Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
VIII. Moreover, that which depends upon nature is not weakened by
delay, but grief is gradually effaced by time. However obstinate
it may be, though it be daily renewed and be exasperated by all
attempts to soothe it, yet even this becomes weakened by time, which
is the most efficient means of taming its fierceness. You, Marcia,
have still a mighty sorrow abiding with you, nevertheless it already
appears to have become blunted: it is obstinate and enduring, but
not so acute as it was at first: and this also will be taken from
you piecemeal by succeeding years. Whenever you are engaged in other
pursuits your mind will be relieved from its burden: at present you
keep watch over yourself to prevent this. Yet there is a great
difference between allowing and forcing yourself to grieve. How
much more in accordance with your cultivated taste it would be to
put an end to your mourning instead of looking for the end to come,
and not to wait for the day when your sorrow shall cease against
your will: dismiss it of your own accord.
IX. “Why then,” you ask, “do we show such persistence in mourning
for our friends, if it be not nature that bids us do so?” It is
because we never expect that any evil will befall ourselves before
it comes, we will not be taught by seeing the misfortunes of others
that they are the common inheritance of all men, but imagine that
the path which we have begun to tread is free from them and less
beset by dangers than that of other people. How many funerals pass
our houses? yet we do not think of death. How many untimely deaths?
we think only of our son’s coming of age, of his service in the
army, or of his succession to his father’s estate. How many rich
men suddenly {173} sink into poverty before our very eyes, without
its ever occurring to our minds that our own wealth is exposed to
exactly the same risks? When, therefore, misfortune befalls us, we
cannot help collapsing all the more completely, because we are
struck as it were unawares: a blow which has long been foreseen
falls much less heavily upon us. Do you wish to know how completely
exposed you are to every stroke of fate, and that the same shafts
which have transfixed others are whirling around yourself? then
imagine that you are mounting without sufficient armour to assault
some city wall or some strong and lofty position manned by a great
host, expect a wound, and suppose that all those stones, arrows,
and darts which fill the upper air are aimed at your body: whenever
any one falls at your side or behind your back, exclaim, “Fortune,
you will not outwit me, or catch me confident and heedless: I know
what you are preparing to do: you have struck down another, but you
aimed at me.” Who ever looks upon his own affairs as though he were
at the point of death? which of us ever dares to think about
banishment, want, or mourning? who, if advised to meditate upon
these subjects, would not reject the idea like an evil omen, and
bid it depart from him and alight on the heads of his enemies, or
even on that of his untimely adviser? “I never thought it would
happen!” How can you think that anything will not happen, when you
know that it may happen to many men, and has happened to many? That
is a noble verse, and worthy of a nobler source than the stage:—
“What one hath suffered may befall us all.”
That man has lost his children: you may lose yours. That man has
been convicted: your innocence is in peril. We are deceived and
weakened by this delusion, when we suffer what we never foresaw
that we possibly could suffer: but by looking forward to the coming
of our sorrows we take the sting out of them when they come.
{174}
X. My Marcia, all these adventitious circumstances which glitter
around us, such as children, office in the state, wealth, large
halls, vestibules crowded with clients seeking vainly for admittance,
a noble name, a well-born or beautiful wife, and every other thing
which depends entirely upon uncertain and changeful fortune, are
but furniture which is not our own, but entrusted to us on loan:
none of these things are given to us outright: the stage of our
lives is adorned with properties gathered from various sources, and
soon to be returned to their several owners: some of them will be
taken away on the first day, some on the second, and but few will
remain till the end. We have, therefore, no grounds for regarding
ourselves with complacency, as though the things which surround us
were our own: they are only borrowed: we have the use and enjoyment
of them for a time regulated by the lender, who controls his own
gift: it is our duty always to be able to lay our hands upon what
has been lent us with no fixed date for its return, and to restore
it when called upon without a murmur: the most detestable kind of
debtor is he who rails at his creditor. Hence all our relatives,
both those who by the order of their birth we hope will outlive
ourselves, and those who themselves most properly wish to die before
us, ought to be loved by us as persons whom we cannot be sure of
having with us for ever, nor even for long. We ought frequently to
remind ourselves that we must love the things of this life as we
would what is shortly to leave us, or indeed in the very act of
leaving us. Whatever gift Fortune bestows upon a man, let him think
while he enjoys it, that it will prove as fickle as the goddess
from whom it came. Snatch what pleasure you can from your children,
allow your children in their turn to take pleasure in your society,
and drain every pleasure to the dregs without any delay. We cannot
reckon on to-night, nay, I have allowed too long a delay, {175} we
cannot reckon on this hour: we must make haste: the enemy presses
on behind us: soon that society of yours will be broken up, that
pleasant company will be taken by assault and dispersed. Pillage
is the universal law: unhappy creatures, know you not that life is
but a flight? If you grieve for the death of your son, the fault
lies with the time when he was born, for at his birth he was told
that death was his doom: it is the law under which he was born, the
fate which has pursued him ever since he left his mother’s womb.
