V. We have a habit of saying that the highest good is to live

according to nature: now nature has produced us for both purposes,

for contemplation and for action. Let us now prove what we said

before: nay, who will not think this proved if he bethinks himself

how great a passion he has for discovering the unknown? how vehemently

his curiosity is roused by every kind of romantic tale. Some men

make long voyages and undergo the toils of journeying to distant

lands for no reward except that of discovering something hidden and

remote. This is what draws people to public shows, and causes them

to pry into everything that is closed, to puzzle out everything

that is secret, to clear up points of antiquity, and to listen to

tales of the customs of savage nations. Nature has bestowed upon

us an inquiring disposition, and being well aware of her own skill

and beauty, has produced us to be spectators of her vast works,

because she would lose all the fruits of her labour if she were to

exhibit such vast and noble works of such complex construction, so

bright and beautiful in so many ways, to solitude alone. That you

may be sure that she wishes to be gazed upon, not merely looked at,

see what a place she has assigned to us: she has placed us in {245}

the middle of herself and given us a prospect all around. She has

not only set man erect upon his feet, but also with a view to making

it easy for him to watch the heavens, she has raised his head on

high and connected it with a pliant neck, in order that he might

follow the course of the stars from their rising to their setting,

and move his face round with the whole heaven. Moreover, by carrying

six constellations across the sky by day, and six by night, she

displays every part of herself in such a manner that by what she

brings before man’s eyes she renders him eager to see the rest also.

For we have not beheld all things, nor yet the true extent of them,

but our eyesight does but open to itself the right path for research,

and lay the foundation, from which our speculations may pass from

what is obvious to what is less known, and find out something more

ancient than the world itself, from whence those stars came forth:

inquire what was the condition of the universe before each of its

elements were separated from the general mass: on what principle

its confused and blended parts were divided: who assigned their

places to things, whether it was by their own nature that what was

heavy sunk downwards, and what was light flew upwards, or whether

besides the stress and weight of bodies some higher power gave laws

to each of them: whether that greatest proof that the spirit of man

is divine be true, the theory, namely, that some parts and as it

were sparks of the stars have fallen down upon earth and stuck there

in a foreign substance. Our thought bursts through the battlements

of heaven, and is not satisfied with knowing only what is shown to

us: “I investigate,” it says, “that which lies without the world,

whether it be a bottomless abyss, or whether it also is confined

within boundaries of its own: what the appearance of the things

outside may be, whether they be shapeless and vague, extending

equally in every direction, or whether they also are arranged {246}

in a certain kind of order: whether they are connected with this

world of ours, or are widely separated from it and welter about in

empty space: whether they consist of distinct atoms, of which

everything that is and that is to be, is made, or whether their

substance is uninterrupted and all of it capable of change: whether

the elements are naturally opposed to one another, or whether they

are not at variance, but work towards the same end by different

means.” Since man was born for such speculations as these, consider

how short a time he has been given for them, even supposing that

he makes good his claims to the whole of it, allows no part of it

to be wrested from him through good nature, or to slip away from

him through carelessness; though he watches over all his hours with

most miserly care, though he live to the extreme confines of human

existence, and though misfortune take nothing away from what Nature

bestowed upon him, even then man is too mortal for the comprehension

of immortality. I live according to Nature, therefore, if I give

myself entirely up to her, and if I admire and reverence her. Nature,

however, intended me to do both, to practise both contemplation and

action: and I do both, because even contemplation is not devoid of

action.

VI. “But,” say you, “it makes a difference whether you adopt the

contemplative life for the sake of your own pleasure, demanding

nothing from it save unbroken contemplation without any result: for

such a life is a sweet one and has attractions of its own.” To this

I answer you: It makes just as much difference in what spirit you

lead the life of a public man, whether you are never at rest, and

never set apart any time during which you may turn your eyes away

from the things of earth to those of Heaven. It is by no means

desirable that one should merely strive to accumulate property

without any love of virtue, or do nothing but hard work without any

cultivation of the {247} intellect, for these things ought to be

combined and blended together; and, similarly, virtue placed in

leisure without action is but an incomplete and feeble good thing,

because she never displays what she has learned. Who can deny that

she ought to test her progress in actual work, and not merely think

what ought to be done, but also sometimes use her hands as well as

her head, and bring her conceptions into actual being? But if the

wise man be quite willing to act thus, if it be the things to be

done, not the man to do them that are wanting, will you not then

allow him to live to himself? What is the wise man’s purpose in

devoting himself to leisure? He knows that in leisure as well as

in action he will accomplish something by which he will be of service

to posterity. Our school at any rate declares that Zeno and Chrysippus

have done greater things than they would have done had they been

in command of armies, or filled high offices, or passed laws: which

latter indeed they did pass, though not for one single state, but

for the whole human race. How then can it be unbecoming to a good

man to enjoy a leisure such as this, by whose means he gives laws

to ages to come, and addresses himself not to a few persons but to

all men of all nations, both now and hereafter? To sum up the matter,

I ask you whether Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and Zeno lived in accordance

with their doctrine? I am sure that you will answer that they lived

in the manner in which they taught that men ought to live: yet no

one of them governed a state. “They had not,” you reply, “the amount

of property or social position which as a rule enables people to

take part in public affairs.” Yet for all that they did not live

an idle life: they found the means of making their retirement more

useful to mankind than the perspirings and runnings to and fro of

other men: wherefore these persons are thought to have done great

things, in spite of their having done nothing of a public character.

{248}

VII. Morever, there are three kinds of life, and it is a stock

question which of the three is the best: the first is devoted to

pleasure, the second to contemplation, the third to action. First,

let us lay aside all disputatiousness and bitterness of feeling,

which, as we have stated, causes those whose paths in life are

different to hate one another beyond all hope of reconciliation,

and let us see whether all these three do not come to the same

thing, although under different names: for neither he who decides

for pleasure is without contemplation, nor is he who gives himself

up to contemplation without pleasure: nor yet is he, whose life is

devoted to action, without contemplation. “It makes,” you say, “all

the difference in the world, whether a thing is one’s main object

in life, or whether it be merely an appendage to some other object.”

I admit that the difference is considerable, nevertheless the one

does not exist apart from the other: the one man cannot live in

contemplation without action, nor can the other act without

contemplation: and even the third, of whom we all agree in having

a bad opinion, does not approve of passive pleasure, but of that

which he establishes for himself by means of reason: even this

pleasure-seeking sect itself, therefore, practises action also. Of

course it does, since Epicurus himself says that at times he would

abandon pleasure and actually seek for pain, if he became likely

to be surfeited with pleasure, or if he thought that by enduring a

slight pain he might avoid a greater one. With what purpose do I

state this? To prove that all men are fond of contemplation. Some

make it the object of their lives: to us it is an anchorage, but

not a harbour.

VIII. Add to this that, according to the doctrine of Chrysippus, a

man may live at leisure: I do not say that he ought to endure

leisure, but that he ought to choose it. Our Stoics say that the

wise man would not take part in the government of any state. What

difference does it {249} make by what path the wise man arrives at

leisure, whether it be because the state is wanting to him, or he

is wanting to the state? If the state is to be wanting to all wise

men (and it always will be found wanting by refined thinkers), I

ask you, to what state should the wise man betake himself; to that

of the Athenians, in which Socrates is condemned to death, and from

which Aristotle goes into exile lest he should be condemned to

death? where virtues are borne down by jealousy? You will tell me

that no wise man would join such a state. Shall then the wise man

go to the commonwealth of the Carthaginians, where faction never

ceases to rage, and liberty is the foe of all the best men, where

justice and goodness are held of no account, where enemies are

treated with inhuman cruelty and natives are treated like enemies:

he will flee from this state also. If I were to discuss each one

separately, I should not be able to find one which the wise man

could endure, or which could endure the wise man. Now if such a

state as we have dreamed of cannot be found on earth, it follows

that leisure is necessary for every one, because the one thing which

might be preferred to leisure is nowhere to be found. If any one

says that to sail is the best of things, and then says that we ought

not to sail in a sea in which shipwrecks were common occurrences,

and where sudden storms often arise which drive the pilot back from

his course, I should imagine that this man, while speaking in praise

of sailing, was really forbidding me to unmoor my ship . . . .

[1] Virg. “Aen.” ix. 612. Compare Sir Walter Scott, “Lay of the

Last Minstrel,” canto iv.:—

“And still, in age, he spurned at rest, And still his brows the

helmet pressed. Albeit the blanched locks below Were white as

Dinlay’s spotless snow,” &c.

{250}

THE NINTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO

SERENUS.

OF PEACE OF MIND.

I. [_Serenus._]

When I examine myself, Seneca, some vices appear on the surface,

and so that I can lay my hands upon them, while others are less

distinct and harder to reach, and some are not always present, but

recur at intervals: and these I should call the most troublesome,

being like a roving enemy that assails one when he sees his

opportunity, and who will neither let one stand on one’s guard as

in war, nor yet take one’s rest without fear as in peace. The

position in which I find myself more especially (for why should I

not tell you the truth as I would to a physician), is that of neither

being thoroughly set free from the vices which I fear and hate, nor

yet quite in bondage to them: my state of mind, though not the worst

possible, is a particularly discontented and sulky one: I am neither

ill nor well, It is of no use for you to tell me that all virtues

are weakly at the outset, and that they acquire strength and solidity

by time, for I am well aware that even those which do but help our

outward show, such as grandeur, a reputation for eloquence, and

everything that appeals to others, gain power by time. Both those

which {251} afford us real strength and those which do but trick

us out in a more attractive form, require long years before they

gradually are adapted to us by time. But I fear that custom, which

confirms most things, implants this vice more and more deeply in

me. Long acquaintance with both good and bad people leads one to

esteem them all alike. What this state of weakness really is, when

the mind halts between two opinions without any strong inclination

towards either good or evil, I shall be better able to show you

piecemeal than all at once. I will tell you what befalls me, you

must find out the name of the disease. I have to confess the greatest

possible love of thrift: I do not care for a bed with gorgeous

hangings, nor for clothes brought out of a chest, or pressed under

weights and made glossy by frequent manglings, but for common and

cheap ones, that require no care either to keep them or to put them

on. For food I do not want what needs whole troops of servants to

prepare it and admire it, nor what is ordered many days before and

served up by many hands, but something handy and easily come at,

with nothing far-fetched or costly about it, to be had in every

part of the world, burdensome neither to one’s fortune nor one’s

body, not likely to go out of the body by the same path by which

it came in. I like[1] a rough and unpolished homebred servant, I

like my servant born in my house: I like my country-bred father’s

heavy silver plate stamped with no maker’s name: I do not want a

table that is beauteous with dappled spots, or known to all the

town by the number of fashionable people to whom it has successively

belonged, but one which stands merely for use, and which causes no

guest’s eye to dwell upon it with pleasure or to kindle at it with

envy. While I am well satisfied with this, I am reminded of the

clothes of a certain schoolboy, dressed with no ordinary care and

splendour, of slaves bedecked with gold and a whole regiment {252}

of glittering attendants. I think of houses too, where one treads

on precious stones, and where valuables lie about in every corner,

where the very roof is brilliantly painted, and a whole nation

attends and accompanies an inheritance on the road to ruin. What

shall I say of waters, transparent to the very bottom, which flow

round the guests, and banquets worthy of the theatre in which they

take place? Coming as I do from a long course of dull thrift, I

find myself surrounded by the most brilliant luxury, which echoes

around me on every side: my sight becomes a little dazzled by it:

I can lift up my heart against it more easily than my eyes. When I

return from seeing it I am a sadder, though not a worse man, I

cannot walk amid my own paltry possessions with so lofty a step as

before, and silently there steals over me a feeling of vexation,

and a doubt whether that way of life may not be better than mine.

