LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
TRANSLATED BY JAMES KER
(1.1) You have asked me, Lucilius, why it is the case that, if the universe is governed by providence, many bad things happen to good men. It would have been more fitting to answer this in the context of a work in which we were proving that providence is in charge of absolutely everything and that god is in our midst. But since you want to extract a small part from the whole and to resolve one dispute while leaving the larger controversy untouched, I will do a thing that is not difficult: I will plead the case of the gods.
(2) It is redundant in the present circumstances to show that a work of such grandeur does not exist without some kind of protector, and that the heavenly bodies do not gather together and move about in this way by a chance impulse—that things propelled by chance frequently fall into disorder and soon bump into one another, whereas this rapid motion continues without collision, obeying an eternal law and carrying along with it such a quantity of things on land and sea, so many lights shining and reflecting in ordered arrangement.9 It is redundant to show that this order is not the product of matter moving randomly, and that things that came together haphazardly could not be suspended so artfully that, as a result, the tremendous weight of the earth could sit without moving and watch the flight of the heavens zooming around it; that the seas could pour into valleys and soften the earth and not be caused to overflow by rivers; that huge things could be born from seeds so small. (3) Not even those things that seem disordered and unpredictable—I mean rain, clouds, lightning bolts shooting down, and fires erupting from the sundered peaks of mountains, and the ground subsiding and quaking, and other things that the restless parts of the universe set in motion around the earth—not even these, however sudden they are, happen without reason. They too have their own causes, no less than things in strange places that are wondrous to look on, such as hot waters amid the tides and new archipelagos breaching in the wide open sea. (4) And again, if someone observes the shores being laid bare by the ebbing sea and in a brief time covered over, he will believe that the waves are first being drawn together and inward by some unseen turbulence, and then are breaking forth and rallying to recapture their position. In fact, however, the waves proportionately grow and decline with the hours and days, now greater now smaller, corresponding to how they have been drawn out by the lunar star, at whose command the ocean swells. These things can be saved for their own occasion, especially as you are not expressing doubts about providence, but leveling a complaint.
(5) I will reconcile you with the gods: they are the best to the best people. You need to know that the nature of the world does not allow that good things should ever be harmful to the good. There is a friendship between good men and the gods sealed by virtue. Did I say friendship? Actually there is a kinship and resemblance, because the only difference between a good man and god is time. He is god’s pupil, his imitator,10 and his true offspring, and that noble parent makes rigorous demands on his virtues and raises him strictly. That is what stern fathers do. (6) So when you see that good men who are favorites of the gods toil, sweat, and climb a steep road to the top, whereas bad men laze about immersed in pleasures, you should think about this: in our sons we are delighted by moderation, but in home-born slaves by license; and the former are restrained by a more severe discipline, whereas impudence is fostered in the latter.11 The same thing should be obvious to you in the case of god. He does not treat the good man as his darling. He tests him, hardens him, readies him for himself.
(2.1) “Why do so many adversities arise for good men?” Nothing bad can happen to a good man. Opposites do not mix. Just as the flavor of the sea remains unchanged and is not even diluted, despite so many rivers, despite such an abundance of rains pouring down from above, despite such strongly tainted springs, so too the mind of a courageous man, faced with an onslaught of adversities, does not falter. It stays where it stands and it converts any happening to match its own color, being, as you know, more powerful than all external things. (2) I do not mean he does not feel them, but he defeats them; and although at other times he is resting and calm, when an attack comes he rises to meet it. He thinks of adversities as training exercises. And what man, so long as he is a man and is poised for morally good things, is not hungry for honest work and ready to undertake duties at great risk? What conscientious man does not find relaxation a punishment? (3) We see that athletes who care about their strength engage in bouts with the toughest men they can find, and demand that these men, who are helping them to prepare for a contest, use every ounce of their strength against them. They let themselves be battered and thrown around, and if they cannot find a single opponent who is their equal, they pit themselves against several at once. (4) Without an adversary, their manliness (uirtus) wastes away: its size and its power can be seen only when it shows what it can stand up to. Clearly good men must do the same. They must not flinch at hardships and difficulties, and must not level complaints against fate; but whatever happens, they must find the good in it—should turn it to good. It is not what you face that counts, but how you face it.
