Moral Letters to Lucilius

​His final condemnation was fulfilled under the gravest charges: both the violation of religions and the corruption of youth were charged against him, whom he was said to egg on against the gods, against the fathers, and against the republic. After these things, prison and poison. These had so little moved the mind of Socrates that they did not even move his countenance. Oh, that wonderful and singular praise! Up to the very end, no one saw Socrates either more cheerful or more sad. He was equal in so great an inequality of fortune. Do you wish for another example?

​Take this Marcus Cato of more recent times, with whom fortune dealt both more hostilely and more persistently. When she had opposed him in all places, and finally even in death, he nevertheless showed that a brave man can live against the will of fortune, and die against her will. All his life was spent either in civil arms or in the toga already conceiving civil war. And of him you may say, no less than of Socrates, that he dedicated himself to liberty among slaves, unless perchance you think that Gnaeus Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus were allies of liberty.

​No one saw Cato changed, though the republic was changed so many times: he showed himself the same in every condition, in his praetorship, in his defeat, in his accusation, in his province, in the assembly, in the army, in death. Finally, in that trepidation of the republic, when on one side was Caesar, supported by ten most warlike legions and all the forces of foreign nations, and on the other Gnaeus Pompey, sufficient by himself against all things, while some inclined to Caesar, others to Pompey, Cato alone made some party even for the republic.

​If you wish to grasp in mind the image of that time, you will see on one side the plebeians and all the populace excited for revolution, on the other the optimates and the equestrian order, whatever was holy and select in the state, and two left in the middle, the republic and Cato. You will wonder, I say, when you observe: “The son of Atreus, and Priam, and Achilles fierce to both.”

​For he disapproves of both, he disarms both. He pronounces this judgment on both: he says that if Caesar wins, he will die; if Pompey, he will go into exile. What did he have to fear, who had himself decreed for himself, both as vanquished and as victor, what could have been decreed by his angriest enemies? Therefore he perished according to his own decree. You see that men can endure labor:

​he led his army on foot through the midst of the deserts of Africa. You see that thirst can be tolerated: on dry hills, without any baggage, dragging the remnants of a defeated army, he endured the lack of moisture while clad in mail and, as often as there was an opportunity for water, he drank last. You see that honor and disgrace can be despised: on the very day he was defeated in election, he played ball in the comitium. You see that the power of superiors can be unfeared: both Pompey and Caesar, of whom no one dared to offend one except to win the favor of the other, he provoked at the same time. You see that death can be as much despised as exile: he declared both exile and death upon himself, and in the meantime, war.

​We can, therefore, have so much courage against these things, if only it pleases us to withdraw our neck from the yoke. But first of all, pleasures must be rejected; they enervate and effeminate, and demand much, and much must be demanded of fortune. Next, riches must be despised: they are the contract-money of slaveries. Let gold and silver, and whatever else burdens happy homes, be left behind; liberty cannot stand without cost. If you value this highly, all things must be valued at a low price. FAREWELL.