The Tusculan Disputations of Cicero. A new edition, revised and corrected, by W. H. Main

Book I. On The Contempt Of Death

I. As I am, at length, entirely, or to a great degree, freed from the fatigue of defending clients, and the duties of a senator, I have recourse again, Brutus, principally by your advice, to those studies which never have been out of my mind, although neglected at times, and which after a long interval I have resumed : and since the reason and pre cepts of all arts which relate to living well, depend on the study of wisdom, which is called philosophy, I have thought of illustrating this in the Latin tongue ; not because philosophy could not be understood in the Greek language, or by Greek masters ; but it was always my opinion, that we have been more happy at inventing than the B Greeks, or that we have improved on whatever we have received from them, which they have thought worthy their care and pains : for, with regard to manners and economy, family and domestic affairs, we certainly now manage them with more elegance, and better than they did ; and our ancestors have, beyond all dispute, formed the republic on better laws and custonos.

What shall I say of our military affairs ; in which, as our ancestors excelled them much in valour, so more in discipline ? As to those things which are attained not by study, but nature, neither Greece, nor any nation, is comparable with them ; for with whom was ever that gravity, that steadiness, that greatness of soul, probity, faith — such distinguished virtue of every kind, as to equal them with ours ? Greece excelled us in learning, and all kinds of literature, and it was easy to do so where there was no competition ; for amongst the Greeks the poets were the most ancient species of learned men. Of these Homer and Hesiod Avere before the foundation of Rome ; Archilochus, in the reign of Romulus. We received poetry much later; LiA'y gives us a fable near five hundred and ten years after the building of Rome, in the consulate of C. Claudius, the son of Cæcus, and M. Tuditanus, a year before the birth of Ennius, who was older than Plautus and Nævius.

II. It was, therefore, late before poets Avere either knoAvn or received amongst us ; though we find in Cato de Originibus that the guests used to sing at their entertainments, the praises of famous men, to the sound of the flute ; but a speech of Cato's shows the custom to have been in no great esteem, as he censures Marcus Nobilior, for carrying poets with him into his province : for that consul, as we JknoAv, carried Ennius with him into Ætolia. Therefore the less esteem poets were in, the less were those studies pursued : not but if, had there been amongst us any of great abilities that way, they would not have been at all inferior to the Greeks. Do we imagine that, had it been commendable in Fabius, a man of the first quality, to paint, we should have been without many Polycleti and Parrhasii ?

Honour nourishes art, and glory is the spur with all to studies ; those studies are ahvays neglected, which are a kind of disgrace to any. The Greeks held vocal and instrumental music as the greatest erudition, and therefore it is recorded of Epaminondas, who, in my opinion, was the first man amongst the Greeks, that he played excellently on the flute ; and Themistocles some years be fore was deemed ignorant because he refused at an entertainment to play on the lyre. For this reason musicians flourished in Greece ; music was a general study ; and whoever was unacquainted with it, was not considered as fully instructed in learning. Geometry was in high esteem with them, therefore none were more honourable than mathematicians ; but we have confined this art to bare counting and measuring. III.

But on the contrary, we soon entertained the orator ; no ways eloquent at first, but capable enough for an harangue, he soon became elo quent ; for it is reported that Galba, Africanus, and Lælius, were men of learning; that even Cato Avas studious, who was an age before them : then succeeded the Lepidi, Carbo, and Gracchi, and so many great orators after them, even to our times, that we were very little, if at all, inferior to the Greeks. Philosophy has been at a low ebb even to this present time, and had no assistance from our own language, which I have undertaken to raise and illustrate ; so that, as I have been of service to my countrymen, when employed in public affairs, I may, if possible, be so to them in my retirement. In this I must take the more pains, because many books are said to be written inaccurately, by excellent men, but not erudite scholars : for indeed it may be that a man may think well, and yet not be able to express his thoughts elegantly; but for any one to publish thoughts which he can neither methodize, nor illus strate nor entertain his reader, is an unpardonable abuse of letters and retirement : they, therefore, read their books to one another, which were never taken up by any but those Avho claimed the same privi lege of writing.

