Letters From a Stoic (27 page)

1
.
The date of Seneca’s birth is not known.
Scholars have tended to place it in either 5 or 4
B.C.
, although some have put it as early as 8
B.C.
or as late as
A.D.
4.

2
.
A procurator was a kind of commissioner or agent, as a rule mainly concerned with revenue collection, although he might hold high administrative rank.
Some provinces had a procurator as their governor.

3
.
He wrote two handbooks on the subject for his sons.
These, the
Suasoriae
and
Controversiae
, acquired a wide reputation and have survived to the present day.

4
.
Antiquus rigor
, as he calls it, writing to his mother (
ad Helviam Matrem
, 17.3).

5
.
Letter LXXVIII.2.

6
.
Pliny (
Natural History
, VI:60) speaks of Seneca’s work on India as mentioning 60 rivers and 118 different races – an indication of the facilities for research at Alexandria.

7
.
Suetonius (
Caligula
, 53) says the emperor disparagingly called him a mere ‘text-book orator’, his style ‘sand without cement’ (
arena sine calce
).

8
.
Dio,
Roman History
, LIX:19.

9
.
A fragment of Suetonius (as quoted by the scholiast on Juvenal,
Satires
, V:109) states that Seneca was exiled on the pretext of his being linked with the scandalous love affairs of Julia Livilla (
quasi conscius adulteriorum Juliae
).
Dio (
Roman History
, LX:8) too speaks as if Seneca was only an incidental victim, the accusation originating in Messalina’s jealousy of Julia (a sister of Agrippina, and apparently a beautiful and cultivated woman).

10
.
Tacitus,
Annals
, XIII:8.

11
.
ibid., XIII:3.

12
.
‘For five years Nero was so great a ruler, from the point of view of Rome’s development and progress, that Trajan’s frequent claim
that no emperor came near Nero in this five year period can be fully justified’, to paraphrase the words of Aurelius Victor,
de Caesaribus
, 5, ii (
Nero
…
quinquennium tamen tantus fuit, agenda urbe maxima, uti merito Trajanus saepius testaretur procul differe cunctos principes Neronis quinquennio
).
It should be added that not all historians are agreed that the
quinquennium Neronis
refers to the first five years of his rule.

13
.
Roman History
, LXI:3.

14
.
Annals
, XIII:6.

15
.
Voluptatibus concessis
, by which Tacitus may be presumed to refer to the arts, sensuality and non-political cruelties.

16
.
Annals
, XIII:2.

17
.
Roman History
, LXI:4.

18
.
Grimal,
The Civilization of Rome.
Seneca’s American translator, Gummere, suggests that this anomalous state of affairs may be seen as an experiment with Plato’s ideal of philosopher-kingship, and one which also took account of the conditions of the time, striking a balance between the dangers of one-man rule (of which the recent reign of Caligula was a vivid illustration) and the impossibility of a return to the free elections and near anarchy of the Republic; he describes the result as a kind of cabinet system in which Seneca was the cabinet.

19
.
Tacitus,
Annals
, XIII:42 and Dio,
Roman History
, LXI:10 are our sources for the sort of thing that was becoming gossip.

20
.
Satires
, X:16.
Tacitus (
Annals
, XV:64) also used this word
praedives
, ‘immensely wealthy’, of Seneca, who was almost certainly a millionaire, in terms of sterling, four or five times over.
Juvenal incidentally speaks of his generosity with his money as if it was well known even after he was dead (
Satires
, V:109).

21
.
Roman History
, LX:32.
This historian states that Seneca’s sudden recall, backed by force, of enormous sums of money which he had lent to leading natives of the recently conquered province of Britain was a cause of the rising of Buduica or Boudicca (‘Boadicea’) in
A.D.
61.

22
.
Res Rustica
, III:3.3.

23
.
In Letters CVIII and LXXXIII, for example.
In Letter LXXXVII
he describes an expedition undertaken by himself and a close friend (Caesonius Maximus, himself a man who had had a distinguished career) in a mule-cart with the simplest of sleeping equipment and only figs or bread to eat; he speaks of having had ‘a blissful two days’, but regrets to report that he could not help blushing whenever they met people travelling in greater style (cf.
p.
228).

24
.
Roman History
, LXI:18.
Dio, usually hostile to Seneca, reports ‘many reliable sources’ as saying that Seneca helped incite Nero to liquidate Agrippina (
Roman History
, LXI:12).

The murder, its significance, and the possibility (remote) of Seneca’s complicity are discussed by S.
J.
Batomsky and P.
J.
Bicknell in
Theoria
, volume 19 (1962) pp.
32–6 and volume 21 (1963) pp.
42–5 (University of Natal Press).

25
.
Annals
, XIV:52f.

26
.
ibid., XV:45.

27
.
ibid., XV:65.

