Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Add now this, that nothing is done honorably unless the whole mind has bent over it and been present at it, and has resisted it in no part of itself. But when one approaches an evil either out of fear of worse things or out of hope for good things, to reach which is considered of so great value by swallowing the endurance of a single evil, the judgments of the doer conflict with one another. On this side is that which commands to complete the proposed tasks; on that side, that which holds back and flees from the suspected and dangerous thing. Therefore he is distracted in opposite directions; if this is the case, glory perishes. For virtue carries out its decisions with a harmonious mind. It does not fear what it does. “Yield not to misfortunes, but go forth more boldly against them, as far as your fortune shall permit you.”

​You will not go more boldly if you believe those things to be evils. This must be removed from your breast; otherwise, a suspicion that will delay your onset will cause hesitation. It will be delivered up to that which must be invaded. Our school indeed wishes it to appear that Zeno’s syllogism is true, but that the other, which is opposed to it, is fallacious and false. I do not reduce these matters to the law of dialectic and to those knots of an extremely stale artifice. I judge that entire class of things should be driven out, by which the person questioned thinks he is being trapped, and, led to an admission, answers one thing while thinking another. For truth we must act more simply, against fear more bravely.

​I would prefer to untie and weigh these very matters which are turned over by them, so that I may persuade, not impose. When about to lead an army into battle, which is going to meet death for spouses and children, how do they exhort them? I give you the Fabii, transferring the entire war of the republic to a single house. I show you the Spartans stationed in the very straits of Thermopylae. They hope neither for victory nor for return. That place is going to be a tomb for them.

​How do you exhort them to catch the ruin of a whole nation with their opposing bodies, and to yield life rather than ground? Will you say: “what is an evil is not glorious; death is glorious; therefore death is not an evil”? Oh, effective speech! Who, after this, would hesitate to throw himself upon hostile sword-points and die standing! But how bravely that Leonidas addressed them! “Eat your lunch, fellow soldiers,” he said, “as if you were going to dine in the underworld.” The food did not grow in their mouths, nor did it stick in their throats, nor did it slip from their hands; cheerful, they promised themselves both to the lunch and to the dinner.

​What about that Roman leader, who spoke thus to the soldiers sent to occupy a position, when they were about to go through a huge army of the enemy: “It is necessary, fellow soldiers, to go thither, whence to return is not necessary”? You see how simple and commanding virtue is; which of mortals can your deceptions make braver, which more resolute? They break the spirit, which must never less be contracted and forced into minute and thorny issues than when something grand is being planned.

​Not from the three hundred, but from all mortals must the fear of death be drawn away. How do you teach them that it is not an evil? How do you overcome the opinions of a whole age, with which infancy is immediately imbued? What help do you find for human weakness? What do you say, inspired by which they may rush into the midst of dangers? With what speech do you avert this consensus of fearing, with what powers of mind do you turn away the conviction of the human race stubbornly opposed to you? Do you compose deceitful words for me and weave petty questions? Great monsters are struck down with great weapons.

​That fierce serpent in Africa, more terrible to the Roman legions than the war itself, they attacked in vain with arrows and slings; it was formidable even to the Pythian, since its huge size, solid in proportion to the vastness of its body, rejected iron and whatever human hands had hurled . Finally it was broken by millstone-like rocks. And against death do you hurl such minute things? Do you face a lion with a cobbler’s awl? Sharp are those things which you say; nothing is sharper than an ear of grain. This very subtility renders certain things useless and ineffectual. FAREWELL.