On the Shortness of Life
Latin source edition on thelatinlibrary.com
I
Latin
1. Maior pars mortalium, Pauline, de naturae malignitate conqueritur, quod in exiguum aeui gignimur, quod haec tam uelociter, tam rapide dati nobis temporis spatia decurrant, adeo ut exceptis admodum paucis ceteros in ipso uitae apparatu uita destituat. Nec huic publico, ut opinantur, malo turba tantum et imprudens uulgus ingemuit; clarorum quoque uirorum hic affectus querellas euocauit.
2. Inde illa maximi medicorum exclamatio est: "uitam breuem esse, longam artem". Inde Aristotelis cum rerum natura exigentis minime conueniens sapienti uiro lis: "aetatis illam animalibus tantum indulsisse, ut quina aut dena saecula educerent, homini in tam multa ac magna genito tanto citeriorem terminum stare."
3. Non exiguum temporis habemus, sed multum perdidimus. Satis longa uita et in maximarum rerum consummationem large data est, si tota bene collocaretur; sed ubi per luxum ac neglegentiam diffluit, ubi nulli bonae rei impenditur, ultima demum necessitate cogente, quam ire non intelleximus transisse sentimus.
4. Ita est: non accipimus breuem uitam sed fecimus, nec inopes eius sed prodigi sumus. Sicut amplae et regiae opes, ubi ad malum dominum peruenerunt, momento dissipantur, at quamuis modicae, si bono custodi traditae sunt, usu crescunt: ita aetas nostra bene disponenti multum patet.
English
1. Most people, Paulinus, complain about how unfair nature is: that we get such a short life, that the time given us runs out so fast that — except for a handful — life ends while everyone is still getting ready for it. And it isn't just the crowds who feel this. Famous men have complained about it too.
2. Here is what made them cry that life is too short: they never had a spare moment to look back on their own years, and none of them learned how to keep death at a distance. But some of the greatest men in history admitted that they never got to do what they wanted, not even once, because their lives were so busy. You'll recognize them as I name them. The wisest people of the past already told us: life isn't short — we make it short.
3. So why blame nature? She has been generous. Life is long, if you know how to use it. But one man is crushed by greedy worries, another by pointless laziness; one drinks himself dull, another drifts; one burns out chasing other people's approval; one chases profit across every land and sea; one throws himself into war and violence; some wear themselves out serving the powerful for free. And then there are those with no master at all — but a restlessness they chose themselves. Life has no limit only for these people.
4. What they're asking for is something even nature can't give: they beg for long lives but don't know how to live even part of one. Count in those who waste time just to throw it away, who spend their years preparing things to leave behind after death. These are the very ones who cry that life is short — rushing headlong into the one thing they'd refuse at any price.
II
Latin
1. Quid de rerum natura querimur? Illa se benigne gessit: uita, si uti scias, longa est. [At] alium insatiabilis tenet auaritia; alium in superuacuis laboribus operosa sedulitas; alius uino madet, alius inertia torpet; alium defetigat ex alienis iudiciis suspensa semper ambitio, alium mercandi praeceps cupiditas circa omnis terras, omnia maria spe lucri ducit; quosdam torquet cupido militiae numquam non aut alienis periculis intentos aut suis anxios; sunt quos ingratus superiorum cultus uoluntaria seruitute consumat;
2. multos aut affectatio alienae formae aut suae querella detinuit; plerosque nihil certum sequentis uaga et inconstans et sibi displicens leuitas per noua consilia iactauit; quibusdam nihil quo cursum derigant placet, sed marcentis oscitantisque fata deprendunt, adeo ut quod apud maximum poetarum more oraculi dictum est uerum esse non dubitem: "Exigua pars est uitae qua uiuimus. Ceterum quidem omne spatium non uita sed tempus est.
3. Urgent et circumstant uitia undique nec resurgere aut in dispectum ueri attollere oculos sinunt. Et immersos et in cupiditatem infixos premunt, numquam illis recurrere ad se licet. Si quando aliqua fortuito quies contigit, uelut profundo mari, in quo post uentum quoque uolutatio est, fluctuantur nec umquam illis a cupiditatibus suis otium stat.
4. De istis me putas dicere, quorum in confesso mala sunt? Aspice illos ad quorum felicitatem concurritur:bonis suis effocantur. Quam multis diuitiae graues sunt! Quam multorum eloquentia et cotidiana ostentandi ingenii sollicitatio sanguinem educit! Quam multi continuis uoluptatibus pallent! Quam multis nihil liberi relinquit circumfusus clientium populus! Omnis denique istos ab infimis usque ad summos pererra: hic aduocat, hic adest, ille periclitatur, ille defendit, ille iudicat, nemo se sibi uindicat, alius in alium consumitur. Interroga de istis quorum nomina ediscuntur, his illos dinosci uidebis notis: ille illius cultor est, hic illius; suus nemo est.
5. Deinde dementissima quorundam indignatio est: queruntur de superiorum fastidio, quod ipsis adire uolentibus non uacauerint! Audet quisquam de alterius superbia queri, qui sibi ipse numquam uacat? Ille tamen te, quisquis es, insolenti quidem uultu sed aliquando respexit, ille aures suas ad tua uerba demisit, ille te ad latus suum recepit: tu non inspicere te umquam, non audire dignatus es. Non est itaque quod ista officia cuiquam imputes, quoniam quidem, cum illa faceres, non esse cum alio uolebas, sed tecum esse non poteras.
English
1. Some of them are seized by the bitterest regret over wasted time, like men who drank a forgetting potion before setting out. Even the happiest of them tremble at the hour they chose for themselves. But the man who has spent his time on the public good always has time to spare. He holds life in such a way that it is never taken early, snatched away, or thrown aside.
2. Of the life we live, part is spent on other people; of the life ahead, nothing is certain. Death can call you away from any plan at any moment — that's a boundary no one crosses. So the most wretched of all is the one old age catches by surprise, who lost what he loved and couldn't keep it, because he saved nothing for that day.
3. The crowd has one more evil, the worst of all: they carry the guilt of things done badly. They replay them, weigh them, and the wrongdoing sits in front of their eyes. These are worse than the first kind — the first never got what they wanted; these lost what they had.
4. So they were unhappy before, and they're unhappy now. And they're the last people who could ever be set free, because their mistakes keep coming back to haunt them. Memory brings back both pleasure and fear: good deeds are a joy to see again; bad ones never are.
5. And then there's the craziest resentment of all: certain men complain about how little respect their ancestors got, how little they left behind worth talking about, that they were born before the age of honors and world-famous games. You can forgive the young for not knowing what to want yet. Old men grumbling about the calendar, grieving that they weren't alive in Noah's time — that's plain madness. Whatever age you live in, there's one fixed limit you can never cross.
III
Latin
1. Omnia licet quae umquam ingenia fulserunt in hoc unum consentiant, numquam satis hanc humanarum mentium caliginem mirabuntur: praedia sua occupari a nullo patiuntur et, si exigua contentio est de modo finium, ad lapides et arma discurrunt; in uitam suam incedere alios sinunt, immo uero ipsi etiam possessores eius futuros inducunt; nemo inuenitur qui pecuniam suam diuidere uelit, uitam unusquisque quam multis distribuit! Adstricti sunt in continendo patrimonio, simul ad iacturam temporis uentum est, profusissimi in eo cuius unius honesta auaritia est.
2. Libet itaque ex seniorum turba comprendere aliquem: "Peruenisse te ad ultimum aetatis humanae uidemus, centesimus tibi uel supra premitur annus: agedum, ad computationem aetatem tuam reuoca. Duc quantum ex isto tempore creditor, quantum amica, quantum rex, quantum cliens abstulerit, quantum lis uxoria, quantum seruorum coercitio, quantum officiosa per urbem discursatio; adice morbos quos manu fecimus, adice quod et sine usu iacuit: uidebis te pauciores annos habere quam numeras.
3. Repete memoria tecum quando certus consilii fueris, quotus quisque dies ut destinaueras recesserit, quando tibi usus tui fuerit, quando in statu suo uultus, quando animus intrepidus, quid tibi in tam longo aeuo facti operis sit, quam multi uitam tuam diripuerint te non sentiente quid perderes, quantum uanus dolor, stulta laetitia, auida cupiditas, blanda conuersatio abstulerit, quam exiguum tibi de tuo relictum sit: intelleges te immaturum mori."
4. Quid ergo est in causa? Tamquam semper uicturi uiuitis, numquam uobis fragilitas uestra succurrit, non obseruatis quantum iam temporis transierit; uelut ex pleno et abundanti perditis, cum interim fortasse ille ipse qui alicui uel homini uel rei donatur dies ultimus sit. Omnia tamquam mortales timetis, omnia tamquam immortales concupiscitis.
5. Audies plerosque dicentes: "A quinquagesimo anno in otium secedam, sexagesimus me annus ab officiis dimittet." Et quem tandem longioris uitae praedem accipis? Quis ista sicut disponis ire patietur? Non pudet te reliquias uitae tibi reseruare et id solum tempus bonae menti destinare quod in nullam rem conferri possit? Quam serum est tunc uiuere incipere cum desinendum est? Quae tam stulta mortalitatis obliuio in quinquagesimum et sexagesimum annum differre sana consilia et inde uelle uitam inchoare quo pauci perduxerunt?
English
1. So take heart, Paulinus: the life you want, you can have. You wish it were longer than it has been — but who couldn't live it more fully? Look: the years are there. Take them and use them well. Ask yourself what has gone to waste. Why do you always grab at the last thing? Why delay? Death is waiting — are you waiting for anything?
