Epistles 1.18 (Fairclough)

If I know you well, my Lollius, most outspoken of men, you will shrink from appearing in the guise of a parasite when you have professed the friend. As matron and mistress will differ in temper and tone, so will the friend be distinct from the faithless parasite. There is a vice the opposite of this—perhaps a greater one—a clownish rudeness, awkward and offensive, which commends itself by shaggy skin and black teeth, while fain to pass for simple candour and pure virtue. Virtue is a mean between vices, remote from both extremes. The one man, over-prone to servility, a jester of the lowest couch, so reveres the rich man’s nod, so echoes his speeches, and picks up his words as they fall, that you would think a schoolboy was repeating his lessons to a stern master or a mime-player acting a second part. The other man wrangles often about goat’s wool, and donning his armour fights for trifles: “To think, forsooth, that I should not find credence first, or that I should not blurt out strongly what I really think! A second life were poor at such a price.” Why, what’s the question in dispute? Whether Castor or Dolichos has more skill; which is the better road to Brundisium, that of Minucius or that of Appius?

The man whom ruinous passion or desperate gambling strips bare, whom vanity dresses up and perfumes beyond his means, who is possessed by an insatiate hunger and thirst for money, by the shame and dread of poverty, his rich friend, though often ten times as well equipped with vices, hates and abhors: or if he does not hate him schools him and like a fond mother would have him wiser and more virtuous than himself. He says to him what is pretty nearly true: “My wealth—don’t try to rival me—allows of folly: your means are but trifling. A narrow toga befits a client of sense; cease to vie with me.” Eutrapelus, if he wished to injure someone, would give him costly clothes: “for now,” said he, “the happy fellow will, together with his fine tunics, put on new plans and hopes, will sleep till dawn, will postpone honest business for a wanton, will swell his debts, and at last will become a gladiator, or the hired driver of a greengrocer’s nag.”

You will never pry into your patron’s secrets, and if one is entrusted to you, you will keep it, though wine or anger puts you on the rack. Again, you will neither praise your own tastes, nor find fault with those of others, nor when your friend would go a-hunting, will you be penning poems. ’Twas so that the brotherly bond between the twins Amphion and Zethus parted asunder, till the lyre, on which the stern one looked askance, was hushed. Amphion, ’tis thought, yielded to his brother’s mood: do you yield to your great friend’s gentle biddings; and when he takes out into the country his mules laden with Aetolian nets, and his dogs, up with you and cast aside the glumness of your unsocial Muse, that you may share his supper with a relish, whereof toil has been the price—’tis the wonted pastime of the heroes of Rome, is good for fame as well as for life and limb—especially when you are in health, and can outdo either the hound in speed or the boar in strength. Add that there is none who more gracefully handles manly weapons: you know how loudly the ring cheers when you uphold the combats of the Campus. In fine, while a mere youth, you served in a hard campaign, and in the Cantabrian wars, under a captain who even now is taking down our standards from the Parthian temples and, if aught is still beyond our sway, is assigning it to the arms of Italy. Further, that you may not draw back and stand aloof without excuse, bear in mind that, however much you take care to do nothing out of time and tune, you do sometimes amuse yourself at your father’s country-seat: your troops divide the skiffs; with you as captain, the Actian fight is presented by your slaves in true foemen’s style; opposing you is your brother, the lake is the Adriatic; till winged Victory crowns with leafage one or the other chieftain. He who believes that you fall in with his pursuits will with both thumbs eagerly commend your sport.

To continue my advice, if you need advice in aught—think often of what you say, and of whom, and to whom you say it. Avoid a questioner, for he is also a tattler. Open ears will not keep secrets loyally, and the word once let slip flies beyond recall. Let no maid or boy within your worshipful friend’s marble threshold inflame your heart, lest the owner of the pretty boy or dear girl make you happy with a present so trifling or torment you if disobliging. What sort of a person you introduce, consider again and again, lest by and by the other’s failings strike you with shame. At times we err and present someone unworthy: therefore, if taken in, forbear to defend him whose own fault drags him down, in order that, if charges assail one you know thoroughly, you may watch over and protect the man who relies on our championship. For when he is nibbled at with Theon’s tooth of slander, don’t you feel that a little later the peril will pass to yourself? ’Tis your own safety that’s at stake, when your neighbour’s wall is in flames, and fires neglected are wont to gather strength.

Those who have never tried think it pleasant to court a friend in power; one who has tried dreads it. While your barque is on the deep, see to it lest the breeze shift and bear you back. The grave dislike the gay, the merry the grave, the quick the staid, the lazy the stirring man of action: drinkers [who quaff Falernian in midnight hours] hate the man who declines the proffered cups, however much you swear that you dread fevers at night. Take the cloud from your brow; shyness oft gets the look of secrecy, silence of sour temper.

Amid all this you must read and question the wise, how you may be able to pass your days in tranquillity. Is greed, ever penniless, to drive and harass you, or fears and hopes about things that profit little? Does wisdom beget virtue, or Nature bring her as a gift? What will lessen care? What will make you a friend to yourself? What gives you unruffled calm—honour, or the sweets of dear gain, or a secluded journey along the pathway of a life unnoticed?

For me, oft as Digentia refreshes me, the icy brook of which Mandela drinks, that village wrinkled with cold, what deem you to be my foe? What, think you, my friend, are my prayers? May I have my present store, or even less; may I live to myself for what remains of life, if the gods will that aught remain. May I have a goodly supply of books and of food to last the year; nor may I waver to and fro with the hopes of each uncertain hour.

But ’tis enough to pray Jove, who gives and takes away, that he grant me life, and grant me means: a mind well balanced I will myself provide.