Consolatio ad Apollonium

Reason therefore requires that men of understanding should be neither indifferent in such calamities nor extravagantly affected; for the one course is unfeeling and brutal, the other lax and effeminate. Sensible is he who keeps within appropriate bounds and is able to bear judiciously both the agreeable and the grievous in his lot, and who has made up his mind beforehand to conform uncomplainingly and obediently to the dispensation of things; just as in a democracy there is an allotment of offices, and he who draws the lot holds office, while he who fails to do so must bear his fortune without taking offence. For those who cannot do this would be unable sensibly and soberly to abide good fortune either.

Among the felicitous utterances the following piece of advice is to the point:

Let no success be so unusual That it excite in you too great a pride, Nor abject be in turn, if ill betide; But ever be the same; preserve unchanged Your nature, like to gold when tried by fire.[*](From an unknown play of Euripides; Cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 963.)

It is the mark of educated and disciplined men to keep the same habit of mind toward seeming prosperity, and nobly to maintain a becoming attitude toward adversity. For it is the task of rational prudence, either to be on guard against evil as it approaches, or, if it have already happened, to rectify it or to minimize it or to provide oneself with a virile and noble patience to endure it. For wisdom deals also with the good, in a fourfold way— either acquiring a store of goods, or conserving them, or adding to them, or using them judiciously. These are the laws of wisdom and of the other virtues, and they must be followed for better fortune or for worse. For

No man exists who’s blest in everything,[*](From the Stheneboea of Euripides, ibid. No. 661.)

and truly

What thou must do cannot be made must not. [*](Author unknown; Cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Adespot. No. 368.)

For as there are in plants at one time seasons of fruitage and at another time seasons of unfruitfulness, and in animals at one time fecundity and at another time barrenness, and on the sea both fair weather and storm, so also in life many diverse circumstances occur which bring about a reversal of human fortunes. As one contemplates these reversals he might say not inappropriately:

Not for good and no ill came thy life from thy sire, Agamemnon, but joy Thou shalt find interwoven with grief; For a mortal thou art. Though against thy desire Yet the plans of the gods will so have it.[*](Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis, 29; cf. Moralia, 33 E.)

and the words of Menander [*](Cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 155, No. 531, and Allinson, Menander (in L.C.L.), p. 478.):

If you alone, young master, at your birth Had gained the right to do whate’er you would Throughout your life, and ever be in luck, And if some god agreed to this with you, Then you have right to feel aggrieved. He has Deceived and strangely treated you. But if Upon the selfsame terms as we, you drew The primal breath of universal life (To speak you somewhat in the tragic style), You must endure this better, and use sense. To sum up all I say, you are a man, Than which no thing that lives can swifter be Exalted high and straight brought low again. And rightly so; for though of puny frame, He yet doth handle many vast affairs, And, falling, ruins great prosperity. But you, young master, have not forfeited Surpassing good, and these your present ills But moderate are; so bear without excess What Fortune may hereafter bring to you.

But, in spite of this condition of affairs, some persons, through their foolishness, are so silly and conceited, that, when only a little exalted, either because of abundance of money, or importance of office, or petty political preferments, or because of position and repute, they threaten and insult those in lower station, not bearing in mind the uncertainty and inconstancy of fortune, nor yet the fact that the lofty is easily brought low and the humble in turn is exalted, transposed by the swift-moving changes of fortune. Therefore to try to find any constancy in what is inconstant is a trait of people who do not rightly reason about the circumstances of life. For

The wheel goes round, and of the rim now one And now another part is at the top.[*](Author unknown; Cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Gr. iii. p. 740.)