Valice Press

Free companion

Seneca: Selected Dialogues

Free material for Seneca: On the Shortness of Life complete, a line on every one of the seventy-nine chapters, the working terms on one sheet, and four ways into the dialogues.

The Valice edition is built and validated but not yet on sale — the rights gate is signed by a person, not a script, and that signature is outstanding. Everything on this page is free and works today regardless.

Reading material

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  • On the Shortness of Life

    PDF · US Letter · 5 pages

    Seneca's most famous essay, complete and unabridged, in Aubrey Stewart's 1889 translation. Twenty chapters on why life is not short and we are simply wasteful with it.

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  • What is in every chapter

    PDF · US Letter · 3 pages

    Seneca wrote no headings; the chapter numbers were added by later editors and tell you nothing. A line for each of the seventy-nine, so you can find a passage again.

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  • The working terms

    PDF · US Letter · 1 page

    The fourteen words Seneca uses technically and plain English hides — happy, virtue, indifferent, leisure, the wise man — each with the Latin and where to find it.

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  • Four ways in

    PDF · US Letter · 1 page

    Where to start depending on why you picked Seneca up — including the one for readers who want to know whether he can be trusted.

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About this material

Seneca died in 65 and Aubrey Stewart, whose translation this is, died in 1918, so the text on these sheets is in the public domain everywhere (source: Project Gutenberg #64576). The argument map, the glossary and the reading paths are Valice Press's own writing.

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