In general one might say to the man who mourns, Shall you at some time cease to take this to heart, or shall you feel that you must grieve always every day of your life ? For if you purpose to remain always in this extreme state of affliction, you will bring complete wretchedness and the most bitter misery upon yourself by the ignobleness and cowardice of your soul. But if you intend some time to change your attitude, why do you not change it at once and extricate yourself from this misfortune ? Give attention now to those arguments by the use of which, as time goes on, your release shall be accomplished, and relieve yourself now of your sad condition. For in the case of bodily afflictions the quickest way of relief is the better. Therefore concede now to reason and education what you surely will later concede to time, and release yourself from your troubles. But I cannot, he says, for I never expected or looked for this experience. But you ought to have looked for it, and to have previously pronounced judgement on human affairs for their uncertainty and fatuity, and then you would not now have been taken off your guard as by enemies suddenly come upon you. Admirably does Theseus in Euripides In an unknown play; cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. Euripides, No. 964 D; Cf. the translation by Cicero, Tusculan Disputations , iii. 14 (29). appear to have prepared himself for such crises, for he says: But I have learned this from a certain sage, And on these cares and troubles set my mind, And on myself laid exile from my land And early deaths and other forms of ills, That if I suffer aught my fancy saw, It should not, coming newly, hurt the more. But the more ignoble and untutored sometimes cannot even recall themselves to the consideration of anything seemly and profitable, but go out of their way to find extremes of wretchedness, even to punishing their innocent body and to forcing the unafflicted, as Achaeus Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 757, Achaeus, No. 45. says, to join in their grief. Wherefore very excellently Plato Adapted from the Republic , p. 604 B. appears to advise us in such misfortunes to maintain a calm demeanour, since neither the evil nor the good in them is at all plain, and since no advance is made by the man who takes things much to heart. For grief stands in the way of sane counsel about an event and prevents one from arranging his affairs with relation to what has befallen, as a player does at a throw of the dice, in whatever way reason may convince him would be best. We ought not, therefore, when we have fallen to act like children and hold on to the injured place and scream, but we should accustom our soul speedily to concern itself with curing the injury and raising up the fallen, and we should put away lamentation by remedial art. They say that the lawgiver of the Lyclans Cf. Valerius Maximus, ii. 6. 13. ordered his citizens, whenever they mourned, to clothe themselves first in women’s garments and then to mourn, wishing to make it clear that mourning is womanish and unbecoming to decorous men who lay claim to the education of the free-born. Yes, mourning is verily feminine, and weak, and ignoble, since women are more given to it than men, and barbarians more than Greeks, and inferior men more than better men; and of the barbarians themselves, not the most noble, Celts and Galatians, and all who by nature are filled with a more manly spirit, but rather, if such there are, the Egyptians and Syrians and Lydians and all those who are like them. For it is recorded that some of these go down into pits and remain there for several days, not desiring even to behold the light of the sun since the deceased also is bereft of it. At any rate the tragic poet Ion, Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 743, Ion, No. 54. who was not without knowledge of the foolishness of these peoples, has represented a woman as saying: The nurse of lusty children I have come, To supplicate you, from the mourning pits. And some of the barbarians even cut off parts of their bodies, their noses and ears, and mutilate other portions of their bodies also, thinking to gratify the dead by abandoning that moderation of feeling which Nature enjoins in such cases. But I dare say that, in answer to this, some may assert their belief that there need not be mourning for every death, but only for untimely deaths, because of the failure of the dead to gain what are commonly held to be the advantages of life, such as marriage, education, manhood, citizenship, or public office (for these are the considerations, they say, which most cause grief to those who suffer misfortune through untimely deaths, since they are robbed of their hope out of due time); but they do not realize that the untimely death shows no disparity if it be considered with reference to the Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 743, Ion, No. 54. common lot of man. For just as when it has been decided to migrate to a new fatherland, and the journey is compulsory for all, and none by entreaty can escape it, some go on ahead and others follow after, but all come to the same place; in the same manner, of all who are journeying toward Destiny those who come more tardily have no advantage over those who arrive earlier. If it be true that untimely death is an evil, the most untimely would be that of infants and children, and still more that of the newly born. But such deaths we bear easily and cheerfully, but the deaths of those who have already lived some time with distress and mourning because of our fanciful notion, born of vain hopes, since we have come to feel quite assured of the continued tarrying with us of persons who have lived so long. But if the years of man’s life were but twenty, we should feel that he who passed away at fifteen had not died untimely, but that he had already attained an adequate measure of age, while the man who had completed the prescribed period of twenty years, or who had come close to the count of twenty years, we should assuredly deem happy as having lived through a most blessed and perfect life. But if the length of life were two hundred years, we should certainly feel that he who came to his end at one hundred was cut off untimely, and we should betake ours elves to wailing and lamentation. It is evident, therefore, that even the death which we call untimely readily admits of consolation, both for these reasons and for those previously given. For in fact Troïlus shed fewer tears than did Priam; A saying of Callimachus; cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations , i. 93 (39); Plutarch, Moralia , 211 A. and if Priam had died earlier, while his kingdom and his great prosperity were at their height, he would not have used such sad words as he did in his conversation with his own son Hector, when he advised him to withdraw from the battle with Achilles; he says: Homer, Il. xxii. 56. Come then within the walled city, my son, so to save from destruction All of the men and the women of Troy, nor afford a great triumph Unto the offspring of Peleus, and forfeit the years of your lifetime. Also for me have compassion, ill-starred, while yet I have feeling; Hapless I am; on the threshold of eld will the Father, descended from Cronus, Make me to perish in pitiful doom, after visions of evils, Sons being slain and our daughters as well being dragged to be captives, Chambers of treasure all wantonly plundered and poor little children Dashed to the earth in the terrible strife by the merciless foeman, Wives of my sons being dragged by the ravishing hands of Achaeans. Me, last of all, at the very front doors shall the dogs tear to pieces, Ravening, eager for blood, when a foeman wielding his weapon, Keen-edged of bronze, by a stroke or a throw, takes the life from my body. Yet when the dogs bring defilement on hair and on beard that is hoary, And on the body as well of an old man slain by the foeman, This is the saddest of sights ever seen by us unhappy mortals. Thus did the old man speak, and his hoary locks plucked by the handful, Tearing his hair from his head, but he moved not the spirit of Hector. Since you have, then, so very many examples regarding the matter, bear in mind the fact that death relieves not a few persons from great and grievous ills which, if they had lived on, they would surely have experienced. But, out of regard for the due proportions of my argument, I omit these, contenting myself with what has been said touching the wrongfulness of being carried away beyond natural and moderate bounds to futile mourning and ignoble lamentation.