Taken out of the morall workes written in Greeke, by the most famous philosopher, & historiographer, Plutarch of Cherronea, by Iohn Clapham. As for the several causes which render us happy or sorrowful, let everyone describe them for himself, and learn the truth of Bion's saying, "That all the doings of men were very like what he began with, and that there is nothing in their lives which is more holy or decent than their conception." They mind other men's business, and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. The program depends on a hard-coded file structure for the locations of image and text files. (http://gutenberg.org), and while they have I then mark where the lines are located by creating a set of grids. Seneca was the second of three brothers; the others . Even though others may form the first line, and your lot may have placed you among the veterans of the third, do your duty there with your voice, encouragement, example, and spirit: even though a man's hands be cut off, he may find means to help his side in a battle, if he stands his ground and cheers on his comrades. Whether she moves at her ease and enjoys her just rights, or can only appear abroad on sufferance and is forced to shorten sail to the tempest, whether it be unemployed, silent, and pent up in a narrow lodging, or openly displayed, in whatever guise she may appear, she always does good. Nevertheless we ought to mix up these two things, and to pass our lives alternately in solitude and among throngs of people; for the former will make us long for the society of mankind, the latter for that of ourselves, and the one will counteract the other: solitude will cure us when we are sick of crowds, and crowds will cure us when we are sick of solitude. On Tranquility of Mind was published in Hardship and Happiness on page 175. You will get an email reminder before your . A household of slaves requires food and clothing: the bellies of so many hungry creatures have to be filled: we must buy raiment for them, we must watch their most thievish hands, and we must make use of the services of people who weep and execrate us. These are: Similarly I assure you that these minds over which desires have spread like evil ulcers, take pleasure in toils and troubles, for there are some things which please our body while at the same time they give it a certain amount of pain, such as turning oneself over and changing one's side before it is wearied, or cooling oneself in one position after another. The Roman worldview during his lifetime was centered around practical and efficient remedies of real life problems. share. then let him help his countrymen with silent counsel. We must, therefore, take away from this commodity its original value, and count the breath of life as a cheap matter. As Seneca teaches in his work "On the Tranquility of the Mind", it requires balance, compromise and effort. "You are able to please yourself," he answered, "my half pint of blood is in your power: for, as for burial, what a fool you must be if you suppose that I care whether I rot above ground or under it." In chapter 11, Seneca introduces the figure of the Stoic sage, whose peace of mind (ataraxia) springs directly from a greater understanding of the world. We have seen Ptolemaeus King of Africa, and Mithridates King of Armenia, under the charge of Gaius's[9] guards: the former was sent into exile, the latter chose it in order to make his exile more honourable. save. The dialogue concerns the state of the animi of Seneca's friend Annaeus Serenus, and how to cure Serenus of anxiety, worry and disgust with life. Hence arises that weariness and dissatisfaction with oneself, that tossing to and fro of a mind which can nowhere find rest, that unhappy and unwilling endurance of enforced leisure. Download On the Tranquility of the Mind Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC - AD 65), fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca and also known simply as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and--in one work--humorist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. Neither should you engage in anything from which you are not free to retreat: apply yourself to something which you can finish, or at any rate can hope to finish: you had better not meddle with those operations which grow in importance, while they are being transacted, and which will not stop where you intended them to stop. In this case, however, caution can effect nothing but to make you ungenerous. "We dislike gladiators," says Cicero, "if they are eager to save their lives by any means whatever: but we look favourably upon them if they are openly reckless of them." Do you not wish to do this in order that posterity may talk of you: yet you were born to die, and a silent death is the least wretched. The dead have often been wailed for in my neighbourhood: the torch and taper have often been borne past my door before the bier of one who has died before his time: the crash of falling buildings has often resounded by my side: night has snatched away many of those with whom I have become intimate in the forum, the Senate-house, and in society, and has sundered the hands which were joined in friendship: ought I to be surprised if the dangers which have always been circling