Consolation of Philosophy 1

I who once in flourishing zeal composed songs—alas, weeping, I am compelled to take up mournful measures. Behold, the torn Muses dictate to me what must be written, and the elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. These at least no terror was able to vanquish, so that they should not, as companions, accompany our journey. The glory of once happy and green youth—now they comfort the destiny of a sorrowful old man. For old age, hastened by ills, has come unlooked-for, and grief has bidden its own age to be present. Untimely grey hairs are poured upon my head, and the slack skin trembles on my worn-out body. Happy is the death of men which neither thrusts itself into sweet years and, often called upon in grief, comes. Alas, with how deaf an ear it turns away from the wretched, and, cruel, refuses to close weeping eyes. While ill-faithful Fortune favoured me with fleeting goods, the sad hour had almost drowned my head. Now, because the cloud has changed its deceptive face, my impious life prolongs its unwelcome delays. Why, my friends, did you so often boast me happy?

He who has fallen was not standing on firm ground. While silently I was turning these things over within myself and was marking down my tearful complaint by the office of the pen, there seemed to stand above my head a woman of countenance most reverend, with eyes burning and keen beyond the common power of men, of fresh colour and inexhaustible vigour—although she was so full of years that she could by no means be believed to be of our age—of stature ambiguous to discernment. For now indeed she restrained herself to the common measure of men, now she seemed to strike the heavens with the summit of her highest crown; and when she had lifted her head higher, she even penetrated the very heavens and frustrated the gaze of the men who looked on. Her garments were made of the finest threads, by subtle craftsmanship, of indissoluble material; which, as I afterwards learned from her own telling, she had woven with her own hands.

Over their appearance a certain darkness of neglected age had spread, as is wont to befall smoke-stained images. On the lowest border of these was read, woven in, the Greek letter Π, and on the topmost the letter θ. And between the two letters there seemed to be marked, after the fashion of a ladder, certain steps by which there was an ascent from the lower to the higher element. Yet the hands of certain violent men had torn that same garment, and each had carried off such little pieces as he could. And in her right hand she bore some small books, but in her left a sceptre. When she saw the poetic Muses standing by my couch and dictating words to my weeping, somewhat moved and inflamed with grim glances, she said: 'Who has permitted these little theatrical harlots to approach this sick man—they who not only soothe his sorrows with no remedies, but even nourish them with sweet poisons?'

For these are they who kill the corn-field of reason, fruitful in fruits, with the unfruitful thorns of the passions, and accustom the minds of men to sickness, instead of freeing them. But if your blandishments had drawn away some profane man, as is commonly your custom, I should think it the less to be borne ill, since in him no harm would be done to our labour. But this man, nourished in the Eleatic and Academic studies? Nay, rather depart, you Sirens sweet unto destruction, and leave him to be tended and healed by my Muses. At this rebuke that company, cast down more sorrowful, lowered its gaze to the ground, and confessing its shame by a blush, sadly passed beyond the threshold. But I, whose sight, drowned in tears, was dimmed, so that I could not discern who this woman of so imperious authority might be, was struck dumb, and with my eyes fixed upon the ground, I began silently to wait what she would do next.

Then she, drawing nearer, sat down on the far part of my couch, and gazing upon my face, heavy with grief and cast down to the ground in sorrow, she lamented the perturbation of my mind in these verses: Alas, how the mind, sunk in a headlong deep, grows dull, and, having left its own light, strives to go into outer darkness, as often as, swollen by earthly blasts, baneful care grows to immensity. This mind, once free under the open sky, wont to go upon ethereal paths, beheld the lights of the rosy sun, visited the stars of the cold moon, and whatever wandering star plies its varied returns, bent through its orbits, the conqueror held it grasped by numbers.

