1A friend of yours of good character has spoken with me; his first conversation showed how much spirit there was in him, how much talent, how much progress already. 1He has given us a foretaste, and he will live up to it. 1For he did not speak from preparation, but was caught off guard. 1When he was collecting himself, he could scarcely shake off his modesty, a good sign in a young man; 1so deeply did a blush spread over him. 1This, as far as I suspect, will stay with him even when he has strengthened himself and stripped off all his faults, even when he is wise. 1For the natural faults of the body are not laid aside by any wisdom.
1Whatever is implanted and inborn is softened by training, not overcome. 2Even in some very steady men sweat breaks out in the sight of the people, just as it usually does in those who are tired and overheated; in some the knees tremble when they are about to speak; in some the teeth chatter, the tongue stumbles, the lips close together. 2These things neither training nor practice ever shakes off, but nature exerts its own power and by that weakness reminds even the strongest of itself. 3Among these I know that the blush too is to be counted, which floods suddenly over even the most dignified men. 3It shows more, indeed, in the young, who have more heat and a tender brow; 3nonetheless it touches both veterans and old men.
3Some are never more to be feared than when they have blushed, as if they had poured out all their sense of shame. 4Sulla was at his most violent when blood had rushed into his face. 4Nothing was softer than the face of Pompey; 4he never failed to blush in front of a number of people, especially at public assemblies. 4I remember that Fabianus blushed when he had been brought into the senate as a witness, and this modesty became him wonderfully. 5This does not happen from weakness of mind but from the novelty of the situation, which, even if it does not shake the unpractised, does move them, inclined as they are to it by a natural susceptibility of the body.
5For just as some men are of good blood, so some are of blood that is quick and lively and rises swiftly to the face. 6These things, as I said, no wisdom drives away; 6otherwise it would hold the nature of things under its command, if it erased all faults. 6Whatever the conditions of birth and the temperament of the body have assigned will cling, however much and however long the mind has composed itself. 6None of these can be forbidden, any more than summoned. 7Actors on the stage, who imitate the emotions, who portray fear and trembling, who represent sadness, imitate modesty by this sign: they lower their faces, soften their words, fix their eyes on the ground and keep them down.
7A blush they cannot force out of themselves; 7it is neither prevented nor brought on. 7Against these things wisdom promises nothing, achieves nothing; 7they are their own masters: they come unbidden, they depart unbidden. 8Now the letter demands its closing phrase. 8Take one, and a useful and wholesome one at that, which I want you to fix in your mind: 'We should cherish some good man and keep him always before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching and do everything as if he saw it.' 9This, my Lucilius, is what Epicurus advised. 9He has given us a guardian and a tutor, and not without reason.
9A great part of wrongdoing is removed if a witness stands by those about to do wrong. 9Let the mind have someone whom it reveres, by whose authority it may make even its private life more sacred. 9Happy the man who improves others not only when present but even when thought of! 9Happy the man who can so revere someone that even at the memory of him he composes and orders himself! 9He who can so revere another will soon be worthy of reverence himself. 10Choose, then, Cato. 10If he seems to you too stern, choose a man of gentler spirit, Laelius. 10Choose one whose life and speech, and whose very face, showing the mind behind it, have pleased you; 10hold him always before you, as guardian or as example.
10We need, I say, someone against whom our characters may measure themselves; 10except with a ruler you will not straighten what is crooked. 10Farewell.