Answer to all your real life distrust, distrustfulness, dubiety, dubitation, incertitude, misdoubt.

 After reading this article you will not need any body else to make you feel better. You by yourself will understand the eternity of life and will get the maximum out of it. 

Answer to all your real life, distrust, distrustfulness, dubiety, dubitation [archaic), incertitude, misdoubt, misgiving, mistrust, mistrustfulness, query, reservation, skepticism, suspicion, uncertainty, disbelief, incredulity, unbelief anxiety, concern, paranoia, wariness,compunction, niggle [chiefly British], qualm, scruple, tremor

LIFE CYCLE

Seneca: shortness of life

I. Most mortals, Pauline, complain about the wickedness of nature, because we are brought into the world for a small period of time, because these periods of time granted to us go by so fast, so fast that, except for a very few, life abandons others in the very beginning of life. Nor of this calamity, common to all, as they believe, only the crowd and the insane populace complained; this state of mind aroused complaints also of celebrities. Hence the famous exclamation of the most illustrious of doctors, that life is short, art long; hence the dispute, not very decent for a sage, of the demanding Aristotle with the nature of things, because it is been so kind to animals, that they can live five or ten generations, and instead has granted a much shorter time to man, born to so many and so great things. We do not have a short time, but we have lost a lot of it. Life is long enough and has been given to us with breadth for making the most large companies, if all were used with diligence; but when it passes in waste and indifference, when it is not spent for anything good, driven in the end by extreme necessity, we realize that it is passed and we did not notice its passing. That's it: we don't get a short life, but we give it back, and we are not poor in it, but prodigal. As sumptuous and regal riches, when they have reached a villain master, are dissipated in a moment, but, although modest, if they are entrusted to a good keeper, they increase with the investment, so our life extends a lot for those who know how to manage it well. 

II. Why we complain of the nature of things? It has behaved in a benevolent way: life is long, if you know how to use it. There are those who are caught from insatiable greed, who from the empty occupations of a frenetic activity; one is drenched in wine, another languishes in inertia; one is stressed by an ambition always dependent on the judgments of others, another is tossed about by all lands from a reckless greed for trade, for all seas from the mirage of profit; some torture the craving of war, eager to create dangers for others or worried about their own; there are others who wear down ungrateful servility of the powerful in voluntary slavery; many are prisoners of the lust for beauty or the care of their own; most, who have no stable references, are pushed to change their opinion by a fickle and unstable lightness and discontented with himself; some do not like anything to steer their course, but they are surprised by fate numb and neglectful, so that I have no doubt that what is said, in the form of an oracle, in the greatest of poets: 

“Small is the portion of life we ​​live”. In fact, all the remaining space is not life, but time. The vices are pressing and besiege on all sides and do not allow to rise or raise one's eyes to discern the truth, but crush them immersed and nailed to pleasure. They are never allowed to take refuge in themselves; if sometimes a moment of respite, as on the high seas, where even after the wind there is disturbance, they sway and never find peace at their passions. Do you think that I speak of these, whose evils are evident? Look at those, whose good fortune is run:

they are suffocated by their possessions. How many riches are a burden! To those who spit blood eloquence and the daily display of one's wits! How many are pale from constant pleasures! How many does not leave a breathe the haunting crowd of customers! So, review all of them, from the humblest to the most powerful:

this one is looking for a lawyer, this one is present, that one tries to produce evidence, that one defends, that is judge, no one claims his freedom for himself, one is consumed for one another. Infòrmarsi of these, whose names yes they learn, you will see that they recognize themselves by these signs: this is a lover of that one, that of that other; nobody it belongs to itself. In short, the indignation of some is extremely unreasonable: they complain about the haughtiness of the Gods powerful, because they do not have time to meet their wishes. Dare to complain about the pride of others who does not do you have time for yourself? That at least, whoever you are, albeit with an arrogant face but sometimes he looked at you, has lowered his ears to your words, he welcomed you by his side: you never deigned to look inside yourself, to listen to you. There is therefore no reason to blame anyone for these services, since you did them not because you desired being with others, but because you couldn't be with yourself. III. Although they agree on this point only, more illustrious wits than ever shone, never enough wonder at this tarnishing of human minds:

they do not tolerate that their fields are occupied by anyone and, if even the slightest dispute arises about the modality of the boundaries, they rush to stones and weapons: they allow others to invade their own life, indeed they themselves do so enter his future masters; there is no one who is willing to divide his money: to how many each distributes his life! They are stingy in keeping possessions; as soon as it comes to waste of time, it becomes a lot prodigal in that one thing in which avarice is a virtue. And so like to quote one from the crowd of elders: “Let's see that you have reached the end of human life, you have a hundred or more years on you: come on, take stock of your life. Calculate how much creditors have been stolen since this time, how much women, how much patrons, how much customers, how much quarrels with your wife, as the punishments of the servants, as the duty visits through the city; add the diseases, that there we are procured with our hands, add the time that lay unused: you will see that you are less than you are accounts. Go back to when you were still in a purpose, how many days have happened as well as there you planned, when you had the availability of yourself, when your face has not changed expression, when your soul has been courageous, what positive things have you achieved in such a long period, how many have plundered your life while you did not realize what you were losing, how much it took away a vain sorrow, a stupid joy, a greedy greed, a pleasant discussion, how little you have left of yours: you will understand that you die ahead of time ". So what's the reason? Live as if you were to live forever, it never occurs to you of yours transience, do not mind how much time has already passed; you lose it as from a rich and abundant income when perhaps that very day, which is given to a certain person or activity, is the last. Are you afraid of everything like mortals, you desire everything as immortal. You will hear most say: “From the age of fifty I will rest, a sixty years I will retire to private life ". And what guarantee do you have for such a long life? Who will allow these things go as you planned? You are not ashamed to reserve for yourself the leftovers of life and to set aside for the healthy reflection only time that cannot be used in anything else? How late is it then to begin live, when it must end! What a foolish lack of human nature to defer good intentions to fifty-sixty years and therefore wanting to start life where few have gone! IV. You'll see more men slip out of their mouths powerful and higher-ranking words with which they aspire to free time, praise it and place it before all their possessions.

