Portraits of Aging and Old Age in Seneca's Moral Epistles.

In the Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, written near the end of his life, Seneca frequently allies meditation on death -- a theme that, as a Stoic, had always deserved his special attention -- with reflections on the passage of time, the meaning of human existence, and the meaning of life in its different phases: childhood and youth, adulthood and old age. In this paper, I will study Seneca's most significant portraits of aging and old age, and articulate them via the literary anthropology that characterizes the Epistulae and his other works in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]