This new and important introduction to Seneca provides a systematic and concise presentation of this author’s philosophical works and his tragedies. It provides handbook style surveys of each genuine or attributed work, giving dates and brief descriptions, and taking into account the most important philosophical and philological issues. In addition, they provide accounts of the major steps in the history of their later influence. The cultural background of the texts and the most important problem areas within the philosophic and tragic (...) corpus of Seneca are dealt with in separate essays. (shrink)

In the traditional view, Martial’s epigram 9. 33 makes fun of a fictive character named Maro, who - thanks to his oversized phallus - is applauded in the baths. This paper argues that the real concern of the poem are not physical body parts, but a literary corpus of obscene texts featuring the notorious mentula, namely the Priapea attributed to P. Vergilius Maro.

Bellum civile 6,564-569 describes how the witch Erictho disrupts a funeral. In its context the expression cognato in funere refers not to any putative relatives of Erictho (not mentioned elsewhere) or to relatives of some anonymous deceased person (so Korenjak), but to the only group of people Erictho shares some kind of bond with, namely her ‚sisters‘ the Thessalian witches.