Note 650 — Chapter III · SENECA THE PHILOSOPHER: MISCELLANEOUS LEARNING

Ed. De Otio. According to Marchesi, Seneca, 1920, all three were written about 62. Dessau’s view, Herm., liii., 1918, pp. 192 sqq., is that they were composed after Serenus’s death, late in Seneca’s career, as a memorial recreating three stages in a dead friend’s advance towards and in Stoicism. Waltz stands not alone, as Dessau said, but has Münscher’s support, for dating the De Const. early in Claudius’s reign, about 42. Most concur in putting all three somewhere in Nero’s reign; e.g. De Const., 54-56; De Tranq., 59; De Otio, 62.