Dialogues and Letters

by Seneca

  But even if the Romans did not show much originality in philosophy, they taught it vigorously, and we know something about Seneca’s early training and his philosophical mentors. In his youth he was influenced by a school founded by Quintus Sextius in the Augustan period, and he was personally taught by two of Sextius’ disciples, Sotion and Fabianus. From this school he seems to have derived his own brand of eclectic Stoicism. Another teacher important for his development as a thinker was the Stoic Attalus, whom he admired greatly and quotes several times in the Letters (e.g., 110 in our selection).

  Thus Stoicism was the most important single strand in Seneca’s teaching – Stoicism modified to the mental and moral requirements of thoughtful Romans. It is not usually clear to what extent Seneca himself was responsible for these modifications, but he certainly endorsed them. The changes were mainly in emphasis: ‘Roman’ Stoicism was more interested in the ethical side of Stoic teaching, and less in Stoic logic and the Stoic account of the physical structure and behaviour of the cosmos. Of course, Stoicism had not remained a static and unchanging system of beliefs since its beginnings in the late fourth century BC. Already in the second and first centuries BC two major theorists, Panaetius and Posidonius, had made important modifications to earlier Stoic theory; and by the time Stoicism became a force in the Roman world there was less interest in logic and purely theoretical knowledge than in questions regarding ethics and personal behaviour. This was not Seneca’s only interest in Stoic theory: his thirst for knowledge included many aspects of the workings of the physical world, and his long book Natural Questions is clear evidence of his detailed study of natural phenomena. Moreover, he followed the later Stoics in accepting the traditional Stoic picture of the cosmos as informed and controlled by a force called variously God, Nature, Reason (logos); and as containing not only the visible heavenly bodies, but an all-pervading rarefied fiery air, the Greek pneuma. He has many references to this pneuma, and to the belief that the human soul derives from it and seeks instinctively to return to it after the death of the body.

  But the Stoic conception of the physical world serves for Seneca mainly as a background for his principal interest, the moral standards by which we should run our lives and behave towards our fellow men. Here he lines himself up squarely with two basic Stoic injunctions, that publicly we should devote ourselves to the service of our country, and that personally we should do our best to acquire wisdom. The ideal goal for the individual is the state of the wise man (sapiens), and one standard Stoic definition of wisdom or virtue (frequently interchangeable terms) is ‘living according to nature’, that is, training ourselves to acquire such standards and values that our own desires are the same as what nature would desire for us. This goal was recognized to be virtually unattainable, and examples of the sapiens in human history were admitted to be as rare as the appearance of the phoenix. The best of us can do no more than approach this ideal, but it is the effort to do so which produces a worthwhile life. Seneca himself frequently disclaims the title of sapiens, and in the Letters he offers himself as a guide to Lucilius simply by virtue of having got a little further on the road towards wisdom, so that Lucilius can profit by his advice and his mistakes. In trying to attain wisdom, however unattainable, we are thereby approaching the condition of the gods, and there are practical advantages as well. It is standard Stoic teaching that the sapiens is self-sufficient and immune to the caprices of fortune: fate has lost its hold over him, and stability and inner calm are increasingly possible for us as we approach closer to the state of wisdom.

  Many of the moral lessons Seneca offers to Lucilius and the other addressees of his works are not, of course, confined to Stoicism. To regard fortitude, constancy and self-reliance as virtues and to attack avarice, greed and time-wasting (three of Seneca’s favourite targets) would clearly be consistent with other moralizing creeds. As we saw above, Seneca was eclectic in his beliefs, and he is, for example, remarkably fair and generous to the Epicureans and to Epicurus himself. This is the more noteworthy because in many respects Stoicism and Epicureanism were the most ostensibly opposed of Hellenistic creeds; but Seneca recognized wisdom and obvious common sense under whatever formal garb they appeared. In several of the early letters to Lucilius he quotes Epicurus approvingly, and he defends himself for doing so, remarking that the best thoughts are common property (Letter 12.11).

