Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings. [1] You ask me to bring forward, ahead of its due day, something I had said I owed you, and to write and tell you whether that part of philosophy which the Greeks call paraenetic and we call "the giving of precepts" is enough by itself to complete wisdom. I know you'll take it well if I say no. All the more reason I promise to do it, and I won't let a common saying go to waste: "afterward, don't ask for what you wouldn't want to get." [2] For sometimes we beg hard for something we would refuse if someone actually offered it. Whether this is fickleness or a kind of servile flattery, it deserves to be punished by having our promise granted. We often want to seem to want many things we don't really want. A reader once brought a huge history, written in the tiniest hand, packed tight line upon line, and after reading a great part of it said, "I'll stop, if you like" — and those who most wanted him to shut up shouted, "Go on, go on!" We often want one thing and wish for another, and we don't tell the truth even to the gods — but the gods either don't hear us, or take pity on us. [3] I, however, will drop the pity and take my revenge: I'll hit you with a huge letter. If you read it unwillingly, tell yourself, "I brought this on myself," and count yourself among those tormented by a wife married for her big dowry, among those made miserable by riches won through great sweat, among those racked by honors chased after with every trick and effort — and the rest of the people who are fully complicit in their own troubles.
[4] But let me drop the preliminaries and get to the matter itself. "The happy life," they say, "consists of right actions; precepts lead to right actions; therefore precepts are sufficient for the happy life." But precepts do not always lead to right actions — only when the disposition is already receptive; sometimes they are applied in vain, if false opinions have taken possession of the mind. [5] And besides, even when people act rightly, they don't know that they are acting rightly. For no one can carry out every requirement of right action — knowing when, how far, with whom, how, and why — unless he has been shaped from the start and put together by a complete rational system. No one can strive toward what is honorable with his whole soul, nor even consistently or willingly, unless he has that; instead he will look back, he will hesitate.
[6] "If honorable action," someone says, "comes from precepts, then precepts are quite enough for the happy life; and honorable action does come from precepts, therefore so does the happy life." We will answer that honorable actions come from precepts, yes, but not only from precepts.
[7] "If other arts," he says, "are satisfied with precepts, wisdom will be too, for it is also an art of living. And indeed the man who instructs, 'move the tiller this way, lower the sails like this, use a following wind this way, resist a headwind this way, seize control of an uncertain, shifting one this way,' makes a pilot. Precepts shape practitioners of other arts too; so in this same way they will be able to shape the practitioners of the art of living." [8] But all those arts are concerned with the tools of life, not with the whole of life; and so many things from outside hold them back and hinder them — hope, desire, fear. But this art, which professes to be the art of life itself, cannot be prevented by anything from exercising itself, for it shakes off obstacles and throws off whatever stands in its way. Do you want to know how different the condition of the other arts is from this one? In them it is more excusable to err by intention than by accident; in this one, to go wrong deliberately is the greatest fault. [9] Here is what I mean. A grammarian will not blush at a solecism if he made it on purpose, but he will blush if he made it unknowingly; a doctor, if he fails to recognize that his patient is failing, is at greater fault professionally than if he pretends not to recognize it. But in this art of living, the fault of those who err on purpose is the more shameful one. Add to this that most arts — indeed the most liberal of all — have their own doctrines, not just precepts, as medicine does; hence one school follows Hippocrates, another Asclepiades, another Themison. [10] Moreover, no contemplative art is without its own doctrines, which the Greeks call dogmata and we may call decrees, or tenets, or convictions — you find these in geometry and in astronomy too. But philosophy is both contemplative and active: it looks and it acts at the same time. You're wrong if you think it promises only earthly business; it breathes something higher. "I search," it says, "the whole universe, and I do not confine myself within mortal company, content merely to advise or dissuade you: greater things call me, things set above you."
