“Tum pavor sapientiam omnem mihiex animo expectorat.”

     ["Then fear drove out all intelligence from my mind.”—­Ennius, ap. 
     Cicero, Tusc., iv. 8.]

Such as have been well rubbed in some skirmish, may yet, all wounded and bloody as they are, be brought on again the next day to charge; but such as have once conceived a good sound fear of the enemy, will never be made so much as to look him in the face.  Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.  And the many people who, impatient of the perpetual alarms of fear, have hanged or drowned themselves, or dashed themselves to pieces, give us sufficiently to understand that fear is more importunate and insupportable than death itself.

The Greeks acknowledged another kind of fear, differing from any we have spoken of yet, that surprises us without any visible cause, by an impulse from heaven, so that whole nations and whole armies have been struck with it.  Such a one was that which brought so wonderful a desolation upon Carthage, where nothing was to be heard but affrighted voices and outcries; where the inhabitants were seen to sally out of their houses as to an alarm, and there to charge, wound, and kill one another, as if they had been enemies come to surprise their city.  All things were in disorder and fury till, with prayers and sacrifices, they had appeased their gods—­[Diod.  Sic., xv. 7]; and this is that they call panic terrors.—­[Ibid. ; Plutarch on Isis and Osiris, c. 8.]

CHAPTER XVIII

That men are not to judge of our happiness till after death.

     [Charron has borrowed with unusual liberality from this and the
     succeeding chapter.  See Nodier, Questions, p. 206.]

                         “Scilicet ultima semper
               Exspectanda dies homini est; dicique beatus
               Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet.”

     ["We should all look forward to our last day:  no one can be called
     happy till he is dead and buried.”—­Ovid, Met, iii. 135]

The very children know the story of King Croesus to this purpose, who being taken prisoner by Cyrus, and by him condemned to die, as he was going to execution cried out, “O Solon, Solon!” which being presently reported to Cyrus, and he sending to inquire of him what it meant, Croesus gave him to understand that he now found the teaching Solon had formerly given him true to his cost; which was, “That men, however fortune may smile upon them, could never be said to be happy till they had been seen to pass over the last day of their lives,” by reason of the uncertainty and mutability of human things,