Category Archives: Europe

by | May 21, 2015 · 7:03 pm

TACITUS
(c. 55-c.117)

from The Annals: The Death of Seneca

 

Cornelius Tacitus, born in northern Italy or southern Gaul, was a Roman political leader and historian who chronicled Roman history of the 1st century A.D.. He was educated in rhetoric in Rome for a career in law and apparently served in several positions of leadership, including quaestor, praetor, and consul. In the year 112 or 113, he held the position of proconsul, or local governor, in the Roman province of Asia. Tacitus spent the last years of his life working on his histories.

Tacitus wrote two major historical works, the Histories (104–109), arranged into 14 books, and the Annals (c. 115–117), comprised of 16 books. These compositions, of which fewer than half survive today, together provide a history of Rome from the years 14 to 96 A.D..

In the fifteenth book of the Annals, Tacitus relates the suicide of the Stoic statesman Seneca the Younger [q.v.], whose writings on suicide are also included in this volume. According to this account, Seneca was implicated in a conspiracy instigated by the plebeian Piso against the emperor Nero. Earlier in his life, Seneca had been Nero’s tutor, and later, together with Burrus, became a trusted advisor to Nero. It is said that much of the decency and moderation of the first five years of Nero’s rule may be attributed to the guidance of Seneca and Burrus. However, Nero grew envious of Seneca’s fortune and attempted to have him poisoned. After the attempt failed, Nero accused Seneca of involvement in the conspiracy and gave the imperial order that Seneca commit suicide. In Tacitus’ account, Seneca voluntarily complied with the order. He also consented to his wife Paulina’s determination to die with him, and they opened their veins together. After a prolonged period of suffering, poison was administered and eventually caused Seneca to die; Paulina’s attempt at suicide was prevented at Nero’s command once she herself was already unconscious.

Tacitus’ account conveys Seneca’s expectation that his suicide, despite the fact that it was unjustly ordered by Nero, will be viewed as an act of courage, to be rewarded with fame and glory, though less so than Paulina’s suicide. He says to her: “we will leave behind us an example of equal constancy; but the glory will be all your own.” Seneca’s death is often regarded as a model of Stoic suicide.

SOURCE
Tacitus,  The Annals, Book XV, 60-64, ed. E. H. Blakeney, tr. Arthur Murphy, New York: E. P. Dutton; London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1908, Vol. 1, pp. 498-502.

from THE ANNALS: THE DEATH OF SENECA

The next exploit of Nero was the death of Seneca Against that eminent man no proof of guilt appeared; but the emperor thirsted for his blood, and what poison had not accomplished, he was determined to finish by the sword.  Natalis was the only person who had mentioned his name. The chief head of his accusation was, “That he himself had been sent on a visit to Seneca, then confined by illness, with instructions to mention to him, that Piso often called at his house, but never could gain admittance, though it was the interest of both to live on terms of mutual friendship.” To this Seneca made answer, “That private interviews could be of no service to either; but still his happiness was grafted on the safety of Piso.” Granius Silvanus, a tribune of the prætorian guards, was dispatched to Seneca, with directions to let him know what was alleged against him, and to inquire whether he admitted the conversation stated by Natalis, with the answers given by himself. Seneca, by design or accident, was that very day on his return from Campania.  He stopped at a villa of his own about four miles from Rome. Towards the close of day the tribune arrived, and beset the house with a band of soldiers.  Seneca was at supper with his wife Pompeia Paulina, and two of his friends, when Silvanus entered the room, and reported the orders of the emperor.

Seneca did not hesitate to acknowledge that Natalis had been at his house, with a complaint that Piso’s visits were not received. His apology, he said, imported no more than want of health, the love of ease, and the necessity of attending to a weak and crazy constitution. “That he should prefer the interest of a private citizen to his own safety, was too absurd to be believed.  He had no motives to induce him to pay such a compliment to any man; adulation was no part of his character. This is a truth well known to Nero himself: he can tell you that, on various occasions, he found in Seneca a man, who spoke his mind with freedom, and disdained the arts of servile flattery.” Silvanus returned to Rome.  He found the prince in company with Poppæa and Tigellinus, who, as often as cruelty was in agitation, formed the cabinet council.  In their presence the messenger reported his answer. Nero asked, “Does Seneca prepare to end his days by a voluntary death?” “He showed,” said the tribune, “no symptom of fear, no token of sorrow, no dejected passion: his words and looks bespoke a mind serene, erect, and firm.” “Return,” said Nero, “and tell him he must resolve to die.” Silvanus, according to the account of Fabius Rusticus, chose to go back by a different road.  He went through a private way to Fenius Rufus, to advise with that officer, whether he should execute the emperor’s orders.  Rufus told him that he must obey. Such was the degenerate spirit of the times. A general panic took possession of every mind. This very Silvanus was one of the conspirators, and yet was base enough to be an instrument of the cruelty which he had combined to revenge. He had, however, the decency to avoid the shock of seeing Seneca, and of delivering in person the fatal message. He sent a centurion to perform that office for him.

Seneca heard the message with calm composure. He called for his will, and being deprived of that right of a Roman citizen by the centurion, he turned to his friends. And “You see,” he said, “that I am not at liberty to requite your services with the last marks of my esteem. One thing, however, still remains. I leave you the example of my life, the best and most precious legacy now in my power. Cherish it in your memory, and you will gain at once the applause due to virtue, and the fame of a sincere and generous friendship.” All who were present melted into tears. He endeavored to assuage their sorrows; he offered his advice with mild persuasion; he used the tone of authority. “Where,” he said, “are the precepts of philosophy, and where the words of wisdom, which for years have taught us to meet the calamities of life with firmness and a well prepared spirit? Was the cruelty of Nero unknown to any of us?  He murdered his mother; he destroyed his brother; and, after those deeds of horror, what remains to fill the measure of his guilt but the death of his guardian and his tutor?”

Having delivered himself in these pathetic terms, he directed his attention to his wife. He clasped her in his arms, and in that fond embrace yielded for a while to the tenderness of his nature. Recovering his resolution, he entreated her to appease her grief, and bear in mind that his life was spent in a constant course of honour and of virtue. That consideration would serve to heal affliction, and sweeten all her sorrows. Paulina was still inconsolable. She was determined to die with her husband; she invoked the aid of the executioners, and begged to end her wretched being. Seneca saw that she was animated by the love of glory, and that generous principle he thought ought not to be restrained. The idea of leaving a beloved object exposed to the insults of the world, and the malice of her enemies, pierced him to the quick. “It has been my care,” he said, “to instruct you in that best philosophy, the art of mitigating the ills of life; but you prefer an honourable death. I will not envy you the vast renown that must attend your fall. Since you will have it so, we will die together. We will leave behind us an example of equal constancy; but the glory will be all your own.”

These words were no sooner uttered, than the veins of both their arms were opened. At Seneca’s time of life the blood was slow and languid. The decay of nature, and the impoverishing diet to which he had used himself, left him in a feeble condition. He ordered the vessels of his legs and joints to be punctured. After that operation, he began to labour with excruciating pains. Lest his sufferings should overpower the constancy of his wife, or the sight of her afflictions prove too much for his own sensibility, he persuaded her to retire into another room. His eloquence still continued to flow with its usual purity. He called for his secretaries, and dictated, while life was ebbing away, that farewell discourse, which has been published, and is in everybody’s hands. I will not injure his last words by giving the substance in another form.

Nero had conceived no antipathy to Paulina. If she perished with her husband, he began to dread the public execration. That he might not multiply the horrors of his present cruelty, he sent orders to exempt Paulina from the stroke of death. The slaves and freedmen, by the direction of the soldiers, bound up her arm, and stopped the effusion of blood. This, it is said, was done without her knowledge, as she lay in a state of languor. The fact, however, cannot be known with certainty. Vulgar malignity, which is ever ready to detract from exalted virtue, spread a report, that, as long as she had reason to think that the rage of Nero was implacable, she had the ambition to share the glory of her husband’s fate; but a milder prospect being unexpectedly presented, the charms of life gained admission to her heart, and triumphed over her constancy. She lived a few years longer, in fond regret, to the end of her days, revering the memory of her husband. The weakness of her whole frame, and the sickly languor of her countenance, plainly showed that she had been reduced to the last extremity.

Seneca lingered in pain. The approach of death was slow, and he wished for his dissolution.  atigued with pain, worn out and exhausted, he requested his friend, Statius Annaeus, whose fidelity and medical skill he had often experienced, to administer a draught of that swift-speeding poison, usually given at Athens to the criminals adjudged to death. He swallowed the potion, but without any immediate effect. His limbs were chilled: the vessels of his body were closed, and the ingredients, though keen and subtle, could not arrest the principles of life. He desired to be placed in a warm bath.  Being conveyed according to his desire, he sprinkled his slaves with the water, and “Thus,” he said, “I make libation to Jupiter the deliverer.” The vapour soon overpowered him, and he was committed to the flames. He had given directions for that purpose in his last will, made at a time when he was in the zenith of power, and even then looked forward to the close of his days.

Comments Off on TACITUS
(c. 55-c.117)

from The Annals: The Death of Seneca

Filed under Ancient History, Europe, Selections, Tacitus

by | May 17, 2015 · 6:24 pm

PLUTARCH
(c. 46-c. 120)

Moralia: The Women of Miletus
Parallel Lives: Cato the Younger

 

Plutarch, Greek biographer and essayist, sometimes called the founder of modern biography, chronicled the lives of many of the great and celebrated Greeks and Romans. Born in Chaeronea in Boeotia, Plutarch was educated in Athens and traveled widely. He was the author of some 227 works, including the Moralia, a collection of didactic essays and dialogues on a wide range of topics, and the Parallel Lives, biographies and character studies of soldiers and statesmen among the Greeks and Romans, most in pairs, from the legendary age of Theseus and Romulus down to his own time. Plutarch’s philosophical thinking can be described as an eclectic Platonism, with elements borrowed from many other philosophical traditions. For at least 20 years, Plutarch served as a priest at the temple at Delphi; later in life, he returned to Chaeronea and served as a city official.

Included in Plutarch’s Moralia is the collection of stories, Mulierum Virtutes, known as On the Virtues of Women or The Bravery of Women, that Plutarch composed for his friend Clea, who held high office among the priestesses at Delphi where he himself was a priest. In it, Plutarch relates an epidemic of suicide (said to have occurred in 277 B.C.) among the young women of Miletus, presumably girls around the age of puberty when they were about to be married. The story is repeated by many other classical authors, including Aulus Gellius, who attributes it to another work of Plutarch’s, now lost, called On the Soul. Although the measure may be a later addition, the story is well known for its account of an effective deterrent to suicide: public shame.

In the Lives, Plutarch chronicles the suicide of the Roman statesman Marcus Portius Cato, known as Cato the Younger (95–46 B.C.), during the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. As a leader, Cato developed a reputation for honesty, frugality, and personal integrity, and had gained considerable influence among the Roman people; he was considered a potential political threat by the First Triumvirate (Caesar, Pompey, and Marcus Crassus), who sent him to Sicily for two years to try to remove him from politics. Cato sided with Pompey during the civil war in 49 B.C.; he tried to defend Sicily and in the end maintained a hopeless defense against Caesar in the North African city of Utica, near modern Tunis. As Caesar was about to take the city, Cato committed suicide by falling on his sword—though the act proved initially ineffective and the wound was sewn closed by a physician; it was not until he awoke and ripped open the wound that he died.

In this biography of Cato, Plutarch represents him as motivated by two principal reasons,  both consonant with Stoic thinking (though Plutarch himself was generally opposed to Stoicism): Cato considers suicide an act of self-control and personal freedom, a way of avoiding the indignity he would suffer at Caesar’s hand; he also sees his suicide as a way of showing the Roman people that they never need to succumb to slavery, even in defeat. This does not mean, however, that Cato urged suicide upon his people too; rather, he remained behind after they sailed as a model of principled resistance. Plutarch’s account also stresses the resoluteness of purpose that he sees as characterizing Cato’s suicide, including Cato’s allowing his family to understand his intentions, his reading of Plato’s Phaedo (twice), his resistance to his son’s paternalism in hiding the sword, and his determination to complete the deed even after its initial failure. Following the suicide, the people of Utica honored Cato, and his reputation for incorruptibility became legendary.

Plutarch’s accounts have had considerable later influence. Shakespeare [q.v.] followed the Lives, which had first been translated into English in 1579, closely in his Roman history plays, sometimes borrowing passages from Plutarch with only minor changes; Plutarch’s work had considerable influence on Shakespeare’s conception of the tragic hero that is evident, for example, in Antony and Cleopatra. And while some later commentators have depicted Cato’s suicide as immoral, many have used it as an example par excellence of courage; even Immanuel Kant [q.v.], in his Lectures on Ethics, says that “appearances are in its favor,” though he hastens to say that it is “the only example which has given the world the opportunity of defending suicide.”

Sources

Plutarch’s Moralia: “Bravery of Women,” XI, tr. Frank Cole Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library, London: William Heinemann, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949, p. 509; Plutarch’s Lives: “Cato the Younger,” LXVIII-LXXIII, tr. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library: London: William Heinemann, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919, vol. 8, odd-numbered pp. 401-409.

from MORALIA: THE WOMEN OF MILETUS

Once upon a time a dire and strange trouble took possession of the young women in Miletus for some unknown cause. The most popular conjecture was that the air had acquired a distracting and infectious constitution, and that this operated to produce in them an alteration and derangement of mind. At any rate, a yearning for death and an insane impulse toward hanging suddenly fell upon all of them, and many managed to steal away and hang themselves. Arguments and tears of parents and comforting words of friends availed nothing, but they circumvented every device and cunning effort of their watchers in making away with themselves. The malady seemed to be of divine origin and beyond human help, until, on the advice of a man of sense, an ordinance was proposed that the women who hanged themselves should be carried naked through the market-place to their burial. And when this ordinance was passed it not only checked, but stopped completely, the young women from killing themselves. Plainly a high testimony to natural goodness and to virtue is the desire to guard against ill repute, and the fact that the women who had no deterrent sense of shame when facing the most terrible of all things in the world, death and pain, yet could not abide nor bear the thought of disgrace which would come after death.

 

from PARALLEL LIVES: CATO THE YOUNGER

Thus the supper came to an end, and after walking about with his friends as he usually did after supper, he gave the officers of the watch the proper orders, and then retired to his chamber, but not until he had embraced his son and each of his friends with more than his wonted kindness, and thus awakened anew their suspicions of what was to come. After entering his chamber and lying down, he took up Plato’s dialogue “On the Soul,” and when he had gone through the greater part of the treatise, he looked up above his head, and not seeing his sword hanging there (for his son had taken it away while Cato was still at supper), called a servant and asked him who had taken the weapon. The servant made no answer, and Cato returned to his book; and a little while after, as if in no haste of hurry, but merely looking for his sword, he bade the servant fetch it.  But as there was some delay, and no one brought the weapon, he finished reading his book, and this time called his servants one by one and in louder tones demanded his sword.  One of them he smote on the mouth with his fist, and bruised his own hand, angrily crying now in loud tones that his son and his servants were betraying him into the hands of the enemy without arms. At last his son ran in weeping, together with his friends, and after embracing him, betook himself to lamentations and entreaties.  But Cato, rising to his feet, took on a solemn look, and said: “When and where, without my knowledge, have I been adjudged a madman, that no one instructs or tries to convert me in matters wherein I am thought to have made bad decisions, but I am prevented from using my own judgement, and have my arms taken from me?  Why, generous boy, dost thou not also tie thy father’s hands behind his back, that Caesar may find me unable to defend myself when he comes?  Surely, to kill myself I have no need of a sword, when I have only to hold my breath a little while, or dash my head against the wall, and death will come.”

As Cato said these words the young man went out sobbing, and all the rest also, except Demetrius and Apollonides. These alone remained, and with these Cato began to talk, now in greater tones. “I suppose,” said he, “that ye also have decided to detain in life by force a man as old as I am, and to sit by him in silence and keep watch of him: or are ye come with the plea that it is neither shameful nor dreadful for Cato, when he has no other way of salvation, to await salvation at the hands of his enemy?  Why, then, do ye not speak persuasively and convert me to this doctrine, that we may cast away those good old opinions and arguments which have been part of our very lives, be made wiser through Caesar’s efforts, and therefore be more grateful to him?  And yet I, certainly, have come to no resolve, I must be master of the course which I decide to take.  And I shall come to a resolve with your aid, as I might say, since I shall reach it with the aid of those doctrines which ye also adopt as philosophers. So go away with a good courage, and bid my son not to try force with his father when he cannot persuade him.”

Without making any reply to this, but bursting into tears, Demetrius and Apollonides slowly withdrew. Then the sword was sent in, carried by a little child, and Cato took it, drew it from its sheath, and examined it. And when he saw that its point was keen and its edge still sharp, he said: “Now I am my own master.” Then he laid down the sword and resumed his book, and he is said to have read it through twice.  Afterwards he fell into so deep a sleep that those outside the chamber heard him. But about midnight he called two of his freedmen, Cleanthes the physician, and Butas, who was his chief agent in public matters. Butas he sent down to the sea, to find out whether all had set sail successfully, and bring him word; while to the physician he gave his hand to bandage, since it was inflamed by the blow that he had given the slave.  This made everybody more cheerful, since they thought he had a mind to live.  In a little while Butas came with tidings that all had set sail except Crassus, who was detained by some business or other, and he too was on the point of embarking; Butas reported also that a heavy storm and a high wind prevailed at sea.  On hearing this, Cato groaned with pity for those in peril on the sea, and sent Butas down again, to find out whether anyone had been driven back by the storm and wanted any necessaries, and to report to him.

