Dialogues and Letters

by Seneca

buries them in a deep chasm, not even leaving any evidence that

  what is no longer there at least once was. Only the ground covers

  the noblest cities, without any trace of their former appearance.

  NOTES

  DIALOGUES

  CONSOLATION TO HELVIA

  1. Seneca himself and his brothers Novatus (also called Gallio) and Mela.

  2. Places to which exiles were banished. Sciathus, Seriphus and Gyara are in the Aegean; Cossura (now Pantelleria) lies between Sicily and North Africa.

  3. Antenor was said to have come from Troy to Italy and to have founded Patavium (Padua). Evander was an Arcadian prince who founded Pallanteum (afterwards the site of Rome). Diomedes, after fighting in the Trojan War, came to Italy and founded Argyripa (later Arpi) in Apulia.

  4. Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC), the most famous scholar of his time.

  5. The conspirator against Julius Caesar, who wrote several philosophical works.

  6. The name given to two ancient thatched huts in Rome, which were regarded as venerable relics from the humble beginnings of the city.

  7. Marcus Claudius Marcellus, consul in 51 BC, and a supporter of Pompey. After Pharsalus he retired to Mytilene.

  8. A river in Colchis (now the Rion) flowing into the Black Sea. The birds referred to are pheasants; and vengeance from the Parthians alludes to the notorious victory of the Parthians over the Romans at Carrhae in 53 BC.

  9. Manius Curius Dentatus: see n. 10 to Tranq.

  10. A notorious gourmet who lived under Augustus and Tiberius. (The treatise on cookery that survives under his name is from a later period.)

  11. Consul, 503 BC: the episode referred to occurred in 494.

  12. For Regulus see n. 30 to Tranq. and for Scipio, mentioned shortly, n. 32 to Tranq.

  13. See n. 8 to Tranq.

  14. See n. 2 to Letter 24.

  15. Aristides is probably a slip for Phocion, a fourth-century BC Athenian general and statesman: Plutarch tells the same story of Phocion (Phoc. 36).

  16. Mother of the two famous tribunes, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (133 and 123 BC): she was regarded as the type of the high-principled Roman matron.

  17. Gaius Aurelius Cotta was exiled in 90 BC on a charge of inciting the Italians to revolt, and subsequently became consul in 75.

  18. Gallio and Mela.

  19. Almost certainly Mela’s son, the poet Lucan, born in AD 39.

  20. Daughter of Gallio (formerly called Novatus).

  21. Wife of Gaius Galerius, prefect of Egypt AD 16–31. His death and the shipwreck referred to shortly occurred on their way home from Egypt in 31.

  22. Alcestis, in place of her husband Admetus. The story is the theme of Euripides’ Alcestis.

  ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND

  1. Serenus was a close friend of Seneca, who mentions him elsewhere in his works. He held the public office of praefectus vigilum, commander of a force at Rome which performed police and fire-brigade duties.

  2. The first three heads of the Stoic school.

  3. A distinguished fifth-century philosopher from Abdera and a pioneer in atomist theories of the nature of matter.

  4. A reference to Iliad 24.10–11, where Achilles cannot sleep for grief over the dead Patroclus.

  5. A slightly inaccurate quotation from De Rerum Natura 3.1068.

  6. A notable Stoic philosopher from Tarsus: he was a friend of Cicero and teacher of Augustus.

  7. Prytanis and sufes are names for certain chief magistrates, the prytanis in some Greek states, the sufes in Carthage and some other Phoenician cities.

  8. They seized autocratic power in Athens (404–403 BC) after the end of the Peloponnesian War.

  9. Famous for his part in killing the tyrant Hipparchus at Athens in 514 BC.

  10. A famous soldier and statesman (died 270 BC), notable for his plebeian origins and his incorruptibility.

  11. A fourth-century BC historian and pupil of the orator Isocrates.

  12. Plato and the historian Xenophon were famous pupils of Socrates. For Cato see n. 2 to Letter 24.

  13. A third-century BC lecturer and writer from Borysthenes on the Black Sea noteworthy for his mordant wit.

  14. The founder of the Cynic school in the fourth century BC.

  15. He came from Gadara and is used here as the type of the wealthy man.

  16. A reference to the accidental burning of the famous library during Julius Caesar’s Alexandrine War in 48 BC.

  17. Apparently a reference to the practice of chaining a prisoner to his guard, with the guard having his left hand bound to the prisoner’s right.

