Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
that he would die some day.” Indeed, you need not be surprised at
the son of such a man being able to die bravely. He did not receive
the tidings of his son’s death as news: for what is there new in a
man’s dying, when his whole life is merely a journey towards death?
“When I begat him, I knew that he would die some day,” said he: and
then he added, what showed even more wisdom and courage, “It was
for this that I brought him up.” It is for this that we have all
been brought up: every one who is brought into life is intended to
die. Let us enjoy what is given to us, and give it back when it is
asked for: the Fates lay their hands on some men at some times, and
on other men at other times, but they will never pass any one by
altogether. Our mind ought always to be on the alert, and while it
ought never to fear what is certain to happen, it ought always to
be ready for what may happen at any time. Why need I tell you of
generals and the children of generals, of men ennobled by many
consulships and triumphs, who have succumbed to pitiless fate? whole
kingdoms together with their kings, whole nations with all their
component tribes, have all submitted to their doom. All men, nay,
all things look forward to an end of their days: yet all do not
come to the same end: one man loses his life in the midst of his
career, another at the very beginning of it, another seems hardly
able to free himself from it when worn out with extreme old age,
and eager to {368} be released: we are all going to the same place,
but we all go thither at different times, I know not whether it is
more foolish not to know the law of mortality, or more presumptuous
to refuse to obey it. Come, take into your hands the poems[2] of
whichever you please of those two authors upon whom your genius has
expended so much labour, whom you have so well paraphrased, that
although the structure of the verse be removed, its charm nevertheless
is preserved; for you have transferred them from one language to
another so well as to effect the most difficult matter of all, that
of making all the beauties of the original reappear in a foreign
speech: among their works you will find no volume which will not
offer you numberless instances of the vicissitudes of human life,
of the uncertainty of events, and of tears shed for various reasons.
Read with what fire you have thundered out their swelling phrases:
you will feel ashamed of suddenly failing and falling short of the
elevation of their magnificent language. Do not commit the fault
of making every one, who according to his ability admires your
writings, ask how so frail a mind can have formed such stable and
well-connected ideas.
XII. Turn yourself away from these thoughts which torment you, and
look rather at those numerous and powerful sources of consolation
which you possess: look at your excellent brothers, look at your
wife and your son. It is to guarantee the safety of all these that
Fortune[3] has struck you in this quarter: you have many left in
whom you can take comfort. Guard yourself from the shame of letting
all men think that a single grief has more power with you than these
many consolations. You see all of them cast down into the same
despondency as yourself, and you know that they cannot help you,
nay, that on the other hand they look to {369} you to encourage
them: wherefore, the less learning and the less intellect they
possess, the more vigorously you ought to withstand the evil which
has fallen upon you all. The very fact of one’s grief being shared
by many persons acts as a consolation, because if it be distributed
among such a number the share of it which falls upon you must be
small. I shall never cease to recall your thoughts to Caesar. While
he governs the earth, and shows how far better the empire may be
maintained by kindnesses than by arms, while he presides over the
affairs of mankind, there is no danger of your feeling that you
have lost anything: in this fact alone you will find ample help and
ample consolation; raise yourself up, and fix your eyes upon Caesar
whenever tears rise to them; they will become dry on beholding that
greatest and most brilliant light; his splendour will attract them
and firmly attach them to himself, so that they are able to see
nothing else. He whom you behold both by day and by night, from
whom your mind never deviates to meaner matters, must occupy your
thoughts and be your defence against Fortune; indeed, so kind and
gracious as he is towards all his followers that he has already, I
doubt not, laid many healing balms upon this wound of yours, and
furnished you with many antidotes for your sorrow. Why, even had
he done nothing of the kind, is not the mere sight and thought of
Caesar in itself your greatest consolation? May the gods and goddesses
long spare him to the earth: may he rival the deeds of the Emperor
Augustus, and surpass him in length of days! as long as he remains
among mortals, may he never be reminded that any of his house are
mortal: may he train up his son by long and faithful service to be
the ruler of the Roman people, and see him share his father’s power
before he succeeds to it: may the day on which his kindred shall
claim him for heaven be far distant, and may our grandchildren alone
be alive to see it.
