103.2

Drawing on modern sociological studies of conversion, this paper explores the role of pre-existing social networks and affective bonds in the process of philosophical recruitment and conversion as reflected in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers.

Theoc. 15.87-8 and Herod. 1.71 have been considered problematic, in that both poets expose the artifice of their creations to the apparent detriment of mimesis. But, as in comic metatheater, these passages serve to engage the audience at key transitional moments of the action. Theocritus and Herodas adapt this dramatic technique by alluding indirectly to the artifice of their composition, providing evidence for the quasi-dramatic nature of Hellenistic mime. The identification of this technique helps explicate a similar imitation of metatheater in Virgil (Ecl. 3.84-5).

Seneca Controversiae 2.5 includes unusually vivid descriptions of torture that suggest an apprehension about the need to transmit to the student the ability to describe such violent imagery. Fictive cases of tyrannical torture prepared the student for real world situations, in which juridical torture could reasonably occur. The case may also reflect an unease with an increasing lack of distinction between tyrannical and juridical torture under the reign of Tiberius.

When analyzed in the context of the play as a whole, the fifth choral ode of Seneca's Oedipus emerges as a summation of the Senecan dystopia. The purpose of its Stoic language is to underscore the difference between Stoicism's rational and optimistic cosmology and the universe to which humanity and divinity alike are consigned'a universe presided over by a sadistic and arbitrary Fate.