Letters on Ethics (Moral Letters to Lucilius)

A collection of 124 letters, grouped in twenty books, written by Seneca in the last years of his life after he withdrew from the court of Nero, and addressed to his younger friend Lucilius, then a procurator in Sicily. Whether or not they were actually sent, they read as a correspondence in which Seneca coaches a friend in Stoic living while admitting his own failings. The early letters are short, open on matters such as the use of time, and often end with a borrowed saying, frequently from Epicurus, whom Seneca quotes freely. Later letters become longer and more technical, discussing the nature of the good, the passions, providence and Stoic logic. Well-known letters treat slaves as fellow human beings (Letter 47) and the brutalising effect of the arena crowd (Letter 7), and others take up friendship, old age, reading, and how to face death.

It is the warmest and most personal way into Stoicism, written by a man who knew the distance between his ideals and his life.