Current opinion tends to see Stoics and Epicureans as unlikely bedfellows, but in the sixteenth century this was not so. As a matter of fact, Seneca, the great auctoritas on Stoic ethics in the Renaissance, was also considered something of a spokesman for Epicurean thought.

In one of his Essais Montaigne gives us a telling insight into the way Seneca's moral philosophy was viewed at the time. For this sixteenth-century reader, the classical authors that best combined the useful and the pleasurable were Plutarch and Seneca. The reason why these two authors in particular suit his temperament best, Montaigne explains, is that the knowledge he seeks is there treated in bits and pieces (“à pièces décousues”) that do not require long hours of reading for which he has neither time nor inclination (“qui ne demandent pas l'obligation d'un long travail, dequoy je suis incapable”).

Concentrated short passages are for Montaigne also most useful, especially in the case of Seneca's correspondence with Lucilius, which forms “the most beautiful and profitable part of his writings” (“la plus belle partie de ses escrits, et al plus profitable”). Another advantage in reading Seneca and Plutarch, Montaigne argues, is that little effort is involved in getting started, and that these authors allow him to break off wherever he feels like it (“II ne faut pas grande entreprinse pour m'y mettre; et les quitte où il me plaît”). Furthermore he finds their teaching simple but relevant (“d'une simple faqon et pertinente”), as each represents the cream of philosophy (“cresme de la philosophic”).