The Shore at Ostia

When I think back and turn over in my mind the memory of Octavius — that fine man, the most faithful of companions — the sweetness and charm of him cling to me so closely that I seem to myself to be going back into past time rather than merely calling up things long since over and gone. The more his living face is taken away from my eyes, the more it is bound into my heart and my deepest feelings. And it was not without reason that this remarkable and holy man, when he left this life, left me a longing for him that has no end — especially since he too burned with such love for me at every hour that, whether we were at leisure or at work, he wanted what I wanted, liking and disliking the same things. You would have thought one mind had been shared between the two of us. [a]

He alone was the one I trusted with my loves, my partner in my mistakes; and when the gloom scattered and I came up out of the pit of darkness into the light of wisdom and truth, he did not throw off his companion — he did what is finer still, and outran him. And so, as my thoughts ran back over the whole stretch of our closeness and friendship, my mind settled above all on that talk of his in which, by very weighty arguments, he turned Caecilius, who was still clinging to empty superstitions, around to the true religion.

Octavius had hurried to Rome on business and to see me, leaving behind his home, his wife, his children — and, in children, the most winning thing of all, the years while they are still innocent and still attempting half-finished words, a speech made sweeter by the very stumbling of the tongue that breaks it. I cannot put into words the enormous, impatient joy I felt at his arrival, since the unlooked-for presence of a man so dear to me made my gladness all the greater. So after a day or two, when the steady pleasure of being together had satisfied our longing for each other, and we had learned by telling it back and forth everything we had not known about each other because of the separation, we agreed to go to Ostia, that very pleasant town, so that my body might have a soothing and suitable cure in sea bathing for drying out its fluids — the more easily because the courts’ vintage holidays had just released me from my work. [d]

It was after the summer days, and the autumn season was turning to a milder temperature. And so, in the early morning, we set out toward the sea and walked along the shore, so that the moving air might gently refresh our limbs and the yielding sand sink under our unhurried feet with great pleasure. And Caecilius, noticing a statue of Serapis, raised his hand to his mouth, in the way superstitious common people do, and pressed a kiss on it with his lips.

Then Octavius said, “It is not what a good man does, Marcus my brother, to abandon a man who sticks close at your side at home and abroad in this blindness of common ignorance — to let him, in broad daylight like this, hand himself over to stones, however they may be carved into images, oiled and garlanded. You know perfectly well that the disgrace of his mistake falls on your reputation no less than on his own.” [e]

Talking like this, we covered the distance between the town and the sea, and we were now walking on the broad open beach. There the gently rippling water was smoothing the outer sands as if to level them for a walkway; and since the sea is always restless, even when the winds have dropped, it came up onto the shore — not with waves crested and foaming, but with waves crimped and curling. Just then we were thoroughly delighted by its play, wetting the soles of our feet on the very threshold of the water: it came up in turn and broke over our feet, and then the wave drew back and, retracing its course, sucked itself into itself. So, going along slowly and quietly, we followed the coast of the gently bending shore, beguiling the way with stories. The stories were Octavius’, who was talking about seafaring.

But when we had used a fair enough stretch of our walk on talk, we turned back the same way and trod the path with our footsteps reversed. And when we came to the place where the small boats, hauled up on oak frames, were lying at rest above the risk of rot from the ground, we saw some boys gesturing eagerly as they played at throwing shells into the sea. The game goes like this. You choose a shell from the shore, rubbed smooth by the tossing of the waves. You take hold of it flat between your fingers. You send it spinning, tilted and as low down as possible, over the waves, so that when it is thrown it either skims the back of a wave, or swims along gliding with a smooth push, or springs up as it cuts the top of the waves and rises as if lifted by repeated bounds. The boy who claimed the victory was the one whose shell both ran out furthest and leaped most often.

