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Title: Between Heathenism and Christianity - Being a translation of Seneca's De Providentia, and - Plutarch's De sera numinis vindicta, together with notes, - additional extracts from these writers and two essays on - Graeco-Roman life in the first century after Christ.
Author: Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, Plutarch
Language: English
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Between Heathenism and Christianity
Between Heathenism and Christianity:
Being a Translation of Seneca’s De Providentia, and Plutarch’s
De Sera Numinis Vindicta, together with Notes, Additional
Extracts from these writers and Two
Essays on Graeco-Roman Life in the
First Century after Christ.
BY
CHARLES W. SUPER, Ph. D., LL. D.,
Ex-President of the Ohio University, and Professor of Greek, ibidem;
translator
of Weil’s Order of Words, and author of a
History of the German Language.
“He who distrusts the light of reason will be the first to follow a
more luminous guide; and if with an ardent love for truth he has
sought her in vain through the ways of this life, he will but turn
with the more hope to that better world where all is simple, true,
and everlasting: for there is no parallax at the zenith; it is only
near our troubled horizon that objects deceive us into vague and
erroneous calculations.”
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
Chicago, New York, Toronto
1899
_Copyrighted 1899, by Fleming H. Revell Company_
PREFACE.
It is admitted by students of history of every shade of belief that the
origin of Christianity and its rapid spread over the ancient world is
the most remarkable fact in the recorded annals of the human race. When
we remember that it was, from the first, more or less closely identified
with the despised religion of the despised Jews; that largely for this
reason it had to make its way against a united front, presented by the
learned and intelligent in the whole gentile world, while the Jews
themselves almost unanimously repudiated it; that the most efficiently
organized government that had existed until then, was indifferent or
hostile; that it set before the heathen world a condition of society in
which all current economic ideas were transformed, and that it demanded
a complete renunciation of its time-honored creeds, we may well ask in
amazement, “How came these things to pass?”
Second in order among the great facts of ancient history is the growth
of the Roman Empire. Here we see a people at first occupying a few
square miles of territory, compelled for nearly fifteen generations to
exert themselves to the utmost to keep their enemies at bay, suddenly
bursting the barriers that confined them and in less than half this time
bringing under their scepter almost the whole of the then known world.
Rome’s conquests have been exceeded in rapidity, but they have never
been equalled in permanence.
The triumphs of Christianity and those of Roman arms stand in a certain
relation to each other, notwithstanding the fact that the latter were
gained with material, the former with spiritual, weapons. When the
conquests of the one were ended, the other began. When material forces
had spent themselves, men began to turn, reluctantly indeed, to
spiritual agencies and undertook to subdue the powers of darkness that
had so long held sway in the human breast. While the arms of Rome were
engaged in overcoming the martial opposition of her enemies, Greece was
occupied with the effort to subjugate the passions of men by the weapons
of the intellect. By the time Roman conquests had reached their limits
it had been demonstrated that Greece, too, could go no farther. But
Greece did not fail because there were no more worlds to conquer: it was
because men had learned that her weapons were powerless to compass the
end in view. “He that ruleth his own spirit is mightier than he that
taketh a city,” was the lesson that the best of the Greek philosophers
strove to impress upon men, but strove in vain.
It will always remain a matter of interest to study the intellectual
sphere in which the old doctrines and the new faith conflict. What was
the best that Greek thought had to offer to the world, and for what
reasons did the world reject it?
In the following pages I have attempted to put before my readers a
solution of some of the problems to which this question gives rise. No
one will deny that Seneca stood on the threshold of Christianity, while
in the opinion of many he had already passed within; yet all will admit
that, at best, he fell far short of the standard Christianity sets up
for its converts. Plutarch is not claimed by Christians, but he
exemplifies many of their virtues, and commends many of the precepts
they endeavored to put in practice. These two men best represent the
strong and the weak points of characters formed under the stimulus of
earnest effort to lead upright lives and to discharge faithfully their
duties to themselves, their fellow men, and the higher power that
controlled their destinies. I have selected a typical work from the
writings of both as a nucleus around which to group such reflections and
facts as seem best fitted to illustrate the environment in which they
lived and the intellectual inheritance to which they had fallen heir,
while I have allowed each to speak for himself on one of the profoundest
problems that has ever engaged the serious attention of man.
Surely, it cannot be a merely accidental coincidence that a Greek at
Delphi, a Roman in his adopted city, a Jew in Alexandria, and another
Jew in Palestine, who had been converted to Christianity and had adopted
the profession of a traveling evangelist, should at the same time, yet
almost or quite independently of each other, maintain the doctrine of a
divine Providence or preach a gospel that recognized it as a fundamental
dogma. The treatise of Philo, though no longer extant in the original
Greek, is more extensive than the tracts here brought together. The
three united in a single volume would make a remarkable trinity in the
history of human thought. The feeling was evidently widespread, both
consciously and unconsciously, that God had never before been so near to
men, though but a few had learned that the Word had become flesh and
dwelt among them, full of grace and truth.
C. W. S.
_Athens, O., Thanksgiving Day, 1898._
CONTENTS.
PREFACE 5
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS USED OR CONSULTED ON SENECA 10
SENECA: HIS CHARACTER AND ENVIRONMENT 11
LIST OF SENECA’S EXTANT WORKS 60
SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF SENECA 63
CONCERNING PROVIDENCE 78
NOTES 104
PLUTARCH AND THE GREECE OF HIS AGE 108
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS USED OR CONSULTED IN THE STUDY OF PLUTARCH
160
CONCERNING THE DELAY OF THE DEITY IN PUNISHING THE WICKED 162
NOTES 214
APPENDIX. LIST OF PLUTARCH’S WORKS 218
THE PRINCIPAL WORKS USED OR CONSULTED ON SENECA.
The following are the principal works used or consulted in preparing the
matter relating to Seneca:
_Oeuvres complètes de Senèque. Par Charpentier et Lemaistre. 4
tomes. Paris, 1885._
_Oeuvres complètes de Senèque. Publiées sous la direction de M.
Nisard. Paris, 1877._
_L. Annaeus Seneca des Philosophen Werke übersetzt von Pauly und
Moser. Stuttgard, 1828-32._
_Christliche Klänge aus den griechischen und römischen Klassikern.
Von R. Schneider. Leipzig, 1877._
_Lucius Annaeus Seneca und das Christenthum. Von Michael Baumgarten.
Rostock, 1895._
_La Religion romaine. Par Gaston Boissier, 2 tomes. Paris. 1892._
_History of the Romans under the Empire. By Charles Merivale. 7
vols. New York, 1863-5._
_L. Annaei Senecae opera quae supersunt. Ed. Frid. Haase. Voll. I,
II, III. Lipsiae, 1871-62-53._
The two Paris editions have the Latin text and the French translation on
the same page. Both translations are characteristically French, and
consequently very smooth and agreeable to read. But they preserve few of
the salient features of the original, and render the thoughts rather
than the style of Seneca. To the translation is accorded the place of
honor both in type and position. The German version holds very close to
the text and errs, perhaps, somewhat at the other extreme as compared
with the French. The work of Baumgarten is thorough and painstaking. It
is not endorsing all the author’s views to say that it is the best
recent book on Seneca and his times.
SENECA: HIS CHARACTER AND ENVIRONMENT.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, surnamed the Philosopher to distinguish him from
his father the Rhetorician, was born in Corduba,[1] in Spain, about 4 B.
C.—authorities differ by several years as to the precise date. When
quite young he was brought to Rome by his father. He devoted himself
with great zeal and brilliant success to rhetorical and philosophical
studies. In the reign of Claudius he attained the office of quaestor and
subsequently rose to the rank of senator. In the year 41 he was banished
to the island of Corsica on a charge that is admitted to have been
false, but the nature of which is not clearly understood.
In this barren and inhospitable island he was compelled to remain eight
years. He was then recalled to Rome and entrusted with the education of
the young Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who afterwards became emperor of
Rome, and notorious as the monster Nero. For five years after his
accession to the principate, the young emperor treated his former
teacher with much deference, consulted him on all important matters, and
seems to have been largely guided by his advice. He also testified his
regard for him by raising him to the rank of consul. In course of time,
however, the feelings and conduct of the prince underwent a change. The
possession of unlimited power by a character that was both weak and
vain; the adulation of the conscienceless favorites with whom he
surrounded himself; the intrigues or cabals to whom the high morality of
the philosopher was a standing rebuke; and the naturally vicious temper
of Nero, all conspired to prepare the way for the downfall of Seneca.
When the conspiracy of Calpurnius Piso against the monarch was
discovered, the charge of participation, or at least of criminal
knowledge, was brought against Seneca, and he was condemned to die.
Allowed to choose the means of ending his life, he caused a vein to be
opened and thus slowly bled to death. It was his destiny to be compelled
to take his departure from this world in the way he had so often
commended to others; indeed it is probable that his reiterated encomiums
upon suicide as an effectual remedy against the ills of this life, was
not without its influence upon his executioners. They probably wanted to
give him the opportunity to prove by his works the sincerity of his
faith.
During the closing scene he told his disconsolate friends that the only
bequest he was permitted to leave to them was the example of an
honorable life; and this he besought them to keep in faithful
remembrance. He implored his weeping wife to restrain the expression of
her grief, and bade her seek in the recollection of the life and virtues
of her husband a solace for her loss.
It was the fortune of Seneca not only to be well born, but also to be
well brought up and carefully educated. That he appreciated the high
worth of his mother is evident from the words, “best of mothers,” with
which he addressed her in the Consolation to Helvia. His father, though
wealthy, was a man of rigid morality, of temperate habits, of great
industry, and possessed very unusual literary attainments. His older
brother, better known as Junius Gallio from the name of the family into
which he was adopted, was for some time proconsul of Achaia, in which
capacity he is mentioned in the Acts, xviii, 12-17. Seneca’s younger
brother was the father of Lucan, the well-known author of the poem,
Pharsalia. Both his mother and his aunt,—he was an especial favorite of
the latter—were not only women of exalted character, but they had
acquired an intellectual culture that was very uncommon for their sex in
their day.
Our authorities for a life of Seneca and for an estimate of his
character are fairly ample and have been variously interpreted. Nothing
can be gained by taking up the controversy anew. To some of his
contemporaries even, he was more or less of an enigma. Others, again,
regarded him as a time-server, a hypocrite, a man whose professions were
belied by his actions. Still others,—and they are largely in the
majority—are more lenient in their judgment; though they cannot
exculpate him from inconsistencies, they excuse them by pointing to the
extremely difficult position in which he was placed during the greater
part of his life. He has strong partisans who are attracted and charmed
by the sublime sentiments scattered so profusely through his writings;
his enemies, in forming their opinions, lay the chief stress on what
they regard as the inexcusable deeds of his life. It is too late to add
anything to the evidence either pro or contra. All that it is proposed
to do in this essay is to place before the reader a picture of the man,
mainly from his own writings, as the chief exponent of the highest
philosophy reached by the ancient world before this philosophy was
supplanted by the new religion that was destined to take its place in
the thought of mankind. Seneca was next to Cicero, or rather along with
Cicero, the most distinguished Roman philosopher; but as a philosopher
he has received the far greater share of attention. Both were Romans at
heart; both were earnestly engaged in the search for the supreme good;
both were guilty of conduct inconsistent with their professions; both
tried and tried in vain to combine a life devoted to reflection with
with an active career in the service of the state; and both failed. But
Seneca not only had a higher ideal than Cicero; he also came nearer
attaining it. He was less vain, less hungry for public honors and
applause, and attached less importance to mere outward display. As a
thinker Seneca has more originality than Cicero, is less dependent upon
books, knows better the motives that underlie human conduct. Both were
essentially Roman in their views of life, and it is only by keeping this
in mind that we are able to explain, if not to excuse, the lack of
harmony between what they said and what they did; between what they
preached and what they practised.
Like that of Cicero, Seneca’s was no adamantine soul, no unyielding
barrier against which the vices of his time beat in vain. He had the
Roman liking for what is practical. He tried to be a statesman and was
somewhat of a courtier when to be a courtier and an upright man was
impossible. He was no Socrates to whom virtue, the fundamentally and
intrinsically right, was more important than anything else, than all
else, even abstention from the political turmoil of his time.
When a long and acrimonious strife is carried on over a man it is
evidence that he is no ordinary person. This has been the fate of Seneca
in an eminent degree. During the Middle Ages, and even after their
close, a great deal of attention was paid to his reputed correspondence
with St. Paul. The National Library in Paris contains more than sixty
MSS. of this pseudo-correspondence. That he was claimed as a Christian
need surprise no one. The poet Virgil shared a similar fate; yet there
is far less in the writings of Virgil to mark him a Christian, or rather
as a writer who was in a sense divinely inspired, than there is in
Seneca to stamp him as a man who had accepted the new faith. The rise
and persistence of such a literature is not an anomaly in the history of
thought. It is not out of harmony with the spirit of an age when the
church was supreme in everything; when all questions were viewed from
the theological standpoint, and when every means were employed to gain
support for the existing ecclesiastical organization. It was honestly
believed that the practice or profession of a high morality, except
under the sanction and guidance of the church, was impossible. It was
taken as a matter of course, that a good man, one who eloquently
preached righteousness, who seemed to be conscious of a struggle within
himself between the flesh[2] and the spirit, must have been enlightened
from on high. Given the internal evidence of Seneca’s own writings, it
was not difficult to supply the complementary external testimony.
This all-embracing and all-absorbing power of the church lasted about a
thousand years and ended with the Reformation, though it had begun to
decline some two centuries earlier. For this condition of things the
Roman empire had prepared the way. It was the prototype to which, in
part unconsciously and in part consciously, ecclesiastical authority was
made to conform. Notwithstanding the fact that the Gospel was first
widely proclaimed in Greek lands and the body of its doctrine formulated
in the Greek tongue, when the church began to aspire to universal
dominion it naturally assumed the garb of Roman secular authority. The
Eastern Empire was regarded as an offshoot from, rather than as a
continuation of, the empire that had so long ruled the world from the
great city on the banks of the Tiber. The natural consequence was that
the Latin language in time supplanted the Greek, and ecclesiastical
thought flowed in the channels worn by the political thought that had
preceded it. The struggle in later times for the supremacy of the state
as against the church was merely the effort to return to a condition of
things that had existed before the establishment of the church. The
Greeks were not less patriotic than the Romans. The state occupied just
as prominent a place in their minds as it did in the minds of the
Romans. But it was their misfortune to appear upon the scene of history,
broken up into a large number of small polities of nearly equal
strength, and the Greek mind never got beyond the particularism thus
inherited. It was their fundamental concept of government. Rome
represented a more advanced type of political development than Greece,
and if it had been permitted to work out its own salvation without
external interference,—for the city at its worst was hardly more corrupt
than many a modern capital—it might be in existence to-day. The Roman
empire endured so long because it was upheld by the patriotism of its
citizens. This was often narrowly selfish, and frequently grossly unjust
to foreigners, but it was effectual in maintaining the supremacy of Rome
against all attempts from within or without to subvert it. The Romans
that were drawn toward philosophy pursued it in a half-hearted manner
because the state occupied the first place in their minds. To serve the
state was the ultimate goal of their ambition. The emperors, even the
most corrupt, still represented the government and as such received the
homage of good men. If we keep this fact in mind we shall be able to
understand the bravery and devotion to duty of many of the officers and
even soldiers in the imperial forces. More or less out of reach of the
contaminating influences that were so powerful in the capital, they
performed the services expected of them as became Romans.
Long, long afterward, and when Rome was nominally a Christian city, a
German monk left its walls as he was returning to his northern home, a
far less zealous churchman than he had entered it. Strange coincidence!
The city that had become the head of a spiritual empire was no less
corrupt and corrupting than it had been as the head of a temporal
empire. More than sixteen centuries of experience, some of it of the
bitterest kind, had wrought no perceptible change. The Christian
followed in the footsteps of the heathen.
For us who have been brought up in the belief that morality and right
and justice have a claim to our services for their own sake, without
accessory support and under all circumstances, the devotion of the Roman
to his government, even the most unworthy, is not easy to understand.
Rome owed her greatness more to the bravery of her citizens in war than
to any other cause. To this virtue they always accorded the foremost
place, and to those who displayed it, the highest honors the state could
bestow.
But Seneca was a man of peace. This fact had without doubt something to
do in producing the unfavorable estimate some of his contemporaries
formed of him. Tacitus, too, was not a military man; yet he looks with a
certain disdain upon those who devoted themselves to the arts of peace
rather than to the profession of arms. He regards with less favor the
man who has wisely administered a province than him who had extended the
boundaries of the empire.
We naturally incline to the opinion that no man who respected himself
could accept service under such a ruler as Nero, or Caligula, or
Domitian, unless it were in the hope that he might mitigate a ferocious
temper or avert calamity from personal friends. And yet, many tyrants
since the dissolution of the Roman empire have been served by honorable
men; and they have usually requited their services in the same way, with
exile, or confiscation of goods, or an ignominious death.
The readiness with which many of the best Romans resorted to
self-destruction as a release from misfortune strikes us with surprise.
Suicide is often mentioned in the writings of Seneca, and always with
approval. It is not hard to understand this attitude of mind if we
recollect the relation the Roman regarded as existing between himself
and the state. The government was in a sense a part of himself, and an
essential part. To the Greek there was still something worth living for
after the loss of country and citizenship. He could devote himself to
literature, or philosophy, or to some more ignoble means of gaining a
livelihood. To the Roman such a thing was well-nigh impossible,
especially if he was a member of one of the ruling families. Exile,
exclusion from service in the state, was to him the end of every thing.
Many Romans of whom one would have expected better things are
inconsolable so long as they are compelled to live away from the capital
with no certain prospect of return. Need we wonder that to many others
life was no longer worth living, and that they freely put an end to it
with their own hand. Often the best men sought surcease of sorrow in
this unnatural way. Those in whom the moral sense was weak, plunged
recklessly into debauchery and sensual gratification. Literature, too,
was corrupted to minister to their corrupt tastes. We know little of the
life of the average Roman citizen; but there is sufficient evidence
within reach of the modern reader to prove that the ruling class had few
redeeming traits. The downward tendency is plainly discernible in the
last days of the Republic. Julius and Augustus Cæsar were men of
depraved appetites and low morals. Their talents as military captains
and administrators, their patronage of letters, and their tastes as
literary men, have somewhat put their moral delinquencies into the
background. There is no doubt that the example of these and such men,
accelerated the evil propensities to which the Roman people were only
too prone. When the lowest depth of moral degradation was reached, as in
the declining years of Seneca, crime and debauchery held high carnival
in the imperial household. There was no wickedness so flagrant, no
species of immorality so bestial, no deed so horrible, that men shrank
from it. For, had they not more than once the example of the prince
himself? It is sometimes charitably said that Nero was insane. There are
men who think it too degrading to human nature to hold it responsible
for his crimes and indecencies. Yet Nero’s excesses were the natural
results of unlimited power in irresponsible hands, when the hands were
servants of a heart that was thoroughly corrupt, and a character that
was weak, and vain as it was weak. The same things have often been
repeated within the last eighteen hundred years; but never was vice so
rampant and so unblushing, on such a large scale, as it was in Rome in
the days of Seneca.
We must not believe, however, that there was no decency, no regard for
morality, no love of culture, to be found in the Roman empire even in
its worst estate. There were always groups and coteries of noble men and
women who kept themselves free from the prevailing corruption. There was
always a saving remnant that remained uncontaminated. Quintillian was
the center of such a group, and what he was in Rome, Plutarch was in
another part of the empire, for they were almost exactly contemporaries.
The belief in God, in the immortality of the human soul, and in man’s
personal responsibility to a higher power, kept some, perhaps many, who
were not directly under the degrading influence of the court, or who had
the moral strength to resist it, from deviating very far from the path
of rectitude. There were slaves of whom better things could be said than
of their masters. But what were these among so many?
Seneca and other writers of his time frequently express contempt for
those men who professed to be philosophers, and whose lives brought only
disgrace upon the fair name of philosophy. He does not seem to be aware
that, in a measure at least, he is recording an unfavorable verdict upon
himself. Does he think that his abstemiousness, his untiring industry,
his devotion to study ought to cover his shortcomings? It looks so. He
commends solitude, yet always remained in the noonday of publicity. He
inveighs against riches, yet was the possessor of vast estates, and was
not above lending money at usurious rates of interest. He teaches men to
bear with fortitude the inevitable ills of life, and ends by commending
suicide as a final resort. Compared with Socrates, to cite but a single
name, Seneca was a very unworthy exponent of practical philosophy. The
former took philosophy seriously, so seriously that he not only wanted
to live for it but was willing to die for it. He kept aloof from
politics because he felt that a public career would interfere with a
duty he owed to a higher power. He, too, believed in a Providence, but
with him this belief amounted to a conviction. All his reported words
and deeds testify to this, while Seneca acts and writes as if trying to
convince himself quite as much as others. Socrates had an abiding faith
in a personal God who not only watched over his life, but cared for him
in death. Duty was to him a thing of such supreme importance that he
never hesitated to perform it, no matter what the consequences to
himself might be. Socrates taught nothing he did not himself practice;
Seneca, much. Socrates feared neither God nor man; Seneca was afraid of
both. Socrates expected nothing of others that he did not exact of
himself; Seneca sets up a higher standard of morals than he, under all
circumstances, attained. His precepts are better than his practice. His
fatal mistake lay in trying to do two things that have always been found
incompatible: to be a successful politician and an upright man. There
were others besides Socrates, before the days of Seneca, in whose life
and character philosophy had had more consistent exponents and faithful
devotees than in him. But when they found that philosophy and a career
in the service of the state were incompatible and reciprocally
exclusive, they unhesitatingly gave up the latter. Seneca can always
admire high ideals, but he cannot always imitate them. He is fascinated
when he gazes on the lofty heights to which virtue had sometimes
attained, and he often makes heroic efforts to follow after; but he is
only now and then successful. It is no wonder, then, that Socrates had
even in his lifetime many ardent admirers and enthusiastic disciples
that remained true to his memory, while Seneca had none.
Canon Farrar is mistaken when he calls Seneca a “seeker after God.” God
was in no man’s thoughts oftener than in his. Nor has any uninspired
writer given utterance to a larger number of noble sentiments and lofty
precepts than he. It is easy to extract from his writings a complete
code of morals, a breviary of human conduct, that would differ but
little from that contained in the New Testament. He is a conspicuous
example of the heathen of whom Paul says, they are without excuse. But
while Seneca is not a seeker after God he can with justice be called a
seeker after Christ. He is an earnest inquirer after the peace that
passeth understanding; after that serene confidence that sustained the
greatest and the least of the Apostles, and the noble army of martyrs no
less. He lacks that Christian enthusiasm that comes only through faith
in a living Christ and in His atonement.
Seneca now and then caught a glimpse of that universal kingdom which the
company of believers expected would one day be established upon the
earth. He says, “No one can lead a happy life who thinks only of himself
and turns everything to his own use. If you would live for yourself, you
must live for others. This bond of fellowship must be diligently and
sacredly guarded,—the bond that unites us all to all and shows to us
that there is a right common to all nations which ought to be the more
sacredly cherished because it leads to that intimate friendship of which
we were speaking.”
It is hard to see how he could write the following striking passage
without thinking of himself; for, though guiltless of some of the vices
he condemns, there are others of which he cannot be acquitted. After
defining philosophy as nothing else than the right way of living, or the
science of living honorably, or the art of passing a good life, and
denouncing the fraudulent professors of it, he proceeds: “Many of the
philosophers are of this description, eloquent to their own
condemnation; for if you hear them arguing against avarice, against lust
and ambition, you would think they were making a public disclosure of
their own character, so entirely do the censures which they utter in
public flow back upon themselves; so that it is right to regard them in
no other light than as physicians whose advertisements contain medicine,
but their medicine-chests, poison. Some are not ashamed of their vices;
but they invent defenses for their own baseness, so that they may even
appear to sin with honor.”
To the same effect is the testimony of Nepos: “So far am I from thinking
that philosophy is the teacher of life and the completer of happiness,
that I consider that none have greater need of teachers of living than
many who are engaged in the discussion of this subject. For I see that a
great part of those who give most elaborate precepts in their school
respecting modesty and self-restraint, live at the same time in the
unrestrained desires of all lusts.”
Both Seneca and Plutarch are firmly convinced that man is the arbiter of
his own happiness; but the former found great difficulty in making a
practical application of the doctrine to his own case. Notwithstanding
the sorry spectacle presented to the world by many professed
philosophers, neither lost faith in philosophy. It was the court of last
resort. For the man to whom philosophy will not bring happiness there is
no happiness in this world. To the importance and benign influence of
this culture of mind, Seneca reverts again and again. He contends that
“He who frequents the school of a philosopher ought every day to carry
away with him something that will be to his profit: he ought to return
home a wiser man. And he will so return, for such is the power of
philosophy that it not only benefits those who devote themselves to it,
but even those who talk about it.” “You must change yourself, not your
abode. You may cross the sea, or as our Virgil says, ‘Lands and cities
may vanish from sight, yet wherever you go your vices will follow you.’
When a certain person made the same complaint to Socrates that you make,
he answered, ‘Why are you surprised that your travels do you no good,
when you take yourself with you everywhere?’ If we could look into the
mind of a good man, what a beautiful vision, what purity, we should
behold beaming forth from its placid depths! Here justice, there
fortitude; here self-control, there prudence. Besides these, sobriety,
continence, frankness and kindliness, and (who would believe it?)
humaneness, that rare trait in man, shed their luster over him.”
Though Seneca’s life was full of contradictions and inconsistencies when
measured by the standard of his own writings, it would be unjust to
charge him with hypocrisy. He was, within certain limits, a man of
moods; a man in whose mind conflicting desires were continually striving
for the mastery. It seems to have been a hard matter for him to attain
settled convictions on a number of important questions. Even the
immortality of the soul, a subject upon which he has much to say, and
which to Plutarch is an incontestable dogma, is to Seneca hardly more
than a hope. His mind matured early and there is almost no evidence of
development or change of views or of style in his writings. He was such
a man as nature made him, and he was on the whole pretty well satisfied
with the product. Though he now and then seems to be conscious of a
certain lack of constancy, and on the point of confessing his sins, he
generally ends by excusing them or by trying to show that they are
venial. Yet the fact that he at times acknowledges a kind of moral
weakness is perhaps the chief reason why Seneca has been so often
claimed as a Christian, while no such claim has ever been made for
Plutarch who sees no defects either in himself or his doctrine.
The chief problem of philosophy has at all times been, how to make the
judgment supreme in all matters that present themselves before the mind
and how to make the will carry out the decisions of the critical
faculty. When the poet says, “Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor,”
he is thinking of this irrepressible conflict. Paul himself was not a
stranger to it, for he exclaims in a moment of self-abasement when
writing to Seneca’s fellow citizens, “The good which I would, I do not;
but the evil which I would not, that I practice.” He, too, finds within
himself a “law,” a fact of human experience, that the flesh wars against
the spirit; that the appetencies are hard to reconcile with the
judgment. Seneca’s own writings furnish abundant evidence that many who
professed to be philosophers used their intellects solely, or chiefly,
in devising means for gratifying their desires. To men of his way of
thinking the Epicureans were a constant object of attack; yet the
Epicureans were generally consistent from their point of view and in
accordance with the postulates of their system. The all-important
question with every man who is in the habit of giving an account to
himself of his life is how to get the most out of it,—how to formulate a
system of complete living. If the individual is the goal, considered
solely from the standpoint of his earthly life, it is evident that he
will act differently in the same circumstances from him whose aim is the
good of society considered as an undying entity, or the happiness of the
individual regarded as an immortal soul. The disagreements of
philosophers have always hinged on these fundamental problems and it is
strange that so little note has been made of them. It is too often taken
for granted that the mere use of the reasoning faculties, that is,
philosophy _per se_, and without reference to the highest good, is able
to make men as nearly perfect as they can become in this life, both as
individuals and as members of the community. It was the conviction that
philosophy had run its course; that it was “played out,”—to use a phrase
more expressive than elegant—that made so many of the best men, in the
first Christian centuries, turn from it and seek refuge in Christianity.
They had become weary of the ceaseless and acrimonious discussions of
the different philosophical schools. Disgusted with contradictions and
inconsistencies, they turned to the Gospel as offering a solution of
problems at which so many acute thinkers had labored for centuries in
vain.
It has often been remarked that the Roman world had grown old. Every
experiment had been tried, every theory had been suggested that might
lead to complete living; all had ended in failure and disappointment for
those who had the good of their fellow men at heart. He who would
perform a successful experiment in physics or chemistry must see to it
that all the necessary conditions have been provided. If this is not
done, no amount of care in manipulation will bring about the desired
result. The mere presence of the proper ingredients, however pure, will
not insure success. So in society, the existence and vitality of social
forces will avail the reformer in no wise unless he knows how to put a
motive force into men’s minds and hearts that will induce them to aid
him in bringing about the changes he proposes. Some good men have been
made so by a noble system of philosophy, to the practical
exemplification of which they have devoted their lives. Both Greece and
Rome furnished not a few such. On the other hand there have been many
bad men who were made so by following the tenets of a vicious
philosophy.
There are two reasons why Seneca has, for more than eighteen hundred
years, engaged the attention of thinking men. No doubt the most
important is his extraordinary ability. The world will not willingly
forget the words of a great man, nor suffer his life to pass into
oblivion. It clings to thoughts and deeds that are worthy to survive.
Seneca not only had something to say that men wanted to hear, but he
knew how to say it in such a way that they were glad to listen. Great as
has been the evil in the world at all times it has never lacked many men
who felt that they were made for something better than the daily
concerns that occupied their time and labor. In their better moments
they found pleasure in listening to the voices that spoke to them of
something more abiding than the fleeting affairs of this transitory
life.
Seneca, too, was intensely human. He frequently furnishes evidence of
extraordinary mental strength while now and then he sinks down in sheer
exhaustion. His mind ranges freely along the whole scale of mental
experiences; and though he dwell, longest on the higher parts, he does
not always do so. The record of such an experience has an attraction for
many men. They see in it a counterpart of their own struggles, and are
rarely without hope that its triumphs may be an earnest of their own.
The scholar in politics is a character of whom we hear a good deal, but
as a matter of fact, scholarship, in the true sense of the word, and
successful politics, as the world understands success, are a combination
that has rarely been made. Again, an ecclesiastical statesman, strictly
speaking, is an equally rare phenomenon and has been since the days of
the supremacy of the Romish church. The greater the success of the
ecclesiastic in statecraft, the farther he departed from the
prescriptions of the church, or at least of the Gospel. How often has
the experience of Wolsey been anticipated or repeated; and many men,
both laics and priests, have felt the truth of Shakespeare’s thoughts,
if they have not expressed them in his words:
“Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.”
We still hope to find a place for the scholar in politics, but we have
given up the search so far as the ecclesiastic is concerned. Yet in
Seneca we have a man who had mastered all the knowledge of his time; who
was by no means an unsuccessful preacher of righteousness, and who,
nevertheless, was a successful courtier and statesman during part of his
life. He might have been both to the ending of his days in peace, had it
not been his fate to serve one of the worst rulers that ever lived. The
secret of his undying fame then is his ability and his whilom position
at the court that ruled the greatest empire of the world. It is probable
that the cause of his exile, at an age when he had as yet not written
very much, so far as we know, was his prominence in a way that was
distasteful to the emperor Claudius. While there was nothing in his past
life or present conduct to justify putting him to death, his removal
from Rome seemed desirable to the reigning monarch and his most
influential advisers. But even in exile Seneca was not a man calmly to
permit his enemies to forget him; nor would his friends suffer him to be
forgotten.
