Consolation to Helvia

LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
TRANSLATED BY GARETH D. WILLIAMS

(1.1) Often by now, dearest mother, I have felt the urge to send you consolation, and as often restrained it. The considerations that prompted me to dare the attempt were many. First, I imagined that I would lay aside all my troubles when I’d wiped your tears away at least for a while, even if I couldn’t stop them altogether; second, I was sure that I would have more power to raise you up if I’d first arisen myself; and, further, I was afraid that fortune, though conquered by me, might still conquer someone close to me. And so, placing my hand over my own gash, I tried as best I could to crawl forward to bandage your wounds. (2) On the other hand, there were factors to delay this purpose of mine. I realized that your grief should not be confronted while it was fresh and violently felt, in case the consolations themselves aggravated and inflamed it; for in diseases as well, nothing is more harmful than overhasty treatment.1 And so I was waiting until your grief tempered its own strength by itself, and softened by time to submit to remedies, it allowed itself to be touched and handled. Moreover, although I read through all the works composed by the most distinguished authors for the purpose of controlling and tempering grief, I found no example of someone who had consoled his own relatives when he himself was the object of their lamentation. In this novel situation, therefore, I was undecided, fearing that my efforts would bring not consolation but exacerbation. (3) Besides, a person raising his head from the very funeral pyre to console his own dear ones needs words that are different, and not drawn from conventional, everyday consolation. But every grief that is surpassing in scale necessarily takes away our ability to choose words, since it often chokes the voice itself. (4) In any event, I’ll try as best I can, not with confidence in my abilities but because I can offer the most effective consolation by myself being the consoler. You never refused me anything; and so I hope you won’t refuse me at least this much, even though grief is always unyielding: your consent for me to set a limit to your sense of loss.

(2.1) See how much I’ve promised myself from your love for me: I don’t doubt that I shall have more power over you than your grief will, though there’s nothing that has more power over the wretched. So in order not to join battle with it immediately, I’ll first take its side and heap on encouragement for its growth; I’ll expose and split open all the wounds that have already been covered over. (2) The objection will be: “What kind of consolation is this, to recall forgotten woes and to set the mind in full view of all its hardships when it can scarcely endure one of them?” But let him reflect: whatever diseases are so destructive as to gather strength against their remedies can generally be treated by opposite methods. And so I’ll set before the mind all its sorrows and all its bereavements: this will not be to apply a gentle approach to healing, but to cauterize and cut. What shall I achieve? That the mind that has overcome so many miseries is ashamed to be distressed by one more wound on a body already so scarred. (3) So let those whose long prosperity has weakened their pampered minds carry on weeping and lamenting, and let them fall faint at the disturbance caused by the slightest injuries; but let those who have spent all their years in a succession of disasters endure even the heaviest blows with brave and steadfast resolve. The one benefit of continual misfortune is that it eventually hardens those whom it always afflicts.

(4) Fortune has given you no respite from the heaviest sorrows, and made no exception even for the day of your birth. You lost your mother as soon as you were born, or rather while you were being born, and you entered life as, in a sense, a child exposed. You grew up in the care of a stepmother, but by showing all the obedience and devotion which can be observed even in a daughter, you made her become a real mother; nevertheless, even a good stepmother comes at a great cost to any child. Your uncle, the kindest, finest and most courageous of men, you lost just when you were awaiting his arrival; and lest fortune should alleviate its harshness by separating out its blows, within a month you buried your dearest husband, who made you the mother of three children.2 (5) This blow was announced to you when you were already grieving, and when in fact your children were all elsewhere, as if your misfortunes were purposely concentrated within that time period so that your grief would have nowhere to find solace. I pass over the multiple dangers, the multiple fears, which you endured as they assailed you without ceasing. Just recently you took back the bones of three grandchildren into the same lap from which you’d sent forth three grandchildren;3 and less than twenty days after you’d buried my son, who died in your arms as you kissed him, you heard that I’d been snatched away.⁴ This alone you had lacked before—to mourn the living.

(3.1) Of all the wounds that have ever penetrated your body, this latest one is, I admit, the most severe: it hasn’t just broken the skin but split apart your breast and innermost organs. But just as new recruits cry out even though they are only superficially wounded, and tremble more at the hands of doctors than they do at the sword, whereas veterans, even though they are pierced through, patiently and without a groan allow their bodies to be cleansed as if they were not their own, so you must now bravely submit to treatment. (2) Away with wailings and lamentations and the rest of the commotion that usually accompanies a woman’s grief; for you’ve wasted so many sorrows if you’ve not yet learned how to be wretched. My treatment of you hardly seems timid, does it? Not one of your misfortunes have I withheld from you, but I’ve piled them all up and set them before you.

(4.1) I’ve taken this bold approach because I’ve resolved to conquer your grief, not limit it. And I shall conquer it, I think, first if I show that I am experiencing nothing that could cause me to be called wretched, let alone make my relatives wretched on my account; and, second, if I turn to you and demonstrate that your lot, which is completely dependent on mine, is not hard to bear either.

(2) I shall deal first with what your devotion to me eagerly wants to hear: that I’m suffering no distress. If I can, I shall make it clear that those very conditions which you think are weighing me down are not unbearable. But if you find that unbelievable, at least I’ll be better pleased with myself for being content in circumstances which usually make people wretched. (3) There’s no reason for you to take the word of others about me; to protect you from the distress of not knowing what to think, I myself declare to you that I am not unhappy. And to reassure you still more, I’ll add that I cannot even be made unhappy.

