John Henderson explores three letters of Seneca describing visits to Roman villas, and surveys the whole collection to show how these villas work as designs for contrasting lives. Seneca's own place ...is ageing drastically; a recent Epicurean's paradise is a seductive oasis away from the dangers of Nero's Rome; once a fortress of the dour Rome of yesteryear, the legendary Scipio's lair was now a shrine to the old morality: Seneca revels in its primitive bath-house, dark and cramped, before exploring the garden with the present owner. Seneca brings the philosophical epistle to Latin literature, creating models for moralizing which feature self-criticism, parody and re-animated myth. Virgil and Horace come in for rough handling, as the Latin moralist wrests ethical practice and writing away from Greek gurus and texts, and into critical thinking within a Roman context. Here is powerful teaching on metaphor and translation, on self-transformation and cultural tradition.
Amanda Wilcox offers an innovative approach to two major collections of Roman letters—Cicero’s Ad Familiares and Seneca’s Moral Epistles —informed by modern ...cross-cultural theories of gift-giving.     By viewing letters and the practice of correspondence as a species of gift exchange, Wilcox provides a nuanced analysis of neglected and misunderstood aspects of Roman epistolary rhetoric and the social dynamics of friendship in Cicero’s correspondence. Turning to Seneca, she shows that he both inherited and reacted against Cicero’s euphemistic rhetoric and social practices, and she analyzes how Seneca transformed the rhetoric of his own letters from an instrument of social negotiation into an idiom for ethical philosophy and self-reflection. Though Cicero and Seneca are often viewed as a study in contrasts, Wilcox extensively compares their letters, underscoring Cicero’s significant influence on Seneca as a prose stylist, philosopher, and public figure.
Purpose. The author in the presented article considers the late texts of Ovid, presented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. The purpose of the article is to analyze how the texts reflect the ...processes of formation of the imperial political culture and identity.
Research novelty. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the late texts of Ovid not as literary, but as political narratives that inspired the transformation of Roman identity, contributing to the actualization of the concepts of Self and Otherness.
Materials and methods. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of interdisciplinarity proposed in the framework of studies of nationalism, intellectual and cultural history, transplanted into the contexts of the literary history of Rome in the 1st century AD.
Results. The article analyzes 1) Ovid’s attempts to form an ideal and positive image of power, 2) Ovid’s contribution to the development of Roman ideas about barbarians, 3) peculiarities of Ovid’s geographical perception of the formation of Roman territory as an imperial heterogeneous space. The contribution of the later texts of Ovid, represented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto and written in exile, to the formation of political imperial culture and identity is shown. The results of the study suggest that 1) Ovid was one of the first Roman authors who textualized the transformations of political power, contributing to the genesis of the cult of imperial power as an element of political culture; 2) in the formation and imagination of the images of the barbarians, Ovid continued the earlier tendencies of hierarchization and idealization of the inhabitants of the peripheral provinces: 3) the later texts of Ovid, written in exile, became a contribution to the development of the cultural geography of the emerging Roman Empire, based on the glorification and positive idealization of Italy through the prism of its opposition to the provinces.
Se ofrece un análisis del autorretrato de Horacio en Epístolas 1, 20, destacando cómo la autorrepresentación del autor se asienta en la preceptiva del discurso demostrativo para conformar una ...particular sphragís poética. Para esto, se examinan los versos 19-28, notando sus particularidades autobiográficas, las referencias intertextuales y, más específicamente, la estructura tripartita que los articula y las semejanzas que manifiestan con la dispositio del elogio. Asimismo, se reflexiona brevemente sobre el potencial lector de este retrato a través de su comparación con las Sátiras y, finalmente, se examina el contexto de la descripción del poeta prestando atención a su ubicación dentro de la propia composición y dentro del primer libro de Epístolas.
Considerando que el tema de la amicitia y la importancia de los amici como modelos inspiradores en el camino hacia la sabiduría son planteados con fuerza desde el comienzo de las Epistulae Morales ...de Séneca, este trabajo analiza cómo el ego epistolar, a partir de una redefinición de la amicitia romana y del género epistolar, se apropia activamente del discurso ejemplar, dispositivo cultural clave para la construcción de la memoria en Roma (Roller, 2004). Nuestra hipótesis es que, desde el comienzo mismo de la colección, en el propio texto de las Epistulae se va construyendo el ideal de una uera amicitia filosófica y que, en todo momento, el ego epistolar busca dirigir la atención del lector hacia su propia ejemplaridad. Palabras clave: Séneca; Epistulae Morales; amicitia; (auto)ejemplaridad.
Considerando que el tema de la amicitia y la importancia de los amici como modelos inspiradores en el camino hacia la sabiduría son planteados con fuerza desde el comienzo de las Epistulae Morales ...de Séneca, este trabajo analiza cómo el ego epistolar, a partir de una redefinición de la amicitia romana y del género epistolar, se apropia activamente del discurso ejemplar, dispositivo cultural clave para la construcción de la memoria en Roma (Roller, 2004). Nuestra hipótesis es que, desde el comienzo mismo de la colección, en el propio texto de las Epistulae se va construyendo el ideal de una uera amicitia filosófica y que, en todo momento, el ego epistolar busca dirigir la atención del lector hacia su propia ejemplaridad.Palabras clave: Séneca; Epistulae Morales; amicitia; (auto)ejemplaridad.
This article takes as its starting point the frequency with which Ovid refers to his earlier works in his Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. Alongside his treatment of the Metamorphoses in the exile ...poetry, it is suggested that Ovid refers, on a number of occasions, to his Fasti and the progress he is making on it. He does so by using the incipit of his calendar poem, Tempora; this term is sometimes combined with signa (‘stars’), which are also mentioned in the opening couplet of the Fasti. It is proposed that Ovid's attitude toward his Fasti changes over the course of his exile, during which time he is, at various junctures, editing his calendar, and that some of these changes are discernible in the exile poetry; they result in part from his entertaining the possibility of using his Fasti as leverage in securing a mitigation of his punishment. Poems discussed in detail are Tristia 1.1, 1.7, 2.547–52, 5.3; Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1, 4.8.
