Talk:Seneca the Younger

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:

WikiProject Spain Spain Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spain, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Spain on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale. WikiProject Philosophy      (Rated Start-Class) Philosophy Portal This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details. Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. Low This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance scale. Additional information: Related task forces (major fields): Philosophers Related task forces (periods): Ancient philosophy WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome     (Rated Start-Class) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. To participate, improve this article or visit the project page for more information. Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the assessment scale. ??? This article is on a subject of -importance within classical antiquity. WikiProject Biography     (Rated Start-Class) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page. Biography Portal Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]

WikiProject Echo has identified Seneca the Younger as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the Latin language Wikipedia.

Contents 1 "Dritte Stoa" 2 Reference deleted 3 Should there be a link? 4 Works 5 The Pseudo-Seneca 6 This page has got very messy with adhoc changes 7 Seneca and Paul? 8 WikiProject class rating 9 Moses Hadas. The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca, 1958.

[edit] "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!

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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).

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)