Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings. Today I have free time for myself not only by my own doing but thanks to a spectacle, which has called away everyone who might have bothered me, off to watch the ball-fighters. No one will burst in, no one will interrupt my thinking, which advances all the more boldly on this very confidence. The door won't keep creaking, the curtain won't keep being lifted: I'll be free to go on safely, which matters more to someone going his own way and following his own path. So am I not following my predecessors, then? I do follow them, but I allow myself to find something new too, to change things, to leave things aside; I'm not a slave to them, I just agree with them. Still, that was a big claim I made, promising myself silence and a retreat free of interruption: look, a huge roar carries over from the stadium, and it doesn't shake me out of myself, but it does turn my thoughts toward considering this very matter. I think to myself how many people train their bodies, and how few train their minds; what a huge crowd gathers for a spectacle that is neither serious nor even genuinely a contest, and what solitude surrounds the fine arts; how feeble in spirit are the men whose arms and shoulders we admire. Here's the thing I keep turning over most in my mind: if the body can be trained by exercise to endure so much that it can take punches and kicks alike from more than one man, that a man can hold out under the blazing sun in the scorching dust and, drenched in his own blood, go on through the whole day—how much more easily could the mind be strengthened so that it might take the blows of fortune unconquered, so that it might rise again after being thrown down, after being trampled underfoot. For the body needs many things to stay strong; the mind grows out of itself, feeds itself, trains itself. The body needs a lot of food, a lot of drink, a lot of oil, and long, sustained effort besides; but virtue will come to you without equipment, without expense. Whatever can make you good is already with you. What do you need in order to be good? Just the will. And what better thing could you want than to tear yourself free from this slavery that weighs on everyone—the very thing that even slaves of the lowest condition, born into this degradation, try every way they can to shed? They count as the price of their heads the savings they scraped together by starving their own bellies: and will you not long to reach freedom, whatever it costs, you who think yourself born into it? Why do you look toward your strongbox? That kind of freedom can't be bought. And so it's an empty name of "freedom" that gets tossed into contracts, one that neither the buyers nor the sellers actually possess: you have to give yourself that good, you have to seek it from yourself. Free yourself first from the fear of death—that's what puts a yoke on us—and then from the fear of poverty. If you want to know how little harm there really is in poverty, compare the faces of the poor and the rich with each other: the poor man laughs more often, and more genuinely; there's no deep anxiety in him; even if some worry does strike, it passes like a light cloud. But the cheerfulness of those who are called fortunate is either fake, or else a heavy, festering gloom—all the heavier, in fact, because sometimes they're not even allowed to be openly miserable, but amid their inner torments, which are eating away at the very heart, they're forced to act happy. I keep having to use this example, since nothing brings out this farce of human life more effectively—a farce that hands us roles we play badly. That man who struts across the stage and, leaning back, declares: "Behold, I rule in Argos; Pelops left his kingdom to me, reaching from the sea of Helle to the Ionian shore"— that man is a slave, and receives five measures of grain and five denarii. And that other one, arrogant and unrestrained, swollen with confidence in his own strength, who says: "Unless you keep quiet, Menelaus, this right hand will kill you"— he gets a daily wage, and sleeps in a patchwork blanket. You could say the same thing about all those people whom a litter raises up above the heads of ordinary men, above the crowd, in delicate comfort: all of their happiness is wearing a mask. You'll despise them the moment you strip off their costumes. When you're about to buy a horse, you order its blanket removed; you strip the clothes off slaves up for sale so that no bodily flaws can hide: do you assess a man all wrapped up? Slave dealers hide behind some bit of dressing-up whatever might displease a buyer, and so buyers grow suspicious of the very ornaments themselves; if you saw a leg or an arm bandaged, you'd order it uncovered, and the body itself shown to you. Do you see that king of Scythia or Sarmatia, adorned with a splendid headdress? If you want to assess him, to know completely what he's really like, undo the headband: a great deal of evil lies hidden beneath it. Why should I speak of others? If you want to weigh yourself properly, set aside your money, your house, your rank, and look inward at yourself: as it stands now, you're taking others' word for what kind of person you are. Farewell.