An Old Acquaintance

I'm getting reacquainted with an old acquaintance -Lucius Annaeus Seneca (more commonly known Seneca, 4 B.C. - 65 A.D.). His bio is here. Among other things he wrote (plays), he wrote a series of letters (124 in all) which were seemingly written to an imaginary friend (Lucilius), but which seem to have never been sent to anyone but rather serve as a series of essays on issues related to Stoicism and commentary on life. A series of interesting quotes from what I read today:



"Nothing can be well regulated if it is done at a breakneck speed" - Letter LX

"No-one should feel any pride in anything that is not his own" - Letter XLI

"And how can people be called back to spiritual well-being when no-one is trying to hold them back and the crowd is urging them on?" - Letter XLI

"And there's no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed." - Letter XLVII



And his writing is just full of them. The complaint by his contemporaries was that he failed to live up to the ideals of Stoicism; but the writings alone are food for thought. The joy of reading such a thing (of which, I suppose, this blog is a dim echo) can hardly be imagined.



Go ahead. Pick up a Seneca, a Tacitus, a Polybius, a Plutarch, a Xenophon or Thucydides, and find out both how little mankind has changed and how most "new" ideas have been around a long time.