So it appears that honour cometh not to virtue from rank, but to rank from virtue.

Look, too, at the nature of that power which ye find so attractive and glorious! Do ye never consider, ye creatures of earth, what ye are, and over whom ye exercise your fancied lordship?
Suppose, now, that in the mouse tribe there should rise up one claiming rights and powers for himself above the rest, would ye not laugh consumedly?
Yet if thou lookest to his body alone, what creature canst thou find more feeble than man, who oftentimes is killed by the bite of a fly, or by some insect creeping into the inner passage of his system! Yet what rights can one exercise over another, save only as regards the body, and that which is lower than the body--I mean fortune?
What! wilt thou bind with thy mandates the free spirit?
Canst thou force from its due tranquillity the mind that is firmly composed by reason?
A tyrant thought to drive a man of free birth to reveal his accomplices in a conspiracy, but the prisoner bit off his tongue and threw it into the furious tyrant's face; thus, the tortures which the tyrant thought the instrument of his cruelty the sage made an opportunity for heroism.

Moreover, what is there that one man can do to another which he himself may not have to undergo in his turn?
We are told that Busiris, who used to kill his guests, was himself slain by his guest, Hercules.

Regulus had thrown into bonds many of the Carthaginians whom he had taken in war; soon after he himself submitted his hands to the chains of the vanquished.

Then, thinkest thou that man hath any power who cannot prevent another's being able to do to him what he himself can do to others?
'Besides, if there were any element of natural and proper good in rank and power, they would never come to the utterly bad, since opposites are not wont to be associated.