Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
corn. Gracchus observed Piso standing in the court, and asked him, in
the hearing of the people, how it was consistent for him to take corn
by a law he had himself opposed. "It was," said he, "against your
distributing my goods to every man as you thought proper; but, as you
do so, I claim my share." Did not this grave and wise man sufficiently
show that the public revenue was dissipated by the Sempronian law? Read
Gracchus's speeches, and you will pronounce him the advocate of the
treasury. Epicurus denies that any one can live pleasantly who does not
lead a life of virtue; he denies that fortune has any power over a wise
man; he prefers a spare diet to great plenty, and maintains that a wise
man is always happy. All these things become a philosopher to say, but
they are not consistent with pleasure. But the reply is, that he doth
not mean _that_ pleasure: let him mean any pleasure, it must be such a
one as makes no part of virtue. But suppose we are mistaken as to his
pleasure; are we so, too, as to his pain? I maintain, therefore, the
impropriety of language which that man uses, when talking of virtue,
who would measure every great evil by pain.
XXI. And indeed the Epicureans, those best of men--for there is no
order of men more innocent--complain that I take great pains to inveigh
against Epicurus. We are rivals, I suppose, for some honor or
distinction. I place the chief good in the mind, he in the body; I in
virtue, he in pleasure; and the Epicureans are up in arms, and implore
the assistance of their neighbors, and many are ready to fly to their
aid. But as for my part, I declare that I am very indifferent about the
matter, and that I consider the whole discussion which they are so
anxious about at an end. For what! is the contention about the Punic
war? on which very subject, though M. Cato and L. Lentulus were of
different opinions, still there was no difference between them. But
these men behave with too much heat, especially as the opinions which
they would uphold are no very spirited ones, and such as they dare not
plead for either in the senate or before the assembly of the people, or
before the army or the censors. But, however, I will argue with them
another time, and with such a disposition that no quarrel shall arise
between us; for I shall be ready to yield to their opinions when
founded on truth. Only I must give them this advice: That were it ever
so true, that a wise man regards nothing but the body, or, to express
myself with more decency, never does anything except what is expedient,
and views all things with exclusive reference to his own advantage, as
such things are not very commendable, they should confine them to their
own breasts, and leave off talking with that parade of them.
XXII. What remains is the opinion of the Cyrenaics, who think that men
grieve when anything happens unexpectedly. And that is indeed, as I
said before, a great aggravation of a misfortune; and I know that it
appeared so to Chrysippus--"Whatever falls out unexpected is so much
the heavier." But the whole question does not turn on this; though the
sudden approach of an enemy sometimes occasions more confusion than it
would if you had expected him, and a sudden storm at sea throws the
sailors into a greater fright than one which they have foreseen; and it
is the same in many other cases. But when you carefully consider the
nature of what was expected, you will find nothing more than that all
things which come on a sudden appear greater; and this upon two
accounts: first of all, because you have not time to consider how great
the accident is; and, secondly, because you are probably persuaded that
you could have guarded against it had you foreseen if, and therefore
the misfortune, having been seemingly encountered by your own fault,
makes your grief the greater. That it is so, time evinces; which, as it
advances, brings with it so much mitigation that though the same
misfortunes continue, the grief not only becomes the less, but in some
cases is entirely removed. Many Carthaginians were slaves at Rome, and
many Macedonians, when Perseus their king was taken prisoner. I saw,
too, when I was a young man, some Corinthians in the Peloponnesus. They
might all have lamented with Andromache,
All these I saw......;
but they had perhaps given over lamenting themselves, for by their
countenances, and speech, and other gestures you might have taken them
for Argives or Sicyonians. And I myself was more concerned at the
ruined walls of Corinth than the Corinthians themselves were, whose
minds by frequent reflection and time had become callous to such
sights. I have read a book of Clitomachus, which he sent to his
fellow-citizens who were prisoners, to comfort them after the
destruction of Carthage. There is in it a treatise written by
Carneades, which, as Clitomachus says, he had inserted into his book;
the subject was, "That it appeared probable that a wise man would
grieve at the state of subjection of his country," and all the
arguments which Carneades used against this proposition are set down in
the book. There the philosopher applies such a strong medicine to a
fresh grief as would be quite unnecessary in one of any continuance;
nor, if this very book had been sent to the captives some years after,
would it have found any wounds to cure, but only scars; for grief, by a
gentle progress and slow degrees, wears away imperceptibly. Not that
the circumstances which gave rise to it are altered, or can be, but
that custom teaches what reason should--that those things which before
seemed to be of some consequence are of no such great importance, after
all.
