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On the basis of lexical and stylistic considerations, a new interpretation of two Senecan passages (nat. vii 1, 3 and vii 25, 3) is proposed, defending the transmitted text.

The oil-producing regions of western Pennsylvania and New York are legendary as the birthplace of the modern petroleum industry; as with any narrative of American origins, it is important to scrutinize the role of racism and colonialism in establishing narratives that render Indigenous people as ghosts, guides, or givers who facilitate white access to resources while fading into a mythical past. Such narratives certainly proliferated in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century popular press, where petroleum was initially known by its regional moniker, “Seneca Oil,” and dreams of “Indian spirits” were said to lead prospectors to successful holes. The reality was that the Seneca people waged active legal and political battles to secure their rights to land, resources, and sacred sites in Pennsylvania and New York throughout the height of the oil boom. Their historical relationship with oil as a healing natural substance led leaders to preserve the Oil Spring Territory between 1797 and 1801; a century later, Seneca leaders engaged in ever-more complex negotiations with white-owned oil companies, and wound up in an existential fight against the Americans attempting to liquidate their treaty-protected territories.

The immediate source of Grotius's etiamsi -claim (natural law would be valid even if there were no God or human affairs were no concern for him) has never been convincingly identified. This paper argues that Grotius's formulation of the claim derives from a very similar sentence of Bartolomé de Medina (1527–1580), a Spanish scholastic and eminent member of the School of Salamanca, whose work Grotius quotes in De iure belli ac pacis. Medina ascribes the sentence to Seneca, but there is apparently no such proposition in Seneca's extant works. Nevertheless, related propositions were attributed to Seneca in the medieval period, not least in sermons and pastoral writings, even in vernacular languages. This shows that, even outside academic debates, counterfactual reasoning involving God's non-existence or indifference to human affairs was not considered illicit or dangerous in the Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precise effects of Jesuit education can be difficult to discern in a given writer or artist. Little is known about Pierre Corneille's (1605–84) humanist formation at the Jesuit college in Rouen; like his philosophical orientation, its nature must be extrapolated from scanty, equivocal evidence. This article traces Corneille's reception of Seneca (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) in his early tragedy Médée and his heroic drama Cinna in an attempt to come to grips with his idiosyncratic classicism, which diverges considerably from contemporary Aristotelianism. Corneille is a practical man of the theatre and focuses less on Aristotle than on Seneca's philosophical prose, as well as his tragedies. By the time he comes to compose Rodogune , Corneille has absorbed Seneca so completely that it seems almost impossible to articulate precisely how his work is "Senecan," except to point to Seneca's shadow. Perhaps Jesuit classicism is easier to study in a less idiosyncratic writer like Thomas Corneille (1625–1709)? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Araucaria is the property of Araucaria-Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofia, Politica y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In diesem Beitrag, der aus der Unterrichtspraxis entstanden und auf diese bezogen ist, wird verdeutlicht, dass lateinische Lektüre so inklusionssensibel materialisiert werden kann, dass unterschiedlich diagnostizierte Bedarfe in den typischen Phasen des Lateinunterrichts (Texterschließung, Übersetzung, Interpretation) auf dem Weg des zielgleichen Lernens qua varianter Methodik (Binnendifferenzierung, Erleichterungs-/Ersatzmaßnahmen) als Potenziale verstanden begünstigt werden können. Das hier vorzustellende Material problematisiert Senecas epistula 16 und ist die überarbeitete Version einer ursprünglichen Fassung, die basierend auf theoretischen Forschungserkenntnissen an die inklusiven Anforderungen einer empirisch zu begleitenden Lerngruppe gestaltet wurde. Nach der Reflexion aller am Prozess Beteiligten (Schüler*innen, Lehrkraft und Forscher*innen) fungiert das hier vorzustellende Material als Endprodukt des Forschungsprozesses, das zugleich die Erkenntnis mit sich bringt, je nach Lerngruppe und deren spezifischen Bedarfen flexibel adaptiert werden zu können. Ferner kann dieses Material als Folie für die Gestaltung weiterer Lektüren oder zur Reflexion über bisher eingesetzte Materialien verwendet werden, um den lateinischen Lektüreunterricht zukünftig inklusionssensibel arrangieren zu können.

