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A Seneca Reader
Selections from Prose and Tragedy
James Ker

lvi + 166 pp (2011) 5" x 7.75" Paperback
ISBN 978-0-86516-758-2

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  large product photo 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 "fitted to the ears of his age."

  • 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
  • Notes at the back and complete vocabulary
  • Timeline, appendix on meter and rhythm
  • One map and six illustrations

James Ker is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Deaths of Seneca (Oxford 2009) and articles on Greek and Roman literature and culture. The Seneca Reader originated in his desire to introduce students to Seneca's unique literary style and to his wide-ranging works in both prose and poetry.