Dialogues by Seneca (smallest ebook reader .txt) π
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Seneca the Younger was a statesman and philosopher who lived in Rome around the dawn of the Common Era. Though he wrote a large amount of tragedies and other works, today heβs perhaps best known for his writing on Stoic philosophy and principles.
Seneca didnβt write books about Stoicism; rather, he composed essays and sent letters over the course of his lifetime that addressed that philosophy. Since these essays and letters are addressed to his friends and contemporaries, theyβre written in a conversational style, and thus referred to as his βDialogues.β Some were written to friends on the death of their loved ones, in an effort to console and comfort them. Others were written to help friends with their personality flaws, like anger. One, βOn Clemency,β was addressed to the emperor Nero as an effort to guide him on the path of good statesmanship.
This collection contains all of his dialogues, including the longer βOn Benefits.β
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- Author: Seneca
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O how little do men understand their own misery, that they do not praise and look forward to death as the best discovery of Nature, whether because it hedges in happiness, or because it drives away misery: because it puts an end to the sated weariness of old age, cuts down youth in its bloom while still full of hope of better things, or calls home childhood before the harsher stages of life are reached: it is the end of all men, a relief to many, a desire to some, and it treats none so well as those to whom it comes before they call for it. Death frees the slave though his master wills it not, it lightens the captiveβs chains: it leads out of prison those whom headstrong power has forbidden to quit it: it points out to exiles, whose minds and eyes are ever turned towards their own country, that it makes no difference under what peopleβs soil one lies. When Fortune has unjustly divided the common stock, and has given over one man to another, though they were born with equal rights, Death makes them all equal. After Death no one acts any more at anotherβs bidding: in death no man suffers any more from the sense of his low position. It is open to all: it was what your father, Marcia, longed for: it is this, I say, that renders it no misery to be born, which enables me to face the threatenings of misfortune without quailing, and to keep my mind unharmed and able to command itself. I have a last appeal. I see before me crosses not all alike, but differently made by different peoples: some hang a man head downwards, some force a stick upwards through his groin, some stretch out his arms on a forked gibbet. I see cords, scourges, and instruments of torture for each limb and each joint: but I see Death also. There are bloodthirsty enemies, there are overbearing fellow-countrymen, but where they are there I see Death also. Slavery is not grievous if a man can gain his freedom by one step as soon as he becomes tired of thralldom. Life, it is thanks to Death that I hold thee so dear. Think how great a blessing is a timely death, how many have been injured by living longer than they ought. If sickness had carried off that glory and support of the empire Gnaeus Pompeius, at Naples, he would have died the undoubted head of the Roman people, but as it was, a short extension of time cast him down from his pinnacle of fame: he beheld his legions slaughtered before his eyes: and what a sad relic of that battle, in which the Senate formed the first line, was the survival of the general.
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