LIBER VII · CAPUT 46
MEN WHOM THE GODS HAVE PRONOUNCED TO BE THE MOST HAPPY
Latine · Mayhoff 1906
Subeunt in hac reputatione Delphica oracula velut ad castigandam hominum vanitatem ab deo emissa. duo sunt haec: Pedium telicissimum, qui pro patria proxime occubuisset; iterum a Gyge rege tunc amplissimo terrarum consulti: Aglaum Psophidium esse feliciorem. senior hic in angustissimo Arcadiae angulo parvum, sed annuis victibus large sufficiens praedium colebat, numquam ex eo egressus atque, ut e vitae genere manifestum est, minima cupidine minimum in vita mali expertus.
English · Bostock & Riley 1855–57
In reference to this point, two oracles of Delphi may come under our consideration, which would appear to have been pronounced as though in order to chastise the vanity of man. These oracles were the following: by the first, Pedius was pronounced to be the most happy of men, who had just before fallen in defence of his country. On the second occasion, when it had been consulted by Gyges, at that time the most powerful king in the world, it declared that Aglaüs of Psophis was a more happy man than himself. This Aglaüs was an old man, who lived in a poor petty nook of Arcadia, and cultivated a small farm, though quite sufficient for the supply of his yearly wants; he had never so much as left it, and, as was quite evident from his mode of living, his desires being of the most limited kind, he had experienced but an extremely small share of the miseries of life.