Seneca's Essays Volume
II
Source: Lucius Annasus Seneca. Moral Essays.
Translated by John W. Basore. The Loeb Classical Library. London: W. Heinemann,1928-1935.
3 vols.: Volume II. Before using any portion of this text in any theme,
essay, research paper, thesis, or dissertation, please read the disclaimer.
Transcription conventions: Page numbers in angle brackets refer
to the edition cited as the source. The Latin text, which appears on even-numbered
pages, is not included here. Words or phrases singled out for indexing
are marked by plus signs. In the index, numbers in parentheses indicate
how many times the item appears. A slash followed by a small letter or
a number indicates a footnote at the bottom of the page. Only notes of
historical, philosophical, or literary interest to a general reader have
been included. I have allowed Greek passages to stand as the scanner read
them, in unintelligible strings of characters.
Table of Contents: | DE CONSOLATIONE AD
MARCIAM+ | DE VITA BEATA+ | DE
OTIO+ | DE TRANQUILLITATE+
| DE BREVITATE VITAE+ | DE CONSOLATIONE AD
POLYBIUM+ | DE CONSOLATIONE AD HELVIAM+
Index: adfectus+(1)
| anger+(1) |
benefactions+(1) | Caliban+(1)
| chance+(1) | cheer+(1)
| common+(7) |
common_property+(1) | commonwealths+(1)
| constantia_integrity+(1)
| courageous+(1) |
courtesy+(1) | cupidatium+(1)
| desire+(1) |
Donne_death+(1) | effeminacy+(2)
| Emerson+(1) |
Eve_evil+(1) | fallen+(1) |
Fate+(1) | Faust+(1) |
feminism+(1) | flesh+(1) |
flies+(1) | fop+(3) |
Fop+(1) | Fortune+(3) |
free+(1) | freedom+(2) |
friendship+(1) | Frost_R+(1) |
future+(1) | giving+(2) |
glory+(1) |
good_die_young+(1)
| goods+(1) | greed+(1)
| Hamlet+(1) |
hand_of_heaven+(1) | herd+(1) |
hesitation+(2) | honour+(1) |
invictus+(2) | Jesus+(1) |
Job+(1) | king's_burden+(1)
| Kubla_Khan+(1) |
Lear+(2) | Liberal_Arts+(1)
| liberal_studies+(2) |
liberality+(3) | liberty+(1) |
lust+(2) | Luxury+(1) |
magnificentia+(1) | manly+(1) |
mansuetudine+(1) | merry_making+(1)
| mob+(1) | moderation+(2)
| modesty+(2) | money+(1)
| mortality+(1) |
Murphy+(1) | nature+(1) |
noblesse_oblige+(1) | outward_show+(1)
| pardon+(1) |
passions+(1) | patience+(1) |
pietas+(1) | PlainDealer+(8)
| poor+(1) | Pope+(2)
| Pope_frailty+(1) |
poverty+(1) | public+(1) |
rabble+(1) | reason+(1) |
Regulus+(1) | riches+(4) |
self_reliance+(1) | sentimentality+(1)
| service+(5) |
servitude+(1) | Sidney+(1) |
simplicitas_PlainDealer+(1) | simplicity+(2)
| slavery+(2) |
slaves+(1) | Sophocles+(1) |
soul+(1) | sport+(2) |
stars_from_wrong+(1) | studies+(5)
| Swift_dusty_shoes+(1) |
tears+(1) | Thoreau+(1) |
Timon+(1) | trust+(1) |
Tyranny_of_majority+(1) | Ulysses+(1)
| virilius+(1) |
virtues+(1) | Wdswth+(1) |
woman+(3) | womanish+(1) |
womanly+(1) | women+(2)
DE CONSOLATIONE AD MARCIAM+
BOOK VI
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION
If I did not know, Marcia,\a that you were
as far removed from womanish weakness of mind {effeminacy+}
as from all other vices, and that your character was looked upon as a model
of ancient virtue, I should not dare to assail your grief - the grief that
even men are prone to nurse and brood upon - nor should I have conceived
the hope of being able to induce you to acquit Fortune of your complaint,
at a time so unfavourable, with her judge so hostile, after a charge so
hateful. But your strength of mind has been already so tested and your
courage, after a severe trial, so approved that they have given me confidence.
How you bore yourself in relation to your father is common knowledge; for
you loved him not less dearly than your children, save only that you did
not wish him to outlive you. And yet I am not sure that you did not
wish even that; for great affection sometimes ventures to break the natural
law. The death of your
<Ess2-3>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, i. 2-4
father, Aulus Cremutius Cordus, you delayed as long as you could; after
it became clear that, surrounded as he was by the minions of Sejanus, he
had no other way of escape from servitude, favour his plan you did not,
but you acknowledged defeat, and you routed\a your tears in public and
choked down your sobs, yet in spite of your cheerful face you did not conceal
them - and these things in an age when the supremely filial was simply
not to be unfilial!\b When, however, changed times gave you an opportunity,
you recovered for the benefit of men that genius of your father which had
brought him to his end, and thus saved him from the only real death, and
the books which that bravest hero had written with his own blood you restored
to their place among the memorials of the nation. You have done a
very great service to Roman scholarship, for a large part of his writings
had been burned; a very great service to posterity, for history will come
to them as an uncorrupted record whose honesty cost its author dear and
a very great service to the man himself, whose memory now lives and will
ever live so long as it shall be worth while to learn the facts of Roman
history - so long as there shall be anyone who will wish to hark back to
the deeds of our ancestors, so long as there shall be anyone who will wish
to know what it is to be a Roman hero, what it is to be unconquered when
all necks are bowed and forced to bear the yoke of a Sejanus, what it is
to be free in thought, in purpose, and in act. A great loss, in very
truth, the state had suffered, had you not rescued this man who had been
thrust into oblivion for the sake of two of the noblest things - eloquence
and freedom. But he is now read, he lives, and ensconced in the hands
and
<Ess2-5>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, i. 4-7
hearts of men he fears no passing of the years; but, those cutthroats
- even their crimes, by which alone they deserved to be remembered, will
soon be heard of no more. This evidence of the greatness of your
mind forbade me to pay heed to your sex, forbade me to pay heed to your
face, which, since sorrow once clouded it, unbroken sadness holds for all
these years. And see! - I am not stealing upon you with stealth, nor am
I planning to filch from you any of your sufferings. I have recalled
to your memory old misfortunes, and, that you may know that even this deep-cut
wound will surely heal, I have shown you the scar of an old wound that
was not less severe. And so let others deal with you gently and ply
soft words. I myself have determined to battle with your grief, and
your eyes that are wearied and worn - weeping now, if I may speak the truth,
more from habit than from sorrow - shall be checked by measures that, if
so it may be, you welcome, if not, even against your will, even though
you hug and embrace the sorrow that you have kept alive in place of your
son. Else what end shall it have? Every means has been tried in vain.
The consolations of your friends, the influence of great men who were your
relatives have been exhausted. Books, your love for which was a boon
bequeathed by your father, now void of comfort and scarcely serving for
brief distraction, make their appeal to unheeding ears. Even time,
Nature's great healer, that lays even our most grievous sorrows, in your
case only has lost its power. Three whole years have now passed,
and yet the first violence of your sorrow has in no way abated. Your grief
is renewed and grows stronger every day - by lingering
<Ess2-7>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, i. 7 - ii. 3
it has established its right to stay, and has now reached the point
that it is ashamed to make an end, just as all vices become deep-rooted
unless they are crushed when they spring up, so, too, such a state of sadness
and wretchedness, with its self afflicted torture, feeds at last upon its
very bitterness, and the grief of an unhappy mind becomes a morbid pleasure.
And so I should have liked to approach your cure in the first stages of
your sorrow. While it was still young, a gentler remedy might have
been used to check its violence; against inveterate evils the fight must
be more vehement. This is likewise true of wounds - they are easy
to heal while they are still fresh and bloody. When they have festered
and turned into a wicked sore, then they must be cauterized and, opened
up to the very bottom, must submit to probing fingers. As it is,
I cannot possibly be a match for such hardened grief by being considerate
and gentle; it must be crushed. I am aware that all those who wish
to give anyone admonition commonly begin with precepts, and end with examples.
But it is desirable at times to alter this practice; for different people
must be dealt with differently. Some are guided by reason, some must
be confronted with famous names and an authority that does not leave a
man's mind free, dazzled as he is by showy deeds. I shall place before
your eyes but two examples - the greatest of your sex and century -one,
of a woman who allowed herself to be swept away by grief, the other, of
a woman who, though she suffered a like misfortune and even greater loss,
yet did not permit her ills to have the mastery long, but quickly restored
her mind to its accustomed state. Octavia and Livia, the one the
<Ess2-9>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, ii. 3-4
sister of Augustus, the other his wife, had lost their sons - both of
them young men with the well-assured hope of becoming emperor.
Octavia lost\a Marcellus, upon whom
Augustus, at once his uncle and his father-in-law, had begun to lean, upon
whom he had begun to rest the burden of empire - a young man of keen mind,
of commanding ability, yet withal marked by a frugality and self- restraint
that, for one of his years and wealth, commanded the highest admiration,
patient under hardships, averse to pleasures, and ready to bear whatever
his uncle might wish to place or, so to speak, to build upon him:
well had he chosen a foundation that would not sink beneath any weight.
Through all the rest of her life Octavia set no bounds to her tears and
moans, and closed her ears to all words that offered wholesome advice;
with her whole mind fixed and centred upon one single thing, she did not
allow herself even to relax. Such she remained during her whole life as
she was at the funeral - I do not say lacking the courage to rise, but
refusing to be uplifted, counting any loss of tears a second bereavement.
Not a single portrait would she have of her darling son, not one mention
of his name in her hearing. She hated all mothers, and was inflamed
nost of all against Livia, because it seemed that the happiness which had
once been held out to herself had passed to the other woman's son.\b Companioned
ever by darkness and solitude, giving no thought even to her brother, she
spurned the poems\c that were written to glorify the memory of Marcellus
and all other literary honours, and closed her ears to every form of consolation.
Withdrawing from all her accustomed duties and hating
<Ess2-11>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, ii. 4-iii. 2
even the good fortune that her brother's
greatness shed all too brightly around her, she buried herself in
deep seclusion. Surrounded by children and grandchildren, she
would not lay aside her garb of mourning, and, putting a slight on
all her nearest, accounted herself utterly bereft though they still
lived. And
Livia lost her son Drusus, who would have made a great emperor, and
had already shown himself a great leader. For he had penetrated far
into Germany, and had planted the Roman standards in a region where
it was scarcely known that any Romans existed. He had died on
the campaign, and his very foes had reverently honoured his sick-bed
by maintaining peace along with us; nor did they dare to desire what
their interests demanded. And to these circumstances of his
death, which he had met in the service of his country, there was
added the unbounded sorrow of his fellow-citizens, of the provinces,
and of all Italy, through the length of which crowds poured forth
from the towns and colonies, and, escorting the funeral train all
the way to the city, made it seem more like a triumph. His mother
had not been permitted to receive her son's last kisses and drink in
the fond words of his dying lips. On the long journey a
through which she accompanied the remains of her dear Drusus, her
heart was harrowed by the countless pyres that flamed throughout all
Italy - for on each she seemed to be losing her son afresh -, yet as
soon as she had placed him in the tomb, along with her son she laid
away her sorrow, and grieved no more than was respectful to Caesar
or fair to Tiberius, seeing, that they were alive. And lastly,
she never ceased from proclaiming the name of her <Ess2-13>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, iii. 2-4
dear Drusus. She had him pictured
everywhere, in private and in public places, and it was her greatest
pleasure to talk about him and to listen to the talk of others - she
lived with his memory. But no one can cherish and cling to a
memory that he has rendered an affliction to himself. Do you choose,
therefore, which of these two examples you think the more
laudable. If you prefer to follow the former, you will remove
yourself from the number of the living; you will turn away your eyes
both from other people's children and from your own, even from him
whom you mourn; mothers will regard you as an unhappy omen;
honourable and permissible pleasures you will renounce as
ill-becoming to your plight; hating the light of day, you will
linger in it, and your deepest offence will be your age, because the
years do not hurry you on and make an end of you as soon as
possible; you will show that you are unwilling to live and unable to
die - a condition that is most disgraceful and foreign, too, to your
character, which is conspicuous for its leaning toward the better
course. If, on the other hand, you appropriate the example of
the other most exalted lady, showing thus a more restrained and more
gentle spirit, you will not dwell in sorrow, nor rack yourself with
anguish. For what madness it is -how monstrous! - to punish
one's self for misfortune and add new ill to present ills!
That correctness of character and self- restraint which you have
maintained all your life, you will exhibit in this matter also; for
there is such a thing as moderation even in grieving. And as
to the youth himself, who so richly deserved that the mention of his
name and your thought of him should always bring you joy, you will
set him in a more fitting place, if he <Ess2-15>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, iii. 4-iv. 4
comes before his mother as the same merry
and joyous son that he used to be when he was alive. Nor shall I
direct your mind to precepts of the sterner sort,\a so as to bid you
bear a human fortune in inhuman fashion, so as to dry a mother's
eyes on the very day of burial. But I shall come with you
before an arbiter, and this will be the question at issue between us
- whether grief ought to be deep or neverending. I doubt not
that the example of Julia Augusta,\b whom you regarded as an
intimate friend, will seem more to your taste than the other; she
summons you to follow her. She, during the first passion of
grief, when its victims are most unsubmissive and most violent, made
herself accessible to the philosopher Areus, the friend of her
husband, and later confessed that she had gained much help from that
source - more than from the Roman people, whom she was unwilling to
sadden with this sadness of hers; more than from Augustus, who was
staggering under the loss of one of his main supports, and was in no
condition to be further bowed down by the grief of his dear ones;
more than from her son Tiberius, whose devotion at that untimely
funeral that made the nations weep kept her from feeling that she
had suffered any loss except in the number of her sons. It was
thus, I fancy, that Areus approached her, it was thus he commenced
to address a woman who clung most tenaciously to her own opinion:
"Up to this day, Julia, at least so far as I am aware - and, as the
constant companion of your husband, I have known not only everything
that was given forth to the public, but all the more secret thoughts
of your minds - you have taken pains that no one should find
anything at all in you to criticize; and not only in the <Ess2-17>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, iv. 4-v. 4
larger matters, but in the smallest trifles,
you have been on your guard not to do anything that you could wish
public opinion, that most frank judge of princes, to excuse.
And nothing, I think, is more admirable than the rule that those who
have been placed in high position should bestow pardon for many
things, should seek pardon for none. {noblesse_oblige+} And so in this matter
also you must still hold to your practice of doing nothing that you
could wish undone, or done otherwise. "Furthermore, I
beg and beseech of you, do not make yourself unapproachable and
difficult to your friends. For surely you must be aware that
none of them know how to conduct themselves - whether they should
speak of Drusus in your presence or not - wishing neither to wrong
so distinguished a youth by forgetting him, or to hurt you by
mentioning him. When we have withdrawn from your company and
are gathered together, we extol his deeds and words with all the
veneration he deserved; in your presence there is deep silence about
him. And so you are missing a very great pleasure in not
hearing the praises of your son, which I doubt not, you would be
glad, if you should be given the opportunity, to prolong to all time
even at the cost of your life. Wherefore submit to
conversation about your son, nay encourage it, and let your ears be
open to his name and memory; and do not consider this burdensome,
after the fashion of some others, who in a calamity of this sort
count it an added misfortune to have to listen to words of
comfort. As it is, you have tended wholly to the other
extreme, and, forgetting the better aspects of your fortune, you
gaze only upon its worse side. You do not turn your
thought to the pleasant intercourse and the meetings you had with
<Ess2-19>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, v. 4-vi. 2
your son, nor to his fond and boyish
caresses, nor to the progress of his studies; you dwell only on that
last appearance of fortune, and just as if it were not horrible
enough in itself, you add to it all the horror you can. Do
not, I pray you, covet that most perverse distinction - that of
being considered the most unhappy of women! Reflect, too, that
it is no great thing to show one's self brave in the midst of
prosperity, when life glides on in a tranquil course; a quiet sea
and a favouring wind do not show the skill of a pilot either - some
hardship must be encountered that will test his soul.
Accordingly, do not be bowed down - nay, on the contrary, plant your
feet firmly, and, terrified only at first by the din, support
whatever burden may fall from above. Nothing casts so much
contempt on Fortune as an unruffled spirit." After this he directed
her to the son that was still alive, he directed her to the children
of the son she had lost. It was your
trouble, Marcia, that was dealt with there, it was at your side that
Areus sat; change the role - it was you that he tried to
comfort. But suppose, Marcia, more was snatched from you than
any mother has ever lost - I am not trying to soothe you or to
minimize your calamity. If tears can vanquish fate, let us
marshal tears; let every day be passed in grief, let every night be
sleepless and consumed with sorrow; let hands rain blows on a
bleeding breast, nor spare even the face from their assault; if
sorrow will help, let us vent it in every kind of cruelty. But
if no wailing can recall the dead, if no distress can alter a
destiny that is immutable and fixed for all eternity, and if death
holds fast whatever it has once carried off, then let grief, which
is futile, cease. Wherefore let us steer our own ship, <Ess2-21>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, vi. 3-vii. 3
and not allow this power to sweep us from
the course! He is a sorry steersman who lets the waves tear
the helm from his hands, who has left the sails to the mercy of the
winds, and abandoned the ship to the storm; but he deserves praise,
even amid shipwreck, whom the sea overwhelms still gripping the
rudder and unyielding. "But," you say,
"Nature bids us grieve for our dear ones." Who denies it, so
long as grief is tempered? For not only the loss of
those who are dearest to us, but a mere parting, brings an
inevitable pang and wrings even the stoutest heart. But
false opinion has added something more to our grief than Nature has
prescribed. Observe how passionate and yet how brief is the
sorrow of dumb animals. The lowing of cows is heard, for one
or two days only, and that wild and frantic running about of mares
lasts no longer; wild beasts, after following the tracks of their
stolen cubs, after wandering through the forests and returning over
and over to their plundered lairs, within a short space of time
quench their rage; birds, making a great outcry, rage about their
empty nests, yet in a trice become quiet and resume their ordinary
flight; nor does any creature sorrow long for its offspring except
man - he nurses his grief, and the measure of his affliction is not
what he feels, but what he wills to feel. Moreover, in order that you
may know that it is not by the will of Nature that we are crushed by
sorrow, observe, in the first place, that, though they suffer the
same bereavement, women are wounded more deeply than men, savage
peoples more deeply than the peaceful and civilized, the uneducated,
than the educated. But the passions that derive their <Ess2-23>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, vii. 3-ix. 1
power from Nature maintain the same hold
upon all; therefore it is clear that a passion of variable power is
not ordered by Nature. Fire will burn alike people of all ages
and of all nationalities, men as well as women; steel will display
its cutting force upon every sort of flesh. And why?
Because each derives its power from Nature, which makes no
distinction of persons. But poverty, grief, and ambition\a are
felt differently by different people according as their minds are
coloured by habit, and a false presumption, which arouses a fear of
things that are not to be feared, makes a man weak and
unresisting. In the second place, whatever proceeds from
Nature is not diminished by its continuance. But grief
is effaced by the long lapse of time. However stubborn it may
be, mounting higher every day and bursting forth in spite of efforts
to allay it, nevertheless the most powerful agent to calm its
fierceness is time -time will weaken it. There remains with
you even now, Marcia, an immense sorrow; it seems already to have
grown calloused - no longer the passionate sorrow it was at first,
but still persistent and stubborn; yet this also little by little
time will remove. Whenever you engage in something else, your
mind will be relieved. As it is now, you keep watch on
yourself; but there is a wide difference between permitting and
commanding yourself to mourn. How much better would it accord
with the distinction of your character to force, and not merely to
foresee, an end to your grief, and not to wait for that distant day
on which, even against your will, your distress will cease! Do you
of your own will renounce it! "Why then," you ask, "do we all so
persist in <Ess2-25>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, ix. 1-4
lamenting what was ours, if it is not
Nature's will that we should?" Because we never anticipate any evil
before it actually arrives, but, imagining that we ourselves are
exempt and are travelling a less exposed path, we refuse to be
taught by the mishaps of others that such are the lot of all. So
many funerals pass our doors, yet we never think of death! So
many deaths are untimely, yet we make plans for our own infants -
how they will don the toga, serve in the army, and succeed to their
father's property! So many rich men are stricken before
our eyes with sudden poverty, yet it never occurs to us that our own
wealth also rests on just as slippery a footing! Of necessity,
therefore, we are more prone to collapse; we are struck, as it were,
off our guard; blows that are long foreseen fall less
violently. And you wish to be told that you stand exposed to
blows of every sort, and that the darts that have transfixed others
have quivered around you! Just as if you were assaulting some
city wall, or were mounting, only half-armed, against some lofty
position manned by a host of the enemy, expect to be wounded, and be
sure that the missiles that whirl above your head, the stones and
the arrows and the javelins, were all aimed at your own
person. Whenever anyone falls at your side or behind you, cry
out: "Fortune, you will not deceive me, you will not fall upon me
confident and heedless. I know what you are planning; it is
true you struck someone else, but you aimed at me." Who of us ever
looked upon his possessions with the thought that he would die?" Who
of us ever ventured to think upon exile, upon want, upon
grief? Who, if he were urged to reflect upon these things,
would not reject the idea as an unlucky omen, and demand that those
curses <Ess2-27>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION. ix. 4-x. 2
pass over to the head of an enemy or even to
that of his untimely adviser? You say: "I did not think it would
happen." Do you think there is anything that will not happen, when
you know that it is possible to happen, when you see that it has
already happened to many? A striking verse this - too good to
have come from the stage:
Whatever can one man befall can happen just
as well to all!\a
That man lost his children; you also may
lose yours. That man was condemned to death; your innocence
also is in imminent peril. Such is the delusion
that deceives and weakens us while we suffer misfortunes which we
never foresaw that we ourselves could possibly suffer. He robs
present ills of their power who has perceived their coming
beforehand.
All these fortuitous things, Marcia, that glitter about us -
children, honours, wealth, spacious halls and vestibules packed with
a throng of unadmitted, clients, a famous name, a high-born or
beautiful wife, and all else that depends upon uncertain and fickle
chance - these are not our own but borrowed trappings; not one of
them is given to us outright. The properties that adorn life's
stage have been lent, and must go back to their owners; some of them
will be returned on the first day, others on the second, only a few
will endure until the end. We have, therefore, no reason to be
puffed up as if we were surrounded with the things that belong to
us; we have received them nerely as a loan.{common_property+} The use and the
enjoyment are ours, but the dispenser of the gift determines the
length of our tenure. On our part we ought always to keep in
readiness the gifts that have been granted <Ess2-29>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, x. 2 - 6
for a time not fixed, and, when called upon,
to restore them without complaint; it is a very mean debtor that
reviles his creditor. And so we should love all of our dear
ones, both those whom, by the condition of birth, we hope will
survive us, and those whose own most just prayer is to pass on
before us, but always with the thought that we have no promise that
we may keep them forever -nay, no promise even that we may keep them
for long. Often must the heart be reminded - it must remember
that loved objects will surely leave, nay, are already
leaving. Take whatever Fortune gives, remembering that it has
no voucher.\a Snatch the pleasures your children bring, let your
children in turn find delight in you, and drain joy to the dregs
without delay; no promise has been given you for this night - nay, I
have offered too long a respite! - no promise has been given even
for this hour. We must hurry, the enemy presses upon our
rear. Soon these companions will all be scattered, soon the
battle-cry will be raised, and these comrade ties sundered.
Nothing escapes the pillage; poor wretches, amid the rout ye know
not how to live!\b If you grieve for the death of your son, the
blame must go back to the time when he was born; for his death was
proclaimed at his birth; into this condition was he begotten, this
fate attended him straightway from the womb. We have come into
the realm of Fortune, and harsh and invincible is her power; things
deserved and undeserved must we suffer just as she wills. With
violence, insult, and cruelty she will maltreat our bodies.
Some she will burn with fire, applied, it may be, to punish, it may
be, to heal; some she will bind with chains, committing the power
now to an enemy, now to a fellow-countryman; some <Ess2-31>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, x. 6-xi. 3
she will toss naked upon the fickle sea,
and, when their struggle with the waves is over, she will not even
cast them up on the sand or the shore, but will hide them away in
the maw of some huge monster; others, when she has worn them down
with divers diseases, she will long keep suspended between life and
death. Like a mistress that is changeable and passionate and
neglectful of her slaves, she will be capricious in both her rewards
and her punishments. What need is there to weep over parts of life?
The whole of it
calls for tears+. New ills will press on
before you have done with the old. Therefore you women
especially must observe moderation, you who are immoderate in your
grief, and against your many sorrows the power of the human breast
must be arrayed. Again, why this forgetfulness of what is the
individual and the general lot? Mortal have you been born, to
mortals have you given birth. You, who are a crumbling and
perishable body and oft assailed by the agents of disease, - can you
have hoped that from such frail matter you gave birth to anything
durable and imperishable? Your son is dead; that is, he has
finished his course and reached that goal toward which all those
whom you count more fortunate than your child are even now
hastening. Toward this, at different paces, moves all this
throng that now squabbles in the forum, that looks on at the
theatres, that prays in the temples; both those whom you love and
revere and those whom you despise one heap of ashes will make
equal. This, clearly, is the meaning of that famous utterance
ascribed to the Pythian oracle:
KNOW THYSELF.\a
I'V@Ot CrEaVT6p! And is this the
prime And heaven-sprung adage of the olden
time?
<Ess2-33>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xi. 3-4
is man? A vessel that the slightest
shaking, the slightest toss will break. No mighty wind is
needed to scatter you abroad; whatever you strike against, will be
your undoing. What is man? A body weak and fragile,
naked,\a in its natural state defenceless, dependent upon another's
help, and exposed to all the affronts of Fortune; when it has
practised well its muscles, it then becomes the food of every wild
beast, of everyone the prey; a fabric of weak and attractive only in
its outer features, unable to bear cold, heat, and toil, yet from
mere rust and idleness doomed to decay; fearful of the foods that
feed it, it dies now from the lack of these, and now is burst open
by their excess; filled with anxiety and concern for its safety, it
draws its very breath on sufferance, keeping but a feeble hold upon
it - for sudden fear or a loud noise that falls unexpectedly upon
the cars will drive it forth and fosters ever its own unrest, a
morbid and a useless thing. Do we wonder that in this thing is
death, which needs but a single sigh? Is it such a mighty
undertakinlg to compass its destruction? For it, smell and taste,
weariness and loss of sleep, drink and food, and the things without
which it cannot live are charged with death. Whithersoever it
moves it straightway becomes conscious of its frailty; unable to
endure all climates, from strange waters, a blast of unfamiliar air,
the most trifling causes and complaints, it sickens and rots with
disease - having {Pope_frailty+} {Donne_death+}
---- a Cf.
Lucretius, v. 222 sqq. um porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab
undis
navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigos omnni vitali auxilio,
cum primun in luminis oras nixibus ex alvo
matris natura profudit. <Ess2-35>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xi. 4-xii. 2
started life with tears, what a mighty
pother all the while does this despicable creature make!
Forgetting his inevitable lot, to what mighty thoughts does man
aspire! He ponders upon everlasting and eternal things, and
makes plans for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while
meantime, amid his far-reaching schemes, death overtakes him, and
even this, which we call old age, is but the passing round of a
pitifully few years. But your sorrow
- granting that there is any reason in it - tell me, does it have in
view your own ills or the ills of him who is gone? In the loss
of your son are you stirred by the thought that you have received no
pleasures from him, or is it that you milyht have experienced
greater pleasures if he had lived longer? If you answer that
you have experienced none, you will render your loss more bearable;
for the things from which men have experienced no joy and gladness
are always less missed. If you confess that you have
experienced great pleasures from him, then it is your duty not to
complain about what has been withdrawn, but to give thanks for what
you have had. Surely his rearing alone has yielded you ample
reward for all your toil, unless perhaps it happens that those who
spare no pains in raising pups and birds and other silly pets derive
some slight pleasure from the sight and touch and fawning caresses
of these dumb creatures, while those who raise children miss the
rearer's reward that comes from the mere act of rearing
them. And so although his industry may have gained you
nothing, although his carefulness may have saved you nothing,
although his wisdom may have taught you nothing, yet in having had
him, in having loved him, lies your reward. <Ess2-37>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xii. 3-5
"But," you say, "it might have lasted
longer, might have been greater." True, but you have been better
dealt with than if you had never had a son; for if we should be
given the choice - whether it is better to be happy for a short time
only or never at all - it is better for us to have blessings that
will flee than none at all. Would you rather have had a son
who was a disgrace, someone who has possessed merely the place and
the name of a son, or one with the fine qualities your son had, a
youth who was early discerning, early dutiful, early a husband,
early a father, who was early diligent in every public duty, early a
priest, as though he were always hastening? Great and at the
same time long-lasting blessings fall to scarcely any man's lot; it
is only the good fortune which comes slowly that lasts and goes with
us to the end. The immortal gods, not purposing to give him to
you for a long time, gave to you from the first a son such as length
of time is able to produce. And you cannot say even this -that
the gods picked you out in order to deprive you of th enjoyment of
your son. Cast your eyes upon the great company of people you
know, or do not know - everywhere you will find those who have
suffered greater losses than yours. Great generals have
experienced such as yours, princes have experienced them; story has
left not even the gods a exempt, in order, I fancy, that the
knowledge that even divinities can perish may lighten our grief for
the dead. Look about you, I say, at everyone; you will not
mention a single home so wretched that it could not take comfort
from knowing one more wretched. But I do not think so ill of your
character - Heaven forbid! - as to believe that you would be able to
bear your <Ess2-39>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xii. 5-xiii. 1
own misfortune more lightly if I should
bring before you a mighty number of mourners. The solace that
comes from having company in misery smacks of ill-will.
Nevertheless, I shall cite some others, not so much to show you that
this calamity often befalls mankind - for it would be absurd to
collect the examples of man's mortality - as to show you that there
have been many who sweetened bitter fortune by enduring it
calmly. I shall begin with a man who was most fortunate.
Lucius Sulla
lost a son, but that circumstance neither blunted his malice and the
great energy of his prowess against his enemies and his
fellow-countrymen nor made it appear that he had wrongly used his
famous title\a; for he assumed it after the death of his son,
fearing neither the hatred of men, by whose misfortune that
excessive prosperity of his was purchased, nor the envy of the gods,
whose reproach it was that Sulla was so truly "the Fortunate." The
question, however, of Sulla's character may be left among the
matters not yet decided - that he took up arms honourably\b and
honourably laid them aside even his enemies will admit. But
the point at present involved will be clear - that an evil which
reaches even the most fortunate men is not the greatest of
evils. Greece had a famous father,\c who, having received news
of the death of his son while he was in the very act of offering
sacrifice, merely bade the flutist be silent, withdrew the chaplet
from his head, and finished duly the rest of the ceremony; but,
thanks to Pulvillus, a Roman priest, Greece cannot give ljim too
much glory. He was dedicating the temple on the Capitoline,
and was still grasping the door-post when he received news of the
death of his son. But <Ess2-41>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xiii. 1-4
he pretended not to hear it, and repeated
the words of the pontifical ritual in the appointed manner; not a
single moan interrupted the course of his Prayer, and he entreated
the favour of Jove with the name of his son ringing in his
ears. Do you not think that such grief must have an end, when
even the first day of it and its first fury failed to divert him,
father though he was, from his duty at the public altar and from an
auspicious delivery of his solemn proclarnation? Worthy, in
truth, was he of the notable dedication, worthy was he to hold the
most exalted priesthood - a man who did not desist from the worship
of the gods even when they were angry! Yet when he had
returned to his home, this man's eyes were flooded with tears and he
indulged in a few tearful laments, then, having completed the rites
that custom prescribed for the dead, he resumed the expression he
had worn at the Capitol. Paulus, about
the time of his most glorious triumph, in which he drove Perses,\a
that king of high renown, in chains before his car, gave over two of
his sons\b to be adopted by others, and the two whom he had kept for
himself he buried. What manner of men, think you, were those
whom he retained when Scipio was one of those whom he bestowed on
others! Not without emotion did the Roman people gaze upon the
car of Paulus that now was empty.\c Nevertheless he made a public
address, and gave thanks to the gods for having granted his prayer;
for he had prayed that, if he should be required to make some
payment to Envy on account of his mighty victory, the debt might be
discharged by a loss to himself rather than to the state. Do
you see with how noble a spirit he bore himself? He con- <Ess2-43>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xiii. 4-xiv. 3
gratulated himself on the loss of his
children! And who would have had a better right to be deeply
moved by so great a shift of forturne? He lost at the
same time both his comfort and his stay. Yet Perses never had
the pleasure of seeing Paulus sad! But why should I
now drag you through the countless examples of great men, and search
for those who were unhappy just as though it were not more difficult
to find those who were happy? For how few families have endured even
to the end with all members intact? What one is there that has not
known trouble? Take any one year you please and call for its
magistrates. Take, if you like, Lucius\a Bibulus and Gaius
Caesar; you will see that, though these colleagues were the
bitterest foes, their fortunes agreed. Lucius Bibulus,
a good, rather than a strong, man, had two sons murdered at the same
time, and that, too, by Egyptian soldiery, who had subjected them to
insult, so that not less than the bereavement itself the source of
it was a matter that called for tears. Yet Bibulus, who, during the
whole year of his consulship, on account of his jealousy of his
colleague, had stayed at home in retirement,\b on the day after he
had heard of the twofold murder came forth and performed the routine
duties of his office.\c Who can devote less than one day to mourning
for two sons? So quickly did he end his grief for his children
- he who had grieved for the consulship a year. Gaius Caesar,
when he was traversing Britain, and could not endure that even the
ocean should set bounds to his success, heard that his daughter\d
had departed; and with her went the fate of the republic. ---- d\ Julia, the
wife of Pompey, whose sudden death in 64 B.C. precipitated the
estrangement of Caesar and Pompey. <Ess2-45>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xiv. 3-xv. 4
It was alredy plain to his eyes that Gnaeus
Pompeius would not endure with calmness that any other should become
"great" in the commonwealth, and would place a check upon his own
advancement, which seemed to cause him offence even when it was
increasing to their common interest. Yet within three days he
returned to his duties as a general, and conquered his grief as
quickly as he was wont to conquer everything. Why should I
recall to you the bereavements of the other Caesars, whom Fortune
seems to me at times deliberately to outrage in order that so also
they may benefit the human race by showing that not even they who
are said to be born from gods, and to be destined to give birth to
gods,\a can have the same power over their own fortune that they
have over the fortune of others. The deified Augustus,
when he had lost his children and his grandchildren, and the supply
of Caesars had been exhausted, bolstered his depleted house by
adoption; nevertheless he bore his lot with the bravery of one who
was already counting it a personal affair\b and his deepest concern
that no man should make complaint of the gods. Tiberius
Caesar lost both the son he had begotten and the son he had
adopted\c; nevertheless he himself delivered a panegyric upon his
own son\d from the Rostra, and he stood there beside the corpse,
which lay in plain view, with but a veil intervening, so that the
eyes of a high-priest\e might not look upon a corpse, and, while the
Roman people wept, he did not even change countenance. To Sejanus,
standing by his side, he offered an example of how patiently he
could endure the loss of his dear ones!\f You see how long
is the list of men who were most <Ess2-47>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xv. 4-xvi. 3
eminent and yet were not exempted from this
misfortune that lays everything low - men, too, upon whom so many
gifts of mind had been heaped, so many distinctions in public and
private life! But it is very plain that this storm of disaster
moves upon its round, lays waste everything without distinction, and
drives everything before it as its prey. Order all men one by
one to compare their accounts; no man has escaped paying the penalty
for being born. I know what you are saying: "You forget that
you are giving comfort to a woman; the examples you cite are of
men." But who has
asserted that Nature has dealt grudgingly with women's natures and
has narrowly restricted their virtues? Believe me, they
have just as much force, just as much capacity, if they like, for
virtuous action; they are just as able to endure suffering and toil
when they are accustomed to them. In what city, good heavens,
are we thus talking? In the city where Lucretia and Brutus\a
tore the yoke of a king from the heads of the Romans - to Brutus we
owe liberty, to Lucretia we owe Brutus. In the city where
Cloelia,\b who braved both the enemy and the river has been almost
transferred by us, on account of her signal courage, to the list of
heroes: the statue of Cloelia, mounted upon a horse, stands on
the Sacred Way in the city's busiest quarter, and, as our young
coxcombs mount to their cushioned seats, she taunts them with
journeying in such a fashion in a city in which even women have been
presented with a horse! {feminism+} But
if you wish me to cite examples of women who have bravely suffered
the loss of dear ones, I shall not go from door to door to find
them. From one family I shall present <Ess2-49>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xvi. 3-6
to you the two Cornelias - the first one,
the daughter of Scipio and mother of the Gracchi. Twelve
births did she recall by as many deaths. The rest whom the state
never knew as either born or lost matter little; as for Tiberius and
Gaius, who even the man who denies that they were good will admit
were great men, she saw them not only murdered but left unburied.
Yet to those who tried to comfort her and called her unfortunate she
said: "Never shall I admit that I am not fortunate, I who have borne
the Gracchi." Cornelia, the wife of Livius Drusus, had lost a son, a
young man\a of distinguished ability and very great renown, who,
while following in the footsteps of the Gracchi, was killed at his
own hearth by an unknown murderer, just when he had so many measures
pending and was at the height of his fame. Yet she showed as much
courage in supporting the death of her son, untimely and unavenged
as it was, as he had shown in supporting his laws. If Fortune,
Marcia, has pierced the Scipios and the mothers and daughters of the
Scipios with her darts, if with them she has assailed the Caesars,
will you not now pardon her if she has not held them back even from
you? Life is beset with full many and varied misfortunes; they
grant to no one long-extended peace, scarcely even a truce.
Four children, Marcia, you had borne. Not a single dart, they
say, that is hurled into the thick of the line falls without a
victim - is it surprising that such a company as yours has not been
able to get by without incurring envy and harm? But Fortune
was all the more unfair because she not only carried off your sons
but chose them out! Yet you should never call it an in- <Ess2-51>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xvi. 6-xvii. 1
justice to be forced to share equally with
one more powerful; she has left you two daughters and the children
of these. And even the son whom you, forgetful of an earlier
loss, mourn so deeply has not been utterly taken from you; you still
have the two daughters he left - great burdens if you are weak,
great comforts if you are brave. Do bring yourself to this -
whenever you see them, let them remind you of your son and not of
your grief! When the farmer sees his fruit-trees all ruined -
completely uprooted by the wind, or twisted and broken by the sudden
fury of a cyclone - he nurses the young stock they have left, and
immediately plants seeds and cuttings to replace the trees that were
lost; and in a moment (for if time causes speedy and swift
destruction, it likewise causes swift and speedy growth) more
flourishing trees grow up than those he lost. Do you no
now put these daughters of your son Metilius in his stead, and fill
the vacant place, and lighten your sorrow for one by drawing comfort
from two! Yet such is the nature of mortals that they find
nothing so pleasing as what they have lost; yearning for what is
taken away makes us too unfair towards what is left. But if
you are willing to count up how very merciful Fortune has been to
you even when she was angry, you will find that she has left you
much beside consolations; look at all your grandchildren, your two
daughters. And, Marcia, say this also to yourself: "I might
indeed be disturbed, if everyone's lot accorded with his conduct,
and if evils never pursued the good; as it is, I see that there is
no distinction and that the good and the bad are tossed to and fro
after the same fashion. {Job+} "Nevertheless it
is hard," you reply, "to lose a <Ess2-53>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xvii. 1-4
son whom you have reared to young manhood
just when his mother, just when his father was finding him their
stay and pride." Who will deny that it is hard? But it is
the common+ lot. To this end
were you born - to lose, to perish, to hope, to fear, to disquiet
yourself and others, both to fear death and to long for it, and,
worst of all, never to know the real terms of your existence.
Suppose a man should be planning a visit to Syracuse and someone
should say to him: "First inform yourself of all the disagreeable
and all the pleasurable features of your future journey, and then
set sail. The things that may fill you with wonder are these.
First, you will see the island itself, cut off from Italy by a
narrow strait, but once evidently joined to the mainland; there the
sea suddenly broke through, and
Severed Sicily from Hesperia's
side.\a
Next, you will see Charybdis - for it will
be possible for you to skirt this greediest of whirlpools, so famous
in story - resting quietly so long as there is no wind from the
south, but whenever a gale blows from that quarter, sucking down
ships into its huge and deep maw. You will see the fountain of
Arethusa, oft famed in song, with its bright gleaming pool,
transparent to the very bottom, and pouring forth its icy waters -
whether it found them there where they first had birth, or yielded
up a river that had plunged beneath the earth\b and, gliding intact
beneath so many seas, had been kept from the contamination of less
pure water.{Kubla_Khan+} You will see a harbour,\c of
all havensthe most peaceful - whether those that Nature has set to
give shelter to ships or that man's hand has improved - and so safe
that not even the fury of <Ess2-55>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xvii. 4-7
the most violent storms can have access
there. You will see where the might of Athens was broken,
where so many thousands of captives were confined in that natural
prison,\a hewn out of solid rock to immeasurable depth - you will
see the great city itself, occupying a broader extent of territory
than many a metropolis can boast, where the winters are the
balmiest, and not a single day passes without the appearance of the
sun. But, having learned of all these things, you will
discover that the blessings of its winter climate are ruined by
oppressive and unwholesome summers. You will find there the
tyrant Dionysius, that destroyer of freedom, justice, and law,
greedy of power, even after knowing Plato, and of even after
exile!\b Some he will burn, some he will flog, some for a slight
offence he will order to be beheaded, he will call for males and
females to satisfy his lust, and to enjoy two at one time of his
shameful victims will will suffice for his royal excesses. You
have now heard what may attract, what repel you - now, then, either
set sail or stay at home! If after such a warning anyone
should declare that he desired to enter Syracuse, against whom but
himself could he find just cause for complaint, since he would not
have stumbled upon those conditions, but have come into them
purposely and with full knowledge? To all of us
Nature says: "I deceive no one. If you bear sons, it may be
that they will be handsome, it may be that they will be ugly;
perchance they will be born dumb. Some one of them, it may be,
will be the saviour of his country, or as likely its betrayer. It is
not beyond hope that they will win so much esteem that out of regard
for them none will venture to speak evil of you; yet bear in mind,
too, that they may sink <Ess2-57>
TO MARCIA, CONSOLATION, xvii. 7-xviii. 3
to such great infamy that they themselves
will become your curse. There is nothing to
forbid that they should perform the last sad rites for you, and that
those who deliver your panegyric should be your children, but, too,
hold yourself ready to place your son upon the pyre, be he lad or
man or graybeard; for years have nothing to do with the matter,
since every funeral is untimely at which a parent follows the bier."
