Key Arguments

• He notes that his friend Liberalis, usually staunch, is especially shaken because the total destruction of Lyons by fire was unforeseen and without precedent, showing how 'unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster.'
• Seneca generalizes that 'what is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster' and that 'The fact that it was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person’s grief.'
• He concludes that this psychological pattern is precisely 'a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise', prescribing that 'We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events.'
• He emphasizes Fortune’s unpredictability—her assaults come by many paths, including our own hands, pleasures, peace, friends turned foes, and unprecedented calamities—so one cannot rely on ordinary expectations; therefore one must prepare for 'every possibility'.
• He urges the deliberate rehearsal of specific extreme misfortunes—'Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck'—so that rare events will not overwhelm us 'as if they were unprecedented ones.'
• He expands the scope from personal to collective disasters by reminding Lucilius how often entire towns in Asia, Greece, Syria, Macedonia, and Cyprus have been annihilated by earthquakes, suggesting that such catastrophes are common enough to be foreseen and mentally prepared for.
• He connects this preparation to resilience: 'So let us face up to the blows of circumstance and be aware that whatever happens is never as serious as rumour makes it out to be.'

Source Quotes

And he has some reason to be shaken. What is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster. The fact that it was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person’s grief.

What is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster. The fact that it was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person’s grief. This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise.

The fact that it was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person’s grief. This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise. We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events.

This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise. We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events. For what is there that fortune does not when she pleases fell at the height of its powers?

This is why we need to envisage every possibility and to strengthen the spirit to deal with the things which may conceivably come about. Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck. Misfortune may snatch you away from your country, or your country away from you, may banish you into some wilderness – these very surroundings in which the masses suffocate may become a wilderness.

Misfortune may snatch you away from your country, or your country away from you, may banish you into some wilderness – these very surroundings in which the masses suffocate may become a wilderness. All the terms of our human lot should be before our eyes; we should be anticipating not merely all that commonly happens but all that is conceivably capable of happening, if we do not want to be overwhelmed and struck numb by rare events as if they were unprecedented ones; fortune needs envisaging in a thoroughly comprehensive way. Think how often towns in Asia or in Greece have fallen at a single earth tremor, how many villages in Syria or Macedonia have been engulfed, how often this form of disaster has wrought devastation in Cyprus, how often Paphos has tumbled about itself!

Key Concepts

• What is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster.
• The fact that it was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person’s grief.
• This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise.
• We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events.
• Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck.
• if we do not want to be overwhelmed and struck numb by rare events as if they were unprecedented ones; fortune needs envisaging in a thoroughly comprehensive way.

Context

Beginning of Letter XCI, in response to Liberalis’s distress at the sudden destruction of Lyons, Seneca uses this concrete disaster to develop a general Stoic practice of premeditation of misfortunes as psychological armor against Fortune’s surprises.