Seeing Seneca Whole (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition)

SEEING SENECA WHOLE COLUMBIA STUDIES IN THE CLASSICAL TRADITION under the direction of WILLIAM V. HARRIS (Editor) • ...

Author: Katharina Volk | Gareth D. Williams

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SEEING SENECA WHOLE

COLUMBIA STUDIES IN THE CLASSICAL TRADITION under the direction of

WILLIAM V. HARRIS (Editor) • EUGENE F. RICE, JR. ALAN CAMERON • SUZANNE SAID KATHY H. EDEN • G.D. WILLIAMS

VOLUME XXVIII

SEEING SENECA WHOLE Perspectives on Philosophy, Poetry and Politics EDITED BY

KATHARINA VOLK AND GARETH D. WILLIAMS

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

Cover illustration: Bust of Pseudo-Seneca (Peter Paul Rubens, 1577-1650). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.843). Photograph, all rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This book is printed on acid -free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 0166-1302 ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15078 2 ISBN-10: 90 04 15078 1 © Copyright 2006 by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii List of Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams, “Introduction” . . . . . . . xiii Richard Tarrant, “Seeing Seneca Whole?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 James Ker, “Seneca, Man of Many Genres” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 John M. Cooper, “Seneca on Moral Theory and Moral Improvement” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Katja Maria Vogt, “Anger, Present Injustice and Future Revenge in Seneca’s De Ira” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Jula Wildberger, “Seneca and the Stoic Theory of Cognition: Some Preliminary Remarks” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Wolfgang-Rainer Mann, “Learning How to Die: Seneca’s Use of Aeneid 4.653 at Epistulae Morales 12.9”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 John Henderson, “Journey of a Lifetime: Seneca, Epistle 57 in Book VI of EM” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Gareth D. Williams, “States of Exile, States of Mind: Paradox and Reversal in Seneca’s Consolatio ad Helviam Matrem” . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Spencer Cole, “Elite Scepticism in the Apocolocyntosis: Further Qualiﬁcations” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Katharina Volk, “Cosmic Disruption in Seneca’s Thyestes: Two Ways of Looking at an Eclipse” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Passages cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

PREFACE

The present volume grew out of the conference “New Directions in Seneca Studies,” which took place at Columbia University on February 27 and 28, 2004. Organized by William Harris with the support of the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, this gathering brought together ten scholars who approached the work of the Roman politician, philosopher and poet from a variety of perspectives. Seven of the original speakers are represented in the volume, which also includes three further papers that were solicited speciﬁcally for this publication. We extend our gratitude to all the contributors, with special thanks to Richard Tarrant for allowing us to use for the collection as a whole a modiﬁed version of the title of his paper. In addition, we wish to thank William Harris, without whose initiative and encouragement this volume would never have seen the light of day; the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean and the Stanwood Cockey Lodge Fund, which have lent ﬁnancial support; the editors of Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, who have kindly accepted the volume for publication in the series; and the helpful staﬀ at Brill. We are particularly grateful to our research assistant, Stephen Distinti, for his invaluable help in preparing the manuscript. Finally, we thank Princeton University Press for the permission to reprint John M. Cooper’s chapter from Knowledge, Nature, and the Good (2004); the Jeﬀ Wall Studio for the right to reproduce the photograph in Figure 1; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for letting us put an image of Rubens’ Bust of Pseudo-Seneca on the dustjacket. Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams New York, March 2006

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS spencer cole holds a Ph.D. in Classics from Columbia University. He specializes in Latin literature of the late Republic and early Empire. john m. cooper is the Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He works on Greek philosophy and is the author of Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (1975), Reason and Emotion (1999), and Knowledge, Nature, and the Good (2004), and the editor of Seneca: Moral and Political Essays (1995) and Plato: Complete Works (1997). john henderson is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of books on Seneca’s letters, on Phaedrus, Statius, Pliny, Juvenal, and Juvenal’s nineteenth-century editor John Mayor, on Roman gardening and on Thorvaldsen’s Museum. 2006 publications include The Medieval World of Isidore of Seville: Truth from Words (CUP), Oxford Reds: Classic Commentaries on Latin Classics, and an edition of Plautus’ Asinaria. james ker teaches in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published articles on various areas of Greek and Latin literature, and is presently completing a book on Seneca. wolfgang-rainer mann is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He is the author of The Discovery of Things: Aristotle’s Categories and Their Context (Princeton 2000). Currently he is completing a book length study, to be entitled Fighting with Words: Dialectic and Eristic in Plato’s Protagoras and Euthydemus. He also works and publishes on 19th century philosophy. richard tarrant is Pope Professor of Latin at Harvard University. His publications include editions with commentary of Seneca’s Agamemnon and Thyestes, and the Oxford Classical Texts edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He is currently completing a commentary on Virgil, Aeneid 12.

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katja maria vogt teaches Philosophy at Columbia University. She specializes in ancient philosophy and ethics and has published Skepsis und Lebenspraxis: Das pyrrhonische Leben ohne Meinungen (Freiburg 1998) as well as a number of articles in both ﬁelds. Currently, she is completing a book on early Stoic political philosophy and working on Plato’s Republic and Theaetetus. katharina volk teaches Classics at Columbia University. A specialist in Latin poetry, she has published The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius (Oxford 2002) as well as numerous articles on topics ranging from Homeric formula to the Aetna poem. Currently, she is working on a book on Manilius. jula wildberger is Lecturer of Greek and Latin at University College London and Privatdozentin at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main. Her forthcoming habilitation thesis Seneca und die Stoa. Teil 1: Der Platz des Menschen in der Welt is a systematic exposition of Seneca’s physics and logic as part of the Stoic discourse. She is preparing a bilingual edition of Seneca’s De ira, and has written articles on Stoic anthropology and on Hellenistic philosophy in Lucan and Ovid, whose Ars amatoria was the subject of her dissertation (1998). gareth d. williams teaches Classics at Columbia University. He is the editor of Seneca’s De otio and De breuitate uitae (Cambridge 2003) and the author of recent articles on Seneca’s Natural Questions.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Cover: Peter Paul Rubens, Bust of Pseudo-Seneca, before 1626. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.843). Photograph, all rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Figure 1: Jeﬀ Wall 1999–2001, After Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the Preface (transparency in lightbox) = Doy 2005, Plate 8. Figure 2: The “Crypta Neapolitana” (from a 17th cent. engraving) = Maiuri 1937, 13.

INTRODUCTION Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams So much can be gathered, inferred or surmised about the “true” character and nature of L. Annaeus Seneca from the writings of the elder Pliny, Tacitus and others in the ﬁrst century CE and later, but so little of value is revealed in his own writings. Much is written by others of his considerable eloquence, his philosophical high-mindedness, his impressive literary versatility and his important restraining inﬂuence on Nero; but there is also much on the negative side, extending from allegations about his hypocrisy and his dark political inﬂuence to the corrupting potential of his “daggered” literary style. This complex and intriguing ﬁgure, so centrally implicated in the labyrinthine politics and controversies of Nero’s reign in particular, has an obvious appeal to specialists in many branches of modern scholarship, from imperial history to literary biography, from ethical, political and natural philosophy to literary history, criticism and theory. In times that encourage cross-disciplinary research this rich diversity of interest doubtless oﬀers one explanation for the ever-expanding growth of Senecan scholarship in the last three decades or so—a growth stimulated in part by the pioneering eﬀorts of particular scholars and scholarly movements, but one that has also been encouraged by at least three broader developments. First, the long-inﬂuential view that “Silver Latin” marked a degenerate departure from the Classical standards of the Ciceronian Golden Age has given way to less jaundiced appraisals of the forces (the rise of declamation in particular) that shaped the evolving literary tendencies of the early empire, so many of them exempliﬁed in Seneca’s elliptical, highly mannered style; the criticisms of a Quintilian, as stern in his condemnation of Seneca’s dangerous stylistic inﬂuence (Inst. 10.1.125– 131) as he is committed to Cicero as the Classical role-model par excellence (cf. 10.1.123), represent only one side of a picture whose other side has increasingly drawn sympathetic viewers in recent scholarship. Second (and this is a related point), Seneca’s direct, highly engaging style is itself an active component in the therapeutic work to which so much of his prose philosophy is directed. What were the special conditions under the early emperors, what the distinctive socio-political or

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-cultural tensions, that contributed to or exacerbated the spiritual needs that Seneca’s prose writings aim to address and satisfy? What literary techniques give his spiritual treatment special force? Such questions give Seneca’s writings a powerful resonance and relevance today in a modern world so preoccupied with alternative modes of living as well as with chemical, psychotherapeutic and meditational forms of escape from the depersonalizing pressures of everyday life. Third, Senecan tragedy has been released in modern scholarship from the overbearing shadow of Greek tragic inﬂuence, important new editions of several of the plays have placed their literary study on a fresh footing, and the movement in modern art, literature and ﬁlm to ever more graphic depictions of sensational violence and cruelty has arguably contributed further to an impressive resurgence of interest in Seneca tragicus. In sum: if, as Tacitus has it (Ann. 13.3), Seneca’s literary talent was “well adapted to the ears of his age,” then his writings in both prose and verse are also well attuned to our times. This gathering of momentum in modern Senecan study was one important factor, Seneca’s cross-disciplinary relevance to so many different areas of modern Classical scholarship another, that prompted the organization of a conference on Seneca that took place under the auspices of the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean at Columbia University in February 2004. If Seneca’s life was a complex amalgam of diﬀerent roles as (in Miriam Griﬃn’s words) “a philosopher in politics,” his writings are also famously diverse in their generic range and versatility, spanning “speeches, poems, letters and dialogues” (Quint. Inst. 10.1.129) and extending among his extant works alone to at least nine tragedies, twelve moral treatises (Dialogi), two books On Clemency (to Nero), one hundred and twenty-four Moral Epistles, eight books of Natural Questions, seven On Favours, and the extraordinary Apocolocyntosis or Gourdiﬁcation, that ribald treatment of Claudius’ non-deiﬁcation after he ﬁnally managed to “gurgle out” his last breath (cf. 4.2) in 54 CE. A main objective of the Columbia conference was to explore from a broad range of perspectives—historical, literary, socio-political, philosophical—the diﬀerent signiﬁcances that the texts acquire when appropriated by one kind of reader (or specialism) as opposed to another, and also the beneﬁts and mutually informing meanings that can result from crossing party-lines and applying a combination of theoretical and/or interdisciplinary approaches to the same work(s). Of course, this particular attempt to “see Seneca whole” (to borrow from the title of Richard Tarrant’s essay) oﬀers but one contribution to what is a

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broader and most welcome tendency in modern Senecan scholarship. But we neverthless believe that the individual papers at the Columbia conference succeeded in shedding fresh light on, and asking stimulating questions of, particular works, parts of works and the shape or construction of the Senecan oeuvre as a whole (especially in the identiﬁcation of possible patterns of conceptual coherence across the oeuvre), and thus in opening up distinct lines of inquiry in a ﬁeld of study that is becoming increasingly crowded. Of the ten essays gathered in this volume versions of seven were presented at the Columbia conference, three acquired later by invitation to John Henderson, Wolfgang-Rainer Mann and Jula Wildberger. In general, the collection may be divided into four categories. First, those that are panoramic in scope: Richard Tarrant set the tone for the original conference in his opening address entitled “Seeing Seneca Whole?,” the published version of which oﬀers a synthetic overview of certain pervasive features of Senecan thought and writing, among them Seneca’s intense engagement in both his prose and tragedies with the Augustan poets, and also the negative implications (“grounds for optimism are slim indeed …”) of his predilection for highly vivid and compelling portrayals of human weakness and moral failing, notably extending to his dark portrayals of the ﬁgure of the tyrant in both his prose and verse. While Tarrant traces important thematic continuities across the Senecan oeuvre, James Ker concentrates on questions of genre, ﬁrst relating the restless generic diversity of Seneca’s writings to his ancient proﬁle as a man of many diﬀerent pursuits (studia), which stretch beyond politics, literature and philosophy not least to viticulture. Ker’s Seneca shapes his oeuvre by conscious principles of inclusion, exclusion and the reworking of inherited genres, with his diﬀerent generic experiments subsumed within the economy of a larger polygeneric project, one genre often embedded within or overlapping with another. Indeed, for Ker, the language and idea of economics supplies an important bridging concept across Seneca’s corpus, the notion of “returns,” say, or “(self-)accounting” and spiritual “gains” etc. contributing to the wider “textual economy” for which Ker argues. Second, philosophy: four essays test diﬀerent aspects of Seneca’s philosophical credentials and position-taking across his oeuvre, the ﬁrst of them perhaps laying down the boldest challenge in John M. Cooper’s contention that Seneca rejects, and openly disparages, certain prominent modes of Stoic philosophical argumentation while still holding

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the Stoic positions that such argumentation traditionally supports. The ethical philosophy that he espouses may be no diﬀerent in principle to that of the foundational Stoics, but he promotes those conclusions through his rhetorical rather than logical force of argument, and in at least this respect his Stoicism diﬀers from its archetype. Of course, Seneca’s rejection of a certain kind of Stoic argumentation need in no way imply any simpliﬁcation or dilution in his own philosophical system. In this respect the contributions of Katja Maria Vogt on Seneca’s analysis of anger in his On Anger and of Jula Wildberger on the Stoic theory of cognition and Seneca’s relation to it both demonstrate his complex, even potentially innovative, engagement with highly technical aspects of the Stoic tradition. So in the case of anger Vogt’s Seneca grapples with the problem of how (if at all) the early Stoic classiﬁcation of anger as a desire for revenge may be reconciled with the notion of anger as pain occasioned by perceived injustice. In arguing that Seneca deftly acknowledges the pain-element even as he remains true to the conventional Stoic deﬁnition, Vogt casts him as an active participant in an ongoing Stoic controversy rather than as a passive transmitter of received ideas. The phenomenon of Stoic assent looms large in Vogt’s analysis of Seneca on anger, and so too in Jula Wildberger’s examination of how a written text can begin to generate the special kind of cognition in the reader that, for Stoics, is the origin of wisdom. What devices does Seneca deploy in striving fully to “grip” and motivate his reader in this direction, the goal of philosophical progress being to adjust and reﬁne our conceptual thinking until there is no inconsistency in our “right reason”? Even if complete wisdom is in practical terms unattainable and the perfect wise man is eﬀectively a chimera, Wildberger’s Seneca engages imaginatively with a major challenge indirectly thrown down by Stoic epistemology: how to empower a text actually to make its reader better or wiser? A particular aspect of philosophical wisdom preoccupies Wolfgang-Rainer Mann in his contribution on Stoic and Senecan attitudes to dying and “preparing for death” in life—a contribution which fuses philosophical and literary approaches to the diﬀerent texts on which he focuses, beginning with parts of the Aeneid. If Virgil’s Dido is cast as admirably heroic and “philosophical” in the way she embraces her own death by suicide (however premature that death may be from an alternative perspective within the text), she serves for Mann as a powerful antitype to the remarkable Pacuvius who is portrayed in the twelfth of Seneca’s Moral Epistles as staging his own funeral-rites on

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a daily basis, as if rounding out each day as if it were his last. Seneca’s quotation in this letter of Dido’s words in Aeneid 4 as she resigns herself to her death proves pivotal in Mann’s demonstration that Pacuvius is utterly unlike Dido, and anything but truly philosophical, in his constant rehearsals of his own death-rites. This negative exemple of “preparing for death” oﬀers a spectacular foil to Mann’s exploration of the positive aspects of this most Stoic of exercises. Third, Seneca as a literary philosopher: if the essays of Cooper, Vogt, Wildberger and Mann fully establish Seneca’s credentials as a “serious” philosopher, to what extent is his philosophical message aﬀected, shaped or enhanced by the literary medium in which he casts it? To what extent is literary form essential to, even part of, that message? John Henderson takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the Moral Epistles, with early emphasis (among much else) on the letter-form itself— “the stop-start stagger of epistolarity,” closure always followed by new incipit—as mimetically recreating or coinciding with the staccato movement of “real” philosophical progress. Our main destination is Seneca’s account in the ﬁfty-seventh letter of the claustrophobia that allegedly aﬄicted him on his journey from Baiae back to Naples via the shortcut of the so-called crypta Neapolitana, a tunnel connecting Naples and Puteoli. The tunnel indeed serves as “a way through” on Henderson’s reading, in that the letter’s broader reﬂections on (coping with the prospect of) death enable Seneca’s persona to pass through his fears; his imprisoning experience underground is paradoxically liberating, the letter an important staging-post for his (our) gradual emancipation from the everyday world of contingency. Literary form and philosophical content are again inextricably bound together in Gareth Williams’ essay on the exiled Seneca’s Consolation to Helvia, his mother. Seneca himself draws attention early in the work to the paradoxical circumstances in which he, the exile on Corsica (41–49 CE), here gives rather than receives consolation. For Williams this paradoxical emphasis ﬁnds signiﬁcant reverberations throughout the Consolation, not least in the possibility that the “real” exile here may not be Seneca but the many vice-ridden types that he surveys in the course of the treatise, types who are “exiles” from themselves, from self-knowledge, from the good. On this approach the Consolation to Helvia is perhaps concerned not so much with the speciﬁc case of Seneca’s exile as with the ﬁgurative potential of “exile” as a pervasive human condition, embracing the remote and self-suﬃcent wise man no less than the ordinary delinquent who is estranged from the good.

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In the fourth category, two essays explore possible links between Seneca’s writings and the socio-political contexts in which they were composed. Spencer Cole argues that Seneca’s vicious ridicule of Claudius’ claim to divinity in the Apocolocyntosis is in fact designed to safeguard in its limited way the institution of imperial apotheosis from disrepute; Claudius is no Augustus, whose divine status and cult titles are by contrast aggressively emphasized in the Apocolocyntosis and elsewhere in Seneca’s oeuvre. While Cole implicates the Apocolocyntosis in ﬁrst-century CE reﬂection upon the institutional integrity of imperial apotheosis, Katharina Volk’s examination of the philosophical underpinnings of the sun’s reversal in Seneca’s Thyestes is the starting-point for a broader political, and especially Neronian, reading of the play. Her evil Atreus aspires to god-like omnipotence in his ecstasy at ﬁnally inﬂicting terrible vengeance on his brother, Thyestes. If, the sun literally dispelled, Atreus walks tall as the (self-projected) sun-god incarnate, he oﬀers for Volk a tantalizing model or ghost for Nero, that other aspiring Phoebus; and she adduces further evidence to argue that the Thyestes is in eﬀect an anti-Neronian play written in the last years of Seneca’s life after his ﬁnal alienation from his former charge. No volume of this sort can seek to oﬀer more than a series of snapshots, taken from many diﬀerent angles, of the range and complexity of Seneca’s writings. Diﬀerent contributors follow their given preferences, some areas (such as philosophy) and works receive more attention than others, signiﬁcant parts of the corpus are omitted or underrepresented (nothing on the Natural Questions, for example, or On Favours, and Senecan tragedy receives but limited coverage), and our editorial duties have merely reinforced our awareness of how diﬃcult it is to capture within a limited space the many facets and fascinations of Seneca’s literary/philosophical character. The essays collected here are nevertheless oﬀered in the hope that they shed signiﬁcant light on those Senecan areas that are covered, and that the aggregate fairly reﬂects our concerted eﬀort at the original Columbia conference to “see Seneca whole.”

SEEING SENECA WHOLE?

Richard Tarrant Even Seneca’s harshest critics give him credit for versatility.* One of the earliest of those critics, Quintilian, writing in the generation after Seneca’s death, paid grudging tribute to the variety of his writings: tractauit etiam omnem fere studiorum materiam; nam et orationes eius et poemata et epistulae et dialogi feruntur (“he dealt with nearly every branch of literature; speeches, poetry, letters, and dialogues by him are in circulation,” Inst. 10.1.128–129). But despite the many-sided character of Seneca’s output, Quintilian clearly recognized—and deplored—some fundamentally consistent features in his work. Seeing Seneca whole has, however, been diﬃcult for his modern students. There has been much recent progress in all areas of Senecan studies, but for understandable reasons the main contributions have tended to focus on one or the other of the two main bodies of his surviving work, the tragedies and the philosophical texts. That is particularly true of commentaries, which have fuelled many of the recent advances in this area. But since the present set of essays aims to explore all aspects of Seneca’s work, I thought it might be appropriate in this context to attempt a brief synthetic treatment of some pervasive aspects of his thought and writing. 1. You Are Who You Quote Virgil, maximus uates (B.V. 9.2) Ovid, ille poetarum ingeniosissimus (Q Nat. 3.27.13)

One consequence of the intensive study of Senecan tragedy in recent decades has been an increased awareness of Seneca’s indebtedness to Augustan poetry, especially that of Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, and at the same time a greater appreciation for his creative reuse of that Augustan * I wish to thank James Ker, Alessandro Schiesaro, and Katharina Volk for helpful comments and questions.

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material.1 Turning to the prose writings, one is struck by the frequency with which Seneca draws on the same poetic sources for supporting or illustrative citations.2 Virgil and Ovid are by far the most often quoted writers, and in several places Seneca combines citations from them for a particularly strong appeal to poetic authority.3 In Q Nat. 3.1.1 Seneca follows Virgilian and Ovidian quotations with a line of Lucilius, the dedicatee of this and several other works of Seneca, including the Epistulae morales; naming him in the same breath as Virgil and Ovid pays him the highest possible compliment. By contrast, Horace, although his Odes are a constant presence in Seneca’s tragic lyrics, is almost completely missing in the prose works. At times, in fact, Seneca seems to go out of his way not to quote Horace, as, for example, in Tranq. 2.13–15 on obsessive travel as a symptom of inner disquiet, where Horace Ep. 1.11.27 caelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt (“those who race across the sea change their surroundings, not their soul”) would have been the perfect poetic complement, even more apt than the phrase from Lucretius that Seneca does quote, 3.1068 hoc se quisque modo semper fugit (“in this way each one runs away from himself ”), or in Tranq. 17.10, where Seneca gives a Latin translation of a Greek gnome, aliquando et insanire iucundum est (“sometimes even going mad is pleasant”), rather than Horace’s more vivid and memorable statement of the same idea, dulce est desipere in loco (Carm. 4.12.28). Horace’s Epicureanism is not a suﬃcient explanation for this avoidance, since Seneca does cite Lucretius several times, not to mention his frequent favorable references to Epicurus himself. Perhaps a more likely reason is that Horace had not achieved the level of widespread popularity that would have made citations from his poetry immediately recognizable to Seneca’s readers.4 In the tragedies, Seneca’s allusions to Augustan poetry are far from inert echoes; in many cases they constitute radical reinterpretations of the original.5 In the prose works, correspondingly strong readings of Virgil and Ovid often take the form of imposing a sense quite foreign

1 For a specimen of that approach at its most subtle, see Alessandro Schiesaro’s treatment of Virgilian and Ovidian motifs in the Thyestes, in Schiesaro 2003, 70–138, 221–251. 2 See Mazzoli 1970 for full discussion and statistics. 3 Cf. Q Nat. 3.1.1, 4A praef. 19, 5.16.1. 4 See also Mazzoli 1998. 5 A good example is the description of the Pelopid royal house in Thyestes 641–682, which negatively reorients Virgil’s account of Latinus’ palace-temple in Aen. 7.170–191; see my notes ad loc. and on 659–664 in Tarrant 1985.

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to that of the original. Ovid’s Phaethon, who provokes his own doom and threatens to destroy the cosmos by recklessly insisting on driving the Sun’s chariot, becomes for Seneca a generosus adulescens and an icon of uirtus, who scorns the safe path and reaches for the heights, uide quam alte escendere debeat uirtus: scies illi non per secura uadendum … humilis et inertis est tuta sectari: per alta uirtus it (“see how high virtue must climb; you will ﬁnd that it cannot take the safe path … it is for the lowly and idle to seek out a safe route: virtue goes through the heights,” Prov. 5.10– 11); cf. also V.B. 20.5 qui haec facere proponet, uolet, temptabit, ad deos iter faciet, ne ille, etiam si non tenuerit, “magnis tamen excidit ausis” (= Met. 2.328) (“whoever resolves, desires, and attempts to act in this way will trace a path toward the gods; indeed, even if he does not reach them, ‘at least he fell in splendid daring’”).6 In such cases Seneca is not being merely perverse or insensitive, but is instead making the cited material his own by appropriating it for a new use. The explicit citation of poetic passages characteristic of the prose works might not seem to oﬀer as much scope for intertextual play as the more allusive style of the tragedies, but interplay of that sort can indeed be found. Here I will illustrate just one type, the presence of explicit citation of Augustan poets in close proximity to allusive reference to the same texts. For example, at Q Nat. 3.27.13–28.2, Seneca quotes several lines from Ovid’s description of the ﬂood in Metamorphoses 1; shortly before the last of those citations, Seneca writes ubi instat illa pernicies mutarique humanum genus placuit (“when that wickedness persisted and the decision was taken to replace humankind”), the wording of which (placuit in particular) clearly evokes Met. 1.260–261 referring to Jupiter, poena placet diuersa, genus mortale sub undis / perdere (“he decides on a diﬀerent punishment, to destroy humankind beneath the ﬂoodwaters”).7 In De ira 2.9.2, in the course of one of Seneca’s numerous descriptions of universal wickedness (on which I will have more to say shortly), he cites the climactic lines of Ovid’s account of the Iron Age: maior cotidie peccandi cupiditas, minor uerecundia est; expulso melioris aequiorisque respectu quocumque uisum est libido se inpingit, nec furtiua iam scelera sunt: praeter oculos eunt, adeoque in publicum missa nequitia est et in omnium pectoribus eualuit ut innocentia non rara sed 6 In Ep. 56.12–13 Seneca cites Aen. 2.726–729, in which Aeneas contrasts his anxiety for the safety of his family on their departure from Troy with his earlier frenzied ﬁghting without thought for his own survival; Seneca glosses the distinction as one between the imperturbable sapiens and the imperitus who fears for his possessions. 7 This passage is also discussed in Katharina Volk’s paper in this volume.

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richard tarrant nulla sit. numquid enim singuli aut pauci rupere legem? undique uelut signo dato ad fas nefasque miscendum coorti sunt: non hospes ab hospite tutus, non socer a genero; fratrum quoque gratia rara est. imminet exitio uir coniugis, illa mariti; lurida terribiles miscent aconita nouercae; ﬁlius ante diem patrios inquirit in annos. (= Met. 1.144–148) Each day the desire for wrongdoing is greater, the shame of it less; with all regard for the better or more just course driven out, lust hurls itself wherever it wishes. Nor are crimes any longer kept hidden: they go in full view, and wickedness has become so open and has taken such a strong hold in the hearts of all that innocence is not rare, but rather nonexistent. Is it just individuals or a few who transgress? On all sides, as if a signal had been given, they throng together to throw right and wrong into confusion. Guest was not safe from guest, nor father-in-law from son-in-law; even brother-love is rare. Husbands plot their wives’ death, wives their husbands’; grim stepmothers mix their pallid poisons; impatient sons seek to learn their fathers’ lifespan.

The quotation is noteworthy at one level because Ovid’s passage literally refers to a period in human history before the Flood, whereas Seneca treats it as an accurate (though incomplete) portrayal of contemporary vice. The discrepancy might suggest that Seneca has simply wrenched the lines from their original context for his own purposes, but I think it is more likely that Seneca realized that Ovid’s description of the Iron Age bore an unmistakable resemblance to the Rome of Ovid’s (and Seneca’s own) day. Seneca’s quotation thus makes explicit an implication already present in his source. But we can go further, by looking closely at the phrase that introduces the Ovidian citation: undique uelut signo dato ad fas nefasque miscendum coorti sunt. The motif of “throwing right and wrong into confusion” does not appear in Ovid’s Iron Age description, but it does appear in a later episode of the Metamorphoses, where Procne, the wife of Tereus, learns that her husband has brutally raped her sister Philomela and is immediately consumed with thoughts of vengeance: fasque nefasque / confusura ruit (“she rushes forth, set on confusing right and wrong,” Met. 6.585–586). I would not go so far as to suggest that the reader of De ira is meant to recall that second Ovidian passage, but at the very least the conjunction shows that Seneca had seen or forged a link between the two passages; the allusion

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to the Procne-Tereus episode has further signiﬁcance for Seneca, since Ovid’s account of that myth functions as a crucial intertext in Seneca’s Thyestes.8 I recently argued that Ovidian passages such as the Iron Age and Procne depict a form of chaos in the moral sphere analogous to the physical chaos with which the Metamorphoses begins, and, in addition, that this concept of moral chaos helped to shape the use Seneca made of Ovid in the Thyestes.9 When advancing that hypothesis I was unaware of the De ira passage, which oﬀers at least some evidence for believing that Seneca did read Ovid in that way. 2. Accentuate the Negative omne futurum incertum est et ad deteriora certius. (Cons. Marc. 23.1) All the future is uncertain, and more certain to be worse than otherwise.

The tragedies and the prose works have usually been thought to represent markedly diﬀerent outlooks on human life. As John Fitch writes in the introduction to his excellent new Loeb edition of the tragedies, “moral philosophy in antiquity is optimistic, which tragedy is not.”10 But just how optimistic is the outlook of Seneca’s prose works? Alessandro Schiesaro has referred in passing to the “restrained optimism” of these texts,11 and Fitch himself perceptively observes that “despite the overt optimism of the philosophical works, their emphasis on the extremes of experience, on adversity, torture, violent death, gives them at times a darkness of timbre comparable to the tragedies.”12 Taking this line of argument further, I would suggest that while Senecan philosophy holds out the ideal of a life lived under the control of reason and in harmony with nature, these works oﬀer a depiction of actual life in which weakness, vice, and corruption are so prevalent that grounds for optimism are slim indeed.

See in particular Schiesaro 2003, 70–85. Tarrant 2002. 10 Fitch 2002, 22. 11 Schiesaro 2003, 20–21. Schiesaro notes some very suggestive similarities between the tragedies and the prose works by focusing on the irrational elements in the ostensibly reason-centered philosophical writings. 12 Fitch 2002, 25. 8 9

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One reason for that impression is Seneca’s predilection for images of universal vice and corruption, examples of which can be found in nearly every one of his philosophical writings. Most of these passages are too extensive to be quoted in full, but some capsule statements will give an indication of their ﬂavor: ceterum idem semper de nobis pronuntiare debebimus. malos esse nos, malos fuisse—inuitus adiciam, et futuros esse. (Ben. 1.10.3) Yet the verdict we must render on ourselves will always be the same: that we are wicked, and have been wicked, and—I regret to add—will always be wicked. hoc scito, istic tantundem esse uitiorum quantum hominum. (De ira 2.8.1) Know this for certain, there [i.e., in the Circus Maximus] you will ﬁnd as many vices as men. nemo sibi tantummodo errat, sed alieni erroris et causa et auctor est. (V. B. 1.4) No-one goes wrong with harm to himself alone, but instead he is the cause and instigation of another’s wrongdoing. Peccauimus omnes, alii grauia, alii leuiora, alii ex destinato, alii forte impulsi aut aliena nequitia ablati; alii in bonis consiliis parum fortiter stetimus et innocentiam inuiti ac retinentes perdidimus; nec deliquimus tantum, sed usque ad extremum aeui deliquemus. (Clem. 1.6.3) We have all done wrong, some in great matters, others in small, some with forethought, others driven by a chance impulse or led astray by another’s wickedness; some of us have failed to stick to our good intentions, and have lost our innocence unwillingly or even while holding on to it; nor have we just done wrong in the past, but we will go on doing wrong to the end of our days.

Descriptions of human weakness or moral failing in Seneca’s favorite poets are invoked with particular emphasis. At Q Nat. 4A praef. 19 Virgil, Ovid, and Menander are cited as authorities for the general depravity of humanity, and at B.V. 9.2 Seneca introduces one of Virgil’s gloomiest gnomai with a verbal fanfare: clamat ecce maximus uates et uelut diuino ore instinctus salutare carmen canit: optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aeui prima fugit. (= Georg. 3.66–67) See how the greatest of poets cries out and, as if inspired with divine power of speech, sings the salutary song:

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the best days of life for wretched mortals are the ﬁrst to ﬂee.

Such images of universal vice take on additional prominence when they are placed as climactic passages at or near the ends of books, as in De ira 2.36.4; Clem. 1.26.1–4; and the ﬁnal pages of Q Nat. 7, which form a lament for the materialism of the age and the consequent lack of interest in philosophy and good learning. Even when Seneca is not explicitly evoking visions of universal corruption, his absolutizing language can give a description of daily life some of the same global coloring. A typical feature is his fondness for expressions based on nemo and omnes or their equivalents, e.g., Ep. 7.2: inimica est multorum conuersatio: nemo non aliquod nobis uitium aut commendat aut imprimit aut nescientibus adlinit (“associating with many people is against our interest: there is no one who does not make some vice appealing to us, or leave its stamp on us, or smear it on us without our knowledge”); and later in 7.7, on the general eﬀect of even a single bad companion: malignus comes quamuis candido et simplici rubiginem suam adfricuit (“a meanspirited friend makes the rust of his malice rub oﬀ on even the most honest and open character”). The strong metaphors in this passage (“smearing” adlinit, “rubbing” adfricuit) lead us toward a more general feature of Seneca’s writing in both prose and verse: his imagination seems to respond more vigorously to vice than to virtue. In his recent book, Restraining Rage, William Harris aptly cites a description of Seneca by Carlin Barton: “a man whose own creative imagination, like that of his nephew Lucan, was ﬁlled with erotically luxuriant scenes of violence.”13 That is well put, but the observation can be generalized: it is not only violence that excites Seneca’s imagination, but moral failure of all kinds, from excessive selfindulgence to its opposing fault, over-activity. Seneca’s evocations of vice have a vividness and an eye for telling detail worthy of Juvenal.14 I am thinking of memorable vignettes such as the restlessly idle characters of Tranq. 12.4, who ﬁll their days with pointless social engagements—having attached themselves to someone’s litter, they go so far as to help carry it—, or the workaholic lawyers of B.V. 12.1, who are still at their desks when the night watchdogs are let loose in the court building. On a larger scale, one could cite the Harris 2001, 115, citing Barton 1993, 23. Satiric elements in Senecan prose deserve a fuller study than they have, to my knowledge, received. 13 14

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extended riﬀs on such topics as noontime gladiatorial combats in Ep. 7 and the glorious cacophony of a bathhouse in Ep. 56. Juxtaposed depictions of virtue and vice are particularly illuminating in this regard. In V. B. 7.3, for example, the structure of the comparison aims for the greatest possible symmetry: altum quiddam est uirtus, excelsum et regale, inuictum infatigabile: uoluptas humile seruile, inbecillum caducum, cuius statio ac domicilium fornices et popinae sunt. uirtutem in templo conuenies, in foro in curia, pro muris stantem, puluerulentam coloratam, callosas habentem manus: uoluptatem latitantem saepius ac tenebras captantem circa balinea ac sudatoria ac loca aedilem metuentia, mollem eneruem, mero atque unguento madentem, pallidam aut fucatam et medicamentis pollinctam. Virtue is something lofty, exalted, and regal, that cannot be conquered or wearied; pleasure is base and slavish, weak and unsteady, its haunt and home the brothel and the tavern. You will come upon virtue in the temple, in the forum, in the senate house, you will see her standing before the walls, covered in dust and burned by the sun, her hands calloused; you will more often ﬁnd pleasure hiding and taking advantage of darkness, around the public baths and gymnasia and places that live in fear of the police, soft and eﬀete, dripping with wine and perfume, either pale or else dyed and made up as if for its own funeral.

The double sequence of the images, however, each time gives vice the more prominent and elaborate second position, and virtue’s calloused hands are easily outdone in imaginative power by the “places that live in fear of the police” (loca aedilem metuentia) frequented by vice. Senecan prose certainly does not lack for positive personal exempla, ﬁgures such as Cato or Socrates, who embody the virtues that Seneca wishes to commend to his audience.15 But even Seneca’s imagines uirtutum can be highly colored by violent or disordered elements, and can also be overshadowed by the attention lavished on incarnations of vice. In Prov. 3.9–10 the tortures of Regulus are contrasted with Maecenas’ notorious self-indulgence: ﬁgunt cutem claui et quocumque fatigatum corpus reclinauit, uulneri incumbit; in perpetuam uigiliam suspensa sunt lumina: quanto plus tormenti tanto plus erit gloriae. … feliciorem ergo tu Maecenatem putas, cui amoribus anxio et morosae uxoris cotidiana repudia deﬂenti somnus per symphoniarum cantum ex longinquo lene resonantium quaeritur? mero se licet sopiat et aquarum fragoribus auocet et mille uoluptatibus mentem anxiam fallat, tam uigilabit in pluma quam ille in cruce; 15

On exempla in Senecan prose see Mayer 1991.

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sed illi solacium est pro honesto dura tolerare et ad causam a patientia respicit, hunc uoluptatibus marcidum et felicitate nimia laborantem magis iis quae patitur uexat causa patiendi. Nails pierce his skin, and wherever he has shifted his tired body, he lies upon a wound; his eyes are forced open in unending wakefulness: but the greater his torment, the greater will be his glory. … So do you think Maecenas is more fortunate, Maecenas fretting over his love-life and mourning the daily rejections of his harridan of a wife, who tries to ﬁnd sleep through the sound of an orchestra playing softly at a distance? Even though he may drug himself with wine and divert himself with the plash of falling waters and deceive his troubled mind with a thousand pleasures, still he will be as awake on his feather bed as Regulus on his cross. But Regulus has the consolation of enduring hardships for the sake of what is right, and he can turn his eyes from his suﬀerings to their cause, while Maecenas, jaded by pleasure and weighed down by an excess of good fortune, is even more troubled by the reason for his suﬀering than by the suﬀerings themselves.

It seems likely that Regulus appealed to Seneca as an avatar of virtue precisely because he oﬀered scope for accounts of physical torture,16 but here Seneca’s treatment seems almost perfunctory when set alongside the lovingly detailed description of Maecenas’ musically assisted slumbers. I would not, of course, wish to deny that many of Seneca’s graphic depictions of immoral or foolish behavior are meant to serve a therapeutic function, just as a skilled preacher will often lead with a powerful description of sinfulness designed to revolt the listeners and make them more eager to repent.17 What I would argue, though, is that in Seneca the overall balance between negative and positive elements is often tilted, at least in terms of rhetorical eﬀect, toward the negative. If my contention is at all persuasive, the obvious next question is, Why is that the case? Seneca’s training in declamation is one likely factor: speciﬁcally, the popular exercise that involved denouncing the evils of the time (the locus de saeculo) provided him with a ready-made repertory of widespread vices and failings.18 At a much more general level, 16 For other references to Regulus cf. Ben. 5.3.2, Tranq. 16.4, Ep. 67.7 and 12, 71.17, 98.12. 17 Traina 1987, 25–41 acutely analyzes Senecan moral rhetoric under the rubric of a “linguaggio della predicazione.” 18 See De Decker 1913, 22–38, Bonner 1949, 60–62 (who notes the commonplace nemo sine uitio est, Sen. Rhet. Controv. 2.4.4).

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wickedness is often more compelling than virtuous behavior, perhaps because most human beings have more direct experience of the former than of the latter. In that respect Seneca is in the same position as other moralists, but I do not think that the same rhetorical imbalance is visible in, for example, Aristotle’s ethical writings. The Stoics’ particularly intense horror of the passions and of the behavior they inspire may oﬀer another partial explanation: what one dreads also fascinates. On that point the analogy between Seneca and a preacher might be pressed a bit further: sin, however roundly condemned, can still exercise a perverse attraction even for a sincere believer.19 Finally, Seneca’s conception of the virtuous person, the wise man or sapiens, itself poses a problem in this regard: his perfection is such that it is diﬃcult to describe him in terms that are both believable and appealing. To say that he commits no wrong action and omits no virtuous one (sapiens autem nihil facit quod non debet, nihil praetermittit quod debet, Clem. 2.7.1) is undoubtedly edifying, but hardly sets the pulses racing. As Seneca himself admits, the pleasures of the wise man are so subtle as to be almost imperceptible: at contra sapientium remissae uoluptates et modestae ac paene languidae sunt compressaeque et uix notabiles, ut quae neque accersitae ueniant nec, quamuis per se accesserint, in honore sint neque ullo gaudio percipientium exceptae; miscent enim illas et interponunt uitae ut ludum iocumque inter seria. (V.B. 12.2) On the other hand, the pleasures of the wise man are gentle and moderate and almost feeble, restrained and scarcely noticeable, given that they do not come in answer to a summons nor, even though they arrive 19 The phenomenon I am describing can be seen in the most digniﬁed and formal expressions of Christian moral sentiment, e.g., the general confession from the evening service of the Anglican liturgy:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have oﬀended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health within us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable oﬀenders. Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy name. Amen. In that text the oﬀenses and shortcomings are present and speciﬁc, while the “godly, righteous, and sober life” that is desiderated remains at best an indistinct prospect.

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unbidden, are they held in high regard or received with any joy on the part of those who experience them; for they mingle and intersperse them in their lives as we vary serious matters with games and amusements.

It is perhaps hardly surprising that Seneca’s moral imagination was more strongly stimulated by wickedness performed with ﬂair and vigor than by the tepid joys of the virtuous. The following two sections take up particular aspects of the larger picture just oﬀered. 3. It’s the Animus, Stupid cum omnia ad animum referamus (Ben. 2.31.1) since we [Stoics] relate everything to the animus

The animus is a constant point of reference in Senecan discussions of the self; in fact, in both Senecan prose and tragedy, the animus often functions as a sort of synecdoche for the whole person. Here I would argue that just as Seneca’s depictions of human life as a whole highlight its ﬂawed and corrupt nature, so also at the microscopic level (as it were), his presentation of the animus is particularly successful in portraying its disorders. A selection of the metaphors in which the animus serves as a synecdoche for the person shows it engaging in a wide variety of somatic behavior; but while the animus has its pleasures (“sed animus quoque” inquit “uoluptates habebit suas”, V. B. 6.1), Seneca more often depicts it in pain or distress. A great soul can be wounded by no weapon (ille ingens animus … uelut nulli penetrabilem telo, De ira 3.5.7–8—the negative phrasing is signiﬁcant), but a weak one throws down its arms at the ﬁrst onslaught (quid terga uertis, anime? quid primo impetu / deponis arma?, Ag. 228–229). The animus can be tossed on storms of passion (irae, amoris omniumque istarum procellarum animos uexantium sunt quaedam praenuntia, De ira 3.10.2) and can complain of queasiness (querelas nausiantis animi, Constant. 10.2); it can crawl into corners to escape the wickedness of the age (obirascens fortunae animus et de saeculo querens et in angulos se retrahens et poenae incubans suae, Tranq. 2.11) and make such a din as to keep its owner from sleeping (quid in causa putas esse? animus illi obstrepit, Ep. 56.7). The anger-prone animus requires especially careful tending and can be soothed by read-

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ings from poetry and history (lectio illum carminum obleniat et historia fabulis detineat; mollius delicatiusque tractetur, De ira 3.9.1). As that delightful image implies, the animus can be engaged in address. Seneca here draws on a long poetic tradition of addresses to one’s thumos, but he invests the convention with a far greater degree of inwardness and self-awareness. One instance of address to the animus in the prose works merits a closer look. In De prouidentia 2.10 the younger Cato prepares to commit suicide rather than surrender to Julius Caesar, and appeals to his animus as follows: aggredere, anime, diu meditatum opus, eripe te rebus humanis (“come, my soul, embark on the exploit you have long pondered, snatch yourself away from human aﬀairs”). Senecan tragedy oﬀers a parallel for the language of that self-exhortation in the words of Medea planning revenge on Jason: Med. 565–566 hac aggredere, qua nemo potest / quidquam timere (“attack here, where no one can be fearing anything”). It is also noteworthy that meditatum usually carries negative associations, being applied to carefully plotted crimes or acts of violence: cf., e.g., Cic. Phil. 2.85 meditatum … scelus; Livy 42.52.3 diu meditatum bellum; and most memorably Tac. Ann. 14.1 diu meditatum scelus (Nero’s murder of Agrippina). It has been observed that Seneca attributes to his tragic irati sentiments or attitudes that would be appropriate for a sapiens: for example, Medea’s scornful rejection of fortune (fortuna semper omnis infra me stetit, Med. 520) or the constancy of Atreus when about to slaughter Thyestes’ sons (stetit sui securus, Thy. 720).20 The passage from De prouidentia might be an example of the inverse process, by which the good man is endowed with characteristics—in this case daring, boldness, endurance of hardship—that in Latin literature are often associated with doers of evil. Another possible instance is Ag. 606, where the person brave enough to overcome the longing for life is described as scorning the ﬁckle gods, contemptor leuium deorum. The phraseology evokes the highly negative characterizations of Mezentius in Virgil (contemptor … deum, Aen. 8.7) and Erysicthon in Ovid (qui numina diuum / sperneret, Met. 8.739–740), but boldly re-evaluates contempt for the gods in positive terms. The Senecan animus speaks as well as being spoken to. In De uita beata 2, Seneca argues that one cannot discover how best to live by observing how most men live, since the vast majority are evidence of the worst form of life. In support of that claim—or, perhaps better, to illustrate 20 See Hine 2000 on the Medea passage, my note in Tarrant 1985 on Thy. 703–704 solus sibi / immotus Atreus constat.

