Books by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Letters from a Stoic (Penguin Classics)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"It is philosophy that has the duty of protecting us...without it no one can lead a life free of fear or worry."

For several years of his turbulent life, Seneca was the guiding hand of the Roman Empire. His inspired reasoning derived mainly from the Stoic principles, which had originally been developed some centuries earlier in Athens. This selection of Seneca's letters shows him upholding the austere ethical ideals of Stoicism—the wisdom of the self-possessed person immune to overmastering emotions and life’s setbacks—while valuing friendship and the courage of ordinary men, and criticizing the harsh treatment of slaves and the cruelties in the gladiatorial arena. The humanity and wit revealed in Seneca’s interpretation of Stoicism is a moving and inspiring declaration of the dignity of the individual mind.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Seneca: Fifty Letters of a Roman Stoic

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

A selection of Seneca’s most significant letters that illuminate his philosophical and personal life.

“There is only one course of action that can make you happy. . . . rejoice in what is yours. What is it that is yours? Yourself; the best part of you.”

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 onto his experience as a landowner, a traveler, and a man coping with the onset of old age. They share his ideas on everything from the treatment of enslaved people to the perils of seafaring, and they provide lucid explanations for many key points of Stoic philosophy.

This selection of fifty letters brings out the essentials of Seneca’s thought, with much that speaks directly to the modern reader. Above all, they explore the inner life of the individual who proceeds through philosophical inquiry from a state of emotional turmoil to true friendship, self-determination, and personal excellence.

Volume IX. Tragedies II: Agamemnon. Thyestes. Hercules Oetaeus. Phoenissae. Octavia (Loeb Classical Library)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION

Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Margaret Graver, A. A. Long

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.

Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Margaret Graver, A. A. Long

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.

Natural Questions (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and adviser to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca―whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson―to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities.
Written near the end of Seneca’s life, Natural Questions is a work in which Seneca expounds and comments on the natural sciences of his day―rivers and earthquakes, wind and snow, meteors and comets―offering us a valuable look at the ancient scientific mind at work. The modern reader will find fascinating insights into ancient philosophical and scientific approaches to the physical world and also vivid evocations of the grandeur, beauty, and terror of nature.

Seneca's Thyestes

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Although the 'Thyestes' is widely acknowledged to be one of Seneca's most powerful tragedies, there has until now been no modern commentary on the play in any language. My principal aim has thus been to make this extraordinary work more widely accessible and so contribute to a greater appreciation of its quality. The 'Thyestes' seems to me an even better and richer play now that it did when I embarked on this commentary; I hope that the pleasure I have had in exploring it will be reflected in what I have written, and that my enthusiasm will offer some compensation for my failures of understanding." -- preface, p. [ix].

Hardship and Happiness (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and advisor to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection helps restore Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities.

Hardship and Happiness collects a range of essays intended to instruct, from consolations—works that offer comfort to someone who has suffered a personal loss—to pieces on how to achieve happiness or tranquility in the face of a difficult world. Expertly translated, the essays will be read and used by undergraduate philosophy students and experienced scholars alike.

On Benefits (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and advisor to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca―whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson―to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities.

On Benefits, written between 56 and 64 CE, is a treatise addressed to Seneca’s close friend Aebutius Liberalis. The longest of Seneca’s works dealing with a single subject―how to give and receive benefits and how to express gratitude appropriately―On Benefits is the only complete work on what we now call “gift exchange” to survive from antiquity. Benefits were of great personal significance to Seneca, who remarked in one of his later letters that philosophy teaches, above all else, to owe and repay benefits well.

Seneca: Phaedra (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Seneca's Phaedra occupies an important and influential position in the tradition of European drama. This new edition concentrates on the play's dramatic qualities, examining its Greek and Roman background. The introduction presents discussion of dramaturgy and rhetoric as well as style and textual transmission. An unusual feature is the tracing of the influence of Phaedra's story on later European literature and music. The commentary has extensive notes not only on Seneca's language, but also on plot, characterization, and the use of myth.

Anger, Mercy, Revenge (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and adviser to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities.
Anger, Mercy, Revenge comprises three key writings: the moral essays On Anger and On Clemency—which were penned as advice for the then young emperor, Nero—and the Apocolocyntosis, a brilliant satire lampooning the end of the reign of Claudius. Friend and tutor, as well as philosopher, Seneca welcomed the age of Nero in tones alternately serious, poetic, and comic—making Anger, Mercy, Revenge a work just as complicated, astute, and ambitious as its author.

