Letters From a Stoic (26 page)
Read Letters From a Stoic Online
Authors: Seneca
The queen unharmed, the bees all live at one;
Once she is lost, the hive’s in anarchy.
*
The spirit is our queen.
So long as she is unharmed, the rest remains at its post, obedient and submissive.
If she wavers for a moment, in the same moment the rest all falters.
†
T
HE
daylight has begun to diminish.
It has contracted considerably, but not so much that there is not a generous amount remaining still for anyone who will, so to speak, rise with the daylight itself.
More active and commendable still is the person who is waiting for the daylight and intercepts the first rays of the sun; shame on him who lies in bed dozing when the sun is high in the sky, whose waking hours commence in the middle of the day – and even this time, for a lot of people, is the equivalent of the small hours.
There are some who invert the functions of day and night and do not separate eyelids leaden with the previous day’s carousal before night sets in.
Their way of life, if not their geographical situation, resembles the state of those peoples whom nature, as Virgil says, has planted beneath our feet on the opposite side of the world
And when Dawn’s panting steeds first breathe on us,
For them the reddening Evening starts at length
To light their lamps.
‡
There are some antipodes living in the same city as ourselves who, as Marcus Cato said, have never seen the sun rise or set.
Can you imagine that these people know how one ought to live when they do not know when one ought to live?
Can they really be afraid of death like other people when this is what they have retreated into in their own lifetimes?
They are as weird as birds that fly by night.
They may while away their hours of darkness to a background of wine and perfume, they may occupy the whole of the time they spend, contrarily, awake eating sumptuous dishes – individually cooked, too, in a long succession of different courses; but what in fact they are doing is not banqueting but celebrating their own last rites.
At least the dead have their memorial ceremonies during the daytime.
Heavens, though, no day is a long one for a man who is up and about!
Let us expand our life: action is its theme and duty.
The night should be kept within bounds, and a proportion of it transferred to the day.
Poultry that are being reared for the table are cooped up in the dark so as to prevent them moving about and make them fatten easily; there they languish, getting no exercise, with the swelling taking possession of their sluggish bodies and the inert fat creeping over them in their magnificent seclusion.
And the bodies of these people who have dedicated themselves to the dark have an unsightly look about them, too, inasmuch as their complexions are unhealthier looking than those of persons who are pale through sickness.
Frail and feeble with their blanched appearance, in their case the flesh on the living person is deathlike.
And yet I should describe this as the least of their ills.
How much deeper is the darkness in their souls!
Their souls are dazed and befogged, envious of the blind!
What man was ever given eyes for the sake of the dark?
Do you ask how the soul comes to have this perverse aversion to daylight and transference of its whole life to the
night-time?
All vices are at odds with nature, all abandon the proper order of things.
The whole object of luxurious living is the delight it takes in irregular ways and in not merely departing from the correct course but going to the farthest point away from it, and in eventually even taking a stand diametrically opposed to it.
Don’t you think it’s living unnaturally to drink without having eaten, taking liquor into an empty system and going on to dinner in a drunken state?
Yet this is a failing which is common among young people, who cultivate their capacities to the point of drinking – swilling would be a better description of it – in naked groups the moment they’re inside the doors of the public bath-house, every now and then having a rub all over to get rid of the perspiration brought on by continually putting down the piping hot liquor.
To them drinking after lunch or dinner is a common habit, something only done by rural worthies and people who don’t know where the true pleasure lies: the wine that gives a person undiluted enjoyment, they say, is the wine that makes its way into his system unobstructed instead of swimming about in his food; intoxication on an empty stomach is the kind that gratifies a man.
Don’t you think it’s living unnaturally to exchange one’s clothes for women’s?
*
Is it not living unnaturally to aim at imparting the bloom of youth to a different period of life can there be a sorrier or crueller practice than that whereby a boy is never, apparently, allowed to grow up into a man, in order that he may endure a man’s attentions for as long as may be?
Won’t even his years rescue him from the indignity his sex ought to have precluded?
Is it not living unnaturally to hanker after roses during the winter, and to force lilies in midwinter by taking the requisite steps to change their environment and keeping up the
temperature with hot water heating?
Is it not living unnaturally to plant orchards on the top of towers, or to have a forest of trees waving in the wind on the roofs and ridges of one’s mansions, their roots springing at a height which it would have been presumptuous for their crests to reach?
Is it not living unnaturally to sink the foundations of hot baths in the sea and consider that one is not swimming in a refined fashion unless one’s heated waters are exposed to the waves and storms?
Having started to make a practice of desiring everything contrary to nature’s habit, they finally end up by breaking off relations with her altogether.
‘It’s daylight: time for bed!
All’s quiet: now for our exercises, now for a drive, now for a meal!
The daylight’s getting nearer: time we had our dinner!
No need to do as the crowd does: to follow the common, well-worn path in life is a sordid way to behave.
Let’s leave the daytime to the generality of people.
Let’s have early hours that are exclusively our own’.
This sort of person is to me as good as dead.
After all, how far can a person be from the grave, and an untimely one at that, if he lives by the light of tapers and torches?
*
I can recall a great many people who led this kind of life at one time, with a former praetor among them, too, Acilius Buta, the man who had squandered an enormous fortune which he had inherited, and when he confessed his impoverished state to the emperor Tiberius was met with the remark, ‘You have woken up rather late.’ Montanus Julius, a tolerably good poet, noted for his closeness to Tiberius and subsequent fall from favour, who used to give public readings of his verse, took great delight in working sunrises and sunsets into his compositions.
Hence the remark of Natta Pinarius when someone was expressing disgust at the way Montanus’ reading had continued for a whole day and declaring that his readings weren’t worth attending: ‘I’m quite prepared to
listen to him – can I say fairer than this – from sunrise to sunset.’ When Montanus had just read the lines
The sun god starts his fiery flames to extend,
The rosy dawn to diffuse her light, and now
That plaintive bird, the swallow, starts to thrust
Her morsels down the throats of nestlings shrill,
With gentle bill supplying each its share,
With journeys yet to come,
one Varus called out, ‘And Buta starts to sleep.’ Varus was a Roman knight, a friend of Marcus Vinicius, who was always in attendance at good dinners, for which he used to qualify by the sauciness of his tongue.
It was he, too, who said a little later on when Montanus had read
The herdsmen now in byres have stalled their beasts,
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.
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.