Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
him, to try to wrong him?” There is nothing on earth so sacred as
not to be liable to sacrilege; yet holy things exist on high none
the less because there are men who strike at a greatness which is
far above themselves, though with no hope of reaching it. The
invulnerable is not that which is never struck, but that which is
never wounded. In this class I will show you the wise man. Can we
doubt that the strength which is never overcome in fight is more
to be relied on than that which is never challenged, seeing that
untested power is untrustworthy, whereas that solidity which hurls
back all attacks is deservedly regarded as the most trustworthy of
all? In like manner you may know that the wise man, if no injury
hurts him, is of a higher type than if none is offered to him, and
I should call him a brave man whom war does not subdue and the
violence of the enemy does not alarm, not him who enjoys luxurious
ease amid a slothful people. I say, then, that such a wise man is
invulnerable against all injury; it matters not, therefore, how
many darts be hurled at him, since he can be pierced by none of
them. Just as the hardness of some stones is impervious to steel,
and adamant can neither be cut, {26} broken, or ground, but blunts
all instruments used upon it; just as some things cannot be destroyed
by fire, but when encircled by flame still retain their hardness
and shape; just as some tall projecting cliffs break the waves of
the sea, and though lashed by them through many centuries, yet show
no traces of their rage; even so the mind of the wise man is firm,
and gathers so much strength, that it is as safe from injury as any
of those things which I have mentioned.
IV. “What then? Will there be no one who will try to do an injury
to the wise man?” Yes, some one will try, but the injury will not
reach him; for he is separated from the contact of his inferiors
by so wide a distance that no evil impulse can retain its power of
harm until it reaches him. Even when powerful men, raised to positions
of high authority, and strong in the obedience of their dependents,
strive to injure him, all their darts fall as far short of his
wisdom as those which are shot upwards by bowstrings or catapults,
which, although they rise so high as to pass out of sight, yet fall
back again without reaching the heavens. Why, do you suppose that
when that stupid king[1] clouded the daylight with the multitude
of his darts, that any arrow of them all went into the sun? or that
when he flung his chains into the deep, that he was able to reach
Neptune? Just as sacred things escape from the hands of men, and
no injury is done to the godhead by those who destroy temples and
melt down images, so whoever attempts to treat the wise man with
impertinence, insolence, or scorn, does so in vain. “It would be
better,” say you, “if no one wished to do so.” You are expressing
a wish that the whole human race were inoffensive, which may hardly
be; moreover, those who would gain by such wrongs not being done
are those who would do them, not he who could not suffer from them
even if they were done; nay, I {27} know not whether wisdom is not
best displayed by calmness in the midst of annoyances, just as the
greatest proof of a general’s strength in arms and men consists in
his quietness and confidence in the midst of an enemy’s country.
V. If you think fit, my Serenus, let us distinguish between injury
and insult. The former is naturally the more grievous, the latter
less important, and grievous only to the thin-skinned, since it
angers men but does not wound them. Yet such is the weakness of
men’s minds, that many think that there is nothing more bitter than
insult; thus you will find slaves who prefer to be flogged to being
slapped, and who think stripes and death more endurable than insulting
words. To such a pitch of absurdity have we come that we suffer not
only from pain, but from the idea of pain, like children, who are
terror-stricken by darkness, misshapen masks, and distorted faces,
and whose tears flow at hearing names unpleasing to their ears, at
the movement of our fingers, and other things which they ignorantly
shrink from with a sort of mistaken spasm. The object which injury
proposes to itself is to do evil to some one. Now wisdom leaves no
room for evil; to it, the only evil is baseness, which cannot enter
into the place already occupied by virtue and honour. If, therefore,
there can be no injury without evil, and no evil without baseness,
and baseness cannot find any place with a man who is already filled
with honour, it follows that no injury can reach the wise man: for
if injury be the endurance of some evil, and the wise man can endure
no evil, it follows that no injury takes effect upon the wise man.
All injury implies a making less of that which it affects, and no
one can sustain an injury without some loss either of his dignity,
or of some part of his body, or of some of the things external to
ourselves; but the wise man can lose nothing. He has invested
everything in himself, has entrusted nothing to fortune, has his
property in safety, {28} and is content with virtue, which does not
need casual accessories, and therefore can neither be increased or
diminished; for virtue, as having attained to the highest position,
has no room for addition to herself, and fortune can take nothing
away save what she gave. Now fortune does not give virtue; therefore
she does not take it away. Virtue is free, inviolable, not to be
moved, not to be shaken, and so hardened against misfortunes that
she cannot be bent, let alone overcome by them. She looks unfalteringly
on while tortures are being prepared for her; she makes no change
of countenance, whether misery or pleasure be offered to her. The
wise man therefore can lose nothing of whose loss he will be sensible,
for he is the property of virtue alone, from whom he never can be
taken away. He enjoys all other things at the good pleasure of
fortune; but who is grieved at the loss of what is not his own? If
injury can hurt none of those things which are the peculiar property
of the wise man, because while his virtue is safe they are safe,
then it is impossible that an injury should be done to a wise man.