Sometimes they wish to get off that pedestal of theirs, if it could be done safely; indeed, even if nothing presses and disturbs from the outside, luck collapses on itself. Divus Augustus, to whom the Gods they conceded more than anyone else, he never ceased to wish himself rest and to ask to be relieved of commitments public; his every speech always fell on this, the hope of free time: he relieved his fatigue with this comfort, however illusory yet pleasant, that one day he would experience for himself. In a letter sent to the senate, after having promised that his rest would be not without decorum or in contrast with the his past glory, I found these words: “But these things would be more beautiful to be able to put them into practice than promise her. However, the desire for that much desired time has led me, since so far the joy of reality is made wait, to taste some pleasure from the sweetness of the words. " Time seemed so great to him free, who, since he could not enjoy it, was looking forward to it with his imagination. He who saw everything depend on he alone, who established the destiny for men and peoples, was thinking of that very happy day when he would abandon your own greatness. He knew from experience how much sweat those glowing goods cost all over the earth, how many hidden labors they hide. Forced to fight with weapons first with fellow citizens, then with colleagues, finally with his relatives, he shed blood on land and sea: after having gone to war through Macedonia, the Sicily, Egypt, Syria and Asia and almost all the coasts, turned armies weary of the Roman massacre against foreigners.

While pacifying the Alps and taming the enemies mixed in the midst of peace and empire, while moving the borders beyond the Reno, the Euphrates and the Danube, in Rome the daggers of Murena, Cepione, Lepidus, Egnazio and others. He had not yet escaped the snares of these and his daughter and many young nobles bound by the bond adultery as from an oath terrified the weary age and even more and more a woman was to be feared with an Antonio. He had cut off these wounds with the same limbs: others were being reborn; like a full body too much blood, it always cracked somewhere. And so he yearned for free time, in whose hope and in which thought his worries subsided: this was the vow of him who could make the others satisfied with their vows.

  V. Marco Cicero, tossed between the Catilina and the Clodii and then between the Pompeii and the Crasses, those manifest opponents, these dubious friends, as he floated with the state and supported him as he went to the bottom, eventually overwhelmed, not calm in the good luck and unable to bear that bad, how many times he swears at his own consulate, praised not without reason but without end! What painful words he expresses in a letter to Atticus, after winning Pompey father, while in Spain the son was putting together the disrupted armies! “You ask me” he says “what am I doing here? Myself I'm half free in my Tuscolo farm ”. Then he adds other words, with which he regrets the past time, yes laments about the present and despairs of the future. Cicero defined himself as semi-free: but perdiana a wise man will never go in such a mortifying adjective, he will never be half free, he will always be in possession of total freedom and absolute, free from his own power and higher than all. Indeed, what can be on top of one that is above the luck?  

VI Livio Druso, a rude and impulsive man, having removed the new laws and disatrium of the Gracchi, pressed by a large aggregation of the whole of Italy, not foreseeing the outcome of the events, which it could not manage and by now was not free to abandon them once they started, it is said that cursing his life, restless from the beginning, he I said that only he had no holidays even as a child. In fact he dared even a minor and then a teenager recommend the accused to the judges and interpose his good offices in the forum with such effectiveness that some sentences resulted from him extorted. Where would such premature ambition not lead? You would understand that such a early audacity would have resulted in great public and private damage. Therefore he later complained that he had not been granted holidays from an early age, quarrelsome and burdensome for the forum. It is debated whether he took his own life; in fact, wounded by a sudden blow to the groin, he collapsed, and there are those who doubt that his death was voluntary, but none that it was timely. It is completely useless to remember the many who, while appearing very happy to the eyes of the others, they testified to the truth in themselves by repudiating every action of their life; but with no such complaints neither others nor themselves changed: in fact, once the words have flown away, the affections will return according to the usual way of life. Perdiana, even assuming that your life exceeds a thousand years, it would be reduced to a time very restricted: these vices will devour every century; in truth this space which, although nature makes the reason expands, it is inevitable that it will soon escape you: in fact, do not grasp or hold back or delay things, but allow it to go away as a useless and recoverable thing.  

