Musonius Rufus, Lectures 11.4

For these reasons I recommend particularly the life of a shepherd. But, speaking generally, if one devotes himself to the life of philosophy and tills the land at the same time, I should not compare any other way of life to his nor prefer any other means of livelihood.

For is it not "living more in accord with Nature" to draw one's sustenance directly from the earth, which is the nurse and mother of us all, rather than from some other source?

Is it not more like the life of a man to live in the country than to sit idly in the city, like the Sophists? Who will say that it is not healthier to live out of doors than to shun the open air and the heat of the sun?

I have always had an affection for sheep and goats, but especially for sheep, and that hopeless Romantic in me still imagines that if I had lived a different life, then it might have involved watching over a flock of Herdwicks on the slopes of the Pennines. This would, of course, have also come with writing poems about longing.

My dream is only half in jest, because there is actually something deadly serious behind the desire to be closer to Nature. Yes, it speaks to the passions, and yet it is also completely in agreement with the calling of reason. I have found that the best things in life will fulfill not just one aspect of me, but everything about me in proper order.

What could be better than going straight to the source, instead of mucking about with all sorts of substitutes and diversions? A painting of a tree can be quite beautiful, but it is as nothing compared to sitting under a tree. Let me by all means read about love, and it will still tell me very little about the glory of actually being in love.

The drones crawling about inside the office blocks in their business suits will bicker about who gets the room with the biggest window, forgetting the whole time that they could be out in the sun and the fresh air, if only they had chosen a natural over an artificial life.

Nature already provides everything we need for the benefit of the body, and yet Nature does far more than that by further offering everything we need for the benefit of the soul. Her order reveals the design of Providence, and so points us directly to knowing the truth. Her harmony reveals the balance and complementarity in all things, and so points us directly to loving what is good.

Sophists of any time or place will try to convince us that life requires all sorts of manufactured trinkets to make it worthwhile, and they are quite ready to sell them to us. So we are told that the trappings of money, property, and status are the measure of happiness.

Don’t let them take you for a ride, because everything they are offering is a pale imitation of life’s blessings. The life well lived requires virtue above all else, and Nature has already given us the power to know and to love, while she then shows us how to use that power by the example of all her works.

Written in 11/1999

Tidbits from Montaigne 11

Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead. 

—Michel de Montaigne, Essays 1.20

Seven Virtues and Seven Liberal Arts

Francesco Pesellino, Seven Virtues and Seven Liberal Arts (c. 1450)

Domenico Fetti, Melancholy

Domenico Fetti, Melancholy (c. 1620)

Musonius Rufus, Lectures 11.3

In fact, to me this is the most agreeable of all aspects of farming, because it gives the spirit more leisure to reflect on and to investigate the things that have to do with our own development and training.

For while, to be sure, the occupations which strain and tire the whole body compel the mind to share in concentration upon them, or at all events, upon the body, yet the occupations which require not too much physical exertion do not hinder the mind from reflecting on some of the higher things and by such reasoning from increasing its own wisdom—a goal toward which every philosopher earnestly strives.

Hesiod could be both a shepherd and a great poet, and Wendell Berry assures us that farmers often make for the best philosophers. As with all things in Stoicism, the central question will always be about what can best help us to become more virtuous, and so to be happy. Is there really something especially noble about the agrarian life?

I would have probably been dubious of any such claim when I was younger, when the call of the city and of industry was so seductive, but as I grow older and just a bit more experienced, I think I begin to understand.

Though I once had many opportunities to live closer to the land, I sadly never made a habit of it. I regret this now. Perhaps if I had managed to do so, I would not think that farming was such a burden, and I would also not be such a terrible gardener. I will still cringe at the labor involved, at the toil and the sweat, and it seems a bit strange to me when Musonius says that the physical effort of farming is hardly so bad.

What I find interesting, however, is that when I eventually moved away from the city and into the country, the people I did meet who still worked in farming, now sadly a dying breed, never complained about the hours or the heaviness of the work.

Yes, they got up early, and yes, they were constantly active, and yes, they didn’t stop until it was dark, but this did not seem to trouble them at all. What troubled them was the slow creep of suburbia, the restrictions on selling their produce, and the threat of total mechanization. They feared losing their livelihoods, and they did not want to see a way of life disappear.

