Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living

NOTES

PREFACE

1.​Seneca, Letters 104.26.

2.​Seneca, Letters 5.4.

3.​Massimo Pigliucci, How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (New York: Basic Books, 2017), 230.

INTRODUCTION: A LIFE TRULY WORTH LIVING

1.​See John Sellars, The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2009), chapter 2, “The Socratic Origins of the Art of Living.”

2.​For a sense of what this stoa, which housed paintings, looked like, see the drawing at https://www.stoicinsights.com/about-stoicism/.

3.​Epicurus, cited and translated by Martha Nussbaum in The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 13.

4.​Seneca, Letters 8.2. On ancient philosophy being compared to a medical art and “the art of living,” see John Sellars, The Art of Living, chapters 2 and 3.

5.​Seneca, Letters 76.16.

6.​I am thankful to Massimo Pigliucci for pointing out this more nuanced meaning of the term eudaimonia that applies specifically to the Stoics.

7.​While Plato and Aristotle set the stage by analyzing civic responsibilities and how to improve the life of the city-state, the Stoics went further by emphasizing the brotherhood of all humanity on a global scale. Seneca wrote that, of all the philosophical schools, the Stoics had the greatest love for humanity as a whole. In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, too, constantly reminded himself that his every action should attempt to improve the common good of society.

8.​Emily Wilson, The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Another biography of Seneca is James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero (New York: Knopf, 2014). The almost impossible task of writing an accurate biography of Seneca stems from the fact that the Roman historians, by modern standards, are often extremely unreliable. Unfortunately, there are no firsthand accounts of Seneca’s life written by people who knew him. The account of Seneca written by Dio Cassius (c. 155–c. 235) in his Roman Histories, which appears to be the most unreliable, was written well over a century after Seneca’s death. The account of Tacitus (c. 56–c. 120) in his Annals appears to be far more solid.

9.​Tacitus, Annals 15.62.

10.​This line from Socrates was a favorite among the Roman Stoics. Epictetus quotes it at the end of his “manual” or “handbook”; see Epictetus, Handbook 53.4. Another Roman senator, Thrasea Paetus, who was also a Stoic and put to death by Nero, is reported to have said, “Nero can kill me, but he cannot harm me.” See Emily Wilson, The Greatest Empire, 154.

11.​Seneca, Letters 123.6.

12.​Seneca, Letters 122.14.

13.​Seneca, Letters 115.9.

14.​As Brad Inwood has noted, Seneca was “an original and innovative exponent” of Stoic philosophy, “one whose distinctive contribution seems to be a sensitivity to the value of first-hand experience in ethics and moral psychology.” Inwood, Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 3.

CHAPTER 1: THE LOST ART OF FRIENDSHIP

1.​Seneca, Letters 48.2–3. Seneca also wrote a work On Friendship, of which only short fragments survive. On the topic of friendship in Seneca, with plentiful quotations, see Anna Lydia Motto and John R. Clark, “Seneca on Friendship,” Atena e Roma 38 (1993): 91–96.

2.​Seneca, Letters 106.12.

3.​According to the Stoic Aristo, quoted by Seneca in Letters 94.16, unless someone has a medical disease, all “madness” or mental suffering originates from holding false opinions. Seneca agreed with this view. In On the Tranquility of Mind, Seneca is approached by his friend Serenus, as though Seneca is a doctor. Serenus, the patient, explains his mental suffering, and Seneca responds as a philosophical therapist to cure the condition. For a letter that strongly resembles a cognitive therapy session between Lucilius and Seneca, see Letters 24. Lucilius is anxious because he has been named the target of a lawsuit; Seneca aims to help Lucilius overcome his anxiety by using a step-by-step therapeutic approach.

4.​Seneca, Letters 40.1.

5.​Seneca, Letters 9.12. According to Cicero, the Stoics believed that friendship should be pursued for its intrinsic value, not for what you could get out of a friendship in a utilitarian way (Cicero, On Ends 3.70).

6.​See John M. Cooper, “Aristotle on the Forms of Friendship,” The Review of Metaphysics 30, no. 4 (1977): 648.

7.​See Nancy Sherman, “Aristotle on Friendship and the Shared Life,” Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 47, no. 4 (1987): 610.

8.​Seneca, Letters 6.1.

9.​Seneca, Letters 6.1.

10.​A summary of Plato, Symposium 203E–204A.

11.​Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 6.54.

12.​For the evidence, see John Sellars, The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2009), 59–64.

13.​For more on the extreme dichotomy between the sage and non-sages, see John Sellars, The Art of Living, 59–64; Sellars, Stoicism (London: Routledge, 2014), 36–41; and Tad Brennan, The Stoic Life: Emotion, Duties, and Fate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chapter 4. The modern philosopher Lawrence C. Becker also rejected the early Stoic idea that virtue was an all-or-nothing matter, along with the strict dividing line between sages and nonsages, as being “untenable.” See Becker, A Modern Stoicism, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 132–33 and following.

14.​Introduction to Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, translated by Margaret Graver and A. A. Long (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), xx.

15.​Evidence suggests that Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, also identified Socrates as being a sage. See René Brouwer, The Stoic Sage: The Early Stoics on Wisdom, Sagehood and Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 109, 164.

