Seneca's Morals by way of Abstract. of benefits. Part I. of a happy life; of anger and clemency. Part II. [The third, and last part] digested into xxviii epistles.

Roger L'Estrange's influential translation of this collection of moral essays by the Hispano-Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (d. AD 65), which together forms the most important primary source for classical Stoicism. L'Estrange's Morals principally draws upon three of Seneca's essays from his wider series of dialogues, namely De Beneficiis ('On Benefits'), written between AD 56-62, De Clementia ('On Mercy'), a mirror for princes composed following the murder of Nero's rival Britannicus in AD 55, and De Ira ('On Anger'), which dates to the end of his life, when Seneca was forced to commit involuntary suicide. Seneca was born at the end of the 1st century BC in Corduba, then in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica. He was soon taken to Rome where his father, a rhetorician of equestrian rank, resided, and where Seneca was exposed to the rudiments of Stoic philosophy, in time gaining the quaestorship which allowed him the right to sit in the Senate. After a brief, but eventful political career, which saw his exile for 8 years to Corsica, Seneca became tutor to the future Emperor Nero, and then advisor during his reign. In AD 65 he was implicated, perhaps rightly, in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate the Emperor, for which he forfeited his life. Fourteenth edition; 12mo (17 x 11 cm); engraved frontispiece, engraved vignette headpieces, further head and tail ornaments and woodcut initials, 18th-century ownership inscription to front free endpaper recto, a little toned; contemporary sprinkled calf, rebacked, contrast red morocco lettering-piece to spine, very good; [24], 445, [7]pp. ESTC R27570; Wing S2514.…