Wherefore, if oratory has acquired any reputation from my application to it, I shall, with more pains, open the fountains of philosophy, from which flowed all the advantages of the other. But, IV. As Aristotle, a man of excellent parts, abundant in all knowledge, being moved at the glory of the rhetorician Isocrates, commenced teacher of youth, and joined philosophy with eloquence : so it is my design not to lay aside my former study of oratory, and yet employ myself in this greater and more fruitful art ; for I always thought, that to be able to speak copiously and elegantly on the most important questions, was the most consummate philosophy, to which sub ject I have so diligently applied myself, that I have already ventured to have Disputations like the Greeks. And lately when you left us, having many of my friends about me, I attempted at my Tus culum Avhat I could do in that way ; for as I formerly practised declaiming, which nobody con tinued longer than myself, so this is noAv to be the declamation of my old age.

I ordered a person to propose something he would have discussed : I disputed on that, either sitting or walking, and have compiled the scholæ as the Greeks call them, of five days, in as many books. It was in this manner : when he who was the hearer had said what he thought proper, I disputed against him ; for this is, you know, the old and Socratic method of disputing against another's opinion; for Socrates thought the truth might thus the easier be discovered. But to give you a better notion of our disputations, I will not barely send you an account of them, but represent them to you as they were carried on ; therefore let the introduction be thus. V. A. To me death seems to be an evil. As. What, to those who'are already dead ? or to those who must die ? A. To both. As. It is a misery then, because an evil ?

A. Certainly. As. Then those Avho must soon die, and those who must die some time or other, are both miserable ? A. So it appears to me. As. Then all are miserable ? A. Every one. As. And, indeed, if you are consistent with yourself, all that are already born, or shall be, are not only miserable, but always will be so ; for should you maintain those only to be miserable, who must die, you would not except any one living, for all must die ; but there should be an end of misery in death. But seeing that the dead are miserable, we are born to eternal misery, for they must of consequence be miserable who died a hundred thousand years ago ; or rather, all that have been born. A. So indeed I think. As. Tell me, I beseech you, are you afraid of the three headed Cerberus below, the roaring waves of Cocytus, the passage over Acheron, Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the water touches his chin ; or Sisyphus, AVho sweats with arduous toil to gain The steepy summit of the mount in vairi?

Perhaps, too, you dread the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus, before whom nor Crassus, nor M. Antonius can defend you ; nor, since the cause lies before Grecian judges, De mosthenes. But you must plead for yourself before a very great assembly : you dread perhaps these, and therefore look on death as an eternal evil. VI. A. Do you take me to be mad enough to give credit to such things ? As. What ? do you not believe them? A. Not in the least. As. I am sorry to hear that. A. Why, I beg ? As. Be cause 1 could have been very eloquent in speaking against them. A. And who could not on such a subject? or, what occasion is there to refute these monsters of the poets and painters ? Al. And yet you have books of philosophers full of arguments against these. A. Idle enough, truly ! for, who is so weak as to be concerned about them ?

At. If then there are none miserable in the infernal regions, there must be no one there. A. I am alto gether of that opinion. As. Where then are those you call miserable ? or what place do they in habit ? if they are at all, they must be somewhere ? A. I, indeed, am of opinion, they are no where. As. Therefore there are none such. A. Even so, and yet they are miserable for this very reason, that they are not at all. As. I had rather now that you had been afraid of Cerberus, than to speak thus inaccurately. A. Why so ? As. Be cause you admit him to be, who is not ; where is your sagacity ? When you say any one is miserable, you say such a one is, when he is not. A. I am not so absurd as to say that. As. What is it you say then ? A. I say, for instance, that Crassus is miserable in being deprived of such great riches by death ; that Cn.

Pompey was so, in being taken from such glory and honour ; upon the whole, that all are miserable who are deprived of this light. As. You have returned to the same point, for to. be miserable implies an existence; but you just now denied that the dead had any existence ; if they are not, they can be nothing ; and if so, not miserable. A. Perhaps I do not express what I mean, for I look upon this very thing, not to exist, after having been, to be very miserable. As. What, more so than not to have been at all? therefore, those who are not yet born, are miserable because they are not; and we ourselves, if we are to be miserable after death, were miserable before we were born : but I do not remember I was miserable before I was born ; and I should be glad to know, if your memory is better, what you recollect of yourself before you were born.

