On the Shortness of Life The Stoic Classic

작성자Coms|작성시간26.06.14|조회수5 목록 댓글 0

(Seneca, Tom Butler-Bowdon)

ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE

The Stoic Classic

SENECA

With an Introduction by TOM BUTLER-BOWDON

This edition first published 2024

All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial intelligence technologies or similar technologies. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval‎ system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley .com/go/permissions.

The right of Tom Butler-Bowdon to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law.

Registered Offices

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley .com.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats.

Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty

While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

ISBN 9781907312540 (Cloth)

ISBN 9781907312564 (ePDF)

ISBN 9781907312557 (ePub)

INTRODUCTION

TOM BUTLER-BOWDON

The three most famous Stoic thinkers had dramatic and unexpected life trajectories.

Marcus Aurelius became the last of the ‘Five Good Emperors’ only because of a fortuitous adoption. Epictetus was born into slavery but founded an academy and became the philosopher friend of Emperor Hadrian. Seneca was born far from the centre of Rome (in Cordoba, Spain), spent a decade in Egypt, was exiled to Corsica, only to become one of Emperor Nero's key advisers.

Epictetus had no problem squaring his philosophy with his life, but Marcus Aurelius and Seneca were men of power. Political realities, the pressure of position, and the burden of wealth tested their Stoic values to an acute degree.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca's birth in 4 BCE came only 20 years or so after the start of the Roman Empire under Augustus. His very full and eventful life would straddle the reign of five emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.

It's hard to find a modern-day equivalent of Seneca: a public intellectual and literary celebrity who climbed to the centre of Roman power. The reality of being an extremely rich and powerful politician was at odds with his self-image as a philosopher with time to work on himself and think. The truth is that ‘peace of mind’ and ‘the happy life’ (two of his essays we feature in this volume) were a challenge for much of his adult existence. His writings provide a window into the ideal Seneca, one who might live beyond the turbulent nastiness of late imperial Rome. His forced suicide came after Nero suspected him (wrongly) of a plot. Historians depict it as a slow, heroic death in the company of his wife Pompeia Paulina.

Seneca was complicated, and the facts of his life make his writing even more intriguing. This introduction draws on research (see Capstone's Letters From A Stoic, 2021, Introduction by Donald Robertson) into Seneca's life and times, which may illuminate his

motivations for writing what he did, when he did. Each essay is prefaced by information about what may have been happening in his world prior to their writing. At the end of this chapter you will also find a timeline of Seneca's life.

For a long period, Seneca's letters were better known than his essays and dialogues – hence our coverage of the letters first in the Capstone series. This edition comprises three of his essays – On the Shortness of Life, On the Happy Life, and On Peace of Mind – that articulate his idea of virtue and the good life within the framework of Stoic philosophy.

ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE DE BREVITATE VITAE (C. 49 CE)

In 37 CE, Emperor Tiberius was supplanted by his adopted grandson Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, or Caligula. At this time Seneca was a rising senator and lawyer, and Caligula considered his influence in the Senate to be a threat. He planned to have Seneca executed, but Seneca's life was spared when Caligula was told that the senator would die soon anyway from consumption.

Shaken by these events, Seneca ended his legal career and focused on writing. He began to have considerable success. In his early forties he penned Of Consolation to Marcia. Marcia was a Roman noblewoman who was mourning the death of her son, and Seneca used Stoic arguments to console her.

After Caligula was assassinated in 41 CE, his uncle Claudius became emperor.

Claudius's wife, Empress Messalina, accused Seneca of having had a relationship with Julia Livilla, Caligula's sister, who was allegedly involved in a plot to kill Caligula. Caligula's other sister, Agrippina the Younger, also a friend of Seneca's, was implicated. Julia was ordered to be killed, but Seneca's fate was much milder. Exiled to Corsica, he got to keep his property in Rome and lived in some comfort on the island. He published Of Consolation to Helvia (42

CE), which attempted to comfort his mother over the fact that her son was now in exile.

In 48 CE, Emperor Claudius had his wife Messalina executed and married Agrippina the Younger, Caligula's sister and Seneca's friend. Agrippina had Claudius recall Seneca from exile. She hired Seneca, by now a literary celebrity, to tutor her 12-year-old son, the future Emperor Nero. Because he was older than Claudius's natural son Britannicus, Nero became heir to the throne.

On the Shortness of Life was written sometime between 49 CE and 55 CE, when Seneca was back in Rome. While exiled on Corsica he had had plenty of time to reflect on the brevity of life, a notion very much part of Stoic philosophy. Seneca's own brush with death, his exile, and the various assassinations and murders happening in Rome made ‘the shortness of life’ a harsh reality, not just an abstract notion. Yet he does not refer to any of these events, rather to more prosaic obstacles to an appreciation of the shortness of life, such as busyness and luxury.

In the very first chapter, Seneca points out that the amount of time we have is not the issue:

Life is long enough to carry out the most important projects – we have ample time, if we arrange it properly. But when it all runs to waste through luxury and carelessness, when it is not devoted to any good purpose, then at the last we are forced to feel that it is all over, although we never noticed how it glided away. So it is: we do not receive a short life, but we make it a short one, and we are not poor in days, but wasteful of them. (On the Shortness of Life, 1)

He then lists all the ways a person can waste their life, chasing after things with no real meaning. These include: greed (‘which nothing can satisfy’); working too hard on things that are not worth it; drunkenness; laziness; ambition, which can make people sell their souls; and love of commercial gain, which sees people constantly on the move seeking clients. Others, Seneca says, are ‘plagued by the love of war’, making their own or others' lives cheap. Some sacrifice their lives ‘in the service of great men’ (thus neglecting their own), while others waste their time litigating to get or regain some fortune.

The result of such wasted efforts is that, as the Oracle said, ‘We live only a small part of our lives.’

The quest for recognition, excitement, and money is not a good use of our lives. A life lost in busyness, in providing services for others, means never giving enough time to ourselves – to that quiet voice that yearns for reflection upon our very existence. If our lives become merely one event leading to another, we are little more than animals responding to stimuli. Seneca wished for this life of reflection. He writes that the day a person decides to become a ‘philosopher’, meaning committed to reflection and truth rather than work, money, duties, and business, that day is a liberation. One starts to belong to one's self.

Many lust after success and power, but when they finally achieve some high office, Seneca notes, all they can think about is when they can leave it and free themselves from the pressure and difficulties of the job. Some daydream of their next vacation, fantasizing about a time when they will not be so busy, to live like normal people. A modern example is provided by Barack Obama's autobiography A Promised Land, in which he revealed that, at the height of his presidency, he had recurring dreams of sitting on a park bench doing nothing. He no longer owned his own time.

So how does a person act who understands the value of time? It is not so much what they do, Seneca says, but what they have resolved to escape from, what they have said ‘No’ to. It takes a superior kind of person to be this intentional and protective of their time:

You cannot find anyone who wants to give away their money; yet among how many people does everyone distribute their life? (On the Shortness of Life, 3)

The lament of the rich, lost in their legal troubles and business problems, is ‘I am not allowed to live my own life.’ Why are they not allowed? Because they have let others and their issues take up their time, when in fact it is in their power to construct a simpler life.

Seneca warns:

When … you see a man often wear the purple robes of office, and hear his name often repeated in the forum, do not envy him; he gains these things by losing so much of his life. Men throw away all their years in order to have one year named after them as consul. (On the Shortness of Life, 20)

No one values time itself, only things and services. Yet time is the one thing you can never get back or buy:

Why are you careless and slow while time is flying so fast, and why do you spread out before yourself a vision of long months and years, as many as your greediness requires? (On the Shortness of Life, 9)

Seneca's conclusion is that it's a mistake to suppose ‘that anyone has lived long, just because they have wrinkles or grey hairs. They have not lived long, but merely existed for a certain duration’.

There are people ‘whose minds are still in their childhood when old age comes upon them’, and find themselves without the ability to deal with it. They stumble into old age, as if it is a shock:

Just as conversation, or reading, or deep thought deceives travellers, and they find themselves at their journey's end before they knew that it was drawing near, so in this fast and never-ceasing journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether we are asleep or awake, busy people never notice that they are moving till they are at the end of it. (On the Shortness of Life, 9)

Yet Seneca also argues that a reflective, meaningful life must include reflection on the years we have already consumed. The past is, after all, ‘a holy and consecrated part of our time’. It has gone, yet it is still ours in the form of memory. Seneca pities the busy person who refuses to do this, even though it may help them to make more sense of their lives. They can actually give themselves more time, because they have the present and the past at their disposal.

Seneca takes aim at people who take their leisure so seriously it becomes their main effort to achieve meaning:

They waste their lives in the minutiae of luxury and creating a perfect life of comfort. They work at it like it is a job. Yet they don't have real leisure, since there is zero self-reflection:

O, how does excessive prosperity blind our intellects! (On the Shortness of Life, 13)

The only people who have real leisure, Seneca writes, ‘are those who devote themselves to philosophy. They alone really live. For they do not merely enjoy their own lifetime, but they annex every century to their own; all the years which have passed before them belong to them’ (On the Shortness of Life, 14).

Fewer people were more ambitious than Seneca, who vaulted himself (with help from his ambitious father) to the centre of Roman life. On the Shortness of Life can therefore be read as the fantasy of a busy and important person who longed to live a quiet scholarly life: one of a philosopher. These lines express that yearning:

Since Nature allows us to commune with every age, why do we not abstract ourselves from our own petty fleeting span of time, and give ourselves up with our whole mind to what is vast, what is eternal? (On the Shortness of Life, 14)

That Seneca never achieved this life, or had it only sporadically, in no way detracts from the value of his insights into time and existence.

Busyness, ambition, and leisure remain the thieves of time as much today as in the first century CE.

ON THE HAPPY LIFE

DE VITA BEATA (C. 58 CE)

By the time this essay was written, Seneca had been Emperor Nero's adviser for four years, along with praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus. His personal wealth had increased dramatically thanks to

Nero's direct largesse and just by being associated with an emperor. His rise also benefited his larger family. Seneca's older brother Gallio (to whom the essay is dedicated) was made a proconsul for a time, and his younger brother Mela a procurator.

Seneca himself was made a consul in 56 CE, the highest position in the Senate and one of the top jobs in the Roman Empire. The role made him part of the Roman hereditary patrician class, and so his membership of the establishment was complete.

The previous year, 55 CE, Nero's stepbrother Britannicus (Claudius's biological son), who had a claim to the throne, was poisoned to death just before his fourteenth birthday. It was almost certainly Nero's doing, and in the public outrage that followed Seneca wrote On Clemency. In this essay he urges Nero to be more moderate, yet also maintains Nero's innocence of the murder of Britannicus.

Seneca, along with Burrus, became a restraining influence on the unhinged Nero. At the same time he became a ‘fixer’ of imperial mistakes, and clearly believed that the stability of the Roman Empire was more important than a single life (Britannicus's).

In 58 CE, Seneca's great wealth led Roman senator Publius Suillius to bring charges of financial corruption against him. By this time Seneca had amassed a spread of luxurious houses and farms, was a money lender at high interest to the aristocracy, and was said to be worth 300 million sestertii (a billionaire in today's terms). Yet Suillius himself, who had earlier been indicted for judicial corruption by Seneca, was found guilty and exiled. This was an apparent vindication for Seneca, but the year 58 CE arguably marked a peak in his political career. From this point things got more difficult for him.

Around this time he wrote On the Happy Life. Many parts of it are a defence of wealth, which historians believe was a response to the accusations of Publius Suillius. Seneca also wanted to burnish his reputation as a thinker on moral issues.

What is, for Seneca, the happy life? Essentially one based on reason. If one thinks and acts rationally, one is in accord with Nature. Only those in accord with Nature can be genuinely happy and at peace:

… true wisdom consists in not departing from Nature and in moulding our conduct according to her laws and model. A happy life, therefore, is one which is in accordance with its own nature. (On the Happy Life, 3)

Living happily is inseparable from living honourably.

When lost in some wilderness, the native people can always point you in the right direction. But when it comes to moral life, Seneca says, ‘the most walked and frequented tracks are those which lead us most astray’. Many come to the realization that all the things they are known for and have strived after are a bit shallow. They want to develop internal qualities ‘that they can use and feel’, rather than spend their time in pursuit of things they can merely display. ‘Let us search for some blessing which does not merely look fine’, Seneca writes, ‘but is sound and good throughout, and most beautiful in the parts which are least seen’. Goodness or virtue is immortal; it ‘knows no ending, and is not subject to either exhaustion or regret’. In contrast, Seneca says:

Pleasure dies at the very moment when it charms us most. It has no great vision, and therefore it soon cloys and wearies us, and fades away as soon as its first impulse is over … we cannot depend upon anything whose nature is to change. (On the Happy Life, 7)

What is our ‘highest good’? It is always about our state of mind, not circumstances. A mind that is ‘gentle in its dealings, showing great courtesy and consideration for those with whom it is brought into contact’. A mind ‘free, upright, undaunted, and steadfast, beyond the influence of fear or desire, which thinks nothing good except honour, and nothing bad except shame, and regards everything else as a mass of mean details which can neither add anything to nor take anything away from the happiness of life’ (On the Happy Life, 4). A person achieves a constant state of cheerfulness when they stop looking to obtain pleasures and avoid pains, but rather see them both as one constant flow of life.

All that matters, for Seneca, is knowing truth and living in accord with it. This automatically leads to appropriate action:

The happy person … is one who can make a right judgment in all things. He is happy who in his present circumstances, whatever they may be, is satisfied and on friendly terms with the conditions of his life. That person is happy whose reason guides and informs all their behaviour. (On the Happy Life, 6)

Compare this state of being to a person who is wracked with regret over decisions made without reflection, or in response to ambition, greed, desire, or fear. The highest good is ‘singleness of mind’, Seneca says, ‘Because where agreement and unity are, there must be virtue; it is the vices that are at war one with another’ (On the Happy Life, 8).

Seneca responds to a rhetorical accusation that he ‘only pursues virtue because it gives him pleasure’. Sure, he replies, virtue generates pleasure and happiness as a by-product, but it is not the reason he seeks it. Virtue has enough of its own rewards: ‘strength of mind, wisdom, magnanimity, sound judgment, freedom, harmony, beauty’. You seek something because it is the highest and greatest in its own right, not because it can ‘deliver’ something to you.

Seneca raises the straw man of a competing philosophical school of his time, Epicureanism, and its reputation for pleasure-seeking as a kind of virtue in itself. This is a rather simplistic view of Epicureanism, and Seneca notes that Epicurus actually mentions pleasure little in his writings. When he does, Epicurus says it must always be in accord with Nature and aligned with virtue. Those who take Epicurean philosophy as a licence for mere pleasure-seeking, Seneca says, are deluding themselves.

‘Only a mind incapable of great things’, Seneca says in chapter 13, ‘would hand over virtue, the highest of all qualities, to be a handmaid of pleasure’. The nature of pleasure-seeking is its rapaciousness: the more we get, the more we seem to need. A person cannot be a protector of their country, of their family, of their friends, if their mind is on the next pleasure.

From chapter 17 onwards, Seneca responds to his critics that he is too rich and corrupted to call himself a philosopher or have any claim to virtue. ‘You talk one way, and live another’ is the accusation.

His first response is a bit precious. He points out that hatred has always been extended ‘to the best of people’, including Plato, Epicurus, and Zeno. Such people ‘declared how they wanted to live, not how they did live’. Seneca's writings are not a ledger of his virtues and vices. He admits that he does not live up to his Stoic ideals; he tries to keep up with Virtue, ‘albeit a long way behind her and with halting gait’. And even though he fails, he ‘Fails in a high enterprise’ (quoting Ovid).

In chapters 21 and 22 Seneca addresses his own wealth explicitly, framing it as a ‘windfall’ (as if he had not sought it out). He even invokes a Stoic principle that it is not wrong to have a ‘preference’ for one thing or another, if we are not too attached to it. He extends the principle to wealth, saying that it is preferable to be rich rather than poor:

He does not love riches, but he prefers to have them. He does not receive them into his spirit, but only into his house. Nor does he give away what he already possesses, but keeps it, and hopes that he can use it on a larger scale for the good. (On the Happy Life, 21)

The opposing side of this argument is that Socrates (whose impact on history and philosophy is immeasurable) was a kind of wandering tramp. However, Seneca's argument is that, all things being equal, wealth is a plus:

He qualifies this by saying that, ‘If my riches leave me, they will carry away with them nothing except themselves.’ Riches had come to him as part of his destiny in life. But he knows he can't take anything with him to his grave, and indeed if in life he lost all his money he would be fine with that. He then demands of his critics: would you remain happy and composed if you lost everything you owned?

Was his wealth honourable? It is questionable, but perhaps the overall impact of the fortune matters more. John D. Rockefeller was accused of many corrupt practices, but his foundation (built on oil revenues) made a large contribution to ending infectious diseases and giving many U.S. citizens the chance of a college education.

Seneca did nothing like this as far as we know, but did put on huge banquets. In chapter 24 he lays out his approach to giving. Rather than simply rewarding friends, he took a systematic approach and recorded every financial gift he made. He was very aware of the effect of his generosity:

Consider what opportunities to benefit the house of a rich man affords! But why give it only to Roman citizens? Nature requires me do good to all humankind, whether slaves or freemen, free-born or emancipated … Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity to benefit them. (On the Happy Life, 24)

Seneca admits that wealth should never be seen as a virtue, because bad people can be wealthy. Wealth on its own is not ‘good’ nor ‘bad’. However, it is something that may be preferred, as it can make life easier and can allow one to be generous. It can be used to display or expand virtue. On the whole, Seneca concludes, money can be a force for good. It can increase happiness, but only if aligned with virtue.

‘Nero and Seneca’, 1904 by Eduardo Barrón. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Eduardo Barrón González / Wikimedia Commons / CC0 1.0

ON PEACE OF MIND

DE TRANQUILLITATE ANIMI (C. 50–62 CE)

We don't know exactly when On Peace of Mind was composed, but scholars think the most likely time was around 60–62 CE. It seems to be Seneca's reflection on a career that was rapidly falling apart as the result of the climate of fear and retribution around Emperor Nero.

By the year 59 CE Nero, now in his twenties, had begun to assert his power. He had attempted to have his mother Agrippina (a controlling influence in the imperial court) killed. She survived, only for the military to complete the assassination. Seneca and Burrus, as Rome's two highest ranking officials, were forced to defend Nero and to laud his qualities at public events.

Yet within a couple of years Burrus had been killed, possibly poisoned by Nero. Seneca sought to extricate himself from Nero's administration, offering to give up his wealth in the process. Fearing assassination, he began to spend most of his time outside Rome; he devoted more energy to writing.

Among his essays, On Peace of Mind is the only one that is set down as a genuine dialogue – as opposed to being a mere essay in Socratic format. The dialogue is with Annaeus Serenus, a younger friend of Seneca's who was a prefect in Nero's personal guard and who became the head of the Roman fire brigade. Seneca dedicated two other essays to Serenus: On the Firmness of the Wise and On Leisure. It seems that Serenus, having leaned towards Epicurean philosophy, was gently guided towards Stoicism by Seneca.

Serenus had become disillusioned with the quest for power and wealth in Rome, and with the various political conspiracies swirling around. He yearned for a simpler life devoted to philosophy. Seneca's responses in On Peace of Mind are an attempt to comfort Serenus, but the essay also became a means for Seneca to examine his own life and its alignment with Stoic virtue. Has his existence been a moral house of cards, or can he still say he has been a good Stoic?

Serenus begins with a confession of his feelings and an estimate of where he has got to in life. He claims to love simplicity and thrift in terms of his food, his lodgings, and his lifestyle. Though he is surrounded by luxury, he despises it. At heart, he is a simple Stoic preferring virtue and philosophy to amassing prestige and power. He admits that it is a Stoic principle to serve in public life if one is able, but he has done this only out of service; he is now keen to step away from it and devote himself to self-development and philosophy.

Serenus acknowledges blind spots when it comes to his character. He has too easily believed himself to be capable and good: ‘we take a rosy view of our own private affairs, and that bias always obscures

our judgment’. He talks of a mental ‘seasickness’. Living in the Roman court, he has tried to stick to his principles and let Virtue be his guide, but he remarks, ‘Long acquaintance with both good and bad people leads one to esteem them all alike.’ Stoics should be clear on what is good and what is evil, but a person in public life has, for the sake of Rome's survival and stability, to do things that a philosopher in an academy would not have to. Serenus wonders if he is able to come out of all of this with some semblance of self-respect and virtue. Seneca replies:

What you desire – to be undisturbed – is a great thing, indeed the greatest thing of all, and one which raises a person almost to the level of a god. The Greeks call this calm steadiness of mind euthymia … I call it peace of mind … What we are talking about is how the mind can always pursue a steady, unruffled course, may be pleased with itself, and look with pleasure upon its surroundings, and experience no interruption of this joy, but abide in a peaceful condition without being ever either elated or depressed. (On Peace of Mind, 2)

Do the work that suits your personality and unique ‘genius’, Seneca counsels, whether that is active service or ‘tranquil speculation and contemplation’. Why? Because ‘No good is done by forcing one's mind to engage in uncongenial work: it is vain to struggle against Nature.’

The philosophical life does not mean becoming a hermit, which is self-indulgent. It is about giving, but in a different way than giving via public service and work. Seneca paraphrases the Stoic philosopher Athenodorus, who called on people to abandon a materialistic existence and become full-time students of philosophy. Seneca believes this to be too extreme. He tells Serenus that the transition from regular working life to philosopher should be a slow and gradual one. One should stay serving the public as long as possible. Serenus might feel miserable, but Seneca asks him to ‘Check that the whole idea that you are thwarted doesn't arise from your own thinking.’ If he can retain Stoic principles even while existing in the hurly-burly of the ‘real’ Roman world, that would be a great accomplishment.

