On the Shortness of Life

t would take long to describe the various individuals who
have wasted their lives over playing at draughts, playing at ball,
or toasting their bodies in the sun: men are not at leisure if their
pleasures partake of the character of business, for no one will
doubt that those persons are laborious triflers who devote themselves
to the study of futile literary questions, of whom there is already
a great number in Rome also. It used to be a peculiarly Greek disease
of the mind to investigate how many rowers Ulysses had, whether the
Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, and furthermore, whether
they were written by the same author, with other matters of the
same stamp, which neither please your inner consciousness if you
keep them to yourself, nor make you seem more learned, but only
more troublesome, if you publish them abroad. See, already this
vain longing to learn what is useless has taken hold of the Romans:
the other day I heard somebody telling who was the first Roman
general who did this or that: Duillius was the first who won a
sea-fight, Curius Dentatus was the first who drove elephants in his
triumph: moreover, these stories, though they add nothing to real
glory, do nevertheless deal with the great deeds of our countrymen:
such knowledge is not profitable, yet it claims our attention as a
fascinating kind of folly. I will even pardon those who want to
know who first persuaded the Romans to go on board ship. It was
Claudius, who for this reason was surnamed Caudex, because any piece
of carpentry formed of many planks was called caudex by the ancient
Romans, for which reason public records are called Codices, and
by old custom the ships which ply on the Tiber with provisions are
called codicariae. Let us also allow that it is to the point to
tell how Valerius Corvinus was the first to conquer Messana,
and first of the family of the Valerii transferred the name of the
captured city to his own, and was called Messana, and how the people
gradually corrupted the pronunciation and called him Messalla: or
would you let any one find interest in Lucius Sulla having been the
first to let lions loose in the circus, they having been previously
exhibited in chains, and hurlers of darts having been sent by King
Bocchus to kill them? This may be permitted to their curiosity: but
can it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompeius was the first
to exhibit eighteen elephants in the circus, who were matched in a
mimic battle with some convicts? The leading man in the state, and
one who, according to tradition, was noted among the ancient leaders
of the state for his transcendent goodness of heart, thought it a
notable kind of show to kill men in a manner hitherto unheard of.
Do they fight to the death? that is not cruel enough: are they torn
to pieces? that is not cruel enough: let them be crushed flat by
animals of enormous bulk. It would be much better that such a thing
should be forgotten, for fear that hereafter some potentate might
hear of it and envy its refined barbarity. O, how doth excessive
prosperity blind our intellects! at the moment at which he was
casting so many troops of wretches to be trampled on by outlandish
beasts, when he was proclaiming war between such different creatures,
when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman
people, whose blood he himself was soon to shed even more freely,
he thought himself the master of the whole world; yet he afterwards,
deceived by the treachery of the Alexandrians, had to offer himself
to the dagger of the vilest of slaves, and then at last discovered
what an empty boast was his surname of “The Great.” But to return
to the point from which I have digressed, I will prove that even
on this very subject some people expend useless pains. The same
author tells us that Metellus, when he triumphed after having
conquered the Carthaginians in Sicily, was the only Roman who ever
had a hundred and twenty captured elephants led before his car: and
that Sulla was the last Roman who extended the pomoerium,[7] which
it was not the custom of the ancients to extend on account of the
conquest of provincial, but only of Italian territory. Is it more
useful to know this, than to know that the Mount Aventine, according
to him, is outside of the pomoerium, for one of two reasons, either
because it was thither that the plebeians seceded, or because when
Remus took his auspices on that place the birds which he saw were
not propitious: and other stories without number of the like sort,
which are either actual falsehoods or much the same as falsehoods?
for even if you allow that these authors speak in all good faith,
if they pledge themselves for the truth of what they write, still,
whose mistakes will be made fewer by such stories? whose passions
will be restrained? whom will they make more brave, more just, or
more gentlemanly? My friend Fabianus used to say that he was not
sure that it was not better not to apply oneself to any studies at
all than to become interested in these.