Letters 66.2

The poet who sang

Worth shows more pleasing in a form that’s fair,

is, in my opinion, mistaken. For virtue needs nothing to set it off; it is its own great glory, and it hallows the body in which it dwells. At any rate, I have begun to regard Claranus in a different light; he seems to me handsome, and as well-set-up in body as in mind.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 66.2, translated by Richard Mott Gummere