Free Dialogues and Letters by Séneca

SENECA: DIALOGUES AND LETTERS
    LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA , statesman, philosopher, advocate and man of letters, was born at Cordoba in Spain around 4 BC . Despite his relatively undistinguished background and ever-recurrent ill health, he rose to prominence at Rome, pursuing the double career, in the courts and political life, for which he had been trained. He began also quickly to acquire celebrity as an author of tragedies and of polished essays, moral, literary and scientific. Falling foul of successive emperors (Caligula in AD 39 and Claudius in AD 41) he spent eight years in exile on the island of Corsica, allegedly for an affair with Caligula’s sister. Recalled in AD 49, he was made praetor, and was appointed tutor to the boy who was to become, in AD 54, the emperor Nero. On Nero’s succession Seneca acted for some eight years as an unofficial chief minister. The early part of this reign was remembered as a period of sound imperial government, for which, according to our sources, the main credit must be given to Seneca. His control over an increasingly cruel emperor declined as enemies turned Nero against him with representations that his popularity made him a danger, or with accusations of immorality or excessive wealth ill assorting with the noble Stoic principles he professed. Retiring from public life he devoted his last three years to philosophy and writing, particularly the
Letters to Lucilius
. In AD 65, following the discovery of a plot against the emperor, in which he was thought to be implicated, he and many others were compelled by Nero to commit suicide. His fame as an essayist and dramatist lasted until two or three centuries ago, when he passed into literary oblivion, from which the twentieth century has seen a considerable recovery.
    C. D. N. COSTA read Classics as a Rhodes Scholar at St John’s College, Oxford, and has spent most of his working life at Birmingham University, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Classics. His main research has been writing commentaries on the works of Seneca (
Letters
,
Dialogues
and the tragedy
Medea
), and he has also edited Lucretius V, a book of essays on Horace and
Greek Fictional Letters
. Some of his translations of Seneca’s
Letters
have been given broadcast readings by Paul Scofield on BBC Radio 3.
    SENECA
Dialogues and Letters
    Edited and translated by

C. D. N. COSTA
    PENGUIN BOOKS
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    This edition first published 1997
Reprinted with corrections 2005
6
    Translation and notes copyright © C. D. N. Costa, 1997, 2005
All rights reserved
    The moral right of the editor has been asserted
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    CONTENTS
    Preface
    Introduction
    A Note on the Text
    Further Reading
    DIALOGUES
    Consolation to Helvia
    On Tranquillity of Mind
    On the Shortness of Life
    LETTERS
    Letter 24
    Letter 57
    Letter 79
    Letter 110
    from
NATURAL QUESTIONS
    1 praef. 1–10 [Seneca urges Lucilius to