Moral Letters to Lucilius

​That which you see those men pursue—who either pluck their beard or pluck it in patches, who shave and scrape their lips very closely while keeping and letting grow the rest, who put on cloaks of scandalous color, who put on a transparent toga, who are unwilling to do anything that might allow them to pass unnoticed by the eyes of men; they provoke them and turn them upon themselves; they wish even to be censured, as long as they are looked at—all this is because the speech of Maecenas and of all others is of such a kind, who do not err by chance but knowingly and willingly.

​This arises from a great disease of the mind. Just as in the case of wine, the tongue does not trip before the mind has yielded to the burden and has inclined or been betrayed, so does that of speech—which is nothing other than drunkenness—trouble anyone, unless the mind is wavering? Therefore, let the mind be cured; from it go out our thoughts, from it our words, from it we have our posture, our expression, our gait. While it is healthy and strong, speech also is robust, powerful, and manly; if it has fallen, the rest also follow its ruin.

” While the king is safe, all have one mind; When he is lost, they break their faith.” Our king is the mind. While this is safe, the rest remain in their duty, they obey, they comply; when it has wavered even a little, they hesitate at the same time. But when it has yielded to pleasure, its arts and actions also wither, and every effort is born of a sluggish and fluid state.

​Since I have used this comparison, I will continue: our mind is sometimes a king, sometimes a tyrant. It is a king when it looks upon honorable things, cares for the safety of the body committed to its charge, and commands it to do nothing shameful, nothing sordid. But when it is powerless, greedy, and self-indulgent, it passes into a detestable and dire name and becomes a tyrant; then powerless passions capture it and press upon it, which indeed rejoice at first, as is the custom of a populace vainly filled with a harmful largess, and handle what they cannot drain.

​But when disease eats away its strength more and more, and self-indulgence has descended into the marrow and nerves, the mind, rejoicing in the sight of those things for which it has rendered itself useless by excessive greed, regards the spectacle of others’ pleasures in place of its own, becoming the provider of lusts and banquets, the enjoyment of which it took away from itself by over-indulgence. Nor is it so pleasing to it to abound in delightful things as it is bitter that it cannot transmit all that preparation through its throat and belly, and that it cannot roll about with the whole crowd of pathics and women, and it mourns because a great part of its happiness, shut out by the narrowness of the body, lies idle.

​For is the madness in this, my Lucilius, that none of us thinks himself mortal, that none thinks himself weak? It is in this, that none of us thinks himself to be just one person! Look at our kitchens and the cooks running about among so many fires; do you think that the belly appears to be just one, for which food is prepared with such great tumult? Look at our old wine-cellars and storehouses filled with the vintages of many generations; do you think that the belly appears to be just one, for which the wines of so many consuls and regions are shut up? Look in how many places the earth is turned, how many thousands of husbandmen plow and dig; do you think that the belly appears to be just one, for which sowing is done both in Sicily and in ​Africa? We shall be healthy and desire moderate things, if each one counts himself, measures his body at the same time, and knows how it can neither hold much nor for a long time. Yet nothing will profit you so much toward moderation in all things as the frequent thought of a short and uncertain life; whatever you do, look back at death. FAREWELL.