Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
considers generous behaviour due only to those who wear the toga?
Nature bids me do good to mankind—what difference does it make
whether they be slaves or freemen, free-born or emancipated, whether
their freedom be legally acquired or betowed by arrangement among
friends? Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity
for a benefit: consequently, money may be distributed even within
one’s own threshold, and a field may be found there for the practice
of freehandedness, which is not so called because it is our duty
towards free men, but because it takes its rise in a free-born mind.
In the case of the wise man, this never falls upon base and unworthy
recipients, and never becomes so exhausted as not, whenever it finds
a worthy object, to flow as if its store was undiminished. You have,
therefore, no grounds for misunderstanding the honourable, brave,
and spirited language which you hear from those who are studying
wisdom: and first of all observe this, that a student of wisdom is
not the same thing as a man who has made himself perfect in wisdom.
The former will say to you, “In my talk I express the most admirable
sentiments, {233} yet I am still weltering amid countless ills.
You must not force me to act up to my rules: at the present time I
am forming myself, moulding my character, and striving to rise
myself to the height of a great example. If I should ever succeed
in carrying out all that I have set myself to accomplish, you may
then demand that my words and deeds should correspond,” But he who
has reached the summit of human perfection will deal otherwise with
you, and will say, “In the first place, you have no business to
allow yourself to sit in judgment upon your betters:” I have already
obtained one proof of my righteousness in having become an object
of dislike to bad men: however, to make you a rational answer, which
I grudge to no man, listen to what I declare, and at what price I
value all things. Riches, I say, are not a good thing; for if they
were, they would make men good: now since that which is found even
among bad men cannot be termed good, I do not allow them to be
called so: nevertheless I admit that they are desirable and useful
and contribute great comforts to our lives.
XXV. Learn, then, since we both agree that they are desirable, what
my reason is amongst counting them among good things, and in what
respects I should behave differently to you if I possessed them.
Place me as master in the house of a very rich man: place me where
gold and silver plate is used for the commonest purposes; I shall
not think more of myself because of things which even though they
are in my house are yet no part of me. Take me away to the wooden
bridge[5] and put me down there among the beggars: I shall not
despise myself because I am sitting among those who hold out their
hands for alms: for what can the lack of a piece of bread matter
to one {234} who does not lack the power of dying? Well, then? I
prefer the magnificent house to the beggar’s bridge. Place me among
magnificent furniture and all the appliances of luxury: I shall not
think myself any happier because my cloak is soft, because my guests
rest upon purple. Change the scene: I shall be no more miserable
if my weary head rests upon a bundle of hay, if I lie upon a cushion
from the circus, with all the stuffing on the point of coming out
through its patches of threadbare cloth. Well, then? I prefer, as
far as my feelings go, to show myself in public dressed in woollen
and in robes of office, rather than with naked or half-covered
shoulders: I should like every day’s business to turn out just as
I wish it to do, and new congratulations to be constantly following
upon the former ones: yet I will not pride myself upon this: change
all this good fortune for its opposite, let my spirit be distracted
by losses, grief, various kinds of attacks: let no hour pass without
some dispute: I shall not on this account, though beset by the
greatest miseries, call myself the most miserable of beings, nor
shall I curse any particular day, for I have taken care to have no
unlucky days. What, then, is the upshot of all this? it is that I
prefer to have to regulate joys than to stifle sorrows. The great
Socrates would say the same thing to you. “Make me,” he would say,
“the conqueror of all nations: let the voluptuous car of Bacchus
bear me in triumph to Thebes from the rising of the sun: let the
kings of the Persians receive laws from me: yet I shall feel myself
to be a man at the very moment when all around salute me as a God.
Straightway connect this lofty height with a headlong fall into
misfortune: let me be placed upon a foreign chariot that I may grace
the triumph of a proud and savage conqueror: I will follow another’s
car with no more humility than I showed when I stood in my own.
What then? In spite of all this, I had rather be a conqueror than
a captive. I despise the whole {235} dominion of Fortune, but still,
if I were given my choice, I would choose its better parts. I shall
make whatever befals me become a good thing, but I prefer that what
befals me should be comfortable and pleasant and unlikely to cause
me annoyance: for you need not suppose that any virtue exists without
labour, but some virtues need spurs, while others need the curb.
As we have to check our body on a downward path, and to urge it to
climb a steep one; so also the path of some virtues leads down hill,
that of others uphill. Can we doubt that patience, courage, constancy,
and all the other virtues which have to meet strong opposition, and
to trample Fortune under their feet, are climbing, struggling,
winning their way up a steep ascent? Why! is it not equally evident
that generosity, moderation, and gentleness glide easily downhill?
