st Macedonia, he not only himself bewailed his wretched
fate, but seemed to all men the most unfortunate and unlucky of mankind;
yet AEmilius who conquered him, though he had to give up to another the
command both by land and sea, yet was crowned, and offered sacrifice,
and was justly esteemed happy. For he knew that he had taken a command
which he would have to give up, but Perseus lost his kingdom without
expecting it. Well also has the poet[754] shown the power of anything
that happens unexpectedly. For Odysseus wept bitterly at the death of
his dog, but was not so moved when he sat by his wife who wept, for in
the latter case he had come fully determined to keep his emotion under
the control of reason, whereas in the former it was against his
expectation, and therefore fell upon him as a sudden blow.

Sec. XVII. And since generally speaking some things which happen against
our will pain and trouble us by their very nature, while in the case of
most we accustom ourselves and learn to be disgusted with them from
fancy, it is not unprofitable to counteract this to have ever ready that
line of Menander,

"You suffer no dread thing but in your fancy."

For what, if they touch you neither in soul nor body, are such things to
you as the low birth of your father, or the adultery of your wife, or
the loss of some prize or precedence, since even by their absence a man
is not prevented from being in excellent condition both of body and
soul. And with respect to the things that seem to pain us by their very
nature, as sickness, and anxieties, and the deaths of friends and
children, we should remember, that line of Euripides,

"Alas! and why alas? we only suffer
What mortals must expect."

For no argument has so much weight with emotion when it is borne down
with grief, as that which reminds it of the common and natural necessity
to which man is exposed owing to the body, the only handle which he
gives to fortune, for in his most important and influential part[755] he
is secure against external things. When Demetrius captured Megara, he
asked Stilpo if any of his things had been plundered, and Stilpo
answered, "I saw nobody carrying off anything of mine."[756] And so when
fortune has plundered us and stripped us of everything else, we have
that within ourselves

"Which the Achaeans ne'er could rob us of."[757]

So that we ought not altogether to abase and lower nature, as if she had
no strength or stability agai