If, after these conditions have been set forth, you bring forth
children, you must free the gods from all blame; for they have made
you no promises. Come now, apply
this picture to your entrance into life as a whole. I have set
forth what could there delight you, what offend you, if you were
debating whether you should visit Syracuse; consider that I am
coming now to give you advice at your birth: "You are about to enter
a city," I should say, "shared by gods and men - a city that
embraces the universe, that is bound by fixed and eternal laws, that
holds the celestial bodies aas they whirl through their unwearied
rounds. {stars_from_wrong+} You will see there the
gleaming of countless stars, you will see one star flooding
everything with his light - the sun that marks off the spaces of day
and night in his daily course, and in his annual course distributes
even more equably the periods of summer and winter. You will see the
moon taking his place by night, who as she meets her brother borrows
from him a pale, reflected light, now quite hidden, now overhanging
the earth with her whole face exposed, ever changing as she waxes
and wanes, ever different from her last appearance. You will
see the five planets a pursuing their different courses and <Ess2-59>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xviii. 3-6
striving to stem the headlong whirl\a of
heaven; on even the slightest motions of these hang the fortunes of
nations, and the greatest and smallest happenings are shaped to
accord with the progress of a kindly or unkindly star. {Wdswth+} You will wonder at the piled-up
clouds and the falling waters and the zigzag lightning and the roar
of heaven. When your eyes are sated with the spectacle of
things above and you lower them to earth, another aspect of things,
and otherwise wonderful, will meet your gaze. On this side you will
see level plains stretching out their boundless expanse, on the
other, mountains rising in great, snowclad ridges and lifting their
peaks to heaven; descending streams and rivers that rise from one
source flowing both to the east and to the west, and waving trees on
the topmost summits and vast forests with the creatures that people
them, and birds blending into harmony the discord of their
songs. You will see cities in diverse places, and the nations
fenced off by natural barriers, some of them withdrawn to mountain
heights, and others in their fear hugging the river-banks, lakes,
and valleys; corn- fields assisted by cultivation and orchards that
need none to tend their wildness; and brooks flowing gently through
the meadows, lovely bays, and shores curving inwards to form a
harbour; the countless islands that are scattered over the deep and,
breaking up its expanse, stud the seas. And what of the
gleaming of precious stones and jewels, and the gold that rolls down
amid the sands of rushing streams, and the flaming torches that soar
from the midst of the land and at times even from the midst of the
sea, and the ocean that encircles the lands, severing the continu-
<Ess2-61>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xviii. 6-xix. 1
ity of the nations by its three gulfs\a and
boiling up in mighty rage? Here you will see its waters troubled and
rising up in billows, stirred not by the wind but by swimming
monsters that surpass in size all creatures of the land, some of
them sluggish and moving under the guidance\b of another, others
nimble and more swift than rowers at full speed, and still others
that drink in the waters of the sea and blow them out to the great
peril of those who are sailing by. You will see here ships
searching for lands that they do not know; you will see man in his
audacity leaving nothing untried, and you will yourself be both a
spectator and a partner of mighty enterprises; {Ulysses+} {Faust+} you
will learn and will teach the arts, of which some serve to maintain
life, some to adorn it, and others to regulate it. But there,
too, will be found a thousand plagues, banes of the body as well as
of the mind, wars, robberies, poisons, shipwreeks, distempers of
climate and of the body, untimely grief for those most dear, and
death - whether an easy one or only after pain and torture no one
can tell. {Liberal_Arts+} Now take counsel of
yourself and weigh carefully the choice you make; if you would reach
these wonders, you must pass through these perils." Will your answer
be that you choose to live? Of course it will - nay, perhaps,
on second thought, you will not enter upon a state in which to
suffer any loss causes you pain! Live, then, upon the terms
you have accepted. "But,"you say, "no one has consulted us." Yet our
psarents have been consulted about us, and they, knowing the terms
of life, have reared us to accept them. But, to come back now to the
subject of consolation, let us consider, first, what wound must be
healed, and, second, in what way. One source of grief is the
<Ess2-63>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xix. 1-4
longing we have for one that we have
lost. But it is evident that this in itself is bearable; for,
so long as they are alive, we do not shed tears for those who are
absent or will soon be absent, although along with the sight of them
we are robbed of all enjoyment of them. What tortures us,
therefore, is an opinion, and every evil is only as great as we have
reckoned it to be. In our own hands we have the
remedy. Let us consider that the dead are merely absent,
and let us deceive ourselves; we have sent them on their way - nay,
we have sent them ahead and shall soon follow. Another source
of grief is the thought: "I shall have no one to protect me, no one
to keep me from being despised." If I may employ a consolation by no
means creditable but true, in this city of ours childlessness
bestows more influence than it takes away, and the loneliness that
used to be a detriment to old age, now leads to so much power that
some old men pretend to hate their sons and disown their children,
and by their own act make themselves childless.\a Yet I know what
you will say: "My own losses do not stir me; for no parent is worthy
of consolation who sorrows over the loss of a son just as he would
over the loss of a slave, who in the case of a son has room to
consider anything except the son himself." What then, Marcia, is it
that troubles you? - the fact that your son has died, or that he did
not live long? If it is that he has died, then you had always
reason to grieve; for you always knew that he would have to die. Reflect that
there are no ills to be suffered after death, that the reports that
make the Lower World terrible to us are mere tales, that no darkness
is in store for the dead, no prison, no blazing streams of <Ess2-65>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xix. 4-xx. 1
fire, no river of Lethe, that no
judgement-seats are there, nor culprits, nor in that freedom so
unfettered are there a second time any tyrants. All these things are
the fancies of the poets, who have harrowed us with groundless
terrors. Death is a release from all suffering, a boundary
beyond which our ills cannot pass - it restores us to that peaceful
state in which we lay before we were born. If anyone pities
the dead, he must also pity those who have not been born.
Death is neither a good nor an evil; for that only which is
something is able to be a good or an evil. But that which is
itself nothing and reduces all things to nothingness consigns us to
neither sphere of fortune for evils and goods must operate upon
,something material. Fortune cannot maintain a hold upon that
which Nature has let go, nor can he be wretched who is
non-existent. Your son has passed beyond those
boundaries within which there is servitude; a great and everlasting
peace has welcomed him. No fear of want assails him, no
anxicty from riches, no stings of lust+ that
through the pleasure of the body rends the soul; envy of another's
prosperity touches him not, envy of his own afflicts him not, no
reproaches ever assail his unoffending ears; no disaster either to
his country or to himself does he descry, nor does he, in suspense
about the future, hang upon the distant outcome that ever repays
with ever more uncertainty. At last he has an abiding-place
from which nothing can drive him, where nothing can affright him.
O ignorant
are they of their ills, who do not laud death and look forward to it
as the most precious discovery of Nature! Whether it shuts off
prosperity, or repels calamity, or terminates the satiety and <Ess2-67>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xx. 1-3
weariness of the old man, or leads off the
youth in the bloom of life while he still hopes for happier things,
or calls back the boy before the harsher stages of life are reached,
it is to all the end, to many a relief, to some an answer to prayer,
and to none does it show more favour than to those to whom it comes
before it is asked for! Death frees the slave though his
master is unwilling; it lightens the captive's chains; from the
dungeon it leads forth those whom unbridled power\a had forbidden to
leave it; to exiles, whose eyes and minds are ever turning to their
native land, death shows that it makes no difference beneath whose
soil a man may lie. If Fortune has apportioned unjustly the
common goods+, and has given over one man to
another though they were born with equal rights, death levels all
things; this it is, after whose coming no one any more does the will
of another; this it is, under whose sway no one is aware of his
lowly estate; this it is, that lies open to everyone this it is,
Marcia, that your father eagerly desired; this it is, I say, that
keeps my birth from being a punishment, that keeps me from falling
in the face of threatening misfortunes, that makes it possible to
keep my soul unharmed and master of itself {invictus+}: I have a last
appeal. Yonder I see instruments of torture, not indeed
of a single kind, but differently contrived by different peoples;
some hang their victims with head toward the ground, some impale
their private parts, others stretch out their arms on a fork-shaped
gibbet; I see cords, I see scourges, and for each separate limb and
each joint there is a separate engine of torture! But I
see also Death. There, too, are bloodthirsty enemies and proud
fellow-countrymen; but yonder, too, I see Death. Slavery is no
hardship when, if a <Ess2-69>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xx. 3-5
man wearies of the yoke, by a single step he
may pass to freedom.
O Life, by the favour of Death I hold thee
dear!
Think how
great a boon a timely death offers, how many have been harmed by
living too long! If Gnaeus Pompeius, that glory and stay of
the realm, had been carried off by his illness at Naples,\a he would
have departed the unchallenged head of the Roman people. But as it
was, a very brief extension of time cast him down from his pinnacle.
He saw his legions slaughtered before his eyes, and from that battle
where the first line was the senate,\b he saw - what a melancholy
remnant\c - the commander himself left alive! He saw an
Egyptian his executioner, and yielded to a slave a body that was
sacrosanct to the victors,\d though even had he been unharmed, he
would have repented of his escape; for what were haser than that a
Pompey should live by the bounty of a king! If Marcus Cicero
had fallen at the moment when he escaped the daggers of Catiline,
which were aimed not less at him than at his country, if he had
fallen as the saviour of the commonwealth which he had freed, if his
death had followed close upon that of his daughter,\e even then he
might have died happy. He would not have seen swords drawn to
take the lives of Roman citizens, nor assassins parcelling out the
goods of their victims in order that these might even be murdered at
their own cost, nor the spoils of a consul\f put up at ---- e Tullia, who
died in 45 B.C. f Cf.
Cicero, Phil. ii. 64: "hasta posita pro aede Iovis Statoris
bona Cn. Pompei (miserum me! consumptis enim lacrimis
tamen infixus haeret animo dolor), bona, inquam, Cn. Poinpei
Magni voci acerbissimae subiecta praeconis!" <Ess2-71>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xx. 5-xxi. 2
public auction, nor murders contracted for
officially, nor brigandage and war and pillage - so many new
Catilines!
If the sea had swallowed up Marcus Cato as he was returning from
Cyprus and his stewardship of the royal legacy,\a and along with him
even the money which he was bringing to defray the expense of the
Civil War, would it not then - the conviction that no one would have
the effrontery to do wrong in the presence of Cato! As it was,
having gained the respite of a very few years, that hero, who was
born no less for personal than for political freedom, was forced to
flee from Caesar and to submit to Pompey. To your son,
therefore, though his death was premature, it brought no ill; rather
has it released him from suffering ills of every sort. "Yet," you
say, "he perished too soon and before his time." In the first place,
suppose he had survived - grant him the very longest life a man can
have - how many years are there after all? Born as we are for
the briefest space, and destined soon to yield place to another
coming into his lease of time, we view our life as a sojourn at an
inn. "Our" life do I say, when Time hurries it on with such
ineredible swiftness? Count the centuries of cities; you will see
how even those that boast of their great age have not existed
long. All things human are short-lived and perishable, and
fill no part at all of infinite time. This earth with its
cities and peoples, its rivers and the girdle of the sea, if
measured by the universe, we may count a mere dot; our life, if
compared with all time, is relatively even less than a dot; for the
com- <Ess2-73>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxi. 2-6
pass of eternity is greater than that of the
world, since the world renews\a itself over and over within the
bounds of time. What, then, is to be gained by lengthening out
that which, however much shall be added on to it, will still not be
far from nothing? The time we live is much in only one way -
if it is enough! You may name to me men who were long-lived
and attained an age that has become proverbial, and you may count up
a hundred and ten years for each, yet when you turn your thought
upon eternal time, if you compare the space that you discover a man
has lived with the space that he has not lived, not a whit of
difference will you find between the shortest and the longest
life. Again, your son himself was ripe for death; for he lived
as long as he needed to live -nothing further was left for him to
do. There is no uniform time for old age in the case of men,
nor indeed of animals either. Some animals are exhausted
within the space of fourteen years, and their longest life is no
more than the first stage of a man's; to each has been given a
different capacity for living. No man dies too soon, because
he lives only as long as he was destined to live. For each the
boundary-line is marked; where it has been once placed, it will
always remain, and no endeavour or favour will move it farther
on. Look at the matter thus - you lost your son in accordance
with a fixed plan. He had his day
And reached the goal of his allotted
years.\b
And so you must not burden yourself with the
thought: "He might have lived longer." His life has not been cut
short, nor does Chance ever thrust itself into the years. What
has been promised to each man, is paid; the Fates go their way, and
neither add any <Ess2-75>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxi. 6-xxii. 2
thing to what has once been promised, nor
subtract from it. Prayers and struggles are all in vain; each
one will get just the amount that was placed to his credit on the
first day of his existence. That day on which he first saw the
light, he entered upon the path to death and drew ever nearer to his
doom, and the very years that were added to his youth were
subtracted from his life. We all fall into the error of
thinking that only those who are old and already on the downward
path are tending toward death, whereas earliest infancy, middle age,
every period of life indeed leads in that direction. The Fates
ply their work; they keep us from being conscious that we are dying,
and, to have it steal upon us the more easily, death lurks beneath
the very name of life; infancy changes into boyhood, boyhood into
adolescence, and old age steals away the age of maturity. Our
very gains, if you reckon them properly, are losses. Do you
complain, Marcia, that your son did not live as long as he might
have lived? For how do you know whether it was advisable for
him to live longer? whether his interest was served by such a
death? Can you this day find anyone whose fortunes are so
happily placed and so firmly grounded that he has nothing to fear
from the advance of time? Human affairs are unstable and
fleeting, and no part of our life is so frail and perishable as that
which gives most pleasure, and therefore at the height of good
fortune we ought to pray for death, since in all the inconstancy and
turmoil of life we can feel sure of nothing except the past.
And your son who was so handsome in body and under the eyes of a
dissolute city had been kept pure by his strict regard for chastity
- <Ess2-77>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxii. 2-4
what assurance have you that he could have
escaped the many diseases there are, and so have preserved the
unimpaired beauty of his person down to old age? And think of
the thousand taints of the soul! For even noble natures do not
support continuously into old age the expectations they had stirred
in their youth, but are often turned aside; they either fall into
dissipation, which coming late is for that reason the more
disgraceful, and begins to tarnish the brilliance of their first
years, or they sink wholly to the level of the eating-house and the
belly, and what they shall eat and what they shall drink become
their chief concern. To this add fires and falling houses, and
shipwrecks and the agonies from surgeons as they pluck bones from
the living body, and thrust their whole hands deep into the bowels,
and treat the private parts at the cost of infinite pain. And
besides all these there is exile -surely your son was not more
blameless than Rutilius\a! - and the prison -surely he was not wiser
than Socrates! - and the suicide's dagger, piercing the heart -
surely he was not more holy than Cato! If you will consider
all these possibilities, you will learn that those who are treated
most kindly by Nature are those whom she removes early to a place of
safety, because life had in store some such penalty as this.
Yes, nothing is so deceptive as human life, nothing is so
treacherous. Heaven knows! not one of us would have
accepted it as a gift, were it not given to us without our
knowledge. If, therefore, the happiest lot is not to be
born, {Sophocles+} the next best, I think, is to
have a brief life and by death to be restored quicky to the original
state.\b
Recall that time, so bitter for you, when Sejanus handed over your
father to his client, Satrius <Ess2-79>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxii. 4-6
Secundus, as a largess. He was angry
because your father, not being able to endure in silence that a
Sejanus should be set upon our necks, much less climb there, had
spoken out once or twice rather boldly. Sejanus was being
voted the honour of a statue, which was to be set up in the theatre
of Pompey, just then being restored by Tiberius after a fire.
Whereupon Cordus exclaimed: "Now the theatre is ruined indeed!"
What! Was it not to burst with rage to think of a Sejanus
planted upon the ashes of Gnaeus Pompeius, a disloyal soldier
hallowed by a statue in a memorial to one of the greatest
generals? Hallowed, too, was the signature of Sejanus! and
those fiercest of dogs\,b which, savage toward all others, he kept
friendly only to himself by feeding them on human blood, began to
bark around that great man,\c who was already caught in a
trap. What was he to do? If he wished to live, he had to
make his plea to Sejanus; if he wished to die, to his own daughter,
and both were inexorable. So he determined to deceive his
daughter. Therefore, having taken a bath and seeking to reduce
his strength still further, he retired to his bedchamber, giving out
that he would have luncheon there; then, having dismissed the
slaves, he threw part of the food out of the window in order to have
it appear that he had eaten it; later he refused dinner on the
pretext that he had already eaten enough in his room. He did
the same thing also on the second day and the third day; on the
fourth, the very weakness of his body revealed the truth. And
so, taking you into his arms, he said: "My dearest daughter, nothing
in my whole life have ----- b The delators,
or unscrupulous political accusers, who were the tools of
Sejanus. c Cordus. <Ess2-81>
TO MARCIA, CONSOLATION, xxii. 6-xxiii. 2
I ever concealed from you but this, but I
have entered upon the road to death, and am now almost half-way
there; you cannot and you ought not to call me back." And so, having
ordered all light to be shut out, he buried himself in deep
darkness. When his purpose was recognized, there was general
rejoicing, because the jaws of the ravening wolves were being
cheated of their prey. At the instigation of Sejanus, accusers
of Cordus appeared before the tribunal of the consuls, complained
that their victim was dying, and begged them to prevent the very
thing they had forced upon him; so strongly did they feel that
Cordus was escaping them! The great question in dispute was
whether an accused man lost his right to die; while the matter was
being debated, while his accusers were making their plea a second
time, he had already gained his freedom. Do you not see,
Marcia, what great vicissitudes of fortune assail us unexpectedly
when the times are evil? Weep you because one of your dear ones was
required to die? One was very nearly not allowed. Besides the fact
that all the future is uncertain, and more certain to be worse than
otherwise, it is true that the souls that are quickly released from
intercourse with men find the journey to the gods above most easy;
for they carry less weight of earthly dross. Set free before
they become hardened, before they are too deeply contaminated by the
things of earth, they fly back more lightly to the source of their
being, and more easily wash away all defilement and stain. And souls
that are great find no joy in lingering in the body; they yearn to
go forth and burst their bonds, and they chafe against these narrow
bounds, accustomed as they are to range far <Ess2-83>
TO MARCIA, CONSOLATION, xxiii. 2-xxiv. 1.
aloft throughout the universe, and from on
high to look down in scorn upon the affairs of men. Hence it
is that Plato\a cries out that the wise man reaches out with all his
mind toward death, longs for it, thinks upon it, and because of this
passion moves through life striving ever for the things
beyond. Tell me, Marcia, when you saw in your son, youth that
he was, the wisdom of an old man, a mind victorious over all sensual
pleasures, unblemished, faultless, seeking riches without greed,
honours without ostentation, pleasures without excess, did you think
that you could long have the good fortune to keep him safe and
unharmed? Whatever has reached perfection, is near its
end. Ideal Virtue hurries away and is snatched from our eyes,
and the fruits that ripen in their first days do not wait long for
their last. The brighter a fire glows, the more quickly it
dies; the fire that is kindled with tough and stubborn wood, and,
shrouded in smoke, shines with a murky light is longer lived; for
the same condition keeps it alive that provides it grudging
food. So with men - the brighter their spirits, the briefer
their day; for when there is no room for increase, destruction is
near. Fabianus relates - our parents also actually saw him -
that there was at Rome a boy who was as tall as a very tall man; but
he soon died, and every sensible person said beforehand that he
would promptly die, for he could not be expected to reach an age
that he had already forestalled. And so it is - ripe maturity is the
sign of impending destruction; when growth stops, the end
approaches.
Undertake to estimate him by his virtues, not by his years, and you
will see he lived long enough. Left as a ward, he was under
the care of guardians <Ess2-85>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxiv. 1-4
up to his fourteenth year, but his mother's
guardianship lasted all his life. Although he had his own
hearthstone, he did not wish to leave yours, and at an age when most
children can scarcely endure the society of a father, he persisted
in seeking that of his mother. As a young man, although by his
stature, beauty, and sure bodily strength, born for the camp, he
refused military service so as not to leave you. Consider,
Marcia, how rarely it happens that mothers who live in separate
houses see their children; think of all the years that are lost to
those mothers who have sons in the army, and they are spent in
constant anxiety; you will find that this period during which you
suffered no loss has been very extended. Your son was never removed
from your sight; with an ability that was outstanding and would have
made him the rival of his grandfather had he not been hampered by
modesty, which in the case of many men checks their advancement by
silence, he shaped all his studies beneath your eyes. Though
he was a young man of the rarest beauty of person, and was
surrounded by such a great horde of women, the corrupters of
men {Eve_evil+}, he lent himself to the hopes
of none, and when some of them in their effrontery went so far as to
make advances to him, he blushed with shame as if he had sinned even
by pleasing them. It was this purity of character that made
him seem worthy of being appointed to the priesthood\a while he was
still a lad; his mother's influence undoubtedly helped, but, unless
the candidate himself had been good, even a mother's influence would
have had no weight. In thinking of all these virtues hold
again, as it were, your son in your arms! He has now more
leisure to devote to you, there is nothing now to call him away from
you; <Ess2-87>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxiv. 4-xxv. 1
never again will he cause you anxiety, never
again any grief. The only sorrow you could possibly have from
a son so good is the sorrow you have had; all else is now exempt
from the power of chance, and holds nought but pleasure if only you
know how to enjoy your son, if only you come to understand what his
truest value was. Only the image of your son and a very
imperfect likeness it was -has perished; he himself is eternal and
has reached now a far better state, stripped of all outward
encumbrances and left simply himself. This vesture of the body
which we see, bones and sinews and the skin that covers us, this
face and the hands that serve us and the rest of our human wrapping
-these are but chains and darkness to our souls. By these
things the soul is crushed and strangled and stained and, imprisoned
in error, is kept far from its true and natural sphere. It
constantly struggles against this weight of the flesh in the effort
to avoid being dragged back and sunk; it ever strives to rise to
that place from which it once descended. There eternal peace
awaits it when it has passed from earth's dull motley to the vision
of all that is pure and bright. There is no need, therefore, for you
to hurry to the tomb of your son; what lies there is his basest part
and a part that in life was the source of much trouble - bones and
ashes are no more parts of him than were his clothes and the other
protections of the body. He is complete - leaving nothing of
himself behind, he has fled away and wholly departed from earth; for
a little while he tarried above us while he was being purified and
was ridding himself of all the blemishes and stain that still clung
to him from his mortal existence, then soared aloft and sped away to
join the souls of the blessed. A saintly hand gave him wel-
<Ess2-89>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxv. 1-xxvi. 1
come - the Scipios tnd the Catos and, joined
with those who scorned life and through a drought of poison found
freedom, your father, Marcia. Although there all are akin with all,
he keeps his grandson near him, and, while your son rejoices in the
newfound light, he instructs him in the movement of the neighbouring
stars, and gladly initiates him into Nature's secrets, not by
guesswork, but by experience having true knowledge of them all; and
just as a stranger is grateful for a guide, through an unknown city,
so your son, as he searches into the causes of celestial things, is
grateful for a kinsman as his instructor. He bids him also
turn his gaze upon the things of earth far below; for it is a
pleasure to look back upon all that has been left behind. Do
you therefore, Marcia, always act as if you knew that the eyes of
your father and your son were set upon you - not such as you once
knew them, but far loftier beings, dwelling in the highest
heaven. Blush to have a low or common thoughtt, and to weep
for those dear ones who have changed for the better!
Throughout the free and boundless spaces of eternity they wander; no
intervening seas block their course, no lofty mountains or pathless
valleys or shallows of the shifting Syrtes; there every way is
level, and, being swift and unencumbered, they easily are pervious
to the matter of the stars and, in turn, are mingled with it.\a
Consider, therefore, Marcia, that your father, whose influence upon
you was not less great than was yours upon your son, using no longer
that tone in which he bewailed the civil wars, in which he himself
proscribed for all time the sponsors of proscription, but the
loftier tone that befits his more exalted state, <Ess2-91>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxvi. 2-4
speaks to you from the citadel of high
heaven and says: "Why, my daughter, are you held by such lengthy
sorrow? Why do you live in such ignorance of the truth as to
believe that our son was unfairly treated because, leaving his
family fortunes whole, he himself returned to his forefathers, safe
and whole? Do you not know how mighty are the storms of
Fortune that demolish everything? How if she shows herself
kindly and indulgent, it is only to those who have the fewest
possible dealings with her? Need I name to you the kings who
would have been the happiest of mortals if death had removed them
sooner from the evils that were threatening? or even the Roman
leaders who would lose not a tithe of greatness if you should
subtract some years from their life? or those heroes of the
highest birth and fame who calmly bowed their necks to receive the
stroke of a soldier's sword? Look back upon your father and
your grandfather. Your grandfather fell into the power
of a foreign assassin; I myself suffered no man to have any power
over me, and, having cut myself off from food, I proved that I was
as courageous as I seemed to have been in my writings. Why
should that member who has had the happiest death be longest mourned
in our family? We are all together in one place, and, released
from the deep night that envelops you, we discover among you nothing
that is, as you think, desirable, nothing that is lofty, nothing
glorious, but all is lowly, heavy laden, and troubled, and beholds
how small a fraction of the light in which we dwell! Why need
I say that here are no rival armies clashing in their rage, no
fleets to shatter one another, no parricides are here either
conceived or planned, no forums ring with strife the <Ess2-93>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxvi. 4-6
livelong day, that no secrecy is here, but
minds are uncovered and hearts revealed and our lives are open and
manifest to all, while every age and things to come are ranged
before our sight? "It was once my
delight to compile the history of what took place in a single
epoch\a in the most distant region of the universe and among the
merest handful of people. Now l may have the view of countless
centuries, the succession and train of countless ages, the whole
array of years: I may behold the rise and fall of future
kingdoms, the downfall of great cities, and new invasions of the
sea. For, if the common fate can be a solace for your
yearning, know that nothing will abide where it is now placed, that
time will lay all things low and take all things with it. And
not simply men will be its sport+ - for
how small a part are they of Fortune's domain! - but places,
countries, and the great parts of the universe. It will level
whole mountains, and in another place will pile new rocks on high;
it will drink up seas, turn rivers from their courses, and,
sundering the communication of nations, break up the association and
intercourse of the human race; in other places it will swallow up
cities in yawning chasms, will shatter them with earthquakes, and
from deep below send forth a pestilential vapour; it will cover with
floods the face of the inhabited world, and, deluging the earth,
will kill every living creature, and in huge conflagration it will
scorch and burn all mortal things. And when the time shall
come for the world to be blotted out in order that it may begin its
life anew, these things will destroy themselves by their own power,
and stars will clash with stars, and all the fiery matter of the
world that now shines in orderly array will blaze <Ess2-95>
TO MARCIA ON CONSOLATION, xxvi. 6
up in a common conflagration. Then
also the souls of the blest, who have partaken of immortality, when
it shall seem best to God to create the universe anew - we, too,
amid the falling universe, shall be added as a tiny fraction to this
mighty destruction, and shall be changed again into our former
elements." Happy, Marcia, is your son, who already knows these
mysteries!
<Ess2-97>
DE VITA BEATA+ BOOK
VII TO GALLIO ON THE HAPPY
LIFE
To live happily, my
brother Gallio,\a is the desire of all men, but their minds are
blinded to a clear vision of just what it is that makes life happy;
and so far from its being easy to attain the happy life, the more
eagerly a man strives to reach it, the farther he recedes from it if
he has made a mistake in the road; for when it leads in the opposite
direction, his very speed will increase the distance that separates
him. First,
therefore, we must seek what it is that we are aiming at; then we
must look about for the road by which we can reach it most quickly,
and on the journey itself, if only we are on the right path, we
shall discover how much of the distance we overcome each day, and
how much nearer we are to the goal toward which we are urged by a
natural desire. But so long as we wander aimlessly, having no
guide, and following only the noise and discordant cries of those
who call us in different directions, life will be consumed in making
mistakes - life that is brief even if we should strive day and night
for sound wisdom. Let us, therefore, decide both upon the goal and
upon the ----- 12-17). He died by his own hand in A.D.
66. To him, apparently before his adoption, are addressed the
three books of the De Ira.Cf. Vol. I, Introd.
pp. vii, xiii. <Ess2-99>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, i. 2-4
way, and not fail to find some experienced
guide who has explored the region towards which we are advancing;
for the conditions of this journey are different from those of most
travel. On most journeys some well-recognized road and
inquiries made of the inhabitants of the region prevent you from
going astray; but on this one all the best beaten and the most
frequented paths are the most deceptive. {Frost_R+}
Nothing, therefore, needs to be more emphasized than the warning
that we should not, like sheep, follow the lead of the throng in
front of us, travelling, thus, the way that all go and not the way
that we ought to go. Yet nothing involves us in greater
trouble than the fact that we adapt ourselves to common report in
the belief that the best things are those that have met with great
approval, - the fact that, having so many to follow, we live after
the rule, not of reason, but of imitation. The result of this
is that people are piled high, one above another, as they rush to
destruction. {Thoreau+} And just as it happens that in a
great crush of humanity, when the people push against each other, no
one can fall down without drawing along another, and those that are
in front cause destruction to those behind - this same thing, You
may see happening everywhere in life. No man can go wrong to
his own hurt only, but he will be both the cause and the sponsor of
another's wrongdoing. For it is dangerous to attach one's self to
the crowd in front, and so long as each one of us is more willing to
trust another than to judge for himself, we never show any judgement
in the matter of living, but always a blind trust, and a mistake
that has been passed on from hand to hand finally involves us and
works our destruction. It is the example of other people that
is our undoing; let <Ess2-101>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, i. 5-ii. 3
us merely separate ourselves from the crowd,
and we shall be made whole. But as it is, the populace,, defending
its own iniquity, pits itself against reason. And so we see
the same thing happening that happens at the elections, where, when
the fickle breeze of popular favour has shifted, the very same
persons who chose the praetors wonder that those praetors were
chosen. {mob+} The same thing has
one moment our favour, the next our disfavour; this is the outcome
of every decision that follows the choice of the majority. When the happy
life is under debate, there will be no use for you to reply to me,
as if it were a matter of votes: "This side seems to be in a
majority." For that is just the reason it is the worse side.
Human affairs are not so happily ordered that the majority prefer
the better things; a proof of the worst choice is the crowd. {Tyranny_of_majority+} Therefore let us
find out what is best to do, not what is most commonly done what
will establish our claim to lasting happiness, not what finds favour
with the rabble, who are the worst possible exponents of the
truth. But by the rabble+ I mean no less the servants of the
court than the servants of the kitchen\a; for I do not regard the
colour of the garments that clothe the body. In rating a man I
do not rely upon eyesight: I have a better and surer light, by which
I may distinguish the false from the true. Let the soul
discover the good of the soul. If the soul ever has leisure to
draw breath and to retire within itself - ah! to what self-
torture will it come, and how, if it confesses the truth to itself,
it will say: "All that I have done hitherto, ------ a Tacitus,
Annals, xiii. 39. 7: " et imbelle vulgus sub corona venundatum,
reliqua praeda victoribus cessit." <Ess2-103>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, ii. 3-iii. 2
I would were undone; when I think of all
that I have said, I envy the dumb; of all that I have prayed for, I
rate my prayers as the curses of my enemies; of all that I have
feared - ye gods! how much lighter it would have been than the
load of what I have coveted! With many I have been at enmity,
and, laying aside hatred, have been restored to friendship with them
- if only there can be any friendship between the wicked; with
myself I have not yet entered into friendship. I have made
every effort to remove myself from the multitude and to make myself
noteworthy by reason of some endowment. What have I
accomplished save to expose myself to the darts of malice and show
it where it can sting me? See you those who praise your
eloquence, who trail upon your wealth, who court your favour, who
exalt your power? All these are either now your enemies, or -
it amounts to the same thing - can become such. To know how
many are jealous of you, count your admirers. Why do I
not rather seek some real good - one which I could feel, not one
which I could display? These things that draw the eyes of men,
before which they halt, which they show to one another in wonder,
outwardly glitter, but are worthless within." Let us seek something
that is a good in more than appearance - something that is solid,
constant, and more beautiful in its more hidden part; for this let
us delve. And it is placed not far off; you will find it - you
need only to know where to stretch out your hand. As it is,
just as if we groped in darkness, we pass by things near at hand,
stumbling over the very objects we desire. Not to bore you,
however, with tortuous details, I shall pass over in silence the
opinions of other philo- <Ess2-105>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, iii. 2-4
sophers, for it would be tedious to
enumerate and refute them all. Do you listen to ours.
But when I say ours, "I do not bind myself to some particular one of
the Stoic masters; I, too, have the right to form an opinion.
Accordingly, I shall follow so- and-so, I shall request so-and-so to
divide the question;\a perhaps, too, when called upon after all the
rest, I shall impugn none of my predecessors' opinions, and shall
say: "I simply have this much to add." Meantime, I follow the
guidance of Nature - a doctrine upon which all Stoics are
agreed. Not to stray from Nature and to mould ourselves
according to her law and pattern - this is true wisdom. The happy life,
therefore, is a life that is in harmony with its own nature, and it
can be attained in only one way. First of all, we must have a
sound mind and one that is in constant possession of its sanity;
second, it must be courageous+ and energetic, and, too,
capable of the noblest fortitude, ready for every emergency, careful
of the body and of all that concerns it, but without anxiety;
lastly, it must be attentive to all the advantages that adorn life,
but with over-much love for none\b - the user, but not the slave, of
the gifts of Fortune. You understand, even if I do not say more,
that, when once we have driven away all that excites or affrights
us, there ensues unbroken tranquillity and enduring freedom; for
when pleasures and fears have been banished, then, in place of all
that is trivial and fragile and harmful just because of the evil it
works, there comes upon us first a boundless joy that is firm and
unalterable, then peace and harmony of the soul and true greatness
coupled with kindliness; for all ferocity is born from
weakness. {anger+} ----- b <...Horace's "nil admirari"> <Ess2-107>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, iv. 1-3
It is possible also to define this good of
ours in other terms - that is, the same idea may be expressed in
different language. Just as an army remains the same, though
at one time it deploys with a longer line, now is massed into a
narrow space and either stands with hollowed centre and wings curved
forward, or extends a straightened front, and, no matter what its
formation may be, will keep the selfsame spirit and the same resolve
to stand in defence of the selfsame cause, - so the definition of
the highest good may at one time be given in prolix and lengthy
form, and at another be restrained and concise. So it will
come to the same thing if I say: "The hishest good is a mind that
scorns the happenings of chance, and rejoices only in virtue," or
say: "It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable, {invictus+} wise from experience, calm in
action, showing the while much courtesy and consideration in
intercourse with others," It may also be defined in the statement
that the happy man is he who recognizes no good and evil other than
a good and an evil mind one who cherishes honour, is content with
virtue, who is neither puffed up, nor crushed, by the happenings of
chance, who knows of no greater good than that which he alone is
able to bestow upon himself, for whom true pleasure will be the
scorn of pleasures. It is possible, too, if one chooses to be
discursive, to transfer the same idea to various other forms of
expression without injuring or weakening its meaning. For what
prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that
is
free+, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed
beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts
virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a
worthless mass of things, which come <Ess2-109>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, iv. 3-v. 2
and go without increasing or diminishing the
highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor
add any part to it? A man thus
grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by
constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep
within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no
joys greater than his inner joys. Should not such joys as
these be rightly matched against the paltry and trivial and fleeting
sensations of the wretched body? The day a man becomes
superior to pleasure, he will also be superior to pain; but you see
in what wretched and baneful bondage he must linger whom pleasures
and pains, those most capricious and tyrannical of masters, shall in
turn enslave.{slavery+} Therefore we must nake
our escape to freedom+. But the only
means of procuring this is through indifference to Fortune.
Then will be born the one inestimable blessing, the peace and
exaltation of a mind now safely anchored, and, when all error is
banished, the great and stable joy that comes from the discovery of
truth, along with kindliness and cheerfulness of mind; and the
source of a man's pleasure in all of these will not be that they are
good, but that they spring from a good that is his own. Seeing that I am
employing some freedom in treating my subject, I may say that the
happy man is one who is freed from both fear and desire because of
the gift of reason+; since even rocks are free from
fear and sorrow, and no less are the beasts of the field, yet for
all that no one could say that these things are "blissful," when
they have no comprehension of bliss. Put in the same class
those people whose dullness of nature and ignorance of themselves
have reduced them to <Ess2-111>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, v. 2-vi. 1
the level of beasts of the field and of
inanimate things. There is no difference between the one and
the other, since in one case they are things without reason, and in
the other their reason is warped, and works their own hurt, being
active in the wrong direction; for no man can be said to be happy if
he has been thrust outside the pale of truth. Therefore the
life that is happy has been founded on correct and trustworthy
judgement, and is unalterable. Then, truly, is the mind
unclouded and freed from every ill, since it knows how to escape not
only deep wounds, but even scratches,\a and, resolved to hold to the
end whatever stand it has taken, it will defend its position even
against the assaults of an angry Fortune. For so far as
sensual pleasure is concerned, though it flows about us on every
side, steals in through every opening, softens the mind with its
blandishments, and employs one resource after another in order to
seduce us in whole or in part, yet who of mortals, if he has left in
him one trace of a human being, would choose to have his senses
tickled night and day, and, forsaking the mind, devote his attention
wholly to the body? "But the mind also," it will be said, "has its
own pleasures." Let it have them, in sooth, and let it pose as a
judge of luxury and pleasures; let it gorge itself with the things
that are wont to delight the senses, then let it look back upon the
past, and, recalling faded pleasures, let it intoxicate itself with
former experiences and be eager now for those to come, and let it
lay its plans, and, while the body lies helpless from present
cramming, let it direct its thoughts to that to come - yet from all
this, it seems to me, the mind will be more wretched than ever,
since it is madness to choose evils instead of goods. But <Ess2-113>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, vi. 1-vii. 3
no man can be happy unless he is sane, and
no man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of
what is best. _The happy man, therefore, is one who has right
judgement; the happy man is content with his present lot, no matter
what it is, and is reconciled to his circumstances; the happy man is
he who allows reason to fix the value of every condition of
existence. Even those who declare that the highest good is in
the belly see in what a dishonourable position they have placed
it. And so they say that it is not possible to separate
pleasure from virtue, and they aver that no one can live virtuously
without also living pleasantly, nor pleasantly without also living
virtuously.\a But I do not see how things so different can be cast
in the same mould. What reason is there, I beg of you, why
pleasure cannot be separated from virtue? Do you mean, since
all goods have their origin in virtue, even the things that you love
and desire must spring from its roots? But if the two were
inseparable, we should not see certain things pleasant, but not
honourable, and certain things truly most honourable, but painful
and capable of being accomplished only through suffering.
