SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXX11.
of these men did not grow lumpy in their mouths, or
stick in their throats, or slip from their fingers ;
eagerly did they accept the invitation to breakfast,
and to supper also Think, too, of the famous
!
a
Roman general
; his soldiers had been dispatched
to seize a position, and when they were about to
make their way through a huge army of the enemy,
he addressed them with the words " : You must go
now, fellow-soldiers, to yonder place, whence there
is no ( '
'
must about your returning
!
You see, then, how straightforward and peremptory
virtue is but what man on earth can
;
your
deceptive logic
make more courageous or more upright
Rather ?
does it break the spirit,
which should
never be less straitened or forced to deal with
petty and thorny problems than when some great
work is
being planned. It is not the Three Hundred, 6
it is all mankind that should be relieved of the fear
of death. But how can you prove to all those men
that death is no evil ? How can you overcome the
notions of all our past life, notions with which we
are tinged from our very infancy What ?
succour can
you discover for man's helplessness
? What can you
say that will make men rush, burning with zeal, into
the midst of danger? By what persuasive speech
can you turn aside this universal feeling of fear, by
what strength of wit can you turn aside the conviction
of the human race which steadfastly opposes you
?
Do you propose to construct catchwords for me, or
to string together petty syllogisms
? It takes great
weapons to strike down great monsters. You recall
the fierce serpent in Africa, more frightful to the
Roman legions o than the war itself, and assailed in
*
vain by arrows and slings it could not be wounded
;
even
" c
by Pythius," since its
huge size, and the
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