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it by another means—Seneca represents the animus of an honest and self-aware person lamenting in an emotional soliloquy all the times it has acted to secure the good will or admiration of others. The passage is too long to cite in full, so I give only its conclusion: “uides istos qui eloquentiam laudant, qui opes sequuntur, qui gratiae adulantur, qui potentiam extollunt? omnes aut sunt hostes aut, quod in aequo est, esse possunt; quam magnus mirantium tam magnus inuidentium populus est. quin potius quaero aliquod usu bonum, quod sentiam, non quod ostendam? ista quae spectantur, ad quae consistitur, quae alter alteri stupens monstrat, foris nitent, introrsus misera sunt.” “You see those who praise your eloquence, dance attendance on your wealth, court your favor, exalt your power? All of them are either your enemies or, what comes to the same thing, they can be. As great as the throng of your admirers, such is also the number of those who envy you. Why don’t I instead seek some genuine good, something to feel and not to show oﬀ? The things that people gaze at or stop to admire, what one man points out in amazement to another—those things shine brightly on the outside, but are wretched within.”

The content of the passage does not diﬀer from what Seneca might write or does write elsewhere in his own person, but the element of prosopopoeia gives the message an added impact that can be properly called dramatic.21 We may see here an attempt on Seneca’s part to give virtue a human voice, or, in other words, to capture for virtuous characters some of the immediacy and rhetorical power that Seneca deploys so eﬀectively in his portraits of the diseased and deranged. The dramatic character of such speeches suggests another connection between the dramatic and philosophical components of Seneca’s writing. It seems very likely that tragedy exerted such a strong appeal for Seneca at least in part because it oﬀered scope for representing the disordered animus from the inside out. Introspective monologues such as those of Medea (Med. 893–944) and Atreus (Thy. 176–204) oﬀer a complement to the De ira, which repeatedly describes the horrifying outward appearance of the iratus but which lacks a corresponding portrait of such a character’s inner workings.

21 The same can be said of many other passages of direct speech in the prose works; to conﬁne myself to the same dialogue, see V.B. 20.3–5, 24.4–25.3.

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richard tarrant 4. Ars Regni ars prima regni est posse in inuidia pati (H.F. 353) The ﬁrst rule of power is to put up with being unliked.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the distinctive character-type of Senecan tragedy is the tyrant. Such ﬁgures are conspicuous not only for their number but also for the gusto and consistency with which they expound their approach to ruling. Lycus, Aegisthus, Atreus, and their confreres share a belief that the chief prerogative of their position is the capacity to inﬂict pain on their helpless subjects.22 That grim conception of the nature and use of power is equally well represented in the prose works; indeed, if one sets aside De clementia, which is unique both in its imperial addressee and its protreptic function, most of the references to rulers (especially kings) in Senecan prose are negative.23 While it is true that the deiﬁed Augustus is cited several times as a good and moderate ruler,24 those references are far outnumbered by the hostile mentions of the overreachers Xerxes and Alexander,25 legendarily cruel rulers like Phalaris,26 and the mostly anonymous tyranni who stream into Seneca’s prose writings from the declamation-chambers bearing their standard accouterments of whips, chains, and brandingirons.27 It is signiﬁcant that the “maxim of subversive statecraft” (in Ronald Syme’s phrase)28 most often invoked by Seneca is the Accian “let them hate, as long as they fear” (oderint dum metuant).29 22 Cf., e.g., Ag. 269 iura regnorum, with my note in Tarrant 1976, also H.F. 511–513, Thy. 247–248, Ag. 994–995, with my note. 23 On tyrant ﬁgures in Seneca see Favez 1960; Opelt 1951 (not available to me); brief remarks in Tarrant 1995, 228–229. 24 Ben. 1.15.5, 2.25.1, 2.27.2, 3.27.1–4, 6.32.1, B.V. 4.2–5, Clem. 1.15.3–16.1, Cons. Pol. 15.3, De ira 3.40.2–5. 25 Xerxes: Ben. 6.31.1 and 11, B.V. 17.1–2, Constant. 4.2, De ira 3.16.4, Q Nat. 5.18.10; Alexander: Ben. 2.116.1, 5.6.1, 7.2.5, 7.3.1, Clem. 1.25.1, De ira 3.23.1, Q Nat. 5.18.10, 6.23.2–3, Ep. 83.19, 94.62. 26 Ben. 7.19.5 and 7, Clem. 2.4.3, De ira 2.5.1, Ep. 66.18. See also De ira 3.14 on Cambyses. 27 Ben. 1.11.3, 2.18.6, 3.19.3, Clem. 1.11.4, 1.12.1, De ira 2.23.1, Tranq. 5.3, Ep. 28.8, 70.6; cf. also my note on Ag. 988ﬀ. Gunderson 2003, 90–114 has suggestive remarks on the way declamation allowed Romans to explore sensitive themes—among them tyranny—with a kind of allegorical distance. 28 Syme 1958, 362. 29 Cf. De ira 1.20.4, Clem. 1.12.4 and 2.2.2.

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By contrast, instances in which a king or tyrant shows restraint or fails to act angrily are considered deserving of special mention because of their rarity, a point made explicitly at De ira 2.23.3 quo rarior autem moderatio in regibus, hoc laudanda magis est (with reference to Alexander and Julius Caesar); at De ira 3.11.4, recounting a story of Pisistratus refusing to take oﬀense at the abuse of a drunken dinner guest, Seneca argues that if even despots (tyranni) with their swollen natures have been able to repress their natural cruelty, moderation should not be so diﬃcult for ordinary mortals. Seneca’s numerous references to the emperor Gaius constitute a portrait of sadistic villainy equal to anything in the tragedies.30 Several passages associate Gaius with other notorious exempla of tyranny: he is called Phalaris ille (Tranq. 14.4) and described as a pseudo-Xerxes or would-be Xerxes (B.V. 18.5, cf. Ben. 2.12.2); at De ira 1.20.7–8—the rhetorical climax of the book—Gaius is introduced almost immediately after Seneca has quoted Accius’ Atreus. A speciﬁc analogy between Gaius and Seneca’s own Atreus is created by the anecdote given in De ira 2.33, where Gaius condemns a man’s son to be executed and invites the father to dine with him the same day. Like any self-respecting Senecan tragic tyrant, Gaius derives greater satisfaction from inﬂicting mental torture than from mere physical bloodshed. In particular, just as Atreus expects to take delight in observing Thyestes’ reactions to having fed on his children (Thy. 903–907), so Gaius posts guards to scrutinize his guest’s behavior: propinauit illi Caesar heminam et posuit illi custodem … unguentum et coronas misit et obseruare iussit an sumeret (“oﬀering a toast, Caesar handed him the cup and set someone to watch … he sent him garlands and perfumes, and ordered him observed to see if he would use them,” De ira 2.33.4).31

30 In addition to the passages cited in the text, cf. Ben. 2.21.5, 4.31.2, Helv. 10.4, Constant. 18.1–5, De ira 1.20.8–9, 3.18.3. 31 De ira 3.15.1–2 relates a similar incident involving Harpagus and the Persian king (another frequent emblem of tyrannical cruelty).

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richard tarrant 5. Come, Sweet Death nemo in conspicuo mortem habet (B.V. 20.5) No one keeps death in plain view.

It is ﬁtting to conclude as many of Seneca’s treatises do, with the contemplation of death. Death is, of course, the ultimate closural motif, but its fascination for Seneca goes deeper and, I would suggest, is closely bound up with several of the themes I have been discussing. Seneca presents death as the critical test of a person and in particular of the animus, as in Ep. 76.32: atqui cum uoles ueram hominis aestimationem inire et scire qualis sit, nudum inspice; … animum intuere, qualis quantusque sit, alieno an suo magnus. si rectis oculis gladios micantes uidet et si scit sua nihil interesse utrum anima per os an per iugulum exeat, beatum uoca. But when you want to form a proper estimate of a person and to know what he is like, look at him naked; look into his animus, see of what kind it is and of what size, whether it is great with its own resources or with those of others. If he can look on ﬂashing swords with unblinking eyes, if he knows that it makes no diﬀerence to him whether his spirit departs through his mouth or his throat, call him happy.

The following sentence restates the point and clinches it by citing Aeneas’ words to the Sibyl in Aen. 6.103–105. Death also oﬀers welcome escape from the follies of life and from the prison of the world: Tranq. 16.3 (spoken to those who have died bravely) “omnes eﬀugisti casus, liuorem, morbum; existi ex custodia; non tu dignus mala fortuna dis uisus est, sed indignus, in quem iam aliquid fortuna posset” (“You have escaped all misfortune, envy, sickness; you have been released from prison; it is not that the gods thought you deserving of bad fortune, but that they considered you undeserving of being under Fortune’s power any longer”). Death brings ﬁnal deliverance from the abusive power of rulers: Ep. 26.10 qui mori didicit seruire dedidicit; supra omnem potentiam est, certe extra omnem. quid ad illum carcer et custodia et claustra? liberum ostium habet (“whoever has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave; he is above all power, or at least outside its reach. What does he care about jails and guards and conﬁnements? The door lies open for him”). Subtle tyrants, knowing death’s liberating eﬀect, are accordingly reluctant to grant it: Ag. 996 —Mortem aliquid ultra est?—Vita, si cupias mori (“What is worse than death?” “Life, if you are longing to die”).

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Finally, in light of the arguments presented here, death may have oﬀered Seneca the only genuine release from the unsettling products of his turbulent imagination. The question mark in my title reﬂects my own doubt that the foregoing pages could achieve their stated goal, a doubt that my readers are now in a position to share. Seneca is too complex and varied to be rendered whole in a short sketch. But I hope at least to have identiﬁed some of the traits that would ﬁgure in a more fully drawn portrait.

SENECA, MAN OF MANY GENRES

James Ker Seneca’s* may just be the most diverse corpus of writings that survives of any author in classical antiquity.1 Even without factoring in works of dubious authenticity, such as the fabula praetexta entitled Octauia, or those that survive only in fragments, such as a treatise on friendship, we possess an oeuvre comprising (in no particular order) eight tragedies, 124 moral letters in 20 books, two books of a work on the exercise of clemency, a seven-book manual on gift-giving, an eight-book investigation of nature, and a dozen “dialogi”—an umbrella term which covers a three-book work on anger, two consolations on death and one on exile, and works on the tranquillity of mind, moral consistency, the happy life, providence, withdrawal, and the brevity of life. The catalogue can be conﬁdently extended to include at least the three epigrams that survive under Seneca’s name,2 and the prosimetric satire on the death of the emperor Claudius. If more of Seneca’s writings had survived, we would have been able to include orations, geographic and ethnographic works, works on various speciﬁc aspects of the natural world, works on various ethical and social topics, a biography of his father, additional poetry, additional letters, and miscellaneous works that included a request to Messalina to help end his exile (which he later suppressed; cf. Dio 61.10.2) and a posthumous text recording his ﬁnal words as he died (Tac. Ann. 15.63). All this, without seeking to attribute to him the still other works and fragments identiﬁed as Senecan in the medieval and renaissance traditions. There are compelling reasons, for example, to believe that the De remediis fortuitorum

* I am grateful to William Harris for the invitation to participate in the conference “New Directions in Seneca Studies” (Columbia University, February 2004), and to the participants, especially the editors Katharina Volk and Gareth Williams, for their comments. 1 On the corpus, and especially its lost, fragmentary, and dubious works, Vottero 1998. 2 Cf. Prato 1964.

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which manuscripts attribute to Seneca is in fact authentic, and that it adds a further genre to the inventory: a meditatio conducted in writing.3 The sense of breadth or heterogeneity we have when faced with the writings we know is made acute by the fact that Seneca’s works are often the only or the earliest surviving examples of their kind: the only whole Roman tragedies, the only Thyestes play, the earliest complete prosimetric satire, the earliest corpus of prose letters in Latin written for publication, the earliest consolations (excluding Cicero’s consolatory letters), the earliest Fürstenspiegel or “mirror of the prince,” the earliest work on the topic of beneﬁcia, the earliest complete work on anger, and so on.4 All of this puts Seneca, a single author, under considerable weight as the representative of distinct areas of ancient literature, in which capacity he has generated separate strands in the textual tradition as well as separate communities of readers up to the present day. The range of writings is suﬃciently diverse that Seneca has often been split into two or more distinct identities. The persisting tendency in modern scholarship to speak as though Seneca had written only tragedies, or only prose, or only letters would seem to have its origin in earlier forking paths: Martial had written of the “two Senecas” from Corduba, referring straightforwardly to Seneca the Elder and Younger (1.61.7–8), but by the time of Sidonius Apollinaris the dichotomy had been applied to our Seneca all on his own, to produce a philosophical adviser to Nero and a separate writer of tragedies (Carm. 9.232– 238). Petrarch, in turn, while believing erroneously that Seneca the Younger had written the Controversiae which we attribute to his father, reapplied the notion of two Senecas to solve the conﬂict of political allegiance that arose in his mind between the works De clementia and Octauia, the latter still being attributed in his day to Seneca (Fam. 24.5.17); and other renaissance commentators and biographers would variously assign some or all of the tragedies to a son (for Boccaccio, “Marcus” Seneca).5 The bifurcation is often a subvariant of the distinction between a moralizing and a pragmatic Seneca—the notion of hypocrisy that has long undermined Seneca’s coherency and authority. I propose, however, to consider Seneca as a single writer of many Cf. Newman 1988. E.g., on De beneﬁciis as the only specimen of the Peri charitos genre, see Griﬃn 2003, 90; on De ira within the tradition of works Peri orgês, Harris 2001, 88–128. 5 On the renaissance tradition, Panizza 1984; Ferri 2003, 6 n. 15. 3 4

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works, and to ponder the relevance of this fact for both ancient and modern readers. I begin by looking at generic abundance and ﬂexibility as characteristics of Seneca’s reputation in antiquity. I then move on to consider questions that arise in light of his polygeneric status: How did Seneca shape his oeuvre as a whole? How did he shape a genre? 1. Seneca’s Ancient Proﬁle as a Man of Many studia Among our witnesses to Seneca is Quintilian, who remembers having heard him in person (cf. Inst. 8.3.31, 12.10.11) and devotes a section to discussing and criticizing the popularity of his style (10.1.125–131). To guide the would-be orator in choosing models of Latin eloquence, Quintilian catalogues authors in the genres of epic, elegy, satire, iambic and lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, oratory, and philosophy. He mentions Seneca, however, only at the end of the catalogue, admitting that he has deliberately postponed him “in every genre of eloquence” (in omni genere eloquentiae, 10.1.125). The reason he gives for this postponement is that he needs to explain his misunderstood criticisms of Seneca in the past, at a time when “virtually no one but Seneca (solus hic fere) was in young men’s hands,” in which Quintilian had intended “not to abolish him altogether” (non … omnino excutere) but to prevent him from being “placed ahead of better [authors]” (potioribus praeferri non sinebam, 126). And in fact Quintilian’s present deferral of Seneca, in placing him last, treats him precisely as he had supposedly treated both contemporaries and earlier authors; Suetonius, for instance, reports that Seneca “diverted [Nero] away from past orators in order to delay him longer in awe of [Seneca] himself ” (a cognitione ueterum oratorum [sc. auertit] … quo diutius in admiratione sui detineret, Suet. Ner. 52). But Quintilian’s deferral would also appear motivated by a desire to challenge the ubiquity which Seneca deserves in the catalogue of genres—despite the fact that, as Quintilian admits, “he undertook virtually every possible endeavor” (tractauit etiam omnem fere studiorum materiam, 10.1.128). This contrasts with Quintilian’s favorable treatment of Cicero, whom he refers to in diﬀerent categories such as oratory and philosophy, saying “M. Tullius, who as everywhere else …” (M. Tullius, qui ubique, 10.1.123). By postponing Seneca Quintilian additionally seems to gain the advantage of being able to focus on (and to criticize) simply one Senecan style, or dicendi genus, rather than to deal with his style in each genre.

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The overall eﬀect, however, is that Seneca, rather than Cicero, emerges as the climax of the discussion of models, at least as it relates to generic diversity. It is almost as if Seneca occupies a separate or superordinate category of genre all by himself—an ironic reinforcement of the exceptionalism for which he is faulted. The heart of Quintilian’s account gives grudging concession to Seneca’s ability and output (10.1.128–129): ingenium facile et copiosum, plurimum studii, multa rerum cognitio, in qua tamen aliquando ab iis quibus inquirenda quaedam mandabat deceptus est. tractauit etiam omnem fere studiorum materiam: nam et orationes eius et poemata et epistulae et dialogi feruntur. [He had] a versatile and abundant talent, a huge degree of endeavor, much knowledge of things—even if he was sometimes misled by those whom he had assigned to investigate things. He undertook virtually every possible endeavor, since orations of his and poems and letters and dialogues are in circulation.

Quintilian’s formulation is worth noting: he sees Seneca as engaged in a blanket activity of studia, which he undertakes as an opportunist with an eye for raw material, almost regardless of its kind. While there has been debate about the reference of such terms as poemata and dialogi in relation to the extant works, the emphasis on generic abundance and adaptability is clear. At the same time, it is noteworthy that Quintilian feels required to undermine the appearance that a single individual was in fact capable of such an output. He races through the list of genres as if Seneca were somehow a contagion that had infected one genre after another. His mention of Seneca’s secretaries is suggestive to us of the later multiplication of Senecas. It is also uncomfortably similar to the image of Calvisius Sabinus, the libertinus whom Seneca himself had criticized for parading the knowledge of his slaves as his own— “as if he knew what anyone in his household knew” (Ep. 27.7). Giving Seneca a taste of his own medicine, Quintilian both acknowledges and problematizes his abundance as a writer.6 In other ancient receptions we ﬁnd a similarly diverse Seneca. In the play Octauia, which may date as soon as ﬁve years after Seneca’s death, the character Seneca appears in the guise of the failed philosophical adviser pining for the studia of his exile on Corsica (384), speaking in the manner of his prose works, and in particular having Nero throw the 6 Other discussions of Quintilian’s subtle critique, bringing out such aspects as its parody of Senecan style, are surveyed by Vottero 1998, 9 n. 24.

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lessons of De clementia in his face (377–592).7 Yet the language and form of the drama, being adapted very closely from Senecan tragedy, reveal the ease with which Roman audiences could view the dramatic and philosophical Seneca in one and the same persona—indeed, it may be that this was unavoidable. This impression is reinforced by epigraphic evidence which shows that Senecan prose and verse had permeated the Roman popular imagination in equal depth: while a verse from Agamemnon is found quoted in a Pompeian graﬃto, an epitaph from the early second century adapts sentences from both Epistulae morales and De remediis fortuitorum.8 The richest illustration, however, is to be found in the account of Tacitus, whose references to the expertise Seneca brings to his position in the court of Nero—which includes instruction (cf. magister, praecepta), political strategizing (consilia, ratio), taste and decorum (comitas honesta), oratory (oratio, eloquentia, professoria lingua), philosophy (philosophorum praecepta, sapientiae studia), and poetry (carmina)—require us to consider all of Seneca’s known activities as relevant to his historical personality (cf. Ann. 12.8, 13.2–3, 13.11, 13.14, 14.52, 14.56). The same ﬂexibility that Tacitus sees in Seneca’s capacity as Nero’s speechwriter, with his “pleasing talent suited to the ears of his age” (ingenium amoenum et temporis eius auribus accommodatum, 13.3), and in his increase in poetic output as Nero’s poetic interests increased (14.52), would seem to be manifested equally in his use of gardens, villas, money-lending, and patronage, or even in his opportunistic relationships with women of the imperial household or the conversion of his exile into a point of fame. Certainly, the range of studia inertia that his opponents accuse him of appears open-ended (13.42; cf. 14.52–56). A distinctive aspect of these studia, as portrayed by his critics, is the nature of their inﬂuence on the tastes of the people, where Tacitus’ choice of words, “to turn the studia of the citizens toward himself ” (studia ciuium in se uerteret), suggests that the anxiety about Seneca was due in part to his power to monopolize people’s “enthusiasm” (14.52). Seneca’s “renown,” his claritudo studiorum (12.8), has recently been discussed by Thomas Habinek as Seneca’s most distinguishing feature, in which it is clearly the studia as much as the claritudo which are important.9 7 On the representation of Seneca, and allusions to his works, Ferri 2003, 226–293 passim. 8 Cf. Gigante 2001, Newman 1988, 97–98. 9 Habinek 2000.

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This is borne out in Tacitus’ two most extensive Senecan episodes: the interview with Nero (Ann. 14.53–56) and the death scene (15.60– 64). The interview gives us a clear image of Seneca’s adaptability in his oﬀer to Nero to downsize his focus from his gardens and villas to a focus on the animus (14.54), and in ways that evoke various of his literary genres—whether in his careful handling of Nero’s beneﬁcia to him10 or in his transition toward a seclusion and solitude which seem to evoke Epistulae morales. The same impression is conveyed in the death scene by Seneca’s easy shift of attention from his actual will—which he is prohibited from rewriting—to the bequest of an imago uitae suae (15.62). In the death scene, Tacitus has Seneca successively shift from mode to mode, including self-examination, advising through exempla, evaluation of beneﬁcia, consolation, exhortation, praemeditatio, and ultima uerba. While Stephen Dyson plausibly suggests that Tacitus’ purpose is to mock Seneca’s death when he describes three diﬀerent attempts at suicide that are representative of Catonian (bleeding), Socratic (hemlock), and luxurious (bath-ridden) modes respectively, the variety itself demonstrates the polygeneric aspect of Senecan agency in his deﬁning moment.11 Still more emphatic reminders of the breadth of Seneca’s expertise can be found in the works of two contemporaries. Columella mentions Seneca’s farm at Nomentum as a recent illustration that “viticulture can make the paterfamilias wealthy” and that “the return (reditum) on vines is very rich” (Rust. 3.3): his certe temporibus Nomentana regio celeberrima fama est illustris, et praecipue quam possidet Seneca, uir excellentis ingenii atque doctrinae, cuius in praediis uinearum iugera singula culleos octonos reddidisse plerumque compertum est. These days, at least, the region around Nomentum basks in great renown, and particularly the part owned by Seneca, a man of outstanding talent and learning: on his farm it has been ascertained that single iugera of vine-groves have usually returned eight sacks each.

Columella sees viticulture as either an illustration or an extension of Seneca’s ingenium and doctrina, clearly falling within the set of activities in which he excels qua intellectual and celebrity (cf. Q Nat. 3.7.1: ego … uinearum diligens fossor). Pliny the Elder also invokes the name of Seneca 10 Griﬃn 2003, 119 notes that the interview passage “plays on the [Senecan] terminology of friendship and reciprocity.” 11 Dyson 1970, 78.

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to validate the prestige of viticulture, in particular that of the Nomentan farm once owned by Remmius Palaemon and cultivated by his overseer Sthenelus: this was the farm which was admired, and purchased, by “L. Annaeus Seneca, the foremost among men of learning at that time, and in the position of power which later [was] too much [and] collapsed over him, a man most disinclined to admire frivolous things” (L. Annaeo Seneca principe tum eruditorum ac potentia quae postremo nimia ruit super ipsum, minime utique miratore inanium, HN 14.51). Pliny’s reference to Seneca as princeps eruditorum is scarcely innocent: Pliny’s Annales may even be among the sources who recorded, as Tacitus after him still does, that if the Pisonian conspiracy had succeeded against Nero, there had been talk of making Seneca (rather than Piso) the princeps (Tac. Ann. 15.65). Certainly, the breadth of Seneca’s studia, here shown to extend to viticulture, is not dissimilar in type from Nero’s interests in sculpture, painting, singing, horses, and poetry (cf. Tac. Ann. 13.3)—a set of studia which Nero had corralled into his own innovative performance of power.12 Nero’s wide range of activities could all be seen to share a common “stamp,” which combined excess in all things with the motif of concentration ﬁgured in the decoctio Neronis, water ﬁrst boiled then cooled using snow (cf. HN 31.40).13 Seneca exercised his talents on a diﬀerent set of materials: myth, friends, money, exile, vineyards, philosophy, and more. He also gave a unique Senecan “stamp” to each of his endeavors in these ﬁelds, and to his endeavors as a whole. 2. How Seneca Shaped his Oeuvre Precisely what coherency or consistency can we expect to ﬁnd in a repertoire as broad as Seneca’s? This question could be addressed at a number of diﬀerent levels: for example, his Stoic worldview, or his transformation of the literary lexicon. In the present context, I will restrict myself to considering his self-conscious shaping of an oeuvre14 and his reworking of given existing genres. 12 An informative comparison is the wide set of activities attributed to the other rival princeps, Calpurnius Piso, in the Laus Pisonis; these include poetry (163–167) and ball-games and board-games (105–208). 13 On decoctio as a Neronian aesthetic, Gowers 1994. 14 I do not mean to deny the role of accident in determining the oeuvre’s ﬁnal shape, nor the extent to which the oeuvre’s shape is the sum by-product of experiments conducted in single genres. Seneca is conspicuously changeable in following through

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Much scholarly energy has been expended on deﬁning how each Senecan genre relates to its corresponding generic tradition. Thus, Senecan tragedy has variously been singled out for its removal of the chorus from the plane of the action, or an intensely allusive poetic language which signals self-consciousness about Senecan tragedy’s “belatedness” and its “epigonic nature.”15 The Senecan dialogus, in turn, has proven diﬃcult to deﬁne. It lacks genuine dialogue, with interlocutors only entering into the discourse occasionally with objections, introduced by an anonymous inquit; but it has proven equally dissatisfying to call it a “diatribe” (a dubious genre at best), or an essay or treatise, and the term may perhaps be taken to evoke simply the prominent use of prosopopoeia (speciﬁcally, sermocinatio).16 Along these lines, Giancarlo Mazzoli has suggested that the Senecan dialogus centers on a kind of “polyphonic play” (e.g., Cato Uticensis speaks of himself in the third person at Prov. 5.10, while Marcia is addressed by a whole “chorus” of voices at the end of Cons. ad Marc.).17 There have also been attempts to distinguish Seneca’s Epistulae morales from earlier epistolographic writing: unlike Horace’s philosophical letters, they are in prose and addressed to a single correspondent; unlike Cicero’s letters to Atticus (which even if they were not published for the ﬁrst time under Nero were at least an obvious model),18 they appear to have been written with a view to publication and in a more decidedly literary, or “epistoliterary,” mode.19 One passage referring critically to Cicero’s letters, in which Seneca says “so I may pass by all those things which ﬁll the letters of Cicero: which candidate is struggling … how hard a lender on explicit structural programs in his single works (if anything, he tends to impose structure retrospectively, or continually to embark upon altogether new structures, in the course of writing), and we cannot expect anything more disciplined in his structuring of the oeuvre itself. Nevertheless, my goal in the present section is to emphasize those characteristics of the oeuvre that give the appearance, at least in hindsight, of shapeliness. 15 These are just some of the useful observations made respectively by Tarrant 1978, 273 and Schiesaro 2003, 223. 16 Cf. Williams 2003, 3–4; on the “diatribe” see also 26, with reference to Powell 1988, 12–14. Wright 1974 oﬀers excellent structural analysis, though without oﬀering a label beyond that of “moral essays.” 17 Mazzoli 2000, 253, 256. For further bibliography on dialogus, Vottero 1998, 10 n. 25. 18 Cf. Hutchinson 1998, 4, with n. 4. 19 On the novelty of the letters in these respects, Cugusi 1983, 195; Coleman 1974, 279–280, 287–288. For “epistoliterarity,” Henderson 2004, 4 and his contribution to the present volume.

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Caecilius is … It is more than enough to deal with your own woes without dealing with those of another” (ut omnia illa quae Ciceronis implent epistulas transeam: quis candidatus laboret … quam durus sit faenerator Caecilius … sua satius est mala quam aliena tractare, Ep. 118.2), is frequently cited as a fair and revealing account of the major diﬀerence of Seneca’s letters from Cicero’s. Marcus Wilson, for example, explains the exclusion of Ciceronian content in part by invoking Seneca’s communicative goal of presenting philosophical doctrine to a wide public—a goal more easily reached without allusions to “persons and events known to Seneca and Lucilius but not to outsiders”; Catharine Edwards reads the exclusion of Ciceronian content as an introspective turn on Seneca’s part, in which “the authorial self … is turned not towards the outside of Roman political life but rather inwards”; Paolo Cugusi sees the “literariness” of Seneca’s letters precisely in the combination of these two notions.20 The focus on the diﬀerence of Seneca’s tragedies, dialogi, and letters within their own respective traditions has additionally drawn attention to the appearance of heterogeneity within Seneca’s oeuvre. A precise structural deﬁnition of the correspondence with Lucilius, for example, precludes us from treating a single letter as if it were an “essay” in the manner of the dialogi.21 More prominently still, the very notion of tragedy has seemed to be at odds with Seneca’s Stoicism, even if both the tragedies and the prose works can be shown to presuppose the same basic cosmology, as Thomas Rosenmeyer has shown,22 or even if the tragedies can be shown to present positive as well as negative examples (e.g., in Hercules and in Troades) of a sort not radically “other” than those found in the prose works.23 As Schiesaro puts it, Seneca’s choice to write tragedies alongside his philosophical writings is at best “perilous and ambivalent”; Thyestes, for instance, shows “that the other world, the one of passions, blood, revenge, hatred, deceit, and darkness, has its appeal,” and oﬀers the audience a form of spectatorial pleasure.24 Ultimately, Seneca tragicus takes on genre-speciﬁc presuppositions which are separate and distinct from those of the prose works. Indeed, the prose Wilson 1987, 103, Edwards 1997, 24, Cugusi 1983, 196. For a survey of Seneca’s exploitation of epistolary form and a critique of seeing Seneca’s letters as “essays”—or, for that matter, as “exhortations” or “pedagogy”— Wilson 1987 and 2001. 22 Cf. Rosenmeyer 1989. 23 Cf. Biondi 2001. 24 Schiesaro 2003, 253–254. 20 21

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works themselves invoke diverse presuppositions which lead to diﬀerent representations of philosophy in diﬀerent works, and the tragedies vary from one another a great deal in their outlook.25 Alongside this heterogeneity, however, there are signs that Seneca exercised principles of selection over the oeuvre as a whole. It is instructive to consider the genres that are absent from Seneca’s repertoire, and especially the possible motivations for these absences. An awareness of the dangers of certain genres in an imperial context must have played a part in discouraging him from undertaking historiography; his earliest extant work, Consolatio ad Marciam, begins with the cautionary tale of Cremutius Cordus, whose history cost him his life (1.2–4). But he also explicitly asserts that a moralizing framework is far preferable for treating historical or literary material than are the frameworks of historiography, antiquarianism, or philological commentary: “It is more than enough,” he says in a critique of historians in Natural Questions, “to quench your own woes than to pass on those of another to posterity” (quam satius est sua mala extinguere quam aliena posteris tradere! Q Nat. 3, praef. 5; cf. Ep. 88.4–8; De Brev. 13).26 The paucity of allusions by Seneca to the writings, and the genres, of archaic Latin writers must be put down at least in part to a desire to monopolize and modernize the ﬁeld of Latin literature.27 His relationship to his contemporaries, however, is particularly noteworthy, since the genres engaged in by such writers as Seneca the Elder (history), Lucan (epic), Persius (verse satire), Cornutus (etymology, theology), Columella (agricultural manual), Petronius (prose ﬁction), Calpurnius Siculus (pastoral), and others, are all ones which Seneca conspicuously avoided in his own oeuvre. At the very least, we may suspect a collaborative division of labor and/or a competitive drive toward self-diﬀerentiation across the sea of genres in Neronian Rome.28 It is equally instructive to note the combination of works in Seneca’s repertoire digesting the oeuvres of several famous Latin authors, or his own. He emulates Cicero in the arc of his career as orator, exile, politician, philosopher, and martyr, but also rewrites him in his studia: De oﬃciis, De amicitia (though strictly entitled Quomodo amicitia continenda sit), An important emphasis of Boyle 1997. On Seneca’s avoidance of historiography, Armisen-Marchetti 1995, Castagna 1991. 27 Several studies have addressed Seneca’s vexed relationship with earlier models: e.g., Setaioli 2000, 219–231, “Seneca e gli arcaici,” Maso 1999, 43–81, “Maiores in Seneca.” 28 On possible relationships between Seneca and other writers under Nero, Sullivan 1985. 25 26

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letters to a friend, consolations, orations, poetry, discussions of old age (e.g., Ep. 12) or of Scipio and the res publica (e.g., Ep. 86), and more. Within his philosophical writings, Seneca’s emphasis on ethics (above all) and natural philosophy, to the exclusion of logic, has been linked by Brad Inwood to an existing bias within the Roman philosophy of his models in the school of Sextius.29 But the pattern of Seneca’s allusions to the diﬀerent masterworks of Augustan literature yields a disparate but apparently purposeful transposition to his own constellation of genres: while the text he appears to be rewriting most in Natural Questions is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in Epistulae morales it is Virgil’s Aeneid and Georgics; and Seneca’s letters are conspicuously silent about their literary debt to Horace’s Epistles, preferring instead to quote several times from the Sermones.30 Seneca’s echoing of his own works is no less suggestive. The Epistulae morales in particular have the appearance of a reprise or a companion text, revisiting numerous moments of his oeuvre in compressed discussions of such themes as consolation (e.g., Ep. 63, 99), withdrawal (Ep. 73), friendship (Ep. 9, 55.8–11), and beneﬁcia (Ep. 81.3, explicitly supplementing De beneﬁciis), and seeming to run in parallel with the projects of Natural Questions (e.g., the shared conceit of Lucilius in Sicily) and the lost (or never completed) Libri moralis philosophiae (cf. Ep. 108.1, 109.17).31 A structural survey of the oeuvre reveals signiﬁcant shapes. A book from one of the last works, Natural Questions, explicitly expands upon Seneca’s earliest work, the lost De motu terrarum (Q Nat. 7.4). There is a trilogy of consolations, and a trilogy of works dedicated to Serenus, appearing to lead him from scepticism (De constantia sapientis) to unsteady conversion (De tranquillitate animi) to conﬁdent Stoicism (De otio).32 The relationship of De clementia to De ira has been interestingly taken up by Mazzoli, who suggests that the two works belong together in a visible contrast, each concerning opposite topics and opposite “mirror” images of the emperor, yet both (probably) three books in length, both dwelling on the oderint dum metuant topos early in the ﬁrst book, and so on.33 Support might also be seen in the preface of De clementia, where Nero is invited to say: “Anger has not driven me to unjust executions”

29 30 31 32 33

Inwood 1995b, 70. On Horace in Epistulae morales, Berthet 1979. On the Libri moralis philosophiae, Leeman 1953. For the Serenus trilogy, Griﬃn 1974, 13–14. Mazzoli 2003.

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(non ira me ad iniqua supplicia conpulit, 1.1.3). Mazzoli suggests that a similar approach might be taken to the tragedies, which he sees as distortive mirror-images of the prose works; certainly, the same approach might have be taken to Seneca’s ethnographies, if only we had them. Thus, while it may not be possible to chart a “Book of Seneca” with quite the simplicity that one may posit a teleological “Book of Virgil” on the basis of dialectical relationships between the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, Seneca’s meta-literary sensitivities are much in evidence.34 3. How Seneca Shaped a Genre In addition to his shaping of the oeuvre, Seneca’s approach to each genre was in a signiﬁcant sense the same. One path toward recognizing this is oﬀered by the common features of all or most of Seneca’s works: the rhetorical goal is therapeutic rather than narrative, even if the therapy of the tragedies is vindictive; there is a single persona at the center of the text (the addressee, an imagined interlocutor or reader, or, in the tragedies, the protagonist); the persona hovers between two positions, in a state of “crisis,”35 but is invited to ﬁnd transformation by the end of the text, through restoring a better or authoritative self; the persona is made spectator, evaluator, or interlocutor of him/herself through a process of interiorization; the transformation is framed in forensic metaphors, or conceived of in terms of “revenge” or “self-repossession” (both referred to by uindicatio); the cosmological environment is characterized by sympathy between whole and part; the persona experiences both connection and detachment in relation to psychologically evocative landscapes; each text has a momentum toward death or reminders of death. The list could continue, but it is already suﬃcient to illustrate the potential for—and, perhaps, the limitations of—talking about all of Seneca’s writings as if they were shaped like a single genre, or at least shared a single template.36 This template provides us with a sketch of a distinctive Senecan “image of man,” to use Bakhtin’s term for describOn the “Book of Virgil,” Theodorakopoulos 1997. Cf. Mazzoli 1997. 36 The compatibility of the tragedies and prose works along axes such as those listed above is noted by Littlewood 2004, 8, who emphasizes “the fragility of Stoic self-representation” throughout Seneca’s writings: “The Stoic sage’s rejection of conventional moral order can resemble the autonomy of a tyrant: both seek to be absolute rulers of a world they construct and sustain for themselves.” Cf. also 15–102. 34 35

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ing what is at the core of each literary genre. Bakhtin also argues that each genre has its own “chronotope”; if a chronotope is needed that will suit all of Seneca’s genres, it will perhaps be found in the timetable of self-transformation delimited by the text, combined with the time of interior solitude in which the self is turned back upon itself.37 Another path toward recognizing Seneca’s common approach—and equally Bakhtinian—is the fact that no Senecan genre allows itself to be read in a mono-generic way, but rather as part of a larger polygeneric project. For all that the dialogi and the Epistulae are diﬀerent, the dialogi often use an epistolary mode (e.g., the opening of De tranquillitate animi, or the preface to Q Nat. 4a) and the Epistulae include some letters that are equivalent in scope and length to entire dialogi (e.g., Ep. 94, 95). There is a continual embedding of one genre in another: a consolatio in book 6 of Natural Questions, a fabula praetexta hinted at in De prouidentia,38 a satirical mode employed in consolatory passages,39 a hymn uttered by Hippolytus at Phaedra 54–80. In De breuitate uitae Seneca changes horses midstream from exhortation to dialectic, though not for long (10.1).40 Such ﬂexibility has been variously explained: Habinek has sought to explain it in terms of the overriding prerogative of Seneca as “exhortator,” with multiple genres at his disposal and able to switch at will between specialized and generalized discourses of evaluation.41 Wilson, in turn, has singled out the Epistulae for their “controlled volubility of mode,” which is only one step away (a step Wilson appears reluctant to make, it should be said, given his desire to emphasize epistolarity) from being a meta-genre or mega-genre.42 The Apocolocyntosis, I suggest, can be taken as a symptomatic example of Seneca’s polygeneric writing: for all of its uniqueness, the work’s prosimetric form captures the underlying aspiration of the entire corpus. Epistulae morales, for instance, and the Natural Questions, and many of the dialogi, are all constantly engaged in transitions between rhythmic prose and embedded verse, even if not with the same frequency. But Seneca is also fairly methodical in his approach to a given genre. His method can be determined most clearly from the self-conscious 37 38 39 40 41 42

(186).

Cf. Bakhtin 1981, 84–144. Cf. Mazzoli 2000, 256. Cf. Wilson 1997. Williams 2003, 174 rightly emphasizes the continuity of Seneca’s basic approach. Habinek 1998, 139. Wilson 2001, 178; he does, however, see the Senecan letter as “a cluster of genres”

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statement he makes in letter 118, noted brieﬂy above, which concerns his reworking of just one genre: epistolography as it was bequeathed by Cicero. The letter begins with Seneca giving in to Lucilius’ request for more frequent letters, even though the “accounts” (rationes) don’t balance and he is in eﬀect giving Lucilius “an advance loan” (in antecessum dabo, 118.1). This sets the two apart from Cicero and Atticus (118.1–3): nec faciam quod Cicero, uir disertissimus, facere Atticum iubet, ut etiam “si rem nullam habebit, quod in buccam uenerit scribat.” [Cic. Att. 1.12.4] (2) numquam potest deesse quod scribam, ut omnia illa quae Ciceronis implent epistulas transeam: quis candidatus laboret; quis alienis, quis suis uiribus pugnet; quis consulatum ﬁducia Caesaris, quis Pompei, quis arcae petat; quam durus sit faenerator Caecilius, a quo minoris centesimis propinqui nummum mouere non possint. sua satius est mala quam aliena tractare, se excutere et uidere quam multarum rerum candidatus sit, et non suﬀragari. (3) hoc est, mi Lucili, egregium, hoc securum ac liberum, nihil petere et tota fortunae comitia transire. quam putas esse iucundum … spectare illas nundinas nec ementem quicquid nec uendentem? Nor will I do what Cicero, a man of the greatest eloquence, orders Atticus to do: that even “if he has no news, he should write whatever comes into his mouth.” (2) There can never be a shortage of things for me to write, so I may pass by all those things which ﬁll the letters of Cicero: which candidate is struggling, who is ﬁghting by his own resources, and who by another’s, who is seeking the consulship by relying on Caesar, who on Pompey, who on his own coﬀers; or how hard a lender Caecilius is, from whom his nearest and dearest cannot squeeze a penny at less than 12 per cent. It is more than enough to deal with your own woes without dealing with those of another, to scrutinize oneself and see how many things one is a candidate for, yet not to go canvassing. (3) This, my Lucilius, is to stand out from the crowd, this is secure and free: to seek nothing and to pass by the assemblies of Fortune. How pleasing do you think it is … to watch that market without buying or selling a thing?

Seneca’s characterization of the diﬀerence between Cicero’s letters and his own is anything but casual. His examples of Ciceronian content, taken from the spheres of politicking (ambitus) and usury (faeneratio), and his own contrasting preference for self-examination and non-participant observation (se excutere … nihil petere … spectare nec ementem … nec uendentem), correspond to a commonplace tripartite model of lifestyles (bioi, genera uitae) usually credited to Pythagoras: at an athletic festival you will ﬁnd athletes, buyers and sellers, and a “certain class” (quoddam genus) of others, the spectators, who “came for the sake of watching and keenly observing what [is] being done, and how”; so too in life, there

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are those who are slaves of ambition, those who are slaves to money, and those who “[hold] everything else to be worth nothing, but keenly [contemplate] the nature of things”—that is, philosophers (Cic. Tusc. 5.3.9).43 There is, then, a systematic basis for Seneca’s circumscription of his epistolary content, and we can read this as virtually a deﬁnition of what it means for him to write epistulae morales44: they stand to the genre of epistolography as the theoretical or philosophical life stands to the set of genera uitae. Seneca proceeds in the following section to underline this as a writer’s choice (118.4–5): quanti animi res est solum nihil petere, nulli supplicare, et dicere, “nihil mihi tecum, fortuna; non facio mei tibi copiam … nihil rogo.” hoc est priuatam facere fortunam. (5) licet ergo haec in uicem scribere et hanc semper integram egerere materiam circumspicientibus tot milia hominum inquieta … How great is the mind that alone seeks nothing, bows down to no one, and says: “You and I have no connection, Fortuna. I don’t give you power over me … I ask for nothing.” This is to render Fortune private. (5) It is open to us, then, to write these things instead and to work out this material which is always inviolate, as we look around at the countless thousands of restless people …

Seneca displaces the authority of Fortuna by rendering her “private” (priuatam facere), in which the term priuatam suggests both a banishment of Fortune from authority and reduction to subject status (cf. OLD s.v. priuatus 1, 2a and 2b)45 and the creation of one’s own, private fortune (OLD 1a–b), which Seneca here represents in the emphatically authorial move of an alternative writing program: “to write these things instead” (haec in uicem scribere). His turn away from Fortuna’s copia, which hints at her traditional cornucopia, is an assertion of his own rival supply of materia—characteristics which we have seen that Quintilian will underline in his sketch of Seneca’s ingenium copiosum (Inst. 10.1.128; cf. 12.10.11: copiam Senecae). 43 Cf. Iambl. VP 58–59 (Joly 1956). The evocation of the tripartite model is enhanced by Seneca’s mention of festive occasions such as comitia (118.3, 4) and nundinae (118.3). For the tripartite model elsewhere in Seneca, cf. De otio 7: tria sunt genera uitae …: unum uoluptati uacat, alterum contemplationi, tertium actioni. Cicero in turn had classiﬁed diﬀerent types of epistolography (Fam. 2.4.1) according to his most characteristic tripartite schema describing the three functions of rhetoric: docere, mouere, delectare. 44 Our earliest testimony for the epithet morales is Aulus Gellius (NA 12.2.3; cf. praef. 9), but it is plausible that the term was coined by Seneca himself. 45 I thank Gareth Williams for drawing attention to this sense here.

