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The Stoic Seneca is the master of the ‘consolation’, a letter written for the express purpose of comforting someone who has been bereaved. Seneca wrote at least three consolations, to Marcia, to Polybius, and to Helvia. In the Consolation to Helvia, he comforts his own mother Helvia on ‘losing’ him to exile—an unusual case, and literary innovation, of the lamented consoling the lamenter.

The emperor Marcus Aurelius (d. 180 CE) had at least fourteen children with his wife Faustina, but only four daughters and one unfortunate son, Commodus, outlived their parents. In the Meditations, Marcus likens his children to leaves, and paraphrases Homer in the Iliad: 

Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees. Those of autumn the wind sheds upon the ground, but when the spring returns the forest buds forth with fresh vines.

Marcus was a Stoic, and would have known, at least in principle, how to cope with grief, loss, and bereavement. But if Seneca could have consoled Marcus on the loss of his children, and could only have told him three things, what might those three things have been?

First, Marcus, remember that life is given to us with death as a precondition. Some people die sooner than others, but life, on a cosmic scale, is so short that, really, it makes no difference. Even children are known to die—indeed, they often do—and these, Marcus, simply happened to be your own. A human life, however long or short, or great or small, is of little historical and no cosmic consequence. Since a life can never be long or great enough, the most that it can be is sufficient, and we would do better to concentrate on what that might mean.

Second, it may be that death is in fact preferable to life (the secret of Silenus). Life is full of suffering, and grieving only adds to it, whereas death is the permanent release from every possible pain. Indeed, many people who have died—think only of our friend Cicero—would have died happier if they had died sooner. If we do not pity the unborn, why should we pity the dead, who at least had the benefit, if benefit it is, of having existed? The unborn cry out as soon as they are delivered into the world, but to the dead we never have to block our ears. If weep we must, it is not over death, but the whole of life, that we should weep.

Third, we should treat the people we love not as permanent possessions but as temporary loans from fortune. When, in the evening, you kiss your wife and children goodnight, reflect on the possibility that they, and you, might never wake up. In the morning when you kiss them goodbye, reflect on the possibility that they, or you, might never come home. That way you’ll be better prepared for their eventual loss, and, what’s more, savour and sublime whatever time that you have with them—and, in that way, lead them to love you more. 

If you do lose a loved one, do not grieve, or no more than is appropriate, or no more than they would have wanted you to, but be grateful for the moments that you shared, and consider how much poorer your life would have been if they had never come into it.

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Why the Stoics valued self-imposed hardship.

Diogenes in his barrel.

In the deep winter, Diogenes the Cynic (d. 323 BCE) would strip naked and embrace bronze statues. One day, upon seeing this, a Spartan asked him whether he was cold. When he said that he was not, the Spartan replied, “Well, then, what’s so impressive about what you’re doing?”

Like their predecessors the Cynics, and like the Spartans, the Stoics greatly valued hardship, albeit on a more modest or moderate scale. We should, they said, routinely practice poverty or put ourselves through mild hardship, and this for several reasons:

First, to discover what we can do without, and reduce our fear of losing those things. In his Letters, Seneca advises Lucilius: “Set yourself a period of some days in which you will be content with very small amounts of food, and the cheapest kinds, and with coarse clothing, and say to yourself, “Is this what I was afraid of?””

Second, to be reminded that simple things, such as bread and olive oil, or a good night’s sleep, can be just as enjoyable and profitable as any great banquet (if not more so), and thus that pleasure is both readily available and highly transferable.

Third, to better reflect upon our true goals, or to work towards them. “If you want to have time for your mind” says Seneca, “you must either be poor or resemble the poor… One cannot study without frugality, and frugality is just voluntary poverty.”

Here are six more advantages of self-imposed hardship, according to the Stoics:

  • To increase our appreciation and enjoyment of the things that we normally enjoy.
  • To break from our normal routine, and reinvigorate our minds while exercising our freedom.
  • To be prepared for future hardship, which, unless we are suddenly struck dead, is all but a certainty.
  • To be convinced that the greater part of our suffering lies not in fact but in our attitude towards it.
  • To practise self-discipline, or test our fortitude.
  • To empathise with less fortunate people, and people from the past.

In addition, self-imposed poverty and hardship can also have more mundane benefits, such as losing weight, saving time or money, and making yourself popular by seeming like one of the people.

Finally, all these motives are in themselves a source of pride and pleasure of a different kind. “Do not” says Marcus Aurelius, “lament misfortune. Instead, rejoice that you are the sort of man who can undergo misfortune without letting it upset you.”

Seneca does us the favour of putting self-imposed hardship into radical perspective when he says: “Armies have endured being deprived of everything for another person’s domination, so who will hesitate to put up with poverty when the aim is to liberate the mind from fits of madness?”

Neel Burton is author of Stoic Stories.

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  • The labyrinth is a Jungian archetype that features in prehistoric rock drawings.
  • Mediaeval labyrinths were not simply ornamental but represented the spiritual path to God.
  • Today, labyrinths are increasingly found in therapeutic settings as an aid to meditation and mindfulness.

