Moral Letters to Lucilius

​I do not wish to throw myself into a vast field and dispute about the treatment of slaves, towards whom we are most arrogant, most cruel, and most insulting. This, however, is the sum of my advice: live with your inferior in the same manner as you would wish your superior to live with you. As often as it comes into your mind how much is permitted to you over your slave, let it come into your mind that just as much is permitted to your master over you.

”But I,” you say, “have no master.” It is a good age; perhaps you will have one. Do you not know at what age Hecuba began to be a slave, at what age Croesus, at what age the mother of Darius, at what age Plato, at what age Diogenes?

​Live with your slave clemently, and courteously too, and admit him to your conversation, into your counsel, and into your company. At this point, the whole band of fastidious men will cry out against me: “Nothing is more lowly than this, nothing more disgraceful.” I shall catch these very same men kissing the hand of other people’s slaves.

​Do you not even see this, how our ancestors removed all hatred from masters and all insult from slaves? They called the master ‘father of the household’, and the slaves (which still survives even in mimes) ‘members of the family’. They established a holiday, not on which day alone masters should eat with slaves, but on which day they should at all events do so; they permitted them to hold offices in the house and to administer justice, and they judged the house to be a miniature republic.

”What then? Shall I admit all slaves to my table?” No more than all free men. You err if you think that I shall reject some as being of meaner employment, as for instance that mule-driver and that cowherd; I shall not value them by their tasks, but by their characters. Each person gives himself his character, chance assigns his tasks. Let some dine with you because they are worthy, and others that they may become so. For if there is anything servile in them from sordid association, the companionship of more honorable men will shake it off.

​There is no reason, my Lucilius, why you should look for a friend only in the forum and in the senate-house; if you pay diligent attention, you will find one at home as well. Often good material lies idle without a craftsman; try, and you will experience it. Just as he is a fool who, when about to buy a horse, does not inspect the horse itself but its saddle and bridle, so he is most foolish who values a man either from his clothes or from his condition, which has been wrapped around us like a garment.

”He is a slave.” But perhaps free in mind. “He is a slave.” Will this do him harm? Show me who is not one; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all to fear. I will show you a man of consular rank serving an old woman, I will show you a rich man serving a little handmaid, I will show you the most noble young men as the slaves of pantomime actors! No servitude is more disgraceful than voluntary servitude. Therefore, there is no reason why those fastidious people should deter you from showing yourself cheerful to your slaves and not arrogantly superior; let them rather respect you than fear you.

​Someone will say that I am now calling slaves to the felt cap and throwing down masters from their high position, because I said: let them respect their master rather than fear him. “Is that so, indeed?” he says, “should they respect him like clients, like morning salutators?” He who says this forgets that that is not too little for masters which is enough for God. He who is respected is also loved; love cannot be mixed with fear.

​Therefore, I judge that you act most rightly because you do not wish to be feared by your slaves, because you use the chastisement of words; dumb animals are admonished with whips. Not everything that offends us also hurts us. But our luxuries compel us to arrive at madness, so that whatever has not responded according to our will evokes anger.

​We put on the minds of kings. For they too, forgetting both their own strength and others’ weakness, flare up and rage as if they had received an injury, from the danger of which the greatness of their fortune keeps them safest. Nor are they ignorant of this, but by complaining they seek an opportunity of doing harm; they assumed they had received an injury so that they might inflict one.

​I do not wish to delay you longer; for you have no need of exhortation. Good character has this among other things: it pleases itself, and it abides. Malice is light, it often changes—not into something better, but into something else. Farewell.