“Check yourself. Examine and consider yourself in different ways. Look at this before everything else: have you advanced in philosophy or in life itself?
Philosophy is not some illusion for the public, not a thing prepared to show off. It consists not of words but in the way things are. It is not practiced to while away the day with some distraction or to free our leisure of boredom. It shapes and builds the mind; it re-orders life; it rules our actions; it indicates what we should do and not do; it sits at the rudder and guides our journey through uncertain weather.
No one can live bravely, no one can live safely without it. In each and every hour countless things happen that need counsel. This counsel must be found in philosophy.”
Excute te et varie scrutare et observa; illud ante omnia vide, utrum in philosophia an in ipsa vita profeceris. Non est philosophia populare artificium nec ostentationi paratum. Non in verbis, sed in rebus est. Nec in hoc adhibetur, ut cum aliqua oblectatione consumatur dies, ut dematur otio nausia. Animum format et fabricat, vitam disponit, actiones regit, agenda et omittenda demonstrat, sedet ad gubernaculum et per ancipitia fluctuantium derigit cursum. Sine hac nemo intrepide potest vivere, nemo secure. Innumerabilia accidunt singulis horis, quae consilium exigant, quod ab hac petendum est.
an Zig performing with rabbit and roses, including hat trick and levitation. Advertising poster for the magician (who seems to have left no other trace behind). From wikimedia commons
“Let’s discuss about these matters, starting from a deeper point. Let it stand that the soul has five categories in which to establish or deny the truth: these are skill, knowledge, prudence, wisdom, and intelligence. The mind is likely to deceive itself through supposition or opinion.”
“Thus Anaxagoras also said that the soul makes movement—along with the rest who argued that the soul moved everything—but not exactly the same way as Democritus. For Democritus simply said that the soul and mind are the same and that truth is as things appear [subjective]. For this reason, he thinks that Homer described well when he has “Hektor lying there thinking differently”. He does not use the word “mind” [noos] as the power for discerning the truth, but he says that the soul and the mind are the same.”
“The mind is sick without philosophy. The body too, even if it possesses great strength, remains no different from the strength of a man in rage or madness. So, care for the health of the first especially, and then the second, which will not be hard for you, if you want to be well.
It is foolish and not at all appropriate, my Lucilius, for an educated person to waste their time building muscles, and thickening their shoulders and strengthening their lungs. Even when the carbo-loading goes well, and your joints stay strong, you will never equal the strength and weight of the best bull. Add to this that the mind is squeezed by an overfull body and becomes less responsive. So, as much as you are able, discipline your body and give free space to your mind.
There are many other annoyances for people obsessed with the body. First, there is exercising: this drains all your energy and leaves you incapable of focusing on more serious studies. Then, nuanced thought is prevented by excessive amounts of food. Add to this that they take advice from the worst kinds of servants, people who switch off from olive oil to wine, whose whole day is complete if they have sweated well, and if they have poured into the same place as much drink as possible, all the more intensely because of their workout. A life of just drinking and sweating is chronic illness.”
Sine hoc aeger est animus. Corpus quoque, etiam si magnas habet vires, non aliter quam furiosi aut phrenetici validum est. Ergo hanc praecipue valitudinem cura, deinde et illam secundam, quae non magno tibi constabit, si volueris bene valere. Stulta est enim, mi Lucili, et minime conveniens litterato viro occupatio exercendi lacertos et dilatandi cervicem ac latera firmandi; cum tibi feliciter sagina cesserit et tori creverint, nec vires umquam opimi bovis nec pondus aequabis. Adice nunc, quod maiore corporis sarcina animus eliditur et minus agilis est. Itaque quantum potes, circumscribe corpus tuum et animo locum laxa.
Multa secuntur incommoda huic deditos curae; primum exercitationes, quarum labor spiritum exhaurit et inhabilem intentioni ac studiis acrioribus reddit. Deinde copia ciborum subtilitas inpeditur. Accedunt pessimae notae mancipia in magisterium recepta, homines inter oleum et vinum occupati, quibus ad votum dies actus est, si bene desudaverunt, si in locum eius, quod effluxit, multum potionis altius ieiunio1 iturae regesserunt. Bibere et sudare vita cardiaci est
Harrow Painter, c. 490 BCE. MET 12.229.13 from Wikimedia Commons
“Now you extend your hand for the daily gift! I’ll ply you with a golden one. Since we are talking about gold, take this so that its use and benefit may be more pleasing to you. “The one who enjoys riches the most is the one who least needs them.”
“Tell me who said that” you say. Well, so you’ll know how open-minded I am, this quote honors a different school. It’s from Epicurus or Metrodorus or some other of that ilk. Yet what difference does it make who said it. It speaks to everyone.