  Seneca was also familiar with the views of the Cynics and their principle of rigorous self-denial, and with Platonic and Aristotelian theories, whether at first or second hand. All his reading and reflections combined to form the amalgam of high moral principle and self-aware, practical common sense that is the essence of his teaching. We do not know how much Lucilius and Seneca’s other addressees needed the lessons, but they are among the most memorably formulated doctrines that have come down to us from the ancient world.

  LATER REPUTATION AND INFLUENCE

  As we have already seen, Seneca enjoyed great popularity and influence in later European literature through both his prose and his verse. The plays do not feature in this selection, but we should note the extraordinary impact they had on European tragedy, especially French and English. In fact, Seneca had to wait many centuries before his plays received recognition. Writing in the late first century AD, Quintilian does not include Seneca in his list of Latin tragedians, even though he quotes a line from the Medea (453) as Seneca’s (Quint. 9.2.8–9). However, along with other classical writers Seneca enjoyed a boom in popularity in what is called the ‘twelfth-century Renaissance’, and by the late thirteenth century his tragedies were attracting attention from scholars and imitators in Italy. England followed suit in the early fourteenth century with Nicholas Trevet’s commentary on the tragedies; in around 1484 they were first printed at Ferrara; and during and after the sixteenth century the Senecan model became deeply influential on French and English tragedians. In France Garnier’s tragedies (1563–90) and in England Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (c. 1590) were early examples of this influence; and in due course the much greater figures of Shakespeare, Corneille and Racine give clear evidence of the Senecan style. It is the style particularly that we should note here: many rhetorical and declamatory techniques and possibly too other formal elements like the chorus and the five-act structure. (The crude horrors of the ‘revenge’ tragedy – mass murders, ghosts and so on – which used to be laid at Seneca’s door are nowadays rightly seen as less due to Seneca than endemic in earlier vernacular drama.) That was the zenith of Seneca’s reputation as a playwright, and thereafter interest in the plays declined sharply. In the late nineteenth century scholarly interest revived in the text of the tragedies, but Seneca had to wait until the mid to late twentieth century before there was a real resurgence of wider interest in and, more important, understanding of his plays, and editions, translations – even performances – have by now given them a modest revival.1

  The knowledge and influence of Seneca’s prose works have also had a chequered history. From the second century onwards into the early medieval period he cannot be said to have had any dynamic philosophical influence. The reason for this is clearly that, as we saw above, he was not an original thinker but a brilliant formulator and popularizer of received Stoic doctrines. So later thinkers interested in Stoicism would go straight to the earlier Stoic writers, who were still available to them, rather than to the filter of Seneca’s writings. With the subsequent loss of earlier texts Seneca’s position as Stoic witness and authority acquired greater dominance: he was the survivor. On the other hand, as a very readable moralizer he was remembered and quoted throughout most of this period. He is mentioned frequently by Christian writers, starting with Tertullian (c. 160– c. 240). On the whole they approved of him: many of his moral precepts harmonized with Christian teaching, and he was very quotable. Lactantius (c. 240– c. 320) was enthusiastic about him; Jerome (c. 348–420) more temperate. Augustine (354–430), on the other hand, was much more critical, and accused Seneca of hypocrisy in not matching his li
fe-style to his teaching (Civ. 6.10–11). At around this time too, in the fourth century, a curious fillip was given to Seneca’s reputation by the appearance of a so-called correspondence between him and St Paul. These letters are certainly spurious, and were no doubt forged in order to establish a closer link between Seneca and Christianity. From the eleventh century they are actually found in manuscripts attached to the genuine letters to Lucilius. One other landmark worth mentioning from this earlier period is St Martin of Braga, who in the sixth century wrote a treatise that was quarried without acknowledgement almost entirely from Seneca’s works.

