Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
any people understand its greatness more than those who by their
assaults have made trial of its strength. The hardness of flint is
known to none so well as to those who strike it. I offer myself to
all attacks, like some lonely rock in a shallow sea, which the waves
never cease to beat upon from whatever quarter they may come, but
which they cannot thereby move from its place nor yet wear away,
for however many years they may unceasingly dash against it. Bound
upon me, rush upon me, I will overcome you by enduring your onset:
whatever strikes against that which is firm and unconquerable merely
injures itself by its own violence. Wherefore, seek some soft and
yielding object to pierce with your darts. But have you leisure to
peer into other men’s evil deeds and to sit in judgment upon anybody?
to ask how it is that this philosopher has so roomy a house, or
that one so good a dinner? Do you look at other people’s pimples
while you {239} yourselves are covered with countless ulcers? This
is as though one who was eaten up by the mange were to point with
scorn at the moles and warts on the bodies of the handsomest men.
Reproach Plato with having sought for money, reproach Aristotle
with having obtained it, Democritus with having disregarded it,
Epicurus with having spent it: cast Phaedrus and Alcibiades in my
own teeth, you who reach the height of enjoyment whenever you get
an opportunity of imitating our vices! Why do you not rather cast
your eyes around yourselves at the ills which tear you to pieces
on every side, some attacking you from without, some burning in
your own bosoms? However little you know your own place, mankind
has not yet come to such a pass that you can have leisure to wag
your tongues to the reproach of your betters.
XXVIII. This you do not understand, and you bear a countenance which
does not befit your condition, like many men who sit in the circus
or the theatre without having learned that their home is already
in mourning: but I, looking forward from a lofty standpoint, can
see what storms are either threatening you, and will burst in
torrents upon you somewhat later, or are close upon you and on the
point of sweeping away all that you possess. Why, though you are
hardly aware of it, is there not a whirling hurricane at this moment
spinning round and confusing your minds, making them seek and avoid
the very same things, now raising them aloft and now dashing them
below? . . . . . .”
[1] Lipsius’s conjecture, “those who are dressed in white as well
as those who are dressed in coloured clothes,’ alluding to the white
robes of candidates for office, seems reasonable.
[2] The Latin words are literally “to divide” their vote, that is,
“to separate things of different kinds comprised in a single vote
so that they might be voted for separately.”—Andrews.
Séneque fait allusion ici à une coutume pratiquée dans les assemblées
du Sénat; et il nous I’explique lui-même ailleurs d’un manière très
claire: “Si quelqu’un dans le Sénat,” dit il, “ouvre un avis, dont
une partie me convienne, je le somme de la detacher du reste, et
j’y adhère.”—_Ep_. 21, La Grange.
[3] _Parentatur_ seems to mean where an offering is made to luxury—
where they sacrifice to luxury. Perfumes were used at funerals.
Lipsius suggests that these feasts were like funerals because the
guests were carried away from them dead drunk.
[4] The quotation is from the epitaph on Phaeton.—See _Ovid_, Met.
II, 327.
[5] The “Pons Sublicius,” or “pile bridge,” was built over the Tiber
by Ancus Martius, one of the early kings of Rome, and was always
kept in repair out of a superstitious feeling.
[6] _Sistrum_. A metallic rattle used by the Egyptians in celebrating
the rites of Isis, &c.—Andrews.
{240}
THE EIGHTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED
TO SERENUS.
OF LEISURE.
I. . . . . why do they with great unanimity recommend vices to us?
even though we attempt nothing else that would do us good, yet
retirement in itself will be beneficial to us: we shall be better
men when taken singly—and if so, what an advantage it will be to
retire into the society of the best of men, and to choose some
example by which we may guide our lives! This cannot be done without
leisure: with leisure we can carry out that which we have once for
all decided to be best, when there is no one to interfere with us
and with the help of the mob pervert our as yet feeble judgment:
with leisure only can life, which we distract by aiming at the most
incompatible objects, flow on in a single gentle stream. Indeed,
the worst of our various ills is that we change our very vices, and
so we have not even the advantage of dealing with a well-known form
of evil: we take pleasure first in one and then in another, and
are, besides, troubled by the fact that our opinions are not only
wrong, but lightly formed; we toss as it were on waves, and clutch
at one thing after another: we let go what we just now sought for,
and {241} strive to recover what we have let go. We oscillate between
desire and remorse, for we depend entirely upon the opinions of
others, and it is that which many people praise and seek after, not
that which deserves to be praised and sought after, which we consider
to be best. Nor do we take any heed of whether our road be good or
bad in itself, but we value it by the number of footprints upon it,
among which there are none of any who have returned. You will say
to me, “Seneca, what are you doing? do you desert your party? I am
sure that our Stoic philosophers say we must be in motion up to the
very end of our life, we will never cease to labour for the general
good; to help individual people, and when stricken in years to
afford assistance even to our enemies. We are the sect that gives
no discharge for any number of years’ service, and in the words of
the most eloquent of poets:—
‘We wear the helmet when our locks are grey.’[1]
We are they who are so far from indulging in any leisure until we
die, that if circumstances permit it, we do not allow ourselves to
be at leisure even when we are dying. Why do you preach the maxims
of Epicurus in the very headquarters of Zeno? nay, if you are ashamed
of your party, why do you not go openly altogether over to the enemy
rather than betray your own side?” I will answer this question
straightway: What more can you wish than that I should imitate my
leaders? What then follows? I shall go whither they lead me, not
whither they send me.
