Author Description

Innovator in the literature of philosophical advising and reshaper of myth in tragedy, at turns inspiring and disturbing: This is Seneca the Younger. A mosaic of readings from four main genres with select follow-up passages showcases Seneca as therapeutic consoler, mirror to the prince, tragedian of the passions, and moral epistolographer—a thinker whose literary voice sounds against the volatility of his times. Seneca spins the republican Cicero's stylistic legacy and Augustan literature's gold into the distinctive silver of the first century CE: concise in encapsulating ideas, inventive in borrowing the vocabulary of everyday life, and with a propensity for using vivid images to depict emotional experience. This is a style the historian Tacitus deemed "œfitted to the ears of his age." Special Features Introduction to Seneca’s life, death, philosophy, style, and literary influence 568 lines of unadapted Latin text selected from eight works of Seneca: Consolatio ad Helviam 1.1–4, 2.1–5, 3.1–2, 17.3–18.3, 20.1–2; Epistulae Morales 85.40; Consolatio ad Polybium 13.3–4 • De Clementia (book 1) 1.1–6, 9.1–12, 10.1–3; Apocolocyntosis 10.1–3; De Ira 1.2.1–3 • Medea 1–18, 40–50, 155–76, 301–8, 361–79, 537–50, 670–93, 849–69, 904–15, 926–36, 1008–13, 1018–27 • Epistulae Morales 2.1–6, 40.1, 49.1–3, 55.1–5 and 8–11; De Amicitia fragment 59.5–6 Vottero Forty cumulative lists All English meanings, macrons, and accents are included