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Seneca is not explicit about the consequences of this shift, but its likely signiﬁcance in his thinking is suggested by various passages which deal with the topic of transformation. In the complex theoretical discussion which comes in the following sections of Ep. 118, Seneca (brieﬂy put) addresses the question of how things that are natural (secundum naturam) can also become goods (bona) by appealing to types of change that are qualitative rather than simply quantitative (cf. non tantum in maius sed in aliud, Ep. 118.14). He illustrates change through growth, process, or addition—such as the addition of a capstone to complete a stone arch—and notes that they are capable of giving a noua condicio or noua forma to something (118.16–17). We are justiﬁed in applying these philosophical notions to Seneca’s transformation of the epistolary genre earlier in the same letter by the fact that they strongly echo letter 84, which applies similar notions explicitly to the challenge of how to incorporate material read elsewhere into one’s own writing. In that letter, Seneca uses numerous images to represent the product of the reading-writing process: as moving from inuenta to inuenienda (84.1); as digestion of what has been read, “so that whatever has been gathered in reading our pen may convert into our body/a corpus” (ut quidquid lectione collectum est stilus redigat in corpus, 84.2); as a bee-like process of “mixing those diﬀerent droplets into a single ﬂavor” (in unum saporem uaria illa libamenta confundere, 84.5); as procreation rather than imitation, so that we resemble the model “as a son, not as an image: an image is a dead thing” (quomodo ﬁlium, non quomodo imaginem: imago res mortua est, 84.8); as a matter of “taking everything from whatever model one likes and impressing one’s form on it” (omnibus quae ex quo uoluit exemplari traxit formam suam inpressit, 84.8); as combining multiple praecepta, artes, and exempla into a chorus or concentus ex dissonis (84.10). Each of these images is evocative for our understanding of Seneca’s approach to existing genres. Ultimately, however, Seneca stipulates that such a dramatic transformation can only be brought about if we listen to the voice of ratio, who counsels a restriction of one’s focus: “‘Abandon riches … abandon the pleasures of body and mind … abandon political ambition …’” (“relinque diuitias … relinque corporis atque animi uoluptates … relinque ambitum …”, 84.11), in which Seneca once again implicitly alludes to the model of diﬀerent bioi. Avoidance of these other bioi leads us on a level path to sapientia, which in fact oﬀers “the most placid and at the same time most abundant resources” (tranquillissimas res … et simul amplissimas, 84.12). Letter 84, then, establishes a clear relationship between Seneca’s notions of adjusting, and especially of circumscribing, one’s

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area of focus and changing an existing literary model into a new form that is qualitatively diﬀerent. In this instance, the relationship turns on the link between the life of sapientia and an imagined new literary sapor, which both result from a process of collection followed by selection and appropriation. When characterizing his circumscribed version of the epistolary genre, however, Seneca somewhat surprisingly privileges the language of economics. This can be seen in the opening of Ep. 118: even as he prepares to criticize the political and economic content of Cicero’s letters, he presents his epistolary exchange with Lucilius as an economy of sorts (Ep. 118.1–2): exigis a me frequentiores epistulas. rationes conferamus: soluendo non eris. conuenerat quidem ut tua priora essent: tu scriberes, ego rescriberem. sed non ero diﬃcilis: bene credi tibi scio. itaque in antecessum dabo nec faciam quod Cicero … (2) numquam potest deesse quod scribam … You demand more frequent letters from me. Let us compare accounts. You won’t be in credit! Indeed, it had been our agreement that yours would be ﬁrst—that you would write, and I would write back. But I won’t kick up a fuss. I know you are a good debt. So I will give you an advance payment and will not do what Cicero … (2) There can never be a shortage of things for me to write …

Seneca’s inﬁnite supply of important content is superior to the content of Cicero, but is nonetheless economic.46 The economic analogy is more than skin-deep: it will be developed in Seneca’s alternative ideal of se excutere, a procedure with juridical and economic connotations (e.g., De ira 3.36.2; cf. Plin. Ep. 7.31.2: rationes … excutere). The superiority of this economy, and its qualitative diﬀerence, is ﬂeshed out in part by his subsequent contrast between Fortune and his own “private” fortune pursued in the writing of the letters (118.4). We have seen a similar move in letter 84, where Seneca at once rejects the pursuit of diuitiae and advertises the superior riches (res amplissimas) on oﬀer from wisdom (84.11–12). The emphasis on arriving at greater wealth through reducing desire is a distinctive feature of Seneca’s economic thinking, and the substitution of material-quantitative economies with symbolicqualitative economies recurs frequently. Since our focus is genres, it is worth noticing that Seneca develops his moral economy in conjunction with the unique parameters of epis-

46

On Seneca’s metaphorical use of economic terms, Levick 2003, 216.

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tolary form. Thus, in Ep. 118, he seeks to reduce irrelevant content in the correspondence, and to focus on the quasi-economic gesture of se excutere, by reducing the frequency of Lucilius’ letters and presenting his own, more frequent letters as an advance loan (cf. in antecessum dabo). Further correlations are not hard to ﬁnd. In the ﬁrst three books of the correspondence, Seneca’s convention of signing oﬀ each letter with a quotation (usually from Epicurus) is referred to with various diﬀerent economic terms (such as mercedula, lucellum, etc.) and is presented as a contribution to Lucilius’ moral resources. The same group of letters also frequently plays upon the brevity of epistolary form and uses the moment of the letter’s ending as a lesson in how to impose an extreme limit on the resources that one needs to be happy—what Epicurus called “happiness with poverty” (laeta paupertas), and which Seneca goes so far as to call true wealth (Ep. 2.6; 17.10). He also explains how the piecemeal aspect of epistolary sermo (cf. 38.1: minutatim irrepit animo) can take eﬀect upon the mind of the reader: like soil that has been planted with many seeds, the fertile mind will enjoy economically miraculous results: “It will itself produce, and will return more than it receives” (ipsa [sc. mens] generabit et plus reddet quam acceperit, 38.2). The letter serves as a vehicle for other transactions also: its daily rhythm makes possible a ratio impensae for all of one’s expenditure of time (1.4; 83.1–7); its communication of news can allow some “proﬁt” (bonum) to be extracted from the incidents of everyday life (55.3); its potential to address a future audience will help to enrich them and generate gratia (21.6). It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that Seneca exploits the potential of epistolary form to generate a “return,” both for Lucilius and for himself, albeit within his specialized economy. This program tells us something, I suggest, about Seneca’s approach to other genres. Even if Ep. 118 is unique in the degree of insight it gives us into Seneca’s thinking about a genre, the program which it allows us to identify—that is, of circumscribing a superior economy within (or perhaps through) a given genre and exploiting the potential of the genre’s form to maximize returns within that economy—is no less manifest in his other writings and studia. This is not to suggest, however, that the economy Seneca circumscribes in each genre is the same: each genre has its own opportunities for distinguishing between economies, and the privileged values within these economies are to some extent even arbitrary. In De breuitate uitae, the specialized economy is time, speciﬁcally “life” (uiuere) as opposed to mere “existence” (esse);

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Seneca’s text circumscribes a ratio uitae suae for Paulinus, as opposed to the ratio publici frumenti he is presently required to author in his role as prefect of Rome’s grain supply (18.3). In De beneﬁciis, Seneca circumscribes a specialized economy of beneﬁcia grounded in the will of the giver, which are not mercenary like debts and which cannot be alienated in the way that material gifts can be alienated by a change in fortune; in persuading Aebutius Liberalis to attend to this economy, Seneca correlates it with his own discourse of “conscience” (cf. 3.10.2: intra tacitam duorum conscientiam) and distinguishes it from the materialistic content of the money-lender’s calendarium or the public acta (1.2.3; 2.10.4).47 In both of these cases, Seneca also consistently exploits the capacity of his circumscribed genre to generate maximum “returns” within the given economy. In De breuitate uitae, he uses the structure of the text as an inventive representation of time: for instance, he organizes the three major exempla in reverse chronological order (Augustus, Cicero, Livius Drusus: 4–6), chooses the text’s exact middle point to expatiate on the division of time into past, present, and future (10.1, in a 20-chapter work), and generally exploits all rhetorical opportunities to give Paulinus a sense of the possibilities of expanding his time through diligent use. In De beneﬁciis, Seneca generates value not least through advertizing the dedication of the work itself as a beneﬁcium to the aptly named addressee, Liberalis; thus, the very act of writing— in a hyperbolically (or generously) long work—is marshalled to generate a valuable beneﬁcium-obligation (esp. 7.1.1–2). Seneca’s tragedies are susceptible to a similar interpretation. While it would be a somewhat longer story to describe the relevant ways in which Seneca circumscribes the textual economy of tragedies (there is no doubt that it is marked, e.g., by a prevailing absence of the gods), the recent readings of Thyestes and Medea by Schiesaro and by Gianni Guastella have drawn attention to the way in which characters such as Atreus and Medea ﬁgure their revenges as “undoing” the wrongs done to them, with a quasieconomic beneﬁt.48 The “returns” which Medea generates, for example, encompass a complete reversion to her pre-exile self (Med. 982– 984): iam iam recepi sceptra germanum patrem, spoliumque Colchi pecudis auratae tenent; rediere regna, rapta uirginitas redit. 47 48

On conscientia, cf. Roller 2001, 82–86. Schiesaro 2003, 105, Guastella 2001, 30. The economic emphasis is mine.

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james ker Now I have recovered my scepter, brother, father, and the Colchians hold the spoil of the golden sheep. My kingdom has returned, and returned is my stolen maidenhood.

Since Medea herself functions as an “author-on-stage,”49 her accomplishment also amounts to a demonstration of Seneca’s own authorial power to generate returns within the textual economy he has constructed. The same logic applies to Seneca’s approach to non-literary studia: his use of villas, gardens, money, vineyards—and, Paul Veyne would add, of inheritances and military conquests (e.g., of Britain by Claudius).50 Even in these cases, we receive hints that he sought to circumscribe his sphere of interest: Henderson’s cryptic reading of Ep. 86 appears to ﬁnd Seneca favoring olive over grape within the symbolic hierarchies of horticulture.51 Even if we are not always in a position to see how he circumscribed the conventions of a given activity, every case exhibits the same goal of generating maximum value that we have seen in the literary examples. There is one other instance in which Seneca writes self-consciously about his approach to a genre, and which allows us to illustrate his approach in action one more time: the opening of Consolatio ad Heluiam.52 There he acknowledges the strangeness of his writing to Helvia to console her on her loss of him (1.2–3): praeterea cum omnia clarissimorum ingeniorum monumenta ad compescendos moderandosque luctus composita euoluerem, non inueniebam exemplum eius qui consolatus suos esset, cum ipse ab illis comploraretur; ita in re noua haesitabam uerebarque ne haec non consolatio esset sed exulceratio. (3) quid quod nouis uerbis nec ex uulgari et cotidiana sumptis adlocutione opus erat homini ad consolandos suos ex ipso rogo caput adleuanti? … (4) utcumque conitar, non ﬁducia ingenii, sed quia possum instar eﬃcacissimae consolationis esse ipse consolator. Besides this, when I was unrolling all the monuments of the most renowned writers composed for the restraining and tempering of grief, I did not ﬁnd any instance of one who had consoled his own family members when he himself was being mourned by them. Thus, I hesitated over the novelty of it and was afraid that this might not be a consolation but an exacerbation of the wound. (3) There is also the fact that a person who raises his head from the very pyre to console his own family 49 50 51 52

Schiesaro 2003, 223. Veyne 2003, 10–11. Henderson 2004, 129, 143. On this work, see the chapter by Williams in the present volume.

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members needs new words that have not been taken from popular and everyday commiseration. … (4) However this may be, let me make the attempt, not relying on any talent of mine but because by myself being the consoler I may oﬀer the most eﬀective image of consolation.

Seneca here casts himself in an unprecedented role for the consolatory genre: that of the consolator who is himself the person whose loss is mourned by the consolanda. This is a signiﬁcant step beyond the traditional conceit that the consolator is himself also somewhat in need of consolation (e.g., Cic. Fam. 5.16.1: consolatione ipse egerem). It is also distinct from Cicero’s great innovation in the genre, which he called “a unique consolation,” namely his self -addressed consolatio after the death of Tullia (Att. 12.14.3: ut ipse me per litteras consolarer. … adﬁrmo tibi nullam consolationem esse talem).53 This novel short-circuiting which Seneca imposes on the consolatio, taking it into his own hands to soothe Helvia’s reaction to his own exile, has the eﬀect of being more aggressive in its style, but also—claims Seneca—more eﬀective. By reducing the number of individual parties involved in the consolatio situation, Seneca produces a more restricted textual economy: just as Senecan epistolography excludes the political or economic aﬀairs of the world, the Consolatio ad Heluiam excludes the option of letting some third party console the mother on her loss of her son. Within this restricted textual economy, in which he takes the role of consolator upon himself and emphasizes the special value of self-therapy, Seneca exploits the potential of the consolatory form to generate maximum returns—both in the more eﬀective remedy of his mother’s grief and in the selfaggrandizement which necessarily ensues from his evoking the “most severe wound of all” (grauissimum … ex omnibus … uulnus) which his exile has left on his mother’s body (3.1).54 We might even say that, in using the consolatio to take control of the public perceptions of his own loss, Seneca also secures for himself a geographical “return.” Certainly, this will have helped his claritudo studiorum to grow even in his absence: it was already widespread by the time Agrippina actually recalled him.

For Cicero’s mentions of this lost work, Graver 2002, xxxi–xxxii, with n. 10. On the rhetorical conﬁgurations of Seneca’s consolations, Wilcox 2002, Ch. 3, “Letters of Consolation: The absent Apex”; Claassen 1999, 90–98. 53 54

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james ker 4. Conclusion

Scholars have traditionally been reluctant to view Seneca holistically because of the presupposition that his moral philosophy sets a code of behavior which ﬁnds his other writings and activities wanting. This is certainly the sense in which Suillius Rufus’ attack on Seneca in the year 58 is to be understood (Tac. Ann. 13.42): simul studiis inertibus et iuuenum imperitiae suetum liuere iis qui uiuidam et incorruptam eloquentiam tuendis ciuibus exercerent. se quaestorem Germanici, illum domus eius adulterum fuisse. an grauius aestimandum sponte litigatoris praemium honestae operae adsequi quam corrumpere cubicula principum feminarum? qua sapientia, quibus philosophorum praeceptis intra quadriennium regiae amicitiae ter milies sestertium parauisset? Romae testamenta et orbos uelut indagine eius capi, Italiam et prouincias immenso faenore hauriri: at sibi labore quaesitam et modicam pecuniam esse. At the same time, [Suillius said,] hooked on meaningless endeavors and the ignorance of young men, [Seneca] was spiteful toward those who exercised lively and pristine speech in the cause of keeping citizens safe. He had been quaestor to Germanicus; Seneca had been an adulterer in his household! Or was it to be thought a worse thing to receive compensation for honorable work at the invitation of a litigant than to deﬁle the bedrooms of imperial women? By what wisdom, what maxims of the philosophers, had he accumulated 300 million sesterces in the fouryear period of his friendship with the emperor? At Rome, legacies and childless benefactors were virtually being tracked down and captured by him, and Italy and the provinces were being drained by unlimited usury. His wealth, on the other hand, was hard-earned and modest.

This is our strongest contemporary evidence for the perception of Seneca as hypocrite. But the fact that Suillius used this approach tells us only that it was a viable polemical argument, not that it was an inevitable perception. The attack is characteristic of the behavior of the Roman aristocracy, treating morality as an overdetermined locus of evaluation and moralism as a competitive strategy.55 But Roman aristocrats, and especially Seneca, employed many more strategies than moralism. Barbara Levick and Paul Veyne have both sought to redress our anachronistic perception of Seneca’s use of money. As Levick explains, “there was no contradiction”: the principles of Seneca’s use of wealth were entirely within the bounds of acceptable 55

Cf. Edwards 1993.

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practice in contemporary Roman society, however much the size of his wealth was exceptional.56 Veyne emphasizes the virtual necessity for the Roman nobility to enrich themselves and develop their patrimonies, and dismisses the notion that a sense of morality served to curb nobles’ ﬁnancial activities: “if morality is understood as the tacit code of behavior implied by conduct normally held to be normal, then wealth was an object of prestige and its possession was, for a senator, a kind of duty.”57 There is much to be said for a content-neutral approach to Seneca’s studia, in which his accomplishments in the area of philosophy are viewed as simply coordinate to his other accomplishments in the writing of tragedies, in politics, in economics. Levick’s assessment of Seneca’s social agency, for instance, presupposes not that Seneca was “a philosopher in politics” (the sub-title of Miriam Griﬃn’s important biography of Seneca [1976]), but rather “a politician who happened also to be a philosopher.”58 This is not to deny that it is often revealing to view Seneca’s philosophy as superordinate over his other spheres of endeavor; but it is no less revealing, in the course of analysis, to elevate his economics instead to the same position and to turn Suillius Rufus’ question on its head: by what economic feats did Seneca accomplish his reputation in philosophy? And in this case, the question has an answer: by circumscribing the economy of some endeavor—any unoccupied endeavor—and using it to make a private fortune.

56 57 58

Levick 2003. Veyne 2003, 9–14; quote taken from 12. Levick 2003, 211.

SENECA ON MORAL THEORY AND MORAL IMPROVEMENT

John M. Cooper

I Seneca’s Stoic writings show clearly that he had a complete and accurate, and also an admirably subtle, understanding of Stoic physical theory and Stoic epistemology and philosophy of language, as well as Stoic ethics—his constant primary concern.* His understanding of these matters plainly conforms in all fundamentals to the “orthodox” Stoicism elaborately worked out by the end of the 3rd century BC and set down in a multitude of philosophical treatises by Chrysippus, the greatest of the earlier Greek Stoics. This is so even if in points of detail and matters of emphasis Seneca’s understanding also reﬂects the work of Greek writers of the 2nd and 1st centuries (Panaetius and Posidonius, most notably). We should bear in mind that Chrysippus and these Greek writers expounded Stoic theory as experts not just in it, but also in philosophical truth. They were professional teachers of philosophy. They addressed their hearers and readers as possessors of the conclusive arguments that would establish, once and for all, all the truths of the Stoic philosophy—in philosophy of language and logic, in physics, in epistemology, as well as in all matters of ethical theory and the correct bases for living a human life. Their function in their writings was to establish, on the basis of philosophical argument and analysis, and to defend against the contrary views of other philosophers, or in response to their attacks, the positions on all these questions that marked Stoicism oﬀ as a single school of philosophy, with distinctive doctrines of its own.1 They did not, of course, * This paper is a much condensed version of the chapter “Moral Theory and Moral Improvement: Seneca” in my book Knowledge, Nature, and the Good (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004 = Cooper 2004b), pp. 309–334 and appears here by kind permission of Princeton University Press. The paper of Jula Wildberger in this volume oﬀers supplementary discussion of issues closely related to those I address. 1 I do not mean to deny that there were diﬀerences of opinion on some matters

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write as if they were complete “sages” themselves—that is, perfectly and completely developed instantiations of human nature, according to the Stoic account of such perfection. For the Stoics, that perfection requires much more than grasping, in some single writing or otherwise at some single time, the reasons that allegedly support, and conclusively support, particular points of Stoic doctrine. Perfection requires such a grasp on these as leads one constantly, without any possibility of failure, to live the sort of life that the Stoic philosophy was intended to establish as the correct one for a human being. Such a grasp is one that cannot be shaken by any possible arguments later presented, or events in one’s own or another’s life, that might seem to cast doubt on them. That sort of grasp no Greek Stoic author professed to have. Nonetheless, they did write as philosophical experts, experts in the truth, expounding and defending Stoic doctrines on the basis of philosophical considerations which they argued did establish them as true. In two important respects Seneca’s Stoic writings diﬀer from those of his Greek authorities (and, for that matter, from the philosophical writings of his Roman predecessor, Cicero). To begin with, and most crucially, both in his so-called “Moral Essays” and in his 124 Moral Letters to Lucilius, Seneca writes to speciﬁc, named addressees as their spiritual adviser or guide.2 He writes as himself a deeply committed adherent of Stoicism, but his purpose is not primarily to expound and defend Stoic doctrines, with appeal to the philosophical arguments on which the Stoic philosophers rested them. Rather, he means to oﬀer advice and assistance to his addressee (and, by implication, his readers in general) in their own eﬀorts to heal their spiritual disorders and discomforts either in general or in particular respects and circumstances. Moreover, he writes explicitly in his Letters, and implicitly or explicitly in each of his Stoic essays, as someone who is working to improve himself and the character of his life through his increasing grasp of the truths of Stoic theory.3 On that basis he oﬀers to aid others in their own eﬀorts (sometimes only presumed, of course—think of Nero, the addressee of On Mercy) to improve themselves and their lives through grasping the truths

among individual Stoic teachers, or developments over time in the doctrine of the school. Since my purpose in this general sketch is to mark Seneca’s writings clearly oﬀ from those of these earlier Greek Stoics, such details matter little. 2 The essential work on this aspect of Seneca’s writing is Hadot 1969. 3 See, e.g., 6.1, 3–4, 8.2, 27.1, 45.4, 61.1–2, 68.8–9, 71.36–37, 87.4–5.

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of Stoicism to whatever imperfect degree, and making them their life’s guide so far as they can manage to do that. In Stoic terms, he counts himself as a προκπτων or progrediens—one “making progress”—who may have gotten further in the long eﬀort to win through to a secure grasp on the true basis for living a good human life, but who like his addressees has still much more work to do before he could conceivably claim to have attained this goal. He is a philosophical fellow-struggler— a seeker after the truth who, like his addressees, is a philosophical amateur, not an oﬃcial Stoic teacher presenting and defending the school’s dogmas.4 He writes as a Roman, for other Romans of the upper classes, seeking to grasp, and help others grasp, the way of life propounded in and by the Stoic philosophical tradition, and to shape their own lives so far as possible in accordance with it. One ﬁnds, in fact, not just with Seneca, but with our other main authors in the history of Stoicism under the Roman Imperial regime, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius—oddly, for a Stoic—an almost impassioned interest in curing one’s own spiritual ills, in moral self-improvement, and in helping others to cure and improve themselves. This has always been a major source of their appeal. More strictly philosophical authors who were also sources in later times for Stoic theory, such as Cicero or Sextus Empiricus or Plutarch, have not played nearly so large a role in the survival and continued appeal of Stoic ideas to educated people in the Renaissance and since as these Stoics of the Imperial period.5 However, all three of these authors—as Stoics— are committed to regarding spiritual cures and self-improvement as depending, in the last analysis, on a person’s own improved and deepened understanding of certain philosophical truths. These truths, according to Stoics, provide the crucial grounding and support for the Stoic way of life as the best one for a human being. Moreover, understanding these truths and accepting them precisely for these philosophical reasons—the ones put forward in Stoic theory as proving their truth— is the only secure basis on which to live a Stoic life at all. For Stoicism, life is not improved simply by improved choices and behavior, however welcome that might be in other respects, but only by behavior to the extent that it reﬂects and derives from an improved state See, e.g., Ep. 45.4. I think here especially of Justus Lipsius, who devoted many years of work to editing Seneca’s works, and to propagating their salutary message for the improvement of individual and political life in early modern Europe. See Cooper 2004a. 4 5

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of mind. And according to Stoic conceptions, only an improvement in one’s grasp of the reasons that make the Stoic doctrines true can constitute such an improved state of mind. Thus, for the Stoics only people’s beliefs about practical matters, only the state of their minds (their power of reasoning) in relation to these, aﬀects how their life goes, for better or for worse, and whether or not it is a good life. For the Stoics, for whom a mind just is a power of thought—there are no non-rational aspects of the human mind on their view, as there are, for example, for Plato and Aristotle—the only way, ultimately, to improve a person’s beliefs is to give them better reasons, and help them to appreciate, in purely rational and philosophical terms, the implications and power of those reasons for transforming oneself and one’s way of life. A Stoic spiritual adviser or guide, such as Seneca wants to be, is therefore in quite a delicate position. By contrast with the Stoic conception of the human good and a well-lived human life, the Epicurean does not make any sort of improvement of one’s mind and in one’s understanding any part of the goal: for Epicureans, a constant pleasurable state of feeling constitutes the good and is the goal of a well-lived life. So an Epicurean could happily rely in his own spiritual guidance simply on getting his patients vividly to see the world through Epicurus’ eyes—as a place made up of atoms and void swirling eternally, with no divine powers of any sort controlling anything that happens, and in which only a pleasurable state of mind is worth striving for. He could limit himself to getting his patients to memorize various basic precepts as guides to achieving and maintaining that state of mind, and to train themselves to remember them as they face adversities and make their choices. For an Epicurean, it does not matter at all on what grounds one holds to this general view, indeed whether one holds to it on any grounds (that is, philosophical reasons) at all: all that matters is that one does keep it and the relevant precepts in mind, and hold to them with a feeling of conviction. But for a Stoic, whose ultimate goal is precisely to improve his own and others’ minds—their grasp of philosophical truths on the basis of the reasons that in fact make them true—matters can never be so simple.6 Writing, as he does, in the ancient tradition of the spiritual director, Seneca adopts a style of writing, and a whole series of rhetorical 6 For a discussion of Seneca’s engagement with Epicurus and the Epicurean outlook on life, see Cooper 2004b, Ch. 13, sect. II (337–346).

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devices, aimed at winning his addressee over to the Stoic world-picture and to feeling its uplifting power, and the sublimity and grandeur of life led in accordance with it. By living this way, Seneca repeatedly makes us feel, we make ourselves partners of the cosmic god, Jupiter or Zeus, in world government, by regarding all external conditions and events, and even ones in one’s body, as strictly indiﬀerent from the point of view of one’s personal good as a rational mind. Speaking, as he does, to persons who are still quite deeply engrossed in bad and harmful ways of life, or constantly apt to fall back into them, this literary style and these rhetorical presentations of the Stoic view are, in themselves, entirely appropriate. Indeed, some might argue that it is only through writing of that inspirational sort that any author has any chance at all of actually aﬀecting the way people live their life: what is needed is a fundamental reform or conversion, and only emotion-stirring appeals to one’s deepest feelings can eﬀect that. Both Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories of moral character, in their diﬀerent ways, support some such view. Because, for them, human beings have three independent sources of motivation that can and do aﬀect not just how they feel but how they choose and how they act, it can make excellent sense to suppose that appeals, through inspiring writing, to our deepest feelings (seated in parts or aspects of the soul other than reason) are the crucial and most fundamental requirement if one is to work any permanent improvement in another’s life-orientation. Indeed, it is arguable that, for Aristotle, reasoned conviction about moral truth is nothing more than the thought-content of such emotionally-induced states of feeling.7 Seneca, however, is, and wishes to write as, a Stoic—not a Peripatetic, or a Platonist. There is a danger—and I will argue that Seneca does fall victim to it—that in relying so heavily on these rhetorical, emotion-evoking devices of the spiritual director, a Stoic writer will tend to forget or neglect the fact that the ultimate goal (for himself as well as for his addressees) is to achieve a full philosophical understanding of the reasons why the truths of Stoicism really are true. For a Stoic, as I have said, a mere feeling of conviction—such as might well be imbued by these rhetorical means—is not good enough. It might well help at early stages of the process, and might even have some salutary eﬀects at much later ones, in helping people to get through rough spots 7 I take this to be John McDowell’s view. See “Virtue and Reason” and “Some Issues in Aristotle’s Moral Psychology” in McDowell 1998.

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in their lives or bolster them against momentary temptations or other stresses that could lead one to slide back. But it is crucial for any Stoic to keep in mind that, on Stoic views, such feelings of commitment can never be more than an ancillary aid to—cannot provide the substance of—improvement.8 As I will argue, however much Seneca himself does show a detailed and excellent knowledge of Stoic philosophical doctrine and the philosophical grounds that Stoic philosophers put forward in order to establish it, he often evinces a harmfully dismissive attitude to the value, for the good life itself, of knowledge of these matters. The result is a Stoicism, however orthodox and however precisely rendered as theory, that is nonetheless a very diﬀerent thing in practice and application from the Stoicism of the founders, Zeno and Chrysippus, and their Greek successors. The ideas remain the same, in principle, but as ideas they no longer have the same practical meaning. They no longer play the same role in a person’s life.

Hadot 1969, in her account of Seneca’s methods as spiritual adviser, marks a distinction between a ﬁrst stage, where the patient comes to know the basic theoretical views that support the Stoic way of life, and a second, in which these views become ingrained in his or her soul, plus a third, in which, through further practice as well as further encouragements of the same sort as at the second stage, they come to be active and eﬀective always in their life (103–126). Thus, on her account, the rhetorical encouragements, which take place at the second and third stages, are preceded by a stage at which the patient ﬁrst learns the philosophical theories in a purely intellectual way. Here she speaks in terms of their coming to know them: “Erst muß man sich die Elemente des Wissens aneignen, … was ein rein intellektueller Vorgang ist, sodann muß man sich das Wissen so einprägen, daß man es immer parat hat …,” (105). For Hadot, therefore, rhetorical presentations do not compete with philosophical explanations, or replace them in Seneca’s practice: they are a useful, indeed much needed, supplement, applied subsequently to an intellectual, presumably philosophical, training. However, on examination it becomes clear that at the ﬁrst stage all that happens, for her, is that the doctrines are laid out for patients so that they now know what views or opinions they are expected to hold; here to know the doctrines is simply to know what they are, and be inclined to believe them—not at all, necessarily, to understand them, to know they are true, because one understands the reasons of theory that make them true. For the ﬁrst stage she refers, in the ﬁrst instance (118 n. 95), to Ep. 66 and 67, where Seneca sets out the Stoic theory of the good. There Seneca uses rhetorical modes of presentation, and avoids relying heavily on philosophical argumentation, just as much as he does when he moves on to Hadot’s second and third stages. In fact, Hadot quite systematically underrates the value (indeed necessity, for a Stoic) of philosophical argument as providing the basis of belief—just as her author, Seneca, does, as I argue below. 8

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II We can begin by taking note of Seneca’s frequent disparagement of Stoic philosophical argumentation—that is, reason-giving—of certain prominent sorts.9 In a large group of his letters Seneca complains contemptuously about the syllogisms of “dialecticians” (dialectici), including Stoic ones, whether on ethical topics or not.10 He denounces them as worse than useless. He rails against people who, he says, debase philosophy by spending all their time on such “logical” pursuits instead of taking hold of the real problems of life by directly ridding themselves or others of the fear of death, bondage to external objects and events, and the like, through other uses of language than the logically deductive. Here I have in mind Ep. 111 and 102, plus several letters in the 40’s: 45, 48, 49. These deal with logical fallacies and paradoxes (the Liar, the Horned One, and others), which the original Stoics devoted great attention to. Partly, Seneca’s objection is the certainly very reasonable one that these are not of the ﬁrst importance for one trying to improve his life: there are no immediate good eﬀects for the conduct of one’s life in knowing how and why they are not in fact logically valid arguments. So, excessive or exclusive attention to them, as if the study of these paradoxes is what philosophy actually consists in, would be a serious mistake.11 But in his polemic against such abuses Seneca is 9 See Ep. 45, 48, 49, 82, 83, 87, 111; also the harsh remarks in 71.6 and 85.1. The remarks in 102.20 are diﬀerent: they speak in some exasperation about the relative waste of time that has to go into a Stoic response to cavilling counterarguments of nonStoic “dialecticians” out to upset the Stoics’ moral applecart (see 102.5); Seneca has just spent some pages dutifully responding. 10 In this he follows Cicero; see Tusc. 2.29–30. 11 Barnes 1997, 13–14 intriguingly speculates that Seneca’s repeated polemic against playing around with these arguments may be evidence that in ﬁrst-century Rome the study of logic might actually have been all the rage—contrary to the usual inference scholars have drawn from Seneca’s and other evidence about ﬁrst-century philosophy. Barnes discusses some of these passages in examining Seneca’s attitude to the study of logic, its place and value as one part of philosophy itself (12–23). He argues, persuasively to my mind, that Seneca is objecting (1) to an obsessive and pointless fascination with the famous sophisms and conundrums of the Liar et al., with which Chrysippus had already dealt adequately, a fascination sustained beyond the point where anything of value can come from attention to them, and at the expense of more serious and more important moral inquiry; and (2) to any other study of logic that has no pay-oﬀ for the overriding ethical purposes and ambitions of philosophy itself. Thus he is not rejecting the study of logic. Indeed, he commends it—when it is conducted with due regard to its utility for ethical concerns. My concern is not with Seneca’s attitude to the study of logic as a part of the overall study of philosophy, but rather with his failure sometimes

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led also to express doubts about the value of knowing anything about these arguments at all. He goes so far as to say that “not to know them does no harm, nor does the one who does know them beneﬁt from the knowledge” (45.8). In fact, he goes yet farther: the games of logic played in worrying over such conundrums as the Horned paradox and ﬁguring out how to resist the inferences are not merely of no proﬁt, they are actually harmful (48.9), since they crush and weaken the spirit of anyone who takes them seriously. For the classical Stoics, however, knowing about them does matter, because if you do not, then you cannot know that our language, which is to say the essential vehicle of reason itself, is actually self-consistent and coherent, so that it does not itself imply the truth of such absurdities. Ultimately, if you are to live by reason and trust it in guiding your life, you must deal with these paradoxes, so as to rationally convince yourself that reason is not in fact a deceiver. In these letters, then, Seneca shows a willingness (dangerous for any Stoic) to blur the line between overfascination with logic, or logical fallacies, and any proper study of them; and this seems clearly to reveal an inadequate and weak grasp of the real value for the moral life of the study of logic. Again, in several connected letters (82, 83, 85, 87) Seneca ridicules as foolishness (ineptiae) all those famous snappy Stoic syllogisms on moral subjects for which Zeno was so famous (or infamous), such as, for example, the following: No bad thing is glorious, but death is [i.e., is sometimes] glorious; therefore death is not a bad thing (82.9). Wonderful, says Seneca! So, having learned this, I’ve now been freed from fear of death? How foolish! Is that how a general leading his men into battle, to meet death in defending their wives and children, would ever address his troops (82.20–22)? Obviously not. So, Seneca concludes, that is not how a philosopher should seek to improve himself or others listening to him, either. Instead of answering the question whether to fear death by, as Seneca sees it, such fruitless and foolish dialecticians’ subtleties that do not persuade anyone, one ought to weigh and solve it with a view to actual persuasion. You ought not to merely force someone by logical necessity to grant the conclusion

to see clearly enough just how extensive, in fact, the implications for ethics actually are of certain studies in logic broadly conceived (i.e., in “dialectic” in the Stoic sense) and certain ones in physics—and, more generally, for the mental formation needed by anyone who is to live a good and happy life according to the Stoic understanding of what that consists in.

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that death is not to be feared, because it is nothing bad for you—when despite accepting the premisses and seeing the logical necessity of the inference, his true opinion was, and remains, to the contrary. In fact, I think, Seneca’s reference to forcing, by contrast with persuading, is a short-sighted characterization of Zeno’s intentions in propounding such syllogisms. In fact, these little arguments have to be carefully reﬂected upon, in order ﬁnally to see the meaning of the premisses, and ﬁnally to appreciate their truth—and so, ﬁnally, to understand why you really do have to accept the conclusion as true, if you accept the premisses. There really is, or can be, persuasion through them—when they are properly reﬂected upon. Seneca’s treatment in these letters of this and several other of these Zenonian syllogisms betrays a serious undervaluation not just, as before, of the analysis of logical fallacies, of the study of logic, but of philosophical reasoning itself. There is a good point in each of Zeno’s syllogisms discussed in 82 and 83, one of direct relevance to how to lead your life—provided that you attend to them in the right, philosophical, way. This is true of the others too. Seneca is presumably correct that no one will make these arguments the sole or even the most important ground of his acceptance of their conclusions—that death is not a bad thing, or that the good man will never get drunk. Other philosophical considerations are available too. But his own preference for “pointing to the facts” by, for example, graphically and movingly describing the oppressiveness and hideousness of the drunken state, is a preference for rhetorical appeals to a person’s feelings over solid reasons why the conclusions really are true. The original Stoics were ﬁrm and clear about the far greater value of sound and solid reasoning for establishing such conclusions. In this discussion Seneca shows himself neither clear nor ﬁrm about this. Had he been so, he could not have dismissed these syllogisms as simply beside the point—that is, of no use for moral improvement.

III Finally, I would draw attention to a late series of letters (106, 113, 117) in which Seneca struggles with three interconnected, strange-sounding Stoic doctrines: (1) that the virtues are corporeal entities (i.e., bodies), (2) that the virtues are actually living beings (animals), and (3) that though a virtue like wisdom (for example) is a good thing, being wise or being

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just is not good.12 All three are doctrines to know which, he tells Lucilius, is of no proﬁt: to concern oneself with such questions is to waste time on superﬂuities; these are matters for the schoolroom, not for living one’s life (106.11–12). Nonetheless, in the case of the ﬁrst of these three doctrines, concerning the corporeality of the virtues, Seneca is quite willing to explain to Lucilius why, however surprising, even outrageous, the idea might seem at ﬁrst presentation, it is nonetheless true. He endorses on his own behalf the Stoic reasoning which establishes it (106.4–10). The other two doctrines—about the virtues being animals, and being wise not itself being a good—he rejects as too oﬀensive to common ways of thinking to be tolerated, however much they might be part of the panoply of that Greek Stoicism with which in general he aligns himself. For example, Seneca does not want to accept the conclusion that being wise et al. are not good things, because, as he says, that ﬂies in the face of common sense, as well as common ways of speaking.13 At 106.2 Seneca pretends that Lucilius had requested to be told whether the good is a body, but that he had delayed responding because this was one of the questions that he was writing on in some books he was then composing in which he would give a systematic account of the whole of moral philosophy, dealing with all its problems; in 108.1 and 109.17 he mentions this proposed work again. At 106.2, because it would be rude to keep him waiting, Seneca agrees to take Lucilius’ question out of the proper order in which it would be taken up in that work; he will answer it now, and proceed to tell him whatever has to do with questions “of the same sort,” without waiting to be asked. He deﬁnes this “sort” vaguely, as questions to know about which is pleasant rather than useful (magis iuuat quam prodest). It is clear that not all the immediately following letters are part of the series thus promised (107 and 110 clearly are not, but 108 and 109 clearly are), and it is not clear for how long after 106 we should look for successors in the projected series. However, because Seneca emphasizes that the questions discussed in both 113 and 117 do belong to the class of things to know which is of no proﬁt to us (113.1, disputationibus nihil profuturis otium terere; 117.20 quid mihi profuturum est scire?), I am inclined to think they are intended as further installments. 13 As usual with Seneca the organization of letter 117, in which he attacks this orthodox view, is ﬂuid at best, so any declaration about his contentions (main or secondary) is somewhat problematic. A review of the whole letter will enable me to explain my understanding of Seneca’s contentions here. He begins, in response to Lucilius’ query whether the Stoic doctrine is true, that being wise is not a good thing, by stating (§1) that he disagrees with his fellow Stoics on this point, and declaring that he will ﬁrst set out the Stoic view, and then be bold enough to state his own opinion. He sets out the Stoic view in §§ 2–5, where he includes in his exposition two connected objections of other philosophers (perhaps Peripatetics), together with the Stoic way of accommodating their position to these objections. In introducing these objections at §4, Seneca alerts us again that this is a preliminary exercise—preliminary to his taking steps to “withdraw [from orthodoxy] and take up a diﬀerent position” (secedere et in alia parte considere). At the beginning of § 6, he reiterates his disagreement (ego non idem sentio), clearly implying that he holds that being wise is a good thing: he says the orthodox have 12

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Chrysippus held them to be incorporeal predicates, “sayables,” belonging to robust corporeal entities (the wise people), but not themselves anything corporeal—and hence, neither good nor bad, since anything good or bad must do something, have eﬀects in the world. By contrast, wisdom itself is, on Stoic theory, a robust bodily thing, namely an actual physical condition of the wise person’s mind or soul. Seneca attempts to develop an alternative account of the “metaphysical” status of such things as being wise or being just that will make them not incorporeal predicates, not sayables at all, but rather robust bodily existents. The reason he gives for not accepting the Stoics’ conclusion is that, according to him (117.6), there is no one who does not hold that wisdom (sapientia) is a good, and that being wise (sapere) is also. Now, no doubt this is so, if one is counting only people, whether actual Stoics or not, who have not had the Stoic theory, and its grounds, explained to them; but how about those to whom these have been explained? Surely the latter do not hold this. Why does Seneca not align himself with them (the educated minority), rather than the rest, however more numerous? Why not simply explain the relevant Stoic distinctions, apply them to the current case, and draw the conclusion that, indeed, as a matter of correct philosophical theory, being wise is not a good thing? Seneca could, as a concession to common ways of thinking (and speaking),

only been led to assert the contrary because they have been caught by a “ﬁrst link” in a chain of argument, which prevents them logically from saying anything else. (He does not make explicit what link he has in mind.) He then presents arguments in favor of his own position on this question (§§ 6–17), beginning (§6) with some methodological considerations. In the course of explaining his own view (i.e., that being wise is a good thing) he takes care to distinguish his position on one crucial point from that of the Peripatetics, and in the course of doing that he says again (§ 14) that he is not yet stating how things seem to him (nondum enim quid mihi uideatur pronuntio). I take this second warning to indicate that his full and true position, which he only gets to much later (§§18–20), is that it does not matter which view you adopt. Your life, your moral understanding, is not aﬀected one iota one way or the other; this is a purely theoretical question devoid of moral or practical signiﬁcance. (After that, Seneca elaborates on this point (§§21–33), decking it out with high-minded ﬂuﬀ and adding exhortations to true wisdom, which consists in actions and not in worrying about philosophical niceties; but his statement of his position and his argument is concluded in §20.) Thus Seneca’s position is a bit complex. On the one hand, he really does disagree with orthodoxy on the theoretical question whether being wise is a good thing; on the other hand, and more importantly, he insists that this is a theoretical question, and a theoretical disagreement. There is no good point in embroiling oneself in such controversies. In that sense, he can say at the end (§20) that since it does not proﬁt anyone to know which view is true, he will take a chance on holding the one view, while Lucilius can go for the other. It won’t matter.

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emphasize that this is only intended as a theoretical truth, that one certainly does not need to insist on it in contexts of common life. In common life one is justiﬁably not in the habit of distinguishing between predicates and the physical conditions in virtue of which they hold true of things. So in common life one can perfectly well say and indeed mean that being wise is a good thing. Because one is not distinguishing between predicates and physical conditions (or thinking in any determinate way at all about either), there is no reason not to take this simply to mean that wisdom is a good thing.14 Seneca, however, prefers, as, he thinks, a matter of proper philosophical methodology (indeed a Stoic methodology), to insist upon going along with the general opinion of mankind in this matter: what “everyone” holds must be true, he says (in a misleadingly Aristotelian-sounding tone of voice).15 On that principle, he is committed to holding, against orthodoxy, that being wise and being just, and so on, are good things, just as wisdom and justice themselves are.16 14 In fact, Seneca has already said in eﬀect, at the end of § 3, that precisely this is what the orthodox Stoics do. He says that they do say that being wise is a good thing, all the while referring “being wise” to that on which it depends, namely wisdom. This concession is not the same as the one Plutarch quotes from Chrysippus’ On Goods (On Stoic Self-Contradictions 30.1048a; LS 58H), but it is related to it. Chrysippus grants that someone who speaks of “preferred indiﬀerents” such as health as good things to possess need not be making any mistake, so long as the sense he attaches to the word “good” in that context is not in error ( ν μν το ς σημαινομνοις ο διαππτοντος ατο)—i.e., so long as he does not mean, e.g., that health, etc., actually make a life better, or truly “beneﬁt” one. And he seems to commend such a practice, as being in accordance with the ordinary use of words. I think Chrysippus is entirely right to grant this, and that there is no philosophical, or other, danger in doing so. I also think the other concession, the one Seneca takes note of, is again entirely acceptable. 15 One might connect this methodological principle with Aristotle’s frequent appeals to “reputable opinion,” including especially matters of common opinion or common linguistic usage, as one reference point that philosophical analysis must be responsible to. However, Aristotle’s practice is subtle and nuanced, as Seneca’s principle is not: Aristotle never holds that common opinion must be true, only that there has to be something to be said for it and that the ultimately correct philosophical account of things must preserve this. It might be true only if interpreted in a certain way, but not in others—and that way might, in truth, not really conform to what ordinary people mean in asserting it. On Aristotle, see “Aristotle on the Authority of ‘Appearances’” in Cooper 1999, 281–291. 16 Seneca not infrequently (and perfectly reasonably) insists on his own right and privilege, even though a committed Stoic, to have and defend his own philosophical opinions, even where they may be in opposition or conﬂict with those of the school’s founders and orthodox spokesmen. See letter 45.4 and Ben. 1.3.8ﬀ., and my discussion of his stance in On the Private Life in Cooper 2004b, Ch. 13, last three paragraphs of sect. II (342–346).

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We should bear in mind, of course, that Seneca writes for readers who are not philosophers themselves and are not expected to become philosophers; they are, and will remain, at best non-philosopher “people making progress.” He is oﬀering, as their spiritual adviser, to help to convince them of the basic truths of Stoic moral philosophy, and to strengthen their capacity and commitment to live in accordance with the moral and more generally practical principles of Stoicism. He is asking them simply to listen to him, to take his explications to heart, and to live according to them—he is not urging anyone to take a complete course in Stoic philosophy.17 That he does not urge them to do that is not my criticism. My complaint is that sometimes, as in the letter we have just been considering, and in the letters I discussed in earlier sections of the paper, Seneca so completely cuts oﬀ the basis on which he is encouraging his addressee to live from the reasons provided by Stoic philosophical theory for living that way, that it becomes highly questionable whether they can be making real progress toward virtue and the fully happy life if they follow him. Anyone who is making progress toward that goal, and wishes to make further progress, must never lose sight of the fact that the only way to do so is to increase their understanding of just why those ways of deciding, acting and living are the right and best ones. Seneca allows his preference for rhetorical styles of argumentation to occlude all interest in many of the more abstruse philosophical questions that anyone must pursue if they are actually to make progress toward this goal, and he also places rhetorical argumentation at the front of his stage even in his presentation of the more narrowly ethical parts of Stoic philosophy. The result is a Stoicism that plays down the philosophical argumentation lying behind and supporting the ethical conclusions that he so treasures. Instead, he promotes those conclusions to a large extent solely through rhetorically induced feelings in favor of them. This is certainly Stoicism of a sort, but no longer quite what Zeno and Chrysippus had in mind.

17 It is even open to him, as he explains at a number of places, especially in the ﬁrst 30 letters, to quote, draw on, and incorporate many Epicurean dicta and theses into his own Stoic advice about, and encouragement for, the moral life. See my discussion in Cooper 2004b, Ch. 13, sect. II (337–346).

