Letter 74

74. To Martinianus.

At how great a price do you think I would value our coming together one day, and being longer in your company, so as to enjoy all the good qualities in you? For if it is a great proof of culture "to have seen the cities of many men and to have known their mind," I think your conversation grants this in a short time. For what difference is there between seeing many men one by one, or one who has taken up in himself the experience of them all? Rather, I would say that there is even a very great difference, in that it procures a knowledge of good things without toil, and gathers the history of virtue pure from any admixture of the worse. For whether it be an excellent deed, or a saying worthy of remembrance, or the polities of men surpassing others, all is laid up in the storehouse of your soul. So that not for a year only, as Alcinous listened to Odysseus, but for all my life I would pray to listen to you, and on this account at least this life would seem long to me, even though I am ill-disposed toward it. Why, then, do I write now, when I ought to be present? Because my suffering country urges me to herself. For what she has suffered, you are not ignorant, my excellent friend: that, in the manner of Pentheus, certain real Maenads, demons, have torn her apart. For they divide her, and divide her again — like the bad physicians, making the wounds more grievous by their own inexperience. Since, then, she is worn out with being cut up, it remains to tend her, as one who is sick. The citizens, therefore, have written urging us; and it is necessary to go to meet them, not as men who will be of any use to affairs, but as those who avoid the blame that comes from absence. For you know how ready to hope are those in distress, and how ready, too, to find fault, ever turning their accusations upon what has been neglected.

And yet for this very reason I had need to come together with you and to obtain your opinion; or rather, to entreat you to devise something vigorous and befitting your spirit, and not to overlook our country brought to her knees, but to reach the camp and say, with that frankness which is yours, that they should not think they have gained two provinces instead of one. For they did not bring in the second from some other inhabited world, but have done something very like what one would do who, possessing a horse or an ox, should then cut it in two and think he had two instead of one; for he has not made two, and has destroyed the one. Say also to those in power that they do not increase the kingdom in this way, for power lies not in number but in actual resources. Since now we suppose that some, perhaps through ignorance of the truth, others through not wishing to grieve by their words, and others because they do not care, overlook what is being done. If, then, it were possible for him to come to the emperor, this would be best for affairs, and befitting your noble purpose in life. But if it is otherwise burdensome, both because of the season of the year and because of your age, which, as you yourself said, has reluctance bred in it, yet at least to write costs no toil. So that, granting to your country the help that comes from letters, first you will be conscious to yourself of having left undone nothing of what lay in your power, and then too you will give sufficient consolation to the suffering, by the very appearance of sharing their pain. But would that it were possible for you, standing over the affairs, to take in with your eyes the gloomy sights themselves. For thus perhaps, moved by the very vividness of what is seen, you would have uttered some voice befitting both your great mind and the dejection of the city. But as for us who relate these things, do not disbelieve us. Or is it that we truly needed a Simonides, or some such lyric poet, skilled to lament over sufferings vividly? And yet why do I speak of Simonides? I ought rather to say Aeschylus, or whoever else, like him, vividly setting forth the magnitude of a calamity, lamented it with a loud voice.

For those assemblies and discourses, the meetings of distinguished men in the market-place, and all that formerly made our city renowned, have failed us; so that one of those concerned with learning and letters would now be less likely to set foot in the market-place than formerly at Athens those condemned to disgrace, or those whose hands were not clean. In their place has been brought in the boorishness of certain Scythians or Massagetae; and there is one voice, of those demanding payment and those demanded of and those torn with scourges. The porticoes on either side, echoing dismally, seem to give forth a voice of their own, lamenting over what is happening. The gymnasia are closed, and the nights are without light, and the struggle for mere life does not let us reckon anything. For the danger is no slight one: that, when the men in power have been withdrawn, all things may be brought down together, like props that have fallen. And what account could reach our evils? Some have gone off in flight, a part of our council, and not the meanest, having preferred perpetual exile to Podandus. And when I say Podandus, think that I mean the Spartan Ceadas, or, if anywhere in the world you have seen a natural pit — such as some have spontaneously taken to calling Charonian, breathing out an air that breeds disease — count the evil of Podandus to be like some such thing. Of the three parts, then, some flee, having removed themselves with their very wives and hearths; others are led off like captives, the most and the best of those in the city, a pitiable sight to friends, but fulfilling a prayer for enemies — if indeed there has been anyone at all who has so cursed us. A third part, somewhere, is left; and these, both not bearing the loss of their familiar friends, and at the same time being proved too feeble for the need, have given up on life itself.

These things we exhort you to make plain to all by your own voice and your own just frankness, which you have from your life, declaring clearly beforehand that, unless they quickly change their counsel, they will not even have any toward whom to display their humanity. For either you will be of some use to the common cause, or you will at least have done what Solon did, who, when he could not defend the citizens who were left behind, the acropolis being already held, put on his arms and sat before his doors, plain by his very posture as not consenting to what was happening. But this I know exactly: that even if someone now should not accept your opinion, a little later it will add to you the greatest reputation both for goodwill and for understanding, when he sees affairs turn out according to your prediction.