Seneca, On Peace of Mind 11.8

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