Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
whether he was at leisure? I can hardly say whether I pity him more
if he really did not know or if he pretended not to know this. Such
people do really become unconscious of much, but they behave as
though they were unconscious of much more: they delight in some
failings because they consider them to be proofs of happiness: it
seems the part of an utterly low and contemptible man to know what
he is doing. After this, do you suppose that playwrights draw largely
upon their imaginations in their burlesques upon luxury: by Hercules,
they omit more than they invent; in this age, inventive in this
alone, such a number of incredible vices have been produced, that
already you are able to reproach the playwrights with omitting to
notice them. To think that there should be any one who had so far
lost his senses through luxury as to take some one else’s opinion
as to whether he was sitting or not? This man certainly is not at
leisure: you must bestow a different title on him: he is sick, or
rather dead: he only is at leisure who feels that he is at leisure:
but this creature is {307} only half alive, if he wants some one
to tell him what position his body is in. How can such a man be
able to dispose of any time?
XIII. It would take long to describe the various individuals who
have wasted their lives over playing at draughts, playing at ball,
or toasting their bodies in the sun: men are not at leisure if their
pleasures partake of the character of business, for no one will
doubt that those persons are laborious triflers who devote themselves
to the study of futile literary questions, of whom there is already
a great number in Rome also. It used to be a peculiarly Greek disease
of the mind to investigate how many rowers Ulysses had, whether the
Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, and furthermore, whether
they were written by the same author, with other matters of the
same stamp, which neither please your inner consciousness if you
keep them to yourself, nor make you seem more learned, but only
more troublesome, if you publish them abroad. See, already this
vain longing to learn what is useless has taken hold of the Romans:
the other day I heard somebody telling who was the first Roman
general who did this or that: Duillius was the first who won a
sea-fight, Curius Dentatus was the first who drove elephants in his
triumph: moreover, these stories, though they add nothing to real
glory, do nevertheless deal with the great deeds of our countrymen:
such knowledge is not profitable, yet it claims our attention as a
fascinating kind of folly. I will even pardon those who want to
know who first persuaded the Romans to go on board ship. It was
Claudius, who for this reason was surnamed Caudex, because any piece
of carpentry formed of many planks was called _caudex_ by the ancient
Romans, for which reason public records are called _Codices_, and
by old custom the ships which ply on the Tiber with provisions are
called _codicariae_. Let us also allow that it is to the point to
tell how Valerius Corvinus was the first {308} to conquer Messana,
and first of the family of the Valerii transferred the name of the
captured city to his own, and was called Messana, and how the people
gradually corrupted the pronunciation and called him Messalla: or
would you let any one find interest in Lucius Sulla having been the
first to let lions loose in the circus, they having been previously
exhibited in chains, and hurlers of darts having been sent by King
Bocchus to kill them? This may be permitted to their curiosity: but
can it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompeius was the first
to exhibit eighteen elephants in the circus, who were matched in a
mimic battle with some convicts? The leading man in the state, and
one who, according to tradition, was noted among the ancient leaders
of the state for his transcendent goodness of heart, thought it a
notable kind of show to kill men in a manner hitherto unheard of.
Do they fight to the death? that is not cruel enough: are they torn
to pieces? that is not cruel enough: let them be crushed flat by
animals of enormous bulk. It would be much better that such a thing
should be forgotten, for fear that hereafter some potentate might
hear of it and envy its refined barbarity. O, how doth excessive
prosperity blind our intellects! at the moment at which he was
casting so many troops of wretches to be trampled on by outlandish
beasts, when he was proclaiming war between such different creatures,
when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman
people, whose blood he himself was soon to shed even more freely,
he thought himself the master of the whole world; yet he afterwards,
deceived by the treachery of the Alexandrians, had to offer himself
to the dagger of the vilest of slaves, and then at last discovered
what an empty boast was his surname of “The Great.” But to return
to the point from which I have digressed, I will prove that even
on this very subject some people expend useless pains. The same
author tells us that {309} Metellus, when he triumphed after having
conquered the Carthaginians in Sicily, was the only Roman who ever
had a hundred and twenty captured elephants led before his car: and
that Sulla was the last Roman who extended the pomoerium,[7] which
it was not the custom of the ancients to extend on account of the
conquest of provincial, but only of Italian territory. Is it more
useful to know this, than to know that the Mount Aventine, according
to him, is outside of the pomoerium, for one of two reasons, either
because it was thither that the plebeians seceded, or because when
Remus took his auspices on that place the birds which he saw were
not propitious: and other stories without number of the like sort,
which are either actual falsehoods or much the same as falsehoods?
for even if you allow that these authors speak in all good faith,
if they pledge themselves for the truth of what they write, still,
whose mistakes will be made fewer by such stories? whose passions
will be restrained? whom will they make more brave, more just, or
more gentlemanly? My friend Fabianus used to say that he was not
sure that it was not better not to apply oneself to any studies at
all than to become interested in these.
