Seneca On the Shortness of Life

Today’s episode features a section from James Romm’s How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life. How To Die is a modern translation and collection of Seneca’s musings on the shortness of life. James Romm is an author and professor of classics at Bard College in Annandale, NY. His specialty is in ancient Greek and Roman culture and civilization. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the London Review of Books, the Daily Beast, and more. This episode is brought to you by LMNT, the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. Right now you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. This deal is only valid for the month of January. Get your FREE Sample Pack now. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow James Romm:Homepage: http://www.jamesromm.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesromm See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare

• 0:47Ryan Holiday?

  for what the future will bring. Hey, everyone. It's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I have raved about the works of James Rahm many times. His book, Dying Every Day: A Biography of Seneca, incredible. And I've had him on the podcast before, so check that out. But his translation of Seneca for Princeton University Press's Ancient Wisdom series, How to Die, is just the best. It is the ultimate collection of Seneca's musings on the shortness of life. Look, Seneca talked about death so much, it feels almost a 300-page book. But it's just fire. Just all of it is so good.

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  And that's why we have this episode. Seneca believed that life is a journey toward death. But he also was saying that death is happening right now. You're dying even as you listen to this. This time you spent, you cannot get back. And so, we have to practice death. We have to be aware of death. We can't let time slip by. And we have to, even as Seneca finds, we have to go out well. It's the final act of our life. And how are we going to do that? So today's episode is an excerpt from the audiobook of that Ancient Wisdom series, How to Die, translated by James Rahm. Thank you to the folks at Tantor Media, Hybridge Audio, which are both a division of Recorded Books.

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  They were nice enough to share this with us. So you can get a sample of it. If you want to check out the book, you can get it on Amazon, Audible, anywhere books are sold. But really, I love this series of books. I'm a big fan. I recommend reading the Stoics in multiple translations. And I've read all of Seneca's works. But to be able to go back and see James Rahm, who's such a wise sort of student and biographer of Seneca, pick the things that really jumped out to him, render them in his own translations. It's just a rare treat. Again, I recommend you listen to my interview with James, read Dying Every Day. And check this out. We're going to focus on the fear of death. We're going to focus on becoming part of the whole. And there's just a lot here.

• 3:00Ryan Holiday?

  Check this out. Seneca's How to Die from Princeton University Press, translated by James Rahm. Of course, the audiobook brought to us from Tantor Media, who, as it happens, also published the audiobooks of a few of my books. So anyways, let's get right into it.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Two. Have no fear. By the time Seneca began his magnum opus, The Moral Epistles, in AD 63, he had been writing ethical treatises for more than a quarter of a century. His earliest surviving works, from the early 40s AD, are consolations, designed to offer comfort to friends or relations, including his own mother, who were mourning the death or absence of a loved one. In the consolation to Marcia, from which the following passage and several others in this volume are taken, Seneca addresses a mother grieving for the loss of a teenaged son.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Consider that the dead are afflicted by no ills, and that those things that render the underworld a source of terror are mere fables. No shadows loom over the dead, nor prisons, nor rivers blazing with fire, nor the waters of oblivion. There are no trials, no defendants, no tyrants reigning a second time in that place of unchained freedom. The poets have devised these things for sport, and have troubled our minds with empty terrors. Death is the undoing of all our sorrows, an end beyond which our ills cannot go.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  It returns us to that peace in which we reposed before we were born. If someone pities the dead, let him also pity those not yet born. To Marcia, Letter 19, Verse 4. In his essay on Serenity of Mind, Seneca makes the case that fear of death not only makes dying more difficult, but diminishes the nobility and moral integrity of all of life. In the following second passage, he uses Julius Canus, a man otherwise barely known to us,

• 5:26Speaker 01

  to illustrate the greatness of mind found in those unafraid of death. What's to be feared in returning to where you came from? He lives badly, who does not know how to die well. Thus, we must, first and foremost, reduce the price we set on life, and count our breath among the things we think cheap. As Cicero says, "Gladiators who seek by every means to preserve their life, we detest; but we favor those who wear their disregard of it, like a badge."

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Know that the same outcome awaits us all, but dying fearfully often is itself a cause of death. Dame Fortune, who makes us her sport, says, "Why should I keep you alive, you lowly, cowering creature? You'll be more wounded and slashed if you don't learn how to offer your throat willingly."

