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LIVING WITH SENECA THROUGH HIS EPISTLES*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2014
Extract
In a letter famous for outlining the genesis of his work The Prince, Machiavelli responded to his friend's description of his day as a courtier in Rome by describing his own daily routine on his farm. The morning he spent bird-catching, taking a book of poetry to pass the time, ‘Dante, Petrarch, or one of the minor poets like Tibullus, Ovid, or some such’. The afternoon was spent at the inn in noisy arguments over games. However, in the evening he goes on:
I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely.
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Footnotes
*
This article is part of a larger project studying the dynamics of censorship in antiquity. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council. The evolution of this article has benefited greatly from the feedback of others, and I would like to acknowledge the help of my colleagues at the University of Adelaide, Peter Davis and Han Baltussen, and Marcus Wilson, Gareth Williams, and Catharine Edwards, who generously shared a copy of her paper ‘Present Absence in Seneca's Letters: Friendship and Philosophy’, given at the Configuring Communities: The Socio-political Dimension of Ancient Epistolography conference at Durham University, 14–16 July 2011.
References
1 Atkinson, J. B. and Sices, D., Machiavelli and His Friends. Their Personal Correspondence (Dekalb, IL, 1996), 264Google Scholar, no. 224, 10 December 1513.
2 Ibid., 264.
3 Connell, W. J., ‘New Light on Machiavelli's Letter to Vettori, 10 December 1513’, in Europe and Italy. Studies in honour of Giorgio Chittolini (Florence, 2011), 108–13Google Scholar, sets out this debate.
4 Seneca's situation is set out clearly by Wilson, M., ‘Quae quis fugit damnat: Outspoken Silence in Seneca's Epistles’, in Baltussen, H. and Davis, P. J. (eds.), Parrhêsia and the Art of Veiled Speech: Studies in Self-Censorship from Aristophanes to Hobbes (forthcoming)Google Scholar.
5 The mechanics are described well by Ahl, F., ‘The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome’, AJPh 105 (1984), 174–208Google Scholar, and Rudich, V., ‘Navigating the Uncertain: Literature and Censorship in the Early Roman Empire’, Arion 14 (2006), 7–28Google Scholar.
6 Previous victims of this censorship here Titus Labienus, Cremutius Cordus, Clutorius Priscus, Gaius Cominius, Sextius Paconianus, and Mamercus Scaurus; for details of their trials, see Bauman, R. A., Impietas in principem. A Study of Treason Against the Roman Emperor with Special Reference to the First Century ad (Munich, 1974)Google Scholar.
7 Wilson (n. 4) stresses the role of imperial enrichment in controlling the nobility, partly through obligation from the beneficia bestowed by the emperor, but also as it effectively ‘painted a very large target on their backs’.
8 Translation from Woodman, A. J., Tacitus. The Annals (Indianapolis, IN, 2004)Google Scholar.
9 I have taken the translations of Seneca's Epistles, with some adaptations, from Gummere, R. M.Seneca. Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, 3 vols (London, 1918–25)Google Scholar.
10 Wilson (n. 4).
11 In what follows I have benefited greatly from von Albrecht, M., Wort Und Wandlung. Senecas Lebenskunst (Leiden, 2004), 53–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which is also available as ‘Cultura socrática en Séneca’, Myrtia 18 (2003), 211–23Google Scholar.
12 Bartsch, S., The Mirror of the Self. Sexuality, Self-knowledge, and the Gaze in the early Roman Empire (Chicago, IL, 2006)Google Scholar.
13 Ibid., 254.
14 Habinek, T. N., ‘An Aristocracy of Virtue: Seneca on the Beginnings of Wisdom’, YClS 29 (1992), 187–203Google Scholar, which appears revised as ch. 7 of The Politics of Latin Literature. Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ, 1998)Google Scholar; Roller, M. B., Constructing Autocracy. Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome (Princeton, NJ, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Shaw, B. D., ‘The Divine Economy: Stoicism as Ideology’, Latomus 44 (1985), 16–54Google Scholar. The distortion of Stoicism that this involves is highlighted by Wilson, M., ‘After the Silence: Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal’, in Boyle, A. J. and Dominik, W. J. (eds.), Flavian Rome. Culture, Image, Text (Leiden, 2003), 535–6Google Scholar.
16 Wilson (n. 15), 537.
17 The way that Seneca uses the three consolations as a critique of his exile is discussed persuasively by Wilson, M., ‘Seneca the Consoler? A New Reading of his Consolatory Writings’, in Baltussen, H. (ed.), Greek and Roman Consolations. Eight Studies of a Tradition and its Afterlife (Swansea, 2013), 113–16Google Scholar.
