cidents with which chance has
visited you; and you behaved as you did, even after you had been inured
to your distress, and after the first swelling of the mind had
subsided!--whereas grief consists (as I shall show) in the notion of
some recent evil--but your grief, it is very plain, proceeded from the
loss of your kingdom, not of your daughter, for you hated her, and
perhaps with reason, but you could not calmly bear to part with your
kingdom. But surely it is an impudent grief which preys upon a man for
not being able to command those that are free. Dionysius, it is true,
the tyrant of Syracuse, when driven from his country, taught a school
at Corinth; so incapable was he of living without some authority. But
what could be more impudent than Tarquin, who made war upon those who
could not bear his tyranny; and, when he could not recover his kingdom
by the aid of the forces of the Veientians and the Latins, is said to
have betaken himself to Cuma, and to have died in that city of old age
and grief!
XIII. Do you, then, think that it can befall a wise man to be oppressed
with grief, that is to say, with misery? for, as all perturbation is
misery, grief is the rack itself. Lust is attended with heat, exulting
joy with levity, fear with meanness, but grief with something greater
than these; it consumes, torments, afflicts, and disgraces a man; it
tears him, preys upon his mind, and utterly destroys him: if we do not
so divest ourselves of it as to throw it completely off, we cannot be
free from misery. And it is clear that there must be grief where
anything has the appearance of a present sore and oppressing evil.
Epicurus is of opinion that grief arises naturally from the imagination
of any evil; so that whosoever is eye-witness of any great misfortune,
if he conceives that the like may possibly befall himself, becomes sad
instantly from such an idea. The Cyrenaics think that grief is not
engendered by every kind of evil, but only by unexpected, unforeseen
evil; and that circumstance is, indeed, of no small effect on the
heightening of grief; for whatsoever comes of a sudden appears more
formidable. Hence these lines are deservedly commended:
I knew my son, when first he drew his breath,
Destined by fate to an untimely death;
And when I sent him to defend the Greeks,
War was his business, not your sportive freaks.
XIV. Therefore, this ruminating beforehand upon future evils which you
see at a distan
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