Moral essays. With an English translation by J.W. Basore

ON PROVIDENCE, m. 7-10roaming at large throughout the city, and manythousands of Roman citizens butchered in one spotafter, nay, by reason of, a promise of security,—let"those who cannot go into exile behold these things !Is Lucius Sulla happy because his way is clearedby the sword when he descends to the forum ?because he suffers the heads of consulars to beshown him and has the treasurer pay the price oftheir assassination out of the pubUc funds ? Andthese all are the deeds of that man—that man whoproposed the Cornehan Law "!Let us come now to Regulus : what injury didFortune do to him because she made him a patternof loyalty, a pattern of endurance ? Nails piercehis skin, and wherever he rests his wearied body heHes upon a wound ; his eyes are stark in eternalsleeplessness. But the greater his torture is, thegreater shall be his glory. Would you hke to knowhow httle he regrets that he rated \Trtue at such aprice ? Make him whole again and send him backto the senate ; he will express the same opinion.Do you, then, think Maecenas a happier man, who,distressed by love and grie\^ng over the daily repulsesof his wayward vrife, courted slumber by means ofharmonious music, echoing faintly from a distance ?Although he drugs himself yviih. wine, and divertshis worried mind with the sound of ripphng waters,and beguiles it \\ith a thousand pleasures, yet he,upon his bed of down, will no more close his eyes'than that other upon his cross. But while theone, consoled by the thought that he is sufferinghardship for the sake of right, turns his eyes fromhis suffering to its cause, the other, jaded vnihpleasures and struggling with too much good fortune,21