[11]
And since every kind of good is not suitable
to the first comer, but a certain proportion and suitability are necessary
（as for instance beautiful weapons are not suitable to the just but to
the courageous man, and distinguished marriages not to the newly rich but to the
nobly born）, if a virtuous man does not obtain what is suitable to him,
we feel indignant. Similarly, if the inferior contends with the superior,
especially among those engaged in the same pursuit,—whence the saying
of the poet, “
He avoided battle with Ajax, son of Telamon,1 for Zeus
was indignant with him, when he would fight with a better man;
”
or, if the pursuit is not the
same, wherever the inferior contends with the superior in anything whatever, as
for instance, the musician with the just man; for justice is better than music.
From this it is clear, then, with whom men are indignant and for what reasons;
they are these or of such a kind.
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1 Hom. Il. 11.542. Only the first verse is given in the received text of Homer; the second is not found in any of the mss. The reference is to Cebriones, a son of Priam slain by Patroclus.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 22, translated by J. H. Freese. Aristotle. Cambridge and London. Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.
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