Practise what you ask of life.
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
The catalogue covers the ten treatises transmitted as the Dialogi (twelve books because On Anger has three), the 124 surviving Letters to Lucilius, On Benefits, On Clemency, Natural Questions, Apocolocyntosis and the ten transmitted tragedies. Octavia is generally rejected as Seneca’s; Hercules Oetaeus remains disputed. Fragmentary lost works are distinguished from intact books, and the letter inventory is complete only for Gummere’s surviving 1–124 sequence. Pseudonymous epigrams, remedies and the later Seneca–Paul correspondence are outside the securely authored corpus.
Explore letters and fragmentsThe 124 surviving letters turn daily events, reading and conversation into a sustained education in Stoic ethics. Lucilius is both an addressed friend and a literary partner; the sequence moves between practical counsel and demanding arguments about virtue, knowledge and happiness.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Addressed to Lucilius, this short dialogue asks why good people suffer if providence governs the universe. Seneca compares adversity to demanding training and parental discipline, defending virtue as a good that hostile circumstances cannot remove.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Addressing Serenus, Seneca defends the paradox that the wise person cannot suffer moral injury or insult. The claim concerns the integrity of virtue, not physical invulnerability; examples of humiliation reveal how strongly dependence on public approval shapes ordinary experience.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Three books addressed to Novatus analyse anger as a desire to punish a perceived wrong. Seneca combines a theory of judgment with practical advice on delay, education and self-examination, while rejecting the claim that anger is necessary for courage or justice.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Seneca addresses Marcia after the death of her son Metilius, combining philosophical argument with examples of bereaved parents. The work also recalls her father Cremutius Cordus, whose historical writings survived political repression through her efforts.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Addressing Gallio, Seneca argues that happiness depends on living according to reason rather than following the crowd or pursuing pleasure. The surviving text then answers charges that a wealthy philosopher’s conduct contradicts his teaching; its ending is incomplete.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)This incomplete dialogue examines when withdrawal from public office can be compatible with Stoic duty. Seneca distinguishes service to a particular political community from participation in the wider community of rational beings, making study potentially useful to others.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Serenus describes an unsettled mind drawn alternately toward simplicity, luxury, public service and retreat. Seneca responds with a flexible account of steadiness, advising the reader to assess personal capacities, choose worthwhile commitments and make room for friendship and rest.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Addressing Paulinus, Seneca argues that life seems short because people surrender their time to ambition, distraction and other people’s demands. Philosophical leisure offers a different relation to the present and to past thinkers, rather than a technique for increasing output.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Written during exile, this consolation addresses the imperial freedman Polybius after his brother’s death. Advice about grief accompanies praise of Claudius, making the relationship between philosophical counsel and the author’s hope of recall unusually visible.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Seneca consoles his mother about his own banishment to Corsica. Reversing the expected direction of comfort, he argues that displacement cannot deprive a person of nature, thought or virtue, and encourages Helvia to resume intellectual study.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Seven books examine giving, receiving, gratitude and ingratitude within Roman relationships of obligation. Seneca locates a benefit in the giver’s intention rather than the object transferred, while testing difficult cases involving slaves, rulers and unequal power.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Addressed to the young Nero, this incomplete treatise describes restraint in punishment as the ruler’s distinguishing virtue. Its praise offers an ideal that the emperor is invited to inhabit, while leaving the structure of concentrated imperial power largely intact.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)These books investigate atmospheric and terrestrial phenomena: rainbows, thunder, water, clouds, winds, earthquakes and comets. Physical explanations alternate with ethical reflections; the transmitted order and the division into seven or eight books vary across editions.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)This Menippean satire follows the dead emperor Claudius through a failed attempt at deification and a humiliating descent to the underworld. Alternating prose and verse, it exposes imperial injustice through grotesque comedy; the received title’s exact relation to the text remains debated.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)After returning from the underworld and overcoming the tyrant Lycus, Hercules is driven mad by Juno and kills his own family. Heroic strength becomes a source of catastrophe, and survival requires accepting help from others.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)After Troy’s destruction, captive women await enslavement while the Greeks demand the deaths of Polyxena and Astyanax. The play turns victory into a study of civilian suffering, bereavement and the reproduction of violence across generations.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)This incomplete tragedy presents Oedipus with Antigone and then Jocasta attempting to prevent war between Eteocles and Polynices. Its surviving scenes examine whether family appeals can interrupt the struggle for sovereign power.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Abandoned by Jason and threatened with exile, Medea destroys his new marriage and kills their children. Seneca’s version gives particular force to self-address, magic and the heroine’s deliberate creation of an identity through revenge.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Phaedra desires her stepson Hippolytus, whose rejection leads to a false accusation and his destruction through Theseus’s curse. The play explores desire, shame and the disastrous authority of a judgment made without hearing the accused.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)A plague drives Oedipus to investigate the hidden pollution afflicting Thebes. Prophecy, necromancy and testimony gradually reveal that the king himself is the killer and son of Laius, making the pursuit of knowledge inseparable from fear.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Agamemnon’s triumphant return from Troy leads to murder by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Cassandra’s prophetic vision and the inherited crimes of the house of Atreus turn the victorious homecoming into another stage of reciprocal violence.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Atreus lures his brother Thyestes back to court with a false offer of reconciliation, then serves him the flesh of his murdered children. The play investigates tyranny as the deliberate construction of another person’s ignorance and helplessness.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Transmitted among Seneca’s tragedies but of disputed authorship, this exceptionally long play recounts Hercules’s death from a poisoned garment sent by Deianira. Physical agony, family misunderstanding and eventual elevation reshape the meaning of heroic endurance.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)This anonymous Roman historical tragedy portrays Nero’s repudiation of Octavia and marriage to Poppaea. Seneca appears as a character advising the emperor; the play was transmitted with his tragedies but is generally regarded as a later work.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Quotations in later authors preserve traces of lost writings, including On Superstition, On Marriage and the Exhortations. A modern fragment collection reconstructs these remains from separate witnesses; it is not a continuous book left by Seneca.
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