Lucius Annaeus Seneca→Lucilius Junior|c. 64 AD|Seneca the Younger|From Rome|To Sicily|AI-assisted
You are again insisting to me that you are
a nobody, and saying that nature in the first place, and fortune in the
second, have treated you too scurvily, and this in spite of the fact that
you have it in your power to separate yourself from the crowd and rise
to the highest human happiness! If there is any good in philosophy,
it is this, - that it never looks into pedigrees. All men, if traced
back to their original source, spring from the gods. You are a Roman
knight, and your persistent work promoted you to this class; yet surely
there are many to whom the fourteen rows are barred; "the senate-chamber
is not open to all; the army, too, is scrupulous in choosing those whom
it admits to toil and danger. But a noble mind is free to all men;
according to this test, we may all gain distinction. Philosophy neither
rejects nor selects anyone; its light shines for all. Socrates was
no aristocrat. Cleanthes
<Ep1-287>
worked at a well and served as a hired man watering a garden.
Philosophy did not find Plato already a nobleman; it made him one.
Why then should you despair of becoming able to rank with men like these?
They are all your ancestors, if you conduct yourself in a manner worthy
of them; and you will do so if you convince yourself at the outset that
no man outdoes you in real nobility. We have all had the same number
of forefathers; there is no man whose first beginning does not transcend
memory. Plato says: "Every king springs from a race of slaves, and
every slave has had kings among his ancestors."
The flight of time, with its vicissitudes, has jumbled all such things
together, and Fortune has turned them upside down. Then who is well-born?
He who is by nature well fitted for virtue. That is the one point to be
considered; otherwise, if you hark back to antiquity, every one traces
back to a date before which there is nothing. From the earliest beginnings
of the universe to the present time, we have been led forward out of origins
that were alternately illustrious and ignoble. A hall full of smoke- begrimed
busts does not make the nobleman. No past life has been lived to
lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours; the soul
alone renders us noble, and it may rise superior to Fortune out of any
earlier condition, no matter what that condition has been.
Suppose, then, that you were not that Roman knight, but a freedman, you
might nevertheless by your own efforts come to be the only free man amid
a throng of gentlemen. "How?" you ask. Simply by distinguishing between
good and bad things without patterning your opinion from the populace.
You should look, not to the source from which these
<Ep1-289>
[1] Iterum tu mihi te pusillum facis et dicis malignius tecum egisse naturam prius, deinde fortunam, cum possis eximere te vulgo et ad felicitatem hominum maximam emergere. Si quid est aliud in philosophia boni, hoc est, quod stemma non inspicit; omnes, si ad originem primam revocantur, a dis sunt. [2] Eques Romanus es, et ad hunc ordinem tua te perduxit industria; at mehercules multis quattuordecim clausa sunt, non omnes curia admittit, castra quoque quos ad laborem et periculum recipiant fastidiose legunt: bona mens omnibus patet, omnes ad hoc sumus nobiles. Nec reicit quemquam philosophia nec eligit: omnibus lucet. [3] Patricius Socrates non fuit; Cleanthes aquam traxit et rigando horto locavit manus; Platonem non accepit nobilem philosophia sed fecit: quid est quare desperes his te posse fieri parem? Omnes hi maiores tui sunt, si te illis geris dignum; geres autem, si hoc protinus tibi ipse persuaseris, a nullo te nobilitate superari. [4] Omnibus nobis totidem ante nos sunt; nullius non origo ultra memoriam iacet. Platon ait neminem regem non ex servis esse oriundum, neminem non servum ex regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas miscuit et sursum deorsum fortuna versavit. [5] Quis est generosus? ad virtutem bene a natura compositus. Hoc unum intuendum est: alioquin si ad vetera revocas, nemo non inde est ante quod nihil est. A primo mundi ortu usque in hoc tempus perduxit nos ex splendidis sordidisque alternata series. Non facit nobilem atrium plenum fumosis imaginibus; nemo in nostram gloriam vixit nec quod ante nos fuit nostrum est: animus facit nobilem, cui ex quacumque condicione supra fortunam licet surgere. [6] Puta itaque te non equitem Romanum esse sed libertinum: potes hoc consequi, ut solus sis liber inter ingenuos. 'Quomodo?' inquis. Si mala bonaque non populo auctore distineris. Intuendum est non unde veniant, sed quo eant. Si quid est quod vitam beatam potest facere, id bonum est suo iure; depravari enim in malum non potest. [7] Quid est ergo in quo erratur, cum omnes beatam vitam optent? quod instrumenta eius pro ipsa habent et illam dum petunt fugiunt. Nam cum summa vitae beatae sit solida securitas et eius inconcussa fiducia, sollicitudinis colligunt causas et per insidiosum iter vitae non tantum ferunt sarcinas sed trahunt; ita longius ab effectu eius quod petunt semper abscedunt et quo plus operae impenderunt, hoc se magis impediunt et feruntur retro. Quod evenit in labyrintho properantibus: ipsa illos velocitas implicat. Vale.
