Seneca on Saturday — nothing is ours except time

Posted on January 16, 2016 by Valerie Block

Statue of Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger in Cordoba, Spain, by Amadeo Ruiz Olmos

Lord Macaulay once said that Seneca the Younger was easily quotable, but reading him straight through would be like “dining on nothing but anchovy sauce.”

I agree! Thus I present some of the condensed wit and wisdom of Seneca, every Saturday.

EPISTLE I. On Saving Time

… Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death’s hands.

Therefore, Lucilius, do as you write me that you are doing: hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession. What fools these mortals be! They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can easily be replaced, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves as in debt when they have received some of that precious commodity,–time! And yet time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay.

Seneca Epistles 1-65, Translation by Richard Gummere. Loeb Classical Library.

Photo credit: Gunnar Bach Pedersen, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

January Word of Mouth

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Valerie Block

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Memoir: Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town, Sarah Payne Stuart

Fiction: The Free World, David Bezmozgis

Writing: Wired for Story, by Lisa Kron

History: Dying Everyday: Seneca at the Court of Nero, James Romm

Music: How Do You Do, Mayer Hawthorne

TV: Endeavor, Russell Lewis, PBS

Movie: Red Army, Gabe Polsky

Ancient Inspiration: “Someone who dies by his own weapons dies twice over.” Publilius Syrus

Seneca on Saturday — hurry up and wait

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Valerie Block

Statue of Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger in Cordoba, Spain, by Amadeo Ruiz Olmos

Lord Macaulay once said that Seneca the Younger was easily quotable, but reading him straight through would be like “dining on nothing but anchovy sauce.”

I agree! Thus I present some of the condensed wit and wisdom of Seneca, every Saturday.

Ancient Rome ran on favors. Each man had someone more important than himself to impress, and someone beneath him to bestow favors upon. The patron-client relationship was one of mutual obligation, requiring political loyalty from a client in return for protection, legal assistance and/or financial support from a patron. Clients lined up before dawn in their patron’s courtyard, and were seen — or avoided — according to their status.

Here is Seneca’s description of the tradition of the morning greeting, and how little it profited either the client or the patron:

“Those who rush about in the performance of social duties, who give themselves and others no rest, when they have fully indulged their madness, when they have every day crossed everybody’s threshold, and have left no open door unvisited, when they have carried around their venal greeting to houses that are very far apart – out of a city so huge and torn by such varied desires, how few will they be able to see? How many will there be who either from sleep or self-indulgence or rudeness will keep them out! How many who, when they have tortured them with long waiting, will rush by, pretending to be in a hurry! How many will avoid passing out through a hall that is crowded with clients, and will make their escape through some concealed door as if it were not more discourteous to deceive than to exclude. How many, still half asleep and sluggish from last night’s debauch, scarcely lifting their lips in the midst of a most insolent yawn, manage to bestow on yonder poor wretches, who break their own slumber in order to wait on that of another, the right name only after it has been whispered to them a thousand times!”

From On the Shortness of Life, by Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger,

Translated by John W. Basore, Loeb Classical Library

Seneca on Saturday — fear and hope

Posted on January 2, 2016 by Valerie Block

Statue of Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger in Cordoba, Spain, by Amadeo Ruiz Olmos

Lord Macaulay once said that Seneca the Younger was easily quotable, but reading him straight through would be like “dining on nothing but anchovy sauce.” I agree! Thus I present some of the condensed wit and wisdom of Seneca, every Saturday.

EPISTLE V. The philosopher’s mean, Part II.

Just as the same chain fastens the prisoner and the soldier who guards him, so hope and fear, dissimilar as they are, keep step together; fear follows hope. I am not surprised that they proceed in this way; each alike belongs to a mind that is in suspense, a mind that is fretted by looking forward to the future. But the chief cause of both these ills is that we do not adapt ourselves to the present, but send our thoughts a long way ahead. … The present alone can make no man wretched.

Seneca Epistles 1-65, Translation by Richard Gummere. Loeb Classical Library.

Photo credit: Gunnar Bach Pedersen, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Deity of the Month: JANUS

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Valerie Block

Janus coin from Republican Rome, c. 225-12 BCE. Image courtesy of VROMA.org

Janus was one of the earliest gods, worshipped before Rome was founded as a city. He was the god of beginnings, and endings, and is often represented in two-headed form, looking both forward and backward. He was associated with doorways, gates and archways, and was the first god invoked in any sacrifice. The first month of the year was named after him, January. There was a cult in his honor on a hill in Rome, which was named after him, the Janiculum.

Freedom and despair

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Valerie Block

Ancient ruins destroyed by fundamentalists

ISIS blows up ancient Roman ruins at Palmyra, in August, 2015. Photo credit: the Times of London.

At a moment when fear might cloud better judgment, here are some lucid thoughts on fundamentalism. They come from Steven Pressfield’s wonderful treatise on creativity, The War of Art.

Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal.

What exactly is this despair? It is the despair of freedom. The dislocation and emasculation experienced by the individual cut free from the familiar and comforting structures of the tribe and the clan, the village and the family.

It is the state of modern life.

The fundamentalism (or, more accurately, the beleaguered individual who comes to embrace fundamentalism) cannot stand freedom. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats to the past. He returns in imagination to the glory days of his race and seeks to reconstitute both them and himself in their purer, more virtuous light. He gets back to basics. To fundamentals.

Fundamentalism and art are mutually exclusive. There is no such thing as fundamentalist art. This does not mean that the fundamentalist is not creative. Rather, his creativity is inverted. He creates destruction. Even the structures he builds, his schools and networks of organization, are dedicated to annihilation, of his enemies and of himself.

But the fundamentalist reserves his greatest creativity for the fashioning of Satan, the image of his foe, in opposition to which he defines and gives meaning to his own life. Like the artist, the fundamentalist experiences Resistance. He experiences it as temptation to sin. Resistance to the fundamentalist is the call of the Evil One, seeking to seduce him from his virtue.

…

It may be that the human race is not ready for freedom…. The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.