The Good Book (19 page)

27. ‘And with little more to add, there is nothing that is lost when so much stands already gained.

28. ‘Wherefore, as I said before, all is as well as possible with him: he sleeps, after much achievement.’

Chapter 2

  1. ‘Not so with me; for as I entered life before him, it would have been fairer for me to leave it also before him.

  2. ‘Yet such is the pleasure I take in recalling our friendship, that I look upon my life as having been a happy one because I have spent it with Scipio.  

  3. ‘With him I was associated in public and private business; with him I lived at home and served abroad;

  4. ‘Between us there was harmony in our tastes, our pursuits and our sentiments, which is the true secret of friendship.

  5. ‘It is not therefore in that reputation for wisdom you mentioned just now, especially as it happens to be groundless, that I find my happiness so much,

  6. ‘As in the assurance that the memory of our friendship will be lasting.

  7. ‘What makes me care about this is the fact that in all history there are scarcely three or four pairs of friends on record;

  8. ‘And it is classed with them that I cherish a hope of the friendship of Scipio and Laelius being known to posterity.

  9. ‘Therefore though I grieve for Scipio, I take comfort and strength in what our friendship was like, and both he and our friendship survive this mere change;

10. ‘We walked the earth together, and learned and shared much together; none of this can be taken away.

11. ‘I think what he would wish for me, could he wish it now: that I would not allow my missing him to make me fail in my duties to myself, to others, and to his memory.

12. ‘I dwell with pleasure on the good of the past, and summon courage to bear his absence now, and turn outward to others who likewise grieve, to comfort them in their affliction;

13. ‘For there is comfort in what we share, and in the knowledge that others understand how we feel.

14. ‘Nothing can replace Scipio, as nothing can replace any of those we love. We do not cease to grieve, but we learn to live with grief;

15. ‘These are our consolations, if we face the inevitabilities of life bravely,

16. ‘Nobly enduring, accepting the sincere condolences of our living friends,

17. ‘Again and again calling upon ourselves for the courage to live on as those who loved us would wish us to live.

18. ‘In this knowledge of our duty to ourselves and the dead we find the strength to perform that duty; and in that performance is our consolation.’

Chapter 3:
Of grief: to Apollonius

  1. Even before this time, Apollonius, I felt for you in your sorrow and trouble, when I heard of the untimely passing from life of your son, who was so dear to us all.

  2. In those days, close upon the time of his death, to visit you and urge you to bear your suffering would have been unsuitable,

  3. For you were prostrated by the unexpected calamity; and I could not help sharing in your feeling, and would have added to the weeping around you.

  4. Now since time, which assuages all things, has intervened since the calamity, and your present condition demands the aid of your friends,

  5. I send you some words of comfort, for the mitigation of grief and the pain of your lamentations.

  6. Though there are many emotions that affect the mind, yet grief, from its nature, is the most cruel of all.

  7. The pain felt at the death of one we love so dearly is a great cause to awaken grief, and over it we have no control.

  8. Yet think of what we say about the right attitude to prosperity and good fortune:

  9. We counsel ourselves to treat them rationally, and to maintain a becoming attitude towards them;

10. To put them in proportion, and understand that they are part of the possibilities of life that come and go, and are never certain.

11. If this is how we must view the good that might visit us, it is likewise how we must view the suffering that life brings.

12. For it is a rational safeguard, when pain of mind comes, to provide oneself with a noble patience to endure it.

13. Just as plants are at one time in a season of fruitage and at another time in a season of unfruitfulness,

14. And animals are at one time in fecundity and at another time in barrenness,

15. And on the sea and over the mountains there is both fair weather and storm,

16. So also in life many diverse circumstances occur which bring their changes and reversals in human fortunes;

17. This everyone knows who lives. Yet to try to find constancy in what is inconstant is a trait of people who do not rightly reason about the circumstances of life.

18. Why do I turn your thoughts in this direction? It is to remind you that misfortune is nothing novel for humankind,

19. But that we all have had the same experience of it, and share it with you; and we wish to remind you that though we never forget, yet the scars heal.

20. Come then and rest on a seat with me in the garden; let us suffer our sorrows to slumber quietly now in our bosoms, in spite of our afflictions;

21. Nothing is ever accomplished by yielding too far to grief and painful lamentation.

22. Now is the time for courage and endurance, now is the time to turn our thoughts to the living who are dear to us too,

23. And not to take ourselves from them, but to help them with our own patience and strength to bear what must be borne; for they bear it too.

Chapter 4:
Of grief: to a friend

  1. I am grieved to hear that he is dead whom you loved, but I would not have you sorrow more than is fitting.

  2. That you should not mourn at all I shall hardly dare insist; and yet I know that it is the better way; for he is at peace, safe from any further harms,

  3. And you and his other friends will cherish the best memories of him, and speak of him, thus making him part of life still.

  4. But what man will ever be so endowed with that ideal steadfastness of mind, unless he has already risen far above the reach of chance, not to mourn?