In chapters 6 and 7, Seneca provides general career and life advice, while in chapters 8 and 9 he addresses property and money. Keep your life simple, he tells Serenus: small house, simple clothes, basic food. He rails against books as household ornaments, and the very idea of book collectors and great libraries. Are these books actually ever read? He advises to live without slaves entirely if possible, lest he become a ‘slave of slaves’. The greater the wealth, the greater the burden and responsibilities.

There are several sections in the essay on the Stoic theme of premeditation of death and danger, and the idea of ‘dying well’. A person is noble who is unafraid of death. The public likes gladiators who are ‘openly reckless with their lives’, and Fortune tends to favour them. In contrast, people who do anything to avoid death attract our contempt. Why? It is because, Seneca says, we respect those who fully accept whatever fate or destiny has laid out for them. They are not struggling against the universe. People are shocked when ‘bad’ things happen to them. Yet it's possible to keep one's calm and repose even in the face of exile, bankruptcy, and death if these are things we pre-imagined might happen.

What office is there whose purple robe, augur's staff, and patrician reins have not as their accompaniment rags and banishment, the brand of infamy, a thousand disgraces, and utter reprobation?

What kingdom is there for which ruin, trampling under foot, a tyrant and a butcher are not ready at hand? (On Peace of Mind, 11)

Seneca is almost talking about himself here, and indeed most people in the public eye in Rome experienced sudden elevations or falls depending on the volatile politics. He says to Serenus:

Know then that every station of life is transitory, and that what has ever happened to anybody may happen to you also. (On Peace of Mind, 11)

In chapter 16, Seneca specifically addresses the topic mentioned above of ‘when good people come to bad ends'. People who bravely faced death, such as Socrates and Cato, had peace of mind while living because they were not afraid of death. They knew the body was a temporary casing; the integrity of their souls was everything.

Seneca had seen great power and wealth, yet in the end found them dissatisfying. The only thing that mattered was virtue: ‘Because virtue, even in an apparently obscure place, cannot be hidden, but gives signs of its presence.’

It is better to laugh at the human race rather than weep for it, Seneca says, because the one who laughs can put things into context and hope for improvement. They can act rather than introspect.

The final chapter, 17, ends on a lighter note. Seneca advises Serenus to take time off from work, to find amusements that he likes (whether it's spending time outdoors, going to festivals, riding horses, or socializing). He even says it's fine to get drunk sometimes, both to be liberated from his own mind and for creative thinking. In short, if he is to have a stable and productive outlook, he should tend to his self-care and relaxation as much as he does his work. Peace of mind is something to be worked at continuously, at least as much as the health of the body. The body will eventually die, but a mind that has achieved peace is a great moral achievement.

Incidentally, Serenus was not wrong to have wanted to leave behind the machinations of the Roman court. Pliny the Elder records that he died by poisoned mushrooms, probably in the year 62 or 63 CE. Seneca was said to have been grief stricken.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Death of Seneca, c. 1615. Alte Pinakothek Museum, Berlin.

Peter Paul Rubens / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

SENECA TIMELINE

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger is born around 4 BCE, in Corduba, in the Roman province of Hispania – modern-day Córdoba in Spain.

The family is well off but not rich. They are Roman-Spanish knights of the eques (i.e., equestrian) class.

Seneca's father (Seneca the Elder) is a historian and rhetorician. His mother, Helvia, is well educated.

He is the middle of three brothers. The elder, Gallio, will become proconsul of the Roman province of Achaea (modern-day Greece) in 52 CE, under Emperor Claudius. The younger, Mela, will become a procurator and the father of the poet Lucan.

While still a boy, Seneca's father brings him to Rome for a classical education in philosophy and rhetoric. The Stoic Attalus becomes his main teacher.

In his mid-twenties (around 20 CE) he acquires a serious lung condition and moves to Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt. His uncle Gaius Galerius is a prefect there.

He spends a decade in convalescence in Egypt, and becomes a student of the School of the Sextii, which blends Stoicism and Pythagoreanism.

He returns to Rome in 31 CE, in the reign of Tiberius. Attains office of questor, which means he can sit in the Senate.

In 37 CE Tiberius dies, supplanted by his adopted grandson Caligula.

Seneca is a rising lawyer, and Caligula considers his influence in the Senate to be a threat. He is saved from execution because Caligula is told that Seneca will soon die of consumption.

Seneca ends his legal career and focuses on writing, which brings him considerable success. In his early forties he pens Of Consolation to Marcia. Marcia was a Roman noblewoman who was mourning the death of her son, and Seneca uses Stoic arguments to console her.

In 41 CE Caligula is assassinated. His uncle Claudius becomes emperor.

In 42 CE Seneca is exiled to Corsica. Claudius's wife, Empress Messalina, accuses him of having had a relationship with Julia Livilla, Caligula's sister, who is allegedly involved in a plot to kill her brother. Caligula's other sister, Agrippina the Younger, also a friend of Seneca, is implicated.

Julia is ordered to be killed, but Seneca is exiled. He gets to keep his property in Rome, and lives in reasonable conditions on Corsica.

In 42 CE he publishes Of Consolation to Helvia, which comforts his mother now that her son lives in exile. This is followed by Of Consolation to Polybius (44 CE). Polybius was Claudius's secretary and had recently lost his brother. Seneca used the letter to praise Claudius and beg for a pardon to return to Rome.

In 48 CE Emperor Claudius has his wife Messalina executed. He marries Agrippina the Younger, Caligula's sister and Seneca's friend. Agrippina has Claudius recall Seneca from exile.

Agrippina hires Seneca, by now a literary celebrity, to tutor her 12-year-old son, the future Emperor Nero. Because he is older than Claudius's natural son Britannicus, Nero becomes heir to the throne.

In 54 CE Emperor Claudius dies. Agrippina is seen to be behind his poisoning. Her 16-year-old son Nero becomes emperor, and she makes Seneca a praetor. Seneca becomes Nero's political advisor and speechwriter, the power behind the throne alongside Burrus, a praetorian prefect.

Seneca writes The Pumpkinification of the (Divine) Claudius, which ridicules the former emperor and hails Nero. His personal wealth increases dramatically. His older brother Gallio becomes a suffect consul in Rome, and his younger brother Mela a procurator.

In 55 CE Nero's stepbrother Britannicus (Claudius's biological son), who has a claim to the throne, is murdered aged 13. Locusta, a poisoner, works for Nero. Seneca writes On

Clemency, urging Nero to be more moderate and forgiving, but maintaining Nero's innocence of the murder of Britannicus.

In 56 CE Seneca becomes consul, one of the highest positions in the Roman Empire after the emperor. As consul he is further enriched.

In 58 CE Roman senator Publius Suillius charges Seneca with financial corruption, compelling him to defend his wealth.

In 59 CE Nero, now in his twenties, begins to assert his power and has his mother Agrippina killed. Seneca and Burrus are forced to defend Nero, and to laud his qualities at public events.

In 62 CE Burrus dies, possibly poisoned by Nero. Seneca seeks to extricate himself from Nero's administration. Fearing assassination he spends most of his time outside Rome. Writes On Benefits, Moral Letters, On Providence, and Natural Questions, and in public continues to praise Nero.

In 63 CE Serenus (Seneca's friend and the dedicatee of On Peace of Mind) is murdered.

In 65 CE Nero learns of a plot led by senator Gaius Calpurnius Piso to have him removed from power. Nero has the plotters, many of whom are Stoics, exiled or executed. Seneca is probably not one of the conspirators, but Nero orders him to commit suicide. He does so by slitting his veins in a bath. Historians depict it as a slow, heroic death in the company of his wife Pompeia Paulina, who attempts to die alongside him.

In 68 CE, after military failures and increasingly erratic behaviour, the Senate pronounces Nero a public enemy. He lacks the courage to commit suicide, so asks his secretary, Epaphroditus, to kill him.

SOURCES

Letters From A Stoic: The Ancient Classic, Capstone/Wiley: 2021. Introduction by Donald Robertson.

Seneca: Dialogues and Essays, Oxford University Press: 2008. Translated by John Davie. Introduction and Notes by Tobias

Reinhardt.

Seneca – Minor Dialogues, Together with the Dialogue On Clemency, George Bell: 1899. Translated by Aubrey Stewart. A Project Gutenberg eBook, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64576/64576-h/64576-h.htm#fn-7.1

NOTE ON THE TEXT

The essays in this Capstone edition are sourced from a classic Aubrey Stewart translation of Seneca's essays and dialogues from 1889.

Stewart (1844–1918) was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a graduate in Classics. He was also a translator of Plutarch's Lives.

This edition modernizes Stewart's text for the modern reader, replacing some archaic words and phrases and improving readability while leaving Seneca's original meaning intact.

ABOUT TOM BUTLER-BOWDON

Tom Butler-Bowdon is the author of the bestselling 50 Classics series, which brings the ideas of important books to a wider audience. Titles include 50 Philosophy Classics, 50 Psychology Classics, 50 Politics Classics, 50 Self-Help Classics, and 50 Economics Classics. As series editor for the Capstone Classics series, Tom has written introductions to Plato's The Republic, Machiavelli's The Prince, Epictetus’s Discourses, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, and Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. Tom is a graduate of the London School of Economics and the University of Sydney.

www.Butler-Bowdon.com

CHAPTER ONE

ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE

Most of humanity, my Paulinus*, complains of the unkindness of Nature, because we are born only for a short space of time, and this allotted period of life runs away so swiftly, so hurriedly, that with but few exceptions a person's life comes to an end just as they are preparing to enjoy it.

It's not just the common or ignorant person who mourns this universal misfortune. It has brought complaints even from the greatest of people. Hence comes that well-known saying of physicians, that art is long but life is short. Hence arose that quarrel, so unbefitting a sage, which Aristotle picked with Nature, because she had allowed some animals to live for ten or fifteen centuries, while humans, although capable of many and great exploits, had the term of their existence cut so much shorter.* We do not have a very short time assigned to us, but we lose a great deal of it. Life is long enough to carry out the most important projects – we have ample time, if we arrange it properly. But when it all runs to waste through luxury and carelessness, when it is not devoted to any good purpose, then at the last we are forced to feel that it is all over, although we never noticed how it glided away. So it is: we do not receive a short life, but we make it a short one, and we are not poor in days, but wasteful of them. When great and kinglike riches fall into the hands of a bad master, they are dispersed straightaway. But even a moderate fortune, when given to a wise guardian, increases by use.

In the same way, life has great opportunities for one who knows how to use it to the best advantage.

Why do we complain about Nature? She has been kind to us. Life is long enough, if you know how to use it. One man is possessed by a

greed which nothing can satisfy, another by a laborious diligence in doing what is totally useless. Another is sodden by wine, another is numbed by sloth. One man is exhausted by an ambition which makes him court the goodwill of others, while another, through his eagerness as a merchant, is led to visit every land and every sea by the hope of gain. Some are plagued by the love of war, and are always either endangering other men's lives or in trembling for their own.

Some wear away their lives in that voluntary slavery, the unrequited service of great men. Many are occupied either in laying claim to other men's fortune or in complaining of their own. A great number have no clear purpose, and are tossed from one new scheme to another by a rambling, inconsistent, dissatisfied, fickle habit of mind. Some care for no object enough to try to attain it, but lie lazily yawning until their fate comes upon them. So I cannot doubt the truth of that verse which the greatest of poets expressed in the style of an oracle:

We live only a small part of our lives.

We experience time, but not life. Vices press upon us and surround us on every side, and do not permit us to regain our feet, or to raise our eyes and gaze upon truth. Instead they keep us prostrate and chained to low desires. People who are in this condition are never allowed to come to themselves. If ever by chance they obtain any rest, they roll to and fro like the deep sea, which heaves and tosses after a gale, and they never have any respite from their lusts. Do you think I'm speaking only of the notorious or bad people? No, look at wealthy people: they are choked by their own good things. Riches prove a heavy burden for them. How many men's eloquence and continual desire to display their own cleverness has cost them their lives? How many are sallow with constant sensual indulgence? How many have no freedom left them by the tribe of clients that surges around them? Look through all these, from the lowest to the highest: this man calls his friends to support him, this one is present in court, this one is the defendant, this one pleads for him, this one is on the jury. But no one lays claim to his own self; everyone wastes his time over someone else.

Look closely at those men whose names are in everyone's mouth: you will find that they are all like. A is devoted to B, and B to C: no one

belongs to himself. Moreover, some men are full of most irrational anger: they complain of the insolence of their chiefs, because they have not granted them an audience when they wished for it – as if a man had any right to complain of being so haughtily shut out by another, when he never seems to have the time to give his own conscience a hearing. This chief of yours, whoever he is, though he may look at you in an offensive manner, still will someday look at you, open his ears to your words, and give you a seat by his side. But you never try to look upon yourself, to listen to your own voice. You should not claim anything from another, because when you were seeking something from them it wasn't that you wished for their company, only that you could not stand your own.

If all the brightest intellects of all time employed themselves on this one subject, they could never sufficiently express their wonder at this blindness of people's minds. People will not allow anyone to steal their property, and on the most trifling dispute about the measuring of boundaries they will take up stones and cudgels. Yet they allow others to encroach upon their lives, indeed help others to take possession of them. You cannot find anyone who wants to give away their money; yet among how many people does everyone distribute their life? People covetously guard their property from waste, but when it comes to waste of time, they are prodigal in the one thing where they should be sparing.

Let's take an old person, and say to him, ‘We see you have arrived at the extreme limits of human life; you are in your hundredth year, or even older. Come now, and take stock of your whole life in black and white. Tell us how much of your time has been spent on your creditors, how much on your mistress, how much on your king, how much on your clients, how much in quarrelling with your wife, how much in keeping your slaves in order, how much in running up and down the city on business. Add to this the diseases which we bring upon us with our own hands, and the time we have let slip by without making any use of it; you will see that you have not lived as many years as you count. Look back in your memory and see how often you have been consistent in your projects, how many days passed as you

intended them to do, how often you kept the same face and didn't let your spirit quail, how much work you have done in so long a time, how many people have without your knowledge stolen parts of your life from you, how much you have lost, how large a part has been taken up by useless grief, foolish gladness, greedy desire, or polite conversation, how little of yourself is left to you. You will then see that you have died before your time.’

Why does this happen? People live as though they thought they would live forever. You never remember your human frailty. You never notice how much of your time has already gone by. You spend it as though you had an abundant and overflowing store of it, though all the while that day which you devote to some man or to some thing is perhaps your last. You fear everything, like the mortals you are, and yet you desire everything as if you were immortals. You will hear many say, ‘After my fiftieth year I will give myself up to leisure; my sixtieth shall be my last year of public office.’ And what guarantee have you that your life will last any longer? Who will let all this go on just as you have arranged it? Are you not ashamed to reserve only the end of your life for yourself, and appoint for the enjoyment of your own right mind only that time which you cannot devote to any business? How late it is to begin life just when we have to be leaving it! What a foolish forgetfulness of our mortality, to put off carefully considered plans until our fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to decide that our lives will begin at a point which few of us ever reach.

You will hear the most powerful and highly placed people remarking that they long for leisure, praise it, and prefer it to all the blessings which they enjoy. Sometimes they would even descend from their lofty position, if it could be safely done. For Fortune collapses by its own weight, without any shock or interference from without. The late Emperor Augustus, upon whom the gods bestowed more blessings than anyone else, never stopped praying for rest and exemption from the troubles of empire. He used to enliven his labours with this sweet, though unreal consolation, that he would someday live for himself alone. In a letter which he addressed to the Senate, after promising that his future time of rest would not be devoid of dignity

or discredit to his former glories, he said: ‘Such things are more honourable to do than to promise; but my eagerness for that time, so earnestly longed for, has led me to derive a certain pleasure just from speaking about it, even though the reality is still far distant.’ He thought leisure so important, that though he could not actually enjoy it, he did so by anticipation and by thinking about it. He, who saw everything depending upon himself alone, who swayed the fortunes of people and of nations, thought that his happiest day would be that on which he laid aside his greatness. He knew by experience how much labour was involved in that glory that shone through all lands, and how much secret anxiety was concealed within it. He had been forced to assert his rights by war, first with his countrymen, next with his colleagues, and lastly with his own relations, and had shed blood both by sea and by land. After marching his troops under arms through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and almost all the countries of the world, when they were weary with slaughtering Romans he had directed them against a foreign foe. While he was pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the enemies whom he found in the midst of the Roman empire, while he was extending its boundaries beyond the Rhine, the Euphrates, and the Danube, at Rome itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius*, and others were being sharpened to slay him. Scarcely had he escaped from their plot, when his already failing age was terrified by his daughter and all the noble youths who were pledged to her cause by adultery with her by way of oath of fidelity. Then there was Paulus's and Antonius's mistress, a second time to be feared by Rome. And when he had cut out these ulcers from his very limbs, others grew in their place. The empire, like a body overloaded with blood, was always breaking out somewhere. For this reason he longed for leisure. All his labours were based upon hopes and thoughts of leisure. This was the wish of one person who could accomplish the wishes of all other people.

While tossed here and there by Catiline and Clodius, Pompey and Crassus†, by some open enemies and some doubtful friends, while he struggled with the struggling republic and kept it from going to ruin, when at last he was banished, being neither able to keep silence in

prosperity nor to endure adversity with patience, how often must Marcus Cicero have cursed that consulship of his which he never ceased to praise, and which he nevertheless deserved? What piteous expressions he uses in a letter to Atticus when Pompey the Elder had been defeated, and his son was recruiting his shattered forces in Spain. ‘Do you ask’, he writes, ‘what I am doing here? I am living in my Tusculan villa almost as a prisoner’. He goes on to lament his former life, complains of the present, and despairs of the future.

Cicero calls himself ‘half a prisoner’, but by God, this wise man never should have come under so lowly a title. He never would be half a prisoner, but always enjoy complete and entire liberty, being free, in his own power, and greater than all others. Because what can be greater than the man who is greater than Fortune?

When Livius Drusus, a vigorous and energetic man, brought forward bills for new laws and radical measures of the Gracchus pattern*, he represented a vast mob of all the peoples of Italy. But seeing no way to solve the question, since he was not allowed to deal with it as he wished, and yet was not free to give it up having started it, complained bitterly of his life, which had been one of unrest from the very cradle, and said, we are told, that ‘he was the only person who had never had any holidays even when he was a boy’. Indeed, while he was still underage and wearing the praetexta, he had the courage to plead the cause of accused persons in court, and to make use of his influence so powerfully that it is well known that in some causes his exertions gained a verdict. Where would such precocious ambition stop? You may be sure that one who showed such boldness as a child would end by becoming a great pest both in public and in private life. But it was too late for him to complain that he had had no holidays, when from his boyhood he had been a firebrand and a nuisance in the courts. It is an open question whether he committed suicide. He fell by a sudden wound in the groin, and some doubted whether his death was caused by his own hand, though none disputed its having happened at the right time. It would be superfluous to mention more who, while others thought them the happiest of men, expressed their real feelings, and loathed all that they had done for all the years of their lives. Yet in making these complaints it did not bring any

change either for themselves or others. For after these words have escaped them their feelings revert to their accustomed frame. My God, the life of you great men, even though it should last for more than a thousand years, is still a very short one. Those vices of yours would swallow up any extent of time. No wonder if this our ordinary span, which, though Nature hurries on, can be enlarged by common sense, soon slips away from you. You do not lay hold of it or hold it back, and try to delay the swiftest of all things; instead you let it pass as though it were a useless thing and you could easily replace it.

But right now I'm thinking of those who devote their time to nothing but drinking and debauchery. None are more shameful in the use of their time. Others, although the glory which they pursue is vain, still deserve some credit for their pursuit of it. You may tell me of misers, of angry men, of men who hate and who even wage war without a cause – they are just men being men. But the sin of those who are given up to gluttony and lust is a disgraceful one. Examine all the hours of their lives: consider how much time they spend in calculation, how much in plotting, how much in fear, how much in giving and deceiving flattery, how much in entering into getting things for themselves or for others, how much in banquets (which indeed become a serious business), you will see that they are not allowed any breathing time either by their pleasures or their pains.

Nothing, neither eloquence nor literature, can be done properly by one who is occupied with something else; because nothing can take deep root in a mind which is directed to some other subject, and which rejects whatever you try to stuff into it. No one knows less about living than a busy person: there is nothing about which it is more difficult to gain knowledge. Other arts have many people everywhere who profess to teach them: some of them can be so thoroughly learned by mere boys, and can be easily taught. But one's whole life must be spent in learning how to live, and this may surprise you more: one's whole life must be spent in learning how to die. Many excellent people have freed themselves from all hindrances, have given up riches, business, and pleasure, and have made it their duty to the very end of their lives to learn how to live.

And yet most of them die confessing that they do not yet know how to live, and still less know how to live as a wise person. Believe me, it requires a great person and one who is superior to human frailties not to allow any of their time to be filched from them. It follows that their life is a very long one, because they devote every possible part of it to themselves; no portion lies idle or uncultivated, or in another person's power. They find nothing worthy of being exchanged for their time, which they guard most grudgingly. They, therefore, have time enough. Whereas those who gave up a great part of their lives to public service do not have enough. They are sometimes conscious of their loss. You will sometimes hear people troubled with great wealth cry out, amid their hosts of clients, their pleadings in court, and their other honourable troubles, ‘I am not allowed to live my own life.’ Why are they not allowed? Because all those who call upon them for help distract them. How many of their days have been spent on that defendant? By that candidate for office? By that old woman who is weary with attending her family funerals? By that man who pretends to be ill, in order to excite the greed of those who hope to inherit his property? By that powerful friend of yours, who uses you to swell his entourage, not to be his friend?

