The Letters of the Younger Pliny, First Series – Volume 1. Pliny the Younger

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СКАЧАТЬ I also felt that I was promising not mere games or gladiatorial shows, but an annual subscription for the upbringing of freeborn youths. The pleasures of the eye and ear never lack eulogists; on the contrary, they need rather to be put in the background than in the foreground by speakers: but to obtain volunteers who will undertake the fatigue and hard work of self-culture, we have not only to offer rewards but to encourage them with the choicest addresses. For if doctors have to coax their patients into adopting an insipid but yet wholesome diet, how much the more ought the man who is giving his fellows good advice to use all the allurements of oratory to make his hearers adopt a course which, though most useful, is not generally popular? Especially is this the case when we have to try and convince men who have no children of the value of the boon which is bestowed on those who have, and to induce all the rest to wait patiently till their turn comes to receive the benefit now given to a few, and in the meantime show themselves fit recipients for it. But just as then, when we wished to explain the meaning and bearing of our bounty, we were studying the common good and not seeking an opportunity for self-boasting, so now in the matter of publication we are afraid lest people should think that we have had an eye not so much to the benefit of others as to our own glorification. Besides, we do not forget how much better it is to seek the reward of a good action in the testimony of one's conscience than in fame. For glory ought to follow of its own accord, and not to be consciously sought for; nor, again, is a good deed any the less beautiful because owing to some chance or other no glory attends it. Those who boast of their own good deeds are credited not so much with boasting for having done them, but with having done them in order to be able to boast of them. Consequently what would have been considered a noble action if told of by a stranger, loses its striking qualities when recounted by the actual doer. For when men find that the deed itself is inassailable they attack the boastfulness of the doer, and hence if you commit anything to be ashamed of, the deed itself is blamed, while if you perform anything deserving of praise, you are blamed for not having kept silence upon it.

      Beyond all this, however, there is a special obstacle in the way of publishing the speech. I delivered it not before the people but before the municipal corporation, not in public but in the Council Chamber. So I am afraid that it may look inconsistent if, after avoiding the applause and cheers of the crowd when I delivered the speech, I now seek for that applause by publishing it, and if, after getting the common people, whose interests I was seeking, removed from the threshold and the walls of the Chamber—to prevent the appearance of courting popularity—I should now seem to deliberately seek the acclamations of those who are only interested in my munificence to the extent of having a good example shown them. Well, I have told you the grounds of my hesitation, but I shall follow the advice you give me, for its weight will be reason sufficient for me. Farewell.

      1.IX.—TO MINUTIUS FUNDANUS

      It is surprising how if you take each day singly here in the city you pass or seem to pass your time reasonably enough when you take stock thereof, but how, when you put the days together, you are dissatisfied with yourself. If you ask any one, "What have you been doing to-day?" he will say, "Oh, I have been attending a coming-of-age function; I was at a betrothal or a wedding; so-and-so asked me to witness the signing of a will; I have been acting as witness to A, or I have been in consultation with B." All these occupations appear of paramount importance on the day in question, but if you remember that you repeat the round day after day, they seem a sheer waste of time, especially when you have got away from them into the country; for then the thought occurs to you, "What a number of days I have frittered away in these chilly formalities!" That is how I feel when I am at my Laurentine Villa and busy reading or writing, or even when I am giving my body a thorough rest and so repairing the pillars of my mind. I hear nothing and say nothing to give me vexation; no one comes backbiting a third party, and I myself have no fault to find with any one except it be with myself when my pen does not run to my liking. I have no hopes and fears to worry me, no rumours to disturb my rest. I hold converse with myself and with my books. 'Tis a genuine and honest life; such leisure is delicious and honourable, and one might say that it is much more attractive than any business. The sea, the shore, these are the true secret haunts of the Muses, and how many inspirations they give me, how they prompt my musings! Do, I beg of you, as soon as ever you can, turn your back on the din, the idle chatter, and the frivolous occupations of Rome, and give yourself up to study or recreation. It is better, as our friend Attilius once very wittily and very truly said, to have no occupation than to be occupied with nothingness. Farewell.

      1.X.—TO ATTIUS CLEMENS

      If ever there was a time when this Rome of ours was devoted to learning, it is now. There are many shining lights, of whom it will be enough to mention but one. I refer to Euphrates the philosopher. I saw a great deal of him, even in the privacy of his home life, during my young soldiering days in Syria, and I did my best to win his affection, though that was not a hard task, for he is ever easy of access, frank, and full of the humanities that he teaches. I only wish that I had been as successful in fulfilling the hopes he then formed of me as he has been increasing his large stock of virtues, though possibly it is I who now admire them the more because I can appreciate them the better. Even now my appreciation is not as complete as it might be. It is only an artist who can thoroughly judge another painter, sculptor, or image-maker, and so too it needs a philosopher to estimate another philosopher at his full merit. But so far as I can judge, Euphrates has many qualities so conspicuously brilliant that they arrest the eyes and attention even of those who have but modest pretensions to learning. His reasoning is acute, weighty, and elegant, often attaining to the breadth and loftiness that we find in Plato. His conversation flows in a copious yet varied stream, strikingly pleasant to the ear, and with a charm that seizes and carries away even the reluctant hearer. Add to this a tall, commanding presence, a handsome face, long flowing hair, a streaming white beard—all of which may be thought accidental adjuncts and without significance, but they do wonderfully increase the veneration he inspires. There is no studied negligence in his dress, it is severely plain but not austere; when you meet him you revere him without shrinking away in awe. His life is purity itself, but he is just as genial; his lash is not for men but for their vices; for the erring he has gentle words of correction rather than sharp rebuke. When he gives advice you cannot help listening in rapt attention, and you hope he will go on persuading you even when the persuasion is complete. He has three children, two of them sons, whom he has brought up with the strictest care. His father-in-law is Pompeius Julianus, a man of great distinction, but whose chief title to fame is that though, as ruler of a province, he might have chosen a son-in-law of the highest social rank, he preferred one who was distinguished not for social dignities but for wisdom.

      Yet why describe at greater length a man whose society I can no longer enjoy? Is it to make myself feel my loss the more? For my time is all taken up by the duties of an office—important, no doubt, but tedious in the extreme. I sit at my magisterial desk; I countersign petitions, I make out the public accounts; I write hosts of letters, but what illiterary productions they are! Sometimes—but how seldom I get the opportunity—I complain to Euphrates about these uncongenial duties. He consoles me and even assures me that there is no more noble part in the whole of philosophy than to be a public official, to hear cases, pass judgment, explain the laws and administer justice, and so practise in short what the philosophers do but teach. But he never can persuade me of this, that it is better to be busy as I am than to spend whole days in listening to and acquiring knowledge from him. That makes me the readier to urge you, whose time is your own, to let him put a finish and polish upon you when you come to town, and I hope you will come all the sooner on that account. I am not one of those—and there are many of them—who grudge to others the happiness they are debarred from themselves; on the contrary, I feel a very lively sense of pleasure in seeing my friends abounding in joys that are denied to me. Farewell.

      1.XI.—TO FABIUS JUSTUS

      It is quite a long time since I had a letter from you. "Oh," you say, "there has been nothing to write about." But at least you might write and say just that, or you might send me the line with which our grandfathers used to begin their letters: "All is well if you are well, for I am well." I should be quite satisfied with so much; СКАЧАТЬ