 The dialogue between Lipsius and his old friend Langius — cast in the role of the Stoic sapiens who had achieved mastery over his emotions by reason — was clearly intended to provide readers with something simpler than contemporary philosophy, which Lipsius criticized for its excessive subtlety, and to establish constancy as the chief virtue. Lipsius’s De constantia thus has a different focus from the Senecan treatise De constantia sapientis (“On the Constancy of the Wise Man”), on which it was ostensibly modeled; for in chapters 1–12 of Book I Lipsius puts forward the virtue of constancy as a remedy for the turmoil of the times and urges readers to detach themselves completely from all feelings which might lead to any sort of emotional involvement in the political and religious wars which were raging around them.