ce makes their approach more tolerable; and on this
account what Euripides makes Theseus say is much commended. You will
give me leave to translate them, as is usual with me:

I treasured up what some learn'd sage did tell,
And on my future misery did dwell;
I thought of bitter death, of being drove
Far from my home by exile, and I strove
With every evil to possess my mind,
That, when they came, I the less care might find.[38]

But Euripides says that of himself, which Theseus said he had heard
from some learned man, for the poet had been a pupil of Anaxagoras,
who, as they relate, on hearing of the death of his son, said, "I knew
that my son was mortal;" which speech seems to intimate that such
things afflict those men who have not thought on them before.
Therefore, there is no doubt but that all those things which are
considered evils are the heavier from not being foreseen. Though,
notwithstanding this is not the only circumstance which occasions the
greatest grief, still, as the mind, by foreseeing and preparing for it,
has great power to make all grief the less, a man should at all times
consider all the events that may befall him in this life; and certainly
the excellence and divine nature of wisdom consists in taking a near
view of, and gaining a thorough acquaintance with, all human affairs,
in not being surprised when anything happens, and in thinking, before
the event, that there is nothing but what may come to pass.

Wherefore ev'ry man,
When his affairs go on most swimmingly,
E'en then it most behooves to arm himself
Against the coming storm: loss, danger, exile,
Returning ever, let him look to meet;
His son in fault, wife dead, or daughter sick;
All common accidents, and may have happen'd
That nothing shall seem new or strange. But if
Aught has fall'n out beyond his hopes, all that
Let him account clear gain.[39]

XV. Therefore, as Terence has so well expressed what he borrowed from
philosophy, shall not we, from whose fountains he drew it, say the same
thing in a better manner, and abide by it with more steadiness? Hence
came that steady countenance, which, according to Xantippe, her husband
Socrates always had; so that she said that she never observed any
difference in his looks when he went out and when he came home. Yet the
look of that old Roman, M. Crassus, who, as Lucilius says, never smiled
but once in his life