Letters from a Stoic

by Seneca

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 favour? The childless and their legacies had been, if he might so put it, enticed into Seneca’s net, whilst all Italy and the provinces were being sucked dry by his practice of lending money at unlimited rates of interest.’ Seneca was indeed already celebrated for his riches. Juvenal mentions ‘the great Gardens of the immensely wealthy Seneca’.20 Agrippina, says Dio, had acquired for him ‘untold wealth from all sources’.21 The agricultural writer Columella mentions the remarkable productivity of his wine growing estates, the best in Italy, at Mentana.22 The reply, if any, which Seneca gave to his attackers’ criticisms of his wealth, was probably that contained in an essay On the Happy Life sent to his brother Gallio. What counts, he says, is one’s attitude to wealth, which is the wise man’s servant and the fool’s master; he, like any good Stoic, could lose all he had at any moment wit...