L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
possess everything. They want a man to speak the truth, to save them
from the organized mass of falsehood by which they are beset, which so
bewilders them with lies that the habit of hearing only what is pleasant
instead of what is true, prevents their knowing what truth really is. Do
you not see how such persons are driven to ruin by the want of candour
among their friends, whose loyalty has degenerated into slavish
obsequiousness? No one, when giving them his advice, tells them what he
really thinks, but each vies with the other in flattery; and while the
man's friends make it their only object to see who can most pleasantly
deceive him, he himself is ignorant of his real powers, and, believing
himself to be as great a man as he is told that he is, plunges the State
in useless wars, which bring disasters upon it, breaks off a useful and
necessary peace, and, through a passion of anger which no one checks,
spills the blood of numbers of people, and at last sheds his own.
Such persons assert what has never been investigated as certain facts,
consider that to modify their opinion is as dishonourable as to be
conquered, believe that institutions which are just flickering out of
existence will last for ever, and, thus overturn great States, to the
destruction of themselves and all who are connected with them. Living
as they do in a fool's paradise, resplendent with unreal and short-lived
advantages, they forget that, as soon as they put it out of their power
to hear the truth, there is no limit to the misfortunes which they may
expect.
XXXI. When Xerxes declared war against Greece, all his courtiers
encouraged his boastful temper, which forgot how unsubstantial his
grounds for confidence were. One declared that the Greeks would not
endure to hear the news of the declaration of war, and would take to
flight at the first rumour of his approach; another, that with such a
vast army Greece could not only be conquered, but utterly overwhelmed,
and that it was rather to be feared that they would find the Greek
cities empty and abandoned, and that the panic flight of the enemy
would leave them only vast deserts, where no use could be made of their
enormous forces. Another told him that the world was hardly large enough
to contain him, that the seas were too narrow for his fleets, the camps
would not take in his armies, the plains were not wide enough to deploy
his cavalry in, and that the sky itself was scarcely large enough to
enable all his troops to hurl their darts at once. While much boasting
of this sort was going on around him, raising his already overweening
self-confidence to a frantic pitch, Demaratus, the Lacedaemonian,
alone told him that the disorganized and unwieldy multitude in which he
trusted, was in itself a danger to its chief, because it possessed
only weight without strength; for an army which is too large cannot
be governed, and one which cannot be governed, cannot long exist. "The
Lacedaemonians," said he, "will meet you upon the first mountain in
Greece, and will give you a taste of their quality. All these thousands
of nations of yours will be held in check by three hundred men: they
will stand firm at their posts, they will defend the passes entrusted to
them with their weapons, and block them up with their bodies: all Asia
will not force them to give way; few as they are, they will stop all
this terrible invasion, attempted though it be by nearly the whole human
race. Though the laws of nature may give way to you, and enable you to
pass from Europe to Asia, yet you will stop short in a bypath; consider
what your losses will be afterwards, when you have reckoned up the price
which you have to pay for the pass of Thermopylae; when you learn that
your march can be stayed, you will discover that you may be put to
flight. The Greeks will yield up many parts of their country to you, as
if they were swept out of them by the first terrible rush of a mountain
torrent; afterwards they will rise against you from all quarters and
will crush you by means of your own strength. What people say, that
your warlike preparations are too great to be contained in the
countries which you intend to attack, is quite true; but this is to our
disadvantage. Greece will conquer you for this very reason, that she
cannot contain you; you cannot make use of the whole of your force.
Besides this, you will not be able to do what is essential to
victory--that is, to meet the manoeuvres of the enemy at once, to
support your own men if they give way, or to confirm and strengthen
them when their ranks are wavering; long before you know it, you will
be defeated. Moreover, you should not think that because your army is
so large that its own chief does not know its numbers, it is therefore
irresistible; there is nothing so great that it cannot perish; nay,
without any other cause, its own excessive size may prove its ruin."
What Demaratus predicted came to pass. He whose power gods and men
obeyed, and who swept away all that opposed him, was bidden to halt by
three hundred men, and the Persians, defeated in every part of Greece,
learned how great a difference there is between a mob and an army. Thus
it came to pass that Xerxes, who suffered more from the shame of his
failure than from the losses which he sustained, thanked Demaratus for
having been the only man who told him the truth, and permitted him to
ask what boon he pleased. He asked to be allowed to drive a chariot into
Sardis, the largest city in Asia, wearing a tiara erect upon his head,
a privilege which was enjoyed by kings alone. He deserved his reward
before he asked for it, but how wretched must the nation have been, in
which there was no one who would speak the truth to the king except one
man who did not speak it to himself.
XXXII. The late Emperor Augustus banished his daughter, whose conduct
went beyond the shame of ordinary immodesty, and made public the
scandals of the imperial house.
