Abbreviation
OLD
Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012).
1. In keeping with Chrysippus’s preference not to apply treatment while “the mind’s swelling is still fresh” (cf. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 4.63).
2. Besides our Seneca, Helvia bore to the elder Seneca two other sons, Novatus (later Gallio, after adoption by L. Junius Gallio in his will) and Mela (cf. n. 59 below).
3. Their identities are unknown, and it is unclear if they include Seneca’s own son (immediately below).
4. Raptum me, as if to (living) death in exile (cf. OLD rapio 5, of death, fate, etc., “to carry off”).
5. The Stoic school; but for the charge of desertion to the rival, Epicurean camp, cf. On Leisure 1.4.
6. Chapters 10–13 below.
7. At Rome, as if Seneca were still there to visualize the scene.
8. Places of exile; the first three are Aegean. “Barren” Cossura (cf. Ovid Fasti 3.567) is now Pantellaria, between Sicily and North Africa.
9. Corsica, here portrayed with exaggerated grimness.
10. Stoics; this in anticipation of the soul drawn as part of the Stoic pneuma in 6.7.
11. See On Leisure 5.5 and n. 10.
12. Relative to the earth, the sun, moon, and planets orbit from east to west, as do the fixed stars; but the sun, moon, and planets orbit more slowly than the fixed stars, relative to which they move from west to east in an “opposite” direction (cf. On the Constancy of the Wise Person 14.4, Consolation to Marcia 18.3).
13. A consequence of Alexander the Great’s eastern campaigns.
14. I.e., Ionia, the western part of Asia Minor.
15. The Tuscan or Tyrrhenian Sea, as opposed to the mare superum or Adriatic.
16. According to tradition, the Etruscans were Lydian in origin (cf. Herodotus 1.94).
17. Greeks: presumably the Phocaeans, apparently founders of Marseilles via Corsica after most citizens chose emigration during the Persian siege of 540 BCE (cf. Herodotus 1.163–7, and see n. 20 below). Gauls: the Celts, of whom one group apparently reached Delphi in 229 BCE while another crossed the Hellespont and settled in Asia Minor, giving their Celtic name to Galatia.
18. Possible confusion of Germans with Celts, early invaders of Spain who merged with the Iberians to form the Celtiberians.
19. Aeneas. In the vast history of migrations drawn in chapter 7, the Roman foundation legend is itself “normalized” by association with many such journeys: see my introduction to this essay.
20. Phocide relicta is surely in error for Phocaea in Asia Minor (Massilia/Marseilles was founded by the Phocaeans; cf. n. 17 above)—unless usage in fact allowed Phocis to be applied erroneously for Phocaea (cf. OLD Phocis 1b).
21. The implication is that the Corsican language was markedly Cantabrian/Spanish and was eroded over time by Phocaean and Ligurian influence. If so, despite the apparent temporal sequence meant in “Subsequently the Ligurians . . . and also the Spanish” above, Seneca seemingly posits Cantabrian settlement and influence before the Phocaean and Ligurian interventions.
22. The colonia Mariana in ca. 100 BCE, the Sullan Aleria ca. 82–80.
23. M. Terentius Varro (116–27 BCE), the most distinguished and prolific scholar of his time. The statement attributed to him here belongs to a lost work.
24. M. Junius Brutus (ca. 85–42 BCE), conspirator against Julius Caesar; his statement here is perhaps from his lost On Virtue (cf. 9.4 below).
25. Different Stoic designations of the power shaping the cosmos; cf. On Favors 4.7–8, Natural Questions 2.45.
26. Reading (with Reynolds) Vahlen’s supplement to fill the lacuna in nullum inueniri exilium intra mundum <potest; nihil enim quod intra mundum> est alienum homini est.
27. Artificial grottoes offering escape from the sun, such as Vatia’s at Letters 55.6.
28. One of two modest huts of straw with thatched roofs, known as casae Romuli, was on the Palatine, the other on the Capitol; they were carefully preserved as ancient relics symbolizing Rome’s humble beginnings.
29. See 8.1 and n. 24 above.
30. M. Claudius Marcellus, consul in 51 BCE, was a vigorous opponent of Julius Caesar who retired to Mytilene after fighting on Pompey’s losing side at Pharsalus in 48. Caesar had approved his return to Rome, but he was murdered at Piraeus in 45.
