Brill’s New Pauly Supplements I - Volume 5 : The Reception of Classical Literature

A. Life and work Gaius Sallustius Crispus, born in 86 BC, the son of an equestrian family from the Sabine municipality of Amiternum (nearly present-day L’Aquila), was probably educated at Rome, where he began his career in the 60s BC. That career was evidently not without the corruption typical of the age, which damaged his reputation. S. became quaestor around 55 BC and thereafter entered the senate. The invective against Cicero ( Invectiva in Ciceronem) that is transmitted in his name was supposedly delivered during this period. Although the text is probably a fabri…

A. Life and work The Greek lyric poet S. ( c. 600 BC) figures in her reception not only as a poet (in the sense of a producer of poetry), but also as an outstanding poetic personality. Not least by reason of the dismal state of transmission of early Greek lyric in general and S. in particular – at least for much of the 2,600 or so years that separate her from us – she was long received less for her actual poems than for the supposed events of her life. These have always been viewed as more authentic in th…

A. Life Lucius Annaeus S. (the Elder, maior) was born into an equestrian family of Cordoba in the mid-50s BC (Mart. 1,61,7). He lived in Spain and twice at Rome for extended periods. There he was involved in literary life and (the schools of) oratory as an observer, while not being active as a rhetor himself. In old age (during the reign of Caligula), he assembled the impressions he received at that time into a work intended for his sons, Oratorum et rhetorum sententiae divisiones colores (‘Sentences, divisions and colorations of orators and rhetors’). It offers an overview of t…

A. Life and work Lucius Annaeus S. was born in Cordoba (Spain) in the last years of the 1st cent. BC (perhaps 4 BC). His father was Seneca the Elder. The family soon moved to Rome, where he received a rhetorical and philosophical education. Upon his return from a trip to Egypt (to visit his aunt, whose husband was governor there), S. set out on the official public career ( cursus honorum) at Rome in AD 31. He distinguished himself by his outstanding gifts as an orator. During the reign of Claudius, in AD 41, he was accused – for political reasons – of adultery with…