As we continue to look at some of the greatest novels and non-fiction works of the 20th century, let's go back further and explore some of the "Greatest Ideas" of the past 2,000 years.

    Our first source is the Roman author Seneca the Younger, born in what is now Spain (then a Roman colony) around 4 B.C. and died at Rome in 65 A.D. He was a Stoic philosopher who served as a tutor, and in later life an advisor, to the Roman Emperor Nero (37-68).

    Though Seneca's life was fairly long, it ended tragically when he was forced to commit suicide after being accused of taking part in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero, though it's quite likely he was innocent.

    Ironic then that one of his best-known works is called "On the Shortness of Life."

    In the first paragraph of the essay, Seneca writes: "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested."

    Instead of life in fact being short, it's enough--if we don't waste it. He continues: "But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing."

    He concludes: "So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it."

    This is a different perspective than the one most people believe, and different, too, from what we expect when we see the title.

    Later, Seneca makes his point even more clearly: "People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy." And later still: "You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire!"

    Like many of the thoughts of the ancients, Seneca's are worth pondering. Are we using time to the fullest? And how is that to be done? For Seneca, it means the study of philosophy.

    Vocabulary: Which word above means:

    1. thoughtless, without caution

    2. using wisely, not wasteful

    3. a plan with others to do something bad

    4. wasting

    5. used in a way to get a good return

    6. very sadly

    7. limit, restriction

    8. in a way that is enough

    9. not willing to spend

    10. richness, also, using more than one needs

    ANSWERS: 1. heedless 2. frugal 3. conspiracy 4. squandering 5. invested 6. tragically 7. constraint 8. sufficiently 9. stingy 10. luxury