(5.1) We are born in circumstances that would be favorable if we didn’t abandon them. It was nature’s design that no great equipment is needed for living well; each and every individual is capable of making himself happy. External goods have trivial importance and exert little influence in one direction or the other: the sage is neither carried away by prosperity nor cast down by adversity, for he has always striven to rely to the fullest extent on himself, and to derive all his joy from within himself. (2) So what? Am I saying that I’m a sage? Not at all; for if I could claim as much, I wouldn’t just be denying that I am unhappy but proclaiming that I’m the most fortunate of all mankind, and that I’ve been brought close to god. But as things are, I’ve placed myself in the hands of wise men, which is sufficient for alleviating every distress; and since I’m not yet robust enough to help myself, I’ve sought refuge in the camp of others,5 who protect themselves and their followers with ease. (3) They have ordered me to keep watch constantly, as if a soldier on guard, and to anticipate every attempted blow of fortune, every attack, long before they strike. Fortune falls heavily on those it suddenly surprises; the person who always awaits its attack easily withstands it. For an enemy’s approach also confounds only those it takes by surprise; but those who have prepared themselves for the coming war before it arrives are well organized and equipped, and they easily absorb the first blow, which is the most violent. (4) Never have I placed trust in fortune, even when it seemed to be at peace. All that it very generously bestowed on me—money, high office, influence—I stored in a place from which it could reclaim them without causing me any disturbance. I have kept a great distance between them and me; and so fortune has taken them from me, not wrenched them away. No one is shattered by hostile fortune unless first beguiled by its favor. (5) Those who loved its gifts as if they were theirs forever, and who wanted to be admired because of them, lie prostrate with grief when those false and fickle delights abandon their empty and childish minds, ignorant as they are of all lasting pleasure. But the person who isn’t puffed up by prosperity is not diminished when circumstances change; his strength of purpose is already tested, and he maintains a mindset that is unassailable in the face of either condition; for in the midst of prosperity, he has tested his ability to cope with bad. (6) Consequently, I’ve never thought that there is any real good in the things everyone prays for. Besides, I’ve found them to be all show, decorated as they are with appealing but deceptive colors, but with nothing within that resembles their outward appearance. And in my present circumstances, these so-called hardships, I find nothing as fearful and oppressive as was threatened by common opinion. The very term exile now falls more harshly on the ear because of a certain conviction and common feeling, and it strikes listeners as something bleak and detestable. For so the masses have ordained, but sages in large part disregard the people’s decrees.

(6.1) Therefore, disregarding the judgment of the majority, who are carried away by the outward appearance of things, whatever the grounds for trusting it, let’s consider what exile really is. Of course, a change of location. To avoid any impression that I’m diminishing its force and removing its worst properties, certain inconveniences accompany this change of place: poverty, disgrace, contempt. I’ll take issue with these factors later;6 meanwhile, the first question I want to consider is what distress is entailed in the actual change of location.

(2) “To be deprived of your homeland is unbearable.” Come now! Look on this vast throng,⁷ which the buildings of the enormous city can scarcely accommodate: most of that crowd are separated from their homeland. They’ve gathered together from their towns and colonies, from the whole wide world in fact, some drawn by ambition, some by the requirements of public duty, some because they are charged with diplomatic business, some by self-indulgence in quest of a place favorably rich in vice, some by a longing for higher learning, some because of public shows. Some are attracted by friendship, some by their appetite for work, seeing ample scope for displaying their special qualities; some have brought their good looks to sell, others their eloquence for sale. (3) Every conceivable type of person has flocked to the city, which sets high prices on both virtues and vices. Have them all summoned by name, and ask each of them: “Where are you from?” You’ll find that the majority of them have left their own homes to come to this city, which is very great and most beautiful to be sure, but not their own. (4) Then move on from this city, which can be said in a way to belong to all, and visit every city: there’s none that doesn’t have a large proportion of foreigners. Pass on from those cities whose delightful setting and convenient situation draw large numbers, and run your mind over desolate places and the most rugged islands, Sciathus and Seriphus, Gyara and Cossura:⁸ you’ll find no place of exile where someone doesn’t stay for his own gratification. (5) What could be found as bare as this rock,⁹ what as precipitous on all sides? If you consider its resources, what could be more barren? If its people, what more savage? If the very topography of the place, what more rugged? If the climate, what more extreme? Yet here live more foreigners than natives. In itself, therefore, a change of place is so far from being a hardship that even this place has drawn some people away from their homeland. (6) I find some10 who say that innate to our minds is a certain incitement to change abode and to move from one place to another; for mankind was given a mind that is shifting and restless. It never stays put but goes in all directions, projecting its thoughts to all places, known and unknown—a wanderer which cannot tolerate being at rest and takes the greatest delight in encountering the new and different. (7) This will cause you no surprise if you consider its earliest origin. It was not composed of heavy, earthy substance but descended from the lofty, heavenly breath.¹¹ But heavenly entities are by nature always on the move, speeding away and driven on with the swiftest motion. Consider the planets that illuminate the world: none of them remains stationary. The sun glides on continuously and shifts from place to place, and though it revolves with the universe, it nevertheless moves in a direction contrary to the heavens themselves:¹² it runs through all the signs of the zodiac and never comes to a halt; its movement is ceaseless as it migrates from one place to another. (8) All the planets are always traveling in their orbits and passing by, and in accordance with the incontrovertible law of nature, they are carried from place to place; when in the course of fixed spans of years they’ve completed their circuits, they will again proceed along the paths they took before. How absurd, then, to imagine that the human mind, which is composed of the same elements as divine beings, is distressed by its travels and changes of abode, while god naturally finds pleasure and even self-preservation in incessant and extremely rapid movement!

