“You ask my why public speech of a corrupt kind dominates in certain periods of time and how the decline of people’s intelligence slides into certain vices so that sometimes speech swells with a kind of strength and at others it becomes broken up and refined like song. You ask as well why sometimes bold notions–even beyond belief–delight people and at other times statements are curt and coded so that more must be understood in them than can be heard? Or, why there have been generations that rely on the use of shameless metaphor.
You can hear the answer in common speech, one that is proverbial among the Greeks: “People’s lives are like the quality of their speech.” Just as the action of an individual is similar to their speech, so too does the culture of speech imitate public character, if civic order has weakened and surrendered to self-indulgence.”
Quare quibusdam temporibus provenerit corrupti generis oratio quaeris, et quomodo in quaedam vitia inclinatio ingeniorum facta sit, ut aliquando inflata explicatio vigeret, aliquando infracta et in morem cantici ducta? Quare alias sensus audaces et fidem egressi placuerint, alias abruptae sententiae et suspiciosae, in quibus plus intellegendum esset quam audiendum? Quare aliqua aetas fuerit, quae translationis iure uteretur inverecunde? Hoc quod audire vulgo soles, quod apud Graecos in proverbium cessit: talis hominibus fuit oratio qualis vita. Quemadmodum autem uniuscuiusque actio dicenti similis est, sic genus dicendi aliquando imitatur publicos mores, si disciplina civitatis laboravit et se in delicias dedit.
People agree that the soul is alive since it has the ability to make us alive and because “living things” have their name from it [anima, animal]. Virtue, moreover, is little more than a soul keeping itself a certain way. So, virtue is alive. In turn, virtue does something and nothing can do a thing without impetus. So, if a thing has impetus, then it has to be alive, since nothing has impetus unless it is alive.
A response might be that “if virtue is alive, then virtue itself has virtue.” Well, why wouldn’t it!? Just as a wise person does everything through virtue, so to does virtue accomplish its goals through itself. “Therefore, ” people continue, “all the arts are also alive and our thoughts and everything the mind contains with it. So it follows that thousands of living things make their home in the narrows of a person’s heart and that each one of are made up many creatures or have many within us
Animum constat animal esse, cum ipse efficiat, ut simus animalia, cum ab illo animalia nomen hoc traxerint. Virtus autem nihil aliud est quam animus quodammodo se habens; ergo animal est. Deinde virtus agit aliquid; agi autem nihil sine impetu potest. Si impetum habet, qui nulli est nisi animali, animal est. “Si animal est,” inquit, “virtus, habet ipsa virtutem.” Quidni habeat se ipsam? Quomodo 3sapiens omnia per virtutem gerit, sic virtus per se. “Ergo,” inquit, “et omnes artes animalia sunt et omnia, quae cogitamus quaeque mente conplectimur. Sequitur, ut multa millia animalium habitent in his angustiis pectoris, et singuli multa simus animalia aut multa habeamus animalia.”
“By god, I do want your friend to be shaped and trained as you want, but he has been taken up already hardened, or, really–and this is worse–soft and ground down by constant bad habits.
I want to provide you an example from my own technique. Not every vine will submit to grafting–if it is old and starting to rot or too thin and weak, the fine won’t take a shoot or it will refuse to feed it and integrate and it will not accept the quality and the nature of the transplant. So, we typically sever the vine above the ground, so if it does not respond at first, a second attempt is possible. Then the second graft is made below the ground.
This person you are writing and worried about,has no strength and indulges their weaknesses. They have somehow become fat and hard at once. They can neither accept reason nor feed it. You say, “But they want to”. I am not saying that they are lying to you, they want to desire this. But excess has ruined their stomach. Soon they’ll turn back again.
“Yet, they claim their own life offends them!” I don’t deny this. Who is not upset with their own life? People love and hate their own faults at the same time. We will form an opinion about them when they have shown us some proof that they truly hate luxury. Now? They’re just in an argument. BYE.”
Cupio mehercules amicum tuum formari, ut desideras, et institui; sed valde durus capitur, immo, quod est molestius, valde mollis capitur et consuetudine mala ac diutina fractus.
