40.  It is only in the manner of our facing the event that its active force consists.  Assemble ten men who, like Paulus Aemilius, have lost both their sons at the moment when life seemed sweetest, then will the misfortune appear to vary in every one.  Misfortune enters within us, but must of necessity yield obedience to all our commands.  Even as the order may be that it finds inscribed on the threshold, so will it sow, or destroy, or reap.  If my neighbour, a commonplace man, were to lose his two sons at the moment when fate had granted his dearest desires, then would darkness steal over all, unrelieved by a glimmer of light; and misfortune itself, contemptuous of its too facile success, would leave naught behind but a handful of colourless cinders.  Nor is it necessary for me to see my neighbour again to be aware that his sorrow will have brought to him pettiness only; for sorrow does merely restore to us that which our soul had lent in happier days.

41.  But this was the misfortune that befell Paulus Aemilius.  Rome, still aglow with his triumph, waited, dismayed, wondering what was to happen.  Were the gods defying the sage, and how would the sage reply?  Would the hero be crushed by his sorrow, or would sorrow acknowledge its master?  Mankind, at moments like these, seems aware that destiny is yet once again making trial of the strength of her arm, and that change of some kind must befall if her blow crush not where it alights.  And see with what eagerness men at such moments will question the eyes of their chiefs for the password against the invisible.

But Paulus Aemilius has gathered to-gether an assembly of the people of Rome; he advances gravely towards them, and thus does he speak:  “I, who never yet feared anything that was human, have, amongst such as were divine, always had, a dread of fortune as faithless and inconstant; and, for the very reason that in this war she had been as a favourable gale in all my affairs, I still expected some change and reflux of things.  In one day I passed the Ionian Sea, and reached Corcyra from Brundisium; thence in five more I sacrificed at Delphi, and in other five days came to my forces in Macedonia, where, after I had finished the usual sacrifices for the purifying of the army, I entered on my duties, and in the space of fifteen days put an honourable period to the war.  Still retaining a jealousy of fortune, even from the smooth current of my affairs, and seeing myself secure and free from the danger of any enemy, I chiefly dreaded the change of the goddess at sea, whilst conveying home my victorious army, vast spoils, and a captive king.  Nay, indeed, after I was returned to you safe, and saw the city full of joy, congratulating, and sacrifices, yet still I distrusted, well knowing that fortune never conferred any great benefits that were unmixed and unattended with probabilities of reverse.  Nor could my mind, that was still as it were in labour, and always foreseeing