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When Caligula succeeded Tiberius in A.D. 37, Seneca had become a leading speaker in the Senate, and so aroused the jealousy7 of the new emperor that according to Dio Cassius he ordered his execution and was only induced to let him off by a woman close to the imperial throne who said that Seneca was ‘suffering from advanced tuberculosis and it would not be long before he died’.8 This incident apparently resulted in his temporary retirement from political affairs.
His fortunes turned dramatically in A.D. 49. Messalina had been executed and the emperor’s new wife, Agrippina, had Seneca recalled to Rome, appointed to the high office of praetor and made tutor to her twelve-year-old son Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (the boy who was shortly to become the emperor Nero).
Tacitus ascribes the secret of the influence of Seneca to ‘his tuition of Nero in public speaking, and his engaging manners and high principles’, that of Burrus to ‘his military responsibilities and austerity of character’.16 The two of them ‘took over total power, and exercised it, to the utmost of their ability, in the best and justest way conceivable, thus each alike arousing all men’s approval’ (Dio).17 While Nero amused himself they set about the problems of government; we notice – to give instances of their activity – legal and financial reforms including the reduction of indirect
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according to Suillius, were the philosopher’s denunciations of tyranny, which did not stop him from being tutor to a tyrant; of flattery, ill according with the attitude he had adopted, especially from exile, towards ex-slaves who headed departments in Claudius’ administration; of extravagance, in spite of (allegedly) giving banquets served at five hundred identical tables of citrus wood with ivory legs; and, above all, of wealth. ‘What kind of wisdom,’ asked Suillius, ‘what philosophical teachings, had led him to acquire three hundred million sesterces within the space of four years in royal
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Tacitus25 tells us that the death (‘probably murder’) of Burrus in A.D. 62 ‘broke Seneca’s power’.
Then in A.D. 65 came the disastrous conspiracy against the emperor by Piso and others, quite possibly including Seneca. There was a report of a sub-conspiracy to kill Piso as well and make Seneca emperor – ‘being a man who seemed to be marked out for supreme power by the good qualities for which he was so famous’.27 Many people lost their lives on the discovery of the plot. Seneca, like many others, was asked to commit suicide, the then prevailing method of imperial execution. Tacitus’ description of his death is not quickly forgotten.28 His brothers and Lucan followed him, all by their own
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Stoicism, for centuries the most influential philosophy in the Graeco-Roman world, had a long history before Seneca. Founded by Zeno (born of Phoenician descent in Cyprus c. 336/5 B.C.) who had taught or lectured in a well-known stoa (a colonnade or porch) – hence the name – in Athens, it had been developed and modified by a succession of thinkers
The Stoics saw the world as a single great community in which all men are brothers, ruled by a supreme providence which could be spoken of, almost according to choice or context, under a variety of names or descriptions including the divine reason, creative reason, nature, the spirit or purpose of the universe, destiny, a personal god, even (by way of concession to traditional religion) ‘the gods’. It is man’s duty to live in conformity with the divine will, and this means, firstly, bringing his life into line with ‘nature’s laws’, and secondly, resigning himself completely and uncomplainingly
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In this way we shall arrive at the true end of man, happiness, through having attained the one and only good thing in life, the ideal or goal called arete in Greek and in Latin virtus – for which the English word ‘virtue’ is so unsatisfactory a translation. This, the summum bonum or ‘supreme ideal’, is usually summarized in ancient philosophy as a combination of four qualities: wisdom (or moral insight), courage, self-control and justice (or upright dealing). It enables a man to be ‘self-sufficient’, immune to suffering, superior to the wounds and upsets of life (often personalized as Fortuna,
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Seneca himself, we observe, occasionally makes immodest statements concerning his own progress, but is capable of humility, as in one description of himself as ‘a long way from being a tolerable, let alone a perfect human being’.34
And the tendency of Stoicism was always to exalt man’s importance in the universe rather than to abase him before a higher authority.