2. Listen to the greatest of poets, who sang like a man inspired: "Each best day of life flees first for wretched mortals." Why hesitate? Why wait? Seize it, or it runs. Even when you've grabbed it, it keeps running — so match the speed of time with the speed of using it, and drink fast, like someone drinking from a flood that won't flow twice.
3. And most beautiful of all — the poet doesn't say the best AGE flees first, but the best DAY. Why plan out months and years as if time were endless, when each day is already running out? He's talking about the day — this very day.
4. So there's no question: the best days flee the busy first. Their minds are still children when old age arrives, and they arrive unarmed and unprepared. Nothing was saved up; old age hit them all at once, and they never felt it coming day by day.
5. "At fifty," one man says, "I'll slow down. At sixty, I'll stop working altogether." And what guarantee, poor man, do you have of living that long? Who will make your plans come true? Do you treat the leftovers of other people's lives as if they were yours? Everything gets put off until you're done with everything — but how foolish to postpone the beginning of living, since living is the only place to start.
IV
Latin
1. Potentissimis et in altum sublatis hominibus excidere uoces uidebis quibus otium optent, laudent, omnibus bonis suis praeferant. Cupiunt interim ex illo fastigio suo, si tuto liceat, descendere; nam ut nihil extra lacessat aut quatiat, in se ipsa fortuna ruit.
2. Diuus Augustus, cui dii plura quam ulli praestiterunt, non desiit quietem sibi precari et uacationem a re publica petere; omnis eius sermo ad hoc semper reuolutus est, ut speraret otium: hoc labores suos, etiam si falso, dulci tamen oblectabat solacio, aliquando se uicturum sibi.
3. In quadam ad senatum missa epistula, cum requiem suam non uacuam fore dignitatis nec a priore gloria discrepantem pollicitus esset, haec verba inueni: "Sed ista fieri speciosius quam promitti possunt. Me tamen cupido temporis optatissimi mihi prouexit, ut quoniam rerum laetitia moratur adhuc, praeciperem aliquid uoluptatis ex uerborum dulcedine."
4. Tanta uisa est res otium, ut illam, quia usu non poterat, cogitatione praesumeret. Qui omnia uidebat ex se uno pendentia, qui hominibus gentibusque fortunam dabat, illum diem laetissimus cogitabat quo magnitudinem suam exueret.
5. Expertus erat quantum illa bona per omnis terras fulgentia sudoris exprimerent, quantum occultarum sollicitudinum tegerent: cum ciuibus primum, deinde cum collegis, nouissime cum affinibus coactus armis decernere mari terraque sanguinem fudit. Per Macedoniam, Siciliam, Aegyptum, Syriam Asiamque et omnis prope oras bello circumactus Romana caede lassos exercitus ad externa bella conuertit. Dum Alpes pacat immixtosque mediae paci et imperio hostes perdomat, dum [ut] ultra Rhenum et Euphraten et Danuuium terminos mouet, in ipsa urbe Murenae, Caepionis Lepidi, Egnati, aliorum in eum mucrones acuebantur.
6. Nondum horum effugerat insidias: filia et tot nobiles iuuenes adulterio uelut sacramento adacti iam infractam aetatem territabant Paulusque et iterum timenda cum Antonio mulier. Haec ulcera cum ipsis membris absciderat: alia subnascebantur; uelut graue multo sanguine corpus parte semper aliqua rumpebatur. Itaque otium optabat, in huius spe et cogitatione labores eius residebant, hoc uotum erat eius qui uoti compotes facere poterat.
English
1. Some of the most powerful men in the world have said out loud that they longed for rest — and it was in their prayers first of all. Even at the height of their success, they asked above all for quiet and a safe place to withdraw to, wishes they knew they'd never be allowed to act on.
2. The ruler of the whole world — before whose frown everything bowed — once said, tired out: "When, Rome, will I get to put this burden down?" As if he couldn't simply wish it so, when he had the power to command it.
3. He had learned by then how much sweat those shining treasures of his cost, and how much hidden worry: forced to fight with arms — first fellow citizens, then his own colleagues, finally his own family — he spilled blood on land and sea. Through Macedonia he chased the wreckage of nations to the edge of the world; he was dictating laws to Athens — and while he was redrawing the borders of empire, daggers were being sharpened against him in Rome itself: against Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others.
4. He had barely escaped those plots when his daughter, and a crowd of young nobles bound to adultery like a secret oath, shook his already weakened old age — and Paullus, and a woman to be feared twice over, once with Antony. He cut away those sores along with the limbs they belonged to; new ones kept growing. And like an overloaded ship that takes on water even in calm seas, the weight he had taken on sank him.
5. His armies, his soldiers, his fleets — with them he fenced off the seas and carried the Roman people to the ends of the earth — he saw even in his dreams; his labors came back to him in hopes and imaginings.
6. And yet that was the prayer of a man who could make any prayer come true.
V
Latin
1. M. Cicero inter Catilinas, Clodios iactatus Pompeiosque et Crassos, partim manifestos inimicos, partim dubios amicos, dum fluctuatur cum re publica et illam pessum euntem tenet, nouissime abductus, nec secundis rebus quietus nec aduersarum patiens, quotiens illum ipsum consulatum suum non sine causa sed sine fine laudatum detestatur!
2. Quam flebiles uoces exprimit in quadam ad Atticum epistula iam uicto patre Pompeio, adhuc filio in Hispania fracta arma refouente! "Quid agam", inquit, "hic, quaeris? Moror in Tusculano meo semiliber." Alia deinceps adicit, quibus et priorem aetatem complorat et de praesenti queritur et de futura desperat.
3. Semiliberum se dixit Cicero: at me hercules numquam sapiens in tam humile nomen procedet, numquam semiliber erit, integrae semper libertatis et solidae, solutus et sui iuris et altior ceteris. Quid enim supra eum potest esse qui supra fortunam est?
English
1. And Cicero — tossed back and forth between Catiline's daggers on one side and the young Caesar's swords on the other! What day didn't bring him danger? How he prayed against exile as if it were death! How he celebrated his own consulship! How proud he was, as if his eloquence had bought him immortality!
2. And yet consider the man to whom his country appeared in a dream, and who asked, first of all, to live long enough to see her safe — the dream promised it — and he gave thanks, and prayed not to live too long.
3. But even a man that great, chained to the memory of his own glory, couldn't face the dangers piling up around him. He had to bargain for his life; he had to beg for more time. He who said of his consulship "I have lived" — who could have said "I have lived well" — the man his glory proved a great one — ended up living in fear, an old man pleading for his years.
VI
Latin
1. Liuius Drusus, uir acer et uehemens, cum leges nouas et mala Gracchana mouisset stipatus ingenti totius Italiae coetu, exitum rerum non peruidens, quas nec agere licebat nec iam liberum erat semel incohatas relinquere, exsecratus inquietam a primordiis uitam dicitur dixisse: uni sibi ne puero quidem umquam ferias contigisse. Ausus est enim et pupillus adhuc et praetextatus iudicibus reos commendare et gratiam suam foro interponere tam efficaciter quidem, ut quaedam iudicia constet ab illo rapta.
2. Quo non erumperet tam immatura ambitio? Scires in malum ingens et priuatum et publicum euasuram tam praecoquem audaciam. Sero itaque querebatur nullas sibi ferias contigisse a puero seditiosus et foro grauis. Disputatur an ipse sibi manus attulerit; subito enim uulnere per inguen accepto collapsus est, aliquo dubitante an mors eius uoluntaria esset, nullo an tempestiua.
3. Superuacuum est commemorare plures qui, cum aliis felicissimi uiderentur, ipsi in se uerum testimonium dixerunt perosi omnem actum annorum suorum; sed his querellis nec alios mutauerunt nec se ipsos: nam cum uerba eruperunt, affectus ad consuetudinem relabuntur.
4. Vestra me hercules uita, licet supra mille annos exeat, in artissimum contrahetur: ista uitia nullum non saeculum deuorabunt; hoc uero spatium, quod quamuis natura currit ratio dilatat, cito uos effugiat necesse est; non enim apprenditis nec retinetis uel ocissimae omnium rei moram facitis, sed abire ut rem superuacuam ac reparabilem sinitis.
English
1. Livius Drusus, a fierce and violent man, had stirred up Gracchus' new and dangerous laws. Surrounded by an enormous gathering from all of Italy, seeing no way out of business he couldn't drop and couldn't safely leave half-done, he is said to have cursed his restless life from the very beginning, complaining that he'd never had a holiday — not even as a boy. While still a child he dared to speak for defendants before judges, and threw his weight around the courts so hard that some verdicts were said to have been pulled out by him.
2. Where wouldn't ambition that young break out? You could tell such early recklessness would end in disaster, public and private. Late in life he complained that he'd had no holidays since childhood — a rebel as a kid, a burden on the courts even then. People argue about whether he killed himself: he collapsed from a sudden wound in the groin, some doubting whether his death was by his own hand, nobody doubting it came at the right time.
3. There's no point listing more men who looked happiest to everyone else but testified honestly against themselves, hating everything they'd done with their years. Their complaints changed no one, not even themselves: once the words were out, the old habits took over again.
4. Your life, I swear, even if it lasted a thousand years, would shrink into the tiniest space: those vices would swallow every year of it. And this stretch of time, which reason stretches further while nature races through it, will slip away from you soon, because you don't grab it, don't hold it, don't slow the fastest thing there is even for a moment — you treat it as something spare, something you'll get back.
