The Law of Success (Napoleon Hill) | Full Audiobook | Part 2 of 3 - Pigeon Audiobooks

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Pigeon Publishing House presents on the Shortness of Life author
Seneca On the Shortness of life. Most human beings politis
complain about the meanness of nature because we are born
for a brief span of life, and because this spell
of time that has been given to us rushes by
so swiftly and rapidly, that, with very few exceptions, life

(00:23):
ceases for the rest of us just when we are
getting ready for it. Nor is it just the man
in the street and the unthinking, massive people who groan
over this, as they see it universal evil. The same
feeling lies behind complaints from even distinguished men. Hence the
dictum of the greatest of doctors. Life is short, art
is long. Hence to the grievance most improper to a

(00:44):
wise man, which Aristotle expressed when he was taking nature
to task for indulging animals with such long existences that
they can live through five or ten human lifetimes, while
a far shorter limit is set for men who are
born to a great and extensive destiny. It is not
that we have a short time to live, but that
we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough,
and a souciently generous amount has been given to us

(01:06):
for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.
But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent
on no good activity, we are forced, at last, by
death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away
before we knew it was passing. So it is we
are not given a short life, but we make it short,
and we are not ill supplied, but wasteful of it.
Just as when ample and princely wealth falls to a

(01:27):
bad owner, it is squandered in a moment. But wealth, however, modest,
if entrusted to a good custodian, increases with use. So
our lifetime extends amply if you manage it properly. Why
do we complain about nature? She has acted kindly. Life
is long if you know how to use it. But
one man is gripped by insatiable greed, another by a

(01:47):
laborious dedication to useless tasks. One man is soaked in wine,
another sluggish with idleness. One man is worn out by
political ambition, which is always at the mercy of the
judgment of others. Another, through hope of profit, is driven
headlong over all lands and seized by the greed of trading.
Some are tormented by a passion for army life, always

(02:09):
intent on inflicting dangers on others, or anxious about danger
to themselves. Some are worn out by the self imposed
servitude of thankless attendance on the great Many are occupied
by either pursuing other people's money or complaining about their own.
Many pursue no fixed goal, but are tossed about in
ever changing designs by a fickleness which is shifting in

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constant and never satisfied with itself. Some have no aims
at all for their life's course, but death takes the
unawares as they yawn languidly, so much so that I
cannot doubt the truth of that oracular remark of the
greatest of poets. It is a small part of life
we really live. Indeed, all the rest is not life,
but merely time. Vices surround in as salemen from every side,

(02:51):
and do not allow them to rise again and lift
their eyes to discern the truth, but keep them overwhelmed
and rooted in their desires. Never can they recover their
true scath. If by chance they achieve some tranquility, Just
as a swell remains on the deep sea, even after
the wind has dropped. So they go on tossing about
and never find rest from their desires. Do you think

(03:11):
I am speaking only of those whose wickedness is acknowledged.
Look at those whose good fortune people gather to see
They are choked by their own blessings. How many find
their riches a burden. How many burst a blood vessel
by their eloquence and their daily striving to show off
their talents. How many are pale from constant pleasures. How

(03:32):
many are left no freedom by the crowd of clients
surrounding them. In a word, run through them all, from
lowest to highest. One calls for legal assistance, another comes
to help. One is on trial, another defends him, another
gives a judgment. No one makes his claim to himself,
but each is exploited for another's sake. Ask about those
whose names are learned by heart, and you will see

(03:53):
that they have these distinguishing marks. Excultivates why and why
cultivates z No one bothers about himself Again, certain people
reveal the most stupid indignation. They complain about the pride
of their superiors because they did not have time to
give them an audience when they wanted one. But can
anyone dare to complain about another's pride when he himself
never has time for himself. Yet, whoever you are, the

(04:16):
great Man has sometimes gazed upon you, even if his
look was patronizing. He has bent his ears to your words.
He has let you walk beside him. But you never
deign to look at yourself or listen to yourself. So
you have no reason to claim credit from anyone for
those attentions, since you showed them not because you wanted
someone else's company, but because you could not bear your own.

(04:37):
Even if all the bright intellects whoever lived were to
agree to ponder this one theme, they would never societally
express their surprise at this fog in the human mind.
Men do not let anyone seize their estates, And if
there is the slightest dispute about their boundaries, they rush
to stones and arms. But they allow others to encroach
on their lives. Why they themselves even invite in those
who will take over their lives. You will find no

(04:59):
one willing to share out his money. But to how
many does each of us divide up his life? People
are frugal in guarding their personal property, But as soon
as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful
of the one thing in which it is right to
be stingy. So I would like to fasten on someone
from the older generation and say to him, I see
that you have come to the last stage of human life.
You were close upon your one hundred year or even beyond.

(05:21):
Come now hold an audit of your life. Reckon, how
much of your time has been taken up by a
money lender, how much by a mistress, a patron, a client,
quarreling with your wife, punishing your slaves, dashing about the
city on your social obligations. Consider also the diseases which
we have brought on ourselves, and the time too, which
has been in used. You will find that you have

(05:43):
fewer years than you reckon. Call to mind, when you
ever had a fixed purpose? How few days have passed
as you had planned, When you were ever at your
own disposal, when your face wore its natural expression, when
your mind was undisturbed? What work you have achieved in
such a long life? How many have plundered your life
when you were unaware of your losses? How much you
have lost through groundless sorrow, foolish joy, greedy desire, the

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seductions of society. How little of your own was left
to you. You will realize that you are dying prematurely.
So what is the reason for this? You are living
as if destined to live forever. Your own frailty never
occurs to you. You don't notice how much time has
already passed, but squander it as though you had a
full and overflowing supply. Though all the while, at very

(06:24):
day which you are devoting to somebody or something, maybe
your last, you act like mortals and all that you fear,
and like immortals and all that you desire. You will
hear many people saying, when I am fifty, I shall
retire into leisure, When I am sixty, I shall give
up public duties. And what guarantee do you have of
a longer life? Who will allow your course to proceed

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as you arrange it? Aren't you ashamed to keep for
yourself just the remnants of your life, and to devote
to wisdom only that time which cannot be spent on
any business. How late it is to begin really to
live just when life must end. How stupid to forget
our more tatality and put off sensible plans to our
fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a
point at which few have arrived. You will notice that

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the most powerful and highly stationed men let drop remarks
in which they pray for leisure, praise it, and rate
it higher than all their blessings. At times they long
to descend from their pinnacles if they can in safety.
For even if nothing external assails or agitates it, high
fortune of itself comes crashing down. The deified Augustus, to
whom the gods granted more than to any one else,

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never cease to pray for rest and to seek a
respite from public affairs. Everything he said always reverted to
this theme is hope for leisure. He used to beguile
his labors with this consolation, sweet though false, that one
day he would live to please himself. In a letter
he wrote to the Senate, after he promised that his
rest would not be lacking in dignity nor inconsistent with

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his former glory. I find these words, but it is
more impressive to carry out these things than to promise them. Nevertheless,
since the delightful reality is still a long way off,
my longing for that much desired time has led me
to anticipate some of its delight by the pleasure arising
from words So valuable did leisure seem to him, that
because he could not enjoy it in actuality, he did

(08:10):
so mentally in advance. He who saw that everything depended
on himself alone, who decided the fortune of individuals and nations,
was happiest when thinking of that day on which he
would lay aside his own greatness. He knew from experience
how much sweat those blessings gleaning through every land cost him,
how many secret anxieties they concealed. He was forced to

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fight first with his fellow countrymen, then with his colleagues,
and finally with his relations, shedding blood on land and sea.
Driven to fight in Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, Asia, almost
every country, he turned his armies against foreign enemies when
they were tired of shedding Roman blood. While he was
establishing peace in the Alps and subduing enemies established in

(08:52):
the middle of his peaceful empire, while he was extending
his boundaries beyond the Rhine, the Euphrates and the Danube.
Roman self Murna Kuipio Lepidus Ignatius and others were sharpening
their swords against him, Nor had he yet escaped their plots.
When his daughter and all the noble youths bound to
her by adultery, as though by an oath, kept alarming
his feeble old age, as did Ilas and a second

(09:14):
formidable woman linked to an antony. He cut away these ulcers, limbs,
and all but others took their place, just like a
body with a surfeit of blood, which is always subject
to a hemorrhage somewhere. So he longed for leisure, and
as his hopes and thoughts dwelt on that he found
relief for his labors. This was the prayer of the
man who could grant the prayers of mankind. When Marcus

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Cicero was cast among men like Catalan and Clodius, and
Pompey and Crassus, some of them undisguised enemies, and some
doubtful friends. When he was tossed about in the storm
that struck the state, he tried to hold it steady
as it went to its doom, But at last he
was swept away. He had neither peace in prosperity, nor
patience in adversity. And how often does he curse the
very consulship which he had praised without ceasing, though not

(09:56):
without good reason. What woeful words he uses it a
letter to Atticus, when the elder Pompey had been conquered
and his son was still trying to revive his defeated
forces in Spain. Do you want to know? He said,
what I am doing here? I am staying a semi
prisoner in my Tusculan villa. He then goes on to
bewail his former life, to complain of the present, and

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to despair of the future. Cicero called himself a semi prisoner.
But really and truly the wise man will never go
so far as to use such an abject term. He
will never be a semi prisoner, but will always enjoy freedom,
which is solid and complete at liberty to be his
own master and higher than all others. For what can
be above the man who is above fortune. Livius Drusus,

(10:40):
a bold and vigorous man, had proposed laws which renewed
the evil policy of the Grachey, and he was supported
by a huge crowd from all over Italy. But he
could see no successful outcome for his measures, which he
could neither carry through nor abandon once embarked upon, and
he is said to have cursed the turbulent life he
had always lived, saying that he alone had never had
a hub, even as a child. For while still a

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ward and dressed as a youth, he ventured to speak
to a jury in favor of some accused men, and
to acquire influence in the law courts, with so much
effect that, as we all know, he forced certain verdicts
favorable to his clients. To what lengths would so precocious
an ambition not go. You might have known that such
premature boldness would result in terrible trouble, both public and private.

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So he was too late in complaining that he had
never had a holiday since from his boyhood he had
been a serious troublemaker in the forum. It is uncertain
whether he died by his own hand, for he collapsed
after receiving a sudden wound in the groin, Some people
doubting whether his death was self inflicted, but no one
doubting that it was timely. It would be superfluous to
mention any more, who, though seeming to others the happiest

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of mortals, themselves, bore true witness against themselves by their
expressed hatred of every action of their lives. Yet they
did not change themselves or anyone else by these complaints,
For after their explosion of words, their feelings reverted to normal. Assuredly,
your lives, even if they last more than a thousand years,
will shrink into the tiniest span. Those vices will swallow

(12:08):
up any space of time. The actual time you have,
which reason can prolong, though it naturally passes quickly, inevitably
escapes you rapidly, for you do not grasp it, or
hold it back, or try to delay the swiftest of
all things, but you let it slip away, as though
it were something superfluous and replaceable. But among the worst
offenders I count those who spend all their time in
drinking and lust, For these are the worst preoccupations of

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all other people, even if they are possessed by an
illusory semblance of glory, suffer from a respectable delusion. You
can give me a list of miserly men or hot
tempered men who indulge in unjust hatreds or wars, but
they are all sinning in a more manly way. It
is those who are on a headlong course of gluttony
and lust, who are stained with dishonor Examine how all

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these people spend their time, How long they devote to
their accounts, delaying traps for others or fearing those late
for themselves, to paying court to others or being courted themselves,
to giving or receiving bail, to banquets which now count
as osile business. You will see how their activities, good
or bad, do not give them even time to breathe. Finally,
it is generally agreed that no activity can be successfully

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pursued by an individual who was preoccupied, not rhetoric or
liberal studies, since the mind, when distracted, absorbs nothing deeply,
but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it.
Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man.
Yet there is nothing which is harder to learn. There
are many instructors in the other arts to be found everywhere. Indeed,

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some of these arts mere boys have grasped so thoroughly
that they can even teach them. But learning how to
live takes a whole life, and which may surprise you more,
it takes a whole life to learn how to die.
So many of the finest men have put aside all
their encumbrances, renouncing riches and business and pleasure, and made
it their one aim, up to the end of their lives,
to know how to live. Yet most of these have

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died confessing that they did not yet know. Still less
can those others know. Believe me, it is the sign
of a great man, and one who is above human error,
not to allow his time to be frittered away. He
has the longest possible life, simply because whatever time was
available he devoted entirely to himself, none of it lay fallow,
and neglected none of it under another's control. For being

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an extremely thrifty guardian of his time, he never found
anything for which it was worth exchanging. So he had
enough time. But those into whose lives the public have
made great inroads inevitably have too little. Nor must you
think that such people do not sometimes recognize their loss. Indeed,
you will hear many of those to whom great prosperity
is a burden, sometimes crying out amidst their hordes of clients,

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or their pleadings in law courts, or their other honorable miseries.
It's impossible to live. Of course, it's impossible all those
who call you to themselves draw you away from yourself.
How many days has that defendant stolen from you? Or
that candidate, or that old lady worn out with burying
her airs, or that man shamming an illness to excite

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the greed of legacy hunters, or that influential friend who
keeps people like you not for friendship but for display.
Mark off. I tell you, and review the days of
your life, you will see that very few the useless
remnants have been left to you. One man who has
achieved the badge of O c e he coveted, longs
to lay it aside, and keeps repeating will this year

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never end? Another man thought it a great coup to
win the chance of giving games. But having given them,
he says, when shall I be rid of them? That
advocate is grabbed on every side throughout they forum, and
fills the whole place with a huge crowd, extending further
than he can be heard, But he says, when will
vacation come? Every one hustles his life along and is

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troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of
the present. But the man who spends all his time
on his own needs, who organizes every day as though
it were his last. Neither longs for nor fears the
next day. For what new pleasures can any hour now
bring him. He has tried everything and enjoyed everything to repletion.
For the rest, fortune can dispose as she likes. His

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life is now secure. Nothing can be taken from this life,
and you can only add to it, as if giving
to a man who is already full and satisfied food
which he does not want but can hold. So you
must not think a man has lived long because he
has white hair and wrinkles. He has not lived long,
just existed long. For suppose you should think that a
man had had a long voyage, who had been caught

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in a raging storm as he left harbor, and carried
hither and thither, and driven round and round in a
circle by the rage of opposing winds. He did not
have a long voyage, just a long tossing about. I
am always surprised to see some people demanding the time
of others and needing a most obliging response. Both sides
have in due the reason for which the time is asked,

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and neither regards the time itself as if nothing there
is being asked for in nothing given. They are trifling
with life's most precious commodity, being deceived because it is
an intangible thing, not open to an inspection, and therefore reckoned,
very cheap, in fact, almost without any value. People are
delighted to accept pensions and gratuities for which they hire
out their labor, or their support, or their services. But

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nobody works out the value of time. Men use it lavishly,
as if it cost nothing. But if death threatens these
same people, you will see them praying to their doctors.
If they are in fear of capital punishment, you will
see them prepared to spend their all to stay alive.
So inconsistent are they in their feelings. But if each
of us could have the tally of his future years
set before him, as we can of our past years,

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how alarmed would be those who saw only a few
years ahead, and how carefully would they use them? And
yet it is easy to organize an amount, however small,
which is assured. We have to be more careful in
preserving what will cease at an unknown point. But you
are not to think that these people do not know
how precious time is. They commonly say to those they
are particularly fond of that, they are ready to give

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them some of their years. And they do give them
without being aware of it. But the gift is such
that they themselves lose without adding anything to the others.
But what they actually do not know is whether they
are losing. Thus they can bear the loss of what
they do not know is gone. No one will bring
back the years. No one will restore you to yourself.
Life will follow the path it began to take, and

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will neither reverse nor check its course. It will cause
no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide
on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king's
command or a people's favor, as it started out on
its first day. So it will run on nowhere, pausing
or turning aside. What will be the outcome? You have

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been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile, death will arrive,
and you have no choice in making yourself available for that.
Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast
of their foresight. They keep themselves ociously preoccupied in order
to improve their lives. They spend their lives in organizing
their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to

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a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest
waste of life. It snatches away each day as it comes,
and denies us the present by promising the future. The
greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow
and loses today. You are arranging what lies in fortune's
control and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you

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looking at to what goal are you straining? The whole
future lies in uncertainty? Live? Immediately listen to the cry
of our greatest poet, who, as though inspired with divine
utteranceing salutary verses life's finest day for wretched mortals, here
is always first to flee. Why do you linger? He means,

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why are you idle? If you don't grasp it first,
it flees, and even if you do grasp it, it
will still flee. So you must match time's swiftness with
your speed in using it. And you must drink quickly,
as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow.
In chastising endless delay. Two, the poet very elegantly speaks
not of the finest age, but finest day. However greedy

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you are, why are you so unconcerned and so sluggish,
while time flies so fast, extending months and years in
a long sequence ahead of you. The poet is telling
you about the day, and about this very day that
is escaping. So can it be doubted that for wretched mortals,
that is, the preoccupied, the finest day is always the
first to flee. Old age overtakes them while they are

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still mentally childish, and they face it unprepared and unarmed,
for they have made no provision for it, stumbling upon
it suddenly and unawares, and without realizing that it was
approaching day by day. Just as travelers are beguiled by
conversation or reading or some profound meditation and find they
have arrived at their destination before they knew they were
approaching it. So it is with this unceasing and extremely

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fast moving journey of life, which waking or sleeping we
make at the same pace. The preoccupied become aware of
it only when it is over. If I wanted to
divide my theme into different headings and offer proofs, I
would find many arguments to prove that the preoccupied find
life very short. But Fabianus, who was not one of
today's academic philosophers, but the true old fashioned sort used

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to say that we must attack the passions by brute
force and not by logic. That the enemy's line must
be turned by a strong attack, and not by pinpricks.
For vices have to be crushed rather than picked at
still in order that the people concerned may be censured
for their own individual faults. They must be taught and
not just given up for lost. Life is divided into
three periods, past, present, in future. Of these, the present

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is short, the future is doubtful. The past is certain.
For this last is the one over which fortune has
lost her power, which cannot be brought back to anyone's control.
But this is what preoccupied people lose, for they have
no time to look back at their past, and even
if they did, it is not pleasant to recall activities
they are ashamed of, so they are unwilling to cast

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their minds back to times ill spent, which they dare
not relive. If their vices in recollection become obvious, even
those vices whose insidious approach was disguised by the charm
of some momentary pleasure. No one willingly reverts to the
past unless all his actions have passed his own censorship,
which is never deceived. The man who must fear his
own memory is the one who has been ambitious in

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his greed, arrogant in his contempt, uncontrolled in his victories,
treacherous in his deceptions, rapacious in his plundering, and wasteful
in his squandering. And yet this is the period of
our time, which is sacred and dedicated, which has passed
beyond all human risks, and is removed from fortune sway,
which cannot be harassed by want or fear, or attacks
of illness. It cannot be disturbed or snatched from us.

