Looking for an example to show why wealth is not necessarily the key to happiness, Horace chooses Phraates, who was restored to the throne of Parthia in 25 BCE. The message is that the crown and authority of a king must always be uncertain: only the man who can maintain a philosophical indifference to such things can truly possess them.
The illustration shows a famous mosaic from Pompeii of Alexander the Great defeating King Darius, an earlier holder of the “throne of Cyrus” at the battle of Issus, some three centuries before Horace’s time.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.