Whoever needs wealth, has anxiety about it. But no one enjoys a benefit that brings anxiety–they always want to add something more. As long as they are worried about increasing wealth, they forget how to use it. They take their profits, they wear out the forum, they keep looking to the next month. They become wealth’s caretaker instead of its master. Goodbye.”
Nunc ad cotidianam stipem manum porrigis. Aurea te stipe implebo, et quia facta est auri mentio, accipe quemadmodum usus fructusque eius tibi esse gratior possit. “Is maxime divitiis fruitur, qui minime divitiis indiget.” “Ede,” inquis, “auctorem.” Ut scias quam benigni simus, propositum est aliena laudare; Epicuri est aut Metrodori aut alicuius ex Illa officina. Et quid interest quis dixerit? Omnibus dixit. Qui eget divitiis, timet pro illis. Nemo autem sollicito bono fruitur; adicere illis aliquid studet. Dum de incremento cogitat, oblitus est usus. Rationes accipit, forum conterit, kalendarium versat; fit ex domino procurator. Vale.
But now I will bring my letter to the end, if I give it its own seal, by which I mean I have commended some other great passage to be offered to you. “Among other faults, foolishness has this too: to always be about to start living.”
Consider what this line means, best of men, Lucilius, and you may understand how gross that lightness of men is when they trace out new foundations daily, beginning new projects even as they are leaving. Just think about some individual examples and old men will occur to you who are readying themselves for office, for journeys, for new business. What is more disgusting than an old man just beginning to live?
I should not include the author of this saying, except that this once is rather unknown and not among the common sayings of Epicurus, which allows me to praise it and take it as my own. Good bye!”
Sed iam finem epistulae faciam, si illi signum suum inpressero, id est aliquam magnificam vocem perferendam ad te mandavero. “Inter cetera mala hoc quoque habet stultitia: semper incipit vivere.” Considera quid vox ista significet, Lucili virorum optime, et intelleges, quam foeda sit hominum levitas cotidie nova vitae fundamenta ponentium, novas spes etiam in exitu inchoantium. Circumspice tecum singulos; occurrent tibi senes, qui se cum maxime ad ambitionem, ad peregrinationes, ad negotiandum parent. Quid est autem turpius quam senex vivere incipiens? Non adicerem auctorem huic voci, nisi esset secretior nec inter vulgata Epicuri dicta, quae mihi et laudare et adoptare permisi. Vale.
Roman; Head of an old man; Stone Sculpture. MET 1st Century AD
I am pretty sure Seneca is objecting not to the elderly making new starts but to people being so heedless of their lives as to only just start important things in old age. I am not quite sure Seneca would pass a Solon test.
“When I heard that your wife was sick, I felt compassion as I thought about how you probably felt about her condition. Then, when I learned that she died, I moaned out loud, taking it badly that Aristainetos, a man so naturally suited to celebrations, was in grief.
I was going to try to comfort you with a speech, but I restrained myself because I worried that even though I think I know you well I might be caught ignorant. For those passages I was about to use to relieve you–the bits from Pindar and Simonides and all those we are in the habit of using from the tragedians as a treatment for sorrow–I imagine that you knew them long ago and spoke them to others yourself.
So I figured that if these were the kinds of things to comfort your despair, then you could minister to yourself or, if not, it would be useless for someone else to recite them to you. So, I stopped that project and I offer instead a summary of everything that has happened during the winter.”
“We’ll talk later about mimesis in hexameter poetry and comedy. For now, let’s chat about tragedy, starting by considering the definition of its character based on what we have already said. So, tragedy is the imitation (mimesis) of a serious event that also has completion and scale, presented in language well-crafted for the genre of each section, performing the story rather than telling it, and offering cleansing (catharsis) of pity and fear through the exploration of these kinds of emotions.”
“The whole of our life is made of parts: it has large circles with smaller ones traced inside. There’s one circle that embraces and contains all the rest–it runs from our birth to our final day. There’s another that encloses our adolescence and another that contains all of childhood in its circuit. Then there’s the annual course that contains all the parts of time in its turn, which, when multiplied, contains all of life. The month is enclosed by a narrower ring while the day has the smallest circle. Yet even the day goes from its beginning to end, from sunrise to sunset.
This is why Heraclitus, who earned that nickname “the obscure” for his rhetorical style, said, “each day is the same as the rest. People explain this in various ways. One says that a day is equal in is number of hours. This isn’t a lie, if we think that a day is 24 hours hours. In that case, all days are necessarily equal because the night takes what the day loses.
Another claims that one day is the same as another in its appearance, since even the longest period of time has nothing more than what you can find in a day. It has light and night and the alternation of days into eternity makes these more numerous, not really different by expanding or contracting the count. And so, each day should be organized as if it continues and completes a sequence, and closes the circuit of a life.”
