Paulus,[6] about the time of his magnificent triumph, in which he

drove Perses in chains before his car, gave two of his sons to be

adopted into other families, and buried those whom he had kept for

himself. What, think you, must those whom he kept have been, when

Scipio was one of those whom he gave away? It was not without emotion

that the Roman people looked upon Paulus’s empty chariot:[7]

nevertheless he made a speech to them, and returned thanks to the

gods for having granted his prayer: for he had prayed that, if any

offering to Nemesis were due in consequence of the stupendous victory

which he had won, it might be paid at his own expense rather than

at that of his country. Do you see how magnanimously he bore his

loss? he even congratulated himself on being left childless, though

who had more to suffer by such a change? he lost at once his

comforters and his helpers. Yet Perses did not have the pleasure

of seeing Paulus look sorrowful.

XIV. Why should I lead you on through the endless {181} series of

great men and pick out the unhappy ones, as though it were not more

difficult to find happy ones? for how few households have remained

possessed of all their members until 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[8] Lucius Bibulus and

Gaius Caesar; you will see that, though 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, although 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 Gnaeus Pompeius 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.

XV. Why need I remind you of the deaths of the other {182} 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, although 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 though he

were already personally concerned in the honour of the gods, and

as though 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, though 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 though 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.

XVI. 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, {183} and the same capacity for honourable and generous

action. If trained to do so, they are just as able to endure sorrow

or labour. 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, for the sublime courage with which she scorned both

the enemy and the river, has been almost reckoned as a man. The

statue of Cloelia, mounted on horseback, in that 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 the 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, 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 {184}

from striking you with the darts with 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?

“But,” say you, “Fortune has treated me unfairly, for she not only

has bereaved me of my son, but chose my best beloved to deprive me

of.” Yet you never can say that you have been wronged, if you divide

the stakes equally with an antagonist who is stronger than yourself:

Fortune has left you two daughters, and their children: she has not

even taken away altogether him who you now mourn for, forgetful of

his elder brother: you have two daughters by him, who if you support

them ill will prove great burdens, but if well, great comforts to

you. You ought to prevail upon yourself, when you see them, to let

them remind you of your son, and not of your grief. When a husbandman’s

trees have either been torn up, roots and all, by the wind, or

broken off short by the force of a hurricane, he takes care of what

is left of their stock, straightway plants seeds or cuttings in the

place of those which he has lost, and in a moment—for time is as

swift in repairing losses as in causing them—more flourishing trees

are growing than were there before. Take, then, in the place of

your Metilius these his two daughters, and by their twofold consolation

lighten your single sorrow. True, human nature is so constituted

as to love nothing so much as what it has lost, and our yearning

after those who have been taken from us makes us judge unfairly of

those who are left to us: nevertheless, if you choose to reckon up

how merciful {185} Fortune has been to you even in her anger, you

will feel that you have more than enough to console you. Look at

all your grandchildren, and your two daughters: and say also,

Marcia:—“I should indeed be cast down, if everyone’s fortune followed

his deserts, and if no evil ever befel good men: but as it is I

perceive that no distinction is made, and that the bad and the good

are both harassed alike.”

XVII. “Still, it is a sad thing to lose a young man whom you have

brought up, just as he was becoming a defence and a pride both to

his mother and to his country.” No one denies that it is sad: but

it is the common lot of mortals. You were born to lose others, to

be lost, to hope, to fear, to destroy your own peace and that of

others, to fear and yet to long for death, and, worst of all, never

to know what your real position is. If you were about to journey

to Syracuse, and some one were to say:—“Learn beforehand all the

discomforts, and all the pleasures of your coming voyage, and then

set sail. The sights which you will enjoy will be as follows: first,

you will see the island itself, now separated from Italy by a narrow

strait, but which, we know, once formed part of the mainland. The

sea suddenly broke through, and

‘Sever’d Sicilia from the western shore.’[9]

Next, as you will be able to sail close to Charybdis, of which the

poets have sung, you will see that greediest of whirlpools, quite

smooth if no south wind be blowing, but whenever there is a gale

from that quarter, sucking down ships into a huge and deep abyss.

You will see the fountain of Arethusa, so famed in song, with its

waters bright and pellucid to the very bottom, and pouring forth

an icy stream which it either finds on the spot or else plunges it

under ground, conveys it thither as a separate river beneath so

many seas, free from any mixture of less pure water, and {186} there

brings it again to the surface. You will see a harbour which is

more sheltered than all the others in the world, whether they be

natural or improved by human art for the protection of shipping;

so safe, that even the most violent storms are powerless to disturb

it. You will see the place where the power of Athens was broken,

where that natural prison, hewn deep among precipices of rock,

received so many thousands of captives: you will see the great city

itself, occupying a wider site than many capitals, an extremely

warm resort in winter, where not a single day passes without sunshine:

but when you have observed all this, you must remember that the

advantages of its winter climate are counterbalanced by a hot and

pestilential summer: that here will be the tyrant Dionysius, the

destroyer of freedom, of justice, and of law, who is greedy of power

even after conversing with Plato, and of life even after he has

been exiled; that he will burn some, flog others, and behead others

for slight offences; that he will exercise his lust upon both sexes

. . . . . You have now heard all that can attract you thither, all

that can deter you from going: now, then, either set sail or remain

at home!” If, after this declaration, anybody were to say that he

wished to go to Syracuse, he could blame no one but himself for

what befel him there, because he would not stumble upon it unknowingly,

but would have gone thither fully aware of what was before him. To

everyone Nature says: “I do not deceive any person. If you choose

to have children, they may be handsome, or they may be deformed;

perhaps they will be born dumb. One of them may perhaps prove the

saviour of his country, or perhaps its betrayer. You need not despair

of their being raised to such honour that for their sake no one

will dare to speak evil of you: yet remember that they may reach

such a pitch of infamy as themselves to become curses to you. There

is nothing to prevent their performing the {187} last offices for

you, and your panegyric being spoken by your children: but hold

yourself prepared nevertheless to place a son as boy, man, or

greybeard, upon the funeral pyre: for years have nothing to do with

the matter, since every sort of funeral in which a parent buries

his child must alike be untimely.[10] If you still choose to rear

children, after I have explained these conditions to you, you render

yourself incapable of blaming the gods, for they never guaranteed

anything to you.”

XVIII. You may make this simile apply to your whole entrance into

life. I have explained to you what attractions and what drawbacks

there would be if you were thinking of going to Syracuse: now suppose

that I were to come and give you advice when you were going to be

born. “You are about,” I should say, “to enter a city of which both

gods and men are citizens, a city which contains the whole universe,

which is bound by irrevocable and eternal laws, and wherein the

heavenly bodies run their unwearied courses: you will see therein

innumerable twinkling stars, and the sun, whose single light pervades

every place, who by his daily course marks the times of day and

night, and by his yearly course makes a more equal division between

summer and winter. You will see his place taken by night by the

moon, who borrows at her meetings with her brother a gentle and

softer light, and who at one time is invisible, at another hangs

full-faced above the earth, ever waxing and waning, each phase

unlike the last. You will see five stars, moving in the opposite

direction to the others, stemming the whirl of the skies towards

the West: on the slightest motions of these depend the fortunes of

nations, and according as the aspect of the planets is auspicious

or malignant, the greatest empires rise and fall: you will see with

wonder the gathering clouds, the falling showers, the {188} zigzag

lightning, the crashing together of the heavens. When, sated with

the wonders above, you turn your eyes towards the earth, they will

be met by objects of a different yet equally admirable aspect: on

one side a boundless expanse of open plains, on another the towering

peaks of lofty and snow-clad mountains: the downward course of

rivers, some streams running eastward, some westward from the same

source: the woods which wave even on the mountain tops, the vast

forests with all the creatures that dwell therein, and the confused

harmony of the birds: the variously-placed cities, the nations which

natural obstacles keep secluded from the world, some of whom withdraw

themselves to lofty mountains, while others dwell in fear and

trembling on the sloping banks of rivers: the crops which are

assisted by cultivation, and the trees which bear fruit even without

it: the rivers that flow gently through the meadows, the lovely

bays and shores that curve inwards to form harbours: the countless

islands scattered over the main, which break and spangle the seas.

What of the brilliancy of stones and gems, the gold that rolls amid

the sands of rushing streams, the heaven-born fires that burst forth

from the midst of the earth and even front the midst of the sea;

the ocean itself, that binds land to land, dividing the nations by

its threefold indentations, and boiling up with mighty rage? Swimming

upon its waves, making them disturbed and swelling without wind,

you will see animals exceeding the size of any that belong to the

land, some clumsy and requiring others to guide their movements,

some swift and moving faster than the utmost efforts of rowers,

some of them that drink in the waters and blow them out again to

the great perils of those who sail near them: you will see here

ships seeking for unknown lands: you will see that man’s audacity

leaves nothing unattempted, and you will yourself be both a witness

and a sharer in great {189} attempts. You will both learn and teach

the arts by which men’s lives are supplied with necessaries, are

adorned, and are ruled: but in this same place there will be a

thousand pestilences fatal to both body and mind, there will be

wars and highway robberies, poisonings and shipwrecks, extremes of

climate and excesses of body, untimely griefs for our dearest ones,

and death for ourselves, of which we cannot tell whether it will

be easy or by torture at the hands of the executioner. Now consider

and weigh carefully in your own mind which you would choose. If you

wish to enjoy these blessings you must pass through these pains.

Do you answer that you choose to live? ‘Of course.’ Nay, I thought

you would not enter upon that of which the least diminution causes

pain. Live, then, as has been agreed on. You say, “No one has asked

my opinion.” Our parents’ opinion was taken about us, when, knowing

what the conditions of life are, they brought us into it.

XIX. But, to come to topics of consolation, in the first place

consider if you please to what our remedies must be applied, and

next, in what way. It is regret for the absence of his loved one

which causes a mourner to grieve: yet it is clear that this in

itself is bearable enough; for we do not weep at their being absent

or intending to be absent during their lifetime, although when they

leave our sight we have no more pleasure in them. What tortures us,

therefore, is an idea. Now every evil is just as great as we consider

it to be: we have, therefore, the remedy in our own hands. Let us

suppose that they are on a journey, and let us deceive ourselves:

we have sent them away, or, rather, we have sent them on in advance

to a place whither we shall soon follow them.[11] Besides this,

mourners are wont to suffer from the thought, “I shall {190} have

no one to protect me, no one to avenge me when I am scorned.” To

use a very disreputable but very true mode of consolation, I may

say that in our country the loss of children bestows more influence

than it takes away, and loneliness, which used to bring the aged

to ruin, now makes them so powerful that some old men have pretended

to pick quarrels with their sons, have disowned their own children,

and have made themselves childless by their own act. I know what

you will say: “My own losses do not grieve me:” and indeed a man

does not deserve to be consoled if he is sorry for his son’s death

as he would be for that of a slave, who is capable of seeing anything

in his son beyond his son’s self. What then, Marcia, is it that

grieves you? is it that your son has died, or that he did not live

long? If it be his having died, then you ought always to have

grieved, for you always knew that he would die. Reflect that the

dead suffer no evils, that all those stories which make us dread

the nether world are mere fables, that he who dies need fear no

darkness, no prison, no blazing streams of fire, no river of Lethe,

no judgment seat before which he must appear, and that Death is

such utter freedom that, he need fear no more despots. All that is

a phantasy of the poets, who have terrified us without a cause.

