Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
I'm going to tell you what to watch out for if you want to live in greater safety. But take these rules the way you would take advice on keeping your health at your place in Ardea. Think about what drives one man to destroy another: you'll find hope, envy, hatred, fear, contempt. Of all these, contempt is by far the lightest — so light that many people have hidden inside it as a cure. When someone despises you, he tramples you, yes, but he keeps walking. Nobody works persistently, nobody works carefully, at harming a man he despises. Even on the battlefield the man lying down gets passed over; the fighting is with the man still standing.
You'll avoid the hopes of the wicked if you own nothing that stirs another man's greedy appetite, if you possess nothing conspicuous — for even small things get coveted when they are scarce or unfamiliar. You'll escape envy if you don't push yourself in front of people's eyes, if you don't parade what you have, if you learn to enjoy things quietly, close to your own chest. Hatred comes either from an injury — you'll avoid that by provoking no one — or for no reason at all, and against that kind ordinary tact will protect you. Still, hatred has been dangerous to many: some men have had haters without having a single enemy. As for being feared, a modest fortune and a mild temperament will spare you that. Let people know you're a man they can offend without risk; let making peace with you be both easy and reliable. Being feared is as miserable at home as it is in public, as bad with slaves as with free men: everyone has strength enough to do harm. And add this: whoever is feared is afraid. No one has ever managed to be terrifying and feel safe. That leaves contempt — and its measure lies in the hands of the man who has taken it on himself, who is despised because he chose to be, not because he had to be. Its disadvantages are dispelled by useful skills, and by friendships with men who have influence with someone influential; it pays to attach yourself to such people, but not to get entangled with them, or the cure will cost more than the danger.
Nothing, though, will help you as much as keeping quiet — speaking rarely with other people and constantly with yourself. There is a certain sweetness in conversation that creeps up on you and coaxes things out, and it draws out secrets exactly the way drunkenness or love does. No one will keep quiet about what he has heard; no one will repeat only as much as he heard. And a man who hasn't kept the story to himself won't keep the source to himself either. Everyone has somebody he trusts as much as he himself was trusted; so, even if each man rations his chatter to one listener's ears, he ends up making an audience — and what was a secret a moment ago is now common gossip.
A great part of security is doing nothing unjust. People with no self-control lead confused, chaotic lives: they fear in proportion to the harm they do, and they never get a moment free. They tremble once they've acted; they're stuck. Conscience won't let them attend to anything else and keeps hauling them back to answer for themselves. Whoever is waiting for punishment is already being punished — and whoever has earned it is waiting for it. With a bad conscience some circumstance may keep you safe, but nothing keeps you at ease; a man like that thinks that even if he isn't caught, he still could be. He stirs in his sleep, and whenever he talks about someone else's crime he thinks about his own — it never seems sufficiently erased to him, never sufficiently covered. A guilty man sometimes has the luck to stay hidden; he never has the confidence that he will. Farewell.