victorious army, vast spoils, and a captive king. Nay, indeed, after
I was returned to you safe, and saw the city full of joy,
congratulating, and sacrifices, yet still I distrusted, well knowing
that fortune never conferred any great benefits that were unmixed
and unattended with probabilities of reverse. Nor could my mind,
that was still as it were in labour, and always foreseeing something
to befall this city, free itself from this fear, until this great
misfortune befell me in my own family, and till, in the midst of
those days set apart for triumph, I carried two of the best of sons,
my only destined successors, one after another to their funerals.
Now therefore, I am myself safe from danger, at least as to what was
my greatest care; and I trust and am verily persuaded that, for the
time to come, fortune will prove constant and harmless unto you;
since she has sufficiently wreaked her jealousy at our great
successes on me and mine, and has made the conqueror as marked an
example of human instability as the captive whom he led in triumph,
with this only difference, that Perseus, though conquered, does yet
enjoy his children, while the conqueror Aemilius is deprived of
his."

42. This was the Roman fashion of accepting the greatest sorrow that
can befall a man at the moment when sorrow is felt the most keenly--
at the moment of his greatest happiness. And there are many ways of
accepting misfortune--as many, indeed, as there are generous
feelings or thoughts to be found on the earth; and every one of
those thoughts, every one of those feelings, has a magic wand that
transforms, on the threshold, the features and vestments of sorrow.
Job would have said, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away:
blessed be the name of the Lord"; and Marcus Aurelius perhaps, "If
it be no longer allowed me to love those I loved high above all, it