While Rome buzzes with election season, with candidates kissing hands, bribing voters, and sweating out the results, Seneca describes a rarer kind of freedom: to campaign for nothing and tell Fortune, “I ask no favors.” What looks like the top from below is only a rung on the ladder once you get there. The letter then turns to a philosophical question, what makes something truly good, and answers with a striking image: the keystone of an arch.
From Seneca to Lucilius
You’ve been demanding more frequent letters from me. But if we compare accounts, you won’t come out on the credit side. We did agree that your part came first: you’d write first, and I’d answer. Still, I won’t be difficult. I know you can be trusted, so I’ll pay in advance. But I won’t do what the eloquent Cicero told Atticus to do: “Even if you have nothing to say, write whatever comes into your head.”
Better Things to Write About
I’ll always have something to write about, even leaving out all the kinds of news Cicero fills his letters with: which candidate is in trouble; who is campaigning on borrowed money and who on his own; who is running for consul relying on Caesar, or Pompey, or his own cash box; what a merciless moneylender Caecilius is, out of whom even his friends can’t squeeze a penny for less than one percent a month.
But it’s better to deal with your own failings than with someone else’s: to examine yourself and see how many empty things you’re a candidate for, and to cast your vote for none of them.
Campaign for Nothing
This, my dear Lucilius, is a noble thing; this brings peace and freedom: to campaign for nothing, and to pass by all of Fortune’s elections. How can you call it enjoyable when the voting tribes are called together and the candidates are making offerings at their favorite temples, some promising money, others doing business through an agent, others wearing out their hands with the kisses of people they won’t let touch even a finger once they’re elected, when everyone is anxiously waiting for the herald’s announcement? Is it enjoyable, I ask, to stand idle and watch this Vanity Fair without buying or selling?
How much greater the joy of someone who looks on calmly, not only at the election of a praetor or consul, but at that great contest in which some seek yearly honors, others permanent power, others a triumph and success in war, others riches, or marriage and children, or the welfare of themselves and their families! What a great-souled thing it is to be the only one campaigning for nothing, praying to no one, and saying: “Fortune, I have nothing to do with you. I’m not at your service. I know you reject men like Cato and make men like Vatinius. I ask no favors.” That’s the way to bust Fortune down to the ranks.
Only a Rung on the Ladder
These, then, are the things we can write about in turn, and this is the endlessly fresh material we can dig up as we watch the restless crowds of people who, to gain something ruinous, struggle through evil to evil, seeking what they’ll soon have to run from or will find sickening.
For who was ever satisfied, once he got it, with the thing that loomed so large while he was praying for it? Happiness isn’t, as people think, a greedy thing; it’s a humble thing, and so it never stuffs a person’s desires. You think the things you seek are lofty because you’re down low and far away from them; but they look small to the one who has reached them. And I’m very much mistaken if he doesn’t want to climb higher still. What you think is the top is just a rung on the ladder.
Now everyone suffers from ignorance of the truth. Fooled by common talk, they head for these goals as if they were good, and then, after getting what they wanted and suffering a great deal, they find them bad, or empty, or less important than they expected. Most people admire what deceives them from a distance, and the crowd assumes that good things are big things.
What Is the Good?
So that this doesn’t happen to us too, let’s ask what the good is. It’s been explained in various ways; different people have described it differently. Some define it like this: “What attracts and calls the spirit to itself is a good.” But an objection comes right up: what if it attracts, but straight to ruin? You know how seductive many evils are. What is true is different from what looks true. So the good is connected with the true, since it isn’t good unless it’s also true. But what attracts and lures is only like the truth; it steals your attention, demands your interest, and draws you toward itself.
So some have given this definition: “That is good which inspires desire for itself, or stirs up the impulse of a striving soul toward itself.” The same objection applies, since many things stir the soul’s impulses and yet pursuing them harms the pursuer. This definition is better: “That is good which stirs the soul’s impulse toward itself in accordance with nature, and is worth seeking only when it starts to be thoroughly worth seeking.” By then it’s something honorable, since that’s something completely worth seeking.
The Good and the Honorable
This topic prompts me to explain the difference between the good and the honorable. They share a quality that blends into both and can’t be separated from either: nothing can be good unless it contains something of the honorable, and the honorable is necessarily good. So what’s the difference? The honorable is the perfect good, and the happy life is completed by it; through its influence other things are made good too.
I mean something like this: some things are neither good nor bad, like military or diplomatic service, or giving legal judgments. When such work is carried out honorably, it starts to be good, and moves from the “indifferent” class into the good. The good comes from partnership with the honorable, but the honorable is good in itself. The good springs from the honorable, but the honorable springs from itself. What is good might have been bad; what is honorable could never have been anything but good.
“According to Nature”
Some have defined it this way: “That is good which is according to nature.” Now listen to my own view. What is good is according to nature, but what is according to nature doesn’t immediately become good. Many things are in harmony with nature but so petty that it isn’t right to call them good. They’re unimportant and deserve to be disregarded. But there’s no such thing as a tiny, contemptible good; as long as something is meager it isn’t good, and when it starts to be good it stops being meager. How, then, can the good be recognized? Only if it is completely according to nature.
