Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings. [1] You think you have trouble with the people you wrote to me about? Your biggest trouble is with yourself — you are a burden to yourself. You don't know what you want. You approve of what's right more readily than you pursue it. You see where happiness lies, but you don't dare go all the way to it. Let me tell you what's holding you back, since you can't quite see it yourself: you think the things you're about to leave behind are important, and having set your sights on the security you're about to cross over into, you're held back by the glitter of the life you're about to leave, as if you were about to fall into something squalid and dark. [2] You're wrong, Lucilius: this life is a step up to that one. The difference between a glare and a light — one has a fixed source of its own, the other shines with a borrowed brightness — is the difference between this life and that one. This life is struck by a brilliance coming from outside; anyone who stands in its way will instantly cast a thick shadow over it. That life is bright with its own light. Your studies will make you famous and distinguished. [3] Let me give you the example of Epicurus. Writing to Idomeneus, and calling him back from a showy life to a reliable, lasting glory — Idomeneus, at that time a minister of royal power handling great affairs — he said: 'If glory is what moves you, my letters will make you better known than all those things you cultivate, and for the sake of which you are cultivated.' [4] Was he lying? Who would know Idomeneus today if Epicurus hadn't carved his name into his writings? Deep oblivion has swallowed all those grandees and satraps and even the king himself, from whom Idomeneus's title was obtained. Cicero's letters won't let the name of Atticus perish. It would have done him no good to have Agrippa as a son-in-law, Tiberius as a grandson-in-law, Drusus Caesar as a great-grandson — among such great names he would have gone unmentioned, if Cicero hadn't attached him to himself. [5] A vast depth of time is bearing down on all of us; only a few great minds will lift their heads above it, and though they too are eventually bound for that same silence, they resist oblivion and hold their ground for a long while. What Epicurus could promise his friend, I promise you, Lucilius: I will have favor with posterity, and I can carry names along with mine that will endure. Our own Virgil promised two men eternal remembrance, and he delivers it:
Fortunate pair! If my poems have any power, no day will ever erase you from the memory of the ages, so long as the house of Aeneas dwells on the Capitol's unmoving rock, and the Roman father holds the empire.
[6] Whoever fortune has thrust into the light, whoever has been a limb or a part of someone else's power — their favor flourished, their house was crowded with visitors, as long as they themselves stood. But once they were gone, their memory faded quickly. The regard we have for genius only grows, and it isn't the great themselves who are honored — everything that has attached itself to their memory is carried along with it.
[7] So that Idomeneus doesn't turn up in my letter for nothing, he will pay for his own place in it. It was to him that Epicurus wrote that famous line urging him not to make Pythocles rich by any common or uncertain path. 'If you want,' he says, 'to make Pythocles rich, it isn't money that needs to be added, but desire that needs to be subtracted.' [8] That statement is too plain to need interpreting, and too well put to need any help. I'll only remind you of this one thing: don't think it was said only about wealth. Apply it wherever you like, and it will still hold. If you want to make Pythocles honorable, it isn't honors that need to be added, but desires that need to be subtracted. If you want Pythocles to live in continuous pleasure, it isn't pleasures that need to be added, but desires that need to be subtracted. If you want to make Pythocles old and to fill out his life, it isn't years that need to be added, but desires that need to be subtracted. [9] You have no reason to think these are sayings that belong only to Epicurus — they belong to everyone. What's normally done in the senate, I think should be done in philosophy too: when someone proposes a motion I only partly agree with, I ask him to divide the motion, and I go along with the part I approve.
I bring up Epicurus's excellent sayings all the more gladly for the sake of those people who run to him out of a false hope, thinking they'll get a cover for their own vices — so that they can prove, wherever they turn, that an honest life is required. [10] When you approach his little garden, with its inscription — 'Stranger, you will do well to stay here; here pleasure is the highest good' — the keeper of that dwelling will be ready and waiting, hospitable and kind. He'll serve you porridge, and pour you plenty of water besides, and ask, 'Haven't you been treated well?' 'These gardens,' he says, 'don't provoke hunger, they satisfy it; they don't create a greater thirst through what they offer to drink, but quench it by a natural and free remedy. In this pleasure I have grown old.' [11] I'm talking to you here about needs that admit no consolation, that have to be given something in order to stop. As for the extraordinary ones — the ones we're free to put off, to rein in and suppress — I'll remind you of just this one thing: that kind of pleasure is natural, not necessary. You owe it nothing; whatever you spend on it is voluntary. The stomach doesn't listen to advice — it demands, it makes claims. Still, it isn't a troublesome creditor: it lets you off cheaply, as long as you give it what it's owed, not what you're able to give. Farewell.