Balance your account, and look over all the days of your life. You will see that only a very few days, and only those which were useless for any other purpose, have been left to you. He who has obtained the fasces* for which he longed, is eager to get rid of them, and is constantly saying, ‘When will this year be over?’ Another puts on public games, and once would have given a great deal for the chance of doing so, but now says, ‘when can I escape from this?’ Another is a lawyer who is fought for in all the courts, and who draws immense audiences, who crowd all the forum to a far greater distance than they can hear him. ‘When’, says the lawyer, ‘will vacation time come?’ Every person hurries through their life, and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But the person who organizes all their time for their own purposes, who arranges all their days as though they were arranging the plan of their life, neither wishes for nor fears the future. Because what new pleasure can be provided that they do not already have? They are fully satisfied with what they have now. Fortune may do what she will, but their life is already safe from her. Such people may gain

something, but cannot lose anything. And indeed, they can only gain anything in the same way as one who is already glutted and filled can get some extra food which they take although do not want.

You have no grounds, therefore, for supposing that anyone has lived long, just because they have wrinkles or grey hairs. They have not lived long, but merely existed for a certain duration. Would you think that a person had travelled far if a fierce gale had caught them as soon as they left their port, and had been driven round and round the same place continually by a succession of winds blowing from opposite quarters? Such a person has not travelled, they have just been tossed about.

I am filled with wonder when I see some people asking others for their time, and those who are asked for it most willing to give it. Both parties consider the object for which the time is given, but neither thinks of the time itself that is involved. We play with what is the most precious of all things, yet it escapes our notice because it is not a physical thing, and does not come before our eyes. Therefore we think it very cheap, and put hardly any value on it. People set the greatest store by financial gifts or pensions, and hire out their work, their services, or their care in order to gain them. No one values time; they give it much more freely, as though it cost nothing. Yet you will see these same people clasping the knees of their physician when they are sick and in present danger of death. And if threatened with capital punishment they are willing to give all that they possess in order that they may live longer. This is how inconsistent they are. If the number of every person's future years could be laid before them, as we can lay out their past years, how anxious would they be if they could see they only had a few years to live, and how careful about their remaining days? Yet it is easy to manage the distribution of a quantity, however small, if we know how much there is. We are very careful about things when we don't know when they will run out.

Yet we shouldn't presume that people have no idea of the value of time. They will often say to those they especially love that they will give them a part of their own years. They do give them, but in such a

manner that it is their loss and not the other's gain. Because they don't know where they got their time, they are given to waste it. Yet no one will give you back your years, no one will restore them to you again. Your life will run its course once it has begun, and will neither begin again or reverse what it has done. It will make no announcements, it will give you no warning of how fast it flies; it will move silently on. It will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the wish of a nation; as it started on its first day, so it will run. It will never turn aside, never delay. What's the result? You're ‘busy’, but life is hurrying on! Death will be here some time or other, and you must serve him, whether you like it or not.

Is anything more insane than the ideas of ‘intelligent’ people about how to spend our time in order to make the most of the future? They work hard in order that they may live better. They prepare themselves for life at the expense of actually living, planning carefully for the future. Yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it wrings day after day from us, and takes away the present by promising something to come. There is no bigger obstacle to true living than waiting, which loses today while it is depending on tomorrow. You claim as yours that which is in the hand of Fortune, and you let go that which is in your own hand. Where are you looking, where are you stretching forward? Everything future is uncertain, so live now. See how the greatest of poets* cries to you and sings in wholesome verse as though inspired with heavenly fire:

The best of wretched mortals' days is that Which is the first to fly.

Why do you hesitate, he says; why do you stand back? Unless you seize it, time will have fled; and even if you do seize it, it will still fly. Our alacrity in making use of our time should compete with the swiftness of time itself, and we should drink of it as we should of a fast-running torrent which will not be always running. The poet admirably satirizes our boundless thoughts when he says, not ‘the first age’, but ‘the first day’. Why are you careless and slow while time is flying so fast, and why do you spread out before yourself a

vision of long months and years, as many as your greediness requires? He talks with you about one day, and that a fast-fleeting one. There can, then, be no doubt that the best days for mortals are the first, whose minds are still in their childhood when old age comes upon them, and they reach it unprepared and without arms to combat it. They have never looked forward. They have all of a sudden stumbled upon old age, never noticing that it was stealing upon them day by day. Just as conversation, or reading, or deep thought deceives travellers, and they find themselves at their journey's end before they knew that it was drawing near, so in this fast and never-ceasing journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether we are asleep or awake, busy people never notice that they are moving till they are at the end of it.

10.

If I chose to divide this argument into separate steps, supported by evidence, many things occur to me by which I could prove that the lives of busy people are the shortest of all. Fabianus* was not one of your regular lecture-room philosophers, but one of the old-school type. He used to say, ‘We should fight against our emotions and passions by brute force, not by skirmishing. We should upset their line of battle by a home charge, not by inflicting trifling wounds.

They must be crushed, not merely scratched.’

Yet errors should be exposed via teaching, not pity. Life is divided into three parts: that which has been, that which is, and that which is to come. Of these three stages, that which we are passing through is brief, that which we are about to pass is uncertain, and that which we have passed is certain. This latter Fortune has lost her rights over, and is beyond the power of another person. This is what busy people lose, because they have no time to look back upon the past, and even if they had, they take no pleasure in remembering what they regret.

They are unwilling to turn their minds to the contemplation of ill-spent time, and they shrink from reviewing a course of action whose faults become glaringly apparent when handled a second time, even if they were snatched at when under the spell of immediate gratification. No one, unless their acts have been submitted to the infallible censorship of their own conscience, willingly turns their

thoughts back upon the past. A person who has ambitiously desired, haughtily scorned, passionately vanquished, treacherously deceived, greedily snatched, or prodigally wasted much, should fear their memories.

Yet the past is a holy and consecrated part of our time, beyond the reach of all human events, removed from the dominion of Fortune, and it cannot be suppressed by desire, fear, or illness. Memories can't be changed or deleted; we have them forever. Our present consists only of single days, and those, too, taken one hour at a time. But all the days of past times appear before us when we summon them, and allow themselves to be examined and lingered over, even if busy people choose not to do this. It is the privilege of a tranquil and peaceful mind to review all the parts of its life. In contrast, the minds of busy people are like animals under the yoke, and cannot bend aside or look back. Consequently, their life passes away into vacancy. Just as there's no point pouring water into a vessel which cannot keep or hold it, so also it doesn't matter how much time you give busy people: they have no place to put it and process it, but must let it leak away through the chinks and holes of their minds. Present time is very short, so much so that to some it seems to be no time at all; it is always in motion, and runs swiftly away. It ceases to exist before it comes, and can no more brook delay than can the stars and the heavens, whose relentless movement never pauses. Busy people, therefore, have only the present moment, and that is so short they cannot grasp it. When they are busy with many things they lose even this.

11.

To sum up, do you want to know how short people's lives are? Just look at how they desire to live longer: broken-down old men beg in their prayers for the addition of a few more years; they pretend to be younger than they are; they delude themselves with their own lies, and are as willing to cheat themselves as if they could cheat Fate at the same time. When at last some weakness reminds them that they are mortal, they die as it were in terror; they are dragged out of this life rather than depart from it. They loudly exclaim that they have been fools and have not lived their lives, and declare that if they only

survive this sickness they will spend the rest of their lives at leisure. At such times they reflect how uselessly they have laboured to provide themselves with what they have never enjoyed, and how all their toil has gone for nothing. But those whose life is spent without any engrossing business may well find it ample: no part of it is made over to others, or scattered here and there. No part is entrusted to Fortune, is lost by neglect, is spent in ostentatious giving, or is useless. All of it is, so to speak, invested at good interest. A very small amount of it, therefore, is abundantly sufficient, and so, when his last day arrives, the wise person will not hang back, but will walk with a steady step to meet death.

12.

Perhaps you want to know who I mean by ‘busy people’? Don't believe I am thinking only of those who are hunted out of the courts of justice with dogs at the close of the proceedings, who you see jostled by a crowd of their own clients or contemptuously hustled in visits of ceremony by strangers, who call them away from home to hang about their patron's doors, or who make use of the praetor's sales by auction to acquire infamous gains which some day will prove their own ruin. No, some people become busy with leisure: in their country house or on their couch, in complete solitude. Even though they have retired from all society, they still continue to worry themselves. It would be wrong to say their life is one of leisure, rather they make leisure their business. Would you call a person idle who expends anxious finicking care in the arrangement of their Corinthian bronzes, valuable only because of the mania of a few connoisseurs? And who passes the greater part of their days among plates of rusty metal? Who sits in the palaestra (shame, that our very vices should be foreign) watching boys wrestling? Who distributes their gangs of fettered slaves into pairs according to their age and colour? Who feeds and lavishes care on the latest fashionable athletes?

Are they ‘at leisure’, those men who pass many hours at the barber's while the growth of the past night is being plucked out by the roots, holding a debate over each hair, while the scattered locks are arranged in order and those which fall back are forced forward on to

the forehead? How angry they become if the shaver is a little careless, as though he were shearing a man! What a white heat they work themselves into if some of their mane is cut away, if some part of it is ill-arranged, if all their ringlets do not lie in regular order!

Which of them would not prefer that the state were overthrown than that their hair should be ruffled? Who does not care more for the appearance of his head than for his health? Who would not prefer ornament to honour? Do you call these men idle, who make a business of the comb and looking-glass? What of those who devote their lives to composing, hearing, and learning songs, who twist their voices, intended by Nature to sound best and simplest when used straightforwardly, through all the turns of futile melodies; whose fingers are always beating time to some music on which they are inwardly meditating; who, when invited to serious and even sad business, may be heard humming an air to themselves?

Such people are not at leisure; they are busy with trifles. As for their banquets, by Hercules, I cannot accept they are unoccupied when I see the anxious care with which they set out their plate, how laboriously they arrange the girdles of their waiters' tunics, how breathlessly they watch to see how the cook dishes up the wild boar, with what speed, making sure the slave boys run to perform their duties, how skilfully birds are carved into pieces of the right size, and how painstakingly wretched youths wipe up the spittings of drunken men. By these means men seek credit for taste and grandeur, and their vices follow them so far that they cannot even eat nor drink privately without making a show of it.

Nor should I count those men idle who have themselves been carried here and there in sedans and litters, and who look forward to their regular hour for taking this exercise as though they were not allowed to omit it: men who are reminded by someone else when to bathe, when to swim, when to dine. They reach such a pitch of languid effeminacy as not to be able to find out for themselves whether they are hungry. I have heard one of these luxurious folk – if, indeed, we ought to give the name of luxury to unlearning the life and habits of a man – when he was carried in men's arms out of the bath and placed in his chair, say inquiringly, ‘Am I seated?’ Do you suppose that such a man as this, who did not know when he was seated, could know whether he was alive, whether he could see, whether he was at

leisure? I can hardly say whether I pity him more if he really did not know or if he pretended not to know this. Such people do really become unconscious of much, but they behave as though they were unconscious of much more. They delight in some failings because they consider them to be proofs of happiness; only a low-class man will know what he is doing. Do you think that playwrights draw largely upon their imaginations in their burlesques on luxury? My God, they omit more than they invent; in our age, inventive in this alone, such a number of incredible vices have been produced that already you are able to reproach the playwrights for not covering them all. To think that there should exist anyone who has so much lost his senses through luxury that they need someone else's opinion as to whether they are sitting or not? This man certainly is not at leisure; you must bestow a different title on him. He is sick, or rather dead. He is only at leisure who feels that he is at leisure. But this creature is only half alive, if he wants someone to tell him what position his body is in. How can such a man possibly be a master of his time?

13.

It would take a long time to describe the various individuals who have wasted their lives over playing at draughts, playing at ball, or toasting their bodies in the sun. People are not at leisure if their pleasures have the feel of business. And no one will doubt that those persons are laborious triflers who devote themselves to the study of futile literary questions, of whom there is already a great number in Rome. It used to be a peculiarly Greek disease of the mind to investigate how many rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, and whether they were written by the same author – and other matters like this. They neither please your inner consciousness if you keep them to yourself, nor make you seem more learned, indeed only more boring, if you publish them. Already this vain longing to learn what is useless has taken hold of the Romans; the other day I heard somebody saying who was the first Roman general who did this or that. Duillius was the first who won a sea-fight, Curius Dentatus was the first who drove elephants in his triumph, and so on. These stories, though they add nothing to real glory, do nevertheless deal with the great deeds of our countrymen.

Such knowledge is not profitable, yet it claims our attention as a fascinating kind of folly. I will even pardon those who want to know who was the first Roman to board a ship. It was Claudius, who for this reason was surnamed Caudex, because any piece of carpentry formed of many planks was called caudex by the ancient Romans, for which reason public records are called codices, and by old custom the ships which ply on the Tiber with provisions are called codicariae. It is also fine to tell how Valerius Corvinus was the first to conquer Messana, and so the first of his family of the Valerii to transfer the name of the captured city to his own, so he was called Messana, and how the people gradually corrupted the pronunciation and called him Messalla. Someone else may be interested in the fact that Lucius Sulla was the first to let lions loose in the circus, they having been previously exhibited in chains, when hurlers of spears were sent by King Bocchus to kill them.

Such things it may be permitted to be curious about. But can it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit eighteen elephants in the circus, who were matched in a show battle with some prisoners? The leading man in the state, and one who, according to tradition, was noted among the ancient leaders of the state for his transcendent goodness of heart, thought it would make for an interesting show to kill men in a new way. Do they fight to the death? That is not cruel enough. Are they torn to pieces? That is not cruel enough. Let them be crushed flat by animals of enormous bulk. It would be much better that such a thing should be forgotten, for fear that some potentate might hear of it and envy its refined barbarity. Oh, how does excessive prosperity blind our intellects! At the moment at which he was casting so many troops of wretches to be trampled on by outlandish beasts, when he was proclaiming war between such different creatures, when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman people, whose blood he himself was soon to shed even more freely, he thought himself the master of the whole world. Yet afterwards, deceived by the treachery of the Alexandrians, Pompey had to offer himself to the dagger of the vilest of slaves, and then at last discovered what an empty boast was his surname of ‘The Great’.

But to return to the point from which I have digressed, I will prove that even on this very subject some people expend useless pains. The

same author tells us that Metellus, when he triumphed after having conquered the Carthaginians in Sicily, was the only Roman who ever had a hundred-and-twenty captured elephants leading his chariot.

And that Sulla was the last Roman who extended the pomoerium* which it was not the custom of the ancients to extend after conquest of provincial, but only of Italian territory. Is it more useful to know this, than to know that the Mount Aventine, according to him, is outside the pomoerium, for one of two reasons: either because it was there that the plebeians seceded; or because when Remus took his auspices on that place the birds which he saw were not propitious – and many other stories like this which are either actual falsehoods or much the same as falsehoods? Because even if you allow that these authors spoke in good faith, if pledged they only wrote the truth, still whose mistakes will be made fewer by such stories? Whose passions will be restrained? Who will they make more brave, more just, or more gentlemanly? My friend Fabianus used to say that it was perhaps better not to apply oneself to any studies at all than to become interested in this kind.

14.

The only people who are really at leisure are those who devote themselves to philosophy. They alone really live. For they do not merely enjoy their own lifetime, but they annex every century to their own; all the years which have passed before them belong to them.

Unless we are the most ungrateful creatures in the world, we shall regard these noblest of men, the founders of divine schools of thought, as having been born for us, and having prepared life for us. We are led by the labour of others to behold most beautiful things which have been brought out of darkness into light. We are not shut out from any period, we can make our way into every subject, and if only we can summon up sufficient strength of mind to overstep the narrow limit of human weakness, we have a vast extent of time in which to enjoy ourselves. We may argue with Socrates, doubt with Carneades, find tranquillity with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, go beyond it with the Cynics.

Since Nature allows us to commune with every age, why do we not abstract ourselves from our own petty fleeting span of time, and give

ourselves up with our whole mind to what is vast, what is eternal, what we share with better humans than ourselves? Those who gad about in a round of calls, who worry themselves and others, having indulged their madness to the full and crossed every patron's threshold daily, leaving no open door unentered, after they have hawked about their interested greetings in houses far apart … and anyway, how few people are they able to see out of so vast a city, filled with so many different wants and desires? How many will be moved by sloth, self-indulgence, or rudeness to deny them admittance? How many, after they have long plagued them, will run past them with feigned hurry? How many will avoid coming out through their entrance hall with its crowds of clients, and will escape by some concealed backdoor, as though it were not ruder to deceive their visitor than to deny him admittance! How many, half asleep and stupid with last night's party, can hardly be brought to return the greeting of the wretched man who has broken his own rest in order to wait on that of another, even after his name has been whispered to them for the thousandth time, save by a most offensive yawn of his half-opened lips.

We may truly say people are pursuing the true path of duty who wish every day to consort on the most familiar terms with Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and the rest of those high priests of virtue, with Aristotle and with Theophrastus. None of these great philosophers will be ‘engaged’, none will fail to send you away after visiting them in a happier frame of mind and on better terms with yourself, and none of them will let you leave them empty handed. Yet their society may be enjoyed by all people, and by night as well as by day.

15.

None of these philosophers will force you to die, but all of them will teach you how to die. None of these will waste your time, but will add his own to it. The talk of these men is not dangerous, their friendship will not lead you to the scaffold, their society will not ruin you in expenses. You may take from them whatever you will; they will not prevent your taking the deepest draughts of their wisdom that you please. What blessedness, what a fair old age awaits the person who

takes these for his patrons! They will have friends with whom to discuss all matters, great and small, to get daily advice that provides truth without insult, praise without flattery, and according to whose likeness they may model their own character.

We are wont to say that we are not able to choose who our parents should be, but that they were assigned to us by chance. Yet we may be born just as we please, because here are several families of the noblest intellects: choose which you would like to belong to. By your adoption you will not receive their name only, but also their property, which is not intended to be guarded in a mean and miserly spirit; the more people it is divided amongst the larger it becomes.

These will open to you the path which leads to eternity, and raise you to a height from where none will cast you down. By this means alone can you prolong your mortal life, even turn it into an immortal one.

High office, monuments, all that ambition records in decrees or piles up in stone, soon passes away; the passing of time casts down and ruins everything. But those things on which philosophy has set its seal are beyond the reach of injury: no age will discard them or lessen their force, and each succeeding century will add somewhat to the respect in which they are held. For we look upon what is near us with jealous eyes, but admire what is further off with less prejudice. The wise person's life, therefore, includes much: they are not hedged in by the same limits which confine others. They are exempt from the laws by which humankind is governed. All ages serve them like a god. If any time is past, they recall it by their memory; if it is present, they use it; if it be future, they anticipate it. Their life is a long one because they concentrate all times into it.

16.

Those people lead the shortest and unhappiest lives who forget the past, neglect the present, and dread the future: when they reach the end of it the poor wretches learn too late that they were busy all the while that they were doing nothing. Just because they sometimes wish for death doesn't mean that their lives are long: their folly torments them with vague passions which lead them into the very things of which they are afraid. They often wish for death because they live in fear. Neither is it, as you might think, a proof of the

length of their lives that they often find the days long, that they often complain how slowly the hours pass until the appointed time arrives for dinner. Because whenever they are left without their usual business, they fret helplessly in their idleness, and don't know how to arrange or to spin it out. They commit themselves to some business, and all the intervening time is irksome to them. They would like to skip over it, just as they wish to skip over the intervening days before a gladiatorial contest or some other time appointed for a public spectacle or private indulgence; all postponement of what they wish for is grievous to them. Yet the very time which they enjoy is brief and soon past, and is made much briefer by their own fault. They run from one pleasure to another, and are not able to devote themselves consistently to one passion; their days are not long, but odious to them. On the other hand, how short do they find the nights which they spend with courtesans or over wine? The poets are bad in the way they encourage the errors of people by their myths, for instance declaring that Jupiter, to gratify his voluptuous desires, doubled the length of the night. Is it not adding fuel to our vices to name the gods as their authors, and to offer our additions free scope by giving them a god for a model? How can the nights which people pay so dearly for, not seem very short to them? They lose the day in looking forward to the night, and lose the night through fear of the dawn.

17.

Such people's very pleasures are restless and disturbed by various alarms, and at the most joyous moment of all there rises the anxious thought: ‘How long will this last?’ This frame of mind has led kings to weep over their power. They have not been as delighted at the grandeur of their position as they have been terrified by the end to which it must someday come. That most arrogant Persian king, Xerxes, when his army stretched over vast plains and could not be counted but only measured, burst into tears at the thought that in less than a hundred years none of all those warriors would be alive. Yet their death was brought upon them by the very man who wept over it, who was about to destroy some of them by sea, some on land, some in battle, and some in flight, and who would in a very short space of time end the life of those about whose hundredth year he showed such concern.

But why should we be surprised at the joys of such leaders being mixed with fear? Their joys do not rest upon any solid grounds, but are disturbed by the same emptiness from which they spring. Even the joys by which they elevate themselves and raise themselves above their fellows are of a mixed character. All the greatest blessings are enjoyed with fear, and no thing is so untrustworthy as extreme wealth. We require fresh strokes of good fortune to enable us to keep that which we are enjoying, and even the prayers which are answered require fresh prayers. Everything for which we are dependent on chance is uncertain. The higher something rises, the more opportunities it has of falling. Moreover, no one takes any pleasure in what is about to fall into ruin. Very miserable, therefore, as well as very short must be the lives of those who work very hard to gain what they must work even harder to keep. They obtain what they wish with infinite labour, and they hold what they have obtained with fear and trembling. Meanwhile they take no account of time, of which they will never have a fresh and larger supply. They substitute new occupations for old ones, one hope leads to another, one ambition to another. They do not seek for an end to their sadness, but just change the reason. Do our own wishes for promotion and offices trouble us? Actually, those of others occupy more of our time. We give up canvassing for ourselves and campaign for others. We stop bothering to bring something to court, and instead become a juror.

