Consolatio ad Helviam 1-7

Seneca: Dialogues and Letters, edited and translated by C.D.N. Costa, Penguin Books 1997, pp.3-7

1.   Dearest mother,

I have often had the urge to console you and I often restrained it.

Many things encouraged me to venture to do so.

First, I thought I would be laying aside all my troubles when I had at least wiped away your tears,

even if I could not stop them coming.

Then, I did not doubt that I would have more power to raise you up

if I had first risen myself.

Moreover, I was afraid that though Fortune was conquered by me

she might conquer someone close to me.

So, staunching my own cut with my hand

I was doing my best to crawl forward to bind up your wounds.

There were, on the other hand, considerations which delayed my purpose.

I realized that your grief should not be intruded upon

while it was fresh and agonizing,

in case the consolations themselves should rouse and inflame it:

for an illness too nothing is more harmful than premature treatment.

So I was waiting until your grief of itself should lose its force

and, being softened by time to endure remedies,

it would allow itself to be touched and handled.

Moreover, although I consulted all the works written by the most famous authors to control and moderate grief,

I couldn't find any example of someone who had comforted his own dear ones

when he himself was the subject of their grief.

So in this unprecedented situation

I hesitated,

fearing that I would be offering not consolation but further irritation.

Consider, too, that a man lifting his head from the very funeral pyre

must need some novel vocabulary not drawn from ordinary everyday condolence to comfort his own dear ones.

But every great and overpowering grief must take away the capacity to choose words,

since it often stifles the voice itself.

Anyway, I'll try my best, not trusting in my cleverness,

but because being myself the comforter I can thereby be the most effective comfort.

As you never refused me anything I hope you will not refuse me this at least

(though all grief is stubborn), to be willing that I should set a limit to your desolation.

2.    Consider how much I have promised myself from your indulgence.

I don't doubt that I shall have more influence over you than your grief

than which nothing has more influence over the wretched.

So in order not to join battle with it at once,

I'll first support it and offer it a lot of encouragement.

I shall expose and reopen all the wounds which have already healed.

Someone will object:

'What kind of consolation is this,

 to bring back forgotten ills and to set the mind in view of all its sorrows

when it can scarcely endure one?'

But let him consider that those disorders which are so dangerous that they have gained ground in spite of treatment

can generally be treated by opposite methods.

Therefore I shall offer to the mind all its sorrows, all its mourning garments:

this will not be a gentle prescription for healing, but cautery and the knife.

What shall I achieve?

That a soul which has conquered so many miseries will be ashamed to worry about one more wound in a body which already has so many scars.

So let those people go on weeping and wailing

whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity,

let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries;

but let those who have spent all their years suffering disasters endure the worst afflictions with a brave and resolute staunchness.

Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing,

that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts.

Fortune has given you no respite from the most woeful sorrows, not even excepting the day of your birth. As soon as you were born, no, even while being born, you lost your mother, and on the threshold of life you were in a sense exposed. You grew up under the care of a stepmother, and you actually forced her to become a real mother by showing her all the deference and devotion which can be seen even in a daughter. Yet even having a good stepmother costs every child a good deal. You lost your uncle, kindest, best and bravest of men, when you were awaiting his arrival; and lest Fortune should lessen her cruelty by dividing it, within a month you buried your dearest husband by whom you had three children.! This sorrow was announced to you when you were already grieving, and when indeed all your children were away, as if your misfortunes were concentrated on purpose into that time so that your grief would have nowhere to turn for relief. I pass over all the dangers, all the fears you endured as they assailed you unceasingly. But recently into the same lap from which you had let go three grandchildren you received back the bones of three grandchildren. Within twenty days of burying my son, who died as you held and kissed him, you heard that I had been taken away. This only you had lacked - to grieve for the living.

