Stoicism books for beginners, in reading order

The short reading path

Three books, read in this order, give you the three best-known Roman Stoics in their own words. Each has its own guide on this site, and all three are in the free editions listed below.

1. Epictetus, Enchiridion. George Long’s 1877 translation runs to about 8,000 words in short numbered chapters (53 in the standard numbering; Long runs two together and has 52): half an hour to an hour of reading. It opens with the division between what is up to you and what is not, and the rest of the book applies that division to desire, loss, other people and your own progress. Read it once straight through, then a chapter a day. Our guide to the Enchiridion.
2. Seneca, On the Shortness of Life. One essay in twenty chapters, about 11,000 words in Aubrey Stewart’s 1889 translation: an evening’s reading. Seneca writes to Paulinus, a busy Roman official, about where people’s time goes, so you see the ideas worked out at length on one everyday problem. Our guide.
3. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Twelve books of private notes, nearly 500 numbered entries, about 45,000 words in Long’s 1862 translation. Read a few entries a day rather than straight through; at five a day the book lasts about three months. Our guide to the Meditations.

The order matters more than it looks. Epictetus gives you the framework in its plainest form. Seneca, writing decades before Epictetus taught, argues for Stoic ideas at length, with examples and jokes, to someone who isn’t yet convinced. Marcus comes last because he is writing to himself, in reminders of ideas he already held. Much of what he reminds himself of echoes Epictetus, whose discourses his teacher Rusticus shared with him from his own collection (Meditations 1.7); Marcus names Epictetus at 4.41 and quotes him several times in Book 11. Read him after the other two and you will recognize the ideas behind his notes.

After the first three. Go on to Epictetus’s Discourses, the longer record of his lectures that the Enchiridion condenses; start with 1.1, on the things that are and are not in our power. Then Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius, 124 letters to a friend from his last years, best read one or two at a time. Then Seneca’s other essays, especially On Anger, On Tranquility of Mind and the consolations. Musonius Rufus, Epictetus’s teacher, left no writings of his own; his lectures and sayings survive only as others recorded them (IEP (opens in a new tab)). For who each writer was, see the philosophers.

Why start with the primary texts

Much of what is sold as Stoicism is someone’s account of it: a selection, an emphasis, a modern vocabulary. Some of that vocabulary is useful, but much of it is new. “Dichotomy of control,” “negative visualization” and “the view from above” are modern labels, not ancient ones. Reading the sources first lets you tell what Epictetus said from what a modern author has built on it.

The sources are also shorter than people expect. The three books above come to roughly 65,000 words in the free translations, about the length of a single modern book about them, and two of the three take an evening each.

And the originals let you check. Many lines shared online as Stoic quotes are modern paraphrases, lines from films or inventions. Once you have read the Enchiridion, a fake Epictetus line is much easier to spot; fake Stoic quotes collects the common ones.

Seneca thought a few books read well were worth more than many skimmed:

He was writing about rich Romans who bought libraries for display, but the advice fits reading lists too. Three books read slowly will teach you more than a shelf of books about them.

Free, legal editions

Every book on the reading path is free, legally, in the translations this site quotes. Project Gutenberg has them as plain text and as e-books.

A few things to know before you download:

• The titles differ. Long’s Meditations is called Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Stewart’s Seneca volume is Minor Dialogues, and inside it On Tranquility of Mind is titled “Of Peace of Mind.”
• The Epictetus volume is a selection. It prints the discourses it includes under their titles, without book and chapter numbers, so a reference such as Discourses 2.13 is hard to find in it. The Enchiridion follows, complete and numbered.
• Long’s Meditations comes with extras: his biographical sketch of Marcus, an essay on Marcus’s philosophy and an index of the Greek terms he translates.
• Seneca’s Letters are the exception. Gummere’s translation is out of copyright in the United States, so free copies are easy to find there, but it is still protected in many other countries. That is why this site gives the Letters only in labeled paraphrase.

These are the same texts the Stoic Practice app and this site quote, and every quotation is checked word for word against them (how we source the Stoics). They are Victorian, so give them time. Long himself warned, in his note on Epictetus, that a reader would sometimes need to read a passage more than once to understand it.

Choosing a modern translation

Long and Stewart are careful translators, but they write Victorian English: Long’s thou and thee, and sentences that run on. Buy a modern translation when that gets in the way, or when you want notes on names and terms. Keep the free text for searching and for checking quotations.

Marcus Aurelius. Gregory Hays (Modern Library, 2002) has the plainest English. Robin Waterfield’s Meditations: The Annotated Edition (Basic Books, 2021) puts notes on every page. Martin Hammond (Penguin Classics, 2006) stays closer to the Greek. Eight translations are compared in which Meditations translation to read.

