LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
TRANSLATED BY HARRY M. HINE
(1.1) *** <Cities, and monuments of stone, if> you compare them to our human <lives>,1 are robust; if you apply the standards of nature, which destroys everything and recalls it to its origins, they are perishable. For what made by mortal hands is immortal? Those seven wonders,2 and anything far more wonderful than them that the ambition of subsequent years has constructed, visitors will one day see leveled to the ground. Yes: nothing is everlasting, and few things are long lasting; things are fragile in different ways, their destruction takes various forms, but everything that has a beginning will also have an end. (2) Some people threaten the whole world with destruction, and this universe, which embraces everything divine and human—if you think it not blasphemous to believe it—will one day disintegrate and be sunk into its original chaos and darkness:3 so there is no point in bewailing individual souls, or in lamenting the ashes of Carthage, Numantia, and Corinth,4 and any other place that has fallen from a greater height, when even what has nowhere to fall is going to perish.5 If the fates will one day go so far as to perpetrate such a great evil, there is no point in any individual’s complaining that he has not been spared by them. (3) Who is so arrogantly and recklessly presumptuous as to want solely himself and his family to be exempted from the necessity imposed by nature, which summons everything to the same ending? or so presumptuous as to try to rescue a single household from the destruction that threatens the world itself? (4) So it is immensely comforting to reflect that what has happened to oneself is what everyone up till now has suffered and everyone is going to suffer; and it seems to me that nature has taken the most grievous thing it had made and has made it universal, in order that fate’s equal treatment of all should be some consolation for fate’s cruelty.
(2.1) It will also help you considerably if you reflect that your grief will do no good, either to him whom you sorely miss or to yourself; for you will not want what is pointless to be prolonged. If we are going to achieve anything by being despondent, I have no objection to shedding any tears left over from my own misfortune for yours;6 right now I shall find something that can flow from these eyes already drained dry by private weeping, if only it will do you some good. (2) What are you waiting for? Let us complain together, or rather, I myself shall be the prosecutor: “Fortune, regarded by everyone as most unjust, up till now you seemed to have embraced this man7 who, thanks to you, had won such veneration that his success attracted no envy—something that rarely happens to anyone. Look, you have inflicted on him the greatest grief he could experience while Caesar remains alive; and after careful reconnaissance from every angle, you realized that only at this point was he exposed to your blows. (3) For what else could you have done to him? Robbed him of his money? He was never a slave to it; even now he distances himself from it as far as possible, and although it is so easy for him to make money, the greatest benefit he seeks from it is to despise it. (4) Should you have robbed him of his friends? You knew that he is so lovable8 that he could easily replace those he had lost with others; for of those I have seen exercising power in the imperial palace, I think there is no one else of whom I have found it true that, though self-interest drives people to seek his friendship, desire drives them more strongly. (5) Should you have robbed him of his good reputation? In his case it is too firm to be shaken even by you. Should you have robbed him of his good health? You knew that his mind was so well grounded in liberal studies9—by which he was surrounded not just during his upbringing but at birth—that it towered above all bodily pain. (6) Should you have robbed him of his breath? How little harm you would have done him! Fame promised him a very long life for his literary talent; he himself did everything to ensure that he would endure with the better part of himself,10 and that he would protect himself from mortality through the outstanding works of literature that he had written. As long as any honor is paid to literature, as long as either the power of the Latin language or the elegance of the Greek survives, he will flourish alongside the giants whose talents he either has matched himself against or, if his modesty rejects that description, has devoted himself to. (7) Therefore you devised this as the only way in which you could do him severe harm; for the better a person is, the more regularly he has trained himself to endure you when you rage blindly, provoking fear even with your generosity. How little it would have cost you to grant immunity from such hurt to a man on whom your kindness seemed to have settled by deliberate policy, and not to have stumbled randomly in your usual fashion.”
(3.1) Let us add to these complaints, if you like, that the young man’s talents were cut short just as they were starting to develop. He deserved to have you for a brother: and certainly you thoroughly deserved not to suffer any grief even for an undeserving brother. He receives the same commendation from everyone; people mourn him as a compliment to you, they praise him as a compliment to the man himself. (2) There was nothing in him you would not be glad to acknowledge; you would have been good even to a less good brother, but in him your love had the right sort of material and was exercised much more readily. No one experienced his power to their detriment; he never used the fact you were his brother to threaten anyone. He had modeled himself on the example of your restraint, and he used to reflect on the way you brought your family not just great distinction but also a great burden of responsibility: he was strong enough to bear the load. (3) O cruel fates, who never treat virtue fairly! Your brother was snatched away before he could learn of his good fortune. I know my protests are too weak; for nothing is more difficult than finding words to match great grief. Still, if it will do any good, let us once again complain, (4) “What were you up to, fortune, so unjust, so violent? Did you so quickly come to regret your kindness? What cruelty is this, to launch a direct attack on brothers, and reduce the size of such a close-knit group with such a savage abduction? Did you want to disrupt a household so full of the finest young men, in which none of the brothers let the family down, did you want to reduce its size for no reason at all? (5) So, is innocence, as judged by every law, of no use? Is old-fashioned frugality of no use, or <moderation> in good fortune, <or> the highest self-restraint maintained while holding the highest power, or a genuine, secure love of literature,11 or a mind free from any kind of fault? Polybius is mourning, and being warned by the case of one brother about what he can fear for the others, he is afraid for the very people who provide comfort for his grief. What a terrible thing, that Polybius should be mourning and suffering from grief while Caesar looks on him favorably! This without doubt is what you were up to, reckless fortune—a demonstration that no one can be protected against you, not even by Caesar.”