Through it all, I must also admit that they came across as some of the most human people I had ever met. They often had a hard edge, but, on the whole, they thought more, they discussed more, and they laughed more than the other pale souls I knew. I started to see that it was hard to win their trust, but once it was won it was absolutely assured.

How did they find the time and the energy to be this way? There may not have been refined in the usual bourgeois sense, but there were brilliant rays of character that outshone all the glorified office managers I was so familiar with.

Perhaps this was because their work actually encouraged them to find meaning, the opportunity to reflect.

I do not mean a leisure of the sort championed by stuffy college professors, who think it rustic to smoke corncob pipes while sipping expensive whiskey on their patios.

No, I mean that sense of dignity I could get from doing the most primitive manual work. At exactly the same time I could use my mind in one worthwhile way, while my hands were doing something else in another worthwhile way. Is this what Musonius meant?

Soon after my wife and I moved to Texas, we bit off a bit more than we could chew by renting a house with what I thought of as a massive plot of land, but what any decent Texan saw as a quaint back yard. As spring came around, I neglected to do any weeding or mowing. Before too long, there was a jungle back there.

My neighbors had a good laugh at my expense. “That’ll now be a full day’s work to clear it, though for a Yankee it’ll probably be two or three days. Unless he’s a yuppie and pays someone else to do it for him.”

And that is exactly how long it took me, as I stubbornly refused to hire anyone to do what I should have done many weeks earlier. It was already hot as hell, and there I was, chopping and hacking away, craving a cold beer but knowing that I wouldn’t come back out once I had gone to the comfort of indoors.

I still have a powerful memory of all the reflecting I did during those few days, and it wasn’t just about complaining and resentment. I credit those few days with two things: the ability to write almost my entire doctoral dissertation in three weeks after I was done, and the gift of learning a deep sense of humility from my own shame.

It was the first time that I truly saw how the right kind of work of the body could do wonders for the right kind of work of the soul.

Written in 11/1999

Dhammapada 81

As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, wise people falter not amidst blame and praise. 

Musonius Rufus, Lectures 11.2

For the earth repays most justly and well those who cultivate her, returning many times as much as she received and furnishing an abundance of all the necessities of life to anyone who is willing to work; and this she does without violating one's dignity or self-respect.

You may be sure that no one who was not demoralized by soft living would say that the labor of the farmer was degrading or unfit for a good man.

How, I ask, could planting trees or plowing or pruning vines not be honorable? Are not sowing seed and harvesting and threshing all occupations for free men and befitting good men? Even keeping flocks, as it did not disgrace Hesiod nor prevent him from being a poet and beloved of the gods, so it would not prevent anyone else.

I must be very careful not to succumb to any sort of romanticism here, of holding to some idyllic image where a rural or pastoral life magically removes all troubles and fears. It may look so refined on paper, while it ends up being quite gritty in practice.

Whenever I have done any sort of farm work, such as clearing a field, or feeding livestock, or baling hay, I have hardly found it to be easy. In whatever way I may have prepared myself, my skin ended up burned, my bones and muscles ached in ways I did not think were possible, and I simply accepted that the dirt and stink would not come off, that they were now a part of me.

At the end of the day, however, the extreme sense of tiredness was profoundly good.

Quite unlike the hours spent filling out paperwork, or babbling at meetings, or inching along in traffic on the highway, something essential and productive was getting done.

Quite unlike the labyrinth of modern bureaucracy, it was beautiful in its simplicity. There was no waste, and there was no confusion of purpose.

Most importantly, it could all be practiced, however much it asked of my body, without demanding that I compromise anything within my conscience. It could be pursued with pride, precisely because it was both useful and moral.

Deception or dodging your responsibilities might serve you well at a law firm or in the boardroom, but they are of absolutely no help at all in a barn or on a field. If I make excuses or point fingers, the job simply doesn’t get done, and then no one eats.

Smug, spoiled, and self-satisfied people might look down their noses at you, but that is entirely on them. Nature is always immediately present, right in your face, with no artificial barriers or distractions. Sometimes she is deeply kind and sometimes she is terrifyingly violent, but she is always completely honest.

