Orationes 11
Orationes 11 Imperial Aelius Aristides Greek- This declamation is in no way fortunate, nor according to my hopes, but it is forced upon me both for the city's sake and for the consolation of the kinsmen of Eteoneus, and besides for our own. And I think that, even if dirges had never before been customary among men, now at least over this it would be right to begin them. For what would one not lament? Whether the youth which he has taken with him in his departure, and the manliness now cruelly hidden away; or the temperance, of which one could not easily find even a pattern; or the hopes of which he himself is bereft, and bereft too are his household and friends and city and all that belongs to the Asia of today? What Simonides will lament these things? What Pindar, having found what melody or what such speech? What Stesichorus will utter anything worthy of such a calamity? What quarrelsome Thessalian woman mourned so great a grief over Antiochus when he died as now lies before his mother for mourning? But it will not
- suffice to mourn in silence, nor only so far as to cry out his name, but some ornament too shall be added to the dirge. For why should we fear that in speaking we shall speak falsely of one whose family is so far the first both in the city and in Asia that not a single man would dispute it—for nearly all of them, man by man, hold the first place; and indeed the line on the father's side is matched by that on the mother's. And his parents themselves: the father the most distinguished of men, the mother the most temperate of women, and besides, in care for her own children, more than a woman. And his rearing and his nature were worthy of his birth, since his nurse and guardian was his mother, and body and soul were suited to one another. To look upon, he was the fairest and tallest and most perfectly formed of those of his age, and brought the greatest pleasure to the beholder; and in character he was most orderly and most liberal, conspicuous for magnificence joined with simplicity, so that one could not guess whether he was a boy or a young man or an old man. For his unaffectedness was a boy's, his bloom a young man's, his prudence an old man's. One had to admire, in his understanding, that it was in no way bold or reckless or self-willed, but that the quickness of wit lay in a leisured temper; and in his temperance, that it was in no way sluggish or supine or torpid, but that, as in a well-tempered spring season, sharpness was set in equal balance with gentleness, and neither his temperance nor his charm was harmed by the other. For he clung to his mother as do children at the breast, and welcomed his brother as a child, and clung to his studies as though it were not possible for him to live otherwise. What he heard he understood at once, and at first sight he would know what manner of man one was, and whether one should be welcomed or guarded against. And thinking that the
- saying of Homer was good, that the rule of many is not good, and that the many teachers tend rather toward ignorance, he chose out of all a single teacher—whomever indeed he chose, for it is not most seemly for me to say—and to him he was so attached that, doing everything that befitted the most studious and most affectionate of pupils, he never thought himself near to the man's deserts. And when he was with him he rejoiced as though this alone of the time of life were worth living for him; and if anything hindered, he was grieved, but he never once complained. Listening, then, to discourses, he was so intent upon them that he had no leisure to praise, but, just as the thirsty drink in silence, so for him it was enough to receive what was said, showing by his bearing and his nod and his radiance the joy he had in the words. And you would always have found him either handling a book, or composing speeches, or gladdening his mother by what he related or by what he displayed, and in any case, in this posture, doing everything that it was fairest even for a painting to imitate. And the things that are sported with day and night by those who come to youth here were to him like so many fables. But of women his one messmate was his mother, of children his one brother, and his friends were those who had chosen the same things and gathered over the same discourses; and he was conspicuous through them all. One would have said he was a statue of Modesty, since for the most part it sufficed him to be silent, and if he uttered anything, he had to blush. You would not otherwise have heard his voice, but he had either to blush before speaking or to blush in speaking; so unseeing and unhearing and untried of all that is most shameful did he pass his life. Speeches and learning were the only things he looked upon, he who even in dying died into these, crying out for the panegyric and the declamations. O fairest of all children, O you who,
- not having attained your fitting age, yet appeared more august and older than the age you had, you are longed for by choruses of your fellows, longed for by elders, longed for by the city that hoped the greatest things upon you, which but lately you gladdened for the first and the last time. But for your mother, what nights, or what days, remain—she who before was sung as blessed in her child, but now is convicted as wretched in her childbearing? O circles of those eyes, closed now for all time to come; head, before most graceful, now in the dust; and hands made invisible. O feet, how did you give way, you who bore such a master? O you, more pitiable than a bridegroom just now burned, and more fit for garlands than for dirges, what untimeliness in your season did you set in motion, so that, before the wedding-song could be sung for you, the time has overtaken us to sing dirges. O fairest form. O voice common to the Greeks, growing in strength, you are gone after only the prelude, having gladdened us so much as to grieve us the more. It comes to me to add the words of Pindar: Stars and rivers and waves of the sea recall your untimeliness. O what a second fall, beside what a young man you lie. O what an addition, how again the second time it has shaken us. O tragic destiny, which, having lately set before us councils and speeches and emulation and joy, far from these in a brief space closed up the drama. O calamities common to the gods of eloquence and the gods below. What answer shall I make to the decrees? Or this, that Eteoneus is gone to the better world? O most ready of children, what manner of book I send you, what manner of speeches you now enjoy. But indeed, as truly as in some tragedy, in the midst of my lamentations I seem to myself to hear a voice from the device of some god turning the dirge into words of good omen, speaking thus: Cease, O men; the boy is not pitiable—or rather the man—nor is he justly to be pitied for the
- journey on which he has set out, but, if anyone else, he holds well indeed the lot of mortals. For neither Cocytus nor Acheron has received this one, nor will the tomb hide him when it has taken him in, but glorious and ageless now for all the time to come he goes about as a hero, an assessor of Cyzicus, honoured by ancestral Apollo in the same fashion as Amyclas and Narcissus and Hyacinthus, and any other who, for a fair form, acquired a virtue greater than after the measure of man. With other honours, then, must he now be honoured, and in another way be escorted on his way, as being above tears and as having made his colony not without a divine portion. And in any case death is the common boundary set before all; but for one who, having thought himself worthy of the fairest things, to be released with glory, is blameless before gods and men. And this has been granted not to all, but to some few of all. And every life of man is brief and of no great worth in the reckoning of number; but whether one names Arganthonius or Tithonus, or Nestor of Pylos who lasted out three generations, putting all these times together you will find them a smaller part of the whole of eternity than there are words to say. One ought not, then, to cling to life nor to measure happiness by this—whether a man has had the most affairs possible, or whether a man has enjoyed long old age, such as men are wont to enjoy—but to hold that he is best off who has filled out the portion of life given to him among the fairest things, and who, like a poet, has closed the drama while men still long to hear and to see. And this one goes his way happy and enviable to all, both younger and older, having enjoyed so much of life as alone made it to be prayed for that he should be born—untouched by evils, untried in troubles, glorious, reared among speeches and learning and praises, setting out from his dear mother who shared his tent to the ancient mother. And if to anyone he seems not to have enjoyed renown sufficiently, we must now make it complete, adorning him as a hero. And since
- praises are now in safety, we must think that we hear these things from the higher powers, and that, so disposed, we should rather attain the truth and do what is pleasing to him. And it is well, even in drinking-songs, that, as we sing of Harmodius, You are surely not dead, we should say, but, if anyone else, he moves in the midst of those who knew him, both citizens and strangers. O you who lived as among holy things and died greater than after the measure of man. O ornament to friends and family and city, O you who held the first place of the virtue belonging to your age. These are the things from us; the rest will be the care of the city in common.