VII. A. You are pleasant, as if I had said, they are miserable who are not born, and that they are not so who are dead. As. You say then that they are so ? A. Yes, because they are most miserable not to be, after* they have been. As. You do not observe, that you assert contradic tions ; for what is a greater contradiction, than that that should be not only miserable, but should be at all, which is not ? When you go out at the Capene gate and see the tombs of the Calatini, the Scipios, Servilii, and Metelli, do you look on them as miserable ? A. Because you distress me with a Avord, henceforward I will not say they are miserable in general, but miserable for this, that they are not. As. You do not say then M. Cras sus is miserable, but only miserable M. Crassus. A. Evidently so. As. As if it did not follow, that whatever you declare in that manner, either is or is not.

Are you not acquainted with the first principles of logic ? for this is the first thing they lay down, whatever is asserted, (for so I render the Greek term, «|<Vœ, I may express it otherwise when I shall find a better) is therefore asserted, because it is either true or false. When, therefore, you say miserable M. Crassus, you either say this, that M. Crassus is miserable, so that some judgment may be made whether it be true or false, or you say nothing. A. Well then, I now own that the dead are not miserable, since you have drawn from me a concession, that they who are not at all, cannot be miserable. What then ? we that are alive, are we riot wretched, seeing we must die ? for Avhat is there agreeable in life, when we must 'night and day reflect that we may instantly die ? VIII. As. Do you not then perceive how great an evil you have delivered human nature from ?

A. By Avhat means ? As. Because, if to die is miserable to the dead, to live would be a kind of infinite and eternal misery : now I see a goal, which when I have reached, there is nothing more to be feared ; but you seem to me to follow the opinion of Epicharmus, a man of some discern ment, and sharp enough for a Sicilian. A. What opinion ? for -I do not recollect it. As. I will tell you if I can in Latin, for you know I am no more used to bring in Latin sentences in a Greek discourse, than Greek in a Latin one. A. And that is right enough; but Avhat is that opinion of Epicharmus ? M. I would not die, but yet Am not concerned that I shall be dead. A. I now recollect the Greek, but since you have obliged me to grant that the dead are not miser able, proceed to convince me that it is not miserable to be under a necessity of dying.

As. That is easy enough, but I have greater things in hand. A. How comes that to be so easy ? and what are those things of more consequence ? As. Thus : because, if there is no evil after death, death itself can be none ; for what succeeds that immediately, is a state where you grant there is no evil; so that to be obliged to die can. be no evil ; for that is to arrive there where we allow no evil is. A. I beg you will be more explicit on this, for these subtle arguments force me sooner to a concession than conviction ; but what are those more important things you undertake ? Al. To teach you, if I can, that death is not only no evil, but a good. A. I do not insist on that, but should be glad to hear, for should you not prove your point, yet, you may prove that death is no evil : but I will not interrupt you, I should like to hear a continued discourse.

Al. What, if I should ask you a question, would you not answer ? A. That would have pride in it ; but I would rather you should not ask but where necessity requires. IX. Al. I will comply Avith you, and explain as well as I can, what you require ; but not like the Pythian Apollo, that what I say must be in fallible ; hut as a mere man, endeavouring at pro babilities, by conjecture, for I have no ground to proceed further on, than probability. Let them deal in demonstrations, who say, they can perceive things as they are, and who proclaim themselves philosophers, by profession. A. Do as you please, we are ready to hear you. Al. The first thing is to inquire, what death, which seems to be so well known, is ; for some imagine death to be the separation of the soul from the body ; some that there is no such separation, but that soul and body perish together, and that the soul is extinguished with the body.

Of those who admit of the soul's separation, some are for its immediate departure, some that it continues a time, others for ever : there is great dispute even what the soul is, where it is, and whence it is derived : Avith some, the heart itself seems to be the soul, hence the expressions, out of heart, bad-hearted, and of one heart ; and that prudent Nasica, twice consul, was called Corculus, i. e. wise heart ; and Ælius Sextus, a man of noble heart. Empedocles imagines the heart's blood to be the soul; with others, a certain part of the brain seems to be the throne of the soul ; others neither allow the heart nor a certain part of the brain to be the soul ; but some would have the heart to be the seat and mansion of the soul ; others, the brain. Some would have the soul, or spirit, to be air, as we generally do ; the name signifying as much, for we say to breathe, to expire, to be animated, &c. and the Latin word for the spirit implies breath.

