All The World's A Stage

Velázquez, Ménipo (1639-41), @ Prado.

So as I contemplated these things, it seemed to me that human life resembles a great procession where Tyche choreographed and arranged each detail, giving different and varied roles to the performers. She would take one an get him up as a king, for example, putting on a tiara, granting him bodyguards and crowning his head with a diadem. But on another she would put the appearance of a slave. One person she makes beautiful, another ugly and contemptible — for the spectacle, I think, must have variety of all sorts. Often even during the procession itself she switched the roles of some, not letting them finish the procession as they had started. She forced Croesus to take up the gear of a slave and war-captive; Maeandrius (who till then marched as a slave) she re-clothed in the tyranny of Polycrates. And when the procession was over, each gave back his costume, took off his persona with his body and became just like he was before, no different from his neighbour. Then some, whenever Tyche demands the costumes back, in their ignorance grow angry as if they were being deprived of their own things and were not returning what they had borrowed for a short time. I imagine that you have often seen tragic actors changing due to the requirements of the play, now being Creons, now becoming Priams or Agamemnons; and the same man, for instance, just a moment ago played the figure of Cecrops or Erechtheus very grandly but a little later comes back out as a slave, when so ordered by the poet. When the drama ends, each takes off that gold-laced clothing, removes the mask, descends from the high tragic boots, and goes forth, a poor humble individual — no longer Agamemnon son of Atreus or Creon son of Menoeceus, but Polus son of Charicles from Sounion or Satyrus son of Theogeiton from Marathon. Such is the condition of human beings, as it seemed to me then.

Ménipo, em Luciano,  Necyomantia 16

em William Desmond, Cynics (pg. 182-3) 

Acumen, Stocksfield: 2006.