“You ask how this information finds me, who informed me that you were contemplating something you had revealed to no one? It was the one who knows the most, rumor. “What,” you ask, “am I so great that I incite rumor?” Well, you shouldn’t be measuring yourself according to this place: look to where you are.
Anything that overshadows its neighbors is a big deal, where it is large by comparison. For size does not have an absolute standard. Comparison increases one thing but diminishes another. A ship in the midst of a great wave is small. But its rudder, massive on another ship, is tiny on a different one.
So in your region, you are a big deal, even if you look down on yourself. What you do, how you eat, how you sleep, is investigated, it is known. For this reason you need to like carefully.
Judge yourself lucky at that time when you can live out in the open, when the walls protect you but don’t hide you–even though we can believe for the most part that we surround ourselves with walls not to be safe, but to sin more in secret.”
Quomodo hoc ad me pervenerit quaeris, quis mihi id te cogitare narraverit, quod tu nulli narraveras? Is qui scit plurumum, rumor. “Quid ergo?” inquis, “Tantus sum, ut possim excitare rumorem?” Non est quod te ad hunc locum respiciens metiaris; ad istum respice, in quo moraris. Quicquid inter vicina eminet, magnum est illic, ubi eminet. Nam magnitudo non habet modum certum; comparatio illam aut tollit aut deprimit. Navis, quae in flumine magna est, in mari parvula est. Gubernaculum, quod alteri navi magnum, alteri exiguum est.
Tu nunc in provincia, licet contemnas ipse te, magnus es. Quid agas, quemadmodum cenes, quemadmodum dormias, quaeritur, scitur; eo tibi diligentius vivendum est. Tunc autem felicem esse te iudica, cum poteris in publico vivere, cum te parietes tui tegent, non abscondent, quos plerumque circumdatos nobis iudicamus non ut tutius vivamus, sed ut peccemus occultius.
“And philosophy will grant you this path. So, entrust yourself to it, if you wish to be safe, if you want to be happy, and, really, if you want to be free, which is the most important thing. There’s no other way to approach this. Foolishness is a basic thing, it is wretched, unclean, servile, and overcome by many savage afflictions.
Such afflictions can be harsh masters, controlling us in turns or sometimes simultaneously–but you can fight them with wisdom, which is the only true freedom. There’s one way to get there and the path is direct. You will not get lost. Move along with a sure step: if you want everything under control, then give yourself to reason. You will rule many others, if reason rules you.
From wisdom you will understand what you should attempt and how to do it. You won’t just fall into things. There’s no one you can offer me who knows how they began to desire what they want–one doesn’t get to desire by planning, but by stumbling around impulsively. Fortune does not wage war against us more often than we attack Fortune.
It is shame, then, to be dragged along instead of forging ahead and then in the middle of chaotic events to ask in confusion: “How did I get here?” Goodbye.
Et hanc tibi viam dabit philosophia. Ad hanc te confer, si vis salvus esse, si securus, si beatus, denique si vis esse, quod est maximum, liber. Hoc contingere aliter non potest. Humilis res est stultitia, abiecta, sordida, servilis, multis affectibus et saevissimis subiecta. Hos tam graves dominos, interdum alternis imperantes, interdum pariter, dimittit a te sapientia, quae sola libertas est. Una ad hanc fert via, et quidem recta; non aberrabis. Vade certo gradu; si vis omnia tibi subicere, te subice rationi; multos reges si ratio te rexerit.
Ab illa disces, quidet quemadmodum adgredi debeas; non incides rebus. Neminem mihi dabis, qui sciat, quomodo quod vult, coeperit velle; non consilio adductus illo, sed inpetu inpactus est. Non minus saepe fortuna in nos incurrit quam nos in illam. Turpe est non ire, sed ferri et subito in medio turbine rerum stupentem quaerere: “Huc ego quemadmodum veni?” Vale.
“What is it? I don’t fear that people may change you. I do fear that they will slow you down. Someone who delays you causes a lot of harm, moreover, and especially given how fast life passes and how we make it even briefer by our inconsistency, always starting up something new and then immediately moving on to something else. We separate life into pieces and then squander it.
Hurry up, then, my dearest Lucilius, and think how fast you’d accelerate if an enemy were behind you or if you thought a horseman were overtaking you to run you down as you ran. This is happening! The enemy is at your back. You should step to it and flee, reach a place of safety, considering all along that it is noble to complete your life before death and then spend the rest of your time in peace, taking nothing for yourself because you already have a lucky life, one made no luckier by being longer.
