Aemilius Paulus

Aemilius, notwithstanding, rightly considering that men have need of bravery and courage, not only against arms and long spears, but against every onset of Fortune as well, so adapted and adjusted the mingled circumstances of his lot that the bad was lost sight of in the good, and his private sorrow in the public welfare, thus neither lowering the grandeur nor sullying the dignity of his victory.

The first of his sons who died he buried, and immediately afterwards celebrated the triumph, as I have said; and when the second died, after the triumph, he gathered the Roman people into an assembly and spoke to them as a man who did not ask for comfort, but rather sought to comfort his fellow-citizens in their distress over his own misfortunes.

He said, namely, that he had never dreaded any human agency, but among agencies that were divine he had ever feared Fortune, believing her to be a most untrustworthy and variable thing; and since in this war particularly she had attended his undertakings like a prosperous gale, as it were, he had never ceased to expect some change and some reversal of the current of affairs.

For in one day, said he, I crossed the Ionian Sea from Brundisium and put in at Corcyra; thence, in five days, I came to Delphi and sacrificed to the god; and again, in other five days, I took command of the forces in Macedonia, and after the usual lustration and review of them I proceeded at once to action, and in other fifteen days brought the war to the most glorious issue.

But I distrusted Fortune because the current of my affairs ran so smoothly, and now that there was complete immunity and nothing to fear from hostile attacks, it was particularly during my voyage home that I feared the reversal of the Deity’s favour after all my good fortune, since I was bringing home so large a victorious army, such spoils, and captured kings.

Nay more, even when I had reached you safely and beheld the city full of delight and gratulation and sacrifices, I was still suspicious of Fortune, knowing that she bestows upon men no great boon that is without alloy or free from divine displeasure.

Indeed, my soul was in travail with this fear and could not dismiss it and cease anxiously forecasting the city’s future, until I was smitten with this great misfortune in my own house, and in days consecrated to rejoicing had carried two most noble sons, who alone remained to be my heirs, one after the other to their graves.

Now, therefore, I am in no peril of what most concerned me, and am confident, and I think that Fortune will remain constant to our city and do her no harm.

For that deity has sufficiently used me and my afflictions to satisfy the divine displeasure at our successes, and she makes the hero of the triumph as clear an example of human weakness as the victim of the triumph; except that Perseus, even though conquered, has his children, while Aemilius, though conqueror, has lost his.