Moral Letters to Lucilius

Introduction

These 124 letters, written in Seneca's last years after he had withdrawn from court, to his younger friend Lucilius, are his best-loved work. Each begins from some small event of daily life, a journey, an illness, a noisy neighbour, the face of an old slave, and leads on to thoughts on time, friendship, wealth, fear, old age and death. Seneca writes not as a master but as a fellow traveller, speaking frankly of his own weaknesses and progress. They are the most companionable introduction to Stoic philosophy, and the essays of Montaigne and Bacon begin from them.