Dialogues and Letters

by Seneca

  19 You must retire to these pursuits which are quieter, safer and more important. Do you think it is the same thing whether you are overseeing the transfer of corn into granaries, unspoilt by the dishonesty and carelessness of the shippers, and taking care that it does not get damp and then ruined through heat, and that it tallies in measure and weight; or whether you take up these sacred and lofty studies, from which you will learn the substance of god, and his will, his mode of life, his shape; what fate awaits your soul; where nature lays us to rest when released from our bodies; what is the force which supports all the heaviest elements of this world at the centre, suspends the light elements above, carries fire to the highest part, and sets the stars in motion with their proper changes – and learn other things in succession which are full of tremendous marvels? You really should leave the ground and turn your thoughts to these studies. Now while the blood is hot you should make your way with vigour to better things. In this kind of life you will find much that is worth your study: the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, the knowledge of how to live and die, and a life of deep tranquillity.

  Indeed the state of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but the most wretched are those who are toiling not even at their own preoccupations, but must regulate their sleep by another’s, and their walk by another’s pace, and obey orders in those freest of all things, loving and hating. If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own.

  20 So, when you see a man repeatedly wearing the robe of office, or one whose name is often spoken in the Forum, do not envy him: these things are won at the cost of life. In order that one year may be dated from their names they will waste all their own years. Life has left some men struggling at the start of their careers before they could force their way to the height of their ambition. Some men, after they have crawled through a thousand indignities to the supreme dignity, have been assailed by the gloomy thought that all their labours were but for the sake of an epitaph. Some try to adjust their extreme old age to new hopes as though it were youth, but find its weakness fails them in the midst of efforts that overtax it. It is a shameful sight when an elderly man runs out of breath while he is pleading in court for litigants who are total strangers to him, and trying to win the applause of the ignorant bystanders. It is disgraceful to see a man collapsing in the middle of his duties, worn out more by his life-style than by his labours. Disgraceful too is it when a man dies in the midst of going through his accounts, and his heir, long kept waiting, smiles in relief. I cannot resist telling you of an instance that occurs to me. Sextus Turannius25 was an old man known to be scrupulous and diligent, who, when he was ninety, at his own request was given retirement from his office by Gaius Caesar. He then ordered himself to be laid out on his bed and lamented by the assembled household as though he were dead. The house bewailed its old master’s leisure, and did not cease its mourning until his former job was restored to him. Is it really so pleasant to die in harness? That is the feeling of many people: their desire for their work outlasts their ability to do it. They fight against their own bodily weakness, and they regard old age as a hardship on no other grounds than that it puts them on the shelf. The law does not make a man a soldier after fifty or a senator after sixty: men find it more difficult to gain leisure from themselves than from the law. Meanwhile, as they rob and are robbed, as they disturb each other’s peace, as they make each other miserable, their lives pass without satisfaction, without pleasure, without mental improvement. No one keeps death in view, no one refrains from hopes that look far ahead; indeed, some people even arrange things that are beyond life – massive tombs, dedications of public buildings, shows for their funerals, and ostentatious burials. But in truth, such people’s funerals should be conducted with torches and wax tapers,26 as though they had lived the shortest of lives.

  LETTERS

  LETTER 24

  [Seneca advises Lucilius on how to face the anxieties of a lawsuit and troubles in general]

  1 You write that you are worried about the outcome of a lawsuit

  which an enraged enemy is bringing against you. You think that

  I’ll persuade you to view the future with confidence and calm

  yourself with comforting hope. For what need is there to summon

  troubles, to anticipate them, all too soon to be endured when

  they come, and squander the present in fears of the future? It is

  certainly foolish to make yourself wretched now just because you

  are going to be wretched some time in the future.

  2 But I shall lead you to tranquillity by another route. If you

  want to be rid of all anxiety, suppose that anything you are

  afraid of happening is going to happen in any case, then mentally

  calculate all the evil involved in it and appraise your own fear:

  you will undoubtedly come to realize that what you fear is either

  3 not great or not long-lasting. It won’t take long to assemble

  examples to convince you: every age has produced them. Cast

  your mind back to any sphere of life, whether at home or abroad,

  and you will think of minds which showed either philosophical

  maturity or great natural energy. If you are condemned, can you

  think of a harsher fate than exile or imprisonment? Is anything

  more fearful than burning or death? Set up these horrors one by

  one and summon forth those who have despised them: we don’t

  4 have to hunt for them, but to select them.1 Rutilius bore his

  condemnation as though the only thing that hurt him was the

  false judgment. Metellus endured his exile bravely, Rutilius even

  willingly; the former afforded the state the chance to recall him,

  the latter refused to return for Sulla – a man to whom one did

  not then refuse anything. Socrates debated when in prison, and

  refused to accept the promise of escape, remaining there so that

  he could free men from their two worst fears, death and prison.

