Letter 49
A man is indeed lazy and careless, my dear
Lucilius, if he is reminded of a friend only by seeing some landscape which
stirs the memory; and yet there are times when the old familiar haunts
stir up a sense of loss that has been stored away in the soul, not bringing
back dead memories, but rousing them from their dormant state, just as
the sight of a lost friend's favourite slave, or his cloak, or his house,
renews the mourner's grief, even though it has been softened by time.
Now, lo and behold, Campania, and especially
Naples and your beloved Pompeii, struck me, when I viewed them, with
a wonderfully fresh sense of longing for you. You stand in full view
before my eyes. I am on the point of parting from you.
I see you choking down your tears and resisting without success the emotions
that well up at the very moment when you try to check them. I seem
to have lost you but a moment ago. For what is not "but a moment
ago" when one begins to use the memory? It was but a moment ago that
I sat, as a lad, in the school of the philosopher Sotion, but a moment
ago that I began to plead in the courts, but a moment ago that I lost the
desire to plead, but a moment ago that I lost the ability. Infinitely
swift is the flight of time, as those see more clearly who are looking
backwards. For when we are intent on the present, we do not notice
it, so gentle is the passage of time's headlong flight. Do you ask
the reason for this? All past time is in the same place; it all presents
the same aspect to us, it lies together. Everything slips into the
same abyss.
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Besides, an event which in its entirety is of brief compass cannot contain
long intervals. The time which we spend in living is but a point,
nay, even less than a point. But this point of time, infinitesimal
as it is, nature has mocked by making it seem outwardly of longer duration;
she has taken one portion thereof and made it infancy, another childhood,
another youth, another the gradual slope, so to speak, from youth to old
age, and old age itself is still another. How many steps for how
short a climb! It was but a moment ago that I saw you off on your journey;
and yet this "moment ago" makes up a goodly share of our existence, which
is so brief, we should reflect, that it will soon come to an end altogether.
In other years time did not seem to me to go so swiftly; now, it seems
fast beyond belief, perhaps, because I feel that the finish-line is moving
closer to me, or it may be that I have begun to take heed and reckon up
my losses.
For this reason I am all the more angry that
some men claim the major portion of this time for superfluous things, -
time which, no matter how carefully it is guarded, cannot suffice even
for necessary things. Cicero declared that if the number of his
days were doubled, he should not have time to read the lyric poets. And
you may rate the dialecticians in the same class; but they are foolish
in a more melancholy way. The lyric poets are avowedly frivolous;
but the dialecticians believe that
they are themselves engaged upon serious business. I do not deny
that one must cast a glance at dialectic; but it ought to be a mere glance,
a sort of greeting from the threshold, merely that one may not be deceived,
or judge these pursuits to contain any hidden matters of great worth.
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Why do you torment yourself and lose weight
over some problem which it is more clever to have scorned than to solve?
When a soldier is undisturbed and travelling at his ease, he can hunt for
trifles along his way; but when the enemy is closing in on the rear, and
a command is given to quicken the pace, necessity makes him throw away
everything which he picked up in moments of peace and leisure. I
have no time to investigate disputed inflections of words, or to try my
cunning upon them.
Behold the gathering cl
ns, the fast-shut gates, And weapons whetted ready for the war. I need
a stout heart to hear without flinching this din of battle which sounds
round about. And all would rightly think me mad if, when graybeards
and women were heaping up rocks for the fortifications, when the armour-clad
youths inside the gates were awaiting, or even demanding, the order for
a sally, when the spears of the foemen were quivering in our gates and
the very ground was rocking with mines and subterranean passages, - I say,
they would rightly think me mad if I were to sit idle, putting such petty
posers as this: "What you have not lost, you have. But you have not
lost any horns. Therefore, you have horns," or other tricks constructed
after the model of this piece of sheer silliness. And yet I may well
seem in your eyes no less mad, if I spend my energies on that sort of thing;
for even now I am in a state of siege. And yet, in the former case
it would be merely a peril from the outside that threatened me, and a wall
that sundered me from the foe; as it is now, death-dealing perils are in
my very presence. I have no time for such nonsense; a
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mighty undertaking is on my hands. What am I to do? Death
is on my trail, and life is fleeting away; teach me something with which
to face these troubles. Bring it to pass that I shall cease trying
to escape from death, and that life may cease to escape from me.
Give me courage to meet hardships; make me calm in the face of the unavoidable.
Relax the straitened limits of the time which is allotted me. Show
me that the good in life does not depend upon life's length, but upon the
use we make of it; also, that it is possible, or rather usual, for a man
who has lived long to have lived too little. Say to me when I lie
down to sleep: "You may not wake again!" And when I have waked: "You may
not go to sleep again!" Say to me when I go forth from my house: "You may
not return!" And when I return: "You may never go forth again!" You are
mistaken if you think that only on an ocean voyage there is a very slight
space between life and death. No, the distance between is just
as narrow everywhere. It is not everywhere that death shows himself
so near at hand; yet everywhere he is as near at hand.
