Sundays with Seneca
Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join the search for ancient lessons on the art of living from Lucius Annaeus Seneca's writings and Stoic philosophy.
Seneca — On Living According to Nature
In a letter known today as On Darkness as a Veil for Wickedness (apologies, no audio for this one), Seneca wrote,
The day has already begun to lessen. It has shrunk considerably, but yet will still allow a goodly space of time if one rises, so to speak, with the day itself. We are more industrious, and we are better men if we anticipate the day and welcome the dawn, but we are base churls if we lie dozing when the sun is high in the heavens or if we wake up only when noon arrives, and even then, too many, it seems not yet dawn.
Some have reversed the functions of light and darkness; they open eyes sodden with yesterday’s debauch only at the approach of night. It is just like the condition of those peoples whom, according to Vergil, Nature has hidden away and placed in an abode directly opposite to our own:
When in our face the Dawn with panting steeds
Breathes down, for them the ruddy evening kindles
Her late-lit fires.
It is not the country of these men, so much as it is their life, that is “directly opposite” to our own.
