Seneca runs into an old schoolmate, Claranus, now elderly and frail, and finds him strong and handsome in spirit. That meeting launches one of the longest and boldest arguments in the letters: that all true goods are equal. Joy and courage under pain, a life of ease and a life of struggle, the healthy body and the weak one: the virtue in each is the same size. Along the way Seneca makes a striking claim about how we should love people, and ends with a soldier who “finished the war unarmed and maimed.”
From Seneca to Lucilius
I’ve just seen my old schoolmate Claranus for the first time in many years. You don’t need me to tell you he’s an old man now; but I assure you I found him vigorous in spirit and sturdy, even though he’s wrestling with a frail and feeble body. Nature was unfair when she gave so rare a soul such a poor house to live in; or perhaps she wanted to prove to us that a completely strong and happy mind can lie hidden under any exterior. Be that as it may, Claranus overcomes all these obstacles, and by looking down on his own body he has reached the point where he can look down on other things too.
Virtue Needs No Ornament
The poet who sang
Worth looks more pleasing in a lovely form
is mistaken, in my view. Virtue needs no ornament; it is its own great glory, and it makes holy the body it lives in. In any case, I’ve begun to see Claranus differently: he seems handsome to me, and as well-built in body as he is in mind.
A great man can come out of a hovel; so can a beautiful and great soul come out of an ugly and insignificant body. That’s why Nature seems to me to produce certain people of this kind, to prove that virtue can be born anywhere at all. If she could have produced souls on their own, naked, she would have done it; as it is, she does something even greater: she produces certain people who, though hampered by their bodies, still break through the obstruction. I think Claranus was made as an example, so that we could understand that the soul isn’t disfigured by the ugliness of the body; rather, the body is made beautiful by the beauty of the soul.
Now, although Claranus and I spent only a few days together, we had many conversations, and I’ll pour them out and pass them on to you right away.
How Can Three Kinds of Goods Be Equal?
On the first day we took up this problem: how can goods be equal if they come in three kinds? According to our school, some goods are primary, like joy, peace, and the well-being of one’s country. Others are secondary, shaped out of unhappy material, like enduring suffering and keeping self-control during a severe illness. Goods of the first kind we’ll pray for outright; those of the second kind we’ll pray for only if the need arises. There’s also a third kind, for example a modest way of walking, a calm and honest face, and a bearing that suits a wise person.
So how can these things be equal when we compare them, if you grant that we should pray for one and avoid the other? If we want to draw distinctions among them, we’d better go back to the First Good and consider its nature. It is the soul that looks steadily at truth, that knows what to seek and what to avoid, that sets its values not by opinion but by nature; the soul that reaches across the whole universe and turns its contemplative gaze on everything in it, attentive to thoughts and actions, equally great and forceful, superior to both hardship and flattery, yielding to neither extreme of fortune, rising above every blessing and trouble, completely beautiful, perfectly equipped with grace as well as strength, healthy and muscular, unruffled, undismayed, a soul no violence can shatter, one that the accidents of chance can neither lift up nor cast down. A soul like this is virtue itself.
One Virtue, Many Faces
There you have its appearance, if it ever came into view all at once and showed itself complete. But it has many aspects. They unfold as life varies and as actions differ; but virtue itself doesn’t become smaller or greater. The Supreme Good can’t shrink, and virtue can’t go backward; instead it is transformed, now into one quality and now into another, shaping itself to the part it has to play.
Whatever it touches, it makes like itself and dyes with its own color. It adorns our actions, our friendships, and sometimes whole households it has entered and set in order. Whatever it handles, it immediately makes lovable, remarkable, admirable.
So the power and greatness of virtue can’t rise any higher, because increase is denied to what is already supremely great. You’ll find nothing straighter than the straight, nothing truer than the truth, and nothing more self-controlled than what is self-controlled. Every virtue is without limit, because limits depend on measurements. Constancy can’t go further, any more than faithfulness, truthfulness, or loyalty can. What can be added to what is perfect? Nothing; otherwise it wasn’t perfect to begin with. Nothing can be added to virtue either, because if anything could be added, it must have been lacking something. Honor, too, allows no addition, because it is honorable precisely because of the qualities I’ve mentioned. What then? Don’t you think that propriety, justice, and lawfulness belong to the same type, and are held within fixed limits? The ability to grow is proof that a thing is still imperfect.
