1It is true, my Lucilius, that a man is slack and careless who is led to remember a friend only because some place reminds him; 1yet sometimes familiar places call forth the longing stored away in our mind, and they do not restore a memory that was extinguished but stir up one that was at rest, just as a slave dear to the one who has been lost, or a garment, or a house, renews the grief of mourners, even if it has been softened by time. 1See how Campania, and above all the sight of Naples and of your beloved Pompeii, have made my longing for you incredibly fresh; 1you are wholly before my eyes.
1I am parting from you at this very moment. 1I see you swallowing your tears and not resisting enough your feelings as they break out in the very act of restraint. 1I seem to have lost you just now. 2For what is not 'just now', if you remember it? 2Just now I sat as a boy with the philosopher Sotion, just now I began to plead cases, just now I ceased to wish to plead, just now I ceased to be able. 2Boundless is the swiftness of time, and it is more apparent to those who look back. 2For it escapes the notice of those intent on the present; 2so gentle is the passage of its headlong flight.
3Do you ask the reason for this? 3Whatever time has passed is in the same place; 3it is seen all alike, it lies together. 3Everything falls into the same abyss. 3And besides, there cannot be long intervals in a thing which is short as a whole. 3What we live is a point, and even less than a point. 3But even this tiny thing nature has mocked with the appearance of a longer span; 3out of it she has made one part infancy, another boyhood, another youth, another a kind of decline from youth to old age, another old age itself. 3How many steps she has set in how narrow a space!
4Just now I saw you off; 4and yet this 'just now' is a good part of our life, whose brevity, we should reflect, will some day come to an end. 4Time did not use to seem so swift to me; 4now its course appears incredible, whether because I feel the finishing line being brought closer, or because I have begun to pay attention and to reckon up my loss. 5All the more, then, am I indignant that some men spend the greater part of this time, which cannot suffice even for necessary things, however carefully it is guarded, on superfluous ones. 5Cicero says that if his lifetime were doubled, he would not have time to read the lyric poets; 5put the dialecticians in the same class; 5they are foolish in a gloomier way.
5The poets frolic openly; these men think they are doing something serious. 6Nor do I deny that one should glance at these things, but only glance at them and greet them from the threshold, for this one purpose, that we may not be deceived and judge that there is some great and secret good in them. 6Why do you torture and waste yourself over a question which it is more subtle to have despised than to solve? 6It is for a man who is free from care and travelling at his ease to gather up trifles; 6when the enemy presses from behind and the soldier has been ordered to move, necessity shakes out whatever leisurely peace had collected.
7I have no time to chase after words of doubtful meaning and to try out my cunning on them. 7'Look what peoples are assembling, what walls, with gates shut, are sharpening the sword.' 7I must listen with a great heart to this din of war resounding all around. 8I would rightly seem mad to everyone if, while old men and women were heaping up stones to fortify the walls, while the armed young men inside the gates were awaiting or demanding the signal for a sally, while the enemy's weapons were quivering in the gates and the very ground was trembling with mines and tunnels, I were to sit idle, posing little questions of this kind: 'What you have not lost, you have.
8But you have not lost horns; 8therefore you have horns,' and other things put together on the model of this sharp-witted madness. 9And yet I may well seem to you just as mad if I spend effort on these things; 9even now I am under siege. 9Then, however, the danger threatening me under siege would be from outside, and a wall would separate me from the enemy; 9now the deadly things are within me. 9I have no leisure for these trifles; 9a huge task is on my hands. 9What am I to do? 9Death pursues me, life flees; 9teach me something against these things. 10Bring it about that I do not flee death, and that life does not flee from me.
10Encourage me against difficulties, give me calm against what cannot be avoided. 10Ease the narrow limits of my time. 10Teach me that the good of life lies not in its length but in its use, and that it can happen, indeed very often does happen, that one who has lived long has lived little. 10Say to me as I go to sleep: 'You may not wake up'; 10say to me when I have woken: 'You may not sleep again.' 10Say to me as I go out: 'You may not come back'; 10say to me as I return: 'You may not go out again.' 11You are wrong if you think that only on a voyage is the distance tiny by which life is separated from death; 11in every place the interval is equally thin.
11Death does not everywhere show itself so near; 11everywhere it is just as near. 11Scatter these shadows; 11and you will more easily teach me the things for which I have been prepared. 11Nature brought us forth teachable, and gave us reason, imperfect, but such as could be perfected. 12Discuss with me justice, duty, frugality, and both kinds of chastity, both that which consists in keeping away from another's body and that which consists in care for one's own. 12If you will not lead me along byways, I shall more easily reach the goal I am striving for. 12For, as the tragic poet says, 'The speech of truth is simple.' 12And therefore it should not be entangled; 12for nothing is less suited to minds attempting great things than that crafty cleverness of yours.
12Farewell.