Letters From a Stoic
Page 25
* Sic itur ad astra? Virgil, Aeneid, IX:641.
* Aeneid, VI:3, III:277.
* i.e. its medical name, asthma.
* A fragment of Varro Atacinus ‘translation from the Greek of Apollonius’ Argonautica.
* Aeneid, II:726–9. Aeneas is describing his feelings as he leads his son and carries his father out of Troy while the city is being sacked.
* Homer narrates in Book XII of the Odyssey how the hero, following the advice of Circe, stopped the ears of his crew with beeswax while they rowed past the place where the temptresses sang.
* Homer, Iliad, XIX:228f., XXIV:601f.
* Well-known works of Polycletus, the great fifth century Greek sculptor. Copies of both statues have survived.
* The source of this quotation is not known.
* Virgil, Aeneid, VI:376.
* Virgil, Aeneid, I:203.
* A total of about 85 lines of this letter have been omitted as not of interest or repeating thoughts expressed elsewhere.
* By the Gauls in 390 B.C.
* Horace, Satires, 1:2.27 and 1:4.92. Horace actually wrote Rufillus.
* Virgil, Georgics, II:58.
† Virgil, Georgics, I:215–16.
* A liber.
* Virgil, Georgics, I:336–7. The person meant is of course the astrologer, not the astronomer.
* Virgil, Georgics, I:424–6.55
* Some 45 lines of the Latin are omitted for their relative lack of interest (§§21 to 28).
* 15 lines (§§39 to 40, on further examples of worthless learning) are omitted.
* Virgil, Georgics, I:144.
* Virgil, Georgics, I:139–40.
* Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI:55 (apparently misquoted).
* About 17 lines (§§28 to 30, in which Seneca appears to claim for philosophy complete and certain knowledge of the truth in religious or cosmological matters) have been omitted.
* Epicureanism.
† i.e. ‘in accordance with nature’.
* Virgil, Georgics, I:125–8.
* Virgil, Aeneid, III:282–3.
* Virgil, Aeneid, VI:277.
* At this point of uncertainty in the text I have adopted the reading servituti se eduxisse suggested by Haase.
† Virgil, Aeneid, 1:458.
* The text at this point is corrupt. I have adopted the emendations si parum nota and si rara suggested by Buecheler and Madvig.
* Virgil, Aeneid, VI:274–5.
* St Augustine quotes this fragment of Cleanthes as Seneca’s (De Civitate Dei, V:8).
* Both quotations, and the next two, are believed to be fragments of plays of Publilius Syrus.
* Georgics, III:284.
† Georgics, III:66–8.
* Aeneid, VI:275.
* A fragment of a lost epic.
† Georgics, III:260–1.
* A set of tablets dating from 451–450 B.C., which record a basic code of laws and were the earliest piece of Latin writing known to the Romans.
It may be noted here that in this letter Seneca sees or draws no distinction between rules applying to literature and rules applying to oratory.
* Virgil, Georgics, IV:212–13.
† The last 34 lines are omitted (§§23 to 27).
‡ Georgics, I:250–51.
* Costly materials such as the silks mentioned in Letter XC, or the diaphanous robe (perlucentem togam) disapproved of in Letter CXIV.
* Carried by custom at a child’s funeral.
* Text corrupt.