16.​Emily Wilson, The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 146.

17.​Seneca, Letters 57.3.

18.​Seneca, Letters 71.36.

19.​On what Marcus Aurelius was trying to accomplish in the Meditations, see John Sellars, Marcus Aurelius (London: Routledge, 2021), 20–36. As William O. Stephens and others have pointed out, a better title for the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius might be “Memoranda,” since it consists of notes to himself about Stoic principles to remember on a daily basis. Stephens, Marcus Aurelius (New York: Continuum, 2012), 2.

20.​Seneca, On Anger 3.36.3–4.

CHAPTER 2: VALUE YOUR TIME: DON’T POSTPONE LIVING

1.​Seneca, Letters 1.1.

2.​Seneca, Letters 1.2.

3.​Seneca, Natural Questions, preface 1.2.

4.​Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 2.1 and 1.3.

5.​Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 2.1–2.2.

6.​Seneca, Letters 3.5.

7.​Seneca, Letters 106.1 and 22.8.

8.​Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 12.2–3.

9.​Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 3.5.

10.​Zeno, cited by Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.121–22.

11.​On the Stoic metaphors of slavery and freedom, see the introduction by A. A. Long to Epictetus, How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). For the use of these metaphors in Seneca, see Catharine Edwards, “Free Yourself! Slavery, Freedom, and the Self in Seneca’s Letters,” in Seneca and the Self, eds. S. Bartsch and D. Wray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 139–59.

12.​Seneca, Letters 22.11.

13.​Epictetus, Discourses 2.1.22.

14.​Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.113.

15.​Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 9.1.

16.​Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 14.1.

17.​Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 14.1–2. For more on Seneca’s idea of a timeless community of wise people, see the conclusion to Catharine Edwards, “Absent Presence in Seneca’s Epistles: Philosophy and Friendship,” in The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, eds. Shadi Bartsch and Allesandro Schiessaro (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 41–53.

18.​Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 15.2.

19.​Seneca, Letters 62.2. In his lost work On Marriage, of which only fragments survive, Seneca said that a wise person will never feel lonely because he or she will have so many friends from the past. See Liz Gloyn, The Ethics of the Family in Seneca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 222.

20.​Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 15.5–16.1.

CHAPTER 3: HOW TO OVERCOME WORRY AND ANXIETY

1.​Seneca, Letters 5.8.

2.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.7.

3.​Seneca, Letters 101.8.

4.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.26. On Marcus Aurelius reading Seneca, see John Sellars, Marcus Aurelius (London: Routledge, 2021), 12.

5.​Paraphrase of Seneca, Letters 89.1.

6.​Seneca, Letters 13.13.

7.​Seneca, Letters 78.13.

8.​Seneca, Letters 44.7.

9.​Seneca, Letters 13.4.

10.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.8.

11.​Seneca, Letters 13.8–9.

12.​Epictetus, Handbook 5.

13.​Cited in Donald Robertson, “The Stoic Influence on Modern Psychotherapy,” in The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, ed. John Sellars (London: Routledge, 2017), 375. Robertson is a cognitive behavioral therapist who has studied Stoicism in depth. His first work (2010) on the relationships between Stoicism and CBT is entitled The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT): Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2020). His more recent book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019), explores the parallels between the thinking of Marcus Aurelius and cognitive behavioral therapy, in addition to other topics.

14.​Seneca, Letters 5.7.

15.​Seneca, Letters 5.8.

16.​Epictetus, Handbook 5.

17.​Seneca, Letters 92.18.

18.​Seneca, Letters 27.3.

CHAPTER 4: THE PROBLEM WITH ANGER

1.​Seneca, On Anger 1.1.2.

2.​The web pages of the American Psychological Association that address anger management overlap with about 95 percent of Seneca’s advice in his book On Anger. See “Controlling Anger Before It Controls You” (https://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control) and “Strategies for Controlling Your Anger: Keeping Anger in Check” (https://www.apa.org/topics/strategies-controlling-anger).

3.​Seneca, On Anger 1.1.3–4.

4.​Seneca, On Anger 2.36.6.

5.​Seneca, On Anger 3.1.4.

6.​Seneca, On Anger 3.1.5.

7.​Seneca, On Anger 1.2.1.

8.​Seneca, On Anger 2.36.5–6.

9.​Seneca, On Anger 1.5.3.

10.​Seneca, On Anger 1.19.1.

11.​Seneca, Letters 71.27.

12.​Epictetus, Discourses 3.2.4.

13.​Seneca, On Mercy 2.5.3.

14.​Seneca, On Anger 1.10.2. My interpretation of the four primary kinds of emotions recognized by the Stoics follows that of John Sellars, “Stoicism and Emotions,” in Stoicism Today: Selected Writings, Volume 2, ed. Patrick Ussher (CreateSpace, 2016), 43–48.

15.​Chrysippus, one of the most important and influential of the early Greek Stoics, in his lost work On Passions or On Affections, had defined the passions as originating from incorrect judgments and as resembling forms of mental illness. He also described a therapy of the passions. Teun Tieleman, Chrysippus’ On Affections: Reconstruction and Interpretation (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 132 and chapter 4.

