SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXIX.
her will. But, as the shadow sometimes precedes
and sometimes follows or even lags behind, so fame
sometimes goes before us and shows herself in plain
sight, and sometimes is in the rear, and is all the
greater in proportion as she is late in coming, when
once envy has beaten a retreat. How long did
men believe Democritus a to be mad !
Glory barely
came to Socrates. And how long did our state
remain in ignorance of Cato !
They rejected him,
and did not know his worth until they had lost him.
If Rutilius b had not resigned himself to wrong, his
innocence and virtue would have escaped notice ;
the hour of his suffering was the hour of his triumph.
Did he not give thanks for his lot, and welcome his
exile with open arms ? I have mentioned thus far
those to whom Fortune has brought n at the
renowr
but how many there
very moment of persecution ;
are whose progress toward virtue has come to light
only after their death ! And how many have been
ruined, not rescued, by their reputation
? There is
Epicurus, for example mark how ; greatly he is
admired, not only by the more cultured, but also by
this ignorant rabble. This man, however, was unknown
to Athens itself, near which he had hidden
himself away. And so, when he had already survived
by many years his friend Metrodorus, he added in a
letter these last words, proclaiming with thankful
appreciation the friendship that had existed between
them "
: So greatly blest were Metrodorus and I that
it has been no harm to us to be unknown, and almost
unheard of, in this well-known land of Greece." c
Is it not true, therefore, that men did not discover
him until after he had ceased to be ? Has not his
renown shone forth, for all that ? Metrodorus also
admits this fact in one of his letters d : that Epicurus
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