13

13. On judging someone else’s death

[After the Christian climax of ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’ which stresses that Stoic virtue cannot lead to grace and salvation, we are shown how splendid Cato’s glorious suicide was in human, philosophical terms. But, as the closing words quietly recall, Cato’s self-destruction was actually an act of murder.]

[A] When we judge the assurance shown by a person as he is dying – and dying is without doubt the most noteworthy action in a man’s life – there is one thing we must always take into account: it is hard for anyone to believe that he himself has reached that point. Few die convinced that their last hour has come; nowhere else does deceiving Hope take up more of our time. She never stops making our ears ring with thoughts such as, ‘Others have been much more ill without dying,’ or, ‘My condition is not as hopeless as they think’; and, if the worst comes to the worst, ‘God has performed plenty of other miracles.’

This happens because we set too much store by ourselves. It appears to us that the whole universe in some way suffers when we are obliterated and that it feels compassion for our predicament, especially since our perception has been affected and sees things accordingly: as our vision fails we think that it is they which are failing: just as for those travelling by sea the mountains, fields, cities, sky and land all go by at the same speed as they do:1

[B] Provehimur portu, terræque urbesque recedunt. [We sail out of harbour and the land and its cities withdraw.]2

Who has ever seen an old man who did not praise former times and condemn the present, loading on to the world the weight of his own wretchedness and on to the manners of men his own melancholy!

Jamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator, Et cum tempora temporibus præsentia confert Præteritis, laudat fortunas sæpe parentis, Et crepat antiquum genus ut pietate repletum.

[The grand old ploughman shakes his head, contrasting the past with the present; he constantly praises his father’s good fortune and croaks on about folk in former days being overflowing with piety.]3

We drag everything along with us.

[A] And so it follows that we reckon our death to be a great event, something which does not happen lightly nor without solemn consultations among the heavenly bodies: [C] ‘tot circa unum caput tumultuantes deos!’ [all those gods in a tumult over one capital punishment!]4 [A] And the higher we rate our worth the more we think that way. [C] What! Should so much learning be lost, should so much harm be done, without the especial concern of the Fates! Can so rare, so model a soul as mine be killed as cheaply as a useless common one! Is such a life as mine, which is the mainstay of so many others, upon which so many others depend, which has activities giving employment to so many people and which occupies so many offices, to be displaced like a life which has no attachments save one single knot! None of us gives enough thought to his being only one.

[A] Hence those words addressed by Caesar to the captain of his ship, words running prouder than the sea which threatened him:

Italiam si, cælo authore, recusas, Me pete: sola tibi causa hæc est justa timoris, Vectorem non nosse tuum; perrumpe procellas, Tutela secure mei.

[If by Heaven’s command you refuse to sail for Italy, then turn to me: this fear of yours is only justified if you do not know who your passenger is! Battle through those waves. Trust in my protection.]5

And there is this as well:

credit jam digna pericula Cæsar Fatis esse suis: Tantusque evertere, dixit, Me superis labor est, parva quem puppe sedentem Tam magno petiere mari

[Caesar now believed the perils to be worthy of his destiny: ‘Is it so great a labour for the gods to topple me, seeking me out where I sit on a huge sea in a tiny boat!’]6

[B] And there was that mad official belief that, for one whole year, the Sun’s face was in mourning out of grief for Caesar’s death:

Ille etiam, extincto miseratus Cæsare Romam, Cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit;

[And likewise the Sun itself pitied Rome with Caesar’s light put out, veiling its radiant forehead in purple darkness;]7

and there are hundreds of others by which this world of ours deceives itself, reckoning that our troubles can bring changes to the face of Heaven [C] and that the heavens’ infinity is passionately concerned with our piddling distinctions. ‘Non tanta coelo societas nobiscum est, ut nostro fato mortalis sit ille quoque siderum fulgor!’ [There is not such a fellowship between the heavens and ourselves that when we are fated to perish the splendour of the stars should perish also!]8

[A] Now to judge the resolution and constancy of a man who does not believe with certainty that the peril is upon him, even though it is, is not reasonable; it is not enough that he did die with such resolute constancy unless he rightly adopted it to perform that action. It happens that most men stiffen their countenance and their words to acquire a reputation which they still hope to live to enjoy. [C] In all the deaths that I have witnessed, it was Fortune which arranged that countenance, not the man’s designs.

[A] And even among those who killed themselves in ancient times there is a great distinction to be made between a quick death and one which took time. That cruel Roman Emperor who would say of his prisoners that he wanted them to feel death, would comment, if one of them killed himself while in prison, ‘That one got away!’9 He wished to prolong their dying and to make them feel what it is through torture:

[B] Vidimus et toto quamvis in corpore cæso Nil animæ letale datum, moremque nefandæ Durum sævitiæ pereuntis parcere morti.

[We saw his body all covered with wounds, but no lethal one was allowed it, by a custom of atrocious cruelty which kept death from the dying.]10

[A] It is not at all difficult to say when you are quite well and quite calm that you have decided to kill yourself: it is easy to act the formidable fighter before you come to grips; so Heliogabalus,11 the most unmanly man in the world, in the midst of his vile debaucheries planned to end his life [C] daintily [A] whenever circumstances should force him to; and so that his death should not belie the rest of his life, he had caused to be built a gorgeous tower, the base and façade of which were enriched with gold and jewels, expressly to throw himself down from it. He made ropes of gold, and of crimson silk as well, to strangle himself with, and a sword of beaten gold to run himself through with; and he kept potions in vessels of emerald and topaz to poison himself with, so that he could choose one or other of these ways of dying as his fancy moved him:

[B] Impiger et fortis virtute coacta [Ready to die and strong – by an enforced valour.]12

[A] However in his case the delicacy of his preparations renders it likely that when it came to the crunch he would have started snivelling blood!

Yet even in those more vigorous men who had made up their minds to carry it out, we must (I insist) look to see if it was to be by a blow which removed any possibility of their feeling its effect; for if they were to see their life dripping away drop by drop, with their body’s awareness mingling with that of their soul and offering them the means for a change of heart, it is a matter of conjecture whether we would find them stubborn and constant in so perilous an intent.

During Caesar’s civil wars, Lucius Domitius was captured in Abruzzi, poisoned himself and then changed his mind.13 In our own days there was the case of a man who had decided to die but with his first assay at it he did not go deep enough since his quivering flesh made his arm flinch; he did give himself two or three wounds afterwards, but could never bring himself to thrust his blows right home.

[C] When Plantius Sylvanus was on trial his grandmother Urgulania sent him a dagger; he could not manage to kill himself with it but got his servants to slash his veins.14 [B] In the time of Tiberius, Albucilla tried to kill herself but the blow was too light; she thus gave her enemies the means of taking her prisoner and killing her their own way.15 Much the same happened to Demothenes (the captain) after his defeat in Sicily.16 [C] Caius Fimbria also struck himself too weak a blow and got his manservant to finish him off.17 On the other hand Ostorius, who was unable to use his own arm, disdained to use that of his servant except for holding the dagger straight and firm: he ran on to it, offering his throat and stabbing it through.18

[A] Meat such as this must, in truth, be swallowed unchewed, unless you have a gizzard paved with frost-nails! The Emperor Hadrian got his doctor to mark with a circle the exact spot round his tit where a blow would prove fatal; the man he made responsible for killing him had to aim at that target.19 Which explains why Caesar, when asked what kind of death he found most desirable, replied, ‘The least anticipated and the quickest.’20 [B] If Caesar dared to say it I can no longer be a coward for thinking the same.

[A] ‘A quick death,’ says Pliny, ‘is the sovereign blessing of human life.’21 People hate reconnoitring death. No man can be said to be resolute in death who refuses to haggle with it and who cannot look at it with his eyes open. Those men at the gallows whom we see running to their end, hastening and hurrying towards it, are not doing so because they are resolute: they want to deprive themselves of time to think about it:

Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihili aestimo. [I think nothing of being dead: it is the dying that I dislike.]22

I know from experience that I could attain to that degree of steadfastness, like men who dive into dangers as into the sea – with their eyes closed.

