Letters From a Stoic

by Seneca

  And night now starts to bring the drowsy world

  A dreamy stillness,

  ‘What’s that you say? Night, is it, now? I’ll go and pay a morning call on Buta.’

  Buta’s upside-down way of life was a byword, and yet, as I’ve said, at one time this sort of life was led by a great many people. The reason why some people live in this sort of way is not that they think that night in itself has any special attraction, but that they get no pleasure out of anything which is usual; apart from the fact that daylight is anathema to a bad conscience, a person who experiences a craving or a contempt for things in proportion to their costliness or cheapness looks down his nose at a form of illumination which does not cost him anything. Moreover the man who lives extravagantly wants his manner of living to be on everybody’s lips as long as he is alive. He thinks he is wasting his time if he is not being talked about. So every now and then he does something calculated to set people talking. Plenty of people squander fortunes, plenty of people keep mistresses. To win any reputation in this sort of company you need to go in for something not just extravagant but really out of the ordinary. In a society as hectic as this one it takes more than common profligacy to get oneself talked about.

  I once heard that delightful story-teller, Albinovanus Pedo, describing how he had lived above Sextus Papinius. Papinius was one of the daylight-shy fraternity. ‘About nine o’clock at night I’d hear the sound of whips. “What’s he doing?” I’d ask, and be told he was inspecting the household accounts. About twelve I’d hear some strenuous shouting. “What’s that?” I’d ask, and be told he was doing his voice exercises. About two I’d ask what the noise of wheels meant, and be told he was off for his drive. About daybreak there would be a scurrying in all directions, a shouting for boys and a chaos of activity among stewards and kitchen staff. “What is it?” I’d ask, to be told he was out of his bath and had called for his pre-dinner appetizer. “His dinner, then,” it might be said, “exceeded the capacity of his day.” Far from it, for he lived in a highly economical fashion: all he used to burn up was the night.’ Hence Pedo’s remark when some people were describing Papinius as being mean and grasping: ‘I take it you would describe him as being an artificial light addict as well.’

  You needn’t be surprised to discover so much individuality where the vices are concerned. Vices are manifold, take countless different forms and are incapable of classification. Devotion to what is right is simple, devotion to what is wrong is complex and admits of infinite variations. It is the same with people’s characters; in those who follow nature they are straightforward and uncomplicated, and differ only in minor degree, while those that are warped are hopelessly at odds with the rest and equally at odds with themselves. But the chief cause of this disease, in my opinion, is an attitude of disdain for a normal existence. These people seek to set themselves apart from the rest of the world even in the manner in which they organize their time-table, in just the same way as they mark themselves off from others by the way they dress, by the stylishness of their entertaining and the elegance of their carriages. People who regard notoriety as a reward for misbehaviour have no inclination for common forms of misbehaviour. And notoriety is the aim of all these people who live, so to speak, back to front. We therefore, Lucilius, should keep to the path which nature has mapped out for us and never diverge from it. For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream.

  LETTER CXXIII

  I’VE reached my house at Alba at last, late at night and worn out by the journey (which wasn’t so much long as thoroughly uncomfortable) to find nothing ready for my arrival – apart from myself. So I’m in bed, recovering from my fatigue, and making the best of this slowness on the part of the cook and the baker by carrying on a conversation with myself on this very theme, of how nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and how nothing need arouse one’s irritation so long as one doesn’t make it bigger than it is by getting irritated. My baker may be out of bread, but the farm manager will have some, or the steward, or a tenant. ‘Bad bread, yes!’ you’ll say. Wait, then: it’ll soon turn into good bread. Hunger will make you find even that bread soft and wheaty. One shouldn’t, accordingly, eat until hunger demands. I shall wait, then, and not eat until I either start getting good bread again or cease to be fussy about bad bread. It is essential to make oneself used to putting up with a little. Even the wealthy and the well provided are continually met and frustrated by difficult times and situations. It is in no man’s power to have whatever he wants; but he has it in his power not to wish for what he hasn’t got, and cheerfully make the most of the things that do come his way. And a stomach firmly under control, one that will put up with hard usage, marks a considerable step towards independence.

  I’m deriving immeasurable satisfaction from the way my tiredness is becoming reconciled to itself. I’m not asking for masseurs, or a hot bath, or any remedy except time. What was brought on by exertion rest is taking away. And whatever kind of meal is on the way is going to beat an inaugural banquet for enjoyment. I have, in fact, put my spirit to a sort of test, and a surprise one, too – such a test being a good deal more candid and revealing. When the spirit has prepared itself beforehand, has called on itself in advance to show endurance, it is not so clear just how much real strength it possesses; the surest indications are the ones it gives on the spur of the moment, when it views annoyances in a manner not merely unruffled but serene, when it refrains from flying into a fit of temper or picking a quarrel with someone, when it sees to everything it requires by refraining from hankering after this and that, reflecting that one of its habits may miss a thing, but its own real self need never do so. Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them. Look at the number of things we buy because others have bought them or because they’re in most people’s houses. One of the causes of the troubles that beset us is the way our lives are guided by the example of others; instead of being set to rights by reason we’re seduced by convention. There are things that we shouldn’t wish to imitate if they were done by only a few, but when a lot of people have started doing them we follow along, as though a practice became more respectable by becoming more common. Once they have become general, mistaken ways acquire in our minds the status of correct ones. Nobody travels now without a troop of Numidian horsemen riding ahead of him and a host of runners preceding his carriage. One feels ashamed not to have men with one to hustle oncoming travellers off the road and to show there’s a gentleman coming by the cloud of dust they raise. Everybody nowadays has mules to carry his crystal-ware, his myrrhine vessels and the other articles engraved by the hands of master craftsmen. One is ashamed to be seen to have only the kind of baggage which can be jolted around without coming to any harm. Everyone’s pages ride along with their faces smeared with cream in case the sun or the cold should spoil their delicate complexions; one is ashamed if there is no member of one’s retinue of boys whose healthy cheeks call for protection with cosmetics.

  With all such people you should avoid associating. These are the people who pass on vices, transmitting them from one character to another. One used to think that the type of person who spreads tales was as bad as any: but there are persons who spread vices. And association with them does a lot of damage. For even if its success is not immediate, it leaves a seed in the mind, and even after we’ve said goodbye to them, the evil follows us, to rear its head at some time or other in the future. In the same way as people who’ve been to a concert carry about with them the melody and haunting quality of pieces they’ve just heard, interfering with their thinking and preventing them from concentrating on anything serious, so the talk of snobs and parasites sticks in our ears long after we’ve heard it. And it’s far from easy to eradicate these haunting notes from the memory; they stay with us, lasting on and on, coming back to
us every so often. This is why we must shut our ears against mischievous talk, and as soon as it starts, too; once such talk has made its entry and been allowed inside, it becomes a good deal bolder. Eventually it reaches the stage where it says that ‘virtue and philosophy and justice are just a lot of clap-trap. There’s only one way to be happy and that’s to make the most of life. Eating, drinking, spending the money that’s been left to you, that’s what I call living – and that’s what I call not forgetting that you’ve got to die some day, too. The days are slipping by, and life is running out on us, never to be restored. Why should we hesitate? What’s the point of being wise? Our years won’t always allow us a life of pleasure, and in the meantime while they’re capable of it and clamouring for it, what’s the point of thrusting austerity on them? Steal a march on death by disposing here and now of whatever he is going to take away. Look at you – no mistress, no boy to make your mistress jealous. Every day you go out sober. You eat as if you had to submit a daily account book to your father for approval. That’s not living – that’s merely being a part of the life enjoyed by other people. And what madness it is to deny yourself everything and so build up a fortune for your heir, a policy which has the effect of actually turning a friend into an enemy, through the very amount that you’re going to leave him, for the more he’s going to get the more gleeful he’s going to be at your death. As for those sour and disapproving characters, those critics of other people’s lives – and spoilers of their own – who set themselves up as moral tutors to society at large, you needn’t give tuppence for them; you needn’t ever have any hesitation when it comes to putting good living before a good reputation.’

