EPISTLES LXXXI., LXXXII.
have received; I do not ask it back; I do not demand it. Let it be safe to have conferred a favour.”[1] There is no worse hatred than that which springs from shame at the desecration of a benefit.[2] Farewell.
LXXXII. ON THE NATURAL FEAR OF DEATH
1. I have already ceased to be anxious about you. “Whom then of the gods,” you ask, “have you found as your voucher?”[3] A god, let me tell you, who deceives no one,—a soul in love with that which is upright and good. The better part of yourself is on safe ground. Fortune can inflict injury upon you; what is more pertinent is that I have no fears lest you do injury to yourself. Proceed as you have begun, and settle yourself in this way of living, not luxuriously, but calmly. 2. I prefer to be in trouble rather than in luxury; and you had better interpret the term “in trouble” as popular usage is wont to interpret it: living a “hard,” “rough,” “toilsome” life. We are wont to hear the lives of certain men praised as follows, when they are objects of unpopularity: “So-and-So lives luxuriously”; but by this they mean: “He is softened by luxury.” For the soul is made womanish by degrees, and is weakened until it matches the ease and laziness in which it lies. Lo, is it not better for one who is really a man even to become hardened[4]? Next, these same dandies fear that which they have made their own lives resemble. Much difference is there between
- ↑ The words are put into the mouth of an imaginary benefactor who fears for his own life.
- ↑ Cf. Tac. Agric. 42 proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris.
- ↑ One who incurs liability by taking upon himself the debt of another. It is part of the process known as intercessio.
- ↑ Rather than mollis.
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