<i>Servilium Litterarum</i>: A Note on the Text of Seneca’s <i>De tranquillitate animi</i> 9.5

In Seneca’s De tranquillitate animi 9.5, he mocks those who buy books as display pieces, particularly when the buyers are uneducated. The manuscript reading of the text refers to such buyers as being “ignorant even of servile letters” (ignaris etiam servilium litterarum). Johan Madvig suggested that the phrase should rather be puerilium litterarum, and this conjecture has received wide acceptance. I argue that the original manuscript reading should be retained, and that the reading is significant because the passage highlights a tension in the Roman notion of the liberal arts: the fact that much literary work was done by the enslaved.