16.​Margaret R. Graver, “Action and Emotion,” in The Brill Companion to Seneca: Philosopher and Dramatist, eds. Gregor Damschen and Andreas Heil (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2014), 272.

17.​For the most important study of Stoic psychology during the entire tradition, see Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

18.​Seneca outlines the three-step cognitive theory of emotion in On Anger 2.4.1–2. In terms of the “three movements,” I follow the interpretation of Robert A. Kaster, introduction to Seneca, On Anger, in Seneca, Anger, Mercy, and Revenge (University of Chicago Press, 2010), 6–8, and Brad Inwood, Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 61–63.

19.​Seneca, On Anger 2.4.2.

20.​Seneca, On Anger 2.29.1.

21.​Seneca, On Anger 2.22.2.

22.​Epictetus, Discourses 1.20.7.

23.​Rollo May, The Courage to Create (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 100.

24.​Seneca, On Anger 2.1.4.

25.​Seneca, On Anger 1.8.1–2.

26.​Seneca, Letters 116.3.

27.​American Psychological Association, “Controlling Anger Before It Controls You,” section on “Strategies to Keep Anger at Bay.” https://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control.

28.​Epictetus, Handbook 30.

29.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.25.

30.​Seneca, On Anger 2.10.7.

CHAPTER 5: WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE: YOU CAN’T ESCAPE YOURSELF

1.​Seneca, Letters 28.1.

2.​At the beginning of Letter 104, Seneca describes how he traveled to his villa at Nomentum, eighteen miles outside of Rome, because he was coming down with a fever. But once he got outside smoke-filled Rome and arrived at the villa, he felt just fine.

3.​Seneca, Letters 17.12.

4.​Seneca, Letters 104.8.

5.​Seneca, Letters 104.7.

6.​Seneca, Letters 2.1.

7.​Seneca, Letters 2.2.

8.​Seneca, Letters 89.23.

9.​Seneca, Letters 16.9.

10.​Seneca, Letters 69.1.

11.​Seneca, Letters 35.4.

12.​You can find a translation of On Leisure in Seneca, Hardship and Happiness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 219–32.

13.​Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 2.14.

14.​M. Andrew Holowchak, The Stoics (New York: Continuum, 2008), 185.

15.​Seneca, Letters 28.4.

16.​Seneca, Letters 55.8.

17.​Seneca, Letters 23.7–8.

18.​Seneca, Letters 71.2–3.

19.​Seneca, Letters 71.2.

CHAPTER 6: HOW TO TAME ADVERSITY

1.​Seneca, Letters 91.1.

2.​Seneca, Letters 91.6.

3.​Jack Malvern, “Stuck at Home, Stoic Britons Get Philosophical,” The Times, April 23, 2020. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stuck-at-home-stoic-britons-get-philosophical-b0h7jdnrb.

4.​The term dichotomy of control was coined by the modern Stoic philosopher William B. Irvine in his book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 86–89. The eminent scholar of ancient philosophy, A. A. Long, believes that this idea, as an ethical premise, ultimately “goes back to Socrates in Plato’s Apology, where he says that no harm can come to the good man in life or death, which implies that virtue is ‘up to us,’ and happiness is impervious to fortune” (personal communication).

5.​Seneca, Letters 76.16.

6.​Seneca, Letters 66.23.

7.​Seneca, Letters 74.1. Also see Letters 74.5–6.

8.​Seneca, Letters 98.2.

9.​Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.112.

10.​Seneca, Letters 44.2.

11.​Seneca, Letters 91.3–4.

12.​Seneca, Letters 24.15.

13.​Seneca, Letters 78.28.

14.​Seneca, On the Happy Life 15.5.

15.​The early Greek Stoic Chrysippus wrote, “A blow that has not previously been foreseen strikes us harder” (quoted in Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.52). For a study of the premeditation of adversity in Stoicism and in Seneca, see Mireille Armisen-Marchetti, “Imagination and Meditation in Seneca: The Example of the Praemeditatio,” in Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Seneca, edited by John G. Fitch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 102–13.

16.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1.

17.​Seneca, Letters 76.35.

18.​Seneca, Natural Questions 4B.13.11.

19.​Seneca, On Providence 5.9.

20.​Seneca, On Providence 3.3.

21.​Seneca, Letters 67.14.

22.​Seneca, On Providence 2.6.

23.​Epictetus, Discourses 1.24.1–2.

24.​Seneca, On Providence 4.6.

25.​Seneca, On Providence 2.4.

26.​Seneca, Letters 85.41.

27.​Epictetus, Handbook 18.

28.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.50.

29.​Seneca, Letters 45.9.

30.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.20 (Gregory Hayes translation).

CHAPTER 7: WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER COMPLAIN

1.​Seneca, On Anger 3.6.3.

2.​Cited by Peter Bregman, “The Next Time You Want to Complain at Work, Do This Instead,” Harvard Business Review (May 17, 2018). https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-next-time-you-want-to-complain-at-work-do-this-instead.

3.​Bregman, “The Next Time You Want to Complain at Work, Do This Instead.”

4.​Will Bowen, “A Complaint Free World.” https://www.willbowen.com/complaintfree/.

5.​Epictetus, Discourses 2.18.13.

