Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Virtue also has a preceding cause: it brings on envy, for many are envied on account of wisdom, and many on account of justice. But it does not have this cause from itself, nor as a plausible one. For, on the contrary, a more plausible appearance is presented to the minds of men by virtue, which calls them to love and admiration.

​Posidonius says that we should question in this way: “Those things which give to the mind neither greatness nor confidence nor security are not goods. But riches and good health and similar things do none of these; therefore, they are not goods.” He now makes this questioning even stronger in this way: “Those things which give to the mind neither greatness nor confidence nor security, but on the contrary create insolence, swelling, and arrogance, are evils. But by fortuitous things we are impelled toward these; therefore, they are not goods.”

”By this reasoning,” he says, “even those advantages of yours will not be advantages.” The condition of advantages is one thing, that of goods is another. An advantage is that which has more of use than of trouble. A good must be pure and harmless in every part. That is not a good which benefits more, but which benefits only.

​Furthermore, an advantage pertains to animals and to imperfect men and to fools. Therefore, an advantage can have disadvantage mixed in, but it is called an advantage being estimated by its greater part; a good pertains only to the wise man; it must be inviolate.

​Have a good mind; one knot remains for you, but it is a Herculean one: “A good does not come from evils. Riches come from many poverty-stricken states; therefore, riches are not a good.” Our school does not acknowledge this questioning, but the Peripatetics both invent and solve it. But Posidonius says that this sophism, tossed about through all the schools of dialecticians, is refuted by Antipater in this way: “Poverty is not spoken of in respect of possession, but in respect of subtraction, or, as the ancients said, deprivation.

​The Greeks call this ‘kat’ sterēsin’. It does not say what it has, but what it does not have. Therefore, from many empty things nothing can be filled; many resources make riches, not many wants. You understand poverty,” he says, “otherwise than you ought. For poverty is not that which possesses few things, but that which does not possess many things; so it is spoken of not from what it has, but from what it lacks.”

​I could express what I want more easily if there were a Latin word by which ‘anyparxia’ is signified. Antipater assigns this to poverty; I do not see what else poverty is than the possession of little. We shall see about that, if ever we have plenty of leisure, what the substance of riches is, and what that of poverty is; but even then we shall consider whether it is not better to soothe poverty and take away arrogance from riches than to dispute about words, as if judgment had already been passed on things.

​Let us suppose we are called to an assembly; a law is being proposed concerning the abolition of riches. Are we going to advocate or oppose it with these questionings? Are we going to bring it about by these that the Roman people seek and praise poverty, the foundation and cause of their empire, but fear their riches, reflecting that they found these among the conquered, that from here electioneering, bribery, and tumults rushed into the most sacred and temperate city, that the spoils of nations are displayed too luxuriously, and that what one people snatched from all can more easily be snatched from one by all? It is better to persuade this and to conquer emotions, not to circumvent them. If we can, let us speak more strongly; if not, more clearly. FAREWELL.