Seneca, Epistulae morales V. Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Dominik Berrens
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 516319177

Seneca’s “Epistulae morales” is not only an influential work of Latin literature, but also a key source of Roman philosophy. Despite their importance, research on the "Epistulae" still shows some gaps. Above all, commentaries that make individual books systematically accessible are lacking. A total of 124 letters from Seneca to an addressee named Lucilius have come down to us, distributed over 20 books of various lengths. The arrangement of the epistles exhibits a progression from shorter letters with simple content to increasingly longer and more complex texts. The book structure is of great relevance with regard to literary composition and content, as has long been recognized for other letter collections as well as for epigram books. Nevertheless, most existent commentaries on the “Epistulae” offer a selection of letters and do not sufficiently consider the book structure and the progression of the corpus. This eclectic approach is partly the reason why the individual letters have received unequal attention in scholarship. Fairly recent commentaries on books 1 to 4 and on the beginning of book 6 are available, but a study on book 5 is still lacking. This gap in research is all the more regrettable as this book raises questions and themes that are of importance to the “Epistulae morales” as a whole. The figure of Lucilius, for instance, gains clearer contours in book 5. In addition, the book proves to be particularly coherent in terms of structure and lends itself to trace the means by which this coherence is created. The proposed project will deal with these and other questions in a volume on book 5 of the “Epistulae morales”. For this purpose, the eleven letters (Ep. 42–52) of this book will be comprehensively and coherently made accessible for the first time by means of an introduction and a scientific commentary. In addition, the volume will be accompanied by a Latin text and a German translation. Additional lectures and articles will study overarching issues, such as the structure of the entire corpus, and thus corroborate the knowledge gained from the book 5.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants