durance of every misfortune is rendered more easy by the fact of others having undergone the same, and the fate of others causes what has happened to appear less important than it has been previously thought, and reflection thus discovers to us how much opinion had imposed on us. And this is what the Telamon declares, "I, when my son was born," etc.; and thus Theseus, "I on my future misery did dwell;" and Anaxagoras, "I knew my son was mortal." All these men, by frequently reflecting on human affairs, had discovered that they were by no means to be estimated by the opinion of the multitude; and, indeed, it seems to me to be pretty much the same case with those who consider beforehand as with those who derive their remedies from time, excepting that a kind of reason cures the one, and the other remedy is provided by nature; by which we discover (and this contains the whole marrow of the matter) that what was imagined to be the greatest evil is by no means so great as to defeat the happiness of life. And the effect of this is, that the blow is greater by reason of its not haying been foreseen, and not, as they suppose, that when similar misfortunes befall two different people, that man only is affected with grief whom this calamity has befallen unexpectedly. So that some persons, under the oppression of grief, are said to have borne it actually worse for hearing of this common condition of man, that we are born under such conditions as render it impossible for a man to be exempt from all evil.
XXV. For this reason Carneades, as I see our friend Antiochus writes, used to blame Chrysippus for commending these verses of Euripides:
Man, doom'd to care, to pain, disease, and strife,
Walks his short journey thro' the vale of life:
Watchful attends the cradle and the grave,
And passing generations longs to save:
Last, dies himself: yet wherefore should we mourn?
For man must to his kindred dust return;
Submit to the destroying hand of fate,
As ripen'd ears the harvest-sickle wait.
- ↑ This is a fragment from the Hypsipyle:
Εφυ μὲν οὐδεὶς ὅστις οὐ πονεῖ βροτῶν·
θάπτει τε τέκνα χἄτερ' αὖ κτᾶται νεὰ,
αὐτός τε θνήσκει. καὶ τάδ' ἄχθονται βροτοὶ
εἰς γῆν φέροντες γῆν· ἀναγκαίως δ' ἔχει
βίον θερίζειν ὥστε κάρπιμον στάχυν.