6.​Guy Winch, “How to Deal with Chronic Complainers: What They Want and What They Need Are Very Different Things,” Psychology Today (July 15, 2011). https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201107/how-deal-chronic-complainers.

7.​See Arius Didymus, Epitome of Stoic Ethics: “live in agreement with nature” (6b) and “happiness is a smooth flow of life” (6e). Also compare Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.87–89.

8.​In her book Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), Susanne Bobzien has collected the evidence and ancient sources confirming this. See also the article by Mikolaj Domaradzki, “Theological Etymologizing in the Early Stoa,” Kernos 25 (2012), 125–48, especially page 134. https://journals.openedition.org/kernos/2109.

9.​Albert Einstein, “Religion and Science” (New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930), reprinted in Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Modern Library, 1994), 42.

10.​Albert Einstein, “Science and Religion” (Address at Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939), in Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 52–53.

11.​Epictetus, Handbook 8.

12.​A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Volume 1, 62A (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 386. It is reported that the story of the dog and the cart was used by Zeno and Chrysippus.

13.​Cleanthes, quoted in Seneca, Letters 107.11.

14.​Seneca, Letters 96.1.

15.​Seneca, Letters 96.2–3.

16.​Seneca, Letters 107.2.

17.​Seneca, Letters 107.6.

18.​Seneca, Natural Questions 3, preface 12.

19.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.23.

CHAPTER 8: THE BATTLE AGAINST FORTUNE: HOW TO SURVIVE POVERTY AND EXTREME WEALTH

1.​Seneca, Letters 19.9.

2.​Seneca, Letters 98.8.

3.​https://www.newsweek.com/was-michael-jackson-debt-he-died-look-king-pops-finances-1349255.

4.​Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 11.10.

5.​Seneca, Natural Questions book 3, preface 1.7.

6.​Seneca, Consolation to Helvia 5.4.

7.​Seneca, Letters 90.18.

8.​Seneca, Letters 90.19.

9.​Seneca, Letters 90.40.

10.​Seneca, Letters 119.11.

11.​Seneca, Letters 119.12–13.

12.​Epicurus, quoted in Seneca, Letters 17.11.

13.​Seneca, Letters 36.1.

14.​Seneca, Letters 87.31.

15.​Seneca tells this tale in Consolation to Helvia 10.8–11.

16.​Seneca, Consolation to Polybius 9.5 and 6.4.

17.​William B. Irvine, On Desire: Why We Want What We Want (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 31.

18.​Seneca, Letters 104.9.

19.​Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 8.2.

20.​The survey was conducted in February 2019. https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Lifestages-survey-results.pdf.

21.​Jeremy Kisner, “Why Rich People Worry about Money.” https://www.jeremykisner.com/rich-people-worry-money/.

22.​Seneca, Letters 19.6–7.

23.​Seneca, Letters 18.5.

24.​Seneca, Letters 18.7.

25.​For an overview of voluntary simplicity with a reading list, see http://simplicitycollective.com/start-here/what-is-voluntary-simplicity-2.

26.​Seneca, Letters 60.3.

27.​Seneca, Consolation to Helvia 11.4.

28.​Seneca, Letters 74.4.

29.​Anna Lydia Motto, one of the leading Seneca scholars of all time, weighed the evidence to see if Seneca was guilty of hypocrisy. Her verdict was “no.” See Anna Lydia Motto, “Seneca on Trial: The Case of the Opulent Stoic,” The Classical Journal 61, no. 6 (1966): 254–58. Also see the discussion by Ward Farnsworth in his book, The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User’s Manual (Boston: David R. Godine, 2018), chapter 13, “Stoicism and its Critics.”

30.​Seneca, Letters 18.13.

31.​Seneca, On the Happy Life 22.5.

CHAPTER 9: VICIOUS CROWDS AND THE TIES THAT BIND

1.​Seneca, Letters 7.2–3.

2.​Seneca, Letters 7.3–4.

3.​Seneca, Letters 7.5.

4.​Seneca, Letters 7.7.

5.​Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 7.4.

6.​Seneca, On Anger 3.8.1–2.

7.​For a brief summary of several studies, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality.

8.​Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Book 1, chapter 1. Translation from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/445.

9.​Le Bon, The Crowd, Book 1, chapter 1.

10.​See Tony D. Sampson, Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

11.​See R. M. Joly-Mascheroni, A. Senju, and A. J. Shepherd, “Dogs Catch Human Yawns,” Biology Letters 4.5 (2008): 446–48. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610100/; and E. A. Madsen, T. Persson, S. Sayehli, S. Lenninger, and G. Sonesson, “Chimpanzees Show a Developmental Increase in Susceptibility to Contagious Yawning: A Test of the Effect of Ontogeny and Emotional Closeness on Yawn Contagion,” PloS One 8.10 (2003). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3797813/.

12.​The insight that we learn some false beliefs through socialization goes back at least to the Stoic Chrysippus. However, Chrysippus only seems to have considered deliberate socialization, not the kind of unconscious transmission that Seneca describes clearly. See Teun Tieleman, Chrysippus’ On Affections: Reconstruction and Interpretations (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 132 ff., and Graziano Ranocchia, “The Stoic Concept of Proneness to Emotion and Vice,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 94, no. 1 (2012): 74–92.

