1Each man as best he can, my Lucilius! 1You have Etna there, that lofty and most famous mountain of Sicily, which Messala, or Valgius, for I have read it in both, called unique, though I cannot discover why, since very many places belch out fire, not only lofty ones, where it happens more often, evidently because fire is carried up to the highest point, but low-lying ones too. 1We, as best we can, are content with Baiae, which I left the day after I reached it, a place to be avoided for this reason, although it has certain natural gifts, that luxury has chosen it for her own resort. 2'What then?
2Must we declare hatred against any place?' 2Not at all. 2But just as one garment suits a wise and upright man better than another, and he hates no colour, but thinks some colour hardly fitting for one who professes frugality; 2so too there is a district which a wise man, or one striving towards wisdom, would avoid as foreign to good morals. 3And so, when thinking of retirement, he will never choose Canopus, although Canopus forbids no one to be frugal, nor Baiae either; 3they have begun to be an inn for vices. 3There luxury permits itself the most, there, as though some licence were owed to the place, it is more unrestrained.
4We ought to choose a place healthy not only for the body but also for the character. 4Just as I would not wish to live among torturers, so I would not wish to live among cookshops either. 4What need is there to see drunkards wandering along the shores, and the revels of boating parties, and lakes resounding with the songs of choirs, and other things which luxury, as though released from the laws, not only commits but makes public? 5We ought to make it our aim to flee as far as possible from the incitements to vice. 5The mind must be hardened and drawn far away from the allurements of pleasures.
5A single winter's quarters undid Hannibal, and the comforts of Campania unnerved that man whom snows and Alps had not tamed. 5He conquered with arms; he was conquered by vices. 6We too must serve as soldiers, and indeed in a kind of warfare in which no rest, no leisure is ever granted. 6First of all, pleasures must be vanquished, which, as you see, have carried off even fierce natures to themselves. 6If anyone sets before himself how great a task he has undertaken, he will know that nothing must be done delicately, nothing softly. 6What have I to do with those hot pools? 6What with sweating rooms, into which dry steam is shut to drain the body?
6Let all sweat come out through toil. 7If we were to do what Hannibal did, breaking off the course of events and abandoning the war to devote our efforts to pampering our bodies, everyone would rightly censure an untimely idleness, dangerous even to a victor, let alone to one still winning; 7less is permitted to us than to those who followed the Punic standards; more danger remains if we give way, more toil even if we persevere. 8Fortune is waging war with me; 8I am not going to do what she commands. 8I do not accept the yoke; rather, which needs greater courage, I shake it off. 8The mind must not be softened; 8if I yield to pleasure, I must yield to pain, I must yield to toil, I must yield to poverty; 8ambition and anger will both want the same rights over me; 8I shall be pulled apart among so many passions, or rather torn to pieces.
9Freedom is set before us; 9it is for this prize that we toil. 9Do you ask what freedom is? 9To be a slave to no thing, to no necessity, to no chance events, to bring fortune down to level terms. 9On the day I understand that I am more powerful than she, she will have no power. 9Shall I put up with her, when death is in my hands? 10A man intent on these thoughts ought to choose places that are serious and pure. 10Too much pleasantness makes minds effeminate, and without doubt a district has some power to corrupt vigour. 10Beasts of burden whose hooves have been hardened on rough ground endure any road; 10those fattened in soft and marshy pasture are quickly worn down.
10And the braver soldier comes from rugged country; 10the townsman and the home-bred slave are sluggish. 10Hands that are transferred from the plough to arms refuse no toil; 10that sleek and oiled fellow gives out at the first dust. 11The sterner discipline of a place strengthens the character and makes it fit for great endeavours. 11Scipio spent his exile more honourably at Liternum than he would have at Baiae; 11a downfall such as his should not be housed so softly. 11Those too to whom the fortune of the Roman people first transferred the public resources, Gaius Marius and Gnaeus Pompey and Caesar, did build country houses in the district of Baiae, but they set them on the topmost ridges of the hills.
11This seemed more soldierly, to look out from a height far and wide over what lay below. 11Look at the position they chose, the places on which they raised their buildings and what kind of buildings they were; 11you will know that they are not country houses but camps. 12Do you think Cato would ever have lived in a dainty pavilion, so that he might count the adulteresses sailing past, and so many kinds of boats painted in various colours, and the roses floating all over the lake, so that he might hear the nightly brawling of singers? 12Would he not rather have stayed within a rampart which he had himself traced with his own hand for a single night?
12Why would not anyone who is a man prefer to have his sleep broken by a trumpet than by a choir? 13But we have quarrelled with Baiae long enough, though never enough with vices, which, I beg you, Lucilius, pursue without measure and without end. 13For they too have neither end nor measure. 13Throw away whatever tears at your heart; if these things could not be pulled out otherwise, the heart itself should have been torn out with them. 13Above all drive out pleasures and hold them most hateful; 13like the robbers whom the Egyptians call 'philetae', they embrace us in order to strangle us. 13Farewell.