When will you reach the time when you understand that time is nothing to you, when you can be tranquil and calm, heedless of tomorrow, because you have made the most of your life!?”
Quid ergo est? Non timeo, ne mutent te, timeo, ne inpediant. Multum autem nocet etiam qui moratur, utique in tanta brevitate vitae, quam breviorem inconstantia facimus aliud eius subinde atque aliud facientes initium. Diducimus illam in particulas ac lancinamus.
Propera ergo, Lucili carissime, et cogita quantum additurus celeritati fueris, si a tergo hostis instaret, si equitem adventare suspicareris ac fugientium premere vestigia. Fit hoc, premeris; accelera et evade, perduc te in tutum et subinde considera, quam pulchra res sit consummare vitam ante mortem, deinde expectare securum reliquam temporis sui partem, nihil sibi, in possessione beatae vitae positum, quae beatior non fit, si longior. O quando illud videbis tempus, quo scies tempus ad te non pertinere, quo tranquillus placidusque eris et crastini neglegens ut1 in summa tui satietate!
“The whole of our life is made of parts: it has large circles with smaller ones traced inside. There’s one circle that embraces and contains all the rest–it runs from our birth to our final day. There’s another that encloses our adolescence and another that contains all of childhood in its circuit. Then there’s the annual course that contains all the parts of time in its turn, which, when multiplied, contains all of life. The month is enclosed by a narrower ring while the day has the smallest circle. Yet even the day goes from its beginning to end, from sunrise to sunset.
This is why Heraclitus, who earned that nickname “the obscure” for his rhetorical style, said, “each day is the same as the rest. People explain this in various ways. One says that a day is equal in is number of hours. This isn’t a lie, if we think that a day is 24 hours hours. In that case, all days are necessarily equal because the night takes what the day loses.
Another claims that one day is the same as another in its appearance, since even the longest period of time has nothing more than what you can find in a day. It has light and night and the alternation of days into eternity makes these more numerous, not really different by expanding or contracting the count. And so, each day should be organized as if it continues and completes a sequence, and closes the circuit of a life.”
Tota aetas partibus constat et orbes habet circumductos maiores minoribus. Est aliquis, qui omnis conplectatur et cingat; hic pertinet a natali ad diem extremum. Est alter, qui annos adulescentiae cludit. Est qui totam pueritiam ambitu suo adstringit. Est deinde per se annus in se omnia continens tempora, quorum multiplicatione vita conponitur. Mensis artiore praecingitur circulo. Angustissimum habet dies gyrum, sed et hic ab initio ad exitum venit, ab ortu ad occasum.
Ideo Heraclitus, cui cognomen fecit orationis obscuritas, “Unus,” inquit, “dies par omni est.” Hoc alius aliter excepit. Dixit enim parem esse horis, nec mentitur; nam si dies est tempus viginti et quattuor horarum, necesse est omnes inter se dies pares esse, quia nox habet, quod dies perdidit. Alius ait parem esse unum diem omnibus similitudine; nihil enim habet longissimi temporis spatium, quod non et in uno die invenias, lucem et noctem, et in aeternum dies vices plures facit istas, non alias contractior, alias productior. Itaque sic ordinandus est dies omnis, tamquam cogat agmen et consummet atque expleat vitam.
Vassily Kandinsky, “Circles within a Circle” 1923
Personally, I am partial to circles that do not end…
“A great number of mortals, Paul, grumble about nature’s cruelty–that we are born to a short life and that this time rushes by so quickly and surprisingly through its granted span that, with the exception of only a few, life’s end comes just when we’re ready to truly live. And it isn’t just a complaint of the public and the uninformed masses: this feeling brings the same quarrel from famous people too–this prompted the shout from the most famous doctors, that “life is short, art is everlasting.”
This also caused Aristotle to express a charge ill fit to a wise person when he was hypothesizing about Nature that when it comes to lifespan she has granted so much to animals that they live five or ten lives when so little has been given to human beings who achieve so much more! We don’t have too little time, but we do waste much of it.
Life is long enough and it has been granted sufficiently for finishing great things as long as the whole time is dedicated to them. Yet when life is wasted in luxury and recklessness or when it is devoted to nothing good, we are forced by the last moment to understand that life has left us before we understood it was going. So it goes–we don’t get a short life, but make it so; and it isn’t limited, we just waste it.”
