seneca and paul 325
Sophia is another manifest loanword from greek, or rather a translitera-
tion, which is rarely found in Latin and was always felt as greek. it is rarely
used in poetry (ennius, martial, ancient theatre) and philosophy (seneca
himself ), and has a Latin parallel in sapientia, according to ennius’s trans-
lation: sophiam, quae sapientia perhibetur. cicero always cites this term in
greek characters; afranius (ap. gell. Xiii 8) declares it to be greek: Usus
me genuit, mater peperit Memoria, Sophiam vocant me Graii, vos [Romani]
Sapientiam. in ennius it is a proper name; it is greek and it is also used
by seneca, Ep. 89, in greek.20 in our pseudepigraphon it is employed in
Letter XiV instead of Latin sapientia: Novum te auctorem feceris Christi
Iesu, praeconiis ostendendo rhetoricis inreprehensibilem sophiam, quam
propemodum adeptus regi temporali eiusque domesticis atque fidis amicis
insinuabis. Σοφία is pivotal in Paul’s thought, especially in the epistles to
the romans and the corinthians.21 Letter XiV, as i mentioned, was very
probably added later to the rest of the correspondence. Therefore, the use
of sophia in it must be considered to be an imitation of Paul’s graecism
sophista in Letter ii and his other graecisms in the correspondence.
another example is aporia. in our pseudepigraphon Paul uses a greek
noun, aporia, which is also used in the Vulgate22 with the meaning, “doubt.”
in Letter X to seneca, Paul writes as follows: debeo enim [.. .] id observare
in tuam personam quod lex Romana honori senatus concessit, perlecta epis-
tola ultimum locum eligere, ne cum aporia et dedecore cupiam efficere quod
mei arbitrii fuerit. Very interestingly, the semantic value of aporia here
is the typical greek meaning of ἀπορία, that is, “difficulty, incoherence,
inconsistency,” not “doubt,” which is the meaning that aporia assumes in
its few occurrences in Latin.
however, not only are lexical graecisms and their distribution in their
correspondence highly remarkable, but also syntactical graecisms. The
latter are even more noteworthy, in that a forger needed significantly
letter, on the contrary, sophista has no negative or despising meaning, but quite the oppo-
site. Thus, there was no reason to prefer sophista to sapiens.
20 Sapientia est quam Graeci σοφίαν vocant. Hoc verbo quoque Romani utuntur, quod et
togatae tibi antiquae probabunt et inscriptus Dossenni monumento titulus: ‘hospes resiste et
sophiam Dossenni lege.’ cf. Forcellini, Lexicon, 420–21.
21 V. wilckens and V. Former, “sophia,” in g. Kittel and g. Friedrich (eds.), Grande Les-
sico del Nuovo Testamento (italian ed. by F. montagnini, g. scarpat, o. soffritti; brescia: Pai-
deia, 1979), 7:829–43; ilaria ramelli, “Philosophen und Prediger: dion und Paulus—pagane
und christliche weise männer,” in Dion von Prusa, Der Philosoph und sein Bild (saPere 18;
Tübingen: mohr siebeck, 2009), 183–210.
22 ThlL ii, 251: Vulg. sir 27:5; Itala, cod. Bezae Cantabrigiensis Lev. 26:16; Luke 21:35;
2 cor. 4:8; isidorus, Orig. 2.21.27.