  18. From his speech Pro Milone 92.

  19. Publilius Syrus lived in Rome in the first century BC and wrote mimes, from which a selection of maxims has survived.

  20. This Pompey seems to be the consul of AD 14, and related to the Julian dynasty: hence his relationship with the emperor Gaius.

  21. Prefect of the praetorian guard under Tiberius and executed in AD 31.

  22. The last king of Lydia (c. 560–546 BC).

  23. King of Numidia, captured and executed by the Romans in 104 BC.

  24. A fourth-century BC Cyrenaic philosopher, known as the ‘Atheist’. The tyrant referred to was Lysimachus, king of Thrace.

  25. We know nothing about him apart from this anecdote.

  26. A sixth-century BC tyrant of Acragas, notorious for his cruelty.

  27. A very distinguished philosopher from Ephesus (flourished c. 500 BC).

  28. Consul in 105 BC and, after conviction on a dubious charge of extortion, exiled to Smyrna.

  29. Hercules cremated himself in unendurable agony from the shirt of Nessus.

  30. Regulus was captured by the Carthaginians in 255 BC and subsequently tortured to death by them for refusing to co-operate in negotiating with Rome.

  31. Probably the elder Cato (the ‘Censor’: 234–149 BC), a man of legendary strictness and moral austerity.

  32. Scipio Africanus Maior (236–184/3 BC), the conqueror of Hannibal in the war against Carthage.

  33. He lived 76 BC–AD 4, and was a notable politician, poet and historian, as well as an orator.

  34. A great Athenian law-giver and poet, and chief archon in 594/3 BC.

  35. Head of the Platonic Academy in the mid third century BC.

  36. Certain identification is difficult, but the quotation might fit Alcaeus or Anacreon. The Plato reference is to Phaedrus 245a, and the Aristotle reference is to the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems 953a.

  ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE

  1. Paulinus is not certainly identifiable, but it appears from sections 18 and 19 that his job was praefectus annonae, overseeing the importing and distribution of corn. He may also have been connected to Seneca through Seneca’s wife Paulina.

  2. Hippocrates, who lived around the second half of the fifth century BC.

  3. Seneca seems to be confusing Aristotle with his pupil and successor Theophrastus, to whom Cicero attributes this thought (Tusc. 3.69).

  4. The quotation has not been identified.

  5. Seneca gives a run-down of Augustus’ struggles to establish himself in power and consolidate his empire, from the time of the Civil War (‘fellow-countrymen’) to the settlement of the Alpine area (8 BC). The dates of the conspiracies were: Lepidus 30 BC, Murena and Caepio 23 BC, Egnatius 19 BC.

  6. Julia, notorious for her licentious conduct. Among her adulterous relationships was that with Iullus Antonius (son of the triumvir), which led in 2 BC to her banishment and his suicide. Hence Seneca’s comparison (‘a second formidable woman…’) with Cleopatra and the elder Antony, whom Augustus had to deal with in 31 BC.

  7. Cicero’s brother-in-law, to whom he addressed a great many of his letters.

  8. Tribune in 91 BC: he proposed some revolutionary measures which provoked fierce opposition and led to his assassination.

  9. Virgil, Georgics 3.66–7.

  10. Papirius Fabianus taught Seneca himself and was much admired
by him (Letter 100).

  11. Gaius Duilius, consul in 260 BC, defeated the Carthaginian fleet in the same year and celebrated the first naval triumph.

  12. For Dentatus see n. 10 to Tranq. Seneca refers to his triumph over Pyrrhus in 275 BC.

  13. Appius Claudius Caudex, consul in 264 BC.

  14. As consul in 263 BC he captured Messana in Sicily from the Carthaginians.

  15. During his praetorship in 97 BC. Bocchus was king of Mauretania.

  16. This was the occasion of the opening of Pompey’s theatre (the first stone theatre in Rome) in 55 BC.

  17. The ‘somebody reporting which Roman general…’ above. Lucius Caecilius Metellus captured the Carthaginian war elephants in Sicily in 250 BC.

  18. The religious boundary of a city, beyond which the auspices could not be taken.

  19. Seneca pinpoints the characteristic features of the main philosophical creeds: Socratic argumentation; the scepticism of Carneades, head of the Platonic Academy in the mid second century BC; Epicurean quietism; Stoic self-control; the extreme self-denial of the Cynics.

  20. Xerxes, on his expedition against the Greeks in 480 BC.

  21. Gaius Marius was a major military and political figure in the later second and early first centuries BC: the first of his many consulships was in 107.