Then, too, we see that pleasure enters into even the basest life,
but, on the other hand, virtue does not permit life to be evil, and
there are people who are unhappy not without pleasure - nay, are so
on account of pleasure itself - and this could not happen if
pleasure were indisolubly joined to virtue; virtue often lacks
pleasure, and never needs it. Why do you couple things that
are unlike, nay, even opposites? Virtue is something lofty,
exalted and regal, unconquerable, and unwearied; pleasure is
something lowly, servile, <Ess2-115>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, vii. 3-viii. 2
weak, and perishable, whose haunt and abode
are the brothel and the tavern. Virtue you will find in the
temple, in the forum, in the senate-house - you will find her
standing in front of the city walls, dusty and stained, and with
calloused hands; {Swift_dusty_shoes+} {PlainDealer+!!!} pleasure
you will more often find lurking out of sight, and in search of
darkness, around the public baths and the sweating-rooms and the
places that fear the police - soft, enervated, reeking with wine and
perfume, and pallid, or else painted and made up with cosmetics like
a corpse. The highest good is immortal, it knows no ending, it
permits neither surfeit nor regret; for the right-thinking mind
never alters, it neither is filled with self-loathing nor suffers
any change in its life, that is ever the best. But pleasure is
extinguished just when it is most enjoyed; it has but small space,
and thus quickly fills it - it grows weary and is soon spent after
its first assault. Nor is anything certain whose nature
consists in movement. So it is not even possible that there
should be any substance in that which comes and goes most swiftly
and will perish in the very exercise of its power; for it struggles
to reach a point at which it may cease, and it looks to the end
while it is beginning. What, further,
is to be said of the fact that pleasure belongs alike to the good
and the evil, and that the base delight no less in their disgrace
than do the honourable in fair repute? And therefore the ancients
have enjoined us to follow, not the most pleasant, but the best
life, in order that pleasure should be, not the, leader, but the
companion of a right and proper desire. For we must use Nature
as our guide; she it is that Reason heeds, it is of her that it
takes counsel.\a Therefore to live happily is the same thing as to
live <Ess2-117>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, viii. 2-6
according to Nature. What this is, I
shall proceed to make clear. If we shall guard the
endowments of the body and the needs of Nature with care and
fearlessness, in the thought that they have been given but for a day
and are fleeting, if we shall not be their slaves+, nor
allow these alien things to become our masters, if we shall count
that the gratifications of the body, unessential as they are, have a
place like to that of the auxiliaries and light-armed troops in camp
- if we let them serve, not command - {Caliban+} thus
and thus only will these things be profitable to the mind. Let
a man not be corrupted by external things, let him be unconquerable
and admire only himself, courageous in spirit and ready for any
fate, let him be the moulder of his own life; let not his confidence
be without knowledge, nor his knowledge without firmness; {constantia_integrity+} let his decisions
once made abide, and let not his decrees be altered by any
erasure. It will be understood, even without my adding it,
that such a man will be poised and well ordered, and will show
majesty mingled with courtesy in all his actions. Let reason
search into external things at the instigation of the senses, and,
while it derives from them its first knowledge - for it has no other
base from which it may operate, or begin its assault upon truth -
yet let it fall back upon itself. For God also, the
all-embracing world and the ruler of the universe, reaches forth
into outward things, yet, withdrawing from all sides, returns into
himself.\a And our mind should do the same; when, having followed
the senses that serve it, it has through them reached to things
without, let it be the master both of them and of itself. In
this way will be born an energy that is united, <Ess2-119>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, viii. 5-ix. 2
a power that is at harmony with itself, and
that dependable reason which is not divided against itself, nor
uncertain either in its opinions, or its perceptions, or in its
convictions; and this reason, when it has regulated itself, and
established harmony between all its parts, and, so to speak, is in
tune, has attained the highest good. For no crookedness, no
slipperiness is left to it, nothing that will cause it to stumble or
fall. It will do eve rything under its own authority and
nothing unexpected will befall it, but whatever it does will turn
out a good, and that, too, easily and readily and without subterfuge
on the part of the doer; for reluctance and hesitation+ are an indication
of conflict and instability. Wherefore you may boldly
declare that the highest good is harmony of the soul; for where
concord and unity are, there must the virtues be.
Discord accompanies the vices. "But even you,"
it is retorted, "cultivate virtue for no other reason than because
you hope for some pleasure from it." But, in the first place, even
though virtue is sure to bestow pleasure, it is not for this reason
that virtue is sought; for it is not this, but something more than
this that she bestows, nor does she labour for this, but her labour,
while directed toward something else, achieves this also. As in a
ploughed field, which has been broken up for corn, some flowers will
spring up here and there, yet it was not for these poor little
plants, although they may please the eye, that so much toil was
expended - the sower had a different purpose, these were superadded
-just so pleasure is neither the cause nor the reward of virtue, but
its by-product, and we do not accept virtue because she delights us,
but <Ess2-121>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, ix. 3-x. 2
if we accept her, she also delights
us. The highest good lies in the very choice of it, and the
very attitude of a mind made perfect, and when the mind has
completed its course and fortified itself within its own bounds, the
highest good has now been perfected, and nothing further is desired;
for there can no more be anything outside of the whole than there
can be some point beyond the end. Therefore you blunder when
you ask what it is that makes me seek virtue; you are looking for
something beyond the supreme. Do you ask what it is that I seek in
virtue? Only herself. For she offers nothing better -
she herself is her own reward. Or does this seem to you too
small a thing? When I say to you, "The highest good is the
inflexibility of an unyielding mind, its foresight, its sublimity
its soundness, its freedom, its harmony, its beauty, {PlainDealer+} do you require
of me something still greater to which these blessings may be
ascribed? Why do
you mention to me pleasure? It is the good of man that I am
searching for, not that of his belly - the belly of cattle and wild
beasts is more roomy! "You" are
misrepresenting what I say," you retort; "for I admit that no man
can live pleasantly without at the same time living virtuously as
well, and this is patently impossible for dumb beasts and for those
who measure their good by mere food. Distinctly, I say, and
openly I testify that the life that I denominate pleasant is
impossible without the addition of virtue." Yet who does not know
that those who are most apt to be filled with your sort of pleasure
are all the greatest fools, and that wickedness abounds in
enjoyments, and that the mind itself supplies many kinds of pleasure
that are <Ess2-123>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, x. 2-xi. 2
vicious? Foremost are haughtiness, a
too high opinion of one's self and a puffed-up superiority to
others, {modesty+} a blind and unthinking
devotion to one's own interests, dissolute luxury, extravagant joy
springing from very small and childish causes, and, besides a biting
tongue and the arrogance that takes pleasure in insults, sloth, and
the degeneracy of a sluggish mind that falls asleep over
itself. All these things Virtue tosses aside, and she plucks
the ear,\a and appraises pleasures before she permits them, and
those that she approves she sets no great store by or even just
permits them, and it is not her use of them, but her temperance that
gives her joy. Since, however, temperance reduces our
pleasures, injury results to your highest good. You embrace
pleasure, I enchain her; you enjoy pleasure, I use it; you think it
the highest good, I do not think it even a good; you do everything
for the sake of pleasure, I, nothing. When I say that
"I" do nothing for the sake of pleasure, I am speaking of the ideal
wise man, to whom alone you are willing to concede pleasure.
But I do not call him a wise man who is dominated by anything, still
less by pleasure. And yet if he is engrossed by this, how will
he withstand toil and danger and want and all the threatening ills
that clamour about the life of man? How will he endure the
sight of death, how grief, how the crashes of the universe and all
the fierce foes that face him, if he has been subdued by so
soft {fop+} an adversary? You say:
"He will do whatever pleasure advises." But come, do you not see how
many things it will be able to advise? "It will not be able to
advise anything <Ess2-125>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xi. 2-xii. 1
base," you say, "because it is linked with
virtue." But once more, do you not see what sort of thing that
highest good must be if it needs a guardian in order to become a
good? And how shall Virtue guide Pleasure if she follows her,
since it is the part of one who obeys to follow, of one who commands
to guide? Do you station in the rear the one that commands?
Truly a fine office that yon assign to Virtue - to be the
foretaster\a of your pleasures! We shall see later whether to
those who have treated virtue so contemptuously she still remains
virtue; for she cannot keep her name if she yields her place.
Meanwhile - for this is the point here - I shall show that there are
many who are beseiged by pleasures, upon whom Fortune has showered
all her gifts, and yet, as you must needs admit, are wicked
men. Look at Nomentanus and Apicius,\b digesting, as they say
the blessings of land and sea, and reviewing the creations of every
nation arrayed upon their board! See them, too, upon a heap of
roses, gloating over their rich cookery, while their ears are
delighted by the sound of music, their eyes by spectacles, their
palates by savours; soft and soothing stuffs caress with their
warmth the length of their bodies, and, that the nostrils may not
meanwhile be idle, the room itself, where sacrifice is being made
to
Luxury+, reeks with varied perfumes. {Fop+} You will
recognize that these are living in the midst of pleasures, and yet
it will not be well with them, because what they delight in is not a
good. "It
will be ill with them," you say, "because many things will intrude
that perturb\c the soul, ----- c i.e., they
will not be true Epicureans, since they lack d7-apa@t'a. <Ess2-127>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xii. 1-4
and opinions, conflicting with one another,
will disquiet the mind." That this is so I grant; but none the less
these very men, foolish as they are and inconsistent and subject to
the pangs of remorse, will have experience of very great pleasures,
so that you must admit that, while in that state they lack all pain,
they no less lack a sound mind, and, as is the case with very many
others, that they make merry in madness and laugh while they
rave. But, on the other hand, the pleasures of the wise man
are calm, moderate, almost listless and subdued, and scarcely
noticeable inasmuch as they come unsummoned, and, although they
approach of their own accord, are not held in high esteem and are
received without joy on the part of those who experience them; for
they only let them mingle now and then with life as we do amusements
and jests with serious affairs. Let them cease,
therefore, to join irreconcilable things and to link pleasure with
virtue - a vicious procedure which flatters the worst class of
men. The man who has plunged into pleasures, in the midst of
his constant belching and drunkenness, because he knows that he is
living with pleasure, believes that he is living with virtue as
well; for he hears first that pleasure cannot be separated from
virtue, then dubs his vices wisdom, and parades what ought to be
concealed. And so it is not Epicurus who has driven them to
debauchery, but they, having surrendered themselves to vice, hide
their debauchery in the lap of philosophy and flock to the place
where they may hear the praise of pleasure, and they do not consider
how sober and abstemious\a the "pleasure" of Epicurus really is -
for so, in <Ess2-129>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xii. 4-xiii. 2
all truth, I think it - but they fly to a
mere name seeking some justification and screen for their
lusts. And thus they lose the sole good that remained to them
in their wickedness - shame for wrongdoing. For they now
praise the things that used to make them blush, and they glory in
vice; and therefore they cannot even recover their youth,\a when
once an honourable name has given warrant to their shameful
laxity. The reason why your praise of pleasure is pernicious
is that what is honourable in your teaching lies hid within, what
corrupts is plainly visible. Personally I
hold the opinion - I shall express it though the members of our
school may protest - that the teachings of Epicurus are upright and
holy and, if you consider them closely, austere; for his famous
doctrine of pleasure is reduced to small and narrow proportions, and
the rule that we Stoics lay down for virtue, this same rule he lays
down for pleasure - he bids that it obey Nature. But it takes
a very little luxury to satisfy Nature! What then is the
case? Whoever applies the term "happiness" to slothful
idleness and the alternate indulgence in gluttony and lust, looks
for a good sponsor for his evil course, and when, led on by an
attractive name, he has found this one,\b the pleasure he pursues is
not the form that be is taught, but the form that he has brought,
and when he begins to think that his vices accord with the teacher's
maxims, he indulges in them no longer timidly, and riots in them,
not now covertly, but from this time on in broad daylight.\c And so
I shall not say, as do most of our sect, that the school of Epicurus
is an academy of vice, but this is what I say - it has a bad name,
is of ill repute, and yet undeservedly. How can <Ess2-131>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xiii. 3-5
anyone know this who has not been admitted
to the inner shrine? Its mere outside gives ground for scandal
and incites to evil hopes. The case is like that of a strong
man dressed up in a woman's garb; you maintain your chastity, your
virility is unimpaired, your body is free from base submission - but
in your hand is a tambourine\a! {fop+} Therefore
you should choose some honourable superscription and a motto that in
itself appeals to the mind; the one that stands has attracted only
the vices.
Whosoever has gone over to the side of virtue, has given proof of a
noble nature; he who follows pleasure is seen to be weakly, broken,
losing his manhood, {fop+} and on the, sure path to baseness
unless someone shall establish for him some distinction between
pleasures, so that he may know which of them lie within the bounds
of natural desire, which sweep headlong onward and are unbounded and
are the more insatiable the more they are satisfied. Come
then! let virtue lead the way, and every step will be
safe. Then, too, it is the excess of pleasure that harms; but
in the case of virtue there need be no fear of any excess, for in
virtue itself resides moderation+ That cannot be a
good that suffers from its own magnitude. Besides, to
creatures endowed with a rational nature what better guide can be
offered than reason? Even if that combination\b pleases you,
if you are pleased to proceed toward the happy life in such company,
let virtue lead the way, let pleasure attend her - let it hover
about the body like its shadow. To hand over virtue, the
loftiest of mistresses, to be the handmaid of pleasure is the part
of a man who has nothing great in his soul. {greatsoul+} ----- a <again
pleasure = effeminacy+. Orgiastic priests of
Cybele are neutered> <Ess2-133>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xiv. 1-3
Let virtue go first, let her bear the
standard. We shall none the less have pleasure, but we shall
be the master and control her; at times we shall yield to her
entreaty, never to her constraint. But those who surrender the
leadership to pleasure, lack both; for they lose virtue, and yet do
not possess pleasure, but are possessed by it, and they are either
tortured by the lack of it or strangled by its excess - wretched if
it deserts them, more wretched if it overwhelms them - they are like
sailors who have been caught in the waters around the Syrtes,\a and
now are left on the dry shore, and again are tossed by the seething
waves. But this results from a complete lack of self-
control and blind love for an object; for, if one seeks evils
instead of goods, success becomes dangerous. As the hunt for
wild beasts is fraught with hardship and danger, and even those that
are captured are an anxious possession - for many a time they rend
their masters - so it is as regards great pleasures; for they turn
out to be a great misfortune, and captured pleasures become now the
captors. And the more and the greater the pleasures are, the
more inferior will that man be whom the crowd calls happy, and the
more masters will he have to serve. I wish to dwell still
further upon this comparison. Just as the man who tracks wild
animals to their lairs, and counts it a great delight
With noose the savage beasts to
snare,\b
and
Around the spreading woods to fling a line
of hounds,
in order that he may follow upon their
tracks, leaves things that are more worth while and forsakes <Ess2-135>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xiv. 3-xv. 4
many duties, so he who pursues pleasures
makes everything else secondary, and first of all gives up liberty,
and he pays this price at the command of his belly; nor does he buy
pleasures for himself, but he sells himself to pleasures.
"Nevertheless," someone asks, "what is there to prevent the blending
of virtue and pleasure into one, and constituting the highest good
in such a way that the honourable and the agreeable may be the same
thing?" The answer is that the honourable can have no part that is
not honourable, nor will the highest good preserve its integrity if
it sees in itself something that is different from its better
part. Even the joy that springs from virtue, although it is a
good, is not nevertheless a part of the absolute good, any more than
are cheerfulness and tranquillity, although they spring from the
noblest origins; for goods they are, yet they only attend on the
highest good but do not consummate it. But whoever forms an
alliance between virtue and pleasure - and that too, not an equal
one - by the frailty of one good dulls whatever power the other may
have, and sends beneath the yoke that liberty+\a
which remains unconquered only so long as it finds nothing more
precious than itself. For it begins to need the help of
Fortune+, and this is the depth of servitude; there follows
a life of anxiety, suspicion, and alarm, a dread of mishap and worry
over the changes time brings. You do not give to virtue a
foundation solid and immovable, but bid her stand on unstable
ground; yet what is so unstable as trust in the hazards of
chance+ and the vicissitudes of the body and the things that
affect the body? How is such a man able to obey God and to
receive in cheerful spirit whatever happens, and, interpreting <Ess2-137>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xv. 4-6
his mishaps indulgently, never to complain
of Fate, if he is agitated by the petty prickings of pleasure and
pain? But he is not even a good guardian or avenger of his
country, nor a defender of his friends\a if he has a leaning toward
pleasures. Therefore let the highest good mount to a place
from which no force can drag it down, where neither pain nor hope
nor fear finds access, nor does any other thing that can lower the
authority of the highest good; but Virtue alone is able to mount to
that height. We must follow her footsteps to find that ascent
easy; bravely will she stand, and she will endure whatever happens,
not only patiently, but even gladly; she will know that every
hardship that time brings comes by a law of Nature, and like a good
soldier she will submit to wounds, she will count her scars, and,
pierced by darts, as she dies she will love him for whose sake she
falls - her commander; she will keep in mind that old injunction,
"Follow God\b!" But whoever complains and weeps and moans, is
compelled by force to obey commands, and, even though he is
unwilling is rushed none the less to the bidden tasks. But
what madness to prefer to be dragged rather than to follow! As
much so, in all faith, as it is great folly and ignorance of one's
lot to grieve because of some lack or some rather bitter happening,
and in like manner to be surprised or indignant at those ills that
befall the good no less than the had - I mean sickness and death and
infirmities and all the other unexpected ills that invade human
life. All that the very constitution of the universe obliges
us to suffer, ----- praecepta sapientitium, qui iubent 'tempori
parere' et 'sequi deum' et 'se noscere' et 'nimi nimis,' haec sine
physicis quam vim habeant (et habent maximam) videre nemo potest."
<Ess2-139>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xv. 7-xvi. 3
must be borne with high courage. This
is the sacred obligation by which we are bound - to submit to the
human lot, {Pope+} and not to be disquieted by
those things which we have no power to avoid. We have been
born under a monarchy; to obey God is freedom+.\a
Therefore true happiness is founded upon virtue. And what is
the counsel this virtue will give to you? That you should not
consider anything either a good or an evil that will not be the
result of either virtue or vice; then, that you should stand unmoved
both in the face of evil and by the enjoyment of good, to the end
that - as far as is allowed - you may body forth God.
And what does virtue promise you for this enterprise? Mighty
privileges and equal to the divine. You shall be bound by no
constraint, nothing shall you lack, you shall be free, safe, unhurt;
nothing shall you essay in vain, from nothing be debarred; all
things shall happen according to your desire, nothing adverse shall
befall you, nothing contrary to your expectations and wish.
"What! does virtue alone suffice for living happily?" Perfect
and divine as it is, why should it not suffice -nay, suffice to
overflowing? For if a man has been placed beyond the reach of
any desire, what can he possibly lack? If a man has gathered
into himself all that is his, what need does he have of any outside
thing? But the man who is still on the road to virtue, who,
even though he has proceeded far, is still struggling in the toils
of human affairs, does have need of some indulgence from Fortune
until he has loosed that knot and every mortal bond. Where
then lies the difference? In that some are closely bound, others
fettered - even hand and foot.\b He who has advanced toward the
higher realm and has <Ess2-141>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xvi. 3-xvii. 3
lifted hmself to higher levels drags a
loosened chain; he is not yet free, but still is as good as free.
If,
therefore, any of those who bark against philosophy, should ask the
usual thing: "Why then do you talk so much more bravely than you
live? Why do you speak humbly in the presence of a superior
and deem money a necessary equipment, and why are you moved by a
loss, and why do you shed tears on hearing of the death of your wife
or a friend, and why do you have regard for your reputation and let
slander affect you? Why do you till broader acres than your
natural need requires? Why do your dinners not conform to your own
teaching? Why do you have such elegant furniture?
Why is the wine that is drunk at your table older than you are
yourself? Why this show of an aviary? Why do you plant
trees that will supply nothing but shade? Why does your wife
wear in her ears the revenue of a rich house? Why are your
young slaves dressed in costly stuffs? Why is it an art to attend at
your table and instead of the plate being set out carelessly and as
you please why is there expertness of service, and why to carve your
meat is there a professional?" Add, too, if you like: "Why do you
have domains across the sea? Why more than you have
seen? And shame to you! - vou are either so careless
that you do not know your handful of slaves by sight, or so pampered
that you have more than your memory can recall to your knowledge!"
Later I shall outdo your reproaches and bestow on myself more blame
than you think of; for the moment I shall make this reply: "I am not
a wise man,\a nor - to feed your malevolence shall I ever be.
And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but
that I <Ess2-143>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xvii. 3-xviii. 3
should be better than the wicked. It
is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and
blame my mistakes. I have not attained to perfect health, nor
indeed shall I attain it; my gout I contrive to alleviate rather
than to cure, content if it comes more rarely and gives less pain;
but when I compare your feet, crippled though I am, I am a racer!"
What I say is not spoken on my own behalf - for I am sunk deep in
vice of every kind but on behalf of the man who has actually
achieved something. "You talk one
way, you live another," you say. The same reproach, O ye
creatures most spiteful, most hostile to all the best of men, has
been made against Plato, against Epicurus, against Zeno; for all
these told, not how they themselves were living, but how they ought
to live. It is of virtue, not of 'myslf, that I am speaking,
and my quarrel is against all vices, more especially against my
own. When I shall be able, I shall live as I ought. And
your spitefulness, deep-dyed with venom, shall not deter me from
what is best, nor shall even this poison with which you besprinkle
others, with which, too, you are killing yourselves, hinder me from
continuing to vaunt the life, not that I lead, but that I know ought
to be led - from worshipping virtue and from following her, albeit a
long way behind and with very halting pace. Am I, in sooth, to
expect that spite will spare anything when it held neither Rutilius
nor Cato\a sacred? Should anyone be concerned whether he seems
too rich in the eyes of those to whom Demetrius the Cynic\b seems
not poor enough? This boldest of heroes, fighting against all the
desires of nature, and poorer than the rest of the Cynics in that,
while they banned <Ess2-145>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xviii.3 - xix. 3
possessions, he banned even the desire of
them - this man they say has not enough poverty! Bul you see -
he has not professed a knowledge of virtue but of poverty. And they say
that Diodorus, the Epicurean philosopher, who within the last few
days put an end to his life with his own hand, was not following the
teaching of Epicurus when he slashed his own throat. Some
would see in his suicide an act of madness, others of recklessness;
he, meanwhile, happy and filled with a good conscience bore
testimony to himself as he was departing from life; he praised the
tranquillity of the years he had passed safe at anchor in a haven,
and uttered the words which you never have liked to hear, as though
you also must do the same thing:
I've lived; my destined course I now have
run.\b
You argue about the life of the one, about
the death of the other,\c and when you hear the name of men who have
become great on account of some distinguished merit, you bark, just
as small dogs do when they meet with strangers; for you find it to
your interest that no man should appear to be good, as though virtue
in another cast reproach upon the shortcomings of all of you.
You jealously compare their glorious appearance with your squalor,
and fail to understand with what great disadvantage to yourself you
dare to do so. For if those who pursue virtue are avaricious,
lustful, and ambitious, what are you yourselves, to whom the very
name of virtue is hateful? You say that no one of them
practises what he preaches, or models his life upon his own
words. But what wonder, since their words are heroic, <Ess2-147>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xix. 3-xx. 3
mighty, and survive all the storms of human
life? Though they strive to release themselves from their
crosses those crosses\a to which each one of you nails himself with
his own hand\b - yet they, when brought to punishment, hang each
upon a single gibbets; but these others who bring upon themselves
their own punishment are stretched upon as many crosses as they had
desires. Yet they are slanderous and witty in heaping insult
on others. I might believe that they were free to do so, did
not some of them spit upon spectators from their own cross\d "Philosophers do
not practise what they preach," you say. Yet they do practise
much that they preach, much that their virtuous minds
conceive. For indeed if their actions always matched their
words, who would be more happy than they? Meanwhile you have
no reason to despise noble words and hearts that are filled with
noble thoughts. The pursuit of salutary studies is praiseworthy,
even if they have no practical result. What wonder that those
who essay the steep path do not mount to the Summit? But if
you are a nan, look up to those who are attempting great things,
even though they fall. The man that measures his effort,
not by his own strength, but by the strength of his nature, that
aims at high things, and conceives in his heart greater undertakings
than could possibly be accomplished even by those endowed with
gigantic courage, shows the mark of nobility. The man who has
set before himself such ideals as these: "As for me, I shall look
upon death or a comedy with the same expression of
countenance. As for me, I shall submit to all hardships, no
matter how great they be, staying my body <Ess2-149>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xx. 3-5
by the spirit. As for me, I shall
despise riches+ alike when I have them
and when I have them not, being neither cast down if they shall lie
elsewhere, nor puffed up if they shall glitter around me. As
for me, I shall pay no heed to
Fortune+, either when she comes or when she goes. As for me,
I shall view all lands as my own, my own as belonging to all
others. As for me, I shall always live as if I were aware that
I had been born for service+ to others, and on this
account I shall render my thanks to Nature; for how could she better
have served my interest? She has given me, the
individual, to all men and all men to me, the individual.{common+} Whatever I may possess,
I shall neither hoard as a miser, nor as a spendthrift
squander. Nothing shall seem to me so truly my possessions as
the gifts I have wisely bestowed. {liberality+} I shall not
estimate my benefactions+ by their number, nor by
their size, nor by anything except my estimation of the recipient;
never shall what a worthy man receives seem great in my eyes.
Nothing shall I ever do for the sake of opinion, everything for the
sake of my conscience. Whatever I shall do when I alone am
witness I shall count as done beneath the gaze of the Roman
people. In eating and drinking my aim shall be to quench the
desires of Nature, not to fill and empty my belly. I shall be
agreeable to my friends, to my enemies mild and indulgent. I
shall give pardon+ before it is asked , and hasten to
grant all honourable requests. {hesitation+} I
shall know that the whole world is my country, that its rulers are
the gods, and that they abide above me and around me, the censors of
my words and deeds. And whenever Nature demands back my
breath, or my reason releases\a it, I shall depart, bearing witness
that I have loved a good <Ess2-151>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xx. 5-xxi. 2
conscience and all good endeavour, that I
have been guilty of nothing that impaired the liberty of any man,
least of all my own" - the man who shall resolve, shall wish, and
shall essay to do these things will be following the path toward the
gods - ah! such a man, even if he shall not reach them,
Yet fails in a high emprise.\a
But as for you, your hatred of virtue and of
those who practise it is in no way strange. For sickly lights
quail before the sun, and creatures of the night abhor the shining
day - they stand aghast at the first signs of dawn, and seek
everywhere their lairs, and, finding some hole, hide themselves away
from fear of the light. Croak, and ply your wretched tongues
in abuse of the good, show your fangs, bite hard; you will break
your teeth long before they leave a mark! "Why," you ask, "does that
man espouse philosophy and yet live in such opulence? Why does
he say that riches ought to be despised and yet have them? Why
does he think that life ought to be despised and yet live?
That health ought to be despised and yet guard it most carefully,
and prefer it to be excellent? And why does he think that exile is
an empty name and say: 'What evil is there in a change of country,'
and yet, if he is allowed, grow old in his native land? Why does he decide
that there is no difference between a long and short existence, yet,
if nothing prevents him, prolong his life and peacefully flourish in
a green old age?" He says these things ought to be despised, not to
keep him from having them, but to keep him from being worried about
having them; he does not drive them away, but if they leave him, he
escorts them to the door without <Ess2-153>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxi. 2-xxii. 2
the least concern. Where, indeed, will
Fortune deposit riches more securely than with one who will return
them without protest when she recalls them? Marcus Cato,\a when he
was vaunting Curius and Coruncanius and that age in which it was a
censorial offence to have a few small silver coins, himself
possessed four million sesterces, fewer without doubt than Crassus,
but more than Cato the Censor. If comparison be made, the
distance by which he had outstripped his great-grandfather was
greater than that by which Crassus had outstripped him, and, if
greater wealth had fallen to his lot, he would not have scorned
it. For indeed the wise man does not deem himself undeserving
of any of the gifts of Fortune. He does not love
riches++, but he would rather have them; he does not admit
them to his heart, but to his house, and he does not reject the
riches he has, but he keeps them and wishes them to supply ampler
material for exercising his virtue. {liberality+} Who, however,
can doubt that the wise man\b finds in riches+,
rather than in poverty, this ampler material for displaying his
powers, since in poverty there is room for only one kind of virtue -
not to be bowed down and crushed by it - while in riches
moderation+ and liberality+ and diligence and orderliness
and grandeur {magnificentia+} all have a wide
field? The wise man will not despise himself even if he has
the stature of a dwarf, but nevertheless he will wish to be
tall. And if he is feeble in body, or deprived of one
eye, he will still be strong,\c but nevertheless he will prefer to
have strength of body, and this too, though he knows that there is
something else in him that is stronger ----
the latter may exist without the former,
but it is desirable to have both. <Ess2-155>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxii. 2-xxiii. 1
than body. If his health is bad he
will endure it, but he will wish for good health. For certain
things, even if they are trifles in comparison with the whole, and
can be withdrawn without destroying the essential good, nevertheless
contribute something to the perpetual joy that springs from
virtue. As a favourable wind, sweeping him on, gladdens the
sailor, as a bright day and a sunny spot in the midst of winter and
cold give cheer, just so riches have their influence upon the wise
man and bring him joy. And besides, who among wise men - I mean
those of our school, who count virtue the sole good - denies that
even those things which we call "indifferent"\a do have some
inherent value, and that some are more desirable than others? To
some of them we accord little honour, to others much. Do not,
therefore, make a mistake - riches are among the more desirable
things. "Why then," you say, "do you make game of me, since they
occupy the same place in your eyes that they do in mine?" Do you
want to know what a different place they occupy? In my case,
if riches slip away, they will take from me nothing but themselves,
while if they leave you, you will be dumbfounded, and you will feel
that you have been robbed of your real self; in my eyes riches have
a certain place, in yours they have the highest; in fine, I own my
riches+, yours own you. Cease,
therefore, forbidding to philosophers the possession of money; no
one has condemned wisdom to poverty. The philosopher shall own
ample wealth, but it will have been wrested from no man, nor will it
be stained with another's blood - wealth acquired without harm to
any man, without base dealing, and the outlay of it will be not less
honourable than was <Ess2-157>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxiii. 1-4
its acquisition; it will make no man groan
except the spiteful. Pile up that wealth of his as high as you
like; it will be honourable, if, while it includes much that each
man would like to call his own, it includes nothing that any man is
able to call his own. But he, surely, will not thrust aside
the generosity of Fortune, and an inheritance that has been
honourably acquired will give him no cause either to blush or to
boast. Yet be will even have reason to boast if, throwing open his
mansion and admitting the whole city to view his possessions, he
shall be able to say. "If any one recognizes anything as his own,
let him take it." O! a great man, O! a man excellently
rich, if after these words he shall possess just as much! I
mean this: if without risk and concern he has allowed the
people to make search, if no man shall have found in his possession
a single thing to lay his hands upon, then he will be rich boldly
and in all openness. Not one penny will a wise man admit within his
threshold that makes a dishonest entry; yet he will not repulse or
exclude great wealth that is the gift of Fortune and the fruit of
virtue. For what reason has he to grudge it good
quarters? Let it come, let it be welcomed. But he will
not flaunt it, neither will he hide it - the one is the part of a
silly mind, the other of a timid and petty mind, that makes him keep
a great blessing as it were, in his pocket - nor, as I said before,
will he expel it from the house. For what shall he say to
it? Will it be -"You are of no use," or "I do not know how to
use riches"? In
the same way that, even if he is able to accomplish a journey on
foot, he will prefer to mount into a carriage, so, even if he is
able to be poor. He will prefer to <Ess2-159>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxiii. 4-xxiv. 2
be rich. And so he will possess
wealth, but with the knowledge that it is fickle and likely to fly
away, and he will not allow it to be a burden either to himself or
to anyone else. He will give of it - why do you prick up your
ears? why do you get ready your pocket? - he will give of it
either to good men or to those whom he will be able to make good
men; choosing the most worthy after the utmost deliberation, he will
give of his wealth, as one who rightly remembers that he must render
account no less of his expenditures than of his receipts; he will
give of it only for a reason that is just and defensible, for
wrong giving+ is no other than a
shameful waste; he will have his pocket accessible, but it will have
no hole in it - a pocket from which much can appear and nothing can
drop.
Whoever believes that giving is an easy matter, makes a mistake; it
is a matter of very great difficulty, provided that gifts are made
with wisdom, and are not scattered at haphazard and by
caprice. To this man I do a service, to that one make return;
this one I succour, this one I pity; I supply this other one because
he does not deserve to be dragged down by poverty and have it
engross him; to some I shall not give although they are in need,
because, even if I should give, they would still be in need; to some
I shall proffer my help, upon certain ones even thrust it. In
this matter I cannot afford to be careless; never am I more careful
to register names than when I am giving. "What!" you say, " do you
give with the intention of taking back?" No, with the intention of
not wasting; the status of giving should be that no return ought to
be asked, yet that a return is possible. <Ess2-161>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxiv, 2-4
A benefit should be stored away like a deep
buried treasure, which you would not dig up except from
necessity. Why, the very house of a rich man - what an
opportunity it offers for conferring benefit! Whose voice
invokes liberality only for-the man that wears a toga\a?
Nature bids me do good to all mankind - whether slaves or freemen,
freeborn or freed-men, whether the laws gave them freedom or a grant
in the presence of friends - what difference does it make? {common+} Wherever there is a
human being there is the opportunity for a kindness. And so it
is possible to be lavish with money even inside the threshold and to
find there a field for one's liberality which is so called, not
because it is owed to a free man, but because it is born from a free
mind. This, in the case of a wise man, is never hurled at base
and unworthy men, and never makes the mistake of being so exhausted
that it cannot flow from a full hand, as it were, as often as it
finds a worthy object. You have no
excuse, therefore, for hearing wrongly the honourable, brave, and
heroic utterances of those who pursue wisdom. And pay heed
first to this -it is one thing to pursue wisdom, and another to have
already attained wisdom. A man of the first type will say to
you: "My words are most excellent, but I still wallow in evils, very
many of them. You have no right to require me to live up to my
own standard. Just now I am still fashioning and moulding myself and
trying to lift myself to the height of a lofty ideal; when I shall
have accomplished all that I have set before me, then require me to
make my actions accord with my words." But he who has already
attained the height of human good will plead with you otherwise, and
will say: <Ess2-163>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxiv. 4-xxv. 2
"In the first place, you have no right to
permit yourself to pass judgement on your betters. As for me I
have already had the good fortune to win the displeasure of the
wicked, which is proof enough of my uprightness, but, that I may
give you the explanation that I grudge to no mortal man, hear what I
maintain and what value I set on each thing. I deny that
riches are a good; for if they were, they would make men good.
As it is, since that which is found in the hands of the wicked
cannot be called a good, I refuse to apply the term to riches.
Nevertheless I admit that they are desirable, that they are useful,
and that they add great comforts to living. "Hear, then,
since we both agree that they are desirable, what reason I have for
not including them in the number of goods, and in what respect my
attitude toward them differs from yours. Place me in a house that is
most sumptuous, place me where I may have gold and silver plate for
common use; I shall not look up to myself on account of these
things, which, even though they belong to me, are nevertheless no
part of me. Take me to the Sublician Bridge\a and cast me
among the beggars; nevertheless I shall not find reason to look down
upon myself beeause I sit in the company of those who stretch out
their hands for alms. For what difference does it make whether a man
lacks a piece of bread when he does not lack the possibility of
dying? And what is the conclusion? I prefer that gorgeous
house to the Bridge! Place me in the midst of sumptuous
furnishings and the trappings of luxury; I shall not think myself
one whit happier because I have a soft mantle, because my guests
recline on purple. Change my mattress; I shall <Ess2-165>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxv. 2-4
be not a whit more wretched if my wearied
neck must rest on a handful of hay, if I shall sleep on a cushion\a
of the Circus with the stuffing spilling out through its patches of
old cloth. And what is the conclusion? I prefer to display the
state of my soul clad rather in the toga and shoes than showing
naked shoulders and with cuts on my feet. Let all my days pass
according to my desire, let new felicitations be added to the old;.
I shall not on this account be puffed up. Change this kindness
of time to just the opposite; from this quarter and that let my soul
be smitten by loss, by grief, by various adversities, let no hour
lack some cause for complaint; I shall not for that reason call
myself the most wretched of the wretched; I shall not for that
reason curse any one day; for I have seen to it that for me no day
shall be black. And what is the conclusion? I prefer to temper
my joys, rather than to stifle my sorrows. This is what a
Socrates\b will say to you: "Make me victor over the nations of the
world, let the voluptuous car of Bacchus convey me in triumph from
the rising\c of the sun all the way to Thebes, let the kings of the
nations seek laws from me; when from every side I shall be greeted
as a god, I shall then most of all remember that I am a man. {common+} Then with such a lofty
height connect straightway a headlong fall to altered fortune; let
me be placed upon a foreign barrow,\d to grace the procession of a
proud and ---- here pictured as returning from his triumphal
journey to India.
d The fericulum was a structure on which the spoils and sometimes
noble captives were displayed in the triumphal procession. <Ess2-167>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxv. 4-8
brutal victor; no whit more humble shall I
be when I am driven in front of the chariot of another than when l
stood erect upon my own." And what is the conclusion? After
all, I prefer to conquer rather than to be captured. The whole
domain of Fortune I shall despise, but, if the choice be offered, I
shall choose the better part of it. Whatever befalls me will
turn into a good, but I prefer that what befalls me should be the
more pleasant and agreeable things and those that will be less
troublesome to manage. For while you are not to suppose that
any virtue is acquired without effort, yet certain virtues need the
spur, certain ones the bridle. Just as the body must be
held back upon a downward path, and be urged up a steep ascent, so
certain virtues follow the downward path, and certain others
struggle up the hill. Would anyone doubt that
patience+, fortitude, and perseverance, and every virtue that
pits itself against hardships and subdues Fortune must mount and
strive and struggle? And tell me, is it not just as evident
that liberality, moderation, and kindness take the downward
path? In the case of these we must put a check, upon the soul
for fear that it may slip, in the case of the others, with all our
power we urge and spur it on. Therefore for poverty we shall
make use of those more hardy virtues that know how to fight, for
riches those more cautious virtues that advance on tiptoe and yet
keep their balance. Since there exists this distinction
between them, I prefer to appropriate for myself the virtues that
can be practised with comparative tranquillity, rather than those
whose exercise draws blood and sweat. "Consequently," says the wise
man, "I do not live one way andd talk another, but I talk one <Ess2-169>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxv. 8-xxvi. 4
way and you hear another - only the sound of
my words reaches your ears, what they mean you do not inquire." "What then," you
say, " is the difference between you, the wise man, and me, the
fool, if we both wish to have riches? "The very greatest; for in the
eyes of a wise man riches are a slave, in the eyes of fools a
master\a; the wise man grants no importance to riches, to you riches
are everything. You accustom yourself to them and cling to
them just as if someone had assured you that they would be a lasting
possession; the wise man never reflects so much upon poverty as when
he abides in the midst of riches. No general ever trusts so
wholly to peace as to fail to make ready for a war that has been
declared, even if it is not yet being waged. As for you, a
beautiful house makes you arrogant, just as if it could never be
burned or tumble down; you are stupefied by your wealth, just as if
it had escaped every risk and had become so great that Fortune had
lost all power to destroy it. Idly you play with your riches,
and do not descry the danger they are in - you are like the
barbarians who, usally, when they are blockaded, having no knowledge
of the engines of war, watch with indifference the effort of the
besiegers, and do not surmise the purpose of the constructions that
are being erected afar. So it is with you; you loll in the
midst of your possessions, and give no heed to the many disasters
that threaten from every side and all too soon will carry off the
costly spoils. But the wise man -whoever steals away his
riches will still leave to him all that is his own\b; for he ever
lives happy in the present and unconcerned about the future. <Ess2-171>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxvi. 4-7
"Upon nothing," says a Socrates, or any
other who has like authority and like ability to cope with human
affairs, "am I more strongly resolved than not to change my course
of life to suit your opinion. Heap upon me from every side the
usual taunts; I shall not consider that you are railing at me, but
that you are wailing like poor little babies." These will be the
words of him who has found wisdom, whose soul, free from all vices,
bids him chide others, not because he hates them, but in order to
cure them. And, too, he will add others: "Your opinion of me
moves me, not on my own account, but on yours; for to hate and to
assail virtue with your outcry, is to disavow the hope of being
good. You do me no harm, but neither do men harm the gods when
they overturn their altars. But evil intention and an
evil purpose are apparent even where there has been no power to
harm. I put up with your babblings even as Jupiter Greatest
and Best puts up with the silly fancies of the poets, one of whom
gives to him wings, another horns, another pictures him as the great
adulterer staying out all night,\a another as cruel toward the
gods,\b another as unjust toward men, another as the ravisher of
freeborn youths\c and even of his kinsmen, another as a parricide
and usurper of another's throne - his own father's too. All
that they have accomplished is that men are relieved of shame at
doing wrong if they beheve that the gods are such. But
although your words do me no harm, nevertheless for your own sake I
proffer advice. Have respect for virtue, give credence to those who,
having long pursued her, proclaim that they themselves are pursuing
something that is great and that every day seems <Ess2-173>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxvi. 7-xxvii. 1
greater, and do you reverence her as you do
the gods, and her exponents as the priests of the gods, and whenever
any mention is made of sacred writings, "be favourable with your
tongues."\a This expression is not derived, as very many imagine,
from "favour" in the sense of "applause," but enjoins silence in
order that sacrifice may be performed according to ritual without
the interruption of an ill-omened word. But it is far more
necessary that you lay this command upon yourself, in order that,
whenever utterance is delivered from that oracle, you may listen
with attentive ear and hushed voice. Whenever someone, shaking
the rattle,\b pretends to speak with authority, whenever someone
dexterous in slashing his muscles makes bloody his arms and his
shoulders with light hand, whenever some woman howls as she creeps
along the street on her knees, and an old man, clad in linen and
carrying a lamp in broad daylight and a branch of laurel, cries out
that some one of the gods is angry, you gather in a crowd and give
ear and, fostering each other's dumb amazement, affirm that he is
divine! Lo! from that prison, which he purified by
entering it and made more honourable than any senatehouse, Socrates
cries out: "What madness is this, what instinct is this at war with
gods and men that leads you to calumniate the virtues and by your
wicked talk to profane holy things? If you are able,
praise the good, if not, ignore them; but if you take pleasure in
indulging in your foul abuse, assail you one ----| bantes, the
frenzied worshippers of Cybele; cf. Lucretius, ii. 630 sq.: n numerumque exultant sanguinolenti. <Ess2-175>
ON THE, HAPPY LIFE, xxvii. 1-5
another. For when you rage against
heaven I do not say, 'You are committing sacrilege,' but 'You are
wasting your time.' I once afforded Aristophanes\a subject matter
for his jokes, the whole company of comic poets has poured upon me
their envenomed wit. Yet their very efforts to assail my
virtue added to its lustre; for if profits from being exposed and
tested, and none understand better how great it is than those who
have perceived its strength by attacking it. None know better
the hardness ot flint than those who strike it. I show myself
like some lonely rock in the sea, which the waves never cease to
beat upon from whatever quarter they have come, yet for all that
they cannot move it from its base nor wear it away by their
ceaseless attack through countless ages. Leap upon me, make
your assault; I shall conquer you by enduring. Whatever
strikes against that which is firm and unconquerable expends its
power to its own hurt. Accordingly, seek some soft and
yielding object in which to stick your darts." But as for you, have
you the leisure to search out others' evils and to pass judgement
upon anybody? "Why does this philosopher have such a spacious
house?" Why does this one dine so sumptuously?" you say. You
look at the pimples of others when you yourselves are covered with a
mass of sores. {Jesus+} This is just as if someone who was
devoured by a foul itch should mock at the moles\b and the warts on
bodies that are most beautiful. Taunt Plato\c because he
sought for money, Aristotle because he <Ess2-177>
ON THE HAPPY LIFE, xxvii. 5-xxviii.
accepted it, Democritus because he
disregarded it, Epicurus because he spent it; fling Alcibiades a and
Phaedrus in my own teeth - though it will prove your happiest time
when you are so fortunate as to copy my vices! Why do
you not rather look about you at your own sins that rend you on
every side, some assailing you from without, others raging in your
very vitals. Human affairs -even if you have insufficient
knowledge of your own position - have not yet reached the situation
in which you may have such superfluity of spare time as to find
leisure to wag your tongue in abusing your betters. This you do not
understand, and you wear an air that ill accords with your condition
- you are like the many who lounge in the Circus or in a theatre
while their home is already wrapped in mourning and they have not
yet heard the evil news. But I, looking from the heights, see
the storms that threaten and a little later will burst upon you in a
flood, or, already near, have drawn still closer to sweep away both
you and yours. Why say more? Are not your minds even now
- though you little know it - whirled and spun about as if some
hrricane had seized them, while they flee and pursue the selfsame
things, and now are lifted to the skies, and now are dashed to the
lowest depths? . . . \b -------- b The rest of the essay is lost <Ess2-179>
DE OTIO+
BOOK VIII TO SERENUS ON LEISURE
. . .\a with great
accord commend to us the vices. Although we attempt nothing
else that would be beneficial, nevertheless retirement in itself
will do us good; we shall be better by ourselves. And what of
the opportunity to retire to the society of the best men,\b and to
select some model by which we may direct our own lives? But we
can do this only in leisure. Only then is it possible for us to
maintain what we have once resolved upon, when there is no one who
can interfere and with the help of the crowd turn aside our decision
while it is still weak; only then is it possible for life, in which
we are now distracted by the most diverse aims, to progress along an
even and single course. For among all the rest of our ills
this is the worst - the habit of changing our very vices. So
we do not have even the good fortune to persist in an evil that we
already know. We find pleasure first in one and then in
another, and the trouble is that our choices are not only wrong, but
also fickle. We are tossed about and clutch at one -------- a <the
beginning of the essay is missing> b i .e., the
company of the best books. <Ess2-181>
ON LEISURE thing
after another; what we have sought we abandon, and what we have
abandoned we seek again, and oscillate ever between desire and
repentance. For we depend wholly on the judgements of others,
and that which the many seek and praise seems to us the best - not
that which deserves to be sought and praised - and we do not
consider whether the way in itself is good or bad, but the number of
footprints it has; and none of these are of men who are coming
back!\a You will say to me: "What are you doing, Seneca? Are
you deserting your party? Surely you Stoics say: 'We
shall engage in affairs to the very end of life, we shall never
cease to work for the common good, to help each and all, to give aid
even to our enemies when our hand is feeble with age. We
are those who grant no exemption from service by reason of years,
and, as that most gifted poet puts it,
Upon our hoary heads we thrust the
helm.\b
We are those who hold so strongly that there
should be no leisure before death that, if circumstance permits, we
take no leisure for death itself.' Why in the very headquarters of
Zeno do you preach the doctrines of Epicurus? Why, if
you are tired of your party, do you not with all speed desert it
rather than betray it?" For the present I shall have only this reply
to make to you: "What more do you expect of me than that I should
imitate my leaders? And what then? I shall not go whither they
despatch me, but whither they lead me." \c {public
service+} Right now I
shall prove to you that I am not in revolt against the teachings of
the Stoics; for they themselves have not revolted against their own
teach- <Ess2-183>
ON LEISURE, ii. 1-iii. 1
ings either. And yet I might plead a
very good excuse even if I did follow their examples and not their
teachings. What I have to say I shall develop under two heads,
showing, first, that it is possibfe for a man to surrender himself
wholly to the contemplation of truth, to search out the art of
living, and to practise it in retirement, even from his earliest
years; secondly, that, when a man has now earned release from
public service+ and his life is almost
over, it is possible that he may with perfect justice do the same
thing and turn his mind to quite different activities,\a after the
manner of the Vestal virgins, whose years are allotted to varied
duties while they are learning to perform the sacred rites, and,
when they have learned, they begin to teach. I shall show,
too, that the Stoics also accept this doctrine, not because I have
made it my rule to set up nothing contrary to the teaching of Zeno
or Chrysippus, but because the matter itself suffers me to adopt
their opinion; for if a man always follows the opinion of one
person, his place is not in the senate, but in a faction.
