Seneca, On Peace of Mind 14.8

He promised, too, that if he made any discoveries, he would come around to his friends and tell them what the condition of the souls of the departed might be.

Here was peace in the very midst of the storm; here was a soul worthy of eternal life, which used its own fate as a proof of truth, which when at the last step of life experimented upon his fleeting breath, and did not merely continue to learn until he died, but learned something even from death itself.

No man has carried the life of a philosopher further. I will not hastily leave the subject of a great man, and one who deserves to be spoken of with respect. I will hand you down to all posterity, you most noble heart, chief among the many victims of Gaius.

If people do somehow continue on after death, I might wonder why we have never heard back from them, or why they don’t tell us all about what they have found.

Then it occurs to me that we may no longer recognize them for what they are when we do come across them, precisely because they are something quite different than what they once were.

The cynical and skeptical side of me wants to say that Canius had nothing more to say, since there clearly was no more of Canius.

Oh no, there is certainly something left of Canius, since all things are constantly being transformed in Nature. What was then is something else now, and what is now will all too soon be something new. Nothing comes from nothing, and everything is reborn and rebuilt.

What Canius made completely clear, while we were able to understand him, is all about how any one of us is able to find a peace of mind and a contentment of spirit. No secret wisdom is necessary, no inhuman strength is required.

Enough is given, right here and now, to make sense of any hardship. It only asks for an honest appreciation of what is truly good in life, and then so much that seemed unbearable can now become a means for happiness.

Is the force thrown at my body too great, or is the pain more than my mind can face without being destroyed? Then it will kill me, as it killed Canius.

Caligula would soon die himself, at the hands of his own Praetorian Guard, and so, at least in one sense, both the victim and the oppressor ended up in exactly the same place.

In another sense, however, how they chose to live before that end was completely different. Canius learned to love the world as it was, and he learned to find joy in everything that he did.

Caligula was always ill at ease, worried about winning this or losing that, and he saw threats around every corner.

Canius even used the act of dying itself to learn something new, and he lifted the spirits of his friends.

I can only imagine what was going through Caligula’s head as they stabbed him to death, though Suetonius claims he cried out “I live!” before the final blows came.

Canius was the happier man, because he was the better man. Caligula was the miserable man, because he was never satisfied with anything that Nature had already given him.

I sincerely hope I will use my terrible stubbornness rightly when the time comes, and that I will insist on my character instead of my vanity.

Live better, or live longer? Be more, or have more?

Written in 12/2011

IMAGE: The Assassination of Caligula