  22. Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus was traditionally appointed dictator in 458 BC to fight the Aequi. The second dictatorship referred to here is historically suspect.

  23. Scipio Africanus Maior (236–184/3 BC) defeated Hannibal in 202 and Antiochus, king of Syria, in 189. Seneca refers to Scipio’s forbidding his bust to be set up in the temple of Jupiter and to his withdrawal into exile following political attacks on himself and his brother Lucius.

  24. Apparently one of the emperor Gaius’ whims was to emulate Xerxes’ bridging of the Hellespont (cf. n. 20) by building a bridge of boats from Baiae to Puteoli. This caused a shortage of provisions, as there were insufficient boats left to import corn.

  25. Tacitus (Ann. 1.7) mentions him holding the post of praefectus annonae, so the story is particularly appropriate for Paulinus.

  26. This was the practice with children, who were buried at night.

  LETTERS

  LETTER 24

  1. The list of examples is characteristic of Seneca and other rhetorical and moralizing writers. P. Rutilius Rufus was consul in 105 BC and exiled in 92. Q. Metellus Numidicus, consul in 109, was exiled in 100. The story of C. Mucius Scaevola dates to the war between the Romans and the Etruscans around the end of the sixth century. Socrates died in prison in 399.

  2. Cato fought on Pompey’s side in the Civil War, and committed suicide in 46. The dialogue of Plato was the Phaedo, which recounts the last hours of Socrates.

  3. Q. Metellus Scipio was another Pompeian commander, defeated at Thapsus in 46.

  LETTER 57

  1. In Letter 53 Seneca records that he was horribly seasick on the voyage to Baiae, a fashionable holiday resort. So, to avoid repeating the experience, he returns by an alternative route, a tunnel built in the time of Augustus to connect Naples and Puteoli.

  LETTER 79

  1. Now Taormina, on the eastern coast of Sicily.

  2. ‘Live unnoticed’ was Epicurus’ motto, representing his ideal of the quiet life away from the hurly-burly of public affairs. Metrodorus of Lampsacus was one of his most distinguished pupils.

  LETTER 110

  1. Nomentum is the modern Mentana, about 14 miles from Rome, where Seneca had a villa.

  2. Kinds of attendant spirit (like our ‘guardian angel’), who looked after the individual man’s or woman’s fortunes.

  3. From De Rerum Natura 2.55–6.

  4. A Stoic philosopher and one of Seneca’s teachers.

  from NATURAL QUESTIONS

  PRAEF. 1–10

  1. Virgil, Aeneid 4.404, from a simile describing ants.

  4A. 2. 4–6

  1. Egypt was part of the Persian Empire from 525 to 332 BC.

  INDEX

  Abelard, Peter xviii

  acceptance: of circumstances 46;

  of human failings xxi, 54–5

  accounting for time 61–2

  accumulation of misfortunes 19

  Achilles 35

  adoption 77

  adultery with Julia Livilla,

  Seneca’s alleged viii, xxii

  Aeneas 10

  afterlife 82

  agricultural imagery 57, 66

  Agrippina viii

  aims, personal 40–41, 46, 50, 60, 61–2

  air 94; fiery (pneuma) xiv

  Alcestis 27

  alcohol 56, 58, 60, 65

  Alexandria, Library of 45

  ambition 19, 28, 44, 54, 60, 108

  Ambrosian Codex x, xi

  ancestors’ simplicity of life 15

  animals: fights in Circus 74–5; lifespan 59; men like ants 109

  annona 80–81, 82

  Antenor 10

  anticipation 68, 78–9, 87; see also procrastination

  Antonius, Iullus 63

  ants 109

  anxiety xix, 87–92; see also fear

  apathy 33

  aphorisms xi, xxiii

  Apicius (gourmet) 15–16

  Apocolocyntosis x

  appearance: personal 22, 72;

  seeing beyond 7, 88

  Arcesilas 58

  Aristides 20

  Aristotle xv, 58, 59n3, 76

  armour 44

  army see military imagery; military service

  art collections 71

  Asia, province of 9

  association of ideas xx

  Athenodorus 36–7, 41

  Athens 9, 39–40; see also Socrates

  Attalus (Stoic philosopher) xiii, xx, 103–4

  auctions 71

  audit of life 61–2

  Augustine of Hippo, St xvii

  Augustus, Emperor 62–3

  aunt, Seneca’s vii, 26–8

  autobiographical information in letters xii

  avarice xv, 65

  Aventine Hill 75

  Bacon, Sir Francis, Baron Verulam xix

  Bacon, Roger xviii

  Baiae, journey from 93–4

  banquets 14, 30, 72

  barber’s shop 72

  bias in self-appraisal 32

  Bion 42, 54

  birth, noble or humble 46

  Black Sea, Greek colonies 9

  blood, sight of 94

  Bocchus, king of Mauretania 74

  books, ownership of 45

  boredom 33–6, 91, 92

  boundaries 61, 109

  bridge of boats, Gaius’ 81

  Bruttium 35

  Brutus, Marcus Junius 11, 13, 14

  buildings: collapse 48, 112;

