Here some people talk of moderate grief; but if such be natural, what occasion is there for consolation?
for nature herself will determine, the measure of it: but if it depends on and is caused by opinion, the whole opinion should be destroyed.

I think that it has been sufficiently said, that grief arises from an opinion of some present evil, which includes this belief, that it is incumbent on us to grieve.

To this definition Zeno has added, very justly, that the opinion of this present evil should be recent.

Now this word recent they explain thus: those are not the only recent things which happened a little while ago; but as long as there shall be any force, or vigor, or freshness in that imagined evil, so long it is entitled to the name of recent.

Take the case of Artemisia, the wife of Mausolus, King of Caria, who made that noble sepulchre at Halicarnassus; while she lived, she lived in grief, and died of it, being worn out by it, for that opinion was always recent with her: but you cannot call that recent which has already begun to decay through time.