Perhaps the noblest and one of the closest of these paraphrases is in the scene of Antony’s death. With his last breath he persuades her
that she should not lament nor sorowe for the miserable chaunge of his fortune at the end of his dayes: but rather that she should thinke him the more fortunate, for the former triumphes and honors he had received, considering that while he lived he was the noblest and greatest Prince of the world, and that now he was overcome, not cowardly but valiantly, a Romane by an other Romane.
Shakespeare’s Antony says:
The miserable change now at my end
Lament nor sorrow at: but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o’ the world,
The noblest: and do now not basely die,
Not cowardly put off my helmet to
My countryman,—a Roman by a Roman