He is free who lives as he likes; who is not subject to compulsion, to
restraint, or to violence; whose pursuits are unhindered, his desires
successful, his aversions unincurred. Who, then, would wish to lead a
wrong course of life? "No one." Who would live deceived, erring,
unjust, dissolute, discontented, dejected? "No one." No wicked man,
then, lives as he likes; therefore no such man is free. And who would
live in sorrow, fear, envy, pity, with disappointed desires and
unavailing aversions? "No one." Do we then find any of the wicked
exempt from these evils? "Not one." Consequently, then, they are not
free.
If some person who has been twice Consul should hear this, he will
forgive you, provided you add, "but you are wise, and this has no
reference to you." But if you tell him the truth, that, in point of
slavery, he does not necessarily differ from those who have been
thrice sold, what but chastisement can you expect? "For how," he says,
"am I a slave? My father was free, my mother free. Besides, I am a
senator, too, and the friend of Cæsar, and have been twice Consul, and
have myself many slaves." In the first place, most worthy sir, perhaps
your father too was a slave of the same kind; and your mother, and
your grandfather, and all your series of ancestors. But even were they
ever so free, what is that to you? For what if they were of a
generous, you of a mean spirit; they brave, and you a coward; they
sober, and you dissolute?
"But what," he says, "has this to do with my being a slave?" Is it no
part of slavery to act against your will, under compulsion, and
lamenting? "Be it so. But who can compel me but the master of all,
Cæsar?" By your own confession, then, you have one master; and let not
his being, as you say, master of all, give you any comfort; for then
you are merely a slave in a large family. Thus the Nicopolitans, too,
frequently cry out, "By the genius of Cæsar we are free!"
For the present, however, if you please, we will let Cæsar alone. But
tell me this. Have you never been in love with any one, either of a
servile or liberal condition? "Why, what has that to do with being
slave or free?" Were you never commanded anything by your mistress
that you did not choose? Have you never flattered your fair slave?
Have you never kissed her feet? And yet if you were commanded to kiss
Cæsar's feet, you would think it an outrage and an excess of tyranny.
What else is this than slavery? Have you never gone out by night where
you did not desire? Have you never spent more than you chose? Have you
not sometimes uttered your words with sighs and groans? Have you never
borne to be reviled and shut out-of-doors? But if you are ashamed to
confess your own follies, see what Thrasonides says and does; who,
after having fought more battles perhaps than you, went out by night,
when [his slave] Geta would not dare to go; nay, had he been compelled
to do it, would have gone bewailing and lamenting the bitterness of
servitude. And what says he afterward? "A contemptible girl has
enslaved me, whom no enemy ever enslaved." Wretch! to be the slave of
a girl and a contemptible girl too! Why, then, do you still call
yourself free? Why do you boast your military expeditions? Then he
calls for a sword, and is angry with the person who, out of kindness,
denies it; and sends presents to her who hates him; and begs, and
weeps, and then again is elated on every little success. But what
elation? Is he raised above desire or fear?
Consider what is our idea of freedom in animals. Some keep tame lions,
and feed them and even lead them about; and who will say that any such
lion is free? Nay, does he not live the more slavishly the more he
lives at ease? And who that had sense and reason would wish to be one
of those lions? Again, how much will caged birds suffer in trying to
escape? Nay, some of them starve themselves rather than undergo such a
life; others are saved only with difficulty and in a pining condition;
and the moment they find any opening, out they go. Such a desire have
they for their natural freedom, and to be at their own disposal, and
unrestrained. "And what harm can this confinement do you?" "What say
you? I was born to fly where I please, to live in the open air, to
sing when I please. You deprive me of all this, and then ask what harm
I suffer?"
Hence we will allow those only to be free who will not endure
captivity, but, so soon as they are taken, die and escape. Thus
Diogenes somewhere says that the only way to freedom is to die with
ease. And he writes to the Persian king, "You can no more enslave the
Athenians than you can fish." "How? Can I not get possession of them?"
