Moral Letters to Lucilius

​It was a custom among the ancients, preserved down to my own age, to add to the first words of a letter: “If you are well, it is well; I am well.” We say rightly: “If you are philosophizing, it is well.” For only this is indeed to be well. Without this, the mind is sick. The body also, even if it has great strength, is strong in no other way than that of a madman or a frantic person.

​Therefore, care for this health especially, and then also for that second one, which will not cost you much if you wish to be well. For it is a foolish occupation, my Lucilius, and least fitting for a lettered man, to train the upper arms, broaden the neck, and strengthen the sides; even when your feeding has turned out successfully for you and your muscles have grown, you will never equal either the strength of a fat ox or its weight. Add to this now that the mind is crushed by a heavier burden of the body and is less agile. Therefore, limit your body as much as you can and make room for your mind.

​Many inconveniences follow those devoted to this care: first, the exercises, the labor of which exhausts the breath and renders it unfit for concentration and sharper studies. Next, by the abundance of food, the sharpness of mind is hindered. There are added the slaves of the worst character received into instruction, men occupied between oil and wine, for whom a day is spent according to their wish if they have sweated well, and if, in place of what has flowed out, they have poured back a large amount of drink that is to go deeper because of their fasting. To drink and to sweat is the life of a dyspeptic.

​There are exercises both easy and short, which tire the body without delay and respect time, of which principal account must be taken: running, and hands moved with some weight, and jumping, either that which lifts the body into the air, or that which sends it far, or that, so to speak, of the Salii, or to speak more insultingly, of the fuller; choose the simple, easy use of whichever of these you please.

​Whatever you do, return quickly from the body to the mind. Exercise the latter by night and by day; it is nourished by moderate labor. Neither cold nor heat will hinder this exercise, nor even old age. Care for that good which becomes better with age.

​Nor do I command you always to hang over a book or writing tablets; some interval must be given to the mind, yet in such a way that it is not dissolved but relaxed. Carriage-riding both shakes the body and does not hinder study; you can read, you can dictate, you can speak, you can hear, none of which even walking forbids to be done.

​Nor should you despise the training of the voice, which I forbid you to raise through steps and certain measures, and then to lower. What if you should then wish to learn how to walk? Admit those whom hunger has taught new arts; there will be someone to regulate your steps and observe the cheeks of you eating, and proceed as far as you have extended his boldness by your patience and credulity. What then? Will your voice begin straight away from a shout and from the greatest strain? It is natural to be stimulated gradually to such an degree that even litigants begin from conversation and pass to shouting. No one immediately ​implores the protection of the citizens. Therefore, however the impulse of your mind suggests to you, now make your shouting more violent, now gentler, just as your voice also encourages you in that direction. Let it descend modestly when you take it back and recall it, not fall flat; let it depart by the middle way of the mouth and not rage in an unlearned and rustic manner. For we do not act so that the voice may be trained, but so that it may train the body.

​I have removed from you no small amount of trouble; one small reward and one Greek word will be added to these benefits. Behold a notable precept: “A foolish life is ungrateful and fearful; it is carried entirely into the future.” “Who says this?” you ask. The same person as above. What life do you think is now called foolish? That of Baba and Isio? It is not so; our own is meant, whom blind desire precipitates into things that will harm, certainly never satisfy, for whom if anything could have been enough, it would have been; we who do not think how pleasant it is to demand nothing, how magnificent it is to be full and not depend on fortune.

​And so, Lucilius, remember from time to time how many things you have obtained. When you look at how many precede you, think how many follow. If you wish to be grateful towards the gods and towards your life, think how many you have preceded. What have you to do with others? You have preceded yourself.

​Establish a limit which you would not even wish to pass, if you could; let those treacherous goods depart at last, which are better to those who hope for them than to those who have attained them. If there were anything solid in them, they would also satisfy at some time; now they only excite thirst when they are drunk. Let showy displays be dismissed. And as for what the uncertain lot of future time rolls along, why should I rather obtain from fortune that she give, than from myself that I do not ask? And why should I ask? Should I heap up, forgetful of human frailty? For what should I labor? Behold, this day is the last. Even if it is not, it is close to the last. FAREWELL.