(5) Do you not see how fathers care for their children in one way, mothers in another? Fathers order their children to get up early to attend to their learning, and do not allow them to relax even on holidays, exacting sweat from them and sometimes tears; whereas mothers coddle them and wish to keep them sheltered, never encountering hardship, never weeping, never toiling. (6) God has a father’s attitude toward good men. He gives them tough love, saying, “Let them be stirred up by labors, pains, and losses so they can become truly robust.” Fattened animals are lazy and inactive, and their strength fails them not only when they are put to work but simply when they move the burden of their own weight. Good fortune that has known no wound cannot endure a single cut. But if someone has had to do constant battle with his misfortunes, his injuries give him a thick skin, and he yields to no bad thing. Rather, if he falls, he still fights—from his knees.
(7) Are you surprised if that god who loves good men so much and wants them to be as good and outstanding as they can be allots them a fortune to exercise against? I, for one, am not surprised if sometimes the gods have an impulse to watch great men wrestling with some calamity. (8) Sometimes we feel pleasure if a young man with a steadfast mind has intercepted an oncoming beast with his hunting spear or has endured a lion’s attack without showing any fear. This spectacle pleases us all the more in proportion to how nobly he accomplished it. [Yet] such childish and frivolous entertainments for human beings are not sufficient to attract the gods’ attention. (9) Here is a spectacle worthy to be looked on by god12 as he inspects his own creation; here is a god-worthy duel: a brave man matched against misfortune, especially if the man has issued the challenge himself.
What I am saying is that I do not see what on earth Jupiter could have that is more beautiful, if he wishes to turn his attention to it, than the sight of Cato,13 his party already devastated more than once, nevertheless standing upright amid public ruin. (10) “The whole world may have yielded to a single man’s authority,” says Cato, “and the lands may be guarded by legions and the seas by fleets, and Caesar’s soldiers may be at the gates. Yet Cato has a way out: with one hand he will make a broad path to freedom. This sword, which remained unstained and blameless even in civil war, will now at last accomplish good and noble deeds: it will give to Cato the freedom it was not able to give to his fatherland. Mind of mine, set about the task you have long rehearsed. Tear yourself out of human affairs. Petreius and Juba have already fought each other and lie slain by each other’s hand, in a brave and splendid death pact.14 But this does not befit our greatness. It is as disgraceful for Cato to seek his death from another as it is for him to seek his life.”
(11) It is clear to me that the gods watched with great joy as that man, that fierce self-liberator, gave thought to others’ safety and eased the escape of those who were departing, as he took up his studies even on that final night,15 as he thrust his sword into his sacred breast, as he splayed his guts and used his hand to extract that soul of his, which was too pure to be sullied by a blade. (12) I can believe that this is why his wound was not sufficiently decisive and fatal.16 For the gods, who do not die, it was not enough to watch Cato once: his virtue was brought back and recalled, to show itself in a more challenging role. After all, entering into death does not take as great a mind as seeking it over again. Why would they not have watched willingly as their progeny escaped in such a conspicuous and memorable exit? Death surely sanctifies those men whose exit earns praise even from those who fear it.
(3.1) But in the course of my discussion, I will show how things that seem bad are not. Now I say this: first, that those things that you call harsh, that you call adverse and detestable, are in the interest of the very men to whom they occur; next, that they occur in the interest of everyone, for whom the gods have greater concern than for individuals; and after this, that the men to whom they occur are willing, and that if they are not willing, they are deserving of bad. To these points I will add that these things come to pass like this due to fate, and they come about for good men by the same law by which the men are good. Then I will persuade you never to feel pity for a good man. Yes, he can be called pitiable, but he cannot be so.17
(2) Of all the things I have proposed, that which I said first seems the most difficult: that those things we shudder and tremble at are in the interest of the very men to whom they happen. “Is it in these men’s own interest,” you ask, “to be cast into exile, to be dragged down into poverty, to carry out their children or their wife for burial, to be broken by dishonor, to be maimed?” If you are surprised that these things are in someone’s interest, you will be surprised that some people are healed by fire and blade, and equally by hunger and thirst. But if you consider for yourself how some people for therapeutic reasons have their bones shaved and picked out and their veins extracted and certain limbs amputated that were not able to remain attached without their killing the whole body, you will also allow this to be proved to you: that certain difficulties are in the interest of those to whom they occur—just as, by Hercules, certain things that are praised and sought after are against the interests of those whom they delight, like feasts, drunkenness, and other things that kill through pleasure.
