Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
Let other mothers look to that, who make use of their sons’ authority
with a woman’s passion, who are ambitious through their sons because
they cannot bear office themselves, who spend their sons’ inheritance,
and yet are eager to inherit it, and who weary their sons by lending
their eloquence to others: you have always rejoiced exceedingly in
the successes of your sons, and have made no use of them whatever:
you have always set bounds to our generosity, although you set none
to your own: you, while a minor under the power of the head of the
family, still used to make presents to your wealthy sons: you managed
our inheritances with as much care as if you were working for your
own, yet refrained from touching them as scrupulously as if they
belonged to strangers: you have spared to use our influence, as
though you enjoyed other means of your own, and you have taken no
part in the public offices to which we have been elected beyond
rejoicing in our success and paying our expenses: your indulgence
has never been tainted by any thought of profit, and you cannot
regret the loss of your son for a reason which never had any weight
with you before his exile.
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XV. All my powers of consolation must be directed to the other
point, the true source of your maternal grief. You say, “I am
deprived of the embraces of my darling son, I cannot enjoy the
pleasure of seeing him and of hearing him talk. Where is he at whose
sight I used to smooth my troubled brow, in whose keeping I used
to deposit all my cares? Where is his conversation, of which I never
could have enough? his studies, in which I used to take part with
more than a woman’s eagerness, with more than a mother’s familiarity?
Where are our meetings? the boyish delight which he always showed
at the sight of his mother?” To all this you add the actual places
of our merrymakings and conversation, and, what must needs have
more power to move you than anything else, the traces of our late
social life, for Fortune treated you with the additional cruelty
of allowing you to depart on the very third day before my ruin,
without a trace of anxiety, and not fearing anything of the kind.
It was well that we had been separated by a vast distance: it was
well that an absence of some years had prepared you to bear this
blow: you came home, not to take any pleasure in your son, but to
get rid of the habit of longing for him. Had you been absent long
before, you would have borne it more bravely, as the very length
of your absence would have moderated your longing to see me: had
you never gone away, you would at any rate have gained one last
advantage in seeing your son for two days longer: as it was, cruel
Fate so arranged it that you were not present with me during my
good fortune, and yet have not become accustomed to my absence. But
the harder these things are to bear, the more virtue you must summon
to your aid, and the more bravely you must struggle as it were with
an enemy whom you know well, and whom you have already often
conquered. This blood did not flow from a body previously unhurt:
you have been struck through the scar of an old wound.
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XVI. You have no grounds for excusing yourself on the ground of
being a woman, who has a sort of right to weep without restraint,
though not without limit. For this reason our ancestors allotted a
space of ten months’ mourning for women who had lost their husbands,
thus settling the violence of a woman’s grief by a public ordinance.
They did not forbid them to mourn, but they set limits to their
grief: for while it is a foolish weakness to give way to endless
grief when you lose one of those dearest to you, yet it shows an
unnatural hardness of heart to express no grief at all: the best
middle course between affection and hard common sense is both to
feel regret and to restrain it. You need not look at certain women
whose sorrow, when once begun, has been ended only by death: you
know some who after the loss of their sons have never laid aside
the garb of mourning: you are constitutionally stronger than these,
and from you more is required. You cannot avail yourself of the
excuse of being a woman, for you have no womanish vices. Unchastity,
the greatest evil of the age, has never classed you with the majority
of women; you have not been tempted either by gems or by pearls;
riches have not allured you into thinking them the greatest blessing
that man can own; respectably brought up as you were in an old-fashioned
and strict household, you have never been led astray by that imitation
of others which is so full of danger even to virtuous women. You
have never been ashamed of your fruitfulness as though it were a
reproach to your youth: you never concealed the signs of pregnancy
as though it were an unbecoming burden, nor did you ever destroy
your expected child within your womb after the fashion of many other
women, whose attractions are to be found in their beauty alone. You
never defiled your face with paints or cosmetics: you never liked
clothes which showed the figure as plainly as though it were naked:
your sole ornament has been a consummate {345} loveliness which no
time can impair, your greatest glory has been your modesty. You
cannot, therefore, plead your womanhood as an excuse for your grief,
because your virtues have raised you above it: you ought to be as
superior to womanish tears as you are to womanish vices. Even women
would not allow you to pine away after receiving this blow, but
would bid you quickly and calmly go through the necessary amount
of mourning, and then to arise and shake it off: I mean, if you are
willing to take as your models those women whose eminent virtue has
given them a place among even great men. Misfortune reduced the
number of Cornelia’s children from twelve to two: if you count the
number of their deaths, Cornelia had lost ten: if you weigh them,
she had lost the Gracchi: nevertheless, when her friends were weeping
around her and using too bitter imprecations against her fate, she
forbade them to blame fortune for having deprived[5] her of her
sons the Gracchi. Such ought to have been the mother of him who,
when speaking in the Forum, said, “Would you speak evil of the
mother who bore me?” The mother’s speech seems to me to show a far
greater spirit: the son set a high value on the birth of the Gracchi;
the mother set an equal value on their deaths. Rutilia followed her
son Cotta into exile, and was so passionately attached to him that
she could bear exile better than absence from him; nor did she
return home before her son did so: after he had been restored, and
had been raised to honour in the republic, she bore his death as
bravely as she had borne his exile. No one saw any traces of tears
upon her cheeks after she had buried her son: she displayed her
courage when he was banished, her wisdom when he died: she allowed
no {346} considerations either to interfere with her affection, or
to force her to protract a useless and foolish mourning. These are
the women with whom I wish you to be numbered: you have the best
reasons for restraining and suppressing your sorrow as they did,
because you have always imitated their lives.