  The cultural renaissance of the twelfth century, referred to in connection with the tragedies, saw the prose works also really coming into their own, and henceforward as a prose writer Seneca’s popularity was exceeded only by Cicero’s. The favourite works were the Letters, De Beneficiis and De Clementia; but, as happens frequently to famous authors, spurious works also appeared, apart from the correspondence with St Paul, and circulated under his name. His reputation now caused him to be widely quoted by men of such distinction as Peter Abelard, John of Salisbury and William of Malmesbury, and he was also a regular quarry for the currently popular anthologies called florilegia. These were collections of moral precepts used in elementary education, and Seneca’s highly quotable sententiae were a favourite source in compiling them. Thereafter Seneca’s influence fluctuated, but in the thirteenth century Roger Bacon much admired and frequently quoted him; and in the fourteenth century the great humanist Petrarch quoted him more often than any other classical writer except Virgil. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw another peak of Seneca’s influence: here our witnesses can include the towering figure of Erasmus, who greatly admired him and edited his works in 1515; Montaigne, whose Essais borrow frequently from Seneca’s works; and Thomas Lodge, who in 1614 published the first complete English translation of the prose works.

  Since the seventeenth century Seneca’s popularity has certainly declined, but the eighteenth century saw some distinguished admirers in Hume, Diderot and Rousseau. In our day, as with the tragedies, there is something of a revival of interest in the prose works, helped by reliable texts and by critical work that has shown a better understanding of Seneca’s good qualities as well as his faults, and of what he was trying to do.2

  Finally, we should note briefly another important area where Seneca’s impact has been felt: the influence of his prose style on English writers. One feature of the last great period of his popularity, the seventeenth century, was that Seneca began to replace Cicero as a model of Latin prose style. A consequence of this was that important writers like Bacon and Jonson began to model their own English styles on Seneca’s, and the dominant prose style of that century became the ‘pointed’ style explicitly inspired by Seneca. It is a fascinating example of literary imitation between languages as different as English and Latin, and it forms a distinctive phase in the history of English prose style.3

  THE SELECTED WORKS

  The selection offered here shows Seneca in many moods, but all the works have in common his characteristic interests in offering informed discussion or giving advice, and most frequently a combination of the two.

  The general features of the Letters, which have been outlined above, can be found in different degrees in the four selected ones, from which we see how Seneca varies his technique. Letter 24 is a good example of how he uses an issue or event in Lucilius’ life as a peg on which to hang more general ethical observations. Lucilius is worried about an impending lawsuit, and Seneca, starting from this, points to ways of coping with it and anxieties in general. A good method, he suggests, is to imagine the worst that could happen and prepare for that, and some familiar examples are produced of heroic endurance to encourage Lucilius.

  Letter 57 takes an episode in Seneca’s own life, an unpleasant journey through a tunnel, as a trigger for reflections on the sorts of irrational shocks and fears which even the bravest people suffer, and these reflections lead on to a declaration of the soul’s immortality.

  Letter 79 shows us Lucilius making a tour of Sicily, and Seneca using this as an excuse to ask him for physical details of the fearsome whirlpool Charybdis. Seneca goes on to suggest that Lucilius might consider writing a poetic account of Mount Etna: this leads to a discussion of literary emulation, and that in turn to the question of rivalry in wisdom and virtue. This kind of rivalry, Seneca stresses, is impossible, for all who have attained these qualities are equal. Here we have a good example of how a Senecan letter proceeds by an association of ideas to what we may assume is the important point. The letter is also particularly interesting because Seneca, in encouraging Lucilius to literary efforts, gives us an important statement about the relationship of Latin writers to their models: it is perfectly acceptable to take up a subject that has been dealt with by a previous writer, provided you make it your own by producing a new effect. This is an explicit endorsement of an obvious feature of much Latin literature – creative reworking of earlier models.

  Letter 110 is an eloquent protreptic to cultivate a healthy state of mind with the aid of philosophy. By such help we can banish mental darkness and illusory fears, and learn to distinguish the essential from the superfluous. This is a letter of sustained seriousness; the thoughts expressed can be compared with those of Letter 24; and Seneca underpins his arguments with a long quotation from the Stoic philosopher Attalus, making the point that we can and should reduce our needs to nothing.