(3) Among the many magnificent sayings of our Demetrius18 is this—I heard it recently and it still rings and echoes in my ears: “Nothing seems to me more unhappy,” he said, “than someone to whom nothing adverse has ever happened.” For such a man has never been allowed to test himself. Though everything has flowed for him in accordance with his wish, or even before he wished it, still the gods have made a scathing judgment of him. He has seemed unworthy of ever defeating fortune, which retreats from any really cowardly man, as if to say: “What? Am I to take that man as my adversary? He will immediately put down his weapons. Against him I do not need all my power. He will take flight at the slightest threatening sign: he cannot even look at me. Let us scout around for someone else with whom I can enter into combat. I am ashamed to fight with a human being who is ready to be defeated!” (4) The gladiator thinks it a dishonor to be matched with an inferior opponent, and knows that there is no glory in defeating one who can be defeated without danger. Fortune does the same. It seeks the bravest men as matches for it and passes over others in disgust. It approaches the most scornful and upright men to direct its force against. It tests fire on Mucius, poverty on Fabricius, exile on Rutilius, torture on Regulus, poison on Socrates, death on Cato.19 A great example cannot be found except in bad fortune.
(5) Is Mucius20 unhappy because he clutches the enemy’s fires with his right hand and exacts his own punishment for his error, because by scorching his hand he puts to flight the king whom he was not able to put to flight when the same hand was armed? Well? Would he have been happier if he had warmed his hand in a lady friend’s lap?
(6) Is Fabricius21 unhappy because, in the time he has left over from the republic, he tills his fields? Because he wages war as much on wealth as he did on Pyrrhus? Because at his hearth he dines on those very roots and grasses he picked as he cleared his land, an old man who once celebrated a triumph? Well? Would he have been happier if he had crammed into his belly fish from distant shores, and exotic birds? If he had roused his slow and sickened stomach with shellfish from the upper and lower seas?22 If he had arrayed a huge pile of fruits around highly sought-after beasts caught at great loss of hunters’ lives?
(7) Is Rutilius23 unhappy because those who condemned him will need to plead their case for all the ages? Because he greeted his removal from his fatherland with a calmer mind than he did the removal of his exile from him? Because he alone refused the dictator Sulla and, when he was recalled, nearly went backward and fled further away? “They will see,” he said, “—those whom Your Happiness24 caught at Rome. Let them see the abundant blood in the forum, and senators’ heads above the Servilian lake (for that was the storage depot for the spoils of Sulla’s proscription),25 and bands of cutthroats roving this way and that throughout the city, and many thousands of Roman citizens butchered in one place even after assurance had been given—indeed, while assurance was being given. Let these things be seen by those men who are not able to go into exile.”26 (8) Well? Is Lucius Sulla lucky because when he goes down to the forum a path is cleared for him with the sword, because he allows the heads of former consuls to be shown to him, and he has the profit of the massacre counted out by the quaestor and in public records? And all this was done by the very one who passed the Cornelian law!27
(9) This brings us to Regulus.28 What harm did fortune do to him when it made him a lesson in trustworthiness, a lesson in endurance? His skin is pierced by nails, and in whichever direction his exhausted body leans, it rests on a wound. His eyes have been held open in unending wakefulness. The greater his torture, the greater his glory will be. Do you wish to know how little he regrets having valued his virtue at this price? Unfasten him and send him to the senate, and he will express the same opinion. (10) Do you therefore think Maecenas happier?29 He, anxious about his love affairs and lamenting over daily rejection by his moody wife, tries to send himself to sleep using musicians playing in harmony, echoing gently from afar. Though he may tranquillize himself with undiluted wine and may use the splashing of waters to distract his anxious thoughts and deceive them with a thousand pleasures, on his feather bed he will lie as wide awake as Regulus on the cross. But Regulus has comfort in tolerating hardships for the sake of what is morally good, and he looks away from his suffering toward its cause; whereas Maecenas, weak from pleasures and toiling with excessive happiness, is vexed less by the things he suffers than by the cause of his suffering. (11) The vices have not taken possession of the human race to such an extent that there is doubt regarding whether, given a choice of fate, more would wish to be born Reguluses than Maecenases. Or, if there is anyone who would dare to say he would have preferred to be born a Maecenas than a Regulus, that same person, even if he does not say so, would have preferred himself to be born a Terentia.30
(12) In your judgment, was Socrates31 badly treated because he swallowed that publicly mixed potion no differently than a tonic of immortality and discussed death right up to death? Was he badly done by because his blood congealed, and the coldness creeping in little by little brought the vigor of his veins to a standstill? (13) How much more ought we to envy him than those to whom wine is served in a jeweled cup, or for whom a male sex slave, who has been taught to endure all things and whose manhood has been cut off or is ambiguous, melts snow floating in a cup of gold. They will measure back out in vomiting whatever they drank, reluctantly re-tasting their own bile. But Socrates will gulp down poison joyfully and willingly.
