Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

by James Romm

Seneca explained his philosophy of executive restraint in De Ira. There he compared a leader’s handling of the state to a physician’s care of the body, an analogy he would often return to. Just as a good doctor seeks the least aggressive cure, a leader should use the gentlest methods of correction. He should chastise with only words if possible, then proceed to the mildest of blows. Execution should be only a last, desperate resort, for those who are so morally “ill” that death is, in effect, euthanasia. Had Agrippina been permitted her own turn on this medical metaphor, she might have argued the benefits of prophylaxis. Sometimes tumors had to be excised before they turned malignant. Or she might have fired back at Seneca the line he had recently quoted himself, from Vergil’s guide to beekeeping: “Death to the weaker; leave the stronger to reign in the empty throne room.”