 A closer look at Lipsius’s first Neostoic work reveals that De constantia was the manifesto of a humanist who was convinced that he had found in Seneca’s philosophy both a consolation and a solution to the public calamities which he and his contemporaries were enduring. From Seneca’s De vita beata (15.8), Lipsius takes the leitmotif: “we are born into a kingdom where obedience to God is true liberty” (De constantia I.14). After defining God, providence and fate, he comes to necessity (necessitas), the logical conclusion of their co-operation: everything which is governed by fate happens by necessity (De constantia I.19). The most obvious example of this natural necessity is the decay and destruction of all temporal things (De constantia I.15–16).