The title seems an understatement for this "handbook", concise but panoramic view of the rich. I can turn up their noses on one thing? It seems to me that the article reflects a too unilateral Stoicism. In my opinion, at least on the side of ethics, quite certain stoicism came very much to Christianity, since the Stoa (as on the other hand the epicureanism, The other philosophy of "mass" of imperial Rome) It was a vast universe, inside with everything and its opposite. Let's think about it: Christians likewise could be seen as a fatalistic, rather, often he has been accused of what, and in some way as well be, but in the positive sense of the term: because in his case he does not see what is happening to the will of an omnipotent and omniscient Fate only they are opposed in vain (and therefore deresponsabilizzante); but the will of an omnipotent God, omniscient, dad, who loves and corrects his children in view of highest good, a God whose object is not only vain (ultimately, in the sense that those who freely does, it does so at its own damage) but also ungodly and unnatural. In surrendering to the will of God there is, to use an oxymoron, a kind of confident and active fatalism who searches and seeks answers. I say this because in reality in a certain stoicism the conflict between fate and Jupiter / Zeus was resolved with a deeper understanding of the divine: the relentlessness of fate acquired provvidenzialistiche appearance, acquired that way, and it was yoked to the will of Zeus. That is, naturally, within the limits of a philosophy that had not known the Revelation itself, a philosophy pre-Christian (while it is obvious that today's neo-stoicism post-Christian implicitly would constitute anti-Christian sense).

Here's an example. Seneca in "De blessed life" writes: "You will always remember the ancient maxim: follow God. Instead those who complain, She is weeping because he is compelled by force to carry out orders and is obliged to obey the same, even unwillingly. But what nonsense is this being drawn instead of following? Like this, for Hercules, is stupidity and recklessness of their condition fret if something is missing or you find it difficult to bear and be surprised or outraged by what happens to the good as the wicked: I mean diseases, bereavement, infirmities and all the other hardships of human life. We face, therefore,, with great fortitude, all that for universal law we have to endure. E’ a duty that we are required to perform: accept human suffering and not get upset by what is not in our power to avoid. We were born under a monarchy: Freedom is obedience to God. "This song could be compatible with the essay that identifies with Fate classically understood (will not pit, add, that the whole tone of the treatise, in my opinion, disproves this hypothesis).

E’ but the same Seneca writes in "De Providentia" (significantly subtitled "because the good Captain certain misfortunes if any providence"): "I will be reconciled with the gods, which they are very good with those who are very good. Indeed, the nature never allows what is good can be harmful to the good; between good men and gods exist a friendship fostered by virtue. I said friendship? Indeed even a bond and a similarity, because a good man is different from God only for the time, It is his disciple, emulo and genuine progeny, that that magnificent parent, Severe collector of virtue, educates with a certain rigor as the strict fathers. Therefore, when you see good men and agree to the suffering, welding, inerpicarsi per arduous life, while the bad ones are given to joy and overflowing with delights, He thinks that we derive joy from the decorum of our children and the license of the young slaves: those are kept in check by a very severe discipline, these feeds insolence. Have the same clear idea of ​​God: he does not keep a good man for delights, He sets the record straight, the quenching, prepares it for itself. (…) Know therefore that the good guys have to do the same, not fear the difficulties and adversities nor complain of fate, no matter what happens see it as a good and the transformed [notice: "To transform"] in a well; what is important is not what you bear but how the bear. "And speaking of the relationship between fate and Zeus above mentioned here is this interesting passage: "The same creator and sustainer of all things prescribed fate but follows him: wanted him once but always obey. "And’ Hence the clear subordination of Fate to Zeus: Zeus "obedience" to Fate, does nothing but obey what he himself has decreed.