^{page 276 note 1} It is found earlier in the legal text C.I.L. i. 583. 13. Other Silver Latin usages in the present letter include the comparative fulgentiorem (§4)—the superlative occurs already at Veil. 2. 39—the agent noun admirator (§ 15), also anticipated by Velleius (I. 13), extensions of the prepositional phrase with nominalized neuter adjectives like ex magnifico placidoque (§ 3). For a useful account of Senecan idiolect see Summers, W. C., Select Letters of Seneca (London, 1913), pp. xlii-xcv.Google Scholar

^{page 276 note 2} This theme is recurrent in the later letters, e.g. too. 4 ff. on the style of the philosopher Fabianus: ‘oratio sollicita philosophum non decet’, 104. 22: the company of philosophers will teach you better things than ‘scite loqui et in oblectationem audientium uerba iactare’. For the decadent preoccupation with compositio uerborum see 114. 15–16. Seneca is no less contemptuous of dialectic quibbles, e.g. 45. 8 ff., 102. 20.

^{page 277 note 1} For nitidus of polished style see Cic. de Or. I. 81, Quint. 8. 3. 18; for concinnitas similarly see Cic. Or. 149.

^{page 277 note 2} Buecheler's sure restoration for MS. complutos. The word is rare; comptula is glossed as apte ornata uel decora in C.G.L. v. 56. 24. No contempt is presumably intended in the phrase lampenam comtulam in Anth. Lat. (Riese) 19. 12, but the adj. is clearly derogatory in lasciui et comptuli iuuenes at Jerome, Epist. 128. 4, p. 964. The diminutive suffix is typical of the colloquial tendency to replace simple words by originally more emotive synonyms. Its currency in Vulgar Latin is reflected by such Romance forms as soleille, vitello, bello (adj.).

^{page 277 note 3} e.g. Cic. Brut. 261, de Or. 3. 150, Sen. Rhet. Contr. 4 pr. 9, 7 pr. 3, Quint. 8. 3. 16 ff., 12. to. 40.

^{page 277 note 4} Thus imponimus in §9 ‘we impose upon’ may once have been colloquial. This use of the verb is admitted by Cicero into his letters but never into his formal prose writings. It does occur, however, in Nep. Eum. 5. 7 and Sen. Contr. 7.4. 10, and so became established in the literary register.

^{page 277 note 5} Though Seneca censures Maecenas' excessive use of figurative language in 114. 5, he explicitly defends the use of poetic devices like metaphor and simile in prose writing, imbecillitatis nostrae adminicula sint et ut dicentem et audientem in rem praesentem adducant' (59.6). For detailed but uncritical surveys of this aspect of Senecan style see Steyns, D., étude sur les Métaphores et les Comparaisons dans les (Euvres en Prose de Sénèque le Philosophe (Gand, 1907)Google Scholar, Smith, C. S., Metaphor and Comparison in the Epistulae ad Lucilium of L. Annaeus Seneca (Baltimore, 1910).Google Scholar

^{page 277 note 6} Seneca is fond of revitalizing old metaphors by association with novel but appropriate metaphoric contexts, e.g. nodus, dissoluere in 45. 5: ‘nectimus nodos et ambiguam significationem uerbis inligamus ac deinde dissoluimus’, or fluctuans in 104. 22: ‘huius uitae fluctuantis et turbidae portus’. Sometimes the effect is close to punning; e.g. 11. 10: ‘nisi ad regulam praua non corriges’.

^{page 278 note 1} Relevant too is the comparison of the Sage to ‘lumen in tenebris’ at 520. 13.

^{page 278 note 2} For these useful technical terms see Richards, I. A., The Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York, 1936), pp. 96–7.Google Scholar

^{page 278 note 3} On humanitas see the interesting discussion in Aul. Gel. N.A. 13. 17.

^{page 278 note 4} Cf. Proculus' words describing his vision of Romulus after his assumption into heaven, ‘cum perfusus horrore uenerabundus adstitissem, petens ut contra intueri fas esset’ (Livy 1. 16), and the phrase in the Einsiedeln Eclogue 1. 26: ‘fas milli sit uidisse deos.’ The idea is parodied in Hor. S. 2. 4. 91 ff.

^{page 279 note 1} The usage is rare in republican Latin, e.g. Cic. Ver. 1. 56, Sall. Iug. 35. 10, and becomes frequent only with Livy (3. 60. 8, 6. 22. 9, etc.), who in this as in many Silver developments is an important formative influence.

