and again as a
"Barbarous land, which rugged rocks surround,
Whose horrent cliffs with idle wastes are crowned,
No autumn fruit, no tilth the summer yields,
Nor olives cheer the winter-silvered fields:
Nor joyous spring her tender foliage lends,
Nor genial herb the luckless soil befriends;
Nor bread, nor sacred fire, nor freshening wave;--
Nought here--save exile, and the exile's grave!"
In such a place, and under such conditions, Seneca had ample need for all his philosophy. And at first it did not fail him. Towards the close of his first year of exile he wrote the "Consolation to his mother Helvia," which is one of the noblest and most charming of all his works.
He had often thought, he said, of writing to console her under this deep and wholly unlooked-for trial, but hitherto he had abstained from doing so, lest, while his own anguish and hers were fresh, he should only renew the pain of the wound by his unskilful treatment. He waited, therefore till time had laid its healing hand upon her sorrows, especially because he found no precedent for one in his position condoling with others when he himself seemed more in need of consolation, and because something new and admirable would be required of a man who, as it were, raised his head from the funeral pyre to console his friends. Still he now feels impelled to write to her, because to alleviate her regrets will be to lay aside his own. He does not attempt to conceal from her the magnitude of the misfortune, because so far from being a mere novice in sorrow, she has tasted it from her earliest years in all its varieties; and because his purpose was to conquer her grief, not to extenuate its causes. Those many miseries would indeed have been in vain, if they had not taught her how to bear wretchedness. He will prove to her therefore that she has no cause to grieve either on his account, or on her own. Not on his--because he is happy among circumstances which others would think miserable and because he assures her with his own lips that not only is he not miserable, but that he can never be made so. Every one can secure his own happiness, if he learns to seek it, not in external circumstances, but in himself. He cannot indeed claim for himself the title of wise, for, if so, he would be the most fortunate of men, and near to God Himself; but, which is the next best thing, he has devoted himself to the study of wise men, and from them he has learnt to expect nothing and to be prepared for all things. The blessings which Fortune had hitherto bestowed on him,--wealth, honours, glory,--he had placed in such a position that she might rob him of them all without disturbing him. There was a great space between them and himself, so that they could be taken but not torn away. Undazzled by the glamour of prosperity, he was unshaken by the blow of adversity. In circumstances which were the envy of all men he had never seen any real or solid blessing, but rather a painted emptiness, a gilded deception; and similarly he found nothing really hard or terrible in ills which the common voice has so described.
What, for instance, was exile? it was but a change of place, an absence from one's native land; and, if you looked at the swarming multitudes in Rome itself, you would find that the majority of them were practically in contented and willing exile, drawn thither by necessity, by ambition, or by the search for the best opportunities of vice. No isle so wretched and so bleak which did not attract some voluntary sojourners; even this precipitous and naked rock of Corsica, the hungriest, roughest, most savage, most unhealthy spot conceivable, had more foreigners in it than native inhabitants. The natural restlessness and mobility of the human mind, which arose from its aetherial origin, drove men to change from place to place. The colonies of different nations, scattered all over the civilized and uncivilized world even in spots the most chilly and uninviting, show that the condition of place is no necessary ingredient in human happiness. Even Corsica had often changed its owners; Greeks from Marseilles had first lived there, then Ligurians and Spaniards, then some Roman colonists, whom the aridity and thorniness of the rock had not kept away.
"Varro thought that nature, Brutus that the consciousness of virtue, were sufficient consolations for any exile. How little have I lost in comparison with those two fairest possessions which I shall everywhere enjoy--nature and my own integrity! Whoever or whatever made the world--whether it were a deity, or disembodied reason, or a divine interfusing spirit, or destiny, or an immutable series of connected causes--the result was that nothing, except our very meanest possessions, should depend on the will of another. Man's best gifts lie beyond the power of man either to give or to take away. This Universe, the grandest and loveliest work of nature, and the Intellect which was created to observe and to admire it, are our special and eternal possessions, which shall last as long as we last ourselves. Cheerful, therefore, and erect, let us hasten with undaunted footsteps whithersoever our fortunes lead us.
"There is no land where man cannot dwell,--no land where he cannot uplift his eyes to heaven; wherever we are, the distance of the divine from the human remains the same. So then, as long as my eyes are not robbed of that spectacle with which they cannot be satiated, so long as I may look upon the sun and moon, and fix my lingering gaze on the other constellations, and consider their rising and setting and the spaces between them and the causes of their less and greater speed,--while I may contemplate the multitude of stars glittering throughout the heaven, some stationary, some revolving, some suddenly blazing forth, others dazzling the gaze with a flood of fire as though they fell, and others leaving over a long space their trails of light; while I am in the midst of such phenomena, and mingle myself, as far as a man may, with things celestial,--while my soul is ever occupied in contemplations so sublime as these, what matters it what ground I tread?
"What though fortune has thrown me where the most magnificent abode is but a cottage? the humblest cottage, if it be but the home of virtue, may be more beautiful than all temples; no place is narrow which can contain the crowd of glorious virtues; no exile severe into which you may go with such a reliance. When Brutus left Marcellus at Mitylene, he seemed to be himself going into exile because he left that illustrious exile behind him. Caesar would not land at Mitylene, because he blushed to see him. Marcellus therefore, though he was living in exile and poverty, was living a most happy and a most noble life.
"'One self-approving hour whole worlds outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Caesar with a senate at his heels.'
"And as for poverty every one who is not corrupted by the madness of avarice and luxury know that it is no evil. How little does man need, and how easily can he secure that! As for me, I consider myself as having lost not wealth, but the trouble of looking after it. Bodily wants are few--warmth and food, nothing more. May the gods and goddesses confound that gluttony which sweeps the sky, and sea and land for birds, and animals, and fish; which eats to vomit and vomits to eat, and hunts over the whole world for that which after all it cannot even digest! They might satisfy their hunger with little, and they excite it with much. What harm can poverty inflict on a man who despises such excesses? Look at the god-like and heroic poverty of our ancestors, and compare the simple glory of a Camillus with the lasting infamy of a luxurious Apicius! Even exile will yield a sufficiency of necessaries, but not even kingdoms are enough for superfluities. It is the soul that makes us rich or poor: and the soul follows us into exile, and finds and enjoys its own blessings even in the most barren solitudes.