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Moral Letters Vol III

Seneca

§ Section 20

On the usefulness of basic principles

95:20

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.

20.

The illustrious founder of the guild and profession of medicine remarked that women never lost their hair or suffered from pain in the feet; and yet nowadays they run short of hair and are afflicted with gout.

This does not mean that woman’s physique has changed, but that it has been conquered; in rivalling male indulgences they have also rivalled the ills to which men are heirs.