Delphi Complete Works of Pliny the Elder

by Pliny the Elder

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  CHAP. 33. (33.)

  DIVINATION.

  A spirit of divination, and a certain communion with the gods, of the most exalted nature, was manifested-among women, in the Sibyl, and among men, in Melampodes, the Greek, and in Marcius, the Roman.

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  CHAP. 34. (34.)

  THE MAN WHO WAS PRONOUNCED TO BE THE MOST EXCELLENT.

  Scipio Nasica is the only individual who, since the commencement of the Roman era, has been declared, by a vote of the senate, confirmed by oath, to be the most excellent of men. And yet, the same person, when he was a candidate for office, was twice stigmatized by a repulse of the Roman people. He was not allowed, in fine, to die in his native country, — no, by Hercules! no more than Socrates, who was declared by Apollo to be the wisest of men, was permitted to die outside of a prison.

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  CHAP. 35. (35.)

  THE MOST CHASTE MATRONS.

  Sulpicia, the daughter of Paterculus, and wife of Fulvius Flaccus, has been considered, in the judgment of matrons, to have been the chastest of women. She was selected from one hundred Roman ladies, who had been previously named, to dedicate a statue of Venus, in obedience to the precepts contained in the Sibylline books. Again, Claudia gave strong proof of her piety and virtue, on the occasion of the introduction into Rome of the Mother of the gods.

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  CHAP. 36. (36.)

  INSTANCES OF THE HIGHEST DEGREE OF AFFECTION.

  Infinite is the number of examples of affection which have been known in all parts of the world; but one in particular occurred at Rome, to which no other can possibly be compared. A woman of quite the lower class, and whose name has consequently not come down to us, having lately given birth to a child, obtained permission to visit her mother, who was confined in prison; but was always carefully searched by the gaoler before being admitted, to prevent her from intro- ducing any food. At last, however, she was detected nourishing her mother with the milk of her breast; upon which, in consideration of the marvellous affection of the daughter, the mother was pardoned, and they were both maintained for the rest of their days at the public charge; the spot, too, was consecrated to Piety, a temple to that goddess being built on the site of the prison, in the consulship of C. Quintius and M. Acilius, where the theatre of Marcellus now stands.

  The father of the Gracchi, on finding [two] serpents in his house, consulted the soothsayers, and received an answer to the effect, that he would survive if the serpent of the other sex was put to death.— “No,” said he, “rather kill the serpent of my own sex, for Cornelia is still young, and may yet bear children.” Thus did he shew himself ready, at the same moment, to spare his wife and to benefit the state; and shortly after, his wish was accomplished. M. Lepidus died of regret for his wife, Apuleia, after having been divorced from her. P. Rupilius, who was at the time affected by a slight disease, instantly expired, upon news being brought to him that his brother had failed in obtaining the consulship. P. Catienus Plotinus was so much attached to his patron, that on finding himself named heir to all his property, he threw himself on the funeral pile.

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  CHAP. 37. (37.)

  NAMES OF MEN WHO HAVE EXCELLED IN THE ARTS, ASTROLOGY, GRAMMAR, AND MEDICINE.

  Innumerable are the men who have excelled in the various arts; we may, however, take a cursory survey of them, by citing the names of the principal ones. Berosus excelled in astrology; and on account of his divinations and predictions, a public statue was erected in his honour by the Athenians. Apollodorus, for his skill as a grammarian, had public honours decreed him by the Amphictyonic Council of Greece. Hip- pocrates excelled in medicine; before its arrival, he predicted the plague, which afterwards came from Illyria, and sent his pupils to various cities, to give their assistance. As an acknowledgment of his merit, Greece decreed him the same honours as to Hercules. King Ptolemy rewarded a similar degree of skill in the person of Cleombrotus of Ceos, by a donation of one hundred talents, at the Megalensian games, he having succeeded in saving the life of King Anti- ochus. Critobulus also rendered himself extremely famous, by extracting an arrow from the eye of King Philip with so much skill, that, although the sight was lost, there was no defect to be seen. Asclepiades of Prusa, however, acquired the greatest fame of all — he founded a new sect, treated with disdain the promises of King Mithridates conveyed to him by an embassy, discovered a method of successfully treating diseases by wine, and, breaking in upon the funeral ceremony, saved the life of a man, who was actually placed on the funeral pile. He rendered himself, however, more celebrated than all, by staking his reputation as a physician against Fortune herself, and asserting that he did not wish to be so much as looked upon as a physician, if he should ever happen in any way to fall sick; and he won his wager, for he met his death at an extreme old age, by falling down stairs.

