Seneca to Lucilius: 49, on the shortness of life

Seneca wrote a whole book “On the shortness of life,” on which I have commented before. But he addresses the same topic also in the much shorter letter XLIX to his friend Lucilius, as part of what Liz Gloyn has called Seneca’s informal curriculum for the study of Stoicism.

This letter includes another jab at those who mis-spend their life studying logic for logic’s sake, which — as we have seen — was the major subject matter of Letter XLVIII. Seneca here is downright sarcastic, providing us with echoes of the later writings of Epictetus:

“When the spears of the foeman were quivering in our gates and the very ground was rocking with mines and subterranean passages — I say, they would rightly think me mad if I were to sit idle, putting such pretty posers as this: ‘What you have not lost, you have. But you have not lost any horns. Therefore, you have horns,’ or other tricks constructed after the model of this piece of sheer silliness.” (XLIX.8)

The not so subtle reference is to the sophists, as the piece of “reasoning” concerning horns cannot…