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Seneca
Letters on Ethics to Lucilius
By Margaret Graver, A. A. Long The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2015 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-26520-9
CHAPTER 1
BOOK ONE
Letter 1
From Seneca to Lucilius Greetings
1 Do that, dear Lucilius: assert your own freedom. Gather and guard the time that until now was being taken from you, or was stolen from you, or that slipped away. Convince yourself that what I write is true: some moments are snatched from us, some are filched, and some just vanish. But no loss is as shameful as the one that comes about through carelessness. Take a close look, and you will see that when we are not doing well, most of life slips away from us; when we are inactive, much of it — but when we are inattentive, we miss it all. 2 Can you show me even one person who sets a price on his time, who knows the worth of a day, who realizes that every day is a day when he is dying? In fact, we are wrong to think that death lies ahead: much of it has passed us by already, for all our past life is in the grip of death.
And so, dear Lucilius, do what your letter says you are doing: embrace every hour. If you lay hands on today, you will find you are less dependent on tomorrow. While you delay, life speeds on by. 3 Everything we have belongs to others, Lucilius; time alone is ours. Nature has put us in possession of this one thing, this fleeting, slippery thing — and anyone who wants to can dispossess us. Such is the foolishness of mortal beings: when they borrow the smallest, cheapest items, such as can easily be replaced, they acknowledge the debt, but no one considers himself indebted for taking up our time. Yet this is the one loan that even those who are grateful cannot repay.
4 You ask, perhaps, what I am doing — I, who give you these instructions. I am a big spender, I freely admit, but a careful one: I have kept my accounts. I cannot say that nothing has been wasted, but at least I can say what, and why, and how; I can state the causes of my impoverishment. But it is with me as with many others who have been reduced to penury through no fault of their own: everyone forgives them, but no one comes to their assistance.
5 What of it? A person is not poor, I think, as long as what little he has left is enough for him. Still, I prefer that you, for your part, conserve what you have. And make an early start. For in the words of our ancestors, "Thrift comes late when stocks are low." Not only is there very little left at the bottom of the jar, but its quality is the worst.
Farewell.
Letter 2
From Seneca to Lucilius Greetings
1 From your letter and from what I hear, I am becoming quite hopeful about you: you are not disquieting yourself by running about from place to place. Thrashing around in that way indicates a mind in poor health. In my view, the first sign of a settled mind is that it can stay in one place and spend time with itself.
2 Be careful, though, about your reading in many authors and every type of book. It may be that there is something wayward and unstable in it. You must stay with a limited number of writers and be fed by them if you mean to derive anything that will dwell reliably with you. One who is everywhere is nowhere. Those who travel all the time find that they have many places to stay, but no friendships. The same thing necessarily happens to those who do not become intimate with any one author, but let everything rush right through them. 3 Food does not benefit or become part of the body when it is eaten and immediately expelled. Nothing impedes healing as much as frequent change of medications. A wound does not close up when one is always trying out different dressings on it; a seedling that is transplanted repeatedly will never grow strong. Nothing, in fact, is of such utility that it benefits us merely in passing. A large number of books puts a strain on a person. So, since you cannot read everything you have, it is sufficient to have only the amount you can read.
4 "But I want to read different books at different times," you say. The person of delicate digestion nibbles at this and that; when the diet is too varied, though, food does not nourish but only upsets the stomach. So read always from authors of proven worth; and if ever you are inclined to turn aside to others, return afterward to the previous ones. Obtain each day some aid against poverty, something against death, and likewise against other calamities. And when you have moved rapidly through many topics, select one to ponder that day and digest.
5 This is what I do as well, seizing on some item from among several things I have read. Today it is this, which I found in Epicurus — for it is my custom to cross even into the other camp, not as a deserter but as a spy:
Cheerful poverty is an honorable thing.
6 Indeed, it is not poverty if it is cheerful: the pauper is not the person who has too little but the one who desires more. What does it matter how much is stashed away in his strongbox or his warehouses, how much he has in livestock or in interest income, if he hangs on another's possessions, computing not what has been gained but what there is yet to gain? Do you ask what is the limit of wealth? Having what one needs, first of all; then, having enough.
