Meditations IV.33
Expressions once in use are now obsolete. So also the names of those much be-sung56 heroes of old are in some sense obsolete, Camillus, Caeso, Volesus,57 Dentatus, and a little later Scipio and Cato, then also Augustus, and then Hadrianus and Antoninus. For all things quickly fade away and become legendary, and soon absolute oblivion encairns them. And here I speak of those who made an extraordinary blaze in the world. For the rest, as soon as the breath is out of their bodies, it is, Out of sight, out of mind.58 But what, when all is said, is even ever-lasting remembrance59? Wholly vanity. What then is it that calls for our devotion? This one thing: justice in thought, in act unselfishness and a tongue that cannot lie and a disposition ready to welcome all that befalls as unavoidable, as familiar,60 as issuing from a like origin and fountain-head.
- 56.See vii. 6.
- 57.Volesus, or Volusus, was the family name of the Valerii. Valerius Poplicola must be meant, the obsolete name adding to the point.
The first names in the list are those of heroes of the early Roman Republic. Camillus is Marcus Furius Camillus, traditionally the saviour of Rome after the Gallic sack of about 390 BC; Publius Valerius Poplicola was, by tradition, one of the first consuls after the expulsion of the kings in 509 BC.
- 58.Homer’s Odyssey i. 242.
Marcus’s words are aistoi, apustoi, “unseen, unheard of,” which Haines renders “Out of sight, out of mind.” In Odyssey i. 242 Telemachus uses them of his father, who has vanished without trace.
- 59.See iv. 19.
- 60.See iv. 44.