And now the birds were already beginning to sing, when he fell asleep again for a little while. And when Butas came and told him that the harbours were very quiet, he ordered him to close the door, throwing himself down upon his couch as if he were going to rest there for what still remained of the night.  But when Butas had gone out, Cato drew his sword from its sheath and stabbed himself below the breast.  His thrust, however, was somewhat feeble, owing to the inflammation in his hand, but in his death struggle fell from the couch and made a loud noise by overturning a geometrical abacus that stood near.  His servants heard the noise and cried out, and his son at once ran in, together with his friends.  They saw that he was smeared with blood, and that most of his bowels were protruding, but that he still had his eyes open and was alive; and they were terribly shocked.  But the physician went to him and tried to replace his bowels, which remained uninjured, and to sew up the wound.  Accordingly, when Cato recovered and became aware of this, he pushed the physician away, tore his bowels with his hands, rent the wound still more, and so died.

Before one would have thought that all in the house could learn of the event, the three hundred were at the door, and a little later the people of Utica had assembled.  With one voice they called Cato their saviour and benefactor, the only man who was free, the only one unvanquished.  And this they continued to do even when word was brought that Caesar was approaching.  But neither fear of the conqueror, nor a desire to flatter him, nor their mutual strife and dissension, could blunt their desire to honour Cato.  They decked his body in splendid fashion, gave it an illustrious escort, and buried it near the sea, where a statue of him now stands, sword in hand.  Then they turned their thoughts to their own salvation and that of their city.

When Caesar learned from people who came to him that Cato was remaining in Utica and not trying to escape, but that he was sending off the rest, while he himself, his companions, and his son, were fearlessly going up and down, he thought it difficult to discern the purpose of the man, but since he made the greatest account of him, he came on with his army in all haste. When, however, he heard of his death, he said thus much only, as we are told: “O Cato, I begrudge thee thy death; for thou didst begrudge me the sparing of thy life.” For, in reality, if Cato could have consented to have his life spared by Caesar, he would not be thought to have defiled his own fair fame, but rather to have adorned that of Caesar.  However, what would have happened is uncertain; though the milder course is to be conjectured on the part of Caesar.

When Cato died, he was forty-eight years old.

Comments Off on PLUTARCH
(c. 46-c. 120)

Moralia: The Women of Miletus
Parallel Lives: Cato the Younger

Filed under Ancient History, Europe, Plutarch, Selections

by | May 15, 2015 · 4:25 pm

PLINY THE ELDER
(23-79)

from Natural History:
   Of God
   The Nature of the Earth
   What Diseases are Attended with the        Greatest Pain

 

Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder to differentiate him from his nephew Pliny the Younger (62–113) [q.v.], was born in Como, Italy, and moved to Rome in his youth. He served as a military commander in Germany and was Procurator in Hispania Tarraconensis, but largely avoided politics. A scholar of considerable note, he wrote numerous works in a variety of fields, including rhetoric, history, biology, natural science, and military science. Only the Natural History remains extant. The 37 books of this work form an encyclopedia of human biology and natural science, including extensive accounts of herbal medicines.

In the year 79, Vesuvius erupted. Pliny, who was at the time commander of the fleet at Misenum on the Bay of Naples, was eager to observe the volcano at close range and attempt a rescue of people in the towns beneath the volcano; he died of exposure to poison gas while trying to do so, having collapsed and been left by his companions.

The first portion of this text presents Pliny’s well-known remark that some things are not possible for God, not even suicide, “the supreme boon that [God] has bestowed on man among all the penalties of life. . . .” This remark is often quoted out of context, an acerbic analysis of claims made about divinities, but has nevertheless intrigued many later authors, including David Hume [q.v.]. The second portion of this text provides Pliny’s account of a lethal herbal substance, probably opium or hemlock, which he argues is preferable to other means of suicide—self-starvation, jumping from a height, self-hanging, self-asphyxiation, self-drowning, and self-stabbing. What is significant here is Pliny’s apparent distinction between violent and nonviolent means of suicide and his embrace of the latter for those who are “weary of life.” This selection from Natural History also continues with his observations about the degree of pain associated with specific illnesses, in which cases sufferers sometimes seek suicide.

Sources

Pliny, The Natural History of Pliny, Book II, ch. 5,  “Of God,” ch. 63, “Nature of the Earth”; Book 25, ch. 7, “What Diseases are Attended with the Greatest Pain.” John Bostock and H. T. Riley, eds. and trs., London: Taylor and Francis, 1855, available online from Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University.

 

from NATURAL HISTORY

Of God

I consider it, therefore, an indication of human weakness to inquire into the figure and form of God. For whatever God be, if there be any other God , and wherever he exists, he is all sense, all sight, all hearing, all life, all mind , and all within himself. To believe that there are a number of Gods, derived from the virtues and vices of man, as Chastity, Concord, Understanding, Hope, Honour, Clemency, and Fidelity; or, according to the opinion of Democritus, that there are only two, Punishment and Reward , indicates still greater folly. Human nature, weak and frail as it is, mindful of its own infirmity, has made these divisions, so that every one might have recourse to that which he supposed himself to stand more particularly in need of. Hence we find different names employed by different nations; the inferior deities are arranged in classes, and diseases and plagues are deified, in consequence of our anxious wish to propitiate them. It was from this cause that a temple was dedicated to Fever, at the public expense, on the Palatine Hill, and to Orbona , near the Temple of the Lares, and that an altar was elected to Good Fortune on the Esquiline. Hence we may understand how it comes to pass that there is a greater population of the Celestials than of human beings, since each individual makes a separate God for himself, adopting his own Juno and his own Genius. And there are nations who make Gods of certain animals, and even certain obscene things, which are not to be spoken of, swearing by stinking meats and such like. To suppose that marriages are contracted between the Gods, and that, during so long a period, there should have been no issue from them, that some of them should be old and always grey- headed and others young and like children, some of a dark complexion, winged, lame, produced from eggs, living and dying on alternate days, is sufficiently puerile and foolish. But it is the height of impudence to imagine, that adultery takes place between them, that they have contests and quarrels, and that there are Gods of theft and of various crimes. To assist man is to be a God; this is the path to eternal glory. This is the path which the Roman nobles formerly pursued, and this is the path which is now pursued by the greatest ruler of our age, Vespasian Augustus, he who has come to the relief of an exhausted empire, as well as by his sons. This was the ancient mode of remunerating those who deserved it, to regard them as Gods. For the names of all the Gods, as well as of the stars that I have mentioned above, have been derived from their services to mankind. And with respect to Jupiter and Mercury, and the rest of the celestial nomenclature, who does not admit that they have reference to certain natural phenomena? But it is ridiculous to suppose, that the great head of all things, whatever it be, pays any regard to human affairs.  Can we believe, or rather can there be any doubt, that it is not polluted by such a disagreeable and complicated office?

 

Nature of the Earth

Next comes the earth, on which alone of all parts of nature we have bestowed the name that implies maternal veneration. It is appropriated to man as the heavens are to God. She receives us at our birth, nourishes us when born, and ever afterwards supports us; lastly, embracing us in her bosom when we are rejected by the rest of nature, she then covers us with especial tenderness; rendered sacred to us, inasmuch as she renders us sacred, bearing our monuments and titles, continuing our names, and extending our memory, in opposition to the shortness of life. In our anger we imprecate her on those who are now no more, as if we were ignorant that she is the only being who can never be angry with man. The water passes into showers, is concreted into hail, swells into rivers, is precipitated in torrents; the air is condensed into clouds, rages in squalls; but the earth, kind, mild, and indulgent as she is, and always ministering to the wants of mortals, how many things do we compel her to produce spontaneously! What odours and flowers, nutritive juices, forms and colours! With what good faith does she render back all that has been entrusted to her! It is the vital spirit which must bear the blame of producing noxious animals; for the earth is constrained to receive the seeds of them, and to support them when they are produced. The fault lies in the evil nature which generates them. The earth will no longer harbour a serpent after it has attacked any one, and thus she even demands punishment in the name of those who are indifferent about it themselves. She pours forth a profusion of medicinal plants, and is always producing something for the use of man. We may even suppose, that it is out of compassion to us that she has ordained certain substances to be poisonous, in order that when we are weary of life, hunger, a mode of death the most foreign to the kind disposition of the earth, might not consume us by a slow decay, that precipices might not lacerate our mangled bodies, that the unseemly punishment of the halter may not torture us, by stopping the breath of one who seeks his own destruction, or that we may not seek our death in the ocean, and become food for our graves, or that our bodies may not be gashed by steel. On this account it is that nature has produced a substance which is very easily taken, and by which life is extinguished, the body remaining undefiled and retaining all its blood, and only causing a degree of thirst. And when it is destroyed by this means, neither bird nor beast will touch the body, but he who has perished by his own hands is reserved for the earth.

 

What Diseases are Attended with the Greatest Pain

It would seem almost an act of folly to attempt to determine which of these diseases is attended with the most excruciating pain, seeing that everyone is of the opinion that the malady with which for the moment he himself is afflicted, is the most excruciating and insupportable. The general experience, however, of the present age has come to the conclusion, that the most agonizing torments are those attendant upon strangury, resulting from calculi in the bladder; next to them, those arising from maladies of the stomach; and in the third place, those caused by pains and affections of the head; for it is more generally in these cases, we find, and not in others, that patients are tempted to commit suicide.

For my own part, I am surprised that the Greek authors have gone so far as to give a description of noxious plants even; in using which term, I wish it to be understood that I do not mean the poisonous plants merely; for such is our tenure of life that death is often a port of refuge to even the best of men. We meet too, with one case of a somewhat similar nature, where M. Varro speaks of Servius Clodius, a member of the Equestrian order, being so dreadfully tormented with gout, that he had his legs rubbed all over with poisons, the result of which was, that from that time forward all sensation, equally with all pain, was deadened in those parts of his body. But what excuse, I say, can there be for making the world acquainted with plants, the only result of the use of which is to derange the intellect, to produce abortion, and to cause numerous other effects equally pernicious? So far as I am concerned, I shall describe neither abortives nor philtres, bearing in mind, as I do, that Lucullus, that most celebrated general, died of the effects of a philtre. Nor shall I speak of other ill-omened devices of magic, unless it be to give warning against them, or to expose them, for I most emphatically condemn all faith and belief in them. It will suffice for me, and I shall have abundantly done my duty, if I point out those plants which were made for the benefit of mankind, and the properties of which have been discovered in the lapse of time.

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(23-79)

from Natural History:
   Of God
   The Nature of the Earth
   What Diseases are Attended with the        Greatest Pain

Filed under Ancient History, Europe, Pliny the Elder, Selections

by | · 4:20 pm

VALERIUS MAXIMUS
(fl. c. 14-c. 37)

from Memorable Doings and Sayings

 

Born to a poor and undistinguished family, the facts of Valerius Maximus’s life remain largely unknown. Attached to the retinue of Sextus Pompeius (consul and later proconsul of Asia during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius and part of a literary circle to which Ovid belonged), Valerius accompanied Sextus to the East in the mid 20’s. Valerius compiled a collection of historical anecdotes, Memorable Doings and Sayings, taken largely from Greek and other Latin writers, apparently to be used for teaching students of rhetoric the art of using historical references to embellish speeches. His sources include Cicero [q. v.] and Livy [q. v.]. These anecdotes, grouped in nine books under virtues and vices, described both Roman and foreign practices.

The brief account of end-of-life customs Valerius ascribes to the Massilians (inhabitants of what is now Marseilles, France) involves a practice in which people having rational reasons for ending their lives could apply to the Senate for permission to do so, and with it, have access to the state-maintained supply of the poison hemlock. What is notable about Valerius’s account is his report that two sorts of reasons were recognized as compelling: if one faced severe suffering or other hardship, or if one’s life were going really well and one did not choose to face a later decline. While Valerius is not recognized as a reliable historian and his writings contain many inconsistencies, errors, and contradictions, his work is the only authority for accounts of the Massilians. Similarly, Valerius’s relating of the voluntary death of a woman on the isle of Ceos, an Aegean island Valerius had apparently visited en route to the East with Sextus Pompeius (the customs of Ceos were later the focus of an essay by Montaigne [q.v.]), is also compelling: in her 90s, still in good health and of high rank and good fortune, she nevertheless seeks permission to end her life while still, so to speak, ahead of the game.

Source

Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings, Book II, 6, ed. and tr. D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Cambridge and London: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 2000, alternate English, pp. 167-177. Footnotes deleted. Quotation in introduction from p. 4.

 

from MEMORABLE DOINGS AND SAYINGS

The same community [the Massilians] is a most strict guardian of morals, not allowing mimes access to the stage, as their themes for the most part involve the enactment of illicit intercourse, lest the habit of watching such things take licence to imitate them. It closes its gates to all who by some pretense of religion seek sustenance for sloth, holding that false and fraudulent superstition should be ousted.

Also, from the foundation of the city there is a sword therein to kill the guilty. It is eroded by rust and scarcely adequate to its function, but a sign that even in the smallest details the monuments of ancient custom are to be preserved. Also two coffins lie before their gates. In one the bodies of freemen, in the other of slaves are carried in a cart to the place of burial without wailing or breast-beating. Mourning ends on the day of the funeral with a domestic sacrifice and a banquet for relatives and friends. For what is the use of indulging human grief or arousing odium against divine power because it did not choose to share its immortality with us?

A poison compounded of hemlock is under public guard in that community, which is given to one who has shown reasons to the Six Hundred, as their senate is called, why death is desirable for him. The enquiry is conducted with firmness tempered by benevolence, not suffering the subject to leave life rashly but providing swift means of death to one who rationally desires a way out. Thus persons encountering an excess of bad fortune or good (for either might afford reason for ending life, the one lest it continue, the other lest it fail) find a finish to it in an approved departure.

I believe this usage of the Massilians did not originate in Gaul but was borrowed from Greece because I saw it also observed in the island of Cea when I entered the town of Iulis on my way to Asia with Sex. Pompeius. For it so happened on that occasion that a lady of the highest rank there but in extreme old age, after explaining to her fellow citizens why she ought to depart from life, determined to put an end to herself by poison and set much store on having her death gain celebrity by the presence of Pompeius. Nor could that gentleman reject her plea, excellently endowed as he was with the virtue of good nature as with all other noble qualities. So he visited her and in fluent speech, which flowed from his lips as from some copious fountain of eloquence, tried at length but in vain to turn her back from her design. Finally he let her carry out her intention. Having passed her ninetieth year in the soundest health of mind and body, she lay on her bed, which was spread, as far as might be perceived, more elegantly than every day, and resting on her elbow she spoke: “Sex. Pompeius, may the gods whom I am leaving rather than those to whom I am going repay you because you have not disdained to urge me to live nor yet to be witness of my death. As for me, I have always seen Fortune’s smiling face. Rather than be forced through greed of living to see her frown, I am exchanging what remains of my breath for a happy end, leaving two daughters and a flock of seven (?) grandchildren to survive me.” Then, having urged her family to live in harmony, she distributed her estate among them, and having consigned her own observance and the domestic rites to her elder daughter, she took the cup in which the poison had been mixed in a firm grasp. After pouring libations to Mercury and invoking his divine power, that he conduct her on a calm journey to the happier part of the underworld, she eagerly drained the fatal potion. She indicated in words the parts of her body which numbness seized one by one, and when she told us that it was about to reach her vitals and heart, she summoned her daughters’ hands to the last office, to close her eyes. As for us Romans, she dismissed us, stunned by so extraordinary a spectacle but bathed in tears.

 

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(fl. c. 14-c. 37)

from Memorable Doings and Sayings

Filed under Ancient History, Europe, Maximus, Valerius, Selections, Valerius Maximus

by | · 4:09 pm

SENECA
(4 B.C.–65 A.D.)

from Moral Letters to Lucilius
   Letter 70: On the Proper Time to Slip       the Cable
   Letter 77: On Taking One’s Own Life
   Letter 78: On the Healing Power of       the Mind

 

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, born in Cordoba, Spain, was the son of the prominent rhetorician and writer known as Seneca Rhetor, or Seneca the Elder; and Helvia, a cultured woman of deep philosophical interests. As a young boy, Seneca the Younger was sent to Rome to study rhetoric and classical philosophy. He showed promise in law and politics, but was hampered by poor health and the uncertain political climate in Rome.

After a recuperative period in Egypt, Seneca returned to Rome and re-entered public life, rapidly gaining fame as an orator. This brought him into disfavor with the emperor Caligula, who wanted no rivals, and Seneca would probably have been murdered if Caligula had not been told that Seneca’s poor health would be the death of him before long. Seneca had been a member of the court of the emperor Claudius before he was accused by the empress Messalina of being the lover of Claudius’s niece; Seneca was condemned to death, but the sentence was changed to banishment to Corsica. Seneca spent eight years in exile on Corsica, where he wrote the Consolations; he was recalled by Agrippina, now married to her uncle Claudius, to become tutor to her son Nero. After Agrippina murdered Claudius and Nero acceded to the throne, Seneca together with the praetorian prefect Burrus exercised considerable political influence. There was a brief period of good government, encouraging fiscal and judicial reforms and a more humane attitude toward slaves. However, in 59, Agrippina was murdered by Nero, with the complicity of Seneca, and other conspiracies were unleashed. Nero began to turn against Seneca; he permitted Seneca to retire from politics in 62, but three years later, accused him of being involved in the Pisonian conspiracy and had him sentenced to death. Seneca committed suicide by exsanguination, opening his veins. According to Tacitus [q.v.], Nero ordered Seneca to commit suicide; other historians maintain, however, that Seneca chose to commit suicide rather than be executed for his alleged part in the conspiracy.

