Even though the powers of intellect retain their vigor, yet he must lead forth the funerals of his children; must gaze upon the pyre of a beloved wife, and the urns filled with all that remains of his brother and sisters. This is the penalty imposed on the long-lived, that they must grow old with the death-blow in their house forever falling fresh--in oft-recurring sorrow--in unremitting mourning, and a suit of black.[645] The king of Pylos,[646] if you put any faith in great Homer, was an instance of life inferior in duration only to the crow's.[647] Happy, no doubt! was he who for so many years put off his hour of death; and now begins to count his years on his right hand,[648] and has drunk so often of the new-made wine. I pray you, lend me your ear a little space; and hear how sadly he himself complains of the decrees of fate, and too great powers of life, when he watches the blazing beard of Antilochus[649] in his bloom, and asks of every friend that stands near, why it is he lingers on to this day; what crime he has committed to deserve so long a life! Such, too, is Peleus' strain, when he mourns for Achilles prematurely snatched from him: and that other, whose lot it was to grieve for the shipwrecked[650] Ithacensian. Priam would have joined the shade of Assaracus with Troy still standing, with high solemnities, with Hector and his brothers supporting his bier on their shoulders, amid the weeping Troades, so that Cassandra would lead off the wail, and Polyxena[651] with mantle rent, had he but died at any time but that, after that Paris had begun to build his audacious ships. What then did length of days confer on him? He saw his all o'erthrown: Asia laid low by flame and sword. Then the poor tottering warrior[652] laid down his diadem and donned his arms, and fell before the altar of supreme Jove; like some old ox[653] that yields his attenuated and miserable neck to his owner's knife, long ago scorned[654] by the ungrateful plow. That was at all events the death of a human being: but his wife who survived him barked fiercely from the jaws of a bitch.[655]