Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
gloomy thoughts by that prattle to which no one can ever be weary
of listening? I pray the gods that he may survive us: may all the
cruelty of fate exhaust itself on me and go no further; may all the
sorrow destined for my mother and my grandmother fall upon me; but
let all the rest flourish as they do now: I shall make no complaints
about my childlessness or my exile, if only my sacrifice may be
received as a sufficient atonement, and my family suffer nothing
more. Hold in your bosom Novatilla, who soon will present you with
great-grandchildren, she whom I had so entirely adopted and made
my own, that, now that she has lost me, she seems like an orphan,
even though her father is alive. Love her for my sake as well as
for her own: Fortune has lately deprived her of her mother: your
affection will be able to prevent her really feeling the loss of
the mother whom she mourns. Take this opportunity of forming and
strengthening her principles; nothing sinks {349} so deeply into
the mind as the teaching which we receive in our earliest years;
let her become accustomed to hearing your discourses; let her
character be moulded according to your pleasure: she will gain much
even if you give her nothing more than your example. This continually
recurring duty will be a remedy in itself: for when your mind is
full of maternal sorrow, nothing can distract it from its grief
except either philosophic argument or honourable work. I should
count your father among your greatest consolations, were he not
absent: as it is, judge from your affection for me what his affection
is for you, and then you will see how much more just it is that you
should be preserved for him than that you should be sacrificed to
me. Whenever your keenest paroxysms of grief assail you and bid you
give way to them, think of your father. By giving him so many
grandchildren and great-grandchildren you have made yourself no
longer his only daughter; but you alone can crown his prosperous
life by a happy end: as long as he is alive it is impiety for you
to regret having been born.
XIX. I have hitherto said nothing of your chief source of consolation,
your sister, that most faithful heart which shares all your sorrows
as fully as your own, and who feels for all of us like a mother.
With her you have mingled your tears, on her bosom you have tasted
your first repose: she always feels for your troubles, and when I
am in the case she does not grieve for you alone. It was in her
arms that I was carried into Rome: by her affectionate and motherly
nursing I regained my strength after a long period of sickness: she
enlarged her influence to obtain the office of quaestor for me, and
her fondness for me made her conquer a shyness which at other times
made her shrink from speaking to, or loudly greeting her friends.
Neither her retired mode of life, nor her country-bred modesty, at
a time when so many women display such boldness of manner, her
placidity, nor her habits of solitary seclusion {350} prevented her
from becoming actually ambitious on my account. Here, my dearest
mother, is a source from which you may gain true consolation: join
yourself, as far as you are able, to her, bind yourself to her by
the closest embraces. Those who are in sorrow are wont to flee from
those who are dearest to them, and to seek liberty for the indulgence
of their grief: do you let her share your every thought: if you
wish to nurse your grief, she will be your companion, if you wish
to lay it aside she will bring it to an end. If, however, I rightly
understand the wisdom of that most perfect woman, she will not
suffer you to waste your life in unprofitable mourning, and will
tell you what happened in her own instance, which I myself witnessed.
During a sea-voyage she lost a beloved husband, my uncle, whom she
married when a maiden; she endured at the same time grief for him
and fear for herself, and at last, though shipwrecked, nevertheless
rescued his body from the vanquished tempest. How many noble deeds
are unknown to fame! If only she had had the simple-minded ancients
to admire her virtues, how many brilliant intellects would have
vied with one another in singing the praises of a wife who forgot
the weakness of her sex, forgot the perils of the sea, which terrify
even the boldest, exposed herself to death in order to lay him in
the earth, and who was so eager to give him decent burial that she
cared nothing about whether she shared it or no. All the poets have
made the wife[6] famous who gave herself to death instead of her
husband: my aunt did more when she risked her life in order to give
her husband a tomb: it shows greater love to endure the same peril
for a less important end. After this, no one need wonder that for
sixteen years, during which her husband governed the province of
Egypt, she was never beheld in public, never admitted any of the
natives to her house, never {351} begged any favour of her husband,
and never allowed anyone to beg one of her. Thus it came to pass
that a gossiping province, ingenious in inventing scandal about its
rulers, in which even the blameless often incurred disgrace, respected
her as a singular example of uprightness,[7] never made free with
her name,—a remarkable piece of self-restraint among a people who
will risk everything rather than forego a jest,—and that at the
present time it hopes for another governor’s wife like her, although
it has no reasonable expectation of ever seeing one. It would have
been greatly to her credit if the province had approved her conduct
for a space of sixteen years: it was much more creditable to her
that it knew not of her existence. I do not remind you of this in
order to celebrate her praises, for to take such scanty notice of
them is to curtail them, but in order that you may understand the
magnanimity of a woman who has not yielded either to ambition or
to avarice, those twin attendants and scourges of authority, who,
when her ship was disabled and her own death was impending, was not
restrained by fear from keeping fast hold of her husband’s dead
body, and who sought not how to escape from the wreck, but how to
carry him out of it with her. You must now show a virtue equal to
hers, recall your mind from grief, and take care that no one may
think that you are sorry that you have borne a son.
