Seneca

c. 4 BCE - 65 CE · Roman (Cordoba, Hispania Baetica) · Stoicism, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, Latin Letters

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Born in Cordoba and raised in Rome, Seneca crossed the distance between philosophy and power without ever reconciling them. He served as Nero's chief minister, accumulated one of the largest fortunes in the empire, and wrote antiquity's most urgent prose about poverty, death, and wasted time. In 65 CE Nero commanded him to die; he opened his veins and composed himself like a man who had rehearsed the scene.

Topics Seneca addresses

• the wise man (sapiens)
• the proficiens (the moral progressor)
• virtue as the only good
• the passions (adfectus) and their extirpation
• preferred and dispreferred indifferents
• the four cardinal virtues
• philosophy as therapy
• preparation for death (meditatio mortis)
• tranquility of mind (tranquillitas animi)
• anger and its therapy
• the daily examination of conscience
• the shortness of life
• withdrawal (otium) and engagement (negotium)
• clemency (clementia) and the prince
• benefits and gratitude (beneficia)
• constancy of the wise man
• providence and divine order
• the happy life (vita beata)
• consolation and grief
• friendship and self-sufficiency
• the crowd and solitude
• time and its proper use
• reading and philosophical study
• writing as moral practice

Converse with Seneca on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in Seneca's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.