Lessons from a Hero's Simple Bath — Letters from a Stoic

Seneca is writing from Scipio Africanus's country estate, the actual villa where the man who saved Rome lived out his self-imposed exile. Letter 86 is an extended meditation on simplicity and character, triggered by two things: the bathhouse Scipio built, and the onions Aegialus grows in the garden. The bathhouse is small, dark, built in the ancient fashion, nothing like the marble luxury Seneca's contemporaries expect.

His observation: we have grown so soft that a rich man is considered poor if his walls aren't covered with large, costly mirrors. Yet the man who built this humble bath held command over armies and saved his country. Then he examines Scipio's decision to go into voluntary exile rather than let his own fame crush Roman liberty.

'Either liberty must work harm to Scipio, or Scipio to liberty.' He chose to leave. The letter closes with practical farming notes from Aegialus, when to plant, how to transplant vines, how to make old stock take root again, and Seneca listening with the attention of a man who finds honest work more instructive than philosophy done for show.