ANGER, PRESENT INJUSTICE AND FUTURE REVENGE IN SENECA’S DE IRA

Katja Maria Vogt De ira is, as Seneca states in the beginning, a treatise on how to alleviate anger.* While other emotions may still have something calm about them, anger, according to Seneca, is all excitement, raging towards vengeance (1.1.1). The idea that we should aim at getting rid of anger is tied to the theoretical discussion of anger: once we understand what we actively do when we experience anger, we can stop short of getting angry. De ira stands within a Stoic tradition of discussing the therapy of the emotions.1 Seneca’s concern with anger is not only in line with the general Stoic conviction that emotions are irrational, but also with a more widespread ancient interest in anger as a particularly violent emotion. However, in spite of the particular attention that is devoted to anger, it seems that, of all emotions, anger is surprisingly diﬃcult to understand within the Stoic framework. The violent anger which is at stake in ancient discussions has an element of pain and an element of desire; the agent feels unjustly harmed and desires revenge. But according to the Stoic framework, an emotion can either be a kind of pain (lupê)2 or a kind of desire

* I am grateful to William Harris for inviting me to present an earlier version of this paper at the Conference “New Directions in Seneca Studies” (Columbia Univeristy, February 2004), and for the helpful comments and questions from the participants at the conference. 1 “Emotions” here translates the Greek pathê and the Latin adfectus. There are good reasons for translating both terms with “aﬀections,” which highlights that both are technical notions. However, “aﬀection” emphasizes the passive element of emotion, and it is precisely the Stoic theory which claims that pathê depend on our active assent. For this reason I will stay with the seemingly less technical translation “emotion.” But it should be kept in mind that this term, in the following discussion, ﬁgures as a translation of the Stoic technical terms. 2 “Distress” better captures the scope of painful experiences which count, according to the Stoics, as emotions; physical pain is not considered a pathos (cf. Cooper 1999, 454 n. 13). But since I want to compare Stoic theory with other ancient accounts, I will for the purposes of this paper translate lupê as “pain.” On the role of pain and pleasure in Stoic ethics compare also Vogt 2004a, 71–75.

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(epithumia),3 but not a complex phenomenon incorporating both. The early Stoics classify anger as a desire, and—in agreement with this classiﬁcation—Seneca accepts a Posidonian deﬁnition which calls anger a “burning desire (cupiditas) to punish him by whom you think yourself to have been unfairly harmed.”4 Thus, the Stoics opt for describing anger as a kind of desire, not as a kind of pain. However, while other ancient philosophers can describe anger as a desire and still mention its painful element, the Stoic classiﬁcation of emotions states that every pathos either is a kind of desire, or a kind of pain. Further, according to Posidonius’ as well as other Stoic deﬁnitions (see below), anger is a desire to punish or take revenge. To be angry means to desire an action which will bring about retaliation—the emotion of anger is partly deﬁned through the action that the agent desires. We may think that this is due to a concept of anger which is diﬀerent from our own; for the ancients, anger may have been a more violent state, a state which cannot consist in solitary brooding or silent indignation.5 But independently of such historical changes, what interests me here is a general feature of the Stoic theory of the emotions. It is not only with respect to anger that the Stoics suggest a fundamental link between emotion and action. Anger seems to highlight a general aspect of the Stoic theory of emotion: emotions are deﬁned as excessive impulses, and, according to the Stoic theory of action, an impulse (hormê) standardly sets oﬀ an action. It is a striking feature of the Stoic theory of emotion that indeed every emotion—as impulse—causes a bodily movement (which, however, may be obstructed or delayed). Therefore, the action which results from an emotion plays a role in deﬁning the emotion: as impulse, an emotion is characterised by the kind of action that

3 It should be kept in mind that what the Stoics mean is appetitive desire (Long and Sedley 1987, Vol. 1, Ch. 65 translate “appetite”). Since I will have to refer constantly to what the agent does, “desire” is preferable to “appetite”—there is no verb corresponding in a similarly obvious way to “appetite” as “to desire” corresponds to “desire.” The early Stoics deﬁne epithumia as an irrational desire (orexis), or pursuit of an expected good (Ps.-Andronicus, On Passions 1 = SVF 3.391, part = LS 65B). 4 Seneca quotes Posidonius’ and two further deﬁnitions at a passage from De ira which is lost (between 1.1.3 and 1.1.4), but can be reconstructed from Lactantius. 5 Harris 2001, 25 discusses how the study of ancient ideas about emotions needs to acknowledge that there may be no exact correspondences between the relevant Greek and Latin terms on the one hand, and terms in the modern languages of today’s scholars on the other. He argues that the Greek term orgê refers to a more violent emotion than “anger” in modern English. On this point, see also generally Ch.s 1, 2 and 3.

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goes along with it. This aspect of the Stoic theory, however, raises several intricate questions about anger. Anger, like other desires, is accompanied by an action towards a perceived good (retaliation), but, unlike other desires, it arises from the impression of something bad in the present (the injustice), not something good and therefore desirable in the future. Seneca, who devotes a full treatise to the complexities of anger, may explain some aspects of the early theory which he ﬁnds himself in agreement with, and which we don’t see suﬃciently clearly due to the scarcity of our sources.6 Thus, I am suggesting turning to Seneca’s De ira, asking whether he clariﬁes how, according to Stoic theory, the present harm of a perceived injustice and the desire for revenge relate in anger. While I cannot argue for this in any detail here, I will be reading Seneca as essentially in agreement with orthodox Stoic thought about the emotions.7 Once we understand, following the interpretations of John Cooper and Teun Tieleman,8 that Posidonius is unlikely to have disagreed with Chrysippus on the emotions in the fundamental ways which are suggested by Galen, we have less reason to expect an unorthodox position in Seneca: he does not face the need to side either with Chrysippus or Posidonius. Apart from this consideration, three very general aspects of De ira speak for Seneca’s orthodoxy: (i) Seneca nowhere in De ira implies or argues for a dualist or tripartite psychology, which would explain anger through an irrational part of the soul; (ii) he pays considerable attention to the central, orthodox 6 I am assuming that Seneca is, while an orthodox Stoic, a philosopher in his own right. On Seneca as a Stoic philosopher, cf. John Cooper’s paper in this volume. For a detailed argument for this view see Inwood 1993, esp. 150–156. Cf. also Williams 2003, 7 and Veyne 2003, ix. Inwood critically examines interpretations of Seneca which focus on ﬁnding the philosophical ancestry of diﬀerent parts of Seneca’s work, and argues in favour of reading De ira as one treatise (156). An important contribution to the literature which adopts the former perspective is Fillion-Lahille 1984. 7 More speciﬁcally, I am assuming either of two scenarios, or, perhaps even more likely, a mix of both: (i) Seneca may further work out some aspects of the theory, while regarding these elaborations as being in line with orthodox Stoicism; (ii) he may discuss ideas which have been presented in earlier Stoic writings, but are not, or are not suﬃciently clearly, transmitted. That Seneca may improve some aspects of the Stoic theory of emotion is argued along diﬀerent lines by Sorabji 1998. Sorabji suggests that Posidonius confronts the Chrysippean theory with objections and counter-examples. He argues that Seneca provides answers to the problems that Posidonius raises, and is thus able to go back to the Chrysippean theory. 8 Cooper 1999; Tieleman 2003.

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idea that anger is set oﬀ by assent as a voluntary movement of the soul; (iii) his interest in a ﬁrst, involuntary movement need not be taken as evidence that he presents a Posidonian rather than an orthodox position; as Graver and Stevens have argued,9 it is likely that the conception of such initial reactive movements of the soul, which do not result from assent and therefore are not pathê, was part of Stoic thought already before Posidonius. Scholarly debate, for the most part, has taken Seneca’s analysis of anger to be an exemplary analysis of one emotion which can be extended to a general theory of all emotions. I too will assume that we can generalize from Seneca’s account of anger to his overall conception of the emotions, and part of my argument depends on this premise. But part of what I hope to show addresses the speciﬁcs of anger: anger, which is related to a present (perceived) injustice and a future (perceived) good, does not share its complex structure with other desires. While in other desires the agent relates to something good in the future, and rushes towards it, so as to attain it, in anger the agent relates to something good in the future, the revenge, and rushes towards it, but at the same time she relates to something bad in the present—the perceived injustice. Thus, anger doesn’t seem to have only one “direction of ﬁt”; the agent relates to something bad in the present and to something good in the future. Anger, therefore, might seem to point to a limitation of a classiﬁcatory system which suggests that each kind of emotion is characterized by precisely one such direction. I will start with a brief sketch of the early Stoic classiﬁcation of anger, as well as with a selective account of Seneca’s analysis of anger, focusing on the impressions which ﬁgure in anger. On this basis I will ﬁrst explain in more detail, and then discuss, four closely related questions: (i) Why is anger, without any qualiﬁcations or reference to pain, classiﬁed as a desire? (ii) and (iii) address what I will call the “anomalies of anger”: (ii) How can anger be classiﬁed as a desire, if it does not arise from a judgment about a perceived good in the future? 9 Graver 1999. See also Stevens 2000, who argues that the early Stoics distinguished between impulse and a preliminary impulse. The latter notion was, according to Stevens, later worked out into the conception of propatheia (initial reactive movements in the soul which are, due to testimony on Posidonius’ discussion of them, often associated with the Stoicism of Posidonius). As Inwood 1993, 175 points out, Seneca is distinguishing between two kinds of impulse: the ﬁrst impetus arises involuntarily, and it is not an impulse proper, i.e., an impulse which leads to action. The second impulse involves assent, while the ﬁrst, preliminary impulse does not.

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(iii) How does assent to an impression like “I have been wronged” set oﬀ movement towards the apparent good of revenge? (iv), ﬁnally, takes up a question that arises with respect to all emotions: How can we account for the fact that, according to Stoic theory, the impressions we assent to in an emotion do not present a speciﬁc course of action? Seneca’s analysis of the diﬀerent movements (motus) of anger can, as I will argue, help to shed light on these four questions. It adds to our understanding of how, according to the Stoics, an emotion is an excessive impulse, an idea that up to now has been mostly explored with respect to questions about Stoic psychological monism, not with respect to the link between emotion and action.10 Seneca’s analysis of anger contributes to our understanding of how not only the emotion itself, but also the action that goes along with it, is irrational. According to early Stoic theory, the emotions fall into four classes depending on whether they are directed towards what appears good or bad, and on whether the presumably good or bad object is only expected, and thus in the future, or already present: Since emotion is of this kind, one must suppose that some emotions are primary and dominant, while others have these as their reference. The generically primary ones are these four: desire, fear, pain, pleasure. Desire and fear come ﬁrst, the former in relation to what appears good, and the latter in relation to what appears bad. Pleasure and pain result from there: pleasure, whenever we get the object of our desire or avoid the object of our fear; pain, whenever we fail to get the objects of our desire or experience the objects of our fear. (Stob. 2.88.8–90.6 = SVF 3.378, 389, part = LS 65A)11

In pleasure we relate to what appears good in the present, in desire to what appears good in the future, in pain to what appears bad in the present, and in fear to what appears bad in the future:

10 Cooper 1999, 453–461 explains how, according to Chrysippus’ theory of the emotions, emotions are impulses, and, as such, “psychic movements of the kind that directly cause voluntary bodily movements.” However, he does not engage with the question how an emotion can cause a speciﬁc action, given that it only seems to propel us into a “direction” like “getting away,” or “getting revenge.” 11 While I do not follow Long and Sedley’s translation in all respects, I provide large portions of the text in their translation. I have consulted their English translation for all passages which are contained in their collection. Even though I sometimes diverge from it substantially, I am very much indebted to their translation. Throughout this paper I am citing Stobaeus from the edition of Wachsmuth 1884.

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apparent good apparent bad

present

future

pleasure pain

desire fear12

Anger (orgê) “and its species” are classiﬁed as desires: The following are classiﬁed under desire: anger (orgê) and its species, thumos, cholos, mênis, kotos, pikriai, and the like, intense sexual desires, cravings and yearnings, love of pleasures and riches and honours, and the like. Under pleasure: rejoicing at another’s misfortunes, self-gratiﬁcations, trickery, and the like. Under fear: hesitancy, anguish, astonishment, shame, confusion, superstition, dread, and terror. Under pain: malice, envy, jealousy, pity, worry, sorrow, annoyance, mental pain, vexation. (Stob. 2.90.19–91.9 = SVF 3.394, part = LS 65E).

There is a striking conformity between diﬀerent ancient texts which deal with anger13: anger arises when we see ourselves slighted, oﬀended, or unjustly harmed, and it is directed at revenge or punishment. In ﬁfth-century and Hellenistic Greek, orgê and thumos seem to be the most frequent terms: while both words are notoriously diﬃcult, they clearly are both used to refer to violent anger which is prone to action. Cholos literally means bile, and seems to refer to a bitter form of anger. Mênis is often translated as “wrath,” and is famously associated with the anger of Achilles. Kotos is a form of anger which goes along with resentfulness, and pikria refers again to bitterness. But in spite of the diﬀerences, all these forms of anger have an active component: the angry person seeks revenge or punishment. Seneca’s picture of raging anger, which lacks whatever element of calm other emotions have, shows that his use of ira agrees with this understanding of the Greek terms. According to Diogenes Laertius, the Stoics deﬁne anger (orgê) as the desire for retribution against one who seems to have done one an undeserved injustice (7.113). A similar deﬁnition is transmitted in Stobaeus: anger is “the desire to retaliate against one who seems to have committed an injustice contrary to one’s deserts” (Stob. 2.91.10 = SVF 3.395). In spite of mentioning the apparent injustice, these deﬁnitions do not speak of pain. Annoyance, mental pain, and vexation—ania, odunê, and asê—are grouped under pain. This may seem surprising: why are emo12 Similar outlines have been presented at various places in the literature, most recently by Tieleman 2003, 114. 13 For this brief summary, I am relying importantly on Harris 2001, Chapters 2 and 3, as well as the translation and comments in Long and Sedley 1987, 1.412; 2.406–407.

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tions that could be described as milder forms of anger classiﬁed as belonging to a diﬀerent genus, implying that anger on the one hand, and annoyance, mental pain, and vexation on the other, are of a different kind?14 If we suppose, in line with what I hope to show, that the Stoic classiﬁcation pays important tribute to the kinds of action which go along with emotion, this seems only plausible. The Stoics could think of annoyance, mental pain, and vexation as fundamentally diﬀerent kinds of emotion because of the “general direction” of the actions they set oﬀ: while they arise, like anger, from a perceived slight or oﬀense, annoyance, mental pain and vexation may go along with a “contraction” in the face of pain, instead of a rush towards retaliation. While the Stoic classiﬁcation of the emotions is attractive by bringing the intentionality of the emotions into full view, it may seem to fall back behind the subtlety of Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas on how pain and pleasure ﬁgure in emotion.15 In the Rhetoric, Aristotle deﬁnes anger as “a desire (orexis), accompanied by pain, for what appears to one to be punishment for what appears to one to be belittlement by people for whom it was not proper to belittle oneself or someone close to one” (2.2.1378a31–33).16 For Aristotle, as for the Stoics, anger primarily is a desire; but for him this desire goes along with pain. His definition of anger seems to acknowledge that, while we feel the excitement of envisaging revenge, we also suﬀer from the pain that a perceived injustice brings. If we allow for the idea that pain and pleasure can be “secondary emotions,” accompanying other emotions, we can explain the complexity of anger.17 But this route is not open to the Stoics: pain and pleasure, within the Stoic account, are primary emo14 It seems that the early Stoics understand thumos as a milder form of anger—it is deﬁned as anger in its beginnings (Stob. 2.91.11–12). 15 The following brief comments on Plato and Aristotle in no way do justice to this subtlety, or the scholarly debate on the relevant texts by Plato and Aristotle. They are included here in order to give a rough idea of two theoretical options that are closed oﬀ for the Stoics: (i) that pain and pleasure go along with other emotions, and (ii) that a single pathos could be explained as having both a painful and a pleasurable component. 16 I am following Cooper’s translation (apart from rendering lupê throughout this paper as “pain,” not “distress”) and his commentary on the passage (1999, 419 n. 23). In De anima 1.1.403a29–31 Aristotle diﬀerentiates between how the dialectician and the natural scientist deal with anger, providing an interesting way in which the former would explain it—as the desire to pay back pain for pain (orexis antilupêsêos). This captures, in the shortest possible way, that anger is about pain, but is a desire. 17 In Rhet. 2.1378a20–23 Aristotle describes emotions as being accompanied by pain and pleasure. As Cooper 1999, 414–415 points out, he also deﬁnes some emotions that involve pain as kinds of pain; there is weaker evidence that he would make the

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tions.18 They are two of the four kinds of emotion; the four primary emotions straightforwardly divide the range of emotions into distinct groups. Although fear and desire are said to “come ﬁrst,” the generic emotions are on a par: pain and pleasure only come second insofar as whatever the agent deems good or bad is present, while in fear and desire it is still in the future. Desire can turn into pleasure when the perceived good has been attained, and fear into pain when the perceived bad thing has become a reality in the present. Pain and pleasure are not components of other emotions—no emotion can be explained by how it is composed of both pain and pleasure. The idea of such a mix could oﬀer another way of capturing the complexity of anger. It seems that Plato, even though he talks about desires (epithumiai) like hunger and thirst in the relevant section of the Philebus (34e–36b), provides the framework for such an account. Plato describes desire as a mix of pleasure and pain: the man who desires something enjoys the prospect of having it, and is at the same time in pain because he experiences the lack of what he wants.19 Both pain and pleasure are referred to in the explanation of a desire. Along these lines, one could explain anger as pleasurable with respect to the prospect of revenge, and painful with respect to the perceived injury. But just as the Stoics cannot accommodate the idea that a desire would be accompanied by pain, they cannot explain it as a mix of pain and pleasure. With the earlier, ancient discussion in mind, we may ask (i) whether Seneca’s analysis of anger can explain whether the Stoics are able to capture the painful element in anger, even though they unqualiﬁedly classify it as a desire. When Seneca introduces his deﬁnition of anger in De ira 1.3.3, he writes that Aristotle’s deﬁnition is not far from “ours,” i.e., the Stoics’. Aristotle, in Seneca’s account, says that “anger is a burning desire to corresponding assumptions about pleasure. On the question how Aristotle relates pain and pleasure to the emotions see also Rapp 2002, 2.546–550 on Rhet. 2.2–11. 18 One could object that if desire envisages a future pleasure, and fear a future pain, then desire and fear indeed are (while not being themselves the emotions of pleasure and pain) not devoid of pleasure and pain. But this is not entirely correct: while desire relates to future pleasure, it is not supposed to be itself pleasurable, and while fear relates to something bad in the future, it is not supposed to be painful. What we experience is desire or fear, and these are supposed to be distinct emotions from pleasure and pain. 19 The discussion in the Philebus proceeds on the model of depletion and replenishment: the agent, who remembers how it was to be “full,” enjoys the prospect of replenishment, and is at the same time in pain because now she is “empty.”

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pay back pain.” The gist of this deﬁnition is that anger is a desire, but refers to pain. At the very beginning of De ira Seneca points out how anger is characterized by the onstorm of pain (dolor), and rages in desire (cupiditas) for revenge (1.1.1). Nevertheless, Seneca remains within the early Stoic framework; he does not explain how anger is a desire which is accompanied by pain, but rather how it is a desire in response to a perceived wrong. The part of De ira where Seneca gives deﬁnitions of anger (between 1.2.3 and 1.2.4) is lost, but Lactantius seems to have quoted precisely this passage. According to his testimony, Seneca cites the following deﬁnitions: anger is “a burning desire (cupiditas) to avenge a wrong,” “a burning desire to punish him by whom you think yourself to have been unfairly harmed,” and “an incitement of the mind (incitatio animi) to damage him who has done damage or wished to do damage” (Lactant. De ira dei 17.13).20 We can get a clearer picture of how Seneca relates the present injustice and the future good of revenge, by asking how they are reﬂected in the impressions an agent assents to when she becomes angry. In line with the early Stoics, Seneca thinks that we generate emotions by assent to impressions. Each such impression has a linguistic counterpart, so that we can speak in a shorthand way of the impression “I have been wronged,” meaning the impression to which the lekton “I have been wronged” corresponds. At the beginning of Book 2 Seneca gives a list of what is involved in anger, which he says is compositum and plura continens: we realize something, experience indignation, condemn, and seek retribution (2.1.5). There are two steps prior to the judgment that we have been unjustly harmed: we realize what has happened and we feel the impact of indignation. This ﬁrst stage of anger is described, only a few lines later, as an involuntary movement (2.4.1), a preparation for emotion. It has often been remarked that Seneca seems to share Posidonius’ interest in the propatheia, states of being moved which are in themselves not yet pathê, given that the agent has not yet assented to anything. After this preliminary movement, according to 2.1.5, there is one judgment—to condemn the other’s deed—and this is followed by action, the quest for revenge. According to this outline, it seems that a single judgment—that one has been wronged—gives rise to anger. This way of reading Seneca is conﬁrmed when we look at the way in which he puts the key question of the early chapters in Book 2: “Anger is 20 I am following the reconstruction and translation of the text by Cooper and Procopé 1995, 20 n. 8.

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undoubtedly set in motion by an impression received of a wrong. But does it follow immediately on the impression itself and break out without any involvement of the mind? Or is some assent by the mind required for it to be set in motion?” (2.1.3; emphasis added).21 Seneca’s answer to this question is an emphatic “yes”—there is an involvement of the mind. The mere impression of a perceived injustice does not set anger into motion; only assent to this impression does. The impression which we assent to in anger is, it seems, an impression received of a wrong. Of course, a lot of earlier assents will ﬁgure in the background—e.g., only an agent who judges certain forms of politeness to be important will feel slighted when she is not greeted by her colleague. The immediate assent to “he is oﬀending me” is based on the earlier assent to something like “when people don’t greet me, they express disrespect.” And given that we are talking about anger in the sense that seems to have been prevalent in ancient discussions, the agent who is prone to anger has probably also assented at some point to an impression like “when someone is oﬀending me, he needs to be paid back,” as well as something like “revenge is good.” But the anger arises out of the immediate judgment that one has been wronged. On the basis of Seneca’s account, I can further explain both what I called the “anomalies of anger,” as described in questions (ii) and (iii) above, as well as the general question about emotion and action outlined in question (iv). (ii) According to Stoic theory, emotions are beliefs, and these beliefs are generated through judgments about what is good and bad. The agent who suﬀers from pathê assents to impressions which present things as good and bad, even though they in fact are (according to the Stoics) indiﬀerent. Insofar as the theory of the good and the indiﬀerent is central to the Stoic theory of the emotions, it seems plausible that the Stoics would single out these judgments as what sets oﬀ emotion: for example, according to Chrysippus, pain is a belief that something bad is present (Andronicus, On Passions 1 = SVF 3.391, part = LS 65B). Even though, like in anger, several other assents may ﬁgure in the background, we can see why Chrysippus would focus on this belief: without the deﬁcient judgment on what is bad and what is indiﬀerent 21 Cooper and Procopé’s translation (1995). I have used this translation and edition throughout my work on Seneca’s De ira. However, for many of the following passages, I provide my own translation, which slightly modiﬁes, and sometimes importantly departs from, Cooper and Procopé’s translation.

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there would be no pain.22 However, it seems that anger is, compared to other desires, an anomalous case: while other desires can be described with respect to beliefs about the presumed goods that the agent wants, anger seems, according to Seneca, to be generated by assent to “I have been unjustly oﬀended,” not to “revenge is a good.” (iii) According to early Stoic theory, actions are caused by impulses, and an impulse (hormê) is generated through assent to impressions of a speciﬁc kind, which we may call hormetic. Even though the impulse causes the bodily movement of action, it is not yet itself the action or bodily movement; it is deﬁned as a movement of thought towards something in the sphere of action (Stob. 2.86.17–87.6 = SVF 3.169, part = LS 53Q). Sources on how exactly the Stoics think of hormetic impressions are scarce. Stobaeus reports that according to the Stoics all impulses are acts of assent, “[b]ut acts of assent and impulses actually diﬀer in their objects: propositions (axiômasi) are the objects of acts of assent, but impulses are directed toward predicates (katêgorêmata), which are contained in a sense in the propositions” (Stob. 2.88.2–6 = SVF 3.171 = LS 33I). Insofar as an impulse is an act of assent, it relates to an impression, and respectively to the axiôma which corresponds to this impression. But strictly speaking, the agent generates an impulse by assenting to an impression. The linguistic counterpart of this impression names—through a predicate—a speciﬁc course of action. Assent to the impression causes the motion towards this course of action. While assent refers to the impression, impulse relates to the predicate which is part of the axiôma, and names an action (Stob. 2.97.15–98.6 = SVF 3.91 = LS 33J). Thus each impulse is generated by assent to an impression which describes an action as to be done.23 Seneca clearly agrees with this analysis. In Ep. 113.18 he explains the nature of assent in a practical 22 One of the striking aspects of the Stoic theory is that there is nothing like rational pain. The Stoics propose that the sage will have “good feelings” (eupatheia). Joy is the “opposite” of pleasure, watchfulness the “opposite” of fear, and wishing the “opposite” of desire (Diog. Laert. 7.116 = SVF 3.431 = LS 65F). The idea that these good feelings are opposites of the emotions highlights that they are not milder versions—since they are rational, they are the opposite of the emotions. It is not obvious why there is no such good or rational counterpart for pain (why, for example, the sage would not have any “good” or “rational feeling” when he considers the viciousness of all those around him who are not wise). On the question whether the good feelings relate to what the sage judges to be good and bad, or to what she judges to be indiﬀerent, cf. Vogt 2004a, 76–79. 23 It is a diﬃcult question how exactly the lekton which is assented to needs to be construed. Cf. Inwood 1985, 45 ﬀ., esp. 55–56 and 60–66.

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context: the action of walking is set oﬀ through “saying to oneself ” and approving of one’s opinion that one should walk. The Stoics deﬁne emotions as impulses (Stob. 2.88.8). Thus, whatever applies to impulses generally, should apply to the kind of impulse which the emotions are. However, if we follow Seneca’s outline, it seems that the angry acts of retaliation are set oﬀ by assent to the impression that one has been unjustly wronged, not by assent to an impression which presents a speciﬁc kind of action. Following the account of impulse, we would expect that, in anger, we assent to an hormetic impression, i.e., an impression which describes an action as to be done. But through assent to “I have been unjustly wronged” we do not seem to assent to performing any kind of action. The fragments on the physiological deﬁnitions of the emotions give some indication of how the early Stoics thought that emotions propel us into action: desire is said to be an irrational “stretching,” or pursuit of an expected good, and fear an irrational “shrinking,” or avoidance of an expected danger. It seems that the emotion impels us toward a certain direction in action: pursuit or avoidance. This motion into one or the other direction seems to be envisaged as a physical extension towards an object, or a physical shrinking back from it. The corresponding physiological deﬁnitions of pleasure and pain say that in pleasure people think it right to be “swollen,” and in pain they think it right to be “contracted” (Andronicus, On Passions 1 = SVF 3.391, part = LS 65B). Thus it seems that in pleasure and pain, we don’t have something like a “direction” into which we are being propelled, so that the emotion would be tied up with some kind of action that ﬁts this direction. Rather, in for example annoyance an agent who thinks it right to be contracted may retreat into grim silence, or in pleasure the agent who thinks it right to be elated may laugh. Retreating into grim silence or laughing seem more like expressions of emotion than actions. However, leaving aside this problem we may say that the fact that assent to an impression sets oﬀ a physiological motion explains to some extent how it sets oﬀ action (without the agent assenting to, e.g., “it is ﬁtting for me to laugh”). But anger still presents a special case. The link between assent and motion is decidedly easier to understand with respect to other desires. If one assents to the impression that a hot bath would be a great good, one’s motion towards this perceived good seems—even though one has not assented to the hormetic impression which presents a hot bath as to be taken now—closely connected to the impression. But in anger the

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relevant impression does not present us with the future good that we desire and towards which we, physiologically speaking, stretch out; it presents the oﬀense, not the revenge. The problem can be described further if we ask how the agent can storm oﬀ into a speciﬁc course of action. This diﬃculty—number (iv) from above—, however, is not speciﬁc to anger, but seems to pose itself with respect to all emotions. Suppose I assent to the impression that an approaching tiger will kill me—what generates the action of climbing onto a tree or running to the left or to the right? Similarly, if anger is generated through assent to the impression that I have been unjustly harmed, it is quite unclear how I can either bring charges against the oﬀender or kick him without ﬁrst assenting to an impression which names either the ﬁrst or the second of these actions. If the agent does not assent to an hormetic impression, she does not assent to doing either A or B. The theory seems to say that when an emotion is generated we storm away into action on the basis of a judgment like that this approaching tiger will kill me, or that someone has unjustly oﬀended me. If the Stoic theory indeed says that in emotion we storm oﬀ into action without having assented to an hormetic impression, then the Stoic theory of the emotions seems to be discontinuous with a very basic tenet of the Stoic theory of action: that there is no action without assent to an impression which presents an action as to be done. Given how ﬁrmly this idea is rooted in Stoic ethics, we would rightly be reluctant to call it into question. It would seem decidedly more promising if we found a way of making sense of this discrepancy as a meaningful part of the standard Stoic theory. I now want to turn back to Seneca’s De ira and ask whether he either gives any explanation of these diﬃculties, or whether he amends them to some extent. We may hope to ﬁnd some suggestion in Seneca that, while the agent primarily assents to “I have been unjustly harmed,” she also assents in a secondary way to something like “this deed needs to be avenged.” An impression like this would be hormetic, but in a deﬁcient way: it would, in a way analogous to the physiological movement of stretching, indicate a direction; but it would not tell the agent exactly what to do. It would also seem to imply the kind of valuejudgment which we would expect in a desire—that revenge is a good thing. When Seneca sets out to describe the three motus of anger in 2.4.1, he writes that he is going to tell us how the emotions begin or grow or

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get carried away. According to this passage, there is ﬁrst the involuntary reaction to the perceived oﬀense; Seneca calls this stage a preparation for emotion24 and describes it as a “threat.” The second movement is “voluntary, but not insistent” (cum uoluntate non contumaci). The agent thinks something like “it is right for me to take revenge because I have been harmed” or “it is right for him to be punished because he has committed a crime”; the fact that she thinks in terms of what is right or appropriate (oportet) bears witness to the fact that her will is not “insistent.” The third movement is out of control and has defeated reason; the agent does not want to take revenge only if it is called for (si oportet), but wants revenge no matter what (2.4.1). Movement 2, just as movement 1, envisages an agent who is not angry. The agent who is in the second state is in this state through her will, but her will is not an obstinate or insistent will. She actually can think about things, and she can, just like the agent in state 1, stop short of becoming angry. “Suppose that someone thinks himself harmed and wishes to exact retribution, that something dissuades him and he promptly calms down—this is not called ‘anger,’ since it is a motion of the mind obedient to reason” (2.3.4). Following this account, we are able to describe Seneca’s answer to the ﬁrst question I raised—(i) whether the Stoics capture the painful side of anger even though it is unqualiﬁedly classiﬁed as a desire. Only agents who storm oﬀ into action, and thus present us with cases of the third motion, are angry. As long as an agent has not arrived at such an uncontrolled action, there is no way of saying whether she really is angry, or whether she may still turn around and be able to give in to reason. Thus anger really is the storming oﬀ into revenge, and is therefore adequately deﬁned as a desire for revenge. At the same time, the starting-point of anger is a judgment about being wronged, and by naming the indignation which hits us, Seneca arguably does not neglect the painful element of anger. Even though he does not use the term “pain” in his detailed analysis, it seems clear that the indignation is a negative type of experience. Thus Seneca remains true to the Stoic classiﬁcation which steers clear of mentioning pain or pleasure in the deﬁnitions of desire and fear. Nevertheless, his elaboration of the ﬁrst 24 Throughout his analysis, Seneca goes back and forth between describing movement 1 as a preparation for emotion and as what the virtuous person will have instead of anger. On the propatheia kai ou pathos-idea in diﬀerent authors compare Graver 1999, 308.

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movement, where we experience indignation as a result of perceiving a wrong done to us, seems to acknowledge the negative experiences of anger. If we infer from Seneca’s analysis of anger how the Stoic classiﬁcation of the emotions works in general, it would seem that the distinction between four kinds of emotion ultimately focuses on the thesis that emotions are excessive impulses (Stob. 2.88.8), and as impulses are directed at action. This would reaﬃrm the reasoning I have oﬀered for the classiﬁcation of annoyance, mental pain, and vexation not as milder forms of anger, but as emotions of a diﬀerent kind: anger and annoyance are of a diﬀerent kind because anger pushes us into action towards a perceived good, whereas annoyance pushes us into the kind of expressive action that accompanies contraction. Seneca’s account also helps to clarify the two questions relating to the “anomalies of anger.” While Seneca does not explicitly state what the agent assents to in stage 3, we can infer this from the diﬀerence between 2 and 3. In stage 2, the agent thinks things like “it is right for me to take revenge because I have been oﬀended.” In stage 3 she does not think in terms of what is right: she will assent to something like “I have to take revenge because I have been oﬀended.” Thus, it may seem that this passage gives indirect evidence for the thesis that, pace Seneca, anger is not generated by assent to the simple impression “I have been unjustly harmed,” but rather through assent to the more complex impression “I have to take revenge because I have been unjustly harmed.” This reading understands movement 3 as an uncontrolled version of movement 2.25 Seneca seems to give the following picture: an agent who is unjustly oﬀended suﬀers from the impact of this “attack,” and thus experiences the involuntary ﬁrst movement. This makes her think about what has just happened, and what kind of reaction is called for. While she thinks about this, the ideas of punishment and revenge ﬁgure in her thoughts. Seneca’s outline is compatible with either of two readings: either an impression presenting revenge is somehow in the background of the decisive impression “I have been unjustly harmed,” or “I have been unjustly harmed” is, when cited as the decisive impression, simply shorthand for a more complex impression which also presents revenge. In both cases, Seneca would seem to make an eﬀort to explain how 25 Cf. Inwood 1993, 180 on how stage 3 can be interpreted as an uncontrolled version of 2.

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the agent, by assenting to the impression of a perceived wrong, relates to the future good which we would expect in a desire, and how she is propelled into action. Both “anomalies of anger” would be, to some extent, amended: (ii) the relevant impression(s) would present the future good at which a desire is directed (revenge), and (iii) they would indicate the direction into which assent propels the agent (revenge). Two further passages add to this picture. In 2.1.4 Seneca gives the following outline of what is involved in anger: “To receive an impression of wrong done to one, to lust for retribution, and to connect the two, that the damage ought not to have been done and that punishment must be inﬂicted.”26 Even though Seneca does not explicitly talk of two impressions and consequently two assents (or assent to a complex impression), it may seem that what is tied together are in some sense two judgments, one stating “I have been unjustly harmed,” the other “there must be retribution.” 2.3.4–5 further aﬃrms this interpretation. In 2.3.4 Seneca states that it is impossible to act for the sake of retribution or punishment without the mind knowing of it. In 2.3.5 he writes: “So the ﬁrst mental agitation induced by the impression of wrong done is no more anger than the impression itself. The impulse that follows, which not only registers but conﬁrms the impression, is what counts as anger, the agitation of a mind proceeding to retribution on its own will and judgment” (concitatio animi ad ultionem uoluntate et iudicio pergentis). Here it seems that Seneca starts out with the assumption that we assent to an impression of wrong done when we generate anger. He goes on to say that the mind proceeds to retribution on its own will and judgment, not that the mind judges that it should seek retribution; however, he is suggesting that the agent’s quest for retribution is voluntary, and this would seem to imply that she has made a judgment about whether or not to seek retribution. Seneca presents us with an account of anger in which anger arises out of assent to a single impression—that one has been unjustly harmed. But he importantly complements this picture by suggesting that the agent who responds to an oﬀense envisages revenge or punishment, or thinks about it. When she assents to the impression that she has been unjustly harmed, this seems to be closely tied to these 26 Cooper and Procopé translate the latter part of this sentence diﬀerently: “to put together the two propositions that the damage ought not to have been done and that punishment ought to be inﬂicted” (nam speciem capere acceptae iniuriae et ultionem eius concupiscere et utrumque coniungere, nec laedi se debuisse et uindicari debere).

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thoughts. Seneca seems to incorporate the thought about revenge into his account of the process that leads up to anger, while at the same time staying true to the Stoic deﬁnitions, according to which anger starts out from a perceived injustice.27 But we are still left with the fourth problem (iv): actions that result from excessive impulse, i.e., that go along with emotions, seem to differ from other actions insofar as we do not assent to impressions which name these actions and present them as to be done. If we extrapolate from Seneca’s account of anger, it might seem that desire and fear are not just, physiologically speaking, “stretchings” and “shrinkings” towards and away from the objects that are judged to be good or bad. There may, additionally, also be thoughts which mirror this physiological movement, like “get it” or “avoid it.” But the impressions we assent to do not name speciﬁc courses of action. From the point of view of ethics, actions that accompany emotions diﬀer in a very fundamental way from other actions: they are the kinds of actions that only the fool or inferior agent performs; none of the actions of a virtuous agent springs from an excessive impulse. Once we consider that the actions that arise from excessive impulses are actions of those who generally act badly, we can see how the fact that in these actions the agent has not even assented to an impression which presents the course of action ﬁts into the ethical theory. To set oﬀ an action through assent to an impression which doesn’t present us with what we are going to do, but simply propels us into some direction, is, on Stoic premises, clearly unwise. The wise man’s lack of any precipitancy in assenting to impressions might partly be described by saying that he would never assent to an impression which will set oﬀ an impulse, while not presenting a speciﬁc course of action. Thus, (iv) turns out to be not a problem within the Stoic theory. Rather, it highlights a central tenet of the Stoics: that emotions are irrational, which would only make it plausible that they go along with actions which, too, are irrational. In fear, we do not decide to either climb onto the tree or run to the left or to the right, and that is one way of explaining what is so bad about fear. If we are in fear of the tiger, there is no gap between this fear and an erratic attempt to escape. Flight will not be the result of assent to 27 Further, as Frede 1986, 103–107 has pointed out with respect to early Stoic philosophy, not every feature of an impression will be captured in the lekton that corresponds to it. It is important to note that we assent to an impression, not to a lekton or proposition. See also Inwood 1993, 168.

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an impression which presents a speciﬁc action as to be done; rather, we run or climb before we even consider the diﬀerent options. Similarly, in anger, we shout or hit or call our lawyer not because we have assented to an impression like “I will call my lawyer.” One of the many bad things about anger is that we have already shouted or kicked or made the phone-call before we have given assent to any such impression. If this interpretation is convincing, it contributes to our understanding of how not only the emotions themselves, but also the actions that go along with them are irrational. The actions accompanying an emotion are irrational because the agent has not assented to an impression which presents a speciﬁc course of action. Loosely speaking, the agent who assents to the impression which generates an emotion, and thus an excessive impulse, isn’t aware of where exactly this assent will take her.

SENECA AND THE STOIC THEORY OF COGNITION: SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS

Jula Wildberger

I. Introduction When I began to read Seneca’s philosophical writings continuously and in larger quantities, I often experienced an irritating feeling of dissolution and of fading coherence, a phenomenon which Seneca himself describes: if we read and never write, this reading will “slacken and dissolve” our intellectual strength.1 Another image for this eﬀect of Seneca’s texts is proposed in a recent German dissertation: a scholarly discussion of “the problem of ethical progress in the Epistulae morales” seemed to the author, Matthias Hengelbrock (2000, VII), as impossible as nailing a pudding to a wall. With the aid of two of his pupils he ﬁnally found a solution: just keep the pudding in the container you bought it in, and nail the container to the wall. Seneca himself proposes another solution. As Margaret Graver puts it: “To read therapeutically, one must begin oneself to be an author …” (1996, 176). When we practice “therapeutic reading,” we approach a text with a certain belief-structure, with our own ratio, and like the bees Seneca describes in his famous Ep. 84 we integrate what we read into this belief-structure in order to produce something new. Both what we read and our own belief-structure must be changed in the process: the thoughts read must be modiﬁed and ﬁltered, so that the ﬁtting parts can be assimilated, and our belief-structure, on the other hand, is altered when new beliefs are integrated. This process is supported and reinforced by writing, because, when we write, we must activate our own belief-structure, if we do not want just to repeat and parrot what we have read. Our minds change when we read therapeutically, and the change shows in our writings.2 1 Sen. Ep. 84.2 nec scribere tantum nec tantum legere debemus: altera res contristabit uires et exhauriet (de stilo dico), altera soluet ac diluet. 2 Cf. the discussion of Ep. 84 by Graver 1996, especially 194–201.

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This advice for the reader who seeks moral ediﬁcation is also instructive for readers who only wish to improve their understanding of Seneca’s texts. This is so, because Seneca shows us what, in his opinion, constitutes a text and what we should therefore expect in his own texts as well: according to Seneca every text worthwhile, any text not uttered by a parrot-like mind, has as its basis and source a belief-structure. This structure is nothing external to the text, nothing like a container containing a soft, amorphous mass; it is its bones, sinews, and joints (Dial. 4.1.2 ossa neruique et articuli), it is the basic plan of a whole (Ep. 33.5 lineamenta) in which every part supports the others. If we can get hold of this structure, we can get hold of the text. I have taken these two images from Seneca himself, and it is interesting to note that both images are applied to a text written by a Stoic philosopher. In the second comparison, Ep. 33.5, no certain individual is referred to; the ﬁrst comparison is applied to Seneca’s own work De ira, where Seneca—as in other texts—explicitly calls “himself,” the “I” of the text, a Stoic. This “self ”-description has, however, often been called into question, precisely because Seneca’s texts often seem to lack a ﬁrm and graspable philosophical structure. This is so, I believe, mainly because of three reasons. Firstly: the structure in question, if there is any, is the belief-structure of the author3 and, therefore, prior to the text. It is not identical with the structure of the text itself. Secondly: by calling “himself ” a Stoic, Seneca tells us that we should expect a Stoic belief-structure in his texts. But large parts of the Stoic philosophical system which were easily accessible to Seneca’s readers are lost to us. It may happen that we do not recognize a text shaped by Stoic beliefs as such, because these beliefs are unknown to us. Thirdly: Seneca does not imply that “he” is going just to repeat what he has learned. On the contrary, he makes it very clear that “he” has something of his own to say. “He” may agree, “he” may accept part of what other Stoics say and reject the rest, or “he” may disagree completely. And such disagreement may not always be made 3 This author must be the person who actually wrote the text, not an implicit author, at least if we wish to avoid an inﬁnite series of authors with a certain beliefstructure who write other authors who also have a certain, possibly diﬀerent, beliefstructure.—But a belief-structure (e.g., the “Stoic system”) can also subsist at a larger discourse, which would mean for a Stoic: at utterances, written texts, actions, and minds of diﬀerent human beings living at diﬀerent times and places who, however, all consent in some sort of “harmony” (cf. Ep. 84.9–10 and, e.g., Ep. 29.11).

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explicit, although it often is. Like the ideal reader-writer in Ep. 84.8– 10, Seneca may shape something new out of sources which we do not recognize. In this paper, I wish to try a new approach to the question raised by Graver, Hengelbrock, and others4 how, according to Seneca, a philosophical text may contribute to make a person wiser and better. Taking as my starting point the belief-structures of Stoic epistemology, I shall point out a basic problem of any kind of Stoic philosophical writing and propose some ideas about how Seneca may have dealt with this problem in the Epistulae morales, because I hope that my observations might oﬀer a basis for further and more detailed research. My question is: What is the pragmatic function of a text in the light of Stoic epistemology? Can a text generate the special kind of cognition which, according to the Stoics, is the origin of wisdom? And if it can not, what else could be its function?

II. The Problem: Can Reading Lead to Grasping? II.1. The Importance of Cognition in Stoic Ethics In order to become a wiser and better person, a Stoic must acquire knowledge. He5 must be able to discern infallibly what is true and what is false and to accept only what is true. The Stoic wise man needs this ability not only to be wise, but also to be a morally perfect person, because all actions (πρξεις) and all passions (πη), which are a subclass of actions, are the result of a decision (κρσις) about the truth value of a proposition. As Seneca puts it: A rational animal only acts, [i] if it has ﬁrst been stimulated by an impression (species = φαντασα) of something, [ii] if it then has generated an impulse (impetus = ρμ), and [iii] if then assent (assensio = συγκατεσις) has conﬁrmed this impulse.

Seneca also explains what assent is:

4 E.g., Bellincioni 1978 and 1979, Hachmann 1995, Hadot 1969, and Trillitzsch 1962. See also John Cooper’s paper in this book. 5 Although a woman could theoretically be wise, the Stoics and Seneca describe the wise person as a male, and I do not wish to gloss over this fact.

