The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [52]
17. I hope beyond hope that our enemies may be content with these endless miseries of ours; among which, after all, there is no discredit for any wrong thing done;
18. Sorrow is the beginning and end, sorrow that punishment is most severe when our conduct has been most unexceptionable.
19. As to my daughter and yours and my young son, why should I recommend them to you, my dear brother?
20. Rather I grieve that their orphan state will cause you no less sorrow than it does me.
21. Yet as long as you are uncondemned they will not be fatherless.
22. The rest, by my hopes of restoration and the privilege of dying in my fatherland, my tears will not allow me to write!
23. Terentia also I would ask you to protect, and to write me word on every subject.
24. Be as brave as the nature of the case admits, and I will endeavour to be likewise.
Chapter 16
1. Yes indeed, my dear Servius, I would have wished that you had been by my side at the time of my grievous loss.
2. How much help your presence might have given me, both by consolation and by your taking an almost equal share in my sorrow,
3. I know from the fact that after reading your letter I experienced a great feeling of relief.
4. For not only was what you wrote calculated to soothe a mourner, but in offering me consolation you manifested no slight sorrow of heart yourself.
5. Yet, after all, your son Servius by all the kindness of which such a time admitted made it evident, both how much he personally valued me,
6. And how gratifying to you he thought such affection for me would be. His kind offices have often been pleasanter to me, yet never more acceptable.
7. For myself again, it is not only your words and your partnership in my sorrow that consoles me, it is your character also.
8. For I think it a disgrace that I should not bear my loss as you – a man of such wisdom – think it should be borne.
9. But at times I am taken by surprise and scarcely offer any resistance to my grief,
10. Because those consolations fail me, which were not wanting in a similar misfortune to those others, whose examples I put before my eyes.
11. After losing the honours which I had gained by the greatest possible exertions, there was only that one solace left which has now been torn away.
12. My sad musings were not interrupted by the business of my friends, nor by the management of public affairs:
13. There was nothing I cared to do in the forum; I could not bear the sight of the senate-house;
14. I thought – as was the fact – that I had lost all the fruits both of my industry and of fortune.
15. But while I thought that I shared these losses with you and certain others, and while I was conquering my feelings and forcing myself to bear them with patience,
16. I had a refuge, one bosom where I could find repose, one in whose conversation and sweetness I could lay aside all anxieties and sorrows.
17. But now, after such a crushing blow as this, the wounds which seemed to have healed break out afresh.
18. For there is no republic now to offer me a refuge and a consolation by its good fortunes when I leave my home in sorrow,
19. As there once was a home to receive me when I returned saddened by the state of public affairs.
20. Hence I absent myself from both home and forum, because home can no longer console the sorrow which public affairs cause me, nor public affairs that which I suffer at home.
21. All the more I look forward to your coming, and long to see you as soon as possible.
22. No reasoning can give me greater solace than a renewal of our friendship and conversation.
23. In our sadness and sorrow we need our friends, and I cannot imagine how life can be borne without them.
24. Where should we be if there were no love? Unhappy, most unhappy, all who are forsaken in their times of trouble,
25. All who lament, and feel the weariness and burden of the world in their suffering.
Consolations
Chapter 1: Of grief: Laelius on the death of Scipio
1. How are we to bear the loss of those