Nay more, the causes whence the sonorous gales stir the level waters of the sea, what spirit turns the stable sphere, or why a star, about to fall into the western waves, rises from its ruddy dawning, what tempers the calm hours of spring, that it may adorn the earth with rosy flowers, who granted that fruitful autumn, in a full year, should flow in with heavy grapes—he was wont to search out and to render the various causes of hidden Nature. Now he lies with the light of his mind worn out, and, his neck pressed with heavy chains, bearing a face bowed down by the weight, he is compelled, alas, to gaze upon the dull earth. 'But it is the time for medicine,' she said, 'rather than for complaint.' Then indeed, intent upon me with her whole gaze: 'Are you,' she said, 'that man who, once nourished with my milk and reared with my nourishment, had come out into the strength of a manly mind? And yet I had bestowed such arms upon you that, unless you had first cast them away, they would have guarded you with unconquered firmness. Do you recognize me? Why are you silent? Have you fallen silent from shame or from astonishment?'

I would prefer it to be from shame, but, as I see, astonishment has overwhelmed you. And when she had seen me not only silent but utterly speechless and dumb, she gently laid her hand upon my breast and said: 'There is no danger; he suffers from lethargy, the common sickness of deluded minds. He has for a little while forgotten himself; he will easily remember, if indeed he first recognizes us. That he may be able to do so, let us for a little wipe his eyes, dimmed by the cloud of mortal things.' She said this, and with her gathered garment drawn into a fold she dried my eyes streaming with tears. Then, the night dispelled, the shadows left me, and to my eyes their former vigour returned; just as, when the stars are gathered together by the headlong northwest wind, and the sky stands with rainy showers, the sun lies hidden, and, the stars not yet coming into the heaven, night is poured from above upon the earth;

If Boreas, sent forth from his Thracian cave, lashes this night and unlocks the imprisoned day, Phoebus flashes out and, with sudden quivering light, strikes the wondering eyes with his rays. Not otherwise, the clouds of sadness being dissolved, did I drink in the heavens and recover my mind to recognize the face of my healer. And so, when I had brought my eyes upon her and fixed my gaze, I beheld my nurse, in whose dwelling I had moved from my youth—Philosophy. 'And why,' I said, 'have you, O mistress of all virtues, come down from the highest height into these solitudes of our exile? Is it that you too may be harried with me, arraigned by false accusations?' 'Should I,' said she, 'abandon you, my child, and not share with you, by labour communicated to you, the burden which you have taken up through the hatred of my name? Indeed, it was not lawful for Philosophy to leave the path of the innocent uncompanied; was I to fear my own accusation, forsooth, and to shudder as though some new thing had befallen?'

For do you now think for the first time that wisdom has been assailed by perils among depraved morals? Did we not, even among the ancients, before the age of our Plato, often wage a great contest with the rashness of folly? And, while he yet survived, did not his teacher Socrates, with me standing by, win the victory of an unjust death? When afterwards the Epicurean crowd and the Stoic, and the rest, each for his own part, were striving to seize his inheritance, and were dragging me, protesting and resisting, as it were into a share of the plunder, they tore the garment which I had woven with my own hands, and, snatching little shreds from it and believing that I had wholly yielded myself to them, they departed. And since in some of them there seemed to be certain traces of my apparel, imprudence, supposing them to be my familiars, perverted some of them through the error of the profane multitude.

But if you have not come to know the flight of Anaxagoras, nor the poison of Socrates, nor the torments of Zeno, because they are foreign, yet you could have known the Caniuses, the Senecas, the Soranuses, whose memory is neither very old nor obscure. Nothing else dragged these to their ruin save that, instructed in our morals, they seemed most unlike to the pursuits of the wicked. And so there is nothing at which you should wonder, if in this brine of life we are tossed by storms blowing round about, whose chief purpose this is—to displease the worst men. Of these, although the army is numerous, yet it is to be despised, since it is ruled by no leader, but is carried away only by error, recklessly and at random, in frenzy. If at any time it presses on against us, drawing up its battle-line and stronger, our leader draws her forces into the citadel, while they busy themselves with plundering useless little baggage.

But we from above laugh at them as they snatch up each of the basest things, secure amid the whole frenzied tumult, and fortified by that rampart to which it is not lawful for raging folly to aspire. Whosoever, serene in a composed life, has driven proud fate beneath his feet, and, gazing upright upon either fortune, has been able to keep his countenance unconquered—him neither the rage and threats of the sea, stirring up its tide from the depths, nor Vesuvius, as often as, restless when its furnaces are broken, it whirls its smoking fires, nor the path of the burning thunderbolt, wont to strike the lofty towers, shall move. Why do wretched men so greatly marvel at savage tyrants, raging without strength? Hope for nothing and fear nothing, and you will have disarmed the wrath of the powerless. But whoever, trembling, fears or desires—since he is not stable and of his own right—has cast away his shield and, moved from his place, weaves the chain by which he may be dragged. 'Do you feel these things,' she said, 'and do they sink into your soul, or are you 'an ass to the lyre'?'