For I will begin to explain to you the highest
reckoning of the sky and the gods,
and lay open the first beginnings of things,
from which nature creates, increases, and nourishes all things,
and into which that same nature again dissolves them once destroyed,
as Lucretius says. It follows, then, that since philosophy is contemplative, it has its own doctrines. [12] What of the fact that no one will properly carry out what needs doing unless he has been given a rational system by which he can carry out every requirement of duty in every situation? A person who has received precepts about one particular matter, not about every matter, will not keep to them. Things given piecemeal are weak in themselves and, so to speak, rootless. Doctrines are what protect us, what guard our security and peace of mind, what embrace the whole of life and the whole of nature all at once. This is the difference between the doctrines of philosophy and its precepts: it is the difference between the basic elements and the limbs of the body. The limbs depend on the elements; the elements are the cause both of the limbs and of everything else.
[13] "Ancient wisdom," he says, "prescribed nothing beyond what should be done and what avoided, and men were far better then. Since the learned appeared, good men have grown scarce; for that simple, open virtue has turned into a dark and clever science, and we are taught to argue, not to live." [14] It's true, as you say, that this ancient wisdom, being newly born, was crude, no less than the other arts whose refinement grew only over time. But then there was not yet even any need for careful remedies. Wickedness had not yet risen so high nor spread so wide: simple faults could be met with simple remedies. Now it's necessary that our defenses be as much more elaborate as the forces attacking us are more violent.
[15] Medicine was once the knowledge of a few herbs to stop bleeding or close wounds; only gradually did it grow into this many-sided complexity we see now. And no wonder it had less work to do then, when bodies were still firm and sound and food was simple, not yet corrupted by artifice and pleasure-seeking. But once people began to seek food not to relieve hunger but to provoke it, and a thousand seasonings were invented to stir up appetite, then what used to be nourishment for the hungry became a burden for the full. [16] From this came pallor, and the trembling of nerves soaked in wine, and an emaciation from indigestion more pitiable than that from hunger; from this the unsteady, stumbling feet, always tottering as if drunk; from this fluid seeping under the whole skin and a belly distended from the bad habit of taking in more than it could hold; from this the yellow bile spreading beneath the skin, the discolored face, the wasting away of what rots within, the shriveled fingers with stiffened joints, the numbness of nerves lying without feeling, or a ceaseless trembling of bodies. [17] What shall I say of the dizziness in the head? Of the tortures of eyes and ears, the worm-gnawing of a fevered brain, and everything through which we discharge the ulcers within us? And beyond that the countless kinds of fevers — some raging in a sudden onslaught, some creeping in with a slow, subtle sickness, some coming on with chills and much shaking of the limbs? [18] Why should I recount the other countless diseases, the punishments of extravagance? Those who had not yet given themselves over to indulgence, who ruled themselves and served themselves, were free of these ills. They toughened their bodies with real work and real exertion — tired out by running, or hunting, or tilling the soil; food awaited them that could please only the hungry. So there was no need for such a vast array of doctors' equipment, nor so many instruments and boxes of drugs. Health was simple because its cause was simple: it is many courses of food that have caused many diseases. [19] See how much stuff luxury — that ravager of land and sea — jumbles together to pass through a single gullet. Things so different from one another can hardly help but clash, and what is swallowed digests badly when its parts pull in different directions. No wonder that disease born of discordant food is itself inconstant and varied, and that things drawn from opposite corners of nature, crammed together into the same stomach, come back up in revolt. That is why we are sick with as strange a range of ailments as we live a strange range of lives.
[20] The greatest of physicians, the founder of this science, said that women neither lose their hair nor suffer in their feet — yet now they go bald and their feet ache. Women's nature hasn't changed; it has been overcome. Since they have matched the license of men, they have also come to match the physical troubles of men. [21] They keep watch just as late, drink just as much, and challenge men with oil and unmixed wine; just as readily they force back up through the mouth what their unwilling stomachs took in, and measure out again by vomiting every drop of wine they drank; just as readily they gnaw on ice, the comfort of a burning stomach. In lust, indeed, they yield nothing even to men — born to be passive (may the gods and goddesses damn them for it!), they have devised so perverse a kind of shamelessness that they mount men. So why should we wonder that the greatest of physicians, most expert in nature, is caught out in an untruth, when so many women now have gout and go bald? They have destroyed the one advantage of their sex through vice, and by shedding their womanhood they have been condemned to the diseases of men.
