Letters 37.1

You have promised to be a good man; you have enlisted under oath; that is the strongest chain which will hold you to a sound understanding. Any man will be but mocking you, if he declares that this is an effeminate and easy kind of soldiering. I will not have you deceived. The words of this most honourable compact are the same as the words of that most disgraceful one, to wit: “Through burning, imprisonment, or death by the sword.”

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 37.1, translated by Richard Mott Gummere