In Greek myth, Poseidon punished Minos by making his wife Pasiphaë lust for a white bull. Sometime later, Pasiphaë gave birth to the Minotaur, a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. As the Minotaur grew, he became increasingly fierce and even began eating people. Fearing that his people would rise against him, Minos sought to contain his stepson in a series of ever-stronger cages; but after he broke out of the strongest cage, he asked Daedalus to build a maze of tunnels beneath his palace. The Labyrinth, as it came to be called, was so intricate that even Daedalus, having built it, struggled to escape from it.

In time, the Minotaur was killed by Theseus, who retraced his steps out of the Labyrinth with the help of a ball of crimson thread given to him by Minos’ daughter Ariadne.

History of the labyrinth

In the early twentieth century, the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, working on Crete, uncovered the existence of a complex civilization whose people he called the Minoans after the mythical King Minos. Minoan Crete flourished from 3000 to 1500 BCE and revolved around a series of palace complexes, the largest of which was at Knossos in the north of the island. The palace at Knossos covered an area of around six acres (or three football pitches); it contained some 1,300 rooms connected by various corridors and stairways, leading Evans to speculate that the mythical labyrinth was none other than the palace itself.

Although the labyrinth was a branching, multicursal maze, it has long been represented, for example, on fifth-century BCE Cretan coins, as a single-path, unicursal maze in which it is, of course, impossible to get lost. As a result, “labyrinth,” although essentially synonymous with “maze,” has come to connote unicursality, whereas “maze” has come to connote multicursality. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder (d. 79 CE) describes four ancient labyrinths—in Egypt, Crete, Lemnos, and Italy—all of which seem to have been enclosed multicursal complexes, confirming that this is the ancient, original meaning of “labyrinth.” In the Histories, Herodotus (d. 425 BCE) claims that the Egyptian labyrinth surpassed even the pyramids in scale and ambition:

I myself have seen the [the Egyptian labyrinth], and no words can tell its wonders: the sum of all that the Greeks have built and wrought would be a matter of less labour and cost than was this single labyrinth.

The psychology of labyrinths

Far from a mere folly, the labyrinth is, like the serpent, the flood, and the trinity, something of a Jungian archetype, found in prehistoric rock drawings at, for example, Pontevedra in Galicia (Spain), Val Camonica in Lombardy (Italy), and Rocky Valley in Cornwall (England).

In mediaeval Europe, cathedrals sometimes contained a labyrinth traced in the nave from contrasting paving stones. Those that have survived, such as the striking one in Chartres Cathedral, can still be walked today. Cathedral labyrinths were not simply ludic or ornamental but represented the spiritual path to God and provided a substitute for going on pilgrimage. Cathedral labyrinths were, therefore, unicursal, as were the first hedge mazes, which evolved from Renaissance knot gardens.

As I argue in The Meaning of Myth, mazes and labyrinths are spiritual tools, not mere amusements or diversions. Multicursal mazes such as the Cretan or Egyptian Labyrinth may have been built not only to guard against gold diggers but also to deter or trap evil spirits, including the Minotaur.

Unicursal labyrinths, on the other hand, may have been traced to guide rituals or dances. The circular unicursal labyrinth symbolizes the cosmos, completeness, and unity, and, by extension, the spiritual path or journey of life. More than a simple garden, it is a removed, secluded, and liminal space that serves to calm and concentrate the mind—which is why labyrinths, often simply mown into a summer field, are increasingly found in therapeutic settings such as hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes.

Labyrinths, especially single-path, unicursal ones, serve not only as a thing of beauty but also and above all as an aid to meditation and mindfulness.

To walk the labyrinth is to re-enter the womb and travel inward, and to come back out is a kind of rebirth. Ariadne’s crimson thread is thus an umbilical cord that ties Theseus to the world while he undertakes the hero’s journey into the underworld and slays the monster.

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The first edition of Plato’s Shadow came out 14 years ago, so it was time for a rewrite and refresh.

Plato’s Shadow contains summaries of all of Plato’s dialogues in their approximate order of composition, enabling you to trace the evolution of Plato’s thought (and of his portrayal of Socrates). Along with Aristotle’s Universe, it was one of the books that served as groundwork for The Gang of Three.

In The Gang Three, I outline and comment on five key dialogues: Meno, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic, and Theaetetus. But the interested reader might also want to delve into the Laches, Gorgias, Cratylus, Symposium, Parmenides… which is why I released this new edition as an appendix to the Ancient Wisdom series.

Unlike the other books in the series, Plato’s Shadow is aimed more at students and academics than at the general reader. As this group is less apt to judge a book by its cover, I took the risk of designing the cover myself! The real challenge was not the front cover as such, but getting all the measurements right and getting everything to match the other covers in the series.

When I began self-publishing in 2008, I worked with a typesetter, a proofreader, a designer, a printer, a warehouse, shippers, importers, and, of course, bookshops. But in the intervening time, the world has changed so much, and technology has advanced so much, that I no longer need any of these people.

I do worry that, soon, even I won’t be needed.

I hope you’re having a lovely summer, full of flowers, wine, and watermelons. And, of course, books.

Browse the Ancient Wisdom series