31. Brutus was son-in-law of M. Porcius Cato (95–46 BCE), doctrinaire Stoic and paragon of republicanism.
32. Here Julius Caesar, but Caligula is so designated at 10.4 below.
33. 58–49 BCE, the period of Caesar’s Gallic Wars.
34. Caesar in Egypt: 48–47 BCE (“treacherous” Egypt because of Pompey’s fate; cf. On the Shortness of Life 13.7 and n. 28). Africa: at Thapsus in 46, against the surviving Pompeians; and thereafter in Spain, at Munda in 45 (cf. On the Shortness of Life 5.2 and n. 9).
35. A river in Colchis flowing into the eastern Black Sea; the delicacy in question is pheasant (phasiana, derived from Phasis).
36. After Crassus’s infamous defeat at Carrhae in 53 BCE.
37. Caligula; cf. 9.6.
38. For this symbol of simplicity, cf. Letters 31.11.
39. An allusion to M. Atilius Regulus, hero of the First Punic War: captured by the Carthaginians, he was sent on parole to Rome in 250 BCE to negotiate either a peace or an exchange of prisoners, but he urged the Roman senate to reject either proposal. Honoring the terms of his parole, he returned to Carthage, where he was tortured to death (see also 12.5).
40. M.’ Curius Dentatus; cf. On the Shortness of Life 13.3 and n. 22.
41. M. Gavius Apicius, a notorious connoisseur in the Tiberian period (cf. On the Happy Life 11.4) whose name became a byword for gluttonous indulgence.
42. In 161 BCE.
43. Cf. On the Shortness of Life 15.5.
44. Reading Vahlen’s supplement excaecat, quos timor paupertatis.
45. Consul in 503 BCE, he apparently persuaded the plebeians of the futility of their secession from Rome in 494.
46. See 10.7 and n. 39 above.
47. See On the Shortness of Life 17.6 and n. 44.
48. “The thirty tyrants” refers to the oligarchy that seized power at the end of the Peloponnesian War (404–403 BCE); for Socrates’ defiance see Plato Apology 32c–d; Xenophon Memorabilia 1.2.32.
49. After his condemnation in 399 BCE; cf. On Leisure 8.2.
50. In 55 and 51 BCE respectively. For Cato see 9.5 and n. 31 above.
51. Athenian politician of the fifth century, nicknamed “the Just” (d. ca. 467). He is possibly given here in error for Phocion (ca. 402–318), the Athenian statesman and general of whom the same story is told by Plutarch (The Life of Phocion 36.1–2).
52. I.e., before she could draw on her inheritance.
53. Presumably to set out homeward to Spain from Rome.
54. Notably Augustus’s sister Octavia, after losing her son Marcellus (cf. Consolation to Marcia 2.3–4).
55. Reading sed leuiorem . . . exsurgere, but there is no sure emendation for leuis or leuiter in the MSS.
56. Second daughter of Scipio Africanus (cf. 12.6 above) and mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, the famous tribunes.
57. Mother of the distinguished orator C. Aurelius Cotta, who was exiled in 90 BCE on the charge of inciting the Italians to revolt; recalled in 82, he was consul in 75.
58. Cf. On the Shortness of Life 14.2 and n. 36.
59. Novatus (Gallio) and Mela (cf. 2.4 and n. 2 above). The former rose to become proconsul of Achaia in ca. 52, suffect consul in 55 or 56; the latter is cast by the elder Seneca (Controversiae 2 pref. 3–4) as the cleverest of the three brothers, and also the least ambitious politically.
60. Probably the poet Lucan, Mela’s son (39–65 CE).
61. Daughter of Novatus (Gallio).
62. Not formally, but in the sense of a special affection for her.
63. Presumably Helvius is in Spain, Helvia having journeyed back to Rome (cf. 15.2–3) after news of Seneca’s exile reached her.
64. Apparently Helvia’s stepsister, given the reference to Helvia as an only child in 18.9. The wife of Gaius Galerius, prefect of Egypt 16–31 CE, she presumably nursed Seneca back to health in Egypt (19.2) in the later part of this period.
65. As a child, from Corduba in Spain; his parents were presumably already at Rome.
66. Shortly after (33 CE?) his aunt’s return from Egypt in 31.
67. Perhaps en route back from Egypt in 31 CE.
68. In Greek myth Alcestis, wife of Admetus.
69. For the ensuing distinction between terrena, sublimia, and caelestia, cf. (albeit in reverse order) Natural Questions 2.1.1–2.