Now, pumpkins are not the most philosophical of vegetables. That distinction surely belongs to the tomato, because everyone thinks it is a vegetable, but actually it is a fruit. Nonetheless, the humble pumpkin has played an occasional role in the writings of philosophers. Seneca wrote a satirical attack on the emperor Claudius called the Apocolokyntosis, which means something like “pumpkinification.” (The title is a pun on the term “apotheosis,” applied to emperors when they become gods.)
