Talk:Seneca the Younger/Archive 1

Archive 1

"Dritte Stoa"

The Dritte Stoa and the Thomas von Kienperg articles appear to be vanity pages. Just take a look at them. The book by von Kienperg is self-published, and a search of his name shows only his own webpages, places selling his book, and copies of Wikipedia pages. Thoughts? --Quadalpha 21:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I have spend some time reading the various texts on the [1] web site as well as on [2]. The link to the Dritte Stoa web site should definitely be removed. Neither that nor the web site of this Kienperg character has anything to do with Seneca, except the name "stoa" and a few references. These self-taught megalomaniacs (referring to themselves as "Meister der Dritten Stoa") should not be allowed to promote their web sites here. But take a look at the Dritte Stoa web site for a quite nauseating experience. If they knew just a bit of latin, they would have "concedite meliori" instead of "concede meliori" as their motto - the latter is simply wrong. Maybe they should start paying attention to the things they publish on their site, notably: ""Sei begierig zu lernen und nicht zu reden! Kleobulos von Lindos".

The "man", who wrote that above, has been talking the words of sheer envy, which not even could understand "concede meliori": "Concede, Thersites, meliori, qui ne pessimus quidem sis!" He never read Seneca nor understood anything of Stoic philosophy.

Yes, obviously! Mister anonymous (yes, you, who spent some time ... ), take a lesson in latin!

Reference deleted

The reference to the study on Hippolytus is not at all relevant here. It is a comparative study (on two authors besides Seneca)only of the Hippolytus theme. The bibliography on Seneca is not of any interest (14 titles mainly on Seneca's Hippolytus).83.119.60.149 20:27, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Should there be a link?

I'm currently looking for information on Seneca's death. Would anyone happen to know in what book by Tacitus Seneca dies?

Annales XV.—♦♦ SʘʘTHING^(Я) 21:07, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Works

I think we really need some links to Seneca's works. Wikisource has nothing, Project Gutenberg only has 2. If anyone else knows where else to find some, please add them! -Elizabennet 02:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I have posted most of the Dialogues at WikiSource. They are taken from a late-19th century translation so as to not step on anyone's IP toes. There are multiple scans of various old editions at Google Books, some have even been run through OCR. Without cleanup, though, those are about worthless. I added external links to those Dialogues that had their own pages, but am not sure how anyone would like to hand the rest.Marstinson (talk) 21:52, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

The Pseudo-Seneca

The bronze bust illustrated here now has its own article. It appears to illustrate Hesiod. I feel that it should be dropped here. The authentic inscribed Roman bust of Seneca, known since 1813, is in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Maybe a Berlin Wikipedian will get a good photo of that one. --Wetman 12:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. Eubulides 19:14, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

This page has got very messy with adhoc changes

This page has got very messy with adhoc changes. I am working on a thesis on Senecan Tragedy and think that its time that this page was expanded and improved. There is a long way to go to bring this up to the standard of other pages. Are there any issues which readers would like to be covered? I would aim to produce a redraft of this page in the next couple of months other work permitting. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Seneca 2007 (talk • contribs) 09:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC).

Seneca and Paul?

I have run across some mentions of correspondence between Seneca and the apostle Paul (of New Testament fame). There is a brief mention of this, but some background on the evidence would be of interest. --babbage 05:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Modern research has proven this to be a forgery. Says so in the preface to my copy of De Ira. Kranak 17:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Moses Hadas. The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca, 1958.

There seem to be a lot of changes which rely on this book which is now 50 years old. Scholarship has moved on a lot since then and I suggest it should be used much more carefully than it has in this article. Seneca did not introduce greek philosophy to rome. If anyone did this (apart from the greeks themselves) it was arguably Cicero who wrote a great deal about much of Greek philosophy.

Also "Seneca remains one of the few popular Roman philosophers from the period" - can whoever wrote that name any Roman philosophers contemporary with Seneca? Philosophy was not a Roman preoccupation and Seneca was unusual in studying it.

"His tendency to engage in illicit affairs with married women and close ties to Nero's excess test the limits of his teachings on restraint and self-discipline." The accusations of immorality against members of the Roman elite were usually convenient ways of making political attacks. They are not to be taken too literally.

Attacks on his wealth on grounds of inconsistency with his stoic beliefs usually demonstrate a woeful lack of knowledge about stoicism. Stoics believe that virtue is the only good and that one should be indifferent to everything else. Nevertheless they believed that there were things to be preferred and so one would prefer to be rich rather than poor and healthy rather than ill.

Likewise Motto is rather dated and I am not sure the way she has been quoted is very helpful. The point here has been garbled. I dont think that Publius Suillius' views (which only exist as they are quoted in Tacitus and so we have no first hand witness of what he said) are the sole source of negative views expressed by suetonius and cassius dio nor of Tacitus' views. I also dont think thats what Motto meant either. She says "To be sure, we should have a highly distorted, misconstrued view. Such is the view left to us of Seneca, if we were to rely upon Suillius alone." But who does rely on that account alone?

There is now so much that it factually wrong with this article that it might be better to put a line through it and start again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seneca 2007 (talk • contribs) 02:48, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Not moved. There was no consensus for a move. It is also not clear that there is a primary topic here based on the lead for the dab page or the sheer number of entries on the dab page. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Seneca the Younger → Seneca — This is the primary meaning of Seneca, which redirects here. His father should stay at Seneca the Elder; the member of the Five Nations at Seneca nation, where it is now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose I think the Seneca nation is a fairly prominent unrelated use, so the dab page should be at the primary name. 65.94.252.195 (talk) 05:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

• Support, don't confuse things, the Seneca nation is called exactly that: 'Seneca nation'. When we are talking about 'Seneca' we are, 99% of the time, talking about the teacher of Nero. Flamarande (talk) 03:40, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment I am not confusing things, when the Seneca is not "Seneca the Younger", but "Seneca the nation". 65.94.252.195 (talk) 04:47, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
    • But we are not speaking about the Seneca, we're speaking (just) about Seneca. Seneca was the tutor of Nero. Seneca was a scholar. Nero spoke to Seneca. The Seneca waged war. The Seneca were numerous. The British spoke to the Seneca nation. There is a clear difference between the two subjects. The person doesn't get a "the". Flamarande (talk) 17:41, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
      • But it's entirely reasonable to omit the "the" when searching. --Cybercobra (talk) 14:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Setting aside for a moment the "Seneca nation" issue completely, what are the virtues of renaming the page simply "Seneca" instead of "Seneca the Younger"? Ease of linking comes to mind. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

One virtue is the Principle of Least Astonishment. Many will look up Seneca who have never heard of his father, and will be puzzled by the Younger. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I daresay those looking for the tribe would be even more puzzled. --Cybercobra (talk) 14:20, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose: It's true that the younger is far better known than the elder, but the name still has four fairly notable meanings (at a quick count, forgive me if I've omitted any): the elder Roman, the younger Roman, the nation, their language. I think the as in the Seneca doesn't decide the issue, because people often remove a leading definite article when looking things up in encyclopedias. I think the astonishment factor of the younger doesn't decide either, because for each person whom it surprises, it may educate another who actually needs to know that two authors by this name exist. If I were starting an online encyclopedia from scratch, I'd put a disambig page at Seneca; but, assuming the current arrangement deals more handily with the weight of redirects, I'd leave things as they are. Andrew Dalby 21:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Seneca the Younger is the primary meaning. --Akhilleus (talk) 01:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Essentially the same argument as Andrew. Too many different different meanings and phrasing variations that could send people to the wrong article were this move performed. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:56, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support. I'm a classicist, so I was looking for objective data to overcome my biases. But I'm looking at the relative number of links from other articles to Seneca the Younger and to Seneca nation, and at a glance, it looks as if nearly twice as many articles link to Seneca the Younger as to the nation. This would seem to be pretty good evidence of what the primary meaning is in terms of using this encyclopedia. I'm also persuaded by the argument that the phrase "Seneca the Younger" is not really standard 21st-century usage. The page Seneca (disambiguation) seems to do what it's supposed to do. If "Seneca the Younger" is renamed as "Seneca", a note at the top would steer users looking for something else to the disambig. Because the search field offers an article menu as soon as you start typing, people looking for the nation can view that option there immediately as well. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

• Traffic stats might also be an indicator. In October, Seneca the Younger received more than four times as many visits as Seneca nation, and 17 times more than Seneca the Elder. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:08, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

More Info ?

I could be wrong but I don't see any mention of Seneca being a successful lawyer. This brought him great wealth, another aspect of his seeming to be a hypocrite.--Kenneth Kloby (talk) 17:11, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

You don't see any mention of this because there is no evidence in ancient sources for what you are saying. He obtained great wealth through his connection with Nero (see Tacitus, Annals, book 13). Charges of hypocrisy only surface in the much later account of Dio based on Suetonius who seems to be biased against Seneca for reasons that are not always clear. Any reader of Seneca will see that charges of hypocrisy are ill founded. Wealth is clearly a preferred good although as a stoic he would have been indifferent to it. Seneca never advocates poverty as a preferred good and indeed he would have thought anyone doing so was out of their mind. Poverty, however if it was ones lot would have to be endured just as much as wealth. 78.86.251.207 (talk) 21:32, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

wider influence?

