1You now understand that you must be drawn out of those showy and harmful occupations of yours. 1But you ask how you can achieve this. 1Some things can be shown only by someone who is present. 1A doctor cannot choose the time for food or for a bath by letter; 1the pulse must be felt. 1There is an old proverb that the gladiator makes his plan in the arena; 1something in his opponent's face, something in the movement of his hand, something in the very leaning of his body warns the man who watches closely. 2What is usually done, and what ought to be done, can be both prescribed and written down in general terms; 2such advice is given not only to those who are absent, but even to those who come after us.
2The other question, when or how a thing should be done, no one will advise from far away, since it must be decided in the face of the facts themselves. 3It takes not only a man who is present, but one who is wide awake, to watch for an opportunity as it hurries past. 3So look around for it, and if you see it, seize it, and with all your energy, with all your strength, make it your business to strip yourself of those duties. 3And indeed, pay attention to the opinion I am going to give. 3I hold that you must depart either from that life of yours or from life itself.
3But I also think that you must go by a gentle path, so that what you have badly entangled you may untie rather than break off, provided that, if there is no other way of untying it, you do even break it off. 3No one is so timid that he would rather hang forever than fall once. 4Meanwhile, and this comes first, do not hamper yourself. 4Be content with the business into which you have gone down, or, as you prefer it to seem, into which you have fallen. 4There is no reason for you to strive after anything further; 4or else you will lose your excuse, and it will be plain that you did not fall into it.
4For those things which people usually say are false: 'I could not do otherwise. 4What if I had not wanted to? 4I had to.' 4No one is obliged to chase good fortune at a run; 4it is something, even if you do not resist, to stand still and not press on when fortune carries you forward. 5Surely you will not be offended if I not only come to the consultation myself, but call in others too, and indeed men wiser than I am, to whom I usually refer anything I am deliberating on? 5Read the letter of Epicurus that bears on this matter, the one addressed to Idomeneus, whom he asks to flee as fast as he can and to hurry, before some greater force intervenes and takes away his freedom to withdraw.
6Yet he also adds that nothing should be attempted except when it can be attempted fittingly and at the right time. 6But when that long-awaited time has come, he says, one must leap out. 6He forbids the man who is thinking of escape to doze, and he hopes for a safe way out even from the most difficult situations, if we neither hurry before the time nor hang back when the time comes. 7Now, I suppose, you want to hear the Stoic view as well. 7There is no reason for anyone to slander them to you as reckless; 7they are more cautious than brave. 7Perhaps you expect them to say this to you: 'It is shameful to give way under a burden.
7Wrestle with the duty which you have once taken on. 7He is no brave and vigorous man who runs away from toil, unless his spirit grows with the very difficulty of things.' 8These things will be said to you, if perseverance is going to be worth the effort, if there is nothing unworthy of a good man that will have to be done or suffered; 8otherwise he will not wear himself out with sordid and degrading toil, nor will he be busy for the sake of being busy. 8Nor will he do what you think he will do, namely remain entangled in ambitious affairs and always endure their surges. 8But when he sees how grave, how uncertain, how perilous are the affairs in which he was rolling about, he will step back; he will not turn tail, but will withdraw gradually to safety.
9Moreover, my Lucilius, it is easy to escape from occupations if you despise the rewards of occupations. 9These are what delay and detain us: 'What then? 9Shall I give up such great hopes? 9Shall I go away at the very harvest? 9Will my side be bare, my litter unescorted, my hall empty?' 9It is from these things, then, that men withdraw unwillingly; they love the wages of their miseries, while they curse the miseries themselves. 10They complain about ambition as they do about a mistress; 10that is, if you look into their true feelings, they do not hate it, they are quarrelling with it. 10Examine closely those who lament what they have longed for and talk of escaping from things which they cannot do without; 10you will see that their delay is voluntary in staying with what they say they bear with difficulty and misery.
11So it is, Lucilius; 11slavery holds few men fast, but more hold fast to slavery. 11But if you have it in mind to lay it down, and if freedom has pleased you in good faith, and you seek advice only for this one purpose, that you may manage to do it without unending anxiety, why should the whole company of Stoics not approve of you? 11All the Zenos and Chrysippuses will urge on you what is moderate, what is honourable, what is fitting for you. 12But if you are dodging about for this reason, to look around and see how much you can take with you and with how great a sum of money you can furnish your leisure, you will never find a way out.
12No one swims to shore with his baggage. 12Rise up to a better life with the gods' favour, but not with favour such as they show to those men to whom, with kind and gracious faces, they have granted splendid evils, the gods being excused only on this one ground, that those things which burn and torture were given to men who prayed for them. 13I was already pressing the seal on the letter; 13it must be opened again, so that it may come to you with its customary little present and carry with it some splendid saying, and look, one occurs to me, of which I do not know whether it is more true or more eloquent.
13'Whose?' 13you ask; 13Epicurus', for I am still laying claim to other men's baggage; 14'Everyone leaves life just as if he had only now entered it.' 14Seize anyone you like, a young man, an old man, a man in middle life; 14you will find him equally afraid of death, equally ignorant of life. 14No one has anything finished, for we have put off our concerns into the future. 14Nothing in that saying delights me more than that old men are reproached with infancy. 15'No one,' he says, 'leaves life otherwise than as one who has just been born.' 15That is false; 15we die worse than we are born. 15That fault is ours, not nature's.
15She ought to complain about us and say: 'What is this? 15I brought you into being without desires, without fears, without superstition, without treachery and the other plagues; 15go out as you came in.' 16A man has grasped wisdom if he dies as free from care as he is born; 16but as it is we tremble when danger has come near; neither our courage nor our colour holds steady; 16tears fall that will do no good. 16What is more shameful than to be anxious on the very threshold of freedom from care? 17But the reason is this, that we are empty of all goods, and we are distressed at the loss of life.
17For no part of it has stayed behind with us; 17it has passed on and flowed away. 17No one cares how well he lives, but how long, although it is within everyone's reach to live well, but within no one's to live long. 17Farewell.