Several scholarly inquiries have explored the possibility that Parmenides was acquainted with Heraclitus and engaged in polemics against him, in light of the fact that their respective chronologies do not preclude this scenario. However, with few exceptions, the debate remains polarized between two main positions: the first contends that Heraclitus and Parmenides were likely unaware of each other, or at least that no conclusive evidence exists to prove their acquaintance; the second posits that Parmenides was indeed aware of Heraclitus and argued against him. This paper focuses on Heraclitus B 49a DK to offer additional, albeit measured, support for the latter position and to suggest a hypothesis, at least a partial one, concerning the origins of Parmenides’ κρίσις between εἶναι and μὴ εἶναι.

In this note an allusion recreated from Seneca’s De providentia is rescued as it was hidden in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, which recovers and adapted some topics from the Senecan text in a few brief lines which have been hitherto practically unnoticed; if the allusion is verified, a more recent reading of Seneca’s writing would make full argumentative sense.

El problema del destino ulterior del alma es una cuestión abierta en la obra de Séneca. En sus Epistulae el filósofo se representa en primera persona mientras reflexiona sobre este interrogante, al que configura en los términos de la llamada “alternativa socrática”, de acuerdo con la cual la muerte “nos destruye o nos libera” (Ep., XXIV, 17). De manera sugerente, en la Ep. CII Séneca pone en escena su propio abandono al “bellum somnium” de la inmortalidad. En el presente artículo nos proponemos demostrar que el marco epistolar nos ofrece una clave de lectura para considerar que esta dramatización de su entrega al sueño escatológico podría no obedecer a una mera “exigencia sentimental o consolatoria” (Setaioli, 2000, p. 317), sino que podría explicarse mejor como una tentativa de trascendencia ya no ontológica, sino textual. En este sentido, proponemos reconsiderar la plasmación del somnium-cogitatio (CII, 21-29) en tanto escritura meditativa de una lectura.

Hercules Oetaeus (Hercules on Oeta) is one of the tragedies written by Seneca, which main subject is the death and the apotheosis of the great hero Hercules. The prologue of the senecan tragedy is composed by 103 stanzas through which Hercules, speakingin first person, tries to persuade Zeus, his father and the father of all gods, to provide him the power of immortality. Our article aims to present the pleadings of the hero on the prologue of the tragedy Hercules Oetaeus, along with the translation and comments about the stanzas in which the hero lists the glorious achievements conducted by himself. We understand that the role of Hercules serves as na example through which the principles of the stoic-senecan teachings can be demonstrated and, especially, disseminated. As a main text, we will use the edition signed by Fitch (2004); and, to assist us with the simbolism of the myths, we will use the researches done by Brandão (2010; 2012); and the philosophical books written by Seneca will be used as a guideline to our observations.