{370}
XIII. Fortune, refrain your hands from him, and show your power
over him only in doing him good: allow him to heal the long sickness
from which mankind has suffered; to replace and restore whatever
has been shattered by the frenzy of our late sovereign: may this
star, which has shed its rays upon a world overthrown and cast into
darkness, ever shine brightly: may he give peace to Germany, open
Britain to us, and lead through the city triumphs, both over the
nations whom his fathers conquered, and over new ones. Of these his
clemency, the first of his many virtues, gives me hopes of being a
spectator: for he has not so utterly cast me down that he will never
raise me up again; nay, he has not cast me down at all; rather he
has supported me when I was struck by evil fortune and was tottering,
and has gently used his godlike hand to break my headlong fall: he
pleaded with the Senate on my behalf, and not only gave me my life
but even begged it for me. He will see to my cause: let him judge
my cause to be such as he would desire; let his justice pronounce
it good or his clemency so regard it: his kindness to me will be
equal in either case, whether he knows me to be innocent or chooses
that I should be thought so. Meanwhile it is a great comfort to me
for my own miseries to behold his pardons travelling throughout the
world: even from the corner in which I am confined his mercy has
unearthed and restored to light many exiles who had been buried and
forgotten here for long years, and I have no fear that I alone shall
be passed over by it. He best knows the time at which he ought to
show favour to each man: I will use my utmost efforts to prevent
his having to blush when he comes to me. O how blessed is your
clemency, Caesar, which makes exiles live more peacefully during
your reign than princes did in that of Gaius! We do not tremble or
expect the fatal stroke every hour, nor are we terrified whenever
a ship comes in sight: you have set bounds to the cruelty of Fortune
towards {371} us, and have given us present peace and hopes of a
happier future. You may indeed be sure that those thunderbolts alone
are just which are worshipped even by those who are struck by them.
XIV. Thus this prince, who is the universal consoler of all men,
has, unless I am altogether mistaken, already revived your spirit
and applied more powerful remedies to so severe a wound than I can:
he has already strengthened you in every way: his singularly retentive
memory has already furnished you with all the examples which will
produce tranquillity: his practised eloquence has already displayed
before you all the precepts of sages. No one therefore could console
you as well as he: when he speaks his words have greater weight,
as though they were the utterances of an oracle: his divine authority
will crush all the strength of your grief. Think, then, that he
speaks to you as follows:—“Fortune has not chosen you as the only
man in the world to receive so severe a blow: there is no house in
all the earth, and never has been one, that has not something to
mourn for: I will pass over examples taken from the common herd,
which, while they are of less importance, are also endless in number,
and I will direct your attention to the Calendar and the State
Chronicles. Do you see all these images which fill the hall of the
Caesars? there is not one of these men who was not especially
afflicted by domestic sorrows: no one of those men who shine there
as the ornament of the ages was not either tortured by grief for
some of his family or most bitterly mourned for by those whom he
left behind. Why need I remind you of Scipio Africanus, who heard
the news of his brother’s death when he was himself in exile? he
who saved his brother from prison could not save him from his fate.
Yet all men saw how impatient Africanus’s brotherly affection was
even of equal law: on the same day on which Scipio Africanus rescued
his brother from the {372} hands of the apparitor, he, although not
holding any office, protested against the action of the tribune of
the people. He mourned for his brother as magnanimously as he had
defended him. Why need I remind you of Scipio Aemilianus,[4] who
almost at one and the same time beheld his father’s triumph and the
funeral of his two brothers? yet, although a stripling and hardly
more than a boy, he bore the sudden bereavement which befel his
family at the very time of Paulus’s triumph with all the courage
which beseemed one who was born that Rome might not be without a
Scipio and that she might be without a Carthage.
XV. Why should I speak of the intimacy of the two Luculli, which
was broken only by their death? or of the Pompeii? whom the cruelty
of Fortune did not even allow to perish by the same catastrophe;
for Sextus Pompeius in the first place survived his sister,[5] by
whose death the firmly knit bond of peace in the Roman empire was
broken, and he also survived his noble brother, whom Fortune had
raised so high in order that she might cast him down from as great
a height as she had already cast down his father; yet after this
great misfortune Sextus Pompeius was able not only to endure his
grief but even to make war. Innumerable instances occur to me of
brothers who were separated by death: indeed on the other hand we
see very few pairs of brothers growing old together: however, I
shall content myself with examples from my own family. No one can
be so devoid of feeling or of reason as to complain of Fortune’s
having thrown him into mourning when he learns that she has coveted
the tears of the Caesars themselves. The Emperor Augustus lost his
darling sister Octavia, and though Nature destined him for heaven,
yet she did not relax her laws to spare him from mourning while on
earth: nay, he suffered every kind of bereavement, {373} losing his
sister’s son,[6] who was intended to be his heir. In fine, not to
mention his sorrows in detail, he lost his son-in-law, his children,
and his grandchildren, and, while he remained among men, no mortal
was more often reminded that he was a man. Yet his mind, which was
able to bear all things, bore all these heavy sorrows, and the
blessed Augustus was the conqueror, not only of foreign nations,
but also of his own sorrows. Gaius Caesar,[7] the grandson of the
blessed Augustus, my maternal great uncle, in the first years of
manhood, when Prince of the Roman Youth, as he was preparing for
the Parthian war, lost his darling brother Lucius[8] who was also