Ozymandias

The summer of 1816 was cold, stormy, and gloomy. Global temperatures had fallen from 4 to 7 degrees Celsius. Crops failed, resulting in major food shortages in the Northern hemisphere. The cause of the climatic abnormalities was the massive eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies in April 1815, the greatest in 1300 years, which threw at least 100 km3 of ash into the atmosphere and blocked the sun.

On Lake Geneva Percy Bysshe Shelly, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (to become Shelley’s second wife), and George Gordon Lord Byron, who had joined them after fleeing from England to escape imprisonment for sodomy, sat around the fire and told horror tales. Mary here invented the uncontrolable monster Frankenstein, and Shelley may have gotten the idea for the poem “Ozymandias” (written in 1817),.which reminds us that fame is fleeting, and time swallows all.

Shelley later wrote:

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.,

A few miles outside Rome, along the still-smooth stone-paved Appian Way, is a tall brick tomb that is rumored to belong to the great Seneca. Unfortunately, no one is certain if this rumor has any truth to it. No sign marks the tomb. There is no archeological proof that the ashes or bones of the famous Stoic ever rested here. What the tomb looked like in ancient times is also uncertain. Over the past two thousand years no one painted, sketched, or described Seneca’s grave, even as time slowly wore it away.

The same is true of the many ornate and massive monuments that line the roads to Rome. Despite the thousands of sesterces spent to build them, despite how important their owners were in life, today they are just curiosities, or used as sources of much needed shade for tourists or, as the Coliseum had been until the Pope stopped the practice, a quarry for building materials.

People famous in their time believe that their reputations are immortal.

Poets, whose winged words enter the collective mind, fare better than others.

Who can forget the lines, Where are the snows of yesteryear? Or Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

Despite the philosophical work that Seneca did to prepare himself for death, Nero’s sentence still came as a surprise. Death is always an interruption and a surprise.

As Thomas Grey wrote in “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:”

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike this' inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Those words apply to Seneca as well. To be sure, we remember him here in these posts, but the vast majority of the world has never heard of him--and that will also be true for each one of us.

For this reason, the Stoics warn against the temptation of the ego’s chasing fame and wealth. These things inevitably fade away and leave no trace. We recently said farewell to Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft, whose 20 billions could not stave off his appointed hour. No matter how much money we accumulate or applause we receive; no matter how monumental our tomb, we will all soon be forgotten.

So let that humble us today while we are still alive, let that curb our selfish or vain ambition. Let that admonition help us choose between doing the wrong thing to get ahead and the thing we know is right in our heart. Let us set priorities, let us not waste precious time, let us remember Memento Mori.

Let that determine what we do today.