Moral Letters to Lucilius

​I suffered shipwreck before I climbed aboard a ship. How it happened, I do not add, lest you should think that this also is to be placed among the Stoic paradoxes, of which I will prove to you, when you wish, or rather even if you do not wish, that none is false nor as admirable as it seems at first sight. Meanwhile, this journey has taught me how many superfluous things we had, and how easily we could lay them aside by judgment, which, if ever necessity has taken them away, we do not feel to be gone.

​With very few slaves, whom a single vehicle could hold, without any things except what were contained on our bodies, my Maximus and I are already passing a second most happy day. The mattress lies on the ground, and I on the mattress. Of two cloaks, one has been made a blanket, the other a coverlet.

​Nothing could be subtracted from our lunch; it was ready in not more than an hour, nowhere without dried figs, never without notebooks. The former, if I have bread, serve as a relish; if I do not have it, they serve as bread. Every day they make a new year for me, which I render auspicious and happy with good thoughts and greatness of soul, which is never greater than when it has set aside foreign things and made peace for itself by fearing nothing, and made riches for itself by desiring nothing.

​The vehicle into which I have been put is rustic; the mules prove that they are alive only by walking; the muleteer is barefoot, and not because of summer. I can hardly obtain from myself that I should wish this vehicle to seem mine. There still lasts a perverse shame of what is right, and as often as we fall into some more elegant company, I blush against my will, which is a proof that those things which I approve and praise do not yet have a secure and immovable seat. He who blushes at a shabby vehicle will boast of a costly one.

​I have made little progress as yet. I do not yet dare to wear frugality openly. Even now I care about the opinions of travelers. Against the opinions of the whole human race a voice should have been sent: “You are mad, you err, you are amazed at superfluous things, you value no one by his own worth. When it comes to patrimony, you, most diligent calculators, set up the account of individuals to whom you are about to lend either money or benefits—for you already enter these also as expenses:

’he possesses widely, but he owes much; he has a beautiful house, but built with other people’s money; no one will quickly bring out a more handsome household of slaves, but he does not answer to his debts; if he pays his creditors, nothing will be left to him.’ You ought to do the same in other matters as well, to shake out how much of his own each one has.”

​You think that man rich because golden furniture follows him even on the road, because he plows in all provinces, because a large book of accounts is rolled, because he possesses as much suburban land as he would possess with envy in the deserts of Apulia. When you have said all, he is poor. Why? Because he owes. “How much?” you say. Everything. Unless perchance you judge it to make a difference whether someone has taken a loan from a man or from fortune.

​What do fattened mules, all of one color, pertain to the matter? What those engraved vehicles? “Swift-footed horses covered with purple and embroidered tapestries, Golden necklaces hang down from their breasts, Covered with gold, they champ the yellow gold under their teeth.” Those things can make neither the master better nor the mule.

​M. Cato the Censor, whose birth was as much of advantage to the republic as Scipio’s—for the one waged war with our enemies, the other with our morals—used to ride on a gelding, and indeed with saddlebags placed on it, so that he might carry useful things with him. Oh, how I should wish some of these “trossuli” on the road to meet him, with runners and Numidians and driving much dust before him! This man, without doubt, would seem more refined and better accompanied than M. Cato—this man who, amid those delicate preparations, is at this very moment doubting whether to hire himself out to the sword or to the knife.