The Good Book (21 page)

24. ‘Reflect, too, that it is no great thing to show oneself brave in the midst of prosperity, when life glides on in a tranquil course;

25. ‘A quiet sea and a favouring wind do not show the skill of a pilot either; some hardship must be encountered that will test his ability.

26. ‘Accordingly, do not be bowed down; on the contrary, plant your feet firmly, and, upset only at first by the din, support whatever burden may fall.

27. ‘Nothing endures the chances and changes of life as a firm resolve.’

28. After this he directed her to the son who was still alive, he directed her to the children of the son she had lost.

29. It was your trouble, Marcia, that was dealt with there, it was at your side that Areus sat; change the role: it was you that he sought to comfort.  

Chapter 10

  1. But suppose, Marcia, more was snatched from you than any mother has ever lost – I am not trying to soothe you or to minimise your calamity.  

  2. If tears can bring back the past, let us summon tears;

  3. Let every day be passed in grief, let every night be sleepless and consumed with sorrow;

  4. Let hands rain blows on a bleeding breast, nor spare even the face from their assault;

  5. If sorrow will help, let us vent it in every kind of cruelty on ourselves.  

  6. But if no wailing can recall the dead, if no distress can alter what is immutable and fixed for ever,

  7. And if death holds fast whatever it has once carried off, then let grief, which is futile, cease.  

  8. Therefore let us steer our own ship, and not allow this power to sweep us from the course!  

  9. He is a sorry steersman who lets the waves tear the helm from his hands, who has left the sails to the mercy of the winds, and abandoned the ship to the storm;

10. But he deserves praise, even amid shipwreck, whom the sea overwhelms while still gripping the rudder, unyielding and firm.        

11. ‘But,’ you say, ‘nature bids us grieve for our dear ones.’   Who denies it, so long as grief is tempered?  

12. For not only the loss of those who are dearest to us, but a mere parting, brings an inevitable pang and wrings even the stoutest heart.  

13. But false opinion has added something more to our grief than nature has prescribed.  

14. Observe how passionate and yet how brief is the sorrow of dumb animals.   The lowing of cows is heard, for one or two days only,

15. And that wild and frantic running about of mares lasts no longer;

16. Wild beasts, after following the tracks of their stolen cubs, after wandering through the forests and returning over and over to their plundered lairs,

17. Within a short space of time quench their agony;

18. Birds, making a great outcry, rage about their empty nests, yet in a trice become quiet and resume their ordinary flight;

19. Nor does any creature sorrow long for its offspring except mankind.

20. He nurses his grief, and the measure of his affliction is not what he feels, but what he wills to feel.    

21. Moreover, in order that you may know that it is not by nature that we are crushed by sorrow,

22. First, observe that poverty, grief and ambition are felt differently by different people according as their minds are predisposed,

23. And a false presumption, which arouses a fear of things that are not to be feared, makes a man weak and unresisting.  

24. In the second place, note that whatever proceeds from nature is not diminished by its continuance.  

25. But grief is effaced by the passing of time. However stubborn it may be, mounting higher every day and bursting forth in spite of efforts to allay it,

26. Yet the most powerful agent to calm its fierceness is time; time will weaken it.

Chapter 11

  1. There remains with you even now, Marcia, an immense sorrow; it seems already to have grown obdurate – no longer the passionate sorrow it was at first, but still persistent and stubborn;

  2. Yet this also, little by little, time will remove. Whenever you engage in something else, your mind will be relieved.  

  3. As it is now, you keep watch on yourself; but there is a wide difference between permitting and commanding yourself to mourn.  

  4. How much better would it accord with the distinction of your character to form, and not merely to foresee, an end to your grief,

  5. And not to wait for that distant day on which, even against your will, your distress will cease. Renounce it of your own will!

  6. ‘Why then,’ you ask, ‘do we all so persist in lamenting what was ours, if it is not nature’s will that we should?’

  7. Because we never anticipate any evil before it arrives, but, imagining that we ourselves are exempt and are travelling a less exposed path,

  8. We refuse to be taught by the mishaps of others that such is the lot of all. So many funerals pass our doors, yet we never think of death!  

  9. So many deaths are untimely, yet we make plans for our own infants – how they will don the toga, serve in the army, and succeed to their father’s property!  

10. So many rich men are stricken before our eyes with sudden poverty, yet it never occurs to us that our own wealth also rests on just as slippery a footing!  

11. Of necessity, therefore, we are more prone to collapse; we are struck, as it were, off our guard; blows that are long foreseen fall less violently.  

12. And you wish to be told that you stand exposed to blows of every sort, and that the darts that have transfixed others have quivered around you!  

13. Just as if you were assaulting some city wall, or were mounting, only half-armed, against some lofty position manned by the enemy,

14. Expect to be wounded, and be sure that the missiles that whirl above your head, the stones and the arrows and the javelins, were all aimed at your own person.  

15. Whenever anyone falls at your side or behind you, cry out: ‘Life, you will not deceive me, you will not find me unprepared and heedless.  

16. ‘I know what you are planning; it is true you struck someone else, but you aimed at me.’

17. Who of us ever looked upon his possessions with the thought that he would die?

18. Who of us ever ventured to think upon exile, upon want, upon grief?  

19. Who, if he were urged to reflect upon these things, would not reject the idea as too uncomfortable?

20. You say: ‘I did not think it would happen.’ Do you think there is anything that will not happen, when you know that it is possible to happen, when you see that it has already happened to many?  

21. Whatever can befall one man can befall all men.

22. That man lost his children; you also may lose yours.  

23. That man was condemned to death; your innocence also is in peril.

24. Such is the delusion that deceives and weakens us while we suffer misfortunes which we never foresaw that we ourselves could possibly suffer.  

Chapter 12

  1. He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.

  2. All these fortuitous things, Marcia, that glitter about us – children, honours, wealth, spacious halls and vestibules packed with a throng of unadmitted clients,

  3. A famous name, a high-born or beautiful wife, and all else that depends upon uncertain and fickle chance – these are not our own but borrowed trappings;

  4. Not one of them belongs to us outright. The properties that adorn life’s stage have been lent, and must go back to their owners;

  5. Some of them will be returned on the first day, others on the second, only a few will endure until the end.

  6. We have, therefore, no reason to be prideful as if we were surrounded with things that belong to us; we have received them merely as a loan from time.

  7. On our part we ought always to keep in readiness the gifts that have been granted for a time not fixed, and, when called upon, to restore them without complaint.

  8. And so we should love all our dear ones, both those whom, by the condition of birth, we hope will survive us, and those whose own most just hope is to pass away before us,

  9. But always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them for ever;

10. Nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.  

11. Often must the heart be reminded of this; it must remember that loved objects will surely leave, indeed, are already leaving.  

12. Take whatever life gives, remembering that it has no promise to endure.

13. Snatch the pleasures your children bring, let your children in turn find delight in you, and drain joy to the dregs without delay;

14. No promise has been given you even for this night – nay, I have offered too long a respite! no promise has been given even for this hour.  

15. We must hurry, the enemy presses upon our rear. Soon these companions will all be scattered, soon the battle cry will be raised, and these comrade ties sundered.  

16. Nothing escapes the pillage of time; men, poor wretches, scarcely know, amid the rout and tumult of time, that they live!

Chapter 13

  1. If you grieve for the death of your son, the blame must go back to the time when he was born;

  2. For his death was proclaimed at his birth; into this condition was he begotten, this promise attended him from the womb.  

  3. We have come into the realm of change and chance, and their power is harsh and invincible.

  4. We must expect things deserved and undeserved. We will experience the kindness of chance, and its cruelty;

  5. Some will burn with fire, applied, it may be, to punish, or it may be to heal;

  6. Some will be bound in chains, in the power now of an enemy, now of a fellow-countryman;

  7. Some will toss naked on the fickle sea, and, when their struggle with the waves is over, will not be cast up on the shore, but will be swallowed by some monster;

  8. Others will be worn down with divers diseases, long suspended between life and death.  

  9. Time and chance are capricious. What need is there to weep over the different parts of life, one by one? The whole of it calls for tears.

10. New ills will press on before you have done with the old. Therefore we must observe moderation; against our many sorrows the power of the human mind must be arrayed.

11. Again, why this forgetfulness of what is the individual and the general lot?   Mortal were you born, to mortals have you given birth.  

12. You, who are a crumbling and perishable body and often assailed by the agents of disease,

13. Can you have hoped that from such frail matter you gave birth to anything imperishable?  

14. Your son is dead; he has finished his course and reached that goal towards which all those whom you count more fortunate than your child are even now hastening.  

15. Towards this, at different paces, moves all this throng that now quarrels in the forum, that looks on at the theatres, that buys in the markets;

16. Both those whom you love and revere and those whom you despise will be made equal as one heap of ashes.  

17. Accept this: return now to the thought of Livia who conquered grief by love and remembrance; remember the living, who need you still;

18. Accept the mortality of ourselves and those we love, and see that to give life is to prepare to lose it, to love is to prepare to grieve,

19. And yet: love, and give life, and be full of courage and honour, for this is our human lot, and we must make it as fine as our powers allow.

Chapter 14: Of old age

  1. Wherever I turn, I see evidence of my advancing years.   I visited the farm where I grew up, and protested against the money that the bailiff had spent on the tumbledown building.  

  2. He maintained that the flaws were not due to his own carelessness: ‘I am doing everything possible,’ he said, ‘but the house is old.’

  3. And this is the house I saw being built when I was a child! What has the future in store for me, if stones of my own age are already crumbling?  

  4. I was upset, and took the first opportunity to express my annoyance in the bailiff’s presence. ‘It is clear,’ I cried, ‘that these plane trees are neglected; they have no leaves.  

  5. ‘Their branches are so gnarled and shrivelled, the boles so rough and unkempt! This would not happen, if someone loosened the earth at their feet, and watered them.’

  6. The bailiff protested again that he was doing everything possible, and never relaxed his efforts, ‘But,’ he said, ‘those trees are old.’

  7. Now, I had planted those trees myself, I had seen them in their first leaf. I owe it to the farm that my old age became apparent whichever way I turned.  

  8. And to it I also owed the realisation that one should cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it.