Letter 27, “On the Good Which Abides,” opens with disarming honesty. When Lucilius teases him — who are you to give advice, have you cured your own faults? — Seneca doesn’t pretend to be a finished sage. “I’m not so shameless as to try to cure others while I’m sick myself,” he says. “We’re lying […]
Letter 26: On Old Age and Death
Letter 26, “On Old Age and Death,” is a serene and moving companion to Letter 12. Seneca, now quite old, reflects that he may have moved even past old age — and yet finds cause for gratitude rather than complaint. His body shows its years, but his mind, he says, is strong and even flourishing, […]
Letter 25: On Reformation
Letter 25, “On Reformation,” finds Seneca discussing two mutual friends who both need to change — one young and correctable, one a hardened forty-year-old whom others have written off as beyond help. Seneca refuses to give up on him: “I’d rather lack success than lack faith.” This becomes the spark for a warm meditation on […]
Letter 24: On Despising Death
Letter 24, “On Despising Death,” is one of the most powerful and searching letters in the entire collection. Lucilius is anxious about a threatened lawsuit, and Seneca uses that ordinary worry as a doorway into the greatest fear of all — the fear of death itself. His method is bracing: instead of soothing Lucilius with […]
Letter 23: On the True Joy Which Comes from Philosophy
Letter 23, “On the True Joy Which Comes from Philosophy,” is one of Seneca’s most beautiful letters, and its subject is one we rarely think to study: how to actually feel joy. Not the thin, surface cheer that merely “smooths the brow,” but the deep, durable gladness that “comes from your own store.” Seneca refuses […]