Plutarch's Morals
condition. Go and throw yourself into some dark place, that you and your
ailments may be unknown." So you say to a vicious man, "Go off with your
vice, and hide your deadly and irremediable disease from your friends,
fearful to show your superstitious fears, palpitations as it were, to
those who could admonish you and cure you." Our remote ancestors paid
public attention to the sick, and if any one had either had or cured a
similar complaint, he communicated his experience to the patient, and so
they say medical art became great by these contributions from
experience. We ought also in the same way to expose to everyone diseased
lives and the passions of the soul, and to handle them, and to examine
the condition of each,[898] and say, Are you a passionate man? Be on
your guard against anger. Are you of a jealous turn? Look to it. Are you
in love? I myself was in love once, but I had to repent. But nowadays
people deny and conceal and cloak their vices, and so fix them deeper in
themselves.
Sec. III. Moreover if you advise men of worth to live unknown and in
obscurity, you say to Epaminondas, Do not be a general; and to Lycurgus,
Do not be a legislator; and to Thrasybulus, Do not be a tyrannicide; and
to Pythagoras, Do not teach; and to Socrates, Do not discourse; and
first and foremost you bid yourself, Epicurus, to refrain from writing
letters to your friends in Asia, and from enrolling Egyptian strangers
among your disciples, and from dancing attendance on the youths of
Lampsacus, and sending books to all quarters to display your wisdom to
all men and all women, and leaving directions in your will about your
funeral. What is the meaning of those common tables of yours? what that
crowd of friends and handsome youths? Why those many thousand lines
written and composed so laboriously on Metrodorus, and Aristobulus, and
Chaeredemus, that they may not be unknown even in death, if[899] you
ordain for virtue oblivion, for art inactivity, for philosophy silence,
and for success that it should be speedily forgotten?
Sec. IV. But if you exclude all knowledge about life, like putting the
lights out at a supper party, that you may go from pleasure to pleasure
undetected,[900] then "live unknown." Certainly if I am going to pass my
life with the harlot Hedeia, or my days with Leontium, and spurn at
virtue, and put my _summum bonum_ in sensual gratifications, these are
ends that require darkness and night, on these oblivion and ignorance
are rightly cast. But if any one in nature sings the praises of the
deity and justice and providence, and in morals upholds the law and
society and the constitution, and in the constitution what is honourable
and not expedient, why should he "live unknown"? Is it that he should
instruct nobody, inspire in nobody an emulation for virtue, and be to
nobody a pattern in good?[901] Had Themistocles been unknown at Athens,
Greece would not have repelled Xerxes; had Camillus been unknown at
Rome, Rome would not have remained a state; had Plato been unknown to
Dion, Sicily would not have won its freedom. And as light, I take it,
makes us not only visible but useful to one another, so knowledge gives
not only glory but impetus to virtue. Epaminondas in obscurity up to his
fortieth year was no use to the Thebans, but when his merits became
known and he was put into power, he saved his state from ruin, and
liberated Greece from slavery, making his abilities efficacious in
emergency through his reputation like the bright shining of a light. For
Sophocles' words,
"Brightly shines brass in use, but when unused
It groweth dull in time, and mars the house,"[902]
are also appropriate to the character of a man, which gets rusty and
senile by not mixing in affairs but living in obscurity. For mute
inglorious ease, and a sedentary life devoted to leisure, not only
injure the body but also the soul: and as hidden waters overshadowed and
stagnant get foul because they have no outlet, so the innate powers of
unruffled lives, that neither imbibe nor pass on anything, even if they
had any useful element in them once, seem to be effete and wasted.
Sec. V. Have you never noticed how when night comes on a tired languor
seizes the body, and inactive torpor overpowers the soul, and reason
shrinks within itself like a fire going out, and feeling quite worn out
is gently agitated by disordered fancies, only just indicating that the
man is alive? But when the sun rises and scares away deceitful dreams,
and brings on as it were the everyday world[903] and with its light
rouses and stimulates the thoughts and actions of everybody, then, as
Democritus says, "men form new ideas for the day," and betake themselves
to their various pursuits with mutual impetuosity, as if drawn by a
strong impulse.
Sec. VI. And I think that life itself, and the way we come into the world,
is so ordained by the deity that we should know one another. For
everyone comes into this great universe obscure and unknown casually and
by degrees, but when he mixes with his fellows and grows to maturity he
shines forth, and becomes well-known instead of obscure, and conspicuous
instead of unknown. For knowledge is not the road to being, as some say,
but being to knowledge, for being does not create but only exhibits
things, as death is not the reducing of existence to non-existence, but
rather the result of dissolution is obscurity. So people considering the
Sun as Apollo according to hereditary and ancient institutions, call him
Delius[904] and Pythius; whereas the lord of the world of darkness,
whether god or demon, they call Hades[905] (for when we die we go into
an unseen and invisible place), and the lord of dark night and idle
sleep. And I think our ancestors called man himself by a word meaning
light,[906] because by their relationship to light all have implanted in
them a strong and vehement desire to know and to be known. And some
philosophers think that the soul itself is light in its essence,
inferring so on other grounds and because it can least endure ignorance
about facts, and hates[907] everything obscure, and is disturbed at
everything dark, which inspires fear and suspicion in it, whereas light
is so dear and welcome to it that it thinks nothing otherwise delightful
bearable without it, as indeed light makes every pleasure pastime and
enjoyment gay and cheerful, like the application of some sweet and
general flavour. But the man who thrusts himself into obscurity, and
wraps himself up in darkness and buries himself alive, is like one who
is dissatisfied with his birth, and renounces his being.
