Dear Cicero, if you are well, then I am
well. There are so many things that I would like to write to you
about, but I find myself hesitating. I have been reading the letters
from your difficult year after Julius Caesar took over Rome, a
calamity which, though great, seems only a pale shadow by comparison
to the death of your beautiful and lovely daughter Tullia. What a
terrible year 45BCE was for you. I have found that my passion for
reading your letters has waned. I know that from here on the story
has too little triumph, and far too much bloodshed. I am looking
forward to re-reading your speeches against Marc Antony, which I
consider to be magnificent examples of your fiery passion and grand
skill as a speaker and writer.
But today I must address, as I have
addressed only in passing in prior letters, your grief, and the
consolations you found in writing. Though perhaps consolation is too
strong a word, and distraction may better describe the usefulness of
your literary pursuits in assuaging the pain of your loss. Loss of
hope, loss of country, liberty and family. Your letters from this
period are full of the advice you give to others, and which they
likewise return to you. I begin in the months before Tullia's
death...
DXXVII
Cicero To Titius
...Now there is a source of
consolation – hackneyed indeed to the last degree – which we
ought ever to have on our lips and in our hearts : we should remember
that we are men, born under the conditions which expose our life to
all the missiles of fortune; and we must not decline life on the
conditions under which we were born, nor rebel so violently under
mischances which we are unable to avoid by any precautions; and by
recalling what has happened to others we should reflect that nothing
strange has betided us...
...there is no evil in death, after
which if any sensation remains it is to be regarded as immortality
rather than death, while if it is all lost, it follows that nothing
must be regarded as misery which is not felt – yet this much I can
assert, that confusions are brewing, disasters preparing and
threatening the Republic, such that whoever has left them cannot
possibly, as it seems to me, be in the wrong.
I have been reading
a lot of the Stoic philosophers, and the above letter seems to neatly
summarise a certain Stoic attitude towards death. If we do live on
in consciousness after death, then that life must be immortal, and
so, death is not to be feared. If we do not maintain any sensation
after death, then it is nought but the release from mortal torment,
and thus, death is not to be feared.
Of course, it is
not our own death that is the cause of our greatest fears.
DXXIX
Cicero to C.
Cassius Longinus
…”Can we laugh, then?” you
will say. No by Hercules, not very easily. Yet other means of
distraction from our troubles we have none. “Where then,” you
will say, “is your philosophy?” yours indeed is in the kitchen,
while mine is in the schools. For I am ashamed of being a slave.
Accordingly I pose as being busy about other things, to avoid the
reproach of Plato.
That reproach from
Plato, (Republic 387b), being that men ought to be free and fear
slavery worse than death.
Plato
Living as I do in a
post-Nuremberg trials world, where the moral responsibility is upon
the individual to follow their own conscience during times of war and
to refuse to follow orders contrary to the dictates of human decency,
reinforces the belief that slavery to a tyrant should be more feared
than death. I feel an obligation to follow in Socrates footsteps and
to place liberty above other concerns, and yet as I watch the
tightening grip of tyranny squeeze my own country, I cannot help but
feel that life, even under such a grip, is worth something. If only
to remain in peace with my family, to be a father to my children, to
remain alive under any conditions seems to me to be right also. I
think I understand, Cicero, the contradiction of your conscience that
you chose to remain alive, when to die for your beliefs was offered
to you as a noble option. Life must continue, for there is yet more
good to be done, regardless of which Caesar rules our lives.
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