Tag Archives: Seneca the Younger

Five More Seneca Commentaries

I have been intending to update my list of commentaries on Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, especially since Jeremias Grau told me in a comment on my last update about three I did not know: two German PhD theses (one of them … Continue reading

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Curculio 6: Two Adjectives in Seneca’s Agamemnon

How’s that for a boring title? As a continuation of my experiment with publishing original scholarship on this site, I have just uploaded an eight-page PDF containing two conjectures on the text of Seneca’s Agamemnon, titled as above (link). (I … Continue reading

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Pedantry Pedantically Denounced

On a Latin play about Richard III by the master of Caius College, Cambridge (1579): . . . Legge’s was a poverty-stricken mind; his Latin versification might crimson the cheek of a preparatory schoolboy, and but for the sad fact … Continue reading

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Getting More Than I Paid For

Elaine Fantham’s new translation of Seneca: Selected Letters (Oxford World Classics, 2010) is described on the back cover as “the largest selection of Seneca’s letters currently available” (in translation, that is). The Note on the Text (xxxv-xxxvi) is more specific: … Continue reading

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A Missed Opportunity for Aesthetic Synergy

The American Shakespeare Center is currently doing four plays in rotation at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton: I Henry IV, Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, and Titus Andronicus. All are delightful in their different ways. Unfortunately, Titus … Continue reading

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Seneca Commentaries

I’ve updated the list of twentieth-century commentaries and other works on Seneca’s Epistulae Morales (link on the left) with four or five recent works. It’s a busy field, though there are still three dozen letters in which the reader is … Continue reading

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Semi-New Feature

I have added a category in the left column for ‘Lists of Commentaries’. So far, the only one is for Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, though Ovid’s Heroides will follow. This is not a complete bibliography, but a cross-reference of letters against … Continue reading

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What Did Seneca Know About Babies?

Not much, to judge by E. M. 22.15, where Natura addresses those dying old: ‘Sine cupiditatibus uos genui, sine timoribus, sine superstitione, sine perfidia ceterisque pestibus; quales intrastis exite.’ “I engendered you without desires, without fears, without superstition, without treachery … Continue reading

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Great Minds Think Alike

Helmuth, Graf von Moltke (the Elder): No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Seneca (the Younger): Vetus proverbium est gladiatorem in harena capere consilium; aliquid adversarii vultus, aliquid manus mota, aliquid ipsa inclinatio corporis intuentem monet. Quid fieri soleat, … Continue reading

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Handouts I

I have made up a one-page handout cross-referencing Seneca’s Epistulae Morales against the various 20th-century commentaries, each of which covers a different selection. The Word 2000 for Windows (.doc) version is here, the Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) version here. Besides showing … Continue reading

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