Epictetus. For the Enchiridion, A. A. Long’s How to Be Free (Princeton University Press, 2018) is a new translation with the Greek on facing pages, a glossary and selections from the Discourses. Nicholas White’s The Handbook of Epictetus (Hackett, 1983) is the handbook alone in modern English. For the complete Discourses, choose Robin Hard’s (Oxford World’s Classics, 2014), with an introduction and notes by Christopher Gill, or Robin Waterfield’s The Complete Works (University of Chicago Press, 2022).

Seneca. C. D. N. Costa’s Penguin Classics selection, Dialogues and Letters, is compact and readable; its On the Shortness of Life is also sold on its own as a slim Penguin Great Ideas paperback, together with two shorter works. The University of Chicago Press’s Hardship and Happiness (2014) collects On the Shortness of Life, On Tranquility of Mind, the three consolations and four other essays in new translations. For the Letters, Robin Campbell’s Letters from a Stoic (Penguin Classics, 1969) is a selection; Margaret Graver and A. A. Long’s Letters on Ethics (University of Chicago Press) has all 124.

Translation or interpretation. Some popular books restate the Stoics in a modern writer’s own words. Sharon Lebell’s The Art of Living (1995) is billed as a new interpretation of Epictetus, not a translation, so its sentences are hers (more on the difference). Read it if you like it, but quote a translation when you attribute a line to Epictetus.

Seneca or Marcus first?

For most beginners, Seneca first. Seneca writes to another person and wants to persuade him: he explains, takes examples from Roman life, answers objections and is often funny. Many of the letters to Lucilius take one idea at a time, and they build on one another if you read them in order.

Marcus writes to himself. The Meditations are reminders of ideas he had already accepted, returned to again and again in different words, and they assume much of what Seneca and Epictetus explain. Book 1, where every edition begins, is a list of what Marcus learned from his family and teachers, an odd place to meet him for the first time. Read after Seneca, the notes look like what they are: one person’s daily effort to live by those ideas. Read first, they can seem like a string of fine sentences.

There are two good reasons to start with Marcus anyway: you want something to read five minutes at a time, or you already know the basic ideas. In that case, begin with Book 2 rather than Book 1.

One practical point: Letters from a Stoic is Robin Campbell’s Penguin selection, not the complete Letters, and it is under copyright. To start with Seneca for free, read On the Shortness of Life, which is also shorter.

Either order works if you read slowly. The bigger mistake is reading both quickly and moving on.

Modern books about Stoicism

Read these after at least one of the primary texts, and know which kind you are holding: a scholar’s account of what the ancient Stoics thought, or a modern writer’s adaptation of Stoicism for today. Both can be useful, but they are different things.

Introductions by scholars

• Brad Inwood, Stoicism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2018). The whole school in brief, from its Greek founders to Stoicism today.
• John Sellars, Lessons in Stoicism (Allen Lane, 2019), published in the U.S. as The Pocket Stoic (University of Chicago Press, 2020). A short book on the ideas and lives of Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus.
• A. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford University Press, 2002). A book-length study of Epictetus by a leading scholar of ancient philosophy.
• Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (Harvard University Press, 1998), translated from the French by Michael Chase. The classic study of the Meditations.
• Emily Wilson, The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (Oxford University Press, 2014). A biography that faces Seneca’s wealth and his years with Nero directly.

Modern adaptations

• William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life (Oxford University Press, 2009). Irvine’s own version of Stoicism for modern readers; his “trichotomy of control” is a revision of Epictetus, discussed on our dichotomy of control page.
• Massimo Pigliucci, How to Be a Stoic (Basic Books, 2017). A philosopher’s modern Stoicism, built around Epictetus.
• Donald Robertson, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor (St. Martin’s Press, 2019). Marcus’s life told alongside modern psychological techniques.

Whatever you read, check any line given without a work and a section number before you repeat it as Stoic.

Reading and practice: one passage a day

The Stoics were wary of reading as an end in itself. Here is Seneca’s advice to Lucilius on how to read, in our paraphrase, since this site does not quote a translation of the Letters:

One thought from each day’s reading is a workable method, and it is how the reading path is meant to continue after the first pass. Read a chapter of the Enchiridion or a few entries of the Meditations in the morning. Choose one sentence. Keep it in mind through the day and notice when the day tests it.

Epictetus says what to measure, and it is not pages:

“To-day I have read so many verses” is the score most readers keep (Discourses 4.4). Epictetus wants a record of conduct instead: how you acted, what you wanted and what you shied away from today.

Seneca adds a second habit, writing:

A notebook is the simplest way to make the reading your own. Write down the sentence you chose in the morning and, at night, a line on whether it held up. Stoic journaling has prompts, and the free Evening Examination gives you a nightly review in five questions. If you would rather not choose the passage yourself, today’s teaching gives you one for each date, with a plain-English explanation and a practice.