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jula wildberger It is ﬁtting for me (oportet me = κακει μοι?6) to walk. Only then do I ﬁnally walk, when I have said this to myself and have approved of this idea of mine.7

Before acting, a person has an impulse-generating rational impression, a φαντασα ρμητικ τε κα λογικ; at this impression, which is a corporeal structure in the mind, subsists an incorporeal sayable (λεκτν), a proposition ("ξωμα), which is either true or false. Assent is withheld or given to this proposition, and every assent to an impulse-generating impression is a (conﬁrmed) impulse.8 Thus, according to the Stoics, every action is a belief about the truth of a proposition. This is the reason why knowledge is necessary not only to be wise, but also to be good, why many Stoic virtues are bodies of knowledge,9 and why every passion is an epistemic error: a passion occurs whenever a person wrongly assents to two propositions, namely (i) that something (very) good or bad is present (or impending) and (ii) that it is ﬁtting for oneself to become agitated about this state of aﬀairs right now.10 Cf. Muson. fr. 31 = Stob. 4.252.11–14; Sen. Dial. 4.4.1. Sen. Ep. 113.18 = SVF 3.169 omne rationale animal nihil agit, nisi primum specie alicuius rei irritatum est, deinde impetum cepit, deinde assensio conﬁrmauit hunc impetum. quid sit assensio dicam. oportet me ambulare: tunc demum ambulo, cum hoc mihi dixi et approbaui hanc opinionem meam; oportet me sedere: tunc demum sedeo. An excellent discussion of this passage is Stevens 2000. See also Diog. Laert. 7.49 = SVF 2.52 = LS 30D. In the translation I have glossed over a problem contained in the word opinionem: Seneca cannot mean δξα, because δξα requires that assent has already been given (see II.2).—On Stoic theories of action and of the passions see also, e.g., Annas 1992, Brennan 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003, and 2005, Gill 2005, Graver 2002, Inwood 1985, Price 2005, Sorabji 2000, Strange 2004, Tieleman 2003, and Katja Vogt’s paper in this book with further references. 8 Cf. Ar. Did. apud Stob. 2.88.2–6 = SVF 3.171 = LS 33I; Inwood 1985, 56–61. 9 E.g., Ar. Did. apud Stob. 2.59.4–60.2 = SVF 3.262 = LS 61H1–5. 10 For the second opinion, without which there would be no impulse, see, e.g., Cic. Tusc. 3.61 and Graver’s 2002 commentary (110–111) with further references.— Accordingly, Seneca distinguishes in De ira two opinions: (i) the opinion that we have been wronged (Dial. 4.22.2) and (ii) the opinion that we did not deserve this (Dial. 4.31.1 duo sunt, ut dixi, quae iracundiam concitant: primum, si iniuriam uidemur accepisse … deinde si inique accepisse). It is remarkable that there is no reference to any psychic movement in Dial. 4.22, where Seneca introduces the ﬁrst opinion, while in the second passage (4.31) expressions like concitant, commouent (31.2), and mouent (31.3) occur. The distinction is also to be found at the beginning of this book: a person has a rational perception [sc. of a wrong having been done, i.e., he or she has opinion (i) or the impression leading to this opinion], the person then resents what he or she has perceived [impulse-generating impression which, if assented to, might lead to opinion (ii)], the person assents to the impressions and acts accordingly: Dial. 4.1.4 nam speciem capere acceptae iniuriae et ultionem eius concupiscere et utrumque coniungere, nec laedi se debuisse et uindicari debere, non est eius impetus qui sine uoluntate nostra concitatur: intellexit aliquid [opinion (i)], indignatus est [opinion (ii)], 6 7

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Being a good person, being virtuous and enjoying "πεια, then, means to a Stoic: to have the right sort of knowledge and never to err in one’s judgments. II.2. Opinions, Grasping and Knowledge According to Stoic epistemology, the perfect human being, a wise man, does not have opinions (δξαι) but only either thoughts (νοσεις), i.e., rational impressions (φαντασαι λογικα) which he entertains without assenting to them, or knowledge ( πιστμη) which is always true and cannot be lost by way of argument or persuasion. This is so, because the wise man does not assent to every thought which may occur to him, not even if this thought is true, but only to a special kind of impression, the so-called “grasping impression” (φαντασα καταληπτικ).11 As Arius Didymus tells us in his Handbook of Stoic Ethics12: Knowledge is a grasping (κατληψις) which is secure and unchangeable by reason ("μετπτωτον $π% λγου). It is secondly a system of such knowledges ( πιστ&μαι), like the rational knowledge of particulars (' κατ( μρος λογικ [sc. πιστμη]) which exists in the perfect man. … They say that the wise man never makes a false supposition, and that he does not assent at all to anything which cannot be grasped ("καταλπτ)ω), owing to his not opining …

Normal people do not have knowledge, because they assent to nongrasping impressions; such an assent is called “weak assent” and “opinion,” as Sextus Empiricus reports13 The Stoics say that there are three things which are linked together: knowledge, opinion and grasping stationed between them. Knowledge is grasping which is secure and ﬁrm and unchangeable through persuasion by meaningful language utterance ("μετπειστος $π% λγου). Opinion is weak and false assent. Grasping in between these is assent belonging to damnauit [assent], ulciscitur [action]. See also Stevens 2000, 156–159 and, for a diﬀerent reading of this passage, Katja Vogt’s paper in this book. 11 Frede 1999a (see also Frede 1983), Long and Sedley 1987, and Reed 2002 call it “cognitive”; Hankinson 2003 transliterates the term (see 60 n. 30). On Stoic epistemology see also Annas 1990 and Striker 1974, and, e.g., Brittain 2002. Sources are collected in Long and Sedley (“LS”) 1987, Ch.s 39–41, and in Hülser 1987–1988, nos. 248–515. 12 Ar. Did. apud Stob. 2.73.19–23 = SVF 3.112 = LS 41H1–2 and 111.18–20 = SVF 3.548 = LS 41G1; translations by LS, slightly altered. 13 Sext. Emp. Math. 7.151–152 = SVF 2.90 = LS 41C1–5; translations by LS, slightly altered. The intricacies of weak assent are discussed by Görler 1977 and Arthur 1983.

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jula wildberger a grasping impression … Of these they say that knowledge is found only in the wise and opinion only in the inferior, but grasping is common to them both …

Although they have no knowledge, normal people can have grasping impressions. And it is most important that they have this faculty. Without it, intellectual and moral progress would be impossible. We nonwise human beings could never hope to attain a wise man’s state of bliss and perfection, if we had no grasping impressions. For if we want to become a wiser and better person we must stop having opinions and start assenting to grasping impressions only.14 II.3. Grasping and Written Instruction But how can we distinguish whether we grasp something or just have an opinion? In fact, this ought to be rather easy. For a grasping impression is, roughly speaking, an impression which is evidently true and which cannot be wrong. As an unknown Stoic puts it: a grasping impression “all but seizes us by the hair and pulls us to assent, needing nothing else to achieve this eﬀect or to establish its diﬀerence from other impressions.”15 The Stoics, probably already Zeno himself, deﬁne the grasping impression as an impression [a] which [comes about] from what is ("π% $πρχοντος), [b] which is impressed in and stamped into in accordance with exactly what is (κατ’ ατ% τ% $πρχον), and [c] which is of such a kind as could not come about from what is not.16

There is an ongoing debate on the exact meaning of this deﬁnition, which cannot be treated in every detail in this context. Some remarks must suﬃce: the most important controversial point is the nature of “what is” (τ% $πρχον). Some scholars understand the term as denoting an existent object. With Michael Frede (1999a) I prefer a reading according to which “what is” is a sayable: either a true proposition or a predicate (κατηγρημα) actually belonging to an existent body or sev14 Brennan 1996 and Stevens 2000 prove that there are grasping impulse-generating impressions, according to the Stoics. 15 Sext. Emp. Math. 7.257 = LS 40K3 (translation by LS). 16 Sext. Emp. Math. 8.248 = SVF 2.65 = LS 40E3 ' "π% $πρχοντος κα κατ’

ατ% τ% $πρχον ναπομεμαγμνη κα ναπεσφραγισμνη, ποα οκ +ν γνοιτο "π% μ$πρχοντος. In this passage (246–252) Sextus gives us the most detailed account of this

diﬃcult deﬁnition.

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eral bodies in the world, because the term $πρχον is used to denote these two entities in other Stoic contexts as well. Another reason why I prefer this reading is that it would be diﬃcult to make sense of the third clause of the deﬁnition if we understood $πρχον as denoting an existing object: How could something ever come about from something which does not exist? The clause would be true of every impression, because nothing can come about from totally inexistent things. For a Stoic, only bodies (σ.ματα) are existent in the proper sense of the word, only bodies are /ντα; either there is a body and it exists and can be causally eﬀective, or there is nothing at all. Sayables, on the other hand, belong to the class of incorporeals ("σ.ματα) which do not exist, but subsist ($φστασαι) at bodies; and they subsist even if they are not “what is.” Μ- $πρχοντα, like a proposition which is not true of any body in the world or a predicate which does not belong to such a body, can nevertheless subsist, e.g., at false language utterances or thoughts of human beings. It is also important to note that, if $πρχον is a sayable belonging to a body, the deﬁnition does not require that grasping impressions have a certain causal history. For only bodies can be causes, whereas sayables which are $πρχοντα are eﬀects caused by bodies at bodies. What is required is, ﬁrstly, that the cognitive impression has come about in virtue of the fact that at some body or bodies in the cosmos there subsists a true proposition (or a belonging predicate—which amounts to the same, because then this predicate can be truthfully predicated of the body it belongs to and the corresponding proposition subsists at this body). And, secondly, this true proposition must correspond to the proposition subsisting at the impression itself (see II.1). But how this correspondence comes about is not part of the deﬁnition. If, e.g., I have the impression “There is a green book on the table,” I may see it directly with my own eyes, I may see it on a monitor by way of a camera scanning the room, I may use an instrument in order to ﬁnd out whether the light reﬂected by the object in question has the characteristic spectrum we use to call “green,” I may touch the table and the book, I may open the book, I may call an expert and ask her whether she believes this object to be a book, etc. A certain causal history may, however, be implied by the third clause of the deﬁnition. How can an impression be of such a kind as could not come about from what is not? Must I not have direct empirical contact with the book? What, if I ask an expert? How can I ever be sure she does not lie to me, and how can I know whether she

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knows, especially if she is no wise person and as ignorant as I myself and all other normal people? How can verbal instruction by a Stoic philosopher (who admittedly is no wise man)17 ever lead to grasping and so to intellectual and moral progress? How, if at all, can words be the source of grasping impressions? And what is the use of words, if they do not lead to grasping, but only to opinions, which may be wrong and easily lost again? II.4. Did Seneca Care about this Problem? Surprisingly, Seneca seems not to have cared about this problem. Or did he? Although, in his Epistulae morales, he discusses methodological questions (like when, where, how, by which means, with whom etc. to study and practice philosophy) on such a scale that one might call the Epistulae Seneca’s Organon, I could not ﬁnd in them any deﬁnite reference to the concept of grasping. There are, of course, expressions for the perception of something evident (e.g., liquet alicui), and we ﬁnd words like comprehendere, comprehensio and apprehendere which Cicero used to translate the Stoic terms. But Seneca does not discuss or allude to the deﬁnition of grasping, and it is possible that he just uses ordinary language.18 There are, however, good reasons to believe that Seneca knew the concept of grasping: ﬁrst of all, it was basic handbook-knowledge to be found in any introduction to Stoic philosophy. This is demonstrated by Brouwer 2002. In Ben. 4.33.2 Seneca mentions a certissima rerum comprehensio which cannot lead us in acting, where we have to go by ueri similitudo. In this context Seneca discusses the concept of ε1λογος "πολογα by which a κα&κον is deﬁned (cf. Ar. Did. apud Stob. 2.85.13–21 = SVF 3.494 = LS 59B) and which leads to an action with reservation ($πεξαρεσις, discussed in Ben. 4.33–39; cf. also Dial. 9.13.2–14.1; Inwood 1985, 119–126, 160, 165–175, 210–251; Brennan 2000. I have not yet seen Jacques Brunschwig, “Sur deux notions de l’éthique stoïcienne: De la ‘reserve’ au ‘renversement,’” in Les stoïciens, ed. G. Romeyer Dherbey and J.-B. Gourinat, Paris, forthcoming. On the meaning of ε1λογος and its epistemic consequences see also Brennan 1996).—The impresson discussed by Seneca concerns the future results of our action, not the question whether we should act at all. The wise man, in these cases, has no grasping impression of the type “If I act in this way, the result r will be achieved,” but he must, nevertheless, have the grasping impression “It is ﬁtting for me to act in this way,” because the wise man is determined to act correctly and must be sure whether it is correct to act in this way, whereas he is not determined always to achieve the result he aimed at with his action and, accordingly, does not need to grasp what the result of his action will be (e.g., Ep. 85.32 huic enim propositum est in uita agenda non utique quod temptat eﬃcere, sed omnia recte facere; Ep. 14.16). 17 18

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Secondly, Cicero, whom Seneca certainly had read, discusses it in his Academica, because the concept of grasping was central to the critique raised by Academic skeptics against Stoic “dogmatism.” Furthermore, Seneca mentions or implies other terms and concepts of the theory sketched above: he distinguishes between opinion and knowledge as well as between weak and strong assent, and in descriptions of a perfect mind mention is made of the coherent body of knowledge such a mind must have.19 In Ep. 88.43–46, Seneca criticizes philosophers who show a strong interest in skeptic epistemology and skepticism and rejects their studies as being a hostile attack on truth. Whereas other philosophers, who study “useless” liberal arts, simply do not promote knowledge, skeptics actually prevent it and harm their students’ natural faculty to perceive what is true. They aggressively deprive me of any hope to acquire knowledge at all. … The others do not light the way, so that the vision may be directed to what is true, these men gouge out my eyes.20

We may, therefore, assume that although Seneca did not explicitly discuss it, he was acquainted with the concept of grasping and its role in Stoic epistemology, and that he did not want to take up a serious debate with the skeptic critics of this concept, because he thought the possibility of certain perception was either evident and, therefore, did not require any proof by further evidence (cf. Ep. 88.46) or at least a necessary precondition for doing philosophy at all. Without hope to attain knowledge, why should we practice what is deﬁned as the striving for “knowledge of the divine and the human” (cf. Ep. 89.4–5)? III. How Can Philosophical Reading Be Epistemologically Proﬁtable? According to Seneca, it is the job of a philosopher to “light the way” and to “direct the vision of others to what is true” (Ep. 88.45). From the tenets of Stoic epistemology it follows that a philosophical text which performs this function must have the eﬀect that its readers grasp more than they grasped before reading this text, since knowledge and wisdom are acquired by way of grasping. I shall now investigate whether Seneca 19 On the concept of πιστμη (scientia) see, e.g., Ep. 31.6 and 8; 50.8; 66.6; 71.27–28; 76.19; 92.3; 95.57; 115.18. 20 Ep. 88.43 audi quantum mali faciat nimia subtilitas et quam infesta ueritati sit. 45 … hi

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says anything about such a function of his texts and whether he actually does something in the Epistulae morales which might have the eﬀect described. III.1. Can Written Texts Generate Grasping Impressions? Tokens of written or spoken words are bodies (e.g., a layer of ink or air in motion) at which sayables subsist. At the written words “On 27 September 2004 the author of this text had eggs for lunch” subsists a proposition which may be true (a $πρχον) or false (a μ- $πρχον), e.g., if I had something else for lunch or no lunch at all or if this text had not one but three authors or was generated by a computer. But how can you know? Obviously, if you formed an impression that I had eggs for lunch that day when reading this paragraph, this impression was not grasping. And this seems to be true of most impressions we form when reading or hearing a text. What, however, if you read a sentence like: “Either a person is eating an egg at this very moment, or not: the aforementioned person is eating an egg at this very moment”? The impression you have when reading this sentence might, in fact, be of such a kind as could not come about from a false proposition. The Stoics seem not to have had a concept of analytic in contrast to synthetic truth, but they seem to have had an intuition that there is something like logical evidence.21 They acknowledged ﬁve “indemonstrable” syllogisms and certain rules for valid arguments, and in Diogenes Laërtius we read that, in addition to sensory grasping, there is grasping by means of reason (λγος) and that this kind of grasping is of “what is reached through demonstration.”22 The context, in which λγος is opposed to α2σησις, the faculty of sensory perception, shows that λγος must here mean the faculty of rational perception which makes human beings rational animals. The demonstration, however, by which something is rationally grasped, requires another kind of λγος as well: meaningful language, either in the form of internal λγος νδιετος, the thoughts of a rational animal,23 or in spem omnis scientiae mihi eripiunt. … illi [other philosophers who are criticized in § 42] non praeferunt lumen per quod acies derigatur ad uerum, hi oculos mihi eﬀodiunt. 21 Bobzien 1996, 192. 22 Diog. Laert. 7.52 = SVF 2.84 = LS40P ' δ κατληψις … λγ)ω δ τ3ν δι’ "ποδεξεως συναγομνων … 23 Sources for Stoic λγος νδιετος are collected in Hülser 1987–1988, nos. 528– 535.

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the form of external λγος προφορικς which consists of written or spoken language utterances. So, if a $πρχον is a true proposition, not an existing, physical body (see II.3), it is reasonable to assume that, according to the Stoics, conclusions of valid arguments can be grasped on the basis of verbal instruction—if the premises of the argument have been grasped before, a fact which might often be diﬃcult to assess for the author, who does not know his reader personally.24 Seneca, at least, seems not to have relied extensively on this method to generate grasping impressions in his readers. Arguments which are valid according to the strict standards of Stoic syllogistic are rare in his oeuvre, and he never discusses the formal validity of syllogisms. More than once, he advises Lucilius not to devote too much attention to the study of syllogistic and dialectic and states his conviction that syllogisms, by themselves, do not further and might even hinder moral progress.25 One reason why Seneca shows himself so impatient with dialecticians and skeptics is, I believe, quite simple: for him, it seems, the basic problem is neither to have a grasping impression, whether by way of sensation or by rational perception of a demonstration, nor how exactly to deﬁne this impression nor how to be sure whether one has one— this ought to be evident to the person who has the impression, if there is any such impression at all. For Seneca, the real problems occur not while we assent to a grasping impression but before and after assent. What the philosopher really should be concerned about is the obstacles which hinder us from grasping what ought to be evident to us (III.2) and the reasons why we do not retain what we have already grasped, why our assent to grasping impressions is so weak (III.3). III.2. How Texts Make the Reader Grasp Something Even if texts could not generate grasping impressions by themselves, verbal instruction could still help the reader to experience grasping impressions outside the text in question.

24

A valid argument must contain true propositions only. Cf. Ep. 45, 48, 49, 111 on paradoxes and sophisms, 82, 83, 85, 87 on the value of syllogistic arguments in ethics, and 102, 106, 109, 113, 117 on dialectical problems and arguments in ethics (102.4 moralibus rationalia immixta). I discuss Seneca’s critique in more detail elsewhere: Wildberger (forthcoming), chapter 2.4.3. See also Tilg 2003 and John Cooper’s paper in this book. 25

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III.2.a. Blinding False Beliefs According to Sextus Empiricus, “later Stoics” added a new element to the deﬁnition of the grasping impression: a grasping impression must be without “obstacle,” because such an 4νστημα prevents assent. Obstacles of this kind are false opinions which are contrary to what is perceived, e.g., the opinion that the dead never return from Hades, which prevented Admetus from grasping that he was actually seeing Alcestis, as, in fact, he did.26 Even without this addition to the theory it is clear that false beliefs may hinder grasping and that texts can remove such obstacles, e.g., by syllogistic arguments or by pointing out what is evident to the reader and has already been grasped. To remove the obstacles which hinder the sight of the mind is, according to Aristo, whom Seneca cites, the ﬁrst function of theoretical instruction, of the decreta of philosophy (Sen. Ep. 94.5 = SVF 1.359); the obstacles to be removed are opiniones falsae (Ep. 94.6, 36), and Seneca regards their removal as a necessary, but not suﬃcient, condition for dispectus rerum agendarum (94.36), i.e., for a suﬃciently subtle and diﬀerentiated perception of what is ﬁtting for oneself to do.27 In Ep. 17, for example, Lucilius has grasped the basic fact that philosophy is very useful, but not the details of its eminent usefulness28; Lucilius is hindered from grasping that it is right now ﬁtting for him to retreat from oﬃce and to devote himself to philosophy by the false opinion that it is ﬁtting for him to concern himself with his ﬁnancial aﬀairs right now. The rest of the letter is dedicated to the task of demonstrating to Lucilius that the second opinion is, indeed, false. III.2.b. Exhortation as a Cause of Grasping Another easy means to help readers grasp what is true is quite simple and frequently applied by Seneca. Often we do not grasp what is true, just because we omit to perform the necessary acts of perception. Accordingly, Seneca asks Lucilius, the exemplary reader, to pay more attention to a matter, to take a closer look at something, to see what Sext. Emp. Math. 7.253–257; partly in LS 40K1–3. Cf. also 94.5 ad oﬃciorum dispiciendum ordinem. Subtlety of perception is discussed below (IV.2.b). 28 Ep. 17.2 … et summam quidem rei peruides, quantum philosophia prosit, partes autem nondum satis subtiliter dispicis … The reinforcing preﬁx in peruides may indicate grasping. 26 27

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other people are doing, to observe himself as well, to experience things on his own instead of just believing what others say or even to try out something in order to ﬁnd out what it feels like, as, e.g., in Ep. 18, where Seneca advises Lucilius to live like a poor man for several days to see whether poverty is something to be afraid of.29 It is obvious that Seneca does not content himself with the theoretical exposition of a subject; he also gives praecepta, directions how to act. And it is very important to see what exactly this means: it means that Seneca causes impulse-generating impressions in his readers, impressions which are meant not only to inform his readers about some fact, but to set them in motion. This in turn means that readers must realize that what is said is not just some universal truth, but concerns themselves as well. An impulse-generating impression is an impression of something which is ﬁtting for oneself at this very moment,30 an impression that it is ﬁtting to move oneself in a certain way right now. It is not enough theoretically to know what is good and what is bad for human beings in general; in order to act, I must also believe that is ﬁtting for me and that I should do it now. This is one reason why Seneca, as he often does,31 urges us to hurry up, to hesitate no longer, to start right now. And this is what Seneca seems to have in mind when he says to Lucilius, as, e.g., in Ep. 16.3, that philosophy is no idle pursuit of words but a thing of life and death which should direct all of Lucilius’ actions, or when Seneca criticizes people who never dare to do what they have been learning for such a long time (Ep. 33.8). This type of person is criticized again in Ep. 108, where Seneca shows in more detail how we can read or listen to texts with more beneﬁt. It is important to realize (a) that it is me the text is speaking about,

29 See also, e.g., Ep. 1.1 et si uolueris attendere; 20.1–3; 22.10; 24.2 and 12–14; 50.3–4; 59.14; 76.27–29; 83.1–2; 98.4 siue alios obseruare uolueris (liberius enim inter aliena iudicium est) siue te ipsum fauore seposito, et senties hoc et conﬁteberis …; 99.7 respice celeritatem rapidissimi temporis, cogita breuitatem huius spatii per quod citatissimi currimus, obserua hunc comitatum generis humani eodem tendentis …; 99.10 propone temporis profundi uastitatem et uniuersum complectere, deinde hoc quod aetatem uocamus humanam compara immenso: uidebis quam exiguum sit quod optamus, quod extendimus …; 99.13 aspice illos iuuenes …: plus timeri quam sperari potuisse manifestum erit; 110.3–12 (esp. 110.6 tanti putemus oculos intendere: iam apparebit …; 110.11 quid ergo nunc te hortor ut facias? nihil noui—nec enim nouis malis remedia quaeruntur—sed hoc primum, ut tecum ipse dispicias …); 114.2–7; 119.8.—Many of these passages also concern praemeditatio futurorum malorum (on which see III.3.b). 30 Ar. Did. apud Stob. 2.86.17–18 = SVF 3.169 = LS 53Q1 τ% δ κινον τ-ν ρμ-ν οδν 5τερον ε6ναι λγουσιν "λλ’ 7 φαντασαν ρμητικ-ν το κακοντος ατεν … 31 E.g., in Ep. 1; 4.1; 32.3; 35.4; 76.5; 101.10.

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(b) that I must start to move, and (c) that I must do it now. Seneca illustrates this by reading Virgilian verses philosophically (108.24–27): Virgil’s general descriptive sentences are explained—you have to understand what you read (decreta)—and turned into directive expressions directed at the ﬁrst person plural (praecepta). Virgil says “Time speeds away without repair”; the philosopher reads “We must be vigilant; if we do not speed up we will be left behind …” So, on the one hand, Seneca shows his readers how to have impulse-generating impressions when reading other authors’ texts; and, on the other hand, he himself already combines descriptive and directive expressions which are addressed to a ﬁrst or second person. A purely theoretical instruction would not change the reader’s life, which consists of actions (Ep. 95.4); and if readers do not change their life, they cannot observe themselves acting in a better, more consistent way, which is exactly the experience needed in order to acquire a clearer concept of what is good for oneself and, thus, practical wisdom. If we did not act and do what is ﬁtting for us to do, we could never grasp what it means for us to act in such a way.32 There is, of course, the danger that the reader is set in motion in the wrong direction—we must not forget that the philosopher is no wise man. This danger can, however, be reduced if the philosopher moves his readers towards what he himself by his own experience has grasped as being good and useful for himself (e.g., Ep. 8.2; 27.1). It is reasonable, therefore, that Seneca demands that a teacher of philosophy really believes, that is: grasps, what he says.33 Furthermore, the most frequent and most important object of motivation in Seneca’s Letters is to motivate readers to do philosophy; in other words: Seneca asks them to have cognitions for themselves and to ﬁnd out by their own observation what is good and useful for them.

32 This is the process of ο8κεωσις to oneself as a rational animal as described, e.g., in Cic. Fin. 3.20–22 = LS 59D2–6. I believe that, at least for Seneca, this process continues as long as a person is not yet perfectly rational: cf., e.g., Sen. Ben. 5.14.4 uos ad speciem ueri componite animum et, dum honestum discitis, quicquid est in quo nomen honesti iactatur, id colite. See also Inwood 1995a. 33 See, e.g., Ep. 75.1–5 and 100.11, where Seneca also implies that readers can recognize whether a speaker means what he says.

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III.3. The Problem of Weak Assent III.3.a. Weakening Assent Stoic assent is no punctual act of accepting, it is a continuous eﬀort. Assent means to accept an impression, which is a corporeal change of one’s corporeal mind, as corresponding to the facts of the world and to hold it there, ﬁxed in the mind. If assent is weak, the ‘grip’ of the mind by which it holds what it has assented to is not ﬁrm enough to retain the impression for a long time. This problem is enhanced when assent is given to an impulse-generating impression: then, additional strength is needed to keep up the movement of the mind, the impulse, until the action is completed. As shown in III.2.b, it is the task of the philosopher to set his readers in motion34: But as virtues once received [in the mind] cannot leave again and are easily kept, so it is most diﬃcult to begin making progress towards them, because it is typical of the weak and sick mind to be afraid of what it has not yet experienced: therefore it must be forced to begin.

As I wish to show now, it is also the task of the philosopher to keep his readers going, after they have begun their philosophical progress. In Ep. 16.1, for example, Lucilius has already grasped (liquere hoc tibi) that it is ﬁtting for him to do philosophy and has even experienced what a relief philosophy is. However, Lucilius’ assent is weak and there is constant need to urge him on. The action has not yet reached the proposed aim: to turn Lucilius’ mind into the perfect bona mens of a wise man, whose knowledge and virtues “cannot leave again.” As yet, it is necessary to make ﬁrmer (ﬁrmandum) and ﬁx more deeply (altius ﬁgendum) his correct but weak assent (bona uoluntas) to the true impulse-generating impression “It is ﬁtting for me to do philosophy right now.”35 34 Ep. 50.9 sed quemadmodum uirtutes receptae exire non possunt facilisque earum tutela est, ita initium ad illas eundi arduum, quia hoc proprium inbecillae mentis atque aegrae est, formidare inexperta; itaque cogenda est ut incipiat. 35 Ep. 16.1 liquere hoc tibi, Lucili, scio, neminem posse beate uiuere, ne tolerabiliter quidem, sine sapientiae studio, et beatam uitam perfecta sapientia eﬃci, ceterum tolerabilem etiam inchoata. sed hoc quod liquet ﬁrmandum et altius cotidiana meditatione ﬁgendum est: plus operis est in eo ut proposita custodias quam ut honesta proponas. perseuerandum est et assiduo studio robur addendum, donec bona mens sit quod bona uoluntas est. See also, e.g., Ep. 1.1, 2, and 5; 4.1; 5.1; 13.1; 19.1; 20.1; 35.1; 41.1; 76.5; 82.1. Lucilius is advised to do the same thing for his own friend (36.1). Inuicem hortari is one of the things friends can do for each other (34.2): ego cum uidissem indolem

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If I happen to have grasped that it is ﬁtting for me to do philosophy right now and have, accordingly, begun reading the Epistulae morales, Seneca will constantly tell me: “Ita fac”. The text which tells me that it is ﬁtting for me to do philosophy causes an impulse-generating impression similar to my own ﬁrst impression which made me start reading this book. If I assent and retain this new moving corporeal structure—at least for a while—it will reinforce the movement of the older corporeal structure(s) already present in my mind and thus help me to proceed further. Weak impulses are a kind of weak memories: the mind slackens until the moving structure in it fades and is lost without trace. Therefore, we need verbal “admonition” which “turns the attention to [what is ﬁtting for us], arouses [the impulse-movement], and raises the coherence of the memory,” which is a permanently retained impression, “so that it cannot glide out [of the mind].”36 The movement will, of course, last longer, the memory will be retained for a longer time, if the impression which caused it was very strong. This may be one reason why Seneca criticizes ethical instruction by syllogisms as ineﬀective. In addition to the fact that uttering syllogisms often does not cause impulse-generating impressions at all, because they normally do not contain directive expressions (see III.2.b), instruction of this kind generally is “slippery because of its subtlety” and, therefore, quickly forgotten. Non-wise readers must be pushed on with blunt but strong language utterances.37

tuam, inieci manum, exhortatus sum, addidi stimulos nec lente ire passus sum, sed subinde incitaui; et nunc idem facio, sed iam currentem hortor et inuicem hortantem. 36 Ep. 94.25 non docet admonitio, sed aduertit, sed excitat, sed memoriam continet nec patitur elabi.—For the Stoic deﬁnition of a memory as μνιμος κα σχετικ- τ9πωσις see Plut. Comm. not. 1085a = SVF 2.847 = LS 39F. 37 Ben. 3.5.1 quemadmodum, mi Liberalis, quaedam res semel perceptae haerent, quaedam, ut scias, non est satis didicisse (intercidit enim eorum scientia, nisi continuetur), geometriam dico et sublimium cursum et si qua alia propter subtilitatem lubrica sunt … On the nimia subtilitas of syllogistic arguments see, e.g., Ep. 82.24; 85.1; 65.16.—It remains to be shown what exactly the term “subtle” refers to in this context. I would suggest that it has something to do with the subtlety of the concepts used (see IV.2.b); an impression would, accordingly, be subtle, if it is formed with very specialized, maybe even physically very small concepts, so that the impression activates only few structures within the mind.

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III.3.b. Assent out of Weakness Weak assent is weak because what is assented to is not ﬁrmly retained in the ‘grip’ of the mind, but also because the mind is so weak that it can easily be moved and changed. The coherent, strong mind of the wise man can only be moved in the right way and measure: only grasping impressions set it in motion, and these, being true, never contradict a prior grasping impression; the weak, incoherent mind, on the other hand, is moved by grasping impressions as well as by non-grasping, but “convincing impressions” (φαντασαι πιανα). And this second type of weakness is a further reason for the weak ‘grip’ of the imperfect mind on what it has grasped. The Stoics distinguish between grasping and convincing impressions; an impression may not be grasping but convincing, and thus may cause a “smooth movement” in the mind although it is false.38 This diﬀerence between convincing and grasping impressions seems to have been regarded as one of the two basic reasons why human beings do not develop properly, but start to assent to erroneous impressions and to want what is not ﬁtting for them. This διαστροφ of the adolescent mind was explained by “the things being convincing” (πιαντης τ3ν πραγμτων) and by “the voices of the many sounding all around us” (κατχησις τ3ν πολλ3ν "νρ.πων/τ3ν συνντων).39 But a false convincing impression may not only cause a new nongrasping assent, it may also loosen the ‘grip’ of the mind on something already grasped by causing a contrary movement to the movement 38 Sext. Emp. Math. 7.242–243 = SVF 2.65 = LS 39G1–6. See also the commentary on LS 40G. There are also true convincing impressions. 39 Sources are collected in SVF 3.228–236; e.g., Diog. Laert. 7.89 and Gal. P.H.P. 5.5.14 = SVF 3.229a (cf. LS 65M).—A diﬀerent distinction is given by Seneca in Ep. 94.13: we are either already corrupted or easily to be corrupted (duo sunt propter quae delinquimus: aut inest animo prauis opinionibus malitia contracta aut, etiam si non est falsis occupatus, ad falsa procliuis est et cito specie quo non oportet trahente corrumpitur). The second reason, however, corresponds to the ﬁrst reason given above: that we are corrupted, if things are convincing to us and if we assent to false convincing impressions all too quickly (cito specie quo non oportet trahente).—Seneca also uses the verb impellere to denote a convincing impulse-generating impression (e.g., Ep. 13.13; 52.1 quid est hoc, Lucili, quod nos alio tendentes alio trahit et eo unde recedere cupimus inpellit?).—Both reasons appear in Dial. 12.5.6 (κατχησις) and 12.6.1 (πιαντης: quos prima rerum species, utcumque credita est, aufert).—Ep. 82.15–16, a very instructive passage, concerns the nature of convincing impressions of "διφορα; cf. also Ep. 118.8–9.—In Ep. 87.33 Seneca (discussing an argument of Posidonius = fr. 170 Edelstein and Kidd) uses the expression species ueri similis ac plerisque credibilis.

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caused before by the grasping impression, as in Ep. 17, where Lucilius has grasped that it is ﬁtting for him to do philosophy, but has now the convincing impression that it is ﬁtting for him to care for his ﬁnancial aﬀairs. In addition to reinforcing the right impulses caused by grasping impressions, the philosopher has to prevent his readers from assenting to false convincing impressions contrary to what has been grasped. One important means to do that is the so-called praemeditatio futurorum malorum.40 Certain objects of perception, e.g., a dying friend, a heap of diamonds, a torturer showing his instruments, are liable to cause in the weak mind strong convincing but false impulse-generating impressions, which will, if assented to, result in passions; these passions in turn may set the mind in a motion which may hinder or even stop the motion caused before by a grasping impression. Now, praemeditatio futurorum malorum can be directed at the ﬁrst opinion constituting a passion (see II.1): the philosophical writer can, for example, cause grasping impressions or instruct his reader to have grasping perceptions on his own according to which things like the death of a friend are not bad and things like a heap of diamonds not good. Praemeditatio futurorum malorum is, however, also a kind of mental vaccination by which the reader is prepared to resist the convincing impressions which cause the second opinion of a passion: that it is ﬁtting in such a case to become agitated. For the reader must learn not to give in to this προπεια, his ﬁrst preliminary impulse leading to a passion; when he perceives the glitter of diamonds, the waxen face of a dead friend, or has, for example, a strong sensation of physical pain, he must not assent to the convincing impression that it is ﬁtting for himself to become agitated about that now.41 In order to achieve this, the philosophical writer does not cause grasping impressions: the reader is to have “fantasies” (φανταστικ) which he generates out of his own mind without any object of perception being present. A fantasy is an “empty pulling”: the mind sets its corporeal concepts (4ννοιαι) in motion and causes a change in itself

40 Hadot 1969, 60–62; Manning 1976; Buﬀa 1989; Newman 1989; Wacht 1998; Sellars 2003; Panaetius fr. 115–116 van Straaten/85 and 87 Alesse; Cic. Tusc. 3.28–30, on which see Graver 2002, 96–99.—In Seneca see, e.g., Ep. 4.4; 24.2; 76.34; 88.17; 91.1 and 3; 98.5; 101.1; 104.12; 107.1–8; 114.26–27. 41 In addition to Stevens 2000 see, e.g., Abel 1983, Graver 1999, Inwood 1993, Sorabji 2000, 66–92, and Tieleman 2003, 127–128, 284.

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which is similar but not identical to an impression, i.e., the alteration caused by a real object of perception.42 A fantasy of a horse, e.g., is caused by moving the concept of horse and is in some way similar to the impression caused by a real horse. As they are generated by the mind itself, such fantasies are, however, not as eﬀective as real impressions. The impact of a fantasy of toothache generated by moving the concept of toothache is quite diﬀerent from the impact of a grasping impression of an aching tooth itself. By generating such harmless fantasies a text can prepare its readers eﬀectively to face the real thing: by moving his concept of pain and generating lively fantasies of toothache or, for that matter, slowly burning hands,43 the reader can learn to endure real pain. The reader can ﬁnd out and train the right reaction to the ﬁrst impulse to become agitated about what may cause a passion in him, because the pressure exerted by a convincing fantasy is much weaker than the pressure exerted by a convincing impression. Both urge the mind on to assent and to move accordingly, but whereas the impression might not be resisted, the fantasy can.44 Regular training with fantasies can thus help build up structures which will later resist the convincing power of the actual object. And this eﬀect can be enhanced by an author who is able—e.g., by means of the enargeia of his style—to create lively and strong fantasies in his readers.

42

“Aëtius” 4.12 = SVF 2.54 = LS 39B; Stob. 1.136.21–137.4 = Ar. Did. 40 = SVF 1.65

= LS 30A.

43 For gruesome descriptions of physical injuries see, e.g., Ep. 14.5 or 24.5 and 66.51 (on Scaevola’s slowly burning hand). See also Sen. Dial. 4.2.2–3. 44 I assume that fantasies can be convincing, like real impressions, and that they can be accepted by some sort of quasi-assent. This is, however, a point which has yet to be proved. A real assent to fantasies is most probably impossible, because, as there is no object of perception, there can be no δε ξις, which means that there cannot ever subsist a deﬁnite proposition (like, e.g., “This is a horse”) at a fantasy. Cf. Bobzien 1999, 100 on these propositions, which she calls “deﬁnite assertibles”: “… in the case of deﬁnite assertibles, assertibility or statability … becomes in part pointat-ability, and Stoic point-at-ability requires intrinsically the existence of the object pointed at.”

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IV.1. “The Voices of the Many Sounding around Us” The structures the reader will build up, strengthen, or modify by praemeditatio futurorum malorum are concepts. Concepts, 4ννοιαι or προλψεις, are corporeal structures in the mind built up by experience ( μπειρα): impressions are retained as memories, and comparison and combination of many such memories results in the formation or modiﬁcation of a concept.45 Accordingly, the content of concepts is universal like definitions or universal propositions, and when we discuss deﬁnitions, we discuss the content of our concepts.46 There can, of course, be wrong concepts, for example a concept of human good according to which such a good can be taken away by chance or a concept of wealth according to which wealth is always useful. A wrong concept of physical pain will be formed, if I assent to many false but convincing impressions, that it is ﬁtting for me to avoid this painful object here by all means. I will then, in the end, have a wrong concept of pain according to which physical pain is something always and by all means to be avoided. In addition to that, new concepts are formed without experience by having many fantasies in which features of diﬀerent existing concepts are modiﬁed or combined, e.g., the concept of horse with the concept of man to create a new concept of centaur. Such a concept cannot be called wrong in the same way as the wrong concepts described above; there simply exists no body which falls under this concept of centaur.47 45 Important sources are collected in LS 39C–F; see also Hülser 1987–1988, Ch. 2.2.2.—As with grasping, Seneca uses diﬀerent expressions to refer to concepts: for πρληψις, e.g., we ﬁnd praesumptio (Ep. 117.16), 4ννοιαι κοινα are referred to, e.g., as what nature dictates to us, as uoces publicae (Ep. 8.8; 21.9), or as sensus communes (9.21). Another term for 4ννοια is persuasio, and such a persuasio is (or can be) identical with what Seneca calls a decretum in Ep. 94 and 95, as is indicated in 95.44. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that the prauae opiniones against which we need decreta and theoretical instruction are concepts as well. Seneca does not use Cicero’s term notio. 46 See, e.g., Cic. Tusc. 4.53 = LS 32H5 and 8 nam superiores deﬁnitiones erant Sphaeri, hominis in primis bene deﬁnientis, ut putant Stoici; sunt enim omnino omnes fere similes, sed declarant communes notiones [= ννοας κοινς], alia magis alia. … quae enim istarum deﬁnitionum non aperit notionem nostram quam habemus omnes de fortitudine tectam atque inuolutam? 47 It is a diﬃcult question whether a universal proposition corresponding to a concept of centaur, like, e.g., “A centaur is a rational animal,” can be true or false at all. Furthermore, there are reasons to believe that the sayables subsisting at concepts are not propositions but rather predicates. Wrong concepts like the erroneous concepts

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Their ability to have and generate their own concepts is what makes human beings rational.48 It is, however, this same ability which causes errors and imperfection. Human beings can form concepts of nonexistent things, like a centaur, and can then have rational impressions of real objects which resemble those concepts, e.g., the impression “That body over there is a centaur” of a man on a horse seen from afar, and, erroneously, assent to this impression. Or they have a perverted concept of pain, according to which pain is evil and bad and to be avoided by all means and at any costs, and assent to convincing impulse-generating impressions like “It is ﬁtting for me to avoid this torture at all costs” and “It is therefore ﬁtting that I now betray my best friend in order to avoid being tortured.” Furthermore, human beings do not keep their errors to themselves but utter them to others, so that individual errors are multiplied to a resounding concert of false statements, which are then perceived, assented to, remembered, and turned into even more wrong concepts.49 These new concepts and the false opinions caused by erroneous utterances all loosen the ‘grip’ of the mind on what it has grasped and further weaken its already weak assent. Only the wise man has knowledge which is “unchangeable by meaningful language utterance” (see II.2); what is grasped by weak assent can be changed this way. The philosopher must, therefore, react to this kind of verbal disinformation with correct verbal counter-instruction of his own. One way to do this is that the philosopher raises his own voice against the

of good, wealth, and pain mentioned above are wrong, e.g., because they contain incompatible features (wealth also attracts thieves and murderers and is useless, if you are cast out alone on a deserted island) or features which do not belong to every object falling under the concept (some pain must be endured; at least some kinds of human goods cannot be taken away by chance). In the latter case the concept has to be divided and diﬀerentiated to suit these diﬀerent kinds of objects (see IV.2.b). 48 In a polemical passage Galen attributes to Chrysippus the view that the rational faculty, the λγος, of human beings is an aggregate (;ροισμα) of concepts and preconceptions (P.H.P. 5.3.1 = SVF 2.841 = LS 53V). This certainly is not a deﬁnition of human λγος, but we should keep in mind that the process of becoming a rational human being is described as a process of concept formation, as, e.g., in “Aëtius” 4.11.1–4 = SVF 2.83 = LS 39E and Cic. Fin. 3.20–22 = LS 59D2–6. 49 See, e.g., Ep. 31.1–3; 32.4; 36.1–2; 41.8; 45.6; 60.1; 67.12; 72.7; 81.27–32; 82 (esp. 82.23); 91.9 and 19; 94.7; 95.58 (possibly with a reference to non-grasping impressions caused this way: quod nihil liquet incertissimo regimine utentibus, fama); 97.10; 110.3; 115.11– 17; 118.7; 123.6–17 (where the similar danger of false philosophical instruction is also discussed).

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opinions of all mankind.50 More eﬀective, however, is the advice altogether to avoid perception of what others say and do, to close one’s ears as Odysseus did with those of his comrades when approaching the Sirens and not to listen to the dangerous public voice which “sounds around us coming from every part of the world.”51 The third counterinstruction consists in advising the reader not to believe what others say, but to wait until he himself is sure to have a grasping impression. The Stoic wise man has the virtue of “Not-assenting-prematurely” ("προπτωσα),52 and not to assent prematurely is exactly what Seneca asks Lucilius to do, e.g., in Ep. 13. He warns him that we are all too quick to believe what others believe (8 cito accedimus opinioni). When Lucilius seems to be in danger, he should not pay attention to what he hears, but to what he feels, should consult his own patientia—his experience of what is happening to him at the moment and, at the same time, his ability to endure this experience—, and ask himself whether there is any reason why these people should be afraid for him.53 IV.2. Concept Formation IV.2.a. Concept Correction “Not-assenting-prematurely” also means to check carefully whether the alteration of the mind undergone by way of an impression exactly ﬁts into the concept in question. A grasping impression “is impressed in and stamped into in accordance with exactly what is” (see II.3), and, as I believe, this means not that every feature of the object perceived 50 Ep. 87.5 contra totius generis humani opiniones mittenda uox erat. See also, e.g., Ep. 82.23; 94.52–74; 95.34–35. 51 Ep. 31.2 ad summam sapiens eris, si cluseris aures, quibus ceram parum est obdere: ﬁrmiore spissamento opus est quam in sociis usum Vlixem ferunt. illa uox quae timebatur erat blanda, non tamen publica: at haec quae timenda est non ex uno scopulo sed ex omni terrarum parte circumsonat. See also, e.g., Ep. 7; 8.1; 69.2. 52 Diog. Laert. 7.46 = SVF 2.130 = LS31B2; PHerc. 1020 col. IV.1–28 = SVF 2.131 = LS 41D1. 53 Ep. 13.6 illud praesta mihi, ut, quotiens circumsteterint qui tibi te miserum esse persuadeant, non quid audias sed quid sentias cogites, et cum patientia tua deliberes ac te ipse interroges, qui tua optime nosti, “quid est quare isti me conplorent? quid est quod trepident, quod contagium quoque mei timeant, quasi transilire calamitas possit? est aliquid istic mali, an res ista magis infamis est quam mala?” ipse te interroga, “numquid sine causa crucior et maereo et quod non est malum facio?” As in Ep. 18, Seneca informs us that his advice is of Epicurean origin (13.4 non loquor tecum Stoica lingua, sed hac summissiore; 18.9); it makes, however, perfect sense in the context of Stoic epistemology as well.

