A.'s translation of the shorter Dialogues and Consolations of Seneca the Younger is a mixed bag, coming to market at a time of stiff competition. On the one hand, a place remains for such an edition in the English-speaking world. This volume fills that place in a few ways: it provides a convenient, annotated Seneca in a more contemporary idiom than the old Loebs now online; it is shorter and cheaper than the volume devoted to the same texts published by the University of Chicago (2014); finally, it is arguably more representative (and cheaper) than the excellent edition of Seneca's longer prose from the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (1995).

On the other hand, the form that this volume has taken is adequate for undergraduate use, but far from definitive. Aside from a variety of errors in translation (see below), the choice of style and the supplementary materials are idiosyncratic. In the introduction, for instance, we read about Tacitus’ ‘quite moving’ description of Seneca's death and the ‘elegant, spiritual, and compassionate’ character of the Consolation to Marcia. Such editorialising takes the place of a balanced assessment of historical context, which would at least mention the charges of hypocrisy already in Tacitus and stand as a synecdochic reminder of the problematic humanism of the active imperialist. Students would likewise benefit from some discussion of Roman gender norms and the extent to which, in spite of his commonly misogynistic language, Seneca subverts them with two Consolations addressed to women and a thoroughgoing conception of equal-opportunity virtue (at Prov. 3.13, the word dubia, applied to virilitas, and not pati of sexual passivity, occasions the only comment on gender). Lacking such discussion, the book deprives the reader of the cultural background so vital to Roman philosophy (e.g. Morford [2002], p. 1) and obscures more legitimate bases of praise (if such are necessary) than Seneca's spirituality.

In terms of style, A.'s commitment to a colloquial Seneca makes the philosopher's popularity intelligible, but sits uncomfortably alongside his treatment of long sentences (Marc. 22.3): ‘Well, Marcia? When you saw that your son was wise beyond his years, that his spirit had conquered every desire, when you saw that his spirit was whole and without fault, seeking riches without greed, political office without blind ambition, and pleasure without extravagance, when you saw this, did you think that it would be possible to keep him unscathed for long?’ ‘Well, Marcia’ captures the force of Quid? tu, Marcia, and the repetition of the leading phrase (‘when you saw’) guides the reader to an appreciation of the building syntax, even if it reads more like Latin than English. Often, the success of a colloquial turn is hard to judge (Prov. 5.5): ‘Do you want to take away some part of my body? Take it. It's not like it's a big deal. I will give up my whole body soon enough in death’. Conservative classicists may find the sudden informality of ‘big deal’ (magnam rem) intrusive, though one could argue that the jolt suits Seneca's Cynic roots in the Dialogues.

The addition of compound verbs, conjunctions, idioms and glosses often impedes the reader. In the above, for instance, ‘give up’ and ‘take away’ could be more concise, the latter even eliminated. At Prov. 5.8, utatur … suis natura corporibus becomes ‘Let nature use its physical bodies’, as if there were another kind. Such additions are sometimes confusing (e.g. Tranq. 2.10): ‘[A] sense of shame drives the anguish deeper inside. Desires that are backed into a corner, without any way out, suffocate themselves. After that, grief and melancholy, and a thousand different ways an uncertain mind wavers when it is propped up by imperfect hopes and sad about hopes given up for dead’. The passage begins clear and vivid. Then, a crisp formula in English (‘After that, grief and melancholy’) founders in superfluous conjunctions (‘grief and melancholy, and …’); the subordinate clause introduced in the last item is unmarked: ‘a thousand different ways [that] an uncertain mind wavers’. An already difficult sentence is almost brought to a halt with the periphrases: ‘propped up’, ‘sad about’, ‘given up’. Similarly encumbering are the wrong notes that the English sometimes hits: an irritant of the aspirant is ‘a smart-mouthed arrogant jerk’ (De Const. 18.5: a procace et superbo et iniurioso). Such charged expressions in the midst of Latinate English are, again, abrupt. Whether they feel appropriate depends on one's sense of Latin.

A. often avoids derivatives in translation to good effect. De Constantia Sapientis becomes On the Resolute Nature of the Wise Man. While the appearance of ‘nature’ in the title may seem suppositious, it is justified by an early occurrence in the dialogue (3.4): ‘the wise man's nature [naturae]’. Similarly, De tranquilitate animi becomes On Serenity of the Spirit, a good way to draw the attention of the Latinless reader to the pun on the name of the addressee. More subtly, pudor is rendered ‘self-respect’; the phrase commercio rupto at Marc. 26.6, ‘bursting our economic ties’. These are nice touches. The reader can judge whether the same is true of A.'s choice to render all instances of malus with some form of the English ‘bad’: while it facilitates the tracking of philosophical terms (p. xvi), it leads to phrases like ‘the greatest badness of our generation’ (Helv. 16.3).

On that note, it is unfortunate that the explication of philosophical terms is confined to two paragraphs of the introduction, with no illustrations from the Dialogues or further notes in the translations. Words of literary significance (e.g. the vocabulary of repraesentatio and exemplarity) receive no comment. Strangely, A. describes the Senecan dialogue and, by implication, the Epistles as ‘well-established literary genres’ (p. xiii). He does not mention the plays, which is surprising: at least since T.G. Rosenmeyer (1989), Seneca's cosmological imagery has been viewed as a primary connection between the prose and poetry, and A. allots more space in the introduction to ‘The Providential Universe’ than any other philosophical topic. More attention should have been paid to the Stoics’ materialist account of psychology, which Seneca's metaphors invoke, and which A. captures at Marc. 8.2: ‘You still have, even now, Marcia, an enormous sadness and it already seems to have grown a callous … Even so, time will remove this much too, bit by bit. Whenever you use your spirit it will loosen’. The word ‘loosen’ conveys the psychophysicalism that informs Seneca's imagery, but here, too, the translation is not free from error. The Latin reads: ‘Whenever you do something else, your spirit will loosen’ (quotiens aliud egeris, animus relaxabitur).

Many errors are minor, such as an elided doublet: ‘very uncertain’ for lubrica et incerta (Const. 5.6). Some may be due to unusual choices more than misconstruction: sons who turn out bad will ‘be like slander itself’ (ipsi maledicta sint, Marc. 17.7) rather than ‘themselves becoming your curse’ (Loeb, modified). Usually, when the English seems strange, something has been added (Marc. 9.4): aufert vim praesentibus malis qui futura prospexit. Literally: ‘The person who has considered the future deprives present suffering of its force’; in A.: ‘The man who foresees his future takes away the force of his later bad fortune in the present’. This kind of gloss-cum-periphrasis, here the addition of a temporal dimension between present and future, is pretty common, impedes the reader and detracts from the value of the translation as a ‘crib’.

The supplementary materials are sometimes gratuitous and less ambitious than those of other Hackett editions of philosophers whom we must therefore assume the press takes more seriously. Plato's Phaedrus has an introduction that ranges from Schleiermacher to Derrida (1995). Kant's Critique of Pure Reason includes a copious analytical index in German and English (1996). The present edition, in contrast, offers a spare bibliography (A. attributes the OCT on which he bases his translation to Lindsay [p. xvi], but he must mean Reynolds – if so, the enumeration of sections is sometimes wrong, e.g. Tranq. 1.12, Polyb. 18.4), a biographical glossary, an index of names and ‘A Glossary of Latin Words Used More Than Once’. The latter includes entries such as maiestas and primipilaris – not philosophical vocabulary, but necessary in this edition because words for titles and offices are untranslated. The point of leaving them untranslated is obscure.