We grow old in the salaried management of other people's property,

while our own takes second place. Gaius Marius was discharged from military service only to be made consul many times. Quintius Cincinnatus was eager to reach the end of his dictatorship, but was called back from his plough a second time to serve. Scipio marched against the Carthaginians before he was old enough for so great an undertaking. After he had conquered Hannibal, conquered Antiochus, been the glory of his own consulship and the surety for that of his brother, he might have been set on the same pedestal with Jupiter. But civil factions vexed the saviour of the state, and the one who as a young man disdained to receive divine honours took pride as an old man in obstinately remaining in exile. There is never a shortage of causes of anxiety, either pleasurable or painful. Our life will be pushed along from one business to another. Leisure will always be wished for, and never enjoyed.

18.

Therefore, my dearest Paulinus, tear yourself away from the common herd, and since you have seen more rough weather than one would think from your age, take yourself off to a more peaceful haven.

Reflect what waves you have sailed through, what storms you have endured in private life, and brought upon yourself in public. Your courage has been sufficiently displayed by many difficult and tiring proofs; test it now with leisure. The greater, certainly the better part of your life, has been given to your country; now give yourself some time. I don't mean practising a dull or lazy sloth, or drowning all your fiery spirit in the pleasures which are dear to the herd. That is not rest. You can find greater projects even than the ones you have so manfully carried out, on which you can employ yourself in retirement and security. You manage the revenues of the entire world as unselfishly as though they belonged to another, as laboriously as if they were your own, as scrupulously as though they belonged to the public. You win love in an office in which it is hard to avoid incurring hatred. Yet believe me, it is better to understand your own mind than to understand the corn-market. Take away that keen intellect of yours, so well capable of grappling with the greatest subjects, from a post which may be dignified, but which is hardly fitted to render life happy, and reflect that you did not study from childhood all the branches of a liberal education merely in order that many thousand tons of corn might safely be entrusted to your charge. You have given us promise of something greater and nobler than this. There will never be any want of strict economists or of laborious workers. Slow-going beasts of burden are better suited for carrying loads than well-bred horses, whose generous swiftness no one would encumber with a heavy pack. Think, moreover, how full of risk is the great task which you have undertaken: you have to deal with the human stomach. A hungry people will not endure reason, will not be appeased by justice, and will not listen to any prayers.

Only just a few days ago, when Gaius Caesar perished, grieving (if those in the other world can feel grief) that the Roman people would not die with him, there was said to be only enough corn for seven or eight days' consumption. While he was making bridges with ships and playing with the resources of the empire, the need of provisions,

the worst evil that can befall even a besieged city, was at hand. His imitation of a crazy, outlandish, and conceited king very nearly ended in ruin, famine, and the general revolution which follows famine. What must then have been the feelings of those who had the charge of supplying the city with corn, who were in danger of stoning, of fire and sword, of Gaius himself? With consummate art they concealed the vast internal evil by which the state was menaced, and were quite right in so doing. Because some diseases must be cured without the patient's knowledge; many have died through discovering what was the matter with them.

19.

Take yourself, then, to these quieter, safer, larger fields of action. Do you think that there can be any comparison between seeing that corn is deposited in the public granary without being stolen by the fraud or spoilt by the carelessness of the importer, that it does not suffer from damp or overheating, and that it measures and weighs as much as it should – and beginning the study of sacred and divine knowledge, which will teach you of what elements the gods are formed, what are their pleasures, their position, their form? To what fate lies in store for your soul? Where will Nature take us when we leave our bodies? What is the principle that holds all the heaviest particles of our universe in the middle, suspends the lighter ones above, puts fire highest of all, and causes the stars to rise in their courses, with many other matters, full of marvels? Will you still grovel on earth when you can turn your mind's eye on these themes? No! While your blood still flows swiftly, before your knees grow feeble, you ought to take the better path. In this course of life there await you many good things, such as love and practice of the virtues, leaving behind the passions, knowledge of how to live and die, and deep calm. The condition of all busy people is unhappiness, but most unhappy of all are those who do not even have time for themselves, but have to regulate their rest by another person's sleep, their walk by another person's pace, and whose very love and hate, the freest things in the world, are at another's bidding. If such people wish to know how short their lives are, let them think on how small a fraction of them is their own.

20.

When, therefore, you see a man often wear the purple robes of office, and hear his name often repeated in the forum, do not envy him; he gains these things by losing so much of his life. Men throw away all their years in order to have one year named after them as consul.

Some lose their lives during the early part of the struggle, and never reach the height to which they aspired. Some, after having submitted to a thousand indignities in order to reach the crowning dignity, have the miserable realization that the only result of their efforts will be the inscription on their tombstone. Some, while trying to defy old age and going after new aspirations, as if they were still young, have failed from sheer weakness before such great and presumptuous enterprises. What a shameful ending it is, when a man's breath deserts him in a court of justice; he is too old to be still striving to gain the sympathies of an ignorant audience for some obscure litigant. It is a sad thing to perish in the midst of one's business, having used up all one's energy for life on work; shameful, too, to die in the act of receiving payments, amid the laughter of one's long-expectant heir. I cannot pass over an instance which occurs to me: Turannius was an old man of the most painstaking exactitude, who after entering upon his ninetieth year, when he had by Gaius Caesar's own act been relieved of his duties as collector of the revenue, ordered himself to be laid out on his bed and mourned for as though he were dead. The whole house mourned for the enforced leisure of its old master, and did not stop its mourning until his work was restored to him. Can people really find pleasure in dying while at work? Yet many think like this; they retain their wish for labour longer than their capacity for it, and fight against their bodily weakness. They think old age an evil for no other reason than because it lays them on the shelf. The law does not enrol a soldier after his fiftieth year, or require a senator's attendance after his sixtieth. But men have more difficulty in obtaining their own consent to a life of leisure than that of the law. Meanwhile, they continue to plunder and be plundered, each disturbing each other's repose. Their lives remain without profit, without pleasure, without any intellectual progress. None of them think of death, and all keep entertaining their ambitions. Some even arrange things which lie beyond their own lives, such as huge tombs, the dedication of public

works, exhibitions to be given at their funeral pyre, and ostentatious processions. But by God, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted by the light of torches and wax tapers, as though they had lived just a few days.

NOTES

Pompeius Paulinus, most probably the father of Seneca's wife Pompeia Paulina. From a noble family, he was for a time praefectus annonae, in charge of the distribution of grain in Rome.

In his writings on animals, Aristotle advanced the theory that larger animals significantly outlived smaller ones. Seneca may be exaggerating Aristotle's theory here.

The men who conspired against Emperor Augustus in the years between 29 and 22 BCE.

† When Marcus Tullius Cicero was co-consul in 63 CE, he had to uncover and suppress the Catilinarian Conspiracy, involving disgruntled aristocratic senators in league with Roman army veterans.

That is, laws for social reform that were considered extreme by the patricians and knights in the Senate.

Bundles of wooden rods, representing the power of a Roman magistrate.

Virgil, Georgics.

Papirius Fabianus, a rhetorician and philosopher who was an important influence on Seneca, and most probably his teacher.

The ancient boundary of Rome.

CHAPTER TWO

ON THE HAPPY LIFE

All people, brother Gallio*, wish to live happily, but are dumb at perceiving exactly what it is that makes life happy. It is not easy to attain happiness. The more eagerly a person struggles to reach it the further they depart from it, if they take the wrong road. Starting in the wrong direction, they are swiftly led even further away.

We must therefore first define clearly what it is we are aiming for. Next we must consider the path by which we can most speedily reach it. Because on our journey, provided it is taken in the right direction, we shall learn how much progress we have made each day, and how much nearer we are to the goal towards which our natural desires urge us. But as long as we wander at random, not following any guide except the shouts and discordant clamours of those who invite us to go in different directions, our short life will be wasted in useless wanderings, even if we work hard to understand things.

So let's not decide where to go and how, without the advice of some experienced person who has explored the region which we are about to enter, because this journey is not subject to the same conditions as others. On some little known track enquiries made of the natives make it impossible for us to go wrong. Here, however, the most walked and frequented tracks are those which lead us most astray.

Nothing, therefore, is more important than that we should not, like sheep, follow the flock that has gone before us, and so go not where we thought we would, but only where the rest are going.

Nothing gets us into greater troubles than our subservience to common thinking, and our habit of believing that those things are best which everyone says are best. We mistake counterfeits for truly good things, and live not by reason but by imitation of others. This is the cause of those great heaps into which people rush till they are piled one upon another. In a great crush of people, when the crowd

presses upon itself, no one can fall without pulling someone else down with him; those who go before cause the destruction of those who follow them. You may observe the same thing in human life: no one can merely go wrong by themselves, but must become both the cause of, and influence on, another person's mistakes. It is harmful to follow the march of those who go before us, and since everyone would rather believe another than form their own opinion, we never make an intentional judgment in life. Rather, some conventional error always entangles us and brings us to ruin, and we perish because we follow other people's examples. We would be cured of this if we were to disengage ourselves from the herd, but as it is the mob is ready to fight against reason in defence of its own mistake.

The same thing happens at elections, where the fickle breeze of popular favour means that those who have been chosen consuls and praetors are suddenly viewed with admiration by the ones who voted them in. That we should all approve and disapprove of the same things is the end result of all decisions made with the voice of the majority.

When we are considering a happy life, we cannot explain it in terms of a vote of the House: ‘This view has most supporters.’ For that very reason it is the worse of the two. With humans, the majority do not naturally choose the better course. Indeed, the more people do a thing the worse it is likely to be. Let us find out then not what is most commonly done, but what is best for us to do, and what will achieve us undying happiness. Let us avoid what is approved of by the vulgar, the worst possible exponents of truth. By ‘the vulgar’ I mean both those who wear woollen cloaks and those who wear crowns. I don't think about the colour of the clothes with which people are covered.

Nor do I trust my eyes to tell me what a person is: I have a better and more trustworthy light by which I can distinguish what is true from what is false; let the mind find out what is good for the mind. If a person allows themselves some breathing space and time for reflection, what truths will they confess, after putting their own selves under torture! They will say:

Whatever I have done I wish were undone. When I think over what I have said, I envy people who cannot speak. Whatever I have longed for seems to have been what my enemies would hope would happen to me. What I have feared seems to be more enduring than what I have lusted after. I have been enemies of many people, and have changed my dislike of them into friendship, if friendship can exist between bad men. Yet I have not made friends with myself. I have striven with all my strength to raise myself above the common herd, and to make myself remarkable and successful. But what have I achieved except making myself a target for the arrows of my enemies, and shown those who hate me where to wound me? Do you see those who praise your eloquence, who covet your wealth, who court your favour, or who want your power? They are all your enemies: the number of those who envy you is as great as that of those who admire you. So why do I not instead seek something which I can actually use and feel, and not one which I can merely display?

These good things which people gaze at in wonder, which they crowd to see, which one points out to another with speechless admiration, are outwardly brilliant, but within are miseries to those who possess them.

Let us search for some blessing which does not merely look fine, but is sound and good throughout, and most beautiful in the parts which are least seen. It is not far distant from us, and can be discovered. All that is necessary is to know where to stretch out your hand. But, as it is, we behave as though we were in the dark, and reach out beyond what is nearest to us, striking as we do so against the very things that we want.

I won't draw you into digressions, looking at the opinions of other philosophers, because it would take a long time to summarise and refute them all. Take our school, for example. When I say ‘our’, I do not bind myself to any one of the chiefs of the Stoic school, because I too have a right to form my own opinion. So I shall follow the authority of some of them, but ask some others to clarify their meaning. Perhaps, when after having reported all their opinions, I

am asked for my own, I will impugn none of my predecessors' decisions, and will say, ‘I will also add something to them.’

Meanwhile I follow Nature, which is a point upon which every one of the Stoic philosophers are agreed: true wisdom consists in not departing from Nature and in moulding our conduct according to her laws and model. A happy life, therefore, is one which is in accordance with its own nature. It cannot be achieved unless in the first place the mind is sound and stable. It must be bold and vigorous, enduring all things with admirable courage, adapting to the times in which it lives, careful of the body and its demands, yet not too careful. This mind must also set due value upon all the things which adorn our lives, without over-estimating any one of them, and must be able to enjoy the bounty of Fortune without becoming her slave. You understand without my saying it that an unbroken calm and freedom ensues when we have driven away all those things which either excite us or alarm us: for in the place of sensual pleasures and temporary gains connected with the basest crimes, we gain an immense, unchangeable, equable joy, together with peace, calmness and greatness of mind, and kindliness: for all savageness is a sign of weakness.

Our highest good can be defined in different ways. An army may at one time be extended more widely, at another contracted into a smaller compass, and may either be curved towards the wings by a depression in the line of the centre, or drawn up in a straight line. But whatever formation it is in, its strength and loyalty remain unchanged. So also our definition of the highest good may in some cases be expressed diffusely and at great length, while in others it is put into a short and concise form. It amounts to the same thing if I say, ‘The highest good is a mind which despises the accidents of fortune, and takes pleasure in virtue’; or, ‘The highest good is an unconquerable strength of mind, knowing the world well, gentle in its dealings, showing great courtesy and consideration for those with whom it is brought into contact.’ Or we may choose to define it by calling that person happy who knows good and bad only in the form of good or bad minds: who worships honour, and is satisfied with

their own virtue, neither puffed up by good fortune nor cast down by evil fortune, who knows no other good than what they are able to give themselves, whose real pleasure lies in despising pleasures.

If you choose to pursue this digression further, you can put this same idea into many other forms, without impairing or weakening its meaning. What prevents our saying that a happy life consists in a mind which is free, upright, undaunted, and steadfast, beyond the influence of fear or desire, which thinks nothing good except honour, and nothing bad except shame, and regards everything else as a mass of mean details which can neither add anything to nor take anything away from the happiness of life, but which come and go without either increasing or diminishing the highest good? A person of these principles must enjoy a continual cheerfulness, a high happiness, which comes indeed from on high because they delight in what they have, and desire no greater pleasures than those which their home affords. Are they not right in allowing these to be more important than the petty, ridiculous, and short-lived movements of their wretched body? On the day on which a person becomes proof against pleasure, they also become proof against pain. See, on the other hand, how evil and guilty and enslaved a person becomes who is dominated by pleasures and pains, those most untrustworthy and passionate of masters. We must, therefore, escape from them into freedom. We will have contempt of Fortune. If we attain this, there will dawn upon us invaluable blessings: the repose of a mind that is at rest in a safe haven, with a great and steady delight at casting out errors and learning to know the truth. In courtesy and cheerfulness we will take delight, not regarding them as good things, but as proceeding naturally from the proper good of a person.

A person may be called ‘happy’ who, thanks to reason, has ceased either to hope or to fear. On the other hand, rocks also feel neither fear nor sadness, nor do cattle, yet no one would call those things happy that cannot comprehend what happiness is. With them you may class people whose dull nature and want of self-knowledge reduces them to the level of cattle, mere animals. There is no difference between the one and the other, because the latter have no

reason, while the former have only a corrupted form of it, crooked and cunning to their own hurt. For no one can be considered happy who is beyond the influence of truth. Consequently a happy life is unchangeable, and is founded upon a true and trustworthy discernment. For the mind is uncontaminated and freed from all evils only when it is able to escape not merely from wounds but also from scratches, when it will always be able to maintain the position which it has taken up, and defend it even against the angry assaults of Fortune. With regard to sensual pleasures, they may surround us on every side, and use every means of assault, trying to win over the mind by caresses and stratagems to attract either our entire selves or bits of our body. What mortal that retains any traces of human origin would not wish to be stimulated day and night, neglecting their minds to give themselves over to physical enjoyments?

‘But the mind also will have pleasures of its own.’

Let it have them, then, and let it sit in judgment over luxury and pleasures. Let it indulge itself to the full in all those matters which give sensual delights. Then let it look back upon what it enjoyed, and with all those faded sensualities fresh in its memory let it rejoice and look eagerly forward to those other pleasures which it experienced long ago, and intends to experience again. While the body lies in helpless repletion in the present, let it send its thoughts towards the future, and take stock of its hopes. All this will make it appear, in my opinion, yet more wretched, because it is insanity to choose evil instead of good. No insane person can be happy, and no one can be sane if they regard what is injurious as the highest good and strive to obtain it. The happy person, therefore, is one who can make a right judgment in all things. He is happy who in his present circumstances, whatever they may be, is satisfied and on friendly terms with the conditions of his life. That person is happy whose reason guides and informs all their behaviour.

Even those people who declare the highest good to be in the belly can see what a dishonourable position they have assigned to it. Even they can say that pleasure cannot be parted from virtue, and that no one can either live honourably without living cheerfully, or live cheerfully without being honourable. But what is to prevent virtue existing separately from pleasure? Of course the answer is that all good things derive their origin from virtue, and therefore even those things which you cherish and seek come originally from its roots. Yet, if they were entirely inseparable, we would not see some things to be pleasant, but not honourable, and others most honourable indeed, but hard and only to be attained by suffering. Add to this, that pleasure is enjoyed by even the lowest creatures, but virtue cannot coexist with an evil life. Some unhappy people are not without pleasure, but it is owing to pleasure itself that they are unhappy. This could not be if pleasure had any connection with virtue, whereas virtue often exists in the absence of pleasure, and never stands in need of it.

Why do you put together two things which are unlike and even incompatible? Virtue is a lofty quality, sublime, royal, unconquerable, untiring. Pleasure is low, slavish, weak, perishable; its haunts and homes are the brothel and the tavern. You will meet virtue in the temple, the marketplace, the senate house, manning the walls, covered with dust, sunburnt, with calloused hands. You will find pleasure skulking out of sight, seeking for shady nooks at the public baths, steamy chambers, and places which dread the visits of the authorities; soft, effeminate, reeking of wine and perfumes, pale or perhaps painted and made up with cosmetics. The highest good is immortal: it knows no ending, and is not subject to either exhaustion or regret. For a right-thinking mind never alters or becomes hateful to itself, nor do the best things ever undergo any change. Pleasure dies at the very moment when it charms us most. It has no great vision, and therefore it soon cloys and wearies us, and fades away as soon as its first impulse is over. Indeed, we cannot depend upon anything whose nature is to change. It is not possible that there should be any solid substance in that which comes and goes so swiftly, and which perishes by the very exercise of its own functions.

What answer are we to make to the idea that pleasure belongs to good and bad people alike, and that bad people take as much delight in their shame as good people in noble things?

This was why the ancients wished us to lead the highest, not the most pleasant life, in order that pleasure might not be the guide but the companion of a right-thinking and honourable mind. It is Nature that should guide us here: let our reason observe her and be advised by her. To live happily is the same thing as to live according to Nature. What this means, I will explain.

If we regard the endowments of the body and the advantages of Nature with care and fearlessness, as things soon to depart and given to us only for a day; if we do not fall under their dominion, or allow ourselves to become the slaves of what is no part of our own being; if we assign to all bodily pleasures and external delights the same position which is held by auxiliaries and light-armed troops in a camp; if we make them our servants, not our masters – then and then only are they of value to our minds.

A person should be unbiased and not be conquered by external things. They should be able to admire themselves, to feel confidence in their own spirit, and to order their life as to be ready for good or for bad fortune. This confidence is tied with knowledge, and the knowledge with steadfastness. Let a person always stick to what they have set out to do and be, without erosion of their beliefs. Such a person will be tranquil and composed in their demeanour, high-minded and courteous in their actions.

Let reason be encouraged by the senses to seek for the truth, and draw its first principles from them. Indeed, there is no other way to begin a pursuit of truth. Even the all-embracing universe and God who is its guide extends itself into outward things, and yet God returns from everywhere back to itself. Let our mind do the same thing: it follows its bodily senses and goes forth into the outward world. But it remains still their master and its own. In this way we obtain a strength and an ability which are united and allied together, and derive from it a kind of reason which never hesitates between two opinions, nor is dull in forming its perceptions, beliefs, or

convictions. Such a mind, when it has ranged itself in order, made its various parts agree together, and, if I may so express myself, harmonized them, has attained to the highest good. Because there will be nothing evil or hazardous remaining, nothing to shake it or make it stumble. It will do everything under the guidance of its own will, and nothing unexpected will happen to it. Whatever is done by it will turn out well, and readily and easily, without recourse to any underhand devices. In contrast, slow and hesitating action are the signs of discord and lack of settled purpose. You can say, then, that the highest good is singleness of mind. Because where agreement and unity are, there must be virtue; it is the vices that are at war one with another.

‘But you only practise virtue because you hope to obtain some pleasure from it.’

Indeed, Virtue may give us pleasure, but this is not why we seek her. Virtue does provide this, but it is not the purpose of her efforts. As in a tilled field when ploughed for corn, some flowers are found amongst it, and yet, though these posies may charm the eye, all this labour was not spent in order to produce them. The person who sowed the field had another object in view. In the same way, pleasure is not the reward or the cause of virtue, but comes in addition to it.

We choose Virtue not because she gives us pleasure, but she does provide pleasure if we choose her.

The highest good lies in the act of choosing virtue, which when achieved needs nothing more. For there is nothing outside the whole, any more than there is anything beyond the end. You are mistaken, therefore, when you ask me why I seek after virtue: for you are seeking for something above the highest. If you ask what I seek from Virtue, my answer is: herself. For she has nothing better; she is her own reward. Is it not enough when I tell you that the highest good is an unyielding strength of mind, wisdom, magnanimity, sound judgment, freedom, harmony, beauty? Do you still ask me for something greater, of which these may be regarded as the attributes? Why do you talk of pleasures to me? I am seeking to find what is

good for the human being, not for their bellies. After all, cattle and whales have larger ones than us.

10.

‘You purposely misunderstand what I say. I too say that no one can live pleasantly unless they live honourably. Look at dumb animals who measure the extent of their happiness by that of their food. I loudly and publicly proclaim that what I call a pleasant life cannot exist without the addition of virtue.’

