XXXIV.  Behind the children and their attendants walked Perseus himself, dressed in a dark-coloured cloak with country boots, seeming to be dazed and stupefied by the greatness of his fall.  A band of his friends and associates followed him with grief-laden countenances, and, by their constantly looking at Perseus, and weeping, gave the spectators the idea that they bewailed his fate without taking any thought about their own.  However, Perseus had sent to Aemilius asking to be excused the walking in procession; but he, as it seems in mockery of his cowardice and love of life, answered, “That was formerly in his own hands, and is now if he pleases.”  Meaning that death was preferable to dishonour; but the dastard had not spirit enough for that, but buoyed up by some hope, became a part of his own spoils.

After these were borne golden crowns, four hundred in number, which the cities of Greece had sent to Aemilius with deputations, in recognition of his success.  Next he came himself, sitting in a splendid chariot, a man worth looking upon even without his present grandeur, dressed in a purple robe sprinkled with gold, and holding a branch of laurel in his right hand.  All the army was crowned with laurel and followed the car of the general in military array, at one time singing and laughing over old country songs, then raising in chorus the paean of victory and recital of their deeds, to the glory of Aemilius, who was gazed upon and envied by all, disliked by no good man.  Yet it seems that some deity is charged with tempering these great and excessive pieces of good fortune, and skimming as it were the cream off human life, so that none may be absolutely without his ills in this life; but as Homer says, they may seem to fare best whose fortune partakes equally of good and evil.

XXXV.  For he had four sons, two, as has been already related, adopted into other families, Scipio and Fabius; and two others who were still children, by his second wife, who lived in his own house.  Of these, one died five days before Aemilius’s triumph, at the age of fourteen, and the other, twelve years old, died three days after it; so that there was no Roman that did not grieve for him, and all trembled at the cruelty of fortune, which had burst into a house filled with joy and gladness, and mingled tears and funeral dirges with the triumphal paeans and songs of victory.

XXXVI.  Yet Aemilius, rightly thinking that courage is as valuable in supporting misfortunes as it is against the Macedonian phalanx, so arranged matters as to show that for him the evil was overshadowed by the good, and that his private sorrows were eclipsed by the successes of the state, lest he should detract from the importance and glory of the victory.  He buried the first child, and immediately afterwards triumphed, as we have said:  and when the second died after the triumph, he assembled the people and addressed them, not so much in the words of one who needs consolation, as of one who would console his