  Our three dialogues between them cover most of Seneca’s leitmotifs, and illustrate important standpoints of this moral crusader and guru. On the Shortness of Life, written some time between 48 and 55 and addressed to Paulinus (possibly a connection by marriage), takes us into one of Seneca’s most favourite topics, the right use of our time. People complain that life is too short, yet of all their possessions they are most wasteful of this most precious one, their time. Life is quite long enough if you only know how to use it. Seneca vigorously attacks people who are ‘preoccupied’ (occupati – a constantly repeated word in this treatise), by which he means those who spend their lives in useless or redundant activities, and sometimes cannot even give a rational account of what they are doing. Here Seneca takes the opportunity of hitting another favourite target, the cultivation of useless literary or historical knowledge (section 13). One of the most learned men of his time clearly had strong views about indiscriminate knowledge for its own sake: the test should be, does it do us any good?

  On Tranquillity of Mind (written some time before 62) is ostensibly a response to a plea for help from Seneca’s good friend Serenus. Serenus is suffering from mental weakness and irresolution: he has high standards and knows what course he ought to follow but lacks the required will-power to do so. Seneca offers a detailed and carefully thought-out reply, in which he covers many of his usual moralizing points: we must carefully appraise ourselves, practise thrift, learn to face life’s difficulties and accept human failings, avoid superfluous activities (as in Shortness of Life), and try to emulate great men who bravely faced disaster (exempla again). The work belongs in a tradition of philosophical treatises on tranquillity and peace of mind going back at least to Democritus in the fifth century BC: Seneca refers to his work in section 2. The great Stoic teacher Panaetius (second century BC) also wrote a treatise on the subject which clearly influenced Seneca. Our treatise has the formal interest of being the only one of Seneca’s with a dialogue structure, though this is not sustained beyond the opening sections. Serenus’ problem is the trigger, but Seneca’s response is for a wider readership.

  The Consolation to Helvia, addressed to his mother, is one of Seneca’s most interesting and attractive works. Here again he is following a traditional literary form: the consolatio as a genre went back to the fifth century BC, and by Seneca’s time had evolved a full repertoire of routine arguments and conventional comforts to soothe the sufferer. Many of these duly appear in the Helvia, but what gives it an unusual interest is that the
consoler has himself caused the sufferer’s grief. (Seneca points out the paradox in the opening section.) There was also a special class of consolation on exile, and Seneca would have been familiar at least with those by Teles the Cynic (third century BC) and his younger contemporary, the Stoic Musonius Rufus. The historical background to the Helvia is (as we saw above) that Seneca was relegated to Corsica in 41 on a charge of adultery with Julia Livilla, sister of the emperor Gaius. He was recalled in 49, and the work can be dated to around 42/3. In ringing his own changes on the traditional arguments Seneca makes two main points to his mother: he himself is not feeling wretched, therefore she should not feel pain either. The reasoning is straightforward throughout, and Seneca stresses the conventional points that exile is, after all, only a change of place, and that the poverty and disgrace associated with exile are irrelevant to the wise man. Helvia’s own strength of character should help her to bear her affliction, and she can derive support from other members of her family. We do not know how effective the work was in consoling Helvia, but – whatever Seneca’s real feelings – he succeeds on his own account in putting up a brave front.

  The Natural Questions, which is represented by three passages, was dedicated to Lucilius and written from 62 onwards; therefore it dates, like the Letters, from the last few years of Seneca’s life. The subject matter embraces a wide range of natural phenomena, the province of what we would, roughly speaking, now call physics, and clearly illustrates both Seneca’s voracious appetite for knowledge and his eagerness to expound what he knows.

  The first passage is from the preface to Book 1 and can be described technically as protreptic in intent: it is an encouragement to the study of philosophy. Seneca urges this as the highest possible activity of the human mind, and he stresses both the benefits and the deep satisfaction that derive from it. The piece belongs to a well-known class of philosophical adjuration and was not pointedly directed at the addressee, Lucilius, who would not have needed persuasion: it appears formally and appropriately at the beginning of a long book that explores the workings of the cosmos. The other passages, on the Nile Cataracts and on earthquakes, are virtuoso descriptive pieces, and should, even in translation, illustrate Seneca’s stylistic versatility being used as a tool for his deep interest in the natural world. Both the Cataracts and earthquakes are dramatic phenomena, and Seneca’s descriptive art rises to the challenge in his account of them.