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It is an untroubled, everlasting possession. In the present we
have only one day at a time, each offering a
minute at a time. But all the days of the
past will come to your call. You can detain and
inspect them at your will, something which the preoccupied have
no time to do. It is the mind, which is
tranquil and free from care, which can roam through all
the stages of its life. The minds of the preoccupied,

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as if harnessed in a yoke, cannot turn round and
look behind them, So their lives vanish into an abyss.
And just as it is no use pouring any amount
of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch
and hold it. So it does not matter how much
time we are given. If there is nowhere for it
to settle, it escapes through the cracks and holes of
the mind. The present time is extremely short, so much

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so that some people are unaware of it, for it
is always on the move, flowing on in a rush.
It ceases before it has come, and does not suffer
delay any more than the firmament or the stars, whose
unceasing movement never pauses in the same place. And so
the preoccupied are concerned only with the present. And it
is so short that it cannot be grasped. And even
this is stolen from them while they are involved in

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their many distractions. In a word, would you like to
know how they do not live long? See how keen
they are to live long? Feeble old men pray for
a few more years. They pretend they are younger than
they are. They comfort themselves by this deception and fool
themselves as eagerly as if they fooled fade at the
same time. But when at lasts some illness has reminded

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them of their mortality, how terrified do they die? As
if they were not just passing out of life, but
being dragged out of it. They exclaimed that they were
fools because they have not really lived, and that if
only they can recover from this illness, they will live
in leisure. Then they reflect how pointlessly they acquired things
they never would enjoy, and how all their toil has
been in vain. But for those whose life is far

(24:26):
removed from all business, it must be amply long. None
of it is frittered away, none of it scattered here
and there, none of it committed to fortune, none of
it lost through carelessness, none of it wasted on largesse,
none of it superfluous. The whole of it, so to speak,
is well invested. So, however short, it is fully sue sciant.
And therefore whenever his last day comes, the wise man

(24:47):
will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step.
Perhaps you want to know whom I would call the preoccupied,
You must not imagine. I mean just those who are
driven from the law court only by the arrival of
the watchdogs, or those whom you see crushed either honorably
in their own crowd of supporters or contemptuously in someone else's,
Or those whose social duties bring them forth from their
own homes to dash them against someone else's doors, or

(25:10):
those whom the praetor's auction spear occupies in acquiring disreputable gain,
which will one day turn rank upon them. Some men
are preoccupied, even in their leisure in their country house,
on their couch, in the midst of solitude, even when
quite alone, they are their own worst company. You could
not call theirs a life of leisure, but an idle preoccupation.

(25:30):
Do you call that man leisured who arranges with anxious
precision as Corinthian bronzes, the cost of which is inflated
by the mania of a few collectors, and spends most
of the day on rusty bits of metal? Who sits
at a wrestling ring, For shame on us, we suffer
from vices which are not even Roman keenly following the
bouts between boys. Who classifies his herds of pack animals

(25:52):
into pairs according to age and color. Who pays for
the maintenance of the latest athletes? Again, do you call
those men lee who spend many hours at the barber's
simply to cut whatever grew overnight. To have a serious
debate about every separate hair to tidy up disarranged locks,
or to train thinning ones from the sides to lie
over the forehead. How angry they get if the barber

(26:13):
has been a bit careless, as if he were trimming
a real man. How they flare up if any of
their mane is wrongly cut off, if any of it
is badly arranged, or if it doesn't all fall into
the right ringlets. Which of them would not rather have
his country rum than his hair, Which would not be
more anxious about the elegance of his head than its safety,

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Which would not rather be trimmed than honorable? Do you
call those men leisured who divide their time between the
comb and the mirror? And what about those who busy
themselves in composing, listening to, or learning songs while they
distort their voice, whose best and simplest tone nature intended
to be the straight one into the most unnatural modulations.
Who are always drumming with their fingers as they be

(26:54):
timed to an imagine tune, whom you can hear humming
to themselves even when they are summoned on as serious,
often even sorrow affair theirs is not leisure, but indolent
occupation and good heavens. As for their banquets, I would
not reckon on them as leisure times when I see
how anxiously they arrange their silver, how carefully they gird
up the tunics of their page boys, how on tenter

(27:15):
hooks they are to see how the cook has dealt
with the bore with what speed smooth they slaves rush
around on their duties, with what skilled birds are carved
into appropriate portions, How carefully wretched little slaves wipe up
the spittle of drunkards. By these means they cultivate a
reputation for elegance and good taste. And to such an
extent do their failings follow them into all areas of
their private lives, that they cannot eat or drink without ostentation.

(27:38):
I would also not count as leisured those who were
carried around in a sedan chair in a litter and
turn up punctually for their drives, as if it was
forbidden to give them up. Who have to be told
when to bathe, or to swim, or to dine. They
are so enervated by the excessive torpor of a self
indulgent mind that they cannot trust themselves to know if
they are hungry. I am told that one of these
self indulgent people, if self indulgence is the right word

(27:59):
for un d learning the ordinary habits of human life.
When he had been carried out from the bath and
put in his sedan chair, asked, am I now sitting down?
Do you think that this man, who doesn't know if
he is sitting down, knows whether he is alive, whether
he sees, whether he is at leisure? It is decault
to say whether I pity him more if he really
did not know this, or if he pretended not to know.

(28:21):
They really experience forgetfulness of many things, but they also
pretend to forget many things. They take delight in certain
vices as proofs of their good fortune. It seems to
be the lowly and contemptible man who knows what he
is doing after that sea, if you can accuse the
minds of inventing many details in order to attack luxury.
In truth, they pass over more than they make up.

(28:42):
And such a wealth of incredible vices have appeared in
this generation, which shows talent in this one area, that
we could now actually accuse the minds of ignoring them
to think that there is anyone so lost in luxuries
that he has to trust another to tell him if
he is sitting down. So this one is not at leisure,
and you must get give him another description. He is ill,
or even he is dead. The man who is really

(29:04):
at leisure is also aware of it. But this one,
who is only half alive and needs to be told
the positions of his own body, how can he have
control over any of his time? It would be tedious
to mention individually those who have spent all their lives
playing drafts or ball, or carefully cooking themselves in the sun.
They are not at leisure, whose pleasures involve a serious commitment.

(29:26):
For example, nobody will dispute that those people are busy
about nothing, who spend their time on useless literary studies.
Even among the Romans, there is now a large company
of these. It used to be a Greek failing to
want to know how many oarsman Ulysses had, whether the
Iliad or the Odyssey was ridden first, and whether too
they were by the same author, and other questions of
this kind, which, if you keep them to yourself, in

(29:47):
no way enhance your private knowledge, And if you publish them,
make you appear more abore than a scholar. But now
the Romans too have been emitted by the pointless enthusiasm
for useless knowledge. Recently I heard somebody reporting which Roman
general first did this, or that Deuillius first won a
naval battle. Curious Dentatus first included elephants in a triumph.

(30:08):
So far these facts, even if they do not contribute
to real glory, at least are concerned with exemplary services
to the state. Such knowledge will not do us any good,
but it interests us because of the appeal of these
pointless facts. We can also excuse those who investigate who
first persuaded the Romans to embark on a ship. That
was Claudius, who for this reason was called Caudex, because

(30:29):
a structure linking several wooden planks was called an antiquity
a caudex. Hence to the law tables are called codices,
and even today the boats which carry provisions up the
Tiber are called by the old fashioned name codiceri. Doubtless,
to it is of some importance to know that Valirius
Corvinus first conquered Messana and was the first of the
family of the Valerie to be surnamed Messana from the

(30:51):
name of the captured city, the spelling of which was
gradually corrupted in everyday speech to Messala. Perhaps you will
also allow someone to take seriously the fact that Lucia
Sella first exhibited lions loose in the circus, though at
other times they were shown in fetters, and that javelin
throwers were sent by King Bacchus to kill them. This,
too may be excused, But does it serve any good

(31:11):
purpose to know that Pompey first exhibited in the circus
of fight involving eighteen elephants, pitting innocent men against them
in a staged battle. A leader of the state, and
as we are told, a man of notable kindliness among
the leaders of old, he thought it would be a
memorable spectacle to kill human beings in a novel way.
Are they to fight to the death? Not good enough?

(31:34):
Are they to be torn to pieces? Not good enough?
Let them be crushed by animals of enormous bulk. It
would be better for such things to be forgotten, lest
in the future someone in power might learn about them
and not wish to be outdone in such a piece
of inhumanity. Oh what darkness does great prosperity cast over
our minds. He thought himself beyond nature's laws, at the

(31:58):
time that he was throwing so many crowds of rens
whiched men to wild creatures from abroad, when he was
setting such desperate creatures against each other, when he was
shedding so much blood in front of the Roman people,
who themselves were soon to be forced by him to
shed their own blood. But later he himself, betrayed by
Alexandrian treachery, offered himself to be stabbed by the lowest slave,
only then realizing that his surname great was an empty boast.

(32:22):
But to return to the point from which I digressed,
and to illustrate how some people spend useless efforts on
these same topics, the man I referred to reported that Metellus,
in his triumph after conquering the Carthaginians in Sicily alone
among all the Romans, had one hundred and twenty elephants
led before his chariot, and that Sullah was the last
of the Romans to have extended the Pomerium asterisk, which
it was the ancient practice to extend after acquiring Italian

(32:45):
but never provincial territory. Is it better to know this
than to know that the Aventine Hill, as he asserted,
is outside the Pomerium for one of two reasons, either
because the plubs withdrew to it, or because when Remus
took the auspices there the birds had not been favorable.
And countless further theories that are either false or very
close to lies. For even if you admit that they

(33:05):
say all this in good faith, even if they guarantee
the truth of their statements, whose mistakes will thereby be lessened,
whose passions restrained? Who will be made more free, more just,
more magnanimous. Our Fabianus used to say that sometimes he
wondered whether it was better not to be involved in
any researches than to get entangled in these. Of all people,

(33:26):
only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy,
Only those are really alive, For they not only keep
a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex
every age to theirs. All the years that have passed
before them are added to their own. Unless we are
very ungrateful, all those distinguished founders of holy creeds were
born for us and prepared for us a way of

(33:46):
life by the toil of others. We are led into
the presence of things which have been brought from darkness
into light. We are excluded from no age, but we
have access to them all. And if we are prepared
in loftiness of mind to pass beyond then narrow confines
of human weakness, there is a long period of time
through which we can roam. We can argue with Socrates,

(34:06):
expressed out with Carneades, cultivate retirement with Epicurus, overcome human
nature with the Stoics, and exceed its limits with the Cynics.
Since nature allows us to enter into a partnership with
every age, why not turn from this brief and transient
spell of time and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the past,
which is limitless and eternal, and can be shared with
better men than we. Those who rush about on social duties,

(34:30):
disturbing both themselves and others. When they have duly finished
their crazy round and have daily crossed everyone's threshold and
passed by no open door, when they have carried around
their self interested greetings to houses that are miles apart,
how few will they be able to see in a
city so enormous and so distracted by varied desires. How
many will there be who, through sleepiness, or self indulgence
or ungraciousness, will exclude them. How many, after keeping them

(34:53):
in an agony of waiting, will pretend to be in
a hurry and rush past them. How many will avoid
going out through a whole all crowded with dependents, and
escape through a secret door, as if it were not
even more discourteous to deceive callers than to exclude them.
How many, half asleep and sluggish after yesterday's drinking, will
yon insolently and have to be prompted a thousand times
in a whisper, before scarcely moving their lips. They can

(35:16):
greet by name the poor wretches who have broken their
own slumbers in order to wait on another's. You should
rather suppose that those are involved in worthwhile duties who
wish to have daily as their closest friends. Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus,
and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and
Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of these will be too busy

(35:36):
to see you. None of these will not send his
visitor away happier and more devoted to himself. None of
these will allow anyone to depart empty handed. They are
at home to all mortals by night and by day.
None of these will force you to die, but all
will teach you how to die. None of them will
exhaust your years, but each will contribute his years to yours.

(35:58):
With None of these will conversation be danger, or his
friendship fatal, or attendance on him expensive. From them, you
can take whatever you wish. It will not be their
fault if you do not take your fill from them.
What happiness, what a fine old age awaits the man
who has made himself a client of these. He will
have friends whose advice he can ask on the most
important or the most trivial matters, whom he can consult

(36:20):
daily about himself, who will tell him the truth without
insulting him, and praise him without flattery, Who will offer
him a pattern on which to model himself. We are
in the habit of saying that it was not in
our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us,
that they were given to us by chance. But we
can choose whose children we would like to be. There
are households of the noblest intellects. Choose the one into

(36:42):
which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit
not only their name, but their property too. Nor will
this property need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly. The
more it is shared out, the greater it will become.
These will offer you a path to immortality, and raise
you to a point from which no one is cast down.
This is the only way to prolong mortality, even to

(37:02):
convert it to immortality. Honours monuments, whatever the ambitious have
ordered by decrees or raised in public buildings, are soon destroyed.
There is nothing that the passage of time does not
demolish and remove. But it cannot damage the works which
philosophy has consecrated. No age will wipe them out, No
age diminish them. The next in every following age will

(37:23):
only increase the veneration for them. Since envy operates on
what is at hand, but we can more openly admire
things from a distance. So the life of the philosopher
extends widely. He is not confined by the same boundary
as are others. He alone is free from the laws
that limit the human race, and all ages serve him
as though he were a god. Some time is past,

(37:44):
he grasps it in his recollection. Time is present, he
uses it, Time is to come, he anticipates it. This
combination of all times into one gives him a long life.
But life is very short and anxious for those who
forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.
When they come to the end of it, the poor

(38:05):
wretches realize too late that for all this time they
have been preoccupied in doing nothing. And the fact that
they sometimes invoke death is no proof that their lives
seem long. Their own folly amixs them with restless emotions,
which hurl themselves upon the very things they fear. They
often long for death because they fear it. Nor is
this a proof that they are living for a long time,

(38:25):
that the day often seems long to them, or that
they complain that the hours pass slowly until the time
fixed for dinner arrives. For as soon as their preoccupations
fail them, they are restless with nothing to do, not
knowing how to dispose of their leisure or make the
time pass, and so they are anxious for something else
to do, and all the intervening time is wearisome. Really,
it is just as when a gladiatorial show has been announced,

(38:47):
or they are looking forward to the appointed time of
some other exhibition or amusement. They want to leap over
the days in between. Any deferment of the long for
event is tedious to them. Yet the time of the
actual enjoyment is show and swift, and made much shorter
through their own fault, For they dash from one pleasure
to another, and cannot stay steady in one desire. Their

(39:08):
days are not long but odious. On the other hand,
how short do the knights seem, which they spend drinking
or sleeping with harlots. Hence the lunacy of the poets,
who encourage human frailty by their stories, in which Jupiter,
seduced by the pleasures of love making, is seen to
double the length of the night. What else is it
but to inflame our vices? When they quote the gods
to endorse them, and as a precedent for our failings,

(39:30):
they offer an excuse the wantonness of the gods. Can
the knights, which they purchase so dearly, not seem much
too short to these people? They lose the day in
waiting for the night, and the night in fearing the dawn.
Even their pleasures are uneasy and made anxious by various fears,
and at the very height of their rejoicing, the worrying
thoughts steals over them. How long will this last? This

(39:52):
feeling has caused kings to bewail their power, and they
were not so much delighted by the greatness of their fortune,
is terrified by the thought of its inevitable land. When
that most arrogant king of Persia, Asterisk, was deploying his
army over vast plains, and could not number it, but
had to measure it, he what because in a hundred
years out of that huge army not a soul would
be alive. But he who was weeping was the very

(40:13):
man who would bring their fate upon them, and would
destroy some on the sea, some on land, some in battle,
some in flight, and in a very short time would
wipe out all those for whose hundredth year he was afraid.
And what of the fact that even their joys are uneasy?
The reason is that they are not based on firm causes,
but they are agitated as groundlessly as they arise. But

(40:34):
what kind of times can those be? Do you think?
Which they themselves admit are wretched? Since even the joys
by which they are exalted and raised above. Humanity are
pretty corrupt. All the greatest blessings create anxiety, and fortune
is never less to be trusted than when it is fairest.
To preserve prosperity, we need other prosperity, and to support
the prayers which have turned out well, we have to

(40:55):
make other prayers. Whatever comes our way by chance is unsteady,
and the hire it rises, the more liable it is
to fall. Furthermore, what is doomed to fall delights no one,
so it is inevitable that life will be not just
very short, but very miserable. For those who acquire by
great toil what they must keep by greater toil, they
achieve what they want laboriously. They possess what they have

(41:18):
achieved anxiously, and meanwhile they take no account of time
that will never more return. New preoccupations take the place
of the old. Hope excites more hope, and ambition more ambition.
They do not look for an end to their misery,
but simply change the reason for it. We have found
our own public honors a torment, and we spend more
time on someone else's. We have stopped laboring as candidates,

(41:41):
and we start canvassing for others. We have given up
the troubles of a prosecutor and taken on those of
a judge. A man stops being a judge and becomes
president of a court. He has grown old in the
job of managing the property of others for a salary,
and then spends all his time looking after his own.
TEUs was released from army life to become busy in

(42:02):
the consulship. Quintius hastens to get through his dictatorship, but
he will be summoned back to it from the plow.
Scipio will go against the Carthaginians before he is experienced
enough for such an undertaking, victorious over Hannibal, victorious over
Antiochus distinguished in his own consulship and assured he for
his brothers. If he had not himself forbidden it, he

(42:23):
would have been set up beside Jupiter. But discord in
the state will harass it. Savior and after. As a
young man he has scorned honors fit for the gods
at length. When old, he will take delight in an
ostentatiously stubborn exile. There will always be causes for anxiety,
whether due to prosperity or to wretchedness. Life will be
driven on through a succession of preoccupations. We shall always

(42:45):
long for leisure, but never enjoy it. And so, my
dear Polinus, extract yourself from the crowd. And, as you
have been storm tossed more than your age deserves, you
must at last retire into a peaceful harbor. Consider how
many waves you have encouned, hunter, how many storms, some
of which you have sustained in private life, and some
you have brought upon yourself in public life. Your virtue

(43:07):
has for long enough been shown. When you are a
model of active industry. Try how it will manage in
leisure the greater part of your life, Certainly the better
part has been devoted to the state. Take some of
your own time for yourself too. I am not inviting
you to idle or purposeless sloth, or to drown all
your natural energy and sleep and the pleasures that are
dear to the masses, that is, not to have repose.

(43:30):
When you are retired and enjoying peace of mind, you
will find to keep you busy more important activities than
all those you have performed so energetically up to now. Indeed,
you are managing the accounts of the world as scrupulously
as you would another persons, as carefully as your own,
as conscientiously as the states. You are winning affection in
a job in which it is hard to avoid ill will.

(43:51):
But believe me, it is better to understand the balance
sheet of one's own life than of the corn trade.
You must recall that vigorous mind of yours supremely capable
of dealing with the greatest responsibilities from a task which
is certainly honorable, but scarcely suited to the happy life.
And you must consider that all your youthful training in
the liberal studies was not directed to this end, that
many thousands of measures of corn might safely be entrusted

(44:14):
to you. You had promised higher and greater things of yourself.
There will not be wanting men who are completely worthy
and hard working. Stolid pack animals are much more fit
for carrying loads than thoroughbred horses, whoever subdued their noble
speed with a heavy burden. Consider too, how much anxiety
you have in submitting yourself to such a weight of responsibility.

(44:36):
You are dealing with the human belly. A hungry people
neither listens to reason, nor is mollified by fair treatment
or swayed by any appeals. Quite recently, within a few
days after Gaya, Caesar died still feeling very upset if
the dead have feelings, because he saw that the Roman
people were still surviving with a supply of food for
seven or at most eight days. While he was building

(44:56):
bridges with boats and playing with the resources of the empire.
We faced the world of all emotions, even to those
under siege, a shortage of provisions. His imitation of a
mad foreign king doomed in his pride, nearly cost the
city destruction in famine and the universal collapse that follows famine.
What then, must those have felt who had charge of
the corn supply when they were threatened with stones, weapons, fire,

(45:18):
and guius. With a huge pretense, they managed to conceal
the great evil lurking in the vitals of the state,
and assuredly they had good reason for certain ailments must
be treated while the patient is unaware of them. Knowing
about their disease has caused the death of many. You
must retire to these pursuits, which are quieter, safer, and
more important. Do you think it is the same thing

(45:40):
whether you were overseeing the transfer of corn into granaries
unspoilt by the dishonesty and carelessness of the shippers, and
taking care that it does not get dampened and ruined
through heat, and that it talies in measure and weight,
Or whether you take up these sacred and lofty studies,
from which you will learn the substance of God and
his will, his mode of life, his shape. What fate
awaits your soul? Where nature lays us to rest when

(46:00):
released from r bodies. What is the force which supports
all the heaviest elements of this world at the center,
suspends the light elements above, carries fire to the highest part,
and sets the stars in motion with their proper changes.
And learn other things in succession which are full of
tremendous marvels. You really should leave the ground and turn
your thoughts to these studies. Now, while the blood is hot,

(46:22):
you should make your way with vigor to better things.
In this kind of life, you will find much that
is worth your study. The love and practice of the virtues,
forgetfulness of the passions, the knowledge of how to live
and die, and a life of deep tranquility. Indeed, the
state of all who are preoccupied is wretched, But the
most wretched are those who are toiling, not even at
their own preoccupations, but must regulate their sleep by another's,

(46:45):
and their walk by another's pace, and obey orders in
those freest of all things, loving and hating. If such
people want to know how short their lives are, let
them reflect how small a portion is their own. So
when you see a man repeatedly wearing the robe of Ocee,
or one whose name is often spoken in the forum,
do not envy him. These things are one at the
cost of life, in order that one year may be

(47:07):
dated from their names, they will waste all their own years.
Life has left some men struggling at the start of
their careers, before they could force their way to the
height of their ambition. Some men, after they have crawled
through a thousand indignities to the supreme dignity, have been
assailed by the gloomy thought that all their labors were
but for the sake of an epitaph. Some try to
adjust their extreme old age to new hopes as though

(47:28):
it were youth, but find its weakness fails them in
the midst of efforts that overtacks it. It is a
shameful sight when an elderly man runs out of breath
while he is pleading in court for litigants who are
total strangers to him, and trying to win the applause
of the ignorant bystanders. It is disgraceful to see a
man collapsing in the middle of his duties, worn out
more by his lifestyle than by his labors. Disgraceful too,

(47:51):
is that when a man dies in the midst of
going through his accounts, and his heir long kept waiting,
smiles in relief. I cannot resist telling you of an
inns instance that occurs to me. Sextus Tyrannius was an
old man known to be scrupulous and diligent, who, when
he was ninety, at his own request, was given retirement
from his ocee by Gaeus Caesar. He then ordered himself

(48:14):
to be laid out on his bed and lamented by
the assembled household as though he were dead. The house
bewailed its old master's leisure and did not cease its
morning until his former job was restored to him. Is
it really so pleasant to die in harness? That is
the feeling of many people. Their desire for their workout
lasts their ability to do it. They fight against their

(48:35):
own bodily weakness, and they regard old age as a
hardship on no other grounds than that it puts them
on the shelf. The law does not make a man
a soldier after fifty or a senator after sixty. Men
find it more decult to gain leisure from themselves than
from the law. Meanwhile, as they robin or robbed, as
they disturb each other's peace, as they make each other miserable,

(48:55):
their lives pass without satisfaction, without pleasure, without mental improvement.
No one keeps death in view. No one refrains from
hopes that look far ahead. Indeed, some people even arrange
things that are beyond life, massive tombs, dedications of public buildings,
shows for their funerals, and ostentatious burials. But in truth,
such people's funerals should be conducted with torches and wax tapers,

(49:18):
as though they had lived the shortest of lives. Consolation
to HELVIAH, dearest mother, I have often had the urge
to console you, and often restrained it. Many things encouraged
me to venture to do so. First, I thought I
would be laying aside all my troubles when I had

(49:39):
at least wiped away your tears, even if I could
not stop them coming. Then I did not doubt that
I would have more power to raise you up if
I had first risen myself. Moreover, I was afraid that
though fortune was conquered by me, she might conquer someone
close to me. So staunching my own cut with my hand,
I was doing my best to crawl forward to bind
up your wounds. There were, on the other hand, considerations

(50:02):
which delayed my purpose. I realized that your grief should
not be intruded upon while it was fresh and agonizing,
in case the consolations themselves should rouse and inflame it.
For an illness to nothing is more harmful than premature treatment.
So I was waiting until your grief of itself should
lose its force and being softened by time to endure remedies.
It would allow itself to be touched and handled. Moreover,

(50:25):
although I consulted all the works written by the most
famous authors to control and moderate grief, I couldn't find
any example of someone who had comforted his own dear
ones when he himself was the subject of their grief.
So when this unprecedented situation, I hesitated, fearing that I
would be offering not consolation but further irritation. Consider too,
that a man lifting his head from the very funeral

(50:47):
pyre must need some novel vocabulary, not drawn from ordinary,
everyday condolence, to comfort his own dear ones. But every
great and overpowering grief must take away the capacity to
choose words, since it often stifles the voice its anyway,
I'll try my best, not trusting in my cleverness, but
because being myself the comforter, I can thereby be the
most effective comfort. As you never refuse me anything, I

(51:10):
hope you will not refuse me this at least, though
all grief is stubborn to be willing that I should
set a limit to your desolation. Consider how much I
have promised myself from your indulgence. I don't doubt that
I shall have more influence over you than your grief,
than which nothing has more influence over the wretched. So
in order not to join battle with it at once,

(51:30):
I'll first support it and offer it a lot of encouragement.
I shall expose and reopen all the wounds which have
already healed. Someone will object, what kind of consolation is this?
To bring back forgotten ills and to set the mind
and view of all its sorrows, when it can scarcely
endure one. But let him consider that those disorders which
are so dangerous that they have gained ground in spite
of treatment, can generally be treated by opposite methods. Therefore,

(51:54):
I shall offer to the mind all its sorrows, all
its morning garments. This will not be a gentle prescription
for heat, but cottery and the knife. What shall I
achieve that a soul which has conquered so many miseries
will be ashamed to worry about one more wound in
a body which already has so many scars. So let
those people go on weeping and wailing whose self indulgent

(52:15):
minds have been weakened by long prosperity, Let them collapse
at the thread of the most trivial injuries. But let
those who have spent all their years suffering disasters endure
the worst emiictions with a brave and resolute staunchness. Everlasting
misfortune does have one blessing that it ends up by
toughening those whomould constantly a mix. Fortune has given you
no respite from the most woeful sorrows, not even accepting

(52:37):
the day of your birth as soon as you were born, no,
even while being born, you lost your mother, and on
the threshold of life you were, in a sense exposed.
You grew up under the care of a stepmother, and
you actually forced her to become a real mother by
showing her all the deference and devotion which can be
seen even in a daughter. Yet even having a good
stepmother costs every child a good deal. You lost your uncle, kindest,

(53:01):
best and bravest of men when you were awaiting his arrival,
and lest fortune should lessen her cruelty by dividing it.
Within a month, you buried your dearest husband, by whom
you had three children. This sorrow was announced to you
when you were already grieving, and when indeed all your
children were away, as if your misfortunes were concentrated on
purpose into that time, so that your grief would have

(53:22):
nowhere to turn for relief. I pass over all the dangers,
all the fears you endured. Is they assailed you unceasingly,
but recently, into the same lap from which you had
let go three grandchildren. You received back the bones of
three grandchildren within twenty days of burying my son, who
died as you held and kissed him. You heard that
I had been taken away. This only you had lacked

(53:44):
to grieve for the living. Of all the wounds which
have ever pierced your body, this last one is, I admit,
the worst. It has not simply broken the skin, but
cut into your breast and vital parts. But just as recruits,
even when superficially wounded, cry aloud in and dread being
handled by doctors more than the sword, while veterans, even
if severely wounded, patiently and without a grown allow the

(54:06):
wounds to be cleaned, as though their bodies did not
belong to them. So you must now offer yourself bravely
for treatment. Come put away wailings and lamentations and all
the other usual noisy manifestations of feminine grief, for all
your sorrows have been wasted on you. If you have
not yet learned how to be wretched. Do I seem
to have dealt boldly with you? I have kept away

(54:27):
not one of your misfortunes from you, but piled them
all up in front of you. I have done this courageously,
for I decided to conquer your grief, not to cheat it.
But I shall do this, I think First of all,
if I show that I am suffering nothing for which
I could be called wretched, let alone make my relations wretched.
Then if I turn to you and show that your fortune,
which is wholly dependent on mine, is also not painful,

(54:50):
first I shall deal with the fact which your love
is longing to hear that I am suffering no omiction.
I shall make it clear if I can, that those
very circumstances which you think crushing me can be born.
But if you cannot believe that, at least I shall
be more pleased with myself for being happy in conditions
which normally make men wretched, there is no need to
believe others about me. I am telling you firmly that

(55:11):
I am not wretched, so that you won't be agitated
by uncertainty. To reassure you further, I shall add that
I cannot even be made wretched. We are born under
circumstances that would be favorable if we did not abandon them.
It was nature's intention that there should be no need
of great equipment for a good life. Every individual can
make himself happy. External goods are of trivial importance and

(55:35):
without much influence in either direction. Prosperity does not elevate
the sage, and adversity does not depress him, for he
has always made the effort to rely as much as
possible on himself and to derive all delight from himself.
So what am I calling myself a sage? Certainly not,
for if I could claim that, not only would I

(55:56):
be denying that I was wretched, but I would be
asserting that I was the most fortunate of all men.
In coming close to God, as it is doing what
is suscyan to alleviate all wretchedness. I have surrendered myself
to wise men, and as I am not yet strong
enough to help myself, I have gone over to another camp.
I mean those who can easily protect themselves and their followers.
They have ordered me to take a firm stand, like

(56:17):
a sentry on guard, and to foresee all the attacks
and all the onslaughts of fortune long before they hit me.
She falls heavily on those to whom she is unexpected.
The man who is always expecting her easily withstands her
for an enemy's arrival. Two scatters those whom it catches
off guard, But those who have prepared in advance for
the coming conflict, being properly drawn up and equipped easily

(56:39):
withstand the first onslaught, which is the most violent. Never
have I trusted Fortune, even when she seemed to offer peace,
all those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me, money,
public oc influence, I relegated to a place whence she
could claim them back without bothering me. I kept a
wide gap between them and me, with the result that
she has taken them away, not torn them away. No

(57:02):
man has been shattered by the blows of fortune unless
he was first deceived by her favors. Those who loved
her gifts as if they were their own forever, who
wanted to be admired on account of them, are laid
low and grieve when the false and transient pleasures desert
their vain and childish minds, ignorant of every stable pleasure.
But the man who was not puffed up in good
times does not collapse either when they change. His fortitude

(57:25):
is already tested, and he maintains a mind unconquered in
the face of either condition, For in the midst of prosperity,
he has tried his own strength against adversity. So I
have never believed that there was any genuine good in
the things which every one prays for. What is more,
I have found them empty and daubed with showy and
deceptive colors, with nothing inside to match their appearance. And
now in these so called evils I find nothing so

(57:47):
terrible and harsh as the general opinion threatened. Certainly, the
word exile itself now enters the years more harshly through
a sort of conviction and popular belief, and strikes the
listener as something gloomy and detestable. For that is the
people's verdict. But wise men on the whole reject the
people's decrees. So, putting aside this judgment of the majority,

(58:08):
who are carried away by the surface appearance of things,
whatever the grounds for believing in it, let us examine
the reality of exile. Clearly, a change of place, I
must not seem to restrict its force and remove its
worst feature. So I agree that this change of place
brings with it the disadvantages of poverty, disgrace, and contempt.
I shall deal with these later. Meanwhile, I wish first

(58:29):
to examine what distress the change of place itself involves.
It is unbearable to be deprived of your country. Come now,
look at this massive people, whom the buildings of huge
rome can scarcely hold. Most of that crowd are deprived
of their country. They have flocked together from their towns
and colonies, in fact, from the whole world. Some brought
by ambition, some by the obligation of public oc some

(58:52):
by the duties of an envoy, some by self indulgence
seeking a place conveniently rich in vice, some by a
love of liberal studies, some by the public shows. Some
of been attracted by friendship, some by their own energy,
which has found a wide field for displaying its qualities.
Some have come to sell their beauty, others their eloquence.
Absolutely every type of person has hastened into the city
which offers high rewards for both virtues and vices. Take

(59:15):
a roll call of all of them and ask each
where he comes from. You will see that most of
them have left their own homes and come to a
very great and beautiful city, but not their own. Then
move away from this city, which in a way can
be said to belong to all, and go around all
the others. In everyone. A large proportion of the population
is immigrant, pass on from those whose lovely and convenient
position attracts large numbers and review deserted places in rocky

(59:39):
islands Sciathos and Seraphus, Gyra and Kashura, you will find
no place of exile where somebody does not linger because
he wants to. What could be found so bare and
with such a steep drop on every side as this rock?
What more barren regarding its resources, what more savage regarding
its people, what more rugged regarding its geography, what more

(01:00:02):
in temperate regarding its climate. Yet more foreigners than natives
live here. Thus, so far is change of locality itself
from being a hardship that even this place has enticed
some people from their homeland. I've come across people who
say that there is a sort of inborn restlessness in
the human spirit, and an urge to change one's abode.
For man is endowed with a mind which is changeable

(01:00:23):
and unsettled nowhere at rest. It darts about and directs
its thoughts to all places known and unknown, A wanderer
which cannot endure repose, and delights chiefly in novelty. This
will not surprise you if you consider its original source.
It was not made from heavy earthly material, but came
down from that heavenly spirit. But heavenly things are by
nature always in motion, fleeing and driven on extremely fast.

(01:00:46):
Look at the planets which light up the world. Not
one is at rest. The Sun blights constantly moving on
from place to place, And although it revolves with the universe,
its motion is nevertheless opposite to that of the firmament itself.
It races through all the suns of the zodiac and
never stops. Its motion is everlasting, as it journeys from
one point to another. All the planets forever move round

(01:01:07):
and pass by. As the constraining law of nature has ordained,
they are born from point of point. When through fixed
periods of years they have completed their courses, they will
start again upon their former circuits. How silly, then, to
imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the
same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change
of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even

(01:01:28):
self preservation and continual and very rapid change. Well, now
turn your attention from heavenly to human matters, and you
will see that whole nations and peoples have changed their abode.
What are Greek cities doing in the midst of Barbarian territories.
Why do we hear the Macedonian language among Indians and Persians?

(01:01:49):
Scythia and all that wide region of fierce and untamed
tribes reveal a keay in cities established on the shores
of the Pontus. People were not put off from migrating
there by the endlessly severe winds or the savage character
of the natives, which matched their climate. There is a
crowd of Athenians in Asia. Militus has sent out all
over the place, enough people to colonize seventy five cities.

(01:02:11):
The whole of the Italian coast, which is washed by
the Lower Sea, was once greater Greece. Asia claims the
Etruscans as her own. Tyrians live in Africa, Phoenicians in Spain,
Greeks penetrated into gall and Gulls into Greece. The Pyrenees
did not block the passage of the Germans through trackless
through unknown territory has ventured the restlessness of men, and
behind them came their wives and children, and parents stricken

(01:02:33):
in years. Some of them, driven about in their long wanderings,
did not choose their goal deliberately, but through weariness settled
at the nearest place. Others, by force of arms, established
their right in a foreign country. Some tribes were drowned
while they sought unknown regions. Others settled where they were
stranded by running out of supplies. They did not all
have the same reason for abandoning one homeland for another.

(01:02:56):
Some escaping the destruction of their cities by enemy attack,
were driven to other territory when they lost their own.
Some were banished by civil strife. Others were sent out
to relieve the burden of overpopulation. Others fled from disease
or constant earthquakes, or some intolerable deficiencies in their barren soil.
Others were tempted by the exaggerated report of a fertile shore.
Different reasons roused different peoples to leave their homes, But

(01:03:19):
this at least is clear. Nothing is stayed where it
was born. The human race is always on the move.
In so large a world, there is every day some change.
New cities are founded, and new names of nations are
born as former ones disappear or are absorbed into a
stronger one. But what else are all these national migrations
than banishments of a people? Why should I drag you

(01:03:39):
through the whole cycle. Why bothered to mention Antenor who
founded Patavium, and Evander, who settled the Arcadian kingdom on
the banks of the Tiber. What about Diomedes and the others,
both conquerors and conquered, who were scattered over alien lands
by the Trojan War? Why the Roman Empire itself looks
back to an exile as its founder a man who

(01:04:00):
was driven out when his homeland was captured, and, taking
a few survivors, was forced by fear of the victor
to make a long journey which brought him to Italy.
What a number of colonies this people, in turn, has
sent out to every province wherever the Romans have conquered.
They dwell, people volunteered for this kind of emigration, and
even old men, leaving their altars, followed the settlers overseas.

(01:04:23):
The point does not need any more illustration, but I
will just add one which hits you in the eye.
This island itself has often changed its inhabitants to leave
aside earlier events which are obscured by antiquity. The Greeks,
who now live in Massilia after leaving Phosis, first settled
in this island. It is not clear what drove them
from it, whether the harsh climate, or being in sight

(01:04:43):
of the superior power of Italy, or the lack of harbors.
For clearly the reason was not the savagery of the inhabitants,
since they settled them on what were then the fiercest
and most uncivilized peoples in Gaul. Subsequently, the Ligurians crossed
over to the island, and the Spaniards too, as is
clear from the similarity of their customs. For the Corsicans
were the same kind of head covering and shoes as

(01:05:04):
the Cantabrians, and some of their words are the same,
only some for their language as a whole, through association
with Greeks and Ligurians, has lost its native elements. Next
two colonies of Roman citizens were brought there, one by
Marius and one by Cellah. So often has the population
of this barren and forny rock changed in a word,
you will hardly find a single country still inhabited by

(01:05:26):
its original natives. Everywhere the people are of mixed and
imported stock. One group has followed another, one longed for
what another scorned. One was driven out from where he
had expelled others. So fate has decreed that nothing maintains
the same condition forever, to compensate for the actual change
of place and forgetting about the other inconveniences attached to exile. Vo,

(01:05:48):
most learned of Romans, considers, we have this siousciant remedy,
that wherever we come, we have the same order of
nature to deal with. Marcus Brutus thinks this is enough
that exiles can carry with them their own virtues. Even
if anyone thinks that these points, taken separately are in
soocient to console the exile, he will admit that in
combination they carry great weight. For how little have we

(01:06:10):
lost when the two finest things of all will accompany
us wherever we go, universal nature in our individual virtue.
Believe me, this was the intention of whoever formed the universe,
whether all powerful God or incorporeal reason, creating mighty works
or divine spirit, penetrating all things from greatest to smallest
with even pressure or fate and the unchanging sequence of causation. This,

(01:06:31):
I say, was the intention that only the most worthless
of our possessions should come into the power of another.
Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control.
It can be neither given nor taken away. The world
you see, nature's greatest and most glorious creation, and the
human mind, which gazes and wonders at it, and is
the most splendid part of it. These are our own

(01:06:51):
everlasting possessions, and will remain with us as long as
we ourselves remain so eager and upright. Let us hasten
with bold steps wherever circuit sumstances take us, and let
us journey through any countries whatever. There can be no
place of exile within the world, since nothing within the
world is alien to men. From whatever point on the
Earth's surface you look up to heaven, the same distance

(01:07:12):
lies between the realms of gods and men. Accordingly, provided
my eyes are not withdrawn from that spectacle of which
they never tire, Provided I may look upon the Sun
and the Moon, and gaze at the other planets, provided
I may trace their risings and settings, their periods, and
the causes of their traveling faster or slower. Provided I
may behold all the stars that shine at night, some fixed,

(01:07:32):
others not traveling far afield, but circling within the same area,
some suddenly shooting forth, and others dazzling the eye with
scattered fire, as if they are falling or gliding past
with a long trail of blazing light. Provided I can
commune with these, and so far as humans may associate
with the divine, and provided I can keep my mind
always directed upwards, striving for a vision of kindred things.

(01:07:54):
What does it matter what ground eye stand on? But
this country is not fertile and lush or fruitful trees,
no large and navigable rivers irrigated with their channels. It
produces nothing which other nations want, being scarcely fertile enough
to support its own inhabitants. No valuable marble is quarried here,
no veins of gold and silver or mined petty. Is

(01:08:16):
the mind which delights in earthly things, it should be
led away to those things which appear everywhere, equally everywhere,
equally lustrous. There is this, too, to consider, that earthly
things stand in the way of genuine goods through a
wayward belief in false goods. The longer people extend their colonnades,
the higher they build their towers, the wider they stretch
their walks, the deeper they dig their summer grottos, the

(01:08:37):
more massively they raise the roofs of their dining halls
so much, the more will there be to cut off
the side of heaven. Fate has cast you into a
land where the most luxurious shelter is a hut. Truly,
you have a petty spirit which meanly comforts itself. If
you put up with this bravely, because you know about
the hut of Romulus, say rather, this humble shack gives shelter.

(01:08:57):
I suppose to the virtues. Soon it will be more
elegant than any temple when justices seemed to be there,
and temperance, wisdom, piety, a system for the right allotment
of all duties, and the knowledge of man in God.
No place is narrow which can hold this assembly of
such great virtues. No exile is burdensome when you can
have this company with you. In his Treatise on Virtue,

(01:09:19):
Brutus says that he saw Marcellus in exile at Matilini,
living as happily as human nature allows, and never more
keen on liberal studies than at that time. And so
he adds that when he was about to return without Marcellus,
he himself seemed to be going into exile rather than
leaving the other in exile. How much more fortunate it
was Marcellus at that time when he won the favor

(01:09:39):
of Brutus for his exile, than when he won the
favor of the state for his consulship. What a man
that was, who caused someone to feel himself in exile
because he was leaving an exile behind. What a man
he was to have won the admiration of a man
whom even his kinsman Cato, had to admire. Brutus also
says that Gaius Caesar had sailed past minut tilliny because

(01:10:00):
he could not bear the sight of a great man
in disgrace. Indeed, the Senate obtained his recall by public petition.
They were so anxious and sorrowful that they all seemed
to share brutus feelings on that day, and to be
pleading not for Marcellus but for themselves, in case they
would be exiled if deprived of him. But he achieved
much more on that day, when Brutus could not bear
to leave nor Caesar to see him in exile, for

(01:10:23):
both gave him testimony. Brutus grieved to return without Marcellus
and Caesar blushed. Can you doubt that Marcellus, being the
great man he was, often encouraged himself. Thus to endure
his exile with equanimity. Being without your country is not misery.
You have thoroughly taught yourself by your studies to know
that to a wise man every place is his country. Besides,

(01:10:46):
was not the man who caused your exile himself absent
from his country for ten consecutive years, No doubt the
reason was to enlarge his domains. Yet he certainly was absent.
See now he is summoned to Africa, which is full
of threats of further, to Spain, which is reviving its
forces shattered by defeat, to treacherous Egypt. In short, to
the whole world, which is watchful for an opportunity against

(01:11:07):
the stricken empire. Which problem shall he face first? To
which quarter take his stand? His own victorious course will
drive him throughout the world. Let the nation's honor and
worship him, Live yourself content with Brutus as your admirer.
Well did Marcellus then endure his exile, nor did his
change of abode, because any change at all in his mind,

(01:11:30):
though poverty attended it. But there is no evil in poverty,
as anyone knows who has not yet arrived at the
lunatic state of greed and luxury, which ruin everything. For
how little is needed to support a man, and who
can lack this if he has any virtue at all.
As far as I am concerned, I know that I
have lost not wealth but distractions. The body's needs are few.

(01:11:52):
It wants to be free from cold, to banish hunger
and thirst with nourishment. If we long for anything more,
we are exerting ourselves to serve our vices, not our needs.
We do not need to scour every ocean, or to
load our bellies with the slaughter of animals, or to
pluck shellfish from the unknown shores of the furthest Sea
may gods and goddesses destroy those whose luxury passes the
bounds of an empire that already awakens envy. They seek

(01:12:16):
to stock their pretentious kitchens by hunting beyond the faces,
and they aren't ashamed to ask for birds from the Parthians,
from whom we have not yet exacted vengeance. From all sides.
They collect everything familiar to a fastidious glutton. From the
furthest Sea has brought food which their stomachs, weakened by
a voluptuous diet, can scarcely receive. They vomit in order

(01:12:37):
to eat, and eat in order to vomit, and banquets
for which they ransack the whole world they do not
even deign to digest. If someone despises all that, what
harm can poverty do him? If he longs for it,
Poverty even does him good, for against his will he
is being cured. And if even under compulsion, he does
not take his medicine for a time, at least his
inability to have those things looks like unwillingness. Gaius Caesar,

(01:13:00):
whom I think nature produced, as an example of the
effect of supreme wickedness in a supreme position, dine in
one day at a cost of ten million cestresses. And
though helped in this by everyone's ingenuity, he could scarcely
discover how to spend the tribute from three provinces on
one dinner. Poor wretches whose appetite is only tempted by
expensive foods. Yet it is not an exquisite taste or

(01:13:21):
some delightful effect on the palate that makes them expensive,
but their scarcity and the deculty of procuring them otherwise,
if these people would agree to return to good sense,
where is the need for all these skills that serve
the belly? What need for importing or laying waste the
woodlands or ransacking the ocean? All around? Food lies ready,
which nature has distributed in every place. But men pass

(01:13:44):
it by as though blind to it, And they scour
every country, they cross the seas, and they wet their
appetite at great expense, when at little cost they could
satisfy it. I want to say to them, why do
you launch your ships, Why do you arm your bands
against both beasts and men? Why do you tear around
in such a panic? Why do you pile wealth upon wealth?

(01:14:05):
You really must consider how small your bodies are. Is
it not madness in the worst form of derangement, to
want so much though you can hold so little. Therefore,
though you may increase your income and extend your estates,
you will never increase the capacity of your bodies. Though
your business may do well in warfare bring you profit.
Though you hunt down and gather your food from every side,

(01:14:26):
you will not have anywhere to store your supplies. Why
do you seek out so many things to be sure
our ancestors were unhappy, whose virtue even now props up
our vices, who procured their food with their own hands,
who slept on the ground, whose dwellings did not yet
glitter with gold, northern temples with precious stones. And so
in those days they swore solomoes by gods of clay,
and having invoked them, returned to the enemy to certain death,

(01:14:49):
rather than break their word. To be sure, our dictator,
who gave audience to the sam night envoys, while with
his own hand he cooked the simplest sort of food,
the hand which already had frequently smitten the enemy in
he placed a laurel wreath on the lap of Capitol
and Jupiter. He lived less happily than apitious in our time, who,
in the city from which philosophers were once banished as
corruptors of the youth, polluted the age by his teaching

(01:15:10):
as professor of cookery. It is worth hearing what happened
to him when he had spent a hundred million cestreses
in his kitchen, when he had drunk up at every
one of his carousals, all those imperial gifts and the
enormous revenue of the capital. Then for the first time
he was forced, by the weight of his debts to
look into his accounts, he reckoned he would have ten
million cestress left, and that living on ten million would

(01:15:33):
be starvation. So he poisoned himself. What luxury? If ten
million meant poverty, how then can you think that it
is the amount of money that matters, and not the
attitude of mind. Someone dreaded having ten million, and what
others pray for he escaped by poison. But indeed, for
a man of such perverted mentality, that last drink was
the best thing for him. It was when he was

(01:15:56):
not merely enjoying but boasting of his huge banquets, when
he was making a display of his vices, when he
was drawing public attention to his vulgar displays, when he
was tempting young people to imitate him, who, even without
bad examples, are naturally impressionable. Then it was that he
was really eating and drinking poisons. Such is the fate
of those who measure wealth not by the standard of reason,
whose limits are fixed, but by that of a vicious

(01:16:18):
lifestyle governed by boundless, uncontrollable caprice. Nothing satisfies greed, but
even a little satisfies nature, So an exile's poverty brings
no hardship, For no place of exile is so barren
that it cannot abundantly support a man. But, says someone,
the exile is going to miss his clothes and home.
These two he will miss only as far as he

(01:16:40):
needs them, and he will lack neither house nor covering,
for the body needs as little for protection as for food.
Nature has not made any of man's essentials laborious as well.
But he must have richly dyed purple clothes, woven with
gold thread, and decorated with multicolored patterns. It is his fault,
not nature's, if he feels poor. Even if if you

(01:17:00):
give him back all he is lost, you'll be wasting
your time. For once he is backed from exile, he
will feel a greater lack compared with his desires than
he felt as an exile, compared with his former possessions.
But he must have furniture gleaming with gold vessels and
antique silver plate wrought by famous artists. Bronze made valuable
because a few lunatics want it. A crowd of slaves
which would throng a house. However, large beasts of burden,

(01:17:21):
with bodies bloated with force, feeding marbles from every land.
Though he piles all these up, they will never sate
his insatiable soul. Just as no amount of fluid will
satisfy one whose craving arises not from lack of water,
but from burning internal fever, For that is not a thirst,
but a disease. Nor is this true only of money
or food. The same feature is found in every desire,

(01:17:43):
which arises not from a lack but from a vice.
However much you heap up, for it will not mark
the end of greed, only a stage in it. So
the man who restrains himself within the bounds set by
nature will not notice poverty. The man who exceeds these
bounds will be pursued by poverty, however rich he is.
Lfe's necessities are found even in places of exile superfluities,

(01:18:04):
not even in kingdoms. It is the mind that creates
our wealth, and this goes with us into exile, and
in the harshest desert places. It finds Soous's science to
nourish the body in rebels in the enjoyment of its
own goods. Money in no way concerns the mind any
more than it concerns the gods. All those things which
are revered by minds untaught and enslaved to their bodies. Marble, gold, silver,

(01:18:26):
great round, polished tables are earthly burdens which a soul
pure and conscious of its nature cannot love. For it
is light and unencumbered, and destined to soar aloft whenever
it is released from the body. Meanwhile, so far as
it is not hampered by our limbs, in this heavy
burden that envelopes us, it surveys things divine with swift
and wing thought. So the soul can never suffer exile,

(01:18:46):
being free and akin to the gods, and equal to
all the universe and all time, for its thought encompasses
the whole of heaven and journeys into all past and
future time. This wretched body, the chain and prison of
the soul, is tossed here hither and thither upon it
punishment in pillage and disease wreak havoc. But the soul
itself is wholly in eternal, and it cannot be assailed
with violence. In case you think I am simply using

(01:19:10):
the teaching of philosophers to make light of the trials
of poverty, which no one feels to be a burden
unless he thinks it that. First, consider that by far
the greater proportion of men are poor, but you will
not see them looking at all more gloomy and anxious
than the rich. In fact, I rather suspect that they
are happier in proportion, as their minds have less to
harry them. Let us pass on to the rich. How

(01:19:31):
frequently are they just like the poor? When they travel abroad,
their luggage is restricted, and whenever they are forced to
hasten their journey, they dismiss their retinue of attendants. When
they are serving in the army, how little of their
belongings do they keep with them? Since camp discipline forbids
any luxury. Nor is it only special conditions of time
and place which put them on a level with the

(01:19:52):
poor in their needs. When on occasion they get tired
of their riches, they choose certain days on which they
dine on the ground end, putting aside their gold and
silver vessels, use earthenware ones. What lunatics to covet sometimes
a condition they always dread? What mental darkness? What ignorance
of the truth blinds those who though omitted by the
fear of poverty, yet take pleasure in imitating it. For

(01:20:14):
my part, whenever I look back at the fine examples
of antiquity, I am ashamed to find consolations for poverty,
since the luxury of the times has reached the point
where an exile's allowance is more than the inheritance of
leading men of old. We all know that Homer had
one slave, Plato had three, and Zeno, the founder of
the strict and manly Stoic philosophy, had none. Will anyone

(01:20:35):
on that account say that they lived wretchedly without himself
seeming to all by his words, to be utterly wretched.
Maninius Agrippa, who kept the public peace by acting as
mediator between patricians and plebeians, was buried by public subscription.
Attilius Regulus, while he was routing the Carthaginians in Africa,
wrote to tell the Senate that his hired worker had
gone off and abandoned his farm. The Senate voted that

(01:20:58):
during regulus absence the farm should be managed by the state.
Was it not worth being without a slave so that
the Roman people might become his tenant. Sippio's daughters received
a dowry from the state treasury because their father had
left them nothing. Assuredly, it was right for the Roman
people to offer tribute to Scipio once, since he was
always exacting it from Carthage. Happy were the girl's husbands

(01:21:21):
whose father in law was the Roman people? Do you
think those whose pantomime mactresses marry with a dowry of
a million sestorses are happier than Scipio, whose children had
the Senate for their guardian and received solid copper money
as a dowry. Could anyone despise poverty with a pedigree
so distinguished? Could an exile resent lacking anything when Sipio

(01:21:41):
lacked a dowry, Regulus a hired worker, Moninius a funeral,
when for all of them, supplying their need was all
the more honorable simply because they had the need. And
so with these men pleading her cause, poverty wins not
only acquittal but high esteem. One might reply, why do
you make an artificial separation of those things which can
be borne separately but not in combination. You can put

(01:22:04):
up with a change of place if only the place
is changed. You can put up with poverty if there
is no disgrace, which even alone usually crushes the spirit.
In answer to this man who aims to frighten me
by an accumulation of ills, this must be said, if
you have the strength to tackle any one aspect of misfortune,
you can tackle all. When once virtue has toughened the mind,

(01:22:25):
it renders it invulnerable on every side. If greed, the
most overmastering plague of the human race, has relaxed its grip,
ambition will not stand in your way. If you regard
your last day not as a punishment, but as a
law of nature, the breast from which you have banished
the dread of death, no fear will dare to enter.
If you consider that sexual desire was given to man

(01:22:45):
not for enjoyment, but for the propagation of the race.
Once you are free of this violent and destructive passion
rooted in your vitals, every other desire will leave you undisturbed.
Reason rots. The vice is not one by one, but altogether.
The victory is final and complete. Do you think that
any wise man can be affected by disgrace? One who
relies entirely on himself and holds aloof from common beliefs,

(01:23:08):
A disgraceful death is worse than disgrace. Yet Socrates went
to prison with the same expression he wore when he
once snubbed the thirty tyrants, and his presence robbed even
prison of disgrace. For where Socrates was could not seem
a prison who is so blind to the truth that
he thinks it was a disgrace to Marcus Cato that
he was twice defeated in his bid for the praetorship

(01:23:30):
and consulship. The disgrace belonged to the praetorship and consulship
which were being honored by Cato. No man is despised
by another unless he is first despised by himself. An
abject and debased mind is susceptible to such insult. But
if a man stirs himself to face the worst of
disasters and defeats the evils which overwhelm others, then he
wears those very sorrows like a sacred badge. For we

(01:23:53):
are naturally disposed to admire, more than anything else, the
man who shows fortitude and adversity. When Aristides was being
led to execution at Athens, everyone who met him cast
down his eyes and groaned, as though it was not
merely a just man, but justice herself, who was being punished.
Yet one man actually spat in his face. He could

(01:24:14):
have resented this, because he knew that only a foul
mild man would dare to do it. Instead, he wiped
his face, and with a smile he said to the
magistrate escorting him, warned that fellow not to give such
a vulgary on another time. This was to retaliate insult
upon insult. I know some people say that nothing is
worse than scorn, and that even death seems preferable to these.

(01:24:36):
I shall reply that exile, too is often free from
any kind of scorn. If a great man falls and
remains great as he lies, people no more despise him
than they stamp on a fallen temple, which the devouts
still worship as much as when it was standing. Dearest mother,
since you have no cause on my account to drive
you to endless tears, it follows the reasons regarding yourself
or urging you to weep, well, there are two. You

(01:24:59):
are bothered, either because as you seem to have lost
some protection, or because you cannot endure the very thought
of doing without me. The first point I must touch
upon only slightly, for I know that your heart loves
your dear ones for themselves alone. Let those mothers reflect
on this, who exploit their children's influence with a woman's
lack of influence, who because women cannot hold oh see,

(01:25:19):
seek power through their sons, who both drain their son's
inheritances and try to get them, who exhaust their sons
by lending their eloquence to others. Whereas you have taken
the greatest pleasure in your son's gifts and made the
least use of them, you have always set a limit
to our generosity without limiting your own. While your father
was still alive, you actually gave gifts to your wealthy sons.
You administered our inheritances as though you were earnestly looking

(01:25:41):
after your own, and being scrupulously provident with another's. You
were cautious in using our influence as if it were
someone else's, and in our spells and ocee. You had
no part accept your pleasure and the expenses. Your love
never had regard for self interest. Therefore, now that your
son has been taken from you, you cannot feel the
life back of those things which you never thought concerned

(01:26:02):
you when he was safe and sound. I must direct
my consolation entirely to that point from which arises the
true force of a mother's grief. You say, so, I
am deprived of my dearest son's embrace. I can't enjoy
seeing him or talking to him. Where is he whose
appearance smoothed my troubled brow, to whom I confided all
my woes. Where are our conversations, of which I never tired?

(01:26:25):
Where are his studies, which I shared with more than
a feminine eagerness and more than a mother's intimacy. Where
are our meetings? Where is the unfailing boyish glee at
the sight of his mother. To all this, you add
the actual places where we rejoiced together and socialized, and
the reminders of our recent life together, which are inevitably
the most acute source of mental anguish. For Fortune plotted

(01:26:48):
even this cruel blow against you, that only two days
before I was struck down, She contrived that you should depart,
tranquil in mind, in fearing no such disaster. It was
well that we had lived far apart, and that an
absence of some years had prepared you for this blow.
By returning, you did not gain the pleasure of your
son's presence, but you lost the habit of bearing his absence.

(01:27:08):
If you had been away long before, you would have
borne the loss more bravely, as the very distance between
us would have softened the longing. If you had not
gone away, you would at least have had the final
pleasure of seeing your son for two days longer. As
it was cruel fate so arranged it that you could
neither be present at my misfortune nor get used to
my absence. But the harsher these circumstances are, the greater

(01:27:30):
the courage you must summon up on. The more fiercely
you must fight, as with an enemy you know and
have often defeated. Your blood has not now flowed from
an undamaged body. You have been struck exactly where the
old scars are. You must not excuse yourself as being
a woman who has been virtually given the right to
indulge excessively, but not endlessly in tears. With this in view,

(01:27:51):
our ancestors allowed widows to mourn their husbands for ten
months in order to compromise, by public decree, with the
stubbornness of female grief. They did not prohibit mourning, but
they limited it for to be emitted with endless sorrow
at the loss of someone very dear is foolish self indulgence,
and to feel none is in human callousness. The best
compromise between love and good sense is both to feel

(01:28:14):
longing and to conquer it. You must not pay regard
to certain women whose grief, once assumed, was ended only
by death. You know some who never removed the morning
dress they put on when they lost their sons. Your
life was braver from its start and expects more from you.
The excuse of being a woman does not apply to
one from whom all womanly faults have been absent. That

(01:28:34):
worst evil of our time on chastity has not numbered
you among the majority of women. Neither jewels nor pearls
have influenced you. The glitter of wealth has not struck
you as the greatest blessing of the human race. You
were brought up in a strict, old fashioned home and
never deviated into the imitation of worse women, which is
dangerous even to good ones. You were never ashamed of
your fertility, as if it taunted you with your advancing years.

(01:28:55):
Never did you follow other women who seek only to
impress by their looks, and hide your pregnancy as if
it were an indecent burden. Nor did you destroy the
hopes of giving birth by abortion. You did not spoil
your complexion by pains and cosmetics. You never liked the
sort of garment which revealed no more when it was
taken off. In you has been seeing that matchless ornament,
that loveliest beauty, which is not dependent on any time

(01:29:17):
of life, that greatest glory of all modesty. So you cannot,
in order to justify your grief, claim the name of
woman from which your virtues have set you apart. You
ought to be as immune to female tears as to
female vices. Not even women will allow you to waste
away from your wound, but they will tell you to
get your necessary morning speedily over with, and rise again,
comforted by willing yourself to keep in mind those women

(01:29:40):
whose conspicuous courage has ranked them with great men. Fortune
reduced Cornelia's twelve children to two. If you wanted to
count Cornelia's bereavements, she had lost ten. If you wanted
to appraise them, she had lost the crack eye. But
when those around her were weeping and cursing her fate,
she forbade them to accuse fortune which I had given
her the Grachye as her sons. It was a fitting

(01:30:05):
son of this mother who said in the assembly, would
you insult the mother who gave me birth? Yet his
mother's words seemed to me much more spirited. The son
was proud of the parentage of the Grachye, the mother
of their deaths as well. Rutilia followed her son Kata
into exile, and was so single minded in her devotion
that she preferred exile to missing him, and returned home
only when he did, and when restored to favor in

(01:30:27):
a distinguished public figure he died. She bore his loss
as bravely as she had shared his exile, Nor was
she ever seen to weep after his funeral. She showed
courage when he was exiled in wisdom when he died.
For nothing stopped her showing her love, and nothing induced
her to persist in useless and unavailing grief. It is
with women like these that I want you to be numbered.

(01:30:48):
You always imitated their way of life, and you will
best follow their example in controlling and conquering your sorrow.
I know that this is not something which is in
our power. And that no strong feeling is under our control,
at least of all that which arises from sorrow, For
it is violent and violently resists every remedy. Sometimes we
want to crush it and swallow down our groans, but

(01:31:09):
through the pretended composure of our features, the tears pour down.
Sometimes we divert our mind with public shows or gladiatorial contests,
but in the very midst of the distractions of the spectacles,
it is undermined by some little reminder of its loss. Therefore,
it is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it.
For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasures

(01:31:30):
and preoccupations, it starts up again, and from its very
respite gains force to savage us. But the grief that
has been conquered by reason is calmed forever. I am
not therefore going to prescribe for you those remedies which
I know many people have used. That you divert or
cheer yourself by a long or pleasant journey abroad, or
spend a lot of time carefully going through your accounts,

(01:31:50):
in administering your estate, or constantly be involved in some
new activity. All those things help only for a short time.
They do not cure grief, but hinder it. But I
would rather end it than distract it. And so I
am leading you to that resource which must be the
refuge of all who are flying from fortune. Liberal studies.
They will heal your wound. They will withdraw all your melancholy.

(01:32:14):
Even if you had never been familiar with them, you
would have need of them now. But so far as
the old fashioned strictness of my father allowed, you have
had some acquaintance with the liberal arts, even if you
have not mastered them. If only my father, best of men,
had been less devoted to ancestral tradition, and had been
willing that you be steeped in the teaching of philosophy,
and not just gain a smattering of it, you would

(01:32:36):
not now have to acquire your defense against fortune, but
just bring it forth. He was less inclined to let
you pursue your studies because of those women who use
books not to acquire wisdom, but as the furniture of luxury.
Yet thanks to your vigorously inquiring mind, you absorbed a lot.
Considering the time you had available. The foundations of all
formal studies have been laid. Return now to these studies,

(01:32:59):
and they will keep you safe. They will comfort you,
they will delight you, And if they genuinely penetrate your mind,
never again will grief enter there, or anxiety, or the
distress caused by futile and pointless suffering. Your heart will
have room for none of these. For to all other failings,
it has long been closed. Those studies are your most
dependable protection, and they alone can snatch you from fortune's grip.

(01:33:23):
But until you arrive at this haven, which philosophy holds
out to you, you must have supports to lean on.
So I want, meanwhile to point out your own consolations.
Consider my brothers, while they live. You have no reason
to complain of your fortune. In both you of contrasting
virtues to cheer you up. The one achieved public o
ce by his energy, the other, in his wisdom, despised it.

(01:33:44):
Take comfort in the distinction of the one, the retirement
of the other, and the devotion of both. I know
the innermost feelings of my brothers. The one fosters his
distinction really in order to bring honor to you, while
the other has retired into peace and tranquility in order
to have leisure for you. Fortune has done you a
service in arranging that your children should bring you both

(01:34:05):
assistance and delight. You can be protected by the distinction
of the one, and you can enjoy the leisure of
the other. They will be rivals in their services to you,
and the devotion of two will fill the blank space
left by one. I promise you with complete confidence that
you will miss nothing but the number of sons after these.
Consider to your grandchildren, Marcus a most charming child. You

(01:34:27):
could not remain sorrowful while looking at him. And no
one's heart could suffer anguish too great or to reason
not to be soothed by his embrace, whose tears would
is merriment. Not a lay whose heart gripped by anxious care,
would not relax at his lively chatter, Who will not
smile at his playfulness, whose attention, however fixed on his
own thoughts, will not be attracted and held by that

(01:34:49):
prattling which no one could tire of. I pray to
the Gods that he may survive us. May all the
cruelty of fate wear itself out and stop at me
whatever you were doing destined to suffer. As a mother
and as a grandmother, May I represent let the rest
of my family flourish undisturbed. I shall not complain of
my childlessness or my exile, if only I prove to

(01:35:11):
be the scapegoat for a family that will suffer no more.
Embrace Navatila, who will soon give you great grandchildren. I
had so attached her to myself and adopted her, that
in losing me, she could seem an orphan. Though her
father is alive. Cherish her for me too. Fortune recently
took away her mother. But your love will mean that
she will only grieve over her mother's loss, but not

(01:35:32):
suffer for it. Now you must shape and compose her character.
Teaching sinks more deeply into those of impressionable years. Let
her grow used to your conversation and be molded as
you think right. You will be giving her a great deal,
even if you give her only your example. Such a
sacred duty as this will act as a cure for you.
For only philosophy or honorable occupation can divert from its

(01:35:54):
anguish a heart whose grief springs from love. I would
reckon your father too, among your great comforts, if he
were not absent as it is. You must now judge
his love for you by your love for him, and
you will realize how much more just it is for
you to preserve yourself for him than sacrifice yourself for me.
Whenever excessive grief attacks you and urges you to give

(01:36:14):
way to it, think of your father. Certainly, by giving
him so many grandchildren and great grandchildren, you cease to
be his only offspring. But for him, the completion of
a happy life depends on you while he lives. It
is wrong for you to complain that you have lived
up to now. I have said nothing about your greatest comfort,
your sister, that heart most faithful to you, into which

(01:36:35):
are poured unreservedly all your anxieties, that soul which has
been a mother to us, all you mingled your tears
with hers. On her bosom you first began to breathe again.
Always indeed, she shares your feelings. But in my case
she grieves not only for you. She carried me in
her arms to Rome during my long illness. It was
her loving and motherly nursing that brought me round. When

(01:36:57):
I was a candidate for the questionship, she support warded me,
and though she normally liked the confidence, even for conversation
or a loud greeting for my sake, love conquered shyness.
Neither her sheltered manner of living, nor her modesty old
fashioned when compared with the prevalent brazenness of women. Nor
her tranquility, nor her reserved nature which wanted peace and quiet.
None of these prevented her from actually becoming ambitious on

(01:37:19):
my behalf, She, dearest mother, is the source of comfort
from which you can revive yourself, cling to her as
much as you can in the closest embraces. Sorrowers tend
to avoid what they are most fond of and try
to give vent to their grief. But you must share
all your thoughts with her. Whether you wish to keep
this mood or lay it aside, you will find in
her either the end of your sorrow or one who

(01:37:40):
will share it. But if I know the wisdom of
this paragon of women, she will not allow you to
be consumed in profitless anguish. And she will tell you
of an edifying episode in her life, which I also
witnessed while actually on a sea voyage. She lost her
beloved husband, my uncle, whom she had married as a maiden.
Yet she bore simultaneously the burdens of grief and fear,
and though shipwrecked, she wrote out the storms and brought

(01:38:02):
his body safely ashore. Oh, how many noble deeds of
women are lost in obscurity. If she had chanced to
live in the days of old, when people frankly admired heroism,
how men of genius would have competed to sing the
praises of a wife who ignored her physical weakness, ignored
the sea which even the bravest must fear, and risked
her life to give her husband burial, And while her
thoughts were on his funeral, had no fears about her own.

(01:38:26):
All the poets have given renown to the woman who
offered to die in place of her husband. But this
is nobler to risk one's life to bury one's husband,
for that love is greater, which wins less through equal danger.
After this, it can surprise no one that, during the
sixteen years her husband governed Egypt, she was never seen
in public, She received no provincial into her home, she

(01:38:46):
never petitioned her husband for a favor, and she never
allowed herself to be petitioned. The result was that a
province given to gossip and clever at insulting its rulers,
or even those who had avoided wrongdoing, did not escape scandal,
respected her as a sad a singular pattern of integrity,
restrained all license in its speech, A very decult achievement,
where even dangerous witticisms are popular, and even to this

(01:39:08):
day keeps hoping though it never expects to see another
like her. It would have been a great achievement if
she had won the approval of the province for sixteen years.
It was even better not to have been noticed there.
I do not recall these things in order to list
her good qualities, to rehearse them so sketchily as to
be unfair to them, but to give you an idea
of the highmindedness of the woman who was not conquered

(01:39:29):
by ambition or greed, those inevitable companions and curses of power,
who facing shipwreck on a disabled boat, was not deterred
by the fear of death from clinging to her dead
husband and seeking not the means of her own escape
but the means of getting his body off for burial.
This is the sort of courage you must match by
withdrawing your mind from grief and resolving that no one
shall think you regret having had children. However, whatever you do,

(01:39:52):
inevitably your thoughts will turn to me constantly, and none
of your other children will come to your mind more often,
not because they are less dear to you, but because,
as it is natural, to touch more often the part
that hurts. So this is how you must think of me,
happy and cheerful, as if in the best of circumstances,
for they are best. Since my mind, without any preoccupation,
is free for its own tasks, now delighting in more

(01:40:14):
trivial studies, Now in its eagerness for the truth. Rising
up to ponder its own nature and that of the universe,
it seeks to know first about lands and their location,
then the nature of the encompassing sea and its tidal
ebb and flow. Then it studies all the awesome expanse
which lies between heaven and Earth, this nearer space, turbulent
with thunder, lightning, gales of wind, and falling rain, snow

(01:40:35):
and hail. Finally, having scoured the lower areas, it bursts
through to the heights and enjoys the noblest sight of
divine things, And, mindful of its own immortality, it ranges
over all that has been and will be throughout all
ages on tranquility of mind, Serenus Asterisk. When I looked
into myself, Seneca, some of my vices appeared clearly on

(01:40:55):
the surface, so that I could lay my hand on them.
Some were more hidden away in the depth. Some were
not there all the time, but return at intervals. These last,
I would say, are the most troublesome. They are like
prowling enemies who pounce on you when occasion offers, and
allow you neither to be at the ready as in war,
nor at ease as in peace. However, the state I
most find myself in, for why should I not admit

(01:41:16):
the truth to you as to a doctor, is that
I am not really free of the vices which I
feared and hated, though not, on the other hand, subject
to them. This puts me in a condition which is
not the worst, but an extremely peevish and quarrelsome one.
I am neither ill nor well. There is no need
for you to say that all virtues are fragile to
start with, and acquire firmness and strength with time. I
know too that those which toil to make a good impression,

(01:41:38):
seeking high rank, for example, and a reputation for eloquence,
and whatever depends on the approval of others take time
to mature. Both those which offer real strengthen those which
are tricked out in some sort of die aimed at
popularity have to wait years until the passage of time
gradually produces their color. But I'm afraid that habit which
induces firmness in things may drive this fault more deeply

(01:41:59):
into me. Long asociation brings love of evil as well
as good. I cannot show all at once, so much
as bit by bit, the nature of this mental weakness,
which wavers between two choices and does not incline strongly
either to right or to wrong. I'll tell you what
happens to me, and you can find a name for
the malady. I have a tremendous love of frugality. I
must admit. I don't like a couch decked out ostentatiously,

(01:42:21):
or clothes brought out from a chest or given achine
by the forceful pressure of weights and a thousand mangles,
but only an inexpensive and not hoarded to be done
with fuss and bother I like food which is not
prepared and watched over by the household slaves, not ordered
many days in advance, nor served by a multitude of hands,
but readily obtainable and easy to deal with, nothing in it,
out of the way or expensive, available everywhere, not heavy

(01:42:43):
on the purse or the body, and not destined to
come back by the same way it entered. I want
my servant to be an ordinary, unskilled, home born slave,
my silver to be the heavywere of my rustic father,
without any hallmark, and my table to be without flashy,
variegated markings, and not familiar to the whole town through
its many chain ranges of fashionable owners, but set up
to be used, and not to distract any guest size

(01:43:04):
with pleasure or kindled them with envy. But what I
have set up these standards, I find my mind dazzled
by the fine trappings of some training school for servants,
with the slaves more carefully clothed and decked with gold
than if they were in a public parade, and a
whole army of glittering flunkeys. By a house where you
even walk on precious stones, where wealth is scattered in
every corner, where the roof itself glitters, and the whole

(01:43:24):
populace deferentially attends the ruin of a family heritage need.
I mention pools clear to their depths, which flow around
the dinner guests or banquets worthy of their surroundings. After
being long given up to frugality, I have found myself
surrounded by the lavish splendor of luxury echoing all about me.
My vision wavers somewhat, for I can raise my mind

(01:43:45):
to face it more easily than my eyes. And so
I come back not a worse but a sadder man.
I don't move with my head so high among my
trivial possessions, and a secret, gnawing doubt undermines me whether
that life is superior. None of these things is changing me,
but none of them fails to shake me. I decide
to follow my teacher's precepts and busy myself in state affairs.

(01:44:06):
I decide to achieve public oc, not of course, because
of the purple robe and elector's rods, but so that
I can be more ready with help for my friends
and relations, for all my fellow citizens, and then for
all mankind. Enthusiastically, I follow Zeno Cleanthes Chrysippus, of whom,
by the way, none entered public life, and all urged
others to do so. But when something has assailed my mind,

(01:44:27):
which is not used to being battered, When something has
happened which either is unworthy of me, a common experience
in every human life, or cannot easily be dealt with.
When unimportant things become time consuming, I take refuge in leisure,
and just like weary flocks of animals, I make my
way more quickly home. I decide to restrict my life
within its walls, saying, let no one rob me of
a single day who is not going to make me

(01:44:49):
an adequate return for such a loss. Let my mind
be fixed on itself, cultivate itself, have no external interest,
nothing that seeks the approval of another. Let it cherish
the tranquility that has no no part in public or
private concerns. But when my mind is excited by reading
a convincing account of something, and spurred on by noble examples,
I long to rush into the forum to speak on

(01:45:10):
behalf of one man and offer help to another, which
will at least be an attempt to assist, even if
it does not succeed, or to curb the pride of
someone else grown arrogant by success. In my studies, I
suppose it must, indeed be better to keep my theme
firmly in view and speak to this, while allowing the
theme to suggest my words, and so dictate the course
of an unstudied style of speech. Where is the need,

(01:45:30):
I ask to compose something to last for ages? Why
not stop trying to prevent posterity being silent about you?
You were born to die, and a silent funeral is
less bothersome. So if you must fill your time, write
something in a simple style for your own use and
not for publication, less toil is needed if you study
only for the day. Again, when my mind is lifted

(01:45:52):
up by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious
for words and lungs to match its higher inspiration with
its language, and so produces a style that conforms to
the impressiveness of the subject matter. Then it is that
I forget my rule and principle of restraint, and I
am carried too far aloft by a voice no longer
my own to cut the matter short. This weakness in
my good intentions pursues me in every sphere. I fear

(01:46:16):
that I am gradually getting worse, or, which is more worrying,
that I am hanging on an edge, like someone always
on the point of falling, and that perhaps there is
more wrong than I myself can see. For we take
too intimate a view of our own characteristics, and bias
always affects our judgment. I imagine many people could have
achieved wisdom if they had not imagined they had already
achieved it, if they had not dissembled about some of

(01:46:36):
their own characteristics and turned a blind eye to others.
For you have no reason to suppose that we come
to grief more through the flattery of others than through
our own. Who has dared to tell himself the truth, who,
even when surrounded by crowds of toadying sycophants, is not
his own greatest flatterer. So I am appealing to you,
if you have any cure for this vacillation of mind,

(01:46:58):
to consider me worthy of owing tranquility to you. I
realize that these mental agitations of mine are not dangerous
and won't produce a storm. To express my complaint for
you in a realistic metaphor, I am harried not by
a tempest, but by sea sickness. Whatever my ailment, then
rooted out and come to the help of one who
is struggling insight of land Seneca. Indeed, Serenus, I have

(01:47:23):
long been silently asking myself to what I should compare
such a mental state, and I could find no closer
analogy than the condition of those people who have got
over a long and serious illness, but are still sometimes
mildly affected by onsets of fever and pain, and even
when free of the last symptoms, are still worried and upset, and,
though quite better, offer their hands to doctors and needlessly
complain if they feel at all. Hot With these people, Serenus,

(01:47:45):
it is not that their bodies are in societly healed,
but that they are in societly used to health, just
as even the calm sea will show some ripples, especially
when it has subsided following a storm. So what you
need is not those more radical remedies, which we have
now finished with bl locking yourself here, being angry with
yourself there, threatening yourself sternly somewhere else, but the final treatment,

(01:48:05):
confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on
the right path and not let as stray by the
many tracks which cross yours of people who are hopelessly lost,
though some are wandering not far from the true path.
But what you are longing for is great and supreme
and nearly divine, not to be shaken. The Greeks call
this steady firmness of mind Euthania. Democritus wrote a good

(01:48:26):
treatise about it. But I call it tranquility. As there
is no need to imitate and reproduce the form of
Greek words, The pointed issue must be indicated by some
term which should have the sense, but not the form,
of the Greek name. We are therefore seeking how the
mind can follow a smooth and steady course while disposed
to itself, happily regarding its own condition, and with no
interruption to this pleasure, but remaining in a state of peace,

(01:48:48):
with no ups and downs. That will be tranquility. Let
us consider in general how this can be achieved. You
will then extract what you like from the communal remedy. Meanwhile,
the whole failing must be dragged doubt into the open,
where everyone will recognize his own share in it. At
the same time, you will realize how much less trouble
you have with your self revulsion than those people who

(01:49:09):
tied to some specious declaration. In laboring under an impressive
title are stuck with their own pretense more by shame
than by desire. They are all in the same category,
both those who are emitted with fickleness, boredom, and a
ceaseless change of purpose, and who always yearn for what
they have left behind, and those who just yawn from apathy.
There are those two who toss around like insomniacs and

(01:49:30):
keep changing their position until they find rest through sheer weariness.
They keep altering the condition of their lives and eventually
stick to that one in which they are trapped, not
by weariness with further change, but by old age, which
is too sluggish for novelty. There are those two who
suffer not from moral steadfastness but from inertia, and so
lack the fickleness to live as they wish and just
live as they have begun. In fact, there are innumerable

(01:49:53):
characteristics of the malady, but one effect dissatisfaction with oneself.
This arises from mental instability and from fearful and unfulfilled desires.
When men do not dare or do not achieve all
they long for and all they grasp but is hope,
they are always unbalanced and fickle. An inevitable consequence of
living in suspense. They struggle to gain their prayers by

(01:50:14):
every path, and they teach and force themselves to do
dishonorable and decult things. And when their efforts are unrewarded,
the fruitless disgrace tortures them, and they regret not the wickedness,
but the frustration of their desires. Then they are gripped
by repentance for their attempt and fear of trying again.
And they are undermined by the restlessness of a mind
that can discover no outlet, because they can neither control

(01:50:34):
nor obey their desires, by the dithering of a life
that cannot see its way ahead, and by the lethargy
of a soul stagnating amid its abandoned hopes. All these
emictions are worse when, through hatred of their toilsome failure,
men have retreated into idleness and private studies, which are
unbearable to a mind aspiring to public service, keen on activity,
and restless by nature, because of course, it is short

(01:50:55):
of inner resources. In consequence, when the pleasures have been
rem move which busy people derive from their actual activities,
the mind cannot endure the house, the solitude, the walls
and hates to observe its own isolation. From this arises
that boredom and self dissatisfaction, that turmoil of a restless mind.
In glooming and grudging endurance of our leisure, especially when

(01:51:15):
we are ashamed to admit the reasons for it, and
our sense of shame drives the agony inward, and our
desires are trapped in narrow bounds without escape and stifle themselves.
From this arise melancholy and mourning in a thousand vacillations
of a wavering mind, buoyed up by the birth of
hope and sickened by the death of it. From this
arises the state of mind of those who loathe their
own leisure and complain that they have nothing to do,

(01:51:37):
and the bitterest envy it. The promotion of others for
unproductive idleness nurtures malice, and because they themselves could not prosper,
they want everyone else to be ruined. Then, from this
dislike of others success and despair of their own, their
minds become enraged against fortune, complain about the times, retreat
into obscurity, and brood over their own sufferings until they
become sick and tired of themselves. For the human mind

(01:52:01):
is naturally mobile and enjoys activity. Every chance of stimulation
and distraction is welcome to it, even more welcome to
all those inferior characters who actually enjoy being worn out
by busy activity. There are certain bodily sores which welcome
the hands that will hurt them, and long to be touched,
And a folage loves to be scratched. In the same way,
I would say that those minds on which desires have

(01:52:22):
broken out like horrid sores, take delight in toil and aggravation.
For some things delight our bodies, even when they cause
some pain, like turning over to change a side that
is not yet tired, and repeatedly shifting to keep cool.
So Achilles in Homer lay now on his face, now
on his back, trying to settle in different positions, and
like an invalid, could endure nothing for long, but used
his restlessness as a cure. Hence, men travel far and wide,

(01:52:45):
wandering along foreign shores and making trial by land and
sea of their restlessness, which always hates what is around it.
Let's now go to Campania. Then, when they get bored
with luxury, let's visit uncultivated areas. Let's explore the woodlands
of Broofy and Leucania, and yet amid the wild sun,
delight is missing by which their pampered eyes can find

(01:53:05):
relief from the tedious squalor of these unsightly regions. Let's
go to Tarentum, with its celebrated harbor and mild winters,
an area prosperous enough for a large population even in antiquity.
Let's now make our way to the city. Too long
have their ears missed the din of applause. Now they
long to enjoy even the sight of human blood. They

(01:53:26):
make one journey after another, in changed spectacle for spectacle.
As Lucretius says, thus each man ever flees himself, but
to what end? If he does not escape himself, he
pursues and dogs himself as his own most tedious companion.
And so we must realize that our deculty is not
the fault of the places, but of ourselves. We are

(01:53:48):
weak in enduring anything, and cannot put up with toil
or pleasure, or ourselves or anything for long. This weakness
has driven some men to their debts, because by frequently
changing their aims, they kept falling back on the same things,
and had left themselves no room for novelty. They began
to be sick of life in the world itself, and
out of their enervating self indulgence, arose the feeling, how

(01:54:08):
long must I face the same things? You want to
know what remedy I can recommend against this boredom. The
best course, as Ethanotus says, would be to busy oneself
in the practical activity of political involvement and civic duties.
For just as some people spend the day in sunbathing,
exercise in the care of their bodies, and for athletes,
it is of the highest practical importance to spend most

(01:54:30):
of their time cultivating the strength of their limbs, to
which alone they have devoted themselves. So for you, for
training your mind for the contests of public life. By
far the finest approach is regular practice. For when one
intends to make himself useful to his fellow citizens and fellowmen,
he is at the same time getting practice and doing
good if he throws himself heart and soul into the
duty of looking after both the community and the individual. But,

(01:54:54):
says Ethanotorus, since mankind is so insanely ambitious, and so
many false accusers twist right into wrong, making honesty unsafe
and bound to meet resistance rather than help. We should
indeed retire from public and political life, though a great
mind his scope for free activity. Even in private life.
The energies of lions and other animals are restricted by cages,
but not of men whose finest achievements are seen in retirement. However,

(01:55:18):
let a man seclude himself on condition that wherever he
conceals his leisure, he is prepared to serve both individuals
in all mankind by his intellect, his words, and his counsel.
Service to the state is not restricted to the man
who produces candidates for oce, defends people in court, and
votes for peace and war. The man who teaches the young,
who instills virtue into their minds. And we have a

(01:55:39):
great shortage of good teachers. Who grips and restrains those
who are rushing madly after wealth and luxury, and if
nothing more at least delays them, he too is doing
a public service. Though in private life do you imagine
that more benefit is provided by the praetors who settle
cases between foreigners and citizens by pronouncing to appellans the
verdict of the assessor, than by those who pronounce on
the nature of justice, piety, endurance, bravery, contempt of death,

(01:56:03):
knowledge of the gods, and how free a blessing is
that of a good conscience. So if you devote to
your studies the time you have taken from your public duties,
you will not have deserted or evaded your task. For
the soldier is not only the man who stands in
the battle line defending the right and left wings, but
also the one who guards the gates and has the
post less dangerous but not idle of keeping the watch

(01:56:24):
and guarding the armory. These duties, though bloodless, count as
military service. If you apply yourself to study, you will
avoid all boredom with life. You will not long for
night because you are sick of daylight. You will be
neither a burden to yourself nor useless to others. You
will attract many to become your friends, and the finest
people will flock about you. For even obscure virtue is
never concealed, but gives visible evidence of herself. Anyone worthy

(01:56:48):
of her will follow her tracks. But if we shun
all society and abandoning the human race live for ourselves alone.
This isolation, devoid of any interest, will be followed by
a dearth of worthwhile activity. We shall begin to put
up some buildings, to pull down others, to push back
the sea, to draw waters through on natural channels, and
to squander the time which nature gave us to be used.

(01:57:10):
Some of us use it sparingly, others wastefully. Some spend
it so that we can give an account of it,
others so that we have no balance left, a most
shameful result. Often a very old man has no other
proof of his long life than his age. It seems
to me, my dear Serenus, that Athenodorus has too easily
submitted to the times and too quickly retreated. I would

(01:57:31):
not deny that one has to yield sometimes, but by
a gradual retreat and holding on to our standards and
our soldier's honor, those who are still armed when they
agree terms with their enemies are safer and more highly regarded. This,
I think, is what virtue and virtues disciples should do.
If fortune gets the better of someone and deprives him
of the means of action, he should not immediately turn

(01:57:52):
his back and bolt, dropping his weapons, and looking for
a place to hide, as if there were any place
where fortune could not find him. But he should apply
himself more sparingly to his duties and choose something carefully
in which he can serve the state. Suppose he cannot
be a soldier, Let him seek public oc Suppose he
has to live in a private capacity. Let him be
an advocate. Suppose he is condemned to silence. Let him

(01:58:15):
help his fellow citizens by unspoken support. Suppose it is
dangerous for him to be seen in the forum, in
private homes, at the shows, at banquets. Let him play
the part of a good companion, a loyal friend, a
temperate bankquettier. Suppose he has lost the duties of a citizen,
Let him practice those of a man with a lofty spirit.
We have refused to confine ourselves within the walls of

(01:58:36):
one city, and we have gone out to have dealings
with the whole earth and claim the world as our country.
For this reason, that we might give our virtual wider
field for action. Suppose you are cut off from judicial
ocee and public speaking, and elections are close to you,
Consider all the extensive regions that lie open behind you,
All the peoples. You will never find an area bard
to you so large that an even larger one is

(01:58:57):
not left open. But take care that this is not
entirely your fault. For example, that you don't want to
take public ocee except as consul or Pritannies or Harald
or soofs. But suppose you didn't want to serve in
the army except as general or tribune. Even if others
hold the front line, and your lot has put you
in the third rank, you must play the soldier there
with your voice, your encouragement, your example, and your spirit.

(01:59:22):
Even if a man's hands are cut off, he finds
he can yet serve his side by standing firm and
cheering them on. You should do something like that. If
fortune has removed you from a leading role in public life,
you should still stand firm and cheer others on. And
if someone grips your throat, still stand firm and help
those silent. The service of a good citizen is never useless.
Being heard and seen, he helps by his expression, a

(01:59:44):
knot of his head, a stubborn silence, even his gait.
Just as certain wholesome substances do us good by their odor,
even without tasting or touching them. So virtue spreads her
advantages even from a distant hiding place. Whether she walks
abroad about her legitimate business, or appears on some refference
and is forced to furl her sales. Whether she is confined,
inactive and dumb within a narrow space, or fully visible

(02:00:06):
in any condition at all, she does good service. Why
do you think that a man living in honorable retirement
cannot offer a valuable example much. The best course, therefore,
is to combine leisure with some activity whenever a fully
energetic life is impossible owing to the hindrances of chance
or the state of the country. For you will never
find absolutely every roadblock to some form of honorable activity.

(02:00:29):
Can you find a more wretched city than Athens? When
she was being torn apart by the thirty tyrants, having
killed thirteen hundred of the best citizens. They did not
stop at that, but their very savagery spurred itself on.
In a city which contained the areopagus, a law court
of the highest sanctity, and a Senate, and a popular
assembly resembling a senate, there met daily a sinister group

(02:00:50):
of executioners, and the unfortunate Senate house was crowded with tyrants.
Could that state be at peace? Where there were as
many tyrants as attendants? Not even be a hope of
recovering their liberty, nor any obvious chance of retaliation against
such powerful villains. For where could the poor country find
enough men like Harmodius? Yet Socrates was in the thick

(02:01:11):
of it. He comforted the gloomy city fathers, encouraged those
who were despairing of the state, reproached the rich who
now feared their own wealth for a tardy repentance of
their dangerous greed. And to those willing to imitate him,
he was a walking inspiration as he moved about, a
free spirit among thirty masters. Yet this was the man
that Athens herself put to death in prison, and freedom
could not bear the freedom of the man who had

(02:01:32):
openly scoffed at a whole troop of tyrants. So you
can understand both that in a state's suffering disaster, the
wise man has the opportunity to show an influential presence,
and that in a successful and prosperous state, money grubbing
envy in a thousand other unmanly vices reign supreme. Therefore,
according to the disposition of the state and the liberty
fortune allows us. We shall either extend or contract our activities,

(02:01:54):
but at all events we shall stir ourselves and not
be gripped and paralyzed by fear. And indeed will prove
a man who threatened by dangers on all sides, with
arms and chains clattering around him, will neither in danger
nor conceal his courage. For self preservation does not entail
suppressing on self. Truly, I believe Curious Dentatus used to
say that he preferred real death to living death, for

(02:02:16):
the ultimate horror is to leave the number of the
living before you die. But if you happen to live
at a time when public life is hard to cope with,
you will just have to claim more time for leisure
and literary work, seek a safe harbor from time to time,
as if you were on a dangerous voyage, and not
wait for public life to dismiss you, but voluntarily release
yourself from At first, however, we must take a careful

(02:02:38):
look first at ourselves, then at the activities which we
shall be attempting, and then at those for whose sake
and with whom we are attempting them. Above all, It
is essential to appraise oneself, because we usually overestimate our capabilities.
One man comes to grief through trusting his eloquence. Another
makes more demands on his fortune than it can stand.
Another taxes his frail body with laborious work. Some men

(02:03:01):
are too shy for politics, which require a bold appearance. Some,
through brashness, are not fitted for court life. Some cannot
restrain their anger, and any feeling of annoyance drives them
to reckless language. Some cannot control their wit and refrain
from smart but dangerous sallies. For all of these, retirement
is more expedient than public activity. A passionate and impatient
nature must avoid provocations to outspokenness that will cause trouble.

(02:03:25):
Then we must to praise the actual things we are attempting,
and match our strength to what we are going to undertake.
For the performer must always be stronger than his task.
Loads that are too heavy for the bearer are bound
to overwhelm him. Moreover, certain tasks are not so much
great as prolific in producing many other tasks. We must
avoid those which give birth and turn to new and

(02:03:45):
manifold activities, and not approach something from which we cannot
easily withdraw. You must set your hands to tasks which
you can finish, or at least hope to finish, and
avoid those which get bigger as you proceed, and do
not cease where you had intended. We must be a
special careful in choosing people and deciding whether they are
worth devoting a part of our lives to them, whether

(02:04:05):
the sacrifice of our time makes a difference to them.
For some people actually charge us for our services to them.
Athanotorus says he would not even go to dinner with
a man who did not thereby feel indebted to him.
I suppose you realize how much less inclined he was
to visit those who repay their friends services with a
meal and count the courses as largestes, as if they

(02:04:26):
were overdoing the honor paid to another. Take away their
witnesses and spectators, and there is no fun in private gormandizing.
You must consider whether your nature is more suited to
practical activity or to quiet study and reflection, and incline
in the direction your natural faculty and disposition take you.
Isocrates forcibly pulled Efforis away from the forum, thinking he

(02:04:47):
would be better employed in writing history. In born dispositions
do not respond well to compulsion, and we labor in
vain against nature's opposition. But nothing delights the mind so
much as fond and loyal friendship. What a blessing it
is to have hearts that are ready and willing to
receive all your secrets and safety, with whom you are
less afraid to share knowledge of something than keep it

(02:05:09):
to yourself. Whose conversation soothes your distress, whose advice helps
you make up your mind, whose cheerfulness dissolves your sorrow,
whose very appearance cheers you up. To be sure, we
shall choose those who are as far as possible free
from strong desires, for vices spread insidiously, and those nearest
to hand are assailed and damaged by contact with them.
It follows that, just as at a time of an

(02:05:30):
epidemic disease, we must take care not to sit beside
people whose bodies are infected with feverish disease, because we
shall risk ourselves and suffer from their breathing upon us.
So in choosing our friends for their characters, we shall
take care to find those who are the least corrupted.
Mixing the sound with the sick is how disease starts.
But I am not enjoining upon you to follow and
associate with none but a wise man, For where will

(02:05:51):
you find him? Whom we have been seeking for ages.
In place of the ideal, we must put up with
the least bad. You would scarcely have the opportunity of
a happier choice if you were hunting for good men
among the Plato's and Xenophons in all that offspring of
the Socratic breed, or if you had access to the
Age of Kato, which produced many men worthy to be
born in Cato's time, it also produced many who were

(02:06:13):
worse than at any other time, and who committed appalling crimes.
For both groups were necessary for Kato to be appreciated.
He needed the good to win their approval, and the
bad to prove his strength. But in the current dearth
of good men, you must be less particular in your choice. Still,
you must especially avoid those who are gloomy and always lamenting,
and who grasp at every pretext for complaint. Though a

(02:06:35):
man's loyalty and kindness may not be in doubt, a
companion who was agitated in groaning about everything is an
enemy to peace of mind. Let us turn to private
possessions the greatest source of human misery. For if you
compare all the other things from which we suffer, deaths, illnesses, fears, desires,
endurance of pains and toils with the evils which money

(02:06:56):
brings us, the latter will far outweigh the others. We
must bear in mind how much lighter is the pain
of not having money than of losing it, And we
shall realize that the less poverty has to lose, the
less agony it can cause us. For you are mistaken
if you think that rich people suffer with more fortitude.
The pain of a wound is the same on the
largest and the smallest bodies. By an aptly remarks that

(02:07:18):
plucking out hair hurts bald people just as much as
those with hair, you can make the same point that
rich and poor suffer equal distress, for both groups cling
to their money and suffer if it is torn away
from them. But as I said, it is easier to bear,
and simpler not to acquire than to lose. So you
will notice that those people are more cheerful whom fortune
has never favored, than those whom she has deserted. That

(02:07:40):
great so old man Diogenes realize this, and arranged that
nothing could be taken from him. You can call this
state poverty, deprivation, need, and give this freedom from care
any shameful name you like. I shall not count this
man happy if you can find me another who has
nothing to lose. If I am not mistaken, it is
a royal position among all the misers, the cheats, the

(02:08:00):
the kidnappers, to be the only one who cannot be harmed.
If anyone has any doubts about Diogenes's felicity, he can
also have doubts about the condition of the immortal gods,
whether they are living unhappily because they have no estates
in parks and costly farms let out to foreign tenants,
and vast receipts of interest in the forum. Are you
not ashamed of yourselves, all of you who are smitten

(02:08:21):
by wealth, Come look at the heavens. You will see
the gods devoid of possessions and giving everything though they
have nothing. Do you think a man who has stripped
himself of all the gifts of chances poor, or that
he resembles the immortal gods? Demetrius Pompey's freedman was not
ashamed to be richer than Pompey, would you say he
was thereby happier. He used to keep the tally of

(02:08:43):
his slaves daily, like a general reviewing his army, where
previously he would have thought it riches to have two
under slaves and a roomy or cell. Yet when Diogenes
was told that his only slave had run away, he
did not think it worth the trouble to get him back.
It would be degrading, he said, if Meanes can live
without Diogenes, and not Diogenes without Manies, I think what

(02:09:04):
he meant was mind your own business fortune. Diogenes has
nothing of yours. Now my slave has run away. No,
it is I who have got away free. A household
of slaves needs clothing and food. So many bellies of
ravenous creatures must be looked after, garments bought, thieving, hands
guarded against, and services employed in the face of tears
and curses. How much happier is the man who owes

(02:09:26):
nothing to anybody except the one he can most easily
refuse himself. But since we have not such strength of will,
we must at least curtail our possessions so we may
be less exposed to the blows of fortune. Men's bodies
are better fitted for warfare if they can be compressed
into their armor than if they bulge out of it,
and by their very bulk are exposed on every side
to wounds. So the ideal amount of money is that

(02:09:49):
which neither falls within the range of poverty, nor far
exceeds it. Moreover, we shall be satisfied with this limit
if we previously practice thrift, without which no amount of
wealth is ans enough, and no amount is not ample enough,
especially as a remedy is to hand, and poverty can
itself turn to riches. By practicing economy, let us get
used to banishing ostentation and to measuring things by their

(02:10:11):
qualities of function rather than display. Let food banish hunger,
and drink banish thirst. Let sex indulge its needs. Let
us learn to rely on our limbs and to adjust
our style of dress in our way of living, not
to the newfangled patterns, but to the customs of our ancestors.
Let us learn to increase our self restraint, to curb luxury,
to moderate ambition, to soften anger, to regard poverty without prejudice,

(02:10:33):
to practice frugality, even if many are ashamed of it,
to apply to nature's needs, the remedies that are cheaply available,
to curb as if in fetters, unbridled hopes, in a
mind obsessed with the future, and to aim to acquire
our riches from ourselves rather than from fortune. It is
not possible that all the manifold and unfair disasters of
life can be so repelled that many storm winds will

(02:10:54):
not still assail those who spread their sales ambitiously. We
must restrict our activities so that fortune weapons miss their mark,
And for that reason exiles and calamities have proved to
benefit us in greater disasters have been mended by lesser ones.
When the mind is less amenable to instruction and cannot
be cured by milder means, why should it not be
helped by having a dose of poverty and disgrace in general,

(02:11:15):
ruin dealing with evil by evil. So let us get
used to dining without a mass of people, to being
slaved to fewer slaves, to acquiring clothes for their proper purpose,
and to living in more restricted quarters. Not only in
running and the contests of the circus, but in this
race course of our lives. We must keep to the
inner track, even in our studies or expenditure, is most

(02:11:39):
worthwhile its justification depends on its moderation. What is the
point of having countless books and libraries whose titles the
owner could scarcely read through in his whole lifetime. The
massive books burdens the student without instructing him. And it
is far better to devote yourself to a few authors
than to get lost among many. Forty thousand books were
burned in the library at Alexandria. Someone else can praise

(02:12:03):
it as a sumptuous monument to royal wealth, like Titus Leviews,
who calls it a notable achievement of the good taste
and devotion of kings. That was not good taste or
devotion but scholarly self indulgence, In fact, not even scholarly,
since they had collected the books not for scholarship but
for display. In the same way, you will find that

(02:12:24):
many people who lack even elementary culture keep books not
as tools of learning, but as decoration for their dining rooms.
So we should buy enough books for use and none
just for embellishment. But this, you say, is a more
honorable expense than squandering money on Corinthian bronzes and on pictures.
But excess in any sphere is reprehensible. How can you

(02:12:45):
excuse a man who collects bookcases of citronwood and ivory,
amasses the works of unknown or third rate authors, and
then sits yawning among all his thousands of books, and
gets most enjoyment out of the appearance of his volumes
in their labels. Thus you will see that the ilest
men possess sets of orations and histories with crates piled
up to the ceiling. For nowadays, an elegant library too
has joined hot and cold baths as an essential adornment

(02:13:07):
for a house. I would certainly excuse people for airing
through an excessive love of study. But these collections of
works have inspired genius, along with their several portraits, are
acquired only for pretentious wall decoration. But perhaps you have
become involved in some decult situation in life in which
either public or private circumstances have fastened a noose on
you unawares, which you can neither loosen nor snap. You

(02:13:30):
must reflect that fettered prisoners only at first feel the
weight of the shackles on their legs. In time when
they have decided not to struggle against, but to bear them.
They learn from necessity to endure with fortitude, and from
habit to endure with ease. In any situation in life,
you will find delights and relaxations and pleasures if you
are prepared to make light of your troubles and not
let them distress you. In no respect, as nature put

(02:13:53):
us more in her debt, since, knowing to what sorrows
we were born, she contrived habit to soothe our disasters,
and so quickly makes us grow used to the worst ills.
No one could endure lasting adversity if it continued to
have the same force as when it first hit us.
We are all tied to fortune, some by a loose
and golden chain, and others by a tight one of

(02:14:13):
baser metal. But what does it matter. We are all
held in the same captivity, and those who have bound
others are themselves in bonds, unless you think, perhaps that
the left hand chain is lighter. One man is bound
by high ocee, another by wealth, good birthways down some
and a humble origin others. Some bow under the rule
of other men, and some under their own. Some are

(02:14:33):
restricted to one place by exile, others by priesthoods. All
life is a servitude, so you have to get used
to your circumstances, complain about them as little as possible,
and grasp whatever advantage they have to offer. No condition
is so bitter that a stable mind cannot find some
consolation in it. Often, small areas can be skillfully divided
up to allow room for many uses. In arrangement can

(02:14:55):
make a narrow piece of ground inhabitable. Think your way
through deculties. Harsh condiment bitions can be softened, restricted ones
can be widened, and heavy ones can weigh less on
those who know how to bear them. Moreover, we must
not send our desires on a distant hunt, but allow
them to explore what is near to hand, since they
do not submit to being totally confined, abandoning those things

(02:15:16):
which are impossible or deculled to attain. Let us pursue
what is readily available and entices our hopes. Yet recognize
that all are equally trivial outwardly varied in appearance, but
uniformly feudle within. And let us not envy those who
stand higher than we do what look like towering heights
or precipices. On the other hand, those whom an unfair
faith is put in a critical condition will be safer

(02:15:38):
for lowering their pride in things that are in themselves proud,
and reducing their fortune as far as they can, to
a humble level. Indeed, there are many who are forced
to cling to their pinnacle because they cannot descend without falling.
But they must bear witness that this in itself is
their greatest burden, that they are forced to be a
burden to others, and that they are not so much
elevated as impaled by justice, gentleness, kindness, and life lavish generosity.

(02:16:01):
Let them prepare many defenses against later disasters to give
them hope of hanging on more safely. But nothing can
rescue us from these mental vacillations. So he silently as
always to set some limit to advancements, and not to
allow fortune the decision when they should cease, but ourselves
to stop far short of that. In this way we
shall have some desires to stimulate the mind, but being limited,

(02:16:21):
they will not lead us to a state of uncontrolled uncertainty.
What I am saying applies to people who are imperfect,
commonplace and unsound, not to the wise man. He does
not have to walk nervously or cautiously, for he has
such self confidence that he does not hesitate to make
a stand against fortune, and will never give ground to her.
He has no reason to fear her, since he regards

(02:16:42):
as held on sufferance, not only his goods and possessions
in status, but even his body, his eyes and hand,
and all that makes life more dear, and his very self.
And he lives as though he relent to himself and
bound to return the loan on demand without complaint. Nor
is he thereby cheap in his own eyes, because he
knows he is not his own. But he will act
in all things as carefully and meticulously as a devout

(02:17:02):
and holy man, guards anything entrusted to him. And whenever
he is ordered to repay his debt, he will not
complain to fortune, but he will say, I thank you
for what I have possessed, and helld I have looked
after your property to my great benefit, But at your
command I give and yield it with gratitude and good will.
If you want me still to have anything of yours,

(02:17:23):
I shall keep it safe. If you wish otherwise, I
give back and restore to you my silver, both coined
and plate my house and my household. Should nature demand
back what she previously entrusted to us, we shall say
to her too, take back my spirit, in better shape
than when you gave it. I do not quibble or
hang back. I am willing for you to have straightway
what you gave me before I was conscious. Take it.

(02:17:45):
What is the harm in returning to the point whence
you came? He will live badly who does not know
how to die well? So we must first strip off
the value we set on this thing and reckon the
breath of life as something cheap. To quote Cicero, we
hate gladiators if they are keen to save their life
by any means, we favor them if they openly show
contempt for it. You must realize that the same thing

(02:18:07):
applies to us. For often the cause of dying is
the fear of it. Dame Fortune, who makes sport with us, says,
why should I preserve you base and fearful creature. You
will only receive more severe wounds and stabs as you
don't know how to offer your throat, But you will
both live longer and die more easily, since you receive
the blade bravely without withdrawing your neck and putting your

(02:18:28):
hands in the way. He who fears death will never
do anything worthy of a living man. But he who
knows that this was the condition laid down for him
at the moment of his conception will live on those terms.
And at the same time he will guarantee with a
similar strength of mind, that no events take him by surprise.
For by foreseeing anything that can happen as though it
will happen, he will soften the onslaught of all his troubles,

(02:18:50):
which present no surprises to those who are ready and
waiting for them, but fall heavily on those who are
careless in the expectation that all will be well. There
is disease, in prisonment, disaster, fire, None of these is unexpected.
I did know in what riotous company nature had enclosed me.
So many times have the dead been lamented in my neighborhood.
So many times have torch and taper conducted untimely funerals

(02:19:12):
past my threshold. Often has the crash of a falling
building echoed beside me. Many who were linked to me
through the Forum and the Senate and everyday conversation have
been carried off in a night which has severed the
hands once join in friendship. Should it surprise me if
the perils which have always roamed around me should some
day reach me. A great number of people plan a

(02:19:33):
see voyage with no thought of a storm. I shall
never be ashamed to go to a bad author for
a good quotation. Whenever Publilius abandoned the absurdities of the
Miman language aimed at the gallery, he showed more force
of intellect than the writers of tragedy and comedy, and
he produced many thoughts more striking than those of tragedy
let alone farce, including this one. What can happen to

(02:19:54):
one can happen to all? If you let this idea
sink into your vitals and regard all the ills of
other of which every day shows an enormous supply as
having a clear path to you too, you will be
armed long before you are attacked. It is too late
for the mind to equip itself to endure dangers once
they are already there. I didn't think it would happen,
and would you ever have believed it would turn out? So?

(02:20:17):
Why ever not are there any riches which are not
pursued by poverty and hunger and beggary What rank is
there whose purple robe and Augur's staff and patrician shoestraps
are not attended by squalor and the brand of disgrace
and a thousand marks of shame and utter contempt? What
kingship does not face ruin in trampling down the tyrant
and the hangman. And these things are not separated by

(02:20:39):
white intervals. There is only a brief hour between sitting
on a throne and kneeling to another. No, then that
every condition can change, and whatever happens to anyone can
happen to you too. You are rich, But are you
richer than Pompy? Yet even he liked bread and water
when Gaeis his old relation and new host had opened
the house of Caesar to him so that he could

(02:21:00):
close his own. Though he possessed so many rivers flowing
from source to mouth in his own lands, he had
to beg for drops of water. He died of hunger
and thirst in a kinsman's palace, and while he starved,
his heir was organizing a state funeral for him. You
have filled the highest ocs. Were they as high or unexpected,
or all embracing as Sejanus had yet on the same

(02:21:22):
day the Senate escorted him to prison, and the people
tore into pieces, and there was nothing left for the
executioner to drag away of the man who had had
everything heaped on him that gods and men could offer.
You are a king. I shall not direct you to Criesus,
who lived to see his own funeral pyre both lit
and extinguished, thus surviving not only his kingdom but his
own death, nor to Jugurtha, who was put on show

(02:21:43):
to the Roman people within a year of causing them terror.
We have seen Ptolemy, King of Africa, and Mithridates, King
of Armenia, imprisoned by Gaeis. One of them was sent
into exile, the other hoped to be sent there in
better faith. In all this time ropsy turvy succession of events.
Unless you regard anything that can happen is bound to happen,

(02:22:04):
you give adversity a power over you which the man
who sees it first can crush. The next thing to
ensure is that we do not waste our energies pointlessly
or in pointless activities that is not to long, either
for what we cannot achieve or for what once gained
only makes us realize too late, and after much exertion,
the futility of our desires. In other words, let our
labor not be in vain and without result, nor the

(02:22:27):
result unworthy of our labor. For usually bitterness follows if
either we do not succeed or we are ashamed of succeeding.
We must cut down on all this dashing about that
a great many people indulge in as they throng around
houses and theaters in fa they intrude into other people's affairs,
always giving the impression of being busy. If you ask
one of them as he comes out of a house,

(02:22:47):
where are you going? What do you have in mind?
He will reply, I really don't know, but I'll see
some people. I'll do something. They wander around aimlessly looking
for employment, and they do not what they intended. But
what they happen to run across their roaming is idle
and pointless, like ants crawling over bushes, which purposelessly make
their way right up to the topmost branch and then

(02:23:09):
all the way down again. Many people live a life
like these creatures, and you could not unjustly call it
busy idleness. You will feel sorry for some folk you
see rushing along as if to a fire. So often
do they bump headlong into those in their way and
send themselves in others sprawling, when all the time they
have been running to call on someone who will not
return the call, or to attend the funeral of somebody

(02:23:30):
they don't know, or the trial of somebody who is
constantly involved in litigation, or the betrothal of a woman
who was constantly getting married, and while attending a litter
have on occasion even carried it. They then return home,
worn out to no purpose in swearing, they themselves don't
know why they went out or where they have been,
And the next day they will wander forth on the
same old round. So let all your activity be directed

(02:23:52):
to some object. Let it have some mend in view.
It is not industry that makes men restless, but false
impressions of things drive them mad. For even madmen needs
some hope to stir them. The outward show of some
object excites them because their deluded mind cannot detect its worthlessness.
In the same way, every individual among those who wander
forth to swell a crowd is led round the city

(02:24:14):
by empty and trivial reasons. Don drives him forth with
nothing to do, and after he has been jostled in
vain on many men's doorsteps, and only succeeds in greeting
their slave announcers. Shut out by many, he finds no
one at home with more deculty than himself. This evil leads,
in turn to that most disgraceful vice of eavesdropping and
prying into public and secret things, and learning about many

(02:24:34):
matters which are safe neither to talk about nor to
listen to. I imagine that Democritus had this in mind
when he began. Anyone who wishes to live a quiet
life should not engage in many activities, either privately or publicly, meaning,
of course useless ones. For if they are essential, then
not just many, but countless things have to be done,
both privately and publicly. But when no binding duties summons us,

(02:24:57):
we must restrain our actions. For a man who is
occupied with many things often puts himself into the power
of fortune, whereas the safest policy is rarely to tempt her,
though to keep her always in mind, and to trust
her in nothing. Thus I shall sail unless something happens,
and I shall become preetor unless something prevents me, and
my business will be successful unless something interferes. That is

(02:25:21):
why we say that nothing happens to the wise man
against his expectation. We remove him not from the chances
that befall mankind, but from their mistakes. Nor do all
things turn out for him as he wished, but as
he reckoned, And above all he reckoned that something could
block his plans. But inevitably, the mind can cope more
easily with the distress arising from disappointed longings if you
have not promised it certain success. We should also make

(02:25:45):
ourselves flexible, so that we do not pin our hopes
too much on our set plans, and can move over
to those things to which chance has brought us without
dreading a change in either our purpose or our condition,
provided that fickleness, that fault most inimical to tranquility, does
not get hold of us. For obstinacy, from which fortune
often extorts something, is bound to bring wretchedness and anxiety.

(02:26:05):
And much more serious is the fickleness that nowhere restrains itself.
Both are hostile to tranquility and find change impossible and
endurance impossible. In any case, the mind must be recalled
from external objects into itself. It must trust in itself
rejoice in itself, admire its own things. It must withdraw
as much as possible from the affairs of others, and

(02:26:25):
devote its attention to itself. It must not feel losses,
and should take a kindly view, even of misfortunes. When
a shipwreck was reported and he heard that all his
possessions had sunk, our founder Zeno said, fortune bids me
be a less encumbered philosopher. When a tyrant threatened to
kill the philosopher Theodorus, and indeed to leave him unburied,
he replied, you can please yourself, and my half pint

(02:26:47):
of blood is in your power. But as to burial,
you are a fool if you think it matters to
me whether I rot above or below ground. Julius c Anus,
an outstandingly fine man whom we can admire, even though
he was born in our age, had a long dispute
with Gaius, and as he was going away that Phalorus
said to him, in case you are deluding yourself with
foolish hopes, I have ordered you to be led off

(02:27:07):
to execution. His reply was, I thank you, noble Emperor.
I am not certain what he meant, for many possibilities
occurred to me. Did he mean to be insulting by
showing the extent of the cruelty which caused death to
be a blessing? Was he taunting him with his daily
bouts of madness for people used to thank him, whose
children had been murdered in whose property had been confiscated?

(02:27:30):
Was he accepting his sentence as a welcome release. Whatever
he meant, it was a spirited reply. Someone will say
after this, Gaius could have ordered him to live. Cannis
was not afraid of that. Gaius was known to keep
his word in commands of that sort. Will you believe
that Cannis spent the ten days leading up to his

(02:27:51):
execution without any anxiety at all? It is incredible what
that man said, what he did. How come he remained
he was plain drafts. When the centurion, who was dragging
off a troop of condemned men, ordered him to be
summoned to at the call, he counted his pieces and
said to his companion, see that you don't falsely claim
after my death that you won. Then, nodding to the centurion,

(02:28:14):
he said, you will be witnessed that I am leading
by one piece. Do you think Cannis was just enjoying
his game at that board, he was enjoying his irony.
His friends were sorrowful at the prospect of losing such
a man, and he said to them, why are you sad?
You are wondering whether souls are immortal? I shall soon know.

(02:28:34):
He did not cease searching for the truth, right up
to the end, and making his own deathatopic for discussion.
His philosophy teacher went with him, and when they were
not far from the mound on which our God Caesar
received his daily offering, he said, Cannis, what are you
thinking about now? What is your state of mind? Cannus replied,
I have decided to take note whether in that most

(02:28:55):
fleeting moment, the spirit is aware of its departure from
the body. And he promised that if he discovered anything,
he would visit his friends in turn and reveal to
them the state of the soul. Just look at that
serenity in the midst of a hurricane, that spirit worthy
of immortality, which invokes its own fate to establish the truth,
and in that very last phase of life, questions the
departing soul and seeks to learn something not only up

(02:29:16):
to the time of death, but from the very experience
of death itself. No one ever pursued philosophy longer. So
great a man will not quickly be relinquished, and he
should be referred to with respect, glorious Spirit, who swelled
the role of gayest victims. We shall ensure your immortality,
But there is no point in banishing the causes of
private sorrow, For sometimes we are gripped by a hatred

(02:29:39):
of the human race. When you consider how rare is simplicity,
and how unknown is innocence, how you scarcely ever find
loyalty except when it is expedient. What a host of
successful crimes you come across, and all the things equally
hateful that men gain and lose through lust, And how
ambition is now so far from setting limits to itself
that it acquires a luster from viciousness. All this drives
the mind into a darkness whose shadows overwhelm it, as

(02:30:01):
though those virtues were overturned, which it is not possible
to hope for and not useful to possess. We must
therefore school ourselves to regard all commonly held vices as
not hateful but ridiculous, And we should imitate Democritus rather
than heroclitis. For whenever these went out in public, the
latter used to weepen the former to laugh. The latter

(02:30:23):
thought all our activity sorrows, the former follies. So we
should make light of all things and endure them with tolerance.
It is more civilized to make fun of life than
to bewail it. Bear in mind, too, that he deserves
better of the human race as well, who laughs at
it than he who grieves over it, since the one
allows it a fair prospect of hope, while the other
stupidly laments over things he cannot hope will be put right.

(02:30:45):
And all things considered, it is the mark of a
greater mind not to restrain laughter than not to restrain tears,
since laughter expresses the gentlest of our feelings, and reckons
that nothing is great, or serious, or even wretched in
all the trappings of our existence. Let every man contemplate
the individual occurrences which bring us joy or grief, and
he will learn the truth of Bion's dictum, that all
the activities of men are like their beginnings, and their

(02:31:07):
life is not more highshold or serious than their conception,
and that being borne from nothing, they are reduced to nothing.
Yet it is preferable to accept commonly public behavior in
human failings, and not to collapse into either laughter or tears.
For to be tormented by other people's troubles means perpetual misery,
while to take delight in them as an inhuman pleasure,
just as it is an empty show of kindness to

(02:31:29):
weep and assume a solemn look because somebody is burying
a sun. In your own troubles, too, the appropriate conduct
is to indulge as much grief as nature, not custom demands.
For many people weep in order to be seen weeping,
though their eyes are dry, as long as there is
nobody looking, since they regard it as bad form not
to weep when everyone is weeping. This evil of taking
our cue from others has become so deeply ingrained that

(02:31:51):
even that most basic feeling, grief, degenerates into imitation. We
must next look at a category of occurrences which, with
good reason and cause us grief and anxiety. When good
men come to a bad end, When Socrates is compelled
to die in prison and Retilius to live in exile,
When Pompey and Cicero have to offer their next to
their clients, when Cato, that living pattern of the virtues,

(02:32:13):
has to fall on his sword to show the world
what is happening to himself in the state. At the
same time, then we have to feel anguish that fortune
hands out such unfair rewards. And what can each of
us then hope for himself when he sees the best
men suffering the worst fates? What follows? Then observe how
each of those men bore his fate. And if they
were brave, long with your spirit for a spirit like theirs.

(02:32:35):
If they died with womanly cowardice, then nothing died with them.
Either they are worthy of your admiration for their courage
or unworthy of your longing for their cowardice. For what
is more disgraceful than if supremely great men, by dying bravely,
make others fearful. Let us repeatedly praise one who deserves praise,
and let us say the braver one is the happier

(02:32:55):
he is. You have escaped all mischances, envy, and disease.
You have come forth from prison. Not that you seem
to the gods worthy of ill fortune, but unworthy the
fortune should any longer have power over you. But we
have to lay hands on those who pull back, and
at the very point of death, look back towards life.
I shall weep for no one who is happy, and
for no one who is weeping. The one has himself

(02:33:16):
wiped away my tears. The other, by his own tears,
has proved himself unworthy of any Should I weep for
Hercules because he was burned alive, or Regulus because he
was pierced by all those nails, or Cato because he
wounded his own wounds all of them. By giving up
a brief spell of time, found the way to become eternal,
and by dying, achieved immortality. There is also another not

(02:33:38):
inconsiderable source of anxieties. If you are too concerned to
assume a pose, and do not reveal yourself openly to anyone,
like many people whose lives are false and aimed only
at outward show, for it is agonizing always to be
watching yourself in fear of being caught when your usual
mask has slipped. Nor can we ever be care free
when we think that whenever we are observed we are appraised.

(02:33:58):
For many things happened to strip us of our pretensions
against our will. And even if all this attention to
one's self succeeds. Yet the life of those who always
live behind a mask is not pleasant or free from care.
On the contrary, how full of pleasure is that honest
and naturally unadorned simplicity that in no way hides its disposition.
Yet this life too runs a risk of being scorned

(02:34:19):
if everything is revealed to everybody. For with some people,
familiarity breeds contempt. But there is no danger of virtue
being held cheap as a result of close observation. And
it is better to be despised for simplicity than to
suffer agonies from everlasting pretense. Still, let us use moderation here.
There is a big difference between living simply and living carelessly.

(02:34:40):
We should also withdraw a lot into ourselves, for associating
with people unlike ourselves upsets a calm disposition, stirs up
passions again, and aggravates any mental weakness which has not
been completely cured. However, the two things must be mingled
and varied. Solitude in joining a crowd, the one will
make us long for people, and the other for ourselves,
and each will be a remedy for the other. Solitude

(02:35:01):
will cure our distaste for a crowd, and a crowd
will cure our boredom with solitude. The mind should not
be kept continuously at the same pitch of concentration, but
given amusing diversions. Socrates did not blush to play with
small children. Cato soothed his mind with wine when it
was tired from the cares of state, and Scipio used
to disport the triumphal and military form in the dance,

(02:35:22):
not shuming about delicately in the present style, when even
in walking men mince and wriggle with more than effeminate voluptuousness,
but in the old fashioned manly style, in which men
danced at times of games and festivals without loss of dignity,
even if their enemies were watching them. Our minds must relax.
They will rise better and keener after a rest, Just
as you must not force fertile farmland, as uninterrupted productivity

(02:35:45):
will soon exhaust it. So constant effort will sap our
mental vigor, while a short period of rest and relaxation
will restore our powers. Unremitting effort leads to a kind
of mental dullness and lethargy. Nor would men's wishes move
so much in this direction, and sport and play did
not involve a sort of natural pleasure, though repeated indulgence
in these will destroy all the gravity and force of

(02:36:06):
our minds. After all, sleep too is essential as a restorative,
but if you prolong it constantly day and night, it
will be death. There is a big difference between slackening
your hold on something and severing the link. While givers
established holidays to give people a public mandate to enjoy themselves,
thinking it necessary to introduce a sort of balance into

(02:36:26):
their labors. And as I said, certain great men gave
themselves monthly holidays on fixed days, while others divided every
day into periods of leisure and work. I remember that
this was the practice of the great Oratorycinius Pollio, whom
nothing kept at work after the tenth hour. After that
time he would not even read his letters in case
something fresh cropped up to be dealt with, But in

(02:36:47):
those two hours he would rid himself of the weariness
of the whole day. Some take a break in the
middle of the day and keep any less demanding task
for the afternoon hours. Our ancestors also forbat any new
motion to be introduced in the Senate After the tenth hour,
the army divides the watches, and those who are returning
from an expedition are exempt from night duty. We must

(02:37:09):
indulge the mind, and from time to time allow it
the leisure which is its food and strength. We must
go for walks out of doors so that the mind
can be strengthened and invigorated by a clear sky and
plenty of fresh air. At times it will acquire fresh
energy from a journey by carriage and a change of scene,
or from socializing and drinking freely. Occasionally we should even

(02:37:30):
come to the point of intoxication, sinking into drink, but
not being totally flooded by it, for it does wash
away cares, and stirs the mind to its depths, and
heal sorrow, just as it heals certain diseases. Lie Bear
was not named because he loosens the tongue, but because
he liberates the mind from its slavery to cares, emancipates it,
invigorates it, and emboldens it for all its undertakings. But

(02:37:52):
there is a healthy moderation in wine, as in liberty.
Solin and arce Silas are thought to have liked their wine,
and Cato has been accused of drunkenness, whoever accused him
will more easily make the charge honorable than Cato disgraceful.
But we must not do this often in case the
mind acquires a bad habit. Yet at times it must
be stimulated to rejoice without restraint, and austere soberness must

(02:38:13):
be banished for a while. For whether we agree with
the Greek poet that sometimes it is sweet to be mad,
or with Plato that a man's sound in mind knocks
in vain at the doors of poetry, or with Aristotle
that no great intellect has been without a touch of madness.
Only a mind that is deeply stirred can utter something
noble and beyond the power of others. When it has

(02:38:34):
scorned every day in commonplace thoughts and risen aloft on
the wings of divine inspiration. Only then does it sound
a note nobler than mortal voice could utter. As long
as it remains in its senses, it cannot reach any
lofty and decult height. It must desert the usual track
and race away, champing the bit and hurrying its driver
in its course, to a height it would have feared
to scale by itself. So here you have my dear Serenus,

(02:38:56):
the means of preserving your tranquility, the means of restoring it,
and the means of resisting the faults that creep up
on you unawares. But be sure of this that none
of them is strong enough for those who want to
preserve such a fragile thing, unless the wavering mind is
surrounded by attentive and unceasing care. Pigeon Publishing House presented

(02:39:17):
on the Shortness of Life author Seneca. Thank you for
listening to this audiobook. We hope you enjoyed it.

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