  5. Even the most stoical would be stung by an event like this, though for him it were only a sting.  

  6. We, however, may be forgiven our tears, if only our tears have not flowed to excess.

  7. We may weep, but we must not wail. Do you think that this advice is harsh?

  8. Well: only consider the reason for lamentations and weeping. It is because we mourn for ourselves as well as for he who has left us; we are sad because we are bereft.

  9. But what would your friend say to you, if he could? That he welcomes the love for him you thus show, but that he does not wish you to suffer too much or too long.

10. He will say, let the time not be distant that you put off the soothing of every regret, the quieting of even the bitterest grief.  

11. As soon as you cease to observe yourself, the picture of sorrow which you have contemplated will fade away;

12. At present you are keeping watch over your own suffering, and that prolongs it.

13. Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we loved and have lost becomes a pleasant memory to us.  

14. No man reverts with pleasure to any subject which he cannot reflect upon without pain.  

15. So too it must be that the names of those whom we have lost come back to us with a grievous pang;

16. But when we recall the best and dearest things about them, and what they added to our own lives by their lives, we can even say, ‘The remembrance of lost friends is a good;

17. ‘It honours them and consoles us, and keeps them with us in our hearts.’

18.   To think of friends who are alive and well is like enjoying a meal of cakes and honey; the recollection of friends who have passed away gives a pleasure that is not without a touch of bitterness.  

19. Yet to me, the thought of my dead friends is a consolation nevertheless.   For I have had them as if I should one day lose them; I have lost them as if I have them still.      

20. Therefore act as befits your own serenity of mind, and cease to put a wrong interpretation on the chances of life and death.  

21. Death has taken away, but life has given. Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long this privilege will be ours.  

22. Let us think how often we shall leave them when we go on distant journeys, and how often we shall fail to see them even when we are in the same town;

23. We shall thus understand that we have lost too much of their time while they were alive.  

24. But will you tolerate men who are most careless of their friends, and then mourn them most abjectly, and do not love anyone unless they have lost him?  

25. If we have other friends, we surely deserve ill at their hands and think ill of them, if they are of so little account that they fail to console us for the loss of one friend.  

26. You have buried one whom you loved; look to the others you love and cherish them the more; now is the time for the living to comfort one another.

27. A man ends his grief by the mere passing of time, even if he has not ended it of his own accord.  

28. But the most shameful cure for sorrow, in the case of a sensible man, is to grow weary of sorrowing.  

29. I should prefer you to move on from grief by choice, rather than have grief abandon you; and you should stop grieving as soon as possible,

30. And honour the dead with loving remembrance that is positive and enhances your life, not hinders it: just as they would wish.

31. He who writes these words to you is no other than I, who wept so excessively for my own dear friend,

32. So that, in spite of my wishes, I must be included among the examples of men who have been overcome by grief.  

33. Today, however, I regret this act of mine, and understand that the reason why I lamented so greatly was that I had never imagined it possible for his death to precede mine.  

34. The only thought which occurred to me was that he was the younger, and much younger, too – as if nature kept to the order of our ages!

35. Therefore let us continually think as much about our own mortality as about that of all those we love.  

36. In former days I ought to have said: ‘My friend is younger than I; but what does that matter?   He would naturally die after me, but he may precede me.’

37. It was just because I did not do this that I was unprepared when fortune dealt me the sudden blow.  

38. Now is the time for you to reflect, not only that all things are mortal, but also that their mortality is subject to no fixed law.  

39. Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.  

40. Let us therefore reflect that we shall soon come to the goal which this beloved friend, to our own sorrow, has reached.  

Chapter 5:
To Marcia

  1. If I did not know, Marcia, that you are as far removed from weakness of mind as from all other vices,

  2. I should not dare to assail your grief – the grief that we are all prone to nurse and brood upon;

  3. Nor should I have hoped to be able to comfort you with philosophy in this trial.

  4. But your strength of mind has been already so tested, and your courage, after such a tragic loss, so approved,

  5. That this gives me confidence to try. How you bore yourself in relation to your father is common knowledge;

  6. For you loved him as dearly as you love your children, save only that you did not wish him to outlive you.  

  7. And yet I am not sure that you did not wish even that; for great affection sometimes ventures to break the natural law.

  8. You dissuaded your father from taking his own life as long as you could;

  9. After it became clear that, surrounded as he was by his enemies sent by Sejanus, he had no other way of escape from servitude,

10. So though you did not favour his plan, you acknowledged defeat, and you routed your tears in public and choked down your sobs,

11. Yet in spite of your composed face you did not conceal them – and these things in an age when the supremely filial was simply not to be unfilial!

12. When, however, changed times gave you an opportunity, you recovered for the benefit of men that genius of your father which had brought him to his end,

13. And thus saved him from the only real death, which is oblivion;

14. And the books which that brave hero had written with his own blood you restored to their place among the memorials of the nation.  

15. You have done a great service to scholarship, for a large part of his writings had been burned;

16. You have done a great service to posterity, for history will come to them as an uncorrupted record whose honesty cost its author dear;