Musonius Rufus 2

This is a follow-up to the previous Musonius Rufus discussion. Feel free to join even if you missed that one.

As a reminder, Gaius Musonius Rufus was a slightly younger contemporary of Seneca, living in the 1st century CE. Besides his day job as philosophy teacher (Epictetus was one of his pupils, and Musonius is mentioned in the Discourses), he was also politically active. He tried (unsuccessfully) to end a civil war peacefully and was exiled at least twice.

His surviving works are a set of lectures preserved by later writers. The lectures are short and can easily be read in a single sitting. Their themes range from education, the relationship between theory and practice, exile, the value of philosophical training, the qualities of a good ruler, marriage, and the relative status of women and men.

References

There are two main English translations of the lectures: Cora Lutz (1947) and Cynthia King (2011). The former is freely available in many formats:

• https://www.stoicsource.com/rufus/rufus-lectures/I
• https://sites.google.com/site/thestoiclife/the_teachers/musonius-rufus/lectures
• Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWu_DY_VGAo