None of these things alter my principles, yet all of them disturb

me. At one time I would obey the maxims of our school and plunge

into public life, I would obtain office and become consul, not

because the purple robe and lictor’s axes attract me, but in order

that I may be able to be of use to my friends, my relatives, to all

my countrymen, and indeed to all mankind. Ready and determined, I

follow the advice of Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, all of whom

bid one take part in public affairs, though none of them ever did

so himself: and then, as soon as something disturbs my mind, which

is not used to receiving shocks, as soon as something occurs which

is either disgraceful, such as often occurs in all men’s lives, or

which does not proceed quite easily, or when subjects of very little

importance require me to devote a great deal of time to them, I go

back to my life of leisure, and, just as even tired cattle go faster

when they are going home, I wish to retire and pass my life within

the walls of my house. “No one,” I say, “that will give me no

compensation worth such a loss shall ever {253} rob me of a day.

Let my mind be contained within itself and improve itself: let it

take no part with other men’s affairs, and do nothing which depends

on the approval of others: let me enjoy a tranquillity undisturbed

by either public or private troubles.” But whenever my spirit is

roused by reading some brave words, or some noble example spurs me

into action, I want to rush into the law courts, to place my voice

at one man’s disposal, my services at another’s, and to try to help

him even though I may not succeed, or to quell the pride of some

lawyer who is puffed up by ill-deserved success: but I think, by

Hercules, that in philosophical speculation it is better to view

things as they are, and to speak of them on their own account, and

as for words, to trust to things for them, and to let one’s speech

simply follow whither they lead. “Why do you want to construct a

fabric that will endure for ages? Do you not wish to do this in

order that posterity may talk of you: yet you were born to die, and

a silent death is the least wretched. Write something therefore in

a simple style, merely to pass the time, for your own use, and not

for publication. Less labour is needed when one does not look beyond

the present.” Then again, when the mind is elevated by the greatness

of its thoughts, it becomes ostentatious in its use of words, the

loftier its aspirations, the more loftily it desires to express

them, and its speech rises to the dignity of its subject. At such

times I forget my mild and moderate determination and soar higher

than is my wont, using a language that is not my own. Not to multiply

examples, I am in all things attended by this weakness of a

well-meaning mind, to whose level I fear that I shall be gradually

brought down, or, what is even more worrying, that I may always

hang as though about to fall, and that there may be more the matter

with me than I myself perceive: for we take a friendly view of our

own private affairs, and partiality always obscures our judgment.

{254} I fancy that many men would have arrived at wisdom had they

not believed themselves to have arrived there already, had they not

purposely deceived themselves as to some parts of their character,

and passed by others with their eyes shut: for you have no grounds

for supposing that other people’s flattery is more ruinous to us

than our own. Who dares to tell himself the truth? Who is there,

by however large a troop of caressing courtiers he may be surrounded,

who in spite of them is not his own greatest flatterer? I beg you,

therefore, if you have any remedy by which you could stop this

vacillation of mine, to deem me worthy to owe my peace of mind to

you. I am well aware that these oscillations of mind are not perilous

and that they threaten me with no serious disorder: to express what

I complain of by an exact simile, I am not suffering from a storm,

but from sea-sickness. Take from me, then, this evil, whatever it

may be, and help one who is in distress within sight of land.

II. [_Seneca._] I have long been silently asking myself, my friend

Serenus, to what I should liken such a condition of mind, and I

find that nothing more closely resembles it than the conduct of

those who, after having recovered from a long and serious illness,

occasionally experience slight touches and twinges, and, although

they have passed through the final stages of the disease, yet have

suspicions that it has not left them, and though in perfect health

yet hold out their pulse to be felt by the physician, and whenever

they feel warm suspect that the fever is returning. Such men,

Serenus, are not unhealthy, but they are not accustomed to being

healthy; just as even a quiet sea or lake nevertheless displays a

certain amount of ripple when its waters are subsiding after a

storm. What you need, therefore, is, not any of those harsher

remedies to which allusion has been made, not that you should in

some cases check yourself, in others be angry with yourself, in

{255} others sternly reproach yourself, but that you should adopt

that which comes last in the list, have confidence in yourself, and

believe that you are proceeding on the right path, without being

led aside by the numerous divergent tracks of wanderers which cross

it in every direction, some of them circling about the right path

itself. What you desire, to be undisturbed, is a great thing, nay,

the greatest thing of all, and one which raises a man almost to the

level of a god. The Greeks call this calm steadiness of mind

_euthymia_, and Democritus’s treatise upon it is excellently written:

I call it peace of mind: for there is no necessity for translating

so exactly as to copy the words of the Greek idiom: the essential

point is to mark the matter under discussion by a name which ought

to have the same meaning as its Greek name, though perhaps not the

same form. What we are seeking, then, is how the mind may always

pursue a steady, unruffled course, may be pleased with itself, and

look with pleasure upon its surroundings, and experience no

interruption of this joy, but abide in a peaceful condition without

being ever either elated or depressed: this will be “peace of mind.”

Let us now consider in a general way how it may be attained: then

you may apply as much as you choose of the universal remedy to your

own case. Meanwhile we must drag to light the entire disease, and

then each one will recognize his own part of it: at the same time

you will understand how much less you suffer by your self-depreciation

than those who are bound by some showy declaration which they have

made, and are oppressed by some grand title of honour, so that shame

rather than their own free will forces them to keep up the pretence.

The same thing applies both to those who suffer from fickleness and

continual changes of purpose, who always are fondest of what they

have given up, and those who merely yawn and dawdle: add to these

those who, like bad sleepers, turn from side to {256} side, and

settle themselves first in one manner and then in another, until

at last they find rest through sheer weariness: in forming the

habits of their lives they often end by adopting some to which they

are not kept by any dislike of change, but in the practice of which

old age, which is slow to alter, has caught them living: add also

those who are by no means fickle, yet who must thank their dulness,

not their consistency for being so, and who go on living not in the

way they wish, but in the way they have begun to live. There are

other special forms of this disease without number, but it has but

one effect, that of making people dissatisfied with themselves.

This arises from a distemperature of mind and from desires which

one is afraid to express or unable to fulfil, when men either dare

not attempt as much as they wish to do, or fail in their efforts

and depend entirely upon hope: such people are always fickle and

changeable, which is a necessary consequence of living in a state

of suspense: they take any way to arrive at their ends, and teach

and force themselves to use both dishonourable and difficult means

to do so, so that when their toil has been in vain they are made

wretched by the disgrace of failure, and do not regret having longed

for what was wrong, but having longed for it in vain. They then

begin to feel sorry for what they have done, and afraid to begin

again, and their mind falls by degrees into a state of endless

vacillation, because they can neither command nor obey their passions,

of hesitation, because their life cannot properly develope itself,

and of decay, as the mind becomes stupefied by disappointments. All

these symptoms become aggravated when their dislike of a laborious

misery has driven them to idleness and to secret studies, which are

unendurable to a mind eager to take part in public affairs, desirous

of action and naturally restless, because, of course, it finds too

few resources within itself: when therefore it loses the amusement

which business itself affords to busy {257} men, it cannot endure

home, loneliness, or the walls of a room, and regards itself with

dislike when left to itself. Hence arises that weariness and

dissatisfaction with oneself, that tossing to and fro of a mind

which can nowhere find rest, that unhappy and unwilling endurance

of enforced leisure. In all cases where one feels ashamed to confess

the real cause of one’s suffering, and where modesty leads one to

drive one’s sufferings inward, the desires pent up in a little space

without any vent choke one another. Hence comes melancholy and

drooping of spirit, and a thousand waverings of the unsteadfast

mind, which is held in suspense by unfulfilled hopes, and saddened

by disappointed ones: hence comes the state of mind of those who

loathe their idleness, complain that they have nothing to do, and

view the progress of others with the bitterest jealousy: for an

unhappy sloth favours the growth of envy, and men who cannot succeed

themselves wish every one else to be ruined. This dislike of other

men’s progress and despair of one’s own produces a mind angered

against fortune, addicted to complaining of the age in which it

lives, to retiring into corners and brooding over its misery, until

it becomes sick and weary of itself: for the human mind is naturally

nimble and apt at movement: it delights in every opportunity of

excitement and forgetfulness of itself, and the worse a man’s

disposition the more he delights in this, because he likes to wear

himself out with busy action, just as some sores long for the hands

that injure them and delight in being touched, and the foul itch

enjoys anything that scratches it. Similarly I assure you that these

minds, over which desires have spread like evil ulcers, take pleasure

in toils and troubles, for there are some things which please our

body while at the same time they give it a certain amount of pain,

such as turning oneself over and changing one’s side before it is

wearied, or cooling oneself in one position after another. It is

like Homer’s Achilles, {258} lying first upon its face, then upon

its back, placing itself in various attitudes, and, as sick people

are wont, enduring none of them for long, and using changes as

though they were remedies. Hence men undertake aimless wanderings,

travel along distant shores, and at one time at sea, at another by

land, try to soothe that fickleness of disposition which always is

dissatisfied with the present. “Now let us make for Campania: now

I am sick of rich cultivation: let us see wild regions, let us

thread the passes of Bruttii and Lucania: yet amid this wilderness

one wants something of beauty to relieve our pampered eyes after

so long dwelling on savage wastes: let us seek Tarentum with its

famous harbour, its mild winter climate, and its district, rich

enough to support even the great hordes of ancient times. Let us

now return to town: our ears have too long missed its shouts and

noise: it would be pleasant also to enjoy the sight of human

bloodshed.” Thus one journey succeeds another, and one sight is

changed for another. As Lucretius says:—

“Thus every mortal from himself doth flee;”

but what does he gain by so doing if he does not escape from himself?

he follows himself and weighs himself down by his own most burdensome

companionship. We must understand, therefore, that what we suffer

from is not the fault of the places but of ourselves: we are weak

when there is anything to be endured, and cannot support either

labour or pleasure, either one’s own business or any one else’s for

long. This has driven some men to death, because by frequently

altering their purpose they were always brought back to the same

point, and had left themselves no room for anything new. They had

become sick of life and of the world itself, and as all indulgences

palled upon them they began to ask themselves the question, “How

long are we to go on doing the same thing?”

{259}

III. You ask me what I think we had better make use of to help us

to support this ennui. “The best thing,” as Athenodorus says, “is

to occupy oneself with business with the management of affairs of

state and the duties of a citizen: for as some pass the day in

exercising themselves in the sun and in taking care of their bodily

health, and athletes find it most useful to spend the greater part

of their time in feeding up the muscles and strength to whose

cultivation they have devoted their lives; so too for you who are

training your mind to take part in the struggles of political life,

it is far more honourable to be thus at work than to be idle. He

whose object is to be of service to his countrymen and to all

mortals, exercises himself and does good at the same time when he

is engrossed in business and is working to the best of his ability

both in the interests of the public and of private men. But,”

continues he, “because innocence is hardly safe among such furious

ambitions and so many men who turn one aside from the right path,

and it is always sure to meet with more hindrance than help, we

ought to withdraw ourselves from the forum and from public life,

and a great mind even in a private station can find room wherein

to expand freely. Confinement in dens restrains the springs of lions

and wild creatures, but this does not apply to human beings, who

often effect the most important works in retirement. Let a man,

however, withdraw himself only in such a fashion that wherever he

spends his leisure his wish may still be to benefit individual men

and mankind alike, both with his intellect, his voice, and his

advice. The man that does good service to the state is not only he

who brings forward candidates for public office, defends accused

persons, and gives his vote on questions of peace and war, but he

who encourages young men in well-doing, who supplies the present

dearth of good teachers by instilling into their minds the principles

of virtue, who seizes and holds back those who {260} are rushing

wildly in pursuit of riches and luxury, and, if he does nothing

else, at least checks their course—such a man does service to the

public though in a private station. Which does the most good, he

who decides between foreigners and citizens (as praetor peregrinus),

or, as praetor urbanus, pronounces sentence to the suitors in his

court at his assistant’s dictation, or he who shows them what is

meant by justice, filial feeling, endurance, courage, contempt of

death and knowledge of the gods, and how much a man is helped by a

good conscience? If then you transfer to philosophy the time which

you take away from the public service, you will not be a deserter

or have refused to perform your proper task. A soldier is not merely

one who stands in the ranks and defends the right or the left wing

of the army, but he also who guards the gates—a service which,

though less dangerous, is no sinecure—who keeps watch, and takes

charge of the arsenal: though all these are bloodless duties, yet

they count as military service. As soon as you have devoted yourself

to philosophy, you will have overcome all disgust at life: you will

not wish for darkness because you are weary of the light, nor will

you be a trouble to yourself and useless to others: you will acquire

many friends, and all the best men will be attracted towards you:

for virtue, in however obscure a position, cannot be hidden, but

gives signs of its presence: any one who is worthy will trace it

out by its footsteps: but if we give up all society, turn our backs

upon the whole human race, and live communing with ourselves alone,

this solitude without any interesting occupation will lead to a

want of something to do: we shall begin to build up and to pull

down, to dam out the sea, to cause waters to flow through natural

obstacles, and generally to make a bad disposal of the time which

Nature has given us to spend: some of us use it grudgingly, others

wastefully; some of us spend it so that we can show a profit and

loss account, {261} others so that they have no assets remaining:

than which nothing can be more shameful. Often a man who is very

old in years has nothing beyond his age by which he can prove that

he has lived a long time.”

