Seneca · Letters to Lucilius
Letter 9: On philosophy and friendship
Letter 9 takes up Epicurus’s reproach against Stilbo and asks whether the wise man, being self-sufficient, still needs friends.
Seneca’s answer is that he can do without them but does not wish to, and that a friendship sought for its usefulness ends as soon as the usefulness does.
From the letter
There is this difference between ourselves and the other school: our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them; their wise man does not even feel them.
In this sense the wise man is self-sufficient, that he can do without friends, not that he desires to do without them.
Hecato, says: “I can show you a philtre, compounded without drugs, herbs, or any witch’s incantation: ‘If you would be loved, love.’”
He who begins to be your friend because it pays will also cease because it pays.
But we must mark with care what this sentence signifies and how far it applies; the wise man is sufficient unto himself for a happy existence, but not for mere existence.
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+ — 2 passages of this letter, each with its reference; Marcus Aurelius is free in the app.