Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 2

Thus, for Volume I, after the Life of Seneca, after the various judgments of ancient authors concerning him, and after J. Lipsius’s Manuduction—which truly introduces the reader as if by the hand into the entire Stoic philosophy—we have assigned the treatises on the various virtues or vices: On Anger, On Clemency, On the Tranquility of the Mind, On the Constancy of the Wise Man, On Leisure, On the Shortness of Life, and On the Happy Life, in this order; beginning with the books On Anger, which it is sufficiently established were the first of all to be written, while Caligula was still alive.

For Volume II, we have destined the various books On Consolation, prefixing to them the short work On Providence, or Why Misfortunes Befall Good Men, which is, as it were, an introduction to the Consolatory Books. We have placed the two Consolations, To Helvia and To Marcia, one after the other, since they treat almost the same material; nor did we wish the Game on the Death of Claudius Caesar to be separated from the Consolation to Polybius, of which it is, as it were, a palinode. Finally, after those moral works, we have seen to it that the books On Benefits be placed; for all writers agree in this, that they were the very last to be written, when Seneca was already an old man.

Volumes III and IV will be filled by the Moral Letters, which our philosopher appears to have written at different times, to be sure, but especially in his old age; to these we shall append the Correspondence of Seneca and the Divine Apostle Paul, which, even if it seems supposititious, will be useful and pleasing to many because it presents marvelous similarities, both in sentiments and in words, between Christians and Stoics.

Volume V will contain the Natural Questions, a work entirely different from all other books and of its own kind, which...