The Good Is Divine, and the Divine Is One
The good, in every case, is subject to these same laws. The interest of the state and the interest of the individual are yoked together; in fact, it’s as impossible to separate them as to separate what is praiseworthy from what is desirable. So the virtues are equal to one another; so are the works of virtue; and so are all the people fortunate enough to have these virtues.
But since the virtues of plants and animals are perishable, they are also frail, fleeting, and uncertain. They spring up and sink down again, and for that reason they aren’t all valued the same; but to human virtues only one rule applies. For right reason is single and of one kind. Nothing is more divine than the divine, or more heavenly than the heavenly.
Mortal things decay, fall, wear out, grow, are used up and refilled. So in their case, given how uncertain their lot is, there is inequality; but the nature of divine things is one. And reason is nothing other than a part of the divine spirit placed in a human body. If reason is divine, and no good is without reason, then every good is divine. And there’s no distinction between divine things, so there’s none between goods either. It follows that joy and a brave, unyielding endurance of torture are equal goods; in both there is the same greatness of soul, relaxed and cheerful in one case, combative and braced for action in the other.
The Attacker and the Defender
What? Don’t you think the courage of someone who bravely storms an enemy stronghold is equal to the courage of someone who endures a siege with the greatest patience? Scipio is great when he besieges Numantia and forces an enemy he couldn’t conquer into a hopeless end. Great too are the souls of the defenders, who knew that no blockade is complete while one road out remains, and who died in the arms of liberty. In the same way, the other virtues are equal when compared with one another: tranquility, simplicity, generosity, constancy, equanimity, endurance. For beneath them all lies a single virtue, the one that makes the soul straight and unswerving.
“What then?” you say. “Is there no difference between joy and unyielding endurance of pain?” None at all, as far as the virtues themselves go; a very great one in the circumstances where each is shown. In one case there is a natural relaxing and loosening of the soul; in the other, an unnatural pain. So these circumstances, between which we can draw a great distinction, belong to the category of indifferent things; but the virtue shown in each case is equal.
Virtue Isn’t Changed by Its Material
Virtue isn’t changed by the material it works with. If the material is hard and stubborn, that doesn’t make the virtue worse; if it’s pleasant and joyful, that doesn’t make it better. So virtue necessarily stays equal. In each case, what is done is done with equal uprightness, equal wisdom, and equal honor. So the states of goodness involved are equal, and no one can go beyond them by behaving better, whether the one person in his joy or the other in his suffering. And two goods, neither of which can be better, are equal.
For if things outside virtue could shrink or enlarge it, then the honorable would stop being the only good. Grant that, and honor has completely died. Why? I’ll tell you: because no act is honorable that’s done by someone unwilling, under compulsion. Every honorable act is voluntary. Mix it with reluctance, complaints, cowardice, or fear, and it loses its best feature: self-approval. What isn’t free can’t be honorable, because fear means slavery.
The honorable is completely free of anxiety and calm. If it ever objects, laments, or treats anything as an evil, it becomes disturbed and begins to flounder in great confusion. On one side the appearance of what’s right calls to it; on the other, the suspicion of evil drags it back. So when someone is about to do something honorable, he shouldn’t regard any obstacles as evils, even if he thinks them inconvenient; he should will to do the deed, and do it willingly. Every honorable act is done without orders or compulsion; it’s pure and has no admixture of evil.
Feasting and Enduring
I know what you may say to me at this point: “Are you trying to make us believe it makes no difference whether a person feels joy or lies on the rack and wears out his torturer?” I could answer: “Epicurus also says that the wise person, even while being burned in the bull of Phalaris, will cry out: ‘It’s pleasant, and it doesn’t concern me at all.'” Why should you be surprised if I hold that the person reclining at a banquet and the victim who bravely withstands torture possess equal goods, when Epicurus holds something harder to believe, that being roasted like that is pleasant?
But my actual reply is this: there is a great difference between joy and pain. If I’m asked to choose, I’ll seek the one and avoid the other. The one is according to nature, the other contrary to it. As long as they’re rated by that standard, there’s a great gulf between them; but when it comes to the virtue involved, the virtue is the same in each case, whether it comes through joy or through sorrow.
