expect was a great while to linger out a painful and miserable life, and
therefore, as the most sure and sovereign remedy, resolutely advised him
to kill himself. But finding him a little tender and backward in so rude
an attempt: "Do not think, my friend," said she, "that the torments I see
thee endure are not as sensible to me as to thyself, and that to deliver
myself from them, I will not myself make use of the same remedy I have
prescribed to thee. I will accompany thee in the cure as I have done in
the disease; fear nothing, but believe that we shall have pleasure in
this passage that is to free us from so many miseries, and we will go
happily together." Which having said, and roused up her husband's
courage, she resolved that they should throw themselves headlong into the
sea out of a window that overlooked it, and that she might maintain to
the last the loyal and vehement affection wherewith she had embraced him
during his life, she would also have him die in her arms; but lest they
should fail, and should quit their hold in the fall through fear, she
tied herself fast to him by the waist, and so gave up her own life to
procure her husband's repose. This was a woman of mean condition; and,
amongst that class of people, 'tis no very new thing to see some examples
of rare virtue:

"Extrema per illos
Justitia excedens terris vestigia fecit."

["Justice, when she left the earth, took her last
steps among them."--Virgil, Georg., ii. 473.]

The other two were noble and rich, where examples of virtue are rarely
lodged.

Arria, the wife of Caecina Paetus, a consular person, was the mother of