Quotation
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“Kindly remember that the person you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies.”
Seneca · Stoicism · Ancient · c. 63–65 CE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that enslaved people share the same human lot as their masters, so the label 'slave' does not mark a different kind of being. A competing reading notes the limit: Seneca owned enslaved people and argues for humane treatment inside slavery, not for abolition as a political programme. The sentence stands in Letter 47, his fullest statement on the subject, after he has praised Lucilius for living on friendly terms with those in his household. Fortune, he says, has equal rights over both.
Did Seneca really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Richard M. Gummere's Loeb English, with 'person' for his 'he whom'. In the Loeb, this sentence is section 10 of Letter 47, not the letter's opening section. The letter as a whole is 47, on master and slave.
Where it comes from
Moral Letters 47.1
Approximate date: c. 63–65 CE.
How to use it
A cleaner, a carer, or a delivery driver can be spoken about as a function rather than as someone under the same sky. The reminder is to put the shared facts back in the sentence: they breathe, live, and die on the same terms. That does not fix a zero-hours contract, and it blocks the habit of talking as if the role were the whole person, and seneca's own wealth makes the reminder easier to say than to complete.
A mindset reading
The habit is to hear a status-word and replace it, for a moment, with the shared conditions. Ask what the label is hiding about origin, luck, and the body. Equality in those facts does not, in his letter, become a constitution, and it does rule out treating a person as a tool that happens to speak.
Understand the philosophy
Seneca is answering the contempt Romans showed to enslaved people at table and in the street. 'The same stock' means a common human origin, and the same skies are a way of saying one world, not two species. He argues from the reversals of fortune, including freeborn people sold after political disaster. The letter is Stoic cosmopolitanism applied to the household, and it stops short of dismantling the institution it criticises.
- justice
- society
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that enslaved people share the same human lot as their masters, so the label 'slave' does not mark a different kind of being. A competing reading notes the limit: Seneca owned enslaved people and argues for humane treatment inside slavery, not for abolition as a political programme. The sentence stands in Letter 47, his fullest statement on the subject, after he has praised Lucilius for living on friendly terms with those in his household. Fortune, he says, has equal rights over both.
Did Seneca really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Richard M. Gummere's Loeb English, with 'person' for his 'he whom'. In the Loeb, this sentence is section 10 of Letter 47, not the letter's opening section. The letter as a whole is 47, on master and slave.
Which work is it in?
Moral Letters 47.1 Approximate date: c. 63–65 CE.