Yet doesn't everyone know that the greatest fools drink the deepest of those pleasures of yours? And that vice is full of enjoyments, and that the mind suggests to itself many perverted, vicious forms of pleasure? Arrogance, love of self, swaggering dominance over others, blind devotion to self-interest, dissolute luxury, excessive delight from the most trifling and childish things, talkativeness, pride that takes a pleasure in insulting others, sloth, and the decay of a dull mind which goes to sleep over itself. All these are dissipated by Virtue, who plucks us by the ear, and measures the value of pleasures before she permits them to be used. Nor does she set much store by those which she allows to be enjoyed, and her cheerfulness is not due to her use of them, but to her moderation in using them. You devote yourself to pleasures, while I try to restrain them. You indulge in pleasure, while I use it. You think that it is the highest good, while I do not even think it to be good at all. For the sake of pleasure I do nothing; you do everything.

11.

When I say that I do nothing for the sake of pleasure, I am talking about an ideal wise man. A wise man is not overcome by anything, let alone by pleasure. If he were engrossed in pleasure, how would he resist toil, danger, want, and all the ills which surround and threaten the life of man? How would he bear the sight of death or of pain?

How would he endure the tumult of the world, and make head against so many most active foes, if he was conquered by so effeminate an antagonist? He would do whatever pleasure advised him. And don't you see what it would advise him to do?

Yet what kind of virtue would it be that required a guardian to ensure it remained good? And how would Virtue rule pleasure if she followed it, given that to follow is the duty of a subordinate, and to rule that of a commander? Do you put that which commands in the background? According to your school, Virtue has the dignified office of preliminary taster of pleasures. We shall, however, see whether Virtue still remains virtuous among those who treat her with such contempt, for if she leaves her proper station she can no longer keep her proper name. Meanwhile, to keep to the point, I will show you many men beset by pleasures, men upon whom Fortune has showered all her gifts, yet whom you have to admit are bad men.

Look at Nomentanus and Apicius*, who enjoyed all the good things, as they call them, of the sea and land, and saw upon their tables the whole animal kingdom. Look at them as they lie on beds of roses gloating over their banquet, delighting their ears with music, their eyes with exhibitions, their palates with flavours, their whole bodies titillated with soft and soothing applications. And so not even their nostrils should be idle, the very place in which they solemnize the rites of luxury is scented with various perfumes. You will say that these men live in the midst of pleasures. Yet they are ill at ease, because they take pleasure in what is not good.

12.

‘They are ill at ease because many things arise which distract their thoughts, and their minds are disquieted by conflicting opinions.’

I admit that this is true. These men, foolish, inconsistent, and surely remorseful, do nevertheless receive great pleasure, and we must allow that in so doing they are as far from feeling any trouble as they are from forming a right judgment. They are possessed by a merry madness, and laugh while they rave. The pleasures of wise men, on the other hand, are mild, decorous, verging on dullness, kept under restraint and scarcely noticeable, and are neither invited to come nor received with honour when they come of their own accord, nor are they welcomed with any delight by those whom they visit, who mix them up with their lives and fill up empty spaces with them, like an amusing farce in the intervals of serious business.

Let us stop, then, joining incongruous matters together and connecting pleasure with virtue, a mistake made by the worst of men. The reckless profligate, always drunk and belching out the fumes of wine, believes that he lives with virtue, because he hears it said that pleasure cannot exist apart from virtue. Consequently he dubs his vices with the title of wisdom and parades what he ought to conceal. Men are not encouraged by Epicurus to run riot, but the vicious hide their excesses in the lap of philosophy, and flock to the schools in which they hear the praises of pleasure. They do not consider how sober and temperate that ‘pleasure’ of Epicurus is, yet they rush at his mere name, seeking to obtain some protection and cloak for their vices. They lose, therefore, the one virtue which their evil life possessed, that of being ashamed of doing wrong. They praise what they used to blush at, and boast of their vices. Modesty can never reassert itself when shameful idleness is dignified with an honourable name. The reason why that praise which your school lavishes upon pleasure is so hurtful, is because the honourable part of its teaching passes unnoticed, while the degrading part is seen by all.

13.

I myself believe, though my Stoic comrades won't like hearing it, that the teachings of Epicurus were upright and holy, and even, if you examine it narrowly, rigorous. What he said of pleasure is minimal, and he saw pleasure submitting to the same law which we see virtue doing – that is, obeying Nature. Luxury, however, is not satisfied with Nature. What is the result? Whoever thinks that happiness consists in lazy sloth, and alternations of gluttony and profligacy, requires a good patron for a bad action. A person then becomes an Epicurean, having been led to do so by the attractive name of that school. They follow not the pleasure which Epicurus spoke of, but that which they brought with them. Once believing that their vices coincide with the maxims of Epicurean philosophy, they indulge them to the hilt and not in dark corners, but boldly in the face of day.

I will not, therefore, like most of our school, say that the sect of Epicurus is the teacher of crime. Rather it is ill-spoken of, it has a bad reputation, and yet it does not deserve it. But you can't know its

mysteries unless you go into its inner circle. Yet it gives opportunity for scandal, and encourages men's baser desires. It is like a brave man dressed in a woman's gown: your chastity is assured, your manhood is safe, your body is submitted to nothing disgraceful, but your hand holds a drum like a priest of Cybele*. Choose, instead, some honourable maxim for your school, some idea which shall arouse the mind. That which at present stands over your door has been invented by the vices. One who puts himself on the side of virtue provides a proof of a noble disposition. One who follows pleasure appears to be weak, worn out, degrading his manhood, likely to fall into infamous vices unless someone chooses his pleasures for him, so that he may know which remain within the bounds of natural desire, and which are frantic and boundless, so becoming all the more insatiable the more they are satisfied.

But come! Let virtue lead the way: then every step will be safe. Too much pleasure is hurtful, but with virtue we need fear no excess of any kind, because moderation is contained in Virtue herself. That which is injured by its own extent cannot be a good thing. Besides, what better guide can there be than reason for beings endowed with a reasoning nature? So if this combination pleases you, if you are willing to proceed to a happy life in such company, let virtue lead the way, let pleasure follow and hang about the body like a shadow. Only a mind incapable of great things would hand over virtue, the highest of all qualities, to be a handmaid of pleasure.

14.

Let Virtue lead the way and bear the standard. We can still have pleasure, but be her masters and controllers. She may win some concessions from us, but will not force us to do anything. On the contrary, those who have permitted pleasure to lead the way have neither pleasure nor virtue. They lose virtue altogether, and yet they do not possess pleasure, but are possessed by it, and are either tortured by its absence or choked by its excess. They are miserable if deserted by it, and yet more miserable if overwhelmed by it, like those who are caught in the shoals of the Syrtes* and at one time are left on dry ground and at another tossed on the flowing waves.

This arises from an exaggerated lack of self-control, and a hidden love of evil. For it is dangerous for one who seeks after evil to attain their object. It's similar to how we hunt wild beasts with great effort and danger, but even when they are caught we find them an anxious possession; they often tear their keepers to pieces, even if they are great pleasures. They turn out to be great evils and take their owners prisoner. The more numerous and the greater they are, the more inferior and the slave of more masters does this ‘happy’ man become. Indeed, in the thrill of the hunt this same man comes to neglect far more worthwhile things, and leaves many duties unfulfilled. He who pursues pleasure postpones everything else, and disregards that first essential, liberty, sacrificing it to his belly. He does not buy pleasure for himself, but sells himself to pleasure.

15.

‘But what is there to hinder virtue and pleasure being combined together, and a highest good being formed out of it, so that honour and pleasure can be the same thing?’

Because nothing except what is honourable can form a part of honour, and the highest good would lose its purity if it were to see within itself anything foreign to its goodness. Even the joy which arises from virtue, although it is a good thing, is not a part of absolute good, any more than cheerfulness or peace of mind, which merely follow the highest good, can contribute to its perfection, even if they are generated by the noblest causes.

Whoever on the other hand forms an alliance, a one-sided one, between Virtue and Pleasure, prevents whatever strength Virtue has by the weakness of the other. Liberty is crushed, for she can only remain unconquered as long as she knows nothing more valuable than herself. A person instead begins to need the help of Fortune, which is the most utter slavery: their life becomes anxious, full of suspicion, fearful of accidents, waiting in agony for the critical moments of life. You do not give virtue a solid immoveable base if you have it stand on what is unsteady. And what can be so unsteady as dependence on mere chance, and the vicissitudes of the body and of those things which act on the body? How can such a person obey God and receive everything which comes to pass in a cheerful spirit,

never complaining of fate, and putting a good interpretation upon everything that befalls them, if they be agitated by the petty pinpricks of pleasures and pains? Someone cannot be a good protector of their country, a good avenger of her wrongs, or a good defender of their friends, if they are inclined to pleasures.

Let the highest good, then, rise to that height from where no force can dislodge it, where neither pain can ascend, nor hope, nor fear, nor anything else that can impair the authority of the ‘highest good’. There, Virtue alone can make her way. By her aid that hill must be climbed: she will bravely stand her ground and endure whatever may befall her not only calmly, but willingly. She will know that all hard times come in obedience to natural laws, and like a good soldier she will bear wounds, count scars, and when transfixed and dying will still adore the general for whom she falls; she will bear in mind the old maxim ‘Follow God.’ On the other hand, one who grumbles and complains and bemoans is still forced to obey orders, and is dragged away, however much against their will, to carry them out. Yet what madness is it to be dragged rather than to follow? It is folly and ignorance of one's true position to grieve because one has not got something or because something has caused us rough treatment, or to be surprised or indignant at those ills which befall good people as well as bad ones, such as diseases, deaths, illnesses, and the other accidents of human life. Let us bear with magnanimity whatever the system of the universe makes it needful for us to bear. We are all bound by this oath: ‘To bear the ills of mortal life, and to submit with a good grace to what we cannot avoid.’ We have been born into a monarchy*: our liberty is to obey God.

16.

True happiness, therefore, consists in virtue: and what will this virtue have you do? Not to think anything bad or good without knowing its connection to either virtue or wickedness. And to endure unmoved the assaults of evil, and, as far as is appropriate, to form a god out of what is good. What reward are you promised for this effort? An enormous one, and one that raises you to the level of the gods: you shall be subject to no restraint and to no want; you shall be free, safe, unhurt; you shall fail in nothing that you attempt; you

shall be debarred from nothing; everything shall turn out according to your wish; no misfortune shall befall you; nothing shall happen to you except what you expect and hope for.

‘What! Is virtue alone enough to make you happy?’ Of course. Consummate and god-like virtue such as this not only suffices, but more than suffices: because when a person is placed beyond the reach of any desire, what can they possibly lack? If all that they need is within them, how can they require anything from without? In contrast, one who is only on the road to virtue, although they may have made great progress along it, still needs some favour from Fortune while struggling among mere human interests. They are still untying that knot, and all the bonds which bind them to mortality.

Some are tied more or less tightly by these bonds, and some have even tied themselves up; whereas one who has made progress towards the upper regions and raised themselves upwards drags a looser chain. Though not yet free, they are as good as free.

17.

If, therefore, any one of those dogs who yelp and bark against philosophy were to say, as they are wont to do: ‘Why do you talk so much more bravely than you live? Why do you check your words in the presence of your superiors, and consider money to be necessary? Why are you disturbed when you sustain losses, and weep on hearing of the death of your wife or your friend? Why do you pay regard to common rumour, and feel annoyed by calumnious gossip? Why is your estate more elaborately kept than its natural use requires? Why do you not dine according to your own maxims? Why is your furniture smarter than it need be? Why do you drink wine that is older than yourself? Why are your gardens nicely laid out? Why do you plant trees which afford nothing except shade? Why does your wife wear in her ears the price of a rich man's house? Why are your children at school dressed in costly clothes? Why is it a science to wait upon you at table? Why is your silver plate not set down at random, but skilfully laid in regular order, with a servant to preside over the carving of the meats?’ Add to this, if you like, the questions, ‘Why do you own property overseas? Why do you own more than you can count? It is a shame to you not to know your slaves by sight: for

you must be very neglectful of them if you only own a few, or very extravagant if you have too many for your memory to retain.’

I will add to your reproaches in a minute, and will bring even more accusations against myself than you can think of. But for the present I will give you the following answer: ‘I am not a wise man, and do not try to be one to feed your spite: so do not require me to be on a level with the best of men, but merely to be better than the worst. I am satisfied if every day I take away something from my vices and correct my faults. I have not arrived at perfect soundness of mind, indeed, I never shall arrive at it. I try only to lessen the symptoms, rather than cure my gout, and am satisfied if it comes at rarer intervals and does not strike so painfully. Compared with your feet, which are lame, I am a racer.’

I make this speech, not on my own behalf, for I am steeped in vices of every kind, but on behalf of one who has made some progress in virtue.

18.

‘You talk one way, and live another.’

You most spiteful of creatures, you who always show the bitterest hatred to the best of people, this reproach was flung at Plato, at Epicurus, at Zeno. All these declared how they wanted to live, not how they did live. I speak of virtue, not of myself, and when I blame vices, I blame my own first of all. When I have the power, I shall live as I ought to do. Spite, however deeply steeped in venom, shall not keep me back from what is best. That poison which you spatter on others, with which you choke yourselves, shall not hinder me from continuing to praise that life which I do not, indeed, lead, but which I know I ought to lead, from loving Virtue and from following after her, albeit a long way behind her and with halting gait.

Can we expect that such spitefulness will respect anything, seeing that it respected neither Rutilius nor Cato? Will anyone worry about being thought too rich by men for whom Diogenes the Cynic was not poor enough? That most energetic philosopher fought against all the desires of the body, and was poorer even than the other Cynics; besides having given up possessing anything he had also given up

asking for anything. Yet they reproached him for not being sufficiently in poverty – as though it was poverty, not virtue, which he was wise about.

19.

They say that Diodorus, the Epicurean philosopher, who within these last few days put an end to his life with his own hand, did not act according to the precepts of Epicurus in cutting his throat. Some choose to regard this act as the result of madness, others of recklessness. Diodorus meanwhile, happy and filled with the consciousness of his own goodness, died as he had lived. He praised a life spent at anchor in a safe harbour, and has said what you do not like to hear, because you too ought to do it:

I've lived, I've run the race which Fortune set me.*

You argue about the life and death of another, and yelp at the name of men whom some peculiarly noble quality has rendered great, just as tiny dogs do at the approach of strangers. Because it is to your interest that no one should appear to be good, as if virtue in another were a reproach to all your crimes. You enviously compare the glories of others with your own dirty actions, and do not understand how greatly to your disadvantage it is to do so. For if they who follow after Virtue be greedy, lustful, and fond of power, what must you be, who hate the very name of Virtue? You say that no one properly fulfils their role, or lives according to the standard which they extol in their words and writings. But this can be no surprise, given that the words which they speak are brave, gigantic, and able to weather all the storms which wreck humankind. They themselves are struggling to tear themselves away from crosses into which each one of you is driving a nail. Men who are crucified hang from one single pole, but these who punish themselves are divided between as many crosses as they have lusts, but even then continue to speak evil, and are so contemptuous of the vices of others that you would think they had none of their own, and have time when on the gibbet to spit upon the spectators.

20.

‘Philosophers do not do everything that they teach.’

No. But they do much good by their teaching, by the noble thoughts which they conceive. And if they live out everything they preached, imagine their level of happiness. But in the meantime you have no right to despise good sayings and hearts full of good thoughts. Men deserve praise for engaging in profitable studies, even though they stop short of producing any results. Why should we wonder if those who begin to climb a steep path do not succeed in ascending it very high? Look with respect on those who attempt great things, even though they fall.

It is the act of a generous spirit to proportion its efforts not to its own strength but to that of human nature, to entertain lofty aims, and to conceive plans which are too vast to be carried into execution even by those who are endowed with gigantic intellects. They appoint for themselves the following rules.

I will look upon death or upon a comedy with the same face. I will submit to labours, however great they may be, supporting the strength of my body by that of my mind. I will despise riches when I have them as much as when I do not. If they be elsewhere I will not be more gloomy, if they sparkle around me I will not be more lively than I should otherwise be. Whether Fortune comes or goes I will take no notice of her. I will view all lands as though they belong to me, and my own as though they belonged to all humankind. I will live as to remember that I was born for others, and will thank Nature on this account: for in what fashion could she have done better for me? She has given me alone to all, and all to me alone. Whatever I may possess, I will neither hoard it greedily nor squander it recklessly. I will think that I have no possessions so real as those which I have given away to deserving people. I will not reckon benefits by their magnitude or number, or by anything except the value set upon them by the receiver. I never will consider a gift to be too large if it is bestowed upon a worthy object. I will do nothing because of public opinion, but everything because of conscience.

Whenever I do anything alone by myself I will believe that the eyes of the Roman people are upon me while I do it. In eating and drinking

my object shall be to quench the desires of Nature, not to fill and empty my belly. I will be agreeable with my friends, gentle and mild to my foes. I will grant pardon before I am asked for it, and will meet the wishes of honourable men half-way. I will bear in mind that the world is my native city, that its governors are the gods, and that they stand above and around me, criticizing whatever I do or say.

Whenever either Nature demands my breath again, or reason requires me dismiss it, I will quit this life, calling all to witness that I have loved a good conscience, and good pursuits; that no one's freedom, my own least of all, has been impaired through me.

He who sets up these as the rules of his life will soar aloft and strive to make his way to the gods. Even though he fails, he

Fails in a high enterprise.*

But you, who hate both virtue and those who practise it, are doing nothing we should be surprised about, for sickly lights cannot bear the sun, nocturnal creatures avoid the brightness of day, and at its first dawning become bewildered and scurry back to their dens.

Creatures that fear the light hide themselves in crevices. So croak away, and exercise your miserable tongues in reproaching good people. Open wide your jaws, and bite hard: you will break many teeth before you make any impression on the world.

21.

‘But how is it that this man studies philosophy and nevertheless lives the life of a rich man?* Why does he say that wealth ought to be despised and yet possess it? That life should be despised, and yet live? That health should be despised, and yet guard it with the utmost care, and wish it to be as good as possible? Does he consider banishment to be an empty name, and say, “What evil is there in changing one country for another?” And yet, if he can, he grows old in his native land? Does he declare that there is no difference between a longer and a shorter time, and yet, if he isn't prevented, lengthens out his life and flourishes in a green old age?’

His answer is, that these things ought to be despised, not that he should not possess them; he should not possess them with fear and trembling. He does not drive them away from him, but when they

leave him he follows after them unconcernedly. Where, indeed, can fortune invest riches more securely than in a place from where they can always be recovered without any squabble with their trustee?

Marcus Cato†, when he was praising Curius and Coruncanius and that century in which the possession of a few small silver coins was an offence which was punished by the Censor, himself owned four million sesterces; a less fortune no doubt, than that of Crassus, but larger than of Cato the Censor. If the amounts be compared, he had outstripped his great-grandfather further than he himself was outdone by Crassus, and if still greater riches had fallen to his lot, he would not have spurned them. For the wise man does not think himself unworthy of any chance windfalls. He does not love riches, but he prefers to have them. He does not receive them into his spirit, but only into his house. Nor does he give away what he already possesses, but keeps it, and hopes that he can use it on a larger scale for the good.

22.

Who can doubt that the wise man, if he is rich, has a wider field for the development of his powers than if he is poor, seeing that in the latter case the only virtue which he can display is that of neither being perverted nor crushed by his poverty. Whereas if he has riches, he will have a large opportunity to show temperance, generosity, laboriousness, methodical arrangement, and grandeur. The wise man will never despise himself, however short of stature he may be, but nevertheless he will wish to be tall. Even though he may be feeble and one-eyed he may be in good health, and will want to have bodily strength, even though he knows that he has something which is even more powerful. He will endure illness, and will hope for good health – for some things, though they may be trifles compared with the sum total, and though they may be taken away without destroying the chief good, still add somewhat to that constant cheerfulness which arises from virtue. Riches encourage and brighten up such a man like a sailor is delighted at a favourable wind that bears him on his way, or as people feel pleasure at a fine day or at a sunny spot in the cold weather. What wise man, I mean of our Stoic school, whose only good is virtue, can deny that even these matters which we call neither good nor bad have in themselves a certain value, and that some of

them are preferable to others? To some of them we show a certain amount of respect, and to some a great deal. Do not, then, make any mistake: riches belong to the class of desirable things. If my riches leave me, they will carry away with them nothing except themselves. But you will be bewildered and will seem to be left without yourself if your riches should pass away from you. With me riches occupy a certain place, but with you they occupy the highest place of all. My riches belong to me; you belong to your riches.

23.

Stop, then, forbidding philosophers to possess money: no one has condemned wisdom to poverty. The philosopher may own ample wealth, but will not own wealth which has been torn from another, or which is stained with another's blood. His must be obtained without wronging anyone, and without its being won by base means. It must be honourably gained and honourably spent. However much it is, it will still be an honourable store of wealth – even if it includes that which every person would like to call their own, but which includes nothing that anyone can say is their own.

Such a man will not give up his right to the favour of Fortune, and will neither boast of his inheritance nor blush for it if it was honourably acquired. But he will have something to boast of, if he throws his house open and invites his countrymen in, and can still stay, ‘If any one recognizes here anything belonging to him, let him take it.’ What a great man, how excellently rich will he be, if after this speech he possesses as much as he had before! I say, then, that if he can safely and confidently submit his accounts to the scrutiny of the people, and no one can find in them any item upon which he can lay hands, such a man may boldly and openly enjoy his riches. The wise man will not allow a single ill-won penny to cross his threshold. Yet neither will he refuse or close his door against great riches if they are the gift of Fortune and the product of his virtue. What reason has he for grudging them good quarters? Let them come and be his guests; he will neither brag of them nor hide them away. The one is the part of a silly person, the other of a cowardly and paltry spirit, who tries to keep his wealth wrapped up in his lap. Neither will he, as I said before, turn them out of his house, for what would he say? ‘I do not

know how to use riches?’ He is capable of making a journey on his own feet, but still prefers to mount a carriage. He is capable of being poor, but can still wish to be rich. He will own wealth, but will view it as an uncertain possession which will someday fly away from him.

