How did this work upon Alexander, who insisted on being Jupiter’s son and going about like Hercules in a lion’s skin? Domitian became a god—“Our Lord God commands that it be done so”—like the Persian kings, whose image was worshipped by everyone entering Babylon. The emperor Commodus was so deceived by his flattering parasites that he had to be called Hercules. The Roman Antony would be crowned with ivy, carried in a chariot and worshipped as Bacchus. Cotys, king of Thrace, was married to Minerva and sent three separate messengers, one after another, to see whether she had come to his bedchamber.

Such were Menecrates the Jupiter, Maximinus the Jovian, Diocletian the Herculean, Shapur the Persian king, brother of the sun and moon, and our present-day Turks, who insist on being gods on earth, kings of kings, God’s shadow, commanders of everything that can be commanded; so too the kings of China and Tartary in our own age. Such was Xerxes, who would whip the sea, put Neptune in chains “with foolish boasting,” and send a challenge to Mount Athos. Such are many foolish princes, led into a fool’s paradise by their parasites.

It is a common disposition in everyone, when they hold high office, reach the height of honour, perform well or deserve well, to applaud and flatter themselves. “They betray their own folly,” and so on, says Plater. Even your tradesmen, if they excel, will boast and brag and display their folly to excess. They have ability and know it; you need not tell them. From a conceit of their own worth they go about smiling to themselves. Continually brooding on their trophies and applause, they at last go quite mad and lose their senses. Petrarch, in book 1 of On Contempt for the World, confessed as much of himself.

Cardano, in his fifth book of wisdom, gives the example of a smith of Milan, a fellow citizen of his, one Galeus de Rubeis, who went mad with joy when praised for rediscovering an instrument of Archimedes. Plutarch, in the Life of Artaxerxes, tells a similar story of a soldier named Chamus, who wounded King Cyrus in battle and became so arrogant as a result that he soon afterwards lost his senses.

So it is with many men: if some new honour, office, advancement, spoils, treasure, property or inheritance falls to them unexpectedly, excessive joy and continual thinking about it keep them from sleeping or knowing what they say or do. They are suddenly so enraptured and carried away by vain notions that there is no controlling them. Epaminondas therefore went out shabby and subdued on the day after his victory at Leuctra. He gave his friends no other reason than that he had noticed himself becoming too arrogant and excessively joyful the day before because of his good fortune.

That wise and virtuous lady, Queen Katherine, dowager of England, said in private conversation on a similar occasion that she would not willingly experience the extreme of either fortune. But if necessity forced her to undergo one of them, she would choose adversity, because comfort was never lacking there, whereas good counsel and self-government were always deficient in the other. People could not moderate themselves.