1It is the month of December; 1just now the city is sweating most of all. 1Licence has been granted to public luxury. 1Everything resounds with huge preparations, as though there were any difference between the Saturnalia and working days. 1So little difference is there that he does not seem to me to have been wrong who said that once December was a month, but now it is a year. 2If I had you here, I would gladly confer with you about what you thought ought to be done: whether nothing should be changed in our daily routine, or whether, so as not to seem at odds with public custom, we should both dine more merrily and put off the toga.
2For we have changed our dress for the sake of pleasure and for festival days, something which used not to happen except in a time of upheaval and sorrow for the state. 3If I know you well, acting the part of an arbiter you would have wished us to be neither like the capped crowd in all things nor unlike it in all things; 3unless perhaps it is on these days most of all that the mind must be commanded to abstain alone from pleasures, just when the whole crowd has sunk down into them; 3for it gains the surest proof of its own firmness if it neither goes nor is drawn away towards things that are alluring and lead to luxury.
4The one is much braver, to stay dry and sober while the people are drunk and vomiting; the other more moderate, not to single oneself out or make oneself conspicuous, nor yet to mingle with everyone, but to do the same things, though not in the same way. 4For one may keep a festival day without luxury. 5However, I am so keen to test the firmness of your mind that, following the precept of great men, I shall give you a precept too: set aside some days in which, content with the scantiest and cheapest food and with rough and coarse clothing, you say to yourself: 'Is this what was feared?' 6It is in the very midst of security that the mind should prepare itself for hardships, and be strengthened against the injuries of fortune amid her favours.
6The soldier performs manoeuvres in the midst of peace, throws up a rampart with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself with needless toil, so that he may be equal to necessary toil. 6If you do not want a man to panic in the actual crisis, train him before it. 6This is the course followed by those who, imitating poverty every month, came close to want, so that they might never be terrified by what they had often rehearsed. 7You need not think now that I mean Timon-style dinners and paupers' cells, and whatever else luxury plays with out of boredom with riches; 7let the pallet be a real one, and the cloak, and the bread hard and coarse.
7Endure this for three or four days, sometimes for more, so that it may be not a game but a trial; 7then, believe me, Lucilius, you will leap for joy when filled for two pennies, and you will understand that there is no need of fortune for freedom from care; 7for what is enough for necessity she gives even when angry. 8Yet there is no reason for you to think you are doing much. 8For you will be doing what many thousands of slaves, many thousands of poor men do; 8admire yourself on this account, that you will do it unforced, that it will be as easy for you to endure it always as to try it now and then.
8Let us train at the post. 8And so that fortune may not catch us unprepared, let poverty become familiar to us. 8We shall be rich with less anxiety if we know how far from burdensome it is to be poor. 9Epicurus, that master of pleasure, used to have fixed days on which he would satisfy his hunger stingily, to see whether anything was lacking from full and complete pleasure, or how much was lacking, and whether it was worth making up with great labour. 9At least he says this in those letters which he wrote to Polyaenus in the archonship of Charinus. 9And indeed he boasts that he is fed for less than a penny, but Metrodorus, who had not yet made so much progress, for a whole penny.
10Do you think there is a full stomach in fare like this? 10There is pleasure too. 10And not that light and fleeting pleasure which must be constantly renewed, but a pleasure that is stable and sure. 10For water and barley-meal or a crust of barley bread is not a delightful thing, but the highest pleasure is to be able to draw pleasure even from these, and to have brought oneself down to what no unfairness of fortune can snatch away. 11Prison fare is more generous; those set aside for capital punishment are not fed so meanly by the man who is going to kill them. How great a greatness of mind it is to descend of one's own accord to what need not be feared even by those condemned to the uttermost!
11This is to forestall the weapons of fortune. 12Begin, then, my Lucilius, to follow the custom of these men and appoint some days on which you may withdraw from your affairs and make yourself familiar with very little; 12begin to have dealings with poverty. 12'Dare, stranger, to despise wealth, and you too fashion yourself worthy of the god.' 13No one else is worthy of the god than he who has despised wealth. 13I do not forbid you to possess it, but I want to bring it about that you possess it without fear; 13and this you will achieve in one way only, if you persuade yourself that you will live happily even without it, if you always look on it as about to depart.
14But now let us begin to fold up the letter. 14'First,' you say, 'pay what you owe.' 14I shall refer you to Epicurus; 14the payment will be made by him: 'Immoderate anger begets madness.' 14How true this is you are bound to know, since you have had both a slave and an enemy. 15This passion blazes up against all sorts of people; 15it is born as much from love as from hatred, no less amid serious matters than amid sport and jest. 15Nor does it matter how great the cause it springs from, but what kind of mind it reaches. 15So with fire it does not matter how great it is, but where it falls.
15For solid things do not catch even the greatest fire; 15on the other hand, things that are dry and easily kindled nurse even a spark into a conflagration. 15So it is, my Lucilius: the outcome of great anger is madness, and therefore anger must be avoided not for the sake of moderation, but for the sake of sanity. 15Farewell.