Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

36 SENECAA capital sentence was firstproposed but;this, on the emperor's interposition, was changedto one of exile.^From the barren and inhospitable shoresof Corsica, where Seneca in middle life was detainedfor nearly eight years, he wrote, after aninterval of six months from his arrival, the 'Consolation'to his mother H elvia which Bolingbrokehas paraphrased in his ' Reflections upon Exile.'She must grieve, he tells her, neither for hissake nor her own. Not for his ;for he is notunhappy. All that he has lost, all that fortunehad so lavishly bestowed upon him— honours,—money, fame he had never held as ifthey werehis own.I kept a great interval between me and them.She took them, but she could not tear them fromme. No man suffers by bad fortune, but he whohas been deceived by good. If we grow fond of hergifts, fancy that they belong to us, and are perpetuallyto remain with us, if we lean on them, and expect to beconsidered for them, we shall sink into all the bitternessof grief as soon as these false and transitory benefitspass away, as soon as our vain and childish minds,unfraught with solid pleasures, become destitute evenof those which are imaginary. But if we do not sufferourselves to be transported by prosperity, neither shallwe be reduced by adversity. Our souls wiU be of proofagainst the danger of both these states ;and havingexplored our strength we shaU be sure of it.^All that is best in man, he urges, liesbeyond^ 'Consol. ad Pol. xxxvii. :Deprecatus est pro me senatum,et vitam mihi non tantum dedit, sed etiam petiit.'*Consol, ad Helviam, v.(Bolingbroke's translation.)