Part 9 (1/2)
but few men have painted more persuasively, with deeper emotion, or more entire conviction, the pleasures of virtue, the calm of a well-regulated soul, the strong and severe joys of a lofty self-denial.
In his youth, he tells us, he was preparing himself for a righteous life, in his old age for a n.o.ble death.[59] And let us not forget, that when the hour of crisis came which tested the real calm and bravery of his soul, he was not found wanting. ”With no dread,” he writes to Lucilius, ”I am preparing myself for that day on which, laying aside all artifice or subterfuge, I shall be able to judge respecting myself whether I merely _speak_ or really _feel_ as a brave man should; whether all those words of haughty obstinacy which I have hurled against fortune were mere pretence and pantomime.... Disputations and literary talks, and words collected from the precepts of philosophers, and eloquent discourse, do not prove the true strength of the soul. For the mere _speech_ of even the most cowardly is bold; what you have really achieved will then be manifest when your end is near. I accept the terms, I do not shrink from the decision.” [60]
[Footnote 57: Ep. 63.]
[Footnote 58: Martha, _Les Moralistes_, p. 61.]
[Footnote 59: Ep. 61.]
[Footnote 60: Ep. 26.]
”_Accipio conditionem, non reformido judicrum_.” They were courageous and n.o.ble words, and they were justified in the hour of trial. When we remember the sins of Seneca's life, let us recall also the constancy of his death; while we admit the inconsistencies of his systematic philosophy, let us be grateful for the genius, the enthusiasm, the glow of intense conviction, with which he clothes his repeated utterance of truths, which, when based upon a surer basis, were found adequate for the moral regeneration of the world. Nothing is more easy than to sneer at Seneca, or to write clever epigrams on one whose moral attainments fell infinitely short of his own great ideal. But after all he was not more inconsistent than thousands of those who condemn him. With all his faults he yet lived a n.o.bler and a better life, he had loftier aims, he was braver, more self-denying--nay, even more consistent--than the majority of professing Christians. It would be well for us all if those who pour such scorn upon his memory attempted to achieve one t.i.the of the good which he achieved for humanity and for Rome. His thoughts deserve our imperishable grat.i.tude: let him who is without sin among us be eager to fling stones at his failures and his sins!
EPICTETUS.
CHAPTER I.
THE LIFE OF EPICTETUS, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT.
In the court of Nero, Seneca must have been thrown into more or less communication with the powerful freedmen of that Emperor, and especially with his secretary or librarian, Epaphroditus. Epaphroditus was a constant companion of the Emperor; he was the earliest to draw Nero's attention to the conspiracy in which Seneca himself perished. There can be no doubt that Seneca knew him, and had visited at his house. Among the slaves who thronged that house, the natural kindliness of the philosopher's heart may have drawn his attentions to one little lame Phrygian boy, deformed and mean-looking, whose face--if it were any index of the mind within--must even from boyhood have worn a serene and patient look. The great courtier, the great tutor of the Emperor, the great Stoic and favourite writer of his age, would indeed have been astonished if he had been suddenly told that that wretched-looking little slave-lad was destined to attain purer and clearer heights of philosophy than he himself had ever done, and to become quite as ill.u.s.trious as himself, and far more respected as an exponent of Stoic doctrines. For that lame boy was Epictetus--Epictetus for whom was written the memorable epitaph: ”I was Epictetus, a slave, and maimed in body, and a beggar for poverty, _and dear to the immortals_.”
Although we have a clear sketch of his philosophical doctrines, we have no materials whatever for any but the most meagre description of his life. The picture of his mind--an effigy of that which he alone regarded as his true self--may be seen in his works, and to this we can add little except a few general facts and uncertain anecdotes.
Epictetus was probably born in about the fiftieth year of the Christian era; but we do not know the exact date of his birth, nor do we even know his real name. ”Epictetus” means ”bought” or ”acquired,” and is simply a servile designation. He was born at Hierapolis, in Phrygia, a town between the rivers Lycus and Meander, and considered by some to be the capital of the province. The town possessed several natural wonders--sacred springs, stalact.i.te grottoes, and a deep cavern remarkable for its mephitic exhalations. It is more interesting to us to know that it was within a few miles of Colossae and Laodicea, and is mentioned by St. Paul (Col. iv. 13) in connexion with those two cities.
It must, therefore, have possessed a Christian Church from the earliest times, and, if Epictetus spent any part of his boyhood there, he might have conversed with men and women of humble rank who had heard read in their obscure place of meeting the Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians, and the other, now lost, which he addressed to the Church of Laodicea.[61]
[Footnote 61: Col. iv. 16.]
It is probable, however, that Hierapolis and its a.s.sociations produced very little influence on the mind of Epictetus. His parents were people in the very lowest and humblest cla.s.s, and their moral character could hardly have been high, or they would not have consented under any circ.u.mstance to sell into slavery their sickly child. Certainly it could hardly have been possible for Epictetus to enter into the world under less enviable or less promising auspices. But the whole system of life is full of divine and memorable compensations, and Epictetus experienced them. G.o.d kindles the light of genius where He will, and He can inspire the highest and most regal thoughts even into the meanest slave:--
”Such seeds are scattered night and day By the soft wind from Heaven, And in the poorest human clay Have taken root and thriven.”
What were the accidents--or rather, what was ”the unseen Providence, by man nicknamed chance”--which a.s.signed Epictetus to the house of Epaphroditus we do not know. To a heart refined and n.o.ble there could hardly have been a more trying position. The slaves of a Roman _familia_ were crowded together in immense gangs; they were liable to the most violent and capricious punishments; they might be subjected to the most degraded and brutalising influences. Men sink too often to the level to which they are supposed to belong. Treated with infamy for long years, they are apt to deem themselves worthy of infamy--to lose that self-respect which is the invariable concomitant of religious feeling, and which, apart from religious feeling, is the sole preventive of personal degradation. Well may St. Paul say, ”Art thou called, being a servant? care not for it: _but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather_.” [62]
[Footnote 62: 1 Cor. vii. 21.]
It is true that even in the heathen world there began at this time to be disseminated among the best and wisest thinkers a sense that slaves were made of the same clay as their masters, that they differed from freeborn men only in the externals and accidents of their position, and that kindness to them and consideration for their difficulties was a common and elementary duty of humanity. ”I am glad to learn,” says Seneca, in one of his interesting letters to Lucilius, ”that you live on terms of familiarity with your slaves; it becomes your prudence and your erudition. Are they slaves? Nay, they are men. Slaves? Nay, companions.
Slaves? Nay, humble friends. Slaves? _Nay, fellow-slaves,_ if you but consider that fortune has power over you both.” He proceeds, in a pa.s.sage to which we have already alluded, to reprobate the haughty and inconsiderate fas.h.i.+on of keeping them standing for hours, mute and fasting, while their masters gorged themselves at the banquet. He deplores the cruelty which thinks it necessary to punish with terrible severity an accidental cough or sneeze. He quotes the proverb--a proverb which reveals a whole history--”So many slaves, so many foes,” and proves that they are not foes, but that men _made_ them so; whereas, when kindly treated, when considerately addressed, they would be silent, even under torture, rather than speak to their master's disadvantage.
”Are they not sprung,” he asks, ”from the same origin, do they not breathe the same air, do they not live and die just as we do?” The blows, the broken limbs, the clanking chains, the stinted food of the _ergastula_ or slave-prisons, excited all Seneca's compa.s.sion, and in all probability presented a picture of misery which the world has rarely seen surpa.s.sed, unless it were in that nefarious trade which England to her shame once practised, and, to her eternal glory, resolutely swept away.
But Seneca's inculcation of tenderness towards slaves was in reality one of the most original of his moral teachings; and, from all that we know of Roman life, it is to be feared that the number of those who acted in accordance with it was small. Certainly Epaphroditus, the master of Epictetus, was not one of them. The historical facts which we know of this man are slight. He was one of the four who accompanied the tragic and despicable flight of Nero from Rome in the year 69, and when, after many waverings of cowardice, Nero at last, under imminent peril of being captured and executed, put the dagger to his breast, it was Epaphroditus who helped the tyrant to drive it home into his heart, for which he was subsequently banished, and finally executed by the Emperor Domitian.
Epictetus was accustomed to tell one or two anecdotes which, although given without comment, show the narrowness and vulgarity of the man.
Among his slaves was a certain worthless cobbler named Felicio; as the cobbler was quite useless, Epaphroditus sold him, and by some chance he was bought by some one of Caesar's household, and made Caesar's cobbler.
Instantly Epaphroditus began to pay him the profoundest respect, and to address him in the most endearing terms, so that if any one asked what Epaphroditus was doing, the answer, as likely as not, would be, ”He is holding an important consultation with Felicio.”
On one occasion, some one came to him bewailing, and weeping, and embracing his knees in a paroxysm of grief, because of all his fortune little more than 50,000_l_. was left! ”What did Epaphroditus do?” asks Epictetus; ”did he laugh at the man as we did? Not at all; on the contrary, he exclaimed, in a tone of commiseration and surprise, 'Poor fellow! how could you possibly keep silence and endure such a misfortune?'”
How brutally he could behave, and how little respect he inspired, we may see in the following anecdote. When Plautius Latera.n.u.s, the brave n.o.bleman whose execution during Piso's conspiracy we have already related, had received on his neck an ineffectual blow of the tribune's sword, Epaphroditus, even at that dread moment, could not abstain from pressing him with questions. The only reply which he received from the dying man was the contemptuous remark, ”Should I wish to say anything, I will say it (not to a slave like you, but) to _your master_.”