Consolatio ad Apollonium

Closely allied with this are the following words of the comic poet [*](Philemon, in the Sardius; cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. ii. p. 497, Philemon, No. 73.) spoken with reference to those whose grief over such calamities is excessive: If only tears were remedy for ills, And he who weeps obtained surcease of woe, Then we should purchase tears by giving gold. But as it is, events that come to pass, My master, do not mind nor heed these things, But, whether you shed tears or not, pursue The even tenor of their way. What then Do we accomplish by our weeping ? Naught. But as the trees have fruit, grief has these tears. And Dictys, who is trying to console Danaë in her excessive grief, says:

Think you that Hades minds your moans at all, And will send back your child if you will groan ? Desist. By viewing close your neighbour’s ills You might be more composed,—if you reflect How many mortals have to toil in bonds,

How many reft of children face old age, And others still who from a prosperous reign Sink down to nothing. This you ought to heed.[*](From the Dictys of Euripides; cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 332.)

In this connexion might be adduced the utterance of Socrates [*](Not original with Socrates, cf. Herodotus, vii. 152; attributed to Solon by Valerius Maximus, vii. 2, ext. 2.) which suggests that if we were all to bring our misfortunes into a common store, so that each person should receive an equal share in the distribution, the majority would be glad to take up their own and depart.

The poet Antimachus, also, employed a similar method. For after the death of his wife, Lyde, whom he loved very dearly, he composed, as a consolation for his grief, the elegy called Lyde, in which he enumerated the misfortunes of the heroes, and thus made his own grief less by means of others’ ills. So it is clear that he who tries to console a person in grief, and demonstrates that the calamity is one which is common to many, and less than the calamities which have befallen others, changes the opinion of the one in grief and gives him a similar conviction— that his calamity is really less than he supposed it to be.