1I know that you have plenty of spirit. 1For even before you equipped yourself with wholesome precepts that overcome hardships, you were well enough satisfied with yourself against fortune, and much more so after you came to grips with her and tested your strength, which can never give sure confidence in itself except when many difficulties have appeared on this side and that, and sometimes have even come quite close; 1it is thus that the true mind, one that will never come under another's control, is put to the proof. 2This is its assay: an athlete cannot bring great spirit to the contest if he has never been bruised; 2the one who has seen his own blood, whose teeth have rattled under a fist, the one who, tripped up, has borne his opponent's whole weight and, though thrown down, did not throw down his spirit, who each time he fell rose again more defiant, goes down to the fight with great hope.
3So, to follow out that comparison, fortune has often been on top of you before now, and yet you did not surrender, but sprang up and stood your ground more fiercely. 3For virtue adds much to itself when it is provoked; 3still, if you think fit, accept from me some aids with which you can fortify yourself. 4There are more things, Lucilius, that frighten us than that crush us, and we suffer more often in opinion than in reality. 4I am not speaking with you in the Stoic tongue but in this humbler one. 4For we Stoics say that all those things that wring groans and bellowing from us are trivial and to be despised; 4let us leave aside these grand words, though, good gods, they are true.
4This I advise you: do not be wretched before the time, since the things that you dreaded as though they were looming will perhaps never come, and certainly have not come yet. 5Some things, then, torment us more than they ought; 5some torment us before they ought; 5some torment us when they ought not to at all. 5We either magnify our pain, or invent it, or anticipate it. 5The first of these, since the matter is in dispute and we have a suit already joined, may be postponed for the present. 5What I call trivial, you will maintain is very serious; 5I know that some laugh under the lash, and others groan at a slap.
5Later we shall see whether these things are strong by their own strength or by our weakness. 6Grant me this: whenever people have gathered round you to persuade you that you are wretched, think not about what you hear but about what you feel, take counsel with your own endurance, and question yourself, since you know your own affairs best: Why is it that these people bewail me? 6Why is it that they tremble, that they fear even catching it from me, as if calamity could leap across? 6Is there some evil in this, or is the thing more disreputable than evil? 6Question yourself: Am I tormented and grieving without cause, and making an evil of what is not an evil?
7'How,' you say, 'am I to know whether the things that distress me are empty or real?' 7Take this rule for the matter: we are tormented either by present things, or by future ones, or by both. 7About present things judgement is easy; 7if your body is free and sound, and there is no pain from any injury. 7We shall see what is to come. 7Today it gives no trouble. 8'But it is coming.' 8First consider whether there are sure proofs that the evil is coming. 8For mostly we suffer from suspicions, and we are mocked by rumour, which usually finishes wars, but finishes off individuals far more. 8So it is, my Lucilius; 8we quickly give way to opinion. We do not test the things that lead us into fear, nor examine them, but we panic and turn our backs just like those whom dust raised by a stampede of cattle has driven out of their camp, or those whom some tale spread without a source has terrified.
9Somehow empty things disturb us more. 9For real things have their own limit; 9whatever comes from uncertainty is handed over to conjecture and to the licence of a frightened mind. 9And so no fears are so destructive, so beyond recall, as panic fears. 9For other fears are without reason, these without mind. 10Let us therefore look into the matter carefully. 10It is likely that some evil is coming; 10it is not at once true. 10How many things have come unexpected! 10How many expected have never appeared at all! 10Even if it is coming, what good is it to run out to meet your pain? 10You will grieve soon enough when it has come; 10meanwhile promise yourself better things.
11What gain will you make? 11Time. 11Many things will intervene through which a danger that is near, or even brought close, will either halt, or cease, or pass on to another's head. 11A fire has left a way open for escape; 11some men a collapsing building has set down gently; 11sometimes the sword has been called back from the very neck; 11some man has outlived his own executioner. 11Even bad fortune has its fickleness. 11Perhaps it will be, perhaps it will not be; 11meanwhile it is not. 11Set better things before yourself. 12Sometimes, though no signs appear to foretell anything evil, the mind invents false images for itself; 12either it twists some word of doubtful meaning for the worse, or it imagines someone's offence against it to be greater than it is, and thinks not how angry he is but how much an angry man may do.
12But there is no reason for living, no limit to our miseries, if everything is feared as much as it can be; 12here let prudence help you, here with strength of mind spurn even a fear that is plain to see. 12If not, drive out one fault with another; 12temper fear with hope. 12Nothing among the things that are feared is so certain that it is not more certain both that what we dread subsides and that what we hope for deceives. 13So weigh hope and fear, and whenever everything is uncertain, favour yourself; 13believe what you prefer. 13If fear has more votes, nonetheless lean rather to this side and stop troubling yourself, and turn this over in your mind again and again: that the greater part of mortals, though nothing is wrong with them and nothing is certain to come, are in a ferment and run about.
13For no one resists himself once he has begun to be driven, nor brings his fear back to the truth. 13No one says: 'The source is worthless; he is worthless, and either invented this or believed it.' 13We let ourselves be carried along by the breeze. 14We take fright at doubtful things as if they were certain. 14We do not keep a sense of proportion in things. 14A pebble of doubt turns at once into fear. 14I am ashamed both to speak with you so gloomily and to revive you with such gentle remedies. 14Let another say: 'Perhaps it will not come.' 14You say: 'What then, if it does come?
14We shall see which of us wins. 14Perhaps it comes for my good, and that death will bring honour to my life.' 14Hemlock made Socrates great. 14Wrest from Cato the sword, the defender of his freedom; 14you will have taken away a great part of his glory. 15I am exhorting you too long, when what you need is reminding rather than exhortation. 15We are not leading you in a direction contrary to your nature; 15you were born for the things that we speak of. 15All the more, then, increase and adorn your own good. 16But now I shall make an end of the letter, once I have pressed its seal upon it, that is, have entrusted it with some splendid saying to carry to you.
16'Among its other evils folly has this one too: it is always beginning to live.' 16Consider what this saying means, Lucilius, best of men, and you will understand how disgraceful is the fickleness of men who every day lay new foundations for life and begin new hopes even at the end. 17Look around you at individuals; 17you will come across old men who are preparing themselves at this very moment for office-seeking, for travels abroad, for business. 17And what is more disgraceful than an old man beginning to live? 17I would not add the author of this saying if it were not rather little known and not among the familiar sayings of Epicurus, which I have allowed myself both to praise and to adopt.
17Farewell.