Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
and owned the name of your son, or one of such noble character as
your son’s was? a youth who soon grew discreet and dutiful, soon
became a husband and a father, soon became eager for public honours,
and soon obtained the priesthood, winning his way to all these
admirable things with equally admirable speed. It falls to scarcely
any one’s lot to enjoy great prosperity, and also to enjoy it for
a long time: only a dull kind of happiness can last for long and
accompany us to the end of our lives. The immortal gods, who did
not intend to give you a son for long, gave you one who was straightway
what another would have required long training to become. You cannot
even say that you have been specially marked by the gods for
misfortune because you have had no pleasure in your son. Look at
any company of people, whether they be known to you or not: everywhere
you will see some who have endured greater misfortunes than your
own. Great generals and princes have undergone like bereavements:
mythology tells us that the gods themselves are not exempt from
them, its aim, I suppose, being to lighten our sorrow at death by
the thought that even deities are subject to it. Look around, I
repeat, at every one: you cannot mention any house so miserable as
not to find comfort in the fact of another being yet more miserable.
I do not, by Hercules, think so ill of your principles as to suppose
that you would bear your sorrow more lightly were I to show you an
enormous company of mourners: that is a spiteful sort of consolation
which we derive from the number of our fellow-sufferers: nevertheless
I will quote some instances, not indeed in order to teach you that
this often befalls men, for it is absurd to multiply examples of
man’s mortality, but to let you know that there have {179} been
many who have lightened their misfortunes by patient endurance of
them. I will begin with the luckiest man of all. Lucius Sulla lost
his son, yet this did not impair either the spitefulness or the
brilliant valour which he displayed at the expense of his enemies
and his countrymen alike, nor did it make him appear to have assumed
his well-known title untruly that he did so after his son’s death,
fearing neither the hatred of men, by whose sufferings that excessive
prosperity of his was purchased, nor the ill-will of the gods, to
whom it was a reproach that Sulla should be so truly The Fortunate.
What, however, Sulla’s real character was may pass among questions
still undecided: even his enemies will admit that he took up arms
with honour, and laid them aside with honour: his example proves
the point at issue, that an evil which befalls even the most
prosperous cannot be one of the first magnitude.
XIII. That Greece cannot boast unduly of that father who, being in
the act of offering sacrifice when he heard the news of his son’s
death, merely ordered the flute-player to be silent, and removed
the garland from his head, but accomplished all the rest of the
ceremony in due form, is due to a Roman, Pulvillus the high priest.
When he was in the act of holding the doorpost[5] and dedicating
the Capitol the news of his son’s death was brought to him. He
pretended not to hear it, and pronounced the form of words proper
for the high priest on such an occasion, without his prayer being
interrupted by a single groan, begging that Jupiter would show
himself gracious, at the very instant that he heard his son’s name
mentioned as dead. Do you imagine that this man’s mourning knew no
end, if the first day and the first shook could not drive him,
though a father, away {180} from the public altar of the state, or
cause him to mar the ceremony of dedication by words of ill omen?
Worthy, indeed, of the most exalted priesthood was he who ceased
not to revere the gods even when they were angry. Yet he, after he
had gone home, filled his eyes with tears, said a few words of
lamentation, and performed the rites with which it was then customary
to honour the dead, resumed the expression of countenance which he
had worn in the Capitol.
Paulus,[6] about the time of his magnificent triumph, in which he
drove Perses in chains before his car, gave two of his sons to be
adopted into other families, and buried those whom he had kept for
himself. What, think you, must those whom he kept have been, when
Scipio was one of those whom he gave away? It was not without emotion
that the Roman people looked upon Paulus’s empty chariot:[7]
nevertheless he made a speech to them, and returned thanks to the
gods for having granted his prayer: for he had prayed that, if any
offering to Nemesis were due in consequence of the stupendous victory
which he had won, it might be paid at his own expense rather than
at that of his country. Do you see how magnanimously he bore his
loss? he even congratulated himself on being left childless, though
who had more to suffer by such a change? he lost at once his
comforters and his helpers. Yet Perses did not have the pleasure
of seeing Paulus look sorrowful.
XIV. Why should I lead you on through the endless {181} series of
great men and pick out the unhappy ones, as though it were not more
difficult to find happy ones? for how few households have remained
possessed of all their members until the end? what one is there
that has not suffered some loss? Take any one year you please and
name the consuls for it: if you like, that of[8] Lucius Bibulus and
Gaius Caesar; you will see that, though these colleagues were each
other’s bitterest enemies, yet their fortunes agreed. Lucius Bibulus,
a man more remarkable for goodness than for strength of character,
had both his sons murdered at the same time, and even insulted by
the Egyptian soldiery, so that the agent of his bereavement was as
much a subject for tears as the bereavement itself. Nevertheless
Bibulus, who during the whole of his year of office had remained
hidden in his house, to cast reproach upon his colleague Caesar on
the day following that upon which he heard of both his sons’ deaths,
came forth and went through the routine business of his magistracy.