IV. To me, my dearest Serenus, Athenodorus seems to have yielded

too completely to the times, to have fled too soon: I will not deny

that sometimes one must retire, but one ought to retire slowly, at

a foot’s pace, without losing one’s ensigns or one’s honour as a

soldier: those who make terms with arms in their hands are more

respected by their enemies and more safe in their hands. This is

what I think ought to be done by virtue and by one who practises

virtue: if Fortune get the upper hand and deprive him of the power

of action, let him not straightway turn his back to the enemy, throw

away his arms, and run away seeking for a hiding-place, as if there

were any place whither Fortune could not pursue him, but let him

be more sparing in his acceptance of public office, and after due

deliberation discover some means by which he can be of use to the

state. He is not able to serve in the army: then let him become a

candidate for civic honours: must he live in a private station?

then let him be an advocate: is he condemned to keep silence? then

let him help his countrymen with silent counsel. Is it dangerous

for him even to enter the forum? then let him prove himself a good

comrade, a faithful friend, a sober guest in people’s houses, at

public shows, and at wine-parties. Suppose that he has lost the

status of a citizen; then let him exercise that of a man: our reason

for magnanimously refusing to confine ourselves within the walls

of one city, for having gone forth to enjoy intercourse with all

lands and for professing ourselves to be citizens of the world is

that we may thus obtain a wider theatre on which to display our

virtue. Is the bench of judges closed to you, are you forbidden to

address the people from the hustings, or to be a candidate at

elections? {262} then turn your eyes away from Rome, and see what

a wide extent of territory, what a number of nations present

themselves before you. Thus, it is never possible for so many outlets

to be closed against your ambition that more will not remain open

to it: but see whether the whole prohibition does not arise from

your own fault. You do not choose to direct the affairs of the state

except as consul or prytanis[2] or meddix[3] or sufes:[4] what

should we say if you refused to serve in the army save as general

or military tribune? Even though others may form the first line,

and your lot may have placed you among the veterans of the third,

do your duty there with your voice, encouragement, example, and

spirit: even though a man’s hands be cut off, he may find means to

help his side in a battle, if he stands his ground and cheers on

his comrades. Do something of that sort yourself: if Fortune removes

you from the front rank, stand your ground nevertheless and cheer

on your comrades, and if somebody stops your mouth, stand nevertheless

and help your side in silence. The services of a good citizen are

never thrown away: he does good by being heard and seen, by his

expression, his gestures, his silent determination, and his very

walk. As some remedies benefit us by their smell as well as by their

their taste and touch, so virtue even when concealed and at a

distance sheds usefulness around. Whether she moves at her ease and

enjoys her just rights, or can only appear abroad on sufferance and

is forced to shorten sail to the tempest, whether it be unemployed,

silent, and pent up in a narrow lodging, or openly displayed, in

whatever guise she may appear, she always does good. What? do you

think that the example of one who can rest nobly has no value? It

is by far the best plan, therefore, to mingle {263} leisure with

business, whenever chance impediments or the state of public affairs

forbid one’s leading an active life: for one is never so cut off

from all pursuits as to find no room left for honourable action.

V. Could you anywhere find a [more] miserable city than that of

Athens when it was being torn to pieces by the thirty tyrants? they

slew thirteen hundred citizens, all the best men, and did not leave

off because they had done so, but their cruelty became stimulated

by exercise. In the city which possessed that most reverend tribunal,

the Court of the Areopagus, which possessed a Senate, and a popular

assembly which was like a Senate, there met daily a wretched crew

of butchers, and the unhappy Senate House was crowded with tyrants.

A state, in which there were so many tyrants that they would have

been enough to form a bodyguard for one, might surely have rested

from the struggle; it seemed impossible for men’s minds even to

conceive hopes of recovering their liberty, nor could they see any

room for a remedy for such a mass of evil: for whence could the

unhappy state obtain all the Harmodiuses it would need to slay so

many tyrants? Yet Socrates was in the midst of the city, and consoled

its mourning Fathers, encouraged those who despaired of the republic,

by his reproaches brought rich men, who feared that their wealth

would be their ruin, to a tardy repentance of their avarice, and

moved about as a great example to those who wished to imitate him,

because he walked a free man in the midst of thirty masters. However,

Athens herself put him to death in prison, and Freedom herself could

not endure the freedom of one who had treated a whole band of tyrants

with scorn: you may know, therefore, that even in an oppressed state

a wise man can find an opportunity for bringing himself to the

front, and that in a prosperous and flourishing one wanton insolence,

jealousy, and a thousand other cowardly vices bear sway. We ought,

{264} therefore, to expand or contract ourselves according as the

state presents itself to us, or as Fortune offers us opportunities:

but in any case we ought to move and not to become frozen still by

fear: nay, he is the best man who, though peril menaces him on every

side and arms and chains beset his path, nevertheless neither impairs

nor conceals his virtue: for to keep oneself safe does not mean to

bury oneself. I think that Curius Dentatus spoke truly when he said

that he would rather be dead than alive: the worst evil of all is

to leave the ranks of the living before one dies: yet it is your

duty, if you happen to live in an age when it is not easy to serve

the state, to devote more time to leisure and to literature. Thus,

just as though you were making a perilous voyage, you may from time

to time put into harbour, and set yourself free from public business

without waiting for it to do so.

VI. We ought, however, first to examine our own selves, next the

business which we propose to transact, next those for whose sake

or in whose company we transact it.

It is above all things necessary to form a true estimate of oneself,

because as a rule we think that we can do more than we are able:

one man is led too far through confidence in his eloquence, another

demands more from his estate than it can produce, another burdens

a weakly body with some toilsome duty. Some men are too shamefaced

for the conduct of public affairs, which require an unblushing

front: some men’s obstinate pride renders them unfit for courts:

some cannot control their anger, and break into unguarded language

on the slightest provocation: some cannot rein in their wit or

resist making risky jokes: for all these men leisure is better than

employment: a bold, haughty and impatient nature ought to avoid

anything that may lead it to use a freedom of speech which will

bring it to ruin. Next we must form an estimate of the matter which

we mean to deal with, and compare our strength {265} with the deed

we are about to attempt: for the bearer ought always to be more

powerful than his load: indeed, loads which are too heavy for their

bearer must of necessity crush him: some affairs also are not so

important in themselves as they are prolific and lead to much more

business, which employments, as they involve us in new and various

forms of work, ought to be refused. Neither should you engage in

anything from which you are not free to retreat: apply yourself to

something which you can finish, or at any rate can hope to finish:

you had better not meddle with those operations which grow in

importance, while they are being transacted, and which will not

stop where you intended them to stop.

VII. In all cases one should be careful in one’s choice of men, and

see whether they be worthy of our bestowing a part of our life upon

them, or whether we shall waste our own time and theirs also: for

some even consider us to be in their debt because of our services

to them. Athenodorus said that “he would not so much as dine with

a man who would not be grateful to him for doing so”: meaning, I

imagine, that much less would he go to dinner with those who

recompense the services of their friends by their table, and regard

courses of dishes as donatives, as if they overate themselves to

do honour to others. Take away from these men their witnesses and

spectators: they will take no pleasure in solitary gluttony. You

must decide whether your disposition is better suited for vigorous

action or for tranquil speculation and contemplation, and you must

adopt whichever the bent of your genius inclines you for. Isocrates

laid hands upon Ephorus and led him away from the forum, thinking

that he would be more usefully employed in compiling chronicles;

for no good is done by forcing one’s mind to engage in uncongenial

work: it is vain to struggle against Nature. Yet nothing delights

the mind so much as faithful and pleasant friendship: what a {266}

blessing it is when there is one whose breast is ready to receive

all your secrets with safety, whose knowledge of your actions you

fear less than your own conscience, whose conversation removes your

anxieties, whose advice assists your plans, whose cheerfulness

dispels your gloom, whose very sight delights you! We should choose

for our friends men who are, as far as possible, free from strong

desires: for vices are contagious, and pass from a man to his

neighbour, and injure those who touch them. As, therefore, in times

of pestilence we have to be careful not to sit near people who are

infected and in whom the disease is raging, because by so doing,

we shall run into danger and catch the plague from their very breath;

so, too, in choosing our friends’ dispositions, we must take care

to select those who are as far as may be unspotted by the world;

for the way to breed disease is to mix what is sound with what is

rotten. Yet I do not advise you to follow after or draw to yourself

no one except a wise man: for where will you find him whom for so

many centuries we have sought in vain? in the place of the best

possible man take him who is least bad. You would hardly find any

time that would have enabled you to make a happier choice than if

you could have sought for a good man from among the Platos and

Xenophons and the rest of the produce of the brood of Socrates, or

if you had been permitted to choose one from the age of Cato: an

age which bore many men worthy to be born in Cato’s time (just as

it also bore many men worse than were ever known before, planners

of the blackest crimes: for it needed both classes in order to make

Cato understood: it wanted both good men, that he might win their

approbation, and bad men, against whom he could prove his strength):

but at the present day, when there is such a dearth of good men,

you must be less squeamish in your choice. Above all, however, avoid

dismal men who grumble at whatever happens, and find something to

complain {267} of in everything. Though he may continue loyal and

friendly towards you, still one’s peace of mind is destroyed by a

comrade whose mind is soured and who meets every incident with a

groan.

VIII. Let us now pass on to the consideration of property, that

most fertile source of human sorrows: for if you compare all the

other ills from which we suffer—deaths, sicknesses, fears, regrets,

endurance of pains and labours— with those miseries which our money

inflicts upon us, the latter will far outweigh all the others.

Reflect, then, how much less a grief it is never to have had any

money than to have lost it: we shall thus understand that the less

poverty has to lose, the less torment it has with which to afflict

us: for you are mistaken if you suppose that the rich bear their

losses with greater spirit than the poor: a wound causes the same

amount of pain to the greatest and the smallest body. It was a neat

saying of Bion’s, “that it hurts bald men as much as hairy men to

have their hairs pulled out”: you may be assured that the same thing

is true of rich and poor people, that their suffering is equal: for

their money clings to both classes, and cannot be torn away without

their feeling it: yet it is more endurable, as I have said, and

easier not to gain property than to lose it, and therefore you will

find that those upon whom Fortune has never smiled are more cheerful

than those whom she has deserted. Diogenes, a man of infinite spirit,

perceived this, and made it impossible that anything should be taken

from him. Call this security from loss poverty, want, necessity,

or any contemptuous name you please: I shall consider such a man

to be happy, unless you find me another who can lose nothing. If I

am not mistaken, it is a royal attribute among so many misers,

sharpers, and robbers, to be the one man who cannot be injured. If

any one doubts the happiness of Diogenes, he would doubt whether

the position of the immortal gods was one of sufficient happiness.

{268} because they have no farms or gardens, no valuable estates

let to strange tenants, and no large loans in the money market. Are

you not ashamed of yourself, you who gaze upon riches with astonished

admiration? Look upon the universe: you will see the gods quite

bare of property, and possessing nothing though they give everything.

Do you think that this man who has stripped himself of all fortuitous

accessories is a pauper, or one like to the immortal gods? Do you

call Demetrius, Pompeius’s freedman, a happier man, he who was not

ashamed to be richer than Pompeius, who was daily furnished with a

list of the number of his slaves, as a general is with that of his

army, though he had long deserved that all his riches should consist

of a pair of underlings, and a roomier cell than the other slaves?

