Series One
Volume I
Know Thyself
The Socratic Dialogues
Socrates was sentenced to death for asking too many questions. He chose hemlock. Know Thyself gathers four of Plato's dialogues on the trial and the examined life.
Volume II
What Is Yours
The Handbook and Discourses of Epictetus
Born a slave, beaten by his master, Epictetus became the freest man in Rome. His one question: what is yours, and what is not? The Enchiridion plus eight Discourses.
Volume III
Life Is Not Short
The Moral Essays of Seneca
Tutor of Nero. Advisor of Rome. Ordered to die by his own student. Seneca's claim: life is not short. We waste it. Three essays on using the time you have.
Why these books exist
Nathan Biles has read Seneca daily for twenty-five years. He started Daimon Classics to put the philosophy he returns to most into English his children could actually read.
Victorian translations are not bad. They are written for a different reader in a different century. These texts have been gatekept long enough.
Every volume is free to read online under Creative Commons. Kindle editions are available now on Amazon. Paperbacks launch May 21, 2026.
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.”
Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
For the reader who wants to actually finish
You have tried to read On the Shortness of Life. You stalled on page twelve of a Victorian translation that used “thee” and “thou” and sentences that ran for a paragraph.
These editions are for readers of all ages who suspect the philosophy is worth the effort. The language just needed to get out of the way.
Free online
Every volume is published under Creative Commons. Read in full, share freely, return whenever you need it.
Print editions
Kindle editions available now on Amazon. Paperbacks launch May 21, 2026, set in the same Georgia serif you see here.
Modern English
No archaic syntax. No footnote thickets. The ideas, in sentences you can read aloud without stumbling.
New volumes. No noise.
Be notified when new volumes are available. One email per release.