Introduction
Seneca — I. Life
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was the second son of Annaeus Seneca (generally, but apparently without authority, called Marcus Annaeus Seneca) of Corduba (Cordova) in Spain: his mother was a Spanish lady named Helvia. The elder Seneca was himself a man of note. He is known as Seneca the Orator or Rhetorician, in contradistinction to his more famous son, the Philosopher. His works that have come down to us suggest by their titles, Controversiae and Suasoriae, the rhetorical character of the contents.
Seneca had an elder brother, M. Annaeus Novatus, and a younger one, L. Annaeus Mela (or Mella), father of Lucan the poet (M. Annaeus Lucanus).1 The family was thus a distinguished one. The poet Martial, himself a Spaniard, speaks of “the house of learned Seneca thrice to be numbered” (iv. 40. 2): the allusion might with equal appropriateness apply either to the three brothers or to the three generations: Seneca the Elder, Seneca, Lucan—father, son, grandson.
The eldest brother of the Senecan family, Novatus, was adopted by a friend of the family, Junius Gallio, by whose name he is known to history. Seneca on more than one occasion makes reference to him in the Q.N., and always in the most laudatory terms. In iv. Pref. 9 et sqq., he pays a high tribute to his character, and a further proof of his admiration and affection is afforded by his addressing to him his treatise on A Happy Life. Gallio is of interest in another connection. He was proconsul of Achaia during the period of the Apostle Paul’s activity there (Acts xviii.), and his conduct on the occasion of a sectarian uproar at Corinth has attached to his name a certain stigma which, perhaps, he does not altogether deserve.
Seneca was born about the beginning of the Christian era, probably in the year 3. By this time the language and the arts of Rome had spread widely over the conquered provinces, in many of which independent centres of culture and literary activity had sprung up. While Rome as the capital and heart of things continued to draw to herself all that was best, or, at any rate, all that was most enterprising and ambitious, her literary and even her political life was largely recruited and maintained by supplies from external sources, such as Spain, Gaul, and Africa.2
Seneca was brought by his father to Rome at an early age,3 and there he was educated and spent practically his whole life. His lot was cast in perilous times, those of Caligula the madman (37–41), Claudius the imbecile (41–54), Nero the monster (54–68). Seneca’s early studies were devoted to rhetoric. With such assiduity did he prosecute them, and with such brilliant success were his efforts at the bar crowned, that he speedily awakened the jealousy of Caligula. The hint of danger was taken. By his father’s advice he abandoned law in the meantime and devoted himself with equal ardour and enthusiasm to philosophy. Among his philosophic tutors were Attalus, a Stoic, and Sotion, a pupil of the Sextii, the decline of whose school is lamented in the Q.N. (307). He first embraced the Stoic doctrine, but finding the tenets and practices of this sect not sufficiently severe, he adopted those of the Pythagoreans. His father, a man with a good deal of worldly wisdom, saw the dangers of extreme eccentricities of this kind, which implied a covert condemnation of the whole world. He exhorted his son to live more like other people; he might otherwise be mistaken for a Jew (i.e. a Christian)! The young barrister’s difficulties were, however, ended for a time by the death of Caligula (41). Seneca, who was now thirty-eight, resumed his practice at the bar, and opened a school for youths of noble birth, which was largely attended. About this time also he obtained the quaestorship, the duties of which introduced a young man into public service and enabled him to obtain some insight into the financial methods of the Empire.
His re-entry on public life was, however, destined to be the prelude to another disaster. Indeed, all through his subsequent life his interests were so involved with the affairs of the rulers of the State that he must always stand on slippery ground. The fact is, Seneca’s abilities were too great for his position. He was a man of the most brilliant parts, “one of those ardent natures the virgin soil of whose talent shows a luxurious richness unknown to the harassed brains of an old civilisation” (Cruttwell, Hist. of Rom. Liter. p. 378). In an age of absolute and suspicious tyranny all eminence is obnoxious to the ruling powers. It is a standing reproach to them, hence a source of fear and alarm, a menace as they imagine, and an incentive to disloyalty. During the very first year of Claudius’ reign Seneca was banished to Corsica, where the next eight years find him. It was the outcome of a Court intrigue. Messalina, wife of the Emperor, was apparently jealous of the influence of Claudius’ nieces, Julia and Agrippina, whom he had just recalled from banishment. Julia was again banished, and Seneca, on the ground of an alleged improper intimacy with her, was made to share her disgrace. His banishment was really a blessing in disguise. He employed assiduously the period of enforced leisure, devoting himself again to philosophy, and returning to his first love, Stoicism. Here he perfected his study, and probably elaborated most of those doctrines with which his writings abound. In Cruttwell’s words, he “struck out the mild and catholic form” of the Stoic philosophy “which has made his teaching, with all its imperfections, the purest and noblest of antiquity” (op. cit. 379). To this period, too, belong some of what may be called his earlier works, already showing remarkable power.