But Diogenes’s only slave ran away from him, and when he was pointed

out to Diogenes, he did not think him worth fetching back. “It is

a shame,” he said, “that Manes should be able to live without

Diogenes, and that Diogenes should not be able to live without

Manes.” He seems to me to have said, “Fortune, mind your own business:

Diogenes has nothing left that belongs to you. Did my slave run

away? nay, he went away from me as a free man.” A household of

slaves requires food and clothing: the bellies of so many hungry

creatures have to be filled: we must buy raiment for them, we must

watch their most thievish hands, and we must make use of the services

of people who weep and execrate us. How far happier is he who is

indebted to no man for anything except for what he can deprive

himself of with the greatest ease! Since we, however, have not such

strength of mind as this, we ought at any rate to diminish the

extent of our property, in order to be less exposed to the assaults

of fortune: those men whose bodies can be within the shelter of

their armour, are more fitted for war than those whose huge size

everywhere extends beyond {269} it, and exposes them to wounds: the

best amount of property to have is that which is enough to keep us

from poverty, and which yet is not far removed from it.

IX. We shall be pleased with this measure of wealth if we have

previously taken pleasure in thrift, without which no riches are

sufficient, and with which none are insufficient, especially as the

remedy is always at hand, and poverty itself by calling in the aid

of thrift can convert itself into riches. Let us accustom ourselves

to set aside mere outward show, and to measure things by their uses,

not by their ornamental trappings: let our hunger be tamed by food,

our thirst quenched by drinking, our lust confined within needful

bounds; let us learn to use our limbs, and to arrange our dress and

way of life according to what was approved of by our ancestors, not

in imitation of new-fangled models: let us learn to increase our

continence, to repress luxury, to set bounds to our pride, to assuage

our anger, to look upon poverty without prejudice, to practise

thrift, albeit many are ashamed to do so, to apply cheap remedies

to the wants of nature, to keep all undisciplined hopes and aspirations

as it were under lock and key, and to make it our business to get

our riches from ourselves and not from Fortune. We never can so

thoroughly defeat the vast diversity and malignity of misfortune

with which we are threatened as not to feel the weight of many gusts

if we offer a large spread of canvas to the wind: we must draw our

affairs into a small compass, to make the darts of Fortune of no

avail. For this reason, sometimes slight mishaps have turned into

remedies, and more serious disorders have been healed by slighter

ones. When the mind pays no attention to good advice, and cannot

be brought to its senses by milder measures, why should we not think

that its interests are being served by poverty, disgrace, or financial

ruin being applied to it? one evil is balanced by another. Let us

then teach ourselves to be able to {270} dine without all Rome to

look on, to be the slaves of fewer slaves, to get clothes which

fulfil their original purpose, and to live in a smaller house. The

inner curve is the one to take, not only in running races and in

the contests of the circus, but also in the race of life; even

literary pursuits, the most becoming thing for a gentleman to spend

money upon, are only justifiable as long as they are kept within

bounds. What is the use of possessing numberless books and libraries,

whose titles their owner can hardly read through in a lifetime? A

student is overwhelmed by such a mass, not instructed, and it is

much better to devote yourself to a few writers than to skim through

many. Forty thousand books were burned at Alexandria: some would

have praised this library as a most noble memorial of royal wealth,

like Titus Livius, who says that it was “a splendid result of the

taste and attentive care of the kings.”[5] It had nothing to do

with taste or care, but was a piece of learned luxury, nay, not

even learned, since they amassed it, not for the sake of learning,

but to make a show, like many men who know less about letters than

a slave is expected to know, and who uses his books not to help him

in his studies but to ornament his dining-room. Let a man, then,

obtain as many books as he wants, but none for show. “It is more

respectable,” say you, “to spend one’s money on such books than on

vases of Corinthian brass and paintings.” Not so: everything that

is carried to excess is wrong. What excuses can you find for a man

who is eager to buy bookcases of ivory and citrus wood, to collect

the works of unknown or discredited authors, and who sits yawning

{271} amid so many thousands of books, whose backs and titles please

him more than any other part of them? Thus in the houses of the

laziest of men you will see the works of all the orators and

historians stacked upon book-shelves reaching right up to the

ceiling. At the present day a library has become as necessary an

appendage to a house as a hot and cold bath. I would excuse them

straightway if they really were carried away by an excessive zeal

for literature; but as it is, these costly works of sacred genius,

with all the illustrations that adorn them, are merely bought for

display and to serve as wall-furniture.

X. Suppose, however, that your life has become full of trouble, and

that without knowing what you were doing you have fallen into some

snare which either public or private Fortune has set for you, and

that you can neither untie it nor break it: then remember that

fettered men suffer much at first from the burdens and clogs upon

their legs: afterwards, when they have made up their minds not to

fret themselves about them, but to endure them, necessity teaches

them to bear them bravely, and habit to bear them easily. In every

station of life you will find amusements, relaxations, and enjoyments;

that is, provided you be willing to make light of evils rather than

to hate them. Knowing to what sorrows we were born, there is nothing

for which Nature more deserves our thanks than for having invented

habit as an alleviation of misfortune, which soon accustoms us to

the severest evils. No one could hold out against misfortune if it

permanently exercised the same force as at its first onset. We are

all chained to Fortune: some men’s chain is loose and made of gold,

that of others is tight and of meaner metal: but what difference

does this make? we are all included in the same captivity, and even

those who have bound us are bound themselves, unless you think that

a chain on the left side is lighter to bear: one man may be bound

by public {272} office, another by wealth: some have to bear the

weight of illustrious, some of humble birth: some are subject to

the commands of others, some only to their own: some are kept in

one place by being banished thither, others by being elected to the

priesthood. All life is slavery: let each man therefore reconcile

himself to his lot, complain of it as little as possible, and lay

hold of whatever good lies within his reach. No condition can be

so wretched that an impartial mind can find no compensations in it.

Small sites, if ingeniously divided, may be made use of for many

different purposes, and arrangement will render ever so narrow a

room habitable. Call good sense to your aid against difficulties:

it is possible to soften what is harsh, to widen what is too narrow,

and to make heavy burdens press less severely upon one who bears

them skilfully. Moreover, we ought not to allow our desires to

wander far afield, but we must make them confine themselves to our

immediate neighbourhood, since they will not endure to be altogether

locked up. We must leave alone things which either cannot come to

pass or can only be effected with difficulty, and follow after such

things as are near at hand and within reach of our hopes, always

remembering that all things are equally unimportant, and that though

they have a different outward appearance, they are all alike empty

within. Neither let us envy those who are in high places: the heights

which look lofty to us are steep and rugged. Again, those whom

unkind fate has placed in critical situations will be safer if they

show as little pride in their proud position as may be, and do all

they are able to bring down their fortunes to the level of other

men’s. There are many who must needs cling to their high pinnacle

of power, because they cannot descend from it save by falling

headlong: yet they assure us that their greatest burden is being

obliged to be burdensome to others, and that they are nailed to

their lofty post rather than raised to it: let {273} them then, by

dispensing justice, clemency, and kindness with an open and liberal

hand, provide themselves with assistance to break their fall, and

looking forward to this maintain their position more hopefully. Yet

nothing sets us free from these alternations of hope and fear so

well as always fixing some limit to our successes, and not allowing

Fortune to choose when to stop our career, but to halt of our own

accord long before we apparently need do so. By acting thus certain

desires will rouse up our spirits, and yet being confined within

bounds, will not lead us to embark on vast and vague enterprises.

XI. These remarks of mine apply only to imperfect, commonplace, and

unsound natures, not to the wise man, who needs not to walk with

timid and cautious gait: for he has such confidence in himself that

he does not hesitate to go directly in the teeth of Fortune, and

never will give way to her. Nor indeed has he any reason for fearing

her, for he counts not only chattels, property, and high office,

but even his body, his eyes, his hands, and everything whose use

makes life dearer to us, nay, even his very self, to be things whose

possession is uncertain; he lives as though he had borrowed them,

and is ready to return them cheerfully whenever they are claimed.

Yet he does not hold himself cheap, because he knows that he is not

his own, but performs all his duties as carefully and prudently as

a pious and scrupulous man would take care of property left in his

charge as trustee. When he is bidden to give them up, he will not

complain of Fortune, but will say, “I thank you for what I have had

possession of: I have managed your property so as largely to increase

it, but since you order me, I give it back to you and return it

willingly and thankfully. If you still wish me to own anything of

yours, I will keep it for you: if you have other views, I restore

into your hands and make restitution of all my wrought and coined

silver, my house and my {274} household. Should Nature recall what

she previously entrusted us with, let us say to her also: ‘Take

back my spirit, which is better than when you gave it me: I do not

shuffle or hang back. Of my own free will I am ready to return what

you gave me before I could think: take me away,’” What hardship can

there be in returning to the place from whence one came? a man

cannot live well if he knows not how to die well. We must, therefore,

take away from this commodity its original value, and count the

breath of life as a cheap matter. “We dislike gladiators,” says

Cicero, “if they are eager to save their lives by any means whatever:

but we look favourably upon them if they are openly reckless of

them,” You may be sure that the same thing occurs with us: we often

die because we are afraid of death. Fortune, which regards our lives

as a show in the arena for her own enjoyment, says, “Why should I

spare you, base and cowardly creature that you are? you will be

pierced and hacked with all the more wounds because you know not

how to offer your throat to the knife: whereas you, who receive the

stroke without drawing away your neck or putting up your hands to

stop it, shall both live longer and die more quickly,” He who fears

death will never act as becomes a living man: but he who knows that

this fate was laid upon him as soon as he was conceived will live

according to it, and by this strength of mind will gain this further

advantage, that nothing can befal him unexpectedly: for by looking

forward to everything which can happen as though it would happen

to him, he takes the sting out of all evils, which can make no

difference to those who expect it and are prepared to meet it: evil

only comes hard upon those who have lived without giving it a thought

and whose attention has been exclusively directed to happiness.

Disease, captivity, disaster, conflagration, are none of them

unexpected: I always knew with what disorderly company {275} Nature

had associated me. The dead have often been wailed for in my

neighbourhood: the torch and taper have often been borne past my

door before the bier of one who has died before his time: the crash

of falling buildings has often resounded by my side: night has

snatched away many of those with whom I have become intimate in the

forum, the Senate-house, and in society, and has sundered the hands

which were joined in friendship: ought I to be surprised if the

dangers which have always been circling around me at last assail

me? How large a part of mankind never think of storms when about

to set sail? I shall never be ashamed to quote a good saying because

it comes from a bad author. Publilius, who was a more powerful

writer than any of our other playwrights, whether comic or tragic,

whenever he chose to rise above farcical absurdities and speeches

addressed to the gallery, among many other verses too noble even

for tragedy, let alone for comedy, has this one:—

“What one hath suffered may befall us all.”

If a man takes this into his inmost heart and looks upon all the

misfortunes of other men, of which there is always a great plenty,

in this spirit, remembering that there is nothing to prevent their

coming upon him also, he will arm himself against them long before

they attack him. It is too late to school the mind to endurance of

peril after peril has come. “I did not think this would happen,”

and “Would you ever have believed that this would have happened?”

say you. But why should it not? Where are the riches after which

want, hunger, and beggary do not follow? what office is there whose

purple robe, augur’s staff, and patrician reins have not as their

accompaniment rags and banishment, the brand of infamy, a thousand

disgraces, and utter reprobation? what kingdom is there for which

ruin, trampling under foot, a tyrant and a {276} butcher are not

ready at hand? nor are these matters divided by long periods of

time, but there is but the space of an hour between sitting on the

throne ourselves and clasping the knees of some one else as suppliants.

Know then that every station of life is transitory, and that what

has ever happened to anybody may happen to you also. You are wealthy:

are you wealthier than Pompeius?[6] Yet when Gaius,[7] his old

relative and new host, opened Caesar’s house to him in order that

he might close his own, he lacked both bread and water: though he

owned so many rivers which both rose and discharged themselves

within his dominions, yet he had to beg for drops of water: he

perished of hunger and thirst in the palace of his relative, while

his heir was contracting for a public funeral for one who was in

want of food. You have filled public offices: were they either as

important, as unlooked for, or as all-embracing as those of Sejanus?