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must be impressed onto the mind, but that the corporeal alteration in the mind caused by the object of perception must ﬁt exactly into the corporeal concept used in forming the rational impression of the object of perception. If, e.g., the wise man has the impression “This here is a centaur” he will carefully check whether the structure of his mental alteration really has all the characteristic marks of an impression of a centaur, i.e., marks which only ﬁt into his concept of centaur; for it might well be that what he has perceived are the common characteristics of both his concept of man on horse and of centaur, so that the impression ﬁts both concepts equally well, because he has seen the object in bad light and very far away. In order to be a grasping impression of a centaur, it must ﬁt into the concept of centaur exactly and into this concept only. Otherwise it is, if at all, the grasping impression that “Either this is a centaur, or this is a man on a horse.”54 Whenever I have a false rational impression, this impression does not ﬁt exactly into the concept I have linked it with.55 To avoid this error is, I believe, for Seneca the most important project of Stoic syllogistic and theoretical instruction. Much of what he writes has the function to support readers in sorting out the concepts they have and in learning to recognize whether an impression has been linked to the right concept. And here, as we have seen in III.1, verbal instruction itself can be the cause of grasping impressions, e.g., if the reader is shown in a syllogism that his concepts of good and of wealth are incompatible. Seneca is not interested in Chrysippean syllogistic. More often than the propositional calculus developed by Chrysippus and characteristic of much of Stoic logic, he discusses syllogisms of the predicate calculus. And even then, he does not dis-

54 Those authors who understand τ% $πρχον as a term for a real, existing object have diﬃculty in assessing exactly which characteristics of this real object should be perceived. If we take $πρχον as denoting a true proposition or a belonging predicate, the answer is easier. Firstly: the characteristics perceived must be those which deﬁne the predicate truly predicated of the object of perception and can vary according to the predicate used. In order to grasp that “This is a man” I need not perceive as many features as if I wanted to grasp that “This is Socrates.” Secondly: which characteristic features are contained in the deﬁnition of the predicate depends on the individual concept the perceiving person has, because the individual concept is the corporeal structure where the deﬁnition relevant for the impressions of this perceiving individual subsists. 55 This is true even with respect to wrong concepts. There simply cannot be an impression which ﬁts them, because the predicates subsisting at these concepts do not belong to any body in the world.

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cuss whether the conclusion is correctly drawn from the premises. What he discusses extensively are the terms and the corresponding concepts used in the premises. He is interested in the concepts and in how to apply them correctly. He wants to be shown, for example, by which characteristic marks a friend and a ﬂatterer can be distinguished, i.e., how the concept of friend and the concept of ﬂatterer diﬀer and how I can ﬁnd out whether I should link the impression I have of a person behaving in a seemingly friendly manner with the former or the latter concept.56 In short: Seneca is interested in deﬁnitions (see IV.1), not in syllogisms. He does not discuss how the terms in a syllogism are logically linked together; he discusses the meaning of these terms, and a syllogism can sometimes help clarify this meaning. This kind of discussion, in turn, is helpful for grasping. For inconsistent concepts are not only useless, because there is no object that can be grasped with them; they are also dangerous, being the source of convincing impressions to which a careless perceiver may assent like the person believing to see a centaur in the mist, when it was only a rider. Therefore the philosophical writer causes new impressions and lets the reader have his or her own perceptions and fantasies which will— if accepted and assented to in suﬃcient number—gradually change the original concept. This is what happens when, as Margaret Graver describes it, “pockets” of coherent belief are built up and enlarged in cognitive therapy (1996, 110–117). However, Graver does not distinguish between single beliefs and the concepts generated out of such single beliefs. But this distinction is crucial: a single belief, which is one impression assented to, will not change a concept; we must assent to similar impressions and must have the same belief many times, before a concept, which is generated out of a large number of beliefs, starts to change. This may be one reason for the repetitiveness so characteristic of Seneca’s philosophical writing (see, e.g., Ep. 27.9). And this process of concept formation is, I believe, what Seneca describes in Ep. 84 (see I) and what he means when he speaks metaphorically, e.g., of “digesting,” “drinking in” or “being steeped in” some philosophical truth57 or when 56 Ep. 45.6–7 quid mihi uocum similitudines distinguis …? res fallunt: illas discerne. 7 adulatio quam similis est amicitiae? … doce, quemadmodum hanc similitudinem possim dinoscere. … in his magno periculo erramus: his certas notas imprime; see also 45.9–10; 48.4; 118.7–8. 57 E.g., Ep. 2.4; 84.7; 94.11 hoc cum persuasi mihi et perbibi; 110.8 … si illa se non perfuderit

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he says, as in Ep. 16.1, that a bona uoluntas or propositum, a good decision to act (and the action itself) must be repeated over and over again to become ﬁxed in the mind as a concept of something ﬁtting for oneself to do. Progress in philosophy, then, is changing one’s concepts until there is no inconsistency left. As a consistent and contradiction-free set of concepts must correspond exactly to the contradiction-free real word— otherwise some inconsistency would remain—, a mind which has such a set of concepts, a “right reason” (=ρ%ς λγος), is not only stable and steadfast in its assents, it also cannot be moved in any wrong direction because all its impulse-generating concepts are pointing the right way. This is the reason why practical knowledge like the virtues could be deﬁned as a system which derives its stability from itself.58 IV.2.b. Reﬁning One’s Concepts: Expert Impressions In addition to eliminating contradictions, philosophical discussion of concepts generates new and ﬁner, more subtle concepts, so that the reader is enabled to have “expert impressions” (φαντασαι τεχνικα).59 The Stoic, e.g., can distinguish between a good and an indiﬀerent normally to be taken (a προηγμνον or commodum), because in comparison to other, uninstructed people, he has ﬁner, expert concepts of what is ﬁtting for human beings. And without such necessary ﬁner concepts rational behavior is impossible. Human souls consist of much subtler material than animal souls, and the internal structures of human minds are, correspondingly, much ﬁner than those of animals.60 But the mind of an imperfect human is still much blunter, the structures in it much grosser than those in the mind of the perfect wise man. This subtlety is, according to Seneca, neither natural nor inborn, but must be achieved artiﬁcially by concept formation. Ars est bonum ﬁeri (Ep. 90.44). Even if all errors were removed there would not automatically follow the ability to distinguish precisely what is to be done (Ep. 94.36). And it is at this point, again, that verbal instruction has a crucial role to play, e.g., by

sed infecerit, si eadem, quamuis sciat, retractauerit et ad se saepe rettulerit, si quaesierit quae sint bona, quae mala, quibus hoc falso sit nomen adscriptum, si quaesierit de honestis et turpibus, de prouidentia. 58 Ar. Did. apud Stob. 2.73.23–74.1 = SVF 3.112 = LS 41H3; cf., e.g., Sen. Ep. 94.50 ipsa sapientia, quae iam eo perduxit animum, ut moueri nequeat nisi in rectum. 59 Diog. Laert. 7.51 = SVF 2.61 = LS 39A7; see also Annas 1992, 81–82. 60 Ep. 124.17–19; Dial. 3.3.7.

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pointing out dissimilarities and by demonstrating that certain features contained in one concept like the inexpert concept of what is good are incompatible and ought to be divided into two diﬀerent concepts.61

V. Limits: The Concept of Perfect Man In the ﬁeld of concept formation there seems to be no limit to what verbal instruction can do: any concept can be distinguished and divided ﬁner and ﬁner—as inﬁnitely as all bodies in the cosmic continuum can be “divided to inﬁnity.”62 In addition to that, an inﬁnite number of new concepts like the concept of centaur can be formed, e.g., by combination (horse and man), on the basis of similarity (from the picture to the real object), by analogy, magniﬁcation and diminution (from the concept of man we can form a fantasy of a giant or a dwarf), transposition (imagining humanoids with eyes on the chest), opposition (imagining death as the opposite of life), or privation (imagining somebody without hands).63 What, however, is the epistemological value of such concepts? How can we distinguish which of them are concepts of an existing body or a subsisting incorporeal and which are not?64 This seems not to matter in the case of centaurs and humanoids with scurrilous features; it matters, however, at least in the case of one concept which is of central importance to the προκπτων or proﬁciens, the man who strives for perfection: the concept of the perfect man he is intending to become himself. Such a man most probably does not exist, according to the Stoics, and if he exists, we do not know him. Therefore, this concept cannot be formed just by having grasping impressions of a real specimen of perfect man. As Seneca tells us, the concept is formed in exactly the same manner as concepts of giants and men with eyes on the chest! There is an element of sensory perception: we observe and gather together into 61 Two verbs Seneca often uses in these contexts are distinguere (e.g., Ep. 9.13–14; 30.17; 44.6; 66.6; 67.4; 71.7; 84.5; 85.14, 18, 28; 120.9) and dispicere (e.g., Ep. 17.2; 26.3; 94.5; 95.54; 107.1; 109.16; 110.11). 62 Stob. 1.142.2 = SVF 2.482 = LS 50A1. It is important, however, to keep in mind that bodies never are inﬁnitely divided but always have a certain shape, magnitude and individual quality at which certain sayables subsist. 63 Diog. Laert. 7.53 = SVF 2.87 = LS 39D; see also Sext. Emp. Math. 8.57–60 = SVF 2.88. 64 Seneca knows such a distinction proposed by “some Stoics”: Ep. 58.15.

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one concept actions repeatedly performed (Ep. 120.4 obseruatio … et rerum saepe factarum collatio) by diﬀerent individuals who happened to do something right (but, of course, not perfectly right, because they were no wise men). Great parts of the concept are, however, formed without such perceptions: by analogy with the sanity and strength of the body (Ep. 120.4–5), by diminution of what is wrong and magniﬁcation of what is good and praiseworthy (5), by opposition (8 ex contrario), and by distinction of vices which are similar to virtues (8).65 The wise man of this concept is a combination of features partly observed in diﬀerent persons, partly imagined altogether! Why should anybody decide to try to become something which might be as real as men with eyes on the chest or centaurs? In this paper, I will not endeavor to give a deﬁnite answer to this question. I wish only to point out one aspect relevant to it: after having shown how we form the concept of perfect man by combination, analogy, and other methods, Seneca suddenly starts to speak as if we actually had observed such a perfect man, a man who did not only show right behavior on one ﬁeld, but every virtue. Observing this quasi-real perfect man, Seneca continues, “we understood that in him virtue is perfected” (120.11), a virtue which then could be analyzed and classiﬁed.66 What is Seneca doing here? The same thing, I believe, which he is doing when he is describing, e.g., Cato or Socrates as wise men, although he must have known that they most probably were not as perfect as they were depicted in philosophical hagiography. But why should an author tell his readers what he himself does not believe to be true? He does so, I suppose, because this is one means of concept formation by way of imagination and fantasies: as I can form a concept of Socrates by similarity from a picture of Socrates, I can form a concept of perfect virtue and the perfect man by similarity from a verbal picture of an idealized, perfect Socrates, and this concept 65 Note that this kind of concept formation is not mentioned in the other sources we have, a fact which, again, demonstrates the importance Seneca attributes to the differentiation of concepts (IV.2.b). Seneca demands the same kind of distinction between something good (a friend) and something bad which seems to be good (a ﬂatterer) in Ep. 45.6–7 (see IV.1). 66 Seneca uses the indicative mood, past tenses, direct speech, and expressions denoting a clear perception of something present: Ep. 120.10 alium uidimus … uidimus … praeterea idem erat semper … intelleximus in illo perfectam esse uirtutem. 11 … ex quo ergo uirtutem intelleximus? ostendit illam nobis ordo eius et decor et … 12 quomodo … nobis apparuit? … numquam … maledixit, numquam … excepit, … subiit. quicquid inciderat non tamquam malum aspernatus est …, sed … 13 necessario itaque magnus apparuit … etc.

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will be as clear and as present in my mind as is the verbal picture the author has painted for me to read, by this means guiding my actions and lighting me the way as Seneca wanted the philosopher to do at the end of Ep. 88 (see II.4). The imaginary perfect man Seneca sets before our eyes “made many understand his nature and shone brightly in no other way as a light in the dark,” and thus may change our life, for “our thoughts and actions are of the same quality as our concepts, and as our thoughts and actions are, so is our life.”67 If we act according to our concept of perfect man, this illusionary image of our fantasies might become a graspable reality.

67 Ep. 120.13 fecit multis intellectum sui et non aliter quam in tenebris lumen eﬀulsit; 95.44 ergo inﬁgi debet persuasio ad totam pertinens uitam: hoc est quod decretum uoco. qualis haec persuasio fuerit, talia erunt quae agentur, quae cogitabuntur; qualia autem haec fuerint, talis uita erit. On the thought that good concepts are like a light in the dark see also Ep. 110.8; on “characterpainting” as a means of ethical instruction see Ep. 95.65–73. That Seneca is speaking about concept formation in this passage as well can be inferred from §67: excellentis animi notas nosse, quas ex alio in se transferre permittitur.

LEARNING HOW TO DIE: SENECA’S USE OF AENEID 4.653 AT EPISTULAE MORALES 12.9

Wolfgang-Rainer Mann

Introduction Prompted by an unclarity in the Behistun inscription (where the Persian king, Darius I, commemorates his own greatness), Wilhelm Schulze, in a classic paper from 1912, sets out to analyze carefully the meaning of a single expression (and its counterparts, as they occur in various Indo-European languages, both ancient and modern) that is equivalent to the Latin suam mortem habens or sua morte obit. Schulze’s question is: What does Darius mean by saying that his predecessor, Cambyses, had “died his own death”?1 While one might be tempted to understand this and similar phrases as ways of referring to suicide—and while Schulze’s predecessors did so understand the Old Persian version of the locution which underlies the Behistun inscription—he argues that any such understanding is fundamentally mistaken. Rather, ‘dying one’s own death’ corresponds to what, in the modern languages, is often referred to as ‘dying a natural death.’ More precisely: as part of a common Indo-European inheritance, there is (according to Schulze) something like a conception of fate, or of an alloted life (-span), such that if a person lives out his life, he will, at the end, die his own death. After a fairly extensive investigation, Schulze thus concludes: “… mori sua morte bedeutet nichts anderes als fato suo mori und steht unserem ‘[eines] natürlichen Todes sterben’ ganz nahe, wenn es mit ihm auch nicht genau identisch ist.”2 As an integral part of this conception, we also encounter the idea of a dies fatalis or dies uitae (= dies leti), of each

1 Schulze 1912 ( Schulze 1934, 131–148). In what follows, all references are to the = 1934 reprint. For a recent assessment of Schulze’s work, see Gippert 2001. See also Borger and Hinz 1984, 419–450, esp. §11 n. f (p. 425). On the inscription more generally, see Schmitt 1990. 2 Schulze 1934, 143.

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person having, so to speak, his own day; as Vergil’s Juppiter puts it: stat sua cuique dies (Aen. 10.467; cited by Schulze 1934, 139). And contrasted with this idea of one’s own death, there is, according to Schulze, the idea of dying a death that (in a sense) is not one’s own: Wohl mag der Philosoph—mit Seneca epist. 69, 6—behaupten: nemo nisi suo die moritur, nemo moritur nisi sua morte, der Glaube des Volkes ging andere Wege. Für seine naivere Empﬁndung bedeutet der eigenmächtige Eingriﬀ des menschlichen Willens—besonders, aber nicht ausschließlich, wenn er sich als gesetzlose Gewalttat äußert—eine Durchbrechung des Fatums, eine Verkürzung der vorausbestimmten Lebenszeit. Man kann nicht nur πρ% >ρας oder πρ% φ9σεως, man kann auch πρ% μορας oder, was manchmal auf dasselbe hinausläuft, ante diem sterben.3

And here we have arrived at Aeneid 4, where Vergil uses the expression ante diem to characterize Dido’s dying as premature, contrasting it precisely with her fated death, or, as we could now say, following Schulze, with her own death: nam quia nec fato merita nec morte peribat, sed misera ante diem subitoque accensa furore … (Aen. 4.696–697) … since she was dying neither her own death nor a deserved one, but wretchedly, before her day, inﬂamed by sudden madness …

That characterization seems at odds with what Dido herself says, in lines that could virtually serve as her epitaph4: 3 Schulze 1934, 140–141; compare also 141 nn. 1–8, where he documents the various formulations. 4 Highet 1972, 182 comments that these lines seem “like the epitaph of a monarch.” Cf. Clausen 2002, 107–108: “In eﬀect, Dido pronounces her own epitaph or elogium (655–656), which recalls, in its starkness and simplicity, the elogia of Roman worthies, men such as Appius Claudius Caecus, censor (312 B.C.) and twice consul:

complura oppida de Samnitibus cepit. Sabinorum et Tuscorum exercitum fudit. pacem ﬁeri cum Pyrrho rege prohibuit. in censura uiam Appiam strauit et aquam in urbem adduxit. aedem Bellonae fecit. He seized many towns from the Samnites. He routed the armies of the Sabines and Etruscans. He forbade making peace with King Pyrrhos. He paved the Appian Way as censor and brought water into the city. He built the temple of Bellona. Virgil modiﬁes the severity of Dido’s elogium, and thus accommodates it to the style of her speech (and to his own style), by casting it in the form of a tricolon, each colon of which, like the lines of Appius’ elogium, ends with an active verb.” One should also

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uixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi, et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago: urbem praeclaram statui, mea moenia uidi, ulta uirum poenas inimico a fratre recepi. (Aen. 4.653–656) My life is lived. And the path Fortune assigned me, I have run through. And now a glorious shade of what I was will go beneath the earth: I have founded a great city; I have looked upon my city’s mighty walls, I have exacted vengeance for my husband from the brother who was my enemy.

Especially the ﬁrst line, i.e., 653, engaged Seneca’s attention. He cites it at De beneﬁciis 5.17; at De vita beata 19.1; and at Epistulae morales 12.9, in a context that is worth quoting in full, since it will be the object of our further attention5: Pacuuius, qui Syriam usu suam fecit, cum uino et illis funeribus epulis sibi parentauerat, sic in cubiculum ferebatur a cena ut inter plausus exoletorum hoc ad symphoniam caneretur: βεβωται, βεβωται. nullo non se die extulit. hoc quod ille ex mala conscientia faciebat, nos ex bona faciamus, et in somnum ituri laeti hilaresque dicamus: uixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi. crastinum si adiecerit deus, laeti recipiamus. ille beatissimus est et securus sui possessor qui crastinum sine sollicitudine expectat; quisquis dixit, ‘uixi,’ cotidie ad lucrum surgit. sed iam debeo epistulam includere. ‘sic,’ inquis, ‘sine ullo ad me peculio ueniet?’ noli timere: aliquid secum fert. quare ‘aliquid’ dixi? multum. quid enim hac uoce praeclarius quam illi trado ad te perferandam? ‘malum est in necessitate uiuere, sed in necessitate uiuere necessitas nulla est.’ quidni ‘nulla sit’? patent undique ad libertatem uiae multae, breues, faciles. agamus deo gratias, quod nemo in uita teneri potest. calcare ipsas necessitates licet. ‘Epicurus,’ inquis, ‘dixit. quid tibi cum alieno?’ quod uerum est, meum est. perseuerabo Epicurum tibi ingerere, ut isti qui in uerba iurant, nec quid dicatur aestimant, sed a quo, sciant quae optima sunt esse communia. VALE. (Ep. 12.8–11) Pacuvius, who had made the Province of Syria his personal property by squatter’s rights, used to hold funeral rites in his own honor, with wine, sepulchral feasts, and all the rest; and he would have himself be borne recall the frequent use, in Roman funerary inscriptions, of uixit + the number of years and months the deceased person had lived. 5 For my translation, I have cheerfully pilfered turns of phrase, etc., from R.M. Gummere’s Loeb edition (1917), as well as from Henderson 2004, 23–24; in particular, I owe to Henderson the idea of translating the Greek into German.

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wolfgang-rainer mann out from the dinner table to his bedroom, while rent-boys clapped and sang in unison: ‘Abgelebt ist er!’ ‘Abgelebt ist er!’ Not a day went by, but that Pacuvius had himself carried out on a bier. This thing, which he was wont to do having a bad mental state, let us do from having a good one. Let us go to rest, being joyful and of good cheer. Let us say: MY LIFE IS LIVED. AND THE PATH FORTUNE ASSIGNED ME, I HAVE RUN THROUGH. And if God will add a tomorrow, let us receive it with a light heart. That man is most happy, and in secure possession of himself, who can await (each) tomorrow without anxiety. Whoever has said, ‘My life is lived,’ arises every morning to further gains. But now I ought to ﬁnish my letter. What (you say), shall it arrive without any little extra for me? Not to worry; it bears something along. But now why did I say, something?—Actually, a great deal. For what is more noble than this saying, which I entrust to the letter to convey to you: IT IS BAD TO LIVE BESET BY NEED. BUT THERE IS NO NEED TO LIVE BESET BY NEED. In what way, no need? In every direction, there lie paths to freedom: they are many, short, and easy. Let us thank God that no-one can be shackled to life. It is possible to spurn the very need that does (seem to) hold us. You say: Epicurus said that—What are you doing with something belonging to another? I say: whatever is true, I claim as my own. And I will keep on sending Epicurus to you, so that all those who set such great store by sayings, yet value not what gets said, but (only) who says it, may come to understand that what is best, is common property. FAREWELL.

In Section 1, I will brieﬂy consider the meaning of line 653 as it occurs in Vergil. I will focus on the discrepancy or tension between Dido’s utterance, quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi, and the epic narrator’s comment, nec fato merita nec morte peribat. Then, in Section 2, I will turn to Seneca’s use of Dido’s words. (And I will proceed as if Pacuvius, too, quotes Aeneid 4.653—an imaginative leap, to be sure, but one licensed by the ‘mourners’ chanting βεβωται, βεβωται, which corresponds exactly, I would maintain, to the Roman funerary use of uixit.) In particular, we will want to see what the diﬀerence is (or: would be) between uttering this line ex bona conscientia and uttering it ex mala conscientia.6

6 ‘Would be,’ because, presumably, only a wise person will really be able to speak these words (or any others) ex bona conscientia.

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1. Vergil It will obviously not be possible, on the present occasion, even to attempt to do justice to the ﬁgure of Dido, still less to the whole of Aeneid 4.7 But I do think it is possible to discuss the detail I am considering (more or less) in isolation from the larger, more complex context(s) in which it belongs. As already noted in the Introduction, Vergil seems quite deliberately to have Dido echoing Roman elogia and funerary inscriptions in lines 653–656. The simple, lapidary quality of her words bestows a kind of dignity on her; and her utterance stands in marked contrast to the emotionally highly-wrought language of lines 305–330 and 365–392 (cf. also 450–477).8 Indeed, one could say that hers is a heroic dignity, both in the way in which she accepts (what she sees as) her fate,9 and in the way in which she decides to kill herself—eschewing the woman’s death of hanging (herself), and choosing instead to fall on her (rather: Aeneas’s) sword.10 Now if hers were the only perspective or point of view, or if it were otherwise conﬁrmed (say, by the Gods somehow validating it), she would succeed in attaining the kind of heroic end and status she performatively claims for herself. But one of the central facts about Dido is that, right from the start, not only does she not understand what happens—especially her own emotions and actions—but the epic narrator shows us how (to put it bluntly) Dido is being duped by the Gods. To oversimplify grossly: with 7 Helpful discussions of Dido (for our purposes) include, Clausen 2002, Ch. 4 “Dido and Aeneas” and, especially, Johnson 1976, 66–74. 8 Compare also the contrast between the merely simulated calm of 477 (and of Dido’s words to her sister, Anna, at 478ﬀ.), and the true calm of 653–656. 9 Perhaps the following comparison is too loose to serve as a strict parallel, but I am reminded of the transition, in Iliad 18, between Achilles’ intense grief (22–35) and his calm acceptance of the ‘fact’ that given how things are, he will die: “I must die soon, then; since I was not to stand by my companion / when he was killed. And now, far away from the land of his fathers, / he has perished, and lacked my ﬁghting strength to defend him” (98–100; emphasis added); cf. “Now I shall go, to overtake that killer of a dear life, / Hektor; then I will accept my own death, at whatever / time Zeus wishes to bring it about, and the other immortals” (114–116; emphasis added) (both translations: R. Lattimore). We might also remember that Achilles was sometimes thought to have been the ﬁrst Stoic. One important diﬀerence between Achilles and Dido, however, is that while he essentially sees things clearly (at any rate: as clearly as does any mortal in the Iliad), her perspective will be revealed as radically incomplete and, to that extent, as incorrect. 10 See Loraux 1987, Ch. 1 “The Rope and the Sword.”

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Venus and Juno arrayed against her (1.657–688; 4.90–128; 4.160–172), she never stands a chance.11 Yet ﬁrst we need to go back still further, to Book 1. The res in the middle of which the Aeneid begins is the storm Juno has coaxed Aeolus into causing, by unleashing the Winds upon the Trojan refugees as they set sail from Sicily (1.65 ﬀ.). Neptune, astonished by the roiling waters, rises from the sea and dresses down the Winds, sending them back to Aeolus and his “barred prison,” where they belong (1.132– 141); and he “calms” the waves (1.142). After this, the battered Trojan ﬂeet (with Neptune’s assistance) makes for the shores of Libya (1.157ﬀ.). Once on dry land, the Trojans secure food and (somewhat) regain their strength and composure, while Aeneas mourns his lost companions: Orontes, Amycus, Gyas, Cloanthus, and the crudelia fata of Lycus (1.220– 222). The scene or perspective now shifts (1.223) to Juppiter, who is looking down—serenely it seems—from the very height of the heavens to the world below, casting his eyes on Libya. Venus interrupts him, complaining that he is not keeping his promise to her: to allow the Trojans to reach Italy, and so to set in motion the events that would lead to the 11 For discussion, see, e.g., Butler 1935, 24; Klinger 1967, 443; Wlosok 1967, 103; or Coleman 1982, 154–156 (on Venus’s eﬀect on Dido); cf. also his further remark: “It is not just that the goddesses [sc. Venus and Juno] are depicted as if they were two rivals in comedy striving to outwit each other; but the noble Dido is in the process reduced to a pawn in an unnecessarily squalid game” (163). D.C. Feeney, in his magisterial The Gods in Epic, speaks of Dido as “doomed throughout to incomprehension of how two gods and two goddesses are making a wreck of her life” (Feeney 1991, 181). For a diﬀerent view (= the Goddesses as, in eﬀect, external manifestations of human motivations which are—and would be—there anyway), see Gellie 1972, 138–148. This as it were local question is obviously related to the much larger question of the extent to which the Gods in the Aeneid are (or might be) dispensable, that is, the extent to which the “human narrative” might prove “comprehensible on its own terms” (see Feeney 1991, 169). Feeney argues persuasively against such “naturalistic” (I would say: reductionist) readings (162–187), suggesting that “Vergil’s methods regularly appear to destabilize prevailing criteria of plausibility, even as accepted in the poem itself ” (176)—in other words, while the Aeneid appears on one level to demand, or at least to allow, being read “as a piece of quasi-realism, or veiled naturalism, with a ‘realistic’ narrative just beneath the surface” (169), on another level (or at other moments), it presents us with “the hallucinatory fantastic” (168), with descriptions that are “essentially impressionistic” (171), in ways which defeat attempts at purely realist readings. (Here Feeney rightly refers to Johnson 1976 as an important milestone in bringing to light this disquieting aspect of Vergil’s epic technique [ibid.].) One consequence of this destabilization, which will prove of importance for us, is that it will be impossible ever fully to integrate the (diﬀering) divine and human perspectives on the ‘events’ of the Aeneid, or to resolve the gulf between them unequivocally in favor of either the human or the divine.

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emergence of the Romans, from whom there would arise leaders to rule the world (1.229 ﬀ.). Juppiter tries to assuage her fears, saying: … manent immota tuorum fata tibi; cernes urbem et promissa Lauini moenia, sublimemque feres ad sidera caeli magnanimum Aenean; neque me sententia uertit. hic tibi (fabor enim, quando haec te cura remordet, longius et uoluens fatorum arcana mouebo) bellum ingens geret Italia … (Aen. 1.257–263) … the fates [fata] of your people remain unshaken (you’ll see); you will gaze upon the city and the promised Lavinian walls; you will carry high up to the stars of heaven great-souled Aeneas; nor has my decree been reversed. Now since this care so gnaws at you, I will speak [fabor] further, unrolling [sc. the scrolls], and put into words the secret, fated things [fatorum arcana]: he (you’ll see) will wage a great war in Italy, and …

No sooner does Juppiter ﬁnish foretelling the pre-Roman and Roman future, than he sends Mercury down to Libya, so that Aeneas and his companions will be properly received: haec ait et Maia genitum demittit ab alto, ut terrae utque nouae pateant Karthaginis arces hospitio Teucris, ne fati nescia Dido ﬁnibus arceret. (297–300) Thus he speaks and sends down from on high Maia’s son, so that the lands and towers of newly built Carthage may oﬀer open welcome to the Trojans—lest Dido, ignorant of fate, keep them barred from her borders.

At long last we can ask: What fatum is Dido ignorant of ? (i) Her own fate, as it will unfold in Books 1 and 4? (ii) The fate of the Trojans (and thus also that of the Romans as well as that of her own people, the Carthaginians) which Juppiter has said remains unchanged (immota)? Or (iii), the things just said by Juppiter? (In 261–262, by an etymological sleight of hand, Vergil raises the question, does saying something—or at any rate: does Juppiter’s saying something—make it fated, or does the fact that something is fated make it be the sort of thing Juppiter says?)12 T.E. Page observes: “The words fati nescia are eﬀective so long as they are left vague and mysterious, but admit of no clear explanation, for 12

See Commager 1981, 104.

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why should Dido drive away the Trojans because she was ‘in ignorance of destiny’? Surely Dido would have been much more likely to drive them away if she had been acquainted with destiny, for Aeneas was to cause her death and the descendants of the Trojans were to destroy Carthage.”13 Perhaps overly rationalistic, but he does have a point. And this suggests that “we might almost understand it [sc. the expression fati nescia] as ‘Dido, who had not heard Jove’s speech.’”14 Realist, or rather, rationalistic interpretation will face two problems. First, in connection with Aeneid 1, it would seem that if Juppiter had spoken diﬀerent words, fate, too, would have been diﬀerent. Yet that stands in real tension with what Juppiter says to Hercules in Book 10. Pallas has (in the midst of his battle with Turnus) prayed to Hercules (459–463); Hercules has heard him—he weeps for Pallas and would save him (464–465), but for Juppiter’s intervention. (The scene is modelled on Iliad 16, where Zeus sheds “tears of blood” [459] for his son, Sarpedon, and where he considers snatching him from out of the battle with Hector, to save him, but is dissuaded from doing so by Hera.) These are Juppiter’s very words: stat sua cuique dies, breue et inreparabile tempus omnibus est uitae; sed famam extendere factis, hoc uirtutis opus. Troiae sub moenibus altis tot gnati cecidere deum, quin occidit una Sarpedon, mea progenies; etiam sua Turnum fata uocant metasque dati peruenit ad aeui. (10.467–472) Every man’s last day is ﬁxed. Lifetimes are brief, and not to be regained, For all mankind. But by their deeds to make Their fame last: that is labor for the brave. Below the walls of Troy so many sons Of gods went down, among them, yes, my child, Sarpedon. Turnus, too, is called by fate. He stands at the given limit of his years.15 (tr. R. Fitzgerald; emphasis added)

Page 1902, 170 ad loc. Commager 1981, 105, referring to W.V. Clausen. 15 With 467–472, one should compare the epic narrator’s moralizing apostrophe to the reader at 501–502: nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae/ et seruare modum rebus sublata secundis! (Fitzgerald has: “The minds of men are ignorant of fate / And of their future lot, unskilled to keep / Due measure when some triumph sets them high.”) This comment comes after Turnus has slain Pallas, stripped the corpse of its baldric, and has gloried in his triumph (479–500). The scene is modelled on Hector’s killing of Patroclus 13 14

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For here it would seem that the Gods themselves cannot alter fate, and that they are not its authors. The second problem, also occasioned by this passage from Aeneid 10, arises in connection with the lines from Book 4 which we have already seen. For if it is really the case that “every man’s last day is ﬁxed,” then it cannot literally be true that Dido died ante diem (i.e., before her last day), nor can it be true that her death was not a fated one. Resolving these problems—if they even can be resolved—is a task far beyond the conﬁnes of this paper. But they vividly illustrate a kind of incommensurability amongst the various perspectives in the Aeneid: that of its human protagonists, that of the Gods, and that of the epic narrator. And thus in regard to Book 4 in particular, I would suggest that there is no wholly stable answer to the question, which assessment, Dido’s or the epic narrator’s, should we take to be true. Clearly Dido’s words, uixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi, despite being moving and heroic in their immediate context, cannot be taken (completely) at face value, for they are (at least partially) undermined by the epic narrator’s perspective in 696–697. It is equally clear that the narrator’s perspective, too, cannot be regarded as fully authoritative and ﬁnal, for it is called into question, both by what Juppiter says to Venus in Book 1, and by what he says to Hercules in Book 10. Vergil (one suspects) is fully aware of these inconcinnities; and he is (presumably) deploying them precisely to resist the sort of resolution rationalistic interpretation seeks. When we come to Seneca, we will see that matters are, in a way, much simpler. From the Stoic perspective, there is but one answer here: nemo moritur nisi sua morte (“No one dies any death other than his own,” Ep. 69.6.). The ironic distance (or incongruity) between Pacuvius’s utterance and the (Stoic) truth of the matter is thus a diﬀerent one: it is the gap between the fool and the wise person, a gap which one can make progress in bridging, by learning how to die (and by learning what that ‘lesson’ is even supposed to be).

and stripping Achilles’ armor from him; but in Homer, the remarks on overstepping one’s bounds are spoken by Zeus (Iliad 17.198–206). See Feeney 1991, 157–158, for some reﬂections on the signiﬁcance of transferring the moral perspective from Juppiter (Zeus) to the epic narrator.

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On a by now widely shared view, the ﬁrst twelve Letters form a kind of introduction to the ‘collection’ of the Epistulae morales as a whole, which is itself devoted to showing—speciﬁcally to their addressee, Lucilius, but more generally to us, Seneca’s readers—how Stoicism bears on the conduct of life, rather, how the kind of wisdom a Stoic wise person possesses will make for a happy and ﬂourishing life. (And it is important to emphasize that the Stoic claim here is not merely that such wisdom will make for a happier and more ﬂourishing life than a life lived without it, but that this wisdom will secure a genuinely good life for the wise person, no matter what any ‘vagaries of fortune’ might suggest to the contrary16—on this point, as in so much else, the Stoics show themselves to be wholly within the Socratic tradition.) And as Letter 4 makes clear, one signiﬁcant obstacle to living the kind of life Nature intended for us is the fear of death: proﬁce modo; intelleges quaedam ideo minus timenda, quia multum metus adferunt. nullum malum magnum, quod extremum est. mors ad te venit; timenda erat, si tecum esse posset; sed necesse est aut non perveniat aut transeat. ‘diﬃcile est,’ inquis, ‘animum perducere ad contemptionem animae.’ non uides, quam ex friuolis causis contemnatur? alius ante amicae fores laqueo pependit, alius se praecipitauit e tecto, ne dominum stomachantem diutius audiret, alius ne reduceretur e fuga, ferrum adegit in uiscera. non putas uirtutem hoc eﬀecturam, quod eﬃcit nimia formido? nulli potest secura uita contingere, qui de producenda nimis cogitat, qui inter magna bona multos consules numerat. hoc cotidie meditare, ut possis aequo animo uitam relinquere, quam multi sic complectuntur et tenent, quomodo qui aqua torrente rapiuntur spinas et aspera. plerique inter mortis metum et uitae tormenta miseri ﬂuctuantur et uiuere nolunt, mori nesciunt. fac itaque tibi iucundam uitam omnem pro 16 For the Stoics, there will of course be no vagaries of fortune, strictly speaking, since all events—the whole history of the world—unfold according to a deterministic and providential plan. Thus what may look like bad fortune from a given individual’s (limited) point of view, will really be good from the cosmic perspective. The wise person recognizes this. However (contrary to what is sometimes claimed), even the wise, never mind the fools, are not omniscient, and so even the wise will not always know how it is that some (seemingly) bad things which befall them really are good. Nevertheless, a sage will know that any such (seemingly) bad thing actually is good; and this is what makes possible the sage’s legendary equanimity. (Recall Chrysippus’s remark, “If my toe had brains, it would seek to be muddied,” apud Epictetus 2.6.10. Cf. also Frede 1986, 93–110; see esp. 108ﬀ.).

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illa sollicitudinem deponendo. nullum bonum adiuuat habentem, nisi ad cuius amissionem praeparatus est animus; nullius autem rei facilior amissio est, quam quae desiderari amissa non potest. … ut potestas maior absit, nemo non seruus habet in te uitae necisque arbitrium. ita dico: quisquis uitam suam contempsit, tuae dominus est. … intelleges non pauciores seruorum ira cecidisse quam regum. quid ad te itaque, quam potens sit quem times, cum id, propter quod times, nemo non possit? at si forte in manus hostium incideris, uictor te duci iubebit; eo nempe, quo duceris. quid te ipse decipis et hoc nunc primum, quod olim patiebaris, intellegis? ita dico: ex quo natus es, duceris. haec et eiusmodi uersanda in animo sunt, si uolumus ultimam illam horam placidi expectare, cuius metus omnes alias inquietas facit. (Ep. 4.3–6 and 8–9) You must at least make progress. You would thus understand that some things are to be feared all the less, precisely because they inspire such great dread. It is not a great evil, if it is the end of evils. Death is approaching you; it would be a thing to fear, if it could stay with you; but necessarily death either does not come at all, or passes by as something wholly transient. It is diﬃcult (you say) to bring the mind to a point where it can look down on life as something of no account. But don’t you see the frivolous reasons why people do look down on life as something of no account? One man hangs himself in front of the door of his girlfriend; another throws himself from the roof, so that he need no longer obey his illtempered master; still another commits seppuku, so as not to be captured after having run away. Do you think that virtue will not be as eﬃcacious as excessive fear? No man can have a life free from care, if he thinks excessively about lengthening it, or if he reckons as a great good: living through many consulships. Reﬂect upon this every day, so that you may be able, with a mind at ease, to let go of life—this life which so many clutch at and cling to, in exactly the same way as those who are being swept away by raging torrents (try to) cling to thorny brambles and sharp rocks. Most people are caught in an ebb and ﬂow between the fear of death and the torments of life. They are wretched. And they are unwilling to live, because they know not how to die. So with all this in view, make the entirety of (your) life congenial to yourself—by setting aside all anxiety about it. No good thing makes its possessor happy, unless his mind is prepared for the possibility of losing it. Yet no loss is easier to bear, than losing that which, once lost, cannot even be sought. …

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wolfgang-rainer mann Even if he lacks any greater, real authority, every slave has the power of life and death over you. Let me put it like this: whoever judges his own life as being of no account, is lord and master over yours. … You will come to understand that just as many people have been killed by the anger of slaves as by the anger of kings. What is it to you, then, how powerful he may be whom you fear, since no one doesn’t possess that (power) which you fear so greatly? But what if you should fall into the hands of the enemy? The conqueror will command that you ‘be led away.’ Well, yes—to that place where you are already ‘being led.’ Why are you playing tricks on yourself and only now, for the ﬁrst time, grasping that which you have been subject to all along? Let me put it like this: from the moment you were born, you have been: ‘being led there.’ We must wrap our minds around this and similar thoughts, if we want to be at ease in facing that ﬁnal hour, the fear of which makes all the other hours be ones lacking in ease.

Yet already here, and certainly by the time we encounter the topic again in later letters, we may be left with the impression that Seneca is morbidly preoccupied with death, that the kind of attention he pays to it, say, by retelling the ﬁnal days of various heroic ﬁgures, betrays an obsession with dying, which seems much more like a symptom of the fear of death, than anything like a means towards allaying this fear. So one would like to know more clearly how the (Epicurean) injunction to reﬂect upon death (meditare mortem) actually is conducive to living a good life rather than a pathological one.17 Or to put the question more provocatively: Isn’t Pacuvius, with his endless ‘funerals,’ reﬂecting upon death every day? We receive a further important pointer on how to construe Epicurus’s injunction in Letter 26: … interim commodabit Epicurus, qui ait: ‘meditare mortem’ … hic patet sensus: egregia res est mortem condiscere. superuacuum forsitan putas id discere, quod semel utendum est. hoc est ipsum, quare meditari debeamus; semper discendum est, quod an sciamus, experiri non pos17 The question of Seneca’s use of Epicurus has been much discussed in the literature. For our present purposes, it does not really matter whether we believe this use to be motivated by Lucilius’s (supposed) own Epicureanism, or by Seneca’s thought that even if Epicureanism is fundamentally ﬂawed, Epicurus did grasp some things (or was making progress towards grasping some things), so that his sayings, if provided with a Stoic gloss, could be seen as true and useful. In the former case, the deployment of Epicurus would in eﬀect be part of a rhetorical or pedagogical strategy; in the latter case, it would (in part) be an illustration of a Stoic ‘truth’: the sage and the fool diﬀer not so much in what they say and do, if that is described extensionally, as in the attitude they take towards (and the understanding they have of) what they say and do.

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sumus. ‘meditare mortem’; qui hoc dicit, meditari libertatem iubet. qui mori didicit, seruire dedidicit; supra omnem potentiam est, certe extra omnem. quid ad illum carcer et custodia et claustra? liberum ostium habet. una est catena, quae nos alligatos tenet, amor uitae, qui ut non est abiciendus, ita minuendus est, ut si quando res exigit, nihil nos detineat nec impediat quo minus parati sumus, quod quandoque faciendum est, statim facere. (Ep. 26.8–10) … in the meantime, Epicurus will help (sc. me) out, with this saying: REFLECT UPON DEATH … Its meaning is plain: it is a splendid thing to learn and master how to die. Perhaps you think it is superﬂuous to learn that (art) which is to be used only once. But that is why we ought to reﬂect upon it. We must always be learning (that thing), when we are unable to put to the test, whether we really do know (it). REFLECT UPON DEATH. He who says this is bidding us to reﬂect upon freedom. He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery. He is above all power, or at any rate, beyond it. What are prison, guards, and bars to him? For him, the exit-door is open. There is but one chain which binds us: the lust for life. It cannot be cast oﬀ. But it can be so weakened that when the occasion demands it, nothing can hold us back or stand in our way from being any less ready to do that thing straightaway, which, at some time or other, we must do in any event.

In order fully to understand the upshot of what is being said in these passages from Letters 4 and 26, we need to remind ourselves of a relevant bit of Stoic doctrine. Central to their theory of value is the distinction between things that are genuinely good (or bad), and things that are neither good nor bad, and are thus indiﬀerent (adiaphora).18 Now labeling something as ‘indiﬀerent’ might suggest that it does not matter at all whether one obtains it (in case one does not already have it), or loses it (in case one happens already to possess it). Up to a point this is exactly what the doctrine of indiﬀerents comes to. However—at least according to mainstream Stoic thinking—there is a further distinction

18 These issues have been treated frequently in the literature. Two helpful recent contributions are Barney 2003 and Vogt 2004b. On the diﬃcult related issue of how one is to understand the notion of the good in Stoicism, see Frede 1999b. The fragments and testimonia are collected in Long and Sedley 1987. (Vol. 1 contains the translations and brief philosophical commentary, vol. 2 the Greek or Latin originals and some short, more philological notes.) Sections 58, “Value and Indiﬀerence,” and 60, “Good and Bad,” include much of the material relevant to the present discussion. (N.B.: Henceforth, I will be citing sections from this work as LS + the relevant section number, e.g., LS58; individual fragments or testimonia receive letters with these numbers, e.g., LS58 A.)

