Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
strength of her mind intently fixed upon one subject. I do not say
that she lacked the courage to shake off her grief, but she refused
to be comforted, thought that it would be a second bereavement to
lose her tears, and would not have any portrait of her darling son,
nor allow any allusion to be made to him. She hated all mothers,
and raged against Livia with especial fury, because it seemed as
though the brilliant prospect once in store for her own child was
now transferred to Livia’s son. Passing all her days in darkened
rooms and alone, not conversing even with her brother, she refused
to accept the poems which were composed in memory of Marcellus, and
all the other honours paid him by literature, and closed her ears
against all consolation. She lived buried and hidden from view,
neglecting her accustomed duties, and actually angry with the
excessive splendour of her brother’s prosperity, in which she shared.
Though surrounded by her children and grandchildren, she would not
lay aside her mourning garb, though by retaining it she seemed to
put a slight upon all her relations, in thinking herself bereaved
in spite of their being alive.
III. Livia lost her son Drusus, who would have been a great emperor,
and was already a great general: he had marched far into Germany,
and had planted the Roman standards in places where the very existence
of the Romans was hardly known. He died on the march, his very foes
treating him with respect, observing a reciprocal truce, and not
having the heart to wish for what would do them most service. In
addition to his dying thus in his country’s service, great sorrow
for him was expressed by the citizens, the provinces, and the whole
of Italy, through which his corpse was attended by the people of
the free towns and colonies, who poured out to perform the last sad
offices to him, till it reached Rome in a procession which resembled
a triumph. His mother was not permitted to {167} receive his last
kiss and gather the last fond words from his dying lips: she followed
the relics of her Drusus on their long journey, though every one
of the funeral pyres with which all Italy was glowing seemed to
renew her grief, as though she had lost him so many times. When,
however, she at last laid him in the tomb, she left her sorrow there
with him, and grieved no more than was becoming to a Caesar or due
to a son. She did not cease to make frequent mention of the name
of her Drusus, to set up his portrait in all places, both public
and private, and to speak of him and listen while others spoke of
him with the greatest pleasure: she lived with his memory; which
none can embrace and consort with who has made it painful to
himself.[2] Choose, therefore, which of these two examples you think
the more commendable: if you prefer to follow the former, you will
remove yourself from the number of the living; you will shun the
sight both of other people’s children and of your own, and even of
him whose loss you deplore; you will be looked upon by mothers as
an omen of evil; you will refuse to take part in honourable,
permissible pleasures, thinking them unbecoming for one so afflicted;
you will be loth to linger above ground, and will be especially
angry with your age, because it will not straightway bring your
life abruptly to an end. I here put the best construction on what
is really most contemptible and foreign to your character. I mean
that you will show yourself unwilling to live, and unable to die.
If, on the other hand, showing a milder and better regulated spirit,
you try to follow the example of the latter most exalted lady, you
will not be in misery, nor will you wear your life out with suffering.
Plague on it! what madness this is, to punish one’s self because
one is unfortunate, and not to lessen, but to increase one’s ills!
You ought to display, in this {168} matter also, that decent behaviour
and modesty which has characterised all your life: for there is
such a thing as self-restraint in grief also. You will show more
respect for the youth himself, who well deserves that it should
make you glad to speak and think of him, if you make him able to
meet his mother with a cheerful countenance, even as he was wont
to do when alive.
IV. I will not invite you to practise the sterner kind of maxims,
nor bid you bear the lot of humanity with more than human philosophy;
neither will I attempt to dry a mother’s eyes on the very day of
her son’s burial. I will appear with you before an arbitrator: the
matter upon which we shall join issue is, whether grief ought to
be deep or unceasing. I doubt not that you will prefer the example
of Julia Augusta, who was your intimate friend: she invites you to
follow her method: she, in her first paroxysm, when grief is
especially keen and hard to bear, betook herself for consolation
to Areus, her husband’s teacher in philosophy, and declared that
this did her much good; more good than the thought of the Roman
people, whom she was unwilling to sadden by her mourning; more than
Augustus, who, staggering under the loss of one of his two chief
supporters, ought not to be yet more bowed down by the sorrow of
his relatives; more even than her son Tiberius, whose affection
during that untimely burial of one for whom whole nations wept made
her feel that she had only lost one member of her family. This was,
I imagine, his introduction to and grounding in philosophy of a
woman peculiarly tenacious of her own opinion:—“Even to the present
day, Julia, as far as I can tell—and I was your husband’s constant
companion, and knew not only what all men were allowed to know, but
all the most secret thoughts of your hearts— you have been careful
that no one should find anything to blame in your conduct; not only
in matters of importance, {169} but even in trifles you have taken
pains to do nothing which you could wish common fame, that most
frank judge of the acts of princes, to overlook. Nothing, I think,
is more admirable than that those who are in high places should
pardon many shortcomings in others, and have to ask it for none of
their own. So also in this matter of mourning you ought to act up
to your maxim of doing nothing which you could wish undone, or done
otherwise.