His exile had been compassed by the notorious Messalina, the third wife of Claudius. On her fall Claudius married, as his fourth wife, his niece, the still more notorious Agrippina,4 daughter of Germanicus Caesar and sister of Caligula and of Julia. One of Agrippina’s first acts was to have Seneca recalled and appointed tutor to the young Nero, her son by a former marriage and now heir-apparent to the throne. This was in 48, when Nero was but eleven years of age, and henceforth to the end of his life Seneca’s fortunes are closely associated with those of Nero, “a name to all succeeding ages curst.” To be tutor to a prince means much if the pupil is docile. If he prove headstrong and at the same time vicious, as Nero speedily did, the choice of the tutor is an unenviable one, either to follow his pupil and palliate his conduct, or else to resist at the risk of position and influence and, it may be eventually, of life. With Seneca at first all went well. The prince was amenable, the tuition seemed to bear good fruit. The teacher was faithful to his charge, and loyal to the prince’s mother, Agrippina, to whom he owed his office and influence. Mother and son were still in accord. To the philosopher there was no conflict of duty, no necessity for the choice of one of two evils.
In 54 the vacillating Claudius was poisoned by Agrippina, and Nero succeeded to the throne. For a time the government was virtually in the hands of Seneca and of Burrus, also an excellent man, commander of the praetorian guards. In these earlier years the young Emperor gained a reputation for justice and moderation which has thrown a halo round that golden quinquennium. His tutor must in fairness receive a portion of the credit. He seems to have been throughout imbued with an honest desire to promote virtue and good government and to check such vicious propensities as a youth with Nero’s antecedents was not unlikely to develop; but whether the means adopted were always unimpeachable seems more open to question. Seneca’s own interests were apparently not neglected. In 50 he had been made praetor; shortly after he was raised to the consulship. Within the short space of four years from his appointment as Nero’s master he had attained a position of commanding influence in the State, and had amassed a colossal fortune (nearly £3,000,000 it is said). The latter he attributed to the unsolicited generosity of his master, but his enemies and detractors had quite a different version of the matter.
For more than a decade after Nero’s succession Seneca’s life is part of the history of the Roman Empire. The philosopher had become, as it appeared, de facto king and a new era seemed to have arisen on mankind. Philosophers, it is true, have neither in ancient nor in modern times shone in the sphere of action. The troubled sea of practical politics is strewn with the wrecks of philosophic reputations. Still, even before the age of the Antonines, Seneca, if any man, might have been the exception to prove the rule. He was a man of versatile genius, he had had a practical training, he was a man of affairs. The facts show that he had a true conception of the necessities as well as of the duties of government. But he was placed in an impossible situation. Agrippina wished to rule her son, and her chosen means was through his tutor. Nero, on the other hand, once he had tasted the sweets of power, determined not to be ruled by his mother, but to make her instrument his tool. The condition of unstable equilibrium could not long continue.
The conflict came to a head through a disgraceful intrigue of Nero’s about the year 59. Seneca had to make his choice, and never was choice more difficult. To Agrippina he owed everything—life, position, fortune, his past belonged to her. But he saw that Nero was to be the winner in the struggle; his safety, his hopes, his future lay with the ruling power. He may have felt that expostulation was vain and resistance fruitless. He does not appear to have attempted either. He decided to cast in his lot with the Emperor. When Nero finally decided to get rid of his mother, Seneca not only adhered to the plan but consented to vilify her memory by composing the letter to the Senate, in which the matricide sought to justify his act. It was the great treason of his life. In a critical situation he had chosen a wrong course, and it cannot have been without a pang, a sense of moral cowardice and tergiversation. He had sacrificed self-respect, he had lost philosophic caste.