In Corinthians, Paul breaks with the Pharisaic belief that justice is the highest virtue, and elevates instead charity. Around the same year Paul wrote this epistle, the stoic philosopher Seneca wrote De Clementia, also replacing the stoic virtue of justice with that of mercy. Has anyone ever suggested that Paul was influenced by Seneca? Or perhaps that there was just tome new discourse privileging charity or mercy, emerging in the Roman world? Slrubenstein | Talk 10:29, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Assorted Christian apologists have suggested Seneca was influenced by Paul; it is unlikely that Seneca ever heard of Paul, or that Paul read Latin. Common influence is possible; but the Utopian tendency in Stoicism, if it ever existed, has left no works. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:55, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Charity (caritas) and mercy (clementia) are not the same thing. The switch from justice to mercy reflects the political transition from a Republic to an Empire under a monarch. Julius Caesar was known for his clementia; he didn't engage in proscriptions and bloodbaths after assuming the dictatorship, as Sulla had, and pardoned many people who sided against him. However, this mercy demonstrated his power as an individual to grant pardons to those who were (now only theoretically) his equal, and the receiving of clementia was a form of submission that grated even on some who were glad to be spared. The ideal of "justice" depends on a system of laws to which those governed have agreed through their legislative bodies, and on the right of free men to speak freely in court and argue their case on the basis of law; justice doesn't depend on the whims or feelings of an individual. Granted, ideals are rarely realized, but at some point, even the illusion cannot be maintained as a guiding principle. In the Rome of Nero, justice was not something a reasonable man like Seneca could hope to find; the clementia of one wielding absolute power was the best you could do. Slashed veins result. That said, the fact that Christianity was born during this transition hardly seems coincidence; with its emphasis on Grace and rewards not of this world, it too reflects an abandoning of the hope of justice, as reflected in its central narrative (the unjust sentencing of Jesus that leads to the Crucifixion) — with consequences that continue to be felt today. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:57, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

More Recent Scholarshhip on Seneca

I have added some brief references and judgements about Seneca which give a fairer picture of his contribution to ideas and philosophy than the rather dismissive tone which seemed to characterise the article. PRC 07 (talk) 03:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

et cetera

This is a source used by people who wish to acquire information. Please do not assume that the reader knows what the et cetera are. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.164.154.11 (talk) 06:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Which works were most influential?

The article mentions that Seneca was held in high esteem in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but it doesn't specify which of his moral works had the most significant influence (assuming the esteem is not due to the "letters to Paul"). Could someone add two sentences discussing which particular non-dramatic works were held in highest regard? Thanks, Aristophanes68 (talk) 05:45, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd guess that the "letters to Paul" were the product of the esteem, and not the other way around. This is a good request, though I'm also guessing it would take a bit of concerted reading to be able to summarize this influence succinctly. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:17, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Which works were most influential?

The article mentions that Seneca was held in high esteem in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but it doesn't specify which of his moral works had the most significant influence (assuming the esteem is not due to the "letters to Paul"). Could someone add two sentences discussing which particular non-dramatic works were held in highest regard? Thanks, Aristophanes68 (talk) 05:45, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd guess that the "letters to Paul" were the product of the esteem, and not the other way around. This is a good request, though I'm also guessing it would take a bit of concerted reading to be able to summarize this influence succinctly. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:17, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Seneca the humorist

First paragraph says Seneca was "in one work, humorist". Which is the name of that work? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.214.10.217 (talk) 00:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I assume the Apocolocyntosis (The Pumpkinification of Claudius) is meant, but there is something about that sentence that gives one pause. And there isn't universal agreement that Seneca is the author of the Ap. Cynwolfe (talk) 01:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Removed quotations

I've removed the very random (and pointless) list of Seneca quotations. Twice now this year someone has added the following quotation to the list:

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

As pointed out on Wikiquote, this is not a Seneca quotation. The fact that someone can add such a quote to the page, and it goes unchallenged, shows why lists of quotes are best left to Wikiquote. Pasicles (talk) 18:15, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

This is a very widely published (mis?)quotation - so suggest appropriate as "disputed" in the useful section "Pseudo-Seneca". Roy Bateman (talk) 05:56, 5 November 2021 (UTC)