Tag: Life Death

Your Message Interrupted My Daydream

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Seneca, Moral Epistles 102.1-2

“Just as someone is annoying when they disturb a person from a happy dream, since he interrupts a pleasure, which, even if counterfeit, has something of a real effect, so your letter has caused me pain. It pulled me back from a needed reverie and I would have gone further if allowed.

It was pleasing me to think about the immortality of our souls, ok, really, to believe in it. I was opening myself to the arguments of great thinkers who promise as much as approve of this most welcome matter. I was surrendering myself to a great hope. I was feeling tired of myself, already sick of the broken pieces of my age and ready to cross over into that endless expanse of time and the embrace of every era. Then, suddenly, I was shaken up by your letter and I lost so beautiful a dream. Maybe I will seek it and find it again, if I get rid of you.

Quomodo molestus est iucundum somnium videnti qui excitat, aufert enim voluptatem, etiam si falsam, effectum tamen verae habentem; sic epistula tua mihi fecit iniuriam. Revocavit enim me cogitationi aptae traditum et iturum, si licuisset, ulterius. Iuvabat de aeternitate animarum quaerere, immo mehercules credere. Praebebam enim me facilem opinionibus magnorum virorum rem gratissimam promittentium magis quam probantium. Dabam me spei tantae. Iam eram fastidio mihi, iam reliquias aetatis infractae contemnebam in immensum illud tempus et in possessionem omnis aevi transiturus; cum subito experrectus sum epistula tua accepta et tam bellum somnium perdidi. Quod repetam, si te dimisero, et redimam.

Color photograph of a book illustration. A woman in a yellow dress looks into a hilly distance at a castle with a light

 

Lucian, “Dialogues of the Dead” Achilles Whines to Antilochus

~ sententiaeantiquae ~ 10 Comments

 

Apparently, after Odysseus leaves the underworld, Achilles has a conversation with his friend, Nestor’s son Antilochus. Antilochus is confused that Achilles spoke so disparagingly of glory in the previous day’s exchange with Odysseus. Achilles explains:

 

“Son of Nestor, when I was alive I wasn’t experienced in this place [Hades] and I was ignorant about which world was better, even preferring that miserable vision of glory to life. But now I know that glory is useless, even if living men endlessly praise it. Among the corpses there is equality, and neither that beauty nor strength remains, but we all wait the same under this darkness and differ from one another in no way. The Trojan dead do not fear me; the Achaian corpses are not solicitous of me. Instead, there is unsparing freedom of speech and every corpse is equal: “both base and noble man alike” [Il. 9.319] This causes me pain and I am annoyed that I don’t serve a lesser man, still alive.”

 

     ῏Ω παῖ Νέστορος, ἀλλὰ τότε μὲν ἄπειρος ἔτι τῶν ἐνταῦθα ὢν καὶ τὸ βέλτιον ἐκείνων ὁπότερον ἦν ἀγνοῶν τὸ δύστηνον ἐκεῖνο δοξάριον προετίμων τοῦ βίου, νῦν δὲ συνίημι ἤδη ὡς ἐκείνη μὲν ἀνωφελής, εἰ καὶ ὅτι μάλιστα οἱ ἄνω ῥαψῳδήσουσιν. μετὰ νεκρῶν δὲ ὁμοτιμία, καὶ οὔτε τὸ κάλλος ἐκεῖνο, ὦ ᾿Αντίλοχε, οὔτε ἡ ἰσχὺς πάρεστιν, ἀλλὰ κείμεθα ἅπαντες ὑπὸ τῷ αὐτῷ ζόφῳ ὅμοιοι καὶ κατ’ οὐδὲν ἀλλήλων διαφέροντες, καὶ οὔτε οἱ τῶν Τρώων νεκροὶ δεδίασίν με οὔτε οἱ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν θεραπεύου-σιν, ἰσηγορία δὲ ἀκριβὴς καὶ νεκρὸς ὅμοιος, “ἠμὲν κακὸς ἠδὲ καὶ ἐσθλός.” ταῦτά με ἀνιᾷ καὶ ἄχθομαι, ὅτι μὴ θητεύω ζῶν.

 

 

This may all seem a little silly, but it is actually a close—though at times absurdist—reading of Odyssey 11 and Iliad 9. It keeps going too….but Antilochus shuts Achilles down when the latter claims that his annoyance at their situation in the underworld proves his own superiority:

 

 

“No, this shows we’re better, Achilles. For we recognize that speaking is useless. It has seemed best to us to be quiet, to bear up and endure, not to become an object of ridicule like you whenever you wish for these sorts of things”

 

     Οὔκ, ἀλλ’ ἀμείνους, ὦ ᾿Αχιλλεῦ· τὸ γὰρ ἀνωφελὲς τοῦ λέγειν ὁρῶμεν· σιωπᾶν γὰρ καὶ φέρειν καὶ ἀνέχεσθαι δέδοκται ἡμῖν, μὴ καὶ γέλωτα ὄφλωμεν ὥσπερ σὺ τοιαῦτα εὐχόμενος.

 

Finis.