Moral Letters to Lucilius

​As each one can, my dear Lucilius! You have there Etna, that elevated and most famous mountain of Sicily, which I do not find why Messala or Valgius — for I have read it in both — called unique, since very many places spew fire, not only elevated ones, which happens more frequently, obviously because fire is carried up to the highest point, but also low-lying ones. As best we can, we are content with Baiae, which I left the day after I had reached it, a place to be avoided for this reason — although it has certain natural advantages — because luxury has claimed it for its own celebration.

’What then? Is hatred to be declared against any place?’ By no means. But just as some clothing is more fitting for a wise and honorable man than some other, and he does not hate any color, but thinks some color is little suited to one who has professed simplicity; so also there is a region which a wise man, or one striving toward wisdom, would avoid as foreign to good morals.

​And so, thinking of retirement, he will never choose Canopus, although Canopus does not forbid anyone from being decent, nor even Baiae; they have begun to be lodging-houses of vices. There luxury allows itself the most, there, as if some license were owed to the place, it is more dissolved.

​We ought to choose a place healthy not only for the body, but also for morals. Just as I would not want to live among executioners, so not even among taverns. What need is there to see drunkards wandering along the shores and the revelries of sailors and lakes noisy with the singing of concerts and other things which luxury, as if released from laws, not only sins in but publicizes?

​We ought to make it our aim to flee as far as possible from the allurements of vices. The mind must be hardened and drawn far away from the charms of pleasures. One winter-quarters relaxed Hannibal, and the warm treatment enervated that man unconquered by snows and Alps — the treatments, ​of Campania. He conquered by arms, he was conquered by vices. We also must serve as soldiers, and indeed in a kind of military service in which rest is never given, leisure is never given. Pleasures, in the first place, must be utterly defeated, which, as you see, have swept even savage characters to themselves. If anyone sets before himself how much work he has undertaken, he will know that nothing must be done delicately, nothing softly. What have I to do with those warm pools? What with steam rooms, in which dry vapor is enclosed to exhaust our bodies? Let all sweat go out through labor.

​If we did what Hannibal did, so that with the course of events interrupted and the war abandoned we gave our attention to pampering our bodies, no one would not deservedly blame an untimely idleness dangerous even to a victor, let alone to one who is still conquering; less is permitted to us than to those following the Carthaginian standards, more danger remains for those who yield, more work even for those who persevere.

​Fortune wages war with me; I am not about to do her bidding. I do not receive the yoke; rather, what must be done with greater courage, I shake it off. The mind must not be softened; if I yield to pleasure, I must yield to pain, I must yield to labor, I must yield to poverty; both ambition and anger will want to have the same right over me; I shall be pulled apart, rather, torn to pieces among so many passions.

​Freedom is set before us; for this reward we labor. What is freedom, you ask? To serve no thing, no necessity, no accidents, to bring fortune down to an equal level. On the day I understand that she has more power than I, she will have no power. Shall I endure her, when death is in my hand?

​Intent upon these thoughts, it is proper to choose serious and holy places. Too much pleasantness makes minds effeminate, and without doubt a region can do something to corrupt vigor. Beasts of burden whose hoof has been hardened on rough ground endure any path; fattened in soft and marshy pasture, they are quickly worn down. And the stronger soldier comes from rugged terrain; the city-bred and home-born slave is sluggish. Hands which are transferred to arms from the plow refuse no labor; that anointed and sleek man fails in the first dust.

​A more severe discipline of a place strengthens character and renders it fit for great endeavors. Scipio was in exile more honorably at Liternum than at Baiae; his downfall is not to be placed so softly. Those too, to whom the fortune of the Roman people first transferred public wealth, Gaius Marius, Gnaeus Pompey, and Caesar, did indeed build villas in the region of Baiae, but they placed them on the highest ridges of the mountains. This seemed more military, to watch from an elevated place over things subjected far and wide. See what position they chose, in what places they raised their buildings and of what kind; you will know they are not villas, but camps.

​Do you think Cato would ever have lived in a pavilion to count the adulteresses sailing past and so many kinds of boats painted with various colors and the rose floating on the whole lake, so that he might hear the nocturnal brawling of singers? Would he not have preferred to remain within a rampart which he himself had drawn with his own hand for a single night? Why would he not prefer, whoever is a man, that his sleep be broken by a trumpet-call rather than by a concert?

​But we have disputed long enough with Baiae, never enough with vices, which, I beg you, Lucilius, pursue without limit, without end. For to them also there is neither end nor limit. Cast away whatever tears your heart, and if they could not be pulled out otherwise, the heart itself had to be plucked out along with them. Drive out pleasures especially and hold them most hated; in the manner of robbers, whom the Egyptians call Philetae, they embrace us for this purpose, to strangle us. FAREWELL.