On the Shortness of Life

hefore, my dearest Paulinus, tear yourself away from the
common herd, and since you have seen more rough weather than one
would think from your age, betake yourself at length to a more
peaceful haven: reflect what waves you have sailed through, what
storms you have endured in private life, and brought upon yourself
in public. Your courage has been sufficiently displayed by many
toilsome and wearisome proofs; try how it will deal with leisure:
the greater, certainly the better part of your life, has been given
to your country; take now some part of your time for yourself as
well. I do not urge you to practise a dull or lazy sloth, or to
drown all your fiery spirit in the pleasures which are dear to the
herd: that is not rest: you can find greater works than all those
which you have hitherto so manfully carried out, upon which you may
employ yourself in retirement and security. You manage the revenues
of the entire world, as unselfishly as though they belonged to
another, as laboriously as if they were your own, as scrupulously
as though they belonged to the public: you win love in an office
in which it is hard to avoid incurring hatred; yet, believe me, it
is better to understand your own mind than to understand the
corn-market. Take away that keen intellect of yours, so well capable
of grappling with the greatest subjects, from a post which may be
dignified, but which is hardly fitted to render life happy, and
reflect that you did not study from childhood all the branches of
a liberal education merely in order that many thousand tons of corn
might safely be entrusted to your charge: you have given us
promise of something greater and nobler than this. There will never
be any want of strict economists or of laborious workers: slow-going
beasts of burden are better suited for carrying loads than well-bred
horses, whose generous swiftness no one would encumber with a heavy
pack. Think, moreover, how full of risk is the great task which you
have undertaken: you have to deal with the human stomach: a hungry
people will not endure reason, will not be appeased by justice, and
will not hearken to any prayers. Only just a few days ago, when G.
Caesar perished, grieving for nothing so much (if those in the other
world can feel grief) as that the Roman people did not die with
him, there was said to be only enough corn for seven or eight days’
consumption: while he was making bridges with ships[9] and playing
with the resources of the empire, want of provisions, the worst
evil that can befall even a besieged city, was at hand: his imitation
of a crazy outlandish and misproud king very nearly ended in ruin,
famine, and the general revolution which follows famine. What must
then have been the feelings of those who had the charge of supplying
the city with corn, who were in danger of stoning, of fire and
sword, of Gaius himself? With consummate art they concealed the
vast internal evil by which the state was menaced, and were quite
right in so doing; for some diseases must be cured without the
patient’s knowledge: many have died through discovering what was
the matter with them.