Letters From a Stoic

“Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius—set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words,—that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness.”

For one of the major philosophical figures of the Roman Empire, philosophy was—above all else—the giving of good advice. What better way, then, could he reason to be the best vehicle for his thought, if not the simple and intimate letter? Seneca’s Letters of a Stoic is a work of masterfully crafted epistolary philosophy that consists of one hundred and twenty-four letters written towards the end of his life to his friend, Lucilius Junior.