Imagine a spiritual authority is watching you and you will be less tempted by vice. This passage, then, provides a criterion for this judgment: receive someone as friend if either you can improve him or he you. Edition Notes Series Loeb classical library. If it were possible, I would rather show what I mean than say it.". Usher²: M. D. Usher, The Student’s Seneca, Oklahoma. Oxford. What method to use at a given moment, for pupils at different stages in their training, is a matter of expertise and is subject to great situational variability. Letter 60, however, begins thus: queror, litigo, irascor. [16] Seneca is undoubtedly also responding to multiple literary influences in choosing the epistolary form. That element is present here, but Lucilius is also in a position to understand Seneca's particular vitia as well: rapida felicitas befell them both. Wenn du die Website weiter nutzt, gehen wir von deinem Einverständnis aus. Epistulae Morales Seneca Sic cum inferiore vivas quemadmodum tecum superiorem velis vivere. 2009. The Letters, then, depict a life lived accordingly and attempt to make that belief plausible by rendering that life interesting, large, majestic. He thinks he should be; otherwise, his instruction is the logical equivalent of "disobey this instruction." Mazzoli, G. 1989. Read honest and … It is clear enough that in the first instance, to Lucilius, this means "be master, take charge, of your own life." Die wichtigste Ursache von beiden aber liegt darin, dass wir uns nicht in die Gegenwart schicken, sondern unsere Gedanken voreilig in die Ferne schweifen lassen; Daher kommt es, dass das Vermögen der Vorschau, dies größte Gut des beschränkten Menschentums, zum Übel verkehrt ist. Seneca's intimate exploration of Lucilius' soul is not only aided by his physical presence in his friend's place of origin; the journey is itself a symbol of this exploration. To the extent that the Letters are a brief for Stoicism, they constitute an argument for that monism and against conventional education, which for Seneca fails to be for anything outside itself. Lucilius frequently asks Seneca about mutual friends; Letter 29, for instance, represents Lucilius as having asked about the condition of one Marcellinus. In Letter 112, however, Seneca flatly refuses a request from Lucilius to help an unnamed acquaintance: he is too far gone and not sincere enough to be helped. Much attention has been devoted to the theme of spiritual guidance in the Letters; it is indisputable that one of their chief concerns is to examine how we can help each other emerge from vice and move toward a good moral state. Inwood (2005, 346-47) attributes the extroversion of the Senecan self in the Letters to the author's need to present the Seneca-character vividly and realistically. The Therapy of Desire. [17] Arist. [32] It is also interesting to see what happens when one applies the coda of this instruction to the text that contains it: ad priores redi. See Russell 1974, 75-79, for an older discussion of the Lucilius story line, which, I propose, does not go far enough. Richard M. Gummere. lucilius must have revealed his lingering preoccupation with material goods. ↑ As Lucilius, in his letter, has come from far away. Even when I am forced to work I am free to mull over the Great Men of history (here Seneca adverts, as he very rarely does, to his career in politics: causa ex officio nata civili): Demetrium, virorum optimum, mecum circumfero et relictis conchyliatis cum illo seminudo loquor, illum admiror (Letter 62.3). Latein [1] Epistulas ad me perferendas tradidisti, ut scribis, amico tuo; deinde admones me ne omnia cum eo ad te pertinentia communicem, quia non soleas ne ipse quidem id facere: ita eadem epistula illum et dixisti amicum et negasti. ("But even if everything was discovered by the ancients, the following will always be new, namely how to use, understand, and arrange the things discovered by others. that the correspondence of Seneca with Lucilius is to a great extent fictitious." [49] How should we imagine all this within the dramatic conceit? Nec passim carpenda sunt nec avide invadenda universa: per partes pervenietur ad totum. Doch um den kleinen Gewinn auch des heutigen Tages mit Dir zu teilen, so fand ich bei unserem Hekaton die Bemerkung, dass die Beseitigung der Leidenschaften auch von Nutzen sei als Heilmittel gegen die Furcht. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that if such things could not provide edification then Nature would have been remiss, and so Seneca's theory wrong. There are suggestive, if relatively few, details about his daily life. Ars Didactica: Seneca's 94th and 95th "Letters." Ep. So for moral reform in general: προκοπή, or moral progress (profectus in Seneca's Latin translation), is a crucial concept in Stoicism. Is this perhaps a little harsh? [15] Analyzing Letter 46, however, Wilson (1987, 104-7) brilliantly establishes the importance of temporal dynamism within the imagined composition of individual letters. Plato and Aristotle and the whole crowd of wise men with divergent views took more from Socrates' character than from his words.". LibriVox recording of Moral letters to Lucilius (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium) by Lucius Annaeus Seneca. . That a teacher must be willing to engage in the livelier sort of instruction, see Letter 25.1, where Seneca discusses a friend whose moral problems are particularly acute: utar tota libertate: non amo illum nisi off endo. In any case, it is too late for Lucilius to deliberate whether a life of anonymity is better for him: in medium te protulit ingenii vigor, scriptorum elegantia, clarae ac nobiles amicitiae; iam notitia te invasit. ‚Quid ergo? Letters from a Stoic : Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium. The portrait of the virtuous and therefore happy life, of the courageous and therefore good death, attracts the painter as much as the viewer; demonstrating the techniques of approaching that vision brings the demonstrator closer to it. On letting the student come to you, reflect on that admitte, and also this sentence from the same passage, just after Seneca warns Lucilius against street preaching (Letter 7.9): aliquis fortasse unus aut alter incidet, et hic formandus tibi erit... . Finally, the correspondence, addressed to a late-middle-aged man, starts with an exhortation to take his life seriously; we infer that that is how Senecan Adult Education begins. This, I take it, explains why the last thirty or so letters are both idiosyncratic in their interests and technical in their exposition: Lucilius has reached the stage where he is competently absorbing a wide range of philosophical texts on his own, and need only trouble Seneca on certain difficulties. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1917-1925. As the correspondence progresses, Lucilius' philosophical sophistication increases. Moreover, on Seneca's reading of the history of philosophy, there is no distinction between research philosophers, philosophy teachers, and philosophical therapists (Letter 6.6): Zenonem Cleanthes non expressisset si tantummodo audisset: vitae eius interfuit, secreta perspexit. Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics. Leeman, A. D. 1953. Senecas "Epistulae Morales" als philosophisches Kunstwerk. The story begins not with Letter 1, but with a letter by Lucilius to Seneca; apparently, the former asked the latter for spiritual advice. In that respect, the vision is monistic. He has by Letter 108 succeeded in reorienting Lucilius' life around philosophy. 2007: Inwood: Translated with commentary in Brad Inwood, Seneca: Selected Philosophical Letters (Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers), Oxford University Press, 2007. Morals and Villas in Seneca's "Letters": Places to Dwell. Quod pertinaciter studes et omnibus omissis hoc unum agis, ut te meliorem cotidie facias, et probo et gaudeo, nec tantum hortor ut perseveres sed etiam rogo. Lucilius asks an unspecified technical question. Letter 61 softens the blow, mitigates the damage, accentuates the positive. In den Briefen erteilt Seneca Ratschläge, wie Lucilius, von dem lange Zeit vermutet wurde, er wäre eine fiktive Gestalt, zu einem besseren Stoiker werden könnte. Rousseau. It is not true, this letter says, that negotia make us too busy for proper studies. [34] "Cleanthes would not have been stamped in Zeno's image if he had only attended his lectures: he was part of Zeno's life, he beheld his secrets. [43], It must be said that this passage can easily be made to support the thesis that Lucilius is not a "real" character but only a mirror