Letters From a Stoic

by Seneca

  Now you must either pronounce your verdict or – the easier course in matters of this nature – declare your inability to arrive at one and order a rehearing. ‘What pleasure,’ you may say, ‘do you get out of frittering time away discussing those questions? It’s not as if you could say they rid you of any emotion or drive out any desire.’ Well, in raising and arguing these less deserving topics my own attitude is that they serve to calm the spirit, and that whilst I examine myself first, certainly, I examine the universe around me afterwards. I am not even wasting time, as you suppose, at the moment. For those questions, provided they are not subjected to a mincing or dissection with the useless kind of over-subtlety we have just seen as the result, all elevate and lighten the spirit, the soul which yearns to win free of the heavy load it is saddled with here and return to the world where it once belonged. For to it this body of ours is a burden and a torment. And harassed by the body’s overwhelming weight, the soul is in captivity unless philosophy comes to its rescue, bidding it breathe more freely in the contemplation of nature, releasing it from earthly into heavenly surroundings. This to the soul means freedom, the ability to wander far and free; it steals away for a while from the prison in which it is confined and has its strength renewed in the world above. When craftsmen engaged on some intricate piece of work which imposes a tiring strain on the eyes have to work by an inadequate and undependable light, they go out into the open air and treat their eyes to the free sunshine in some open space or other dedicated to public recreation. In the same way the soul, shut away in this dim and dismal dwelling, as often as it can makes for the open and finds its relaxation in contemplating the natural universe. The wise man and devotee of philosophy is needless to say inseparable from his body, and yet he is detached from it so far as the best part of his personality is concerned, directing his thoughts towards things far above. He looks on this present life of his, much like the man who has signed on as a soldier, as the term he has to serve out. And he is so made that he neither loves life nor hates it. He endures the lot of mortality even though he knows there is a finer one in store for him.

  Are you telling me not to investigate the natural world? Are you trying to bar me from the whole of it and restrict me to a part of it? Am I not to inquire how everything in the universe began, who gave things form, who separated them out when they were all plunged together in a single great conglomeration of inert matter? Am I not to inquire into the identity of the artist who created that universe? Or the process by which this huge mass became subject to law and order? Or the nature of the one who collected the things that were scattered apart, sorted apart the things that were commingled, and when all things lay in formless chaos allotted them their individual shapes? Or the source of the light (is it fire or is it something brighter?) that is shed on us in such abundance? Am I supposed not to inquire into this sort of thing? Am I not to know where I am descended from, whether I am to see this world only once or be born into it again time after time, what my destination is to be after my stay here, what abode will await my soul on its release from the terms of its serfdom on earth? Are you forbidding me to associate with heaven, in other words ordering me to go through life with my eyes bent on the ground? I am too great, was born to too great a destiny to be my body’s slave. So far as I am concerned that body is nothing more or less than a fetter on my freedom. I place it squarely in the path of fortune, letting her expend her onslaught on it, not allowing any blow to get through it to my actual self. For that body is all that is vulnerable about me: within this dwelling so liable to injury there lives a spirit that is free. Never shall that flesh compel me to feel fear, never shall it drive me to any pretence unworthy of a good man; never shall I tell a lie out of consideration for this petty body. I shall dissolve our partnership when this seems the proper course, and even now while we are bound one to the other the partnership will not be on equal terms: the soul will assume undivided authority. Refusal to be influenced by one’s body assures one’s freedom.

  And to this freedom (to get back to the subject) even the kind of inquiries we were talking about just now have a considerable contribution to make. We know that everything in the universe is composed of matter and of God. God, encompassed within them, controls them all, they following his leadership and guidance. Greater power and greater value reside in that which creates (in this case God) than in the matter on which God works. Well, the place which in this universe is occupied by God is in man the place of the spirit. What matter is in the universe the body is in us. Let the worse, then, serve the better. Let us meet with bravery whatever may befall us. Let us never feel a shudder at the thought of being wounded or of being made a prisoner, or of poverty or persecution. What is death? Either a transition or an end. I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here.

  LETTER LXXVII

  TODAY we saw some boats from Alexandria – the ones they call ‘the mail packets’ – come into view all of a sudden. They were the ones which are normally sent ahead to announce the coming of the fleet that will arrive behind them. The sight of them is always a welcome one to the Campanians. The whole of Puteoli crowded onto the wharves, all picking out the Alexandrian vessels from an immense crowd of other shipping by the actual trim of their sails, these boats being the only vessels allowed to keep their topsails spread. Out at sea all ships carry these sails, for nothing makes quite the same contribution to speed as the upper canvas, the area from which a boat derives the greatest part of its propulsion. That is why whenever the wind stiffens and becomes unduly strong sail is shortened, the wind having less force lower down. On entering the channel between Capri and the headland from which

  Upon the storm-swept summit Pallas keeps

  Her high lookout,*

  regulations require all other vessels to confine themselves to carrying a mainsail, and the topsail is accordingly conspicuous on the Alexandrian boats.

