Letter 12: On Old Age

Back to Letters to Lucilius: An Overview | Seneca: A Guide to the Works

In Letter 12, Seneca writes to Lucilius from his country villa, where he has been reflecting on the passage of time. The letter is at once deeply personal Seneca is growing old, and he knows it and universally applicable. It is a meditation on aging that avoids both the sentimentality of those who pretend old age is as good as youth and the despair of those who see it only as loss.

Wherever I turn, I see signs of my old age. I had just come to my country house, and was complaining about the expense of the tumble-down building. My bailiff told me that the trouble was not due to the carelessness of the workmen the house was old. And this house was built under my own hands! What will become of me if stones of my own age are already crumbling? — Seneca, Letter 12

The letter opens with a vivid scene: Seneca arrives at his villa and notices it is falling apart. The bailiff tells him it is simply old age. Seneca then realises that the villa was built under his own supervision it is as old as he is. The crumbling walls are a mirror of his own body. The passage is wonderfully concrete, turning an abstract meditation on aging into something immediate and personal.

The Stoic Attitude to Aging

The Stoics did not deny the reality of aging. They did not pretend that the loss of physical vigour, the fading of memory, the approach of death were anything other than what they are. But they insisted that these are not evils. They are indifferent natural processes that are neither good nor bad in themselves. What matters is how we respond to them.

Seneca's response is characteristic: he finds in old age a reason for gratitude. Let us cherish and love old age, for it is full of pleasure, if you know how to use it. The pleasure of old age is not the pleasure of the body but the pleasure of reflection, of memory, of wisdom hard-won. The old person who has lived well can look back on a life well spent and find in that contemplation a deep and lasting satisfaction.

The Daily Practice of Dying

Letter 12 also introduces a theme that will recur throughout the letters: the idea that every day is a rehearsal for death. It is just as foolish to fear death as to fear old age, Seneca writes. He urges Lucilius to live each day as if it were his last not in a hedonistic frenzy but in a spirit of mindful completeness. Let us so order our minds as if we had come to the very end of our lives. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's account every day.

Let us go to our sleep with joy and gladness; let us say: I have lived. I have finished the course which fortune gave me. If God should add another day, let us accept it gladly. — Seneca, Letter 12

Continue to Letter 16: On Philosophy as a Guide to Life or return to Letters to Lucilius: An Overview.