Re: Non vitae sed scholae discimus

Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:

> If he actually meant it the other way round, then it is very bad. "non
> uitae sed scholae discimus" *cannot* mean 'we learn  not for school but
> for life' and Seneca would certainly have known that! If in fact he meant
> the other way round, then he has been extremely careless.
I think Mach meant that Seneca's noting that we, in reality, learn for school
rather than life was meant to imply that, ideally, it should be the other way
around.

> But we have assumed all along the Seneca meant 'school' when he wrote
> _scholae_. But the native Latin for school is _ludus_, _schola_ is a Greek
> borrowing. It may mean 'school', but it can also mean 'leisure time [given
> to learning]'. Maybe he meant:
> "We don't learn for our daily living but for the our leisure time."
>
> Does any know the context in which the sentence occurs?
I'm given to understand it occurs as criticism of the paedagogical practices of
the Roman schools of his day. Jansson's discussion, in any case, presupposes
that _schola_ means "school" here, and, being a former professor of Latin*, he
should know.

* He's now professor of African languages.

                                                             Andreas

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