The Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) recorded his moral philosophy and reflections on life as a highly original kind of correspondence. Letters on Ethics includes vivid descriptions of town and country life in Nero's Italy, discussions of poetry and oratory, and philosophical training for Seneca's friend Lucilius. This volume, the first complete English translation in nearly a century, makes the Letters more accessible than ever before. Written as much for a general audience as for Lucilius, these engaging letters offer advice on how to deal with everything from nosy neighbors to sickness, pain, and death. Seneca uses the informal format of the letter to present the central ideas of Stoicism, for centuries the most influential philosophical system in the Mediterranean world. His lively and at times humorous expositions have made the Letters his most popular work and an enduring classic. Including an introduction and explanatory notes by Margaret Graver and A. A. Long, this authoritative edition will captivate a new generation of readers.

In the year 62, citing health issues, the Roman philosopher Seneca withdrew from public service and devoted his time to writing. His letters from this period offer a window into his experience as a landowner, a traveler through Roman Italy, and a man coping with the onset of old age. They describe the roar of the arena, the festival of Saturnalia, and the perils of the Adriatic Sea, and they explain his thoughts about political power, the treatment of slaves, the origins of civilization, and the key points of Stoic philosophy. This selection of fifty of his letters brings Seneca to readers in a fresh modern voice and shows how, as a philosopher, he speaks to our time. Above all, these letters explore the inner life of the individual: from the life of heedless vanity to the first interest in philosophy, to true friendship, self-determination, and personal excellence.

On the surface, stoicism and emotion seem like contradictory terms. Yet the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome were deeply interested in the emotions, which they understood as complex judgments about what we regard as valuable in our surroundings. "Stoicism and Emotion" shows that they did not simply advocate an across-the-board suppression of feeling, as stoicism implies in today's English, but instead conducted a searching examination of these powerful psychological responses, seeking to understand what attitude toward them expresses the deepest respect for human potential.
In this elegant and clearly written work, Margaret Graver gives a compelling new interpretation of the Stoic position. Drawing on a vast range of ancient sources, she argues that the chief demand of Stoic ethics is not that we should suppress or deny our feelings, but that we should perfect the rational mind at the core of every human being. Like all our judgments, the Stoics believed, our affective responses can be either true or false and right or wrong, and we must assume responsibility for them. Without glossing over the difficulties, Graver also shows how the Stoics dealt with those questions that seem to present problems for their theory: the physiological basis of affective responses, the phenomenon of being carried away by one's emotions, the occurrence of involuntary feelings and the disordered behaviors of mental illness. Ultimately revealing the deeper motivations of Stoic philosophy, "Stoicism and Emotion" uncovers the sources of its broad appeal in the ancient world and illuminates its surprising relevance to our own.

Seneca stands apart from other philosophers of Greece and Rome not only for his interest in practical ethics, but also for the beauty and liveliness of his writing. These twelve in-depth essays take up a series of interrelated topics in his works, from his relation to Stoicism, Epicureanism, and other schools of thought; to the psychology of emotion and action and the management of anger and grief; to letter-writing, gift-giving, friendship, and kindness; to Seneca's innovative use of genre, style, and humor. Recalling Socrates's critique of philosophical writing in Plato's Phaedrus, this volume gives particular attention to Seneca's ideas about the techniques of reading, writing, and study that make philosophy beneficial to the individual and to society. Clear explanations and careful translations make the volume accessible to a wide range of readers.

In the year 62, citing health issues, the Roman philosopher Seneca withdrew from public service and devoted his time to writing. His letters from this period offer a window into his experience as a landowner, a traveler through Roman Italy, and a man coping with the onset of old age. They describe the roar of the arena, the festival of Saturnalia, and the perils of the Adriatic Sea, and they explain his thoughts about political power, the treatment of slaves, the origins of civilization, and the key points of Stoic philosophy. This selection of fifty of his letters brings Seneca to readers in a fresh modern voice and shows how, as a philosopher, he speaks to our time. Above all, these letters explore the inner life of the individual: from the life of heedless vanity to the first interest in philosophy, to true friendship, self-determination, and personal excellence.

Extensively trained as a philosopher, Cicero was also a working politician with a keen awareness of the distance between pure intellectual endeavor and effective strategies of persuasion. This volume explores a series of interrelated problems in his works, from the use of emotion, self-correction, and even fiction in intellectual inquiry, to the motives of political agents and the morality of political arguments, to the means of justifying the use of force in international relations. It features close readings of works from all periods of Cicero's philosophical career, from the threshold of Rome's civil war to the year following the assassination of Julius Caesar. For a richer body of evidence, the volume also makes use of material from Cicero's personal letters and political speeches. Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy will be essential reading not only in Roman philosophy but also for the political and rhetorical culture of the Roman Republic.

On the surface, stoicism and emotion seem like contradictory terms. Yet the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome were deeply interested in the emotions, which they understood as complex judgments about what we regard as valuable in our surroundings. "Stoicism and Emotion" shows that they did not simply advocate an across-the-board suppression of feeling, as stoicism implies in today's English, but instead conducted a searching examination of these powerful psychological responses, seeking to understand what attitude toward them expresses the deepest respect for human potential.
In this elegant and clearly written work, Margaret Graver gives a compelling new interpretation of the Stoic position. Drawing on a vast range of ancient sources, she argues that the chief demand of Stoic ethics is not that we should suppress or deny our feelings, but that we should perfect the rational mind at the core of every human being. Like all our judgments, the Stoics believed, our affective responses can be either true or false and right or wrong, and we must assume responsibility for them. Without glossing over the difficulties, Graver also shows how the Stoics dealt with those questions that seem to present problems for their theory: the physiological basis of affective responses, the phenomenon of being carried away by one's emotions, the occurrence of involuntary feelings and the disordered behaviors of mental illness. Ultimately revealing the deeper motivations of Stoic philosophy, "Stoicism and Emotion" uncovers the sources of its broad appeal in the ancient world and illuminates its surprising relevance to our own.

The third and fourth books of Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations" deal with the nature and management of human emotion: first grief, then the emotions in general. In lively and accessible style, Cicero presents the insights of Greek philosophers on the subject, reporting the views of Epicureans and Peripatetics and giving a detailed account of the Stoic position, which he himself favors for its close reasoning and moral earnestness. Both the specialist and the general reader will be fascinated by the Stoics' analysis of the causes of grief, their classification of emotions by genus and species, their lists of oddly named character flaws, and by the philosophical debate that develops over the utility of anger in politics and war.
Margaret Graver's elegant and idiomatic translation makes Cicero's work accessible not just to classicists but to anyone interested in ancient philosophy and psychotherapy or in the philosophy of emotion. The accompanying commentary explains the philosophical concepts discussed in the text and supplies many helpful parallels from Greek sources.