Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
The man you sent to bring news of our little daughter's death seems to have missed you on the road to Athens; I, on reaching Tanagra, learned of it from my granddaughter. As for the funeral, I imagine everything has already been done; I only hope it was arranged in a way that will bring you the least pain now and for the future. But if there is something you wanted to do and have not yet done, but are waiting
for my judgment, thinking you will bear it more easily once you know my mind, that too shall be settled, free of all excessive fuss and superstition, neither of which is at all like you. Only, wife, watch over me and yourself in the face of this suffering, and hold us both to our settled state. For I myself know and can measure just how great this event is; but if I find you giving way to grief beyond measure, that will trouble me more than
what has happened. And yet I myself was not "born of oak or of rock," as you yourself know, having shared with me the rearing of so many children, all of them brought up at home under our own care. As for this one, because she was born to you, after four sons, when you longed for a daughter, and gave me the chance to give her your own name, which I longed to do, she became exceptionally dear to me. There was, besides, a peculiar sharpness
in the affection one feels for a child at that age, and the delight such children give is pure and unmixed with any anger or complaint. She herself, by nature, had a wonderful sweetness and gentleness of temper, and the affection and favor she returned brought us pleasure together with an understanding of her loving-kindness: for not only to other babies, but even to objects that pleased her, and to her toys, she would bid her nurse give
the breast and offer it, and she would call them to her own table, as it were, out of affection, sharing with those who delighted her whatever sweet things she knew of and had. But I do not see, wife, why these things and others like them, which delighted us while she lived, should now grieve and disturb us when we recall them. Yet I fear, on the other hand, that in casting off the pain we may also cast off the memory,
as Clymene says, "I hate the well-curved bow of cornel wood, and the gymnasium" — forever fleeing and trembling at the reminder of her son, because the recollection brought grief along with it: for nature flees everything that causes distress. But just as she herself, while alive, gave us the sweetest of greetings, sights, and sounds, so too the thought of her should dwell with us and live alongside us, bringing more
— indeed many times more — of what delights than of what grieves, if indeed any of the arguments we have often spoken to others is likely to be of use to us as well in this moment of need, and we are not to sit shut in, repaying those former pleasures with griefs many times over. And this too people who were present remark with wonder: that you did not even change your dress, nor did you bring in any attendants
for slovenly display; nor was there any preparation of showy extravagance for the funeral, but everything was done decently and in silence, with only what was necessary. For my part I was not surprised that you, who never adorned yourself for the theater or a procession, and who indeed considered extravagance useless even for occasions of pleasure, should in this sorrowful time have kept to what is simple and plain. For it is not only "amid Bacchic revels"
that a woman of sound mind must remain uncorrupted, but she must think that the turmoil and agitation of feeling amid mourning need self-control no less — a self-control that struggles not against natural affection, as most people suppose, but against the intemperance of the soul. To natural affection we grant the longing, the honoring, and the remembering of those who have passed; but the insatiable desire for lamentation, which
drags one into wailing and beating of the breast, is no less shameful than intemperance in pleasures, yet it wins pardon in people's talk, because its pain and bitterness attach to what is shameful in place of what is pleasant. For what is more unreasonable than to curb excesses of laughter and exuberant joy, and yet to let loose without restraint the streams of weeping and lamentation, which flow from the very same source? And
is it not strange that some men contend fiercely with their wives over perfume or purple dye, yet allow mourning haircuts, black-dyed garments, unseemly postures of sitting, and painful modes of reclining? And — what is hardest of all — if their household servants or maids are punished immoderately and unjustly, they intervene and stop it, yet look on unmoved while these same women are being cruelly and bitterly punished by their own selves, in circumstances and misfortunes that call for ease and
kindness? But between us, wife, there has never been need of that first kind of contest, nor do I think there will be need of this second kind. In frugality of dress and simplicity of way of life, is there any philosopher whom you have not astonished, once he came into familiar acquaintance with us? And is there any of our fellow citizens to whom you do not offer, in temples and sacrifices and theaters, a display of
your own plainness? And already, in matters such as this, you have shown great steadiness — when you lost your eldest child, and again when that fine boy Chaeron left us. For I remember that when strangers, traveling with me from the coast, had been told of the child's death and came together with the others into the house, they found such great composure and calm that, as they later
related to others, they supposed nothing terrible had happened, but that some empty report had simply gone out — so wisely did you keep order in the household at a time that gives every excuse for disorder, even though you had nursed that child at your own breast and endured the tearing when the nipple was bruised: for such things are noble and show true affection. We see most mothers, when their children have been washed and adorned by others,
take them into their arms as if they were toys, and then, when they die, pour themselves out into empty and graceless mourning — not out of true affection (for affection is reasonable and noble), but because a small natural feeling, mixed heavily with a craving for empty reputation, makes their grief wild, frenzied, and hard to appease. And this does not seem to have escaped Aesop's notice: he said that when Zeus
was distributing honors among the gods, Grief too asked for a share, and so Zeus granted it to her — but only among those who choose her and are willing to receive her. In the beginning, then, this is how it happens: each person of his own accord admits grief into himself. But once it has settled in over time and become a familiar companion and housemate, it does not depart even when one is quite willing to be rid of it. That is why one must fight it at the door and not let it in —
guarding oneself with dress, or with a haircut, or with some other such thing, which, meeting and reproaching us daily, makes the mind small, narrow, closed off, harsh, and fearful, as though it had no part in laughter, or light, or a kindly table, wrapped up and occupied as it is with such things because of grief. And neglect of the body follows upon this evil, along with a distaste for
