Seneca's Letters Research Articles

Poetry as Spiritual Exercise

Poetry as Spiritual Exercise

SENECA RISING: EPISTOLARY SELF-RECREATION IN THE AD HELVIAM

Abstract: Following his relegation to Corsica in ad 42, Seneca the Younger wrote the ad Helviam, a consolatory letter ostensibly offering his mother Helvia comfort and support in the face of his deathlike absence through exile. The addressees of Seneca's letters served different purposes for him, and here, because he is addressing his mother, who birthed him, Seneca creates within the ad Helviam a space for rebirth, a means of reviving and repairing a self left shattered by the trauma of exile. Reading Seneca's consolation through the lens of psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut's theory of the ‘tripolar self’, I suggest that in this letter Seneca satisfies his needs for mirroring, for an idealized other, and for twinship, which are requisite for his self-recreation. Through this process, Seneca also provides Helvia with the tools she needs to recreate her own self after the ‘loss’ of Seneca; both son and mother are thus reborn.

Civilization, Law, and Customary Diplomacy: Arguments against Removal in Cherokee and Seneca Letters to the Federal Government

Civilization, Law, and Customary Diplomacy: Arguments against Removal in Cherokee and Seneca Letters to the Federal Government

Reading First Thessalonians as a Consolatory Letter in Light of Seneca and Ancient Handbooks on Letter-Writing

In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul addressed the occasion of deaths among Christians with stock arguments of the consolatory genre, without using the typical epistolary structure associated with consolation in ancient handbooks of letter-writing. It is demonstrated that three of Seneca the Younger's letters also employed stock arguments of consolation, but did not follow the usual structure for a letter of consolation. Using Seneca's letters as a test case for what constituted pagan ideas of consolation, we highlight some compelling reasons for reading First Thessalonians as a letter of consolation, a reading that offers some new insights into the passage on the right Christian attitude towards death in 1 Thess 4.13–5.11.

“In the Same Predicament as Heretofore”: Proremoval Arguments in Seneca Letters from the Buffalo Creek Reservation in the 1830s and 1840s

This article discusses the arguments made by Seneca supporters of the United States' removal policy and notes the similarity of these arguments to those made by the policy's Iroquois supporters. Yet while one group used their criticisms as a way of rejecting removal, the other instead sought to shape it. I conclude that the main difference distinguishing the argumentation of the opposing groups was their use of the concept of law, with the removal advocates limiting themselves to drawing on US law, albeit in what appears to have been an attempt to gain their independence from US governmental control and supervision. They may also have seen removal in the tradition of older ways of resolving disputes through temporary fragmentation.

Latin Literature

Among this latest batch of books to review are a number whose endeavour, very much to my own taste, is intellectual and cultural history through the study of Latin literature. Cream of the crop is Craig Williams’ study of Roman friendship. Admirers of Williams’ excellent Roman Homosexuality, recently reissued in second edition, will recognize the approach; this is a theoretically informed and meticulously argued work of cultural history that also shows fine appreciation of philological, linguistic, and literary issues. In Chapter 1 (Men and Women), Williams has a simple and compelling point to make: basing their idealization of friendship on our male-authored ancient literary texts (Cicero's De amicitia, Seneca's Letters), the great thinkers of Western civilization have asserted that ideal friendship is a man's game, and even that women are by and large incapable of real friendship, at the very least being excluded from the most interesting parts of friendship's history. As Williams shows, the epigraphic evidence tells a different story; here we can gain a new appreciation of friendships between women, and indeed between men and women. In its divergence from the well-trodden literary tradition, the epigraphic material opens up new ways of understanding the ancient world, but it can also be used to bring a fresh perspective to familiar literary texts, especially when one is as open-minded and attentive to linguistic nuance as Williams. Chapter 2 explores some of the key conceptual issues and themes related to the (vexed) distinction between amor and amicitia, and then in Chapter 3 Williams turns to the close reading of particular Latin texts, bringing his new interpretative framework to Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Propertius, Petronius’ Satyricon, and the letters of Cicero and of Fronto. The fourth and final chapter, ‘Friendship and the Grave’, turns again to the epigraphic evidence, and funerary inscriptions in particular, where friends are shown to play an important role in the commemoration of the dead, usually associated in the Western tradition with close family. Williams’ work showcases Classics as a vitally and productively interdisciplinary academic subject, where significant new readings can be achieved with the right methodologies and approach. He has some big claims to make about Roman society, of which ancient historians will certainly want to take note, but his fresh analysis of familiar literary texts is also highly illuminating and the book has many smaller-scale insights to offer as well.