[22] The ancient doctors did not know how to give food more frequently and prop up sinking veins with wine; they did not know how to let blood, or ease a lingering illness with baths and sweating; they did not know how to bind the legs and arms to draw hidden strength lodged deep in the body out to the extremities. There was no need to look about for many kinds of remedies, since there were so very few dangers. [23] But now — how far the ills of health have advanced! We pay this interest on pleasures pursued beyond all measure and all decency. You need not marvel that diseases are countless: count the cooks. Every serious study has come to a halt; those who profess the liberal arts sit unattended in deserted corners; in the schools of rhetoricians and philosophers there is a wasteland — but how crowded the kitchens are, how the young crowd around the hearths of gluttons! [24] I pass over the herds of unhappy boys awaiting, after the banquet is over, still other indignities in the bedroom; I pass over the troops of male prostitutes sorted by nationality and complexion, so that all may have the same smoothness of skin, the same measure of first down on the cheek, the same style of hair, lest one with straighter hair be mixed in among the curly ones; I pass over the crowd of bakers, I pass over the throng of servants who scatter at a signal to bring in dinner. Good gods, how many people a single belly keeps busy! [25] What of this — do you think those mushrooms, that luxurious poison, do no hidden damage, even when they don't kill on the spot? Do you think that summer snow doesn't callous the liver? Those oysters, that laziest of flesh fattened on filth — do you think they add nothing of muddy heaviness? That garum from allied provinces, that costly discharge of rotten fish — don't you believe it burns the vitals with its salty decay? Those scalding dishes, brought almost straight from the fire to the mouth — do you think they cool down inside the body without harm? What foul, pestilential belches result, what disgust at themselves as they breathe out yesterday's drunkenness! You may be sure that what they've eaten is rotting, not digesting. [26] I remember once hearing talk of a famous dish into which some fast-food shop, rushing headlong to its own ruin, had crammed everything that usually takes a whole day to serve among the fashionable: mussels and oysters and spondyli, trimmed just enough to be eaten, were set out with sea urchins in between, and boned mullets, filleted whole, had been laid all around. [27] It disgusts me now even to speak of these things one by one: the flavors are all forced into one. What ought to happen in the stomach now happens in the dining room; I expect soon they'll serve it pre-chewed. And how much less would that be than picking out the shells and bones and letting the cook do the work of the teeth? "It's too tiresome," they say, "to indulge one course at a time; let everything be served at once, blended into a single flavor. Why should I reach my hand out for just one thing? Let many come together at once, let the trimmings of many courses meet and merge. [28] Let those who used to say they wanted display and glory from such things know at once that this is not for show but offered to their own conscience. Let the things usually served separately be lumped together, drenched in one sauce; let there be no distinction — oysters, urchins, mussels, mullets, all jumbled and cooked up together and served that way." The food of a vomiting man would not be more of a mess. [29] Just as these dishes are all tangled together, so from them arise diseases that are not single but tangled, various, many-shaped, against which medicine has begun arming itself with many kinds of remedies, many methods of observation.
I say the same thing to you about philosophy. It was once simpler, back when men's faults were smaller and curable even with light care; against so great an overturning of morals, everything must be tried. If only this plague could finally be conquered that way! [30] We rage not only privately but publicly. We restrain individual murders, single killings — but what of wars, and the glorious crime of slaughtering whole nations? Neither greed nor cruelty knows any limit. And these things, as long as they are done stealthily and by individuals, are less harmful, less monstrous; but once they are authorized by decrees of the senate and votes of the people, savage acts are carried out and publicly ordered that are forbidden in private. [31] Deeds that, done in secret, would cost a man his life, we praise once they are done in uniform. Human beings, that gentlest of creatures, feel no shame in rejoicing in each other's blood, in waging wars and handing them down to their children to wage in turn — even though there is peace among dumb beasts and wild animals.
