The Good Book (18 page)

  8. Not him to whom you had with mutual tears bidden farewell as he followed you on your departure for your province:

  9. Not a trace even or faint image of him, but rather what I may call the likeness of a living corpse.

10. And oh! that you had sooner seen me or heard of me as a corpse!

11. Oh that I could have left you to survive, not my life merely, but my undiminished rank!

12. But I call everyone to witness that the one argument which recalled me from death was, that all declared that to some extent your life depended upon mine.

13. In which matter I made an error and acted culpably. For if I had taken my life, my death would have given clear evidence of my fidelity and love to you.

14. As it is, I have allowed you to be deprived of my aid, though I am alive, and with me still living to need the help of others;

15. And my voice, of all others, to fail when dangers threatened my family, which had so often been successfully used in the defence of strangers.

16. For as to my not writing, it was because of a numbness of my faculties, and a seemingly endless deluge of tears and sorrows.

17. How many tears do you suppose these very words have cost me?

18. As many as I know they will cost you to read them! Can I ever refrain from thinking of you or ever think of you without tears?

19. For when I miss you, is it only a brother that I miss?

20. Rather it is almost a twin brother in the charm of his companionship, a son in his consideration for my wishes, a father in the wisdom of his advice!

21. What pleasure did I ever have without you, or you without me? And what must my case be when at the same time I miss a daughter:

22. How affectionate! how modest! how clever! The express image of my face, of my speech, of my very heart! Or again a son, the prettiest boy, the very joy of my heart?

23. Cruel inhuman monster that I am, I dismissed him from my arms better schooled in the world than I could have wished: for the poor child began to understand what was going on.

24. So, too, your own son, your own image, whom my little boy loved as a companion, and was beginning to respect as an elder brother!

25. Need I mention also how I refused to allow my unhappy wife – the truest of helpmates – to accompany me,

26. That there might be someone to protect the wrecks of the calamity which had fallen on us both, and guard our common children?

27. I dreaded the renewed lamentation which our meeting would cause: while I could not have borne your departure,

28. And was afraid of the very thing you mention in your letter – that you would be unable to tear yourself away.

29. For these reasons the supreme pain of not seeing you – and nothing more painful or more wretched could, I think, have happened to the most affectionate and united of brothers –

30. Was a lesser misery than would have been such a meeting followed by such a parting.

Chapter 15

  1. Now, if you can, though I, whom you always regarded as a brave man, cannot do so, rouse yourself and collect your energies in view of any challenge you may have to confront.

  2. I hope, if my hope has anything to go upon, that your own spotless character and the love of your fellow citizens, and even remorse for my treatment, may prove a protection to you.

  3. But if it turns out that you are free from personal danger, you will doubtless do whatever you think can be done for me.

  4. In that matter, indeed, many write to me at great length and declare they have hopes;

  5. But I personally cannot see what hope there is, since my enemies have the greatest influence,

  6. While my friends have in some cases deserted, in others even betrayed me.

  7. I shall continue to live as long as you shall need me, in view of any danger you may have to undergo:

  8. Longer than that I cannot go in this kind of life. For there is neither wisdom nor philosophy with sufficient strength to sustain such a weight of grief.

  9. I know that there has been a time for dying, more honourable and more advantageous; and this is not the only one of my many omissions;

10. Which, if I should choose to bewail, I should merely be increasing your sorrow and emphasising my own stupidity.

11. But one thing I am not bound to do, and it is in fact impossible:

12. Remain in a life so wretched and so dishonoured any longer than your necessities, or some well-grounded hope, shall demand.

13. For I, who was lately supremely blessed in brother, children, wife, wealth, and in the very nature of that wealth,

14. While in position, influence, reputation, and popularity, I was inferior to none, however, distinguished –

15. I cannot, I repeat, go on longer lamenting over myself and those dear to me in a life of such   humiliation as this, and in a state of such utter ruin.

16. I see and feel, to my misery, of what a culpable act I have been guilty in squandering to no purpose the money which I received from the treasury in your name,

17. I hope beyond hope that our enemies may be content with these endless miseries of ours; among which, after all, there is no discredit for any wrong thing done;

18. Sorrow is the beginning and end, sorrow that punishment is most severe when our conduct has been most unexceptionable.

19. As to my daughter and yours and my young son, why should I recommend them to you, my dear brother?

20. Rather I grieve that their orphan state will cause you no less sorrow than it does me.

21. Yet as long as you are uncondemned they will not be fatherless.

22. The rest, by my hopes of restoration and the privilege of dying in my fatherland, my tears will not allow me to write!

23. Terentia also I would ask you to protect, and to write me word on every subject.

24. Be as brave as the nature of the case admits, and I will endeavour to be likewise.

Chapter 16

  1. Yes indeed, my dear Servius, I would have wished that you had been by my side at the time of my grievous loss.

  2. How much help your presence might have given me, both by consolation and by your taking an almost equal share in my sorrow,

  3. I know from the fact that after reading your letter I experienced a great feeling of relief.

  4. For not only was what you wrote calculated to soothe a mourner, but in offering me consolation you manifested no slight sorrow of heart yourself.

