192 ^MILIUS PAULUS.

which the faint-hearted man not having the spirit for, and made effeminate b} I know not what hopes, allowed himself to appear as a part of his own spoils. After these were cariued four hundred crowns, all made of gold, sent from the cities by their respective deputations to ^milius, 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 char- iot of their commander ; some singing verses, according to the usual custom, mingled with raillery ; others, songs of triumph, and the praise of -^milius's deeds; who, indeed, was admired and accounted happy by all men, and unenvied b}- every one that was good ; except so far as it seems the province of some god to lessen that hap- piness which is too great and inordinate, and so to mingle the affairs of human life that no one should be entirely free and exempt from calamities ; but, as we read in Homer,* that those should think themselves truly blessed to whom fortune has given an equal share of good and evil. .^Ekuilius had four sons, of whom Scipio and Fabius, as is already related, were adopted into other families ; the other two, whom he had by a second wife, and who were yet but young, he brought up in his own house. One of

• " Grief is useless ; cease to threshold of Zeus, of the gifts that

lament," says Achilles to Priam, he dispenses ; one of evil thing.s, his suppliant for the body of Hec- the other of good ; he who receives tor. " For tluis have the gods from both at the hand of thunder- appointed for mortal men ; tliat ing Zeus, he meets at one time they should live in vexation, while with evil, and at another with they themselves are untroubled, good ; he who receives from only Two vessels are set upon the one, is a miserable wretch."