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Moral Letters Vol III

Seneca

§ Section 10

On darkness as a veil for wickedness

122:10

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.

10.

Such men are, in my opinion, as good as dead.

Are they not all but present at a funeral—and before their time too—when they live amid torches and tapers?

I remember that this sort of life was very fashionable at one time: among such men as Acilius Buta, a person of praetorian rank, who ran through a tremendous estate and on confessing his bankruptcy to Tiberius, received the answer: “You have waked up too late!”