Death is a release from and an end of all pains: beyond it our

sufferings cannot extend: it restores us to the peaceful rest in

which we lay before we were born. If any one pities the dead, he

ought also to pity those who have not been born. Death is neither

a good nor a bad thing, for that alone which is something can be a

good or a bad thing: but that which is nothing, and reduces all

things to nothing, does not hand us over to either fortune, because

good and bad require some material to work upon. Fortune cannot

take hold of that which Nature has let go, nor can a man be unhappy

if he is nothing. Your son has passed beyond the border of the {191}

country where men are forced to labour; he has reached deep and

everlasting peace. He feels no fear of want, no anxiety about his

riches, no stings of lust that tears the heart in guise of pleasure:

he knows no envy of another’s prosperity, he is not crushed by the

weight of his own; even his chaste ears are not wounded by any

ribaldry: he is menaced by no disaster, either to his country or

to himself. He does not hang, full of anxiety, upon the issue of

events, to reap even greater uncertainty as his reward: he has at

last taken up a position from which nothing can dislodge him, where

nothing can make him afraid.

XX. O how little do men understand their own misery, that they do

not praise and look forward to death as the best discovery of Nature,

whether because it hedges in happiness, or because it drives away

misery: because it puts an end to the sated weariness of old age,

cuts down youth in its bloom while still full of hope of better

things, or calls home childhood before the harsher stages of life

are reached: it is the end of all men, a relief to many, a desire

to some, and it treats none so well as those to whom it comes before

they call for it. Death frees the slave though his master wills it

not, it lightens the captive’s chains: it leads out of prison those

whom headstrong power has forbidden to quit it: it points out to

exiles, whose minds and eyes are ever turned towards their own

country, that it makes no difference under what people’s soil one

lies. When Fortune has unjustly divided the common stock, and has

given over one man to another, though they were born with equal

rights. Death makes them all equal. After Death no one acts any

more at another’s bidding: in death no man suffers any more from

the sense of his low position. It is open to all: it was what your

father, Marcia, longed for: it is this, I say, that renders it no

misery to be born, which enables me to face the threatenings of

misfortune without quailing, and to keep {192} my mind unharmed and

able to command itself. I have a last appeal. I see before me crosses

not all alike, but differently made by different peoples: some hang

a man head downwards, some force a stick upwards through his groin,

some stretch out his arms on a forked gibbet. I see cords, scourges,

and instruments of torture for each limb and each joint: but I see

Death also. There are bloodthirsty enemies, there are overbearing

fellow-countrymen, but where they are there I see Death also. Slavery

is not grievous if a man can gain his freedom by one step as soon

as he becomes tired of thraldom. Life, it is thanks to Death that

I hold thee so dear. 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,

Gnaeus Pompeius, at Naples, he would have died the 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, although even had he been unhurt,

he would have regretted his safety: for what could have been more

infamous than that a Pompeius should owe his life to the clemency

of a king? If Marcus Cicero had fallen at the time when he avoided

those daggers which Catiline aimed equally at him and at his country,

he might have died as the saviour 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 {193} 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

Pompeius’s follower. Premature death therefore did him no evil:

indeed, it put an end to the power of any evil to hurt him.

XXI. “Yet,” say you, “he perished too soon and untimely.” In the

first place, suppose that he had lived to extreme old age: let him

continue alive to the extreme limits of human existence: how much

is it after all? 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 sea-board 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

{194} 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. All men do not grow old at the

same age, nor indeed do all animals: some are wearied out by life

at fourteen years of age, and what is only the first stage of life

with man is their extreme limit of longevity. To each man a varying

length of days has been assigned: no one dies before his time,

because he was not destined to live any longer than he did. Everyone’s

end is fixed, and will always remain where it has been placed:

neither industry nor favour will move it on any further. Believe,

then, that you lost him by advice: he took all that was his own,

“And reached the goal allotted to his life,”

so you need not burden yourself with the thought, “He might have

lived longer.” His life has not been cut short, nor does chance

ever cut short our years: every man receives as much as was promised

to him: the Fates go their own way, and neither add anything nor

take away anything from what they have once promised. Prayers and

endeavours are all in vain: each man will have as much life as his

first day placed to his credit: from the time when he first saw the

light he has entered on the path that leads to death, and is drawing

nearer to his doom: those same years which were added to his youth

were subtracted from his life. We all fall into this mistake of

supposing that it is only old men, already in the decline of life,

who are drawing {195} near to death, whereas our first infancy, our

youth, indeed every time of life leads thither. The Fates ply their

own work: they take from us the consciousness of our death, and,

the better to conceal its approaches, death lurks under the very

names we give to life: infancy changes into boyhood, maturity

swallows up the boy, old age the man; these stages themselves, if

you reckon them properly, are so many losses.

XXII. Do you complain, Marcia, that your son did not live as long

as he might have done? How do you know that it was to his advantage

to live longer? whether his interest was not served by this death?

Whom can you find at the present time whose fortunes are grounded

on such sure foundations that they have nothing to fear in the

future? All human affairs are evanescent and perishable, nor is any

part of our life so frail and liable to accident as that which we

especially enjoy. We ought, therefore, to pray for death when our

fortune is at its best, because so great is the uncertainty and

turmoil in which we live, that we can be sure of nothing but what

is past. Think of your son’s handsome person, which you had guarded

in perfect purity among all the temptations of a voluptuous capital.

Who could have undertaken to keep that clear of all diseases, so

that it might preserve its beauty of form unimpaired even to old

age? Think of the many taints of the mind: for fine dispositions

do not always continue to their life’s end to make good the promise

of their youth, but have often broken down: either extravagance,

all the more shameful for being indulged in late in life, takes

possession of men and makes their well-begun lives end in disgrace,

or they devote their entire thoughts to the eating-house and the

belly, and they become interested in nothing save what they shall

eat and what they shall drink. Add to this conflagrations, falling

houses, shipwrecks, the agonizing operations of surgeons, who cut

{196} pieces of bone out of men’s living bodies, plunge their whole

hands into their entrails, and inflict more than one kind of pain

to effect the cure of shameful diseases. After these comes exile;

your son was not more innocent than Rutilius: imprisonment; he was

not wiser than Socrates: the piercing of one’s breast by a

self-inflicted wound; he was not of holier life than Cato. When you

look at these examples, you will perceive that nature deals very

kindly with those whom she puts speedily in a place of safety because

there awaited them the payment of some such price as this for their

lives. Nothing is so deceptive, nothing is so treacherous as human

life; by Hercules, were it not given to men before they could form

an opinion, no one would take it. Not to be born, therefore, is the

happiest lot of all, and the nearest thing to this, I imagine, is

that we should soon finish our strife here and be restored again

to our former rest. Recall to your mind that time, so painful to

you, during which Sejanus handed over your father as a present to

his client Satrius Secundus: he was angry with him about something

or other which he had said with too great freedom, because he was

not able to keep silence and see Sejanus climbing up to take his

seat upon our necks, which would have been bad enough had he been

placed there by his master. He was decreed the honour of a statue,

to be set up in the theatre of Pompeius, which had been burned down

and was being restored by Caesar. Cordus exclaimed that “Now the

theatre was really destroyed.” What then? should he not burst with

spite at a Sejanus being set up over the ashes of Gnaeus Pompeius,

at a faithless soldier being commemorated within the memorial of a

consummate commander? The inscription was put up:[12] and those

keen-scented {197} hounds whom Sejanus used to feed on human blood,

to make them tame towards himself and fierce to all the world beside,

began to bay around their victim and even to make premature snaps

at him. What was he to do? If he chose to live, he must gain the

consent of Sejanus; if to die, he must gain that of his daughter;

and neither of them could have been persuaded to grant it: he

therefore determined to deceive his daughter, and having taken a

bath in order to weaken himself still further, he retired to his

bed-chamber on the pretence of taking a meal there. After dismissing

his slaves he threw some of the food out of the window, that he

might appear to have eaten it: then he took no supper, making the

excuse that he had already had enough food in his chamber. This he

continued to do on the second and the third day: the fourth betrayed

his condition by his bodily weakness; so, embracing you, “My dearest

daughter,” said he, “from whom I have never throughout your whole

life concealed aught but this, I have begun my journey towards

death, and have already travelled half-way thither. You cannot and

you ought not to call me back.” So saying he ordered all light to

be excluded from the room and shut himself up in the darkness. When

his determination became known there was a general feeling of

pleasure at the prey being snatched out of the jaws of those ravening

wolves. His prosecutors, at the instance of Sejanus, went to the

judgment-seat of the consuls, complained that Cordus was dying, and

begged the consuls to interpose to prevent his doing what they

themselves had driven him to do; so true was it that Cordus appeared

to them to be escaping: an important matter was at stake, namely,

whether the accused should lose the right to die. While this point

was being debated, and the prosecutors were going to attend the

court a second time, he had set himself free from them. Do you see,

Marcia, how suddenly evil days come upon a man? {198} and do you

weep because one of your family could not avoid dying? one of your

family was within a very little of not being allowed to die.

XXIII. Besides the fact that everything that is future is uncertain,

and the only certainty is that it is more likely to turn out ill

than well, our spirits find the path to the Gods above easiest when

it is soon allowed to leave the society of mankind, because it has

then contracted fewest impurities to weigh it down: if set free

before they become hardened worldlings, before earthly things have

sunk too deep into them, they fly all the more lightly back to the

place from whence they came, and all the more easily wash away the

stains and defilements which they may have contracted. Great minds

never love to linger long in the body: they are eager to burst its

bonds and escape from it, they chafe at the narrowness of their

prison, having been wont to wander through space, and from aloft

in the upper air to look down with contempt upon human affairs.

Hence it is that Plato declares that the wise man’s mind is entirely

given up to death, longs for it, contemplates it, and through his

eagerness for it is always striving after things which lie beyond

this life. Why, Marcia, when you saw him while yet young displaying

the wisdom of age, with a mind that could rise superior to all

sensual enjoyments, faultless and without a blemish, able to win

riches without greediness, public office without ambition, pleasure

without extravagance, did you suppose it would long be your lot to

keep him safe by your side? Whatever has arrived at perfection, is

ripe for dissolution. Consummate virtue flees away and betakes

itself out of our sight, and those things which come to maturity

in the first stage of their being do not wait for the last. The

brighter a fire glows, the sooner it goes out: it lasts longer when

it is made up with bad and slowly burning fuel, and shows a dull

light through a cloud of smoke: its being poorly fed {199} makes

it linger all the longer. So also the more brilliant men’s minds,

the shorter lived they are: for when there is no room for further

growth, the end is near. Fabianus tells us, what our parents

themselves have seen, that there was at Rome a boy of gigantic

stature, exceeding that of a man: but he soon died, and every

sensible person always said that he would soon die, for he could

not live to reach the age which he had assumed before it was due.

So it is: too complete maturity is a proof that destruction is near,

and the end approaches when growth is over.

XXIV. Begin to reckon his age, not by years, but by virtues: he

lived long enough. He was left as a ward in the care of guardians

up to his fourteenth year, and never passed out of that of his

mother: when he had a household of his own he was loth to leave

yours, and continued to dwell under his mother’s roof, though few

sons can endure to live under their father’s. Though a youth whose

height, beauty, and vigour of body destined him for the army, yet

he refused to serve, that he might not be separated from you.

Consider, Marcia, how seldom mothers who live in separate houses

see their children: consider how they lose and pass in anxiety all

those years during which they have sons in the army, and you will

see that this time, none of which you lost, was of considerable

extent: he never went out of your sight: it was under your eyes

that he applied himself to the cultivation of an admirable intellect

and one which would have rivalled that of his grandfather, had it

not been hindered by shyness, which has concealed many men’s

accomplishments: though a youth of unusual beauty, and living among

such throngs of women who made it their business to seduce men, he

gratified the wishes of none of them, and when the effrontery of

some led them so far as actually to tempt him, he blushed as deeply

at having found favour in their eyes as though he had been guilty.

