§82.1Desii iam de te esse sollicitus.
I have already ceased to be anxious about you.
"Quem," inquis, "deorum sponsorem accepisti?" Eum scilicet, qui neminem fallit, animum recti ac boni amatorem.
"Which of the gods," you ask, "did you accept as sponsor?" That one, of course, who deceives no one: a mind that is a lover of the right and the good.
In tuto pars tui melior est.
The better part of you is in safety.
Potest fortuna tibi iniuriam facere; quod ad rem magis pertinet, non timeo, ne tu facias tibi.
Fortune can do you injury; what is more to the point, I do not fear lest you should do it to yourself.
I, qua ire coepisti et in isto te vitae habitu conpone placide, non molliter.
Go where you have begun to go, and settle yourself in that habit of life peacefully, not softly.
§82.2Male mihi esse malo quam molliter; male nunc sic excipe, quemadmodum a populo solet dici: dure, aspere, laboriose.
I prefer to be ill off than to be soft; accept "ill off" now in the sense in which it is usually spoken by the crowd: harshly, roughly, laboriously.
Audire solemus sic quorundam vitam laudari, quibus invidetur: "molliter vivit"; hoc dicunt: "mollis est. "Paulatim enim effeminatur animus atque in similitudinem otii sui et pigritiae, in qua iacet, solvitur.
We are accustomed to hear the lives of certain people who are envied praised in this way: "He lives softly"; what they mean is: "He is soft." For gradually the mind is effeminated and dissolved into the likeness of its own leisure and laziness in which it lies.
Quid ergo? Viro non vel obrigescere satius est? Deinde idem delicati timent, cui vitam suam fecere similem.
What then? Is it not better for a man even to grow stiff? Then, these same delicate people fear that to which they have made their lives similar.
Multum interest inter otium et conditivum. "
There is a great difference between leisure and a tomb.
§82.3Quid ergo?" inquis, "non satius est vel sic iacere quam in istis officiorum verticibus volutari?" Utraque res detestabilis est, et contractio et torpor.
"What then?" you say, "is it not better even to lie thus than to be tossed about in those whirlpools of duties?" Both things are detestable, both tension and torpor.
Puto, aeque qui in odoribus iacet, mortuus est quam qui rapitur unco.
I think he who lies in perfumes is just as dead as he who is dragged by the hook.
Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura.
Leisure without letters is death and the burial of a living man.
§82.4Quid deinde prodest secessisse? Tamquam non trans maria nos sollicitudinum causae persequantur! Quae latebra est, in quam non intret metus mortis? Quae tam emunita et in altum subducta vitae quies, quam non dolor territet? Quacumque te abdideris, mala humana circumstrepent.
What benefit, then, is there in having retired? As if the causes of anxieties would not pursue us across the seas! What hiding-place is there, into which the fear of death does not enter? What peace of life is so fortified and withdrawn on high, that pain does not terrify it? Wherever you hide yourself, human evils will clamor around you.
Multa extra sunt, quae circumeunt nos, quo aut fallant aut urgeant, multa intus, quae in media solitudine exaestuant.
There are many things outside which encircle us, either to deceive or to press hard upon us; many things inside which boil up in the midst of solitude.
§82.5Philosophia circumdanda est, inexpugnabilis murus, quem fortuna multis machinis lacessitum non transit.
Philosophy must be thrown around us as an impregnable wall, which fortune, though attacking it with many engines, does not cross.
In insuperabili loco stat animus, qui externa deseruit, et arce se sua vindicat; infra illum omne telum cadit.
The mind stands in an insuperable position, which has abandoned external things and defends itself in its own citadel; below it every weapon falls.
Non habet, ut putamus, fortuna longas manus; neminem occupat nisi haerentem sibi.
Fortune does not have long hands, as we think; she seizes no one except him who clings to her.
§82.6Itaque quantum possumus, ab illa resiliamus; quod sola praestabit sui naturaeque cognitio.
Therefore, let us leap back from her as much as we can; which only the knowledge of oneself and of nature will afford.
