Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Latin for "Moral Letters to Lucilius"), also known as the Moral Epistles and Letters from a Stoic, is a letter collection of 124 letters that Seneca the Younger wrote at the end of his life, during his retirement, after he had worked for the Emperor Nero for more than ten years.
De Beneficiis (English: On Benefits) is a first-century work by Seneca the Younger.It forms part of a series of moral essays (or "Dialogues") composed by Seneca. De Beneficiis concerns the award and reception of gifts and favours within society, and examines the complex nature and role of gratitude within the context of Stoic ethics.
The information about Lucilius comes from Seneca's writings, especially his Moral Letters, which are addressed to Lucilius. Seneca also dedicated his Naturales Quaestiones and his essay De Providentia to Lucilius. Lucilius seems to have been a native of Campania, and Seneca refers repeatedly to "your beloved Pompeii."
The work is addressed to a man called Paulinus—probably Pompeius Paulinus, a knight of Arelate—and is usually dated to around 49 AD. It is clear from chapters 18 and 19 of De Brevitate Vitae that Paulinus was praefectus annonae, the official who superintended the grain supply of Rome, and was, therefore, a man of importance.
Naturales quaestiones (Natural Questions) is a Latin work of natural philosophy written by Seneca around AD 65. It is not a systematic encyclopedia like the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, though with Pliny's work it represents one of the few Roman works dedicated to investigating the natural world.
The work cannot be precisely dated, but since it is addressed to Lucilius, who is the addressee of some of Seneca's final works including his Letters, and since the essay has similarities to letters 106, 108, and 109 then the work is usually considered a late one dating to around 64 AD.
Seneca's De Clementia is an instructional contrast between the good ruler and the tyrant, and an evaluation of the relationship between ruler and subject. A survey of history is made in the first volume to select different rulers to point out as examples, including Dionysius of Syracuse and Sulla being used as cautionary tales and young Augustus as the exemplar.
As a Roman letter expressing ambivalence about slavery from the 1st century, it has been compared to the early Christian writing in Paul's Epistle to Philemon. [5] And Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th century condemns slavery outright, in rhetorical terms that may draw from Seneca, but that go beyond him.