for Seneca's interiority, a device allowing him to talk to himself. Seneca. [33] In Letter 36, Seneca seems to respond to a request for advice on how Lucilius should advise a friend, reaffirming that Lucilius should strive to make his friend as good as he can. Seneca. That Seneca should all but explicitly suggest rereading him is no small support to a reading of him that requires us constantly to revise our understanding of individual letters in the light of what follows them. Unsere Vorzüge gereichen uns vielfach zum Schaden: Unser Gedächtnis erneuert uns die Qual der Furcht, unsere Vorausschau lässt sie uns schon vor ihrem Eintritt empfinden; Niemandes Unglück beschränkt sich bloß auf die Gegenwart. Und ich wundere mich nicht über diesen Hergang: Beide sind Regungen eines schwankenden Gemütes, das beunruhigt ist durch den Blick in die Zukunft. Moral education has its trends, movements visible from a bird' s-eye view; but it also cannot be reduced to a syllabus. Material for edification can be found everywhere: in philosophical study, for sure, but also in history, in poetry, in the banalities of daily life. Seneca can also be seen applying his own lessons. If this move is allowed, we have in this passage further authorial encouragement for the sort of closely read interpretation proposed here. [12] One simply cannot tell. Seneca's Stoicism proclaims that all of us are vicious and spiritually disordered, that setting our souls aright is our one mission, the only thing that really matters. Letter 53 is the infamous sea-voyage: physical illness provides the entree to a discussion of spiritual illness. Nic. Le Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium di Seneca: Valore letterario e filosofico. si fieri posset, quid sentiam ostendere quam loqui mallem, "I want my letters to be like my speech would be, if we were sitting or walking together, that is, spontaneous and natural. Quemadmodum eadem catena et custodiam et militem copulat, sic ista quae tam dissimilia sunt pariter incedunt: spem metus sequitur. . ANRW 2.36.3: 1823-77. . Vaco, Lucili, vaco, et ubicumque sum, ibi meus sum. Paris. [51] Letter 106.12: non vitae sed scholae discimus. . Cambridge. Lucilius has asked a quite general, but also sensible, question: what should I avoid? This movement, from chatty, breezy letters to dense and serious ones, is noticed by all students of the Letters. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium. The crucial methodological assumption for my reading is not that the correspondence is entirely fictional but that it is entirely governed by Seneca's authorial control: not only are the individual letters intended for publication, but the story as a whole and all of its inferable details serve Seneca's ambitions in writing them. When he says in 3.2 post amicitiam credendum est, ante iudicandum, Seneca has already practiced what he preaches. Meinen Namen, meine E-Mail-Adresse und meine Website in diesem Browser speichern, bis ich wieder kommentiere. Motto, A. L., and J. R. Clark. [27] Letter 109 reveals that the question is whether a sapiens would benefit another sapiens. The danger of moral contagion correlates directly with the number of one's acquaintances. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Isaac J. Meyers. Letters, though, are kept and reread. 4.48. That last we may take, I think, as explicit warrant for meta-dramatic readings of the Letters in general. Lucilius is usually mi Lucili; the carissime suggests that Seneca is worried he has alienated his friend. Penguin UK, Aug 26, 2004 - Philosophy - 256 pages. [19] The distinction I am positing, between "Seneca the character," the producer of the extended speech act that the Letters are, and "Seneca the author," who, for his own reasons, conceives the dramatization and carries it out, is of course fundamental to the dramatic reading (pace opponents of inferring authorial intent). Then he corrects himself. So is Lucilius. Cum his versare is also heeded; who but Seneca, after all, could Lucilius be meant to think about here? Leeman, A. D. 1953. [9] The narrative hints, the details of Seneca's life, of Lucilius' life, of the various third-parties mentioned, are to be squeezed, wrung dry. [2] Within the drama, Seneca's purpose is the moral improvement of his friend Lucilius. Magnus ille est