Seneca’s writings include the Moral Essays, the Moral Letters to Lucilius (a collection of 124 essays on a wide range of topics, including suicide), several tragedies based on classical Greek drama, dialogues, and seven books of philosophical essays called Natural Questions. He was not so much an original philosopher as a moral teacher and proponent of Stoic thought; his originality rests mainly in the artistic and compelling way he presented his ideas. He urged people to be indifferent to the fleeting things of the world, emphasizing composure, wisdom, goodness, and control of the emotions over false valuations of material goods and external praise, and he viewed the achievement of virtue as the true end of philosophy. Seneca’s influence has been felt in both philosophy and drama, especially in medieval and Renaissance literature.

In these selections from the Moral Letters, Seneca argues that it is the quality of life, not the quantity, that is important. He argues against thinking of suicide as an act that inappropriately cuts a life short. Unlike a journey cut short, which is incomplete, life cut short can still be complete if it has been lived well. Freedom and self-determination are of primary importance; suicide is the way for one to retain control and freedom over one’s life, and, in accordance with Stoic thinking, it is the act par excellence of the wise man. While history gives examples of noble figures who have killed themselves, such as Cato, Seneca also gives examples of ordinary people who have done so as well, arguing that only will and courage are needed to end one’s life, not even a divine call. “The wise man will live as long as he ought,” Seneca famously says in Letter 70, “not as long as he can.” Among the Stoics, Seneca’s celebration of voluntary death is most pronounced and most central to his thought.

Source

Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Letters 70, 77, 78, tr. Richard M. Gummere, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920, Vol. 2, pp. 57–73, 169–199.

from MORAL LETTERS TO LUCILIUS

Letter 70: On the Proper Time to Slip the Cable

After a long space of time I have seen your beloved Pompeii. I was thus brought again face to face with the days of my youth. And it seemed to me that I could still do, nay, had only done a short time ago, all the things which I did there when a young man. We have sailed past life, Lucilius, as if we were on a voyage, and just as when at sea, to quote from our poet Vergil,

Lands and towns are left astern,

even so, on this journey where time flies with the greatest speed, we put below the horizon first our boyhood and then our youth, and then the space which lies between young manhood and middle age and borders on both, and next, the best years of old age itself. Last of all, we begin to sight the general bourne of the race of man. Fools that we are, we believe this bourne to be a dangerous reef; but it is the harbor, where we must some day put in, which we may never refuse to enter; and if a man has reached this harbor in his early years, he has no more right to complain than a sailor who has made a quick voyage. For some sailors, as you know, are tricked and held back by sluggish winds, and grow weary and sick of the slow-moving calm; while others are carried quickly home by steady gales.

You may consider that the same thing happens to us; life has carried some men with the greatest rapidity to the harbor, the harbor they were bound to reach even if they tarried on the way, while others it has fretted and harassed. To such a life, as you are aware, one should not always cling. For mere living is not a good, but living well. Accordingly, the wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can. He will mark in what place, with whom, and how he is to conduct his existence, and what he is about to do. He always reflects concerning the quality, and not the quantity, of his life. As soon as there are many events in his life that give him trouble and disturb his peace of mind, he sets himself free. And this privilege is his, not only when the crisis is upon him, but as soon as Fortune seems to be playing him false; then he looks about carefully and sees whether he ought, or ought not, to end his life on that account. He holds that it makes no difference to him whether his taking-off be natural or self-inflicted, whether it comes later or earlier. He does not regard it with fear, as if it were a great loss; for no man can lose very much when but a driblet remains. It is not a question of dying earlier or later, but of dying well or ill. And dying well means escape from the danger of living ill.

That is why I regard the words of the well-known Rhodian as most unmanly. This person was thrown into a cage by his tyrant, and fed there like some wild animal. And when a certain man advised him to end his life by fasting, he replied: “A man may hope for anything while he has life.” This may be true; but life is not to be purchased at any price. No matter how great or how well-assured certain rewards may be, I shall not strive to attain them at the price of a shameful confession of weakness. Shall I reflect that Fortune has all power over one who lives, rather than reflect that she has no power over one who knows how to die? There are times, nevertheless, when a man, even though certain death impends and he knows that torture is in store for him, will refrain from lending a hand to his own punishment; to himself, however, he would lend a hand. It is folly to die through fear of dying. The executioner is upon you; wait for him. Why anticipate him? Why assume the management of a cruel task that belongs to another? Do you grudge your executioner his privilege, or do you merely relieve him of his task? Socrates might have ended his life by fasting; he might have died by starvation rather than by poison. But instead of this he spent thirty days in prison awaiting death, not with the idea “everything may happen,” or “so long an interval has room for many a hope” but in order that he might show himself submissive to the laws and make the last moments of Socrates an edification to his friends. What would have been more foolish than, scorning death, at the same time to be afraid of poison?

Scribonia, a woman of the stern old type, was an aunt of Drusus Libo. This young man was as stupid as he was well born, with higher ambitions than anyone could have been expected to entertain in that epoch, or a man like himself in any epoch at all. When Libo had been carried away ill from the senate-house in his litter, though certainly with a very scanty train of followers,—for all his kinsfolk undutifully deserted him, when he was no longer a criminal but a corpse,—he began to consider whether he should commit suicide, or await death. Scribonia said to him: “What pleasure do you find in doing another man’s work?” But he did not follow her advice; he laid violent hands upon himself. And he was right, after all; for when a man is doomed to die in two or three days at his enemy’s pleasure, he is really “doing another man’s work” if he continues to live.

No general statement can be made, therefore, with regard to the question whether, when a power beyond our control threatens us with death, we should anticipate death, or await it. For there are many arguments to pull us in either direction. If one death is accompanied by torture, and the other is simple and easy, why not snatch the latter? Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life. Moreover, just as a long-drawn-out life does not necessarily mean a better one, so a long-drawn-out death necessarily means a worse one. There is no occasion when the soul should be humored more than at the moment of death. Let the soul depart as it feels itself impelled to go; whether it seeks the sword, or the halter, or some draught that attacks the veins, let it proceed and burst the bonds of its slavery. Every man ought to make his life acceptable to others besides himself, but his death to himself alone. The best form of death is the one we like. Men are foolish who reflect thus: “One person will say that my conduct was not brave enough; another, that I was too headstrong; a third, that a particular kind of death would have betokened more spirit.” What you should really reflect is: “I have under consideration a purpose with which the talk of men has no concern!” Your sole aim should be to escape from Fortune as speedily as possible; otherwise, there will be no lack of persons who will think ill of what you have done.

You can find men who have gone so far as to profess wisdom and yet maintain that one should not offer violence to one’s own life, and hold it accursed for a man to be the means of his own destruction; we should wait, say they, for the end decreed by nature. But one who says this does not see that he is shutting off the path to freedom. The best thing which eternal law ever ordained was that it allowed to us one entrance into life, but many exits. Must I await the cruelty either of disease or of man, when I can depart through the midst of torture, and shake off my troubles? This is the one reason why we cannot complain of life: it keeps no one against his will. Humanity is well situated, because no man is unhappy except by his own fault. Live, if you so desire; if not, you may return to the place whence you came. You have often been cupped in order to relieve headaches. You have had veins cut for the purpose of reducing your weight. If you would pierce your heart, a gaping wound is not necessary; a lancet will open the way to that great freedom, and tranquility can be purchased at the cost of a pin-prick.

What, then, is it which makes us lazy and sluggish? None of us reflects that some day he must depart from this house of life; just so old tenants are kept from moving by fondness for a particular place and by custom, even in spite of ill-treatment. Would you be free from the restraint of your body? Live in it as if you were about to leave it. Keep thinking of the fact that some day you will be deprived of this tenure; then you will be more brave against the necessity of departing. But how will a man take thought of his own end, if he craves all things without end? And yet there is nothing so essential for us to consider. For our training in other things is perhaps superfluous. Our souls have been made ready to meet poverty; but our riches have held out. We have armed ourselves to scorn pain; but we have had the good fortune to possess sound and healthy bodies, and so have never been forced to put this virtue to the test. We have taught ourselves to endure bravely the loss of those we love; but Fortune has preserved to us all whom we loved. It is in this one matter only that the day will come which will require us to test our training.

You need not think that none but great men have had the strength to burst the bonds of human servitude; you need not believe that this cannot be done except by a Cato,—Cato, who with his hand dragged forth the spirit which he had not succeeded in freeing by the sword. Nay, men of the meanest lot in life have by a mighty impulse escaped to safety, and when they were not allowed to die at their own convenience, or to suit themselves in their choice of the instruments of death, they have snatched up whatever was lying ready to hand, and by sheer strength have turned objects which were by nature harmless into weapons of their own. For example, there was lately in a training-school for wild-beast gladiators a German, who was making ready for the morning exhibition; he withdrew in order to relieve himself,—the only thing which he was allowed to do in secret and without the presence of a guard. While so engaged, he seized the stick of wood, tipped with a sponge, which was devoted to the vilest uses, and stuffed it, just as it was, down his throat; thus he blocked up his windpipe, and choked the breath from his body. That was truly to insult death! Yes, indeed; it was not a very elegant of becoming way to die; but what is more foolish than to be over-nice about dying? What a brave fellow! He surely deserved to be allowed to choose his fate! How bravely he would have wielded a sword! With what courage he would have hurled himself into the depths of the sea, or down a precipice! Cut off from resources on every hand, he yet found a way to furnish himself with death, and with a weapon for death. Hence you can understand that nothing but the will need postpone death. Let each man judge the deed of this most zealous fellow as he likes, provided we agree on this point,—that the foulest death is preferable to the cleanest slavery.

Inasmuch as I began with an illustration taken from humble life, I shall keep on with that sort. For men will make greater demands upon themselves, if they see that death can be despised even by the most despised class of men. The Catos, the Scipios, and the others whose names we are wont to hear with admiration, we regard as beyond the sphere of imitation; but I shall now prove to you that the virtue of which I speak is found as frequently in the gladiators’ training-school as among the leaders in a civil war. Lately a gladiator, who had been sent forth to the morning exhibition, was being conveyed in a cart along with the other prisoners; nodding as if he were heavy with sleep, he let his head fall over so far that it was caught in the spokes; then he kept his body in position long enough to break his neck by the revolution of the wheel. So he made his escape by means of the very wagon which was carrying him to his punishment.

When a man desires to burst forth and take his departure, nothing stands in his way. It is an open space in which Nature guards us. When our plight is such as to permit it, we may look about us for an easy exit. If you have many opportunities ready to hand, by means of which you may liberate yourself, you may make a selection and think over the best way of gaining freedom; but if a chance is hard to find, instead of the best, snatch the next best, even though it be something unheard of, something new. If you do not lack the courage, you will not lack the cleverness, to die. See how even the lowest class of slave, when suffering goads him on, is aroused and discovers a way to deceive even the most watchful guards! He is truly great who not only has given himself the order to die, but has also found the means.

I have promised you, however, some more illustrations drawn from the same games. During the second event in a sham sea-fight one of the barbarians sank deep into his own throat a spear which had been given him for use against his foe. “Why, oh why,” he said, “have I not long ago escaped from all this torture and all this mockery? Why should I be armed and yet wait for death to come?” This exhibition was all the more striking because of the lesson men learn from it that dying is more honorable than killing.

What, then? If such a spirit is possessed by abandoned and dangerous men, shall it not be possessed also by those who have trained themselves to meet such contingencies by long meditation, and by reason, the mistress of all things? It is reason which teaches us that fate has various ways of approach, but the same end, and that it makes no difference at what point the inevitable event begins. Reason, too, advises us to die, if we may, according to our taste; if this cannot be, she advises us to die according to our ability, and to seize upon whatever means shall offer itself for doing violence to ourselves. It is criminal to “live by robbery”; but, on the other hand, it is most noble to “die by robbery.” Farewell.

Letter 77: On Taking One’s Own Life

Suddenly there came into our view to-day the “Alexandrian” ships,—I mean those which are usually sent ahead to announce the coming of the fleet; they are called “mail-boats.” The Campanians are glad to see them; all the rabble of Puteoli stand on the docks, and can recognize the “Alexandrian” boats, no matter how great the crowd of vessels, by the very trim of their sails. For they alone may keep spread their topsails, which all ships use when out at sea, because nothing sends a ship along so well as its upper canvas; that is where most of the speed is obtained. So when the breeze has stiffened and becomes stronger than is comfortable, they set their yards lower; for the wind has less force near the surface of the water. Accordingly, when they have made Capreae and the headland whence

Tall Pallas watches on the stormy peak,

all other vessels are bidden to be content with the mainsail, and the topsail stands out conspicuously on the “Alexandrian” mail-boats.

While everybody was bustling about and hurrying to the water-front, I felt great pleasure in my laziness, because, although I was soon to receive letters from my friends, I was in no hurry to know how my affairs were progressing abroad, or what news the letters were bringing; for some time now I have had no losses, nor gains either. Even if I were not an old man, I could not have helped feeling pleasure at this; but as it is, my pleasure was far greater. For, however small my possessions might be, I should still have left over more traveling-money than journey to travel, especially since this journey upon which we have set out is one which need not be followed to the end. An expedition will be incomplete if one stops half-way, or anywhere on this side of one’s destination; but life is not incomplete if it is honorable. At whatever point you leave off living, provided you leave off nobly, your life is a whole. Often, however, one must leave off bravely, and our reasons therefore need not be momentous; for neither are the reasons momentous which hold us here.

Tullius Marcellinus, a man whom you knew very well, who in youth was a quiet soul and became old prematurely, fell ill of a disease which was by no means hopeless; but it was protracted and troublesome, and it demanded much attention; hence he began to think about dying. He called many of his friends together. Each one of them gave Marcellinus advice,—the timid friend urging him to do what he had made up his mind to do; the flattering and wheedling friend giving counsel which he supposed would be more pleasing to Marcellinus when he came to think the matter over; but our Stoic friend, a rare man, and, to praise him in language which he deserves, a man of courage and vigor, admonished him best of all, as it seems to me. For he began as follows: “Do not torment yourself, my dear Marcellinus, as if the question which you are weighing were a matter of importance. It is not an important matter to live; all your slaves live, and so do all animals; but it is important to die honorably, sensibly, bravely. Reflect how long you have been doing the same thing: food, sleep, lust,—this is one’s daily round. The desire to die may be felt, not only by the sensible man or the brave or unhappy man, but even by the man who is merely surfeited.”

Marcellinus did not need someone to urge him, but rather someone to help him; his slaves refused to do his bidding. The Stoic therefore removed their fears, showing them that there was no risk involved for the household except when it was uncertain whether the master’s death was self-sought or not; besides, it was as bad a practice to prevent one’s master from killing himself as it was to kill him. Then he suggested to Marcellinus himself that it would be a kindly act to distribute gifts to those who had attended him throughout his whole life, when that life was finished, just as, when a banquet is finished, the remaining portion is divided among the attendants who stand about the table. Marcellinus was of a complaint and generous disposition, even when it was a question of his own property; so he distributed little sums among his sorrowing slaves, and comforted them besides. No need had he of sword or of bloodshed; for three days he fasted and had a tent put up in his very bedroom. Then a tub was brought in; he lay in it for a long time, and, as the hot water was continually poured over him, he gradually passed away, not without a feeling of pleasure, as he himself remarked,—such a feeling as a slow dissolution is wont to give. Those of us who have ever fainted know from experience what this feeling is.

This little anecdote into which I have digressed will not be displeasing to you. For you will see that your friend departed neither with difficulty nor with suffering. Though he committed suicide, yet he withdrew most gently, gliding out of life. The anecdote may also be of some use; for often a crisis demands just such examples. There are times when we ought to die and are unwilling; sometimes we die and are unwilling. No one is so ignorant as not to know that we must some time die; nevertheless, when one draws near death, one turns to flight, trembles, and laments. Would you not think him an utter fool who wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago? And is he not just as much of a fool who weeps because he will not be alive a thousand years from now? It is all the same; you will not be, and you were not. Neither of these periods of time belongs to you. You have been cast upon this point of time; if you would make it longer, how much longer shall you make it? Why weep? Why pray? You are taking pains to no purpose.

Give over thinking that your prayers can bend
Divine decrees from their predestined end.

These decrees are unalterable and fixed; they are governed by a mighty and everlasting compulsion. Your goal will be the goal of all things. What is there strange in this to you? You were born to be subject to this law; this fate befell your father, your mother, your ancestors, all who came before you; and it will befall all who shall come after you. A sequence which cannot be broken or altered by any power binds all things together and draws all things in its course. Think of the multitudes of men doomed to death who will come after you, of the multitudes who will go with you! You would die more bravely, I suppose, in the company of many thousands; and yet there are many thousands, both of men and of animals, who at this very moment, while you are irresolute about death, are breathing their last, in their several ways. But you,—did you believe that you would not some day reach the goal towards which you have always been traveling? No journey but has its end.