around me at last assail me? If the object of life is not mere resilience but flourishing, attaining it may be less a matter of wild pursuit of favorable outcomes that leave us perpetually dissatisfied and reaching for more than of wise acceptance that allows us to do the best we can with the cards weve been dealt. nay, he went away from me as a free man." Traditionally, many philosophical, religious, spiritual, or mystical traditions in East and West have strived to reach tranquil experiences and produced texts serving as manuals to reach them. size and horizontally aligned. Here is the book in which I found this work: I think it's a good idea to support living writers with the skills to render ancient texts into readable modern prose. Nor does he appear worthless in his own eyes because he knows that he is not his own, but he will do everything as diligently and carefully as a conscientious and pious man is accustomed to guard that which is entrusted in his care. To maintain serenity without getting exuberant in joy or cast down in sadness, this will be tranquility of mind. Seneca, A state, in which there were so many tyrants that they would have been enough to form a bodyguard for one, might surely have rested from the struggle; it seemed impossible for men's minds even to conceive hopes of recovering their liberty, nor could they see any room for a remedy for such a mass of evil: for whence could the unhappy state obtain all the Harmodiuses it would need to slay so many tyrants? Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (/ s n k /; c. 4 BC - 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature.. Seneca was born in Crdoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. This is not code that I would write in a A tyrant threatened Theodorus with death, and even with want of burial. We must humour our minds and grant them rest from time to time, which acts upon them like food, and restores their strength. one evil is balanced by another. Treatises On providence, On tranquillity of mind, On shortness of life, On happy life; together with select epistles, epigrammata, an introduction, copious notes and Scripture parallelisms Thus in the houses of the laziest of men you will see the works of all the orators and historians stacked upon bookshelves reaching right up to the ceiling. Athenodorus said that "he would not so much as dine with a man who would not be grateful to him for doing so": meaning, I imagine, that much less would he go to dinner with those who recompense the services of their friends by their table, and regard courses of dishes as donatives, as if they overate themselves to do honour to others. Influenced by Stoic philosophy, he wrote several philosophical treatises and 124 letters on moral issues, the Epistulae Morales (Moral Epistles). It features a vitalizing diversity of contributors from different generations . Yet on the day on which the Senate disgraced him, the people tore him to pieces: the executioner[8] could find no part left large enough to drag to the Tiber, of one upon whom gods and men had showered all that could be given to man. Let a man, however, withdraw himself only in such a fashion that wherever he spends his leisure his wish may still be to benefit individual men and mankind alike, both with his intellect, his voice, and his advice. If I am not mistaken, it is a royal attribute among so many misers, sharpers, and robbers, to be the one man who cannot be injured. and 5) the end of section. But," continues he, "because innocence is hardly safe among such furious ambitions and so many men who turn one aside from the right path, and it is always sure to meet with more hindrance than help, we ought to withdraw ourselves from the forum and from public life, and a great mind even in a private station can find room wherein to expand freely. You would pity some of them when you see them running as if their house was on fire: they actually jostle all whom they meet, and hurry along themselves and others with them, though all the while they are going to salute someone who will not return their greeting, or to attend the funeral of someone whom they did not know: they are going to hear the verdict on one who often goes to law, or to see the wedding of one who often gets married: they will follow a man's litter, and in some places will even carry it: afterwards returning home weary with idleness, they swear that they themselves do not know why they went out, or where they have been, and on the following day they will wander through the same round again. We must understand, therefore, that what we suffer from is not the fault of the places but of ourselves: we are weak when there is anything to be endured, and cannot support either labour or pleasure, either one's own business or anyone else's for long. But what difference does it make? adequately express their wonder at this dense darkness of the human mind. He then explains that there are all sorts of men who do not achieve tranquillity of mind, for different reasons. If we believe the Greek poet, "it is sometimes pleasant to be mad"; again, Plato always knocked in vain at the door of poetry when he was sober; or, if we trust Aristotle, no great genius has ever been without a touch of insanity. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on Amazon from any link on here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. This dislike of other men's progress and despair of one's own produces a mind angered against fortune, addicted to complaining of the age in which it lives to retiring into corners and brooding over its misery, until it becomes sick and weary of itself: for the human mind is naturally nimble and apt at movement: it delights in every opportunity of excitement and forgetfulness of itself, and the worse a man's disposition the more he delights in this, because he likes to wear himself out with busy action, just as some sores long for the hands that injure them and delight in being touched, and the foul itch enjoys anything that scratches it. September 4, 2020 . You would hardly find any time that would have enabled you to make a happier choice than if you could have sought for a good man from among the Platos and Xenophons and the rest of the produce of the brood of Socrates, or if you had been permitted to choose one from the age of Cato: an age which bore many men worthy to be born in Cato's time (just as it also bore many men worse than were ever known before, planners of the blackest crimes: for it needed both classes in order to make Cato understood: it wanted both good men, that he might win their approbation, and bad men, against whom he could prove his strength): but at the present day, when there is such a dearth of good men, you must be less squeamish in your choice. A short life is not the problem, but an excessive waste of time. Seneca explains to Serenus how to maintain a tranquil mind, and in doing so runs down the 13 or so high points of Stoic doctrine. support for as long as it lasted.) a man cannot live well if he knows not how to die well. This pragmatic approach was the perspective Roman society used to analyze their material reality (Footnotes can be collected and output as a group at the end of chapter.). Cato is reproached with drunkenness: but whoever casts this in his teeth will find it easier to turn his reproach into a commendation than to prove that Cato did anything wrong: however, we ought not to do it often, for fear the mind should contract evil habits, though it ought sometimes to be forced into frolic and frankness, and to cast off dull sobriety for a while. The mind ought in all cases to be called away from the contemplation of external things to that of itself: let it confide in itself, rejoice in itself, admire its own works; avoid as far as may be those of others, and devote itself to itself; let it not feel losses, and put a good construction even upon misfortunes. There are other special forms of this disease without number, but it has but one effect, that of making people dissatisfied with themselves. If a man takes this into his inmost heart and looks upon all the misfortunes of other men, of which there is always a great plenty, in this spirit, remembering that there is nothing to prevent their coming upon him also, he will arm himself against them long before they attack him. "I have decided," answered Kanus, "at that most swiftly-passing moment of all to watch whether the spirit will be conscious of the act of leaving the body." 250-287. I shall never be ashamed to quote a good saying because it comes from a bad author. I read this dialogue in a modern translation, and I found it calming and inspiring. As a tragedian, he is best-known for his Medea and Thyestes. The same prison surrounds all of us, and even those who have bound others are bound themselves; unless perchance you think that a chain on the left side is lighter. [18] The work opens with Serenus asking Seneca for counsel, and this request for help takes the form of a medical consultation. what office is there whose purple robe, augur's staff, and patrician reins have not as their accompaniment rags and banishment, the brand of infamy, a thousand disgraces, and utter reprobation? Did my slave run away? The inner curve is the one to take, not only in running races and in the contests of the circus, but also in the race of life; even literary pursuits, the most becoming thing for a gentleman to spend money upon, are only justifiable as long as they are kept within bounds. Let us accustom ourselves to set aside mere outward show, and to measure things by their uses, not by their ornamental trappings: let our hunger be tamed by food, our thirst quenched by drinking, our lust confined within needful bounds; let us learn to use our limbs, and to arrange our dress and way of life according to what was approved of by our ancestors, not in imitation of new-fangled models: let us learn to increase our continence, to repress luxury, to set bounds to our pride, to assuage our anger, to look upon poverty without prejudice, to practise thrift, albeit many are ashamed to do so, to apply cheap remedies to the wants of nature, to keep all undisciplined hopes and aspirations as it were under lock and key, and to make it our business to get our riches from ourselves and not from Fortune. Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind Seneca's dialogue with Serenus, more of an essay than a dialogue, is essentially comprised of the many tenets of Stoic morals and virtues. 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