[32] Against so powerful and so widely spread a madness, philosophy has had to become more laborious, and has taken on for itself as much strength as has grown in the forces it was raised against. It was easy to rebuke people indulging in wine or craving richer food when the mind did not need to be dragged back with great force to a frugality from which it had only slightly departed:
but now there is need of grasping hands, now of guiding art.
Pleasure is sought from everything. No vice stays within its own bounds: luxury rushes headlong into greed. Forgetfulness of honor has taken hold; nothing is shameful once its price is right. Man, a thing sacred to man, is now killed for sport and amusement, and one whom it was once wrong to train to inflict and receive wounds is now led out naked and unarmed, and a man's death is spectacle enough. [34] In this perversity of morals, then, something more forceful than usual is needed to shake loose ills grown chronic: we must work through doctrines, so that the accepted persuasion of false beliefs may be uprooted from deep within. If we add to these precepts, consolations, exhortations, they will be able to have effect; by themselves they are ineffective. [35] If we want to hold men bound to virtue and pull them away from the evils that already grip them, they must learn what is evil and what is good, and know that everything but virtue changes its name, becoming now bad, now good. Just as the first bond of military service is devotion, love of the standards, and the conviction that desertion is unthinkable — and only then are the rest of the duties easily demanded and the oath exacted of the recruits — so too, in those you wish to lead to the happy life, the first foundations must be laid and virtue must be instilled. Let them be held by a kind of reverence for it, let them love it; let them want to live with it and refuse to live without it.
[36] "What then? Haven't some people, without any refined instruction, turned out upright and made great progress simply by following bare precepts?" I admit it, but they had a fortunate nature and snatched up what was healthy in passing. For just as the immortal gods never learned any virtue, being born complete in every way, and it is part of their nature to be good, so too some human beings, endowed with an outstanding disposition, arrive at what is usually only taught without long instruction, and embraced what is honorable the first time they heard of it; hence come those minds so quick to seize on virtue, or so fertile in producing it from within themselves. But those who are dull and slow, or beset by bad habits, need a long time to scrub the rust off their minds. [37] Still, just as instruction leads those already inclined to the good more quickly to the heights, it will also help the weaker ones and draw them out of their bad opinions if someone hands them the doctrines of philosophy. And you can see just how necessary these are in the following way. Certain things lodge in us that make us slow toward some things, rash toward others; and this rashness cannot be checked, nor that sluggishness roused, unless their causes are removed — false admiration and false dread. As long as these possess us, you may say, 'you owe this to your father, this to your children, this to your friends, this to your guests' — but greed will hold back the man who tries. He will know he ought to fight for his country, but fear will talk him out of it; he will know he ought to sweat to the very last drop for his friends, but self-indulgence will forbid it; he will know that a mistress is the gravest wrong a wife can suffer, but lust will drive him the other way. [38] So it will do no good to give precepts unless you first remove what will stand in the precepts' way — no more good than it would do to lay out weapons in plain sight and bring them closer, unless the hands that must use them are first freed. For the mind to be able to advance toward the precepts we give it, it must first be set loose.
[39] Let us suppose someone does what he ought: he will not do it consistently, he will not do it evenly, for he will not know why he is doing it. Some actions will turn out right by chance or by practice, but he will have no fixed rule in hand by which to test them, no ground for trusting that what he did was right. A man who is good by chance cannot promise to remain so forever.
