1Persevere as you have begun, and hasten as much as you can, so that you may enjoy the longer a mind corrected and well ordered. 1You will enjoy it, indeed, even while you are correcting it, even while you are ordering it; 1yet different is that pleasure which is gained from contemplating a mind pure and shining, free of every stain. 2You certainly remember how much joy you felt when you laid aside the bordered gown, put on the toga of manhood and were escorted into the forum; 2expect a greater one when you have laid aside the mind of a boy and philosophy has enrolled you among men. 2For up to now there remains in us not boyhood but, what is more serious, boyishness.
2And this indeed is the worse because we have the authority of old men, the faults of boys, and not only of boys but of infants. 2Boys fear trifles, infants fear phantoms, we fear both. 3Only make progress; 3you will understand that some things are to be feared less for the very reason that they bring much fear. 3No evil is great which is the last. 3Death comes to you; 3it would be something to fear if it could remain with you; 3but it must either not arrive or pass on. 4'It is difficult,' you say, 'to bring the mind to a contempt for life.' 4Do you not see for what trivial reasons it is despised?
4One man hanged himself with a noose before his mistress's door, another threw himself from the roof so as not to hear his master's ill temper any longer, another, so as not to be brought back from flight, drove a sword into his vitals. 4Do you not think that virtue will accomplish what excessive fear accomplishes? 4No one can have a life free from care who thinks too much about prolonging it, who counts living through many consuls among the great goods. 5Rehearse this every day, so that you may be able to leave life with a calm mind, a life which many embrace and cling to as those swept away by a torrent cling to brambles and rough rocks.
5Most men toss wretchedly between the fear of death and the torments of life, and do not want to live, yet do not know how to die. 6Make your whole life pleasant, then, by laying aside all anxiety about it. 6No good thing helps its possessor unless the mind is prepared for its loss; 6and the loss of nothing is easier than of that which, once lost, cannot be missed. 6So against these things, which can befall even the most powerful, encourage and harden yourself. 7On the head of Pompey a ward and a eunuch passed sentence, on Crassus a cruel and insolent Parthian; 7Gaius Caesar ordered Lepidus to offer his neck to the tribune Dexter, and offered his own to Chaerea.
7Fortune has raised no one so high that she did not threaten him as much as she had allowed him. 7Do not trust this calm; 7in a moment the sea is overturned. 7On the same day that ships have sported, they are swallowed up. 8Reflect that both a robber and an enemy can put a sword to your throat: even if a greater power is lacking, there is no slave who does not hold over you the power of life and death. 8This is what I say: whoever has despised his own life is master of yours. 8Review the examples of those who have perished through plots in their own household, either by open force or by guile; 8you will understand that no fewer have fallen through the anger of slaves than through that of kings.
8So what does it matter to you how powerful the man you fear may be, when the thing for which you fear him is in anyone's power? 9But if perhaps you fall into the hands of enemies, the victor will order you to be led away; 9to the very place, of course, to which you are being led already. 9Why do you deceive yourself and only now for the first time realise this, which you have long been undergoing? 9This is what I say: from the moment you were born, you are being led there. 9These and such thoughts must be turned over in the mind, if we wish to await calmly that last hour, the fear of which makes all the others restless.
10But to put an end to this letter, take what has pleased me today. 10And this too has been taken from another man's gardens. 10'Poverty brought into line with the law of nature is great wealth.' 10And do you know what limits that law of nature sets for us? 10Not to hunger, not to thirst, not to be cold. 10To drive off hunger and thirst, it is not necessary to sit at haughty thresholds or to endure a heavy frown and even insulting condescension, nor is it necessary to brave the seas or follow the camp; 10what nature requires is easy to obtain, and close at hand. 11It is for superfluous things that men sweat.
11It is these that wear out the toga, that force us to grow old under canvas, that dash us on foreign shores. 11What is enough is ready to hand. 11He who is on good terms with poverty is rich. 11Farewell.