(4.1) We can go on accusing the fates, but we cannot alter them: they remain harsh and inexorable; no one can influence them by abuse, not by weeping, not by arguing his case; they never spare anyone, never let them off. So let us spare ourselves tears, which achieve nothing; for this grief will more easily add us to the number of the dead than bring them back to us; if it torments us without helping, we must set it aside immediately, and our minds must be rescued from empty comforts and from a distressing desire for grief. For if reason does not put an end to our tears, fortune will not either. (2) Come on, survey the whole of humanity, and everywhere you find abundant, constant grounds for tears: hardworking poverty summons one person to the daily task; another is tormented by an ambition that never rests; another fears for the riches for which he had prayed, and is oppressed by what he had longed for; another is tortured by anxiety, another by work, another by the crowd that constantly lays siege to his forecourt; this man grieves because he has children, this one because he has lost them. Our tears will be exhausted sooner than our reasons for grieving. (3) Do you not see what sort of life nature promised us, when it decided that the first thing human beings do at their birth should be to cry?12 This is our starting point when we come into the world, and the entire sequence of succeeding years follows the pattern. We live our lives on these terms, and so we should exercise moderation when doing what we have to do so often; and as we glance behind us at all the forms of sorrow that are at our backs, threatening us, we ought, if not to put a complete stop to our tears, at least to hold them in reserve. There is nothing we should use more sparingly than what we need so frequently.
(5.1) You will also be helped considerably by the reflection that no one finds your grief less pleasing than the person for whose sake it appears you are indulging in it: either he does not wish you to be in anguish, or he is unaware that you are. So there is no reason to perform a service that, as far as the beneficiary is concerned, if he is unaware of it, is superfluous, and if he is aware, is displeasing. (2) I would boldly assert that there is no one in the entire world who enjoys your tears. So, then, do you think your brother adopts an attitude toward you that no one else does, harming you by torturing you, and wanting to distract you from your occupation, that is, from your studies and from Caesar? That is not likely; for he showed you the love appropriate to a brother, the devotion appropriate to a parent, the respect appropriate to a superior; he wants you to miss him, but he does not want to cause you anguish. So what is the use of wasting away with a grief that, if the dead have any consciousness, your brother wants to be ended? (3) Were I dealing with another brother whose goodwill might seem questionable, I would treat all this as doubtful and would say, “If your brother wants you to be tormented by tears that never end, he does not deserve this affection of yours; but if he does not want that, let go of the grief that is haunting you both; an unloving brother ought not to be mourned in this way, and a loving one would not want to be.” But in his case, since his love has been so clearly demonstrated, we should be certain that nothing can distress him more than seeing that this misfortune of his distresses you, that he makes you suffer in any way, that he causes your eyes, which are totally undeserving of this pain, to be disfigured and drained dry, without any end to their weeping.
(4) Nothing will divert your love from such fruitless tears as effectively as the consideration that you ought to give your brothers an example of how to bear bravely this injury that fortune has inflicted. Great generals, when things are going badly, deliberately pretend to be cheerful, and conceal bad news with a show of happiness, lest, if the soldiers see their general’s spirits crushed, their morale also should collapse. That is what you too must do now. (5) Put on an expression that belies your state of mind, and if you can, get rid completely of all your grief, or if not, keep it hidden inside you, so that it is not visible; and take care to ensure that your brothers imitate you, for they will think that whatever behavior they observe in you is correct, and they will take courage from your expression. You should be both their comfort and their comforter; but you will not be able to prevent their laments if you give free rein to your own.
