Peer of the Gods. Seneca, Epistles 4.31.9-10
Nature
has prepared you for life. Use her gifts to become like the gods, who
live without being attached to money or clothing or reputation. The
beauty and strength they serve, natural beauty and strength, is
greater than ours, which is mortal and must fade.
Quomodo
inquis isto pervenitur? Non per Poeninum Graiumve montem
nec per deserta Candaviae; nec Syrtes tibi nec Scylla aut Charybdis
adeundae sunt, quae tamen omnia transisti procuratiunculae pretio:
tutum iter est, iucundum est, ad quod natura te instruxit. Dedit tibi
illa quae si non deserueris, par deo surges. Parem autem te
deo pecunia non faciet: deus nihil habet. Praetexta non
faciet: deus nudus est. Fama non faciet nec ostentatio tui et in
populos nominis dimissa notitia: nemo novit deum, multi de illo male
existimant, et impune. Non turba servorum lecticam tuam per itinera
urbana ac peregrina portantium: deus ille maximus potentissimusque
ipse vehit omnia. Ne forma quidem et vires beatum te facere possunt:
nihil horum patitur vetustatem.
“How
does one find this place, where work and rest meet in perfect
harmony?” you ask. Not by way of the Pennine mount, nor the Greek
one, nor by journeying through the wastes of Candavia. You are not to
go seeking the Syrtes, or Scylla, or Charybdis (†)—all barriers
you have already passed, by paying the administrative fee. The road
for which nature has furnished you is safe, pleasant even. She has
already given you the goods by which you will rise as peer of the
gods, if you do not abandon them. Money will not make you equal to
divinity: gods possess nothing. A fine robe will not do, either: gods
go naked. Fame will not serve you, and it is useless to display
yourself in public or send news of your name to the nations. For
nobody ever recognized a god, and many judge divinity harshly, with
impunity. No crowd of servants for you, bearing your litter through
the streets of our city, or foreign ones: the greatest and most
powerful god carries everything all by himself. Not even beauty and
strength can make you blessed: nothing that belongs to them survives
old age.
---
(†)
The Pennine mount takes its original Latin name (Mons Pennus)
from the Celtic word penn,
meaning summit, though
Seneca here calls the mountain Poeninus,
Punic, as some did after Hannibal used its pass to cross the Alps
separating Gaul from Italy. Today this mountain & its pass are known as the Great St.
Bernard. The Greek mount, Mons Graius,
is another alp, known to us as the Little St. Bernard. The Romans
identified its passage as the one Hercules used on his
way back from stealing
Geryon's cattle in Iberia. Candavia
is a mountain in Illyria, traversed in Seneca's time by the Egnatian
Way (Via Egnatia) that
joined Dyrrachium to Byzantium.
The Syrtes were large
sandbanks guarding the coasts of northern
Africa between Cyrenaica and the territory of Carthage.
Scylla and Charybdis, whom we
have already met in Seneca's letters, are the cliffs and tides
guarding the straits of Messina.