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been the humbler one of trying to maintain accuracy while conveying something of the energy of Seneca’s prose and the variations of his tone. It is particularly important to retain the impression of the speaking voice that is clearly to be heard in the treatises and particularly in the letters. These works are not just moralizing texts, but personal counsel, frequently conveyed in tones of evangelizing urgency, and at other times just offering friendly sympathy coupled with touches of irony and self-depreciation. I hope that some at least of these varying effects come across in the translations, and that readers with sufficient knowledge of Latin may thereby be encouraged to go back to the originals and see for themselves what Seneca is really like.
NOTES
    1 . For further details of Seneca’s influence on English tragedy see F. L. Lucas, Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy, Cambridge, 1922.
    2 . Good discussions on all this can be found in L. D. Reynolds, The Medieval Tradition of Seneca’s Letters, Oxford, 1965, and G. M. Ross in C. D. N. Costa (ed.), Seneca, London, 1974.
    3 . See further G. Williamson, The Senecan Amble: Prose Form from Bacon to Collier, London, 1951.

A NOTE ON THE TEXT
TEXTS
    The Latin texts for this selection can be found as follows:
Letters
.
Edited by L. D. Reynolds for Oxford Classical Texts, Oxford, 1965.
Dialogues
Edited by L. D. Reynolds for Oxford Classical Texts, Oxford, 1977 (the ten Ambrosian Dialogues)
Natural Questions
Edited by A. Gercke, Teubner, Leipzig, 1907
TRANSLATIONS
    Translations that have been consulted are:
Letters
R. M. Gummere (Loeb), London/Cambridge, Mass., 1917–25
R. Campbell,
Letters from a Stoic
, Harmondsworth, 1969
Dialogues
J. W. Basore (Loeb), London/Cambridge, Mass., 1928–35
Natural Questions
T. H. Corcoran (Loeb), London/Cambridge, Mass., 1971–72

FURTHER READING
    Abel, K.,
Bauformen in Senecas Dialogen
, Heidelberg, 1967
    Albertini, E., La
Composition dans les ouvrages philosophiques de Sénèque
, Paris, 1923
    Costa, C. D. N. (ed.),
Seneca
, London, 1974
    Griffin, M. T.,
Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics
, Oxford, 1876
    Long, A. A.,
Hellenistic Philosophy
, London, 1974
    Lucas, F. L.,
Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy
, Cambridge, 1922
    Martha, C.,
Les Moralistes sous l’empire romain
, Paris, 1965
    Peter, H.,
Der Brief in der Römischen Literatur
, Leipzig, 1901
    Reynolds, L. D.,
The Medieval Tradition of Seneca’s Letters
, Oxford 1965
    Rist, J. M.,
Stoic Philosophy
, Cambridge, 1969
    Sandbach, F. H.,
The Stoics
, London, 1975
    Steyns, D.,
Métaphores et comparaisons de Sénèque le philosoph
Ghent, 1906
    Summers, W. C.,
Select Letters of Seneca
, London, 1910 (importan introduction)
    Trillitzsch, W.,
Seneca im literarischen Urteil der Antike
, Amsterdam 1971
    Williamson, G.,
The Senecan Amble: Prose Form from Bacon to Collier
, London, 1951

LETTERS
LETTER 24
    [
Seneca advises Lucilius on how to face the anxieties of a lawsuit and troubles in general
]
    1          You write that you are worried about the outcome of a lawsuit
which an enraged enemy is bringing against you. You think that
I’ll persuade you to view the future with confidence and calm
yourself with comforting hope. For what need is there to summon
troubles, to anticipate them, all too soon to be endured when
they come, and squander the present in fears of the future? It is
certainly foolish to make yourself wretched now just because you
are going to be wretched some time in the future.
    2               But I shall lead you to tranquillity by another route. If you
want to be rid of all anxiety, suppose that anything you are
afraid of happening is going to happen in any case, then mentally
calculate all the evil involved in it and appraise your own fear:
you will undoubtedly come to realize that what you fear is either
    3          not great or not