XX. However, since it is necessary, whatever you do, that your
thoughts should sometimes revert to me, and that I should now be
present to your mind more often than your other children, not because
they are less dear to you, but because it is natural to lay one’s
hands more often upon a place that pains one; learn how you are to
think of me: I am as joyous and cheerful as in my best days: indeed
these {352} days are my best, because my mind is relieved from all
pressure of business and is at leisure to attend to its own affairs,
and at one time amuses itself with lighter studies, at another
eagerly presses its inquiries into its own nature and that of the
universe: first it considers the countries of the world and their
position: then the character of the sea which flows between them,
and the alternate ebbings and flowings of its tides; next it
investigates all the terrors which hang between heaven and earth,
the region which is torn asunder by thunderings, lightnings, gusts
of wind, vapour, showers of snow and hail. Finally, having traversed
every one of the realms below, it soars to the highest heaven,
enjoys the noblest of all spectacles, that of things divine, and,
remembering itself to be eternal, reviews all that has been and all
that will be for ever and ever.
[1] Corsica.
[2] Seneca himself was of Spanish extraction.
[3] Qu., oysters from Britain.
[4] The allusion is evidently to Regulus.
[5] I think Madvig’s _ademisset_ spoils the sense. _Dedisset_ means:
“when you bid me mourn the loss of the Gracchi you bid me blame
fortune for having given me such sons.” “’Tis better to have loved
and lost than to have never loved at all.”—J. E. B. M.
[6] Alcestis.
[7] The context shows that _sanctitas_ is opposed to “rapacity,”
“taking bribes,” like the Celaeno of Juv. viii.—J. E. B. M.
{353}
THE TWELFTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED
TO POLYBIUS.
OF CONSOLATION.
I. .... compared with ours is firm and lasting; but if you transfer
it to the domain of Nature, which destroys everything and calls
everything back to the place from whence it came, it is transitory.
What, indeed, have mortal hands made that is not mortal? The seven
wonders of the world, and any even greater wonders which the ambition
of later ages has constructed, will be seen some day levelled with
the ground. So it is: nothing lasts for ever, few things even last
for long: all are susceptible of decay in one way or another. The
ways in which things come to an end are manifold, but yet everything
that has a beginning has an end also. Some threaten the world with
death, and, though you may think the thought to be impious, this
entire universe, containing gods and men and all their works will
some day be swept away and plunged a second time into its original
darkness and chaos. Weep, if you can, after this, over the loss of
any individual life! Can we mourn the ashes of Carthage, Numantia,
Corinth, or any city that has fallen from a high estate, when we
know that the world must perish, albeit it has no place {354} into
which it can fall. Weep, if you can, because Fate has not spared
you, she who some day will dare to work so great a wickedness! Who
can be so haughtily and peevishly arrogant as to expect that this
law of nature by which everything is brought to an end will be set
aside in his own case, and that his own house will be exempted from
the ruin which menaces the whole world itself? It is, therefore, a
great consolation to reflect that what has happened to us has
happened to every one before us and will happen to every one after
us. In my opinion, nature has made her cruellest acts affect all
men alike, in order that the universality of their lot might console
them for its hardship.
II. It will also be no small assistance to you to reflect that grief
can do no good either to him whom you have lost or to yourself, and
you would not wish to protract what is useless: for if we could
gain anything by sorrow, I should not refuse to bestow upon your
misfortunes whatever tears my own have left at my disposal: I would
force some drops to flow from these eyes, exhausted as they are
with weeping over my own domestic afflictions, were it likely to
be of any service to you. Why do you hesitate? let us lament together,
and I will even make this quarrel my own:—“Fortune, whom every one
thinks most unjust, you seemed hitherto to have restrained yourself
from attacking one who by your favour had become the object of such
universal respect that—rare distinction for any one—his prosperity
had excited no jealousy: but now, behold! you have dealt him the
cruellest wound which, while Caesar lives, he could receive, and
after reconnoitring him from all sides you have discovered that on
this point alone he was exposed to your strokes. What else indeed
could you have done to him? should you take away his wealth? he
never was its slave: now he has even as far as possible put it away
from him, and the chief thing that he has gained by his unrivalled
facilities {355} for amassing money has been to despise it. Should
you take away his friends? you knew that he was of so loveable a
disposition that he could easily gain others to replace those whom
he might lose: for of all the powerful officers of the Imperial
household he seems to me to be the only one whom all men wish to
have for their friend without considering how advantageous his
friendship would be. Should you take away his reputation? it is so