SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE XCI.
mortality, and in the midst of things
which have
been destined to die, we live !
Hence it is
thoughts like these, and of this kind,
which I am offering as consolation to our friend
Liberalis, who burns with a love for his country that
is
beyond belief. Perhaps
its destruction has been
brought about only that it may be raised up again
to a better destiny. Oftentimes a reverse has but
made room for more prosperous fortune.
Many
structures have fallen only to rise to a greater
height. Timagenes,^ who had a grudge against
Rome and her prosperity, used to say that the only
reason he was grieved when conflagrations occurred
in Rome was his knowledge o that better buildings O
would arise than those which had gone down in the
flames. And probably in this city of Lyons, too,
all its citizens will earnestly strive that everything
shall be rebuilt better in size and security than what
they have lost. May it be built to endure and,
under happier auspices, for a longer existence !
This is indeed but the hundredth year since this
colony was founded not the limit even of a man's
lifetime. 6 Led forth by Plancus, the natural
advantages of its site have caused it to wax strong
and reach the numbers which it contains to-day
;
and yet how many calamities of the greatest severity
has it endured within the space of an old man's life !
Therefore let the mind be disciplined to understand
and to endure its own lot, and let it have the
knowledge that there is
nothing which fortune does
not dare that she has the same jurisdiction over
empires as over emperors, the same power over cities
as over the citizens who dwell therein. We must
(unnecessarily) emend to read centesimus Septimus. But
Seneca was using round numbers.
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