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to be drawn, between things which are, as we might say, utterly and completely indiﬀerent, and those which are not, and are accordingly to be regarded as either preferred, or dispreferred. Having an odd number of hairs on one’s head can serve as an example of an indiﬀerent of the former kind. The suggestion is that not only is it rational for me not to care whether I have an odd or an even number of hairs on my head, but this is the sort of thing I just could not care about one way or the other (unless I were in the grip of some sort of fairly extreme, disturbed mental state). Thus here the Stoic view can easily seem like straightforward, common sense: no sane person cares about these kinds of things. Yet matters are not so simple, for most of the traditional ‘goods’ and ‘evils’ are treated as being indiﬀerent in the other way. Thus on the one hand, bodily goods (like physical beauty, strength, or health), external goods (like wealth, social status, or political power), and life itself are regarded as preferred indiﬀerents; on the other hand, bodily ills (like ugliness, weakness, or disease), external evils (like poverty, low social status, or lack of power), and even death itself are regarded as dispreferred indiﬀerents. Talk of some indiﬀerents as preferred, and of others as dispreferred, of course suggests that they are not wholly or utterly indiﬀerent—a suggestion which is reinforced by the examples the Stoics actually use. And indeed the art of living will involve properly selecting amongst these indiﬀerents, namely, by selecting in favor of the preferred ones, and against the dispreferred ones. Here, however, we need to proceed carefully, to avoid misunderstanding what is involved: when selecting in favor of, say, health, a wise person is going for what, in a sense, it is natural or rational to go for. (For Nature has so constructed human beings that their natural state is: being healthy, or tending towards being healthy.) But this must not be understood either as the claim that actually being healthy is a good (and that failing to achieve or to maintain health is thus an evil), or as the claim that in selecting in favor of health, the wise person is pursuing health as a good. Why not? One reason (though this is to express matters slightly anachronistically) is that the Stoics seek to neutralize moral luck, to insure that it will play no role in a good life, and therefore, no role in a happy and ﬂourishing one. They thus want to deny that whether a given person is good (i.e., wise or virtuous) or not (i.e., foolish and vicious), depends on anything other than the condition of the leading part of his soul (= to

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hêgemonikon), or that this is in any way hostage to fortune. And so attaining or possessing external goods, or indeed bodily ones—i.e., any of the so-called goods of fortune—has no part in making a good life a good one. For example: whether or not I am healthy in fact does depend on a whole host of factors, many of which lie wholly outside of me and over which I have no control. Thus in order to be insulated from this sort of luck, the Stoics exclude health from the good life, strictly speaking, and they stipulate that what is at issue (as far as goodness is concerned) is selecting well, not attaining the preferred indiﬀerents (and/or avoiding the dispreferred ones). A famous passage in Cicero, De ﬁnibus 3.22, illustrates the point by means of an analogy with archery (cf. also Plut. Comm. not. 1071B–C). Prior to our encounter with Stoicism, we might think that the goal of archery is hitting the target; that the good archer actually does hit his target; and that an archer who fails to hit his target is a bad archer, precisely on account of that failure. But the Stoics suggest that the goal of archery is not: hitting the target (= obtaining a preferred indiﬀerent, or avoiding a dispreferred one), it rather is simply: aiming well (= selecting properly among the indiﬀerents). The link between excellence at archery and success at hitting the target is thus broken, at least to the following extent. Someone might hit the target by mere luck, despite not aiming well; yet such ‘success’ is in no way to his credit, nor should we say that he possesses the art of archery. And it is equally possible that someone misses the target, despite having aimed well (say, a sudden gust of wind blew the arrow oﬀ course); in this kind of case, his ‘failure’ should not really be viewed as his failure, nor should we call into question his mastery of the art of archery, because in aiming well, he in fact did everything he did fully in accord with the principles, rules, or precepts of that art. But there is another reason as well. The Stoics (notoriously) hold that everything that happens, down to the smallest detail, happens in accord with a Providential Plan for the World (as a whole). This means that nothing that happens is bad, in the sense of being contrary to Fate or Providence. But that also means that if in a speciﬁc case, say, if in my own case, I end up not being healthy (despite having selected in favor of health, and having done everything in accord with the art of medicine, and in accord with whatever other arts or kinds of knowledge are relevant), this cannot, strictly speaking, be something bad. Indeed, if I were a wise person, I would see that my ‘failure’ to have obtained this preferred indiﬀerent was not really a failure at all. As Michael Frede

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rightly notes, the wise person will recognize that his ‘failure’ actually proves to be a kind of success.19 There are of course a whole host of diﬃcult questions we cannot consider here, including: Why should I view something, e.g., my own illness, from a ‘cosmic’ perspective rather than from my own, more limited one?20 How is one to reconcile the idea that selecting well among indiﬀerents has a kind of value, or rather, that these indiﬀerents themselves have a kind of value, with the thought that only the virtues are good, and only the vices are bad?21 How much of the view depends 19 See Frede 1986, 110: “… it does not really matter to [the wise person] which way the things he does turn out. For whether he succeeds or fails, it will be for the best for the world in either case. And since this is what he was aiming at in the ﬁrst place when he felt impelled towards what he failed to obtain, he succeeds even in his failure.” For a slightly diﬀerent interpretation of this point, see Inwood 1985, 213–214: “The same action can be described as ‘going home for Thanksgiving,’ as ‘honouring one’s parents,’ and as ‘doing a just act.’ The wise and virtuous man is the one who construes his actions as acts of virtue, as things which ought to be done. Simply making the right selection does not constitute virtue, although it is essential for it. The virtuous man thinks of his action as being right and in accordance with Nature’s will. He thinks of himself as doing the action because man was made for acting thus. So when the virtuous man goes home for Thanksgiving, he does not just assent to the proposition ‘I should go home for Thanksgiving’; he also assents to ‘by doing so I honour my parents’ and ‘by doing so I do a just act.’ If his selection of the appropriate action is also to be virtuous, he must also assent to these propositions. In so acting, the virtuous man sees his actions as expressions of virtue. In this way the sage can insure that his actions and intentions will never be frustrated. For the impulse to going home is reserved (after all the plane might crash); but the impulse to doing a good act cannot be frustrated and so no reservation is required. … If a man assents to a proposition which describes his action as virtuous, then his action will never fail of his objective. For although one may not achieve one’s goal under the description ‘honouring one’s parents’ or ‘going home for Thanksgiving,’ if the action is construed by the agent as a just act it cannot fail. For to do one’s best, consciously to do all that is in one’s power, is in itself a just act if it is done with an awareness of the good as one’s reason.” (All emphases added.) (A full discussion of Inwood would obviously require analyzing the distinction between reserved and unreserved impulses; but the overall import of his remarks should be clear even without such an analysis.) See also Vogt 2004b, 74–77 for yet another, extremely subtle approach to the issue. 20 The process of (what the Stoics call) oikeiôsis is meant to account for and explain the transition from identifying the good solely with my own ‘good’ (= my well-being) to identifying it with the cosmic good. See LS57, esp. A, F, and G. For brief discussion, cf. LS, vol. 1, 351–354. See also Striker 1983 (repr. in Striker 1996, 281–297); Inwood 1985, esp. Ch. 6 “Moral Evolution”; and, again, Frede 1986, 108–110. 21 Carneades seems to have been the ﬁrst to raise the objection that the Stoics contradict themselves by, as it seems, on the one hand setting up virtue (reason) as the sole good, and hence the end to be pursued, and thus treating it as being of incommensurably greater value than anything else, and on the other hand, treating preferred indiﬀerents as if they do have some value (and thus that a life of virtue + a certain number of preferred indiﬀerents would actually be better than a life of virtue

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on the idea that there is a Providential Plan for the World? And not least, how is one supposed to resolve (what to many interpreters has seemed like) the deep tension between the Stoic claim that people are wholly responsible for their choices, and the Universal Fate which they hold governs the World? Diﬃcult as these questions are, we can already see that there will be an enormous diﬀerence between the wise person and someone who takes the various preferred indiﬀerents actually to be good, and the various dispreferred ones actually to be bad. Notice also that this diﬀerence need not manifest itself in any overt behavior: thus both a wise person and (at least a certain kind of) a fool might do the right sorts of things in order to maintain and enhance their health: they will eat nutritious meals; they will eat the right amount of food; they will follow an appropriate exercise regimen; they will go to the relevant doctors if they become ill; they will obey their doctors’ instructions and take the prescribed medicines; and so on. Indeed, if they both live healthy lives (i.e., do not succumb to some sort of debilitating or otherwise ‘bad’ disease), there might well be no way at all (if we look ‘in’ on them from, as it were, the ‘outside’) to tell the fool apart from the wise person. The diﬀerence between them consists wholly in something ‘internal,’ in what one might describe as the attitude or outlook they take on, among other things, their being healthy. That diﬀerence will most obviously come to light in case things actually do end up going ‘badly’ for them: the fool will regard his illness as a terrible thing; he will be subject to thoughts like, ‘Why am I, of all people, aﬄicted in this way?,’ or ‘It’s unfair that I should suﬀer so, when this other person is doing ﬁne,’ and so on. The wise person, on the other hand, will continue doing whatever he is doing, secure in the knowledge that everything that is happening is (ultimately) for the best, and that he has done everything required of him. At this point we can return to Seneca. It is clear that he attributes to the fool the thought that life really is a good (perhaps the greatest of goods), and that death really is something bad (perhaps the worst

without any preferred indiﬀerents), and as if they thus are also ‘ends’ of a sort; but now it would appear that Stoics do not, after all, recognize only a single good or end. Besides the Cicero and Plutarch passages mentioned in the body of the text (= LS64 F and C), see all the fragments in LS64; cf. LS63 and 58; for brief discussion, see LS, vol. 1, 406–410. See also Inwood 1985, 205–215 and Striker 1986 (repr. in Striker 1996, 298–315).

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of evils). But it seems to me that in the passages quoted above he goes a step further. The suggestion seems to be (and this is a thought we should be familiar with from Epicurus) that even though the diﬀerence between the fool and the wise person is an ‘internal’ one, the sort of situation described in the previous paragraph either cannot occur, or will be extremely rare—that is to say, it is not the case that there will be no way of telling the two of them apart (when looking ‘in’ from the ‘outside’); on the contrary, the diﬀerence between the fool and the wise person will manifest itself in virtually every aspect of their lives, as part of all of their everyday behavior. The slavery in question (at 26.10) is the fear of death; it is rightly called slavery, because the person who does fear death in this way lets that fear govern his life, not just on those occasions when there are (let us say) obvious dangers to life and limb, but on all occasions: that is why anyone who looks down on his own life as being of no account (quisquis uitam suam contempsit), i.e., treats it as an indiﬀerent, will have power over the life of someone who regards life as a genuine good (cf. 4.8). The fear of death thus suﬀuses the whole of life and exercises a distorting inﬂuence on it: recall Seneca’s comment that the fear (metus) of “that ﬁnal hour” (ultimam illam horam) “makes all the other hours [sc. of our life] be ones lacking in ease” (omnes alias inquietas facit) (4.9). Or rather, the person who does fear death in this way, i.e., who holds the various false beliefs about the goodness of life and the badness of death, himself distorts his own life to such an extent that he can be described as unwilling to live (4.5); in other words, he is incapable of willing to live, that is, making the kinds of choices and decisions (including selecting appropriately among indiﬀerents) that are necessary for leading a life that could so much as be a candidate for a good life. Thus when Seneca says, “most people (plerique) … are unwilling to live, because they know not how to die” (4.5), this should not be thought of as an overly pointed paradox, or as reﬂecting a (morbid) obsession with death, but as a simple statement of fact. Learning how to die is not indulging in some sort of pathological fantasy, it rather is learning how to live. Part of the lesson to be learned is recognizing that while the attachment to life is, in a way, natural (and for non-rational animals, including human children—whom the Stoics regard as non-rational animals— such an attachment just is natural, without qualiﬁcation), in the case of a rational being, any overly strong attachment to mere (biological) life is irrational. A rational being, if it is actually being rational, will rather seek to live rationally, i.e., in accordance with reason, i.e., in accordance

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with the logos of the world as a whole. Thus if such a being (e.g., a person who is, in the Stoic sense, wise) ﬁnds that it is no longer possible to live in this way, then, because “the chain” (= “the lust for life”) which binds him to mere (biological) life has been “weakened,” he is “ready to do that thing straightaway” which he “must at some time or other do in any event” (26.10). (Seneca is here perhaps even stating the notorious Stoic view that the wise person will be prepared to commit suicide—if that is what reason demands.22 Recall Letter 12.10: “In every direction, there lie paths to freedom: they are many, short, and easy. Let us thank God that no-one can be shackled to life. It is possible to spurn the very need that does [seem to] hold us.”) Now, at long last, we can return to our friend Pacuvius (from Letter 12). I take it to be uncontroversial that Seneca means to be describing, in vivid terms, an unhealthy mind (conscientia mala) leading to unhealthy behavior. The contrived theatricality of Pacuvius’s ‘funerals,’ the male prostitutes who make up the chorus of ‘mourners,’ the endless repetition, the performative contradiction between the perfective aspect (or Aktionsart) of the perfect tense verbs, uixi and peregi, and the fact that he needs to keep on saying them, the patent insincerity—all are signs that far from having learned how to die and being reconciled to his mortality, Pacuvius is a slave to the fear of death, who indulges in a rigid (perhaps unconsciously motivated) apotropaic ritual which is doomed to failure. (And its psychological failure is displayed in his need to keep putting on these mock funerals, over and over again.) History always repeats itself, but the ﬁrst time it is a tragedy, the second time, a farce. When Dido says, uixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi, there is a noble simplicity in what she says. Indeed, for Seneca (or for any Stoic), there is a greater or more heroic quality to her words than there is in Vergil. That is because, as we have seen, Vergil problematizes her utterance by having the epic narrator point out that hers was not a fated death, that she is dying ante diem. But the Stoics 22 See LS66G and H; for brief discussion, see LS, vol. 1, 428–429. It is crucial to recognize, in coming to terms with this part of Stoic doctrine, that they are in no way recommending suicide: the wise person should not be thought of as somehow subject to a death-wish. Rather the wise person, recognizing that life (being alive) is a preferred indiﬀerent, will not seek to cling to it, no matter what the cost. But the wise person also recognizes the ‘value’ of life, and so he will not carelessly or mindlessly endanger himself, or commit suicide on a whim or in order to make some ‘grand’ gesture. One might also want to ask: To what extent does Seneca’s own suicide (as depicted by Tacitus) conform to the Stoic model?

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hold that no one dies a death that is not fated; or, alternatively, that everyone dies his own death.23 The task for all of us—learning how to die—is coming to own our death as our own death. But Dido, in a way, does precisely that. And so Seneca must in eﬀect take her side—it is she, after all, who sees things aright, not the epic narrator. But this only serves to highlight how ridiculous, in fact, how grotesque, Pacuvius is being when he attempts the noble gesture, which, by being repeated daily, fails at being even a simulacrum of such a gesture. There is one further irony in Letter 12. In anticipation of an objection Lucilius might raise (to Seneca’s use of Epicurus), Seneca admonishes him to pay attention to “what gets said,” not to “who says it.” But the object lesson that Pacuvius provides, suggests exactly the opposite: it makes all the diﬀerence in the world, who it is who says, uixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi. For this sentence—like any other—will mean one thing when spoken by a wise person and another (indeed, something wholly diﬀerent) when spoken by a fool. If we learn the lesson Seneca would have us learn, we could speak Dido’s words wholeheartedly and mindfully. At the same time, we would have been freed from the need to speak any such words. But we could, lightly and with ease, say a quick uixi before going to sleep and await, ex bona conscientia, (each) tomorrow with patience and good cheer.

23 In the article with which we began, W. Schulze notes that Seneca himself says so; see Ep. 69.6: nemo moritur nisi sua morte. illud praeterea tecum licet cogites: nemo nisi suo die moritur (“No one dies any death other than his own. And there is also this for you to reﬂect on: no one dies on any day other than his own”).

JOURNEY OF A LIFETIME: SENECA, EPISTLE 57 IN BOOK VI IN EM

John Henderson The only way out is through The only way we’ll feel better The only way out is through ultimately Morissette, “Out is Through,” 2004

In the Epistulae Morales, Seneca deﬂects the Latin letter from the rattle and hum of this world—the politics, society, and everyday living of Nero’s imperial Rome and its worldpower, government, and elite. En route to direct engagement with moral arguments, logical puzzles, and the technical apparatus of Hellenistic epistemology, ontology, and deontology, he trades on the associations of the epistolary format in showing how the coordinates of the external habitus provide challenging material for cerebration.1 The epistolary genre checks out the apparatus of philosophy in terms of its applicability in the Roman context of Latin language and discourse.2 In just one major sequence, in the ﬁrst half of EM VI, Seneca presents a mimetic sequence set around a tour of the Bay of Naples area. Here he runs smack into GraecoRoman culture: the history of Italy and the myths of Rome, playing Odysseus and Aeneas, himself at once another hero of the Republic and one more imperial escapee. In context, the itinerary proﬁles a graded series of spiritual ordeals, and prompts the desired lessons. Its climax, at EM 57, ﬁnds the ultimate scenario for a psychic journey beyond. In the Naples underpass, he plays through a private meltdown of collapse in mud, dark, and swoon; and soars to a higher plane, to 1 Henderson 2004 ( = “H 2004” below) concentrates on EM 12, 55, 86 (171–174, “Appendix. Here to Stay,” maps and tabulates all “Places and Persons Named in EM”). The present essay stems from a panel at the Classical Association Annual Conference (2004) held in Leeds. My thanks to Diana Spencer for inviting me to hold forth. 2 Vindication of generic imprinting of whatever material is stamped into EM: Wilson 1987 and 2001; cf. Lavery 1989. Their perpetually shifting readability gets downplayed (under-appreciated) by analysis within Philosophy.

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the stars, blinding light, break on through to the other side. Here epic nekuia-cum-astral scintillation catches up with modernizing consciousness, as Latin prose is set to dramatize individual experience pushed past extremity. The letter shows how to fasten upon jarring mundane circumstance and deliver the POW of bliss to thunderstruck reading— in this case, to turn disoriented stress into transportation to hyperspace.3 What good is this crisis for thinking? Seneca channels writing to get us out of this world, reaching for eternity to realize the essence of Being. Then the campaign to habituate strenuous reasoning presses ahead. Bursts of auto-portraiture will recur, but ere Book VI the collection has completed its transformation of writer and addressee into a pact to renounce unreasoning existence. Embodied contingency will persist as intermittent jolt and spur to philosophize, as “we” stumble and falter along the road through its denigration toward its elimination from our preoccupation. The autography of this therapeutic writing enshrines philosophy as a continuous drive to battle on through the distraction of life to reach past mortality to discountenance, more than consciousness, the entire baggage of happenstance, including the paraphernalia of language, social-individual persona, and cultural situatedness. Nonetheless, the “postcard” qualities of Seneca’s solitary record of tripping to (and fro) the coast function, too, to emphasise the dependence of philosophy on contingency—weather and traﬃc conditions, bus or boat, hover or chunnel, the way round or cut through!—as its raison d’être. Till death stops the chain of mail, reason must never succeed absolutely in repressing its Sitz im Leben. And we better get used to it.4 This essay takes a wild shot at DOING exactly that. 1. If I Were Dead, Would My Records Sell: EM 1–52 I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer’s dream night … I can now see the darkness of lightness. And I love light. Perhaps you’ll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it’s exactly because 3 4

Cf. Elkins 2001, esp. 171–173, “The history of being thunderstruck.” Smith 1995. See esp. Schönegg 1999 for EM “als philosophisches Kunstwerk.”

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I am invisible. … In my hole in the basement there are exactly 1,369 light bulbs. I’ve wired the entire ceiling, every inch of it. … The truth is the light and light is the truth. Ellison 1952, 6–75

ita fac, mi, Lucili … fac ergo, mi Lucili, quod facere te scribis … interrogabis fortasse quid ego faciam qui tibi ista praecipio (1.1, 2, 4). Seneca rolls the ball6: on this journey by post, valorized “deeds” will assume this form, of self creation from ﬁrst principles: from the outset, “doing” re-positions us, rearranging you/me, my you, through reason: uindica te tibi …; persuade tibi … (1.1).7 The opening topics map Space onto Time, you can tell— you are told—they are programmatic (et si uolueris attendere …, 1.1). Opening the book that opens the collection, we must know “one dies every day” and “life runs past,” so any “start” will never be “too late”: get it?, bono tempore incipies (1.5). Latin letters were the most prestigious prose genre where book composition from a number of serial subunits metonymized an expanding collection of books. The ﬁrst time Seneca makes you surge past the shutdown valediction of epistolary closure and stagger into a new incipit is fed straight into classic moral product, as travel is anathematized as “shiftless scurrying,” “a sick psyche’s bucking,” disproof of the “settled” psyche that belongs to “consistency, in a word hanging-out-with-your-self ” (discurris … locorum mutationibus inquietaris. aegri animi iactatio est … compositae mentis … consistere et secum morari, 2.1).8 Travellers have “many hosts, few friends,” no?, and same goes for adventurers in bookland, too. Be warned, transience gets lost in transit: before we hopped across into this second letter-space, the lesson was “to die every day” (cotidie mori, 1.2)9; this now transposes into settling into a routine of reading wisdom, “acquire some help every See Doy 2005, 105–107, “The invisible Subject,” and Fig. 1. H 2004, 6–18 on EM Book I; cf. esp. Scarpat 1975. Other ﬁne sequential readings of the Letters play down book divisions: esp. Hachmann 1995; Maurach 1970. 7 See esp. Edwards 1997 on “self-transformation” as the project in EM. Radical reappraisal of Senecan theorems of selfhood: Bartsch 2006, chapters 4–5, in particular reﬁning conceptualization and mobilization of Senecan “interiority” (for which cf. esp. Thévanaz 1976; Grimal 1992). The whole image-repertoire of EM, staked out so painstakingly by Armisen-Marchetti 1989, is meant to drain oﬀ colour and erase diﬀerence as everything wells into activation of moral praxis. fac is Seneca’s delight: e.g., 109.17, fortiorem fac me, iustiorem, temperantiorem, and the conceitful sonorities of 117.33, fac me fortiorem, fac securiorem, fac fortunae parem, fac superiorem, etc; cf. 114.17 for robust discussion of mouth-whetting Sallustian constructions with facio. 8 Cf. esp. 104.18. 9 See esp. 101.1, omnis dies, omnis hora quam nihil simus ostendit … quid sibi istud principium uelit quaeris? … 5 6

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day to bat oﬀ ﬁnancial pressure, dying, and the rest of the aﬄictions …: when you’ve scurried over reams, pick out one item to digest that day” (aliquid cotidie … compara; et cum multa percurreris, unum excerpe quod illo die concoquas, 2.4). Such is your old Seneca’s own “deed,” always in the groove, back in the class that never graduates (hoc ipse quoque facio, 2.5). “Today’s nugget” is on its way; a gem from Epicurus, for Seneca has taught himself to trespass into enemy territory for ﬁeldwork (hodiernum hoc est quod apud Epicurum nanctus sum. soleo enim et in aliena castra transire—non tamquam transfuga sed tamquam explorator). Letter 3 continues with the good work of consolidation by habituation (soleas … facere; ita uiue; consuetudo fecit … facies … fecerunt … faciendum, 3.1, 3, 4). Its successor tells us that success in this consists in consolidating the start made in successive consolidation: perseuera ut coepisti … (4.1). Watch words of “progress” take form—“arrive,” “get there”—“meditate daily”—“do it” (proﬁce; perueniat; perducere; cotidie meditari, fac itaque, 4.3, 4, 5, 6),10 and mount the “journal” custom of a lemma a day as the “end” of each letter instalment: sed ut ﬁnem epistulae imponam, accipe quod mihi hodierno die placuit … (4.10). The stop-start stagger of epistolarity transforms into the puncturing of each salvo by its closure via supplementation with point through this writerly ruse of formal “postscript”; a move which obliges retrospective re-pondering of the body of the letter just read, which will have been thinking with the chosen thought for the day, must have reposed on its meditation, whence materialized the reasoning represented by today’s “diary-entry.” And so, we re-commence, The Pattern is set—set the pattern: quod pertinaciter studes … ut te meliorem cotidie facias … (5.1). The punchline message at the end of the day ends the day’s text with the text of the day, which crystallizes epistolary format as embodying the formative massage of this correspondence course of treatment (5.7): sed ut huius quoque diei lucellum tecum communicem, apud Hecatonem nostrum inueni cupiditatum ﬁnem etiam ad timoris remedia proﬁcere. “Desines” inquit “timere, si sperare desieris.” PS. To share this today’s spot of lucre with you, Lucilius, I came across in our Hecato that limiting desires also progresses alleviation of fear. “Thou shalt cease” he says “to fear if thou hast ceased to hope.”

With this dynamic instituted and inculcated, the book is set to lurch its way from one day to a next, traversing the same ground on the same 10

On (prae)meditatio: esp. Armisen-Marchetti 1986; Newman 1989.

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mission of “perseverance” to the (same) end. Piece by piece. At times, instalments link formally, in places letters follow up on each other; otherwheres, they situate themselves as the same cumulative process in other words. “One, broken, journey: peregrinatio, iter, fuga, secessus, nauigatio …”11 As a run of stop-overs: “Avoid crowding” → “You tell me to avoid crowding” (7.1 → 8.1), and “The same Stilbo … as in my last letter” (10.1 ← 9.18–19). Through “transcription” from child to adult, “transﬁguration” by a special book, to one boy giving himself his own bad company followed by another’s grand blushing start, precipitating relapse as our old guru goes back to his roots to backslide, last time out, and close this carefully designed suite in spluttering shame at letting himself and his lessons down (4.2; 6.1; 10.1; 11.2; 12.2–3).12 For Book I ﬁnally ﬁnds Seneca’s out-of-town home as the place that imagines quotidian mundanity—“Wherever I have turned myself ”—into the vital chip in the circuitry of our Life-Time. Here we map metonymic metaphor, delivered along the chain of epistolarity: twelve folded into one, and the next post set to continue/start the campaign again (13 = II.1). Just as EM 12 completes itself by re-cycling suicidal Dido’s epitaph for closure—uixi et quem dederat cursum Fortuna peregi (12.9)—while promising to keep on keeping on, and dish out more of the same: perseuerabo Epicurum tibi ingerere … (12.11). Books to come shall now register as abiding by, as deviating from, this paradigmatic ﬁrst sally. And, so, add themselves as paradigms, repeat versions or new variants both. A lesson or three that will last, what mileage for Senecan teaching can be extracted from its conditioning by speciﬁcally epistolary dynamics13; correlatively, how much purposive thinking comes from brooding over reading samples—this is what we are getting used to replicating in reading Seneca—; and counter-generically, how demonstratively the mimetic world of socialpersonal-commercial-political intercourse can be demoted to occasional and optional baseline for salutary excogitation. In Book I, the milieu from which the letters write has featured Seneca’s metropolitan stamping-ground of forum and threshold, arena and senate-house (EM 5, 7, 11), before at the death parading the dramatic potential of scenography so far (now still more glaringly) repressed, in the slightest touch of narrativity provided by the move out to the decrepit plane-trees of 11 12 13

The “journey-metaphor”: Lavery 1980, 151–155. On EM 12: H 2004, 19–27. Lana 1991.

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superannuated Seneca’s suburban self. Of the long-suﬀering addressee’s whereabouts and standpoint, not one word. Book II14 therefore departs from a retrospect on Lucilius’ progress. Spiritual progress, ﬁrst. (Obviously.) The book starts up with its ﬁrst ending spoonful of Epicurus devoted to doubling the idiocy of beginning—“Always [semper: i.e. = cotidie] starting to live!” (13.16)—with the shame of beginning—“Old men oﬀ travelling or trading, starting to live!” (13.17). The second entry neckotiates the tricky straits between humiliation and prudence in keeping a head on a sage’s (merely corporeal) shoulders: “like handling a squall en voyage” (in nauigando procellam, 14.7); and this is where Lucilius comes in(to the picture): cum peteres Siciliam, traiecisti fretum … (14.8). To get to Sicily means thinking your way through “Scylla-and-Charybdis”—whatever sort applies. Philosophical retreat? Political evasion? sed postea uidebimus … (14.14).15 For now, ponder “HMS X sinks in port: and so …—what do you believe happens in mid-ocean?” (14.15). We’re here, recall, to excogitate “the daily dole” of secondhand Wisdom, and today’s will be “golden,” and what matters is that it’s time to ﬂatten all cult of personality, “not that it matters whose clipping is in the mix”: you want to know what Lucilius is up to? Today’s watchword, “Who enjoys riches the most? Who needs riches the least,” you think it’s about (a?) Lucilius raking it in, and living it up, in Sicily? You think it isn’t? You think. This gathering gets on with, gets back to, philosophizing epistolary dynamics, from the “ancient ethic” incapsulated in the formula SVBEEV (15.1) through the up-date si philosopharis, bene est to the end in ualediction that counts (15.11); through postscripts on the ﬁnis miseriarum (cf. 17.11) and on “beginning postscripts as letter endings” (EM 18–19); to the self-reﬂexive ﬁnale on fame-production in the wake of the Letters of Epicurus and Cicero (21.3–5): compare Seneca and addressee with those gloriﬁed losers Nisus ’n’ Euryalus (20.5). Lucilius is just (just!) the protreptic régime’s necessary prompt, for cotidiana meditatio; perseuerandum; already, a book and a half in, intellege multum te profecisse (16.1–2). “Shake him out,” and ﬁnd he is a vector of epistolarity (excute te ↔ circumspicies quid haec epistula munusculi attulerit: excute illam, et inuenies, 16.2, 7). “No fare needed to go the whole way to Philosophy” (17.7, etiam sine uiatico peruenire). It makes Seneca think, the fact he lives his space-time Xmas in Rome, where festivities make a sociopath of the ascetic who 14 15

H 2004, 29–31. See EM 68, with Maso 1999, chapter 4.

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won’t give his cotidiana consuetudo a rest (18.12). Otherwise, mundanity only intrudes when Lucilius’ letters inspire good hope and a bravo—ita fac—, that is to say, worry his minder with the distractions that preoccupy his protégé (19.1, istis occupationibus). Seneca need not tell his own, totting up, tale—“We’ve lived on the foam, let’s die in port”—but Lucilius has his name-and-fame still to fashion: shunning celebrity, including the anchorite’s, but not holing up in a hide-out … We are permitted the luxury of a proﬁle (19.3): in medium te protulit ingenii uigor, scriptorum elegantia, clarae et nobiles amicitiae; iam notitia te inuasit … Pushing you into the limelight: livewire temperament; classy writings; luminous alliances with notables. Plus celebrity has just plagued you …

He has the dependants and associated duties that menace the person of standing, bad as an ocean to cross: fortunate at present to be so fortunate at present as to be removed from harm’s way (19.5): tulit te longe a conspectu uitae salubris rapida felicitas, prouincia et procuratio et quicquid ab istis promittitur. Carrying you oﬀ far from sight of healthy living: whirlwind success; province, administrative post, whatever promise all this holds for you.

“Lucilius” has the space, the time, to incubate in Sicily. The storm will hit him later, when success waits in ambush back at Rome. Meantime— ﬂuctuaris, imperial administrator overboard (20.1). Book III tacitly congratulates readers for having internalized repression of the biographic urge. Lucilius (we get moving, by doubting the eﬃcacy of therapeutics by mail) “knows he must be delivered from those preoccupations, seductive and evil” (22.1). Lucilius will never return, to face the music; but he’s menaced by a threatening prosecution (presumably for doing his job?, 24.1: we shan’t be told). He’s not learned (from Horace or Vergil) that travel doesn’t shift or lift mental depression (peregrinatione tam longa et tot locorum uarietatibus; terrarum … nouitas …, cognitio urbium aut locorum; etc. etc., 28.1–2), as we learn from a spaced-out letter full of sea-crossings whose postscript, “The start of salvation? Know your sin,” is ﬁgured as “harbour-dues”: tempus est desinere, sed si prius portorium soluero (28.9). To take Lucilius down any last remaining peg or two, this collection ends up focussing on an interloper, one Marcellinus (EM 29): sceptic in peril, and giving our administrator a piece of his mind for PS: si pudorem haberes, ultimam mihi pensionem remisisses … (29.10). If Seneca ever catches him lapping up celebrity, “there’ll be

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some dose of withering pity—from one who knows the road that leads to popularity of that sort! Vale” (29.12). Going, going, gone. Book IV opens up with a good guy going down, Auﬁdius Bassus, like a ship riddled with holes and foundering. A long, long letter of death that spells necrology for the Senecan post-script.16 Instead of cuttings, from here on in any tag will be pure Seneca (30.18): sed uereri debeo ne tam longas epistulas peius quam mortem oderis. itaque ﬁnem faciam: tu tamen mortem ut numquam timeas semper cogita. uale. —But I must worry you’ll loathe letters this long worse than death. So I’ll make an end: you, though, get thinking and never stop, so you never fear death. Fare well.

Lucilius must be re-habilitated anew, personhood formally subordinated to Senecan ratiﬁcation: agnosco Lucilium meum: incipit quem promiserat exhibere (31.1). “Self-making” intensiﬁes (fac te ipse felicem; facies autem …; te … faciet …, faciet; faciet; te facere, 31.5, 9–10), to a Virgilian climax (“et te quoque dignum | ﬁnge deo.” ﬁnges autem, 31.11), around the conceit: “How do you make it all the way to the summum bonum?” “No, not up the Alps, … or through the Syrtes, or between Scylla-Charybdis, etc. etc.”—and, yes, the conﬁrmation ﬂashes past (plus denigration! 31.9)17: quae tamen omnia transisti procuratiunculae pretio. You climbed every mountain, mind—thanks to that adminnikinstration!

This volume in twelve helpings conﬁnes itself to its last with thoughtgenerating epistolographics all the way. Seneca does check up on news of Lucilius from people coming “from your province” (32.1), just as he asks in the latest, as in many an earlier, letter for a few words from “our leading lights”—but (naturally) means {more postscripts from} “our {sect’s} main sages,” so he and we can be told that excerpts are no use (ﬂosculi)—no, the whole corpus needs reading entire (33.1).18 Take 16 H 2004, 16 n. 27, cf. 29–31: Epicurus appears in EM: 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29; 30, 33 (the “PS” operator exhumed for rumination), 46, 52, 66, 67, 79, 81. On the Senecan “PS”: Hachmann 1996. 17 Vassileiou 1971 traces a career for Lucilius from Alps-Epirus-Africa here. 18 Book XIV will impress this indelibly, at cosmic scale, when Lucilius wants philosophy divided up into its limbs, through its parts, for students in a hurry to comprehend

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note, reader, this corpus is growing: don’t just “walk in your forebears’ tracks,” we’re here to “make use of the old road,” or, if we “ﬁnd a nearer, ﬂatter, one,” let’s “build it” (33.11): “our” sages are “not masters, but guides.” There’s plenty of Truth left for the Future. Vale. For the rest, this suite goes up-beat, as the task-master is rejuvenated for joy at pupil’s progress over the distance of the collection to date, and the processing goes on (turbam olim reliqueras, 34.1 ↔ EM 7–8): si perseueraueris …; pergis ut coepisti; proﬁce; dum mihi proﬁcis; proﬁce … (34.4, 35.1, 2, 4). He asks for the rate of exchange to speed up, presses for a consignment of books to read, no crammers, mind, and earns congratulations for himself writing more often (EM 38, 39, 40). The method required is “step-by-step,” that “daily work-out” regimen (pedetemptim procedere; exercitatio cotidiana, 40.7, 13): so, the appropriate style for the philosopher to adopt must (you guessed!) be anything but up-beat: summa ergo summarum haec erit: tardilocum esse te iubeo. uale (40.14). Still no mimesis to record, and the book wraps up with more episto-literarity (41.1, 8): SENECA LVCILIO SVO SALVTEM facis rem optimam et tibi salutarem si, ut scribis, perseueras ire ad bonam mentem … … quomodo autem reuocari ad salutem possunt quos nemo retinet, populus impellit? uale. SENECA TO FRIEND LUCILIUS: GREETINGS {& GOOD HEALTH} You’re doing the best thing there is, good for your health. If, as you write, you’re keeping on with the trek to a sound mind … … How can people be recalled to good health when no one brakes them, and the masses stampede them? Fare you well.

Book V brews up both sides of the mail link, foregrounds textual exchange: Lucilius is still that big wheel in Sicily we know (43.1). A grumpy eques Romanus—on the iter uitae (44.1). Complaining of book shortage—at risk of Seneca setting sail across the Scylla-Charybdis whole, but must learn that we cannot view the totality of Philosophy or the Universe, be content with sectioning “into parts, not bits,” through “computation” plus “gradus” (89.1, 9–15; 16–17). Our best guide to reading our way to the wisdom of EM? per partes peruenietur ad totum (108.2).

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straits (at his age), swimming, even, this tour of duty is dragging on so long—wanting books from Seneca (45.1–3), who next tells he can’t put down the book Lucilius despatched him, comment to follow (wait for it!) after re-reading (46.1–3). More information on Lucilius arrives with—from—his couriers (47.1), and so does a jumbo screed he sent ex itinere—tam longam quam ipsum iter, answer pending meditation, a look round for counsel (48.1). Still the journey doesn’t change—consult Virgil: hac ad summum bonum itur? … “sic itur ad astra?” (48.10–11). Without warning, lo!, Seneca is on the move (49.1)19: ecce Campania et maxime Neapolis ac Pompeiorum tuorum conspectus …: totus mihi in oculis es. Look! Campania. Above all, Naples. The sight of your Pompeii …: you, all you, ﬁll my eyes.

Out of Rome, to get close enough to Lucilius (no swim). Taking a look at familiar places brings friends to mind across miles and years: totus mihi in oculis es. In the narrow space of life there are “no long intervals,” not just at sea, but any place the gap between life and death is a “slim interval” (49.2, 11): so many gradations “in such a narrow bottleneck,” no easing “my narrow neck of time” (in quam angusto quodam, 49.3; angustias temporis mei, 10). Next up, a late delivery spurs more thoughts on the power we assign “place and time,” leading to the collection’s ﬁrst naming of Rome, as a (the?) site for self-blind conniving at our cooption by the social machine (50.1, 3). Each according to his powers, let’s get geophysical: as Lucilius has Etna, ﬁre-belching Everest of Sicily, so Seneca makes do with Baiae, worthy opponent for a satisfying slanging-match against luxuriance (contenti sumus Bais ↔ satis diu cum Bais litigauimus, 51.1, 13).20 Not that you should declare loathing for a place, any place, but somewhere to avoid, all the same (the Nilotic “Canopus” of Italy: 51.3, cf. 13). Why the excursion (in)to the holiday resort? Etna spews sensational writing (51.1), and Baiae is a hybristic hubbub of topics for persiﬂage: drunks teetering along the sea-aﬀront, boat-trippers living it up fortissimo, orchestrated lakes beaming muzakkety-yak, just name it. The famous “Campanian treatment” story that unmanned the Hannibal that waltzed Alpine snowstorms; his conqueror Scipio roughing it at Liternum, so near, so far from, Baiae. Other local legends of Roman heroes besides (51.4–12). A pre-packaged tour of the 19 20

Summers 1910, 217 on EM 51 neatly travelogues the collection; cf. H 2004, 32. H 2004, 32–33; Hönscheid 2004.

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wrong place to choose for locating body or moral self, when Freedom demands we choose “a jokeless zone, consecrated ground” (51.4, 10). Back in the swim: ﬂuctuamur, the job’s not (yet, ever) done: diﬀeram hoc in praesentia (52.1, 15). A sixth series calls, then. At the least. We can have no idea how Seneca will pick up his momentum and walk. Stooping to a veritable spree—half the book—of farcical fabulation. Really. 2. quid ergo nunc te hortor ut facias? nihil noui—nec enim nouis malis remedia quaeruntur (110.11): EM 63–124 At 45.13, Seneca had contrived an ending from opinionation on epistolary scale21: sed ne epistulae modum excedam, quae non debet sinistram manum legentis implere, in alium diem hanc litem cum dialecticis diﬀeram nimium subtilibus et hoc solum curantibus, non et hoc. uale. But—not to bust the limit for a letter, which mustn’t ﬁll full the reader’s left hand, I shall put oﬀ for another day this dispute with discussants both hyper-sophisticated and occupied with this and only this, not this on the side. Fare well.

Book VII eschews mimesis, instead ((un)duly) breaking generic bounds with its seven pieces the lowest total so far/to date. The number of jolts per book will thereafter decrease drastically (5 → 6 → 3), as we complete the ﬁrst decade of volumes—, and, while picking up, never regain the steady ﬂow of handy sized hunks collected just into double ﬁgures that characterized Books I through VI; several monsterpieces— worth a book’s bulge each—lie ahead (the ﬁrst at 66).22 Here begins another book with necrology, for Flaccus—targeting the ﬁnem doloris (63.1, 12). “Yesterday you were with us (sc. in mind)” twins with “Half yesterday I was unwell” (64.1 ↔ 65.1). Spring marks Senecan time—it must be late Spring, he is “nailed to his bed, thank you old age”; “most of his conversations are with Lucilius’ letters, he doesn’t so Cf. 85.1, peperceram tibi … quod si facere uoluero, non erit epistula, sed liber … H 2004, 28–29. These hulking missives stand a fat chance of getting into the eternal selections from EM, Seneca’s massive grauitas is generally unrecognized. 21 22

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much write back to them as reply to him” (67.1–2). The pupil is told: “hide, at rest—and hide the hiding” (68.1), before the book shuts on a fresh denunciation afresh of shiftlessness of body as of mind: mutare te loca et aliunde alio transilire nolo … (69.1). No change, then, from Seneca’s inexorable halma of psychic stabilization, this unrelenting concatenation. This book-end loudly resumes the terms and strategy of EM 12, the ﬁrst “epilogue.” It “preludes” the next initiative, Book VIII, which returns us fully ampliﬁed to Book V (70.1 ↔ 49.1)23: post longum interuallum Pompeios tuos uidi. in conspectum adulescentiae meae reductus sum … After a lengthy gap, I’ve set eye on your Pompeii. It took me back to a sighting of my own youth …

Oﬀ we must sail, on the voyage of life with Virgil for the second time of asking (70.2 ↔ 28.1). Soon, too, we’ll reach for his poetic stars again (73.15 ↔ 48.11).24 Our writing dyad are parted, the partner needs reminding, “by a vast sea {!: straits or gulf ? Evidently as wide as it feels …}” (71.1). Another upbeat ﬁnale capitalizes on receipt of a cheering letter, enough to stir one more Jeremiad on human vulnerability, “to shipwreck and similar,” just “like” another “squall or lightning strike” (74.1, 4 ↔ 14.7, 53.4; 57.8).25 None of these revisits simply reprises what was afoot ﬁrst time out (nor could they). But reinforcement palpably re-directs the collection hereabouts. Book IX pairs Lucilius moaning at getting casual letters—as if they’re meant to be enjoyed, not improve!—with Lucilius threatening a feud if he doesn’t get told Seneca’s daily trivia, cueing a brisk uita from everyman—oﬀ to school for lectures, past the Naples theatre on the way to Metronax—: ﬁrst we chew over “something I said in an earlier letter”; then, we pick up on a lengthy “demonstration in an earlier letter” that hasn’t satisﬁed Lucilius, and oﬀer a compact re-run (75.1 ↔ 76.1; 75.5 ↔ 76.7, 25, 26: recapping 74.14, 16).26 Two strikingly vivid patches of scenography slot into this category, of sequel, follow-up: ﬁrst the mail-arm of the imperial ﬂeet delivers its payload of news from the colonies (77.1–2):

H 2004, 36–37. Cf. 92.31, 93.10 (death of Metronax). 25 For Senecan naufragium: Allegri 1999. Cf. esp. 81.2; Seneca’s rough-it country picnic at 87.1, naufragium antequam nauem ascenderem feci … (H 2004, 49–50); 88.7; 103.1. 26 Cf. 121.18, itaque, ut in prioribus epistulis dixi … 23 24

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subito nobis hodie Alexandrinae naues apparuerunt … gratus illarum Campaniae aspectus est: omnis in pilis Puteolorum turba consistit … cum intrauere Capreas … Suddenly, today, the ships from Alexandria appeared over the horizon … Campania loves catching sight of them: the whole crowd takes up position on the pier: Pozzuoli … Once they’ve negotiated their way in past Capreae …

But our prophet has “more fare than road to run,” on that life-changing journey which the latest suicide, Tullius Marcellinus, just showed no one needs to complete, since (to reiterate) “any stopping completes said journey,” there being “no journey without end”: ui(t)a (77.3–4, 13, uiaticum … uia; iter; iter).27 You know, someone said, the world’s a stage, and life’s a play—but it takes epistolarity to drive the point home with ﬁnality: no matter where you stop, ad lib. your exit (77.20): quocumque uoles, desine: tantum bonam clausulam impone. uale. Wherever you want—stop. Only see you fetch it a noble conclusion. Fare well.

And Lucilius? First he’s reported in sick, and inevitably it’s one more familiar malady to Seneca, who’s been there and done it (78.1). The remedial letter back must have done the trick, since we next await a letter which will diary the circuit of Sicily he will just have completed (is this tour a cure? Not our concern): (79.1) what’s the low-down on that Charybdis up close (79.2)? There’s that Etna, again—just the place for one more hot poetaster to clamber up Parnassus, a peak where (you’ll ﬁnd) success plateaus (79.1–5, 8: cum ad summum perueneris, paria sunt).28 Finally, back to base, with Seneca reporting on today’s ballgame (80.1). Sour as ever: “Except for the ‘Mask of happiness’ and the new turn given to the ‘Play of life’ image of 77.20, this letter does little but repeat thoughts with which previous letters in this Selection have already made us familiar.”29 Apart from … Book X’s triad shrugs oﬀ occasionality, rising instead to the fullest description of our host’s regimen: singulos dies tibi meos et quidem totos indicari iubes … faciam ergo quod iubes … diem meum recognoscam. … hodiernus

27 28

uale. 29

96.3, omnia ista in longa uita sunt, quomodo in longa uia et puluis et lutum et pluuia. H 2004, 38; cf. 84.13, si conscendere hunc uerticem libet, … uenies ad summa per planum. | Summers 1910, 274–275.