Volo tibi ex nostro artificio exemplum referre. Non quaelibet insitionem vitis patitur; si vetus et exesa est, si infirma gracilisque, aut non recipiet surculum aut non alet nec adplicabit sibi nec in qualitatem eius naturamque transibit. Itaque solemus supra terram praecidere, ut si non respondit, temptari possit secunda fortuna, et iterum repetita infra terram inseratur.
Hic, de quo scribis et mandas, non habet vires; indulsit vitiis. Simul et emarcuit et induruit. Non potest recipere rationem, non potest nutrire. “At cupit ipse.” Noli credere. Non dico illum mentiri tibi; putat se cupere. Stomachum illi fecit luxuria; cito cum illa redibit in gratiam. “Sed dicit se offendi vita sua.“Non negaverim. Quis enim non offenditur? Homines vitia sua et amant simul et oderunt. Tunc itaque de illo feremus sententiam, cum fidem nobis fecerit invisam iam sibi esse luxuriam; nunc illis male convenit. Vale.
“You have been asking me how to say sophismata in Latin. Many have tried to give it a translation, but nothing has stuck. This seems predictable, given that we have not put the idea into regular use. There’s also some resistance to the word. Cicero, still, seems to me to have used the most fit translation when he calls them cavillationes. Whoever gives themselves over to them surely ties themselves into subtle little questions, but they make no advances in life, becoming neither braver, nor more temperate, nor any more elevated in thought.
But someone who has applied philosophy in their own healing has a depth of spirit, full of confidence, unconquerable and greater to one who approaches. It is the way with large mountains that seem rather small to someone gazing from afar: yet when you approach them, then it becomes abundantly clear, how high the summits lie above.
That’s what a true philosopher is like from his actions, my Lucilius, not his devices. They stand high above, worthy of admiration, towering in true greatness. They don’t reach high or walk on their tiptoes by habit like those who increase their height with tricks and seem taller than they are. They are content in their own size. And Why not be content when you have grown into a place where fortune’s hand cannot reach?
The philosopher is beyond human things, enough for themselves in every state of things, whether life proceeds favorably or it surges and tosses them across hostile and difficult seas. Sophistic arguments of those kind I was mentioning before cannot prepare this resilience. The mind plays with these things but does not develop because of them–it drags philosophy down from its place to the flat ground.
I won’t tell you to avoid all these things all the time, but only do it when you want to accomplish nothing. The worst thing these disciplines possess is that they develop a kind of self-fulfilling allure, grabbing and detaining the mind with the appearance of sophistication. And we hear this even though serious affairs call to us–when an entire life is barely enough to learn one simple thing: to devalue life itself. What, you ask, don’t I mean to control life? No, that’s our second job. For no one has lived life well unless they learn contempt for it. BYE.”
Quid vocentur Latine sophismata, quaesisti a me. Multi temptaverunt illis nomen inponere, nullum haesit. Videlicet, quia res ipsa non recipiebatur a nobis nec in usu erat, nomini quoque repugnatum est. Aptissimum tamen videtur mihi, quo Cicero usus est: cavillationes vocat. Quibus quisquis se tradidit, quaestiunculas quidem vafras nectit, ceterum ad vitam nihil proficit, neque fortior fit neque temperantior neque elatior.
At ille, qui philosophiam in remedium suum exercuit, ingens fit animo, plenus fiduciae, inexsuperabilis et maior adeunti. Quod in magnis evenit montibus, quorum proceritas minus apparet longe intuentibus; cum accesseris, tunc manifestum fit, quo in arduo summa sint;
talis est, mi Lucili, verus et rebus, non artificiis philosophus. In edito stat admirabilis, celsus, magnitudinis verae. Non exsurgit in plantas nec summis ambulat digitis eorum more, qui mendacio staturam adiuvant longioresque quam sunt, videri volunt; contentus est magnitudine sua. Quidni contentus sit eo usque crevisse, quo manus fortuna non porrigit?
