Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings. [1] You write that you have read the books of Fabianus Papirius entitled On Civil Life with great eagerness, and that they did not meet your expectations; then, forgetting that we're talking about a philosopher, you find fault with his style. Suppose what you say is true, and that his words pour out rather than being fixed in place. First, this quality has its own charm, and there is a distinctive grace to prose that flows gently along; for I think it matters a great deal whether words fall out or flow out. Add to this a further point I'm about to make, where the difference is enormous: [2] Fabianus, to my mind, doesn't pour his speech out so much as pour it forth. It is so abundant, and comes without disturbance, yet not without motion. He himself plainly admits, and even prefers, that it hasn't been worked over or long labored at. But let's grant, as you wish, that this is so: he arranged his character, not his words, and wrote for the mind, not for the ear. [3] Besides, if you had heard him speaking, you wouldn't have had leisure to examine the parts, so thoroughly would the whole have swept you along; and generally things that please by their impact do less well when handled up close in the hand. But this too counts for much: to have seized the eye at first sight, even if careful scrutiny will find something to criticize. [4] If you ask me, the greater man is the one who carries off your judgment than the one who merely earns it; and I know this one is safer, I know he can promise himself more boldly about the future. Anxious speech doesn't suit a philosopher: where, in the end, will he be brave and steady, where will he risk himself, if he is afraid of his own words? [5] Fabianus was not careless in his speech but unworried by it. So you will find nothing shoddy in it: the words are chosen, not hunted down, and not, in the fashion of our own age, twisted and inverted against their own nature, yet splendid even though drawn from everyday use. You have thoughts that are noble and grand, not forced into an epigram but stated more expansively. We'll see what is not quite trimmed, what is not quite well-built, what lacks this modern polish: but when you've looked all around, you'll find no empty narrowness anywhere. [6] Granted, it lacks the variety of marbles, the channeled waters running between rooms, the poor man's cell, and whatever else luxury mixes in when it isn't content with plain elegance: as the saying goes, the house stands upright and sound.
Add to this the further point that there's no agreement about style: some want it polished out of roughness, others delight in roughness to such a degree that they deliberately scatter what chance had smoothed out more gently, and break off their clauses so they won't land where expected. [7] Read Cicero: his rhythm is uniform, bending its foot slowly and softly without disgrace. Pollio Asinius's, by contrast, is bumpy and jumps about, and lets you down exactly where you least expect it. In short, in Cicero everything comes to a close; in Pollio, everything falls, except for a very few passages bound to a fixed measure and a single pattern.
[8] You say, besides, that everything in him seems low to you and insufficiently elevated: I judge him free of that fault. For his style isn't low, but calm, shaped to a quiet and composed cast of mind, not sunken but level. It lacks the orator's vigor, the goads you're looking for, and the sudden stabs of epigram; but the whole body of it, once you see how well-groomed it is, is honorable. His speech does not yet possess dignity, but it will give it. [9] Name someone you could rank above Fabianus. Say Cicero, whose philosophical books are almost as numerous as Fabianus's: I'll grant it, but a thing isn't immediately trivial just because it's less than the greatest. Say Asinius Pollio: I'll grant that too, and let's answer: in so great a matter, to stand out is to come third after two others. Name also Titus Livy, for he too wrote dialogues, which you could no more assign to philosophy than to history, and also books devoted expressly to philosophy: I'll give him a place as well. But see how many he still outranks, even while being beaten by three, and three of the most eloquent men there are.
[10] But he doesn't excel in everything: his speech is not forceful, though it is elevated; it is not violent or torrential, though it flows freely; it is not brilliant, but it is pure. 'I would want,' you say, 'something said harshly against vice, boldly against dangers, proudly against fortune, scornfully against ambition. I want luxury rebuked, lust held up to ridicule, self-indulgence broken. Let something be sharp in the manner of the orator, grand in the manner of tragedy, slight in the manner of comedy.' You want him to sit down beside some trivial matter and fuss over words; he has devoted himself to the greatness of the subject matter, and drags eloquence along like a shadow, without aiming at it. [11] Individual points, no doubt, will not be closely examined or tightly gathered in on themselves, and not every word will rouse and sting you, I admit; much will pass by without striking home, and at times his speech will glide past almost idly, but there will be great brightness throughout, an immense expanse without tedium. In the end, this he will achieve: that it becomes clear to you he felt what he wrote. You will understand that this was done so that you might know what pleased him, not so that he might please you. Everything tends toward progress, toward a sound mind: applause is not what is sought.
[12] I have no doubt his writings are of this kind, even though I recall them more than I retain them, and their color clings to me not from recent familiarity but only in outline, as tends to happen with old acquaintance; certainly when I used to hear him, this is how he seemed to me: not solid, but full, of a sort that would raise up a young man of good natural gifts and call him to imitation without despair of ever matching him, which strikes me as the most effective kind of encouragement. For a man deters others the moment he has stirred the desire to imitate him but taken away the hope of doing so. For the rest, he was abundant in words, magnificent as a whole without any single part standing out for special praise. Farewell.