Letters from a Stoic

Letters from a Stoic is presumably a collection of 124 letters Seneca sent to his friend Lucilius – then the procurator of Sicily (essentially an official in Ancient Rome) — advising him on how to become a better Stoic. “Presumably” because many scholars have hypothesized that Seneca’s letters were “essays in disguise” – there is no evidence of Lucilius writing back to Seneca, and the letters’ style suggests that they were meant to be published rather than read by a friend. The first recorded full translation of these letters to English was by Thomas Lodge in 1614, and they have been translated many times since. Letters from a Stoic contains a selection of these letters and key lessons about Stoicism, such as making the most with what we have in the time we have.