Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] Not long ago I was telling you that old age was in sight; now I suspect I have left old age behind me. These years of mine—this body of mine, at any rate—deserve a different word now, since 'old age' names a life that is tired, not one that is broken. Count me among the worn-out, the ones touching the very edge. [2] Still, in your hearing I give myself some credit: I do not feel the damage of age in my mind, though I feel it in my body. Only my vices have grown old, and the equipment that served them. The mind is vigorous, and it delights in having little business with the body; it has set down a great part of its load. It celebrates, and picks a quarrel with me about this so-called old age: this, it says, is its time of bloom. Let us take it at its word—let it enjoy what is good for it. [3] It tells me to go into my thoughts and sort out how much of this calm and this restraint of conduct I owe to wisdom and how much simply to my years; to examine carefully what I cannot do and what I do not want to do—and to treat whatever I am glad to find impossible as if I did not want it anyway. For what is there to complain of, what hardship is it, if something that was due to stop has run out? [4] 'It is the worst hardship of all,' you say, 'to shrink, to waste away, to melt—that is the exact word. We are not knocked flat by a single blow: we are whittled down, and each day takes something from our strength.' But is there any better way out than to slide toward one's own end while nature loosens the fastenings? Not that there is anything bad in a sudden stroke and an abrupt exit from life—only that this other road, being drawn away gently, is the soft one. As for me, as if the test were approaching and the day that will pass sentence on all my years had arrived, I keep watch on myself and I say to myself: [5] 'Nothing we have shown so far, in deeds or in words, counts for anything. Those are light and deceptive pledges of the spirit, wrapped in a great deal of window-dressing. What progress I have made, I will let death decide. So I am preparing—without fear—for that day when the tricks and the makeup come off and I pass judgment on myself: whether I merely talk courage or actually feel it; whether all those defiant words I hurled at fortune were playacting and mime. [6] Set aside other people's opinion of you: it is always uncertain, and it splits both ways. Set aside the studies you have pursued your whole life: death is going to pronounce the verdict on you. I mean this: debates and bookish conversation and sayings gathered from the precepts of the wise and cultivated talk do not display the real strength of a mind—even the most frightened people can speak boldly. What you have accomplished will show when you are gasping out your last breath. I accept the terms; I do not flinch from the verdict.' [7] I say this to myself, but consider it said to you as well. You are younger—what of it? The years are not counted out one by one. There is no knowing where death is waiting for you; so you wait for it everywhere.
[8] I was ready to stop, and my hand was reaching for the closing line, but the accounts have to be settled and this letter must be given its travel money. Assume I am not telling you where I will borrow it from—you know whose cash-box I draw on. Give me a little while and the payment will come from my own house; in the meantime Epicurus will advance the loan. He says: 'Rehearse for death'—or, if the thought crosses over to us more comfortably this way: 'It is a splendid thing to learn death thoroughly.' [9] Perhaps you think it pointless to learn something you will use only once. That is precisely why we must rehearse it: a thing must be studied forever when we cannot test whether we know it. [10] 'Rehearse for death': whoever says this is telling you to rehearse freedom. To have learned death is to have unlearned servitude. He stands above every power—certainly outside every power. What are prison and guards and bolted doors to him? His way out is unlocked. There is one chain that holds us bound: love of life. It need not be thrown off, but it should be slackened, so that when circumstances someday demand it, nothing holds us back or keeps us from being ready to do at once what must be done sooner or later. Farewell.