Care of the Self and Social Bonding in Seneca: Recruiting Readers for a Global Network of Progressor Friends

This paper interprets the demonstrative retreat from public life and the promotion of self-improvement in Seneca’s later works as a political undertaking. Developing arguments by THOMAS HABINEK, MATTHEW ROLLER and HARRY HINE, it suggests that Seneca promoted the political vision of a cosmic community of progressors toward virtue constituted by a special form of progressor friendship, a theoretical innovation made in the Epistulae morales. This network of like-minded individuals spanning time and space is open to anyone who shares the other members’ commitment to the improvement of one’s own self and that of others. By advertising such self-care and courting his readers as prospective friends, the author of the Epistulae morales aims to recruit new members for that community, in particular in the first nine letters

The Stoics and the State: Theory – Practice – Context

How did the Stoics conceive of a polis and statehood? What happens when these ideas meet different biographies and changing historical environments? To answer these questions, 'The Stoics and the State' combines close philological reading of original source texts and fine-grained conceptual analysis with wide-ranging contextualisation, which is both thematic and diachronic. A systematic account elucidates extant definitions, aspects of statehood (territory, institutions, population and state objectives) and the constitutive function of the common law. The book’s diachronic part investigates how Stoics from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius used their theory of the state to assess particular states, explain the origin of political communities and shape their own political practice. A glimpse at modern adaptations from Justus Lipsius to Martha C. Nussbaum explains the peculiarities of Stoic notions and their basis in a conception of human nature as not only political but essentially sociable and beneficent

Mucius Scaevola and the Essence of Manly Patientia

Patientia, the virtue of enduring physiological pain, poses a problem for Roman elite masculinities. The male body is supposed to be unpenetrated, but when pain is inflicted the body is often cut and pierced. This paper looks at literary and philosophical representations of the moral exemplar Mucius Scaevola to see how Roman writers and philosophers deal with this dilemma

Male Youths as Objects of Desire in Latin Literature: Some Antinomies in the Priapic Model of Roman Sexuality

Drawing on a range of sources such as Roman oratory, love elegy, Carmina Priapea and Petronius, the paper claims that the Priapic model of Roman Sexuality entails a particularly vulnerable form of male sexuality which can best be observed in descriptions of young men in the transitional period to manhood, such as, e.g., Achilles in Statius' Achilleis

Delimiting a Self by God in Epictetus

Epictetus' thought is defined by an antithesis of mine and not-mine, which is an antithesis of externals and self. From this arise a number of questions for Epictetus‘ theology, which are addressed in this paper: How is the self delimited from God, given that God is all-pervading? Is God inside or outside the self? In which way is God the cause, creator and shaper of the self? And how does human agency and self-shaping through prohairesis spell out within this determinst framework? If, as will become apparent in the discussion of the previous questions, the shape and activities of human selves originate from God and should be perfectly aligned with God, in which sense is there still a separate, individual human self

Senecan Progressor Friendship and the Characterization of Nero in Tacitus' Annals

Argues that Tacitus’ shaped his account of Seneca and the characterization of Nero within his social environment according to features characteristic of Seneca’s conception of friendship. Surprisingly, Tacitus assigns to Nero an active power: The emperor drives a ubiquitous inversion of the social values promoted by his mentor. Patterns of Seneca’s social thought are adduced to characterize not only the portrayed emperor but also the political institution itself

Types of Freedom and Submission in Tacitus' Agricola

Discusses conceptions of freedom displayed in Tacitus' Agricola. Tacitus seems to have had a clear-cut conceptual grid in which the German defectors, the Usipi, mirror the futile demonstrations of freedom by senators seeking a "ambitious death." The British provincials, including Calgacus and his followers, correspond to the ordinary Roman people and their leadership. It is in the army that a form of non-debasing hierarchy for the common benefit can be conceived, as long as the army and their leader is in the field. Problems arise when the military meets the civilian sphere

Copia-e-incolla e la struttura del ‘Compendio di etica stoica’ attribuito ad Ario Didimo

This paper is a first publication on my ongoing research on the sources of the extant doxographies on Stoic ethics. It argues that there are identifiable traces of a copy-and-paste strategy in the “Outline of Stoic Ethics” generally attributed to Arius Didymus and transmitted in Johannes Stobaeus’ Anthology. The author of the Outline took extant doxographic texts and supplemented it by inserting additional material. The editing process also resulted in transpositions, omissions, and rewriting to connect the original material with the accretions to it. This kind of source criticism is important because sometimes there is still an identifiable train of thought that can be restored, and the relation of parallel accounts, their sources, and the choices of individual source authors can be spelled out more precisely

Seneca Philosophus

Addressing classicists, philosophers, students, and general readers alike, this volume emphasizes the unity of Seneca's work and his originality as a translator of Stoic ideas in the literary forms of imperial Rome. It features a vitalizing diversity of contributors from different generations, disciplines, and research cultures. Several prominent Seneca scholars publishing in other languages are for the first time made accessible to anglophone readers. (See also the attached file with ToC and Introduction

Ovids Schule der ‘elegischen’ Liebe: Erotodidaxe und Psychagogie in der Ars amatoria

This dissertation in classics might be of interest for gender studies as well since it is a sustained demonstration how one social and literary sterotype (the elegiac lover -- der elegisch Liebende) is systematically transformed into another (the artist of love -- der Liebeskünstler) as part of generic transformation (turning Latin love elegy into didactic poetry). The counterpart of these stereotypes is the "harsh lady" (dura domina), who is domesticated in the third book of the Ars amatoria. The copyright for the book belongs to the author, who has uploaded it to the site. Please feel free to use it for non-profit purposes