"If you do," said he, "they will leave you and be gone like fish. For
catch a fish, and it dies. And if the Athenians, too, die as soon as
you have caught them, of what use are your warlike preparations?" This
is the voice of a free man who had examined the matter in earnest,
and, as it might be expected, found it all out. But if you seek it
where it is not, what wonder if you never find it?
A slave wishes to be immediately set free. Think you it is because he
is desirous to pay his fee [of manumission] to the officer? No, but
because he fancies that, for want of acquiring his freedom, he has
hitherto lived under restraint and unprosperously. "If I am once set
free," he says, "it is all prosperity; I care for no one; I can speak
to all as being their equal and on a level with them. I go where I
will, I come when and how I will." He is at last made free, and
presently having nowhere to eat he seeks whom he may flatter, with
whom he may sup. He then either submits to the basest and most
infamous degradation, and if he can obtain admission to some great
man's table, falls into a slavery much worse than the former; or
perhaps, if the ignorant fellow should grow rich, he dotes upon some
girl, laments, and is unhappy, and wishes for slavery again. "For what
harm did it do me? Another clothed me, another shod me, another fed
me, another took care of me when I was sick. It was but in a few
things, by way of return, I used to serve him. But now, miserable
wretch! what do I suffer, in being a slave to many, instead of one!
Yet, if I can be promoted to equestrian rank, I shall live in the
utmost prosperity and happiness." In order to obtain this, he first
deservedly suffers; and as soon as he has obtained it, it is all the
same again. "But then," he says, "if I do but get a military command,
I shall be delivered from all my troubles." He gets a military
command. He suffers as much as the vilest rogue of a slave; and,
nevertheless, he asks for a second command and a third; and when he
has put the finishing touch, and is made a senator, then he is a slave
indeed. When he comes into the public assembly, it is then that he
undergoes his finest and most splendid slavery.
[It is needful] not to be foolish, but to learn what Socrates taught,
the nature of things; and not rashly to apply general principles to
particulars. For the cause of all human evils is the not being able
to apply general principles to special cases. But different people
have different grounds of complaint; one, for instance, that he is
sick. That is not the trouble; it is in his principles. Another, that
he is poor; another, that he has a harsh father and mother; another,
that he is not in the good graces of Cæsar. This is nothing else but
not understanding how to apply our principles. For who has not an idea
of evil, that it is hurtful; that it is to be avoided; that it is by
all means to be prudently guarded against? One principle does not
contradict another, except when it comes to be applied. What, then, is
this evil--thus hurtful and to be avoided? "Not to be the friend of
Cæsar," says some one. He is gone; he has failed in applying his
principles; he is embarrassed; he seeks what is nothing to the
purpose. For if he comes to be Cæsar's friend, he is still no nearer
to what he sought. For what is it that every man seeks? To be secure,
to be happy, to do what he pleases without restraint and without
compulsion. When he becomes the friend of Cæsar, then does he cease to
be restrained; to be compelled? Is he secure? Is he happy? Whom shall
we ask? Whom can we better credit than this very man who has been his
friend? Come forth and tell us whether you sleep more quietly now than
before you were the friend of Cæsar. You presently hear him cry,
"Leave off, for Heaven's sake! and do not insult me. You know not the
miseries I suffer; there is no sleep for me; but one comes and says
that Cæsar is already awake; another, that he is just going out. Then
follow perturbations, then cares." Well, and when did you use to sup
the more pleasantly--formerly, or now? Hear what he says about this
too. When he is not invited, he is distracted; and if he is, he sups
like a slave with his master, solicitous all the while not to say or
do anything foolish. And what think you? Is he afraid of being whipt
like a slave! No such easy penalty. No; but rather, as becomes so
great a man, Cæsar's friend, of losing his head. And when did you
bathe the more quietly; when did you perform your exercises the more
at your leisure; in short, which life would you rather wish to
live--your present, or the former? I could swear there is no one so
stupid and insensible as not to deplore his miseries, in proportion as
he is the more the friend of Cæsar.
Since, then, neither they who are called kings nor the friends of
kings live as they like, who, then, after all, is free?...