Seneca, On Peace of Mind 11.11

We have seen Ptolemaeus, King of Africa, and Mithridates, King of Armenia, under the charge of Gaius's guards: the former was sent into exile, the latter chose it in order to make his exile more honorable.

Among such continual topsy-turvy changes, unless you expect that whatever can happen will happen to you, you give adversity power against you, a power which can be destroyed by anyone who looks at it beforehand.

The Romans were quite skilled at managing the business of other people around them, and they were masters at making or breaking the kings of their vassal states.

Egypt, the breadbasket of the Empire, had to be kept firmly under control, and when the nominal rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty became too inconvenient, the formality was abolished entirely.

The Armenians were always a problem, lying right on the border with the hated Persians.

Was this or that king useful for the moment? Then he was allowed to keep his titles and honors for the moment. Was he suddenly inconvenient? Then he would find himself deposed, exiled, or murdered.

There is the very problem with a politics divorced from a sense of ethics, where justice is subservient to the lust for power.

Through all of it, the Romans were hardly immune to suffering from their own vices. As always, the deepest harm will strike inward, not outward. There were always good people, committed to living with character, and yet around them there was also intrigue, corruption, and violence.

For all of its greatness in some ways, Rome, whether in the Republic or the Empire, was already doomed in other ways. Ambitious men, grasping men, interested in profit over principle, encouraged the rot from within. It is no different in any other time or place.

Knowing that all of our circumstances are subject to the whims of despots, how can we possibly expect our lives to become good or bad by the money, honor, or power we might win or lose?

Can we fight them? Yes, of course, but once we fight on their terms, we become them, and so the whole effort was wasted by transforming ourselves into the very people we find so disagreeable.

How rarely it even occurs to us that a success in life will have nothing to do with the externals that are given or taken away. Perhaps we could look to owning ourselves, instead of trying to own others?

There is no admission of defeat in saying that others will act as they will act; there is only an admission of defeat in refusing to act as we should act.

I am seeing more clearly, day by day, that no one else has ever really done me any harm at all, at least not in a way that counts; I do myself harm.

If I am willing to accept any situation whatsoever, depending only upon my own judgments and actions, what could I possibly have to fear but myself? 

Written in 11/2011