People say: “You admit that what is good is according to nature, since that’s its special quality. You admit too that there are other things according to nature that aren’t good. How then can one be good and the other not? How can a thing’s special quality change, when each shares with the other the special attribute of being in accord with nature?”
Things That Grow Into Something New
Surely because of its magnitude. It’s no new idea that some things change as they grow. A person who was once a child becomes a young man, and his special quality is transformed: the child couldn’t reason, but the young man can. Some things don’t just grow larger as they develop; they grow into something else.
Some reply: “But what becomes greater doesn’t necessarily become different. It makes no difference whether you pour wine into a flask or a vat; the wine keeps its special quality in both. Small and large amounts of honey taste the same.” But those cases are different. Wine and honey have a uniform quality; no matter how much you increase the amount, the quality stays the same. Some things keep their kind and their special qualities even when they’re enlarged.
The Keystone
Others, though, after many additions, are changed by the last one; a new character is stamped on them, different from what they had before. One stone makes an arch: the keystone that wedges the leaning sides and holds the arch together by its position in the middle. And why does the last addition, though very small, make such a difference? Because it doesn’t add; it completes.
Some things, as they develop, shed their former shape and change into a new form. When the mind has long developed some idea and grown tired trying to grasp its size, that thing begins to be called “infinite.” And then it has become something very different from what it was when it seemed great but finite. In the same way, we’ve thought of something as hard to divide; finally, as the task grows harder and harder, the thing is found to be “indivisible.” Likewise, from what could barely or only with difficulty be moved, we’ve gone on and on until we reach the “immovable.” By the same reasoning, a certain thing was according to nature; its greatness has transformed it into a different special quality and made it a good.
Farewell.
Breaking It Down: A Modern Take on Letter 118
Letter 118 has two parts. The first is a vivid, timeless picture of ambition: candidates kissing hands and bribing voters, everyone chasing promotions, honors, and wealth, and the rare person who simply steps out of the race. The second is a careful attempt to define the good. Its keystone image is worth remembering: virtue isn’t just more of something; it’s what completes and holds the whole structure together.
1. Examine your own campaigns
Seneca would rather “examine yourself and see how many empty things you’re a candidate for, and cast your vote for none of them.” What are you quietly campaigning for: approval, status, a title, a bigger house?
2. Peace comes from not campaigning
“This brings peace and freedom: to campaign for nothing, and to pass by all of Fortune’s elections.” When you stop needing the prize, the race loses its grip on you.
3. Ambition can be ugly up close
Candidates kiss hands they won’t touch after they win. It’s a sharp image of how ambition can make people fake, and how quickly flattery reverses once power is won.
4. Tell Fortune, “I ask no favors”
“Fortune, I have nothing to do with you. I’m not at your service.” Fortune rewards scoundrels and rejects good people. Refusing to depend on her favor is the only way to be free of her moods.
5. Happiness is humble
“Happiness isn’t, as people think, a greedy thing; it’s a humble thing.” Real contentment doesn’t need more and more. It’s found in modest, steady things.
6. The top is just another rung
“What you think is the top is just a rung on the ladder.” Anyone who has reached a long-sought goal knows the feeling: the view from the summit reveals another summit.
7. Distance deceives
“Most people admire what deceives them from a distance.” Things look grander from far away. Up close, many prizes are empty or disappointing.
8. Attraction isn’t goodness
Something that pulls at us isn’t necessarily good; it may pull us straight to ruin. “What is true is different from what looks true.” Desire is a poor compass.
9. Honor makes things good
Ordinary work, like public service or making decisions, becomes good when done honorably. “What is good might have been bad; what is honorable could never have been anything but good.” It’s not the job but how you do it.
10. Some things grow into something new
“Some things don’t just grow larger as they develop; they grow into something else.” A child becomes a reasoning adult. Character, too, can be transformed, not just improved.
11. The keystone completes the arch
“Because it doesn’t add; it completes.” Small final steps can make all the difference. Virtue is the keystone that turns a pile of good qualities into a strong, whole life.
Key Takeaways from Letter 118
- Audit your ambitions. What empty things are you running for?
- Step out of the race. Peace comes from campaigning for nothing.
- See ambition clearly. It often makes people fake.
- Ask Fortune for nothing. Her favors are unreliable.
- Happiness is humble. It doesn’t need more and more.
- Every summit hides another. The top is just a rung.
- Distance flatters. Look closely before you chase.
- Attraction isn’t goodness. Desire can lead to ruin.
- Honor transforms work. How you do it makes it good.
- Growth can transform. Character can become something new.
- Virtue is the keystone. It completes and holds a life together.
“This, my dear Lucilius, is a noble thing; this brings peace and freedom: to campaign for nothing, and to pass by all of Fortune’s elections.”
— Seneca, Letter 118
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Next up: Letter 119 — On Nature as Our Best Provider
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