Tacitus1 and Seneca

Denis Henry; B. Walker

doi:10.1017/S0017383500013450

Tacitus1 and Seneca

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009

Denis Henry and

B. Walker

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Seneca has long been regarded as one of the supreme—one might say notorious—examples of the way in which the human personality can be divided and compartmentalized. To live in two entirely different worlds at the same time can never be easy: to combine the contrasts present in Seneca without outward sign of strain is almost miraculous. Seneca took a leading part in Nero's education and training, both before and after he became Emperor; he lived for eleven years during his reign and then committed suicide at his behest; he played a central role as chief counsellor in his administration. At the same time he wrote treatises on the perfectibility of the human race under the flag of liberty, equality, and fraternity, not as a vision of the future, but associating its realization with Nero himself; he discussed the moral duty of the philosopher in terms which were completely inconsistent with his own mode of life, and composed ten (or is it nine?) tragedies which have as one of their main themes the rule of moral chaos in human affairs, often under a tyrant. In these plays there is a vision much less pleasant, that of the coming disintegration of the world, expressed in terms like ‘In nos ultima aetas uenit?’

Type: Research Article
Information: Greece & Rome , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , October 1963 , pp. 98 - 110

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017383500013450 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Classical Association 1963

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References

^{page 98 note 2} Thyestes, 879.Google Scholar

^{page 98 note 3} iv. 32.

^{page 98 note 4} vi. 10.

^{page 99 note 1} lix. 19. 7 f.

^{page 99 note 2} Ann. xii. 8. 3.Google Scholar

^{page 99 note 3} Ibid. xiii. 2. 2.

^{page 100 note 1} Ann. xiv. 51. 1–3.Google Scholar

^{page 100 note 2} The Tacitean ‘Non liquet’ on Seneca (Berkeley, 1952).Google Scholar

^{page 101 note 1} Ann. xiii. 3. i f.Google Scholar

^{page 101 note 2} Ibid. II. 2.

^{page 101 note 3} Ibid. 5. 3.

^{page 101 note 4} Ibid. 13. i.

^{page 102 note 1} Ann. xiii. 16f.Google Scholar

^{page 102 note 2} Ibid. 18. i.

^{page 102 note 3} Ibid. 42 f.

^{page 103 note 1} ‘Studiis inertibus’ contrasted with ‘uiuida eloquentia’; ‘liuere’ meaning ‘envy’; ‘corrumpere cubicula principum feminarum’; ‘orbos uelut indagine eius capi’; ‘prenuncias immenso faenore hauriri’.

^{page 103 note 2} Ann. xiv. 2. i f.Google Scholar

^{page 104 note 1} Ann. xiv. 10 f.Google Scholar

^{page 104 note 2} Ibid. 14. i.

^{page 104 note 3} Ibid. 52. i.

^{page 104 note 4} Ibid. 52. 2–4.

^{page 105 note 1} Ann. xiv. 53–56.Google Scholar Apart from the generally conventional rhetoric of these speeches—their careful balance and effective series of questions—the reader is surprised to find them reported at such great length and in such hackneyed terms. Seneca declaims in the style of the stock philosopher: ‘tantum honorum atque opum in me cumulasti ut nihil felicitati meae desit nisi moderatio eius.…’ Nero replies with sentiments proper to a pupil: ‘quod meditatae orationi statim occurram, id primum tui muneris habeo.’ Both scatter platitudes: ‘et tu, quantum amicus tribuere amico posset, et ego, quantum amicus a principe accipere…’; ‘non tamen sapienti uiro decorum fuerit unde amico infamiam paret, inde gloriam sibi recipere.’ The amplitude and the rhetorical embellishment of these speeches might be thought to show Tacitus as enthusiastically taking an opportunity for rich and showy writing, but the flatness of the vocabulary prevents us from feeling this: ‘at tu gratiam immensam, innumeram pecuniam circumdedisti adeo ut plerumque intra me ipse uoluam… sed uterque mensurara impleuimus… quae quidem, ut ornnia mortalia, infra tuam magnitudinem iacet, sed mihi incumbit…’, &c.

This reads as though Tacitus, feeling compelled to allow Seneca a proper appearance, had in the event been defeated by boredom. Stale similes, stale and conventional phrasing make Seneca's last attempt to escape the mesh a matter of indifference to writer and reader alike.

^{page 105 note 2} Ann. xv. 45. 6.Google Scholar

^{page 105 note 3} Ibid. 56. i f.

^{page 106 note 1} Ann. xv. 60–63.Google Scholar

^{page 106 note 2} The Annals of Tacitus: A Study in the Writing of History (2nd ed., Manchester, 1960), 204–34.Google Scholar

^{page 107 note 1} Ann. xiii. 14. 5.Google Scholar

^{page 107 note 2} Ibid. ii. 2.

^{page 107 note 3} Ibid. xiv. 49. 5.

^{page 108 note 1} Ann. xiii. 12. 2.Google Scholar

^{page 108 note 2} 42. 4.

^{page 108 note 3} Ep. li. 9.Google Scholar

^{page 108 note 4} Tranq. 5. 3.Google Scholar

^{page 108 note 5} Agr. 42.Google Scholar

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