On the Shortness of Life

“On the Shortness of Life” was written in the middle part of first-century Rome, during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius. The first century in Rome is characterized by historians as a time of great sophistication but also of political machination and moral corruption in the ruling class. The emperors of this period—Caligula (ruled 37-41 CE), Claudius (41-54 CE), and Nero (54-68 CE)—are now renowned for their brutality, corruption, and immorality. When the Emperor Augustus seized power in 27 BCE, Rome had become an autocratic state, and the structures of power and politics were in flux throughout the following decades. Those in Rome’s elite class vied between—and within—families to secure power through any means: corruption, assassination, and incestuous alliances were common. A time of contradictions, the period 27 BCE to 180 CE is also known as the “Pax Romana,” a time of expansion and increased wealth for the Roman Empire and of relative peace and civic order. During the life of Seneca, Rome grew in its wealth and sophistication, both in material culture and in ideas.

This was Seneca’s milieu: he was an extremely wealthy man and a prominent member of the highest Roman political and social class for much of his life. What is known of his life shows that he was himself subject to the whims and power struggles of the emperors and imperial families. Born in Spain (c. 4 CE), he was raised in Rome and quickly became one of the most distinguished politicians and orators in the Senate. In 41 CE, he was exiled to Corsica by the emperor Claudius on—probably politically motivated—charges of adultery with a woman the imperial family. In 49 CE he was recalled to Rome to become tutor to Nero, who would become emperor in 54 CE. Seneca would remain a prominent politician and advisor to Nero until 64 CE, when, falling from favor, he was ordered by Nero to end his life by suicide. “On the Shortness of Life” was most probably composed in the year of his return to Rome and can be read as a treatise at this key point in his life: for his mode of education for Nero and philosophical ideas for Roman society more generally. Schofield reminds readers that:

the topic must, of course, have been of pressing interest to Seneca himself, whose own life oscillated between otium (leisure), enforced or otherwise, and public activity, above all as Nero’s principal adviser for the first eight years of his reign (Schofield, Malcolm. “Seneca on Monarchy and the Political Life: De Clementia, De Tranquillitate Animi, De Otio.” The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 77).

Writings of the time show that many educated Romans recognized and had concerns about the nature of the society in which they lived, and how best to navigate its challenges. “On the Shortness of Life” is no exception. Through it, Seneca reflects Stoic ideas on how people should strive to live meaningful and virtuous lives, in a time of great uncertainty. As with many of Seneca’s works, it reveals critiques of the conspicuous consumption, luxuries, and the related collapse of morality that characterized the lives of the wealthy and powerful in the imperial Roman world.