Section 20: Rank Does Not Prove A Life Was Lived explained simply

XX. When, therefore, you see a man often wear the purple robes of office, and hear his name often repeated in the forum, do not envy him: he gains these things by losing so much of his life. Men throw away all their years in order to have one year named after them as consul: some lose their lives during the early part of the struggle, and never reach the height to which they aspired: some after having submitted to a thousand indignities in order to reach the crowning dignity, have the miserable reflexion that the only result of their labours will be the inscription on their tombstone. Some, while telling off extreme old age, like youth, for new aspirations, have found it fail from sheer weakness amid great and presumptuous enterprises. It is a shameful ending, when a man’s breath deserts him in a court of justice, while, although well stricken in years, he is still striving to gain the sympathies of an ignorant audience for some obscure litigant: it is base to perish in the midst of one’s business, wearied with living sooner than with working; shameful, too, to die in the act of receiving payments, amid the laughter of one’s long-expectant heir. I cannot pass over an an instance which occurs to me: Turannius was an old man of the most painstaking exactitude, who after entering upon his ninetieth year, when he had by G. Caesar’s own act been relieved of his duties as collector of the revenue, ordered himself to be laid out on his bed and mourned for as though he were dead. The whole house mourned for the leisure of its old master, and did not lay aside its mourning until his work was restored to him. Can men find such pleasure in dying in harness? Yet many are of the same mind: they retain their wish for labour longer than their capacity for it, and fight against their bodily weakness; they think old age an evil for no other reason than because it lays them on the shelf. The law does not enrol a soldier after his fiftieth year, or require a senator’s attendance after his sixtieth: but men have more difficulty in obtaining their own consent than that of the law to a life of leisure. Meanwhile, while they are plundering and being plundered, while one is disturbing another’s repose, and all are being made wretched alike, life remains without profit, without pleasure, without any intellectual progress: no one keeps death well before his eyes, no one refrains from far-reaching hopes. Some even arrange things which lie beyond their own lives, such as huge sepulchral buildings, the dedication of public works, and exhibitions to be given at their funeral-pyre, and ostentatious processions: but, by Hercules, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted by the light of torches and wax tapers, as though they had lived but a few days. “On croit que ce Paulin étoit frère de Pauline, épouse de Sénéque.” —La Grange. “L’un se consume en projets d’ambition, dont le succès depend du suffrage de l’autrui.”—La Grange. “Combien d’orateurs qui s’épuisent de sang et de forces pour faire montrer de leur génie!”—La Grange. “Pour vous, jamais vous ne daignâtes vous regarder seulement, ou vous entendre. Ne faites pas non plus valoir votre condescendance a écouter les autres. Lorsque vous vous y prêtez, ce n’est pas que vous aimiez a vous communiquer aux autres; c’est que vous craignez de vous trouver avec vous-même.”—La Grange. “It is a folly therefore beyond Sence, When great men will not give us Audience To count them proud; how dare we call it pride When we the same have to ourselves deny’d. Yet they how great, how proud so e’re, have bin Sometimes so courteous as to call thee in. And hear thee speak; but thou could’st nere afford Thyself the leisure of a look or word. Thou should’st not then herein another blame, Because when thou thyself do’st do the same. Thou would’st not be with others, but we see Plainly thou can’st not with thine own self be.” “L. ANNAEUS SENECA, the Philosopher, his book of the Shortness of Life, translated into an English Poem. Imprinted at London, by William Goldbird, for the Author, mdclxiii.” “Dans une lettre qu’il envoya au Sénat apres avoir promis que son repos n’aura rièn indigne de la gloire de ses premières années, il ajoute: Mais l’execution y mettra un prix, que ne peuvent y mettre les promesses. J’obeis cependant a la vive passion que j’ai, de me voir a ce temps si désiré; et puisque l’heureuse situation d’affaires m’en tient encore éloigné, j’ai voulu du moins me satisfaire en partie, par la douceur que je trouve à vous en parler.”—La Grange. “Such words I find. But these things rather ought Be done, then said; yet so far hath the thought Of that wish’d time prevail’d, that though the glad Fruition of the thing be not yet had. Yet I,” &c. Fasces, the rods carried by the _lictors_ as symbols of office. See Smith’s “Diet, of Antiquities,” _s.v._ See Smith’s “Dict. of Antiquities.” Xerxes. “Sénéque parle ici du pont que Caligula fit construire sur le golphe de Baies, l’an de Rome 791, 40 de J. C. . . . . rassembla et fit entrer dans la construction de son pont tous les vaisseaux qui se trouverent dans les ports d’Italie et des contrées voisines. Il n’excepta pas même ceux qui etoient destinés a y apporter des grains étrangers,” &c.—LaGrange. For _vis tu_ see Juv. v., vis tu consuetis, &c. Mayor’s note. As those of children were. THE ELEVENTH BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED