Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
forced to assert his rights by war, first with his countrymen, next
with his colleagues, and lastly with his own relations, and had
shed blood both by sea and by land: after marching his troops under
arms through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and almost
all the countries of the world, when they were weary with slaughtering
Romans he had directed them against a foreign foe. While he was
pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the enemies whom he found
in the midst of the Roman empire, while he was extending its
boundaries beyond the Rhine, the Euphrates, and the Danube, at Rome
itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others
were being sharpened to slay him. Scarcely had he escaped from their
plot, when his already failing age was terrified by his daughter
and all the noble youths who were pledged to her cause by adultery
with her by way of oath of fidelity. Then there was Paulus and
Antonius’s mistress, a second time to be {295} feared by Rome: and
when he had cut out these ulcers from his very limbs, others grew
in their place: the empire, like a body overloaded with blood, was
always breaking out somewhere. For this reason he longed for leisure:
all his labours were based upon hopes and thoughts of leisure: this
was the wish of him who could accomplish the wishes of all other
men.
V. While tossed hither and thither by Catiline and Clodius, Pompeius
and Crassus, by some open enemies and some doubtful friends, while
he struggled with the struggling republic and kept it from going
to ruin, when at last he was banished, being neither able to keep
silence in prosperity nor to endure adversity with patience, how
often must Marcus Cicero have cursed that consulship of his which
he never ceased to praise, and which nevertheless deserved it? What
piteous expressions he uses in a letter to Atticus when Pompeius
the father had been defeated, and his son was recruiting his shattered
forces in Spain? “Do you ask,” writes he, “what I am doing here? I
am living in my Tusculan villa almost as a prisoner.” He adds more
afterwards, wherein he laments his former life, complains of the
present, and despairs of the future. Cicero called himself “half a
prisoner,” but, by Hercules, the wise man never would have come
under so lowly a title: he never would be half a prisoner, but would
always enjoy complete and entire liberty, being free, in his own
power, and greater than all others: for what can be greater than
the man who is greater than Fortune?
VI. When Livius Drusus, a vigorous and energetic man, brought forward
bills for new laws and radical measures of the Gracchus pattern,
being the centre of a vast mob of all the peoples of Italy, and
seeing no way to solve the question, since he was not allowed to
deal with it as he wished, and yet was not free to throw it up after
having once taken part in it, complained bitterly of his life, which
had been {296} one of unrest from the very cradle, and said, we are
told, that “he was the only person who had never had any holidays
even when he was a boy.” Indeed, while he was still under age and
wearing the praetexta, he had the courage to plead the cause of
accused persons in court, and to make use of his influence so
powerfully that it is well known that in some causes his exertions
gained a verdict. Where would such precocious ambition stop? You
may be sure that one who showed such boldness as a child would end
by becoming a great pest both in public and in private life: it was
too late for him to complain that he had had no holidays, when from
his boyhood he had been a firebrand and a nuisance in the courts.
It is a stock question whether he committed suicide: for he fell
by a sudden wound in the groin, and some doubted whether his death
was caused by his own hand, though none disputed its having happened
most seasonably. It would be superfluous to mention more who, while
others thought them the happiest of men, have themselves borne true
witness to their own feelings, and have loathed all that they have
done for all the years of their lives: yet by these complaints they
have effected no alteration either in others or in themselves: for
after these words have escaped them their feelings revert to their
accustomed frame. By Hercules, that life of you great men, even
though it should last for more than a thousand years, is still a
very short one: those vices of yours would swallow up any extent
of time: no wonder if this our ordinary span, which, though Nature
hurries on, can be enlarged by common sense, soon slips away from
you: for you do not lay hold of it or hold it back, and try to delay
the swiftest of all things, but you let it pass as though it were
a useless thing and you could supply its place.