In the words of that earthy heretic, John Ball:

When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?

Written in 11/1999

Epictetus, Golden Sayings 123

Shall we never wean ourselves—shall we never heed the teachings of Philosophy (unless perchance they have been sounding in our ears like an enchanter's drone):

This World is one great City, and one is the substance whereof it is fashioned. A certain period indeed there needs must be, while these give place to those; some must perish for others to succeed; some move and some abide. Yet all is full of friends—first God, then Men, whom Nature has bound by ties of kindred each to each.

IMAGE: John Martin, The City of God (1851)
 

 

Allegory of Prudence

Titian, Allegory of Prudence (c. 1550–1565)

Inscription:

EX PRÆTE/RITO // PRÆSENS PRVDEN/TER AGIT // NI FVTVRA / ACTIONĒ DE/TVRPET

"From the experience of the past, the present acts prudently, lest it spoil future actions.”

Aesop's Fables 23

Androcles

A slave named Androcles once escaped from his master and fled to the forest. As he was wandering about there he came upon a Lion lying down moaning and groaning. At first he turned to flee, but finding that the Lion did not pursue him, he turned back and went up to him. 

As he came near, the Lion put out his paw, which was all swollen and bleeding, and Androcles found that a huge thorn had got into it, and was causing all the pain. He pulled out the thorn and bound up the paw of the Lion, who was soon able to rise and lick the hand of Androcles like a dog. 

Then the Lion took Androcles to his cave, and every day used to bring him meat from which to live. 

But shortly afterwards both Androcles and the Lion were captured, and the slave was sentenced to be thrown to the Lion, after the latter had been kept without food for several days. 

The Emperor and all his Court came to see the spectacle, and Androcles was led out into the middle of the arena. Soon the Lion was let loose from his den, and rushed bounding and roaring towards his victim. 

But as soon as he came near to Androcles he recognized his friend, and fawned upon him, and licked his hands like a friendly dog. 

The Emperor, surprised at this, summoned Androcles to him, who told him the whole story. Whereupon the slave was pardoned and freed, and the Lion let loose to his native forest. 

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.

 

Musonius Rufus, Lectures 11.1

Lecture 11: What means of livelihood are appropriate for a philosopher? 

There is also another means of livelihood in no way inferior to this, indeed, perhaps it would not be unreasonable to consider it even better for a strong person, namely earning a living from the soil, whether one owns his own land or not.

For many who are farming land owned either by the state or by other private individuals are yet able to support not only themselves but their wives and children as well; and some in fact attain even a high degree of prosperity by hard work with their own hands. 

This may seem an odd sort of question, because most of us would assume that being a “philosopher” is itself already a profession, one for which you go to certain schools, receive certain accreditations, and then make a living writing articles and teaching other people about becoming philosophers.

In this sense, philosophers are seen as making their way by not doing much of anything, but rather by telling other people how to go about doing things. This is often sadly true, though only for those who understand philosophy in the shallowest sense.

The standing joke, of course, is that philosophy majors will never make any money from their useless trade, but that is not necessarily the case. I know a good number who have turned their studies into lucrative careers, either by putting on an academic puppet show, or by using their credentials to move on into fields like law or business.

Those who aren’t cut out for that sort of self-promotion, however, will likely give up philosophy entirely, and find other ways to produce and consume.

Fully aware that my own thinking goes quite against the grain, I will nevertheless suggest that philosophy is not really a profession at all; it is a vocation.

The genuine philosopher seeks meaning first and foremost, and so looks behind all those concerns about making money or building status. When he must ask how to feed, clothe, or house himself, he will not think that these things alone constitute living well, but rather that they must be informed by living well.

Accordingly, anyone, regardless of how he tries to pay the bills, is able to be a philosopher, as long as his most important calling is to be human above all else.

Most of the wisest and best people I have known were never formally trained in philosophy, and they never pontificated in any lecture hall. They followed the urges of their minds and hearts to know and to love, to be brave enough to distinguish between the true and the false, the right and the wrong, before they pursued any action.

Given that philosophy is a universal mission, might there be certain jobs or lifestyles most conducive to a good life? Musonius will here suggest that the life of a farmer, living close to the land that Nature provides, is quite clearly ideal for the man who wishes to live in accord with Nature.

What Musonius has to say makes me reconsider my own choices in life, and it inspires me to challenge my own children about the choices that they will make. Perhaps it is wiser to be a Wendell Berry instead of a Bertrand Russell.

Written in 11/1999

IMAGE: Maxfield Parrish, The Philosopher (The Farmer) (1909)

Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ 3.15

How we must stand and speak, in everything that we desire

1. "My Son, speak thus in every matter, 'Lord, if it pleases You, let this come to pass. Lord, if this shall be for Your honor, let it be done in Your Name. Lord, if You see it good for me, and approve it as useful, then grant me to use it for Your honor. But if You know that it shall be hurtful unto me, and not profitable for the health of my soul, take the desire away from me!' For not every desire is from the Holy Ghost, although it appears to a man as right and good. It is difficult to judge with certainty whether a good or an evil spirit moves you to desire this or that, or whether you are moved by your own spirit. Many have been deceived at the last, who seemed at the beginning to be moved by a good spirit. 

2. "Therefore, whatsoever seems to you desirable, you must always desire and seek after it with the fear of God and humility of heart, and most of all, must altogether resign yourself, and commit all unto Me and say, 'Lord, You know what is best; let this or that be, according as You will. Give what You will, so much as You will, when You will. Do with me as You know best, and as best shall please You, and as shall be most to Your honor. Place me where You wish, and freely work Your will with me in all things. I am in Your hand, and You turn me in my course. Behold, I am Your servant, ready for all things; for I desire to live not to myself but to You. Oh, that I might live worthily and perfectly.'" 

A PRAYER TO BE ENABLED TO DO GOD'S WILL PERFECTLY 

3. Grant me Your grace, most merciful Jesus, that it may be with me, and work in me, and persevere with me, even unto the end. Grant that I may ever desire and wish whatsoever is most pleasing and dear unto You. Let Your will be mine, and let my will always follow Yours, and entirely accord with it. May I choose and reject whatsoever You do; yes, let it be impossible for me to choose or reject except according to Your will.

4. Grant that I may die to all worldly things, and for Your sake love to be despised and unknown in this world. Grant unto me, above all things, that I can desire to rest in You, and that in You my heart may be at peace.You are the true peace of the heart, You alone its rest; apart from You all things are hard and unquiet. In You alone, the supreme and eternal God, I will lay me down in peace and take my rest. Amen.

Youth

Paolo Veronese, Youth Between Virtue and Vice (1582)

Hans Holbein, The Dance of Death 13: The Duke

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.39

“Do you see now,” she continued, “what follows upon all that we have said?”

“What is it?” I asked.

“That all fortune is plainly good,” she answered.

“How can that be?” said I.

“Consider this,” she said. “All fortune, whether pleasant or difficult, is due to this cause; it is for the sake of rewarding the good or exercising their virtue, and of punishing and correcting bad men. Therefore, it is plain that all this fortune, which is allowed to be just or expedient, must be good.”

—from Book 4, Prose 7

Even as the whole argument of the Consolation has been leading us to this insight, it can still be a difficult conclusion to accept. We are so accustomed to thinking that bad things happen to good people, and that good things happen to bad people, precisely because we assume that happiness or misery proceed from our external conditions. We look to the circumstances to provide our blessings, instead of looking to our own character to give meaning to the circumstances.

We can hardly be blamed for such habits, having been told for our entire lives, by those who would call themselves our betters, that “getting what we want” requires making the world fit our preferences. We remain ignorant of the other path, that we need only master ourselves.

Rarely will a day pass when I don’t find it necessary to remind myself that all fortune can be good for me, if only I understand it rightly. If I deliberately go through the argument in my head, then I restore my sense that nothing is ever wasted, and that every occurrence is an opportunity.

What is good for me? All that increases my own virtue, my power to live well through understanding and love. What is bad for me? All that increases my own vice, my weakness of living poorly through ignorance and hatred. Once I clearly understand this, and I put it into concrete action instead of merely mouthing the words, then everything else will fall into place.

