Consolatio ad Apollonium

Now since time, which is wont to assuage all things, has intervened since the calamity, and your present condition seems to demand the aid of your friends, I have conceived it to be proper to communicate to you some words that can give comfort, for

the mitigation of grief and the termination of mournful and vain lamentations. For

Words are physicians for an ailing mind, When at the fitting time one soothes the heart.[*](Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 379.)

Since, according to the wise Euripides,[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 962. The last two lines are cited supra 69 D.)

For divers ills are remedies diverse: The kindly speech of friends for one in grief, And admonitions when one plays the fool.

Indeed, though there are many emotions that aifect the soul, yet grief, from its nature, is the most cruel of all. They say:

To many there doth come because of grief Insanity and ills incurable, And some for grief have ended their own life.[*](From Philemon; cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. ii. p. 512, Philemon, No. 106, where additional lines are given.)

The pain and pang felt at the death of a son has in itself good cause to awaken grief, which is only natural, and over it we have no control. For I, for my part, cannot concur with those who extol that harsh and callous indifference, which is both impossible and unprofitable.[*](Cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, iii. 6 (12).) For this will rob us of the kindly feeling which comes from mutual affection and which above all else we must conserve. But to be carried beyond all bounds and to help in exaggerating our griefs I say is contrary to nature, and results from our depraved ideas. Therefore this also must be dismissed as injurious and depraved and most unbecoming to right-minded men, but a moderate indulgence

in grief is not to be disapproved. Pray that we be not ill, says Crantor [*](Cf. Mullach, Frag. Philos. Graec. iii. p. 146; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, iii. 6 (12).) of the Academy, but if we be ill, pray that sensation be left us, whether one of our members be cut off or torn out. For this insensibility to pain [*](Such Stoicism was required by the stricter Stoic school, but the philosophers of the Academy would have none of it.) is attained by man only at a great price; for in the former case, we may suppose, it is the body which has been brutalized into such insensibility, but in the latter case the soul.