You think, I suppose, that it is now in order for me to cite some examples of great men. No, I shall cite rather the case of a boy. The story of the Spartan lad has been preserved: taken captive while still a stripling, he kept crying in his Doric dialect, “I will not be a slave!” and he made good his word; for the very first time he was ordered to perform a menial and degrading service,—and the command was to fetch a chamber pot,—he dashed out his brains against the wall. So near at hand is freedom, and is anyone still a slave? Would you not rather have your own son die thus than reach old age by weakly yielding? Why therefore are you distressed, when even a boy can die so bravely? Suppose that you refuse to follow him; you will be led. Take into your own control that which is now under the control of another. Will you not borrow that boy’s courage, and say: “I am no slave!”? Unhappy fellow, you are a slave to men, you are a slave to your business, you are a slave to life. For life, if courage to die be lacking, is slavery.

Have you anything worth waiting for? Your very pleasures, which cause you to tarry and hold you back, have already been exhausted by you. None of them is a novelty to you, and there is none that has not already become hateful because you are cloyed with it. You know the taste of wine and cordials. It makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand measures pass through your bladder; you are nothing but a wine-strainer. You are a connoisseur in the flavor of the oyster and of the mullet; your luxury has not left you anything untasted for the years that are to come; and yet these are the things from which you are torn away unwillingly. What else is there which you would regret to have taken from you? Friends? But who can be a friend to you? Country? What? Do you think enough of your country to be late to dinner? The light of the sun? You would extinguish it, if you could; for what have you ever done that was fit to be seen in the light? Confess the truth; it is not because you long for the senate-chamber or the forum, or even for the world of nature, that you would fain put off dying; it is because you are loth to leave the fish-market, though you have exhausted its stores.

You are afraid of death; but how can you scorn it in the midst of a mushroom supper? You wish to live; well, do you know how to live? You are afraid to die. But come now: is this life of yours anything but death? Gaius Caesar was passing along the Via Latina, when a man stepped out from the ranks of the prisoners, his grey beard hanging down even to his breast, and begged to be put to death. “What!” said Caesar, “are you alive now?” That is the answer which should be given to men to whom death would come as a relief. “You are afraid to die; what! are you alive now?” “But,” says one, “I wish to live, for I am engaged in many honorable pursuits. I am loth to leave life’s duties, which I am fulfilling with loyalty and zeal.” Surely you are aware that dying is also one of life’s duties? You are deserting no duty; for there is no definite number established which you are bound to complete. There is no life that is not short. Compared with the world of nature, even Nestor’s life was a short one, or Sattia’s, the woman who bade carve on her tombstone that she had lived ninety and nine years. Some persons, you see, boast of their long lives; but who could have endured the old lady if she had had the luck to complete her hundredth year? It is with life as it is with a play,—it matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is. It makes no difference at what point you stop. Stop whenever you choose; only see to it that the closing period is well turned. Farewell.

 

 Letter 78: On the Healing Power of the Mind

That you are frequently troubled by the snuffling of catarrh and by short attacks of fever which follow after long and chronic catarrhal seizures, I am sorry to hear; particularly because I have experienced this sort of illness myself, and scorned it in its early stages. For when I was still young, I could put up with hardships and show a bold front to illness. But I finally succumbed, and arrived at such a state that I could do nothing but snuffle, reduced as I was to the extremity of thinness. I often entertained the impulse of ending my life then and there; but the thought of my kind old father kept me back. For I reflected, not how bravely I had the power to die, but how little power he had to bear bravely the loss of me. And so I commanded myself to live. For sometimes it is an act of bravery even to live.

Now I shall tell you what consoled me during those days, stating at the outset that these very aids to my peace of mind were as efficacious as medicine. Honorable consolation results in a cure; and whatever has uplifted the soul helps the body also. My studies were my salvation. I place it to the credit of philosophy that I recovered and regained my strength. I owe my life to philosophy, and that is the least of my obligations! My friends, too, helped me greatly toward good health; I used to be comforted by their cheering words, by the hours they spent at my bedside, and by their conversation. Nothing, my excellent Lucilius, refreshes and aids a sick man so much as the affection of his friends; nothing so steals away the expectation and the fear of death. In fact, I could not believe that, if they survived me, I should be dying at all. Yes, I repeat, it seemed to me that I should continue to live, not with them, but through them. I imagined myself not to be yielding up my soul, but to be making it over to them.

All these things gave me the inclination to succor myself and to endure any torture; besides, it is a most miserable state to have lost one’s zest for dying, and to have no zest in living. These, then, are the remedies to which you should have recourse. The physician will prescribe your walks and your exercise; he will warn you not to become addicted to idleness, as is the tendency of the inactive invalid; he will order you to read in a louder voice and to exercise your lungs, the passages and cavity of which are affected; or to sail and shake up your bowels by a little mild motion; he will recommend the proper food, and the suitable time for aiding your strength with wine or refraining from it in order to keep your cough from being irritated and hacking. But as for me, my counsel to you is this,—and it is a cure, not merely of this disease of yours, but of your whole life,—“Despise death.” There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the fear of death. There are these three serious elements in every disease: fear of death, bodily pain, and interruption of pleasures. Concerning death enough has been said, and I shall add only a word: this fear is not a fear of disease, but a fear of nature. Disease has often postponed death, and a vision of dying has been many a man’s salvation. You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive; even when you have been cured, the same end awaits you; when you have recovered, it will be not death, but ill-health, that you have escaped.

Let us now return to the consideration of the characteristic disadvantage of disease: it is accompanied by great suffering. The suffering, however, is rendered endurable by interruptions; for the strain of extreme pain must come to an end. No man can suffer both severely and for a long time; Nature, who loves us most tenderly, has so constituted us as to make pain either endurable or short. The severest pains have their seat in the most slender parts of our body; nerves, joints, and any other of the narrow passages, hurt most cruelly when they have developed trouble within their contracted spaces. But these parts soon become numb, and by reason of the pain itself lose the sensation of pain, whether because the life-force, when checked in its natural course and changed for the worse, loses the peculiar power through which it thrives and through which it warns us, or because the diseased humors of the body, when they cease to have a place into which they may flow, are thrown back upon themselves, and deprive of sensation the parts where they have caused congestion. So gout, both in the feet and in the hands, and all pain in the vertebrae and in the nerves, have their intervals of rest at the times when they have dulled the parts which they before had tortured; the first twinges, in all such cases, are what cause the distress, and their onset is checked by lapse of time, so that there is an end of pain when numbness has set in. Pain in the teeth, eyes, and ears is most acute for the very reason that it begins among the narrow spaces of the body,—no less acute, indeed, than in the head itself. But if it is more violent than usual, it turns to delirium and stupor. This is, accordingly, a consolation for excessive pain,—that you cannot help ceasing to feel it if you feel it to excess. The reason, however, why the inexperienced are impatient when their bodies suffer is, that they have not accustomed themselves to be contented in spirit. They have been closely associated with the body. Therefore a high-minded and sensible man divorces soul from body, and dwells much with the better or divine part, and only as far as he must with this complaining and frail portion.

“But it is a hardship,” men say, “to do without our customary pleasures,—to fast, to feel thirst and hunger.” These are indeed serious when one first abstains from them. Later the desire dies down, because the appetites themselves which lead to desire are wearied and forsake us; then the stomach becomes petulant, then the food which we craved before becomes hateful. Our very wants die away. But there is no bitterness in doing without that which you have ceased to desire. Moreover, every pain sometimes stops, or at any rate slackens; moreover, one may take precautions against its return, and, when it threatens, may check it by means of remedies. Every variety of pain has its premonitory symptoms; this is true, at any rate, of pain that is habitual and recurrent. One can endure the suffering which disease entails, if one has come to regard its results with scorn. But do not of your own accord make your troubles heavier to bear and burden yourself with complaining. Pain is slight if opinion has added nothing to it; but if, on the other hand, you begin to encourage yourself and say, “It is nothing,—a trifling matter at most; keep a stout heart and it will soon cease”; then in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion; ambition, luxury, greed, hark back to opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer. A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is. I hold that we should do away with complaint about past sufferings and with all language like this: “None has ever been worse off than I. What sufferings, what evils have I endured! No one has thought that I shall recover. How often have my family bewailed me, and the physicians given me over! Men who are placed on the rack are not torn asunder with such agony!” However, even if all this is true, it is over and gone. What benefit is there in reviewing past sufferings, and in being unhappy, just because once you were unhappy? Besides, every one adds much to his own ills, and tells lies to himself. And that which was bitter to bear is pleasant to have borne; it is natural to rejoice at the ending of one’s ills.

Two elements must therefore be rooted out once for all,—the fear of future suffering, and the recollection of past suffering; since the latter no longer concerns me, and the former concerns me not yet. But when set in the very midst of troubles one should say:

Perchance some day the memory of this sorrow
Will even bring delight.

Let such a man fight against them with all his might: if he once gives way, he will be vanquished; but if he strives against his sufferings, he will conquer. As it is, however, what most men do is to drag down upon their own heads a falling ruin which they ought to try to support. If you begin to withdraw your support from that which thrusts toward you and totters and is ready to plunge, it will follow you and lean more heavily upon you; but if you hold your ground and make up your mind to push against it, it will be forced back. What blows do athletes receive on their faces and all over their bodies! Nevertheless, through their desire for fame they endure every torture, and they undergo these things not only because they are fighting but in order to be able to fight. Their very training means torture. So let us also win the way to victory in all our struggles,—for the reward is not a garland or a palm or a trumpeter who calls for silence at the proclamation of our names, but rather virtue, steadfastness of soul, and a peace that is won for all time, if fortune has once been utterly vanquished in any combat. You say, “I feel severe pain.” What then; are you relieved from feeling it, if you endure it like a woman? Just as an enemy is more dangerous to a retreating army, so every trouble that fortune brings attacks us all the harder if we yield and turn our backs. “But the trouble is serious.” What? Is it for this purpose that we are strong,—that we may have light burdens to bear? Would you have your illness long-drawn-out, or would you have it quick and short? If it is long, it means a respite, allows you a period for resting yourself, bestows upon you the boon of time in plenty; as it arises, so it must also subside. A short and rapid illness will do one of two things: it will quench or be quenched. And what difference does it make whether it is not or I am not? In either case there is an end of pain.

This, too, will help—to turn the mind aside to thoughts of other things and thus to depart from pain. Call to mind what honorable or brave deeds you have done; consider the good side of your own life. Run over in your memory those things which you have particularly admired. Then think of all the brave men who have conquered pain: of him who continued to read his book as he allowed the cutting out varicose veins; of him who did not cease to smile, though that very smile so enraged his torturers that they tried upon him every instrument of their cruelty. If pain can be conquered by a smile, will it not be conquered by reason? You may tell me now of whatever you like—of colds, hard coughing-spells that bring up parts of our entrails, fever that parches our very vitals, thirst, limbs so twisted that the joints protrude in different directions; yet worse than these are the stake, the rack, the red-hot plates, the instrument that reopens wounds while the wounds themselves are still swollen and that drives their imprint still deeper. Nevertheless there have been men who have not uttered a moan amid these tortures. “More yet!” says the torturer; but the victim has not begged for release. “More yet!” he says again; but no answer has come. “More yet!” the victim has smiled, and heartily, too. Can you not bring yourself, after an example like this, to make a mock at pain?

“But,” you object, “my illness does not allow me to be doing anything; it has withdrawn me from all my duties.” It is your body that is hampered by ill-health, and not your soul as well. It is for this reason that it clogs the feet of the runner and will hinder the handiwork of the cobbler or the artisan; but if your soul be habitually in practice, you will plead and teach, listen and learn, investigate and meditate. What more is necessary? Do you think that you are doing nothing if you possess self-control in your illness? You will be showing that a disease can be overcome, or at any rate endured. There is, I assure you, a place for virtue even upon a bed of sickness. It is not only the sword and the battle-line that prove the soul alert and unconquered by fear; a man can display bravery even when wrapped in his bed-clothes. You have something to do: wrestle bravely with disease. If it shall compel you to nothing, beguile you to nothing, it is a notable example that you display. O what ample matter were there for renown, if we could have spectators of our sickness! Be your own spectator; seek your own applause.

Again, there are two kinds of pleasures. Disease checks the pleasures of the body, but does not do away with them. Nay, if the truth is to be considered, it serves to excite them; for the thirstier a man is, the more he enjoys a drink; the hungrier he is, the more pleasure he takes in food. Whatever falls to one’s lot after a period of abstinence is welcomed with greater zest. The other kind, however, the pleasures of the mind, which are higher and less uncertain, no physician can refuse to the sick man. Whoever seeks these and knows well what they are, scorns all the blandishments of the senses. Men say, “Poor sick fellow!” But why? Is it because he does not mix snow with his wine, or because he does not revive the chill of his drink—mixed as it is in a good-sized bowl—by chipping ice into it? Or because he does not have Lucrine oysters opened fresh at his table? Or because there is no din of cooks about his dining-hall, as they bring in their very cooking apparatus along with their viands? For luxury has already devised this fashion—of having the kitchen accompany the dinner, so that the food may not grow luke-warm, or fail to be hot enough for a palate which has already become hardened. “Poor sick fellow!”—he will eat as much as he can digest. There will be no boar lying before his eyes, banished from the table as if it were a common meat; and on his sideboard there will be heaped together no breast meat of birds, because it sickens him to see birds served whole. But what evil has been done to you? You will dine like a sick man, nay, sometimes like a sound man.

All these things, however, can be easily endured—gruel, warm water, and anything else that seems insupportable to a fastidious man, to one who is wallowing in luxury, sick in soul rather than in body—if only we cease to shudder at death. And we shall cease, if once we have gained a knowledge of the limits of good and evil; then, and then only, life will not weary us, neither will death make us afraid. For surfeit of self can never seize upon a life that surveys all the things which are manifold, great, divine; only idle leisure is wont to make men hate their lives. To one who roams through the universe, the truth can never pall; it will be the untruths that will cloy. And, on the other hand, if death comes near with its summons, even though it be untimely in its arrival, though it cut one off in one’s prime, a man has had a taste of all that the longest life can give. Such a man has in great measure come to understand the universe. He knows that honorable things do not depend on time for their growth; but any life must seem short to those who measure its length by pleasures which are empty and for that reason unbounded.

Refresh yourself with such thoughts as these, and meanwhile reserve some hours for our letters. There will come a time when we shall be united again and brought together; however short this time may be, we shall make it long by knowing how to employ it. For, as Posidonius says: “A singly day among the learned lasts longer than the longest life of the ignorant.” Meanwhile, hold fast to this thought, and grip it close: yield not to adversity; trust not to prosperity; keep before your eyes the full scope of Fortune’s power, as if she would surely do whatever is in her power to do. That which has been long expected comes more gently. Farewell.

Comments Off on SENECA
(4 B.C.–65 A.D.)

from Moral Letters to Lucilius
   Letter 70: On the Proper Time to Slip       the Cable
   Letter 77: On Taking One’s Own Life
   Letter 78: On the Healing Power of       the Mind

Filed under Ancient History, Europe, Selections, Seneca, Stoicism

by | · 3:59 pm

LIVY
(c. 59 B.C.-17 A.D.)

from The History of Rome: The Rape of Lucretia

 

Livy, or Titus Livius, Roman historian, was born in 59 B.C., according to St. Jerome, and died in 17 A.D. in Patavium, now the north Italian city of Padua. Livy lived much of his life in Rome during the rule of Caesar Augustus. He received the education of one from a wealthy background in philosophy and probably rhetoric, except that his education did not culminate in the usual period of study in a Greek city and his Greek was faulty. He never saw military duty, nor took part in politics.

By 30 B.C., Livy had moved to Rome, where he came to know Augustus. About this time, Livy began his monumental Ab Urbe Condita or History of Rome from its Foundation, usually called The History of Rome. It provides an account of Rome from its founding in 753 B.C. down to 9 B.C. Only 35 of the original 142 books (chapters) of The History survive in complete form, though summaries exist for all of the books save two. Livy’s political purpose in writing this work was to depict Rome as destined to rise from modest beginnings to greatness, and as was the practice of historians of his time, he includes many reconstructed speeches of important figures as purportedly verbatim accounts. However, Livy apparently shared the popular view of the time that Rome had morally degenerated from its comparatively virtuous beginnings. Today The History is valued more for its style and dramatic technique than for its historical accuracy.

In The History, Livy narrates the rape of a Roman matron, Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, by Sextus Tarquinius, son of the king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), the seventh and last king of Rome (reigned 534/535–509/510 B.C.). This notorious incident led to the downfall of the Tarquin royal family and the establishment of a new republic under Lucius Brutus. Lucretia’s suicide, one of the most famous incidents of early Roman history and understood as representing a Stoic ideal and a model of womanly virtue, has been widely portrayed in art and literature in subsequent centuries. Lucretia’s suicide has also provoked subsequent commentary by many authors in various traditions on the question of whether self-killing can be an appropriate response following, or to prevent, sexual violation.

Sources

Titus Livius, The History of Rome, Vol. l. ed. Ernest Rhys, tr. Rev. Canon Roberts, London: J.M. Dent and Sons; New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1912.  Also online at etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Liv1His.html

 

from THE HISTORY OF ROME: THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA

The two Tarquins conceived the desire to ask which of them would succeed there father as king of Rome.  From the inmost recess of the sanctuary this response is said to have issued:  ‘Whoever of you, my lads, first brings a kiss to his mother shall hold supreme power at Rome.’ The Tarquins gave orders that no one say anything about this: they intended to keep their brother Sextus back inRomein the dark and eliminate him as a possible successor.  Between them they agree to draw lots to determine which, on reaching Rome, would be the first to kiss his mother.  But Brutus thought the pythia’s words meant something quite different.  Pretending to slip, he fell to the ground and pressed his lips to the earth, the mother of us all.

