Abstract
Seneca the Younger on tyranny in On Mercy (Clemency). Advice on political morality addressed to his pupil, the future tyrant Nero. The tyrant unleashes an overpowering sense of fear among those whom he seeks to reduce to servitude. Apologist for the imperial regime, the principate.
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Notes
- 1.
J. M. Cooper and J. F. Procopé, Seneca, Moral and Political Essays (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), introduction, edition, and translation. M. T. Griffin, Seneca: a Philosopher in Politics (Oxford, 1976). M. Morford, Stoics and Neo-Stoics (Princeton, 1991). P. Stacey, Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince (Cambridge UK, 2007). Panizza’s and Barrizza’s reliance on Seneca is particularly striking.
- 2.
M.C. Horowitz, “The Stoic Synthesis of the Idea of Natural Law in Man: Four Themes,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 35 (1974), 3–16, an overview.
- 3.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, introduction.
- 4.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 132.
- 5.
F.E. Kranz, Reorientations of Western Thought from Antiquity to the Renaissance, chap. IX.
- 6.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 15.
- 7.
There are mentions of the late Republic, but no nostalgia. The Romanitas of the earlier centuries since the previous reigns of kings had been infused with Stoicism.
- 8.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 122.
- 9.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 142.
- 10.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 122.
- 11.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 143.
- 12.
Aristotle, Politics, 254, 1315b, “Tyrannies have generally been short-lived.”
- 13.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 145.
- 14.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 144.
- 15.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 144.
- 16.
Cooper and Procopé, Seneca, 145.
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Ranum, O. (2020). Seneca the Younger on Tyranny in On Mercy. In: Tyranny from Ancient Greece to Renaissance France. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43185-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43185-3_5
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