“I could end my letter at this place, except that I have put you in a bad place. It is impossible to hail Parthian nobility without a gift and it is not allowed for me to say goodbye to you without thanks. What then? I’ll take something from Epicurus: “getting rich is not an end of troubles for most people, but a change in them.”
I am not surprised by this. The problem isn’t in the money but in the mind. The very thing that makes poverty weigh heavy on us also makes wealth a burden. It doesn’t matter whether you put a sick person on a wooden bed or one of gold: wherever you move them, they take their sickness too!
So, it makes no difference at all whether a sick spirit rests in riches or poverty. The disease follows the person. Goodbye!”
Poteram hoc loco epistulam claudere, nisi te male instituissem. Reges Parthorum2 non potest quisquam salutare sine munere; tibi valedicere non licet gratis. Quid istic? Ab Epicuro mutuum sumam: “Multis parasse divitias non finis miseriarum fuit, sed mutatio.” Nec hoc miror. Non est enim in rebus vitium, sed in ipso animo. Illud, quod paupertatem nobis gravem fecerat, et divitias graves fecit. Quemadmodum nihil refert, utrum aegrum in ligneo lecto an in aureo conloces,—quocumque illum transtuleris, morbum secum suum transferet,—sic nihil refert, utrum aeger animus in divitiis an in paupertate ponatur. Malum illum suum sequitur. Vale.
opper engraving of Doctor Schnabel [i.e Dr. Beak], a plague doctor in seventeenth-century Rome, with a satirical macaronic poem (‘Vos Creditis, als eine Fabel, / quod scribitur vom Doctor Schnabel’) in octosyllabic rhyming couplets.
“Check yourself. Examine and consider yourself in different ways. Look at this before everything else: have you advanced in philosophy or in life itself?
Philosophy is not some illusion for the public, not a thing prepared to show off. It consists not of words but in the way things are. It is not practiced to while away the day with some distraction or to free our leisure of boredom. It shapes and builds the mind; it re-orders life; it rules our actions; it indicates what we should do and not do; it sits at the rudder and guides our journey through uncertain weather.
No one can live bravely, no one can live safely without it. In each and every hour countless things happen that need counsel. This counsel must be found in philosophy.”
Excute te et varie scrutare et observa; illud ante omnia vide, utrum in philosophia an in ipsa vita profeceris. Non est philosophia populare artificium nec ostentationi paratum. Non in verbis, sed in rebus est. Nec in hoc adhibetur, ut cum aliqua oblectatione consumatur dies, ut dematur otio nausia. Animum format et fabricat, vitam disponit, actiones regit, agenda et omittenda demonstrat, sedet ad gubernaculum et per ancipitia fluctuantium derigit cursum. Sine hac nemo intrepide potest vivere, nemo secure. Innumerabilia accidunt singulis horis, quae consilium exigant, quod ab hac petendum est.
an Zig performing with rabbit and roses, including hat trick and levitation. Advertising poster for the magician (who seems to have left no other trace behind). From wikimedia commons
But now I will bring my letter to the end, if I give it its own seal, by which I mean I have commended some other great passage to be offered to you. “Among other faults, foolishness has this too: to always be about to start living.”
Consider what this line means, best of men, Lucilius, and you may understand how gross that lightness of men is when they trace out new foundations daily, beginning new projects even as they are leaving. Just think about some individual examples and old men will occur to you who are readying themselves for office, for journeys, for new business. What is more disgusting than an old man just beginning to live?
I should not include the author of this saying, except that this once is rather unknown and not among the common sayings of Epicurus, which allows me to praise it and take it as my own. Good bye!”
Sed iam finem epistulae faciam, si illi signum suum inpressero, id est aliquam magnificam vocem perferendam ad te mandavero. “Inter cetera mala hoc quoque habet stultitia: semper incipit vivere.” Considera quid vox ista significet, Lucili virorum optime, et intelleges, quam foeda sit hominum levitas cotidie nova vitae fundamenta ponentium, novas spes etiam in exitu inchoantium. Circumspice tecum singulos; occurrent tibi senes, qui se cum maxime ad ambitionem, ad peregrinationes, ad negotiandum parent. Quid est autem turpius quam senex vivere incipiens? Non adicerem auctorem huic voci, nisi esset secretior nec inter vulgata Epicuri dicta, quae mihi et laudare et adoptare permisi. Vale.