(14) As for Cato, enough has been said, and all human beings will agree in acknowledging that the greatest happiness fell to him, whom the nature of the world selected to collide with things that are objects of fear: “Enmities with the powerful are grievous: let him be set in simultaneous opposition to Pompey, Caesar, Crassus.32 It is grievous to be surpassed in political office by the worst sort of men: let him be placed below Vatinius.33 It is grievous to be involved in civil wars: let him soldier around the whole world for a good cause with equal determination and lack of good luck. It is grievous to lay one’s hands on oneself: let him do this. What will I accomplish through these things? That all may know that these things are not bad. After all, I deemed Cato worthy of them.”
(4.1) Prosperity comes even to the common people and to worthless minds. But subjugating the misfortunes and terrors of mortals is unique to a great man. The fact is that always being happy and passing through life without one’s mind being challenged is not to know the other part of the nature of the world. (2) You are a great man. But how do I know, if fortune does not give you an opportunity to show virtue? You have gone to the Olympic Games, but no one except for you has gone. You have a crown; victory you do not have. I do not congratulate you as though you were a brave man, but as though you had attained the consulship or praetorship: your increase is from a conferred honor. (3) I can say the same thing even to a good man, if no difficult event has given him occasion to show the force of his mind: “I judge you pitiable because you have never been pitiable. You have passed through life without an adversary. No one will know what you were capable of—not even you yourself.” The thing is, self-knowledge requires a test: no one ever discovered what he was capable of except by trying. That is why there are men who, when bad things were slow to come, spontaneously put themselves in their path and, when their virtue looked like it would pass into obscurity, sought out an occasion for it to shine forth. (4) What I am saying is that great men sometimes rejoice in adversities, just as brave soldiers rejoice in war. I myself once heard the gladiator Triumphus lamenting the rarity of spectacles under Tiberius Caesar: “What a fine era has passed away!” he said.34
Virtue is greedy for danger and does not think about what it is going to suffer but what it is striving toward, because even what it is going to suffer is part of its glory. Men in the army glory in their wounds. They joyfully display blood flowing, as a stroke of good fortune. Even if those who come back from the battle line unwounded have accomplished the same, he who returns wounded is looked on more. (5) What I am saying is that whenever god provides people with the material for doing something spiritedly and courageously, he is showing concern for them, whom he desires to be as morally good as possible. This is something that requires events of a certain difficulty. It is in a storm that one may recognize a captain, in a battle line a soldier. How can I know how much spirit you have against poverty, if you are immersed in wealth? How can I know how much resilience you have against dishonor and infamy and being hated by the people, if you are living your old age amid applause, if you are followed by a popularity that cannot be assailed and somehow turns minds favorably toward you? How do I know how calm your mind will be when you confront deprivation, if the children you have raised are there before your eyes? I have heard you when you were consoling others. I would have taken notice only if you had consoled yourself, if you had forbidden yourself to grieve.
(6) My plea to you35 is that you not allow yourselves to fear those things that the immortal gods apply to our minds like spurs. Calamity is an opportunity for virtue. The ones that can deservingly be called pitiable are those who grow numb from excessive good fortune, who are held in a lazy tranquility as if on a motionless sea. If anything happens to them, it will come as a novelty. (7) Harsh things come as a greater shock to those who lack experience. The yoke feels heavy to a neck that is tender. The new recruit blanches at the sight of a wound. The veteran soldier looks on his own bleeding boldly, knowing that he has often been victorious after blood. That is why god hardens, examines, and exercises those whom he approves of, those whom he loves, whereas those whom he seems to be indulging, whom he seems to be sparing, he is keeping soft for bad things to come. You are wrong if you judge that an exception has been made for someone: though he has been fortunate for a long time, his share will come to him too. Whoever seems to have been dismissed has been postponed.
(8) Why does god assail all the best men with bad health or grief or other misfortunes? Because also in an army camp, the most dangerous missions are given to the bravest. A leader sends his most select troops to attack the enemy in a night raid or to scout out a path or to dislodge a garrison from its post. None of them says as he departs, “The general has done badly by me,” but rather, “He judged well.” Let the same thing be said by any who are ordered to suffer things that fearful and cowardly men would weep over: “We seemed to god to be worthy of a test of how much human nature could endure.”
(9) Flee from delights, flee from good fortune that drains your strength. In good fortune your minds are dissolved, and unless something intervenes to remind you of your lot as human beings, your minds fade as if put to sleep in an unending drunkenness. If someone has always been protected from gusts by windows, if his feet are warm from a succession of heated applications, if his dining rooms have been tempered by heat coming from under the floor and piped through the walls, the touch of a light breeze will be dangerous. (10) Because all things are harmful that have exceeded due measure, an excess of good fortune is exceedingly dangerous. It disturbs the brain. It lures our thoughts into baseless fantasies. It infuses a great deal of fogginess between fiction and truth. Why would it not be more preferable to endure unending misfortune by summoning virtue than to be broken asunder by “good” things lacking limit or measure? Death by starvation is gentler: from feasting men explode.
(11) With good men, then, the gods follow the same reasoning that instructors follow with their pupils: they demand more work from those who give them greater reason to hope. You cannot think that the Lacedaemonians hate their children just because they test their abilities with public floggings?36 Their own fathers urge them to endure the lashes of the whip courageously, and though they are lacerated and half-unconscious they beg them to keep offering up their wounds for further wounding. (12) Why is it strange if god puts noble spirits through hard tests? A lesson in virtue is never soft. Fortune flogs us and lacerates us: let us suffer. It is not cruelty but a trial, and the more often we come to it the more courageous we will be. The most robust part of the body is that which constant use has put into action. We ought to offer ourselves up to fortune so that by it we can be hardened against it. It will gradually make us equal to it: the frequency of our endangerment will give us scorn for dangers. (13) The reason why sailors have bodies hard enough to endure the sea, why farmers have callused hands, why soldiers’ arms are strong enough to wield weapons, and why runners have agile limbs is this: what is most robust in each is what he has exercised. The mind comes to scorn suffering by suffering.
You will realize what suffering can produce in us if you observe what a contribution hard work makes to nations who are naked and become more courageous by what they lack. (14) Consider all the races in which the pax Romana reaches its limit—I mean the Germans and whatever nomadic races are encountered around the lower Danube.37 They are oppressed by unending winter and gloomy skies. The barren soil sustains them grudgingly. They keep the rain out with straw and leaves. They range over lakes hardened into ice. For nourishment they catch beasts. (15) Do they seem pitiable to you? Nothing is pitiable if habit has carried it to the point where it is natural: things that began by necessity have little by little become a pleasure. Those races have no dwellings and no settlements except what is determined by their fatigue at the end of each day. Their nourishment is base and must be sought out by hand, the sky is hostile and terrifying, their bodies are uncovered. What seems calamitous to you is the life of so many races.
(16) Why are you surprised if good men are buffeted so that they can be made stronger? A tree is not robust or strong unless a continuous wind has been blasting it, for the harassment makes it solid and its roots become more securely fixed. Trees that have grown up in a sunny valley are susceptible to breaking. In order to be able to be fearless, then, it is in good men’s own interest that they be much thrown around amid terrifying things, and that they endure things with a calm mind—things that are not bad except for someone who bears them badly.
(5.1) Now add the fact that it is in everyone’s interest for the best men to be “soldiers,” as it were, and to perform labors. This is god’s plan and the wise man’s alike: to show that the things that the crowd desires and fears are neither good nor bad.38 But it will be clear that things he has allotted to no one but the good man are good, and that things he has imposed only on bad men are bad. (2) Blindness will be hateful if no one has lost their eyes except those who deserved to have them gouged out: therefore let Appius and Metellus lack sight.39 Wealth is not a good: therefore let even Elius40 the pimp have it so that although people have consecrated their wealth in temples, they can see it also in a brothel. God has no better way of removing people’s desire for things than by conferring them on the most disgraceful men and taking them away from the best men.
