Cornelia, on hearing these words, threw herself on
the ground, and lay there a long time without sense or speech, and
with difficulty recovering herself, and seeing that it was not a time
for tears and lamentations, she ran through the city to the sea.
Pompeius met and caught her in his arms as she was just ready to sink
down and fall upon him, when Cornelia said, "I see you, husband, not
through your own fortune but mine, reduced to a single vessel, you who
before your marriage with Cornelia sailed along this sea with five
hundred ships. Why have you come to see me, and why did you not leave
to her evil daemon one who has loaded you also with so much misfortune?
How happy a woman should I have been had I died before I heard that
Publius, whose virgin bride I was, had perished by the Parthians; and
how wise, if even after he died I had put an end to my own life, as I
attempted to do; but forsooth I have been kept alive to be the ruin of
Pompeius Magnus also."
LXXV. So it is said Cornelia spoke, and thus Pompeius replied: "It is
true, Cornelia, you have hitherto known only one fortune, and that the
better; and perhaps it has deceived you too, in that it has abided
with me longer than is wont. But as we are mortals, we must bear this
change, and still try fortune; for it is not hopeless for a man to
attempt from this condition to recover his former state who has come
to this after being in that other.
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