THE EPISTLES OF SENECA

6 Nor for this reason would I refuse more years if they came to me, yet I would say that nothing was missing from a happy life if its span were cut short. For I did not prepare myself for that day which greedy hope had promised as my last, but I have looked upon every day as if it were my last. Why do you ask me when I was born, or whether I am still counted among the juniors As in the original comitia centuriata assembly of centuries, men between the ages of seventeen and forty-six.

7 counted? I have my own measure. Just as in a smaller physical stature a man can be perfect, so too in a smaller measure of time, a life can be perfect. Age is among external things As riches, health, etc.. How long I am is someone else's; how long I shall be, so that I may be, is mine. Demand this of me: that I do not spend my life obscurely, as if in the dark, and that I act to live, not merely to pass by.

8 You ask what is the most ample span of life? To live until one attains sapientia wisdom. He who has reached that has touched not the longest end, but the greatest. Let him boast boldly and give thanks to the gods, and among them, to himself; and let him credit rerum natura the nature of things for the fact that he was. For he will rightly credit it; for he has returned a life better than

Textual note: "ero" I shall be suggested by Buecheler; "vero" truly found in manuscripts BA.