(6.1) Another thing that can keep you from excessive mourning is reminding yourself that nothing you do can be hidden from view. Public opinion has given you an important role: you must stick to it. Around you there stands a great throng of people offering comfort; they scrutinize your mind and observe how much strength it has when confronted with grief, and whether you are good at handling only favorable circumstances, or can also face adverse ones like a man. They are watching your eyes. (2) Those whose feelings can be concealed enjoy greater freedom: you are not free to have any secrets. Fortune has placed you in a bright light: everyone will know how you behaved after this wound, whether you laid down your weapons as soon as you were hit, or stood your ground. Caesar’s love has long since elevated you, and your literary pursuits have promoted you to a higher level; nothing ordinary, nothing common is appropriate for you; and yet what is so vulgar and womanish as letting yourself be consumed by grief? (3) You are not allowed to behave in the same way as your brothers, though your loss is equal; there are many things that the reputation you have gained from your writing and from your character will not let you do; people demand much from you, they expect much. If you wanted to be allowed to behave as you liked, you should not have turned everyone’s attention toward yourself: as things are, you must deliver on what you have promised. All those who praise the products of your literary talent, who make copies of them, who, though they do not want your fortune, do want your ability, they keep your mind under surveillance. You can never do anything unworthy of your claim to be a highly educated, learned man without many people regretting their admiration for you. (4) You are not allowed to weep unrestrainedly, and that is not the only thing you are not allowed to do: you are not even allowed to sleep in for part of the morning; or to escape from the hubbub of business to the leisure of a quiet country retreat; or, when your body is exhausted with constantly being on guard duty in your demanding post, to restore it with an enjoyable holiday abroad; or to seek mental diversion at shows of various kinds; or to organize your day as you please. You are not allowed to do many things that even the humblest people in obscure circumstances are allowed to: great fortune is great slavery. (5) You are not allowed to do anything as you please: you must listen to so many thousands of people, must organize so many documents; you must examine such an accumulation of business, gathered in from across the whole world, so that it can be brought to the attention of our outstanding emperor in the appropriate order. You are not allowed to weep, I tell you: you need to listen to many people who are weeping, to listen to the <requests> of many people standing trial and longing to gain access to the mercy of our most kindly Caesar, and to do all that you must dry your own tears.
(7.1) So far I have dealt with milder remedies, though they will still help: but when you want to forget everything else, think of Caesar. See what great loyalty, what great industry you owe in return for his favor toward you: you will realize that you may no more be bowed down by your burden than he on whose shoulders the world rests—or so the myths say.13 (2) Caesar himself too is allowed to do everything; and yet, for this very reason, there are many things he is not allowed to do: his wakefulness protects everyone else’s sleep, his hard work everyone else’s leisure, his industry everyone else’s pleasures, his ceaseless activity everyone else’s free time. Ever since Caesar devoted himself to the world, he has robbed himself of himself; and like the stars, which constantly trace out their courses without resting, he is never allowed to stop or do anything for himself. (3) So to a certain extent the same necessity is imposed on you as well: you may not consider your own interests or your own studies. While Caesar controls the world you cannot devote any part of yourself to pleasure or pain or anything else: you owe your whole being to Caesar. (4) In addition, since you constantly declare that Caesar is dearer to you than your own breath, it is not right for you to complain about fortune while Caesar lives: so long as he is unharmed, your relatives are safe and sound, you have lost nothing, your eyes must be not just dry but joyful; in him you have everything, he takes the place of everything. You are not grateful enough for your good fortune—behavior that is quite alien to your very wise and loyal feelings—if you allow yourself to grieve over anything while he is alive.
(8.1) I shall go on to prescribe for you not a stronger remedy but a more personal one. Whenever you go home, at that point you will have to be on your guard against sadness. For it will be unable to gain access to you as long as you can look at your divinity; Caesar will occupy you totally. But when you leave him, then grief, as though handed an opportunity, will lay siege to your loneliness and will gradually creep up on your mind as it relaxes. (2) So you must not allow any moment to be unoccupied by your studies: during that time let the literature you have loved so long and so faithfully return the favor, during that time let it protect you, its priest and worshipper; during that time let Homer and Virgil—they have served the human race as well as you have served both them and everyone else, when you wanted them to be known to a larger readership than they had written for14—let them linger long in your company: all the time that you entrust to their safekeeping will be safe. During that time write as well as you possibly can about the achievements of your Caesar, so that they may be passed on down through the ages by a herald from within his own household; for when it comes to shaping and writing a history, he himself will be the best person to give you both a subject and a model.15 (3) I do not venture to get you to compose, in your usual agreeable style, fables and stories from Aesop, a genre not attempted by Roman talents.16 It is certainly hard for your mind to find a way to embark on these lighter forms of literature so soon after it has received such a severe shock; but take it as proof that your mind has already been strengthened and restored, if it can proceed from more serious forms of writing to these more informal ones. (4) With the first kind, the very somberness of the subject matter will distract your mind, however much it is still ailing and struggling with itself; but your mind will not tolerate works whose composition requires a relaxed expression until it is completely at one with itself. So you will need first of all to exercise it on sterner subject matter, and later to switch to a gentler regime with something lighter.
(9.1) You will also find it a great relief if you frequently ask yourself, “Am I grieving on my own account or on the deceased’s account? If on my own, my display of devotion is meaningless; grief is only justified when it is honorable, so it begins to part company with love when it takes self-interest into consideration; and when it comes to mourning for a brother, nothing suits a good man less than being calculating. (2) If I grieve on his account, I must necessarily judge one of the following alternatives to be the case. If the dead no longer have any sensation, my brother has now escaped all the disadvantages of life, he has been restored to the state he was in before he was born, and free from all evil, he fears nothing, desires nothing, suffers nothing. What madness is this, never to stop grieving for someone who is never going to grieve? (3) But if the dead do have some sensation, now my brother’s mind is exulting as though released from a lengthy prison sentence and at last its own master and judge, enjoying the contemplation of the universe, and looking down on the whole human world from a higher place; best of all, it is looking from closer quarters at the divine, which for so long it had sought in vain to understand.17 So why am I wasting away with longing for someone who is either happy or nonexistent? To weep for a happy man is envy, to weep for a nonexistent man is madness.”
(4) Does it weigh with you that he seems to have lost out on great blessings just at the point when they were showering down on him? When you reflect that there are many things he has missed out on, reflect that there are more things he is not afraid of: anger will not torment him, disease will not strike him down, suspicion will not plague him; gnawing envy, always the enemy of other people’s successes, will not pursue him; fear will not trouble him; the fickleness of fortune, which swiftly redirects its gifts elsewhere, will not unsettle him. If you do the sums properly, he has been let off more than he has been deprived of. (5) He will enjoy neither wealth nor influence, either yours or his own; he will not receive favors, nor will he grant them. Do you think him unhappy because he has lost all that, or blessed because he does not miss it? Believe me: the person to whom good fortune is unnecessary is more blessed than the person who has it in his grasp. All those good things that delight us with an appealing but deceptive pleasure—money, honor, power, and many other things by which the blind greed of the human race is entranced—they bring trouble to their possessor, they are viewed with envy, and, finally, they oppress the very people to whom they bring distinction; they are more a threat than a benefit; they are slippery and unreliable, one’s hold on them is never secure; for even supposing that there is no fear about the future, safeguarding great prosperity is itself an anxious business. (6) If you would believe those who have a more profound insight into the truth, all life is a punishment. We are thrown into this deep, restless sea, whose tides flow back and forth, which at one moment lifts us up with sudden gains, at the next hurls us down with greater losses, constantly tossing us about; and we never settle in a stable position, but we teeter, surge to and fro, and collide with one another; occasionally we suffer shipwreck, and we are constantly afraid of it; as we sail on this squally sea, exposed to every storm, there is no harbor except that of death. (7) So do not begrudge your brother his condition: he is at rest. At last he is free, at last secure, at last eternal. He is survived by Caesar and all his progeny,18 and he is survived by you, together with the brothers you share. Before fortune could withdraw any part of its favor, he took his leave of it while it was still standing beside him, heaping up gifts with bountiful hands. (8) Now he enjoys an open, free sky; from this low, sunken spot he has soared upward to that place, whatever it is, that welcomes souls freed from their chains into its blessed embrace; now he roams there freely, and with supreme pleasure explores all of nature’s goodness. You are mistaken: your brother has not been robbed of the light but has gained a purer light. (9) We all participate in the journey there: so why do we weep over death? He did not leave us, but went on ahead. Believe me, there is great happiness in the inevitability of death. We can be certain of nothing, not even for the rest of today. When the truth is so obscure and shrouded, who can guess whether death resented your brother or had his interests at heart?
(10.1) Your actions always proceed from a strong sense of justice, so you are bound to gain further comfort from this thought: that you suffered no injustice when you lost such a brother, but were granted a favor when you were permitted to enjoy the benefit of his love for so long. (2) It is unjust not to let the giver keep control of the gift; and it is greedy not to count what has been received as gain, but to count what has been handed back as loss. It is an ungrateful person who calls the termination of a pleasure an injustice; and it is a foolish person who thinks that good things are of no benefit except when they are present, and who derives no further satisfaction from them when they are past, failing to realize that things we no longer have are more dependable, because in their case there is no need to fear that they will come to an end. (3) Anyone who thinks he benefits only from something that he has and sees, and who regards having had it as worthless, is taking an over-restricted view of his joys; for pleasures all quickly desert us, they ebb and fade and are swept away almost before they arrive. So our mind must be focused on the past, and everything that has ever delighted us must be recalled and frequently revisited in our thoughts; the memory of pleasures is longer lasting and more dependable than their presence. (4) So count the fact that you had such a fine brother as one of your greatest blessings: you should think not of how much longer you could have had him, but of how long you did have him. Just as with other people and their brothers, nature did not give you ownership of him but lent him to you;19 then when it seemed appropriate it asked for him back, being guided not by the sufficiency of your enjoyment of him but by its own laws. (5) If someone got annoyed about repaying money lent to him, particularly money he was able to use without interest, would he not be considered unjust? Nature gave your brother life, it gave it to you too: if it, exercising its rights, wanted to call in someone’s debt rather early, it is not to blame, for its terms were well known; the blame lies with the mortal mind’s greedy hopes, which repeatedly forget what nature is, and never remember their own status except when they receive a reminder. (6) So rejoice that you had such a good brother, and be content with your enjoyment of him, although it was briefer than you wanted. Count the fact that you had him as a great delight, the fact that you lost him as human; for there is nothing more inconsistent than for someone to be upset because he was granted such a brother for too short a time, and yet not rejoice that at any rate he was granted him.
