After his children and their attendants came Perseus himself, clad all in black, and wearing the boots of his country; and looking like one altogether stunned and deprived of reason, through the greatness of his misfortunes. Next followed a great company of his friends and familiars, whose countenances were disfigured with grief, and who let the spectators see, by their tears and their continual looking upon Perseus, that it was his fortune they so much lamented, and that they were regardless of their own. Perseus sent to Aemilius to entreat that he might not be led in pomp, but be left out of the triumph; who, deriding, as was but just, his cowardice and fondness of life, sent him this answer, that as for that, it had been before, and was now, in his own power; giving him to understand that the disgrace could be avoided by death;which the faint-hearted man not having the spirit for, and made effeminate by I know not what hopes, allowed himself to appear as a part of his own spoils. After these were carried four hundred crowns, all made of gold, sent from the cities by their respective deputations to Aemilius, in honor of his victory. Then he himself came, seated on a chariot magnificently adorned (a man well worthy to be looked at, even without these ensigns of power), dressed in a robe of purple, interwoven with gold, and holding a laurel branch in his right hand. All the army, in like manner, with boughs of laurel in their hands, divided into their bands and companies, followed the chariot of their commander; some singing verses, according to the usual custom, mingled with raillery;others, songs of triumph, and the praise of Aemilius's deeds; who, indeed, was admired and accounted happy by all men, and unenvied by every one that was good; except so far as it seems the province of some god to lessen that happiness which is too great and inordinate, and so to mingle the affairs of human life that no one should be entirely free from calamities; but, as we read in Homer*, only those should think themselves truly blessed to whom fortune has given an equal share of good and evil.
* "Grief is useless; cease to lament," Achilles to Priam, his suppliant for the body of Hecor. "For thus have the gods appointed for mortal men; that they should live in vexation, while the gods themselves are untroubled. Two vessels are set upon the threshold of Zeus, of the gifts that he dispenses; one of evil things, the other of good; he who receives from both at the hand of thundering Zeus, meets at one time with evil, and at another with good; he who receives from only one, is a miserable wretch."The Noble Character of Caius Fabricius from the life of PyrrhusCaius Fabricius, a man of highest consideration among the Romans as an honest man and a good soldier, but extremely poor, went upon an embassy to Pyrrhus to treat about prisoners that had been taken. Pyrrhus received him with much kindness, and privately would have persuaded him to accept of his gold, not for any evil purpose, but as a mark of respect and hospitable kindness. Upon Fabricius's refusal, he pressed him no further, but the next day, having a mind to discompose him, as he had never seen an elephant before, he commanded one of the largest, completely armed, to be placed behind the hangings, as they were talking together. This being done, at a given signal the hanging was drawn aside, and the elephant, raising his trunk over the head of Fabricius, made a horrid and ugly noise. He gently turned about and, smiling, said to Pyrrhus, "neither your money yesterday, nor this beast today make any impression upon me." At supper, amongst all sorts of things that were discoursed of, but more particularly Greece and the philosophers there, Cineas, by accident, had occasion to speak of Epicurus, and explained the opinions his followers hold about the gods and the commonwealth, and the object of life, who place the chief happiness of man in pleasure, and decline public affairs as an injury and disturbance of a happy life, and remove the gods afar off both from kindness or anger, or any concern for us at all, to a life wholly without business and flowing in pleasures.
Before he had done speaking, Fabricius cried out to Pyrrhus, "OHercules! may Pyrrhus and the Samnites entertain themselves with this sort of opinions as long as they are at war with us."Pyrrhus, admiring the wisdom and gravity of the man, was the more transported with desire to make friendship instead of war with the city, and entreated him, personally, after the peace should be concluded, to accept of living with him as the chief of his ministers and generals. Fabricius answered quietly, "Sir, this will not be for your advantage, for they who now honor and admire you, when they have had experience of me, will rather choose to be governed by me, than by you." And Pyrrhus received his answer without any resentment or tyrannic passion; nay, among his friends he highly commended the great mind of Fabricius, and intrusted the prisoners to him alone, on condition that if the senate should not vote a peace, after they had conversed with their friends and celebrated the festival of Saturn, they should be remanded. And, accordingly, they were sent back after the holidays; death being decreed for any that stayed behind.
