The most accessible and exciting ancient source on imperial Rome is Tacitus’ Annals, of which there is a good recent Oxford World’s Classics translation (J. C. Yardley, 2008). Suetonius’ gossipy Life of Nero is also very much worth reading (in Lives of the Caesars, translated by Catherine Edwards, Oxford World’s Classics 2009).
The best modern scholarly study of Seneca in English is Miriam Griffin’s Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (1976), which may be rather dense for nonspecialists but has a host of useful information.
Edward Champlin’s Nero is a fine and lively study of the emperor and his time; Miriam Griffin’s Nero is also useful.
For those wanting to know about a very different Stoic philosopher, A. A. Long’s Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2004) is highly recommended.
Art Credits
Figure I.1 BPK, Berlin/Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen/CoDArchLab/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 1.1 © Shutterstock.
Figure 1.2 © Courtesy of the British Museum.
Figure 1.3 Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 1.4 © Manfred Heyde.
Figure 2.1 Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 2.2 Album/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 2.3 Album/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 2.4 Scala/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 2.5 © Ethelwulf, The Megalithic Portal.
Figure 3.1 Album/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 3.2 Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 3.3 © Shutterstock.
Figure 3.4 Scala/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 3.5 Jewelry: Album/Art Resource, NY. Cup: © Shutterstock.
Figure 3.6 © Shutterstock.
Figure 3.7 © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 4.1 Scala/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 4.2 © Shutterstock.
Figure 4.3 © Shutterstock.
Figure 4.4 © Shutterstock.
Figure 4.5 BPK, Berlin/Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesamm)/Peter Paul Rubens/Art Resource, NY.
Acknowledgments
I would like first to thank Stefan Vranka at Oxford University Press, for suggesting that I write about Seneca. Thank you also to the Penn Humanities Forum, where the interdisciplinary discussions of violence in 2013–2014 provided a useful background for thinking about life in imperial Rome. I’d also like to thank my colleagues, graduate students, and undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania, who have all helped provide a stimulating but safe environment in which to write—quite the opposite of barren Corsica or Nero’s court.
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First published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 2014
First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2015
Text copyright © Emily Wilson, 2014
Cover design: Coralie Bickford-Smith
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-846-14638-1
* Confragosa in fastigium dignitatis via est (Epistle 84)
* Sagax parentum est cura (Phaedra 152)
* Nusbquam est, qui ubique est (Epistle 2.2). More literally, “One who is everywhere is nowhere. It happens to those who spend their lives traveling that they have many acquaintances but few friends.”
* Mercede te vitia sollicitant (Epistle 69.4)
* Non est ad astra mollis e terries via (Hercules Furens, 437)