Letter 68

I fall in with your plan: hide yourself in retirement. But hide the retirement itself as well. That you will be doing this by the example, even if not by the precept, of the Stoics, you may know. But you will do it by the precept too; you will justify it both to yourself and to whomever you wish.

We do not send the wise man to every commonwealth, nor always, nor without any limit. Besides, when we have given the wise man a commonwealth worthy of himself — that is, the universe — he is not outside the commonwealth even if he has withdrawn; nay, perhaps, leaving one corner, he passes into greater and ampler things, and, set in the heavens, understands, when he used to mount the magistrate's chair or the tribunal, in how lowly a seat he sat. Lay this up with yourself: the wise man is never more active than when things divine and human have come within his view.

Now I return to what I had begun to advise you, that your retirement be unknown. There is no reason for you to label yourself with "philosophy" or "repose." Give your purpose another name; call it ill health and weakness and idleness. To boast of one's retirement is a lazy kind of ambition.

Certain animals, that they may not be found, confuse their own tracks around their very lair; the same you must do. Otherwise there will be no lack of those who always follow you. Many pass by what is open and pry into what is concealed and hidden away; the sealed door tempts the thief. Whatever lies open seems cheap; the burglar passes by an open door. These are the manners of the people, these of every most ignorant man: he longs to break into secret places. Therefore it is best not to flaunt one's retirement.

But it is a kind of flaunting to lie hidden too much and to withdraw from the sight of men. This man has buried himself at Tarentum, that one has shut himself up at Naples, this one for many years has not crossed the threshold of his own house. Whoever has fastened some story upon his retirement calls a crowd about it.

When you have withdrawn, you must not aim at this, that men should talk about you, but that you should talk with yourself. And what shall you say? What men most gladly do about others, think ill of yourself to yourself; you will grow used both to speaking the truth and to hearing it. But handle most of all that which you shall feel to be weakest in you.

Each man knows the faults of his own body. And so one relieves the stomach by vomiting, another props it up with frequent food, another drains and purges the body by an interposed fast. Those whose feet are attacked by pain abstain either from wine or from the bath. Careless of the rest, they meet the trouble by which they are often beset; so in our mind there are certain parts, as it were, in poor health, to which a cure must be applied.

What do I do in retirement? I treat my own sore. If I showed you a swollen foot, a livid hand, or the withered sinews of a shrunken leg, you would allow me to lie in one place and nurse my disease. There is a greater evil, this which I cannot show you: in the very breast there is a gathering and an abscess. I do not — I do not — want you to praise me, I do not want you to say: "O great man! He has despised all things and fled, condemning the madnesses of human life."

I have condemned nothing but myself. There is no reason for you to wish to come to me for the sake of progress. You are mistaken, if you hope for any help from here; not a physician, but a sick man, lives here. I would rather, when you have gone away, you should say: "I used to think that man blessed and learned. I had pricked up my ears; I am let down. I saw nothing, I heard nothing, that I should covet, to which I should return." If you feel this, if you say this, something has been gained. I would rather you forgave my retirement than envied it.

"Do you," you say, "Seneca, commend retirement to me? You are sliding into Epicurean phrases." I commend retirement to you, in which you may do greater and finer things than those you have left behind. To knock at the proud doors of the more powerful, to set down childless old men in alphabetical order, to have the most influence in the forum — this is an invidious and brief power, and, if you weigh it truly, a sordid one.

That man will far outstrip me in forensic favor, that one in military service and the rank won by it, that one in the throng of his clients; it is worth being outdone by all, so long as fortune is outdone by me, with whom in the crowd I cannot be a match; she has more favor.

Would, indeed, that long ago your mind had been to follow this purpose! Would that we were not treating of the happy life within sight of death! But even now let us not delay. For many things which we should have believed, on reason's word, to be superfluous and hostile, we now believe on the word of experience.

Let us do as those are wont to do who have set out too late and wish to repair the time by speed; let us add the spur. This age does best for these studies; it has now thrown off its froth. It has now wearied the vices, untamed in the first heat of youth; not much remains for it to extinguish them.

"And when," you say, "will this profit you, which you learn at your exit, or for what purpose?" For this: that I may go out the better. Yet there is no reason for you to suppose that any age is fitter for a good mind than one which has subdued itself by many trials, by long and frequent regret for its doings, and which has come to wholesome things with its passions softened. This is the season of this good; whoever as an old man has reached wisdom has reached it by his years. Farewell.