• 6:32Speaker 01

  But you'll live longer and die more easily if you accept the sword-stroke bravely, without pulling back your neck or holding up your hands. He who fears death will never do anything to help the living. But he who knows that this was decreed by the moment he was conceived will live by principle and at the same time will ensure, using the same power of mind, that nothing of what happens to him comes as a surprise. On Serenity of Mind, Chapter 11, Verse 4

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Julius Canus, an exceptionally great man, got into a long dispute with Caligula. As he was leaving the room, Caligula, that second Phaleris, said, "Just so you don't take comfort from an absurd hope, I've ordered you to be led away for execution." "Thank you, best of rulers," Canus replied. I'm not sure what he was feeling. I can imagine several possibilities. Did he want to give insult by showing how great was the emperor's cruelty, that it made death seem a boon? Or was he reproaching the man's habitual insanity?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  For those whose children had been executed, or whose property had been taken away, used to give thanks in this way? Or was he embracing the sentence joyfully, like a grant of freedom? Whatever the reason, his reply showed a greatness of mind. He was playing a board game when the centurion in charge of leading off the throngs of the condemned told him it was time to move. Hearing the call, Canus counted up the pieces and said to his partner, "See that you don't cheat and say you won after my death." Then he turned to the centurion and said, "You're my witness.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I was ahead by one."

• 8:43Speaker 01

  On Serenity of Mind, Chapter Fourteen, Verse Four

• 8:49Speaker 01

  In later life, to judge by the moral epistles, Seneca witnessed the illnesses and deaths of many close contemporaries, and made careful note of how each man faced his final challenge. He then held up these exemplars for the edification of his friend Lucilius, and through the publication of the letters, the entire Roman world. Dear Lucilius, I went to see Ophidius Bassus, a very noble fellow, stricken and struggling with his advancing years. But already, there is more to weigh him down than lift him up, for old age is leaning upon him with its huge weight, everywhere.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  The man's body, as you know, was ever weak and desiccated. He held, or even patched it together, as I might more accurately say, for a long time, but suddenly it gave out. Just as, when a ship has got water in the hold, one crack or another can be stopped up, but once it has begun to come apart in many spots and to go under, there is no more help for the splitting vessel. Just so, in an old man's body, weakness can be supported and propped up for a time. But when, just as in a rotting house, every join is coming apart

• 10:17Speaker 01

  and a new crack opens up while you're patching the old, then it's time to look around for a way to leave. But our friend Bassus stays sharp-minded. Philosophy furnishes him with this: "To be cheerful when death comes in view; to stay strong and happy, no matter what one's bodily condition; and not to let go, even when one is let go of."