Who could devote less than one day to mourning for two sons? Thus
soon did he end his mourning for his children, although he had
mourned a whole year for his consulship. Gaius Caesar, after having
traversed Britain, and not allowed even the ocean to set bounds to
his successes, heard of the death of his daughter, which hurried
on the crisis of affairs. Already Gnaeus Pompeius stood before his
eyes, a man who would ill endure that any one besides himself should
become a great power in the state, and one who was likely to place
a check upon his advancement, which he had regarded as onerous even
when each gained by the other’s rise: yet within three days’ time
he resumed his duties as general, and conquered his grief as quickly
as he was wont to conquer everything else.
XV. Why need I remind you of the deaths of the other {182} Caesars,
whom fortune appears to me sometimes to have outraged in order that
even by their deaths they might be useful to mankind, by proving
that not even they, although they were styled “sons of gods,” and
“fathers of gods to come,” could exercise the same power over their
own fortunes which they did over those of others? The Emperor
Augustus lost his children and his grandchildren, and after all the
family of Caesar had perished was obliged to prop his empty house
by adopting a son: yet he bore his losses as bravely as though he
were already personally concerned in the honour of the gods, and
as though it were especially to his interest that no one should
complain of the injustice of Heaven. Tiberius Caesar lost both the
son whom he begot and the son whom he adopted, yet he himself
pronounced a panegyric upon his son from the Rostra, and stood in
full view of the corpse, which merely had a curtain on one side to
prevent the eyes of the high priest resting upon the dead body, and
did not change his countenance, though all the Romans wept: he gave
Sejanus, who stood by his side, a proof of how patiently he could
endure the loss of his relatives. See you not what numbers of most
eminent men there have been, none of whom have been spared by this
blight which prostrates us all: men, too, adorned with every grace
of character, and every distinction that public or private life can
confer. It appears as though this plague moved in a regular orbit,
and spread ruin and desolation among us all without distinction of
persons, all being alike its prey. Bid any number of individuals
tell you the story of their lives: you will find that all have paid
some penalty for being born.
XVI. I know what you will say, “You quote men as examples: you
forget that it is a woman that you are trying to console.” Yet who
would say that nature has dealt grudgingly with the minds of women,
and stunted their virtues? Believe me, they have the same intellectual
power as men, {183} and the same capacity for honourable and generous
action. If trained to do so, they are just as able to endure sorrow
or labour. Ye good gods, do I say this in that very city in which
Lucretia and Brutus removed the yoke of kings from the necks of the
Romans? We owe liberty to Brutus, but we owe Brutus to Lucretia—in
which Cloelia, for the sublime courage with which she scorned both
the enemy and the river, has been almost reckoned as a man. The
statue of Cloelia, mounted on horseback, in that busiest of
thoroughfares, the Sacred Way, continually reproaches the youth of
the present day, who never mount anything but a cushioned seat in
a carriage, with journeying in such a fashion through that very
city in which we have enrolled even women among our knights. If you
wish me to point out to you examples of women who have bravely
endured the loss of their children, I shall not go far afield to
search for them: in one family I can quote two Cornelias, one the
daughter of Scipio, and the mother of the Gracchi, who made
acknowledgment of the birth of her twelve children by burying them
all: nor was it so hard to do this in the case of the others, whose
birth and death were alike unknown to the public, but she beheld
the murdered and unburied corpses of both Tiberius Gracchus and
Gaius Gracchus, whom even those who will not call them good must
admit were great men. Yet to those who tried to console her and
called her unfortunate, she answered, “I shall never cease to call
myself happy, because I am the mother of the Gracchi.” Cornelia,
the wife of Livius Drusus, lost by the hands of an unknown assassin
a young son of great distinction, who was treading in the footsteps
of the Gracchi, and was murdered in his own house just when he had
so many bills half way through the process of becoming law:
nevertheless she bore the untimely and unavenged death of her son
with as lofty a spirit as he had shown in carrying his laws. Will
you not, Marcia, forgive fortune because she has not refrained {184}
from striking you with the darts with which she launched at the
Scipios, and the mothers and daughters of the Scipios, and with
which she has attacked the Caesars themselves? Life is full of
misfortunes; our path is beset with them: no one can make a long
peace, nay, scarcely an armistice with fortune. You, Marcia, have
borne four children: now they say that no dart which is hurled into
a close column of soldiers can fail to hit one,—ought you then to
wonder at not having been able to lead along such a company without
exciting the ill-will of Fortune, or suffering loss at her hands?
“But,” say you, “Fortune has treated me unfairly, for she not only
has bereaved me of my son, but chose my best beloved to deprive me
of.” Yet you never can say that you have been wronged, if you divide
the stakes equally with an antagonist who is stronger than yourself: