Or it is for her sake, I suppose, that you are grieving? How many times must you have arrived at the same conclusion as that into which I too have frequently fallen, that in these days theirs is not the hardest lot who are permitted painlessly to exchange their life for the grave! Now what was there at the present time that could attach her very strongly to life? what hope? what fruition? what consolation for the soul? The prospect of a wedded life with a husband chosen from our young men of rank? Truly, one would think it was always in your power to choose a son-in-law of a position suitable to your rank out of our young men, one to whose keeping you would feel you could safely intrust the happiness of a child. Or that of being a joyful mother of children, who would be happy in seeing them succeeding in life; able by their own exertions to maintain in its integrity all that was bequeathed them by their father; intending gradually to rise to all the highest offices of the State; and to use that liberty to which they were born for the good of their country and the service of their friends. Is there any one of these things that has not been taken away before it was given? But surely it is hard to give up one's children? It is hard; but this is harder still--that they should bear and suffer what we are doing. A circumstance which was such as to afford me no light consolation I cannot but mention to you, in the hope that it may be allowed to contribute equally towards mitigating your grief. As I was returning from Asia, when sailing from AEgina in the direction of Megara, I began to look around me at the various places by which I was surrounded. Behind me was AEgina, in front Megara; on the right the Piraeus, on the left Corinth; all of them towns that in former days were most magnificent, but are now lying prostrate and in ruins before one's eyes. "Ah me," I began to reflect to myself, "we poor feeble mortals, who can claim but a short life in comparison, complain as though a wrong was done us if one of our number dies in the course of nature, or has met his death by violence; and here in one spot are lying stretched out before me the corpses of so many cities! Servius, be master of yourself, and remember that it is the lot of man to which you have been born." Believe me, I found myself in no small degree strengthened by these reflections. Let me advise you too, if you think good, to keep this reflection before your eyes. How lately at one and the same time have many of our most illustrious men fallen! how grave an encroachment has been made on the rights of the sovereign people of Rome! every province in the world has been convulsed with the shock: if the frail life of a tender woman has gone too, who being born to the common lot of man must needs have died in a few short years, even if the time had not come for her now, are you thus utterly stricken down?