thus providing the chief means to compel him, like a wild
animal, to come and surrender himself into the hands of those who had
his children. He felt most confidence in Nasica, and inquired for him,
but as he was not present, after lamenting his fate, and reflecting on
the impossibility of acting otherwise, he surrendered himself to Cnaeus.

Now he was able to prove that he had a vice yet more sordid than
avarice, namely, base love of life; by which he lost even his title to
pity, the only consolation of which fortune does not deprive the fallen.
He begged to be brought into the presence of Aemilius, who, to show
respect to a great man who had met with a terrible misfortune, rose, and
walked to meet him with his friends, with tears in his eyes. But Perseus
offered a degrading spectacle by flinging himself down upon his face and
embracing his knees, with unmanly cries and entreaties, which Aemilius
could not endure to listen to; but looking on him with a pained and sad
expression, said, "Wretched man: why do you by this conduct deprive
fortune of all blame, by making yourself seem to deserve your mishaps,
and to have been unworthy of your former prosperity, but worthy of your
present misery? And why do you depreciate the value of my victory, and
make my success a small one, by proving degenerate and an unworthy
antagonist for Romans? Valour, however unfortunate, commands great
respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even though
it be prosperous."

XXVII. However, he raised him from the ground, and, having given him his
hand, he entrusted him to Tubero, and then taking into his own tent his
sons, sons-in-law, and most of the younger officers, he sat silent,
wrapt in thought for some time, to their astonishment. Then he said,
"Ought a man to be confident that he deserves his good fortune, and
think much of himself when he has overcome a nation, or city, or empire;
or does fortune give this as an example to the victor also of the
uncertainty of human affairs, which never continue in one stay? For what
time can there be for us mortals to feel confident, when our victories
over others especially compel us to dread fortune, and while we are
exulting, the reflection that the fatal day comes now to one, now to
another, in regular succession, dashes our joy. Can we, who in less than
an hour have trampled under our feet the successor of Alexander the
Great, who was so powerful and mighty, and who see these kin