Pelopidarum secunda is an understudied anonymous English adaptation of Seneca's Agamemnon and Sophocles' Electra. The play is preserved only in manuscript and was probably performed at Winchester College around 1590. Through a combination of Marvin Carlson's notions of 'ghosting' and of the 'site of memory' with a neo‐historicist approach, the article offers a close analysis of this neglected school play from an intertextual, performative, and extratextual perspective. The analysis shows that the play is haunted by memories of its classical sources and of other performance contexts, including the church, and contains potential allusions to contemporary royal figures. In so doing, I argue that Pelopidarum secunda showcases the role of classical models in the history of Elizabethan revenge tragedy. By conjuring up memorable sources—Sophocles and Seneca—and events—past performances and executions—the unknown playwright(s) had the ambition to make Pelopidarum secunda equally memorable. Although this attempt has evidently failed given the obscurity into which the play has fallen so far, Pelopidarum secunda deserves a place in the archival memory of classical reception as well as further scholarly attention within early modern English drama studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper regards Seneca's practical philosophy as ancestor to psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy and as a progenitor of ongoing contemporary praxis in applied ideas of mind. Facing forward into the Anthropocene, as psychoanalysis encounters Artificial Intelligence, the convergence with contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy of value concepts developed from Antiquity is discussed. Drawn from Seneca's Letters on Ethics, constellations of significant ideas present in ancient practical philosophy resonate with similar configurations developed two millennia later, and central to the practice of contemporary psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthy aging is associated with a heterogeneous decline across cognitive functions, typically observed between language comprehension and language production (LP). Examining resting‐state fMRI and neuropsychological data from 628 healthy adults (age 18–88) from the CamCAN cohort, we performed state‐of‐the‐art graph theoretical analysis to uncover the neural mechanisms underlying this variability. At the cognitive level, our findings suggest that LP is not an isolated function but is modulated throughout the lifespan by the extent of inter‐cognitive synergy between semantic and domain‐general processes. At the cerebral level, we show that default mode network (DMN) suppression coupled with fronto‐parietal network (FPN) integration is the way for the brain to compensate for the effects of dedifferentiation at a minimal cost, efficiently mitigating the age‐related decline in LP. Relatedly, reduced DMN suppression in midlife could compromise the ability to manage the cost of FPN integration. This may prompt older adults to adopt a more cost‐efficient compensatory strategy that maintains global homeostasis at the expense of LP performances. Taken together, we propose that midlife represents a critical neurocognitive juncture that signifies the onset of LP decline, as older adults gradually lose control over semantic representations. We summarize our findings in a novel synergistic, economical, nonlinear, emergent, cognitive aging model, integrating connectomic and cognitive dimensions within a complex system perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to think through paranoia's epistemic and affective features, which pervade both the worldview presented in Senecan tragedy and the inner life of many of its protagonists. Drawing upon recent literary-critical work, I argue that paranoia is temporally and epistemically ambivalent: subjects simultaneously attempt to "get ahead" of a looming cataclysm--looking to the future in an attempt to avert disaster--while inevitably "falling behind," failing to predict or preempt the future in time to protect themselves. Much of Senecan tragedy plays out paranoia's future-oriented vigilance on the formal level. Foreshadowing, allusions, and meta-literary flourishes serve to render both readers and characters hyperaware of the earth-shattering horrors to come; however, in doing so, they also reveal that this forward-oriented bracing only serves to dredge up negative affect in advance. By contrast, I argue that Seneca's Phoenissae thematizes in the character of Oedipus not only paranoia's future-looking vigilance but also its inherent lagging, the failure to know and act in advance. These elements of slowness, stuckness, and delay open a space for stillness, relief, and intimacy, even within a narrative which hurtles toward cataclysm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article scrutinises Seneca's moral engagement with complex financial accounting as a speculative form of wealth and moneymaking that challenged social norms and subverted systems of value. The contribution discusses Seneca's construction of a form of greed and corruption that is often anticipated by psychological biases, such as loss aversion and self-deception. This degenerating process is exemplified by the misuse of financial ledgers, and specifically of the kalendarium, an account book associated with moneylending that Seneca describes as a suspect instrument of avarice that provoked the ruin of fortunes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La filosofía posee un potencial terapéutico presente desde sus inicios griegos. De entre todas las escuelas helenísticas, podemos afirmar que la que más se preocupó por el malestar humano fue la estoica. El presente artículo analiza la gestión estoica del duelo presente en las Consolaciones de Séneca, exponiendo la operatividad terapéutica de su modelo, en tanto que metodología explicativo-experiencial de fines eudaimónicos o sapienciales.

De clementia, tratado dirigido por Séneca al emperador Nerón hacia 55-56, fue objeto de una traducción destinada a Juan II de Castilla, realizada por Alfonso de Cartagena a inicios de la década de 1430. El trabajo buscará reconstruir el contexto cultural, jurídico y político en el que dicha traducción se realizó, marcado por el impulso al uso del perdón real como un medio para alcanzar la paz en el reino y por la centralización del poder en manos del monarca, donde la clemencia, motivo central del tratado, se presentaría como argumento legitimador de dicho perdón y como mecanismo de autorregulación de un poder presentado como absoluto, siguiendo el modelo de la monarquía imperial romana defendido por Séneca en el tratado. El análisis permitirá, asimismo, analizar el trasvase ideológico entre el período romano y la Baja Edad Media y el impacto político de la obra en el siglo XV castellano.

