{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "seneca.de_otio",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/seneca/de-otio/reference-4/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "On Leisure",
    "author": "Seneca",
    "date": "c. 62 CE",
    "summary": "In this incompletely preserved dialogue, Seneca asks when withdrawal from public life can remain faithful to Stoic duty. Study, contemplation, and teaching become ways of serving a human community wider than the present state.",
    "learning": "Distinguish withdrawal, idleness, and active contemplation, understand the two commonwealths, and account for gaps when interpreting Stoic engagement.",
    "long_summary": "Stoicism recommends engagement while no obstacle makes it impossible or fruitless. Seneca considers a diseased state, personal incapacity, and a leisure producing shareable knowledge rather than retreat devoted to comfort.\n\nThe distinction between two commonwealths, one local and one shared by gods and humans, enlarges action’s field. The fragmentary state leaves some transitions open. Its doctrine should not be reconstructed as unlimited permission to escape duties.",
    "historical_context": "The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.",
    "material_world_label": "Roman world, 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE",
    "material_world": {
        "technology": "Paved roads, aqueducts, concrete, glassware, mills, and hypocaust heating equip some cities, but energy comes mainly from bodies, animals, water, and wood.",
        "science": "Astronomy, geometry, natural history, and engineering compile Greek, Egyptian, and Roman knowledge. Measurement exists without a modern laboratory.",
        "medicine": "Physicians, midwives, baths, plants, and rudimentary surgery can help; reliable anaesthesia, antisepsis, and antibiotics do not exist.",
        "transport": "On foot, horseback, cart, or ship, road and sea networks connect the Empire. Travel remains slow, costly, and risky.",
        "agriculture": "Grain, vines, olives, pulses, and livestock supply cities and armies; estates, slavery, and tenancy organize part of the labour.",
        "communication": "Imperial couriers, letters on papyrus or tablets, inscriptions, and oral proclamations spread information. Everything is copied by hand.",
        "clothing": "Tunics and cloaks are common to both sexes; the stola, toga, footwear, colours, and jewellery mark citizenship, office, wealth, and origin."
    },
    "material_world_scenes": [
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-01.webp",
            "title": "Technology, science, and care",
            "description": "Paved roads, aqueducts, concrete, glassware, mills, and hypocaust heating equip some cities, but energy comes mainly from bodies, animals, water, and wood. Astronomy, geometry, natural history, and engineering compile Greek, Egyptian, and Roman knowledge. Measurement exists without a modern laboratory. Physicians, midwives, baths, plants, and rudimentary surgery can help; reliable anaesthesia, antisepsis, and antibiotics do not exist."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-02.webp",
            "title": "Travel and communication",
            "description": "On foot, horseback, cart, or ship, road and sea networks connect the Empire. Travel remains slow, costly, and risky. Imperial couriers, letters on papyrus or tablets, inscriptions, and oral proclamations spread information. Everything is copied by hand."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-03.webp",
            "title": "Farming and food",
            "description": "Grain, vines, olives, pulses, and livestock supply cities and armies; estates, slavery, and tenancy organize part of the labour."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-04.webp",
            "title": "Clothing, women and men",
            "description": "Tunics and cloaks are common to both sexes; the stola, toga, footwear, colours, and jewellery mark citizenship, office, wealth, and origin."
        }
    ],
    "intellectual_tradition": {
        "id": "stoicism",
        "label": "Stoicism"
    },
    "period": {
        "id": "ancient",
        "label": "Antiquity"
    },
    "languages": [
        "lat",
        "en",
        "fr"
    ],
    "manifestations": [
        {
            "annotation_file": "data/corpus/normalized/seneca/de-otio/annotations/lat-perseus-editorial-notes.ndjson",
            "annotation_records": 7,
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/seneca/de-otio/representations/lat-perseus-lat2.ndjson",
            "language": "lat",
            "records": 8,
            "role": "original",
            "source_id": "perseus.seneca.de_otio.perseus_lat2"
        },
        {
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/seneca/de-otio/representations/en-stewart.ndjson",
            "language": "en",
            "records": 8,
            "source_id": "project-gutenberg.seneca.aubrey-stewart-minor-dialogues-1889",
            "translator": "Aubrey Stewart"
        },
        {
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/seneca/de-otio/representations/fr-baillard.ndjson",
            "language": "fr",
            "records": 8,
            "source_id": "baillard-1914-wikisource-fr",
            "translator": "Joseph Baillard"
        }
    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "anger",
            "label": "Anger"
        },
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "civic_duty",
            "label": "Civic duty"
        },
        {
            "id": "creation",
            "label": "Creation"
        },
        {
            "id": "death",
            "label": "Death"
        },
        {
            "id": "duty",
            "label": "Duty"
        },
        {
            "id": "ether_field",
            "label": "Ether and field"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "god",
            "label": "God"
        },
        {
            "id": "junzi_exemplary_person",
            "label": "Junzi, exemplary person"
        },
        {
            "id": "law",
            "label": "Law"
        },
        {
            "id": "messiah",
            "label": "Messiah"
        },
        {
            "id": "nature",
            "label": "Nature"
        },
        {
            "id": "service",
