Becoming Stoic
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Public-domain translations, marked up with our notes, cross-linked to every essay that discusses the passage. Read here or take the PDF.
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
12 books · 3 translations
Reading now · Book IV
Epictetus
Discourses & Enchiridion
4 books · 2 translations
Season Three
Seneca
Letters to Lucilius
124 letters · 2 translations
Season Two
Musonius Rufus
Season Five, 2027
Fragments · in preparation
Compare translations · Meditations II.11
One passage, three translators, and what each gave up.
Hays · 2002
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
Plainest English of the three. Loses the imperative grammar of the Greek but gains the shock of the first line.
Long · 1862 · public domain
“Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.”
The only one of the three that loses a verb. Doing, saying, and thinking become acts and thoughts, and the archaism reads as ceremony where the original is blunt.
Hard · 2011
“You could depart from life this very moment: let that govern what you do and say and think.”
The compromise. Keeps the governing verb and modern syntax; slightly less memorable than Hays.