defamed, detracted, undervalued, or [2381]"left behind their fellows.”  Lucian brings in Aetamacles, a philosopher in his Lapith. convivio, much discontented that he was not invited amongst the rest, expostulating the matter, in a long epistle, with Aristenetus their host.  Praetextatus, a robed gentleman in Plutarch, would not sit down at a feast, because he might not sit highest, but went his ways all in a chafe.  We see the common quarrelings, that are ordinary with us, for taking of the wall, precedency, and the like, which though toys in themselves, and things of no moment, yet they cause many distempers, much heart-burning amongst us.  Nothing pierceth deeper than a contempt or disgrace, [2382]especially if they be generous spirits, scarce anything affects them more than to be despised or vilified.  Crato, consil. 16, l. 2, exemplifies it, and common experience confirms it.  Of the same nature is oppression, Ecclus. 77, “surely oppression makes a man mad,” loss of liberty, which made Brutus venture his life, Cato kill himself, and [2383]Tully complain, Omnem hilaritatem in perpetuum amisi, mine heart’s broken, I shall never look up, or be merry again, [2384]_haec jactura intolerabilis_, to some parties ’tis a most intolerable loss.  Banishment a great misery, as Tyrteus describes it in an epigram of his,

       “Nam miserum est patria amissa, laribusque vagari
          Mendicum, et timida voce rogare cibos: 
        Omnibus invisus, quocunque accesserit exul
          Semper erit, semper spretus egensque jacet,” &c.

       “A miserable thing ’tis so to wander,
          And like a beggar for to whine at door,
        Contemn’d of all the world, an exile is,
          Hated, rejected, needy still and poor.”

Polynices in his conference with Jocasta in [2385]Euripides, reckons up five miseries of a banished man, the least of which alone were enough to deject some pusillanimous creatures.  Oftentimes a too great feeling of our own infirmities or imperfections of body or mind, will shrivel us up; as if we be long sick: 

       “O beata sanitas, te praesente, amaenum
        Ver florit gratiis, absque te nemo beatus:” 

O blessed health! “thou art above all gold and treasure,” Ecclus. xxx. 15, the poor man’s riches, the rich man’s bliss, without thee there can be no happiness:  or visited with some loathsome disease, offensive to others, or troublesome to ourselves; as a stinking breath, deformity of our limbs, crookedness, loss of an eye, leg, hand, paleness, leanness, redness, baldness, loss or want of hair, &c., hic ubi fluere caepit, diros ictus cordi infert, saith [2386]Synesius, he himself troubled not a little ob comae defectum, the loss of hair alone, strikes a cruel stroke to the heart.  Acco, an old woman, seeing by chance her face in a true glass (for she used false flattering glasses belike at other times, as most gentlewomen