Hardship & Happiness

Book excerpt: Essays from the Stoic philosopher instructing how to find happiness in a world full of adversity. 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. Praise for Hardship and Happiness “[The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca] brings together many preeminent anglophone scholars of Seneca as editors and translators and succeeds in its aim to reach a wider audience through readable, modern English translations. . . . The overall high quality of the translations and notes make this volume (and its respective series) highly desirable for scholars and libraries alike.” —Classical Journal “A significant improvement over what has been available in English of the previous century. . . . The translations presented here admirably achieve the aim set out by the series’ editors: ‘to be faithful to the Latin while reading idiomatically in English.’ . . . Hardship and Happiness is a handsome volume, beautifully conceived and executed.” —Review of Metaphysics “We owe a debt of gratitude to Chicago for this one-volume selection of essays from long ago, which still have the power to stimulate our minds today.” —Classics for All