[40] Furthermore, precepts may perhaps enable him to do what he ought, but they will not enable him to do it in the way he ought; and if they do not achieve that, they do not lead to virtue. He will do what he ought when reminded to, I grant you; but that is too little, since praise lies not in the deed itself but in how it is done. [41] What is more scandalous than an extravagant dinner that eats up a knight's whole fortune? What more deserving of the censor's mark, if someone, as those gluttons put it, indulges himself and his own appetite that way? And yet dinners costing a million sesterces to inaugurate a priesthood have been given by the most frugal men. The same act, if done to satisfy the palate, is disgraceful; if done to honor an office, it escapes censure — for it is not luxury but a customary expense. [42] There was a mullet of enormous size — why not add the exact weight, and whet the appetite of a few gourmands as well? — they said it weighed four and a half pounds — which Tiberius Caesar, when it was brought to him, ordered taken to the fish market and sold, saying, 'Friends, I am much mistaken if that mullet isn't bought by either Apicius or Publius Octavius.' His guess exceeded even his own expectation: they bid against each other, Octavius won, and won enormous glory among his circle for buying, for five thousand sesterces, a fish that Caesar had sold and that not even Apicius had bought. It was shameful only for Octavius to pay that sum — not for the man who bought it to send it to Tiberius, though I would fault him too, for admiring something he thought worthy of Caesar. Someone sits at the bedside of a sick friend — we approve. [43] But suppose he does it for the sake of an inheritance: then he's a vulture, waiting for a corpse. The same act can be either base or honorable: it depends on why and how it is done. Everything, however, will be done honorably if we devote ourselves to what is honorable and judge it the one good thing in human affairs, along with whatever follows from it; everything else is only good for the moment. [44] So a conviction bearing on the whole of life must be firmly fixed in us: this is what I call a doctrine. Whatever this conviction is, so will be the actions and the thoughts that follow; and whatever these are, so will life be. Persuading someone about particular matters is not enough when the whole must be set in order. [45] Marcus Brutus, in the book he entitled On Duty, gives many precepts concerning parents, children, and siblings; but no one will carry these out as he ought unless he has something to refer them to. We must set before ourselves the goal of the highest good, toward which we strive, and to which every deed and word of ours looks back — just as sailors must steer their course by some star. [46] Life without a purpose wanders aimlessly; and if a purpose must in any case be set, then doctrines become necessary. You will grant me this, I think: nothing is more shameful than a hesitant, uncertain step, timidly drawing back. This will happen to us in everything unless we remove whatever holds our minds back, checks them, and forbids them to advance and strive with their whole force.
[47] How the gods are to be worshiped is usually taught by precept. Let us forbid anyone to light lamps on the sabbath, since the gods have no need of light, and even men take no pleasure in smoke. Let us forbid people to attend morning greetings and sit at the doors of temples: it is human ambition that is caught by such observances; the man who truly worships god is the one who knows him. Let us forbid bringing linens and scrapers to Jupiter, or holding up a mirror to Juno: god seeks no attendants. Why should he? He himself attends on the human race, present everywhere and to everyone. [48] One may be told what measure to observe in sacrifices, how far to shrink from tiresome superstitions — but no real progress will ever be made unless he has conceived god in his mind as he ought to be: possessing everything, granting everything, beneficent for nothing in return. [49] What is the cause of the gods' doing good? Their nature. Whoever thinks they are simply unwilling to do harm is mistaken: they cannot do it. They can neither receive an injury nor inflict one; for to harm and to be harmed go together. That highest and most beautiful of all natures, having removed them from danger, has not thereby made them dangerous. [50] The first act of worshiping the gods is to believe that they exist; next, to render to them their majesty, to render their goodness, without which there is no majesty; to know that they are the ones who preside over the world, who govern the whole by their power, who watch over the human race, sometimes without concern for individuals. They neither give evil nor possess it; but they do chastise and restrain certain people, and impose penalties, and sometimes punish under the guise of a benefit. Do you want to win the gods over? Be good. Whoever has imitated them has worshiped them enough.
[51] Now here is a second question: how are we to treat other human beings? What are we doing? What precepts are we giving? That we should spare human blood? What a small thing it is not to harm someone you ought to be helping! It is, apparently, great praise if one man is gentle to another. Shall we instruct someone to give a hand to a shipwrecked man, to show a lost traveler the way, to share his bread with someone starving? Why should I list everything that must be done and everything that must be avoided, when I can hand him this brief formula of human duty in a few words: [52] all this that you see, in which divine and human things are enclosed together, is one; we are limbs of one great body. Nature made us kin, since she produced us from the same elements and for the same ends; she implanted in us mutual love and made us social. It is she who established what is fair and just; by her decree it is more wretched to harm than to be harmed; by her command our hands should be ready to help. [53] Let that verse be always in our heart and on our lips:
I am a man; I count nothing human foreign to me.
