Sublime

Tacitus slyly tells us that he will not transcribe Seneca’s last words in his narrative, since they are already part of his public works. He hints that Seneca’s own self-publicizing may make him less admirable than his old Athenian model.

Do you know what boundaries nature’s law imposes? Not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold.* To keep back hunger and thirst, you need not hang about the thresholds of the proud, nor endure the scorn of those whose very kindness is insulting; you need not brave the seas nor follow the camps of the army.

Quand tu en seras là, quand tu commenceras à être toi-même en quelque honneur auprès de toi, je t'accorderai peu à peu comme droit ce dont Épicure a fait un conseil : « Sois plus que jamais seul avec toi-même, quand tu seras forcé d'être avec la foule[933]. »

Those wishing to read the Stoics would do well to start with the essays of Seneca, especially, “On the Happy Life,” “On Tranquility of Mind,” and “On the Shortness of Life.”

S. Eliot claimed, “No author exercised a wider or deeper influence on the Elizabethan mind or on the Elizabethan form of tragedy than did Seneca,” and the consensus is that he was right.

Nero built a magnificent palace of this type for himself in 64, the Golden House. 10 Seneca’s simple life in quasi-retirement allowed him enough distance to criticize the kind of pampered lifestyle that he himself had lived for most of his middle years, and to be quietly critical of Nero’s increasingly extravagant and autocratic ways.