History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne Volume I Part 17

265 Epict. _Ench._ xvii.

266 Epict. _Ench._ xi.

267 Seneca, _De Prov._ i.

268 Ibid. iv.

269 Marc. Aurel. ii. 2, 3.

270 The language in which the Stoics sometimes spoke of the inexorable determination of all things by Providence would appear logically inconsistent with free will. In fact, however, the Stoics a.s.serted the latter doctrine in unequivocal language, and in their practical ethics even exaggerated its power. Aulus Gellius (_Noct. Att._ vi.

2) has preserved a pa.s.sage in which Chrysippus exerted his subtlety in reconciling the two things. See, too, Arrian, i. 17.

271 We have an extremely curious ill.u.s.tration of this mode of thought in a speech of Archytas of Tarentum on the evils of sensuality, which Cicero has preserved. He considers the greatest of these evils to be that the vice predisposes men to unpatriotic acts. "Nullam capitaliorem pestem quam corporis voluptatem, hominibus a natura datam.... Hinc patriae proditiones, hinc rerumpublicarum eversiones, hinc c.u.m hostibus clandestina colloquia nasci," etc.-Cicero, _De Senect._ xii.

272 Diog. Laert. _Anax._

273 "Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares; sed omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere si ei sit profuturus?"-_De Offic._ i. 17.

274 See Seneca, _Consol. ad Helviam_ and _De Otio Sapien._; and Plutarch, _De Exilio_. The first of these works is the basis of one of the most beautiful compositions in the English language, Bolingbroke's _Reflections on Exile_.

_ 275 De Officiis_.

_ 276 Epist._ i. 10.

277 "Tota enim philosophorum vita, ut ait idem, commentatio mortis est."-Cicero, _Tusc._ i. 30, _ad fin_.

_ 278 Essay on Death._

279 Spinoza, _Ethics_, iv. 67.

280 Camden. Montalembert notices a similar legend as existing in Brittany (_Les Moines d'Occident_, tome ii. p. 287). Procopius (_De Bello Goth._ iv. 20) says that it is impossible for men to live in the west of Britain, and that the district is believed to be inhabited by the souls of the dead.

281 In his _De Sera Numinis Vindicta_ and his _Consolatio ad Uxorem_.

282 In the _Phaedo_, _pa.s.sim_. See, too, Marc. Aurelius, ii. 12.

283 See a very striking letter of Epicurus quoted by Diogenes Laert. in his life of that philosopher. Except a few sentences, quoted by other writers, these letters were all that remained of the works of Epicurus, till the recent discovery of one of his treatises at Herculaneum.

_ 284 Tusc. Quaest._ i.

_ 285 Consol. ad Polyb._ xxvii.

286 Maury, _Hist. des Religions de la Grece antique_, tom. i. pp.

582-588. M. Ravaisson, in his Memoir on Stoicism (_Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres_, tom. xxi.) has enlarged on the terrorism of paganism, but has, I think, exaggerated it. Religions which selected games as the natural form of devotion can never have had any very alarming character.

287 Plutarch, _Ad Apollonium_.

288 Ibid.

289 Cic. _Tusc. Quaest._ i.

290 Philost. Apoll. of Tyan. v. 4. Hence their pa.s.sion for suicide, which Silius Italicus commemorates in lines which I think very beautiful:-

"Prodiga gens animae et properare facillima mortem; Namque ubi transcendit florentes viribus annos Impatiens aevi, spernit novisse senectam Et fati modus in dextra est."-i. 225-228.

Valerius Maximus (ii. vi. -- 12) speaks of Celts who celebrated the birth of men with lamentation, and their deaths with joy.

291 Aulus Gellius, _Noctes_, i. 3.

292 Tacitus, _Annales_, xv. 62.

293 Sueton. _t.i.tus_, 10.

294 Capitolinus, _Antoninus_.

295 See the beautiful account of his last hours given by Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus and reproduced by Gibbon. There are some remarks well worth reading about the death of Julian, and the state of thought that rendered such a death possible, in Dr. Newman's _Discourses on University Education_, lect. ix.

296 "Lex non pna mors" was a favourite saying among the ancients. On the other hand, Tertullian very distinctly enunciated the patristic view, "Qui autem primordia hominis novimus, audenter determinamus mortem non ex natura secutam hominem sed ex culpa."-_De Anima_, 52.

297 Plutarch, _Ad Uxorem_.

298 St. Augustine, _Epist._ 166.

299 "At hoc quidem commune est omnium philosophorum, non eorum modo qui deum nihil habere ipsum negotii dic.u.n.t, et nihil exhibere alteri; sed eorum etiam, qui deum semper agere aliquid et moliri volunt, numquam nec irasci deum nec nocere."-Cic. _De Offic._ iii. 28.

300 See the refutation of the philosophic notion in Lactantius, _De Ira Dei_.

301 "Revelation," as Lessing observes in his essay on this subject, "has made Death the 'king of terrors,' the awful offspring of sin and the dread way to its punishment; though to the imagination of the ancient heathen world, Greek or Etrurian, he was a youthful genius-the twin brother of Sleep, or a l.u.s.ty boy with a torch held downwards."-Coleridge's _Biographia Litteraria_, cap. xxii., note by Sara Coleridge.

302 "Vetat Pythagoras injussu imperatoris, id est Dei, de praesidio et statione vitae decedere."-Cic. _De Senec._ xx. If we believe the very untrustworthy evidence of Diog. Laertius (_Pythagoras_) the philosopher himself committed suicide by starvation.

303 See his _Laws_, lib. ix. In his _Phaedon_, however, Plato went further, and condemned all suicide. Libanius says (_De Vita Sua_) that the arguments of the _Phaedon_ prevented him from committing suicide after the death of Julian. On the other hand, Cicero mentions a certain Cleombrotus, who was so fascinated by the proof of the immortality of the soul in the _Phaedon_ that he forthwith cast himself into the sea. Cato, as is well known, chose this work to study, the night he committed suicide.

304 Arist. _Ethic._ v.

305 See a list of these in Lactantius' _Inst. Div._ iii. 18. Many of these instances rest on very doubtful evidence.

306 Adam Smith's _Moral Sentiments_, part vii. -- 2.

307 "Proxima deinde tenent msti loca qui sibi lethum Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi Projecere animas. Quam vellent aethere in alto Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores."

-_aeneid_, vi. 434-437.

308 Cicero has censured suicide in his _De Senectute_, in the _Somn.

Scipionis_, and in the _Tusculans_. Concerning the death of Cato, he says, that the occasion was such as to const.i.tute a divine call to leave life.-_Tusc._ i.

309 Apuleius, _De Philos. Plat._ lib. i.

310 Thus Ovid:-