^{page 279 note 2} In 95. 48–50 there is a similar progression from the images of conventional piety, through the discussion of true deorum cultus, to the simple statement that ‘satin illos coluit quisquis imitatus est’.

^{page 279 note 3} e.g. Publilius Syrus and the comic poets in 8. 9–10, Lucilius in 24. 21, Euripides in 49. 12 Lucretius in 95. 11, Horace in 119.

^{page 280 note 1} e.g. Pindar in PI. Rep. 331 a, Hesiod in Ar. N.E. 1095b, Theognis and Sophocles in the diatribes of Teles p. 45. 7, P. 47. 7 Hense. Cicero's fondness for quotation in his philosophical works, e.g. T.D. 3 passim, may be influenced by Plato, but was in any case a feature of his writing at all stylistic levels. For a discussion of Seneca's Vergilian quotations on somewhat similar lines to what follows see Maguinness, W. S., Hermath. lxxxviii (1956), 81–98, ‘Seneca and the Poets’, esp. 94 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 280 note 2} Though a familiar exercise of rhetorical education (cf. 33. 7, Quint. 1. 9. 3 ff.) the chria had much in common with the thesis of the philosophical schools. Instances abound in the letters, e.g. Hecaton's ‘desines timere, si sperare desieris’ (5. 7–9), Heraclitue ‘unus dies par omni est’ (12. 7–8), and the ‘thought for the day’ with which many of the earlier letters conclude. A more elaborate example is the Panaetius passage in 16. 5–8. Among other such influences from the rhetorical schools may be noted the suasoria to Cato onthe choice between philosophy and politics in 14. 12 ff.

^{page 281 note 1} For the storms of fortune see § 18 of the present letter, 98. 7, and 104. 22. Philosophy ‘sedet ad gubernaculum et per ancipitia fluctuantium derigit cursum’ (16. 3); it has helped Bassus to hold the storm-damaged ship of life on its course (30. 3); we must set our sights on the summum bonum just as ‘nauigantibus ad aliquod sidus derigendus est curses’ (95. 45).

^{page 281 note 2} The verb, which has the appearance of a popular formation, is glossed by Nonius, 147. 8, as obstare and quoted by him from Ennius (Sat. 5 Vahlen) and Varro. It may be related to obstrigillus ‘sandal’ which is post- classical (Isid. Or. 19. 34). ueternus seems generally to be avoided in formal prose and the higher genres of poetry (rare exceptions are Vg. G. 1. 124, where it has its commonest sense ‘sloth’, and Stat. Theb. 6. 94, where, almost uniquely, it has its original sense ‘antiquity, old age’). In the present sense ‘dirt’ it is also found in Colum. 4. 24. 6.

^{page 281 note 3} For the dirt that accompanies sloth cf. robigo animorum in 95. 36. For falsa lux cf. the contrast between huius uitae fulgor and the life of the philosopher suo lumine illustris in 21. 2. The doctrines that moral defects are a form of blindness and philosophers are rich even in poverty are Senecan commonplaces; e.g. 50. 3, 109. 16, 120. 17–18 and 20. 10, 41. 6, 76. 31.

^{page 282 note 1} The analogy itself is elaborated in 64. 8, 94. 17 ff., 95. 20 ff., and 75 passim.

^{page 282 note 2} The unphilosophic life is likened to childhood in 4. 2; cf. 99. 27, 104. 13; the philosopher is humani genesis paedagogus in 89. 13.

^{page 282 note 3} He rejected the logical and metaphysical doctrines of his master Zeno, and his ethical teaching had a distinctly Cynic flavour (Diog. L. 7. 160–2). Strabo, 10. 5. 6, even calls him . Although only the letters to Cleanthes were indisputably genuine (Diog. 7. 163), other works were commonly attributed to him (see Cic. Sen. 3) and he is often cited by Cicero (Fin. 2. 43, Ac. 2. 130) and Seneca (36. 3, 89.13 [see n. 2], 94. I).

^{page 282 note 4} Like many of Seneca's vivid word-pictures this recalls Juvenal; cf. 47. 2–8 on the master and his slaves, 78. 23–4 on the sick gourmet, 84. 12 on the morning salutatio. Indeed his flair for making a didactic point through a contrasted pair of images, like Tubero's earthenware outlasting other men's gold and silver in 95. 72–3 is very much in the tradition of Latin satire.

^{page 282 note 5} Cf. p. 276 above. Elsewhere Seneca has insanire with in+ acc. (94. 71; cf. Hor. S. I. 2. 49) or ProPter (81. 27).

