Jula Wildberger

This dissertation in classics might be of interest for gender studies as well since it is a sustained demonstration how one social and literary sterotype (the elegiac lover -- der elegisch Liebende) is systematically transformed into another (the artist of love -- der Liebeskünstler) as part of generic transformation (turning Latin love elegy into didactic poetry). The counterpart of these stereotypes is the "harsh lady" (dura domina), who is domesticated in the third book of the Ars amatoria. The copyright for the book belongs to the author, who has uploaded it to the site. Please feel free to use it for non-profit purposes.

Relates Stoic changing conceptions of time to these philosophers’ theology. Roughly speaking, we can distinguish a first phase in which the original definition by Zeno was developed and refined, and a second phase, beginning with Posidonius at the latest, in which new concepts of both objective and subjective time were introduced that turned out to be incompatible with the strictly "corporealist" ontology into which the original definitions had been embedded. The early Stoics defined time in dependence of moving bodies in such a way that the subsistence of times, their structural coherence and unity within the whole time of the cosmos's movement as well as the division of time into past, present and future were a consequence of god's activities. It was god who determined time and what it was like. Maybe under the influence of Aristotle, some middle Stoics and in particular Posidonius seem to have become dissatisfied with the idea that there are only times of single movements but no time as a universal temporal dimension. They introduced a distinction between objective time and - both perceptually and conceptually - subjective time as well as the concept of a now that implies both a point-like division between past and future and a defined location for the present within objective time. As a consequence, God's activities are now structured by a temporal dimension that does no longer depend of God in all its aspects. Now, God too has a past and a future, and his activities can be analyzed in terms of necessity and possibility. This raises questions about divine agency similar to those discussed in order to define human responsibility and freedom of action. Reflexes of such a debate about the determinedness of god's activities can be observed in the imperial Stoic Seneca.

This paper is a first publication on my ongoing research on the sources of the extant doxographies on Stoic ethics. It argues that there are identifiable traces of a copy-and-paste strategy in the “Outline of Stoic Ethics” generally attributed to Arius Didymus and transmitted in Johannes Stobaeus’ Anthology. The author of the Outline took extant doxographic texts and supplemented it by inserting additional material. The editing process also resulted in transpositions, omissions, and rewriting to connect the original material with the accretions to it. This kind of source criticism is important because sometimes there is still an identifiable train of thought that can be restored, and the relation of parallel accounts, their sources, and the choices of individual source authors can be spelled out more precisely.

Epictetus' thought is defined by an antithesis of mine and not-mine, which is an antithesis of externals and self. From this arise a number of questions for Epictetus‘ theology, which are addressed in this paper: How is the self delimited from God, given that God is all-pervading? Is God inside or outside the self? In which way is God the cause, creator and shaper of the self? And how does human agency and self-shaping through prohairesis spell out within this determinst framework? If, as will become apparent in the discussion of the previous questions, the shape and activities of human selves originate from God and should be perfectly aligned with God, in which sense is there still a separate, individual human self?

According to an ancient stereotype, prominent in Cicero’s writings, Stoics hated rhetoric and were really bad it. But Horaces’ Satires are populated with lecturing Stoics using colorful, effusive language to cure their audience. The paper asks how “rhetorical” Stoics really were and argues that there was a continued tradition of Stoic rhetoric linking the diatribic speech of the Imperial period to its Hellenistic practitioners. It surveys the evidence for Stoic orators and rhetorical writers in the Hellenistic period and presents evidence that Greek Stoics were more eloquent than their stereotype. The paper also suggests reasons for the wood-cut and sometimes fictitious representation of Stoic rhetoric in ancient accounts, in particular a propensity for classification in rhetorical theory, Cicero's dissatisfaction with Stoic terminology, and Cicero's own agenda in self-fashioning his image as an orator and writer of philosophy.

Reconstructs the original Greek version of the confatalia-argument that Cicero attributes to Chrysippus in De fato and misrepresent in crucial ways. Compares this argument with Seneca's discussion of determinism in the Naturales quaestiones. Clarifies that Seneca makes a different distinction from that attested in Cicero's De fato. Argues that problems with interpreting both accounts derive from disregarding terminological distinctions harder to spot in the Latin versions and, related to this, insufficient attention to the ontological distinction between bodies (such as Fate) and predicates (e.g. "what is fated"), which unfortunately does not square well with the modern ontological category "event." Contains some corrections to the author's earlier discussion of the topic in Seneca und die Stoa: Der Platz des Menschen in der Welt, De Gruyter 2006, ch. 3.3.4

The engagement with Epicurus in the Epistulae morales is a multifaceted literary device essential to the fabric of that epistolary Bildungsroman. It characterizes a Letter Writer “Seneca” and contributes to the dramatic structure of the Epistulae morales as an introduction not just to Stoicism, but to philosophy itself. The Letter Writer develops into a serious philosopher and progresses from naïve endorsement to a more sophisticated account of Stoic thought. He draws increasingly sharper distinctions between his own views and Epicurean tenets. There are two layers of reception: While the Letter Writer might be blissfully unaware of a theoretical problem, the author L. Annaeus understood Epicurus well enough to know exactly what he was doing when he cunningly manipulated Epicurean tenets and expressions in order to unfold an intellectual drama.

Considers the paradox of demonstrative retreat from public life, as illustrated by scenes like Sen. Ep. 78.20f. and Epict. 3.22.23 with ailing philosophers almost scurrilously eager to display their heroism. Why would a philosopher want to withdraw and, at the same time, make a show of his withdrawal? How can this kind of exemplarity fulfill its therapeutic function? And how is this kind of communication, with one’s back turned to the audience, as it were, supposed to work? Tacitus’ narrative of Thrasea Paetus’ end in the Annales (16.22ff.) is analyzed as illustrating this form of communication and compared with a similar communication strategy of Seneca’s Epistulae morales as a document of exemplary withdrawal. Concentric circles of audiences and interactors are layered around the role model, and he reader is pulled into the center of the circle, into direct contact with the exemplum. The way in which this happens determines the reader’s role in the story and thus the import the role model.