Why should I lead you on through the endless series of great men and
pick out the unhappy ones, as tho it were not more difficult to find
happy ones? for how few households have remained possest of all their
members to the end? what one is there that has not suffered some loss?
Take any one year you please and name the Consuls for it; if you like,
that of Lucius Bibulus[79] and Julius Caesar; you will see that, tho
these colleagues were each other's bitterest enemies, yet their
fortunes agreed. Lucius Bibulus, a man more remarkable for goodness
than for strength of character, had both his sons murdered at the same
time, and even insulted by the Egyptian soldiery, so that the agent of
his bereavement was as much a subject for tears as the bereavement
itself. Nevertheless Bibulus, who during the whole of his year of
office had remained hidden in his house, to cast reproach upon his
colleague Caesar on the day following that upon which he heard of both
his sons' deaths, came forth and went through the routine business of
his magistracy. Who could devote less than one day to mourning for
two sons? Thus soon did he end his mourning for his children, altho he
had mourned a whole year for his consulship. Gaius Caesar, after having
traversed Britain, and not allowed even the ocean to set bounds to his
successes, heard of the death of his daughter, which hurried on the
crisis of affairs. Already Cnaeus Pompey stood before his eyes, a man
who would ill endure that any one besides himself should become a
great power in the state, and one who was likely to place a check upon
his advancement, which he had regarded, as onerous even when each
gained by the other's rise: yet within three days' time he resumed his
duties as general, and conquered his grief as quickly as he was wont
to conquer everything else.
Why need I remind you of the deaths of the other Caesars, whom fortune
appears to me sometimes to have outraged in order that even by their
deaths they might be useful to mankind, by proving that not even they,
altho they were styled "sons of gods," and "fathers of gods to come,"
could exercise the same power over their own fortunes which they did
over those of others? The Emperor Augustus lost his children and his
grandchildren, and after all the family of Caesar had perished was
obliged to prop his empty house by adopting a son: yet he bore his
losses as bravely as tho he were already personally concerned in the
honor of the gods, and as tho it were especially to his interest that
no one should complain of the injustice of Heaven. Tiberius Caesar lost
both the son whom he begot and the son whom he adopted, yet he
himself pronounced a panegyric upon his son from the Rostra, and
stood in full view of the corpse, which merely had a curtain on one
side to prevent the eyes of the high priest resting upon the dead
body, and did not change his countenance, tho all the Romans wept: he
gave Sejanus, who stood by his side, a proof of how patiently he could
endure the loss of his relatives. See you not what numbers of most
eminent men there have been, none of whom have been spared by this
blight which prostrates us all: men, too, adorned with every grace of
character, and every distinction that public or private life can
confer. It appears as tho this plague moved in a regular orbit, and
spread ruin and desolation among us all without distinction of
persons, all being alike its prey. Bid any number of individuals tell
you the story of their lives: you will find that all have paid some
penalty for being born.
I know what you will say, "You quote men as examples: you forget that
it is a woman that you are trying to console." Yet who would say that
nature has dealt grudgingly with the minds of women and stunted their
virtues? Believe me, they have the same intellectual power as men, and
the same capacity for honorable and generous action. If trained to do
so, they are just as able to endure sorrow or labor. Ye good gods, do
I say this in that very city in which Lucretia and Brutus removed the
yoke of kings from the necks of the Romans? We owe liberty to Brutus,
but we owe Brutus to Lucretia--in which Cloelia,[80] for the
sublime courage with which she scorned both the enemy and the river,
has been almost reckoned as a man.
The statue of Coelia, mounted on horseback, in the busiest of
thoroughfares, the Sacred Way, continually reproaches the youth of the
present day, who never mount anything but a cushioned seat in a
carriage, with journeying in such a fashion through that very city in
which we have enrolled even women among our knights. If you wish me to
point out to you examples of women who have bravely endured the loss
of their children, I shall not go far afield to search for them: in
one family I can quote two Cornelias, one the daughter of Scipio, and
the mother of Gracchi, who made acknowledgment of the birth of her
twelve children by burying them all; nor was it so hard to do this in
the case of the others, whose birth and death were alike unknown to
the public, but she beheld the murdered and unburied corpses of both
Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus, whom even those who will not
call them good must admit were great men. Yet to those who tried to
console her and called her unfortunate, she answered, "I shall never
cease to call myself happy, because I am the mother of the Gracchi."