He will not allow it to be a burden either to himself or to anyone else. He will give it (Why do you prick up your ears? Why do you open your pockets as I speak?) either to good people or to those whom it may make into good people. He will give it after having taken the utmost pains to choose those who are fittest to receive it, as is appropriate to one who knows that he ought to give an account of what he spends as well as of what he receives. He will give for good and commendable reasons, because a gift ill bestowed counts as a shameful loss. He will have an easily opened pocket, but not one with a hole in it. Much may be taken out of it, but nothing may fall out of it.

24.

Anyone who believes giving is an easy matter is mistaken. It offers great difficulties if we are rational in our giving, and do not scatter the wealth impulsively and at random. I do this man a service, I requite a good turn done me by another. I help this person because I pity him, while another is worthy of largesse because he does not deserve to be held down or degraded. I shall not give some people anything, even if they need it, because even if I do give to them it won't fix their situation and they will still want. I will proffer my bounty to some, and will forcibly thrust it upon others. I cannot be neglecting my own interests while I am doing this; I carefully record who I am giving to.

‘What?’ you say, ‘do you give so that you may receive again?’ I do not give to the point of throwing away my bounty, and although I cannot ask for its return, it may well be given back to me. A benefit should be invested in the same manner as a treasure buried deep in the earth, which you would not dig up unless actually obliged. Consider what opportunities to benefit the house of a rich man affords! But why give it only to Roman citizens? Nature requires me do good to all humankind, whether slaves or freemen, free-born or emancipated, whether their freedom be legally acquired or bestowed by

arrangement among friends. Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity to benefit them. Consequently, money may be distributed even within one's own house; the practice of freehandedness is not so called because it is our duty towards free men, but because it emerges from a free-born mind. In the case of the wise man, this never falls upon base and unworthy recipients, and never becomes so exhausted that, whenever it finds a worthy object, it won't flow as if its store was limitless.

You have therefore no grounds for misunderstanding the honourable, brave, and spirited language which you hear from those who are studying philosophy. First of all observe that a student of wisdom is not the same thing as a person who has made themselves perfect in wisdom. The former will say to you, ‘In my talk I express the most admirable sentiments, yet I am still suffering amid countless ills. You must not force me to live up to my rules, because at the present time I am forming myself, moulding my character, and striving to rise to the height of a great example. If I should ever succeed in carrying out all that I have set myself to accomplish, you may then demand that my words and deeds should correspond.’

But one who has reached the summit of human perfection will deal otherwise with you, saying, ‘In the first place, you have no business to allow yourself to sit in judgment upon your betters.’ I have already obtained one proof of my righteousness in having become an object of dislike to bad men. But to give you a rational answer, which I grudge to no one, listen to what I declare, and at what price I value all things. Riches, I say, are not a ‘good’ thing. If they were, they would make people good. As that which is found even among bad men (wealth) cannot be termed good, I do not allow it to be called good. Nevertheless I admit that wealth is desirable and useful and contributes great comforts to our lives.

25.

Learn, then, since we both agree that wealth is desirable, what my reason is in counting it among good things, and in what respects I would behave differently to you in the possession of it.

Place me as master in the house of a very rich man. Place me where gold and silver plate is used for the commonest purposes. I shall not think more of myself because of things which even though they are in my house are not part of me. Take me away to the wooden bridge where the beggars go. I will not despise myself because I am sitting among those who hold out their hands for alms. Because what can the lack of a piece of bread matter to one who is not afraid of dying? I prefer the magnificent house to the beggar's bridge. Place me among magnificent furniture and all the appliances of luxury. But I shall not think myself any happier because my cloak is soft, because my guests rest upon purple cloth. Change the scene: I shall be no more miserable if my weary head rests upon a bundle of hay, if I lie upon a cushion from the circus, with all the stuffing on the point of coming out through its patches of threadbare cloth. I prefer, as far as my feelings go, to show myself in public dressed in wool and in robes of office, rather than with naked or half-covered shoulders. I should like every day's business to turn out just as I wish it to do, and new congratulations to be constantly following upon the former ones. Yet I will not pride myself upon this. Change all this good fortune for its opposite, let my spirit be distracted by losses, grief, various kinds of attacks. Let no hour pass without some dispute. I won't because of this, though beset by the greatest miseries, call myself the most miserable of beings, nor will I curse any particular day, for I have taken care to have no unlucky days.

What, then, is the upshot of all this? It is that I prefer to have to moderate my joys than to stifle my sorrows. The great Socrates would say the same thing to you: Make me, he would say, the conqueror of all nations. Let the voluptuous chariot of Bacchus bear me in triumph to Thebes from the rising of the sun. Let the kings of the Persians receive laws from me. Yet I shall feel myself to be a man at the very moment when all around salute me as a God. Join this lofty height with a headlong fall into misfortune: let me be placed upon a foreign chariot so I may grace the triumph of a proud and savage conqueror. I will follow another's carriage with no more humility than I showed when I stood in my own. And so? In spite of all this, I would rather be a conqueror than a captive. I despise the whole dominion of Fortune, but still, if I were given my choice, I would choose its better parts. I shall make whatever befalls me

become a good thing, but I prefer that what befalls me should be comfortable and pleasant and unlikely to cause me annoyance.

You don't have to believe that any virtue exists without work, but some virtues need spurs, while others need the bridle. Just as we have to slow our body on a downward path, and push it to climb a steep one, so also the path of some virtues leads downhill, that of others uphill. Can we doubt that patience, courage, constancy, and all the other virtues which have to meet strong opposition, and to trample Fortune under their feet, are climbing, struggling, winning their way up a steep ascent? And is it not equally evident that generosity, moderation, and gentleness glide easily downhill? These virtues we have to restrain a little, unless they run away with us.

With the former virtues we have to force and spur them on. We should, therefore, apply the energetic, combative virtues to poverty, and to riches the ones which move lightly along, and merely support their own weight. This being the distinction between them, I would rather have to deal with those which I can practise peacefully, than those of which require blood and sweat.

‘In conclusion’, says our sage, ‘I do not talk one way and live another. But you do not really understand what I say; the sound of my words alone reaches your ears, but you do not try to find out their meaning.’

26.

‘What difference, then, is there between me, a fool, and you, who are a wise man?’

All the difference in the world: for riches are slaves in the house of a wise man, but masters in that of a fool. You accustom yourself to them and cling to them as if somebody had promised that they should be yours forever, but a wise man never thinks so much about poverty as when he is surrounded by riches. No general ever trusts so implicitly in the maintenance of peace as not to make himself ready for a war, which, though it may not actually be waged, has nevertheless been declared. You are rendered over-proud by a fine house, as though it could never be burned or fall down, and your heads are turned by riches as though they were beyond the reach of all dangers and were so great that Fortune has not sufficient strength

to swallow them up. You sit idly playing with your wealth and do not foresee the perils in store for it, as savages generally do when besieged. Not understanding the use of siege artillery, they look on idly at the efforts of the besiegers and do not understand the object of the machines which they are putting together at a distance. And this is exactly what happens to you: you go to sleep over your property, and never reflect how many misfortunes loom menacingly around you on all sides, and soon will plunder you of costly spoils.

But if one takes away riches from the wise man, one leaves him still in possession of all that is his. He still can be happy in the present, and without fear for the future.

The great Socrates, or anyone else who had the same superiority and power to withstand the things of this life, would say: ‘I have no more fixed principle than that of not altering the course of my life to suit your prejudices. You may spout your common talk upon me from all sides. I will not think that you are abusing me, but that you are merely wailing like poor little babies.’ This is what the person will say who possesses wisdom, whose mind, being free from vices, requires them to reproach others, not because they hate them, but in order to improve them. And such a person will say: ‘Your opinion of me affects me with pain, not for my own sake but for yours, because to hate perfection and to assail virtue is in itself a giving up of all hope of doing well. You do me no harm, just as humans do not harm the gods when they overthrow their altars. But it is clear that your intention is an evil one and that you will wish to do harm even where you are not able. I bear with your inane prattling in the same spirit in which Jupiter, best and greatest, bears with the idle tales of the poets, one of whom represents him with wings, another with horns, another as an adulterer staying out all night, another dealing harshly with the gods, another unjust to men, another as the seducer of noble youths whom he carries off by force (and those, too, his own relatives), another as a parricide and the conqueror of another's kingdom, even his father's.

The only result of such tales is that men feel less shame at committing sin if they believe the gods to be guilty of such actions. But although this conduct of yours does not hurt me, for your own sake I advise you to respect Virtue. Believe those who having long followed her cry that what they follow is a thing of might, and every

day getting mightier. Revere her as you would the gods, and revere her followers as you would the priests of the gods. And whenever any mention of sacred writings is made, favete linguis – favour us with silence. This word is not derived, as most people imagine, from favour, but commands silence, so that divine rites can be performed without being interrupted by any words of evil omen. It is important that you yourself should follow this, so that whenever utterance is made by that oracle, you will listen to it with attention and in silence. Whenever anyone beats a sistrum*, pretending to do so by divine command, whenever you see someone grazing his own skin on arms and shoulders with blood from light cuts, when anyone crawls on his knees howling along the street, or any old man clad in linen comes forth in daylight with a lamp and laurel branch and cries out that one of the gods is angry, you crowd round him and listen to his words. In these cases everyone increases the other's wonderment by declaring such people to be divinely inspired.

27.

Now listen! From the prison where they kept him, which by entering he cleansed from shame and rendered more honourable than any senate house, hear Socrates addressing you: ‘What is this madness of yours? Why are you like this, at war alike with gods and men, which leads you to impugn virtue and to outrage holiness with malicious accusations? Praise those who are good, if you can; if not, pass them by in silence. If you take pleasure in this offensive abusiveness, then attack each other. Because when you rage against Heaven, I'm not saying that you commit sacrilege, but you waste your time. I was once lampooned by Aristophanes. Since then all the crew of comic poets have made me the subject of their venomous wit. Yet my virtue has been made to shine more brightly by the very blows which have been aimed at it, for it is to its advantage to be brought before the public and exposed. No one understands its greatness more than those who assaulted it and in the process made it stronger. The hardness of flint is known best to those who strike it. I offer myself to all attacks, like some lonely rock in a shallow sea, which the waves never cease to beat upon from whatever quarter they may come, but which they cannot move from its place or wear away, however many years they may unceasingly smash against it. Crash upon me, rush

upon me, I will overcome you by enduring your attack. Whatever strikes against that which is firm and unconquerable merely injures itself by its own violence. Seek some soft and yielding object to pierce with your darts. But do you have the time to peer into other men's evil deeds and to sit in judgment upon anybody? To ask how it is that this philosopher has so roomy a house, or that one so good a dinner? Do you look at other people's pimples while you yourselves are covered with countless ulcers? This is like the one who was consumed by constant itching, pointing with scorn at the moles and warts on the bodies of the most beautiful people. Reproach Plato for having sought money, reproach Aristotle with having obtained it, Democritus with having disregarded it, and Epicurus for having spent it. Cast sculptures of the scandalous Phaedrus* and Alcibiades† in my own likeness, you who reach the height of enjoyment whenever you get an opportunity of even imitating our vices! Why don't you instead cast your eyes around yourselves and see the ills which tear you to pieces on every side, some attacking you from the outside, some burning away internally? Humanity has yet to reach a point where, even if you don't understand your own situation, it is fine for you to be wasting time reproaching your superiors.

28.

All this you do not understand, and you maintain a facial expression‎ which does not match your condition, like those men who sit in enjoyment in the circus or the theatre before having learned that someone has died in their family. But I, looking forward from a lofty standpoint, can see what storms are either threatening you, and will burst in torrents upon you later, or are close upon you and on the point of sweeping away all that you possess. Though you are hardly aware of it, there is a whirling hurricane at this moment spinning round and confusing your minds, making you seek and avoid the very same things. In one moment you are being raised aloft, and at the other being dashed below.

NOTES

* Seneca's older brother c. 5 BCE–65 CE. See notes in Introduction.

Nomentanus is mentioned in Horace's Satires as a famously debauched man. Marcus Gavius Apicius was a gourmand during the reign of Tiberius who wrote a popular cookbook.

The cult of the goddess Cybele had a caste of eunuch priests who dressed as women. Their castration ceremony, the ‘Day of Blood’, involved wild dancing with drums and tambourines.

Notorious sandbanks off the coast of Libya that sailors avoided.

A state of affairs ruled by reason.

Virgil, Eclogues.

Ovid, Metamorphoses.

Seneca is talking of himself here.

† Cato the Younger. Curius and Coruncanius are spoken of here as eminent and upright statesmen of an older Roman age.

A metal rattle used in Roman religious ceremonies, particularly in worship of the goddess Isis.

Greek aristocrat and friend of Socrates c. 444–393 BCE, associated with eroticism.

† Greek statesman and general c. 450–404 BCE.

CHAPTER THREE ON PEACE OF MIND

To Serenus*

SERENUS:

When I examine myself, Seneca, some vices appear on the surface, where I can lay my hands on them, while others are less distinct and harder to reach. Some are not always present, but recur at intervals; these are the most troublesome, being like a roving enemy that attacks when he sees his opportunity, and who won't let you stand on your guard as in war, or let you take your rest without fear as in peace.

The position that I find myself in (and why should I not tell you the truth as I would to a doctor), is that of neither being thoroughly set free from the vices which I fear and hate, nor yet quite in bondage to them. My state of mind, though not the worst possible, is a discontented and sulky one. I am neither ill nor well. It's of no use for you to tell me that all virtues are weak at the outset, and acquire strength and solidity over time, because I am well aware that even those which do help our outward appearance, such as grandeur, a reputation for eloquence, and everything that appeals to others, gain power by time. Virtues which afford us real strength and those which delude us in a more attractive form, require long years before they gradually are adopted by us. And I fear that custom, which confirm‎s most things, implants this latter vice more and more deeply in me.

Long acquaintance with both good and bad people leads one to esteem them all alike.

What this state of weakness really is, when the mind stops between two opinions without any strong inclination towards either good or evil, I intend to show you gradually rather than all at once. I will tell you what ails me, and you can tell me the name of the disease. I have

to confess the greatest possible love of thrift: I do not care for a bed with gorgeous hangings, nor for clothes brought out of a chest, or pressed under weights and made glossy by frequent manipulations, but for common and cheap ones that require no care either to keep them or to put them on. For food I do not want what requires whole troops of servants to make, nor what is ordered many days before and served up by many hands, but food that is easy to come by, with nothing far-fetched or costly about it, to be had in every part of the world, burdensome neither to one's fortune nor one's body, not likely to go out of the body by the same path by which it came in. I like a rough and unpolished servant; I like my country-bred father's heavy silver plate stamped with no maker's name; I do not want an antique table that is known by the number of fashionable people to whom it has successively belonged, but one which is merely useful, and which causes no guest's eye to dwell upon it with pleasure or to kindle at it with envy. While I am well satisfied with this, I am reminded of the clothes of a certain schoolboy, dressed with care and splendour, of slaves decked out in gold and a whole regiment of glittering attendants. I think of houses too, where one treads on precious stones, and where valuables lie about in every corner, where the very roof is brilliantly painted, and where all the citizenry watch a family get onto the road to ruin. What shall I say of waters, transparent to the very bottom, which flow round the guests, and banquets worthy of the theatre in which they take place? Coming as I do from a long line of dull thrift, I find myself surrounded by the most brilliant luxury, which echoes around me on every side. My sight becomes a little dazzled by it; I can lift up my heart against it more easily than my eyes. When I return from seeing it I am a sadder, though not a worse man. I cannot walk amid my own possessions with so lofty a step as before, and silently there steals over me a feeling of vexation, and a doubt whether that way of life may not be better than mine.

None of these things alter my principles, yet all of them disturb me.

It's always been my intention to obey the maxims of our school and plunge into public life. To obtain office and become consul, not because the purple robe and lictor's axes* attract me, but so I am able to be of use to my friends, my relatives, to all my countrymen, and indeed to all humankind. Ready and determined, I follow the advice of our Stoic teachers Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, all of

whom bid us to take part in public affairs, though none of them ever did so themselves. But then, as soon as something disturbs my mind, which is not used to receiving shocks, as soon as something occurs which is either disgraceful, such as often occurs in all men's lives, or which is difficult, or when subjects of very little importance require me to devote a great deal of time to them, I go back to my life of leisure. Just as even tired cattle go faster when they are going home, I wish to retire and pass my life within the walls of my house. I say: ‘No one shall rob me of a day. Let my mind be contained within itself and improve itself. Let it take no part with other men's affairs, and do nothing which depends on the approval of others. Let me enjoy a tranquillity undisturbed by either public or private troubles.’

But whenever my spirit is roused by reading some inspiring words, or some noble example spurs me into action, I want to rush into the law courts to make my voice useful to someone, and to try to help them even though I may not succeed, or to quell the pride of some lawyer who is puffed up by ill-deserved success. And I really believe that in philosophical speculation it is better to view things as they are, and let the issue or cause direct what I say and do, and to let my speech simply follow. I say to myself: ‘Why do you want to construct a fabric that will endure for ages? Isn't it so posterity may talk of you? Yet you were born to die, and a silent death is the least wretched. Write something therefore in a simple style, merely to pass the time, for your own use, and not for publication. Less labour is needed when one does not look beyond the present.’

When the mind is elevated by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ostentatious in its use of words; the loftier its aspirations, the more loftily it desires to express them. At such times I forget my mild and moderate determination and soar higher than I wished, using a language that is not my own. Not to go on, but in all things I have this weakness of a well-meaning mind, to whose level I fear that I shall be gradually brought down. Or, what is even more worrying, that there may be more the matter with me than I myself perceive; because we take a rosy view of our own private affairs, and that bias always obscures our judgment. I fancy that many people might have become wise had they not believed themselves to have become so already, and if they had not purposely deceived themselves as to some parts of their character, and passed by others with their eyes

shut. Because there is no reason to believe that other people's self-flattery is worse than our own. Who dares to tell himself the truth? Who is there, regardless of how many courtiers surround him, who in spite of them is not his own greatest flatterer? I beg you, therefore, if you have any remedy by which you could stop this vacillation of mine, to deem me worthy to owe my peace of mind to you. I am well aware that these waverings of mind are not a real danger and don't threaten me with any serious disorder. To express what I complain of in an exact simile, I am not suffering from a storm, but from seasickness. Take from me, then, this evil, whatever it may be, and help one who is in distress within sight of land.

SENECA:

I have long been silently asking myself, my friend Serenus, to what I should compare such a condition of mind. I find that nothing more closely resembles it than the conduct of those who, after having recovered from a long and serious illness, occasionally experience slight pains and twinges. Although they have passed through the final stages of the disease, they have suspicions it has not left them, and though in perfect health hold out their pulse to be felt by the doctor, and whenever they feel warm suspect that the fever is returning. Such people, Serenus, are not unhealthy, but they are not accustomed to being healthy; just as even a quiet sea or lake nevertheless displays a certain amount of ripple when its waters are subsiding after a storm. What you need, therefore, is, not any of those harsher remedies to which allusion has been made, not that you should in some cases check yourself, in others be angry with yourself, in others sternly reproach yourself, but that you should adopt that which comes last in the list: have confidence in yourself, and believe that you are proceeding on the right path, without being led aside by the numerous divergent tracks of wanderers which cross it in every direction, some of them circling about the right path itself.

mind, for there is no need to so exactly copy the words of the Greek idiom. The meaning is the same. What we are talking about is how the mind can always pursue a steady, unruffled course, may be pleased with itself, and look with pleasure upon its surroundings, and experience no interruption of this joy, but abide in a peaceful condition without being ever either elated or depressed; this is ‘peace of mind’.

Let us now go into how it can be attained, then you can apply as much as you choose of the universal remedy to your own case. We will look at the entire disease, and then each one can recognize their own part of it. At the same time you will understand how much less you suffer by your self-deprecation than those who are bound by some showy declaration which they have made, and are oppressed by some grand title of honour, so that shame rather than their own free will forces them to keep up the pretence. The same thing applies both to those who suffer from fickleness and continual changes of purpose, who always are fondest of what they have given up, and those who merely yawn and dawdle. Add to these those who, like bad sleepers, turn from side to side, and settle themselves first in one manner and then in another, until at last they find rest through sheer weariness; in forming the habits of their lives they often end up adopting ones simply because they can't face taking on anything new. Then there are the dull ones, who go on living not in the way they wish, but in the way they have begun to live. There are other special forms of this disease without number, but it has but one effect, that of making people dissatisfied with themselves. This arises from a distemperature of mind and from desires which one is afraid to express or unable to fulfil, when people either dare not attempt as much as they wish to do, or fail in their efforts and depend entirely upon hope. Such people are always fickle and changeable, which is a necessary consequence of living in a state of suspense; they take any way to arrive at their ends, and teach and force themselves to use both dishonourable and difficult means to do so, so that when their toil has been in vain they are made wretched by the disgrace of failure, and do not regret having longed for what was wrong, but having longed for it in vain. They then begin to feel sorry for what they have done, and afraid to begin again, and their mind falls by degrees into a state of endless vacillation, because they can neither

command nor obey their passions; of hesitation, because their life cannot properly develop itself; and of decay, as the mind becomes stupefied by disappointments. All these symptoms become aggravated when their dislike of a laborious misery has driven them to idleness and to secret studies, which are unendurable to a mind eager to take part in public affairs, desirous of action and naturally restless because, of course, it finds too few resources within itself.

When therefore it loses the amusement which business itself affords to busy people, it cannot endure home, loneliness, or the walls of a room, and regards itself with dislike when left to itself. Hence arises that weariness and dissatisfaction with oneself, that tossing to and fro of a mind which can nowhere find rest, that unhappy and unwilling endurance of enforced leisure.

In all cases where one feels ashamed to confess the real cause of one's suffering, and where modesty leads one to drive one's sufferings inward, the desires pent up in a little space without any vent choke one another. So comes melancholy and drooping of spirit, and a thousand waverings of the unsteadfast mind, which is held in suspense by unfulfilled hopes and saddened by disappointed ones.

