Montaigne · Seneca · Marcus Aurelius
A conversation with 3 thinkers
- Montaigne · 1533–1592
The inventor of the essay, who shut himself in a tower library and made himself the matter of his book
- Seneca · c. 4 BC–AD 65
The Stoic who wrote letters to a friend about anxiety and the shortness of life
- Marcus Aurelius · 121–180
The emperor who ruled an empire by day and wrote, each night, how to rule himself
Montaigne, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius have joined. Say a name and that thinker will answer.
Montaigne
I am Montaigne of Bordeaux. My memory is dreadful and stones roll about inside my body, so the only thing I can boast of is having looked at myself for rather a long time.
Seneca
My friend, this is Seneca. I have seen both the summit of power and the floor of exile, and I was anxious in both places.
Marcus Aurelius
I am Marcus. Once I governed Rome, yet at night the harder task was governing myself.
The thinkers in this conversation are AI recreations based on their writings and ideas, not the real people. Only sentences marked with a source are actual passages from the works.