(Ah, my beloved comrade, unless I tell you all that I said to myself when I learned that you were compelled to journey far from my side, I shall think I am deprived of some comfort; or rather, I shall consider that I have not even begun to procure some assuagement for my grief unless I have first shared it with you. For we two have shared in many sorrows and also in many pleasant deeds and words, in affairs private and public, at home and in the field, and therefore for the present troubles, be they what they may, we must needs discover some cure, some remedy that both can share. But who will imitate for us the lyre of Orpheus, who will echo for us the songs of the Sirens or discover the drug nepenthe?(294) Though that was perhaps some tale full of Egyptian lore or such a tale as the poet himself invented, when in what follows he wove in the story of the sorrows of the Trojans, and Helen had learned it from the Egyptians; I do not mean a tale of all the woes that the Greeks and Trojans inflicted on one another, but rather tales such as they must be that will dispel the griefs of men’s souls and have power to restore cheerfulness and calm. For pleasure and pain, methinks, are connected at their source(295) and succeed each other in turn. And philosophers assert that in all that befalls the wise man the very greatest trials afford him as much felicity as vexation; and thus, as they say, does the bee extract sweet dew from the bitterest herb that grows on Hymettus and works it into honey.(296) Even so bodies that are naturally healthy and robust are nourished by any kind of food, and food that often seems unwholesome for others, far from injuring them, makes them strong. On the other hand, the slightest causes usually inflict very serious injuries on persons who by nature or nurture, or owing to their habits, have an unsound constitution and are lifelong invalids. Just so with regard to the mind: those who have so trained it that it is not altogether unhealthy but moderately sound, though it do not indeed exhibit the vigour of Antisthenes or Socrates, or the courage of Callisthenes, or the imperturbability of Polemon, but so that it can under the same conditions as theirs adopt the golden mean, they, I say, will probably be able to remain cheerful in more trying conditions.)