The Wisdom of the Stoics: Selections from Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius

The Stoic philosophy was founded by Zeno, a Phoenician (c. 320-c. 250 B.C.), but nothing by him has come down to us except a few fragmentary quotations. He was followed by Cleanthes, then by Chrysippus, and still later by Panaetius and Posidonus. But though Chrysippus, for example, is said to have written 705 books, practically nothing is extant by any of these philosophers except in second-hand accounts. Only three of the ancient Stoics, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, survive in complete books.

None of the three has ever had a large audience. The history of their reputations is curious. In the seventeenth century Seneca was certainly the best known. Then, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, he was almost completely forgot­ten, and popularity alternated between Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Under the influence of Matthew Arnold, the latter became a sort of cultural “must” for mid-Victorians. As an example of what was being written in the early years of this century, I quote from one of the self-improvement books written by the novelist Arnold Bennett:

I suppose there are some thousands of authors who have written with more or less sincerity on the management of the human machine. But the two which, for me, stand out easily above all the rest are Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Epictetus. ... Aurelius is assuredly regarded as the greatest of writers in the human machine school, and not to read him daily is considered by many to be a bad habit. As a confession his work stands alone. But as a practical ‘Bradshaw’ of existence, I would put the discourses of Epictetus before M. Aurelius. ... He is brimming over with actuality for readers of the year 1908. Nevertheless [Aurelius] is of course to be read, and re-read continually. When you have gone through Epictetus — a single page or paragraph per day, well masticated and digested, suffices — you can go through M. Aurelius, and then you can return to Epictetus, and so on, morning by morning, or night by night, till your life’s end.1

Two things are worth remarking about this passage. First, it presents both writers simply as guides to living; it nowhere mentions their Stoic philosophy or its implications. And second, it nowhere mentions Seneca. In this it was typical not only of Arnold Bennett’s own frequent references to the two later Stoics but to the references of his contemporaries and those of other writers down to the present day. Yet Seneca was the first of the three great Stoic philosophers whose writings are still extant. He lived half a century before Epictetus and more than a century before Marcus. His output was far greater than that of either of his successors, and he surpassed them in purely literary gifts. In his writings on philosophy one memorable aphorism follows another. There are almost none of the obscurities that one so often encounters in Epictetus and Marcus. His long neglect seems all but unaccountable.

It is the purpose of this volume to make available generous selections from all three of the great Stoic philosophers. So far as the editors know, this has not been done elsewhere. There are only one or two books that even bring reasonably adequate excerpts of Epictetus and Marcus together; most often readers have had to find them in separate volumes. And adequate selections from Seneca’s writings on Stoicism do not seem to exist in any book at present in print.

Moreover, most readers today, we are convinced, will much prefer to read selections from each of the great Stoics rather than have to confront their output in its entirety. Because of the very way in which their work was composed or reported, it is full of repetitions. The Meditations of Marcus, for example, were apparently a journal, kept solely for his own eyes, in which he put down each evening or morning some reflection, resolve, or piece of advice to himself, without looking back to see whether he had written substantially the same thing a week or a month before. Again, nothing that has come down to us from Epictetus was written by him directly; it is the record of his discourses taken down by his disciple Arrian. In consequence, when Epictetus delivered very similar harangues to different audiences on different occasions, we have the record of each. Seneca, finally, repeated himself again and again and was conscious of it. He excused himself by remarking that “he does but inculcate over and over the same counsels to those that over and over commit the same faults.”

So selection seemed to the present editors both necessary and desirable, not only greatly to reduce repetition or to minimize obscurities but in order to concentrate on what is most representative or most memorable.

Of course there is no way of selecting “the best” objectively. Selection must necessarily depend to a large extent on the judgment and taste of the editors; and with so much richness to choose from, many decisions on what to put in or leave out had to be arbitrary. We can only plead that we have been as conscientious and “objective” as we know how.

We have taken approximately equal selections from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, but a slightly greater amount from Seneca, to compensate for the comparative inaccessibility of his work and for the previous undeserved neglect into which it has fallen.

