INTRODUCTION

TOM BUTLER-BOWDON

The three most famous Stoic thinkers had dramatic and unexpected life trajectories.

Marcus Aurelius became the last of the ‘Five Good Emperors’ only because of a fortuitous adoption. Epictetus was born into slavery but founded an academy and became the philosopher friend of Emperor Hadrian. Seneca was born far from the centre of Rome (in Cordoba, Spain), spent a decade in Egypt, was exiled to Corsica, only to become one of Emperor Nero's key advisers.

Epictetus had no problem squaring his philosophy with his life, but Marcus Aurelius and Seneca were men of power. Political realities, the pressure of position, and the burden of wealth tested their Stoic values to an acute degree.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca's birth in 4 BCE came only 20 years or so after the start of the Roman Empire under Augustus. His very full and eventful life would straddle the reign of five emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.

It's hard to find a modern-day equivalent of Seneca: a public intellectual and literary celebrity who climbed to the centre of Roman power. The reality of being an extremely rich and powerful politician was at odds with his self-image as a philosopher with time to work on himself and think. The truth is that ‘peace of mind’ and ‘the happy life’ (two of his essays we feature in this volume) were a challenge for much of his adult existence. His writings provide a window into the ideal Seneca, one who might live beyond the turbulent nastiness of late imperial Rome. His forced suicide came after Nero suspected him (wrongly) of a plot. Historians depict it as a slow, heroic death in the company of his wife Pompeia Paulina.

Seneca was complicated, and the facts of his life make his writing even more intriguing. This introduction draws on research (see Capstone's Letters From A Stoic, 2021, Introduction by Donald Robertson) into Seneca's life and times, which may illuminate his motivations for writing what he did, when he did. Each essay is prefaced by information about what may have been happening in his world prior to their writing. At the end of this chapter you will also find a timeline of Seneca's life.

For a long period, Seneca's letters were better known than his essays and dialogues – hence our coverage of the letters first in the Capstone series. This edition comprises three of his essays – On the Shortness of Life, On the Happy Life, and On Peace of Mind – that articulate his idea of virtue and the good life within the framework of Stoic philosophy.

ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE

DE BREVITATE VITAE (C. 49 CE)

In 37 CE, Emperor Tiberius was supplanted by his adopted grandson Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, or Caligula. At this time Seneca was a rising senator and lawyer, and Caligula considered his influence in the Senate to be a threat. He planned to have Seneca executed, but Seneca's life was spared when Caligula was told that the senator would die soon anyway from consumption.

Shaken by these events, Seneca ended his legal career and focused on writing. He began to have considerable success. In his early forties he penned Of Consolation to Marcia. Marcia was a Roman noblewoman who was mourning the death of her son, and Seneca used Stoic arguments to console her.

After Caligula was assassinated in 41 CE, his uncle Claudius became emperor.

Claudius's wife, Empress Messalina, accused Seneca of having had a relationship with Julia Livilla, Caligula's sister, who was allegedly involved in a plot to kill Caligula. Caligula's other sister, Agrippina the Younger, also a friend of Seneca's, was implicated. Julia was ordered to be killed, but Seneca's fate was much milder. Exiled to Corsica, he got to keep his property in Rome and lived in some comfort on the island. He published Of Consolation to Helvia (42 CE), which attempted to comfort his mother over the fact that her son was now in exile.

In 48 CE, Emperor Claudius had his wife Messalina executed and married Agrippina the Younger, Caligula's sister and Seneca's friend. Agrippina had Claudius recall Seneca from exile. She hired Seneca, by now a literary celebrity, to tutor her 12-year-old son, the future Emperor Nero. Because he was older than Claudius's natural son Britannicus, Nero became heir to the throne.

On the Shortness of Life was written sometime between 49 CE and 55 CE, when Seneca was back in Rome. While exiled on Corsica he had had plenty of time to reflect on the brevity of life, a notion very much part of Stoic philosophy. Seneca's own brush with death, his exile, and the various assassinations and murders happening in Rome made ‘the shortness of life’ a harsh reality, not just an abstract notion. Yet he does not refer to any of these events, rather to more prosaic obstacles to an appreciation of the shortness of life, such as busyness and luxury.

In the very first chapter, Seneca points out that the amount of time we have is not the issue:

Life is long enough to carry out the most important projects – we have ample time, if we arrange it properly. But when it all runs to waste through luxury and carelessness, when it is not devoted to any good purpose, then at the last we are forced to feel that it is all over, although we never noticed how it glided away. So it is: we do not receive a short life, but we make it a short one, and we are not poor in days, but wasteful of them. (On the Shortness of Life, 1)

He then lists all the ways a person can waste their life, chasing after things with no real meaning. These include: greed (‘which nothing can satisfy’); working too hard on things that are not worth it; drunkenness; laziness; ambition, which can make people sell their souls; and love of commercial gain, which sees people constantly on the move seeking clients. Others, Seneca says, are ‘plagued by the love of war’, making their own or others' lives cheap. Some sacrifice their lives ‘in the service of great men’ (thus neglecting their own), while others waste their time litigating to get or regain some fortune. The result of such wasted efforts is that, as the Oracle said, ‘We live only a small part of our lives.’

The quest for recognition, excitement, and money is not a good use of our lives. A life lost in busyness, in providing services for others, means never giving enough time to ourselves – to that quiet voice that yearns for reflection upon our very existence. If our lives become merely one event leading to another, we are little more than animals responding to stimuli. Seneca wished for this life of reflection. He writes that the day a person decides to become a ‘philosopher’, meaning committed to reflection and truth rather than work, money, duties, and business, that day is a liberation. One starts to belong to one's self.

Many lust after success and power, but when they finally achieve some high office, Seneca notes, all they can think about is when they can leave it and free themselves from the pressure and difficulties of the job. Some daydream of their next vacation, fantasizing about a time when they will not be so busy, to live like normal people. A modern example is provided by Barack Obama's autobiography A Promised Land, in which he revealed that, at the height of his presidency, he had recurring dreams of sitting on a park bench doing nothing. He no longer owned his own time.

So how does a person act who understands the value of time? It is not so much what they do, Seneca says, but what they have resolved to escape from, what they have said ‘No’ to. It takes a superior kind of person to be this intentional and protective of their time:

You cannot find anyone who wants to give away their money; yet among how many people does everyone distribute their life? (On the Shortness of Life, 3)

The lament of the rich, lost in their legal troubles and business problems, is ‘I am not allowed to live my own life.’ Why are they not allowed? Because they have let others and their issues take up their time, when in fact it is in their power to construct a simpler life. Seneca warns:

When … you see a man often wear the purple robes of office, and hear his name often repeated in the forum, do not envy him; he gains these things by losing so much of his life. Men throw away all their years in order to have one year named after them as consul. (On the Shortness of Life, 20)

No one values time itself, only things and services. Yet time is the one thing you can never get back or buy:

Why are you careless and slow while time is flying so fast, and why do you spread out before yourself a vision of long months and years, as many as your greediness requires? (On the Shortness of Life, 9)

Seneca's conclusion is that it's a mistake to suppose ‘that anyone has lived long, just because they have wrinkles or grey hairs. They have not lived long, but merely existed for a certain duration’.

There are people ‘whose minds are still in their childhood when old age comes upon them’, and find themselves without the ability to deal with it. They stumble into old age, as if it is a shock:

Just as conversation, or reading, or deep thought deceives travellers, and they...