Talk:Seneca the Younger
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[edit] External Links
- [httpwww.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lucius_annaeus_seneca.html Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quotes], BrainyQuote.com
Note that current consensus, as seen on WQ:VP, is to not link to quote sites. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 16:42, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Quote format
The quotes in nested bullets (in particular the Epistles section) seemed to be too unorganized. I tried cleaning it up the following way:
When both Latin and its English translation is available for a quote, the Latin (italicized and followed by reference in parentheses ()) was placed in bullet level 1, then in the following line, the English translation was placed in bullet level 2.
If only one of Latin (italicized) or English is available, it was placed in level 1, also followed by a parenthesized reference.
--Immer in Bewegung 01:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] "True, False, Useful" Quote
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful" is attributed to Seneca at http://www.transtopia.org/quiz.html, question III. 82.16.6.228 22:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the comment, but that link is broken. I realize that you can find many, many, MANY places on the internet that repeat this quote, yet not a single one of them say precisely where this quote comes from (They never say which of Seneca's works includes this passage). If you google the quote you find hudreds and hundreds of people who repeat it, but not a single one of them seems to know where it came from. This has become somewhat of a personal quest for me these last few days. I even went to the old-fashioned public library to see if I could sort this out, but without any success. I am always weary of internet-circulated quotes that don't offer a decent citation. The thing that makes me wonder if this quote is genuine is this...
- The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. - Edward Gibbon (1776)
- Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. - Seneca (ca. 4 BC –AD 65)
- All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. - Lucretius (94 BC - 49 BC)
Either a couple of these guys are plagiarist, or some internet fiend has been misattributing this quote and duping hundreds of other internet sites into thinking the quote is genuine. I can't find a proper citation for Lucretius either. Some sites say that the quote comes from his work On the Nature of Things. But I found a copy of this work[1] on the Internet and that quote wasn't in it. Something fishy is going on here. If these quotes are genuine, I want to accurately source them. If they aren't, we need to list them as "misattributed". - Big Brother 1984 22:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I found a fairly comprehensive collection of Seneca's works here. I searched through every text they had available and could not find this passage. It's difficult to "prove a negative" and declare with certainty that Seneca never wrote these words, but I'm about ready to list this quote as "misattributed". I'll keep searching, though... - Big Brother 1984 00:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
- Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I, ch. II:
"The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord." [2]
Since Gibbon was writing here about the beliefs of the ancient Romans, it appears that what he wrote has ended up attributed to Roman authors. It's analogous to a very well-known quote that has often been attributed to Voltaire; but it turns out to have been said by an author who was merely summarizing Voltaire's beliefs. - InvisibleSun 00:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Something like that may be happening here. I ran into the same issue when I was trying to source a quote from Celsus -- Somebody had taken Origen's commentary on Celsus and attempted to guess what Celsus' original words were, then the quote began to circulate as Celsus' original words. But if the Seneca/Lucretius quotes are merely this kind of paraphrasing, they should be listed as misattributed.
But I do have some good news. According to this the two quotes (Seneca and Lucretius) come from a book by James Haught titled 2000 Years of Disbelief (Prometheus, 1996)[3]. I was able to determine where Haught got the Lucretius quote from. Luckily, the Amazon.com "look inside the book" feature let me see the Lucretius quote. It seems that Haught's source is a book by Ira D. Cardiff named What great men think of religion (New York, Arno Press, 1972 [c1945]) [4]. Now I just need to figure out where CarDiff found this quote.
As for Seneca's quote, it appears on page 21 of Haught's book, but the "free preview" ends with page 20. What a crock. The search continues... - Big Brother 1984 01:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I found a copy of "What Great Men Think About Religion" by Ira D. Cardiff at the St. Louis Public Library. As far as I can tell, this book is THE source for both the Seneca quote and the similar passage by Lucretius. Unfortunately, the book doesn't include a bibliography. It doesn’t say explicitly where either of these quotes came from. The only clue to where these quotes came from can be found in the introduction to the book...
- I was reared a Christian; was taught that good and great were, as a matter of course, always religious -- Christians to be sure.
- Being a rather persistent and omnivorous reader, I, soon after reaching the age of discretion, began to discover that many of the great men of the past and present were not religious. In fact a great many seemed anti-religious.
- After a time I commenced making note of some of the opinions of the great men and women with reference to religion, and I find after a number of years of this practice that I have accumulated a considerable number of such opinions - many of which are to me, exceedingly interesting.
- […]It is not maintained that they represent the thought of all great men, or of any certain group of class. The quotations are simply the gleanings from the desultory reading of a busy business man. - Ira D. Cardiff, introduction to "What Great Men Think About Religion" (1972 [c1945])
It appears that these quotes come from this "business man" who just found these quotes somewhere, and jotted them down in a little notebook -- but didn't bother to document where any of these quotes came from. Besides being a bit unscholarly, does this sound a litle fishy to anybody else? Every place on the internet that repeats this quote cites this book as a source (when they cite any source at all, that is). Is it possible that they've all been fooled by Dr. Cardiff? - Big Brother 1984 00:15, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
It is also cited in "The Great Quotations", p 627, George Seldes, Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-0817-5
- Does it say where the quote comes from? The problem that I have with this quote is that have been unable to find it in any of Seneca's extant works. If Seneca did indeed write this line, I want to know where he wrote it. The same goes for the Lucretius quote as well. Books which merely repeat the quote don't do me any good. They all could be using the Cardiff book as a source. And as I explained above, this might not be a trustworthy source. - Big Brother 1984 23:27, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Do check the Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius. Many quotes and anecdotes related to the ancient greats are found in that book, but not in their extant works, due to those works being lost in time. E.
[edit] "... a little crazy" quote
Hey y'all.
A long time back I memorized and enjoyed a quote attributed to Seneca. It's got lots of gHits but can't find a reputable source that verifies.
"Aliquando et insanire iucundum est." My translation would be, "At times, it can even be [or "be even"] enjoyable to be crazy." Obviously variants may be superior. I would not translate it so loosely as to turn it into, "Sometimes, you feel like a nut. Ain't we got fun."
If anybody has a source for the Latin, the phrase appears widely on webpages, usually by people taking the crazy and the enjoyable far too seriously. Or not seriously enough. Thanks! Eh Nonymous
Aulus scripsit:
Adding to this, unless anyone can provide the specific notation (work, book, chapter and line) for this "quote" as well as the original Latin, said quote has to be treated as suspect, at the very least.
In short, if you are going to post quotes allegedly from Classical authors, claiming some nebulous skene of truth, be prepared to back it up with the original language and commonly accepted citation of its source. Anything less is just masturbatory exhibitionism. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.208.233.253 (talk • contribs) at 6:56 on January 21, 2008 (UTC)
- Running the phrase Aliquando et insanire iucundum est through Google Book Search, I got a number of results, including the original source. As seen here, it's from Seneca, Dialogue IX, Ad Serenum De Tranquillitate Animi, 17.10: Sive Graeco poetae credimus, aliquando et insanire iucundum est. ("If we believe the Greek poet, sometimes it is even pleasant to be mad.") The translation I used here is from one of the other Google Book Search results (which can be seen in their totality here). - InvisibleSun 07:21, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