Would that all things were now understood, that truth were uncovered
and revealed, and that we never altered our mandates! As
it is, we are in search of truth in company with the very men that
teach it. The two sects, the Epicureans and the Stoics, are at
variance, as in most things, in this matter also; they both direct
us to leisure, but by different roads. Epicurus\b says: "The
wise man will not engage in public affairs except in an emergency."
Zeno says: "He Will engage in public affairs unless something
prevents him." The
one seeks leisure by fixed pur- <Ess2-185>
ON LEISURE, iii. 3-iv. 1
pose the other for a special cause; but the
term "cause" has here broad application. If the state is too
corrupt to be helped, if it is wholly dominated by evils, the wise
man will not struggle to no purpose, nor spend himself when nothing
is to be gained. If he is lacking in influence or power and
the state is unwilling to accept his services, if he is hampered by
ill health, he will not enter upon a course for which he knows he is
unfitted, just as he would not launch upon the sea a battered ship,
just as he would not enlist for service in the army if he were
disabled. Consequently, it is also possible that a man
whose fortunes are still unharmed may establish himself in a safe
retreat before he experiences any of the storms of life, and
thenceforth devote himself to the liberal_studies+ and
demand uninterrupted leisure to cultivate the virtues, which even
those who are most retired are able to practise. It is of
course required of a man that he should benefit his fellow-men -
many if he can, if not, a few; if not a few, those who are nearest;
if not these, himself. For when he renders himself useful to
others, he engages in public affairs. Just as the man
that chooses to become worse injures not only himself but all those
whom, if he had become better, he might have benefited, so whoever
wins the approval of himself benefits others by the very fact that
he prepares what will prove beneficial to them. Let us grasp the
idea that there are two commonwealths+
- the one, a vast and truly common state, which embraces alike gods
and men, in which we look neither to this corner of earth nor to
that, but measure, the bounds of our citizenship by the path of the
sun; the other, the one to which we have <Ess2-187>
ON LEISURE, iv. 1-v. 2
been assigned by the accident of
birth. This will be the commonwealth of the Athenians or of
the Carthaginians, or of any other city that belongs, not to all,
but to some particular race of men. Some yield service to both
commonwealths at the same time to the greater and to the lesser -
some only to the lesser, some only to the greater. This
greater commonwealth we are able to serve even in leisure - nay, I
im inclined to think, even better in leisure - so that we may
inquire what virtue is, and whether it is one or many; whether it is
nature or art that makes men good; whether this world, which
embraces seas and lands and the things that are contained in the sea
and land, is a solitary creation\a or whether God has strewn about
many systems\b of the same sort; whether all the matter from which
everythinng is formed is continuous and compact\c, or whether it is
disjunctive and a void is interrnidgled with the solid; what God is
- whether he idly gazes upon his handiwork, or directs it; whether
he encompasses it without, or pervades the whole of it; whether the
world is eternal, or is to be counted among the things that perish
and are born only for a time. And what service does he who
ponders these things render unto god? He keeps the mighty
works of God from being without a witness! We are fond of
saying that the highest good is to live according to Nature.
Nature has begotten us for both purposes - for contemplation and for
action. Let me now prove the first statement. But
why anything more? Will not this be proved if each one of us
shall take counsel simply of himself, and ponder how great is his
desire to gain knowledge of the unknown, and how this desire is
stirred by tales of every sort? Some sail the sea and endure
the hardships of <Ess2-189>
ON LETSURE, v. 2-5
journeying to distant lands for the sole
reward of discovering something hidden and remote. It is this
that collects people everywhere to see sights, it is this that
forces them to pry into things that are closed, to search out the
more hidden things, to unroll the past, and to listen to the tales
of the customs of barbarous tribes. Nature has bestowed upon
us an inquisitive disposition, and being well aware of her own skill
and beauty, has begotten us to be spectators of her mighty array,
since she would lose the fruit of her labour if her works, so vast,
so glorious, so artfully contrived, so bright and so beautiful in
more ways than one, were displayed to a lonely solitude. That
you may understand how she wished us, not merely to behold her, but
to gaze upon her, see the position in which she has placed us. She
has set us in the centre of her creation, and has granted us a view
that sweeps the universe; and she has not only created man erect,
but in order to fit him for contemplation of herself, she has given
him a head to top the body, and set it upon a pliant neck, in order
that he might follow the stars as they glide from their rising to
their setting and turn his face about with the whole revolving
heaven. And besides, guiding on their course six
constellations by day, and six by night, she left no part of herself
unrevealed, hoping that by these wonders which she had presented to
man's eyes she might also arouse his curiosity in the rest.
For we have not beheld them all, nor the full compass of them, but
our vision opens up a path for its investigation, and lays the
foundations of truth so that our research may pass from revealed to
hidden things and discover something more ancient than the world
itself - whence yon stars came forth, what <Ess2-191>
ON LEISURE, v. 5-6
was the state of the universe before the
several elements separated to form its parts, what principle
separated the engulfed and confused elements, who appointed their
places to things, whether the heavy elements sank and the light ones
flew aloft by reason of their own nature,\a or apart from the energy
and gravity of matter some higher power\b has appointed laws for
each of them, or whether that theory is true which strives
especially to prove that man is part of the divine spirit, that some
part, sparks, as it were, of the stars fell down to earth and
lingered here in a place that is not their own. Our thought
bursts through the ramparts\c of the sky, and is not content to know
that which is revealed. "I search out that," it says, "which lies
beyond the world whether the vastness of space is unending, or
whether this also is enclosed within its own boundaries; what is the
appearance of whatever exists outside, whether it is formless and
disordered, occupying the same amount of room in every direction, or
whether that also has been arranged into some show of elegance;
whether it clings close to this world, or has withdrawn far from it
and revolves there in the void; whether it is atoms\d by means of
which everything that has been born and will be born is built up or
whether the matter of things is continuous and throughout is capable
of change\e; whether the elements are hostile to each other, or
whether they are not at war, but while they differ are in -------- d The Epicurean
view. e An
allusion to the Stoic doctrine of the transmutation of the four
elements in fixed order. See note, Vol. I. p. 204. <Ess2-193>
ON LEISURE, v. 7-vi. 3
harmony." Since man was born for inquiring
into such matters as these, consider how little time has been
allotted to him even if he claims the whole of it for himself.
Though he allows none of it to be snatched from him by ease, none of
it to be lost through carelessness, though he guards his hours with
most miserly care, and attains to the utmost limit of human life,
though Fortune wrecks no part of that which Nature has appointed for
him, yet man is too mortal to comprehend things immortal. {Pope+} Consequently I live according to
Nature if I surrender myself entirely to her, if I become her
admirer and worshipper. But Nature intended me to do both - to
be active 44and to have leisure for contemplation. And really
I do both, since even the contemplative life is not devoid of
action.\a
"But it makes a difference," you say, "whether you have resorted to
that merely for the sake of pleasure, demanding nothing from it
except unbroken contemplation without practical result; for that
life is pleasant and has its own charms." In answer to this I say
that it makes just as much difference in what spirit you engage in
public life - whether you are always distraught, and never take any
time to turn your eyes from human affairs to the things of
heaven. Just as to seek wealth without any love of the virtues
and without the cultivation of character, and to display an interest
in bare work only is by no means to be commended - for all these
must be combined and go hand in hand - so when virtue is banished to
leisure without action it is an imperfect and spiritless good, that
never brings what it has learned into the open. Who will deny that
Virtue ought to test her progress by open deed, and should <Ess2-195>
ON LEISURE, vi. 3-vii. 1
not only consider what ought to be done, but
also at times apply her hand and bring into reality what she has
conceived? But if the hindrance is not in the wise man himself
- if what is lacking is not the doer, but the things to be done,
will you then permit him to court his own soul? And with what
thought does the wise man retire into leisure? In the
knowledge that there also he will be doing something that will
benefit posterity. Our school at any rate is ready to say that both
Zeno and Chrysippus accomplished greater things than if they had led
armies, held public office, and framed laws. The laws they
framed were not for one state only, but for the whole human
race. Why, therefore, should such leisure as this not be
fitting for the good man, who by means of it may govern the ages to
come, and speak, not to the ears of the few, but to the ears of all
men of all nations, both those who now are and those who shall
be? In brief, I ask you whether Cleanthes and Chrysippus
and Zeno lived in accordance with their teachings. Undoubtedly you
will reply that they lived just as they taught that men ought to
live. And yet no one of them governed a state. You
reply: "They had neither the fortune nor the rank which ordinarily
admit one to the management of public affairs." But, nevertheless,
they did not lead a life of sloth; they found a way to make their
own repose a greater help to mankind than all the pother and sweat
of others. Therefore, though they played no public part, they
none the less have been thought to have played a great part.
Moreover, there are three kinds of life, and it is a common question
as to which of them is best. One <Ess2-197>
ON LEISURE, vii. 1-viii. 1
is devoted to pleasure, a second to
contemplation, a third to action. Having first put away our strife
and having put away the hatred which we have relentlessly declared
against those who pursue ends different from ours, let us see how
all these, under different names, come to the same thing. For
he who sanctions pleasure is not without contemplation, nor he who
surrenders to contemplation without pleasure, nor is he whose life
is devoted to action without contemplation. But you say:
"Whether something is a chief aim or is merely attached to some
other chief aim makes a very great difference." Yes, grant that
there is a huge difference, nevertheless the one does not exist
without the other. That man is not given to contemplation
without action, nor this one to action without contemplation, nor
does that third one - concerning whom we have agreed to form a bad
opinion - give sanction to idle pleasure, but to the pleasure that
he renders stable for himself by his reason; thus even this
pleasure-loving sect is itself committed to action. Clearly is
it committed to action! since Epicurus himself declares
that he will at times withdraw from pleasure, will even seek pain if
he foresees that he will either repent of pleasure, or will be able
to substitute a lesser pain for one that is greater.\b And what is
my purpose in stating these things? To make it clear that
contemplation is favoured by all. Some men make it their aim;
for us it is a roadstead, but not the harbour. Add, further,
that on the authority of Chrysippus a man has a right to live a life
of leisure; I do not mean, that he may tolerate leisure, but that he
may choose it. Our school refuses to allow the wise man <Ess2-199>
ON LEISURE, viu. 1-4
to attach himself to any sort of
state. But what difference does it make in what manner the
wise man arrives at leisure - whether because no state is available
to him or because he is not available to the state - if he is
nowhere to find a state? Besides, no state will ever be
available to the fastidious searcher. I ask you to what state
should the wise man attach himself? To that of the Athenians,
in which Socrates was senteneed to death, from which Aristotle fled
to avoid being sentenced? in which all the virtues are crushed
by envy? Surely you will say that no wise man will wish to
attach himself to this state. Shall the wise man, then,
attach himself to the state of the Carthaginians, in which faction
is always rife and all the best men find "freedom" their foe, in
which justice and goodness have supreme contempt, and enemies are
treated with inhuman cruelty and fellow-citizens like enemies?
From this state also will be flee. If I should attempt to
enumerate them one by one, I should not find a single one which
could tolerate the wise man or which the wise man could
tolerate. But if that state which we dream of can nowhere be
found, leisure begins to be a necessity for all of us, because the
one thing that might have been preferred to leisure nowhere
exists. If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail
the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where
shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms
that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that
this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch
my ship.\a ----- a This essay is
apparenetly incomplete. <Ess2-201>
DE
TRANQUILLITATE+ BOOK IX TO SERENUS ON TRANQUILLITY OF
MIND\
SERENUS\a: When I
made examination of myself, it became evident, Seneca, that some of
my vices are uncovered and displayed so openly that I can put my
hand upon them, some are more hidden and lurk in a corner, some are
not always present but recur at intervals; and I should say that the
last are by far the most troublesome, being like roving enemies that
spring upon one when the opportunity offers, and allow one neither
to be ready as in war, nor to be off guard as in peace. Nevertheless the
state in which I find myself most of all - for why should I not
admit the truth to you as to a physician? - is that I have neither
been honestly set free from the things that I hated and feared, nor,
on the other hand, am I in bondage to them; while the condition in
which I am placed is not the worst, yet I am complaining and
fretfull - I am neither sick nor well. There is no need for
you to say that all the virtues are weakly at the beginning, that
firmness and strength are added by time. I am well aware also
----- a <Seneca
regarded Serenus with> the deepest affection. His premature
death in A.D. 63 is the subject of a touching tribute in
Epistles. lxiii. 14-16. Cf. Vol. 1. Introd.
p. xii. <Ess2-203>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, i. 3-7
that the virtues that struggle for outward
show, I mean for position and the fame of eloquence and all that
comes under the verdict of others, do grow stronger as time passes -
both those that provide real strength and those that trick us out
with a sort of dye with a view to pleasing, must wait long years
until gradually length of time develops colour - but I greatly fear
that habit, which brings stability to most things, may cause this
fault of mine to become more deeply implanted. Of things evil
as well as good long intercourse induces love. The nature of
this weakness of mind that halts between two things and inclines
strongly neither to the right nor to the wrong, I cannot show you so
well all at once as a part at a time; I shall tell you what befalls
me - you will find a name for my malady. I am possessed by the very
greatest love of frugality, I must confess; I do not like a couch
made up for display, nor clothing brought forth from a chest or
pressed by weights and a thousand mangles to make, it glossy, but
homely and cheap, that is neither preserved nor to be put on with
anxious care; the food that I like is neither prepared nor watched
by a household of slaves, it does not need to be ordered many days
before nor to be served by many hands, but is easy to get and
abundant; there is nothing far-fetched or costly about it, nowhere
will there be any lack of it, it is burdensome neither to the purse
nor to the body, nor will it return by the way it entered; the
servant that I like is a young home-born slave without training or
skill; the silver is my country-bred father's heavy plate bearing no
stamp of the maker's name, and the table is not notable for the
variety of its markings or known to <Ess2-205>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, i. 7-10
the town from the many fashionable owners
through whose hands it has passed, but one that stands for use, and
will neither cause the eyes of any guest to linger upon it with
pleasure nor fire them with envy. Then, after all these things
have had my full approval, my mind is dazzled by the magnificence of
some training-school for pages, by the sight of slaves bedecked with
gold and more carefully arrayed than the leaders of a public
procession, and a whole regiment of glittering attendants; by the
sight of a house where one even treads on precious stones and riches
are scattered about in every corner, where the very roofs glitter,
and the whole town pays court and escorts an inheritance on the road
to ruin. And what shall I say of the waters, transparent to
the bottom, that flow around the guests even as they banquet, what
of the feasts that are worthy of their setting? Coming from a long
abandonment to thrift, luxury has poured around me the wealth of its
splendour, and echoed around me, on every side. My sight
falters a little, for I can lift up my heart towards it more easily
than my eyes. And so I come back, not worse, but sadder, and I
do not walk among my paltry possessions with head erect as before,
and there enters a secret sting and the doubt whether the other life
is not better. None of these things changes me, yet none of
them fails to disturb me. {PlainDealer+} I resolve to
obey the commands of my teachers and plunge into the midst of public
life; I resolve to try to gain office and the consulship, attracted
of course, not by the purple or by the lictor's rods, but by the
desire to be more serviceable and useful to my friends and relatives
and all my countrymen and than to all mankind. {public
service+} Ready and determined, I follow <Ess2-207>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, i. 10-13
Zeno,\a Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, of whom
none the less not one catered upon public life, and not one failed
to urge others to do so. And then, whenever something upsets
my mind, which is unused to meeting shocks, whenever something
happens that is either unworthy of me, and many such occur in the
lives of all human beings, or that does not proceed very easily, or
when things that. are not to be accounted of great value
demand much of my time, I turn back to my leisure, and just as
wearied flocks too do, I quicken my pace towards home. I
resolve to confine my life within its own walls: "Let no one," I
say, "who will make me no worthy return for such a loss rob me of a
single day; let my mind be fixed upon itself, let it cultivate
itself, let it busy itself with nothing outside, nothing that looks
towards an umpire\b; let it love the tranquillity that is remote
from public and private concern." But when my mind has been aroused
by reading of great bravery, and noble examples have applied the
spur, I want to rush into the forum, to lend my voice to one man; to
offer such assistance to another as, even if it will not help, will
be an effort to help; or to check the pride of someone in the forum
who has been unfortunately puffed up by his successes. And in my
literary studies I think that it is surely better to fix my eye on
the theme itself, and, keeping this uppermost when I speak, to trust
meanwhile to the theme to supply the words so that unstudied
language may follow it wherever it leads. {PlainDealer+} I say: "What
need is there to compose something that will last for centuries?
Will you not give up striving to keep posterity from being silent
about you? You were born for death; a silent funeral is less
troublesome! <Ess2-209>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, i. 13-17
And so to pass the time, write something in
simple style, for your own use, not for publication; they that study
for the day have less need to labour." Then again, when my mind has
been uplifted by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious
of words, and with higher aspirations it desires higher expression,
and language issues forth to match the dignity of the theme
forgetful then of my rule and of my more restrained judgement, I am
swept to loftier heights by an utterance that is no longer my own.
Not to
indulge longer in details, I am in all things attended by this
weakness of good intention. In fact I fear that I am gradually
losing ground, or, what causes me even more worry, that I am hanging
like one who is always on the verge of falling, and that perhaps I
am in a more serious condition than I myself perceive; for we take a
favourable view of our private matters, and partiality always
hampers our judgement. I fancy that many men would have
arrived at wisdom if they had not fancied that they had already
arrived, if they had not dissembled about certain traits in their
character and passed by others with their eyes shut. For there
is no reason for you to suppose that the adulation of other people
is more ruinous to us than our own. Who dares to tell
himself the truth? Who, though he is surrounded by a horde of
applauding sycophants, is not for all that his own greatest
flatterer? {modesty+} I beg you, therefore, if you
have any remedy by which you could stop this fluctuation of mine, to
deem me worthy of being indebted to you for tranquillity. I
know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and
give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt <Ess2-211>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, i. 17-ii. 3
metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest,
but by sea-sickness. Do you, then, take
from me this trouble, whatever it be, and rush to the rescue of one
who is struggling in full sight of land. SENECA: In
truth, Serenus, I have for a long time been silently asking myself
to what I should liken such a condition of mind, and I can find
nothing that so closely approaches it as the state of those who,
after being released from a long and serious illness, are sometimes
touched with fits of fever and slight disorders, and, freed from the
last traces of them, are nevertheless disquieted with mistrust, and,
though now quite well, stretch out their wrist to a physician and
complain unjustly of any trace of heat in their body. It is
not, Serenus, that these are not quite well in body, but that they
are not quite used to being well; just as even a tranquil sea will
show some ripple, particularly when it has just subsided after a
storm. What you need, therefore, is not any of those harsher
measures which we have already left behind, the necessity of
opposing yourself at this point, of being angry with yourself at
that, of sternly urging yourself on at another, but that which comes
last -confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the
right path, and have not been led astray by the many cross- tracks
of those who are roaming in every direction, some of whom are
wandering very near the path itself. But what you desire is
something great and supreme and very near to being a god - to be
unshaken.
This abiding stability of mind the Greeks call euthyimia,
"well-being of the soul," on which there is an excellent treatise by
Democritus; I call it tranquillity. For there is no need to
imitate and repro- <Ess2-213>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, ii. 3-7
duce words in their Greek shape; the thing
itself, which is under discussion, must be designated by some name
which ought to have, not the form, but the force, of the Greek
term. What we are seeking, therefore, is how the mind may
always pursue a steady and favourable course, may be well-disposed
towards itself, and may view its condition with joy, and suffer no
interruption of this joy, but may abide in a peaceful state, being
never uplifted nor ever cast down. This will be
"tranquillity." Let us seek in a general way how it may be obtained;
then from the universal remedy you will appropriate as much as you
like. Meanwhile we must drag forth into the light the whole of
the infirmity, and each one will then recognize his own share of it;
at the same time you will understand how much less trouble you have
with your self-depreciation than those who, fettered to some showy
declaration and struggling beneath the burden of some grand title,
are held more by shame than by desire to the pretence they are
making. {PlainDealer+} All are in the
same case, both those, on the one hand, who are plagued with
fickleness and boredom and a continual shifting of purpose, and
those, on the other other, who loll and yawn. Add also those who,
just like the wretches who find it hard to sleep, change their
position and settle first in one way and then in another, until
finally they find rest through weariness. By repeatedly
altering the condition of their life they are at last left in that
in which, not the dislike of making a change, but old age, that
shrinks from novelty, has caught them. And add also those who by
fault, not of firmness of character, but of inertia, are not fickle
enough, and live, not as they wish, but as they have begun. The
characteristics of the malady <Ess2-215>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, ii. 7-10
are countless in number, but it has only one
effect - to be dissatisfied with oneself. This springs from a
lack of mental poise and from timid or unfulfilled desires, when men
either do not dare, or do not attain, as much as they desire, and
become entirely dependent upon hope; such men are always unstable
and changeable, as must necessarily be the fate of those who live in
suspense. They strlve to attain their prayers by every means,
they teach and force themselves to do dishonourable and difficult
things, and, when their effort is without reward, they are tortured
by the fruitless disgrace and grieve, not because they wished for
what was wrong, but because they wished in vain. Then regret
for what they have begun lays bold upon them, and the fear of
beginning again, and then creeps in the agitation of a mind which
can find no issue, because they can neither rule nor obey their
desires, and the hesitancy of a life which fails to find its way
clear, and then the dullness of a soul that lies torpid amid
abandoned hopes. And all these tendencies are aggravated when
from hatred of their laborious ill-success men have taken refuge in
leisure and in solitary studies, which are unendurable to a mind
that is intent upon public affairs, desirous of action, and
naturally restless, because assuredly it has too few resources
within itself; when, therefore, the pleasures have been withdrawn
which business itself affords to those who are busily engaged, the
mind cannot endure home, solitude, and the walls of a room, and sees
with dislike that it has been left to itself. From this comes
that boredom and dissatisfaction and the vacillation of a mind that
nowhere finds rest, and the sad and languid endurance of one's
leisure; {Hamlet+?} <Ess2-217>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, ii. 10-12
especially when one is ashamed to confess
the real causes of this condition and bashfullness drives its
tortures inward; the desires pent up within narrow bounds, from
which there is no escape, strangle one another. Thence comes
mourning and melancholy and the thousand waverings of an unsettled
mind, which its aspirations hold in suspense and then disappointment
renders melancholy. Thence comes that feeling which makes men
loathe their own leisure and complain that they themselves have
nothing to be busy with; thence too the bitterest jealousy of the
advancements of others. For their unhappy sloth fosters envy,
and, because they could not succeed themselves, they wish every one
else to be ruined; then from this aversion to the progress of others
and despair of their own their mind becomes incensed against
Fortune, and complains of the times, and retreats into corners and
broods over its trouble until it beconies weary and sick of
itself. For it is the nature of the human mind to be active
and prone to movement. Welcome to it is every
opportunity for excitement and distraction, and still more welcome
to all those worst natures which willingly wear themselves out in
being employed. Just as there are some sores which crave the
hands that will hurt them and rejoice to be, touched, and as a foul
itch of the body delights in whatever scratchcs, exactly so, I would
say, do these minds upon which, so to speak, desires have broken out
like wicked sores find pleasure in toil and vexation. For
there are certain things that delight our body also while causing it
a sort of pain, as turning over and changing a side that is not yet
tired and taking one position after another to get cool.
Homer's hero Achilles is like that - lying now on his face, now <Ess2-219>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, 12-15
on his back,\a placing himself in various
attitudes, and, just as sick men do, enduring nothing very long and
using changes as remedies. Hence men
undertake wide-ranging travel, and wander over remote shores, and
their fickleness, always discontented with the present, gives proof
of itself now on land and now on sea. "Now let us head for
Campania," they say. And now when soft living palls, "Let us
see the wild parts," they say, "let us hunt out the passes of
Bruttium and Lucania." And yet amid that wilderness something is
missing - something pleasant wherein their pampered eyes may find
relief from the lasting squalor of those rugged regions: "Let us
head for Tarentum with its famous harbour and its mild winter
climate, and a territory rich enough to have a horde of people even
in antiquity." Too long have their ears missed the shouts and the
din; it delights them by now even to enjoy human blood: "Let us now
turn our course toward the city." They undertake one journey after
another and change spectacle for spectacle. As Lucretius
says\b:
Thus ever from himself doth each man
flee.
But what does he
gain if he does not escape from himself? {Emerson+} He
ever follows himself and weighs upon himself as his own most
burdensome companion. And so we ought to understand that what
we struggle with is the fault, not of the places, but of ourselves;
when there is need of endurance, we are weak, and we cannot bear
toil or pleasure or ourselves or anything very long. It is
this that has driven some men to death, because by often altering
their purpose they were always brought back to the same things <Ess2-221>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, ii. 15-iii. 3
and had left themselves no room tor anything
new. They began to be sick of life and the world itself, and
from the self- indulgences that wasted them was born the thought:
"How long shall I endure the same things?" You ask what
help, in my opinion, should be employed to overcome this
tedium. The best course would be, as Athenodorus a says, to
occupy oneself with practical matters, the management of public
affairs, and the duties of a citizen. For as some men pass the
day in seeking the sun and in exercise and care of the body, and as
athletes find it is most profitable by far to devote the greater
part of the day to the development of their muscles and the strength
to which alone they have dedicated themselves; so for you, who are
training your mind for the struggle of political life, by far the
most desirable thing is to be busy at one task. For, whenever
a man has the set purpose to make himself useful to his countrymen
and all mortals, he both gets practice and does service at the same
time when he has placed himself in the very midst of active duties,
serving to the best of his ability the interests both of the
public+ and of the individual. "But because," he continues, "in
this mad world of ambition where chicanery so frequently twists
right into wrong, simplicity {simplicitas_PlainDealer+} is hardly safe,
and is always sure to meet with more that hinders than helps it, we
ought indeed to withdraw from the forum and public life, but a great
mind has an opportunity to display itself freely even in private
life; nor, just as the activity of lions and animals is restrained
by their dens, is it so of man's, whose greatest achievements are
wrought in retirement. Let a man, however, hide himself away bearing
in mind that, <Ess2-223>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, iii. 3-6
wherever be secretes his leisure, he should
be willing to benefit the individual man and mankind by his
intellect, his voice, and his counsel. For the man that does good
service to the state is not merely he who brings forward candidates
and defends the accused and votes for peace and war, but he also who
admonishes young men, who instils virtue into their minds, supplying
the great lack of good teachers, who lays hold upon those that are
rushing wildly in pursuit of money and luxury, and draws them back,
and, if he accomplishes nothing else, at least retards them - such a
man performs a public service even in private life. Or does he
accomplish more who in the office of praetor,\a whether in cases
between citizens and foreigners or in cases between citizens,
delivers to suitors the verdict his assistant has formulated, than
he who teaches the meaning of justice, of piety, of endurance, of
bravery, of contempt of death, of knowledge of the gods, and how
secure and free is the blessing of a good conscience?
If, then, the time that you have stolen from public duties is
bestowed upon studies, you will neither have deserted, nor refused,
your office. For a soldier is not merely one who stands
in line and defends the right or the left wing, but he also who
guards the gates and fills, not an idle, but a less dangerous, post,
who keeps watch at night and has charge of the armoury; these
offices, though they are bloodless, yet count as military service.
If you devote yourself to studies, you will have escaped all your
disgust at life, you will not long for night to come because you are
weary of the light, nor will you be either burdensome to yourself or
useless to others; you will attract many to friendship and those
that gather about you <Ess2-225>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, iii. 6-iv. 2
will be the most excellent. For
virtue, though obscured, is never concealed, but always gives signs
of its presence; whoever is worthy will trace her out by her
footsteps. But if we give up society altogether and, turning
our back upon the human race, live with our thoughts fixed only upon
ourselves, this solitude deprived of every interest will be followed
by a want of something to be accomplished. We shall begin to
put up some buildings, to pull down others, to thrust back the sea,
to cause waters to flow despite the obstacles of nature, and shall
make ill disposition of the time which Nature has given us to be
used. Some use it
sparingly, ethers wastefully; some of us spend it in such a way that
we are able to give an account of it, others in such a way - and
nothing can be more shameful - that we have no balance left.
Often a man who is very old in years has no evidence to prove that
he has lived a long time other than his age." {liberal_studies+} To me, my
dearest Serenus, Athenodorus seems to have surrendered too quickly
to the times, to have retreated too quickly. I myself would
not deny that sometimes one must retire, but it should be a gradual
retreat without surrendering the standards, without surrendering
the honour+ of a soldier; those are more
respected by their enemies and safer who come to terms with their
arms in their hands. This is what I think Virtue and
Virtue's devotee should do. If Fortune shall get the upper
hand and shall cut off the opportunity for action, let a man not
straightway turn his back and flee, throwing away his arms and
seeking some hiding-place, as if there were anywhere a place where
Fortune could not reach him, but let him devote himself to his
duties more sparingly, and, after <Ess2-227>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, iv. 3-6
making choice, let him find something in
which he may be useful to the state. {service+} Is
he not permitted to be a soldier? Let him seek public
office. Must he live in a private station? Let him be a
pleader. Is he condemned to silence? Let him help his
countrymen by his silent support. Is it dangerous even to enter the
forum? In private houses, at the public spectacles, at
feasts let him show himself a good comrade, a faithful friend, a
temperate feaster. Has he lost the duties of a citizen?
Let him exercise those of a man. The very reason for our
magnanimity in not shutting ourselves up within the walls of one
city, in going forth into intercourse with the whole earth, and in
claiming the world as our country, was that we might have a wider
field for our virtue. Is the tribunal closed to you, and are
you barred from the rostrum and the hustings? Look how many
broad stretching countries lie open behind you, how many peoples;
never can you be blocked from any part so large that a still larger
will not be left to you. But take care that this is not wholly
your own fault; you are not willing to serve the state except as a
consul or prytanis\a or herald or sufete.\b What if you should be
unwilling to serve in the army except as a general or a
tribune? Even if others shall hold the front line and your lot
has placed you among those of the third line, from there where you
are do service with your voice, encouragement, example, and spirit;
even though a man's hands are cut off, he finds that he can do
something for his side in battle if he stands his ground and helps
with the shouting. Some such thing is what you should
do. If Fortune has removed you from the foremost position in
the state, you should, nevertheless, stand your ground <Ess2-229>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, iv. 6-v. 1
and help with the shouting, and if someone
stops your throat, you should, nevertheless, stand your ground and
help in silence. The service of a good citizen is never
useless; by being heard and seen, by his expression, by his gesture,
by his silent stubbornness, and by his very walk he helps. As there
are certain salutary things that without our tasting and touching
them benefit us by their mere odour, so virtue sheds her advantage
even from a distance, and in hiding. Whether she walks abroad
and of her own right makes herself active, or has her appearances on
sufferance and is forced to draw in her sails, or is inactive and
mute and pent within narrow bounds, or is openly displayed, no
matter what her condition is, she always does good. Why, then, do you
think that the example of one who lives in honourable retirement is
of little value? Accordingly, the best course by far is to
combine leisure with business, whenever chance obstacles or the
condition of the state shall prevent one's living a really active
life; for a man is never so completely shut off from all pursuits
that no opportunity is left for any honourable activity. Can
you find any city more wretched than was that of the Athenians when
it was being torn to pieces by the Thirty Tyrants? They had
slain thirteen hundred citizens, all the best men, and were not for
that reason ready to stop, but their very cruelty fed its own
flame. In the city in which there was the Areopagus, a most
god-fearing court, in which there was a senate and a popular
assembly that was like a senate, there gathered together every day a
sorry college of hangmen, and the unhappy senate-house was made too
narrow by tyrants\a! Could that city ever find peace in which there
were as many tyrants <Ess2-231>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, v. 1-5
as there might be satellites? No hope
even of recovering liberty could offer itself, nor did there seem to
be room for any sort of help against such mighty strength of wicked
men. For where could the wretched state find enough
Harmodiuses\a? Yet Socrates was in their midst and comforted
the mourning city fathers, he encouraged those that were despairing
of the state, reproached the rich men that were now dreading their
wealth with a too late repentance of their perilous greed, while to
those willing to imitate him he carried round with him a great
example, as he moved a free man amid thirty masters. Yet this
was the man that Athens herself murdered in prison, and Freedom
herself could not endure the freedom of one who had mocked in
security at a whole band of tyrants. And so you may
learn both that the wise man has opportunity to display his power
when the state is torn by trouble, and that effrontery, envy, and a
thousand other cowardly vices hold sway when it is prosperous and
happy. Therefore we shall either expand or contract our effort
according as the state shall lend herself to us, according as
Fortune shall permit us, but in any case we shall keep moving, and
shall not be tied down and numbed by fear. Nay, he will be
truly a man who, when perils are threatening from every side, when
arms and chains are rattling around him, will neither endanger, nor
conceal, his virtue; for saving oneself does not mean burying
oneself. Curius Dentatus said, truly as I think, that he would
rather be a dead man than a live one dead\b; for the worst of ills
is to leave the number of the living before you die. But if
you should happen upon a time when it is not at all easy to serve
the state, <Ess2-233>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, v. 5-vi. 4
your necessary course will be to claim more
time for leisure and for letters, and, just as if you were making a
perilous voyage, to put into harbour from time to time, and, without
waiting for public affairs to release you, to separate yourself from
them of your own accord. Our duty,
however, will be, first, to examine our own selves, then, the
matters that we shall undertake, and lastly, those for whose sake or
in whose company we are undertaking them. Above
all it is necessary for a man to estimate himself truly, because we
commonly think that we can do more than we are able. One man
blunders by relying upon his eloquence, another makes more demand
upon his fortune than it can stand, another burdens a weakly body
with laborious tasks. Some men by reason of their modesty are
quite unsuited to civil affairs, which need a strong front; some by
reason of their stubborn pride are not fitted for court; some do not
have their anger under control, and any sort of provocation hurries
them to rash words; some do not know how to restrain their
pleasantry and cannot abstain from dangerous wit. For all
these retirement is more serviceable than employment; a hcadstrong
and impatient nature should avoid all incitements to a freedom
ofspeech that will prove harmful. Next, we must
estimate the matters themselves that we are undertaking, and must
compare our strength with the things that we are about to attempt;
for the doer must always be stronger than his task; burdens that are
too heavy for their bearer must necessarily crush him. There
are certain undertakings, moreover, that are not so much great as
they are prolific, and thus lead to many fresh under- <Ess2-235>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, vi. 4-vii. 3
takings. Not only ought you to avoid
those that give birth to new and multifarious employment, but you
ought not to approach a task from which you are not free to retreat;
you must put your hand to those that you can either finish, or at
least hope to finish, leaving those untouched that grow bigger as
you progress and do not cease at the point you intended. And we must be
particularly careful in our choice of men, and consider whether they
are worthy of having us devote some part of our life to them, or
whether the sacrifice of our time extends to theirs also; for
certain people actually charge against us a the services we do
them. Athenodorus says that he would not go to dine with a man
who would not feel indebted to him for doing so. You
understand, I suppose, that much less would he go to dinner with
those who recompense the services of friends by their table, who get
down the courses of a meal as largesses, as if they were being
intemperate to do honour to others. Take away the spectators and
witnesses, and solitary gluttony will give them no pleasure.
spt consider whether your nature is better adapted to active affairs
or to leisurely study and contemplation, and you must turn towards
that course to which the bent of your genius shall direct you.
Isocrates laid hands upon Ephorus\b and led him away from the forum,
thinking that he would be more useful in compiling the records of
history; for inborn tendencies answer ill to compulsion, and where
Nature opposes labour is in vain.\c Nothing,
however, gives the mind so much pleasure as fond and faithful
friendship+. What a blessing it is to have those to whose
waiting hearts every secret may be committed with safety, whose
knowledge of you <Ess2-237>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, vii. 3-6
you fear less than your knowledge of
yourself, whose conversation soothes your anxiety, whose opinion
assists your decision, whose cheerfulness scatters your sorrow, the
very sight of whom gives you joy! We shall of course choose
those who are free, as far as may be, from selfish desires; for
vices spread unnoticed, and quickly pass to those nearest and do
harm by their contact. And so, just as in times of pestilence we
must take care not to sit near those whose bodies are already
infected and inflamed with disease, because we shall incur risks and
be in danger from their very breath, so, in choosing our friends, we
shall have regard for their character, so that we may appropriate
those who are marked with fewest stains; to combine the sick with
the sound is to spread disease. Yet I would not lay down the
rule that you are to follow, or attach to yourself, none but a wise
man. For where will you find him whom we have been seeking for
so many centuries? In place of the best man take the one least
bad! Opportunity for a happier choice scarcely could you have,
were you searching for a good man among the Platos and the Xenophons
and the rest of that glorious company of the Socratic breed, or,
too, if you had at your command the age of Cato, which bore many men
who were worthy to be born in Cato's time, just as it also bore many
that were worse than had ever been known, and contrivers of the most
monstrous crimes; for both classes were necessary in order that Cato
might be understood - he needed to have good men that he might win
their approval, and bad men that be might prove his strength.
