Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION 17Under the influence of this teaching Senecafor a time lived a life of asceticism accordingto the strictest rule of the Stoics and, though itwas not long before he reverted to a more ordinaryway of life, there were some habits then contractedand some abstinences then resolved upon whichhe never abandoned. In the letter already quoted,written to Lucilius near the end of his life, afterdescribing the teaching of Attains and his ownyouthful enthusiasm, he adds :Something of all this remained with me, Lucilius.After the great original impulse had spent its force, Ipersevered in some fragments of that high enterprise.Thus I have abstained throughout mylife from suchdelicacies as oysters and mushrooms. They are not food,but condiments, meant to stimulate a jaded appetite,and the delight of the gluttonous because they are easilyswallowed and easily vomited. So, too, from that timeonward I have never used ointment, believing that thebest odour for the body is the absence of odour ;nevertouched wine ;and always avoided hot-air baths. Toboil down the body and exhaust itby sweating alwaysseemed to me a luxurious superfluity. From otherrenunciations I desisted ;but I returned to what I hadabandoned with a moderation that came much nearerto abstinence than self-indulgence— a moderation perhapseven more difficult in practice than total abstention,for certainly it is often easier to abandon a habitaltogether than to keep it within modest bounds.^Another of Seneca's habits, dating probablyfrom this time, which ought to win him somesympathy from Englishmen, was the daily cold1Ep. 108.