^{page 282 note 6} Juvenal employs this grammatical variation to similar effect in Sat. 1. 10–11: ‘unde alius furtivae deuehat aurum / pelliculae’. The replacement of auream pelliculam (the choice of the diminutive is of course contemptuous) by this phrase with aurum in the head position and the hypallage of the derogatory furtivae combine to change the heroic quest by the Argonauts into a squalid pursuit of filthy lucre.

^{page 282 note 7} The transfer of abstract nouns to concrete or specific function was common in Latin at all times, e.g. compositio originally ‘the act of putting together’, oratio ‘the act of pleading’. It is most clearly discerned in plurals like solitudines and sollicitudines in the present letter, both of which are already established in Ciceronian Latin. Cenatio is not found at all before Seneca and Petronius, who both use it only in its transferred meaning.

^{page 283 note 1} A famous example occurs in 90. 9–18.

^{page 283 note 2} The contrast between ostentatious wealth, with ‘columns ultima recisas / Africa’, and the inner contentment that comes from ‘fides et ingeni / benigna uena’ (Hor. C. 2. 18) was of course a moral commonplace.

^{page 283 note 3} Not recorded at all before Seneca, the word occurs, again metaphorically and contemptuously, in 41. 6. For the metaphor itself cf. ‘non est ista solida et sincera feficitas; crusta est et quidem tenuis’ (de Prouid. 6. 4).

^{page 283 note 4} The careful way in which each visual detail is exploited metaphorically is typical of the Senecan technique. In 12. 1–3, when his crumbling country estate is an ‘argumentum senectutis meae’, the details selected progress from the inanimate, ‘putria aetatis meae saxa’, to the vegetative, the planes leafless and gnarled with their ‘tristes et squalidi trunci’, to the human, his manager's son who had once been his pet slave and is now ‘decrepitus, merito ad ostium admotus’. The coarse picture of the toothless old dotard seems callous until we realize that Seneca sees in him a reflection of himself.

^{page 283 note 5} Cf. 57 passim, 87. 23 ff., 94. 60 ff., 108. 11 ff., 110. 14 ff.

^{page 284 note 1} See 12. 9. This Stoic commonplace is often referred to in the letters; e.g. 8. 7: ‘hoc enim ipsum philosophiae seruire libertas est’; cf. 47. s 7, 65. 21. For uenales itself cf. 42. 7: ‘ea gratuita uocamus pro quibus nos ipsos impendimus.’.

^{page 284 note 2} Perhaps even a school text-book. The first, ‘sine me uocari pessimism ut dines uocer’, is the opening line of an unattributed quotation in Greg. Naz. 2. 21OB (Nauck² Adesp. fr. 181. 1–3): . The last, ‘pecunia, ingens generis human bonum’, etc., is also preserved in Stob. Flor. 91. 4, Athen. 4. 159B: ., cf. Sext. Emp. 663. Nauck², Eur. fr. 324, follows Stobaeus in assigning it to Danae, not, as Seneca does, to a play in which Bellerophon is the speaker.

^{page 284 note 3} Cf. the thought-for-the-day from Epicurus in 17. 11: ‘multis parasse diuitias non finis miseriarum fuit sed mutatio’, also 119. 12.

^{page 284 note 4} Cf. 45. 9: ‘beatum non eum esse quem uolgus appellat ad quem pecunia magna confluxit sed ilium cui bonum omne in animo est.’

^{page 285 note 1} In the companion letter 114, on decadence in style and morals, there is a similar association between the restless search for orations lasciuia (§§ 3, 5, 15–19), luxurious living (§§ 4, 6–7), lavish architecture (§ 9), and personal adornment (§§ 20–1).

^{page 285 note 2} La Composition dons les Ouvrages Philosophiques de Sénèque (Paris, 1923), 296–8. The failure to distinguish logical and literary criteria of structure leads Albertini to exaggerate the incoherence of the letters; e.g. pp. 143–6, where the present letter is actually included among those that lack unity.Google Scholar

^{page 285 note 3} Cf. Bourgery's, A. observation, Sénèque Prosateur (Paris, 1922), 114: ‘il se plait a faire briller toutes les facettes d'une même idée.’ This applies not only to individual letters but to the whole collection, as witness the recurrent themes and images cited in the notes to the present paper. Fronto makes the chief target in his savage criticism of Seneca (pp. 155–6 Naber) his fondness for repeating eandem sententiam milliens alio atque alio amictu indutam.Google Scholar

^{page 286 note 1} It is interesting to note that in 75. 1–5 he asserts that his epistolary style is aimed at being ‘quails sermo meus esset, si una sederemus aut ambularemus, inlaboratus et facilis’ (defending himself against a complaint he attributes to Lucilius that his letters are minus accuratas!), but then goes on to say ‘non mehercules ieiuna esse et arida uolo quae de rebus tam magnis dicentur; neque enim philosophia ingenio renuntiat’.