Notwithstanding his sudden elevation to a position of great importance
in the empire, he seems never to have lost sight of the fact that he was
standing on the edge of a precipice from which he might be thrust at any
moment, and that he still had need of all the consolation his philosophy
could afford. Boissier rightly says, “Though praetor and consul he
remained not the less a sage who gives instruction to his age; while he
was governing the Romans he preached virtue to them.” And he might have
added, “to himself,” for it is evident from many passages in his works
that he had himself in view no less than others. He strove to fortify
his own soul against temptations by giving expression to the tenets of
his philosophy, just as men find relief in sorrow by recording the
thoughts that pass through their minds. We may be certain, too, that to
his contemporaries his speech often sounded bolder and freer than to us
with our inadequate knowledge of the inner life of the Roman
court-circle, and accustomed as we are to the freedom of criticism to
which all our public characters, not excepting sovereigns, are subject.
They doubtless saw in many of his pithy sayings, allusions, whether
always intentional or not, does not matter, to occurrences to which we
no longer have the key. And we may be sure that he was not without an
abundance of enemies and detractors. A few of these have left themselves
on record for us. There were, doubtless, also many persons who were wont
to sneer at the man who professed to find the highest good in a
contemplative life; in devotion to an ideal that differed so widely from
the reality in which he lived; and who could yet maintain his influence
at a court of which little that was good could be said. Every society
contains a certain number of members who regard all who endeavor to lead
a better life than they themselves do, or whose ideals are higher than
their own, as offering a sort of personal challenge or directing a
rebuke at them which they must needs resent. Seneca was himself
conscious that his life and professions were sometimes irreconcilable.
He says: “To the student who professes his wish and hope to rise to a
loftier grade of virtue, I would answer that this is my wish also, but I
dare not hope it. I am preoccupied with vices. All I require of myself
is, not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad.”
On the much-debated question of Seneca’s responsibility for the vices of
Nero, Merivale is probably right in saying that he must soon have become
aware that it was impossible to make even a reasonably virtuous man out
of his pupil. Under such circumstances it was natural for him to
conclude that the best thing to be done was to allow the youth to
indulge in private vices in order to keep him from injuring others. The
morality he impressed upon Nero, the modern writer sums up in these
words: “Be courteous and moderate; shun cruelty and rapine; abstain from
blood; compensate yourself with the pleasures of youth without
compunction; amuse yourself, but hurt no man.” This principle was a
dangerous one, as we now know; but it is easy to be wise after the
event. A philosopher ought to have known that it is never safe to make a
compromise with vice. Our philosopher did not know it, or, knowing it,
was willing to take the risk.
It is doubtless some of his detractors that he has in mind in his
defense of riches. He can see no harm in large possessions when they
have been honestly, or at least lawfully, acquired and are properly
used. It may help us to understand his attitude in this matter if we
compare it with that of some of the ministers of our own day, and with
some of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the past. Seneca’s philosophy
did not come to him as a divine command. It was the fruit of his own
cogitation in the search for the supreme good. But there are men in our
day, as there have always been, who are not only members of the church
but preachers of the Gospel, who are both rich themselves and apologists
of the rich. Yet they profess to be followers of the Son of God; of Him
who taught that it is exceedingly difficult for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven. Seneca did not profess to seek this kingdom. His
search was after the kingdom of earthly felicity, and he could not see
why riches should be an obstacle to his entering it.
Seneca was a good exemplar of the truth of a saying quoted by Xenophon
in his Memorabilia of Socrates to the effect that even an upright man is
sometimes good, sometimes bad. His writings convey the impression that
their author is always under stress. The philosophical composure of
which he has much to say, is an aspiration and a hope, not a fruition.
When he speaks of the passions he sees them in their intensity. He seems
to regard all men as either very good or very bad, and finds the latter
class to include the great body of mankind. He fails to realize that the
majority belong to neither extreme. The theater on which he saw the game
of life played probably never had its counterpart in the world. He
stands at one extreme and Plutarch at the other, just as the social
circle in which each moved and knew best is the antipode of the other.
Both looked too intently and exclusively upon the merely external.
Though Plutarch judges the average man more correctly, neither possessed
sufficient penetration of intellect to fathom all the passions that
dominate or agitate the soul. Plutarch was most familiar with the man
who is concerned with the ordinary affairs of life; Seneca knew best the
corrupt crowd that sought to ingratiate itself into the favor of those
who controlled the destinies of all about them, and, in a measure, of
the entire world. Both were much in the public eye, but the public was a
widely different one. Plutarch sought to make an impression by the arts
of persuasion alone; Seneca, by all the arts that are within the power
of a resourceful intellect. How much he was in the public eye is evident
from the statement of Tacitus that his last words were written down and
at once made public. His friends no less than his enemies desired this:
his enemies, because they were eagerly watching for a final opportunity
to prove that this famous preacher of an exalted philosophy would, after
all, prove to be nothing more than a maker of fine phrases when the
crucial test came; his friends, in order to furnish indubitable evidence
that he had been true to his teachings to the end.
It is a noteworthy fact that should always be kept in mind in the study
of the writings of the ancients, and the career of their statesmen, that
there existed no universal conscience to which men could appeal. Even
the separate states were without any considerable party among their
citizens who shared the conviction that there exist eternal principles
of justice that demand the recognition of rights for all living beings,
for slaves as well as for brutes, whether they are in position to
enforce these rights or not. There was an interminable struggle of class
with class, each striving to wrest from the other the privileges they
withheld as long as they could, and finally granted only so far as they
could no longer be withheld. The political economy of the ancients did
not concern itself with making the public burdens bear as lightly as
possible on each member of the body politic, and compelling even the
most refractory to contribute their share; the problem was almost
invariably how to raise the largest amount of public revenue. Only a
part,—often but a small part, especially under the later republic—found
its way into the imperial fisc. Most of it flowed into the coffers of
the farmers of the revenue, and for this reason their representatives,
the publicans or tax-gatherers, were so thoroughly detested. Their
relation to the citizens was entirely different from the modern officers
of the government who perform the same functions. Every privilege or
alleviation granted by the governing class was usually wrung from it by
force or threats on the part of the subject. Generally speaking, the
empire was more lenient than the republic because the emperors needed
the support of the mass of their subjects against the turbulent and
avaricious nobility. The spirit of altruism that is such a powerful
force in our day is of very modern growth. It was introduced into the
world by Christianity, but its development was not rapid. Sociology as a
scientific term is but little older than the present generation; nor
does the study of political economy as a science extend far into the
last century. That remarkable people, the Jews, have from time
immemorial recognized the claims of a brother in the faith, upon every
other, for aid and sympathy. Their voluntary contributions for the
maintenance of the temple at Jerusalem and its ritual, no matter how
widely scattered they might be, is the earliest indication of a spirit
of altruism, the recognition of an obligation that was coextensive with
the faith. The Jews, however, made but a faint impression upon the
thought of antiquity. This is evident from the way they are treated by
Greek writers without exception. They were perhaps never more numerous
or more influential than during the last two or three centuries B. C.
and the first century after Christ, until the destruction of Jerusalem.
Yet Plutarch, who was the most widely read man of his time, and who
might easily have obtained his knowledge of their doctrines almost at
first hand from the Septuagint, does not show in a single line that he
ever thought this knowledge worth the trouble. When he mentions the Jews
it is only to disparage them, and to betray the grossest ignorance of
their religion and their nationality. The same is true of Seneca and the
other Roman writers. Tacitus, who professes to give an account of their
origin and of some of the tenets of their religion, shamefully
misrepresents both, while he holds the people up to the scorn of his
countrymen. So little are the most intelligent men often aware of the
occult forces at work in the world, and so ready are they to pour
contempt upon everything that does not accord with their preconceived
opinions!
The early Christians, as is well known, were reluctant to believe that
the new doctrines were intended for Gentiles as well as Jews. Both the
New Testament and some of the church fathers testify to this fact.
Merivale makes it clear that Tertullian believed that Christianity must
always, to some extent, stand apart from the ordinary march of events,
and that the true faith could only be held by a chosen few. He does not
intend his words to be understood in their spiritual significance, that
many are called but few chosen, and he makes this plain by adding that
the Roman emperors might themselves have been Christians, if governments
could become Christian; in other words “mankind in general were equally
incapable of moral renovation and spiritual conversion.”
Though Seneca was, during almost his whole life in the public eye and
lived amid the toil and turbulence of the busiest city in the world, he
professed a distaste for crowds. He tries to dissuade those who value
their peace of mind, but especially those who are truly devoted to
philosophy, from seeking popular applause. He loves to be the center of
a circle of choice spirits, to associate on intimate terms with men of
like aims and tastes with his own. It is almost exclusively against the
vices of the rich and the great that he declaims. Only in “good society”
is he at home; in fact he seems to know no other, has nothing in common
with any other. He is profoundly ignorant, with Plutarch, of the fact
that society cannot be reformed from the top or from within. Yet the
refinements of luxury are hateful to him, and from boyhood to the end of
his days he lived a frugal life.
How easy it is for Seneca to talk, to express himself in words whether
with tongue or pen, becomes evident not only from a glance at the
subjects upon which he writes, some of which are of the same tenor with
those discussed by his equally fluent predecessor, Cicero, but from his
own direct testimony. At the beginning of the Fifth Book on Benefits he
tells his readers that he has virtually exhausted the subject. Yet he
runs on through three more Books, apparently for no other reason than
because he finds pleasure in discussing every question that has the
remotest connection with the main theme. The result is that the portion
which he considers irrelevant is almost as long as the treatise proper.
I have once or twice in the present essay, touched upon the most
prominent feature of the Roman character, but the phenomenon is so
important, contributes so much to a proper estimate of the career of
Seneca, and goes so far toward reconciling the apparent or real
inconsistencies between his life and his doctrines, between his words
and his deeds, that it is necessary to dwell upon the point at greater
length. The Romans were, above everything else, men of the world; men
who laid the greatest possible stress on practical activity in the
service of the state; men who were wholly out of their sphere when this
outlet for their energies was closed to them. Greece gave birth to many
individuals who lived entirely, or at least chiefly, in the realm of
their thoughts; or as Jean Paul says of the Germans, the air was their
domain. The precincts of abstract speculation lay in a region never
entered by a Roman. A few trod the outer courts under the guidance of
Greeks, but not one ever penetrated farther. The Romans had no
literature of their own, no music, no pictorial or plastic arts, no
architecture. Though so long under the intellectual tutelage of Greece,
their taste was not refined, nor was a genuine love of culture inherent
in the nation. It saw no use for these things because they were not
practical; could not be employed in the service of the government. The
occasional efforts of the emperors and of some of the leading families
to elevate the national taste produced but meager results. Such being
the case, what was there for the average Roman to do when he had become
rich, or had no public duty to perform, and wanted to “have a good
time”? There is abundant evidence within our reach to enable us to
answer this question. He plunged headlong into debaucheries so shameful
that the modern pen shrinks from describing them, and the mind from
contemplating them. Fortunes were sometimes spent on a single banquet.
The Roman baths ministered equally to luxury and licentiousness. In
short, it seems as if all the ingenuity of the empire had at times been
exerted to the utmost to devise new methods of sensual gratification.
But he could not indulge incessantly in bacchanalian orgies; the jaded
body needed some relaxative that could be found neither in sleep nor in
such business that could not be delegated to a subordinate. There he
regaled himself with the sight of blood. The huge structures erected for
the gladiatorial combats testify to the Roman passion for these cruel
sports. Every living creature that could be induced to fight was
exhibited in the arena where men and women took equal delight in the
bloody spectacle. Lecky, in his History of European Morals, sets forth
in graphic colors the pomp and circumstance with which these horrible
exhibitions were given. I cannot do better than to transcribe his words:
“The gladiatorial games form, indeed, the one feature of Roman society
which to a modern mind is almost inconceivable in its atrocity. That not
only men, but women, in an advanced period of civilization—men and women
who not only professed, but very frequently acted upon, a high code of
morals—should have made the carnage of men their habitual amusement;
that all this should have continued for centuries, with scarcely a
protest, is one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is,
however, perfectly normal, and in no degree inconsistent with the
doctrine of natural moral perceptions, while it opens out fields of
ethical enquiry of a very deep, though painful interest.”
“The mere desire for novelty impelled the people to every excess or
refinement of barbarity. The simple combat became at last insipid, and
every variety of atrocity was devised to stimulate the flagging
interest. At one time a bear and a bull, chained together, rolled in
fierce contest along the sand; at another, criminals dressed in the
skins of wild beasts, were thrown to bulls, which were maddened by
red-hot irons, or by darts tipped with burning pitch. Four hundred bears
were killed in a single day under Caligula; three hundred on another day
under Claudius. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and
elephants; four hundred bears and three hundred lions were slaughtered
by his soldiers. In a single day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by
Titus, five thousand animals perished. Under Trajan, the games continued
for one hundred and twenty-three successive days. Lions, tigers,
elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even
crocodiles and serpents, were employed to give novelty to the spectacle.
Nor was any form of human suffering wanting. The first Gordian, when
edile, gave twelve spectacles, in each of which from one hundred and
fifty to five hundred pair of gladiators appeared. Eight hundred pair
fought at the triumph of Aurelian. Ten thousand men fought during the
games of Trajan. Nero illumined his gardens during the night by
Christians burning in their pitchy shirts. Under Domitian, an army of
feeble dwarfs was compelled to fight, and more than once female
gladiators descended to perish in the arena.”
“So intense was the craving for blood, that a prince was less unpopular
if he neglected the distribution of corn than if he neglected the games;
and Nero himself, on account of his munificence in this respect, was
probably the sovereign who was most beloved by the Roman multitude.”
“It is well for us to look steadily on such facts as these. They display
more vividly than any mere philosophical disquisition the abyss of
depravity into which it is possible for human nature to sink. They
furnish us with striking proofs of the reality of the moral progress we
have attained, and they enable us in some degree to estimate the
regenerating influence that Christianity has exercised in the world. For
the destruction of the gladiatorial games is all its work. Philosophers,
indeed, might deplore them, gentle natures might shrink from their
contagion, but to the multitude they possessed a fascination which
nothing but the new religion could overcome.”
How deeply the virulent poison of inhumanity and the insatiable thirst
for blood had infected the Roman people is further evident, not only
from the means employed to make these sanguinary spectacles as
fascinating as possible, but also from the impress they made upon the
current phraseology. Lecky says further: “No pageant has ever combined
more powerful elements of attraction. The magnificent circus, the
gorgeous dresses of the assembled court, the contagion of a passionate
enthusiasm thrilling almost visibly through the mighty throng, the
breathless silence of expectation, the wild cheers bursting
simultaneously from eighty thousand tongues, and echoing to the
fartherest outskirts of the city, the rapid alternations of the fray,
the deeds of splendid courage that were manifested, were all well fitted
to entrance the imagination. The crimes and servitude of the gladiator
were for a time forgotten in the blaze of glory that surrounded him.
Representing to the highest degree that courage which the Romans deemed
the first of virtues, the cynosure of countless eyes, the chief object
of conversation in the metropolis of the universe, destined, if
victorious, to be immortalized in the mosaic and the sculpture, he not
unfrequently rose to heroic grandeur.... Beautiful eyes, trembling with
passion, looked down upon the fight, and the noblest ladies of Rome,
even the empress herself, had been known to crave the victor’s love. We
read of gladiators lamenting that the games occurred so seldom,
complaining bitterly if they were not permitted to descend into the
arena, scorning to fight except with the most powerful antagonists,
laughing aloud at their wounds when dressed, and at last, when prostrate
in the dust, calmly turning their throats to the sword of the conqueror.
The enthusiasm that gathered round them was so intense that special laws
were found necessary, and were sometime insufficient, to prevent
patricians from enlisting in their ranks, while the tranquil courage
with which they never failed to die, supplied the philosopher with his
most striking examples. The severe continence that was required before
the combat, contrasting vividly with the licentiousness of Roman life,
had even invested them with something of a moral dignity; and it is a
singularly suggestive fact, that, of all pagan characters, the gladiator
was selected by the fathers as the closest approximation to a Christian
model. St. Augustine tells us how one of his friends, being drawn to the
spectacle, endeavored by closing his eyes to guard against a fascination
that he knew to be sinful. A sudden cry caused him to break his
resolution, and he never could withdraw his gaze again.”
The Roman people clung with amazing tenacity to this gruesome sport.
Nero instituted, in a private way, games after the Grecian model, and
Hadrian made a similar effort on a larger scale; but the public took
little interest in them while sturdy Romans protested against these
Hellenic corruptions.
I have dwelt somewhat at length on this singular institution, both
because it was peculiar to ancient Rome and because, above everything
else, it throws light on the character of its populace. It is true that
men of kindly natures like Virgil and Cicero condemned these atrocious
pastimes, or at least took no pleasure in them, but their influence
produced no effect on public opinion. Nothing that Seneca has written is
more to his credit than the vigorous language he employs in denunciation
of the gladiatorial combats.
A life devoted to study and speculation was to a Roman citizen
impossible. Cicero, who did more than any of his countrymen to
naturalize Greek philosophy on Roman soil through the medium of the
Latin language, was a practical statesman. When forced to retire from
the service of the state he longed to return to its labors,
notwithstanding the dangers to be incurred. Livy and Virgil devoted
their lives almost exclusively to the glorification of the past in
extolling the heroes by whose toil, endurance, and self-sacrifice, the
Rome of their day had become what it was. Though in a sense living in
retirement, their thoughts were none the less upon the state; their time
and talents not the less devoted to its service. To a Roman the state
embodied almost everything worth living for; asceticism was impossible
for him. Even when not actively engaged in public affairs he found
pleasure in observing, at close range, the machinery of government in
action. He longed to live and move in the strife and turmoil of the
capital. We need not wonder that Ovid, in exile, was ready to submit
with cheerful alacrity to any moral indignity, and to humiliate himself
in the dust before his emperor, would he but permit him to return to the
city which his spirit had never left. Seneca’s conduct, when in
banishment, was even less to his credit than that of Ovid, inasmuch as
he professed to be governed by far higher principles. He thought he was
a philosopher, yet when compelled to live in Corsica where he had all
his time to devote to study and meditation, he was wretched in the
extreme; belittled himself by the most degrading exhibition of
servility; did not scruple to stoop to the most shameful falsehoods and
the most disgusting flattery in order to bring about his recall. His
encomium on solitude, and his aversion to crowds, if they are anything
more than mere theory, are the result of larger experience and of deeper
insight into the human heart. Yet it is hardly open to doubt that he
could have gone into voluntary retirement at any period of his life,
except perhaps near its close.
It has been said of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, that his mind was more
Greek than Roman. While it is true that he loved philosophy, and studied
it daily, he did so in the belief that in this way he could the better
prepare his mind and heart to perform the duties which his exalted
station imposed upon him. He seems never to have seriously entertained
the thought that it was in his power at all times to lay down his
official burdens in order to follow his natural inclinations. His
highest ideal of virtue was to cultivate and strengthen his sense of
duty; but this duty was primarily political.
There is little doubt that the conspicuous place occupied by the state
in the mind of every Roman citizen prepared the way for the deification
of the emperors, a form of adulation that in the course of time wrought
untold mischief, and led to the most abject servility on the part of men
of whom one would have expected better things. Baumgarten devotes many
pages to a discussion of this curious feature of Roman politics. In the
nature of the case this deification had no regard whatever to the
personal character of the sovereign. It elevated him to the skies,
solely as the personification of the largest possible power entrusted to
a mortal. When in the course of time all the functions of the government
were concentrated in the hands of a single individual, it was natural
that he should become an object of worship, at least in a sense, even
during his lifetime, and as a matter of course placed among the gods at
his death. We shall find this transition easy if we consider further the
character of the gods of antiquity. They were not distinguished from
mortals by higher attributes, but only by the possession of greater
power. A god, in the popular estimation, was not necessarily any better
than a man—he was only stronger. His good-will was to be gained and his
ill-will averted by precisely the same means that were employed in the
case of men. The Roman gods were, in a far larger measure than those of
the Greeks, personifications of abstract qualities. There was thus a
wide scope for projecting into their character the salient traits of the
worshiper.
The gods, then, being an abstraction, and the state being the mightiest
visible representation of human power, it required no great effort of
the imagination to regard its head as divine, in the sense which the
Romans attached to the term. The unthinking multitude naturally fell in
with the ideas of their leaders, and even the better class of men rarely
protested because they considered the ceremony of little moment, or
because protests would have been unavailing.
Strangely, too, the belief in fate, in an inevitable destiny, did much
to paralize the free action of many of the bravest men. The fate of the
republic, the destiny of the Roman people, regarded as an immutable law
of nature, the utter insignificance of the individual either expressed
or implied, are ideas that figure prominently in the literature of
ancient Rome. It has been truly said that Rome attained its greatness
without great men. Almost from its remotest beginnings it was like an
organism in which each separate cell, though incapable of life by
itself, performs its function as part of a whole and contributes to its
life and growth. In this case the cell, as we may designate each
individual moral entity, though conscious in a sense of a life apart,
was powerless to modify the whole organism.
To what extent the Roman emperors took their apotheosis seriously we
have scant means of knowing. It is well established that a few of them
regarded it as a huge joke. But it is beyond question that on the great
mass of the people it had a most deleterious effect. How could it be
otherwise, when some of them reached the lowest depths of degradation to
which human nature could sink? When the monarch in his official capacity
was recognized not only as the political and military head of the
government but also its divine head, it is easy to imagine what the
effect of such a recognition must be upon the average Roman, in
contracting his spiritual outlook. As long as the gods were mere
abstract qualities, or even to some extent personal beings like those of
the Greeks, there was a sort of indistinctness in which they were veiled
that did not invite imitation. But a deified emperor was, or had been, a
creature of flesh and blood; no matter what he might do, there would be
many ready to tread in his footsteps, so far as they could. The
pernicious influence of the ancient mythology engaged the attention of
thoughtful men from the remotest times. How much worse, then, would this
influence be when the vilest that tradition reported of the gods was
actually done by men in flesh and blood. “Like priest, like people,” is
a true saying even when both priest and people are pagans.
Aside from the restraints of religion, there is, in modern times, in all
civilized countries, a certain restraining influence exercised by public
opinion that keeps the rich, who are inclined to a lax personal
morality, within reasonable bounds. But so far as we can discover, the
inhibitive force of public opinion in Rome upon the individual in the
matter of ethics was very slight, especially under the empire. It is
plain then where a debauched public sentiment placed no check upon any
form of vice from without, and but few individuals yielded to moral
restraints from within, the condition of society was such that it could
hardly have been worse.
We are sometimes inclined to wonder that so few protests were made by
enlightened Romans against the deification of the emperors. The
explanation may be found in the prevailing rationalism of the age. To
the majority of those men one religion was just as good as another, and
all religions were but forms of superstition. The persecutions directed
against the early Christians were urged on the general ground that the
failure to follow the multitude was a mark of treason against the
government, and for this reason the best men were naturally the
instigators. To perform the religious functions enjoined by the state
was regarded as a mark of loyalty; to refuse, the badge of disloyalty.
It is not necessary to go back to ancient Rome and to heathen religions
to find parallels for treating the externals of worship as matters of
indifference, or for requiring the subject, under penalties, to conform
to the creed of the sovereign.
When we come to speak of the relation of Seneca to Christianity, but
especially of his conversion by St. Paul, a thesis laboriously defended
by more than one modern writer, we cannot do better than to transcribe a
passage from Merivale setting forth clearly the courses that led men
into a very natural error. After calling attention to the fact that both
Seneca and Paul were moral reformers, he proceeds: “There is so much in
their principles, so much even in their language, which agrees together,
so that one has been thought, though it must be allowed without adequate
reason, to have borrowed directly from the other. But the philosopher,
be it remembered, discoursed to a large and not inattentive audience,
and surely the soil was not all unfruitful on which this seed was
scattered, when he proclaimed that _God dwells not in temples of wood or
stone, nor wants the ministration of human hands; that He has no delight
in the blood of victims; that He is near to all His creatures; that His
spirit resides in men’s hearts; that all men are truly His offspring;
that we are members of one body, which is God or nature; that men must
believe in God before they can approach Him; that the true service of
God is to be like unto Him; that all men have sinned, and none performed
all the works of the law; that God is no respecter of nations, ranks, or
conditions, but all, barbarian and Roman, bond and free, are alike under
His all-seeing providence._ St. Paul enjoined submission and obedience
even to the tyranny of Nero, and Seneca fosters no ideas subversive of
political subjection. Endurance is the paramount virtue of the Stoic. To
forms of government the wise man was wholly indifferent; they were among
the external circumstances above which his spirit soared in serene
self-contemplation. We trace in Seneca no yearning for a restoration of
political freedom, nor does he ever point to the senate, after the
manner of the patriots of the day, as a legitimate check to the
autocracy of the despot. The only mode, in his view, of tempering
tyranny is to educate the tyrant himself in virtue. His was the
self-denial of the Christians, but without their anticipated
compensation. It seems impossible to doubt that in his highest flights
of rhetoric—and no man ever recommended the unattainable with a finer
grace—Seneca must have felt that he was laboring to build up a house
without foundations; that his system, as Caius said of his style, was
sand without lime. He was surely not unconscious of the inconsistency of
his own position, as a public man and a minister, with the theories to
which he had wedded himself; and of the impossibility of preserving in
it the purity of his character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware
that in the existing state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to
men high in station; wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor
minister became at once contemptible. Both Cicero and Seneca were men of
many weaknesses, and we remark them the more because both were
pretenders to unusual strength of character: but while Cicero lapsed
into political errors, Seneca cannot be absolved of actual crime.
Nevertheless, if we may compare the greatest masters of Roman wisdom
together, the Stoic will appear, I think, the more earnest of the two,
the more anxious to do his duty for its own sake, the more sensible of
the claims of mankind upon him for such precepts of virtuous living as
he had to give. In an age of unbelief and compromise, he taught that
Truth was positive and Virtue objective. He conceived, what never
entered Cicero’s mind, the idea of improving his fellow creatures; he
had, what Cicero had not, a heart for conversion to Christianity.”
Notwithstanding the many points of contact between the doctrines of the
New Testament and the teachings of Seneca, no competent judge now holds
that he was a Christian. The wonder is that there should ever have
arisen any serious controversy on the subject. The very fact that
Seneca’s faith underwent no change from first to last ought to be
decisive. He did not pass through the experience of conversion; he shows
no vicissitudes of intellectual or moral growth; he never wavered in his
faith in philosophy, and in the power of man to attain the supreme good
by mere force of will. Yet Seneca is, to the Christian, unquestionably,
the most interesting personality that heathen antiquity has produced.
His philosophy and his morality show, in a striking way, that a man may
approach very close to the boundary line of Christianity without
crossing it; without even knowing what is before him. The best thought
of the age clearly proves that Greek philosophy had, in a sense,
prepared a few noble minds for the reception of the ethical and
altruistic precepts of the Gospel; but it was in no sense the harbinger
of its spiritual doctrines.
It remains yet to consider briefly an institution which, while not
peculiar to Rome, was, nevertheless, here characterized by some features
that were unique in their influences for evil. Slavery rested like a
horrible incubus upon the ancient world, though few persons seem to have
been aware of it. It placed a curse upon labor and almost prevented the
development of the mechanic arts. It seriously impeded the growth of the
moral sentiments by the hindrances it placed in the way of free
discussion, and by the opportunities it afforded the basely inclined for
the gratification of carnal lusts. It placed a large part of the
population virtually beyond the range of human sympathy by branding the
expression of such sympathy as a symptom of treason. While it did these
things everywhere, in Rome it made a people that were naturally coarse
and brutal still more so, by placing within the easy reach of every
slave-owner helpless objects upon which he could vent his rage, and
whose services he could exploit in the most unfeeling manner. A lurid
light is thrown on the barbarity of the Romans toward their slaves by an
occurrence that took place in the later years of Seneca. A plain
statement of the facts is more impressive than many pages of theory. A
prefect of the city, Pedanius Secundus by name, was murdered by one of
his slaves and the criminal could not be apprehended. According to law,
all the bondmen of the murdered man, four hundred in number, were to be
put to death. The populace, to their honor be it said, more humane than
the senators, raised a tumult of protest against the execution of the
sentence. Their sympathy availed nothing; the unhappy victims were led
away to die. One of the senators even proposed a decree that all the
freedmen belonging to the household of the late prefect should be
transported beyond the confines of Italy. But the emperor, and that
emperor was Nero, more humane than the optimates, alleged that the laws
were already severe enough, and that it would be cruel to add to their
severity by fresh enactments. The decree of expulsion was not passed.
Yet Tacitus, from whom this narrative is taken, a writer who never tires
of lamenting the degeneracy of his age, has not a word of compassion for
the unfortunate sufferers, nor a syllable of condemnation for an
atrocious law.
Still it must be said that some of the Roman philosophers, especially
Cicero and Seneca, lay stress in their writings, upon the universal
brotherhood of man. They have much to say about the intrinsic worth of
the human soul. While these ideas are largely borrowed from the Greeks,
or at least suggested by Greek philosophers, the Romans are singularly
eloquent in proclaiming them. But slavery is never attacked by name. It
is doubtful whether a passage can be found in any Greek or Roman writer
explicitly asserting that it is wrong for one man to hold another in
bondage. This may be due to the conviction that such a doctrine would be
extremely dangerous among a large servile population, even if the
government allowed entire freedom of speech. The New Testament is almost
silent about slavery. Its authors did not wish to give utterance to any
views that could be used by their enemies as the basis for a charge of
disaffection with the “powers that be.”
Again, slavery in some form was universal. Servitude was held to be the
proper condition of a large part of the human race. No man who lived
during the existence of the Roman empire would have ventured to predict
the ultimate downfall of slavery. It is interesting to note in this
connection that Basil Hall, writing as late as 1828, while admitting
everything that could be alleged on the evils of slavery, thought that
to do away with it seemed “so completely beyond the reach of any human
exertions that I consider the abolition of slavery as one of the most
profitless of all possible subjects of discussion.”
On the supposition, then, that slavery must continue indefinitely, if it
could ever be abolished, it was the duty of the philanthropist to do
what he could to ameliorate the condition of the servile class by
educating their masters in the principles of a humane philosophy, rather
than to incur the risk of making it worse by the suggestion of
emancipation. If the good man is kind to his beast, he cannot fail to
treat kindly his bondman. It does not seem inconsistent with the general
tenor of Seneca’s writings to assume that he thought the best way to
mitigate the condition of the slaves was to indoctrinate their owners
with a philosophy that would accord to them kind treatment, rather than
to seek to bring about their liberation.
Besides, the slaves themselves were not often conscious of their
unfortunate legal status. The best they desired for themselves was that
they might fall into the hands of a good master. That such men were not
altogether wanting, even among the Romans, is evident from the many
instances of rare devotion shown by their slaves.
It is one of the surprising things in the history of mankind that the
progress of the anti-slavery sentiment was so rapid when the cause of
the slave had obtained a hearing before the bar of public conscience.
Slavery had existed from time immemorial. The wrongs it condoned, the
evils entailed upon its victims, attracted but little attention until
the close of the last century. Within less than a hundred years after
the agitation had begun there was not a slave recognized as such by law
in Christendom. The contemplation of this fact may well teach political
prophets to be careful in their predictions as to what will or will not
happen in the future.
* * * * *
In the foregoing essay I have, for the most part omitted such
biographical data as may be found in any encyclopedia, and have confined
myself chiefly to a study of the society in which Seneca moved, and to a
consideration of some of the leading characteristics of the age in which
he lived. Every man should be judged by his times, for no man is
uninfluenced by them. It is only men of the strongest character that
rise far above the manners and thoughts of their contemporaries. Seneca
was not one of these. Though endowed with a penetrating intellect and
strong moral convictions he sometimes yielded to temptations against the
protest of his better judgment. He compelled his intellect to sanction
or at least to excuse conduct that he felt to be unworthy of the
philosophy he professed and taught. Yet after making all due allowance
for his shortcomings, I am persuaded that one cannot long study his
writings and his career without reaching the conviction that among the
great men of Rome none towered above him in moral grandeur and but few
surpassed him in intellectual stature. If I may be allowed to express a
personal opinion I do not hesitate to affirm that in the first thousand
years of its history no more interesting and attractive character lived
and died in the City of the Seven Hills than the philosopher Seneca.