(7.1) Turn now from heavenly to human affairs, and you’ll see that whole tribes and peoples have changed their abode. What’s the meaning of Greek cities in the heart of barbarian territories? Why is the Macedonian tongue heard among Indians and Persians?¹³ Scythia and that whole region of wild and unconquered tribes show Achaean cities established on the shores of the Black Sea; neither the harshness of the perpetual winter nor the character of the inhabitants, savage like their climate, deterred migrants from settling there. (2) There is a mass of Athenians in Asia;14 Miletus has sent forth in different directions enough people to fill seventy-five cities; the entire coast of Italy that is washed by the Lower Sea¹⁵ became Greater Greece; Asia claims the Etruscans as her own;¹⁶ Tyrians have settled in Africa, Carthaginians in Spain; Greeks have forced their way into Gaul, Gauls into Greece;¹⁷ the Pyrenees did not prevent the Germans from crossing.¹⁸ Through pathless regions and unknown parts, the restlessness of mankind has made its way. (3) Children and wives and parents heavy with age were dragged along. Some peoples, driven to and fro in their long wandering, did not deliberately choose their destination but wearily settled on the land that was nearest; others established their right in a foreign country by force of arms. Some tribes were engulfed by the sea when they were going in quest of unknown lands, while some settled at the place where they were stranded because their supplies had run out. (4) Nor did they all have the same motive for leaving and seeking a new homeland. The destruction of their cities by enemy attack forced some to escape to foreign lands when they were robbed of their own; some were dislodged by political discord at home; some were sent out to relieve the burden caused by the overcrowding of an excessive population; some were driven out by disease, by frequent earthquakes, or by some unbearable deficiencies in the unproductive soil; some were beguiled by overblown reports of a fertile shore. (5) Different peoples have been led by different causes to leave their homes, but this at least is clear: nothing has stayed where it came into being. The human race is constantly running this way and that, and in a world so vast something changes every day: the foundations of new cities are laid and new names of nations emerge, while older powers are obliterated or transformed into a subsidiary of a stronger power. But all these migrations of peoples—what are they but states of communal exile? (6) Why drag you through so lengthy a cycle? Why bother to mention Antenor, the founder of Padua, and Evander, who established the Arcadian kingdom on the banks of the Tiber? Why mention Diomedes and others, conquered as well as conquerors, who were scattered over foreign lands by the Trojan War? (7) To be sure, the Roman Empire itself looks back to an exile¹⁹ as its founder—a refugee from his captured city who, taking with him its few survivors, was forced by fear of the conqueror to make for distant parts and was brought to Italy. In turn, this people—how many colonies has it sent to every province! Wherever the Romans have conquered, there they settle. People willingly put their names down for this kind of migration, and even old men left their altars and followed the colonists overseas. (8) The point needs no listing of further instances, but I’ll nevertheless add one that forces itself on my attention: this very island has often changed its population. To pass over its earlier history, which the long passage of time has obscured, the Greeks who left Phocis and now inhabit Massilia first settled on this island.20 What caused them to leave it is unclear, whether the harshness of the climate, or their close-up view of Italy’s outstanding power, or the shortage of harbors. For the cause was evidently not the savagery of the native inhabitants, given that they settled among the most fierce and uncivilized peoples of Gaul at that time. (9) Subsequently the Ligurians crossed to the island, and also the Spanish, as is plain from their similar customs: the islanders wear the same head coverings and the same kind of shoes as the Cantabrians, and certain words are the same—but some only, because their language as a whole has lost its original character through association with the Greeks and Ligurians.²¹ Later, two colonies of Roman citizens were founded, one by Marius, another by Sulla:²² so often has the population of this barren and thorny rock been changed! (10) To sum up, you’ll scarcely find any land which is still lived in by its original inhabitants; every population consists of mixed and foreign stock. One people has come after another, what one people has viewed with disdain another has ardently desired, and one people has expelled another only to be driven out itself. So it is by decree of fate that nothing remains where it is in the same condition forever.

(8.1) To offset the actual change of place, and barring the other disadvantages that attach to exile, Varro, the most learned of Romans,²³ holds that this is remedy enough, that wherever we come, we inevitably experience the same order of nature. Marcus Brutus²⁴ thinks it a sufficient compensation that exiles can take with them their own virtues. (2) Even if anyone judges these two considerations, taken individually, inadequate to comfort the exile, he’ll admit that they are extremely effective in combination. For how little it is that we actually lose! Wherever we go, the two finest attributes will go with us—universal nature and individual virtue. (3) So it was intended, believe me, by whoever fashioned the universe, whether that was an all-powerful god, or incorporeal reason capable of producing vast works, or a divine breath pervading all things from the greatest to the smallest with uniform tension, or fate and the unalterable sequence of causes that are interconnected25—so it was intended, I say, that none but the most worthless of our possessions should fall under anyone else’s control. (4) Whatever is best for mankind lies beyond human control, and can be neither given nor taken away. This world, which is nature’s greatest and best-endowed creation, and the human mind, which surveys the world and marvels at it, and is the most glorious part of it—these are our own possessions, lasting indefinitely and set to remain with us as long as we ourselves remain alive. (5) So, enthusiastic and confident, let us hasten with undaunted step wherever circumstances lead us, let us travel over any lands whatsoever: no place of exile [can] be found in the world, [since nothing in the world] is alien to mankind.²⁶ From any point on earth you raise your eyes to the heavens on an equal basis: there is always the same distance between all things divine and all things human. (6) Accordingly, so long as my eyes are not directed away from that spectacle, which they can never look on enough; so long as I may watch the sun and the moon and fix my gaze on the other planets; so long as I may track their risings and settings, the intervals between occurrences, and the reasons for their moving faster or slower; so long as I may observe so many stars gleaming throughout the night—some fixed, others not voyaging forth over a great distance but circling around their own given area, some suddenly bursting forth, others dazzling our eyes with spreading fire as if they were falling, or flying by with a long trail of brilliant light; so long as I may commune with these and, so far as a human can, mingle with things divine, and so long as I may keep my mind always striving to contemplate the kindred objects on high—what difference does it make to me what ground I tread?

(9.1) “But this land produces no trees rich in fruit or foliage, it isn’t irrigated by the channels of any great or navigable rivers, it produces nothing that other nations want, and it’s scarcely fertile enough to support its inhabitants; no valuable stone is quarried here, and no veins of gold and silver are mined.” (2) Narrow is the mind that takes delight in earthly matters; it should be directed instead to those objects that are equally visible from any vantage point, and from any vantage point equally radiant. And another consideration should be borne in mind: earthly objects block our view of true goods through our perverse belief in false goods. The further people extend their colonnades, the higher they raise their towers, the wider they stretch their country seats, the deeper they dig their summer caves,27 the more massive the structures raising the roofs of their banquet halls—so much more will there be to obscure the heavens from their sight. (3) Misfortune has cast you into a region where the most sumptuous shelter is a mere hut: truly you show a narrow-mindedness that consoles itself cheaply if you put up with this bravely only because you know of Romulus’s hut.²⁸ Rather, say to yourself: “This lowly shack has room, I take it, for the virtues? Soon it will be more beautiful than every temple, when justice will be seen there, and forbearance, and wisdom, and righteousness, and a system for properly apportioning all duties, and knowledge of things human and divine. No place is confining which can accommodate this multitude of such great virtues; no exile is hard to bear when you can enter it in this company.”