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  CHAP. 38.

  GEOMETRY AND ARCHITECTURE.

  M. Marcellus, too, at the taking of Syracuse, offered a remarkable homage to the sciences of geometry and mechanics, by giving orders that Archimedes was to be the only person who should not be molested; his commands, however, were disregarded, in consequence of the imprudence of one of the soldiers. Chersiphron, also, the Cnossian, was rendered fa- mous by the admirable construction of the temple of Diana at Ephesus; Philon, by the construction of the basin at Athens, which was capable of containing one thousand vessels; Cte- sibius, by the invention of pneumatics and hydraulic machines; and Dinochares, by the plan which he made of the city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander in Egypt. The same monarch, too, by public edict, declared that no one should paint his portrait except Apelles, and that no one should make a marble statue of him except Pyrgoteles, or a bronze one except Lysippus. These arts have all been rendered glorious by many illustrious examples.

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  CHAP. 39. (38.)

  OF PAINTING; ENGRAVING ON BRONZE, MARBLE, AND IVORY; OF CARVING.

  King Attalus gave one hundred talents, at a public auction, for a single picture of Aristides, the Theban painter. Cæsar, the Dictator, purchased two pictures, the Medea and the Ajax of Timomachus, for eighty talents, it being his intention to dedicate them in the temple of Venus Genetrix. King Candaules gave its weight in gold for a large picture by Bularchus, the subject of which was the destruction of the Magnetes. Demetrius, who was surnamed the “taker of cities,” refused to set fire to the city of Rhodes, lest he should chance to destroy a picture of Protogenes, which was placed on that side of the walls against which his attack was directed. Praxiteles has been ennobled by his works in marble, and more especially by his Cnidian Venus, which became remarkable from the insane love which it inspired in a certain young man, and the high value set upon it by King Nicomedes, who endeavoured to procure it from the Cnidians, by offering to pay for them a large debt which they owed. The Olympian Jupiter day by day bears testimony to the talents of Phidias, and the Capitoline Jupiter and the Diana of Ephesus to those of Mentor; to which deities, also, were consecrated vases made by this artist.

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  CHAP. 40. (39.)

  SLAVES FOR WHICH A HIGH PRICE HAS BEEN GIVEN.

  The highest price ever given for a man born in slavery, so far as I am able to discover, was that paid for Daphnus, the grammarian, who was sold by Natius of Pisaurum to M. Scaurus, the first man in the state, for seven hundred thousand sesterces. In our day, no doubt, comic actors have fetched a higher price, but then they were purchasing their own freedom. In the time of our ancestors, Roscius, the actor, gained five hundred thousand sesterces annually. Perhaps, too, a person might in the present instance refer to the case of the army commissary in the Armenian war, which was of late years undertaken in favour of Tiridates; which officer, in our own time, received his manumission from Nero for the sum of thirteen million sesterc
es; but, in this case, the consideration was the profit to be derived from the war, and it was not the value of the man that was paid for. And so, too, when Lutorius Priscus bought of Sejanus, the eunuch, Pæzon, for fifty million sesterces, the price was given, by Hercules! rather to gratify the passion of the purchaser, than in commendation of the beauty of the slave. Universal sorrow and consternation then reigning, the public were too much pre-occupied with it to put a stop to a bargain of so scandalous a nature.

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  CHAP. 41. (40.)

  SUPREME HAPPINESS.

  Of all nations of the earth, the Romans have, without doubt, excelled every other in the display of valour. The human judgment cannot, however, possibly decide what man has enjoyed the highest degree of happiness, seeing that every one defines a state of prosperity in a way different from another, and entirely in conformity with his own notions. If we wish to form a true judgment and come to a decision, casting aside all the allurements and illusions of fortune, we are bound to say that no mortal is happy. Fortune has dealt well, and, indeed, indulgently, to him who feels that he has a right to say that he is not unhappy. For if there is nothing else, at all events, there is the fear lest fortune should fail at last; which fear itself, when it has once fastened upon us, our happiness is no longer unalloyed. And then, too, is it not the case that there is no mortal who is always wise? Would that there were many to be found, who could feel a conviction that this is false, and that it had not been enunciated by an oracle itself, as it were! Mortals, vain as they are, and ingenious in deceiving themselves, calculate in the same way as the Thracians, who, according to their experience of each day, deposit in an urn a black or a white pebble; at the close of their life, these pebbles are separated, and from the relative number of each kind, they form their conclusions. But really, may not that very day that has been complimented with a white pebble, have contained in itself the germ of some misfortune? How many a man has got into trouble by the very power which has been bestowed upon him? How many have been brought to ruin and plunged into the deepest misery by their own blessings? or rather, by what have been looked upon too fondly as blessings, for the hour during which they were in the full enjoyment of them. But most true it is, that it is the day after, that is the judge of the day before; and after all, it is only the last day that is to set its stamp on the whole; the consequence is, that we can put our trust in none of them. And then, too, is it not the fact that the blessings of life would not be equal to its evils, even though they were equal in number? For what pleasure is there that can compensate for the slightest grief? Alas! what a vain and unreasonable task we impose upon ourselves! We trouble ourselves with counting the number of days, when it is their weight that ought to be taken into consideration.

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  CHAP. 42. (41.)

  RARE INSTANCES OF GOOD FORTUNE CONTINUING IN THE SAME FAMILY.

  During the whole course of ages, we find only one woman, and that, Lampido, the Lacedæmonian, who was the daughter of a king, the wife of a king, and the mother of a king. Berenice was the only woman who was daughter, sister, and mother of conquerors in the Olympian games, The family of the Curios has been the only one to produce three orators in succession; that of the Fabii alone has given three chiefs of the senate in succession, Fabius Ambustus, his son Fabius Rullianus, and his grandson Quintus Fabius Gurges.

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  CHAP. 43. (42.)

  REMARKABLE EXAMPLE OF VICISSITUDES.

  As to examples of the vicissitudes of Fortune, they are innumerable. For what great pleasures has she ever given us, which have not taken their rise in misfortunes? And what extraordinary misfortunes have not taken their first rise in great pleasures? (43.) It was fortune that preserved the Senator, M. Fidustius, who had been proscribed by Sylla, for a period of thirty-six years. And yet he was proscribed a second time; for he survived Sylla, even to the days of Antony, and, as it appears, was proscribed by him, for no other reason but because he had been proscribed before.

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  CHAP. 44.

  REMARKABLE EXAMPLES OF HONOURS.

  Fortune has determined that P. Ventidius alone should enjoy the honour of a triumph over the Parthians, and yet the same individual, when he was a child, she led in the triumphal procession of Cneius Pompeius, the conqueror of Asculum. Indeed, Masurius says, that he had been twice led in triumph; and according to Cicero, he used to let out mules for the bakers of the camp. Most writers, indeed, admit that his younger days were passed in the greatest poverty, and that he wore the hob-nailed shoes of the common soldier. Balbus Cornelius, also, the elder, was elected to the consulate; but he had previously been accused, and the judges had been charged to discuss the point whether he could or not lawfully be scourged with rods; he being the first foreigner, — born even on the very shores of the ocean, — who obtained that honour, which our ancestors denied even to the people of Latium. Among other remarkable instances, also, we have that of L. Fulvius, the consul of the rebellious Tusculani, who, immediately upon his coming over to the Romans, obtained from them the same honour. He is the only individual who, in the same year in which he had been its enemy, enjoyed the honour of a triumph in Rome, and that too, over the people whose consul he had previously been. Down to the present time, L. Sylla is the only man who has claimed to himself the surname of “Happy;” a name which he derived, forsooth, from the bloodshed of the citizens and the oppression of his country! But what claim had he on which to found his title to this happiness? Was it the power which he had of proscribing and massacreing so many thousands of his fellow-citizens? Oh interpretation most disgraceful, and which must stamp him as “Unhappy” to all future time! Were not the men who perished in those times, of the two, to be looked upon as the more fortunate — seeing that with them we sympathize, while there is no one who does not detest Sylla? And then, besides, was not the close of his life more horrible than the sufferings which had been experienced by any of those who had been proscribed by him? his very flesh eating into itself, and so engendering his own punishment. And this, although he may have thought proper to gloss it over by that last dream of his, in the very midst of which he may be said, in some measure, to have died; and in which, as he pretended, he was told that his glory alone had risen superior to all envy; though at the same time, he confessed that it was still wanting to his supreme happiness, that he had not dedicated the Capitol.