  While everyone around me was hurrying thus from all directions to the waterfront, I found a great deal of pleasure in refusing to bestir myself. Although there would be letters for me from my people over there I was in no hurry to know what reports they might be carrying or what might be the state of my financial interests there. For a long time now I have not been concerned about any profit or loss. This particular pleasure was one that I ought to have been experiencing even if I were not an old man; but being old in fact made it all the greater, for it meant that however little money I might have I should still have more left to cover the journey than distance left to be covered – especially as the journey on which we have all set out is one which does not have to be travelled to the very end. An ordinary journey will be incomplete if you come to a stop in the middle of it, or anywhere short of your destination, but life is never incomplete if it is an honourable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is a whole. And there are many occasions on which a man should leave life not only bravely but for reasons which are not as pressing as they might be – the reasons which restrain us being not so pressing either.

  Tullius Marcellinus, whom you knew very well, a man, old before his years, who found tranquillity early in life, began to meditate suicide after he had gone down with a disease which was not an incurable one but at the same time was a protracted, troublesome one, importunate in its demands. He called together a large number of his friends, and each one offered him advice. This consisted either of urgings (from the timid among them) that he should just take whichever course he himself felt urged to take, or of whatever counsel flattering admirers thought would be most likely to gratify someone meditating suicide, until a Stoic friend of mine, an outstanding personality for whom I can find no more fitting compliment than that of calling him a man of fighting courage, gave what I thought was the most inspiring advice. This was how he began: ‘My dear Marcellinus,’ he said, ‘you mustn’t let this worry you as if you w
ere having to make a great decision. There’s nothing so very great about living – all your slaves and all the animals do it. What is, however, a great thing is to die in a manner which is honourable, enlightened and courageous. Think how long now you’ve been doing the same as them – food, sleep, sex, the never-ending cycle. The desire for death can be experienced not merely by the enlightened or the brave or the unhappy, but even by the squeamish.’ Well, Marcellinus wanted no urging, only a helper. His slaves refused to obey him in this, whereupon our Stoic talked away their fears, letting them know that the household staff could only be in danger if there had been any room for doubt as to whether their master’s death had been a voluntary one; besides, he told them, it was just as bad to let other people see you ordering your master not to kill himself as actually to kill him. He then suggested to Marcellinus himself that it would not be an unkind gesture if, in the same way as at the end of a dinner the leftovers are divided among the attendants, something were offered at the end of his life to those who had served throughout it. Marcellinus had a generous and good-natured disposition which was no less evident where it meant personal expense, and he distributed accordingly little sums of money among his slaves, who were now in tears, and went out of his way to comfort them all. He did not need to resort to a weapon or to shedding blood. After going without food for three days he had a steam tent put up, in his own bedroom; a bath was brought in, in which he lay for a long time, and as fresh supplies of hot water were continually poured in he passed almost imperceptibly away, not without, as he commented more than once, a kind of pleasurable sensation, one that is apt to be produced by the gentle fading out of which those of us who have ever fainted will have some experience.

  I have digressed, but you will not have minded hearing this story, since you will gather from it that your friend’s departure was not a difficult or unhappy one. Although his death was self-inflicted, the manner of his passing was supremely relaxed, a mere gliding out of life. Yet the story is not without its practical value for the future. For frequently enough necessity demands just such examples. The times are frequent enough when we cannot reconcile ourselves to dying, or to knowing that we ought to die.

  No one is so ignorant as not to know that some day he must die. Nevertheless when death draws near he turns, wailing and trembling, looking for a way out. Wouldn’t you think a man a prize fool if he burst into tears because he didn’t live a thousand years ago? A man is as much a fool for shedding tears because he isn’t going to be alive a thousand years from now. There’s no difference between the one and the other – you didn’t exist and you won’t exist – you’ve no concern with either period. This is the moment you’ve been pitched into – supposing you were to make it longer how long would you make it? What’s the point of tears? What’s the point of prayers? You’re only wasting your breath.

  So give up hoping that your prayers can bring

  Some change in the decisions of the gods.*

  Those decisions are fixed and permanent, part of the mighty and eternal train of destiny. You will go the way that all things go. What is strange about that? This is the law to which you were born; it was the lot of your father, your mother, your ancestors and of all who came before you as it will be of all who come after you. There is no means of altering the irresistible succession of events which carries all things along in its binding grip. Think of the multitudes of people doomed to die that will be following you, that will be keeping you company! I imagine you’d be braver about it if thousands upon thousands were dying with you: the fact is that men as well as other creatures are breathing their last in one way or another in just such numbers at the very instant when you’re unable to make your mind up about death. You weren’t thinking, surely, that you wouldn’t yourself one day arrive at the destination towards which you’ve been heading from the beginning? Every journey has its end.

