SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE XC.
trees ? Are not the feathers of birds sewn together
to serve for clothing? Even at the present day
does not a large portion of the Scythian tribe garb
itself in the skins of foxes and mice, soft to the
touch and impervious to the winds "
? For all that,
men must have some thicker protection than the skin,
in order to keep
off the heat of the sun in summer."
What then ? Has not antiquity produced many
retreats which, hollowed out either by the damage
wrought by time or by any other occurrence you
will, have opened into caverns ? What then ? Did
not the very
first -comers take twigs a and weave
them by hand into wicker mats, smear them with
common mud, and then with stubble and other
wild grasses construct a roof, and thus pass their
winters secure, the rains carried off by means of the
sloping gables What ? then Do ? not the peoples
on the edge of the Syrtes dwell in dug-out houses
and indeed all the tribes who, because of the too
fierce blaze of the sun, possess no protection sufficient
to keep off the heat except the soil
parched itself?
Nature was not so hostile to man that, when she
gave all the other animals an easy role in life, she
made it impossible for him alone to live without all
these artifices. None of these was imposed upon us
by her none of them had to be
; painfully sought
out that our lives might be prolonged.
All things
were ready for us at our birth ; it is we that have
made everything difficult for ourselves, through our
disdain for what is easy. Houses, shelter, creature
comforts, food, and all that has now become the
source of vast trouble, were ready at hand, free to
Among many accounts by Roman writers of early man,
compare this passage of Ovid, and that in the fifth book of
Lucretius.
407