"Here Zeno lies, who tall Olympus scal'd; Not heaping Pelion on Ossa's head; Nor by Herculean labours so prevailed; But found out virtue's paths, which thither led." The other by Xenodotus, the Stoic, thus: "Zeno, thy years to hoary age were spent, Not with vain riches, but with self-content." XXVII. Seneca, a great and excellent philosopher, who with Epictetus shall conclude the testimonies of the men of their character, hath so much to our purpose that his works are but a kind of continued evidence for us: he saith, "Nature was not so much an enemy, as to give an easy passage of life to all other creatures, and that man alone should not live without so many arts; she hath commanded us none of these things. We have made all things difficult to us, by disdaining things that are easy: houses, clothes, meats, and nourishment of bodies, and those things which are now the care of life, were easy to come by, freely gotten, and prepared with a light labour: for the measure of these things was necessity, not voluptuousness: but we have made them pernicious and admirable: they must be sought with art and skill. Nature sufficeth to that which she requireth. "Appetite hath revolted from nature, which continually inciteth itself, and increaseth with the ages, helping vice by wit. First it began to desire superfluous, then contrary things: last of all, it sold the mind to the body, and commanded it to serve the lusts thereof. All these arts, wherewith the city is continually set at work, and maketh such a stir, do center in the affairs of the body, to which all things were once performed as to a servant, but now are provided as for a lord: hence the shops of engravers, perfumers, &c. Hence, of those that teach effeminate motions of the body, and vain and wanton songs: for natural behaviour is despised, which completed desires with necessary help; now it is clownishness and ill-breeding to be contented with as much as is requisite. What shall I speak of rich marbles curiously wrought, wherewith temples and houses do shine? What of stately galleries and rich furniture? these are but the devices of most vile slaves; the inventions of men, not of wise men: for wisdom sits deeper; it is the mistress of the mind. Wilt thou know what things she hath found out, what she hath made? Not unseemly motions of the body, nor variable singing by trumpet or flute; nor yet weapons of wars, or fortifications: she endeavoureth profitable things; she favours peace, and calls all mankind to agreement: she leadeth to a blessed estate; she openeth the way to it, and shows what is evil from what is good, and chaseth vanity out of the mind. She giveth solid greatness, but debaseth that which is puffed up, and would be seen of men: she bringeth forth the image of God to be seen in the souls of men: and so from corporeal, she translateth into incorporeal things." Thus in the 90th epistle to Luculius.