At a moment of anxiety about the consequences and sustainability of globalization, consider that Seneca himself (1st century AD) reflected on how a more modest, earlier globalization affected the world.
The first passage is an idealization of the local. And the second passage is his reflection on a world where distant places are drawn together:
Seneca, Medea 329-334
Our fathers knew simple times
Far removed from corruption.
Each was a provincial–held to his own shore
And grew old in his ancestral field.
Rich in little,
Save only for what his native land provided,
He did not know abundance.
Seneca, Medea 364-374.
Now, in our day, the sea gives way
And suffers all laws. No celebrated Argo
Fitted together by Pallas’s hands,
Royal rowers aboard, is called for.
Any old skiff wanders the deep.
Every border has been breached.
Cities have planted walls in new lands.
In a world open for business
Nothing is where it used to be:
The Indian drinks the cold Araxes river,
And the Persians drink the Alba and the Rhine.
329-334
Candida nostri saecula patres
videre, procul fraude remota.
sua quisque piger litora tangens
patrioque senex factus in arvo,
parvo dives,
nisi quas tulerat natale solum,
non norat opes.
364-374.
Nunc iam cessit pontus et omnes
patitur leges: non Palladia
compacta manu regum referens
inclita remos quaeritur Argo—
quaelibet altum cumba pererrat;
terminus omnis motus et urbes
muros terra posuere nova,
nil qua fuerat sede reliquit
pervius orbis:
Indus gelidum potat Araxen,
Albin Persae Rhenumque bibunt.
“My nurse was the Island of Tyre but the country which bore me
Was Atthis which rests in Assyrian Gadara.
I, Meleager, came as a shoot of the Muses from Eukrates
And I ran first in play with the Menippiean Graces.
If I am Syrian, why is it a surprise? Friend, we inhabit
One country, the world. One Khaos gave all mortals this life.
I inscribe these words on a tablet before my tomb, now very old.
For old age is Hades’ neighbor next door.
Offer a word to bid this chatty old man farewell,
And may you come to a chatty old age too.”
“My nurse was the Island of Tyre but the country which bore me
Was Atthis which rests in Assyrian Gadara.
I, Meleager, came as a shoot of the Muses from Eukrates
And I ran first in play with the Menippiean Graces.
If I am Syrian, why is it a surprise? Friend, we inhabit
One country, the world. One Khaos gave all mortals this life.
I inscribe these words on a tablet before my tomb, now very old.
For old age is Hades’ neighbor next door.
Offer a word to bid this chatty old man farewell,
And may you come to a chatty old age too.”
“Thus one thing never ceases to arise from another,
and life is given to no one for ownership, but to all for rent.”
sic aliud ex alio numquam desistet oriri
vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu.
Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2.16.4
“Gradually, then, by granting citizenship to those who had not carried arms or had put them down rather late, the population was rebuilt as Pompeius, Sulla and Marius restored the flagging and sputtering power of the Roman people.”
Paulatim deinde recipiendo in civitatem, qui arma aut non ceperant aut deposuerant maturius, vires refectae sunt, Pompeio Sullaque et Mano fluentem procumbentemque rem populi Romani restituentibus.
Any student of Roman history understands that Rome’s expansion and strength relied in part on its ability to absorb and assimilate hostile populations. Today we often forget that the Italian peninsula was far from a uniform culture. (And a tour through modern Italy will confirm the persistence of many differences). The process, of course, was not without pain and hard compromises, as Vergil echoes in Aeneid 6 during Anchises’ prophecy to Aeneas (851-3):
tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
(hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem,
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.
“Roman, remember that your arts are to rule
The nations with your empire, to enforce the custom of peace,
To spare the conquered and to subjugate the proud.”
Plutarch, De Exilio 600e7-601b5
“This is the character of your current exile from your customary country. For we have no country by nature, just as we have neither home, nor field, nor blacksmith’s, nor doctor’s office, as Aristôn said. But each of these things develops or, rather, is named and called so by the man inhabiting or using it. For a human being, as Plato says, “is not earthly born and immovable but comes from heaven” just as if the head raises the body up straight from its root stretching towards the sky. So Herakles said well “Am I Argive or Theban? I do not claim / one—every citadel in Greece is my homeland”. But Socrates put it better saying “I am neither Athenian nor Greek, but a citizen of the world,” as someone might claim to be Rhodian or Korinthian, because he did not lock himself within Sounion, Tainaros, or the Keraunian mountains.
As [Euripides] puts it: “Do you see the boundless light above / and the earth opening below with damp embrace?” These are the boundaries of our countries and no man is an exile, foreigner or stranger where there is fire, water, air; where we find the same rulers, overseers, and presidents: the same sun, moon, and star at day’s break; where the same laws exist for all under one order and single government: the summer and winter solstices, the Pleiades and Arcturus, the seasons of planting and harvesting that rise and set for us all; and where there is one king and ruler, god, who knows the beginning, middle and end of everything; who travels through all, guiding it with a straight force. Justice is his attendant as an avenger for those who transgress divine law. We all by nature follow this law in treating all people as our fellow citizens.”
Diogenes Laertius, 6.63, on Diogenes the Cynic (4th Century BCE)
“When asked where he was from, he said “I am a world-citizen.”
ἐρωτηθεὶς πόθεν εἴη, “κοσμοπολίτης,” ἔφη.
Cicero is one of the earliest sources attributing the sentiment to Socrates.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.108
“Socrates, when he was asked what state was his, used to say “the world”. For he judged himself an inhabitant and citizen of the whole world.”
