On the Shortness of Life

hen, 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,[11] as though they had lived
but a few days.

[1] “On croit que ce Paulin étoit frère de Pauline, épouse de
Sénéque.” —La Grange.

[2] “L’un se consume en projets d’ambition, dont le succès depend
du suffrage de l’autrui.”—La Grange.

[3] “Combien d’orateurs qui s’épuisent de sang et de forces pour
faire montrer de leur génie!”—La Grange.

[4] “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.”