I am so breathless that I can no longer lie flat. Even the slightest exertion leaves me panting like one of our heralds, freshly returned from Delphi or Corinth. As for my legs, they are so bloated that I can no longer make use of the footstool to clamber onto my couch, which my faithful Sychon has adapted and brought closer to the ground. I often dangle an arm over its edge, letting my fingertips linger upon the flagstones, gently exploring their scabby irregularities like I once did the prominences of your forehead, the contours of your cheek, the grooves in your neck. They feel so cold as to act like a tonic, chilling my fevers and invigorating my spirit.
Unable to go much beyond the hermai at the gate, I have become highly sensitized to the life of the house, the dance of the spiders in the corners of my room, the minute crevices into which the ladybirds go to escape from the early morning cold, the infinite variations in the hue and intensity of the sunbeams upon the floor and upon my skin—my cold and clammy skin, which in the silver daylight takes on all the appearance but none of the permanence of Pentelic marble. Then there are all the noises, the cracking of the beams in the late morning sun, the wind tumbling through the olive grove and whistling in through the lattice window, the rhythms of the slaves dicing vegetables in the kitchen or drawing water from the well in the courtyard, and, at this very moment, most distinct of all, the energetic, almost frenetic, scratching of my scribe’s reed as I reach out to you, my dear Adimantes. As the frost glistens upon the thinning foliage of the olive trees, I think back over my life and feel a gentle regret for all the little things that I never made time for, all the little things that I looked too high and too far to see, all the little things that I forgot to include in my books of philosophy. They are as much a part of life as anything else, and the only things of which we can be certain; the quiet spectators of our follies, and, once they have all been spent, all that remain of our world.
Since I last met with you, my world has fast been shrinking, first to Athens, then to the Academy, and, since the last moon, to this single couch and the space within the restricted reach of my flailing arms. But my mind remains cheerful, buoyed by the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, and also by another sort of intoxication brought about by something much more earthy, much more earthly. I thank Dionysus for the pleasure that I am still able to take in wine, and in particular from the rich elixirs that Eurymedon brought back from the steepest and sunniest slopes of Thassos, Lesbos, and Chios. The wine of Thassos of four years ago is especially fine, provided it has not been disgorged from its original wax-sealed amphora; even after mixing with three or four parts of water, it is still thick and potent, with a delicate perfume of violets, roses, and hyacinths, a pure and elegant entry, and a long, lingering finish that grips my tongue and leaves it searching for more, in my cheeks, behind my teeth, and on my lips. Unlike the many philosophers who privilege the life of pure thought to the exclusion of all pleasure, I have not scorned or shunned the gratification of the body. The greatest good has to be both perfect and sufficient, and neither the life of thought nor the life of pleasure is perfect and sufficient when compared with the union between the two. True, the element by which this mixed life is good is far more akin to mind than to body, since the pleasures and pains of the body arise from the incessant restoration and dissolution of harmony, whereas mind and wisdom are concerned with those things that are unmixed, unmoveable, and eternal. All the same, there is no need to forsake pleasure like so many philosophers do, and end up like a Heraclitus living on top of a mountain and feeding on nothing but grasses and conceit.
Pleasure and pain may seem to be opposites, but they are in fact related to each other, as if growing together out of one head or stem; when one comes, the other follows, and so I find myself almost revelling in my illness, luxuriating in all the unusual pleasures it has brought. Even my thoughts and feelings seem more vivid, more real, as though heightened and intensified by my thirst and fever. Still, I would not wish my condition upon you or any of my friends. My cough is much worse at night and often prevents me from sleeping. It is not so much the daytime tiredness that I resent, but the inability to proceed uninterrupted with my dreams, to run and play with my fancies, and, at last, in the early hours of the morning, to be visited with visions like a holy madman. The dreamer is like a Delian diver, fishing for pearls from the depths of our inner sea of knowledge; and I must have solved, or rather resolved, many more problems in my sleep than in my conscious hours.â€
Plato: Letters to my Son, has just been published.
**Book launch promotion: The ebook edition is currently free from Amazon.**
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