1You want to know whether Epicurus is right to criticise, in a certain letter, those who say that the wise man is content with himself and for that reason does not need a friend. 1This is the charge Epicurus brings against Stilbo and those who have held that the highest good is a mind that does not suffer. 2We are bound to fall into ambiguity if we try to render ἀπάθεια quickly in one word and call it 'impatience'. 2For it could be understood as the opposite of what we wish to signify. 2We wish to speak of the man who rejects all feeling of evil; 2he will be taken to be one who can endure no evil.
2Consider, then, whether it would be better to speak either of an invulnerable mind or of a mind placed beyond all suffering. 3This is the difference between us and them: our wise man does indeed overcome every misfortune, but he feels it; 3theirs does not even feel it. 3This we have in common with them: that the wise man is content with himself. 3But nevertheless he wishes to have a friend, a neighbour and a companion, although he is sufficient for himself. 4See how content with himself he is; 4sometimes he is content with a part of himself. 4If disease or an enemy should cut off his hand, if some accident should strike out an eye or both eyes, what remains of him will satisfy him, and he will be as cheerful with his body impaired and maimed as he was when it was whole.
4But while he does not long for what he lacks, he prefers not to lack it. 5Thus the wise man is content with himself, not in that he wishes to be without a friend, but in that he can be. 5And this 'can' that I speak of means this: he bears the loss of one with a calm mind. 5But without a friend he will never be. 5It is in his own power how quickly he replaces him. 5Just as Phidias, if he loses a statue, will at once make another; 5so this craftsman in the making of friendships will put another in place of the one he lost. 6You ask how he will make a friend quickly; 6I will tell you, if we agree on this between us, that I may pay you at once what I owe and, as far as this letter is concerned, we may be quits.
6Hecato says: 'I will show you a love potion without drugs, without herbs, without any witch's spell: if you wish to be loved, love.' 6Moreover, not only the practice of an old and settled friendship holds great pleasure, but also the beginning and acquiring of a new one. 7The difference there is between the farmer who reaps and the farmer who sows is the difference between the man who has gained a friend and the man who is gaining one. 7The philosopher Attalus used to say that it is more pleasant to make a friend than to have one, just as it is more pleasant for an artist to paint than to have painted.
7That anxious care absorbed in one's own work holds an immense delight in the very absorption. 7The man who has taken his hand away from a finished work does not take equal delight. 7Now he enjoys the fruit of his art; 7it was the art itself he enjoyed while he was painting. 7The youth of our children is more fruitful, but their infancy is sweeter. 8Now let us return to our subject. 8The wise man, even if he is content with himself, still wishes to have a friend, if for no other reason, in order to exercise friendship, so that so great a virtue may not lie idle, not for the purpose Epicurus spoke of in this very letter, 'that he may have someone to sit by him when he is sick, to help him when he is thrown into chains or in want,' but that he may have someone by whom he himself may sit when that one is sick, someone whom he himself may free when he is beset by an enemy's guard.
8He who looks to himself and comes to friendship for that reason reckons wrongly. 8As he began, so he will end: he has gained a friend who will bring him help against chains; 8as soon as the chain has rattled, the friend will depart. 9These are the friendships which people call 'fair-weather'; 9he who has been taken up for the sake of advantage will please only as long as he is useful. 9That is why a crowd of friends besets those who are flourishing; 9around those who are ruined there is loneliness, and friends flee from the very place where they are tested. 9That is why there are all those wicked examples of some deserting out of fear, of others betraying out of fear.
9Beginnings and endings must agree with each other. 9He who has begun to be a friend because it pays will also cease because it pays. 9Some reward will be preferred to friendship, if anything in it is valued besides friendship itself. 10For what purpose do I gain a friend? 10That I may have someone for whom I can die, someone whom I may follow into exile, someone whose death I may put myself in the way of, spending myself for him. 10What you describe is a business deal, not a friendship, which approaches for the sake of profit and looks to what it will gain. 11Without doubt the passion of lovers has something resembling friendship; 11you could say that it is friendship gone mad.
11Does anyone, then, love for the sake of gain? 11Or for ambition or glory? 11Love, of itself, heedless of all other things, kindles minds with desire for beauty, not without hope of affection in return. 11What then? 11Does a base passion unite people from a more honourable motive? 12'The question now,' you say, 'is not whether friendship is to be sought for its own sake.' 12On the contrary, nothing needs to be proved more. 12For if it is to be sought for its own sake, he who is content with himself can approach it. 12'How, then, does he approach it?' 12As one approaches a most beautiful thing, not captured by gain nor terrified by the changeableness of fortune.