But now, when there is such a great dearth of good men, you must be
less squeamish in making your choice. Yet those are <Ess2-239>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF, MIND, vii. 6-viii. 4
especially to be avoided who are melancholy
and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for
complaint. Though
a man's loyalty and friendliness be assured, yet the companion who
is always upset and bemoans everything is a foe to tranquillity. Let us pass now
to the matter of fortunes, which are the greatest source of human
sorrow; for if you compare all the other ills from which we suffer
deaths, sicknesses, fears, longings, the endurance of pains and
labours - with the evils which our money brings, this portion will
far outweigh the other. And so we must reflect how much
lighter is the sorrow of not having money than of losing it; and we
shall understand that, the less poverty has to lose, the less chance
it has to torment us. For you are wrong if you think that the
rich suffer losses more cheerfully; the pain of a wound is the same
in the largest and smallest bodies. Bion says neatly that it
hurts, the bald-head just as much as the thatched - head to have his
hairs plucked. You may be sure that the same thing holds for
the poor and the rich, that their suffering is just the same; for
their money has a fast grip on both, and cannot be torn away without
their feeling it. But, as I have said, it is more endurable
and easier not to acquire it than to lose it, and therefore you will
see that those whom Fortune has never regarded are more cheerful
than those whom she has forsaken. Diogenes, that high-souled
man, saw this, and made it impossible for anything to be snatched
from him. Do you call such a state poverty, want, need, give
this security any disgraceful name you please. I shall not count the
man happy, if you can find anyone else who has nothing to
lose! Either I am <Ess2-241>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, viii. 4-8
deceived, or it is a regal thing to be the
only one amid all the misers, the sharpers, the robbers, and
plunderers who cannot be harmed. If anyone has any doubt about
the happiness of Diogenes, he may likewise have doubt about the
condition of the immortal gods is well - whether they are living
quite unhappily because they have neither manors nor gardens nor
costly estates farmed by a foreign tenant,\a nor a huge yield of
interest in the forum. All ye who bow down to riches, where is
your shame? Come, turn your eyes upon heaven; you will
see the gods quite needy, giving all and having nothing. Do
you think that he who stripped himself of all the gilds of Fortune
is a poor man or simply like the immortal gods? Would you say
that Demetrius, the freedman of Pompeii who was not ashamed to be
richer than Pompey, was a happier man? He, to whom two
underlings and a roomier cell would once have been wealth, used to
have the number of his slaves reported to him every day as if he
were the general of an army! But the only slave Diogenes had
ran away from him once, and, when he was pointed out to him, he did
not think it worth while to fetch him back. "It would be a shame,"
he said, "if Diogenes is not able to live without Manes, when Manes
is able to live without Diogenes." But he seems to me to have cried:
"Fortune, mind your own business; Diogenes has now nothing of
yours. My slave has run away - nay, it is I that have got away
free!" A household of slaves requires clothes and food so any
bellies of creatures that are always hungry have to be filled, we
have to buy clothing for them, and watch their most thievish hands,
and use the services of people weeping and cursing. How much
<Ess2-243>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, viii. 8-ix. 3
happier is he whose only obligation is to
one whom he can most easily refuse himself! Since, however, we
do not have such strength of character, we ought at least to reduce
our possessions, so as to be less exposed to the injuries of
Fortune. In war
those men are better fitted for service whose bodies can be squeezed
into their armour than those whose bodies spill over, and whose very
bulk everywhere exposes them to wounds. In the case of
money+, an amount that does not descend to poverty, and yet is
not for removed from poverty, is the most desirable. Moreover, we
shall be content with this measure if we were previously content
with thrift, without which no amount of wealth is sufficient, and no
amount is not sufficiently ample, especially since the remedy is
always near at hand, and poverty of itself is able to turn itself
into riches by summoning economy. Let us form the habit of
putting away from us mere pomp and of measuring the uses of things,
not their decorative qualities. Let food subdue hunger, drink
quench thirst; let lust follow the course of nature; let us learn to
rely upon our limbs and to conform our dress and mode of life, not
to the new fashions, but to the customs our ancestors approved; let
us learn to increase our self-control, to restrain luxury, to
moderate ambition, to soften anger, to view poverty with
unprejudiced eyes, to cultivate frugality, even if many shall be
ashamed, all the more to apply to the wants of nature the remedies
that cost little, to keep unruly hopes and a mind that is intent
upon the future, as it were, in chains, and to determine to seek our
riches from ourselves rather than from Fortune. It is never
possible that all the diversity and injustice of mischance can be so
repulsed, that many storms <Ess2-245>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, ix. 3-5
will not sweep down upon those who are
spreading great sail. We must draw in our activities to a
narrow compass in order that the darts of Fortune may fall into
nothingness, and for this reason exiles and disasters have turned
out to be benefits, and more serious ills have been healed by those
that are lighter. When the mind is disobedient to precepts and
cannot be restored by gentler means, why should it not be for its
own good to have poverty, disgrace, and a violent overthrow of
fortune applied to it - to match evil with evil? Let us then
get accustomed to being able to dine without the multitude, to being
the slave of fewer slaves, to getting clothes for the purpose for
which they were devised, and to living in narrower quarters.
Not only in the race and the contests of the Circus, but also in the
arena of life\a we must keep to the inner circle. {PlainDealer+} Even for
studies+, where expenditure is most honourable, it is
justifiable only so long as it is kept within bounds. What is
the use of having countless books and libraries, whose titles their
owners can scarcely read through in a whole lifetime?
The learner is, not instructed, but burdened by the mass of them,
and it is much better to surrender yourself to a few authors than to
wander through many. Forty thousand books were burned\b at
Alexandria; let someone else praise this library as the most noble
monument to the wealth of kings, as did Titus Livius, who says\c
that it was the most distinguished achievement of the good taste and
solicitude of kings. There was no "good taste" or "solicitude"
about it, but only learned luxury - nay, not even "learned," since
they had collected the books, not for the sake of learning, ----- c
Livy's narrative of the event (Bk. cxii.) has been lost. <Ess2-247>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, ix. 5 x. 1
but to make a show, just as many who lack
even a child's knowledge of letters use books, not as the tools of
learning, but as decorations for the diningroom. Therefore,
let just as many books be acquired as are enough, but not for mere
show. "It is more respectable," you say, "to squander money on these
than on Corinthian bronzes and on pictures." But excess in anything
becomes a fault. What excuse have you to offer for a man who
seeks to have bookcases of citrus-wood and ivory, who collects the
works of unknown or diseredited authors and sits yawning in the
midst of so many thousand books, who gets most of his pleasure from
the outsides of volumes and their titles? Consequently it is
in the houses of the laziest men that you will see a full collection
of orations and history with the boxes piled right up to the
ceiling; for by now among cold baths and hot baths a library also is
equipped as a necessary ornament of a great house. I would
readily pardon these men if they were led astray by their excessive
zeal for learning. But as it is,these collections of the works of
sacred genius with all the portraits that adorn them are bought for
show and a decoration of their walls. But it may be
that you have fallen upon some phase of life which is difficult, and
that, before you are aware, your public or your private fortune has
you fastened in a noose which you can neither burst nor untie.
But reflect that it is only at first that prisoners are worried by
the burdens and shackles upon their legs; later, when they have
determined not to chafe against them, but to endure them, necessity
teaches them to bear them bravely, habit to bear them easily. In any
sort of life you will find that there are amusements and relaxations
and pleasures, if you are
<Ess2-249>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, x. 1-5
willing to consider your evils lightly
rather than to make them hateful. On no score has Nature more
deserved our thanks, who, since she knew to what sorrows we were
born, invented habit as an alleviation for disasters, and thus
quickly accustoms us to the most serious ills. No one could
endure adversity if, while it continued, it kept the same violence
that its first blows had. All of us are chained to
Fortune. Some are bound by a loose and golden chain, others by
a tight chain of baser metal; but what difference does it
make? The same captivity holds all men in its toils, those who
have bound others have also been bound - unless perhaps you think
that a chain on the left hand\a is a lighter one. Some are
chained by public office, others by wealth; some carry the burden of
high birth, some of low birth; some bow beneath another's empire,
some beneath their own; some are kept in one place by exile, others
by priesthoods. All life is a servitude+.
And so a man must become reconciled to his lot, must complain of it
as little as possible, and must lay hold of whatever good it may
have; no state is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find in it some
consolation. Even small spaces by skilful planning often reveal many
uses; and arrangement will make habitable a place of ever so small
dimensions. Apply reason to difficulties; it is possible to
soften what is hard, to widen what is narrow, and burdens will press
less heavily upon those who bear them skilfully. Moreover, we
must not send our desires upon a distant quest, but we should permit
them to have access to what is near, since they do not endure to <Ess2-251>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, x. 5 xi. 1
be shut up altogether. Leaving those
things that either cannot be done, or can be done only with
difficulty, let us pursue what lies near at hand and allures our
hope, but let us be aware that they all are equally trivial, diverse
outwardly in appearance, within alike vain. And let us not
envy those who stand in higher places; where there appeared heights,
there are precipices. Those, on the other hand, whom an unkind
lot has placed in a critical position, will be safer by reducing
their pride in the things that are in themselves proud and lowering
their fortune, so far as they shall be able, to the common
level. While there are many who must necessarily cling to
their pinnacle, from which they cannot descend without falling, yet
they may bear witness that their greatest burden is the very fact
that they are forced to be burdensome to others, being not lifted,
but nailed on high. By justice, by kindness, by
courtesy+ {mansuetudine}, and by lavish and kindly
giving+ let them prepare many safeguards against later
mishaps,in hope whereof they may be more easy in their
suspense. Yet nothing can free us from these mental waverings
so effectively as always to establigh some limit to advancement and
not leave to Fortune the decision of when it shall end, but halt of
our own accord far short of the limit that the examples of others
urge. In this way there will be some desires to prick on the
mind, and yet, because bounds have been set to them, they will not
lead it to that which is unlimited and uncertain. These remarks of
mine apply, not to the wise man, but to those who are not yet
perfect, to the mediocre, and to the unsound. The wise man
does not need to walk timidly and cautiously; for so great is his
confidence in himself that he does not hesitate to <Ess2-253>
ON TRANQILLITY OF MIND, xi. 1-4
go against Fortune, and will never retreat
before her. Nor has he any reason to fear her, for he counts
not merely his chattels and his possessions and his position, but
even his body and his eyes and his hand and all else that makes life
very dear to a man, nay, even himself, among the things that are
given on sufferance, and he lives as one who has been lent to
himself and will return everything without sorrow when it is
reclaimed.{hand_of_heaven+} Nor is he therefore cheap
in his own eyes, because be knows that he does not belong to
himself, but he will perform all his duties as diligently and as
circumspectly as a devout and holy man is wont to guard the property
entrusted to his protection. When, however, he is bidden to
give them up, he will not quarrel with Fortune, but will say: "I
give thanks for what I have possessed and held. I have managed
your property to great advantage, but, since you order me, I give it
up, I surrender it gratefully and gladly. If you still wish me
to have anything of yours, I shall guard it; if your pleasure is
otherwise, I give back and restore to you my silver both wrought and
coined, my house, and my household." Should Nature recall what she
previously entrusted us with, we shall say to her also: "Take back
the spirit that is better than when you gave it. I do not quibble or
hang back; of my own free will I am ready for you to take what you
gave me before I was conscious - away with it!" What hardship is
there in returning to the place from which you came? That man
will live ill who will not know how to die well. Therefore we
must take from the value we set upon this thing, and the breath of
life must be counted as a cheap matter. As Cicero says\a we
feel hostility to gladiators if they are eager to save their life no
matter how; if they <Ess2-255>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xi. 4-7
display contempt for it, we favour
them. The same thing, you may know, applies to us; for often
the cause of death is the fear of dying. Mistress Fortune, who
uses us for her sport+, {flies} says: "Why should I save
you, you base and cowardly creature? You will be hacked and
pierced with all the more wounds, because you do not know how to
offer your throat. But you, who receive the steel courageously
and do not withdraw your neck or put out your hands to stop it,
shall both live longer and die more easily." He who fears death will
never do anything worthy of a man who is alive, but be who knows
that these were the terms drawn up for him at the moment of his
conception will live according to the bond, and at the same time
will also with like strength of mind guarantee that none of the
things that happen shall be unexpected. For by looking forward
to whatever can happen as though it would happen, {Murphy+} he will soften the attacks of all
ills, which bring nothing strange to those who have been prepared
beforehand and are expecting them; it is the unconcerned and those
that expect nothing but good fortune upon whom they fall
heavily. Sickness comes, captivity, disaster, conflagration,
but none of them is unexpected - I always knew in what disorderly
company Nature had confined me. Many times has wailing for the
dead been heard in my neighbourhood; many times have the torch and
the taper led untimely funerals past my threshold; often has the
crash of a falling building resounded at my side; many of those whom
the forum, the senate-house and conversation had bound to me a night
has carried off, and the hands that were joined in friendship have
been sundered by the grave. Should I be surprised if the <Ess2-257>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xi. 7-10
dangers that always have wandered about me
should at some time reach me? The number of men that will plan
a voyage without thinking of storms is very great. I shall
never be ashamed to quote a bad author if what he says is
good. Publilius, who, whenever he abandoned the absurdities of
farce and language directed to the gallery, had more vigour than the
writers of comedy and tragedy, among many other utterances more
striking than any that came from the buskined - to say nothing of
the comic curtain's - stage, has also this:
Whatever can one man befall can happen just
as well to all.\a
If a man lets this sink deep into his heart,
and, when he looks upon the evils of others, of which there is a
huge supply every day, remembers that they are free to come to him
also, he will arm himself against them long before they attack
him. It is too late to equip the soul to endure dangers after
the dangers have arisen. You say: "I did not think this would
happen," and "Would you have believed that this would happen?" But
why not? Where are the riches that do not have poverty and
hunger and beggary following close behind? What rank is there
whose bordered robe and augur's wand and patrician boot- laces\b do
not carry in their train rags and branded disgrace - a thousand
stigmas and utter disrepute? What kingdom is there for which
ruin and a trampling underfoot and the tyrant and the hangman are
not in store? Nor are such things cut off by long intervals,
but between the throne and bending at another's knees there is but
an hour's space. Know, then, that every lot in life is changeable,
and that whatever befalls, any man can befall you also. You
are rich: but are you any <Ess2-259>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xi. 10-12
richer than pompey\a? Yet he lacked
even bread and water when Gaius, an old kinsman\b but a new sort of
host, had opened to him the house of Caesar in order that he might
have a chance to close his own! Though he owned so many rivers
that had their source within his own lands and their mouth within
his own lands, he had to beg for drops of water. In the palace
of his kinsman he perished from hunger and thirst, and, while he was
starving, his heir was arranging to give him a state funeral!
You have held the highest offices; but have you held any as great,
as unlooked for, as comprehensive as those of Sejanus? Yet on
the day on which the senate played the escort\c the people tore him
to pieces! Of the man who had had heaped upon him all that
gods and men were able to bestow nothing was left for the
executioner to drag to the river! You are a king: it
will not be Croesus to whom I shall direct you, who lived to see his
own pyre both lighted and extinguished,\d who was forced to survive,
not his kingdom only, but even his own death, nor Jugurtha, whom the
Roman people gazed upon as a captive in less than a year after he
had made them afraid. We ourselves have seen Ptolemy, king of
Africa, and Mithridates, king of Armenia, under the charge of
Gaius's guards; the one was sent into exile, the other was anxious
to be sent there in better faith!\e In view of this great mutability
of fortune, that <Ess2-261>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xi. 12-xii. 4
moves now upward, now downward, unless you
consider that whatever can happen is likely to happen to you, you
surrender yourself into the power of adversity, which any man can
crush if he sees her first. Our next concern
will be not to labour either for useless ends or uselessly, that is,
not to desire either what we are not able to accomplish, or what, if
attained, will cause us to understand too late and after much shame
the emptiness of our desires. In other words, neither should
our labour be in vain and without result, nor the result unworthy of
our labour; for as a rule sadness attends upon it, if there has been
either lack of success or shame for success. We must curtail
the restlessness that a great many men show in wandering through
houses and theatres and forums; they thrust themselves into the
affairs of others, and always appear to be busily engaged. If
you ask one of these as he comes out of the house: "Where are you
going? What have you in mind?" he will reply to you: "Upon my
word, I really do not know; but I shall see some people, I shall do
something." They wander without any plan looking for employment, and
they do, not what they have determined to do, but whatever they have
stumbled upon. Their course is is aimless and idle as that of
ants crawling among bushes, which idly bustle to the top of a twig
and then to the bottom; many men are like these in their way of
life, which one may not unjustly call "busy idleness." When you see
some of them running as if they were going to a fire, you will be
sorry for them; so often do they collide with those they meet and
send themselves and others sprawling, though all the while they have
been rushing to pay a call to someone who will not return it, or to
attend <Ess2-263>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xii. 4-xiii. 1
the funeral of a man they do not know, or
the trial of someone who is always having a suit, or the betrothal
of some woman who is always getting married, and, having attached
themselves to some litter, have in some places even carried
it. Afterwards, when they are returning home wearied to no
purpose, they swear that they themselves do not know why they left
home, or where they have been, and, on the next day they will wander
over the selfsame track. And so let all your effort be
directed toward some object, let it keep some object in view!
It is not activity that makes men restless, but false conceptions of
things render them mad. For even madmen do not become
agitated without some hope; they are excited by the mere appearance
of some object, the falsity of which is not apparent to their
afflicted mind. In the same way every one of those. who
go forth to swell the throng is led around the city by worthless and
trivial reasons; dawn drives a man forth though he has no task to
do, and, after he has been crushed in many men's door-ways, all in
vain, and has saluted their nomenclators one after another, and has
been shut out by many, he finds that, of them all, not one is more
difficult to catch at home than himself. From this evil is
derived that most disgusting vice of eavesdropping and prying into
public and secret matters and learning of many things that it is
neither safe to tell nor safe to listen to. I fancy that
Democritus\a was thinking of this when he began: "If a man shall
wish to live tranquilly, let him not engage in many affairs either
public or private," referring of course to useless affairs.
For if necessity demands, we must engage in many, even countless,
affairs both public and private; but when <Ess2-265>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xiii. 1-xiv. 2
there is no call from sacred duty, we must
restrain other activities. For if a man engages in many affairs, he
often puts himself in the power of Fortune, while his safest course
is rarely to tempt her, always to be mindful of her, and never to
put any trust in her promises. Say, "I will set sail unless
something happens," and "I shall become praetor unless something
hinders me," and "My enterprise will be successful unless something
interferes." This is why we say that nothing happens to a wise man
contrary to his expectations - we release him, not from the
accidents, but from the blunders of mankind, nor do all things turn
out as he has wished, but as he has thought; but his first thought
has been that something might obstruct his plans. Then, too,
the suffering that comes to the mind from the abandonment of desire
must necessarily be much lighter if you have not certainly promised
it success. We ought also to make ourselves adaptable lest we
become too fond of the plans we have formed, and we should pass
readily to the condition to which chance has led us, and not dread
shifting either purpose or positions - provided that fickleness, a
vice most hostile to repose, does not get hold of us. For
obstinacy, from which Fortune often wrests some concession, must
needs be anxious and unhappy, and much more grievous must be a
fickleness that nowhere shows self-restraint. Both are foes to
tranquillity - both the inability to change and the inability to
endure. Most of all, the mind must be withdrawn from external
interests into itself. Let it have confidence in itself,
rejoice in itself, let it admire its own things, let it retire as
far as possible from the things of others and devote itself to
itself, let it not feel losses, let it <Ess2-267>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MTND, xiv. 2-6
interpret kindly even adversities.
Zeno, our master, when he received news of a shipwreck and heard
that all his property had been sunk, said: "Fortune bids me to
follow philosophy with fewer encumbrances." A tyrant was threatening
the philosopher Theodorus with death and even with lack of burial:
"You have the right," he replied, "to please yourself, you have
within your power only a half pint of my blood; for as to burial,
you are a fool if you think it makes any difference to me whether I
rot above ground or beneath it." Julius Canus, a rarely great man,
whom even the fact that he was born in our own age does not prevent
our admiring, had had a long dispute with Gaius,\a and when, as he
was leaving, Phalaris said to him: "That you may not by any chance
comfort yourself with a foolish hope, I have ordered you to be
executed," he replied: "Most excellent prince, I tender vou my
thanks." I am not sure what he meant, for many explanations occur to
me. Did he wish to be insulting and show him how great his
cruelty must be if it made death a kindness? Or was he
taunting him with the everyday proofs of insanity? - for those whose
children had been murdered and whose property had been confiscated
used to thank him - or was it that he accepted death as a happy
escape? However it may be, it was a high-souled reply. But
someone will say: "There was a possibility that after this Gaius
might order him to live." Canus had no fear of that; it was well
known that in orders of this sort Gaius was a man of his word!
Will you believe that Canus spent the ten intervening days before
his execution in no anxiety of any sort? What the man said,
what he did, how tranquil he was, passes all credence. <Ess2-269>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xiv. 7-10
He was playing chess when the centurion who
was dragging off a whole company of victims to death ordered that he
also be summoned. Having been called, he counted the pawns and
said to his partner: "See that after my death you do not claim
falsely that you won"; then nodding to the centurion, he said: "You
will bear witness that I am one pawn ahead." Do you think that at
that board Canus was playing a game? Nay, he was making
game! His friends were sad at the thought of losing such a
man; but "Why," said he, "are you sorrowful? You are wondering
whether our souls are immortal; but I shall soon know." Nor up to
the very end did he cease to search for truth and to make his own
death a subject for debate. His own teacher of philosophy was
accompanying him, and, when they were not far from the low hill on
which the daily sacrifice to Caesar, our god, was made, said: "What
are you thinking of now, Canus, or what state of mind are you in?"
And Canus said: "I have determined to watch whether the spirit will
be conscious that it is leaving the body when that fleetest of
moments comes," and he promised that, if he discovered anything, he
would make the round of his friends, and reveal to them what the
state of the soul really is.{Sidney+} Here
is tranquillity in the very midst of the storm, here is a mind
worthy of immortality - a spirit that summons its own fate to the
proof of truth, that, in the very act of taking that one last step,
questions the departing soul, and learns, not merely up to the point
of death, but seeks to learn something even from death itself.
No one has ever played the philosopher longer. Not hastily shall so
great a man be abandoned, and he must be spoken of with <Ess2-271>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xiv. 10-xv. 3
respect. O most glorious soul, chief
victim of the murders of Gaius, to the memory of all time will I
consign thee! But it does no
good to have got rid of the causes of individual sorrow; for one is
sometimes seized by hatred of the whole human race. {Timon+} When you reflect how rare is simplicity+, how unknown is
innocence, and how good faith {trust+}
scarcely exists, except when it is profitable, and when you think of
all the throng of successful crimes and of the gains and losses of
lust, both equally hateful, and of ambition that, so far from
restraining itself within its own bounds, now gets glory from
baseness - when we remember these things, the mind is plunged into
night, and as though the virtues, which it is now neither possible
to expect nor profitable to possess, had been overthrown, there
comes overwhelming gloom. We ought, therefore, to bring
ourselves to believe that all the vices of the crowd are, not
hateful, but ridiculous, and to imitate Democritus rather than
Heraclitus. For the latter, whenever he went forth into
public, used to weep, the former to laugh; to the one all human
doings seemed to be miseries, to the other follies. And so we
ought to adopt a lighter view of things, and put up with them in an
indulgent spirit; it is more human\a to laugh at life than to lament
over it. {cheer+} Add, too, that he deserves better
of the human race also who laughs at it than he who bemoans it; for
the one allows it some measure of good hope, while the other
foolishly weeps over things that he despairs of seeing corrected.
And, considering
everything, he shows a greater mind who does not restrain his
laughter than he who does not restrain his tears, since the laugher
gives expression to the mildest of the emotions, and <Ess2-273>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xv. 3-xvi. 1
deems that there is nothing important,
nothing serious, nor wretched either, in the whole outfit of
life. Let a man set before himself the causes, one by one,
that give rise to joy and sadness, and he will learn that what Bion
said is true, that all the doings of men are just like their
beginnings, and that their life is no more respectable or serious
than their conception, that born from nothingness they go back to
nothingness. Yet it is better to accept calmly the ways
of the public and the vices of man, and be thrown neither into
laughter nor into tears; for it is unending misery to be worried by
the misfortunes of others, and unhuman pleasure to take delight in
the misfortunes of ethers, just as it is a useless show of humanity
to weep and pull a long face because someone is burying a son.
In the matter of one's own misfortunes, too, the right way to act is
to bestow on them the measure of sorrow that Nature, not custom,
demands; for many shed tears in order to make a show of them, and,
whenever a spectator is lacking, their eyes are dry, though they
judge it disgraceful not to weep when everyone is doing it.
This evil of depending on the opinion of others has become so deeply
implanted that even grief, the most natural thing in the world,
becomes now a matter of pretence. {sentimentality+} I come now to a
class of cases which is wont with good cause to sadden and bring us
concern. When good men come to bad ends, when Socrates is
forced to die in prison, Rutilius to live in exile, Pompey and
Cicero to offer their necks to their own clients, and great Cato,
the living image of all the virtues, by falling upon his sword to
show that the end had come for himself and for the state at the same
time, we needs must be distressed that Fortune pays her re- <Ess2-275>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xvi. 1-xvii. 1
wards so unjustly. And what hope can
anyone then have for himself when he sees that the best men suffer
the worst fate? What then is the answer? See the manner in
which each one of them bore his fate, and if they were brave, desire
with your heart hearts like theirs, if they perished like a woman
and a coward, then nothing perished; either they deserve that you
should admire their virtue, or they do not deserve that you should
desire their cowardice. For if the greatest men by dying
bravely make others cowards, what could be more shameful? Let
us praise those deserving of praise over and over and say: "The
braver a man is, the happier he is! You may escaped from all
accident, jealousy, and sickness; you have gone forth from prison;
it was not that you seemed to the gods to be worthy of evil fortune,
but unworthy of being subject any longer to the power of Fortune."
But those who draw back and on the very threshold of death look back
toward life - there is need to lay hands on these! I shall
weep for no one who is happy, for no one who weeps; the one with his
own hand has wiped away my tears, the other by his tears has made
himself unworthy of having any of mine. Should I weep for Hercules
because he was burned alive? or for Regulus because he was
pierced by so many nails? or for Cato because he wounded his
own wounds\a? All these by a slight sacrifice of time
found out how they might become eternal, and by dying reached
immortality.
And this, too, affords no small occasion for anxieties - if you are
bent on assuming a pose and never reveal yourself to anyone frankly,
in the fashion of many who live a false life that is all made up for
show; for it is torturous to be constantly watching <Ess2-277>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xvii. 1-4
oneself and be fearful of being caught out
of our usual role. And we are never free from concern if we
think that every time anyone looks at us he is always taking-our
measure; for many things happen that strip off our pretence against
our will, and, though all this attention to self is successful, yet
the life of those who live under a mask cannot be happy and without
anxiety. But how much pleasure there is in simplicity that is
pure, in itself unadorned, and veils no part of its character!{PlainDealer+} Yet even such
a life as this does run some risk of scorn, if everything lies open
to everybody; for there are those who disdain whatever has become
too familiar. But neither does virtue run any risk of being
despised when she is brought close to the eyes, and it is better to
be scorned by reason of simplicity than tortured by perpetual
pretence. Yet we should employ moderation in the matter;
there is much difference between living naturally and living
carelessly.
Moreover, we ought to retire into ourselves very often; for
intercourse with those of dissimilar natures disturbs our settled
calm, and rouses the passions anew, and aggravates any weakness in
the mind that has not been thoroughly healed. Nevertheless the
two things must be combined and resorted to alternately - solitude
and the crowd. The one will make us long for men, the other for
ourselves, and the one will relieve the other; solitude will cure
our aversion to the throng, the throng our weariness of
solitude. And the mind must not be kept invariably at the same
tension, but must be diverted to amusements. Socrates
did not blush to play with little children, and Cato, when he was
wearied by the cares of state, would relax his mind with wine, and
Scipio would <Ess2-279>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xvii. 4-7
disport his triumphal and soldierly person
to the sound of music, moving not with the voluptuous contortions
that are now the fashion, when men even in walking souirm with more
than a woman's voluptuousness, but in the manly style in which men
in the days of old were wont to dance during the times of sport and
festival, risking no loss of dignity even if their own enemies
looked on. The mind must be given relaxation; it will arise
better and keener after resting. As rich fields must not be
foreed - for their productiveness, if they have no rest, will
quickly exhaust them - so constant labour will break the vigour of
the mind, but if it is released and relaxed a little while, it will
recover its powers; continuous mental toil breeds in the mind a
certain dullness and languor. Nor would the
desire of men tend so much in this direction unless sport and
amusement brought a sort of pleasure that was natural, but the
frequent use of these will steal all weight and all force from the
mind; for sleep also is necessary for refreshment, nevertheless if
you prolong it throughout the day and night, it will be death.
There is a great difference between slackening and removing your
bond! The founders of our laws appointed days of festival in
order that men might be foreed by the state into merry_making+, thinking that it was
necessary to modify their toil by some interruption of their tasks;
and among great men, as I have remarked, some used to set aside
fixed days every month for a holiday, some divided every day into
play-time and worktime. Asinius Pollio, the great orator, I
remember, had such a rule, and never worked at anything beyond the
tenth hour\a; he would not even read letters after that hour for
fear something new might arise <Ess2-281>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xvii. 7-9
that needed attention, but in those two
hours laid aside the weariness of the whole long day. Some
break off in the middle of the day, and reserve some task that
requires lighter effort for the afternoon hours. Our
ancestors, too forbade any new motion to be made in the senate after
the tenth hour. The soldier divides his watches, and those who have
just returned from an expedition have the whole night free. We
must be indulgent to the mind, and from time to time must grant it
the leisure that serves as its food and strength. And, too, we
ought to take walks out-of-doors in order that the mind may be
strengthened and refreshed by the open air and much breathing;
sometimes it will get new vigour from a journey by carriage and a
change of place and festive company and generous drinking. At
times we ought to reach the point even of intoxication, not drowning
ourselves in drink, yet succumbing to it; for it washes away
troubles, and stirs the mind from its very depths and heals its
sorrow just as it does certain ills-of the body; and the inventor of
wine is not called the Releaser\a on account of the licence it gives
to the tongue, but because it frees the mind from bondage to cares
and emancipates it and gives it new life, and makes it bolder in all
that it attempts. But, as in freedom, so in wine there is a
wholesome moderation. It is believed that Solon and Arcesilaus
were fond of wine, and Cato has been reproached for drunkenness; but
whoever reproaches that man will more easily make reproach
honourable than Cato base. Yet we ought not to do this often,
for fear that the mind may contract an evil habit, nevertheless
there are times when it must be drawn into rejoicing and freedom,
and <Ess2-283>
ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND, xvii. 10-12
gloomy sobriety must be banished for a
while. For whether we believe with the Greek poet\a that
"sometimes it is a pleasure also to rave," or with Plato that "the
sane mind knocks in vain at the door of poetry," or with Aristotle
that "no great genius has ever existed without some touch of
madness"\b - be that as it may, the lofty utterance that rises above
the attempts of others is impossible unless the mind is
excited. When it has scorned the vulgar and the
commonplace, and has soared far aloft fired by divine inspiration,
then alone it chants a strain too lofty for mortal lips. So
long as it is left to itself, it is impossible for it to reach any
sublime and difficult height; it must forsake the common track and
be driven to frenzy and champ the bit and run away with its rider
and rush to a height that it would have feared to climb by
itself. Here are the rules, my dearest Serenus, by which you
may preserve tranquillity, by which you may restore it, by which you
may resist the vices that steal upon it unawares. Yet be sure
of this - none of them is strong enough to guard a thing so frail
unless we surround the wavering mind with earnest and unceasing
care. <Ess2-285>
DE BREVITATE VITAE+ BOOK X TO
PAULINUS ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE
The majority of
mortals, Paulinus,\a complain bitterly of the spitefulness of
Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, because even
this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so
swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they
are getting ready to live. Nor is it merely the common herd and the
unthinking crowd that bemoan what is, as men deem it, an universal
ill; the same feeling has called forth complaint also from men who
were famous. It was this that made the greatest of physicians
exclaim that "life is short, art is long;"\b it was this that led
Aristotle,\c while expostulating with Nature, to enter an indictment
most unbecoming to a wise man - that, in point of age, she has shown
such favour to animals that they --------
b The famous
aphorism of Hippocrates of Cos: tipaX(,g, @ 6@'r@XP'q
PaKp@. c An error for Theophrastus, as shown by Cicero,
Tusc. Disp. iii. 69: "Theophrastus autem moriens
accusasse naturam dicitur, quod cervis et cornicibus vitam
diuturnam, quorum id nihil interesset, hominibus, quorum maxime
interfuisset, tam exiguam vitam dedisset; quorum si aetas potuisset
esse longinquior, futurum fuisse ut omnibus perfectis artibus omni
doctrina hominum vita erudiretur." <Ess2-287>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, 1. 2-ii. 2
drag out five or ten lifetimes,\a but that a
much shorter limit is fixed for man, though he is born for so many
and such great achievements. It is not that we have a short
space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough,
and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the
accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is
well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and
carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by
the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we
were aware that it was passing. So it is -the life we receive is not
short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are
wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered
in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while
wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian,
increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it
properly.
Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly;
life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is
possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome
devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine,
another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition
that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by
the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the
hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always
either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about
their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in
a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in
the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own;
many, following no fixed aim, shifting <Ess2-289>
ON THF, SHORTNESS OF LIFE, ii. 2-4
and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged
by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed
principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them
unawares while they loll and yawn - so surely does it happen that I
cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets
delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: "The part of life we
really live is small."\a For all the rest of existence is not life,
but merely time. Vices beset us and surround us on every side,
and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the
discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have
overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust. Their victims are
never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they chance to
find some release, like the waters of the deep sea which continue to
heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about, and no
rest from their lusts abides. Think you that I am speaking of
the wretches whose evils are admitted? Look at those whose
prosperity men flock to behold; they are smothered by their
blessings. To how many are riches a burden! From how
many do eloquence and the daily straining to display their powers
draw forth blood! How many are pale from constant
pleasures! To how many does the throng of clients that
crowd about them leave no freedom! In short, run through the
list of all these men from the lowest to the highest - this man
desires an advocate,\b this one answers the call, that one is on
trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence; no one asserts
his claim to himself, everyone is wasted for the sake of
another. Ask about the men whose names are known by heart, and
you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them: A
cultivates B and B <Ess2-291>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, ii. 5-iii. 2
cultivates C; no one is his own
master. And then certain men show the most senseless
indignation - they complain of the insolence of their superiors,
because they were too busy to see them when they wished an
audience! But can anyone have the hardihood to complain of the
pride of another when he himself has no time to attend to
himself? After all, no matter who you are, the great man does
sometimes look toward you even if his face is insolent, he does
sometimes condescend to listen to your words, he permits you to
appear at his side; but you never deign to look upon yourself, to
give ear to yourself. There is no reason, therefore, to count
anyone in debt for such services, seeing that, when you performed
them, you had no wish for another's company, but could not endure
your own.
Though all the brilliant intellects of the ages were to concentrate
upon this one theme, never could they adequately express their
wonder at this dense darkness of the human mind. Men do not
suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and
arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their
lands, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life -nay, they
themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it.
No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet
among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In
guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes
to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which
it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal. And
so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older
men and say: "I see that you have reached the farthest limit of
human life, you are <Ess2-293>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, iii. 2-5
pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or
are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a
reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a
moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how
much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much
in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on
social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our
own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will
see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count.
Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how
few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your
own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when
your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so
long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not
aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless
sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of
society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive
that you are dying before your season!"\a What, then, is the reason
of this? You live as if you were destined to live forever, no
thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has
already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you
drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day
which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.
You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of
immortals. You will hear many men saying: "After my fiftieth
year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me
from public duties." And what guarantee, pray, have you that your
life will last longer? Who will <Ess2-295>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, iii. 5-iv. 4
suffer your course to be just as you plan
it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the
remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which
cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to
live just when we must cease to live! What foolish
forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the
fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point
to which few have attained! You will see
that the most powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in
which they long for leisure, acclaim it, and prefer it to all their
blessings. They desire at times, if it could be with safety,
to descend from their high pinnacle; for, though nothing from
without should assail or shatter, Fortune of its very self comes
crashing down.\a The deified
Augustus, to whom the gods vouchsafed more than to any other man,
did not cease to pray for rest and to seek release from public
affairs; all his conversation ever reverted to this subject - his
hope of leisure. This was the sweet, even if vain, consolation
with which he would gladden his labours - that he would one day live
for himself. In a letter addressed to the senate, in which he
had promised that his rest would not be devoid of dignity nor
inconsistent with his former glory, I find these words: "But these
matters can be shown better by deeds than by promises.
Nevertheless, since the joyful reality is still far distant, my
desire for that time most earnestly prayed for has led me to
forestall some of its delight by the pleasure of words." So
desirable a thing did leisure seem that he anticipated it in thought
because he could not attain it in reality. He who saw
everything depending upon himself alone, who deter- <Ess2-297>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, iv. 4-5
mined the fortune of individuals and of
nations, thought most happily of that future day on which he should
lay aside his greatness. He had discovered how much sweat
those blessings that shone throughout all lands drew forth, how many
secret worries they concealed. Forced to pit arms first
against his countrymen, then against his colleagues, and lastly
against his relatives, he shed blood on land and sea. Through
Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and almost all countries
he followed the path of battle, and when his troops were weary of
shedding Roman blood, he turned them to foreign wars. While he
was pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the enemies planted
in the midst of a peaceful empire, while he was extending its bounds
even beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates and the Danube, in Rome
itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others
were being whetted to slay him. Not yet had he escaped their
plots, when his daughter\a and all the noble youths who were bound
to her by adultery as by a sacred oath, oft alarmed his failing
years -and there was Paulus, and a second time the need to fear a
woman in league with an Antony.\b When be had cut away these
ulcers\c together with the limbs themselves, others would grow in
their place; just as in a body that was overburdened with blood,
there was always a rupture somewhere. And so he longed for
leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief for his
labours. This was the prayer of one who was able to
answer the prayers of mankind. <Ess2-299>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, v. 1-vi. 1
Marcus Cicero, long flung among men like
Catiline and Clodius and Pompey and Crassus, some open enemies,
others doubtful friends, as he is tossed to and fro along with the
state and seeks to keep it from destruction, to be at last swept
away, unable as he was to be restful in prosperity or patient in
adversity - how many times does he curse that very consulship of
his, which he had lauded without end, though not without
reason! How tearful the words he uses in a letter\a written to
Atticus, when Pompey the elder had been conquered, and the son was
still trying to restore his shattered arms in Spain! "Do you ask,"
he said, "what I am doing here? I am lingering in my Tusculan villa
half a prisoner." He then proceeds to other statements, in which he
bewails his former life and complains of the present and despairs of
the future. Cicero said that he was "half a prisoner." But, in
very truth, never will the wise man resort to so lowly a term, never
will he be half a prisoner - he who always possesses an undiminished
and stable liberty, being free and his own master and towering over
all others. For what can possibly be above him who is above
Fortune? When Livius Drusus,\b a bold and energetic man, had
with the support of a huge crowd drawn from all Italy proposed new
laws and the evil measures of the Gracchi, seeing no way out for his
policy, which he could neither carry through nor abandon when once
started on, he is said to have complained bitterly against the life
of unrest he had had from the cradle, and to have exclaimed that he
was the only person who had never had a holiday even as a boy. For,
while he <Ess2-301>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, vi. 1-4
was still a ward and wearing the dress of a
boy, he had had the courage to commend to the favour of a jury those
who were accused, and to make his influence felt in the law-courts,
so powerfully, indeed, that it is very well known that in certain
trials he foreed a favourable verdict. To what lengths was not such
premature ambition destined to go? One might have known that
such precocious hardihood would result in great personal and public
misfortune. And so it was too late for him to complain that he
had never had a holiday when from boyhood he had been a
trouble-maker and a nuisance in the forum. It is a question
whether he died by his own hand; for he fell from a sudden wound
received in his groin, some doubting whether his death was
voluntary, no one, whether it was timely. It would be
superfluous to mention more who, though others deemed them the
happiest of men, have expressed their loathing for every act of
their years, and with their own lips have given true testimony
against themselves; but by these complaints they changed neither
themselves nor others. For when they have vented their
feelings in words, they fall back into their usual round.
Heaven knows! such lives as yours, though they should pass the
limit of a thousand years, will shrink into the merest span; your
vices will swallow up any amount of time. The space you have,
which reason can prolong, although it naturally hurries away, of
necessity escapes from you quickly; for you do not seize it, you
neither hold it back, nor impose delay upon the swiftest thing in
the world, but you allow it to slip away as if it were something
superfluous and that could be replaced. <Ess2-303>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, vii. 1-4
But among the worst I count also those who
have time for nothing but wine and lust; for none have more shameful
engrossments.\a The others, even if they are possessed by the empty
dream of glory+, nevertheless go astray in a seemly
manner; though you should cite to me the men who are avaricious, the
men who are wrathful, whether busied with unjust hatredsthe men are
wrathful, whether busied with unjust hatred or with unjust wars,
these all sin in more manly+{virilius+} fashion. But those
who are plunged into the pleasures of the belly and into lust bear a
stain that is dishonourable. Search into the hours of all these
people,\b see how much time they give to accounts, how much to
laying snares, how much to fearing them, how much to paying court,
how much to being courted, how much is taken up in giving or
receiving bail, how much by banquets - for even these have now
become a matter of business -, and you will see how their interests,
whether you call them evil or good, do not allow them time to
breathe.
Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be sucecssfully
followed by a man who is busied with many things - eloquence cannot,
nor the liberal studies - since the mind, when its interests are
divided, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that
is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man
is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is
harder to learn. Of the other arts there are many teachers
everywhere; some of them we have seen that mere boys have mastered
so thoroughly that they could even play the master. It takes
the whole of life to learn how to live, and - what will perhaps make
you wonder more - it takes the whole of life to learn how to
die. Many very great men, having laid aside all <Ess2-305>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, vii. 4-7
their encumbrances, having renounced riches,
business, and pleasures, have made it their one aim up to the very
end of life to know how to live; yet the greater number of them have
departed from life confesssing that they did not yet know -still
less do those others know. Believe me, it takes a great man
and one who has risen far above human weaknesses not to allow any of
his time to be filched from him, and it follows that the life of
such a man is very long because he has devoted wholly to himself
whatever time he has had. None of it lay neglected and idle;
none of it was under the control of another, for, guarding it most
grudgingly, he found nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange
for his time. And so that man had time enough, but those
who have been robbed of much of their life by the public, have
necessarily had too little of it. And there is no reason for
you to suppose that these people are not sometimes aware of their
loss. Indeed, you will hear many of those who are burdened by
great prosperity cry out at times in the midst of their throngs of
clients, or their pleadings in court, or their other glorious
miseries: "I have no chance to live." Of course you have no
chance! All those who summon you to themselves, turn you
away from your own self. Of how many days has that defendant
robbed you? Of how many that candidate? Of how many that
old woman wearied with burying her heirs?\a Of how many that man who
is shamming sickness for the purpose of exciting the greed of the
legacy-hunters? Of how many that very powerful friend who has you
and your like on the list, not of his friends, but of his
retinue? Check off, I say, and review the days of your life;
you will see that very <Ess2-307>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, vii. 8-viii. 1
few, and those the refuse. have been
left for you. That man who had prayed for the fasces,\a when
he attains them, desires to lay them aside and says over and over:
"When will this year be over!" That man gives games,\b and, after
setting great value on gaining the chance to give them, now says:
"When shall I be rid of them?" That advocate is lionized throughout
the whole forum, and fills all the place with a great crowd that
stretches farther than he can be heard, yet he says: "When will
vacation time come?" Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a
yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But he
who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every
day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the
morrow. For what new pleasure is there that any hour can now
bring? They are all known, all have been enjoyed to the
full. Mistress Fortune may deal out the rest as she likes; his
life has already found safety. Something may be added to it,
but nothing taken from it, and he will take any addition as the man
who is satisfied and filled takes the food which he does not desire
and yet can hold. And so there is no reason for you to think
that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles;
he has not lived long - he has existed long. For what if you
should think that that man had had a long voyage who had been caught
by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and
thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters,
had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much
voyaging did he have, but much tossing about. I am often
filled with wonder when I see some men demanding the time of others
and those from whom <Ess2-309>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, viii. 1-4
they ask it most indulgent. Both of
them fix their eyes on the object of the request for time, neither
of them on the time itself; just as if what is asked were nothing,
what is given, nothing. Men trifle with the most precious
thing in the world; but they are blind to it because it is an
incorporeal thing, because it does not come beneath the sight of the
eyes, and for this reason it is counted a very cheap thing - nay, of
almost no value at all. Men set very great store by pensions
and doles, and for these they hire out their labour or service or
effort. But no one sets a value on time; all use it
lavishly as if it cost nothing. But see how these same people
clasp the knees of physicians if they fall ill and the danger of
death draws nearer, see how ready they are, if threatened with
capital punishment, to spend all their possessions in order to
live! So great is the inconsistency of their
feelings. But if each one could have the number of his
future years set before him as is possible in the case of the years
that have passed, how alarmed those would be who saw only a few
remaining, how sparing of them would they be! And yet it is
easy to dispense an amount that is assured, no matter how small it
may be; but that must be guarded more carefully which will fail you
know not when. Yet there is no
reason for you to suppose that these people do not know how precious
a thing time is; for to those whom they love most devotedly they
have a habit of saying that they are ready to give them a part of
their own years. And they do give it, without realizing it;
but the result of their giving is that they themselves suffer loss
without adding to the years of their dear ones. But the very
thing <Ess2-311>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, viii. 4-ix. 2
they do not know is whether they are
suffering loss; therefore, the removal of something that is lost
without being noticed they find is bearable. Yet no one will bring
back the years, no one will bestow you once more on yourself.
Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse
nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you
of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it will not prolong
itself at the command of a king, or at the applause of the
populace. Just as it was started on its first day, so it
will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay.
And what will be the result? You have been engrossed, life
hastens by; meanwhile death will be at hand, for which, willy nilly,
you must find leisure. Can anything be
sillier than the point of view of certain people - I mean those who
boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged
in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in
making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to
the distant future+; yet postponement is the greatest
waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches
from them the present by promising something hereafter. The
greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the
morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of that which lies in the
hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own.
Whither do you look? At what goal do you aim? All things
that are still to come lie in uncertainty; live straightway!
See how the greatest of bards cries out, and, as if inspired with
divine utterance, sings the saving strain: <Ess2-313>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, ix, 2-x. 1
The fairest day in hapless mortals' life
Is ever first to flee.-
"Why do you delay,"
says he, "Why are you idle? Unless you seize the day, it
flees." Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore you
must vie with time's swiftness in the speed of using it, and, as
from a torrent that rushes by and will not always flow, you must
drink quickly. And, too, the utterance of the bard is most
admirably worded to cast censure upon infinite delay, in that he
says, not "the fairest age," but "the fairest day." Why, to whatever
length your greed inclines, do you stretch before yourself months
and years in long array, unconcerned and slow though time flies so
fast? The poet speaks to you about the day, and about
this very day that is flying. Is there, then, any doubt that
for hapless mortals, that is, for men who are engrossed, the fairest
day is ever the first to flee? Old age surprises them while their
minds are still childish, and they come to it unprepared and
unarmed, for they have made no provision for it; they have stumbled
upon it suddenly and unexpectedly, they did not notice that it was
drawing nearer day by day. Even as conversation or reading or
deep meditation on some subject beguiles the traveller, and he finds
that he has reached the end of his journey before he was aware that
he was approaching it, just so with this unceasing and most swift
journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether waking or
sleeping; those who are engrossed become aware of it only at the
end. Should I choose to divide my subject into heads with
their separate proofs, many arguments will occur to me by which I
could prove that busy men find life very short. But
Fabianus,\b who was none of your <Ess2-315>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, x. 1-4
lecture-room philosophers of to-day, but one
of the genuine and old-fashioned kind, used to say that we must
fight against the passions+{adfectus+} with main force, not with
artifice, and that the battle-line must be turned by,a bold attack,
not by inflicting pinpricks; that sophistry is not serviceable, for
the passions must be, not nipped, but crushed. Yet, in order
that the victims of them nay be censured, each for his own
particular fault, I say that they must be instructed, not merely
wept over.
Life is divided into three periods - that which has been, that which
is, that which will be. Of these the present time is short,
the future is doubtful, the past is certain. For the
last is the one over which Fortune has lost control, is the one
which cannot be brought back under any man's power. But men
who are engrossed lose this; for they have no time to look back upon
the past, and even if they should have, it is not pleasant to recall
something they must view with regret. They are, therefore, unwilling
to direct their thoughts backward to ill-spent hours, and those
whose vices become obvious if they review the past, even the vices
which were disguised under some allurement of momentary pleasure, do
not have the courage to revert to those hours. No one
willingly turns his thought back to the past, unless all his acts
have been submitted to the censorship of his conscience, which is
never deceived; he who has ambitiously coveted, proudly scorned,
recklessly conquered, treacherously betrayed, greedily seized, or
lavishly squandered, must needs fear his own memory. And yet this is
the part of our time that is sacred and set apart, put beyond the
reach of all human mishaps, and removed from the dominion of
Fortune, the part which is disquieted by <Ess2-317>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, x. 4-xi. 1
no want, by no fear, by no attacks of
disease; this can neither be troubled nor be snatched away - it is
an everlasting and unanxious possession. The present offers
only one day at a time, and each by minutes; but all the days of
past time will appear when you bid them, they will suffer you to
behold them and keep them at your will - a thing which those who are
engrossed have no time to do. The mind that is untroubled and
tranquil has the power to roam into all the parts of its life; but
the minds of the engrossed, just as if weighted by a yoke, cannot
turn and look behind. And so their life vanishes into an
abyss; and as it does no good, no matter how much water you pour
into a vessel, if there is no bottom\a to receive and hold it, so
with time - it makes no difference how much is given; if there is
nothing for it to settle upon, it passes out through the chinks and
holes of the mind. Present time is very brief, so brief,
indeed, that to some there seems to be none; for it is always in
motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it has
come, and can no more brook delay than the firmament or the stars,
whose ever unresting movement never lets them abide in the same
track. The engrossed, therefore, are concerned with present
time alone, and it is so brief that it cannot be grasped, and even
this is filched away from them, distracted as they are among many
things. In a
word, do you want to know how they do not "live long"? See how
eager they are to live long! Decrepit old men beg in their
prayers for the addition of a few more years; they pretend that they
are younger than they are; they comfort themselves with a falsehood,
and are as pleased to deceive themselves as if they deceived Fate at
the same time. But <Ess2-319>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xi. 1-xii. 2
when at last some infirmity has reminded
them of their mortality, in what terror do they die, feeling that
they are being dragged out of life, and not merely leaving it.
They cry out that they have been fools, because they have not really
lived, and that they will live henceforth in leisure if only they
escape from this illness; then at last they reflect how uselessly
they have striven for things which they did not enjoy, and how all
their toil has gone for nothing. But for those whose life is
passed remote from all business, why should it not be ample?
None of it is assigned to another, none of it is scattered in this
direction and that, none of it is committed to Fortune, none of it
perishes from neglect, none is subtracted by wasteful giving, none
of it is unused; the whole of it, so to speak, yields income. And
so, however small the amount of it, it is abundantly sufficient, and
therefore, whenever his last day shall come, the wise man will not
hesitate to go to meet death with steady step. Perhaps you ask whom I
would call "the engrossed "? There is no reason for you to
suppose that I mean only those whom the dogs\a that have at length
been let in drive out from the law- court, those whom you see either
gloriously crushed in their own crowd of followers, or scornfully in
someone else's, those whom social duties call forth from their own
homes to bump them against someone else's doors, or whom the
praetor's hammer\b keeps busy in seeking gain that is disreputable
and that will one day fester. Even the leisure of some men is
engrossed; in their villa or on their couch, in the midst of
solitude, although they have withdrawn from all others, they are
themselves the source of their own worry; we should say that these
are living, not in leisure, but in busy <Ess2-321>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xii. 2-4
idleness.\a Would you say that that man is
at leisure\b who arranges with finical care his Corinthian bronzes,
that the mania of a few makes costly, and spends the greater part of
each day upon rusty bits of copper? Who sits in a public
wrestling-place (for, to our shame I we labour with vices that are
not even Roman) watching the wrangling of lads? Who sorts out
the herds of his pack-mules into pairs of the same age and colour?
Who feeds all the newest athletes? Tell me, would you say that
those men are at leisure who pass many hours at the barber's while
they are being stripped of whatever grew out the night before?
while a solemn debate is held over each separate hair? while
either disarranged locks are restored to their place or thinning
ones drawn from this side and that toward the forehead? How
angry they get if the barber has been a bit too careless, just as if
he were shearing a real man! How they flare up if any of their
mane is lopped off, if any of it lies out of order, if it does not
all fall into its proper ringlets! Who of these would not
rather have the state disordered than his hair? Who is not
more concerned to have his head trim rather than safe? Who
would not rather be well barbered than upright? Would you say
that these are at leisure who are occupied with the comb and the
mirror? And what of those who are engaged in composing,
hearing, and learning songs, while they twist the voice, whose best
and simplest movement Nature designed to be straightforward,{PlainDealer+} into the meanderings of some
indolent tune, who are always snapping their fingers as they beat
time to some song they have in their head, who are overheard humming
---- b For the
technical meaning of otiosi, "the leisured," see Seneca's definition
at the beginning of chap. 14. <Ess2-323>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xii. 4-7
a tune when they have been summoned to
serious, often even melancholy, matters? These have not
leisure, but idle occupation. And their banquets, Heaven
knows! I cannot reckon among their unoccupied hours, since I
see how anxiously they set out their silver plate, how diligently
they tie up the tunics of their pretty slave-boys, how breathlessly
they watch to see in what style the wild boar issues from the hands
of the cook, with what speed at a given signal smoothfaced boys
hurry to perform their duties, with what skill the birds are carved
into portions all according to rule, how carefully unhappy little
lads wipe up the spittle of drunkards. By such means
they seek the reputation of being fastidious and elegant, and to
such an extent do their evils follow them into all the privacies of
life that they can neither eat nor drink without ostentation.
And I would not count these among the leisured class either - the
men who have themselves borne hither and thither in a sedan-chair
and a litter, and are punctual at the hours for their rides as if it
were unlawful to omit them, who are reminded by someone else when
they must bathe, when they must swim, when they must dine; so
enfeebled are they by the excessive lassitude of a pampered mind
that they cannot find out by themselves whether they are
hungry! I hear that one of these pampered people - provided
that you can call it pampering to unlearn the habits of human life -
when he had been lifted by hands from the bath and placed in his
sedan- chair, said questioningly: "Am I now seated?" Do you think
that this man, who does not know whether he is sitting, knows
whether he is alive, whether he sees, whether he is at
leisure? I find it hard to say whether I pity him <Ess2-325>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xii. 8-xiii. 2
more if he really did not know, or if he
pretended not to know this. They really are subject to forgetfulness
of many things, but they also pretend forgetfulness of many.
Some vices delight them as being proofs of their prosperity; it
seems the part of a man who is very lowly and despicable to know
what he is doing. After this imagine that the mimes\a
fabricate many things to make a mock of luxury! In very truth,
they pass over more than they invent, and such a multitude of
unbelievable vices has come forth in this age, so clever in this one
direction, that by now we can charge the mimes with neglect.
To think that there is anyone who is so lost in luxury that he takes
another's word as to whether he is sitting down! This man,
then, is not at leisure, you must apply to him a different term - he
is sick, nay, he is dead; that man is at leisure, who has also a
perception of his leisure. But this other who is half alive,
who, in order that he may know the postures of his own body, needs
someone to tell him - how can he be the master of any of his time?
It would be
tedious to mention all the different men who have spent the whole of
their life over chess or ball or the practice of baking their bodies
in the sun. They are not unoccupied whose pleasures are made a
busy occupation. For instance, no one will have any doubt that
those are laborious triflers who spend their time on useless
literary problems, of whom even among the Romans there is now a
great number. It was once a foible confined to the Greeks to inquire
into what number of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the
Odyssey was written first, whether moreover they belong to the same
author, and various other matters of this stamp, which, if you keep
them <Ess2-327>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xiii. 2-6
to yourself, in no way pleasure your secret
soul, and, if you publish them, make you seem more of a bore than a
scholar. But now this vain passion for learning useless things
has assailed the Romans also. In the last few days I
heard someone telling who was the first Roman general to do this or
that; Duilius was the first who won a naval battle, Curius Dentatus
was the first who had elephants led in his triumph. Still,
these matters, even if they add nothing to real glory, are
nevertheless concerned with signal services to the state; there will
be no profit in such knowledge, nevertheless it wins our attention
by reason of the attractiveness of an empty subject. We may
excuse also those who inquire into this - who first induced the
Romans to go on board ship. It was Claudius, and this was the
very reason he was surnamed Caudex, because among the ancients a
structure formed by joining together several boards was called a
caudex, whence also the Tables of the Law are called codices," and,
in the ancient fashion, boats that carry provisions up the Tiber are
even to-day called codicariae. Doubtless this too may have some
point - the fact that Valerius Corvinus was the first to conquer
Messana, and was the first of the family of the Valerii to bear the
surname Messana because be had transferred the name of the conquered
city to himself, and was later called Messala after the gradual
corruption of the name in the popular speech. Perhaps you will
permit someone to be interested also in this - the fact that Lucius
Sulla was the first to exhibit loosed lions in the Circus, though at
other times they were exhibited in chains, and that javelin-throwers
were sent by King Bocchus to despatch them? And, doubtless,
this too may find some excuse - but does <Ess2-329>
THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xiii. 6-8
it serve any useful purpose to know that
Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants
in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic
battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according to
report, was conspicuous among the leaders\a of old for the kindness
of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human
beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death?
That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not
enough! Let them be crushed by aninials of monstrous
bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion
lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be
jealous of an act that was nowise human.\b O, what blindness does
great prosperity cast upon our minds! When he was casting so
many troops of wretched human beings to wild beasts born under a
different sky, when he was proclaiming war between creatures so ill
matched, when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the
Roman people, who itself was soon to be foreed to shed more.
he then believed that he was beyond the power of Nature. But
later this same man, betrayed by Alexandrine treachery, offered
himself to the dagger of the vilest slave, and then at last
discovered what an empty boast his surname\c was. But to return to
the point from which I have digressed, and to show that some people
bestow useless pains upon these same matters - the man I mentioned
related that Metellus, when he triumphed after his victory over the
Carthaginians in Sicily, was the only one of all the Romans who had
caused a hundred and twenty captured elephants to be led ---- c i.e., Magnus.
<Ess2-331>
ON THE SHORTNFSS OF LIFE, xiii. 8-xiv. 1
before his car; that Sulla was the last of
the Roman's who extended the pomerium,\a which in old times it was
customary to extend after the acquisition of Italian but never of
provincial, territory. Is it more profitable to know this than
that Mount Aventine, according to him, is outside the pomerium for
one of two reasons, either because that was the place to which the
plebeians had seceded, or because the birds had not been favourable
when Remus took his auspices on that spot - and, in turn, countless
other reports that are either crammed with falsehood or are of the
same sort? For though you grant that they tell these things in good
faith, though they pledge themselves for the truth of what they
write, still whose mistakes will be made fewer by such
stories? Whose passions will they restrain? Whom will they
make more brave, whom more just, whom more noble-minded? My friend
Fabianus used to say that at times he was doubtful whether it was
not better not to apply oneself to any studies than to become
entangled in these. Of all men they
alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really
live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own
lifetime only. They annex ever age to their own; all the years
that have gone ore them are an addition to their store.
Unlesss we are most ungrateful, all those nen, glorious fashioners
of holy thoughts, were born for us; for us they have prepared a way
of life. By other men's labours we are led to the sight of
things most beautiful that have been wrested from darkness and
brought into light; from no age are we shut out, we have access to
all ages, and if it is our wish, by greatness of mind, to pass
beyond the <Ess2-333>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xiv. 1-5
narrow limits of human weakness, there is a
great stretch of time through which we may roam. We may argue
with Socrates, we may doubt\a with Carneades, find peace with
Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the
Cynics. Since Nature allows us to enter into fellowship with
every age, why should we not turn from this paltry and fleeting span
of time and surrender ourselves with all our soul to the past, which
is boundless, which is eternal, which we share with our betters? Those who rush
about in the performance of social duties, who give themselves and
others no rest, when they have fully indulged their madness, when
they have every day crossed everybody's threshold, and have left no
open door unvisited, when they have carried around their venal
greeting to houses that are very far apart - out of a city so huge
and torn by such varied desires, how few will they be able to
see? How many will there be who either from sleep or
self-indulgence or rudeness will keep them out! How many who,
when they have tortured them with long waiting, will rush by,
pretending to be in a hurry! How many will avoid passing out
through a hall that is crowded with clients, and will make their
escape through some concealed door as if it were not more
discourteous to deceive than to exclude. How many, still half
asleep and sluggish from last night's debauch, scarcely lifting
their lips in the midst of a most insolent yawn, manage to bestow on
yonder poor wretches, who break their own slumber\b in order to wait
on that of another, the right name only after it has been whispered
to them a thousand times! But we may
fairly say that they alone are engaged <Ess2-335>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xiv. 5-xv. 4
in the true duties of life who shall wish to
have Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and all the other high priests of
liberal studies+, and Aristotle and
Theophrastus, as their most intimate friends every day. No one
of these will be "not at home," no one of these will fail to have
his visitor leave more happy and more devoted to himself than when
he came, no one of these will allow anyone to leave him with empty
hands; all mortals can meet with them by night or by day. No one of these
will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die; no one of
these will wear out your years, but each will add his own years to
yours; conversations with no one of these will bring you peril, the
friendship of none will endanger your life, the courting of none
will tax your purse. From them you will take whatever you
wish; it will be no fault of theirs if you do not draw the utmost
that you can desire. What happiness, what a fair old age
awaits him who has offered himself as a client to these! He
will have friends from whom he may seek counsel on matters great and
small, whom he may consult every day about himself, from whom he may
hear truth without insult, praise without flattery, and after whose
likeness he may fashion himself. We are wont to say that it
was not in our power to choose the parents who fell to our lot, that
they have been given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons of
whomsoever we will. Households there are of noblest
intellects; choose the one into which you wish to be adopted; you
will inherit not merely their name, but even their property, which
there will be no need to guard in a mean or niggardly spirit; the
more persons you share it with, the greater it will become. <Ess2-337>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xv. 4-xvi. 1
These will open to you the path to
immortality, and will raise you to a height from which no one is
cast down. This is the only way of prolonging mortality -nay,
of turning it into immortality. Honours, monuments, all that
ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone,
quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does
not tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has
consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age
reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will but increase
the reverence for them, since envy works upon what is close at hand,
and things that are far off we are more free to admire. The life of
the philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not confined
by the same bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from
the limitations of the human race; all ages serve him as if a
god. Has some time passed by? This he embraces by
recollection. Is time present? This he uses.
Is it still to come? This he anticipates. He makes his
life long by combining all times into one. But those who
forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a
life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end
of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long
while they have been busied in doing nothing. Nor because they
sometimes invoke death, have you any reason to think it any proof
that they find life long. In their folly they are harassed by
shifting emotions which rush them into the very things they dread;
they often pray for death because they fear it. And, too, you
have no reason to think that this is any proof that they are living
a long time - the fact that the day often seems to them long, the
fact <Ess2-339>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xvi, 3--xvii. 1
that they complain that the hours pass
slowly until the time set for dinner arrives; for, whenever their
engrossments fail them, they are restless because they are left with
nothing to do, and they do not know how to dispose of their leisure
or to drag out the time. And so they strive for something else
to occupy them, and all the intervening time is irksome; exactly as
they do when a gladiatorial exhibition\b is been announced, or when
they are waiting for the appointed time of some other show or
amusement, they want to skip over the days that lie between.
All postponement of something they hope for seems long to
them. Yet the time which they enjoy is short and swift, and it
is made much shorter by their own fault; for they flee from one
pleasure to another and cannot remain fixed in one desire.
Their days are not long to them, but hateful; yet, on the other
hand, how scanty seem the nights which they spend in the arms of a
harlot or in wine! It is this also that accounts for the
madness of poets in fostering human frailties by the tales in which
they represent that Jupiter under the enticenient of the pleasures
of a lover doubled the length of the night. For what is it but
to inflame our vices to inscribe the name of the gods as their
sponsors, and to present the excused indulgence of divinity as an
example to our own weakness? Can the nights which they pay for
so dearly fail to seem all too short to these men? They lose
the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the
dawn. The
very pleasures of such men are uneasy and disquieted by alarms of
various sorts, and at the very moment of rejoicing the anxious
thought comes over them: How long will these things last?"
This <Ess2-341>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xvii. 1-5
feeling has led kings to weep over the power
they possessed, and they have not so much delighted in the greatness
of their fortune, as they have viewed with terror the end to which
it must some time come. When the King of Persia,\a in all the
insolence of his pride, spread his army over the vast plains and
could not grasp its number but simply its measure,\b he shed copious
tears because inside of a hundred years not a man of such a mighty
army would be alive.\c But he who wept was to bring upon them their
fate, was to give some to their doom on the sea, some on the land,
some in battle, some in flight, and within a short time was to
destroy all those for whose hundredth year he had such fear.
And why is it that even their joys are uneasy from fear?
Because they do not rest on stable causes, but are perturbed as
groundiessly as they are born. But of what sort do you
think those times are which even by their own confession are
wretched, since even the joys by which they are exalted and lifted
above mankind are by no means pure? All the greatest blessings
are a source of anxiety, and at no time is fortune less wisely
trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need
of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned
out well we must make still other prayers. For everything that
comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the
more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed to perish
brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely
short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they
must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they
wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they
take no account of time that will never more <Ess2-343>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xvii. 5-xviii. 1
return. New engrossments take the
place of the old, hope leads to new hope, ambition to new
ambition. They do not seek an end of their wretchedness, but
change the cause. Have we been tormented by our own public
honours? Those of others take more of our time. Have we ceased
to labour as candidates? We begin to canvass for others. Have
we got rid of the troubles of a prosecutor? We find those of a
judge. Has a man ceased to be a judge? He becomes
president of a court. Has he become infirm in managing the
property of others at a salary? He is perplexed by caring for
his own wealth. Have the barracks\a set Marius free? The
consulship keeps him busy. Does Quintius hasten to get to the
end of his dictatorship? He will be called back to it from the
plough. Scipio will go against the Carthaginians before he is
ripe for so great an undertaking; victorious over Hannibal,
victorious over Antiochus, the glory of his own consulship, the
surety for his brother's, did he not stand in his own way, he would
be set beside Jove\c; but the discord of civilians will vex their
preserver, and, when as a young man he had scorned honours that
rivalled those of the gods, at length, when he is old, his ambition
will lake delight in stubborn exile.\d Reasons for anxiety will
never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness;
life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall
always pray for leisure, but never enjoy it. And so, my
dearest Paulinus, tear yourself away from the crowd, and, too much
storm-tossed for the time you have lived, at length withdraw into a
peaceful harbour. Think of how many waves you have
encountered, how many storms, on the one hand, you have sustained in
private life, how many, on the other, <Ess2-345>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xviii. 1-5)
you have brought upon yourself in public
life; long enough has your virtue been displayed in laborious and
unceasing proofs - try how it will behave in leisure. The
greater part of your life, certainly the better part of it, has been
given to the state; take now some part of your time for yourself as
well. And I do not summon you to slothful or idle inaction, or
to drown all your native energy in slumbers and the pleasures that
are dear to the crowd. That is not to rest; you will find far
greater works than all those you have hitherto performed so
energetically, to occupy you in the midst of your release and
retiremeat. You, I know, manage the accounts of the whole world as
honestly as you would a stranger's, as carefully as you would your
own, as conscientiously as you would the state's. You win love
in an office in which it is difficult to avoid hatred; but
nevertheless believe me, it is better to have knowledge of the
ledger of one's own life than of the corn-market. Recall that
keen mind of yours, which is most competent to cope with the
greatest subjects, from a service that is indeed honourable but
hardly adapted to the happy life, and reflect that in all your
training in the liberal studies, extending from your earliest years,
you were not aiming at this -that it might be safe to entrust many
thousand pecks of corn to your charge; you gave hope of something
greater and more lofty. There will be no lack of men of tested
worth and painstaking industry. But plodding oxen are much
more suited to carrying heavy loads than thoroughbred horses, and
who ever hampers the fleetness of such high-born creatures with a
heavy pack? Reflect, besides, how much worry you have in
subjecting yourself to such a great burden; your deal- <Ess2-347>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xviii. 5-xix. 1
ings are with the belly of man. A
hungry people neither listens to reason, nor is appeased by justice,
nor is bent by any entreaty. Very recently within those few
day's after Gaius Caesar died - still grieving most deeply (if the
dead have any feeling) because he knew that the Roman people were
alive\a and had enough food left for at any rate seven or eight days
while he was building his bridges of boats\b and playing with the
resources of the empire, we were threatened with the worst evil that
can befall men even during a siege - the lack of provisions; his
imitation of a mad and foreign and misproud king\c was very nearly
at the cost of the city's destruction and famine and the general
revolution that follows famine. What then must have been the
feeling of those who had charge of the corn-market, and had to face
stones, the sword, fire -and a Caligula? By the greatest
subterfuge they concealed the great evil that lurked in the vitals
of the state - with good reason, you may be sure. For certain
maladies must be treated while the patient is kept in ignorance;
knowledge of their discase has caused the death of many. Do you retire to
these quieter, safer, greater things! Think you that it is
just the same whether you are concerned in having corn from oversea
poured into the granaries, unhurt either by the dishonesty or the
neglect of those who transport it, in seeing that it does not become
heated and spoiled by collecting moisture and tallies in weight and
measure, or whether you enter upon these sacred and loftystudies+ with the purpose of
discovering what substance, what ---- c Xerxes, who laid a bridge over
the Hellespont. <Ess2-349>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xix. 1-xx. 1
pleasure, what mode of life, what shape God
has; what fate awaits your soul; where Nature lays us to rest When
we are freed from the body; what the principle is that upholds all
the heaviest matter in the centre of this world, suspends the light
on high, carries fire to the topmost part, summons the stars to
their proper changes - and ether matters, in turn, full of mighty
wonders? You really must leave the ground and turn your mind's
eye upon these things! Now while the blood is hot, we must
enter with brisk step upon the better course. In this kind of
life there awaits much that is good to know -the love and practice
of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions {cupidatium+}, knowledge of living and
dying, and a life of deep repose. The condition of
all who are engrossed is wretched, but most wretched is the
condition of those who labour at engrossments that are not even
their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk
by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest
things in the world - loving and hating. If these wish to know
how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is
their own.
And so when you see a man often wearing the robe of office, when you
see one whose name is famous in the Forum, do not envy him; those
things are bought at the price of life. They will waste all
their years, in order that they may have one year reckoned by their
name.\a Life has left some in the midst of their first struggles,
before they could climb up to the height of their ambition; some,
when they have crawled up through a thousand indignities to the
crowni,indignity, have been possessed by the unhappy thought that
they have but toiled for an inscription <Ess2-351>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xx. 1-5
on a tomb; some who have come to extreme old
age, while they adjusted it to new hopes as if it were youth, have
had it fail from sheer weakness in the midst of their great and
shameless endeavours. Shameful is he whose breath leaves him
in the midst of a trial when, advanced in years and still courting
the applause of an ignorant circle, he is pleading for some litigant
who is the veriest stranger; disgraceful is he who, exhausted more
quickly by his mode of living than by his labour, collapses in the
very midst of his duties; disgraceful is he who dies in the act of
receiving payments on account, and draws a smile from his long
delayed\a heir. I cannot pass over an instance which occurs to
me. Sextus\b Turannius was an old man of long tested
diligence, who, after his ninetieth year, having received release
from the duties of his office by Gaius Caesar's own act, ordered
himself to be laid out on his bed and to be mourned by the assembled
household as if he were dead. The whole house bemoaned the
leisure of its old master, and did not end its sorrow until his
accustomed work was restored to him. Is it really such pleasure for
a man to die in harness? Yet very many have the same feeling;
their desire for their labour lasts longer than their ability; they
fight against the weakness of the body, they judge old age to be a
hardship on no other score than because it puts them aside.
The law does not draft a soldier after his fiftieth year, it does
not call a senator after his sixtieth; it is more difficult for men
to obtain leisure from themselves than from the law. Meantime,
while they rob and are being robbed, while they break up each
other's repose, while they make each other wretched, their life is
without profit, without pleasure, without any improvement <Ess2-353>
ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE, xx. 5
of the mind. No one keeps death in
view, no one refrains from far-reaching hopes; some men, indeed,
even arrange for things that lie beyond life - huge masses of tombs
and dedications of public works and gifts for their funeral-pyres
and ostentatious funerals. But, in very truth, the funerals of
such men ought to be conducted by the light of torches and wax
tapers,\a as though they had lived but the tiniest span.
<Ess2-355>
DE CONSOLATIONE AD POLYBIUM+ BOOK XI TO
POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION
CITIES\a and
monuments made of stone, if you compare them with our life, are
enduring; if you submit them to the standard of Nature's law they
are perishable, since Nature brings all things to destruction and
recalls them to the state from which they sprang. For what
that mortal hands have made is ever immortal? The seven wonders of
the world and all the works, far more wonderful than these, that the
ambition of later years has reared, will some day be seen levelled
to the ground. So it is - nothing is everlasting, few
things are even long-lasting; one thing perishes in one way, another
in another, though the manner of their passing varies, yet whatever
has beginning has also an end. Some there are who threaten
even the world with destruction, and (if you think that piety admits
the belief) this universe, which contains all the works of gods and
men, will one day be scattered and plunged into the ancient chaos
and darkness. What
folly, then, for anyone to weep for the lives of individuals, to
mourn over the ashes of Carthage and Numantia and Corinth and the
fall of any other city, mayhap loftier ----
a The essay
begins abrubtly after the loss of some part of the text.
<Polybius> at one time was the emperor's secretary a studiis
(Suet. Claudius, 28), and when this essay was written was
holding the responsible post a libellis (ch. 6. 5). <Ess2-357>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, 1. 2-ii. 2
than these, when even this universe will
perish though it has no place into which it can fall; what folly for
anyone to complain that Fate+, though she will some day dare so
great a crime, has not spared even him! Who is of such haughty
and overweaning presumption as to wish that he and his dear ones
alone be excepted from this law of Nature that brings all things to
their end, and to exempt some one household from the destruction
that threatens even the world itself? A man, therefore, will
find the greatest comfort in the thought that what has befallen
himself was suffered by all who were before him and will be suffered
by all who come after hint; and Nature has, it seems to me, made
universal what she had made hardest to bear in order that the
uniformity of fate might console men for its cruelty. And it will help
you, too, not a little if you reflect that your grief can accomplish
nothing either for him whose loss you mourn or for yourself; for the
suffering that is vain you will be unwilling to prolong. For
if we are likely to accomplish anything by sorrow, I do not refuse
to shed whatever tears my own fortune\a has left me in regret for
yours; for I shall even yet find some that may flow from these eyes
of mine, that have already been drained by my personal woes, if only
thereby I may do you some good. Why do you
hesitate? Let us lament together, or rather I myself
will bring forth this indictment as my own: "O Fortune, you who by
the verdict of all men are most unjust, you seemed hitherto to have
cherished this man in your bosom, for, thanks to you, he had by a
rare accident won so much respect that his prosperity escaped
envy. But now you have stamped upon him the greatest sorrow
that, while Caesar -------- a Seneca writes
from exile in Corsica, to which he was banished under Claudius (A.D.
41). <Ess2-359>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, ii. 2-7
lives, he could possibly have received, and,
having thoroughly reconnoitred him on every side, you discovered
that from this direction only was he exposed to your arrows.
For what other harm could you have dealt him? Should you have
snatched away his money? But he was never its slave; even now
he thrusts it from him as much as he can, and, though he has so many
opportunities to acquire it, he seeks from it no greater gain than
the power to scorn it. Should you have snatched away his
friends? But you knew that, so lovable is he, he could easily
substitute others in place of those he had lost; for of all those I
have seen holding high place in the imperial household, I seem to
have discovered in him the only one whom, though it is to the
interest of all, it is yet even more their pleasure, to have as a
friend. Should you have snatched away his good reputation? But
in his case this is too well-grounded for even you to be able to
shake it. Should you have snatched away good health? But
you knew that his mind was so well grounded by liberalstudies+ -for he had not merely
been bred, but born, among books - that it rose superior to all
pains of the body. Should you have snatched away his
life? But how little you could have harmed him!
Fame has promised him that the life of his genius shall be very
long; and he himself has made it his aim that he should endure, in
the better part of him, and by the composition of glorious works of
eloquence rescue himself from mortality. So long as letters shall
have any honour, so long as the force of the Latin or the grace of
the Greek tongue shall survive, he shall flourish in the company of
those giants of whose genius he has made himself a rival, or, if his
modesty refuses so much, a <Ess2-361>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, ii. 7-iii. 3
devotee. Consequently, Fortune, you
have found out that this is the only way in which you could injure
him very deeply; for the better a man is, the more often is he wont
to endure your assaults - you who vent your rage without
discrimination, and are to be feared even in the midst of your
kindnesses. How little it would have cost you to render him
exempt from such an injury - a man to whom, it seemed, your favour
had been extended on a fixed principle, and had not, after your
usual fashion, fallen upon him at random." Let us add, if
you will, to these grounds of complaint the character of the youth
himself, cut off in the midst of its first growth; worthy was he to
be your brother. You, at any rate, were most worthy that not
even an unworthy brother should be to you any cause for grief.\a All
men alike bear witness to his character; he is regretted in
compliment to you, he is lauded in compliment to
himself. There was nothing in him which you were not
glad to recognize. You would indeed have been good even to a
brother less good, but in his case your natural affection, having
found a suitable object, displayed itself much more generously. No
one was ever made to feel his power from an injury he did, he never
threatened anyone with your being his brother. He had moulded
himself after the pattern of your modesty, and remembered what a
great ornament you were to your family, and what a responsibility;
but he was equal to this burden. O pitiless Fate, always unjust to
virtue!{good_die_young+} Before your brother could
know his own happiness, he was taken from it. But I know that
I express my indignation poorly; for nothing is so difficult as to
find words to match a great sorrow. Yet once again, <Ess2-363>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, iii. 4-iv. 1
if words can be of any avail, let us
complain together: "What did you mean, O Fortune, by being so unjust
and so violent? Did you repent so quickly of your former
kindness? What cruelty is this, to make your assault upon a
company of brothers, and by such cruel robbery to impoverish so
loving a group? Did you mean to break up a household of
admirable young men so closely united, no one of whom fell short of
his brothers, and without any reason to take one from their
number? Does blamelessness, then, avail nothing, though tested
by every principle? old-fashionedsimplicity+,
nothing? persistent self-restraint when there was unlimited
opportunity to gain unlimited wealth, nothing? a sincere and
safe love of letters, nothing? a mind free from every taint of sin,
nothing? Polybius mourns, and, warned by the fate of one
brother of what he may dread concerning the rest, he fears for the
very solaces of his sorrow. O the shame! Polybius mourns
and suffers sorrow while Caesar smiles upon him! 0 O unbridled
Fortune, clearly what you aimed at was this - to show that no one
can be protected against you - no, not even by Caesar." We can go on
blaming Fate much longer, change it we cannot. It stands harsh
and inexorable; no one can move it by reproaches, no one by tears,
no one by his cause; it never lets anyone off nor shows mercy.
Accordingly let us refrain from tears, that profit nothing; for
sooner will this grief unite us with the dead than bring them back
to us. And if grief tortures us and does not help us, we ought
to lay it aside as soon as possible, and recall the mind from its
empty consolations and a sort of morbid <Ess2-365>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, iv. 2-v. 1
pleasure in grieving. For unless
reason puts an end to our tears, fortune will not do so. Come, look about
you, survey all mortals - everywhere there is ample and constant
reason for tears. Toilsome poverty summons one man to his
daily task, never-resting ambition harasses another; one fears the
riches that he had prayed for, and suffers from the granting of his
prayer; his loneliness torments one, the throng that besieges his
threshold, another; this man mourns because he has children, this
one because he has lost them. Tears will fail us sooner than
the causes for weeping. Do you not see what sort of life Nature has
promised us -she who decreed that the first act of man at birth
should be to weep\a?{Lear+} With such a beginning are we
brought forth, with such the whole series of later years
accords. Thus we spend our lives, and therefore we ought to do
in moderation this thing that we must do so often; and as we look
back upon the great mass of sorrows that threatens us behind, we
ought, if not to end our tears, yet at any rate to keep guard over
them. Nothing must be husbanded more carefully than that
of which there is such frequent need. And this also
will give you no small help - if you reflect that there is no one
who is less pleased by your grief than he to whom it seems to be
offered; for he either does not wish you to suffer, or does not know
that you do. There is, therefore, no sense in this service,
for if he to whom it is offered lacks ----
---- a
Lucretius (v 222 sqq.) supplies a famous example of this ancient
commonplace; see p. 35, note a. Cf. Shakespeare, King
Lear+, iv. 6:
When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great
stage of fools. <Ess2-367>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, v. 2-4
consciousness,\a it is useless, and, if he
has consciousness, it is displeasing to him. I may say boldly
that there is no one in the whole wide world who finds pleasure in
your tears. And what then? Do you suppose that
your brother has towards you the disposition that no one else
displays - the desire that you should withdraw from your ordinary
tasks - that is, from the serving of Caesar -in order to do harm to
yourself by self- torture? This is not likely. For he always
paid to you the love due to a brother, the respect due to a parent,
and the court due to a superior; he wishes to be missed by you, not
to cause you suffering. Why, therefore, do you choose to pine
away with a sorrow which, if the dead have any consciousness, your
brother desires to have ended? Were it any other brother,
about whose goodwill there might seem to be some uncertainty, I
should put all these things doubtfully, and say: "If your brother
desires that you be tortured with tears that never cease, he is
unworthy of this affection of yours; if he does not wish this, leave
off the grief that is painful to both; an unloving brother ought
not, and a loving brother would not want, to be mourned for in this
way." But in his case his brotherly love has been so clearly proved
that we must feel sure that nolhing could be more bitter for him
than seeing that this mishap of his is bitter for you, that it in
any way causes you distress, that to those eyes of yours, which
least deserve so great an ill, it, too, brings both trouble and
exhaustion without any end of weeping. Nothing,
however, will so effectually restrain your love from such useless
tears as the thought that you ought to give to your brothers an
example by bearing <Ess2-369>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, v. 4-vi. 2
this injustice of Fortune bravely.
This is the way great generals act in times of disaster - they
purposely make pretence of cheerfulness, and conceal their
misfortunes by feigning joy, lest the soldiers themselves should
likewise grow faint-hearted if they saw the spirit of their leader
broken. You also must now do the same. Assume an
expression that belies your feeling, and, if you can, wholly cast
out all your sorrow; if not, hide it in your heart, and keep it from
showing, and make effort to have your brothers copy you, who will
think whatever they see you doing to to be right, and will take
heart from your face. You ought to be to them both their
comfort and their consoler; but you will not be able to check their
sorrow if you indulge your own. And it may be
that this also will keep you from excessive grief - if you remind
yourself that none of the things that you do can be kept
secret. Public opinion has assigned to you an important role;
this you must maintain. All yonder throng that you consolation
stands about you, and it searches into your heart, and descries how
much strength this has in the face of sorrow, and whether you only
know how to use prosperity adroitly, or are able also to bear
adversity with courage. They watch your eyes! Those have
more liberty whose feelings are able to be concealed; you are not
free to have any privacy. Fortune has placed you in the bright
light; all people will know how you have behaved under this wound of
yours - whether the moment you were struck you laid down your arms,
or stood your ground. Long ago the love of Caesar lifted
you to a higher rank, and your literary pursuits have elevated
you. Nothing vulgar, nothing base <Ess2-371>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, vi. 2-5
befits you. Yet what is so base and
so womanish+ as to give oneself over to be
utterly consumed by sorrow? Though you have equal grief, you
do not have the same liberty as your brothers; there are many things
that the opinion which others have formed of your learning and your
character does not permit you to do - men demand much of you, expect
much. If you wished to be free to do everything, you should
not have turned all faces toward you; as it is, you must make good
all that of which you have given promise. All those who praise
the works of vour genius, who take copies of them, who, though they
have no need of your greatness, have need of your genius, keep watch
on your mind. And thus you can never do anything unworthy of
your claim to be a sage and a scholar without making many repent of
their admiration for you. You may not weep beyond measure nor
is this the only thing you may not do; you may not either prolong
sleep into the hours of day, or flee from the turmoil of business to
the leisure of rural repose, or refresh your body, wearied by its
constant guard at the post, of toilsome duty, by a trip abroad for
pleasure, or engage your mind with a variety of shows, or arrange
your day according to your own desire. Many things you may not
do, which the lowliest wretch that lies in his corner may do.
A great fortune is a greatslavery+; you
may not do anything according to your wish. You must give
audience to countless thousands of men, countless petitions a must
be disposed of; so great is the pile of business, accumulated from
every part of the world, that must be carefully weighed in order
that it may be brought to the attention of a most illustrious prince
in the proper order. You, I say, are not allowed to <Ess2-373>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, vi. 5-vii. 4
weep; in order that you may be able to
listen to the many who weep - in order that you may dry the tears of
those who are in peril and desire to obtain mercy from Caesar's
clemeney, it is your own tears that you must dry. My
suggestions, so far, deal with the milder remedies, nevertheless
they will help you; but when you shall wish to forget everything
else - think of Caesar. Think what loyalty, what industry, you
owe him in return for his imperial favour to you; you will then
understand that you may no more bend beneath the burden than he\a -
if there really is anyone such as myths tell of -whose shoulders
uphold the sky. Even Caesar himself, who may do all things,
may not do many things for the very same reason. His watchfulness
guards all men's sleep, his toil all men's ease, his industry all
men's dissipations, his work all men's vacation. On the
day that Caesar dedicated himself to the wide world, he robbed
himself of himself; and even as the planets, which, unresting, ever
pursue their courses, he may never halt or do anything for
himself. And so, to a certain degree, the same necessity is
enjoined upon you also; you may not pay regard to your own interests
or to your books. While Caesar owns the wide world, you can
give no part of yourself either to pleasure or sorrow or anything
else; you owe the whole of yourself to Caesar. And
besides, since you always declare that Caesar is dearer to you than
your own life, it is not right for you to make complaint of Fortune
while Caesar is alive, so long as be is alive, your dear ones are
alive - you have lost nothing. Your eyes ought to be not only
dry, but even happy; in him you have all things, he takes the place
of all. If you allow your <Ess2-375>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, vii. 4-viii.
self to weep for anything while he is alive,
you lack gratitude for your good fortune; but this is very foreign
to your sensible and loyal disposition. {king's_burden+} Further, I shall
prescribe a remedy that is not indeed surer, but more private.
Whenever you retire to your home, then will be the time for you to
dread your sadness. For as long as your divinity is before
your eyes, that will find no access to you, Caesar will possess all
that is in you; but when you have left him, then, having found, as
it were, a good opportunity, sorrow will he in wait for your
loneliness, and will little by little steal upon your mind when it
is unoccupied. And so there is no reason why you should allow
any of your time to be without the interest of literature.
Then let your books, so long and so faithfully loved, repay your
favour, then let them claim you for their high priest and
worshipper, then let Homer and Virgil, to whom the human race owes
as much as they and all men owe to you, whom you wished to become
known to a wider eircle than that for which they wrote,\a be much in
your company; the time that you entrust to their safeguarding will
be safe indeed. Then, with your best powers, compile an
account of the deeds of your Caesar, so that, being heralded by one
of his own household, they may be repeated throughout all ages;
since, for the fashioning and writing of history, he himself will
best supply you with both matter and model. I do not venture
to push you to the point of putting together also, with your
characteristic charm, the tales and fables of
Aesop - a task that Roman talent has not yet
essayed.\b
It would be difficult indeed for a mind so
severely smitten to approach so quickly this lighter kind of
literature; nevertheless, if it shall be <Ess2-377>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, viii. 3-ix. 3
able to pass from more serious compositions
to these less exacting ones, you must count this as proof that it
has now recovered its strength and is itself again. For in the
case of the former, the very sternness of the subject which it
treats will distract the mind although still suffering and
struggling with itself; the latter, which must be pondered with a
brow unbent, it will not endure until it has wholly recovered its
native harmony. Your duty, therefore, will be first to give it hard
work with a more serious subject, and then to modify its effort with
a lighter.
It will also serve as a great relief, if you will often question
yourself thus: "Am I grieving on my own account, or on account of
him who has departed? If on my own account, tis parade of
affection is idle, and my grief, the only excuse for which is that
it is honourable, begins to show defection from brotherly love when
it looks toward personal advantage; but nothing is less becoming to
a good man than to be calculating in his grief for a brother.
If I grieve on his account, I must decide that one or the other of
the two following views is true. For, if the dead retain no feeling
whatever, my brother has escaped from all the ills of life, and has
been restored to that state in which he had been before he was born,
and, exempt from every ill, he fears nothing, desires nothing,
suffers nothing. What madness this is - that I should never
cease to grieve for one who will never grieve any more! If,
however, the dead do retain some feeling, at this moment my
brother's soul, released, as it were, from its long imprisonment,
exults to be at last its own lord and master, enjoys the spectacle
of Nature, and from its higher place looks down upon all human
things, while upon things <Ess2-379>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, ix. 3-6
divine,\a the explanation of which it had so
long sought in vain, it gazes with a nearer vision. And so why
should I pine away in yearning for him who either is happy or does
not exist? But to weep for one who is happy is envy; for one
who does not exist, madness." Or is it this
that moves you - the thought that he has been deprived of great
blessings just when they were showered upon him? But when you
reflect that there are many things which he has lost, reflect also
that there are more which he no longer fears. He is not
racked by anger, he is not smitten with disease, he is not worried
by suspicion, he is not assailed by gnawing envy that is always
hostile to other men's successes, he is not disquieted by fear, he
is not alarmed by the fickleness of Fortune, who quickly shifts her
favours. If you count carefully, he has been spared more than
he has lost. He will not enjoy wealth, nor favour at court,
his own together with yours; he will not receive benefits, he will
not bestow them. Do you think that he is unhappy because he
has lost these things, or happy because be does not miss them?
Believe me, he is happier who does not need good fortune than he for
whom it is in store. All those goods which delight us by their
showy, but deceptive, charm - money, standing, power, and the many
other things at the sight of which the human race, in its blind
greed, is filled with awe - bring trouble to their possessor, stir
jealousy in the beholder, and in the end also crush the very men
that they adorn; they are more of a menace than a good. They
are slippery and uncertain, and are never held happily; for though
there should be no anxiety about the future, yet the mere
preservation of great prosperity is full of worry. If we are to
believe some who <Ess2-381>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, ix. 6-x. 1
have a more profound insight into truth, all
life is a torment. Plunged into this deep and restless sea,
that ebbs and flows with changing tides, now uplifting us with
sudden accessions of fortune, now sweeping us downward with greater
losses and flinging us about incessantly, we never stay steadfast in
one place, we dangle aloft, are tossed hither and thither, collide
with each other, and sometimes suffer shipwreck, always fear it; for
those who sail upon this sea, so stormy and exposed to every gale,
there is no harbour save death. And so do not grudge your
brother this - he is at rest. At last he is free, at last
safe, at last immortal. He leaves Caesar and all of Caesar's
offspring still surviving, he leaves you surviving in company with
the brothers of you both. While Fortune was still standing
near him and bestowing her gifts with generous hand, he left her
before she could make any change in her favour. He delights
now in the open and boundless sky, from a low and sunken region he
has darted aloft to that place (whatever it be) which receives in
its happy embrace souls that are freed from their chains; and he now
roams there, and explores with supreme delight all the blessings of
Nature. You are mistaken - your brother has not lost the light
of day, but he has gained a purer light. The way thither is
the same for us all. Why do we bemoan his fate? He has
not left us, but has gone before. Believe me, there is great
happiness in the very necessity of dying. We can be sure of
nothing - not even for the whole of one day. Where the truth
is so dark and involved, who can divine whether Death had a grudge
against your brother or sought his welfare? And, such is
your justice in all things, this, too, must give you comfort -the
thought that no wrong has <Ess2-383>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, x. 1-5
been done you because you lost such a
brother, but that a favour was shown you, because you were permitted
to have and enjoy his affection so long. He who does not leave
to the giver the power over his own gift is unfair, he who does not
count whatever he receives as gain and yet counts whatever he gives
back as loss, is greedy. He who calls the ending of pleasure
an injustice is an ingrate; he who thinks that there is no enjoyment
from blessings unless they are present, who does not find comfort
also in past blessings, and does not regard those that are gone as
more certain because he need have no fear that they will cease -
this man is a fool. He limits his pleasures too narrowly who
thinks that he enjoys only those which he now has and sees, and
counts his having had these same pleasures as nothing; for every
pleasure quickly leaves us - it flows on and passes by and is gone
almost before it comes, and so our thoughts must be turned towards
time that has passed, and whatever has once brought us pleasure must
be recalled, and we must ruminate over it by frequent thought; the
remembrance of pleasures is more lasting and trustworthy than their
reality. Count this, then, among your greatest blessins - the
fact that you have had an excellent brother! There is no
reason for you to think of how much longer you might have had him -
think, rather, of how long you did have him. Nature gave him
to you, just as she gives to others their brothers, not as a
permanent possession, but as a loan\a; when it seemed best to her,
then she took him back, nor was she guided by your having had your
fill of him, but only by her own law. If anyone should be
angry that he has had to pay back borrowed money -especially that of
which <Ess2-385>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, x. 5-xi. 2
he had the use without paying interest -
would he not be considered an unfair man? Nature gave your
brother his life, she has likewise given you yours. If she has
required from him from whom she wanted it an earlier payment of her
loan, she has but used her own right; the fault is not with her, for
her terms were known, but with the greedy hopes of mortal minds that
often forget what nature+ is, and never remember their own
lot except when they are reminded. Rejoice, therefore, that
you have had such a good brother, and have had the use and enjoyment
of him; though this was briefer than you wished, count it so much
good. Reflect that to have had him is most delightful; to have
lost him, the human lot.{common+} For nothing is less
consistent than for a man to grieve because he did not have long
enough the blessing of such a brother, and not to rejoice because,
after all, such a blessing had once been his. "But," you say, "he
was snatched from me unexpectedly." Every man is deceived by his own
credulity, and in the case of those whom he loves he wilfully
forgetsmortality+. Yet Nature has made it
clear that she will exempt no man from her stern law. Every day the
funerals of acquaintances and strangers pass by before our eyes, we,
nevertheless, pay no heed, and we count that event as sudden of
whose coming the whole of life has given us warning.
This, therefore, is not the injustice of Fate, but the perversity of
the human mind that, with its insatiable greed for all things,
chafes at leaving a place to which it was admitted on sufferance.
How much more
righteous was he who, on the announcement of the death of his son,
uttered the words, worthy of a great man: "When I begat him, I knew
then that he would <Ess2-387>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, xi. 2-5 die.\a We need not be at all
surprised that the son of such a man was one who was able to die
bravely. He did not receive the news of the death of his son
as a strange thing; for why is it surprising that man should die
when his whole life is no thing but a journey towards death? "When I
begat him, I knew then that he would die, "he said. And then
he added some words that show even greater wisdom and courage: "And
it was for this that I reared him." It is for this that we all are
reared; every man who is brought into life is appointed to die. Let
us rejoice, therefore, in whatever shall be given us, and let us
return it when we are asked for it. The Fates will seize one
at one time, another at another; they will pass no man by. Let
the mind, then, stand in readiness, and let it never fear whatever
must be, let it always expect whatever may be., Why need I tell
you of generals and the offspring of generals, of men famous for
their many consulships or many triumphs, who have finished their
appointed lot? Whole kingdoms with their kings and peoples
with their rulers have met their fate; all men, nay, all things,
look toward their last day. They do not all have the same end;
life forsakes one in the middle of his career, it leaves another at
the very entrance, and another it reluctantly releases in extreme
old age when he is now worn out and eager to depart; one goes at one
time, another at another, yet we are all travelling toward the same
place. I know not whether it is more foolish to be ignorant of
the law of mortality, or more presumptuous to refuse to obey it. Turn, now, to
those poems which the efforts of our genius have made famous and
which you have turned into prose with such skill that, though their
form has <Ess2-389>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, xi. 5-xii. 2
disappeared, they, nevertheless, retain all
their charm (for you have so performed the most difficult task of
transferring them from one language to another that all their merits
have followed them into the foreign speech) -take into your hands
whichever of the two authors you please, and you will find that
there is not a single book of their writings which does not supply
numberless examples of the vicissitudes of human life, of unexpected
misfortunes, and of tears that for one reason or another have been
made to flow. Read with what great vigour you have thundered
in mighty words; suddenly to break down and fall short of such
grandeur of utterance will make you blush. Let it not happen
that every one who admired your writings as a model should wonder
how a spirit so easily broken produced such mighty and substantial
works. Do
you turn, rather, from the thoughts that torture you to the many and
great sources of consolation you have, and look upon your admirable
brothers, look upon your wife, look upon your son; it is for all
their lives that Fortune has settled with you for this partial
payment. You have many on whose affection to rest. Save
yourself from the shame of having everybody think that your grief
for one counts for more than these many sources of comfort. You see that they all
have been smitten along with you, and you know that they are not
able to come to your rescue - nay, even that they on their part are
expecting to be rescued by you; and, therefore, the less their
learning, the less their ability than yours, the more necessary it
is for you to withstand the common+
misfortune. Moreover, to share one's grief with many is in
itself a kind of consolation; because, if it is distributed among
many, the part that is left behind with you must be small. <Ess2-391>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, xii. 3-xiii. 1
I shall not cease to confront you over and
over again with Caesar. While he governs the earth, while he
shows how much better it is to safeguard the empire by benefits than
by arms, while he presides over human affairs, there is no danger of
your feeling that you have suffered any loss; in this one source you
have ample protection, ample consolation. Lift yourself up,
and every time that tears well up in your eyes, fix these upon
Caesar; at the sight of the exceeding greatness and splendour of his
divinity they will be dried; his brilliance will dazzle them so that
they will be able to see nothing else, and will keep them fastened
upon himself. He, whom you behold day and night, from
whom you never lower your thoughts, must fill your mind, he must be
summoned to your help against Fortune. And, so great is his
kindness; so great is his gracious favour toward all followers, I do
not doubt that he has already covered over this wound of yours with
many balms, that he has already supplied many things to stay your
sorrow. Besides, even though he has done none of these things, are
not the very sight and merely the thought of Caesar, in themselves,
forthwith to you the very greatest comfort? May gods and
goddesses lend him long to earth! May he rival the achievements, may
he surpass the years, of the deified Augustus! So long as he
shall linger among mortals, may he not learn that aught of his house
is mortal! By long proof may he commend his son\a as
ruler to the Roman Empire and see him his father's consort ere that
he is his successor! Late be the day and known only to our
grandchildren on which his kindred claim him for the skies!
From him, O Fortune, refrain thy hands, and in his case display not
thy power save in that part where thou <Ess2-393>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, xiii. 1-4
dost benefit. Suffer him to heal the
human race, that has long been sick and in evil case, suffer him to
restore and return all things to their place out of the havoc the
madness of the preceding prince\a has wrought! May this sun, which
has shed its light upon a world that had plunged into the abyss and
was sunk in darkness, ever shine! May he bring peace to
Germany, open up Britain,\a and celebrate again both his father's
triumphs and new ones! And his mercy, which in the list of his
virtues holds the chief place, raises the hope that of these I also
shall not fail to be a spectator. For he has not cast me down with
no thought of ever lifting me up - nay, he has not even cast me
down, but when I had been smitten by Fortune and was falling, he
checked my fall, and, using the mitigating power of his divine hand,
he let me down gently when I was plunging to destruction; he
besought the senate in my behalf, and not only gave me my life, but
even begged it.\c Be his the care -howsoever he shall wish, such let
him account my case. Let either his justice discern that it is
good, or his mercy make it good; whether he shall discern that I am
innocent, or shall wish me to be so - either, in my eyes, will
equally show his kindness. Meanwhile, the great consolation of my
own wretchedness is to see his compassion spreading over the whole
world; and since even in this remote corner, in which I am planted,
his mercy has unearthed many who were buried under a downfall that
came long years ago, and has restored them to light, I do not fear
that I shall be the only one it will pass by. But he himself
knows best the time at which he ought to come to each man's rescue;
I, for my part, shall strive that he should not blush to come to
mine. O how bIessed is your mercy, -------- c These details
of Seneca's mishap are not known from any other source. The
cause of his banishment was a reputed intrigue with Julia, the
notorious sister of Caligula (Cassius Dio, lx 8.5). <Ess2-395>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, xiii.4-xiv. 3
Caesar, which makes exiles live more
peacefully under your rule than did princes recently under the rule
of Gaius! They are not uneasy, nor do they expect the sword
hour by hour, nor cower at the sight of every ship; through you they
possess not only a limit to the cruelty of Fortune, but also the
hope of her being more kindly and peace even as she is. One
may know that those thunderbolts are indeed most just which even
those they have smitten worship. And so this prince, who is
the universal consolation of all mankind, has already, if I am not
altogether mistaken, revived your spirit and applied the more potent
remedies to a wound so serious. He has already strengthened
you in every way; by reason of his most retentive memory he has
already presented to you all the examples which could bring your
mind to a state of equanimity; with his habitual eloquence he has
already set before you the precepts of all the sages.
There is no one, therefore, who could better have appropriated these
roles of the comforter. Words, when he speaks, have, as if the
utterances of an oracle, a different weight; his divine authority
will dull all the sharpness of your grief. Think, then, that he
speaks to you in these words. "You are not the only one whom Fortune
has picked out to afflict with an injury so grievous; there is no
family in all the earth, nor has there ever been one, that has no
one to mourn for. {common+} I will pass over examples from
the masses, which, while they have less weight, are nevertheless
countless - I will direct you to the Calendar\a and the State
Chronicles. See you all these portrait busts that fill
the hall of the Caesars? Every one of these men is
marked by some ill that befell their dear ones; every one, too, of
those men <Ess2-397>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, xiv. 3-xv. 1
whose glory lights up the ages was either
tortured with yearning for dear ones, or was yearned for by dear
ones with bitterest torture of mind. "Why need I remind you of
Scipio Africanus, who learned of the death of his brother while he
himself was in exile? The brother who snatched his brother\a
from prison was not able to snatch him from Fate. And
Africanus's brotherly love made it clear to all how impatient he was
of equal rights\b; for on the same day on which he had rescued his
brother from the hands of a court-summoner, he also, though he held
no office, interfered with the acts of a tribune of the
people. Yet he showed as much greatness of spirit in his grief
for his brother as he had shown in his defence. Why need I
remind you of Scipio Aemilianus,\c who viewed the triumph of his
father and the funerals of his two brothers at almost the same
time? Nevertheless, a mere youth and hardly more than a boy,
he bore that sudden desolation, which befell his own family close
upon the triumph of Paulus, with all the courage that became a man,
born to the end that a Scipio might not fail, or Carthage outlive,
the city of Rome. "Why need I remind you of the two Luculli, whose
concord was broken only by death? Or of the Pompeys, to whom
cruel Fortune did not even grant that they should perish together in
the same disaster? Sextus Pompeius, in the first place,
survived his sistere\d by whose death the closely knit bonds of
peace between the Romans were broken, and he | ----| - Scipio, better
known as Africanus the younger, destroyed Carthage in 146 B.C.
d From what follows, Seneca seems to have confused Pompeia, sister
of Sextus, with Julia, daughter of Caesar and wife of the elder
Pompey. <Ess2-399>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, xv. 1-4
likewise survived his excellent brother,
whom Fortune had raised aloft for the very purpose of hurling him
down from a pinnacle not less high than that from which she had
hurled his father; and yet, even after this misfortune, Sextus
Pompeius sustained the burden, not only of grief, but also of
war. The examples that are supplied from every side of
brothers who were separated by death are innumerable - nay, almost
never have pairs of brothers been seen who were growing old
together. But I shall be content with examples from my own
family; for no one will be so devoid of feeling and good sense as to
complain that Fortune has brought grief upon any when he knows that
she has coveted the tears of even the Caesars. The deified
Augustus lost his darling sister Octavia, and not even was he, whom
Nature had destined for heaven, made exempt from the necessity of
mourning - nay, he was harassed by every sort of bereavement, and,
when he had planned to make his sister's son his own successor, he
lost him. In fine, not to mention his sorrows one by one, he
lost his sons-in-law a and his children and his grandchildren, and,
while he lingered among men, no one of all mortals had clearer
evidence that he was a man. Nevertheless, his heart that was
able to bear all things bore bravely these many deep afflictions,
and the deified Augustus rose victor, not only over foreign nations,
but also over sorrows. "Gaius Caesar, grandson of the deified
Augustus, my great-uncle, when he was in the early years of manhood,
lost his beloved brother Lucius; Prince of the Roman Youth,\b he
lost a 'Prince' of that same youth in the very midst of his
preparation for the <Ess2-401>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, xv. 4-xvi. 2
Parthian War, and he suffered much more
deeply from this wound of the mind than he did later from the wound
of his body; yet he bore both most righteously and bravely. "Tiberius
Caesar, my uncle, lost his younger brother Drusus Germanicus, my
father, just when he was opening up the remote parts of Germany, and
was bringing the fiercest tribes under the power of Rome, and,
holding him in his arms, he gave him a last kiss. Yet, not only for
himself but for others, he set a limit upon mourning, and when the
whole army was not only disconsolate but even distraught, and
claimed the body of the loved Drusus for itself, he forced it to
return to the Roman fashion of mourning, and ruled that discipline
must be maintained, not only in fighting, but also in
grieving. But he would not have been able to check the tears
of others if he had not first repressed his own. "Mark Antony, my
grandfather, second to none save his conqueror, received the news of
his brother's execution just at the time when he was setting the
state in order, and when, as a member of the triumvirate,\a he
beheld no man above him - nay, with the exception of his two
colleagues, saw all men beneath him. O unbridled Fortune, what
sport {flies+} dost thou make for thyself out of
human ills. At the very time at which Mark Antony sat
enthroned with the power of life and death over his own countrymen,
the brother of Mark Antony was being ordered to execution! Yet
such a bitter wound was borne by Mark Antony with the same loftiness
of spirit with which he had endured all his other adversities, and
this was his mourning - to give sacrifice to the shade of his
brother with the blood of twenty legions\b! <Ess2-403>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, xvi. 3-6
"But to pass over all ether examples, to be
silent concerning the other deaths, even in my own case also twice
has Fortune assailed me through my grief as a brother, twice has she
learned that I might be injured, but that I could not be
conquered. I lost my brother Germanicus, and how much I loved
him all those assuredly understand who consider how brothers, who
have true affection, love their brothers; yet I so ruled my feelings
that I neither left anything undone that ought to have been required
of a loving brother, nor did anything that a prince could have been
censured for doing." Consider,
therefore, that these are the examples the Father of the State cites
for you, and that he also shows how nothing is sacred and inviolable
to Fortune, who has dared to lead funerals from those households
whence she was to seek gods. And so let no man be surprised at
any cruel or unjust act of hers; for is it possible that she, whose
insatiate cruelty has so often desolated the very seats of the gods,
should know any justice or self- restraint in her dealings with
private families? Though we heap reproach upon her, voicing
not merely our own protest, but that of all men, she will not be
changed; she will work her will despite all entreaties, despite all
complaints. Such has fortune ever been in human affairs,
such will she ever be. Nothing has she ever left undared,
nothing will she ever leave untried; in violent rage will she range
through all places just as has always been her wont, she who, on
injury bent, has dared to enter even those houses whose entrance
lies through the temples of the gods,\a and she will drape the
laurelled doors with the garb of mourning. If she has not yet
resolved to destroy utterly the human race, <Ess2-405>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, xvi. 6-xvii. 3
if she still looks with favour upon the name
of Roman, may we by public vows and prayers obtain from her this one
concession - that this prince, who has been granted to the
fallen+ estate of mankind, should be held as sacred by her as he
is by all mortal men! Let her learn mercy from him, and to the
kindest of all princes let her become kind! And so you ought
to turn your eyes upon all these - those whom I have just mentioned
as either enrolled in the skies or soon so to be - and submit calmly
to Fortune, who now lays also upon you the hands that she does not
withhold even from those by whose names we swear; you must imitate
the firmness of these in enduring and conquering sorrows, so far as
it is permissible for a man to follow in the footsteps of the
gods. Although in other matters there are great distinctions
of rank and birth, virtue is accessible to all; she deems no man
unworthy if only he deems himself worthy of her. Surely you
cannot do better than imitate those who, though they might have been
indignant that even they were not exempt from this evil, yet decided
that it was not injustice, but the law of mortality, that in this
one respect put them on a level with the rest of mankind, and
endured what had befallen them neither with too much bitterness and
wrath, nor in a weak and womanly+
fashion; for it is not human not to feel misfortunes, and it is not
manly not to bear them. And yet, since I
have run through the roll of all the Caesars from whom Fortune
snatched brothers and sisters, I cannot pass by the one whose name
ought to be torn from very list of the Caesars, whom Nature produced
to be the ruin and the shame of the human race, who utterly wasted
and wrecked the <Ess2-407>
TO POLYBIUS, CONSOLATION, xvii. 3-xviii. 1
empire that is now being restored by the
mercy of the kindliest of princes. Having lost his sister Drusilla,
Gaius Caesar, a man who could no more indulge his grief than his
pleasure in princely fashion, fled the sight and society of his
fellow-men, did not attend the funeral of his sister, did not pay to
his sister the ordinary tributes, but in his villa at Alba he tried
to relieve his distress at her deeply regretted death with dice and
gaming- board and other common engrossments of this sort. What
a disgrace to the empire! Gambling was the solace of a Roman
prince mourning for his sister! And this same Gaius with mad
caprice, sometimes allowing his beard and hair to grow, sometimes
shearing them close, wandering aimlessly along the coast of Italy
and Sicily, and never quite sure whether he wished his sister to be
lamented or worshipped, during the whole time that he was rearing
temples and shrines\a to her memory would inflict the most cruel
punishment upon those who had not shown sufficient sorrow\b; for he
was bearing the blows of adversity with the same lack of self
restraint from which, when puffed up by prosperity, he was swollen
with pride beyond all human decency. Far be it from every
manly Roman to follow such an example - either to divert his sorrow
by untimely amusements, or to encourage it by disgraceful neglect
and squalor, or to seek relief by that most inhuman of consolations,
the causing of suffering to others. You, however,
need make no change in your habits, since, indeed, you have taught
yourself to love those studies which most fittingly exalt prosperity
and most easily lessen calamity, and are at the same time both the
greatest adornments and the greatest comforts <Ess2-409>
TO POLYBIUS, ON CONSOLATION, xvill. 1-4
for man. Now, therefore, bury yourself
more deeply in your studies, now encircle yourself with them as
bulwarks for your mind in order that sorrow may find no point that
will give entrance to you. And, too, prolong the remembrance
of your brother by some memorial in your writings; for among human
achievements this is the only work that no storm can harm nor length
of time destroy. All others, those that are formed by piling
up stones and masses of marble, or rearing on high huge mounds of
earth, do not secure a long remembrance, for they themselves will
also perish; but the fame of genius is immortal. Do you lavish
such upon your brother, in such embalm his name. It will be
better for you to immortalize him by your genius that will live
forever than mourn for him with a sorrow that is futile. So far as
concerns Fortune herself, even if it is impossible just now to plead
her case before you - for everything that she has given us is
hateful to you merely for the reason that she has snatched one thing
from you - yet there will be need to plead her case as soon as lapse
of time shall have made you a more impartial judge; for then you
will be able to restore her to favour. For she has provided
many things to offset this injustice; she will still give you many
things to make atonement for it; indeed this very thing that she has
now withdrawn she had herself given. Refuse, therefore, to
employ your talent against yourself, refuse to give support to your
sorrow. For it is possible for your eloquence to make hiings
that are really small seem important, and, on the other hand, to
minimize important things and reduce them to merest trifles; but let
it keep the former kind of power for another occasion - just <Ess2-411>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, xviii. 4-8
now let it direct all its effort toward
giving you comfort. And yet consider whether even this be not
by this time superfluous; for Nature requires from us some sorrow,
while more than this is the result of vanity. But never will I
demand of you that you should not grieve at all. And I well
know that some men are to be found whose wisdom is harsh rather than
brave, who deny that the wise man will ever grieve.\a But these, it
seems to me, can never have fallen upon this sort of mishap; if they
had, Fortune would have knocked their proud philosophy out of them,
and, even against their will, have forced them to admit the
truth. Reason will have accomplished enough if only she
removes from grief whatever is excessive and superfluous; it is not
for anyone to hope or to desire that she should suffer us to feel no
sorrow at all. Rather let her maintain a mean which will copy
neither indifference nor madness, and will keep us in the state that
is the mark of an affectionate, and not an unbalanced, mind.
Let your tears flow, but let them also cease, let deepest sighs be
drawn from your breast, but let them also find an end; so rule your
mind that you may win approval both from wise men and from
brothers. Make yourself willing to encounter oft the
memory of your brother, both to speak of him frequently in your
conversation, and to picture him to yourself by constant
remembrance, all of which you will be able to accomplish only if you
make the thought of him more pleasant than tearful; for it is only
natural that the mind should always shrink from a subject to which
it reverts with sadness. Think of his modesty, think of his
alertness in the activities of life, of his diligence in performing
them, of his stead- <Ess2-413>
TO POLYBIUS ON CONSOLATION, xviii. 8-9
fastness to promises. Set forth all
his words and deeds to others and do you yourself recall them to
mind. Think what he was, and what he might have been expected
to become. For what guarantee could not have been safely given
concerning such a brother? I have put these
things together, as best I could, with a mind now weakened and
dulled by long rusting. If they shall seem to you to be ill
suited to your intelligence, or to ill supply the healing of your
sorrow, reflect how he who is held fast in the grip of his own
misfortunes is not at leisure to comfort others, and how Latin words
do not suggest themselves readily to one in whose ears the uncouth
jargon of barbarians is ever ringing, distressing even to the more
civilized barbarians.
<Ess2-415>
\
DE CONSOLATIONE AD HELVIAM+ BOOK XII TO HELVIA HIS
MOTHER ON CONSOLATION
OFTEN, my best of
mothers, I have felt the impulse to send you consolation,\a and as
often I have cheeked it. The motives that urged me to be so
bold were many. In the first place, I thought that I should
lay aside all my troubles when, even though I could not stop your
weeping, I had meanwhile at least wiped away your tears; again, I
felt sure that I should have more power to raise you up, if I had
first arisen from my own grief; besides, I was afraid that Fortune,
though vanquished by me, might still vanquish someone dear to
me. And so, placing my hand over my own gash, I was trying as
best I could to creep forward to bind up your wounds. On the
other hand, there were reasons which made me delay as regards my
purpose. I knew that I ought not to intrude upon your grief
while its violence was fresh, lest my very condolences should
irritate and inflame it; for in bodily ills also nothing is more
harmful than an untimely use of medicine. I was waiting,
therefore, until your grief should of itself subdue its violence,
and its soreness, soothed by time ----- a Writing in
philosophic serenity from his place of exile, Seneca seeks to allay
his mother's grief at the mishap that has befallen him. After
her widowhood she seems to have lived with her father In Spain (ch
18. 9), but had, apparently, visited Rome shortly before her son's
banishment (ch 16.3). <Ess2-417>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, i. 2-ii. 2
to tolerate remedies, should submit to being
touched and handled. Moreover, although I
unrolled all the works "that the most famous writers had composed
for the purpose of repressing and controlling sorrow, not one
instance did I find of a man who had offered consolation to his dear
ones when he himself was bewailed by them; thus, in a novel
situation I faltered, and I feared that my words might supply, not
consolation, but an aggravation. And besides, a man who was lifting
his head from the very bier to comfort his dear ones - what need he
would have of words that were new and not drawn from the common and
everyday forms of condolence! But the very greatness of every
grief that passes bounds must necessarily snatch away the power of
choosing words, since often it chokes even the voice itself.
Yet I shall try as best I can, not because I have confidence in my
eloquence, but because the mere fact that I myself am able to act as
comforter may amount to most effective comfort. You who could
refuse me nothing, will surely not, I hope, refuse me - although all
sorrow is stubborn -your consent to my setting bounds to your
grieving.
See how great a thing I have promised to myself from your
indulgence. I do not doubt that I shall have more power over
you than your grief, though there is nothing that has more power
over the wretched. And so, that I may not join battle with it
immediately, I shall first uphold it, and be lavish with what will
encourage it; I shall expose and tear open all the wounds that have
already closed over. But someone will say: "What sort of
consolation is this, to recall ills that are blotted out and to set
the mind, when it is scarcely able to bear one sorrow, in full <Ess2-419>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, ii. 2-5
view of all its sorrows? "But let him
reflect that whenever diseases become so malignant that they grow
strong in spite of treatment they are then commonly treated by
opposite methods. And so to the stricken mind I shall exhibit
all its distresses, all its garbs of woe; my purpose will be not to
heal by gentle measures, but to cauterize and cut. And what
shall I gain? I shall cause a heart that has been victorious
over so many afflictions to be ashamed to bewail one wound the more
upon a body so marked with scars. Let those, therefore, whose
pampered minds have been weakened by long happiness, weep and moan
continuously, and faint away at the threat of the slightest injury;
but let those whose years have all been passed in a succession of
calamities endure even the heaviest blows with strong and unwavering
resolution. Constant misfortune brings this one blessing, that
those whom it always assails, it at last fortifies. To you Fortune
has never given any respite from the heaviest woes; she did not
except even the day of your birth. You lost your mother as soon as
you had been born, nay, while you were being born, and entering life
you became, as it were, an outcast.\a You grew up under a
stepmother, but by your complete obedience and devotion as great as
can be seen even in a daughter you forced her to become a true
mother; nevertheless every child has paid a great price even for a
good stepmother. My most loving uncle,\b an excellent and very
brave man, you lost just when you were awaiting his arrival, and,
lest Fortune by dividing her cruelty should make it lighter, within
thirty days you buried your dearest husband, who had made you the
proud mother of <Ess2-421>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, ii. 5-iv. 1
three children. This blow was
announced when you were already mourning, when, too, all of your
children were absent, just as if your misfortunes had been
concentrated into that period purposely in order that your grief
might find nothing to rest upon. I pass over the countless
dangers, the countless fears which you have endured, though they
assailed you without cessation. But lately into the self-same
lap from which you had let three grandchildren go, you took back the
bones of three grandchildren. Less than twenty days
after you had buried my son, who died in your arms and amid your
kisses, you heard that I had been snatched from you.
This misfortune you had still lacked - to mourn the living. Of
all the wounds that have ever gone deep into your body, this latest
one, I admit, is the most serious; it has not merely torn the outer
skin, but pierced your very breast and vitals. But just as raw
recruits cry out even when they are slightly wounded, and shudder
more at the hands of surgeon's than they do at the sword, while
veterans, though deeply wounded, submit patiently and without a
groan to the cleansing of their festered bodies just as if these
were not their own, so now you ought to offer yourself bravely to be
healed. But away with lamentations and outcries and the other
demonstrations by means of which women+
usually vent their noisy grief; for you have missed the lesson of so
many ills if you have not yet learned how to be wretched. Do I
seem to have dealt with you now without fear? Not a single one
of your misfortunes have I hidden away; I have placed them all
before you in a heap. In a heroic
spirit have I done this; for I have determined to conquer your
grief, not to dupe it. And <Ess2-423>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, iv. 1-v. 2
too I shall conquer it, I think, if, in the
first place, I show that there is nothing in my condition that could
cause anyone to call me wretched, still less cause those also to
whom I am related to be wretched on my account; and, secondly, if I
turn next to you, and prove that your fortune also, which depends
wholly upon mine, is not a painful one. First of all, I
shall proceed to prove what your love {pietas+} is
eager to hear - that I am suffering no ill. If I can, I shall make
it clear that those very circumstances, which your love fancies
weigh me down, are not intolerable;, but if it will be impossible
for you to believe this, I, at any rate, shall be better pleased
with myself if I show that I am happy under circumstances that
usually make others wretched. You are not asked to believe the
report of others about me; that you may not be at all disturbed by
ungrounded suppositions, I myself inform you that I am not
unhappy. That you may be the more assured, I will add, too,
that I cannot even be made unhappy. We are born
under conditions that would be favourable if only we did not abandon
them. Nature intended that we should need no great equipment
for living happily; each one of us is able to make his own
happiness. External things are of slight importance, and can
have no great influence in either direction. Prosperity does
not exalt the wise man, nor does adversity cast him down; for he has
always endeavoured to rely entirely upon himself, {self_reliance+} to derive all of his joy
from himself. What, then? Do I say that I am a wise
man? By no means; for if I could make that claim, I should
thereby not only deny that I am unhappy, but should also declare
that I am the most fortunate of all men and had been brought into
<Ess2-425>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, v. 2-6
nearness with God. As it is, fleeing
to that which is able to lighten all sorrows, I have surrendered
myself to wise men and, not yet being strong enough to give aid to
myself, I have taken refuge in the camp\a of others - of those,
clearly, who can easily defend themselves and their followers. They
have ordered me to stand ever watching, like a soldier placed on
guard, and to anticipate all the attempts and all the assaults of
Fortune long before she strikes. Her attack falls heavy only
when it is sudden; he easily withstands her who always expects
her. For the arrival too of the enemy lays low only those whom
it catches off guard; but those who have made ready for the coming
war before it arrives, fully formed and ready armed, easily sustain
the first impact, which is always the most violent. Never have
I trusted Fortune, even when she seemed to be offering peace; the
blessings she most fondly bestowed upon me - money, office, and
influence - I stored all of them in a place from which she could
take them back without disturbing me. Between them and me I
have kept a wide space; and so she has merely taken them, not torn
them, from me. No man is crushed by hostile Fortune+ who
is not first deceived by her smiles. Those who love her gifts
is if they were their very own and lasting, who desire to be
esteemed on account of them, grovel and mourn when the false and
fickle delights forsake their empty, childish minds, that are
ignorant of every stable pleasure; but he who is not puffed up by
happy fortune does not collapse when it is reversed. The
man of long-tested constancy, when faced with either condition,
keeps his mind unconquered; for in the very midst of prosperity he
proves his strength to meet adversity. Consequently, I have
always be- <Ess2-427>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, v. 6-vi. 2
lieved that there was no real good in the
things that most men pray for; besides, I have always found that
they were empty and, though painted over with showy and deceptive
colours, have nothing within to match theiroutward_show+. Even now in the midst
of these so-called evils I find nothing so fearful and harsh as the
fancy of everyone foreboded. The very name of exile, by reason
of a sort of persuasion and general consent, falls by now upon the
ears very harshly, and strikes the hearer as something gloomy and
accursed. For so the people have decreed, but decrees of the
people wise men in large measure annul. Therefore, putting
aside the verdict of the majority who are swept away by the first
appearance of things, no matter what ground they have to trust it,
let us see what exile is. It is a change of place. That
l may not seem to narrow its force and to subtract the worst it
holds, I will admit that this changing of place is attended by
disadvantages - by poverty, disgrace, and scorn. These matters
I shall cope with later meanwhile, the first question that I wish to
consider is what unpleasantness the mere changing of place brings
with it. "To be deprived of one's country is intolerable," you
say. But come now, behold this concourse of men, for whom the
houses of huge Rome scarcely suffice; most of this throng are now
deprived of their country. From their towns and colonies, from
the whole world, in fact, hither have they flocked. Some have
been brought by ambition, some by the obligation of a public trust,
some by an envoy's duty having been laid upon them, some, seeking a
convenient and rich field for vice, by luxury, some by a desire for
the <Ess2-429>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, vi. 2-6
higher studies, some by the public
spectacles; some have been drawn by friendship, some, seeing the
ample opportunity for displaying energy, by the chance to work; some
have presented their beauty for sale, some their eloquence for sale
- every class of person has swarmed into the city that offers high
prizes for both virtues and vices. Have all of them summoned
by name and ask of each - "Whence do you hail?"? You will find
that there are more than half who have left their homes and come to
this city, which is truly a very great and a very beautiful one, but
not their own. Then leave this city, which in a sense may be
said to belong to all, and travel from one city to another; everyone
will have a large proportion of foreign population. Pass from
the cities that entice very many by their delightful situation and
an advantageous position; survey the desert places and the, rockiest
islands -Sciathus and Seriphus, Gyarus and Cossura\a; you will find
no place of exile where someone does not linger of his own desire.
