Hipparchus' Treatise On Tranquillity

Men live but for a very short period.

Their lifetime would be a most beautiful journey if they pass through life with tranquillity.

They can achieve this most eminently if they accurately and scientifically know themselves – if they know that they:

• are mortal
• have a body which is corruptible and can be easily injured.

First, let us direct our attention to those things which happen to the body:

• pleurisy
• inflammation of the lungs
• phrensy
• gout
• stranguary
• dysentery
• lethargy
• epilepsy
• putrid ulcers
• ten thousand other diseases.

But the diseases which happen to the soul are much greater and more dire than these.

All the iniquitous, evil, illegal, and impious conduct in the life of man, originates from the passions of the soul.

Through preternatural immoderate desires, many:

• have become subject to unrestrained impulses
• have not refrained from the most unholy pleasures, arising from being connected with daughters or even mothers.

Many also have been induced to destroy their fathers, and their own offspring.

Many calamities such as rain, drought, violent heat and cold, pestilence and famine, are impendent.

We should not be elevated by:

• the possession of corporeal goods which may rapidly be consumed by the incursions of a small fever
• prosperous external circumstances which frequently in their own nature perish more rapidly than they accede.

All these:

• are uncertain and unstable
• exist in many and various mutations

None of them is permanent, or immutable, or stable, or indivisible.

We would live in tranquillity and with hilarity, generously bearing whatever may befall us if whatever is imparted to us is able to persist for the smallest amount of time, as much as we should expect.

However, many people imagine that all that is present is better than it actually is.

• People do not think that everything is as they are in reality.
• They think that everything can still reach the summit of excellence.
• So they burden the soul with many great, nefarious, and stupid evils, when they are suddenly deprived of [these evanescent goods].

This then gives them a most bitter and miserable life during:

• the loss of riches, or
• the death of friends or children
• in the privation of certain other things

These are conceived by them to be most honorable possessions.

They weep and lament, asserting that they alone are most unfortunate and miserable. They do not remember that these things happen and have happened to many others.

Such people are unable to:

• understand the life of:
  • currently-living people
  • people who have lived in former times
• see the great calamities and waves of evils people of the present and of the past have been involved in.

We shall pass through life with greater tranquillity if we consider that, in history:

• many have lost their property and have died at the hands of the robber or a tyrant
• many have been hated by the people that they had loved extremely
• many have been destroyed by their children, and by those that they have most dearly loved
• many have been more unhappy than we have been

The whole of life is naturally exposed to many calamities. It is not lawful that a man should think the calamities of others to be easier.

People weep and lament for not being able to recover what they have lost, or bring to life those that are dead.

• They impel the soul to greater perturbations, in consequence of its being filled with much depravity.

Therefore, we should by all possible means wipe away, wash, and purify our inveterate stains by the reasonings of philosophy.

We shall accomplish this by:

• adhering to prudence and temperance
• being satisfied with our present circumstances
• not aspiring after many things.

Men who procure for themselves a great abundance [of external goods], do not consider that the enjoyment of them terminates with the present life.

We should therefore use the goods that are present by the assistance of the beautiful and venerable things of which philosophy is the source, we shall be liberated from the insatiable desire of depraved possessions.