Footnote 1:
It is a noteworthy fact that many of Rome’s great men were Spaniards,
while many others were not natives of the city. Among the former were
the emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius. The two
Senecas, Lucan, Martial and Quintillian were also Spaniards. Vespasian
was born at Reate; Livy, in Padua; Horace, at Venusia; Virgil, in
Mantua; Cicero, at Arpinum; the emperor Claudius, at Lugdunum; the two
Plinys, at Comum, etc.
Footnote 2:
Seneca is generally regarded as the first Roman writer who used
_caro_, flesh, as distinct from, and opposed to, spirit.
The following is a list of Seneca’s extant works:
_De Providentia_, (On Providence).
_De Constantia Sapientis_, (On the Constancy of the Sage).
_De Ira_, (On Anger).
_De Vita beata_, (On a happy life).
_De Otio_, (On Leisure).
_De Tranquillitate Animi_, (On Peace of Mind).
_De Brevitate Vitae_, (On the Shortness of Life).
_De Beneficiis_, (On Beneficence).
_De Clementia_, (On Clemency).
_Ad Marciam de Consolatione_, (A Letter of Condolence to Marcia).
_Ad Polybium de Consolatione_, (A Letter of Condolence to Polybius).
_Ad Helviam matrem de Consolatione._ (A Letter of Condolence to his
mother Helvia).
_Apocolocynthosis_, (Pumpkinfication, as it may be translated by a
parody on Deification; or we may call it Pumpkinosis to correspond
with Apotheosis).
_Epistolae Morales ad Lucilium_, (Letters to Lucilius on the Conduct
of Life).
_Quaestiones Naturales_, (Questions relating to Physical Phenomena).
This is the only work of the kind belonging to Latin literature.
During the Middle Ages it was much used as a text-book.
In the Charpentier-Lemaistre edition the letters to Lucilius fill the
first volume and a little more than half of the second. The first Book
on Beneficence is in the third volume; the remainder with the Problems
in Physics fill the fourth and last. The smaller treatises occupy the
rest of the four volumes. A number of Tragedies with Greek titles are
also attributed to our Seneca, probably with justice.
Note:—To translate Seneca adequately is not an easy task. While his
meaning is usually plain, the modern reader is not in all cases
certain that he clearly apprehends the exact signification of his
words when taken separately. He is thus in danger of reading into
them ideas that savor more of modern theology than the author
intended,—a common fault of interpreters. It has been demonstrated
that Seneca knew nothing of the Gospels directly, yet he has often
been claimed as a Christian. Evidently, then, there must be a good
deal in his writings that can be used to support such a claim.
Attention has already been called to his use of _caro_. He seems
also to be the first Roman who uses Providentia to designate an
intelligent guide and guardian of the affairs of the world. There
are other terms to which he gives a signification not found in the
profane writers of ancient Rome.
But the chief obstacle the translator has to contend against is his
diction. This is highly rhetorical and very difficult to transfer
into another language, unless the translator has at command all the
resources of his mother tongue. Such a wealth of resources, I do not
hesitate to confess, is not within my reach. If a translation is to
make the same impression on the reader or hearer that is made by the
original, it is as important to preserve the peculiarities of a
writer’s style as to render accurately the meaning of the separate
words. While I flatter myself that I have been fairly successful in
the interpretation of Seneca’s words, I am not equally sanguine as
to his diction. I believe, however, that I have in no case strayed
very far afield and that the reading of the following pages will
convey not only a fairly correct idea of what Seneca thought on many
important problems, but also of the manner in which he expressed
himself. I hope at some future time, if life and health are
vouchsafed to me, to prepare a complete translation of Seneca’s
moral writings.
SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF SENECA, TO WHICH PASSAGES MORE OR LESS
CLOSELY AKIN OCCUR IN THE SCRIPTURES.
FROM THE LETTERS TO LUCILIUS.
A holy spirit dwells within us, the observer and keeper of the evil and
the good; it treats us just as it is treated by us.
If you do what is right, let all men know it; if what is wrong, does it
matter that no one knows it, since you know it yourself? O what a
wretched man you are if you disregard such a witness!
The human mind has come down from the spirit that dwells on high.
Fortune exempts many from punishment; from fear, no one.
It is natural for those who have done wrong to be afraid.
The light is irksome to a bad conscience.
The guilty have sometimes the good fortune not to be found out; never
the certainty of it.
Good precepts, if you often reflect upon them, will profit you equally
with good examples.
If thou wouldst gain the favor of the gods, be good.
He adequately worships the gods who imitates them.
It suffices God that he be worshiped and loved; love cannot be mixed
with fear.
What thou hast learned, confirm by doing.
A great and holy spirit, it is true, holds converse with us, but it
cleaves to its origin.
Let the young reverence and look up to their teachers.
How wisely you live is an important matter: not, how long.
It is not a good thing to live; it is, to live wisely.
He who would live for himself must live for others.
He who has much covets more.
No one is worthy of God save him who contemns riches.
Dare to contemn riches and thus to make thyself worthy of God.
The shortest road to riches is to contemn riches.
Not he who has little but he who covets more is poor.
Thin is the texture of a lie; it is easily seen through if closely
examined.
The praise is not in the deed but in the way it is done.
To be master of one’s self is the greatest mastery.
One cause of the evils of our time is that we live after the example of
others. We are not guided by reason but led astray by custom.
Money never made anybody rich.
Why did God create the world? He is good; a good being feels no aversion
to anything that is good. Therefore He made the world as good as
possible. _Quoted from Plato._
Some of our time is filched from us, some is stolen outright, some
passes unnoticed. But most reprehensible of all things is to lose it by
mere negligence; and if you will note carefully, men spend a great part
of life in doing evil, the greatest part in doing nothing the whole of
it doing something else than they ought. Whom will you name that places
any value on time? Who prizes a day? Who realizes that he is dying
daily? For we err when we regard death as something in the future; a
great part of it has already passed; the portion of our life that is
behind us, death holds. Do, therefore, Lucilius, what you write that you
are doing, husband every hour; you will be less dependent upon to-morrow
if you seize to-day. Everything else belongs to others, time only is
ours.
There is a great difference between not wanting to sin and not knowing
how.
If thou wouldst get rid of thy vices keep out of bad company.
He worships God who knows Him.
No one commits wrongs for himself alone; he communicates them to others
and is in turn led astray by others.
Our minds are dazzled when they look upon truth.
No virtue remains hidden, and it suffers no damage by having been
hidden.
Nature has given to all the fundamental principles and seeds of virtue.
Nature does not make us virtuous; it is an art to become good.
If what you are doing is right, all men may know it.
The reward of all the virtues is in the virtues themselves. The
recompense of a good deed is to have done it.
Virtue alone brings lasting and sure happiness.
He errs who thinks the gods intentionally inflict injuries on any one;
they cannot do so; they can neither receive nor do injury.
So live with men as if God saw thee; so talk with God as if men heard
thee.
God has no need of ministering servants: He Himself ministers to men; is
present everywhere and in everything.
The gods extend a helping hand to those who would rise. Do you wonder
that man goes to the gods? God comes to men, and what is more, He comes
into men. No mind is good without God.
All men, if they are traced to their first origin, are from the gods.
Every day, every hour, reminds us of our nothingness and, by some fresh
admonition, warns those of their frailty who are prone to forget it.
Give heed to each day as if it were your whole life. Nothing will so
much enable you to exercise control over yourself in all things as to
think often of the uncertainty and brevity of life.
You will grant that the greatest piety toward the gods is a
characteristic of a good man; and so whatever may befall him he will
bear with equanimity, for he will know that it has happened in harmony
with that divine law by which all things are governed.
No one is strong enough to rise by his own strength; every man needs
some one to extend a hand, some one to lead him.
So let us live, so let us talk, that our destiny may find us prepared
and ready to follow it. Great is the soul that has yielded itself to
God; on the other hand, that one is cowardly and degenerate that
resists, that finds fault with the order of the world, and is more ready
to set the the gods right than itself.
We ought to have before our minds some one whom we revere; some one
whose influence makes even our most secret thoughts holier.
Long is a way by precepts; short and effectual, by examples.
Weaker minds, however, have need of some one to go before who shall say,
“This avoid, this do.”
The community of which we form a part is very much like an arch built of
stone; it would at once fall down if one did not support another.
We are members of an immense body. Nature begat us as kinsmen, since it
formed us of the same elements and for the same end.
What is it that draws us in one direction when we would go in another,
that urges us on when we want to resist, that strives against our
desires and does not permit us to do what we purpose?
If thou wishest to be loved, love!
No one is free that is the slave of his body.
We ought to live in this thought: I was not born for a corner only; my
country is this entire world.
The beginning of salvation is the knowledge of sin. _Quoted from
Epicurus._
Philosophy sheds its light upon all men.
It is so difficult for us to get well because we do not know that we are
sick.
It is the strongest evidence that our mind is directed toward its own
improvement when we see faults that we had not before observed.
It is an infirmity of mind not to be able to bear riches.
To live right is in the power of everybody.
The acknowledgement of a fault is the beginning of a better life.
He who does not admit his proneness to do wrong has no desire to be
corrected. You must recognize your errors before you can correct them.
The ancients held the first requisite of repentance to be an examination
of one’s self, especially since without this, life would not be worth
living.
There is no vice without some excuse.
You ask me what you should particularly avoid. (I answer,) a crowd. You
cannot with safety to yourself mingle in a large company. I must verily
confess my own weakness. I never bring back the same character that I
took with me; something which I had banished, returns; something else
that I had quieted, is aroused.... But nothing is so damaging to a good
character as to spend much time at public spectacles, for with the
pleasure we receive vices the more easily creep in unawares.
It is a large part of goodness to desire to become good.
There is a certain fitness in the feeling of sorrow; this the sage ought
to heed, and just as in everything else so in grief there is a proper
mean.
What fate did not give it did not take away.
To obey God is liberty.
No one is out of the reach of the temptation of vice unless he has
banished it wholly from his breast; and no one has banished it wholly
until he has put wisdom in its stead.
Great is the praise if man is helpful to man. We admonish you to extend
a hand to the shipwrecked; to point out the way to the lost; to share
your bread with the hungry.
No one ever renders a service to another without also rendering a
service to himself.
Often what is given is a small matter; what follows from it, a great
one.
When we reason upon the immortality of the soul, we do not regard as of
little weight the universal belief of men who either fear or revere the
gods of the lower world.
That day which thou dreadest as if it were thy last is the day of the
birth into eternity.
A time will come that shall unite us and bring us into each other’s
company.
Then shall our soul have reason to rejoice because, freed from this
darkness in which it is involved, it shall see the light, no longer with
feeble vision, but in all the brightness of day, and it will have
returned to its own heaven since it will again occupy the place which
belongs to it by right of birth. Its origin calls it on high.
Let another begin a quarrel, but let reconciliation begin with thee.
What else is nature than God and the divine reason that permeates the
whole world and all its parts. Whithersoever thou turnest thou wilt see
Him before thee; there is no place where He is not; He Himself fills all
His work.
Every crime is committed before the deed is done.
The human mind has come down from the spirit that dwells on high.
Believe me, the creator of this vast universe, whoever he may have been,
whether it was a god, master of everything, whether it was an
incorporeal intelligence able to bring forth the most brilliant marvels,
whether it was a divine spirit diffused with equal energy in the
smallest and the largest things, whether it was destiny and an immutable
concatenation of causes linked together: this sovereign potentate did
not wish to leave us dependent upon any one else even in the smallest
matters.
Stars shall impinge upon stars and all matter that now delights us with
its beautiful order will burn in one huge conflagration.
How often he who refuses pardon to others begs it for himself!
It is base to say one thing and mean another; it is baser to write one
thing and mean another.
A wise man will pardon an injury, though it be great, and if he can do
it without breach of piety and fidelity, that is, if the whole injury
pertains to himself.
As far as thou canst, accuse thyself, try thyself, discharge the office,
first of a prosecutor, then of a judge, lastly of an intercessor.
We can never quarrel enough with our vices, which, I beseech thee,
persecute perpetually. Cast from thee everything that corrupts the
heart; and if thou canst not otherwise get rid of it, spare not the
heart itself.
FROM DE BENEFICIIS.
Nature is not without God nor is God without nature. Both are the same
and their functions are the same. So, too, nature, destiny, fortune, are
all the names of the same God.
It is the mark of a noble and generous soul to be helpful, to do good;
he who confers favors, imitates the gods.
Beneficence always makes haste; what one does willingly one does
quickly.
We owe no thanks for a favor that has for a long time adhered to the
hands of the giver, as it were; which he seems to have let go with
reluctance and which one might almost say had been wrested from him.
Those favors are most gratifying to us that are deliberately and
willingly offered, and in connection with which the only hesitancy is on
the part of the recipient.
I do not make the favors I confer a matter of public record.
He who intends to be grateful ought to think about requiting a favor as
soon as he receives it.
This is the law of beneficence between two persons: the one should
forthwith forget that he has given; the other should never forget that
he has received.
You buy from the physician a thing that is above price, life and health;
from the teacher of belles-lettres, acquaintance with the liberal arts.
Yet it is not the value of these things that you pay for but their
pains, because when they are serving us they give up their private
business to devote themselves to us.
The sun rises for the evil also.
God has given certain benefactions to all men, and from which none are
excluded.
Who is so wretched, so despised, who born to so hard and sorrowful a
destiny that he has never perceived the munificence of the gods? Seek
out even those who bewail their fate and who are always complaining, you
will not find among the entire number one who has not experienced the
beneficence of heaven; there is not one for whom there has not flowed
something from the most inexhaustible of all fountains.
Add, now, that external circumstances do not coerce the gods, but their
sempiternal will is their law. They have established an order of events
which they do not change. The gods never repent of their first purpose.
Beneficence consists not in what is done or given, but in the spirit of
the doer or giver.
It is a most glorious work to save even the unwilling and refractory.
The door to virtue is closed to no one; it is open to all, admits all;
virtue invites everybody, free-born, freedmen, slaves, kings and exiles.
It selects neither class nor condition, it seeks the man only.
Nature directs us to do good to all men whether bond or free, free-born
or emancipated slaves. Wherever there is a human being, there is a place
for beneficence.
He who reasons thus (like Epicurus), does not hear the voices of
supplicants and the prayers offered everywhere, in public and private,
with hands outstretched toward heaven. This could not be, nor is it
possible that all men should have willingly consented to the folly of
addressing deaf divinities and powerless gods, if they had not
recognized their benefactions, sometimes given spontaneously, sometimes
in answer to prayer, always great, timely, averting by their
intervention impending disasters.
FROM VARIOUS SOURCES.
It is easy to form the mind while it is still tender; but it is
difficult to root out those vices that have grown up with it.
It is a great thing to know when to speak and when to be silent.
The vices of others we have before our eyes; our own, behind our backs.
Use your ears oftener than your tongue.
Nothing is more out of place in him who is inflicting punishment than
anger.
It is not the issue of a thing that ought to be taken into account, but
the purpose.
Every crime is committed before the deed is done.
To cupidity nothing is enough; to nature even a little is enough.
Vice takes possession of us unconsciously; virtue is difficult to find,
and we need a guide and teacher. Vices are learned without a teacher.
Stars shall impinge upon stars and all matter that now delights us with
its beautiful order shall burn in one huge conflagration.
All that is best can neither be given to men nor taken from them.
There are two things, the most precious of all, that attend us
whithersoever we turn our steps: common nature and personal virtue.
These things are so, believe me, because they were so willed by the
creator of the universe, whether it is that God who controls everything,
or incorporeal reason, the artificer of great works, or the divine
spirit that pervades equally the greatest and the smallest things.
If the dead have any feeling, the soul of my brother, now set free from
a long imprisonment, is at length in the full enjoyment of his freedom
and his majority; he beholds with delight the nature of things and looks
down upon human affairs from his high abode; but things divine, the
causes of which he so long sought out in vain, he now beholds at close
range. Why then do I pine away in sorrow for him who is either blessed
or not all? To mourn for one who is in bliss is envy; for one who is
not, folly.
Borne on high, he soars among beatified spirits, and a sanctified
company welcomes him—the Scipios, the Catos, released by the beneficence
of death. There thy father devotes himself to his grandson, resplendent
in the new light even though in that place all are known to each. He
explains to him the motions of the stars around him; not from
conjectures, but, versed in the knowledge of all things, he gladly
inducts him into the arcana of nature.
If you will believe those who have looked more deeply into the truth,
our whole life is a punishment.
For those who sail this sea so stormy, so exposed to every tempest,
there is no harbor except death.
He now enjoys a serene and cloudless heaven. From this humble and low
abode, he has sped swiftly into that region, wherever it may be, where
souls, freed from their chains, are received into the abode of the
blest. He now roams about at will, and beholds with supremest delight
all that is good in the universe.... He has not left us; he has gone
before.
DE PROVIDENTIA SIVE QUARE ALIQUA INCOMMODA BONIS VIRIS ACCIDANTCUM
PROVIDENTIA SIT.
NOTE:—This monograph is addressed to the same Lucilius, procurator
of Sicily, to whom Seneca also dedicates his letters and his
Problems in Physics. The date of composition is not known, but it
probably belongs to the later years of the author’s life. The
opening sentences seem to make it a part of a larger work on ethics,
or rather of a theodicy, which was either never completed or has not
come down to us. This is a serious loss both to us and to Seneca: to
us, because such a work would doubtless have placed before us a
complete theory of human conduct as conceived by a man who was
thoroughly conversant with the motives that dominate men; to Seneca,
because it would in all probability have explained if not justified
some of the inconsistencies that have so sadly marred his career.
Indeed the fundamental proposition of the essay is inconsistent,
since the conclusion does not follow from the premises. For if the
patient endurance of tribulation is the supreme test of a good man,
how is he justified in avoiding that test, as our author proposes,
by taking his own life?
I.
You have asked me, Lucilius, why it is, if the world is governed by a
Providence, that so many misfortunes befall good men. To this an answer
would more properly be given in a work in which I should undertake to
prove that a Providence presides over the affairs of men, and that God
dwells among us. But since you deem it best to take a small portion of
the whole subject, and to settle this single disputed question, the main
proposition meanwhile being left untouched, I shall undertake a case of
little difficulty: I shall plead the cause of the gods.
2. It is superfluous to show at the present time that so great a work
does not stand fast and firm without an overseer; that the regular
course of the heavenly bodies is not a fortuitous concourse of atoms;
that those objects which chance puts in motion are subject to frequent
disturbances and sudden collisions; that this harmonious velocity is
under the sway of an eternal law governing everything on land and sea,
no less than the brilliant luminaries which shine according to a
prearranged plan; that this order is not the result of elements moving
about at random, neither can fortuitous aggregations of matter cohere
with such art that the immense mass of the earth remains motionless
while beholding the rapid gyrations of the heavenly bodies about itself;
that the seas poured into the valleys to fructify the soil never feel
any increase from rivers; or that enormous vegetation grows from the
minutest seeds.
3. Not even those things that appear to be uncertain and without
regularity—I mean rains and clouds and the bolts of lightning darting
from the clouds, and fires poured from the cleft summits of mountains,
and the quakings of the tottering ground, and such other disturbances of
the earth about us—are without a rational explanation, unforeseen though
they be. These things, too, have their causes, not less those which,
when they appear in unexpected places, are regarded as prodigies, such
as warm springs among the billows or new insular lands rising up in the
vast expanse of the sea.
4. Moreover, if one has observed the beach laid bare by the waves of the
retiring sea and covered again within a brief space of time, does he
believe that the waves have been contracted and drawn inward by a kind
of blind restlessness, to burst forth again to seek with a mighty onset
their accustomed seats, especially since the waters increase at regular
intervals and move according to a fixed day and hour just as the lunar
star attracts them more or less, under whose influence the ocean
regulates its ebb and flow? However, these questions had better be
reserved for their proper place, since you do not deny the existence of
a providence, but only bring complaints against it.
5. I wish to reconcile you with the gods since they regard the best men
with the most favor. For in the nature of things, what is good can never
harm the good. Between good men and the gods a friendship exists, virtue
being the bond of amity. Friendship, do I say? nay, more; it is a near
relationship and likeness, since the good man differs from God only in
time; he is His pupil and imitator, His true offspring, whom his august
father, no lenient trainer in the virtues, brings up somewhat rigorously
after the manner of stern parents.
6. Accordingly, when you see good men, the favorites of the gods,
toiling, sweating, ascending by hard paths, and the bad living in
licentious indulgence and growing effeminate in luxury, consider that we
too are gratified with the sobriety of our sons, but with the wantonness
of our household slaves; that the former gain greater self-control by
the sterner discipline, the latter are confirmed in their presumption.
The same thing is true in regard to God; He does not support the good
man in enervating ease; He tries him, hardens him, prepares him for
Himself.
II.
“Why do the good meet with so many adversities?” (you ask). No evil
thing can befall a good man; things in their nature contradictory may
not be commingled. Just as so many rivers, so much water falling from
the clouds above, so great a number of springs impregnated with mineral
substances, do not change the saltness of the sea, do not even dilute
it; so the assaults of adversity produce no change in the spirit of a
brave man. He remains steadfast, and whatever betides he gains for his
colors, for he is stronger than all external circumstances. I do not, it
is true, say, that he is insensible to them, but that he triumphs over
them, and, moreover, remains calm and serene in spite of obstacles. All
untoward events he regards as so much drill. Besides, is there any man
who is only an admirer of noble deeds, that is not eager for honest
toil, or ready to do his duty with alacrity even in the face of danger?
To what industrious man is not inactivity a punishment? We see athletes,
whose purpose is to develop their bodily strength, matching themselves
with the most doughty antagonists, and requiring those who prepare them
for a contest to use all their strength against their pupils; they allow
themselves to be smitten and buffeted, and if they do not find suitable
single antagonists they pit themselves against several at the same time.
3. When virtue has no antagonist it becomes enervated; then only does it
appear what its true character is, how strong, how virile it is when
patient endurance shows what it can accomplish. You surely know that
good men must do the same thing, to the end that they may not fear what
is hard or formidable, nor complain about fate. Whatever happens, let
the good bear it patiently and turn it to good uses. Not what we bear
but how we bear it, is the important thing. Do you not see how
differently fathers and mothers show their love for their children? The
former want their sons to be aroused early in order that they may betake
themselves to their studies; their vacations even they would not have
them pass in idleness, and they draw sweat and sometimes even tears from
the youths; but mothers want to fondle them on their bosom, keep them in
the shade; they would never have them weep, never be sad, never undergo
toil.
4. God has a father’s feelings toward good men and ardently loves them,
and says: “By labors, sorrows, privations, let them be tried in order
that they may gain real strength.” Animals that are being fattened grow
languid by their inactivity, and by the weight of their own bodies
become incapable not only of work, but of movement. Unalloyed felicity
cannot withstand any shock, but a constant struggle against obstacles
hardens a man against injuries, and he does not succumb to any disaster,
for even if he falls, he fights on his knees.
5. Are you surprised if God, who is a most devoted friend of the good,
and who wishes them to attain the highest degree of perfection, assigns
them a place in which they are to be disciplined? Verily, I am not
surprised that sometimes a desire seizes the the gods to behold great
men struggling against some misfortune. To us mortals it at times
affords pleasure to see a courageous youth await with the hunting spear,
the onset of some wild beast, or if with unblanched cheek he thrusts
back the attack of a lion; and the spectacle is agreeable in proportion
to the rank of him who exhibits it.
6. These are not the sights that attract the attention of the gods, but
childish pastimes and the pleasures of men who have no serious aims.
Behold a spectacle worthy of a god who is intensely interested in his
work; behold a pair of champions worthy of god, a brave man pitted
against adverse fortune, especially if he himself be the challenging
party. I do not see, I say, what more agreeable sight on earth Jupiter
can look upon, if he turns his attention thither, than to behold Cato,
after his party had been more than once defeated, standing erect,
nevertheless, amid the ruins of the republic.
7. Said he, “Though everything has yielded to the behests of one man;
though the lands be guarded by legions and the seas by fleets and the
soldiers of Caesar keep watch at our gates, there is a way of escape for
Cato. Single-handed will he make a broad way for liberty; this sword,
pure and untarnished even in civil strife, shall at length perform a
worthy and noble deed; the liberty it could not give to his country, it
shall give to Cato. Perform my soul, a deed long meditated, free thyself
from earthly concerns!
8. Already Petreius and Juba have turned their swords against each other
and lie dead, slain with mutual hands. A brave and glorious covenant to
die was that, but one that was unworthy of my greatness; it is as
ignoble for Cato to beg for death at the hands of another as (to beg
for) life.” I am sure the gods looked with keen satisfaction when that
hero, the intrepid liberator of himself, takes counsel for the safety of
others and provides a way of escape for the fugitives; when he pursues
his studies far even into that final night; when he thrusts the sword
into his own sacred breast; when he disembowels himself and sets free
with his own hand that purest spirit unworthy to be contaminated with a
sword.
9. Hence I would fain believe that the thrust was badly directed and the
wound not fatal; it was not enough for the immortal gods to have beheld
Cato once only; his courage was restrained and called back that it might
show itself in a more difficult part. For death may be said not so much
to have come upon so great a soul as to have been sought by it. Why
should they not rejoice to see their favorite pass from life in a way so
glorious and memorable? Death deifies those whose departure fills with
admiration even those who stand aghast at the manner of it.
III.
But as I proceed with my discourse, I shall show that not all those
things which seem to be evils are such. For the present, I affirm that
the conditions you call hard, adverse, and terrible, are in the first
place best for those very persons whom they befall; and in the second,
for all men, since the gods are more concerned for mankind as a whole
than for the individual; and lastly; that they happen either with their
approval, or to men who are worthy of them, if without their approval.
To these propositions I shall add that such things take place in the
fixed order of the world and rightly happen to the good, in virtue of
the same law which makes them good. From this point of view I shall then
convince you that you never need feel pity for the good man; for though
he may be called unfortunate, he never is so.
2. The most difficult of the affirmations I have made seems to be the
first, to wit, that it is for our own good these very things happen
which we dread and shudder at. Is it good for anybody, you say, to be
driven into exile, to see his children reduced to want, to bear a wife
to the grave, to be disgraced, maimed? If you are surprised that this
should result in good to any one, then you will be surprised that
persons are sometimes cured by cutting and burning not the less than by
hunger and thirst. But if you will reflect that as remedial measures,
the bones have to be laid bare or taken out, veins to be extracted, and
even members to be amputated, because they cannot be allowed to remain
attached to it without detriment to the whole body; you will also admit
that some unpleasant things are an advantage to those whom they befall,
no less than that some things which are accounted good and are sought
after, are an injury to those who find pleasure in them, such as eating
and drinking to excess and other things that kill by the gratification
they afford.
3. Among the many noteworthy sayings of our friend Demetrius there is
one that is fresh in my mind and keeps sounding and ringing in my ears.
“There is no being,” says he, “more unfortunate than the man who never
felt adversity.” For he has never had an opportunity to test himself.
Though everything may have come to him when he wished it or even before
he wished it, the gods have nevertheless not thought well of him. They
have adjudged him unworthy of a struggle with adversity lest he be
overcome by it, for it avoids all cowards as if saying, Why should I
choose such an antagonist? he lays down his arms forthwith; there is no
need of all my strength against him; he is beaten by a feeble onset; he
cannot bear even a look.
4. Let another be selected for the struggle. It is a shame to fight with
a man who wants to be beaten. A gladiator regards it as a disgrace to be
pitted against an inferior antagonist for he knows there is no glory in
overcoming one who is vanquished without danger. Adversity does
likewise; it seeks out foemen worthy of their antagonist and passes by
some with disdain. It always attacks the doughtiest and boldest for a
trial of its strength.
5. It tries Mucius with fire, Fabricius with poverty, Regulus with
torture, Socrates with poison, Cato with death. It is misfortune alone
that finds noble examples. Is Mucius to be commiserated because he put
his hand into an enemy’s fire and punished himself for his mistake?
because he vanquished with a burned hand a king whom he could not
vanquish with it armed? Would he have been happier if he had warmed it
in the bosom of a mistress?
6. Is Fabricius to be pitied because he tilled his own field when not
engaged in public duties? because he waged war against riches as well as
against Pyrrhus? because he ate, by his own fireside, the same roots and
herbs that his triumphant old age pulled up on his farm? Can we say that
he would have been happier if he had filled his stomach with fish from a
far off strand and with exotic birds? or if he had stimulated his jaded
and nauseated stomach with oysters from the Upper and the Lower sea? or
if he had encircled with a huge pile of different fruits, the finest
game captured at the cost of many a huntsman’s life?
7. Is Rutilius unfortunate because those who condemned him decided a
case against themselves for all time to come? because he was more
willing to be deprived of his country than to be recalled from exile?
because he alone dared to deny anything to the dictator Sulla, and when
invited to return, not only refused, but fled farther? “Let those manage
affairs,” said he, “whom thy good fortune keeps in Rome! Let them look
upon the pool of blood in the Forum and the heads of senators floating
on the Servilian lake,—for that was the field of carnage of those
proscribed by Sulla—and the bands of assassins roaming through the city,
and the many thousands of Roman citizens slain in one place after
pledges of immunity had been given, yes, because of those very pledges!
Let those look upon these things who are not able to endure exile.”
8. Shall we say that Sulla is to be congratulated because, when he
descends to the Forum, a way is opened for him with the sword? because
he allows the heads of men of consular rank to be shown him in public,
and paid the price of their slaughter by the hand of the quaestor and
from the fisc? And he who did these things is the same man that enacted
the Cornelian law! Let us return to Regulus. What injury did his destiny
do him by making him, the well-known exemplar of good faith, an exemplar
of patient endurance? Nails pierce his skin, and whatever way he lays
down his weary body he lies on a wound, while his open eyes doom him to
perpetual wakefulness.
9. The greater the anguish, the greater will be the glory. Wouldst thou
know how little he regretted the high value he set on fortitude? Heal
his wounds and send him back to the senate—he will give the same advice
(as before). Dost thou think Maecenas happier when a prey to the
torments of love and when grieving over the daily repulses of a wayward
wife, he courts sleep amid the sound of symphonies softly sounding in
the distance? Though he stupify himself with wine, and seek diversion in
the murmur of waters, or trick his troubled mind with a thousand
pastimes, he lies awake on his bed of down no less than the other on his
bed of torture. But for the former there is the solace that he is
enduring hardness for a noble purpose, and he can look away from his
pain to its cause; the latter, surfeited with pleasures, weighed down by
an excess of good fortune, is more tormented by the cause of his
sufferings than by the sufferings themselves.
10. Not yet has vice so completely taken possession of the human race as
to make it doubtful that the majority, if they had the choice of their
lot, would prefer that of Regulus to that of Maecenas. Or, if there
should be anybody who had presumption enough to say that he had rather
be born a Maecenas than a Regulus, the same person, even though he might
not openly admit it, would also rather be born a Terentia. Do you
pronounce Socrates unfortunate because he drained the executioner’s cup
as if it had been the draught of immortality, and discoursed about death
up to the moment it overtook him? Was his lot an unhappy one because his
blood congealed and his vital force stopped by the gradually advancing
rigor of death?