[C] According to my standards there is nothing more glorious in the life of Socrates than his having had thirty whole days to chew over his death and his having digested it, all that time, with a most certain hope, without fuss, without alteration and with a line of conduct and conversation subdued and relaxed by the weight of that thought rather than heightened and tensed.

[A] When he was ill, Pomponius Atticus (to whom Cicero addressed his epistles)23 summoned his son-in-law Agrippa and two or three other friends and told them that he had essayed it and knew that he had nothing to gain from wanting to be cured: everything he was doing to prolong his life was both prolonging and increasing his suffering; so he had decided to end them both. He begged them to approve of his decision, or at least not to waste their efforts on trying to dissuade him. Whereupon, having chosen to die by starvation, by accident his illness was cured! The remedy he had chosen to end his life restored him to health. His doctors and his friends feasted such a happy outcome and were rejoicing in his presence but they were much mistaken: for all that, they did not find it possible to make him go back on his decision: he said that he had to go through with it some time or other and that, having got thus far, he wanted to rid himself of the trouble of starting all over again on another occasion. That man, having had leisure to make a reconnaissance of death, not only was not disheartened at joining battle with it, he was keen to do so; once he had been satisfied by his reasons for entering the fight, he spurred himself on bravely to see the end of it.24

It is to go far beyond having no fear of death actually to want to taste it, to savour it.

[C] The account of what happened to Cleanthes the philosopher is a close parallel. His gums were swollen and rotting; the doctors advised extreme abstinence. After two days of fasting he made such a good recovery that they pronounced him cured and allowed him to return to his usual way of life. He on the other hand already savouring a kind of sweetness in his failing powers, determined not to retreat and crossed that boundary towards which he had so firmly advanced.25

[A] Tullius Marcellinus, a Roman youth, wishing to forestall his fatal hour so as to rid himself of an illness which was battering him more than he was prepared to put up with even though his doctors promised him a certain, but not a quick, cure, called his friends together to consider the matter. ‘Some,’ says Seneca, ‘gave him the advice which they would have cowardly chosen for themselves; others, out of flattery, the advice which they thought would be most pleasing to him; but a Stoic said the following: “Do not toil over it, Marcellinus, as if you were considering anything important: it is no great thing to be alive: your servants and the animals are; the great thing is to die honourably, wisely and with constancy. Think how long you have been doing the same things – eating, drinking and sleeping: drinking, sleeping and eating. We are for ever going round in that circle; not only bad and intolerable mishaps but merely being sated with living gives us a desire for death.” ’

Marcellinus – he went on – did not need anyone to advise him: he wanted someone who could help him. His servants were frightened of getting mixed up with it; but that Stoic philosopher made them understand that a man’s domestic servants fall under suspicion only when there is reason to doubt that their master’s death was deliberate; therefore they would set as bad an example by hindering him as by murdering him, since

Invitum qui servat idem facit occidenti.[To save a man against his will is the same as murdering him.]26

He then suggested to Marcellinus that, just as when we have finished our dinners we leave what is left on the tables for those who have waited on us, so too, having finished his life, it would not be inappropriate to distribute something among those who were to help him. Now Marcellinus was of a frank and generous mind; he caused a certain sum to be shared among his servants and comforted them. For the rest, he needed neither blade nor bloodshed: he undertook not to run away from this life but to take leave of it; not to escape from this life but to assay death. And to give himself leisure to haggle with it, he gave up all food; three days later he had himself sprinkled with warm water; he failed away gradually, not, judging from what he said, without a feeling of pleasure. Indeed those who have experienced such failings away of the mind brought on by weakness say that they felt no pain but rather indeed a certain kind of pleasure, like dropping off to sleep and resting.27

There you have deaths which have been carefully prepared for and digested. But so that Cato alone should furnish a complete model of virtue it seems that his good Destiny gave him some trouble in the arm with which he dealt himself the blow, in order to afford him leisure to confront Death and to fall about its neck, strengthening his courage in that peril not weakening it. And if it had been up to me to portray him in his most exalted posture, it would have shown him all covered with blood and tearing out his entrails, rather than sword in hand as did the sculptors of his time. For that second murder was more ecstatic than the first.28