Seneca

Previous interpretations of the treatment of slavery by Seneca the Younger (Bobzien 1998, 338–45; Roller 2001, 214–33; and Edwards 2009, 139–59), agree on two interrelated claims: first, that Seneca only introduces slavery as a foil to his definition of freedom in Stoic political philosophy (Patterson 1982, 17–34); and second, that Seneca’s treatment of slavery, exemplified by Epistulae Morales 47, is primarily metaphorical and provides little insight into the historical institution of slavery, let alone a critique of it.

This paper offers a quantitative analysis of the reception of Senecan trimeter in four early works of Italian Humanist tragedy, which illuminates the creative possibilities afforded by the basic structure of the meter and identifies specific features important to questions of style and semantics. The four Neo-Latin tragedies, drawn from Grund 2011, represent influential works that date from the early 14th century to mid-15th century and include both historical and mythological subject matter.

Parallels of Anger and Fear in Seneca’s Thyestes

The bizarre figure of Hostius Quadra, for whom mirrors that distort the size of the things they reflect are an object of sexual obsession, has fascinated modern readers of Seneca’s Natural Questions. The viewing experience is crucial to Hostius’ sexual enjoyment; indeed, Seneca devotes a long passage in NQ 1.16 to Hostius’ love of gazing upon the distorted body parts of his sexual partners.