The Third Of Three Slim Volumes Roger L'Estrange, staunch royalist, author and pamphleteer, one-time inmate of Newgate Prison, one-time exile, one-time Member of Parliament, takes up the teaching of the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca, rearranging and paraphrasing the original Latin to shape a unique and engaging work of his own. True friendship, based on Stoic principles, provides a certain antidote against all calamities, and even the fear of poverty, the hurt of death, and the lamentations of grief may be turned aside by those who possess a proper philosophy. This third slim volume is the concluding part of Roger L'Estrange's Seneca of a Happy Life, being itself an extract of a much larger whole, Seneca's Morals, first published in 1678.
For what purpose, then, do I make a man my friend? In order to have someone for whom I may die, whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may stake my own life, and pay the pledge, too.