Tota aetas partibus constat et orbes habet circumductos maiores minoribus. Est aliquis, qui omnis conplectatur et cingat; hic pertinet a natali ad diem extremum. Est alter, qui annos adulescentiae cludit. Est qui totam pueritiam ambitu suo adstringit. Est deinde per se annus in se omnia continens tempora, quorum multiplicatione vita conponitur. Mensis artiore praecingitur circulo. Angustissimum habet dies gyrum, sed et hic ab initio ad exitum venit, ab ortu ad occasum.
Ideo Heraclitus, cui cognomen fecit orationis obscuritas, “Unus,” inquit, “dies par omni est.” Hoc alius aliter excepit. Dixit enim parem esse horis, nec mentitur; nam si dies est tempus viginti et quattuor horarum, necesse est omnes inter se dies pares esse, quia nox habet, quod dies perdidit. Alius ait parem esse unum diem omnibus similitudine; nihil enim habet longissimi temporis spatium, quod non et in uno die invenias, lucem et noctem, et in aeternum dies vices plures facit istas, non alias contractior, alias productior. Itaque sic ordinandus est dies omnis, tamquam cogat agmen et consummet atque expleat vitam.
Vassily Kandinsky, “Circles within a Circle” 1923
Personally, I am partial to circles that do not end…
“A sprit should have someone whom it may respect, by whose authority even their own innermost self is improved. Oh, how happy is the person who makes us better not merely when they’re around but when we think of them too! How happy is the person who can respect someone so much that they can compose and reset their mind just with their memory!
So, choose yourself a Cato. if he seems too harsh, then select someone with a kinder spirit like Laelius. Choose the person who pleases you with their life and speech and a face that bears their soul itself. Provide that person at all times as a safeguard or example for yourself. We need someone who can help us check ourselves: you can’t fix a crooked line without a ruler! Goodbye.”
Aliquem habeat animus, quem vereatur, cuius auctoritate etiam secretum suum sanctius faciat. O felicem illum, qui non praesens tantum, sed etiam cogitatus emendat! O felicem, qui sic aliquem vereri potest, ut ad memoriam quoque eius se conponat atque ordinet! Qui sic aliquem vereri potest, cito erit verendus. Elige itaque Catonem. Si hic tibi videtur nimis rigidus, elige remissioris animi virum Laelium. Elige eum, cuius tibi placuit et vita et oratio et ipse animum ante se ferens vultus; illum tibi semper ostende vel custodem vel exemplum. Opus est, inquam, aliquo, ad quem mores nostri se ipsi exigant; nisi ad regulam prava non corriges. Vale.
“But let me send my letter with some little gift, as is my custom. I found this one in Athenodorus: “Understand that you are freed from all desires when you come to the point that you pray to god for nothing except what you can ask openly”.
How much madness there is among people today! They whisper the foulest requests to the gods–but if anyone eavesdrops, they hush up. They tell god what they don’t want people to know.
Don’t you think that some better advice can be offered? Live with other people as if god is watching; and speak with god as if everyone is listening. Goodbye!”
Sed ut more meo cum aliquo munusculo epistulam mittam, verum est, quod apud Athenodorum inveni: “Tunc scito esse te omnibus cupiditatibus solutum, cum eo perveneris, ut nihil deum roges, nisi quod rogare possis palam.” Nunc enim quanta dementia est hominum! Turpissima vota dis insusurrant; si quis admoverit aurem, conticescent. Et quod scire hominem nolunt, deo narrant. Vide ergo, ne hoc praecipi salubriter possit: sic vive cum hominibus, tamquam deus videat; sic loquere cum deo, tamquam homines audiant. Vale.
Theodore Ralli, “Eavesdropping” 1890
It seems the Stoic school was generally opposed to the early Greek philosophical precept (sometimes attributed to Epicurus) of “living unknown”
Plutarch, “On Whether Living Unknown is a Wise Precept”
1128a “But isn’t this very thing somehow evil—“living unknown” is like tomb-robbing, no? But living is a shameful thing, so that we should all be ignorant about it? I would say instead don’t even live badly in secret, but be known, be advised, and change! If you have virtue, don’t be useless; if you have weakness, don’t go without help.”
“If you take public knowledge away from your life just as you might remove light from a drinking party—to make it possible to pursue every pleasure in secret—then “live unknown” indeed.
The saying “live unknown” was attributed in antiquity to Epicurus. It had reached proverbial status by the Byzantine era (from the Suda):
λάθε βιώσας· “Live unknown”: This is said customarily in a proverb but enacted by deed. “Live unknown so that I might expect no one living or dead to understand what I say”
