A Letter of Condolence to Apollonius (8-10)

Closely allied with this are the following words of the comic poet [*] spoken with reference to those whose grief over such calamities is excessive: If only tears were remedy for ills, And he who weeps obtained surcease of woe, Then we should purchase tears by giving gold. But as it is, events that come to pass, My master, do not mind nor heed these things, But, whether you shed tears or not, pursue The even tenor of their way. What then Do we accomplish by our weeping ? Naught. But as the trees have fruit, grief has these tears. And Dictys, who is trying to console Danaë in her excessive grief, says:

Think you that Hades minds your moans at all, And will send back your child if you will groan ? Desist. By viewing close your neighbour’s ills You might be more composed,—if you reflect How many mortals have to toil in bonds,

How many reft of children face old age, And others still who from a prosperous reign Sink down to nothing. This you ought to heed.[*]

For he bids her to think of the lot of those who are equally unfortunate or even more unfortunate than herself, with the idea that her grief will be lightened.

In this connexion might be adduced the utterance of Socrates [*] which suggests that if we were all to bring our misfortunes into a common store, so that each person should receive an equal share in the distribution, the majority would be glad to take up their own and depart.

The poet Antimachus, also, employed a similar method. For after the death of his wife, Lyde, whom he loved very dearly, he composed, as a consolation for his grief, the elegy called Lyde, in which he enumerated the misfortunes of the heroes, and thus made his own grief less by means of others’ ills. So it is clear that he who tries to console a person in grief, and demonstrates that the calamity is one which is common to many, and less than the calamities which have befallen others, changes the opinion of the one in grief and gives him a similar conviction— that his calamity is really less than he supposed it to be.

Aeschylus [*] seems admirably to rebuke those who think that death is an evil. He says:

Men are not right in hating Death, which is The greatest succour from our many ills.

In imitation of Aeschylus some one else has said:

O Death, healing physician, come.[*]

For it is indeed true that

A harbour from all distress is Hades.[*]

For it is a magnificent thing to be able to say with undaunted conviction:

What man who recks not death can be a slave?[*]

and

With Hades’ help shadows I do not fear.[*]

For what is there cruel or so very distressing in being dead ? It may be that the phenomenon of death, from being too familiar and natural to us, seems somehow, under changed circumstances, to be painful, though I know not why. For what wonder if the separable be separated, if the soluble be dissolved, if the combustible be consumed, and the corruptible be corrupted ? For at what time is death not existent in our very selves ? As Heracleitus [*] says: Living and dead are potentially the same thing, and so too waking and sleeping, and young and old; for the latter revert to the former, and the former in turn to the latter. For as one is able from the same clay to model figures of living things and to obliterate them, and again to model and obliterate, and alternately to repeat these operations without ceasing, so Nature, using the same material, a long time ago raised up our forefathers, and then in close succession to them created our fathers, and then ourselves, and later will create others and still others in a neverending cycle; and the stream of generation, thus flowing onward perpetually, will never stop, and so likewise its counterpart, flowing in the opposite direction—which is the stream of destruction, whether it be designated by the poets as Acheron or as Cocytus. The same agency which at the first showed us the light of the sun brings also the darkness of Hades. May not the air surrounding us serve to symbolize this, causing as it does day and night alternately, which bring us life and death, and sleep and waking ? Wherefore it is said that life is a debt to destiny, the idea being that the loan which our forefathers contracted is to be repaid by us. This debt we ought to discharge cheerfully and without bemoaning whenever the lender asks for payment; for in this way we should show ourselves to be most honourable men.