12He robs friendship of its majesty who gains it for good fortune. 13The wise man is content with himself. 13This, my Lucilius, most people interpret wrongly; 13they remove the wise man from every side and confine him within his own skin. 13But we must distinguish what that saying promises and how far; 13the wise man is content with himself for living happily, not for living. 13For the latter he needs many things, for the former only a mind sound and upright and looking down on fortune. 14I want to point out to you Chrysippus' distinction too. 14He says that the wise man lacks nothing, and yet he needs many things.
14'The fool, on the other hand, needs nothing, for he knows how to use nothing, but he lacks everything.' 14The wise man needs both hands and eyes and many things necessary for daily use; he lacks nothing. 14For to lack implies necessity, and nothing is necessary to the wise man. 15Therefore, although he is content with himself, he needs friends. 15He wants to have as many of them as possible, not in order to live happily; 15for he will live happily even without friends. 15The highest good does not seek its instruments from outside. 15It is cultivated at home, it arises wholly from itself. 15It begins to be subject to fortune if it seeks any part of itself outside.
16'Yet what kind of life will the wise man's be, if he is left without friends, thrown into prison, or abandoned among some foreign people, or detained on a long voyage, or cast up on a deserted shore?' 16Such as is the life of Jupiter, when, the universe dissolved and the gods merged into one, with nature ceasing for a little while, he rests in himself, given over to his own thoughts. 16Something of that kind the wise man does; 16he withdraws into himself, he is with himself. 17As long, indeed, as he is allowed to order his affairs as he thinks fit, he is content with himself and takes a wife; 17he is content with himself and raises children; 17he is content with himself, and yet he would not live if he had to live without a human being.
17It is no advantage of his own that draws him to friendship, but a natural impulse. 17For just as an inborn sweetness attaches for us to other things, so it does to friendship. 17Just as there is a hatred of solitude and a longing for society, just as nature unites man to man, so in this matter too there is an innate spur to make us eager for friendships. 18Nevertheless, though he is most devoted to his friends, though he compares them with himself and often prefers them, he will confine all good within himself and will say what that Stilbo said, the Stilbo whom Epicurus' letter attacks; 18for when his country had been captured, his children lost, his wife lost, and he was coming out of the general conflagration alone and yet happy, to Demetrius, who had the surname Poliorcetes from his destruction of cities, when he asked whether he had lost anything, he said: 'All my goods are with me.' 19There is a brave and vigorous man!
19He conquered the very victory of his enemy. 19'I have lost nothing,' he says; 19he forced the man to doubt whether he had conquered. 19'All that is mine is with me;' 19this is the very thing: to think nothing good that can be snatched away. 19We marvel at certain animals which pass through the midst of fire without harm to their bodies; 19how much more marvellous is this man, who came out through sword and ruins and fire unhurt and without loss! 19Do you see how much easier it is to conquer a whole nation than one man? 19This saying he shares with the Stoic. 19He too carries his goods untouched through burnt-out cities.
19For he is content with himself. 19By this limit he marks out his happiness. 20Do not think that we alone fling about noble words; 20Epicurus himself, the critic of Stilbo, uttered a saying like his, which you must take in good part, even if I have already struck this day off the account. 20'If anyone,' he says, 'does not think what he has most ample, though he be master of the whole world, he is still wretched.' 20Or, if it seems to you better expressed in this way, for our aim must be to serve not words but meanings: 'Wretched is the man who does not judge himself most happy, though he rule the world.' 21And so that you may know that these thoughts are common, nature evidently dictating them, you will find in a comic poet: 'He is not happy who does not think he is.' 21For what does it matter what your condition is, if it seems bad to you?
22'What then?' 22you say. 22'If that man shamefully rich and that man master of many but slave of more should call himself happy, will he become happy by his own verdict?' 22It matters not what he says, but what he feels, and not what he feels on one day, but what he feels constantly. 22But there is no reason for you to fear that so great a thing will come to someone unworthy; 22only to the wise man is what is his own pleasing. 22All folly suffers from disgust with itself. 22Farewell.