Letter 87, “Some Arguments in Favour of the Simple Life,” begins with a small adventure: Seneca and his friend Maximus take a two-day journey traveling as lightly as possible — a farmer’s cart, dried figs for food, two rugs on the ground for a bed. The trip shows Seneca something unexpected: how much we own that we don’t actually need, and how easily we could give it up if we had to. From this concrete experience, the letter shifts into a series of formal Stoic arguments — syllogisms about whether wealth can truly be called “good.” Throughout, Seneca admits his own remaining weakness: he still blushes when fancier travelers pass him on the road. The letter is honest about how hard the simple life is to actually live, even for someone who knows it’s right.
From Seneca to Lucilius
“I was shipwrecked before I got aboard.” I won’t tell you how that happened — you might count it as just another Stoic paradox. But whenever you’re willing to listen (or even when you’re not), I will prove to you that these words aren’t strange or false at all. Meanwhile, this is what the journey showed me: how much we own that is unnecessary, and how easily we can decide to do without things whose loss we don’t even notice when we have to part with them.
My friend Maximus and I have just spent two extremely happy days traveling with very few servants — a single cart’s load — and no equipment beyond what we wore. The mattress lay on the ground, and I lay on the mattress. There were two rugs — one to spread beneath us and one to cover us.
Nothing could have been cut from our lunch; it took less than an hour to prepare, and we were never without dried figs and never without writing tablets. If I have bread, I use figs as a relish; if not, I treat figs as a substitute for bread. So they bring me a New Year’s feast every day, and I make every New Year happy and prosperous through good thoughts and greatness of soul. The soul is never greater than when it has set aside everything external, securing peace for itself by fearing nothing, and riches by craving no riches.
The Farmer’s Cart and the Blush
The vehicle I’ve been riding in is a farmer’s cart. The mules show they’re alive only by walking. The driver is barefoot — and not because it’s summer. I can hardly bring myself to wish that others would think this cart is mine. My foolish embarrassment about the truth still hangs on, you see. Whenever we meet a fancier party, I blush in spite of myself — proof that this behavior, which I approve and praise, hasn’t yet found a firm and permanent home in me.
The person who blushes at riding in a rattle-trap will boast when he rides in style. So my progress is still insufficient. I don’t yet have the courage to openly acknowledge my thrift. I’m still bothered by what other travelers think of me.
What I should have said, going the other direction from what the world believes, is this: “You’re crazy. You’re confused. Your admiration is devoted to superfluous things. You don’t estimate anyone at their real worth.”
How to Really Measure a Person’s Wealth
When it comes to property, you’re very careful — you make scrupulous calculations about who you’ll lend money or favors to (since by now you’re entering favors as line items in your ledger). You’ll say, “His estates are wide, but his debts are large.” “He has a fine house, but he built it on borrowed money.” “Nobody can put together a more impressive entourage on short notice — but he can’t pay his bills.” “If he settles with his creditors, he’ll have nothing left.”
You should be doing the same arithmetic everywhere else too — figuring out, by subtraction, the real net worth of every person.
I suppose you call a man rich because his gold service goes with him even on his travels, because he farms land in every province, because he unrolls a massive account book, because he owns estates near the city that people resent his holding even in the wastelands of Apulia. But after you’ve listed all these facts, he’s poor. Why? He’s in debt. To what extent? For everything he has. Or do you really think it matters whether someone has borrowed from another person or borrowed from Fortune?
What good is there in having mules dressed in matching livery? Or decorated chariots and:
Steeds decked with purple and with tapestry,
With golden harness hanging from their necks,
Champing their yellow bits, all clothed in gold?
Neither the master nor the mule is improved by such trappings.
Cato on a Donkey
Marcus Cato the Censor — whose existence helped the state as much as Scipio’s did, for while Scipio fought against our enemies, Cato fought against our bad habits — used to ride a donkey. And not just any donkey: one carrying saddlebags with his master’s necessities.
How I would love to see him meet, on the road today, one of our fashionable dandies — with his outriders and his Numidian guards and his great cloud of dust ahead of him. Your dandy would seem refined and well-attended next to Marcus Cato. Your dandy, who, in the middle of all his luxurious gear, is mainly concerned with whether to draw his sword or his hunting-knife.