Quevedo a imprimé au néo-stoïcisme sa marque personnelle. Cette sagesse de plume s’est sans doute forgée également à l’épreuve du vécu. Notre travail s’attache à montrer la relation entre l’expérience de l’emprisonnement et la démarche d’écriture qui préside à quelques œuvres. L’écriture quévédienne laisse transparaître une importante intertextualité, rendue possible grâce à la circulation des textes qui continue, y compris dans les moments de réclusion qui sont aussi des moments de production intense. Nous nous appuyons sur la correspondance depuis la dernière prison, sur la poésie morale et sur certains textes doctrinaux et politiques pour montrer que cette fabrique de l’écriture correspond à une heuristique personnelle rendue nécessaire par les circonstances de la vie.

This article situates the pseudo-Senecan Octavia within a modern feminist framework in order to excavate a reading of the play as a commentary on the suppression of women’s anger and agency. In analyzing Octavia’s anger as untapped potential to effect real political change, I argue that the gradual suppression of her rage against the backdrop of the gendered brutality experienced by her imperial predecessors facilitates an exploration of systems of misogyny and sexism developed to check female agency precisely at a historical moment when imperial rule had carved out a space for (a few) powerful Roman women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Birgitte Thott's (1610–1662) intellectual identity by investigating the paratexts to her translation of Seneca's philosophical works (1658) in a European context. Written partly by Thott herself and partly by other scholars, these texts assisted in creating Thott's public persona and in establishing Thott as a female intellectual in early modern Denmark. As there was a certain tension for female intellectuals between participating in the public sphere and living up to the gender norms of their times, it was difficult for them to become recognised as public figures. While Thott is praised by others as an exception, Thott herself developed different strategies to address the tensions between traditional gender roles and her intellectual activities. In an unconventional way, Thott dedicated her work to women, aiming at a broad consent in society for female learning and encouraging other women to follow her example. She presented her own work as a serious contribution to the Christian tradition of engaging with Stoic philosophy. This article contributes to mapping the development of a female intellectual identity during the early modern period by focusing on a geographical region that is often overlooked in research about the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hypnos is the property of Hypnos / Instituto Hypnos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Collectanea Philologica is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval is the property of Sociedad Espanola de Filosofia Medieval and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines some passages in the De Clementia where Seneca seems to aim at being identified with both Callisthenes and Pindar as an act of homage towards Nero. The former was the official historian of the Persian expedition of Alexander the Great, whose keen imitator the Emperor Nero was. The latter was held in the highest esteem by Alexander to the extent that Alexander did not destroy the poet's house when he destroyed Thebes, Pindar's hometown. This paper aims to demonstrate that Seneca blends the two personae to create his own persona, a better character than the objects of his imitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several scholarly inquiries have explored the possibility that Parmenides was acquainted with Heraclitus and engaged in polemics against him, in light of the fact that their respective chronologies do not preclude this scenario. However, with few exceptions, the debate remains polarized between two main positions: the first contends that Heraclitus and Parmenides were likely unaware of each other, or at least that no conclusive evidence exists to prove their acquaintance; the second posits that Parmenides was indeed aware of Heraclitus and argued against him. This paper focuses on Heraclitus B 49a DK to offer additional, albeit measured, support for the latter position and to suggest a hypothesis, at least a partial one, concerning the origins of Parmenides' κρίσις between εἶναι and μὴ εἶναι. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea (1969), starting from a comparison with Pasolini’s different drafts and with Euripides’ hypotext. The analysis highlights the fundamental opposition between two antithetical civilisations – one, from which Medea comes, archaic, ‘barbaric’, defined by sacredness and ritual; the other, to which Medea arrives, marked by rationality and the negation of the sacred. This duality deflagrates in Medea’s dreams, Pasolini’s true great innovation with respect to the monologues of Euripides’ tragedy: Pasolini’s Medea arrives at the project (which is also desire) of revenge through contact with the Sun, a figure to which Pasolini gives much more space as the fulcrum of the eternal circuit of death and rebirth, and who makes vengeance somewhat human, guiding Medea towards the re-appropriation of her own roots and of the archaic civilisation from which she had distanced herself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Shakespeare's late plays, the arts of care push towards sublime horizons of value out of lived ecologies of virtue nourished by global wisdom traditions. To know by nursing is to intuit in and through the intimate tactility of tending to the birth, growth, healing, or dying of another person a sense of purpose and meaning, of telos or goal, yearnings that both sustain and are supported by philosophies, religions, or world views that gain value by being shared with others: 'What is your study?' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the emperor, quoting Homer was both a danger and an opportunity. Suetonius' Lives shows that anecdotes of quotation circulated widely to characterise the emperor for good or for ill. Subsequently, these moments could themselves become the subject of allusion. If you quote a line of Homer that was famously quoted by the emperor, are you quoting the poet or Caesar? This phenomenon, whereby a poetic cliché could be reborn as charged reference to a prior use of that tag by a well-known figure, might be termed metaquotation. This ambiguity of reference was exploited throughout Seneca's Apocolocyntosis , and in turn by readers of that text in antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient philosophical schools developed and discussed perspectives and practices on the emotion of anger useful in contemporary philosophical practice with clients, groups, and organizations. This paper argues the case for incorporating these insights from four main philosophical schools (Platonist, Aristotelian, Epicurean, and Stoic) sets out eight practices drawn from these schools, and discusses how these insights can be used by philosophical practitioners with clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Psicoterapia y Psicosomática is the property of Instituto de Estudios Psicosomaticos & Psicoterapia Medica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