Why do you weep, why do you flow with tears? 'Speak out, hide it not in your mind.' If you await the work of the physician, you must lay bare your wound. Then I, having gathered my spirit into its strength: 'Does the harshness of fortune raging against us still need warning, and does it not of itself stand out plainly enough? Does not the very face of this place move you? Is this the library which you yourself had chosen for yourself as a most assured seat in our dwelling? In which, often sitting with me, you used to discourse on the knowledge of things human and divine? Was my bearing such, was my countenance such, when with you I searched out the secrets of nature, when you described to me with your rod the paths of the stars, when you fashioned my morals and the reason of my whole life after the patterns of the heavenly order? Are these the rewards we bring back to you for obeying you? And yet you sanctioned this judgement by the mouth of Plato: that commonwealths would be happy, if either the lovers of wisdom should govern them, or it had befallen that their rulers should pursue wisdom.'

You admonished, through the mouth of the same man, that this was a necessary reason for the wise to take up the governance of the commonwealth: lest, the helms of cities being left to wicked and shameful citizens, they should bring ruin and destruction to the good. Following therefore this authority, I desired to transfer into the act of public administration that which I had learned from you amid secret leisure. You, and the God who has set you in the minds of the wise, are my witnesses that I brought nothing to any magistracy except the common zeal for all good men. Hence with the wicked there were grave and inexorable discords, and—as freedom of conscience entails—the ever-disregarded offence of the more powerful, for the sake of guarding right.

How often did I, going to meet him, intercept Conigastus as he made an onset upon the fortunes of each weak man! How often did I cast down Triguilla, the provost of the royal house, from a wrong begun—nay, already wholly perpetrated! How often did I, by interposing my authority against perils, protect the wretched whom the ever-unpunished avarice of the barbarians harassed with endless calumnies! Never did anyone draw me away from right to wrong. I grieved no otherwise than those who suffered it, that the fortunes of the provincials were being ruined now by private plunderings, now by public taxes. When, in a time of bitter famine, a grievous and inexplicable forced purchase was imposed and seemed likely to lay waste with want the province of Campania, I undertook a contest against the praetorian prefect for the sake of the common good; with the king taking cognizance I contended, and prevailed, that the forced purchase should not be exacted.

Paulinus, a man of consular rank, whose wealth the Palatine dogs had already in hope and ambition devoured, I dragged from the very jaws of the gaping ones. That the penalty of a prejudged accusation might not seize Albinus, a man of consular rank, I set myself against the hatreds of the informer Cyprian. Do I seem to have stirred up sufficiently great discords against myself? But I ought to have been safer among the rest—I who, for love of justice, reserved nothing for myself among the courtiers whereby I might be the safer. But by whose informing were we struck down? Of these, Basilius, formerly thrust out of the royal service, was driven by the necessity of another's debt into the laying of an information against our name.

But when the royal censure had decreed that Opilio and Gaudentius should go into exile on account of innumerable and manifold frauds, and when they, unwilling to obey, defended themselves by taking sanctuary in sacred buildings, and this was made known to the king, he proclaimed: that unless they departed from the city of Ravenna within the prescribed day, they should be driven out, branded with marks upon their foreheads. What can seem possible to be added to this severity? And yet on that very day an information laid against our name was received from those same men. What then? Did my arts deserve this? Or did a preceding condemnation make those accusers just? Did fortune feel no shame at all—if not for innocence accused, yet for the baseness of the accusers? But you ask the sum of the crime with which we are charged? We are said to have wished the senate to be safe. Do you desire the manner? We are accused of having hindered an informer from delivering documents whereby he might make the senate guilty of treason. What then, O mistress, do you judge?