By this holiness of life he caused himself, while yet quite a {200}

boy, to be thought worthy of the priesthood, which no doubt he owed

to his mother’s influence; but even his mother’s influence would

have had no weight if the candidate for whom it was exerted had

been unfit for the post. Dwell upon these virtues, and nurse your

son as it were in your lap: now he is more at leisure to respond

to your caresses, he has nothing to call him away from you, he will

never be an anxiety or a sorrow to you. You have grieved at the

only grief so good a son could cause you: all else is beyond the

power of fortune to harm, and is full of pleasure, if only you know

how to make use of your son, if you do but know what his most

precious quality was. It is merely the outward semblance of your

son that has perished, his likeness, and that not a very good one;

he himself is immortal, and is now in a far better state, set free

from the burden of all that was not his own, and left simply by

himself: all this apparatus which you see about us of bones and

sinews, this covering of skin, this face, these our servants the

hands, and all the rest of our environment, are but chains and

darkness to the soul: they overwhelm it, choke it, corrupt it, fill

it with false ideas, and keep it at a distance from its own true

sphere: it has to struggle continually against this burden of the

flesh, lest it be dragged down and sunk by it. It ever strives to

rise up again to the place from whence it was sent down on earth:

there eternal rest awaits it, there it will behold what is pure and

clear, in place of what is foul and turbid.

XXV. You need not, therefore, hasten to the burial-place of your

son: that which lies there is but the worst part of him and that

which gave him most trouble, only bones and ashes, which are no

more parts of him than clothes or other coverings of his body. He

is complete, and without leaving any part of himself behind on earth

has taken wing and gone away altogether: he has tarried a brief

space above us while his soul was being cleansed {201} and purified

from the vices and rust which all mortal lives must contract, and

from thence he will rise to the high heavens and join the souls of

the blessed: a saintly company will welcome him thither,—Scipios

and Catos; and among the rest of those who have held life cheap and

set themselves free, thanks to death, albeit all there are alike

akin, your father, Marcia, will embrace his grandson as he rejoices

in the unwonted light, will teach him the motion of the stars which

are so near to them, and introduce him with joy into all the secrets

of nature, not by guesswork but by real knowledge. Even as a stranger

is grateful to one who shows him the way about an unknown city, so

is a searcher after the causes of what he sees in the heavens to

one of his own family who can explain them to him. He will delight

in gazing deep down upon the earth, for it is a delight to look

from aloft at what one has left below. Bear yourself, therefore,

Marcia, as though you were placed before the eyes of your father

and your son, yet not such as you knew them, but far loftier beings,

placed in a higher sphere. Blush, then, to do any mean or common

action, or to weep for those your relatives who have been changed

for the better. Free to roam through the open, boundless realms of

the everliving universe, they are not hindered in their course by

intervening seas, lofty mountains, impassable valleys, or the

treacherous fiats of the Syrtes: they find a level path everywhere,

are swift and ready of motion, and are permeated in their turn by

the stars and dwell together with them.

XXVI. Imagine then, Marcia, that your father, whose influence over

you was as great as yours over your son, no longer in that frame

of mind in which he deplored the civil wars, or in which he for

ever proscribed those who would have proscribed him, but in a mood

as much more joyful as his abode now is higher than of old, is

saying, as {202} he looks down from the height of heaven, “My

daughter, why does this sorrow possess you for so long? why do you

live in such ignorance of the truth, as to think that your son has

been unfairly dealt with because he has returned to his ancestors

in his prime, without decay of body or mind, leaving his family

flourishing? Do you not know with what storms Fortune unsettles

everything? how she proves kind and compliant to none save to those

who have the fewest possible dealings with her? Need I remind you

of kings who would have been the happiest of mortals had death

sooner withdrawn them from the ruin which was approaching them? or

of Roman generals, whose greatness, had but a few years been taken

from their lives, would have wanted nothing to render it complete?

or of men of the highest distinction and noblest birth who have

calmly offered their necks to the stroke of a soldier’s sword? Look

at your father and your grandfather: the former fell into the hands

of a foreign murderer: I allowed no man to take any liberties with

me, and by abstinence from food showed that my spirit was as great

as my writings had represented it. Why, then, should that member

of our household who died most happily of all be mourned in it the

longest? We have all assembled together, and, not being plunged in

utter darkness, we see that with you on earth there is nothing to

be wished for, nothing grand or magnificent, but all is mean, sad,

anxious, and hardly receives a fractional part of the clear light

in which we dwell. I need not say that here are no frantic charges

of rival armies, no fleets shattering one another, no parricides,

actual or meditated, no courts where men babble over lawsuits for

days together, here is nothing underhand, all hearts and minds are

open and unveiled, our life is public and known to all, and that

we command a view of all time and of things to come. I used to take

pleasure in compiling the history of what took place in one century

among {203} a few people in the most out-of-the-way corner of the

world: here I enjoy the spectacle of all the centuries, the whole

chain of events from age to age as long as years have been. I may

view kingdoms when they rise and when they fall, and behold the

ruin of cities and the new channels made by the sea. If it will be

any consolation to you in your bereavement to know that it is the

common lot of all, be assured that nothing will continue to stand

in the place in which it now stands, but that time will lay everything

low and bear it away with itself: it will sport, not only with

men—for how small a part are they of the dominion of Fortune? —but

with districts, provinces, quarters of the world: it will efface

entire mountains, and in other places will pile new rocks on high:

it will dry up seas, change the course of rivers, destroy the

intercourse of nation with nation, and break up the communion and

fellowship of the human race: in other regions it will swallow up

cities by opening vast chasms in the earth, will shake them with

earthquakes, will breathe forth pestilence from the nether world,

cover all habitable ground with inundations and destroy every

creature in the flooded world, or burn up all mortals by a huge

conflagration. When the time shall arrive for the world to be brought

to an end, that it may begin its life anew, all the forces of nature

will perish in conflict with one another, the stars will be dashed

together, and all the lights which now gleam in regular order in

various parts of the sky will then blaze in one fire with all their

fuel burning at once. Then we also, the souls of the blest and the

heirs of eternal life, whenever God thinks fit to reconstruct the

universe, when all things are settling down again, we also, being

a small accessory to the universal wreck,[13] shall be changed into

our old elements. Happy is your son, Marcia, in that he already

knows this.”

[1] See Merivale’s “History of the Romans under the Empire,” ch.

xlv.

[2] If it is a pain to dwell upon the thought of lost friends, of

course you do not continually refresh the memory of them by speaking

of them.

[3] See my note on _invidiam facere alicui_ in Juv. 15.—J. E. B.

Mayor.

[4] Koch declares that this cannot be the true reading, and suggests

_deminutio_, ‘degradation.’

[5] This seems to have been part of the ceremony of dedication.

Pulvillus was dedicating the Temple of Jupiter in the Capitol. See

Livy, ii. 8; Cic. Pro Domo, paragraph cxxi.

[6] Lucius Aemilius Paullus conquered Perses, the last King of

Macedonia, B.C. 168.

[7] “For he had four sons, two, as has been already related, adopted

into other families, Scipio and Fabius; and two others, who were

still children, by his second wife, who lived in his own house. Of

these, one died five days before Aemilius’s triumph, at the age of

fourteen, and the other, twelve years old, died three days after

it: so that there was no Roman that did not grieve for him,”

&c.—Plutarch, “Life of Aemilius,” ch. xxxv.

[8] A. U. C. 695, B.C 59.

[9] Virg. Ae. III. 418.

[10] See Mayor’s note on Juv. i., and above, c. 16, §4.

[11] Lipsius points out that this idea is borrowed from the comic

poet Antiphanes. See Meineke’s “Comic Fragments,” p. 3.

[12] This I believe to be the meaning of the text, but Koch reasonably

conjectures that the true reading is “editur subscriptio,” “an

indictment was made out against him.” See “On Benefits,” iii. 26.

[13] _Ruinae_; Koch’s _urinae_ is a misprint.

{204}

THE SEVENTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED

TO GALLIO.

OF A HAPPY LIFE.

I. All men, brother Gallio, wish to live happily, but are dull at

perceiving exactly what it is that makes life happy: and so far is

it from being easy to attain to happiness that the more eagerly a

man struggles to reach it the further he departs from it, if he

takes the wrong road; for, since this leads in the opposite direction,

his very swiftness carries him all the further away. We must therefore

first define clearly what it is at which we aim: next we must

consider by what path we may most speedily reach it, for on our

journey itself, provided it be made in the right direction, we shall

learn how much progress we have made each day, and how much nearer

we are to the goal towards which our natural desires urge us. But

as long as we wander at random, not following any guide except the

shouts and discordant clamours of those who invite us to proceed

in different directions, our short life will be wasted in useless

roamings, even if we labour both day and night to get a good

understanding. Let us not therefore decide whither we must tend,

and by what path, without the advice of some experienced person who

has explored the region which we are about to enter, because this

{205} journey is not subject to the same conditions as others; for

in them some distinctly understood track and inquiries made of the

natives make it impossible for us to go wrong, but here the most

beaten and frequented tracks are those which lead us most astray.

Nothing, therefore, is more important than that we should not, like

sheep, follow the flock that has gone before us, and thus proceed

not whither we ought, but whither the rest are going. Now nothing

gets us into greater troubles than our subservience to common rumour,

and our habit of thinking that those things are best which are most

generally received as such, of taking many counterfeits for truly

good things, and of living not by reason but by imitation of others.

This is the cause of those great heaps into which men rush till

they are piled one upon another. In a great crush of people, when

the crowd presses upon itself, no one can fall without drawing some

one else down upon him, and those who go before cause the destruction

of those who follow them. You may observe the same thing in human

life: no one can merely go wrong by himself, but he must become

both the cause and adviser of another’s wrongdoing. It is harmful

to follow the march of those who go before us, and since every one

had rather believe another than form his own opinion, we never pass

a deliberate judgment upon life, but some traditional error always

entangles us and brings us to ruin, and we perish because we follow

other men’s examples: we should be cured of this if we were to

disengage ourselves from the herd; but as it is, the mob is ready

to fight against reason in defence of its own mistake. Consequently

the same thing happens as at elections, where, when the fickle

breeze of popular favour has veered round, those who have been

chosen consuls and praetors are viewed with admiration by the very

men who made them so. That we should all approve and disapprove of

the same things is the end of every {206} decision which is given

according to the voice of the majority.

II. When we are considering a happy life, you cannot answer me as

though after a division of the House, “This view has most supporters;”

because for that very reason it is the worse of the two: matters

do not stand so well with mankind that the majority should prefer

the better course: the more people do a thing the worse it is likely

to be. Let us therefore inquire, not what is most commonly done,

but what is best for us to do, and what will establish us in the

possession of undying happiness, not what is approved of by the

vulgar, the worst possible exponents of truth. By “the vulgar” I

mean both those who wear woollen cloaks and those who wear crowns;[1]

for I do not regard the colour of the clothes with which they are

covered: I do not trust my eyes to tell me what a man is: I have a

better and more trustworthy light by which I can distinguish what

is true from what is false: let the mind find out what is good for

the mind. If a man ever allows his mind some breathing space and

has leisure for communing with himself, what truths he will confess

to himself, after having been put to the torture by his own self!