Let us hold things in common: we were born for that common holding. Our fellowship is very much like an arch of stones, which would collapse if the stones did not hold each other up — and it is held up by that very mutual resistance.
[54] After the gods and men, let us consider how we ought to use material things. We will waste our precepts in vain unless this comes first: what opinion we ought to hold about anything — poverty, riches, glory, disgrace, our country, exile. Let us judge each thing on its own, apart from its reputation, and ask what it is, not what it is called.
[55] Let us pass on to the virtues. Someone will instruct us to hold prudence in high esteem, to embrace courage, and, if possible, to attach ourselves to justice even more closely than the rest; but he will accomplish nothing if we don't know what virtue is, whether it is one thing or many, separate or interwoven, whether whoever has one has all the rest, and how they differ from one another. [56] It is not necessary for a craftsman to ask about his craft what its origin is or what its use is, any more than it is for a pantomime dancer to ask about the art of dance: all those arts know themselves fully, nothing is missing, because they do not bear on the whole of life. Virtue, though, is knowledge both of other things and of itself; one must learn about it in order to learn it. [57] An action will not be right unless the will behind it is right, for action comes from the will. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind is right, for the will comes from that. And the disposition of the mind will not be at its best unless it has grasped the laws governing the whole of life and worked out what judgment to make about everything, unless it has reduced things to the truth. There is no peace of mind except for those who have attained a fixed and unchangeable judgment: the rest keep falling and being picked up again, tossed back and forth between what they've given up and what they still crave. [58] What causes this tossing about? That nothing is clear to those steering by the most uncertain of guides — reputation. If you want to always want the same things, you must want what is true. And you cannot reach the truth without doctrines: they contain the whole of life. Good and evil, honorable and base, just and unjust, dutiful and impious, the virtues and their exercise, the possession of useful things, reputation and standing, health, strength, beauty, keenness of the senses — all of these require someone to appraise them. We ought to be able to know how much each is worth when declared for assessment. [59] For you are mistaken, and you rate some things higher than they are — so mistaken that the things held greatest among us, wealth, influence, power, ought to be valued at a single sesterce. You will not know this unless you have examined the very system by which these things are weighed against one another. Just as leaves cannot be green by themselves, but need a branch to cling to from which they draw their sap, so these precepts, if left alone, wither; they need to be rooted in a system of doctrine.
[60] Besides, those who reject doctrines fail to see that the very act of rejecting them confirms them. For what do they say? That precepts are enough to guide life fully, and the doctrines of wisdom — dogmas, that is — are superfluous. But this very statement is itself a doctrine, every bit as much as if I now said we should abandon precepts as superfluous and rely only on doctrines, devoting our study to them alone; in denying that precepts need attention, I would be laying down a doctrine of my own. [61] Some things in philosophy require only a reminder, others require proof, and a great deal of it, because they are intricate and are laid bare only with the utmost care and subtlety. If proofs are necessary, then the doctrines that establish truth through argument are necessary too. Some things are plain, others obscure: plain are the things grasped by the senses and by memory; obscure are those beyond these. But reason is not fulfilled by what is plain; the greater and finer part of it lies among hidden things. Hidden things demand proof, and proof cannot exist without doctrines; therefore doctrines are necessary. [62] The same thing that produces ordinary sense also produces perfect sense: a firm conviction about things. Without this, if everything floats loose in the mind, doctrines are necessary, since they give the mind an unbending judgment. [63] Finally, when we advise someone to hold a friend in the same regard as himself, to consider that an enemy may become a friend, to stir up love in the one case and restrain hatred in the other, we add: 'this is just, this is honorable.' But the reasoning behind our doctrines is what contains what is just and honorable; therefore this reasoning is necessary, since without it those qualities do not exist either. [64] But let us join the two together, for branches without roots are useless, and the roots themselves are helped by what they have produced. No one can fail to see how useful the hands are — their help is plain; but the heart, by which the hands live, from which they draw their impulse, by which they are moved, is hidden. I can say the same about precepts: they are plain, but the doctrines of wisdom lie hidden. Just as only the initiated know the more sacred rites of the mysteries, so in philosophy those secret things are shown only to those admitted and received into the inner rites; but precepts and matters like them are known even to the uninitiated.
