Dialogues and Letters (5 page)

9               ‘But this country is not fertile in lush or fruitful trees; no large and navigable rivers irrigate it 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 are mined.' Petty is 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 grottoes, the more massively they raise the roofs of their dining-halls, so much the more will there be to cut off the sight 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.
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Say rather ‘This humble
shack gives shelter, I suppose, to the virtues. Soon it will be more elegant than any temple when justice is seen to be there, and temperance, wisdom, piety, a system for the right allotment of all duties, and the knowledge of man and 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' Brutus says that he saw Marcellus
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in exile at Mytilene, 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 was Marcellus at that time when he won the favour of Brutus for his exile than when he won the favour of the state for his consulship! What a man that was who caused someone to feel himself an 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 Mytilene because 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 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, 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 war; 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 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 nations honour and worship him; live yourself content with Brutus as your admirer.'

10               Well did Marcellus, then, endure his exile, nor did his change of abode cause any change at all in his mind 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: 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 to stock their pretentious kitchens by hunting beyond the Phasis,
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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 is brought food which their stomachs, weakened by a voluptuous diet, can scarcely receive. They vomit in order 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, whom I think nature produced as an example of the effect of supreme wickedness in a supreme position, dined in one day at a cost of ten million sesterces; 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 some delightful effect on the palate that makes them expensive, but their scarcity and the difficulty 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 it by as though blind to it, and they scour every country, they cross the seas, and they whet 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? You really must consider how small your bodies are. Is it not madness and 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 and warfare bring you profit, though you hunt down and gather your food from every side, 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 nor their temples with precious stones – and so in those days they swore solemn oaths by gods of clay and, having invoked them, returned to the enemy to certain death rather than break their word. To be sure, our dictator
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who gave audience to the Samnite envoys while with his own hand he cooked the simplest sort of food (the hand which already had frequently smitten the enemy and placed a laurel wreath on the lap of Capitoline Jupiter) – he lived less happily than Apicius
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in our time, who in the city from which
philosophers were once banished as corrupters of the youth, polluted the age by his teaching as professor of cookery.' It is worth hearing what happened to him. When he had spent a hundred million sesterces in his kitchen, when he had drunk up at every one of his carousals all those imperial gifts and the enormous revenue of the Capitol, 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 sesterces left, and that living on ten million would 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 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 life-style 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.

11             ‘But,' says someone, ‘the exile is going to miss his clothes and home.' These too he will miss only as far as he 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 multicoloured patterns: it is his fault, not nature's, if he feels poor. Even if you give him back all he has lost, you'll be wasting your time; for once he is back 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 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 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. Life's necessities are found even in places of exile, superfluities 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 sufficient to nourish the body and revels 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, 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 and this heavy burden that envelops us, it surveys things divine with swift and winged thought. So the soul can never suffer exile, 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 hither and thither; upon it punishment and pillage and disease wreak havoc: but the soul itself is holy and eternal, and it cannot be assailed with violence.

12              In case you think I am simply using 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 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 poor in their needs: when on occasion they get tired of their riches they choose certain days on which they dine on the ground and, 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 afflicted by the fear of poverty, yet take pleasure in imitating it! For 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 on that account say that they lived wretchedly without himself seeming to all by his words to be utterly wretched? Menenius Agrippa,
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12who kept the public peace by acting as mediator between patricians and plebeians, was buried by public subscription. Atilius Regulus,
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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 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? Scipio'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 girls' husbands whose father-in-law was the Roman people! Do you think those whose pantomime actresses marry with a dowry of a million sesterces 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 Scipio lacked a dowry, Regulus a hired worker, Menenius a funeral: when for all of them supplying their need was all the more honourable simply because they had the need? And so, with these men pleading her cause poverty wins not only acquittal but high esteem.