Caesar would not land at Mitylene, because he blushed
to see him. Marcellus therefore, though he was living in exile and
poverty, was living a most happy and a most noble life.

"'One self-approving hour whole worlds outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Caesar with a senate at his heels.'

"And as for poverty every one who is not corrupted by the madness of
avarice and luxury know that it is no evil. How little does man need,
and how easily can he secure that! As for me, I consider myself as
having lost not wealth, but the trouble of looking after it. Bodily
wants are few--warmth and food, nothing more. May the gods and goddesses
confound that gluttony which sweeps the sky, and sea and land for birds,
and animals, and fish; which eats to vomit and vomits to eat, and hunts
over the whole world for that which after all it cannot even digest!
They might satisfy their hunger with little, and they excite it with
much. What harm can poverty inflict on a man who despises such excesses?
Look at the god-like and heroic poverty of our ancestors, and compare
the simple glory of a Camillus with the lasting infamy of a luxurious
Apicius! Even exile will yield a sufficiency of necessaries, but not
even kingdoms are enough for superfluities. It is the soul that makes us
rich or poor: and the soul follows us into exile, and finds and enjoys
its own blessings even in the most barren solitudes.

"But it does not even need philosophy to enable us to despise poverty.
Look at the poor: are they not often obviously happier than the rich?
And the times are so changed that what we would now consider the poverty
of an exile would then have been regarded as the patrimony of a prince.
Protected by such precedents as those of Homer, and Zeno, and Menenius
Agrippa, and Regulus, and Scipio, poverty becomes not only safe but
even estimable.

"And if you make the objection that the ills which assail me are not
exile only, or poverty only, but disgrace as well, I reply that the soul
which is hard enough to resist one wound is invulnerable to all. If we
have utterly conquered the fear of death, nothing else can daunt us.
What is disgrace to one who stands above the opinion of the multitude?
what was even a death of disgrace to Socrates, who by entering a prison
made it cease to be disgraceful? Cato was twice defeated in his
candidature for the praetorship and consulshi