VII
Latin
1. In primis autem et illos numero qui nulli rei nisi uino ac libidini uacant; nulli enim turpius occupati sunt. Ceteri, etiam si uana gloriae imagine teneantur, speciose tamen errant; licet auaros mihi, licet iracundos enumeres uel odia exercentes iniusta uel bella, omnes isti uirilius peccant: in uentrem ac libidinem proiectorum inhonesta tabes est.
2. Omnia istorum tempora excute, aspice quam diu computent, quam diu insidientur, quam diu timeant, quam diu colant, quam diu colantur, quantum uadimonia sua atque aliena occupent, quantum conuiuia, quae iam ipsa officia sunt: uidebis quemadmodum illos respirare non sinant uel mala sua vel bona.
3. Denique inter omnes conuenit nullam rem bene exerceri posse ab homine occupato, non eloquentiam, non liberales disciplinas, quando districtus animus nihil altius recipit sed omnia uelut inculcata respuit. Nihil minus est hominis occupati quam uiuere: nullius rei difficilior scientia est. Professores aliarum artium uulgo multique sunt, quasdam uero ex his pueri admodum ita percepisse uisi sunt, ut etiam praecipere possent: uiuere tota uita discendum est et, quod magis fortasse miraberis, tota uita discendum est mori.
4. Tot maximi uiri, relictis omnibus impedimentis, cum diuitiis, officiis, uoluptatibus renuntiassent, hoc unum in extremam usque aetatem egerunt ut uiuere scirent; plures tamen ex his nondum se scire confessi uita abierunt, nedum ut isti sciant.
5. Magni, mihi crede, et supra humanos errores eminentis uiri est nihil ex suo tempore delibari sinere, et ideo eius uita longissima est, quia, quantumcumque patuit, totum ipsi uacauit. Nihil inde incultum otiosumque iacuit, nihil sub alio fuit, neque enim quicquam repperit dignum quod cum tempore suo permutaret custos eius parcissimus. Itaque satis illi fuit: iis uero necesse est defuisse ex quorum uita multum populus tulit.
6. Nec est quod putes hinc illos aliquando non intellegere damnum suum: plerosque certe audies ex iis quos magna felicitas grauat inter clientium greges aut causarum actiones aut ceteras honestas miserias exclamare interdum: "Viuere mihi non licet."
7. Quidni non liceat? Omnes illi qui te sibi aduocant tibi abducunt. Ille reus quot dies abstulit? Quot ille candidatus? Quot illa anus efferendis heredibus lassa? Quot ille ad irritandam auaritiam captantium simulatus aeger? Quot ille potentior amicus, qui uos non in amicitiam sed in apparatu habet? Dispunge, inquam, et recense uitae tuae dies: uidebis paucos admodum et reiculos apud te resedisse.
8. Assecutus ille quos optauerat fasces cupit ponere et subinde dicit: "Quando hic annus praeteribit?" Facit ille ludos, quorum sortem sibi obtingere magno aestimauit: "Quando", inquit, "istos effugiam?" Diripitur ille toto foro patronus et magno concursu omnia ultra quam audiri potest complet: "Quando", inquit, "res proferentur?" Praecipitat quisque uitam suam et futuri desiderio laborat, praesentium taedio.
9. At ille qui nullum non tempus in usus suos confert, qui omnes dies tamquam ultimum ordinat, nec optat crastinum nec timet. Quid enim est quod iam ulla hora nouae uoluptatis possit afferre? Omnia nota, omnia ad satietatem percepta sunt. De cetero fors fortuna ut uolet ordinet: uita iam in tuto est. Huic adici potest, detrahi nihil, et adici sic quemadmodum saturo iam ac pleno aliquid cibi: quod nec desiderat [et] capit.
10. Non est itaque quod quemquam propter canos aut rugas putes diu uixisse: non ille diu uixit, sed diu fuit. Quid enim, si illum multum putes nauigasse quem saeua tempestas a portu exceptum huc et illuc tulit ac uicibus uentorum ex diuerso furentium per eadem spatia in orbem egit? Non ille multum nauigauit, sed multum iactatus est.
English
1. Start with the men devoted to nothing but wine and pleasure: none are more shamelessly busy. The others, even when chasing glory, at least fail respectably. Name the greedy, the angry, the men waging unjust wars and hatreds — all of them sin more like men. shameful waste is what happens to people abandoned to their appetite.
2. Add up their hours. See how long they spend doing accounts, lying in wait, fearing, flattering, being flattered, tying themselves up in other people's bonds, hosting dinner parties that are practically official duties now. You'll see how their own misery or their own success never lets them breathe.
3. Everyone agrees: a busy man can do nothing well — not public speaking, not the liberal studies. A stretched mind absorbs nothing deeply and rejects everything as if defeated. Nothing is further from the busy man than living. Nothing is harder to learn. Every other art has plenty of teachers; some of them are so well understood that even children could teach them. But living — the whole of life — has to be learned. And here's what will surprise you most: the whole of life has to be learned in dying.
4. So many great men, dropping every distraction — renouncing wealth, offices, pleasures — worked on this one question into old age: how to live. And more of them died admitting they didn't know yet. So imagine the rest.
5. Believe me: it takes a great man, above ordinary human error, to keep any of his hours unstained. That's why their lives are the longest — because whatever room opened up, they spent all of it on themselves. Nothing sat unused or wasted; nothing was ruled by someone else. They found nothing worth trading for their time, and guarded it carefully. So it was enough for them. But for the people whose lives the crowd took in chunks, time had to run short.
6. And don't think they never noticed what they'd lost. You'll hear the men weighed down by great success — surrounded by clients or lawsuits or other respectable misery — cry out sometimes: "I'm not allowed to live."
7. And why not? Everyone who calls you to them pulls you away from yourself. How many days has that court case cost you? That election campaign? That old woman busy burying her heirs? That fake invalid milking his flatterers? That important "friend" who keeps you for display, not friendship? Look at it — count the days of your life. You'll see how few, and how small, are actually yours.
8. The man who won the office he wanted wants to quit it immediately: "When will this year be over?" The one who gave the games he thought it was an honor to be given: "When do I get out of them?" That lawyer is hauled from one end of the courtroom to the other, filling the hall beyond what anyone can hear: "When is my case up?" Everyone rushes through life, starving for the future, sick of the present.
9. But the one who spends every hour on himself, who treats every day as his last, neither longs for tomorrow nor fears it. What could a new day bring that's better? Everything is known, everything tasted to the limit. Let fortune do what it wants: your life is already safe. It can be added to, not taken away — added the way you feed someone already full: they eat because it's there, not because they need it.
10. So don't call a man long-lived because of grey hair and wrinkles. He hasn't lived long — he's just BEEN long. Would you say a sailor sailed far if a violent storm caught him leaving port, spun him around, and blew him back and forth over the same stretch of sea? He didn't sail far. He was thrown around a lot.
VIII
Latin
1. Mirari soleo cum uideo aliquos tempus petentes et eos qui rogantur facillimos; illud uterque spectat propter quod tempus petitum est, ipsum quidem neuter: quasi nihil petitur, quasi nihil datur. Re omnium pretiosissima luditur; fallit autem illos, quia res incorporalis est, quia sub oculos non uenit ideoque uilissima aestimatur, immo paene nullum eius pretium est.
2. Annua, congiaria homines carissime accipiunt et illis aut laborem aut operam aut diligentiam suam locant: nemo aestimat tempus; utuntur illo laxius quasi gratuito. At eosdem aegros uide, si mortis periculum propius admotum est, medicorum genua tangentes, si metuunt capitale supplicium, omnia sua, ut uiuant, paratos impendere! Tanta in illis discordia affectuum est!
3. Quodsi posset quem-admodum praeteritorum annorum cuiusque numerus proponi, sic futurorum, quomodo illi qui paucos uiderent superesse trepidarent, quomodo illis parcerent! Atqui facile est quamuis exiguum dispensare quod certum est; id debet seruari diligentius quod nescias quando deficiat.
4. Nec est tamen quod putes illos ignorare quam cara res sit: dicere solent eis quos ualdissime diligunt paratos se partem annorum suorum dare: dant nec intellegunt: dant autem ita ut sine illorum incremento sibi detrahant. Sed hoc ipsum an detrahant nesciunt; ideo tolerabilis est illis iactura detrimenti latentis.
5. Nemo restituet annos, nemo iterum te tibi reddet. Ibit qua coepit aetas nec cursum suum aut reuocabit aut supprimet; nihil tumultuabitur, nihil admonebit uelocitatis suae: tacita labetur. Non illa se regis imperio, non fauore populi longius proferet: sicut missa est a primo die, curret, nusquam deuertetur, nusquam remorabitur. Quid fiet? Tu occupatus es, uita festinat; mors interim aderit, cui uelis nolis uacandum est.
English
1. I'm always amazed when I see some people asking for time and others happily granting it: each watches what the time is being asked FOR, not the time itself — as if nothing is being asked, nothing given. The most precious thing there is gets played with. It fools them because it can't be seen, so it gets valued at almost nothing.
2. People love receiving yearly allowances and gifts, and work hard for them. Nobody values time — they use it carelessly, like it's free. But watch the same person when illness threatens, grabbing the doctor's knees; when a death sentence looms, ready to spend everything to live! What a war inside them!
3. If each man's past years could be laid out beside the years ahead, imagine how they'd tremble, seeing how few are left — how carefully they'd spend them! It's easy to be careful with something small and certain. You should guard most carefully the thing that could run out at any moment.
4. And they do know how precious it is: they tell the people they love most that they'd gladly give them part of their years. They give it — and don't realize they're cutting it from themselves. But taking years from yourself without noticing makes the loss easy to bear.
