Free Download Of Consolation: To Marcia, to Helvia, to Polybius (Audiobook)
English | July 20, 2023 | ASIN: B0C9KSG6JR | M4B@128 kbps | 3h 58m | 220 MB
Author: Seneca the Younger | Narrator: Mike Rogers
These three ‘Consolations’, written by Seneca to his mother and two friends, have been described as ‘the crowning achievement in the canon of ‘consolation letters’. But sentimental they are not, for they emerge from the writer’s deep-seated commitment to Stoicism, where individuals are exhorted to inhabit qualities of virtue, positivity, resilience, and indifference. This recording opens with Seneca’s consolatory letter to Marcia, who, after three years, was still mourning the death of her son. He recognizes her exceptional personal qualities and what benefits she has brought to her family, having rescued her father’s legacy as a historian following his death. He cites other noble Roman mothers who lost their sons, and enjoins her to adopt a more Stoic attitude of mind: we are all destined to die, he declares.
The second letter is to his mother sent after he had been exiled to Corsica by Emperor Caligula. He counsels Helvia not to mourn his absence-not least because he himself does not feel grief at the prospect of his own exile. He acknowledges the trials of his mother during her life, remarking ‘ill-fortune has given you no respite’. But her grief at the absence of her son may be put to one side in the knowledge that as he has ‘never trusted in Fortune,’ she can be comforted that her son is not discommoded. And history points to far harsher separations.