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Document Details : Title: Reflections on the Documentary Organization of the Elder Seneca's Collection Author(s): HUELSENBECK, Bart Journal: Latomus Volume: 84 Issue: 2 Date: 2025 Pages: 282-316 DOI: 10.2143/LAT.84.2.3294648 Abstract : Much remains unknown about how the elder Seneca’s rhetorical compilation was made. This article focuses on the documentary substructure of the collection by studying patterns in sequences of citation. A catalogue is provided of the names, in order, of all the declaimers who are quoted. Analysis of the catalogue reveals patterns of collection and assemblage. The compilation, it is seen, rests on multiple layers of documents. Seneca interlayered sources, sometimes scrambling their sequence. He drew heavily on written sources containing not one speaker but multiple declaimers together. Declaimers linked in source documents are found to cluster together in the collection. Although over 100 declaimers are quoted, about 22 declaimers form the bulk of the collection. It is 12 declaimers that served as its documentary foundation. Their quotations often carried the quotations of other declaimers. The records of only five or six declaimers, almost all rhetors, were fundamental to the compilation. |
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