XIV. The only persons who are really at leisure are those who devote
themselves to philosophy: and they alone really live: for they do
not merely enjoy their own lifetime, but they annex every century
to their own: all the years which have passed before them belong
to them. Unless we are the most ungrateful creatures in the world,
we shall regard these noblest of men, the founders of divine schools
of thought, as having been born for us, and having prepared life
for us: we are led by the labour of others to behold most beautiful
things which have been brought out of darkness into light; we are
not shut out from any period, we can make our way into every subject,
{310} and, if only we can summon up sufficient strength of mind to
overstep the narrow limit of human weakness, we have a vast extent
of time wherein to disport ourselves: we may argue with Socrates,
doubt with Carneades, repose with Epicurus, overcome human nature
with the Stoics, out-herod it with the Cynics. Since Nature allows
us to commune with every age, why do we not abstract ourselves from
our own petty fleeting span of time, and give ourselves up with our
whole mind to what is vast, what is eternal, what we share with
better men than ourselves? Those who gad about in a round of calls,
who worry themselves and others, after they have indulged their
madness to the full, and crossed every patron’s threshold daily,
leaving no open door unentered, after they have hawked about their
interested greetings in houses of the most various character,—after
all, how few people are they able to see out of so vast a city,
divided among so many different ruling passions: how many will be
moved by sloth, self-indulgence, or rudeness to deny them admittance:
how many, after they have long plagued them, will run past them
with feigned hurry? how many will avoid coming out through their
entrance-hall with its crowds of clients, and will escape by some
concealed backdoor? as though it were not ruder to deceive their
visitor than to deny him admittance!—how many, half asleep and
stupid with yesterday’s debauch, can hardly be brought to return
the greeting of the wretched man who has broken his own rest in
order to wait on that of another, even after his name has been
whispered to them for the thousandth time, save by a most offensive
yawn of his half-opened lips. We may truly say that those men are
pursuing the true path of duty, who wish every day to consort on
the most familiar terms with Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and the
rest of those high priests of virtue, with Aristotle and with
Theophrastus. None of these men will be “engaged,” {311} none of
these will fail to send you away after visiting him in a happier
frame of mind and on better terms with yourself, none of them will
let you leave him empty-handed: yet their society may be enjoyed
by all men, and by night as well as by day.
XV. None of these men will force you to die, but all of them will
teach you how to die: none of these will waste your time, but will
add his own to it. The talk of these men is not dangerous, their
friendship will not lead you to the scaffold, their society will
not ruin you in expenses: you may take from them whatsoever you
will; they will not prevent your taking the deepest draughts of
their wisdom that you please. What blessedness, what a fair old age
awaits the man who takes these for his patrons! he will have friends
with whom he may discuss all matters, great and small, whose advice
he may ask daily about himself, from whom he will hear truth without
insult, praise without flattery, and according to whose likeness
he may model his own character. We are wont to say that we are not
able to choose who our parents should be, but that they were assigned
to us by chance; yet we may be born just as we please: there are
several families of the noblest intellects: choose which you would
like to belong to: by your adoption you will not receive their name
only, but also their property, which is not intended to be guarded
in a mean and miserly spirit: the more persons you divide it among
the larger it becomes. These will open to you the path which leads
to eternity, and will raise you to a height from whence none shall
cast you down. By this means alone can you prolong your mortal life,
nay, even turn it into an immortal one. High office, monuments, all
that ambition records in decrees or piles up in stone, soon passes
away: lapse of time casts down and ruins everything; but those
things on which Philosophy has set its seal are beyond the reach
of injury: no age will discard them or {312} lessen their force,
each succeeding century will add somewhat to the respect in which
they are held: for we look upon what is near us with jealous eyes,
but we admire what is further off with less prejudice. The wise
man’s life, therefore, includes much: he is not hedged in by the
same limits which confine others: he alone is exempt from the laws
by which mankind is governed: all ages serve him like a god. If any
time be past, he recals it by his memory; if it be present, he uses
it; if it be future, he anticipates it: his life is a long one
because he concentrates all times into it.
XVI. Those men lead the shortest and unhappiest lives who forget
the past, neglect the present, and dread the future: when they reach
the end of it the poor wretches learn too late that they were busied
all the while that they were doing nothing. You need not think,
because sometimes they call for death, that their lives are long: