ↀ V
1Consider, too, that it is for the common good to have the best men become soldiers, so to speak, and do service. It is God's purpose, and the wise man's as well, to show that those things which the ordinary man desires and those which he dreads are really neither goods nor evils.[1] It will appear, however, that there are goods, if these are bestowed only on good men, and that there are evils, if these are inflicted only on the evil. 2Blindness will be a curse if no one loses his eyes but the man who deserves to have them torn out; therefore let an Appius and a Metellus be deprived of the light. Riches are not a good; therefore let even the panderer Elius possess them in order that men, though they hallow wealth in temples, may see it also in a brothel. In no better way can God discredit what we covet than by bestowing those things on the basest men while withholding them from the best. 3"But," you say, "it is unjust that a good man be broken in health or transfixed or fettered, while the wicked are pampered and stalk at large with whole skins." What then? Is it not unjust that brave men should take up arms, and stay all night in camp, and stand with bandaged wounds before the rampart, while perverts and professional profligates rest secure within the city? What then? Is it not unjust that the noblest maidens[2] should be aroused from sleep to perform sacrifices at night, while others stained with sin enjoy soundest slumber? 4Toil summons the best men. The senate is often kept in session the whole day long, though all the while every worthless fellow is either amusing himself at the recreation-ground, or lurking in an eating-house, or wasting his time in some gathering. The same is true in this great commonwealth of the world. Good men labour, spend, and are spent, and withal willingly. Fortune does not drag them—they follow her, and match her pace. If they had known how, they would have outstripped her. 5Here is another spirited utterance which, I remember, I heard that most valiant man, Demetrius, make: "Immortal gods," he said, "I have this one complaint to make against you, that you did not earlier make known your will to me; for I should have reached the sooner that condition in which, after being summoned, I now am. Do you wish to take my children?—it was for you that I fathered them. Do you wish to take some member of my body?—take it; no great thing am I offering you; very soon I shall leave the whole. Do you wish to take my life?—why not? I shall make no protest against your taking back what once you gave. 6With my free consent you shall have whatever you may ask of me. What, then, is my trouble? I should have preferred to offer than to relinquish. What was the need to take by force? You might have had it as a gift. Yet even now you will not take it by force, because nothing can be wrenched away from a man unless he withholds it."
I am under no compulsion, I suffer nothing against my will, and I am not God's slave but his follower, and the more so, indeed, because I know that everything proceeds according to law that is fixed and enacted for all time. 7Fate guides us, and it was settled at the first hour of birth what length of time remains for each. Cause is linked with cause, and all public and private issues are directed by a long sequence of events. Therefore everything should be endured with fortitude, since things do not, as we suppose, simply happen—they all come. Long ago it was determined what would make you rejoice, what would make you weep, and although the lives of individuals seem to be marked by great dissimilarity, yet is the end one—we receive what is perishable and shall ourselves perish. 8Why, therefore, do we chafe? why complain? For this were we born. Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of our own that perishes.
What, then, is the part of a good man? To offer himself to Fate. It is a great consolation that it is together with the universe we are swept along; whatever it is that has ordained us so to live, so to die, by the same necessity it binds also the gods. One unchangeable course bears along the affairs of men and gods alike. Although the great creator and ruler of the universe himself wrote the decrees of Fate, yet he follows them. He obeys for ever, he decreed but once. 9"Why, however," do you ask, "was God so unjust in his allotment of destiny as to assign to good men poverty, wounds, and painful death?" It is impossible for the moulder to alter matter; to this law it has submitted. Certain qualities cannot be separated from certain others; they cling together, are indivisible. Natures that are listless, that are prone to sleep, or to a kind of wakefulness that closely resembles sleep, are composed of sluggish elements. It takes sterner stuff to make a man who deserves to be mentioned with consideration. His course will not be the level way; uphill and downhill must he go, be tossed about, and guide his bark through stormy waters; he must keep his course in spite of fortune. Much that is hard, much that is rough will befall him, but he himself will soften the one, and make the other smooth. 10Fire tests gold, misfortune brave men. See to what a height virtue must climb! you will find that it has no safe road to tread:
The way is steep at first, and the coursers strain
To climb it, fresh in the early morn. They gain
The crest of heaven at noon; from here I gaze
Adown on land and sea with dread amaze,
And oft my heart will beat in panic fear.
The roadway ends in sharp descent—keep here
A sure control; 'twill happen even so
That Tethys, stretching out her waves below.
Will often, while she welcomes, be affright
To see me speeding downward from the height.[3]
11Having heard the words, that noble youth replied, "I like the road, I shall mount; even though I fall, it will be worth while to travel through such sights." But the other did not cease from trying to strike his bold heart with fear:
And though you may not miss the beaten track,
Nor, led to wander, leave the zodiac.
Yet through the Bull's fierce horns, the Centaur's bow
And raging Lion's jaws you still must go.[4]
In reply to this he said, "Harness the chariot you offered; the very things that you think affright me urge me on. I long to stand aloft where even the Sun-god quakes with fear." The groveller and the coward will follow the safe path: virtue seeks the heights.
1 In Stoic dogma virtus was the sole good and dedectis the sole evil. All things not related to these standards were considered neither good nor evil, and, consequently, negligible (αδιάφορα).
2 The Vestal Virgins, who maintained the public worship of Vesta.
3 Ovid, Met. ii. 63 sqq. The speaker is Phoebus, the Sun-god, who seeks to dissuade the youthful Phaethon from his desire to drive the chariot of the Sun.
4 Ovid, Met. ii. 79 sqq.