If I am working toward improving myself, then any kind of fortune, whether we traditionally call it “good” or “bad”, will be of assistance in that improvement. If something is given to me, I now have a chance to make proper use of the situation, and if something is taken away, I also have a chance to make proper use of the situation. Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, easy or difficult, it is helpful to me, and therefore it is good for me.

Do I need to be encouraged in one way? Some things come to me as rewards. Do I need to be discouraged in another way? Other things come to me as corrections. My own awareness of my moral worth will tell me the difference.

And what if I am oblivious to the content of my character, only interested in acquiring and consuming more? Then, out of my own confusion, no state of affairs will be of any use to me at all. Closing myself to the difference between right and wrong, I won’t know where the value is in something that is given to me, and I won’t recognize the benefit in something that is taken away.

Can I still choose to turn myself around? Of course, but that will be entirely up to my own judgment, not up to the whims of Fortune. No reward or punishment has its intended effect without my willingness to embrace its purpose.

Now I can see more clearly what was at first so confusing: All situations are good for the good man, and all situations are bad for the bad man. The one sees them as occasions to act well, while the other sees them as excuses to act poorly.

The light or the darkness are in the quality of my thinking about things, not in the mere presence or absence of things.

Written in 12/2015

Heroic Virtue

Peter Paul Rubens, Hercules as Heroic Virtue Overcoming Discord (1633)

Vanitas 14

Franciscus Gijsbrechts, Vanitas Still Life with a Skull, a Globe, a Trumpet, and Smoking Implements (c. 1675)

Seneca, On Peace of Mind 11.11

We have seen Ptolemaeus, King of Africa, and Mithridates, King of Armenia, under the charge of Gaius's guards: the former was sent into exile, the latter chose it in order to make his exile more honorable.

Among such continual topsy-turvy changes, unless you expect that whatever can happen will happen to you, you give adversity power against you, a power which can be destroyed by anyone who looks at it beforehand.

The Romans were quite skilled at managing the business of other people around them, and they were masters at making or breaking the kings of their vassal states.

Egypt, the breadbasket of the Empire, had to be kept firmly under control, and when the nominal rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty became too inconvenient, the formality was abolished entirely.

The Armenians were always a problem, lying right on the border with the hated Persians.

Was this or that king useful for the moment? Then he was allowed to keep his titles and honors for the moment. Was he suddenly inconvenient? Then he would find himself deposed, exiled, or murdered.

There is the very problem with a politics divorced from a sense of ethics, where justice is subservient to the lust for power.

Through all of it, the Romans were hardly immune to suffering from their own vices. As always, the deepest harm will strike inward, not outward. There were always good people, committed to living with character, and yet around them there was also intrigue, corruption, and violence.

For all of its greatness in some ways, Rome, whether in the Republic or the Empire, was already doomed in other ways. Ambitious men, grasping men, interested in profit over principle, encouraged the rot from within. It is no different in any other time or place.

Knowing that all of our circumstances are subject to the whims of despots, how can we possibly expect our lives to become good or bad by the money, honor, or power we might win or lose?

Can we fight them? Yes, of course, but once we fight on their terms, we become them, and so the whole effort was wasted by transforming ourselves into the very people we find so disagreeable.

How rarely it even occurs to us that a success in life will have nothing to do with the externals that are given or taken away. Perhaps we could look to owning ourselves, instead of trying to own others?

There is no admission of defeat in saying that others will act as they will act; there is only an admission of defeat in refusing to act as we should act.

I am seeing more clearly, day by day, that no one else has ever really done me any harm at all, at least not in a way that counts; I do myself harm.

If I am willing to accept any situation whatsoever, depending only upon my own judgments and actions, what could I possibly have to fear but myself? 

Written in 11/2011

Death on a Pale Horse

J.M.W. Turner, Death on a Pale Horse (1830)

Stoic Snippets 27

Nothing can come out of nothing, any more than a thing can go back to nothing. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.4

Wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita 16

30-31. All of these are knowers of Yajna, having their sins consumed by Yajna, and eating of the nectar—the remnant of Yajna, they go to the Eternal Brahman. Even this world is not for the non-performer of Yajna, how then another, O best of the Kurus?

