Livy, speaking of the Roman army in Spain, says that for the loss of the two brothers, their great captains: "Flere omnes repente, et offensare capita." ["All at once wept and tore their hair."-Livy, xxv.

37.] 'Tis a common practice.

And the philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the king, who by handsful pulled his hair off his head for sorrow, "Does this man think that baldness is a remedy for grief ?"--[Cicero, Tusc.

Quest., iii.

26.]--Who has not seen peevish gamesters chew and swallow the cards, and swallow the dice, in revenge for the loss of their money?
Xerxes whipped the sea, and wrote a challenge to Mount Athos; Cyrus employed a whole army several days at work, to revenge himself of the river Gyndas, for the fright it had put him into in passing over it; and Caligula demolished a very beautiful palace for the pleasure his mother had once enjoyed there.
-- [Pleasure--unless 'plaisir' were originally 'deplaisir'-- must be understood here ironically, for the house was one in which she had been imprisoned .-- Seneca, De Ira.iii.