Upon returning to Rome they found that preparations for war against the Rutuli were in full swing.  There people inhabited the city ofArdeaand were very wealthy for that time and place.  Their wealth was the cause of the war: Tarquin wanted to enrich himself, now that his resources were exhausted from his many pubic works, and to mollify the plebeians with Ardea’s plunder, for they disliked his rule both because of his general arrogance and because of their resentment at having been kept at work fit for ordinary workmen and slaves. Tarquin tried to take Ardea in an initial assault, but when this did not succeed, he fell back on blockading the city from behind siegeworks.

A permanent camp grew up and, as happens in a war that is long but not hard-fought, furloughs were freely granted, but more for the officers than the rank and file.  Now the young princes of the royal house were in the habit of spending their free time feasting and carousing among themselves.  It so happened that when they were drinking in the quarters of Sextus Tarquinius, where Tarquinius Collatinus, the son of Egerius, was one of the guests, they fell to discussing there wives. Each man praised his own extravagantly.  When the dispute heated up, Collatinus said there was no need of talk.  Why, in a few hours they could see for themselves that his Lucretia was the best of the lot. ‘We’re young and red-blooded.  Why don’t we ride off and see with our own eyes just what sort of wives we’ve got?  The surest proof will be what each man finds when he shows up unexpectedly.’  By this time they were quite drunk.  ‘Well then, let’s go!’  Spurring their horses they flew off to Rome.

The evening shadows were lengthening when they came upon the royal princesses feasting and frolicking with their friends.  Then they sped off to Collatia: though the evening was late, they found Lucretia still in the main hall of her home, bent over her spinning and surrounded by her maids as they worked by lamplight. Lucretia was the clear winner of the contest. She graciously welcomed her husband and the Tarquins as they approached; Collatinus, happy in his victory, issued a comradely invitation for the royal young men to come in.  When Sexton Tarquin set eyes upon her he was sized by the evil desire to debauch her, spurred on as he was by her beauty and redoubtable chastity.  In the meantime, with the youthful lark now at an end, they returned to camp.

After a few days Sexton Tarquin, without Collatinus’ knowledge, came to Collatia with a single companion.  He was graciously welcomed, for no one suspected what he was up to, and after dinner was shown to a guest room.  When the household was safely asleep, in the heat of passion he came to the sleeping Lucretia sword in hand and, pressing his hand on her breast, whispered, ‘Say no word, Lucretia.  I am Sexton Tarquin.  There is a sword in my hand.  You die if you make a sound.’  She awoke in fright, and when she realized she could not call for help with the threat of death hanging over her, Tarquin confessed his passion, pleaded with her, intermingling threats with entreaties and working in every way upon her feeling as a woman.  When he saw she was resolute and would not yield even out of fear for her life, he threatened to disgrace her even in death by placing the naked body of a murdered slave next to her corpse, evidence that she had been killed in the act of committing adultery of the basest sort.  When by this threat his lust vanquished her resolute chastity, he left the house exulting in his seeming conquest of the woman’s honour.

Lucretia, stricken to the heart at the disgrace, sent the same messenger to her father in Rome and husband in Ardea: each was to come with one trustworthy friend; it must be done this way and done quickly: a terrible thing had happened.  Spurius Lucretius arrived with Publius Valerius son of Volesus, Collatinus with Lucius Iunius Brutus, in whose company he was traveling en route to Rome when his wife’s messenger chanced to meet him.  They found Lucretia seated downcast in her bedchamber.  At the arrival of her father and husband tears welled up, and when her husband asked, ‘Are you all right?’ she replied ‘indeed, no.  What can be right when a woman’s virtue has been taken from her?  The impress of another man is in your bed, Collatinus; yet only my body was defiled; my soul was not guilty.  Death will be my witness to this.  But pledge with your right hands and swear that the adulterer will not go unpunished. Sexton Tarquin did this, a guest who betrayed his host, an enemy in arms last night took his pleasure, fatal, alas, to me—and, if you act as you should, to him.’  Each pledged his word in turn and tried to comfort the heartsick woman by fixing the guilt not upon the victim but the transgressor: the mind sins, they said, not the body, and there is not guilt when intent is absent.  ‘It is up to you’, she said, ‘to punish the man as he deserves.  As for me, I absolve myself of wrong, but not from punishment.  Let no unchaste woman hereafter continue to live because of the precedent of Lucretia.’  She took a knife she was hiding in her garments and drove it into her breast.  Doubling over, she collapsed in death.

Husband and father raised a ritual cry of mourning for the dead.

While they were taken up with lamentation, Brutus pulled the knife dripping with blood from Lucretia’s body.  Holding it before him he cried, ‘By this blood, so pure before defilement by prince Tarquin, I hereby swear—and you, O deities, I make my witness—that I will drive out Lucius Tarquinius Superbus together with his criminal wife and progeny with sword, fire, and whatever force I can muster, nor will I allow them or anyone else to be king at Rome.’  He then handed the dagger to Collatinus, and next to Lucretius and Valerius, who stood amazed at the miraculous change that had come over him.  They repeated the oath after him; from that moment on, anger overmastering grief, they followed Brutus’ lead in bringing the monarchy to an end.

They bore Lucretia’s body from the house to the forum, where they drew a large crowd that was scandalized by the extraordinary turn of events, as anyone would be.  Each man expressed his personal sense of outrage at the rape the prince had committed.  And not just the father’s grief moved them, but Brutus also, when he rebuked them for tears and useless complaints when what they should be doing as men and Romans was to take up arms against those who dared such violence.  The most spirited young men were quick to seize weapons and join the cause; the rest followed their lead.  Then, leaving a garrison at Collatia’s gates to prevent anymore from getting out and reporting the uprising to the royal family, Brutus led the rest of the warriors toRome.

The arrival of a large group of armed men caused fear and commotion wherever it went; on the other hand, the sight of the nation’s leaders at the forefront made people think that whatever was afoot there must be a good reason for it.  Moreover, men were as appalled by Sextus’ heinous deed atRomeas they had been at Collatia.  From all quarters of the city people crowed into the forum, where a herald summoned them to assemble before the tribune of the Celeres, or king’s bodyguard, a post that Brutus chanced to be holding at that moment.  He then delivered a speech that was wholly at odds with the spirit and character he had pretended to have up to that day.  He spoke of the violence and lust of Sextus Tarquin, of the unspeakable rape of Lucretia and her wretched death, of the bereavement of Lucretius Tricipitinus and the cause of his daughter’s death, which for him was more unworthy and more pitiable than the death itself.  He mentioned also the arrogance of the king himself and how the plebs had been forced underground to dig out trenches and sewers: the men ofRome, victorious over all their neighbours, had been turned into drudge and quarry slaves, warriors no longer.  He recalled the appalling murder of King Servius Tullius and how his daughter had driven over her father’s body in that accursed wagon, and he invoked her ancestral gods as avengers.  After saying these things and, I am sure, even more shocking once prompted by his outrage of the moment, which are not easy for writers to capture on paper, he brought his listeners to such a pitch of fury that they revoked the king’s power and ordered the exile of Lucius Tarquinius, together with wife and children.

Comments Off on LIVY
(c. 59 B.C.-17 A.D.)

from The History of Rome: The Rape of Lucretia

Filed under Ancient History, Europe, Livy, Selections, Sexual Issues

by | · 3:45 pm

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
(106-43 B.C.)

from Tusculan Disputations
from On Ends
from On Old Age

 

Cicero, the great Roman orator and statesman, was born in Arpinum, near Rome, into a prosperous equestrian family. Cicero began his career as a lawyer and served in the military before later deciding to train as an orator. From the beginning, he gained a reputation for his rhetorical skill, defending an alleged patricide in his first major case and accusing friends of the dictator Sulla of the murder. Presumably due to political threats, Cicero spent the year 78 B.C. abroad in Asia Minor, Athens, and Rhodes. In 75 B.C., he was made quaestor in Sicily. Cicero made a favorable impression on the Sicilians, who engaged him in the prosecution of their disreputable governor Verres, who had usurped much of the province’s wealth. After the reading of Cicero’s first oration, Verres voluntarily withdrew and went into exile. The publishing of the orations and subsequent political alliances led Cicero to a rapid series of promotions from aedile to praetor and finally to consul. Cicero’s quick action in opposing his rival, L. Sergius Catilina, whose attempt at consulship had failed, and convincing the senate of the dangers of an uprising won Cicero popular acclaim, but he had also had the conspirators executed without a trial. The hasty executions were controversial and left a mark on his political reputation. He was banished, recalled, sent as governor to Cicilia in Asia Minor, and when he returned, he sided first with Pompey in the Civil War and then later with Caesar.

Cicero’s writings include philosophical and political discourses, books of rhetoric, orations, poetry, and letters. He was particularly interested in how philosophical teachings might be applied to the actual situations of human life. Cicero often used dialogue as a vehicle for his philosophical discourse, drawing freely on his broad understanding of Hellenistic thought, including late Platonic and Academic, Aristotelian and Peripatetic, Stoic, and Epicurean sources.

When he was 62, Cicero’s beloved daughter Tullia died in childbirth. Cicero then left politics, retiring to his Tusculan villa to devote himself to philosophical studies and writing. He is said to have made it his custom to invite his friends to the villa for philosophical conversations, and the Tusculan Disputations (45 B.C.) are said to be the legacy of five days of discussion of questions concerning how to overcome the fear of death, how to endure pain, the immortality of the soul, suicide, the moderation of passion, virtue, and related matters. They are dialogues of unique form, found nowhere else in Cicero’s writings; in them one speaker is dominant (though unnamed, it is clearly Cicero himself) and objections are minimized.

On Old Age (44 B.C.), said to be one of Cicero’s most loved and admired works, addresses when it is proper to leave life in one’s later years; On Ends, in which the speaker is the Stoic Cato, addresses some apparent paradoxes concerning the question. In both the Tusculan Disputations and On Old Age, Cicero expresses equanimity concerning the prospect of death: one should not fear death, since either the soul will be extinguished at death or, as he says he believes, it will go to a place of eternal life, and hence one will either lack unhappiness or be positively happy. (He does not consider a third possibility, that of a painful afterlife, or hell.) Self-elected death may play a role, but need not do so: in this characteristically Stoic view, the wise man, like an actor, does not have to appear all the way through the play “until the curtain is rung down” or live a life extended into old age; what matters is how well life is lived, not how long. Cicero’s view of old age is optimistic, yet he says, “. . . the old must not grasp greedily after those last few years of life, nor must they walk out on them without cause.”

Supporting Octavian after the assassination of Caesar in 44 B.C., he delivered a series of censorious orations (the “Philippics”) against Antony, who was gathering support for Caesar’s memory. However, when Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus (the Second Triumvirate) were reconciled, Cicero’s name appeared on a list of citizens whose lives were pronounced forfeit to the state. He was murdered leaving his country estate at Formiae, and his head and hands were presented to Antony and nailed to the rostrum in the Forum. In all, he had lived through five revolutions.

SOURCES
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, I:34-36, tr. J. E. King, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967,  pp. 97, 99, 101, 103. “On Ends” 3.60-61, trs. A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 425. On Old Age, Part 4, pp. xix 70; xx 72-76; xxiii 85; tr. Frank O. Copley. Ann Arbor, MI:  The University of Michigan Press, 1967,  pp. 35, 36-38, 42.

 

from TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS

I see that you have lofty aims and that you wish to be a pilgrim heavenward.  I hope that this will be our lot.  But suppose, as these thinkers hold, that souls do not survive after death: I see that in the case we are deprived of the hope of a happier life. But what evil does such a view imply?  For suppose that the soul perishes like the body: is there then any definite sense of pain or sensation at all in the body after death?  There is no one who says so, though Epicurus accuses Democritus of this, but the followers of Democritus deny it.  And so there is no sensation in the soul either, for the soul is nowhere.  Where, then is the evil, since there is no third thing?  Is it because the actual departure of soul from body does not take place without sense of pain?  Though I should believe this to be so, how petty a matter it is! But I think it False, and the fact is that after the departure takes place without sensation, sometimes even with a feeling of pleasure; and the whole thing is trivial, whatever the truth, for departure takes place in a moment of time. What does cause anguish, or rather torture, is the departure from all those things that are good in life.  Take care it may not more truly be said, from all its evils!  Why should I now bewail the life of Man?  I could do so with truth and justice. But what need is there, when my object is to avoid the thought that we shall be wretched after death, of rendering life still more wretched by lamentation?  We have done this in the book in which we did our utmost to console ourselves.  Death then withdraws us from evil, not from good, if truth is our object.  Indeed this thought is discussed by Hegesias the Cyrenaic with such wealth of illustration that the story goes that he was stopped from lecturing on the subject by King Ptolemy, because a number of his listeners afterwards committed suicide.  There is an epigram of Callimachus’ upon Cleombrotus of Ambracia who, he says, without having met with any misfortune, flung himself from the city wall into the sea after reading Plato’s book.  Now in the book of Hegesias whom I have mentioned, Apokerteron, there appears a man who was passing away from life by starvation and is called back by his friends, and in answer to their remonstrances, details the discomforts of human life.  I could do the same, but I should not go so far as he does in thinking it no advantage at all for anyone to live.  Other cases I wave aside: is it an advantage still to me?  I have been robbed of the consolations of family life and the distinctions of a public career, and assuredly, if we had died before this happened, death would have snatched us from evil, not from good.

Grant then the existence of someone distinguished by suffering no evil, receiving no blow from the hand of fortune. The famous Metellus had four sons who became dignitaries of state, but Priam had fifty, and seventeen of them born in lawful wedlock: in both these instances fortune had the same power of control, but exercised it in one; for a company of sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters placed Metellus upon the funeral pyre, Priam was bereft of his numerous family and slain by the hand of his enemy after he had fled for refuge to the altar.  Had he died with his sons alive, his throne secure:

His barbarous opulence at hand
And Fretted ceilings richly carved;

would he have departed from good or from evil? At that date assuredly he would have seemed to depart from good. Certainly it would have been a better fate, and strains so melancholy would not have been sung:

By the flames I saw all things devoured,
Priam’s life by violence shortened,
Jove’s altar by bloodshed polluted.

As if in such a scene of violence anything better could have happened for him in that hour!  But if he had died previously he would have wholly escaped so sad an ending: but by dying at the moment he did escape the sense of the evils about him.  Our dear friend, Pompey, on the occasion of his serious illness atNaples, got better.  The Neapolitans set garlands on their heads; so, be sure, did the inhabitants of Puteoli; public congratulations kept pouring in from the towns: silly behaviour no doubt and in Greekish taste, but all the same it may count as a proof of good fortune.  Had his life come to an end then, would he have left a scene of good or a scene of evil?  Certainly he would have escaped

wretchedness.  He would not have gone to war with his father-in-law, he would not have left home, he would not have taken up arms when unprepared, he would not have left home, he would not have fled from Italy, would not have lost his army and fallen unprotected into the hands of armed slaves; his poor children, his wealth, would not have passed into the power of his conquerors.  Had he died atNaples, he would have fallen at the zenith of his prosperity, whilst by the prolongation of life what repeated, bitter draughts of inconceivable disaster he came to drain!  Such things are evaded by death, because although they have not taken place, yet they may take place; but men do not think it possible they can happen to themselves: each one hopes for himself the good fortune of Metellus, just as if more men were lucky than unlucky, or there were certainly in men’s affairs of hope were wiser than apprehension.

 

from ON ENDS

When a man has a preponderance of the things in accordance with nature, it is his proper function to remain alive; when he has or foresees a preponderance of their opposites, it is his proper function to depart from life.  This clearly shows that it is sometimes a proper function both for the wise man to depart from life, although he is happy, and for a fool to remain alive, although he is wretched.  For the real good and bad, as has been frequently said already, arise later.  But the primary natural things, whether favourable or adverse, fall under the wise man’s decision and choice, forming as it were the material of wisdom.  Therefore, the reason for remaining in and departing from life is to be measured by those things.  For it is not virtue which retains <the wise man> in life, nor are those without virtue obliged to seek death.  And it is sometimes a wise man’s proper function to abandon life even though he is supremely happy if he can do so at the right time… Since, then, vices do not have the power of providing a reason for suicide, even fools, who are wretched, plainly have the proper function of remaining alive if they have a preponderance of the things we call in accordance with nature.

 

from ON OLD AGE

An actor, in order to find favor, does not have to take part all the way through a play; he need only prove himself in any act in which he may appear; similarly the wise and good man does not have to keep going until the curtain is rung down.  A brief span of years is quite long enough for living a good and honorable life; and if that span should be prolonged, we must not weep and wail about it, any more than farmers weep and wail at the coming of summer and autumn, after sweet springtime has passed.  Spring, you see, symbolizes youth, and, as it were, displays the fruits that are to come; the remaining ages have been set up for the reaping and garnering of the fruits.

