The early Greeks held a doctrine known as the Envy of the Gods. They imagined that the gods were envious of the great and prosperous. Hence they thought it was the envy of the gods which brought about the undoing of the great and powerful. Their prayer for a friend enjoying an unusual run of good fortune was, “May the gods not become envious.” We find this doctrine embodied in the Herodotean story of Crœsus, king of Lydia, whose long career of unbroken and dazzling prosperity ends at last in dreadful reverses and sudden downfall.[475] The same belief colors the advice which Herodotus represents Artabanus, the uncle of Xerxes, as giving the king, who was meditating an attack on the Greek cities. The immoderate ambition of the king, in view of the envious nature of the gods, had awakened the apprehension of the old and experienced counselor, and he labored to dissuade the king from engaging in so vast a project. “Dost thou not notice,” said he, “how the lightning smites always the highest buildings and the tallest trees. Thus often the mighty host is overthrown by lightning sent by the jealous gods; for the gods are jealous of mortals, and will allow no one unduly to exalt himself.”[476] There is here no suggestion of an ethical element. The envious gods overthrow things simply and solely because they are big and tall and cast them into the shade. At a still later period the Athenian general Nicias gives memorable expression to this belief in his speech to his disheartened troops before Syracuse. He bade them take cheer from their wretched plight because the envious gods must certainly be disarmed by the sight of their woeful condition and would now pity and help.[477] But alongside this unethical doctrine of the Envy of the Gods the Greeks held another, which seems to have been simply a modification and outgrowth of the earlier crude conception of deity. This was the doctrine of Nemesis. There was here full recognition of the vicissitudes of human life. The great and the overpowerful are indeed destroyed by the gods,--there was no denying the fact,--but not merely because they are great, but because their greatness and their prosperity has made them self-confident, insolent, overbearing. In their blind arrogance they have overstepped the limits of moderation; hence their downfall wrought by the gods.