Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶39 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 3 ¶39

But as besides this opinion of great evil there is this other added also—that we ought to lament what has happened, that it is right so to do, and part of our duty—then is brought about that terrible disorder of mind, grief. And it is to this opinion that we owe all those various and horrid kinds of lamentation, that neglect of our persons, that womanish tearing of our cheeks, that striking on our thighs, breasts, and heads. Thus Agamemnon, in Homer and in Accius, Tears in his grief his uncomb’d locks; from whence comes that pleasant saying of Bion, that the foolish king in his sorrow tore away the hairs of his head, imagining that his grief would be alleviated by baldness. But men do all these things from being persuaded that they ought to do so. And thus Aeschines inveighs against Demosthenes for sacrificing within seven days after the death of his daughter. But with what eloquence, with what fluency, does he attack him! what sentiments does he collect! what words does he hurl against him! You may see by this that an orator may do anything; but nobody would approve of such license if it were not that we have an idea innate in our minds that every good man ought to lament the loss of a relation as bitterly as possible. And it is owing to this that some men, when in sorrow, betake themselves to deserts, as Homer says of Bellerophon: Distracted in his mind, Forsook by heaven, forsaking human kind, Wide o’er the Aleïan field he chose to stray, A long, forlorn, uncomfortable way! And thus Niobe is feigned to have been turned into stone, from her never speaking, I suppose, in her grief. But they imagine Hecuba to have been converted into a bitch, from her rage and bitterness of mind. There are others who love to converse with solitude itself when in grief, as the nurse in Ennius, Fain would I to the heavens find earth relate Medea’s ceaseless woes and cruel fate.