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De Constantia Sapientis
''De Constantia Sapientis'' () is a moral essay written by Seneca the Younger, a Roman Stoic philosopher, sometime around 55 AD. The work celebrates the imperturbility of the ideal Stoic sage, who with an inner firmness, is strengthened by injury and adversity. Date and addressee The work is addressed to Seneca's friend Annaeus Serenus and written sometime between 47 and 62. ''De Constantia Sapientis'' is one of a trio of dialogues addressed to Serenus, which also includes ''De Tranquillitate Animi'' and ''De Otio''. The superior position the sage inhabits, of detachment from earthly future events of a detrimental nature, is the unifying theme of the dialogues. Since Serenus is portrayed as not yet a Stoic in ''De Constantia Sapientis'', it is usually considered the earliest of the three dialogues. Content In ''De Constantia Sapientis'' Seneca argues that Stoicism is not as harsh as it first appears. Recalling the figure of Cato the Younger Marcus Porcius Cato "Uticensis" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seneca The Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (; 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in Córdoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica under emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his advisor and, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, provided competent government for the first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, in which he was probably innocen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), Roman Republic (509–27 BC) and Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD) until the fall of the western empire. Ancient Rome began as an Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian Peninsula. The settlement grew into the city and polity of Rome, and came to control its neighbours through a combination of treaties and military strength. It eventually dominated the Italian Peninsula, assimilated the Greek culture of southern Italy ( Magna Grecia) and the Etruscan culture and acquired an Empire that took in much of Europe and the lands and peoples surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. It was among the largest empires in the ancient world, with an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants, roughly 20% of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjuga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essay
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc. Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's ''An Essay on Criticism'' and '' An Essay on Man''). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's ''An ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century Common Era, BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve Eudaimonia, (happiness, ): one flourishes by living an Ethics, ethical life. The Stoics identified the path to with a life spent practicing the cardinal virtues and living in accordance with nature. The Stoics are especially known for teaching that "virtue is the only good" for human beings, and that external things, such as health, wealth, and pleasure, are not good or called in themselves (''adiaphora'') but have value as "material for virtue to act upon". Alongside Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to virtue ethics. The Stoics also held that certain destructive emotions resulted from errors of judgment, and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De Tranquillitate Animi
''De Tranquillitate Animi'' (''On the tranquility of the mind / on peace of mind'') is a Latin work by the Stoic philosopher Seneca (4 BC–65 AD). The dialogue concerns the state of mind of Seneca's friend Annaeus Serenus, and how to cure Serenus of anxiety, worry and disgust with life. Background Around 400 B.C., Democritus wrote a treatise ''On Cheerfulness'' (Greek: Περι εύθυμίης; ''Peri euthymiés''). The term euthymia, or "cheerfulness", can mean ''steadiness of the mind'', ''well-being of the soul'', ''self-confidence''. Seneca lauds Democritus in relation to his treatise on the subject, and states that he will use the Latin word ''tranquillitas'' as a rough translation of ''euthymia''.''Volume 2 of History of rhetoric'' Writing a little later than Seneca, Plutarch wrote a similar work, described in the 1589 translation as, "a philosophical treatise concerning the quietness of the mind". Dating ''De Tranquillitate Animi'' is thought to be written during the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De Otio
''De Otio'' (''On Leisure'') is a 1st-century Latin work by Seneca (4 BC–65 AD). It survives in a fragmentary state. The work concerns the rational use of spare time, whereby one can still actively aid humankind by engaging in wider questions about nature and the universe. Dating No absolute certainty about the date of writing is possible, but since the contents of the work parallel Seneca's own withdrawal into private life near the end of his life it is thought by a majority of critics to have been written around 62 AD or shortly after.R Scott Smith ''Brill's Companion to Seneca: Philosopher and Dramatist''(edited by Andreas Heil, Gregor Damschen) Brill, 2013 etrieved 2015-3-16/ref> Title and contents ''Otio'' is from ''otium'', this literally translates as leisure, vacant time, freedom from business. ''De Otio'' survives only in fragmentary form. The manuscript text begins mid-sentence, and ends rather abruptly. In the Codex Ambrosianus C 90 (the main source for Seneca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sage (philosophy)
A sage ( grc, σοφός, ''sophos''), in classical philosophy, is someone who has attained wisdom. The term has also been used interchangeably with a 'good person' ( grc, ἀγαθός, ''agathos''), and a 'virtuous person' ( grc, σπουδαῖος, ''spoudaios''). Among the earliest accounts of the sage begin with Empedocles' ''Sphairos''. Horace describes the ''Sphairos'' as "Completely within itself, well-rounded and spherical, so that nothing extraneous can adhere to it, because of its smooth and polished surface."Pierre Hadot (1998).''The Inner Citadel'', trans. Michael Chase. Harvard University Press, p. 119 Alternatively, the sage is one who lives "according to an ideal which transcends the everyday." Several of the schools of Hellenistic philosophy have the sage as a featured figure. Karl Ludwig Michelet wrote that "Greek religion culminated with its true god, the sage"; Pierre Hadot develops this idea, stating that "the moment philosophers achieve a rational conception ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cato The Younger
Marcus Porcius Cato "Uticensis" ("of Utica"; ; 95 BC – April 46 BC), also known as Cato the Younger ( la, Cato Minor), was an influential conservative Roman senator during the late Republic. His conservative principles were focused on the preservation of what he saw as old Roman values in decline. A noted orator and a follower of Stoicism, his scrupulous honesty and professed respect for tradition gave him a powerful political following which he mobilised against powerful generals (including Julius Caesar and Pompey) of his day. Before Caesar's civil war, Cato served in a number of political offices. During his urban quaestorship in 63 BC, he was praised for his honesty and incorruptibility in running Rome's finances. He passed laws during his tribunate in 62 BC to expand the grain dole and force generals to give up their armies and commands before standing in elections. He also frustrated Pompey's ambitions by opposing a bill brought by Pompey's allies to transfer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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