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You are again insisting to me that you are a nobody, and saying that nature in the first place, and fortune in the second, have treated you too scurvily, and this in spite of the fact that you have it in your power to separate yourself from the crowd and rise to the highest human happiness! If there is any good in philosophy, it is this, - that it never looks into pedigrees. All men, if traced back to their original source, spring from the gods. You are a Roman knight, and your persistent work promoted you to this class; yet surely there are many to whom the fourteen rows are barred; "the senate-chamber is not open to all; the army, too, is scrupulous in choosing those whom it admits to toil and danger. But a noble mind is free to all men; according to this test, we may all gain distinction. Philosophy neither rejects nor selects anyone; its light shines for all. Socrates was no aristocrat. Cleanthes <Ep1-287>
worked at a well and served as a hired man watering a garden. Philosophy did not find Plato already a nobleman; it made him one. Why then should you despair of becoming able to rank with men like these? They are all your ancestors, if you conduct yourself in a manner worthy of them; and you will do so if you convince yourself at the outset that no man outdoes you in real nobility. We have all had the same number of forefathers; there is no man whose first beginning does not transcend memory. Plato says: "Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave has had kings among his ancestors." The flight of time, with its vicissitudes, has jumbled all such things together, and Fortune has turned them upside down. Then who is well-born? He who is by nature well fitted for virtue. That is the one point to be considered; otherwise, if you hark back to antiquity, every one traces back to a date before which there is nothing. From the earliest beginnings of the universe to the present time, we have been led forward out of origins that were alternately illustrious and ignoble. A hall full of smoke- begrimed busts does not make the nobleman. No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed before us is not ours; the soul alone renders us noble, and it may rise superior to Fortune out of any earlier condition, no matter what that condition has been. Suppose, then, that you were not that Roman knight, but a freedman, you might nevertheless by your own efforts come to be the only free man amid a throng of gentlemen. "How?" you ask. Simply by distinguishing between good and bad things without patterning your opinion from the populace. You should look, not to the source from which these <Ep1-289>
Latin / Greek Original
[1] Iterum tu mihi te pusillum facis et dicis malignius tecum egisse naturam prius, deinde fortunam, cum possis eximere te vulgo et ad felicitatem hominum maximam emergere. Si quid est aliud in philosophia boni, hoc est, quod stemma non inspicit; omnes, si ad originem primam revocantur, a dis sunt. [2] Eques Romanus es, et ad hunc ordinem tua te perduxit industria; at mehercules multis quattuordecim clausa sunt, non omnes curia admittit, castra quoque quos ad laborem et periculum recipiant fastidiose legunt: bona mens omnibus patet, omnes ad hoc sumus nobiles. Nec reicit quemquam philosophia nec eligit: omnibus lucet. [3] Patricius Socrates non fuit; Cleanthes aquam traxit et rigando horto locavit manus; Platonem non accepit nobilem philosophia sed fecit: quid est quare desperes his te posse fieri parem? Omnes hi maiores tui sunt, si te illis geris dignum; geres autem, si hoc protinus tibi ipse persuaseris, a nullo te nobilitate superari. [4] Omnibus nobis totidem ante nos sunt; nullius non origo ultra memoriam iacet. Platon ait neminem regem non ex servis esse oriundum, neminem non servum ex regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas miscuit et sursum deorsum fortuna versavit. [5] Quis est generosus? ad virtutem bene a natura compositus. Hoc unum intuendum est: alioquin si ad vetera revocas, nemo non inde est ante quod nihil est. A primo mundi ortu usque in hoc tempus perduxit nos ex splendidis sordidisque alternata series. Non facit nobilem atrium plenum fumosis imaginibus; nemo in nostram gloriam vixit nec quod ante nos fuit nostrum est: animus facit nobilem, cui ex quacumque condicione supra fortunam licet surgere. [6] Puta itaque te non equitem Romanum esse sed libertinum: potes hoc consequi, ut solus sis liber inter ingenuos. 'Quomodo?' inquis. Si mala bonaque non populo auctore distineris. Intuendum est non unde veniant, sed quo eant. Si quid est quod vitam beatam potest facere, id bonum est suo iure; depravari enim in malum non potest. [7] Quid est ergo in quo erratur, cum omnes beatam vitam optent? quod instrumenta eius pro ipsa habent et illam dum petunt fugiunt. Nam cum summa vitae beatae sit solida securitas et eius inconcussa fiducia, sollicitudinis colligunt causas et per insidiosum iter vitae non tantum ferunt sarcinas sed trahunt; ita longius ab effectu eius quod petunt semper abscedunt et quo plus operae impenderunt, hoc se magis impediunt et feruntur retro. Quod evenit in labyrintho properantibus: ipsa illos velocitas implicat. Vale.