Gender forms and gender relations in the Senecan corpus

This thesis proposes a new perspective on the concept of gender in Seneca the Younger’s multifaceted oeuvre, commonly referred to as the Senecan corpus. By focusing on two aspects of the phenomenon of gender, namely gender forms and gender relations, I analyse how Seneca utilises the tenets of Stoicism and Roman moral tradition to, firstly, conceptualise and categorise men, women and everyone in between; and then secondly, visualise relations both within and between those categories. Moreover, I explore the origins of Seneca’s views on gender in order to establish the extent of originality and novelty of these views. I argue that not only does the Senecan corpus provide a valuable insight into the philosopher’s opinion on how gender in Roman imperial society was and should have been organised and operating but allows to refine the understanding of gender by the representatives of contemporary versions of Stoicism.