II. Now I will prove to you that I am not deserting the {242} tenets
of the Stoics: for they themselves have not deserted them: and yet
I should be able to plead a very good excuse even if I did follow,
not their precepts, but their examples. I shall divide what I am
about to say into two parts: first, that a man may from the very
beginning of his life give himself up entirely to the contemplation
of truth; secondly, that a man when he has already completed his
term of service, has the best of rights, that of his shattered
health, to do this, and that he may then apply his mind to other
studies after the manner of the Vestal virgins, who allot different
duties to different years, first learn how to perform the sacred
rites, and when they have learned them teach others.
III. I will show that this is approved of by the Stoics also, not
that I have laid any commandment upon myself to do nothing contrary
to the teaching of Zeno and Chrysippus, but because the matter
itself allows me to follow the precepts of those men; for if one
always follows the precepts of one man, one ceases to be a debater
and becomes a partizan. Would that all things were already known,
that truth were unveiled and recognized, and that none of our
doctrines required modification! but as it is we have to seek for
truth in the company of the very men who teach it. The two sects
of Epicureans and Stoics differ widely in most respects, and on
this point among the rest, nevertheless, each of them consigns us
to leisure, although by a different road. Epicurus says, “The wise
man will not take part in politics, except upon some special
occasion;” Zeno says, “The wise man will take part in politics,
unless prevented by some special circumstance.” The one makes it
his aim in life to seek for leisure, the other seeks it only when
he has reasons for so doing: but this word “reasons” has a wide
signification. If the state is so rotten as to be past helping, if
evil has entire dominion over it, the wise man will not labour in
vain or waste his strength in unprofitable {243} efforts. Should
he be deficient in influence or bodily strength, if the state refuse
to submit to his guidance, if his health stand in the way, then he
will not attempt a journey for which he is unfit, just as he would
not put to sea in a worn-out ship, or enlist in the army if he were
an invalid. Consequently, one who has not yet suffered either in
health or fortune has the right, before encountering any storms,
to establish himself in safety, and thenceforth to devote himself
to honourable industry and inviolate leisure, and the service of
those virtues which can be practised even by those who pass the
quietest of lives. The duty of a man is to be useful to his fellow-men;
if possible, to be useful to many of them; failing this, to be
useful to a few; failing this, to be useful to his neighbours, and,
failing them, to himself: for when he helps others, he advances the
general interests of mankind. Just as he who makes himself a worse
man does harm not only to himself but to all those to whom he might
have done good if he had made himself a better one, so he who
deserves well of himself does good to others by the very fact that
he is preparing what will be of service to them.
IV. Let us grasp the fact that there are two republics, one vast
and truly “public,” which contains alike gods and men, in which we
do not take account of this or that nook of land, but make the
boundaries of our state reach as far as the rays of the sun: and
another to which we have been assigned by the accident of birth.
This may be that of the Athenians or Carthaginians, or of any other
city which does not belong to all men but to some especial ones.
Some men serve both of these states, the greater and the lesser,
at the same time; some serve only the lesser, some only the greater.
We can serve the greater commonwealth even when we are at leisure;
indeed I am not sure that we cannot serve it better when we are at
leisure to inquire into what virtue is, and whether it be one or
many: {244} whether it be nature or art that makes men good: whether
that which contains the earth and sea and all that in them is be
one, or whether God has placed therein many bodies of the same
species: whether that out of which all things are made be continuous
and solid, or containing interstices and alternate empty and full
spaces: whether God idly looks on at His handiwork, or directs its
course: whether He is without and around the world, or whether He
pervades its entire surface: whether the world be immortal, or
doomed to decay and belonging to the class of things which are born
only for a time? What service does he who meditates upon these
questions render to God? He prevents these His great works having
no one to witness them.
V. We have a habit of saying that the highest good is to live
according to nature: now nature has produced us for both purposes,
for contemplation and for action. Let us now prove what we said
before: nay, who will not think this proved if he bethinks himself
how great a passion he has for discovering the unknown? how vehemently
his curiosity is roused by every kind of romantic tale. Some men
make long voyages and undergo the toils of journeying to distant