The Road to Sicily: Lucilius to Seneca

One of Horace's best-known allegations inEpistles1 is that where in the world you are is neither here nor there, as long as you have peace of mind (animus aequus):caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.strenua nos exercet inertia; nauibus atquequadrigis petimus bene uiuere. quod petis, hie est,est Vlubris, animus si te non deficit aequus.(Hor.Ep. 1.11.27-30)Cross the sea, and you change your climate, not your mental state. Restless idleness drives us on. In ships and chariots we seek the good life. What you seek is here, it's even at Ulubrae—if your mind is only at peace with itself.This turns out to be one of the book's hugest lies. It makes all the difference how Horace and his correspondents are placed when he is writing to them: Rome is different from backwater Ulubrae, Baiae from Brundisium. InMorals and Villas in Seneca's Letters, John Henderson has attached similar importance to named locations in calibrating metaphorical distance between Seneca and the correspondent of hisEpistles, Lucilius. This paper aims to close a gap of two centuries between two of the most disparate figures in Latin literature: the same Seneca, that knotted-up recluse, and another Lucilius, the laughing cavalier satirist. The link: a journey made from Rome to Sicily, or, more precisely, the uses of the road to Sicily in epistolary-philosophical discourse (by way of Horace'sSatiresandEpistles). Lucilius'Iter Siculumand Seneca's mental journeys to Sicily in theEpistulae Moralesare related stages, I will argue, in the philosophical applications of travel writing.

Montaigne and the Coherence of Eclecticism

Since publication Pierre Hadot's essays on ancient philosophy by Arnold Davidson in 1995, 2 Michel Foucault's late work on the self3 has appeared in a new light. We now know that Hadot's work was familiar to Foucault as early as 1950s.4 It is also clear that Foucault's notion techniques is very close to what Hadot calls exercises. At same time, there are important differences between views these two philosophers, and Hadot has often expressed his regret that Foucault's untimely death prevented them from exploring these differences.5 One important point disagreement was status eclecticism. In Foucault's interpretation ancient philosophy, constitution implied a personal choice among disparate philosophical references: Writing as a personal exercise done by self and for is an art disparate truth.6 In a 1989 article Hadot argued from a historical point view that, so far as Stoicism and Epicureanism were concerned, eclecticism had no place in a mature practice philosophy. Foucault's favorite example, Seneca's Letters to Lucilius, in which Stoic arguments were invoked along with Epicurean arguments, was a work for beginners. In a mature practice Stoicism, one would stick to arguments Stoic school, choose them for their coherence, and instead trying to forge a spiritual identity for oneself through writing, one would liberate oneself from one's individuality in order to raise oneself up to universality.7 Hadot added that is only in New Academy - in person Cicero, for instance - that a personal choice is made according to what reason considers as most likely at a given moment.8 This discussion Foucault may give impression that Hadot was somewhat dismissive eclecticism. Yet in a 2001 interview Hadot claimed that he had always admired Cicero's intellectual independence, and he proposed a reappraisal of an attitude that has always had a bad reputation: eclecticism.9Something very similar is a stake in work Alexander Nehamas, as Lanier Anderson and Joshua Landy showed in their study his Art Living. In conception philosophy as a life (Hadot) or care (Foucault) or (Nehamas), a central issue is relationship between theoretical coherence and coherence person who theorizes. Elaborating on Nehamas's chapter on Montaigne, Anderson and Landy argue that there is a move in Montaigne away from doctrinal coherence and towards a coherence self. As they put it, the harmonious whole Montaigne commends [ . . . ] is not a coherent body fact or theory; it is unified self theorizer.10 Anderson and Landy show that this brings up all kinds difficulties: can this unified self be other than a fiction? If that is case, how can philosophy be a way life} Nehamas's answer is very much in spirit late Foucault: there is a coherence self in Montaigne, and this coherence is product as a philosophical activity. The self is fashioned through writing.Because Montaigne writes in ancient tradition philosophy as a way life, one may recall Hadot's suggestion that Foucault's notion writing is an intriguing but historically inaccurate description ancient philosophical practice. But perhaps Hadot agrees with Foucault after all, since in his most recent interviews, he speaks favorably eclecticism, a notion that is central to Foucault's analysis self-fashioning through writing. The case Montaigne is particularly interesting for these purposes, not only because Essays seem to be prototypical example writing self, but also because eclecticism is both discussed and practiced throughout Essays. I propose to take a fresh look at this issue by investigating status eclecticism in Montaigne's Essays. This must start with an examination philosophical tradition most closely associated with practice eclecticism, Skeptical tradition. …

