VII

Seneca to his Lucilius, greeting. You ask what you think should especially be avoided? The crowd. You are not yet safely entrusted to it. I, at any rate, will admit my weakness: I never bring back the character that I carried out; something of what I had set in order is disturbed, and something of what I had driven away returns. What happens to the sick, whom long weakness has so affected that they cannot be moved anywhere without harm, happens to us, whose minds are recovering from a long illness.

The company of many people is hostile to us: everyone either recommends some vice to us, or stamps it upon us, or smears it on us without our knowing. Certainly, the greater the crowd with which we mingle, the greater the danger. Nothing, however, is so damaging to good character as lingering at some public show; for then vices creep in more easily through pleasure.

What do you think I mean? Do I return more greedy, more ambitious, more given to luxury? No indeed: I return more cruel and less human, because I have been among human beings. By chance I came upon the midday spectacle, expecting games and jokes and some relaxation by which men's eyes might rest from human blood. It is the opposite: whatever fighting came before was mercy; now, with trifles set aside, there are sheer murders. They have nothing with which to protect themselves; exposed to the blow with their whole bodies, they never strike in vain.

Most people prefer this to the regular pairs and to the requested matches. Why should they not prefer it? No helmet, no shield turns aside the sword. What use are defenses? What use are skills? All those things are only delays of death. In the morning men are thrown to lions and bears; at midday they are thrown to their own spectators. They order killers to be thrown to those who will kill them, and they keep the victor for another slaughter; the outcome for the fighters is death. The matter is carried on with sword and fire.

These things happen while the arena is free. “But someone committed robbery; he killed a man.” What of it? Because he killed, he deserved to suffer this; but what have you deserved, poor wretch, that you should watch it? “Kill him, flog him, burn him! Why does he run onto the sword so timidly? Why does he kill with so little boldness? Why does he die so unwillingly? Let him be driven by blows into wounds; let them receive each other’s strokes with bare and exposed chests.” The show is interrupted: “In the meantime let men be slaughtered, so that nothing is left undone.” Come now, do you not even understand that evil examples recoil upon those who set them? Give thanks to the immortal gods that you are teaching cruelty to a man who cannot learn it.

A tender mind, not yet firm in what is right, must be withdrawn from the crowd: it is easy to go over to the majority. A crowd unlike them could have shaken even Socrates, Cato, and Laelius out of their own character; so surely none of us, who are only now shaping our disposition, can withstand the assault of vices arriving with so great a retinue.

A single example of luxury or greed does much harm: a refined housemate gradually weakens and softens us; a rich neighbor stirs up desire; a malicious companion rubs his own rust even onto someone honest and simple. What do you think happens to characters against which a public assault has been made?

You must either imitate them or hate them. But both are to be avoided: do not become like the bad because they are many, and do not become hostile to the many because they are unlike you. Withdraw into yourself as much as you can; associate with those who will make you better, and admit those whom you can make better. These things happen mutually, and people learn while they teach.

There is no reason for the glory of displaying your talent to draw you out into public, so that you should want to recite or debate before such people. I would want you to do that if you had suitable wares for that crowd; but there is no one there who can understand you. Perhaps someone, one or two, may turn up, and even he will have to be shaped and trained by you to understand you. 'For whom, then, did I learn these things?' There is no reason to fear that you have wasted your effort, if you learned them for yourself.

But so that I may not have learned today only for myself, I will share with you three sayings that come to mind, finely expressed and bearing on almost the same thought. Of these, this letter will pay one as its debt; receive the other two in advance. Democritus says, 'One person is as good as a crowd to me, and a crowd as good as one person.'

Well said also was that other man, whoever he was, for the author is disputed: when he was asked what such great care in his art aimed at, since it would reach only a very few, he said, 'A few are enough for me; one is enough; none is enough.' Excellent too is this third saying of Epicurus, written to one of the companions of his studies: 'I write these things not for many, but for you; for we are a large enough theater for each other.'

These things, my Lucilius, must be stored away in the mind, so that you may despise the pleasure that comes from the approval of the many. Many people praise you: do you have any reason to be pleased with yourself, if you are the sort of person whom the many understand? Let your good qualities look inward. Farewell.