What a glory to his age — that a general who had celebrated a triumph, a censor, and most notable of all, a Cato, was content with a single horse — and not even a whole horse, since part of the animal was claimed by the baggage hanging on either flank. Wouldn’t you prefer Cato’s lone steed, saddle-worn by Cato himself, to the dandy’s full retinue of plump ponies, Spanish cobs, and trotting horses?
I see there’s no end to writing on this theme unless I make one myself. So I’ll stop now, at least with reference to such superfluous things. The man who first called these things “encumbrances” had a prophetic sense of what they would become.
The Syllogisms Begin
Now I’d like to deliver to you the few syllogisms from our school that bear on the question of virtue — which, in our view, is sufficient for the happy life.
“What is good makes people good. For example, what is good in the art of music makes someone a musician. But chance events do not make a person good. Therefore chance events are not goods.”
The Peripatetics reply that the premise is false. Not everything good makes a person good, they say. In music, for instance, there are good things — a flute, a harp, an organ suited to accompany singing — but none of these instruments makes a musician.
Our reply: You don’t understand what we mean by “good in music.” We don’t mean what equips the musician; we mean what makes the musician. You’re talking about the tools of the art, not the art itself. If anything in the art of music is good, that will, in every case, make the musician.
Let me put this even more clearly. The good in the art of music has two senses: first, what assists the musician’s performance; second, what assists his art. The instruments — flutes, organs, harps — have to do with performance, not with the art itself. The musician is still a musician without them; he just may lack the means to practice. But the good in a human being doesn’t divide this way. The good of the person and the good of life are the same.
What Lands in Anyone’s Lap Cannot Be a Real Good
“What can fall to the lot of any person, no matter how base or despised, is not a good. But wealth falls to the lot of the pimp and the gladiator-trainer. Therefore wealth is not a good.”
“Another wrong premise,” they say. “Goods fall to the lot of even the lowest sort of people — in scholarship, in medicine, in navigation.”
But these arts don’t claim greatness of soul. They don’t rise to any heights. They don’t look down on what Fortune brings. Virtue is what lifts us up and places us above what mortals hold dear. Virtue doesn’t crave too much or fear too much what’s called good or bad.
Chelidon, one of Cleopatra’s eunuchs, possessed great wealth. Natalis — a man whose tongue was as shameless as it was dirty — was the heir of many and made many his heirs. So which is it: did his money make him filthy, or did he besmirch the money? Money tumbles into some people’s hands the way a coin tumbles down a sewer.
Virtue stands above all such things. It’s appraised in its own coinage, and it considers none of these random windfalls to be good. But medicine and navigation don’t forbid themselves or their practitioners from marveling at such windfalls. A person who isn’t good can still be a doctor, or a pilot, or a scholar — yes, just as easily as he can be a cook.
Someone whose possessions are random can only be a random sort of person. You are what you own. A strongbox is worth what it holds — or rather, the box is a mere accessory of its contents. Who values a full purse by anything other than the count of the coins inside? The same applies to the owners of great estates: they are only accessories to their possessions.
What Makes the Wise Person Great
Why is the wise person great? Because the wise person has a great soul. So it’s true that what falls to the lot of even the most despicable person is not a good.
For this reason, I would never call inactivity a good — even tree-frogs and fleas have that. Nor would I call rest and freedom from trouble a good — what is more at leisure than a worm? Do you ask what produces the wise person? The same thing that produces a god. You must grant that the wise person has something divine, something heavenly, something grand in them.
The good does not come to everyone, nor does it allow just anyone to possess it. Consider:
What fruits each country bears, or will not bear;
Here corn, and there the vine, grow richer.
And elsewhere still the tender tree and grass
Unbidden clothe themselves in green. See you
How Tmolus ships its saffron perfumes forth,
And ivory comes from Ind; soft Sheba sends
Its incense, and the unclothed Chalybes
Their iron.
These products are distributed among separate countries so that human beings will trade with one another, each seeking something from a neighbor in turn. The Supreme Good likewise has its own dwelling place. It doesn’t grow where ivory grows, or where iron grows. Where does the Supreme Good live? In the soul. And unless the soul is pure and holy, there’s no room in it for God.
Riches Come From Greed
“Good doesn’t result from evil. But riches result from greed. Therefore riches are not a good.”
