Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
firmly established, that even you could not shake it. Should you
take away his health? you knew that his mind was so grounded on
philosophical studies, in whose schools he was born as well as bred,
that it would rise superior to any sufferings of the body. Should
you take away his breath? how small an injury would that be to him?
fame promised his genius one of the longest of lives: he himself
has taken care that his better part should remain alive, and has
guarded himself against death by the composition of his admirable
works of eloquence: as long as literature shall be held in any
honour, as long as the vigour of the Latin or the grace of the Greek
language shall endure, he will flourish together with their greatest
writers, with whose genius he has measured, or, if his modesty will
not let me say this, has connected his own. This, then, was the
only means you could devise of doing him a great injury. The better
a man is, the more frequently he is wont to suffer from your
indiscriminate rage, you who are to be feared even when you are
bestowing benefits upon one. How little it would have cost you to
avert this blow from one upon whom your favours seemed to be conferred
according to some regular plan, and not to be flung at random in
your wonted fashion!”
III. Let us add, if you please, to these grounds of complaint the
disposition of the youth himself, cut off in the midst of its first
growth. He was worthy to be your brother: you most certainly did
not deserve to be given {356} any pain through your brother, even
though he had been unworthy. All men alike bear witness to his
merits: he is regretted for your sake, and is praised for his own.
He had no qualities which you would not be glad to recognize. You
would indeed have been good to a worse brother, but to him your
fraternal love was given all the more freely because in him it found
so fitting a field for its exercise. No one ever was made to feel
his influence by receiving wrongs at his hands, he never used the
fact of your being his brother to threaten any one: he had moulded
his character after the pattern of your modesty, and reflected how
great a glory and how great a burden you were to your family: the
burden he was able to sustain; but, O pitiless Fate, always unjust
to virtue—before your brother could taste the happiness of his
position, he was called away. I am well aware that I express my
feelings inadequately; for nothing is harder than to find words
which adequately represent great grief: still, let us again lament
for him, if it be of any use to do so:—“What did you mean, Fortune,
by being so unjust and so savage? did you so soon repent you of
your favour? What cruelty it was to fall upon brothers, to break
up so loving a circle by so deadly an attack; why did you bring
mourning into a house so plenteously stocked with admirable youths,
in which no brother came short of the high standard of the rest,
and without any cause pluck one of them away? So, then, scrupulous
innocency of life, old-fashioned frugality, the power of amassing
vast wealth wielded with the greatest self-denial, a true and
imperishable love of literature, a mind free from the least spot
of sin, all avail nothing: Polybius is in mourning, and, warned by
the fate of one brother what he may have to dread for the rest, he
fears for the very persons who soothe his grief. O shame! Polybius
is in mourning, and mourns even though he still enjoys the favour
of Caesar. No doubt, Fortune, what you aimed at in {357} your
impotent rage was to prove that no one could be protected from your
attacks, not even by Caesar himself.”
IV. We might go on blaming fate much longer, but we cannot alter
it: it stands harsh and inexorable: no one can move it by reproaches,
by tears, or by justice. Fate never spares any one, never makes
allowances to any one. Let us, then, refrain from unprofitable
tears: for our grief will carry us away to join him sooner than it
will bring him back to us: and if it tortures us without helping
us, we ought to lay it aside as soon as possible, and restore the
tone of our minds after their indulgence in that vain solace and
the bitter luxury of woe: for unless reason puts an end to our
tears, fortune will not do so. Look around, I pray you, upon all
mortals: everywhere there is ample and constant reason for weeping:
one man is driven to daily labour by toilsome poverty, another is
tormented by never-resting ambition, another fears the very riches
that he once wished for, and suffers from the granting of his own
prayer: one man is made wretched by loneliness, another by labour,
another by the crowds which always besiege his antechamber. This
man mourns because he has children, that one because he has lost
them. Tears will fail us sooner than causes for shedding them. Do
you not see what sort of a life it must be that Nature has promised
to us men when she makes us weep as soon as we are born? We begin
life in this fashion, and all the chain of years that follow it is
in harmony with it. Thus we pass our lives, and consequently we
ought to be sparing in doing what we have to do so often, and when
we look back upon the mass of sorrows that hangs over us, we ought,
if not to end our tears, at any rate to reserve them. There is
nothing that we ought to husband more carefully than this, which
we are so often obliged to expend.
V. It will also be no small assistance to you to consider that there
is no one to whom your grief is more offensive {358} than he upon
whom it is nominally bestowed: he either does not wish you to suffer
or does not understand why you suffer. There is, therefore, no
reason for a service which is useless if it is not felt by him who
is the object of it, and which is displeasing to him if it is. I
can boldly affirm that there is no one in the whole world who derives
any pleasure from your tears. What then? do you suppose that your
brother has a feeling against you which no one else has, that he
wishes you to be injured by your self-torture, that he desires to
separate you from the business of your life, that is, from philosophy
and from Caesar? that is not likely: for he always gave way to you
as a brother, respected you as a parent, courted you as a superior.
