Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
‘Prince of the Roman Youth,’ and suffered more thereby in his mind
than he did afterwards in his body, though he bore both afflictions
with the greatest piety and fortitude. Tiberius Caesar, my paternal
uncle, lost his younger brother Drusus Germanicus,[9] my father,
when he was opening out the innermost fastnesses of Germany, and
bringing the fiercest tribes under the dominion of the Roman empire;
he embraced him and received his last kiss, but he nevertheless
restrained not only his own grief but that of others, and when the
whole army, not merely sorrowful but heartbroken, claimed the corpse
of their Drusus for themselves, he made them grieve only as it
became Romans to grieve, {374} and taught them that they must observe
military discipline not only in fighting but also in mourning. He
could not have checked the tears of others had he not first repressed
his own.
XVI. “Marcus Antonius, my grandfather, who was second to none save
his conqueror, received the news of his brother’s execution at the
very time when the state was at his disposal, and when, as a member
of the triumvirate, he saw no one in the world superior to himself
in power, nay, when, with the exception of his two colleagues, every
man was subordinate to himself. O wanton Fortune, what sport you
make for yourself out of human sorrows! At the very time when Marcus
Antonius was enthroned with power of life and death over his
countrymen, Marcus Antonius’s brother was being led to his death:
yet Antonius bore this cruel wound with the same greatness of mind
with which he had endured all his other crosses; and he mourned for
his brother by offering the blood of twenty legions to his manes.
However, to pass by all other instances, not to speak of the other
deaths which have occurred in my own house. Fortune has twice
assailed me through the death of a brother; she has twice learned
that she could wound me but could not overthrow me. I lost my brother
Germanicus, whom I loved in a manner which any one will understand
if he thinks how affectionate brothers love one another; yet I so
restrained my passion of grief as neither to leave undone anything
which a good brother could be called upon to do, nor yet to do
anything which a sovereign could be blamed for doing.”
Think, then, that our common parent quotes these instances to you,
and that he points out to you how nothing is respected or held
inviolable by Fortune, who actually dares to send out funeral
processions from the very house in which she will have to look for
gods: so let no one be surprised at her committing any act of cruelty
{375} or injustice; for how could she show any humanity or moderation
in her dealings with private families, when her pitiless fury has
so often hung the very throne[10] itself with black? She will not
change her habits even though reproached, not by my voice alone,
but by that of the entire nation: she will hold on her course in
spite of all prayers and complaints. Such has Fortune always been,
and such she ever will be in connexion with human affairs: she has
never shrunk from attacking anything, and she will never let anything
alone: she will rage everywhere terribly, as she has always been
wont to do: she will dare to enter for evil purposes into those
houses whose entrance lies through the temples of the gods, and
will hang signs of mourning upon laurelled door-posts. However, if
she has not yet determined to destroy the human race: if she still
looks with favour upon the Roman nation, may our public and private
prayers prevail upon her to regard as sacred from her violence this
prince, whom all men think to be sacred, who has been granted them
by heaven to give them rest after their misfortunes: let her learn
clemency from him, and let the mildest of all sovereigns teach her
mildness.
XVII. You ought, therefore, to fix your eyes upon all the persons
whom I have just mentioned, who have either been deified or were
nearly related to those who have been deified, and when Fortune
lays her hands upon you to bear it calmly, seeing that she does not
even respect those by whose names we swear. It is your duty to
imitate their constancy in enduring and triumphing over suffering,
as far as it is permitted to a mere man to follow in the footsteps
of the immortals. Albeit in all other matters rank and birth make
great distinctions between men, yet virtue is open to all; she
despises no one provided he thinks himself {376} worthy to possess
her. Surely you cannot do better than follow the example of those
who, though they might have been angry at not being exempt from
this evil, nevertheless have decided to regard this, the only thing
which brings them down to the level of other men, not as a wrong
done to themselves, but as the law of our mortal nature, and to
bear what befals them without undue bitterness and wrath, and yet
in no base or cowardly spirit: for it is not human not to feel our
sorrows, while it is unmanly not to bear them. When I glance through
the roll of all the Caesars whom fate has bereaved of sisters or
brothers, I cannot pass over that one who is unworthy to figure on
the list of Caesars, whom Nature produced to be the ruin and the
shame of the human race, who utterly wrecked and destroyed the state
which is now recovering under the gentle rule of the most benign
of princes. On losing his sister Drusilla, Gaius Caesar, a man who
could neither mourn nor rejoice as becomes a prince, shrank from
seeing and speaking to his countrymen, was not present at his
sister’s funeral, did not pay her the conventional tribute of
respect, but tried to forget the sorrows caused by this most
distressing death by playing at dice in his Alban villa, and by
sitting on the judgment-seat, and the like customary engagements.
