New Philosopher – July 2019

NewPhilosopher

Your sorrow is most to be feared
when you have retired to your own
home: for as long as your divinity is
before your eyes, it can find no means
of access to you, but Caesar will possess
your entire being; when you have left
his presence, grief, as though it then
had an opportunity of attack, will lie
in ambush for you in your loneliness,
and creep by degrees over your mind
as it rests from its labours. You ought
not, therefore, to allow any moment to
be unoccupied by literary pursuits: at
such times let literature repay to you
the debt which your long and faithful
love has laid upon it, let it claim you for
its high priest and worshipper: at such

By Seneca

On grief

On grief

times let Homer and Virgil be much

in your company, those poets to whom

the human race owes as much as eve-

ryone owes to you, and they especially,

because you have made them known

to a wider circle than that for which

they wrote. All time which you entrust

to their keeping will be safe. At such

times, as far as you are able, compile

an account of your Caesar’s acts, that

they may be read by all future ages in

a panegyric written by one of his own

household: for he himself will afford

you both the noblest subject and the

noblest example for putting together

and composing a history. I dare not

go so far as to advise you to write in

your usual elegant style a version of

Aesop’s fables, a work which no Ro-

man intellect has hitherto attempted.

It is hard, no doubt, for a mind which

has received so rude a shock to betake

itself so quickly to these livelier pur-

suits: but if it is able to pass from more

serious studies to these lighter ones,

you must regard it as a proof that it

has recovered its strength, and is itself

again. In the former case, although it

may suffer and hang back, still it will

be led on by the serious nature of the

subject under consideration to take an

interest in it: but, unless it has thor-

oughly recovered, it will not endure to

treat of subjects which must be writ-

ten of in a cheerful spirit. You ought,

therefore, first to exercise your mind

upon grave studies, and then to en-

liven it with gayer ones.

It will also be a great solace to you

if you often ask yourself: “Am I griev-

ing on my own account or on that

of him who is gone? If on my own, I

have no right to boast of my affection-

ate sensibility; grief is only excusable

as long as it is honourable; but when

it is only caused by personal interests,

it no longer springs from tenderness:

nothing can be less becoming to a

good man than to make a calcula-

tion about his grief for his brother. If

I grieve on his account, I must nec-

essarily take one of the two follow-