2: Virtue Or Pleasure?

     In my most recent post on Seneca's first letter, I observed how the quality of his writing makes him a pleasure to read. But in the second letter to Lucilius, Seneca advises his friend to be mindful in reading selections, urging him to focus on quality versus quantity:
          "Be careful, though, about your reading in many authors and every type of book. It may be that there is something wayward and unstable in it. You must stay with a limited number of writers and be fed by them if you mean to derive anything that will dwell reliably with you. One who is everywhere is nowhere."
For whatever it's worth, I have found this to be true in my own experience.
     Interestingly, Seneca closes the second letter with a quote from Epicurus ("Cheerful poverty is an honorable thing"). Among other reasons, this is interesting because Seneca was a self-proclaimed Stoic, whereas Epicurus was the founder of a rival school of philosophy that bears his name. For the Stoics, according to Seneca, virtue -- defined as perfected reason -- was the sole good. The Stoic school of philosophy was founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the third century BC/BCE.
     Also in that century (and also in Athens) Epicurus of Samos founded the school of philosophy that bears his name. According to Epicurus, "pleasure ... is our primary native good".  Although Epicurus argued for "a simple rather than a lavish way of life", even in his own time, critics accused him of promoting hedonism; however, he attempted to clarify that:
          "The pleasant life is not the product of one drinking party after another or of sexual intercourse ... or of the sea food and other delicacies afforded by a luxurious table. On the contrary, it is the result of sober thinking ... ."
     It is noteworthy that -- while the Stoics and Epicureans disagreed about the nature of the greatest good -- this did not prevent Seneca from citing Epicurus when they were in agreement. The quote above on poverty seems to be favorable, as does Seneca's quotation of Epicurus in Letter 4 ("Poverty is great wealth when it adjusts to nature's law"). In fact, near the end of Letter 2, Seneca jokes with Lucilius that he crosses into the Epicurean camp as a spy rather than as a deserter.
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References:

     Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus at 129, page 158, from The Art of Happiness, Translated with Commentary by George K. Strodach and Forward by Daniel Klein (Penguin Classics, London, 2012); see also 131 at page 159 and 132 at page 160. 
     Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2015), Letter 2, 2 and 5, pages 26 and 27; see Letter 76, 10 and 21, pages 241 and 243; see also Letter 4, 10, page 30.