After the murder of his mother, Nero abandoned himself to the wildest excesses and extravagances. The philosopher had perforce to follow in his wake, and humiliating enough he must have felt the part he was obliged to play. Still, he and Burrus continued to act as a sort of drag, conspiring with what of conscience was left to Nero in checking his headlong course. The beginning of the end, so far as Seneca was concerned, came with the death in 63 of Burrus, his constant friend and ally. Various indications now showed that the tyrant was anxious to be freed from the last remaining restraint. The philosopher felt his position was insecure. The man who had murdered his mother, not to mention his (step-)brother and his wife—two of his other victims—was not likely to have great compunction in ridding himself of his tutor. Seneca sought to anticipate the storm by abandoning politics, retiring from Court, and surrendering his estates. Nero refused the offer, and expressed profusely his continued regard for his tutor; shortly afterwards he displayed the sincerity of his professions by an insidious attempt to poison him! The philosopher then renounced all his state, adopted a voluntary poverty, and by putting into practice his professed tenets of the simple life endeavoured to avoid a repetition of the risk at least of poison. His diet was herbs, his drink, water from the fountain. But it was only a matter of time now. The occasion for which the Emperor was on the watch came in 65. In that year Piso’s conspiracy was formed against the Emperor’s life, and Seneca was accused, falsely so far as we can judge, of complicity. He was ordered to prepare for death, which, according to the custom of the day, allowed the victim the choice of means, and was usually a voluntary opening of the veins in order to bleed to death. Tacitus has with characteristic power and pathos depicted the scene (Annals, xv. 61–4). No act of his life, it would seem, became Seneca better than the leaving of it. His death was worthy of a philosopher and a Stoic. With the utmost calmness, amid a throng of mourning, sympathising friends, he faced his fate, and yet with the studied pose of a man who had conned the part. The age was one of posturing. Men were always under the eye of the informer and the spy, and learnt to act their part accordingly. The “meditation of death” must often have occupied the philosopher’s latter days. He was a second Socrates consigned to an unjust end; the last scene was enacted with all the dignity, composure, and even cheerfulness of his great prototype. The cock due to Aesculapius has a parallel more worthy of the occasion in the libation to Jupiter the Liberator. The supreme act atoned for many weaknesses and failures.
Though Seneca was not without many detractors,5 his worth as a man is attested by many proofs. His young wife Paulina desired to share his fate, and opened her veins along with her husband. By Nero’s orders she was saved, but she continued to the end of her life to bear in her unnatural pallor the marks of her devotion. Tacitus, writing at a distance of thirty or forty years, describes the character of Seneca in terms of commendation and esteem. No doubt the historian had himself borne the yoke of the savage Domitian, and knew what life under a tyrant meant. But withal he was too acute an observer and too impartial a critic to be blinded by any mere sentimental sympathy. He understood and appreciated Seneca, to whose genuine worth his testimony is the most enduring tribute.
The age of Seneca, whose “life almost coincides with the Julio-Claudian tyranny,” has been made to re-live for us in Professor Dill’s Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, which ought to be studied by those who desire to understand more of Seneca as statesman, philosopher, and man.6 In addition to a short account and criticism of the Quaestiones Naturales (pp. 300 et sqq.), the chapter (Book III. ch. i. pp. 289–333) on “The Philosophic Director” is particularly illuminating. The following tribute from it may fittingly close our brief sketch:—
“The man who approaches Seneca thinking only of scandals gleaned from Tacitus and Dio Cassius, and frozen by a criticism which cannot feel the power of genius, spiritual imagination, and a profound moral experience, behind a rhetoric sometimes forced and extravagant, had better leave him alone. The Christianity of the twentieth century might well hail with delight the advent of such a preacher, and would certainly forget all the accusations of prurient gossip in the accession of an immense and fascinating spiritual force. The man with any historical imagination must be struck with amazement that such spiritual detachment, such lofty moral ideals, so pure an enthusiasm for the salvation of souls, should emerge from a palace reeking with all the crimes of the haunted races of Greek legend” (op. cit. p. 295).