Letter 63

I am grieved that your friend Flaccus has died, but I would not have you grieve more than is fitting. That you should not grieve at all, I shall scarcely dare to demand; and yet I know it is better. But who will attain such firmness of mind unless he is already lifted far above fortune? Even such a man this matter will pinch — but only pinch. We, however, may be pardoned for slipping into tears, provided they have not run down in excess, provided we have ourselves checked them. The eyes should be neither dry when a friend is lost, nor flooded. There should be weeping, not wailing.

Do I seem to lay down a hard law for you, when the greatest of the Greek poets gave the right of weeping for one single day, when he said that even Niobe thought of food? You ask whence come lamentations, whence excessive weeping? Through tears we seek proofs of our longing, and we do not follow our grief but display it. No one is sad for himself. O unhappy folly! There is even an ambition in grief.

"What then?" you say. "Shall I forget my friend?" You promise him a brief remembrance with you, if it is to last only with grief; soon any chance thing will turn that brow of yours to laughter. I do not put it off to a longer time, in which all longing is soothed, in which even the keenest mourning subsides. As soon as you cease to watch yourself, that image of sadness will depart; now you yourself keep guard over your grief. But even from him who guards it, it slips away, and ceases the sooner the keener it is.

Let us take care that the recollection of those we have lost becomes pleasant to us. No one returns willingly to that which he cannot think of without torment. So this too must needs come about, that the name of those we have lost, whom we loved, occurs to us with some sting. But this sting too has its own pleasure.

For, as our Attalus used to say, the memory of dead friends is pleasant in the way that certain fruits are sweetly tart, in the way that in very old wine its very bitterness delights us; but when an interval has come between, all that pained is extinguished, and pure pleasure comes to us.

If we believe him: "To think of living friends is to enjoy honey and cake; the recollection of those who have been pleases not without a certain tartness." But who would deny that these things too, sharp and having something of austerity, stir the appetite?

I do not feel the same; to me the thought of dead friends is sweet and gentle. For I had them as one about to lose them, I lost them as though I had them still. Do then, my dear Lucilius, what befits your fairness of mind: cease to interpret the gift of fortune ill; she took away, but she gave.

Therefore let us enjoy our friends eagerly, since how long this may be granted us is uncertain. Let us reflect how often we have left them, setting out on some distant journey, how often, staying in the same place, we have not seen them; we shall understand that we lost more of our time while they were alive.

But can you endure those who hold their friends most carelessly, yet mourn them most wretchedly, and love no one unless they have lost him? And therefore they then grieve the more lavishly, because they fear it may be doubted whether they loved at all; they seek late proofs of their affection.

If we have other friends, we deserve ill of them, and think ill of them, if they avail too little for the consolation of one who is dead; if we have none, we have done ourselves a greater wrong than we received from fortune: she took away one, but we have lost everyone whom we failed to make a friend.

And further, he has not loved even one too well who could not love more than one. If a man, stripped bare, having lost his only tunic, should choose to bewail himself rather than look about how to escape the cold and find something to cover his shoulders, would he not seem to you most foolish? The man you loved you have buried; seek one to love.

It is better to make good a friend than to weep for one. I know that what I am about to add is now worn threadbare, yet I will not pass it by merely because it has been said by everyone: an end to grieving even the man who has not made it by resolve finds in time. But the most shameful remedy of mourning in a prudent man is weariness of mourning. I would rather you left your grief than were left by it, and that you ceased as soon as possible to do what, even if you wished, you could not do for long.

Our ancestors fixed a year for women to mourn, not that they should mourn so long, but that they should not mourn longer; for men there is no lawful period, because none is honorable. Yet which of those poor women, scarcely dragged back from the pyre, scarcely torn from the corpse, will you show me whose tears lasted out a whole month? Nothing comes into hatred sooner than grief, which, while fresh, finds a comforter and draws some to itself, but when grown old is laughed at — and not without reason. For it is either feigned or foolish.

I write you this — I, who wept for Annaeus Serenus, dearest to me, so immoderately that, what I would least wish, I am among the examples of those whom grief overcame. Today, however, I condemn my own conduct, and I understand that the chief cause of my mourning so was that I had never reflected that he could die before me. This alone occurred to me: that he was younger, and much younger — as though the fates kept order.

Therefore let us constantly reflect on the mortality both of ourselves and of all whom we love. Then I ought to have said: "My Serenus is younger; what does that matter? He ought to die after me, but he can die before me." Because I did not do this, fortune struck me unprepared, all at once. Now reflect that all things are mortal, and mortal by no fixed law. Today there can happen whatever can ever happen.

Let us reflect, then, dearest Lucilius, that we shall soon come to the place where we mourn that he has come. And perhaps — if only the report of the wise is true and some place receives us — he whom we think to have perished has only been sent on ahead. Farewell.