Ancient Wisdom

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 BC) was a Roman poet better known as just Horace. Here's something from Book II of his Epistles:

"Who then is free? The wise man, who is
lord over himself, whom neither poverty,
or death, nor bonds affright, who bravely
defies his passions, and scorns ambition,
who in himself is a whole, smoothed and
rounded, so that nothing outside can rest
on the polished surface, and against whom
Fortune in her onset is ever defeated."