A Note on the Translation

This volume is a complete translation of the twelve works that the manuscripts of Seneca call his Dialogues, together with the two surviving books of On Clemency, which he addressed to the young Nero. It is made directly from the Latin. The source is the electronic text of The Latin Library, which descends from the standard Teubner editions. Aubrey Stewart’s public-domain translation of 1889 was consulted only where the Latin is in doubt, and none of its wording is kept.

The works are printed in the traditional order of the Dialogues, from On Providence to the Consolation to His Mother Helvia, followed by On Clemency. Each keeps its chapter numbers, in bold at the start of the paragraph where a chapter begins; the finer section numbers of modern editions are left out. Every one of the 438 paragraphs of the source appears here as one paragraph. Where an editor has supplied a word, it is translated without a mark; where an editor has deleted one, it is left out; where the text is lost, the gap is shown as ⟨…⟩ and a note says so.

Seneca writes as a man talking to a friend. He states a point in a sentence short enough to remember, presses it with questions, and lets an imagined objector interrupt him. The English keeps those voices apart: the objector speaks inside quotation marks, and Seneca answers outside them. His key words are rendered the same way in every work: virtus is “virtue,” animus “mind,” fortuna “Fortune,” ira “anger,” iracundia “irascibility,” clementia “clemency,” and the sapiens is “the wise man.” Roman offices stay Roman: a consul is a consul.

The 210 notes are the translator’s. Because each work can be read on its own, a person is identified at his first appearance in each work. The notes also give the sources of quotations, mark damaged passages and Seneca’s own slips of fact, and offer no commentary.