The three great Stoics came from astonishingly different backgrounds. Seneca (c. 4 B.C. to A.D. 65) was a Spaniard who was brought to Rome at an early age. He studied rhetoric and philosophy, and soon gained a reputation at the Bar. He was banished in A.D. 41 by the Emperor Claudius, but recalled eight years later by Agrippina to become tutor to her son Domitius, afterwards the Emperor Nero, then 11 years old. When Nero came to the throne at 17, Seneca’s power was still further increased. Though a Stoic, professedly despising riches, he amassed a huge fortune. This was probably a mistake. His presence in time became irksome to Nero, and his enormous wealth excited his cupidity. Finally, in A. D. 65 Nero charged Seneca with complicity in a conspiracy against him, and ordered him to commit suicide. Tactitus describes the scene:

“Undismayed, he asked for tab lets to make his will. When this was refused by the centurion, he turned to his friends and said that, since he was prevented from rewarding their services, he would leave them the only thing, and yet the best thing, that he had to leave — the pattern of his life. ... At the same time he reminded his weeping friends of their duty to be strong ... asking them what had become of the precepts of wisdom, of the philosophy which for so many years they had studied in the face of impending evils. ... Then he embraced his wife” — and slit his wrists.

He was very prolific, and wrote altogether the equivalent of more than twenty volumes, including, in addition to his essays on practical ethics and other works on philosophy, nine tragedies, many satires and epigrams, and books on natural science, astronomy and meteorology.

Little is known about Epictetus. There is no agreement even about the years of his birth or death. The first has been set by various writers anywhere between A.D. 50 and 60, and the second between A.D. 100 and 135. He was probably from Hierapolis in Phrygia. As a boy he was a slave in Rome in the house of Epaphroditus, a favorite of Nero’s. On receiving his freedom, he became a professor of philosophy, which he had learned from attending the lectures of the Stoic Musonius Rufus.

He taught at Rome, but was expelled with other philosophers by Domitian in A.D. 90, and then went to Nicopolis in Epirus, where he appears to have spent the rest of his life.

He was lame, weak, and chronically poor. A story has it that one day his master started to twist his leg. Epictetus, smiling, told him: “If you go on, you will break my leg.” This happened; and Epictetus continued, just as calmly: “Did I not tell you that you would break my leg?”  Whether this actually happened we do not know; but it would be fully in accord with what we do know of the philos­opher’s character.

Epictetus wrote nothing. He teaching was transmitted by a pupil, Arrian, who recorded his discourses and compiled the short manual, the Enchiridion.

Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121 to 180) was at the other end of the social scale. He was the adopted son of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. He was privately educated, but abandoned the study of literature for that of philosophy and law under the Stoics Rusticus and Moecianus. He became Emperor in A.D. 161, but his reign from the beginning was a tragically unlucky one, and he was forced to spend most of his time fighting frontier wars, putting down insurrections, and combatting the effects of plague and demoraliza­tion. Notwithstanding all this, he found time to write his famous Meditations.

There has been much dispute among critics as to which of the three great Stoics was the best writer; but most present-day readers will be content to relish their variety. Seneca has the most copius vocabulary, is the richest in aphorisms, writes the most finished prose, and appeals by his strong and consistent common sense. Epictetus (as transcribed by Arrian) is the wittiest and most humorous, but also the most harshly uncompromising, and while he always keeps his reader awake, he also tends to put him off by his apparent coldness. Marcus lacks some of the gifts of either of his predecessors, but writes with a nobility and sincerity that has few equals in the whole realm of literature.

Though Stoicism expounded an elaborate cosmol­ogy, it was essentially a guide to the conduct of life. Man should live in accordance with nature. By this the Stoics meant not at all, however, that he should yield to his bodily appetites, but that he should be ruled by Reason. The highest good was the virtuous life. Virtue alone is happiness. Virtue is its own sufficient reward, and vice its own punish­ment. Good must be found by every man within himself. All outward things that are commonly regarded as good or bad, such as weal th and poverty, plea sure and pain, health and sickness, are matters of indiffer­ences to the true Stoic. He can be as happy stretch­ed upon a rack as reposing on a bed of roses.