18 The main letters I examine are Epp. 29, 33, 64, and 104.
19 Henderson, J., Morals and Villas in Seneca's Letters. Places to Dwell (Cambridge, 2004), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Bartsch (n. 12), 216.
21 Ibid., 229.
22 Ibid., 205. She cites Roller (n. 14), 63–126, and Rosenmeyer, T. G., Senecan Drama and Stoic Cosmology (Berkeley, CA, 1989), 52Google Scholar, in support.
23 Bartsch (n. 12), 201.
24 In regard to apparent inconsistencies in his writing, it appears that Seneca valued ideas that make the reader think over those that are internally consistent. One small example is in Book 4 of the Epistles. In three letters (Epp. 31–3) he stresses the need for self-sufficiency in one's relation to the divine and one's teachers. In the next two, he stresses the role of friendship in making mutual progress. How these two positions are reconciled is not addressed in those letters.
25 Flower, H. I., ‘Spectacle and Political Culture in the Roman Republic’, in Flower, H. I. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2004), 322CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Bartsch (n. 12), 117.
27 Polyb. 6.53.9; see also Flower, H. I., Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford, 1996), 129Google Scholar.
28 Kaster, R. A., Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome (London, 2005), 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Bodel, J., ‘Death on Display: Looking at Roman Funerals’, in Bergmann, B. A. and Kondoleon, C. (eds.), The Art of Ancient Spectacle (Washington, DC, 1999), 270–1Google Scholar.
30 Bartsch (n. 12), 191.
31 Ibid., 198. She cites Roller (n. 14), 88, in support of this.
32 This is a contrast that Wilson, M., ‘The Younger Seneca’, in Dominik, W. J. and Hall, J. (eds.), A Companion to Roman Rhetoric (Malden, MA, 2007) 436Google Scholar, draws attention to well.
33 Ep. 8.3: rectum iter, quod sero cognoui et lassus errando, aliis monstro (‘I point other men to the right path, which I have found late in life, when wearied with wandering’).
34 Seneca's care in the Epistles about presenting the necessity of retirement has been mentioned earlier. It is, nevertheless, a ‘categorical imperative’ (Griffin, M. T., Seneca. A Philosopher in Politics (Oxford, 1992), 334Google Scholar), whereas in On Leisure, for example, retirement was a second choice, though valid (Ot. 3.2–5).
35 Ep. 29.11: quis enim placere populo potest cui placet virtus?
36 Ep. 30, in particular, is on facing death, a topic also seen in Epp. 36–7. For the theme of death and suicide more generally, see Ker, J. B., The Deaths of Seneca (Oxford, 2009), ch. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 Shelton, J.-A., ‘Persuasion and Paradigm in Seneca's Consolatio ad Marciam 1–6’, Classica et Mediaevalia 46 (1995), 163–6Google Scholar, comments perceptively on these two letters in relation to Seneca's similar use of exempla in the Consolation to Marcia.
38 This self-respect is perhaps analogous to the self-regard (tibi placere) of Ep. 29.12.
39 Tac. Ann. 4.35, has Cremutius Cordus make this point about Brutus and Cassius; statues and historical records were widely available.
40 Later in the letter to Vettori cited earlier (n. 1).
41 Bartsch (n. 12), 200–1.
42 non sumus sub rege (‘We are not under a king’; 33.4).
43 omnes itaque istos, numquam auctores, semper interpretes, sub aliena umbra latentes, nihil existimo habere generosi (‘For this reason I hold that there is nothing of eminence in all such men as these, who never create anything themselves, but always lurk in the shadow of others, playing the role of interpreters’; 33.8).
44 See also his criticisms of Chrysippus at Ben. 1.3.8–9.
45 Evenepoel, W., ‘Seneca's Letters on Friendship: Notes on the Recent Scholarly Literature and Observations on Three Quaestiones’, AC 75 (2006), 177–93Google Scholar, provides a useful overview of the scholarship on friendship in Seneca's Epistles. More recently, Wilcox, A., The Gift of Correspondence in Classical Rome. Friendship in Cicero's Ad Familiares and Seneca's Moral Epistles (Madison, WI, 2012)Google Scholar has described Seneca as pointedly contrasting genuine friendships in his Epistles with the transactional and political ones in Cicero's correspondence.
46 hic autem numquam abest; quemcumque vult cotidie videt (‘Such a friend can never be absent; he can see every day whomever he desires to see’; 55.11).
47 Brev. 15.2; Williams, G. D., Seneca. De otio; De breuitate uitae (Cambridge, 2003), 219Google Scholar, notes that this clientship is actually described in terms applicable to genuine friendship. By using the term clientela here, Seneca is perhaps highlighting the mismatch of terms in contemporary social practice, where such relations were generally described in terms of amicitia to avoid the degradation inherent in clientela. See also Saller, R. P., Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge, 1982), 8–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 Ep. 104.3: Indulgendum est enim honestis adfectibus.