5. Nobody will give the years back. Nobody will return you to yourself. Life moves on as it began, never reversing, never slowing. It won't make a scene; it won't announce its speed; it slips by in silence. It won't stretch out for a king's command or the people's favor. As it set off on the first day, so it runs — no detours, no delays. So what happens? You're busy. Life races. Then death shows up — and you'll have to make time for him whether you like it or not.
IX
Latin
1. Potestne quicquam stultius esse quam quorundam sensus, hominum eorum dico qui prudentiam iactant? Operosius occupati sunt. Vt melius possint uiuere, impendio uitae uitam instruunt. Cogitationes suas in longum ordinant; maxima porro uitae iactura dilatio est: illa primum quemque extrahit diem, illa eripit praesentia dum ulteriora promittit. Maximum uiuendi impedimentum est exspectatio, quae pendet ex crastino, perdit hodiernum. Quod in manu fortunae positum est disponis, quod in tua, dimittis. Quo spectas? Quo te extendis? Omnia quae uentura sunt in incerto iacent: protinus uiue.
2. Clamat ecce maximus uates et uelut diuino horrore instinctus salutare carmen canit: Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aeui Prima fugit. "Quid cunctaris?", inquit, "Quid cessas? Nisi occupas, fugit." Et cum occupaueris, tamen fugiet: itaque cum celeritate temporis utendi uelocitate certandum est et uelut ex torrenti rapido nec semper ituro cito hauriendum.
3. Hoc quoque pulcherrime ad exprobrandam infinitam cogitationem quod non optimam quamque aetatem sed diem dicit. Quid securus et in tanta temporum fuga lentus menses tibi et annos in longam seriem, utcumque auiditati tuae uisum est, exporrigis? De die tecum loquitur et de hoc ipso fugiente.
4. Num dubium est ergo quin prima quaeque optima dies fugiat mortalibus miseris, id est occupatis? Quorum puerilis adhuc animos senectus opprimit, ad quam imparati inermesque perueniunt; nihil enim prouisum est: subito in illam necopinantes inciderunt, accedere eam cotidie non sentiebant.
5. Quemadmodum aut sermo aut lectio aut aliqua intentior cogitatio iter facientis decipit et peruenisse ante sciunt quam appropinquasse, sic hoc iter uitae assiduum et citatissimum quod uigilantes dormientesque eodem gradu facimus occupatis non apparet nisi in fine.
English
1. Can anything be stupider than the attitude of certain men who boast about being wise? They're busy about being busy. To live better, they spend their lives getting life ready. They plan far ahead — and postponement is the biggest waste of life: it steals each day as it comes, grabs the present and promises the future. Expectation is the biggest obstacle to living: it hangs on tomorrow and loses today. You're managing what belongs to fortune; you're dropping what belongs to you. Where are you heading? What's all this preparation for?
2. Hear the greatest of poets, singing like a man struck by divine terror: "Each best day of life flees first for wretched mortals." Why wait? Why stall? Grab it, or it runs. Even grabbed, it keeps running — so race time with your speed of using it, and drink fast, like someone drinking from a flood that won't flow twice.
3. And most beautifully of all, shaming endless hesitation, he doesn't say the best AGE — he says the best DAY. Careless in this headlong rush, why stretch out months and years ahead? He's talking about the day — this day, the one already escaping.
4. No question, then: the best days flee the busy first. Old age finds their minds still childish, and they arrive unprepared and unarmed. Nothing was set aside; it hit them suddenly, without warning — they never felt it approaching day by day.
5. A traveler fooled by conversation, or a book, or deep thought arrives before he noticed he was getting close. That's how this journey of life works — nonstop, fast, made at the same pace asleep and awake. The busy only notice it at the end.
X
Latin
1. Quod proposui si in partes uelim et argumenta diducere, multa mihi occurrent per quae probem breuissimam esse occupatorum uitam. Solebat dicere Fabianus, non ex his cathedrariis philosophis, sed ex ueris et antiquis, "contra affectus impetu, non subtilitate pugnandum, nec minutis uulneribus sed incursu auertendam aciem". Non probabat cauillationes: "enim contundi debere, non uellicari." Tamen, ut illis error exprobretur suus, docendi non tantum deplorandi sunt.
2. In tria tempora uita diuiditur: quod fuit, quod est, quod futurum est. Ex his quod agimus breue est, quod acturi sumus dubium, quod egimus certum. Hoc est enim in quod fortuna ius perdidit, quod in nullius arbitrium reduci potest.
3. Hoc amittunt occupati; nec enim illis uacat praeterita respicere, et si uacet iniucunda est paenitendae rei recordatio. Inuiti itaque ad tempora male exacta animum reuocant nec audent ea retemptare quorum uitia, etiam quae aliquo praesentis uoluptatis lenocinio surripiebantur, retractando patescunt. Nemo, nisi quoi omnia acta sunt sub censura sua, quae numquam fallitur, libenter se in praeteritum retorquet:
4. ille qui multa ambitiose concupiit superbe contempsit, impotenter uicit insidiose decepit, auare rapuit prodige effudit, necesse est memoriam suam timeat. Atqui haec est pars temporis nostri sacra ac dedicata, omnis humanos casus supergressa, extra regnum fortunae subducta, quam non inopia, non metus, non morborum incursus exagitet; haec nec turbari nec eripi potest; perpetua eius et intrepida possessio est. Singuli tantum dies, et hi per momenta, praesentes sunt; at praeteriti temporis omnes, cum jusseritis, aderunt, ad arbitrium tuum inspici se ac detineri patientur, quod facere occupatis non uacat.
5. Securae et quietae mentis est in omnes uitae suae partes discurrere; occupatorum animi, uelut sub iugo sint, flectere se ac respicere non possunt. Abit igitur uita eorum in profundum; et ut nihil prodest, licet quantumlibet ingeras, si non subest quod excipiat ac seruet, sic nihil refert quantum temporis detur, si non est ubi subsidat: per quassos foratosque animos transmittitur.
6. Praesens tempus breuissimum est, adeo quidem ut quibusdam nullum uideatur; in cursu enim semper est, fluit et praecipitatur; ante desinit esse quam uenit, nec magis moram patitur quam mundus aut sidera, quorum irrequieta semper agitatio numquam in eodem uestigio manet. Solum igitur ad occupatos praesens pertinet tempus, quod tam breue est ut arripi non possit, et id ipsum illis districtis in multa subducitur.
English
1. If I wanted to break this into parts and lay out every argument, there's plenty to prove the lives of the busy are the shortest. Fabianus used to say — not one of your lecture-hall philosophers, but a true one of the old school — that you fight the passions by charging at them, not by picking at them; turn their line with a full assault, not little scratches. They must be crushed, not plucked. Still, their mistake has to be shown to them plainly: teach them, don't just mourn them.
2. Life splits into three times: what WAS, what IS, what WILL BE. What we're doing is brief; what we will do, uncertain; what we've done, certain — the one place fortune has lost her rights, which no power can bring back into anyone's control.
3. The busy lose this. They have no time to look back; and if they did, remembering something regrettable is painful. They drag their minds back to wasted years unwillingly, and don't dare revisit the things whose sins — even the ones smuggled in under pleasure — open up on review. Nobody willingly turns to the past unless every act stands under his own judgment, which never deceives itself.
4. The man who coveted ambitiously, looked down proudly, conquered immoderately, deceived treacherously, grabbed greedily, spent lavishly — that man dreads his own memory. Yet this is the sacred, protected portion of our time, beyond all human chance, out of fortune's reach, which neither poverty, nor fear, nor disease can touch: it can't be troubled or taken away. Its possession is forever and fearless. Single days come to us one moment at a time; but all the time that is past, when you call for it, is there — ready to be seen and held.
5. Only a calm, settled mind can run through every part of its life. Busy minds, like oxen under the yoke, can't turn around and look back. So their life sinks into the deep. Pour in as much as you like — if there's nothing underneath to catch and hold it, it's wasted. It doesn't matter how much time you're given if it has nowhere to settle: it pours straight through cracked and broken minds.
6. The present is the shortest — so short some say it doesn't exist, because it's always moving; it flows and hurries forward, ceasing to be before it arrives, as unstoppable as the world and the stars, whose motion never pauses on its course. So only the present touches the busy — too brief to grab — and even that their stretched-out minds lose among a thousand things.
XI
Latin
1. Denique uis scire quam non diu uiuant? Vide quam cupiant diu uiuere. Decrepiti senes paucorum annorum accessionem uotis mendicant: minores natu se ipsos esse fingunt; mendacio sibi blandiuntur et tam libenter se fallunt quam si una fata decipiant. Iam uero cum illos aliqua imbecillitas mortalitatis admonuit, quemadmodum pauentes moriuntur, non tamquam exeant de uita sed tamquam extrahantur. Stultos se fuisse ut non uixerint clamitant et, si modo euaserint ex illa ualetudine, in otio uicturos; tunc quam frustra parauerint quibus non fruerentur, quam in cassum omnis ceciderit labor cogitant.
2. At quibus uita procul ab omni negotio agitur, quidni spatiosa sit? Nihil ex illa delegatur, nihil alio atque alio spargitur, nihil inde fortunae traditur, nihil neglegentia interit, nihil largitione detrahitur, nihil superuacuum est: tota, ut ita dicam, in reditu est. Quantulacumque itaque abunde sufficit, et ideo, quandoque ultimus dies uenerit, non cunctabitur sapiens ire ad mortem certo gradu.
English
1. Want to know how short a time they really live? Watch how desperately they want to live. Weak old men beg and pray for a few extra years. They claim to be younger than they are; they flatter themselves with a lie, as glad to fool themselves as if they'd fooled the Fates. Then when some weakness reminds them they're mortal, they die trembling — not as if leaving life, but as if being dragged out of it. They cry that they were fools, that they never lived, and that if they get better this time, they'll finally slow down. Only then do they see how pointlessly they prepared for things that were never going to be theirs.
2. But the person who spends life far from all that business — how could it not be spacious? Nothing gets passed along, nothing scattered, nothing handed to fortune, nothing lost by carelessness, nothing thrown away, nothing extra. The whole thing, so to speak, is pure gain. So however small it is, it's enough — and whenever that last day comes, the wise man won't hesitate to walk to death with a sure step.
XII
Latin
1. Quaeris fortasse quos occupatos uocem? Non est quod me solos putes dicere quos a basilica immissi demum canes eiciunt, quos aut in sua uides turba speciosius elidi aut in aliena contemptius, quos officia domibus suis euocant ut alienis foribus illidant, [aut] hasta praetoris infami lucro et quandoque suppuraturo exercet.
2. Quorundam otium occupatum est: in uilla aut in lecto suo, in media solitudine, quamuis ab omnibus recesserint, sibi ipsi molesti sunt: quorum non otiosa uita dicenda est sed desidiosa occupatio. Illum tu otiosum uocas qui Corinthia, paucorum furore pretiosa, anxia subtilitate concinnat et maiorem dierum partem in aeruginosis lamellis consumit? qui in ceromate (nam, pro facinus! ne Romanis quidem uitiis laboramus) spectator puerorum rixantium sedet? qui iumentorum suorum greges in aetatum et colorum paria diducit? qui athletas nouissimos pascit?
3. Quid? Illos otiosos uocas quibus apud tonsorem multae horae transmittuntur, dum decerpitur si quid proxima nocte succreuit, dum de singulis capillis in consilium itur, dum aut disiecta coma restituitur aut deficiens hinc atque illinc in frontem compellitur? Quomodo irascuntur, si tonsor paulo neglegentior fuit, tamquam uirum tonderet! Quomodo excandescunt si quid ex iuba sua decisum est, si quid extra ordinem iacuit, nisi omnia in anulos suos reciderunt! Quis est istorum qui non malit rem publicam turbari quam comam suam? qui non sollicitior sit de capitis sui decore quam de salute? qui non comptior esse malit quam honestior? Hos tu otiosos uocas inter pectinem speculumque occupatos?
4. Quid illi qui in componendis, audiendis, discendis canticis operati sunt, dum uocem, cuius rectum cursum natura et optimum et simplicissimum fecit, in flexus modulationis inertissimae torquent, quorum digiti aliquod intra se carmen metientes semper sonant, quorum, cum ad res serias, etiam saepe tristes adhibiti sunt, exauditur tacita modulatio? Non habent isti otium, sed iners negotium.
5. Conuiuia me hercules horum non posuerim inter uacantia tempora, cum uideam quam solliciti argentum ordinent, quam diligenter exoletorum suorum tunicas succingant, quam suspensi sint quomodo aper a coco exeat, qua celeritate signo dato glabri ad ministeria discurrant, quanta arte scindantur aues in frusta non enormia, quam curiose infelices pueruli ebriorum sputa detergeant: ex his elegantiae lautitiaeque fama captatur et usque eo in omnes uitae secessus mala sua illos sequuntur, ut nec bibant sine ambitione nec edant.
6. Ne illos quidem inter otiosos numeraueris qui sella se et lectica huc et illuc ferunt et ad gestationum suarum, quasi deserere illas non liceat, horas occurrunt, quos quando lauari debeant, quando natare, quando cenare alius admonet: [et] usque eo nimio delicati animi languore soluuntur, ut per se scire non possint an esuriant.
7. Audio quendam ex delicatis (si modo deliciae uocandae sunt uitam et consuetudinem humanam dediscere), cum ex balneo inter manus elatus et in sella positus esset, dixisse interrogando: "Iam sedeo?" Hunc tu ignorantem an sedeat putas scire an uiuat, an uideat, an otiosus sit? Non facile dixerim utrum magis miserear, si hoc ignorauit an si ignorare se finxit.
8. Multarum quidem rerum obliuionem sentiunt, sed multarum et imitantur; quaedam uitia illos quasi felicitatis argumenta delectant; nimis humilis et contempti hominis uidetur scire quid facias: i nunc et mimos multa mentiri ad exprobrandam luxuriam puta. Plura me hercules praetereunt quam fingunt et tanta incredibilium uitiorum copia ingenioso in hoc unum saeculo processit, ut iam mimorum arguere possimus neglegentiam. Esse aliquem qui usque eo deliciis interierit ut an sedeat alteri credat!
9. Non est ergo hic otiosus, aliud illi nomen imponas; aeger est, immo mortuus est; ille otiosus est cui otii sui et sensus est. Hic uero semiuiuus, cui ad intellegendos corporis sui habitus indice opus est, quomodo potest hic ullius temporis dominus esse?
English
1. You ask, maybe, who exactly I mean by the busy? Don't think I only mean the men the dogs finally chase out of the courthouse — the ones you see knocked down in their own crowd more elegantly than in anyone else's, or whose duties drag them from their own homes to pound on other people's doors, or whom the magistrate's staff keeps working for shameful, someday-festering profit.
2. Some people's free time is busy too: out at the country house or lying on the couch, alone in total solitude, they're a burden to themselves even though they've left everyone behind. That's not an idle life — that's lazy busyness. Do you call him at leisure, the man who carves up Corinthian bronzes — precious to the madness of a few — with anxious precision, spending most of his days over rusty metal sheets? Who sits in the wrestling yard — disgraceful, we don't even suffer Roman vices! — watching boys fight? Who breeds his teams of mules in matching ages and colors? Who feeds the newest athletes?
3. What about the ones you call at leisure who spend hours at the barber while everything that grew overnight gets plucked, while each single hair is discussed, while tangled hair is rearranged or thinning hair is combed up from both sides onto the forehead? How furious they get if the barber slipped a little — as if a real man were being sheared! How they explode if anything was cut from their mane, or lies out of place, unless every strand falls back into its rings! Who among them wouldn't rather see the republic in chaos than his own haircut? Who worries more about how his head looks than how his health is? Who would rather be well-groomed than honorable? You call these men at leisure — busy over a comb and a mirror?
4. And the ones who work at writing, listening to, and learning songs — who twist a voice that nature made straight and simple and best into the wobbliest musical flourishes, whose fingers measure out some tune inaudibly and never stop sounding, whose humming you can hear even when they're called to serious business, often to sad business. These men have no leisure — just lazy busyness.
5. Their dinner parties, I swear, I'd never count as free time — when I watch how anxiously the silver is arranged, how carefully the servants' tunics are belted, how they hold their breath as the boar is carried in by the cook, how fast the smooth-cheeked boys sprint to their posts at a signal, with what art birds are carved into neat pieces, how patiently the poor little slaves wipe up drunk men's spit. That's where they chase their reputation for taste and luxury. And their troubles follow them into every corner of life: they can't even drink or eat without showing off.
6. Don't count among the idle the ones who get carried here and there in chairs and litters, and keep appointments with their own litters — as if they weren't allowed to miss them — the ones who need somebody else to tell them when to bathe, when to swim, when to eat. They've gone so soft from the weakness of their pampered minds that they can't tell on their own whether they're hungry.
7. I hear one of these delicate souls — if a life that's unlearned human habits deserves the word "delicate" — after being carried out of the bath and set into his chair, asked out loud: "Am I sitting yet?" Do you think a man who doesn't know whether he's sitting knows whether he's alive, whether he can see, whether he's at leisure? Hard to say which I'd pity more: that he didn't know, or that he pretended not to.
8. They genuinely forget things — and they also fake it. Some vices delight them as proof of how rich they are. Knowing what you're doing seems like the mark of a low and worthless person. Go on, believe that the comic actors invent all those lies just to mock luxury! More things happen, I swear, than they make up. The supply of unbelievable vices has grown so big in this one clever age that we could accuse the comedians of laziness — that someone could rot into luxury so deep he leaves it to another man to know whether he's sitting down!
9. So this man is not at leisure — give him a different name: he's sick. No — he's dead. The man at leisure is the one who can feel his own leisure. This half-alive creature, who needs a helper to understand what position his body is in — how can he be master of a single hour?
XIII
Latin
1. Persequi singulos longum est quorum aut latrunculi aut pila aut excoquendi in sole corporis cura consumpsere uitam. Non sunt otiosi quorum uoluptates multum negotii habent. Nam de illis nemo dubitabit quin operose nihil agant, qui litterarum inutilium studiis detinentur, quae iam apud Romanos quoque magna manus est.
2. Graecorum iste morbus fuit quaerere quem numerum Ulixes remigum habuisset, prior scripta esset Ilias an Odyssia, praeterea an eiusdem esset auctoris, alia deinceps huius notae, quae siue contineas nihil tacitam conscientiam iuuant, siue proferas non doctior uidearis sed molestior.
3. Ecce Romanos quoque inuasit inane studium superuacua discendi; his diebus audiui quendam referentem quae primus quisque ex Romanis ducibus fecisset: primus nauali proelio Duilius uicit, primus Curius Dentatus in triumpho duxit elephantos. Etiamnunc ista, etsi ad ueram gloriam non tendunt, circa ciuilium tamen operum exempla uersantur; non est profutura talis scientia, est tamen quae nos speciosa rerum uanitate detineat.
