tatue of Coelia, mounted on horseback, in the busiest of
thoroughfares, the Sacred Way, continually reproaches the youth of the
present day, who never mount anything but a cushioned seat in a
carriage, with journeying in such a fashion through that very city in
which we have enrolled even women among our knights. If you wish me to
point out to you examples of women who have bravely endured the loss
of their children, I shall not go far afield to search for them: in
one family I can quote two Cornelias, one the daughter of Scipio, and
the mother of Gracchi, who made acknowledgment of the birth of her
twelve children by burying them all; nor was it so hard to do this in
the case of the others, whose birth and death were alike unknown to
the public, but she beheld the murdered and unburied corpses of both
Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus, whom even those who will not
call them good must admit were great men. Yet to those who tried to
console her and called her unfortunate, she answered, "I shall never
cease to call myself happy, because I am the mother of the Gracchi."
Cornelia, the wife of Livius Drusus,[81] lost by the hands of an
unknown assassin a young son of great distinction, who was treading in
the footsteps of the Gracchi, and was murdered in his own house just
when he had so many bills half-way through the process of becoming
law: nevertheless she bore the untimely and unavenged death of her son
with as lofty a spirit as he had shown in carrying his laws.

Will you not, Marcia, forgive Fortune because she has not refrained
from striking you with the darts which she launched at the Scipios,
and the mothers and daughters of the Scipios, and with which she has
attacked the Caesars themselves? Life is full of misfortunes; our path
is beset with them: no one can make a long peace, nay, scarcely an
armistice with fortune. You, Marcia, have borne four children; now
they say that no dart which is hurled into a close column of soldiers
can fail to hit one--ought you then to wonder at not having been able
to lead along such a company without exciting the ill will of Fortune,
or suffering loss at her hands?...

Think how great a blessing is a timely death, how many have been
injured by living longer than they ought. If sickness had carried off
that glory and support of the empire, Cnaeus Pompey, at Naples, he
would have died undoubted head of the Roman people, but as it was, a
short extension of time cast him down from