Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Do you think you have business with those people about whom you had written? You have the greatest business with yourself; you are a trouble to yourself. You do not know what you want; you approve of honorable things more than you follow them; you see where happiness is placed, but you do not dare to reach it. But what it is that hinders you, since you yourself do not discern it sufficiently, I shall tell you. You think these things which you are about to leave are great, and when you have set before yourself that security to which you are about to transition, the brightness of this life, which you are about to leave, holds you back as if you were about to fall into a filthy and obscure place.

​You err, Lucilius; one ascends from this life to that. What difference there is between brightness and light—since light has a certain origin and its own, while brightness shines with another’s—this same difference is between this life and that; this life is struck by a brightness coming from without, and whoever stands in the way will immediately make a thick shadow upon it; that life is illustrious with its own light. Your studies will make you famous and noble.

​I shall recall the example of Epicurus. When he was writing to Idomeneus and recalling him from a showy life to a faithful and stable glory—who was at that time a minister of a rigid power and managing great affairs—he said: “If you are touched by glory, my letters will make you more well-known than all those things which you worship and for which you are worshipped.”

​Did he then lie? Who would know Idomeneus, if Epicurus had not engraved him in his letters? Deep oblivion has suppressed all those grandees and satraps and the king himself, from whom the title of Idomeneus was derived. Cicero’s letters do not allow the name of Atticus to perish. His son-in-law Agrippa, his step-grandson Tiberius, and his great-grandson Drusus Caesar would have profited him nothing; among such great names he would be kept silent, if Cicero had not attached him to himself.

​A deep abyss of time will come upon us; a few geniuses will raise their heads, and, though destined to go at some time into the same silence, will resist oblivion and vindicate themselves for a long time. What Epicurus was able to promise to his friend, I promise to you, Lucilius. I shall have favor with posterity; I can bring out names that will endure with me. Our Vergil promised eternal memory to two and performs it: “Fortunate both! If my songs have any power, no day shall ever erase you from remembering time, while the house of Aeneas shall dwell near the immovable rock of the Capitol, and the Roman father shall hold empire.”

​Whomever fortune brought into the open, whoever were members and parts of another’s power, their influence flourished, and their house was crowded as long as they themselves stood; after themselves, memory quickly failed. The dignity of geniuses grows, and honor is paid not only to themselves, but whatever has adhered to their memory is preserved.

​Lest Idomeneus should have entered into my letter for nothing, he himself shall redeem it from his own. To him Epicurus wrote that noble saying, in which he exhorts that he should make Pythocles rich not by a public or hazardous path. “If you wish,” he says, “to make Pythocles rich, you must not add to his money, but subtract from his desire.”

​And that saying is too clear to be interpreted, and too eloquent to be assisted. This one thing I advise you, lest you think this was said only about riches; wherever you transfer it, it will have the same power. If you wish to make Pythocles honorable, you must not add to his honors, but subtract from his desires. If you wish Pythocles to be in perpetual pleasure, you must not add to his pleasures, but subtract from his desires; if you wish to make Pythocles an old man and to fill his life, you must not add to his years, but subtract from his desires.

​There is no reason for you to judge these voices to be of Epicurus; they are common property. What is accustomed to be done in the Senate, I think should be done in philosophy too: when someone has proposed an opinion which pleases me in part, I bid him to divide the opinion and I follow what I approve. All the more willingly do I commemorate the excellent sayings of Epicurus, so that I may prove to those who flee to him, led by a bad hope, thinking they will have a cover for their vices, that they must live honorably wherever they go.

​When you approach his little gardens and read inscribed upon the gardens, “Stranger, here you will do well to remain, here pleasure is the highest good,” the hospitable and humane guardian of that dwelling will be ready, and will welcome you with barley-meal and will also minister water abundantly and say: “Are you not well received?” “These gardens,” he says, “do not irritate hunger, but extinguish it. Nor do they make a greater thirst by the drinks themselves, but quiet it with a natural and free remedy. In this pleasure I have grown old.”

​I speak with you about these desires which do not admit of comfort, to which something must be given so that they may cease. For concerning those extraordinary ones, which it is permitted to defer, permitted to chastise and suppress, this one thing I shall remind you: that pleasure is natural, not necessary; you owe nothing to this; if you spend anything, it is voluntary. The belly does not hear precepts; it demands, it calls out. Yet it is not a troublesome creditor; it is dismissed with a small amount, if only you give to it what you owe, not what you can. FAREWELL.