So comes the state of mind of those who hate their idleness, but complain that they have nothing to do, and view the progress of others with the bitterest jealousy. Because an unhappy sloth favours the growth of envy, and people who cannot succeed themselves wish everyone else to be ruined. This dislike of other's progress and despair of one's own produces a mind angered against Fortune, addicted to complaining of the age in which it lives, to retiring into corners and brooding over its misery, until it becomes sick and weary of itself. The human mind is naturally nimble and good at movement; it delights in every opportunity of excitement and forgetfulness of itself, and the worse a person's disposition the more they delight in it, because they like to wear themselves out with busy action, just as some sores long for the hands that injure them and delight in being touched, and the foul itch enjoys anything that scratches it. Similarly I assure you that these minds, over which desires have spread like evil ulcers, take pleasure in toils and troubles, for there are some things which please our body while at the same time they give it a certain amount of pain, such as turning oneself over and changing one's side before it is wearied, or cooling

oneself in one position after another. It is like Homer's Achilles, lying first upon its face, then upon its back, placing itself in various attitudes, and, as sick people are wont, enduring none of them for long, and using changes as though they were remedies. Hence people undertake aimless wanderings, travel along distant shores, at one time at sea, at another by land, trying to soothe that fickleness of disposition which always is dissatisfied with the present: ‘Now let us make for Campania*; now I am sick of rich cultivation, let us see wild regions; let us travel the passes of Bruttii and Lucania. Yet amid this wilderness one wants something of beauty to relieve pampered eyes after so long dwelling on untamed areas: let us seek Tarentum with its famous harbour, its mild winter climate, and its district, rich enough to support even the great hordes of ancient times. Let us now return to town: our ears have too long missed its shouts and noise; it would be pleasant also to enjoy the sight of human bloodshed.’ So one journey succeeds another, and one sight is changed for another. As Lucretius† says:

Thus every mortal from himself does flee.

But what can we gain if we can't escape from ourselves? We weigh ourselves down by our own burdensome companionship. We must understand, therefore, that what we suffer from is not the fault of the places but of ourselves: we are weak when there is anything to be endured, and cannot support either labour or pleasure, either our own business or anyone else's for long. This has driven some people to death, because by frequently altering their purpose they were always brought back to the same point, and had left themselves no room for anything new. They had become sick of life and of the world itself, and as all indulgences palled upon them they began to ask themselves the question, ‘How long are we to go on doing the same thing?’

You ask me what I think we had better make use of to help us manage this ennui. The best thing, as Athenodorus* says, is to occupy oneself with business, with the management of affairs of state, and the duties of a citizen: for as some pass the day in

exercising themselves in the sun and in taking care of their bodily health, and athletes find it most useful to spend the greater part of their time in feeding up the muscles and strength to whose cultivation they have devoted their lives – so with you who are training your mind to take part in the struggles of political life, it is far more honourable to also be at work than to be idle. He whose object is to be of service to his countrymen and to all mortals, both develops himself and does good at the same time when he is engrossed in business and is working to the best of his ability in the interests of the public and in private matters.

But, continues Athenodorus, because innocence is hardly safe among such furious ambitions, and there are so many ready to turn you from the right path, we should seek to withdraw ourselves from the forum and from public life. Yet a great mind can always find a private space in which to be mentally free. Confinement in dens restrains the leaping of lions and wild creatures, but this does not apply to human beings, who often effect the most important works in retirement. We should withdraw ourselves in such a way that even in leisure we wish to benefit ourselves and humankind alike, both with our intellect, our voice, and our advice. The one who does good service to the state is not only he who brings forward candidates for public office, defends accused persons, and gives his vote on questions of peace and war, but who encourages the young to do well, instilling into their minds the principles of virtue, who seizes and holds back those who are rushing wildly in pursuit of riches and luxury, or at least checking their course. Such a person does service to the public even while in a private capacity. Who does the most good, he who decides cases between foreigners and citizens (as praetor peregrinus) or between citizens and citizens (as praetor urbanus), pronouncing sentences to the suitors written up by his assistant – or he who shows them what is meant by justice, duty, endurance, courage, contempt of death and knowledge of the gods, and how much one is helped by a good conscience?

If then you devote to philosophy the time which you take away from public service, you will not be a deserter or have refused to perform your duty. A soldier is not merely one who stands in the ranks and defends the right or the left wing of the army, but he also who guards the gates – a service which, though less dangerous, is no easy

sinecure – who keeps watch, and takes charge of the arsenal. These are bloodless duties, yet they count as military service. As soon as you have devoted yourself to philosophy, you will have overcome all disgust at life; you will not wish for darkness because you are weary of the light, nor will you be a trouble to yourself and useless to others. You will acquire many friends, and all the best people will be attracted towards you. Because virtue, even in an apparently obscure place, cannot be hidden, but gives signs of its presence. Anyone who is worthy will find it by its footsteps. But if we give up all society, turn our backs upon the whole human race, and live communing with ourselves alone, this solitude without any interesting purpose will lead nowhere. We will stop being constructive and instead undertake things that go against Nature, trying to dam the sea, to cause waters to flow through rock, and generally to make a bad use of the time which Nature has given us. Some of us use time grudgingly, others wastefully; some of us spend it so that we can show a profit and loss account, others so that there will be nothing left, of which nothing can be more shameful. Often a person who is very old in years has nothing beyond his age by which he can prove that he has lived a long time.

To me, my dearest Serenus, Athenodorus seems to have yielded too completely to the times, to have fled too soon. I won't deny that sometimes a person must retire, but you should do it slowly, at walking pace, without losing your standards or your honours as a soldier. Those who make terms with weapons in their hands are more respected by their enemies and will be better treated.

This is what I think should be done by virtue and by one who practises virtue: if Fortune or events get the upper hand and deprive a person of the power of action, let them not straightaway turn their back to the enemy, throw away their weapons, and run away seeking for a hiding place, as if there were any place where Fortune could not pursue them. Instead, let them be more careful in accepting roles of public office, and only after due deliberation look for ways to be of use to the state. Are they not able to serve in the army? Then let them become a candidate for civic honours. Must they work in the private

sector only? Then let them work as a lawyer. Are they condemned to keep silence? Then let them be of help to their fellow citizens with silent counsel. Is it dangerous for them even to enter the forum?

Then let them prove themselves a good comrade, a faithful friend, a sober guest in people's houses, at public shows, and at dinner parties. Suppose they have lost the status of a citizen and been exiled; then let it be that they are magnanimously refusing to confine themselves within the walls of one city, and instead enjoying intercourse with all lands; as a citizen of the world they can obtain a wider theatre on which to display their virtue. Is the bench of judges closed to you, are you forbidden to address the people from the hustings, or to be a candidate at elections? Then turn your eyes away from Rome, and see what a wide extent of territory, what number of nations present themselves before you.

So it is that it is never possible for so many outlets to be closed against your ambition that more will not open up. Check that the whole idea that you are thwarted doesn't arise from your own thinking. You don't want to direct the affairs of the state except as consul or prytanis or meddix or sufes*. But what would happen if you refused to serve in the army except as a general or a military tribune? Even though others may be in the front line, and you have found yourselves among the veterans of the third line, do your duty there with your voice, encouragement, example, and spirit. Even though a man's hands be cut off, he may find means to help his side in a battle, if he stands his ground and cheers on his comrades. Do something of that sort yourself. If Fortune removes you from the front rank, stand your ground nevertheless and cheer on your comrades, and if somebody stops you speaking, stand nevertheless and help your side in silence. The services of a good citizen are never thrown away: one does good by being heard and seen, by one's positivity, gestures, silent determination, and even the way one walks. Just as some remedies benefit us by their smell as well as by their taste and touch, so Virtue even when concealed and at a distance sheds usefulness around. Whether she moves freely or only appears in time of danger or crisis, whether she be unemployed, silent, pent up in a narrow lodging, or openly displayed, in whatever guise Virtue may appear, she always does good. What, do you think that a person who has retired from public life has no value?

Whenever it happens that the state of public affairs stops you leading a more active or public life, it is absolutely fine to pursue a life mixing business and leisure. Because you are never so cut off from things that there is no room left for honourable action.

Could you anywhere find a more miserable city than that of Athens when it was being torn to pieces by the Thirty Tyrants*. They killed thirteen hundred citizens, all the best men, and their cruelty stimulated them to keep going. In the city which possessed that most reverend tribunal, the Court of the Areopagus, which had a Senate and a popular assembly which was like a Senate, there met daily a wretched crew of butchers executing people, and so the unhappy Senate House was crowded with tyrants. It seemed impossible for Athenians to conceive hopes of getting back their liberty, and they could not see a way out from such a mass of evil: where could the unhappy state obtain all the Harmodiuses† it would need to slay so many tyrants? Yet Socrates was around, and he consoled its mourning city fathers, encouraged those who despaired of the republic, reproached rich men who feared for their wealth, and moved about as a great example to those who wished to imitate him, because he walked a free man in the midst of thirty masters.

However, Athens put him to death in prison, and Freedom herself could not endure the freedom of one who had treated a whole band of tyrants with scorn. It shows that even in an oppressed state a wise person can find an opportunity for bringing themselves to the front, and that in a prosperous and flourishing one wanton insolence, jealousy, and a thousand other cowardly vices can dominate. We should therefore expand or contract ourselves according to whatever state we find ourselves in, because Fortune always offers us opportunities. But in any case we ought to move and not become frozen by fear. He is the best man who, even when danger menaces him on every side and weapons and chains strew his path, his virtue is not concealed or reduced. Seeking to hide will not save you. I think that Curius Dentatus* spoke truly when he said that he would rather be dead than alive but morally dead. The worst evil of all is to die before your time. But it is your duty, if you happen to live in an age when you cannot serve the state, to devote more time to leisure and

to literature. Thus, just as though you were making a perilous voyage, you may from time to time put into harbour, and set yourself free from public affairs without waiting for you to be made so.

We should first examine our own selves and our motives, next the business which we propose to transact and its purpose, next the people we will transact it with.

It is above all things necessary to form a true estimate of oneself, because as a rule we think that we can do more than we are able. One man is led too far through confidence in his eloquence, another demands more from his estate than it can produce, another tires out his body through work. Some men are too thin-skinned for the conduct of public affairs, which requires an unblushing front. Some men's obstinate pride renders them unfit for courts. Some cannot control their anger, and break into unguarded language on the slightest provocation. Some cannot rein in their wit or resist making risky jokes. For all these men, leisure is better than employment: a bold, haughty, and impatient nature ought to avoid anything that may lead it to use the freedom of speech which will bring it to ruin.

Next we must form an estimate of the matter which we mean to deal with, and compare our strength with the deed we are about to attempt – because the bearer should always be more powerful than his load; indeed, loads which are too heavy for their bearer must of necessity crush him. Some kinds of work are not so important in themselves but they require a lot of time and involve us in new and various forms of work. These should be refused because you should not engage in anything from which you are not free to retreat. Only apply yourself to something which you can finish, or at any rate can hope to finish; you had better not meddle with those operations which grow in importance while they are being transacted, and which will not stop where you intended them to stop.

In all cases one should be careful in one's choice of colleagues and business partners, and see whether they are worthy of our bestowing

a part of our life upon them, or whether we shall waste our own time and theirs too; because some even consider us to be in their debt because of our services to them. Athenodorus said that ‘he would not so much as dine with a man who would not be grateful to him for doing so’. Meaning, I imagine, that he wouldn't go to dinner with anyone who offers meals in kind for services, and regards courses of dishes as donations, overrating themselves as doing an honour to others by their presence. Take away from these men their witnesses and spectators: they will take no pleasure in solitary gluttony.

You must decide whether your disposition is better suited for vigorous action or for tranquil speculation and contemplation, and go with whatever your genius inclines you for. The orator Isocrates laid hands upon Ephorus, the future historian, and led him away from the forum, thinking that he would be more usefully employed in compiling chronicles. No good is done by forcing one's mind to engage in uncongenial work: it is silly to struggle against Nature. Yet nothing delights the mind so much as faithful and pleasant friendship: what a blessing it is when you have one to receive all your secrets with safety, whose knowledge of your actions you fear less than your own conscience, whose conversation removes your anxieties, whose advice assists your plans, whose cheerfulness dispels your gloom, whose very sight delights you! We should choose for our friends people who are, as far as possible, free from strong desires, because vices are contagious and injure those who touch them. Just as in times of pestilence we have to be careful not to sit near people who are infected and in whom the disease is raging, because we will catch the plague from their very breath, so too, in choosing our friends' dispositions, we must take care to select those who are as far as possible not tarnished by the world. Because the way to breed disease is to mix what is good with what is rotten.

Yet I don't advise you to follow after or draw to yourself only the wise, because such people are few and far between. You would do well to befriend at least people who are less bad. But you could hardly have made a happier choice than if you could have found a good friend from among the Platos and Xenophons and the rest of the students of Socrates, or if you had been permitted to choose one from the age of Cato, an age which bore many men worthy to be born in his time (just as it also bore many men worse than were ever

known before, planners of the blackest crimes; for it needed both classes in order to make Cato understood: it wanted both good men, that he might win their approbation, and bad men, against whom he could prove his strength). But in the present day, when there is such a lack of good people, you must be less squeamish in your choice.

Above all, however, avoid dismal men who grumble at whatever happens, and find something to complain of in everything. Though he may seem loyal and friendly towards you, still one's peace of mind is destroyed by a comrade whose mind is soured and who meets every incident with a groan.

Let's now move on to the matter of property and money, that most fertile source of human sorrows. For if you compare all the other ills from which we suffer – deaths, sicknesses, fears, regrets, endurance of pains and labours – with those miseries which our money inflicts upon us, the latter will far outweigh all the others. Reflect, then, how much less a grief it is never to have had any money than to have lost it; the less we have in the first place, the less torment it has with which to afflict us. You are mistaken if you suppose that the rich bear their losses with greater spirit than the poor; a wound causes the same amount of pain to the greatest and the smallest body. It was a neat saying of Bion's, ‘that it hurts bald men as much as hairy men to have their hairs pulled out’. Be assured that the same thing is true of rich and poor people, that their suffering is equal; for their money cannot be torn away without their feeling it. Yet it is more endurable, as I have said, and easier, not to gain property than to lose it, and therefore you will find that those upon whom Fortune has never smiled are more cheerful than those whom she has deserted.

Diogenes, a man of infinite spirit, perceived this, and made it impossible that anything should be taken from him. Call this security from loss poverty, want, necessity, or any contemptuous name you please – I shall consider such a person to be happy who has nothing to lose. Among so many misers and robbers, it's best to be the one man who cannot be injured. If anyone doubts the happiness of Diogenes, they would also doubt whether the state of the immortal gods was one of sufficient happiness – because they have no farms or

gardens, no valuable estates let to difficult tenants, and no large loans in the money market.

Are you not ashamed of yourself, you who gaze upon riches with astonished admiration? Look upon the universe: you will see the gods quite bare of property, and possessing nothing though they give everything. Do you think that a person who has stripped themselves of all accessories is a pauper, or more like the immortal gods? Do you think Demetrius, Pompey's freedman, was happy with all his wealth, when all he had wanted was to have a roomier cell than the other slaves? Diogenes's only slave ran away from him, and when he was pointed out to Diogenes, he did not think him worth fetching back. ‘It is a shame’, he said, ‘that Manes should be able to live without Diogenes, and that Diogenes should not be able to live without Manes’. He seems to me to have said, ‘Fortune, mind your own business; Diogenes has nothing left that belongs to you. Did my slave run away? No, he went away from me as a free man.’ A household of slaves requires food and clothing; the bellies of so many hungry creatures have to be filled. We must buy clothes for them, must watch their thievish hands, and we must make use of the services of people who don't like us. How far happier is he who has no debt to anyone except for what he can deprive himself of with the greatest ease! Since we, however, have not such strength of mind as this, we should at any rate seek to reduce the extent of our property, in order to be less exposed to the assaults of Fortune. Those men whose bodies can be within the shelter of their armour, are more fitted for war than those whose huge size everywhere extends beyond it, and exposes them to wounds. The best amount of money to have is that which is enough to keep us from poverty, but yet is not far beyond poverty.

We will be pleased with this measure of wealth if we have previously taken pleasure in thrift, without which no riches are sufficient.

Poverty can convert itself into riches. Let us be ready to set aside mere outward show, and to measure things by their uses, not by their ornamental value. Let our hunger be tamed by food, our thirst quenched by drinking, our lust confined within needful bounds. Let

us arrange our dress and way of life according to what was approved of by our ancestors, not in imitation of new-fangled fashions. Let us learn to moderate ourselves, to repress luxury, to set bounds to our pride, to assuage our anger, to look upon poverty without prejudice, to practise thrift. Let us keep all undisciplined hopes and aspirations as it were under lock and key, and make it our business to get our riches from ourselves and not from Fortune. In terms of the vast diversity and malignity of misfortune with which we are threatened, we are more likely to feel the weight of many gusts if we offer a large spread of canvas to the wind; we must draw our affairs into a small compass, so the darts of Fortune will miss us. For this reason, sometimes slight mishaps have turned into remedies, and more serious disorders have been healed by slighter ones. When the mind pays no attention to good advice, and cannot be brought to its senses by milder measures, why wouldn't we accept that its interests are being served by poverty, disgrace, or financial ruin being applied to it? One evil is balanced by another.

Let us then teach ourselves to be able to dine without all Rome to look on, to be the slaves of fewer slaves, to get clothes which fulfil their original purpose, and to live in a smaller house. The inner curve is the one to take, not only in running races and in the contests of the circus, but also in the race of life; even literary pursuits, the most becoming thing for a gentleman to spend money upon, are only justifiable as long as they are kept within bounds. What is the use of possessing numberless books and libraries, whose titles their owner can hardly read through in a lifetime? A student is overwhelmed by such a mass, not instructed, and it is much better to devote yourself to a few writers than to skim through many. Forty thousand books were burned at Alexandria*. Some would have praised this library as a most noble memorial of royal wealth, like Titus Livius, who says that it was ‘a splendid result of the taste and attentive care of the kings’. It had nothing to do with taste or care, but was a piece of learned luxury, indeed not even learned, since they amassed it not for the sake of learning, but to make a show, like many men who know less about letters than a slave is expected to know, and who use their books not to help them in their studies but to ornament their dining room. Let us obtain as many books as we want, then, but not for show. ‘It is more respectable’, you say, ‘to spend one's money on

such books than on vases of Corinthian brass and paintings’. Not so: everything that is carried to excess is wrong. What excuses can you find for someone who is eager to buy bookcases of ivory and citrus wood, to collect the works of unknown or discredited authors, and who sits yawning amid so many thousands of books, whose backs and titles please him more than any other part of them? So it is that in the houses of the laziest of men you will see the works of all the orators and historians stacked upon bookshelves reaching right up to the ceiling. At the present day a library has become as necessary an appendage to a house as a hot and cold bath. I would excuse them straightaway if they really were carried away by an excessive zeal for literature; but as it is, these costly works of sacred genius, with all the illustrations that adorn them, are merely bought for display and to serve as wall furniture.

10.

Suppose, however, that your life has become full of trouble, and that without knowing what you were doing you have fallen into some snare which either public or private fortune has set for you, and that you can neither untie nor break. At this moment, remember that fettered men suffer much at first from the burdens and clogs upon their legs; afterwards, when they have made up their minds not to fret themselves about them, but to endure them, necessity teaches them to bear them bravely, and habit to bear them easily. In every level of life you will find amusements, relaxations, and enjoyments, especially if you are willing to make light of evils rather than to hate them. Knowing to what sorrows we were born, there is nothing for which Nature more deserves our thanks than for having invented habit as an alleviation of misfortune, which soon accustoms us to the severest evils. No one could hold out against misfortune if it carried the same force as at its beginning.

We are all chained to Fortune: some men's chain is loose and made of gold, that of others is tight and of meaner metal: but what difference does this make? We are all included in the same captivity, and even those who have bound us are bound themselves, unless you think that a chain on the left side is lighter to bear. One man may be bound by public office, another by wealth; some have to bear the

weight of illustrious, some of humble, birth. Some are subject to the commands of others, some only to their own. Some are kept in one place by being banished there, others by being elected to the priesthood. All life is slavery: let each man therefore reconcile himself to his lot, complain of it as little as possible, and lay hold of whatever good lies within his reach. No condition can be so wretched that an impartial mind can find no compensations in it. Small rooms, if ingeniously divided, may be made use of for many different purposes, and arrangement will render ever so narrow a room habitable. Apply good sense to your difficulties: it is possible to soften what is harsh, to widen what is too narrow, and to make heavy burdens press less severely upon one who bears them skilfully.

Moreover, we ought not to allow our desires to wander far afield, but we must make them confine themselves to our immediate neighbourhood, since they will not endure to be altogether locked up. We must leave alone things which either cannot come to pass or can only be effected with difficulty, and follow after such things as are near at hand and within reach of our hopes, always remembering that all things are equally unimportant, and that though they have a different outward appearance, they are all alike empty within.

Neither should we envy those who are in high places, as the heights which look lofty to us are steep and rugged. There are many who feel they have to cling to their high pinnacle of power, because they cannot descend from it without falling; yet they assure us that their greatest burden is being obliged to be burdensome to others, and that they are nailed to their lofty post rather than raised to it. Let them then, by dispensing justice, clemency, and kindness with an open and liberal hand, provide themselves with assistance to break their fall, and so they can maintain their position more hopefully.

Nothing sets us free from these alternations of hope and fear as much as always fixing some limit to our successes, and not allowing Fortune to choose when to stop our career, but to stop of our own accord long before we apparently need do so. By acting this way we will continue to feel inspired, and yet having given ourselves limits, we will not be led to embark on vast and vague enterprises which have no certainty.

11.