VII. Among the first I certainly include those who have time for nothing but wine and lust; in fact no one is busy any more shameful. The others, even if they are obsessed with an ephemeral thought of glory, nevertheless err gracefully; list me the greedy, the angry ones or those who pursue unjust grudges or wars, all of them sin more manly: the guilt of those who are addicted to the womb and lust is shameful. Examine all the days of these, see how much time they waste in thinking about their own interest, how much in plotting pitfalls, how much in being afraid, how much in being servile, how much their own promises and those of others keep them busy, how much lunches, what by now they too have become duties: you will see how their evils or goods do not allow them to breathe.

Finally, everyone agrees that nothing can be well managed by a busy man, not eloquence, not liberal arts, since a soul intent on several things understands nothing more deeply, but everything rejects as if it were forcibly introduced. Nothing is of less importance to a busy man than living: of none what is more difficult to know. There are many teachers of the other arts everywhere, and some of them it seems that i children have so assimilated them that they can also teach them: all of life we ​​must learn to live and, what of which perhaps you will marvel, all our life we ​​must learn to die So many illustrious men, having abandoned each obstacle and having renounced riches, offices and pleasures, only for this they yearned until the last hour, to know live; however many of them went away confessing that they do not know it yet, all the more reason they do not know these. Believe me, it is typical of a great man who rises above human errors to allow nothing to come subtracted from his time, and his life is very long for this, because, however long it lasted, he dedicated it all to himself. No period therefore remained neglected and inactive, none under the influence of others; and in fact he did not find anything that was worthy of being traded with his time, the most jealous keeper of it. Therefore it was him enough. But it is inevitable that he has failed those, from whose life he took people away. And don't believe that they once and for all do not understand their own harm; certainly you will hear most of those, on which one weighs great luck, among the multitude of customers or the management of the causes or among other dignified miseries to exclaim from time to time in time: "I am not allowed to live." And why is he not allowed? All those who call you to themselves push you away at your place. How many days did that defendant take from you? How many that candidate? How many that old woman tired of burying heirs? How many the one who pretended to be sick to arouse the greed of the will hunters? How many that influential friend, who holds you not out of friendship but out of outwardness? Browse, I tell you, and take stock of days of your life: you will see that there are very few and badly spent. That, after getting the charges that he had desired, wishes to abandon them and repeatedly says: "When will this year pass?" That sets up the games, the outcome of which was so close to his heart and says: "When will I run away from them?" That lawyer is disputed throughout the forum and with

great crowd all flock to where it can be heard; says: "When will the holidays be announced?"

Everyone consumes his life and torments himself with the desire for the future and the boredom of the present. But what he uses all his time for himself, which he plans every day as a life, he does not want tomorrow or it fears. For what is there that any hour of new pleasure can bring? Everything is known, everything has been tasted a satiety. For the rest, good luck arranges as it wills: life is already safe. We can add to it, but nothing remove and add food to someone who is now full and full, who does not want it but welcomes it. Therefore there is no reason for you to believe that one has lived long because of white hair or wrinkles: he is not lived a long time, but was alive a long time And just as you can believe that one has sailed a lot than a violent one storm surprised out of the harbor and slammed him here and there and made him go round and round within the same space, at the mercy of winds blowing from opposite directions? He didn't sail much, but he was tossed around a lot.  

VIII. I am always amazed when I see some people asking for time and those who are asked to be so compliant; the one and the other look at the reason why time is required, neither at its essence: one wonders how if it were nothing, as if it were nothing it is granted. You play with the most precious thing of all; (time) instead them it deceives, since it is something incorporeal, because it does not fall before the eyes, and therefore it is considered a small thing account, indeed it has almost no price. Men accept annual checks and donations as things of high price and in them they put their efforts, their work and their scrupulous attention: no one considers time: they

a too reckless use, as if it were (a good) free. But look at these (when they are) sick, if the danger of death is very close, clinging to the knees of doctors, if they fear capital punishment, ready to shell out all their belongings in order to live: how much contradiction there is in them. What if you could in some way to put in front (of each) the number of past years of each, as well as future ones, as they would fear those who saw few remain, how they would save! Yet it's easy to manage what's safe, for how small; what you do not know when it will end must instead be taken care of with greater diligence. And there is no reason other than you believe that they do not know what precious it is :: they usually say, to those who love most intensely, of be ready to give part of their years. They give them and do not understand: that is, they give them in a way that takes them away from themselves without increasing those. But they don't really notice that they are taking them off; therefore for them the loss is bearable of hidden damage. Nobody (you) will give the years back, nobody will give you back to yourself again; life will go for where it began and will not change or stop its course; it won't make any noise, it won't leave any trace  of its own speed: it will flow silently; it shall not extend further either by order of king or by favor of the people: it will run as it started from day one, it will never change its trajectory, it will never linger. What will happen? You are all taken, life hurries: in the meantime death will approach, for which, like it or not, you must have time.  

IX. What could you imagine more foolish than those men who boast of their foresight?

from themselves without increasing those. But they don't really notice that they are taking them off; therefore for them the loss is bearable of hidden damage. Nobody (you) will give the years back, nobody will give you back to yourself again; life will go for where it began and will not change or stop its course; it won't make any noise, it won't leave any trace of its own speed: it will flow silently; it shall not extend further either by order of king or by favor of the people: it will run as it started from day one, it will never change its trajectory, it will never linger. What will happen? You are all taken, life hurries: in the meantime death will approach, for which, like it or not, you must have time.  

