Letter 51

Each of us does what he can, my dear Lucilius! You there have Etna, that lofty and most famous mountain of Sicily; why Messala called it unique, or Valgius (for I have read it in both), I cannot make out, since a great many places belch fire — not only the lofty ones, as happens more often (because, of course, fire is carried up to the greatest height), but the low-lying ones as well. As for me, I make do as I can, content with Baiae — which I left the very day after I reached it; a place to be shunned, for, although it has certain natural endowments, luxury has claimed it for her own resort.

What then? Is any place to be marked out for our hatred? By no means. But just as one garment suits a wise and upright man better than another — and he hates no color, yet thinks some little fitted to a man who has professed frugality — so there is a region too which the wise man, or the man bent on wisdom, will avoid as alien to good morals.

And so, when he thinks of retirement, he will never choose Canopus — though Canopus forbids no one to be temperate — nor even Baiae; both have begun to be the lodging-houses of the vices. There luxury grants herself the fullest license; there, as though some indulgence were owed to the spot, she lets herself go more freely.

We ought to choose a place wholesome not only for the body but for the character. Just as I would not wish to live among torturers, so neither among cookshops. What need is there to watch drunkards staggering along the shores, the revels of pleasure-boaters, the lakes ringing with the strains of music, and all the rest, by which luxury, as though freed from law, not only goes astray but goes public?

We must take care to flee as far as possible from the incitements of the vices. The mind must be hardened and dragged far from the allurements of pleasures. A single winter quarters undid Hannibal, and the comforts of Campania unstrung that man whom the snows and the Alps could not subdue. He conquered with arms; he was conquered by vices.

We too must serve as soldiers, and in a kind of service that grants no rest, no leisure. Before all else the pleasures are to be beaten down — pleasures which, as you see, have carried off even fierce natures to themselves. If a man sets before himself how great a work he has undertaken, he will know that nothing must be done daintily, nothing softly. What have I to do with those steaming pools? What with sweat-baths, into which a dry vapor is shut up to drain the body? Let all sweat come out through toil.

If we were to do what Hannibal did — break off the course of affairs, lay aside the war, and devote our energies to pampering the body — everyone would rightly censure such ill-timed sloth, dangerous even to a victor, much more to one still winning. We who follow the standards of philosophy have less license than they who followed those of Carthage; greater danger awaits us if we give ground, and greater toil too if we persevere.

Fortune wages war with me; I will not do her bidding. I will not take her yoke — nay, what must be done with greater courage, I shake it off. The mind must not be made soft; if I yield to pleasure, I must yield to pain, must yield to toil, must yield to poverty; ambition and anger will both claim the same right over me; amid so many passions I shall be torn this way and that — nay, torn to pieces.

Freedom is the prize set before us; for this reward we labor. You ask what freedom is? To be slave to nothing — to no compulsion, to no chance — and to bring fortune down to a level with oneself. On the day when I understand that I have more power than she, she will have none. Shall I endure her, when death lies in my own hand?

The man intent on such thoughts ought to choose places that are grave and holy. Excessive charm of scenery makes the spirit effeminate, and without doubt a region can do something to corrupt one's vigor. Beasts of burden endure any road whose hoofs are hardened on rough ground; those fattened on soft and marshy pasture are quickly worn through. The braver soldier comes from rugged country; the city-dweller and the home-bred slave are sluggish. The hands transferred from the plough to arms refuse no labor; that sleek and glistening fellow gives out at the first cloud of dust.

The sterner discipline of a place strengthens the character and renders it fit for great endeavors. Scipio lived in honorable exile at Liternum rather than at Baiae; his fall is not to be laid to rest so softly. Those too to whom Fortune first transferred the public wealth of the Roman people — Gaius Marius and Gnaeus Pompeius and Caesar — did indeed build villas in the region of Baiae, but they set them on the highest ridges of the mountains. This seemed more soldierly: to look out from on high over the country spread far and wide below. Look at the situation they chose, at the spots on which they raised their buildings, and of what kind they were; you will know that these were not villas but camps.

Do you suppose that Cato would ever have lived in a little villa, to count the adulteresses sailing past, and so many kinds of pleasure-craft painted in various colors, and the roses floating over the whole lake, and to hear the nightly brawling of singers? Would he not rather have chosen to stay within a rampart that he himself had traced with his own hand for a single night? Why would not any man — any real man — rather have his sleep broken by the trumpet than by a symphony?

But I have quarreled with Baiae long enough — though never long enough with the vices, which I beg you, Lucilius, to pursue without measure, without end. For they too have neither end nor measure. Cast off whatever rends your heart; and if it could not be torn out otherwise, the heart itself would have had to be plucked out along with it. Drive out the pleasures above all, and hold them most hateful; like brigands — whom the Egyptians call philetae — they embrace us only to strangle us. Farewell.