1To marvel at nothing, Numicius, is almost the one and only thing that can make and keep a man happy. This sun and the stars and the seasons passing at fixed intervals, there are some who can gaze on them imbued with no dread: what do you think of the gifts of the earth, what of the sea that enriches the far Arabs and Indians, what of the shows, the applause and the favours of the friendly citizen, in what way do you believe they should be viewed, with what feeling and expression? 9He who fears their opposites marvels in much the same way as he who desires: in either case agitation is a nuisance, as soon as an unforeseen sight startles either man.
12Whether he rejoices or grieves, desires or fears, what does it matter, if, whenever he has seen anything better or worse than he expected, he is numbed, eyes fixed, in mind and body? 15Let the wise man bear the name of madman, the just man of unjust, if he seeks even Virtue herself beyond what is enough. 17Go now, gaze up at silver and ancient marble and bronzes and works of art, marvel at Tyrian colours with your gems; 19rejoice that a thousand eyes watch you as you speak; 20go busily to the forum in the morning and home in the evening, lest Mutus reap more grain from his dowry fields and (shameful, since he is born of worse stock) he be a marvel to you rather than you to him.
24Whatever is under the earth, time will bring into the sunlight; it will bury and hide what now shines. When Agrippa's colonnade and the Appian Way have seen you well known, it still remains for you to go where Numa and Ancus have gone. 28If your side or kidneys are attacked by sharp disease, seek escape from the disease. You wish to live rightly: who does not? 30If Virtue alone can give this, boldly drop your pleasures and set to work. 31You think virtue is mere words, and a sacred grove firewood: take care that no rival reaches harbour before you, that you do not lose your Cibyran and Bithynian business; 34let a thousand talents be rounded off, as many again, and further a third thousand follow, and the part that squares the heap.
36Of course Queen Money bestows a wife with dowry, credit and friends, birth and beauty, and Persuasion and Venus grace the man well supplied with cash. The king of the Cappadocians is rich in slaves but short of coin: do not be like him. 40Lucullus, as they say, when asked whether he could provide a hundred cloaks for the stage: 'How can I provide so many?' 42he says; 42'yet I shall look, and send what I have.' A little later he writes that he has five thousand cloaks at home; 44the man could take part of them or all. It is a poor house where there is not much to spare that escapes the master's notice and benefits thieves.
46So if wealth alone can make and keep you happy, be the first to return to this task, the last to leave it. 49If display and popularity make a man fortunate, let us buy a slave to tell us names, to nudge our left side and make us stretch our right hand out across the obstacles: 'This man has much influence in the Fabian tribe, that one in the Veline; 53this one will give the fasces to whom he pleases, and, if he is crossed, will snatch the ivory chair from whom he will.' 54Add 'brother', 'father': adopt each one charmingly, according to his age. 56If he who dines well lives well, it is daylight, let us go where our gullet leads; 57let us fish, let us hunt, as Gargilius once did, who used to order nets, spears and slaves to cross the crowded forum in the morning, so that one mule out of many, while the people watched, might bring back a boar he had bought; let us bathe, undigested and bloated, forgetting what is seemly and what is not, deserving the Caerite register, like the vicious crew of Ithacan Ulysses, to whom forbidden pleasure was dearer than their homeland.
65If, as Mimnermus holds, nothing is pleasant without love and jests, live amid love and jests. 67Live, farewell! 67If you know anything more right than these precepts, share it frankly; 68if not, use these with me.