1The ancients had a custom, preserved right down to my own time, of adding to the first words of a letter: 'If you are well, it is good; I am well.' 1We rightly say: 'If you are practising philosophy, it is good.' 1For this alone is what being well means. 1Without this the mind is sick. 1The body too, even if it has great strength, is healthy only in the way that a madman's or a lunatic's is. 2So attend above all to this health, and then also to that second kind, which will not cost you much if you wish to be well. 2For it is foolish, my Lucilius, and not at all fitting for a man of letters, to be busy exercising the arms and broadening the neck and strengthening the sides; 2even when your fattening has gone well and your muscles have grown, you will never equal either the strength or the weight of a fatted ox.
2Add now that by a greater burden of body the mind is crushed and is less nimble. 2So, as far as you can, keep your body within bounds and make room for the mind. 3Many disadvantages follow those devoted to this concern; 3first, the exercises, whose toil drains the vital spirit and makes it unfit for concentration and for keener studies. 3Next, by an abundance of food subtlety of mind is impeded. 3Add slaves of the worst stamp taken on as trainers, men occupied between oil and wine, for whom the day has been spent to their heart's desire if they have sweated well, if in place of what has flowed out they have poured back plenty of drink, which will sink deeper because of the fasting.
3To drink and to sweat is the life of a man with a weak stomach. 4There are exercises both easy and brief, which tire the body without delay and are sparing of time, of which special account must be taken: running, and moving the hands with some weight, and jumping, either the kind that lifts the body high or the kind that sends it far, or the kind that is, so to speak, Salian, or, to put it more insultingly, the fuller's; 4choose the practice of any one of these you like, plain and easy. 5Whatever you do, come back quickly from body to mind. 5Exercise it night and day; 5it is nourished by moderate labour.
5This exercise no cold, no heat will hinder, not even old age. 5Cultivate that good which grows better with age. 6Nor do I bid you always to be bent over a book or writing tablets; 6some respite must be given to the mind, yet in such a way that it is not unstrung but relaxed. 6Riding in a carriage both shakes up the body and does not hinder study; 6you can read, you can dictate, you can talk, you can listen, none of which even walking prevents. 7Nor should you despise exercise of the voice, though I forbid you to raise it by steps and fixed scales and then lower it.
7What if you should then want to learn how to walk? 7Admit those whom hunger has taught new arts; 7there will be one to regulate your steps and watch your cheeks as you eat, and go as far as you have drawn on his boldness by your patience and credulity. 7What then? 7Is your voice to begin straight away with shouting and at its highest strain? 7So natural is it to rouse oneself little by little that even people quarrelling begin with conversation and pass on to shouting. 7No one at once calls on the citizens for help. 8So, however the impulse of your mind urges you, make your attack now more vehement, now gentler, as your voice too will encourage you, in that direction.
8Let it, when you draw it back and recall it, come down with restraint, not drop; 8let it go off at a middle pitch and not rage in an untrained and rustic fashion. 8For our aim is not that the voice should be exercised, but that it should exercise us. 9I have taken no small amount of trouble off your hands; 9one little fee and one Greek saying will be added to these favours. 9Here is a remarkable precept: 'The fool's life is ungrateful and anxious; 9it is carried wholly towards the future.' 9'Who,' you ask, 'says this?' 9The same man as above. 9What life do you think is now being called foolish?
9That of Baba and Isio? 9That is not so; 9it is ours that is meant, we whom blind desire hurls headlong into what will harm us, and certainly will never satisfy us, we for whom, if anything could be enough, it would have been already, we who do not consider how pleasant it is to ask for nothing, how splendid it is to be full and not to depend on fortune. 10So from time to time, Lucilius, recall how much you have achieved. 10When you have looked at how many are ahead of you, think how many are behind. 10If you wish to be grateful towards the gods and towards your own life, think how many you have overtaken.
10What have you to do with the rest? 10You have overtaken yourself. 11Set a limit which you would not even wish to pass, if you could; 11let those treacherous goods depart at last, better to those who hope for them than to those who have attained them. 11If there were anything solid in them, they would at some point fill us as well; 11as it is, they rouse the thirst of those who drink them. 11Let showy trappings be dismissed. 11And as for what the uncertain lot of future time rolls on, why should I rather beg fortune to give it than beg myself not to seek it? 11And why should I seek it?
11Am I to heap things up, forgetting human frailty? 11For what am I to toil? 11Look, this day is the last. 11Suppose it is not; 11it is near the last. Farewell.