(11.1) “But he was snatched away when I was not expecting it.” People are all deceived through their own gullibility, and in the case of those they love there is a deliberate forgetfulness about their mortality: nature has testified that it will grant no one a dispensation from its requirements. Daily there pass before our eyes the funerals of people known and unknown; but we pay no attention, and we regard as unexpected what throughout our lives we have been told was going to happen. So this is not the unfairness of fate but the perverseness of the human mind with its insatiable desire for everything, which complains about departing from a place to which it was admitted as a favor. (2) How much more fair-minded was the person who, when he got the news of his son’s death, uttered words worthy of a great man: “When I fathered him, I knew then that he would die.” You would not be at all surprised that this man had a son who was able to die bravely. He did not treat his son’s death as unexpected news; for what is unexpected about a human being dying, when his whole life is merely a journey toward death? (3) “When I fathered him, I knew then that he would die.” Then he added something that showed even greater wisdom and courage: “And it was for this I lifted him up.”20 It is for this we are all lifted up; whoever is brought into life is earmarked for death. Let us rejoice in what is given to us, and let us return it when we are asked to. The fates will seize hold of different people at different times, but they will not miss anybody out; let the mind stand at the ready, let it never fear the unavoidable, let it constantly expect the unpredictable. (4) Do I need to speak of generals and the offspring of generals and men outstanding for their many consulships or many triumphs who encountered the inexorability of destiny? Entire kingdoms with their kings, and nations with their races, have endured their fate; everyone, or rather everything, faces its final day. The end is not the same in every case: life abandons one person in midcourse, deserts another right at the start, and reluctantly releases another in extreme old age, when he is wearied and longing to depart. Though the timetable differs, still we are all heading for the same place. I am not sure whether it is more foolish to be unaware of the law of mortality or more hubristic to object to it. (5) Come on, now, go and fetch the poems of either of your two authors,21 poems that have become more widely known thanks to all the efforts of your literary genius, poems that you have turned into prose of such quality that, though their poetic texture has been lost, their appeal has remained (for in translating from one language to another you have ensured that all their finest characteristics followed you into the foreign tongue—something which was very difficult to achieve): in those works there is not a single book that will not supply you with numerous examples of human fragility, of unpredictable misfortunes, and of tears flowing for all sorts of different reasons. (6) Read and see how inspired was the thundering of your mighty words: you will be ashamed of suddenly going to pieces and abandoning the real greatness of your writing. Do not cause those who have unbounded admiration for your works to ask how such a frail mind could conceive something so powerful and enduring.
(12.1) Instead, turn from the things that torment you to the many great sources of comfort that you have. Look at your splendid brothers, look at your wife, look at your son: fortune has agreed with you that you should make this partial payment in return for the wellbeing of all of them.22 You have many people in whom you can find comfort: make sure you avoid the disgrace of everyone thinking that a single source of grief counts for more with you than all these sources of consolation. (2) You can see that they have all been traumatized just as you have, and they cannot help you; indeed, you realize that they are actually looking to you for support. So, given that they are less highly educated and less talented than you, it is all the more essential for you to withstand the suffering that all of you face. Moreover, it is itself a form of comfort to share one’s grief with many others: because it is being distributed among a number of people, only a tiny part of it should end up with you.