IX. What could you imagine more foolish than those men who boast of their foresight?

They are busy in a very demanding way: in order to live better they organize life at the expense of life. Do long-term projects; on the other hand, the greatest misfortune in life is its procrastination: first of all this done postpones every day, destroys the present while promising the future. The biggest obstacle to living is waiting, which depends on tomorrow, (but) loses today. You arrange what is placed in the lap of fate and you neglect what is in yourspower.

 Where do you want to aim? Where do you want to go?

 All future events are shrouded in uncertainty: live without arrest you. Here, cries the great poet [Virgil, Georgics] and as if inspired by the divine mouth he raises a saving poet:

"The first to flee for unhappy mortals are the best days of life." It says, “Why are you hesitating? Why do you delay? If you don't appropriate, (the best days) flee. " And even when you have taken possession of them, they will flee: therefore it is necessary to fight with the rapid use of it (lit .: the speed of using it) against the speed of time and draw from it swiftly as from an impetuous stream that does not flow forever. This is also very nice, which for reproach endless delay, say not "the best time", but "the best days." Why you, quiet and indifferent in time to escape from time foreshadow a long series of months and years, depending on whether appropriate to your greed? (Virgil) tells you about a day and a day that runs away. There is therefore doubt that the best days flee from unfortunate, that is, busy mortals? On their still childish souls, old age is pressing, to which they come unprepared and defenseless; in fact nothing was foreseen: suddenly and without expecting it they came across, they did not realize that it was approaching day after day. In the same way that a speech or a reading or a rather intense thought deceives those who walk a path and realize that they have come before to have approached (to the goal), thus this journey of life, constant and very fast, which we travel with the same gait when awake and asleep, it does not manifest itself to the busy ones until at the end.  

X If you wanted to divide what I have presented and the arguments, many things would come to my aid through which I can prove that the life of the busy is very short. Fabiano used to say [Papirio Fabiano, philosopher neo-Pythagorean, highly esteemed by Seneca], who is not one of these academic philosophers but of the genuine and old-fashioned, that against the passions we must fight instinct, not subtlety, and reject the ranks (of passions) not with small blows but with an assault: in fact they must be beaten, not stung.

However, to blame them for their mistake, it is not so much to reproach them but to teach them. Life divides into three times: past, present and future. Of these, the present is short, the future uncertain, the past safe. Only on the latter, in fact, luck has lost its authority, because it cannot be reduced to anyone's power. This forgive the busy people: in fact they do not have time to look at the past and, if they did, it would be unpleasant memory of a fact to repent of. Reluctantly, therefore, they turn their souls to bad moments and do not dare re-examine things, whose vices are manifested by rethinking them, even those that are hidden with some artifice of present pleasure. No one, if not those who have always acted according to their conscience, who never do he deceives, he gladly turns to the past; who has desired many things with ambition, has despised with pride, yes it is imposed without rule or restraint, it has deceived with perfidy, it has stolen with greed, it has wasted lightly,

he is afraid of his memory. Yet this is the sacred and inviolable part of our time, above all human affairs, placed outside the realm of fortune, which does not disturb either hunger, fear, or the onslaught of illnesses; it cannot be disturbed or subtracted: its possession is eternal and unalterable. Only one by one there are days and moment by moment; but all (days) of past tense will show up when you do you will order, they will tolerate being scrutinized and detained at your leisure, which the busy have no time to do. It is typical of a serene and peaceful mind to wander into every part of one's life; the minds of the busy, as if under a yoke, they cannot bend or turn. Their life therefore falls into an

 abyss as it is useless, any quantity you can put in it, if there is something underneath that picks it up and there contain [like a bottomless vessel], so it doesn't matter how much time is allowed, if there is nothing where to settle: it is passed through weakened and pierced souls. The present is very short, so much so that to someone

it seems non-existent; in fact it is always running, flowing and rushing; it ceases to exist before it comes, and does not

it admits more delay than creation or the stars, whose ever incessant motion never remains in the same place.

Therefore, the busy people have only the present, which is so short that it cannot be grasped and that escapes who is oppressed by many occupations.  

XI. So do you want to know how little time (the busy ones) live? You see how long they wish to live. Old decrepit beggars with supplications the addition of a few years: they pretend to being younger; they flatter themselves with the lie and delude themselves as willingly as if they deceive the time fate itself. But when some infirmity warns (them) of their mortal state, how they die in terror,

not as coming out of life, but as if they were pulled out of it! Van shouting that they were foolish, so much so that they didn't to have lived and if they somehow come out of that disease, to want to live in peace; then think about how many things they procured in vain, and of which they would not have made use, as all their toil has fallen into the void. But for those who spend life far from all affairs, why shouldn't it be long-lasting? Nothing of it is entrusted (to others), nothing is scattered here and there, therefore nothing is entrusted to luck, nothing is consumed by carelessness, nothing is dissipated by prodigality, nothing is superfluous: all (life), so to speak, produces an income. However short, therefore, it is abundantly sufficient, and therefore, when the last day comes, the sage will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step.