He wishes to be fondly remembered by you, but not to be a source
of agony to you. Why, then, should you insist upon pining away with
a grief which, if the dead have any feelings, your brother wishes
to bring to an end? If it were any other brother about whose affection
there could be any question, I should put all this vaguely, and
say, “If your brother wishes you to be tortured with endless mourning,
he does not deserve such affection: if he does not wish it, dismiss
the grief which affects you both: an unnatural brother ought not,
a good brother would not wish to be so mourned for,” but with one
whose brotherly love has been so clearly proved, we may be quite
sure that nothing could hurt him more than that you should be hurt
by his loss, that it should agonize you, that your eyes, most
undeserving as they are of such a fate, should be by the same cause
continually filled and drained of never-ceasing tears.
Nothing however will restrain your loving nature from these useless
tears so effectually as the reflexion that you ought to show your
brothers an example by bearing this outrage of fortune bravely. You
ought to imitate great generals in times of disaster, when they are
careful to affect {359} a cheerful demeanour, and conceal misfortunes
by a counterfeited joyousness, lest, if the soldiers saw their
leader cast down, they should themselves become dispirited. This
must now be done by you also. Put on a countenance that does not
reflect your feelings, and if you possibly can, cast out conceal
it within you and hide it away so that it may not be seen, and take
care that your brothers, who will think everything honourable that
they see you doing, imitate you in this and take courage from the
sight of your looks. It is your duty to be both their comfort and
their consoler; but you will have no power to check their grief if
you humour your own.
VI. It may also keep you from excessive grief if you remind yourself
that nothing which you do can be done in secret: all men agree in
regarding you as an important personage, and you must keep up this
character: you are encompassed by all that mass of offerers of
consolation who all are peering into your mind to learn how much
strength it has to resist grief, and whether you merely know how
to avail yourself cunningly of prosperity, or whether you can also
bear adversity with a manly spirit: the expression of your very
eyes is watched. Those who are able to conceal their feelings may
indulge them more freely; but you are not free to have any secresy:
your fortune has set you in so brilliant a position, that nothing
which you do can be hid: all men will know how you have borne this
wound of yours, whether you laid down your arms at the first shock
or whether you stood your ground. Long ago the love of Caesar raised
you, and your own literary pursuits brought you, to the highest
rank in the state: nothing vulgar, nothing mean befits you: yet
what can be meaner or more womanish than to make oneself a victim
to grief? Although your sorrow is as great as that of your brothers,
yet you may not indulge it as much as they: the ideas which the
public have formed about your philosophic {360} learning and your
character make many things impossible for you. Men demand much, and
expect much from you: you ought not to have drawn all eyes upon
yourself, if you wished to be allowed to act as you pleased: as it
is, you must make good that of which you have given promise. All
those, who praise the works of your genius, who make copies of them,
who need your genius if they do not need your fortune, are as guards
set over your mind: you cannot, therefore, ever do anything unworthy
of the character of a thorough philosopher and sage, without many
men feeling sorry that they ever admired you. You may not weep
beyond reason: nor is this the only thing that you may not do: you
may not so much as remain asleep after daybreak, or retreat from
the noisy troubles of public business to the peaceful repose of the
country, or refresh yourself with a pleasure tour when wearied by
constant attendance to the duties of your toilsome post, or amuse
yourself with beholding various shows, or even arrange your day
according to your own wish. Many things are forbidden to you which
are permitted to the poorest beggars that lie about in holes and
corners. A great fortune is a great slavery; you may not do anything
according to your wish: you must give audiences to all those thousands
of people, you must take charge of all those petitions: you must
cheer yourself up, in order that all this mass of business which
flows hither from every part of the world may be offered in due
order for the consideration of our excellent emperor. I repeat, you
yourself are forbidden to weep, that you may be able to listen to
so many weeping petitioners: your own tears must be dried, in order
that the tears of those who are in peril and who desire to obtain
the gracious pardon of the kindest-hearted of Caesars may be dried.
VII. These reflexions will serve you as partial remedies for your
grief, but if you wish to forget it altogether, remember Caesar:
think with what loyalty, with what {361} industry you are bound to
requite the favours which he has shown you: you will then see that
you can no more sink beneath your burden than could he of whom the
myths tells us, he whose shoulders upheld the world. Even Caesar,
who may do all things, may not do many things for this very reason:
his watchfulness protects all men’s sleep, his labour guarantees