Politics by Other Means? Ethics and Aesthetics in Roman Stoicism

In the Epistulae morales, Seneca translates the early Stoic concept of eros into a form of amicitia more palatable to a readership of Roman knights and senators. On the basis of this modified eros-amicitia, he also develops a new conception of progressor friendship that is no longer just a deficient emulation of the true philia of Stoic sages, but a practice of its own kind and purpose.

Although Dion of Prusa’s work betrays more influences than strictly Stoic ones, our sources do tell us that he studied with Musonius Rufus, and scholars such as Brunt (1973) have already shown how fruitful an analysis of his speeches can be for reconstructions of Stoic viewpoints.

In this paper I will focus on the question of participation in politics, and more specifically on the challenges that such participation poses. Dion proposes a number of strategies, which all, one way or another, end up underscoring rather than undermining the importance of such participation.

This paper investigates the politics of Seneca’s stoic engagement with traditional Roman exemplary discourse. In the Epistulae, Seneca develops the argument that past social actors cannot provide usable models for action in the present, because our knowledge of such actors’ moral states is insufficient.

After the trailblazing works of Fleck 1974 and Maslakov 1984, in the last two decades an increasing number of articles and monographs have explored the concept of “exemplarity,” understood as key-concept for a deeper understanding of Valerius Maximus (V.M. henceforth). Even if the practical function of Facta ac Dicta Memorabilia as a repository for school and declamatory culture cannot be denied, the principles of selection, the elaboration of the sources, and, above all, the moral implications of these exempla have been systematically targeted.

The aim of this paper is to explore the overlapping terminology and argumentation of Stoic physics and ancient aesthetic discourse, especially with respect to the color and variety of the natural world. The Stoics, like their pre-Socratic predecessors, drew heavily on visual phenomena in developing their account of a continuous, monistic universe, and in return they supplied ancient aesthetic theory with defenses against the philosophical critique of art articulated by the Platonic Socrates and various of his successors.