(4) Brutus says, in the book that he wrote on virtue,²⁹ that he saw Marcellus in exile at Mytilene, living as happily as human nature permits and never more devoted to liberal studies than at that time.³⁰ And so he adds that when he was set to return without Marcellus, he felt that he himself was going into exile rather than leaving Marcellus in exile. (5) How much more fortunate was Marcellus at that moment when he won Brutus’s applause for his exile, than when he won the state’s applause for his consulship! How great a man that was who made someone feel like an exile because he was parting from an exile! What a man that was who drew the admiration of one admired even by Cato, his kinsman!³¹ (6) Brutus also says that Gaius Caesar³² had sailed past Mytilene because he couldn’t bear to see a great man marred by disgrace. The senate did indeed secure his recall by public petition, and in so anxious and mournful a mood that all seemed to have the same feelings as Brutus did on that day, and to be making their entreaty not on Marcellus’s behalf but their own, for fear that they would be exiles if they had to do without him. But he achieved much more on that day when Brutus couldn’t bear to leave him, and Caesar to see him, in exile. For he received the testimony of both: Brutus grieved that he was returning without Marcellus, and Caesar blushed. (7) Can you doubt that that great and distinguished man often encouraged himself to bear his exile with equanimity in terms such as these? “The loss of your country is no cause of sorrow. Thoroughly steeped in your studies as you are, you know that to the wise man every place is his homeland. Besides, wasn’t the man who banished you himself without his country for ten successive years?33 The reason was doubtless to enlarge the empire; but he was still without his country. (8) Look! Now he’s being pulled toward Africa, which is teeming with threats of renewed war; pulled toward Spain, which is reviving the strength of the broken and shattered opposition; pulled toward treacherous Egypt,³⁴ and in short toward the whole world, which is watching closely for an opportunity against the weakened empire. Which problem will he meet first? Against which part of the world will he first make a stand? He’ll be driven through every land by his own victorious course. Let nations admire and worship him; live yourself content to have an admirer in Brutus!”

(10.1) Marcellus endured his exile well, then, and his change of place caused no change at all in his mind, although poverty went with him. But there’s nothing disastrous in poverty, as anyone knows who has not yet been driven to the madness of greed and extravagant indulgence, which ruin everything. For how little is the amount needed to support a man! And who can lack this much if he possesses any virtue whatsoever? (2) As far as my own case is concerned, I know that I’ve lost not wealth but my preoccupations. The needs of the body are slight: it wants the cold to be kept off, and to allay hunger and thirst with basic provisions; if we crave anything more, we exert ourselves for our vices, not our needs. There’s no need to scour every ocean and to burden the stomach with the carnage of animals, or to pluck shellfish from the uncharted shore of the remotest sea. May gods and goddesses destroy those whose luxurious tastes overstep the boundaries of an empire that already arouses such envy! (3) They want game from beyond the Phasis³⁵ to supply their ostentatious kitchen, and they feel no shame at trying to get fowl from the Parthians, from whom we have yet to exact vengeance.³⁶ From all parts they gather up everything known to the finicky palate, and from the ends of the ocean food is transported which their stomachs, weakened by their luxurious living, can scarcely take in. They vomit to eat, eat to vomit, and the feasts which they search out from the world over they don’t deign even to digest. If a man disdains such things, how can poverty harm him? If a man yearns for them, poverty even benefits him; for he’s healed despite himself, and if he doesn’t swallow his medicine even under compulsion, at least for a time his inability to get such things resembles a lack of desire for them. (4) Gaius Caesar,37 whom nature produced, it seems to me, to show what supreme vice can do in combination with supreme power, dined one day at a cost of ten million sesterces; and though everyone used their ingenuity to help him to this end, he could scarcely find how to spend the tribute from three provinces on a single dinner. (5) How wretched are the people whose appetite is stimulated only by costly foods! But what makes them costly is not their exquisite flavor or some pleasant sensation in the throat but their rarity and the difficulty of obtaining them. Otherwise, if these people would willingly return to sanity, what need of so many professional skills that serve the belly? What need of imports, or of devastating forests, or of scouring the sea? All about us lie the foods which nature has made available in every place; but these people pass them by as if blind, and they roam through every country, they cross the seas, and though they could allay their hunger at a trifling cost, they excite it at great expense. (6) I feel like saying to them: “Why do you launch your ships? Why do you take up the sword against both beasts and humans? Why do you rush about with so much commotion? Why do you heap riches on riches? Won’t you consider how small your bodies are? Isn’t it madness and the wildest derangement to desire so much when you have room for so little? And so, though you may increase your worth and extend your lands, you’ll never enlarge the capacity of your bodies. Though your business has thrived, though your military service has brought you much, though you’ve tracked down and gathered in foods from all parts, you’ll have nowhere to store those sumptuous supplies of yours. (7) Why do you hunt down so many things? I ask you! Our ancestors, whose virtue even to this day props up our vices, were doubtless unhappy because they provided food for themselves with their own hands, because the ground was their bed, because their houses weren’t yet gleaming with gold, and because their temples had yet to shine with precious stones—and so in those days oaths would solemnly be sworn by gods of clay,³⁸ and those who’d invoked the gods would return to the enemy, even though they were certain to die, rather than break their word.39 (8) Doubtless our dictator,⁴⁰ who listened to the envoys of the Samnites as he himself cooked at the hearth the simplest kind of food with his own hand (the hand which had already frequently routed the enemy and placed a triumphal laurel branch on the lap of Capitoline Jupiter)—this man doubtless lived less happily than did Apicius⁴¹ within our own memory, who lectured on cookery in the very city from which philosophers were once expelled⁴² on the grounds of corrupting youth, and who defiled his age by his teaching.” It’s worth knowing Apicius’s end. (9) After he’d poured a hundred million sesterces into his kitchen, and after he’d swallowed up at every one of his revels the equivalent of so many imperial gratuities and the enormous state revenue of the Capitol, he was overwhelmed by debt and then forced for the first time to look carefully into his accounts. He calculated that he would have ten million sesterces left over; and as if doomed to live in extreme starvation if he existed on ten million sesterces, he took his life by poison. (10) What luxury, if ten million counted as poverty for him! What folly to think that what matters is the amount of money, not wealth of mind! Someone shuddered at ten million sesterces, and he escaped by poison what others pray for! In truth, for a man of such a perverse mindset, that last drink was most healthy. It was when he was not simply enjoying his boundless banquets but boasting of them, when he was ostentatiously displaying his own vices, when he was drawing the city’s attention to his own luxurious ways, when he was rousing the young to imitate him (even without corrupt examples they are naturally impressionable)—it was then that he was truly eating and drinking poisons. (11) Such an end is what befalls people who measure their wealth not by the standard of reason, which has fixed limits, but by that of a corrupt disposition whose sway is boundless and illimitable. Nothing is ever enough for greed, but for nature even too little is enough. The poverty of an exile therefore involves no hardship; for no place of exile is so lacking in resources that it cannot amply support a person.

