Moral Essays, Volume III: De Beneficiis

by John W. Basore, Seneca

Overview

Topics in Stoicism.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, born at Corduba (Cordova) ca. 4 BC, of a prominent and wealthy family, spent an ailing childhood and youth at Rome in an aunt’s care. He became famous in rhetoric, philosophy, money-making, and imperial service. After some disgrace during Claudius’ reign he became tutor and then, in AD 54, advising minister to Nero, some of whose worst misdeeds he did not prevent. Involved (innocently?) in a conspiracy, he killed himself by order in 65. Wealthy, he preached indifference to wealth; evader of pain and death, he preached scorn of both; and there were other contrasts between practice and principle.

We have Seneca’s philosophical or moral essays (ten of them traditionally called Dialogues)—on providence, steadfastness, the happy life, anger, leisure, tranquility, the brevity of life, gift-giving, forgiveness—and treatises on natural phenomena. Also extant are 124 epistles, in which he writes in a relaxed style about moral and ethical questions, relating them to personal experiences; a skit on the official deification of Claudius, Apocolocyntosis (in LCL 15); and nine rhetorical tragedies on ancient Greek themes. Many epistles and all his speeches are lost.

His moral essays are collected in Volumes I–III of the Loeb Classical Library’s ten-volume edition of Seneca.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674993433
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1935
Series:	Loeb Classical Library , #310
Edition description:	5th printing/1st pub.1935
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	4.25(w) x 6.38(h) x 1.15(d)
Language:	Latin

About the Author

John William Basore (b. 1870) was Professor of Classics at Princeton University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

De Beneficiis:

Book I

Book II

Book III

Book IV

Book V

Book VI

Book VII

Index Of Names