(3) “But it is unfair for a good man to be maimed or crucified or bound in chains, while bad men walk around free and indulgent, their bodies unharmed.” And? Is it not “unfair” for brave men to take up arms and spend the night encamped and stand before the rampart with wounds bandaged up, and meanwhile for the castrated and the devotees of shamelessness to live in the city without a care? And? Is it not “unfair” for the noblest virgins to be awakened in the night to perform sacred rituals, while the corrupted ones enjoy the deepest of sleeps? (4) Toil requires the very best. The senate often deliberates the whole day long while at the same time the most despicable individuals either pass their leisure on the Campus (Martius) or lurk in taverns or waste their time standing around talking. The same thing happens in this republic of the world: good men toil, they expend and are expended—and this willingly. They are not dragged away by fortune: they follow it and match its pace. If they had known, they would have anticipated it.
(5) I remember hearing this other saying of Demetrius, that bravest of men:41 “I can,” he said, “make only this one complaint to you, immortal gods: that you did not make your will known to me beforehand. For I would have come earlier to these things at which I am now present, in response to your summons. Do you want to take my children? I raised them for you. Do you want a part of my body? Take it: it is not a great thing for me to promise, as I will soon leave the whole of it. Do you want my breath? Why would I cause any delay for your receiving back what you gave? Whatever you seek you will take from one who is willing. Well? I would have preferred to offer it than to be asked to give it. Why was there a need to take it? You could have received it. Still, even now you will not be taking it, because nothing is seized except from someone who is holding on.”
(6) I am coerced into nothing. I suffer nothing unwillingly. I do not serve god, but rather I agree with him—all the more so because I know that all things come to pass by a law that is fixed and is decreed for eternity. (7) The fates lead us, and the amount of time that remains for each person was stipulated at our first hour when we were born.42 Cause hangs on cause. Things both private and public are drawn along in a long order of events. Each thing must be suffered bravely because all things do not simply occur, as we think, but rather they arrive. It was decided long ago what you would have that you could rejoice about, what you would have that you could cry about. And however much the lives of individuals seem to be distinguished by great variety, the total comes to one thing: the things we receive will perish, as will we. (8) Why, then, do we get angry? Why do we complain? We were made ready for this. Let nature use its bodies as it wants. We should be joyful and courageous toward all things, and we should consider how nothing perishes that is ours. What belongs to a good man? To offer himself up to fate. It is a magnificent consolation to be carried away with the universe. Whatever it is that has commanded us to live in this way, to die in this way, binds the gods too with the same necessity. Human and divine are carried along equally on a course that cannot be revoked. Yes, the founder and ruler of everything inscribed the fates himself, but he also follows them: having commanded them once, he obeys them always.
(9) “But why was god so unfair when distributing fate that he matched good men with poverty and wounds and untimely deaths?” An artisan cannot change his material: nature has not allowed this.43 Certain things cannot be separated from certain other things: they hold together, they are indivisible.44 Minds that are sluggish and liable to fall asleep or to be awake in a way that is no different from sleep are woven from inactive elements. To fashion a man who can genuinely be called a man, a stronger fate is needed. For him, the way will not be flat: he must go up and down, he must be tossed by waves, and must guide his vessel on a stormy sea. He must hold his course against fortune. Many things will happen that are hard and rough—but things he can soften and smooth out himself. Fire proves gold; misery, brave men.
(10) See how high virtue ought to ascend. You will realize that the way he needs to go is not free of cares:
The first part of the road is steep, and even fresh in the morning the horses can scarcely struggle up it. The highest part is in the middle of the sky,
and to look on the sea and the lands from there is something I myself
am often afraid to do, and my heart trembles in quivering terror.
The road’s furthest part is steep and calls for firm control: even then, Tethys looks up from below, fearing that, before she receives me
in the waves that lie beneath, I may be thrown headlong.45
(11) When that noble-born young man (Phaethon) had heard this, he said: “This road appeals to me: I will ascend. So valuable is it to go through those things, even if I will fall.” He (the Sun) persists in trying to scare his eager mind with causes for fear:
And even if you hold to the road and are not drawn to err from it,
still you will go amid the horns of the Bull who stands opposite, and the Haemonian Bow, and the face of the fierce Lion.
After this he says: “Give me the chariot and harness it. These things you think deter me goad me on. I wish to stand in the place where the Sun himself trembles.” It is lowly and lazy to follow the safe path: virtue takes the high road.
(6.1) “But why does god allow anything bad to happen to good men?” Actually he does not allow this. He has taken all bad things away from them—crimes and misdeeds and wicked thoughts and greedy designs and blind lust and avarice that hovers over what belongs to another. The men themselves he watches over and protects. Surely no one can demand from god that he take care of good men’s baggage too? They themselves discharge god of this responsibility: they scorn external things. (2) Democritus cast away his wealth, reckoning it to be burdensome to a good intellect.46 Why, then, are you surprised if god allows to happen to a good man what a good man himself sometimes wants to happen to him? Good men lose their sons: why not, when sometimes they actually kill them? They are sent into exile: why not, when sometimes they leave their fatherland themselves, with no intention of seeking it again? They are killed: why not, when sometimes they lay their hands on themselves? (3) Why do they suffer certain hardships? So they can teach others to suffer them: they are born to serve as an example.
Imagine, therefore, god saying: “What do you47 have that you can complain to me about, you who have approved of what is right? I have surrounded others with false goods, and I have deluded their empty minds as if with a long and deceptive dream. I have adorned them with gold and silver and ivory. There is nothing good within. (4) Those whom you gaze on as if they are happy, if you look not at their exposed part but at their hidden part, are pitiable. They are filthy and disgraceful, decorated on the exterior just like their walls: that happiness is not robust and pure; it is a shell, and a thin one at that. That is why, so long as they are permitted to stand and show themselves just as they choose, they shine and deceive. When something happens that unsettles them and uncovers them, then it is plain to see what profound and genuine squalor that incongruous splendor was concealing. (5) To you I gave goods that are certain and will endure, things that are better and greater the more someone turns them and inspects them from different angles. I have permitted you to scorn things that would be fearful, to treat desires with disgust. You do not dazzle on the outside: your goods are turned inward. In just this way has the world scorned external things, finding joy in the spectacle of itself. I have placed every good on the inside. Your good fortune is not to need good fortune.
(6) “‘But many things happen that are sobering, terrifying, and hard to bear.’ Because I was not able to save you from these, I have armed your minds against all things. Bear them bravely! This is the way in which you surpass god: he is beyond suffering bad things, you are above suffering them. Scorn poverty: no one lives in as much poverty as he was born in. Scorn pain: it will either be dissolved or will dissolve you. Scorn death: it either finishes you or takes you somewhere else.48 Scorn fortune: I did not give it any weapon by which it could strike your mind. (7) Before all else I took measures that no one could hold you against your will. An exit is there: if you do not wish to fight, you are permitted to flee. That is why, of all the things that I wanted to be necessary for you, I made none easier than dying. I placed your life on a downward slope. If it is drawn out,49 just look and you will see what a brief and direct road leads to freedom. I did not place as long a delay for you in exiting as I did for when you entered. Otherwise, if a human being were to die as slowly as he is born, fortune would have held a great sovereignty over you. (8) Let every moment, every place, teach you how easy it is to give notice to nature and to press its gift back onto it.
“Even at the altars and solemn rites of sacrificers, while life is being prayed for, learn death. The fattened bodies of bulls collapse from a tiny wound, and animals of great strength are laid low by a blow from a human hand. The connection of the neck is sundered by a thin blade, and when that joint connecting the head and neck has been cut through, the whole great mass crashes down. (9) Your breath does not lie hidden, and does not need to be dug out with a blade. There is no need to grope around in your breast through a wound pressed deep inside.50 Death could not be closer at hand. I did not stipulate a fixed spot for these blows: wherever you wish, a road can be made. The thing itself that is called death, by which the soul departs from the body, is too brief for such speed to be felt. Whether a noose strangles your throat, whether water cuts off your breathing, whether you fall on your head and are shattered by the hard surface of the underlying ground, whether a gulp of fire interrupts the passage of your returning breath—whatever it is, it comes fast. Are you embarrassed? You spend a long time fearing what happens so quickly!”