II Writings
Seneca was a voluminous writer. Most of his works partake more or less of a philosophical character. In a class by themselves may be placed the ten tragedies, together with some verses, attributed to him. The titles, Medea, Hercules Furens, Hippolytus, Agamemnon, etc., suggest the Greek subjects as well as the plays of the same names by Euripides and Aeschylus. The treatment of the themes is all Seneca’s own. Moral maxims abound; the plays are homiletic and were never designed to be acted.
One of the plays is of special interest as dealing with current topics. This is the Octavia, whose chief character is Nero’s wife of that name, exiled by him in order to make room for the licentious Poppaea Sabina. Seneca himself is introduced as one of the characters, deploring the vices of the age and the unhappiness of those set in high position. If the play is genuine, which has been doubted on the ground of references in it that seem to apply to Nero’s death, it goes to prove that Seneca used very plain language toward his master and pupil. In any case, it shows what the relation of Seneca to Nero was generally supposed to be. Tacitus (xv. 61) represents Seneca as telling Nero by messenger that the latter has had more frequent experience of his independence than of his servility, and the Octavia is fair comment upon his statement.
Here is a specimen of the dialogue:—
Nero. Fortune has put everything in my power.
Seneca. Distrust her favours: she is a fickle goddess.
N. To fail to see all that one may do, betrays the coward.
S. The credit lies in doing not what one may, but what one ought.
N. The crowd tramples on a feeble prince.
S. They will crush a hated one:
and so forth. Seneca’s last remark may be a prophecy—some would say after the event. The play contains other allusions which suggest some of the actual details of Nero’s end.
The prose works include:
(a) Philosophical Essays such as Anger, Clemency, Benefits, Calmness of Mind, A Happy Life, The Shortness of Life, Providence, or Why Providence allows troubles to afflict the Just, The Constancy of the Sage, The Leisure of the Sage.
(b) Letters, or rather Treatises, of Condolence, the so-called Consolations, addressed respectively to his Mother Helvia; to Marcia, the daughter of Cordus, on the death of her son; to Polybius, the powerful freedman of Claudius, on the loss of his brother.
(c) Letters to Lucilius, a hundred and twenty-four in number.
(d) Apocolocyntosis—a lampoon on the deceased Emperor Claudius. On such occasions deification (apotheosis) was accorded to the late ruler, and he was received into the number of the gods. This skit describes the reception of Claudius in heaven and his expulsion thence to the lower regions, with his trial and sentence there. Pumpkinification is the nearest English translation of the title.7
(e) Quaestiones Naturales.
(f) Works no longer extant, the only one of them that concerns us being that on Earthquakes, referred to as a work of his youth in Q.N. 230.
(g) A spurious work, as is now on all hands conceded, is the correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul. In his opposition to popular beliefs and superstitions, and in the purity of his moral tenets, Seneca approached some of the Christian doctrines, and it was no improbable supposition that at the Court of Nero he might have became acquainted with the Apostle of the Gentiles.8 But the assumption of a correspondence of this kind is another affair. Its genuineness was believed from the time of Jerome (400) till the sixteenth century.
Seneca is generally considered to appear at his best in the Consolation to his Mother Helvia and in the Epistles to Lucilius, which are therefore usually ranked as amongst his finest works. The latter work, which from the outset was designed for publication, is not an ordinary correspondence on the current affairs and interests of everyday life like Cicero’s Letters, but is philosophic in character; it covers a wide range of moral discussion and reflection, and is full of admirable maxims. Many of its sentiments have become commonplaces; their almost hackneyed character detracts perhaps somewhat from our appreciation of their intrinsic merit. On the other hand, the spitefulness of the Apocolocyntosis, the servility of the Consolation to Polybius, and the flattery of the Clemency, which was addressed to Nero, show the reverse of Seneca’s character. Of the characteristics of his style, however, and of his position in Roman literature—one of commanding importance—this is not the place to speak. His works reflect truly enough both the iron and the miry clay which entered into his mental and moral composition.