The Consolation of Philosophy | Page 8

been cognisant of a conspiracy
against him. "If I had known," said he, "thou shouldst never have
known." Grief hath not so blunted my perceptions in this matter that I
should complain because impious wretches contrive their villainies
against the virtuous, but at their achievement of their hopes I do
exceedingly marvel. For evil purposes are, perchance, due to the
imperfection of human nature; that it should be possible for scoundrels
to carry out their worst schemes against the innocent, while God
beholdeth, is verily monstrous. For this cause, not without reason, one
of thy disciples asked, "If God exists, whence comes evil? Yet whence
comes good, if He exists not?" However, it might well be that wretches
who seek the blood of all honest men and of the whole senate should
wish to destroy me also, whom they saw to be a bulwark of the senate
and all honest men. But did I deserve such a fate from the Fathers also?
Thou rememberest, methinks--since thou didst ever stand by my side to
direct what I should do or say--thou rememberest, I say, how at Verona,
when the king, eager for the general destruction, was bent on
implicating the whole senatorial order in the charge of treason brought
against Albinus, with what indifference to my own peril I maintained
the innocence of its members, one and all. Thou knowest that what I
say is the truth, and that I have never boasted of my good deeds in a
spirit of self-praise. For whenever a man by proclaiming his good deeds
receives the recompense of fame, he diminishes in a measure the secret
reward of a good conscience. What issues have overtaken my
innocency thou seest. Instead of reaping the rewards of true virtue, I
undergo the penalties of a guilt falsely laid to my charge--nay, more
than this; never did an open confession of guilt cause such unanimous
severity among the assessors, but that some consideration, either of the
mere frailty of human nature, or of fortune's universal instability,
availed to soften the verdict of some few. Had I been accused of a
design to fire the temples, to slaughter the priests with impious sword,
of plotting the massacre of all honest men, I should yet have been
produced in court, and only punished on due confession or conviction.
Now for my too great zeal towards the senate I have been condemned
to outlawry and death, unheard and undefended, at a distance of near

five hundred miles away.[C] Oh, my judges, well do ye deserve that no
one should hereafter be convicted of a fault like mine!
'Yet even my very accusers saw how honourable was the charge they
brought against me, and, in order to overlay it with some shadow of
guilt, they falsely asserted that in the pursuit of my ambition I had
stained my conscience with sacrilegious acts. And yet thy spirit,
indwelling in me, had driven from the chamber of my soul all lust of
earthly success, and with thine eye ever upon me, there could be no
place left for sacrilege. For thou didst daily repeat in my ear and instil
into my mind the Pythagorean maxim, "Follow after God." It was not
likely, then, that I should covet the assistance of the vilest spirits, when
thou wert moulding me to such an excellence as should conform me to
the likeness of God. Again, the innocency of the inner sanctuary of my
home, the company of friends of the highest probity, a father-in-law
revered at once for his pure character and his active beneficence, shield
me from the very suspicion of sacrilege. Yet--atrocious as it is--they
even draw credence for this charge from _thee_; I am like to be thought
implicated in wickedness on this very account, that I am imbued with
_thy_ teachings and stablished in _thy_ ways. So it is not enough that
my devotion to thee should profit me nothing, but thou also must be
assailed by reason of the odium which I have incurred. Verily this is the
very crown of my misfortunes, that men's opinions for the most part
look not to real merit, but to the event; and only recognise foresight
where Fortune has crowned the issue with her approval. Whereby it
comes to pass that reputation is the first of all things to abandon the
unfortunate. I remember with chagrin how perverse is popular report,
how various and discordant men's judgments. This only will I say, that
the most crushing of misfortune's burdens is, that as soon as a charge is
fastened upon the unhappy, they are believed to have deserved their
sufferings. I, for my part, who have been banished from all life's
blessings, stripped of my honours, stained in repute, am punished for
well-doing.
'And now methinks