Sêneca e as figurações da hospitalidade

Abstract

This article analyzes the way in which hospitable reception or deliberate hostility were figured in three works by Seneca, a Roman Stoic philosopher of the 1st century AD. It is an important topic, capable of revealing social elements and political orientations expected of a good princeps. We propose the study of a Menippean satire against Emperor Claudius; a philosophical treatise on the virtue of clemency; and a mythological tragedy involving Thyestes and Atreus, descendants of Tantalus. Regardless of the discursive genre, there is an orderly appeal according to the precepts of Stoicism, so that the absence of hospitality can represent the insanity of a tyrant; the impropriety of an apotheosis; a reproach against vice.