Maior pars mortalium, Pauline, de naturae malignitate conqueritur, quod in exiguum aevi gignamur, quod haec tam velociter, tam rapide dati nobis temporis spatia decurrant, adeo ut exceptis admodum paucis ceteros in ipso vitae apparatu vita destituat. Nec huic publico, ut opinantur, malo turba tantum et imprudens1 volgus ingemuit; clarorum quoque virorum hic affectus querellas evocavit. Inde illa maximi medicorum exclamatio est: ‘vitam brevem esse, longam artem’; inde Aristotelis cum rerum natura exigentis minime conveniens sapienti viro lis: ‘aetatis illam animalibus tantum indulsisse, ut quina aut dena saecula educerent, homini in tam multa ac magna genito tanto citeriorem terminum stare.’
Non exiguum temporis habemus, sed multum perdimus. Satis longa vita et in maximarum rerum consummationem large data est, si tota bene collocaretur; sed ubi per luxum ac neglegentiam diffluit, ubi nulli bonae rei impenditur, ultima demum necessitate cogente quam ire non intelleximus transisse sentimus. Ita est: non accipimus brevem vitam, sed facimus, nec inopes eius sed prodigi sumus.
Tower clock at the south side of the Schwabentor with the painting “Kosmos” by Carl Roesch, Vorstadt 69, Schaffhausen, Switzerland
“Socrates, then, would agree that it is useful for a person to be a worker and both harmful and bad for someone to be lazy. Work, then, is a good thing; being lazy is an evil one. He said that work was when people did something good, but he used to call people who gambled or did any other deceptive or questionable thing lazy. From these ideas, he rightly believed that “work isn’t to be criticized at all, laziness is.”
“During the reign of Manes’ son, a massive food shortage struck all of Lydia. The Lydians endured this living as they could, but after a while, when it did not stop, they sought cures, and different men devised different solutions. At that time they invented the ideas of dice, and knucklebones, and ball, and every other kind of game except for draughts. For the Lydians do not claim the invention of these games. They invented the games they did for the famine. They played their games on alternate days when they could not seek food and on others they stopped their games and ate. They lived this way for eighteen years.”
“Plato likened life to a dice-game in which we need both to throw what is advantageous and to use the dice well after we’ve thrown them. And when we are subject to chance, if we take good advice, this is our task: though we cannot control the toss, we can accept the outcome luck gives us properly and allot to each event a place in which what is good for us helps the most and what was unplanned aggrieves the least.”
And here is the passage Plutarch is drawing on from the tenth book of the Republic (Plato, Republic 604c-d)
“The best way to deliberate about what has happened is just as we might in the fall of dice: to order our affairs in reference to how the dice have fallen where reason dictates the best place would be, and not to stumble forward like children shocked at the outcome wasting time with crying. Instead, we should always prepare our mind towards addressing what has happened as quickly as possible and to redress what has fallen and what ails, erasing lament [lit. threnody] with treatment*.”
“Sôsikrates, in his Successions, says that when Pythagoras was asked by Leon, the tyrant of the Phliasians, who he was, he said, “a philosopher,” and that he said life was like the Great Games. Some people go there to compete, others go to make money, and the best people go to watch. For in life, some people have a slavish nature and they hunt for glory or profit, while philosophers search for the truth.”
“It is amazing how the schedule is or seems on individual days in the city when they all blend together. If you ask anyone “what did you do today?” He may say, “I went to a toga-ceremony, an engagement, or a marriage. I was the witness at a will-signing, or at court as a witness or supporter.” These things which you do seem necessary on the day that you do them but empty if you remember that you have done the same kind of things every day and they seem even sillier if you consider them when you are away.
Then the realization comes over you: “How many days have I wasted in trivial pursuits!” This occurs to me whenever I am reading or writing or taking some time to exercise, to keep my mind fit for my work, at my Laurentum. I hear nothing and I say nothing which later on it hurts me that I said or heard. No one troubles me with evil rumors. I find no one to blame but myself when I write with too little ease. I am troubled by no hope, no fear; I am disrupted by no gossip. I speak only with myself and my little books.
What a fine and sincere life! What sweet and honest leisure, finer than nearly any business at all. The sea, the beach, my own true and private museum—how much you discover for me, how much you have told me!
Take the first chance you can to leave that noise, the empty conversation, and so many useless tasks and dedicate yourself to studies or relaxing. For our friend Atilius put it most elegantly and intelligently when he said “it is better to do engage in leisure than to do nothing.”
Plinius Minicio Fundano Suo S.
