The Dynamics of Seneca's reception in the Late Ancient Christian Tradition: some methodological remarks

In this essay, I aim to debate a methodological issue regarding that pervasive sense of ‘familiarity’, deeply affecting Senecan reception among Christian authors as a whole, so as to consider many dynamics of this latter as a form of embodied or personified relationship. The fullest evidence of this in Late Antiquity is the pseudo-correspondence of St Paul and Seneca, hinging as it does upon mutual familiarity. Hence, my purpose is to give this work the role of a paradigm, very useful to correctly redefine that personified, symbolic relationship and therefore effectively outline the history of the critical issue pertaining to Seneca’s reception among the Fathers. Furthermore, in order to sketch the main routes of Seneca’s permanence in Late Ancient Christian Tradition, the most famous judgment of Quintilian on him (inst. or. X 1, 125-131), well known in schools, will be here also taken into consideration.