He will say, “Whatever I have hitherto done I wish were undone:

when I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people: whatever I

have longed for seems to have been what my enemies would pray might

befall me: good heaven, how far more endurable what I have feared

seems to be than what I have lusted after. I have been at enmity

with many men, and have changed my dislike of them into friendship,

if friendship can exist between bad men: yet I have not yet become

reconciled to myself. I have striven with all my strength to raise

myself above the {207} common herd, and to make myself remarkable

for some talent: what have I effected save to make myself a mark

for the arrows of my enemies, and show those who hate me where to

wound me? Do you see those who praise your eloquence, who covet

your wealth, who court your favour, or who vaunt your power? All

these either are, or, which comes to the same thing, may be your

enemies: the number of those who envy you is as great as that of

those who admire you; why do I not rather seek for some good thing

which I can use and feel, not one which I can show? these good

things which men gaze at in wonder, which they crowd to see, which

one points out to another with speechless admiration, are outwardly

brilliant, but within are miseries to those who possess them.”

III. Let us seek for some blessing, which does not merely look fine,

but is sound and good throughout alike, and most beautiful in the

parts which are least seen: let us unearth this. It is not far

distant from us; it can be discovered: all that is necessary is to

know whither to stretch out your hand: but, as it is, we behave as

though we were in the dark, and reach out beyond what is nearest

to us, striking as we do so against the very things that we want.

However, that I may not draw you into digressions, I will pass over

the opinions of other philosophers, because it would take a long

time to state and confute them all: take ours. When, however, I say

“ours,” I do not bind myself to any one of the chiefs of the Stoic

school, for I too have a right to form my own opinion. I shall,

therefore, follow the authority of some of them, but shall ask some

others to discriminate their meaning:[2] perhaps, when after having

{208} reported all their opinions, I am asked for my own, I shall

impugn none of my predecessors’ decisions, and shall say, “I will

also add somewhat to them.” Meanwhile I follow nature, which is a

point upon which every one of the Stoic philosophers are agreed:

true wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in moulding

our conduct according to her laws and model. A happy life, therefore,

is one which is in accordance with its own nature, and cannot be

brought about unless in the first place the mind be sound and remain

so without interruption, and next, be bold and vigorous, enduring

all things with most admirable courage, suited to the times in which

it lives, careful of the body and its appurtenances, yet not

troublesomely careful. It must also set due value upon all the

things which adorn our lives, without over-estimating any one of

them, and must be able to enjoy the bounty of Fortune without

becoming her slave. You understand without my mentioning it that

an unbroken calm and freedom ensue, when we have driven away all

those things which either excite us or alarm us: for in the place

of sensual pleasures and those slight perishable matters which are

connected with the basest crimes, we thus gain an immense, unchangeable,

equable joy, together with peace, calmness and greatness of mind,

and kindliness: for all savageness is a sign of weakness.

IV. Our highest good may also be defined otherwise, that is to say,

the same idea may be expressed in different language. Just as the

same army may at one time be extended more widely, at another

contracted into a smaller compass, and may either be curved towards

the wings by a depression in the line of the centre, or drawn up

in a straight line, while, in whatever figure it be arrayed, its

{209} strength and loyalty remain unchanged; so also our definition

of the highest good may in some cases be expressed diffusely and

at great length, while in others it is put into a short and concise

form. Thus, it will come to the same thing, if I say “The highest

good is a mind which despises the accidents of fortune, and takes

pleasure in virtue”: or, “It is an unconquerable strength of mind,

knowing the world well, gentle in its dealings, showing great

courtesy and consideration for those with whom it is brought into

contact.” Or we may choose to define it by calling that man happy

who knows good and bad only in the form of good or bad minds: who

worships honour, and is satisfied with his own virtue, who is neither

puffed up by good fortune nor cast down by evil fortune, who knows

no other good than that which he is able to bestow upon himself,

whose real pleasure lies in despising pleasures. If you choose to

pursue this digression further, you can put this same idea into

many other forms, without impairing or weakening its meaning: for

what prevents our saying that a happy life consists in a mind which

is free, upright, undaunted, and steadfast, beyond the influence

of fear or desire, which thinks nothing good except honour, and

nothing bad except shame, and regards everything else as a mass of

mean details which can neither add anything to nor take anything

away from the happiness of life, but which come and go without

either increasing or diminishing the highest good? A man of these

principles, whether he will or no, must be accompanied by a continual

cheerfulness, a high happiness, which comes indeed from on high

because he delights in what he has, and desires no greater pleasures

than those which his home affords. Is he not right in allowing these

to turn the scale against petty, ridiculous, and shortlived movements

of his wretched body? on the day on which he becomes proof against

pleasure he also becomes proof against pain. See, on the other hand,

how {210} evil and guilty a slavery the man is forced to serve who

is dominated in turn by pleasures and pains, those most untrustworthy

and passionate of masters. We must, therefore, escape from them

into freedom. This nothing will bestow upon us save contempt of

Fortune: but if we attain to this, then there will dawn upon us

those invaluable blessings, the repose of a mind that is at rest

in a safe haven, its lofty imaginings, its great and steady delight

at casting out errors and learning to know the truth, its courtesy,

and its cheerfulness, in all of which we shall take delight, not

regarding them as good things, but as proceeding from the proper

good of man.

V. Since I have begun to make my definitions without a too strict

adherence to the letter, a man may be called “happy” who, thanks

to reason, has ceased either to hope or to fear: but rocks also

feel neither fear nor sadness, nor do cattle, yet no one would call

those things happy which cannot comprehend what happiness is. With

them you may class men whose dull nature and want of self-knowledge

reduces them to the level of cattle, mere animals: there is no

difference between the one and the other, because the latter have

no reason, while the former have only a corrupted form of it, crooked

and cunning to their own hurt. For no one can be styled happy who

is beyond the influence of truth: and consequently a happy life is

unchangeable, and is founded upon a true and trustworthy discernment;

for the mind is uncontaminated and freed from all evils only when

it is able to escape not merely from wounds but also from scratches,

when it will always be able to maintain the position which it has

taken up, and defend it even against the angry assaults of Fortune:

for with regard to sensual pleasures, though they were to surround

one on every side, and use every means of assault, trying to win

over the mind by caresses and making trial of every conceivable

stratagem to attract either our entire selves or {211} our separate

parts, yet what mortal that retains any traces of human origin would

wish to be tickled day and night, and, neglecting his mind, to

devote himself to bodily enjoyments?

VI. “But,” says our adversary, “the mind also will have pleasures

of its own.” Let it have them, then, and let it sit in judgment

over luxury and pleasures; let it indulge itself to the full in all

those matters which give sensual delights: then let it look back

upon what it enjoyed before, and with all those faded sensualities

fresh in its memory let it rejoice and look eagerly forward to those

other pleasures which it experienced long ago, and intends to

experience again, and while the body lies in helpless repletion in

the present, let it send its thoughts onward towards the future,

and take stock of its hopes: all this will make it appear, in my

opinion, yet more wretched, because it is insanity to choose evil

instead of good: now no insane person can be happy, and no one can

be sane if he regards what is injurious as the highest good and

strives to obtain it. The happy man, therefore, is he who can make

a right judgment in all things: he is happy who in his present

circumstances, whatever they may be, is satisfied and on friendly

terms with the conditions of his life. That man is happy, whose

reason recommends to him the whole posture of his affairs.

VII. Even those very people who declare the highest good to be in

the belly, see what a dishonourable position they have assigned to

it: and therefore they say that pleasure cannot be parted from

virtue, and that no one can either live honourably without living

cheerfully, nor yet live cheerfully without living honourably. I

do not see how these very different matters can have any connexion

with one another. What is there, I pray you, to prevent virtue

existing apart from pleasure? of course the reason is that all good

things derive their origin from virtue, and therefore even those

things which you cherish and seek for {212} come originally from

its roots. Yet, if they were entirely inseparable, we should not

see some things to be pleasant, but not honourable, and others most

honourable indeed, but hard and only to be attained by suffering.

Add to this, that pleasure visits the basest lives, but virtue

cannot co-exist with an evil life; yet some unhappy people are not

without pleasure, nay, it is owing to pleasure itself that they are

unhappy; and this could not take place if pleasure had any connexion

with virtue, whereas virtue is often without pleasure, and never

stands in need of it. Why do you put together two things which are

unlike and even incompatible one with another? virtue is a lofty

quality, sublime, royal, unconquerable, untiring: pleasure is low,

slavish, weakly, perishable; its haunts and homes are the brothel

and the tavern. You will meet virtue in the temple, the market-place,

the senate house, manning the walls, covered with dust, sunburnt,

horny-handed: you will find pleasure skulking out of sight, seeking

for shady nooks at the public baths, hot chambers, and places which

dread the visits of the aedile, soft, effeminate, reeking of wine

and perfumes, pale or perhaps painted and made up with cosmetics.

The highest good is immortal: it knows no ending, and does not admit

of either satiety or regret: for a right-thinking mind never alters

or becomes hateful to itself, nor do the best things ever undergo

any change: but pleasure dies at the very moment when it charms us

most: it has no great scope, and therefore it soon cloys and wearies

us, and fades away as soon as its first impulse is over: indeed,

we cannot depend upon anything whose nature is to change. Consequently

it is not even possible that there should be any solid substance

in that which comes and goes so swiftly, and which perishes by the

very exercise of its own functions, for it arrives at a point at

which it ceases to be, and even while it is beginning always keeps

its end in view.

{213}

VIII. What answer are we to make to the reflexion that pleasure

belongs to good and bad men alike, and that bad men take as much

delight in their shame as good men in noble things? This was why

the ancients bade us lead the highest, not the most pleasant life,

in order that pleasure might not be the guide but the companion of

a right-thinking and honourable mind; for it is Nature whom we ought

to make our guide: let our reason watch her, and be advised by her.

To live happily, then, is the same thing as to live according to

Nature: what this may be, I will explain. If we guard the endowments

of the body and the advantages of nature with care and fearlessness,

as things soon to depart and given to us only for a day; if we do

not fall under their dominion, nor allow ourselves to become the

slaves of what is no part of our own being; if we assign to all

bodily pleasures and external delights the same position which is

held by auxiliaries and light-armed troops in a camp; if we make

them our servants, not our masters—then and then only are they of

value to our minds. A man should be unbiassed and not to be conquered

by external things: he ought to admire himself alone, to feel

confidence in his own spirit, and so to order his life as to be

ready alike for good or for bad fortune. Let not his confidence be

without knowledge, nor his knowledge without steadfastness: let him

always abide by what he has once determined, and let there be no

erasure in his doctrines. It will be understood, even though I

append it not, that such a man will be tranquil and composed in his

demeanour, high-minded and courteous in his actions. Let reason be

encouraged by the senses to seek for the truth, and draw its first

principles from thence: indeed it has no other base of operations

or place from which to start in pursuit of truth: it must fall back

upon itself. Even the all-embracing universe and God who is its

guide extends himself forth into outward things, and yet altogether

returns from all sides back to {214} himself. Let our mind do the

same thing: when, following its bodily senses it has by means of

them sent itself forth into the things of the outward world, let

it remain still their master and its own. By this means we shall

obtain a strength and an ability which are united and allied together,

and shall derive from it that reason which never halts between two

opinions, nor is dull in forming its perceptions, beliefs, or

convictions. Such a mind, when it has ranged itself in order, made

its various parts agree together, and, if I may so express myself,

harmonized them, has attained to the highest good: for it has nothing

evil or hazardous remaining, nothing to shake it or make it stumble:

it will do everything under the guidance of its own will, and nothing

unexpected will befal it, but whatever may be done by it will turn

out well, and that, too, readily and easily, without the doer having

recourse to any underhand devices: for slow and hesitating action

are the signs of discord and want of settled purpose. You may, then,

boldly declare that the highest good is singleness of mind: for

where agreement and unity are, there must the virtues be: it is the

vices that are at war one with another.

