Tacito, Agr. 30.4: presenze senecane nel discorso di Calgaco

In a famous passage of Calgacus??? speech in the Agricola (30.4), Tacitus borrows some expressions from Seneca???s vocabulary, especially from the de clementia and the de beneficiis. Starting from the syntagm mare scrutantur, the main evidence of the paradigmatic rôle Seneca plays in this crucial moment in the narrative of Tacitus??? monograph, the paper focuses on the dense web of texts and auctores ??? mostly belonging to the historiographic genre ??? with which Tacitus founds a dialogue to shape his original representation of the words of an enemy of Rome. Together whith the need to reconsider Seneca???s presence in Tacitus??? Agricola, the analysis carried out in the paper also points out how some verbal and thematic references to Alexander the Great could be interpreted as allusions to Trajan???s propaganda.