During the whole course of ages, we find only one woman, and that, Lampido, the Lacedæmonian, who was the daughter of a king, the wife of a king, and the mother of a king.[1194] Berenice was the only woman who was daughter, sister, and mother of conquerors in the Olympian games.[1195] The family of the Curios[1196] has been the only one to produce three orators in succession; that of the Fabii alone has given three chiefs of the senate in succession, Fabius Ambustus, his son Fabius Rullianus, and his grandson Quintus Fabius Gurges.[1197] CHAP. 43. (42.)—REMARKABLE EXAMPLE OF VICISSITUDES. As to examples of the vicissitudes of Fortune, they are innumerable. For what great pleasures has she ever given us, which have not taken their rise in misfortunes? And what extraordinary misfortunes have not taken their first rise in great pleasures? (43.) It was fortune that preserved the Senator, M. Fidustius,[1198] who had been proscribed by Sylla, for a period of thirty-six years. And yet he was proscribed a second time; for he survived Sylla, even to the days of Antony, and, as it appears, was proscribed by him, for no other reason but because he had been proscribed before. CHAP. 44.—REMARKABLE EXAMPLES OF HONOURS. Fortune has determined that P. Ventidius alone should enjoy the honour of a triumph over the Parthians, and yet the same individual, when he was a child, she led in the triumphal procession of Cneius Pompeius, the conqueror of Asculum.[1199] Indeed, Masurius says, that he had been twice led in triumph; and according to Cicero, he used to let out mules for the bakers of the camp.[1200] Most writers, indeed, admit that his younger days were passed in the greatest poverty, and that he wore the hob-nailed shoes[1201] of the common soldier. Balbus Cornelius, also, the elder, was elected to the consulate;[1202] but he had previously been accused, and the judges had been charged to discuss the point whether he could or not lawfully be scourged with rods; he being the first foreigner,[1203]—born even on the very shores of the ocean,—who obtained that honour, which our ancestors denied even to the people of Latium.[1204] Among other remarkable instances, also, we have that of L. Fulvius,[1205] the consul of the rebellious Tusculani, who, immediately upon his coming over to the Romans, obtained from them the same honour. He is the only individual who, in the same year in which he had been its enemy, enjoyed the honour of a triumph in Rome, and that too, over the people whose consul he had previously been.