Roman; Head of an old man; Stone Sculpture. MET 1st Century AD
I am pretty sure Seneca is objecting not to the elderly making new starts but to people being so heedless of their lives as to only just start important things in old age. I am not quite sure Seneca would pass a Solon test.
“When I heard that your wife was sick, I felt compassion as I thought about how you probably felt about her condition. Then, when I learned that she died, I moaned out loud, taking it badly that Aristainetos, a man so naturally suited to celebrations, was in grief.
I was going to try to comfort you with a speech, but I restrained myself because I worried that even though I think I know you well I might be caught ignorant. For those passages I was about to use to relieve you–the bits from Pindar and Simonides and all those we are in the habit of using from the tragedians as a treatment for sorrow–I imagine that you knew them long ago and spoke them to others yourself.
So I figured that if these were the kinds of things to comfort your despair, then you could minister to yourself or, if not, it would be useless for someone else to recite them to you. So, I stopped that project and I offer instead a summary of everything that has happened during the winter.”
“The whole of our life is made of parts: it has large circles with smaller ones traced inside. There’s one circle that embraces and contains all the rest–it runs from our birth to our final day. There’s another that encloses our adolescence and another that contains all of childhood in its circuit. Then there’s the annual course that contains all the parts of time in its turn, which, when multiplied, contains all of life. The month is enclosed by a narrower ring while the day has the smallest circle. Yet even the day goes from its beginning to end, from sunrise to sunset.
This is why Heraclitus, who earned that nickname “the obscure” for his rhetorical style, said, “each day is the same as the rest. People explain this in various ways. One says that a day is equal in is number of hours. This isn’t a lie, if we think that a day is 24 hours hours. In that case, all days are necessarily equal because the night takes what the day loses.
Another claims that one day is the same as another in its appearance, since even the longest period of time has nothing more than what you can find in a day. It has light and night and the alternation of days into eternity makes these more numerous, not really different by expanding or contracting the count. And so, each day should be organized as if it continues and completes a sequence, and closes the circuit of a life.”
Tota aetas partibus constat et orbes habet circumductos maiores minoribus. Est aliquis, qui omnis conplectatur et cingat; hic pertinet a natali ad diem extremum. Est alter, qui annos adulescentiae cludit. Est qui totam pueritiam ambitu suo adstringit. Est deinde per se annus in se omnia continens tempora, quorum multiplicatione vita conponitur. Mensis artiore praecingitur circulo. Angustissimum habet dies gyrum, sed et hic ab initio ad exitum venit, ab ortu ad occasum.
Ideo Heraclitus, cui cognomen fecit orationis obscuritas, “Unus,” inquit, “dies par omni est.” Hoc alius aliter excepit. Dixit enim parem esse horis, nec mentitur; nam si dies est tempus viginti et quattuor horarum, necesse est omnes inter se dies pares esse, quia nox habet, quod dies perdidit. Alius ait parem esse unum diem omnibus similitudine; nihil enim habet longissimi temporis spatium, quod non et in uno die invenias, lucem et noctem, et in aeternum dies vices plures facit istas, non alias contractior, alias productior. Itaque sic ordinandus est dies omnis, tamquam cogat agmen et consummet atque expleat vitam.
Vassily Kandinsky, “Circles within a Circle” 1923
Personally, I am partial to circles that do not end…
“A sprit should have someone whom it may respect, by whose authority even their own innermost self is improved. Oh, how happy is the person who makes us better not merely when they’re around but when we think of them too! How happy is the person who can respect someone so much that they can compose and reset their mind just with their memory!
So, choose yourself a Cato. if he seems too harsh, then select someone with a kinder spirit like Laelius. Choose the person who pleases you with their life and speech and a face that bears their soul itself. Provide that person at all times as a safeguard or example for yourself. We need someone who can help us check ourselves: you can’t fix a crooked line without a ruler! Goodbye.”
