and although he hath received much, yet (as [3733]Seneca follows it) “he thinks it an injury that he hath no more, and is so far from giving thanks for his tribuneship, that he complains he is not praetor, neither doth that please him, except he may be consul.”  Why is he not a prince, why not a monarch, why not an emperor?  Why should one man have so much more than his fellows, one have all, another nothing?  Why should one man be a slave or drudge to another?  One surfeit, another starve, one live at ease, another labour, without any hope of better fortune?  Thus they grumble, mutter, and repine:  not considering that inconstancy of human affairs, judicially conferring one condition with another, or well weighing their own present estate.  What they are now, thou mayst shortly be; and what thou art they shall likely be.  Expect a little, compare future and times past with the present, see the event, and comfort thyself with it.  It is as well to be discerned in commonwealths, cities, families, as in private men’s estates.  Italy was once lord of the world, Rome the queen of cities, vaunted herself of two [3734]myriads of inhabitants; now that all-commanding country is possessed by petty princes, [3735]Rome a small village in respect.  Greece of old the seat of civility, mother of sciences and humanity; now forlorn, the nurse of barbarism, a den of thieves.  Germany then, saith Tacitus, was incult and horrid, now full of magnificent cities:  Athens, Corinth, Carthage, how flourishing cities, now buried in their own ruins! Corvorum, ferarum, aprorum et bestiarum lustra, like so many wildernesses, a receptacle of wild beasts.  Venice a poor fisher-town; Paris, London, small cottages in Caesar’s time, now most noble emporiums.  Valois, Plantagenet, and Scaliger how fortunate families, how likely to continue! now quite extinguished and rooted out.  He stands aloft today, full of favour, wealth, honour, and prosperity, in the top of fortune’s wheel:  tomorrow in prison, worse than nothing, his son’s a beggar.  Thou art a poor servile drudge, Foex populi, a very slave, thy son may come to be a prince, with Maximinus, Agathocles, &c. a senator, a general of an army; thou standest bare to him now, workest for him, drudgest for him and his, takest an alms of him:  stay but a little, and his next heir peradventure shall consume all with riot, be degraded, thou exalted, and he shall beg of thee.  Thou shalt be his most honourable patron, he thy devout servant, his posterity shall run, ride, and do as much for thine, as it was with [3736]Frisgobald and Cromwell, it may be for thee.  Citizens devour country gentlemen, and settle in their seats; after two or three descents, they consume all in riot, it returns to the city again.