Farewell.
Letter 3
From Seneca to Lucilius Greetings
1 You gave letters to a friend of yours — so you write — to bring to me, and then you advise me not to tell him all your affairs, since you yourself are not in the habit of doing so. Thus in one and the same letter you have said both that he is your friend and that he is not. Well, if you used that word not with its proper meaning but as if it were public property, calling him a friend in the same way as we call all candidates "good men" or address people as "sir" when we don't remember their names, then let it go. 2 But if you think that a person is a friend when you do not trust him as much as you trust yourself, you are seriously mistaken; you do not know the meaning of real friendship.
Consider every question with a friend; but first, consider the friend. After you make a friend, you should trust him — but before you make a friend, you should make a judgment. People who love someone and then judge that person are mixing up their responsibilities: they should judge first, then love, as Theophrastus advised. Take time to consider whether or not to receive a person into your friendship; but once you have decided to do so, receive him with all your heart, and speak with him as candidly as with yourself.
3 Live in such a way that anything you would admit to yourself could be admitted even to an enemy. Even so, there are things that are customarily kept private; with a friend, though, you should share all your concerns, all your thoughts. If you believe him loyal, you will make him so. Some people teach their friends to betray them by their very fear of betrayal: by being suspicious, they give the other person the right to transgress. He is my friend: why should I hold back my words in his presence? When I am with him, why is it not as if I am alone?
4 There are those who unload their worries into every available ear, telling anyone they meet what should be entrusted only to friends. Others are reluctant to confide even in those who are closest to them; they press every secret to their chest, and would keep it even from themselves if they could. Neither alternative is appropriate — to trust everyone or to trust no one; both are faults, but the former is what I might call a more honorable fault, the latter a safer one.
5 Similarly, there is reason to criticize both those who are always on the move and those who are always at rest. Liking to be in the fray does not mean that one is hardworking; it is only the hustle and bustle of an agitated mind. Finding every movement a bother does not mean that one is tranquil; it is just laxity and idleness. 6 So let's keep in mind this saying I have read in Pomponius:
Some flee so far into their dens that they think everything outside is turmoil.
There should be a mix: the lazy one should do something, the busy one should rest. Consult with nature: it will tell you that it made both day and night.
Farewell.
Letter 4
From Seneca to Lucilius Greetings
1 Persevere in what you have begun; hurry as much as you can, so that you will have more time to enjoy a mind that is settled and made flawless. To be sure, you will have enjoyment even as you make it so; but there is quite another pleasure to be gained from the contemplation of an intellect that is spotlessly pure and bright.
2 Surely you remember what joy you felt when you set aside your boy's clothes and put on a man's toga for your first trip down to the Forum. A greater joy awaits you once you set aside your childish mind, once philosophy registers you as a grown man. For childhood — or rather, childishness, which is worse — has not yet left us. Worse yet, we have the authority of grown men but the faults of children, of infants even. Children are terrified of trivial things, infants of imagined things, and we of both. 3 Just make some progress, and you will understand that if some things seem very frightening, that is all the more reason why we should not fear them.
No evil is great if it is an ending. Death is on its way to you. You would have reason to fear it if it could ever be present with you; necessarily, though, it either does not arrive or is over and gone.
4 "It is hard," you say, "to get one's mind to despise life." But don't you see, people do sometimes despise it, and for trivial reasons. One person hangs himself outside his girlfriend's door; another hurls himself from a rooftop so as not to have to listen any longer to his master's complaints; a runaway slave stabs himself in the belly to avoid being recaptured. Don't you agree that courage will achieve what overwhelming terror manages to do? One cannot attain a life free of anxiety if one is too concerned about prolonging it — if one counts living through many consulships as an important good.
5 Rehearse this every day, so that you will be able to let go of life with equanimity. Many people grasp and hold on to life, like those caught by a flash flood who grasp at weeds and brambles. Most are tossed about between the fear of death and the torments of life: they do not want to live but do not know how to die. 6 Cast off your solicitude for life, then, and in doing so make life enjoyable for yourself. No good thing benefits us while we have it unless we are mentally prepared for the loss of it. And of all losses this is the easiest to bear, since once life is gone, you cannot miss it.