Annoyance, pain, and other inconveniences don’t matter, because virtue overcomes them. Just as the brightness of the sun dims all lesser lights, so virtue, by its own greatness, shatters and overwhelms all pains, annoyances, and wrongs; wherever its radiance reaches, every light that shines without virtue’s help goes out; and inconveniences, when they meet virtue, matter no more than a storm cloud does at sea.
The Good Person Goes Straight to the Noble Deed
You can see this proved by the fact that a good person will hurry without hesitation to any noble deed. Even if he is faced with the executioner, the torturer, and the stake, he’ll persist, thinking not about what he must suffer but about what he must do. He’ll entrust himself to an honorable deed as readily as he would to a good friend; he’ll consider it beneficial to himself, safe, and favorable. And he’ll hold the same view of an honorable deed, even when it brings sorrow and hardship, as he does of a good man who is poor or wasting away in exile.
Come now: compare a good man who is rolling in wealth with one who has nothing, except that in himself he has everything. They’ll be equally good, though their fortunes are unequal. The same standard, as I’ve said, applies to things as well as to people: virtue is just as praiseworthy in a body that is sick or enslaved as in one that is healthy and free.
So as for your own virtue, you won’t praise it any more because fortune has favored it with a sound body than if fortune had given you a body impaired in some limb; that would be like thinking less of a master because he’s dressed like a slave. All the things chance rules over are mere goods and chattels: money, the body, position. They are weak, shifting, quick to perish, and uncertain to hold. The works of virtue, on the other hand, are free and unconquered, no more worth seeking when fortune treats them kindly, and no less worth it when any hardship presses on them.
How We Should Love People
Now, what friendship is in the case of people, desirability is in the case of things. I don’t imagine you’d love a good man more if he were rich than if he were poor, or a strong and muscular person more than one who is slender and delicate. So neither will you seek or love a good thing that is cheerful and calm more than one full of difficulty and toil.
Or if you do, then of two equally good men you’ll care more for the one who is neat and well-groomed than for the one who is dirty and unkempt. Next you’d go so far as to care more for a good man who is sound in every limb and without blemish than for one who is weak or has poor eyesight; and little by little your fussiness would reach the point where, of two equally just and wise men, you’d choose the one with long curly hair! Whenever the virtue in each is equal, the inequality in their other qualities disappears from view. All those other things aren’t parts of a person, only accessories.
Would any parent judge his children so unfairly as to love a healthy son more than a sickly one, or a tall child more than one who is short or of average height? Wild animals don’t play favorites among their young; they lie down to nurse them all alike; birds share their food fairly. Ulysses hurries back to the rocks of his Ithaca as eagerly as Agamemnon speeds to the royal walls of Mycenae. No one loves his homeland because it is great; he loves it because it is his own.
What’s the point of all this? That you may know that virtue looks on all her works in the same light, as if they were her children, showing equal kindness to all, and still deeper kindness to those that meet with hardship; for even parents lean with more affection toward the children they feel sorry for. Virtue, too, doesn’t necessarily love more deeply those of her works she sees in trouble and under heavy burdens, but, like good parents, she gives them more of her care.
Weighing True Goods
Why is no good greater than any other good? Because nothing can be more fitting than what is fitting, and nothing more level than what is level. You can’t say that one thing is more equal to a given object than another thing is; and so nothing is more honorable than what is honorable.
So if all the virtues are equal by nature, the three kinds of goods are equal. Here’s what I mean: there is an equality between feeling joy with self-control and suffering pain with self-control. The joy in the one case doesn’t surpass the steadiness of soul in the other, the steadiness that swallows the groan when the victim is in the torturer’s grip. Goods of the first kind are desirable; those of the second deserve admiration; and in each case they are equal nonetheless, because whatever inconvenience comes with the second is outweighed by the good itself, which is so much greater.
Anyone who thinks them unequal is turning his gaze away from the virtues themselves and looking only at externals. True goods have the same weight and the same width. The false ones are full of empty space; so when they’re weighed in the balance, they’re found wanting, even though they look impressive and grand to the eye.
Reason Rules the Senses
Yes, my dear Lucilius, the good that true reason approves is solid and everlasting; it strengthens the spirit and lifts it, so that it will always stand on the heights. But the things that are praised without thought, the goods in the opinion of the crowd, only puff us up with empty joy. And the things feared as if they were evils only fill people’s minds with alarm, because the mind is disturbed by the appearance of danger, just as animals are.
