COLLOQUIUM: Jamie Romm, Bard College, "Self-punishment in Seneca, the Boudicca Revolt, and the De Beneficiis"

Seneca has been called an "egregius vitiorum insectator," an "outstanding persecutor of vices," and sometimes the vices toward which he turned his attacks were his own. A tendency toward self-criticism or self-punishment runs through many of his mature works, especially in De Vita Beata or "On the Happy Life." Where it surfaces more briefly in De Beneficiis, "On Benefits," it may help answer a question on which historians are divided: Did Seneca's rapacious moneylending in Britain help touch off the revolt led by Queen Boudicca, as one ancient source has charged?