V. “In the next place, I pray and beseech you not to be self-willed
and beyond the management of your friends. You must be aware that
none of them know how to behave, whether to mention Drusus in your
presence or not, as they neither wish to wrong a noble youth by
forgetting him, nor to hurt you by speaking of him. When we leave
you and assemble together by ourselves, we talk freely about his
sayings and doings, treating them with the respect which they
deserve: in your presence deep silence is observed about him, and
thus you lose that greatest of pleasures, the hearing the praises
of your son, which I doubt not you would be willing to hand down
to all future ages, had you the means of so doing, even at the cost
of your own life. Wherefore endure to listen to, nay, encourage
conversation of which he is the subject, and let your ears be open
to the name and memory of your son. You ought not to consider this
painful, like those who in such a case think that part of their
misfortune consists in listening to consolation. As it is, you have
altogether run into the other extreme, and, forgetting the better
aspects of your lot, look only upon its worse side: you pay no
attention to the pleasure you have had in your son’s society and
your joyful meetings with him, the sweet caresses of his babyhood,
the progress of his education: you fix all your attention upon that
last scene of all: and to this, as though it were not shocking
enough, you add every horror you can. Do not, I implore you, take
a perverse pride in appearing {170} the most unhappy of women: and
reflect also that there is no great credit in behaving bravely in
times of prosperity, when life glides easily with a favouring
current: neither does a calm sea and fair wind display the art of
the pilot: some foul weather is wanted to prove his courage. Like
him, then, do not give way, but rather plant yourself firmly, and
endure whatever burden may fall upon you from above, scared though
you may have been at the first roar of the tempest. There is nothing
that fastens such a reproach[3] on Fortune as resignation.” After
this he points out to her the son who is yet alive: he points out
grandchildren from the lost one.
VI. It is your trouble, Marcia, which has been dealt with here: it
is beside your couch of mourning that Areus has been sitting: change
the characters, and it is you whom he has been consoling. But, on
the other hand, Marcia, suppose that you have sustained a greater
loss than ever mother did before you: see, I am not soothing you
or making light of your misfortune: if fate can be overcome by
tears, let us bring tears to bear upon it: let every day be passed
in mourning, every night be spent in sorrow instead of sleep: let
your breast be torn by your own hands, your very face attacked by
them, and every kind of cruelty be practised by your grief, if it
will profit you. But if the dead cannot be brought back to life,
however much we may beat our breasts, if destiny remains fixed and
immoveable for ever, not to be changed by any sorrow, however great,
and death does not loose his hold of anything that he once has taken
away, then let our futile grief be brought to an end. Let us, then,
steer our own course, and no longer allow ourselves to be driven
to leeward by the force of our misfortune. He is a sorry pilot who
lets the waves wring his rudder from his grasp, who leaves the sails
to fly loose, and abandons the ship to the storm: but he who {171}
boldly grasps the helm and clings to it until the sea closes over
him, deserves praise even though he be shipwrecked.
VII. “But,” say you, “sorrow for the loss of one’s own children is
natural.” Who denies it? provided it be reasonable? for we cannot
help feeling a pang, and the stoutest-hearted of us are cast down
not only at the death of those dearest to us, but even when they
leave us on a journey. Nevertheless, the mourning which public
opinion enjoins is more than nature insists upon. Observe how intense
and yet how brief are the sorrows of dumb animals: we hear a cow
lowing for one or two days, nor do mares pursue their wild and
senseless gallops for longer: wild beasts after they have tracked
their lost cubs throughout the forest, and often visited their
plundered dens, quench their rage within a short space of time.
Birds circle round their empty nests with loud and piteous cries,
yet almost immediately resume their ordinary flight in silence; nor
does any creature spend long periods in sorrowing for the loss of
its offspring, except man, who encourages his own grief, the measure
of which depends not upon his sufferings, but upon his will. You
may know that to be utterly broken down by grief is not natural,
by observing that the same bereavement inflicts a deeper wound upon
women than upon men, upon savages than upon civilised and cultivated
persons, upon the unlearned than upon the learned: yet those passions
which derive their force from nature are equally powerful in all
men: therefore it is clear that a passion of varying strength cannot
be a natural one. Fire will burn all people equally, male and female,
of every rank and every age: steel will exhibit its cutting power
on all bodies alike: and why? Because these things derive their
strength from nature, which makes no distinction of persons. Poverty,
grief, and ambition,[4] are {172} felt differently by different
people, according as they are influenced by habit: a rooted prejudice
about the terrors of these things, though they are not really to
be feared, makes a man weak and unable to endure them.