IX. “But,” says our adversary, “you yourself only practise virtue

because you hope to obtain some pleasure from it.” In the first

place, even though virtue may afford us pleasure, still we do not

seek after her on that account: for she does not bestow this, but

bestows this to boot, nor is this the end for which she labours,

but her labour wins this also, although it be directed to another

end. As in a tilled-field, when ploughed for corn, some flowers are

found amongst it, and yet, though these posies may charm the eye,

all this labour was not spent in order to produce them—the man who

sowed the field had another object in view, he gained this over and

above it—so pleasure is not the reward or the cause of virtue, but

comes in addition to it; nor do we choose virtue because she gives

us pleasure, but {215} she gives us pleasure also if we choose her.

The highest good lies in the act of choosing her, and in the attitude

of the noblest minds, which when once it has fulfilled its function

and established itself within its own limits has attained to the

highest good, and needs nothing more: for there is nothing outside

of the whole, any more than there is anything beyond the end. You

are mistaken, therefore, when you ask me what it is on account of

which I seek after virtue: for you are seeking for something above

the highest. Do you ask what I seek from virtue? I answer. Herself:

for she has nothing better; she is her own reward. Does this not

appear great enough, when I tell you that the highest good is an

unyielding strength of mind, wisdom, magnanimity, sound judgment,

freedom, harmony, beauty? Do you still ask me for something greater,

of which these may be regarded as the attributes? Why do you talk

of pleasures to me? I am seeking to find what is good for man, not

for his belly; why, cattle and whales have larger ones than he.

X. “You purposely misunderstand what I say,” says he, “for I too

say that no one can live pleasantly unless he lives honorably also,

and this cannot be the case with dumb animals who measure the extent

of their happiness by that of their food. I loudly and publicly

proclaim that what I call a pleasant life cannot exist without the

addition of virtue.” Yet who does not know that the greatest fools

drink the deepest of those pleasures of yours? or that vice is full

of enjoyments, and that the mind itself suggests to itself many

perverted, vicious forms of pleasure?—in the first place arrogance,

excessive self-esteem, swaggering precedence over other men, a

shortsighted, nay, a blind devotion to his own interests, dissolute

luxury, excessive delight springing from the most trifling and

childish causes, and also talkativeness, pride that takes a pleasure

in insulting others, sloth, and the decay of a dull mind which goes

to sleep over itself. All these are dissipated by virtue, which

plucks a {216} man by the ear, and measures the value of pleasures

before she permits them to be used; nor does she set much store by

those which she allows to pass current, for she merely allows their

use, and her cheerfulness is not due to her use of them, but to her

moderation in using them. “Yet when moderation lessens pleasure,

it impairs the highest good.” You devote yourself to pleasures, I

check them; you indulge in pleasure, I use it; you think that it

is the highest good, I do not even think it to be good: for the

sake of pleasure I do nothing, you do everything.

XI. When I say that I do nothing for the sake of pleasure, I allude

to that wise man, whom alone you admit to be capable of pleasure:

now I do not call a man wise who is overcome by anything, let alone

by pleasure: yet, if engrossed by pleasure, how will he resist toil,

danger, want, and all the ills which surround and threaten the life

of man? How will he bear the sight of death or of pain? How will

he endure the tumult of the world, and make head against so many

most active foes, if he be conquered by so effeminate an antagonist?

He will do whatever pleasure advises him: well, do you not see how

many things it will advise him to do? “It will not,” says our

adversary, “be able to give him any bad advice, because it is

combined with virtue?” Again, do you not see what a poor kind of

highest good that must be which requires a guardian to ensure its

being good at all? and how is virtue to rule pleasure if she follows

it, seeing that to follow is the duty of a subordinate, to rule

that of a commander? do you put that which commands in the background?

According to your school, virtue has the dignified office of

preliminary taster of pleasures. We shall, however, see whether

virtue still remains virtue among those who treat her with such

contempt, for if she leaves her proper station she can no longer

keep her proper name: in the meanwhile, to keep to the point, I

will show you many men beset by pleasures, {217} men upon whom

Fortune has showered all her gifts, whom you must needs admit to

be bad men. Look at Nomentanus and Apicius, who digest all the good

things, as they call them, of the sea and land, and review upon

their tables the whole animal kingdom. Look at them as they lie on

beds of roses gloating over their banquet, delighting their ears

with music, their eyes with exhibitions, their palates with flavours:

their whole bodies are titillated with soft and soothing applications,

and lest even their nostrils should be idle, the very place in

which, they solemnize[3] the rites of luxury is scented with various

perfumes. You will say that these men live in the midst of pleasures.

Yet they are ill at ease, because they take pleasure in what is not

good.

XII. “They are ill at ease,” replies he, “because many things arise

which distract their thoughts, and their minds are disquieted by

conflicting opinions.” I admit that this is true: still these very

men, foolish, inconsistent, and certain to feel remorse as they

are, do nevertheless receive great pleasure, and we must allow that

in so doing they are as far from feeling any trouble as they are

from forming a right judgment, and that, as is the case with many

people, they are possessed by a merry madness, and laugh while they

rave. The pleasures of wise men, on the other hand, are mild,

decorous, verging on dulness, kept under restraint and scarcely

noticeable, and are neither invited to come nor received with honour

when they come of their own accord, nor are they welcomed with any

delight by those whom they visit, who mix them up with their lives

and fill up empty spaces with them, like an amusing farce in the

intervals of serious business. Let them no longer, then, join

incongruous matters together, or connect pleasure with {218} virtue,

a mistake whereby they court the worst of men. The reckless profligate,

always in liquor and belching out the fumes of wine, believes that

he lives with virtue, because he knows that he lives with pleasure,

for he hears it said that pleasure cannot exist apart from virtue;

consequently he dubs his vices with the title of wisdom and parades

all that he ought to conceal. So, men are not encouraged by Epicurus

to run riot, but the vicious hide their excesses in the lap of

philosophy, and flock to the schools in which they hear the praises

of pleasure. They do not consider how sober and temperate—for so,

by Hercules, I believe it to be—that “pleasure” of Epicurus is, but

they rush at his mere name, seeking to obtain some protection and

cloak for their vices. They lose, therefore, the one virtue which

their evil life possessed, that of being ashamed of doing wrong:

for they praise what they used to blush at, and boast of their

vices. Thus modesty can never reassert itself, when shameful idleness

is dignified with an honourable name. The reason why that praise

which your school lavishes upon pleasure is so hurtful, is because

the honourable part of its teaching passes unnoticed, but the

degrading part is seen by all.

XIII. I myself believe, though my Stoic comrades would be unwilling

to hear me say so, that the teaching of Epicurus was upright and

holy, and even, if you examine it narrowly, stern: for this much

talked of pleasure is reduced to a very narrow compass, and he bids

pleasure submit to the same law which we bid virtue do—I mean, to

obey nature. Luxury, however, is not satisfied with what is enough

for nature. What is the consequence? Whoever thinks that happiness

consists in lazy sloth, and alternations of gluttony and profligacy,

requires a good patron for a bad action, and when he has become an

Epicurean, having been led to do so by the attractive name of that

school, he follows, not the pleasure which he there hears {219}

spoken of, but that which he brought thither with him, and, haying

learned to think that his vices coincide with the maxims of that

philosophy, he indulges in them no longer timidly and in dark

corners, but boldly in the face of day. I will not, therefore, like

most of our school, say that the sect of Epicurus is the teacher

of crime, but what I say is: it is ill spoken of, it has a bad

reputation, and yet it does not deserve it. “Who can know this

without having been admitted to its inner mysteries?” Its very

outside gives opportunity for scandal, and encourages men’s baser

desires: it is like a brave man dressed in a woman’s gown: your

chastity is assured, your manhood is safe, your body is submitted

to nothing disgraceful, but your hand holds a drum (like a priest

of Cybele). Choose, then, some honourable superscription for your

school, some writing which shall in itself arouse the mind: that

which at present stands over your door has been invented by the

vices. He who ranges himself on the side of virtue gives thereby a

proof of a noble disposition: he who follows pleasure appears to

be weakly, worn out, degrading his manhood, likely to fall into

infamous vices unless someone discriminates his pleasures for him,

so that he may know which remain within the bounds of natural desire,

which are frantic and boundless, and become all the more insatiable

the more they are satisfied. But come! let virtue lead the way:

then every step will be safe. Too much pleasure is hurtful: but

with virtue we need fear no excess of any kind, because moderation

is contained in virtue herself. That which is injured by its own

extent cannot be a good thing: besides, what better guide can there

be than reason for beings endowed with a reasoning nature? so if

this combination pleases you, if you are willing to proceed to a

happy life thus accompanied, let virtue lead the way, let pleasure

follow and hang about the body like a shadow: it is the part of a

mind incapable of great things to hand {220} over virtue, the highest

of all qualities, as a handmaid to pleasure.

XIV. Let virtue lead the way and bear the standard: we shall have

pleasure for all that, but we shall be her masters and controllers;

she may win some concessions from us, but will not force us to do

anything. On the contrary, those who have permitted pleasure to

lead the van, have neither one nor the other: for they lose virtue

altogether, and yet they do not possess pleasure, but are possessed

by it, and are either tortured by its absence or choked by its

excess, being wretched if deserted by it, and yet more wretched if

overwhelmed by it, like those who are caught in the shoals of the

Syrtes and at one time are left on dry ground and at another tossed

on the flowing waves. This arises from an exaggerated want of

self-control, and a hidden love of evil: for it is dangerous for

one who seeks after evil instead of good to attain his object. As

we hunt wild beasts with toil and peril, and even when they are

caught find them an anxious possession, for they often tear their

keepers to pieces, even so are great pleasures: they turn out to

be great evils and take their owners prisoner. The more numerous

and the greater they are, the more inferior and the slave of more

masters does that man become whom the vulgar call a happy man. I

may even press this analogy further: as the man who tracks wild

animals to their lairs, and who sets great store on—

“Seeking with snares the wandering brutes to noose,”

and

“Making their hounds the spacious glade surround,”

that he may follow their tracks, neglects far more desirable things,

and leaves many duties unfulfilled, so he who pursues pleasure

postpones everything to it, disregards that first essential, liberty,

and sacrifices it to his belly; nor does he buy pleasure for himself,

but sells himself to pleasure.

{221}

XV. “But what,” asks our adversary, “is there to hinder virtue and

pleasure being combined together, and a highest good being thus

formed, so that honour and pleasure may be the same thing?” Because

nothing except what is honourable can form a part of honour, and

the highest good would lose its purity if it were to see within

itself anything unlike its own better part. Even the joy which

arises from virtue, although it be a good thing, yet is not a part

of absolute good, any more than cheerfulness or peace of mind, which

are indeed good things, but which merely follow the highest good,

and do not contribute to its perfection, although they are generated

by the noblest causes. Whoever on the other hand forms an alliance,

and that, too, a one-sided one, between virtue and pleasure, clogs

whatever strength the one may possess by the weakness of the other,

and sends liberty under the yoke, for liberty can only remain

unconquered as long as she knows nothing more valuable than herself:

for he begins to need the help of Fortune, which is the most utter

slavery: his life becomes anxious, full of suspicion, timorous,

fearful of accidents, waiting in agony for critical moments of time.