What can be found so barren, what so precipitous on every side as
this rock\b? If its resources are viewed, what is more
starved? if its people, what is more uncivilized? if the
very topography of the place, what is more rugged? if the
character of its climate, what is more intemperate? Yet here reside
more foreigners than natives. So far, therefore, is the mere
changing of places from being a hardship that even this place has
tempted some from their native land. I find some who say that
nature has planted in the hurnan breast a certain restlessness that
makes man seek to change his abode and find a new home; for to him
has been given a mind that is fickle and restless, it lingers
nowhere; it ranges to and fro, and <Ess2-431>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, vi. 6-vii. 1
sends forth its thoughts to all places,
known and unknown - a rover, impatient of repose and happiest in the
midst of new scenes. And this will not make you wonder if you
consider its earliest origin. It was not formed from heavy and
terrestrial matter, it came down from yonder spirit in the sky; but
celestial things by their very nature are always in motion, they
ever flee and are driven on in swiftest course. Behold the
planets that light the world; no one of them stands still. The
sun glides onward ceaselessly and changes from place to place, and
although it revolves with the universe, it moves none the less in a
direction contrary to that of the world itself, it runs through all
the signs of the zodiac and never halts; its movement is incessant
and it shifts from one position to another. All the planets
are ever whirling on and passing by; as the inviolable law of Nature
has decreed, they are swept from one position to another; when in
the course of fixed periods of years they have rounded out their
circuits, they will enter again upon the paths by which they
came. What folly, then, to think that the human mind, which
has been formed from the self-same elements as these divine beings,
is troubled by journeying and changing its home, while God's nature
finds delight or, if you will, its preservation in continuous and
most speedy movement! Come now, turn
your attention from things divine to the affairs of men; you will
see that whole tribes and nations have changed their abodes.
Why do we find Greek cities in the very heart of barbarian
countries? why the Macedonian tongue among the Indians and the
Persians? Scythia and all that great stretch which is peopled
with fierce and unconquered tribes show Achaean towns planted on <Ess2-433>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, vii. 1-4
the shores of the Pontic Sea; not by the
fierceness of eternal winter, not by the temper of the inhabitants,
as savage as their climate, were men deterred from seeking there new
homes. A host of Athenians dwell in Asia; Miletus has poured
forth in divers directions enough people to fill seventy-five
cities\a; the whole coast of Italy which is washed by the Lower Sea
became a greater Greece; Asia claims the Tuscans\b as her own;
Tyrians live in Africa, Carthaginians in Spain; the Greeks\c thrust
themselves into Gaul, the Gauls into Greece\d; the Pyreness did not
stay the passage of the Germans - through pathless, through unknown
regions restless man has made his way. Wives and children and
elders burdened with age trailed along. Some have not settled
upon a place from choice, but, tossed about in long wandering, from
very weariness have seized upon the nearest; others have established
their right in a foreign land by the sword; some tribes, seeking
unknown regions, were swallowed up by the sea; some settled in the
spot in which a lack of supplies had stranded them. And not
all have had the same reason for leaving their country and seeking a
new one. Some, having escaped the destruction of their cities
by the forces of the enemy, have been thrust into strange lands when
stripped of their own; some have been cast out by civil discord;
some have gone forth in order to relieve the pressure from
over-crowding caused by an excess of population; some have been
driven out by pestilence or repeated earthquakes or certain
unbearable defects of an unproductive soil; some ---- berians, who
crossed from Gaul into Spain at an early period. <Ess2-435>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, vii. 4-8
have been beguiled by the fame of a fertile
shore that was too highly praised. Different peoples have been
impelled by different reasons to leave their homes. But at
least this is clear - none has stayed in the place where it was
born. The human race is constantly rushing to and fro; in this
vast world some change takes place every day. The foundations
of new cities are laid, the names of new nations arise, while former
ones are blotted out or lost by annexation with a stronger.
But all these transmigrations of peoples - what are they but
wholesale banishments? Why should I drag you through the
whole long circle? What need to cite Antenor, founder of
Patavium, and Evander, who planted the authority of the Arcadians on
the banks of the Tiber? Why mention Diomedes and the others,
victors and vanquished alike, who were scattered throughout strange
lands by the Trojan War? The Roman Empire itself, in fact,
looks back to an exile as its founder - a refugee from his captured
city, who, taking along a small remnant of his people and driven by
fear of the victor to seek a distant land, was brought by destiny
into Italy. This people, in turn - how many colonies has
it sent to every province! Wherever the Roman conquers,
there he dwells. With a view to this change of country,
volunteers would gladly give in their names, and the old man,
leaving his altars, would follow the colonists overseas.
The matter does not require a listing of more instances; yet I shall
add one which thrusts itself before the eyes. This very island
has ofttimes changed its dwellers. To say nothing of older
matters, which antiquity has veiled, the Greeks who now inhabit
Marseilles, after leaving Phocis,\a <Ess2-437>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, vii. 8-viii. 2
first settled on this island, and it is
doubtful what drove them from it -whether the harshness of the
climate, or the near sight of all-powerful Italy, or the harbourless
character of the sea; for that the fierceness of the natives was not
the cause is clear from the fact that they established themselves in
the midst of what were then the most savage and uncivilized peoples
of Gaul. Later the Ligurians crossed into the island, and the
Spaniards also came, as the similarity of customs shows; for the
islanders wear the same head-coverings and the same kind of
foot-gear as the Cantabrians, and certain of their words are the
same; but only a few, for from intercourse with the Greeks and
Ligurians their language as a whole has lost its native
character. Still later two colonies of Roman citizens were
transported to the island, one by Marius, the other by Sulla; so
many times has the population of this barren and thorny rock been
changed! In short, you will scarcely find any land in which
there dwells to this day a native population; everywhere the
inhabitants are of mongrel and ingrafted stock. One
people has followed upon another; what one scorned, the other
coveted; one that drove another from its land, has been in turn
expelled. Thus Fate has decreed that nothing should
stand always upon the same plane of fortune. Varro, the most
learned of the Romans, holds that, barring all the other ills of
exile, the mere changing of place is offset by this ample
compensation -the fact that wherever we come, we must still find
there the same order of Nature. Marcus Brutus thinks that this
is enough - the fact that those who go into exile may take along
with them their virtues. Even though one may <Ess2-439>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, viii. 2-6
decide that these considerations taken
singly do not suffice to give full consolation to the exile, yet he
will admit that they are all-powerful when they are combined.
For how little it is that we have lost! Wherever we
betake ourselves, two things that are most admirable will go with us
-universal Nature and our own virtue. Believe me, this was the
intention of the great creator of the universe, whoever he may be,
whether an all-powerful God, or incorporeal Reason contriving vast
works, or divine Spirit pervading all things from the smallest to
the greatest with uniform energy, or Fate and an unalterable
sequence of causes clinging one to the other - this, I say, was his
intention, that only the most worthless of our possessions should
fall under the control of another. All that is best for a man
lies beyond the power of other men, who can neither give it nor take
it away. This firmament, than which Nature has created naught
greater and more beautiful, and the most glorious part of it, the
human mind\a that surveys and wonders at the firmament, are our own
everlasting possessions, destined to remain with us so long as we
ourselves shall remain. Eager, therefore, and erect, let
us hasten with dauntless step wherever circumstance directs, let us
traverse any lands whatsoever. Inside the world there can be
found no place of exile; for nothing that is inside the world is
foreign to mankind.\b No matter where you lift your gaze from earth
to heaven, the realms of God and man are separated by an unalterable
distance. Accordingly, so long as my eves are not deprived of
that spectacle with which they are never sated, so long as I may
behold the sun and the moon, so long as I may fix my gaze upon the
other planets, <Ess2-441>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, viii. 6-ix. 3
so long as I may trace out their risings and
settings, their periods, and the reasons for the swiftness or the
slowness of their wandering, behold the countless stars that gleam
throughout the night - some at rest, while others do not enter upon
a great course, but circle around within their own field, some
suddenly shooting forth, some blinding the eyes with scattered fire
as if they were falling, or flying by with a long trail of lingering
light - so long as I may be with these, and, in so far as it is
permitted to a man, commune with celestial beings, so long as I may
keep my mind directed ever to the sight of kindred things on high,
what difference does it make to me what soil I tread upon? But," you say,
"this land yields no fruitful or pleasing trees; it is watered by
the channels of no great or navigable rivers; it produces nothing
that other nations desire, it scarcely bears enough to support its
own inhabitants; no costly marble is quarried here, no veins of gold
and silver are unearthed." But it is a narrow mind that finds its
pleasure in earthly things; it should turn from these to those
above, which everywhere appear just the same, everywhere are just as
bright. This, too, we must bear in mind, that earthly things
because of false and wrongly accepted values cut off the sight of
these true goods. The longer the rich man extends his colonnades,
the higher he lifts his towers, the wider he stretches out his
mansions, the deeper he digs his caverns for summer, the huger loom
the roofs of the banquet-halls he rears, so much the more there will
be to hide heaven from his sight. Has misfortune cast
you into a country where the most sumptuous shelter is a hut?
Truly you show a paltry spirit and <Ess2-443>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, ix. 3-6
take to yourself mean comfort if you bear
this bravely only because you know the hut of Romulus. Say,
rather, this: "This lowly hovel, I suppose, gives entrance to the
virtues+? When justice, when temperance, when wisdom and
righteousness and understanding of the proper apportionment of all
duties and the knowledge of God and man are seen therein, it will
straightway become more stately than any temple. No place that
can hold this concourse of such great virtues is narrow; no exile
can be irksome to which one may go in such company as this." Brutus, in the
book\a he wrote on virtue, says that he saw Marcellus in exile at
Mytilene, living as happily as the limitations of human nature
permit, and that he had never been more interested in liberal
studies+ than he was at that time. And so he adds that,
when he was about to return to Rome without him, he felt that he
himself was going into exile instead of leaving him behind in
exile. How much more favoured was Marcellus at that time when
as an exile he won the approval of Brutus than when as consul he won
the approval of the state! What a man he must have been
to have made any one feel that he himself was an exile because he
was parting from an exile! What a man he must have been to
have drawn to himself the admiration of one whom Cato, his kinsman,
had to admire! Brutus says, too, that Gaius Caesar had sailed
past Mytilene because he could not bear to see a hero in
disgrace. The senate did indeed by public petitions
secure his recall,\c being meanwhile so anxious and sad that all its
members on that day seemed to feel as Brutus did and to be pleading,
not for Marcellus, but for themselves, lest they should be exiles if
they should be left without him; but <Ess2-445>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, ix. 6-x. 2
he attained far more on that day when Brutus
could not bear to leave him, and Caesar to see him as an
exile! For he was so fortunate as to have testimony from both
- Brutus grieved to return without Marcellus, but Caesar
blushed! Can you doubt that Marcellus, great hero that he was,
often encouraged himself by such thoughts as these to bear his exile
with patience? "The mere loss of your country is not
unhappiness. You have so steeped yourself in studies as
to know that to the wise man every place is his country. And,
besides, the very man who drove you forth - was be not absent from
his country through ten successive years? His reason
was, it is true, the extension of the empire, but for all that he
was away from his country. See! now he is drawn toward Africa,
which is rife with menace as war again lifts up its head; he is
drawn toward Spain, which is nursing back the strength of crushed
and shattered forces; he is drawn toward faithless Egypt - in short,
toward the whole world, waiting for a chance to strike the stricken
empire. Which matter shall he cope with first? Toward
what quarter set his face? Throughout all lands shall he
be driven, a victim of his own victory. Him let the
nations reverence and worship, but do you live content to have
Brutus an admirer!" Nobly, then, did
Marcellus endure his exile, and his change of place made no change
at all in his mind, although poverty went with him. But
everyone who has not yet attained to insanity of greed and luxury,
which upset everything, knows that there is no calamity in
that. For how small a sum is needed to support a man!
And who can fail to have this little if he possesses any merit
whatsoever? So far as concerns myself, I know that I have
lost, not wealth, <Ess2-447>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, x. 2-5,
but my "engrossments."\a The wants of the
body are trifling. It requires protection from the cold and
the quenching of hunger and thirst by food and drink; if we covet
anything beyond, we toil to serve, not our needs, but our
vices. We have no need to scour the depths of every sea, to
load the belly with the carnage of dumb creatures, to wrest
shell-fish from the distant shore of farthest sea - curses of gods
and goddesses upon the wretches whose luxury overleaps the bounds of
an empire that already stirs too much envy! They want game
that is caught beyond the Phasis to supply their pretentious
kitchens, and from the Parthians, from whom Rome has not yet got
vengeance, they do not blush to get - birds! From every
quarter they gather together every known and unknown thing to tickle
a fastidious palate; the food which their stomachs, weakened by
indulgence, can scarcely retain is fetched from farthest ocean; they
vomit that they may eat, they eat that they may vomit, and they do
not deign even to digest the feasts for which they ransack the whole
world. If a man despises such things, what harm can poverty do
him? If a man covets them, poverty becomes even a benefit to him,,
for he is made whole in spite of himself, and, if even under
compulsion he will not take his medicine, for a time at least, while
he cannot get them, he is as though he did not want
them. Gaius Caesar, whom, as it seems to me, Nature
produced merely to show how far supreme vice, when combined with
supreme power, could go, dined one day at a cost of ten million
sesterces; and though everybody used their ingenuity to help him,
yet he could hardly discover how to spend the tribute-money from
three provinces on one dinner! How unhappy those whose <Ess2-449>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION. x. 5-7
appetite is stirred at the sight of none but
costly foods! And it is not their choice flavour or some
delight to the palate that makes them costly, but their rarity and
the difficulty of getting them . Otherwise, if men should be
willing to return to sanity of mind, what is the need of so many
arts that minister to the belly? What need of
commerce? What need of ravaging the forests? What
need of ransacking the deep? The foods which Nature has placed
in every region lie all about us, but men, just as if blind, pass
these by and roam through every region, they cross the seas and at
great cost excite their hunger when at little cost they might allay
it. One would like to say: "Why do you launch your
ships? Why do you arm your bands both against man and against
wild beasts? Why do you rush to and fro in such wild
confusion? Why do you pile riches on riches? You really should
remember how small your bodies are! Is it not madness and the
wildest lunacy to desire so much when you can hold so little? And so you may swell
your incomes, and extend your boundaries; yet you will never enlarge
the capacity of your bellies. Though your business may
prosper, though warfare may profit you much, though you may bring
together foods hunted from every quarter, yet you will have no place
in which to store your hoards. Why do you search for so many
things? Our ancestors, of course, were unhappy -they whose
virtue even to this day props up our vices, who by their own hands
provided themselves with food, whose couch was the earth, whose
ceilings did not yet glitter with gold, whose temples were not yet
shining with precious stones. And so in those days they would
solemnly take oath by gods of clay,\a and those who had invoked them
<Ess2-451>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, x. 8-10
would go back to the enemy,\a preferring to
die rather than break faith. And our dictator,\b he who, while he
gave audience to the envoys of the Samnites, was busy at his hearth,
cooking with his own hand the cheapest sort of food, with that hand
that had often smitten the enemy before and had placed a laurel
wreath\c upon the lap of Capitoline Jove - this man, of course, was
living less happily than did Apicius\a within our own memory, who in
this very city, which at one time the philosophers were ordered
to ave/c, as being 'corruptors of youth,' as a professor of
the science (if the cook-shop defiled the age with his teaching." It
is worth our while to learn his end, After he had squandered a
hundred million sesterces upon his kitchen, after he had drunk up at
every one of his revels the equivalent of the many largesses of the
emperors and the huge revenue of the Capitol, then for the first
time, when overwhelmed with debt and actually forced, he began to
examine his accounts. He calculated that he would have ten
million sesterces left, and considering that he would be living in
extreme starvation if he lived on ten million sesterces, he ended
his life by poison. But how great was his luxury if ten
millions counted as poverty! What folly then to think that it is the
amount of money and not the state of mind that matters! Ten
million sesterces made one man shudder, and a sum that others seek
by prayer he escaped from by poison! For a man so perverted in
desire, his last draught was really the most wholesome. When
he not only enjoyed, but boasted of his enormous banquets, when he
flaunted his vices, when he attracted the attention of the community
to his wantonness, when he enticed the young to imitate his own
course, Who even without ------ a
Regulus+ . . . . <Ess2-453>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, x. 10-xi. 3
bad examples are quick enough to learn of
themselves, it was then that be was eating and drinking
poisons. Such are the pitfalls of those who measure riches,
not by the standard of reason, which has its bounds fixed, but by
the standard of a mode of living that is vicious, and yet has
boundless and illimitable desire. Nothing will satisfy greed,
but even scant measure is enough for Nature's need. Therefore
the poverty of an exile holds no hardship; for no place of exile is
so barren as not to yield ample support for a man. "But," you say,
"the exile is likely to miss his raiment and his house." Will he
desire these also merely to the extent of his need? Then he will
lack neither shelter nor covering; for it takes just as little to
shield as to feed the body. Nature has made nothing difficult
which at the same time she made necessary for man. But if he
desires cloth of purple steeped in rich dye, threaded with gold, and
damasked with various colours and patterns, it is not Nature's fault
but his own if he is poor. Even if you restore to him whatever he
has lost, it will do no good; for he who will need to be restored/a
Will still lack more of all that he covets than as an exile he
lacked of all that he once had. But if he desires tables that
gleam with vessels of gold, and silver plate that boasts the names
of ancient artists, bronze /b made costly by the crazy fad of a few,
and a throng of slaves that would hamper a house however large,
beasts of burden with bodies over-stuffed and forced to grow fat,
and the marbles of every nation - though he should amass all these,
they will no more be able to satisfy his insatiable soul than any
amount of drink will ever suffice to quench the thirst of a man <Ess2-455>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xi. 3-7
whose desire arises, not from need, but from
the fire that burns in his vitals; for this is not thirst, but
disease. {lust+} Nor is this true only in respect to
money or food. Every want that springs, not from any need, but
from vice is of a like character; however much you gather for it
will serve, not to end, but to advance desire. He, therefore,
who keeps himself within the bounds of nature will not feel poverty;
but he who exceeds the bounds of nature will be pursued by poverty
even though he has unbounded wealth. Even places of exile will
provide necessaries, but not even kingdoms superfluities. It
is the mind that makes us rich; this goes with us into exile, and in
the wildest wilderness, having found there all that the body needs
for its sustenance, it itself overflows in the enjoyment of its own
goods. The mind has no concern with money - no whit more than
have the immortal gods. Those things that men's untutored
hearts revere, sunk in the bondage of their bodies - jewels, gold,
silver, and polished tables, huge and round - all these are earthly
dross, for which the untainted spirit, conscious of its own nature,
can have no love, sinee it is itself light and uncumbered, waiting
only to be released from the body before it soars to highest
heaven. Meanwhile, hampered by mortal limbs and encompassed by
the heavy burden of the flesh+, it surveys, as best it can, the
things of heaven in swift and winged thought. And so the
mind can never suffer exile, since it is free, kindred to the gods,
and at home in every world and every age; for its thought ranges
over all heaven and projects itself into all past and future
time. This poor body, the prison and fetter of the soul,
is tossed hither and thither <Ess2-457>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xi. 7-xii. 4
upon it punishments, upon it robberies, upon
it diseases work their will. But the soul itself is sacred and
eternal, and upon it no hand can be laid. But, that you may
not think that I am using merely the precepts of philosophers for
the purpose of belittling the ills of poverty, which no man feels to
be burdensome unless he thinks it so, consider, in the first place,
how much larger is the proportion of poor+ men, and
yet you will observe that they are not a whit sadder or more anxious
than the rich; nay, I am inclined to think that they are happier
because they have fewer things to harass their minds. Let us
pass over the wealth that is almost poverty, let us come to the
really rich. How many are the occasions on which they are just
like the poor! If they go abroad, they must cut down their
baggage, and whenever the pressure of the journey requires haste,
they dismiss their train of attendants. And those who
are in the army - how small a part of their possessions do they have
with them since camp discipline prohihits every luxury! And
not only does the necessity of certain times and places put them on
a level with the poor in actual want, but, when a weariness of
riches happens to seize them, they even choose certain days on which
to dine on the ground and use earthen vessels, refraining from gold
and silver plate. Madmen! - this state which they always
dread, they sometimes even covet. O what darkness of mind,
what ignorance of truth blinds those who, harassed by the fear of
poverty+, for pleasure's sake simulate poverty! As for
myself, whenever I look back upon the great examples of antiquity, I
am ashamed to seek any consolations for poverty, since in these
times luxury has <Ess2-459>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xii. 4-7
reached such a pitch that the allowance of
exiles is larger than the inheritance of the chief men of old.
It is well known that Homer had one slave, Plato three, that Zeno,
the founder of the strict and virile school of Stoic philosophy, had
none. Will any one say, therefore, that these men lived poorly
without seeming from his very words to be the poorest wretch
alive? Menenius Agrippa, who acting as mediator between the
patricians and plebeians brought harmony to the state, was buried by
public subscription. Atilius Regulus, when he was engaged in routing
the Carthaginians in Africa, wrote to the senate that his hired-
hand had absconded and left the farm abandoned; whereupon the senate
decreed that, as long as Regulus was away, his farm was to be
managed by the state. Was it not worth his while to have no
slave in order that the Roman people might become his labourer?
Scipio's daughters received their dowry from the public treasury
because their father had left them nothing. Heaven
knows! it was only fair for the Roman people to bestow tribute
on Scipio just once since he was always exacting it from
Carthage. O happy the maidens' husbands in having the Roman
people as their father-in-- law! Think you that those whose
daughters dance upon the stage and wed with a dowry of a million
sesterces are happier than Scipio, whose children had the senate as
their guardian and received from it a weight of copper a for their
dowry? Can any one scorn Poverty when she has a pedigree so
illustrious? Can an exile chafe at suffering any need when
Scipio had need of a dowry, Regulus of a hireling, Menenius of a
funeral? when in the case of all of these what they needed was
supplied to their <Ess2-461>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xii. 7-xiii. 4
greater honour for the very reason that they
had had the need? With such defenders, therefore, as these the
cause of poverty becomes not only safe, but greatly favoured. To this one may
reply: "Why do you artfully divide things which, if taken
separately, can be endured; if combined, cannot? Change of
place is tolerable if you change merely your place; poverty is
tolerable if it be without disgrace, which even alone is wont to
crush the spirit." In reply to this man, the one who tries to
frighten me with an aggregation of ills, I shall have to use such
words as these: "If you have enough strength to cope with any one
phase of fortune, you will have enough to cope with all, When virtue
has once steeled your mind, it guarantees to make it invulnerable
from every quarter. If greed+, the
mightiest curse of the human race, has relaxed its hold, ambition
will not detain you; if you regard the end of your days, not as a
punishment, but as an ordinance of nature, when once you have cast
from your breast the fear of death, the fear of no other thing will
dare to enter in; if you consider sexual desire+ to
have been given to man, not for the gratification of pleasure, but
for the continuance of the human race, when once you have escaped
the violence of this secret destruction implanted in your very
vitals, every other desire will pass you by unharmed. Reason
lays low the vices not one by one, but all together; the victory is
gained once for all." Think you that any wise man can be moved by
disgrace - a man who relies wholly upon himself, who draws aloof
from the opinions of the common herd+?
Worse even than disgrace is a disgraceful death. And yet
Socrates, wearing the same aspect wherewith he had once all <Ess2-463>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xiii. 4-8
alone put the Thirty Tyrants in their
place,/a entered prison, and so was to rob even prison of all
disgrace; for no place that held Socrates could possibly seem a
prison. Who has become so blind to the perception of truth as
to think that the twofold defeat of Marcus Cato in his candidacy for
the praetorship and the consulship was to him a disgrace. It
was the praetorship and the consulship, on which Cato was conferring
honour, that suffered the disgrace. No one is despised by
another unless he is first despised by himself. An abject and
grovelling mind may be liable to such insult; but a man who rises up
to face the most cruel of misfortunes and overthrows the evils by
which others are crushed this man's very sorrows crown him, as it
were, with a halo, since we are so constituted that nothing stirs
our admiration so much as a man who is brave in adversity. At Athens, when
Aristides/b was being led to death, everyone who met him would cast
down his eyes and groan, feeling that it was not merely a just man,
but Justice herself who was being doomed to die; yet one man was
found who spat into his face. He might have resented this for
the simple reason that he knew well that no clean-mouthed man would
have dared to do it. But he wiped his face and smiled, saying
to the officer that attended him: "Remind that fellow not to open
his mouth so offensively another time." This was to put insult/c
upon insult itself. I know that there are some who say that nothing
is harder to bear than scorn, that death itself seems more desirable
to them. To these I will reply that even exile is often
free from any mark of scorn. If a great man falls, though
prostrate, he is still great - men no more scorn him, I say, than
they tread upon <Ess2-465>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xiii. 8-xv. 1
the fallen walls of a temple, which the
devout still revere as deeply as when they were standing. Since you have
no reason, my dearest mother, to be forced to endless tears on my
own account, it follows that you are goaded to them by reasons of
your own. Now there are two possibilities.
For what moves you is either the thought that you have lost some
protection, or the mere longing for me is more than you can
endure. The first consideration I must touch upon very
lightly; for I well know that your heart values nothing in your dear
ones except themselves. Let other mothers look to that - the
mothers who make use of a son's power with a woman+'s lack
of selfcontrol, who, because they cannot hold office, seek power
through their sons, who both spend their sons' inheritances and hope
to be their heirs, who wear out their eloquence in lending it to
others. But you have always had the greatest joy in the
blessings of your children, yet you have used them not at all; you
have always set bounds to our generosity, though you set none to
your own; you, though a daughter in your father's household,
actually made presents to your wealthy sons; you managed our
inheritances with such care that they might have been your own, with
such scrupulousness that they might have been a stranger's; you were
as sparing in the use of our influence as if you were using a
stranger's property, and from our elections to office nothing
accrued to you except your pleasure and the expense. Never did
your fondness look to self-interest. You cannot, therefore, in
the loss of a son miss what you never considered your own concern
while he was still safe. So I must direct all my effort at
consolation upon <Ess2-467>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xv. 1-4
the second point - the true source of the
power of a mother's grief. "I am deprived," you say, "of the
embraces of my dearest son; I may no longer enjoy the pleasure of
seeing him, the pleasure of his conversation! Where is he the very
sight of whom would smooth my troubled brow, upon whom I unloaded
all my anxieties? Where are the talks, of which I could never
have enough? Where are the studies, which I shared with more
than a woman+'s pleasure, with more than
a mother's intimacy? Where the fond meeting? Where
the boyish glee that was always stirred by the sight of his mother?"
You add to all this the actual scenes of our rejoicings and
intercourse and the reminders of our recent association, which are,
necessarily, the most potent causes of mental distress. For
Fortune cruelly contrived to deal you even this blow - she willed
that you should part from me only two days before I was struck down,
and you had no reason for concern nor any fear of such a
disaster. It is well that we had been separated before by a
great distance, it is well that an absence of several years had
prepared you for this misfortune. By returning to Rome,
you failed to gain the pleasure of seeing your son, and lost the
habit of doing without him. Had you been absent long before,
you could have borne my misfortune more bravely, since separation
itself lessens our longing; had you not gone away, you would have at
least gained the final pleasure of seeing your son two days longer.
As it was, cruel Fate contrived that you should neither be with me
in the midst of disaster, nor have grown accustomed to my
absence. But the harder these circumstances are, the more
courage must you summon, and you must engage with For- <Ess2-469>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xv. 4-xvi. 3
tune the more fiercely, as with an enemy
well known and often conquered before. It is not from an
unscathed body that your blood has now flowed; you have been struck
in the very scars of old wounds. It is not for
you to avail yourself of the excuse of being a woman, who, in a way,
has been granted the right to inordinate, yet not unlimited,
tears. And so our ancestors, seeking to compromise with the
stubbornness of a woman's grief by a public ordinance, granted the
space of ten months as the limit of mourning for a husband. They did
not forbid their mourning, but limited it; for when you lose one who
is most dear, to be filled with endless sorrow is foolish fondness,
and to feel none is inhuman hardness. The best course is the
mean between affection and reason - both to have a sense of loss and
to crush it. There is no need for you to regard certain women,
whose sorrow once assumed ended only with their death - some you
know, who, having put on mourning for sons they had lost, never laid
the garb aside. From you life, that was sterner from the
start, requires more; the excuse of being a woman can be of no avail
to one who has always lacked all the weaknesses of a woman. Unchastity, the
greatest evil of our time, has never classed you with the great
majority of women; jewels have not moved you, nor pearls; to your
eyes the glitter of riches has not seemed the greatest boon of the
human race; you, who were soundly trained in an old-fashioned and
strict household, have not been perverted by the imitation of worse
women that leads even the virtuous into pitfalls; you have never
blushed for the number of your children, as if it taunted you with
your years, never have <Ess2-471>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xvi. 3-6
you, in the manner of other women whose only
recommendation lies in their beauty, tried to conceal your pregnancy
as if an unseemly burden, nor have you ever crushed the hope of
children that were being nurtured in your body; you have not defiled
your face with paints and cosmetics; never have you fancied the kind
of dress/a that exposed no greater nakedness by being removed.
In you has been seen that peerless ornament, that fairest beauty on
which time lays no hand, that chiefest glory which is modesty. You cannot, therefore,
allege your womanhood as an excuse for persistent grief, for your
very virtues set you apart; you must be as far removed from
woman+'s tears as from her vices. But even women will not
allow you to pine away from your wound, but will bid you finish
quickly with necessary sorrow, and then rise with lighter heart - I
mean, if you are willing to turn your gaze upon the women whose
conspicuous bravery has placed them in the rank of mighty heroes.
Cornelia
bore twelve children, but Fortune had reduced their number to two;
if you wished to count Cornelia's losses, she had lost ten, if to
appraise them, she had lost the two Gracchi. Nevertheless,
when her friends were weeping around her and cursing her fate, she
forbade them to make any indictment against Fortune, since it was
Fortune who had allowed the Gracchi to be her sons. Such a
woman had right to be the mother of him who exclaimed in the public
assembly: "Do you dare to revile the mother who gave birth to me?"
But to me his mother's utterances seems more spirited by far; the
son set great value on the birthdays of the Gracchi, but the mother
on their funerals as well. <Ess2-473>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xvi. 7-xvii. 2
Rutilia followed her son Cotta/a into exile,
and was so wrapped up in her love for him that she preferred exile
to losing him; and only her son's return brought her back to her
native land. But when, after he had been restored and now had
risen to honour in the state, he died, she let him go just as
bravely as she had clung to him; and after her son was buried no one
saw her shed any tears. When he was exiled, she showed
courage, when she lost him, wisdom; for in the one case she did not
desist from her devotion, and in the other did not persist in
useless and foolish sorrow. In the number of such women as these I
wish you to be counted. In your effort to restrain and
suppress your sorrow your best course will be to follow the example
of those women whose life you have always copied. I know well that
this is a matter that is not in our own power, and that no emotion
is submissive, least of all that which is born from sorrow; for it
is wild and stubbornly resists every remedy. Sometimes we will
to crush it and to swallow down our cries, yet tears pour down our
faces even when we have framed the countenance to deceive. Sometimes
we occupy the mind with public games or the bouts of gladiators, but
amid the very spectacles that divert the mind it is crushed by some
slight reminder of its loss. Therefore it is better to subdue
our sorrow than to cheat it; for when it has withdrawn and has been
beguiled by pleasures or engrossments, it rises up again, and from
its very rest gathers new strength for its fury. But the grief
that has submitted to reason is allayed for ever. And so I am
not going to point you to the expedients that I know many have used,
suggesting that you distract <Ess2-475>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xvii. 2-5
or cheer your mind by travel, whether to
distant or pleasant places, that you employ much time in diligent
examination of your accounts and in the management of your estate,
that you should always be involved in some new tasks. All such
things avail for a brief space only, and are not the remedies but
the hindrances of sorrow; but I would rather end it than beguile
it. And so I guide you to that in which all who fly from
Fortune must take refuge to philosophic studies. They will
heal your wound, they will uproot all your sadness. Even if
you had not been acquainted with them before, you would need to use
them now; but, so far as the old-fashioned strictness of my father
permitted you, though you have not indeed fully grasped the liberal
arts, still you have had some dealings with them. Would that
my father, truly the best of men, had surrendered less to the
practice of his forefathers, and had been willing to have you
acquire a thorough knowledge of the teachings of philosophy instead
of a mere smattering! In that case you would now have, not to
devise, but merely to display, your protection against
Fortune. But he did not suffer you to pursue your
studies because of those women+ who do not employ learning as a
means to wisdom, but equip themselves with it for the purpose of
display. Yet, thanks to your acquiring mind, you imbibed more
than might have been expected in the time you had; the foundations
of all systematic knowledge have been laid. Do you return now
to these studies; they will render you safe. They will comfort
you, they will cheer you; if in earnest they gain entrance to your
mind, nevermore will sorrow enter there, nevermore anxiety,
nevermore the use- <Ess2-477>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xvii. 5-xviii. 5
less distress of futile suffering. To
none of these will your heart be open; for to all other weaknesses
it has long been closed. Philosophy is your most unfailing
safeguard, and she alone can rescue you from the power of
Fortune. But because you have need of something to lean upon
until you can reach that haven which philosophy promises to you, I
wish meanwhile to point out the consolations you still have.
Turn your eyes upon my brothers; while they live, you have no right
to complain of Fortune. Different as their merits are, you
have reason to rejoice in both. The one by his energy has
attained public honours; the other with wisdom has scorned
them. Find comfort in the prestige of one son, in the
retirement of the other - in the devotion of both! The secret
motives of my brothers I well know. The one fosters his
prestige for the real purpose of shedding lustre upon you; the other
retired to a life of tranquillity and repose for the real purpose of
using his leisure for you. It was kind of Fortune so to
arrange the lives of your children that they would bring help and
pleasure to you; you can both be protected by the position of the
one, and enjoy the leisure of the other. They will vie in
their services to you, and the blank that one has caused will be
filled by the devotion of two. I can make a confidant promise
- you will lack nothing except the full number. From these
turn your eyes, too, upon your grandchildren - to Marcus,/a a most
winsome lad, the sight of whom no sorrow can possibly withstand; no
one's heart can hold a sorrow so great or so fresh that his embrace
will not soothe it. Whose tears would his merriment not stay?
Whose heart contracted <Ess2-479>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xviii. 5-9
by pain will his lively prattle not
release? Whom will his playfulness not provoke to mirth?
Whom intent upon his own thoughts will he not attract to himself and
divert by the chatter that no one will weary of? I pray the
gods that we may have the good fortune to die before he does!
May all the cruelty of Fate be exhausted and stop at me; whatever
grief you are doomed to suffer as a mother, whatever as a
grandmother - may it all be shifted to me! May all the rest of
my band be blest with no change in their lot. I make no
complaint of my childlessness, none of my present fortune; only let
me be a scapegoat for the family, and know that it will have no more
sorrow. Hold
to your bosom Novatilla, who so soon will present you with
great-grandchildren, whom I had so transferred to myself, had so
adopted as my own, that in losing me she may well seem to be an
orphan although her father is still living; do you cherish her for
me also! Fortune recently snatched from her her mother, but
you by your affection can see to it that she shall but mourn, and
not really know, her mother's loss. Now is the time to order
her character, now is the time to shape it; instruction that is
stamped upon the plastic years leaves a deeper mark. Let her
become accustomed to your conversation, let her be moulded to your
pleasure; you will give her much even if you give her nothing but
your example. Such a sacred duty as this will bring to you
relief; for only philosophy or an honourable occupation can turn
from its distress the heart that sorrows from affection. Among your great
comforts I would count your father also, were he not now
absent. As it is, never- <Ess2-481>
TO HELVIA, CONSOLATION, xviii. 9-xix. 3
theless, let your love for him make you
think of what his is for you, and you will understand how much more
just it is that you should be preserved for him than sacrificed for
me. Whenever excessive grief assails you with its power and
bids you submit, do you think of your father! It is true that,
by giving to him so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you
have saved yourself from being his sole treasure; nevertheless the
crowning pleasure of his happy life depends on yon. While he
lives, it is wrong to complain because you have lived. Of your
greatest source of comfort I have thus far said nothing - your
sister,/a that heart most loyal to you, upon which without reserve
you unload all your cares, who for all of us has the feeling of a
mother. With her tears you have mingled yours, and in her arms
you first learned to breathe again. While she closely
shares all your feelings, yet in my case it is not for your sake
only that she grieves. It was in her arms that I was carried
to Rome, it was by her devoted and motherly nursing that I recovered
from a lengthened illness; she it was who, when I was standing for
the quaestorship, gave me generous support - she, who lacked the
courage even for conversation or a loud greeting, in order to help
me, conquered her shyness by her love. Neither her retired
mode of life, nor her modesty, so old-fashioned amid the great
boldness of present women, nor her quietness, nor her habits of
seclusion and devotion to leisure prevented her at all from becoming
even ambitious in order to help me. She, my dearest mother, is
the source of comfort from which you will gain new strength.
To her attach yourself as closely as you can, in her embraces
<Ess2-483>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xix. 3-6
enfold yourself most closely. Those
who are in grief are prone to avoid the ones they love most dearly,
and to seek liberty for the indulgence of their sorrow. Do
you, however, share with her your every thought; whether you wish to
retain or to lay aside your mood, you will find in her either the
end of your sorrow or a comrade in it. But if I know rightly
the wisdom of this most perfect woman, she wilt not suffer you to be
consumed by a grief that will profit you nothing, and she will
recount to you an experience of her own, which I myself also
witnessed.
In the very midst of a voyage she lost her dearly beloved husband,
my uncle, whom she had married when a maiden; nevertheless, she bore
up bravely, enduring at the same time both grief and fear, and,
overmastering the storm, bore his body safe to land amid the
shipwreck. O how many noble deeds of women are unknown to
fame! If she had had the good fortune to live in the
days of old when men were frank in admiration of heroic deeds, with
what rivalry of genius would her praise be sung - a wife who
forgetful of her own weakness, forgetful of the sea, which even the
stoutest hearts must dread, exposed her own life to peril to give
another burial, and, while she planned her husband's funeral, had no
fear at all about her own! She/a who gave herself to death in
place of her husband has fame from the songs of all
poets. But for a wife to seek burial for her husband at
the risk of her own life is far more; for she who, enduring equal
danger, has smaller recompense shows greater love. After this no
one can be surprised that throughout the sixteen years during which
her husband was <Ess2-485>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xix. 6
governor of Egypt she was never seen in
public, never admitted a native to her house, sought no favour from
her husband, nor suffered any to be sought from herself. And
so a province that was gossipy and ingenious in devising insults for
its rulers, one in which even those who shunned wrongdoing did not
escape ill fame, respected her as a singular example of
blamelessness, restrained altogether the licence of their tongues -
a most difficult thing for a people who take pleasure in even
dangerous witticisms - and today ever hopes, although it never
expects, to see one like her, It would be much to her credit if she
had won the approval of the province for sixteen years; that she
escaped its notice is still more. I do not cite these
things for the purpose of recounting her praises - for to list them
so scantily is to do them injustice - but in order that you may
understand the highmindedness of a woman who has submitted neither
to the love of power nor to the love of money - those attendants and
curses of all authority - who, with ship disabled and now viewing
her own shipwreck, was not deterred by the fear of death from
clinging to her lifeless husband and seeking, not how she might
escape from the ship, but how she might take him with her. You
must show a courage to match hers, must recall your mind from grief,
and strive that no one may think that you regret your
motherhood. But because, though you have done everything, your
thoughts must necessarily revert at times to me, and it must be that
under the circumstances no one of your children engages your mind so
often - not that the others are less dear, but that it is natural to
lay the hand more often on the part that hurts - hear now how you
must think of me. I am as happy and <Ess2-487>
TO HELVIA ON CONSOLATION, xx. 1-2
cheerful as when circumstances were
best. Indeed, they are now best, since my mind, free from all
other engrossment, has leisure for its own tasks, and now finds joy
in lighter studies, now, being eager for the truth, mounts to the
consideration of its own nature and the nature of the universe. It
seeks knowledge, first, of the lands and where they be, then of the
laws that govern the encompassing sea with its alternations of ebb
and flow. Then it takes ken of all the expanse, charged with
terrors, that lies between heaven and earth -this nearer space,
disturbed by thunder, lightning, blasts of winds, and the downfall
of rain and snow and hail. Finally, having traversed the lower
spaces, it bursts through to the heights above, and there enjoys the
noblest spectacle of things divine, and, mindful of its own
immortality, it proceeds to all that has been and will ever be
throughout the ages of all time. <Ess2-489>
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