Notes and Emendations to Seneca's Letters.

Extract

v. 2. ‘Don't parade philosophy: avoid asperum cultum et intonsum caput et quidquid aliud ambitionem peruersa uia sequitur.’ So the MSS. Hense adopts Gertz's ingenious conjecture ambitio nempe. I have before me a list containing some thirty examples of the use of nempe by Seneca. It is very definitely a dialogue particle and is used (1) to introduce the answer to a question, where it is implied that the answer is obvious (‘Why, to be sure’), (2) to introduce a clause which shews that a statement just urged by the interlocutor though true in itself in no way weakens the original speaker's point ‘Yes, but’ or ‘After all said and done’ and (3) to introduce a premiss the truth of which the interlocutor must grant‘I take it,’ ‘You know.’For examples I may refer to Ira 3.26.1 quare fers aegri rabiem . . . puerorum proteruas manus ? nempe quia etc.; Ep. 4.9 ‘ at uictor te duci iubebit ?’ eo nempe quo duceris (sc. to death).; Ep. 124.6 nempe uos (the Stoics)... dicitis. There is absolutely no parallel in Seneca to the parenthetical use which Gertz assumes here, and for which I should expect rather the concessive sine dubio (which indeed is opposed to nempe in Heluia 9.7).