How to Have a Life: An Ancient Guide to Using Our Time Wisely
(Hardback)
Publishing Details
How to Have a Life: An Ancient Guide to Using Our Time Wisely
By (Author) Seneca
Edited by James S. Romm
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press
1st March 2023
United States
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Time management
Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy
188
Physical Properties
Hardback
200
Width 114mm, Height 171mm
Description
A vibrant new translation of Senecas 'On the Shortness of Life', a pointed reminder to make the most of our time.
Who doesnt worry sometimes that smart phones, the Internet, and TV are robbing us of time and preventing us from having a life How can we make the most of our time on earth In the first century AD, the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger offered one of the most famous answers to that question in his essay 'On the Shortness of Life' a work that has more to teach us today than ever before. In How to Have a Life, James Romm presents a vibrant new translation of Senecas brilliant essay, plus two Senecan letters on the same theme, complete with the original Latin on facing pages and an inviting introduction.
With devastating satiric wit, skillfully captured in this translation, Seneca lampoons the ways we squander our time and fail to realise how precious it is. We dont allow people to steal our money, yet we allow them to plunder our time, or else we give it away ourselves in useless, idle pursuits. Seneca also describes how we can make better use of our brief days and years. In the process, he argues, we can make our lives longer, or even everlasting, because to live a real life is to attain a kind of immortality.
A counterweight to the time-sucking distractions of the modern world, How to Have a Life offers priceless wisdom about making our time and our lives count.
Reviews
"[A] lively and sometimes arresting translation. . . . Once again Princeton University Press and Professor Romm have put us in their debt."---Ray Morris, Classics for All
Author Bio
James S. Romm is an author, a book reviewer, and the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College. He is the editor and translator of Senecas How to Give, How to Keep Your Cool, and How to Die (all Princeton), and the author of Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero. His reviews and essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the London Review of Books, the Daily Beast, and other publications. He lives in Barrytown, New York.