Now there is no fixed point at which old age must end, and we may properly go on living as long we can maintain and carry out our obligations… and make light of death; the result is that old age may be even more spirited than youth, and braver, too. This is the meaning of Solon’s reply to Pisistratus, who had asked him what gave him the courage to resist him so boldly; Solon, we are told, replied, “My years.”  But life comes to its best end when, with mind unimpaired and senses intact, nature herself breaks up the fabric to which she first gave form and order.  Now in every case, things freshly put together are hard to pull apart; things that have gotten old come to pieces with ease.

It follows that the old must not grasp greedily after those last few years of life, nor must they walk out on them without cause.  Pythagoras has said that we are not to leave our post and station in life except by order of our commanding officer, that is, of God. There is the epitaph of Solon the Wise, too, in which he declares that his death must not pass unwept and unhonored by his friends.  I suppose he wants them to show that they loved him; but I rather think that Ennius put it better:

“Let none shed tears to show respect for me
nor make a moaning at my obsequies.”

He thought it improper to weep and wail over death, since death was our entry into eternal life.

As for the act of dying, we may have some sensation there, but it will be no more than momentary, especially for the old.  After death there will be either a pleasant sensation, or no sensation at all.  In any event, from our youngest years we must train ourselves to make light of death, since the man who does not so train himself can never have peace of mind.  For die we must, and for all we know, on this very day.  Every minute of every hour, death hangs over us; if we live in terror of it, how can we keep our sanity?

It seems unnecessary to discuss the matter at such great length, when I recall Lucius Brutus—how he died in the act of setting his country free, or the Two Decii, who spurred their horses on to a death they freely chose, or Marcus Atilius, who marched off to the torture-chamber to keep the promise he had made to an enemy, or the two Scipios, who tried with their own bodies to block the advance of the Carthaginians, or your grandfather Lucius Paulus, who died to atone for the foolhardiness of his colleague at the battle of Cannae, or Marcus Marcellus, whose death even that most bloodthirsty of enemies would not permit to pass unhonored by burial—when I think, too, of our legionaries who, as I wrote in my Origins, have marched on many occasions briskly and with heads held high, into positions from which they never expected to return.  Here then is something that young men have made light of—and young men who were not just uneducated but downright illiterate: are old men who have had all the advantages of education to fear a thing like that?

From a more general point of view, it seems to me that once we have had our fill of all the things that have engaged our interest, we have had our fill of life itself.  There are interests that are proper to childhood: does a full-grown man regret their loss?  There are interests that belong to early manhood: when we reach full maturity—what is called “Middle age”—do we look back to them with longing?  Middle age itself has its special concerns; even these have lost their attraction for the old.  Finally, there are interests peculiar to old age; these fall away, too, just as did those of the earlier years.  When this has happened, a sense of the fullness of life tells us that it is time to die.

It is for these reasons, Scipio—for it was this that you told me you and Laelius were forever admiring—that old age is easy for me to bear, and is not only not painful, but positively a joy.  And if I am deluded in believing that the soul of man is immortal, then I am glad to be deluded, and I hope no one, as long as I live, will ever wrench this delusion from me.  If on the other hand, as certain petty philosophers have held, I shall have no sensation when I am dead, then I need have no fear that deceased philosophers will make fun of this delusion of mine.  And even if we are not destined to live forever, it is no more than right that when his time has come, a man should die.  For nature has set a proper limit on living as on all other things.  Yes, old age is, so to speak, the last scene in the play; when we find it beginning to be tiresome we should beat a hasty retreat from it, especially when we feel as if we had seen all this before, entirely too many times.

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(106-43 B.C.)

from Tusculan Disputations
from On Ends
from On Old Age

Filed under Ancient History, Cicero, Marcus Tullius, Europe, Selections

by | May 14, 2015 · 10:24 pm

CHRYSIPPUS
(c. 280-c. 206 B.C.)

The Stoics’ Five Reasons for Suicide

 

Chrysippus, to whom von Armin attributes the fragment provided here (though it may be the work of one of his successors) was born at Soli in Cilicia. Chrysippus, a disciple of Cleanthes, became the third head of the Stoic school at Athens.

Founded by Zeno of Citium, Stoic philosophy had begun as a recognizable movement around 300 B.C.. Only fragments of the writings of the early Stoics remain, for the most part preserved by quotation in the works of later thinkers. Under the guidance of Chrysippus, Stoicism developed into a full philosophical discipline. Stoicism remained one of the most influential and fruitful philosophical movements in the Graeco-Roman world for more than 500 years.

Chrysippus was particularly known for his work in logic, especially in developing formal propositional logic, rather than for providing practical advice on how to live one’s life, as were the efforts to varying extent of later Stoic thinkers like Epictetus [q.v.], Seneca [q.v.], and Marcus Aurelius. Nevertheless, in this fragment, Chrysippus encapsulates Stoic thinking on the matter of how to live—and end—one’s life. The passage presented here gives the five reasons recognized by the Stoics as adequate for suicide. A similar passage appears in Olympiodorus’ later commentary on Plato’s [q.v.] Phaedo.

Sources

Ioannes ab Arnim, ed., Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, Vol. 3, paragraph 768, Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1903, pp. 190-191, tr. Yukio Kachi. Some material in the introduction is from Nicholas White, tr. and ed., Handbook of Epictetus (Indianapolis/Cambridge, Hackett, 1983), pp. 1-2.

 

THE STOICS’ FIVE REASONS FOR SUICIDE

But the Stoic philosophers too understood philosophy to be the practice of death, and for this reason they wrote of five ways of reasonable departure from life.  For…life is like a great party in which the soul seems to feast, and all the ways of reasonable departure from life correspond to the ways in which a party is broken up.  Now, a party is broken up in five ways: 1) because a pressing matter suddenly turns up–for instance, a friend appears after a long absence, and you and the friend get up in delight to walk out and the party is broken up.  Or 2), because revelers rush in, shouting obscenities; the party is likewise broken up. Or 3) because the meats served are spoiled, or 4) because the provisions have run out, or 5) because of drunken stupor, a party is broken up.

Reasonable departures from life take place in the same five ways: 1) because a pressing matter turns up, as in the case of someone commanded by the Pythia [the oracle of Apollo at Delphi] to slit his throat to save his own city, on the brink of destruction.  Or 2) because tyrants rush in, forcing us to do shameful deeds or say forbidden things; or 3) because a serious illness prevents the soul from using the body as an instrument for a long time.  For this reason Plato too does not approve of the dietetic part of medicine, because of its effect of moderating the disease and turning it into a chronic condition, but approves of the surgical and the pharmaceutical parts, to which Archigenes, the army doctor, resorted.  So Sophocles too says:

It will not become a good doctor
To chant incantations over a malady calling for the knife.

            (Ajax, 582)

Or 4) because of poverty, as Theognis says well: “…Escaping from poverty, it is necessary to…”  Or 5) because of dementedness.  For just as drunken stupor would break up a party there, so here too can one have oneself depart from life because of dementedness.  For being demented is nothing but natural intoxication, and intoxication, nothing but self-induced dementia. The same consideration applies here.

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(c. 280-c. 206 B.C.)

The Stoics’ Five Reasons for Suicide

Filed under Ancient History, Chrysippus, Europe, Selections, Stoicism

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ARISTOTLE
(384-322 B.C.)

from Nicomachean Ethics

 

Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and scientist, was born in Macedonia. He moved to Athens at about age 17 or 18 and became a student of philosophy under the tutelage of Plato. He remained in Athens for the next 20 years, where he continued his studies and became a teacher at Plato’s Academy. With the death of Plato in 347 B.C., Aristotle traveled to Asia Minor and counseled the ruler Hermias. He married Hermias’ adopted daughter Pythias, but was forced to flee to Lesbos, where he carried out research in zoology and marine biology, when Hermias was seized and executed by the Persians. In 343 or 342, Aristotle was called to Macedonia, where he tutored Philip II of Macedon’s son Alexander, who would later be known as Alexander the Great. About the time Alexander became ruler in Macedonia, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum, which for the next decade served as the center of Aristotle’s explorations into virtually every field of inquiry. In 323, following the death of Alexander, an anti-Macedonian movement gained power in Athens, and Aristotle was forced to retire to a family-owned estate in Euboea, where he died a year later.

Very few of Aristotle’s own writings survive today, although a large corpus of his lecture notes, most likely delivered orally and written down by students, exists in an edited arrangement prepared by the first-century B.C. editor Andronicus. This extensive body of thought includes treatments of almost all branches of philosophy, politics, and art. Some of the best known of these works are Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, Politics, Poetics, and the Nicomachean Ethics, dedicated to his son Nicomachus.

The Nicomachean Ethics, from which the selection in this volume is taken, is an exploration of the virtues of intellect and characte in relationship to happiness. In it, Aristotle formulates what is called the doctrine of the mean as applicable to virtues of character, exhibited in behavior: one should try to achieve the “mean” between opposing excesses. For example, to achieve the ideal of courage, one should try to seek the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness, a mean modified by one’s circumstances but nevertheless functioning as an intermediate between extremes. In this discussion of courage, from which the first selection is taken, Aristotle maintains that committing suicide to avoid pain or other undesirable circumstances is a cowardly act. In a later chapter, he further argues that suicide is unlawful and is an act committed against the interests of the state.

Sources

Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, Book III, vii. 5-13, 1115a-1116a; Book V, xi, 1138a, ed. and tr. W. D. Ross. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1925, pp. 155-163, 317-319.

 

from NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

…it is for a noble end that the brave man endures and acts as courage directs…

The coward…is a despairing sort of person; for he fears everything. The brave man, on the other hand, has the opposite disposition; for confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition. The coward, the rash man, and the brave man, then, are concerned with the same objects but are differently disposed towards them; for the first two exceed and fall short, while the third holds the middle, which is the right, position; and rash men are precipitate, and wish for dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in them, while brave men are keen in the moment of action, but quiet beforehand.

As we have said, then, courage is a mean with respect to things that inspire confidence or fear, in the circumstances that have been stated; and it chooses or endures things because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so. But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome, and such a man endures death not because it is noble but to fly from evil…

***

Whether a man can treat himself unjustly or not, is evident from what has been said. For (a) one class of just acts are those acts in accordance with any virtue which are prescribed by the law; e.g. the law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not expressly permit it forbids. Again, when a man in violation of the law harms another (otherwise than in retaliation) voluntarily, he acts unjustly, and a voluntary agent is one who knows both the person he is affecting by his action and the instrument he is using; and he who through anger voluntarily stabs himself does this contrary to the right rule of life, and this the law does not allow; therefore he is acting unjustly. But towards whom? Surely towards the state, not towards himself. For he suffers voluntarily, but no one is voluntarily treated unjustly. This is also the reason why the state punishes; a certain loss of civil rights attaches to the man who destroys himself, on the ground that he is treating the state unjustly.

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(384-322 B.C.)

from Nicomachean Ethics

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PLATO
(c. 424-c. 348 B.C.)

Apology: Socrates On Being    Condemned to Death
Phaedo: The Death of Socrates
Republic: On Medicine
Laws: Recidivist Criminals and    Penalties for Suicide

 

Plato was born in Athens into an aristocratic family during the Peloponnesian War, in the waning years of Greece’s golden age, when Athens was in decline after having been the cultural, political, and military center of Greece. According to an ancient story, his original name was Aristocles; he was given the surname Plato (Greek for “broad” or “wide”) because of his broad shoulders, or, in other versions, broad forehead or wide range of knowledge. Plato’s principal teacher, Socrates, to whom he later gave the role of philosophical protagonist in his early and middle-period Dialogues, was unjustly convicted and sentenced to death by a democratic government in 399 B.C.; this would later be of central influence in Plato’s Dialogues, especially the Apology and Crito, and the monumental philosophical work The Republic. In the years after Socrates’ death, Plato traveled widely. In about 387, after returning to Athens, he founded the Academy, a center of philosophical and mathematical learning; Aristotle [q.v.], Plato’s student, was one of the Academy’s many pupils. Plato also traveled on several occasions to Syracuse, where he sought to persuade Dion, the son-in-law of the tyrant Dionysus I, and later Dionysus II, of the importance of the idea of the philosopher-king. Plato died in Athens.

Plato’s well-known Theory of Ideas, or Forms, is the foundation of his dualistic metaphysics. It recognizes two domains, the realm of material objects perceived by the senses and the realm of unchanging, transcendent entities (Ideas, or Forms) that are the eternal truths. Only Ideas are true objects of knowledge; material existence, known by sense-perception, is illusory and can be the subject of opinion only. The philosopher, by reason and contemplation, can come to know the Ideas and thereby achieve true knowledge.

The first two selections are taken from the Apology and Phaedo. When in 399 Socrates was convicted on charges of “not believing in the Gods the State believes in” and “corrupting the youth” by encouraging them to challenge conventional wisdom, he was offered the chance to set his own penalty, but he chose one calculated to irritate the court and so was not set free. In the Apology, Plato offers Socrates’ defense of this choice: “the difficulty is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness.” Then, in the month intervening between trial and execution, Socrates could have escaped from jail and again could have saved his own life; he chose not to do so. Describing Socrates’ life—and death—in these and other dialogues, Plato portrays Socrates as arguing that there is no contradiction in his submitting freely to death and holding the belief that suicide is forbidden. Plato portrays Socrates’ final conversation as taking place on the day he is to be executed, just before the jailor brings the lethal bowl of hemlock. The section presented here opens as Socrates sends a message to Evenus to “come after me as quickly as he can,” that is, as Cebes interprets it, to die as soon as possible. The resultant conversation explores the distinctions between “engaging in philosophy,” or, as Socrates puts it, “practising nothing other than dying and being dead.” In this passage and the subsequent discussion of death and immortality, of inestimable influence in later religious and philosophical thought in the West, Plato is exploring his view that death will bring independence from sense-perception, the body, the material world, and thus will be welcome to the philosopher in search of fully abstract truth. After this discussion, the selection presented resumes with Plato’s description of Socrates’ final actions as he asks for the cup of hemlock and drinks it. Whether this act itself is a suicide or not has been widely discussed in later literature.

In The Republic Plato explores issues of justice and the ideal form of state. He envisions a utopia where wise philosopher-kings rule and where the balance of faculties in the just individual, where the appetites and emotions are regulated by the intellect, is mirrored in the structure of the state, where the workers and the military are governed by the philosophically just and principled guardians. Against this background, The Republic depicts Socrates conversing with Glaucon about the appropriate role of the physician in the ideal state. The physician, Socrates holds, should treat only acute illness and wounds from which the patient can recover fully enough to return to his work, but there should be no coddling of chronic disease. The man who is sickly or who destroys his own health should recognize that he is “of no use either to himself or the state”; he is not to be given treatment, but allowed to die. Significantly, the obligation is on the patient to decline treatment, rather than on the physician to refrain from providing it; in this indirect sense, the patient is to bring about his own death if he can no longer work.

Plato continued to explore issues of individual responsibility and utility to society in his second treatise attempting to depict a just state, The Laws. In the first passage from The Laws presented here, the Laws themselves appear to recommend suicide, or voluntary subjection to capital punishment, for the recidivist criminal unable to control his behavior: here, having one’s life end is seen as obligatory, though it is not clear whether this is to be brought about by the person himself or by some other party, or whether this is a matter of indifference. In the second passage, Plato asks what penalties should be imposed by the just state for homicide and suicide. He recommends separate burial for the suicide, as was the case in Greek custom, but he also identifies circumstances in which penalties are not to be imposed: judicial execution, disgrace, and the “stress of cruel and inevitable calamity.” Sloth—he may mean what is now understood as depression—and “want of manliness” or cowardice are identified as conditions in which burial penalties for suicide are to be imposed, though even here the penalties are much less severe than those for murder. Some commentators have seen in Plato’s discussion a nascent distinction between rational and irrational suicide, or suicide with and without good reason.

Sources

The Dialogues of Plato. Apology, 38C-42A; Phaedo 61B-69E, 116A-118A; Republic III 405A-410A; Laws IX 853A-854D, 862D-863A, 872D-873E, tr. Benjamin Jowett, New York: Random House, 1892, 1920, Vol. I,  pp. 444-453 and 499-501; 669-674; Vol. II, pp. 599-600, 608, 617-618, available online from Project Gutenberg; from the Constitution Society; from the Internet Classics Archive, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

from ­APOLOGY: SOCRATES ON BEING CONDEMNED TO DEATH

…Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise, even although I am not wise, when they want to reproach you.  If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature.  For I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death.  I am speaking now not to all of you, but only to those who have condemned me to death.  And I have another thing to say to them:  you think that I was convicted because I had no words of the sort which would have procured my acquittal–I mean, if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone or unsaid. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words– certainly not.  But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to do, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I maintain, are unworthy of me.  I thought at the time that I ought not to do anything common or mean when in danger:  nor do I now repent of the style of my defence; I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.  For neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use every way of escaping death.  Often in battle there can be no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything.  The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.  I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them.  And now I depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death,–they too go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by my award–let them abide by theirs.  I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated,–and I think that they are well.

And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and in the hour of death men are gifted with prophetic power.  And I prophesy to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my departure punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you.  Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives.  But that will not be as you suppose:  far otherwise.  For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained:  and as they are younger they will be more inconsiderate with you, and you will be more offended at them.  If you think that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves.  This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure to the judges who have condemned me.

Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also to talk with you about the thing which has come to pass, while the magistrates are busy, and before I go to the place at which I must die.  Stay then a little, for we may as well talk with one another while there is time.  You are my friends, and I should like to show you the meaning of this event which has happened to me.  O my judges–for you I may truly call judges–I should like to tell you of a wonderful circumstance.  Hitherto the divine faculty of which the internal oracle is the source has constantly been in the habit of opposing me even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error in any matter; and now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil.  But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either when I was leaving my house in the morning, or when I was on my way to the court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech, but now in nothing I either said or did touching the matter in hand has the oracle opposed me.  What do I take to be the explanation of this silence?  I will tell you.  It is an intimation that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of us who think that death is an evil are in error.  For the customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good.

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things–either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.  Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain.  For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others.  Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night.  But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?  If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making.  What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer?  Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again.  I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs.  Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not.  What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too!  What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions!  In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions:  assuredly not.  For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.  He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance.  But I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble; wherefore the oracle gave no sign.  For which reason, also, I am not angry with my condemners, or with my accusers; they have done me no harm, although they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.

Still I have a favour to ask of them.  When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing,–then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing.  And if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways–I to die, and you to live.  Which is better God only knows.

from PHAEDO: THE DEATH OF SOCRATES

…Tell this to Evenus, Cebes, and bid him be of good cheer; say that I would have him come after me if he be a wise man, and not tarry; and that to-day I am likely to be going, for the Athenians say that I must.

Simmias said:  What a message for such a man! having been a frequent companion of his I should say that, as far as I know him, he will never take your advice unless he is obliged.

Why, said Socrates,–is not Evenus a philosopher?

I think that he is, said Simmias.

Then he, or any man who has the spirit of philosophy, will be willing to die, but he will not take his own life, for that is held to be unlawful.

Here he changed his position, and put his legs off the couch on to the ground, and during the rest of the conversation he remained sitting.

Why do you say, enquired Cebes, that a man ought not to take his own life, but that the philosopher will be ready to follow the dying?

Socrates replied:  And have you, Cebes and Simmias, who are the disciples of Philolaus, never heard him speak of this?

Yes, but his language was obscure, Socrates.

My words, too, are only an echo; but there is no reason why I should not repeat what I have heard:  and indeed, as I am going to another place, it is very meet for me to be thinking and talking of the nature of the pilgrimage which I am about to make.  What can I do better in the interval between this and the setting of the sun?

Then tell me, Socrates, why is suicide held to be unlawful? as I have certainly heard Philolaus, about whom you were just now asking, affirm when he was staying with us at Thebes:  and there are others who say the same, although I have never understood what was meant by any of them.

Do not lose heart, replied Socrates, and the day may come when you will understand.  I suppose that you wonder why, when other things which are evil may be good at certain times and to certain persons, death is to be the only exception, and why, when a man is better dead, he is not permitted to be his own benefactor, but must wait for the hand of another.

Very true, said Cebes, laughing gently and speaking in his native Boeotian.

I admit the appearance of inconsistency in what I am saying; but there may not be any real inconsistency after all.  There is a doctrine whispered in secret that man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand.  Yet I too believe that the gods are our guardians, and that we are a possession of theirs.  Do you not agree?

Yes, I quite agree, said Cebes.

And if one of your own possessions, an ox or an ass, for example, took the liberty of putting himself out of the way when you had given no intimation of your wish that he should die, would you not be angry with him, and would you not punish him if you could?

Certainly, replied Cebes.

Then, if we look at the matter thus, there may be reason in saying that a man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him, as he is now summoning me.

Yes, Socrates, said Cebes, there seems to be truth in what you say.  And yet how can you reconcile this seemingly true belief that God is our guardian and we his possessions, with the willingness to die which we were just now attributing to the philosopher?  That the wisest of men should be willing to leave a service in which they are ruled by the gods who are the best of rulers, is not reasonable; for surely no wise man thinks that when set at liberty he can take better care of himself than the gods take of him.  A fool may perhaps think so–he may argue that he had better run away from his master, not considering that his duty is to remain to the end, and not to run away from the good, and that there would be no sense in his running away.  The wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself.  Now this, Socrates, is the reverse of what was just now said; for upon this view the wise man should sorrow and the fool rejoice at passing out of life.

The earnestness of Cebes seemed to please Socrates.  Here, said he, turning to us, is a man who is always inquiring, and is not so easily convinced by the first thing which he hears.

And certainly, added Simmias, the objection which he is now making does appear to me to have some force.  For what can be the meaning of a truly wise man wanting to fly away and lightly leave a master who is better than himself?  And I rather imagine that Cebes is referring to you; he thinks that you are too ready to leave us, and too ready to leave the gods whom you acknowledge to be our good masters.

Yes, replied Socrates; there is reason in what you say.  And so you think that I ought to answer your indictment as if I were in a court?

We should like you to do so, said Simmias.

Then I must try to make a more successful defence before you than I did when before the judges.  For I am quite ready to admit, Simmias and Cebes, that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded in the first place that I am going to other gods who are wise and good (of which I am as certain as I can be of any such matters), and secondly (though I am not so sure of this last) to men departed, better than those whom I leave behind; and therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead, and as has been said of old, some far better thing for the good than for the evil.

But do you mean to take away your thoughts with you, Socrates? said Simmias.  Will you not impart them to us?–for they are a benefit in which we too are entitled to share.  Moreover, if you succeed in convincing us, that will be an answer to the charge against yourself.

I will do my best, replied Socrates.  But you must first let me hear what Crito wants; he has long been wishing to say something to me.

Only this, Socrates, replied Crito:–the attendant who is to give you the poison has been telling me, and he wants me to tell you, that you are not to talk much, talking, he says, increases heat, and this is apt to interfere with the action of the poison; persons who excite themselves are sometimes obliged to take a second or even a third dose.

Then, said Socrates, let him mind his business and be prepared to give the poison twice or even thrice if necessary; that is all.

I knew quite well what you would say, replied Crito; but I was obliged to satisfy him.

Never mind him, he said.

And now, O my judges, I desire to prove to you that the real philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to obtain the greatest good in the other world.  And how this may be, Simmias and Cebes, I will endeavour to explain.  For I deem that the true votary of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood by other men; they do not perceive that he is always pursuing death and dying; and if this be so, and he has had the desire of death all his life long, why when his time comes should he repine at that which he has been always pursuing and desiring?

Simmias said laughingly:  Though not in a laughing humour, you have made me laugh, Socrates; for I cannot help thinking that the many when they hear your words will say how truly you have described philosophers, and our people at home will likewise say that the life which philosophers desire is in reality death, and that they have found them out to be deserving of the death which they desire.

And they are right, Simmias, in thinking so, with the exception of the words ‘they have found them out’; for they have not found out either what is the nature of that death which the true philosopher deserves, or how he deserves or desires death.  But enough of them:–let us discuss the matter among ourselves:  Do we believe that there is such a thing as death?

To be sure, replied Simmias.

Is it not the separation of soul and body?  And to be dead is the completion of this; when the soul exists in herself, and is released from the body and the body is released from the soul, what is this but death?

Just so, he replied.

There is another question, which will probably throw light on our present inquiry if you and I can agree about it:–Ought the philosopher to care about the pleasures–if they are to be called pleasures–of eating and drinking?

Certainly not, answered Simmias.

And what about the pleasures of love–should he care for them?

By no means.

And will he think much of the other ways of indulging the body, for example, the acquisition of costly raiment, or sandals, or other adornments of the body?  Instead of caring about them, does he not rather despise anything more than nature needs?  What do you say?

I should say that the true philosopher would despise them.

Would you not say that he is entirely concerned with the soul and not with the body?  He would like, as far as he can, to get away from the body and to turn to the soul.

Quite true.

In matters of this sort philosophers, above all other men, may be observed in every sort of way to dissever the soul from the communion of the body.

Very true.

Whereas, Simmias, the rest of the world are of opinion that to him who has no sense of pleasure and no part in bodily pleasure, life is not worth having; and that he who is indifferent about them is as good as dead.

That is also true.

What again shall we say of the actual acquirement of knowledge?–is the body, if invited to share in the enquiry, a hinderer or a helper?  I mean to say, have sight and hearing any truth in them?  Are they not, as the poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses? and yet, if even they are inaccurate and indistinct, what is to be said of the other senses?–for you will allow that they are the best of them?

Certainly, he replied.

Then when does the soul attain truth?–for in attempting to consider anything in company with the body she is obviously deceived.

True.

Then must not true existence be revealed to her in thought, if at all?

Yes.

And thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her–neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure,–when she takes leave of the body, and has as little as possible to do with it, when she has no bodily sense or desire, but is aspiring after true being?

Certainly.

And in this the philosopher dishonours the body; his soul runs away from his body and desires to be alone and by herself?

That is true.

Well, but there is another thing, Simmias:  Is there or is there not an absolute justice?

Assuredly there is.

And an absolute beauty and absolute good?

Of course.

But did you ever behold any of them with your eyes?

Certainly not.

Or did you ever reach them with any other bodily sense?–and I speak not of these alone, but of absolute greatness, and health, and strength, and of the essence or true nature of everything.  Has the reality of them ever been perceived by you through the bodily organs? or rather, is not the nearest approach to the knowledge of their several natures made by him who so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most exact conception of the essence of each thing which he considers?

Certainly.

And he attains to the purest knowledge of them who goes to each with the mind alone, not introducing or intruding in the act of thought sight or any other sense together with reason, but with the very light of the mind in her own clearness searches into the very truth of each; he who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements which when they infect the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge–who, if not he, is likely to attain the knowledge of true being?

What you say has a wonderful truth in it, Socrates, replied Simmias.

And when real philosophers consider all these things, will they not be led to make a reflection which they will express in words something like the following?  ‘Have we not found,’ they will say, ‘a path of thought which seems to bring us and our argument to the conclusion, that while we are in the body, and while the soul is infected with the evils of the body, our desire will not be satisfied? and our desire is of the truth.  For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being:  it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us the power of thinking at all.  Whence come wars, and fightings, and factions? whence but from the body and the lusts of the body?  wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body; and by reason of all these impediments we have no time to give to philosophy; and, last and worst of all, even if we are at leisure and betake ourselves to some speculation, the body is always breaking in upon us, causing turmoil and confusion in our enquiries, and so amazing us that we are prevented from seeing the truth.  It has been proved to us by experience that if we would have pure knowledge of anything we must be quit of the body–the soul in herself must behold things in themselves:  and then we shall attain the wisdom which we desire, and of which we say that we are lovers, not while we live, but after death; for if while in company with the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things follows–either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death.  For then, and not till then, the soul will be parted from the body and exist in herself alone.  In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible intercourse or communion with the body, and are not surfeited with the bodily nature, but keep ourselves pure until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us.  And thus having got rid of the foolishness of the body we shall be pure and hold converse with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is no other than the light of truth.’  For the impure are not permitted to approach the pure.  These are the sort of words, Simmias, which the true lovers of knowledge cannot help saying to one another, and thinking.  You would agree; would you not?

Undoubtedly, Socrates.

But, O my friend, if this is true, there is great reason to hope that, going whither I go, when I have come to the end of my journey, I shall attain that which has been the pursuit of my life.  And therefore I go on my way rejoicing, and not I only, but every other man who believes that his mind has been made ready and that he is in a manner purified.

Certainly, replied Simmias.

And what is purification but the separation of the soul from the body, as I was saying before; the habit of the soul gathering and collecting herself into herself from all sides out of the body; the dwelling in her own place alone, as in another life, so also in this, as far as she can;–the release of the soul from the chains of the body?

Very true, he said.

And this separation and release of the soul from the body is termed death?

To be sure, he said.

And the true philosophers, and they only, are ever seeking to release the soul.  Is not the separation and release of the soul from the body their especial study?

That is true.

And, as I was saying at first, there would be a ridiculous contradiction in men studying to live as nearly as they can in a state of death, and yet repining when it comes upon them.

Clearly.

And the true philosophers, Simmias, are always occupied in the practice of dying, wherefore also to them least of all men is death terrible.  Look at the matter thus:–if they have been in every way the enemies of the body, and are wanting to be alone with the soul, when this desire of theirs is granted, how inconsistent would they be if they trembled and repined, instead of rejoicing at their departure to that place where, when they arrive, they hope to gain that which in life they desired–and this was wisdom–and at the same time to be rid of the company of their enemy.  Many a man has been willing to go to the world below animated by the hope of seeing there an earthly love, or wife, or son, and conversing with them.  And will he who is a true lover of wisdom, and is strongly persuaded in like manner that only in the world below he can worthily enjoy her, still repine at death?  Will he not depart with joy?  Surely he will, O my friend, if he be a true philosopher.  For he will have a firm conviction that there and there only, he can find wisdom in her purity.  And if this be true, he would be very absurd, as I was saying, if he were afraid of death.

He would, indeed, replied Simmias.

And when you see a man who is repining at the approach of death, is not his reluctance a sufficient proof that he is not a lover of wisdom, but a lover of the body, and probably at the same time a lover of either money or power, or both?

Quite so, he replied.

And is not courage, Simmias, a quality which is specially characteristic of the philosopher?

Certainly.

There is temperance again, which even by the vulgar is supposed to consist in the control and regulation of the passions, and in the sense of superiority to them–is not temperance a virtue belonging to those only who despise the body, and who pass their lives in philosophy?

Most assuredly.

For the courage and temperance of other men, if you will consider them, are really a contradiction.

How so?

Well, he said, you are aware that death is regarded by men in general as a great evil.

Very true, he said.

And do not courageous men face death because they are afraid of yet greater evils?

That is quite true.

Then all but the philosophers are courageous only from fear, and because they are afraid; and yet that a man should be courageous from fear, and because he is a coward, is surely a strange thing.

Very true.

And are not the temperate exactly in the same case?  They are temperate because they are intemperate–which might seem to be a contradiction, but is nevertheless the sort of thing which happens with this foolish temperance.  For there are pleasures which they are afraid of losing; and in their desire to keep them, they abstain from some pleasures, because they are overcome by others; and although to be conquered by pleasure is called by men intemperance, to them the conquest of pleasure consists in being conquered by pleasure.  And that is what I mean by saying that, in a sense, they are made temperate through intemperance.

Such appears to be the case.

Yet the exchange of one fear or pleasure or pain for another fear or pleasure or pain, and of the greater for the less, as if they were coins, is not the exchange of virtue.  O my blessed Simmias, is there not one true coin for which all things ought to be exchanged?–and that is wisdom; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything truly bought or sold, whether courage or temperance or justice.  And is not all true virtue the companion of wisdom, no matter what fears or pleasures or other similar goods or evils may or may not attend her?  But the virtue which is made up of these goods, when they are severed from wisdom and exchanged with one another, is a shadow of virtue only, nor is there any freedom or health or truth in her; but in the true exchange there is a purging away of all these things, and temperance, and justice, and courage, and wisdom herself are the purgation of them.  The founders of the mysteries would appear to have had a real meaning, and were not talking nonsense when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will lie in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods.  For ‘many,’ as they say in the mysteries, ‘are the thyrsus- bearers, but few are the mystics,’–meaning, as I interpret the words, ‘the true philosophers.’  In the number of whom, during my whole life, I have been seeking, according to my ability, to find a place;–whether I have sought in a right way or not, and whether I have succeeded or not, I shall truly know in a little while, if God will, when I myself arrive in the other world–such is my belief.  And therefore I maintain that I am right, Simmias and Cebes, in not grieving or repining at parting from you and my masters in this world, for I believe that I shall equally find good masters and friends in another world.  But most men do not believe this saying; if then I succeed in convincing you by my defence better than I did the Athenian judges, it will be well.

…A man of sense ought not to say, nor will I be very confident, that the description which I have given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true.  But I do say that, inasmuch as the soul is shown to be immortal, he may venture to think, not improperly or unworthily, that something of the kind is true.  The venture is a glorious one, and he ought to comfort himself with words like these, which is the reason why I lengthen out the tale.  Wherefore, I say, let a man be of good cheer about his soul, who having cast away the pleasures and ornaments of the body as alien to him and working harm rather than good, has sought after the pleasures of knowledge; and has arrayed the soul, not in some foreign attire, but in her own proper jewels, temperance, and justice, and courage, and nobility, and truth–in these adorned she is ready to go on her journey to the world below, when her hour comes.  You, Simmias and Cebes, and all other men, will depart at some time or other.  Me already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls.  Soon I must drink the poison; and I think that I had better repair to the bath first, in order that the women may not have the trouble of washing my body after I am dead.

When he had done speaking, Crito said:  And have you any commands for us, Socrates–anything to say about your children, or any other matter in which we can serve you?

Nothing particular, Crito, he replied:  only, as I have always told you, take care of yourselves; that is a service which you may be ever rendering to me and mine and to all of us, whether you promise to do so or not. But if you have no thought for yourselves, and care not to walk according to the rule which I have prescribed for you, not now for the first time, however much you may profess or promise at the moment, it will be of no avail.

We will do our best, said Crito:  And in what way shall we bury you?

In any way that you like; but you must get hold of me, and take care that I do not run away from you.  Then he turned to us, and added with a smile:–I cannot make Crito believe that I am the same Socrates who have been talking and conducting the argument; he fancies that I am the other Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body–and he asks, How shall he bury me?  And though I have spoken many words in the endeavour to show that when I have drunk the poison I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed,– these words of mine, with which I was comforting you and myself, have had, as I perceive, no effect upon Crito.  And therefore I want you to be surety for me to him now, as at the trial he was surety to the judges for me:  but let the promise be of another sort; for he was surety for me to the judges that I would remain, and you must be my surety to him that I shall not remain, but go away and depart; and then he will suffer less at my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body being burned or buried.  I would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the burial, Thus we lay out Socrates, or, Thus we follow him to the grave or bury him; for false words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.  Be of good cheer, then, my dear Crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and do with that whatever is usual, and what you think best.

