SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXVI.
which he is clothed. But when you wish to inquire
into a man's true worth, and to know what manner of
man he is,
look at him when he is naked ;
make him
lay aside his inherited estate, his titles, and the other
deceptions of fortune let him even
;
strip
off his body.
Consider his soul, its quality and its stature, and thus
learn whether its greatness is borrowed, or its own.
If a man can behold with unflinching eyes the
flash of a sword, if he knows that it makes no
difference to him whether his soul takes flight
through his mouth or through a wound in his throat,"
you may call him happy ; you may
also call him
happy if,
when he is threatened with bodily torture,
whether it be the result of accident or of the might
of the stronger, he can without concern hear talk of
chains, or of exile, or of all the idle fears that stir
men's minds, and can say
:
'* O maiden, no new sudden form of toil
Springs up before my eyes within my soul
;
6
I have forestalled and surveyed everything.
To-day it is you who threaten me with these terrors ;
but I have always threatened myself with them, and
have prepared myself as a man to meet man's
destiny." If an evil has been pondered beforehand,
the blow is gentle when it comes. To the fool,
however, and to him who trusts in fortune, each
event as it arrives " comes in a new and sudden
form," and a large part of evil, to the inexperienced,
consists in its novelty. This is
proved by the fact
that men endure with greater courage, w^hen they
have once become accustomed to them, the things
which they had at first
regarded as hardships.
Hence, the wise man accustoms himself to coming
trouble, lightening by long reflection the evils which
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