  These are voices you must steer clear of like those which Ulysses refused to sail past until he was lashed to the mast. They have the same power: they lure men away from country, parents, friends and moral values, creating expectations in them only to make sport out of the wretchedness of lives of degradation.* How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant and the things that are honourable finally become, for you, the same. And we can achieve this if we realize that there are two classes of things attracting or repelling us. We are attracted by wealth, pleasures, good looks, political advancement and various other welcoming and enticing prospects: we are repelled by exertion, death, pain, disgrace and limited means. It follows that we need to train ourselves not to crave for the former and not to be afraid of the latter. Let us fight the battle the other way round – retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us. You know the difference, Lucilius, between the postures people adopt in climbing up and descending a mountain; those coming down a slope lean back, those moving steeply upwards lean forward, for to tilt one’s weight ahead of one when descending, and backwards when ascending, is to be in league with what one has to contend with. The path that leads to pleasures is the downward one: the upward climb is the one that takes us to rugged and difficult ground. Here let us throw our bodies forward, in the other direction rein them back.

  Are you now supposing that the only people I consider a danger to our ears are the ones who glorify pleasure and inculcate in us a dread (itself a fearsome thing) of pain? No, I think we’re also damaged by the people who urge us under colour of Stoic beliefs to do what’s wrong. They make much of our principle that only a man of wisdom and experience can really love. ‘He’s the one man with a natural gift for the art of love-making, then,’ they say, ‘and he’s equally in the best position to know all about drink and parties. Well, here’s a question for discussion: up to what age is it proper to love young men?’

  This sort of thing may be all right for the Greeks, but the kind of talk to which we would be better to turn our ears is this: ‘No man’s good by accident. Virtue has to be learnt. Pleasure is a poor and petty thing. No value should be set on it: it’s something we share with dumb animals – the minutest, most insignificant creatures scutter after it. Glory’s an empty, changeable thing, as fickle as the weather. Poverty’s no evil to anyone unless he kicks against it. Death is not an evil. What is it then? The one law mankind has that is free of all discrimination. Superstition is an idiotic heresy: it fears those it should love: it dishonours those it worships. For what difference does it make whether you deny the gods or bring them into disrepute?’ These are things which should be learnt and not just learnt but learnt by heart. Philosophy has no business to supply vice with excuses; a sick man who is encouraged to live in a reckless manner by his doctor has not a hope of getting well.

  NOTES

  SENECA’S LIFE

  1. The date of Seneca’s birth is not known. Scholars have tended to place it in either 5 or 4 B.C., although some have put it as early as 8 B.C. or as late as A.D. 4.

  2. A procurator was a kind of commissioner or agent, as a rule mainly concerned with revenue collection, although he might hold high administrative rank. Some provinces had a procurator as their governor.

  3. He wrote two handbooks on the subject for his sons. These, the Suasoriae and Controversiae, acquired a wide reputation and have survived to the present day.

  4. Antiquus rigor, as he calls it, writing to his mother (ad Helviam Matrem, 17.3).

  5. Letter LXXVIII.2.

  6. Pliny (Natural History, VI:60) speaks of Seneca’s work on India as mentioning 60 rivers and 118 different races – an indication of the facilities for research at Alexandria.

  7. Suetonius (Caligula, 53) says the emperor disparagingly called him a mere ‘text-book orator’, his style ‘sand without cement’ (arena sine calce).

  8. Dio, Roman History, LIX:19.

  9. A fragment of Suetonius (as quoted by the scholiast on Juvenal, Satires, V:109) states that Seneca was exiled on the pretext of his being linked with the scandalous love affairs of Julia Livilla (quasi conscius adulteriorum Juliae). Dio (Roman History, LX:8) too speaks as if Seneca was only an incidental victim, the accusation originating in Messalina’s jealousy of Julia (a sister of Agrippina, and apparently a beautiful and cultivated woman).