(11.1) “But the exile is going to feel the loss of his clothes and his home.” These too he will miss only to the extent that he needs them—and he will lack neither shelter nor basic clothing, for it takes as little to protect the body as it is does to feed it. Nothing that nature made a necessity for mankind did it make hard to get. (2) But he longs for garments deep-dyed in purple, embroidered with gold, and spangled with different colors and designs: it’s not fortune’s fault but his own if he feels poor. Even if you give him back whatever he’s lost, you’ll achieve nothing; for his desires will make him feel more deprived, now he’s restored, than his possessions made him feel when in exile. (3) But he longs for sideboards gleaming with golden vessels, and silver plate distinguished by the names of its old master craftsmen, and bronze that is made costly by the frenzied collecting of a few, and a mass of slaves that would crowd any house, however large, and draft animals whose bodies are stuffed and fattened through forced feeding, and marbles from every country: though all these things are amassed, they’ll never satisfy his insatiable soul, just as no amount of fluid will be enough to satisfy the man whose craving arises not from a lack of water but from the heat that scorches his insides; for that isn’t thirst but disease. (4) Nor does this apply only to money or food. Every desire, provided that it arises not from need but from vice, has a like character: however much you heap up for it, it will serve not as the end of the desire but only as a stage in it. So the person who keeps himself within the bounds set by nature will not feel poverty, while the man who goes beyond those bounds will be pursued by poverty even amid the greatest wealth. Even places of exile are adequate for essentials, but not even kingdoms for superfluities. (5) It’s the mind that makes us rich; it follows us into exile, and in the harshest wildernesses, when it has found enough there to support the body, it takes delight in its own plentiful goods. Money is of no concern to the mind, any more than it is to the immortal gods. (6) All those things that win the admiration of untutored intellects which are too attached to their bodies—marbles, gold, silver, and polished tables, round and huge—all are earthly burdens that cannot be loved by the mind which is unsullied and conscious of its true nature, since it is light and unencumbered and set to dart upward to the highest heavens at whatever time it’s freed from the body. In the meantime, so far as it is unimpeded by our limbs and by the heavy burden of flesh that surrounds it, it ranges over things divine in swift flights of thought. (7) And so the mind cannot ever be exiled, liberated as it is and akin to the gods and equal to all the world and all ages; for its thought moves around the entire heavens and is granted access to the whole of time, past and future.43 This mere body, the soul’s prison and chain, is tossed this way and that; punishments are inflicted on it, and villainies and diseases. But the mind itself is sacred and eternal, and no violent hand can be laid on it.

(12.1) In case you think I’m using the teachings of philosophers only to belittle the hardships of poverty, which no one feels to be burdensome unless he thinks it so, consider first that the proportion of poor people is so much greater; and yet you’ll notice that they’re not a bit more unhappy or troubled than the rich. Rather, I’m inclined to think that the fewer the claims that distract their minds, the happier they are. (2) Let’s pass on to the wealthy: how many are the occasions when they look just like paupers! When they travel abroad, their baggage is limited; and whenever the constraints of their journey force them to hurry on, they dismiss their crowd of attendants. When they’re on active military service, how small a part of their belongings do they keep with them, since camp discipline prohibits all luxurious paraphernalia! (3) And it’s not just the special circumstances of time and place that put them on a par with the needy: when they’re in the grip of boredom with their riches, they pick certain days on which to dine on the ground and, laying aside their gold and silver plate, to use earthenware dishes. What madmen! They always dread this state of poverty that they sometimes crave! What darkness of mind, what ignorance of truth [blinds those who are troubled by fear of the poverty]44 that they take pleasure in simulating! (4) In my own case, whenever I look back to the models of times long past, I’m ashamed to find any consolations for poverty, since the extravagance of the times has degenerated to the point where an exile’s traveling allowance is more than the inheritance left by the leading citizens of old. It’s well known that Homer had one slave, Plato three, and Zeno, the founder of the stern and manly Stoic philosophy, none. Will anyone therefore suggest that they lived wretched lives without himself thereby seeming thoroughly wretched to all? (5) Menenius Agrippa,⁴⁵ who acted as mediator between the patricians and the plebeians to keep the state at peace, was buried by public donation. Atilius Regulus,⁴⁶ when he was routing the Carthaginians in Africa, wrote to the senate that his hired hand had gone, leaving his farm abandoned; the senate decreed that in Regulus’s absence, his farm would be managed at public expense. Wasn’t being without a slave a price worth paying, so that the Roman people would become his tenant-farmer? (6) Scipio’s47 daughters received a dowry from the public treasury because their father had left them nothing: it was utterly reasonable for the Roman people to pay Scipio tribute just once, since he was always exacting it from Carthage. Lucky were the girls’ husbands, to have the Roman people as their father-in-law! Do you think those fathers whose pantomime-actress daughters wed with a dowry of a million sesterces are happier than Scipio, whose daughters received from the senate, their guardian, a weight of copper as a dowry? (7) Can anyone feel contempt for poverty when it shows such distinguished models? Can an exile be aggrieved that he lacks anything when Scipio lacked a dowry, Regulus a hired hand, Menenius a funeral? And when in all those cases their need was met all the more honorably precisely because they were in need? And so, with advocates such as these to plead for her, poverty is not only assured of acquittal but even attractive.

