Seneca's most mteresting 'Moral Essays': On Anger, On Mercy, On the Private Life and the first four books of On Favours. They provide an attractive insight into the social and moral outlook of a Stoic thinker at the centre of power in the Roman empire of the mid first century AD. A General Introduction on Sene- ca's life and work explains the fundamental ideas in the philos- ophy that informs the essays. Individual introductions place the works in their specific historical and intellectual conte