32. Various Yajnas, like the above, are strewn in the store-house of the Veda. Know them all to be born of action, and thus knowing, you shall be free,

33. Knowledge-sacrifice, O scorcher of foes, is superior to sacrifice performed with material objects. All action in its entirety, O Pârtha, attains its consummation in knowledge.

34. Know that, by prostrating yourself, by questions, and by service; the wise, those who have realized the Truth, will instruct you in that knowledge.

35. Knowing which, you shall not, O Pândava, again get deluded like this, and by which you shall see the whole of creation in your Self and in Me.

36. Even if you are the most sinful among all the sinful, yet by the raft of knowledge alone you shall go across all sin.

37. As blazing fire reduces wood into ashes, so, O Arjuna, does the fire of knowledge reduce all Karma to ashes.

38. Verily there exists nothing in this world purifying like knowledge. In good time, having reached perfection in Yoga, one realizes that oneself in one's own heart.

39. The man with Shraddhâ, the devoted, the master of one's senses, attains this knowledge. Having attained knowledge one goes at once to the Supreme Peace.

40. The ignorant, the man without Shraddhâ, the doubting self, goes to destruction. The doubting self has neither this world, nor the next, nor happiness.

41. With work renounced by Yoga and doubts rent asunder by knowledge, O Dhananjaya, actions do not bind him who is poised in the Self.

42. Therefore, cutting with the sword of knowledge, this doubt about the Self, born of ignorance, residing in your heart, take refuge in Yoga. Arise, O Bhârata!

—Bhagavad Gita, 4:30-42

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

J.M.W. Turner, Sunrise with Sea Monsters (c. 1845)

Seneca, On Peace of Mind 11.10

You are a king: I will not bid you go to Croesus for an example, he who while yet alive saw his funeral pile both lighted and extinguished, being made to outlive not only his kingdom but even his own death, nor to Jugurtha, whom the people of Rome beheld as a captive within the year in which they had feared him.

Some people would like to claim that we don’t have kings anymore, but I will suggest that they are sadly mistaken.

We may have different titles and different trappings, but the human temptation to reign over others is far too strong, and no amount of egalitarian posturing can hide the fact that there will always be those folks who wish to define themselves by how they can push other people around. They don’t want to admit it, but they’re especially fond of all the kowtowing they can get.

In every single office, or school, or social club I have ever been in, there was always at least one self-appointed king or queen. Sometimes there were several, and their rival claims to the throne made for miniature versions of historical dramas.

And when they fall, how mightily they do indeed fall, having based everything on their superiority over others, and then losing everything that gave them a false purpose.

The story of King Croesus of Lydia, as told by Herodotus, is an ideal example of all this, a man known first for his incredible wealth and power, and then for his ultimate insight that it was all as nothing.

Croesus, bragging about his status, is said to have challenged the Athenian statesman Solon to find a man happier than himself. Solon reminded Croesus that fortune is unreliable, and that one can never really judge the value of a man’s whole life until after his death.

Solon pointed out that Tellus, who had died heroically in battle, or Kiebos and Biton, two pious and virtuous sons who were granted a peaceful death in their sleep after their mother asked the gods to bless them, were surely happier.

Croesus learned that this was all too true, with the tragic loss of his own son, and when his whole kingdom fell to the Persian King Cyrus.

In deciding whether to go to war with Cyrus, Croesus apparently asked the Oracle at Delphi if he would be victorious. “You will destroy a great empire,” came the reply. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Cyrus ordered Croesus, the man who had everything and lost everything, to be burned to death on a pyre. As the fire was lit, Croesus called out the name of Solon three times, and Cyrus asked what this could possibly mean. He was told about Solon’s earlier advice, and Cyrus suddenly also saw himself in his defeated foe, two men who were both seduced by the fickle nature of circumstances.

Cyrus quickly ordered the fire put out, but it seemed to be too late. It was only Croesus’ prayer to Apollo that brought rain and drenched the flames. So it is that Croesus was, as Seneca says, a man who lived through both the passing of his rule as well as the moment of his appointed death.