His implicit belief in the equality and brotherhood of man despite all barriers of race or class or rank, was one, resurrected from the days of the early Stoics, which led directly to great improvements in the legal position of slaves; besides explaining the then remarkable attitude towards slaves expressed in Letter XLVII, the belief was also the germ of the notion of natural law, the law which was thought to transcend national boundaries and form a basis for the validity of international law. These elements of Stoicism made their not so small or indirect contribution to the French and
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The ‘teaching’ is generously eclectic; the first thirty letters each contain some quotation from or reference to writings of the main rival philosophical school, the Epicureans.
The exploitation of such figures as antithesis, alliteration, homeoteleuta and all manner of other plays upon words, paradox and oxymoron, apposition and asyndeton, the use of cases and prepositions in uncommon connotations, all contribute to the twin aims of brevity and sparkle.
Anthologies were made of him and he was frequently quoted by such writers as Jerome, Lactantius and Augustine. Tertullian called him saepe noster, ‘often one of us’.
Seneca’s main ‘scientific’ work, the Naturales Quaestiones, was the undisputed authority on the subjects with which it dealt. Dante, Chaucer and Petrarch were great admirers and quoters of his writings.47 Printing spread his influence, the first printed version of the Epistulae being published in or about 1475 at Rome, Paris and Strasbourg. Erasmus48 was the first person to produce a critical edition (in 1515) and Calvin’s first work was an edition in 1532 of the De Clementia, an essay originally written to encourage clemency in Nero, and incidentally inspiring much of the ‘quality of mercy’
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To be everywhere is to be nowhere. People who spend their whole life travelling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships.
After running over a lot of different thoughts, pick out one to be digested thoroughly that day.
My thought for today is something which I found in Epicurus (yes, I actually make a practice of going over to the enemy’s camp – by way of reconnaissance, not as a deserter!). ‘A cheerful poverty,’ he says, ‘is an honourable state.’ But if it is cheerful it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more. What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man’s safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another’s and only counts what he
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Those people who, contrary to Theophrastus’ advice, judge a man after they have made him their friend instead of the other way round, certainly put the cart before the horse. Think for a long time whether or not you should admit a given person to your friendship. But when you have decided to do so, welcome him heart and soul, and speak as unreservedly with him as you would with yourself.
Why shouldn’t I imagine I’m alone when I’m in his company?
Similarly, people who never relax and people who are invariably in a relaxed state merit your disapproval – the former as much as the latter. For a delight in bustling about is not industry – it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind. And the state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia. This prompts me to memorize something which I came across in Pomponius. ‘Some men have shrunk so far into dark corners that objects in bright daylight seem quite blurred to them.’ A balanced combination of the two attitudes is what we want; the active
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The very name of philosophy, however modest the manner in which it is pursued, is unpopular enough as it is: imagine what the reaction would be if we started dissociating ourselves from the conventions of society. Inwardly everything should be different but our outward face should conform with the crowd. Our clothes should not be gaudy, yet they should not be dowdy either. We should not keep silver plate with inlays of solid gold, but at the same time we should not imagine that doing without gold and silver is proof that we are leading the simple life. Let our aim be a way of life not
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The first thing philosophy promises us is the feeling of fellowship, of belonging to mankind and being members of a community; being different will mean the abandoning of that manifesto.
‘Does that mean we are to act just like other people? Is there to be no distinction between us and them?’ Most certainly there is. Any close observer should be aware that we are different from the mob. Anyone entering our homes should admire us rather than our furnishings.
Finding wealth an intolerable burden is the mark of an unstable mind.
But let me share with you as usual the day’s small find (which today is something that I noticed in the Stoic writer Hecato). Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope,’ he says, ‘and you will cease to fear.’ ‘But how,’ you will ask, ‘can things as diverse as these be linked?’ Well, the fact is, Lucilius, that they are bound up with one another, unconnected as they may seem. Widely different though they are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope. Nor does their so moving together surprise
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Even this, the fact that it perceives the failings it was unaware of in itself before, is evidence of a change for the better in one’s character.
the friendship that exists between us, that true friendship which not hope nor fear nor concern for personal advantage ever sunders, that friendship in which and for which people are ready to die.