These remarks of mine apply only to imperfect, common, and unsound natures, not to the wise person, who doesn't need to be timid and walk cautiously. Because such a person has such confidence in themselves that they do not hesitate to go directly into the teeth of Fortune, and never will give way to her. Nor indeed do they have any reason for fearing her, for they count not only chattels, property, and high office, but even their body, eyes, hands, and everything whose use makes life dearer to us, indeed, even their very self, to be things whose possession is uncertain. They live as though they had borrowed them, and are ready to return them cheerfully whenever they are claimed. Yet such a person does not hold himself cheap, because they know that they are not their own, but perform all their duties as carefully and prudently as a pious and scrupulous person would take care of property left in their charge as trustee.

When required to give them up, they will not complain of Fortune, but will say, ‘I thank you for what I have had possession of: I have managed your property so as largely to increase it, but since you order me, I give it back to you and return it willingly and thankfully. If you still wish me to own anything of yours, I will keep it for you: I will also give you all my wrought and coined silver, my house and my household. Should Nature recall what she previously entrusted us with, let us say to her also: ‘Take back my spirit, which is better than when you gave it me. I do not shuffle or hang back. Of my own free will I am ready to return what you gave me before I could think: take me away.’ What hardship can there be in returning to the place from where one came? A person cannot live well if they know not how to die well. We must, therefore, take away from this commodity its original value, and count the breath of life as a cheap matter. ‘We dislike gladiators’, says Cicero*, ‘if they are eager to save their lives by any means whatever. But we look favourably upon them if they are openly reckless of their lives’.’

You may be sure that the same thing occurs with us: we often die because we are afraid of death. Fortune, which regards our lives as a show in the arena for her own enjoyment, says, ‘Why should I spare you, base and cowardly creature that you are? You will be pierced and hacked with all the more wounds because you know not how to

offer your throat to the knife. Whereas another, who receives the stroke without drawing away their neck or putting up their hands to stop it, will both live longer and die more quickly.’ He who fears death will never act as becomes a living man; but he who knows that this fate was laid upon him as soon as he was conceived will live according to it, and by this strength of mind will gain this further advantage, that nothing can befall him unexpectedly. Because by looking forward to everything which can happen as though it would happen to him, he takes the sting out of all evils, which can make no difference to those who expect it and are prepared to meet it. Evil only comes hard upon those who have lived without giving it a thought and whose attention has been exclusively directed to happiness. Disease, captivity, disaster, conflagration, are never unexpected. Yet I always knew with what disorderly company Nature had associated me. The dead have often been wailed for in my neighbourhood. The torch and taper have often been borne past my door before the bier of one who has died before his time; the crash of falling buildings has often resounded by my side; night has snatched away many of those with whom I have become intimate in the forum, the Senate house, and in society, and has sundered the hands which were joined in friendship. So should I too be surprised if the dangers which have always been circling around me at last assail me? How large a part of humankind never think of storms when about to set sail? I shall never be ashamed to quote a good saying because it comes from a bad author. Publilius* was a more powerful writer than any of our other playwrights, whether comic or tragic, whenever he chose to rise above farcical absurdities and speeches addressed to the gallery. Among many other verses too noble even for tragedy, let alone for comedy, he had this one:

What one has suffered may befall us all.

If a person takes this into their inmost heart and looks upon all the misfortunes of other people, of which there is always a great plenty, remembering that there is nothing to prevent their happening to them also, they will arm themselves against them long before they are attacked. It is too late to school the mind to endurance of peril after peril has come. ‘I did not think this would happen’, and ‘Would you ever have believed that this would have happened?’ you say. But why should it not? Where are the riches after which want, hunger,

and begging do not follow? What office is there whose purple robe, augur's staff, and patrician reins have not as their accompaniment rags and banishment, the brand of infamy, a thousand disgraces, and utter reprobation? What kingdom is there for which ruin, trampling under foot, a tyrant, and a butcher are not ready at hand? Nor are these matters divided by long periods of time, but there is but the space of an hour between sitting on the throne ourselves and clasping the knees of someone else as a supplicant. Know then that every station of life is transitory, and that what has ever happened to anybody may happen to you also. You are wealthy: but are you wealthier than Pompey? Yet when Gaius, his old relative, opened Caesar's house to him in order that he might close his own, at the time he lacked both bread and water. Though he owned so many rivers which both rose and flowed within his dominions, he had to beg for drops of water. He perished of hunger and thirst in the palace of his relative; his heir was organizing a public funeral for one who was dying of hunger. You have filled public offices: were they either as important, as unlooked for, or as all-embracing as those of Sejanus*? Yet on the day on which the Senate disgraced him, the people tore him to pieces: the executioner could find no part left large enough to drag to the Tiber†. This is one on whom gods and men had showered all that could be given to man. You are a king: I will not ask you to consider Croesus for an example, he who while still alive saw his funeral pyre both lit and extinguished*, being made to outlive not only his kingdom but even his own death, nor to Jugurtha, whom the people of Rome beheld as a captive within the same year in which they had feared him. We have seen Ptolemy King of Africa, and Mithridates King of Armenia, under the charge of Gaius's guards: the former was sent into exile, the latter chose it in order to make his exile more honourable. Among such continual topsy-turvy changes, unless you expect that whatever can happen will happen to you, you give adversity power against you, a power which can be destroyed by anyone who faces its possibility ahead of time.

12.

The next point to make is that we must be careful not to try to achieve the unachievable. That is to say, neither to desire what we

are not able to obtain, or having achieved what we want only realize it was not worth it. Or that the result was not worthy of our efforts. For as a rule sadness arises from one of these two things: from lack of success, or from being ashamed of having succeeded.

We must limit the running to and fro which most people practise, rambling about houses, theatres, and marketplaces. They mind other people's business, and always seem as though they themselves have something to do. If you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, ‘Where are you going?’ he will answer, ‘To be honest, I do not know: but I shall see some people and do something.’ They wander purposelessly seeking something to do, and do not do what they have made up their minds to do, only what has casually fallen their way.

They move uselessly and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining anything. Many people spend their lives in this fashion, a state of restless indolence. You would pity some of them when you see them running as if their house was on fire; they jostle all whom they meet, and hurry along themselves and others, saluting those who will not return their greeting, or attending the funeral of someone they did not know. They go to hear the verdict on someone's court case, or to see the wedding of one who often gets married. They will follow a man's chariot, and in some places will even carry it. Afterwards returning home weary with idleness, they swear that they themselves do not know why they went out, or where they have been, and on the following day they will wander through the same round again.

Let all your work, therefore, have some purpose, and keep some object in view; these restless people are not made restless by labour, but are driven out of their minds by mistaken ideas. Because even they do not put themselves in motion without any hope; they are excited by the outward appearance of something, and their crazy mind cannot see its futility. In the same way every one of those who walk out to swell the crowd in the streets is led round the city by worthless and empty reasons. The dawn drives them forth, although they have nothing to do, and after they have pushed their way into many people's doors, and saluted them one after the other, and been turned away from many others, they find that the hardest person of all to find at home is themselves. From this evil habit comes that

worst of all vices, eavesdropping and prying into public and private secrets, and the knowledge of many things which it is neither safe to tell nor safe to listen to.

13.

It was along these lines that I believe Democritus taught that ‘he who would live at peace must not do much business either public or private’ – referring of course to unnecessary business. Because if there is any necessity for it we end up doing not only much but endless business, both public and private. In cases, however, where no religious duty requires us to act, we had better keep ourselves quiet: for he who does many things often puts himself in Fortune's power, and it is safest not to tempt her often, but always to remember her existence, and never to assume anything of her. I will set sail unless something happens to prevent me; I shall be praetor, if nothing stops me; my business will succeed, unless anything goes wrong with it. This is why we say that nothing befalls the wise person which they did not expect; we don't make them exempt from the accidents of life, but from its bigger mistakes. Nor does everything happen to a wise person as they wished it would, but as they thought it would. Their first thought was that their purpose might meet with some resistance, and the pain of disappointed wishes must affect a person's mind less severely if they were not totally confident of success.

14.

We should stay equivocal, and not become over fond of the lot which fate has assigned to us, but adjust ourselves to whatever situation chance may lead us to, and fear no change either in our purposes or our position in life, provided that we do not go too far and become fickle ourselves, which of all vices is the most hostile to calmness.

Stubbornness, from which Fortune often wrings some concession, must be anxious and unhappy, but caprice, which can never restrain itself, must be more so.

Both of these qualities, that of willing to change nothing, and that of being dissatisfied with everything, prevent calmness and repose. The

mind should always be turned away from external things to that of itself: let it confide in itself, rejoice in itself, admire its own works; let it not feel losses, and put a good interpretation even upon misfortunes. Zeno, the chief of our school, when he heard the news of a shipwreck in which all his property had been lost, remarked, ‘Fortune now requires me follow philosophy with even fewer obstacles.’ A tyrant threatened Theodorus with death, and even with preventing his burial. ‘You can please yourself’, he answered, ‘my half pint of blood is in your power. As for burial, what a fool you must be if you suppose that I care whether I rot above ground or under it’. Julius Canus*, a man of peculiar greatness, who not even the fact of his having been born in our era prevents us from admiring, had a long dispute with Gaius†, and when as he was leaving that Phalaris‡ of a man, Gaius said to him, ‘So you won't delude yourself with any foolish hopes, I have ordered you to be executed.’ Canus answered, ‘I thank you, most excellent prince.’ I am not sure what he meant; many ways of explaining his conduct occur to me. Did he wish to be reproachful, and to show him how great his cruelty must be if death became a kindness? Or did he upbraid him for his everyday insanity? Because even those whose children were put to death, and whose goods were confiscated, used to thank him.

Or was it that he willingly accepted death, regarding it as freedom?

Whatever he meant, it was a magnanimous answer. Some might say, ‘After this Gaius might have let him live.’ Canus had no expectation of this: it was well known that Gaius saw implemented what he had ordered. Will you believe that Canus passed the ten intervening days before his execution without the slightest despondency? It is marvellous how that man spoke and acted, and how peaceful he was. He was playing at draughts when the centurion in charge of those to be executed called for him. On this he counted his pieces and said to his companion, ‘Mind you don't tell a lie after my death, and say that you won.’ Then, turning to the centurion, he said, ‘You will be the witness that I am one man ahead of him.’

Do you think that Canus was just playing a game on that draught board? No, he was using the game as a message. His friends were sad at being about to lose so great a man. ‘Why are you sorrowful?’ he asked. ‘You're wondering if our souls are immortal, but I will soon know.’ Nor did he up to the very end cease his search after truth, and

raised philosophical arguments around the subject of his own death. His own teacher of philosophy accompanied him, and they were not far from the hill on which the daily sacrifice to Caesar our god was offered, when he said, ‘What are you thinking of now, Canus? How are you facing this?’ ‘I have decided’, answered Canus, ‘at that most swiftly passing moment of all to watch whether the soul will be conscious of the act of leaving the body’. He promised, too, that if he made any discoveries, he would come round to his friends and tell them what the condition of the souls of the departed might be.

Here was peace in the very midst of the storm. Here was a soul worthy of eternal life, which used its own fate as a proof of truth, which even at the last moment of life experimented with his fleeting breath, and did not merely continue to learn until he died, but learned something even from death itself. No man has carried the life of a philosopher further. I will not quickly leave the subject of this great man, who deserves to be spoken of with such respect. I will make you live on in posterity, you most noble heart, chief among the many victims of Gaius.

15.

Even if we get rid of all personal causes of sadness, sometimes we are possessed by hatred of the whole human race. When you reflect how rare simplicity is, how unknown innocence, how seldom faith is kept, unless it brings an advantage, when you remember the numberless successful crimes, so many equally hateful losses and gains of lust, and ambition so impatient even of its own natural limits that it is willing to promote itself to all, the mind seems as it were cast into darkness, and shadows rise before it as though the virtues were all overthrown and we were no longer allowed to hope to possess them or be benefited by their possession.

We should therefore bring ourselves into such a state of mind where all the vices of the vulgar don't appear hateful to us, but merely ridiculous. We should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus.

The latter, whenever he appeared in public, used to weep, the former to laugh; one thought all human activity to be folly, the other thought them to be miseries. We must take a higher view of all things, and accept them more easily. It's more becoming of a person to scoff at

life than to lament over it. Add to this that he who laughs at the human race deserves better of it than he who mourns for it, for the former leaves it some good hopes of improvement, while the latter stupidly weeps over what he has given up all hopes of mending. He who after surveying the universe cannot control his laughter shows, too, a greater mind than he who cannot restrain his tears, because his mind is only affected in the slightest possible degree, and he does not think that any part of all this apparatus is either important, or serious, or unhappy.

As for the many causes which render us happy or sorrowful, let every person describe them for themselves, and learn the truth of Bion's saying, ‘That all the activities of human beings are just like they began, and quickly return to nothingness.’ Yet it is better to accept public morals and human vices calmly without bursting into either laughter or tears; for to be hurt by the sufferings of others is to be forever miserable, while to enjoy the sufferings of others is an inhuman pleasure, just as it is a useless piece of humanity to weep and pull a long face because someone is burying his son. In our own misfortunes, too, we should act according to our natures, how we feel, not as custom requires us to. Because many shed tears for show, and when no one is looking at them their eyes are dry. But they think it disgraceful not to weep when everyone is doing it. So deeply has this evil of being guided by the opinion of others taken root in us, that even grief, the simplest of all emotions, begins to be faked.

16.

There comes now a part of our subject which for good reason makes one sad and anxious. I mean when good people come to bad ends.

When Socrates is forced to die in prison, Rutilius* to live in exile, Pompey and Cicero to offer their necks to the swords of their own followers, when the great Cato, that living image of virtue, falls upon his sword and rips up both himself and the republic, one cannot help being grieved that Fortune should bestow her gifts so unjustly. What, too, can a good person hope to obtain when they see the best of people meeting with the worst fates. Well, only to see how each of them endured their fate, and if they endured it bravely, to long in your heart for courage as great as theirs. If they died in an effeminate

and cowardly manner, nothing was lost. Either they deserved your admiration of their courage, or they did not deserve that you wish to imitate their cowardice. Because what can be more shameful than that the greatest men should die so bravely as to make people cowards. Let us praise those who deserve it, and say, ‘The braver you are the happier you are! You have escaped from all accidents, jealousies, diseases; you have escaped from prison; the gods have not thought you worthy of ill-fortune, but have thought that fortune no longer deserved to have any power over you.’ But when anyone shrinks back in the hour of death and looks longingly at life, we must lay hands upon him. I will never weep for a man who dies cheerfully, nor for one who dies weeping: the former wipes away my tears, the latter by his tears makes himself unworthy that any should be shed for him. Shall I weep for Hercules because he was burned alive*, or for Regulus because he was pierced by so many nails†, or for Cato because he tore open his wounds a second time?‡. All these men discovered how at the cost of a small portion of time they might obtain immortality, and by their deaths gained eternal life.

17.

It also proves a fertile source of troubles if you go to lengths to conceal your feelings and never show yourself to anyone undisguised, and instead live an artificial life, for display. But the constant watching of yourself is a torment, and you dread being caught doing something at variance with the image. Indeed, we never can be at our ease if we imagine that everyone who looks at us is weighing our real value: because many things happen which can strip people of their disguise, and even if all this trouble about oneself is successful, still life is neither happy nor safe when one always has to wear a mask.

But what pleasure there is in that honest straightforwardness which is its own ornament, and which does not try to hide its character? Yet even this life, which hides nothing from anyone, runs some risk of being despised given we tend to be critical of anything we see up close. But there is no danger of virtue becoming contemptible when she is brought near our eyes, and it is better to be scorned for one's simplicity than to bear the burden of unceasing hypocrisy. Still, we

must observe moderation in this matter, for there is a great difference between living simply and living slovenly. Moreover, we ought to retire a great deal into ourselves, because association with people unlike ourselves upsets all that we had arranged, rouses the passions which were at rest, and rubs into a sore any weak or imperfectly healed place in our minds. Nevertheless, we ought to mix up these two things, and to pass our lives alternately in solitude and among throngs of people. The former will make us long for the society of other humans, the latter for that of ourselves, and the one will counteract the other. Solitude will cure us when we are sick of crowds, and crowds will cure us when we are sick of solitude.

We shouldn't always keep the mind strained to the same pitch, but let it sometimes be relaxed by amusement. Socrates was happy to play with little children, Cato used to refresh his mind with wine after he had tired himself on affairs of state, and Scipio would move his triumphal and soldierly limbs to the sound of music, not with a feeble and halting gait, as is the fashion nowadays, but dancing as men did in the days of old on sportive and festal occasions – that is, with manly leaps – thinking it no harm to be seen so doing even by his enemies. Our minds ought to have relaxation: they rise up better and more vigorous after rest. We must not force crops from rich fields, for an unbroken course of heavy crops will soon exhaust their fertility. So also the liveliness of our minds will be destroyed by unceasing labour, and they will recover their strength after a short period of rest and relief; continuous toil produces a sort of numbness and sluggishness. People would not be so eager for this, if play and amusement did not possess natural attractions for them, although constant indulgence in them takes away all gravity and all strength from the mind. Sleep, also, is necessary to refresh us, yet if you prolong it for days and nights together it will become death. There is a great difference between slackening your hold of a thing and letting it go. Our leaders established festivals so that people might be publicly encouraged to be cheerful, and they thought it necessary to vary our labours with amusements, and, as I said before, some great men have been wont to give themselves a certain number of holidays in every month, and some divided every day into play-time and

work-time. Thus, I remember that great orator Asinius Pollio would

not attend to any business after the tenth hour*; he would not even

read letters after that time for fear some new trouble should arise, but those two hours he used to get rid of the weariness which he had gained during the whole day. Some rest in the middle of the day, and reserve some light occupation for the afternoon. Our ancestors, too, forbade any new motion to be made in the Senate after the tenth hour. Soldiers divide their watches, and those who have just returned from active service are allowed to sleep the whole night undisturbed.

We must indulge our minds and grant them rest from time to time, which acts upon them like food, and restores their strength. It does good also to take walks out of doors, that our spirits may be raised and refreshed by the open air and fresh breezes. Sometimes we gain strength by driving in a carriage, by travel, by change of air, or by social meals and a more generous allowance of wine: at times we should even get drunk, not so as to drown, but merely to dip ourselves in wine. Because wine washes away troubles and dislodges them from the depths of the mind, and acts as a remedy to sorrow as it does to some diseases. The inventor of wine is called Liber*, not from the licence which he gives to our tongues, but because he liberates the mind from the bondage of cares, and emancipates it, animates it, and renders it more daring in all that it attempts. Yet moderation is healthy both in freedom and in wine. It is believed that Solon and Arcesilaus† drank wine. Cato was accused of drunkenness, but whoever makes this reproach will find it easier to turn it into a commendation than to prove that Cato did anything wrong. But we should not get drunk often, for fear the mind should contract evil habits, though it should sometimes be forced into frolic and frankness, and to cast off dull sobriety for a while. If we believe the Greek poet*, ‘it is sometimes pleasant to be mad’. Plato always knocked in vain at the door of poetry when he was sober; or, if we trust Aristotle, no great genius has ever been without a touch of insanity. The mind cannot use lofty language, above that of the common herd, unless it is stimulated. When it has put aside the commonplace and customary world, and rises sublime, inspired with sacred fire, that is the point when it can produce things greater than mortal lips. As long as it continues to dwell within itself it cannot rise to any pitch of splendour. It must break away from the beaten track and whip itself into frenzy, until it rushes away taking its rider to heights where it would fear to climb when alone.

I have now, my beloved Serenus, given you an account of what things can preserve peace of mind, what things can restore it to us, and what can arrest the vices which secretly undermine it. Yet be assured that none of these is strong enough alone to enable us to retain something so fleeting and weak. We have to watch over our vacillating mind with intense and unremitting care.

NOTES

See notes on Serenus in Introduction.

Holders of high office had a toga with a purple hem, and their ‘lictors’ (assistants) carried the fasces (tightly bound rods and an axe) that symbolized their power.

A place famous for holidaying and luxurious villas.

† On the Nature of the Universe.

Probably the Stoic Athenodorus of Tarsus.

The chief magistrates of the Greeks, the Oscans, and the Carthaginians, respectively.

After its defeat to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, in 405–404 BCE, Sparta imposed thirty commissioners to run the city. Their reign lasted just eight months but in that time a sizeable chunk of the population were killed.

† Harmodius had killed a previous Athenian tyrant, Hipparchus.

A gloried Roman general.

The great library of Alexandria in Egypt, which burned down in 48 BCE.

In the speech For Milo.

Publilius Syrus of Antioch, a former slave cum popular philosopher whose epigrams were often quoted.

A prefect of the Praetorian Guard under Emperor Tiberius who had a dramatic rise in power and equally dramatic fall.

† The executioner would fasten a hook to the neck of condemned criminals so that they could be dragged to Rome's Tiber river.

King Croesus, after being defeated by Cyrus, was to be burned alive but rain extinguished the flames.

A Stoic philosopher.

† Caligula.

‡ Phalaris was a famously evil tyrant of the sixth century BCE.

A pre-eminent Stoic thinker and writer who while acting as an official exposed tax corruption in the Roman provinces. Trumped up charges forced him into exile.

Hercules was poisoned, and realizing it built his own funeral pyre.

† Regulus was a Roman consul who defeated the Carthaginians in 256 BCE, but the following year they defeated the Romans. As a prisoner he proposed a peace treaty. When it failed, the Carthaginians brutally tortured him to death.

‡ Cato the Younger, 95–46 BCE, was seen as the incorruptible opposing force to the rise of Caesar. When it became clear that Caesar would rule Rome, Cato committed suicide by repeatedly stabbing himself in the abdomen.

The two hours before sunset, in the Roman time system.

An alternative name for Bacchus, Roman god of wine.

† Sages and philosophers of old.

Menander.

WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

Go to www.wiley.com/go/eula to access Wiley’s ebook EULA.

다음검색

북마크

댓글 0
댓글쓰기
답글쓰기

댓글 리스트

CAFE

Lines

On the Shortness of Life The Stoic Classic

댓글

카페 검색