Seneca · Letters to Lucilius
Letter 62: On good company
Letter 62 denies that a crowd of affairs prevents study: those who say so multiply their engagements themselves.
Seneca lends himself to business without surrendering to it, keeps company in thought with the best men of every age, and carries the half-naked Demetrius everywhere with him.
From the letter
We are deceived by those who would have us believe that a multitude of affairs blocks their pursuit of liberal studies; they make a pretence of their engagements, and multiply them, when their engagements are merely with themselves.
As for me, Lucilius, my time is free; it is indeed free, and wherever I am, I am master of myself.
For I do not surrender myself to my affairs, but loan myself to them, and I do not hunt out excuses for wasting my time.
But I spend my time in the company of all the best; no matter in what lands they may have lived, or in what age, I let my thoughts fly to them.
It is in the power of any man to despise all things, but of no man to possess all things.
Coverage
Our editions hold 30 letters of 124 in Richard Mott Gummere’s translation (1917–1925); 29 of them have a page here, those that Joseph Baillard’s French translation (1861) also contains.
Seneca and Epictetus are in Stoic+ — 1 passage of this letter, with its reference; Marcus Aurelius is free in the app.