It inquires first of all about the lands and their situation; then into the condition of the surrounding sea, its ebbings and flowings; then it carefully studies all this terror-fraught interspace between heaven and earth, tumultuous with thunders and lightnings, and the blasts of winds, and the showers of rain, and snow and hail; then, having wandered through all the lower regions, it bursts upwards to the highest things, and revels in the most lovely--spectacle of that which is divine, and, mindful of its own eternity, passes into all that hath been and all that shall be throughout all ages." Such in briefest outline, and without any of that grace of language with which Seneca has invested it, is a sketch of the little treatise which many have regarded as among the most delightful of Seneca's works.

It presents the picture of that grandest of all spectacles-- "A good man struggling with the storms of fate." So far there was something truly Stoical in the aspect of Seneca's exile.

But was this grand attitude consistently maintained?
Did his little raft of philosophy sink under him, or did it bear him safely over the stormy waves of this great sea of adversity..