Form and Meaning in Cicero, Seneca, and Novidio Fracco

In book 3 of the Natural Questions, Seneca criticizes the knowledge offered by poets and offers his natural philosophy as an alternative. Through his treatment of the cyclical cosmic flood in 3.27-30, he shows that while poets are focused on the past and narrow human concerns, he can see the bigger picture and so both explain the present and predict the future.

Though framed as dialogues between Seneca and his interlocutor, much of Seneca’s Consolations involve Seneca taking on the roles of many other distinct persons, including that of his addressee. In my paper, I will demonstrate how Seneca’s strategy of switching between personae particular to his addressee has a therapeutic effect for both his addressee and himself, with a focus on Ad Helviam and Ad Marciam.

Four Forms of Philosophic Esotericism in Cicero’s De natura deorum

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Emerging out of the turmoil and miseries of the 1527 Sack of Rome, the poetic genres of the consolatio (consolation) and lamentio (lament) for the fallen city have continued to attract scholarly attention. Studies by De Caprio (1986) and Gouwens (1998), and more recently Romei (2018) have explored how humanists such as Pietro Corsi and Piero Valeriano, looking to poetic models found in classical authors such as Statius and Ovid, sought to comfort the sacked city and rationalize its suffering.

Digging in the Dirt (?): Seneca, Columella, and the Value of Res Rustica

Scholars have long noted that the famous saying of Cato the Elder, “Carthage must be destroyed” (Carthago delenda est), is likely apocryphal (Dubuission 2000). But what is less often noted is that Cicero’s De senectute is the earliest surviving evidence for Cato’s support for the Third Punic War (Cic. Sen. 18-19). In this paper, I examine Cicero’s version of the anecdote—delivered in the dialogic Cato’s voice—in context of the plausibility and historicity of the dialogue’s setting in the penultimate year of Cato’s life.