Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] What can't I be talked into, when I let myself be talked into a boat? I cast off on a calm sea. True, the sky was heavy with dirty clouds — the kind that usually break into rain or wind — but I figured the few miles from your Parthenope to Puteoli could be stolen even under a doubtful, lowering sky. So, to get across faster, I steered straight out through open water toward Nesis, meaning to cut off all the bays. [2] By the time going forward and going back cost me exactly the same, the first thing to fail was that smoothness which had seduced me. It wasn't a storm yet, but the sea was already heaving, and the swells came quicker and quicker. I began pleading with the pilot to land me on any stretch of beach. He answered that the coast was rough and harborless, and that in a storm there was nothing he feared so much as land. [3] But I was suffering too badly for danger to even register: I was in the grip of that sluggish seasickness that offers no relief, the kind that stirs the bile without bringing it up. So I leaned on the pilot and forced him, willing or not, to make for shore. As soon as we got close, I didn't wait for anything out of Vergil's instructions —
the anchor is thrown from the prow —
no: remembering my old training as a veteran devotee of cold water, I dropped myself into the sea, woolen cloak and all, the way a proper cold-plunger should. [4] Imagine what I went through crawling out over the rocks, hunting for a path, making one. I understood that sailors have good reason to fear the land. What I endured is past believing, given that I couldn't endure myself. Let me tell you: Ulysses wasn't born to such an angry sea that he had to shipwreck everywhere — he was a seasick man. And I too, wherever I have to go by ship, will get there in the twentieth year.
[5] Once I'd settled my stomach — which, as you know, doesn't leave its seasickness behind with the sea — and refreshed my body with a rubdown, I began to reflect on how thoroughly we forget our failings, even the bodily ones that keep reminding us of themselves, let alone those that hide more deeply the bigger they are. [6] A slight chill can fool a man; but when it grows and a real fever blazes up, it forces a confession even out of the tough and long-suffering. Our feet ache, our joints feel little stabs: we still play it down, claiming we twisted an ankle or overdid it in some exercise. While the disease is uncertain and just beginning, we shop for a name for it; but once it starts swelling the ankles and has bent both feet out of shape, there's no choice but to admit it's gout.
[7] With the diseases of the mind, the opposite happens: the worse off a man is, the less he feels it. Don't be surprised, dearest Lucilius. A light sleeper has dream-images in his rest and sometimes, while sleeping, knows that he's asleep; but heavy stupor snuffs out even the dreams and sinks the mind too deep for any awareness of itself. [8] Why does no one confess his vices? Because he is still inside them. Telling your dream is for the man who's awake, and to confess your vices shows the patient is mending. Let us wake up, then, so that we can call out our own errors. Only philosophy will rouse us; only she will shake off the heavy sleep. Devote yourself to her entirely. You are worthy of her, she of you: go into each other's arms. Refuse yourself to everything else — bravely, openly. Philosophy is not something to do on sufferance. [9] If you were sick, you'd have suspended the management of your estate; your court business would have dropped away; you'd think no client important enough to go down to the forum for during a remission. You'd work with your whole mind at one thing: getting free of the disease as fast as possible. Well then — won't you do the same now? Drop every hindrance and clear time for a sound mind: no one arrives at it while busy. Philosophy exercises her own sovereignty; she grants time, she doesn't accept it. She's not a sideline; she's the main business, she's the mistress, she is present and she commands. [10] When a certain city offered Alexander part of its lands and half of everything it owned, he said: 'I came to Asia intending not to take what you might give, but to let you keep what I might leave.' Philosophy says the same to all our affairs: 'I am not going to accept the time you have left over; you shall have the time I refuse.' [11] Give her your mind entire; keep close beside her; wait on her: a vast gap will open between you and everyone else. You will run far ahead of all mortals, and the gods will not run far ahead of you. You ask what the difference between you and them will be? They will last longer. But by god, it takes a great artist to shut the whole into a small space. To the wise man his own lifetime lies as open as all of time does to a god. And there is one point where the wise man outstrips a god: the god is free of fear by nature's gift, the wise man by his own. [12] What a thing that is — to have the weakness of a man and the security of a god. The power of philosophy to blunt every blow of chance is beyond belief. No weapon lodges in her body; she is fortified, solid. Some attacks she wears out, dodging them like light missiles with a slack fold of her robe; others she shatters and hurls back at whoever threw them. Farewell.