You
are wealthy; are you wealthier than Pompeius? Yet when Gaius, his old relative
and new host, opened Caesar's house to him in order that he might close his
own, he lacked both bread and water.
Though
he owned so many rivers which both rose and discharged themselves within his
dominions, yet he had to beg for drops of water. He perished of hunger and
thirst in the palace of his relative, while his heir was contracting for a
public funeral for one who was in want of food.
I have never
had a fancy life, though that doesn’t stop me from sometimes thinking that I am
special, that the rules of Nature somehow don’t apply to me. Yes, others are
subject to the whims of Fortune, but I’m surely different because I have a foolproof
plan. Just watch, I say, you’ll see me going through this life with everything
at my command.
Now I may
manage to get myself in order, but I will have no success in herding my
circumstances; like my cats, they will go wherever they please.
Expanding
the breadth of my awareness can help me to rid myself of my delusions, and
since I have always had a weakness for tales from the past, few things are more
humbling for me than a good historical narrative. It will remind me that the
more things change, the more they remain the same, and that the lessons learned
the hard way by others can make it so much easier for me.
The Pompeius
mentioned here is not Pompey the Great, but a later relative, though it is also
worth noting that the older Pompey went from being part of the First Triumvirate
to being assassinated.
In this
case, Sextus Pompeius had been both a senator as well as a rather wealthy man,
a combination one can hardly avoid noticing to be quite common in most times
and places.
He seems to
have successfully served in government under both Augustus and Tiberius, though
things went poorly under Gaius Julius Caesar, known as Caligula. I have never
found any further details about the story mentioned here, but Caligula relieved
Pompeius of all his wealth and power, imprisoned him in the Imperial palace, and
starved the poor fellow to death.
It is
certainly tragic, and quite grand in its scale, though it is not so different from
all the other sorts of greed, betrayal, or violence we will see around us most
every day. The context does not need to be so dramatic to know that something
similar could happen to any one of us.
People leave
this life alone, abandoned, impoverished, or starving all the time, though many
of us don’t think such people are important enough to take any notice of.
I suppose
that is, in a way, Seneca’s whole point: if I choose to make the whole worth of
my life dependent on what others might give to me, then I will also have to accept
my worthlessness when they take it away.
Written in 11/2011
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