Are “magna” and “maxima” incorrectly translated in these examples? (Seneca Epistula I)

Question

I am reading the Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium by Seneca, both in the original Latin and in various translations for comparison/understanding (English, French, Italian, German). For the following sentence, I have an issue with most of the translations, except the German:

“(Et si volueris attendere), magna pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, maxima nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.”

I include the different translations below and their sources. I note that EN, FR, and IT seem to translate “magna pars” as roughly “largest portion” and “maxima pars” as roughly “a considerable part”, even though it seems to me that it should be the reverse - which is exactly what I find in the German translation. Is German correct, or are the former, or both? Is there something about how “magna” and “maxima” are being used here that allows for the interpretation found in the former?

EN: “… the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose.” (wikisource)

FR: “… la plus grande part de la vie se passe à mal faire, une grande à ne rien faire, le tout à faire autre chose que ce qu’on devrait” (wikisource)

IT: “… la maggior parte della vita se ne va mentre operiamo malamente, una porzione notevole mentre non facciamo nulla, tutta quanta la vita mentre siamo occupati in cose que non ci riguardano” (Lettere morali a Lucilio, 2013, Mondadori, ebook)

DE: “… ein großer Teil des Lebens entgleitet den Menschen, wenn sie Schlechtes tun, der größte, wenn sie nichts tun, das ganze Leben, wenn sie Nebensächliches tun” (Seneca Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, Teil 1, Reclam)

Gratias!

EDIT

I am including here the preceding sentences for more context and clarity.

[1] Ita fac, mi Lucili: vindica te tibi, et tempus quod adhuc aut auferebatur aut subripiebatur aut excidebat collige et serva. Persuade tibi hoc sic esse ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, magna pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, maxima nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

Answer 1

You're generally correct - only the German translation corresponds to the Latin magna pars vitae elabitur [...], maxima... What underlies the other translations is a different manuscript reading where magna and maxima are switched around: maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus. An article elaborates (p. 42):

While 'maxima ... magna ... tota' is found in an overwhelming number of manuscripts, 'magna ... maxima ... tota' appears in a few. (Backed in the past by Erasmus and Lipsius because it constitutes a rhetorical gradatio or crescendo, this rarer reading has now received a seal of approval in L. D. Reynolds's critical edition for the same reason.)

Erasmus backs it as follows:

Quidam inverterant sermonis ordinem, 'maxima male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus', sed inepte. Debet enim oratio gradibus crescere: 'magna, maxima, tota'.

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To me as well the gradation magna ... maxima ... tōta at first appeared clearly preferrable, both on stylistic grounds as well as in light of the rest of the translation, but after adding a couple of translation remarks below it became evident that all the translations presented here fundamentally misinterpret the passage, which actually makes sense in the maxima ... magna reading.

What I think the passage says is "If one takes a close look, [one will find that] most of our life slips away while/when doing things badly (or messing things up?), a large part while/when achieving nothing at all (neither good nor bad?), but the whole of it while/when doing something other than what we should be doing, something that's not fundamental." Whatever he's trying to say with the first two, the last one clearly refers to his jactūra per neglegentiam: the worst situation, the biggest waste of our life is when the very aim of our exertions is misguided.

The reading maxima pars nihil agentibus would mean that everyone abjectly failed most of the time, in which case the world would be going backwards, a pessimism hardly attributable to Seneca or his age, or to the Romans as a whole. And if, like the majority of the translators, we retain the predominant reading maxima ... magna and take nihil agentibus to literally mean "doing nothing at all", then the passage means that doing nothing wastes less life than doing something but badly, which makes no sense.

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My translation remarks are:

1. All the translations apart from the Italian one appear to be mistaken when they say 'doing ill, mal faire, Schlechtes tun' - apart from this conflicting with the meaning of agere, this whole letter is not about doing good or bad deeds, but about wasting time by not putting enough thought into our actions. "To do ill, inflict something bad" uses a different verb - facere, and will be either male facere or malum facere. Seneca's meaning is "to go about doing things badly and so achieve bad results", perhaps more precisely "to make things worse".

2. The same concerns nihil agere - this is not a literal "to do nothing at all, to be at leisure", but an idiom meaning "to do as good as nothing, to accomplish nothing, to waste one's time", a meaning which is made even more evident by the preceeding "doing things badly" and the following "doing the wrong things".

3. To address what Vegawatcher says, the tricolon doubtless describes the same common lifetime, and the "three different types of people" interpretation must be due to being unfamiliar with Latin's use of present participles which prototypically stand for dum/cum temporal clauses as opposed to being adjectival (let alone substantivised). Their subject is introduced one sentence above as nōbīs. The information structure of the text combined with agentēs being a temporary-state and not an inherent-type description allows no different interpretation. The clauses would be un-telescoped as follows: magna pars vītae nōbīs ēlābitur dum male agimus... More details in the comments to Vegawatcher's answer.

Linked article:

• Panizza, Letizia A. (1983). Textual Interpretation in Italy, 1350-1450: Seneca's Letter I to Lucilius

Answer 2

Welcome to the site!

I am reading the Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium by Seneca, both in the original Latin and in various translations for comparison/understanding (English, French, Italian, German). For the following sentence, I have an issue with most of the translations, except the German:

“(Et si volueris attendere), magna pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, maxima nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.”

Rather than continuing to comment, I think I am ready to venture my first actual answer, having now actually researched the full context of this quote.

First, at least one version of Seneca's words I found differs from yours. This site has:

Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

Notice that maxima and magna are reversed from the version you posted. I do not know which version is correct or if both versions have come down to us through the textual tradition, but this accounts for some of the differences in the translations.

When I read the full text, to me the German version comes closest to how I understand the Latin (except for the reversal of maxima and magna) because it does not restate the topic and leaves the reference vague. Seneca is addressing a particular person, Lucilius, and first warning against wasted aspects of life common to all of us. Then he elaborates with the generic reference you have quoted.

The Latin phrase si volueris attendere could be addressed specifically to Lucilius or could be a "generalizing" second person addressed to everyone in general. Previously, he says:

quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt

certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach

He then ups the ante by saying:

Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit.

The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness.

To me, this comment implies that the first three kinds of loss may be beyond our control, but carelessness is something that we do have the power to avoid.

Then Seneca expands with the three situations you cited without repeating any reference to the first person plural, leaving open exactly what he is talking about.

To me, his math works out only if he is talking about three different types of people or three different types of behavior and not if he is saying that we all tend to engage in all three types. To me, maxima, magna, and tota are words that cannot apply to the same lifetime, but seem like comments on different types of people. There are people who ignore morality most of the time and so waste most of their lives, accomplishing little of true worth. There are people who don't amount to much and so waste a good part of their lives. And there are people hellbent on doing things not worth doing and so waste their entire lives.