After a dinner with friends, someone reads aloud from the philosopher Quintus Sextius, and Seneca comes away on fire. Some philosophers leave you cold; Sextius makes you want to take on the world. That leads Seneca to a beautiful idea of what philosophy is: an inheritance we’re meant to grow, not just guard. The ancients […]
Letter 63: On Grief for Lost Friends
Lucilius has lost his friend Flaccus, and Seneca writes to console him. His advice is firmer than most of us would offer a grieving friend today: weep, but don’t wail; don’t put your sorrow on display; turn memory into something sweet. But this is also one of Seneca’s most human letters. He admits that he […]
Letter 62: On Good Company
“I’m too busy to read.” Seneca has heard it all before, and he isn’t buying it. In this short letter he explains how he keeps his time his own: he lends himself to his duties instead of surrendering to them, and wherever he goes, he keeps the best company there is, the great minds of […]
Letter 61 On Meeting Death Cheerfully
Seneca is old now, and he writes this short letter as if death might call him away before he finishes the sentence. It isn’t gloomy. It’s the calm of a man who has stopped wanting what he wanted as a boy, who tries to live each day as if it were a complete life, and […]
Letter 60 On Harmful Prayers
Be careful what the people who love you wish for you. In this short, fiery letter, Seneca “files a complaint” against the prayers of our families, who wish us wealth, status, and plenty, and against our own endless appetite for more. Nature, he reminds us, is satisfied with very little. And he ends with a […]