Seneca the Philosopher and His Modern Message

Richard Mott Gummere's volume on Seneca is the first in a series known as Our Debt to Greece and Rome. The volume is an attempt to explain, as far as possible within a small volume, the nature and extent of the influence of the philosophy of Seneca, which was of constant interest and importance throughout the centuries following the life, work and death of the great Roman philosopher and statesman of the empire. That such influence persists is of sufficient interest to mark Seneca's philosophy as a philosophy of broad character and vital content. For everything rises and falls, people come and go, and the whims of Time pay little attention to the insignificant and insignificant. The reader will discover the main reasons for the continuing appeal of Seneca's message and mission in Europe in a later period, not to mention the further penetration of this religious and ethical system into the thought, life and literature of other peoples across the seas. That Seneca is still alive, that Seneca's modernity is characterized by a mind that transcends time and space, that Seneca will continue to shape human aspirations are some of the inevitable takeaways from reading this essay.