Seneca: Phaedra: Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics
Autor Lucius Annaeus Seneca Editat de Michael Coffey, Roland Mayeren Limba Engleză Paperback – 22 feb 1990
Observăm în această ediție a volumului Seneca o poartă de acces riguros structurată către nucleul stoicismului roman. Selecția se concentrează pe tema autocunoașterii și a rafinării caracterului, pornind de la premisa că singura posesiune reală a individului este propriul sine. Scrisorile, redactate după retragerea lui Seneca din viața publică în anul 62, nu sunt simple corespondențe private, ci exerciții de îndrumare etică ce transformă experiențele cotidiene — călătoriile, boala sau administrarea unei proprietăți — în lecții de filozofie practică.
Ceea ce distinge acest volum este calitatea traducerii semnate de Margaret Graver și A. A. Long. Aceștia reușesc să mențină echilibrul între precizia terminologică necesară studiului academic și fluența cerută de un cititor modern. Față de ediția lor anterioară, Letters on Ethics, care cuprindea integrala celor 124 de scrisori, acest format de tip „paperback” este recalibrat pentru a oferi esențialul gândirii senecane într-o formă mai accesibilă. Volumul reprezintă o alternativă viabilă la Seneca: Selected Philosophical Letters de Brad Inwood pentru cursurile de filozofie antică, având avantajul unei perspective mai ancorate în dimensiunea personală și biografică a autorului, nu doar în dezbaterea tehnică dintre stoici și platonicieni.
În contextul operei sale, dacă Tragedies, Volume I ne prezintă un Seneca preocupat de forța distructivă a pasiunilor umane, această selecție de scrisori oferă antidotul: calea rațională către liniște. Ne este oferită astfel o imagine completă a unui gânditor care, în fața declinului fizic și a instabilității politice, caută să definească libertatea prin autodeterminare și prietenie autentică.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780521337137
ISBN-10: 0521337135
Pagini: 232
Dimensiuni: 127 x 203 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.25 kg
Editura: Cambridge University Press
Colecția Cambridge University Press
Seria Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics
Locul publicării:Cambridge, United Kingdom
ISBN-10: 0521337135
Pagini: 232
Dimensiuni: 127 x 203 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.25 kg
Editura: Cambridge University Press
Colecția Cambridge University Press
Seria Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics
Locul publicării:Cambridge, United Kingdom
De ce să citești această carte
Această ediție este ideală pentru cititorul care dorește să descopere stoicismul nu ca teorie abstractă, ci ca mod de viață. Prin cele 50 de scrisori selectate, câștigați acces la sfaturile practice ale unuia dintre cei mai influenți filozofi romani despre gestionarea fricii, a timpului și a relațiilor interumane. Este un instrument esențial pentru studenții la științe umaniste și pentru oricine caută claritate mentală într-o lume imprevizibilă.
Despre autor
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (aprox. 4 î.Hr. – 65 d.Hr.) a fost un filozof stoic, dramaturg și om de stat roman, figură centrală a epocii de argint a literaturii latine. Consilier al împăratului Nero, Seneca a încercat să tempereze excesele acestuia, sfârșind prin a fi forțat să se sinucidă. Opera sa vastă include tratate morale, precum Hardship and Happiness, și tragedii care au influențat profund dramaturgia europeană, inclusiv pe Shakespeare. Scrisorile sale către Lucilius rămân cea mai importantă mărturie a aplicării eticii stoice în viața de zi cu zi.
Descriere scurtă
Seneca's Phaedra occupies an important and influential position in the tradition of European drama. This new edition concentrates on the dramatic qualities of Phaedra and examines the Greek and Roman background to the play, particularly Seneca's use of Euripides and Ovid, and its philosophical elements grounded in Seneca's Stoicism. The introduction also discusses dramatic and rhetorical presentation, aspects of style including imagery and the transmission of the text. An unusual feature is the treatment of the influence of the Phaedra story in later European literature and music. The commentary examines Seneca's language in detail and looks at his use of earlier poetic models (Virgil and Ovid) as well as plot, characterisation and his use of myth. Although principally for students of Latin literature, this new edition will also be of interest to historians of drama and comparative literature.