The name of Jugurtha, the King of Numidia, would have been more immediate in the memory of the Romans. He struggled against the Republic with both political cunning and military prowess, and for a time it seemed like he might be another Hannibal in the making. Yet soon he was defeated, paraded through the streets of Rome, and died of starvation in prison.

Can you please remind me what I thought was so good about being the king? 

Written in 11/2011

IMAGE: Croesus on his pyre

Wisdom from the Early Stoics, Zeno of Citium 16

The Athenians buried him in the Ceramicus and honored him in the decrees already cited above, adding their testimony of his goodness. Here is the epitaph composed for him by Antipater of Sidon:

Here lies great Zeno, dear to Citium, who scaled high Olympus, though he piled not Pelion on Ossa, nor toiled at the labors of Heracles, but this was the path he found out to the stars—the way of temperance alone.

Here too is another by Zenodotus the Stoic, a pupil of Diogenes:

Thou madest self-sufficiency thy rule,
Eschewing haughty wealth, O godlike Zeno,
With aspect grave and hoary brow serene.
A manly doctrine thine: and by thy prudence
With much toil thou didst found a great new school,
Chaste parent of unfearing liberty.
And if thy native country was Phoenicia,
What need to slight thee? came not Cadmus thence,
Who gave to Greece her books and art of writing?

And Athenaeus the epigrammatist speaks of all the Stoics in common as follows:

O ye who've learnt the doctrines of the Porch
And have committed to your books divine
The best of human learning, teaching men
That the mind's virtue is the only good!
She only it is who keeps the lives of men
And cities—safer than high gates and walls.
But those who place their happiness in pleasure
Are led by the least worthy of the Muses.

—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.29-30

IMAGE: Kerameikos Cemetery,  Athens

Jacob Matham, Melancholy

School of Jacob Matham, Melancholy (c. 1600)

Seneca, On Peace of Mind 11.9

You have filled public offices: were they either as important, as unlooked for, or as all-embracing as those of Sejanus? Yet on the day on which the Senate disgraced him, the people tore him to pieces. The executioner could find no part left large enough to drag to the Tiber, of one upon whom gods and men had showered all that could be given to man.

Now I might say that I’m not really after the money, knowing full well how tricky the world of business can be, and that what I’m really working on is building up my reputation and winning people’s respect.

This might seem to be something that is more fully within my power, because I’m the one who decides how I will treat other people, whether I am going to be useful to them, and when I pay up on my promises. A flattering word here, a favor offered there, and alliances forged wherever I can will put me in a comfortable place. Before I know it, people will come to depend on me.

Or is it possible they might also come to resent me, precisely because I now have something that they don’t? My status does not come from what I do, but from how others will react to what I do.

I’m afraid I didn’t know much about Lucius Aelius Sejanus before coming across this mention of him by Seneca, and it turns out there’s a very good reason for that. He acquired great influence as the prefect of the Praetorian Guard under Tiberius, and he seemed to have had a knack for making deals, winning friends, and disposing of his enemies. He even managed to have himself made consul, but then the sweet turned to sour.

As with Pompeius, I’m not sure what finally brought on his unpleasant end, and I suppose all the particulars hardly matter. It surely didn’t help that Sejanus had seduced the wife of Drusus, the emperor’s son, and then secretly plotted with her to poison Drusus. Sejanus was eventually arrested and executed, and the angry crowd, as always needing something to be angry at, ripped his body apart.

There was rioting, and looting, and his friends and family were hunted down to join his fate. His statues were toppled, and his name was removed from all public records. His mistress took her own life before they could get to her, and his daughter was apparently raped before she was killed, because it was against custom to execute a virgin.

One of my students was quite terrified by this whole account, and she wanted to refer to it as a morality tale in a project for her government class. She came to me when she couldn’t find any images of Sejanus for her PowerPoint presentation.

I couldn’t find any either, but that’s what tends to happen to people who have been erased from history because they ended up on the wrong side of public opinion. Sometimes the difference between a hero and villain is just a matter of which way the mood of the mob happens to turn.

I did, however, come across a photograph of a coin that had been minted with his name on it, even as the inscription had been appropriately scratched out.

Written in 11/2011