25: Someone To Watch Over Me (And You)

     I apologize to my regular readers for the unusual length of time between posts, but my elderly mother fell and broke her hip last month; the good news is, her surgery was successful, and she is now in a rehabilitation facility; so my duty to family came first. Speaking of obligations -- note the smooth transition -- in Letter 25 to Lucilius, Seneca reminds him that it is their duty (as friends) to help two mutual friends overcome their faults. Seneca also goes on to provide Lucilius with an antidote for the latter's faults. Once again, Seneca finds a quote from his old frenemy Epicurus to summarize the advice. According to Seneca, the late Greek philosopher once told one of his followers to do everything as if he (Epicurus) were watching him. Seneca writes:
          "Assuredly it is beneficial to set a watch on yourself and to have someone to look up to, someone who you think will make a difference in your plans. To be sure, it is much grander if you live as if some good man were always present and held you in his gaze. But I am satisfied even with this: let everything you do be done as if watched by someone. Solitude encourages every fault in us. Once you have progressed far enough to have some reverence even for yourself, then you may dismiss your tutor; meanwhile, put yourself under the guardianship of men of authority. Let it be Cato, or Scipio, or Laelius, or someone else at whose coming even desperate characters would suppress their faults, while you go about making yourself the person in whose company you would not dare to do wrong. When you have done that, and have begun to have some worth in your own eyes ... ." 
For those -- like me -- who were not Classics majors in college, Cato the Younger was a politician who fought (unsuccessfully) for the survival of the Roman republic in its final years; Scipio Africanus was the general who, by campaigning against Carthage, forced Hannibal to withdraw his army from Italy; and Gaius Laelius was apparently renowned for his wisdom. Fortunately, America history provides no shortage of more recent role models: Abraham Lincoln, Jane Addams, and Martin Luther King Jr. come to mind.
     However, if you are going to select someone to watch over you, I suggest that you choose a dead person. Living legends, unfortunately, always have the possibility of disappointing their admirers, as long as they remain alive.  Take the case of Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Wheaton College, a conservative Christian school in the Chicago suburbs that was also Hastert's alma mater, named a political institute after him when he retired from Congress: the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy. But it was later discovered that, prior to beginning his political career, when Hastert had taught and coached the boys' wrestling team at an Illinois high school, he took more than an athletic interest -- to put it politely -- in some of his underage students. Because the statute of limitations on the underlying crimes had expired, Hastert was instead charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (among other felonies). Hastert ended up pleading guilty to other charges and was sentenced to prison. Needless to say, Wheaton College had to rename its Center.
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     Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2015), Letter 25, 4-6, pages 91-92.
     Wikipedia, 10/23/18, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Hastert.