“Besides, the straitened bounds of this scant dwelling place are inhabited by many nations differing widely in speech, in usages, in mode of life; to many of these, from the difficulty of travel, from diversities of speech, from want of commercial intercourse, the fame not only of individual men, but even of cities, is unable to reach. Why, in Cicero’s days, as he himself somewhere points out,10 the fame of the Roman Republic had not yet crossed the Caucasus, and yet by that time her name had grown formidable to the Parthians and other nations of those parts. Seest thou, then, how narrow, how confined, is the glory ye take pains to spread abroad and extend! Can the fame of a single Roman penetrate where the glory of the Roman name fails to pass? Moreover, the customs and institutions of different races agree not together, so that what is deemed praiseworthy in one country is thought punishable in another. Wherefore, if any love the applause of fame, it shall not profit him to publish his name among many peoples. Then, each must be content to have the range of his glory limited to his own people; the splendid immortality of fame must be confined within the bounds of a single race.
“Once more, how many of high renown in their own times have been lost in oblivion for want of a record! Indeed, of what avail are written records even, which, with their authors, are overtaken by the dimness of age after a somewhat longer time? But ye, when ye think on future fame, fancy it an immortality that ye are begetting for yourselves. Why, if thou scannest the infinite spaces of eternity, what room hast thou left for rejoicing in the durability of thy name? Verily, if a single moment’s space be compared with ten thousand years, it has a certain relative duration, however little, since each period is definite. But this same number of years—ay, and a number many times as great—cannot even be compared with endless duration; for, indeed, finite periods may in a sort be compared one with another, but a finite and an infinite never. So it comes to pass that fame, though it extend to ever so wide a space of years, if it be compared to never-lessening eternity, seems not short-lived merely, but altogether nothing. But as for you, ye know not how to act aright, unless it be to court the popular breeze, and win the empty applause of the multitude—nay, ye abandon the superlative worth of conscience and virtue, and ask a recompense from the poor words of others. Let me tell thee how wittily one did mock the shallowness of this sort of arrogance. A certain man assailed one who had put on the name of philosopher as a cloak to pride and vainglory, not for the practice of real virtue, and added: ‘Now shall I know if thou art a philosopher if thou bearest reproaches calmly and patiently.’ The other for awhile affected to be patient, and, having endured to be abused, cried out derisively: ‘Now, do you see that I am a philosopher?’ The other, with biting sarcasm, retorted: ‘I should have hadst thou held thy peace.’ Moreover, what concern have choice spirits—for it is of such men we speak, men who seek glory by virtue—what concern, I say, have these with fame after the dissolution of the body in death’s last hour? For if men die wholly—which our reasonings forbid us to believe—there is no such thing as glory at all, since he to whom the glory is said to belong is altogether nonexistent. But if the mind, conscious of its own rectitude, is released from its earthly prison, and seeks heaven in free flight, doth it not despise all earthly things when it rejoices in its deliverance from earthly bonds, and enters upon the joys of heaven?”
Song VII
Glory May Not Last
Oh, let him, who pants for glory’s guerdon,
Deeming glory all in all,
Look and see how wide the heaven expandeth,
Earth’s enclosing bounds how small!
Shame it is, if your proud-swelling glory
May not fill this narrow room!
Why, then, strive so vainly, oh, ye proud ones!
To escape your mortal doom?
Though your name, to distant regions bruited,
O’er the earth be widely spread,
Though full many a lofty-sounding title
On your house its lustre shed,
Death at all this pomp and glory spurneth
When his hour draweth nigh,
Shrouds alike th’ exalted and the humble,
Levels lowest and most high.
Where are now the bones of stanch Fabricius?
Brutus, Cato—where are they?
Lingering fame, with a few graven letters,
Doth their empty name display.
But to know the great dead is not given
From a gilded name alone;
Nay, ye all alike must lie forgotten,
’Tis not you that fame makes known.
Fondly do ye deem life’s little hour
Lengthened by fame’s mortal breath;
There but waits you—when this, too, is taken—
At the last a second death.
VIII
“But that thou mayst not think that I wage implacable warfare against Fortune, I own there is a time when the deceitful goddess serves men well—I mean when she reveals herself, uncovers her face, and confesses her true character. Perhaps thou dost not yet grasp my meaning. Strange is the thing
