Una humilis casa, la figlia di un archipirata. Strategie retoriche e allusioni letterarie in Sen. contr. 1, 6, 3-6

The contribution analyses a significant section of the long speech by Julius Bassus reported by Seneca the Elder in contr. 1, 6, 3-6. Through a successful rhetorical strategy, the declamator juxtaposes the memory of the city’s humble birth with its majestic grandeur in the time of Augustus. In the context of the scholastic exercise, the comparison is aimed at demonstrating the qualities of the archipirata’s daughter in the face of her origins linked to an ‘other’ world: with a singular game, typical of the sharpness produced in the school, it is shown that it is not a rich heiress but a maiden from another world who maintains the values of her origins. The intellectual provocation calls into question the core values of the Romans’ identity and cultural memory, also through a targeted reference to elegiac literature.