Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
enjoy an uninterrupted course of good fortune.
VIII. Varro, that most learned of all the Romans, thought that for
the mere change of place, apart from the other evils attendant on
exile, we may find a sufficient remedy in the thought that wherever
we go we always have the same Nature to deal with. Marcus Brutus
thought that there was sufficient comfort in the thought that those
who go into exile are permitted to carry their virtues thither with
them. Though one might think that neither of these alone were able
to console an exile, yet it must be confessed that when combined
they have great power: for how very little it is that we lose!
whithersoever we betake ourselves two most excellent things will
accompany us, namely, a common Nature and our own especial virtue.
Believe me, this is the work of whoever was the Creator of the
universe, whether he be an all-powerful deity, an incorporeal mind
which effects vast works, a divine spirit by which all things from
the greatest to the smallest are equally pervaded, or {331} fate
and an unalterable connected sequence of events, this, I say, is
its work, that nothing above the very lowest can ever fall into the
power of another: all that is best for a man’s enjoyment lies beyond
human power, and can neither be bestowed or taken away: this world,
the greatest and the most beautiful of Nature’s productions, and
its noblest part, a mind which can behold and admire it, are our
own property, and will remain with us as long as we ourselves endure.
Let us therefore briskly and cheerfully hasten with undaunted steps
whithersoever circumstances call us: let us wander over whatever
countries we please; no place of banishment can be found in the
whole world in which man cannot find a home. I can raise my eyes
from the earth to the sky in one place as well as in another; the
heavenly bodies are everywhere equally near to mankind: accordingly,
as long as my eyes are not deprived of that spectacle of which they
never can have their fill, as long as I am allowed to gaze on the
sun and moon, to dwell upon the other stars, to speculate upon their
risings and settings, their periods, and the reasons why they move
faster or slower, to see so many stars glittering throughout the
night, some fixed, some not moving in a wide orbit but revolving
in their own proper track, some suddenly diverging from it, some
dazzling our eyes by a fiery blaze as though they were falling, or
flying along drawing after them a long trail of brilliant light:
while I am permitted to commune with these, and to hold intercourse,
as far as a human being may, with all the company of heaven, while
I can raise my spirit aloft to view its kindred sparks above, what
does it matter upon what soil I tread?
IX. “But this country does not produce beautiful or fruit-bearing
trees; it is not watered by the courses of large or navigable rivers;
it bears nothing which other nations would covet, since its produce
barely suffices to support its inhabitants: no precious marbles are
quarried here, no veins {332} of gold and silver are dug out.” What
of that! It must be a narrow mind that takes pleasure in things of
the earth: it ought to be turned away from them to the contemplation
of those which can be seen everywhere, which are equally brilliant
everywhere: we ought to reflect, also, that these vulgar matters
by a mistaken perversion of ideas prevent really good things reaching
us: the further men stretch out their porticos, the higher they
raise their towers, the more widely they extend their streets, the
deeper they sink their retreats from the heats of summer, the more
ponderous the roofs with which they cover their banqueting halls,
the more there will be to obstruct their view of heaven. Fortune
has cast you into a country in which there is no lodging more
splendid than a cottage: you must indeed have a poor spirit, and
one which seeks low sources of consolation, if you endure this
bravely because you have seen the cottage of Romulus: say, rather,
“Should that lowly barn be entered by the virtues, it will straightway
become more beautiful than any temple, because within it will be
seen justice, self-restraint, prudence, love, a right division of
all duties, a knowledge of all things on earth and in heaven. No
place can be narrow, if it contains such a company of the greatest
virtues; no exile can be irksome in which one can be attended by
these companions. Brutus, in the book which he wrote upon virtue,
says that he saw Marcellus in exile at Mytilene, living as happily
as it is permitted to man to live, and never keener in his pursuit
of literature than at that time. He consequently adds the reflexion:
‘I seemed rather to be going into exile myself when I had to return
without him, than to be leaving him in exile.’ O how much more
fortunate was Marcellus at that time, when Brutus praised him for
his exile, than when Rome praised him for his consulship! what a
man that must have been who made any one think himself exiled because
he was leaving him in exile! what a man that {333} must have been
who attracted the admiration of one whom even his friend Cato
admired! Brutus goes on to say:— ‘Gaius Caesar sailed past Mytilene
without landing, because he could not bear to see a fallen man.’