Sciat, quo iturus sit, unde ortus, quod illi bonum, quod malum sit, quid petat, quid evitet, quae sit illa ratio, quae adpetenda ac fugienda discernat, qua cupiditatum mansuescit insania, timorum saevitia conpescitur.
Let it know where it is to go, whence it has sprung, what is good for it, what is evil, what it should seek, what it should avoid, what that reason is, which distinguishes what is to be desired and what is to be fled, by which the madness of desires is tamed, and the cruelty of fears is repressed.
§82.7Haec quidam putant ipsos etiam sine philosophia repressisse.
Some people think that they themselves have repressed these things even without philosophy.
Sed, cum securos aliquis casus expertus est, exprimitur sera confessio.
But when some event has tested them while they are secure, a late confession is wrung out.
Magna verba excidunt, cum tortor poposcit manum, cum mors propius accessit.
Big words fall away when the torturer has demanded the hand, when death has approached nearer.
Possis illi dicere: facile provocabas mala absentia; ecce dolor, quem tolerabilem esse dicebas, ecce mors, quam contra multa animose locutus es; sonant flagella, gladius micat:
"
Nunc animis opus, Aenea, nunc pectore firmo. " §82.8Faciet autem illud firmum adsidua meditatio, si non verba exercueris, sed animum, si contra mortem te praeparaveris, adversus quam non exhortabitur nec adtollet, qui cavillationibus tibi persuadere temptaverit mortem malum non esse.
You might say to him: "You easily challenged evils when they were absent; look, here is the pain which you said was tolerable; look, here is the death against which you spoke many spirited words; the whips sound, the sword flashes: 'Now is need of courage, Aeneas, now of a firm heart.'" And constant meditation will make that heart firm, if you do not exercise words but the mind, if you prepare yourself against death, against which he will not exhort you nor lift you up, who attempts to persuade you with sophistries that death is not an evil.
Libet enim, Lucili virorum optime, ridere ineptias Graecas, quas nondum, quamvis mirer, excussi.
For I am pleased, Lucilius, best of men, to laugh at the Greek follies, which I have not yet shaken off, although I admire them.
§82.9Zenon noster hac collectione utitur: "nullum malum gloriosum est; mors autem gloriosa est; mors ergo non est malum. "Profecisti; liberatus sum metu; post hoc non dubitabo porrigere cervicem.
Our Zeno uses this syllogism: "No evil is glorious; but death is glorious; therefore death is not an evil." You have made progress; I have been freed from fear; after this I shall not hesitate to stretch out my neck.
Non vis severius loqui nec moritura risum movere? Non mehercules facile tibi dixerim, utrum ineptior fuerit, qui se hac interrogatione iudicavit mortis metum extinguere, an qui hoc, tamquam ad rem pertineret, conatus est solvere.
Do you not wish to speak more seriously and not to move laughter in those about to die? By Hercules, I could not easily tell you whether he was sillier who judged that he could extinguish the fear of death by this question, or he who attempted to solve this, as if it pertained to the matter.
§82.10Nam et ipse interrogationem contrariam opposuit ex eo natam, quod mortem inter indifferentia ponimus, quae ἀδιάφορα Graeci vocant.
For he himself also opposed a contrary question arising from the fact that we place death among indifferent things, which the Greeks call adiaphora.
"Nihil," inquit, "indifferens gloriosum est; mors autem gloriosum est; ergo mors non est indifferens. "Haec interrogatio vides ubi obrepat: mors non est gloriosa, sed fortiter mori gloriosum est.
"Nothing indifferent," he says, "is glorious; but death is glorious; therefore death is not indifferent." Do you see where this question creeps in? Death is not glorious, but to die bravely is glorious.
Et cum dicis: "indifferens nihil gloriosum est," concedo tibi ita, ut dicam nihil gloriosum esse nisi circa indifferentia.
And when you say: "nothing indifferent is glorious," I grant it to you in such a way as to say that nothing is glorious except around indifferent things.
Tamquam indifferentia esse dico, id est nec bona nec mala, morbum, dolorem, paupertatem, exilium, mortem.
I say that things such as sickness, pain, poverty, exile, and death are indifferent, that is, neither good nor bad.