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 lifetime, was not of this kind, but placid and serene,
for so we are told. He, indeed, might well have had the same look at
all times who never changed his mind, from which the countenance
derives its expression. So that I am ready to borrow of the Cyrenaics
those arms against the accidents and events of life by means of which,
by long premeditation, they break the force of all approaching evils;
and at the same time I think that those very evils themselves arise
more from opinion than nature, for if they were real, no forecast could
make them lighter. But I shall speak more particularly on these matters
after I have first considered Epicurus's opinion, who thinks that all
people must necessarily be uneasy who believe themselves to be in any
evils, let them be either foreseen and expected, or habitual to them;
for with him evils are not the less by reason of their continuance, nor
the lighter for having been foreseen; and it is folly to ruminate on