So it’s without reason that both of these distract and sting the spirit: the one doesn’t deserve joy, the other doesn’t deserve fear. Reason alone is unchangeable, holding fast to its decisions. For reason isn’t a slave to the senses but a ruler over them. Reason is equal to reason, as one straight line is to another; so virtue too is equal to virtue. Virtue is nothing other than right reason. All virtues are forms of reason. Reasons are reasons if they are right reasons. If they are right, they are also equal.
As reason is, so are actions; so all actions are equal. Since they resemble reason, they also resemble one another. I hold that actions are equal to one another insofar as they are honorable and right. There will of course be great differences depending on the material, as it becomes broader or narrower, glorious or humble, wide in scope or limited. But what is best in all these cases is equal: they are all honorable.
In the same way, all good people, insofar as they are good, are equal. There are differences of age: one is older, another younger. Of body: one is good-looking, another plain. Of fortune: this one is rich, that one poor; this one is influential, powerful, and known to cities and nations, that one is unknown to most people and obscure. But all of them, in the respect in which they are good, are equal.
The senses don’t decide what is good and evil; they don’t know what is useful and what isn’t. They can’t give an opinion unless they’re brought face to face with a fact; they can neither see into the future nor remember the past; and they don’t know what follows from what. Yet it’s from that kind of knowledge that a sequence and succession of actions is woven, and a unity of life is created, a unity that will move along a straight course. So reason is the judge of good and evil. What is foreign and external she treats as dross, and what is neither good nor evil she judges to be merely an accessory, small and trivial. For all her good lives in the soul.
Goods According to Nature and Against It
But there are certain goods that reason treats as primary, which she aims at deliberately: for example, victory, good children, and the well-being of one’s country. Others she treats as secondary; these show themselves only in adversity, for example, calm in enduring severe illness or exile. Some goods are indifferent; these are no more according to nature than against it, for example a discreet walk and a dignified way of sitting in a chair. For sitting is no less according to nature than standing or walking.
The two higher kinds of goods are different. The primary ones are according to nature, like taking joy in the good behavior of one’s children and in the well-being of one’s country. The secondary ones are against nature, like courage in resisting torture, or in enduring thirst when illness makes the body feverish.
“What then?” you say. “Can anything against nature be a good?” Of course not; but the setting in which this good arises is sometimes against nature. Being wounded, wasting away over a fire, being afflicted with poor health: such things are against nature. But it is according to nature to keep an unconquerable soul amid such distresses. To put my thought briefly: the material a good deals with is sometimes against nature, but a good itself never is, since no good is without reason, and reason is according to nature.
“What, then,” you ask, “is reason?” It is imitating nature. “And what,” you say, “is the greatest good a human being can have?” To behave according to what nature wills.
“Surely Peace Unbroken Is Better”
“There’s no doubt,” says the objector, “that peace gives more happiness when it has never been attacked than when it has been won back at the cost of great slaughter. There’s no doubt, either,” he continues, “that health that has never been impaired gives more happiness than health restored to soundness by force, so to speak, and by endurance of suffering, after serious illnesses that threatened life itself. And in the same way there’s no doubt that joy is a greater good than a soul’s struggle to endure to the bitter end the torments of wounds or burning at the stake.”
Not at all. Things that come about by chance allow wide distinctions, since they’re valued according to how useful they are to the people who experience them; but with goods, the only thing to consider is whether they agree with nature, and that is equal in all goods. When we vote for someone’s motion in the Senate, no one can say, “A agrees with the motion more than B does.” Everyone alike votes for the same motion. I say the same about the virtues: they all agree with nature. And I say the same about goods: they all agree with nature.
Death Has No Degrees
One person dies young, another in old age, and another in infancy, having had nothing more than a glimpse of life. They have all been equally subject to death, even though death let one go further along life’s road, cut off the second in his prime, and broke off the third at the very beginning. Some find their release at the dinner table. Others pass from sleep into the sleep of death. Some are blotted out in the middle of their excesses. Now compare these with people who have died by the sword, or from snakebite, or crushed under falling buildings, or through long torment. Some of these departures may be thought better, some worse; but the act of dying is equal in all. The ways of ending life differ; the end is one and the same. Death has no degrees of more or less, because it has the same limit in every case: the finishing of life.
