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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts,

audio books that we like here recommend here at Daily Stoic and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend.

We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life.

Thank you for listening.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Today, we're doing a deep dive into Seneca, specifically from Tim Ferriss's wonderful audio book edition of Seneca's Letters, The Doub of Seneca.

Tim produces a couple of years ago. He's been nice enough to let us run it on the podcast. If you haven't bought it or read the PDF, highly recommend it. You can actually get the PDF totally for free at Tim.blogslash.seneca.

But in today's episode, Seneca is talking about conquering a conqueror. Talks about examining the causes of our fear. Talks about the unavoidable threat of death.

This is we do not fear death. We fear the thought of death. And I'll just get right into it. My favorite translation of Seneca's Letters is his penguin edition, which I carry at the Peyton porch. I'll link to that in today's show notes. And we'll just get into it.

Hello, it is Matt and Alice from British Scandal here. And we wanted to let you know that this season we are very excited to be covering the Cambridge Spies.

It's got everything you could possibly want from a series of British scandal, treachery in the establishment, overconfident public schoolboys and strange meetings on park benches.

Check, check, and double check. You can search and follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and add free via the OneDriPlus subscription in Apple Podcasts or the OneDriApp.

Letter 30 on conquering the conqueror.

I have beheld a fidious boss who's that noble man shattered in health and wrestling with his years. But they already bear upon him so heavily that he cannot be raised up. Old age has settled down upon him with great yes with its entire weight.

You know that his body was always delicate and saveless. For a long time he has kept it in hand or to speak more correctly has kept it together. Of a sudden it has collapsed.

Just as in a ship that springs a leak, you can always stop the first or the second Fisher, but when many holes begin to open and let in water, the gaping hull cannot be saved.

Similarly, in an old man's body there is a certain limit up to which you can sustain and prop its weakness. But when it comes to resemble a decrepit building, when every joint begins to spread and while one is being repaired another falls apart, then it is time for a man to look about him and consider how he may get out.

But the mind of our friend Basus is active. Philosophy bestows this boon upon us. It makes us joyful in the very sight of death, strong and brave no matter in what state the body may be. Cheerful and never failing though the body fail us.

A great pilot can sail even when his canvases rent. If his ship be dismantled he can yet put in trim what remains of her hull and hold her to her course.

This is what our friend Basus is doing and he contemplates his own end with the courage and countenance which he would regard as undue indifference in a man who so contemplated on others.

This is a great accomplishment, Lucilius, and one which needs long practice to learn, to depart calmly when the inevitable hour arrives.

Other kinds of death contain an ingredient of hope. A disease comes to an end. A fire is quenched. Falling houses have set down in safety those who they seemed certain to crush.

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