(3) I shall not stop bringing Caesar repeatedly to your attention: while he rules the world and demonstrates how much more effectively the empire is protected by generosity than by military power, while he is in charge of human affairs, there is no risk of your feeling that you have suffered any loss; in this one person you have sufficient security and comfort. So pick yourself up, and whenever tears well up in your eyes, turn them toward Caesar: they will be dried up at the sight of that most mighty and most glorious divinity; his radiance will dazzle them so that they can see nothing else, and it will keep them fixed on him. (4) You must think about him, the one you look at day and night, from whom you never divert your attention; you must invoke his aid against fortune. I have no doubt—so great is his kindness and his benevolence toward all who are close to him—that he has already dressed this wound of yours with many kinds of consolation, and has already amassed many medicines to counter your pain. Besides, even supposing he has done none of those things, is not the mere sight of Caesar, and the thought of him, a supreme comfort to you? (5) May the gods and goddesses extend their loan of him to the earth for a long time to come.23 May he equal the achievements of the deified Augustus and exceed his years.24 So long as he remains among mortals, may he not experience the mortality of anything in his own household. May he build up people’s confidence in his son and win approval for him to be the ruler of the Roman Empire; and may he see him as his father’s partner before he sees him as his successor.25 May the day when his family claims him for heaven be long delayed, and be witnessed by our grandchildren.26
(13.1) Keep your hands off him, fortune, and do not demonstrate your power over him except in your beneficial aspect. Allow him to heal the human race, which has long been sick and ailing; allow him to reinstate and restore everything that the madness of the previous emperor destroyed.27 May this star, which has dawned on a world that was plunged into the abyss and sunk in darkness, shine forever.28 (2) May he pacify Germany,29 open up Britain,30 and conduct triumphs such as his father did,31 and new ones. The virtue that occupies the highest place among his virtues, his clemency, holds out the promise that I too shall be a spectator of those triumphs.32 For he has not struck me down without being willing to raise me up, or rather he has not really struck me down; but when I was assailed by fortune and was falling, he held me up, and as I was hurtling to destruction, with a restraining touch from his divine hand he gently gave me a soft landing: he interceded for me with the senate, and did not just grant me my life but pleaded for it. (3) I leave it to him: let him think what he will of my case; either let his justice discern that it is a good one, or let his clemency make it a good one. Either favor will mean the same to me, whether he knows that I am innocent or wishes I were so. Meanwhile, it is a great comfort for my misery to see his mercy ranging across the whole world; from this very corner in which I have been buried it has already dug out several people who were overwhelmed by disaster many years previous, and has restored them to the light; so I am not afraid that I am the only one he will overlook. But he himself best knows the proper time to come to the rescue of each individual; I shall make every effort to ensure that he will not be ashamed when it is my turn. (4) O that blessed clemency of yours, Caesar, thanks to which exiles live a more tranquil life under you than the leading citizens did so recently under Gaius! They are not fearful, and do not await the sword every single hour, nor do they tremble every time they see a ship; thanks to you, they are enjoying not only an end to fortune’s savagery but also hope of an improvement in fortune, and peace of mind while fortune remains as it is. One can tell that thunderbolts are entirely just when they are worshipped even by those they strike.33
(14.1) So this emperor, who is a universal source of comfort for everyone, has already, if I am not totally mistaken, restored your spirits, and to such a great wound he has applied even greater remedies. He has already used every means to give you strength; he has already, with his highly retentive memory, rehearsed all the precedents that could urge you toward equanimity; he has already expounded the precepts of all the philosophers with his customary eloquence. (2) So no one would better perform the role of comforter: when he is speaking, the words will have a special power, as if they were uttered by an oracle; his divine authority will crush all the force of your grief. So imagine him saying to you, “Fortune has not picked out you alone to subject to such grievous hurt: there neither is nor has been any household in the whole world exempted from mourning for someone. I shall pass over ordinary examples, which, even if they are less significant, are still numerous, and I shall take you to our public calendar and annals.34 (3) You see all these portraits that have filled the atrium of the Caesars? Every single one of them is memorable for some family misfortune; every single one of those luminaries who brought distinction to past centuries was either racked with grief for lost relatives, or his relatives felt the most anguished grief for him.
(4) “Need I remind you of Scipio Africanus, who got the news of his brother’s death while in exile?35 This brother, who rescued his brother from prison, could not rescue him from fate; and it was evident to all how intolerant of equal rights was the brotherly love of Africanus, for on the same day as he had snatched his brother from the hands of a court official, he also vetoed a tribune of the plebs, although he was a private citizen.36 But he mourned the loss of his brother with as much courage as he had defended him. (5) Need I remind you of Scipio Aemilianus, who at virtually one and the same time watched his father’s triumph and the funerals of two brothers?37 Although he was a mere youth, almost a boy, when his family was struck down hard on the heels of Paulus’s triumph, he endured the sudden devastation with all the courage required of a man who was born to ensure that the city of Rome did not lack a Scipio and was not outlived by Carthage.38
(15.1) “Need I recall the closeness of the two Luculli, wrenched apart by death?39 Or the Pompeii,40 to whom savage fortune would not even concede that they should eventually die in the same catastrophe? Sextus Pompeius first of all outlived his sister, by whose death the bonds of the peace that had held together so well at Rome were undone;41 he also outlived his excellent brother, whom fortune had raised up in order that it should topple him from a height no less than that from which it had toppled his father; and still after this misfortune Sextus Pompeius proved himself equal not just to the grief but also to the war. (2) From everywhere countless examples of brothers separated by death suggest themselves, or rather, to put it the other way around, scarcely any pairs of brothers have ever been seen growing old together. But I shall be content with examples from our own family; for no one will be so lacking in judgment and good sense as to complain that fortune has inflicted grief on someone else when he knows that it has even set its heart on the tears of the Caesars.
