Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
long prospered will have his share some day; those who seem to have
been spared them have only had them put off. Why does God afflict
the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles?
Because in the army the most hazardous services are assigned to the
bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the
enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march,
or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places. No one
of these {13} men says as he begins his march, “The general has
dealt hardly with me,” but “He has judged well of me.” Let those
who are bidden to suffer what makes the weak and cowardly weep, say
likewise, “God has thought us worthy subjects on whom to try how
much suffering human nature can endure.” Avoid luxury, avoid
effeminate enjoyment, by which men’s minds are softened, and in
which, unless something occurs to remind them of the common lot of
humanity, they lie unconscious, as though plunged in continual
drunkenness. He whom glazed windows have always guarded from the
wind, whose feet are warmed by constantly renewed fomentations,
whose dining-room is heated by hot air beneath the floor and spread
through the walls, cannot meet the gentlest breeze without danger.
While all excesses are hurtful, excess of comfort is the most hurtful
of all; it affects the brain; it leads men’s minds into vain
imaginings; it spreads a thick cloud over the boundaries of truth
and falsehood. Is it not better, with virtue by one’s side, to
endure continual misfortune, than to burst with an endless surfeit
of good things? It is the overloaded stomach that is rent asunder:
death treats starvation more gently. The gods deal with good men
according to the same rule as schoolmasters with their pupils, who
exact most labour from those of whom they have the surest hopes.
Do you imagine that the Lacedaemonians, who test the mettle of their
children by public flogging, do not love them? Their own fathers
call upon them to endure the strokes of the rod bravely, and when
they are torn and half dead, ask them to offer their wounded skin
to receive fresh wounds. Why then should we wonder if God tries
noble spirits severely? There can be no easy proof of virtue. Fortune
lashes and mangles us: well, let us endure it: it is not cruelty,
it is a struggle, in which the oftener we engage the braver we shall
become. The strongest part of the {14} body is that which is exercised
by the most frequent use: we must entrust ourselves to fortune to
be hardened by her against herself: by degrees she will make us a
match for herself. Familiarity with danger leads us to despise it.
Thus the bodies of sailors are hardened by endurance of the sea,
and the hands of farmers by work; the arms of soldiers are powerful
to hurl darts, the legs of runners are active: that part of each
man which he exercises is the strongest: so by endurance the mind
becomes able to despise the power of misfortunes. You may see what
endurance might effect in us if you observe what labour does among
tribes that are naked and rendered stronger by want. Look at all
the nations that dwell beyond the Roman Empire: I mean the Germans
and all the nomad tribes that war against us along the Danube. They
suffer from eternal winter, and a dismal climate, the barren soil
grudges them sustenance, they keep off the rain with leaves or
thatch, they bound across frozen marshes, and hunt wild beasts for
food. Do you think them unhappy? There is no unhappiness in what
use has made part of one’s nature: by degrees men find pleasure in
doing what they were first driven to do by necessity. They have no
homes and no resting-places save those which weariness appoints
them for the day; their food, though coarse, yet must be sought
with their own hands; the harshness of the climate is terrible, and
their bodies are unclothed. This, which you think a hardship, is
the mode of life of all these races: how then can you wonder at
good men being shaken, in order that they may be strengthened? No
tree which the wind does not often blow against is firm and strong;
for it is stiffened by the very act of being shaken, and plants its
roots more securely: those which grow in a sheltered valley are
brittle: and so it is to the advantage of good men, and causes them
to be undismayed, that they should live much {15} amidst alarms,
and learn to bear with patience what is not evil save to him who
endures it ill.
V. Add to this that it is to the advantage of every one that the
best men should, so to speak, be on active service and perform
labours: God has the same purpose as the wise man, that is, to prove
that the things which the herd covets and dreads are neither good
nor bad in themselves. If, however, He only bestows them upon good
men, it will be evident that they are good things, and bad, if He
only inflicts them upon bad men. Blindness would be execrable if
no one lost his eyes except those who deserve to have them pulled
out; therefore let Appius and Metellus be doomed to darkness. Riches
are not a good thing: therefore let Elius the pander possess them,
that men who have consecrated money in the temple, may see the same
in the brothel: for by no means can God discredit objects of desire
so effectually as by bestowing them upon the worst of men, and
removing them from the best. “But,” you say, “it is unjust that a
good man should be enfeebled, or transfixed, or chained, while bad
men swagger at large with a whole skin.” What! is it not unjust
that brave men should bear arms, pass the night in camps, and stand
on guard along the rampart with their wounds still bandaged, while
within the city eunuchs and professional profligates live at their
ease? what? is it not unjust that maidens of the highest birth
should be roused at night to perform Divine service, while fallen
women enjoy the soundest sleep? Labour calls for the best man: the
senate often passes the whole day in debate, while at the same time
every scoundrel either amuses his leisure in the Campus Martius,
or lurks in a tavern, or passes his time in some pleasant society.
