Letters from a Stoic

Main ideas

• Philosophy practised through correspondence and daily review.
• Time as the one possession genuinely our own.

Important themes

Reading context

Letters written by Nero's former tutor in his last years, addressed to a friend and to posterity at once. They are Stoic advice from a man who was also enormously rich and politically compromised, which is part of their interest.

How to approach it

Letters 1, 2, 47 and 54 are the usual way in. Read one at a time. Notice when the advice costs him nothing and when it clearly does.