easy, but their persuasion that grief and lamentation was not becoming
in a man? Therefore, as some give themselves up to grief from an
opinion that it is right so to do, they refrained themselves, from an
opinion that it was discreditable; from which we may infer that grief
is owing more to opinion than nature.

XXIX. It may be said, on the other side, Who is so mad as to grieve of
his own accord? Pain proceeds from nature, which you must submit to,
say they, agreeably to what even your own Crantor teaches, for it
presses and gains upon you unavoidably, and cannot possibly be
resisted. So that the very same Oileus, in Sophocles, who had before
comforted Telamon on the death of Ajax, on hearing of the death of his
own son, is broken-hearted. On this alteration of his mind we have
these lines:

Show me the man so well by wisdom taught
That what he charges to another's fault,
When like affliction doth himself betide,
True to his own wise counsel will abide.[47]

Now, when they urge these things, their endeavor is to prove that
nature is absolutely and wholly irresistible; and yet the same people
allow that we take greater grief on ourselves than nature requires.
What madness is it, then, in us to require the same from others? But
there are many reasons for our taking grief on us. The first is from
the opinion of some evil, on the discovery and certainty of which grief
comes of course. Besides, many people are persuaded that they are doing
something very acceptable to the dead when they lament bitterly over
them. To these may be added a kind of womanish superstition, in
imagining that when they have been stricken by the afflictions sent by