Shall we deny the charge, that we may not be a shame to you? But I did will it, and shall never cease to will it. Shall we confess it? But the work of hindering the informer has ceased. Or shall I call it a crime to have wished the safety of that order? Indeed by its own decrees concerning me it had brought it about that this should be a crime. But folly, ever lying to itself, cannot change the deserts of things; nor do I think it lawful for me, by the Socratic decree, either to have concealed the truth or to have conceded a falsehood. But however that may be, I leave it to be appraised by your judgement and that of the wise. The sequence and truth of which matter, lest it be able to lie hidden from posterity, I have also committed to my pen and to memory. For concerning the letters falsely composed, by which I am charged with having hoped for Roman liberty, what need is there to speak? The fraud of these would have stood open, had it been permitted us to use the confession of the very informers, which in all affairs has the greatest force. For what liberty can be hoped to remain?

And would that any could! I should have answered with the word of Canius, who, when he was said by Gaius Caesar, the son of Germanicus, to have been privy to a conspiracy made against himself, said: 'If I had known it, you would not have known.' In which matter grief has not so dulled our senses that I should complain that wicked men plotted criminal things against virtue, but I greatly marvel that they have accomplished what they hoped. For to will worse things may perhaps have been a defect of ours; but that against innocence anything which each wicked man has conceived should be possible, while God looks on, is like a monster. Hence not without justice did a certain one of your familiars inquire: 'If indeed there is a God,' said he, 'whence come evils? But whence come good things, if there is not?' But granted it may have been right that nefarious men, who seek the blood of all good men and of the whole senate, should have wished even us—whom they had seen fighting for the good and the senate—to go to ruin. Yet did we deserve the same from the senators also?

You remember, as I suppose—since you yourself, ever present, always directed what I should say or do—you remember, I say, at Verona, when the king, greedy of common destruction, was endeavouring to transfer the charge of treason laid against Albinus to the whole order of the senate, with how great a security of my own peril I defended the innocence of the universal senate. You know that I both bring forth these things truly and have never boasted in any praise of myself. For the secret of a self-approving conscience is in a manner diminished, as often as a man, by display, receives the reward of fame for his deed. But you see what outcome has received our innocence; for the rewards of true virtue we undergo the penalties of a false crime. And of what crime ever did a manifest confession so hold the judges concord in severity, that either the very error of human wit or the condition of fortune, uncertain to all mortals, should not bring some of them to relent?

If we had been said to have wished to set fire to the sacred buildings, to butcher the priests with impious sword, to have contrived death for all good men, yet sentence would have punished one present, one who confessed or was convicted. But now, distant almost five hundred miles, mute and undefended, we are condemned to death and proscription on account of too zealous a devotion toward the senate. O senate, well deserving that no one can be convicted of a like crime! The dignity of which charge even they who laid the information saw; and that they might darken it by some admixture of crime, they lied that, out of ambition for dignity, I had polluted my conscience with sacrilege. And yet you, implanted in us, were driving from the seat of our soul every desire of mortal things, and under your eyes there could be no lawful place for sacrilege.

For you used to instil into my ears and thoughts daily that Pythagorean saying, 'Follow God.' Nor was it fitting that I should grasp at the patronage of the basest spirits, I whom you were composing unto this excellence, that you might make me like to God. Moreover, the innocent sanctuary of my home, the company of most honourable friends, my father-in-law too, holy and equally to be revered as you yourself, defend us from all suspicion of this crime. But—O wickedness!—from you indeed they take confidence for so great a crime, and for this very reason we shall seem to have been akin to that evil-doing, because we are imbued with your disciplines, instituted in your morals. Thus it is not enough that your reverence has profited me nothing, unless of your own accord you rather are torn by my offence. But truly there accrues to our ills this further heap: that the estimation of very many regards not the merits of things, but the outcome of fortune, and judges those things only to have been provided which felicity has commended.