The soul seems to Zeno, the Stoic, to be fire. But what I have said of the heart's blood, air, and fire, are general opinions ; the rest almost singular, of which there were formerly many amongst the ancients. X. The latest is Aristoxenus, both musician and philosopher ; he maintains a certain intension of the body, like what is called harmony in music, to be the soul. Thus, from the figure and nature of the body, various motions are excited, as sounds from an instrument. He stuck close to his profession, and yet he said something, whatever it was, which had been said and explained a great while before by Plato. Xenocrates denied that the soul had any figure, or any thing like matter ; but said it was a number, the power of which, as Py thagoras thought, some ages before, was the great est in nature : his master, Plato, had imagined a three-fold soul ; the chief, i. e. reason, he had lodged in the head, as in a tower ; and being willing to separate the other two, he placed anger in the breast, and desire under the præcordia.

But Di cæarchus, in a discourse of some learned disputants, held at Corinth, which he gives us in three books ; in the first of which he makes many speakers ; in the other two he introduces a certain Pherecrates, an old man of Phthios, who, as he said, was de scended from Deucalion ; asserting, that there is in fact no soul ; and that it is a name, without a meaning; and that it is idle to say, animals, or animated ; that neither men nor beasts have minds or souls ; and all that power, by which we act or perceive, is equally infused into every living creature, and is inseparable from the body, for it then would be nothing ; nor is there any thing besides one simple body, so fashioned, as to live and have its sensation, from the temperature of nature. Aristotle, superior to all, both in parts and industry (I always except Plato), having em braced these four known sorts of principles, from which all things deduce their original, imagines there is a certain fifth nature, from whence comes the soul ; for to think, to foresee, to learn, to teach, to invent any thing, and many others ; as, to re member, to love, to hate, desire, to fear, to be pleased or displeased ; these, and such like, are, he thinks, in none of those four kinds : he adds a fifth kind, Avhich has no name, and thus by a new name he calls the soul ivieXe^a, as it were a certain continued and perpetual motion.

XI. If I have not forgotten, these are all the opinions concerning the soul. I have omitted Democritus, a very great man indeed, but Avho deduces the soul from the fortuitous concourse of light and round corpuscles, as with them, the crowd of atoms can effect every thing. Which of these opinions is true, some god must determine : the great question with us is, which has the most appearance of truth : shall we determine between them ; or return to our subject ? A. I could wish hoth, if possible ; but it is difficult to mix them ; therefore, if Avithout a discussion of them we can get rid of the fears of death, let us proceed to do so ; but if this is not to be done without explaining the question ahout souls, let us have that now, the other, another time. As. I take that to be best, which I perceive you are inclined to ; for reason will evince, that let either of the opinions I have stated be true, death cannot be an evil: for, if either the heart, the blood, or brain, be the soul, certainly, as corporeal, it will perish with the rest of the body ; if it should be air, it will be dispersed ; if fire, extinguished ; if Aristoxenus's harmony, disconcerted.

What shall I say of Dicæarchus, who denies there is any soul? In all these opinions, there is nothing to affect any one after death ; for all feeling is lost Avith life, and where there is no sensation, nothing can interfere to affect us. The opinions of others are charged with hope ; if it is any pleasure to you to think, that souls, after they leave the body, may go to heaven as their abode. A. I have great pleasure in that thought, and it is what I most desire ; but should it not be so, I still am very willing to believe it. As. What occasion have you then for my assistance ? am I superior to Plato in eloquence 1 turn over carefully his book that treats of the soul, you will have there all you can want. A. I have indeed done that, and often ; but I know not how, I allow of it whilst I am reading ; but when I lay down the book, and begin to reflect with myself on the immortality of the soul, that conviction vanishes.

As. How comes that? do you admit that souls exist after death, or that they perish in death ? A. I agree to that. As. What if they should exist ? A. I allow them happy. As. If they perish ? A. I cannot think they are unhappy, because they have no existence. You drove me to that concession but just now. As. How then can you maintain any sus picions of death being a misery, which either makes us happy, the soul continuing ; or not un happy, as void of all sensation ? XII. A. Explain therefore, if it is not trouble some, first, if you can, that souls exist; then, should you fail in that, for it is very difficult, that death is free of all evil ; for I am not without my fears, that this itself is an evil; I do not say, the immediate deprivation of sense, but, that we shall be deprived. Al. I have the best authority in sup port of the opinion you desire to have established, which ought, and generally has, great weight in all cases.

