may be pulled up by the roots by explaining, as
I said at the beginning, the cause of grief; for it is nothing else but
an opinion and judgment formed of a present acute evil. And thus any
bodily pain, let it be ever so grievous, may be endurable where any
hopes are proposed of some considerable good; and we receive such
consolation from a virtuous and illustrious life that they who lead
such lives are seldom attacked by grief, or but slightly affected by
it.

XXVI. But as besides this opinion of great evil there is this other
added also--that we ought to lament what has happened, that it is right
so to do, and part of our duty, then is brought about that terrible
disorder of mind, grief. And it is to this opinion that we owe all
those various and horrid kinds of lamentation, that neglect of our
persons, that womanish tearing of our cheeks, that striking on our
thighs, breasts, and heads. Thus Agamemnon, in Homer and in Accius,

Tears in his grief his uncomb'd locks;[42]

from whence comes that pleasant saying of Bion, that the foolish king
in his sorrow tore away the hairs of his head, imagining that his grief
would be alleviated by baldness. But men do all these things from being
persuaded that they ought to do so. And thus AEschines inveighs against
Demosthenes for sacrificing within seven days after the death of his
daughter. But with what eloquence, with what fluency, does he attack
him! what sentiments does he collect! what words does he hurl against
him! You may see by this that an orator may do anything; but nobody
would approve of such license if it were not that we have an idea
innate in our minds that every good man ought to lament the loss of a
relation as bitterly as possible. And it is owing to this that some
men, when in sorrow, betake themselves to deserts, as Homer says of
Bellerophon:

Distracted in his mind,
Forsook by heaven, forsaking human kind,
Wide o'er the Aleian field he chose to stray,
A long, forlorn, uncomfortable way![43]

And thus Niobe is feigned to have been turned into stone, from her
never speaking, I suppose, in her grief. But they imagine Hecuba to
have been converted into a bitch, from her rage and bitterness of mind.
There are others who love to converse with solitude itself when in
grief, as the nurse in Ennius,

Fain would I to the heavens find earth relate
Medea's ceaseless woes and cruel fate.[44]

XXVII. Now all these thing