  5 Mucius put his own hand in the fire. Being burnt is ghastly: how

  much more so if you submit to it voluntarily! Here you see a man

  neither clever nor fortified by precepts against death or pain,

  simply a product of tough military discipline, punishing himself

  for a failed attempt. He stood and watched his right hand dripping

  into the enemy’s brazier, and did not remove the bare bones of

  his dissolving hand until his enemy took the fire away. He could

  have done something more successful in that campaign, but nothing

  more brave. You can see how much more keen is virtue to

  anticipate dangers than cruelty to inflict them: Porsina was more

  ready to spare Mucius for wishing to kill him than Mucius was to

  spare himself because he had failed to do so.

  6 ‘These stories are chanted in all the rhetorical schools,’ you say;

  ‘soon you’ll be coming to the theme Contempt for Death and

  telling me about Cato.’2 And why not tell you about him reading

  Plato’s dialogue on that last night, with a sword near his pillow?

  He had taken care to have these two aids in his extremity, the

  will to die and the means to die. And so, arranging his affairs so

  far as his final disaster allowed, he determined to act so that no

  one would have the choice whether to kill Cato or to spare

  7 him. He then drew his sword which until that day he had kept

  unstained by any slaughter, and said, ‘Fortune, you have achieved

  nothing by blocking all my efforts. So far I have fought for my

  country’s liberty, not my own, and all my determination was

  aimed at living, not a free man myself, but among free m
en. But

  now that mankind’s affairs are hopeless let Cato be led to safety.’

  8 Then he dealt himself a fatal wound on the head. This was bound

  up by the doctors, but, though his blood and his strength were

  failing him, his courage failed him not, and by now angry not just

  with Caesar but with himself he tore at his wound with his bare

  hands, and not so much let forth as cast out that noble spirit which

  despised any kind of tyranny.

  9 ‘I am not piling up examples just to exercise my wits but to

  support you against a horrifying prospect; and I shall do this the

  better by showing you that not only brave men have treated with

  contempt this moment when life ceases, but some who were in

  other respects indolent have here matched the courage of the

  bravest. Such was Scipio,3 father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompey, who,

  carried back by adverse winds to Africa and seeing his ship

  in the power of his enemies, fell on his sword, and when men asked

  where was the general he replied, ‘All is well with the general.’

  These words raised him to the stature of his ancestors and ensured

  the continuance of that renown which destiny granted the Scipios

  in Africa. It was a great achievement to conquer Carthage, but

  10 a greater one to conquer death. ‘All is well with the general,’ he

  said: should a general – and what is more Cato’s general – die

  11 otherwise? I’m not referring you to the history books or assembling

  from all past ages the very many who have despised death.

  Look at these times of ours whose apathy and affected manners

  we complain about: they will still offer you individuals of every

  rank, fortune and age who have cut short their sufferings by death.

  Trust me, Lucilius, death is so far not to be feared that, thanks

  12 to it, nothing is to be feared. So listen with tranquillity to your

  enemy’s threats, and though your good conscience gives you

  confidence, since there are many powerful factors outside the

  case, you must both hope for the most favourable outcome and

  gird yourself to face the most unfavourable one. But this above all

  remember: to banish life’s turbulence and see clearly the essence of

  everything. You will then realize that there is nothing fearful

  13 there except fear itself. What you see happen with children is true

  of us slightly older children too. If they see their own friends

  and regular playfellows wearing masks they become frightened of

  them. Well, not only people but things must have their masks

  stripped off and their true features restored.

  14 Why do you show me swords and flames and a crowd of

  executioners clamouring around you? Away with that parade

  behind which you lurk to terrify fools: you are death, whom

  lately my slave and my handmaid despised. Why display again all

  that equipment of whips and racks – the instruments specially

  designed to tear apart individual joints, and a thousand other

  tools for slaughtering a man bit by bit? Lay aside those means of

  paralysing us with horror; silence the groans, the shrieks, the

  hoarse cries extorted under torture. Of course you are pain –

  pain which the gouty man scorns, the dyspeptic suffers while he

  indulges himself, the girl endures in childbirth. You are mild if I

  can bear you and short-lived if I cannot.

  15 Think these things over: you have often heard them and often

  said them yourself, but you must give practical proof that you

  have really absorbed them from others and uttered them sincerely.

