TO NUMICIUS.

That a wise man is in love with nothing but virtue.

To admire nothing is almost the one and only thing, Numicius, which can make and keep a man happy.  There are who view this sun, and the stars, and the seasons retiring at certain periods, untainted with any fear.  What do you think of the gifts of the earth?  What of the sea, that enriches the remote Arabians and Indians?  What of scenical shows, the applause and favors of the kind Roman?  In what manner do you think they are to be looked upon, with what apprehensions and countenance?  He that dreads the reverse of these, admires them almost in the same way as he that desires them; fear alike disturbs both ways:  an unforeseen turn of things equally terrifies each of them:  let a man rejoice or grieve, desire or fear; what matters it—­if, whatever he perceives better or worse than his expectations, with downcast look he be stupefied in mind and body?  Let the wise man bear the name of fool, the just of unjust; if he pursue virtue itself beyond proper bounds.

Go now, look with transport upon silver, and antique marble, and brazen statues, and the arts:  admire gems, and Tyrian dyes:  rejoice, that a thousand eyes are fixed upon you while you speak:  industrious repair early to the forum, late to your house, that Mutus may not reap more grain [than you] from his lands gained in dowry, and (unbecoming, since he sprung from meaner parents) that he may not be an object of admiration to you rather than you to him.  Whatever is in the earth, time will bring forth into open day light; will bury and hide things, that now shine brightest.  When Agrippa’s portico, and the Appian way, shall have beheld you well known; still it remains for you to go where Numa and Ancus are arrived.  If your side or your reins are afflicted with an acute disease, seek a remedy from the disease.  Would you live happily?  Who would not?  If virtue alone can confer this, discarding pleasures, strenuously pursue it.  Do you think virtue mere words, as a grove is trees?  Be it your care that no other enter the port before you; that you lose not your traffic with Cibyra, with Bithynia.  Let the round sum of a thousand talents be completed; as many more; further, let a third thousand succeed, and the part which may square the heap.  For why, sovereign money gives a wife with a [large] portion, and credit, and friends, and family, and beauty; and [the goddesses], Persuasion and Venus, graced the well-moneyed man.  The king of the Cappadocians, rich in slaves, is in want of coin; be not you like him.  Lucullus, as they say, being asked if he could lend a hundred cloaks for the stage, “How can I so many?” said he:  “yet I will see, and send as many as I have;” a little after he writes that he had five thousand cloaks in his house; they might take part of them, or all.  It is a scanty house, where there are not many things superfluous, and which escape the owner’s notice, and are the gain of pilfering