Between Heathenism and Christianity / Being a translation of Seneca's De Providentia, and Plutarch's De sera numinis vindicta, together with notes, additional extracts from these writers and two essays on Graeco-Roman life in the first century after Christ.

by Charles William Super; Plutarch; Lucius Annaeus Seneca

DE PROVIDENTIA SIVE QUARE ALIQUA INCOMMODA BONIS VIRIS ACCIDANTCUM PROVIDENTIA SIT.

Note:—This monograph is addressed to the same Lucilius, procurator of Sicily, to whom Seneca also dedicates his letters and his Problems in Physics. The date of composition is not known, but it probably belongs to the later years of the author’s life. The opening sentences seem to make it a part of a larger work on ethics, or rather of a theodicy, which was either never completed or has not come down to us. This is a serious loss both to us and to Seneca: to us, because such a work would doubtless have placed before us a complete theory of human conduct as conceived by a man who was thoroughly conversant with the motives that dominate men; to Seneca, because it would in all probability have explained if not justified some of the inconsistencies that have so sadly marred his career. Indeed the fundamental proposition of the essay is inconsistent, since the conclusion does not follow from the premises. For if the patient endurance of tribulation is the supreme test of a good man, how is he justified in avoiding that test, as our author proposes, by taking his own life?