  10. Tacitus, Annals, XIII:8.

  11. ibid., XIII:3.

  12. ‘For five years Nero was so great a ruler, from the point of view of Rome’s development and progress, that Trajan’s frequent claim that no emperor came near Nero in this five year period can be fully justified’, to paraphrase the words of Aurelius Victor, de Caesaribus, 5, ii (Nero… quinquennium tamen tantus fuit, agenda urbe maxima, uti merito Trajanus saepius testaretur procul differe cunctos principes Neronis quinquennio). It should be added that not all historians are agreed that the quinquennium Neronis refers to the first five years of his rule.

  13. Roman History, LXI:3.

  14. Annals, XIII:6.

  15. Voluptatibus concessis, by which Tacitus may be presumed to refer to the arts, sensuality and non-political cruelties.

  16. Annals, XIII:2.

  17. Roman History, LXI:4.

  18. Grimal, The Civilization of Rome. Seneca’s American translator, Gummere, suggests that this anomalous state of affairs may be seen as an experiment with Plato’s ideal of philosopher-kingship, and one which also took account of the conditions of the time, striking a balance between the dangers of one-man rule (of which the recent reign of Caligula was a vivid illustration) and the impossibility of a return to the free elections and near anarchy of the Republic; he describes the result as a kind of cabinet system in which Seneca was the cabinet.

  19. Tacitus, Annals, XIII:42 and Dio, Roman History, LXI:10 are our sources for the sort of thing that was becoming gossip.

  20. Satires, X:16. Tacitus (Annals, XV:64) also used this word praedives, ‘immensely wealthy’, of Seneca, who was almost certainly a millionaire, in terms of sterling, four or five times over. Juvenal incidentally speaks of his generosity with his money as if it was well known even after he was dead (Satires, V:109).

  21. Roman History, LX:32. This historian states that Seneca’s sudden recal
l, backed by force, of enormous sums of money which he had lent to leading natives of the recently conquered province of Britain was a cause of the rising of Buduica or Boudicca (‘Boadicea’) in A.D. 61.

  22. Res Rustica, III:3.3.

  23. In Letters CVIII and LXXXIII, for example. In Letter LXXXVII he describes an expedition undertaken by himself and a close friend (Caesonius Maximus, himself a man who had had a distinguished career) in a mule-cart with the simplest of sleeping equipment and only figs or bread to eat; he speaks of having had ‘a blissful two days’, but regrets to report that he could not help blushing whenever they met people travelling in greater style (cf. p. 228).

  24. Roman History, LXI:18. Dio, usually hostile to Seneca, reports ‘many reliable sources’ as saying that Seneca helped incite Nero to liquidate Agrippina (Roman History, LXI:12).

  The murder, its significance, and the possibility (remote) of Seneca’s complicity are discussed by S. J. Batomsky and P. J. Bicknell in Theoria, volume 19 (1962) pp. 32–6 and volume 21 (1963) pp. 42–5 (University of Natal Press).

  25. Annals, XIV:52f.

  26. ibid., XV:45.

  27. ibid., XV:65.

  28. ibid., XV:60–64. The passage is given on p. 243 in Michael Grant’s translation, from the Penguin Classics Tacitus: The Annals of Imperial Rome. It incidentally illustrates (like the beginning of Letter CIV) the close affection between him and his young second wife. There is a rather touching mention in his treatise entitled Anger of how his first wife, after the light was out for the night, would keep quiet while he made his customary review of everything he had done or said in the course of the day (De Ira, III:36).

  29. Augustine (De Civitate Dei, VI:10) says that Seneca quod culpabat adorabat, ‘worshipped the very things he criticized’. Milton speaks of him as ‘in his books a philosopher’. La Rochefoucauld, for the frontispiece of an edition of his Réflexions, has him portrayed with villainous features from which a figure of Cupid representing L’Amour de la Vérité has just stripped a mask of virtuous amiability.