11. How much more is he to be envied than those who are served from
goblets studded with gems, for whom a male prostitute, accustomed to
submit to every kind of abuse, whose virility is gone or at least
doubtful, dissolves the snow that floats in a golden chalice? Whatever
they drink they vomit up, to their chagrin, and taste again mixed with
bile; but he willingly and with joy drains the poisonous draught. For
Cato it is sufficient that the unanimous verdict of mankind has raised
him to the pinnacle of felicity; him destiny selected as one who was
fitted to contend against everything that is to be dreaded.
12. Is the enmity of the powers that be a serious matter? let him be
opposed at the same time by Pompey, Caesar, Crassus. Is it hard to bear
when one is less honored than worse men? let him be sacrificed for
Vatinius. Is it a hard thing to be involved in civil wars? throughout
the whole world let him fight for the good cause, equally renowned for
his misfortunes as for his bravery. Is it hard to take one’s own life?
let him do it. What do I wish to prove by these things? I would have all
men know that those vicissitudes of which Cato was deemed worthy, cannot
be regarded as evils.
IV.
Prosperity comes to ordinary people and to men of mean abilities, but it
is the prerogative of a great man to overcome the calamities and terrors
that frighten mortals. In truth, to be always happy and to pass one’s
life without mental anxiety, is to be ignorant of half of man’s destiny.
Thou art a great man; yet how am I to know it unless fate gives thee an
opportunity to show thy worth?
2. Thou didst enter the Olympian games as a contestant; if there was
none beside thyself, thou hast the crown, thou hast not the victory. I
congratulate thee, not as a brave man, but as one who has gained the
consulship or the praetorship: thou hast won political honors. I can say
the same thing to a good man, unless some more than ordinary emergency
has given him an opportunity to show his strength of soul.
3. Unhappy do I adjudge thee, if thou hast never been unhappy; thou hast
passed thy life without an adversary. No one knows what thou mightest
have done; thou dost not even know it thyself. We need to be tried that
we may find out what we are; what a man can do can be ascertained only
by trial. For this reason men have sometimes voluntarily encountered
obstacles that seemed to evade them and sought an opportunity for
demonstrating to others the virtue that was passing into oblivion.
4. I assert that great men sometimes rejoice in tribulation like valiant
soldiers in battles. I heard Triumphus, a gladiator under Caius Caesar
(Caligula) complain because he had so little to do. “How my best days
are speeding away,” said he! Courage is eager for danger and looks to
the end in view, not at what it is likely to encounter, for the reason
that what it encounters is part of the glory. Warriors are proud of
their wounds; joyfully they point to the blood it was their good fortune
to shed. Those who return from the combat unscathed may have been just
as brave—it is the wounded man that is the observed of all eyes.
God shows his good will to those whom he would have attain the highest
excellence every time he gives them an opportunity to display courage
and endurance; this is possible only in some contingency beset with
difficulties. You form your opinion of a pilot in a storm; of a soldier,
in battle. By what test am I to know how thou wilt bear up against
poverty, if thou aboundest in wealth? By what test am I to know how thou
wilt bear up under ignominy and disgrace and popular hatred, if thou
growest old amid public applause? if a strong and unswerving popular
partiality supports thee in all thou doest?
6. How am I to know with what equanimity thou wilt bear the loss of
children, if thou seest about thee all those thou hast begotten? I have
listened to thee when thou wert offering consolation to others; then
should I have seen thee when thou wert thyself in need of consolation;
when thou wert trying to restrain thyself from sorrowing. Do not, I
beseech thee, shrink from these things which the immortal gods send upon
thee as stimuli to thy courage. A disaster is an occasion of virtue.
Those persons one can rightly call wretched who grow effeminate in
superabounding prosperity; whom a dead calm bears along, as it were, in
a motionless sea.
7. No matter what befalls them, they are unprepared for it. Hardships
bear heaviest on those who have never known them; heavy lies the yoke on
the neck that has not felt it. The mere thought of a wound makes the raw
recruit turn pale; the veteran looks without blanching upon his own
blood because he knows that he has often gained a victory at the price
of it. Then it is that God trains and hardens those whom he has chosen,
whom he loves and wishes well to; but those whom he seems to treat with
indulgence, whom he spares, he keeps tender for the evils to come. For
you are mistaken if you conclude that any one is exempt; he who has long
basked in the sunshine of fortune will have his turn.
Every one that thinks he is discharged has been placed among the
reserves. (You ask) why does God afflict every good man with ill health
or sorrow or other misfortune? Because in camp-life the most perilous
duties are also laid on the bravest; the commander sends picked men to
fall upon the enemy from a nocturnal ambuscade, or to explore a route,
or to carry by assault an outpost. No one of those who go forth says,
“The general has a poor opinion of me,” but, “He has judged wisely and
well,” And so let all say who are ordered to undergo what to the coward
and the slothful seem to be painful experiences: God has accounted us
worthy to be used as examples by which to show how much human nature can
endure. Flee from pleasure, from that unmanly felicity in which the
active powers of the mind grow torpid, unless something intervenes to
recall man’s lot, by a sort of perpetual intoxication.
9. Him whom glass windows protect against every breath of air; whose
feet are kept warm by fomentations periodically renewed; whose
dining-rooms are made always comfortable by heat within the walls and
under the floor—such a person, not even a gentle breeze passes over
without danger. Though everything that transcends the bounds of
moderation is hurtful, the most perilous intemperance is that of good
fortune. It excites the brain, awakens idle fancies in the mind, puts
dense darkness between the false and the true.
10. Which is better, to bear up under continuous misfortune that incites
us to do our best, or to be crushed under unbounded and inexhaustible
riches? Death comes gently when the stomach is empty; it is from
repletion that men die like beasts. Accordingly the gods follow the same
method with good men that teachers follow with good pupils—they require
the hardest labor from those of whom they cherish the highest hopes.
Dost thou believe that it is out of hatred for their children that the
Lacedaemonians try, by public scourgings, what stuff they are made of?
Their own fathers exhort them to bear bravely their flagellations, and
ask them, when bleeding and half dead, to proffer unflinchingly their
wounds for fresh wounds.
11. Why is it strange if God sends severe trials upon noble spirits? a
test of one’s courage is never an easy matter. Is it destiny that
scourges and lacerates us? let us endure it; ’tis not wanton cruelty, it
is a contest; the oftener we enter it, the stronger we shall become. The
solidest part of the body, frequent use has made so. We must be
subjected to the buffetings of fortune in order that in this way we may
become callous to it. Little by little, fortune makes us a match for
itself; contempt of dangers results from often braving them. In this way
sailors inure their bodies to the sea; the hands of the husbandman are
calloused; the arms of the soldier are strong from hurling javelins; the
limbs of runners are agile. That part of everybody is the strongest that
has exercised the most.
12. The soul acquires the strength to brave misfortune by patient
endurance; what it can effect in us thou mayst know, if thou dost but
consider what hardship does for those peoples that go about without
clothing and are strong by their very indigence. Consider all the
nations over whom the sway of Rome does not extend, I mean the Germans
and every nomad tribe along the Danube. Perpetual winter, a severe
climate, bear hard upon them, a sterile soil grudgingly supports them, a
hut or branches of trees protect them against the rain, they roam over
marshes hardened by frost, for food they capture wild beasts.
13. Dost thou think them wretched? No one is wretched when he performs
what habit has made second nature to him; for by degrees we find
pleasure in doing what we began to do from necessity. These peoples have
no houses and no resting place except as weariness finds them from day
to day; their food is cheap and obtained only as wanted; their naked
bodies are exposed to the terrible extremes of a horrid climate; what
thou regardest as a frightful calamity is the whole life of many
peoples.
14. Why dost thou wonder that good men are called upon to undergo
violent shocks to the end that they may stand the more firmly? A tree
does not take deep root, or grow strong, unless it is frequently shaken
by the wind; for as a result of violent agitation its fiber is toughened
and its roots more firmly set. Those are fragile that grow up in
sheltered valleys. It is therefore a boon to good men, as it makes them
fearless amid danger, to become familiar with hardships and to bear with
equanimity those things that are not ills, except when they are borne
with an ill grace.
V.
Add, now, that it is best for all that every good man should, so to
speak, be always under arms and in action. It is the purpose of God,
just as if He were a wise man, to demonstrate that those things which
the average man longs for, which he fears, are neither good nor evil;
but it will be evident that those things are good that are sent upon
good men, and those evil, that fall upon the bad. Blindness would be
dreadful, if nobody had lost his sight except those who deserved to have
their eyes put out. Accordingly, let Appius and Metellus be deprived of
eyesight. Riches are not a good.
2. And so even the procurer Elius is rich in order that money to which
men have given a sacred character in temples may also be found in a
brothel. In no way is God better able to expose to contempt those things
that men covet than by bestowing them upon the vilest and taking them
from the worthiest. “But,” sayst thou, “it is unjust that a good man
should suffer mutilation, or be crucified, or be bound in fetters, while
the bad strut proudly at large and live in luxury.”
3. What then? is it not also unjust when brave men are required to take
up arms, to pass the night in camps and to defend the outposts, though
the bandages are still on their wounds, while in the city, eunuchs and
debauchees by profession go about in security. What further? is it not
unjust that the noblest virgins should be aroused at night to perform
their sacred duties while impure women are enjoying sound sleep? Toil
claims the best men. The senate is often in session during the entire
day, when at the same time all the vilest men are either taking their
ease in the Campus Martius, or loitering in eating-houses, or wasting
their time in idle gossip. It is just so in the world at large—good men
toil, sacrifice themselves or are sacrificed, and willingly at that.
They are not dragged along by destiny, they follow it and keep pace with
it; had they known whither it would lead them, they would have preceded
it.
4. I remember also to have heard these encouraging words from that
noblest of men, Demetrius. “This one complaint,” said he, “I have to
make against you, ye immortal gods: it is that ye did not sooner make
known to me your will; for of my own accord I would have come to those
things to which I am now summoned. Do you wish to take away my children?
For you I have brought them up. Do you wish any portion of my body? Take
it. No great thing it is that I am offering you; soon I shall resign it
entirely to you. Do you wish my life? Why not? I shall not be slow to
give back to you what ye have entrusted to my keeping; ye shall find me
willing to give up anything ye ask. Still I should rather have proferred
it to you than given it up. What need was there to take what you could
have had as a gift. Yet not even now do ye need to constrain me, since
that is not taken from a man which he does not try to retain. I am in no
sense the victim of constraint or violence, nor am I God’s slave, but I
am in accord with Him, and this all the more cheerfully because I know
that everything takes its course in accordance with an immutable law
established from all eternity.”
5. The fates lead us, and our lot is assigned to us from the very hour
of our birth. Cause depends upon cause; an unbroken chain of events
links together public and private affairs. We ought therefore to bear
with fortitude whatever befalls us because everything takes place, not
as we think, by chance, but in its due order. A long time in advance,
all our pleasures and our pains have been determined, and although in
the great diversity of individual lives, one life may seem to stand
apart, it all comes to this: transitory beings ourselves we have entered
into a transitory inheritance.
6. Why then does this disquiet us? Why indulge in complaints? it is the
law of our existence. Let nature use our bodies, which are its own, as
it wishes; let us cheerfully and bravely meet whatever comes, bearing in
mind that what we lose is not our property. What is the duty of a good
man? To resign himself to his destiny. It is a great consolation to
share the fate of the universe. Whatever it be that decrees how we are
to live, how to die, it binds even the gods by the same inexorable law;
an irresistible current bears along terrestrial and celestial things.
The creator and governor of the universe has indeed prescribed the
course of events, but He Himself follows them; He obeys always, He
commanded but once.
7. “But why was God so unjust in the destinies he prescribed for
mortals, as to send upon good men poverty, wounds, and cruel deaths”?
The artisan cannot change matter; it is passive. There are some things
that cannot be separated from others; they are bound together and
indivisible. Sluggish natures and such as are prone to sink into slumber
or into a state closely akin to slumber, are conjoined of inert
elements; to form a man who is really worthy of the name a more heroic
destiny is needed. His path will not be smooth; he must go up-hill and
down-hill, be tossed on the waves, and guide his bark through turbid
waters; in spite of changing fortune, he must hold on his way.
8. He will meet many obstacles hard to remove or surmount, but he will
himself remove them and smooth his path. Gold is tried by fire; brave
men by misfortune. Behold to what heights virtue may climb; thou
shouldst know that it cannot go by ways that are free from dangers.
Hard is the way at first: though drawn by prancing steeds,
Slow, up the sky, the shining car proceeds;—
On land and sea I gaze from heaven’s high crest;
Fear and emotion fill my heaving breast.
Steep is the downward way, and with tight rein
I must the ardor of my steeds restrain;
E’en Tethys, wont to greet me ’neath the waves,
Fears lest we plunge headlong to wat’ry graves.
9. When the high-spirited youth heard these words he said, “I like the
way; I shall ascend it even though I fall forthwith in so doing.” The
sun-god still tries to dissuade him from his rash purpose by exciting
his fears:
Hold straight thy course nor turn for aught aside,
Through Taurus’ horns adverse thy coursers guide,
And Haemon’s bow and Leo’s searching face.
To this he replied, “Yoke the steeds to the chariot; by the very words
which you seek to deter me, you incite me. I long to stand where Sol
himself quakes with fear; it is only ignoble and weak souls that journey
on safe roads; courage ventures on giddy heights.”
VI.
“But why does God suffer any evil to befall the good”? Verily, He does
not suffer it. He wards off from them all evils, crimes and misdeeds and
impure thoughts and avaricious designs and unbridled passions and lust
after other men’s property; He watches over and protects them. Will any
one in addition to this demand of God that He shall also bear the
luggage of good men (as if He were a slave)! They themselves cast this
burden upon God; mere externals they make light of. Democritus threw
away his riches, thinking them a fardel upon his noble soul. Why do you
wonder that God sometimes suffers that to come upon a good man which he
himself desires?
2. “Good men sometimes lose their children.” Why not, when they
sometimes even put them to death? “They are sent into exile.” Why not,
when they sometimes leave their country, voluntarily, never to return?
“They are put to death.” Why not, when they sometimes lay violent hands
on themselves? “Why do they suffer many hardships?” That they may teach
others to suffer patiently; they are born to be examples.
3. Think of God as speaking to them thus: “What right have ye to
complain of me, ye who take pleasure in doing right? Other men I have
encompassed with seductive pleasures and their torpid souls I have
lulled into a long and delusive sleep; gold, silver and ivory I have
lavished upon them; yet at heart they are good for nothing. Those men
whom you look upon as fortunate, if you regard them, not with respect to
what is external but what is concealed, are wretched, unclean, deformed,
adorned on the outside after the similitude of their own walls. Their
good fortune is not substantial and unalloyed; it is a mere crust and a
thin one at that.
4. Accordingly, as long as they are allowed to stand and to show
themselves as they wish to appear, they make a brilliant and imposing
display; but when something occurs that disarranges their plans and
discloses their true character, then it becomes apparent how real and
deep their foulness. To you I have given a genuine, an abiding good; the
more one turns it about and looks at it from every side, the greater and
better it appears. I have given you the strength to contemn what other
men fear; to make of little account what others long for. You do not
shine because of externals; it is the kingdom within you that is your
highest good. Thus does the world disdain what is on the outside because
happy in the contemplation of itself; within you have I placed all real
good; not to need happiness is your happiness.”
5. “But many sad occurrences take place, things from which we shrink in
terror, and which are hard to bear.” “Because I am not able to ward them
off from you, I have armed you against all changes of fortune. Endure
bravely; in this you may surpass God: He is exempt from suffering, you
are superior to it. Contemn poverty; no one lives so poor as he is born.
Contemn pain; either it will end or you. Contemn fortune; I have given
to it no weapon with which to wound the soul. Contemn death; it either
ends your existence or transfers it.
6. Before all things, I took care that no one should keep you here
against your will; the way for your departure is open. If you do not
want to fight, you can run away. Therefore, with all the restrictions I
have placed upon you, I have made nothing easier for you than death.
Only look and you will see how short and easy is the way to liberty. I
have made the way shorter for those who wish to go out of the world than
for those who are entering it; besides, destiny would have had great
power over you, if it were as hard for a man to die as to be born.
7. Every moment of time, every place, can teach you how easy it is to
quit nature’s service and to return to her her gift. At the very foot of
the altar and amid the solemnities of those who are offering sacrifices
for the preservation of life, learn to know death. The huge bodies of
bulls drop from the effects of a little wound, and beasts of enormous
strength are felled by a blow from a human hand; with a little piece of
iron the jointures of the vertabrae are severed, and when the ligature
that binds the head and neck is cut asunder, the huge mass falls dead to
the ground.
8. The breath does not lurk in some secret hiding place, nor must it
necessarily be sought out with the sword; there is no need of piercing
the vitals with a deep wound; death is close at hand. I have not
designated any particular place for the fatal thrust, it may enter
anywhere. What is called death, that time in which the spirit leaves the
body, is so brief that its fleetness cannot be perceived. Whether it be
a noose that strangles you, or water that suffocates you, or a fall upon
the hard earth that dashes the life out of you, or fire drawn in with
the breath that cuts off its return—whatever it be, its effect is
speedy. Are you not ashamed to fear so long what may be done so
quickly?”
NOTES.
A few notes have been added to the translation. They bear chiefly on
obscure allusions in Seneca’s treatise, as the necessary biographical
data may be found in almost any encyclopedia. The notes are placed by
themselves so as not to interrupt the reader, who may omit them, if he
chooses.
I.
2. It was held by some of the Greek philosophers, notably Epicurus,
that the universe was built up by a fortuitous concourse of atoms.
4. Some texts have _quaeris_, you are seeking information.
6. _Vernae_ were slaves born in the household of their masters,
sometimes his own children by a female slave. The _licentia
vernularum_ was proverbial in Rome. The _vernae_ and _vernulae_ were
allowed privileges not accorded to slaves obtained by purchase.
II.
_In suum colorem_, to its colors. The parties represented in the
race-course were distinguished by different colors. The significance
of the expression is therefore evident. Another less probable
explanation of the passage is that the author has reference to the
effect of red wine when mixed with liquids of another color.
3. As the holidays in Rome were very numerous much time was lost by
those who spent all of them in idleness.
7. Cato, surnamed Uticensis, is here meant. He was the patron saint
of the Roman Stoics.
9. The sentence here translated, “For death,” etc., may also mean,
“For it requires less courage to meet death (once) than to seek it a
second time.”
III.
6. The wild boar roasted whole was generally placed on the center of
the table. Around it were piled fruits, vegetables, etc.
7. _Tua felicitas._ Sulla called himself FELIX, and in the next
section we find this epithet applied to him. The atrocities he
committed are familiar to every reader of Roman history.
8. The Cornelian law. The Roman Legal Code was greatly modified
under the inspiration of Sulla. The statute here referred to, fixed
the penalty for homicide and similar crimes. It bore its author’s
gentile name.
The familiar story of Regulus was accepted as true by the Romans,
and, in fact, by the world generally, until recent times. It is
interesting as showing the high estimate placed upon patriotism by
the Romans from their point of view. Though narrow it was intense
and played a conspicuous part in the growth of the Roman state.
9. Maecenas the well-known Premier of the emperor Augustus was
passionately attached to his wife Terentia; but her fidelity was
more than suspected, a condition of things that led to many quarrels
with her husband.
11. The writer refers here to the disgusting practice of the Romans,
who, at their feasts, frequently ate and drank to excess, then
produced vomiting in order to be able to begin eating and drinking
over again.
12. Vatinius was a worthless fellow who defeated Cato in the contest
for the praetorship.
IV.
12. The Romans were wilfully blind as to the climate and soil of
Germany. It was a case of “sour grapes.” After vainly endeavoring to
conquer its inhabitants, they decided that they were not worth the
trouble of conquest.
V.
6. “Whatever it be” etc. The First Cause, about which Seneca is in
some doubt, whether it is personal or impersonal, material or
immaterial; whether matter exists of necessity or is created. In 4
he uses _mundus_ in a personal sense. He is also inconsistent in his
attitude toward suicide; for after assuring us in the strongest
language, that it is every man’s duty to endure whatever Providence
or Fate or Destiny or Chance sends upon him, he ends by telling him
that if the service is too hard he is at perfect liberty to run away
from it. Gréard rightly says, “He confuses God with the world,
Providence with destiny; he admits and does not admit the
immortality of the soul; he proclaims the freedom of the will, and
denies it.”
8. 9. Dr. Lodge, (1614) translates the two extracts from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses as follows:
“The first which with unwearied steeds I clime,
Is such a iourney that their ceaseless toyle
Can scarcily reach before the morrowes prime;
The next is highest heau’n from whence the soyle
And spacious seas, I see with dreadfull eye
And fearfull heart; the next whereto I hie
Is steep and prone and craues a cunning guide;
And then dothe Thetis shake herselfe for dread,
Lest headlong I should fall and downward glide,
And burie in her waues my golden head.”
“And that thou mayst continue in the way,
Be carefull lest thy posting steeds doe stray;
Yet shalt thou pass by Taurus, who will bend
His hornes to cross thee, whither thou dost tend;
Th’ Aemonian Archer and the Lion fell
Shall stay thy course and fright thee where they dwell.”
See also the classical dictionary under Phaethon.
VI.
6. An inclined plane down which an object may be easily started to
roll.
8. The final sentence more literally translated would read, Are you
not ashamed? what is so quickly done you fear so long?
PLUTARCH AND THE GREECE OF HIS AGE.
Ever since I have known enough about Greek literature to form an opinion
of my own on its merits, it has been a matter of surprise to me that the
authors who flourished in the century or two immediately preceding and
succeeding the Christian era, are treated with so much neglect. The
histories of Greek literature, whose name is legion, frequently end with
Grecian independence; or if they continue the subject some centuries
longer, treat the later periods in a half-hearted and perfunctory
manner, as if they were deserving of nothing better. While it is true,
that in some departments the field is relatively infertile, there are
many writers well worth a careful study, and several eminently so. The
storm and stress period is over; the centuries of vigorous productions
well-nigh past; yet the Greek mind is not dead; the field of authorship
still bears many fine ears and occasionally a large sheaf for the
careful gleaner. The times that could produce a Polybius, a Plutarch, an
Epictetus, an Arrian, a Dion Chrysostomus, a Lucian, to say nothing of
Josephus and Philo, together with others, a score or more in number,
cannot justly be charged with intellectual stagnation. If the form in
which the later writers express their thoughts has no longer the
elegance, nor the thoughts themselves the profundity, of their
predecessors, they are far from being unworthy of painstaking study. If
men reflected less, they did more, or were at least active in a larger
sphere. Greeks were now to be found in all parts of the civilized world;
they still provided its intellectual nourishment; Athens was still its
university and it is of the Greeks of these centuries more than of the
earlier that Horace could say,
Graeca capta ferum victorem cepit et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.
Greek culture had become so widespread that a sojourn in Athens was no
longer necessary for those who were ambitious to learn the language in
its purest form. Though this city was still looked upon with a certain
filial regard, half a score of rivals had sprung up in three continents
that at times seriously threatened its prestige. The centuries that meet
at the birth of Christ are the link that unites the golden age of Greek
literature with the Renaissance. In them was coined much of the small
change of Greek thought, which was by reason of its form the more widely
circulated. That much of it was silver, so to speak, only made it the
more generally available.
But while the writings of these three or four centuries have suffered
greatly from neglect at the hands of the moderns, the language in its
narrower sense, except that of the New Testament, has been almost wholly
ignored. It needs but a brief examination of the current Greek
dictionaries to convince the student that here is an ample field for
profitable work. Even the great Thesaurus of Stephanus often leaves one
sadly in the lurch; besides, it is both too extensive and too expensive
for general use. What we need is a careful lexicographical and
grammatical study of the individual authors and the presentation of the
results in as succinct a form as possible.
It is a pleasure to note the signs of a revival in this quarter—for that
it is not a misnomer to speak of a revival will be evident to those who
know that the reader of some of the authors above named, together with
others, is largely compelled to rely on texts that are more than half a
century old, in some cases much more. In this laudable work of
rediscovery, Professor Mahaffy in Great Britain, and Professor
Krumbacher in Germany, may be regarded as the leaders. The former, by
his various works upon the Greeks under Roman sway, and the latter by
his masterly _Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur_ and his
_Byzantinische Zeitschrift_ have done more than any two writers in the
present century to awaken an interest in a subject that has long been in
a comatose condition. The present volume, though bearing upon the
general theme, is concerned with but a small portion of it. I have tried
to throw a little light upon two authors, in whose writings are many
passages that put them in some sort of relation to nascent Christianity.
While it is almost absolutely certain that neither Seneca nor Plutarch
had any knowledge of the new doctrines first preached in their time, it
ought surely to be a matter of interest to every thinking man to note
how closely the best that is in the old philosophy approached the new
religion; or, to state the case somewhat differently, that the old
philosophy and the new religion are in many points identical.
The French have, almost from the beginning of their national literature,
been ardent admirers of Plutarch. Amyot reduced some of his precepts to
rhyme in order that they might the more readily be taught to children,
and regarded his writings as more profitable than any other except the
Scriptures. Gui-Patin makes Pliny, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Seneca
constitute an entire family,—father, mother, older and younger
brother—and thus in a sense represent the whole circle of literature.
Rollin copies his Parallel Lives almost literally into his Ancient
History. Rousseau cites him among the few authors that he read in his
old age. He is the last consolation of St. Pierre. Laharpe regards him
as by nature the most moral man that ever lived; and Joubert calls him
the Herodotus of Philosophy, and deems his Lives the wisdom of antiquity
in its entirety. Montaigne says, “I never settled myself to the reading
of any authors but Plutarch and Seneca.” Again, “Plutarch had rather we
should applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather
leave us with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have
already read. He knew very well that a man may say too much even upon
the best subjects, and that Alexandrides did justly reproach him who
made very elegant but too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said: ‘O
stranger, thou speakest the things thou oughtest to speak, but not after
the manner thou shouldst speak them.’” Elsewhere he recurs to the
subject with these words, “As to what concerns my other reading that
mixes a little more profit with the pleasure and whence I learn how to
marshal my opinions, the books that serve me to this purpose are
Plutarch and Seneca. Both of them have this great convenience suited to
my humor, that the knowledge I there seek is discoursed in some pieces
that do not require any great trouble of reading long, of which I am
incapable.” In his Essays, Montaigne refers to or quotes Plutarch more
than two hundred times, and Seneca almost as often. So far as Plutarch’s
Lives are concerned, the translation published by Jacques Amyot, bishop
of Auxerre, in 1559, is still regarded as a masterpiece. This version is
of special interest to English-speaking people, because from it Sir
Thomas North made his translation, published some twenty years later,
and Shakespeare, in turn, took the material for his plays dealing with
antique life. Of later English translations, that of the Langhorne is
undoubtedly the most popular, though the one known as Dryden’s, albeit
he had little to do with it, as revised by A. H. Clough, is much read.
That of Stewart and Long is not generally known. There seems to be no
English translation of Plutarch’s Moral Writings except that made by a
number of Oxford scholars some two centuries since and edited by
Professor Goodwin. The German version made by Kaltwasser just one
hundred years ago, is an excellent piece of work. The Lives have been
frequently translated.
About sixty miles northwest of the city of Athens near the road leading
from Delphi to Lebadeia, midway between the gulf of Corinth and the
northern end of the Euripus, lies to-day the town of Chaeroneia, or
rather its modern representative, Capraena. Though never a municipality
of much importance, its inhabitants, before the time of Plutarch, had
been the spectators of many stirring events. Epaminondas called the
plain near it the dancing-plot of Ares, an epithet that was abundantly
justified by preceding and succeeding occurrences. Lying in a measure
between northern and southern Greece it was rich in historical
reminiscences and in traditions. Already known to Homer as Arne, it
subsequently witnessed the countless hosts of Dareius and Xerxes pass
beneath its walls. Near it Philip of Macedon completely overthrew the
allied Thebans and Athenians, B. C. 338. In Plutarch’s time the mound
erected in honor of the king’s soldiers who lost their lives here, was
still in a fair state of preservation, and the oak under which Alexander
had erected his tent was yet standing. In 279 the Gauls passed over the
plain of Chaeroneia leaving desolation in their track. Twenty-eight
years later the Boeotians were defeated near the town in a battle with
the Aetolians. Still later, by a century and a half, Sulla inflicted a
crushing blow on his enemies, for the most part Greeks, under the
command of Archelaus, the lieutenant of Mithridates. It was two citizens
of Chaeroneia who performed for the Roman general a service similar to
that rendered to Xerxes by Ephialtes. In order to leave a memorial of
his success he erected a trophy on the summit of an adjacent hill.
Another trophy, dating from this time and of special significance to the
Chaeroneans, was the statue of Lucius Lucullus, a Roman commander, that
stood in their marketplace. They had become involved in a quarrel with
their old enemies, the Orchomenians, on the charge of having caused the
death of a Roman officer and several of his attendants; but through the
interposition of Lucullus had obtained a verdict from the home
government in their favor.
But the pen is mightier than the sword. Posterity is not greatly
interested in wars and battles in which no great principles are
involved; besides, all sanguinary conflicts are of more or less local
significance. Hence it is that Chaeroneia is chiefly known, not because
of the two hundred thousand men who lost their lives or limbs near it,
but as the birthplace and lifelong residence of one of the best-known
characters in the literary history of the world. About half a score of
years after the crucifixion, this august yet kindly personage, first saw
the light in what was, even for Greece, an obscure town, but which he
never left for any considerable time, until the day of his death, at a
ripe old age. The visible remains of the first great battle fought here
in historic times are the fragments of a colossal lion erected to
commemorate, not a victory, but the valor of those who fell fighting for
their country and for what they believed to be its freedom. There is
also a village of some fifty houses, a church, a schoolhouse and a stone
seat which its inhabitants fondly imagine to have been the property of
their illustrious fellow townsman, and which they eagerly show as such,
to the traveler. Small as the village is to-day, it can never have been
a place of much importance, a fact that is attested by the scant remains
of its ancient theater, one of the smallest in Greece.
In Plutarch’s time the chief industry of his native town consisted in
its trade in oil and the manufacture of perfumes and unguents from the
numerous flowers and herbs that grew in the vicinity. In conformity to
ancient usage, this business was chiefly carried on by slaves, while its
citizens, having no political affairs to engage their attention, and but
little interest in philosophical discussion, gave themselves up largely
to gossip and other equally profitless ways of passing time.
Plutarch was descended from one of the most prominent families of his
native town. He received an excellent education, according to the
standard of his day. He also seems to have given instruction informally
and without pay, as he shared the prejudices of his countrymen against
receiving compensation for such service. We do not know much of his
private life or of his family connections. Living as he did the quiet
life of a peaceable man, absorbed in his books and his studies and only
appearing in public when his duties as a good citizen called him forth,
there was little in his career to attract the attention of a biographer.
Almost all that we know about him has to be gleaned from occasional
references in his own writings. It has been aptly said of him that the
prince of biographers is himself without a biographer. His father’s name
is not recorded. That of his grandfather was Lamprias. We do not know
how many brothers and sisters he had, though he speaks of two brothers
with whom he lived on the most amicable terms. Of these, Timon is an
interlocutor in the dialogue De Sera. His wife’s name was Timoxena. By
her he had four sons and one daughter. The latter and the oldest son
died when quite young.
Plutarch’s wife seems to have been an excellent woman and to have shared
her husband’s views as to the proper conduct of life. She was plain in
dress and appearance, averse to show and parade, devoted to her husband,
her children, and her household affairs.
Plutarch made some journeys beyond the bounds of his native land; one at
least as far as Alexandria in Egypt. He spent some time in Rome where he
gave lectures in Greek; for as he himself tells us he never learned the
Latin language well. He went thither on public business, and is thought
to have visited other parts of Italy on a similar errand. His fame had
preceded him to the imperial city where he was already known by
reputation to some of the literati, and he embraced the opportunity to
enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. Athens he visited a number of
times, and Sparta at least once. Yet, notwithstanding his celebrity in
his lifetime, and in striking contrast to his fame in modern times, he
is not quoted by any extant Roman writer, and but rarely by his own
countrymen.
As a patriotic citizen and an admirer of all that was venerable and
worthy of preservation in the history no less than in the traditions of
Greece, Plutarch felt it incumbent upon him to discharge both civil and
religious duties as occasion called him. He was a priest of Apollo to
whose worship he was ardently devoted and to whom he frequently refers
in his works, among others in the De Sera. As a consequence he
interested himself greatly in the religious festivals that occurred so
frequently in Delphi near by. It is also plain from his writings that he
kept open house. People who desired to learn, and all who took life
seriously, were always welcome. In some of the young men who came to him
for enlightenment, whom, nevertheless, we cannot regard as his pupils
except in the Socratic sense, he took a lifelong interest. The choice of
many of the subjects discussed in his lectures was probably accidental.
They were proposed by persons who visited him, talked over at the time,
but afterwards more fully investigated and the results written out. It
this way light was thrown upon them both by the oral contributions of an
intelligent company and also by the aid of books, of which he had a
large collection.[3]
Plutarch was a man who strove not only to make others wiser, but also to
become wiser himself. His aim was to be a living exemplar of the
doctrines he professed and taught. He was a firm believer in plain
living and high thinking. He disliked as strongly as he disliked
anything the costly and luxurious banquets so much affected by the rich
Romans of his day. The little company that so frequently came together
under his hospitable roof met, not to eat and drink, but to engage in
serious and profitable conversation. The viands were plain—a secondary
matter; the chief thing was the discussion. This often turned on the
most trivial subjects, for the host seems to have thought with Terence:
“Homo sum, et nihil humani a me alienum puto.”
Practical politics for a Greek of Plutarch’s day did not mean serious
business, especially for the citizen of a small municipality like
Chaeroneia. He had therefore ample time for studying, lecturing and
formulating his numerous writings. He was not only so fortunate as to
have a good memory, but he began at an early age to take notes on what
he read; in this way he accumulated the large stock of quotations so
profusely scattered through his writings. In fact this practice of
depending upon others for his information must have done a good deal
toward weakening his power of original thought, and he usually enforces
a precept by an apt quotation rather than by arguments that he has
himself elaborated. On the other hand, his frequent reference to older
authors has given a special value to his writings in the eyes of the
moderns. Though not quoted by any extant Roman writer and rarely by a
Greek he must have been much read soon after his death, and at no time
was he wholly forgotten. His early and continued popularity doubtless
contributed not a little to the preservation of so large a portion of
his writings; but it also put into circulation under his name a number
of spurious works—just how many cannot be determined. Yet it is certain
that some genuine writings have been lost. Among the earliest printed
books were portions of Plutarch.
Plutarch is a prolix but not a pedantic nor a tedious writer. Though he
displays immense erudition he does so without effort. An apt quotation
from one of the poets, a telling anecdote of some celebrated man or
woman, or historical incident seems always ready to his hand, and
waiting for a suitable place to be used. He is completely master of the
extensive stock of knowledge stored up in his mind or his notes. He is a
capital story-teller. He knows how to seize the salient features of a
situation, and can place them before the reader in the most effective
light. A large proportion of the anecdotes of illustrious men, belonging
to a remoter antiquity, current in modern literature, have found their
way into it through the medium of his writings. He often reminds one of
Herodotus notwithstanding his antipathy to this author, and whose
veracity he vigorously impeaches in one of his essays—assuming, of
course, that De Malignitate is really the work of Plutarch. Like
Herodotus, he often wanders from the main theme of his narrative, but
never loses sight of it, and always returns to it without unduly
distracting the reader’s attention. Like Herodotus, he is often reminded
of a “little story” that he forthwith proceeds to tell; and, as in the
case of Herodotus, the reader feels that something of value has been
added to the narrative by the story. Like Herodotus, too, he exhibits a
strange mixture of credulity with sterling good sense. So it happens
that the Father of History and the man whom Jean Paul Richter calls the
Biographical Shakespeare of Universal History often meet on common
ground, in spite of the aversion of the one to the other. Of course the
canvas on which the historian paints is much larger; the interests he
discusses are much more momentous; but he does not treat them with
greater seriousness than does the biographer and moralist.
Perhaps the most succinct statement of Plutarch’s creed is a passage in
Isis and Osiris. He says: “For God is not a being that is without
intelligence, without a soul, and subject to men, but we regard these as
gods who constantly and in sufficient measure furnish us these fruits,
and there are neither different gods among different peoples, some
barbarian some Greek, some northern, some southern; but just as the sun
and moon, heaven and earth and sea are common to all, but are
differently designated by different peoples, so there is but one
intelligence that arranges all those things about us in order and one
Providence to which other powers that direct all things are made
subordinate, some of which have, by custom, received different honors
and appellations among different peoples. The initiates also employ
different symbols, some clearer, others more obscure, that lead the mind
to what is divine, though not without risk (of being misunderstood). For
some, being altogether led astray, fall into superstition; others again,
having steered clear of superstition, as if it were a bog, fall into
atheism as from a precipice. On this account it is especially important
to take reason that is born of philosophy, as a guide through these
mysteries, in order that we may comprehend rightly everything that is
said and done, in its true significance.”
Plutarch is a philosopher in the sense that every man of sound mind may
be a philosopher; but he is not, strictly speaking, a philosophical
thinker. He does not hold to any carefully elaborated and consistent
system. While he has much to say about character and conduct, he rarely
attempts to fathom the motives that underlie and influence conduct. He
is at times inconsistent with himself because his views on
transcendental problems have not been systematically wrought out and
firmly fixed. If he can quote the authority of some great name in
support of a position he takes, it generally suffices him. Not
unfrequently he cites contradictory authorities both for facts and
opinions, then declares which he prefers without giving a reason for his
preference.
Plutarch’s Moralia or Moral Writings are so called for the reason that
they are more or less concerned with ethical problems. But they also
treat incidentally of matters religious, political, literary,
psychological, physical and metaphysical or philosophical. Many of his
treatises are in the form of dialogues, in which he doubtless had before
his mind’s eye his great prototype Plato, little as he is able to fathom
his speculative profundity. Sometimes his discussions are addressed to a
real or imaginary interlocutor, who has, however, little to say. His
discourses may be regarded as sermons or lectures addressed to a small
circle of interested listeners, or even to a single person, though in
reality intended for a larger public. The homiletic character of many of
Plutarch’s discourses is also attested by the fact that he regards
morals as closely connected with religion. He is the bitter enemy of
atheism, because, as he maintains, it leads to a dissolute and aimless
life. He was, however, in no sense an innovator, but ardently attached
to the traditions of his countrymen. He seeks to discover a hidden
meaning in the popular myths and cults, and to explain them on
philosophical grounds. His attitude in this respect has contributed a
good deal to the popular interest in the man. He is a self-consecrated
priest of the established religion which he defended, not because it was
to his personal profit to do so, but from conviction. As he will not or
can not discard the cults of his day, or treat them as founded on mere
figments of the imagination, it is incumbent upon him to explain them as
best he can. And he seems to be convinced that he has been entirely
successful.
Not only is he an avowed foe of atheism, but he is an equally vigorous
opponent of superstition. Yet it is often impossible to see where he
draws the line between what he regards as rational faith and mere
credulity; between his own creed and that of the populace. In truth, the
task is not an easy one for anybody. The German nicely designates the
close proximity of faith and credulity by the two terms _Glaube_ and
_Aberglaube_. There was hardly a man in the ancient world of whom we
have any considerable knowledge, even though he may have been an avowed
atheist, who was wholly without superstition. The destiny of individuals
and nations was so often decided by influences so mysterious and
inscrutable that it might well be attributed to the miraculous
interposition of the gods. Even in our day, when the laws of nature are
better understood than ever before, men still feel themselves the sport
of unseen forces and powers that often seem to be malevolent or
benevolent for no discoverable reason, and which, it is hard to believe,
are not controlled by a supernal will.
Plutarch’s merits as a historical writer are seriously impaired by his
readiness to believe everything that comes to him through tradition or
record. Still one ought not to blame him for not being what he does not
profess to be. His main purpose is not to attain historical truth, but
to discover what will “point a moral, or adorn a tale.” Had he been
other than he was he would never have been so assiduously read.
Plutarch fully recognized the importance of the family in the social
fabric. This is the more to his credit for the reason that the trend of
public opinion was against him in this respect. All the evidence we have
goes to show that he was a judicious father, a loving husband, a dutiful
son, and an affectionate brother. He is thus a zealous defender of the
virtues he himself exemplified. A knowledge of his character, as shown
by his conduct, contributes not a little to the pleasure the modern
reader finds in the perusal of his pages. How often, alas! do we
discover on closer examination a great gulf between what men write and
what they do! How often does a knowledge of the private life of a great
writer mar the interest we take in what he writes!
Though a man of kind heart and polished manners, judged by the standard
of his time, Plutarch was no reformer. Indeed, no reform was possible by
means of his didactic method. He does not denounce vigourously the
corruptions of his time. He is far from employing the drastic speech of
his Roman contemporaries. It is probable that in his secluded home he
did not know or even suspect the moral degradation of the world around
him; it is certain he had not fathomed it. He knows something of the
Jewish religion, and might have known more, had he cared to inform
himself. He might have heard Paul’s preaching; and Christianity had
gained a firm foothold in Greece before Plutarch’s death. But he was too
much of a Greek to take any interest in what had no relation either to
Greek religion or tradition. The new faith in virtue of its origin, was
foolishness to him. He considered the Hellenic religion good enough for
anybody and everybody. It might indeed need purification from some of
its grosser elements and exotic excrescences; but more than this was
wholly unnecessary.
Nothing that Plutarch says exhibits in a more striking light the
humaneness of his disposition than his exhortations to the kind
treatment of brutes. He believes that the good man is kind to his beast.
He regards it a duty to care for the horse and the dog that have served
him well, when they become old and useless. He seems to think that
animals are not without a measure of reason and that they have to a
limited extent, the power to decide between right and wrong. Though
possessed of only a modicum of intelligence, this at least cannot be
entirely denied to them, any more than it can be denied to a bad man. A
certain measure of reason is the gift of nature; perfect and virtuous
reason is the result of practice and instruction. The reasoning powers
of many animals are, to an extent, on a level with those of man; they
differ not so much in quality as in quantity. It is right, therefore, to
use but not to abuse them. Cruelty to animals is evidence of a base
heart. Those who treat them harshly usually accentuate their bad traits
in their dealings with men. Our treatment of animals is, therefore, in
some sort and often to a considerable extent, an index of how we treat
our fellow beings. Plutarch finds the lower animals in some respects
more rational than men. They never eat or drink more than enough to
satisfy hunger and thirst; nor do they give way to any unnatural or
excessive appetites. He is somewhat inclined to condemn the use of
animal food; but, at any rate, animals must not be cruelly dealt with to
make them more palatable, nor put to death by lingering and inhuman
methods. He had in view more particularly some of the practices
prevalent in Rome in his day,—practices that were, in truth, horrible in
the extreme. It is no wonder that he names them only to condemn them.
The extreme modernness of Plutarch in this matter becomes the more
strikingly evident when we remember that classical antiquity not only
very seldom has a kind word for irrational creatures, but was wont to
treat them with extreme harshness. This was particularly the case among
the Romans.
Plutarch regards the soul as composed of two parts. One part seeks after
truth and light; the other is under the influence of the passions, and
liable to error. The first is divine, the second carnal. In so far as a
man heeds the monitions of the former he will follow the path of virtue.
Practical virtue, virtue in action, is wisdom; vice is error. In order
to be virtuous it is only necessary to listen to the voice of reason.
Plutarch does not doubt that virtue can be taught. To teach virtue
consists largely in making it attractive to the young. Reason does not
annihilate the passions; it merely directs them toward a goal that it
has marked out. Virtue consists in “the golden mean”—μηδὲν ἄγαν—in doing
neither too much nor too little. Bravery is a virtue whose place is
between cowardice and rashness. Mildness or kindness is a virtue: its
place is between stolidity and cruelty, just as the place of liberality
is midway between the extremes, stinginess and prodigality. He adduces a
number of proofs to establish the position that the passions are
corporeal and the reason supersensuous; in a correct system of pedagogy
a proper use is to be made of the latter for controlling and wisely
directing the former toward rational ends. It is in every man’s power to
be virtuous under all circumstances, but happiness, or rather good
fortune, is dependent upon many things. A virtuous man may enjoy peace
of mind at all times, while the largest possessions are of no real value
to a bad man. Vice is an anomaly in the constitution of society.
Tranquillity of mind, calmness of soul, are not to be sought in a state
of inactivity and in retirement. The affirmative of this proposition has
led many people into error. Disgusted with the world, they seek peace by
withdrawing from its turmoil and hurly-burly, too often only to meet
with disappointment. There is not a condition in life from which no
consolation can be extracted, and it is the province of reason to
discover how this may be done. In what way this is possible he shows by
a number of examples from biography. What many persons at first looked
upon as misfortunes not unfrequently turned out to be a blessing to
themselves and to the world. On the other hand, many persons who were
regarded by almost every one as among the most fortunate, were found to
have a skeleton in their closet. When the sage suffers a loss, he does
not grieve over it, but places a higher value on what is left to him. No
man is so poor, no man has lost so much, but that there remains in his
possession something for which he can felicitate himself. Neither is any
one so destitute but that he might be still worse off, and the most
wretched are certain to meet with others more needy than themselves. On
the physical side of our nature we are all subject to what, for want of
a better name, may be called _chance_; but this is not true of our moral
and intellectual side. It is therefore within our power to secure
indestructible and inalienable possessions: insight, love of knowledge,
virtue, the consciousness of being and doing right. Not even the fear of
death disquiets the good man, for he knows that after his dissolution he
shall enter into a better state of existence than this life; the bad man
clings to life because of the dread uncertainty before him after death.
As a last resource, if a man’s sufferings become too great to be
endured, he can make an end of them with his own hand.
To Plutarch, no riches, no purely external possessions, are so conducive
to peace of mind and cheerfulness of heart, as a soul that has kept
itself free from evil thoughts and acts. For a soul that has held itself
aloof from contamination every day is a festival; the world, a temple in
which God dwells and which he has adapted to the fulfilment of man’s
wants. By the proper use of reason men may control their passions and
find satisfaction in the enjoyment of what is within their reach. They
may reflect with complacency on the past and look forward to the future
with hope. A man’s unhappiness is caused rather by the pains of the soul
than those of the body. Diseases of the body are due to its nature, but
disease of the soul is man’s own work. Moreover the maladies of the soul
are curable, a condition of things that ought to afford us much
consolation. Though the sufferings and diseases to which the body is
subject take many forms, those that a corrupt heart and a debased soul
send forth, as from a perennial fountain, are much more numerous. Again,
corporal diseases may be detected by their external symptoms; the
maladies of the soul are hidden. They are the more dangerous from the
fact that, in most instances, the patient himself is not aware of them.
The greatest malady of the soul is the want of reason and good sense,
because they disqualify men from recognizing their own baseness and the
remedies necessary for a cure. Few persons who are guilty of wrong-doing
realize that they have committed transgressions; oftentimes they even
think they have acted wisely and judiciously. They call their anger,
bravery; their envy and jealousy, emulation; their cowardice, prudence;
while it never occurs to them to seek the aid of a philosopher for the
diseases of the soul until they are incurable and have become so
virulent that they drive the patient to the commission of the most
diabolical crimes.
From these premises there follows the inevitable conclusion that the
chief end of man is progress in virtue, or, we might better say, in all
the virtues, though virtue in reality is but one. Our progress in
philosophy is the result of constant and uninterrupted effort. Parallel
to this is our progress in virtue; if we relax our efforts for a moment
we incur the danger of letting vice get a hold upon us. He who is always
in conflict with vice, with his evil passions, may rest assured that he
is making progress in virtue. But our love for virtue must partake of
the nature of a passion; in it we ought to find our highest
gratification, so that if we are interrupted in our pursuit we shall
long to return to it. The aim and purpose of our philosophy must be
practical, and it is chiefly in our activity as a citizen and a man in
all the multiplex relations of life, that we may test our love for it.
Yet, the true philosopher is not ostentatious, and it makes little
difference to him whether the world recognizes him as such or not. He
ought to seek internal satisfaction, not public acknowledgement. Herein
Plutarch takes his stand in opposition to many of his countrymen who
aspired to the name and title of philosophers, but did little to deserve
them. How men of sense regarded them has been pointed out elsewhere.
We may also measure our progress in philosophy, that is, in virtue, by
our love of the beautiful and the good; by our attitude towards praise
and blame. We ought neither to seek the one nor avoid the other. If we
really desire to correct our faults and shortcomings, we will be ready
at all times to listen to advice and to heed criticism; nor will we
conceal any part of our nature or cover up any of our acts in order to
seem what we are not. Nevertheless, when we are firmly convinced that we
are in the right, it is our duty to go forward in the course we have
marked out for ourselves, no matter what others may think or say.
There is no stronger incentive to noble deeds and an upright life than
the lives of the great and the good of all ages. It was mainly under the
impulse of this belief that Plutarch compiled his parallel biographies.
In the nature of the case their value as truthful records is greatly
impaired by the standpoint from which they were written; but it is this
fact that has given them an attractiveness and a currency such as no
other works of their kind have equalled. Plutarch’s Lives have for
centuries been the monitors of youth and the solace of the aged. They
have been read and admired wherever men have honored courage, fortitude,
intrepidity, self-control, patriotism, humaneness—in short, every trait
of character that can be classed among the virtues. Greeks and Romans,
ancients and moderns, learned and illiterate, rich and poor, have been
fascinated by them, and it is on them that their author’s fame chiefly
rests. To many persons, in fact to the great majority of readers,
Plutarch is known only as the writer of charming biographies; yet these
constitute a good deal less than half his extant works.
Plutarch holds that men find the path of virtue and continue to walk in
it, by reflection, deliberation, introspection; by a systematic, rigid
and continued self-examination—in other words, by a practical
application of the methods that philosophy points out. Man is sane and
sound only so long as he puts into practice the principles of virtue. So
long as he is the slave of his passions he is in need of a physician.
Philosophy is the sanitation of the soul; the genuine philosopher is the
real physician of the soul. In pursuance of his chosen vocation,
Plutarch wrote a number of essays for the purpose of giving instruction
upon the best methods of controlling the different passions to which men
are subject. Their purport easily becomes evident from a glance at their
titles. They show that he has carefully observed and studied men, at
least those that constitute the various higher classes and give the
prevailing tone to society. Many of these essays are still of interest
and well repay perusal. They contain many acute observations and piquant
remarks.
For Plutarch the old mythology is sufficient as a basis for a religious
belief. Like most of the Greek philosophers who incline toward theism,
he maintains that myths are, to a greater or less extent, corruptions of
primitive verities. These originated in the popular mind and received
artistic form at the hands of the poets. Underlying them all there is
truth enough and beauty enough to show the aspiration of the soul after
higher things, and they form the basis of a purely theistic belief.
Plutarch’s unbounded faith in human reason leads him to believe that it
alone is entirely sufficient to enable any and every man to lead a
virtuous life. His advice to every one is, in substance: get all the
light you can; use the reason you are endowed with by the creator;
acquire additional knowledge and wisdom every day; make your inward life
an object of daily study and reflection,—if you do these things you will
lead a virtuous life. Those persons who have no love for the beautiful
and the good, no desire to become virtuous, fail because they neglect to
cultivate the reason with which every man is originally endowed. They
grope in the darkness cast about them by their own passions, and refuse
to follow the lamp that reason holds up before them. Plutarch’s
optimism; his faith in the power of the intellect to make the world
better, is especially remarkable in view of the fact that his
countrymen, notwithstanding their general intelligence, notwithstanding
the large number of great men in almost every department of knowledge
born in Greek lands, in spite of the fact that Greece was the native
hearth of philosophy, had for centuries been retrograding morally,
intellectually and politically. So hard is it to divorce most men from a
theory to which they have attached themselves. His mistake arose from
his seeing all men in the mirror of his own thoughts. He believed that
the whole human race could be influenced by the motives that influenced
himself, and that all could, if they wished, be constantly engaged in
the search for light and wisdom in the way he sought them. This radical
error he inherited from his master, Plato, and it is strange that he did
not detect it. He seems never to have suspected that he might be
mistaken.
Plutarch’s religion is wholly without enthusiasm and his morality has in
it not a tinge of emotion. Do right always, because by such a course of
life you will enjoy the largest measure of mundane happiness that can
fall to the lot of a mortal, and be a benefactor to all who come within
the circle of your influence. Make the best of every situation in which
you may be placed. Do not take too seriously the hindrances to a
virtuous life that you may find in your way, because you can remove them
if you will. No matter what your station in life, do not expect your
path to be always a smooth one. If you keep these things in mind you
will probably live long,—you are sure to live happily.
Plutarch’s views regarding the education of women are far in advance of
his age. He follows his master, Plato, in vindicating for them the same
virtues that belong to men. His treatise often designated The Virtues of
Women is chiefly a record of heroic deeds that have been performed by
the so-called weaker sex. He admits that the worth or efficiency of
women is not necessarily of the same quality as that of men, but he
contends that its ethical value is equal and its intrinsic merit in no
wise inferior. The woman who has performed a noble deed is entitled to
just as much credit as a a man. He takes issue with Thucydides for
saying that the best woman is the one of whom least is said either for
good or evil. He also takes issue with the thoroughly Greek sentiment,
though perhaps more pronounced in Athens than elsewhere, that woman is
at most little else than a plaything and a convenience for man; and that
her highest function is to bear legitimate male children. According to
Plutarch the wife is to be the equal partner in the management of the
household. When it is well conducted she deserves equal commendation
with the husband. He would open a wider sphere for women; train them
intellectually, and awaken in them an interest in the larger affairs of
life. Consistently with these views, Plutarch assigned to his wife an
honorable place in his household. She received guests in her husband’s
absence; sat at table with him and interested herself in public as well
as private affairs. While this was in contravention of the custom of his
day, it was in harmony with a faintly discernible trend of public
opinion, probably the result of Roman influence. That the innovation
made slow progress is plain not only from the later history of Greece
but also from Greek social usages in our own day. When we take
cognizance of the unhappy state of his country we are inclined to wonder
at Plutarch’s uniform serenity of mind. He never indulges in satire or
sneer, while many of his contemporaries did both. But we must remember
that his philosophy had, above and beyond everything else, a practical
purpose, and that in a rather material sense. Men’s misfortunes are
their own fault and therefore preventible; or they are not their own
fault and therefore unavoidable. In either case nothing is gained by
grieving over them.
It will be evident from a perusal of the De Sera that optimism is the
basis of Plutarch’s philosophy. Men can do right if they will, and if
they do right they can not fail to be happy. There is a superintending
Providence that in the end rectifies all wrong and injustice. He seems
to hold with Goethe that “Every sin is punished here below,” though the
punishment does not end in this life. Retribution is not delayed until
after death; it visits the sinner in this world. Or if he is so
fortunate as to end his days in peace, so far as mortals can see, he
entails a curse upon his descendants. The iniquities of the fathers are
visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. But the
punishment of the wicked does not end with this life. The soul bears the
imprint of its crimes after it has left the body. That God sometimes
permits a wicked man to end his days in peace but that He has fastened a
curse on his offspring, is a prominent article in the creed of many of
the older Greek writers. It is often referred to by Herodotus. So firmly
convinced is he that all wrong-doing must be atoned for that when he
finds an instance where the law does not appear to hold good he
confesses himself at a loss to account for the failure of its operation.
Not only individuals but nations as well must expiate crimes committed
and wrongs done by their representatives in an official capacity. And
there is no doubt that the influence of this belief was most wholesome.
Much of what Plutarch says on this point is probably fanciful,
especially when he appeals to the testimony of history; but what he
records is in keeping with his philosophy and has therefore a strong
personal interest. Moreover, he furnishes us with some interesting
testimony as to the prevalence of a belief in rewards and punishments
among men outside the pale of Christianity.
Plutarch’s ideal of duty is a high one. The fulfilment of some duty is
incumbent upon every man so long as he lives. It is as imperative in old
age as in early life. When a man is quit of his obligations to his
children, he owes a service to his country and to his fellow citizens in
a narrower sense. From this service, only the impairment of his
facilities or death may release him. As every man is born into the
state, and as, in a certain sense, he is a man only in so far as he
discharges his obligations to the state, he has no choice in the matter.
Herein lies a duty from which there is no possible escape. But the mere
holding of an office is not the only or even the chief test of the good
citizen. His duties in a private capacity are no less important, and if
less conspicuous are equally far reaching. The good citizen is the
philosopher in his true sphere: good citizenship is philosophy in
action—applied philosophy. It is only in actual life that the
philosopher can put his theories to the test. The form of government is
a matter of minor importance. Plutarch regards monarchy, as on the
whole, the best, but he is not radical. In this he agrees with the
majority of Greek philosophers, most of whom were generally more or less
dissatisfied with the turbulent Athenian democracy. That monarchy is
best where the head of the state is what Plutarch would have him be, a
philosopher. But even the most absolute monarch should not regard
himself above law; he is to be its executor. Moreover, it is his duty
not only to obey cheerfully the written law that binds prince and people
alike, but also that unwritten law that reason has implanted in the soul
of every man of sound mind. Rulers are in a sense the servants of God
whose duty it is to apportion rewards and punishments according to their
deserts, to all that are under their authority.
After all, man’s first and chief duty is to himself. His quest for
light, for knowledge, for truth is never to be intermitted. He is to
take his bearings, as it were, frequently, in order to see what progress
he is making. If his aims are noble, his purposes right, and his motives
pure, he will not only make daily progress in virtue, but when he is
called to leave this world he can depart in peace because he will have
the consciousness that it is the better for his having lived in it.
Having thus given a short sketch of Plutarch as a man and a citizen let
us proceed to examine briefly the times in which he lived as
supplementary to what has already been said under this general head in
treating of Seneca. What had Roman rule done for his country? What was
the social and economic condition of Greece and Greek lands in the first
century of the Christian era? Unfortunately our information on these
points is exceedingly scanty. In fact, political economy is a recent
science; in ancient times the lot of the poor was little taken note of.
It was everywhere a hard one, and the care of the indigent, so much
insisted on in the New Testament, is almost the first sign of an
awakening in this respect. But it did not originate with the government;
that had other ends in view. That the Roman policy toward the
proletariat in the imperial capital only made matters worse, is well
known. When we remember how much has been done in recent years by
legislation in every civilized country for the amelioration of the
condition of the lowest classes and how much still remains to be done,
we can picture to ourselves the state of society where all this was
omitted.
When we remember further that up to a comparatively recent period
commerce, trade and manufactures flourished, in so far as they can be
said to have flourished, not because they were fostered by governments,
but almost in spite of them, it is not surprising that they received
little attention at the hands of the Greeks and Romans, either
individually or collectively. It has already been stated that the sole
object of the ruling powers was to raise the largest amount of revenue,
not to equalize the burdens on all the subjects. On no question is
ancient thought so crude as upon economics. The blight of slavery that
made free labor to a certain extent disgraceful, and a condition of
things that hindered the establishment of manufacturies on a large
scale, tells the sorrowful story.
In his attitude toward slavery, Plutarch does not seem to hold as
advanced views as Seneca and some of the better men of his age and
preceding times. Yet he did not endorse the prevalent opinion, embodied
in legislation, that a slave is a soulless thing, though the justice of
emancipation occupied his attention but little. Here again we find his
practical ideas in the foreground. He is concerned to make the best of
the situation as he finds it. Slavery exists, is an ineradicable element
of organized society and is coextensive with the human race. The best
that the philosopher can do is to make sages of slave-holders, to the
end that they treat their bondmen with justice and humaneness. Compare
the anecdotes of Plato and Archytas in De Sera, Chap. 5. According to
Plutarch slaves have souls like other human beings, and are capable of
mental and moral improvement; consequently masters have duties to
perform toward them that are just as plain and just as imperative as
those due to persons on the same social level with themselves.
The prosperity of nations rests mainly upon the numbers and intelligence
of its middle classes. It can everywhere be measured by the rise of this
class. What wonder then that the nations were poor among whom it
scarcely existed? Rome could not go on plundering interminably, and the
riches of its provinces in time became exhausted because not
replenished. All that the ancient world has left upon record for us,
proceeds upon the assumption of a large body of slaves and a small body
of free citizens, and breathes a contempt for labor and trade. In most
of the Greek states the commercial and manufacturing class consisted
chiefly of resident aliens who were also slave-holders, and no citizen
was so poor that he did not own at least one slave. To be a slave-owner
was a badge of respectability even for those who were not citizens. In
the Greek states, so long as they were free polities, war and religion
occupied all the time and attention of the citizens, except that small
body that were interested in philosophical pursuits. When they were no
longer free and no longer had serious affairs in which to employ their
time, they spent most of it in idle gossip or as the Acts tell us, “in
hearing or telling some new thing.” What legislation they were still
permitted to engage in never concerned matters of grave import. They
decreed crowns and statues to real or supposed benefactors, only to
annul their decrees when those whom they were intended to honor happened
to incur the displeasure of the legislators or to fall into disgrace
with the higher powers. Then there were deputations between different
states about boundary disputes, about festivals, about claims and
counter claims of all sorts, the sending of which was often debated with
a solemnity that makes us wonder how the participants could themselves
fail to see their farcical character. Generally the game at stake was
the favor of the emperor, each party striving to outbid the other in
professions of loyalty or to outvie it in the length of its bill for
services rendered. When, as was frequently the case, these delegations
did not find the emperor in Rome, they had, of course, to follow him
into provinces or to await his return. This required time that, we may
be sure, was in most cases ungrudgingly given. Instead of directing
their energies into channels of activity and trying by honest work to
better their worldly condition it was talk, talk with the Greeks, and
talk without end.
There is no stronger evidence of their fondness for discussion and for
listening to the spoken word than Greek literature itself. The
historians are in the habit of stating the case of opposing parties by
harangues which they put into the mouth of a representative of each.
Greek poetry consists in a great measure of dialogue. Philosophy was
chiefly developed by means of oral discussion. Comedy, even after it was
no longer represented on the stage, still appears as dialogue and not in
the usual form of the satire. Among its richest legacies to posterity is
its oratory, and in it we have the spoken word in its most effective
form; but it still represents words rather than deeds, and belongs for
the most part to the declining age of Greece. A solitary thinker like
Kant was wholly foreign to Greek ideas. So persistently has this trait
remained a characteristic of the Hellenes that many of their best
friends deplore their fondness for petty politics; their sleepless
anxiety to assist in the management of the government instead of turning
their attention to bettering their material condition by a steady
devotion to private business. Many of the rich and well-to-do Greeks
live outside the kingdom of Greece where their lingual activity is
circumscribed and they are compelled by circumstances to turn their
energies into more profitable channels. Rarely has a man, distinguished
for eloquence alone, profoundly influenced the course of human events.
Contemporaries are unanimous in ascribing to Julius Caesar oratorical
gifts of the highest order; but he preferred to make his mark as a doer
of deeds rather than as a maker of phrases.
In Rome the economic conditions were somewhat different from those
prevailing in Greece and the East, yet Rome was not a commercial state.
It was founded on military power, extended by valor and endurance in
war, and when there were no more worlds to conquer, the forces that had
been turned against external enemies began to be turned against herself.
Rome was rich while she had other countries to plunder; when this was no
longer possible her decay began. And these countries, by which we mean
all the provinces outside of the city, were rich so long as the
fertility of their soil continued and their mines were productive. That
Rome’s moral decline antedated her economic retrogression by centuries
is familiar to every reader of ancient history, but it is only the
latter that we are concerned with here.
Money was not used for purposes of production, but for the purchase of
articles of luxury and display. Much of what had been accumulated in the
capital flowed eastward and disappeared. Italy gradually passed into the
hands of a small number of largelanded proprietors, whose vast estates
were cultivated by persons who had no interest in maintaining their
fertility. Great numbers of free citizens flocked to Rome to enjoy the
doles distributed to the populace at stated intervals; to feast their
eyes on the bloody spectacles, so frequently and so magnificently given;
and to die, only to leave room to be filled by the constantly inflowing
stream. The empire existed for the City, its capital. We have already
spoken of the strange fascination it exercised over all who had once
been under its spell. We may safely assume that of the eighty thousand
Romans put to death by Mithridates in his dominions, a considerable
portion had gone abroad in the hope of enriching themselves in order to
spend their gains in the capital. Doubtless, too, so far afield, trade
was less despised than at the seat of government. The empire built, and
for a time kept in repair, those magnificent highways that are still the
admiration of all who see them. But they served military purposes almost
exclusively. When no longer needed they were suffered to fall into
decay. They were not constructed to facilitate commercial intercourse,
and contributed little to the economic welfare of the empire. When the
lack of local improvements was sufficiently felt and the people were not
too much impoverished, which was seldom the case, to bear the necessary
financial burdens these were undertaken by the local authorities. But
there is reason to believe that some of the provinces, notably the
Grecian, became poorer and poorer from year to year. The capital drained
the province; the people lost heart, and gave themselves up to the
apathy of indifference or despair.
It was the evil destiny of the Greek polities that they could never be
brought to act together for any length of time; nor did all of them ever
act together in any common enterprise. And they learned nothing from
experience. The misfortunes resulting from this centripetal tendency
were pointed out time and again by writers and orators, but to no
purpose. Local pride always outweighed the dictates of reason or even of
common prudence. Had Greece presented a united front, under competent
leadership, it would have been a hard task for even Rome to subdue it.
But it was impossible for the different states to forget their
reciprocal animosities: the increasing prosperity of one was usually the
signal for others to turn their arms against it. In this way all of them
were gradually weakened and thus became a comparatively easy prey to any
strong foreign foe that might choose to attack them. Their subjugation
by Rome was by far the greatest misfortune that ever befell them. Philip
of Macedon and his successors were at least more than half Greeks, and
had a good deal of sympathy with Greek ideas. The Romans had none
whatever. Still, cruelly as they carried out the work of subjugation in
certain localities, when their first animosity was appeased they seem
not to have interfered systematically with existing municipal
administrations. Yet the financial pressure became harder as the people
grew poorer, and matters went from bad to worse. The wickedness of
Corinth, the most Roman of Greek cities after it had been rebuilt under
imperial auspices, affords striking evidence of what Roman influence
meant on the morals of a Greek polity.
It is a matter of common knowledge what Roman internecine war brought
upon Italy. To a certain extent the same evils were shared by Greece.
Three of the fiercest battles between the contestants for the principate
were fought in or near Greece. The Greeks were always on the losing
side, though her soldiers were not numerously represented in the Roman
armies. These battles did but accelerate a retrograde movement that had
been quite marked at least since the Mithridatic war, though it did not
begin then. The population was rapidly decreasing. Plutarch says that in
his time all Greece could not furnish three thousand heavy-armed
soldiers. This statement must not be taken too literally; it can hardly
mean that there were not this number of able-bodied men in the whole of
Greece; it must mean that it did not contain three thousand citizens
sufficiently well-to-do to enable them to support themselves in the
field. In the days of their glory some of the smallest Greek states were
better off than this would indicate. It is certainly proof positive of
poverty, if not of a very sparse population. But this, too, had greatly
decreased in some places. In the time of Augustus, Thebes had ceased to
be anything more than a large village—the same Thebes that had played so
prominent a part in legend and history. With a few exceptions, the
larger Boeotian towns were in the same sad plight. Cities without
inhabitants, or only a few; cattle grazing in the deserted streets, and
even in the market-place, seem to have been a common sight. What had
become of the inhabitants? We only know that they were gone, most of
them, doubtless, to their graves.
In Greece, Sparta excepted, slavery was of a rather mild type, and it
was unusual for a Greek to sell a slave to a foreigner. Neither did
gladiatorial combats flourish among the Greeks. Even Corinth, that in
later times contained a large admixture of Romans, could not acclimate
them. While it is true that the Greeks made light of human life and took
it upon the slightest pretext, it was rarely done by the cruel methods
of the Romans. With all their faults and frailties they belonged to a
distinctly higher type of men, and their civilization at a very early
period began to move along lines afterward followed by the progressive
nations of the world. How infinitely better were their peaceful contests
than the bloody spectacles that were the delight of Rome!
Just as the Greeks were reluctant to admit foreigners to citizenship,
they were also reluctant to admit exotic gods into their pantheon. In
both, their policy was diametrically opposed to that of Rome. Their
exclusiveness in the former regard was due to their belief in their own
superiority; in the latter, to the conviction that their national gods
were sufficient for all human needs. Friedlaender is probably right in
his contention that the period here under consideration shows no decay
in what we may call religion, either in Greece or Rome. Its external
forms and traditional rites were sedulously kept up and scrupulously
maintained. Plutarch likewise bears testimony to this condition of
things. Scoffers and infidels had become more numerous, mainly because
the Romans were more tolerant in such matters than the Greeks. To the
ruling class all cults were alike; consequently they made no objections
to anything that was spoken or written, so long as their authority was
not directly or indirectly attacked. In the various controversies about
religion mentioned in the New Testament, the attitude of the government
is always one of indifference except as to the maintenance of public
order.
The Greeks, generally speaking, preferred, like Plutarch, the limited
sphere of local political activity to the larger one offered at Rome.
The provincials who came to honor on the other side of the Adriatic were
few in number.
In the main the provinces fared better under the imperial government
than under the republic. There was a higher degree of probability that
wrongs would be redressed. A case in point is that of the apostle Paul
who appealed to Caesar even when the Caesar was Nero.
It is a well-known fact of ancient history that property in transit,
either by land or sea, was at no time particularly safe at a distance
from the centers of population. The thief and the robber are familiar
figures in both sacred and profane writings. Pompey’s extensive crusade
against the pirates that infested all parts of the Mediterranean forms
an important episode in the records of the Roman navy. Even in the
cities, the unlighted streets afforded frequent opportunities for
plunder and murder to those who had no scruples about taking life or
property. As domestic affairs from time to time engrossed the attention
of the imperial administration, the outlying provinces were not
carefully looked after; roads were neglected and became insecure; the
police force lacked efficiency, and commercial intercourse between the
different parts of the empire was reduced to a minimum. The people were
driven to agriculture as their only means of support, which, in Greece
particularly, was never a profitable industry. Nothing affords a more
striking contrast between the police system of ancient and modern times
than the frequency with which robberies are mentioned in the former and
their rarity in the other. Paul tells us that he had been in peril by
robbers; we know, too, from the writings of Josephus and others that the
conflicts between this class of outlaws and the Roman government were by
no means infrequent. Those who had been engaged in rebellion, or who
were among the vanquished in battle, or who had become voluntary or
compulsory exiles, often felt that they had a right to prey on orderly
society.
It is a recognized fact that the monarchical system of the East tended
to encourage immorality, a condition of things that usually exists where
there is no strong and wholesome public opinion. The usurpers in the
Greek cities, and later, the Roman provincial governors, were, with rare
exceptions, men of loose morals if not worse. The private life of its
representatives was a matter with which the home government did not
concern itself, and the subjects were constrained to be dumb. Now and
then one of these petty sovereigns ruled wisely according to the
standards of the time, and the public was satisfied, especially if they
knew how to maintain brilliant courts, and to adorn their capitals with
imposing structures. It was so easy to trump up the charge of sedition
against persons who refused to be servile flatterers, that only the most
courageous dared to stand aloof. Finlay, though somewhat given to
painting in strong colors, is probably not far wrong when he says: “It
is difficult to imagine a society more completely destitute of moral
restraint than that in which the Asiatic Greeks lived. Public opinion
was powerless to enforce even an outward respect for virtue; military
accomplishments, talents for civil administration, literary eminence and
devotion to the power of an arbitrary sovereign, were the direct roads
to distinction and wealth; honesty and virtue were very secondary
qualities. In old countries or societies where a class becomes
predominant, a conventional character is formed, according to the
exigencies of the case, as the standard of an honorable man; and it is
usually very different indeed from what is really necessary to
constitute a virtuous or even an honest citizen.”
The student of Greek history is often inclined to believe that the bane
of Hellenic statesmanship was the bitter rivalry that always existed
between the different polities. From the standpoint of the philosopher
this view is correct. If the energies devoted to the means and methods
of mutual destruction had been expended on the arts of peace, not only
Greece, but the entire world would, to-day, present a widely different
aspect. However much the moralist may deplore the existing conditions,
the man who takes the world as it is cannot fail to see that the utmost
strength of a nation is always put forth in war and for warlike
purposes. It was so with the Greeks. Political rivalry was the strongest
stimulus under which they acted. It was their life and growth, and to a
large extent the measure of their prosperity. When political rivalries
were extinguished by Alexander, and more effectually by the Romans, the
spirit of Greece, too, died out. The Romans, especially in their first
contact with Greece, were too much barbarians to have any sympathy with
the best that Greece had to offer. A genius for government is not
necessarily a mark of advanced civilization. It is true there were at
all times men among the Romans able to appreciate the proud preeminence
of the Greeks in arts and letters, but their numbers were too few to
make any general impression. The leading families, including most of the
emperors, were familiar with the Greek language and used it with ease;
but there were few Romans who did not despise the Greeks and regard them
as inferiors. Nations, like individuals, feel more or less contempt for
those whose tastes are different from their own; and in the case before
us, the Greeks being the weaker, were the chief sufferers. But just as
rich men sometimes buy books and statuary of which they do not know the
value, and collect libraries which they cannot read, because intelligent
people take pleasure in these things, so a certain class of Romans
affected a fondness for Greek art and literature and philosophy. An
enormous quantity of works of Greek art was transported across the
Adriatic by the Romans with small advantage to the pillagers or to the
nation. Notwithstanding the predilection of some of the leading families
for Greek culture, their influence made no deep and lasting impression
on Roman thought, in the better sense. Rome always showed itself much
more receptive toward what is debasing than for what was ennobling.
After this hasty survey of the condition of Plutarch’s countrymen we are
more than ever inclined to be surprised at his optimism. Yet the
explanation is not far to seek, and is consistent with his philosophy.
He had an abiding faith in a divine Providence who orders all things for
the best. He holds that men are free and therefore responsible. The ills
that afflict them are chiefly of their own making; why then should a
wise man grieve over them? It is man’s chief business to free himself
from unholy desires; to control the volcanic and perturbing impulses of
his nature by means of philosophy, which when rightly apprehended is
divine. As man is in the last analysis an ethical being, the fundamental
problem of philosophy is how to carry out in practice those ethical
principles in the observance of which man only can be truly happy. If,
then, men’s misfortunes are the natural consequence and result of their
own perverseness, there is no reason why we should grieve over them. So
far as political conditions are concerned, he doubtless felt that the
rule of the Roman emperors had at last given peace to his long
distracted country, on as favorable terms as could be expected.
It has been said of Plutarch that there is not a new thought in all his
writings,—and this by way of disparagement. The charge is probably true.
The men who have put new ideas into the world are few indeed. The world
is far less in need of instruction than of reminding. Besides, there is
no reason why an artist should not deal with a familiar subject in his
own way. If he can tell an old story so as to give it a new interest, or
treat a well-worn theme so as to make it seem fresh, he is not the least
among his brethren. It is especially writers upon ethics that are apt to
be tedious. The more honor to him who can make his preaching attractive
and interesting.
Perhaps the chief charm of Plutarch’s writings is the assumption on his
part that he is a reasonable man himself and is talking to reasonable
men; for as we have already seen, he has always hearers in mind rather
than readers. We can imagine him ever and anon saying, You either know
what is right, what your duty is, or you want to know. The rules of
conduct are plain and simple; you have but to obey them and you will be
happy. Perform the duties incumbent upon you, to the gods, to your
fellow citizens, to the members of your family, to yourself, and you
will be content with the present order of things, and your fellow men
with you. If you want to lead a moral life, be humane, be truthful, be
sympathetic, be chaste, deal honestly with your fellow men, follow your
rational nature rather than your emotions, and you will have no reason
to regret that you have lived; your fellow men will be glad that you
have for a time sojourned among them, and have left behind you the light
of your example to shine for those who come after you.
Lecky in his History of European Morals, already cited, has some
interesting passages on the relation of Seneca and Plutarch to certain
phases of the thought of their time, a few of which may properly find a
place here. He says: “A class of writers began to arise, who, like the
Stoics, believed virtue rather than enjoyment, to be the supreme good,
and who acknowledged that virtue consisted solely of the control which
the enlightened will exercises over the desires, but who at the same
time gave free scope to the benevolent affections, and a more religious
and mystical tone to the whole scheme of morals.”
“Plutarch, whose fame as a biographer has, I think, unduly eclipsed his
reputation as a moralist, may be justly regarded as the leader of this
movement, and his moral writings may be profitably compared with those
of Seneca, the most ample exponent of the sterner school. Seneca is not
unfrequently self-conscious, theatrical, and over-strained. His precepts
have something of the affected ring of a popular preacher. The imperfect
fusion of his short sentences gives his style a disjointed and, so to
speak, granulated character, which the emperor Caligula happily
expressed when he compared it to sand without cement; yet he often rises
to a majesty of eloquence, a grandeur both of thought and expression,
that few moralists have ever rivaled. Plutarch, though far less sublime,
is more sustained, equable and uniformly pleasing. The Montaigne of
antiquity, his genius coruscates playfully and gracefully around his
subject; he delights in illustrations which are often singularly vivid
and original, but which by their excessive multiplication appear
sometimes rather the texture than the ornament of his discourse. A
gentle, tender spirit, and a judgment equally free from paradox,
exaggeration, and excessive subtilty, are characteristics of all he
wrote. Plutarch excels most in collecting motives of consolation; Seneca
in forming characters that need no consolation. There is something of
the woman in Plutarch; Seneca is all man.[4] The writings of the first
resemble the strains of the flute, to which the ancients attributed the
power of calming the possessions and chasing away the clouds of sorrow,
and drawing men by gentle suasion into the paths of virtue; the writings
of the other are like the trumpet blast which kindles the soul with
heroic courage. The first is more fitted to console a mother sorrowing
over her dead child; the second to nerve a brave man, without flinching
and without illusion, to grapple with an inevitable fate. The elaborate
letters which Seneca has left us on distinctive tenets of the Stoical
school, such as the equality of the vices, or the evil of the
affections, have now little more than an historic interest; but the
general tone of his writings gives them a permanent importance, for they
reflect and foster a certain type of excellence which, since the
extinction of Stoicism, has had no adequate expression in literature.
The prevailing moral tone of Plutarch, on the other hand, being formed
mainly on the prominence of the amiable virtues has been eclipsed or
transcended by the Christian writers, but his definite contribution to
philosophy and morals are more important than those of Seneca. He has
left us one of the best works on Superstition, and one of the most
ingenious on Providence, we possess. He was probably the first writer
who advocated very strongly humanity to animals on the broad ground of
universal benevolence, as distinguished from the Pythagorean doctrine of
transmigration, as he was also remarkable, beyond all his contemporaries
for his high sense of female excellence, and of the sanctity of female
love.”
Seneca, Plutarch, and the Apostle Paul were in a sense contemporaries.
All three did what they could to make the world better in their time and
after them. All three were preachers of righteousness, each in his way.
All three wrote much that has engaged the attention of the world, and
stimulated its thought. But how great the contrast between the projects
of these men, especially the two last! Plutarch was wholly lacking in
Paul’s devotion to an idea. He would have scouted the suggestion that a
man should give up friends, social position, country, kindred,
everything, to go forth to preach a new doctrine. How widely apart, how
almost diametrically opposite the methods of two men who are in a sense
seeking the same end! The thoughts of the philosopher, his intellectual
vision, was turned toward the setting sun. At most he could only hope,
as we now see, to prolong the dim twilight that still hovered over the
earth. The world had well-nigh lost faith in the power of human reason
to regenerate mankind. The spiritual eyes of the Christian were on the
rising sun. Though he saw that it was as yet shining but dimly, he had
no doubt that in time it would rise to noonday splendor. The pillar of
fire that led and lighted the way for the saint; the beatific vision
that always stood before his enraptured gaze; the world-embracing
panorama that kept growing larger and larger as the little Christian
colonies were planted one after another in Asia Minor, in Greece, in
Rome, had no existence for the philosopher. He has, it is true, a belief
in an overruling Providence, but it lacks clearness, because weakened by
a polytheistic creed, or at least by the remnants of such a creed. To it
he still tenaciously clings, though it may be half unconsciously. He too
had a belief in an existence after death; but it was not of the sort
that made him feel that all the tribulations of this world which were
but for a moment were not to be compared with the glory that should
follow.
If we would personify Christianity and Philosophy as they met each other
at the close of the first century of our era, we may designate the one
as the young man, who, though poor in this world’s goods, is strong in
hope, in faith, in himself and in his cause. His superb physique, his
capital digestion, make him ready for any enterprise, any sacrifice that
shall promise success. Any field in which he may display his splendid
energies is welcome to him, for he lives not in the past, but in the
future. The other is the old man who has, in the main, lived a useful
and honorable life, who has performed some noble deeds, and whose chief
anxiety is to give the rising generation the benefit of the wisdom that
has come to him in a life of study and observation. But, as is usually
the case with the aged, his advice has become commonplace and the rising
generation passes him by almost unheeded. Few have now any confidence in
his teachings, while many of his former disciples have deserted him. It
is his sad fate, to see himself jostled at first and finally thrust
aside by the passing stream of humanity.
Footnote 3:
Students of German literature are reminded of a certain moral and
intellectual similarity between Plutarch and Gellert. The latter,
though a man of much less natural ability, had all of Plutarch’s
kindliness, moral and religious earnestness, sympathy for those in
distress, and the same popularity among all classes from prince to
peasant. Both were equally religious, though one was a heathen and the
other a Christian; both preserved the same serenity of mind and
cheerfulness of heart in a time of national degradation and
immorality.
Footnote 4:
“When Plutarch, after the death of his daughter; was writing a letter
of consolation to his wife, we find him turning away from all the
commonplaces of the stoics as the recollection of one simple trait of
his little child rushed upon his mind:—‘She desired her nurse to press
even her dolls to her breast. She was so loving that she wished
everything that gave her pleasure to share in the best she had.’” The
statement that Seneca is all man will be questioned by those who know
that two of his Letters of Condolence are addressed to women. These
are almost the only writings in Roman literature so addressed.
* * * * *
The principal works used in the study of Plutarch here placed before the
reader are the following:
_Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia. Edidit Daniel Wyttenbach. 8 voll.
Oxonii, 1795-1821._
_R. Volkmann. Leben und Schriften des Plutarch von Chaeronea.
Berlin, 1869._
_O. Grèard. De la Morale de Plutarque. Cinquiéme edition. Paris,
1892._
_Plutarch’s Werke übersetzt von Klaiber, Bähr, u. A. Stuttgart,
1837-57._
_Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia. Recognovit Gregorius N.
Bernardakis. Lipsiae, 1888-96. 7 voll._
The last named contains a revised text only; from it my translation of
the De Sera was made. The German translation of Bähr, the well-known
Heidelberg professor, in the collection above cited, follows the
original very closely and has been of much service to me by its
interpretation of obscure passages.
A complete catalogue of Plutarch’s Moralia is given in the appendix. The
list is borrowed from the edition of Bernardakis and the question of
authenticity is not taken into account.
NOTE:—To translate Plutarch is a very different task from that of
translating Seneca. The style of the latter is terse and
epigrammatic; clauses and sentences often follow each other without
connectives, and are in the main short. That of the former is the
reverse. Most of his sentences are long, many of them very long.
These, as well as clauses and words, are often strung together with
the participles καὶ and γὰρ, or other connectives, until the reader
sometimes wonders whether they will ever end. Seneca is full of
pithy sayings well suited for quotation; in Plutarch they are rare.
The style of both writers is highly rhetorical, but, if we except
the evident striving after effect, they have little else in common.
As in the case of Seneca, it has been my aim to preserve for the
English reader the peculiarities of the Greek, so far as possible.
There is much to be said in favor of making a translation, above
everything else, readable; but in the effort to do so, the
translator is constantly exposed to the danger of displacing the
style of the original with his own. I hope I have in a measure, at
least, succeeded in putting before the English reader, not only what
Plutarch said in the following Tract, but also how he said it.
“Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do
evil.”
CONCERNING THE DELAY OF THE DEITY IN PUNISHING THE WICKED.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
PLUTARCH. PATROCLEAS, his son-in-law. TIMON, his brother. OLYMPICHUS.
The scene is the portico of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The
tract is dedicated to a certain Quintus, whose name seems to
indicate that he was a Roman, but of whom nothing definite is known.
When Epicurus had thus spoken, O Quintus, and before any one had
replied, he went hurriedly away, as we were now at the end of the porch.
We stood for some time in speechless wonder at the strange conduct of
the man and looking at one another, then turned back to resume our walk.
Thereupon Patrocleas first broke the silence: “Pray, what shall we do?”
said he, “Shall we drop the inquiry, or shall we answer the arguments of
the speaker who is not present as if he were?” “It would not be fitting
to leave the dart he discharged, as he departed, sticking in the wound.
Brasidas, as we are told, drew the shaft from his body, and with the
same weapon slew the man who had hit him. It is not worth our while, of
course, to defend ourselves against all those who assail us with
ill-grounded or fallacious arguments, but it will suffice us if we cast
them from us before they become firmly fixed in our minds.” “What was
there then,” said I, “in what he said that most impressed you? For many
things and without any order, one here, another there, the man kept
charging against Providence, with anger and vituperation at the same
time.”
2. Hereupon Patrocleas said: “The tardiness and delay of the Deity in
punishing the wicked seems to me a matter of special importance; and
now, by the arguments that have been advanced, I have been led anew and,
as it were, a stranger, to the question; but long ago I was offended
when I read in Euripides,
‘He procrastinates, and this is the manner of the Deity.’ Yet God ought,
least of all things, to be slack towards the wicked, as they are neither
slack nor dilatory about doing evil, but are impelled by their
unrestrained passions to acts of injustice. And in truth, the
retribution, which Thucydides says follows close upon the commission of
a crime, forthwith bars the way for those who usually prosper in
successful villainy. For there is no debt like overdue justice that
makes him who has been wronged so faint-hearted and discouraged, while
it emboldens the wicked man in his audacity and violence; but the
punishments that follow close upon the commission of crimes are
restraints upon those who are meditating wrongs against others, and
there is the greatest consolation in this for those who have suffered
injustice. So, then, the remark of Bias often troubles me when I reflect
upon it; for he said, according to report, to a certain reprobate, that
he did not fear lest he might not suffer the punishment of his misdeeds,
but only that he might not himself (Bias) live to see it. What profit
was it to the Messenians, who were long since dead, that Aristokrates
was punished for betraying them at the battle of Taphros, when the
matter remained undiscovered for more than twenty years, during which
time he had been king of the Arcadians, though he was finally detected
and punished, when they were no longer alive? Or what consolation was it
to the Orchomenians who had lost children and friends and kinsmen
through the treason of Lykiscus, that he was seized a long time
afterwards by a disease which gradually ate up his body?—this man who
was always dipping his feet into the river to wet them and calling down
a curse upon himself, praying that he might rot if he had betrayed and
wronged them. And the casting forth of the bodies of the accursed from
Athens and their transportation beyond the boundaries was an act that
not even the children of those who had been slain were permitted to
behold. Wherefore, Euripides inappropriately uses these lines to deter
men from the commission of crime, ‘Fear not lest injustice overtake thee
and smite thee down, unjust man; but in silence and with slow step it
will overtake the wicked when the time is ripe.’ For verily, no other
consideration but just such as these, the bad will naturally use to
encourage themselves and take as pledges of security in villainy, on the
ground that wrong-doing brings forth early and evident fruit, while the
penalty comes late, and long after the satisfaction (that arises from
success in crime).”
3. When Patrocleas had concluded his remarks, Olympichus spoke up and
said, “To what great absurdities do the delays and postponements of the
Deity in such matters lead! Because this tardiness destroys faith in
Providence, and the fact that retribution does not closely follow each
particular act of wrong-doing but is later, thus making room for chance,
men, by calling it a misfortune, not a penalty, are they in any wise
bettered? Even though they may be grieved at what has befallen them, do
they feel regret at what they have done? For just as the immediate
stroke of the whip or the spur laid quickly to the horse that makes a
false step or stumbles brings it to a sense of duty, but all the
subsequent jerking and tugging at the reins and shouting seem rather to
be done for some other reason than correction, because they produce pain
but not betterment; so vice, if lashed and beaten for each act of
villainy committed, would speedily become repentant and humble and
fearful of God who beholds men’s acts and sufferings, if He did not
postpone justice. And justice that according to Euripides procrastinates
and with slow pace overtakes the wicked, seems more like an affair of
chance than of Providence, because there is about it so much
uncertainty, delay and lack of system. The result is that I do not see
what use there is in the saying that the mills of the gods grind late,
both because they obscure justice and take away the fear of evil-doing.”
4. Thereupon in reply to these remarks and while I was still absorbed in
reflection, Timon said: “Shall I now add to the discussion the climax of
my own perplexity or shall I pass it over until after the disposal of
the main argument?” “What is the use,” said I, “of sending along a third
wave to wash away the subject-matter, if it be found impossible to
refute and invalidate the first objection? First, then, beginning, as we
say, at the ingle-side and with the caution of the philosophers of the
Academy in regard to the divinity, let us beware of assuming that we
know just what to say on this subject. In truth, an affair of more
serious moment is the consideration of supernal and divine things, for
us who are human beings, than when one who has no ear for music
discusses this art, or when one who has never served in the army
discourses on military affairs; because, though ignorant of the plan of
the artificer, we assume to be able to fathom his designs from what we
suppose to be probable and fitting. It is not hard for one unacquainted
with the healing art to comprehend the reasoning of a physician as to
why he did not sooner perform a certain amputation rather than later, or
why he ordered a bath yesterday and not to-day; in respect to God, on
the other hand, it is not easy for a mortal to say any thing positive
except that, knowing best the proper occasion for curing a man of his
vices, He administers to each person chastisements as medicaments, but
not equally severe in all cases nor at one and the same time. For that
the healing art when applied to the soul is called right and
righteousness and is the greatest of all arts, Pindar in addition to
thousands of others, affirms, when he calls God the ruler and custodian
of the whole universe, the ‘master builder,’ for the reason that He is
the guardian of justice according to which it shall be determined when
and how and to what degree every wicked man is to be punished. And of
this art Plato says that Minos the son of Jove was a student, as it is
not possible to properly dispense justice, or to recognize what is just
unless one has learned and acquired a knowledge of the same. Not even
the laws that men enact have always their clear and plain justification
and some enactments even seem at first sight ridiculous. For instance,
in Lacedaemon, the ephors, immediately upon taking office, issue an
edict that no one is to wear a mustache and that the laws are to be
obeyed in order that none may feel their severity. The Romans inflict a
slight blow with a twig upon those whom they intend to emancipate; and
when they make a will they bequeath their property to some persons as
their heirs, but sell it to others,—which seems to be absurd. But most
absurd one would think the law of Solon to be to the effect that he
shall be deprived of civil rights, who, when there are parties and
factions in the state, take sides with neither. In short, one could name
many anomalies in law, if he did not know the intentions of the
law-maker, and did not understand the reason for every single part of
the decrees that have been issued. What wonder is it then, if, when it
is so hard to see through human purposes, that it is not easy to say
with respect to the gods for what reason they punish some transgressors
later, others sooner.
5. These things are no excuse for shunning an investigation, but a plea
for indulgence, so that the discussion, looking as it were, toward a
harbor and port of refuge, may move forward with the greater confidence,
in the midst of perplexities. Then consider first this fact, that
according to Plato, God having placed Himself in the midst of all that
is enchantingly fair, as a sort of model, gives to human worth, which is
in some measure an image of Himself, an exemplar which all are to follow
so far as they are able. For the universe, being in its natural state
devoid of order, began to change and to be transformed into a cosmos
when it participated in, and became assimilated to, the divine idea and
virtue. This same man also says that nature kindles in us the germ of
vision so that by beholding the heavenly bodies borne along in their
courses, and by admiration of the same, the soul becomes habituated to
take pleasure in and to love what is orderly and systematically
arranged, but that it hates all disorderly and uncontrolled passion, and
shuns the purposeless and hit-or-miss as being the origin of all vice
and discord. It is impossible for man, by his very nature, to have a
completer enjoyment of God than when seeking and earnestly striving
after virtue by imitating everything that is good and noble. For this
reason also God punishes the wicked in due time and with deliberation;
not because He is Himself afraid of making a mistake by chastising any
one too soon or because He might repent of it, but in order to remove
from us what is brutal and hasty in the infliction of punishment, and to
teach us not to chastise in anger nor when greatly excited and
indignant, ‘rage o’erleaps the bounds of reason’; as if, in order to
satisfy our hunger or quench our thirst we rushed upon those who have
done us an injury, but imitating His goodness and long-suffering and
taking time as our adviser, that gives least room for repentance, we
should proceed to inflict punishments in accordance with justice. For,
as Socrates said, it is less mischievous to drink murky water,
heedlessly, than when one is in a perturbed state of mind and under the
influence of anger and has lost the power of self-control before the
mind has become calm and clear, to vent one’s wrath on the person of a
kinsman or friend. For vengeance does not belong close upon the inquiry,
as Thucydides says, but is most in place when as far from it as
possible. Since anger, according to Melanthius ‘commits terrible deeds
when it has displaced self-control’; so, likewise, reason does what is
just and fitting when it has put aside anger and excitement. Further
also, men are made humane by the example of others when they learn, for
instance, that Plato, after raising his staff to strike his slave,
remained standing for a long time, as he himself says, in this way
chastening his anger. And Archytas, on learning that his servants were
negligent and disorderly in his fields, but noticing that he was greatly
angered and incensed at them, did nothing but remark as he walked away,
‘You are lucky that I am very wroth at you.’ If, therefore, the reported
sayings of men, treasured up for us, deter us from harshness and the
violence resulting from passion; much more does it become us, as we look
upon God who lacks nothing and who knows no repentance for any deed, yet
postpones punishment to the future and bides His time, to be on our
guard in such matters. We ought also to look upon mildness and
long-suffering as the divine part of the virtue which God Himself
exemplifies (in His dealings with men), and to remember that few are
made better by swift chastisement, but that many are profited and
admonished by tardiness in punishing.
6. In the second place, let us remember that punishments among men,
having regard solely to the infliction of injuries to others, cease with
the malefactor and go no further; therefore, like a barking dog they
(the penalties) cling to the heels of the transgression and follow up
actions closely. But God, as seems reasonable, discerns the passions of
the diseased soul upon which He wishes to visit punishment, whether in
any way, perchance, it may turn to repentance, and He gives time for
amendment to those whose vices are not ineradicable and incurable. For,
knowing (as He does) what portion of virtue souls going forth from Him
to be born, carry with them, and how strong and ineffaceable is the
nobleness implanted in them, and that virtue yields to vice contrary to
its nature because corrupted by food and evil communications, and that
some, after undergoing a cure, again resume their former nature, He does
not inflict upon all a penalty equally severe. But him who is
incorrigible He removes forthwith from life and cuts off, because
constant association with wickedness is very harmful to others, and in
the highest degree harmful to the soul itself. On the contrary, to those
who from ignorance of the good rather than from a predilection for evil
and to whom it is only second nature to go astray, He gives time for
repentance. But if they remain obdurate He visits these also with
punishment, for, of course, He has no fear lest they may escape Him.
Consider also what transformations have taken place in the character of
men and in their life; for which reason also this change and character
(ἦθος) is called a turning (τρόπος) as habit (ἔθος) for the most part
shapes it and by laying hold of it controls it. I think, therefore, that
the ancients represented Kecrops dual in form (a combination of man and
dragon), not as some say, because, after he had been an excellent king
he became a cruel and ruthless tyrant, but for the opposite reason,
namely, that after having been unjust and merciless he turned out to be
gentle and kindly, when he had got into power. If this is not certain,
we know, at least, that Gelo and Hiero, both Sicilians, and Peisistratus
the son of Hippokrates, all men who had put themselves at the head of
affairs by base methods, used their power for the furtherance of
virtuous ends; and though they had attained power illegally, they
nevertheless became just and popular rulers. They promoted good order
and the cultivation of the soil; made temperate and industrious citizens
out of men who had been gossipers and idlers; and Gelo, after fighting
bravely and defeating the Carthaginians in a great battle, would not
make the peace with them which they sued for until they had pledged
themselves to cease from sacrificing their children to Kronos. In
Megalopolis, Lydiades was a usurper; but when at the height of his power
a change came over him and, having conceived a loathing for iniquity, he
gave a constitution to the citizens, then in a battle with the enemies
of his country met a glorious death. If some one had slain the usurper
Miltiades in the Chersonesus, or had prosecuted Kimon for incest with
his sister, or had driven Themistocles from the city by an indictment,
when he was indulging in drunken revelries and insulting people in the
market place, as was afterwards done with Alkibiades, would we not have
lost the heroes of Marathon, of the Eurymedon and fair Artemisium,
‘where the sons of the Athenians laid the glorious corner-stone of
liberty?’ Men cast in a large mold neither do anything in a small way,
nor do the vehemence and energy of their titanic natures suffer them to
be inactive; but they are tossed to and fro like a ship on the waves
until they settle down into a fixed and well-grounded character. Just as
a person who was ignorant of agriculture would not take a fancy to land,
if he saw it overgrown with weeds and brambles, full of wild animals,
running water and marshes; while to one who has learned to discriminate
and to judge, these very things show the strength and goodness of the
soil; so men cast in a large mold commit irregularities and follies—men
whose volcanic and vehement natures we cannot endure, and think they
ought to be cut off or kept in check. But the better judge, he who in
spite of these things discerns innate worth and nobility, waits until
age and maturity become the co-workers of reason and virtue, when nature
shall bring forth her proper fruit.”
7. “So much, then, on this point. And do you not think certain of the
Greeks have done wisely in adopting the Egyptian law that forbids the
execution of a woman condemned to death during pregnancy, until after
her delivery?” “Most assuredly,” they said. “If then,” said I, “a person
is big, not with a child, but with a deed or a secret project which he
may in the course of time bring into the world and put into execution,
or if he might disclose some hidden crime, or be the author of some
judicious counsel or the discoverer of some useful invention, would it
not be better to await a seasonable time for removing him (than to do it
prematurely)? To me at least it seems so,” I said. “And to us also,”
replied Patrocleas. “Very good,” said I. “Now consider that if Dionysius
had been punished at the beginning of his usurped power, no Greek would
have settled in Sicily, though it had been laid waste by the
Carthaginians; nor would Greeks have settled in Apollonia or in
Anaktorium or in the peninsula of Leukadia, if Periander had not
received his punishment a long time after (his accession to power). And
I believe also that the day of reckoning for Kasander was postponed in
order that Thebes might be rebuilt. Of the mercenaries that had assisted
in plundering the temple here the greater part accompanied Timoleon on
an expedition to Sicily where they conquered the Carthaginians and
overthrew the tyrants; then the miserable wretches died a miserable
death. There is no doubt that the Deity sometimes employs certain men
after the manner of public executioners, to be the avengers of other
villains, then destroys them as I think He does most tyrants. For just
as the gall of the hyena and the beestings (or rennet) of the seal and
other parts of repulsive animals have a property that is useful for the
cure of diseases, so God inflicts on some persons who need a drastic
remedy and chastisement, a stern and hard tyrant; nor does He release
them from their grievous and melancholy state until He has cured their
disease and purified them. Such a medicine was Phalaris to the
Akragantines, and to the Romans, Marius. To the Sikyonians also the god
declared explicitly that their city needed a scourge for taking away
from the Kleonians the boy Teletias, crowned in the Pythian games, as
their own fellow-citizen, and putting him to death. So, sure enough,
when Orthagoras had become tyrant of Sikyon, and after him Myron and
Kleisthenes, he and his successors made an end of their lasciviousness;
the Kleonians, however, not receiving such curative treatment, sank into
insignificance. You know that Homer somewhere says, ‘From him, a far
baser father, was born a son better in all manner of excellence’; yet
that son of Kopreus performed no brilliant or even noteworthy exploit.
But the descendants of Sisyphus and of Autolycus and of Phlegyas were
conspicuous for the deeds and virtues of great kings. Pericles of
Athens, also sprang from a house on which rested a curse; while in Rome,
Pompey the Great was the son of Strabo whose corpse the Roman people, in
their hatred, cast out and trampled under foot. Why should it then be
thought strange, if, just as the husbandman does not dig up the thorns
lest he destroy the asparagus, and the Lydians do not burn the shrub
until they have gathered the gum from it; so God should in like manner
delay to extirpate the evil and corrupt root of an illustrious and
kingly house until the proper fruit has grown from it? It was better for
the Phokians to lose the countless herds of kine and horses belonging to
Iphitus, as also that much gold and silver should be taken from Delphi,
than not to have had Ulysses or Asklepias born among them, or the other
distinguished and noble-minded men whose ancestors had been evil-doers
and reprobates.
8. Do you not think it better that retribution should come in due season
and in a fitting way, than immediately and all at once? As, for
instance, in the case of Kalippus, who, supposed to be the friend of
Dion, killed him with the same sword with which he was afterward
dispatched by his friends; and that of Mitias the Argive who had been
slain in a tumult and whose brazen statue in the market-place fell on
the slayer of Mitias during a dramatic performance and killed him. And
the stories of Bessus, the Paeonian, and of Aristo the Oetaean, the
leaders of the mercenaries, you, of course, know, Patrocleas.” “I do
not,” said he, “but I would like to hear them.” “Aristo,” I said,
“having taken away the ornaments of Eriphyle lying here (in this
temple), with the permission of the authorities, presented them to his
wife; but his son, angered at his mother from some cause, set the house
on fire and burned up all who were in it. And Bessus, as the story goes,
having killed his own father, was not found out for a long time, but
finally, going to a banquet with some friends and happening to strike a
nest of young swallows with his spear, knocked it down and killed the
fledglings. When those who were present said, as was natural, ‘Man, what
possessed you to do such an ill-omened deed?’ he replied, ‘Have they not
this long time been falsely accusing me and crying out against me for
killing my father’? The astonished company reported the remark to the
king, and after the case had been investigated Bessus received his just
deserts.”
9. “We say these things,” I continued, “on the assumption that there is
a postponement of punishment for the wicked; on the other hand, it is
proper to hear what Hesiod says, who does not think with Plato that
punishment is a pain which follows injustice, but that it is something
of equal age with it; that it springs from the same root and place, for
he says,
‘Evil counsel is most hurtful to him who has given it,’ and,
‘He who lays plots for another, lays a plot against himself.’
The cantharis, you know, is said to contain within itself the antidote
(for the pain it inflicts), and villainy, by engendering within itself
both pain and punishment, pays the penalty for evil-doing, not at a
subsequent time, but in the outrage itself. Every malefactor who is
punished by the infliction of pain on his body bears his own cross, and
vice wreaks upon itself, out of itself, its own vengeance, because it is
in a sense a creator of the woes of life that it brings into existence,
together with the accompanying disgrace, many sorrows, fears and violent
passions and regrets and unceasing restlessness. Some people are in no
wise different from children, who, on seeing malefactors in the theaters
often clad in gilded and purple garments, crowned and dancing about, are
delighted and admire them as fortunate mortals, until they are seen
goaded and scourged, while the fire breaks forth from their splendid and
costly attire. For many of the wicked are the owners of fine mansions,
and, as they hold magistracies and other responsible positions, no one
is aware that they are undergoing punishment until they are put to death
or hurled from rocks. This, one ought not to call punishment, but the
consummation and fulfilment of punishment. For as Herodicus of
Selymbria, who had been attacked by consumption, an incurable disease,
was the first to combine gymnastics with the healing art, and of whom
Plato says, that (in so doing) he protracted his own death, and that of
all who were similarly diseased; so malefactors who are seen to have
escaped immediate punishment, expiate their crimes by a longer, not by a
shorter penalty; nor after a longer time but during a longer time; they
are not punished after they have grown old, but they grow old during
their punishment. And I say _a long time_ with reference to ourselves,
for to the gods the span of human life is nothing,—now, but not thirty
years ago is the same as to say, that in the evening, but not in the
morning, the malefactor, is to be tortured or hanged, especially since
man is shut up in this life just as in a prison from which there is no
migration to another place or escape, but which in the meanwhile allows
time for many enjoyments and the transaction of business, the bestowing
and receiving of honors and favors, and for diversions; just as persons
in prison are allowed to play at dice or draughts, though the noose is
all the while dangling above their heads.
10. Moreover, what reason is there for saying that those who lie in
prison under sentence of death do not receive their punishment until
they are decapitated? or that he who has drunk the hemlock-juice, but is
still walking about waiting for the heaviness to get into his legs,
until he is seized by anaesthesia and the rigor of death, (has not
received his?) If we regard the consummation of the punishment as the
punishment itself, we overlook the intervening sufferings and fears, as
well as the apprehension and regret with which every evil-doer is
harassed. Is not this just as if we were to say of the fish that has
swallowed the hook, that it is not caught until we see it broiled or cut
up by the cooks? Every one who has committed a crime is firmly held by
justice and has then and there fastened within himself, like a bait the
sweet morsel of iniquity. Having an avenging conscience in his breast,
‘Like a frantic tunny he spins round in the sea.’ For the well-known
reckless audacity and over-confidence of vice is active and ardent until
the evil deed has been done; then the passion subsiding like a wind,
sinks down weak and cowed under the weight of fears and superstitions;
so that it is entirely in accordance with the event and the truth that
Stesichorus attributes a dream to Klytemnestra in about these words:
‘She thought a dragon with gory head approached her, and from it
Pleisthenades came forth.’ For visions by night and apparitions by day
and oracles and celestial portents and whatever other phenomenon is
regarded as caused by the direct interposition of God, cause anxieties
and fears to persons who have a guilty conscience. For example, it is
said, that Apollodorus once in a dream saw himself flayed by the
Scythians, then boiled, and heard his heart speaking from the caldron
and saying, ‘I am the cause of all this’; and that at another time he
saw his daughters all ablaze, their bodies encircled with flame, running
about him. Hipparchus also, the son of Peisistratus, a little before his
death saw Aphrodite flinging blood in his face from a kind of basin; and
the favorites of Ptolemy the Thunderer, saw him summoned before a
tribunal by Seleucus where vultures and wolves were the judges,
distributing many pieces of flesh among his enemies. Pausanias,
likewise, having caused a free maiden to be brought by force from
Byzantium in order to pass the night with her, but when she was come,
owing to some perturbation of mind and suspicion, had her put to
death—this maiden he frequently saw in a dream calling to him, ‘Hasten
to judgment; assuredly lust brings sorrow on men.’ As the apparition did
not cease to haunt him, it is said that he set sail for the oracle of
the dead at Heracleia where he called up the ghost of the damsel by
expiatory rites and libations. Appearing before him, she said that he
would be freed from his troubles when he came to Lacedaemon; but as soon
as he arrived there he died.
11. If then the soul has no sensation after death, and dissolution is
the end of all rewards and punishments, one might rather say that the
divinity deals kindly and indulgently with the wicked who are speedily
chastised and die. For if we were to assert nothing more than that as
long as they live and during the present existence no evil befalls the
bad, but that when vice is exposed and is seen to be a fruitless and
barren thing, that it brings nothing good or worth an effort, in spite
of many severe agonies of mind—the recognition of these facts renders
life an uneasy one. A case in point is the story told of Lysimachus that
under stress of thirst he gave up his body and his dominions to the
Getae, but that when he had got into their hands and received a draught
he cried out, ‘Shame on my baseness for depriving myself of such a
kingdom for so short-lived a pleasure.’ Yet it is exceedingly difficult
to resist the needs of our physical nature; but when a man, either for
the sake of money or from avidity for political honors or influence,
commits a lawless and wicked act, and when, after the thirst and madness
of his passion have been allayed, he finds, in the course of time, that
the ignominy and the bitter sorrow for his crimes remain behind, and
that villainy has been neither advantageous nor necessary nor
profitable, must not the thought, so servile and mean, often occur to
him, that for empty glory or fleeting enjoyment he has trampled under
foot the dearest and highest rights of mankind, only to fill his life
with shame and confusion. For as Simonides jestingly said, that he
always found the chest he kept for money full and the one he kept for
gratitude empty; so wicked men, when they examine their own evil hearts,
discover that for the sake of a pleasure which directly proves to be an
empty one, they find them void of hope but full of sorrows and pain,
unpleasant memories, and anxiety for the future, but big with distrust
of the present. Just as we hear Ino crying out in the theater when
filled with regret for what she had done, ‘Dear women, how can I again
dwell in the house of Athamas? Would that I had done none of the deeds I
committed!’ So the soul of every villain ought to consider well and
reflect how it may rid itself of the memory of its iniquities and
exorcise a bad conscience, undergo a process of purification and live
life over again. When the bad is deliberately preferred, it shows a lack
of confidence and firmness and strength and stability—unless, forsooth,
we admit that evil-doers are a class of sages. Wherever there exists an
uncontrollable love of money and pleasure, and insatiable avarice
coupled with malice or a bad character, there you will find also, if you
look closely, latent superstitions and an aversion to labor and fear of
death and sudden gusts of passion and an eagerness to be talked about
joined to a penchant for boasting. Such men fear those who censure them
and are afraid of those who praise them as persons who have been wronged
by deception; they are particularly hostile to the wicked because they
freely praise those who have the reputation of being virtuous. For that
which hardens men in vice is like the brittleness in poor iron and is
easily shivered. Whence it comes that as they, in the course of time,
gain a deeper insight into the nature of things, are weighed down with
sorrow and become morose and abhor their own past life. It surely cannot
be but that a bad man who has restored a trust, or become surety for a
friend, or who from a love of glory or fame has given and contributed
something to his country, will forthwith regret what he has done,
because he is unstable in his ways and fickle in his purpose; sometimes
persons of this kind, even when applauded in the theaters, groan
inwardly because the love of money has supplanted the love of glory; nor
can it be that those who have sacrificed men for the attainment of
sovereignty or to carry out a conspiracy, as did Apollodorus, or who
have taken away money from their friends, as did Glaucus, do not repent,
nor hate themselves, and do not feel regret for what they have done. I,
for my part, do not believe, if I may say so, that there is need of any
god or man to punish the impious, but that their life, ruined and made
uneasy by vice, is fully sufficient.”
12. “Consider, however,” I said, “whether we are not examining the
argument at greater length than its importance demands.” To this Timon
replied, “It may be, in view of what is yet to come and of what has been
omitted. For I shall now bring up as a sort of reserve the final
difficulty, since we have in a measure worked our way through those that
preceded. What Euripides alleges against the gods when he boldly charges
them with turning ‘the transgressions of the parents over to their
children,’ this, believe me, we also tacitly impute to them as an
injustice. For, if those who have committed offenses have themselves
expiated them, there is no further need of punishing those who have
committed none, since it is not just to punish a second time for the
same crime those who are innocent; or if through negligence they have
failed to punish the real criminals, and long after visit the penalty
upon the innocent, they do not justly make up for their tardiness by
injustice. Something of this kind is told of Aesop who, it is said, came
here (to Delphi) with gold from Crœsus in order to make a magnificent
oblation to the god and to distribute to each of the Delphians four
minae; but some difficulty arising, as it seems, and he having got into
a quarrel with the parties here, performed the sacrifice but sent the
money back to Sardis, alleging that the men were not worthy to receive
it; thereupon they trumped up a charge of temple-robbery against him and
put him to death by hurling him from the rock called Hyampeia. For this
the god is said to have become incensed at them and to have sent a
famine upon the land, together with all manner of strange diseases; so
that they went around to the Hellenic festivals proclaiming and making
known everywhere that whoever wished might wreak vengeance upon them for
the wrong they had done to Aesop. In the third generation came one
Iadmon, a man in no way related to Aesop, but a descendant of those who
had bought him in Samos; and to this man, having in some way made
satisfaction (for the wrong done to Aesop), the Delphians were released
from their calamities. After that date also, they say, the punishment of
temple-robbery was transferred to Nauplia from Hyampeia. Those who are
great admirers of Alexander, of which number we also are, do not commend
him for destroying the city of the Branchidae and putting them all to
death, without distinction of age or sex, because their forefathers had
betrayed the temple at Miletus. Agathocles, too, the usurper of
Syracuse, mockingly told the Corcyreans, in answer to the question why
he had laid waste their island, ‘That it most assuredly was because
their fathers had kindly received Ulysses.’ To the people of Ithaca he
likewise replied when they expostulated with him because his soldiers
carried off their sheep, ‘Your king also came to us and even blinded the
shepherd.’ And is not Apollo even more unreasonable if he is destroying
the present generation of Pheneatae by blocking up the barathrum and
inundating their entire territory, because a thousand years ago, as they
say, Hercules carried off the prophetic tripod and took it to Pheneus?
or when he foretold to the Sybarites a release from their ills, whenever
they had appeased the anger of the Leucadian Hera, by a demolition three
times repeated? And in truth, it is not long since the Lacedaemonians
ceased to send virgins to Troy ‘who without upper garments and with bare
feet, like slaves, at early dawn swept around the altar of Athena,
without the wimple, even though old age bore heavy upon them,’ on
account of the lasciviousness of Ajax. Where, pray, is the logic or
justice of these things? We do not approve the custom of the Thracians,
who even at the present day tattoo their wives for the purpose of
avenging Orpheus, nor that of the barbarians along the Po for wearing
black garments in token of mourning for Pentheus, as they say. And it
would have been still more ridiculous, I think, if the men who lived at
the time when Phaethon perished had not concerned themselves about him,
but those who were born five or ten generations after his death had
begun to change their garments for his sake and to put on mourning.
Nevertheless this is merely silly and has nothing pernicious or
irremediable about it. But with what reason does the anger of the gods
sometimes suddenly disappear like certain rivers, only to break out
afterwards against others in order to plunge them into the direst
misfortunes?”
13. As soon as he ceased, I, fearing lest he might again proceed anew to
more and greater absurdities, spoke up and asked him: “Very well, but do
you accept all these things as true?” To which he replied, “Even if not
all, but only some of them are true, do you not think the question
presents the same difficulty?” “Perhaps,” said I, “and yet when persons
are suffering from a high fever, the same or nearly the same heat
remains whether they have on them one or more garments; nevertheless it
affords some relief (to the patient) to remove what is superfluous.
Still, if you do not wish to go on, we will let this matter pass; at any
rate, these stories look like fables and inventions; remember, however,
the festival of Theoxenia, recently celebrated, and the honorable place
the heralds assign to the descendants of Pindar; how imposing and
delightful the ceremony appeared to you. Who would not, I said, be
charmed with the bestowal of this honor, so entirely in harmony with the
spirit of Greek antiquity, unless his ‘black heart had been forged with
cold flame,’ to use one of Pindar’s own expressions? Then I forbear to
mention, I said, a proclamation similar to this in Sparta called, After
the Lesbian Bard, in honor and memory of Terpander the Ancient, for the
argument is the same. And you too, descendants of Opheltas, forsooth,
claim somewhat more consideration than others among the Boeotians and at
the hands of the Phokians because of Diophantus; besides, you were
present and were the first to support me when I upheld the traditional
honor of Herakles and the right to wear a crown which the Lycormae and
the Satilaiae laid claim to; for I said it was altogether proper that
the descendants of Herakles should enjoy unimpaired honors and benefits
for services which he had rendered to the Greeks, but for which he had
not himself received adequate recognition and requital.” “You have
recalled to my mind a noble contest,” he said, “and one well worthy of a
philosopher.” “Retract, then, my friend,” said I, “this serious charge,
and do not take it ill if the descendants of wicked or base men are
sometimes punished; or cease to speak with approval of the honors
conferred upon those who are of noble ancestry. For it is incumbent upon
us, if we are to requite to their descendants, the services of their
forefathers, as a matter of consistency not to think that punishment
ought to cease or be discontinued at once after the crime, but that it
ought to run along with it and render a recompense corresponding to it.
He who is pleased to see the family Kimon honored at Athens, but feels
sore and aggrieved when the descendants of Lachares or Aristo are
expelled, is very weak and inconsistent; or rather, he is captious and
hypercritical as regards the deity: for he finds fault if the
grand-children of a wicked and unjust man seem to meet with good
fortune, and he finds fault again, if the offspring of the vicious are
cut off and blotted out. He blames God equally whether the children of a
good man or a bad man fare ill.”
14. “Let these things,” I said, “serve you as a sort of bulwark against
those over hasty and carping critics; but let us take up again, as one
may say, the beginning of the thread of this obscure problem concerning
the Deity, with its many windings and ramifications, and let us follow
them up with care but without fear, to what is probable as well as what
is reasonable; this at least is clear and well established, that even in
those things which we ourselves do, we cannot always give the reason.
For example, why do we direct the children of those who have died of
consumption or dropsy to sit with both feet in the water until the
corpse is buried? for it is believed that in this way the disease will
not pass to them or come near them. Again, for what reason does a whole
herd of goats stand still if one of their number gets eryngo in its
mouth, until the herdsman comes up and takes it out? And there are other
forces in nature that interact among each other and pass back and forth
with incredible swiftness through a great extent of space. Yet we are
surprised at intervals of time, but not those of space. With all that,
it is more wonderful if Athens is infected with a disease that had its
origin in Ethiopia and of which Pericles died and from which Thucydides
suffered than if the penalty for the crimes committed by the Delphians
or Sybarites should be carried down to and visited upon their children.
The forces of nature have certain connections, and inter-relations with
each other extending from their farthest endings to their very
beginnings, the cause of which, though unknown by us, silently produce
their proper effects.
15. And, in truth, the wrath of the gods, when it falls upon a whole
city, has its justification. For a city is a unit and an entirety, just
like an animal, that does not lose its identity with the passing of the
years, nor is transformed from one thing into something different in the
course of time, but is always affected by like feelings and has a
character peculiar to itself. It merits all the praise and all the blame
for what it has done in its sovereign capacity, so long as the community
which makes it one and binds it together preserves its unity. To make
one city, in the course of time, consist of many cities, or rather, of a
countless number, is like dividing one man into many because he is now
older, but was formerly younger, and still earlier, a stripling. This is
altogether like the well-known argument of Epicharmus, the so-called
increasing syllogism, much used by the Sophists, that the man who had
incurred a debt some time ago does not owe it now as he has become
another man, and that he who was invited to a banquet yesterday comes
to-day an unbidden guest because he is another person. Advancing age
produces greater changes in each one of us than in the general character
of cities. Any one would recognize Athens if he saw it thirty years ago;
the customs of to-day, the motions, the sports, the occupations, the
likes and dislikes of the people are precisely the same they were in
former times; but a man whom a relative or a friend might chance to meet
after an interval of time, he would scarcely recognize, and the change
of character easily seen in every remark and occupation and in the
feelings and habits have, even for those who are about us all the time,
something strange and striking by their novelty. Nevertheless a man is
regarded as one person from his birth to his death; and in like manner
we think it right that the city, which remains the same, ought to be
held responsible for the transgressions of its former citizens with the
same show of reason that it shares in their glory and prestige;
otherwise we shall, without being aware of it, cast everything into the
river of Heracleitus into which he says nothing goes twice because
nature keeps all things in motion and changes their form.
16. If then a city is a unit and a continuous thing, the same is
undoubtedly true of the family that springs from one and the same
beginning and engenders a certain power and a natural bond of sympathy
between all its members. That which is begotten is not as if it were the
handiwork of an artisan, separate from him who begets, for it is
something that proceeds out of him, not something framed by him;
consequently it possesses and bears within itself some portion of its
original that may rightfully be chastised or honored. If I were not
afraid I should be thought to be jesting I would say that the statue of
Kasander has suffered a greater wrong at the hands of the Athenians when
it was melted down, and the body of Dionysius when after death it was
carried beyond their boundary by the Syracusans, than their descendants
in paying the penalty for the deeds of these men. For in a statue of
Kasander there was no part of him, and the soul of Dionysius had left
the dead body long previously; but in the case of Nysaeus and of
Apollokrates and of Antipater and of Philip and of all other persons in
like manner who are the children of vicious parents, nature has
implanted this predominant principle and it is ever present with them;
is not dormant or inoperative, but they live in it and are nurtured by
it; with them it abides and it directs their actions. It is not cruel or
unreasonable if the children of these men share their destiny. All
things considered, here, as in the healing art, what is advantageous is
just, and he would make himself ridiculous who should affirm that in
diseases of the hip-joint it was wrong to cauterize the thumb, and in
the case of an ulcerated liver, to make an incision in the belly, and to
anoint the tips of the horns of cattle if their hoofs are soft. So in
the matter of punishments; he who thinks anything else is just than what
will cure vice, and is scandalized if the healing is affected on one
party for the sake of another,—like the opening of a vein to relieve the
eyes—evidently sees no farther than what is plain to the senses. He does
not take into account that even a schoolmaster, when he punishes one
pupil also corrects others, and that a general who decimates his army
punishes all his soldiers. Likewise, certain qualities, good as well as
bad, are transmitted not only from one body to another, but even more
readily from one soul to another. For in the one case it seems
reasonable that the same conditions should also produce the same change,
while in the other, the soul impelled by motives and impulses is
naturally inclined by boldness or timidity to become worse or better.”
17. While I was yet speaking, Olympichus interrupting me, said, “You
seem, in your discourse, to proceed on a weighty assumption, namely, the
continued existence of the soul.” “You will surely grant this,” I
replied, “or rather, have granted it, for my argument has proceeded from
the beginning on the hypothesis that God distributes to us all rewards
and punishments according to our deserts.”
Hereupon he replied, “Do you then think it follows of necessity, from
the fact that because the gods observe all our actions, and apportion
rewards and punishments, that souls are either altogether incorruptible,
or that they continue to exist for some time after death?” “My good
friends,” said I, “God is not impatient, or so occupied with trifles,
that if there were not something of the divinity in us, something at
least in a measure similar to Himself, but if, like unto leaves, as
Homer says, we are altogether transitory, and doomed to perish in a
little while, He would treat us with so much consideration—like those
women who plant the gardens of Adonis in fragments of pottery and bestow
pains on them—cherishing those ephemeral souls of ours, that dwell in a
frail body, and when they are sprung up have no firm root in life, but
are forever extinguished by any sudden calamity. But if you are agreed,
let us pass over the other gods and let us consider ours here (in
Delphi), whether you think, if he were aware that the souls of those who
have passed from life, forthwith dissolve into nothing, like clouds or
smoke, as soon as they leave the body, he would have instituted so many
ceremonies for the dead, and would still require large gifts and honors
for the deceased, merely to impose upon and delude the credulous. For my
part, I could never give up (my faith in) the immortality of the soul
unless some one should again, like another Herakles, take away the
tripod of the Pythia, and eradicate and destroy the oracle. So long as
even in our day many such oracular responses are rendered, as they say
were given to Korax the Naxian, it is impious to assert that the soul
can die.” Here Patrocleas asked, “What was the response and who was this
Korax? for to me both the name and the circumstance are unknown.” “Not
at all,” said I, “but I am to blame for using a cognomen instead of a
name. The man who slew Archilochus in battle was called Kalondas, as you
know; but he bore the eponym, Korax. Repelled at first by the Pythia for
killing a devotee of the Muses, he next had recourse to prayers and
humble supplications in order to secure his restoration to favor, then
was commanded to repair to the habitation of Tettix, in order to appease
the soul of Archilochus. This was at Taenarus, for thither, they say,
Tettix the Cretan came with his fleet, founded a city and settled near
an oracle of the dead. In like manner, also, an oracle came to the
Spartans, bidding them conciliate the soul of Pausanias, persons who
could evoke the dead having been sent for to Italy; these, after
offering sacrifice, conjured up the ghost of the dead man in the temple.
18. This, then is one argument which establishes the providence of God
and at the same time the immortality of the soul, and it is not possible
to reject the one and accept the other. Now if the soul survives after
the death of the body, it is also quite reasonable that it shares the
rewards and punishments (of the latter). For in this life it is engaged
in a contest, like an athlete, and when the contest is ended it receives
its deserts. To the rewards and punishments meted out when existing
there by itself (separate from the body) for the deeds of the previous
life, the living attach no importance; they are concealed from our
knowledge, and discredited. But those that are transmitted to children
and through successive generations, being plainly evident to all who
live here, turn many bad men from their ways and hold them in check.
There is no more grievous chastisement, and none that reaches more to
the quick, than for men to see their descendants in misfortune on their
account; and when the soul of an impious and unjust man beholds, after
death, not statues overturned and honors annulled, but children and
friends and his own household overwhelmed with calamities and paying the
penalty for crimes that he has himself committed,—there is no one who
would again be unjust, or who would yield to his unbridled passion, for
the honors of Zeus. I have also a story to tell that I recently heard,
but I hesitate to do so lest you think it a fable, I will therefore keep
to what is probable. “By no means,” said Olympichus, “but repeat it
entire.” When the others also joined in the request, I said, “Permit me
to repeat what is probable in the story and afterward, if you like, we
will take up the fable, granting, of course, that it is a fable.”
19. Now Bion says for a god to punish the children of bad men would be
more ridiculous than if a physician were to administer medicine to the
son or grandson, for the disease of the grandfather, or the father. In
one respect the conditions are unlike, in another they are alike, or
similar. Administering medicine to one man for the disease of another
does not, it is true, cure the patient, and a person who is suffering
from a disease of the eyes, or a fever, does not get better when he sees
another annointed or having a plaster put on him; but the punishments of
the wicked make it evident to all men that it is the purpose of
wisely-directed justice to restrain some by the correction of others. In
what respect the comparison made by Bion is pertinent to the inquiry, he
himself failed to notice; for suppose, now, a man falls sick of a
painful but by no means incurable disease, then gives himself up to
intemperance and effeminate habits, and dies; and suppose, again, that
his son does not have the same disease but only a predisposition to
it,—would not a physician, or a trainer, or even a careful master, on
learning this fact, put him on a frugal diet, and keep him from dainties
and pastry, from drink and women, and by enjoining the continuous use of
remedies and the exercise of the body in gymnastics, scatter and
eradicate the little germ of a big disorder, before it had reached the
serious stage? Forsooth, do not we admonish those who are born of
diseased fathers or mothers, to take heed to themselves, and to be on
their guard against neglecting themselves, and forthwith to expel the
inbred evil while its germ is yet undeveloped, and thus take the danger
by the forelock? “Most assuredly,” said they. “Then,” replied I, “we are
not doing an absurd but a necessary thing; not something ridiculous but
something useful, when we recommend to the children of epileptics and
hypochondriacs and gouty persons, physical exercise and wholesome diet
and medicaments, not because they are sick, but to the end that they may
not become sick. The body that is born of an unsound body does not need
chastisement but medical treatment and good regimen. If anybody calls
the interdiction of pleasures and the imposition of toil and labor,
punishment, he does so because he is inept and effeminate, and no
attention need be paid to him. Shall we say, then, that a body born of
an unsound body is worthy of care and attention, but the congenital
seeds of vice that germinate and spring up in the young character, we
are to let alone and wait and dally, until the evil passions break forth
openly,—‘show forth the malignant fruit of the heart,’ as Pindar says?
20. Of a truth, in this matter is the Deity any wiser than Hesiod when
he exhorts and advises us ‘Not when returned from the sorrowful burial,
to propagate the race, but after the feast of the immortals?’ on the
ground that not only vice and virtue, but sorrow and joy and all
qualities, are transferred to the offspring in procreation; that at such
a time men should be jocund and in good spirits and merry. But it does
not follow, according to Hesiod, nor is it the work of human wisdom, but
of God, to see through and understand similarities and differences of
human nature, before they have led to great crimes and are thus made
plain to all men. For while the cubs of bears and the whelps of wolves
and monkeys immediately disclose their inborn nature because there is
nothing to conceal or disguise it, the natural disposition of man
conforms to customs and opinions and laws, and thus frequently puts a
mask on what is evil and imitates the good. In this way it altogether
expunges or eradicates the inborn taint of vice, or hides it for a long
time by cunningly disguising itself under the cloak of virtue; inasmuch
as we hardly take note of any particular act of villainy, unless it
falls upon us or strikes us; or, rather, we are for the most part
accustomed to regard men as bad only when they do a bad deed, licentious
when they indulge their lusts, and cowards when they run away. This is
doing as if we believed scorpions had a sting only when they strike, and
serpents were poisonous only when they bite,—a foolish notion, verily!
The man who proves to be a villain does not become so just at the moment
he is found out, but he had in him from his birth the germs of iniquity,
the thief merely seizing the opportunity or using his power to steal,
and the tyrant to override the law. But God, depend upon it, is not
ignorant of the inclinations and nature of any man because He looks to
the soul rather than the body; He does not wait to punish deeds of
violence, until they are done with the hands, or impurity until it is
uttered with the tongue, or lasciviousness until it is committed with
the sexual organs. He does not take vengeance on the evil-doer from any
wrong he has himself suffered, neither is He incensed at the robber,
because he has been roughly handled, nor does He hate the adulterer
because of the disgrace; yet, for the sake of betterment, He often
punishes the adulterer and the miser and the unjust man, thus cutting
off vice, as if it were an epilepsy, before it becomes firmly rooted.
21. A little while ago we expressed our ill-will at the late and tardy
punishment of the wicked; now we find fault because in some cases, even
before they perpetrate any evil deed, God checks the natural bent and
disposition of men, though we are aware that the future is often worse
and more to be feared than the past, and what is dormant than what is
apparent. We are not able to fathom the reasons why it is sometimes
better to let men commit crimes and sometimes better to anticipate them
while they are merely deliberating and contriving; just as some
medicines are not adapted to certain patients, though helpful to others
who are not actually sick, and yet in a worse condition than the former.
For this reason the gods do not ‘turn all the transgressions of the
parents upon their offspring,’ but if a virtuous son is begotten by a
wicked father, as it were, a sound man, by one who is diseased, he
averts the penalty from the house, the offspring of one being, so to
speak, adopted into another. But it is fitting that a young man who
conforms himself to the likeness of a corrupt family should also share
the chastisement of its villainies as a debt incurred by inheritance.
Antigonus was not punished on account of Demetrius, any more than the
heroes of the olden time, Phyleus and Nestor, for the sake of Augeas and
Neleus; since these men, though sprung from wicked fathers, were
themselves good men. But those who cherish and take naturally to the
baseness that is born in them must also expect to be pursued to the end
by that justice which the likeness of vice demands. For just as warts
and livid spots and freckles that fathers sometimes have, are not on
their sons, but afterwards reappear on the grandsons, and
granddaughters; and a certain Greek woman who had given birth to a black
child for which she was charged with adultery until she proved that she
was descended from an Ethiopian in the fourth generation; and one of the
sons of Pytho of Nisibis, who recently died, and who was said to be
sprung from the Sparti, was born with the print of a spear on his
body—in which case the family likeness reappeared and came to the
surface as out of the deep, after such a long space of time,—so in like
manner the character and passions of the soul are often concealed in the
first generations and remain unknown, but some time afterward and in
other persons nature springs up and asserts its power, either for virtue
or vice.”
22. When he had spoken thus he held his peace, whereupon Olympichus
said with a smile, “We do not give you our approval lest we shall seem
to excuse you from telling the story, on the ground that the case has
been sufficiently proved; but we shall only then render our verdict
when we have heard that.” In this wise I accordingly began:
“Thespesius of Soli, a kinsman and friend of the Protagenes who spent
some time here with us, having passed the first part of his life in
great dissoluteness, and having speedily squandered all his patrimony,
now pressed by the exigencies of his situation, for some time led a
vicious life; besides repenting of his bad management, he also sought
in every way to recover what he had lost, and acted just like those
libertines who care nothing for their wives so long as they are in
possession of them, but after they are divorced and married to other
men, basely try to corrupt them. Accordingly, by holding aloof from no
act of meanness that brought either gratification or gain, he acquired
in a short time not only very great possessions, but also the
reputation of being a thorough scoundrel. Above all, an oracle brought
from Amphilochus gave him a bad name; for having asked the god through
a messenger, as we are told, whether he would lead a better life in
the future, the answer came back that it would be better with him
after he was dead. And in a measure this turned out to be true, not
long after. For happening to fall on his head from a height he lay
like one dead from the shock alone, for he had received no wound, and
on the third day was already carried forth for burial. Then all at
once recovering strength and coming to himself, he showed a most
astonishing change in his manner of life; for the Cilicians know of no
man of his time more just in dealings between man and man, none more
reverent toward the gods, none more dreaded by his enemies, or more
faithful to his friends. Consequently all who knew him were eager to
hear the cause of this transformation, as they thought such an
alteration of character could not be a mere matter of chance—which was
in fact the case, as he himself related to Protagenes and other
equally intimate friends. For when he lost consciousness,—(literally,
when his rational soul left his body)—he at first experienced about
the same sensation as the result of the change that a pilot would feel
who should be hurled from a ship into the deep; afterwards, having
recovered a little, he thought he had entirely regained his breath and
was able to see on every side with his soul opened as if it were all
one eye. Yet he beheld none of the former things, but the objects he
recognized were stars of immense magnitude at immeasurable distances
from one another, and a radiance proceeding from them, surprising in
its brilliancy and color, in which his soul moved about with facility
just as a man in a calm moves a ship in any direction, easily and
quickly. Though he omitted most of what he saw, he said that the souls
of the dead, rising from below, made flame-like bubbles as they
displaced the air before them; then, as each bubble noiselessly burst,
the souls came forth, human in form but of a smaller size. Their
movements, however, were not alike, for some started forth with
surprising fleetness and darted straight up, while others whirled
round in a circle just like spindles, and whisking, now upward, now
downward, with a kind of confused and aimless motion, they came to
rest only after a long time and with great difficulty. Respecting most
of the souls, however, he was in ignorance as to who they were; but
recognizing two or three of his acquaintances, he tried to approach
and address them, yet they neither heard him nor were in their right
mind, but beside themselves and dazed, trying to avoid all notice and
intercourse, moving aimlessly about, at first alone by themselves,
then encountering many who were in a like condition, they joined
themselves to these, and, tossed about in a disorderly manner in all
directions, they uttered unintelligible cries that sounded like
mingled screams of lamentation and fear. Others, again, were seen at
the very summit of the upper air, radiant with joy, frequently
approaching each other with signs of affection, but avoiding the
disorderly ones and testifying their aversion, as he thought, by
drawing themselves together, but their delight and satisfaction, by
expanding and extending themselves. Here, he said, he recognized the
soul of one of his kinsmen, though not quite distinctly, for he had
died when yet very young; but drawing near it saluted him with, ‘Hail,
Thespesius!’ When he, in surprise, rejoined that his name was not
Thespesius, but Aridaeus. ‘Formerly, it is true,’ replied the spirit,
‘that was thy name, but henceforth it is Thespesius (the Divine). For
thou didst not die, but through the interposition of God art come
hither in the full possession of thy faculties; the other part of thy
soul thou hast left behind in thy body, as it were an anchor; and let
this be a token to thee both, now, and henceforth, that the souls of
the departed neither cast a shadow nor move the eyelids.’ On hearing
this, Thespesius, who had by this time somewhat recovered
consciousness, looked and beheld a kind of faint line about himself,
while the rest were completely encircled with a radiance and
diaphanous, though not all in the same manner, for some, like the moon
in her brightest splendor, had a uniformly smooth and even color,
while others were marked with a kind of spots or faint weals; others
again were all variegated and strange to look upon; while still others
were marked with livid fleckings like vipers, and some even showed
slight scarifications. The kinsman of Thespesius explained these
things in detail (for there is nothing to hinder us from calling the
souls of men by the name they themselves bore during life) by reciting
that Adrastea, the daughter of Necessity and Zeus, had been placed in
the highest seat as the avenger of all crimes, and that there is no
wicked man so powerful or so insignificant as to be able, either by
craft or by force, to escape her. Three attendants wait upon her to
each of whom has been assigned a different mode of inflicting
punishment: those who are to be chastised while yet in the body and by
means of the body, swift Poena (Punishment) seizes, though in a rather
mild way that still leaves behind many things needing expiation; those
whose cure is a matter of greater difficulty on account of their
vices, the daemon hands over, after death, to Dike (Justice), while
those that Dike gives up as entirely incorrigible, the third and most
terrible of the attendants of Adrastea, Erinys (the Fury), pursues,
and after hounding them as they rush about trying to escape her in one
way or another, she puts them all out of sight in a pitiless and awful
way by thrusting them into a nameless and invisible abyss. Of the
other punishments, said he, that inflicted by Poena in this life is
like those of the non-Greeks. For as among the Persians the clothes
and tiaras of those who are undergoing chastisement are pulled off and
they are scourged, while the culprits beg with tears that their
castigation may be ended; so the punishments suffered in body or
estate are no severe affliction, nor do they touch vice itself, but
are chiefly for appearance sake and for the outward sense. But him who
comes hither from there, unpunished and unpurged, Dike seizes and
exposes his soul in all its nakedness, and there is no place where it
can hide or go into concealment or cover up its baseness, but it is
completely seen on all sides and by everybody. At first Dike shows
this soul to honest parents, if such he had, or to ancestors, as a
detestable creature and unworthy (of such ancestry); but if they were
likewise wicked, he sees them undergoing chastisement, while he is in
turn beheld by them receiving his deserts and expiating, for a long
time, each of his evil passions with pains and torments which as far
exceed in sharpness those endured in the flesh as the reality exceeds
in distinctness the mere vision (before you). The stripes and weals
for each of the passions remain on some a longer, on others a shorter
time.” ‘Observe also,’ said he, ‘the variegated and party-colored
appearance of the souls; the darkish and filthy hue is the mark of
fraud and avarice, while the blood-red and flame-colored indicates
cruelty and ugliness of temper; where the soul has a bluish color, a
lack of self-control as against lust has not been wholly eradicated
from it; inherent malevolence combined with envy give out the violet
color and festering appearance underneath, just as the cuttle-fish
sets free its black fluid. For yonder (in the world), vice, when the
soul is changed by its passions and changes the body, occasions a
variety of colors, but here (in the realm of departed spirits) there
is an end of purification and punishment, and when the passions are
purged out, the soul recovers entirely its native luster and uniform
color. Until this takes place, paroxysms of passion break forth,
causing relapses and heart-throbs, in some cases faint and easily
recovered from, in others exceedingly violent. Some of the souls,
after undergoing repeated castigations resume their natural character
and disposition; others again are carried away into the bodies of
animals by the force and power of ignorance and the innate love of
sensual gratification; for, owing to the weakness of the reasoning
faculty and a disinclination to discursive thought, one is impelled by
its active principle to procreation, while another, though lacking an
instrument of sensual gratification, yet longs to satisfy its desires
with worldly pleasures and to attain its ends by means of the body,
for in this place there is only a kind of imperfect shadow and vision
of joys that can have no reality.’ When the spirit had thus spoken, it
conducted him (Thespesius) swiftly through boundless space, as he
thought, easily and without deviation, borne up by the beams of light
as if on wings, until he came to a wide and deep chasm where the power
that supported him gave way; he saw, too, that the other souls had a
like experience at that place, for these, crowding together like
birds, and darting downward, flew about the chasm,—for they dared not
venture to pass directly across it—which he saw was decorated within
like the grottoes of Bacchus, with shrubbery and plants and with all
sorts of green twigs bearing flowers; it also sent forth a gentle and
agreeable breeze which was singularly pleasant and which produced the
same effect that wine does on those who are addicted to it, for the
souls that inhaled these fragrant odors were in ecstasies of joy and
embraced one another. All around this place there was revelry and
laughter, together with every kind of enjoyment and merry-making. He
said that here Dionysus had ascended and had afterwards fetched up
Semele and that it was called the place of Forgetfulness (Lethe).
Here, too, Thespesius desired to tarry, but his conductor would not
allow it, and hurried him forcibly away, at the same time telling him
that the rational soul is melted and dissolved under the influence of
pleasure, but that the irrational and carnal part, moistened and
clothed in flesh, revives the memory of the body, and as a result of
this reminiscense, a desire and a concupiscence that incites to
procreation; for which reason it is called an _inclination toward the
earth_ because the soul is weighed down with moisture. Passing next
over another way of equal extent, he thought he saw a huge goblet into
which streams flowed, of which one was of a whiter color than the foam
of the sea or snow; another, purple like the iris; while others again
showed, from afar, different hues, each of which shone with its own
particular luster, yet when he came near, the ambient air became more
and more rarified, the colors became fainter, and the goblet lost its
brilliant tints, except the white. Here he saw three supernatural
beings (daemons) sitting by one another in the form of a triangle,
mixing together the streams with certain measures. The conductor of
the soul of Thespesius said that to this point Orpheus had advanced
when he was following after the soul of his wife, but because his
memory partly failed him he brought back to men an incorrect account
when he said that the oracle at Delphi was the common property of
Apollo and Night, when in sooth, there is nothing in common between
Apollo and Night. ‘But this oracle,’ the spirit said, ‘is common to
night and the moon; it gives response nowhere upon the earth and has
no fixed abode, but roams about everywhere among men, in dreams and
apparitions; and emanating from it, as thou seest, dreams mixed up
with the plain and simple truth, spread abroad trickery and fraud. But
that of Apollo thou didst not see,’ it said, ‘nor wilt thou be able to
see it, for the earthly part of the soul neither strives toward what
is higher nor does it release (the spiritual part), but it tends
downward as long as it is joined to the body.’ At the same time the
spirit leading him (Thespesius) nearer tried to show him the light
issuing from the tripod which, as he said, passed through the bosom of
Themis and reached as far as Parnassus. Though greatly desiring to see
it, he was not able to do so because of its brilliancy; but as he
passed by he heard the shrill voice of a woman chanting in verse some
other things, and the time of his death, as he thought. The
supernatural being (daemon) said it was the Sibyl, and that she
foretold future events as she was whirled about on the face of the
moon. Though wishing to hear more, he was carried round to the
opposite side by the rotary motion of the moon and caught but a few
words; among which was the prediction about Mount Vesuvius and the
impending destruction of Dicaearchea by fire, and a verse about the
reigning emperor, thus:
‘Though he is good, disease shall end his reign.’ Next in order they
turned to look upon those who were undergoing punishments. From the very
first they beheld nothing but repulsive and pitiable sights; then
Thespesius quite unexpectedly came upon kindred and acquaintances and
former companions who were in terrible sufferings and undergoing
horrible torments and pains, and who besought him with loud lamentations
to have pity on them. Finally, he recognized his own father coming up
from a kind of abyss, all covered with marks and wounds, stretching out
his hands to him; nor did those who directed his castigations suffer him
to hold his peace, but they compelled him to confess that he had been
guilty of a base crime against some guests, for their gold, by taking
them off with poison, and that, though the deed was unknown to everybody
in the world above, it was known to those below. (He also said) that he
had already undergone some torments, but was being dragged away to
suffer others. Smitten with fear and horror he durst not offer
supplications and intercessions for his father; but wanting to turn
about and flee, he no longer saw his kind and familiar guide, and felt
himself urged forward by other beings horrible to look upon, by whom he
was compelled to pass among and behold the chastisements of others of
his acquaintances who had openly led a wicked life, though the shade of
those who had been punished in the world was less grievously tormented
than the rest, and not in the same way, as they were merely condemned to
severe toil for the irrational nature and the passions. On the other
hand, those who had worn the garb and assumed the name of virtue, but
had in secret led corrupt lives, were forced by other tormentors, with
severe exertion and great pain, to turn the inner parts of the soul
outward; which action being so contrary to their nature, they performed
it with wrigglings and contortions like those made by the marine
scolopendra when they have swallowed the hook; some, their tormentors
flayed and laid open in order to show how corrupt and flecked they were,
and that their iniquity had its root in the reason which is the noblest
part of the soul. Other souls, he also said, he observed coiled about
each other by twos and threes and even more, gnawing one another on the
score of old grudges for the deeds of malice they had suffered or
committed in life. And he noticed further, some lakes alongside of each
other, one of which was of seething gold, another of exceeding cold
lead, and still another of hard iron; that over these stood certain
demons who in turn, like smiths, seized with tongs the souls of those
who had been guilty of insatiable greed and avarice, drawing them out
and thrusting them in. When they had become heated through and
diaphanous in the gold from the effects of the burning, they were
plunged into the sea of lead; having become congealed here and hard as
hailstones, they were next thrust into the lake of iron, where they
turned completely black, and were then twisted round and round because
of their hard-heartedness, and rubbed together until they lost all
semblance of their former selves. They were then put once more into the
lake of gold to undergo, as he said, awful torments by the change. But
he said those endured the keenest anguish, who, supposing they had been
released by Justice (Dike) were seized anew: these were the souls of
those for whose transgressions their descendants or children had to pay
the penalty. For whenever one of these arrived and encountered the
other, he fell upon the shade in great wrath, uttering loud cries and
showing the marks of what he had endured, at the same time execrating
and pursuing it while it endeavored to flee away and hide itself, yet
could not. For swiftly did the avengers of justice pursue such, dragging
them back again amid loud lamentations because they foreknew their
impending doom. To some of the souls, he said, many of their descendants
at the same time attached themselves like bees or bats, uttering shrill
cries and falling into transports of rage at the recollection of what
they had endured for their sakes; and last of all he saw the souls of
those who were undergoing the preparation for a second birth by a forced
transformation into all sorts of animals, and by metempsychosis at the
hands of those who were appointed to the task. These, by the use of
certain tools, and with blows, hammered together entire members, turned
others round, scraped down or removed others entirely in order to adapt
them to different modes of life, among which also appeared the soul of
Nero that had already undergone the other castigations, and had been
transfixed with red-hot nails. When the workmen had begun to prepare the
figure of a Pindaric viper, in which it was destined to live after it
had been conceived and had eaten its way out of its mother, he said that
a great light appeared and a voice came out of the light commanding that
it be transformed into some more gentle creature and made over into an
animal that is wont to chant around marshes and ponds, as he had already
expiated his crimes, and some consideration was due him at the hands of
the gods for freeing Greece, the land in which dwelt the best and most
god-favored of his subjects. Thus far now Thespesius was an eyewitness;
but when he was about to turn back, he got into the utmost perplexity
through fright; for a woman, imposing by her stature and beauty, taking
hold of him, said, ‘Pray come hither, my friend, in order that you may
the better remember everything’ (you have seen). And as she was about to
apply to him a little red-hot iron rod such as the painters in encaustic
are wont to use, another woman interfered. But he himself was carried
away all at once by a sudden and very violent gust of wind, as if blown
through a tube, and so lighting again in his own body, he was restored
to life, as it were, on the very brink of the grave.”
NOTES.
A few notes of general character are here appended. Biographical and
mythological details may be found in classical dictionaries. They are,
however, rarely necessary to make clear the object of the author’s
allusions. A word or a phrase not in the original has, in a few cases,
been inserted in the translation to preclude the necessity of a note.
Τοῦ θείου of the title. It is not clear from the writings of
Plutarch to what extent he was a monotheist. He uses θεὸς both with
and without the article. In some cases his meaning is perfectly
clear; in others not. The New Testament writers, whose monotheism is
beyond question, frequently use the article before the name of God.
In like manner proper names sometimes have the article and sometimes
are without it. Thus we have Παῦλος and ὁ Παῦλος, Πιλᾶτος usually
has the article while Τίτος never has it, etc.
CHAP. 3. The thought here expressed regarding the mills of the gods
has been put into the form of a couplet by Longfellow in his Poetic
Aphorisms, thus:
“Though the mills of God grind slowly
yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting,
with exactness grinds He all.”
The purport of the passage is plain, but the parallelism between the
fact and the figure is not very close. The idea is much older than
Plutarch.
CHAP. 4. “The ingle-side” or ancestral hearth. According to the
ancients the hearth was the center and beginning of the family and
the state. The expression, which is often used by Plato and others,
is equivalent to the _remotest beginning_. Compare also the Roman
Vesta.
5. “God having placed Himself,” etc. The following extract from the
Timaeus of Plato will serve to illustrate our author’s meaning. “Let
me tell you then why the Creator made this world of generation. He
was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And
being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as
like himself as they could be. This is in the truest sense the
origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do well in
believing on the testimony of wise men. God desired that all things
should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable.
Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but
moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he
brought order, considering that this was in every way better than
the other. Now the deeds of the best could never be or have been
other than the fairest and best; and the Creator, reflecting on the
things which are by nature visible, found that no unintelligent
creature taken as a whole was fairer than the intelligent taken as a
whole; and that intelligence could not be present in anything which
was devoid of soul. For which reason, when he was framing the
universe, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he
might be the creator of a work which was, by nature, fairest.
Wherefore, using the language of probability, we may say that the
world became a living creature, truly endowed with soul and
intelligence by the providence of God.”
6. “Souls going forth from him.” The idea here is, that the human
soul existed previous to its incarnation in the human body, and that
it is a direct emanation from the Deity. This doctrine is fully
expounded by Plato. How to establish the immortality of the soul, if
it comes into existence with the body, was a serious problem with
the ancients. Plutarch seems to have regarded both the soul and the
body as eternal and uncreated, but the latter without form until it
was united with the soul. Or we may put the case otherwise by saying
that the soul, upon entering into a conscious existence, shapes the
hitherto formless body into an abode for itself. He also holds that
the soul consists of two parts: The one part seeks after truth and
has an affection for the beautiful; the other is subject to the
passions and under the dominion of error. “For which reason,” the
author here assumes that the words ἔθος and ἦθος are from the same
root. The former means, use and wont; the latter was originally
applied to the haunts or abodes of animals; then the manners,
habits, and dispositions of men. Aristotle says, ἡ δ᾽ ἠθικὴ ἐξ ἔθους
περιγίνεται, ὅθεν καὶ τοῦνομα ἔσχηκε μικρὸν περικλῖνον ἀπὸ τοῦ
ἤθους. (Ethical is from ἔθος, for which reason the word differs but
slightly from ἤθος.) Plutarch himself says that custom is second
nature. It is easy to trace the connection between a man’s acts and
the psychical forces, the character, that produces them.
8. “An ill-omened deed.” It was a prevalent belief in antiquity that
misfortunes fell upon those who were concerned in disturbing a
swallow’s nest.
10. Near the end. The Greeks ventured to consult oracles of the dead
only on rare and extraordinary occasions. They probably borrowed the
custom from the East.
11. The story of Glaucus is told at length by Herodotus in the third
book of his history and is often alluded to by later writers. The
ethical import of the anecdote is far-reaching.
17. “Gardens of Adonis.” Shakespeare probably had these in mind when
he wrote (King Henry VI. Part 1, scene sixth): “Thy promises are
like Adonis’ gardens, That one day bloomed and fruitful were the
next.” At Taenarus, the most southern point of the Peloponnesus,
there was believed to be an entrance to the lower world.
22. “None more dreaded by his enemies.” To return good for good and
evil for evil was a fundamental article of Greek ethics. It is more
than once alluded to in the Anabasis, and is found in nearly all
Greek writers. Socrates, however, takes a firm stand against the
principle and maintains that whatever is intrinsically wrong can
never under any circumstances become right.
“An inclination toward the earth.” The author here assumes that
γένεσις, procreation, beginning, is both in fact and etymologically,
connected with νεῦσις ἐπὶ γῆν, an inclination or tendency toward the
earth. It need hardly be said that his idea is pure fancy.
This eruption of Vesuvius, as is well known, took place in the year
79. Decaearchea or Puteoli was one of the cities destroyed together
with Herculaneum, Pompei and others. Vespasian was one of the few
Roman emperors, who, up to his time, died a natural death.
What is meant by a Pindaric viper is not known. Plutarch is
evidently of the opinion that its young gnaw their way out of the
mother’s womb instead of being born in the natural way, and the
allusion to Nero’s treatment of his mother is plain. Nero’s love for
music and his proficiency in the musical art are evidently held up
to ridicule in this passage.
APPENDIX.
A list of Plutarch’s works in the order of Bernardakis’ edition.
Lipsiae, 1888-96.
VOLUME I.
_De liberis educandis_, (On the education of children).
_Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat_, (How a young man ought to
hear poems).
_De recta ratione audiendi_, (How one ought to hear lectures).
_Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur_, (How one may distinguish
a flatterer from a friend).
_Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus_, (How one may know
whether he is making progress in virtue).
_De capienda ex inimicis utilitate_, (How one may profit by his
enemies).
_De amicorum multitudine_, (On the abundance of friends).
_De fortuna_, (On good and ill fortune).
_De virtute et vitio_, (On virtue and vice).
_Consolatio ad Apollonium_, (Consolation for Apollonius).
_De tuenda sanitate præcepta_, (Precepts on the preservation of
health).
_Conjugalia præcepta_, (Precepts on matrimony).
_Septem sapientum convivium_, (The banquet of the seven sages).
_De superstitione_, (On superstition).
VOLUME II.
_Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata_, (Memorable sayings of kings
and commanders).
_Apophthegmata Laconica_, (Memorable sayings of Spartans).
_Instituta Laconica_, (The ancient customs of the Lacedaemonians).
_Lacænarum apophthegmata_, (Memorable sayings of Spartan women).
_Mulierum virtutes_, (Heroic deeds of women).
_Ætia Romana_, (A list of topics, Roman).
_Ætia Græca_, (A list of topics, Greek).
_Parallela Græca et Romana_, (A collection of Greek and Roman
historical parallels).
_De fortuna Romanorum_, (On the good fortune of the Romans).
_De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute, oratio I et II_, (On the
good fortune or valor of Alexander the Great, discourses I and II).
_Bellone an pace clariores fuerint Athenienses_, (Were the Athenians
more distinguished in war or in wisdom)?
_De Iside et Osiride,_ (Concerning Isis and Osiris).
VOLUME III.
_De E apud Delphos_, (On the E at Delphi).
_De Pythia oraculis_, (On the cessation of the Pythian oracles in
meter).
_De defectu oraculorum_, (On the cessation of oracles).
_An virtus doceri possit_, (Can virtue be taught)?
_De virtute morali_, (On moral virtue).
_De cohibenda ira_, (On the control of the temper).
_De tranquillitate animi_, (On peace of mind).
_De fraterno amore_, (On fraternal love).
_De amore prolis_, (On the love of offspring).
_An vitiositas ad infelicitatem sufficiat_, (Does vice of itself
make men unhappy)?
_Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores_, (Are the sufferings
of the mind more grievous than those of the body)?
_De garrulitate_, (On talkativeness).
_De curiositate_, (On meddlesomness).
_De cupiditate divitiarum_, (On the love of riches).
_De vitioso pudore_, (On excess of modesty).
_De invidia et odio_, (Concerning envy and hatred).
_De se ipsum citra invidiam laudando_, (On praising one’s self
without reproach).
_De sera numinis vindicta_, (Concerning those whom God is slow to
punish).
_De fato_, (On fate).
_De genio Socratis_, (On the tutelary deity of Socrates).
_De exilio_, (On exile).
_Consolatio ad uxorem_, (A letter of condolence to his wife).
VOLUME IV.
_Questionum convivialium libri IX_, (Nine books of table-talk).
_Amatorius_, (A dialogue on love).
_Amatoriae narrationes_, (Love stories).
VOLUME V.
_Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum_, (On the
proposition that the philosopher ought chiefly to converse with
rulers).
_Ad principem ineruditum_, (To an uneducated ruler).
_An seni res publica gerenda sit_, (Should an old man hold a public
office)?
_Praecepta gerendae rei publicae_, (Political precepts).
_De unius in re publica dominatione, populari statu et paucorum
imperio_, (On monarchy, democracy, and oligarchy).
_De vitando aere alieno_, (On avoiding debts).
_X oratorum vitae_, (The lives of the ten orators).
_De comparatione Aristophanis et Menandri epitome_ (Abstract of a
comparison between Aristophanes and Menander).
_De Herodoti malignitate_, (On the malice of Herodotus).
_De placitis philosophorum libri V_, (Five books of maxims of the
philosophers).
_Aetia physica_, (Problems in physics).
_De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet_, (Concerning the face that
appears on the moon’s disk).
_De primo frigido_, (On the origin of cold).
VOLUME VI.
_Aquane an ignis sit utilior_, (Is fire or water the more useful)?
_Terrestriane an aquatilia animalia sint callidiora_, (Are water or
land animals the more cunning)?
_Bruta animalia ratione uti_, (On the use of reason by brutes).
_De esu carnium, orationes duo_, (On the eating of flesh, two
discourses).
_Platonicae quaestiones_, (Platonic questions).
_De animae procreatione in Timaeo_, (On the origin of the soul in
the Timaeus).
_Epitome libri de animae procreatione in Timaeo_, (Abstract of the
book on the origin of the soul in the Timaeus).
_De Stoicorum repugnantiis_, (On contradictions of the Stoics).
_Compendium libri cui argumentum fuit, Stoicos absurdiora poetis
dicere_, (Synopsis of the book the argument of which was, The Stoics
utter greater absurdities than the poets).
_De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos_, (Concerning the common
conceptions against the Stoics).
_Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum_, (That it is not
possible to live pleasurably according to Epicurus).
_Adversus Coloten_, (Against Colotes).
_An recte dictum sit latenter vivendum esse_, (Is it a true saying
that one ought to live in seclusion)?
_De musica_, (On music).
VOLUME VII.
_De fluviorum et montium nominibus et de iis quæ in illis
inveniuntur_, (On the names of rivers and mountains and those things
that are found in them).
_De vita et poesi Homeri, Lib. I et II_, (On the life and poetry of
Homer).
The two treatises last named fill more than one-third of the volume, the
remainder being chiefly taken up with fragments, some of them only a few
lines in length. It also contains the so-called catalogue of Lamprias
which, including the Parallel lives, assigns 227 different works to
Plutarch. Volume seven concludes with an index of names. As these
treatises are usually cited by their Latin titles, they only are given
above. A complete edition of Plutarch’s Morals, with an introduction by
R. W. Emerson was published in Boston about twenty-five years ago, under
the editorial supervision of Professor Goodwin of Harvard University.
The translations were made by a number of English scholars near the
close of the seventeenth century. In their revised form they are in the
main correct and some of them are vigorous and readable.
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the sections in which they are
referenced.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Between Heathenism and Christianity - Being a translation of Seneca's De Providentia, and - Plutarch's De sera numinis vindicta, together with notes, - additional extracts from these writers and two essays on - Graeco-Roman life in the first century after Christ." ***
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