“That’s not true,” they say. “Good can come from evil. Money comes from sacrilege and theft. These are evils — but they’re evils only because they produce more evil than good. They bring gain, but the gain is accompanied by fear, anxiety, and torment of mind and body.”
Whoever says this is forced to admit that sacrilege, though an evil because it produces much evil, is also partly good because it produces some good. What could be more monstrous than this?
We’ve actually convinced the world that sacrilege, theft, and adultery should be counted among the goods. How many people there are who don’t blush at theft. How many who boast of adultery! Petty sacrilege is punished, but sacrilege on a grand scale is honored with a triumphal procession.
If sacrilege were entirely good in any respect, then it would also be honorable, and we would call it right conduct — since conduct refers to ourselves. But no serious person admits this.
Therefore good cannot spring from evil. For if, as you object, sacrilege is evil only because it brings on much evil, then if you remove the punishment and pledge it immunity, sacrilege will be entirely good. But the worst punishment for a crime lies in the crime itself. You are wrong, I insist, if you reserve punishment for the executioner or the prison. The crime is punished as soon as it is committed — even at the very moment of committing.
So good doesn’t spring from evil, any more than figs grow on olive trees. Things grow according to their seed. Goods cannot depart from their kind. As the honorable doesn’t grow from the base, neither does the good grow from evil. The honorable and the good are identical.
The Jar With the Snake
Some in our school object: “Suppose money from any source is a good. Even when it’s obtained through sacrilege, the money itself doesn’t originate from sacrilege. Imagine a jar containing a piece of gold and a snake. If you take the gold from the jar, you don’t get the gold because the snake is there — you get it in spite of the snake being there. Similarly, gain results from sacrilege not because sacrilege is wicked, but because the act happens to contain gain too. The snake in the jar is the evil, not the gold. In sacrilege, the crime is the evil, not the profit.”
I disagree. The two cases aren’t the same. In the jar, I can take the gold without the snake. In sacrilege, I cannot get the profit without committing the crime. The gain in sacrilege doesn’t sit beside the crime — it is fused with the crime.
What Brings Many Evils Cannot Be a Good
“What involves us in many evils while we pursue it is not a good. But pursuing riches involves us in many evils. Therefore riches are not a good.”
“Your first premise has two meanings,” they say. “First: we get into many evils pursuing wealth. But we also get into many evils pursuing virtue. A man travels to study philosophy and is shipwrecked. Another is taken captive.”
“Second meaning: that through which we get involved in evils is not a good. By this reasoning, it doesn’t follow that we get into evils through wealth or through pleasure. Otherwise, if we get into many evils through wealth, wealth is not merely not a good — it’s a positive evil. You only claim it’s not a good. Besides, you grant that wealth is of some use. You reckon it among the advantages. But by this reasoning it can’t even be an advantage, because we suffer disadvantages pursuing it.”
Some answer this objection by saying: “You’re wrong to ascribe disadvantages to wealth. Wealth injures no one. It’s a person’s own folly, or a neighbor’s wickedness, that does the harm. A sword by itself doesn’t kill — it’s the weapon used by the killer. Wealth itself doesn’t harm you just because harm happens on account of wealth.”
Why Posidonius Is Right About Riches
I think Posidonius’s reasoning is better. He says riches are a cause of evil — not because they themselves do any evil, but because they goad people on so that they’re ready to do evil.
There’s a difference between an efficient cause, which necessarily produces immediate harm, and an antecedent cause. The antecedent cause is what inheres in riches. Wealth puffs up the spirit, breeds pride, brings unpopularity, and unsettles the mind so much that the mere reputation of having money — though it’s bound to harm us — still delights us.
True goods are free from blame. They’re pure, they don’t corrupt the spirit, they don’t tempt. They do uplift and broaden the spirit — but without puffing it up. Real goods produce confidence; wealth produces shamelessness. Real goods give us greatness of soul; wealth gives us arrogance. And arrogance is nothing but a false show of greatness.
“By that argument,” the objector says, “wealth isn’t just not a good — it’s a positive evil.” It would be an evil if it harmed us directly, by an efficient cause. But the cause that inheres in wealth is antecedent — and not just stirring the spirit, but actually dragging it along by force.
