3. Letter-Writing

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about the form of Seneca's Epistulae Morales – the epistle, or the letter. Are these historical letters or a literary invention? Was the addressee, Lucilius, a real person? Why does Seneca choose this form in which to outline his Stoic philosophy?

Course

In this course, Professor Catharine Edwards (Birkbeck, University of London) provides an introduction to Seneca the Younger and his Epistulae Morales. We begin by providing a broad introduction to Seneca's life, career, and literary output, before moving on in the second module to think about the philosophy of Stoicism. In the third module, we explore the letter as both a means of communication in the Roman world as well as a well-developed literary genre, before turning in the fourth module to consider Seneca's distinctive prose style. Finally, in the fifth module, we provide a close reading of one of Seneca's letters – Letter 53.

Lecturer

Professor Catharine Edwards is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of London. Her work focuses on the cultural history of the Roman world, especially Rome in the early principate, Seneca and the Younger and his Letters, and responses to the city of Rome in antiquity and later periods. Her recent publications include Suetonious: Lives of the Caesars (Oxford World's Classics, 2000), (as co-editor with Greg Woolf) Rome the Cosmopolis (CUP, 2002), and Death in Ancient Rome (Yale, 2007).