Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Where is that prudence of yours? Where is your subtlety in discerning things? Where is your greatness of mind? Does a trivial thing now distress you? Your slaves have thought your occupations an opportunity for flight. If friends were deceiving you—for indeed let them have the name which our error imposed on them, and let them be called by that than which nothing can be more shameful—something would be lacking to all your affairs; but now those are lacking who used to waste your effort and who believed that you were troublesome to others.

​Nothing of these is unusual, nothing unexpected. To be offended by these things is as ridiculous as to complain that you are splashed in public or soiled in the mud. The condition of life is the same as that of a bath, a crowd, a journey: some things will be thrown at you, some will fall upon you. To live is not a delicate thing. You have entered upon a long journey; you must slip, and collide, and fall, and grow weary, and cry out: ‘O death!’—that is, lie. In one place you will leave a companion behind, in another you will bury one, in another you will fear one; through such offenses this rugged journey must be traversed.

​Does he wish to die? Let the mind be prepared against all things; let it know that it has come where the lightning thunders. Let it know that it has come where ‘ Grief and avenging Cares have set their couches, And pale Diseases dwell, and sad Old Age. ‘ In this shared quarters life must be spent. You cannot escape those things, but you can despise them. And you will despise them if you think of them often and anticipate the future.

​No one has not approached more bravely that for which he had long prepared himself, and has resisted even hard things if they had been premeditated. But on the contrary, the unprepared man has feared even the lightest things. We must act to this end, that nothing may be unexpected by us. And since all things are heavier because of novelty, constant reflection will ensure that you are a raw recruit to no evil.

’My slaves have left me.’ They have robbed another, accused another, killed another, betrayed another, trampled upon another, attacked another with poison, another with false accusation; whatever you say, it has happened to many. Next, weapons, which are many and various, are aimed at us . Some are fixed in us, some are vibrating and coming at this very moment, some, about to reach others, graze us.

​Let us wonder at nothing of those things to which we were born, which for that reason ought to be complained of by no one, because they are equal to all. I say so, they are equal; for even what someone has escaped, he was able to suffer. But an equitable law is not that which all have used, but that which has been proposed for all. Let equity be commanded to the mind, and let us pay the taxes of mortality without complaint.

​Winter brings cold: we must freeze. Summer returns heat: we must sweat. Intemperate weather tries our health: we must fall ill. And a wild beast will meet us in some place, and a man more destructive than all wild beasts. One thing water will snatch away, another fire will rip away. We cannot change this condition of things; we can do this: take up a great mind, and one worthy of a good man, by which we may bravely endure fortuitous events and consent to nature.

​Nature, however, tempers this kingdom which you see with changes; clear weather succeeds the cloudy; the seas are troubled after they have been quiet; winds blow in turn; day follows night; part of the sky rises, part sinks. The eternity of things consists of contraries.

​Our mind must be adapted to this law; let it follow this, let it obey this. And whatever happens, let it think that it ought to have happened, and let it not wish to scold nature. It is best to endure what you cannot amend, and to accompany without murmuring the God by whose authorship all things come forth; he is a bad soldier who follows his commander groaning.

​Therefore, let us receive commands active and cheerful, and let us not desert this course of the most beautiful work, in which whatever we shall suffer is interwoven. And let us address Jupiter, by whose rudder this great mass is directed, in the same way as our Cleanthes addresses him in most eloquent verses, which I am permitted to translate into our language following the example of Cicero, a most eloquent man. If they please you, you will take it in good part; if they displease you, you will know that I have followed Cicero’s example in this:

’ Lead, O Father and ruler of the high heaven, Whithersoever it has pleased you; there is no delay in obeying. I am present, active. Even if I were unwilling, I shall accompany you groaning, And I shall suffer with greater pain what I might have done as a good man. The fates lead the willing, they drag the unwilling. ‘ ​Thus let us live, thus let us speak; let fate find us prepared and active. This is the great mind, which has surrendered itself to it; but on the contrary, that mind is petty and degenerate which struggles, and thinks ill of the order of the world, and prefers to amend the gods rather than itself. FAREWELL.