Thoughts ad loc.:
29 Protagoras began a book with “I have no way of knowing either that the gods exist, or that they do not exist”
30f αθεος normally meant ‘hated by the gods’
48 The idea that all virtue amounts to knowing the right thing to do, thus conflating bravery, holiness, etc. Love?
52ff good on the politics, esp. Andocides’ similar trial in 400/399.
62 Leon of Salamis’ murder: do we know S did nothing to prevent it?
70 Bloom: Falstaff ‘the first human being in literature’
75 Connection between S’s and Spartan asceticism
99 Aristotle: “Philosophy begins with wonder”
108 “The philosopher wears logic as an amulet around his neck, which allows him to die like a man, not weeping like a child for his lost life”
108-118 On how S takes on female roles at death, and prays to Asclepius to thank him for presiding over the birth of his own death.
128f Cato the younger: ‘cicuta magnum Socratem fecit’
132f Inconsistency: did Seneca drink hemlock before or after slitting veins?
158 “prophani” in Erasmus? Correct form? Surely ‘proFani’?
165-169 Montaigne on S as a hero, dying like an ignorant ordinary person, not treating death as special. Dying is not the goal of life, merely its end.