With the latter we must hold in our spirit, lest it run away with
us: with the former we must urge and spur it on. We ought, therefore,
to apply these energetic, combative virtues to poverty, and to
riches those other more thrifty ones which trip lightly along, and
merely support their own weight. This being the distinction between
them, I would rather have to deal with those which I could practise
in comparative quiet, than those of which one can only make trial
through blood and sweat. “Wherefore,” says the sage, “I do not talk
one way and live another: but you do not rightly understand what I
say: the sound of my words alone reaches your ears, you do not try
to find out their meaning.”
XXVI. “What difference, then, is there between me, who am a fool,
and you, who are a wise man?” “All the difference in the world: for
riches are slaves in the house of a wise man, but masters in that
of a fool. You accustom yourself to them and cling to them as if
somebody had promised that they should be yours for ever, but a
wise man never thinks so much about poverty as when he is surrounded
by riches. No general ever trusts so implicitly in {236} the
maintenance of peace as not to make himself ready for a war, which,
though it may not actually be waged, has nevertheless been declared;
you are rendered over-proud by a fine house, as though it could
never be burned or fall down, and your heads are turned by riches
as though they were beyond the reach of all dangers and were so
great that Fortune has not sufficient strength to swallow them up.
You sit idly playing with your wealth and do not foresee the perils
in store for it, as savages generally do when besieged, for, not
understanding the use of siege artillery, they look on idly at the
labours of the besiegers and do not understand the object of the
machines which they are putting together at a distance: and this
is exactly what happens to you: you go to sleep over your property,
and never reflect how many misfortunes loom menacingly around you
on all sides, and soon will plunder you of costly spoils, but if
one takes away riches from the wise man, one leaves him still in
possession of all that is his: for he lives happy in the present,
and without fear for the future. The great Socrates, or any one
else who had the same superiority to and power to withstand the
things of this life, would say, ‘I have no more fixed principle
than that of not altering the course of my life to suit your
prejudices: you may pour your accustomed talk upon me from all
sides: I shall not think that you are abusing me, but that you are
merely wailing like poor little babies.’” This is what the man will
say who possesses wisdom, whose mind, being free from vices, bids
him reproach others, not because he hates them, but in order to
improve them: and to this he will add, “Your opinion of me affects
me with pain, not for my own sake but for yours, because to hate
perfection and to assail virtue is in itself a resignation of all
hope of doing well. You do me no harm; neither do men harm the gods
when they overthrow their altars: but it is clear that your intention
is an evil one and that you will wish to do harm even {237} where
you are not able. I bear with your prating in the same spirit in
which Jupiter, best and greatest, bears with the idle tales of the
poets, one of whom represents him with wings, another with horns,
another as an adulterer staying out all night, another is dealing
harshly with the gods, another as unjust to men, another as the
seducer of noble youths whom he carries off by force, and those,
too, his own relatives, another as a parricide and the conqueror
of another’s kingdom, and that his father’s. The only result of
such tales is that men feel less shame at committing sin if they
believe the gods to be guilty of such actions. But although this
conduct of yours does not hurt me, yet, for your own sakes, I advise
you, respect virtue: believe those who having long followed her cry
aloud that what they follow is a thing of might, and daily appears
mightier. Reverence her as you would the gods, and reverence her
followers as you would the priests of the gods: and whenever any
mention of sacred writings is made, _favete linguis_, favour us
with silence: this word is not derived, as most people imagine,
from _favour_, but commands silence, that divine service may be
performed without being interrupted by any words of evil omen. It
is much more necessary that you should be ordered to do this, in
order that whenever utterance is made by that oracle, you may listen
to it with attention and in silence. Whenever any one beats a
sistrum,[6] pretending to do so by divine command, any proficient
in grazing his own skin covers his arms and shoulders with blood
from light cuts, any one crawls on his knees howling along the
street, or any old man clad in linen comes forth in daylight with
a lamp and laurel branch and cries out that one of the gods is
angry, you crowd round him and listen to his words, and each increases
the {238} other’s wonderment by declaring him to be divinely inspired.
XXVII. Behold! from that prison of his, which by entering he cleansed
from shame and rendered more honourable than any senate house,
Socrates addresses you, saying: “What is this madness of yours?
what is this disposition, at war alike with gods and men, which
leads you to calumniate virtue and to outrage holiness with malicious
accusations? Praise good men, if you are able: if not, pass them
by in silence: if indeed you take pleasure in this offensive
abusiveness, fall foul of one another: for when you rave against
Heaven, I do not say that you commit sacrilege, but you waste your
time. I once afforded Aristophanes with the subject of a jest: since
then all the crew of comic poets have made me a mark for their
envenomed wit: my virtue has been made to shine more brightly by
the very blows which have been aimed at it, for it is to its advantage
to be brought before the public and exposed to temptation, nor do