position against him, or how deploy into action if you are in line and
he takes you in flank or rear, and how you are to learn all you can
about his movements, while keeping your own as secret as may be; these
are matters on which you need no further word of mine; all that I know
about them you have heard a hundred times, and I am sure you have not
neglected any other authority on whom you thought you could rely. You
know all their theories, and you must apply them now, I take it,
according to circumstances and your need. [44] But," he added, "there
is one lesson that I would fain impress on you, and it is the greatest
of them all. Observe the sacrifices and pay heed to the omens; when
they are against you, never risk your army or yourself, for you must
remember that men undertake enterprises on the strength of probability
alone and without any real knowledge as to what will bring them
happiness. [45] You may learn this from all life and all history. How
often have cities allowed themselves to be persuaded into war, and
that by advisers who were thought the wisest of men, and then been
utterly destroyed by those whom they attacked! How often have
statesmen helped to raise a city or a leader to power, and then
suffered the worst at the hands of those whom they exalted! And many
who could have treated others as friends and equals, giving and
receiving kindnesses, have chosen to use them as slaves, and then paid
the penalty at their hands; and many, not content to enjoy their own
share of good, have been swept on by the craving to master all, and
thereby lost everything that they once possessed; and many have won
the very wealth they prayed for and through it have found destruction.
[46] So little does human wisdom know how to choose the best, helpless
as a man who could but draw lots to see what he should do. But the
gods, my son, who live for ever, they know all things, the things that
have been and the things that are and the things that are to be, and
all that shall come from these; and to us mortals who ask their