The Essays, vol 3 | Page 9

and threw themselves headlong upon the great
battalion of the enemies, which with marvellous force and fury they
charged through and through, and routed with a very great slaughter of
the Carthaginians, thus purchasing an ignominious flight at the same
price they might have gained a glorious victory.--[Livy, xxi. 56.]
The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, that passion alone, in
the trouble of it, exceeding all other accidents. What affliction could be
greater or more just than that of Pompey's friends, who, in his ship,
were spectators of that horrible murder? Yet so it was, that the fear of
the Egyptian vessels they saw coming to board them, possessed them
with so great alarm that it is observed they thought of nothing but
calling upon the mariners to make haste, and by force of oars to escape
away, till being arrived at Tyre, and delivered from fear, they had
leisure to turn their thoughts to the loss of their captain, and to give
vent to those tears and lamentations that the other more potent passion
had till then suspended.
"Tum pavor sapientiam omnem mihiex animo expectorat."

["Then fear drove out all intelligence from my mind."--Ennius, ap.
Cicero, Tusc., iv. 8.]
Such as have been well rubbed in some skirmish, may yet, all wounded
and bloody as they are, be brought on again the next day to charge; but
such as have once conceived a good sound fear of the enemy, will
never be made so much as to look him in the face. Such as are in
immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery,
live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such
as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other
folk. And the many people who, impatient of the perpetual alarms of
fear, have hanged or drowned themselves, or dashed themselves to
pieces, give us sufficiently to understand that fear is more importunate
and insupportable than death itself.
The Greeks acknowledged another kind of fear, differing from any we
have spoken of yet, that surprises us without any visible cause, by an
impulse from heaven, so that whole nations and whole armies have
been struck with it. Such a one was that which brought so wonderful a
desolation upon Carthage, where nothing was to be heard but affrighted
voices and outcries; where the inhabitants were seen to sally out of
their houses as to an alarm, and there to charge, wound, and kill one
another, as if they had been enemies come to surprise their city. All
things were in disorder and fury till, with prayers and sacrifices, they
had appeased their gods--[Diod. Sic., xv. 7]; and this is that they call
panic terrors.--[Ibid. ; Plutarch on Isis and Osiris, c. 8.]

CHAPTER XVIII
THAT MEN ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF OUR HAPPINESS TILL
AFTER DEATH.
[Charron has borrowed with unusual liberality from this and the
succeeding chapter. See Nodier, Questions, p. 206.]
"Scilicet ultima semper Exspectanda dies homini est; dicique beatus

Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet."
["We should all look forward to our last day: no one can be called
happy till he is dead and buried."--Ovid, Met, iii. 135]
The very children know the story of King Croesus to this purpose, who
being taken prisoner by Cyrus, and by him condemned to die, as he was
going to execution cried out, "O Solon, Solon!" which being presently
reported to Cyrus, and he sending to inquire of him what it meant,
Croesus gave him to understand that he now found the teaching Solon
had formerly given him true to his cost; which was, "That men,
however fortune may smile upon them, could never be said to be happy
till they had been seen to pass over the last day of their lives," by
reason of the uncertainty and mutability of human things, which, upon
very light and trivial occasions, are subject to be totally changed into a
quite contrary condition. And so it was that Agesilaus made answer to
one who was saying what a happy young man the King of Persia was,
to come so young to so mighty a kingdom: "'Tis true," said he, "but
neither was Priam unhappy at his years."--[Plutarch, Apothegms of the
Lacedaemonians.]--In a short time, kings of Macedon, successors to
that mighty Alexander, became joiners and scriveners at Rome; a tyrant
of Sicily, a pedant at Corinth; a conqueror of one-half of the world and
general of so many armies, a miserable suppliant to the rascally officers
of a king of Egypt: so much did the prolongation of five or six months
of life cost the great Pompey; and, in our fathers' days, Ludovico Sforza,
the tenth Duke of Milan, whom all Italy