Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 80

by Seneca

LXXX. On Worldly Deceptions

1. To-day I have some free time, thanks not so much to myself as to the games, which have attracted all the bores to the boxing-match.^[1] No one will interrupt me or disturb the train of my thoughts, which go ahead more boldly as the result of my very confidence. My door has not been continually creaking on its hinges nor will my curtain be pulled aside;^[2] my thoughts may march safely on, – and that is all the more necessary for one who goes independently and follows out his own path. Do I then follow no predecessors? Yes, but I allow myself to discover something new, to alter, to reject. I am not a slave to them, although I give them my approval.

2. And yet that was a very bold word which I spoke when I assured myself that I should have some quiet, and some uninterrupted retirement. For lo, a great cheer comes from the stadium, and while it does not drive me distracted, yet it shifts my thought to a contrast suggested by this very noise. How many men, I say to myself, train their bodies, and how few train their minds!^[3] What crowds flock to the games, – spurious as they are and arranged merely for pastime, – and what a solitude reigns where the good arts are taught! How feather-brained are the athletes whose muscles and shoulders we admire! 3. The question which I ponder most of all is this: if the body can be trained to such a degree of endurance that it will stand the blows and kicks of several opponents at once and to such a degree that a man can last out the day and resist the scorching sun in the midst of the burning dust, drenched all the while with his own blood, – if this can be done, how much more easily might the mind be toughened so that it could receive the blows of Fortune and not be conquered, so that it might struggle to its feet again after it has been laid low, after it has been trampled under foot?

For although the body needs many things in order to be strong, yet the mind grows from within, giving to itself nourishment and exercise. Yonder athletes must have copious food, copious drink, copious quantities of oil, and long training besides; but you can acquire virtue without equipment and without expense. All that goes to make you a good man lies within yourself. 4. And what do you need in order to become good? To wish it. But what better thing could you wish for than to break away from this slavery, – a slavery that oppresses us all, a slavery which even chattels of the lowest estate, born amid such degradation, strive in every possible way to strip off? In exchange for freedom they pay out the savings which they have scraped together by cheating their own bellies; shall you not be eager to attain liberty at any price, seeing that you claim it as your birthright? 5. Why cast glances toward your strong-box? Liberty cannot be bought. It is therefore useless to enter in your ledger^[4] the item of "Freedom," for freedom is possessed neither by those who have bought it, nor by those who have sold it. You must give this good to yourself, and seek it from yourself.

First of all, free yourself from the fear of death, for death puts the yoke about our necks; then free yourself from the fear of poverty. 6. If you would know how little evil there is in poverty, compare the faces of the poor with those of the rich; the poor man smiles more often and more genuinely; his troubles do not go deep down; even if any anxiety comes upon him, it passes like a fitful cloud. But the merriment of those whom men call happy is feigned, while their sadness is heavy and festering, and all the heavier because they may not meanwhile display their grief, but must act the part of happiness in the midst of sorrows that eat out their very hearts. 7. I often feel called upon to use the following illustration, and it seems to me that none expresses more effectively this drama of human life, wherein we are assigned the parts which we are to play so badly. Yonder is the man who stalks upon the stage with swelling port and head thrown back, and says:

Lo, I am he whom Argos hails as lord,

Whom Pelops left the heir of lands that spread
From Hellespont and from th' Ionian sea
E'en to the Isthmian straits.^[5]

And who is this fellow? He is but a slave; his wage is five measures of grain and five denarii. 8. Yon other who, proud and wayward and puffed up by confidence in his power, declaims:

Peace, Menelaus, or this hand shall slay thee!^[5]

receives a daily pittance and sleeps on rags. You may speak in the same way about all these dandies whom you see riding in litters above the heads of men and above the crowd; in every case their happiness is put on like the actor's mask. Tear it off, and you will scorn them.

9. When you buy a horse, you order its blanket to be removed; you pull off the garments from slaves that are advertised for sale, so that no bodily flaws may escape your notice; if you judge a man, do you judge him when he is wrapped in a disguise? Slave-dealers hide under some sort of finery any defect which may give offence,^[6] and for that reason the very trappings arouse the suspicion of the buyer. If you catch sight of a leg or an arm that is bound up in cloths, you demand that it be stripped and that the body itself be revealed to you. 10. Do you see yonder Scythian or Sarmatian king, his head adorned with the badge of his office? If you wish to see what he amounts to, and to know his full worth, take off his diadem; much evil lurks beneath it. But why do I speak of others? If you wish to set a value on yourself, put away your money, your estates, your honours, and look into your own soul. At present, you are taking the word of others for what you are. Farewell.

Footnotes

1. Probably a contest in which the participants attached leaden weights to their hands in order to increase the force of the blows.
2. Compare Pliny's "den" (Ep. ii. 17. 21): quae specularibus et velis obductis reductisve modo adicitur cubiculo modo aufertur.
3. Compare the ideas expressed in Ep. xv. 2 f.
4. For this figure see the "lucellum," "diurna mercedula," etc., of the opening letters of the correspondence (Vol. I.).
5. Authors unknown; Ribbeck, Frag. Trag. pp. 289 and 276. The first passage (with one change) is also quoted by Quintilian, ix. 4. 140. See, however, Tyrrell, Latin Poetry, p.39, who calls this passage the beginning of Attius's Atreus.
6. A favourite trick; cf. Quintil. ii. 15. 25 mangones, qui colorem fuco et verum robur inani sagina mentiuntur.