Socrates cum rogaretur, cujatem se esse diceret, Mundanum, inquit. Totius enim mundi se incolam et civem arbitrabatur.”
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius articulate different versions of what becomes a central part of Stoic philosophy.
Seneca, De vita beata, 20.5
“I know that my country is the world and that the gods are guardians, those judges of my deeds and words above and beyond me.”
Patriam meam esse mundum sciam et praesides deos, hos supra circaque me stare factorum dictorumque censores.
Seneca, De Otio, 4.1
“We encounter two republics with our mind–one is great and truly public, by which gods and men are contained and in which we may not gaze upon this corner or that one, but we measure the boundaries of our state with the sun; the other we enter by the fact of being born. This will be the state of Athens or Carthage or of any other city at all. It does not extend to all people but to certain ones. Some people serve the good of both republics at the same time, the greater and the lesser, some serve only the lesser or only the greater.”
Duas res publicas animo complectamur, alteram magnam et vere publicam, qua dii atque homines continentur, in qua non ad hunc angulum respicimus aut ad illum, sed terminos civitatis nostrae cum sole metimur; alteram, cui nos adscripsit condicio nascendi. Haec aut Atheniensium erit aut Carthaginiensium,aut alterius alicuius urbis, quae non ad omnis pertineat homines sed ad certos. Quidam eodem tempore utrique rei publicae dant operam, maiori minorique, quidam tantum minori, quidam tantum maiori.
Epictetus, Dissertationes 1.9.1
“If what is said about the kinship of humans and god by the philosopher is true, what is left for all people other than that advice of Socrates never to say when someone asks where you are from that you are Athenian or Corinthian but that you are a citizen of the world?”
Yesterday I quoted a bit from Plutarch’s essay On Exile and received a bit of feedback about the fact that Plutarch was not the first to claim that we are all citizens of the same country. He wasn’t even the first to assign the remark to Socrates! As far as I can tell, there is no clear articulation of this idea in Plato or Xenophon. The first person to have said such a thing was Diogenes the Cynic.
Diogenes Laertius, 6.63, on Diogenes the Cynic (4th Century BCE)
“When asked where he was from, he said “I am a world-citizen.”
ἐρωτηθεὶς πόθεν εἴη, “κοσμοπολίτης,” ἔφη.
“Diogenes” by Jules Bastien-Lepage
Cicero is one of the earliest sources attributing the sentiment to Socrates.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.108
“Socrates, when he was asked what state was his, used to say “the world”. For he judged himself an inhabitant and citizen of the whole world.”
Socrates cum rogaretur, cujatem se esse diceret, Mundanum, inquit. Totius enim mundi se incolam et civem arbitrabatur.”
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius articulate different versions of what becomes a central part of Stoic philosophy.
Seneca, De vita beata, 20.5
“I know that my country is the world and that the gods are guardians, those judges of my deeds and words above and beyond me.”
Patriam meam esse mundum sciam et praesides deos, hos supra circaque me stare factorum dictorumque censores.
Seneca, De Otio, 4.1
“We encounter two republics with our mind–one is great and truly public, by which gods and men are contained and in which we may not gaze upon this corner or that one, but we measure the boundaries of our state with the sun; the other we enter by the fact of being born. This will be the state of Athens or Carthage or of any other city at all. It does not extend to all people but to certain ones. Some people serve the good of both republics at the same time, the greater and the lesser, some serve only the lesser or only the greater.”
Duas res publicas animo complectamur, alteram magnam et vere publicam, qua dii atque homines continentur, in qua non ad hunc angulum respicimus aut ad illum, sed terminos civitatis nostrae cum sole metimur; alteram, cui nos adscripsit condicio nascendi. Haec aut Atheniensium erit aut Carthaginiensium,aut alterius alicuius urbis, quae non ad omnis pertineat homines sed ad certos. Quidam eodem tempore utrique rei publicae dant operam, maiori minorique, quidam tantum minori, quidam tantum maiori.
Epictetus, Dissertationes 1.9.1
“If what is said about the kinship of humans and god by the philosopher is true, what is left for all people other than that advice of Socrates never to say when someone asks where you are from that you are Athenian or Corinthian but that you are a citizen of the world?”
“Nothing is as productive of an expansive mind than to consider truly and as completely as possibly everything you encounter in life and always to look at things so that you realize what the nature of the universe is, what each thing is used for, and what worth it has in relation to the whole, and how it relates to man, who is a citizen of the highest city, within which the rest of the cities are like houses. Think: what is it, and where is it from, and how long has it endured which now makes this impact on me.
And: what are the demands of virtue from me because of it? Gentleness, bravery, fidelity, simplicity, self-sufficiency and others. This is why at every opportunity we must say that this comes from god, this is according to the serendipity and spinning of allotment and this is from the same chance, while this is from the same character and family in common, even when one is ignore about what is his because of nature. But I am not ignorant. This is why I treat each person according to the natural law of the commonwealth, kindly and justly, just as at the same time, when dealing with indifferent things, I try to assign them their true value.”
“If the power of thought is common then our reason is also shared, through which we are rational beings. If this is true, then we also share the assignment of what to do or not to do according to reason. If that is true, than law is shared. If this is the case, we are fellow citizens. And if that is true, we shared some state. If we share a state, the world resembles a city. For what other state could claim to contain the whole human race?…”
