Letter 15

There was an old custom, kept down to my own time, of adding at the beginning of a letter: "If you are well, it is well; I am well." We do rightly to say: "If you are practising philosophy, it is well." For this at last is to be well. Without this the mind is sick. The body too, even if it has great strength, is sound only in the way a madman or a frenzied man is sound.

Care, therefore, especially for this health, and then for that other, the secondary kind, which will cost you little if you are willing to be truly well. For it is a foolish occupation, my Lucilius, and ill-suited to a man of letters, to exercise the muscles and broaden the neck and strengthen the sides; when the fattening has prospered with you and your sinews have grown, you will never match either the strength or the weight of a well-fed ox. Add now that the mind is crushed by a greater bodily bulk and is less nimble. So, as much as you can, hem in your body and give room to your mind.

Many discomforts attend those given over to this care. First, the exercises, whose toil exhausts the breath and renders it unfit for concentration and for sharper studies. Then the keenness of mind is dulled by a fullness of food. Added to this are slaves of the worst stamp taken on as trainers, men occupied between oil and wine, whose day has been spent to their liking if they have sweated well, if in place of what has flowed out they have poured in much drink, the deeper for fasting. To drink and sweat is the life of a dyspeptic.

There are exercises both easy and short, which both tire the body without delay and spare time, of which the chief account must be had: running, and the hands moved with some weight, and leaping—either the kind that lifts the body upward, or the kind that flings it forward, or that, so to call it, of the Salian priests, or, to put it more rudely, the leaping of the fuller. Choose any of these you please for its plainness and ease.

Whatever you do, return quickly from the body to the mind. Exercise it night and day; by moderate toil it is nourished. Neither cold nor heat will hinder this exercise, nor even old age. Care for that good which grows better with age.

Nor do I bid you always hang over your book or your tablets; some interval must be given to the mind—yet in such a way that it is not unstrung, but relaxed. Riding in a litter both shakes the body and does not interfere with study; you may read, you may dictate, you may speak, you may listen—none of which even walking forbids to be done.

Nor will you despise the training of the voice, which I forbid you to raise and then lower by degrees and fixed measures. What if next you should wish to learn how to walk? Admit those whom hunger has taught new crafts; there will be one to regulate your steps and watch your cheeks as you eat, and go as far as your patience and credulity has emboldened him. "What then? Will your voice begin straightway with a shout and with the highest strain?" There is so natural a thing as raising it by degrees, that even men in a quarrel begin in ordinary tones and pass on to a cry.

Therefore, whatever the impulse of your mind has urged, do it now more vehemently, now more remissly, according as the voice has carried you forth that day, according as it has answered. When you walk abroad, let your gait be modest; when you have raised it, let it be loud rather than reaching its full pitch. I do not bid you go so far as the orators; let your step be neither hurried nor loitering.

I have taken off you no small task; one little fee, and one Greek saying, shall be added to these benefits. Here is a notable precept: "The foolish life is thankless and full of trembling; it is wholly carried off into the future." "Who says this?" you ask. The same one as above. What life do you think is here called foolish? That of Baba and Ision? No, it is not so; it is our own that is meant—we whom a blind desire hurls into things that will hurt us, that certainly will never satisfy us; we for whom, if anything could be enough, it would have been enough; we who do not consider how pleasant it is to demand nothing, how splendid it is to be full and not to depend upon fortune.

Therefore, Lucilius, recall again and again how many things you have attained. When you look at how many go before you, think how many follow behind. If you wish to be grateful toward the gods and toward your own life, think how many you have outstripped. What have you to do with the rest? You have outstripped yourself.

Set a limit which you would not even wish to pass beyond, were it allowed. Let these flattering goods, more hostile than hateful ones, at last depart. Farewell.