Yet on the day on which the Senate disgraced him, the people tore

him to pieces: the executioner[8] could find no part left large

enough to drag to the Tiber, of one upon whom gods and men had

showered all that could be given to man. You are a king: I will not

bid you go to Croesus for an example, he who while yet alive saw

his funeral pile both lighted and extinguished, being made to outlive

not only his kingdom but even his own death, nor to Jugurtha, whom

the people of Rome beheld as a captive within the year in which

they had feared him. We have seen Ptolemaeus King of Africa, and

Mithridates King of Armenia, under the charge of Gaius’s[9] guards:

the former was sent into exile, the latter chose it in order to

make his {277} exile more honourable. Among such continual topsy-turvy

changes, unless you expect that whatever can happen will happen to

you, you give adversity power against you, a power which can be

destroyed by any one who looks at it beforehand.

XII. The next point to these will be to take care that we do not

labour for what is vain, or labour in vain: that is to say, neither

to desire what we are not able to obtain, nor yet, having obtained

our desire too late, and after much toil to discover the folly of

our wishes: in other words, that our labour may not be without

result, and that the result may not be unworthy of our labour: for

as a rule sadness arises from one of these two things, either from

want of success or from being ashamed of having succeeded. We must

limit the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about

houses, theatres, and market-places. They mind other men’s business,

and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If

you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, “Whither are

you going?” he will answer, “By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall

see some people and do something.” They wander purposelessly seeking

for something to do, and do, not what they have made up their minds

to do, but what has casually fallen in their way. They move uselessly

and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which

creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining

anything. Many men spend their lives in exactly the same fashion,

which one may call a state of restless indolence. You would pity

some of them when you see them running as if their house was on

fire: they actually jostle all whom they meet, and hurry along

themselves and others with them, though all the while they are going

to salute some one who will not return their greeting, or to attend

the funeral of some one whom they did not know: they are going to

hear the verdict on one {278} who often goes to law, or to see the

wedding of one who often gets married: they will follow a man’s

litter, and in some places will even carry it: afterwards returning

home weary with idleness, they swear that they themselves do not

know why they went out, or where they have been, and on the following

day they will wander through the same round again. Let all your

work, therefore, have some purpose, and keep some object in view:

these restless people are not made restless by labour, but are

driven out of their minds by mistaken ideas: for even they do not

put themselves in motion without any hope: they are excited by the

outward appearance of something, and their crazy mind cannot see

its futility. In the same way every one of those who walk out to

swell the crowd in the streets, is led round the city by worthless

and empty reasons; the dawn drives him forth, although he has nothing

to do, and after he has pushed his way into many men’s doors, and

saluted their nomenclators one after the other, and been turned

away from many others, he finds that the most difficult person of

all to find at home is himself. From this evil habit comes that

worst of all vices, talebearing and prying into public and private

secrets, and the knowledge of many things which it is neither safe

to tell nor safe to listen to.

XIII. It was, I imagine, following out this principle that Democritis

taught that “he who would live at peace must not do much business

either public or private,” referring of course to unnecessary

business: for if there be any necessity for it we ought to transact

not only much but endless business, both public and private; in

cases, however, where no solemn duty invites us to act, we had

better keep ourselves quiet: for he who does many things often puts

himself in Fortune’s power, and it is safest not to tempt her often,

but always to remember her existence, and never to promise oneself

anything on her security. I will set sail unless anything happens

to prevent me, I shall {279} be praetor, if nothing hinders me, my

financial operations will succeed, unless anything goes wrong with

them. This is why we say that nothing befals the wise man which he

did not expect—we do not make him exempt from the chances of human

life, but from its mistakes, nor does everything happen to him as

he wished it would, but as he thought it would: now his first thought

was that his purpose might meet with some resistance, and the pain

of disappointed wishes must affect a man’s mind less severely if

he has not been at all events confident of success.

XIV. Moreover, we ought to cultivate an easy temper, and not become

over fond of the lot which fate has assigned to us, but transfer

ourselves to whatever other condition chance may lead us to, and

fear no alteration, either in our purposes or our position in life,

provided that we do not become subject to caprice, which of all

vices is the most hostile to repose: for obstinacy, from which

Fortune often wrings some concession, must needs be anxious and

unhappy, but caprice, which can never restrain itself, must be more

so. Both of these qualities, both that of altering nothing, and

that of being dissatisfied with everything, are energies to repose.

The mind ought in all cases to be called away from the contemplation

of external things to that of itself: let it confide in itself,

rejoice in itself, admire its own works; avoid as far as may be

those of others, and devote itself to itself; let it not feel losses,

and put a good construction even upon misfortunes. Zeno, the chief

of our school, when he heard the news of a shipwreck, in which all

his property had been lost, remarked, “Fortune bids me follow

philosophy in lighter marching order.” A tyrant threatened Theodorus

with death, and even with want of burial. “You are able to please

yourself,” he answered, “my half pint of blood is in your power:

for, as for burial, what a fool you must be if you suppose that I

care whether I rot above ground or under it.” Julius {280} Kanus,

a man of peculiar greatness, whom even the fact of his having been

born in this century does not prevent our admiring, had a long

dispute with Gaius, and when as he was going away that Phalaris of

a man said to him, “That you may not delude yourself with any foolish

hopes, I have ordered you to be executed,” he answered, “I thank

you, most excellent prince.” I am not sure what he meant: for many

ways of explaining his conduct occur to me. Did he wish to be

reproachful, and to show him how great his cruelty must be if death

became a kindness? or did he upbraid him with his accustomed insanity?

for even those whose children were put to death, and whose goods

were confiscated, used to thank him: or was it that he willingly

received death, regarding it as freedom? Whatever he meant, it was

a magnanimous answer. Some one may say, “After this Gaius might

have let him live.” Kanus had no fear of this: the good faith with

which Gaius carried out such orders as these was well known. Will

you believe that he passed the ten intervening days before his

execution without the slightest despondency? it is marvellous how

that man spoke and acted, and how peaceful he was. He was playing

at draughts when the centurion in charge of a number of those who

where going to be executed bade him join them: on the summons he

counted his men and said to his companion, “Mind you do not tell a

lie after my death, and say that you won;” then, turning to the

centurion, he said “You will bear me witness that I am one man ahead

of him.” Do you think that Kanus played upon that draught-board?

nay, he played with it. His friends were sad at being about to lose

so great a man: “Why,” asked he, “are you sorrowful? you are enquiring

whether our souls are immortal, but I shall presently know.” Nor

did he up to the very end cease his search after truth, and raised

arguments upon the subject of his own death. His own teacher of

philosophy accompanied him, and they {281} were not far from the

hill on which the daily sacrifice to Caesar our god was offered,

when he said, “What are you thinking of now, Kanus? or what are

your ideas?” “I have decided,” answered Kanus, “at that most

swiftly-passing moment of all to watch whether the spirit will be

conscious of the act of leaving the body.” He promised, too, that

if he made any discoveries, he would come round to his friends and

tell them what the condition of the souls of the departed might be.

Here was peace in the very midst of the storm: here was a soul

worthy of eternal life, which used its own fate as a proof of truth,

which when at the last step of life experimented upon his fleeting

breath, and did not merely continue to learn until he died, but

learned something even from death itself. No man has carried the

life of a philosopher further. I will not hastily leave the subject

of a great man, and one who deserves to be spoken of with respect:

I will hand thee down to all posterity, thou most noble heart, chief

among the many victims of Gaius.

XV. Yet we gain nothing by getting rid of all personal causes of

sadness, for sometimes we are possessed by hatred of the human race.

When you reflect how rare simplicity is, how unknown innocence, how

seldom faith is kept, unless it be to our advantage, when you

remember such numbers of successful crimes, so many equally hateful

losses and gains of lust, and ambition so impatient even of its own

natural limits that it is willing to purchase distinction by baseness,

the mind seems as it were cast into darkness, and shadows rise

before it as though the virtues were all overthrown and we were no

longer allowed to hope to possess them or benefited by their

possession. We ought therefore to bring ourselves into such a state

of mind that all the vices of the vulgar may not appear hateful to

us, but merely ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather

than Heraclitus. The latter of these, whenever be {282} appeared

in public, used to weep, the former to laugh: the one thought all

human doings to be follies, the other thought them to be miseries.

We must take a higher view of all things, and bear with them more

easily: it better becomes a man to scoff at life than to lament

over it. Add to this that he who laughs at the human race deserves

better of it than he who mourns for it, for the former leaves it

some good hopes of improvement, while the latter stupidly weeps

over what he has given up all hopes of mending. He who after surveying

the universe cannot control his laughter shows, too, a greater mind

than he who cannot restrain his tears, because his mind is only

affected in the slightest possible degree, and he does not think

that any part of all this apparatus is either important, or serious,

or unhappy. As for the several causes which render us happy or

sorrowful, let every one describe them for himself, and learn the

truth of Bion’s saying, “That all the doings of men were very like

what he began with, and that there is nothing in their lives which

is more holy or decent than their conception.” Yet it is better to

accept public morals and human vices calmly without bursting into

either laughter or tears; for to be hurt by the sufferings of others

is to be for ever miserable, while to enjoy the sufferings of others

is an inhuman pleasure, just as it is a useless piece of humanity

to weep and pull a long face because some one is burying his son.

In one’s own misfortunes, also, one ought so to conduct oneself as

to bestow upon them just as much sorrow as reason, not as much as

custom requires: for many shed tears in order to show them, and

whenever no one is looking at them their eyes are dry, but they

think it disgraceful not to weep when every one does so. So deeply

has this evil of being guided by the opinion of others taken root

in us, that even grief, the simplest of all emotions, begins to be

counterfeited.

{283}

XVI. There comes now a part of our subject which is wont with good

cause to make one sad and anxious: I mean when good men come to bad

ends; when Socrates is forced to die in prison, Rutilius to live

in exile, Pompeius and Cicero to offer their necks to the swords

of their own followers, when the great Cato, that living image of

virtue, falls upon his sword and rips up both himself and the

republic, one cannot help being grieved that Fortune should bestow

her gifts so unjustly: what, too, can a good man hope to obtain

when he sees the best of men meeting with the worst fates. Well,

but see how each of them endured his fate, and if they endured it

bravely, long in your heart for courage as great as theirs; if they

died in a womanish and cowardly manner, nothing was lost: either

they deserved that you should admire their courage, or else they

did not deserve that you should wish to imitate their cowardice:

for what can be more shameful than that the greatest men should die

so bravely as to make people cowards. Let us praise one who deserves

such constant praises, and say, “The braver you are the happier you

are! You have escaped from all accidents, jealousies, diseases: you

have escaped from prison: the gods have not thought you worthy of

ill-fortune, but have thought that fortune no longer deserved to

have any power over you”: but when any one shrinks back in the hour

of death and looks longingly at life, we must lay hands upon him.

I will never weep for a man who dies cheerfully, nor for one who

dies weeping: the former wipes away my tears, the latter by his

tears makes himself unworthy that any should be shed for him. Shall

I weep for Hercules because he was burned alive, or for Regulus

because he was pierced by so many nails, or for Cato because he

tore open his wounds a second time? All these men discovered how

at the cost of a small portion of time they might obtain immortality,

and by their deaths gained eternal life.

{284}

XVII. It also proves a fertile source of troubles if you take pains

to conceal your feelings and never show yourself to any one

undisguised, but, as many men do, live an artificial life, in order

to impose upon others: for the constant watching of himself becomes

a torment to a man, and he dreads being caught doing something at

variance with his usual habits, and, indeed, we never can be at our

ease if we imagine that every one who looks at us is weighing our

real value: for many things occur which strip people of their

disguise, however reluctantly they may part with it, and even if

all this trouble about oneself is successful, still life is neither

happy nor safe when one always has to wear a mask. But what pleasure

there is in that honest straight-forwardness which is its own

ornament, and which conceals no part of its character? Yet even

this life, which hides nothing from any one runs some risk of being

despised; for there are people who disdain whatever they come close

to: but there is no danger of virtue’s becoming contemptible when

she is brought near our eyes, and it is better to be scorned for

one’s simplicity than to bear the burden of unceasing hypocrisy.