You do not afford virtue a solid immoveable base if you bid it stand

on what is unsteady: and what can be so unsteady as dependence on

mere chance, and the vicissitudes of the body and of those things

which act on the body? How can such a man obey God and receive

everything which comes to pass in a cheerful spirit, never complaining

of fate, and putting a good construction upon everything that befalls

him, if he be agitated by the petty pin-pricks of pleasures and

pains? A man cannot be a good protector of his country, a good

avenger of her wrongs, or a good defender of his friends, if he be

inclined to pleasures. Let the highest good, then, rise to that

height from whence no force can dislodge it, whither neither pain

can ascend, nor hope, nor fear, nor anything else that can {222}

impair the authority of the “highest good.” Thither virtue alone

can make her way: by her aid that hill must be climbed: she will

bravely stand her ground and endure whatever may befal her not only

resignedly, but even willingly: she will know that all hard times

come in obedience to natural laws, and like a good soldier she will

bear wounds, count scars, and when transfixed and dying will yet

adore the general for whom she falls: she will bear in mind the old

maxim “Follow God.” On the other hand, he who grumbles and complains

and bemoans himself is nevertheless forcibly obliged to obey orders,

and is dragged away, however much against his will, to carry them

out: yet what madness is it to be dragged rather than to follow?

as great, by Hercules, as it is folly and ignorance of one’s true

position to grieve because one has not got something or because

something has caused us rough treatment, or to be surprised or

indignant at those ills which befall good men as well as bad ones,

I mean diseases, deaths, illnesses, and the other cross accidents

of human life. Let us bear with magnanimity whatever the system of

the universe makes it needful for us to bear: we are all bound by

this oath: “To bear the ills of mortal life, and to submit with a

good grace to what we cannot avoid.” We have been born into a

monarchy: our liberty is to obey God.

XVI. True happiness, therefore, consists in virtue: and what will

this virtue bid you do? Not to think anything bad or good which is

connected neither with virtue nor with wickedness: and in the next

place, both to endure unmoved the assaults of evil, and, as far as

is right, to form a god out of what is good. What reward does she

promise you for this campaign? an enormous one, and one that raises

you to the level of the gods: you shall be subject to no restraint

and to no want; you shall be free, safe, unhurt; you shall fail in

nothing that you attempt; you shall be debarred from nothing;

everything shall turn out according {223} to your wish; no misfortune

shall befal you; nothing shall happen to you except what you expect

and hope for. “What! does virtue alone suffice to make you happy?”

why, of course, consummate and god-like virtue such as this not

only suffices, but more than suffices: for when a man is placed

beyond the reach of any desire, what can he possibly lack? if all

that he needs is concentred in himself, how can he require anything

from without? He, however, who is only on the road to virtue,

although he may have made great progress along it, nevertheless

needs some favour from fortune while he is still struggling among

mere human interests, while he is untying that knot, and all the

bonds which bind him to mortality. What, then, is the difference

between them? it is that some are tied more or less tightly by these

bonds, and some have even tied themselves with them as well; whereas

he who has made progress towards the upper regions and raised himself

upwards drags a looser chain, and though not yet free, is yet as

good as free.

XVII. If, therefore, any one of those dogs who yelp at philosophy

were to say, as they are wont to do, “Why, then, do you talk so

much more bravely than you live? why do you check your words in the

presence of your superiors, and consider money to be a necessary

implement? why are you disturbed when you sustain losses, and weep

on hearing of the death of your wife or your friend? why do you pay

regard to common rumour, and feel annoyed by calumnious gossip? why

is your estate more elaborately kept than its natural use requires?

why do you not dine according to your own maxims? why is your

furniture smarter than it need be? why do you drink wine that is

older than yourself? why are your grounds laid out? why do you plant

trees which afford nothing except shade? why does your wife wear

in her ears the price of a rich man’s house? why are your children

at school dressed in costly {224} clothes? why is it a science to

wait upon you at table? why is your silver plate not set down anyhow

or at random, but skilfully disposed in regular order, with a

superintendent to preside over the carving of the viands?” Add to

this, if you like, the questions “Why do you own property beyond

the seas? why do you own more than you know of? it is a shame to

you not to know your slaves by sight: for you must be very neglectful

of them if you only own a few, or very extravagant if you have too

many for your memory to retain.” I will add some reproaches afterwards,

and will bring more accusations against myself than you think of:

for the present I will make you the following answer. “I am not a

wise man, and I will not be one in order to feed your spite: so do

not require me to be on a level with the best of men, but merely

to be better than the worst: I am satisfied, if every day I take

away something from my vices and correct my faults. I have not

arrived at perfect soundness of mind, indeed, I never shall arrive

at it: I compound palliatives rather than remedies for my gout, and

am satisfied if it comes at rarer intervals and does not shoot so

painfully. Compared with your feet, which are lame, I am a racer.”

I make this speech, not on my own behalf, for I am steeped in vices

of every kind, but on behalf of one who has made some progress in

virtue.

XVIII. “You talk one way,” objects our adversary, “and live another.”

You most spiteful of creatures, you who always show the bitterest

hatred to the best of men, this reproach was flung at Plato, at

Epicurus, at Zeno: for all these declared how they ought to live,

not how they did live. I speak of virtue, not of myself, and when

I blame vices, I blame my own first of all: when I have the power,

I shall live as I ought to do: spite, however deeply steeped in

venom, shall not keep me back from what is best: that poison itself

with which you bespatter others, with which you choke yourselves,

shall not hinder me from continuing {225} to praise that life which

I do not, indeed, lead, but which I know I ought to lead, from

loving virtue and from following after her, albeit a long way behind

her and with halting gait. Am I to expect that evil speaking will

respect anything, seeing that it respected neither Rutilius nor

Cato? Will any one care about being thought too rich by men for

whom Diogenes the Cynic was not poor enough? That most energetic

philosopher fought against all the desires of the body, and was

poorer even than the other Cynics, in that besides haying given up

possessing anything he had also given up asking for anything: yet

they reproached him for not being sufficiently in want: as though

forsooth it were poverty, not virtue, of which he professed knowledge.

XIX. They say that Diodorus, the Epicurean philosopher, who within

these last few days put an end to his life with his own hand, did

not act according to the precepts of Epicurus, in cutting his throat:

some choose to regard this act as the result of madness, others of

recklessness; he, meanwhile, happy and filled with the consciousness

of his own goodness, has borne testimony to himself by his manner

of departing from life, has commended the repose of a life spent

at anchor in a safe harbour, and has said what you do not like to

hear, because you too ought to do it:

“I’ve lived, I’ve run the race which Fortune set me.”

You argue about the life and death of another, and yelp at the name

of men whom some peculiarly noble quality has rendered great, just

as tiny curs do at the approach of strangers: for it is to your

interest that no one should appear to be good, as if virtue in

another were a reproach to all your crimes. You enviously compare

the glories of others with your own dirty actions, and do not

understand how greatly to your disadvantage it is to venture to do

so: for if they who follow after virtue be greedy, lustful, {226}

and fond of power, what must you be, who hate the very name of

virtue? You say that no one acts up to his professions, or lives

according to the standard which he sets up in his discourses: what

wonder, seeing that the words which they speak are brave, gigantic,

and able to weather all the storms which wreck mankind, whereas

they themselves are struggling to tear themselves away from crosses

into which each one of you is driving his own nail. Yet men who are

crucified hang from one single pole, but these who punish themselves

are divided between as many crosses as they have lusts, but yet are

given to evil speaking, and are so magnificent in their contempt

of the vices of others that I should suppose that they had none of

their own, were it not that some criminals when on the gibbet spit

upon the spectators.

XX. “Philosophers do not carry into effect all that they teach.”

No; but they effect much good by their teaching, by the noble

thoughts which they conceive in their minds: would, indeed, that

they could act up to their talk: what could be happier than they

would be? but in the meanwhile you have no right to despise good

sayings and hearts full of good thoughts. Men deserve praise for

engaging in profitable studies, even though they stop short of

producing any results. Why need we wonder if those who begin to

climb a steep path do not succeed in ascending it very high? yet,

if you be a man, look with respect on those who attempt great things,

even though they fall. It is the act of a generous spirit to

proportion its efforts not to its own strength but to that of human

nature, to entertain lofty aims, and to conceive plans which are

too vast to be carried into execution even by those who are endowed

with gigantic intellects, who appoint for themselves the following

rules: I will look upon death or upon a comedy with the same

expression of countenance: I will submit to labours, however great

they may be, supporting {227} the strength of my body by that of

my mind: I will despise riches when I have them as much as when I

have them not; if they be elsewhere I will not be more gloomy, if

they sparkle around me I will not be more lively than I should

otherwise be: whether Fortune comes or goes I will take no notice

of her: I will view all lands as though they belong to me, and my

own as though they belonged to all mankind: I will so live as to

remember that I was born for others, and will thank Nature on this

account: for in what fashion could she have done better for me? she

has given me alone to all, and all to me alone. Whatever I may

possess, I will neither hoard it greedily nor squander it recklessly.

I will think that I have no possessions so real as those which I

have given away to deserving people: I will not reckon benefits by

their magnitude or number, or by anything except the value set upon

them by the receiver: I never will consider a gift to be a large

one if it be bestowed upon a worthy object. I will do nothing because

of public opinion, but everything because of conscience: whenever

I do anything alone by myself I will believe that the eyes of the

Roman people are upon me while I do it. In eating and drinking my

object shall be to quench the desires of Nature, not to fill and

empty my belly. I will be agreeable with my friends, gentle and

mild to my foes: I will grant pardon before I am asked for it, and

will meet the wishes of honourable men half way: I will bear in

mind that the world is my native city, that its governors are the

gods, and that they stand above and around me, criticizing whatever

I do or say. Whenever either Nature demands my breath again, or

reason bids me dismiss it, I will quit this life, calling all to

witness that I have loved a good conscience, and good pursuits;

that no one’s freedom, my own least of all, has been impaired through

me.” He who sets up these as the rules of his life will soar aloft

and strive to make his way to the gods: of a truth, even though he

fails, yet he {228}

“Fails in a high emprise.”[4]

But you, who hate both virtue and those who practise it, do nothing

at which we need be surprised, for sickly lights cannot bear the

sun, nocturnal creatures avoid the brightness of day, and at its

first dawning become bewildered and all betake themselves to their

dens together: creatures that fear the light hide themselves in

crevices. So croak away, and exercise your miserable tongues in

reproaching good men: open wide your jaws, bite hard: you will break

many teeth before you make any impression.

XXI. “But how is it that this man studies philosophy and nevertheless

lives the life of a rich man? Why does he say that wealth ought to

be despised and yet possess it? that life should be despised, and

yet live? that health should be despised, and yet guard it with the

utmost care, and wish it to be as good as possible? Does he consider

banishment to be an empty name, and say, “What evil is there in

changing one country for another?” and yet, if permitted, does he

not grow old in his native land? does he declare that there is no

difference between a longer and a shorter time, and yet, if he be

not prevented, lengthen out his life and flourish in a green old

age?” His answer is, that these things ought to be despised, not

that he should not possess them, but that he should not possess

them with fear and trembling: he does not drive them away from him,

but when they leave him he follows after them unconcernedly. Where,

indeed, can fortune invest riches more securely than in a place

from whence they can always be recovered without any squabble with

their trustee? Marcus Cato, when he was praising Curius and Coruncanius

and that century in which the possession of a few small silver coins

were an offence which was punished by the Censor, himself owned

four million sesterces; a less fortune no {229} doubt, than that

of Crassus, but larger than of Cato the Censor. If the amounts be

compared, he had outstripped his great-grandfather further than he

himself was outdone by Crassus, and if still greater riches had

fallen to his lot, he would not have spurned them: for the wise man

does not think himself unworthy of any chance presents: he does not

love riches, but he prefers to have them; he does not receive them

into his spirit, but only into his house: nor does he cast away

from him what he already possesses, but keeps them, and is willing

that his virtue should receive a larger subject-matter for its

exercise.