[65] Posidonius holds that not only instruction (nothing forbids us from using this word) but also persuasion, consolation, and exhortation are necessary. To these he adds the investigation of causes, aetiology — I don't see why we shouldn't dare to use that word ourselves, since grammarians, the guardians of the Latin tongue, use it freely enough. He says a description of each virtue will also be useful; this Posidonius calls 'ethology,' others call it 'characterismos' — giving the signs and marks of each virtue and vice by which similar things may be told apart from one another. [66] This has the same force as giving precepts; for the one who instructs says, 'do that, if you want to be temperate,' while the one who describes says, 'the temperate man is the one who does that, who abstains from that.' You ask what the difference is? One gives the precepts of virtue, the other a model. I admit these descriptions — or, to borrow a word from the tax-farmers, these 'likenesses' — are useful in practice: let us hold up things worth praising, and an imitator will be found. [67] Do you think it useful to be given marks by which you can recognize a noble horse, so you aren't deceived when buying one, and don't waste your effort on a worthless animal? How much more useful is it to know the marks of an excellent spirit, which one is allowed to transfer from another into oneself!
At once the foal of noble stock strides higher
across the fields, and sets down his supple legs;
first he dares to go the road and test the threatening streams,
and trust himself to an unknown bridge,
and shies at no idle noise. His neck is proud,
his head fine-drawn, his belly short, his back full,
and his spirited chest swells with muscle . . .
. . . Then, if far off some weapon has rung out,
he cannot stand still; his ears flick and his limbs tremble,
and, gathering the fire within, he rolls it beneath his nostrils.
[69] Meaning to describe something else, our Virgil there described the brave man; I certainly would not assign the great man any other image. If I had to picture Marcus Cato, fearless amid the crash of civil wars, first to stand against the armies already advancing on the Alps and to throw himself in the way of civil war, I would give him no other face, no other bearing. [70] Certainly no one could stride higher than the man who rose up alone against both Caesar and Pompey at once, and, while some favored Caesar's power and others Pompey's, challenged both, showing that there was still a place for the republic's own side. For it's too little to say of Cato, 'he shies at no idle noise.' Of course not — when he doesn't shy even at real and neighboring dangers, when, against ten legions and Gallic auxiliaries and mixed barbarian arms joined with citizens, he raises a free voice and urges the republic not to give up its liberty but to try everything, since it is more honorable to fall into slavery than to walk into it. [71] What vigor, what spirit was in that man, what confidence amid the public panic! He knows he is the one man whose own standing is not at stake; for the question is not whether Cato is free, but whether he is still among free men — hence his contempt for danger and for swords. One is tempted, admiring the man's unconquered constancy amid public ruin, to say of him, 'and his spirited chest swells with muscle.'
[72] It will help not only to describe what good men are usually like, sketching their general shape and features, but also to narrate and set out what particular good men actually were — Cato's last and bravest wound, through which he let his freedom out along with his life; the wisdom of Laelius and his harmony with his friend Scipio; the outstanding deeds, at home and abroad, of the other Cato; Tubero's wooden couches, when he was laying out a public banquet, and goatskins used in place of coverlets, and earthenware vessels set out for the feast right before the very shrine of Jupiter. What else was that but consecrating poverty on the Capitol itself? Even if I had no other deed of his to place him among the Catos, is this not enough for us to believe it? That was a censorship, not a dinner. [73] Oh, how little men who crave glory understand what glory is or how it should be sought! On that day the Roman people looked at the fine furnishings of many men, but marveled at the furnishings of one. All that gold and silver of theirs has since been broken up and melted down a thousand times over, but Tubero's earthenware will endure through every age to come. Farewell.