Moral Letters Vol I

1.

A man is indeed lazy and careless, my dear Lucilius, if he is reminded of a friend only by seeing some landscape which stirs the memory; and yet there are times when the old familiar haunts stir up a sense of loss that has been stored away in the soul, not bringing back dead memories, but rousing them from their dormant state, just as the sight of a lost friend’s favourite slave, or his cloak, or his house, renews the mourner’s grief, even though it has been softened by time.

Now, lo and behold, Campania, and especially Naples and your beloved Pompeii, struck me, when I viewed them, with a wonderfully fresh sense of longing for you.

You stand in full view before my eyes.

I am on the point of parting from you.

I see you choking down your tears and resisting without success the emotions that well up at the very moment when you try to check them.

I seem to have lost you but a moment ago.

For what is not “but a moment ago” when one begins to use the memory?