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Book 6 - Introduction
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Quintilian laments that his son, whose improvement, in conjunction with that of the sons of Marcellus and Caesar, he had had in view in the composition of this work, had been carried off by death, § 1, 2. He had previously lost, during the composition of another work, a younger son, as well as his wife, 3-6. Abilities of which his children gave indications, 7-9. His grief; he intreats indulgence if, in consequence of it, he pursues his work with less spirit, 10-16.
1. HAVING entered upon this undertaking, Marcellus Victor, principally at your request, but with a desire, at the same time, that some profit to well-disposed youth might arise from my labors, I have applied to it recently with great diligence, from the necessity, almost, of the office conferred upon me, yet with a regard also to my own gratification, thinking that I should leave this work to my son, whose remarkable ability deserved even the most anxious attention of a father, as the best portion of his inheritance, so that if the fates should cut me off before him, as would have been but just and desirable, he might still have his father's precepts to guide him. 2. But while I was pursuing my design day and night, and hastening the completion of it, through fear of being prevented by death, fortune sent so sudden an affliction upon me that the result of my industry interests no one less than myself, for I have lost by a second severe bereavement that son, of whom I had conceived the highest expectations, and in whom I reposed my only hopes for the solace of my age. 3. What shall I now do? Or what further use can I suppose that there is for me upon the earth, when the gods thus animadvert upon me? When I had just begun to write the book which I have published, On the Causes of the Corruption of Eloquence, it happened that I was struck with a similar blow. It would have been best for me, therefore, to have thrown that inauspicious work, and whatever ill-omened learning there is in me, into the flames of that premature funeral pyre which was to consume what I loved, and not to have wearied my unnatural prolongation of life with new and additional anxieties. 4. What parent, of right feelings at least, would pardon me if I could pursue my studies with my accustomed diligence and would not hate my insensibility if I had any other use for my voice than to accuse the gods for causing me to survive all my children and to testify that divine providence pays no regard to terrestrial affairs? If such neglect of the gods is not visible in my own person, to whom nothing can be objected but that I am still alive, it is certainly manifest in the fate of those whom cruel death has condemned to perish so undeservedly, their mother having been previously snatched from me, who, after giving birth to a second son, before she had completed her nineteenth year, died, though cut off prematurely, a happy death. 5. By that one calamity I was so deeply afflicted that no good fortune could ever afterwards render me completely happy, for, exhibiting every virtue that can grace a woman, she not only caused incurable grief to her husband, but, being of so girlish an age, especially when compared with my own, her loss might be counted even as that of a daughter. 6. I consoled myself, however, with my surviving children, and she, knowing that I should be left alive (what was contrary to the order of nature, though she herself desired it), escaped the greatest of pangs in her untimely death. My younger son, who died, first of the two, when he had just passed his fifth year, took from me, as it were, the sight of one of my eyes. 7. I am not ostentatious of my misfortunes nor desirous to exaggerate the causes which I have for tears; on the contrary, I wish that I had some mode of lessening them. But how can I forbear to contemplate what beauty he showed in his countenance, what sweetness in his expressions, what nascent fire in his understanding, and what substantial tokens he gave (such as I know are scarcely credible in one so young), not only of calm but of deep thought? Such a child, even if he had been the son of a stranger, would have won my love. 8. It was the will, too, of insidious fortune, with a view to torture me the more severely, that he should show more affection for me than for anyone else, that he should prefer me to his nurses, to his grandmother who was educating him, and to all such as gain the love of children of that age. I, therefore, feel indebted to that grief which I experienced a few months before for the loss of his excellent mother, whose character is beyond all praise, for I have less reason to mourn on my own than to rejoice on her account.
9. I then rested for my only hope and pleasure on my remaining son, my little Quintilian, and he might have sufficed to console me, for he did not put forth merely flowers, like the other, but, having entered his tenth year, certain and well-formed fruits. 10. I swear by my own sufferings, by the sorrowful testimony of my feelings, by his own shade, the deity that my grief worships that I discerned in him such excellences of mind (not in receiving instruction only, for which, in a long course of experience, I have seen no child more remarkable, or in steady application, requiring, even at that age, as his teachers know, no compulsion, but in indications of honorable, pious, humane, and generous feelings), that the dread of such a thunder-stroke might have been felt even from that cause, as it has been generally observed that precocious maturity is most liable to early death, and that there reigns some malignant influence to destroy our fairest hopes, in order that our enjoyments may not be exalted beyond what is appointed to man. 11. He had also every fortuitous advantage: agreeableness and clearness of voice, sweetness of tone, and a peculiar facility in sounding every letter in either language, as if he had been born to speak that only. But these were still only promising appearances; he had greater qualities, fortitude, resolution, and strength to resist pain and fear, for with what courage, with what admiration on the part of his physicians, did he endure an illness of eight months! How did he console me at the last! How, when he was losing his senses and unable to recognize me, did he fix his thoughts in delirium only on learning! 12. O disappointment of my hopes! Did I endure, my son, to contemplate your eyes sinking in death and your breath taking its flight? Could I, after embracing your cold and lifeless body, and receiving your last breath, breathe again the common air? Justly do I deserve the affliction which I endure and the thoughts which affect me! 13. Have I, your parent, lost you, when just raised, by being adopted by a man of consular dignity, to the hopes of enjoying all the honors of your father, you, who were destined to be son-in-law to the praetor, your maternal uncle; you who, in the opinion of all, were a candidate for the highest distinctions of Attic eloquence, surviving myself only to grieve? May my sufferings at least, if not my obstinate clinging to life, make atonement to you during the rest of my existence! We in vain impute all our ills to the injustice of fortune, for no man grieves long but through his own fault. 14. But I still live, and some occupation for life must be sought, and I must put faith in the learned who have pronounced letters the only consolation in adversity.
If the present violence of my grief, however, should in time subside, so that some other thought may be admitted among so many sorrowful reflections, I shall not unreasonably crave pardon for the delay in my work, for who can wonder that my studies were interrupted, when it must rather appear wonderful that they were not relinquished entirely? 15. Should anything, then, in this part of my work, appear less finished than that which I commenced when less oppressed with affliction, let it be excused on account of the rigorousness of fortune, who, if she has not extinguished the moderate power of mind which I previously possessed, has at least succeeded in weakening it. But let me, on this very account, rouse myself to action with the greater spirit, since, though it is difficult for me to bear her oppression, it is easy for me to despise it, for she has left nothing further to inflict upon me and has brought to me, out of my calamities, a security which, though unhappy, is certainly stable. 16. It is right to look favorably on my efforts, too, for this reason, that I persevere for no interest of my own, but that all my pains are devoted to the service of others, if what I write, indeed, be of any service. My work, like the acquisitions of my fortune, I, unhappy that I am, shall not leave to those for whom I designed it.
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