Chapter 4 - On the Shortness of Life, by Seneca the Younger

You will hear some of the most powerful and senior people make off-hand comments about how they long to relax, claim they enjoy it, and yearn for a life of leisure over all other pursuits.

They long, sometimes, if it can be done in the right way, to step down from their ivory towers; and while nothing ever changes in the world as a result, their good luck its very self comes crashing down.

The god-like Augustus, a man whom Fortune blessed more than any other, never stopped praying for rest and to gain release from public affairs; everything he spoke about always got back to this topic – his desire for a peaceful life.

This was the happy, if perhaps vain, consolation with which Augustus would lighten his labors – that one day he would have time to live for himself.

In a letter addressed to the Senate, in which the Emperor had promised that the rest of his days would not lack the dignity of his former glory, I find this remarkable passage:

“However, these issues can be portrayed better by actions rather than promises. But because that happy time is still far off, my desire for that existence most earnestly prayed for has given me a chance to sample some of its delight through the pleasure of words."

So desirable a thing was a life of leisure that he gained pleasure in thought what he could not attain in reality.

He who felt responsible for everything, who decided the fate of people and of nations, thought most fondly of that future time when he could walk away from such a position.

More and more the Emperor felt the strain behind the flattery that sprang forth from every corner of his domains and detected secret worry hidden beneath the blessings.  Forced to wage war first against his countrymen, then against his colleagues, and lastly against his relatives, he shed blood on land and sea.

Through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and almost all countries he followed the path of battle, and when his troops were tired of shedding Roman blood, he marched them to foreign wars.

While he was settling disputes in the Alpine regions, and subduing enemies rooted in the midst of a peaceful empire, while he was extending its borders even past the Rhine and the Euphrates and the Danube, in Rome itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others were being sharpened to slay him.

Augustus was never completely free of enemies. There was the time when his daughter and all the young aristocrats who were linked to her adultery like a sacred oath, and he was often surprised in his later years by schemers like Paulus, and a second time he had to fear a woman in cahoots with Antony.

When he had cut out these ulcers together with the limbs themselves, others would grow in their place; just as in a body that had a surfeit of blood, there was always a rupture somewhere.

But still he longed for rest, a recurring day-dream in which he found escape from his burdens. This was the prayer of a man who had been able to answer the prayers of his people.