Chapter 16
There comes now a part of our
subject which is wont, with good cause, to make one sad and anxious.
I mean when good men come to bad
ends: when Socrates is forced to die in prison, Rutilius to live in exile,
Pompeius and Cicero to offer their necks to the swords of their own followers,
when the great Cato, that living image of virtue, falls upon his sword and rips
up both himself and the republic, one cannot help being grieved that Fortune
should bestow her gifts so unjustly.
What, too, can a good man hope to
obtain when he sees the best of men meeting with the worst fates?
It was the problem of suffering, especially the
fact that bad things happened to good people, that made Stoicism a necessity
for me, not just some convenience or luxury.
There are times when it hardly seems fair that
Rutilius was cast out from his home for defending the poor from tax collectors,
or that Socrates was asked to drink the hemlock for asking inconvenient questions.
Pompeius and Cicero were killed simply because they tried to do right. Cato, finally
knowing that Caesar would now rule Rome, took his own life. Where is the
justice in any of that, when the virtuous must suffer persecution from the vicious?
The scale hardly needs to be so grand and dramatic.
Perhaps I travel in all the wrong circles, but I have found that it is all too
easy for those with a conscience to be cast aside, while those who look only
for their own power and gratification are given most everything they desire. Honesty
is punished, and lies are rewarded. Charity is trampled down, and greed is
raised up. The world seems upside down.
Well yes, the world is upside down, but not as I
might expect. It isn’t that the righteous are destroyed and the wicked are
glorified, but rather that I myself am misunderstanding what constitutes genuine
benefit or harm.
Only the sinners think they deserve to be rich;
only the saints understand that character is itself the greatest blessing. My
own expectations need to be flipped, to grasp that what I thought was up is
down and what was down is up.
Let me look at the words of the problem more
carefully:
Do good men really come to bad ends? I would only
think that if I did not understand the meaning and purpose of my life.
Do the best of men meet with the worst of fates? The
circumstances don’t make for a dignified life, even as a dignified life thrives
through any circumstances.
Written in 12/2011
IMAGE: The Death of Cicero (French, 15th century)
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