Still, we must observe moderation in this matter, for there is a

great difference between living simply and living slovenly. Moreover,

we ought to retire a great deal into ourselves: for association

with persons unlike ourselves upsets all that we had arranged,

rouses the passions which were at rest, and rubs into a sore any

weak or imperfectly healed place in our minds. Nevertheless we ought

to mix up these two things, and to pass our lives alternately in

solitude and among throngs of people; for the former will make us

long for the society of mankind, the latter for that of ourselves,

and the one will counteract the other: solitude will cure us when

we are sick of crowds, and crowds will cure us when we are sick of

solitude. Neither ought we always to keep the mind strained to the

{285} same pitch, but it ought sometimes to be relaxed by amusement.

Socrates did not blush to play with little boys, Cato used to refresh

his mind with wine after he had wearied it with application to

affairs of state, and Scipio would move his triumphal and soldierly

limbs to the sound of music, not with a feeble and halting gait,

as is the fashion now-a-days, when we sway in our very walk with

more than womanly weakness, but dancing as men were wont in the

days of old on sportive and festal occasions, with manly bounds,

thinking it no harm to be seen so doing even by their enemies. Men’s

minds ought to have relaxation: they rise up better and more vigorous

after rest. We must not force crops from rich fields, for an unbroken

course of heavy crops will soon exhaust their fertility, and so

also the liveliness of our minds will be destroyed by unceasing

labour, but they will recover their strength after a short period

of rest and relief: for continuous toil produces a sort of numbness

and sluggishness. Men would not be so eager for this, if play and

amusement did not possess natural attractions for them, although

constant indulgence in them takes away all gravity and all strength

from the mind: for sleep, also, is necessary for our refreshment,

yet if you prolong it for days and nights together it will become

death. There is a great difference between slackening your hold of

a thing and letting it go. The founders of our laws appointed

festivals, in order that men might be publicly encouraged to be

cheerful, and they thought it necessary to vary our labours with

amusements, and, as I said before, some great men have been wont

to give themselves a certain number of holidays in every month, and

some divided every day into play-time and work-time. Thus, I remember

that great orator Asinius Pollio would not attend to any business

after the tenth hour: he would not even read letters after that

time for fear some new {286} trouble should arise, but in those two

hours[10] used to get rid of the weariness which he had contracted

during the whole day. Some rest in the middle of the day, and reserve

some light occupation for the afternoon. Our ancestors, too, forbade

any new motion to be made in the Senate after the tenth hour.

Soldiers divide their watches, and those who have just returned

from active service are allowed to sleep the whole night undisturbed.

We must humour our minds and grant them rest from time to time,

which acts upon them like food, and restores their strength. It

does good also to take walks out of doors, that our spirits may be

raised and refreshed by the open air and fresh breeze: sometimes

we gain strength by driving in a carriage, by travel, by change of

air, or by social meals and a more generous allowance of wine: at

times we ought to drink even to intoxication, not so as to drown,

but merely to dip ourselves in wine: for wine washes away troubles

and dislodges them from the depths of the mind, and acts as a remedy

to sorrow as it does to some diseases. The inventor of wine is

called Liber, not from the licence which he gives to our tongues,

but because he liberates the mind from the bondage of cares, and

emancipates it, animates it, and renders it more daring in all that

it attempts. Yet moderation is wholesome both in freedom and in

wine. It is believed that Solon and Arcesilaus used to drink deep.

Cato is reproached with drunkenness: but whoever casts this in his

teeth will find it easier to turn his reproach into a commendation

than to prove that Cato did anything wrong: however, we ought not

to do it often, for fear the mind should contract evil habits,

though it ought sometimes to be forced into frolic and frankness,

and to cast off dull sobriety for a while. If we believe the Greek

poet, “it is sometimes pleasant to be mad”; again, Plato always

{287} knocked in vain at the door of poetry when he was sober; or,

if we trust Aristotle, no great genius has ever been without a touch

of insanity. The mind cannot use lofty language, above that of the

common herd, unless it be excited. When it has spurned aside the

commonplace environments of custom, and rises sublime, instinct

with sacred fire, then alone can it chant a song too grand for

mortal lips: as long as it continues to dwell within itself it

cannot rise to any pitch of splendour: it must break away from the

beaten track, and lash itself to frenzy, till it gnaws the curb and

rushes away bearing up its rider to heights whither it would fear

to climb when alone.

I have now, my beloved Serenus, given you an account of what things

can preserve peace of mind, what things can restore it to us, what

can arrest the vices which secretly undermine it: yet be assured,

that none of these is strong enough to enable us to retain so

fleeting a blessing, unless we watch over our vacillating mind with

intense and unremitting care.

[1] Cf. Juv. ii. 150.

[2] The chief magistrate of the Greeks.

[3] The chief magistrate of the Oscans.

[4] The chief magistrate of the Carthaginians.

[5] “Livy himself styled the Alexandrian library _elegantiae regum

curaeque egregium opus_: a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly

criticised by the narrow stoicism of Seneca (Tranq., ch. ix.), whose

wisdom, on this occasion, deviates into nonsense.”—Gibbon, “Decline

and Fall,” ch. li, note.

[6] Haase reads _Ptolemaeus_.

[7] Caligula.

[8] It was the duty of the executioner to fasten a hook to the neck

of condemned criminals, by which they were dragged to the Tiber.

[9] Caligula.

[10] The Romans reckoned twelve hours from sunrise to sunset. These

“two hours” were therefore the two last of the day.

{288}

THE TENTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO

PAULINUS.[1]

OF THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE.

I. The greater part of mankind, my Paulinus, complains of the

unkindness of Nature, because we are born only for a short space

of time, and that this allotted period of life runs away so swiftly,

nay so hurriedly, that with but few exceptions men’s life comes to

an end just as they are preparing to enjoy it: nor is it only the

common herd and the ignorant vulgar who mourn over this universal

misfortune, as they consider it to be: this reflection has wrung

complaints even from great men. Hence comes that well-known saying

of physicians, that art is long but life is short: hence arose that

quarrel, so unbefitting a sage, which Aristotle picked with Nature,

because she had indulged animals with such length of days that some

of them lived for ten or fifteen centuries, while man, although

born for many and such great exploits, had the term of his existence

cut so much shorter. We do not have a very short time assigned to

us, but we lose a great deal of it: life is long enough to carry

out the most important projects: we {289} have an ample portion,

if we do but arrange the whole of it aright: but when it all runs

to waste through luxury and carelessness, when it is not devoted

to any good purpose, then at the last we are forced to feel that

it is all over, although we never noticed how it glided away. Thus

it is: we do not receive a short life, but we make it a short one,

and we are not poor in days, but wasteful of them. When great and

kinglike riches fall into the hands of a bad master, they are

dispersed straightway, but even a moderate fortune, when bestowed

upon a wise guardian, increases by use: and in like manner our life

has great opportunities for one who knows how to dispose of it to

the best advantage.

II. Why do we complain of Nature? she has dealt kindly with us.

Life is long enough, if you know how to use it. One man is possessed

by an avarice which nothing can satisfy, another by a laborious

diligence in doing what is totally useless: another is sodden by

wine: another is benumbed by sloth: one man is exhausted by an

ambition which makes him court the good will of others[2]: another,

through his eagerness as a merchant, is led to visit every land and

every sea by the hope of gain: some are plagued by the love of

soldiering, and are always either endangering other men’s lives or

in trembling for their own: some wear away their lives in that

voluntary slavery, the unrequited service of great men: many are

occupied either in laying claim to other men’s fortune or in

complaining of their own: a great number have no settled purpose,

and are tossed from one new scheme to another by a rambling,

inconsistent, dissatisfied, fickle habit of mind: some care for no

object sufficiently to try to attain it, but lie lazily yawning

until their fate comes upon them: so that I cannot {290} doubt the

truth of that verse which the greatest of poets has dressed in the

guise of an oracular response—

“We live a small part only of our lives.”

But all duration is time, not life: vices press upon us and surround

us on every side, and do not permit us to regain our feet, or to

raise our eyes and gaze upon truth, but when we are down keep us

prostrate and chained to low desires. Men who are in this condition

are never allowed to come to themselves: if ever by chance they

obtain any rest, they roll to and fro like the deep sea, which

heaves and tosses after a gale, and they never have any respite

from their lusts. Do you suppose that I speak of those whose ills

are notorious? Nay, look at those whose prosperity all men run to

see: they are choked by their own good things. To how many men do

riches prove a heavy burden? how many men’s eloquence and continual

desire to display their own cleverness has cost them their lives?[3]

how many are sallow with constant sensual indulgence? how many have

no freedom left them by the tribe of clients that surges around

them? Look through all these, from the lowest to the highest:—this

man calls his friends to support him, this one is present in court,

this one is the defendant, this one pleads for him, this one is on

the jury: but no one lays claim to his own self, every one wastes

his time over some one else. Investigate those men, whose names are

in every one’s mouth: you will find that they bear just the same

marks: A is devoted to B, and B to C: no one belongs to himself.

Moreover some men are full of most irrational anger: they complain

of the insolence of their chiefs, because they have not granted

them an audience when they wished for it; as if a man had any right

to complain of being so haughtily shut out by another, when he never

has {291} leisure to give his own conscience a hearing. This chief

of yours, whoever he is, though he may look at you in an offensive

manner, still will some day look at you, open his ears to your

words, and give you a seat by his side: but you never design to

look upon yourself, to listen to your own grievances. You ought

not, then, to claim these services from another, especially since

while you yourself were doing so, you did not wish for an interview

with another man, but were not able to obtain one with yourself.[4]

III. Were all the brightest intellects of all time to employ

themselves on this one subject, they never could sufficiently express

their wonder at this blindness of men’s minds: men will not allow

any one to establish himself upon their estates, and upon the most

trifling dispute about the measuring of boundaries, they betake

themselves to stones and cudgels: yet they allow others to encroach

upon {292} their lives, nay, they themselves actually lead others

in to take possession of them. You cannot find any one who wants

to distribute his money; yet among how many people does every one

distribute his life? men covetously guard their property from waste,

but when it comes to waste of time, they are most prodigal of that

of which it would become them to be sparing. Let us take one of the

elders, and say to him, “We perceive that you have arrived at the

extreme limits of human life: you are in your hundredth year, or

even older. Come now, reckon up your whole life in black and white:

tell us how much of your time has been spent upon your creditors,

how much on your mistress, how much on your king, how much on your

clients, how much in quarrelling with your wife, how much in keeping

your slaves in order, how much in running up and down the city on

business. Add to this the diseases which we bring upon us with our

own hands, and the time which has laid idle without any use having

been made of it; you will see that you have not lived as many years

as you count. Look back in your memory and see how often you have

been consistent in your projects, how many days passed as you

intended them to do when you were at your own disposal, how often

you did not change colour and your spirit did not quail, how much

work you have done in so long a time, how many people have without

your knowledge stolen parts of your life from you, how much you

have lost, how large a part has been taken up by useless grief,

foolish gladness, greedy desire, or polite conversation; how little

of yourself is left to you: you will then perceive that you will

die prematurely.” What, then, is the reason of this? It is that

people live as though they would live for ever: you never remember

your human frailty; you never notice how much of your time has

already gone by: you spend it as though you had an abundant and

overflowing store of it, though all the while that day which you

devote {293} to some man or to some thing is perhaps your last. You

fear everything, like mortals as you are, and yet you desire

everything as if you were immortals. You will hear many men say,

“After my fiftieth year I will give myself up to leisure: my sixtieth

shall be my last year of public office”: and what guarantee have

you that your life will last any longer? who will let all this go

on just as you have arranged it? are you not ashamed to reserve

only the leavings of your life for yourself, and appoint for the

enjoyment of your own right mind only that time which you cannot

devote to any business? How late it is to begin life just when we

have to be leaving it! What a foolish forgetfulness of our mortality,

to put off wholesome counsels until our fiftieth or sixtieth year,

and to choose that our lives shall begin at a point which few of

us ever reach.

IV. You will find that the most powerful and highly-placed men let

fall phrases in which they long for leisure, praise it, and prefer

it to all the blessings which they enjoy. Sometimes they would fain

descend from their lofty pedestal, if it could be safely done: for

Fortune collapses by its own weight, without any shock or interference

from without. The late Emperor Augustus, upon whom the gods bestowed

more blessings than on any one else, never ceased to pray for rest

and exemption from the troubles of empire: he used to enliven his

labours with this sweet, though unreal consolation, that he would

some day live for himself alone. In a letter which he addressed to

the Senate, after promising that his rest shall not be devoid of

dignity nor discreditable to his former glories, I find the following

words:—”These things, however, it is more honourable to do than to

promise: but my eagerness for that time, so earnestly longed for,

has led me to derive a certain pleasure from speaking about it,

though the reality is still far distant.”[5] He thought leisure so

important, that though {294} he could not actually enjoy it, yet

he did so by anticipation and by thinking about it. He, who saw

everything depending upon himself alone, who swayed the fortunes

of men and of nations, thought that his happiest day would be that

on which he laid aside his greatness. He knew by experience how

much labour was involved in that glory that shone through all lands,

and how much secret anxiety was concealed within it: he had been

forced to assert his rights by war, first with his countrymen, next

with his colleagues, and lastly with his own relations, and had

shed blood both by sea and by land: after marching his troops under

arms through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and almost

all the countries of the world, when they were weary with slaughtering

Romans he had directed them against a foreign foe. While he was

pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the enemies whom he found

in the midst of the Roman empire, while he was extending its

boundaries beyond the Rhine, the Euphrates, and the Danube, at Rome

itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others

were being sharpened to slay him. Scarcely had he escaped from their

plot, when his already failing age was terrified by his daughter

and all the noble youths who were pledged to her cause by adultery

with her by way of oath of fidelity. Then there was Paulus and

Antonius’s mistress, a second time to be {295} feared by Rome: and

when he had cut out these ulcers from his very limbs, others grew

in their place: the empire, like a body overloaded with blood, was

always breaking out somewhere. For this reason he longed for leisure:

all his labours were based upon hopes and thoughts of leisure: this

was the wish of him who could accomplish the wishes of all other

men.

V. While tossed hither and thither by Catiline and Clodius, Pompeius

and Crassus, by some open enemies and some doubtful friends, while

he struggled with the struggling republic and kept it from going

to ruin, when at last he was banished, being neither able to keep

silence in prosperity nor to endure adversity with patience, how

often must Marcus Cicero have cursed that consulship of his which

he never ceased to praise, and which nevertheless deserved it? What

piteous expressions he uses in a letter to Atticus when Pompeius

the father had been defeated, and his son was recruiting his shattered

forces in Spain? “Do you ask,” writes he, “what I am doing here? I

am living in my Tusculan villa almost as a prisoner.” He adds more

afterwards, wherein he laments his former life, complains of the

present, and despairs of the future. Cicero called himself “half a

prisoner,” but, by Hercules, the wise man never would have come

under so lowly a title: he never would be half a prisoner, but would

always enjoy complete and entire liberty, being free, in his own

power, and greater than all others: for what can be greater than

the man who is greater than Fortune?

VI. When Livius Drusus, a vigorous and energetic man, brought forward

bills for new laws and radical measures of the Gracchus pattern,

being the centre of a vast mob of all the peoples of Italy, and

seeing no way to solve the question, since he was not allowed to

deal with it as he wished, and yet was not free to throw it up after

having once taken part in it, complained bitterly of his life, which

had been {296} one of unrest from the very cradle, and said, we are

told, that “he was the only person who had never had any holidays

even when he was a boy.” Indeed, while he was still under age and

wearing the praetexta, he had the courage to plead the cause of

accused persons in court, and to make use of his influence so

powerfully that it is well known that in some causes his exertions

gained a verdict. Where would such precocious ambition stop? You

may be sure that one who showed such boldness as a child would end

by becoming a great pest both in public and in private life: it was

too late for him to complain that he had had no holidays, when from

his boyhood he had been a firebrand and a nuisance in the courts.

It is a stock question whether he committed suicide: for he fell

by a sudden wound in the groin, and some doubted whether his death

was caused by his own hand, though none disputed its having happened

most seasonably. It would be superfluous to mention more who, while

others thought them the happiest of men, have themselves borne true

witness to their own feelings, and have loathed all that they have

done for all the years of their lives: yet by these complaints they

have effected no alteration either in others or in themselves: for

after these words have escaped them their feelings revert to their

accustomed frame. By Hercules, that life of you great men, even

though it should last for more than a thousand years, is still a

very short one: those vices of yours would swallow up any extent

of time: no wonder if this our ordinary span, which, though Nature

hurries on, can be enlarged by common sense, soon slips away from

you: for you do not lay hold of it or hold it back, and try to delay

the swiftest of all things, but you let it pass as though it were

a useless thing and you could supply its place.

VII. Among these I reckon in the first place those who devote their

time to nothing but drinking and debauchery: {297} for no men are

busied more shamefully: the others, although the glory which they

pursue is but a counterfeit, still deserve some credit for their

pursuit of it—though you may tell me of misers, of passionate men,

of men who hate and who even wage war without a cause—yet all such

men sin like men: but the sin of those who are given up to gluttony

and lust is a disgraceful one. Examine all the hours of their lives:

consider how much time they spend in calculation, how much in

plotting, how much in fear, how much in giving and deceiving flattery,

how much in entering into recognizances for themselves or for others,

how much in banquets, which indeed become a serious business, you

will see that they are not allowed any breathing time either by

their pleasures or their pains. Finally, all are agreed that nothing,

neither eloquence nor literature, can be done properly by one who

is occupied with something else; for nothing can take deep root in

a mind which is directed to some other subject, and which rejects

whatever you try to stuff into it. No man knows less about living

than a business man: there is nothing about which it is more difficult

to gain knowledge. Other arts have many folk everywhere who profess

to teach them: some of them can be so thoroughly learned by mere

boys, that they are able to teach them to others: but one’s whole

life must be spent in learning how to live, and, which may perhaps

surprise you more, one’s whole life must be spent in learning how

to die. Many excellent men have freed themselves from all hindrances,

have given up riches, business, and pleasure, and have made it their

duty to the very end of their lives to learn how to live: and yet

the larger portion of them leave this life confessing that they do

not yet know how to live, and still less know how to live as wise

men. Believe me, it requires a great man and one who is superior

to human frailties not to allow any of his time to be filched from

him: {298} and therefore it follows that his life is a very long

one, because he devotes every possible part of it to himself: no

portion lies idle or uncultivated, or in another man’s power; for

he finds nothing worthy of being exchanged for his time, which he

husbands most grudgingly. He, therefore, had time enough: whereas

those who gave up a great part of their lives to the people of

necessity had not enough. Yet you need not suppose that the latter

were not sometimes conscious of their loss: indeed, you will hear

most of those who are troubled with great prosperity every now and

then cry out amid their hosts of clients, their pleadings in court,

and their other honourable troubles, “I am not allowed to live my

own life.” Why is he not allowed? because all those who call upon

you to defend them, take you away from yourself. How many of your

days have been spent by that defendant? by that candidate for office?

by that old woman who is weary with burying her heirs? by that man

who pretends to be ill, in order to excite the greed of those who

hope to inherit his property? by that powerful friend of yours, who

uses you to swell his train, not to be his friend? Balance your

account, and run over all the days of your life; you will see that

only a very few days, and only those which were useless for any

other purpose, have been left to you. He who has obtained the

_fasces_[6] for which he longed, is eager to get rid of them, and

is constantly saying, “When will this year be over?” another exhibits

public games, and once would have given a great deal for the chance

of doing so, but now “when,” says he, “shall I escape from this?”

another is an advocate who is fought for in all the courts, and who

draws immense audiences, who crowd all the forum to a far greater

distance than they can hear him; “When,” says he, “will vacation-time

come?” Every man hurries through his life, and {299} suffers from

a yearning for the future, and a weariness of the present: but he

who disposes of all his time for his own purposes, who arranges all

his days as though he were arranging the plan of his life, neither

wishes for nor fears the morrow: for what new pleasure can any hour

now bestow upon him? he knows it all, and has indulged in it all

even to satiety. Fortune may deal with the rest as she will, his

life is already safe from her: such a man may gain something, but

cannot lose anything: and, indeed, he can only gain anything in the

same way as one who is already glutted and filled can get some extra

food which he takes although he does not want it. You have no

grounds, therefore, for supposing that any one has lived long,

because he has wrinkles or grey hairs: such a man has not lived

long, but has only been long alive. Why! would you think that a man

had voyaged much if a fierce gale had caught him as soon as he left

his port, and he had been driven round and round the same place

continually by a succession of winds blowing from opposite quarters?

such a man has not travelled much, he has only been much tossed

about.

VIII. I am filled with wonder when I see some men asking others for

their time, and those who are asked for it most willing to give it:

both parties consider the object for which the time is given, but

neither of them thinks of the time itself, as though in asking for

this one asked for nothing, and in giving it one gave nothing: we

play with what is the most precious of all things: yet it escapes

men’s notice, because it is an incorporeal thing, and because it

does not come before our eyes; and therefore it is held very cheap,

nay, hardly any value whatever is put upon it. Men set the greatest

store upon presents or pensions, and hire out their work, their

services, or their care in order to gain them: no one values time:

they give it much more freely, as though it cost nothing. Yet you

will see these {300} same people clasping the knees of their physician

as suppliants when they are sick and in present peril of death, and

if threatened with a capital charge willing to give all that they

possess in order that they may live: so inconsistent are they.

Indeed, if the number of every man’s future years could be laid

before him, as we can lay that of his past years, how anxious those

who found that they had but few years remaining would be to make

the most of them? Yet it is easy to arrange the distribution of a

quantity, however small, if we know how much there is: what you

ought to husband most carefully is that which may run short you

know not when. Yet you have no reason to suppose that they do not

know how dear a thing time is: they are wont to say to those whom

they especially love that they are ready to give them a part of

their own years. They do give them, and know not that they are

giving them; but they give them in such a manner that they themselves

lose them without the others gaining them. They do not, however,

know whence they obtain their supply, and therefore they are able

to endure the waste of what is not seen: yet no one will give you

back your years, no one will restore them to you again: your life

will run its course when once it has begun, and will neither begin

again or efface what it has done. It will make no disturbance, it

will give you no warning of how fast it flies: it will move silently

on: it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the

wish of a nation: as it started on its first day, so it will run:

it will never turn aside, never delay. What follows, then? Why! you

are busy, but life is hurrying on: death will be here some time or

other, and you must attend to him, whether you will or no.

IX. Can anything be mentioned which is more insane than the ideas

of leisure of those people who boast of their worldly wisdom? They

live laboriously, in order that {301} they may live better; they

fit themselves out for life at the expense of life itself, and cast

their thoughts a long way forwards: yet postponement is the greatest

waste of life: it wrings day after day from us, and takes away the

present by promising something hereafter: there is no such obstacle

to true living as waiting, which loses to-day while it is depending

on the morrow. You dispose of that which is in the hand of Fortune,

and you let go that which is in your own. Whither are you looking,

whither are you stretching forward? everything future is uncertain:

live now straightway. See how the greatest of bards cries to you

and sings in wholesome verse as though inspired with celestial

fire:—

“The best of wretched mortals’ days is that Which is the first

to fly.”

Why do you hesitate, says he, why do you stand back? unless you

seize it it will have fled: and even if you do seize it, it will

still fly. Our swiftness in making use of our time ought therefore

to vie with the swiftness of time itself, and we ought to drink of

it as we should of a fast-running torrent which will not be always

running. The poet, too, admirably satirizes our boundless thoughts,

when he says, not “the first age,” but “the first day.” Why are you

careless and slow while time is flying so fast, and why do you

spread out before yourself a vision of long months and years, as

many as your greediness requires? he talks with you about one day,

and that a fast-fleeting one. There can, then, be no doubt that the

best days are those which fly first for wretched, that is, for busy

mortals, whose minds are still in their childhood when old age comes

upon them, and they reach it unprepared and without arms to combat

it. They have never looked forward: they have all of a sudden

stumbled upon old age: they never noticed that it was stealing upon

them day by day. As conversation, or reading, or deep thought

deceives travellers, and they find {302} themselves at their journey’s

end before they knew that it was drawing near, so in this fast and

never-ceasing journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether

we are asleep or awake, busy people never notice that they are

moving till they are at the end of it.