And so, while the rest of us were taken up with enjoying this show, Caecilius was paying no attention and not laughing at the contest. He was silent, uneasy, standing off by himself, and his face admitted that he was grieving over something I could not name. I said to him, “What is the matter? Why do I not see your usual liveliness, Caecilius? Why do I look in vain for the cheerfulness that is in your eyes even in serious business?” [g]

Then he said, “For a while now our friend Octavius’ speech has been galling me and gnawing at me — the one in which he went after you and blamed you for negligence, so that under cover of that charge he could convict me the more heavily of ignorance. So I will go further: the matter now lies wholly and entirely between me and Octavius. If he is willing that I, a man of that persuasion, should argue it out with him, he will see at once that it is easier to hold a debate among friends than to grapple hand to hand the way philosophers do. Let us sit down on those rock barriers thrown out there to protect the baths, which run far out into the deep, so that we can both rest after our walk and argue with closer attention.”

At his word we sat down, so that by covering me on either side they sheltered me in the middle of the three. This was not a matter of protocol, or of rank, or of honor — friendship always either finds equals or makes them — but so that, as arbitrator and close to both, I could give my attention, and by sitting between them keep the two apart. Then Caecilius began.

“Although, Marcus my brother, the question we are chiefly asking is not in doubt for you — since you have been carefully instructed in both ways of life, and have rejected the one and given your assent to the other — still, in the present case your mind must be so shaped that you hold the scales of a perfectly just judge, and do not lean by inclination to one side, or your verdict will look as though it came not from our arguments but from your own settled views. So, if you will sit in judgment on me as someone new, as a man who knows neither side, there is no difficulty in making it plain that everything in human affairs is doubtful, uncertain, and unsettled, and that all of it is likely rather than true. That makes it the less surprising that some men, worn out with investigating the truth thoroughly, give way rashly to any opinion at all rather than keep at the search with steady effort. [h]

“And so everyone must be indignant, everyone must feel pain, that certain people — untrained in learning, strangers to literature, without skill even in the meaner trades — should dare to settle anything for certain about nature at large and about the divine majesty, when so many of the crowd of schools in every age are still in doubt about it and philosophy itself is still deliberating. And with reason. The middling reach of human intelligence falls so far short of divine investigation that it is not given us to know, nor permitted to inquire, nor reverent to violate the things that hang suspended in the sky above us or the things sunk deep below the earth. We may fairly count ourselves happy enough and prudent enough if, according to that old oracle of the sage, we come to know ourselves thoroughly.

“But even if we indulge in a senseless and useless labor, and wander out beyond the limits proper to our lowliness — even if, bent toward the earth as we are, we climb past heaven itself and the very stars with our daring ambition — let us at least not tangle this mistake up with empty and frightened notions. Suppose the seeds of all things were in the beginning packed together by a nature that combined them in itself: what god is the author here? Suppose the parts of the whole world were united, arranged, and shaped by chance collisions: what god is the craftsman? Fire may have kindled the stars; the lightness of its own material may have hung the heaven up; its own material may have set the earth firm by its weight; the sea may have flowed in out of moisture. Where does this religion come from? Where does this fear come from? What is this superstition?

“A human being, and every animal that is born and breathes and is fed, is nothing but a coming-together of the elements of its own accord, and into the elements a man and an animal are divided again, dissolved and scattered. So everything flows back into its source and turns back into itself, with no craftsman, no judge, no maker. That is how the seeds of fires, gathered together, make other suns, and others after them, shine out again and again. That is how the vapors of the earth, drawn up, make the mists keep growing; the mists, thickened and collected, make the clouds rise higher; and when the clouds fall they make the rains run, the winds blow, the hail rattle down — or when the clouds clash together, they make the thunder bellow, the lightning flush red, the thunderbolts flash out. So the bolts fall everywhere. They rush at the mountains, they strike the trees. Making no choice at all, they blast places sacred and profane alike; they hit dangerous men, and often religious men too.

“Why should I speak of storms, various and unpredictable, in which the assault on everything is flung about without order or discrimination? Or of shipwrecks, where the fates of good men and bad are jumbled together and what each deserves is confounded? Or of fires, in which the destruction of the innocent and the guilty is one thing? Or of a region stained by a plague-taint in the sky, where everyone dies without distinction? Or of the heat of war, when it is generally the better men who fall? In peacetime too, wickedness is not only put on a level with the lot of better men; it is held in such regard that with many people you cannot tell whether their depravity is more to be loathed or their good fortune more to be envied. But if the world were governed by divine providence and by the authority of some deity, Phalaris and Dionysius would never have deserved to reign, Rutilius and Camillus would never have earned exile, Socrates would never have earned the poison. Look at the fruit trees, look at the harvest already white, the vintage already dropping — ruined by the rain, beaten down by the hail. So either the truth is uncertain and hidden from us and kept back, or, which is likelier to be believed, in these varied and wayward chances it is Fortune, bound by no laws, who rules over us.