49 This is the term that Williams (n. 47), 23, uses, following Nussbaum, M. C., The Therapy of Desire. Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ, 1994), 355Google Scholar.
50 It is noted by Williams (n. 47), 211, who calls it a ‘society of the imagination’. Other descriptions of friendship or conversation with figures from the past occur at Epp. 52.7, 62.2, and 67.2. Befriending past figures is noted by Knoche, U. W., ‘Der Gedanke der Freundschaft in Senecas Briefen an Lucilius’, Arctos 1 (1954), 94Google Scholar, and Albrecht (n. 11), 56.
51 Flower (n. 27), 14.
52 Bartsch (n. 12), 201 and 244.
53 Ibid., 245, in relation to Ep. 104 acknowledges some of this – philosophers can be ‘dialogic partners’ – but she does not seem to accord the idea any real weight.
54 Ibid., 201.
55 Another occurrence of the internal guardian is possibly in Ep. 94.40–1. Here Seneca suggests that the association with good men (boni viri) or wise men (sapientes) can lead to moral improvement in a process that is not entirely obvious but definitely occurs. The point of this is to suggest that precepts can function in a similar way. But it could also be read as a suggestion for making progress, in which case the implication of Ep. 104.21–2 is that such wise men are to be found in books. Similarly, in a number of places in that same epistle (94.8, 10, 52, 55, 59, and 72), Seneca counsels having a guardian to monitor one's actions. This could be taken literally, as a personal philosopher of the sort he describes (Tranq. 14.4–10) Julius Canus, condemned to death by Caligula, as having (so Roller (n. 14), 95–6). It can also, and perhaps better, be understood in terms of the internal guardian of earlier letters.
56 Mayer, R. G., ‘Roman Historical Exempla in Seneca’, in Grimal, P. (ed.), Sénèque et la prose latine (Geneva, 1991), 143Google Scholar.
57 Polyb. 6.53 and Sall. Iug. 4.5.
58 Nussbaum (n. 9), 354–7, discusses this letter, but sees it as a rejection of Roman concepts of nobility, not a redefinition.
59 As noted earlier, this accords with being adopted into the households of the most noble talents (nobilissimorum ingeniorum familiae) at Brev. 15.3. Albrecht (n. 11), 66, observes that the description of philosophical sects as noble families is one that Cicero had used on occasions (e.g. De or. 3.61).
60 Schofield, M., The Stoic Idea of the City, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL, 1999), 28–35Google Scholar, argues that Zeno claimed that eros was not a passion and had an educational purpose similar to that found in Plato.
61 Cicero, Tusc. 4.68–76, for example, is contemptuous of such love, while Seneca, Ep. 116.5, quotes Panaetius with approval in saying that any but the wise would avoid it.
62 Albrecht (n. 11), 66, makes precisely this point: ‘The imagery of fatherhood and family is the legitimate Roman transformation of the Socratic and Platonic Eros’ (‘Die Metaphorik von Vaterschaft und Familie ist die legitime römische Metamorphose des sokratisch-platonischen Eros’). The affective force of pietas within the Roman family has been argued for by Saller, R. in a number of works, for instance, ‘Pietas, obligation and authority in the Roman family’, in Kneiss, P. and Laseman, V. (eds.), Alte Geschichte und Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Festschrift für Karl Christ zum 65. Geburtstag (Darmstadt, 1988), 399Google Scholar.
63 Silius Italicus is reported to have done the same for Virgil (Plin. Ep. 3.7), and the Elder Pliny complains of people doing it to Epicurus (HN 35.5).
64 The analogy of a letter to a conversation was a commonplace of ancient literary theory: see Malherbe, A. J., Ancient Epistolary Theorists (Atlanta, GA, 1988), 12Google Scholar. Epp. 38 and 40 develop ideas in Ep. 33 discussed above. Ep. 38 starts by responding positively to a request for a more frequent correspondence, which the start of Ep. 40 acknowledges as having happened. Seneca's justifies his response by continuing on the benefits of conversation: Plurimum proficit sermo, ‘The greatest benefit is to be derived from conversation’ (38.1).
65 Edwards, C., ‘Self-scrutiny and Self-transformation in Seneca's Letters’, G&R 44 (1997), 24Google Scholar.
66 This self-revelation is logically consequent from the idea that one's speech reveals one's character: talis oratio qualis vita, ‘People's speech is just like their life’.
67 The educational role of Seneca as an exemplum is explored well by Schafer, J., ‘Seneca's Epistulae Morales as Dramatized Education’, CPh 106 (2011), 32–52Google Scholar.
68 Bartsch (n. 12), 202, describes Seneca as ‘lonely’.
69 Wilson (n. 4).