Yet shun Achilles! enter yet the wall; And spare thyself, thy father, spare us all! Save thy dear life; or, if a soul so brave Neglect that thought, thy dearer glory save. Pity, while yet I live, these silver hairs; While yet thy father feels the woes he bears, Yet curst with sense! a wretch whom in his rage All trembling on the verge of helpless age Great Jove has placed, sad spectacle of pain! The bitter dregs of Fortune’s cup to drain: To fill with scenes of death his closing eyes And number all his days by miseries! My heroes slain, my bridal bed o’erturn’d, My daughters ravish’d, and my city burn’d, My bleeding infants dash’d against the floor; These I have yet to see, perhaps yet more! Perhaps even I, reserv’d by angry Fate, The last sad relic of my ruin’d state, (Dire pomp of sovereign wretchedness!) must fall, And stain the pavement of my regal hall; Where famish’d dogs, late guardians of my door, Shall lick their mangled master’s spatter’d gore. But when the Fates, in fulness of their rage, Spurn the hoar head of unresisting age, In dust the reverend lineaments deform, And pour to dogs the life-blood scarcely warm: This, this is misery! the last, the worst, That man can feel,—man, fated to be cursed! He said, and acting what no words can say, Rent from his head the silver locks away. With him the mournful mother bears a part; Yet all her sorrows turn not Hector’s heart.[164] Having then so many examples of this kind before thine eyes, thou oughtest to make thyself sensible that not a few have been saved by death from those calamities they would certainly have fallen into had they lived longer. Contenting myself with those I have related already, I will omit the rest, that I may not seem tedious; and these are sufficient to show that we ought not to abandon ourselves to violent sorrow, beyond temper and the bounds of nature. 25. Crantor saith, To be innocent is the greatest comfort in afflictions. I assent to him, and affirm that it is the noblest remedy. Besides, the indication of our love to the deceased consists not in grieving ourselves for him, but in paying respect to his fame by honorable remembrance. For no good man deserves elegies, but panegyrics; and we should rather celebrate his loss by an honorable remembrance, than lament it; and offer up rather first-fruits of joy to the Gods, and not tears which sorrow extorts from us. For he who ceaseth to be amongst men becomes partaker of a divine life, is free from the servitude of the body, and all those solicitous cares which they who are embarrassed with a mortal life of necessity must undergo till they have finished the course which Providence hath marked out for them; and this life Nature hath not given us as a perpetual possession, but hath clogged it with restrictions and conditions of fate.