Cuprins
Introduction; 1. The life of Seneca; 2. The dating of Seneca's tragedies; 3. The background of the myth; 4. Roman literary influences; 5. Dramatic performances; 6. Rhetorical elements; 7. Aspects of literary craftsmanship; 8. Literary and philosophical interpretation; 9. The manuscripts and the transmission of the text; 10. The influence of Seneca's tragedies and of the Phaedra myth; 11. Metre and prosody; Annaei Senecae Phaedra; Commentary; Appendices; Bibliography; Indexes.
Notă biografică
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BCE-65CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, and advisor to Emperor Nero. Margaret Graver is the Aaron Lawrence Professor in Classics at Dartmouth College. Her publications include Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4; Stoicism and Emotion; and, in collaboration with A.A. Long, a complete translation of Seneca’s Letters on Ethics. A.A. Long is chancellor’s professor of classics emeritus and affiliated professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Greek Models of Mind and Self and Epictetus: How to be Free.
Extras
The best way to learn about Seneca, as a person and as a philosopher, is to read his letters. Begun late in his life, the Letters on Ethics adhere to a format that he himself devised and that proved especially congenial to his talents. These are serious writings, using the intimacy of the personal letter as a vehicle for a searching examination of values and life choices. In this, they resemble the letters of the philosopher Epicurus, which Seneca had studied extensively. Unlike Epicurus, though, Seneca addresses all his letters to one individual, his younger friend Gaius Lucilius Iunior. The collection does not include any letters written by the friend, and yet Lucilius is constantly made present to us through frequent references to his life experiences and his questions about philosophy. As readers, we come to feel that we know both men at a deep level. Still, these letters are not a private correspondence like Cicero’s letters to his friend Atticus. They are meant to be shared with a wider public, to bring comfort in difficult times, intellectual engagement, and sheer entertainment to those outside the author’s own circle.
In this work we do not find much of the story of Seneca’s life as reported later by the historians Tacitus and Dio Cassius: his tutoring the young Nero, his work as a speechwriter, and the charges of his political opponents. After all, he wrote the Letters in the two to three years before his death in 65 CE, after he had withdrawn entirely from the imperial court. Nonetheless, there are elements of autobiography in the work. Seneca describes his early experience as a vegetarian, his travels in and around Pompeii, his daily routine. He mentions his wife Paulina, his brother Gallio, and his deceased father, whom we know as Seneca the Elder. At age sixty- five, he tells us what it is like to come near dying from shortness of breath. More than once he sketches an incident that makes him look ridiculous: his cluelessness on visiting an aging property of his own, his effort to cross the Bay of Naples in choppy seas, his sitting down in a schoolroom among teenagers. We do not get the big events of his life so much as the small but significant ones.
Reading more closely, we can collect some information about his personal situation. We see that he owns a great deal of property since he mentions visiting three of his own villas. While his personal habits are austere, he makes it clear that for someone like him, simple living is a matter of choice, not economic necessity. Similarly, it is by choice that he now has no influence on the affairs of state. Early in the correspondence, he establishes a parallel between the political career he has now abandoned and that of Lucilius, a man familiar with the imperial court who is still active as civil governor of Sicily. As Seneca urges his friend to withdraw from his public position and devote himself to a life of study, we catch the tensions that might attend such a decision. Those tensions were very real, for those who had entered public service were expected to stay on, not only by their peers but also by a powerful and unpredictable ruler. That same dynamic was to be explored later by Tacitus, who writes it as a dialogue between Seneca and the emperor Nero himself.
Significantly, the letters make no direct mention of Nero or of his immediate family. On the face of it, Seneca’s stance is apolitical. Sounding a theme that was already traditional in philosophy, he remarks on the gratitude that philosophers should feel toward those who provide the benefits of peace. His own retreat from politics is repeatedly explained as the consequence of ill health and a desire for study; it is not to be taken as criticism of the current regime. Yet the anxiety with which he speaks of the dangers of insubordination is highly revealing. Just as in another of his works he speaks of the “fires and torments” Lucilius had witnessed at the court of Gaius Caligula, so here he speaks feelingly of imprisonment, torture, and execution as real possibilities for men like himself. His admiration for such historical figures as Publius Rutilius Rufus, Scipio Africanus, Quintus Aelius Tubero, and especially Cato the Younger suggests nostalgia for the old days of the Roman Republic, but he does not imply that those days could ever return.
