Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
is forced to shorten sail to the tempest, whether it be unemployed,
silent, and pent up in a narrow lodging, or openly displayed, in
whatever guise she may appear, she always does good. What? do you
think that the example of one who can rest nobly has no value? It
is by far the best plan, therefore, to mingle {263} leisure with
business, whenever chance impediments or the state of public affairs
forbid one’s leading an active life: for one is never so cut off
from all pursuits as to find no room left for honourable action.
V. Could you anywhere find a [more] miserable city than that of
Athens when it was being torn to pieces by the thirty tyrants? they
slew thirteen hundred citizens, all the best men, and did not leave
off because they had done so, but their cruelty became stimulated
by exercise. In the city which possessed that most reverend tribunal,
the Court of the Areopagus, which possessed a Senate, and a popular
assembly which was like a Senate, there met daily a wretched crew
of butchers, and the unhappy Senate House was crowded with tyrants.
A state, in which there were so many tyrants that they would have
been enough to form a bodyguard for one, might surely have rested
from the struggle; it seemed impossible for men’s minds even to
conceive hopes of recovering their liberty, nor could they see any
room for a remedy for such a mass of evil: for whence could the
unhappy state obtain all the Harmodiuses it would need to slay so
many tyrants? Yet Socrates was in the midst of the city, and consoled
its mourning Fathers, encouraged those who despaired of the republic,
by his reproaches brought rich men, who feared that their wealth
would be their ruin, to a tardy repentance of their avarice, and
moved about as a great example to those who wished to imitate him,
because he walked a free man in the midst of thirty masters. However,
Athens herself put him to death in prison, and Freedom herself could
not endure the freedom of one who had treated a whole band of tyrants
with scorn: you may know, therefore, that even in an oppressed state
a wise man can find an opportunity for bringing himself to the
front, and that in a prosperous and flourishing one wanton insolence,
jealousy, and a thousand other cowardly vices bear sway. We ought,
{264} therefore, to expand or contract ourselves according as the
state presents itself to us, or as Fortune offers us opportunities:
but in any case we ought to move and not to become frozen still by
fear: nay, he is the best man who, though peril menaces him on every
side and arms and chains beset his path, nevertheless neither impairs
nor conceals his virtue: for to keep oneself safe does not mean to
bury oneself. I think that Curius Dentatus spoke truly when he said
that he would rather be dead than alive: the worst evil of all is
to leave the ranks of the living before one dies: yet it is your
duty, if you happen to live in an age when it is not easy to serve
the state, to devote more time to leisure and to literature. Thus,
just as though you were making a perilous voyage, you may from time
to time put into harbour, and set yourself free from public business
without waiting for it to do so.
VI. We ought, however, first to examine our own selves, next the
business which we propose to transact, next those for whose sake
or in whose company we transact it.
It is above all things necessary to form a true estimate of oneself,
because as a rule we think that we can do more than we are able:
one man is led too far through confidence in his eloquence, another
demands more from his estate than it can produce, another burdens
a weakly body with some toilsome duty. Some men are too shamefaced
for the conduct of public affairs, which require an unblushing
front: some men’s obstinate pride renders them unfit for courts:
some cannot control their anger, and break into unguarded language
on the slightest provocation: some cannot rein in their wit or
resist making risky jokes: for all these men leisure is better than
employment: a bold, haughty and impatient nature ought to avoid
anything that may lead it to use a freedom of speech which will
bring it to ruin. Next we must form an estimate of the matter which
we mean to deal with, and compare our strength {265} with the deed
we are about to attempt: for the bearer ought always to be more
powerful than his load: indeed, loads which are too heavy for their
bearer must of necessity crush him: some affairs also are not so
important in themselves as they are prolific and lead to much more
business, which employments, as they involve us in new and various
forms of work, ought to be refused. Neither should you engage in
anything from which you are not free to retreat: apply yourself to
something which you can finish, or at any rate can hope to finish:
you had better not meddle with those operations which grow in
importance, while they are being transacted, and which will not
stop where you intended them to stop.