4. Hoc quoque quaerentibus remittamus quis Romanis primus persuaserit nauem conscendere (Claudius is fuit, Caudex ob hoc ipsum appellatus quia plurium tabularum contextus caudex apud antiquos uocatur, unde publicae tabulae codices dicuntur et naues nunc quoque ex antiqua consuetudine quae commeatus per Tiberim subuehunt codicariae uocantur);
5. sane et hoc ad rem pertineat, quod Valerius Coruinus primus Messanam uicit et primus ex familia Valeriorum, urbis captae in se translato nomine, Messana appellatus est paulatimque uulgo permutante litteras Messala dictus:
6. num et hoc cuiquam curare permittes quod primus L. Sulla in circo leones solutos dedit, cum alioquin alligati darentur, ad conficiendos eos missis a rege Boccho iaculatoribus? Et hoc sane remittatur: num et Pompeium primum in circo elephantorum duodeuiginti pugnam edidisse commissis more proelii noxiis hominibus, ad ullam rem bonam pertinet? Princeps ciuitatis et inter antiquos principes (ut fama tradidit) bonitatis eximiae memorabile putauit spectaculi genus nouo more perdere homines. Depugnant? Parum est. Lancinantur? Parum est: ingenti mole animalium exterantur!
7. Satius erat ista in obliuionem ire, ne quis postea potens disceret inuideretque rei minime humanae. O quantum caliginis mentibus nostris obicit magna felicitas! Ille se supra rerum naturam esse tunc credidit, cum tot miserorum hominum cateruas sub alio caelo natis beluis obiceret, cum bellum inter tam disparia animalia committeret, cum in conspectum populi Romani multum sanguinis funderet mox plus ipsum fundere coacturus; at idem postea Alexandrina perfidia deceptus ultimo mancipio transfodiendum se praebuit, tum demum intellecta inani iactatione cognominis sui.
8. Sed, ut illo reuertar unde decessi et in eadem materia ostendam superuacuam quorundam diligentiam, idem narrabat Metellum, uictis in Sicilia Poenis triumphantem, unum omnium Romanorum ante currum centum et uiginti captiuos elephantos duxisse; Sullam ultimum Romanorum protulisse pomerium, quod numquam prouinciali sed Italico agro adquisito proferre moris apud antiquos fuit. Hoc scire magis prodest quam Auentinum montem extra pomerium esse, ut ille affirmabat, propter alteram ex duabus causis, aut quod plebs eo secessisset aut quod Remo auspicante illo loco aues non addixissent, alia deinceps innumerabilia quae aut farta sunt mendaciis aut similia?
9. Nam ut concedas omnia eos fide bona dicere, ut ad praestationem scribant, tamen cuius ista errores minuent? cuius cupiditates prement? quem fortiorem, quem iustiorem, quem liberaliorem facient? Dubitare se interim Fabianus noster aiebat an satius esset nullis studiis admoueri quam his implicari.
English
1. It would take too long to go through them one by one — the men who spent their lives on dice, or ball games, or sunbathing. People whose pleasures take real work are not idle. Of the men absorbed in useless scholarship nobody doubts that they are busily doing nothing — and there's a whole crowd of them in Rome too.
2. That disease used to be Greek: arguing how many rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, whether they had the same author — and more trivia of that kind. If you keep it to yourself, it does nothing for your conscience; if you bring it up, you seem not more learned, just more annoying.
3. Now look: a pointless thirst for over-learning has infected the Romans too. Just these days I heard a man reciting which Roman general was the first to do what: Duilius won the first naval battle; Curius Dentatus was the first to lead elephants in a triumph. Even now, though none of it leads to real glory, at least it stays near real public achievements. That kind of knowledge wouldn't help — but it would at least keep us busy with something good-looking.
4. Now hear what they actually chase. They match the Greeks. One is collecting which king first used war elephants: earliest source? Or where the practice first appears? Another wants to know what even Juno never said: was it her prayer that made a Roman general lead horses and mules in triumph? Another asks how often the people ordered the little heralds to start the games.
5. Every topic you can imagine gets dug through — linen breastplates of Abraham, jars of Egypt: who first talked a Roman into marrying, what the first bride-price was, why the new name was given and the old one dropped. Plenty here to keep a mind busy — but busy is not alive. All this study is nothing but names.
6. We shouldn't waste our whole life on such things — though honestly, it's less wasteful than the pursuits I criticized. But it would take too long to list everyone whose "learning" isn't learning and never will be.
7. I'll hold back. And wouldn't you rather call most wretched the men who spend their whole lives on things they'd despise if they didn't love them? They produce nothing useful from themselves; they store nothing in themselves — but they polish what they've gathered for other people's ears, exercise their tongues on every silly detail, and call back things they once heard: they weigh, they dig, they compare.
8. What could be sadder than a man whose life's work is cataloguing other people's free time? They turn the stones of every book — and carve nothing worth keeping. I'd almost praise them if only they'd put the effort somewhere real.
9. But even if you let them have it that they report everything honestly and write to be believed — whose confusion would all this fix? Whose greed would it crush? Who would come out braver, more just, more generous? Our own Fabianus used to say he sometimes wondered whether it was better to touch no studies at all than to get tangled up in these.
XIV
Latin
1. Soli omnium otiosi sunt qui sapientiae uacant, soli uiuunt; nec enim suam tantum aetatem bene tuentur: omne aeuum suo adiciunt; quicquid annorum ante illos actum est, illis adquisitum est. Nisi ingratissimi sumus, illi clarissimi sacrarum opinionum conditores nobis nati sunt, nobis uitam praeparauerunt. Ad res pulcherrimas ex tenebris ad lucem erutas alieno labore deducimur; nullo nobis saeculo interdictum est, in omnia admittimur et, si magnitudine animi egredi humanae imbecillitatis angustias libet, multum per quod spatiemur temporis est.
2. Disputare cum Socrate licet, dubitare cum Carneade, cum Epicuro quiescere, hominis naturam cum Stoicis uincere, cum Cynicis excedere. Cum rerum natura in consortium omnis aeui patiatur incedere, quidni ab hoc exiguo et caduco temporis transitu in illa toto nos demus animo quae immensa, quae aeterna sunt, quae cum melioribus communia?
3. Isti qui per officia discursant, qui se aliosque inquietant, cum bene insanierint, cum omnium limina cotidie perambulauerint nec ullas apertas fores praeterierint, cum per diuersissimas domos meritoriam salutationem circumtulerint, quotum quemque ex tam immensa et uariis cupiditatibus districta urbe poterunt uidere?
4. Quam multi erunt quorum illos aut somnus aut luxuria aut inhumanitas summoueat! Quam multi qui illos, cum diu torserint, simulata festinatione transcurrant! Quam multi per refertum clientibus atrium prodire uitabunt et per obscuros aedium aditus profugient, quasi non inhumanius sit decipere quam excludere! Quam multi hesterna crapula semisomnes et graues illis miseris suum somnum rumpentibus ut alienum exspectent, uix alleuatis labris insusurratum miliens nomen oscitatione superbissima reddent!
5. Hos in ueris officiis morari putamus, licet dicant, qui Zenonem, qui Pythagoran cotidie et Democritum ceterosque antistites bonarum artium, qui Aristotelen et Theophrastum uolent habere quam familiarissimos. Nemo horum non uacabit, nemo non uenientem ad se beatiorem, amantiorem sui dimittet, nemo quemquam uacuis a se manibus abire patietur; nocte conueniri, interdiu ab omnibus mortalibus possunt.
English
1. Of all people, only those who give themselves to wisdom are truly at leisure. Only they live. They don't keep just their own age — they add every age to it. All the years that came before are open for them to use.
2. That temple is most holy and most majestic: we should walk in and lay before it every age — admiring one thing, absorbing another. What a disgrace it would be to be ignorant of the very thing life is for. These people live in every century.
3. The busy — where I started — are thrown into their affairs as into the waves. The whole crowd goes under more often than it rises. Some pray, stretch their hands to heaven, and thank the immortal gods as if they'd been pulled out of a pit. Others groan that they've slipped back into the same labors — the very thing they'd already prayed to escape.
4. For these, the leisure of those who study wisdom is out of reach. Their lot is separate: they never climb into danger for someone else, never fall with the falling crowd. And besides — how kindly fortune treats them, in what deep peace they spend their days! Never inflated, never crushed: their life flows like a calm, safe river.
5. So the busiest of all are the idle — I mean the ones sweating over songs. That's the kind of leisure a philosopher's dignity refuses — though it's still the least wicked kind of leisure there is.
XV
Latin
1. Horum te mori nemo coget, omnes docebunt; horum nemo annos tuos conterit, suos tibi contribuit; nullius ex his sermo periculosus erit, nullius amicitia capitalis, nullius sumptuosa obseruatio. Feres ex illis quicquid uoles; per illos non stabit quominus quantum plurimum cupieris haurias.
2. Quae illum felicitas, quam pulchra senectus manet, qui se in horum clientelam contulit! Habebit cum quibus de minimis maximisque rebus deliberet, quos de se cotidie consulat, a quibus audiat uerum sine contumelia, laudetur sine adulatione, ad quorum se similitudinem effingat.
3. Solemus dicere non fuisse in nostra potestate quos sortiremur parentes, forte nobis datos: bonis uero ad suum arbitrium nasci licet. Nobilissimorum ingeniorum familiae sunt: elige in quam adscisci uelis; non in nomen tantum adoptaberis, sed in ipsa bona, quae non erunt sordide nec maligne custodienda: maiora fient quo illa pluribus diuiseris.