X. If I chose to divide this proposition into separate steps,

supported by evidence, many things occur to me by which I could

prove that the lives of busy men are the shortest of all. Fabianus,

who was none of your lecture-room philosophers, but one of the true

antique pattern, used to say, “We ought to fight against the passions

by main force, not by skirmishing, and upset their line of battle

by a home charge, not by inflicting trifling wounds: I do not approve

of dallying with sophisms; they must be crushed, not merely scratched.”

Yet, in order that sinners may be confronted with their errors,

they must be taught, and not merely mourned for. Life is divided

into three parts: that which has been, that which is, and that which

is to come: of these three stages, that which we are passing through

is brief, that which we are about to pass is uncertain, and that

which we have passed is certain: this it is over which Fortune has

lost her rights, and which can fall into no other man’s power: and

this is what busy men lose: for they have no leisure to look back

upon the past, and even if they had, they take no pleasure in

remembering what they regret: they are, therefore, unwilling to

turn their minds to the contemplation of ill-spent time, and they

shrink from reviewing a course of action whose faults become glaringly

apparent when handled a second time, although they were snatched

at when we were under the spell of immediate gratification. No one,

unless all his acts have been submitted to the infallible censorship

of his own conscience, willingly turns his thoughts back upon the

past. He who has ambitiously desired, haughtily scorned, passionately

vanquished, treacherously deceived, greedily snatched, or prodigally

{303} wasted much, must needs fear his own memory; yet this is a

holy and consecrated part of our time, beyond the reach of all human

accidents, removed from the dominion of Fortune, and which cannot

be disquieted by want, fear, or attacks of sickness: this can neither

be troubled nor taken away from one: we possess it for ever

undisturbed. Our present consists only of single days, and those,

too, taken one hour at a time: but all the days of past times appear

before us when bidden, and allow themselves to be examined and

lingered over, albeit busy men cannot find time for so doing. It

is the privilege of a tranquil and peaceful mind to review all the

parts of its life: but the minds of busy men are like animals under

the yoke, and cannot bend aside or look back. Consequently, their

life passes away into vacancy, and as you do no good however much

you may pour into a vessel which cannot keep or hold what you put

there, so also it matters not how much time you give men if it can

find no place to settle in, but leaks away through the chinks and

holes of their minds. Present time is very short, so much so that

to some it seems to be no time at all; for it is always in motion,

and runs swiftly away: it ceases to exist before it comes, and can

no more brook delay than can the universe or the host of heaven,

whose unresting movement never lets them pause on their way. Busy

men, therefore, possess present time, alone, that being so short

that they cannot grasp it, and when they are occupied with many

things they lose even this.

XI. In a word, do you want to know for how short a time they live?

see how they desire to live long: broken-down old men beg in their

prayers for the addition of a few more years: they pretend to be

younger than they are: they delude themselves with their own lies,

and are as willing to cheat themselves as if they could cheat Fate

at the same time: when at last some weakness reminds them that they

{304} are mortal, they die as it were in terror: they may rather

be said to be dragged out of this life than to depart from it. They

loudly exclaim that they have been fools and have not lived their

lives, and declare that if they only survive this sickness they

will spend the rest of their lives at leisure: at such times they

reflect how uselessly they have laboured to provide themselves with

what they have never enjoyed, and how all their toil has gone for

nothing: but those whose life is spent without any engrossing

business may well find it ample: no part of it is made over to

others, or scattered here and there; no part is entrusted to Fortune,

is lost by neglect, is spent in ostentatious giving, or is useless:

all of it is, so to speak, invested at good interest. A very small

amount of it, therefore, is abundantly sufficient, and so, when his

last day arrives, the wise man will not hang back, but will walk

with a steady step to meet death.

XII. Perhaps you will ask me whom I mean by “busy men”? you need

not think that I allude only to those who are hunted out of the

courts of justice with dogs at the close of the proceedings, those

whom you see either honourably jostled by a crowd of their own

clients or contemptuously hustled in visits of ceremony by strangers,

who call them away from home to hang about their patron’s doors,

or who make use of the praetor’s sales by auction to acquire infamous

gains which some day will prove their own ruin. Some men’s leisure

is busy: in their country house or on their couch, in complete

solitude, even though they have retired from all men’s society,

they still continue to worry themselves: we ought not to say that

such men’s life is one of leisure, but their very business is sloth.

Would you call a man idle who expends anxious finicking care in the

arrangement of his Corinthian bronzes, valuable only through the

mania of a few connoisseurs? and who passes the greater part of his

days among plates of rusty metal? who sits in the palaestra (shame,

that our very vices {305} should be foreign) watching boys wrestling?

who distributes his gangs of fettered slaves into pairs according

to their age and colour? who keeps athletes of the latest fashion?

Why, do you call those men idle, who pass many hours at the barber’s

while the growth of the past night is being plucked out by the

roots, holding councils over each several hair, while the scattered

locks are arranged in order and those which fall back are forced

forward on to the forehead? How angry they become if the shaver is

a little careless, as though he were shearing a _man_! what a white

heat they work themselves into if some of their mane is cut away,

if some part of it is ill-arranged, if all their ringlets do not

lie in regular order! who of them would not rather that the state

were overthrown than that his hair should be ruffled? who does not

care more for the appearance of his head than for his health? who

would not prefer ornament to honour? Do you call these men idle,

who make a business of the comb and looking-glass? what of those

who devote their lives to composing, hearing, and learning songs,

who twist their voices, intended by Nature to sound best and simplest

when used straightforwardly, through all the turns of futile melodies:

whose fingers are always beating time to some music on which they

are inwardly meditating; who, when invited to serious and even sad

business may be heard humming an air to themselves?—such people are

not at leisure, but are busy about trifles. As for their banquets,

by Hercules, I cannot reckon them among their unoccupied times when

I see with what anxious care they set out their plate, how laboriously

they arrange the girdles of their waiters’ tunics, how breathlessly

they watch to see how the cook dishes up the wild boar, with what

speed, when the signal is given, the slave-boys run to perform their

duties, how skilfully birds are carved into pieces of the right

size, how painstakingly wretched youths wipe up the spittings of

drunken men. By these means men seek credit for taste {306} and

grandeur, and their vices follow them so far into their privacy

that they can neither eat nor drink without a view to effect. Nor

should I count those men idle who have themselves carried hither

and thither in sedans and litters, and who look forward to their

regular hour for taking this exercise as though they were not allowed

to omit it: men who are reminded by some one else when to bathe,

when to swim, when to dine: they actually reach such a pitch of

languid effeminacy as not to be able to find out for themselves

whether they are hungry. I have heard one of these luxurious folk—if

indeed, we ought to give the name of luxury to unlearning the life

and habits of a man—when he was carried in men’s arms out of the

bath and placed in his chair, say inquiringly, “Am I seated?” Do

you suppose that such a man as this, who did not know when he was

seated, could know whether he was alive, whether he could see,

whether he was at leisure? I can hardly say whether I pity him more

if he really did not know or if he pretended not to know this. Such

people do really become unconscious of much, but they behave as

though they were unconscious of much more: they delight in some

failings because they consider them to be proofs of happiness: it

seems the part of an utterly low and contemptible man to know what

he is doing. After this, do you suppose that playwrights draw largely

upon their imaginations in their burlesques upon luxury: by Hercules,

they omit more than they invent; in this age, inventive in this

alone, such a number of incredible vices have been produced, that

already you are able to reproach the playwrights with omitting to

notice them. To think that there should be any one who had so far

lost his senses through luxury as to take some one else’s opinion

as to whether he was sitting or not? This man certainly is not at

leisure: you must bestow a different title on him: he is sick, or

rather dead: he only is at leisure who feels that he is at leisure:

but this creature is {307} only half alive, if he wants some one

to tell him what position his body is in. How can such a man be

able to dispose of any time?

XIII. It would take long to describe the various individuals who

have wasted their lives over playing at draughts, playing at ball,

or toasting their bodies in the sun: men are not at leisure if their

pleasures partake of the character of business, for no one will

doubt that those persons are laborious triflers who devote themselves

to the study of futile literary questions, of whom there is already

a great number in Rome also. It used to be a peculiarly Greek disease

of the mind to investigate how many rowers Ulysses had, whether the

Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, and furthermore, whether

they were written by the same author, with other matters of the

same stamp, which neither please your inner consciousness if you

keep them to yourself, nor make you seem more learned, but only

more troublesome, if you publish them abroad. See, already this

vain longing to learn what is useless has taken hold of the Romans:

the other day I heard somebody telling who was the first Roman

general who did this or that: Duillius was the first who won a

sea-fight, Curius Dentatus was the first who drove elephants in his

triumph: moreover, these stories, though they add nothing to real

glory, do nevertheless deal with the great deeds of our countrymen:

such knowledge is not profitable, yet it claims our attention as a

fascinating kind of folly. I will even pardon those who want to

know who first persuaded the Romans to go on board ship. It was

Claudius, who for this reason was surnamed Caudex, because any piece

of carpentry formed of many planks was called _caudex_ by the ancient

Romans, for which reason public records are called _Codices_, and

by old custom the ships which ply on the Tiber with provisions are

called _codicariae_. Let us also allow that it is to the point to

tell how Valerius Corvinus was the first {308} to conquer Messana,

and first of the family of the Valerii transferred the name of the

captured city to his own, and was called Messana, and how the people

gradually corrupted the pronunciation and called him Messalla: or

would you let any one find interest in Lucius Sulla having been the

first to let lions loose in the circus, they having been previously

exhibited in chains, and hurlers of darts having been sent by King

Bocchus to kill them? This may be permitted to their curiosity: but

can it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompeius was the first

to exhibit eighteen elephants in the circus, who were matched in a

mimic battle with some convicts? The leading man in the state, and

one who, according to tradition, was noted among the ancient leaders

of the state for his transcendent goodness of heart, thought it a

notable kind of show to kill men in a manner hitherto unheard of.

Do they fight to the death? that is not cruel enough: are they torn

to pieces? that is not cruel enough: let them be crushed flat by

animals of enormous bulk. It would be much better that such a thing

should be forgotten, for fear that hereafter some potentate might

hear of it and envy its refined barbarity. O, how doth excessive

prosperity blind our intellects! at the moment at which he was

casting so many troops of wretches to be trampled on by outlandish

beasts, when he was proclaiming war between such different creatures,

when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman

people, whose blood he himself was soon to shed even more freely,

he thought himself the master of the whole world; yet he afterwards,

deceived by the treachery of the Alexandrians, had to offer himself

to the dagger of the vilest of slaves, and then at last discovered

what an empty boast was his surname of “The Great.” But to return

to the point from which I have digressed, I will prove that even

on this very subject some people expend useless pains. The same

author tells us that {309} Metellus, when he triumphed after having

conquered the Carthaginians in Sicily, was the only Roman who ever

had a hundred and twenty captured elephants led before his car: and

that Sulla was the last Roman who extended the pomoerium,[7] which

it was not the custom of the ancients to extend on account of the

conquest of provincial, but only of Italian territory. Is it more

useful to know this, than to know that the Mount Aventine, according

to him, is outside of the pomoerium, for one of two reasons, either

because it was thither that the plebeians seceded, or because when

Remus took his auspices on that place the birds which he saw were

not propitious: and other stories without number of the like sort,

which are either actual falsehoods or much the same as falsehoods?

for even if you allow that these authors speak in all good faith,

if they pledge themselves for the truth of what they write, still,

whose mistakes will be made fewer by such stories? whose passions

will be restrained? whom will they make more brave, more just, or

more gentlemanly? My friend Fabianus used to say that he was not

sure that it was not better not to apply oneself to any studies at

all than to become interested in these.