• 10:46Speaker 01

  A great ship's captain continues the voyage even with a torn sail, and if he has to jettison cargo, he still keeps the remainder of the ship on course. This is what our friend Bossus does. He looks on his own end, with the kind of attitude and expression that would seem too detached, even if he were looking on someone else's. It's a great thing, Lucilius, and always to be studied. When that inescapable hour arrives, go out with a calm mind. Other kinds of death are intermingled with hope.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Illness lets up, fires are put out, ruin bypasses those to whom it seemed about to sink. The sea spits out, safe and well, those whom it had just as violently swallowed down. The soldier retracts his sword from the very neck of the doomed man. But he whom old age leads toward death, has nothing to hope for. For him alone, no reprieve is possible. No other way of dying is so gradual and so long-lasting.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Our Bossus seemed to me to be laying out his own body for burial, and accompanying it to the grave. He lives like one surviving himself, and bears the grief over himself as a wise man should. For he talks freely about death, and bears it so calmly, that we are led to think that, if there's anything troubling or fearsome in this business, it's the fault of the dying man, not of death. There's nothing more worrisome in the act of dying than there is after death. It's just as insane to fear what you're not going to feel, as to fear what you're not even going to experience.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Or could anyone think, that it will be felt, the very thing that will cause nothing at all to be felt? Therefore, Bassus declares: "Death is as far beyond all other evils, as it is beyond the fear of evils." I know such things are often said, and often must be said, but they have never done me so much good, either when reading them, or hearing people say that we must not fear things that don't hold any terrors. It's the man who speaks from death's own neighbourhood, that has the most authority in my eyes.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  I'll say plainly what I believe: I think that the man in the midst of death, is braver than the one who skirts its edges. The approach of death lends even to the ignorant, the resolve to face inevitabilities. Like a gladiator who, though very skittish throughout his combat, offers his neck to his enemy, and guides the sword toward himself if it strays off target. But the death that is only near by, though sure to arrive, does not grant that steady firmness of resolve, a rarer thing, that can only be exhibited by a sage.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  I would gladly listen therefore to one who can, as it were, report on death, giving his opinion about it, and showing what it's like, as though having seen it close up. You would, I suppose, put more trust and give more weight, to someone who had come back to life, and told you, based on experience, that death holds no evils. But those who have stood in front of death, who have seen it coming and embraced it, can best tell you what sort of upset its approach brings with it. You can count Bassus among these: a man who doesn't want us to be deceived.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Bassus says that it's as silly to fear death, as to fear old age: for just as age follows youth, so death follows age. Whoever doesn't want to die, doesn't want to live.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Life is granted with death as its limitation. It's the universal end-point. To fear it is madness, since fear is for things we're unsure of. Certainties are merely awaited. Death's compulsion is both fair and unopposed, and who can complain of sharing a condition that no one does not share?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  The first step toward fairness is even-handedness. But there's no need now to plead the case of nature. She wants our law to be the same as hers. Whatever nature puts together, she undoes, and what she undoes, she puts together again. Truly, if it happens that old age dispatches someone gently, not suddenly tearing him away from life, but little by little releasing him, that person ought to thank the gods for bringing him, after he's had his fill of life, to a rest that is needed by all and welcomed by the weary.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  You see people who long for death, more so indeed than life is usually sought. I don't know which imparts to us a greater resolve: those who beg for death, or those who await it calmly and cheerfully.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  The former happens occasionally, owing to madness or some sudden outrage, while the latter is a kind of serenity born of steady judgment. Some arrive at death in a rage, but no one greets death's arrival cheerfully, except those who have long prepared themselves for it. I confess that I had gone to see Bossus, a dear friend, rather often, for multiple reasons. In part, to learn whether I would find him the same on every occasion, or wouldn't the power of his will diminish, along with the strength of his body. In fact, it only increased in him,

• 17:19Speaker 01

  just as the joy of chariot drivers is often seen more clearly as they approach the seventh and last lap of victory. He would say, in accord with the teachings of Epicurus, that he hoped, first of all, there would be no pain in his final breath. But if there was, he had a certain comfort in its very brevity, for no pain is long-lasting if it is great. Moreover, there would be relief for him in this thought, even if his soul was torturously torn from his body. That after this pain, he could no longer feel pain.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  But he had no doubt that his elderly soul was already on the edge of his lips, and no great force would be needed to pull it away. "A fire that has gotten control of ready tinder must be put out with water, or sometimes by tearing down buildings," he said, "but the fire that lacks fuel dies down by itself." I listened to these words gladly, Lucilius, not because I'm hearing something new, but because I'm being drawn toward what is, as it were, right before my eyes. What then? Have I not seen many others cutting their lives short?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Indeed, I have, but those who come to death with no hatred of life, who receive death rather than drawing it toward them, make a deeper impression on me. Bossus used to say that the torment we feel is of our own making. We tremble when we believe death is near. But whom is it not near, when it's ready and waiting at every moment, in every place?

• 19:14Speaker 01

  "Let's consider," he says, "at the point when something seems to draw near that might cause our death, how many other causes there are, even close at hand, which we don't fear."

• 19:28Speaker 01

  An enemy threatens someone with death, but an upset stomach beats him to it.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  If we want to separate into categories the reasons for our fear, we will find some that exist, others that merely seem to. We don't fear death, but the contemplation of death. Death itself is always the same distance away. If it is to be feared, then it should be feared always. What time is there that's exempt from death? But I ought to be afraid that you'll hate this lengthy letter even more than death, so I'll come to an end. As for you, study death always, so that you'll fear it never. Farewell.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Epistle thirty. It's not death that's glorious, but dying courageously. No one praises death. Rather, we praise the person whose soul death stripped away, before causing it any turmoil. The death that was glorious in Cato's case, was base and worthy of shame in Decimus's. This is Decimus, the man who, while seeking postponements of death, though destined to die, drew apart in order to empty his bowels, and, when summoned to his death and ordered to bare his neck, said,