The Senate did indeed obtain his recall by public petition, being
so anxious and sorrowful the while, that you would have thought
that they all were of Brutus’s mind that day, and were not pleading
the cause of Marcellus, but their own, that they might not be sent
into exile by being deprived of him: yet he gained far greater glory
on the day when Brutus could not bear to leave him in exile, and
Caesar could not bear to see him: for each of them bore witness to
his worth: Brutus grieved, and Caesar blushed at going home without
Marcellus. Can you doubt that so great a man as Marcellus frequently
encouraged himself to endure his exile patiently in some such terms
as these: “The loss of your country is no misery to you: you have
so steeped yourself in philosophic lore, as to know that all the
world is the wise man’s country? What! was not this very man who
banished you absent from his country for ten successive years? he
was, no doubt, engaged in the extension of the empire, but for all
that he was absent from his country. Now see how his presence is
required in Africa, which threatens to re-kindle the war, in Spain
which is nursing up again the strength of the broken and shattered
opposite faction, in treacherous Egypt, in fine, in all the parts
of the world, for all are watching their opportunity to seize the
empire at a disadvantage. Which will he go to meet first? which
part of the universal conspiracy will he first oppose? His victory
will drag him through every country in the world. Let nations look
up to him and worship him: do thou live satisfied with the admiration
of Brutus.”
X. Marcellus, then, nobly endured his exile, and his change of place
made no change in his mind, even though it was accompanied by
poverty, in which every man who {334} has not fallen into the madness
of avarice and luxury, which upset all our ideas, sees no harm.
Indeed, how very little is required to keep a man alive? and who,
that has any virtue whatever, will find this fail him? As for myself,
I do not feel that I have lost my wealth, but my occupation: the
wants of the body are few: it wants protection from the cold, and
the means of allaying hunger and thirst: all desires beyond these
are vices, not necessities. There is no need for prying into all
the depths of the sea, for loading one’s stomach with heaps of
slaughtered animals, or for tearing up shell-fish[3] from the unknown
shore of the furthest sea: may the gods and goddesses bring ruin
upon those whose luxury transcends the bounds of an empire which
is already perilously wide. They want to have their ostentatious
kitchens supplied with game from the other side of the Phasis, and
though Rome has not yet obtained satisfaction from the Parthians,
they are not ashamed to obtain birds from them: they bring together
from all regions everything, known or unknown, to tempt their
fastidious palate: food, which their stomach, worn out with delicacies,
can scarcely retain, is brought from the most distant ocean: they
vomit that they may eat, and eat that they may vomit, and do not
even deign to digest the banquets which they ransack the globe to
obtain. If a man despises these things, what harm can poverty do
him? If he desires them, then poverty even does him good, for he
is cured in spite of himself, and though he will not receive remedies
even upon compulsion, yet while he is unable to fulfil his wishes
he is as though he had them not. Gaius Caesar, whom in my opinion
Nature produced in order to show what unlimited vice would be capable
of when combined with unlimited power, dined one day at a cost of
ten millions of sesterces: and though in this he had the {335}
assistance of the intelligence of all his subjects, yet he could
hardly find how to make one dinner out of the tribute-money of three
provinces. How unhappy are they whose appetite can only be aroused
by costly food! and the costliness of food depends not upon its
delightful flavour and sweetness of taste, but upon its rarity and
the difficulty of procuring it: otherwise, if they chose to return
to their sound senses, what need would they have of so many arts
which minister to the stomach? of so great a commerce? of such
ravaging of forests? of such ransacking of the depths of the sea?
Food is to be found everywhere, and has been placed by Nature in
every part the world, but they pass it by as though they were blind,
and wander through all countries, cross the seas, and excite at a
great cost the hunger which they might allay at a small one. One
would like to say: Why do you launch ships? why do you arm your
hands for battle both with men and wild beasts? why do you run so
riotously hither and thither? why do you amass fortune after fortune?
Are you unwilling to remember how small our bodies are? is it not
frenzy and the wildest insanity to wish for so much when you can
contain so little? Though you may increase your income, and extend
the boundaries of your property, yet you never can enlarge your own
bodies: when your business transactions have turned out well, when
you have made a successful campaign, when you have collected the
food for which you have hunted through all lands, you will have no
place in which to bestow all these superfluities. Why do you strive
to obtain so much? Do you think that our ancestors, whose virtue
supports our vices even to the present day, were unhappy, though
they dressed their food with their own hands, though the earth was
their bed, though their roofs did not yet glitter with gold, nor
their temples with precious stones? and so they used then to swear
with scrupulous honesty by earthenware {336} gods; those who called
these gods to witness would go back to the enemy for certain death
rather than break their word.[4] Do you suppose that our dictator
who granted an audience to the ambassadors of the Samnites, while
he roasted the commonest food before the fire himself with that
very hand with which he had so often smitten the enemy, and with
which he had placed his laurel wreath upon the lap of Capitolian
Jove, enjoyed life less than the Apicius who lived in our own days,
whose habits tainted the entire century, who set himself up as a
professor of gastronomy in that very city from which philosophers
once were banished as corrupters of youth? It is worth while to
know his end. After he had spent a hundred millions of sesterces
on his kitchen, and had wasted on each single banquet a sum equal
to so many presents from the reigning emperors, and the vast revenue