XVII. I am aware that this is a matter which is not in our power,
and that none of the passions, least of all that which arises from
grief, are obedient to our wishes; indeed, it is overbearing and
obstinate, and stubbornly rejects all remedies: we sometimes wish
to crush it, and to swallow our emotion, but, nevertheless, tears
flow over our carefully arranged and made-up countenance. Sometimes
we occupy our minds with public spectacles and shows of gladiators;
but during the very sights by which it is amused, the mind is wrung
by slight touches of sorrow. It is better, therefore, to conquer
it than to cheat it; for a grief which has been deceived and driven
away either by pleasure or by business rises again, and its period
of rest does but give it strength for a more terrible attack; but
a grief which has been conquered by reason is appeased for ever. I
shall not, then, give you the advice which so many, I know, adopt,
that you should distract your thoughts by a long journey, or amuse
them by a beautiful one; that you should spend much of your time
in the careful examination of accounts, and the management of your
estate, and that you should keep constantly engaging in new
enterprises: all these things avail but little, and do not cure,
but merely obstruct our sorrow. I had rather it should be brought
to an end than that it should be cheated: and, therefore, I would
fain lead you to the study of philosophy, the true place of refuge
for all those who are flying from the cruelty of Fortune: this will
heal your wounds and take away all your sadness: to this you would
now have to apply yourself, even though you {347} had never done
so before; but as far as my father’s old-fashioned strictness
permitted, you have gained a superficial, though not a thorough
knowledge of all liberal studies. Would that my father, most excellent
man that he was, had been less devoted to the customs of our
ancestors, and had been willing to have you thoroughly instructed
in the elements of philosophy, instead of receiving a mere smattering
of it! I should not now need to be providing you with the means of
struggling against Fortune, but you would offer them to me: but he
did not allow you to pursue your studies far, because some women
use literature to teach them luxury instead of wisdom. Still, thanks
to your keen intellectual appetite, you learned more than one could
have expected in the time: you laid the foundations of all good
learning: now return to them: they will render you safe, they will
console you, and charm you. If once they have thoroughly entered
into your mind, grief, anxiety, the distress of vain suffering will
never gain admittance thither: your breast will not be open to any
of these; against all other vices it has long been closed. Philosophy
is your most trustworthy guardian, and it alone can save you from
the attacks of Fortune.
XVIII. Since, however, you require something to lean upon until you
can reach that haven of rest which philosophy offers to you, I wish
in the meantime to point out to you the consolations which you have.
Look at my two brothers—while they are safe, you have no grounds
for complaint against Fortune; you can derive pleasure from the
virtues of each of them, different as they are; the one has gained
high office by attention to business, the other has philosophically
despised it. Rejoice in the great place of one of your sons, in the
peaceful retirement of the other, in the filial affection of both.
I know my brothers’ most secret motives: the one adorns his high
office in order to confer lustre upon you, the {348} other has
withdrawn from the world into his life of quiet and contemplation,
that he may have full enjoyment of your society. Fortune has consulted
both your safety and your pleasure in her disposal of your two sons:
you may be protected by the authority of the one, and delighted by
the literary leisure of the other. They will vie with one another
in dutiful affection to you, and the loss of one son will be supplied
by the love of two others. I can confidently promise that you will
find nothing wanting in your sons except their number. Now, then,
turn your eyes from them to your grandchildren; to Marcus, that
most engaging child, whose sight no sorrow can withstand. No grief
can be so great or so fresh in any one’s bosom as not to be charmed
away by his presence. Where are the tears which his joyousness could
not dry? whose heart is so nipped by sorrow that his animation would
not cause it to dilate? who would not be rendered mirthful by his
playfulness? who would not be attracted and made to forget his