Epilogue

Summary

The expression “navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse” (to navigate is necessary, living is not) is attributed to Pompey by Plutarch, who affirms that the Roman general said it when his sailors, frightened by lightning bolts, refused to embark during the war. Actually, there is something paradoxical in his statement. Traveling could be thought, conversely, as necessary to life and subordinate to it (Pompey’s ship carried wheat, a vital provision for his fellow countrymen). In any case, what this phrase distils is a combination of resignation and defiance: invoking the very act of navigating, instead of that of reaching its end, as an argument to encourage the crew to undertake the journey, that is, to make the trip an end in itself, would be a ruse to ward off uncertainty in the face of an unpredictable destiny.