Great turnout to discuss Seneca’s On The Shortness Of Life and it was terrific to be able to welcome some new members to the group, Chris and Michael. The book was a real handful to read, very long-winded with paragraphs that stretched over page after page, but it was still quite thought provoking in talking about our lives and how we live them. The other two essays were similar but also good.
I was very struck by how this was a window to a very distant time: Seneca speaks of people wasting time waiting for things that are coming in the future and when the gladiatorial contest happens, it’s all too short after such a long lead in, of how when someone’s slave runs away how must he feel when his former slave has exceeded the wealth of his former master because he’s got more slaves now, of reading something and going to speak at the Forum with a fire in your belly. Gladiators! Slaves! The Forum! It really spoke from another era and yet the themes that he spoke of seem just as relevant today.
Chris suggested that we should read Norman Mailer’s The Fight which he said had passages that had the hairs standing up on the back of his neck.
