Law in declamation: the 'status legales' in Senecan 'controversiae'

As a part of the Hermagorean status-theory, the system of the status legales was established in the ancient rhetorical doctrine as the standard procedure for the treatment of cases involving a problem of interpretation of the law, and represented therefore the main link between rhetoric and law. By examining the application of the status legales in some controversiae of Seneca the Elder’s declamatory collection, I aim at illustrating how this method of the juridical argumentation matches up with the use in declamation of fictional laws.