Led away by his passion, he divulged all these crimes which, as emperor,
he ought to have kept secret with as much care as he punished them,
because the shame of some deeds asperses even him who avenges them.
Afterwards, when by lapse of time shame took the place of anger in his
mind, he lamented that he had not kept silence about matters which he
had not learned until it was disgraceful to speak of them, and often
used to exclaim, "None of these things would have happened to me, if
either Agrippa or Maecenas had lived!" So hard was it for the master
of so many thousands of men to repair the loss of two. When his legions
were slaughtered, new ones were at once enrolled; when his fleet was
wrecked, within a few days another was afloat; when the public buildings
were consumed by fire, finer ones arose in their stead; but the places
of Agrippa and Maecenas remained unfilled throughout his life. What am I
to imagine? that there were not any men like these, who could take
their place, or that it was the fault of Augustus himself, who preferred
mourning for them to seeking for their likes? We have no reason for
supposing that it was the habit of Agrippa or Maecenas to speak the
truth to him; indeed, if they had lived they would have been as great
dissemblers as the rest. It is one of the habits of kings to insult
their present servants by praising those whom they have lost, and to
attribute the virtue of truthful speaking to those from whom there is no
further risk of hearing it.
XXXIII. However, to return to my subject, you see how easy it is to
return the kindness of the prosperous, and even of those who occupy the
highest places of all mankind. Tell them, not what they wish to hear,
but what they will wish that they always had heard; though their ears be
stopped by flatteries, yet sometimes truth may penetrate them; give them
useful advice. Do you ask what service you can render to a prosperous
man? Teach him not to rely upon his prosperity, and to understand that
it ought to be supported by the hands of many trusty friends. Will you
not have done much for him, if you take away his foolish belief that
his influence will endure for ever, and teach him that what we gain by
chance passes away soon, and at a quicker rate than it came; that we
cannot fall by the same stages by which we rose to the height of good
fortune, but that frequently between it and ruin there is but one step?
You do not know how great is the value of friendship, if you do not
understand how much you give to him to whom you give a friend, a
commodity which is scarce not only in men's houses, but in whole
centuries, and which is nowhere scarcer than in the places where it is
thought to be most plentiful. Pray, do you suppose that those books of
names, which your nomenclator [Footnote: The nomenclator was a slave
who attended his master in canvassing and on similar occasions, for
the purpose of telling him the names of whom he met in the street.] can
hardly carry or remember, are those of friends? It is not your friends
who crowd to knock at your door, and who are admitted to your greater or
lesser levees.
XXXIV. To divide one's friends into classes is an old trick of kings and
their imitators; it shows great arrogance to think that to touch or
to pass one's threshold can be a valuable privilege, or to grant as an
honour that you should sit nearer one's front door than others, or enter
house before them, although within the house there are many more doors,
which shut out even those who have been admitted so far. With us Gaius
Gracchus, and shortly after him Livius Drusus, were the first to keep
themselves apart from the mass of their adherents, and to admit some to
their privacy, some to their more select, and others to their general
receptions. These men consequently had friends of the first and second
rank, and so on, but in none had they true friends. Can you apply the
name of friend to one who is admitted in his regular order to pay his
respects to you? or can you expect perfect loyalty from one who is
forced to slip into your presence through a grudgingly-opened door? How
can a man arrive at using bold freedom of speech with you, if he is only
allowed in his proper turn to make use of the common phrase, "Hail to
you," which is used by perfect strangers? Whenever you go to any of
these great men, whose levees interest the whole city, though you find
all the streets beset with throngs of people, and the passers-by hardly
able to make their way through the crowd, you may be sure that you
have come to a place where there are many men, but no friends of their
patron. We must not seek our friends in our entrance hall, but in our
own breast; it is there that he ought to be received, there retained,
and hoarded up in our minds. Teach this, and you will have repaid your
debt of gratitude.
XXXV. If you are useful to your friend only when he is in distress, and
are superfluous when all goes well with him, you form a mean estimate
of your own value. As you can bear yourself wisely both in doubtful,
in prosperous, and in adverse circumstances, by showing prudence in
doubtful cases, courage in misfortune, and self-restraint in good
fortune, so in all circumstances you can make yourself useful to your
friend. Do not desert him in adversity, but do not wish that it may
befall him: the various incidents of human life will afford you many
opportunities of proving your loyalty to him without wishing him evil.
He who prays that another may become rich, in order that he may share
his riches, really has a view to his own advantage, although his prayers
are ostensibly offered in behalf of his friend; and similarly he who
wishes that his friend may get into some trouble from which his own
friendly assistance may extricate him--a most ungrateful wish--prefers