Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
and whose attention has been exclusively directed to happiness.
Disease, captivity, disaster, conflagration, are none of them
unexpected: I always knew with what disorderly company {275} Nature
had associated me. The dead have often been wailed for in my
neighbourhood: the torch and taper have often been borne past my
door before the bier of one who has died before his time: the crash
of falling buildings has often resounded by my side: night has
snatched away many of those with whom I have become intimate in the
forum, the Senate-house, and in society, and has sundered the hands
which were joined in friendship: ought I to be surprised if the
dangers which have always been circling around me at last assail
me? How large a part of mankind never think of storms when about
to set sail? I shall never be ashamed to quote a good saying because
it comes from a bad author. Publilius, who was a more powerful
writer than any of our other playwrights, whether comic or tragic,
whenever he chose to rise above farcical absurdities and speeches
addressed to the gallery, among many other verses too noble even
for tragedy, let alone for comedy, has this one:—
“What one hath suffered may befall us all.”
If a man takes this into his inmost heart and looks upon all the
misfortunes of other men, of which there is always a great plenty,
in this spirit, remembering that there is nothing to prevent their
coming upon him also, he will arm himself against them long before
they attack him. It is too late to school the mind to endurance of
peril after peril has come. “I did not think this would happen,”
and “Would you ever have believed that this would have happened?”
say you. But why should it not? Where are the riches after which
want, hunger, and beggary do not follow? what office is there whose
purple robe, augur’s staff, and patrician reins have not as their
accompaniment rags and banishment, the brand of infamy, a thousand
disgraces, and utter reprobation? what kingdom is there for which
ruin, trampling under foot, a tyrant and a {276} butcher are not
ready at hand? nor are these matters divided by long periods of
time, but there is but the space of an hour between sitting on the
throne ourselves and clasping the knees of some one else as suppliants.
Know then that every station of life is transitory, and that what
has ever happened to anybody may happen to you also. You are wealthy:
are you wealthier than Pompeius?[6] Yet when Gaius,[7] his old
relative and new host, opened Caesar’s house to him in order that
he might close his own, he lacked both bread and water: though he
owned so many rivers which both rose and discharged themselves
within his dominions, yet he had to beg for drops of water: he
perished of hunger and thirst in the palace of his relative, while
his heir was contracting for a public funeral for one who was in
want of food. You have filled public offices: were they either as
important, as unlooked for, or as all-embracing as those of Sejanus?
Yet on the day on which the Senate disgraced him, the people tore
him to pieces: the executioner[8] could find no part left large
enough to drag to the Tiber, of one upon whom gods and men had
showered all that could be given to man. You are a king: I will not
bid you go to Croesus for an example, he who while yet alive saw
his funeral pile both lighted and extinguished, being made to outlive
not only his kingdom but even his own death, nor to Jugurtha, whom
the people of Rome beheld as a captive within the year in which
they had feared him. We have seen Ptolemaeus King of Africa, and
Mithridates King of Armenia, under the charge of Gaius’s[9] guards:
the former was sent into exile, the latter chose it in order to
make his {277} exile more honourable. Among such continual topsy-turvy
changes, unless you expect that whatever can happen will happen to
you, you give adversity power against you, a power which can be
destroyed by any one who looks at it beforehand.
XII. The next point to these will be to take care that we do not
labour for what is vain, or labour in vain: that is to say, neither
to desire what we are not able to obtain, nor yet, having obtained
our desire too late, and after much toil to discover the folly of
our wishes: in other words, that our labour may not be without
result, and that the result may not be unworthy of our labour: for
as a rule sadness arises from one of these two things, either from
want of success or from being ashamed of having succeeded. We must
limit the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about
houses, theatres, and market-places. They mind other men’s business,
and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If
you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, “Whither are
you going?” he will answer, “By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall
see some people and do something.” They wander purposelessly seeking
for something to do, and do, not what they have made up their minds
to do, but what has casually fallen in their way. They move uselessly
and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which
creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining
anything. Many men spend their lives in exactly the same fashion,
which one may call a state of restless indolence. You would pity
some of them when you see them running as if their house was on
fire: they actually jostle all whom they meet, and hurry along
themselves and others with them, though all the while they are going
to salute some one who will not return their greeting, or to attend
the funeral of some one whom they did not know: they are going to
hear the verdict on one {278} who often goes to law, or to see the
wedding of one who often gets married: they will follow a man’s
litter, and in some places will even carry it: afterwards returning
home weary with idleness, they swear that they themselves do not
know why they went out, or where they have been, and on the following
day they will wander through the same round again. Let all your
work, therefore, have some purpose, and keep some object in view:
these restless people are not made restless by labour, but are
driven out of their minds by mistaken ideas: for even they do not
put themselves in motion without any hope: they are excited by the
outward appearance of something, and their crazy mind cannot see
its futility. In the same way every one of those who walk out to
swell the crowd in the streets, is led round the city by worthless
and empty reasons; the dawn drives him forth, although he has nothing
to do, and after he has pushed his way into many men’s doors, and
saluted their nomenclators one after the other, and been turned
away from many others, he finds that the most difficult person of
all to find at home is himself. From this evil habit comes that
worst of all vices, talebearing and prying into public and private
secrets, and the knowledge of many things which it is neither safe
to tell nor safe to listen to.