(13.1) To this the response might be: “Why do you unnaturally separate the factors you mention, which can be endured individually, but not in combination? A change of place is endurable if you change only the place; poverty is endurable if it involves no disgrace, which even on its own is enough to crush the spirit.” (2) In reply to anyone who’ll try to frighten me with a mass of troubles, this needs to be said: “If you’re sufficiently fortified against any one aspect of fortune, the same will apply against all aspects. Once virtue has toughened the mind, it makes it invulnerable on every front. If greed, the most powerful pestilence of the human race, has loosened its hold on you, ambition won’t detain you. If you look on your last day not as a punishment but as a law of nature, no fear of anything will dare enter the breast from which you’ve banished all fear of death. (3) If you believe that sexual desire was given to man not for pleasure’s sake but for the continuation of the human race, once you’ve escaped this hidden plague that is embedded in our very vitals, every other desire will leave you untouched. Reason doesn’t strike down the vices one by one but all of them together; the victory is total and final.” (4) Do you think that any sage who relies entirely on himself and keeps his distance from popular opinion can be distressed by disgrace? A disgraceful death is worse even than disgrace. Yet Socrates entered prison with the same expression that he wore when he alone once cut the thirty tyrants down to size,⁴⁸ and he was set to remove all disgrace even from prison;49 for no place where Socrates was could seem a prison. (5) Who is so blind to the truth that he thinks that Marcus Cato’s double defeat in his bid for the praetorship and the consulship⁵⁰ was a disgrace to him? That disgrace fell on the praetorship and the consulship, which gained distinction from Cato’s candidacy. (6) No one is despised by another unless first despised by himself. A submissive and groveling mind may lend itself to the insult of others, but the person who lifts himself to face the cruelest misfortunes and to overcome the evils that overwhelm others wears his very sorrows as a mark of distinction; for our disposition is such that nothing commands our admiration as much as a man who is brave amid adversity. (7) When, at Athens, Aristides⁵¹ was being led to execution, everyone who met him cast down his eyes and groaned, as if it was not merely a just man but justice itself that was sentenced to death. The base exception, however, was someone who spat in his face. Aristides might have reacted with annoyance, knowing that only a foulmouthed creature would dare such a thing. Instead, he wiped his face clean and, smiling, said to the magistrate accompanying him: “Warn that fellow not to open his mouth so offensively in the future.” This was to put insult on insult itself. (8) I know some people say that there’s nothing harder to bear than contempt, and that they find death preferable. My response to them will be that exile too is often free of any contempt. If a great man has fallen and remains great as he lies prostrate, he is no more despised than the ruins of a temple are trampled underfoot—a temple which the devout treat as reverently as when it still stood.

(14.1) Since you have no reason, dearest mother, to be driven to endless tears on my account, it follows that you are moved to weep for reasons of your own. There are two possibilities: you are distressed either because you appear to have lost some protection, or because you find your longing for me unendurable in itself.

(2) I must touch on the first point only lightly, for I know that at heart you love your dear ones for nothing more than themselves. Let those mothers take note who exploit their children’s power with a woman’s weakness; who, because women are not allowed to hold office, are eager for advancement through their children; who both swallow up their sons’ inheritances and try to be their heirs; and who wear out their sons’ eloquence by lending it to others. (3) But you’ve taken the greatest joy in your sons’ strengths, and exploited them to the least extent. You’ve always set limits on our generosity, though not on yours. Though your father was still alive,52 you actually bestowed gifts on your wealthy sons. You managed our inheritances as if you were taking diligent care of your own inheritance and dealing scrupulously with a stranger’s. You made sparing use of our influence, as if it belonged to someone else, and our times in office brought you nothing except pleasure and expense. Never did your kindness look toward self-interest. And so, now that your son has been snatched away, you can’t feel the absence of those things that you never considered a concern to you when he was safely at home.

(15.1) It is to the other point that I must entirely direct my consolation—the source from which the real force of a mother’s grief arises. “So I’ve lost my dearest son’s embrace,” you say, “and I cannot delight in seeing him and conversing with him. When he appeared, my face relaxed its sad expression, and to him I entrusted all my anxieties: where is he? Where are the talks that always left me wanting more? Where are his studies, in which I participated with more than a woman’s willingness, and with an intimacy beyond our maternal relationship? Where are those meetings of ours? Where that boyish sense of glee whenever he saw his mother?” (2) To all this you can add the actual places where we celebrated together and spent time with each other, and the reminders of the close association that we lately shared—reminders that inevitably cause the greatest anguish. For this blow too, fortune cruelly contrived against you: it willed that only two days before I was struck down, you should depart from me⁵³ with easy mind and unafraid of any such disaster. (3) It was a good thing that we had been living far apart from each other, and good that my absence from you for several years had prepared you for this blow; the effect of your return to Rome was not that you gained the pleasure of seeing your son, but that you lost the habit of longing for him. Had you departed long before my exile, you would have endured the loss more bravely, since distance would have eased your longing; had you not gone back, you would at least have gained the final benefit of seeing your son for two days longer. But as it is, cruel fate so arranged matters that you could neither be with me when disaster struck nor get used to being away from me. (4) But the harder those circumstances, the greater the courage you must call on and the more bitterly you must fight, as if against a known enemy who has often been defeated in the past. It’s not from an undamaged body that this blood has flowed; you’ve been struck through your very scars.

