1Do you think this has happened to you alone, and do you wonder at it as something new, that with such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not shaken off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? 1It is your mind you must change, not your sky. 1Though you have crossed the vast sea, though, as our Virgil says, 'lands and cities recede', your vices will follow you wherever you arrive. 2To someone making this same complaint Socrates said: 'Why are you surprised that your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? 2You are weighed down by the same cause that drove you out.' 2What help can novelty of lands give?
2What help can acquaintance with cities or places? 2All that tossing about comes to nothing. 2Do you ask why this flight of yours does not help you? 2You flee with yourself. 2The burden on your mind must be laid down; 2until then, no place will please you. 3Imagine that your condition now is like that of the prophetess whom our Virgil brings on, already roused and goaded and holding within her much breath that is not her own: 'The prophetess raves, if she might shake the great god from her breast.' 3You go here and there to shake off the weight that sits on you, which becomes more troublesome through the very tossing, just as in a ship cargo that stays still presses less, while cargo rolling unevenly sinks more quickly the side on which it has settled.
3Whatever you do, you do against yourself, and by the very motion you harm yourself; 3for you are shaking a sick man. 4But when you have removed that evil, every change of place will become pleasant; 4you may be driven out to the farthest lands, you may be settled in any corner of barbarian country, that dwelling, whatever it is, will be hospitable to you. 4Who you are when you come matters more than where you come to, and therefore we ought not to bind our mind to any one place. 4We must live with this conviction: 'I was not born for one corner; my homeland is this whole world.' 5If this were clear to you, you would not wonder that you get no help from the variety of regions to which you keep moving out of weariness with the ones before.
5For the first of them would have pleased you, if you believed every land was yours. 5As it is, you are not travelling but wandering, and are driven about and change from place to place, when what you seek, to live well, is set down in every place. 6Can anything be as turbulent as the forum? 6Even there one may live quietly, if need be. 6But if one were free to order one's life, I would flee far even from the sight and neighbourhood of the forum. 6For as unhealthy places try even the strongest constitution, so too for a mind that is good but not yet perfect and still recovering, 6there are some places that are not wholesome enough.
7I disagree with those who go into the midst of the waves and, approving of a turbulent life, wrestle every day with great spirit against the difficulties of affairs. 7The wise man will endure such things, not choose them, and will prefer to be at peace rather than at war. 7It is of little use to have thrown off your own vices if you must quarrel with other people's. 8'The Thirty Tyrants,' someone says, 'stood around Socrates and could not break his spirit.' 8What does it matter how many masters there are? 8Slavery is one and the same. 8Whoever has despised it is free, however great the crowd of masters.
9It is time to stop, but only once I have paid the toll. 9'The knowledge of wrongdoing is the beginning of salvation.' 9Epicurus seems to me to have said this excellently. 9For whoever does not know that he is doing wrong does not want to be corrected; 9you must catch yourself out before you can reform. 10Some men boast of their vices; 10do you suppose that those who count their faults in place of virtues give any thought to a cure? 10Therefore, as far as you can, convict yourself, investigate yourself; 10play the part first of accuser, then of judge, last of all of intercessor. 10Sometimes give yourself offence. 10Farewell.