Dialogues and Letters Read Online Free PDF

long-lasting. It won’t take long to assemble
examples to convince you: every age has produced them. Cast
your mind back to any sphere of life, whether at home or abroad,
and you will think of minds which showed either philosophical
maturity or great natural energy. If you are condemned, can you
think of a harsher fate than exile or imprisonment? Is anything
more fearful than burning or death? Set up these horrors one by
one and summon forth those who have despised them: we don’t
    4           have to hunt for them, but to select them. 1 Rutilius bore his
condemnation as though the only thing that hurt him was the
false judgment. Metellus endured his exile bravely, Rutilius even
willingly; the former afforded the state the chance to recall him,
the latter refused to return for Sulla – a man to whom one did
not then refuse anything. Socrates debated when in prison, and
refused to accept the promise of escape, remaining there so that
he could free men from their two worst fears, death and prison.
    5          Mucius put his own hand in the fire. Being burnt is ghastly: how
much more so if you submit to it voluntarily! Here you see a man
neither clever nor fortified by precepts against death or pain,
simply a product of tough military discipline, punishing himself
for a failed attempt. He stood and watched his right hand dripping
into the enemy’s brazier, and did not remove the bare bones of
his dissolving hand until his enemy took the fire away. He could
have done something more successful in that campaign, but nothing
more brave. You can see how much more keen is virtue to
anticipate dangers than cruelty to inflict them: Porsina was more
ready to spare Mucius for wishing to kill him than Mucius was to
spare himself because he had failed to do so.
    6             ‘These stories are chanted in all the rhetorical schools,’ you say;
‘soon you’ll be coming to the theme Contempt for Death and
telling me about Cato.’ 2 And why not tell you about him reading
Plato’s dialogue on that last night, with a sword near his pillow?
He had taken care to have these two aids in his extremity, the
will to die and the means to die. And so, arranging his affairs so
far as his final disaster allowed, he determined to act so that no
one would have the choice whether to kill Cato or to spare
    7          him. He then drew his sword which until that day he had kept
unstained by any slaughter, and said, ‘Fortune, you have achieved
nothing by blocking all my efforts. So far I have fought for my
country’s liberty, not my own, and all my determination was
aimed at living, not a free man myself, but among free men. But
now that mankind’s affairs are hopeless let Cato be led to safety.’
    8          Then he dealt himself a fatal wound on the head. This was bound
up by the doctors, but, though his blood and his strength were
failing him, his courage failed him not, and by now angry not just
with Caesar but with himself he tore at his wound with his bare
hands, and not so much let forth as cast out that noble spirit which
despised any kind of tyranny.
    9              ‘I am not piling up examples just to exercise my wits but to
support you against a horrifying prospect; and I shall do this the
better by showing you that not only brave men have treated with
contempt this moment when life ceases, but some who were in
other respects indolent have here matched the courage of the
bravest. Such was Scipio, 3 father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompey, who,
carried back by adverse winds to Africa and seeing his ship
in the power of his enemies, fell on his sword, and when men asked
where was the general he replied, ‘All is well with the general.’
These words raised him to the stature of his ancestors