If wisdom were offered me on the one condition that I should keep it shut away and not divulge it to anyone, I should reject it.
There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.
Cleanthes would never have been the image of Zeno if he had merely heard him lecture; he lived with him, studied his private life, watched him to see if he lived in accordance with his own principle. Plato, Aristotle and a host of other philosophers all destined to take different paths, derived more from Socrates’ character than from his words. It was not Epicurus’ school but living under the same roof as Epicurus that turned Metrodorus, Hermarchus and Polyaenus into great men.
The combatants have nothing to protect them; their whole bodies are exposed to the blows; every thrust they launch gets home. A great many spectators prefer this to the ordinary matches and even to the special, popular demand ones. And quite naturally. There are no helmets and no shields repelling the weapons. What is the point of armour? Or of skill? All that sort of thing just makes the death slower in coming. In the morning men are thrown to the lions and the bears: but it is the spectators they are thrown to in the lunch hour. The spectators insist that each on killing his man shall be
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A single example of extravagance or greed does a lot of harm – an intimate who leads a pampered life gradually makes one soft and flabby; a wealthy neighbour provokes cravings in one; a companion with a malicious nature tends to rub off some of his rust even on someone of an innocent and open-hearted nature – what then do you imagine the effect on a person’s character is when the assault comes from the world at large? You must inevitably either hate or imitate the world. But the right thing is to shun both courses: you should neither become like the bad because they are many, nor be an enemy
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‘To me,’ says Democritus, ‘a single man is a crowd, and a crowd is a single man.’ Equally good is the answer given by the person, whoever it was (his identity is uncertain), who when asked what was the object of all the trouble he took over a piece of craftsmanship when it would never reach more than a very few people, replied: ‘A few is enough for me; so is one; and so is none.’ The third is a nice expression used by Epicurus in a letter to one of his colleagues. ‘I am writing this,’ he says, ‘not for the eyes of the many, but for yours alone: for each of us is audience enough for the other.’
harness?’ Come now, do I really give you the impression that I advocate a life of inactivity? I have only buried myself away behind closed doors in order to be able to be of use to more people.
I am acting on behalf of later generations. I am writing down a few things that may be of use to them;
‘Avoid,’ I cry, ‘whatever is approved of by the mob, and things that are the gift of chance.
Cling, therefore, to this sound and wholesome plan of life: indulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. It needs to be treated somewhat strictly to prevent it from being disobedient to the spirit. Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather. It makes no difference whether it is built of turf or of variegated marble imported from another country: what you have to understand is that thatch makes a person just as good a roof as gold does.
‘To win true freedom you must be a slave to philosophy.’
Quite possibly you’ll be demanding to know why I’m quoting so many fine sayings from Epicurus rather than ones belonging to our own school. But why should you think of them as belonging to Epicurus and not as common property?
I was occupied with just now, a verse in which he proclaims that gifts which chance brings our way are not to be regarded as possessions: If you pray a thing may And it does come your way, ’Tis a long way from being your own.
What fortune has made yours is not your own.
The boon that could be given can be withdrawn.
YOU desire to know whether Epicurus is right in one of his letters in criticizing those who maintain that the wise man is content with himself and therefore needs no friend.
This is what Epicurus objects to in Stilbo and thosefn1 who believe that the supreme ideal in life is a mind devoid of feeling or as we say impatiens.
Consider then whether it might not be preferable to call it a mind that is ‘invulnerable’ or ‘above all suffering’.
The difference here between the Epicurean and our own school is this: our wise man feels his troubles but overcomes them, while their wise man does not even feel them. We share with them the belief that the wise man is content with himself. Nevertheless, self-sufficient though he is, he still desires a friend, a neighbour, a companion.
‘I shall show you,’ said Hecato, ‘a love philtre compounded without drug or herb or witch’s spell. It is this: if you wish to be loved, love.
The philosopher Attalus used to say that it was more of a pleasure to make a friend than to have one, ‘in the same way as an artist derives more pleasure from painting than from having completed a picture’.
