EPISTLE LXXVII.
cloyed with it. You know the taste of wine and cordials. It makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand measures[1] pass through your bladder; you are nothing but a wine-strainer.[2] You are a connoisseur in the flavour of the oyster and of the mullet;[3] your luxury has not left you anything untasted for the years that are to come; and yet these are the things from which you are torn away unwillingly. 17. What else is there which you would regret to have taken from you? Friends? But who can be a friend to you? Country? What? Do you think enough of your country to be late to dinner? The light of the sun? You would extinguish it, if you could; for what have you ever done that was fit to be seen in the light? Confess the truth; it is not because you long for the senate chamber or the forum, or even for the world of nature, that you would fain put off dying; it is because you are loth to leave the fish-market, though you have exhausted its stores.[4]
18. You are afraid of death; but how can you scorn it in the midst of a mushroom supper?[5] You wish to live; well, do you know how to live? You are afraid to die. But come now: is this life of yours anything but death? Gaius Caesar was passing along the Via Latina, when a man stepped out from the ranks of the prisoners, his grey beard hanging down even to his breast, and begged to be put to death. “What!” said Caesar, “are you alive now?” That is the answer which should be given to men to whom death would come as a relief. “You are afraid to die; what! are you alive now?” 19. “But,” says one, “I wish to live, for I am engaged in many
- ↑ About 5¾ gallons.
- ↑ Cf. Pliny, xiv. 22 quin immo ut plus capiamus, sacco frangimus vires. Strained wine could be drunk in greater quantities without intoxication.
- ↑ Cf. Dio Cassius, xl. 54, for the exiled Milo’s enjoyment of the mullets of Marseilles.
- ↑ Probably the strong tone of disapproval used in this paragraph is directed against the Roman in general rather than against the industrious Lucilius. It is characteristic of the diatribe.
- ↑ Seneca may be recalling the death of the Emperor Claudius.
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