Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] Thank you for writing to me so often; you are showing yourself to me in the one way you can. I never receive a letter of yours without our being instantly together. If portraits of absent friends give us pleasure — refreshing our memory of them, easing the ache of separation with a comfort that is false and empty — how much more pleasure in letters, which bring the true traces, the true marks, of an absent friend. What is sweetest when we meet face to face, a friend's hand pressed into his letter supplies: the moment of recognition.
[2] You write that you heard the philosopher Serapion when he landed where you are: 'He likes to tear his words loose at a great gallop; he doesn't pour them out but crowds and drives them — more of them come than any one voice can handle.' In a philosopher I don't approve of this. His speech, no less than his conduct, ought to be kept in order; and nothing is orderly that rushes headlong. So in Homer the speech that comes storming without a pause, like falling snow, is given to the orator; from the old man the speech flows gently, sweeter than honey. [3] Take it this way, then: that rushing, overflowing style of speech suits a street performer better than a man handling a great and serious matter and teaching it. Yet I no more want him to drip than to sprint; he should neither leave the ear straining nor bury it. Thinness and poverty of delivery also lose the hearer's attention — he wearies of a slowness full of stops; still, what is waited for settles in more easily than what flies past. And after all, people say teachers hand down precepts to their students; what runs away cannot be handed down. [4] Add to this that speech which serves the truth should be plain and unstudied. This crowd-pleasing sort has no truth in it. It aims to stir the mob and sweep unreflecting ears along by sheer momentum; it does not submit itself to examination — it is gone. But how is speech to rule others when it will not take the rein itself? And consider: speech applied to healing minds must sink down into us. Remedies do no good unless they stay in place. [5] Besides, that style carries a great load of hollowness and emptiness; it makes more sound than force. My terrors need soothing, my irritants need curbing, my illusions need dispelling, my extravagance needs the rein, my greed needs the rebuke: which of these can be done at a run? What doctor treats his patients in passing? And note that there is not even any pleasure in such a din of words tumbling out without selection. [6] But just as with most things you would never have believed possible, it is enough to have learned once that they happen, so with these word-athletes: to have heard them once is plenty. What would anyone want to learn from them, or imitate? What should one conclude about the mind of men whose speech is a disordered stampede that cannot be pulled up? [7] As a man running downhill cannot stop where he chooses, but is the servant of his body's gathering weight and carried farther than he intended, so this speed of speaking is not under its own control, and not decent enough for philosophy — which ought to place its words, not fling them, and go forward one step at a time. [8] 'What, then? Is it never to rise to a height?' Of course it is — but with the dignity of character intact, which that violent, excessive force strips away. Let it have great strength, but strength under discipline; let it be a stream that never fails, not a torrent. Even in a courtroom orator I would scarcely allow a pace of speaking that cannot be recalled and moves without law: how is the judge to keep up — a judge who at times is inexperienced and untrained besides? Even when showing off carries the speaker away, or a passion beyond his control, let him hurry and heap up only as much as the ears can take.
[9] You will do well, then, not to listen to those men who ask how much they can say rather than how they say it, and yourself to prefer, if it comes to that, to speak like P. Vinicius. When someone asked how P. Vinicius spoke, Asellius said, 'By the syllable, dragging.' And Geminus Varius said, 'What makes you people call him a speaker is beyond me — he can't string three words together.' Why shouldn't you rather choose to speak the way Vinicius did? [10] Some wit may break in on you, like the man who said to Vinicius — who plucked his words out one at a time, as if he were dictating rather than speaking — 'Say it! Are you never going to say it?' Though as for the racing pace of Q. Haterius, the most celebrated orator of his day, I want it kept far from any sane man: he never hesitated, he never paused; he began once and he stopped once.
[11] Some habits, I think, suit some nations more, some less. Among Greeks you might tolerate that license; we Romans have got into the habit of punctuating even when we write. Our own Cicero too, from whom Roman eloquence sprang up, went at a walking pace. Roman speech looks about itself more; it takes its own measure, and offers itself to be measured. [12] Fabianus, a remarkable man in his life, in his learning, and — what comes after those — in his eloquence as well, used to discourse fluently rather than furiously, so that you could call it ease, not speed. That I accept in a wise man; I don't demand it. Let his speech come out unimpeded — but I would rather it were brought forth than let flow. [13] I am all the more anxious to scare you off this disease because you cannot catch it except by losing your capacity for shame. You would have to rub your forehead smooth and stop listening to yourself; that unwatched gallop will carry along a great deal you would want to take back. [14] You cannot, I repeat, catch it with your modesty intact. Moreover it demands daily practice, and your effort would have to shift from matter to words. And even if the words are there and can run on without any labor from you, they still need the rein; for as a more restrained walk befits a wise man, so does speech that is compact, not daring. So the sum of all my sums is this: I order you to be a slow talker. Farewell.