• 21:03Speaker 01

  "I'll bear it, if I can live." What madness, to take flight when there's no going backward! "I'll bear it if I can live." He almost added, "Even under Antony." That's a man worthy to be allowed to live all right. But, as I was discussing earlier, you see that death in itself is neither good nor bad. Cato made the most honorable use of it, Decimus the most shameful. Anything that has no glory of its own takes on glory when virtue is added to it. Metal is neither cold nor hot in itself.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  It grows hot when stuck in a furnace, and cools off again when plunged into water. Death is honorable by way of what's honorable, namely virtue and a mind that disdains outward appearances. But, Lucilius, even among the things we call "intermediate between good and bad", there are distinctions to be made. Death is not indifferent in the same way as whether you have an odd or even number of hairs on your head. Death is among those things that are not bad, but nevertheless have an outward appearance of badness.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  For the love of one's own self and the desire to maintain and preserve oneself are deeply rooted, along with an aversion to annihilation, which seems to strip away many good things from us and take us away from that abundance of things to which we are accustomed. And this too estranges us from death, that we know what is here before us, but don't know what the things are like that we will cross over into, and we dread the unknown. Then too, our fear of darkness is a natural fear, and death is thought to be leading us into darkness. So, even if death is an indifferent,

• 23:11Speaker 01

  it's not the kind of thing that can be easily ignored. The mind must be hardened by a great training program to endure to look on it and see it approach. Death ought to be scorned more than it customarily is. We take many things about it on faith, and the talents of many strive to increase its ill reputation. There are descriptions of a subterranean prison-house and a realm shrouded in eternal night in which the huge door-guard of Orchus, stretched out over half-eaten bones in a gore-spattered cave, barks forever to frighten the bloodless shades of the dead.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  And even if you believe that these are fables and that nothing remains in the afterlife to frighten the dead, a different terror creeps in. People are just as afraid of being in the underworld as of not being anywhere.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  With these things working against us, poured into our ears over long stretches of time, why would it not be glorious to die courageously, one of the greatest achievements of the human mind? The mind will never strive for virtue if it thinks death is an evil thing. It will, though, if it considers death an indifferent. Epistle eighty-two, verses ten through seventeen.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  It's fitting for you to experience pain, and thirst, and hunger, and old age, if that is, a long delay in the human world befalls you, and illness, and loss, and death. But there's no reason to trust those who make a great din all around you. Nothing of these things is bad, nothing is unbearable or harsh. Fear attaches to them only by consensus. You fear death, but your fear is only a rumor, and what could be more foolish than a man who's afraid of words? Our friend Demetrius often says that the words of the ignorant

• 25:27Speaker 01

  issue from the same place as the rumblings of their guts. "What matter to me," he says, "whether they sound off from up top or from down below." It's altogether mad to fear being disgraced by the disgraceful. And likewise, just as you have no cause to fear evil rumors, so you have none to fear the things you would not fear unless rumor had commanded it. No good man would take harm from getting scattered by nasty rumors, right? Death too has a bad reputation, but let's not allow that to harm it in our eyes.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  None of those who bring charges against it have ever tried it, and it's impudent to condemn what you know nothing of. But you do know, at least, how many have found death helpful, how many it has released from tortures, poverty, lamentation, punishments, fatigue. We are in no one's power if death is in our power.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Epis. 91, Verses 18 through 21.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  The following passage is preceded by a description of the celestial plane of serene contemplation, to which the philosopher's mind can rise. In its final sentence, Seneca demonstrates one of his greatest rhetorical talents: a sharp eye for trenchant, pointed analogies.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  "When the mind raises itself to this sublime level, it becomes a manager, not a lover, of the body, as though this were its necessary burden. It does not become subject to what it was put in charge of.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  No free man is slave to the body. No need to mention the other masters that emerge from an excessive concern over it. The body's own dominion is gloomy and demanding.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  The man of temperate mind leaves his body. The great-minded man leaps out of it.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  No one asks what its end will be after it's been left behind. But just as we ignore the clippings from our beards and hair, just so, that divine sort of mind, as it prepares to leave its human form, judges that the destination of its container, whether fire burns it, or earth covers it, or wild beasts tear it apart, matters as little to it as the afterbirth does to an infant." Epis. 92, Verses 33 through 34.

• 28:25Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. And if you didn't know, I also have another podcast and daily email. Every day I write something at dailiedad.com, which gets delivered to thousands of people all over the world. I record the meditations, just like this one, on the podcast for free. So if you're a parent, if you know a parent, if you're an expecting parent, I think you'd really like it. It's called Daily Dad, but it has nothing to do with gender. I'm a dad, that's why it's called that. We'd love to have you over at dailiedad.com. And of course, subscribe to the Daily Dad Podcast.