Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger, On the Shortness of Life, transl. C. D. N. Costa, Penguin Books – Great Ideas, New York, 2005

Most human beings, Paulinus [friend of Seneca’s], complain about the meanness of nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, … (On the Shortness of Life, 1)

Hence the dictum of the greatest of doctors [Hippocrates]: ‘Life is short, art is long.’ Hence too the grievance, most improper to a wise man, which Aristotle expressed when he was taking nature to task for indulging animals with such long existences that they can live through five or ten human lifetimes, while a far shorter limit is set for men who are born to a great and extensive destiny. It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. (1)

Why do we complain about nature? She has acted kindly: life is long if you know how to use it. (2)

Some have no aims at all for their life’s course, but death takes them unawares as they yawn languidly—so much so that I cannot doubt the truth of that oracular remark of the greatest of poets: ‘It is a small part of life we really live.’ Indeed, all the rest is not life but merely time. (2)

How many find their riches a burden! How many burst a blood vessel by their eloquence and their daily striving to show off their talents! How many are pale from constant pleasures! How many are left no freedom by the crowd of clients surrounding them! (3)

Call to mind when you ever had a fixed purpose; how few days have passed as you had planned; … when your face wore its natural expression; … [4] what work you have achieved in such a long life; … how much you have lost through groundless sorrow, foolish joy, greedy desire, the seductions of society; how little of your own was left to you. (4-5)

You will hear many people saying: ‘When I am fifty I shall retire into leisure; when I am sixty I shall give up public duties.’ … Aren’t you ashamed to keep for yourself just the remnants of your life, and to devote to wisdom only that time which cannot be spent on any business? How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! (5)

Cicero called himself a semi-prisoner, but really and truly the wise man will never go so far as to use such an abject term. He will [7] never be a semi-prisoner, but will always enjoy freedom which is solid and complete, at liberty to be his own master and higher than all others. For what can be above the man who is above fortune? (7-8)

But among the worst offenders I count those who spend all their time in drinking and lust, for these are the worst preoccupations of all. Other people, even if they are possessed by an illusory semblance of glory, suffer from a respectable delusion. You can give me a list of miserly men, or hot-tempered men who indulge in unjust hatreds or wars: but they are all sinning in a more manly way. (9)

But learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die. (10)

…putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. (13)

But this is what preoccupied people lose: for they have no time to look back at their past, and even if they did, it is not pleasant to recall activities they are ashamed of. …
And yet this [the past] is the period of our time which is sacred and dedicated, which has passed beyond all human risks and is removed from Fortune’s sway, which cannot be harassed by want or fear or attacks of illness. It cannot be disturbed or snatched from us: it is an untroubled, everlasting possession. (15)

But for those whose life is far removed from all business it must be amply long. None of it is frittered away, none of it scattered here and there, none of it committed to fortune, none of it lost through carelessness, none of it wasted on largesse, none of it superfluous: the whole of it, so to speak, is well invested. So, however short, it is fully sufficient, and therefore whenever his last day comes, the wise man will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step. (17)

Some men are preoccupied even in their leisure: in their country house, on their couch, in the midst of solitude, even when quite alone, they are their own worst company. You could not call theirs a life of leisure, but an idle preoccupation. Do you call that man leisured who arranges with anxious precision his Corinthian bronzes, the cost of which is inflated by the mania of a few collectors, and spends most of the day on rusty bits of metal? [17] … Again, do you call those men leisured who spend many hours at the barber’s simply to cut whatever grew overnight, … Which of them would not rather have his country ruffled than his hair? … And what about those who busy themselves in composing, listening to, or learning songs, while they distort their voice, whose best and simplest tone nature intended to be the straight one, into the most unnatural modulations; who are always drumming with their fingers as they beat time to an imagined tune; whom you can hear humming to themselves even when they are summoned on a serious, often even sorrowful, affair? Theirs is not leisure but indolent occupation. And, good heavens, as for their banquets, I would not reckon on them as leisure times when I see how anxiously they arrange their silver, … [18] with what skill birds are carved into appropriate portions, … By these means they cultivate a reputation for elegance and good taste, and to such an extent to their failings follow them into all areas of their private lives that they cannot eat or drink without ostentation. / I would also not count as leisured those who are carried around in a sedan chair and a littler, and turn up punctually for their drives as if it was forbidden to give them up; who have to be told when to bathe or to swim or to dine: they are so enervated by their excessive torpor of a self-indulgent mind that they cannot trust themselves to know if they are hungry. (17-19)