VII. In all cases one should be careful in one’s choice of men, and
see whether they be worthy of our bestowing a part of our life upon
them, or whether we shall waste our own time and theirs also: for
some even consider us to be in their debt because of our services
to them. Athenodorus said that “he would not so much as dine with
a man who would not be grateful to him for doing so”: meaning, I
imagine, that much less would he go to dinner with those who
recompense the services of their friends by their table, and regard
courses of dishes as donatives, as if they overate themselves to
do honour to others. Take away from these men their witnesses and
spectators: they will take no pleasure in solitary gluttony. You
must decide whether your disposition is better suited for vigorous
action or for tranquil speculation and contemplation, and you must
adopt whichever the bent of your genius inclines you for. Isocrates
laid hands upon Ephorus and led him away from the forum, thinking
that he would be more usefully employed in compiling chronicles;
for no good is done by forcing one’s mind to engage in uncongenial
work: it is vain to struggle against Nature. Yet nothing delights
the mind so much as faithful and pleasant friendship: what a {266}
blessing it is when there is one whose breast is ready to receive
all your secrets with safety, whose knowledge of your actions you
fear less than your own conscience, whose conversation removes your
anxieties, whose advice assists your plans, whose cheerfulness
dispels your gloom, whose very sight delights you! We should choose
for our friends men who are, as far as possible, free from strong
desires: for vices are contagious, and pass from a man to his
neighbour, and injure those who touch them. As, therefore, in times
of pestilence we have to be careful not to sit near people who are
infected and in whom the disease is raging, because by so doing,
we shall run into danger and catch the plague from their very breath;
so, too, in choosing our friends’ dispositions, we must take care
to select those who are as far as may be unspotted by the world;
for the way to breed disease is to mix what is sound with what is
rotten. Yet I do not advise you to follow after or draw to yourself
no one except a wise man: for where will you find him whom for so
many centuries we have sought in vain? in the place of the best
possible man take him who is least bad. You would hardly find any
time that would have enabled you to make a happier choice than if
you could have sought for a good man from among the Platos and
Xenophons and the rest of the produce of the brood of Socrates, or
if you had been permitted to choose one from the age of Cato: an
age which bore many men worthy to be born in Cato’s time (just as
it also bore many men worse than were ever known before, planners
of the blackest crimes: for it needed both classes in order to make
Cato understood: it wanted both good men, that he might win their
approbation, and bad men, against whom he could prove his strength):
but at the present day, when there is such a dearth of good men,
you must be less squeamish in your choice. Above all, however, avoid
dismal men who grumble at whatever happens, and find something to
complain {267} of in everything. Though he may continue loyal and
friendly towards you, still one’s peace of mind is destroyed by a
comrade whose mind is soured and who meets every incident with a
groan.
VIII. Let us now pass on to the consideration of property, that
most fertile source of human sorrows: for if you compare all the
other ills from which we suffer—deaths, sicknesses, fears, regrets,
endurance of pains and labours— with those miseries which our money
inflicts upon us, the latter will far outweigh all the others.
Reflect, then, how much less a grief it is never to have had any
money than to have lost it: we shall thus understand that the less
poverty has to lose, the less torment it has with which to afflict
us: for you are mistaken if you suppose that the rich bear their
losses with greater spirit than the poor: a wound causes the same
amount of pain to the greatest and the smallest body. It was a neat
saying of Bion’s, “that it hurts bald men as much as hairy men to
have their hairs pulled out”: you may be assured that the same thing
is true of rich and poor people, that their suffering is equal: for
their money clings to both classes, and cannot be torn away without
their feeling it: yet it is more endurable, as I have said, and
easier not to gain property than to lose it, and therefore you will
find that those upon whom Fortune has never smiled are more cheerful
than those whom she has deserted. Diogenes, a man of infinite spirit,
perceived this, and made it impossible that anything should be taken
from him. Call this security from loss poverty, want, necessity,
or any contemptuous name you please: I shall consider such a man
to be happy, unless you find me another who can lose nothing. If I
am not mistaken, it is a royal attribute among so many misers,
sharpers, and robbers, to be the one man who cannot be injured. If
any one doubts the happiness of Diogenes, he would doubt whether
the position of the immortal gods was one of sufficient happiness.
{268} because they have no farms or gardens, no valuable estates
let to strange tenants, and no large loans in the money market. Are
you not ashamed of yourself, you who gaze upon riches with astonished
admiration? Look upon the universe: you will see the gods quite
bare of property, and possessing nothing though they give everything.
Do you think that this man who has stripped himself of all fortuitous
accessories is a pauper, or one like to the immortal gods? Do you
call Demetrius, Pompeius’s freedman, a happier man, he who was not
ashamed to be richer than Pompeius, who was daily furnished with a
list of the number of his slaves, as a general is with that of his
army, though he had long deserved that all his riches should consist
of a pair of underlings, and a roomier cell than the other slaves?
But Diogenes’s only slave ran away from him, and when he was pointed
out to Diogenes, he did not think him worth fetching back. “It is
a shame,” he said, “that Manes should be able to live without
Diogenes, and that Diogenes should not be able to live without
Manes.” He seems to me to have said, “Fortune, mind your own business:
Diogenes has nothing left that belongs to you. Did my slave run
away? nay, he went away from me as a free man.” A household of
slaves requires food and clothing: the bellies of so many hungry
creatures have to be filled: we must buy raiment for them, we must
watch their most thievish hands, and we must make use of the services
of people who weep and execrate us. How far happier is he who is
indebted to no man for anything except for what he can deprive