And first, I have all antiquity on that side ; which the nearer it is to its origin and divine descent, possibly by that discerns truth the clearer : this very thing, then, was adopted by all those ancients, whom Ennius calls in the Sabine tongue, Casci ; that in death there was a sensation, and that, when men departed this life, they were not so entirely destroyed, as to perish ab solutely. And this may appear, as from many other things, so from the pontifical rites, and funeral obsequies, which men of the best sense would not have been so solicitous about, nor fenced from any injury with such severe laAvs, but from a firm persuasion, that death was not so entire a destruction as to leave nothing remain ing, but a certain transmigration, as it were, and change of life ; which usually conveyed the illustrious of both sexes into heaven, confining others to the earth, but so as still to exist.

From this, and the sentiments of the Romans, In heaven Romulus with gods now lives, Ennius saith, on common report : hence Hercules is held so great and propitious a god amongst the Greeks, from whom we received him, as he is also by those who inhabit the borders of the ocean. Hence Bacchus was deified, the offspring of Se mele; and from the same illustrious fame we receive Castor and Pollux, as gods, who are reported not only to have helped the Romans to victory in their battles, but to have been the mes sengers of their success. What? Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, is she not called Leucothea, by the Greeks, and Matuta, by us ? What ? is not all c heaven (not to dAvell on particulars) filled, as it were, with the offspring of men ? XIII. Should I attempt to search into antiquity, and produce from thence, what the Greek writers have asserted ; it would appear that even those who are called their principal gods, went from hence into heaven : examine the sepulchres of them which are shown in Greece ; recollect, as you are initiated, what is delivered in the myste ries ; then will you perceive how extensive this doctrine is.

But they who were not acquainted with physics, (for they began to be in vogue many ages after) had no higher conviction, than what natural reason could give them ; they were not in possession of the reason and cause of things ; they were often induced by certain visions, and those generally in the night, to think that they were still alive, Avho had departed from this life. And this may further be brought as an irrefragable argument, that there are gods, in that there never was any nation so barbarous, not a single instance of that savageness, as to be Avithout some notion of gods : many have wrong notions of the gods, which may proceed from bad customs, yet all allow there is a certain divine nature and energy ; nor doth this proceed from conversing together, or consent of parties ; it is not an opinion established by law : and in every case the consent of all nations is to be looked on as a law of nature.

Who is there then that does not lament the loss of his friends, principally from imagining them deprived of the conveniences of life ? Take away this opinion, and you remove with it all grief ; for no one grieves on his own account. Perhaps we may be slightly affected, and uneasy ; but that bitter lamentation, and those bewailing tears, have their cause from our apprehensions, that he, whom we loved, is deprived of the advantages of life, and is sensible of it. And we are led to this opinion by nature, without learning, or the deductions of reason. XIV. But the greatest argument is, that na ture herself gives a silent judgment in favour of the immortality of the soul, in that all are anxious, and greatly so, in what relates to futurity : One plants, what future ages shall enjoy, as Statius saith in his Synephebi.

What has he an eye to in this, but that he is interested in pos terity ? Shall the industrious husbandman then plant trees, the fruit of which he shall never see ? and shall not the great man found laws, institutes, a republic ? What doth the procreation of children imply ? the continuing a name — adoptions — the exactness in writing wills ? what the inscriptions on monuments, or elogies? but that our thoughts run on futurity? There is no doubt but a judgment may be formed of nature in general, from those of the best natural dispositions; and what is a better natural disposition in man, than those discover, who look on themselves born for the pro tection, preservation, and assistance of others? Hercules went to heaven ; he never had gone thither, had he not, whilst amongst men, secured that road to himself. — These are of old date, and have, besides, the sanction of religion.

XV. What, do you imagine so many and such great men of our republic, who have sacri ficed their lives for its good, thought that their names should not continue beyond their lives? None ever encountered death for their country, but under a firm persuasion of immortality ! The mistocles might have lived at his ease : so might Epaminondas; and, not to look abroad for in stances and amongst the ancients, I myself might. But, I know not how, there adheres to our minds a certain presage of future ages ; and this both exists most, and appears clearest, in men of the best parts, and greatest souls. Take away this, and who is so mad as to spend his life amidst toils and dangers? I speak of those in poAver. What Avere the poet's views but to be ennobled after death ? Whence then have we, Behold old Ennius here, who erst Thy fathers' great exploits rehears"d. He challenged the reward of glory from those whose ancestors he had ennobled.