…the man who is really at leisure is also aware of it. But this one who is only half alive, and needs to be told the positions of his own body—how can he have control over any of his time? (20)

They are not at leisure whose pleasures involve a serious commitment. For example, nobody will dispute that those people are busy about nothing who spend their time on useless literary studies: even among the Romans there is now a large company of these. It used to be a Greek failing to want to know how many oarsmen Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, and whether too they were by the same author, and other questions of this kind, which if you keep them to yourself in no way enhance your private knowledge, and if you publish them make you appear more a bore than a scholar. But now the Roman too have been afflicted by the pointless enthusiasm for useless knowledge. Recently I heard somebody reporting which Roman general first did this or that: Duilius first won a naval battle; Curius Dentatus first included elephants in a triumph. So far these facts, even if they do not contribute to real glory, at least are concerned with exemplary services to the state: such knowledge will not do us any good, but it interests us [20] because of the appeal of these pointless facts. … Doubtless too it is of some importance to know that… Perhaps you will also allow someone to take seriously the fact that… This too may be excused—but does it serve any good purpose? –to know that… It would be better for such things to be forgotten, lest in the future someone in power might learn about them and not wish to be outdone in such a piece of inhumanity. (20-21)

For even if you admit that they say all this in good faith, even if they guarantee the truth of their statements, whose mistakes will thereby be lessened? Whose passions restrained? Who will be made more free, more just, more magnanimous? (22)

Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. … We can argue with Socrates, express doubt with Carneades, cultivate retirement with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, and exceed its limits with the Cynics. Since nature allows us to enter into a partnership with every age, why not turn from this brief and transient spell of time and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the past, … (23)

We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too. (25)

Their own folly afflicts them with restless emotions which hurl themselves upon the very things they fear: they often long for death because they fear it. Nor is this a proof that they are living for a long time that the day often seems long to them, or that they complain that the hours pass slowly until the time fixed for dinner arrives. … Their days are not long but odious: on the other hands, how short do the nights seems which they spend drinking or sleeping with harlots! Hence the lunacy of the poets, who encourage human frailty by their stories in which Jupiter, seduced by the pleasures [26] of love-making, is seen to double the length of the night. … Can the nights, which they purchase so dearly, not seem much too short to these people? They lose the day in waiting for the night, and the night in fearing the dawn. (26-27)

And so, my dear Paulinus, extract yourself from the crowd, and as you have been storm-tossed more than your age deserves, you must at last retire into a peaceful harbour. (29)

…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—… the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, the knowledge of how to live and die, and a life of deep tranquility. (31)

It is a shameful sight when an elderly man runs out of breath while he is pleading in court for litigants who are totals strangers to him, and trying to win the applause of the ignorant bystanders. (32)

Dearest mother, I have often had the urge to console you and often restrained it. (Consolation to Helvia)

As you never refused me anything I hope you will not refuse me this at least (though all grief is stubborn), to be willing that I should set a limit to your desolation. (34)

As soon as you were born, no, even while being born, you lost your mother, … You lost your uncle, …. You buried your dearest husband … the bones of three grandchildren. Within twenty days of burying my son, who died as you held and kissed him, [36] you heard that I had been taken away. (36-37)