            "label": "Service"
        },
        {
            "id": "sin",
            "label": "Sin"
        },
        {
            "id": "time",
            "label": "Time"
        },
        {
            "id": "tranquillity",
            "label": "Tranquillity"
        },
        {
            "id": "virtue",
            "label": "Virtue"
        }
    ],
    "source_work_ids": [
        "seneca.de_otio"
    ],
    "passages": 8,
    "word_count": 3414,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 3414,
        "fr": 2913,
        "lat": 1961
    },
    "editorial_status": "gpt_5_6_semantic_draft_v1",
    "structure": {
        "citation_scheme": "seneca_dialogue_chapter_v1",
        "kind": "native",
        "levels": [
            {
                "key": "chapter",
                "label_fr": "Chapitre",
                "label_en": "Chapter"
            }
        ],
        "leaf_fr": "Chapitre",
        "leaf_en": "Chapter"
    },
    "canonical_passage_id": "passage:seneca.de_otio:4",
    "canonical_ref": "4",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "lat",
            "text": "Duas res publicas animo complectamur, alteram magnam et vere publicam, qua dii atque homines continentur, in qua non ad hunc angulum respicimus aut ad illum, sed terminos civitatis nostrae cum sole metimur; alteram, cui nos adscripsit condicio nascendi. Haec aut Atheniensium erit aut Carthaginiensium,aut alterius alicuius urbis, quae non ad omnis pertineat homines sed ad certos. Quidam eodem tempore utrique rei publicae dant operam, maiori minorique, quidam tantum minori, quidam tantum maiori. Huic maiori rei publicae et in otio deservire possumus, immo vero nescio an in otio melius, ut quaeramus quid sit virtus, una pluresne sint ; natura an ars bonos viros faciat ; unum sit hoc, quod maria terrasque et mari ac terris inserta complectitur, an multa eiusmodi corpora deus sparserit; continua sit omnis et plena materia, ex qua cuncta gignuntur, an diducta et solidis inane permixtum ; qui sit deus ; deses opus suum spectet an tractet; utrumne extrinsecus illi circumfusus sit an toti inditus ; immortalis sit mundus an inter caduca et ad tempus nata numerandus. Haec qui contemplatur, quid deo praestat ? Ne tanta eius opera sine teste sit.",
            "edition": "Perseus canonical Latin TEI",
            "source_id": "perseus.seneca.de_otio.perseus_lat2",
            "translation_type": "original"
        },
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "Let us grasp the fact that there are two republics, one vast and truly “public,” which contains alike gods and men, in which we do not take account of this or that nook of land, but make the boundaries of our state reach as far as the rays of the sun: and another to which we have been assigned by the accident of birth. This may be that of the Athenians or Carthaginians, or of any other city which does not belong to all men but to some especial ones. Some men serve both of these states, the greater and the lesser, at the same time; some serve only the lesser, some only the greater. We can serve the greater commonwealth even when we are at leisure; indeed I am not sure that we cannot serve it better when we are at leisure to inquire into what virtue is, and whether it be one or many: whether it be nature or art that makes men good: whether that which contains the earth and sea and all that in them is be one, or whether God has placed therein many bodies of the same species: whether that out of which all things are made be continuous and solid, or containing interstices and alternate empty and full spaces: whether God idly looks on at His handiwork, or directs its course: whether He is without and around the world, or whether He pervades its entire surface: whether the world be immortal, or doomed to decay and belonging to the class of things which are born only for a time? What service does he who meditates upon these questions render to God? He prevents these His great works having no one to witness them.",
            "translator": "Aubrey Stewart",
            "edition": "Minor Dialogues Together with the Dialogue on Clemency (1889)",
            "source_id": "project-gutenberg.seneca.aubrey-stewart-minor-dialogues-1889",
            "translation_type": "historical_human_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "Il est deux sortes de républiques que doit embrasser notre dévouement : d’abord la grande, la vraie république, qui comprend les dieux et les hommes, où l’on ne voit point la cité dans tel ou tel coin de terre, mais dans les limites que nous mesure la carrière du soleil ; ensuite celle que nous assigna le sort de notre naissance : ce sera Athènes, ou Carthage, ou toute autre ville qui appartient non à tous, mais à tels ou tels. Quelques personnes vouent leurs soins à toutes deux en même temps, à la grande comme à la petite ; d’autres seulement à la première, d’autres enfin à la seconde. Cette grande république, on peut la servir tout aussi bien au sein du loisir, je ne sais même si ce n’est mieux, en agitant ces questions : Qu’est-ce que la vertu ? Est-elle une ? en est-il plusieurs ? Est-ce la nature ou l’art qui fait l’homme de bien ? Est-ce une unité que cet ensemble qui embrasse les mers et les terres et tout ce qu’elles renferment ; ou Dieu a-t-il semé dans l’espace plusieurs mondes comme le nôtre ? Forme-t-elle un tout continu et plein, cette matière d’où naissent tous les êtres, ou est-elle divisée, entremêlée de vide et de parties compactes ? Dieu est-il assis devant son œuvre en spectateur, ou la dirige-t-il ? Est-il répandu au dehors et alentour, ou intimement mêlé au tout ? Le monde est-il immortel, ou est-ce parmi les choses périssables et nées pour un temps qu’il faut .le compter ? Celui qui médite ces problèmes, quel mérite a-t -il envers Dieu ? Que ses grandes créations ne restent pas sans admirateur. Nous répétons souvent que le souverain bien consiste à vivre selon la nature ; or la nature nous a faits pour deux choses : la contemplation et l’action.",
            "translator": "Joseph Baillard",
            "edition": "Œuvres complètes de Sénèque le Philosophe (1914)",
            "source_id": "baillard-1914-wikisource-fr",
            "translation_type": "historical_human_translation"
        }
    ],
    "content_checksum": "9349ffc0f0c840f1171ba043ea70d33b4bdc6c0044b5ba5086d18edaa1053c53"
}