Why are so many people anxious, whatever they have? Seneca’s answer is that we’ve handed our happiness to Fortune. In this long, rich letter he pictures Fortune tossing prizes into a scrambling crowd, and advises the sensible person to slip out of the theater before the fighting starts. The safer path is to treat outside […]
Letter 73: On philosophers and kings
Are philosophers troublemakers who scorn those in power? Seneca, writing under the emperor Nero, argues the opposite: the person who uses peace well owes the most gratitude for it. But this letter is really about gratitude for what we share with everyone, the sun, the seasons, peace and liberty, and about how ambition never looks […]
Letter 72: On business as the enemy of philosophy
Seneca is too busy to answer Lucilius’s question properly, and he turns that very busyness into the lesson. Philosophy, he says, can’t wait until you have free time, because free time never comes: we plant our own errands, and each one sprouts more. Along the way he gives us a famous image of the greedy […]
Letter 71: On the supreme good
Lucilius keeps sending Seneca specific questions, but advice mailed across the sea arrives too late to fit the moment. So Seneca gives him something better than answers: a method. Measure every choice against the purpose of your whole life, and you’ll know what to do. From there the letter climbs to one of the boldest […]
Letter 70: On the proper time to slip the cable
Seneca passes through Pompeii, Lucilius’s beloved hometown, and is suddenly face to face with his own youth. That sets off one of his most famous images: life as a voyage, with boyhood, youth and middle age slipping below the horizon one after another, and death not as a reef to fear but as the harbor […]