 XII. Do you ask who I call busy? 

Don't think that I am stamping as such only those that only aroused dogs manage to drive out of the basilica [the business center], those who you see being crushed or with greater luster in your crowd [of customers] or more shamefully that [of customers] of others, those whose commitments push out of their homes to crush them with the business of others, or that the auction of praetor makes trouble with a dishonorable gain and one day destined to become gangrenous [refers to the sale at the auction of war spoils and slaves, whose trade was considered dishonorable]. Some people's free time is everything busy: in their villa or in their bed, in the middle of solitude, although they are isolated from everyone, they are annoying to themselves: theirs must not be defined as an idle life but an idle busyness. you can call idle who arranges Corinth bronzes in order with meticulous fussiness, precious for the passion of a few, and do you waste most of your days among rusty flakes? Who in the gym (in fact, what a horror !, not even Romans are the vices we suffer from) sit as a spectator of struggling kids? Who divides the herds of their horses into pairs  of the same age and color? Who feeds the last (joints) athletes? Is that? You call those who have passed many hours since idle barber, while pulling out something that came up last night, while holding a consultation on every single hair, something from their mane, if something has been badly styled, if it all doesn't fall into perfect rings! Who of them don't you prefer the state to be in disorder rather than your own hair? That he is no longer worried about the grace of his head than of his safety? Who doesn't prefer to be more elegant than dignified? These you do you define idlers, bustling between the comb and the mirror? Those who are dedicated to composing, hearing and learning songs, while twisting the voice, of which nature rendered the correct one, in modestly modest rhythms

I walk the best and the simplest, whose rhythmic fingers always play some poem within themselves, and of which one hear the silent rhythm when they turn to serious and often sad things too? They don't have free time, but idle occupations. Certainly I would not count the banquets of these among the free time, when I see how much care they arrange the silverware, with how much care they arrange the tunics of their amasi [young men who sold themselves for lust], how anxious they are for how the boar comes out of the cook's hands, how eagerly the hairless

 [slaves who were being shaved to take on a feminine aspect] rush to their services at a given signal,

 how skilfully birds are cut into pieces that are not irregular, how zealously unhappy children cleanse the

spits of drunks: they seek fame for elegance and luxury and to such an extent they follow their aberrations in every recess of life, who neither drink nor eat without ostentation. You won't even count among the elders those who go around in a sedan chair or litter and present themselves at the time of their walks as if they were not it was permitted to renounce it, and that another must warn when they should wash, when they should swim or

to dine: and they languish in too much weakness of a delicate soul, that they cannot notice for themselves if They are hungry. I feel that one of these delicacies - even if it can be called delicacy - unlearning life and the human custom -, carried by hand from the bathroom and placed on a sedan chair, said asking: "I am already seated? ". Do you think that he who does not know if he is sitting knows if he is alive, if he sees and if he is idle? It is not easy to say if I feel more sorry if he didn't know or if he pretended not to know. Certainly many things suffer in reality is forgetfulness, but many also simulate it; some vices entice them as an object of happiness; it seems that the knowing what you do is typical of the humble and despised man; go now and believe mimes make up a lot of things for blame the luxury. They certainly neglect more than they represent and so much abundance of incredible vices have appeared in this only century, which by now we can demonstrate the neglect of mimes. There is someone who is consumed to such

point in the refinements to believe another if he is seated! So he is not idle, give him another name:

he is ill, indeed he is dead; idler is the one who is aware of his free time. But this half-alive, to which it is a spy is needed to make him understand the state of his body, as he can be the master of anyone moment?

 XIII. It would take a long time to enumerate one by one those whose lives consumed chess or the ball or the cure of the body with the sun. Those whose pleasures cost a lot of effort are not idle. In fact, no one will doubt them who do nothing with difficulty, who keep themselves busy in studies of useless literary works, which now also near the Romans are a large number. It was a disease of the Greeks to wonder how many rowers Ulysses had, if whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first and also if they were by the same author, and then other things of this kind that if you keep them to yourself for nothing they are useful for a silent acquaintance, if you disclose them you will no longer seem educated but more importunate. Here too the Romans invaded a vain desire to learn superfluous things. In these days I heard a guy saying what each of the Roman generals did first: Duilio first won in a naval battle, Curio Dentato was the first to introduce elephants in the parade of triumph. Again these things, even if they do not aim at true glory, at least deal with examples of civil works: this knowledge will not be useful, at least it is such as to keep us interested in the splendid vanity of things. We also forgive this to those who do he asks who first convinced the Romans to get on a ship - it was Claudius, for this reason called the Code

["Caudica" was a boat, obtained from a trunk, called "caudex"], because the aggregate of several boards was called "code" by the ancients, for which the public registers are called "codes" and even now the ships, which transport the foodstuffs along the Tiber, by ancient custom are called "codicarie" -; certainly that too has importance, that Valerio Corvino was the first to defeat Messina and was the first of the Valeria people to be called Messana, having transferred in his name that of the conquered city, and then it was called Messalla having its people gradually altered the letters: but you will also allow someone to take care of the fact that Lucio Silla first presented in the circus loose lions, when normally they were exhibited bound, having been sent by King Bocco [rebirth of Mauritania] archers to kill them? And forgive this as well: perhaps that is good for something

