THE SENECAS.
Ito TES EDITOR or THE " SPECTLIOR.'.1
Sm,—Your reviewer of some recent translations in the Loeb series seems, if I understand him aright, to hold unauthorized views on the two Senecas. According to him (apparently) there
ORA was an older Seneca, Nero's Minister and victim, who wrote the Egistufae Morales, and a " Later " Seneca, who was the author of tragedies. The facts are of course well known, HMI may be found in any history of Latin literature. Seneca the elder was a rhetorician, who " flourished " in the Augustan and Tiberian period, and is best known now -by certain volumes of controversiae. His much more famous son, Nero's Minister, wrote the Bpistulae Morales and a number of other things—including the tragedies
above mentioned.—I am, Sir, &c., A. D. G.
(The reviewer writes :—" Perhaps I indicated too clearly my doubts as to the identity of the Seneca to whom the tragedies are ascribed with Seneca the philosopher. Quintilian's testimony in favour of the traditional view, indicated by your correspondent, is not altogether conclusive, though it is of course generally accepted. It must be remembered that the Octaria, though manifestly later than Seneca the philosopher who figures in it, is also traditionally ascribed to 'Seneca.' "—En. Spectator.]
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