Stoic Philosophy

Stoicism began in Athens around the third century before the common era, but the writings that survive whole are Roman and later: letters of advice to a friend, and a set of private notes that were never meant for publication. Their authors were a statesman and an emperor, writing to steady themselves rather than to found a school.

The recurring subject is the line between what a person controls, which is their own judgement and their own action, and everything else, which is not theirs. The writing returns again and again to grief, anger, time and death, and it treats them in the plain register of someone working out how to get through a day.