Aliquem habeat animus, quem vereatur, cuius auctoritate etiam secretum suum sanctius faciat. O felicem illum, qui non praesens tantum, sed etiam cogitatus emendat! O felicem, qui sic aliquem vereri potest, ut ad memoriam quoque eius se conponat atque ordinet! Qui sic aliquem vereri potest, cito erit verendus. Elige itaque Catonem. Si hic tibi videtur nimis rigidus, elige remissioris animi virum Laelium. Elige eum, cuius tibi placuit et vita et oratio et ipse animum ante se ferens vultus; illum tibi semper ostende vel custodem vel exemplum. Opus est, inquam, aliquo, ad quem mores nostri se ipsi exigant; nisi ad regulam prava non corriges. Vale.
“But let me send my letter with some little gift, as is my custom. I found this one in Athenodorus: “Understand that you are freed from all desires when you come to the point that you pray to god for nothing except what you can ask openly”.
How much madness there is among people today! They whisper the foulest requests to the gods–but if anyone eavesdrops, they hush up. They tell god what they don’t want people to know.
Don’t you think that some better advice can be offered? Live with other people as if god is watching; and speak with god as if everyone is listening. Goodbye!”
Sed ut more meo cum aliquo munusculo epistulam mittam, verum est, quod apud Athenodorum inveni: “Tunc scito esse te omnibus cupiditatibus solutum, cum eo perveneris, ut nihil deum roges, nisi quod rogare possis palam.” Nunc enim quanta dementia est hominum! Turpissima vota dis insusurrant; si quis admoverit aurem, conticescent. Et quod scire hominem nolunt, deo narrant. Vide ergo, ne hoc praecipi salubriter possit: sic vive cum hominibus, tamquam deus videat; sic loquere cum deo, tamquam homines audiant. Vale.
Theodore Ralli, “Eavesdropping” 1890
It seems the Stoic school was generally opposed to the early Greek philosophical precept (sometimes attributed to Epicurus) of “living unknown”
Plutarch, “On Whether Living Unknown is a Wise Precept”
1128a “But isn’t this very thing somehow evil—“living unknown” is like tomb-robbing, no? But living is a shameful thing, so that we should all be ignorant about it? I would say instead don’t even live badly in secret, but be known, be advised, and change! If you have virtue, don’t be useless; if you have weakness, don’t go without help.”
“If you take public knowledge away from your life just as you might remove light from a drinking party—to make it possible to pursue every pleasure in secret—then “live unknown” indeed.
The saying “live unknown” was attributed in antiquity to Epicurus. It had reached proverbial status by the Byzantine era (from the Suda):
λάθε βιώσας· “Live unknown”: This is said customarily in a proverb but enacted by deed. “Live unknown so that I might expect no one living or dead to understand what I say”
“But, to make sure that I have not learned today for myself alone, I will give you three outstanding sayings that came to me with pretty much the same sense. From these, this letter will resolve my debt to you with one of them; take the other two as advanced payment.
Democritus says, “One person stands in for the whole people for me and the people count as one.” This is also well, whoever it belongs to–the author is uncertain–when they asked him what the goal was of so much labor dedicated to an art that would reach such a small amount of people, he said, “A few are enough for me, one is enough, none is enough too.” The third saying is from Epicurus, which he wrote to one of his collaborators: “These words aren’t for the many, but for you: we are a great enough audience for each other.”
Take these things into your thoughts, Lucilius, so you can ignore that pleasure that comes from the adulation of the crowd.Many people praise you, but do you have anything that makes you happy with yourself if you are the kind of person everyone understands? Your fine qualities should look within. Goodbye!”
Sed ne soli mihi hodie didicerim, communicabo tecum, quae occurrerunt mihi egregie dicta circa eundem fere sensum tria; ex quibus unum haec epistula in debitum solvet, duo in antecessum accipe. Democritus ait: “Unus mihi pro populo est, et populus pro uno.” Bene et ille, quisquis fuit, ambigitur enim de auctore, cum quaereretur ab illo, quo tanta diligentia artis spectaret ad paucissimos perventurae, “Satis sunt,” inquit, “mihi pauci, satis est unus, satis est nullus.” Egregie hoc tertium Epicurus, cum uni ex consortibus studiorum suorum scriberet: “Haec,” inquit,” ego non multis, sed tibi; satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus.” Ista, mi Lucili, condenda in animum sunt, ut contemnas voluptatem ex plurium adsensione venientem. Multi te laudant. Ecquid1 habes, cur placeas tibi, si is es, quem intellegant multi? Introrsus bona tua spectent.
