Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

by James Romm

Agrippina’s brother did not care for Seneca, nor for the epigrammatic style in which he spoke. “Sand without lime,” Caligula called those words, drawing an analogy from the building trade, where sand and lime were mixed to make mortar. Seneca’s speeches, to Caligula, seemed to lack solidity—ear-catching phrases strung together without binder to firm them up. (That critique has been repeated, in various forms, ever since. Lord Macaulay echoed it in the 1830s when he wrote: “There is hardly a sentence [in Seneca] which might not be quoted; but to read him straightforward is like dining on nothing but anchovy sauce.”) Or else they were “nothing but commissiones,” showy declamations like those put on for prizes at the start of public games. Senators like Seneca were, at the outset of Caligula’s reign, welcome visitors in the imperial household, for the Senate had cheered the new princeps and rushed to grant him supreme power. But the lessons of Roman history suggested that amity would not last. The Senate, still cherishing memories of its central role under the republic, had never reconciled itself to the principate, even though the attempt to prevent it—the killing of Julius Caesar—had failed. A bloody civil war had decided the question, and Augustus had taken over. But both he and his successor, Tiberius, had struggled to find a modus vivendi with stiff-necked senators. When that effort failed, those necks often went under the sword.