At the beginning of De vita beata, Seneca defines the vulgus in an original way: aristocrats are included in his definition of the notion. We will study this definition from three different perspectives. Firstly, this paper looks into the manuscript transmission of this passage and outlines the history of the discussions about this definition, whose cryptic nature has generated a lot of commentary since the Renaissance period. Secondly, it aims at explaining the meaning of this passage by giving new arguments to support the view that the participles chlamydati and coronati refer to the aristocrats, who are usually excluded from the vulgus. Thirdly, it situates this definition in Stoicism and Seneca’s works.

This paper analyses the problem of shame in the thinking of Lucius Annaeus Seneca. The authors examine this problem primarily in two contexts. The first, social meaning, understands shame as an emotion that appears during a conflict between a person’s “self” and social norms. Seneca mainly tackles this question concerning providing “benefits” (beneficia) in his On Benefits and eighty-first letter of Moral Epistles. The second therapeutic and didactic meaning utilises shame as an instrument to manage some illnesses of the mind (for example, anger). Moreover, to educate a “Stoic disciple” (proficiens), deliberate exposure to shame in public marks one of the important techniques to near the perfect ideal of “the wise man” (sapiens) and to prepare oneself for service in public office. Especially in Moral Epistles, we find a detailed description of this didactic approach and the limiting factors to using this technique.

The article considers Dinner by V. S. Filimonov (1837) as a literary and gastronomic poem. The dishes mentioned by the poet are not only of practical use, they are incorporated into the system of literary relationships, and become a source of intertextual connections and allusions. V. S. Filimonov’s characters taste not only and not so much the dishes and drinks served; they rather taste life itself: over dinner they satisfy their hunger of long-expected meetings with true friends, have polemic conversations, relish literary novelties. The research focuses on the food culture of Ancient Rome. The poem Dinner follows the forming system of images of the Russian Italiana of the 1840s, but its thematic peculiarity allows S. V. Filimonov to show the power, the eternity of Rome from another point of view – the everyday one. Five categories, recreating the picture of the gastronomic life of the great empire, have been singled out: popular phrases and Latin expressions; culinary dishes; names and events; elements of everyday life and customs; quotes from the works of Roman authors. The object of research in this article is the first category: popular phrases and Latin expressions. A transformation of the expressions “edimus ut vivamus”, “non vivimus ut edamus”, “sub rosā”, “in vino veritas” can be traced. A probable source of the Latin expression “nubes exculenta“ for V. S. Filimonov is assumed to be the treatise of a French political leader J. A. Brillat-Savarin. By studying the culinary encyclopedia, dictionaries and cookbooks of the 18–21st centuries, an attempt is made to identify the dishes included in the notion of “nubes exculenta“ (edible clouds). The poem Dinner is compared to the original texts of the Roman authors – Natural History by Pliny the Elder, On Nature, On the Blessed Life by Seneca. The Latin sources have been translated by the author of the article.

