Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~150,000 words · 696 passages
Cite this work
- APALucius Annaeus Seneca. (n.d.). Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/minor-dialogues-together-with-the-dialogue-on-clemency
- MLALucius Annaeus Seneca. Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/minor-dialogues-together-with-the-dialogue-on-clemency.
- ChicagoLucius Annaeus Seneca. Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/minor-dialogues-together-with-the-dialogue-on-clemency.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The collection of Seneca's short treatises — on anger, on the shortness of life, on tranquillity, on providence, on the wise man, on the happy life, on leisure — together with the 'De clementia', addressed to Nero.
Context and history
'Dialogues' is the traditional name, but they are not dialogues: they are essays with an implied interlocutor, and they are the form in which Roman Stoicism becomes practical. 'On Anger' is a treatise of moral psychology and is still read as one; 'On the Shortness of Life' argues that we do not lack time but waste it. The 'De clementia' is the uncomfortable one and the most revealing: written around AD 55, when Seneca was tutor and adviser to the young emperor, it explains to power why it is in power's interest to be merciful. It is a document of how a philosopher tries to influence a prince from within, and what happened afterwards — Nero eventually ordered his death — is part of what makes it worth reading.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
what you said when you were consoling others: then I should have seen whether you could have consoled yourself, whether you could have forbidden yourself to grieve. Do not, I beg you, dread those things which the immortal gods apply to our minds like spurs: misfortune is virtue’s opportunity. Those men may justly be called unhappy who are stupified with excess of enjoyment, whom sluggish contentment keeps as it were becalmed in a quiet sea: whatever befalls them will come strange to them. Misfortunes press hardest on those who are unacquainted with them: the yoke feels heavy to the tender neck. The recruit turns pale at the thought of a wound: the veteran, who knows that he has often won the victory after losing blood, looks boldly at his own flowing gore. In like manner God hardens, reviews, and exercises those whom He tests and loves: those whom He seems to indulge and spare, He is keeping out of condition to meet their coming misfortunes: for you are mistaken if you suppose that any one is exempt from misfortune: he who has long prospered will have his share some day; those who seem to have been spared them have only had them put off. Why does God afflict the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles? Because in the army the most hazardous services are assigned to the bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march, or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places. No one of these {13} men says as he begins his march, “The general has dealt hardly with me,” but “He has judged well of me.” Let those who are bidden to suffer what makes the weak and cowardly weep, say likewise, “God has thought us worthy subjects on whom to try how much suffering human nature can endure.…