3.  Of all the wounds which have ever pierced your body this last  one is, I admit, the worst. It has not simply broken the skin but cut into your breast and vital parts. But just as recruits, even when superficially wounded, cry aloud and dread being handled by doctors more than the sword, while veterans, even if severely wounded, patiently and without a groan allow their wounds to be cleaned as though their bodies did not belong to them; so you must now offer yourself bravely for treatment. Come, put away wailings and lamentations and all the other usual noisy manifestations of feminine grief For all your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched. Do I seem to have dealt boldly with you? I have kept away not one of your misfortunes from you, but piled them all up in front of you.

4.    I have done this courageously for I decided to conquer your  grief not to cheat it. But I shall do this, I think, first of all if I show that I am suffering nothing for which I could be called wretched, let alone make my relations wretched; then if I turn to you and show that your fortune, which is wholly dependent on mine, is also not painful.

First I shall deal with the fact, which your love is longing to hear, that I am suffering no affliction. I shall make it clear, if I can, that those very circumstances which you think are crushing me can be borne; but if you cannot believe that, at least I shall be more pleased with myself for being happy in conditions which normally make men wretched. There is no need to believe others about me: I am telling you firmly that I am not wretched, so that you won't be agitated by uncertainty. To reassure you further, I shall add that I cannot even be made wretched.

5.     We are born under circumstances that would be favourable if we did not abandon them. It was nature's intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can make himself happy. External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence in either direction: pros- perity does not elevate the sage and adversity does not depress him. For he has always made the effort to rely as much as possible on himself and to derive aU delight from himself.. So what? Am I calling myself a sage? Certainly not. For if I could claim that, not only would I be denying that I was wretched but I would be asserting that I was the most fortunate of all men and coming close to god. As it is, doing what is sufficient to alleviate all wretchedness, I have surrendered myself to wise men, and as I am not yet strong enough to help myself I have gone over to another camp - I mean those who can easily protect themselves and their followers. They have ordered me to take a firm stand, like a sentry on guard, and to foresee all the attacks and all the onslaughts of Fortune long before they hit me. She falls heavily on those to whom she is unexpected; the man who is always expecting her easily withstands her. For an enemy's arrival too scatters those whom it catches off guard; but those who have prepared in advance for the coming conflict, being properly drawn up and equipped, easily withstand the first onslaught, which is the most violent. Never have I trusted Fortune, even when she seemed to offer peace. All those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me - money, public office, influence - I relegated to a place whence she could claim them back without bothering me. I kept a wide gap between them and me, with the result that she has taken them away, not torn them away. No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortune unless he was first deceived by her favours. Those who loved her gifts as if they were their own for ever, who wanted to be admired on account of them, are laid low and grieve when the false and transient pleasures desert their vain and childish minds, ignorant of every stable pleasure. But the man who is not puffed up in good times does not collapse either when they change. His fortitude is already tested and he maintains a mind unconquered in the face of either condition: for in the midst of prosperity he has tried his own strength against adversity. So 1 have never believed that there was any genuine good in the things which everyone prays for; what is more, 1 have found them empty and daubed with showy and deceptive colours, with nothing inside to match their appearance. And now in these so-called evils I find nothing so terrible and harsh as the general opinion threatened. Certainly the word 'exile' itself now enters the ears more harshly through a sort of conviction and popular belief; and strikes the listener as something gloomy and detestable. For that is the people's verdict, but wise men on the whole reject the people's decrees.

6. So, putting aside this judgement of the majority who are carried away by the surface appearance of things, whatever the grounds for believing in it, let us examine the reality of exile. Clearly a change of place. I must not seem to restrict its force and remove its worst feature, so I agree that this change of place brings with it the disadvantages of poverty, disgrace and contempt. I shall deal with these later; meanwhile I wish first to examine what distress the change of place itself involves.

'It is unbearable to be deprived of your country.' Come now, look at this mass of people whom the buildings of huge Rome can scarcely hold: most of that crowd are deprived of their country. They have flocked together from their towns and colonies, in fact from the whole world, some brought by ambition, some by the obligation of public office, some by the duties of an envoy, some by self-indulgence seeking a place