The article is devoted to three politicians and intellectuals – the republican leader Cato of Utica, Neroʼs tutor Seneca and Trajanʼs friend Pliny the Younger. An uncompromising fighter against tyranny, Cato chose to commit suicide rather than accept the dictatorship of Caesar. The conformist Seneca, who consciously accepted autocracy and dreamed of the rule of an ideal princeps, was forced to commit suicide under the compulsion of his unworthy pupil, emperor Nero. Pliny the Younger made a brilliant political career and, having survived the despotic regime of Domitian, created the image of «the best princeps» in the «Panegyric» dedicated to Trajan.

The idea that learning liberates or that education emancipates is hardly a novelty, and it can be traced to ancient times and Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. Thus, in this paper, we aim to express that some of the ideas (like the idea that women and men are equally subject to moral virtue because of their rationality) and educational practices (such as those that encourage students to use their voices and reason independently from any authorities) embraced by well-known Roman Stoics did have emancipatory potential. Particularly important was a requirement that philosophy should be lived outside the classrooms.

This paper will primarily focus on the philosophical depictions of Medea’s character and actions. The following identities will be examined: gender (which roles defined a woman in antiquity and are these definitions still relevant today), political (what does it mean to be a foreigner and not belong to a particular political community), and psychological (do passions inevitably lead to a split in the psyche or, on the contrary, constitute it). These will serve as frames that outline Medea’s exceptional (in)humanness in the Greco-Roman society.

In this paper I explore the Stoic view on attachment to external goods, or what the Stoics call “indifferents.” Attachment is problematic, on the Stoic view, because it exposes us to loss and exacerbates the fragility that comes with needing others and things. The Stoics argue that we can build resilience through a robust reeducation of ordinary emotions and routine practice in psychological risk management techniques. Through a focus on selected writings of Seneca as well as Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, I nonetheless ask whether Stoicism leaves any room for grief and distress. I argue that it does, and that consolation comes not from a retreat to some inner citadel, but from the support and sustenance of social connections.

In his Letter 79 (probably written in c. AD 64) Seneca asks his addressee, Lucilius, who was then serving as procurator of Sicily, to send him a report on his travels around the island, including information specifically on Charybdis and Lucilius’ climb up Mount Etna. In addition to this “scientific tourism”, Seneca encourages Lucilius to attempt a new poem on Etna, “the venerated theme of every poet” (Ep. 79.5) and not to be deterred from doing so by the fact that there are already prominent literary works that offer remarkable descriptions of Etna. In my paper, I will first briefly discuss the implications of Seneca’s choice to single out Vergil’s and Ovid’s works as the specific volcanic intertexts against which not only Lucilius, but also he himself will initiate the process of literary emulation. In this connection, I will also explore the significance for Seneca of the fact that Lucretius’ volcanic passages -to which Seneca does not refer overtly- are the dominant intertexts for both Vergil and Ovid. I will then discuss the principle of multiple explanations and the notion of the sublime, two prevailing thematic themes that the Epistle 79 shares with the Natural Questions (in particular Books 3 and 4a) and which are conditioned by Seneca’s intertextual reception of Lucretius and Ovid.

This paper focuses on the narrative aspect of Seneca's idea of self-transformation. It compares Seneca's viewpoint with some modern notions of the narrative self to highlight some parallels and significant differences between the ancient and modern conceptions and it establishes the reading of some parts of De Brev. Vit. in the context of other passages as concerned with the narrative self. The paper argues, amongst other points, that in Ep. 83.1–3, Seneca extends the practice of meditatio (ethically directed self-examination) by incorporating the construction of a narrative self into this process, in dual roles, as examiner and examined. It concludes that Seneca expected us to avail ourselves of a similar self-assessment based on a dialogue with philosophical texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]