Consolatio ad Apollonium

In general one might say to the man who mourns, Shall you at some time cease to take this to heart, or shall you feel that you must grieve always every day of your life ? For if you purpose to remain always in this extreme state of affliction, you will bring complete wretchedness and the most bitter misery upon yourself by the ignobleness and cowardice of your soul. But if you intend some time to change your attitude, why do you not change it at once and extricate yourself from this misfortune ? Give attention now to those arguments by the use of which, as time goes on, your release shall be accomplished, and relieve yourself now of your sad condition. For in the case of bodily afflictions the quickest way of relief is the better. Therefore concede now to reason and education what you surely will later concede to time, and release yourself from your troubles.

But I cannot, he says, for I never expected or looked for this experience. But you ought to have looked for it, and to have previously pronounced judgement on human affairs for their uncertainty and fatuity, and then you would not now have been taken off your guard as by enemies suddenly come upon you. Admirably does Theseus in Euripides [*](In an unknown play; cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. Euripides, No. 964 D; Cf. the translation by Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, iii. 14 (29).) appear to have prepared himself for such crises, for he says:

But I have learned this from a certain sage, And on these cares and troubles set my mind, And on myself laid exile from my land And early deaths and other forms of ills,

That if I suffer aught my fancy saw, It should not, coming newly, hurt the more.