whom you
are acquainted whom you did not amaze, nor is there any citizen who has
not observed[196] how plainly you dressed at sacred rites, and
sacrifices, and theatres. You have also already on similar painful
occasions exhibited great fortitude, as when you lost your eldest son,
and again when our handsome Chaeron died. For when I was informed of his
death, I well remember some guests from the sea were coming home with me
to my house as well as some others, but when they saw the great quiet
and tranquillity of the household, they thought, as they afterwards told
some other people, that no such disaster had really happened, but that
the news was untrue. So well had you ordered everything in the house, at
a time when there would have been great excuse for disorder. And yet you
had suckled that son, though your breast had had to be lanced owing to a
contusion. This was noble conduct and showed your great natural
affection.

Sec. VI. But most mothers we see, when their children are brought to them
clean and tidy, take them into their hands as playthings, and when they
die burst out into idle and unthankful grief, not so much out of
affection--for affection is thoughtful and noble--but a great yearning
for vain glory[197] mixed with a little natural affection makes their
grief fierce and vehement and hard to appease. And this does not seem to
have escaped AEsop's notice, for he says that when Zeus assigned their
honours to various gods, Grief also claimed his. And Zeus granted his
wish, with this limitation that only those who chose and wished need pay
him honour.[198] It is thus with grief at the outset, everyone welcomes
it at first, but after it has got by process of time settled, and become
an inmate of the house, it is with difficulty dislodged again, however
much people may wish to dislodge it. Wherefore we ought to keep it out
of doors, and not let it approach the garrison by wearing mourning or
shearing the hair, or by any similar outward sign of sorrow. For these
things occurring daily and being importunate make the mind little, and
narrow, and unsocial, and harsh, and timid, so that, being besieged and
taken in hand by grief, it can no longer laugh, and shuns daylight, and
avoids society. This evil will be followed by neglect of the body, and
dislike to anointing and the bath and the other usual modes of life:
whereas the very opposite ought to be the case, for the mind ill at ease
especially requires that the b