Whence it comes about that good estimation, first of all things, deserts the unfortunate. What rumours of the people now, what discordant and manifold opinions there are, it irks me to recall. This only would I say: that the last burden of adverse fortune is this—that, while some crime is fastened upon the wretched, they are believed to have deserved what they endure. And I indeed, driven from all good things, stripped of dignities, befouled in estimation, have suffered punishment for a benefit. But I seem to see the nefarious workshops of the wicked overflowing with joy and gladness, every most abandoned man threatening with new frauds of informations, the good lying prostrate, laid low by the terror of our peril; every shameful man incited to dare a crime by impunity, and to accomplish it by rewards; but the innocent deprived not only of security, but even of defence itself. And so I am moved to cry out:

O Founder of the star-bearing sphere, who, resting upon Thy everlasting throne, turnest the heaven with rapid whirl and compellest the stars to endure Thy law—so that now the moon, bright with full horn, meeting all the flames of her brother, hides the lesser stars, now, pale with darkened horn, nearer to Phoebus, loses her light; and he who, at the time of early night, drives the cold risings as Hesperus, again as pale Lucifer changes his accustomed reins at the rising of Phoebus. Thou, in the cold of leaf-shedding winter, dost bind in the light to a shorter span; Thou, when fervid summer has come, dividest the swift hours for the night. Thy power tempers the changing year, so that the gentle Zephyrus brings back the leaves which the breath of Boreas takes away, and Sirius burns the tall crops whose seeds Arcturus beheld. Nothing, loosed from the ancient law, abandons the work of its proper station. Governing all things to a fixed end, the actions of men alone Thou refusest to restrain, as ruler, in due measure. For why does slippery Fortune turn such great vicissitudes?

The penalty due to crime, the noxious punishment, presses the innocent, while perverse characters sit upon a lofty throne, and the guilty, by an unjust turn, tread upon holy necks. Virtue lies hidden, buried in dark shadows, the bright one, and the just man bears the crime of the unjust. Perjuries harm them not at all, nor does fraud decked out with lying colour. But when it has pleased them to use their strength, they delight to subdue the highest kings, whom countless peoples fear. O, now look upon the wretched earth, whoever Thou art that weavest the covenants of things! We men, no mean part of so great a work, are tossed by the brine of fortune. Ruler, restrain the rushing floods, and by that covenant by which Thou rulest the immense heaven, make firm the earth with stable compact. When I had thus declaimed in continued grief, she, with placid countenance and not at all moved by my complaints, said: 'When I had seen you sad and weeping, I knew at once that you were wretched and an exile. But how far off that exile was, I did not know, unless your discourse had betrayed it.'

But as for you, you have not so much been driven far from your homeland as you have strayed from it; and if you would rather be thought to have been driven out, it is you yourself who have driven yourself away. For that act could never have been lawful for anyone else to do to you. For if you remember from what fatherland you spring, it is not governed, as Athens once was, by the rule of the multitude, but 'one is the ruler, one the king' (Homer) — who rejoices in a throng of citizens, not in their banishment, and to be guided by whose reins and to obey whose justice is the highest liberty. Are you ignorant of that most ancient law of your city, by which it is established that no one who has chosen to fix his dwelling there can be made an exile? For whoever is enclosed within its rampart and bulwark has no fear of deserving to be an exile. But whoever ceases to wish to dwell in it likewise ceases to deserve to do so.

And so it is not so much the appearance of this place that moves me as your own face; nor do I seek so much the walls of a library adorned with ivory and glass as the seat of your mind, in which I have placed not books, but that which gives books their worth — the thoughts that once filled my books. And concerning your services to the common good you have indeed spoken truly, but in proportion to the multitude of your deeds you have said little. Concerning the honesty or the falsehood of the charges brought against you, you have recalled what is known to all. Concerning the crimes and frauds of the informers you rightly judged that they should be touched on briefly, since these things are better and more fully celebrated by the mouth of the common people, who recognize all. You also vehemently denounced the deed of the unjust senate. You grieved also over the slander against me, and wept over the losses of your wounded reputation. Last of all your grief blazed up against Fortune, and you complained that rewards were not weighed out fairly according to merit.