Sec. VII. And yet _Pindar_ tells us[908] that the abode of the blest is a
glorious existence, where the sun shines bright through the entire night
in meadows red with roses, an extensive plain full of shady trees ever
in bloom never in fruit, watered by gentle purling streams, and there
the blest ones pass their time away in thinking and talking about the
past and present in social converse....[909] But the third road is of
those who have lived unholy and lawless lives, that thrusts their souls
to Erebus and the bottomless pit, where sluggish streams of murky night
belch forth endless darkness, which receive those that are to be
punished and conceal them in forgetfulness and oblivion. For vultures do
not always prey on the liver of wicked persons lying on the ground,[910]
for it is destroyed by fire or has rolled away; nor does the carrying of
heavy burdens press upon and tire out the bodies of those that undergo
punishment,
"For their strength has no longer flesh and bones,"[911]
nor have the dead any vestige of body that can receive the infliction of
punishment that can make impression; but in reality the only punishment
of those who have lived ill is infamy and obscurity and utter
annihilation, which hurries them off to the dark river of oblivion,[912]
and plunges them into the abyss of a fathomless sea, involving them in
uselessness and idleness, ignorance and obscurity.
[895] Probably Epicurus, as we infer from the very
personal Sec. iii.
[896] Euripides, Fragm. 930.
[897] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: Alla touto men
taute].
[898] Reading [Greek: ekastou] for [Greek: ekaston].
Reiske proposed [Greek: ekaston].
[899] Reading [Greek: ei] (for [Greek: hina]) with
Xylander and Wyttenbach.
[900] Reading with Wyttenbach.
[901] Adopting the suggestion of Wyttenbach, "Forte
[Greek: kalou], at Amiot."
[902] Frag. 742.
[903] "Dormiens quisque in peculiarem abest mumdum,
expergefactus in communem redit."--_Xylander._ Compare
Herrick's Poem, "_Dreames._"
[904] Bright.
[905] Invisible.
[906] [Greek: phos].
[907] Reading with Wyttenbach [Greek: echthairei].
[908] Reading [Greek: phesin] for [Greek: physin].
[909] Hiatus hic valde deflendus.
[910] As was fabled about Tityus, "Odyssey," xi.
576-579.
[911] "Odyssey," xi. 219.
[912] So Reiske, [Greek: potamin tes lethes].
ON EXILE.
Sec. I. They say those discourses, like friends, are best and surest that
come to our refuge and aid in adversity, and are useful. For many who
come forward do more harm than good in the remarks they make to the
unfortunate, as people unable to swim trying to rescue the drowning get
entangled with them and sink to the bottom together. Now the discourse
that ought to come from friends and people disposed to be helpful should
be consolation, and not mere assent with a man's sad feelings. For we do
not in adverse circumstances need people to weep and wail with us like
choruses in a tragedy, but people to speak plainly to us and instruct
us, that grief and dejection of mind are in all cases useless and idle
and senseless; and that where the circumstances themselves, when
examined by the light of reason, enable a man to say to himself that his
trouble is greater in fancy than in reality, it is quite ridiculous not
to inquire of the body what it has suffered, nor of the mind if it is
any the worse for what has happened, but to employ external sympathizers
to teach us what our grief is.
Sec. II. Therefore let us examine alone by ourselves the weight of our
misfortunes, as if they were burdens. For the body is weighed down by
the burden of what presses on it, but the soul often adds to the real
load a burden of its own. A stone is naturally hard, and ice naturally
cold, but they do not receive these properties and impressions from
without; whereas with regard to exile and loss of reputation or honours,
as also with regard to their opposites, as crowns and office and
position, it is not their own intrinsic nature but our opinion of them
that is the gauge of their real joy or sorrow, so that each person makes
them for himself light or heavy, easy to bear or hard to bear. When
Polynices was asked
"What is't to be an exile? Is it grievous?"
he replied to the question,
"Most grievous, and in deed worse than in word."[913]
Compare with this the language of Alcman, as the poet has represented
him in the following lines. "Sardis, my father's ancient home, had I had
the fortune to be reared in thee, I should have been dressed in gold as
a priest of Cybele,[914] and beaten the fine drums; but as it is my name
is Alcman, and I am a citizen of Sparta, and I have learned to write
Greek poetry, which makes me greater than the tyrants Dascyles or
Gyges." Thus the very same thing one man's opinion makes good, like
current coin, and another's bad and injurious.
Sec. III. But let it be granted that exile is, as many say and sing, a
grievous thing. So some food is bitter, and sharp, and biting to the
taste, yet by an admixture with it of sweet and agreeable food we take