of course you could
not but be affected--anything else would have been wholly unnatural in a
man of your gentle nature--but that the cause of your non-attendance at
our college meeting was illness, not melancholy.

_Laelius_. Thanks, Scaevola! You are quite right; you spoke the exact
truth. For in fact I had no right to allow myself to be withdrawn from
a duty which I had regularly performed, as long as I was well, by any
personal misfortune; nor do I think that anything that can happen will
cause a man of principle to intermit a duty. As for your telling me,
Fannius, of the honourable appellation given me (an appellation to
which I do not recognise my title, and to which I make no claim), you
doubtless act from feelings of affection; but I must say that you seem
to me to do less than justice to Cato. If any one was ever "wise,"--of
which I have my doubts,--he was. Putting aside everything else, consider
how he bore his son's death! I had not forgotten Paulus; I had seen with
my own eyes Gallus. But they lost their sons when mere children; Cato
his when he was a full-grown man with an assured reputation. Do not
therefore be in a hurry to reckon as Cato's superior even that same
famous personage whom Apollo, as you say, declared to be "the wisest."
Remember the former's reputation rests on deeds, the latter's on words.

3. Now, as far as I am concerned (I speak to both of you now), believe
me the case stands thus. If I were to say that I am not affected by
regret for Scipio, I must leave the philosophers to justify my conduct,
but in point of fact I should be telling a lie. Affected of course I am
by the loss of a friend as I think there will never be again, such as
I can fearlessly say there never was before. But I stand in no need of
medicine. I can find my own consolation, and it consists chiefly in my
being free from the mistaken notion which generally causes pain at the
departure of friends. To Scipio I am convinced no evil has befallen mine
is the disaster, if disaster there be; and to be severely distressed at
one's own misfortunes does not show that you love your friend, but that
you love yourself.

As for him, who can say that all is not more than well? For, unless he
had taken the fancy to wish for immortality, the last thing of which he
ever thought, what is there for which mortal man may wish that he did
not attain? In his early manhood he more than justified by extraordinary
personal courage the hopes whic