We don't control outcomes. Seneca, Epistles 2.14.14-16
What can we do, if not politics? Seneca suggests that we cultivate life, specifically a private life that does not require public means to maintain itself and avoid giving others offense. Of course this path is fraught with risk and danger, as all are, but Seneca likes it better.
Sed
postea videbimus an sapienti opera rei publicae danda sit: interim ad
hos te Stoicos voco qui a re publica exclusi secesserunt ad colendam
vitam et humano generi iura condenda sine ulla potentioris offensa.
Non conturbabit sapiens publicos mores nec populum in se vitae
novitate convertet.
Quid ergo? utique erit tutus qui hoc propositum sequetur? Promittere
tibi hoc non magis possum quam in homine temperanti bonam
valetudinem, et tamen facit temperantia bonam valetudinem.
Perit
aliqua navis in portu: sed quid tu accidere in medio mari credis?
Quanto
huic periculum paratius foret multa agenti molientique, cui ne otium
quidem tutum est? Pereunt aliquando innocentes—quis
negat?—nocentes
tamen saepius. Ars ei constat qui per ornamenta percussus est.
Denique
consilium rerum omnium sapiens, non exitum spectat;
initia
in potestate nostra sunt, de eventu fortuna iudicat, cui de me
sententiam non do.
At aliquid vexationis afferet, aliquid adversi. Non
damnatur
(‡)
latro cum occidit.
But
we will look later at the question of whether the work of government
should be given to a wise man. In the meantime, I call your attention
to those Stoics who, when they were excluded from public business,
retired to cultivate life, and to create independent laws for
humanity that avoid offending anyone too powerful (†). A wise man
will not disturb public customs or draw the people toward himself by
the novelty of his life. "What of it?" you ask. "Is
following this precept enough to keep him safe?" I cannot
promise you this, anymore than I can promise good health to someone
temperate; but temperance does create good health, all the same. A
ship sometimes sinks in port, but what do you think happens in the
middle of the sea? How do you suppose a vessel unable to bear calm is
going to handle danger, tossing and pitching every which way?
Innocent passengers perish sometimes. I don't deny it. But the guilty
perish even more often. Skill belongs to the man whom fortune strikes
through his achievements, his tools and what he has wrought. In every
undertaking, a wise man looks ultimately for counsel, not for escape.
Beginnings lie in our power, but fortune decides outcomes, about
which I refuse to offer any personal judgment. "But the outcome
will bring us some trouble, some misfortune." What of it? A
brigand is not condemned after he has perished.
---
(‡)
I follow the MSS here, shaking my head at the emendation proposed by
Gronovius (damnat).
Schweighäuser's
dominatur
makes
better sense than that, but why fix what isn't broken?
(†)
Not all Romans of birth or means were active in politics. The Stoics
mentioned here might be part of the philosophical school of Quintus
Sextius, which flourished between 50 BCE and 19 CE and advocated
withdrawal from politics. Seneca calls Sextius a Stoic elsewhere in
these letters to Lucilius (7.64.2), but also records that Sextius did
not see himself that way.