This book examines the literary and philosophical qualities essential to Seneca's art of science in his Natural Questions. Seneca's meteorological theme raises our gaze from a terrestrial level to a higher, more intuitive plane - a conceptual climb by which Seneca promotes a change of perspective in his readership towards the cosmic viewpoint.

The Cosmic Viewpoint examines the literary and philosophical qualities essential to Seneca's art of science in his Natural Questions. Seneca's meteorological theme raises our gaze from a terrestrial level to a higher, more intuitive plane.

In his note on lines 27–8 Luck gives two Ovidian parallels for conversation outlasting the day, P. 2.4.11–12 and P. 2.10.37–8, but he makes no reference to lines 2–3 of Callimachus' epigram on Heraclitus of Halicarnassus.

Heroides 11 has long enjoyed a favourable reputation among critics, largely because Ovid appears to show a tactful restraint in his description of Canace's last moments and to refrain, for once in the Heroides, from descending into what Jacobson terms ‘nauseating mawkishness’. Despite appearances, however, Ovid's wit is not entirely extinguished in this poem, for a devastating irony accompanies the certainty of Canace's imminent death. My objective is to demonstrate the nature of this irony by adopting a methodological approach which (...) owes much to Kennedy's analysis of Heroides 1 in the light of the later books of the Odyssey. Kennedy's argument – that without knowing it Penelope is about to give her letter to its intended addressee – is based on two premises which are postulated by the epistolary mode of the poem. The first is that we are to imagine Ovid's heroines writing at a specific moment within a dramatic context; the second is that they have a specific motive for writing at that moment. In Kennedy's hands, this approach assumes the privileged position of the reader of Heroides 1 who, through access to the Odyssey, is alive to the ironies which Ovid's Penelope cannot realize. I propose to establish a similarly privileged position for the reader of Heroides 11, a position from which Canace's death can be seen to be both ill-timed and unnecessary. The key to identifying the ironic circumstances of Canace's death lies in reconstructing the background to the Canace and Macareus myth and the possible precedents which Ovid drew on in his treatment of the story. The situation is more complex than in the case of Heroides 1, however, since the literary sources familiar to Ovid and his readers have, in this instance, largely been lost to us and can only be reconstructed from fragmentary evidence. (shrink)

Heroides 11 has long enjoyed a favourable reputation among critics, largely because Ovid appears to show a tactful restraint in his description of Canace's last moments and to refrain, for once in the Heroides, from descending into what Jacobson terms ‘nauseating mawkishness’. Despite appearances, however, Ovid's wit is not entirely extinguished in this poem, for a devastating irony accompanies the certainty of Canace's imminent death. My objective is to demonstrate the nature of this irony by adopting a methodological approach which (...) owes much to Kennedy's analysis of Heroides 1 in the light of the later books of the Odyssey. Kennedy's argument – that without knowing it Penelope is about to give her letter to its intended addressee – is based on two premises which are postulated by the epistolary mode of the poem. The first is that we are to imagine Ovid's heroines writing at a specific moment within a dramatic context; the second is that they have a specific motive for writing at that moment. In Kennedy's hands, this approach assumes the privileged position of the reader of Heroides 1 who, through access to the Odyssey, is alive to the ironies which Ovid's Penelope cannot realize. I propose to establish a similarly privileged position for the reader of Heroides 11, a position from which Canace's death can be seen to be both ill-timed and unnecessary. The key to identifying the ironic circumstances of Canace's death lies in reconstructing the background to the Canace and Macareus myth and the possible precedents which Ovid drew on in his treatment of the story. The situation is more complex than in the case of Heroides 1, however, since the literary sources familiar to Ovid and his readers have, in this instance, largely been lost to us and can only be reconstructed from fragmentary evidence. (shrink)

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and advisor to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection helps restore Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to (...) his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities. _Hardship and Happiness_ collects a range of essays intended to instruct, from consolations—works that offer comfort to someone who has suffered a personal loss—to pieces on how to achieve happiness or tranquility in the face of a difficult world. Expertly translated, the essays will be read and used by undergraduate philosophy students and experienced scholars alike. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the question of whether it is appropriate and inevitable that higher education systems are becoming so large and so diverse that the only realistic way they can be analysed is as aggregates of market-like transactions.

This volume contains ten essays on Seneca the Younger. Approaching the Roman writer from various angles, the authors endeavor both to illuminate individual aspects of Seneca's enormous output and to discern common themes among the different genres practiced by him.

When the Romans adopted Greek literary genres and artistic techniques, they did not slavishly imitate their models but created vibrant and original works of literature and art in their own right. The same is true for philosophy, notwithstanding the fact that the rich Roman philosophical tradition is still all too often treated as a mere footnote to the history of Greek philosophy. This volume aims to reassert the significance of Roman philosophy and to explore the "Romanness" of philosophical writings and (...) practices in the Roman world, endeavoring to show that the Romans in their creative adaptation of Greek modes of thought developed sophisticated forms of philosophical discourse shaped by their own history and institutions, concepts, and values--and last--but not least--by the Latin language, which nearly all Roman philosophers used to express their ideas.This volume of thirteen chapters by an international group of specialists in ancient philosophy, Latin literature, and Roman social and intellectual history moves from Roman attitudes to and practices of philosophy to the great late Republican writers Cicero and Lucretius, then onwards to the early Empire and the work of Seneca the Younger, and finally to Epictetus, Apuleius, and Augustine. Using a variety of approaches, the essays demonstrate the diversity and originality of Roman philosophical discourse over the centuries. (shrink)

The Cosmic Viewpoint examines the literary and philosophical qualities essential to Seneca's art of science in his Natural Questions. Seneca's meteorological theme raises our gaze from a terrestrial level to a higher, more intuitive plane.

In this essay, hegemony in traditional Marxism is posited as a social ontology based on overcoming the alienation of the masses. The aim of hegemony is to produce the full realization through the work of the proletariat as one specific political subject, as a collective version of the bourgeois subject. The emancipation through hegemony marks the self-realization of the proletariat as the subject of history, as one subject that somehow imposes itself on the alienated forms of capitalism. On the other (...) hand, poshegemony is thought from the decline of the subjectivist and productivist idolatry of hegemony, from the end of its expired truth, in the name of another promise. (shrink)