Morals and Villas in Seneca’s Letters: Places to Dwell

John Henderson explores three letters of Seneca describing visits to Roman villas, and surveys the whole collection to show how these villas work as designs for contrasting lives. Seneca’s own place is ageing drastically; a recent Epicurean’s paradise is a seductive oasis away from the dangers of Nero’s Rome; once a fortress of the dour Rome of yesteryear, the legendary Scipio’s lair was now a shrine to the old morality: Seneca revels in its primitive bath-house, dark and cramped, before exploring the garden with the present owner. Seneca brings the philosophical epistle to Latin literature, creating models for moralizing which feature self-criticism, parody and re-animated myth. Virgil and Horace come in for rough handling, as the Latin moralist wrests ethical practice and writing away from Greek gurus and texts, and into critical thinking within a Roman context. Here is powerful teaching on metaphor and translation, on self-transformation and cultural tradition.

• Features in-depth study of key letters in Seneca’s collection, with fresh translations • Combines approaches to the Roman villa and its owners from literary criticism, history, politics, cultural history, philosophy, myth and religion • Surveys, interprets, and enthuses over the whole of this classic work from one of the major figures of ancient Rome, whose writings are set for a wave of re-evaluation

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Twelve steps to haven; 2. Dropping in (it) at SENECA’S; 3. You can get used to anything; 4. The long and winding mode; 5. Booking us in; 6. Now and then; here and there: at SCIPIO’S; 7. Bound for VATIA’S; 8. Knocking the self: genuflexion, villafication, VATIA’S; 9. The world of the bath-house: SCIPIO’S; 10. The appliance of science: SCIPIO’S; 11. Shafts of light: transplantation and transfiguration; 12. Still olive, still SCIPIO’S; Appendices; Bibliography; Indexes.