On the Chicago blog, we usually stick to news of our books and authors—that, after all, is what a publisher’s blog is for. Today, however, we’d like to break from that for a moment to offer thanks and good wishes to the colleague who has been an eloquent voice on this blog for the past few years, Stephanie Hlywak.
Stephanie is leaving us today after seven years, and she’ll be missed, perhaps nowhere more than in this very space, where her inventiveness, eye for a story, and ready wit have been responsible for giving the Chicago blog much of its panache. We wish her the best of luck as she takes up a job at the Poetry Foundation, where she’ll continue the good work of promoting books and literature to the world at large.
At times like these, people have turned for centuries to the Ancients, and we would be remiss if we did any less. So as we wave goodbye, we’ll let Seneca have the floor, in an excerpt from a letter of advice to young Nero Caesar, as translated by Robert A. Kaster in our new volume, Anger, Mercy, Revenge:

You can boldly make this declaration, Caesar: all that has been entrusted to your faithful guardianship is kept safe, and you have detracted not a jot from the commonwealth by force or by stealth. . . . That unique goodness of yours does not go for naught, nor has it encountered ungrateful or malicious judges: gratitude is given you in return, and no one person has even been as dear to another individual as you are dear to the Roman people, its great and lasting good.