At the close, in a raging Muse, you uttered the prayer that the same peace which rules heaven might rule the earth as well. But since so great a tumult of passions has fallen upon you, and grief, anger, and sorrow pull you in different directions, in your present state of mind the stronger remedies do not yet reach you. Therefore we shall for a while use gentler ones, so that what has hardened into a swelling under the inflowing disturbances may, by a more soothing touch, be softened to receive the force of a sharper medicine. When the sun's rays kindle the heavy sign of Cancer, then he who has entrusted abundant seed to furrows that deny it, cheated of his faith in Ceres, must go to the oaks for acorns. Never seek the violets to gather in the purple grove when the field bristles, whistling with the savage north winds. Nor with greedy hand seek to strip the spring vine-shoots, if you would enjoy the grapes; rather has Bacchus bestowed his gifts in autumn.

God marks out the seasons, fitting them to their proper offices, nor does he allow the changes which he himself has restrained to be confounded. Thus whatever by a headlong course forsakes the appointed order has no happy outcome. First, then, will you permit me to approach and probe the state of your mind with a few questions, so that I may understand what manner of treatment yours requires? 'Ask,' I said, 'as you will, whatever you wish, and I will answer.' Then she: 'Do you think that this world is driven by random and chance events, or do you believe there is in it some governance of reason?' 'Indeed,' I said, 'I could in no way suppose that things so fixed are moved by chance randomness; rather I know that God the Creator presides over his work, nor will there ever be a day that drives me from the truth of this conviction.' 'It is so,' she said. 'For this very thing you sang a little before, and you lamented that men alone were left out of God's care.'

For concerning all else, that they were governed by reason, you had no doubt. But — strange to say! — I greatly wonder why, holding so wholesome a conviction, you are nevertheless sick. But let us probe more deeply; I surmise that something is lacking. Yet tell me, since you do not doubt that the world is governed by God, do you perceive also by what helm it is steered?' 'I scarcely grasp the sense of your question,' I said, 'much less could I answer your inquiry.' 'Was I mistaken,' she said, 'that something is lacking, through which, as through a gap in the strength of your rampart, the disease of the passions has crept into your mind? But tell me, do you remember what is the end of things, and toward what the aim of all nature tends?' 'I had heard,' I said, 'but grief has dulled my memory.' 'And yet do you know whence all things proceeded?' 'I do know,' I said, and I answered that it was God. 'And how can it be that, knowing the beginning, you are ignorant of what is the end of things?'

But such is the character of the passions, such their power, that they can indeed move a man from his place, yet cannot tear him up and utterly root him out from himself. But I would have you answer this also: do you remember that you are a man?' 'Why should I not remember?' I said. 'Then can you state what a man is?' 'Is this what you ask — whether I know myself to be a rational and mortal animal? I know it, and I confess that I am that.' And she: 'Do you know yourself to be nothing else?' 'Nothing.' 'Now I know,' she said, 'another and indeed the greatest cause of your sickness: you have ceased to know what you yourself are. Wherefore I have most fully discovered both the cause of your illness and the way to recover your health. For since you are confounded by forgetfulness of yourself, you have grieved that you are an exile and despoiled of your proper goods. And since you are ignorant of what is the end of things, you reckon wicked and abominable men to be powerful and happy.

And since you have forgotten by what helm the world is governed, you reckon these turns of fortune to drift along without a steersman — great causes not only of sickness but even of death. But thanks be to the Author of your salvation, that nature has not yet wholly forsaken you. We have, as the greatest kindling of your health, a true conviction concerning the governance of the world, in that you believe it to be subject not to the randomness of chances but to divine reason. Fear nothing, therefore; already from this least little spark the warmth of life will have shone forth for you. But since it is not yet time for the firmer remedies, and since it is the established nature of minds in collapse that, as often as they cast off true opinions, they put on false ones, from which arises the fog of passions that confounds that true vision, I shall try for a while to thin this fog with gentle and moderate fomentations, so that, the darkness of the deceiving affections being dispersed, you may be able to recognize the splendor of the true light.

Stars hidden by black clouds can shed no light. If the turbid south wind, rolling the sea, churns up the swell, the wave, but lately glassy and clear as on serene days, soon, the mire loosened, foul with mud, blocks the sight. And the stream that wanders down from the high mountains often is stayed by the rock of a stone loosened in its path. You too, if you wish to discern the truth with clear light, and to take the path by a straight track, cast off joy, cast off fear, put hope to flight, and let no grief be present. The mind is clouded and bound in reins where these hold sway.