SEEKERS AFTER GOD: Seneca · Epictetus · Marcus Aurelius
Three lives. Three radically different places in Roman society. One enduring question: how should we live?
Seneca advised an emperor while struggling with the demands of wealth and power. Epictetus, once enslaved, taught that freedom begins with the way we judge what happens to us. Marcus Aurelius ruled an empire and, in the privacy of his Meditations, examined his own conduct with uncommon honesty. In Seekers after God, F. W. Farrar brings these three Stoic lives together in a work of moral history. First published in the late 1860s, the book follows philosophy beyond its precepts and into the court, the classroom, exile, and the imperial camp. Farrar asks what virtue costs when it must be practiced under pressure-and what the ancient search for wisdom reveals when read alongside Christianity. Farrar's account remains essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Stoicism and its encounter with Christian thought. Its value lies both in its vivid portraits of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius and in the questions its nineteenth-century author brings to their lives. Readers can admire the force of his interpretation while examining the historical evidence and religious assumptions behind it.
This annotated edition is prepared for that fuller reading. It restores Farrar's complete text in its original chapter sequence, retains his footnotes, and presents it in a newly typeset format. An editorial introduction and clearly distinguished comments before the chapters provide historical context, identify questions in the sources, and guide readers toward the ancient texts. A classic account of three remarkable thinkers, presented with the care its subject and its readers deserve.
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