Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] I've just come back from a ride in my litter, as worn out as if I'd walked the whole distance instead of sitting it. Being carried for a long stretch is work too — and maybe harder work, because it goes against nature, which gave us feet so we could do our own walking and eyes so we could do our own seeing. Soft living has sentenced us to feebleness: what we long refused to do, we have finally become unable to do. [2] Still, I needed to shake my body up, so that if bile had settled in my throat the jolting would break it loose, or if my breathing had thickened for some reason, the bouncing would thin it out — and I could feel it doing me good. So I kept riding longer than planned, tempted by the shoreline itself, which curves between Cumae and the villa of Servilius Vatia and is hemmed in like a narrow lane, sea on one side, lagoon on the other. It was packed firm from a recent storm; as you know, frequent, driven surf levels the sand, while a longer calm loosens it, once the moisture that binds the grains has drained away.
[3] Out of old habit I started looking around to see whether the place offered me anything I could use, and my eyes went to the villa that once belonged to Vatia. There that rich ex-praetor grew old, famous for nothing except his leisure, and on that one account he was counted a lucky man. Every time someone was sunk by friendship with Asinius Gallus, or by Sejanus's hatred — and later by his affection, since it was as dangerous to have loved him as to have offended him — people would cry out, 'Vatia, you're the only one who knows how to live!' [4] What he knew was how to hide, not how to live; and it matters enormously whether your life is at leisure or merely limp. While Vatia was alive I never passed that villa without saying, 'Here lies Vatia.' But philosophy, my dear Lucilius, is something so sacred and so venerable that even a counterfeit of it wins approval. The crowd assumes a man in retirement is withdrawn, untroubled, content with what he has, living for himself — when none of those things can belong to anyone but the wise man. Only the wise man understands what living for oneself is, because he, first of all, understands what living is. [5] The man who runs from affairs and from people, driven into exile by the failure of his own desires, who couldn't bear to watch others do better, who has gone to ground in fear like some skittish, sluggish animal — that man is not living for himself but, most shameful of all, for his belly, his sleep, and his lust. Living for no one does not automatically mean living for yourself. Yet steadiness and sticking to one's course count for so much that even stubborn idleness carries a certain authority.
[6] About the villa itself I can tell you nothing for certain; I know only its front and the parts on display, the ones it shows even to passers-by. There are two grottoes, huge undertakings, each as roomy as a spacious entrance hall, dug by hand: one never admits the sun, the other holds it until it sets. A stream, fed both from the sea and from Lake Acheron, runs like a channel through the middle of a plane-tree grove — enough to stock with fish even if you drew on it constantly. But it gets spared when the sea is open; only when a storm gives the fishermen a holiday does the hand reach for what's ready and waiting. [7] The villa's greatest convenience, though, is this: it has Baiae just over the wall. It escapes Baiae's nuisances while enjoying its pleasures. These merits I know at first hand. I believe it's a villa for the whole year, too: it meets the west wind head-on and intercepts it so completely that Baiae never gets it. Vatia doesn't seem to have chosen badly when he picked this spot to deposit a leisure already lazy and elderly.
[8] But place contributes little to peace of mind. It is the mind that makes everything acceptable to itself. I have seen gloomy people in a cheerful, lovely villa; I have seen people in the depths of solitude who might as well have been swamped with business. So there's no reason to think yourself poorly settled just because you're not in Campania. And anyway, why aren't you? Send your thoughts all the way here. [9] You may keep company with absent friends — as often as you like, for as long as you like. In fact we enjoy this pleasure, the greatest there is, more while we're apart. Presence makes us spoiled: because we sometimes talk, walk, and sit together, once we're separated we give no thought at all to those we've just seen. [10] And here's another reason to bear absence calmly: everyone is largely absent even from the people right beside him. Count up, first, the nights spent apart, then the different engagements each one has, then private study, trips out to the countryside — and you'll see that travel doesn't steal much from us. [11] A friend must be possessed in the mind; and the mind is never absent — it sees whomever it wants, every day. So study with me, dine with me, walk with me. We would be living in a tight cell indeed if anything were closed to thought. I see you, my dear Lucilius; at this very moment I hear you. So fully are you here beside me that I begin to doubt whether letters are the right vehicle at all — perhaps I should be sending you short notes instead. Farewell.