“Fortune makes him a fool whom she wishes to destroy.”Publilius Syrus · Sentințe · -50 · 618
Luck doesn't strike out of nowhere: it first corrupts your judgment, then lets you fall on your own.
Syrus describes a recurring pattern of great misfortune: it doesn't strike out of nowhere, but first turns a person into a fool. Unearned success breeds arrogance, overconfidence, and blindness to warning signs; the person sabotages their own position, and the fall is merely the ending. The mechanism is judgment corrupted by euphoria: a brain that keeps winning stops testing its assumptions. An entrepreneur with three successful ventures borrows massively for a fourth without analyzing anything — and loses everything.
Why it matters Check your judgment precisely when luck smiles on you: a winning streak is when reasoning errors cost the most.