More generally, Seneca uses his rhetorical skills and satirical wit to expose the decadence of the elite Roman society he knows so well. He is often critical of extravagant expenditures, on everything from glassware to bathing establishments, and he can be scathingly funny about the ridiculous habits of his contemporaries. The violence and cruelty of Roman reality are constantly brought to the fore, notably the gladiatorial contests, the harsh treatment of the enslaved and of prisoners, and the sexual exploitation of women and boys. Yet it is not the times alone that are at fault, for he also refers to one of Cicero’s letters for an instance of shocking moral degeneracy in the time of Cato. The values and practices of contemporary Roman society are completely out of joint, but the vice that pervades Rome affects human societies in every era.
In all this, his point is about the corruption of existing human societies, not about human nature as such. However flawed our surrounding culture may be, our innate sociability is nonetheless a basic guide to action. As rational beings, we have a natural instinct to seek companionship and genuine friendship, and we can learn to recognize the responsibilities we have, not only toward our immediate communities but also toward the worldwide community. These are the Stoic values that Seneca finds quite absent from the dominant ideology of his time. Ultimately it is this principle of the interconnectedness of all human beings that gives rise to the Letters on Ethics themselves. Seneca states the premise of his entire work near the beginning of letter 8, where he writes,
The work that I am doing is for posterity: it is they who can benefit from what I write. I am committing to the page some healthful admonitions, like the recipes for useful salves. I have found these effective on my own sores, which, even if not completely healed, have ceased to spread. The right path, which I myself discovered late in life when weary from wandering, I now point out to others.
He thus offers an answer to a question that had long been debated among philosophers, one that he himself had investigated in the brief essay On Leisure. If every one of us has a responsibility to serve the community throughout life, then how can anyone be justified in spending long periods in philosophical study and reflection? For Seneca, a scholarly retreat is itself a form of public service. Although philosophers may not be able to solve the immediate problems of their societies, their writings can still benefit others by teaching readers of every time and place how to live happy and productive lives.
To be sure, this stated purpose implies a rather limited range of objectives for philosophical writing. Not all philosophy offers social benefits of exactly that kind. But Seneca can find excuses to incorporate many different intellectual issues into his work, while still keeping his primary emphasis on the most basic themes of ethics: the importance of personal integrity, the foundations of friendship, the reasons not to fear pain and death, and the management of one’s emotions.
In this work we do not find much of the story of Seneca’s life as reported later by the historians Tacitus and Dio Cassius: his tutoring the young Nero, his work as a speechwriter, and the charges of his political opponents. After all, he wrote the Letters in the two to three years before his death in 65 CE, after he had withdrawn entirely from the imperial court. Nonetheless, there are elements of autobiography in the work. Seneca describes his early experience as a vegetarian, his travels in and around Pompeii, his daily routine. He mentions his wife Paulina, his brother Gallio, and his deceased father, whom we know as Seneca the Elder. At age sixty- five, he tells us what it is like to come near dying from shortness of breath. More than once he sketches an incident that makes him look ridiculous: his cluelessness on visiting an aging property of his own, his effort to cross the Bay of Naples in choppy seas, his sitting down in a schoolroom among teenagers. We do not get the big events of his life so much as the small but significant ones.
Reading more closely, we can collect some information about his personal situation. We see that he owns a great deal of property since he mentions visiting three of his own villas. While his personal habits are austere, he makes it clear that for someone like him, simple living is a matter of choice, not economic necessity. Similarly, it is by choice that he now has no influence on the affairs of state. Early in the correspondence, he establishes a parallel between the political career he has now abandoned and that of Lucilius, a man familiar with the imperial court who is still active as civil governor of Sicily. As Seneca urges his friend to withdraw from his public position and devote himself to a life of study, we catch the tensions that might attend such a decision. Those tensions were very real, for those who had entered public service were expected to stay on, not only by their peers but also by a powerful and unpredictable ruler. That same dynamic was to be explored later by Tacitus, who writes it as a dialogue between Seneca and the emperor Nero himself.