Come, put away wailings and lamentations and all the other usual noisy manifestations of feminine grief. For all your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched. Do I seem to have dealt boldly with you? I have kept away not one of your misfortunes from you, but piled them all up in front of you. (37)

We are born under circumstances that would be favourable if we did not abandon them. It was nature’s intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can make himself happy. External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence in either direction: prosperity does not elevate the sage and adversity does not depress him. … Am I calling myself a sage? Certainly not. For if I could claim that, not only would I be denying that I was wretched but I would be asserting that I was the most fortunate of all men and coming close to god. (38)

Never have I trusted Fortune, even when she seemed to offer peace. All those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me—money, public office, influence—I relegated to a place when she could claim them back without bothering me. (39)

…the world ‘exile’ itself now enters the ears more harshly through a sort of conviction and popular belief, and strikes the listener as something gloomy and detestable. For that is the people’s verdict, but wise men on the whole reject the people’s decrees. (39)

…you will find no place of exile where somebody does not linger because he wants to. … Thus, so far is change of locality itself from being a hardship that even this place has enticed some people from their homeland. I’ve come across people who say that there is a sort of inborn restlessness in the human spirit and an urge to change one’s abode; … (41)

Different reasons roused different peoples to leave their homes; but this at least is clear, nothing has stayed where it was born. The human race is always on the move: in so large a world there is every day some change—new cities are founded, … Why, the Roman empire itself looks back to an exile as its founder,… (43)

…there can be no place of exile within the world since nothing within the world is alien to men. From whatever point on earth’s surface you look up to heaven the same distance lies between the realms of gods and men. (45)

As far as I am concerned, I know that I have lost not wealth but distractions. The body’s needs are few: it wants to be free from cold, to banish hunger and thirst with nourishment, if we long for anything more we are exerting ourselves to serve our vices, not our needs. We do not need to scour [48] every ocean, or to load our bellies with the slaughter of animals, or to pluck shellfish from the unknown shores of the furthest sea. (48-49)

So the soul can never suffer exile, being free and akin to the gods and equal to all the universe and all time. For its thought encompasses the whole of heaven, and journeys into all past and future time. This wretched body, the chain and prison of the soul, is tossed hither and thither; upon it punishment and pillage and disease wreak havoc: but the soul itself is holy and eternal, and it cannot be assailed with violence. (53)

We all know that Homer had one slave, Plato had three, and Zeno, the founder of the strict and manly Stoic philosophy, had none. Will anyone on that account say that they lived wretchedly without himself seeming to all by his words to be utterly wretched? (54)

If you consider that sexual desire was given to man not for enjoyment but for the propagation of the race, once you are free of this violent and destructive [55] passion rooted in your vitals, every other desire will leave you undisturbed. Reason routs the vices not one by one but all together: the victory is final and complete.’ (55-56)

…exile too is often free from any kind of scorn. If a great man falls and remains great as he lies, people no more despise him than they stamp on a fallen temple, which the devout still worship as much as when it was standing. (57)

You must not excuse yourself as being a woman, who has been virtually given the right to indulge excessively, but not endlessly, in tears. With this in view our ancestors allowed widows to mourn their husbands for ten months, in order to compromise by public decree with the stubbornness of grief. (59)

…the excuse of being a woman does not apply to one from whom all womanly faults have been absent. That worst evil of our time, unchastity, has not numbered you among the majority of women;… (59)

…never did you follow other women who seek only to impress by their looks, and hide your pregnancy as if it were an indecent burden, nor did you destroy the hopes of giving birth by abortion; … you ought to be as immune to female tears as to female vices. (60)

She showed courage when he was exiled and wisdom when he died; for nothing stopped her showing her love and nothing induced her to persist in useless and unavailing grief. It is with women like these that I want you to be numbered. You always imitated their way of life, and you will best follow their example in controlling and conquering your sorrow. (61)

