ing tears,
and stretching out their hands to the spectators, and making the
children themselves also beg and entreat their compassion. There were
two sons and a daughter whose tender age made them but little sensible
of the greatness of their misery, which very insensibility of their
condition rendered it the more deplorable; insomuch that Perseus himself
was scarcely regarded as he went along, whilst pity fixed the eyes of
the Romans upon the infants; many of them could not forbear tears, and
all beheld the sight with a mixture of sorrow and pleasure, until the
children had passed.

After his children and their attendants came Perseus himself, clad all
in black, and wearing the boots of his country; and looking like one
altogether stunned and deprived of reason, through the greatness of his
misfortunes. Next followed a great company of his friends and familiars,
whose countenances were disfigured with grief, and who let the
spectators see, by their tears and their continual looking upon Perseus,
that it was his fortune they so much lamented, and that they were
regardless of their own. Perseus sent to Aemilius to entreat that he
might not be led in pomp, but be left out of the triumph; who, deriding,
as was but just, his cowardice and fondness of life, sent him this
answer, that as for that, it had been before, and was now, in his own
power; giving him to understand that the disgrace could be avoided by
death; which the faint-hearted man not having the spirit for, and made
effeminate by I know not what hopes, allowed himself to appear as a part
of his own spoils. After these were carried four hundred crowns, all
made of gold, sent from the cities by their respective deputations to
Aemilius, in honor of his victory. Then he himself came, seated on a
chariot magnificently adorned (a man well worthy to be looked at, even
without these ensigns of power), dressed in a robe of purple, interwoven
with gold, and holding a laurel branch in his right hand. All the army,
in like manner, with boughs of laurel in their hands, divided into
their bands and companies, followed the chariot of their commander; some
singing verses, according to the usual custom, mingled with raillery;
others, songs of triumph, and the praise of Aemilius's deeds; who,
indeed, was admired and accounted happy by all men, and unenvied by
every one that was good; except so far as it seems the province of some
god to lessen that happiness which is too great and