“There’s a certain kind of person who tells everyone they meet details that should only be entrusted to friends and they unburden themselves on any available ear of whatever is annoying them. Other people withhold their true feeling from those closest to them–and, if they could, they would suppress every secret deep inside, distrustful even of themselves.
But neither way is right. It is as much a fault to trust everyone as it is to trust no one. The former mistake, however, I might call somewhat innocent, while the latter is safer. Really, you should criticize people who take both approaches, those who are always restless and those who are ever still. For delight in being busy is not rigor but instead is the treadmill of an unsettled mind. And yet it is not true rest to consider all movement annoying–that’s laziness and inattention.
So, take to mind instead this saying I read from Pomponius: “Some people retreat into shadows so far that they believe dark whatever is in the light.”
Quidam quae tantum amicis committenda sunt, obviis narrant et in quaslibet aures, quicquid illos urserit, exonerant. Quidam rursus etiam carissimorum conscientiam reformidant, et si possent, ne sibi quidem credituri interius premunt omne secretum. Neutrum faciendum est. Utrumque enim vitium est, et omnibus credere et nulli. Sed alterum honestius dixerim vitium, alterum tutius: sic utrosque reprehendas, et eos qui semper inquieti sunt, et eos qui semper quiescunt. Nam illa tumultu gaudens non est industria, sed exagitatae mentis concursatio. Et haec non est quies, quae motum omnem molestiam iudicat, sed dissolutio et languor. Itaque hoc, quod apud Pomponium legi, animo mandabitur: “quidam adeo in latebras refugerunt, ut putent in turbido esse, quicquid in luce est.”
“Based on what you are writing to me and from what I hear, I am developing a positive opinion about you. You don’t run around in every direction or disrupt yourself by moving all the time–that kind of distraction is the mark of a sickly spirit. I guess I think that the first indication of a well-put together mind is the ability to stand still and spend time with one’s self.
But beware! Don’t let that reading of a wide number of authors and every kind of text make you absent-minded and flighty. It is best to tarry among a set number of generational talents and soak up their work, if you want to get ideas that will take firm root in your mind.
What is everywhere is nowhere. When someone spends their life travelling all over the place, it turns out that they know many people but have no friends. It works the same way for people who try to get deeply familiar with no individual author but rush around them all in a hurry.
Food is useless if the body can’t absorb it and it exits the stomach as soon as as it is consumed; nothing undermines health as much as changing medicine constantly; no wound heals if different salves are applied one after another. A plant moved too frequently never grows strong.
There is nothing so useful that it is helpful in motion. Too many books are a distraction.”
Ex iis quae mihi scribis, et ex iis quae audio, bonam spem de te concipio; non discurris nec locorum mutationibus inquietaris. Aegri animi ista iactatio est. Primum argumentum conpositae mentis existimo posse consistere et secum morari.
Illud autem vide, ne ista lectio auctorum multorum et omnis generis voluminum habeat aliquid vagum et instabile. Certis ingeniis inmorari et innutriri oportet, si velis aliquid trahere, quod in animo fideliter sedeat.
Nusquam est, qui ubique est. Vitam in peregrinatione exigentibus hoc evenit, ut multa hospitia habeant, nullas amicitias. Idem accidat necesse est iis, qui nullius se ingenio familiariter applicant, sed omnia cursim et properantes transmittunt.
Non prodest cibus nec corpori accedit, qui statim sumptus emittitur; nihil aeque sanitatem impedit quam remediorum crebra mutatio; non venit vulnus ad cicatricem, in quo medicamenta temptantur; non convalescit planta, quae saepe transfertur. Nihil tam utile est, ut in transitu prosit. Distringit librorum multitudo.
istoric works in a Bookshelf in the Prunksaal (State Hall) of the Imperial Library of the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
![opper engraving of Doctor Schnabel [i.e Dr. Beak], a plague doctor in seventeenth-century Rome, with a satirical macaronic poem (‘Vos Creditis, als eine Fabel, / quod scribitur vom Doctor Schnabel’) in octosyllabic rhyming couplets.](https://i0.wp.com/sententiaeantiquae.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Paul_Furst_Der_Doctor_Schnabel_von_Rom_coloured_version.png?ssl=1)
