Flattering with exempla

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 proposes an innovative reading of the presence of Claudius in the consolation by analysing the speech attributed to Claudius by Seneca. At the end of this consolation, after having instructed Polybius to contain his pain through praecepta, Seneca, by means of the emperor, presents a sequence of exempla to the freedman. This chapter offers a new interpretation of the presence of Claudius in this consolation. According to traditional scholarship, the presence of Claudius, called to take over the role of the consolator, should be read as another attempt to flatter him. Instead, it is drawn out a subversive meaning in the presence of the ruler by focusing on the words which Seneca employs to describe the emperor: tenacissima memoria and adsueta sibi facundia, in typical Senecan style, betray a ‘veiled’ meaning, that is not necessarily apparent at first reading. On closer examination, that passage discloses a web of intertextual links, first of all, with Ovid, the favourite model for Seneca’s consolations.