A muddy road, a choking tunnel, and torches so dim they only show you the dark: Seneca’s short trip from Baiae to Naples turns into a meditation on the reflexes even brave people can’t control. A flinch, a shudder, a lurch of dizziness at a cliff’s edge isn’t cowardice, he says. And the trip leads […]
Letter 56 On Quiet and Study
Seneca is trying to study in a rented room directly above a public bathhouse, and he gives us a hilarious soundtrack of the place: grunting weightlifters, slapping masseurs, a man singing in the bath, vendors yelling about sausages. But the noise is only the setup. His real point is that outer quiet means nothing if […]
Letter 55 On Vatia’s Villa
On a ride along the beach near Cumae, Seneca passes the villa of Vatia, a rich man famous for one thing: surviving Rome’s deadly politics by staying out of sight. People used to say Vatia alone knew how to live. Seneca disagrees: “what he knew was how to hide, not how to live.” The letter […]
Letter 54 On Asthma and Death
Seneca suffered from attacks of breathlessness all his life, likely asthma, and in this short, brave letter he writes just after one has passed. His doctors called it “rehearsing death.” Gasping for air, he steadied himself with a simple thought: we have already “tried” nonexistence, before we were born, and it held no suffering. His […]
Letter 53: On the Faults of the Spirit
This letter begins with one of Seneca’s funniest stories: a short boat trip, a miserable bout of seasickness, and Seneca jumping overboard in his cloak to swim for shore. From there he draws a serious lesson. We notice bodily illness eventually, but the sicker the soul, the less it knows it’s sick. Only philosophy can […]