34.7
The whole army also carried sprays of laurel, following the chariot of their general by companies and divisions, and singing, some of them divers songs intermingled with jesting, as the ancient custom was, and others paeans of victory and hymns in praise of the achievements of Aemilius, who was gazed upon and admired by all, and envied by no one that was good.
34.8
But after all there is, as it seems, a divinity whose province it is to diminish whatever prosperity is inordinately great, and to mingle the affairs of human life, that no one may be without a taste of evil and wholly free from it, but that, as Homer says, Iliad, xxiv. 525 ff. those may be thought to fare best whose fortunes incline now one way and now another.
35.1
For Aemilius had four sons, of whom two, as I have already said,Cf. chapter v. 3. had been adopted into other families, namely, Scipio and Fabius; and two sons still boys, the children of a second wife, whom he had in his own house.
35.2
One of these, fourteen years of age, died five days before Aemilius celebrated his triumph, and the death of the other, who was twelve years of age, followed three days after the triumph,
35.3
so that there was no Roman who did not share the father’s grief; nay, they all shuddered at the cruelty of Fortune, seeing that she had not scrupled to bring such great sorrow into a house that was full of gratulations, joy, and sacrifices, or to mingle lamentations and tears with paeans of victory and triumphs.
36.1
Aemilius, notwithstanding, rightly considering that men have need of bravery and courage, not only against arms and long spears, but against every onset of Fortune as well, so adapted and adjusted the mingled circumstances of his lot that the bad was lost sight of in the good, and his private sorrow in the public welfare, thus neither lowering the grandeur nor sullying the dignity of his victory.
