Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,

And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.

But if perchance the soul's to be adjudged

Immortal, mainly on ground 'tis kept secure

In vital forces—either because there come

Never at all things hostile to its weal,

Or else because what come somehow retire,

Repelled or ere we feel the harm they work,

For, lo, besides that, when the frame's diseased,

Soul sickens too, there cometh, many a time,

That which torments it with the things to be,

Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares;

And even when evil acts are of the past,

Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly.

Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind,

And that oblivion of the things that were;

Add its submergence in the murky waves

Of drowse and torpor.

Table of Contents

Therefore death to us

Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least,

Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.

And just as in the ages gone before

We felt no touch of ill, when all sides round

To battle came the Carthaginian host,

And the times, shaken by tumultuous war,

Under the aery coasts of arching heaven

Shuddered and trembled, and all humankind

Doubted to which the empery should fall

By land and sea, thus when we are no more,

When comes that sundering of our body and soul

Through which we're fashioned to a single state,

Verily naught to us, us then no more,

Can come to pass, naught move our senses then—

No, not if earth confounded were with sea,

And sea with heaven. But if indeed do feel

The nature of mind and energy of soul,

After their severance from this body of ours,

Yet nothing 'tis to us who in the bonds

And wedlock of the soul and body live,

Through which we're fashioned to a single state.

And, even if time collected after death

The matter of our frames and set it all

Again in place as now, and if again

To us the light of life were given, O yet

That process too would not concern us aught,

When once the self-succession of our sense

Has been asunder broken. And now and here,

Little enough we're busied with the selves

We were aforetime, nor, concerning them,

Suffer a sore distress. For shouldst thou gaze

Backwards across all yesterdays of time

The immeasurable, thinking how manifold

The motions of matter are, then couldst thou well

Credit this too: often these very seeds

(From which we are to-day) of old were set

In the same order as they are to-day—

Yet this we can't to consciousness recall

Through the remembering mind. For there hath been

An interposed pause of life, and wide

Have all the motions wandered everywhere

From these our senses. For if woe and ail

Perchance are toward, then the man to whom

The bane can happen must himself be there

At that same time. But death precludeth this,

Forbidding life to him on whom might crowd

Such irk and care; and granted 'tis to know:

Nothing for us there is to dread in death,

No wretchedness for him who is no more,

The same estate as if ne'er born before,

When death immortal hath ta'en the mortal life.

Hence, where thou seest a man to grieve because

When dead he rots with body laid away,

Or perishes in flames or jaws of beasts,

Know well: he rings not true, and that beneath

Still works an unseen sting upon his heart,

However he deny that he believes.

His shall be aught of feeling after death.

For he, I fancy, grants not what he says,

Nor what that presupposes, and he fails

To pluck himself with all his roots from life

And cast that self away, quite unawares

Feigning that some remainder's left behind.

For when in life one pictures to oneself

His body dead by beasts and vultures torn,

He pities his state, dividing not himself

Therefrom, removing not the self enough

From the body flung away, imagining

Himself that body, and projecting there

His own sense, as he stands beside it: hence

He grieves that he is mortal born, nor marks

That in true death there is no second self

Alive and able to sorrow for self destroyed,

Or stand lamenting that the self lies there

Mangled or burning. For if it an evil is

Dead to be jerked about by jaw and fang

Of the wild brutes, I see not why 'twere not

Bitter to lie on fires and roast in flames,

Or suffocate in honey, and, reclined

On the smooth oblong of an icy slab,

Grow stiff in cold, or sink with load of earth

Down-crushing from above.

"Thee now no more

The joyful house and best of wives shall welcome,

Nor little sons run up to snatch their kisses

And touch with silent happiness thy heart.

Thou shalt not speed in undertakings more,

Nor be the warder of thine own no more.

Poor wretch," they say, "one hostile hour hath ta'en

Wretchedly from thee all life's many guerdons,"

But add not, "yet no longer unto thee

Remains a remnant of desire for them"

If this they only well perceived with mind

And followed up with maxims, they would free

Their state of man from anguish and from fear.

"O even as here thou art, aslumber in death,

So shalt thou slumber down the rest of time,

Released from every harrying pang. But we,

We have bewept thee with insatiate woe,

Standing beside whilst on the awful pyre

Thou wert made ashes; and no day shall take

For us the eternal sorrow from the breast."

But ask the mourner what's the bitterness

That man should waste in an eternal grief,

If, after all, the thing's but sleep and rest?

For when the soul and frame together are sunk

In slumber, no one then demands his self

Or being. Well, this sleep may be forever,

Without desire of any selfhood more,

For all it matters unto us asleep.

Yet not at all do those primordial germs

Roam round our members, at that time, afar

From their own motions that produce our senses—

Since, when he's startled from his sleep, a man

Collects his senses. Death is, then, to us

Much less—if there can be a less than that

Which is itself a nothing: for there comes

Hard upon death a scattering more great

Of the throng of matter, and no man wakes up

On whom once falls the icy pause of life.

This too, O often from the soul men say,

Along their couches holding of the cups,

With faces shaded by fresh wreaths awry:

"Brief is this fruit of joy to paltry man,

Soon, soon departed, and thereafter, no,

It may not be recalled."—As if, forsooth,

It were their prime of evils in great death

To parch, poor tongues, with thirst and arid drought,

Or chafe for any lack.

Once more, if Nature

Should of a sudden send a voice abroad,

And her own self inveigh against us so:

"Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concern

That thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?

Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?

For if thy life aforetime and behind

To thee was grateful, and not all thy good

Was heaped as in sieve to flow away

And perish unavailingly, why not,

Even like a banqueter, depart the halls,

Laden with life? why not with mind content

Take now, thou fool, thy unafflicted rest?

But if whatever thou enjoyed hath been

Lavished and lost, and life is now offence,

Why seekest more to add—which in its turn

Will perish foully and fall out in vain?

O why not rather make an end of life,