Seneca certainly liked to write his letters! This is a collection of Seneca’s letters to his friend Lucilius, mostly about Stoicism and how to practice it. I enjoyed them, but I prefer the earlier letters to the ones that seemed to be written towards the end of his life. In the later writing you can see how Seneca would be adapted by Augustine. The older Seneca also seems to lose his nerve and commit himself to the immortality of the soul, rather than accepting the possibility that he might just die.
Bit of a mixed bag, this one. The first two-thirds of the book are strangely flat. The social satire, deft characterization, and engrossing plot line that all mark the earlier books are absent. The humor is shallow (and not that funny), the characters all seem to speak with the same voice, and the scenes are disconnected and require determined effort to get through.
An ancient vision of the good life, remarkable for its austerity, but also lacking in the warmth and compassion found in some of the philosophies and creeds more popular with us moderns.
Predicting that something will someday end requires no special knowledge as eventually everything ends. Monetary systems and currencies have failed before and they will continue to do so, the present ones not excepted. But predicting that something is about to end requires a bit more.
How do you reconcile yourself with death and the decrees of fate?
Take some advice from this gentle soul. Contemplate the permanence of change and cast away opinion. Yours, that is. And if, like me, you occasionally find yourself thinking that it might be just a bit easier to reconcile oneself with one’s fate if one happens to be the Emperor of Rome well, we’ve just got some philosophical work to do, don’t we?
Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
