Now listen to what consolation on the other hand he can offer, who has neither studied the Cynics, nor the doctrines of the Stoics, that differ from the Cynics only by a tunic,[872] and pays no veneration to Epicurus,[873] that delighted in the plants of his diminutive garden. Let patients whose cases are desperate be tended by more skillful physicians; you may trust _your_ vein even to Philippus' apprentice. If you can show me no act so heinous in the whole wide world, then, I hold my tongue; nor forbid you to beat your breast with your fists, nor thump your face with open palm. For, since you really _have_ sustained loss, your doors must be closed; and money is bewailed with louder lamentations from the household, and with greater tumult,[874] than deaths. No one, in such a case, counterfeits sorrow; or is content with merely stripping[875] down the top of his garment, and vexing his eyes for forced rheum.[876] The loss of money is deplored with genuine tears. But if you see all the courts filled with similar complaints, if, after the deeds have been read ten times over, and each time in a different quarter,[877] though their own handwriting,[878] and their principal signet-ring,[879] that is kept so carefully in its ivory casket, convicts them, they call the signature a forgery and the deed not valid; do you think that you, my fine fellow, are to be placed without the common pale? What makes _you_ the chick of a white hen, while we are a worthless brood, hatched from unlucky eggs? What you suffer is a trifle; a thing to be endured with moderate choler, if you but turn your eyes to crimes of blacker dye. Compare with it the hired assassin, fires that originate from the sulphur of incendiaries,[880] when your _outer_ gate is the first part that catches fire. Compare those who carry off the ancient temple's massive cups,[881] incrusted with venerable rust--the gifts of nations; or, crowns[882] deposited there by some king of ancient days. If these are not to be had, there comes some sacrilegious wretch that strikes at meaner prey; who will scrape the thigh of Hercules incased in gold, and Neptune's face itself, and strip off from Castor his leaf-gold. Will he, forsooth, hesitate, that is wont to melt down whole the Thunderer[883] himself? Compare, too, the compounders and venders of poisons;[884] or him that ought to be launched into the sea in an ox's hide,[885] with whom the ape,[886] herself innocent, is shut up, through her unlucky stars. How small a portion is this of the crimes which Gallicus,[887] the city's guardian, listens to from break of day to the setting of the sun! Would you study the morals of the human race, one house is quite enough. Spend but a few days there, and when you come out thence, call yourself, if you dare, a miserable man!