(3) “The deified Augustus lost Octavia, his beloved sister, and nature granted no dispensation from the inevitability of grief even to someone it had destined for heaven. Indeed, he was assailed by every kind of bereavement, losing his sister’s son, who had been groomed to succeed him;42 briefly, to save me listing his sorrows individually, he lost both his sons-in-law, his children, and his grandchildren, and of all mortals none was more conscious that he was a human being while he lived among human beings.43 But his heart, which was well able to cope with everything, coped with all these numerous, severe losses, and the deified Augustus was victorious not just over foreign nations but also over his sorrows. (4) Gaius Caesar, <son> and grandson of the deified Augustus,44 my maternal uncle,45 in the earliest years of his manhood, while Leader of the Youth, lost Lucius, his beloved brother, also a Leader of the Youth, during the preparations for the Parthian War.46 He suffered an emotional wound much more serious than his later physical one; but he bore both with outstanding love and outstanding courage.
(5) “<Tiberius> Caesar, my paternal uncle, lost Drusus Germanicus my father, a brother younger than he was, who at the time was opening up the interior of Germany and bringing the wildest tribes under Roman control; and he held him and kissed him as he died. Nevertheless he imposed a limit not only on his own grief but also on that of others: the whole army was not just sorrowful but traumatized, and claimed the body of its dear Drusus for itself; but Tiberius made it revert to the traditional Roman form of mourning, and judged that discipline had to be maintained not just in military matters but also in grief. He would not have been able to restrain the tears of other people if he had not first held his own in check. (16.1) Marcus Antonius, my grandfather, was second to none except the man who defeated him; just when he was reorganizing the state, when he was invested with triumviral power and acknowledged no superior authority, when, indeed, he saw everything, apart from his two colleagues, under his own control, he heard that his brother had been killed.47 (2) Reckless fortune, how you amuse yourself with human suffering! At the very same time when Marcus Antonius was sitting in judgment on the life and death of his fellow citizens, the order was given for the brother of Marcus Antonius to be led away to execution. Marcus Antonius bore such a cruel wound with the same courageousness as he had endured all other adversities, and his mourning took the form of offering a sacrifice to his brother with the blood of twenty legions.48
(3) “But, to pass over every other example, and to ignore even the other deaths by which I have been affected, fortune has twice attacked me with grief for a brother, twice it has learned that I could be hurt but could not be defeated:49 I lost my brother Germanicus, and anyone who considers how devoted to each other loyal brothers are can readily understand how I was devoted to him; but I kept my feelings under control so as not to neglect anything that was required of a good brother, and not to do anything that could be criticized in an emperor.”
(4) So imagine the father of his people presenting you with these examples, and showing how nothing is sacred and inviolable for fortune, which has had the nerve to conduct funeral processions from the very household from which it was intending to seek gods. Let no one be surprised if it acts either cruelly or unjustly; can it know any sense of fairness or any restraint in its dealings with private houses when its implacable savagery has so often polluted the couches of the gods with death? (5) We may revile it not just with our own voices but also with the voices of the whole people, yet it will not change; it will stand its ground before all our prayers, all our complaints. This is how fortune has behaved toward humans, this is how it will behave: it has left nothing unventured, it will leave nothing unscathed; it will rampage violently everywhere, just as it always has done; in order to cause hurt it will even have the effrontery to enter those houses that are approached through temples, and it will drape black cloth over doorways festooned with laurel.50 (6) Let us seek to obtain this one request from it with public vows and prayers, if it has not yet decided to reduce the human race to nothing, if it still looks favorably on the name of Rome: this emperor was a gift to a weary human world, so may it be willing to revere him as sacred, just as every mortal does; may it learn mercy from him, and be gentle with the gentlest of all emperors.
(17.1) So you should look at all those I have just mentioned who were either adopted into heaven or came very close to it: fortune does not even keep its hands off those by whose names we swear,51 so you should react with equanimity when its hands reach out toward you as well. You should imitate the resoluteness with which these people have borne and overcome their grief, insofar as it is right for a human to walk in the footsteps of the divine. (2) Although in other spheres there are immense disparities of status and distinction, virtue is available to all: it thinks no one unworthy as long as he thinks himself worthy. You will certainly do well to imitate those who might have complained that they were not themselves exempted from this suffering, but who nevertheless judged that to be treated in the same way as everyone else in this one respect was not an injustice but the law of mortality, those who endured what had happened neither with excessive bitterness and resentment nor in a weak and womanish manner. For failure to acknowledge one’s sufferings is inhuman; failure to shoulder them is unmanly.
