A Reading Recommendation: Seneca's Letters 63 and 99
two perspective-providing letters about how Stoics should deal with the death of loved ones
As I’m writing this from Wyoming Stoic Camp, where I’m on deck tonight as one of the guest speakers, to lead a discussion bearing upon some of the Stoic attitudes, assumptions, and arguments bearing on the emotion of grief, I realized that it might make some sense for my next reading recommendation to feature some of the material I’ll be referencing.
There are two letters by Seneca that will feature heavily in my presentation. I’ll also be referencing a bit of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, parts of Epictetus’ Enchiridion and Discourses, and some passages from Arius Didymus’ Epitome of Stoic Ethics. But Letters 63 and 99 will be the pieces that really clinch what I aim to have the participants engage with.
Both of these, like all of the letters in the collection, are addressed to his younger friend Lucilius. These two are occasioned by the type of crisis that every one of us inevitably faces, the loss of a loved one through death, and Seneca not only provides valuable advice to readers about how to deal with one’s own grief when experiencing such a loss. He both articulates in depth the Stoic position on grief as an emotion and grieving as comportment. And he also provides us with what I’ll call a well-reasoned and realistic reinterpretation of that sometimes too rigid and austere Stoic position.
The explicit occasion and application for Letter 63 is the death of a friend. The advice that Seneca provides there can also be applied to family members, romantic partners, or even (as I have done myself in the past) close animal companions. Lucilius has lost his friend Flaccus, so the wound is still quite fresh. Seneca also interestingly brings up his own earlier experience of a similar loss of a close friend, Annaeus Serenus, and openly admits that back then he fell short of the counsel he provides Lucilius in the present.
Letter 99 is a bit different. He tells Lucilius that he is including a previously written letter, addressed to someone else, Marullus, who is arguably in a tougher situation of loss than Lucilius was. Marullus had lost a child, his “little son”. The rest of Letter 99 is in fact that letter.
I won’t enumerate all of the interesting points that Seneca makes in these two letters, not least since I’m planning on doing some additional writing in the near future about this topic of Stoics’ attitudes towards and advice about grief. I’ll just close by pointing out two things that really stand out to me in Seneca’s letters concerning that emotion that might prove interesting enough to get you to read them yourself.
The first is that he doesn’t try to talk either of his correspondents out of feeling or displaying any grief over their losses at all. Seneca acknowledges that, with the exception of the legendary, perhaps never-existing, ideal sage or “wise person”, if you have a close relationship with a person who dies, you’re going to experience grief. And it is appropriate to express that grief, within certain reasonable limits. In fact, in Letter 99, he suggests that not expressing any grief would be wrong.
The second feature of these two letters, is a set of teachings bearing on memory practices (which I myself regularly engage in) that help us maintain some sort of connection with our beloved dead, one that has the potential to move beyond being bittersweet to offering occasions of joy and opportunities to continue loving.
There are many places online where you can find Seneca’s Letters. Generally, you will find them all using the same translation, an older public-domain one by Richard Gummere. Here’s one of them:
Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius (Wikisource)
If you’d like to read them in the original Latin, there’s also this:
Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales (Perseus)
If you want to purchase a copy, there’s a more recent translation by Margaret Graver and Anthony Long
Seneca, Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius (University of Chicago)
If you have previously read these two letters, or if you come back to this recommendation post after having read them, feel free to leave a comment with your own take on them!