ONE I HAVE PARDONED FOR HIS HIGH POSITION, ANOTHER FOR HIS HUMBLE STATE
5. AS THE WHOLE BODY
bodies beneath him and prepare a path for him with slaughtered men. But the words go well together, and the metaphors are most appropriate.
Among writers the words sternere and instruere are commonly used for the terms pavire or munire. Lucan [Phars., 1.3339] seems to allude to this notion, when he ironically scoffs at Nero: However, if the Pates could not find any other may / For Nero’s advent — if for eternal empire the gods / Pay dearly as only after a War of great Giants / Could heaven serve its Thunderer — /Then me complain no further, o gods: by this reward / Even these crimes are justified. What if Pharsalia filled / Dire fields, and
Carthaginian ghosts with blood were gorged, etc.
proportion of its members, and the varied distinction of functions. The state consists of an almost infinite number of men, and no less variety of functions. Thirdly, the members of the body have indeed from themselves a vigor and natural force, but the moderation thereof is in the mind’s power. In the common mass there is more than enough strength, but too little counsel, unless it be sustained from outside. Thus we have to investigate severally all the points of similarity that exist between things that are compared to each other. Tacitus refers to this notion [Ann., 1.12]
when Tiberius would deny his capacity to govern the whole state, and was asked by Asinius Gallus what part he wished entrusted to himself; but after Asinius had observed his offended look, he said that by this question he did not mean to divide things which could not be separated, but to be convinced, by his own confession, that the commonwealth is but one body, and can be governed only by the mind of one man.
NOT KNOWING WHERE ITS SECRET HABITATION LIES In passing he lightly touches upon the contradictory notions of the philosophers, who have not yet settled upon a sure and definite location for the soul. Herophilus has located it in the ventricle of the brain; for Plato and Democritus it seems more likely to rest in the entire head,
Erasistratus considers it to be around the membrane of the brain, Strato in the space between the eyebrows; Parmenides and Epicurus in the whole breast; Diogenes in the arterial ventricle of the heart; the Stoics assign to it the whole heart or spirit; others the whole cervix of the heart; others the praecordia; Empedocles the concretion of the blood. See Plutarch [Mor., 899A] and further, in Cicero, Tusc. Disp. [1.9.191.10.20].
THE HANDS, THE FEET AND THE EYES CARRY OUT ITS BUSINESS
That is, are prompted by its decision, and serve it. Similarly, Seneca [Ep.
Mor., 90.19]: All these arts, by which the city is either aroused or
resounds, carry out the body’s business. In many editions there is the very bad reading “of bodies,” even Erasmus agreeing with it in both his editions.
In accordance with this notion Cicero [Acad., 2.10.30] has called the mind which discerns objects “the fountainhead of the sensations”; according to its decisions, the sensations follow or flee. As Sallust [Cat. 1.2] truly puts
it: We use the mind as ruler, the body rather as servant. Also pertinent to this is Quintilian’s statement [Deal., 11.7]: Thus our bodies take their movement from the mind alone, and our members are idle until our mind puts them to use.
WE SEARCH THE SEA FOR GAIN
The philosophers posit a threefold appetite: natural, sensitive, and rational. The first they attribute to all natures, the second to animals, the third to rational souls. In turn, they so divide the sensitive appetite that one is the superior, pertaining to the interior affections — hate, love, sorrow, hope, fear, and the like. This passage is to be understood as referring to this upper part. The other, they say, resides in the bodily passions — hunger, thirst, cold, and the like. That, then, of which Seneca makes mention, is the root of all desires, which Plato in the Laws [1.644E]
describes as being like the sinews in man, or like ropes by which we are drawn; and as they are contrary among themselves, so also are we carried off in various directions, unless Mistress Reason is in charge. Yet because some inclinations [affectus] stand out in some persons and others in others as Propertius [Eleg., 3.9.20] says: Everyone follows the seeds of his own nature, Seneca accordingly sometimes makes it a GRASPING TYRANT, sometimes AN AMBITIOUS ONE. If it is grasping, according to its command:
The diligent merchant rushes to the far-off Indes Fleeing poverty through sea, through rocks, through fire.
[Hor. Ep., 1.1.45f]
For what Horace [C., 3.1.25f] says is true: He who desires what is enough, is not / Troubled by tumultuous seas. Juvenal [Sat., 14.274279]:
For the sake of a thousand talents
And a hundred villas, look you, heedless, to ports And to the sea full of magic ships; more men now there are
In the deep; the fleet will come wherever hope Of gain calls; nor will it leap only the Carpathian
And Gaetulian seas.
Propertius [Eleg., 3.7.12]:
Therefore you, O money, are the cause of troubled life Through you we take our untimely way to death.
The same [3.7.2930]:
Go curved vessels, and contrive the causes of death;
Driven on by human hands, that death will come.
The same [3.7.37]:
Nature has laid the sea itself as a snare for grasping man.
IF AN AMBITIOUS TYRANT
Seneca frankly admits what those splendid virtues of the pagans were which are always being rehearsed so fulsomely. Remove ambition and you will have no haughty spirits, neither Platos, nor Catos, nor Scaevolas, nor Scipios, nor Fabriciuses. One reads this same thought in Sallust [B.J., 1.3]:
The ruler and director of the life of man is the mind: when it pursues glory by virtuous ways, is sufficiently powerful, efficient, and worthy of honor.
Virgil hints at this [A., 6.824]:
Love of country will prevail, and boundless lust for praise.
WE HAVE THRUST A RIGHT HAND INTO THE FLAMES This is to be referred to Scaevola, on whom see Livy [2.13.1]. When he entered the camp of Porsena and killed a scribe instead of the king, he thrust his right hand into a brazier kindled for sacrifice; from this calamity he received the name Scaevola, for the ancients called “Scaeva” one whose left hand was more adept than his right. Augustine [DCD, 4.20]: Why is Fortitude not a goddess, who was present with Mucius when he thrust his right hand into the flames? Martial [8.30.26] also recalls this.
OR PLUNGED WILLINGLY
Either he is alluding to the history of Horatius Codes, mentioned by Livy in the same book [2.10.211]. When he had withstood the attack of the Etruscans for so long, while the Romans were destroying the Pons Sublicius he threw himself into the Tiber, and amid showers of darts hurled on him, swam across safe to his fellow soldiers. Because of this deed a statue was decreed to him, and an annual subsistence. Plutarch relates this story in his Life of Publicola [16.4]. Or (as seems to me more likely) it should be referred to Curtius, who, as Livy relates [7.6.5] and
Valerius also [5.6.2], cast himself into a deep chasm in the earth, since the oracles stated that it should be filled up with that thing at which the Romans chiefly excelled. See Augustine [DCD, 5.18.2; 4.20]. Propertius [Eleg., 3.11.61]: When he filled the cracks, Curtius established a
monument.
WOULD CRUSH AND CRIPPLE
Other editions have STRATURA [for FRACTURA], but with the same meaning, according with what Horace has said [C., 3.4.6568]: Blind force with its own might is spent; / Self-tempered force the gods prolong / To higher ends; but they resent / A power that works for wrong.
CHAPTER 4
1. It is, therefore, their own safety that men love, when for one man