Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Morales)
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Richard M. Gummere
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~240,000 words · 1,135 passages
Cite this work
- APALucius Annaeus Seneca. (n.d.). Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Morales). SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/moral-letters-to-lucilius-epistulae-morales
- MLALucius Annaeus Seneca. "Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Morales)." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/moral-letters-to-lucilius-epistulae-morales.
- ChicagoLucius Annaeus Seneca. Moral Letters to Lucilius (Epistulae Morales). SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/moral-letters-to-lucilius-epistulae-morales.
What it is about
A hundred and twenty-four letters to Lucilius on how to live: time wasted, the fear of death, friendship, wealth, and what is and is not worth having from philosophy.
Context and history
He wrote them in his last years, withdrawn from Nero's court, which would soon force him to take his own life. They look like correspondence and probably are not entirely: Seneca composed them for publication, and the letter form is a device — it lets him begin with something small and concrete and arrive wherever he likes without writing a treatise. That is why they are still read when his formal treatises are harder going.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Among the personalities of the early Roman Empire there are few who offer to the readers of to-day such dramatic interest as does Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the author of the Epistles which are translated in this volume. Born in a province, educated at Rome, prominent at the bar, a distinguished exile, a trusted minister of State, and a doomed victim of a capricious emperor, Seneca is so linked with the age in which he lived that in reading his works we read those of a true representative of the most thrilling period of Roman history. Seneca was born in the year 4 B.C., a time of great opportunity, at Corduba, in Spain, son of the talented rhetorician, Annaeus Seneca. We gather that the family moved to Rome during the boyhood of Lucius, that he was educated for the bar, and that he was soon attracted by the Stoic philosophy, the stern nurse of heroes during the first century of the Empire. That his social connexions were distinguished we infer from the prominence and refinement of his brother Gallio,—the Gallio of the New Testament,—from the fact that he himself was noticed and almost condemned to death by the Emperor Caligula soon after he began to speak in public, and especially because his aunt, whom he visited in Egypt, was the wife of the governor of that country. Up to the year 41 he prospered. He makes mention of his children, of his mother who, like the mother of Goethe, seems to have imbued him with idealism and a certain amount of mysticism, and of many valued friends. But during that year, as a result of court intrigue, he was banished to the island of Corsica. The charge against him was a too great intimacy with Iulia Livilla, unfortunate sister of the late emperor, and the arch-foe of Messalina, whose husband, Claudius, had recalled the princess from exile. We may discount any crime on Seneca’s part because even the gossip-laden Suetonius says: “The charge was vague and the accused was given no opportunity to defend himself.”
Themes in this work
Quotes
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
“A great step towards independence is a good-humoured stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.”