What a disgrace to the Empire! a Roman emperor solaced himself by
gambling for his grief at the loss of his sister! This same Gaius,
with frantic levity, at one time let his beard and hair grow long,
at another wandered aimlessly along the coast of Italy and Sicily.
He never clearly made up his mind whether he wished his sister to
be mourned for or to be worshipped, and during all the time that
he was raising temples and shrines[11] in her honour he punished
those who did not manifest sufficient {377} sorrow with the most
cruel tortures:[12] for his mind was so ill-balanced, that he was
as much cast down by adversity as he was unbecomingly elated and
puffed up by success. Far be it from every Roman to follow such an
example, either to divert his mind from his grief by unreasonable
amusements, to stimulate it by unseemly squalor and neglect, or to
be so inhuman as to console himself by taking pleasure in the
sufferings of others.
XVIII. You, however, need change none of your ordinary habits, since
you have taught yourself to love those studies which, while they
are pre-eminently fitted for perfecting our happiness, at the same
time teach us how we may bear misfortune most lightly, and which
are at the same time a man’s greatest honour and greatest comfort.
Now, therefore, immerse yourself even more deeply in your studies,
now surround your mind with them like fortifications, so that grief
may not find any place at which it can gain entrance. At the same
time, prolong the remembrance of your brother by inserting some
memoir of him among your other writings: for that is the only sort
of monument that can be erected by man which no storm can injure,
no time destroy. The others, which consist of piles of stone, masses
of marble, or huge mounds of earth heaped on high, cannot preserve
his memory for long, because they themselves perish; but the memorials
which genius raises are everlasting. Lavish these upon your brother,
embalm him in these: you will do better to immortalise him by an
everlasting work of genius than to mourn over him with useless
grief. As for Fortune herself, although I cannot just now {378}
plead her cause before you, because all that she has given us is
now hateful to you, because she has taken something away from you,
yet I will plead her cause as soon as time shall have rendered you
a more impartial judge of her action: indeed she has bestowed much
upon you to make amends for the injury which she has done you, and
she will give more hereafter by way of atonement for it: and, after
all, it was she herself who gave you this brother whom she has taken
away. Forbear, then, to display your abilities against your own
self, or to take part with your grief against yourself: your
eloquence, can, no doubt, make trifles appear great, and, conversely,
can disparage and depreciate great things until they seem the merest
trifles; but let it reserve those powers and use them on some other
subject, and at the present time devote its entire strength to the
task of consoling you. Yet see whether even this task be not
unnecessary. Nature demands from us a certain amount of grief, our
imagination adds some more to it; but I will never forbid you to
mourn at all. I know, indeed, that there are some men, whose wisdom
is of a harsh rather than a brave character, who say that the wise
man never would mourn. It seems to me that they never can have been
in the position of mourners, for otherwise their misfortune would
have shaken all their haughty philosophy out of them, and, however
much against their will, would have forced them to confess their
sorrow. Reason will have done enough if she does but cut off from
our grief all that is superfluous and useless: as for her not
allowing us to grieve at all, that we ought neither to expect nor
to wish for. Let her rather restrain us within the bounds of a
chastened grief, which partakes neither of indifference nor of
madness, and let her keep our minds in that attitude which becomes
affection without excitement: let your tears flow, but let them
some day cease to flow: groan as deeply as you will, but let your
{379} groans cease some day: regulate your conduct so that both
philosophers and brothers may approve of it. Make yourself feel
pleasure in often thinking about your brother, talk constantly about
him, and keep him ever present in your memory; which you cannot
succeed in doing unless you make the remembrance of him pleasant
rather than sad: for it is but natural that the mind should shrink
from a subject which it cannot contemplate without sadness. Think
of his retiring disposition, of his abilities for business, his
diligence in carrying it out, his loyalty to his word. Tell other
men of all his sayings and doings, and remind your own self of them:
think how good he was and how great you hoped he might become: for
what success is there which you might not safely have wagered that
such a brother would win?
I have thrown together these reflexions in the best way that I
could, for my mind is dimmed and stupefied with the tedium of my
long exile: if, therefore, you should find them unworthy of the
consideration of a person of your intelligence, or unable to console
you in your grief, remember how impossible it is for one who is
full of his own sorrows to find time to minister to those of others,
and how hard it is to express oneself in the Latin language, when
all around one hears nothing but a rude foreign jargon, which even
barbarians of the more civilised sort regard with disgust.
[1] “The Latins had four versions of Homer (Fabric, tom. i. 1. ii.
ch. 3, p. 297), yet, in spite of the phraises of Seneca, Consol,
ch. 26 (viii.), they appear to have been more successful in imitating
than in translating the Greek poets.”—Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall,”
ch. 41, ad init., note. Polybius had made a prose translation of
Homer, and a prose paraphrase of Virgil.
[2] See note _ante_, ch. viii.
[3] “Fortune hath parted stakes with thee, in taking away thy