I know that this is not something which is in our power and that no strong feeling is under our control, least of all that which arises from sorrow:… Therefore it is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. … the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed for ever. I am not therefore going to prescribe for you those remedies which I know many people have used, that you divert or cheer yourself by a long or pleasant journey abroad, or spend a lot of time carefully going through your accounts and administering your estate, or constantly be involved in some new [61] activity. All those things help only for a short time; they do not cure grief but hinder it. But I would rather end it than distract it. And so I am leading you to that resource which must be the refuge of all who are flying from Fortune, liberal studies. (61-62)

But, so far as the old-fashioned strictness of my father allowed, you have had some acquaintance with the liberal arts, even if you have not mastered them. If only my father, best of men, had been less devoted to ancestral tradition, and had been willing that you be steeped in the teaching of philosophy and not just gain a smattering of it: you would not now have to acquire your defense against Fortune but just bring it forth. He was less inclined to let you pursue your studies because of those women who use books not to acquire wisdom but as the furniture of luxury. … Return now to these studies and they will keep you safe. They will comfort you, they will delight you; and if they genuinely penetrate your mind, never again will grief enter there, or anxiety, or the distress caused by futile and pointless suffering. (62)

But until you arrive at this haven which philosophy holds out to you, you must have supports to lean on: so [62] I want meanwhile to point out your own consolations. Consider my brothers: while they live you have no reason to complain of your fortune. In both you have contrasting virtues to cheer you up: the one achieved public office by his energy, the other in his wisdom despised it. … I promise you with complete confidence that you will miss nothing but the number of sons. / After these consider too your grandchildren: Marcus, a most charming child—you could not remain sorrowful while looking at him,… (62-63)

Embrace Novatilla, who will soon give you great-grandchildren; I had so much attached her to myself and adopted her that in losing me she could seem an orphan, though her father is alive. Cherish her for me too. Fortune recently took away her mother, but your love will mean that she will only grieve over her mother’s loss but not suffer for it. Now you must shape and compose her character:… you will be giving her a great deal even if you give her only your example. Such a sacred duty as this will act as a cure for you, for only philosophy or honourable occupation can divert from its anguish a heart whose grief springs from love. (64)

Up to now I have said nothing about your greatest comfort, your sister, that heart most faithful to you into which are poured unreservedly all your anxieties, [64] … Whether you wish to keep this mood or lay it aside, you will find in her either the end of your sorrow or one who will share it. But if I know the wisdom of this paragon of women, she will not allow you to be consumed in profitless anguish, … (64-65)

While actually on a sea voyage she lost her beloved husband, my uncle, whom she had married as a maiden; yet she bore simultaneously the burdens of grief and fear and, though shipwrecked, she rode out the storms and brought his body safely ashore. O how many noble deeds [65] of woman are lost in obscurity! If she had chanced to live in the days of old when people frankly admired heroism, how men of genius would have competed to sing the praises of a wife who ignored her physical weakness, ignored the sea which even the bravest must fear, and risked her life to give her husband burial; and while her own thoughts were on his funeral had no fear about her own! All the poets have given renown to the woman who offered to die in place of her husband. But this is nobler, to risk one’s life to bury one’s husband: for that love is greater which wins less through equal danger. (66)

So this is how you must think of me—happy and cheerful as if in the best of circumstances. For they are best, since my mind, without any preoccupation, is free for its own task, … (67)

After being long given up to frugality I have found myself surrounded by the lavish splendour of luxury echoing all about me. …a secret gnawing doubt undermines me whether that life is superior. (Letter from Serenus, friend of Seneca’s, in On Tranquility of Mind, 70)

I decide to restrict my life within its walls, saying, ‘Let no one robe me of a [70] single day who is not going to make me an adequate return for such a loss. Let my mind be fixed on itself, cultivate itself, have no external interest—nothing that seeks the approval of another; let it cherish the tranquility that has no part in public or private concerns.’ But when my mind is excited by reading a convincing account of something and spurred on by noble examples, I long to rush into the forum, to speak on behalf of one man and offer help to another, (70-71)