Ergo et supra humana est et par sibi in omni statu rerum, sive secundo cursu vita procedit, sive fluctuatur et it per adversa ac difficilia; hanc constantiam cavillationes istae, de quibus paulo ante loquebar, praestare non possunt. Ludit istis animus, non proficit, et philosophiam a fastigio suo deducit in planum.
Nec te prohibuerim aliquando ista agere, sed tunc, cum voles nihil agere. Hoc tamen habent in se pessimum: dulcedinem quandam sui faciunt et animum specie subtilitatis inductum tenent ac morantur, cum tanta rerum moles vocet, cum vix tota vita sufficiat, ut hoc unum discas, vitam contemnere. “Quid? Regere,” inquis. Secundum opus est; nam nemo illam bene rexit nisi qui contempserat. Vale.
Joseph Kutter, “Tête de clown / Head of a Clown” 1937
“What mortal person will escape
A god’s crooked deception?
Who steps with a light enough foot
To leap away through the air?
For destruction seems at first friendly, even fawning
As it draws someone aside into a trap
From which it is impossible for any mortal to escape
Or even avoid.”
“I have been silent for a while, struck with pains
By these evils. The disaster runs over all bounds
of speaking or asking about its suffering.
Still, necessity forces mortals to endure the pains
The gods send us. Pull yourself together,
Tell us everything that happened…”
“Friends, whoever gains some practice in troubles
Understands that when a wave of troubles come
We mortals tend to fear everything.
But when a god makes things easy, you think
You’ll always sail under the same favorable wind.”
“But there’s no reason why you should pray for the gods to be hateful to someone you think deserves punishment. I say they are being punished, even if the person seems to be lucky. Put your own attention to this and examine how our lives actually go and not what they are said to be. Then you will see that evils change us more than just happen.
How many times has something first called a disaster turned out to be the cause and beginning of good fortune? How many times have advantages built steps for themselves with great thanks straight up, lifting someone who was already doing well, as if they were standing in place they could fall safely from!
Well, that guy falling has no real evil in it, if you see the way out, beyond which nature can kick no one lower! That shared end of all things is near–that’s the place where the successful person is thrown out, where the unlucky is released. We expand both boundaries, we create them with great hope and fear.
Yet, if you are wise, measure everything by the human condition. Keep both what you fear and what you take joy in reasonable. Truly, don’t take joy in anything too long so that you may not fear too long either.”
Sed non est quare cuiquam, quem poena putaveris dignum, optes, ut infestos deos habeat; habet, inquam, etiam si videtur eorum favore produci. Adhibe diligentiam tuam et intuere, quid sint res nostrae, non quid vocentur; et scies plura mala contingere nobis quam accidere. Quotiens enim felicitatis et1 causa et initium fuit, quod calamitas vocabatur? Quotiens magna gratulatione excepta res gradum sibi struxit in praeceps et aliquem iam eminentem adlevavit etiamnunc, tamquam adhuc ibi staret, unde tuto cadunt? Sed ipsum illud cadere non habet in se mali quidquam, si exitum spectes, ultra quem natura neminem deiecit. Prope est rerum omnium terminus, prope est, inquam, et illud, unde felix eicitur, et illud, unde infelix emittitur; nos utraque extendimus et longa spe ac metu facimus.
Sed si sapis, omnia humana condicione metire; simul et quod gaudes et quod times, contrahe. Est autem tanti nihil diu gaudere, ne quid diu timeas.
Diogenes Laertius, Hippasos [Lives of the Philosophers, 8.6]
“Hippasos of Metapontum was also a Pythagorean. He used to say that the time of the transformation of the universe is specific and that the Everything is bounded and always moving.
Demetrius says that he left no written text in his work People of the Same Name. There were two Hippases. This one and another one who wrote five books about the constitution of the Lakonians. He was also Lakonian.”
Arrian’s Discourses of Epicetus [=Stobaeus IV. 44, 66]
“Everything heeds and serves the Universe: the land, the sea, the sun, and the rest of the stars, along with the earth’s plants and animals. Our body obeys it too whether in sickness or health, in youth and old age, when the Universe wants, through all our other changes as well.
