SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE XCI.
not very large in extent. But of all those cities,
of whose magnificence and grandeur you hear to-day,
the very traces will be blotted out by time. Do
you not see how, in Achaia, the foundations of the
most famous cities have already crumbled to nothing,
so that no trace is left to show that they ever even
existed ? a Not only does that which has been made
with hands totter to the ground, not only
is that
which has been set in place by man's art and man's
efforts overthrown by the passing days nay, the
;
peaks of mountains dissolve, whole tracts have
settled, and places which once stood far from the
sight of the sea are now covered by the waves.
The mighty power of fires has eaten away the hills
through whose sides they used to glow, and has
levelled to the ground peaks which were once most
lofty the sailor's solace and his beacon. The
works of nature herself are harassed ;
hence we
ought to bear with untroubled minds the destruction
of cities.
They stand but to fall ! This doom
awaits them, one and all ;
it
may be that some
internal force, and blasts of violence which are
tremendous because their way is blocked, will throw
off the weight which holds then down ;
or that a
whirlpool of raging currents, mightier because they
are hidden in the bosom of the earth, will break
through that which resists its power or that the
;
vehemence of flames will burst asunder the framework
of the earth's crust ;
or that time, from which
nothing is safe, will reduce them little by little ;
or
that a pestilential climate will drive their inhabitants
away and the mould will corrode their deserted
walls. 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
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