This large-scale commentary on Book 2 (letters 13–21) of Seneca's Epistulae Morales (EM) by Janja Soldo is a welcome addition to Senecan studies. It adds to the growing number of commentaries (listed xxxvii) on a whole book of his letters, rather than select letters from across the corpus. Thus S. builds on the growing recent interest in the letter-book, prose or verse, as a literary unit. The ‘General Introduction’ succinctly and judiciously covers Seneca's career, the date of EM, the addressee Lucilius, the question whether it is a genuine or fictional correspondence, the structure of EM and of Book 2, Seneca's relationship to earlier letter-writing, his language and terminology, the manuscript tradition, and the rationale of S.'s book.
The heart of the book is the commentary. Each letter receives an introduction summarising the letter's argument, tracing connections to adjacent letters, the rest of Book 2 and the whole collection; and the letter is set in its wider philosophical, literary and cultural context (e.g. the role of Epicureanism in the early letters is carefully examined; letter 15 is ably related to ancient discourse on, and practice of, physical and vocal exercise; it is shown how letter 18 has multiple links to the Saturnalia; and S. is admirably judicious on the recurring question of allusions to Nero in the letters — though his absence from the letters might have been contrasted with his appearance in the near-contemporary QNat). Then follows very full commentary, offering more detail on the topics covered in the letter's introduction, and much else. On terminology, S. carefully examines how Seneca shifts to and fro along the spectrum from technical philosophical jargon to ordinary language. There is much useful comment on style and language, though here S. can occasionally be less assured (e.g. 93 ‘Non est itaque: the adverb is not found in the third position before Seneca’: it should be made clear that this applies only to that specific phrase, not ‘itaque’ generally; 152 ‘There are no parallels for in uita proficisci meaning …’, but Seneca's ‘profeceris’ is from ‘proficere’; 211 argues ‘triduo et quatriduo’ means ‘for three and (then) four days’ not ‘for three or four days’, but see OLD ‘et’ 3 on such expressions; 263 on ‘temet’ in Seneca, S. could usefully have considered other cases and pronouns with ‘-met’ suffix; 267 ‘diuitîs pauper est’ is double-cretic, not ditrochaeus).
The commentary is preceded by text and facing translation. For the text, recent editors have generally adopted their own paragraphing, but S. makes each of the traditional numbered sections an individual paragraph; this enables easy alignment of the text and translation, but arguably gives undue prominence to section divisions that are not Seneca's and can obscure the structure of his argument. The text is based on Reynolds’ OCT, but diverges in a number of places, principally where Reynolds resorts to cruces or obeli, but S. prints a conjecture giving continuous sense. Some of the conjectures are her own: 15.4 ‘quaslibet ex his elige, usurpa faciles’ seems somewhat self-contradictory, ‘choose any of them you like, use easy ones’ (Watt's conjectures at RhM 144 (2001), 231, are overlooked); 15.8 ‘id est latus’ may lie behind the manuscripts, but it seems a very pedestrian explanation for Seneca, perhaps better regarded as a gloss; 15.8 ‘mediocritatem habeat nec hoc’ is possible; 19.6 ‘oportet’ arguably introduces an unwanted idea of obligation.
S. explains that the apparatus criticus ‘largely restricts itself to listing conjectures and alternative readings that are discussed in the commentary’ (xxxviii). It does not help the clarity of the apparatus that separate entries related to the same line of Latin are separated only by a letter space, or that manuscript ‘v’ in the introduction becomes ‘u’ in the apparatus. Then there are a few mistakes, e.g. (references here by S.'s page and line numbers): 6.74 Buecheler proposed ‘aurae ferendos’, not ‘aurae referendos’; 18.41 (and commentary at 133–4) on ‘quoque te’ is confused, because ‘vulg.’ in Reynolds’ apparatus is misunderstood to refer to manuscripts (rather than printed editions); 34.29 ‘*** ω’ would seemingly mean that the manuscripts indicate a lacuna, which they do not; 36.43 ‘in ipso culmine’ is Capps's conjecture, not Gummere's; 46.54 lists conjectures, but not the manuscript reading.
S.'s intention is ‘to produce a translation that gives an accurate picture of the original Latin (for a different approach that resulted in an immensely readable translation, see Graver/Long 2015)’ (xxxviii). However, Graver/Long (G./L.) regularly give a clearer picture of the original Latin than S., e.g. early in the first letter: 13.1 ‘satis aduersus fortunam placebas tibi’ is rendered by S. ‘you stood your ground against fortune’; better G./L. ‘you felt that you were doing quite well against fortune’; 13.3 ‘sed subsiluisti et acrior constitisti’ becomes ‘but you have gained your strength and fought back harder’, G./L. ‘you have jumped up and stood still more boldly on your feet’; 13.7 ‘iniuria’ is surely ‘injury’ (G./L.) rather than ‘injustice’; 13.8 ‘exuit castris’ is not just ‘put to flight’ but ‘forced (them) to abandon camp’.
The book concludes with bibliography, general index and very full index locorum, increasing the usefulness of what is overall a valuable contribution both to Senecan studies, and to the study of the Latin letter-book.
