The Stoic Bible: Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus

What it is

This is a 1920 anthology titled The Stoic Bible. Its contents list gives Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, the work of Epictetus, and Seneca's Moral Letters. The record says it was collected from public domain books and that the preface was removed. The scanned book is available as a PDF from the Internet Archive. The text is in English, and the record credits the compilation to a collector named in the scan.

Why it matters

Stoicism was a philosophy that taught self-control and acceptance of what one cannot change. Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations as private notes, and this anthology brings his writing together with the work of Seneca and Epictetus, two other Stoic thinkers. Because it is a collection of older texts made for a modern reader, it shows how Stoic ideas were passed on and read in the twentieth century.

Look closer

• Why might an editor have grouped these three writers together in one book?
• How does the title "Stoic Bible" affect the way you read these texts?
• What parts of the original writings might be missing from a collection put together for readers in 1920?