Significantly, the letters make no direct mention of Nero or of his immediate family. On the face of it, Seneca’s stance is apolitical. Sounding a theme that was already traditional in philosophy, he remarks on the gratitude that philosophers should feel toward those who provide the benefits of peace. His own retreat from politics is repeatedly explained as the consequence of ill health and a desire for study; it is not to be taken as criticism of the current regime. Yet the anxiety with which he speaks of the dangers of insubordination is highly revealing. Just as in another of his works he speaks of the “fires and torments” Lucilius had witnessed at the court of Gaius Caligula, so here he speaks feelingly of imprisonment, torture, and execution as real possibilities for men like himself. His admiration for such historical figures as Publius Rutilius Rufus, Scipio Africanus, Quintus Aelius Tubero, and especially Cato the Younger suggests nostalgia for the old days of the Roman Republic, but he does not imply that those days could ever return.
More generally, Seneca uses his rhetorical skills and satirical wit to expose the decadence of the elite Roman society he knows so well. He is often critical of extravagant expenditures, on everything from glassware to bathing establishments, and he can be scathingly funny about the ridiculous habits of his contemporaries. The violence and cruelty of Roman reality are constantly brought to the fore, notably the gladiatorial contests, the harsh treatment of the enslaved and of prisoners, and the sexual exploitation of women and boys. Yet it is not the times alone that are at fault, for he also refers to one of Cicero’s letters for an instance of shocking moral degeneracy in the time of Cato. The values and practices of contemporary Roman society are completely out of joint, but the vice that pervades Rome affects human societies in every era.
In all this, his point is about the corruption of existing human societies, not about human nature as such. However flawed our surrounding culture may be, our innate sociability is nonetheless a basic guide to action. As rational beings, we have a natural instinct to seek companionship and genuine friendship, and we can learn to recognize the responsibilities we have, not only toward our immediate communities but also toward the worldwide community. These are the Stoic values that Seneca finds quite absent from the dominant ideology of his time. Ultimately it is this principle of the interconnectedness of all human beings that gives rise to the Letters on Ethics themselves. Seneca states the premise of his entire work near the beginning of letter 8, where he writes,
The work that I am doing is for posterity: it is they who can benefit from what I write. I am committing to the page some healthful admonitions, like the recipes for useful salves. I have found these effective on my own sores, which, even if not completely healed, have ceased to spread. The right path, which I myself discovered late in life when weary from wandering, I now point out to others.
He thus offers an answer to a question that had long been debated among philosophers, one that he himself had investigated in the brief essay On Leisure. If every one of us has a responsibility to serve the community throughout life, then how can anyone be justified in spending long periods in philosophical study and reflection? For Seneca, a scholarly retreat is itself a form of public service. Although philosophers may not be able to solve the immediate problems of their societies, their writings can still benefit others by teaching readers of every time and place how to live happy and productive lives.
To be sure, this stated purpose implies a rather limited range of objectives for philosophical writing. Not all philosophy offers social benefits of exactly that kind. But Seneca can find excuses to incorporate many different intellectual issues into his work, while still keeping his primary emphasis on the most basic themes of ethics: the importance of personal integrity, the foundations of friendship, the reasons not to fear pain and death, and the management of one’s emotions.
Recenzii
"The letters’ intimate voice, their accessibility, and their focus on everyday challenges make the letters relevant for readers of all ages and academic levels. In addition, explanatory notes at the end of the book add depth and offer clarification for readers unfamiliar with Seneca or Stoic philosophy. A good representative sample of Seneca’s letters, Fifty Letters is an approachable text and a good introduction to Roman Stoicism. . . . Recommended."
"In 2015 Chicago did the great service of publishing G. and L.’s magisterial translation and commentary on all 124 surviving letters to Lucilius (Seneca: Letters on Ethics to Lucilius)... With this volume, G. and L. have now produced a very reasonably priced soft covered selection of slightly under half of the full corpus of Letters to Lucilius."