  Here I imagine you’ll be expecting me to tell you the stories of examples set by heroic men? Well, I’ll tell you about ones which children have set. History relates the story of the famous Spartan, a mere boy who, when he was taken prisoner, kept shouting in his native Doric, ‘I shall not be a slave!’ He was as good as his word. The first time he was ordered to perform a slave’s task, some humiliating household job (his actual orders were to fetch a disgusting chamber pot), he dashed his head against a wall and cracked his skull open. Freedom is as near as that – is anyone really still a slave?54 Would you not rather your own son died like that than lived by reason of spinelessness to an advanced age? Why be perturbed, then, about death when even a child can meet it bravely? Suppose you refuse to follow him: you will just be dragged after him. Assume the authority which at present lies with others. Surely you can adopt the spirited attitude of that boy and say, ‘No slave am I!’ At present, you unhappy creature, slave you are, slave to your fellow-men, slave to circumstance and slave to life (for life itself is slavery if the courage to die be absent).

  Have you anything that might induce you to wait? You have exhausted the very pleasures that make you hesitate and hold you back; not one of them has any novelty for you, not one of them now fails to bore you out of sheer excess. You know what wine or honey-wine tastes like: it makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand flagons go through your bladder – all you are is a strainer. You are perfectly familiar with the taste of oysters or mullet. Your luxurious way of life has kept back not a single fresh experience for you to try in coming years. And yet these are the things from which you are reluctant to be torn away. What else is there which you would be sorry to be deprived of? Friends? Do you know how to be a friend? Your country? Do you really value her so highly that you would put off your dinner for her? The sunlight? If you could you would put out that light – for what have you ever done that deserved a place in it? Confess it – it is no attachment to the world of politics or business, or even the world of nature, that makes you put off dying – the delicatessens, in which there is nothing you have left untried, are what you are reluctant to leave. You are scared of death – but how magnificently heedless of it you are while you are dealing with a dish of choice mushrooms! You want to live – but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying – and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead? Caligula was once passing a column of captives on the Latin Road when one of them, with a hoary old beard reaching down his breast, begged to be put to death. ‘So,’ replied Caligula, ‘you are alive, then, as you are?’ That is the answer to give to people to whom death would actually come as a release. ‘You are scared of dying? So you are alive, then, as you are?’

  Someone, though, will say, ‘But I want to live because of all the worthy activities I’m engaged in. I’m performing life’s duties conscientiously and energetically and I’m reluctant to leave them undone.’ Come now, surely you know that dying is also one of life’s duties? You’re leaving no duty undone, for there’s no fixed number of duties laid down which you’re supposed to complete. Every life without exception is a short one. Looked at in relation to the universe even the lives of Nestor and Sattia were short. In Sattia, who ordered that her epitaph should record that she had lived to the age of ninety-nine, you have an example of someone actually boasting of a prolonged old age – had it so happened that she had lasted out the hundredth year everybody, surely, would have found her quite insufferable! As it is with a play, so it is with life – what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. It is not important at what point you stop. Stop wherever you will – only make sure that you round it off with a good ending.

  LETTER LXXVIII

  I AM all the more sorry to hear of the trouble you are having with constant catarrh, and the spells of feverishness which go with it when it becomes protracted to the point of being chronic, because this kind of ill health is something I have experienced myself. In its early stages I refused to let it bother me, being still young enough then to adopt a defiant attitude to sickness and put up with hardships, but ev
entually I succumbed to it altogether. Reduced to a state of complete emaciation, I had arrived at a point where the catarrhal discharges were virtually carrying me away with them altogether. On many an occasion I felt an urge to cut my life short there and then, and was only held back by the thought of my father, who had been the kindest of fathers to me and was then in his old age. Having in mind not how bravely I was capable of dying but how far from bravely he was capable of bearing the loss, I commanded myself to live. There are times when even to live is an act of bravery.

  Let me tell you the things that provided me with consolation in those days, telling you to begin with that the thoughts which brought me this peace of mind had all the effect of medical treatment. Comforting thoughts (provided they are not of a discreditable kind) contribute to a person’s cure; anything which raises his spirits benefits him physically as well. It was my Stoic studies that really saved me. For the fact that I was able to leave my bed and was restored to health I give the credit to philosophy. I owe her – and it is the least of my obligations to her – my life. But my friends also made a considerable contribution to my return to health. I found a great deal of relief in their cheering remarks, in the hours they spent at my bedside and in their conversations with me. There is nothing, my good Lucilius, quite like the devotion of one’s friends for supporting one in illness and restoring one to health, or for dispelling one’s anticipation and dread of death. I even came to feel that I could not really die when these were the people I would leave surviving me, or perhaps I should say I came to think I would continue to live because of them, if not among them; for it seemed to me that in death I would not be passing away but passing on my spirit to them. These things gave me the willingness to help my own recovery and to endure all the pain. It is quite pathetic, after all, if one has put the will to die behind one, to be without the will to live.