 Like Cicero, Seneca wrote essays in natural as well as political philosophy, including for example a significant analysis of the give and take of benefits or reciprocal gifts and favors in political life (De beneficiis, recently translated afresh by Griffin and Inwood, 2011), and even a De officiis (which is lost). Like Cicero, he wrote important collections of letters (and where Cicero wrote poetry, Seneca also wrote plays). The letters include his distinctive “consolations” which would inaugurate a new philosophical and literary genre (see the entry on  Seneca).  