ABSTRACT
This chapter has two main goals. First, it attempts to provide a systematic overview of what people call myth in Seneca’s philosophical works, including a review of Seneca’s theological concerns on the one hand, and a new evaluation of the use of figures and events in the spatiumythicum the other. Second, the chapter will explore some tensions between myth-as-intertext and poetry-as-intertext, with special attention to the Homeric texts that stood at the center of elite Roman education. While many studies have sought to explain Seneca’s view of what may be called ‘divine myth,’ no study to author knowledge systematically addresses how Seneca treated the body of traditional stories that are told about the world of Greek heroes. It is well known that Seneca generally refrains from referring to Greek poetic texts, vastly preferring the ‘poesia nazionale’, especially the poems of Vergil and Ovid.