anointing, bathing, and the rest of one's regimen — when the very opposite is needed, that the soul, suffering as it is, be helped through a body kept strong. For much of what causes pain is blunted and relaxed, just as a wave in calm weather, when the body's tranquility spreads through it. But if dryness and roughness set in from poor regimen, and the body sends up to the soul nothing kindly or wholesome,
but only pains and griefs, like some bitter and harsh vapors, then it becomes hard to recover, even for those who wish it. Such are the sufferings that seize a soul thus ruined. And indeed — the greatest and most fearsome danger in this matter — I would not fear "the visits of wicked women" and their voices and shared lamentations, which wear down and sharpen grief, if you did not allow it, neither by others nor by
yourself, to be worn away. For I know what struggles you fought not long ago, helping Theon's sister and battling those who came from outside with wailings and shrieks, as though carrying, quite literally, fire to fire. For when people see their friends' houses burning, they extinguish the fire as quickly and as forcefully as each can; but when souls are ablaze, these same people bring them fuel instead. And to a man with sore eyes
they do not allow anyone who wishes to lay hands, nor do they touch the inflamed part; but the mourner sits there, offering himself to everyone who comes along, as it were a stream to be stirred and roughened further, so that the suffering, from a small irritating and stirring cause, is scratched open into a great and grievous wound. These things, then, I know you will guard against. Try, rather, by shifting your thought, to carry yourself back often to that
time before this child was even born, when we had no complaint against fortune; then join the present moment to that earlier one, as though our circumstances had again become the same as they were then. For otherwise, wife, we shall seem to resent the child's very birth, making the time before she existed appear less troubled for us than it should. The two years in between must not be removed from
memory, but rather set down among our pleasures, as having afforded us joy and delight; and we must not count a small good as a great evil, nor, because fortune did not add what we hoped for, show ingratitude for what was given. For speaking well of the divine, and a spirit gracious and uncomplaining toward fortune, always yields a fine and pleasant fruit; whereas in such
circumstances as ours, the one who draws especially on the memory of good things, and turns and carries his thoughts from the dark and troubling toward the bright and shining, either wholly extinguishes what pains him or, by mixing in its opposite, makes it small and dim. For just as perfume always delights the sense of smell, yet is also a remedy against foul odors,
so too the recollection of good things amid evils supplies, for those who do not avoid remembering what was kind and do not blame fortune for everything and in every way, the service of a necessary help. This is something we ought not to suffer — to slander our own life, as though it were a book with a single blot amid all the rest that is clean and unmarred. For that
happiness depends on ending in a settled disposition arrived at through sound reasoning, and that the shifts of fortune do not produce great deviations nor bring on confused slippages of life, you have heard many times. But if we too, like most people, must be steered by outward circumstances, and reckon up what comes from fortune, and use ordinary men as judges of happiness, then do not look now at
the tears and lamentations of those who come to visit, performed toward each person out of some worthless habit; consider rather how you continue to be envied by these very people for your children, your household, and your life. And it is strange that others would gladly choose your fortune, blemish and all — even with this thing for which we now grieve added to it — while you find fault and chafe at possessing it, and do not even perceive, from the very thing that
stings you, how much gratitude is owed for what remains to us: like those who pick out Homer's headless and tailless verses while overlooking, quite unfairly, the many great passages of his poetry, so too, to scrutinize and slander the base things in life while dealing with its good things in a vague and confused manner, is to suffer something like what the illiberal and money-loving suffer, who, gathering much, do not use what they have
but lament and chafe over what is lost. But if you feel pity for her as one who died unmarried and childless, you may in turn find comfort in reflecting that you yourself have not been left without a share in these things, having become no stranger to any of them. For these are great goods to those who lack them, but small to those who possess them. And she, having reached a state beyond pain, has no need to grieve us; for what harm can come to us
from her, if nothing now causes her pain? Indeed, even the loss of great things ceases to pain us once we come to feel we no longer need them. And your Timoxena has been deprived only of small things, for she knew only small things and delighted in small things; and of things she never perceived or even conceived, how could she be said to be deprived? And as for what you hear from others, who persuade many
by saying that nothing at all is evil or painful for what has been dissolved, I know that our ancestral tradition and the mystic symbols of the rites of Dionysus, which we who share in them understand among ourselves, prevent you from believing this. Think, then, of the soul as indestructible, and that it undergoes something like what happens to captured birds: if it has been nurtured a long time within the body and has grown
tame to this life through many activities and long habituation, it settles down again into another body and does not release itself, nor does it cease to entangle itself here in the sufferings and fortunes that come through successive births. For do not suppose that old age is reviled and spoken ill of because of its wrinkles, its gray hair, and its bodily weakness; rather, the hardest thing about it is this: that it
makes the soul stale with memories of things here and clinging to them, and bends and presses it down, preserving the shape it took on from the body while it was subject to these experiences. But the soul that is taken by higher powers is held fast, as though springing back from a moist and yielding bend toward its true nature. For just as fire, if someone puts it out and then immediately rekindles it,
is fanned back to life and quickly recovers — so it is best to pass through the gates of Hades as swiftly as possible, before too great a love for the affairs of this world takes hold, and before one is softened toward the body and dissolved into it as if by drugs. The truth about these matters is shown more clearly in our ancestral and ancient customs and laws. For to their own infants who have died, people neither pour
libations nor perform the other rites customary for the dead, since infants have no part in earth or in earthly things; nor do people linger about their graves, tombs, and lyings-in-state, nor sit beside their bodies — for the laws do not permit mourning for those so young, holding it impious to mourn those who have passed into a better and more divine portion and place. Since it is harder for us
to disbelieve this than to believe it, let us keep our outward observance as the laws prescribe, but keep what is within us still more unstained, pure, and sound of mind.