Moral Letters to Lucilius

​What cannot I be persuaded to do, I who was persuaded to go on a voyage? I set sail on a calm sea. There was, without doubt, a sky heavy with dark clouds, which usually dissolve either into rain or into wind. But I thought that the few miles from your Parthenope as far as Puteoli could be stolen, even though the sky was doubtful and threatening. Therefore, so that I might escape the more quickly, I headed straight through the deep sea toward ​Nesis, intending to cut across all the bays. When they had already proceeded so far that it made no difference to me whether I went on or returned, first that flatness of the sea which had deceived me vanished. It was not yet a storm, but already a tossing of the sea and increasingly frequent waves. I began to ask the helmsman to put me ashore on some beach. He kept saying that those places were rough and harborless, and that he feared nothing so much in a storm as the land.

​But I was too badly tormented for any thought of danger to occur to me. For that sluggish and endless seasickness was racking me, which stirs up the bile without casting it out. Therefore I pressed the helmsman and forced him, willy-nilly, to make for the shore. As we neared its vicinity, I did not wait for any of Vergil’s precepts to be carried out, such as “They turn the prows to the sea” or “The anchor is cast from the prow”; remembering my old skill as a devotee of cold baths, I threw myself into the sea, dressed in my cloak, as becomes a cold-water bather.

​What do you think I suffered while I crawled out over the rough rocks, while I sought a path, while I made one? I understood that it is not without reason that the land is feared by sailors. Incredible are the things I endured when I could not bear myself; know this, that Ulysses was not born to so angry a sea that he should be shipwrecked everywhere; he was prone to seasickness. And I, wherever I have to sail, shall arrive in the twentieth year.

​As soon as I settled my stomach—which, as you know, does not escape seasickness along with the sea—and as soon as I refreshed my body with an anointing, I began to think this over with myself: how great an oblivion of our vices follows us, even of our bodily ones, which constantly remind us of themselves, not to mention those of the soul, which are the more hidden the greater they are.

​A slight touch of fever deceives a person; but when it has grown and a true fever has flared up, it wrests a confession even from a tough and long-suffering man. The feet ache, the joints feel sharp pricks; still we dissemble and say either that we have sprained an ankle or have worked too hard in some exercise. A name is sought for the disease while it is doubtful and beginning; but when it begins to stretch even the ankles’ tendons and has made both feet right feet, it is necessary to confess to gout.

​The opposite happens in those diseases by which minds are affected; the worse off a person is, the less he feels it. There is no reason for you to wonder, my dearest Lucilius. For he who sleeps lightly both catches visions during his rest and sometimes, while sleeping, thinks that he is asleep; but a heavy slumber extinguishes even dreams and plunges the mind too deep for any awareness of itself. Why does no one confess his vices?

​Because he is still in them; to tell one’s dream is the act of a waking person, and to confess one’s vices is a sign of health. Let us wake up, then, so that we may be able to refute our errors. But philosophy alone will wake us, philosophy alone will shake off that heavy sleep. Dedicate yourself wholly to her. You are worthy of her, and she is worthy of you; go, rush into each other’s embrace. Deny yourself to all other things, strongly, openly. There is no reason why you should study philosophy on sufferance.

​If you were sick, you would have neglected the care of your estate, and your public business would have slipped from your mind, nor would you think anyone of such importance that you would go down to court as his advocate during a temporary relief. You would act with your whole mind to be freed from the disease as soon as possible. What then? Will you not do the same now? Cast aside all hindrances and devote yourself to a sound mind; no one reaches it while busy. Philosophy exercises her own kingship; she gives time, she does not receive it. She is not a spare-time occupation, but an ordinary one; she is a mistress, she commands us to be present.

​Alexander, to a certain city promising a part of their lands and half of all their possessions, said, “I did not come into Asia with this purpose, to accept what you might give, but that you should have what I might leave behind.” Philosophy says the same to all other affairs: “I am not going to accept this time which is left over for you, but you shall have what I myself reject.”

​Turn your whole mind here, sit by her, cultivate her; a huge gap will be made between you and the rest. You will far surpass all mortals, and the gods will not far surpass you. Do you ask what will be the difference between you and them? They will exist longer. But, by Hercules, it is the mark of a great artist to have enclosed the whole in a small space. His own lifetime is open to the wise man just as much as all eternity is open to God. There is something in which the wise man surpasses God: God is free from fear by the benefit of nature, the wise man by his own.

​Behold a great thing: to have the weakness of a human being, the security of a god. Incredible is the power of philosophy to blunt every stroke of chance. No weapon stays fixed in her body; she is fortified, solid. Some weapons she tires out and, as it were, eludes like light darts with the loose fold of her robe, some she shatters and flings back against the very one who had sent them. FAREWELL.