XXII. Who can doubt, however, that the wise man, if he is rich, has

a wider field for the development of his powers than if he is poor,

seeing that in the latter case the only virtue which he can display

is that of neither being perverted nor crushed by his poverty,

whereas if he has riches, he will have a wide field for the exhibition

of temperance, generosity, laboriousness, methodical arrangement,

and grandeur. The wise man will not despise himself, however short

of stature he may be, but nevertheless he will wish to be tall:

even though he be feeble and one-eyed he may be in good health, yet

he would prefer to have bodily strength, and that too, while he

knows all the while that he has something which is even more powerful:

he will endure illness, and will hope for good health: for some

things, though they may be trifles compared with the sum total, and

though they may be taken away without destroying the chief good,

yet add somewhat to that constant cheerfulness which arises from

virtue. Riches encourage and brighten up such a man just as a sailor

is delighted at a favourable wind that bears him on his way, or as

people feel pleasure at a fine day or at a sunny spot in the cold

weather. What wise man, I mean of our school, whose only good is

virtue, can deny that even these matters which we call neither good

nor bad have in themselves a {230} certain value, and that some of

them are preferable to others? to some of them we show a certain

amount of respect, and to some a great deal. Do not, then, make any

mistake: riches belong to the class of desirable things. “Why then,”

say you, “do you laugh at me, since you place them in the same

position that I do?” Do you wish to know how different the position

is in which we place them? If my riches leave me, they will carry

away with them nothing except themselves: you will be bewildered

and will seem to be left without yourself if they should pass away

from you: with me riches occupy a certain place, but with you they

occupy the highest place of all. In fine, my riches belong to me,

you belong to your riches.

XXIII. Cease, then, forbidding philosophers to possess money: no

one has condemned wisdom to poverty. The philosopher may own ample

wealth, but will not own wealth that which has been torn from

another, or which is stained with another’s blood: his must be

obtained without wronging any man, and without its being won by

base means; it must be alike honourably come by and honourably

spent, and must be such as spite alone could shake its head at.

Raise it to whatever figure you please, it will still be an honourable

possession, if, while it includes much which every man would like

to call his own, there be nothing which any one can say is his own.

Such a man will not forfeit his right to the favour of Fortune, and

will neither boast of his inheritance nor blush for it if it was

honourably acquired: yet he will have something to boast of, if he

throw his house open, let all his countrymen come among his property,

and say, “If any one recognizes here anything belonging to him, let

him take it.” What a great man, how excellently rich will he be,

if after this speech he possesses as much as he had before! I say,

then, that if he can safely and confidently submit his accounts to

the scrutiny of the people, and no one can find {231} in them any

item upon which he can lay hands, such a man may boldly and

unconcealedly enjoy his riches. The wise man will not allow a single

ill-won penny to cross his threshold: yet he will not refuse or

close his door against great riches, if they are the gift of fortune

and the product of virtue: what reason has he for grudging them

good quarters: let them come and be his guests: he will neither

brag of them nor hide them away: the one is the part of a silly,

the other of a cowardly and paltry spirit, which, as it were, muffles

up a good thing in its lap. Neither will he, as I said before, turn

them out of his house: for what will he say? will he say, “You are

useless,” or “I do not know how to use riches?” As he is capable

of performing a journey upon his own feet, but yet would prefer to

mount a carriage, just so he will be capable of being poor, yet

will wish to be rich; he will own wealth, but will view it as an

uncertain possession which will some day fly away from him. He will

not allow it to be a burden either to himself or to any one else:

he will give it—why do you prick up your ears? why do you open your

pockets?—he will give it either to good men or to those whom it may

make into good men. He will give it after having taken the utmost

pains to choose those who are fittest to receive it, as becomes one

who bears in mind that he ought to give an account of what he spends

as well as of what he receives. He will give for good and commendable

reasons, for a gift ill bestowed counts as a shameful loss: he will

have an easily opened pocket, but not one with a hole in it, so

that much may be taken out of it, yet nothing may fall out of it.

XXIV. He who believes giving to be an easy matter, is mistaken: it

offers very great difficulties, if we bestow our bounty rationally,

and do not scatter it impulsively and at random. I do this man a

service, I requite a good turn done me by that one: I help this

other, because I pity him: this man, again, I teach to be no fit

object for poverty to {232} hold down or degrade. I shall not give

some men anything, although they are in want, because, even if I

do give to them they will still be in want: I shall proffer my

bounty to some, and shall forcibly thrust it upon others: I cannot

be neglecting my own interests while I am doing this: at no time

do I make more people in my debt than when I am giving things away.

“What?” say you, “do you give that you may receive again?” At any

rate I do not give that I may throw my bounty away: what I give

should be so placed that although I cannot ask for its return, yet

it may be given back to me. A benefit should be invested in the

same manner as a treasure buried deep in the earth, which you would

not dig up unless actually obliged. Why, what opportunities of

conferring benefits the mere house of a rich man affords? for who

considers generous behaviour due only to those who wear the toga?

Nature bids me do good to mankind—what difference does it make

whether they be slaves or freemen, free-born or emancipated, whether

their freedom be legally acquired or betowed by arrangement among

friends? Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity

for a benefit: consequently, money may be distributed even within

one’s own threshold, and a field may be found there for the practice

of freehandedness, which is not so called because it is our duty

towards free men, but because it takes its rise in a free-born mind.

In the case of the wise man, this never falls upon base and unworthy

recipients, and never becomes so exhausted as not, whenever it finds

a worthy object, to flow as if its store was undiminished. You have,

therefore, no grounds for misunderstanding the honourable, brave,

and spirited language which you hear from those who are studying

wisdom: and first of all observe this, that a student of wisdom is

not the same thing as a man who has made himself perfect in wisdom.

The former will say to you, “In my talk I express the most admirable

sentiments, {233} yet I am still weltering amid countless ills.

You must not force me to act up to my rules: at the present time I

am forming myself, moulding my character, and striving to rise

myself to the height of a great example. If I should ever succeed

in carrying out all that I have set myself to accomplish, you may

then demand that my words and deeds should correspond,” But he who

has reached the summit of human perfection will deal otherwise with

you, and will say, “In the first place, you have no business to

allow yourself to sit in judgment upon your betters:” I have already

obtained one proof of my righteousness in having become an object

of dislike to bad men: however, to make you a rational answer, which

I grudge to no man, listen to what I declare, and at what price I

value all things. Riches, I say, are not a good thing; for if they

were, they would make men good: now since that which is found even

among bad men cannot be termed good, I do not allow them to be

called so: nevertheless I admit that they are desirable and useful

and contribute great comforts to our lives.

XXV. Learn, then, since we both agree that they are desirable, what

my reason is amongst counting them among good things, and in what

respects I should behave differently to you if I possessed them.

Place me as master in the house of a very rich man: place me where

gold and silver plate is used for the commonest purposes; I shall

not think more of myself because of things which even though they

are in my house are yet no part of me. Take me away to the wooden

bridge[5] and put me down there among the beggars: I shall not

despise myself because I am sitting among those who hold out their

hands for alms: for what can the lack of a piece of bread matter

to one {234} who does not lack the power of dying? Well, then? I

prefer the magnificent house to the beggar’s bridge. Place me among

magnificent furniture and all the appliances of luxury: I shall not

think myself any happier because my cloak is soft, because my guests

rest upon purple. Change the scene: I shall be no more miserable

if my weary head rests upon a bundle of hay, if I lie upon a cushion

from the circus, with all the stuffing on the point of coming out

through its patches of threadbare cloth. Well, then? I prefer, as

far as my feelings go, to show myself in public dressed in woollen

and in robes of office, rather than with naked or half-covered

shoulders: I should like every day’s business to turn out just as

I wish it to do, and new congratulations to be constantly following

upon the former ones: yet I will not pride myself upon this: change

all this good fortune for its opposite, let my spirit be distracted

by losses, grief, various kinds of attacks: let no hour pass without

some dispute: I shall not on this account, though beset by the

greatest miseries, call myself the most miserable of beings, nor

shall I curse any particular day, for I have taken care to have no

unlucky days. What, then, is the upshot of all this? it is that I

prefer to have to regulate joys than to stifle sorrows. The great

Socrates would say the same thing to you. “Make me,” he would say,

“the conqueror of all nations: let the voluptuous car of Bacchus

bear me in triumph to Thebes from the rising of the sun: let the

kings of the Persians receive laws from me: yet I shall feel myself

to be a man at the very moment when all around salute me as a God.

Straightway connect this lofty height with a headlong fall into

misfortune: let me be placed upon a foreign chariot that I may grace

the triumph of a proud and savage conqueror: I will follow another’s

car with no more humility than I showed when I stood in my own.

What then? In spite of all this, I had rather be a conqueror than

a captive. I despise the whole {235} dominion of Fortune, but still,

if I were given my choice, I would choose its better parts. I shall

make whatever befals me become a good thing, but I prefer that what

befals me should be comfortable and pleasant and unlikely to cause

me annoyance: for you need not suppose that any virtue exists without

labour, but some virtues need spurs, while others need the curb.

As we have to check our body on a downward path, and to urge it to

climb a steep one; so also the path of some virtues leads down hill,

that of others uphill. Can we doubt that patience, courage, constancy,

and all the other virtues which have to meet strong opposition, and

to trample Fortune under their feet, are climbing, struggling,

winning their way up a steep ascent? Why! is it not equally evident

that generosity, moderation, and gentleness glide easily downhill?

With the latter we must hold in our spirit, lest it run away with

us: with the former we must urge and spur it on. We ought, therefore,

to apply these energetic, combative virtues to poverty, and to

riches those other more thrifty ones which trip lightly along, and

merely support their own weight. This being the distinction between

them, I would rather have to deal with those which I could practise

in comparative quiet, than those of which one can only make trial

through blood and sweat. “Wherefore,” says the sage, “I do not talk

one way and live another: but you do not rightly understand what I

say: the sound of my words alone reaches your ears, you do not try

to find out their meaning.”

XXVI. “What difference, then, is there between me, who am a fool,

and you, who are a wise man?” “All the difference in the world: for

riches are slaves in the house of a wise man, but masters in that

of a fool. You accustom yourself to them and cling to them as if

somebody had promised that they should be yours for ever, but a

wise man never thinks so much about poverty as when he is surrounded

by riches. No general ever trusts so implicitly in {236} the

maintenance of peace as not to make himself ready for a war, which,

though it may not actually be waged, has nevertheless been declared;

you are rendered over-proud by a fine house, as though it could

never be burned or fall down, and your heads are turned by riches

as though they were beyond the reach of all dangers and were so

great that Fortune has not sufficient strength to swallow them up.

