Epistles 1.11 (Fairclough)

What did you think of Chios, my Bullatius, and of famous Lesbos? What of charming Samos? What of Sardis, royal home of Croesus? What of Smyrna and Colophon? Whether above or below their fame, do they all seem poor beside the Campus and Tiber’s stream? Or is your heart set upon one of the cities of Attalus? Or do you extol Lebedus, because sick of sea and roads? You know what Lebedus is—a town more desolate than Gabii and Fidenae: yet there would I love to live, and forgetting my friends and by them forgotten, gaze from the land on Neptune’s distant rage.

Yet he who travels from Capua to Rome, though bespattered with rain and mud, will not want to live on in an inn, nor does he who has caught a chill cry up stoves and baths as fully furnishing a happy life. And so you, though a stiff south wind has tossed you on the deep, will not on that account sell your ship on the far side of the Aegean Sea.

To a sound man Rhodes or fair Mitylene is what a heavy cloak is in summer, an athlete’s garb when snowy winds are blowing, the Tiber in winter, a stove in the month of August. While one may, and Fortune keeps a smiling face, at Rome let Samos be praised, and Chios and Rhodes—though far away! And you—whatever hour God has given for your weal, take it with grateful hand, nor put off joys from year to year; so that, in whatever place you have been, you may say that you have lived happily. For if ’tis reason and wisdom that take away cares, and not a site commanding a wide expanse of sea, they change their clime, not their mind, who rush across the sea. ’Tis a busy idleness that is our bane; with yachts and cars we seek to make life happy. What you are seeking is here; it is at Ulubrae, if there fail you not a mind well balanced.