The Stoics made a sharp distinction between things that are in our power and things that are not. Desire and dislike, opinion and affection, are within the power of the will; health, wealth, position, reputation, and the like are commonly not.

The Stoics strongly insisted on the unity of the universe, and on man’s duty as part of a great whole. They were the first to preach “cosmopolitanism.” “There is no difference between Greeks and barbar­ians; the world is our city.” They were also apparently the first who pronounced positive benefic­ence a virtue. “Love of one’s neighbor” for example, was enjoined by Marcus Aurelius. The Stoics deeply influenced the later morality of Christianity.

The three great Stoics represented here preached essentially the same doctrines, though colored by their individual experience and temperaments.

In comparison with the two others, the wealthy Seneca expounded only a modified Stoicism, with a much greater admixture of worldly wisdom. Yet it was he who reminded his readers: “If what you have seems insufficient to you, then, though you possess the world, you will yet be miserable.” And he tells us also that “the sum of human duty” is “patience, where we are to suffer, and prudence in the things we do.”

When we come to Epictetus, there is no compro­mise with worldliness: “Let death and exile be daily before your eyes.” “Better to die in hunger, exempt from grief and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation.”

Marcus is not as unfeeling as Epictetus some­times appears to be, yet such consolation as he offers must be bought at a high price. “Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold or warm, if thou art doing thy duty.” He even tells himself at one point: “Do not then consider life a thing of any value.”

These quotations, we must add in fairness, give far too grim an impression of the bulk of the writ­ings of the Stoics, most of whose advice on the conduct of life is not widely different from that given to this day by many non-Stoic philosophers. But the quotations do point to an apparent contra­dication in the Stoic system. If we are to take literally its contentions that happiness as ordinarily understood is not necessary, and pain no evil, what is the point in morality or in any human striving whatever?

For many modern readers, in fact, it may be hard to see what there was in the doctrines of Stoicism to attract adherents. Epicureans were told they could look for pleasure or at least tranquillity in the present life. Rationalists could recognize that if they refrained from overindulgence in their physical appetites they could probably enjoy better health and longer life, and that peaceful cooperation with others would bring great benefits to themselves as well as to their fellow men. Christians were promised at least future rewards for goodness or future punishment for sins. But the Stoic was told only that the reward of virtue was that of being virtuous.

Yet Stoicism did in fact appeal to the noblest among the ancients, and it has held that appeal for more than two thousand years. It is one of the permanent philosophies of life. In fact, it is still an indispensable element in any rational philosophy. For all men must eventually face death; and before that, the loss of loved ones; and nearly all, no matter how prudently or wisely they try to manage their lives, must at some time suffer disappointment, hardship, accident, defeat, ingratitude, rejection, affronts, humiliation, pain, and even periods of agony. There will always be times when men have need for patience, endurance and fortitude. These are the great virtues that the Stoic philosophy instills. And when men need these virtues most, they will want to turn to the calm wisdom of Seneca, to the stern admonishments of Epictetus, or to the lofty serenity of the Marcus Meditations, to renew their own courage and strength.

A note on the sources of the excerpts: The selections from Seneca are taken from the seven­teenth-century translation by Sir Roger L’ Estrange was published in Burt’s Home Library series in the early 1900s. It is hard to believe that this translation was not modernized by someone sometime along ­the way, for it is amazingly smooth and clear. For Epictetus we have chosen the Elizabeth Carter trans­lation of 1758 as still the most satisfactory. In addition to the numerous short excerpts, we have taken the whole of the Enchiridion, as this seems to have been specifically designed as a summary of his philosophy. For Marcus Aurelius we have for the most part used the George Long translation of 1862 — though in just a few passages we have returned to the old Meric Casaubon text of 1634, where we thought it clearer or more colorful.

In the selections from both Epictetus and Marcus we have retained the same “Book” numeration as in the full editions; but for the individual thoughts the selected numbering is our own, and has been adopted purely for convenience in reference.

• 1The Human Machine, 1908.