Moral Letters to Lucilius

​I do not collect these examples now in order to exercise my wit, but to encourage you against that which seems most terrible. And I shall encourage you more easily if I show that not only brave men have despised this moment of breathing out the soul, but that certain men, otherwise cowardly, have in this matter equalled the spirit of the bravest—such as that Scipio, the father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompeius, who, driven back to Africa by a contrary wind, when he saw his ship being held by the enemy, ran himself through with a sword, and to those asking where the commander was, said, “The commander is doing well.”

​This utterance made him equal to his ancestors and did not allow the glory destined for the Scipios in Africa to be interrupted. It was a great thing to conquer Carthage, but a greater thing to conquer death. “The commander is doing well,” he said. Ought a commander to die in any other way—and that too, in chains?

​I do not recall you to history, nor do I collect from all ages the despisers of death, who are very numerous. Look back at these times of ours, of whose languor and luxury we complain; they will suggest men of every class, of every fortune, of every age, who have cut short their evils by death. Believe me, Lucilius, death is so little to be feared that by its benefit nothing is to be feared. Therefore, hear the threats of your enemy with a mind at ease.

​And although your conscience gives you confidence, yet because many things outside the case have power, both hope for what is most just, and prepare yourself for what is most unjust. But remember this above all: to strip things of their confusion and see what is in each thing; you will know that there is nothing terrible in those things except fear itself.

​What you see happening to children, this happens to us too, who are larger children: they, if they see those whom they love, to whom they have become accustomed, with whom they play, wearing masks, are terrified. A mask must be stripped off not only from men, but from things, and their own face must be restored to them.

​Why do you show me swords and fires and a crowd of executioners roaring around you? Take away that pomp under which you hide and terrify fools! You are death, whom lately my slave, whom my handmaid despised. Why do you again unfold before me whips and racks with great display? Why devices fitted to each joint, by which they may be wrenched, and a thousand other instruments for torturing a man piece by piece? Put aside those things which stupefy us. Order the groans and shrieks and the bitterness of voices squeezed out during laceration to be silent! Surely you are pain, whom that gouty man despises, whom that sufferer of stomach ache endures in the midst of his very pleasures, whom a girl endures in childbirth. You are light, if I can bear you; you are short, if I cannot bear you.

​Ponder these things in your mind, which you have often heard, often said. But whether you have truly heard, or truly said them, prove by the result. For this is most shameful, which is wont to be objected to us, that we deal with the words of philosophy, not its works. What? Did you know only now that death, only now that exile, only now that pain is imminent for you? You were born for these things. Whatever can happen, let us think of it as if it will happen.

​What I advise you to do, I know for certain you have done; now I admonish you not to submerge your mind in that anxiety. For it will be dulled and will have less vigor when it is necessary to rise up. Lead it away from your private case to the public one. Say that you have a mortal and fragile body, to which pain will be threatened not only from injustice or from the power of a stronger man. Pleasures themselves turn into torments, banquets bring indigestion, drunkenness brings numbness and trembling of the nerves, lusts bring distortions of feet, hands, and of all joints.

​I shall become poor; I shall be among the majority. I shall become an exile; I shall think myself born there, where I am sent. I shall be bound; what of it? Am I free now? Nature has bound me to this heavy weight of my body. I shall die; you say this, but it means I shall cease to be able to be sick, I shall cease to be able to be bound, I shall cease to be able to die.