Vivere Militare Est – Seneca
To the ancients, survival was a very real everyday battle. Pithy cries to stay in the fight weren’t just aspirational messages meant to inspire the troops, or shore up support from the homeland for an army away at war.
Death and dismemberment lurked everywhere in the ancient world, around every corner and in every interaction. A 2016 study by a group of Italian scientists and doctors uncovered the shocking fact that the average Roman didn’t live past 30; with a full 50% having never survived to the age of 10.
Even if they did make it to their third decade, it was likely they did so with numerous broken bones, arthritis and bone cancers. That’s assuming that you didn’t die in a battle in a foreign land – or in childbirth.
Life in Rome was hard. But there’s a story in the data that is often missed. The truth is, if an Ancient Roman was successful in reaching the age of 35, it was very likely that they would live a healthy and safe life into their 60s.
So how could a Roman improve their chances for a long life? It was unlikely that they would be able to increase their odds by moving from the low to higher classes. That just didn’t really happen.
Service in the army meant better food and a liveable wage but came with the nasty side effects of getting holes punched in your sides by a Greek sword or a crushed skull from a Macedonian’s blow.
Seems kinda risky.
Either way – the citizen or the soldier – they had to learn one thing.
They had to learn how to fight.
For the soldier, this wasn’t much of a metaphor. With Roman military service pensions set at 25 years or 16 campaigns, it required longevity in a dangerous profession. This was not a peace time Rome.
In fact, over the 700 years the Roman Empire was at their peak, there really was never such a thing. A Roman soldier was a wartime soldier. Survival through campaigns allowed soldiers to promote in rank, earn more money, and as they aged they moved towards the back of the formation, away from the front lines. The young and new took the brunt of the death and destruction of war.
To survive, you had to be a good fighter.
The civilians fought a different battle absent of archer’s arrows or battlefield war cries but it was still a fight. Children died constantly, mothers died constantly, occupational accidents happened all the time. The threat of disease was ever-present.
The battlefield often within themselves.
Roman Stoic Seneca spoke wisely when he said, “Viviere est militare” or quite literally, “to live is to fight.” Seneca saw the struggle of everyday life, whether it was dodging arrows or the plague. It was always something.
But this idea that life is a fight is still true today. You chances of being bludgeoned by the Persians is significantly less but instead you have a demanding boss, a mortgage, a growing waistline, or any number of maladies of modern life.
We still fight every day – or at least we should. We fight the slow erosion of our health or our mental faculties, we fight to stay physically strong. We fight against apathy and negativity. Many of us fight the effects of trauma and well, too much fighting.
Every day is it’s own knock down drag out fight for control of our mindset and attitude – two of the few things we actually have control over.
But if we’re aware of that and if we steel ourselves against the challenges ahead, we can prepare to battle against our lesser instincts of ego, selfishness, laziness and greed.