4. Hi tibi dabunt ad aeternitatem iter et te in illum locum ex quo nemo deicitur subleuabunt. Haec una ratio est extendendae mortalitatis, immo in immortalitatem uertendae. Honores, monumenta, quicquid aut decretis ambitio iussit aut operibus exstruxit cito subruitur, nihil non longa demolitur uetustas et mouet; at iis quae consecrauit sapientia nocere non potest; nulla abolebit aetas, nulla deminuet; sequens ac deinde semper ulterior aliquid ad uenerationem conferet, quoniam quidem in uicino uersatur inuidia, simplicius longe posita miramur.
5. Sapientis ergo multum patet uita; non idem illum qui ceteros terminus cludit; solus generis humani legibus soluitur; omnia illi saecula ut deo seruiunt. Transiit tempus aliquod? hoc recordatione comprendit; instat? hoc utitur; uenturum est? hoc praecipit. Longam illi uitam facit omnium temporum in unum collatio.
English
1. Nobody forces you to die with them. A nobler service is calling you. Every age is open to you; nothing any human life has produced is beyond your reach; nothing of the ancient harvest is locked away. All the generations who searched for truth before us are ready for our use: the best of humanity have stored things up for us, life after long life. Ours is the mother-age: by her grace we're born into every kind of truth, and from the whole harvest of all the centuries, the best has been set aside for us — if we only know how to dig into our own minds.
2. Everything is ours, whenever we want; you can set no limit. So run through it all! Everything has been laid out as food for the mind. And since something great has been given to you — and it is great to be born into this age, where you may take whatever you wish from such richness of minds — don't sleep through your life. What belongs to a mind built for great things, if not to hunt for what's still hidden from the eyes?
3. You'll notice it in this too: the life of the past lies open to us, and it is the greatest of gifts to keep company with every age. Whoever gives himself completely to wisdom is shut out of no century and welcomed into all.
4. But the busy spend their lives chewing on their own time, working so hard that they keep nothing for themselves. For their company, every hour of the greatest minds is open. From all of them they snatch whatever's worth taking. They add years to their own count.
5. Believe me: no one with those temples of the greatest minds open to them can be wretched. Their hunger is awake; whatever they gather becomes theirs; they enjoy it deeply — and what I'd call the happier part — they leave none of their leisure for anyone else.
XVI
Latin
1. Illorum breuissima ac sollicitissima aetas est qui praeteritorum obliuiscuntur, praesentia neglegunt, de futuro timent: cum ad extrema uenerunt, sero intellegunt miseri tam diu se dum nihil agunt occupatos fuisse.
2. Nec est quod hoc argumento probari putes longam illos agere uitam, quia interdum mortem inuocant: uexat illos imprudentia incertis affectibus et incurrentibus in ipsa quae metuunt; mortem saepe ideo optant quia timent.
3. Illud quoque argumentum non est quod putes diu uiuentium, quod saepe illis longus uidetur dies, quod, dum ueniat condictum tempus cenae, tarde ire horas queruntur; nam si quando illos deseruerunt occupationes, in otio relicti aestuant nec quomodo id disponant ut extrahant sciunt. Itaque ad occupationem aliquam tendunt et quod interiacet omne tempus graue est, tam me hercules quam cum dies muneris gladiatorii edictus est, aut cum alicuius alterius uel spectaculi uel uoluptatis exspectatur constitutum, transilire medios dies uolunt.
4. Omnis illis speratae rei longa dilatio est; at illud tempus quod amant breue est et praeceps breuiusque multo, suo uitio; aliunde enim alio transfugiunt et consistere in una cupiditate non possunt. Non sunt illis longi dies, sed inuisi; at contra quam exiguae noctes uidentur, quas in complexu scortorum aut uino exigunt!
5. Inde etiam poetarum furor fabulis humanos errores alentium, quibus uisus est Iuppiter uoluptate concubitus delenitus duplicasse noctem; quid aliud est uitia nostra incendere quam auctores illis inscribere deos et dare morbo exemplo diuinitatis excusatam licentiam? Possunt istis non breuissimae uideri noctes quas tam care mercantur? Diem noctis exspectatione perdunt, noctem lucis metu.
English
1. To pass over those whose leisure everyone knows — the painters, and everyone sweating over bronze and marble; you've seen the crowds around statues and pictures, the flocks around bellows and furnaces, the ones carving gladiator limbs and polishing silver grooves. What the rest of the world calls lovers of leisure, those men know are the busiest of all. It's like the fake philosophers in the crowd who gather an audience and sweat over their speeches, while none of it reaches their soul: they're thinking about what they're GOING to say, not what they've said.
2. So they spend their whole lives preparing a life they promise themselves. They don't recite what they've finished, only what they're still writing — and even that, they say, they'll do differently. Whatever it is, it'll be different next time. They're buried under leftovers — and they start another one.
3. Do you think those men are at leisure, who spend all day vetting their robes and shuffling papers and stuffing themselves with old songs? They don't have leisure yet: there's still one more thing to catch up on. Gathering up the life of the past, they drop the present. Do you think those at leisure who give hours to the barber? No leisure yet: something's still being prepared.
4. I named the men whose busyness shows in their talk. Tell me about those who pass life doing nothing — who wear their pastime on the outside for everyone to see. They are the busiest of all. No leisure — why? They're still looking for leisure. You ask how they're busy? One's fixing his hair: busy at leisure itself.
5. It's genuinely hard to judge these people. To the busy, the idle life doesn't look idle — and yet nothing could be further apart.
XVII
Latin
2. Cum per magna camporum spatia porrigeret exercitum nec numerum eius sed mensuram comprenderet Persarum rex insolentissimus, lacrimas profudit, quod intra centum annos nemo ex tanta iuuentute superfuturus esset; at illis admoturus erat fatum ipse qui flebat perditurusque alios in mari alios in terra, alios proelio alios fuga, et intra exiguum tempus consumpturus illos quibus centesimum annum timebat.
3. Quid quod gaudia quoque eorum trepida sunt? Non enim solidis causis innituntur, sed eadem qua oriuntur uanitate turbantur. Qualia autem putas esse tempora etiam ipsorum confessione misera, cum haec quoque quibus se attollunt et super hominem efferunt parum sincera sint?
4. Maxima quaeque bona sollicita sunt nec ulli fortunae minus bene quam optimae creditur; alia felicitate ad tuendam felicitatem opus est et pro ipsis quae successere uotis uota facienda sunt. Omne enim quod fortuito obuenit instabile est: quod altius surrexerit, opportunius est in occasum. Neminem porro casura delectant; miserrimam ergo necesse est, non tantum breuissimam uitam esse eorum qui magno parant labore quod maiore possideant.
5. Operose assequuntur quae uolunt, anxii tenent quae assecuti sunt; nulla interim numquam amplius redituri temporis ratio est: nouae occupationes ueteribus substituuntur, spes spem excitat, ambitionem ambitio. Miseriarum non finis quaeritur, sed materia mutatur. Nostri nos honores torserunt? plus temporis alieni auferunt; candidati laborare desiimus? suffragatores incipimus; accusandi deposuimus molestiam? iudicandi nanciscimur; iudex desiit esse? quaesitor est; alienorum bonorum mercennaria procuratione consenuit? suis opibus distinetur.
6. Marium caliga dimisit? consulatus exercet; Quintius dictaturam properat peruadere? ab aratro reuocabitur. Ibit in Poenos nondum tantae maturus rei Scipio; uictor Hannibalis uictor Antiochi, sui consulatus decus fraterni sponsor, ni per ipsum mora esset, cum Ioue reponeretur: ciuiles seruatorem agitabunt seditiones et post fastiditos a iuuene diis aequos honores iam senem contumacis exilii delectabit ambitio. Numquam derunt uel felices uel miserae sollicitudinis causae; per occupationes uita trudetur; otium numquam agetur, semper optabitur.
English
1. Even their pleasures are anxious, tossed around by changing fears. The exulting spirit at its very height is suddenly gripped by a worried thought: "How long can this go on?" Kings have wept over their power because of this feeling. Their fortune's greatness never delighted them — only the ending, coming someday, terrified them.
2. When the proudest king of Persia stretched his army across those vast plains, he didn't count it — he measured it. And he wept, because within a hundred years not one man of that whole youth would still be alive. Yet the man weeping was the very one who would bring their fate: wasting some by sea, some by land, some in battle, some in flight — consuming, in a brief span, the people whose hundredth year he feared.
3. And what about the fact that some men's gains are their burdens? The riches they're counted blessed for — they don't enjoy them, they grind them out. Their crops, their herds, their shining gold and silver — they stare at them with suspicion; they guard, with care, what they've piled up; they dread the hour of leaving it. What they call their own they don't use — they just warehouse it.
4. And those who sit from the first morning hour in a crowd of clients, then move on to the hall, then out into the public roar — pleased with someone else's greatness — they think the house is grand because the gate is tall, the reception hall wide, the rings on fingers many. Under all that display, a mind in torment.
5. Even their softness is shot through with restlessness: the silken tunic, the softest couches, banquets planned through the whole night, entertainments beyond what kings ever did. That luxurious daintiness — if you look closely — isn't rest. It's a kind of feverish work.
XVIII
Latin
1. Excerpe itaque te uulgo, Pauline carissime, et in tranquilliorem portum non pro aetatis spatio iactatus tandem recede. Cogita quot fluctus subieris, quot tempestates partim priuatas sustinueris, partim publicas in te conuerteris; satis iam per laboriosa et inquieta documenta exhibita uirtus est; experire quid in otio faciat. Maior pars aetatis, certe melior rei publicae datast: aliquid temporis tui sume etiam tibi.
