Seneca: tempus edax `voracious time'.

Yesterday I had a pupil here for some training in Seneca. We read epistle 107 in which Seneca tells Lucilius not to worry about trivial things, like slaves having run away, as life is shit anyway and we need always be prepared for the worst. Somehow I have the impression that Seneca had a troubled mind.

I found this poem by Seneca in a book with Latin lyrics. It had no further information about the source, but a search on internet informed me that it is from the Anthologia Latina., but there the information stops.

OMNIA tempus edax depascitur, omnia carpit,   

  omnia sede movet, nil sinit esse diu.     

flumina deficiunt, profugum mare litora siccant,

  subsidunt montes et iuga celsa ruunt.   

quid tam parva loquor? moles pulcherrima caeli          5

  ardebit flammis tota repente suis.         

omnia mors poscit. lex est, non poena, perire:    

  hic aliquo mundus tempore nullus erit.

edax: voracious  (adjectives  in –ax denote a lasting capacity, so someone who is audax is that by character.  Edax is from edo `to eat’: the Latin and the English word comes from the same Indo-European root.)

depascor: to consume

(ex) sede

sino sivi situm: to allow

deficio: to disappear 

profugum mare litora siccant `the shores make dry the sea, so that it is banished’  The idea comes of course from lakes drying up.

subsido: to sink down

iugum: summit of a mountain

quid tam parva loquor? Indeed, with such things in mind everything else is trivial!

moles pulcherrima caeli ardebit flammis tota repente suis.`The very beautiful structure (moles, f) of heaven shall suddenly  totally burn by its own flames.’  In Stoic philosophy the ideas was that after a period of time this world will be at some time (aliquo tempore) consumed by fire and then emerge again in an endless cycle. Fire (ignis) was one of the 4 elements and as fire is a light element, it was thought to be up in the sky. The idea of the world being burnt and rise up again is remarkably similar to such ideas in Hinduism and Buddhism.

posco poposci: to demand

 

Kala, the all devouring time in Buddhism.