Letter 6

Surgeons, as they call them, are thought cruel, and they are wretched men. For is it not misery to grieve over wounds that are not one's own, and to cut away dead flesh with a merciful blade? Is it not misery that the healer does not shrink from what the sufferer himself shrinks at, and is reckoned an enemy for it? Such is the way of nature: truth is bitter, while vices are accounted sweet. Isaiah, as an example of the captivity to come, does not blush to go about naked; Jeremiah is sent from the midst of Jerusalem to the Euphrates, the river of Mesopotamia, that among hostile nations, where the Assyrian is and the camps of the Chaldeans stand, he may lay down a girdle to be spoiled; Ezekiel is commanded to eat bread sprinkled with every kind of seed, baked first over human dung and then over cow dung, and he watches the death of his wife with dry eyes; Amos is driven out of Samaria—and why, I ask? Surely for this reason, that these spiritual surgeons, by cutting away the vices of sinners, were urging them on to repentance. The apostle Paul says: "Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?" And because the words of the Savior seemed harsh, many of his disciples drew back.

So it is no wonder if we too, by inveighing against vices, give offense to many. I have determined to cut off a stinking nose: let the man with a scrofulous swelling be afraid. I want to pull at a chattering little crow: then let the crow understand that it is rancid. Is there but one man in the Roman world whose nostrils have been hacked off by a shameful wound? Is Onasus of Segesta the only one who weighs out hollow words, swollen like bladders, with puffed-out cheeks? I say that certain men have risen to some dignity or other by crime, perjury, and falsehood: what is that to you, if you know yourself to be innocent? I laugh at an advocate who needs an advocate himself; I turn up my nose at eloquence that is worth a farthing: what is that to you, who are eloquent? I want to attack venal priests: why are you angry, you who are rich? I want lame Vulcan to burn in his own fires: are you his guest or his neighbor, that you should strive to keep the blaze away from the idol's shrines? It pleases me to laugh at ghosts, at the screech-owl, at the horned owl, at the monsters of the Nile: whatever is said, you think it is said against you. Against whatever vice the point of my pen is turned, you cry out that you are the one meant, you come to grips with me and summon me to court, and you foolishly arraign a satirical writer for writing in prose. Or do you think yourself a fine fellow because your name is one of good omen? As though a grove were not called a lucus for the very reason that it has the least light, and the Snakes named for not sparing, and the Furies called the Kindly Ones, and Ethiopians commonly called Silvermen. But if you will always be angry when foul things are described, then I will sing of you, with Persius, as a handsome man: "May king and queen long for you as a son-in-law, may the girls carry you off; whatever you tread upon, let it turn to a rose."

Yet I will give you advice by which, with certain things concealed, you may appear more beautiful: let your nose not be seen on your face, and let your speech make no sound when you talk—and so you may seem both handsome and eloquent.