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Moral Letters Vol III

Seneca

§ Section 18

On style as a mirror of character

114:18

Book Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.

Book Description: The final volume of Seneca's moral letters. Common Stoic themes emerge again and again: the unreliability of fortune, the ability to form Stoic resolve, and the importance of virtue.

18.

I merely desired to give you a taste; his whole book is interwoven with such stuff as this.

What Sallust reserved for occasional use, Arruntius makes into a frequent and almost continual habit—and there was a reason: for Sallust used the words as they occurred to his mind, while the other writer went afield in search of them.

So you see the results of copying another man’s vices.