In my studies I suppose it must indeed be better to keep my theme firmly in view and speak to this, while allowing the theme to suggest my words and so dictate the course of an unstudied style of speech. ‘Where is the need,’ I ask, ‘to compose something to last for ages? Why not stop trying to prevent posterity being silent about you? You were born to die, and a silent funeral is less bothersome. So if you must fill your time, write something in a simple style for your own use and not for publication: less toil is needed if you study only for the day.’ Again, when my mind is lifted up by the greatness of its thought, it becomes ambitious for words and longs to match its higher inspiration with its language, and so produces a style that conforms to the impressiveness of the subject matter. Then it is that I forget my rule and principle of restraint, and I am carried too far aloft by a voice no longer my own. (71)

To express my complaint for you in a realistic metaphor, I am harried not by a tempest but by sea-sickness. Whatever my ailment, then, root it out and come to the help of one who is struggling in sight of land. (72)

[Seneca:] Indeed, Serenus, I have long been silently asking myself to what I should compare analogy than the condition of those people who have got over a long and serious illness, but are still sometimes mildly affected by onsets of fever and pain, and even when free of the last symptoms are still worried and upset; and, though quite better, offer their hands to doctors and needlessly complain if they feel at all hot. With these people, Serenus, it is not that their bodies are insufficiently healed but [72] that they are insufficiently used to health, … So what you need is not those more radical remedies which we have now finished with—blocking yourself here, being angry with yourself there, threatening yourself sternly somewhere else—but the final treatment, confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the right path, … But what you are longing for is great and supreme and nearly divine—not to be shaken. (72-73)

We are, therefore, seeking how the mind can follow a smooth and steady course, well disposed to itself, happily regarding its own condition and with no interruption to this pleasure, but remaining in a state of peace with no ups and downs: that will be tranquility. (73)

But nothing delights the mind so much as fond and loyal friendship. … To be sure, we shall choose those who are as far as possible free from strong desires; for vices spread insidiously, … (84)

Let us turn to private possessions, the greatest source of human misery. For if you compare all the other things from which we suffer, deaths, illnesses, fears, desires, endurance of pains and toils, with the evils which money brings us, the latter will far outweigh the others. So we must bear in mind how much lighter is the pain of not having money than of losing it; … (85)

…those people are more cheerful whom Fortune has never favoured than those whom she has deserted. That great-souled man Diogenes realized this, and arranged that nothing could be taken from him. … If anyone has any doubts about Diogenes’ felicity he can also have doubts about the condition of the immortal gods— … Are you not ashamed of yourselves, all of you who are smitten by wealth? Come, look at the heavens: you will see the gods devoid of possessions, and giving everything though they have nothing. Do you think a man who has stripped himself of all gifts of chance is poor, or that he resembles the immortal gods? [86] …when Diogenes was told that his only slave had run away, he did not think it worth the trouble to get him back. ‘It would be degrading,’ he said, ‘if Manes can live without Diogenes had not Diogenes without Manes.’ I think what he meant was: ‘Mind your own business, Fortune: Diogenes has nothing of yours now. My salve has run away—no, it is I who have got away free.’ (86-87)

Men’s bodies are better fitted for warfare if they can be compressed into their armour than if they bulge out of it and by their very bulk are exposed on every side to wounds. So the ideal amount of money is that which neither falls within the range of poverty nor far exceeds it. (87)

Let us get used to banishing ostentation, and to measuring things by their qualities of function rather than display. Let food banish hunger and drink banish thirst; let sex indulge its needs; [87] let us learn to rely on our limbs, and to adjust our style of dress and our way of living not to the newfangled patterns but to the customs of our ancestors. (88)ink your