(16.1) You must not plead the excuse that consists in being a woman, who has been granted a virtual license for immoderate weeping—but not for limitless tears. This is why our forebears allowed widows to lament their husbands for a period of ten months, thereby reaching a settlement by public decree with the persistence of female grief. They didn’t forbid their mourning but set a limit to it; for when you’ve lost someone very close to you, to be endlessly stricken with grief is foolish self-indulgence, and to feel no grief is to be inhumanly insensitive. The best balance between dutiful affection and reason is both to feel a sense of loss and to crush it. (2) You must pay no heed to certain women whose grief, once assumed, was ended only by their death (you know some who’ve never taken off the mourning garb they donned when they lost their sons54); your life, braver from the outset, demands more from you, and the excuse of being a woman cannot apply to one who has shown no trace of any womanly weakness. (3) The greatest scourge of our age, unchastity, has exempted you from the majority of women. Precious gems have not diverted you, nor have pearls; the gleam of riches has not made them seem to you the greatest good of the human race. Well brought up as you were in an old-fashioned and strict household, you’ve not been led astray by imitation of worse women, a danger even for upright characters. You were never ashamed of your fertility, as if it brought reproach on the age in which you live; and unlike other women who rely for their attractiveness solely on their beauty, never did you hide your pregnancy as if it were an unsightly burden, nor did you abort your hopes of children after they were conceived within you. (4) You didn’t defile your face with paints and cosmetics, and never did you favor the kind of clothing that exposed no more flesh when it was taken off. In you has been seen that singular ornament, that most splendid form of beauty that lasts to any age, that greatest distinction: your modesty. (5) So you can’t put forward your womanhood as an excuse to justify your grief, for your virtues set you apart from womanhood; you ought to be as far removed from female tears as you are from female vices. Not even women will permit you to wither away from your wound, but they will order you quickly to be done with your necessary mourning and then to rise again with less heavy heart55—if only you’re willing to look to those women whose striking courage has placed them in the ranks of great men. (6) Cornelia⁵⁶ had twelve children, but fortune reduced them to two. If you wanted to reckon Cornelia’s losses by number, she had lost ten; if by their value, she had lost the Gracchi. Nonetheless, when her companions were weeping around her and cursing her fate, she forbade them to censure fortune, since fortune had given her the Gracchi as her sons. From this woman could only be born the kind of man who exclaimed in public: “Would you speak ill of the mother who gave birth to me?” But to me the mother’s utterance seems much more spirited: the son placed great value on the parentage of the Gracchi, but the mother on their deaths as well. (7) Rutilia⁵⁷ followed her son Cotta into exile, and was so bound up in her devotion that she preferred to endure exile than her longing for him, and she didn’t come home until he did. After his return he distinguished himself in public life; when he died, she endured his loss as bravely as she had followed him into exile, and after her son’s burial no one ever saw any tears. When he was exiled she showed courage, wisdom when she lost him; for in the first case nothing discouraged her from her loving duty, while in the second nothing made her persist in unnecessary and misguided sorrow. I want you to be counted with women such as these. In your efforts to control and suppress your anguish, you’ll best follow the example of those women whose lives you have always imitated.

(17.1) I know that this is not a matter that is in our power, and that no strong feeling is under our control,⁵⁸ least of all that born of grief; for it is violent and stubbornly resistant to every remedy. At times we want to suppress it and swallow down our cries of pain, but our tears stream forth through the false mask of composure on our faces. Sometimes we distract the mind with public games or gladiators, but amid the very spectacles that are meant to divert it, it’s undone by some slight reminder of its loss. (2) It’s therefore better to defeat our sorrow than to cheat it; for grief that has been beguiled and distracted by pleasures or preoccupations rises again, and from its very rest it gathers force to rage once more. But the grief that submits to reason is quelled permanently. And so I’m not going to prescribe for you those remedies which I know many have adopted—that you should occupy or cheer yourself with travel to places either distant or charming, use up much of your time in diligently scrutinizing your accounts and managing your property, or constantly engage yourself in some new activity. All such initiatives are helpful only for a brief span; they are not a cure for grief, but they hinder it. But I’d rather end it than cheat it. (3) And so I’m guiding you to the refuge that’s to be sought by all who are escaping fortune: liberal studies. They will heal your wound, they will root out all your sadness. Even if you’d never been familiar with them, you would need to make use of them now; but to the degree that my father’s old-fashioned strictness allowed you, you have touched on all the liberal arts, even if you have yet to master them. (4) How I wish that my father, the best of men, had been less attached to ancestral custom, and willing for you to receive a thorough grounding in philosophical doctrine rather than just initial instruction! You’d now have no need to acquire protection against fortune, but merely to apply it. He was less inclined to let you devote yourself to philosophical study because of those women who use books not to gain wisdom but as equipment for the display of luxury. Nevertheless, thanks to your quick and voracious intellect, you took in a great deal for the amount of time you had; the foundations for every branch of philosophical study have been laid. Return to those studies now, and they will keep you safe. (5) They will bring you comfort, they will give you pleasure. If they truly enter your mind, never again will grief gain entry, and never will anxiety, and never the unnecessary distress caused by suffering that is pointless. Your heart will be open to none of these; for it has long been closed to all other moral failings. These studies are your surest form of protection, and the only resource that can rescue you from fortune’s power.

(18.1) But because you need supports to lean on until you reach that haven which philosophy guarantees you, I want in the meantime to show you the consolations that are yours already. (2) Think of my brothers:59 while they live, you have no right to find fault with fortune. In their different kinds of excellence, you have in each of them good reason for delight. One of them has achieved high office by diligent effort, while the other has despised it in his philosophical wisdom. Take comfort in the high standing of one son, the retirement of the other, the devotion of both. I know the deepest feelings of both my brothers. One seeks to improve his standing in order to bring you luster, while the other has withdrawn to a life of restful tranquility to have leisure for you. (3) Fortune has favorably arranged for your children to bring you both help and delight: you can be protected by one son’s standing, enjoy the other’s leisure. They will compete in their services to you, and the devotion of two sons will make up for your longing for one son. I can confidently promise that you’ll lack nothing except the full number of your sons.

