Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, Epistulae

Quaeris, quomodo amicum cito facturus sit; dicam, si illud mihi tecum converterit, ut statim tibi solvam, quod debeo, et quantum ad hanc epistulam, paria faciamus. Hecaton ait: Ego tibi monstrabo amatorium sine medicamenta, sine herba, sine ullius veneficae carmine: si vis amari, ama. Habet autem non tantum usus amicitiae veteris et certae magnam voluptatem, sed etiam initium et comparatio novae.

You ask how he will make a friend quickly. I will tell you, if we agree that I pay you at once what I owe and that, as far as this letter is concerned, we are quits. Hecaton says: “I will show you a love-potion without drugs, without herbs, without any witch’s spell: if you want to be loved, love.” And not only the practice of an old and settled friendship holds great pleasure, but also the beginning and acquiring of a new one.

Ex Nomentano meo te saluto et iubeo habere mentem bonam, hoc est propitios deos omnis, quos habet placatos et faventes, quisquis sibi se propitiavit. Sepone in praesentia, quae quibusdam placent, unicuique nostrum paedagogum dari deum, non quidem ordinarium, sed hunc inferioris notae ex eorum numero, quos Ovidius ait de plebe deos. Ita tamen hoc seponas volo, ut memineris maiores nostros, qui crediderunt, Stoicos fuisse; singulis enim et Genium et Iunonem dederunt.

From my place at Nomentum I greet you and bid you have a sound mind, that is, have all the gods propitious; and whoever has made himself propitious to himself has them appeased and favourable. Set aside for the present the view some hold, that a god is assigned to each one of us as a tutor, not indeed one of the regular rank, but one of this lower grade, from the number of those whom Ovid calls “gods of the common people”. Yet I want you to set this aside in such a way as to remember that our ancestors, who believed it, were Stoics; for they gave each person both a Genius and a Juno.