“Since, then, either fortune is fixed or nature is unfixed, how much more reverent and better it is, as a high priest of truth, to receive the teaching of your ancestors, to cultivate the religions handed down to you, to worship the gods you were trained by your parents to fear before you came to know them intimately — not to lay down an opinion about the divine powers, but to believe your forefathers, who, while the age was still untrained, in the birth-times of the world itself, deserved to have the gods either favorable to them or as their kings. [l]

“And so we see, all through the empires and provinces and towns, that each people has its own national rites of worship and adores its local gods: the Eleusinians worship Ceres; the Phrygians, the Mother; the Epidaurians, Aesculapius; the Chaldeans, Belus; the Syrians, Astarte; the Taurians, Diana; the Gauls, Mercury; the Romans, all the gods. That is how their power and authority has occupied the circuit of the whole world; that is how it has spread its rule beyond the paths of the sun and the bounds of the ocean itself. Because in their arms they practice a religious courage. Because they fortify their city with the religions of sacred rites, with chaste virgins, with many honors and the titles of priesthoods. Because, when they were besieged and taken all but the Capitol alone, they went on worshiping gods who were angry with them, gods that any other people would have thrown away. Because they move through the lines of the Gauls — who marvel at the boldness of their superstition — unarmed with weapons, but armed with the practice of their religion. Because in an enemy city, taken and still in the fury of victory, they show reverence to the conquered gods. Because in every direction they look for the gods of foreigners and make them their own. Because they build altars even to unknown divine powers, and to the spirits of the dead.

“So, by acknowledging the sacred institutions of every nation, they have also deserved to rule them. And from this the unbroken course of their veneration has continued, not weakened by the long lapse of time but increased, because antiquity has been accustomed to grant ceremonies and temples as much holiness as it has granted them age.

“Nor was it by chance either — for I will venture in the meantime even to grant the point under debate, and so to err on the safe side — that our ancestors succeeded in what they undertook, whether by watching the auguries, or by consulting the entrails, or by setting up sacred rites, or by dedicating temples. Consider what the record in the books is. You will discover at once that they inaugurated the rites of every kind of religion either so that divine favor might be repaid, or so that a threatened anger might be turned aside, or so that a wrath already swelling and raging might be appeased. [p]

“Take the Idaean Mother as witness: at her arrival she both proved the chastity of the matron and freed the city from fear of the enemy. Take as witnesses the statues of the two brothers on horseback, set up exactly as they had shown themselves at the lake, who — with their horses out of breath, foaming and steaming — announced the victory over Perseus on the very day it was won. Take as witness the repetition of the games for the offended Jupiter, on account of a common man’s dream. And the devotion of the Decii is an acknowledged witness. Take Curtius as witness too, who filled up the mouth of that deep chasm either with his own bulk or with the glory of his knighthood.

“And more often than we could have wished, the auguries, when they were despised, have borne witness that the gods are present. So Allia is an unlucky name. So the engagement of Claudius and Junius was not a battle against the Carthaginians but a deadly shipwreck. So, that Trasimene might be both swollen and discolored with Roman blood, Flaminius despised the auguries; and, so that we should have to demand our standards back from the Parthians all over again, Crassus both earned and laughed at the curses of the dreadful sisters. I leave out the old stories, which are many, and I pass by the poets’ songs about the births and the gifts and the rewards of the gods. I also hurry past the fates foretold by the oracles, so that antiquity may not strike you as excessively fabulous.

“Look at the shrines and temples of the gods, by which the city of Rome is both protected and armed: they are more venerable for the deities who live in them, present and constantly at home there, than they are rich in the emblems and gifts of worship. And that is why the seers, filled with the god and mingled with him, gather up the future in advance, give warning of dangers, medicine for diseases, hope for the afflicted, help for the wretched, comfort in disasters, relief in labors. Even in our sleep we see, we hear, we acknowledge the gods whom in the daytime we impiously deny, refuse, and disown.