Wealth, in fact, showers us with a semblance of the good — a semblance so like the real thing that it wins credence with many people. An antecedent cause inheres in virtue too: it brings on envy. Many people become unpopular because of their wisdom, many because of their justice. But this cause, though it inheres in virtue, isn’t the result of virtue itself, nor is it a mere semblance. The vision that virtue flashes upon people’s spirits — summoning them to love it and admire it — is far closer to the reality.
Posidonius’s Better Syllogism
Posidonius thinks the syllogism should be framed this way: “What bestows no greatness, confidence, or freedom from care upon the soul is not a good. Riches, health, and similar conditions do none of these things. Therefore riches and health are not goods.”
He extends it further: “What bestows no greatness, confidence, or freedom from care upon the soul, but on the contrary creates arrogance, vanity, and insolence, is an evil. But things given by Fortune drive us into these evils. Therefore these things are not goods.”
“By this reasoning,” the objector says, “things given by Fortune aren’t even advantages.”
No — advantages and goods occupy different categories. An advantage is something that contains more usefulness than annoyance. A good must be unmixed, with no element of harm in it. A thing isn’t good just because it contains more benefit than injury; it’s good only when it contains nothing but benefit.
Advantages can be predicated of animals, of imperfect people, of fools. So the advantageous may contain some element of disadvantage — but we call it “advantageous” by its dominant element. The good, however, can be predicated only of the wise person. It must be without alloy.
The Last Knot
Take heart — there’s only one knot left for you to untie. But it’s a knot worthy of Hercules: “Good doesn’t result from evil. But wealth results from many cases of poverty. Therefore wealth is not a good.”
This syllogism isn’t recognized by our school, but the Peripatetics both invent it and answer it. Posidonius says the fallacy, passed around among every school of logic, is refuted by Antipater as follows:
“The word ‘poverty’ doesn’t denote the possession of something — it denotes the non-possession, the deprivation, of something. Poverty states not what a person has, but what they don’t have. Consequently, no fullness can result from a multitude of empties. Many positive things — not many deficiencies — make up wealth. You have the wrong notion of what poverty is. Poverty doesn’t mean possessing little; it means not possessing much. It refers to what a person lacks, not to what they have.”
I could put this more easily if Latin had a word that translated the Greek term for “non-possessing.” Antipater attaches this quality to poverty; for my part, I can’t see what else poverty is than possessing little. When we have plenty of leisure, we’ll investigate what the essence of riches and poverty really is — but when that time comes, we should also consider whether it would be better to relieve poverty and to disarm wealth of its arrogance, rather than quibble about words as if we’d already settled the substance.
What If There Were a Real Vote on This?
Suppose we’ve been called to an assembly. An act has been proposed for the abolition of riches. Would we be supporting it, or opposing it, by deploying these syllogisms?
Will these syllogisms help us bring the Roman people to demand poverty and praise it — poverty, which was the very foundation and cause of their empire? Will they make us shrink from our current wealth, reflecting that we found it among the victims of our conquests, that wealth is the source from which office-seeking, bribery, and disorder have burst into a city once characterized by the strictest scrupulousness and sobriety, that wealth puts an excessive display upon the spoils of conquered nations — and that whatever one people has snatched from all the rest may still more easily be snatched by all away from one?
No — it’s better to support this law by our conduct, and to subdue our desires by direct assault, rather than to outflank them with logic. If we can, let us speak more boldly. If not, let us speak more frankly.
Farewell.
Breaking It Down: A Modern Take on Letter 87
Letter 87 is two letters in one. The first half is one of the most charming pieces of writing in the entire collection — Seneca’s account of a low-budget road trip with his friend Maximus. The second half is a series of formal philosophical arguments about whether wealth can really be called good. Together they make the case that the simple life is the better life. Here’s what stands out for a modern reader:
1. The Trip That Showed Him How Little He Needed
Seneca’s opening is irresistible. Two friends. A farmer’s cart. Dried figs. Two rugs on the ground. Writing tablets. “How much we own that is unnecessary, and how easily we can decide to do without things whose loss we don’t even notice when we have to part with them.” This is the kind of insight that requires actual experience to gain — not philosophical theory but the lived reality of needing less.
2. The Honesty of the Blush
One of the most disarming moments in all of Seneca. He knows the simple life is right. He’s traveling exactly as he believes a wise person should. And yet — when a fancier party passes him on the road, he blushes. He admits it. He doesn’t pretend to be further along than he is. This honesty about his own incomplete progress makes him a far better teacher than someone claiming to have arrived.
