SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE XC.
need of happiness, and that he is most powerful who
has power over himself.
I am not speaking of that philosophy which has
placed the citizen outside his country and the gods
outside the universe, and which has bestowed virtue
upon pleasure,* but rather of that philosophy which
counts nothing good except what is honourable, one
which cannot be cajoled by the gifts either of man or
of fortune, one whose value is that it cannot be bought
for any value. That this philosophy existed in such
a rude age, when the arts and crafts were still unknown
and when useful things could only be learned by use,
this I refuse to believe.
Next there came the fortune-favoured period when
the bounties of nature lay open to all, for men's indiscriminate
use, before avarice and luxury had broken
the bonds which held mortals together, and they,
abandoning their communal existence, had separated
and turned to plunder. The men of the second age
were not wise men, even though they did what
wise men should do. & Indeed, there is no other
condition of the human race that anyone would
regard more highly ; and if God should commission
a man to fashion earthly creatures and to bestow
institutions upon peoples, this man would approve
of no other system than that which obtained among
the men of that age, when
No ploughman
tilled the soil, nor was it right
To portion off or bound one's property.
Men shared their gains, and earth more freely gave
Her riches to her sons who sought them not. c
What race of men was ever more blest than that
race ?
They enjoyed all nature in partnership.
Nature sufficed for them, now the guardian, as before
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