Dialogues, Seneca [best motivational books of all time TXT] 📗

epub:type="z3998:roman">XII, Cleopatra’s brother, then about seventeen years of age. ↩

“On Clemency,” Book II, 6, 4, I emended many years ago ένὸϛ χανότος με ΤΕΣΧΗΚεν into έ. χ., με ΤΑΚΕΧΗΝεν ϋτεροϛ: “when one has yawned, the other yawns.” —⁠J. E. B. M. ↩

The voting-place in the Campus Martius. ↩

Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 144, sqq. The same lines are quoted in the essay On Benefits, Book V, Chapter 15. ↩

I.e., he can plead that he kept the beaten track. ↩

“On Clemency,” Book I, 12, 5. ↩

Compare Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act V, Scene 5:⁠—

“His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that nature might stand up
And say to all the world, this was a man!”

See Mr. Aldis Wright’s note upon the passage. ↩

Paedagogus was a slave who accompanied a boy to school, etc., to keep him out of mischief; he did not teach him anything. ↩

Tempestiva, beginning before the usual hour. ↩

Fear of self-condemnation. ↩

Lipsius conjectures supprocax, mischievous. ↩

I have adopted the transposition of Haase and Koch. ↩

I adopt Vahlen’s reading. See his Preface, p. viii, ed. Jenae, 1879. ↩

I read onerosos with Vahlen. See his Preface, p. viii, ed. Jenae, 1879. ↩

The lines are from Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, 702, but are inaccurately quoted. ↩

The hook alluded to was fastened to the neck of condemned criminals, and by it they were dragged to the Tiber. Also the bodies of dead gladiators were thus dragged out of the arena. The hook by which the dead bull is drawn away at a modern Spanish bullfight is probably a survival of this custom. ↩

Heroditus, iii, 34, 35. ↩

Seneca’s own death, by opening his veins, gives a melancholy interest to this passage. ↩

Heroditus, iv, 84. ↩

Heroditus, vii, 38, 39. ↩

Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 27. ↩

Heroditus, iii, 17, sqq. ↩

Heroditus, i, 189, 190. ↩

A mistake: Antigonus (Monophthalmus) was one of Alexander’s generals. ↩

Acerbum = άωρου; the funeral of one who has been cut off in the flower of this youth. ↩

In point of time. ↩

Consul ordinarius, a regular consul, one who administered in office from the first of January, in opposition to consul suffectus, one chosen in the course of the year in the place of one who had died. The consul ordinarius gave his name to the year. ↩

It seems inconceivable that so small an interest, 1⅕ percent per annum, can be meant. ↩

Captatis, Madvig. Adv., II, 394. ↩

See “On Clemency,” Book I, 18, 2. ↩

Corsica. ↩

Seneca himself was of Spanish extraction. ↩

Qu. oysters from Britain. ↩

The allusion is evidently to Regulus. ↩

I think Madvig’s ademisset spoils the sense. Dedisset means: “when you bid me mourn the loss of the Gracchi you bid me blame fortune for having given me such sons.” “ ’Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” —⁠J. E. B. M. ↩

Alcestis. ↩

The context shows that sanctitas is opposed to “rapacity,” “taking bribes,” like the Celaeno of Juvenal viii. —⁠J. E. B. M. ↩

“The Latins had four versions of Homer (Fabric, torn. i 1. ii ch. 3, p. 297), yet, in spite of the phraises of Seneca, ‘Consolations’ chapter 26 (viii), they appear to have been more successful in imitating than in translating the Greek poets.”

—⁠Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, Chapter 41, ad initium, note

Polybius had made a prose translation of Homer, and a prose paraphrase of Virgil. ↩

See this note. ↩

“Fortune hath parted stakes with thee, in taking away thy brother, and leaving thee all the rest in securtie and safetie.” —⁠Lodge ↩

See On Benefits, Book V, Chapter 16. ↩

Scipio Africanus Minor, the son of Paulus Æmilius. ↩

Marcellus. See Virgil’s well-known lines, Aeneid, VI, 869, sqq., and “Consolatio ad Marciam,” Chapter 2. ↩

G. Caesar, d. at Limyra, AD 4. ↩

Lucius Caesar, d. at Marseilles, AD 2. ↩

Drusus died by a fall from his horse, BC 9. “A monument was erected in his honour at Moguntiacum (Mayence), and games and military spectacles were exhibited there on the anniversary of his death. An altar had already been raised in his honour on the banks of the Lippe.” Tacitus, Annals, II, 7. “The soldiers began now to regard themselves as a distinct people, with rites and heroes of their own. Augustus required them to surrender the body of their beloved chief as a matter of discipline.” Merivale, Chapter 36. ↩

Pulvinaria. This word properly means “a couch made of cushions, and spread over with a splendid covering, for the gods or persons who received divine