BOOK X
things that are done in such secrecy, and detect the efficient force, just as we detect the descensive and the ascensive none the less clearly that it is not with our eyes.
27. Bear in mind continually how all such things as now exist existed also before our day[1] and, be assured, will exist after us. Set before thine eyes whole dramas and their settings, one like another, all that thine own experience has shewn thee or thou hast learned from past history, for instance the entire court of Hadrianus,[2] the entire court of Antoninus, the entire court of Philip, of Alexander, of Croesus. For all those scenes were such as we see now, only the performers being different.
28. Picture to thyself every one that is grieved at any occurrence whatever or dissatisfied, as being like the pig which struggles and screams when sacrificed; like it too him who, alone upon his bed, bewails in silence the fetters of our fate; and that to the rational creature alone has it been granted to submit willingly to what happens, mere submission being imperative on all.[3]
29. In every act of thine pause at each step and ask thyself: Is death to be dreaded for the loss of this?
30. Does another's wrong-doing shock thee? Turn incontinently to thyself and bethink thee what analogous wrong-doing there is of thine own,[4] such as deeming money to be a good[5] or pleasure[6] or a little cheap fame[7] and the like. For by marking
- ↑ vii. 49.
- ↑ viii. 25, 31.
- ↑ cp. Sen. Ep. 107: ducunt volentem fata nolentem trahunt; de Vit. Beat. 15; Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus: ὡς ἕψομαί γ' ἄοκνος· ἦν δὲ μὴ θέλω κακὸς γενόμενος, οὐδεν ἧττον ἕψομαι.
- ↑ vii. 26; xi. 18, § 4.
- ↑ Marcus had a horror of avarice; cp. Vulc. Gallic. Vit. Avid. Cass. viii. 5: in imperatore avaritiam acerbissimum esse malum. Yet he was accused of it and repudiated the charge (Capit. xxix. 5); and he is also exculpated by Dio (71. 32, § 3), and in the Oxyrr. Papyri (i. p. 62) we find an Egyptian official expressly calling him ἀφιλάργυρος.
- ↑ See on v. 5.
- ↑ See on iv. 19.
