Seneca

On a par with Cicero, Seneca is described in Inf., IV 141 as Seneca morale (“Seneca the moralist”) and was seen by Dante essentially a great philosopher, as testified by his inclusion in the “philosophic family” surrounding Aristotle in Limbo. Dante’s recognition of Seneca’s greatness as a philosopher is confirmed by several passages in the Convivio and by his description of him as inclitissimo philosophorum (“that most famous philosopher”) in Ep., III 8. Dante’s knowledge of Seneca is not limited to moral works such as De beneficiis or Epistole a Lucilio, both mentioned in the Convivio, but includes at least Naturales Questiones. Dante may have read this work directly, as demonstrated not so much by the reference in Conv., II 13 22 as by the echoes that Contini found in the petrose. The link between Dante and Seneca also extends to the Commedia, which has fewer but nonetheless significant parallels, such as in the figure of Ulysses: in Ep. ad Lucilium, 88 6, Seneca recalls Ulysses’ journey extra notum nobis orbem. As some scholars have convincingly pointed out, this Ulysses may also draw on Seneca’s depiction of Alexander the Great as a mad hero wanting to pass beyond the limits of a world to which he is bound by no homeland, nor wife, nor father, nothing. The issue of Dante’s direct knowledge of Seneca’s tragedies is more complex, although many verbal calques in the Commedia have been pointed out, although not always convincingly. The issue relates both to the widespread view in the Middle Ages (though probably unfamiliar to Dante) that there were two different Senecas, one a philosopher and the other a poet, and to Dante’s authorship of Epistle XIII, which explicitly mentions Seneca’s tragedies. The tragedies were certainly known to Giovanni del Virgilio and in Venetian pre-humanist circles, with which Dante may have had contact during his stay in Verona.