The same thing happens in this great commonwealth (of the world):
good men labour, spend and are spent, and that too of their own
free will; they are not dragged along by fortune, but follow {16}
her and take equal steps with her; if they knew how, they would
outstrip her. I remember, also, to have heard this spirited saying
of that stoutest-hearted of men, Demetrius. “Ye immortal Gods,”
said he, “the only complaint which I have to make of you is that
you did not make your will known to me earlier; for then I would
sooner have gone into that state of life to which I now have been
called. Do you wish to take my children? it was for you that I
brought them up. Do you wish to take some part of my body? take it:
it is no great thing that I am offering you, I shall soon have done
with the whole of it. Do you wish for my life? why should I hesitate
to return to you what you gave me? whatever you ask you shall receive
with my good will: nay, I would rather give it than be forced to
hand it over to you: what need had you to take away what you did?
you might have received it from me: yet even as it is you cannot
take anything from me, because you cannot rob a man unless he
resists.”
I am constrained to nothing, I suffer nothing against my will, nor
am I God’s slave, but his willing follower, and so much the more
because I know that everything is ordained and proceeds according
to a law that endures for ever. The fates guide us, and the length
of every man’s days is decided at the first hour of his birth: every
cause depends upon some earlier cause: one long chain of destiny
decides all things, public or private. Wherefore, everything must
be patiently endured, because events do not fall in our way, as we
imagine, but come by a regular law. It has long ago been settled
at what you should rejoice and at what you should weep, and although
the lives of individual men appear to differ from one another in a
great variety of particulars, yet the sum total comes to one and
the same thing: we soon perish, and the gifts which we receive soon
perish. Why, then, should we be angry? why should we lament? we are
prepared for our fate: let nature deal {17} as she will with her
own bodies; let us be cheerful whatever befalls, and stoutly reflect
that it is not anything of our own that perishes. What is the duty
of a good man? to submit himself to fate: it is a great consolation
to be swept away together with the entire universe: whatever law
is laid upon us that thus we must live and thus we must die, is
laid upon the gods also: one unchangeable stream bears along men
and gods alike: the creator and ruler of the universe himself,
though he has given laws to the fates, yet is guided by them: he
always obeys, he only once commanded. “But why was God so unjust
in His distribution of fate, as to assign poverty, wounds, and
untimely deaths to good men?” The workman cannot alter his materials:
this is their nature. Some qualities cannot be separated from some
others: they cling together; are indivisible. Dull minds, tending
to sleep or to a waking state exactly like sleep, are composed of
sluggish elements: it requires stronger stuff to form a man meriting
careful description. His course will not be straightforward; he
must go upwards and downwards, be tossed about, and guide his vessel
through troubled waters: he must make his way in spite of fortune:
he will meet with much that is hard which he must soften, much that
is rough that he must make smooth. Fire tries gold, misfortune tries
brave men. See how high virtue has to climb: you may be sure that
it has no safe path to tread.
“Steep is the path at first: the steeds, though strong, Fresh
from their rest, can hardly crawl along; The middle part lies
through the topmost sky, Whence oft, as I the earth and sea
descry, I shudder, terrors through my bosom thrill. The ending
of the path is sheer down hill, And needs the careful guidance
of the rein, For ever when I sink beneath the main, {18} Old
Tethys trembles in her depths below Lest headlong down upon
her I should go.”[7]
When the spirited youth heard this, he said, “I have no fault to
find with the road: I will mount it, it is worth while to go through
these places, even though one fall.” His father did not cease from
trying to scare his brave spirit with terrors:—
“Then, too, that thou may’st hold thy course aright, And neither
turn aside to left nor right. Straight through the Bull’s fell
horns thy path must go. Through the fierce Lion, and the
Archer’s bow.”
After this Phaethon says:—
“Harness the chariot which you yield to me,
I am encouraged by these things with which you think to scare me:
I long to stand where the Sun himself trembles to stand.” It is the
part of grovellers and cowards to follow the safe track; courage
loves a lofty path.
VI. “Yet, why does God permit evil to happen to good men?” He does
not permit it: he takes away from them all evils, such as crimes
and scandalous wickedness, daring thoughts, grasping schemes, blind
lusts, and avarice coveting its neighbour’s goods. He protects and
saves them. Does any one besides this demand that God should look
after the baggage of good men also? Why, they themselves leave the
care of this to God: they scorn external accessories. Democritus
forswore riches, holding them to be a burden to a virtuous mind:
what wonder then, if God permits that to happen to a good man, which
a good man sometimes chooses should happen to himself? Good men,
you say, lose their children: why should they not, since sometimes
they even put them to death? They are banished: why should they not