13.​At the beginning of Letter 60, Seneca provides an emphatic explanation of how Lucilius picked up his beliefs about the value of wealth as a child from his parents and others responsible for his upbringing.

14.​See, for example, J. W. Bridges, “Imitation, Suggestion, and Hypnosis,” chapter 18, in J. W. Bridges, Psychology: Normal and Abnormal, with Special Reference to the Needs of Medical Students and Practitioners (New York: Appleton, 1930), 311–24. Available from the American Psychological Association: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-08475-018.

15.​Seneca, Letters 7.8.

16.​Seneca, Letters 94.69.

17.​Seneca, On Anger 3.8.2.

18.​Seneca, Letters 109.1–2.

19.​For Aristotle, neither women nor slaves possessed the mental capacity to benefit from the study of politics. Additionally, as he wrote in Politics 1260a11, “natural slaves” lack the power of deliberation entirely. Women possess the power of deliberation, “but in a form that lacks authority,” which excludes them from participating in politics. By contrast, Plato, who was Aristotle’s teacher, believed that women could be guardians of the state.

20.​Daniel S. Richter, Cosmopolis: Imagining Community in Late Classical Athens and the Early Roman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 68. In chapter 4, Richter highlights the vast differences between the views of Aristotle and the Stoics on human equality.

21.​Lactantius, Divine Institutes 3.25, cited and translated in Richter, Cosmopolis, 67. For more on human equality and slavery in early Stoic philosophy, see Lisa Hill and Prasanna Nidumolu, “The Influence of Classical Stoicism on John Locke’s Theory of Self-Ownership,” History of the Human Sciences (May 2020): 6–7.

22.​On natural law in Stoicism and Cicero, see Maryanne Cline Horowitz, “The Stoic Synthesis of Natural Law in Man: Four Themes,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35, no. 1 (1974): 3–16; Elizabeth Asmis, “Cicero on Natural Law and the Laws of State,” Classical Antiquity 27, no. 1 (2008): 1–33; and Fernando H. Llano Alonso, “Cicero and Natural Law,” ARSP: Archiv für Rechts- und Socialphilosophie / Archives for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy 98, no. 2 (2012): 157–68.

23.​Cicero, On the Republic 3.33.

24.​Philosophy scholar Phillip Mitsis concluded that the Stoics gave “expression to the notion of natural human rights.” The Stoics, with their idea of the cosmopolis, lived “in a moral climate conducive to the recognition of their fellow citizens’ needs and rights—rights that the Stoics think we all share in virtue of the fact that we are human.” Mitsis, “The Stoic Origin of Natural Rights, in Topics in Stoic Philosophy, ed. Katerina Ierodiakonou (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 176–77.

25.​Our modern idea of human rights—for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, developed by the United Nations in 1948—combines aspects of universal, natural law with civil and international law. Interestingly, this had been an important question for Cicero: how closely can civil law be brought into harmony with natural law?

26.​Paul Meany, “Why the Founders’ Favorite Philosopher Was Cicero,” FEE (May 31, 2018). https://fee.org/articles/why-the-founders-favorite-philosopher-was-cicero/. I am grateful to Meany for his articles on Stoicism, Cicero, natural law, and natural rights, which encouraged me to investigate the Stoic contribution to the development of natural and human rights.

27.​In fact, when Thomas Jefferson died, he had a volume of Seneca’s writings open on his bedside table, and Jefferson listed Cicero as a major influence on his drafting of the Declaration of Independence. John Locke, who influenced Jefferson’s thinking on natural rights, also read the Stoic philosophers and recommended them to his students.

28.​M. Andrew Holowchak, “Thomas Jefferson,” section 2.2, “Nature and Society,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/jefferson/.

29.​As the political historian Charles McIlwan noted, “The idea of the equality of men is the profoundest contribution of the Stoics to political thought, that idea has colored its whole development from their day to ours, and its greatest influence is in the changed conception of law that in part resulted from it.” McIlwan, The Growth of Political Thought in the West: From the Greeks to the Middle Ages (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 8.

See also chapter 3, “The Cosmopolis in Human Rights,” in Tony Honoré, Ulpian: Pioneer of Human Rights, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), which documents how Stoicism led to the ideas of human equality, freedom, and the dignity of all in the Roman legal tradition, especially in the work of the jurist Domitius Ulpianus or Ulpian (c. 170–c. 228).

30.​Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 53.

31.​Marcelo Gleiser, “The Trouble with Tribalism,” Orbiter (July 18, 2019). https://orbitermag.com/the-trouble-with-tribalism/.

32.​Seneca, Letters 95.52–53.

33.​Seneca, Letters 48.2.

34.​Seneca, On Benefits 4.18.4.

35.​Ilaria Ramelli, Hierocles the Stoic: Elements of Ethics, Fragments, and Excerpts (Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2009), xxxv.

36.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3. He repeats this “doctrine” and elaborates it throughout the Meditations, exploring how “we were born to help one another” (11.18).

37.​Cicero, On Ends 3.62.

38.​Cicero, On Ends 3.62–63.

39.​Cicero, On Ends 3.63.