Cornelia, the wife of Livius Drusus,[81] lost by the hands of an
unknown assassin a young son of great distinction, who was treading in
the footsteps of the Gracchi, and was murdered in his own house just
when he had so many bills half-way through the process of becoming
law: nevertheless she bore the untimely and unavenged death of her son
with as lofty a spirit as he had shown in carrying his laws.
Will you not, Marcia, forgive Fortune because she has not refrained
from striking you with the darts which she launched at the Scipios,
and the mothers and daughters of the Scipios, and with which she has
attacked the Caesars themselves? Life is full of misfortunes; our path
is beset with them: no one can make a long peace, nay, scarcely an
armistice with fortune. You, Marcia, have borne four children; now
they say that no dart which is hurled into a close column of soldiers
can fail to hit one--ought you then to wonder at not having been able
to lead along such a company without exciting the ill will of Fortune,
or suffering loss at her hands?...
Think how great a blessing is a timely death, how many have been
injured by living longer than they ought. If sickness had carried off
that glory and support of the empire, Cnaeus Pompey, at Naples, he
would have died undoubted head of the Roman people, but as it was, a
short extension of time cast him down from his pinnacle of fame: he
beheld his legions slaughtered before his eyes: and what a sad relic
of that battle, in which the Senate formed the first line, was the
survival of the general. He saw his Egyptian butcher, and offered his
body, hallowed by so many victories, to a guardsman's sword, altho,
even had he been unhurt, he would have regretted his safety: for what
could have been more infamous than that a Pompey should owe his life
to the clemency of a king? If Marcus Cicero had fallen at the time
when he avoided those dangers which Catiline aimed equally at him and
at his country, he might have died as the savior of the commonwealth
which he had set free: if his death had even followed upon that of his
daughter, he might have died happy. He would not then have seen swords
drawn for the slaughter of Roman citizens, the goods of the murdered
divided among the murderers, that men might pay from their own purse
the price of their own blood, the public auction of the Consul's spoil
in the civil war, the public letting out of murder to be done,
brigandage, war, pillage, hosts of Catilines. Would it not have been a
good thing for Marcus Cato if the sea had swallowed him up when he was
returning from Cyprus after sequestrating the king's hereditary
possessions, even if that very money which he was bringing to pay the
soldiers in the civil war had been lost with him? He certainly would
have been able to boast that no one would dare to do wrong in the
presence of Cato: as it was, the extension of his life for a very few
more years forced one who was born for personal and political freedom
to flee from Caesar and to become Pompey's follower. Premature death
therefore did him no evil: indeed, it put an end to the power of any
evil to hurt him....
Born for a very brief space of time, we regard this life as an inn
which we are soon to quit that it may be made ready for the coming
guest, Do I speak of our lives, which we know roll away incredibly
fast? Reckon up the centuries of cities: you will find that even those
which boast of their antiquity have not existed for long. All human
works are brief and fleeting: they take up no part whatever of
infinite time. Tried by the standard of the universe, we regard this
earth of ours, with all its cities, nations, rivers, and seaboard, as
a mere point: our life occupies less than a point when compared with
all time, the measure of which exceeds that of the world, for indeed
the world is contained many times in it. Of what importance, then, can
it be to lengthen that which, however much you add to it, will never
be much more than nothing? We can only make our lives long by one
expedient, that is, by being satisfied with their length: you may tell
me of long-lived men, whose length of days has been celebrated by
tradition, you may assign a hundred and ten years apiece to them: yet
when you allow your mind to conceive the idea of eternity, there will
be no difference between the shortest and the longest life, if you
compare the time during which any one has been alive with that during
which he has not been alive. In the next place, when he died his life
was complete; he had lived as long as he needed to live: there was
nothing left for him to accomplish.