VII. Among these I reckon in the first place those who devote their
time to nothing but drinking and debauchery: {297} for no men are
busied more shamefully: the others, although the glory which they
pursue is but a counterfeit, still deserve some credit for their
pursuit of it—though you may tell me of misers, of passionate men,
of men who hate and who even wage war without a cause—yet all such
men sin like men: but the sin of those who are given up to gluttony
and lust is a disgraceful one. Examine all the hours of their lives:
consider how much time they spend in calculation, how much in
plotting, how much in fear, how much in giving and deceiving flattery,
how much in entering into recognizances for themselves or for others,
how much in banquets, which indeed become a serious business, you
will see that they are not allowed any breathing time either by
their pleasures or their pains. Finally, all are agreed that nothing,
neither eloquence nor literature, can be done properly by one who
is occupied with something else; for nothing can take deep root in
a mind which is directed to some other subject, and which rejects
whatever you try to stuff into it. No man knows less about living
than a business man: there is nothing about which it is more difficult
to gain knowledge. Other arts have many folk everywhere who profess
to teach them: some of them can be so thoroughly learned by mere
boys, that they are able to teach them to others: but one’s whole
life must be spent in learning how to live, and, which may perhaps
surprise you more, one’s whole life must be spent in learning how
to die. Many excellent men have freed themselves from all hindrances,
have given up riches, business, and pleasure, and have made it their
duty to the very end of their lives to learn how to live: and yet
the larger portion of them leave this life confessing that they do
not yet know how to live, and still less know how to live as wise
men. Believe me, it requires a great man and one who is superior
to human frailties not to allow any of his time to be filched from
him: {298} and therefore it follows that his life is a very long
one, because he devotes every possible part of it to himself: no
portion lies idle or uncultivated, or in another man’s power; for
he finds nothing worthy of being exchanged for his time, which he
husbands most grudgingly. He, therefore, had time enough: whereas
those who gave up a great part of their lives to the people of
necessity had not enough. Yet you need not suppose that the latter
were not sometimes conscious of their loss: indeed, you will hear
most of those who are troubled with great prosperity every now and
then cry out amid their hosts of clients, their pleadings in court,
and their other honourable troubles, “I am not allowed to live my
own life.” Why is he not allowed? because all those who call upon
you to defend them, take you away from yourself. How many of your
days have been spent by that defendant? by that candidate for office?
by that old woman who is weary with burying her heirs? by that man
who pretends to be ill, in order to excite the greed of those who
hope to inherit his property? by that powerful friend of yours, who
uses you to swell his train, not to be his friend? Balance your
account, and run over all the days of your life; you will see that
only a very few days, and only those which were useless for any
other purpose, have been left to you. He who has obtained the
_fasces_[6] for which he longed, is eager to get rid of them, and
is constantly saying, “When will this year be over?” another exhibits
public games, and once would have given a great deal for the chance
of doing so, but now “when,” says he, “shall I escape from this?”
another is an advocate who is fought for in all the courts, and who
draws immense audiences, who crowd all the forum to a far greater
distance than they can hear him; “When,” says he, “will vacation-time
come?” Every man hurries through his life, and {299} suffers from
a yearning for the future, and a weariness of the present: but he
who disposes of all his time for his own purposes, who arranges all
his days as though he were arranging the plan of his life, neither
wishes for nor fears the morrow: for what new pleasure can any hour
now bestow upon him? he knows it all, and has indulged in it all
even to satiety. Fortune may deal with the rest as she will, his
life is already safe from her: such a man may gain something, but
cannot lose anything: and, indeed, he can only gain anything in the
same way as one who is already glutted and filled can get some extra
food which he takes although he does not want it. You have no
grounds, therefore, for supposing that any one has lived long,
because he has wrinkles or grey hairs: such a man has not lived
long, but has only been long alive. Why! would you think that a man
had voyaged much if a fierce gale had caught him as soon as he left
his port, and he had been driven round and round the same place
continually by a succession of winds blowing from opposite quarters?
such a man has not travelled much, he has only been much tossed
about.
VIII. I am filled with wonder when I see some men asking others for
their time, and those who are asked for it most willing to give it:
both parties consider the object for which the time is given, but
neither of them thinks of the time itself, as though in asking for
this one asked for nothing, and in giving it one gave nothing: we
play with what is the most precious of all things: yet it escapes
men’s notice, because it is an incorporeal thing, and because it
does not come before our eyes; and therefore it is held very cheap,
nay, hardly any value whatever is put upon it. Men set the greatest
store upon presents or pensions, and hire out their work, their
services, or their care in order to gain them: no one values time:
they give it much more freely, as though it cost nothing. Yet you
will see these {300} same people clasping the knees of their physician
as suppliants when they are sick and in present peril of death, and
if threatened with a capital charge willing to give all that they
possess in order that they may live: so inconsistent are they.
Indeed, if the number of every man’s future years could be laid
before him, as we can lay that of his past years, how anxious those
who found that they had but few years remaining would be to make
the most of them? Yet it is easy to arrange the distribution of a
quantity, however small, if we know how much there is: what you
ought to husband most carefully is that which may run short you
know not when. Yet you have no reason to suppose that they do not
know how dear a thing time is: they are wont to say to those whom
they especially love that they are ready to give them a part of
their own years. They do give them, and know not that they are
giving them; but they give them in such a manner that they themselves
lose them without the others gaining them. They do not, however,
know whence they obtain their supply, and therefore they are able