40.​Ramelli, Hierocles the Stoic, 89–91.

41.​John Sellars, Stoicism (London: Routledge, 2014), 131.

CHAPTER 10: HOW TO BE AUTHENTIC AND CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY

1.​Epicurus wrote to one friend, “I am thrilled with pleasure in the body when I live on bread and water,” and in another letter he wrote, “Send me some preserved cheese, so I may have a feast when I like.” See Cyril Bailey, Epicurus: The Extant Remains (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), 131.

2.​The stark difference between the Stoic view of rationality in nature and a random world of colliding atoms and is summed up nicely in a phrase that Marcus Aurelius often used to describe the divide between the Stoics and the Epicureans: “providence or atoms.”

3.​This saying of Epicurus, lathe biōsis or “live unknown,” was widely known in the ancient world. See for example the essay of Plutarch, Is “Live Unknown” a Wise Precept? In Plutarch, Moralia, Volume 14 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 318–43.

4.​Epictetus, Discourses 3.7.19.

5.​Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 6.2.

6.​The Roman writer Cicero presents the ideas of Panaetius in the first two books of his work On Duties, an important work on Stoic ethics. The description of the four personae appears in Cicero, On Duties 1.107–115. In the discussion that follows here, I draw on both the ideas of Panaetius and Seneca, since Seneca expressed the same thoughts in his writings.

7.​Seneca, Letters 11.6.

8.​One of the most accurate psychological tests ever devised measures “the Big Five personality traits.” These are identified as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (and their opposites). Interestingly, when people are tested for these traits, it’s possible to predict where they fall on the political spectrum with a high degree of accuracy. This suggests that many or even most people identify with political orientations based on their personality traits rather than through a process of critical thinking.

9.​Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 6.2.

10.​Cicero, On Duties 1.110–111, reporting on the thought of Panaetius.

11.​Seneca, Letters 20.2.

12.​Seneca, Letters 37.5.

13.​Seneca, Letters 120.21–22.

14.​Seneca, Letters 47.21.

15.​Seneca, Letters 20.3.

16.​Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 17.1 and 17.2.

17.​Seneca, Letters 16.3.

18.​Seneca, Letters 75.4.

19.​Seneca, Letters 64.7 and 64.9.

20.​Seneca, Natural Questions 7.25.4.

21.​Seneca, Letters 79.5.

22.​For some criticisms of Zeno’s arguments, see Seneca, Letters 82.9 and 83.9. Seneca, On Benefits 1.4.1, describes Chrysippus’s acumen as being so finely pointed that, rather than being compelling, it only delivered “pinpricks.”

23.​Seneca, Letters 80.1.

24.​Seneca, Letters 33.11.

25.​Seneca, Letters 81.1–2.

26.​James Ker, introduction to On the Constancy of the Wise Person, in Seneca, Hardship and Happiness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 143.

27.​Seneca, On the Constancy of the Wise Person 9.4–5 and Epictetus, Discourses 3.25.4.

28.​See Seneca, On Leisure 2.2. As Diogenes Laertius put it, “The Stoics say that a wise person will take part in politics, if nothing hinders him . . . since, by doing so, he will restrain vice and promote virtue” (Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.121). For an in-depth study of Seneca’s views on public service and leisure, see chapter 10, “The Philosopher on Political Participation,” in Mariam T. Griffin, Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

29.​Seneca, On Leisure 6.4–5.

30.​Seneca, On Leisure 3.5.

31.​Seneca, On Leisure 8.1.

32.​Seneca, On Leisure 6.4.

33.​Seneca, Letters 8.2–3.

34.​Seneca, Letters 21.5.

35.​Seneca, Letters 79.17.

CHAPTER 11: LIVING FULLY REGARDLESS OF DEATH

1.​Seneca, Letters 12.1.

2.​William B. Irvine, one of the first philosophers to have experimented with Stoicism as a modern way of life, has noted that a primary aim of “a philosophy of life” is to make sure that you have a good life and don’t “mislive.” One sign of having a good life is that, when you reach your final moments of being alive, you won’t feel regret that you wasted your life. See Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1–2.

3.​Seneca, Letters 78.2.

4.​Plato, Apology 30C–D.

5.​On the trial of Socrates and his death, see Plato’s dialogues, The Apology (where Socrates defends himself while on trial), The Crito (where Socrates explains his unwillingness to escape prison), and The Phaedo (where Socrates drinks the hemlock, surrounded by his students). These dialogues can all be found in Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, translated by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant (New York: Penguin, 1993).

6.​Seneca, Letters 63.8.

7.​Seneca, Letters 22.16.

8.​Epictetus, Discourses 3.26.38.

9.​Seneca, Letters 4.5.

10.​Seneca, Letters 26.6.

11.​Seneca, Letters 30.10–11.

12.​Seneca, Letters 24.18. Marcus Aurelius also uses this argument in Meditations 8.58. It actually goes back to Socrates, who used the argument at his trial. See Plato, Apology 40C–D.

13.​Seneca, Letters 54.4–5.

14.​As Epicurus wrote, death is nothing to us, because “when we exist, death has not come, and when death has come, we don’t exist” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.125).

15.​Seneca, Letters 92.24–25.