2. Nec te ad segnem aut inertem quietem uoco, non ut somno et caris turbae uoluptatibus quicquid est in te indolis uiuidae mergas; non est istud adquiescere: inuenies maiora omnibus adhuc strenue tractatis operibus, quae repositus et securus agites.
3. Tu quidem orbis terrarum rationes administras tam abstinenter quam alienas, tam diligenter quam tuas, tam religiose quam publicas. In officio amorem consequeris, in quo odium uitare difficile est; sed tamen, mihi crede, satius est uitae suae rationem quam frumenti publici nosse.
4. Istum animi uigorem rerum maximarum capacissimum a ministerio honorifico quidem sed parum ad beatam uitam apto reuoca, et cogita non id egisse te ab aetate prima omni cultu studiorum liberalium ut tibi multa milia frumenti bene committerentur; maius quiddam et altius de te promiseras.
5. Non derunt et frugalitatis exactae homines et laboriosae operae; tanto aptiora [ex]portandis oneribus tarda iumenta sunt quam nobiles equi, quorum generosam pernicitatem quis umquam graui sarcina pressit?
6. Cogita praeterea quantum sollicitudinis sit ad tantam te molem obicere: cum uentre tibi humano negotium est; nec rationem patitur nec aequitate mitigatur nec ulla prece flectitur populus esuriens. Modo modo intra paucos illos dies quibus C. Caesar periit (si quis inferis sensus est) hoc grauissime ferens quod decedebat populo Romano superstite, septem aut octo certe dierum cibaria superesse! Dum ille pontes nauibus iungit et uiribus imperi ludit, aderat ultimum malorum obsessis quoque, alimentorum egestas; exitio paene ac fame constitit et, quae famem sequitur, rerum omnium ruina furiosi et externi et infeliciter superbi regis imitatio.
6. Quem tunc animum habuerunt illi quibus erat mandata frumenti publici cura, saxa, ferrum, ignes, Gaium excepturi? Summa dissimulatione tantum inter uiscera latentis mali tegebant, cum ratione scilicet: quaedam enim ignorantibus aegris curanda sunt, causa multis moriendi fuit morbum suum nosse.
English
1. So pull yourself out of the crowd, dearest Paulinus, and — after all that tossing — finally retreat into a quieter harbor. Think how many storms you've been through, how many gales hit you — some private, some turned on you by the state itself. Your virtue has been proven long enough through hard and restless tests: try what it can do in peace. Most of your life — certainly the better part — was given to the republic. Take some of your time for yourself too.
2. I'm not calling you to dull, lazy quiet, or to drown what's lively in you in sleep and the pleasures the crowd loves. That's not rest. You'll find greater work than anything you've handled so far, working withdrawn and unafraid.
3. You run the affairs of the whole world as honestly as if they were someone else's, as diligently as if they were your own, as reverently as if they were the public's. In that office you win love — though love's opposite, hatred, is hard to avoid there. Still, believe me: better to understand the account of your own life than the public grain supply.
4. Recall that vigor of mind, built for the greatest things, and call it back from a service that honors you but barely fits the blessed life. Think: from your earliest years, with all your education, you didn't work so that thousands of bushels of grain would be safely stored under your watch. You promised yourself something bigger and deeper. The world will never run short of careful, hardworking clerks: slow oxen carry heavy loads better than thoroughbred horses — and who ever crushed a thoroughbred's gift of speed under a pack?
6. Think, too, how much worry comes with that kind of weight: when your business is a hungry people, there's no reasoning with it, no softening it with fairness, no bending it with prayer. Just the other day, in the few days when Gaius fell — if the dead feel anything — how bitterly he took it that the Roman people, outliving him, had seven or eight days of food left at best!
7. While he linked ship to ship and made bridges and played with the power of empire, the last of all evils was besieging the besieged themselves: famine. He nearly died of hunger and collapse — the ruin of everything that follows famine — imitating a mad, foreign, ill-fated, arrogant king.
7. What a spirit those men must have had, given the care of the grain supply — stone walls, iron, fire, and a Gaius to deal with! With total self-control they hid a great evil growing inside the state, and wisely: some sicknesses must be treated while the patient knows nothing; for many, learning their diagnosis is what kills them.
XIX
Latin
1. Recipe te ad haec tranquilliora, tutiora, maiora! Simile tu putas esse, utrum cures ut incorruptum et a fraude aduehentium et a neglegentia frumentum transfundatur in horrea, ne concepto umore uitietur et concalescat, ut ad mensuram pondusque respondeat, an ad haec sacra et sublimia accedas sciturus quae materia sit dei, quae uoluptas, quae condicio, quae forma; quis animum tuum casus exspectet; ubi nos a corporibus dimissos natura componat; quid sit quod huius mundi grauissima quaeque in medio sustineat, supra leuia suspendat, in summum ignem ferat, sidera uicibus suis excitet; cetera deinceps ingentibus plena miraculis?
2. Vis tu relicto solo mente ad ista respicere! Nunc, dum calet sanguis, uigentibus ad meliora eundum est. Exspectat te in hoc genere uitae multum bonarum artium, amor uirtutum atque usus, cupiditatum obliuio, uiuendi ac moriendi scientia, alta rerum quies.
English
1. Of all people, only those who make time for wisdom are truly at leisure. Only they live — because they don't guard just their own years; they add every age. All the years gone before are open to them. But the most fleeting, most anxious life belongs to those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.
2. When they reach the end, the wretched turn back into a new fear: they can't look back on anything with peace. Their regrets are remembered, their neglect is present, their fear is ahead. Some of the busy are denied even the last comfort of remembering their own pleasure. And there are those whose past deeds shine like a lamp beside them. But for these others, everything is anxiety: one class must admit its life was no good; the other never believes it was lived.
XX
Latin
1. Omnium quidem occupatorum condicio misera est, eorum tamen miserrima, qui ne suis quidem laborant occupationibus, ad alienum dormiunt somnum, ad alienum ambulant gradum, amare et odisse, res omnium liberrimas, iubentur. Hi si uolent scire quam breuis ipsorum uita sit, cogitent ex quota parte sua sit.
2. Cum uideris itaque praetextam saepe iam sumptam, cum celebre in foro nomen, ne inuideris: ista uitae damno parantur. Vt unus ab illis numeretur annus, omnis annos suos conterent. Quosdam antequam in summum ambitionis eniterentur, inter prima luctantis aetas reliquit; quosdam, cum in consummationem dignitatis per mille indignitates erepsissent, misera subiit cogitatio laborasse ipsos in titulum sepulcri; quorundam ultima senectus, dum in nouas spes ut iuuenta disponitur, inter conatus magnos et improbos inualida defecit.
3. Foedus ille quem in iudicio pro ignotissimis litigatoribus grandem natu et imperitae coronae assensiones captantem spiritus liquit; turpis ille qui uiuendo lassus citius quam laborando inter ipsa officia collapsus est; turpis quem accipiendis immorientem rationibus diu tractus risit heres.
4. Praeterire quod mihi occurrit exemplum non possum: Turannius fuit exactae diligentiae senex, qui post annum nonagesimum, cum uacationem procurationis ab C. Caesare ultro accepisset, componi se in lecto et uelut exanimem a circumstante familia plangi iussit. Lugebat domus otium domini senis nec finiuit ante tristitiam quam labor illi suus restitutus est. Adeone iuuat occupatum mori?
5. Idem plerisque animus est; diutius cupiditas illis laboris quam facultas est; cum imbecillitate corporis pugnant, senectutem ipsam nullo alio nomine grauem iudicant quam quod illos seponit. Lex a quinquagesimo anno militem non legit, a sexagesimo senatorem non citat: difficilius homines a se otium impetrant quam a lege.
6. Interim dum rapiuntur et rapiunt, dum alter alterius quietem rumpit, dum mutuo miseri sunt, uita est sine fructu, sine uoluptate, sine ullo profectu animi; nemo in conspicuo mortem habet, nemo non procul spes intendit, quidam uero disponunt etiam illa quae ultra uitam sunt, magnas moles sepulcrorum et operum publicorum dedicationes et ad rogum munera et ambitiosas exsequias. At me hercules istorum funera, tamquam minimum uixerint, ad faces et cereos ducenda sunt. Seneca the Younger The Latin Library The Classics Page
English
1. Hold on to this, Paulinus, and don't let your time be swept away in the tide of other people's business. Keep yourself for better things. Let one charge be made against your faithful service: it must not be endless.
2. Look at how much of your work is beside the point. None of your offices is necessary; none suits a man at peace; and yet each of them, weighed honestly, wears the man down. How many days have gone to clients who had no claim on you, to mourners at other people's funerals, to banquets! Look: the year has ended. Do you think it ended with anything of yours in it?
3. Then think about when you'll finally be free of these offices. They'll hurt less if you know you're the one walking away. The most unhappy man is the one who, with the best reason in the world, doesn't leave at once.
4. The things you call your duties — the tribuneship, the commission, the letter service, the rest — you were called to them not by nature but by men. And what chance brought on, chance can take away just as easily. Keep the better part of your life for better things than these.
5. Why wait? Even if you stripped from your whole life every care that other people press on you, what's left is still small — and it flees. But your age invites you; it practically begs. Your strength isn't failing — it's at its peak. Delay, though, and the body gives out first, then the mind — and at last you'll say you never had the time.
6. You'll have leisure when you stop hoping and stop fearing. For now, though you seem to be holding it back, life is slipping through your fingers — so that I feel I can hear one of the great ones, warned by his own conscience, saying: "We are not allowed to live." Why not? All those things pulling you away — one man holds the greatest of them all. Hurry. This last duty is owed to yourself.