Cicero's Laelius and Seneca's letters on friendship

Comparaison entre le dialogue Laelius de Ciceron et les lettres a Lucilius de Seneque au sujet de l’amitie, vue sous des angles philosophiques differents

Seneca's Letters en Friendship: Notes on the Recent Scholarly Literature and Observations on Three Quaestiones

Seneca's Letters en Friendship: Notes on the Recent Scholarly Literature and Observations on Three Quaestiones

Self-Scrutiny and Self-Transformation in Seneca' Letters

The idea of a collection of letters from a Roman senator to his equestrian friend might encourage the reader familiar with the Letters of Cicero to expect a certain kind of self-revelation. Seneca, like Cicero, was one of the most prominent men in Rome in his own time. We might expect his letters to tell us his views on the emperor Nero, for instance, or what his motives were for retiring from public life (as he had done by the time he came to write the Letters). But readers of Seneca's Letters, at least in modern times, have often felt disappointed at his failure to provide information about himself and the world he lives in.

A Note on Ancient Methods of Learning to Write

There is still some confusion over the literary evidence for the methods by which children and others learnt to write in the ancient world. There are four main sources: the analogy between the methods of thegrammatistesand the function of the laws in Plato,Protagoras326c–d, three passages in Quintilian (1. 1. 27; 5. 14. 31; 10. 2. 2), a passage from one of Seneca's letters (Ep. 94. 51) and a short analogy in Maximus of Tyre (p. 20 Hobein, lines 13-16).

Seneca's Circles: "Ep." 12.6-9

Research Article| April 01 1982 Seneca's Circles: "Ep." 12.6-9 Thomas Habinek Thomas Habinek Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Classical Antiquity (1982) 1 (1): 66–69. https://doi.org/10.2307/25010761 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Thomas Habinek; Seneca's Circles: "Ep." 12.6-9. Classical Antiquity 1 April 1982; 1 (1): 66–69. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25010761 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentClassical Antiquity Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1982 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Gasparino Barzizza's Commentaries on Seneca's Letters

Gasparino Barzizza of Bergamo, a humanist educator and university professor of rhetoric at Padua and Milan in the early fifteenth century, has come down to us chiefly as a pioneer expounder of Ciceronian eloquence, the man to whom the precious old manuscript of Cicero's complete rhetorical works was confided in 1421 for transcription and divulgation. For centuries, however, his considerable contribution to Seneca studies made before this date has been almost totally neglected. But for a few excerpts from his commentary on Seneca's Letter 1 to Lucilius, tucked away in Francesco Novati's footnotes to a letter of Coluccio Salutati, nothing substantial from these commentaries and their introductory material has to my knowledge ever been printed. Judging from the scanty literature on Barzizza, one is forced to conclude that the content of these commentaries has not even been examined. Still worse, the only biography of Barzizza written in the twentieth century says they are lost. Yet Gasparino Barzizza emerges from these commentaries as a leading Seneca scholar of early fifteenth-century Italian humanism. He was the central figure of Seneca studies while at Padua, a university town with a tradition of interest in Seneca stretching back to Lovato Lovati and Albertino Mussato and the revival of Senecan tragedy, and continuing with Sicco Polenton and his Life of Seneca. As part of the introductory material to his Seneca commentaries, Barzizza wrote the first humanist Latin biography of Seneca using Tacitus, and developed more fully than anyone before him the image of Seneca as a religious dissimulator, calling him for the first time a ‘Nicodemus.’ In a sadly mutilated and anonymous form, it can now be shown, Barzizza's life of Seneca was the only one printed in several early editions of Seneca's works, including the 1515 and 1529 ones edited by Erasmus, and later mistakenly attributed to Sicco Polenton. Erasmus' caustic prefatory remarks on deformers of Seneca that characterize his 1529 edition are aimed, it can also be shown, at Barzizza. Barzizza's lengthy commentary on the controversial opening of Seneca's Letter 1 to Lucilius, a set piece in its own right, stands at the centre of a dispute very much alive in his own time, in which Petrarch and Salutati participated before him, and Pier Candido Decembrio, his brother Angelo, and Leonello d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, participated after him, not to mention Erasmus himself.