qui fictilibus sic utitur quemadmodum argento, nec ille minor est qui sic argento utitur quemadmodum fictilibus; infirmi animi est pati non posse divitias. Id agamus ut meliorem vitam sequamur quam vulgus, non ut contrariam: alioquin quos emendari volumus fugamus a nobis et avertimus; Illud quoque efficimus, ut nihil imitari velint nostri, dum timent ne imitanda sint omnia. . Seneca: Epistulae Morales – Epistula 5 – Übersetzung. Seneca quickly realizes his mistake. If they were merely genuine letters, unintended for publication, with genuine letters from Lucilius being sent and received between the composition of each, inconsistency becomes not only tolerable but, at some point, expected: anyone who regularly deals in pontificating will at some point self-contradict (or else be a terrible bore). Nec miror ista sic ire: utrumque pendentis animi est, utrumque futuri exspectatione solliciti. Während der Corona-Krise stellen wir selbstverständlich gern Lateinunterricht öffentlich ins Netz. This artistry is both a lesson in cautious self-promotion and a one-upping of Seneca's less cautious, less artful predecessor in philosophical epistolarity. Oxford. Seneca, however, takes his responsibility as spiritual guide seriously, reaching into the details of his travels for edifying material. Princeton, N.J. Pire, G. 1958. On The True Joy Which Comes From Philosophy, XXIX. Ego certe id ago ne senex eadem velim quae puer volui. The opening of Letter 49, the first of the travel letters, has Seneca remarking on how the places he is seeing (Campania et Pompeiorum tuorum conspectus) are evoking his friend (totus mihi in oculis es). Aspetti della lingua e dell’ideologia senecana, Bologna, 111-217; Setaioli 2011: A. Setaioli, Epistulae morales, in Brill’s Companion To Seneca, forthcoming; Spallone 1995: M. Spallone, ’Edizioni’ tardoantiche e tradizione medievale dei testi: il caso delle Epistulae ad Lucilium di Seneca, in O. Pecere, M. D. Reeve (eds. Maxima autem utriusque causa est quod non ad praesentia aptamur sed cogitationes in longinqua praemittimus; itaque providentia, maximum bonum condicionis humanae, in malum versa est. [29] There is, of course, also a Seneca-drama, also important for my purposes, though somewhat less so. His dissertation explores the connection of cura, temporality, and hand imagery as a unifying thread in Seneca’s Epistulae Morales. [28] Letter 106.2 also mentions this work, known to us as the Moralis philosophiae libri. [14], One of the virtues of the dramatic reading is that it offers a literary explanation for Seneca's use of the epistolary form: letters are not only well suited to, but perhaps the only suitable medium for dramatizing a multi-year friendship and course of philosophical instruction. tulit te longe a conspectu vitae salubris rapida felicitas, provincia et procuratio et quidquid ab istis promittitur (Letter 19.3-5). [26] The Letters themselves reflect the latter to a far greater extent than the former; but they also show that Seneca's curriculum includes the former, knotty (nodosum) stuff. [21] As already noted, the story begins with Lucilius requesting spiritual guidance and Seneca responding with a mixture of exhortation and self-scrutiny. How we learn Stoicism is a part of Stoicism. The teacher wants his student on occasion to practice self-imposed poverty. We are to infer Lucilius' words from Seneca's responses. Richard M. Gummere. . Edwards, C. 1997. Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales - Ebook written by Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium 1,3. [43] This point can also be seen in Seneca's use of negative exempla (12.8-9, 94.62-67), and especially those in which the exemplum is Seneca himself (12.2-3, 87.1-5). The letter closes thus: vixi, Lucili carissime, quantum satis erat; mortem plenus expecto. To the extent that the representation rings true, we can be convinced that this sort of guidance is valuable. Intus omnia dissimilia sint, frons populo nostra conveniat. Mnemosyne 6: 307-13. Und doch, es ist so, mein Lucilius: Sie scheinen einander zu widersprechen, gehören aber doch zusammen. Of course, this middle-ground position implies, in practical terms, endlessly subjecting oneself to the temptation to conflate means and ends, to identify the object of your pursuit with the reason for your