SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXXVI1I.
Posidonius a divides the arts into four classes :
we have those which are common and low, then
first
those which serve for amusement, then those which
refer to the education of boys, and, finally, the liberal
arts. The common sort belong to workmen and are
mere hand-work ;
they are concerned with equipping
life ;
there is in them no pretence to beauty or
honour. The arts of amusement are those which
aim to please the eye and the ear. To this class
you may assign the stage - machinists, who invent
scaffolding that goes aloft of its own accord, or
floors that rise silently into the and air, many other
surprising devices, as when objects that fit together
then fall apart, or objects which are separate then
join together automatically, or objects which stand
erect then gradually collapse. The eye of the
inexperienced is struck with amazement by these
things for such persons marvel at everything that
;
takes place without warning, because they do not
know the causes. The arts which belong to the
education of boys, and are somewhat similar to the
liberal arts, are those which the Greeks call the
" cycle of b studies," but which we Romans call the
"liberal." However, those alone are really liberal
or rather, to give them a truer name, "free"
whose concern is virtue.
"But," one will say, "just as there is a part of
philosophy which has to do with nature, and a part
which has to do with ethics, and a part which has to
do with reasoning, so this group of liberal arts also
claims for itself a place in philosophy. When one
approaches questions that deal with nature, a decision
is reached by means of a word from the mathematician.
Therefore mathematics is a department
of that branch which it aids." c But many things
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