The author's approach to Roman epic is interpretative; the reader is invited to study a choice of typical texts, from the beginnings to the end of Antiquity. Famous poets are given the attention they deserve, but also some minor authors are discovered as precious 'missing links' between the ages. Special heed is paid to intertextual relationships between different epochs, cultures, literary genres, linguistic and literary patterns. The book is meant for students and teachers of classical and modern literatures, but also for all those interested in the history of literary genres and cultural...

The most important medium of Seneca's Lebenskunst is language. We first change the meaning of words through philosophical reflection; then we can change ourselves through language. Each chapter in this book takes linguistic or stylistic observations in texts as starting point (e.g. metaphors from the domains of health, finance, and sea-faring). Topics are man's self-definition in time and place and his relation to property, learning, and tradition. Single words and rhetorical patterns guide us in constructing an inner world and to find our own identity. Texts in Latin and in...