XIII. It was, I imagine, following out this principle that Democritis
taught that “he who would live at peace must not do much business
either public or private,” referring of course to unnecessary
business: for if there be any necessity for it we ought to transact
not only much but endless business, both public and private; in
cases, however, where no solemn duty invites us to act, we had
better keep ourselves quiet: for he who does many things often puts
himself in Fortune’s power, and it is safest not to tempt her often,
but always to remember her existence, and never to promise oneself
anything on her security. I will set sail unless anything happens
to prevent me, I shall {279} be praetor, if nothing hinders me, my
financial operations will succeed, unless anything goes wrong with
them. This is why we say that nothing befals the wise man which he
did not expect—we do not make him exempt from the chances of human
life, but from its mistakes, nor does everything happen to him as
he wished it would, but as he thought it would: now his first thought
was that his purpose might meet with some resistance, and the pain
of disappointed wishes must affect a man’s mind less severely if
he has not been at all events confident of success.
XIV. Moreover, we ought to cultivate an easy temper, and not become
over fond of the lot which fate has assigned to us, but transfer
ourselves to whatever other condition chance may lead us to, and
fear no alteration, either in our purposes or our position in life,
provided that we do not become subject to caprice, which of all
vices is the most hostile to repose: for obstinacy, from which
Fortune often wrings some concession, must needs be anxious and
unhappy, but caprice, which can never restrain itself, must be more
so. Both of these qualities, both that of altering nothing, and
that of being dissatisfied with everything, are energies to repose.
The mind ought in all cases to be called away from the contemplation
of external things to that of itself: let it confide in itself,
rejoice in itself, admire its own works; avoid as far as may be
those of others, and devote itself to itself; let it not feel losses,
and put a good construction even upon misfortunes. Zeno, the chief
of our school, when he heard the news of a shipwreck, in which all
his property had been lost, remarked, “Fortune bids me follow
philosophy in lighter marching order.” A tyrant threatened Theodorus
with death, and even with want of burial. “You are able to please
yourself,” he answered, “my half pint of blood is in your power:
for, as for burial, what a fool you must be if you suppose that I
care whether I rot above ground or under it.” Julius {280} Kanus,
a man of peculiar greatness, whom even the fact of his having been
born in this century does not prevent our admiring, had a long
dispute with Gaius, and when as he was going away that Phalaris of
a man said to him, “That you may not delude yourself with any foolish
hopes, I have ordered you to be executed,” he answered, “I thank
you, most excellent prince.” I am not sure what he meant: for many
ways of explaining his conduct occur to me. Did he wish to be
reproachful, and to show him how great his cruelty must be if death
became a kindness? or did he upbraid him with his accustomed insanity?
for even those whose children were put to death, and whose goods
were confiscated, used to thank him: or was it that he willingly
received death, regarding it as freedom? Whatever he meant, it was
a magnanimous answer. Some one may say, “After this Gaius might
have let him live.” Kanus had no fear of this: the good faith with
which Gaius carried out such orders as these was well known. Will
you believe that he passed the ten intervening days before his
execution without the slightest despondency? it is marvellous how
that man spoke and acted, and how peaceful he was. He was playing
at draughts when the centurion in charge of a number of those who
where going to be executed bade him join them: on the summons he
counted his men and said to his companion, “Mind you do not tell a
lie after my death, and say that you won;” then, turning to the
centurion, he said “You will bear me witness that I am one man ahead
of him.” Do you think that Kanus played upon that draught-board?
nay, he played with it. His friends were sad at being about to lose
so great a man: “Why,” asked he, “are you sorrowful? you are enquiring
whether our souls are immortal, but I shall presently know.” Nor
did he up to the very end cease his search after truth, and raised
arguments upon the subject of his own death. His own teacher of
philosophy accompanied him, and they {281} were not far from the
hill on which the daily sacrifice to Caesar our god was offered,