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Epistulae ad Familiares, IV. v.

on my right the Piraeus, on my left Corinth,[1] towns at one time most flourishing, now lying prostrate and demolished before one's very eyes. I began to think to myself "So! we puny mortals resent it, do we, if one of us, whose lives are naturally shorter, has died in his bed or been slain in battle, when ' in this one land alone there lie flung down before us the corpses of so many towns[2]?' Pray control yourself, Servius, and remember that you were born a human being." Take my word for it, I was not a little fortified by that reflexion. This thought also, if you do not mind, be careful to set before your eyes. Not so long ago there perished at one and the same time many of our famous men; the imperial power of the Roman people has been terribly impaired; all the provinces have been shaken to their foundations; are you so profoundly moved by the loss of the spark of life in one weak woman? If she had not met her death to-day, she would in any event have had to die in a few years' time, seeing that she was born a human being.

5 You, like myself, must call your mind and thoughts away from these subjects, and bethink yourself rather of what is worthy of the part you have to play, remembering that she lived as long as life was of use to her; that she and the Republic passed away together; that she saw you, her father, elected praetor, then consul, then augur; that she had been successively the bride of more than one youth of the highest rank,[3] that she enjoyed almost every blessing in life; and it was with the fall of the Republic that she ceased to live. What reason have either you or she for quarrelling with fortune on this score?

  1. ↑ Byron made the same voyage (see Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV. xliv.):
    Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,
    The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind,
    The friend of Tully.
  2. ↑ Apparently a poetic quotation.
  3. ↑ She had married successively Piso, Crassipes, and Dolabella.
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