Pompey was the first to have staged a battle of eighteen opposing elephants in the circus as if in combat with Gods condemned? The first of the city and among the first of the ancients, as it is handed down, of exceptional goodness, considered a kind of spectacle worth remembering about making men die in a new way. “They fight at the last things went into oblivion, so that later no powerful would learn and envy a thing entirely inhumane. How much fog puts great luck ahead of our minds! He then thought he was above of nature, exposing many unhappy hosts to beasts born under a foreign sky, organizing fights among such dissimilar animals, shedding much blood in the presence of the Roman people, who would soon have forced him to pay more [refers to Pompey's civil war against Caesar]; but then, deceived by perfidy

Alexandrina [the betrayal of Pharaoh Ptolemy, brother of Cleopatra], offered to be killed by the last slave [the eunuch Achillas, who stabbed Pompey treacherously], only then understanding the useless vainglory of his nickname [Magno]. But to return there from where I started and to demonstrate the vacuous zeal of some, that same narrated that Metello, after defeating the Carthaginians in Sicily, was the only one who they obtained the triumph among all the Romans to have brought before the chariot one hundred and twenty captive elephants; that Silla was the last of the Romans to have enlarged the pomerium [space of land, consecrated and left free, inside and outside

of the city walls of Rome], which was never extended, by ancient custom, with the acquisition of provincial land, but italic. Knowing this is more useful (than knowing) that Mount Aventine is located outside the pomerium, as he asserted,

for one of two reasons: either because the plebs had made the secession from there [in 494 BC], or because while in that place. Remus took auspices, the birds had not given good omens, and so on countless other things, which they are stuffed with lies or are similar to lies. In fact, even if they say all this in good faith, that write things that they can prove, yet whose errors will these things diminish? 

Whose will they hold back the passions? Who will they make stronger, who more just, who more altruistic? Sometimes our Fabiano said to doubting whether it was better not to approach any study than to get involved in them. 

XIV I am alone among all those who devote themselves to wisdom idle, they alone live; and in fact they not only keep their own well life: they add each age to their own; whatever was done in the years before them is an acquired thing for them.

If we are not very ungrateful people, those illustrious founders of sacred doctrines were born for us, for us they have prepared life. We are guided by the fatigue of others towards noble deeds, brought out of the darkness towards the light; we are not forbidden to any century, in all we are allowed and, if we like to come out with greatness of the soul from the anguish of human weakness, there is a lot of time through which we can wander. We can talk with Socrates, doubt with Carneades, rest with Epicurus, conquer the nature of man with the Stoics, go further with the Cynics. Allowing us nature to extend into all time participation, why not (to raise ourselves) with all our spirit from this small and transient passing of time towards those things that are immense, eternal and in common with the best? These, who run here and there for commitments, who do not let in peace for themselves and others, when they are well insane, when they have daily wandered through the doors all and they did not neglect any open door when they carried the interested greeting  customer to the patron saint, rewarded in food], how much and who could they see of such an immense and bound in various passions? How many will there be whose sleep or lust or grossness will reject them! How many those who, after having tormented them for a long time, will neglect them with feigned care! How many will avoid showing up in the hall packed with customers and they will flee through secret exits of houses, as if the deception was no longer rude

 not to let them in! How many half asleep and emboldened by the revelry of the previous day, to those miserable ones

who interrupt their own sleep to wait for that of others, with difficulty lifting their lips they will emit with

arrogant yawns the name whispered a thousand times! It can be said that those who want to linger in real commitments be every day as close as possible to Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus and the other priests of the good arts,

Aristotle and Theophrastus. None of them will have no time, no one will not leave those who come to him happier and fond of himself, no one will allow anyone to leave him empty-handed; from all mortals they can be met, night and day. 

XV. None of them will force you to die, all of them will teach you; none of them he will wear out your years or add his own; speaking of none of them will be dangerous, none of them will be lethal friendship, no one's consideration will be expensive. You will get anything you want from them; will not depend on they that you do not absorb the more you will receive. What joy, what peaceful old age awaits those who take refuge in the bosom of clientele of these! He will have with whom to reflect on the little ones and on the biggest topics, who to consult every day about himself

same, by whom hear the truth without outrage, by whom be praised without servility, in the likeness of whom conform.

We used to say that it was not in our power to choose the parents we were lucky to have: but we are allowed be born according to our will. There are families of excellent talents: choose which (of them) you want to be welcomed into;

 you will not only be adopted in the name, but also in the goods themselves, which should not be guarded either with avarice or

 with narrow-mindedness: (the goods) will become greater the more you distribute them. They will show you the way to

eternity and they will lift you to that place from which no one is thrown out. This is the only way to extend it mortal state, indeed to change it into an immortal state. Honors, monuments, everything that ambition has established by decrees or

he built with works, soon goes to ruin, nothing does not destroy and transform a long old age; but it can't harm those things that wisdom has consecrated; no age (them) will erase or diminish (them); the following one and then the ever successive ones will bring something in venerability, since envy dominates more closely

 we frankly admire when (envy) lies in the distance. Therefore the life of the sage extends much, not he is troubled by the same border that (anguish) others: he alone is free from the laws of human nature, all the centuries they are subject to him as to a god. A certain time passes: it keeps him linked with the memory; it is urgent: it makes use of it; stands for arrive: anticipates it. The collection of each time into one makes his life long. 

