Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Persevere as you have begun and hasten as much as you can, so that you may be able to enjoy a corrected and composed mind for a longer time. You do indeed enjoy it even while you are correcting, even while you are composing it; yet that pleasure is of another kind which is perceived from the contemplation of a mind pure and splendid from every stain.

​You surely keep in memory how great a joy you felt when, having laid aside the toga praetexta, you assumed the manly toga and were led into the forum; expect a greater one when you have laid aside your boyish mind and philosophy has enrolled you among men. For up to now, not boyhood, but what is more serious, childishness remains. And this is indeed worse in that we have the authority of old men, but the vices of boys, and not only of boys but of infants. The former fear trivial things, the latter false things, and we fear both.

​Only make progress; you will understand that certain things are all the less to be feared because they bring much fear. No evil is great which is the last. Death comes to you; it was to be feared if it could be with you; but it must of necessity either not arrive or pass away. ”It is difficult,” you say, “to bring the mind to a contempt of life.” Do you not see for what trifling reasons it is contemned? One hung by a noose before his mistress’s door, another cast himself down from the roof so that he might no longer hear his angry master, another, lest he should be brought back from flight, drove the sword into his vitals. Do you not think that virtue will accomplish this which excessive fear accomplishes? No secure life can fall to the lot of anyone who thinks too much about prolonging it, who counts many consuls among great goods.

​Meditate on this daily, so that you may be able to leave with an even mind this life which many so embrace and hold onto, just as those who are carried away by a rushing torrent grasp at thorns and rough rocks. Most people fluctuate miserably between the fear of death and the torments of life, and are unwilling to live, yet do not know how to die.

​Therefore, make your whole life pleasant to yourself by laying aside all anxiety about it. No good benefits the owner unless his mind is prepared for its loss; moreover, of no thing is the loss easier than that which, once lost, cannot be missed. Therefore, against these things which can happen even to the most powerful, encourage yourself and harden yourself.

​Concerning Pompey’s head, a minor and a eunuch passed judgment, concerning Crassus, a cruel and insolent Parthian; Gaius Caesar ordered Lepidus to offer his neck to the tribune Dexter, and he himself offered his to Chaerea. Fortune has advanced no one so high that she did not threaten him with as much as she had permitted him. Do not trust this tranquility; in a moment the sea is overturned. On the same day where vessels have sported, they are swallowed up.

​Reflect that both a robber and an enemy can apply a sword to your throat: even though a greater power be absent, there is no slave who does not have the power of life and death over you. So I say: whoever has contemned his own life is master of yours. Recall the examples of those who have perished by domestic plots, either by open force or by guile; you will understand that no fewer have fallen by the anger of slaves than of kings. What is it to you, therefore, how powerful he is whom you fear, when what you fear is what anyone can do?

​But if by chance you fall into the hands of enemies, the victor will order you to be led; namely, to that place to which you are being led. Why do you deceive yourself and only now understand this which you have long been suffering? So I say: from the moment you were born, you are being led. These and similar things must be revolved in the mind, if we wish to await peacefully that last hour, the fear of which makes all other hours restless.

​But so that I may put an end to the letter, accept what pleased me today. And this too was taken from another’s gardens: “Poverty composed according to the law of nature is great wealth.” But do you know what boundaries that law of nature sets for us? Not to hunger, not to thirst, not to be cold. To drive away hunger and thirst, it is not necessary to sit at proud thresholds, nor to endure a heavy brow and even an insulting kindness; it is not necessary to tempt the seas nor to follow camps; what nature desires is easily procurable and ready at hand.

​For superfluous things we sweat. It is those things which wear out the toga, which force us to grow old under a tent, which drive us onto foreign shores. What is enough is close at hand. He with whom poverty agrees well is rich. FAREWELL.