To a man who, like Seneca, aimed at being not only a philosopher, but also a man of the worldwho in this very treatise criticises the Stoics for their ignorance of lifethere would not have seemed to be even the shadow of disgrace in a private effusion of insincere flattery intended to win the remission of a deplorable banishment.

The doctrine that there is no real good but virtue deprived the Stoics of the argument for a future world derived from unrequited merit and unpunished crimes, and the earnestness with which they contended that a good man should act irrespectively of reward, inclined them, as it is said to have inclined some Jewish thinkers, to the denial of the existence of the reward.

The Christians disliked the Stoics, the Stoics despised and persecuted the Christians.

Other philosophers of the period, even if not professed Stoics, may have discussed the same subjects in their lectures and writings, arriving at conclusions of the same kind.

why, there's a cadence able to ravish the dullest stoic.