XVI. Very short and troubled is the life of those who forget the past, neglect the present, have fears about the future: when they will come  late at the last hour they realize, unhappy, that they have been busy for a long time, even though they haven't done anything. IS there is no reason to believe that they can be proven to have a long life by frequently invoking the death: ignorance torments them in uncertain feelings, which incur in the same things they fear; therefore they invoke often death, because they fear it. It is not even proof to believe that they live long the fact that often the day it seems to them eternal, that while the agreed time for supper arrives they complain that the hours pass slowly;

in fact, if sometimes the occupations abandon them, they burn abandoned in their free time and do not know how to dispose of them and

how to use it. And so they turn to any occupation and all the time that elapses is burdensome for them,

just as well as, when a day has been set for a gladiator show, or when the moment is awaited

established of some other show or pleasure, they want to skip the days in between. For them, each postponement of one is long what was hoped for: but the time they love is short and quick, and much shorter because of them; in fact they pass from a

place to another and cannot stop in a single passion. For them the days are not long, but hateful; but instead how brief the nights that pass in wine or in the embrace of prostitutes seem! Here also the madness of poets,  who feed human errors with (their) fables: according to them it seems that Jupiter, seduced by intercourse [lit .:

sweetened by pleasure], doubled (the time of) one night [is the myth of Alcmene, to whom Jupiter had presented himself

under the guise of her husband Amphitryon: she doubled the length of the night, the fruit of which was later to be Hercules].

What else is to feed our vices than to attribute to them the authors of which and give the evil justified license by the example of divinity? The nights they buy expensive may not seem very short to them price? They lose the day waiting for the night, the notes for fear of the day.

 XVII. The same pleasures are theirs anxious and restless for various fears and the anguished question of who is at the maximum of pleasure [lit .: of whom maximally rejoices]: "How long will this (last)?". From this state of mind kings mourned their power,

who is at the maximum of pleasure [lit .: of whom

maximally rejoices]: "How long will this (last)?". From this state of mind kings mourned their power,

nor did the greatness of their fortune console them, but the imminent end terrified them. Having deployed the army

through huge spaces of territories and not embracing the number but the size, the proud king of the gods

Persians [Xerxes] shed tears, because in a hundred years none of such youth would have survived: but to

they were about to hasten their destiny just he who wept (them) and who would lose others at sea, others on land,

others in battle, others on the run and in a short time it would have brought to ruin those for whom he feared the hundredth year.

And are not their joys also anxious? In fact, they do not have solid foundations, but they are disturbed by it

nullity from which they derive. Which therefore do you think are sad times by their own admission, when

also these (periods), in which they pride themselves on and place themselves above humanity, are they untrue? All the

greater goods are anxious and we must not trust any luck less than the most favorable: it is

new happiness is necessary to preserve happiness and vows must be made precisely for the vows that have been fulfilled. Indeed

 everything that happens by chance is unstable; that which will rise higher, more easily (will fall) below.

Certainly transient things do not please anyone: it is therefore inevitable that it is very painful and not only

very short the life of those who procure with great difficulty things to possess with greater difficulty.

Hardly they get what they want, anxiously they manage what they got; while none time is calculated that will never return: new occupations take over from old ones, a hope awakens hope, ambition ambition. The end of suffering is not sought, but matter is changed. The our offices have tormented us: those of others take more time; we stopped struggling as candidates:

let's start over as voters; we have renounced the annoyance of accusing: we fall (into that) of judging; has ceased  to be a judge: he becomes an inquisitor; has aged in the paid administration of other people's assets: it is required occupied by their possessions. Military service dismissed Mario: (him) tires the consulate. Quinzio [Cincinnato] yes

he struggles to avoid the office of dictator [lit .: the dictatorship]: he will be recalled by the plow. Scipio will march against the Carthaginians not yet ripe for so much enterprise; winner of Hannibal [in Zama, in 202 BC], winner of Antiochus [king of Syria, in Magnesia in 190 BC], pride of his own consulate, guarantor of his brotherly one [Lucio], if there is no had it been opposition on his part, it would have been placed next to Jupiter [Scipio refused that his statue was placed in the temple of Capitoline Jupiter]: civil uprisings will involve (him) savior of the citizens and after the equal honors

the gods, rejected as a young man, now old (him) will please the ostentation of a proud exile. They will not fail never happy or sad reasons for concern; life will drag on through occupations: you will never live the time free, will always be desired.

 XVIII. So get away from the crowd, dearest Pauline, and finally retire to a more port quiet, push yourself not because of the lifespan. Think how many waves you have faced, how many private storms you have endured, how many public (storms) have you attracted; already enough your worth has been proven through tiring and heavy examples: experience what (your worth) can do without commitments. Most of life, of certainly the best, even if it was dedicated to public affairs: take some time for yourself as well. And I'm not inviting you to a lazy and inert inactivity, not because you immerse what is in you of vigorous nature in torpor and pleasures dear to the common people: this is not to rest; you will find more important activities than all those so far valiantly treated, that