(3) Since I have mentioned all the Caesars whom fortune robbed of brothers and sisters, I cannot omit one who deserves to be struck off every list of the Caesars, one whom nature created to bring ruin and shame to the human race, who burned and totally destroyed the empire which the clemency of our most kindly emperor is now restoring. (4) When he lost his sister Drusilla,52 Gaius Caesar, that fellow who could no more grieve than rejoice as an emperor should, shunned the sight and company of his citizens, did not attend the funeral of his sister, and did not make the funerary offerings due to his sister, but in his residence at Alba he relieved the trauma of that agonizing bereavement with dice and gaming board and *** other such distractions.53 What a disgrace to the empire! Gambling was the solace of a Roman emperor who was mourning his sister! (5) The same Gaius who, with insane inconsistency, sometimes let his beard and hair grow long, sometimes roamed aimlessly along the shores of Italy and Sicily, and was never quite sure whether he wanted his sister to be mourned or worshipped, all the while that he was setting up temples and couches for her,54 was inflicting the cruelest punishment on those who had not been sufficiently mournful; for he endured the blows of adversity with the same lack of self-control with which, when buoyed up by favorable events, he swaggered far beyond the bounds of human decency. (6) Every Roman man should shun the example he set of distracting one’s grief with ill-timed amusements, or inflaming it with unsightly mourning clothes and unkempt appearance, or entertaining it with other people’s sufferings, an utterly inhuman form of comfort.
(18.1) You, however, need not change your usual behavior at all, since you have begun to devote yourself to those studies that best increase your happiness and most easily diminish your misfortune, that simultaneously bring both the greatest distinction and the greatest comfort to a human being. So now plunge yourself more deeply into your studies, now surround yourself with them, like fortifications for your mind, so that grief may not find a way in from any direction. (2) Also, prolong the memory of your brother in some literary monument of your own; in human life this is the only product that no storm can harm, no length of time consume. Other monuments, formed from stone structures and blocks of marble, or from mounds of earth raised up to a great height, do not guarantee a long survival, because they too perish: but a memorial built by literary genius is immortal. Lavish that on your brother, lay him to rest in that; it will be better for you to celebrate him with your literary genius, which is destined to last forever, than to mourn him with a grief that is pointless.
(3) As for fortune itself, although at the moment its case cannot be defended before you—for all that it has given us is made hateful by the fact that it has taken one thing away—nevertheless fortune will need to be defended as soon as time has enabled you to judge it more fairly; because then you will be able to achieve reconciliation with it. For it has made many provisions for remedying this hurt, and in future will give you many gifts to compensate for it; and finally, it itself had given you what it has taken away. (4) So do not employ your talent against yourself, do not be an advocate for your own grief. Your eloquence can make small things pass for great, and again it can belittle what is great and make it seem insignificant; but let it keep its powers for another occasion, now let it be wholly devoted to your own consolation. Yet watch out, in case this too is now superfluous; for nature demands some grief from us, but we bring more on ourselves through empty pride. (5) I shall never demand that you do not mourn at all, though I know that one can find men of a harsh rather than a courageous wisdom who say that the sage will not feel any grief.55 They do not seem to me ever to have encountered this sort of adversity; otherwise fortune would have knocked their arrogant philosophy out of them, and forced them even against their will to confess the truth. (6) Reason will have achieved enough if it simply excises any grief that is superfluous and redundant; that reason should not allow grief to exist at all is something no one should either hope or wish for. Let reason rather maintain a midcourse that bears no similarity either to lack of love or to lack of sanity, and let it keep us in a frame of mind that is loving but not anguished: let tears flow, but let them also stop; let groans well up from the depths of the heart, but let them also come to an end; keep your mind under control in a manner that wins approval both from the wise and from brothers. (7) Make sure that you want to be reminded of your brother frequently, that you often mention him in your conversation, and also that through constant recollection you keep him in your mind’s eye. You will be successful if you ensure that you find his memory pleasant rather than melancholy; for it is natural for the mind always to recoil from anything it returns to with sadness. (8) Think of his modesty, think of his resourcefulness when it came to action, his energy when it came to getting things done, his reliability when it came to promises. Pass on to others, and recall for your own benefit, all he said and did. Think of what he was like and of the hopes one could have had for him; for is there anything that one could not have confidently promised concerning such a brother?
(9) I have written this as best I was able, with a mind worn out and numbed by long disuse. If my words seem an inadequate match for your intellect or an inadequate cure for your grief, consider how one cannot be free to console someone else when one is preoccupied with one’s own sufferings, and how Latin words do not come to one readily when the crude gabbling of barbarians, which even the ears of more civilized barbarians find harsh, is echoing all around.56