For this reason it is logical that what is under our control–our judgment–should not be the only thing to resist it. The Universe is powerful and strong and it has planned better on our behalf by combining us with everything else it governs. To act against these forces, moreover, is illogical and it results in little more than a useless effort all while creating pain and suffering.”
“I have done what you asked, although it was in a series of subjects which are in my works on moral philosophy. Consider what I am in the habit of telling you often: there is nothing in these kinds of studies for us other than practicing our wit. I repeatedly return to this: How does this subject help me? Make me braver now, more just, more temperate. There has been no time to practice yet, I still need my trainer beside me. Why do you ask me about useless knowledge? You made massive promises: check this, watch!. You were saying that I would be fearless even if swords were clashing around me, even if the edges were just touching my throat–you were claiming I would feel safe, even if fires were raging around me, even if a sudden storm would toss my ship over the whole sea!
Offer me this cure now so I can spurn pleasure and glory. After that you will teach me to solve logic problems and make sense of ambiguity. For now, teach me what I need to know. BYE.”
Persolvi id quod exegeras, quamquam in ordine rerum erat, quas moralis philosophiae voluminibus complectimur. Cogita, quod soleo frequenter tibi dicere, in istis nos nihil aliud quam acumen exercere. Totiens enim illo revertor: quid ista me res iuvat? Fortiorem fac iam, iustiorem, temperantiorem. Nondum exerceri vacat; adhuc medico mihi opus est. Quid me poscis scientiam inutilem? Magna promisisti; exige, vide. Dicebas intrepidum fore, etiam si circa me gladii micarent, etiam si mucro tangeret iugulum; dicebas securum fore, etiam si circa me flagrarent incendia, etiam si subitus turbo toto navem meam mari raperet. Hanc mihi praesta curam, ut voluptatem, ut gloriam contemnam. Postea docebis inplicta solvere, ambigua distinguere, obscura perspicere; nunc doce quod necesse est. Vale.
Olympia’s most-high, wide-ruling one,
May you, father Zeus, for all time
Hold nothing against my words,
And while you keep this people safe from harm,
Pilot the winds of Xenephon’s fortunes.
Accept from him this ritual praise
For the garlands he brings from Pisa’s plains:
He won the pentathlon and stadion race.
No mortal man has done that before.
Two parsley wreaths also crowned him
When he appeared at the Isthmian festival.
And in Nemea it was no different.
“Winter returns the cold, and we feel cold. Summer brings the heat, and we must be warm. Intemperate skies test health and we must be sick Wild beasts approach us in one place, while people more dangerous than beasts are everywhere. Floods ruin one thing; fires destroy another.
We are incapable of changing the nature of things. But we can do this: develop a strong spirit worthy of a good person, the very thing that helps us bravely endure chance and give our consent to nature. Indeed, nature oversees the realm you look on with her changes. A peaceful sky replaces clouds; the seas get stirred up when they have been calm; winds take their turns blowing; day follows night; part of the sky rises, the rest sets. Eternity resides in the tensions among these things.
Our souls must fit themselves to this law, this is the law we follow. Whatever happens, believe that it had to happen and don’t long to castigate nature. It is best to endure what you cannot change.”
Hiems frigora adducit: algendum est. Aestas calores refert: aestuandum est. Intemperies caeli valitudinem temptat: aegrotandum est. Et fera nobis aliquo loco occurret et homo perniciosior feris omnibus. Aliud aqua, aliud ignis eripiet. Hanc rerum condicionem mutare non possumus; illud possumus, magnum sumere animum et viro bono dignum, quo fortiter fortuita patiamur et naturae consentiamus. Natura autem hoc, quod vides, regnum mutationibus temperat; nubilo serena succedunt; turbantur maria, cum quieverunt; flant in vicem venti; noctem dies sequitur; pars caeli consurgit, pars mergitur. Contrariis rerum aeternitas constat.
Ad hanc legem animus noster aptandus est; hanc sequatur, huic pareat. Et quaecumque fiunt, debuisse fieri putet nec velit obiurgare naturam. Optimum est pati, quod emendare non possis