Demetrius, who was surnamed Poliorcetes, took Megara, and the
philosopher Stilbo, when asked by him whether he had lost anything,
answered, “No, I carry all my property about me.” Yet his inheritance
had been given up to pillage, his daughters had been outraged by
the enemy, his country had fallen under a foreign dominion, and it
was the king, enthroned on high, surrounded by the spears of his
victorious troops, who put this question to him; yet he struck the
victory out of the king’s hands, and proved that, though the city
was taken, he himself was not only unconquered but unharmed, for
he bore with him those true goods which no one can lay hands upon.
What was being plundered and carried away hither and thither he did
not consider to be his own, but to be merely things which come and
go at the caprice of fortune; therefore he had not loved them as
his own, for {29} the possession of all things which come from
without is slippery and insecure.
VI. Consider now, whether any thief, or false accuser, or headstrong
neighbour, or rich man enjoying the power conferred by a childless
old age, could do any injury to this man, from whom neither war nor
an enemy whose profession was the noble art of battering city walls
could take away anything. Amid the flash of swords on all sides,
and the riot of the plundering soldiery, amid the flames and blood
and ruin of the fallen city, amid the crash of temples falling upon
their gods, one man was at peace. You need not therefore account
that a reckless boast, for which I will give you a surety, if my
words goes for nothing. Indeed, you would hardly believe so much
constancy or such greatness of mind to belong to any man; but here
a man comes forward to prove that you have no reason for doubting
that one who is but of human birth can raise himself above human
necessities, can tranquilly behold pains, losses, diseases, wounds,
and great natural convulsions roaring around him, can bear adversity
with calm and prosperity with moderation, neither yielding to the
former nor trusting to the latter, that he can remain the same amid
all varieties of fortune, and think nothing to be his own save
himself, and himself too only as regards his better part. “Behold,”
says he, “I am here to prove to you that although, under the direction
of that destroyer of so many cities, walls may be shaken by the
stroke of the ram, lofty towers may be suddenly brought low by
galleries and hidden mines, and mounds arise so high as to rival
the highest citadel, yet that no siege engines can be discovered
which can shake a well-established mind. I have just crept from
amid the ruins of my house, and with conflagrations blazing all
around I have escaped from the flames through blood. What fate has
befallen my daughters, whether a worse one than that of their
country, I {30} know not. Alone and elderly, and seeing everything
around me in the hands of the enemy, still I declare that my property
is whole and untouched. I have, I hold whatever of mine I have ever
had. There is no reason for you to suppose me conquered and yourself
my conqueror. It is your fortune which has overcome mine. As for
those fleeting possessions which change their owners, I know not
where they are; what belongs to myself is with me, and ever will
be. I see rich men who have lost their estates; lustful men who
have lost their loves, the courtesans whom they cherished at the
cost of much shame; ambitious men who have lost the senate, the law
courts, the places set apart for the public display of men’s vices;
usurers who have lost their account-books, in which avarice vainly
enjoyed an unreal wealth; but I possess everything whole and
uninjured. Leave me, and go and ask those who are weeping and
lamenting over the loss of their money, who are offering their bare
breasts to drawn swords in its defence, or who are fleeing from the
enemy with weighty pockets.” See then, Serenus, that the perfect
man, full of human and divine virtues, can lose nothing; his goods
are surrounded by strong and impassable walls. You cannot compare
with them the walls of Babylon, which Alexander entered, nor the
fortifications of Carthage and Numantia, won by one and the same
hand,[2] nor the Capitol and citadel of Rome, which are branded
with the marks of the victors’ insults; the ramparts which protect
the wise man are safe from fire and hostile invasion; they afford
no passage; they are lofty, impregnable, divine.
VII. You have no cause for saying, as you are wont to do, that this
wise man of ours[3] is nowhere to be found; we do not invent him
as an unreal glory of the human race, or conceive a mighty shadow
of an untruth, but we have displayed and will display him just as
we sketch him, though {31} he may perhaps be uncommon, and only one
appears at long intervals; for what is great and transcends the
common ordinary type is not often produced; but this very Marcus
Cato himself, the mention of whom started this discussion, was a
man who I fancy even surpassed our model. Moreover, that which hurts
must be stronger than that which is hurt. Now wickedness is not
stronger than virtue; therefore the wise man cannot be hurt. Only
the bad attempt to injure the good. Good men are at peace among
themselves; bad ones are equally mischievous to the good and to one
another. If a man cannot be hurt by one weaker than himself, and a
bad man be weaker than a good one, and the good have no injury to
dread, except from one unlike themselves; then, no injury takes
effect upon the wise man; for by this time I need not remind you