^{page 286 note 2} And hypocritical too, if we know something of his public and private life; cf. the scornful remarks on ‘the cant of his philosophy’ in Macaulay's essay on Bacon (Edinburgh Review, July 1837). But the discrepancy between the principles professed and the life that is lived, though relevant to our judgement of the man, has no necessary bearing on our assessment of his achievement as a writer. Here it is the effectiveness of what he writes that matters, not his ‘sincerity’.

^{page 286 note 3} Proclaimed in 21. 9, 64. 10 and especially Brev. Vit. 14. 2: ‘disputare cum Socrate licet, dubitare cum Carneade, cum Epicuro quiescere, hominis naturam cum Stoicis uincere, cum Cynicis excedere.’ Orthodox Stoic positions and procedures are questioned in, e.g., 45, 85, and 117.

^{page 286 note 4} It is especially frequent in the early letters; e.g. 2. 5, 8. 7, 9. 20, 12. 10. The gentle mockery and humour that Motto, A. L. and Clark, J. R. (C. W. lxii [1968], 37–42Google Scholar ‘Paradoxum Senecae: The Epicurean Stoic’) rightly see in this practice have thus a serious intent. Grimal's, P. view, Sénèque (Paris, 1966), 40–1, is that Seneca ‘veut utiliser, pour attirer son interlocuteur à la philosophic, ce que l'épicurisme offre de plus séduisant…’. But Stoicism would surely have had more immediate appeal than Epicureanism to a Roman reader, even an unphilosophical one.Google Scholar

^{page 286 note 5} Il s'est approprié une matière commune par la forme artistique dont it l'a revêtue’ (Albertini, op. cit. 233).

^{page 286 note 6} This feature of Seneca's style has provoked adverse comments in ancient and modern times; e.g. Caligula's ‘harena sine calce’ (Suet. Calig. 53) and Macaulay's remarks to T. F. Ellis: ‘His style affects me in something the same way with that of Gibbon. But Lucius Seneca's affectation is more rank than Gibbon's. His works arc made up of mottoes. There is hardly a sentence which might not be quoted; but to read him straightforward is like dining on nothing but anchovy sauce’ (Trevelyan, G. O., Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay [London, 1908], p. 324). Quintilian's ‘si rerum pondera minutissimis sententiis non fregisset’ (10. 1. 130) forms part of a more balanced censure on him.Google Scholar

^{page 287 note 1} Metaphor was appropriate both tc poetry and to the high style of prose; cf. 59, 6, cited above, p. 277 n. 5, with Cic. Brut. 314, Quint. 8. 6. It is difficult to recognize in the letters much of the ‘fundamental ordinariness of diction’ and the ‘basically colloquial, direct and popular’ style that H. M. Currie sees as characteristic of Seneca (B.I.C.S. xiii [1966], 76–87: ‘The Younger Seneca's Style: some observations’, esp. p. 84). Genius (12. 2. 1) reports without dissent criticisms of Seneca's style as ‘uulgaris et protrita’ and having ‘elegantiae parum,’ and of his learning as ‘tiernacula et plebeia’; but the doctrinaire basis of these is revealed by the phrase ‘nihilque ex ueterum scriptis habens neque gratiae neque dignitatis’.Google Scholar

^{page 287 note 2} See Diog. L. 7. 59, Cic. Par. St. pr. 2.

^{page 287 note 3} In an interesting passage of a letter to Curio (ad Fam. 2. 4. 1) Cicero says: ‘epistularum genera multa esse non ignoras, sed unum illud certissimum, cuius causa inuenta res ipsa est, ut certiores faceremus absentis, si quid esset quod eos scire aut nostra aut ipsortun interesset… reliqua sunt epistularum genera duo, quae me magnopere delectant, unum familiare et iocosum, alterum seuerum et graue.’ The classification, which smacks of the threefold rhetorical division of styles—‘ut doceat, ut delectet, ut moueat’—is certainly not hard and fast in his own letters, which often range over all three categories. As we have seen, the boundary between docere and mouere is a very fluid one in Seneca's letters too.