pursuing it. Seneca and Self-Assertion. Lucilius is "burning" (flagrare) with philosophical enthusiasm. [1] But they are not merely a discussion of these matters; they are also a representation, a dramatization, of an individual moral education. There is sure to be no small amount of repetition, both in form and in content. The day after that, however, in the course of examining his conscience Seneca comes to see the connection between his imperiousness towards Lucilius and his Imperial Connections. While far from exhaustive, this survey has considered many of the most important texts for the dramatic reading. And a charming text, or an infuriating one, if one finds Seneca's condescension to the lower classes distasteful. ‘Desines’ inquit ‘timere, si sperare desieris.’. Wherever precisely he is in Letter 56 (Baiae? [18] We may be confident that these lessons are meant to apply to our consumption of the Letters as well. -. Semper lege: i.e., "read trusted authors all the time," but also "only read trusted authors." Read in English by John Van Stan Seneca the Younger’s letters to his friend, Lucilius Junior, appear to have been written with a broad audience in mind. Was unserem Wunsche nach uns Bewunderung verschaffen soll, das könnte leicht lächerlich und widerwärtig erscheinen. Platon et Aristoteles et omnis in diversum itura sapientium turba plus ex moribus quam ex verbis Socratis traxit. Queries HELP. Read "tried and true" authors. he insists he is not a sage: he must plead for extra time to consider technical matters, he relates instances where he displays vicious emotional reactions, and so on. Berwick, Victoria. ... Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium. 2005. (1), given the fragmentary state of his oeuvre and of hellenistic philosophy in general. 1993. The answer can be inferred by reading the Letters dramatically. Stop wasting time. Seneca frequently revisits and revises his teachings on various themes. For one, Seneca stresses that his contribution to moral education lies more in its modalities than in its matter. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Seneca. Finally, on examining one's conscience, and doing so with a friend as an audience, I trust that any reader of the Letters will recognize those themes. Finally, I will consider Letters 60-62 as a connected series, arguing that they can be seen as a case study of a pedagogical mistake conscientiously corrected.[30]. Space prevents me from tracing it here, except to point out that the act of teaching Lucilius is itself part of Seneca's journey toward goodness. Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium - Libro 1 - Paragrafo 3 - Rifletti bene prima di sceglierti un amico, ma poi abbi piena fiducia Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium - Libro 1 - Paragrafo 4 We infer that the letter is being written in Seneca's apartment, that he is describing noises at the very moment he hears them. The philosophical letter was already an established genre (of which Epicurus is the most important practitioner; letters purporting to be by Plato, Aristotle, and other figures also circulated in antiquity). Moral education, then, is subject to such great situational variability that a purely general account of it is impossible, and exempla are more effective than purely general accounts anyway. He would be too distant. But they do so gradually: even the people in them only sporadically notice and only imperfectly recall these changes. Brescia. Experiri et exercere me volui . Others are overtly epistolary, remarking on Seneca's receipt of a previous letter, providing details of his own goings-on, and inquiring into those of his correspondent Lucilius. In den Briefen erteilt Seneca Ratschläge, wie Lucilius, von dem lange Zeit vermutet wurde, er wäre eine fiktive Gestalt, zu einem besseren Stoiker werden könnte. [48] But they also bear meta-didactic fruit. Letter 60 had been all stick; 61 reaches for the carrot. If it is read as a specific instruction, Seneca is telling his student and patient to find his own student/ patients as well. The Letters, understood in this way, also fill in a lacuna in the philosophical tradition. This ita fac recalls the ita fac that begins Letter 1, particularly as the next sentence, satis multum temporibus sparsimus, clearly recalls the