  For this is the most shocking charge commonly brought against

  us, that we deal in the words of philosophy and not its works.

  Well, then, have you just now realized that death looms over

  you, or exile, or anguish? You were born to these things. Let us

  16 reflect that whatever can happen is going to happen. I am sure

  you have done what I’m telling you to do: my point now is not

  to let your mind be overwhelmed by this anxiety of yours, for it

  will be deadened and lose its vigour when the time comes for it

  to bestir itself to action. Divert it from your individual case to a

  general one. Tell yourself that you have only a little body, frail

  and mortal, and threatened by pain not only from ill-treatment

  by superior strength. Pleasures themselves lead to pain, banquets

  bring indigestion, excessive drinking brings muscular paralysis and

  fits of trembling, lust brings deformity in hands, feet and all the

  17 joints. I shall become poor: I’ll be among the majority. I shall

  become an exile: I’ll suppose myself a native of my place of

  banishment. I shall be bound in fetters: so what? Am I free now?

  Nature has tied me to this grievous weight of my body. I shall

  die: what you mean is this – I shall cease to be liable to illness, I

  shall cease to be liable to bonds, I shall cease to be liable to death.

  18 I am not so gauche as to keep repeating the Epicurean refrain

  here, that fears about the underworld are groundless, and there is

  no Ixion turning on his wheel, no Sisyphus heaving a stone uphill

  with his shoulders, no possibility of anyone’s entrails being daily

  devoured and reborn. No one is so childish as to fear Cerberus

  and darkness and the spectral forms of skeletons. Death either

  destroys us or sets us free. If we are released, the better part of us

  19 remains having lost its burden; if we are destroyed, nothing

  remains and good and evil alike are removed. Allow me at this

  point to quote your own verse, first warning you to deem it

  written not for others but even for yourself. It is shocking to say

  one thing and think another: how much worse to write one thing

  and think another! I recall that you once treated this topic, that

  20 we don’t suddenly meet death but gradually approach it. Every

  day we die, for every day part of our life is lost, and even when

  we are growing bigger our life is growing shorter. We have lost

  successively childhood, boyhood, youth. Right up to yesterday

  all the time which has passed has been lost, and this present day

  itself we share with death. It is not the last drop of water which

  empties the water-clock, but all that dripped out previously. In

  the same way the final hour when we actually die does not alone

  bring our death but simply completes the process. At that point

  we have arrived at death, but we have been journeying thither

  21 for a long time. When you had established this with your usual

  eloquence, always noble but never more pungent than when your

  words match the truth, you then said: ‘We face more deaths than

  one: ’tis the last one takes us off.’ I’d rather you read your own

  words than my letter: you will see clearly that this death which

  we fear is not the only one, only the last.

  22 I see what you are looking for: you are wondering what I’ve

  packed into this letter, what spirited remark of somebody, what

  useful precept. I’ll send you something straight from my current

  reading. Epicurus rebukes equally those who wish for death and

  those who fear it, saying, ‘It is silly to run to meet death
through

  boredom with life, when it is just because of your life-style that

  23 you have created the need to do so’. Similarly he remarks elsewhere:

  ‘What is so silly as to seek death when it is the fear of death

  which has made your life anxious?’ You can add this reflection too

  which makes the same point: so great is human thoughtlessness,

  even madness, that certain people are driven to death by the fear

  of it.

  24 Pondering over any of these thoughts will fortify your mind

  to endure either death or life; for we have to be advised and strengthened

  to face both without either loving or hating our life too

  much. Even when reason persuades us to end our lives we should

  25 not follow this urge rashly or impetuously. A brave and wise man

  should not flee from life but step out of it, and that mood above

  all must be avoided which grips many men – a passion for dying.

  For, Lucilius, there is an unthinking tendency towards death, as

  towards other things, which often gets hold of men of noble and

  most energetic character, and often men who are indolent and

  spiritless: the former despise life, the latter are flattened by it.

  26 Some people suffer from a surfeit of doing and seeing the same

  things. Theirs is not contempt for life but boredom with it, a

  feeling we sink into when influenced by the sort of philosophy

  which makes us say, ‘How long the same old things? I shall wake

  up and go to sleep, I shall eat and be hungry, I shall be cold and

  hot. There’s no end to anything, but all things are in a fixed cycle,

  fleeing and pursuing each other. Night follows day and day night;

  summer passes into autumn, hard on autumn follows winter, and

  that in turn is checked by spring. All things pass on only to return.

  Nothing I do or see is new: sometimes one gets sick even of this.’

  There are many who think that life is not harsh but superfluous.