^{page 287 note 4} We learn that he was a native of Campania (49. I, etc.), a self-made man (19. 5), younger than Seneca (26. 7) but a friend of long standing (49. 1) who wrote to him frequently (31. I, etc.), enjoyed travelling whether in his procuratorial duties (31. 9) or privately (48. I), scholarly (45. I) and a writer of prose and verse (46. 1, 8. 10, 24. 19 ff.), suffered from catarrh (78. I), and was involved as defendant in a lawsuit (24. I). But most of these references are incidental or else introduced as a theme for moralizing, and Lucilius himself tends to fade altogether as a person in the later letters. It is of course relevant to add that, apart from his moral views, we learn very little of Seneca himself either.

^{page 288 note 1} In this respect like many of Pliny's letters, which have all the characteristics of set pieces, e.g. on the villa at Laurenttun (2. 17), the will-hunter Regulus (2. 20), the source of the Clitumnus (8. 8), and even the pair on Vesuvius (6. 16. 20). Though, unlike Seneca, Pliny addressed his letters to a vast number of different recipients, it is clear that he too regarded them as literary compositions in a distinct genre.

^{page 288 note 2} The dedication of the latter to particular people, e.g. Naturales Quaestiones to Lucilius, de Beneficiis to Liberalis Aebutius, does not affect their more impersonal mode of exposition. On the thematic continuity between the letters and the earlier works see Albertini, op. cit. 142.

^{page 288 note 3} As a literary term continued to bear the general meaning ‘discourse, lecture’ that it had had earlier; cf. P1. Apol. 37 d with D. H. Ant. Rom. 10. 15. The more specialized reference to moral sermons, for which the semantic history of sermo itself offers something of a parallel, was due to the character of the delivered by Bion, Teles, Cleanthes, etc.

^{page 288 note 4} The definition is adapted from A. Lesky, but it represents a consensus of modern opinion.

^{page 288 note 5} Diog. L. 4. 52; cf. Strabo 1. 2. 2.

^{page 289 note 1} The phrase is Quintilian's (2. 5. 22), the target probably Seneca and his imitators but the judgement is not that of a defender of the purity of philosophical discourse.

^{page 289 note 2} Oltramare, A. in Les Origins de h Diatribe Romaine (Lausanne, 1926), 44–65 263–92, lists themes common to Seneca anc the Greek popular philosophical tradition, a: defined by Ariston, Diogenes, Antisthenes Bion, Teles. But the range of topics is sc comprehensive that a Latin moralist woulc have been hard put to it to break new ground wealth as an obstacle to philosophizirq (Teles, p. 45. 3 Hense, Sen. 57. 3), the folly of blaming our faults on externa circumstances (Teles, p. 8. 6, Sen. 50. 1), and consolatory reflections at the death ofloved one (Teles, p. 56. 54 f., Sen. 74. 30) are so commonplace as to be inconclusive foi indebtedness.Google Scholar

^{page 289 note 3} Most of the instances noted are either trivial, like the use of the analogy with the apyrenum in the discussion of impertur. bability at Teles, p. 55 and Sen. 85. 5, or else likely to belong to an older tradition; e.g. the helmsman's defiant address to the sea. god in Teles, p. 62 and Sen. 85. 33, which clearly comes from some lost tale, and the conceit at Sen. 119. 12 ‘sic diuitias habeni quomodo habere dicimur febrem cum illa nos habeat’, which recalls not only Bion'sw) but also Aristippus' , (Diog. L. 4. 50, 2. 75).

^{page 289 note 4} Only thus far can we on the evidence available accept Albertini's claim (op. cit. 304) that 'il n'y a pas de nom dans la terminologie antique qui s'applique aux oeuvres de Stine que plus exactement que celui-la (sc. la diatribe)’.

^{page 289 note 5} A striking example is Hor. Ep. 1. 11 and Sen. 28, which clearly alludes to it in the phrase ‘anirmun debes mutare, non caelum’ in the opening paragraph.

^{page 289 note 6} Seneca's influence as a prose writer reached its zenith in the sixteenth century with such diverse continental authors as Erasmus, Muret, and Montaigne (see Summers, op. cit. ciii-cvii). But it was important too in seventeenth-century English literature from Bacon onwards; see Williamson, G., The Senecan Amble: a study in prose from Bacon to Collier (London, 1955)Google Scholar. Sometimes the relation is very close; see, e.g., Clark, C. E., B.H.R. xxx (1968), 249–66: ‘Seneca's Letters to Lucilius as a source of some of Montaigne's imagery’, esp. pp. 260–2 on the image of solida felicitas.Google Scholar