Seneca on Conquering the Conqueror - Transcripts

You can actually get the PDF totally for free at tim.blog.seneca. But in today's episode, Seneca is talking about conquering a conqueror. Talks about examining the causes of our fear. Talks about the unavoidable threat of death. He says, we do not fear death, we fear the thought of death. I'll just get right into it. My favorite translation of Seneca's Letters is his penguin edition, which I carry at the Painted Porch.

A great pilot can sail even when his canvases rent. If his ship be dismantled, he can yet put in trim what remains of her hull and hold her to her course. This is what our friend Basus is doing, and he contemplates his own end with the courage and countenance which he would regard as undue indifference in a man who so contemplated another's. This is a great accomplishment, Lucilius, and one which needs long practice to learn, to depart calmly when the inevitable hour arrives. Other kinds of death contain an ingredient of hope. A disease comes to an end. A fire is quenched. Falling houses have set down in safety those who they seemed certain to crush. The sea has cast ashore unharmed, those whom it had engulfed, by the same force through which it drew them down. The soldier has drawn back his sword from the very neck of his doomed foe, but those whom old age is leading away to death have nothing to hope for. Old age alone grants no reprieve. No ending, to be sure, is more painless, but there is none more lingering.

Our friend Basus seemed to me to be attending his own funeral, and laying out his own body for burial, and living almost as if he had survived his own death, and bearing with wise resignation his grief at his own departure. For he talks freely about death. Looking hard to persuade us that if this process contains any element of discomfort or of fear, it is the fault of the dying person, and not of death itself, also, that there is no more inconvenience at the actual moment than there is after it is over. And it is just as insane, he adds, for a man to fear what will not happen to him as to fear what he will not feel if it does happen. Or does anyone imagine it to be possible that the agency by which feeling is removed can be itself felt? Therefore, says Basus, death stands so far beyond all evil that it is beyond all fear of evils. I know that all this has often been said, and should be often repeated, but neither when I read them were such precepts so effective with me, nor when I heard them from the lips of those who were at a safe distance from the fear of the things which they declared were not to be feared. But this old man had the greatest weight with me when he discussed death and death was near, for I must tell you what I myself think. I hold that one is braver at the very moment of death than when one is approaching death. For death, when it stands near us, gives even to inexperienced men the courage not to seek to avoid the inevitable. So the gladiator, who throughout the fight has been no matter how faint-hearted, offers his throat to his opponent and directs the wavering blade to the vital spot. But an end that is near at hand and is bound to come calls for tenacious courage of soul.

This is a rarer thing, and none but the wise man can manifest it. Accordingly, I listen to Basus with the deepest pleasure. He was casting his vote concerning death and pointing out what sort of a thing it is when it is observed, so to speak, nearer at hand. I suppose that a man would have your confidence in a larger degree and would have more weight with you if he had come back to life and should declare from experience that there is no evil in death, and so, regarding the approach of death, those will tell you best what disquiet it brings who have stood in its path, who have seen it coming, and have welcomed it. Basus may be included among these men, and he had no wish to deceive us. He says that it is as foolish to fear death as to fear old age. For death follows old age precisely, as old age follows youth. He who does not wish to die cannot have wished to live, for life is granted to us with the reservation that we shall die to this end our path leaves. Therefore how foolish it is to fear it, since men simply await that which is sure, but fear only that which is uncertain. Death has its fixed rule, equitable and unavoidable. Who can complain when he is governed by terms which include everyone? The chief part of equality, however, is equality.

But it is superfluous at the present time to plead nature's case, for she wishes our laws to be identical with her own. She but resolves that which she has compounded, and compounds again that which she has resolved. Moreover, if it falls to the lot of any man to be set gently adrift by old age, not suddenly torn from life but withdrawn bit by bit, oh verily he should thank the gods one and all, because after he has had his fill, he is removed to arrest which is ordained for mankind, arrest that is welcome to the weary. You may observe certain men who crave death even more earnestly than others are wont to beg for life. And I do not know which men give us greater courage, those who call for death, or those who meet it cheerfully and tranquilly, for the first attitude is sometimes inspired by madness and sudden anger. The second is the calm which results from fixed judgment. Before now, men have gone to meet death in a fit of rage, but when death comes to meet him, no one welcomes it cheerfully, except the man who has long since composed himself

Have I not seen many men break the thread of life? I have, indeed, seen such men. But those have more weight with me who approach death without any loathing for life, letting death in, so to speak, and not pulling it towards them. Vassus kept saying, it is due to our own fault that we feel this torture, because we shrink from dying only when we believe that our end is near at hand. But who is not near death? It is ready for us in all places and at all times. Let us consider, he went on to say. When some agency of death seems imminent, how much nearer are other varieties of dying which are not feared by us? A man is threatened with death by an enemy. But this form of death is anticipated by an attack of indigestion. And if we are willing to examine critically the various causes of our fear, we shall find that some exist, and others only seem to be. We do not fear death.

We fear the thought of death. For death itself is always the same distance from us, wherefore, if it is to be feared at all, it is to be feared always. For what season of our life is exempt from death? But what I really ought to fear is that you will hate this long letter worse than death itself. So I shall stop. Do you, however, always think on death in order that you may never fear it.