H ear now a very few points in favour of wakefulness against sleep1: and yet methinks I am guilty of collusion, in that I side with sleep night and day without ceasing: I desert him not, nor is he likely to desert me, such cronies are we. But my hope is that he may be huffed at my indictment of him and leave me for a little space, and give me a chance at last of burning some midnight oil. Now for subtle arguments: of which2 my first, indeed, shall be this, in regard to which, if you say that I have taken up an easier theme in accusing sleep than you who have praised it—for who, say you, cannot easily bring an indictment against sleep?—I will counter thus: what is easy to indict is hard to praise; what is hard to praise can serve no useful purpose.
But I let that pass. For the nonce, as we are staying at Baiae in this interminable labyrinth3 of Ulysses, I will take from Ulysses a few things which bear on my subject. For he surely would not have taken twenty years his fatherland to reach,4 nor have wandered so long about that pool, nor gone through all the other adventures which make up the Odyssey, had not then sweet sleep seized his weary limbs.5 Yet on the tenth day his native soil appeared6—but what did sleep do?
The evil counsel of my crew prevailed: The bag they opened, and forth rushed the winds; The fierce gale caught and swept them to the sea, Weeping with sorrow, from their native shore?7
What again took place at the island of Trinacria?8
Nor winds sweet sleep upon mine eyelids shed: Eurylochus his crew ill counsel gave.9
Afterwards, when the Sungod's oxen and fat flocks . . they slew and flayed . . and burnt the thighs and ate the flesh,10 what then Ulysses when awaked?
Wailing I cried to all the Gods on high, Who ruthless to my ruin made me sleep.11
Sleep, however, did not allow Ulysses a long recognition of his native land, from which he yearned to see even the smoke leap upwards.12
Now I leave the son of Laertes for the son of Atreus. For that with all haste, which beguiled the latter, and led to the defeat and rout of so many legions, surely sprang from sleep and a dream.
Again, when the poet would praise Agamemnon, what says he?—
Then none might see the godlike Agamemnon sleeping—13
what, when he is finding fault?—
No councillor should sleep the whole night long,14
verses indeed, which an illustrious orator15 once wrested in a strange fashion.
I now pass on to our friend Q. Ennius, who, you say, drew from sleep and a dream16 his first inspiration to write. But, marry, had he never waked from sleep, he had never told his dream.
From him let us to Hesiod the shepherd, who became a poet, you say, in slumber. But, indeed, I remember reading once upon a time at school:
When on the swift steed's track he was leading his sheep to the pasture, Hesiod once was met in the way by a bevy of Muses.17
That was met, you see what it implies? Why, that he was walking when the Muses met him.
What, again, do you think of that, of which its most eloquent advocate says what?
Sweet dreamless sleep, death's counterfeit.18
Enough of this trifling which I have indulged in more from love of you than from my own faith in it. Now after soundly abusing sleep, I am off to sleep: for I have spun all this out for you in the evening. I hope sleep will not pay me out.
143 A.D.
Fronto to his Lord Marcus Caesar.