1Mirum est quam singulis diebus in urbe ratio aut constet aut constare videatur, pluribus iunctisque
Nam si quem interroges “Hodie quid egisti?,” respondeat: “Officio togae virilis interfui, sponsalia aut nuptias frequentavi, ille me ad signandum testamentum, ille in advocationem, ille in 3 consilium rogavit.” Haec quo die feceris, necessaria, eadem, si cotidie fecisse te reputes, inania videntur, multo magis cum secesseris. Tunc enim subit recordatio: “Quot dies quam frigidis rebus absumpsi!” 4 Quod evenit mihi, postquam in Laurentino meo aut lego aliquid aut scribo aut etiam corpori vaco, cuius fulturis animus sustinetur. Nihil audio quod audisse, nihil dico quod dixisse paeniteat; nemo apud me quemquam sinistris sermonibus carpit, neminem ipse reprehendo, nisi tamen me cum parum commode scribo; nulla spe nullo timore sollicitor, nullis rumoribus inquietor: mecum tantum et cum libellis loquor. O rectam sinceramque vitam! O dulce otium honestumque ac paene omni negotio pulchrius! O mare, o litus, verum secretumque μουσεῖον, quam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis! 7 Proinde tu quoque strepitum istum inanemque discursum et multum ineptos labores, ut primum fuerit occasio, relinque teque studiis vel otio trade. 8 Satius est enim, ut Atilius noster eruditissime simul et facetissime dixit, otiosum esse quam nihil agere. Vale.
“A man who has done proper things,
Certainly forgets about Hades.”
Ἀίδα τοι λάθεται
ἄρμενα πράξαις ἀνήρ.
Schol. ad Pin. Ol. 8.72
“He certainly forgets about Hades.” For every man who has accomplished fitting things obtains forgetfulness of Hades by his own choice, and this in fact means death. For, I guess, this is naturally just the thought of those who are troubled: for this sort of thing is the fine action of a fantasy for those who do well.”
A man fresh from some handsome win
In a time of plenty,
Takes flight, hope-propelled,
On wings of manly accomplishment.
He’s intent on more than riches.
Men’s joy swells fast, and fast it falls to earth
Disturbed by an adverse pronouncement.
Beings for a day. What is anyone?
What is someone not? A shadow’s dreaming,
That’s man. Yet, when the light of Zeus issues,
Men shine radiant and life is kind.
“I am waiting for your letters on those events [in Rome]: what is Arrius saying and what is is opinion about being overthrown. Which consuls are being prepared—is it Pompey and Crassus as people claim or, as was just written to me, is it Servius Sulpicius with Gabinius. Are there new laws? Is there anything worthy of news at all? Or, who, since Nepos has left, is going to be nominated as Augur? (and this is the one thing I might be captured with by those people—look at how easy I am!)
Why do I ask these things when I want to put them aside and pursue philosophy with all my focus? This, I say, is what is in my mind. I wish I had pursued this from the start. But now when I have learned that everything which I thought was precious is empty, I am planning to dedicate myself to all the Muses.
Nevertheless, please do tell me in your reply about ?Tutius? and whether they have readied someone for his place and also what has become of Publius Clodius. Write me about everything, as you promised, at leisure. And also tell me on what day you think you will leave Rome so that I may tell you more certainly where I will be then? Please send me a letter right away on the things I have written you about. I am deeply awaiting your letter.”
De istis rebus exspecto tuas litteras, quid Arrius narret, quo animo se destitutum ferat, et qui consules parentur, utrum, ut populi sermo, Pompeius et Crassus, an, ut mihi scribitur, cum Gabinio Ser. Sulpicius, et num quae novae leges et num quid novi omnino, et, quoniam Nepos proficiscitur, cuinam auguratus deferatur, quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi possum—vide levitatem meam! sed quid ego haec, quae cupio deponere et toto animo atque omni cura ϕιλοσοϕεῖν? sic, inquam, in animo est; vellem ab initio, nunc vero, quoniam quae putavi esse praeclara expertus sum quam essent inania, cum omnibus Musis rationem habere cogito.
3Tu tamen de †Tutio†1 ad me rescribe certius et num quis in eius locum paretur, et quid de P. Clodio fiat, et omnia, quem ad modum polliceris, ἐπὶ σχολῆς scribe. et quo die Roma te exiturum putes velim ad me scribas, ut certiorem te faciam quibus in locis futurus sim, epistulamque statim des de iis rebus de quibus ad te scripsi. valde enim exspecto tuas litteras.