Exhort yourself, toughen yourself, against such events as befall even the most powerful. 7 Pompey lost his life to the decree of a young boy and a eunuch; Crassus lost his to the cruel and uncouth Parthians. Gaius Caesar commanded Lepidus to yield his neck to the tribune Dexter — then gave his own to Chaerea. No one has ever reached a point where the power fortune granted was greater than the risk. The sea is calm now, but do not trust it: the storm comes in an instant. Pleasure boats that were out all morning are sunk before the day is over.
8 Think: a robber, as well as a foe, can put a knife to your throat. In the absence of any greater authority, any slave holds the power of life or death over you. That's right: anyone who despises his own life is master of yours. Call to mind the stories of people whose house servants plotted to kill them, some by stealth and some in broad daylight, and you will realize that just as many people have died from the anger of slaves as from the anger of kings. So why should you bother to fear those who are especially powerful, when the thing you are afraid of is something anyone can do?
9 And suppose you should fall into the hands of the enemy, and the victor should order you to be put to death. Death is where you are headed anyway! Why do you deceive yourself? Do you realize now for the first time what has in fact been happening to you all along? So it is: since the moment of birth, you have been moving toward your execution. These thoughts, and others like them, are what we must ponder if we want to be at peace as we await the final hour. For fear of that one makes all our other hours uneasy.
10 To bring this letter to an end, here is what I liked from today's reading. This too is lifted from another's Garden:
Poverty is great wealth when it adjusts to nature's law.
Do you know what boundaries nature's law imposes? Not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold. To keep back hunger and thirst, you need not hang about the thresholds of the proud, nor endure the scorn of those whose very kindness is insulting; you need not brave the seas nor follow the camps of the army. What nature requires is close by and easy to obtain. 11 All that sweat is for superfluities. We wear out our fine clothes, grow old in army tents, hurl ourselves against foreign shores, and for what? Everything we need is already at hand. Anyone who is on good terms with poverty is rich.
Farewell.
Letter 5
From Seneca to Lucilius Greetings
1 You are hard at work, forgetting everything else and sticking to the single task of making yourself a better person every day. This I approve, and rejoice in it too. I urge you, indeed plead with you, to persevere. All the same, I have a warning for you. There are those whose wish is to be noticed rather than to make moral progress. Don't be like them, altering your dress or way of life so as to attract attention. 2 The rough clothes, the rank growth of hair and beard, the sworn hatred of silverware, the pallet laid on the ground: all these and any other perverse form of self-aggrandizement are things you should avoid.
The word "philosophy" makes people uncomfortable enough all by itself, even when used modestly. How would it be if we were to begin exempting ourselves from the conventions people usually observe? Within, let us be completely different, but let the face we show to the world be like other people's. 3 Our clothes should not be fine, but neither should they be filthy; we should not own vessels of silver engraved with gold, but neither should we think that the mere fact that one lacks gold and silver is any indication of a frugal nature. The life we endeavor to live should be better than the general practice, not contrary to it. Otherwise we frighten off the very people we want to correct: by making them afraid that they will have to imitate everything about us, we make them unwilling to imitate us in any way at all. 4 The very first thing philosophy promises is fellow feeling, a sense of togetherness among human beings. By becoming different, we will be cut off from this. If we are not careful, the very measures that are meant to win us admiration will instead make us objects of hatred and ridicule.
Our aim is to live in accordance with nature, is it not? This is contrary to nature: tormenting one's body, swearing off simple matters of grooming, affecting a squalid appearance, partaking of foods that are not merely inexpensive but rancid and coarse. 5 A hankering after delicacies is a sign of self-indulgence; by the same token, avoidance of those comforts that are quite ordinary and easy to obtain is an indication of insanity. Philosophy demands self-restraint, not self-abnegation — and even self-restraint can comb its hair. The limit I suggest is this: our habits should mingle the ideal with the ordinary in due proportion, our way of life should be one that everyone can admire without finding it unrecognizable.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Seneca by Margaret Graver, A. A. Long. Copyright © 2015 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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