Letter 18

It is December, the month when the city is at its busiest sweat. License has been given to public extravagance. Everything resounds with vast preparations, as though there were any difference between the Saturnalia and the days of doing business. So little difference is there, that he seems to me not to have been wrong who said December once was a month, but now is a year.

If I had you here, I should gladly confer with you as to what you think ought to be done: whether nothing should be altered from our daily habit, or whether, that we might not seem at variance with the public customs, we should both dine more merrily and put off the toga. For we have changed our dress for the sake of pleasure and of festal days—a thing that used not to be done except in some uproar and in a sorrowful time of the state.

If I know you well, playing the part of arbiter, you would have wished us neither in all things like the capped throng, nor in all things unlike; unless perhaps on these days above all the mind must be commanded, that it alone abstain from pleasures just when the whole crowd has flung itself upon them; for it takes the surest proof of its own firmness, if to the things that allure and draw toward luxury it neither goes nor is led away.

This is far the braver course—to be dry and sober while the people are drunk and vomiting; that other is the more temperate—neither to set oneself apart nor be conspicuous nor mingle with all, and to do the same things, but not in the same way. For one may keep a festal day without luxury.

For the rest, it so pleases me to test the firmness of your mind that, after the precept of great men, I too will give you this charge: set apart certain days on which, content with the meanest and cheapest fare, with rough and harsh clothing, you may say to yourself: "Is this what was feared?"

In the very midst of security let the mind prepare itself for hardships, and against the injuries of Fortune let it be strengthened amid her benefits. The soldier drills in the midst of peace, throws up a rampart with no enemy near, and is wearied by superfluous toil that he may be equal to the necessary kind. The man whom you would not have tremble in the crisis itself, you must train before the crisis. This those men followed who, in every month imitating poverty and drawing near to want, never feared what they had often rehearsed.

There is no reason now for you to suppose that I mean those banquets of Timon, and the poor men's cells, and whatever else it is by which luxury, weary of its riches, plays its games; let the pallet be a true one, and the soldier's cloak, and the bread hard and coarse. Endure this for three days and four, sometimes for more, so that it be not a game but an experiment; then, believe me, Lucilius, you will leap for joy, filled for two pennies, and will understand that for security there is no need of Fortune. For what is enough for necessity, she gives even to the angry.

Yet there is no reason why you should think you are doing much. For you will be doing what many thousands of slaves, many thousands of poor men do; on this score esteem yourself, that you will be doing it unconstrained, that it will be as easy for you to bear that always as to try it sometimes. Let us train at the practice-post. And, that Fortune may not catch us unprepared, let poverty become familiar to us. We shall be the more secure as rich men if we have learned how little a burden it is to be poor.

That master of pleasure, Epicurus, had certain days on which he would meanly stay his hunger, meaning to see whether anything was lacking from full and consummate pleasure, or how much was lacking, and whether it was worth making up for by great labour. This, at any rate, he says in those letters which he wrote to Polyaenus in the magistracy of Charinus. And indeed he boasts that he can be fed for less than a penny, but that Metrodorus, who has not yet made so much progress, needs a whole one.

Do you think there is fullness in this fare? There is even pleasure—not that light and fleeting pleasure that needs to be renewed from time to time, but a settled and sure one. For water and barley-meal, or a crust of barley bread, is not a pleasant thing; but it is the highest pleasure to be able to take pleasure even from these, and to have brought oneself to that which no unfairness of Fortune can snatch away.

The fare of prisoners is more liberal; those condemned to death are not so meanly kept by him who is to put them to death. How great a soul, then, voluntarily to bring oneself down to that which not even men under sentence of the extreme penalty need fear! This is to forestall the weapons of Fortune.

Begin therefore, my Lucilius, to follow the custom of these men, and set apart some days on which you may withdraw from your affairs and make yourself the intimate of the smallest store; begin to have dealings with poverty. "Dare, my guest, to despise wealth, and shape yourself too worthy of the god."

No other man is worthy of the god than he who has despised wealth. I do not forbid you the possession of it, but I wish to bring it about that you possess it without fear; and this you will attain in one way only: if you persuade yourself that you will live happily even without it, if you always look upon it as about to depart.

But now let us begin to fold up the letter. "First," you say, "pay back what you owe." I will refer you to Epicurus; the payment shall be made from him: "Excessive anger begets madness." How true this is, you must needs know, since you have had both a slave and an enemy.

Against all persons this passion blazes up; it is born as much of love as of hatred, no less amid serious things than amid sport and jests. Nor does it matter from how great a cause it springs, but into what sort of mind it comes. So fire does not matter how great it is, but where it falls. For solid materials have not received even the greatest fire; whereas dry things, easy to catch, nurse even a spark into a conflagration. So it is, my Lucilius: the outcome of a mighty anger is madness, and therefore anger is to be avoided, not for the sake of moderation, but for the sake of sanity. Farewell.