28
.
ibid., XV:60–64.
The passage is given on p.
243 in Michael Grant’s translation, from the Penguin Classics
Tacitus: The Annals of Imperial Rome.
It incidentally illustrates (like the beginning of Letter CIV) the close affection between him and his young second wife.
There is a rather touching mention in his treatise entitled
Anger
of how his first wife, after the light was out for the night, would keep quiet while he made his customary review of everything he had done or said in the course of the day (
De Ira
, III:36).

29
.
Augustine (
De Civitate Dei
, VI:10) says that Seneca
quod culpabat adorabat
, ‘worshipped the very things he criticized’.
Milton speaks of him as
‘in his books
a philosopher’.
La Rochefoucauld, for the frontispiece of an edition of his
Réflexions
, has him portrayed with villainous features from which a figure of Cupid representing
L’Amour de la Vérité
has just stripped a mask of virtuous amiability.

30
.
Natural History
, XIV:51.

31
.
Letter LXII.

32
.
The Stoics were considered by many as
contumaces… ac refractarios, contemptores magistratuum aut regum eorumve per quos publica administrantur
, ‘hostile to authority and resistant to discipline, disdainful of kings, magistrates or public officials’ (Letter LXXIII).
There are a number of cases of Stoics whose lack of respect for emperors earned them martyrdom.

33
.
Letter XLVIII.

34
.
Letter LVII.
Compare Letter VI.

35
.
A few examples of sayings or ideas so paralleled are those of 1
Cor.
iii, 16 (God’s ‘indwelling presence’ – cf.
Letter XLI,
init
.); 1
Tim.
vi, 10 (‘money the root of all evil’);
Job
i, 21 (we came into the world naked and go out of it naked, and
‘the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away’
);
Rom.
xii, 5, 10 (we are members of one body, and
‘Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love’
, etc.);
Acts
xvii, 29 (God is not like any gold or silver image);
Heb.
iv, 13 (not even thoughts are hidden from God – cf.
Letter LXXXIII,
init); Matt
.
v, 45 (the sun rises on the wicked as well); and (as translated in the New English Bible)
Eph.
v, 1 (imitate, try to be like God).
They do not lend any real support to theories that Seneca was influenced by St Paul or by Christian slaves in his own household.

36
.
Dr Basore.

37
.
Letter LXXV.
Cf.
‘Philosophy teaches us to act, not to talk’ (Letter XX).

38
.
The introduction to the translation
Four Tragedies and Octavia
by E.
F.
Watling (Penguin Classics) discusses generally the faults of Senecan drama and the question whether it was performable.

39
.
See, for example, Duff,
Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age.

40
.
There are isolated passages of magnificent writing, poetic or polemic, for example in parts of Letters XC and CIV.

41
.
For instance in Letters XC, XCIV and XCV.
The last two
incidentally (which discuss the question whether, in order to enable them to know what is the right thing to do in a given situation, people need a general ‘doctrine’ or a sufficient number of ‘precepts’, or both) are sufficient answer in themselves to critics who have said that Seneca is incapable of setting out a sustained, continuous, consistent argument.
One might quote here the opinions of Coleridge: ‘You may get a motto for every sect in religion, but nothing is ever thought out by him’, and Quintilian: ‘As a philosopher he was rather slipshod, though a magnificent censor of moral faults’ (
in philosophia parum diligens, egregius tamen vitiorum insectator, Institutio Oratoria
, X:1.129).

42
.
In Letters CXV (e.g.
quaere quid scribas, non quemadmodum
, ‘consider what, not how you should write’), C and elsewhere.

43
.
Duff,
Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age.

44
.
Institutio Oratoria
, X:1.125–31 forms throughout an interesting appraisal of Seneca by a famous scholar, advocate and teacher who died only thirty years or so after him.
A short, late seventeenth-century comment on Seneca’s style is that to be found in Aubrey’s
Lives:
‘Dr Kettle was wont to say that “Seneca writes, as a boare does pisse”,
scilicet
, by jirkes.’

45
.
Oratio certam regulam non habet
, since fashion or usage (
consuetude
) is constantly altering the rules (Letter CXIV).

46
.
Aulus Gellius, to give another example, described his language as ‘trite and commonplace’ (
vulgaria et protrita
), his learning as being ‘of a very ordinary, low-brow character’ (
vernacula et plebeia
).

47
.
Dante quotes him frequently and ranks him (with Cicero) after Virgil only in the
Inferno.
Chaucer, in the
Parson’s Tale
, classes Seneca with St Paul, Solomon and St Augustine.
Petrarch modelled his letters on Seneca’s, which he knew intimately.
The University of Piacenza was actually endowed with a Professor of Seneca.

48
.
Erasmus put many quotations from Seneca’s prose works into an anthology known as the
Adagia
which has been supposed to be the source of most of the imitations or borrowings found in Elizabethan writers.

49
.
Montaigne (
Essays
, 1:26) says ‘I have never got to grips with a single solid book, apart from Plutarch and Seneca, from whom
I draw unceasingly, for ever dipping and emptying my pitcher like the daughters of Danaus’ (who were set to fill a leaking jar as punishment in Hades).