16.​Seneca, Letters 77.20.

17.​Seneca, Letters 93.4.

18.​Seneca, Letters 12.4–5.

19.​Seneca, Letters 101.13–14.

20.​Seneca, Letters 101.15.

21.​Seneca, Letters 58.34.

22.​Seneca, Letters 58.32.

23.​Seneca, Letters 58.35.

24.​Text of Steve Jobs’s Commencement Address at Stanford University, June 12, 2005. https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/.

25.​Seneca, Letters 101.7.

26.​Seneca, Letters 12.9.

CHAPTER 12: GIVE GRIEF ITS DUE

1.​Seneca, Consolation to Polybius 18.5. On the belief of the Greek Stoics that a sage would not feel grief: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.118.

2.​Seneca, Letters 71.27.

3.​Seneca’s Consolation to Marcia addresses Marcia’s extreme state of grief, lasting three years after the death of her son Metilius, and was probably written during the reign of Caligula (AD 37–41). Consolation to Helvia was written to Seneca’s mother to address her sorrow over Seneca’s banishment to the island of Corsica. Consolation to Polybius addresses Polybius’s grief over his brother’s death and was written while Seneca was in exile on Corsica (AD 41–49). Seneca’s Letter 63 is a letter of consolation written for Lucilius after the death of Flaccus, a friend of Lucilius’s. Seneca’s Letter 99 to Lucilius includes the text of a letter Seneca wrote to Maurullus after he lost an infant son. Seneca’s Letters were written in the period of AD 63–65.

4.​Seneca, Letters 99.18–19.

5.​Seneca, Letters 99.19.

6.​Seneca, Letters 99.18 and 99.20.

7.​Oxytocin is a hormone associated with bonding, love, sex, and stress reduction. Endorphins are opioids associated with pain reduction, stress reduction, and feelings of euphoria. It’s no wonder people often feel better and calmer after crying.

8.​Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 1.5. Seneca’s Consolation to Marcia was written during the reign of Caligula, which probably makes it his earliest surviving prose work.

9.​Seneca, Letters 99.16.

10.​For these two arguments, see Seneca, Consolation to Polybius 18.6 and Consolation to Helvia 16.1.

11.​Seneca, Consolation to Polybius 18.6.

12.​Seneca, Letters 63.12.

13.​Seneca, Consolation to Polybius 11.2.

14.​Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 9.5.

15.​Seneca, Letters 63.14–15.

16.​Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 10.1.

17.​Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 10.3.

18.​Epictetus, Handbook 11.

19.​Seneca, Consolation to Polybius 11.3.

20.​Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 11.1.

21.​For a similar view from someone who has also experimented with looking at life from a Stoic perspective, see Scott LaBarge, “How (and Maybe Why) to Grieve Like an Ancient Philosopher,” in Virtue and Happiness: Essays in Honour of Julia Annas, edited by Rachana Kamtekar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 320–42.

22.​Seneca, Letters 99.4.

23.​Seneca, Letters 99.4.

24.​Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 3.4.

25.​Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 5.4. Marcia’s son Metilius had two daughters, so he was not a child when he died. But as Seneca illustrates, even very young children can be a source of happy memories.

CHAPTER 13: LOVE AND GRATITUDE

1.​Seneca, On Anger 2.31.7.

2.​Anna Lydia Motto, “Seneca on Love,” Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos 27, no. 1 (2007): 80.

3.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.39.

4.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.9.

5.​William O. Stephens, Stoic Ethics: Epictetus and Happiness as Freedom (New York: Continuum, 2007), 154.

6.​Cicero, Pro Plancio 80.

7.​Seneca, On Benefits 1.1.2.

8.​Edward J. Harpham, “Gratitude in the History of Ideas,” in The Psychology of Gratitude, eds. Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 22.

9.​Seneca was often critical of this system. But he was also part of it: his relationship with Nero could be described as a patron–client relationship.

10.​Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, Philosophies of Gratitude (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 46–47.

11.​The only scholarly article I’ve been able to find devoted to gratitude in Stoicism is by my friend Aldo Dinucci, a scholar of Stoicism in Brazil. It’s about gratitude in Epictetus and is written in Portuguese. See Antônio Carlos Rodrigues and Aldo Dinucci, “A eucharistia em Epicteto,” in Epistemologias da religião e relações de religiosidade, eds. Celma Laurinda Freitas Costa, Clóvis Ecco, and José Reinaldo F. Martins Filho (Curitiba: Editora Prismas, 2017), 17–44.

12.​Donald Robertson, “Stoicism and Love,” presentation from Stoicism Today Conference 2014. Video at https://youtu.be/W4sawA20hdE.

13.​On the Stoic approach to loving others with an awareness of their mortality, see William O. Stephens, “Epictetus on How the Stoic Sage Loves,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 14 (1996): 193–210.

