Seneca’s guide to coping with disaster

How does one attempt to console someone on the destruction of their home, a fate recently visited on so many citizens of Los Angeles? Seneca, the millionaire philosopher and adviser to the emperor Nero, associated consolation with ‘reprimanding, dissuading, exhorting, commending’. He exemplifies that in a letter musing on the reaction which his friend Liberalis had had to the destruction by fire of his beloved Lugdunum (Lyon) in Gaul ad 64. This had caused Liberalis to worry about the strength of his own character, usually so steadfast, when confronted with this disaster.

Seneca contended that we should be ready for anything, since there is ‘nothing that Fortune, when it so wishes, does not topple at the height of its prosperity’. War arises in the middle of peace, friends become foes. There would be some consolation if all things perished as slowly as they came into being, but ruin is rapid. Nothing, whether public or private, is stable; the destinies of men no less than of cities are tossed about.

We must therefore confront the operations of Fortune. What man builds up will fall to the ground; mountains collapse, and seas overwhelm the land. Cities stand, but to fall. ‘It would be tedious to recount all the ways by which fate may come, but this one thing I know: all the works of mortal man have been doomed to mortality and in the midst of things which have been destined to die, we live.’

So we must not cry out at these calamities. Into such a world have we come and under such laws do we live. We will grow old, we will be sick, we will suffer loss, and we will die. None of these is a burden which it is impossible to bear; it is only common opinion that makes it so.