Letter 27

"You," you say, "give me advice? For have you already advised yourself, already set yourself right? Is that why you have time to spare for mending others?" I am not so shameless as to undertake cures while I am sick; rather, as though I lay in the same hospital ward, I talk with you about the malady we share and pass on the remedies. So then, listen to me as though I were speaking to myself. I admit you to my private chamber, and with you for witness I call myself to account.

I cry aloud to myself: "Count your years, and you will be ashamed to want the same things you wanted as a boy, to provide for the same ends. Grant yourself this one thing as your dying day draws near: let your faults die before you. Dismiss those turbulent pleasures, to be paid for at a heavy price; they do harm not only when they are to come, but when they are past. Just as crimes, even if they were not detected at the moment they were done, leave anxiety behind that does not depart with them, so with base pleasures the regret outlasts the pleasures themselves. They are not solid, they are not faithful; even if they do not harm, they fly away.

Look about you rather for some good that will abide. But there is none, except what the mind finds for itself out of itself. Virtue alone affords joy that is lasting and secure; and even if something stands in its way, it comes between only as the clouds do, which drift below and never overcome the day.

When will you reach this joy? So far there has been no slackening, but let there be haste. Much work remains, on which you yourself must spend your own watchfulness, your own labour, if you wish it to be accomplished. This is a matter that admits of no deputy.

There is another kind of literary effort that does admit of help. Calvisius Sabinus, within our own memory, was a rich man. He had both the estate of a freedman and the wit; never have I seen a man whose prosperity was less becoming. His memory was so bad that now the name of Ulysses would slip from him, now that of Achilles, now of Priam, men whom we know as well as our own tutors. No aged name-prompter, who does not so much render names as bestow them, ever saluted the tribes so wrongly as that man saluted the Trojans and the Greeks. None the less he wished to seem learned.

So he hit upon this short cut: he bought slaves at a great price, one to hold Homer by heart, another Hesiod; besides, he assigned a single slave to each of the nine lyric poets. That he paid much for them is no wonder; not finding them ready, he contracted to have them made. Once this household had been got together, he began to plague his guests. He would keep these fellows at his feet, and from time to time, when he asked them for verses to repeat, he would often break down in the middle of a word.

Satellius Quadratus, a gnawer of rich fools (and what follows from that, a flatterer, and what is joined to both, a mocker), urged him to keep grammarians as gleaners. When Sabinus had remarked that each of his slaves had cost him a hundred thousand sesterces, Satellius said, "You could have bought the same number of bookcases for less." Yet the man was of the opinion that he himself knew whatever anyone in his household knew.

The same Satellius began to urge him to wrestle, sick man that he was, pale, frail. When Sabinus had answered, "And how can I? I scarcely live," Satellius said, "Do not, I beg you, say that; do you not see how many most robust slaves you have?" Soundness of mind is neither lent nor bought. And I think that, if it were for sale, it would find no buyer. But unsoundness is bought every day.

But take now what I owe you, and farewell. "Poverty brought into accord with the law of Nature is wealth." Epicurus says this often, in one way and another; but a thing is never said too much that is never learned enough. To some, remedies must be pointed out; to others, they must be driven home. Farewell.