Cicero's Tusculan Disputations. Marcus Cicero
is undergone in the running, encounters, shouts! Hence it is that their minds are worked 79up to make so light of wounds in action. Take a soldier of equal bravery, but undisciplined, and he will seem a woman. Why is it that there is this sensible difference between a raw recruit and a veteran soldier? The age of the young soldiers is for the most part in their favor; but it is practice only that enables men to bear labor and despise wounds. Moreover, we often see, when the wounded are carried off the field, the raw, untried soldier, though but slightly wounded, cries out most shamefully; but the more brave, experienced veteran only inquires for some one to dress his wounds, and says,
Patroclus, to thy aid I must appeal
Ere worse ensue, my bleeding wounds to heal;
The sons of Æsculapius are employ’d,
No room for me, so many are annoy’d.
XVII. This is certainly Eurypylus himself. What an experienced man!—While his friend is continually enlarging on his misfortunes, you may observe that he is so far from weeping that he even assigns a reason why he should bear his wounds with patience.
Who at his enemy a stroke directs,
His sword to light upon himself expects.
Patroclus, I suppose, will lead him off to his chamber to bind up his wounds, at least if he be a man: but not a word of that; he only inquires how the battle went:
Say how the Argives bear themselves in fight?
And yet no words can show the truth as well as those, your deeds and visible sufferings.
Peace! and my wounds bind up;
but though Eurypylus could bear these afflictions, Æsopus could not,
Where Hector’s fortune press’d our yielding troops;
and he explains the rest, though in pain. So unbounded is military glory in a brave man! Shall, then, a veteran soldier be able to behave in this manner, and shall a wise and learned man not be able? Surely the latter might be 80able to bear pain better, and in no small degree either. At present, however, I am confining myself to what is engendered by practice and discipline. I am not yet come to speak of reason and philosophy. You may often hear of old women living without victuals for three or four days; but take away a wrestler’s provisions but for one day, and he will implore the aid of Jupiter Olympius, the very God for whom he exercises himself: he will cry out that he cannot endure it. Great is the force of custom! Sportsmen will continue whole nights in the snow; they will bear being almost frozen upon the mountains. From practice boxers will not so much as utter a groan, however bruised by the cestus. But what do you think of those to whom a victory in the Olympic games seemed almost on a par with the ancient consulships of the Roman people? What wounds will the gladiators bear, who are either barbarians, or the very dregs of mankind! How do they, who are trained to it, prefer being wounded to basely avoiding it! How often do they prove that they consider nothing but the giving satisfaction to their masters or to the people! for when covered with wounds, they send to their masters to learn their pleasure: if it is their will, they are ready to lie down and die. What gladiator, of even moderate reputation, ever gave a sigh? who ever turned pale? who ever disgraced himself either in the actual combat, or even when about to die? who that had been defeated ever drew in his neck to avoid the stroke of death? So great is the force of practice, deliberation, and custom! Shall this, then, be done by
A Samnite rascal, worthy of his trade;
and shall a man born to glory have so soft a part in his soul as not to be able to fortify it by reason and reflection? The sight of the gladiators’ combats is by some looked on as cruel and inhuman, and I do not know, as it is at present managed, but it may be so; but when the guilty fought, we might receive by our ears perhaps (but certainly by our eyes we could not) better training to harden us against pain and death.
XVIII. I have now said enough about the effects of exercise, custom, and careful meditation. Proceed we now 81to consider the force of reason, unless you have something to reply to what has been said.
A. That I should interrupt you! By no means; for your discourse has brought me over to your opinion. Let the Stoics, then, think it their business to determine whether pain be an evil or not, while they endeavor to show by some strained and trifling conclusions, which are nothing to the purpose, that pain is no evil. My opinion is, that whatever it is, it is not so great as it appears; and I say, that men are influenced to a great extent by some false representations and appearance of it, and that all which is really felt is capable of being endured. Where shall I begin, then? Shall I superficially go over what I said before, that my discourse may have a greater scope?
This, then, is agreed upon by all, and not only by learned men, but also by the unlearned, that it becomes the brave and magnanimous—those that have patience and a spirit above this world—not to give way to pain. Nor has there ever been any one who did not commend a man who bore it in this manner. That, then, which is expected from a brave man, and is commended when it is seen, it must surely be base in any one to be afraid of at its approach, or not to bear when it comes. But I would have you consider whether, as all the right affections of the soul are classed under the name of virtues, the truth is that this is not properly the name of them all, but that they all have their name from that leading virtue which is superior to all the rest: for the name “virtue” comes from vir, a man, and courage is the peculiar distinction of a man: and this virtue has two principal duties, to despise death and pain. We must, then, exert these, if we would be men of virtue, or, rather, if we would be men, because virtue (virtus) takes its very name from vir, man.
XIX. You may inquire, perhaps, how? And such an inquiry is not amiss, for philosophy is ready with her assistance. Epicurus offers himself to you, a man far from a bad—or, I should rather say, a very good man: he advises no more than he knows. “Despise pain,” says he. Who is it saith this? Is it the same man who calls pain the greatest of all evils? It is not, indeed, very consistent in him. Let us hear what he says: “If the pain is excessive, 82it must needs be short.” I must have that over again, for I do not apprehend what you mean exactly by “excessive” or “short.” That is excessive than which nothing can be greater; that is short than which nothing is shorter. I do not regard the greatness of any pain from which, by reason of the shortness of its continuance, I shall be delivered almost before it reaches me. But if the pain be as great as that of Philoctetes, it will appear great indeed to me, but yet not the greatest that I am capable of bearing; for the pain is confined to my foot. But my eye may pain me, I may have a pain in the head, or sides, or lungs, or in every part of me. It is far, then, from being excessive. Therefore, says he, pain of a long continuance has more pleasure in it than uneasiness. Now, I cannot bring myself to say so great a man talks nonsense; but I imagine he is laughing at us. My opinion is that the greatest pain (I say the greatest, though it may be ten atoms less than another) is not therefore short, because acute. I could name to you a great many good men who have been tormented many years with the acutest pains of the gout. But this cautious man doth not determine the measure of that greatness or of duration, so as to enable us to know what he calls excessive with regard to pain, or short with respect to its continuance. Let us pass him by, then, as one who says just nothing at all; and let us force him to acknowledge, notwithstanding he might behave himself somewhat boldly under his colic and his strangury, that no remedy against pain can be had from him who looks on pain as the greatest of all evils. We must apply, then, for relief elsewhere, and nowhere better (if we seek for what is most consistent with itself) than to those who place the chief good in honesty, and the greatest evil in infamy. You dare not so much as groan, or discover the least uneasiness in their company, for virtue itself speaks to you through them.
XX. Will you, when you may observe children at Lacedæmon, and young men at Olympia, and barbarians in the amphitheatre, receive the severest wounds, and bear them without once opening their mouths—will you, I say, if any pain should by chance attack you, cry out like a woman? Will you not rather bear it with resolution and constancy? 83and not cry, It is intolerable; nature cannot bear it! I hear what you say: Boys bear this because they are led thereto by glory; some bear it through shame, many through fear, and yet are we afraid