XXIII. It may be said, What occasion is there to apply to reason, or to
any sort of consolation such as we generally make use of, to mitigate
the grief of the afflicted? For we have this argument always at hand,
that nothing ought to appear unexpected. But how will any one be
enabled to bear his misfortunes the better by knowing that it is
unavoidable that such things should happen to man? Saying this
subtracts nothing from the sum of the grief: it only asserts that
nothing has fallen out but what might have been anticipated; and yet
this manner of speaking has some little consolation in it, though I
apprehend not a great deal. Therefore those unlooked-for things have
not so much force as to give rise to all our grief; the blow perhaps
may fall the heavier, but whatever happens does not appear the greater
on that account. No, it is the fact of its having happened lately, and
not of its having befallen us unexpectedly, that makes it seem the
greater. There are two ways, then, of discerning the truth, not only of
things that seem evil, but of those that have the appearance of good.
For we either inquire into the nature of the thing, of what
description, and magnitude, and importance it is--as sometimes with
regard to poverty, the burden of which we may lighten when by our
disputations we show how few things nature requires, and of what a
trifling kind they are--or, without any subtle arguing, we refer them
to examples, as here we instance a Socrates, there a Diogenes, and then
again that line in Caecilius,
Wisdom is oft conceal'd in mean attire.
For as poverty is of equal weight with all, what reason can be given
why what was borne by Fabricius should be spoken of by any one else as
unsupportable when it falls upon themselves? Of a piece with this is
that other way of comforting, which consists in pointing out that
nothing has happened but what is common to human nature; for this
argument doth not only inform us what human nature is, but implies that
all things are tolerable which others have borne and are bearing.
XXIV. Is poverty the subject? They tell you of many who have submitted
to it with patience. Is it the contempt of honors? They acquaint you
with some who never enjoyed any, and were the happier for it; and of
those who have preferred a private retired life to public employment,
mentioning their names with respect; they tell you of the verse[40] of
that most powerful king who praises an old man, and pronounces him
happy because he was unknown to fame and seemed likely to arrive at the
hour of death in obscurity and without notice. Thus, too, they have
examples for those who are deprived of their children: they who are
under any great grief are comforted by instances of like affliction;
and thus the endurance of every misfortune is rendered more easy by the
fact of others having undergone the same, and the fate of others causes
what has happened to appear less important than it has been previously
thought, and reflection thus discovers to us how much opinion had
imposed on us. And this is what the Telamon declares, "I, when my son
was born," etc.; and thus Theseus, "I on my future misery did dwell;"
and Anaxagoras, "I knew my son was mortal." All these men, by
frequently reflecting on human affairs, had discovered that they were
by no means to be estimated by the opinion of the multitude; and,
indeed, it seems to me to be pretty much the same case with those who
consider beforehand as with those who derive their remedies from time,
excepting that a kind of reason cures the one, and the other remedy is
provided by nature; by which we discover (and this contains the whole
marrow of the matter) that what was imagined to be the greatest evil is
by no means so great as to defeat the happiness of life. And the effect
of this is, that the blow is greater by reason of its not having been
foreseen, and not, as they suppose, that when similar misfortunes
befall two different people, that man only is affected with grief whom
this calamity has befallen unexpectedly. So that some persons, under
the oppression of grief, are said to have borne it actually worse for
hearing of this common condition of man, that we are born under such
conditions as render it impossible for a man to be exempt from all
evil.
XXV. For this reason Carneades, as I see our friend Antiochus writes,
used to blame Chrysippus for commending these verses of Euripides:
Man, doom'd to care, to pain, disease, and strife,
Walks his short journey thro' the vale of life:
Watchful attends the cradle and the grave,
And passing generations longs to save:
Last, dies himself: yet wherefore should we mourn?
For man must to his kindred dust return;
Submit to the destroying hand of fate,
As ripen'd ears the harvest-sickle wait.[41]
He would not allow a speech of this kind to avail at all to the cure of
our grief, for he said it was a lamentable case itself that we were
fallen into the hands of such a cruel fate; and that a speech like
that, preaching up comfort from the misfortunes of another, was a
comfort adapted only to those of a malevolent disposition. But to me it
appears far otherwise; for the necessity of bearing what is the common
condition of humanity forbids your resisting the will of the Gods, and
reminds you that you are a man, which reflection greatly alleviates
grief; and the enumeration of these examples is not produced with a
view to please those of a malevolent disposition, but in order that any
one in affliction may be induced to bear what he observes many others
have previously borne with tranquillity and moderation. For they who
are falling to pieces, and cannot hold together through the greatness
of their grief, should be supported by all kinds of assistance. From
whence Chrysippus thinks that grief is called [Greek: lype], as it were
[Greek: lysis], that is to say, a dissolution of the whole man--the
whole of which I think may be pulled up by the roots by explaining, as
I said at the beginning, the cause of grief; for it is nothing else but
an opinion and judgment formed of a present acute evil. And thus any