When he had spoken these words, he arose and went into a chamber to bathe; Crito followed him and told us to wait.  So we remained behind, talking and thinking of the subject of discourse, and also of the greatness of our sorrow; he was like a father of whom we were being bereaved, and we were about to pass the rest of our lives as orphans.  When he had taken the bath his children were brought to him–(he had two young sons and an elder one); and the women of his family also came, and he talked to them and gave them a few directions in the presence of Crito; then he dismissed them and returned to us.

Now the hour of sunset was near, for a good deal of time had passed while he was within.  When he came out, he sat down with us again after his bath, but not much was said.  Soon the jailer, who was the servant of the Eleven, entered and stood by him, saying:–To you, Socrates, whom I know to be the noblest and gentlest and best of all who ever came to this place, I will not impute the angry feelings of other men, who rage and swear at me, when, in obedience to the authorities, I bid them drink the poison–indeed, I am sure that you will not be angry with me; for others, as you are aware, and not I, are to blame.  And so fare you well, and try to bear lightly what must needs be–you know my errand.  Then bursting into tears he turned away and went out.

Socrates looked at him and said:  I return your good wishes, and will do as you bid.  Then turning to us, he said, How charming the man is:  since I have been in prison he has always been coming to see me, and at times he would talk to me, and was as good to me as could be, and now see how generously he sorrows on my account.  We must do as he says, Crito; and therefore let the cup be brought, if the poison is prepared:  if not, let the attendant prepare some.

Yet, said Crito, the sun is still upon the hill-tops, and I know that many a one has taken the draught late, and after the announcement has been made to him, he has eaten and drunk, and enjoyed the society of his beloved; do not hurry–there is time enough.

Socrates said:  Yes, Crito, and they of whom you speak are right in so acting, for they think that they will be gainers by the delay; but I am right in not following their example, for I do not think that I should gain anything by drinking the poison a little later; I should only be ridiculous in my own eyes for sparing and saving a life which is already forfeit.  Please then to do as I say, and not to refuse me.

Crito made a sign to the servant, who was standing by; and he went out, and having been absent for some time, returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison.  Socrates said:  You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed.  The man answered:  You have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act.  At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of colour or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said:  What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god?  May I, or not?  The man answered:  We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough.  I understand, he said:  but I may and must ask the gods to prosper my journey from this to the other world–even so–and so be it according to my prayer.  Then raising the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison.  And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept, not for him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having to part from such a friend. Nor was I the first; for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud and passionate cry which made cowards of us all.  Socrates alone retained his calmness:  What is this strange outcry? he said.  I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not misbehave in this way, for I have been told that a man should die in peace.  Be quiet, then, and have patience.  When we heard his words we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel; and he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff.  And he felt them himself, and said:  When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end.  He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said–they were his last words–he said: Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?  The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else?  There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth.

Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend; concerning whom I may truly say, that of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest and justest and best.

from REPUBLIC: BOOK III

…when intemperance and disease multiply in a State, halls of justice and medicine are always being opened; and the arts of the doctor and the lawyer give themselves airs, finding how keen is the interest which not only the slaves but the freemen of a city take about them.

Of course.

And yet what greater proof can there be of a bad and disgraceful state of education than this, that not only artisans and the meaner sort of people need the skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but also those who would profess to have had a liberal education? Is it not disgraceful, and a great sign of want of good-breeding, that a man should have to go abroad for his law and physic because he has none of his own at home, and must therefore surrender himself into the hands of other men whom he makes lords and judges over him? Of all things, he said, the most disgraceful. Would you say “most,” I replied, when you consider that there is a further stage of the evil in which a man is not only a life-long litigant, passing all his days in the courts, either as plaintiff or defendant, but is actually led by his bad taste to pride himself on his litigiousness; he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty; able to take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole, bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for what? ù in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without a napping judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing. Is not that still more disgraceful? Yes, he said, that is still more disgraceful. Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just because, by indolence and a habit of life such as we have been describing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies were a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names for diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace? Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and newfangled names to diseases. Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such diseases in the days of Asclepius; and this I infer from the circumstance that the hero Eurypylus, after he has been wounded in Homer, drinks a posset of Pramnian wine well besprinkled with barley-meal and grated cheese, which are certainly inflammatory, and yet the sons of Asclepius who were at the Trojan war do not blame the damsel who gives him the drink, or rebuke Patroclus, who is treating his case.

Well, he said, that was surely an extraordinary drink to be given to a person in his condition.

Not so extraordinary, I replied, if you bear in mind that in former days, as is commonly said, before the time of Herodicus, the guild of Asclepius did not practise our present system of medicine, which may be said to educate diseases. But Herodicus, being a trainer, and himself of a sickly constitution, by a combination of training and doctoring found out a way of torturing first and chiefly himself, and secondly the rest of the world.

How was that? he said.

By the invention of lingering death; for he had a mortal disease which he perpetually tended, and as recovery was out of the question, he passed his entire life as a valetudinarian; he could do nothing but attend upon himself, and he was in constant torment whenever he departed in anything from his usual regimen, and so dying hard, by the help of science he struggled on to old age. A rare reward of his skill!

Yes, I said; a reward which a man might fairly expect who never understood that, if Asclepius did not instruct his descendants in valetudinarian arts, the omission arose, not from ignorance or inexperience of such a branch of medicine, but because he knew that in all well-ordered states every individual has an occupation to which he must attend, and has therefore no leisure to spend in continually being ill. This we remark in the case of the artisan, but, ludicrously enough, do not apply the same rule to people of the richer sort. How do you mean? he said.

I mean this: When a carpenter is ill he asks the physician for a rough and ready cure; an emetic or a purge or a cautery or the knife, these are his remedies. And if some one prescribes for him a course of dietetics, and tells him that he must swathe and swaddle his head, and all that sort of thing, he replies at once that he has no time to be ill, and that he sees no good in a life which is spent in nursing his disease to the neglect of his customary employment; and therefore bidding good-bye to this sort of physician, he resumes his ordinary habits, and either gets well and lives and does his business, or, if his constitution falls, he dies and has no more trouble.

Yes, he said, and a man in his condition of life ought to use the art of medicine thus far only.

Has he not, I said, an occupation; and what profit would there be in his life if he were deprived of his occupation?

Quite true, he said.

But with the rich man this is otherwise; of him we do not say that he has any specially appointed work which he must perform, if he would live. He is generally supposed to have nothing to do. Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as soon as a man has a livelihood he should practise virtue?

Nay, he said, I think that he had better begin somewhat sooner.

Let us not have a dispute with him about this, I said; but rather ask ourselves: Is the practice of virtue obligatory on the rich man, or can he live without it? And if obligatory on him, then let us raise a further question, whether this dieting of disorders which is an impediment to the application of the mind t in carpentering and the mechanical arts, does not equally stand in the way of the sentiment of Phocylides?

Of that, he replied, there can be no doubt; such excessive care of the body, when carried beyond the rules of gymnastic, is most inimical to the practice of virtue.

Yes, indeed, I replied, and equally incompatible with the management of a house, an army, or an office of state; and, what is most important of all, irreconcilable with any kind of study or thought or self-reflection ù there is a constant suspicion that headache and giddiness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practising or making trial of virtue in the higher sense is absolutely stopped; for a man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant anxiety about the state of his body.

Yes, likely enough.

And therefore our politic Asclepius may be supposed to have exhibited the power of his art only to persons who, being generally of healthy constitution and habits of life, had a definite ailment; such as these he cured by purges and operations, and bade them live as usual, herein consulting the interests of the State; but bodies which disease had penetrated through and through he would not have attempted to cure by gradual processes of evacuation and infusion: he did not want to lengthen out good-for-nothing lives, or to have weak fathers begetting weaker sons; ù if a man was not able to live in the ordinary way he had no business to cure him; for such a cure would have been of no use either to himself, or to the State.

Then, he said, you regard Asclepius as a statesman.

Clearly; and his character is further illustrated by his sons. Note that they were heroes in the days of old and practised the medicines of which I am speaking at the siege of Troy: You will remember how, when Pandarus wounded Menelaus, they Sucked the blood out of the wound, and sprinkled soothing remedies,35 but they never prescribed what the patient was afterwards to eat or drink in the case of Menelaus, any more than in the case of Eurypylus; the remedies, as they conceived, were enough to heal any man who before he was wounded was healthy and regular in habits; and even though he did happen to drink a posset of Pramnian wine, he might get well all the same. But they would have nothing to do with unhealthy and intemperate subjects, whose lives were of no use either to themselves or others; the art of medicine was not designed for their good, and though they were as rich as Midas, the sons of Asclepius would have declined to attend them.

They were very acute persons, those sons of Asclepius.

Naturally so, I replied. Nevertheless, the tragedians and Pindar disobeying our behests, although they acknowledge that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, say also that he was bribed into healing a rich man who was at the point of death, and for this reason he was struck by lightning. But we, in accordance with the principle already affirmed by us, will not believe them when they tell us both; ù if he was the son of a god, we maintain that hd was not avaricious; or, if he was avaricious he was not the son of a god.

All that, Socrates, is excellent; but I should like to put a question to you: Ought there not to be good physicians in a State, and are not the best those who have treated the greatest number of constitutions good and bad? and are not the best judges in like manner those who are acquainted with all sorts of moral natures?

Yes, I said, I too would have good judges and good physicians. But do you know whom I think good?

Will you tell me?

I will, if I can. Let me however note that in the same question you join two things which are not the same.

How so? he asked.

Why, I said, you join physicians and judges. Now the most skillful physicians are those who, from their youth upwards, have combined with the knowledge of their art the greatest experience of disease; they had better not be robust in health, and should have had all manner of diseases in their own persons. For the body, as I conceive, is not the instrument with which they cure the body; in that case we could not allow them ever to be or to have been sickly; but they cure the body with the mind, and the mind which has become and is sick can cure nothing.

That is very true, he said.

But with the judge it is otherwise; since he governs mind by mind; he ought not therefore to have been trained among vicious minds, and to have associated with them from youth upwards, and to have gone through the whole calendar of crime, only in order that he may quickly infer the crimes of others as he might their bodily diseases from his own self-consciousness; the honourable mind which is to form a healthy judgment should have had no experience or contamination of evil habits when young. And this is the reason why in youth good men often appear to be simple, and are easily practised upon by the dishonest, because they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls.

Yes, he said, they are far too apt to be deceived.

Therefore, I said, the judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.

Yes, he said, that is the ideal of a judge.

Yes, I replied, and he will be a good man (which is my answer to your question); for he is good who has a good soul. But the cunning and suspicious nature of which we spoke, ù he who has committed many crimes, and fancies himself to be a master in wickedness, when he is amongst his fellows, is wonderful in the precautions which he takes, because he judges of them by himself: but when he gets into the company of men of virtue, who have the experience of age, he appears to be a fool again, owing to his unseasonable suspicions; he cannot recognise an honest man, because he has no pattern of honesty in himself; at the same time, as the bad are more numerous than the good, and he meets with them oftener, he thinks himself, and is by others thought to be, rather wise than foolish.

Most true, he said.

Then the good and wise judge whom we are seeking is not this man, but the other; for vice cannot know virtue too, but a virtuous nature, educated by time, will acquire a knowledge both of virtue and vice: the virtuous, and not the vicious, man has wisdom ù in my opinion.

And in mine also.

This is the sort of medicine, and this is the sort of law, which you sanction in your State. They will minister to better natures, giving health both of soul and of body; but those who are diseased in their bodies they will leave to die, and the corrupt and incurable souls they will put an end to themselves. That is clearly the best thing both for the patients and for the State.

from LAWS

…Athenian Stranger. There is a sense of disgrace in legislating, as we are about to do, for all the details of crime in a state which, as we say, is to be well regulated and will be perfectly adapted to the practice of virtue. To assume that in such a state there will arise someone who will be guilty of crimes as heinous as any which are ever perpetrated in other states, and that we must legislate for him by anticipation, and threaten and make laws against him if he should arise, in order to deter him, and punish his acts, under the idea that he will arise-this, as I was saying, is in a manner disgraceful. Yet seeing that we are not like the ancient legislators, who gave laws to heroes and sons of gods, being, according to the popular belief, themselves the offspring of the gods, and legislating for others, who were also the children of divine parents, but that we are only men who are legislating for the sons of men, there is no uncharitableness in apprehending that some one of our citizens may be like a seed which has touched the ox’s horn, having a heart so hard that it cannot be softened any more than those seeds can be softened by fire. Among our citizens there may be those who cannot be subdued by all the strength of the laws; and for their sake, though an ungracious task, I will proclaim my first law about the robbing of temples, in case anyone should dare to commit such a crime. I do not expect or imagine that any well-brought-up citizen will ever take the infection, but their servants, and strangers, and strangers’ servants may be guilty of many impieties. And with a view to them especially, and yet not without a provident eye to the weakness of human nature generally, I will proclaim the law about robbers of temples and similar incurable, or almost incurable, criminals. Having already agreed that such enactments ought always to have a short prelude, we may speak to the criminal, whom some tormenting desire by night and by day tempts to go and rob a temple, the fewest possible words of admonition and exhortation:-O sir, we will say to him, the impulse which moves you to rob temples is not an ordinary human malady, nor yet a visitation of heaven, but a madness which is begotten in a man from ancient and unexpiated crimes of his race, an ever-recurring curse;-against this you must guard with all your might, and how you are to guard we will explain to you. When any such thought comes into your mind, go and perform expiations, go as a suppliant to the temples of the Gods who avert evils, go to the society of those who are called good men among you; hear them tell and yourself try to repeat after them, that every man should honour the noble and the just. Fly from the company of the wicked-fly and turn not back; and if your disorder is lightened by these remedies, well and good, but if not, then acknowledge death to be nobler than life, and depart hence.

Such are the preludes which we sing to all who have thoughts of unholy and treasonable actions…

…Ath. When any one commits any injustice, small or great, the law will admonish and compel him either never at all to do the like again, or never voluntarily, or at any rate in a far less degree; and he must in addition pay for the hurt. Whether the end is to be attained by word or action, with pleasure or pain, by giving or taking away privileges, by means of fines or gifts, or in whatsoever way the law shall proceed to make a man hate injustice, and love or not hate the nature of the just-this is quite the noblest work of law. But if the legislator sees anyone who is incurable, for him he will appoint a law and a penalty. He knows quite well that to such men themselves there is no profit in the continuance of their lives, and that they would do a double good to the rest of mankind if they would take their departure, inasmuch as they would be an example to other men not to offend, and they would relieve the city of bad citizens. In such cases, and in such cases only, the legislator ought to inflict death as the punishment of offences…

…There are things about which it is terrible and unpleasant to legislate, but impossible not to legislate. If, for example, there should be murders of kinsmen, either perpetrated by the hands of kinsmen, or by their contrivance, voluntary and purely malicious, which most often happen in ill-regulated and ill-educated states, and may perhaps occur even in a country where a man would not expect to find them, we must repeat once more the tale which we narrated a little while ago, in the hope that he who hears us will be the more disposed to abstain voluntarily on these grounds from murders which are utterly abominable. For the myth, or saying, or whatever we ought to call it, has been plainly set forth by priests of old; they have pronounced that the justice which guards and avenges the blood of kindred, follows the law of retaliation, and ordains that he who has done any murderous act should of necessity suffer that which he has done. He who has slain a father shall himself be slain at some time or other by his children-if a mother, he shall of necessity take a woman’s nature, and lose his life at the hands of his offspring in after ages; for where the blood of a family has been polluted there is no other purification, nor can the pollution be washed out until the homicidal soul which the deed has given life for life, and has propitiated and laid to sleep the wrath of the whole family. These are the retributions of Heaven, and by such punishments men should be deterred. But if they are not deterred, and any one should be incited by some fatality to deprive his father or mother, or brethren, or children, of life voluntarily and of purpose, for him the earthly lawgiver legislates as follows:-There shall be the same proclamations about outlawry, and there shall be the same sureties which have been enacted in the former cases. But in his case, if he be convicted, the servants of the judges and the magistrates shall slay him at an appointed place without the city where three ways meet, and there expose his body naked, and each of the magistrates on behalf of the whole city shall take a stone and cast it upon the head of the dead man, and so deliver the city from pollution; after that, they shall bear him to the borders of the land, and cast him forth unburied, according to law. And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life, not because the law of the state requires him, nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him, nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty. For him, what ceremonies there are to be of purification and burial God knows, and about these the next of kin should enquire of the interpreters and of the laws thereto relating, and do according to their injunctions. They who meet their death in this way shall be buried alone, and none shall be laid by their side; they shall be buried ingloriously in the borders of the twelve portions the land, in such places as are uncultivated and nameless, and no column or inscription shall mark the place of their interment.

Comments Off on PLATO
(c. 424-c. 348 B.C.)

Apology: Socrates On Being    Condemned to Death
Phaedo: The Death of Socrates
Republic: On Medicine
Laws: Recidivist Criminals and    Penalties for Suicide

Filed under Afterlife, Ancient History, Cowardice, Courage, Bravery, Fear, Europe, Honor and Disgrace, Illness and Old Age, Love, Mental Illness: depression, despair, insanity, delusion, Plato, Selections, Slavery