We have come under the dominion of Fortune, and a harsh and
unconquerable dominion it is: at her caprice we must suffer all
things whether we deserve them or not. She maltreats our bodies
with anger, insult, and cruelty: some she burns, the fire being
sometimes applied as a punishment and sometimes as a remedy: some
she imprisons, allowing it to be done at one time by our enemies,
at another by our countrymen: she tosses others naked on the changeful
seas, and after their struggle with the waves will not even cast
them out upon the sand or the shore, but will entomb them in the
belly of some huge sea-monster: she wears away others to a skeleton
by divers kinds of disease, and keeps them long in suspense between
life and death: she is as capricious in her rewards and punishments
as a fickle, whimsical, and careless mistress is with those of her
slaves.
XI. Why need we weep over parts of our life? the whole of it calls
for tears: new miseries assail us before we have freed ourselves
from the old ones. You, therefore, who allow them to trouble you
to an unreasonable extent ought especially to restrain yourselves,
and to muster all the powers of the human breast to combat your
fears and your pains. Moreover, what forgetfulness of your own
position and that of mankind is this? You were born a mortal, and
you have given birth to mortals: yourself a weak and fragile body,
liable to all diseases, can you have hoped to {176} produce anything
strong and lasting from such unstable materials? Your son has died:
in other words he has reached that goal towards which those whom
you regard as more fortunate than your offspring are still hastening:
this is the point towards which move at different rates all the
crowds which are squabbling in the law courts, sitting in the
theatres, praying in the temples. Those whom you love and those
whom you despise will both be made equal in the same ashes. This
is the meaning of that command, KNOW THYSELF, which is written on
the shrine of the Pythian oracle. What is man? a potter’s vessel,
to be broken by the slightest shake or toss: it requires no great
storm to rend you asunder: you fall to pieces wherever you strike.
What is man? a weakly and frail body, naked, without any natural
protection, dependent on the help of others, exposed to all the
scorn of Fortune; even when his muscles are well trained he is the
prey and the food of the first wild beast he meets, formed of weak
and unstable substances, fair in outward feature, but unable to
endure cold, heat, or labour, and yet falling to ruin if kept in
sloth and idleness, fearing his very victuals, for he is starved
if he has them not, and bursts if he has too much. He cannot be
kept safe without anxious care, his breath only stays in the body
on sufferance, and has no real hold upon it; he starts at every
sudden danger, every loud and unexpected noise that reaches his
ears. Ever a cause of anxiety to ourselves, diseased and useless
as we are, can we be surprised at the death of a creature which can
be killed by a single hiccup? Is it a great undertaking to put an
end to us? why, smells, tastes, fatigue and want of sleep, food and
drink, and the very necessaries of life, are mortal. Whithersoever
he moves he straightway becomes conscious of his weakness, not being
able to bear all climates, falling sick after drinking strange
water, breathing an air to which he is not accustomed, or {177}
from other causes and reasons of the most trifling kind, frail,
sickly, entering upon his life with weeping: yet nevertheless what
a disturbance this despicable creature makes! what ideas it conceives,
forgetting its lowly condition! It exercises its mind upon matters
which are immortal and eternal, and arranges the affairs of its
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while death surprises it in
the midst of its far-reaching schemes, and what we call old age is
but the round of a very few years.
XII. Supposing that your sorrow has any method at all, is it your
own sufferings or those of him who is gone that it has in view? Why
do you grieve over your lost son? is it because you have received
no pleasure from him, or because you would have received more had
he lived longer? If you answer that you have received no pleasure
from him you make your loss more endurable: for men miss less when
lost what has given them no enjoyment or gladness. If, again, you
admit that you have received much pleasure, it is your duty not to
complain of that part which you have lost, but to return thanks for
that which you have enjoyed. His rearing alone ought to have brought
you a sufficient return for your labours, for it can hardly be that
those who take the greatest pains to rear puppies, birds, and such
like paltry objects of amusement derive a certain pleasure from the
sight and touch and fawning caresses of these dumb creatures, and
yet that those who rear children should not find their reward in
doing so. Thus, even though his industry may have gained nothing
for you, his carefulness may have saved nothing for you, his foresight
may have given you no advice, yet you found sufficient reward in
having owned him and loved him. “But,” say you, “it might have
lasted longer.” True, but you have been better dealt with than if
you had never had a son, for, supposing you were given your choice,
which is the better lot, to be happy for a short time or not at
all? {178} It is better to enjoy pleasures which soon leave us than
to enjoy none at all. Which, again, would you choose? to have had
one who was a disgrace to you, and who merely filled the position