7 Pleasures A Stoic REJECTS To Be FREE.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born in Córdoba in Roman Hispania a few years before the birth of Christ.

His father, a cultured and demanding man, moved the family to Rome so that his sons could make their careers there.

And Seneca, while still a boy, began to seek out the city's philosophers.

One of them left his mark on him for good.

His name was Attalus, a Stoic teacher with a fiery tongue.

Seneca tells us in one of his letters that he was always the first to arrive at his lectures and the last to leave, and that whenever Attalus spoke out against luxury and against the pleasures that enslave, he walked out determined to change his life, and he did, at least in part.

Seneca relates that on Attalus' advice, he gave up oysters and mushrooms for good, which in Rome were a rich man's indulgence.

He gave up perfumes.

For the rest of his life, he never drank wine to excess, and he avoided baths that were too hot.

He even stopped eating meat for a year under the influence of another teacher, Sotion, until his father asked him to give it up because in those days, such a habit could arouse suspicion.

Then life happened.

A brilliant career as an orator, eight years of exile on Corsica by order of the Emperor Claudius, and an unexpected return.

The Empress Agrippina summoned him back to Rome to be tutor to her son, a boy named Nero.

When Nero came to the throne, Seneca became his chief advisor, and within a few years, one of the richest men in the empire.

Nero's early years were surprisingly good ones.

Ancient historians remembered them as a time of sensible government, and much of the credit went to Seneca and his colleague Burrus, the commander of the guard.

Seneca wrote a whole book for the young emperor, On Mercy, in which he tried to teach him that true power lies in mastering oneself.

But as the years went by, Nero stopped listening.

Burrus died, and Seneca was left alone, facing a pupil who had become everything he had tried to prevent.

Here lies the great paradox of Seneca and the reason his story is so useful to you.

He didn't speak about pleasure from a cave.

He had everything within arm's reach, and he had to decide every single day which pleasures to accept and which to refuse.

His enemies called him a hypocrite, a philosopher who praised poverty while living surrounded by luxury.

He himself admitted he wasn't a wise man, just someone trying to improve, and that's precisely why his advice is so practical.

It isn't the advice of a saint.