Letters from a Stoic

About the Book

What is the importance of friendship? How do we deal with challenges in life? And how do we look death in the eye and be not afraid? Letters from a Stoic is a compilation of carefully chosen letters that Seneca penned to Lucilius, letters which are personal essays that answer the questions stated above and many, many more. Translated from Latin into English by Richard M. Gummere, these are letters on a wide variety of topics, such as on having quiet conversations, on suicide, on the dynamic of a master-slave relationship, on grief, on god, and even on welcoming death. So, here is a book to give you a peek into a rich and complicated mind, a book that holds letters both beautiful and pensive, written by one of the greatest philosophers ever.

About the Author
Considered to be the greatest Roman philosopher in history, Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born in Cordoba (Spain) in c.4 BC. The writings of Seneca were revived in the Renaissance. His dramas, all of which were tragedies, inspired the writers of that period and helped formulate the genre of the ‘revenge tragedy’. The chronology of Seneca’s works has been a matter of debate since very little information on his life is available. His earliest work is believed to be Consolation to Marcia. Around 43 or 44 AD he wrote Consolation to Helvia and Consolation to Polybius, when he had been exiled and was living at Corsica. Upon his return to Rome, he composed Letters from a Stoic, and Natural Questions was written in the last few years of his life. Among the ten plays that he wrote, all of which were widely read during the Renaissance, Thyestes is considered his best. Medea and Oedipus were very popular as well. Seneca was charged with an attempt to assassinate Emperor Nero. He was, most likely, innocent. But he had been marked a traitor and was consequently told to commit suicide. True to his writings that claimed that death was inevitable and need not be feared, Seneca did as he was commanded and committed suicide.