[Quote courtesy of Seneca]
[Although Seneca was a rich old bastard, we’ll have to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to understanding how one might separate one’s fortune from one’s pursuit of what he calls philosophy. In order to develop a “love of wisdom”, money need not influence one’s progress. Although, I’d bet that being frickin’ rich makes it one hell of a lot easier to pretend to be poor than actually being poor.
On the flip side, having disdain for the finer things in life, that is, being poor, might jade one to believe they can attain their wisdom all the more readily as they have no bright, sparkly objects to distract them.
The one thing I find curious in reading all of these pontifications is, jeeze, they sure had a lot of time to pontificate over the smallest of topics. Yeah, I’m wasting a few minutes here and there on this endeavor. But, the effort these Stoics put into just being Stoic, from what I can tell, hell, I’d like to have a life like that.]
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
Like those old commercials where the rich woman collected velvet Elvis portraits. Big money doesn’t always mean good taste. In fact, the more I see of the moneyed, the less character I witness.
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Didn’t prosperous Romans have slaves? Or did Stoics think that slavery wasn’t a good thing?
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Slavery was a really odd incongruous behavior in ancient Greece and Rome. To project individualism and self-determinism — agency essentially, while at the same time denying it for your slaves, which they did, seems totally disingenuous.
I suspect that they were subject to some radically different mindset than what we can imagine. How can you justify slavery and at the same time proselytizing personal freedom?
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I suspect slaves were considered to be in a different category, more like animals. Although I seem to have read somewhere that some slaves were literate and employed as scribes. Some form of sleight of mind might explain it.
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Seneca owned slaves.
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So he had lots of leisure time to think.
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