I took to accomplish secluded and quiet. You will certainly manage the affairs of the world as selflessly as
(of) others, as scrupulously as yours, with as much zeal as public. You earn esteem in a position where

it is not easy to avoid ill will: but nevertheless, believe me, it is better to know the calculation of one's life than (that) of the

state grain. It removes this vigor of the soul, very capable of the greatest things, from an honorary office, but

not very suitable for a peaceful life and thinks that you have not taken care, from an early age, of every care of liberal studies

so that many thousands (of moggi) of wheat would be happily entrusted to you: you had aspired for something more greater and higher. There will be men of perfect sobriety and industrious activity: all the more suitable for mares are slow to carry weights than noble horses, whose generous agility who has ever oppressed with a heavy soma? Then think how much trouble it is to subject yourself to such a great burden: you take care of the human belly; the people hungry does not hear reasons, is not appeased by justice or bent by prayer. Now, within those few days in which Gaius Caesar [Caligula] died - if there is any sensitivity in the afterlife, supporting this with a very grateful heart,

because he calculated that the surviving Roman people certainly remained food for seven or eight days - while

he joins ship bridges [Caligula had a ship bridge built from Baia to Pozzuoli, as Suetonius tells us]

and playing with the resources of the empire, the worst of evils even for the besieged was approaching, the lack of food;

it almost consisted in death and hunger and, as a consequence of hunger, the ruin of everything and the imitation of a king

foolish and foreign and sadly proud [King Xerxes, who built a port on the Dardanelles for the

unfortunate expedition to Greece]. What was the soul then of those who had been entrusted with the care of public grain,

subject to stones, iron, flames, Gaius? With enormous dissimulation they covered up such a great evil hidden in the bowels and with good reason; in fact some evils must be treated without the knowledge of the sick: for many reasons of death was knowing one's own evil.

 XIX.  Take refuge in these quieter, safer, bigger things! Believe that it is the same thing if you take care that the wheat is transferred into the granaries intact both by fraud and by the neglect of

transporters, which is not drenched in accumulated moisture and does not ferment, which conforms to the size and weight, or if

you approach these sacred and sublime things to know what the matter of God is, what the will, the condition, the

form; what condition awaits your spirit; where nature disposes us once we come out of (our) bodies; what it is that it holds everything heavier in the center of this world, suspends above the light ones, raises the fire at the top, excite the stars in their paths; and gradually the other things full of amazing phenomena? Want, once abandoned the earth, pay attention to these things? Now, as long as the blood is warm, we must full of vigor strive for better things. Many good activities await you in this kind of life, love and the practice of virtues,

the oblivion of passions, knowing how to live and knowing how to die (lit .: the knowledge of living and dying), a profound stillness of things.

 XX. Certainly miserable is the condition of all the busy ones, but even more miserable (that) than

those who do not even get busy with their own chores, sleep in relation to the sleep of others, walk

according to the passage of others, who are prescribed (how) to love and hate, things that are the most spontaneous of all. Self they want to know how short their life is, consider how small their share is. Therefore when you see a pretext together already worn several times or a famous name in the forum, do not feel envious: these

things are achieved at the expense of life. In order for a single year to be given by them, they will consume all their years [the years yes

were given by the name of the consuls]. Before climbing to the top of ambition, some life gave up while you they debated among the first (difficulties); to some, having gone through a thousand dishonesties to achieve the position, the bitter consideration came to mind of having been damned by the epitaph; of some the extreme failed

old age, while like youth awaited new hopes, weakened by enormous and burdensome efforts. Shameful  the one who left his breath in court, in old age, defending completely unknown litigants and looking for the assent of an ignorant audience; infamous is he who, tired of living rather than working, collapsed among his own

commitments; infamous is he who the heir, detained for a long time, laughs at while he dies devoting himself to his accounts. I can not leave out an example that comes to mind:

 Sesto Turranio was an old man of careful conscientiousness, who after ninety years, having unexpectedly received from Caio Cesare [Caligula] the exemption from the power of attorney, he gave

of being made up on the bed and being mourned as if dead by the family around him. The house cried the inactivity of the old master and did not stop mourning before his job was returned to him. At this point it is pleasant to die busy? The same state of mind has the most: in them there is longer the desire than the capacity of work; they fight against the decay of the body, the same old age they judge burdensome and with no other name, because it puts them aside. The law does not call into arms from the age of fifty, does not summon the senator from

sixty: men get rest more difficultly from themselves than from the law. Meanwhile, while I am robbed and robbed, while mutually taking away their peace, while they are mutually unhappy, life is without fruit, without pleasure, without any progress of the spirit: no one has death before his eyes, no one does not projects hopes far away, some then even organize those things that are beyond life, great piers of sepulchres and dedications of public works and funeral games (lit .: at the stake) and sumptuous funeral rites. But surely the funeral of these, as if they had lived very little, must celebrate themselves in the light of torches and candles blood? It is little. Are they torn apart? It is little: they are crushed by the enormous mass of animals! ". It was better than these things went into oblivion, so that later no powerful would learn and envy a thing entirely inhumane. How much fog puts great luck ahead of our minds! He then thought he was above of nature, exposing many unhappy hosts to beasts born under a foreign sky, organizing fights among such dissimilar animals, shedding much blood in the presence of the Roman people, who would soon have forced him to

pay more [refers to Pompey's civil war against Caesar]; but then, deceived by perfidy dedications of public works and funeral games (lit .: at the stake) and sumptuous funeral rites. But surely the funeral of these, as if they had lived very little, must celebrate themselves in the light of torches and candles.