Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
dying in harness? Yet many are of the same mind: they retain their
wish for labour longer than their capacity for it, and fight against
their bodily weakness; they think old age an evil for no other
reason than because it lays them on the shelf. The law does not
enrol a soldier after his fiftieth year, or require a senator’s
attendance after his sixtieth: but men have more difficulty in
obtaining their own consent than that of the law to a life of
leisure. Meanwhile, while they are plundering and being plundered,
while one is disturbing another’s repose, and all are being made
wretched alike, life remains without profit, without pleasure,
without any intellectual progress: no one keeps death well before
his eyes, no one refrains from far-reaching {319} hopes. Some even
arrange things which lie beyond their own lives, such as huge
sepulchral buildings, the dedication of public works, and exhibitions
to be given at their funeral-pyre, and ostentatious processions:
but, by Hercules, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted
by the light of torches and wax tapers,[11] as though they had lived
but a few days.
[1] “On croit que ce Paulin étoit frère de Pauline, épouse de
Sénéque.” —La Grange.
[2] “L’un se consume en projets d’ambition, dont le succès depend
du suffrage de l’autrui.”—La Grange.
[3] “Combien d’orateurs qui s’épuisent de sang et de forces pour
faire montrer de leur génie!”—La Grange.
[4] “Pour vous, jamais vous ne daignâtes vous regarder seulement,
ou vous entendre. Ne faites pas non plus valoir votre condescendance
a écouter les autres. Lorsque vous vous y prêtez, ce n’est pas que
vous aimiez a vous communiquer aux autres; c’est que vous craignez
de vous trouver avec vous-même.”—La Grange.
“It is a folly therefore beyond Sence, When great men will not
give us Audience To count them proud; how dare we call it pride
When we the same have to ourselves deny’d.
Yet they how great, how proud so e’re, have bin Sometimes so
courteous as to call thee in. And hear thee speak; but thou
could’st nere afford Thyself the leisure of a look or word.
Thou should’st not then herein another blame, Because when thou
thyself do’st do the same. Thou would’st not be with others,
but we see Plainly thou can’st not with thine own self be.”
“L. ANNAEUS SENECA, the Philosopher, his book of the Shortness of
Life, translated into an English Poem. Imprinted at London, by
William Goldbird, for the Author, mdclxiii.”
[5] “Dans une lettre qu’il envoya au Sénat apres avoir promis que
son repos n’aura rièn indigne de la gloire de ses premières années,
il ajoute: Mais l’execution y mettra un prix, que ne peuvent y
mettre les promesses. J’obeis cependant a la vive passion que j’ai,
de me voir a ce temps si désiré; et puisque l’heureuse situation
d’affaires m’en tient encore éloigné, j’ai voulu du moins me
satisfaire en partie, par la douceur que je trouve à vous en
parler.”—La Grange.
“Such words I find. But these things rather ought Be done, then
said; yet so far hath the thought Of that wish’d time prevail’d,
that though the glad Fruition of the thing be not yet had. Yet
I,” &c.
[6] Fasces, the rods carried by the _lictors_ as symbols of office.
See Smith’s “Diet, of Antiquities,” _s.v._
[7] See Smith’s “Dict. of Antiquities.”
[8] Xerxes.
[9] “Sénéque parle ici du pont que Caligula fit construire sur le
golphe de Baies, l’an de Rome 791, 40 de J. C. . . . . rassembla
et fit entrer dans la construction de son pont tous les vaisseaux
qui se trouverent dans les ports d’Italie et des contrées voisines.
Il n’excepta pas même ceux qui etoient destinés a y apporter des
grains étrangers,” &c.—LaGrange.
[10] For _vis tu_ see Juv. v., vis tu consuetis, &c. Mayor’s note.
[11] As those of children were.
{320}
THE ELEVENTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED
TO HIS MOTHER, HELVIA.
OF CONSOLATION.
I. My best of mothers, I have often felt eager to console you, and
have as often checked that impulse. Many things urged me to make
the attempt: in the first place, I thought that if, though I might
not be able to restrain your tears, yet that if I could even wipe
them away, I should set myself free from all my own sorrows: then
I was quite sure that I should rouse you from your grief with more
authority if I had first shaken it off myself. I feared, too, lest
Fortune, though overcome by me, might nevertheless overcome some
one of my family. Then I endeavoured to crawl and bind up your
wounds in the best way I could, holding my hand over my own wound;
but then again other considerations occurred to me which held me
back: I knew that I must not oppose your grief during its first
transports, lest my very attempts at consolation might irritate it,
and add fuel to it: for in diseases, also, there is nothing more
hurtful than medicine applied too soon. I waited, therefore, until
it exhausted itself by its own violence, and being weakened by time,
so that it was able to bear remedies, would allow itself to be
handled and {321} touched. Beside this, while turning over all the
works which the greatest geniuses have composed, for the purpose
of soothing and pacifying grief, I could not find any instance of
one who had offered consolation to his relatives, while he himself
was being sorrowed over by them. Thus, the subject being a new one,
I hesitated and feared that instead of consoling, I might embitter
your grief. Then there was the thought that a man who had only just
raised his head after burying his child, and who wished to console
his friends, would require to use new phrases not taken from our
common every-day words of comfort: but every sorrow of more than
usual magnitude must needs prevent one’s choosing one’s words,
seeing that it often prevents one’s using one’s very voice. However
this may be, I will make the attempt, not trusting in my own genius,
but because my consolation will be most powerful since it is I who
offer it. You never would deny me anything, and I hope, though all
grief is obstinate, that you will surely not refuse me this request,
that you will allow me to set bounds to your sorrow.
II. See how far I have presumed upon your indulgence: I have no
doubts about my having more power over you than your grief, than
which nothing has more power over the unhappy. In order, therefore,
to avoid encountering it straightway, I will at first take its part
and offer it every encouragement: I will rip up and bring to light
again wounds already scarred. Some one may say, “What sort of
consolation is this, for a man to rake up buried evils, and to bring
all its sorrows before a mind which scarcely can bear the sight of
one?” but let him reflect that diseases which are so malignant that
they do but gather strength from ordinary remedies, may often be
cured by the opposite treatment: I will, therefore, display before
your grief all its woes and miseries: this will be to effect a cure,
not by soothing measures, but by cautery and {322} the knife. What
shall I gain by this? I shall make the mind that could overcome so
many sorrows, ashamed to bewail one wound more in a body so full
of scars. Let those whose feeble minds have been enervated by a
long period of happiness, weep and lament for many days, and faint
away on receiving the slightest blow: but those whose years have
all been passed amid catastrophes should bear the severest losses
with brave and unyielding patience. Continual misfortune has this
one advantage, that it ends by rendering callous those whom it is
always scourging. Ill fortune has given you no respite, and has not
left even your birthday free from the bitterest grief: you lost
your mother as soon as you were born, nay, while you were being
born, and you came into life, as it were, an outcast: you grew up
under a step-mother, whom you made into a mother by all the obedience
and respect which even a real daughter could have bestowed upon
her: and even a good step-mother costs every one dear. You lost
your most affectionate uncle, a brave and excellent man, just when
you were awaiting his return: and, lest Fortune should weaken its
blows by dividing them, within a month you lost your beloved husband,
by whom you had become the mother of three children. This sorrowful
news was brought you while you were already in mourning, while all
your children were absent, so that all your misfortunes seemed to
have been purposely brought upon you at a time when your grief could
nowhere find any repose. I pass over all the dangers and alarms
which you have endured without any respite: it was but the other
day that you received the bones of three of your grandchildren in
the bosom from which you had sent them forth: less than twenty days
after you had buried my child, who perished in your arms and amid
your kisses, you heard that I had been exiled: you wanted only this
drop in your cup, to have to weep for those who still lived.
{323}
III. The last wound is, I admit, the severest that you have ever
yet sustained: it has not merely torn the skin, but has pierced you
to the very heart: yet as recruits cry aloud when only slightly
wounded, and shudder more at the hands of the surgeon than at the
sword, while veterans even when transfixed allow their hurts to be
dressed without a groan, and as patiently as if they were in some
one else’s body, so now you ought to offer yourself courageously
to be healed. Lay aside lamentations and wailings, and all the usual
noisy manifestations of female sorrow: you have gained nothing by
so many misfortunes, if you have not learned how to suffer. Now,
do I seem not to have spared you? nay, I have not passed over any
of your sorrows, but have placed them all together in a mass before
you.
IV. I have done this by way of a heroic remedy: for I have determined
to conquer this grief of yours, not merely to limit it; and I shall
conquer it, I believe, if in the first place I can prove that I am
not suffering enough to entitle me to be called unhappy, let alone
to justify me in rendering my family unhappy: and, secondly, if I
can deal with your case and prove that even your misfortune, which
comes upon you entirely through me, is not a severe one.
The point to which I shall first address myself is that of which
your motherly love longs to hear, I mean, that I am not suffering:
if I can, I will make it clear to you that the events by which you
think that I am overwhelmed, are not unendurable: if you cannot
believe this, I at any rate shall be all the more pleased with
myself for being happy under circumstances which could make most
men miserable. You need not believe what others say about me: that
you may not be puzzled by any uncertainty as to what to think, I
distinctly tell you that I am not miserable: I will add, for your
greater comfort, that it is not possible for me to be made miserable.
V. We are born to a comfortable position enough, if we {324} do not
afterwards lose it: the aim of Nature has been to enable us to live
well without needing a vast apparatus to enable us to do so: every
man is able by himself to make himself happy. External circumstances
have very little importance either for good or for evil: the wise
man is neither elated by prosperity nor depressed by adversity; for
he has always endeavoured to depend chiefly upon himself and to
derive all his joys from himself. Do I, then, call myself a wise
man? far from it: for were I able to profess myself wise, I should
not only say that I was not unhappy, but should avow myself to be
the most fortunate of men, and to be raised almost to the level of
a god: as it is, I have applied myself to the society of wise men,
which suffices to lighten all sorrows, and, not being as yet able