  5. Yet, after all, your son Servius by all the kindness of which such a time admitted made it evident, both how much he personally valued me,

  6. And how gratifying to you he thought such affection for me would be. His kind offices have often been pleasanter to me, yet never more acceptable.

  7. For myself again, it is not only your words and your partnership in my sorrow that consoles me, it is your character also.

  8. For I think it a disgrace that I should not bear my loss as you – a man of such wisdom – think it should be borne.

  9. But at times I am taken by surprise and scarcely offer any resistance to my grief,

10. Because those consolations fail me, which were not wanting in a similar misfortune to those others, whose examples I put before my eyes.

11. After losing the honours which I had gained by the greatest possible exertions, there was only that one solace left which has now been torn away.

12. My sad musings were not interrupted by the business of my friends, nor by the management of public affairs:

13. There was nothing I cared to do in the forum; I could not bear the sight of the senate-house;

14.   I thought – as was the fact – that I had lost all the fruits both of my industry and of fortune.

15. But while I thought that I shared these losses with you and certain others, and while I was conquering my feelings and forcing myself to bear them with patience,

16. I had a refuge, one bosom where I could find repose, one in whose conversation and sweetness I could lay aside all anxieties and sorrows.

17. But now, after such a crushing blow as this, the wounds which seemed to have healed break out afresh.

18. For there is no republic now to offer me a refuge and a consolation by its good fortunes when I leave my home in sorrow,

19. As there once was a home to receive me when I returned saddened by the state of public affairs.

20. Hence I absent myself from both home and forum, because home can no longer console the sorrow which public affairs cause me, nor public affairs that which I suffer at home.

21. All the more I look forward to your coming, and long to see you as soon as possible.

22. No reasoning can give me greater solace than a renewal of our friendship and conversation.

23. In our sadness and sorrow we need our friends, and I cannot imagine how life can be borne without them.

24. Where should we be if there were no love? Unhappy, most unhappy, all who are forsaken in their times of trouble,

25. All who lament, and feel the weariness and burden of the world in their suffering.

Consolations

Chapter 1:
Of grief: Laelius on the death of Scipio

  1. How are we to bear the loss of those we loved? Is there wisdom that can save us from the worst grief, and give us strength to bear what all of us must learn, one inevitable day, to bear?

  2. Consider what Laelius said when asked about the death of his friend Scipio, with whom he had passed all his life in work, in war, in office and in affection.

  3. A friend said to Laelius, ‘You are accounted wise not only for your natural ability and character, but also for your learning.

  4. ‘In this sense we hear of no one called wise save that one man at Athens, Socrates, who desired to know the good.

  5. ‘Your wisdom consists in this, that you look upon yourself as self-sufficing, and regard the accidents of life as powerless to affect your virtue.

  6. ‘How then do you respond to the death of your dear friend Scipio: for such grief is both a test of character, and a mark of the nature of friendship.

  7. ‘For you did not come to our regular meeting at our college, and it was asked: how fares Laelius in the death of Scipio?

  8. ‘What does a man reputed for wisdom think and feel in this heavy case?

  9. ‘I see that you bear your grief in a reasoned manner, even though you have lost one who was at the same time your dearest friend and a man of illustrious character;

10. ‘So of course you could not but be affected; nothing else would have been natural in a man of your gentleness;

11. ‘But yet I think that the cause of your absence from our college was illness, not melancholy; I do not think grief has defeated you.’

12. To which Laelius replied: ‘My thanks, friend! What you say is correct; I would have no right, if in health, to withdraw from duties, not even for personal misfortune;

13. ‘For I do not think that anything that can happen will cause a man of principle to intermit a duty.

14. ‘As for the honourable appellation of wisdom you give me, I make no claim: you doubtless say this from affection;

15. ‘But if anyone was ever truly wise, which I yet doubt, the great Cato most certainly was.

16. ‘Putting aside everything else, consider how he bore his son’s death! I have not forgotten those who lost their sons when mere children; but Cato lost his when full-grown with an assured reputation.  

17. ‘Do not therefore be in a hurry to reckon as Cato’s superior even Socrates, for remember that the former’s reputation rests on deeds, the latter’s on words.

18. ‘But if I were to claim not to be affected by grief for Scipio, I should lie, for so I am:

19. ‘Affected by the loss of a friend as I think there will never be again, such as I can fearlessly say there never was before.

20. ‘Yet I stand in no need of medicine. I can find my own consolation, and it consists chiefly in being free from the mistaken notions that generally cause pain at the death of friends.

21. ‘To Scipio I am convinced no evil has befallen. Mine is the disaster, if disaster there be; and to be prostrated by distress at one’s own misfortunes does not show that you love your friend, but that you love yourself.

22. ‘As for him, who can say that all is not more than well? He rests for ever now; and this after attainments in life which any man would wish for.

23. ‘He achieved great things by his unswerving dedication in the work that the world and our community asked of him.

24. ‘What need even to mention the grace of his manners, his devotion to those he loved, the integrity of his conduct to everyone?

25. ‘All this is known. What could such a man have gained by the addition of a few years?

26. ‘Though age need not be a burden, yet it cannot but take away a measure of vigour and freshness;