Two leaves from a copy of Seneca the younger, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [Italy, late thirteenth or early fourteenth century]

Two leaves from a copy of Seneca the younger, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [Italy, late thirteenth or early fourteenth century]

2 single leaves, each with double column of 40 lines of a tall Italian gothic bookhand (with parts of epistles 81-2 & 83-4), spaces left for initials, some pointing finger marks, reused in a later binding and hence with scuffs and stains, a few later Italian scribbles in margins, overall in fair and presentable condition, each 209 by 145mm.

Unlike many other works of Classical literature, the Middle Ages never set aside and forgot the gentle moralising works of the Roman philosopher and statesman, Seneca the younger (c. 4 BC.-65 AD., more properly Lucius Annaeus Seneca). His collection of letters seems to have been split in Antiquity into three volumes, with the first two containing letters 1-88 and 89-124 respectively, and the third volume lost. The first volume, with the texts here, survived as a predominantly French tradition, with the two halves reuniting again in Normandy and England around the time of the Norman Conquest. The letters here cover the subjects of benefits (or acts of kindness to others), the natural fear of death (with the line Leisure without study is death; it is a tomb for the living man), drunkenness (arguing that the wise man ought not to get drunk … [as] what men call pleasures are punishments as soon as they have exceeded due bounds), and the gathering of ideas over riches.