Seneca · Letters to Lucilius
Letter 91: On the lesson to be drawn from the burning of Lyons
Letter 91 is prompted by the fire that destroyed the colony of Lyons in a single night, in a time of peace.
The unexpected weighs heaviest, so the mind should go ahead to meet not what usually happens but what can happen; nothing public or private is stable, and the ashes of all men are alike.
From the letter
And not without reason has he been shaken; for it is the unexpected that puts the heaviest load upon us.
Our minds should be sent forward in advance to meet all problems, and we should consider, not what is wont to happen, but what can happen.
It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works, if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.
Nothing, whether public or private, is stable; the destinies of men, no less than those of cities, are in a whirl.
For enduring all things, we are equal; no one is more frail than another, no one more certain of his own life on the morrow.
Coverage
Our editions hold 30 letters of 124 in Richard Mott Gummere’s translation (1917–1925); 29 of them have a page here, those that Joseph Baillard’s French translation (1861) also contains.
Seneca and Epictetus are in Stoic+ — 1 passage of this letter, with its reference; Marcus Aurelius is free in the app.