You sit idly playing with your wealth and do not foresee the perils

in store for it, as savages generally do when besieged, for, not

understanding the use of siege artillery, they look on idly at the

labours of the besiegers and do not understand the object of the

machines which they are putting together at a distance: and this

is exactly what happens to you: you go to sleep over your property,

and never reflect how many misfortunes loom menacingly around you

on all sides, and soon will plunder you of costly spoils, but if

one takes away riches from the wise man, one leaves him still in

possession of all that is his: for he lives happy in the present,

and without fear for the future. The great Socrates, or any one

else who had the same superiority to and power to withstand the

things of this life, would say, ‘I have no more fixed principle

than that of not altering the course of my life to suit your

prejudices: you may pour your accustomed talk upon me from all

sides: I shall not think that you are abusing me, but that you are

merely wailing like poor little babies.’” This is what the man will

say who possesses wisdom, whose mind, being free from vices, bids

him reproach others, not because he hates them, but in order to

improve them: and to this he will add, “Your opinion of me affects

me with pain, not for my own sake but for yours, because to hate

perfection and to assail virtue is in itself a resignation of all

hope of doing well. You do me no harm; neither do men harm the gods

when they overthrow their altars: but it is clear that your intention

is an evil one and that you will wish to do harm even {237} where

you are not able. I bear with your prating in the same spirit in

which Jupiter, best and greatest, bears with the idle tales of the

poets, one of whom represents him with wings, another with horns,

another as an adulterer staying out all night, another is dealing

harshly with the gods, another as unjust to men, another as the

seducer of noble youths whom he carries off by force, and those,

too, his own relatives, another as a parricide and the conqueror

of another’s kingdom, and that his father’s. The only result of

such tales is that men feel less shame at committing sin if they

believe the gods to be guilty of such actions. But although this

conduct of yours does not hurt me, yet, for your own sakes, I advise

you, respect virtue: believe those who having long followed her cry

aloud that what they follow is a thing of might, and daily appears

mightier. Reverence her as you would the gods, and reverence her

followers as you would the priests of the gods: and whenever any

mention of sacred writings is made, _favete linguis_, favour us

with silence: this word is not derived, as most people imagine,

from _favour_, but commands silence, that divine service may be

performed without being interrupted by any words of evil omen. It

is much more necessary that you should be ordered to do this, in

order that whenever utterance is made by that oracle, you may listen

to it with attention and in silence. Whenever any one beats a

sistrum,[6] pretending to do so by divine command, any proficient

in grazing his own skin covers his arms and shoulders with blood

from light cuts, any one crawls on his knees howling along the

street, or any old man clad in linen comes forth in daylight with

a lamp and laurel branch and cries out that one of the gods is

angry, you crowd round him and listen to his words, and each increases

the {238} other’s wonderment by declaring him to be divinely inspired.

XXVII. Behold! from that prison of his, which by entering he cleansed

from shame and rendered more honourable than any senate house,

Socrates addresses you, saying: “What is this madness of yours?

what is this disposition, at war alike with gods and men, which

leads you to calumniate virtue and to outrage holiness with malicious

accusations? Praise good men, if you are able: if not, pass them

by in silence: if indeed you take pleasure in this offensive

abusiveness, fall foul of one another: for when you rave against

Heaven, I do not say that you commit sacrilege, but you waste your

time. I once afforded Aristophanes with the subject of a jest: since

then all the crew of comic poets have made me a mark for their

envenomed wit: my virtue has been made to shine more brightly by

the very blows which have been aimed at it, for it is to its advantage

to be brought before the public and exposed to temptation, nor do

any people understand its greatness more than those who by their

assaults have made trial of its strength. The hardness of flint is

known to none so well as to those who strike it. I offer myself to

all attacks, like some lonely rock in a shallow sea, which the waves

never cease to beat upon from whatever quarter they may come, but

which they cannot thereby move from its place nor yet wear away,

for however many years they may unceasingly dash against it. Bound

upon me, rush upon me, I will overcome you by enduring your onset:

whatever strikes against that which is firm and unconquerable merely

injures itself by its own violence. Wherefore, seek some soft and

yielding object to pierce with your darts. But have you leisure to

peer into other men’s evil deeds and to sit in judgment upon anybody?

to ask how it is that this philosopher has so roomy a house, or

that one so good a dinner? Do you look at other people’s pimples

while you {239} yourselves are covered with countless ulcers? This

is as though one who was eaten up by the mange were to point with

scorn at the moles and warts on the bodies of the handsomest men.

Reproach Plato with having sought for money, reproach Aristotle

with having obtained it, Democritus with having disregarded it,

Epicurus with having spent it: cast Phaedrus and Alcibiades in my

own teeth, you who reach the height of enjoyment whenever you get

an opportunity of imitating our vices! Why do you not rather cast

your eyes around yourselves at the ills which tear you to pieces

on every side, some attacking you from without, some burning in

your own bosoms? However little you know your own place, mankind

has not yet come to such a pass that you can have leisure to wag

your tongues to the reproach of your betters.

XXVIII. This you do not understand, and you bear a countenance which

does not befit your condition, like many men who sit in the circus

or the theatre without having learned that their home is already

in mourning: but I, looking forward from a lofty standpoint, can

see what storms are either threatening you, and will burst in

torrents upon you somewhat later, or are close upon you and on the

point of sweeping away all that you possess. Why, though you are

hardly aware of it, is there not a whirling hurricane at this moment

spinning round and confusing your minds, making them seek and avoid

the very same things, now raising them aloft and now dashing them

below? . . . . . .”

[1] Lipsius’s conjecture, “those who are dressed in white as well

as those who are dressed in coloured clothes,’ alluding to the white

robes of candidates for office, seems reasonable.

[2] The Latin words are literally “to divide” their vote, that is,

“to separate things of different kinds comprised in a single vote

so that they might be voted for separately.”—Andrews.

Séneque fait allusion ici à une coutume pratiquée dans les assemblées

du Sénat; et il nous I’explique lui-même ailleurs d’un manière très

claire: “Si quelqu’un dans le Sénat,” dit il, “ouvre un avis, dont

une partie me convienne, je le somme de la detacher du reste, et

j’y adhère.”—_Ep_. 21, La Grange.

[3] _Parentatur_ seems to mean where an offering is made to luxury—

where they sacrifice to luxury. Perfumes were used at funerals.

Lipsius suggests that these feasts were like funerals because the

guests were carried away from them dead drunk.

[4] The quotation is from the epitaph on Phaeton.—See _Ovid_, Met.

II, 327.

[5] The “Pons Sublicius,” or “pile bridge,” was built over the Tiber

by Ancus Martius, one of the early kings of Rome, and was always

kept in repair out of a superstitious feeling.

[6] _Sistrum_. A metallic rattle used by the Egyptians in celebrating

the rites of Isis, &c.—Andrews.

{240}

THE EIGHTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED

TO SERENUS.

OF LEISURE.

I. . . . . why do they with great unanimity recommend vices to us?

even though we attempt nothing else that would do us good, yet

retirement in itself will be beneficial to us: we shall be better

men when taken singly—and if so, what an advantage it will be to

retire into the society of the best of men, and to choose some

example by which we may guide our lives! This cannot be done without

leisure: with leisure we can carry out that which we have once for

all decided to be best, when there is no one to interfere with us

and with the help of the mob pervert our as yet feeble judgment:

with leisure only can life, which we distract by aiming at the most

incompatible objects, flow on in a single gentle stream. Indeed,

the worst of our various ills is that we change our very vices, and

so we have not even the advantage of dealing with a well-known form

of evil: we take pleasure first in one and then in another, and

are, besides, troubled by the fact that our opinions are not only

wrong, but lightly formed; we toss as it were on waves, and clutch

at one thing after another: we let go what we just now sought for,

and {241} strive to recover what we have let go. We oscillate between

desire and remorse, for we depend entirely upon the opinions of

others, and it is that which many people praise and seek after, not

that which deserves to be praised and sought after, which we consider

to be best. Nor do we take any heed of whether our road be good or

bad in itself, but we value it by the number of footprints upon it,

among which there are none of any who have returned. You will say

to me, “Seneca, what are you doing? do you desert your party? I am

sure that our Stoic philosophers say we must be in motion up to the

very end of our life, we will never cease to labour for the general

good; to help individual people, and when stricken in years to

afford assistance even to our enemies. We are the sect that gives

no discharge for any number of years’ service, and in the words of

the most eloquent of poets:—

‘We wear the helmet when our locks are grey.’[1]

We are they who are so far from indulging in any leisure until we

die, that if circumstances permit it, we do not allow ourselves to

be at leisure even when we are dying. Why do you preach the maxims

of Epicurus in the very headquarters of Zeno? nay, if you are ashamed

of your party, why do you not go openly altogether over to the enemy

rather than betray your own side?” I will answer this question

straightway: What more can you wish than that I should imitate my

leaders? What then follows? I shall go whither they lead me, not

whither they send me.

II. Now I will prove to you that I am not deserting the {242} tenets

of the Stoics: for they themselves have not deserted them: and yet

I should be able to plead a very good excuse even if I did follow,

not their precepts, but their examples. I shall divide what I am

about to say into two parts: first, that a man may from the very

beginning of his life give himself up entirely to the contemplation

of truth; secondly, that a man when he has already completed his

term of service, has the best of rights, that of his shattered

health, to do this, and that he may then apply his mind to other

studies after the manner of the Vestal virgins, who allot different

duties to different years, first learn how to perform the sacred

rites, and when they have learned them teach others.

III. I will show that this is approved of by the Stoics also, not

that I have laid any commandment upon myself to do nothing contrary

to the teaching of Zeno and Chrysippus, but because the matter

itself allows me to follow the precepts of those men; for if one

always follows the precepts of one man, one ceases to be a debater

and becomes a partizan. Would that all things were already known,

that truth were unveiled and recognized, and that none of our

doctrines required modification! but as it is we have to seek for

truth in the company of the very men who teach it. The two sects

of Epicureans and Stoics differ widely in most respects, and on

this point among the rest, nevertheless, each of them consigns us

to leisure, although by a different road. Epicurus says, “The wise

man will not take part in politics, except upon some special

occasion;” Zeno says, “The wise man will take part in politics,

unless prevented by some special circumstance.” The one makes it

his aim in life to seek for leisure, the other seeks it only when

he has reasons for so doing: but this word “reasons” has a wide

signification. If the state is so rotten as to be past helping, if

evil has entire dominion over it, the wise man will not labour in

vain or waste his strength in unprofitable {243} efforts. Should

he be deficient in influence or bodily strength, if the state refuse

to submit to his guidance, if his health stand in the way, then he

will not attempt a journey for which he is unfit, just as he would

not put to sea in a worn-out ship, or enlist in the army if he were

an invalid. Consequently, one who has not yet suffered either in

health or fortune has the right, before encountering any storms,

to establish himself in safety, and thenceforth to devote himself

to honourable industry and inviolate leisure, and the service of

those virtues which can be practised even by those who pass the

quietest of lives. The duty of a man is to be useful to his fellow-men;

if possible, to be useful to many of them; failing this, to be

useful to a few; failing this, to be useful to his neighbours, and,

failing them, to himself: for when he helps others, he advances the

general interests of mankind. Just as he who makes himself a worse

man does harm not only to himself but to all those to whom he might

have done good if he had made himself a better one, so he who

deserves well of himself does good to others by the very fact that

he is preparing what will be of service to them.

IV. Let us grasp the fact that there are two republics, one vast

and truly “public,” which contains alike gods and men, in which we

do not take account of this or that nook of land, but make the

boundaries of our state reach as far as the rays of the sun: and

another to which we have been assigned by the accident of birth.

This may be that of the Athenians or Carthaginians, or of any other

city which does not belong to all men but to some especial ones.

Some men serve both of these states, the greater and the lesser,

at the same time; some serve only the lesser, some only the greater.

We can serve the greater commonwealth even when we are at leisure;

indeed I am not sure that we cannot serve it better when we are at

leisure to inquire into what virtue is, and whether it be one or

many: {244} whether it be nature or art that makes men good: whether

that which contains the earth and sea and all that in them is be

one, or whether God has placed therein many bodies of the same

species: whether that out of which all things are made be continuous

and solid, or containing interstices and alternate empty and full

spaces: whether God idly looks on at His handiwork, or directs its

course: whether He is without and around the world, or whether He

pervades its entire surface: whether the world be immortal, or

doomed to decay and belonging to the class of things which are born

only for a time? What service does he who meditates upon these

questions render to God? He prevents these His great works having

no one to witness them.