“On my behalf therefore, dearest mother; you have no cause for endless weeping:  nor have you on your own.  You cannot grieve for me on selfish grounds, in consequence of any personal loss to yourself; for you were ever eminently unselfish, and unlike other women in all your dealings with your sons, and you were always a help and a benefactor to them rather than they to you.  Nor should you give way out of a regret and longing for me in my absence.  We have often previously been separated, and, although it is natural that you should miss that delightful conversation, that unrestricted confidence, that electrical sympathy of heart and intellect that always existed between us, and that boyish glee wherewith your visits always affected me, yet, as you rise above the common herd of women in virtue, the simplicity, the purity of your life, you must abstain from feminine tears as you have done from all feminine follies.  Consider how Cornelia, who had lost ten children by death, instead of wailing for her dead sons, thanked fortune that had made her sons Gracchi.  Rutilia followed her son Cotta into exile so dearly did she love him, yet no one saw her shed a tear after his burial.  She had shown her affection when it was needful, she restrained her sorrow when it was superflous.  Imitate the example of these great women as you have imitated their virtues.  I want you not to beguile your sorrow by amusements or occupations, but to conquer it.  For you may now return to those philosophical studies in which you once showed yourself so apt a proficient, and which formerly my father checked.  They will gradually sustain and comfort you in your hour of grief.

“And meanwhile consider how many sources of consolation already exist for you.  My brothers are still with you; the dignity of Gallio, the leisure of Mela, will protect you; the ever-sparkling mirth of my darling little Marcus will cheer you up; the training of my little favourite Novatilla will be a duty which will assuage your sorrow.  For your father’s sake, too, though he is absent from you, you must moderate your lamentations.  Above all, your sister—­that truly faithful, loving, and high-souled lady, to whom I owe so deep a debt of affection for her kindness to me from my cradle until now,—­she will yield you the fondest sympathy and the truest consolation.

“But since I know that after all your thoughts will constantly revert to me, and that none of your children will be more frequently before your mind than I,—­not because they are less dear to you than I, but because it is natural to lay the hand most often upon the spot which pains,—­I will tell you how you are to think of me.  Think of me as happy and cheerful, as though I were in the midst of blessings; as indeed I am, while my mind, free from every care, has leisure for its own pursuits, and sometimes amuses itself with lighter studies, sometimes, eager for truth, soars upwards to the contemplation