“Why then,” you ask, “do we all so persist in lamenting what was ours, if it is not Nature’s will that we should?” Because we never anticipate any evil before it actually arrives, but, imagining that we ourselves are exempt and are traveling a less exposed path, we refuse to be taught by the mishaps of others that such are the lot of all. So many funerals pass our doors, yet we never think of death! So many deaths are untimely, yet we make plans for our own infants — how they will don the toga, serve in the army, and succeed to their father’s property! So many rich men are stricken before our eyes with sudden poverty, yet it never occurs to us that our own wealth also rests on just as slippery a footing! Of necessity, therefore, we are more prone to collapse; we are struck, as it were, off our guard; blows that are long foreseen fall less violently. And you wish to be told that you stand exposed to blows of every sort, and that the darts that have transfixed others have quivered around you! Just as if you were assaulting some city wall, or were mounting, only half-armed, against some lofty position manned by a host of the enemy, expect to be wounded, and be sure that the missiles that whirl above your head, the stones and the arrows and the javelins, were all aimed at your own person. Whenever anyone falls at your side or behind you, cry out: “Fortune, you will not deceive me, you will not fall upon me confident and heedless. I know what you are planning; it is true you struck someone else, but you aimed at me.” Who of us ever looked upon his possessions with the thought that he would die?12 Who of us ever ventured to think upon exile, upon want, upon grief? Who, if he were urged to reflect upon these things, would not reject the idea as an unlucky omen, and demand that those curses pass over to the head of an enemy or even to that of his untimely adviser? You say: “I did not think it would happen.” Do you think there is anything that will not happen, when you know that it is possible to happen, when you see that it has already happened to many? A striking verse this — too good to have come from the stage:
Whatever can one man befall can happen just as well to all!13
That man lost his children; you also may lose yours. That man was condemned to death; your innocence also is in imminent peril. Such is the delusion that deceives and weakens us while we suffer misfortunes which we never foresaw that we ourselves could possibly suffer. He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.