A Stoic on time

Seneca and Nero

Lucius Seneca the Younger had time for philosophy during his forced retirement by the Roman emperor Nero. Seneca had been Nero’s tutor, but the young man outgrew his tutelage to become a conniving, suspicious and altogether appalling adult. He killed his mother, whose strong will had vaulted him to power, lest her strong will inhibit his exercise of that power. He killed his stepbrother, to eliminate a competitor. He killed his first wife, fearing that her popularity would cause his enemies to coalesce around her. He killed his second wife in a fit of rage.

He banished Seneca, whose teachings he found inconvenient. Seneca was a Stoic, an advocate of self-discipline and detachment from worldly desires. He employed his retirement to articulate his philosophy in a series of essays cast as letters to a friend, Lucilius. Seneca worked quickly, as he supposed Nero wouldn’t be content with banishment.

He wrote of death. “One cannot attain a life free of anxiety if one is too concerned about prolonging it,” he said. “Rehearse this every day, so that you will be able to let go of life with equanimity. Many people grasp and hold on to life, like those caught by a flash flood who grasp at weeds and brambles. Most are tossed about between the fear of death and the torments of life: they do not want to live but do not know how to die.”

Perhaps thinking more specifically of himself, he went on, “Suppose you should fall into the hands of the enemy, and the victor should order you to be put to death. Death is where you are headed anyway! Why do you deceive yourself? Do you realize now for the first time what has in fact been happening to you all along? So it is: since the moment of birth, you have been moving toward your execution.”

Time, therefore, was the thing of greatest value. “Embrace every hour. If you lay hands on today, you will find you are less dependent on tomorrow. While you delay, life speeds on by. Everything we have belongs to others, Lucilius; time alone is ours. Nature has put us in possession of this one thing, this fleeting, slippery thing—and anyone who wants to can dispossess us. Such is the foolishness of mortal beings: when they borrow the smallest, cheapest items, such as can easily be replaced, they acknowledge the debt, but no one considers himself indebted for taking up our time. Yet this is the one loan that even those who are grateful cannot repay.”

Time had to be employed judiciously. Lucilius liked to read. Seneca encouraged him. “Be careful, though,” he cautioned, “about your reading in many authors and every type of book. It may be that there is something wayward and unstable in it. You must stay with a limited number of writers and be fed by them if you mean to derive anything that will dwell reliably with you. One who is everywhere is nowhere. Those who travel all the time find that they have many places to stay, but no friendships. The same thing necessarily happens to those who do not become intimate with any one author, but let everything rush right through them.”

Time must not be wasted in worry about things to come. “How many of our expectations never happen at all,” Seneca observed. “Even if it is to come, what good does it do to anticipate your grief? You will grieve soon enough, when it comes; in the meantime, allow yourself something better. What do you gain by that? Time.”

Time should be devoted to improving the mind. Materialism could get in the way. “If you want to have time for your mind, you must either be poor or resemble the poor,” Seneca said. “Study cannot be beneficial without some concern for frugality, and frugality is just voluntary poverty. So away with your excuses!”

The philosopher was richer than any merchant or moneylender. “Happy and carefree, he will laugh at the busy lives of the wealthy and at the hustle and bustle of those who compete for wealth,” Seneca said. Merchants and lenders had to wait for their ventures to pay off and their loans to come due. “Wisdom pays off immediately. Its wealth is bestowed on all to whom wealth has come to seem irrelevant.”

Seneca’s time came when Nero exploited an assassination plot to include Seneca among the conspirators. He was ordered to kill himself, on pain of execution if he refused.

He had seen it coming. Likewise his Stoic friends, who now mourned his dying. He chided their sorrow. Tacitus recounted Seneca’s words: “Where were the maxims of your philosophy? Where that reasoned attitude towards impending evils which they had studied through so many years? For to whom had Nero’s cruelty been unknown? Nor was anything left him, after the killing of his mother and his brother, but to add the murder of his guardian and preceptor.”

Seneca slit his veins. When death came too slowly, he swallowed hemlock. His time ran out.