3. “You Are What You Own”
One of the sharpest observations in the letter: “A person is the same kind of thing as what they possess. A strongbox is worth only what it holds. Who values a purse by anything other than the coins inside?” The implication is brutal: if your identity is built on possessions, your worth fluctuates with their market value. Real worth must come from somewhere else.
4. The Real Math of Wealth
Seneca’s accounting trick — the rich man “after you’ve listed all these facts, he’s poor, because he’s in debt” — is funny and devastating. How many “wealthy” people today are actually wealthy? Or are they just in debt to creditors, to expectations, to the lifestyles they’ve trapped themselves into? The genuinely rich person owes nothing.
5. Cato on a Donkey vs. the Dandy
The contrast between Cato — censor, triumph-celebrating general, moral pillar — riding a donkey carrying his own saddlebags, and the modern dandy with his cloud of dust and retinue, is comic genius. The truly impressive person doesn’t need an entourage to announce them. The entourage is what insecure people use to hide.
6. The Snake in the Jar
One of Seneca’s most pointed arguments. Some Stoics tried to say that money from theft was still good — the gold could be separated from the crime, the way you could pull gold out of a jar containing a snake. Seneca’s reply: the gold and the snake are separable; the gain and the crime are not. When the only way to get something is to do wrong, the gain is fused with the wrong. There is no clean version.
7. Confidence Versus Shamelessness
This is the line of the letter for me: “Real goods produce confidence; wealth produces shamelessness. Real goods give us greatness of soul; wealth gives us arrogance. And arrogance is nothing but a false show of greatness.” The contrast between confidence (grounded) and arrogance (performed) is one of Stoicism’s most useful diagnostic tools. The first is rooted; the second is theater.
8. Wealth as Antecedent Cause
Seneca cites Posidonius for one of the most psychologically sophisticated arguments in the letter: wealth doesn’t directly cause harm — it goads us toward harm. It puffs up the spirit, breeds pride, unsettles the mind. We don’t become cruel because we have money; we become more inclined toward cruelty because money makes us feel above the rules. This explains a great deal of modern behavior without requiring anyone to be straightforwardly evil.
9. Goods vs. Advantages
A subtle but important distinction: “An advantage contains more usefulness than annoyance. A good must be unmixed, with no element of harm in it.” Wealth, health, status — these may be advantages, but they cannot be goods, because they always come with downsides. The only true goods are unmixed: virtue, wisdom, justice. Everything else is an advantage at best.
10. Better Conduct Than Logic
The closing turn of the letter is wonderful. After all these syllogisms about whether wealth is good, Seneca asks: if someone proposed actually abolishing wealth in the Roman assembly, would your logic help? “It’s better to support this law by our conduct, and to subdue our desires by direct assault, rather than to outflank them with logic.” Live the simple life. Don’t just argue for it.
11. “What One People Has Snatched From All the Rest…”
The most politically pointed line in the letter: “Whatever one people has snatched away from all the rest may still more easily be snatched by all away from one.” Wealth built on conquest is wealth built on a foundation that can be reversed. Empires built on plunder are setting themselves up for the same plunder. Two thousand years later, this still hits.
Key Takeaways from Letter 87
- Travel light, and you learn how much you don’t need. The journey teaches what theory cannot.
- Be honest about your own incomplete progress. The blush at fancy travelers is more useful than pretending not to feel it.
- You are what you own — if you let yourself be. Real worth must come from somewhere money can’t reach.
- Real wealth is what’s left after you settle your debts. Most “rich” people are deeply in debt to expectations.
- Confidence is grounded; arrogance is performed. Wealth tends to manufacture the second, not the first.
- The crime and the gain are fused. There is no clean version of ill-gotten gain.
- Wealth is an antecedent cause of harm. It doesn’t make you bad — it inclines you toward badness.
- Goods must be unmixed. Advantages may carry harm with them. Wealth is an advantage at best — never a good.
- Conduct matters more than argument. Live the simple life rather than syllogize about it.
- What is taken can be taken back. Plundered wealth sits on a reversible foundation.
“The soul is never greater than when it has set aside everything external, securing peace for itself by fearing nothing, and riches by craving no riches.”
— Seneca, Letter 87
Next up: Letter 88 — On Liberal and Vocational Studies
