Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

by James Romm

The harrowing stories of De Ira (“On Anger”), probably written soon after Caligula’s fall, show the young senator reckoning up the spiritual cost of despotism: the psychic wounds suffered by those forced to capitulate. It was the defining problem of Seneca’s age, and he was to grapple with it as no one else did, both in his writings and in his own life. De Ira is Seneca’s first in a string of treatises, each dealing with a single ethical topic announced in the title (De Clementia or “On Mercy,” De Brevitate Vitae or “On the Shortness of Life,” and so on). Anger leads the series of topics because anger poses such an immense threat to Reason. Seneca shows first why ira must be avoided, then how it can be. If we exert strenuous effort—Seneca uses the analogy of a sponge diver learning to hold his breath for ever-longer intervals—we can master anger and prevent it from infecting our souls. Along the way, Seneca discusses some disturbing cases in point.