14.​Several modern philosophers have explored this topic. These are some of the writings I studied while writing this chapter, listed in order of their publication dates. On the gratitude of Epicurus toward nature but not toward the gods: N. W. De Wit, “The Epicurean Doctrine of Gratitude,” American Journal of Philology 58, no. 3, (1937): 320–28. On why the experience of “cosmic gratitude” or “transpersonal gratitude” does not call for belief in God: George Naknikian, “On the Cognitive Import of Certain Religious States,” in Religious Experience and Truth: A Symposium, ed. Sidney Hook (New York: New York University Press, 1961), 156–64. On nonpersonal gratitude, gratitude toward nature, and “free-floating gratitude”: E. R. Loder, “Gratitude and the Environment: Toward Individual and Collective Ecological Virtue,” Journal Jurisprudence (2011): 383–435. On gratitude toward nature: Nathan Wood, “Gratitude and Alterity in Environmental Virtue Ethics,” Environmental Values 29, no. 4 (2020): 481–98. A recent exploration of cosmic gratitude: chapter 8, “Cosmic Gratitude,” in Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, Philosophies of Gratitude (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 219–53.

15.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.27.

16.​Robert C. Solomon, foreword, in The Psychology of Gratitude, eds. Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), v.

17.​Philip C. Watkins, Gratitude and the Good Life: Toward a Psychology of Appreciation (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 3.

18.​Watkins, Gratitude and the Good Life, 5.

19.​Watkins, Gratitude and the Good Life, 7.

20.​Watkins, Gratitude and the Good Life, 8.

21.​Robert A. Emmons, “The Psychology of Gratitude: An Introduction,” in The Psychology of Gratitude, eds. Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 5.

22.​For a list of well-known pantheists, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pantheists. Philosopher Michael Levine believes that “there are probably more (grass-root) pantheists than Protestants, or theists in general, and pantheism continues to be the traditional religious alternative to theism for those who reject the classical theistic notion of God.” Levine, Pantheism: A Non-Theistic Concept of Deity (London: Routledge, 1994), 14.

23.​Carl Sagan’s son, the science writer Dorion Sagan, wrote, “My father believed in the God of Spinoza and Einstein, God not behind nature, but as nature, equivalent to it.” Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2007), 14.

24.​See the discussion in David Fideler, Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2014), 32.

25.​For “Nature” as a term for “God,” see Seneca, On Benefits 4.7.1–2 and 4.8.3 and Natural Questions 2.45.3.

26.​These words appear at the beginning of Rumi’s discourses. Jalaluddin Rumi, Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, translated by W. M. Thackston, Jr. (Boston: Shambhala, 1994), 1.

27.​Seneca, On Benefits 4.25.2. Similarly, when Marcus Aurelius referred to the gods as being “visible,” he was referring to the celestial bodies (Meditations 12.28).

28.​For some examples of this, see Mikolaj Domaradzki, “Theological Etymologizing in the Early Stoa,” Kernos 25 (2012): 125–48. https://journals.openedition.org/kernos/2109.

29.​As philosopher Michael P. Levine stresses, pantheism is not a form of theism and it’s not a form of atheism either. Instead, it’s an alternative to them. While pantheism doesn’t posit the existence of a personal God, it does suggest that there is a unifying force in nature: everything that exists constitutes a unity, and this all-inclusive unity is in some sense divine. See Levine, Pantheism, 25.

30.​Seneca, On Benefits 4.7.1.

31.​Seneca, On Benefits 2.29.5.

32.​Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: Nietzsche’s Autobiography, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 7. Modified.

33.​Richard Dawkins, speaking during the Intelligence Squared Debate, “Atheism Is the New Fundamentalism,” November 2019. A video clip of Dawkins’s remark can be seen at https://youtu.be/lheDgyaItOA, 1:44.

34.​Robert C. Solomon, foreword, in The Psychology of Gratitude, eds. Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), ix.

35.​Solomon, foreword, in The Psychology of Gratitude, x.

36.​Epictetus, Discourses 3.5.11. The metaphor of life as a festival, which we should feel grateful for upon leaving, appears several separate times in the Discourses of Epictetus. See also Epictetus, Discourses 3.5.10–11 and 4.1.105–106.

37.​Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.48.

CHAPTER 14: FREEDOM, TRANQUILITY, AND LASTING JOY

1.​William O. Stephens, Stoic Ethics: Epictetus and Happiness as Freedom (New York: Continuum, 2007), 154.

2.​As Epictetus explained, “If virtue holds out this promise—to produce happiness, freedom from suffering, and serenity—then progress toward virtue, surely, is also progress toward these states of mind.” Epictetus, Discourses 1.4.3.

3.​Seneca, Letters 17.7.

4.​Summary of a short dialogue in Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.52.

5.​Seneca, Letters 75.18.

6.​Seneca, Letters 15.9.

7.​Seneca, Letters 42.8.

8.​Seneca, Letters 45.9.

9.​Seneca, Letters 23.2.

10.​Seneca, Letters 32.5 and 32.3. “A life that is already complete” is a memorable phrase from the translation of Margaret Graver and A. A. Long. My translation of the same passage: “In order to surpass all constraints, in order to be released and truly free, one must live a fully completed life” (Letters 32.5).

11.​Seneca, Letters 44.7.

12.​Stephens, Stoic Ethics, 141.

13.​Seneca, Letters 56.6.

14.​Seneca, Letters 59.16.

15.​Seneca, Letters 87.3.

16.​Seneca, On the Happy Life 3.4.

17.​Seneca, Letters 92.17.