I assure you the same is true of goods. You’ll find one amid pure pleasure, another amid sorrow and bitterness. One manages the favors of fortune; the other overcomes her attacks. Each is equally a good, though one travels a smooth, easy road and the other a rough one. And the end of them all is the same: they are goods, they deserve praise, they go hand in hand with virtue and reason. Virtue makes everything it acknowledges equal to everything else.
Even Epicurus Agrees
You needn’t be surprised that this is one of our principles. In the works of Epicurus we find two goods mentioned, of which his Supreme Good, or blessedness, is made: a body free from pain and a soul free from disturbance. These goods, when they’re complete, don’t increase; how can what is complete increase? Suppose the body is free from pain: what can be added to this absence of pain? The soul is composed and calm: what can be added to this tranquility?
Just as fair weather, purified to the purest brightness, admits no greater degree of clearness, so when a person takes care of body and soul, weaving the fabric of his good from both, his condition is complete, and he has reached the fulfillment of his prayers if there is no turmoil in his soul and no pain in his body. Whatever pleasures come his way beyond these two things don’t increase his Supreme Good; they only season it, so to speak, and add spice. For the absolute good of human nature is satisfied with peace in the body and peace in the soul.
I can show you right now in the writings of Epicurus a ranked list of goods just like our school’s. There are some things, he says, that he’d prefer to have come his way, such as bodily rest free of all inconvenience, and the relaxation of the soul as it takes pleasure in contemplating its own goods. And there are other things that, though he’d prefer they didn’t happen, he still praises and approves, for example the kind of patient acceptance, in times of illness and serious suffering, that I mentioned a moment ago, and which Epicurus showed on the last and most blessed day of his life. He tells us that he had to endure terrible agony from a diseased bladder and an ulcerated stomach, so severe that the pain could grow no worse; “and yet,” he says, “that day was nonetheless happy.” And no one can spend a day like that in happiness unless he possesses the Supreme Good.
So even Epicurus mentions goods one would prefer not to experience, but which, because circumstances have decided so, must be welcomed and approved and placed on a level with the highest goods. We can’t say that the good that rounded off a happy life, the good Epicurus gave thanks for in his last words, isn’t equal to the greatest.
A Bolder Word
Allow me, excellent Lucilius, to say something bolder still: if any goods could be greater than others, I’d prefer the ones that seem harsh to the ones that are mild and inviting, and I’d call them greater. For it takes more to break your way through difficulties than to keep joy within bounds.
I know perfectly well that it takes the same use of reason to bear prosperity well and to bear misfortune bravely. The soldier who sleeps in front of the ramparts without fear when no enemy is attacking the camp may be just as brave as the one who, with the tendons of his legs cut, holds himself up on his knees and doesn’t drop his weapons; but it’s to the bloodstained soldier coming back from the front that people shout, “Well done, hero!” So I would give greater praise to the goods that have been tested, that show courage, and that have fought it out with fortune.
The Hand of Mucius
Should I hesitate to give greater praise to the maimed and shriveled hand of Mucius than to the uninjured hand of the bravest man in the world? There stood Mucius, scorning the enemy and scorning the fire, watching his own hand drip into the fire on his enemy’s altar, until Porsenna, envying the fame of the hero whose punishment he had been urging, ordered the fire removed against the victim’s will.
Why shouldn’t I count this good among the primary goods, and consider it greater than those other goods that come without danger and have never been tested by fortune, to the same degree that it is a rarer thing to defeat a foe with a hand lost than with a hand armed? “What then?” you say. “Will you wish this good for yourself?” Of course I will. For no one can achieve this unless he can also wish for it.
Should I wish instead to stretch out my limbs for my slaves to massage, or to have some attendant crack my finger joints? I can’t help thinking Mucius was all the more fortunate because he handled the flames as calmly as if he were holding out his hand to the masseur. He had wiped out all his earlier mistakes; he finished the war unarmed and maimed; and with that stump of a hand he conquered two kings.
Farewell.
Breaking It Down: A Modern Take on Letter 66
Letter 66 is long and argumentative, but its heart is simple and humane. It starts with an old, frail friend whose spirit makes him beautiful, and it builds to the Stoic claim that every true good is equal: courage in pain is no smaller than joy in good times, because the virtue behind each is the same. The most moving part is about how we value people. Seneca says that looks, wealth, health, and status are only accessories, and that a good person who is sick, poor, or disabled deserves exactly the same love and respect as anyone else. His world took slavery for granted, as his offhand mention of slaves massaging their masters shows, and we rightly reject that; but his point that a person’s worth isn’t measured by their body or fortune is one we can embrace fully. Epicurus plays a part in this letter too; for the whole rivalry between his school and Seneca’s, see our essay Epicureanism vs. Stoicism.