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  CHAP. 45.

  TEN VERY FORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH HAVE HAPPENED TO THE SAME PERSON.

  Q. Metellus, in the funeral oration which he made in praise of his father, L. Metellus, who had been pontiff, twice consul, dictator, master of the horse, one of the quindecemvirs for dividing the lands, and the first who had elephants in his triumphal procession, the same having been taken in the first Punic war, has left it written to the effect that his father had attained the ten greatest and best things, in the search after which wise men have spent all their lives. For, as he states, he was anxious to become the first warrior, the best orator, the bravest general, that the most important of all business should be entrusted to his charge, that he should enjoy the very highest honours, that he should possess consummate wisdom, that he should be regarded as the most distinguished senator, that he should by honourable means acquire a large fortune, that he should leave behind him many children, and that he should be the most illustrious person in the state. To refute this assertion, would be tedious and indeed unnecessary, seeing that it is contradicted more than sufficiently by the single fact, that Metellus passed his old age, deprived of his sight, which he had lost in a fire, while rescuing the Palladium from the temple of Vesta; a glorious action, no doubt, although the result was unhappy: on which account it is, that although he ought not to be called unfortunate, still he cannot be called fortunate. The Roman people, however, granted him a privilege which no one else had ever obtained since the foundation o
f the city, that of being conveyed to the senate- house in a chariot whenever he went to the senate: a great distinction, no doubt, but bought at the price of his sight.

  (44.) The son also, of the same Q. Metellus, who has given the above account of his father, is considered himself to have been one of the rarest instances of human felicity. For, in ad- dition to the very considerable honours which he obtained, and the surname which he acquired from the conquest of Macedonia, he was carried to the funeral pile by his four sons, one of whom had been prætor, three of them consuls, two had obtained triumphs, and one had been censor; each of which honours falls to the lot of a very few only. And yet, in the very full-blown pride of his dignity, as he was returning from the Campus Martius at mid-day, when the Forum and the Capitol are deserted, he was seized by the tribune, Caius Atinius Labeo, surnamed Macerion, whom, during his censorship, he had ejected from the senate, and was dragged by him to the Tarpeian rock, for the purpose of being precipitated there from. The numerous band, however, who called him by the name of father, flew to his assistance, though tardily, and only just, as it were, at the very last moment, to attend his funeral obsequies, seeing that he could not lawfully offer resistance, or repel force by force in the sacred case of a tribune; and he was just on the very point of perishing, the victim of his virtues and the strictness of his censorship, when he was saved by the intervention of another tribune, — only obtained with the greatest difficulty, — and so rescued from the very jaws of death. He afterwards had to subsist on the bounty of others, his property having been consecrated by the very man whom he had degraded; and who, as if that had not satiated his vengeance, still farther wreaked his malice upon him, by throwing a rope around his neck, and twisting it with such extreme violence that the blood flowed from out of his ears. And for my part, too, I should look upon it as in the number of his misfortunes, to have been the enemy of the second Africanus; indeed, Macedonicus, in this instance, bears testimony against himself; for he said to his sons, “Go, my children, render the last duties to Scipio; you will never witness the funeral of a greater citizen than him;” and this speech he made to his sons, one of whom had already acquired the surname of Balearicus, and another of Diadematus, he himself at the time bearing that of Macedonicus.