first letter's theme of conserving time. A. Setaioli, 69-87. . Self-Scrutiny and Self-Transformation in Seneca's Letters. Nussbaum, M. C. 1994. Paris. . Brescia. . Seneca's Plans for a Work "Moralis Philosophiae" and Their Influence on His Later Epistles. Seneca (1-65 AD), Spanish Philosopher, counselor to Nero Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Then, a meditatio mortis. [35], Moreover, the teacher-student relationship is, for Seneca, not a different sort of relationship from friendship. [45] Tracing how this works is beyond the scope of this paper; see, of course, Henderson 2004 (especially 67-92 on Letter 55) for Seneca's complex exploitation of place in the Letters. For him not to have seen the passages where his teachings are in tension or in downright contradiction with themselves requires us to suppose our author not only hypocritical but rather careless as well.[47]. Hic mihi modus placet: temperetur vita inter bonos mores et publicos; suspiciant omnes vitam nostram sed agnoscant. Finally, he reveals why he overreacted: Lucilius' vices are the precise ones that wreaked so much havoc on Seneca's life, and he does not want his friend to suffer what he suffered. Seneca also remarks in several passages that Lucilius both wants to and should become a full-fledged philosopher himself (Letter 33.7). The letter is a beautiful, polythematic piece, moving from a meditation on the motivational power of noble words, through a reminiscence of Seneca's own enthusiastic embrace of philosophy as a youth (including his temporary adoption of a vegetarian diet), finally focusing on the dangers of studying as mere dilettante, as philologus, instead of studying for the sake of the Supreme Good, virtue. It is a separate question, I think, whether the details about Lucilius, even his existence, are historically true or merely invented by the author. The dramatic reading also explains both the order and the disorder of the Letters. Bei aller innerlichen Verschiedenheit mag doch nach außen hin unser Auftreten der Sitte des Volkes entsprechen. Bologna. (Translated by Richard M. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. Everything works, or at least can work, in harmony. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium sind eine Sammlung von 124 Briefen. It would be quite natural to read this passage merely as Seneca's recommendations for spiritual reform in general. Consulta qui la traduzione all'italiano di Paragrafo 45, Libro 5 dell'opera latina Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, di Seneca In a real life it is particularities all the way down. Morals and Villas in Seneca's "Letters": Places to Dwell. Der bloße Name Philosophie mag er auch noch so bescheiden verwendet werden, hat schon etwas anstößiges: Wohin soll es also führen, wenn wir uns zur Aufgabe machen, uns ganz der üblichen Lebensweise des Volkes zu entziehen? Much of these letters consists in first-person narratives culminating in advice. But lest we reproach Seneca for exempting himself from the hardships he imposes on others, Letter 56 reminds us that he gives himself homework too. Genügsamkeit fordert die Philosophie, nicht Kasteiung; Die Genügsamkeit braucht aber nicht auf jeglichen Schmuck zu verzichten. Moriantur ante te vitia (Letter 27.2): old age is the climax of the story. Was die Philosophie an erster Stelle verspricht, ist Gemeinsinn, Leutseligkeit und Zusammenschluss; Zu dieser Ankündigung würden wir uns in starken Gegensatz bringen. . He reads full-time, asking Seneca for clarifications on particular issues that trouble him. [25] For this Letter and its importance for establishing the shifting nature of the Seneca-Lucilius relationship, see Wilson 2001, 179-86. Satis ipsum nomen philosophiae, etiam si modeste tractetur, invidiosum est: quid si nos hominum consuetudini coeperimus excerpere? Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1917-1925. C. D. N. Costa, 70-95. To read the Letters dramatically is to work through and test Seneca's pedagogical notions for oneself; the deep conviction that this sort of experiential success can instill is precisely what makes teaching by example so efficacious. Taken together, this point/counterpoint renders a meta-didactic moral, "be careful with praise," which reflects and confirms Seneca's explicit warnings about evaluating oneself too leniently. At 82.9, Seneca derides one of Zeno's syllogisms by sarcastically exclaiming liberatus sum metu! First, I will consider Letter 7, whose thematic resonances, especially within the first book (Letters 1-12) of the collection, are of fundamental importance for establishing the dynamics of Senecan philosophical friendship. [40] Lucilius is Seneca writ small: made famous by his talent, a writer, connected to Roman power circles, enriched by political office. Vottero, D. 1998. Masters, 211-24. Grimal, P. 1979. [31] Letter 2 relies heavily on the pun between loca (physical places) and loci (passages in literature), as Henderson 2004, 8, observes. Dices, ‚quomodo ista tam diversa pariter sunt?‘ Ita est, mi Lucili: cum videantur dissidere, coniuncta sunt. The crucial points, as I see them, are that within the Letters Lucilius is a literary character, and that his function as such is not incidental or instrumental. There is much more to the issue of self-consistency and self-contradiction in the Letters than can be considered here; the dialectic is a central problem for the work. Taken together, the two letters can be seen to apply Seneca's doctrine on method (Letters 94 and 95 again, et passim): first you warn, admonish, motivate, and then you give the technical explanations. The virtues, by contrast, are mutually entailing. No surprise if Lucilius' efforts should have failed: he is less experienced in instruction than Seneca is, and the students it is appropriate for him to take even less so, and accordingly more ensnared by vice. Friends, teacher/student, guru/disciple, confessor and confessant; I will usually use the term "education" to describe what Seneca's Letters do; by this I do not mean to privilege those aspects that are didactic in a narrow sense. -. Finally, Letter 1 instantiates its own theme of conserving time. For instance, the Stoics often employed sweeping (and unconvincing) syllogisms to argue for key points of doctrine. For instance, one might see Seneca's comment at Letter 34.2, adsero te mihi; meum opus es, as a hint that Lucilius is essentially fictional (meum opus es, i.e., you, Lucilius, are my literary creation). Brief der ``epistulae morales´´ an seinen fiktiven Freund Lucilius, um ihm klar zu machen, dass viel zu reisen nicht der Schlüssel zum Lösen von Problemen sei, sondern das befreite Leben an sich der Weg sei, gut leben There is the student, and then there is the teacher. It is not limited to the Stoic school alone (witness especially the approving quotations of Epicurus). He is trying, with Seneca's persistent exhortation, to put aside his duties and devote his retirement to philosophy. Within the drama, however, the imperatives in this passage are also specific instructions from Seneca to Lucilius, issued at this particular, early point in the course of training, which Lucilius will be expected to obey. [2] By "dramatization" and "dramatic reading" I do not mean to overemphasize a comparison between the Letters and actual drama, nor to raise the vexing issue of possible connections between Seneca's dramatic output and the Letters. Lucilius had sparks of interest, which Seneca fanned: the treatment took. . [48] 75.1: Qualis sermo meus esset si una desideremus aut ambularemus, inlaboratus et facilis, tales esse epistulas meas volo . Hachmann, E. 1995. Cambridge. indeed, the third word of the letter, irascor, all but proves (in Stoic terms) that Seneca's reaction is mistaken: it is never right to be angered. In Texts, Ideas, and the Classics: Scholarship, Theory, and Classical Literature, ed. The scattered references to Lucilius' reading works of technical philosophy are crucially important on this reading. [35] This thought also explains Letter 99, in which Seneca transcribes a letter he wrote to one Marullus, who had failed to endure the death of his son courageously. Münster. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. Essays on Seneca. . Lateinischer Text: Deutsche Übersetzung: Seneca grüßt seinen Lucilius (Brief 5) Quod pertinaciter studes et omnibus omissis hoc unum agis, ut te meliorem cotidie facias, et probo et gaudeo, nec tantum hortor ut perseveres sed etiam rogo. Wie es Üppigkeit ist, auf Leckerbissen gierig zu sein, so ist es Torheit, das Übliche und leicht Beschaffbare zu meiden.