 While consoling his readers, Lipsius does not deny the hubris of power, the atrocities of history or the cruelty of tyrants and emperors. Yet he tries to encourage his readers to adopt an attitude of constancy by listing a long series of divinae clades (divinely sanctioned disasters): horrifying examples from history meant to illustrate the utility of divine punishment and to demonstrate that evils such as earthquakes, pestilence, war and tyranny are part and parcel of the human condition — indeed, of God’s plan for the preservation and improvement of the whole world. Moreover, he argues, the evils of the present time are neither particularly grave nor worse than those which existed in the past: “Just as work becomes easier if shared by more people, so too does sorrow” (De constantia II.26).