(4) After these, think also of your grandchildren—of Marcus, a most charming boy.60 No one can look at him and still feel sad; no distress in anyone’s heart can be so great and so freshly felt that it cannot be soothed by his embrace. (5) Whose tears would his cheerfulness not check? What mind that is tight with anxiety could fail to be relaxed by his witty chatter? Who won’t be lured into merriment by his playfulness? What person, though concentrating on his own thoughts, will not be diverted and captivated by that talkativeness of his, which can never weary anyone? I pray to the gods that we die before he does! (6) May all the cruelty of fate be exhausted and extend no further than me. Whatever grief you were destined to suffer as a mother, whatever as a grandmother—may it be transferred to me, and may the rest of my family flourish unharmed. I shall make no complaint about my childlessness, and none about my present circumstances; let me only serve as the scapegoat for a family that will have no more cause of grief. (7) Fondly embrace Novatilla,⁶¹ who will soon give you great-grandchildren. I had so brought her into my care and adopted her as my own⁶² that in losing me she could seem an orphan, even though her father still lives. Cherish her for me as well! Fortune recently snatched her mother from her, but by your devotion you can see to it that she grieves only for the loss of her mother without being deeply affected by it as well. (8) Now is the time for you to arrange and mold her character; instruction leaves a deeper mark when it is stamped on impressionable minds. Let her grow accustomed to conversation with you and be shaped as you see fit; you’ll give her much even if you give her only your example. Such a solemn duty as this will serve as a remedy for you; for only philosophy or a respectable form of occupation can distract from its anguish a mind that grieves for a loved one.

(9) Among your great consolations I would count your father as well, were he not away from you.⁶³ As it is, however, imagine his love for you, given your love for him, and you’ll understand how much more proper it is for you to preserve yourself for him than to expend yourself for me. Whenever unrestrained grief assails you and bids you to yield to it, think of your father. By giving him so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you’ve made it that you’re not his only child; but for him the crowning fulfillment of a life lived happily nevertheless depends on you. As long as he lives, it is wrong to complain of your life.

(19.1) So far I’ve said nothing of your greatest source of comfort, your sister64—that heart which is so very devoted to you, receiving all the worries that you unreservedly convey to it, and that sensibility which is motherly to all of us. You blended your tears with hers, and you first began to breathe again in her embrace. (2) She always shares your feelings, but in my case she grieves not just for your sake. I was carried to Rome in her arms,⁶⁵ and it was by her devoted and motherly nursing that I recovered from my long period of illness. She exerted her influence on my behalf when I stood for the quaestorship,⁶⁶ and though she lacked the confidence of voice even for conversation or a loud greeting, on my behalf her love conquered her shyness. Neither her secluded way of life nor her modesty, which is so old-fashioned in comparison with the boorish forwardness of today’s women, nor her quietness, nor her reserved character with its disposition to retirement—none of these prevented her from becoming ambitious on my behalf. (3) She, dearest mother, is the source of comfort by which you can recover your strength: attach yourself to her as closely as you can, cling to her with the tightest embraces. Mourners tend to avoid the things they love most and to seek freedom to indulge their grief; but you must share your every thought with her. Whether you’ll want to persist in that state of feeling or lay it aside, you’ll find in her either the end of your grief or a companion for it. (4) But if I rightly know the wisdom of this most complete of women, she won’t allow you to be worn down by pointless grief, and she’ll recount to you a telling experience of her own which I too witnessed.

In the very midst of a sea voyage⁶⁷ she had lost her beloved husband, my uncle, whom she had married as a virgin. She nevertheless bore the weight of both her grief and her fear simultaneously, and though shipwrecked, she overcame the storm and brought his body ashore. (5) How many women are there whose glorious deeds lie hidden in darkness! If it had been her lot to live in past times when people were straightforward in their admiration of great deeds, how much competition would there have been among gifted artists to sing the praises of a wife who forgot her physical weakness and forgot the sea, which even the boldest must fear; who placed her own life in danger in order to bury her husband; and who had no fears at all about her own funeral while she thought about his! She who was ready to give her life in place of her husband68 has won fame through all the poets. But this is a greater achievement—for a wife to seek burial for her husband at the risk of her own life: that love is greater which gains a lesser return from an equal danger.

(6) After this, no one can be surprised that throughout the sixteen years when her husband was governor of Egypt, she was never seen in public, she never allowed any native inhabitant to enter her home, she sought no political favors from her husband and allowed none to be sought from her. So a province that was fond of gossip and talented at insulting its governors, where even those who steered clear of any wrongdoing didn’t escape ill repute, looked up to her as a singular model of integrity; and—a very difficult thing for a people given to witticisms, even when risky—it curbed its freely wagging tongue, and to this day it keeps praying for, though it never expects to see, another like her. It would have been a considerable achievement if she had won the province’s approval for sixteen years; but more remarkable is that she remained unknown there. (7) I mention these things, not for the purpose of enumerating her praiseworthy qualities (to run through them so sparingly is to treat them unfairly), but for you to recognize the high-mindedness of a woman who has succumbed to neither ambition nor greed, scourges that always accompany power; who, when her boat was disabled and she was watching her own shipwreck, was not deterred by fear of death from clinging to her lifeless husband; and who sought not a way to escape from the ship but a way to secure his burial. You must show courage equal to hers, and withdraw your mind from grief; and thereby ensure that no one thinks you’re sorry you had children.

(20.1) But despite all your measures, your thoughts must inevitably return to me constantly, and under the circumstances it must be that none of your children enters your mind more often—not because the others are any less dear to you, but because it is natural to keep on touching the place that hurts. You must therefore think of me as follows—happy and energetic as if in the best of circumstances. For best they are, since my mind is free of all preoccupation and with time for all its own concerns, now delighting itself with lighter studies, and now, in its eagerness for the truth, rising to the contemplation of its own nature and that of the universe. (2) It first seeks to know about the lands and their position,69 and then the nature of the sea that surrounds them, and its alternating ebb and flow. Then it investigates the expanse, full of frightening phenomena, that lies between the heavens and earth—this near space that is turbulent with thunder, lightning, wind blasts, and downfalls of rain and snow and hail. Finally, after traversing the lower reaches, it breaks through to the heights above and delights in the most beautiful sight of things divine; and mindful of its own immortality, it moves freely over all that has been and will come to be in every age across time.