1. The body is only the house
Claranus proves that “a completely strong and happy mind can lie hidden under any exterior.” Age and frailty don’t diminish a person’s worth. Sometimes they reveal it.
2. Character makes people beautiful
“The body is made beautiful by the beauty of the soul.” We’ve all known people who became more beautiful to us the better we knew them.
3. Virtue needs no ornament
“Virtue needs no ornament; it is its own great glory, and it makes holy the body it lives in.” Goodness doesn’t need good lighting.
4. One virtue, many roles
Virtue takes on different forms as life demands: patience one day, courage the next, generosity after that. But “virtue itself doesn’t become smaller or greater.”
5. Growth means something is missing
“The ability to grow is proof that a thing is still imperfect.” That’s not a reason for discouragement; it’s a description of where most of us are, and of where the road leads.
6. Joy and endurance are equal goods
Celebrating well and suffering well show the same strength of character. One is relaxed, one is braced, but “virtue isn’t changed by the material it works with.”
7. Do good willingly
“Every honorable act is voluntary.” Help given grudgingly loses something. When you choose to do the right thing, choose it fully: “he should will to do the deed, and do it willingly.”
8. Pain is still pain
Seneca doesn’t pretend suffering is pleasant, unlike Epicurus in the bull of Phalaris. “There is a great difference between joy and pain.” He’d choose joy. His claim is only that the virtue shown in each is the same.
9. Love people for their goodness, not their circumstances
Would you love a good friend less because they became poor, sick, or plain? Seneca’s answer is no: “Whenever the virtue in each is equal, the inequality in their other qualities disappears from view.” It’s a quiet case for treating everyone with equal dignity.
10. Give extra care to those who struggle
Virtue, like a good parent, shows “still deeper kindness to those that meet with hardship.” Anyone who has cared for a sick child or a struggling friend knows this instinct. It’s one of the best things in us.
11. We love what is ours
“No one loves his homeland because it is great; he loves it because it is his own.” The same is true of family, friends, and community. Love isn’t a ranking.
12. Reason over the crowd’s opinion
“The good that true reason approves is solid and everlasting.” What the crowd praises only puffs us up with empty joy, and what it fears only frightens us. Thinking clearly frees us from both.
13. Good people are equal in their goodness
“All good people, insofar as they are good, are equal.” Age, looks, wealth, and fame differ. The goodness doesn’t. That’s a democratic thought from an unexpected source.
14. Hardship can be met in harmony with nature
Illness and pain are against nature, but “it is according to nature to keep an unconquerable soul amid such distresses.” As any clinician sees, patients facing serious illness often show the greatest courage we ever witness.
15. Tested goods earn greater praise
“It takes more to break your way through difficulties than to keep joy within bounds.” Mucius’s burned hand is Seneca’s emblem of courage that has fought it out with fortune and won.
Key Takeaways from Letter 66
- Look past the body. A strong spirit can live in a frail frame.
- Let character be your beauty. Goodness needs no ornament.
- Know that virtue doesn’t shrink. It just changes roles.
- Value courage in pain as much as joy in ease. Both are equal goods.
- Do good willingly. Reluctance spoils a good act.
- Don’t pretend pain is pleasant. Choose joy when you can; bear pain well when you can’t.
- Love people for who they are. Wealth, health, and looks are accessories.
- Care most for those who struggle. That’s what good parents do.
- Trust reason over the crowd. Its goods are solid and lasting.
- Treat good people as equals. Status doesn’t change their worth.
- Meet hardship with an unconquered soul. That is according to nature.
- Honor tested courage. Breaking through difficulty takes more than enjoying ease.
“Virtue needs no ornament; it is its own great glory, and it makes holy the body it lives in.”
— Seneca, Letter 66
Keep Seneca With You
If this letter spoke to you
Discourses and Selected Writings
Epictetus, the bluntest Stoic teacher, on putting philosophy into practice.
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Next up: Letter 67 — On Ill-Health and Endurance of Suffering