Seneca: Apocolocyntosis (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The Gourdification of Claudius the God has instant and lasting appeal. It is a uniquely surviving specimen of prose-and-verse satire from the Roman world - and satire, a Roman speciality, is one of the few types of ancient literature to survive, and thrive, in modern society. Its author, Seneca, was not only gifted with intellectual virtuosity, but, at the time of writing, was the precarious power behind the throne of the dangerously developing Nero. Claudius, the target of his malicious wit, remains the most controversial of the first twelve imperial Caesars. The English version facing the text makes the work available to the general reader who may not have any Latin. The text, which is based on a critical examination of all the manuscripts, will be indispensable to scholars. The commentary, which is the first on this scale to have been written in English, is primarily addressed to university and other students.

Phaedra

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Ahl's translations of three Senecan tragedies will gratify and challenge readers and performers. With stage performance specifically in mind, Ah1 renders Seneca's dramatic force in a modern idiom and style that move easily between formality and colloquialism as the text demands, and he strives to reproduce the richness of the original Latin, to retain the poetic form, images, wordplays, enigmas, paradoxes, and dark humor of Seneca's tragedies.

Here is a moving and accomplished translation of this complex play dealing the the violent passions stirred by innocence and beauty and the terrible power of ideology, hatred, and misunderstanding.

The Phaedra of Seneca (Latin Edition)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Gilbert Lawall, Sarah Lawall, Gerda Kunkel

Illustrated rapid reader. Book includes an analysis of the play, vocabulary, study questions, stage directions, and a new translation of the Hippolytus by Euripides.

The Complete Tragedies, Volume 2 Oedipus, Hercules Mad, Hercules on Oeta, Thyestes, Agamemnon

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The second of two volumes collecting the complete tragedies of Seneca.

Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, the Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca offers authoritative, modern English translations of the writings of the Stoic philosopher and playwright (4 BCE–65 CE). The two volumes of The Complete Tragedies presents all of his dramas, expertly rendered by preeminent scholars and translators.

The first volume contains Medea, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, The Trojan Women, and Octavia, the last of which was written in emulation of Senecan tragedies and serves as a unique example of political tragedy. This second volume includes Oedipus, Hercules Mad, Hercules on Oeta, Thyestes, and Agamemnon. High standards of accuracy, clarity, and style are maintained throughout the translations, which render Seneca into verse with as close a correspondence, line for line, to the original as possible, and with special attention paid to meter and overall flow. In addition, each tragedy is prefaced by an original translator’s introduction offering reflections on the work’s context and meaning. Notes are provided for the reader unfamiliar with the culture and history of classical antiquity. Accordingly, The Complete Tragedies will be of use to a general audience and professionals alike, from the Latinless student to scholars and instructors of comparative literature, classics, philosophy, drama, and more.

Seneca: Medea (Aris and Phillips Classical Texts)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

A new edition of the Latin text, with a facing English prose translation, of one of Rome's most notorious and ferocious plays. The lengthy, useful introduction examines all aspects of the play's literary and thematic features, placing it firmly within the context of the 1st century AD, whilst also trying to determine the processes that led Seneca to create such a bleak view of the universe. Hine's discussion includes a biography of Seneca, a history of tragedy and the Roman theatre, the influence of Stoicism, politics and religion, characterisation, the play's language, devices and structure, questions of staging and the manuscript tradition.

The Complete Tragedies, Volume 1: Medea, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, The Trojan Women, Octavia (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The first of two volumes collecting the complete tragedies of Seneca.

Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, the Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca series offers authoritative, modern English translations of the writings of the Stoic philosopher and playwright (4 BCE–65 CE). The two volumes of The Complete Tragedies present all of his dramas, expertly rendered by preeminent scholars and translators.

This first volume contains Medea, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, The Trojan Women, and Octavia, the last of which was written in emulation of Senecan tragedies and serves as a unique example of political tragedy. The second volume includes Oedipus, Hercules Mad, Hercules on Oeta, Thyestes, and Agamemnon. High standards of accuracy, clarity, and style are maintained throughout the translations, which render Seneca into verse with as close a correspondence, line for line, to the original as possible, and with special attention paid to meter and overall flow. In addition, each tragedy is prefaced by an original translator’s introduction offering reflections on the work’s context and meaning. Notes are provided for the reader unfamiliar with the culture and history of classical antiquity. Accordingly, The Complete Tragedies will be of use to a general audience and professionals alike, from the Latinless student to scholars and instructors of comparative literature, classics, philosophy, drama, and more.