6.Seneca, Letters 13.13.
7.Seneca, Letters 78.13.
8.Seneca, Letters 44.7.
9.Seneca, Letters 13.4.
10.Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.8.
11.Seneca, Letters 13.8–9.
12.Epictetus, Handbook 5.
13.Cited in Donald Robertson, “The Stoic Influence on Modern Psychotherapy,” in The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, ed. John Sellars (London: Routledge, 2017), 375. Robertson is a cognitive behavioral therapist who has studied Stoicism in depth. His first work (2010) on the relationships between Stoicism and CBT is entitled The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT): Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2020). His more recent book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019), explores the parallels between the thinking of Marcus Aurelius and cognitive behavioral therapy, in addition to other topics.
14.Seneca, Letters 5.7.
15.Seneca, Letters 5.8.
16.Epictetus, Handbook 5.
17.Seneca, Letters 92.18.
18.Seneca, Letters 27.3.
CHAPTER 4: THE PROBLEM WITH ANGER
1.Seneca, On Anger 1.1.2.
2.The web pages of the American Psychological Association that address anger management overlap with about 95 percent of Seneca’s advice in his book On Anger. See “Controlling Anger Before It Controls You” (https://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control) and “Strategies for Controlling Your Anger: Keeping Anger in Check” (https://www.apa.org/topics/strategies-controlling-anger).
3.Seneca, On Anger 1.1.3–4.
4.Seneca, On Anger 2.36.6.
5.Seneca, On Anger 3.1.4.
6.Seneca, On Anger 3.1.5.
7.Seneca, On Anger 1.2.1.
8.Seneca, On Anger 2.36.5–6.
9.Seneca, On Anger 1.5.3.
10.Seneca, On Anger 1.19.1.
11.Seneca, Letters 71.27.
12.Epictetus, Discourses 3.2.4.
13.Seneca, On Mercy 2.5.3.
14.Seneca, On Anger 1.10.2. My interpretation of the four primary kinds of emotions recognized by the Stoics follows that of John Sellars, “Stoicism and Emotions,” in Stoicism Today: Selected Writings, Volume 2, ed. Patrick Ussher (CreateSpace, 2016), 43–48.
15.Chrysippus, one of the most important and influential of the early Greek Stoics, in his lost work On Passions or On Affections, had defined the passions as originating from incorrect judgments and as resembling forms of mental illness. He also described a therapy of the passions. Teun Tieleman, Chrysippus’ On Affections: Reconstruction and Interpretation (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 132 and chapter 4.
16.Margaret R. Graver, “Action and Emotion,” in The Brill Companion to Seneca: Philosopher and Dramatist, eds. Gregor Damschen and Andreas Heil (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2014), 272.
17.For the most important study of Stoic psychology during the entire tradition, see Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
18.Seneca outlines the three-step cognitive theory of emotion in On Anger 2.4.1–2. In terms of the “three movements,” I follow the interpretation of Robert A. Kaster, introduction to Seneca, On Anger, in Seneca, Anger, Mercy, and Revenge (University of Chicago Press, 2010), 6–8, and Brad Inwood, Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 61–63.
19.Seneca, On Anger 2.4.2.
20.Seneca, On Anger 2.29.1.
21.Seneca, On Anger 2.22.2.
22.Epictetus, Discourses 1.20.7.
23.Rollo May, The Courage to Create (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 100.
24.Seneca, On Anger 2.1.4.
25.Seneca, On Anger 1.8.1–2.
26.Seneca, Letters 116.3.
27.American Psychological Association, “Controlling Anger Before It Controls You,” section on “Strategies to Keep Anger at Bay.” https://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control.
28.Epictetus, Handbook 30.
29.Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.25.
30.Seneca, On Anger 2.10.7.
CHAPTER 5: WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE: YOU CAN’T ESCAPE YOURSELF
1.Seneca, Letters 28.1.
2.At the beginning of Letter 104, Seneca describes how he traveled to his villa at Nomentum, eighteen miles outside of Rome, because he was coming down with a fever. But once he got outside smoke-filled Rome and arrived at the villa, he felt just fine.
3.Seneca, Letters 17.12.
4.Seneca, Letters 104.8.
5.Seneca, Letters 104.7.
6.Seneca, Letters 2.1.
7.Seneca, Letters 2.2.
8.Seneca, Letters 89.23.
9.Seneca, Letters 16.9.
10.Seneca, Letters 69.1.
11.Seneca, Letters 35.4.
12.You can find a translation of On Leisure in Seneca, Hardship and Happiness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 219–32.
13.Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 2.14.
14.M. Andrew Holowchak, The Stoics (New York: Continuum, 2008), 185.
15.Seneca, Letters 28.4.
16.Seneca, Letters 55.8.
17.Seneca, Letters 23.7–8.
18.Seneca, Letters 71.2–3.
19.Seneca, Letters 71.2.
CHAPTER 6: HOW TO TAME ADVERSITY
1.Seneca, Letters 91.1.
2.Seneca, Letters 91.6.
3.Jack Malvern, “Stuck at Home, Stoic Britons Get Philosophical,” The Times, April 23, 2020. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stuck-at-home-stoic-britons-get-philosophical-b0h7jdnrb.
4.The term dichotomy of control was coined by the modern Stoic philosopher William B. Irvine in his book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 86–89. The eminent scholar of ancient philosophy, A. A. Long, believes that this idea, as an ethical premise, ultimately “goes back to Socrates in Plato’s Apology, where he says that no harm can come to the good man in life or death, which implies that virtue is ‘up to us,’ and happiness is impervious to fortune” (personal communication).
5.Seneca, Letters 76.16.
6.Seneca, Letters 66.23.
7.Seneca, Letters 74.1. Also see Letters 74.5–6.
8.Seneca, Letters 98.2.
9.Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.112.
10.Seneca, Letters 44.2.
11.Seneca, Letters 91.3–4.
12.Seneca, Letters 24.15.