1As far as our two friends are concerned, we must go by different paths; 1for the faults of the one must be corrected, those of the other broken. 1I shall use complete frankness. 1I do not love him unless I offend him. 1'What then?' 1you say, 'do you intend to keep a forty-year-old ward under your guardianship? 1Consider his age, already hardened and unmanageable. 1He cannot be reshaped; 1it is soft things that are moulded.' 2Whether I shall succeed, I do not know. 2I would rather lack success than loyalty. 2And you should not despair that even long-standing invalids can be cured, if you stand firm against their intemperance, if you force them to do and to endure many things against their will.
2Not even about the other have I enough confidence, except in this, that he still blushes at doing wrong. 2This sense of shame must be nourished, and as long as it lasts in his mind, there will be some room for good hope. 2With this veteran, I think, we must deal more sparingly, so that he does not come to despair of himself. 3Nor has there been any better time for tackling him than now, while he is taking a rest, while he looks like a reformed man. 3This pause of his has deceived others; 3me it does not fool. 3I expect his faults to return with heavy interest, faults which I know are now idle, not absent.
3I shall devote days to this matter and find out whether anything can be done or not. 4As for you, show yourself brave to us, as you are doing, and pack up your baggage. 4None of the things we have is necessary. 4Let us return to the law of nature; 4riches are ready to hand. 4What we need is either free or cheap; 4nature craves bread and water. No one is poor in respect of these things, and whoever has confined his desire within them may compete in happiness with Jupiter himself, as Epicurus says, some saying of whose I shall wrap up in this letter. 5'Do everything,' he says, 'as if Epicurus were watching.' 5It is without doubt useful to have set a guardian over oneself, and to have someone you can look back to, whom you consider present at your thoughts.
5It is indeed far nobler to live as if under the eyes of some good man who is always present, but I am content even with this, that you do whatever you do as if someone were watching; 5solitude prompts us to every evil. 6When you have progressed so far that you have respect even for yourself, you will be allowed to dismiss your tutor; 6meanwhile guard yourself with the authority of certain men, whether it be the famous Cato or Scipio or Laelius, or someone of the kind at whose arrival even abandoned men would suppress their vices, while you make yourself the sort of person in whose company you would not dare to do wrong.
6When you have achieved this, and some esteem for yourself has begun to dwell with you, I shall begin to allow you what Epicurus likewise advises: 'Withdraw into yourself above all when you are forced to be in a crowd.' 7You must become unlike the many. 7While it is not safe for you to withdraw into yourself, look around at each person in turn; 7there is no one who would not be better off with anyone at all than with himself. 7'Withdraw into yourself above all when you are forced to be in a crowd'; 7that is, if you are a good man, a quiet one, a self-controlled one. 7Otherwise you must withdraw from yourself into the crowd; 7there you are too close to a bad man.
7Farewell.