If we in wet complaints could quench our grief, At any rate we’d purchase our relief; With proffered gold would bribe off all our fears, And make our eyes distil in precious tears. But the Gods mind not mortals here below, Nor the least thought on our affairs bestow; But with an unregarding air pass by, Whether our cheeks be moist, or whether dry. Unhappiness is always sorrow’s root, And tears do hang from them like crystal fruit. And Dictys comforts Danae, who was bitterly taking on, after this manner:— Dost think that thy repinings move the grave, Or from its jaws thy dying son can save? If thou would’st lessen it, thy grief compare;— Consider how unhappy others are; How many bonds of slavery do hold; How many of their children robbed grow old; How sudden Fate throws off th’ usurped crown, And in the dirt doth tread the tyrant down. Let this with deep impression in thee sink, And on these revolutions often think.[150] He bids her consider the condition of those who have suffered equal or greater afflictions, and by such a parallel to comfort up her own distempered mind. 9. And here that opinion of Socrates comes in very pertinently, who thought that if all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart. After this manner Antimachus the poet allayed his grief when he lost his wife Lyde, whom he tenderly loved; for he writ an elegy upon her, which he called by her own name, and in it he numbered up all the calamities which have befallen great men; and so by the remembrance of other men’s sorrows he assuaged his own. By this it may appear, that he who comforts another who is macerating himself with grief, and demonstrates to him, by reckoning up their several misfortunes, that he suffers nothing but what is common to him with other men, takes the surest way to lessen the opinion he had of his condition, and brings him to believe that it is not altogether so bad as he took it to be. 10. Aeschylus also doth justly reprimand those who think death to be an evil, declaring after this manner:— Some as a thing injurious death do fly; But of all mischiefs ’tis the remedy. And he who spoke thus very nicely imitated him:— Come, with impatience I expect thee, Death; And stop with thy obliging hand my breath: To thee as a physician all resort, And we through tempests sail into thy port. And it is great to speak this sentence with courage:— Where is the slave who never fears to die?[151] Or this:— And shadows never scare me, thanks to hell.