Stealing fortune's arrows. Seneca, Epistles 2.18.8-11

The irony of pleasure: if you are always inundated with it, then it loses the ability to move you. Deprivation allows you to appreciate and recognize what is missing. Deprivation is pleasant. Train yourself to notice this, so that when you are deprived, you do not feel depressed.

Non est tamen quare tu multum tibi facere videaris. Facies enim quod multa milia servorum, multa milia pauperum faciunt; illo nomine te suspice, quod facies non coactus, quod tam facile erit tibi illud pati semper quam aliquando experiri. Exerceamur ad palum, et ne imparatos fortuna deprehendat, fiat nobis paupertas familiaris; securius divites erimus si scierimus quam non sit grave pauperes esse.

Certos habebat dies ille magister voluptatis Epicurus quibus maligne famem exstingueret, visurus an aliquid deesset ex plena et consummata voluptate, vel quantum deesset, et an dignum quod quis magno labore pensaret. Hoc certe in iis epistulis ait quas scripsit Charino magistratu ad Polyaenum; et quidem gloriatur non toto asse pasci (‡), Metrodorum, qui nondum tantum profecerit, toto. In hoc tu victu saturitatem putas esse? Et voluptas est; voluptas autem non illa levis et fugax et subinde reficienda, sed stabilis et certa. Non enim iucunda res est aqua et polenta aut frustum hordeacii panis, sed summa voluptas est posse capere etiam ex his voluptatem et ad id se deduxisse quod eripere nulla fortunae iniquitas possit. Liberiora alimenta sunt carceris: sepositos ad capitale supplicium non tam anguste qui occisurus est pascit. Quanta est animi magnitudo ad id sua sponte descendere quod ne ad extrema quidem decretis timendum sit! hoc est praeoccupare tela fortunae.

Don't think you are doing anything special. The deprivation you are going to practice is nothing more than many thousands of slaves and paupers already do. Look at it this way: you are going to undertake voluntary poverty, since it is at least as easy to embrace suffering always as to endure it unpredictably, whenever ill fortune strikes. Let us practice fighting at the stake (†): in order that fortune may not seize us unprepared, we should make poverty a member of the family. We will be safer in the good times if we know that being poor is no problem.

Epicurus, the famous master of pleasure, had certain days when he would scarcely touch food, to see if his pleasure lacked anything truly essential to total consummation, and if so what it might be, and whether anyone would judge it worthy of any great effort. Or at least that is what he says in the letter he wrote to Polyaenus when Charinus was archon of Athens (*). He boasts that his feasts cost less than a penny, while their mutual friend Metrodorus (⁑) has to spend the whole penny for his, since he has not yet advanced as far in the study of pleasure. Do you suppose satiety is possible on this diet? Of course it is. So is pleasure: not the light and fleeting pleasure that must constantly be recreated, but the kind that abides fixed and firmly in its place. Water, grits (††), and a crust of barley-bread are nothing to laugh at! The peak of pleasure is being able to take such joy from them that we become immune to any loss fortune may impose. Even jail-food is richer than this pauper's meal, for the authorities do not starve those doomed to death before they kill them. What greatness of mind there is in descending deliberately to depths so low that even a death sentence will not make us face them! This is how you steal fortune's arrows before she shoots.

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(‡) Muretus offers a plausible emendation: non toto asse se pasci.

(†) Roman soldiers and gladiators drilled techniques for armed combat by using heavy wooden sword and shield against a stake driven into the ground (Vegetius, De Re Militari 1.11).

(*) Archon (ἄρχων) is a generic Greek word for magistrate (magistratus here in Seneca's text). From an early age, Athens recognized various different archons in its governments, each with special duties carried out over a regular term of service. After 683 BCE, the term of archonship was limited to one year. Charinus served as the eponymous archon, whose chief role was to provide a name for the official year (a role assumed by the consuls in Rome); his name was given to a year sometime between 291 and 288 BCE.

(⁑) Metrodorus and Polyaenus were both from Lampsacus, a Greek city on the Asian side of the Hellespont, where they joined the school Epicurus founded after he departed Mitylene. When their master went to Athens to found his last and most famous school, the Garden, they followed, and enjoyed positions of respect within the society of friends there. Polyaenus had a reputation for math, while Metrodorus composed treatises criticising Greek philosophy from an Epicurean perspective.

(††) Roman polenta was like the modern versions known throughout Italy (cucina povera) and Europe generally (pura, bakrdan, puliszka, kačamak, kuymak, mămăligă, ghomi, abysta, mamrys, mamyrza, sera, etc.), except that the grain peeled and crushed was never maize, which remained isolated in the Americas. Instead, Romans used barley, wheat, millet, spelt, or chickpeas. Mixed with water, the crushed grains could be cooked as stew or poured out on a hot rock and baked into loaves.