What is the point of having countless books and libraries whose titles the owner could scarcely read through in his whole lifetime? The mass of books burdens the students without [88] instructing him, and it is far better to devote yourself to a few authors than to get lost among many. …excess in any sphere is reprehensible. How can you excuse a man who collects bookcases of citron-wood and ivory, amasses the works of unknown or third-rate authors, and then sits yawning among all his thousands of books and get most enjoyment out of the appearance of his volumes and their labels? (88-89)

Think your way through difficulties: harsh conditions can be softened, restricted ones can be widened, and heavy ones can weigh less on those who know how to bear them. Moreover, we must not send our desires on a distant hunt, but allow them to explore what is near to hand, since they do not submit to being totally confined. Abandoning those things which are impossible or difficult to attain, let us pursue what is readily available and entices our hopes, yet recognize that all are equally trivial, outwardly varied in appearance but uniformly futile within. … we shall have some desires to stimulate the mind, but being limited they will not lead us to a state of uncontrolled uncertainty. [91] What I am saying applies to people who are imperfect, commonplace and unsound, not to the wise man. …he does not hesitate to make a stand against Fortune and will never give ground to her. He has no reason to fear her, since he regards as held on sufferance not only his goods and possessions and status, but even his body,…he lives as though he were lent to himself and bound to return the loan on demand without complaint. Nor is he thereby cheap in his own eyes because he knows he is not his own, but he will act in all things as carefully and meticulously as a devout and holy man guards anything entrusted to him. (91-92)

…often the cause of dying is the fear of it. Dame Fortune, who makes sport with us, says, ‘Why should I preserve you, base and fearful creature? You will only receive more severe wounds and stabs, as you don’t know how to offer your throat. But you will both live longer and die more easily, since you receive the blade bravely, without withdrawing your neck and putting your hands in the way. (93)

…sometimes we are gripped by a hatred of the human race. When you consider how rare is simplicity and how unknown is innocence, …all this drives the mind into darkness whose shadows overwhelm it, as though those virtues were overturned which it is not possible to hope for and not useful to possess. We must therefore school ourselves to regard all commonly held [100] vices as not hateful but ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. For whenever these went out in public, the latter used to weep and the former to laugh; the latter thought all our activities sorrows, the former, follies. So we should make light of all things and endure them with tolerance: it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it. …the one allows it a fair prospect of hope, while the other stupidly laments over things he cannot hope will be put right. …Yet it is preferable to accept calmly public behaviour and human failings, and not to collapse into either laughter or tears. For to be tormented by other people’s troubles means perpetual misery, while to take delight in them is an inhuman pleasure;… (100-101)

I shall weep [102] for no one who is happy and for no one who is weeping: the one has himself wiped away my tears; the other by his own tears has proved himself unworthy of any. …For it is agonized always to be watching yourself in fear of being caught when your usual mask has slipped. … On the contrary, how full of pleasure is that honest and naturally unadorned simplicity that in no way hides its disposition! Yet this life too runs a risk of being scorned if everything is revealed to everybody; for with some people familiarity breeds contempt. But there is no danger of virtue being held cheap as a result of close observation, … Still, let us use moderation here: there is a big difference between living simply and living carelessly. …associating with people unlike ourselves upsets a calm [103] disposition, stirs up passions again, and aggravates any mental weakness which has been completely cured. However, the two things must be mingled and varied, solitude and joining a crowd: the one will make us long for people and the other for ourselves, and each will be a remedy for the other; … (102-104)

The mind should not be kept continuously at the same pitch of concentration, but given amusing diversions. Socrates did not blush to play with small children; Cato smoothed his mind with wine when it was tired from the cares of state; and Scipio used to disport that triumphal and military form in the dance, not shuffling about delicately in the present style, when even in walking men mince and wriggle with more than effeminate voluptousness, but in the old-fashioned, manly style in which men danced at times of games and festivals, without loss of dignity even if their enemies were watching them. Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after a rest. (104)