Seneca the Younger, also known as Lucius Annaeus Seneca, was born in 4 BC in Cordoba, Spain. Having the good fortune of being born into a wealthy and well-connected family, Seneca was educated in rhetoric and philosophy, and raised in the bustling city of Ancient Rome.
It was here in Rome that Seneca began his career as a lawyer and orator, and later turned his hand to the writing of philosophy, specifically Stoic philosophy.
Stoicism is a branch of ancient Greek philosophy that emphasizes the need for self control and the development of resilience of character in the face of hardship and adversity.
The Stoics taught that the world and everything in it are governed by reason, and that it is the responsibility of each of its citizens to learn the workings of the world around them and live in accordance and harmony with it.
For the Stoics, living in line with this universal reason is a fundamental step on the path to living a good life. Similarly, living a life of virtue was also a necessary component of this good life, where virtue meant the development of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.
Seneca’s personal philosophy was a reflection of his personal life, he was a moralist and a strong advocate for discipline and self control. He wrote a number of Stoic works, including essays, tragedies, and a collection of 124 letters written to a close friend to offer wisdom and practical advice on how to live a good and moral life.
Seneca died in 65 AD. Emperor Nero, to whom Seneca was an adviser, had become increasingly paranoid and volatile, and believed that Seneca was part of a plot to overthrow him. This, in turn, led to Seneca’s execution, in which he was given the choice to be executed by another person, or to take his own life. Seneca chose to take his own life.
Despite the tragic end to his life and the proximity he had to emperor Nero, which some hold against him, the work Seneca did in Stoic philosophy has survived to this day and has had a profound impact on many people who have read it. His teachings on virtue, philosophy, temperance, and morality are particularly noteworthy and continue to be read and valued to this day.
10 Stoic Rules from Seneca:
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
“All cruelty springs from weakness.”
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality”
“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast – a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
“Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool ”
“The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
