Peer of the Gods. Seneca, Epistles 4.31.9-10

Nature has prepared you for life. Use her gifts to become like the gods, who live without being attached to money or clothing or reputation. The beauty and strength they serve, natural beauty and strength, is greater than ours, which is mortal and must fade.

Quomodo inquis isto pervenitur? Non per Poeninum Graiumve montem nec per deserta Candaviae; nec Syrtes tibi nec Scylla aut Charybdis adeundae sunt, quae tamen omnia transisti procuratiunculae pretio: tutum iter est, iucundum est, ad quod natura te instruxit. Dedit tibi illa quae si non deserueris, par deo surges. Parem autem te deo pecunia non faciet: deus nihil habet. Praetexta non faciet: deus nudus est. Fama non faciet nec ostentatio tui et in populos nominis dimissa notitia: nemo novit deum, multi de illo male existimant, et impune. Non turba servorum lecticam tuam per itinera urbana ac peregrina portantium: deus ille maximus potentissimusque ipse vehit omnia. Ne forma quidem et vires beatum te facere possunt: nihil horum patitur vetustatem.

“How does one find this place, where work and rest meet in perfect harmony?” you ask. Not by way of the Pennine mount, nor the Greek one, nor by journeying through the wastes of Candavia. You are not to go seeking the Syrtes, or Scylla, or Charybdis (†)—all barriers you have already passed, by paying the administrative fee. The road for which nature has furnished you is safe, pleasant even. She has already given you the goods by which you will rise as peer of the gods, if you do not abandon them. Money will not make you equal to divinity: gods possess nothing. A fine robe will not do, either: gods go naked. Fame will not serve you, and it is useless to display yourself in public or send news of your name to the nations. For nobody ever recognized a god, and many judge divinity harshly, with impunity. No crowd of servants for you, bearing your litter through the streets of our city, or foreign ones: the greatest and most powerful god carries everything all by himself. Not even beauty and strength can make you blessed: nothing that belongs to them survives old age.

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(†) The Pennine mount takes its original Latin name (Mons Pennus) from the Celtic word penn, meaning summit, though Seneca here calls the mountain Poeninus, Punic, as some did after Hannibal used its pass to cross the Alps separating Gaul from Italy. Today this mountain & its pass are known as the Great St. Bernard. The Greek mount, Mons Graius, is another alp, known to us as the Little St. Bernard. The Romans identified its passage as the one Hercules used on his way back from stealing Geryon's cattle in Iberia. Candavia is a mountain in Illyria, traversed in Seneca's time by the Egnatian Way (Via Egnatia) that joined Dyrrachium to Byzantium. The Syrtes were large sandbanks guarding the coasts of northern Africa between Cyrenaica and the territory of Carthage. Scylla and Charybdis, whom we have already met in Seneca's letters, are the cliffs and tides guarding the straits of Messina.