4. But with the reasoning of religion the mother quenched passions so great and powerful.
5. For we must consider also this: that, had the woman been faint hearted, as being their other, she would have lamented over them; and perhaps might have spoken thus:
6. Ah! wretched I, and many times miserable; who having born seven sons, have become the mother of none.
7. O seven useless childbirths, and seven profitless periods of labor, and fruitless givings of suck, and miserable nursings at the breast.
8. Vainly, for your sakes, O sons, have I endured many pangs, and the more difficult anxieties of rearing.
9. Alas, of my children, some of you unmarried, and some who have married to no profit, I shall not see your children, nor be felicitated as a grandmother.
10. Ah, that I who had many and fair children, should be a lone widow full of sorrows!
11. Nor, should I die, shall I have a son to bury me. But with such a lament as this the holy and God-fearing mother bewailed none of them.
12. Nor did she divert any of them from death, nor grieve for them as for the dead.