  dedication of public 77, 83

  burial 27, 28, 52, 83

  burning alive 87, 88

  Burrus, Sextus Afranius viii

  Caepio, Fannius 63

  Caesar, Gaius see Caesar, Gaius Julius; Gaius, Emperor

  Caesar, Gaius Julius 13–14, 50

  Caligula see Gaius, Emperor

  calm, inner see tranquillity

  Campania 35

  Cantabrians 11

  Canus, Julius 52–4

  captives 46, 87, 88, 90

  Carneades 76

  Carthage 18, 19, 75

  Cato, Marcus Porcius (the Censor) 56

  Cato Uticensis, Marcus Porcius 13, 20, 42, 56, 58; death 55, 88, 98

  Caudex, Appius Claudius 74

  Cerberus 91

  chains, captives’ 46

  change 8–9, 11, 52; of place, in exile xxii, 7–14, 19

  Charybdis xx, 95

  children, fear of masks 88

  Chrysippus 31

  Cicero, Marcus Tullius x, xi, xviii, xix, 48, 55, 63–4

  Cincinnatus, Lucius Quintius 80

  Circus 45, 74–5

  cities, immigrants in 7–8

  Claudius, Emperor x

  Claudius Caud
ex, Appius 74

  Cleanthes 31

  clientage 50–51, 61, 71, 76

  clothing 16, 22–3, 44

  Codex Ambrosianus x, xi

  codicariae (boats) 74

  codices, Law Tables termed 74

  collecting works of art 71

  colloquialisms, Seneca’s xi

  colonies 9, 10, 11

  common sense, Seneca’s xv, xvi, xxi–xxii

  Consolation to Helvia xxi–xxii, 3–28; on change of place xxii, 7–14, 19; on disgrace xxii, 7, 19–20; exempla 13–16, 19–20, 23; on family as consolation xxii, 25–8; on loss of son’s presence 20–28; on poverty xxii, 7, 14–19; on Seneca’s feelings in exile xxii, 5–20

  consul, Seneca as suffect viii

  Corduba vii

  corn supply 80–81, 82

  Corneille, Pierre xvi

  Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi 23

  Cornelius Severus 96

  Corsica viii, xxii, 8, 10–11, 12

  cosmetics 22

  cosmology xiii, xiv, 8–9, 28, 82, 102, 107, 112

  Cossura (Pantelleria) 8

  Cotta, Gaius Aurelius 23

  courage: women’s 23, 27, 28; see also fortitude

  creation 107

  Croesus, king of Lydia 50

  crowd, mixing with 56

  Curius Dentatus, Manius 15, 40, 74

  Cynics xv, 76

  Dacians 109

  dancing 56–7

  Danube 109

  darkness, mental xx, 18, 101–2

  De Vita Beata ix, x

  death: afterlife 82; equanimity at 47, 48–9; facing up to violent 87, 88, 89–90; fame after 98; fear of 19, 67, 71, 90, 91–2, 108; gradual process 91; in harness 83; Helvia’s relatives’ 4–5; learning how to die 66, 77, 82; regrets on misuse of time 70–71; wish for 91, 92

  Demetrius (Pompey’s freedman) 43

  Democritus xxi, 33, 51, 76, 97

  Dentatus, Manius Curius 15, 40, 74

  desires 34, 47, 60, 65, 82, 108;

  sexual 19, 44, 65

  dialogue structure x, xi, xxi

  dialogues and other treatises x, xi, xxi and see individual entries for Consolation to Helvia; On the Shortness of Life; On Tranquillity of Mind; De Vita Beata

  Diderot, Denis xviii

  Dio Cassius viii

  Diogenes 43

  Diomedes 10

  disappointments 51–2

  disasters, natural 112–13

  disgrace 44, 49: in exile xxii, 7, 19–20

  display: false friendship motivated by 66; see also ostentation

  diversions 24, 35, 56–8