Rid me of these shadowy terrors; then you
will more easily deliver to me the instruction for which I have prepared
myself. At our birth nature made us teachable, and gave us reason,
not perfect, but capable of being perfected. Discuss for me justice,
duty, thrift, and that twofold purity, both the purity which abstains from
another's person, and that which takes care of one's own self. If
you will only refuse to lead me along by- paths, I shall more easily reach
the goal at which I am aiming. For, as the tragic poet says:
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Latin / Greek Original
[1] Est quidem, mi Lucili, supinus et neglegens qui in amici memoriam ab aliqua regione admonitus reducitur; tamen repositum in animo nostro desiderium loca interdum familiaria evocant, nec exstinctam memoriam reddunt sed quiescentem irritant, sicut dolorem lugentium, etiam si mitigatus est tempore, aut servulus familiaris amisso aut vestis aut domus renovat. Ecce Campania et maxime Neapolis ac Pompeiorum tuorum conspectus incredibile est quam recens desiderium tui fecerint: totus mihi in oculis es. Cum maxime a te discedo; video lacrimas combibentem et affectibus tuis inter ipsam coercitionem exeuntibus non satis resistentem.
[2] Modo amisisse te videor; quid enim non 'modo' est, si recorderis? Modo apud Sotionem philosophum puer sedi, modo causas agere coepi, modo desii velle agere, modo desii posse. Infinita est velocitas temporis, quae magis apparet respicientibus. Nam ad praesentia intentos fallit; adeo praecipitis fugae transitus lenis est. [3] Causam huius rei quaeris? quidquid temporis transit eodem loco est; pariter aspicitur, una iacet; omnia in idem profundum cadunt. Et alioqui non possunt longa intervalla esse in ea re quae tota brevis est. Punctum est quod vivimus et adhuc puncto minus; sed et hoc minimum specie quadam longioris spatii natura derisit: aliud ex hoc infantiam fecit, aliud pueritiam, aliud adulescentiam, aliud inclinationem quandam ab adulescentia ad senectutem, aliud ipsam senectutem. In quam angusto quodam quot gradus posuit! [4] Modo te prosecutus sum; et tamen hoc 'modo' aetatis nostrae bona portio est, cuius brevitatem aliquando defecturam cogitemus. Non solebat mihi tam velox tempus videri: nunc incredibilis cursus apparet, sive quia admoveri lineas sentio, sive quia attendere coepi et computare damnum meum.
Eo magis itaque indignor aliquos ex hoc tempore quod sufficere ne ad necessaria quidem potest, [5] etiam si custoditum diligentissime fuerit, in supervacua maiorem partem erogare. Negat Cicero, si duplicetur sibi aetas, habiturum se tempus quo legat lyricos: eodem loco <pono> dialecticos: tristius inepti sunt. Illi ex professo lasciviunt, hi agere ipsos aliquid existimant. [6] Nec ego nego prospicienda ista, sed prospicienda tantum et a limine salutanda, in hoc unum, ne verba nobis dentur et aliquid esse in illis magni ac secreti boni iudicemus. Quid te torques et maceras in ea quaestione quam subtilius est contempsisse quam solvere? Securi est et ex commodo migrantis minuta conquirere: cum hostis instat a tergo et movere se iussus est miles, necessitas excutit quidquid pax otiosa collegerat. [7] Non vacat mihi verba dubie cadentia consectari et vafritiam in illis meam experiri.
Magno mihi animo strepitus iste belli circumsonantis exaudiendus est. [8] Demens omnibus merito viderer, si cum saxa in munimentum murorum senes feminaeque congererent, cum iuventus intra portas armata signum eruptionis exspectaret aut posceret, cum hostilia in portis tela vibrarent et ipsum solum suffossionibus et cuniculis tremeret, sederem otiosus et eiusmodi quaestiunculas ponens: 'quod non perdidisti habes; cornua autem non perdidisti; cornua ergo habes' aliaque ad exemplum huius acutae delirationis concinnata. [9] Atqui aeque licet tibi demens videar si istis impendero operam: et nunc obsideor. Tunc tamen periculum mihi obsesso externum immineret, murus me ab hoste secerneret: nunc mortifera mecum sunt. Non vaco ad istas ineptias; ingens negotium in manibus est. Quid agam? mors me sequitur, fugit vita. [10] Adversus haec me doce aliquid; effice ut ego mortem non fugiam, vita me non effugiat. Exhortare adversus difficilia, [de aequanimitate] adversus inevitabilia; angustias temporis mei laxa. Doce non esse positum bonum vitae in spatio eius sed in usu posse fieri, immo saepissime fieri, ut qui diu vixit parum vixerit. Dic mihi dormituro 'potes non expergisci'; dic experrecto 'potes non dormire amplius'. Dic exeunti 'potes non reverti'; dic redeunti 'potes non exire'. [11] Erras si in navigatione tantum existimas minimum esse quo <a> morte vita diducitur: in omni loco aeque tenue intervallum est. Non ubique se mors tam prope ostendit: ubique tam prope est. Has tenebras discute, et facilius ea trades ad quae praeparatus sum. Dociles natura nos edidit, et rationem dedit imperfectam, sed quae perfici posset. [12] De iustitia mihi, de pietate disputa, de frugalitate, de pudicitia utraque, et illa cui alieni corporis abstinentia est, et hac cui sui cura. Si me nolueris per devia ducere, facilius ad id quo tendo perveniam; nam, ut ait ille tragicus, 'veritatis simplex oratio est', ideoque illam implicari non oportet; nec enim quicquam minus convenit quam subdola ista calliditas animis magna conantibus. Vale.