Manuscrits démembrés des Epistulae ad Lucilium de Sénèque

Membra disiecta of Seneca's « Epistulae ad Lucilium ». New investigations on the manuscripts of Seneca's Letters have led to the identification of three dismembered witnesses, all of them having been written in France. The first one, Κ (Pal. lat. 1551, f. 1-40 + Paris, Bibl. nat., lat. 8624, f. 65- 72 + Pal. lat. 1550), a 12th century copy, had already fallen apart around the late 16th century, since the Paris quire was before 1617 in J.-A. de Thou's library, but there is no proof that the Vatican quires went through the Fugger collection in the 16th century ; now offering Ep. 1-83, 20, ms. Κ belongs to the δ family of the text. The second one, C (Pal. lat. 869, f. 31-45 + Paris, Bibl. nat., lat. 3358, f. 121-136 + Pal. lat. 869, f. 46-61), is also a 12th century copy, but its history remains unfortunately unknown before the 17th century ; at that time the Paris quire was in Colbert's Library and the Vatican quires at Heidelberg ; with Ep. 92, 9-123, 2, ms. C belongs to the φ family and the textual importance of the Vatican quires has been pointed out by L. D. Reynolds. The last one, Ζ (Pal. lat. 1549, f. 1-34 + Paris, Bibl. nat., lat. 3358, f. 137- 144 + Pal. lat. 1549, f. 35-51), was written in the 13th century, and could have been the property, with the remaining parts of the manuscript, of a 15th century canon in Saint-Martin d'Epernay ; with Ep. ad Lucilium 1-58, Ep. ad Paulum and Ep. ad Lucilium 59-81, 20, ms. Ζ is a member of the β-δ group.

The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters

The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters

Two Notes on the Manuscripts of Seneca's Letters

Two Notes on the Manuscripts of Seneca's <i>Letters</i>

Three Emendations in Seneca's Letters

Three Emendations in Seneca's Letters

Notes on the Text of Seneca's Letters

The text of Seneca's Letters, despite the attention it has received from scholars in the last fifty years, still leaves much to be desired in a large number of places. It is a field in which emendations can be proposed (and judged) with rather more security than is often the case in classical Latin prose, because Seneca was a very prolific writer, exceeded only by Cicero and Livy in the bulk of his extant work. The absence of a special lexicon for this eminent author constitutes a genuine difficulty of course, but it can be overcome in part at least by a constant reading and re-reading of his works, not excluding the dramas. The following suggestions are based on a more intense application to Seneca than Quintilian would be likely to have approved.

The Modern Note in Seneca's Letters

The literary world is prone to eye askance one who mingles types, or, to borrow a phrase from Latin comedy, practices contaminatio. In the drama, lyric, no matter how inspiring, must be subordinate to the action; for this reason the public has not bestowed immortality upon George Darley, the belated Elizabethan. Nor will the lyric itself permit much moralizing; for this reason many of Wordsworth's poems met with a storm of disapproval. If the epic ceases to tell a story and dwells too much upon description, the reader is wearied; for this reason the narrative poetry of Southey and Landor is no longer read except by the specialist or the curio-hunter. Seneca was similarly handicapped; his prose could not be identified with the direct study of oratory, as could that of his father; nor with the drama of history, as Tacitus; nor with the professional side of Stoicism, as Epictetus; nor with the descriptive charms of an epistolographer like Pliny. In the Epistulae morales, he has tried to write a personal letter, to move his correspondent with the beauty of philosophy and virtue, to deal directly with the throbbing facts of his own epoch, and to suggest remedies for its shortcomings. Hence he is judged at every point of approach. And it is only by virtue of his message to the world of today, to his modern element, that we can insist on his enduring value. I hope to show, perhaps by a sort of paradox, that this very mixing of literary types, this habit of scorning the liturgical form, has resulted in the catholicity of his appeal to so many thinkers in subsequent ages. It is well known that his successors under the empire subjected him to much criticism. He was a puzzle to his own contemporaries. Just as some gifted Hibernian, who settles in the literary world of London and conceals a genuine message beneath the mask of paradox and pose, is greeted with cheers of approval and hisses of scorn,