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dies solidus est. … uide quid exercitatio cotidiana proﬁciat. But the thought that occupies this today, survives from yesterday—and it concerns preaching against gurus’ patently ﬂimsy preaching against … inebriation! (83.1–4; 8). Book divisions elude us for a while, but there are to be no further Lucilius “episodes,” and the Teacher extends himself to just the one epiphanic visitation to that Scipio shrine at Liternum, incubating in the villa and parable-mongering in the garden, “through the wall from Baiae” (EM 86 ↔ 51.11),30 before he reverts to a jag of stop-overs at a row of properties back in the out-of-town belt round Rome, at Nomentum (“on the run from, not Rome, but fever”), Ardea, and Alba (104.1, 110; 105; 123 ↔ 12.1, suburbanum meum).31 Soon before the letters fade away, towards that last collection, that last post …32 By which time, we’ve long been taught the recursiveness of training for life, its beneﬁcial longueurs: “To those who ask ‘For how long this same stuﬀ?,’ answer: ‘I should have said “For how long you gonna sin these same sins?” You want the cure to stop before the sickness? quia recusatis, perseuerabo.’ … How far …, how far …? How far, again? Everywhere …, everywhere, everywhere … How little …, how little …, how little …?” (89.18–22; 23): haec aliis dic, ut dum dicis audias ipse; scribe, ut dum scribis legas, omnia ad mores et ad sedandam rabiem adfectuum referens. stude, non ut plus aliquid scias, sed ut melius. uale. Tell other people the news, so you can tune in while you tell it. Write so while you write you read it. Relate the whole lot to morality, to lulling mad-dog emotions. Study hard, not so you know something more, but so you know something better. Fare well.

So when Lucilius’ ever more pressing “wants” have to be held over from one letter to the next (108.1, 39 → 109.1), and Seneca delivers, “even though this really belonged in the orbit of books of moral philosophy {i.e., not the EM},” he is told peremptorily (109.17–18):

30 H 2004, 53–61, 93–170. When Lyons suﬀers 100% burns, at its centenary, Seneca points to the personiﬁcatory function of its human span of life (91.14). 31 H 2004, 40–42. 32 On this “eternal open-endedness” of Seneca’s drive to death: H 2004, 28–29.

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cogita quod soleo frequenter tibi dicere. … totiens enim illo reuertor. … nunc doce quod necesse est. uale. Ponder what I am in the habit of telling you. … For I often go back there. … Now, teach me what need be. Now. Fare well.

3. Come on the Amazing Journey, and Learn All That You Should Know: EM 57 SENECA LVCILIO SVO SALVTEM 1 cum a Bais deberem Neapolim repetere, facile credidi tempestatem esse, ne iterum nauem experirer, et tantum luti tota uia fuit ut possim uideri nihilominus nauigasse. totum athletarum fatum mihi illo die perpetiendum fuit: a ceromate nos haphe excepit in crypta Neapolitana. 2 nihil illo carcere longius, nihil illis facibus obscurius, quae nobis praestant non ut per tenebras uideamus, sed ut ipsas. ceterum etiam si locus haberet lucem, puluis auferret, in aperto quoque res grauis et molesta: quid illic, ubi in se uolutatur et, cum sine ullo spiramento sit inclusus, in ipsos a quibus excitatus est recidit? duo incommoda inter se contraria simul pertulimus: eadem uia, eodem die, et luto et puluere laborauimus. 3 aliquid tamen mihi illa obscuritas quod cogitarem dedit: sensi quendam ictum animi et sine metu mutationem quam insolitae rei nouitas simul ac foeditas fecerat. non de me nunc tecum loquor, qui multum ab homine tolerabili, nedum a perfecto absum, sed de illo in quem fortuna ius perdidit: huius quoque ferietur animus, mutabitur color. 4 quaedam enim, mi Lucili, nulla eﬀugere uirtus potest: admonet illam natura mortalitatis suae. itaque et uultum adducet ad tristia et inhorrescet ad subita et caligabit si uastam altitudinem in crepidine eius constitutus despexerit: non est hoc timor, sed naturalis aﬀectio inexpugnabilis rationi. 5 itaque fortes quidam et paratissimi fundere suum sanguinem alienum uidere non possunt; quidam ad uulneris noui, quidam ad ueteris et purulenti tractationem inspectionemque succidunt ac linquuntur animo; alii gladium facilius recipiunt quam uident. 6 sensi ergo, ut dicebam, quandam non quidem perturbationem, sed mutationem: rursus ad primum conspectum redditae lucis alacritas rediit incogitata et iniussa. illud deinde mecum loqui coepi, quam inepte quaedam magis aut minus timeremus, cum omnium idem ﬁnis esset. quid

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john henderson enim interest utrum supra aliquem uigilarium ruat an mons? nihil inuenies. erunt tamen qui hanc ruinam magis timeant, quamuis utraque mortifera aeque sit: adeo non eﬀectus sed eﬃcientia timor spectat.

7 nunc me putas de Stoicis dicere, qui aestimant animam hominis magno pondere extriti permanere non posse et statim spargi, quia non fuerit illi exitus liber? ego uero non facio: qui hoc dicunt uidentur mihi errare. 8 quemadmodum ﬂamma non potest opprimi—nam circa id diﬀugit quo urgetur—, quemadmodum aer uerbere atque ictu non laeditur, ne scinditur quidem—sed circa id cui cessit refunditur—, sic animus, qui ex tenuissimo constat, deprehendi non potest nec intra corpus eﬄigi, sed beneﬁcio subtilitatis suae per ipsa quibus premitur erumpit. quomodo fulmini, etiam cum latissime percussit ac fulsit, per exiguum foramen est reditus, sic animo, qui adhuc tenuior est igne, per omne corpus fuga est. 9 itaque de illo quaerendum est an possit immortalis esse. hoc quidem certum habe: si superstes est corpori, proteri illum nullo genere posse, quoniam nulla immortalitas cum exceptione est, nec quicquam noxium aeterno est. uale. 1 When duty called me to head back for Naples from Baiae, no trouble, I convinced myself a storm was in being, so I’d not be doing a second seatrial. And … the entire road … was such a sea of mud, it could maybe seem that I nonetheless did go sailing. The entire destiny that runs every wrestler’s régime was the experience I had to suﬀer through on that day: to follow the mud-lotion greasing, a sand-scour rubdown gave us a welcome in the hidey-hole tunnel to Naples. 2 No longer stretch than that there prison-cell, nowt murkier than them there beacons, they enable us not to see through the dark, but to see it. Besides which, even if the site did have light, the dust’d snatch it away— that’s heavy stuﬀ, dust, and a right drag out in the open as well, so how ’bout there, where it gets churned up in itself and, ’cos it’s shut inside without a breath of ventilation, falls back down on the ones who’ve just stirred it up? Two nuisances, polar opposites, between them put us through it together: same road, same day, we made heavy weather of (1) mud + (2) dust. 3 And yet … there was something …—that murkiness did hand me a topic to think: I felt a “mind-jab” and—short of fear—“mood-shift,” brought about by an unfamiliar situation’s strangeness + nastiness combined together. No, I am not now speaking as me to you about myself, miles oﬀ being an acceptable human being as I am, let alone a paragon who has come through, but rather about the proverbial saint who’s through with Fortune’s sway over him: his “mind,” his as well, will get “jolted,” his hue take a “shift.”

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4 For, dear Lucilio mio, there be some things no brand of heroism can get away from: that’s Nature’s reminder of heroism’s mortality. So it is, the saint will (a) tauten expression when faced with a tear-jerker, (b) shiver when faced with the unexpected, (c) black out if, stood up at the edge of a height, he takes a look down into the chasm: that’s not fear, no, it’s natural reﬂex, beyond Reason to overpower. 5 So it is, that some bravehearts perfectly prepared to shed their own blood cannot stand the sight of someone else’s, and some of ’em when faced with handling, examining, a fresh wound, some, an old gangrenous one, others, they buckle and blow their minds; others handle being on the receiving-end of a sword easier than looking on. 6 Accordingly, as I was saying, “I felt” a—no, no way a through-and-through paroxysm, but “a shift”: back again, at the ﬁrst sighting of light being restored, upbeatness returned—not as a result of thinking or telling. Next I started talking over with myself the old chestnut of how inappropriately we fear some things more or else less, though for all of us there’s one and the same end. For what odds does it make whether it’s a watch-tower collapses down on somebody or a hill? None at all, you’ll ﬁnd. And yet … there’ll be folk who fear the second sort of collapse more, even though both of ’em are equally death-laden …—that’s how far it holds that fear looks not at the accomplishments but at the accomplices. 7 Now you suppose I’m talking about Stoics who reckon the human psyche can’t make it on through when its owner has been pulverized by a ton weight—it gets instantly disintegrated, ’cos it’s got no free way out? Well that’s not what I’m doing, for sure: those who say this seem to me to go wrong. 8 The same way (1) a ﬂame cannot be squashed—as it gets every which way round what is bearing down on it—, and the same way (2) air doesn’t get bruised, in fact not even cut, by whipping and jabbing it—no, it goes a-pouring round what it’s displaced by, like so, the mind, which consists of the least substantial material, cannot be nabbed and spiﬄicated inside the body, but thanks to being rareﬁed it busts out right through what is squeezing it. In the way lightning, even when it’s shot its bolt through far and wide, it’s ﬂashed its lightning, has a way to return back that is through a mini-bolthole, like so, the mind, which is still more insubstantial than ﬁre, has an escape route that is through every bit of body. 9 So it is, the question to ask about the mind is whether it can be that it be immortal. This, anyhow, cop for certain: if its existence survives the body, it cannot be obliterated any shape or fashion, since no brand of immortality comes with a let-out clause, and neither is anything lethal to what is everlasting. Fare well.

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john henderson 4. Down in the Hole: EM 57 in Book VI It was I | who was the hourglass And the sands of time | like shattering glass Went past me | like a tunnel to the sea. S. Nicks, “Goodbye Baby,”on Fleetwood Mac, 2003

Straightway, Book VI announces that anything can happen (53.1)33: quid non potest mihi persuaderi, cui persuasum est ut nauigarem? What can’t I be talked into, when I’ve been talked into a voyage?

In a matter of a sentence or two of incipient narrative, we are in it up to here: “I’d got to the point where it made no odds to me whether I went on or went back.” In just the few oﬀ-shore miles from Lucilius’ Naples to Puteoli, life ﬁgures its options: take your chances on the short-cut over the waves? Fail to cope when the going gets rough? Out of your element, landlubber, know your frailty; swim for it—ﬁnd your road, make it. This parody Ulysses chunders his way to expose the dis-ease in our constitution from mind lodged in body. It takes such a minute movement, dodgy sea or perilous ailment, before, whether stomach or toe, body lets you know; the sinking spirit, though, fools us all (trouble—what trouble?). To partner this ﬁrst fun adventure for Seneca since that cameo back in his childhood’s leafy suburbs, he next moves us straight back “inside” from the Italian riviera scene to relate a sudden attack, “just like” another “squall,” of his intermittent, till now long dormant, physical aﬄiction. A respiratory problem— asthma—a.k.a. the “breathy sigh” (54.1, suspirium). The psycho-physical intrication overspills into the most graphic burst of “real-life” narrative showcase of description in the collection so far34: back from a ride along the Campanian shore near Cumae, Seneca’s verbal boneshaker of a promenade by sedan re-winds, to take us along for a bumpy shake-up, limbering up the body to dislodge bile from the throat, or thin that clogged respiration. Our perseverance along the sand-bar beach one ridge away from Baiae keeps us going through the Siren On 53: Motto and Clark 1971; Wenskus 1994. On 55: Motto and Clark 1972–1973; 1979; Saylor 2002; H 2004, 62–92; see now Hönscheid 2004. 33 34

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portrait of hedonism personiﬁed as the paradise home of Servilius Vatia, Epicurean recluse and refugee from the perils of politics—and of life. The 2-D visit to the villa’s façade is a page-long shot of mundane superﬁciality injected to inoculate reading against the lure of retreat to Lotus-land for peace of mind. We tour to denigrate touring, as ekphrasis turns vehicle for denigration of descriptive writing (55.8): sed non multum ad tranquillitatem locus confert. But—location is not that much of a positive factor for gaining calm.

This “little” goes a long way. Epistoliterarity makes this modest input, telling on itself: set pieces can’t pinpoint where thinking is at. “You’re not in Campania”? How so? Minds make presence. The next unlikely reel on location torments Senecan peace of mind with noise: rooming above a bath-house (where? Campania? Nowhere? Dystopia) is no place for thought to dwell.35 Overlooking life in the gym: panting, groaning, puﬃng, whistling, rasping, respiration; smack of ﬂesh, calling the score; rowdies and “stop thief !”; complete pandemonium … To do its work, this latest showcase of writerly coruscation ransacks the lexikon to furnish the wares of mundanity with all the epistolographic normality of colloquialism, over-egged into vulgarity: pilicrepus, scordalus, alipilus, biberarius, botularius, crustularius, popinae institor, serrarius, pausarius … (56.1, 2, 4, 5). An ear-bruising assault on the calm of sanity, to be sure, but this bath-house bathos is a spot of ordeal literature where it’s worth plunging in so we can tell if our composure is noise-proof, and then move out (56.14–15). Here at the centre of Book VI, it’s high time to work back over the trajectory of our relationship with Senecan thought through his relationship with his relationship with Campanian Lucilius. The mimetic sequence runs us smack into another way “to get back” by “going over the same ground,” this time doubling round a second time from Baiae to Naples (repetere, 57.1), in an ordeal on dry-ish land, or rather, underneath it.36 The mimetic sequence perseveres, that is, hitting the tunnel as a second short-cut on the word-road that bumps over ocean or heaves through mountain to everywhere normality cannot otherwise take us. The tour homed on those mind-dinning ﬂesh-pots of Baiae to smuggle our dummy into t/his most demanding-demeaning plunge On 56: Motto and Clark 1970; Hönscheid 2004. On the tunnel, for real: Fig. 2, Maiuri 1937, 11–14: long closed, Agrippa masterminded? 35 36

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into physiological stress, where bodily pressure folds into psychic transport that blacks, blanks, out consciousness to envision Philosophy as starburst. Ordinary space shrinks and elongates to pipe us through and out of this world. Let’s go back over this extra-mundial route, go there so we never need to again.37 Not till we attain Nirvana.38 Like Lucilius’ Sicilian straits, Seneca’s Campanian coastline narrows readerly through-passage between sea and land. The life-squashing constrictions of bile and phlegm down inside the Teacher’s throat imprint his tale of the geography by Cumae, sporting that “narrow, enclosed, spit” along which our psychonaut pilots to explode “the narrow lives we would lead if thinking ever suﬀered close-down” (55.2, uelut angustum iter cluditur ↔ 55.11, in angusto uiuebamus, si quicquam esset cogitationibus clusum). The claustrophobic underpass forces us down the ultimate access-route to visionary bliss beyond sharing. But our tunnel vision does not land us on the far side of ephemerality beyond this one special instant, for there will recur sporadic, marooned, irruptions of the mimetic dimension; and the possibility of a second “travelogue” will condition all the letters to come—by suspension. They serve to bring the preaching back down to self-recognition before it forgets, and swallows its own sonorities whole. For sure, this dystopic metaphor roughs up the import of Plato to Rome. For this horizontal pot-hole of a “cave” goes somewhere, transports people—us—along a thoroughfare where you can (only) see the darkness you are living in. Here bathophobia pressures our mind-body dualism to feel entrapment of soul in body; in this theorem, Hellish discomfort channels us from urbane wit straight to searing shock past the curb of rationality, where minds don’t usually go. Mud up to here, we muck in, wrestle our way through to the murk. One day; one journey. Sand-scouring + mud-packing. Not, as ﬁrst supposed, one after the other, but both these opposites at once (57.2, 3: simul). Spatial and perceptual dimensionality collapses in double conceit (“long cell”; “visible non-invisibility”). Preparing the killer third paradox, for this “dust” is the dust we are: this dust “rolling on itself, the dust falling on the ones that raised it,” is not dust “out in the open,” dust as is, above board dust; this dust is “shut in,” “no way, 37 On 57: Motto and Clark 1973; Setaioli 1991, 84–85; Schönegg 1999, 73–76, “Durchbruch zu Platon”; H 2004, 35. 38 On Seneca’s (for once explicitly role-playing) personation of The Sage: Edwards 1997, 33 on 57.3.

Figure 1. Jeff Wall 1999-2001, After Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the Preface (transparency in lightbox) = Doy 2005, Plate 8.

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chapter two

Figure 2. The “Crypta Neapolitana” (from a 17th-cent. engraving) = Maiuri 1937, 13.

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nowhere to breathe.” Yes, this tunneling pulverizes us, the sand in the mud, particles in suspension, waves of them, as we could say. No mystic harrowing of Virgil’s Avernus this, nor invitation into John Malkowitz’s visor. No, this door to perception resists narration—would rather show up what we are made of. All of us passengers, not just the cultureheroes. Human beings do a lot with looking; and this is physiologically wired in together with physical reﬂexes—we scowl, shiver, black out (57.4, caligabit)—which ﬁnesse the intervention of reasoning. So we should reason. Take dizzy heights, vertigo; blinding light, in subterranean suﬀocation: these extreme conditions may well blankly overwhelm minds: see?39 Whether pressurized to gaze down serene and clear over the pathetic spectacle of humanity making heavy weather of living; or entombed in enforced introspection to meditate selfhood blind. Here meet combat without “sighting” the enemy; no orientation from triggered pain, mortiﬁcation, body-slicing; in the cut-and-thrust of ordinary lives (57.5). Philosophers, they like to perch themselves on high up the “watch-tower” of κατασκοπ; so Seneca plays ugly, has stuck us under that “hill” (57.6). Down with the suﬀering self trapped in the temporary body, far from the aether above, home for the eternal soul. Underground and immured, our hero has passed through fear, beyond any “perturbation,” intent on feeling trapped by the exhilarating logic he sees in the bonds of mortality. Squashed soul crushed into smithereen specks by the roof caving in …—it was to think this that we 39 Murk and dark variously power the Senecan drive for reason from EM 3.6, “quidam adeo in latebras refugerunt ut putent in turbido esse quicquid in luce est”; cf. 49.11, has tenebras discute. Knotted themes loom ahead as the collection bulks out: 79.11–12, cui sol per caliginem splendet, licet contentus interim sit eﬀugisse tenebras, adhuc non fruitur bono lucis. tunc animus noster habebit quod gratuletur sibi cum emissus his tenebris in quibus uolutatur non tenui uisu clara prospexerit, sed totum diem admiserit et redditus caelo suo fuerit …; 89.2, nobis … quibus perrumpenda caligo est et quorum uisus in proximo deﬁcit …; 90.28, mundus, … cuius uera simulacra uerasque facies cernendas mentibus protulit; nam ad spectacula tam magna hebes uisus est; 94.58, quae per longissimorum cuniculorum tenebras extrahuntur; 96.3, quomodo in longa uia et puluis et lutum et pluuia; 102.28, aliquando naturae tibi arcana retegentur, discutietur ista caligo et lux undique clara percutiet. imaginare tecum … tunc in tenebris uixisse te dices cum totam lucem et totus aspexeris, quam nunc per angustissimas oculorum uias obscure intueris …; 110.6– 7, “nam ueluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis | in tenebris metuunt, ita nos in luce timemus.” quid ergo? non omni puero stultiores sumus qui in luce timemus? sed falsum est, Lucreti (2.55–56), non timemus in luce: omnia nobis fecimus tenebras. … uides autem quam sit furiosa res in tenebris impetus. … sed lucescere, si uelimus, potest; 120.13, non aliter quam in tenebris lumen eﬀulsit; 122.4, on “night-birds” (lucifugae = lychnobioi), qui se tenebris dicauerunt …: quanto plus tenebrarum in animo est. ille in se stupet, ille caligat, inuidet caecis. quis umquam oculos tenebrarum causa habuit?

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descended into the tunnel; it can make no “sense”—there is no death beyond death, since “soul is like ﬂame, like air, it can only escape every which way around what’s ﬂattening it; and unsliceably, unhurtably, it pours around what displaces it” (57.8). Only more so: there’s always a way through for this “dust” (no vents needed). Spirit cannot be muddied or greased out of its inﬁnitesimal substantiality; nor crushed and ground into disintegration subjected to no matter what pressure. This “dust” is diﬀerent—“bursts right through what falls on it” (57.8). So the tunnel is indeed a “way through.”40 It looks like the inversion of celestial space-travel, but the “air/ﬂame” of the soul is like a lightning-ﬂash lasering down and back up, through its minute tube in the ﬁrmament41; the “length” of the Naples underpass (longius); the “breadth” of the careering thunderbolt (latissime); the microscopic level of psychic materiality has need of neither way in nor exit. No corpuscle, body, corpse, however compacted, could contain psyche stuﬀ. Putting yourself in the position which the soul must occupy should thrill your mind, as the ugliness of mock-obliteration “shifts” relations between sensing self and the rest of your material being (57.3, mutatio), such that the mind “receives a blow” (ferietur), in the biophysical sense that can make sense of this, and the mind cannot “escape” bodily physiology (eﬀugere), in the sense that this can be true, and this is “nature”’s way to rub in its “mortality” (57.4), in the sense that the “mind” is not identical with the “soul” (animus, 3 bis, 5, 8 bis, vs animam, 7).42 Cf. Novikov 1998, esp. 95–138, “Holes in space and time.” Cf. “Know-It-All” Jacobs 2005, 47, “Lightning goes up. It shoots right up from the ground and into the cloud. This is what the encyclopedia [sc. Britannica] says in the section on climate and weather. I reread this passage a couple of times to make sure I hadn’t gone batty—but no, lightning goes up. To be technical, it does ﬁrst go down—there’s an initial bolt called the ‘leader’ that zips from the cloud to the ground. But the bright part, the part that ﬂashes, is the ‘return stroke,’ which goes from the ground back to the cloud. This is profoundly unnerving. … This is a whole new level of ignorance. … To be confronted with this totally counter-intuitive information—it makes me paranoid. What other incorrect ideas do I have? … Is Keanu Reeves a brilliant actor?” 42 Cf. Amato 2000, 157–177, “Who will tremble at these marvels?”, esp. 176–177, “The mind will not forsake the body and its senses. … Humans easily forget the universal whirl of particles. … Even when human beings have written the obituaries of minuscule things past and embraced inﬁnitesimal and virtual things new, they will still fear dust’s ﬁnal requiem for all life. They will still dread the inﬁnite granularity of all things, their own selves and meanings included. ||” 40 41

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Reach bedrock, and we can look up/down on “vast height/depth” (57.4, uasta altitudo). No eyes can see through the darkness (or through any of the other ten instances of per on this postcard), but realising the psychological force of mental recovery, beyond the reach of thought or self-control, has nevertheless managed to image a privileged instant of integration where experience and logic collude to vindicate human being from phobophobia. And the odds against tomorrow ever knowing: 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancs? But … triumphant insistence of nine end-stopping repetitions of est/esse (in 57.9) already presses us on to our next stop, where the whistle blows on our incapacity to think without jargon, in the form of thinking with our Latinate incapacity to say τ% /ν, mouthing only essentia, past Greek. Just think: what would it be to lack awareness of any such contingency as this linguistic-conceptual-cultural ﬁx? Yes, we just burrowed deep to oblige the mind, for once, to ﬁnesse thought. But the journey of our lifetime still awaits us, always up ahead, as we skip through to more mental distress, in the form of argumentation pounding our capacity to think, think over, then think some more. Into perpetuity, letter by letter. With EM 57 the ﬁrst half of Book VI terminates, springing us into metaphysics: the essence of Platonic theory. Launched by Roman imagination through the impossibility of Latin terminology, we confront and surmount the lack of just the one tiny monosyllable required to frame cosmic truths for Essentialism. We have learned our Letters, know to pounce: so where does the intransigence of τ% /ν take reason that Hellenic thought cannot begin to miss? EM 58 quits in-body reconnoitering and pitches into conceptual battle, against frail psychology, over and across the cultural chasm/bridge of ?transferability?/untranslatability: angustias Romanas (58.7). Emergence through that subterranean “longest of prison-cells” now pushes “longest-lived” Seneca at least as far and long from the moral battle as a “long, long letter” can bear (57.2, longius; 58.26, remotius; longissime; 34, longissima senectus; 37, sed in longum exeo). “End your letter, learn how to end your life: uale” (as epistles know to say, every time: suck on that, Ontology). Which pointed point transmutes into (consequent) critique of “Enjoying a—your—letter,” the worry that rhetoric can lead far, far past where we meant to go (59.4, longius). Metaphor is under review—athwart pleasure real and delusory. “Sage bliss never ends, beyond pilfering. uale.” Without a doubt, Book VI means to trounce its opening excrescence of narrativity: irritation at you—“still harbouring wishes”—pairs

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up with a wish for us—“Let’s stop wanting what we’ve wanted”—as these Letters resume their targeting on proper “ending”—“of old evils,” (encore) “of living” (60.1 ↔ 61.1, 2): uixi, Lucili carissime, quantum satis erat; mortem plenus exspecto. uale. (61.4) I have lived, darling Lucilius, a suﬃcient amount; I await death, and I’m full. Fare well.

The quest for moral strengthening takes us where we should want to go.43 There never was the need to catch that tour-bus except that it drove us through its needlessness. We took the magical mystery tour precisely so we could learn, ﬁnally, that “liberal studies” are the way to get somewhere: everywhere, any time. For, “Nobody can be too busy to study. That lie!” (62.1–2, ubicumque; quocumque … loco; in quocumque loco, in quocumque saeculo). Make space in your head for metaphor, not mimesis, if you mean to think through to what counts (62.3): breuissima ad diuitias per contemptum diuitiarum uia est. The shortest road to wealth runs through scorn for wealth.

No time to deplore. Read on (write) some more. Wish (don’t wish) you shan’t miss adventures. Just enough to know you always will. Lick every envelope. Per-very-severe.

43

On 60: Motto and Clark 1990; on 62: Motto and Clark 1991.

STATES OF EXILE, STATES OF MIND: PARADOX AND REVERSAL IN SENECA’S CONSOLATIO AD HELVIAM MATREM

Gareth D. Williams A familiar argument* in that sub-class of the ancient consolatory tradition, the consolation on exile,1 is that exclusion from one’s homeland is no great deprivation; for, as Musonius Rufus has it in the ﬁrst century CE, since the cosmos is the κοιν- πατρς of all men, exile deprives us not of our true πατρς but only of our given πλις.2 Seneca’s Consolatio ad Heluiam matrem, written to console his mother for the loss of her son to exile on Corsica in 41 CE,3 predictably applies this cosmopolitan emphasis, arguing (inter alia) that the exile never loses those two most precious assets, “universal nature and our individual virtue” (8.2), and that “to the wise man every place is his country” (9.7). In these and many other ways Seneca can be seen to be “ringing his own changes on a traditional literary form”4 in the ad Heluiam, albeit with the explicit innovation announced at 1.2: in all of his reading within the genre, no precedent apparently existed for someone “who had consoled his own dear ones when he himself was being lamented by them.”5 Beyond this

* The text followed below is that of L.D. Reynolds’ OCT (L. Annaei Senecae Dialogorum libri duodecim 1977, 291–317). I am most grateful to Katharina Volk for criticism and advice. 1 In general, Claassen 1996, 29–32 and 1999, 19–26, but for detailed analysis of sources, Giesecke 1891, and Häsler 1935, esp. 28–50, “Die Topoi und ihre Ausgestaltung.” 2 Muson. p. 42.1–6 Hense (full reference in fn. 6 below), associating the idea with Socrates (cf. Cic. Tusc. 5.108, Epict. 1.9.1, Plut. De exil. 5 = Mor. 600f.); as a Stoic commonplace, e.g., Sen. Dial. 7.20.5, 9.4.4, Ep. 28.4 with Summers 1910, 196, and cf. fnn. 28, 38 below. 3 Background: Griﬃn 1976, 59–62. 4 Costa 1994, 5. On the structure and organization of the ad Heluiam, Abel 1967, 48. For bibliography on consolation in Seneca in general, Scourﬁeld 1993, 20 n. 93. 5 Senecan novelty despite Cic. Att. 12.14.3 on the consolatio composed after the death of his daughter, Tullia, in February 45: quin etiam feci quod profecto ante me nemo ut ipse me per litteras consolarer (cf. Tusc. 4.63). Pace Favez 1937, 49, the two cases are very diﬀerent (unlike Seneca, Cicero is not the cause of the grief for which consolation is sought; further Borgo 1978, 100–101).

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superﬁcial novelty, however, the ad Heluiam resists characterization as a typical consolatio for deeper reasons, two of which provide the departurepoint for my own approach to this work as a highly creative meditation on exile as a ﬂexible symbol for a common, even potentially universal, condition of mind or being. My ﬁrst proposition is that, by extending the notion of exile into many modes, ﬁgurative as well as literal, of social detachment, (self-) alienation, withdrawal, desertion (cf. 5.1 bona condicione geniti sumus, si eam non deseruerimus) and rejection (cf. 6.1 remoto ergo iudicio plurium …), the ad Heluiam goes far beyond its declared purpose of consoling Helvia, embarking instead on a wide-ranging and—to judge by the extant tradition of philosophical reﬂection on exile from Teles in the third century BCE down to Musonius Rufus, Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, Favorinus and Cassius Dio in the ﬁrst century CE and later6—a novel literary-philosophical disquisition into the many possible implications or side-applications of the idea of exile. Certainly, this ﬁgurative dimension ﬁnds signiﬁcant parallels in other cultures and eras, in which exile serves as “a powerful literary, theological, and philosophical trope expressing the alienation of the human condition in general.”7 But in the ad Heluiam, I propose that Seneca simultaneously explores many diﬀerent modes or versions of exilic alienation, and that the rich variety of these versions—this breadth of imaginative possibility—importantly distinguishes the ad Heluiam from its ancient precedents and parallels (including his own consolations ad Marciam and ad Polybium, Dial. 6 and 11 respectively): who cannot be fashioned or envisaged as an exile in some way, literally or ﬁguratively, physically or spiritually/philosophically, whether in the form of the sapiens alienated from the crowd or the crowd estranged from the good, the soul incarnate alienated from its cosmic home or the glutton estranged from all moderation and limit, and so on?8 Further, Tim Whitmarsh rightly stresses that “it is cru6 Teles, On Exile pp. 21–32 Hense (Teletis reliquiae, Tübingen 1909; 2nd edn, repr. Hildesheim 1969) = O’Neil 1977, 20–33 = Fuentes González 1998, 274–283 (with extensive commentary, 284–355); Musonius, That exile is not an evil pp. 41–51 Hense (C. Musonii Ruﬁ reliquiae, Leipzig 1905; trans. with notes in Jagu 1979, 48–54); Dio Chrysostom (Musonius’ pupil), Or. 13; Plut. De exil. = Mor. 599a–607f; Favor. On Exile in Norsa and Vitelli 1931, 17–32, and then Barigazzi 1966, 375–409 (with commentary, 409–521), with a useful translation in Whitmarsh 2001a, 302–324; Cass. Dio 38.18–29, on which Claassen 1996. 7 Whitmarsh 2001a, 137, with a sharp summation of recent trends in scholarship on exile at 137–138 (also 2001b, 269). 8 True, this easy use of English terminology (“estranged,” “alienated”) may not

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cial to understand the speciﬁc dynamics of the culture in question, to site the questions raised by the representation of exile in the context of the issues relevant to the author in question.”9 To this end we shall later explore some possible ramiﬁcations of the ad Heluiam as an oblique commentary on the nature and limits of Roman imperial power and self-regard in the age of Seneca. Secondly, Seneca’s mode of therapy works to detach Helvia from reliance on, or vulnerability to, external circumstance by consolidating within her an inner core of self-suﬃciency. The protections oﬀered by this inner core suggestively extend the relevance of Seneca’s message from the particular case of Helvia’s grief to prescribing a way of life, a way of coping, for any reader in distress (this core may itself be characterized as a state of safe detachment, even inner “exile”). Seneca thus promotes an attitude of mind, an inner resilience, that is the focus of much of his philosophical prose; and in this respect the ad Heluiam may be viewed not (just) as an end in itself but as one part or aspect of the broader therapeutic programme that his prose corpus cumulatively represents. Before we can begin to view Seneca as truly liberated by his Corsican exile, and before the freer associations of “exile” can be fully felt in the ad Heluiam, a preliminary task of his therapeutic mode here is to loosen Helvia’s, and our, ordinary identiﬁcation with place in the earlier part of the consolatio. By centering our existence not in any given place (Rome, say, or Corsica) but in the cosmic whole, the work opens the way to re-interpreting our strong investment in local aﬃliations as an estrangement from our primary cosmic identity. Further variations on the exilic condition will then be seen to extend from this critical ﬁrst departure.

I “To be deprived of your country is intolerable” (6.2 carere patria intolerabile est): so Seneca’s imaginary interlocutor represents the “popular” view (cf. Cic. Tusc. 5.106 exilium …, quod in maximis malis ducitur) before

correspond to a discernible chain of exile-related metaphor or ﬁgured language in the Latin. My proposal is rather that Seneca’s Corsican setting oﬀers a starting-point for his imaginative play with ﬁgurative and loosely related extensions (e.g., presence, absence, possession, deprivation etc.) of literal exile. 9 2001a, 137–138.

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Seneca argues in reply (6.2–10.1) that, if we momentarily leave aside its accompanying incommoda such as poverty etc. (cf. 6.1 aduersus ista postea conﬂigam), exile itself is but “a change of place.”10 The interlocutor could here be speaking for the exiled Ovid in Tomis, for whom the evocative word patria represents the nostalgic centre of his exilic existence even as he adapts to life on the imperial margins. So at, e.g., Tristia 3.3.53 he exclaims cum patriam amisi, tunc me periisse putato!: the patria was, still is, his world.11 Ovid’s mental travels back to Rome further complicate the emotional geography of his exilic verse,12 which hovers in that ambiguous space between Rome and Tomis, the poet simultaneously present in both and neither. Seneca, evidently familiar with Ovid’s exilic verse,13 uses similar techniques to complicate the spatial parameters in the ad Heluiam, where he answers his interlocutor’s “Exile from one’s country is intolerable!” with aspice agedum hanc frequentiam (6.2). This (Roman) crowd if he is in exile on Corsica? For Duﬀ “istam would be more correct, in the circumstances; but possibly hanc is ‘of our time.’”14 But what then of “move on from this city” (6.4 ab hac ciuitate discede), on which Duﬀ is silent?15 A simple slip on Seneca’s part? Or a nostalgic form of return to his beloved Rome? Perhaps; but in visualizing “this Rome” as if he still commands a presence there, he also begins by gently dislodging the interlocutor’s ﬁxed idea of place (patria here, exile there) by locating himself somewhere between Rome and Corsica, or in both simultaneously. This initial example of place destabilized readies us for the main journey on which he subsequently embarks, challenging his interlocutor’s static, place-centered perception of the world by guiding us (6.2–8) towards the external, cosmic viewpoint from which Rome is soon put in her place. Rome is our departure-point in 6.4 deinde ab hac ciuitate discede, the heavens our destination in 6.7–8—a journey whose progress from the 10 For exile as but a commutatio loci cf. Dial. 7.21.1 (in the imagined voice of Seneca’s detractor) quare … exilium uanum nomen putat et ait “quid enim est mali mutare regiones?” et tamen, si licet, senescit in patria? 11 For the sentiment, and for the full force of Seneca’s carere patria (6.2; of exclusion from place, OLD careo 2c), cf. Tr. 1.5.83 at mihi perpetuo patria tellure carendum est, 3.7.45, 3.11.16, 4.6.19, 4.9.12, 5.10.47–48 quod patriae uultu uestroque caremus, amici, / … queror, Pont. 4.4.7. 12 Nagle 1980, 91–99 for collected examples; Hardie 2002, 289–291 on the instability of Ovid’s Roman presence and absence in exile. 13 Ample demonstration in Degl’Innocenti Pierini 1980. 14 Duﬀ 1915, 239; so Favez 1918, 17. 15 But cf. Favez 1918, 19 (“on s’attendrait ici encore à ista …”).

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earthly to the celestial, the conﬁning to the liberating, ﬁnds important analogues elsewhere in Senecan prose.16 But here his conventional argument is of mixed strength, at least at ﬁrst sight. How can exile be an evil if so large a part of the population of Rome and other cities is made up of voluntary migrants from all regions?17 Even as Seneca consoles Helvia by assimilating his own experience to that of mankind in general, as if his exile is a “normal” part of human experience, Charles Favez characterizes the argument as “un sophisme”18; for how can one forced into exile pretend that his experience resembles that of the mostly willing migrants pictured in 6.2–5? Seneca was trapped, Favez supposes, by one of those consolatory arguments that “s’imposaient tyranniquement à l’auteur”19; but his objection is met if the whole trajectory of Seneca’s argument is diﬀerently understood. What sets this journey apart from its Senecan parallels is that all roads at ﬁrst lead to Rome, ﬁrst from within Italy (6.2 ex municipiis et coloniis suis) and then from without (ex toto denique orbe terrarum), so that she is drawn as the focal point (cf. 6.2 conﬂuxerunt, 6.3 nullum non hominum genus concucurrit in urbem) of the world mapped out around her. The limitless diversity of the pursuits that draw allcomers to the city in Seneca’s busy anaphoric sequence of clauses (6.2 alios … alios etc.)20—whether business or pleasure, public duty or private study, virtue or vice (cf. 6.3 in urbem et uirtutibus et uitiis magna pretia ponentem)—casts Rome as a world in itself and even as a Stoic indiﬀerent of sorts, intrinsically neither good nor bad in the more or less honest pursuits of its varied population. It is a megalopolis of opportunity and of imperial (self-)importance—only for Seneca suddenly to qualify this centripetal picture. Once transported from Rome (6.4 deinde ab hac ciuitate discede), we move away from this vision of her global signiﬁcance as a city “in a sense belonging to all” (ueluti communis), and we begin to locate her instead in a context (omnes urbes circumi) where her uniqueness begins to fade: nulla [sc. urbs] non magnam partem peregrinae multitudinis habet. Cf. Dial. 6.17.2–18.8, 8.5.1–6, Ep. 65.15–22, 79.12, Q Nat. 1 praef. 1–17. Cf. Cic. Tusc. 5.106 sin abesse patria miserum est, plenae miserorum prouinciae sunt, ex quibus admodum pauci in patriam reuertuntur. On 6.2–5 Favez 1918, xliv–xlv compares Plut. De exil. 13–14 = Mor. 604d–605d in seeking to identify “un thème favori des consolateurs” (xliv), but the connection is loose at best (rightly Coccia 1959, 152–153). 18 1918, xlv. 19 1918, xlv. 20 On the anaphoric eﬀect, Coccia 1959, 153 n. 16 (arousing “il senso di quella che doveva essere la caotica vita della metropoli, immenso crogiolo …”). 16 17

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As we extend our tour and begin to ﬁnd voluntary exiles even on remote islands, many of them notorious as places of banishment (6.4–5 Sciathus, Seriphus, Gyara, all three Aegean; Cossura, between Sicily and north Africa; and then Seneca’s own Corsica),21 Rome recedes ever further into a carefully edited world-picture of timeless “natural” migration that normalizes her—without, of course, entirely negating her special importance in the (mere) cosmic moment of her ascendancy. And so by this stage (6.5) the thrust of Seneca’s argument is not just that exile is but a change of place, but also that exile from Rome is hardly the end of the world; Rome is no longer our world. Our journey continues in a cosmic direction when Seneca invokes the familiar Stoic idea that the human mens/animus is related to the all-penetrating Stoic pneuma or divine breath (6.7 caelesti spiritu), and that mankind’s restlessness coincides with the permanent motions of the heavens at the macrocosmic level.22 How, then, can exile be an evil if mankind is predisposed by cosmic design to be so mobile? For Favez, Seneca’s procedure in 6.6–8 is again “[g]uère mieux qu’un sophisme”23; for how to reconcile man’s natural restlessness (6.6) with the pain of enforced exile? Favez once more cites “la tyrannie de la tradition dans le genre consolatoire,”24 but again without taking the full measure of Seneca’s argument. After all, at this culmination-point of the progressive journey that extends outwards from Rome in 6.2–8, we are all “exiles,” in the sense that the mens humana is not of earthly origin (6.7 ex terreno et graui … 21 For Gyara as a place of exile, e.g., Tac. Ann. 3.68.2, 69.5 insulam … immitem et sine cultu hominum, Juv. 1.73; linked at Juv. 10.170 with Seriphus (cf. also 6.564, Tac. Ann. 2.85.3), that byword for insigniﬁcance (Powell 1988, 119 on Cic. Sen. 8). For Corsica, cf. esp. Dial. 11.18.9, [Sen.] Epigr. 2, 3 Prato = Anth. Lat. 236, 237 Riese2 = 228, 229 Shackleton Bailey with Prato 1964, 114 on 3 (direct overlaps with Helv. 6.5). The obscure Cossuran (cf. Mela 2.120) with Gertz 1886 after M.A. de Muret’s earlier proposal of Cosuram—but only if Corsican in the best MS is deemed intolerable given Seneca’s apparent introduction of Corsica only in 6.5 quid tam nudum inueniri potest … quam hoc saxum? The (attractive) alternative, however, is that hoc saxum takes up with emphasis the initial allusion in Corsicam—an eﬀect lost by emendation; hence Corsicam perhaps rightly retained by Viansino 1988–1990, 2.418. The objection (Favez 1918, 19–20) that Corsica is out of place among these “rochers déserts” is overstated. 22 Soul as part of the Stoic pneuma: Long 1986, 155–158; 1999, 561; for its descent ex illo caelesti spiritu, cf. Ep. 41.5 maiore sui parte illic est [sc. animus] unde descendit, 92.30, 120.15, and for its natural motion (cf. Dial. 9.2.11 natura … humanus animus agilis est et pronus ad motus, Ep. 39.3) related to the dynamics of universal pneuma, see Long 1986, 157–158 with Sambursky 1959, 21–44. 23 1918, xlvi. 24 1918, xlvi.

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corpore) but descends ex illo caelesti spiritu (i.e., it participates in the Stoic pneuma)25; Seneca leads us from exile, in that we are released from the local conﬁnes of this life, this city, this Rome into a vision (6.7) of the soul’s true cosmic home. So later (11.6) the animus is “destined to soar aloft when it is released from the body,” that familiar custodia et uinculum animi (11.7), while the animus itself is “free and akin to the gods and equal26 to the whole universe and all time.” From this perspective exile from Rome or any other city can be no evil because, the sapiens apart, we are all necessarily estranged from our primary cosmic identity. At 9.2 the soul is weighed down by the corrupting impositions of this world: angustus animus est quem terrena delectant: ad illa abducendus est quae ubique aeque apparent, ubique aeque splendent. Petty is the mind that derives pleasure from earthly things: it should be directed away from them to those heavenly bodies [cf. 8.6] which are everywhere equally visible, everywhere equally radiant.

When we return from this celestial vision (cf. 6.7) to the Rome pictured in 6.2, the busy sequence of preoccupations that draw the world to her is crowded with the kinds of imposition (even honest pursuits, necessitas oﬃcii publici and legatio) and vice (ambitio, luxuria, uenalis forma, uenalis eloquentia) that constitute the mind-narrowing terrena of 9.2. True, the path to enlightenment remains open to those (few) at Rome who study philosophy (6.2 alios liberalium studiorum cupiditas [sc. traxit]). But for Seneca’s majority the public shows of 6.2 (alios spectacula [sc. traxerunt]) divert us from the permanent spectacle of the heavens (8.6 illo spectaculo cuius insatiabiles sunt [sc. oculi]; cf. 20.2 pulcherrimo diuinorum spectaculo),27 while the motions of the sun and the planets (6.7–8) are set in reassuring contrast to the harried movements of the perpetual strivers at Rome. Above all, the cosmopolitan who contemplates the heavens participates 25 For this emphasis cf. Plutarch’s interpretation of Empedocles fr. 115.1, 3, 5, 6, 13 DK (De exil. 17 = Mor. 607c–e), casting the soul as “an exile and a wanderer (607d φε9γει κα πλαν@ται), driven forth by divine decrees and laws; and then …, imprisoned within the body …, because it does not remember or recall ‘what honour and what high felicity’ [Emped. fr. 119 DK] it has left, not leaving Sardis for Athens or Corinth for Lemnos or Scyros, but Heaven and the Moon for earth and life on earth, if it shifts but a short distance here from one spot to another, it is resentful and feels strange …” (trans. P.H. De Lacy and B. Einarson). 26 par (OLD 11a) “explained in what follows” (Duﬀ 1915, 269): nam cogitatio eius [sc. animi] circa omne caelum it, in omne praeteritum futurumque tempus inmittitur. 27 For the contrast between popular and cosmic spectacula, cf. Dial. 8.5.2–3 with Dionigi 1983, 234 on 5.3 spectatores nos … genuit.

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fully in that “city that is shared by gods and man, embracing everything and bound together by ﬁxed and eternal laws” (Dial. 6.18.2 urbem dis hominibus communem, omnia complexam, certis legibus aeternisque deuinctam …).28 As we look back on Rome (6.2–3) from this cosmic perspective, we view a city “in a sense common to all” (6.4 ueluti communis) in a conﬁning, provisional way. We view an imperial centre which, however large, lasting and eﬃciently run, is as nothing in comparison with the timeless and serene self-regulation of the universal urbs. Equipped with this cosmic awareness when Seneca returns Helvia (and us) to the world of the familiar in chapter 7 (7.1 a caelestibus agedum te ad humana conuerte …), we again ﬁnd Rome cast in a normalizing perspective in this new stage of argument, where man’s “natural” movement is reaﬃrmed by appeal to the countless historical examples that oﬀer themselves of mass migration.29 For now three points are of interest here, the ﬁrst arising from Seneca’s lightning survey in 7.1–2 of Greek and other colonization down to the age of Alexander the Great (cf. 7.1 quid inter Indos Persasque Macedonicus sermo?) and beyond. As the Senecan list unfolds, this humana leuitas (7.2) begins to resemble, or move with, the oscillating motions of fortune (cf. 7.10 ita fato placuit, nullius rei eodem semper loco stare fortunam): cities and powers rise and fall, now Atheniensis in Asia turba est (7.2, i.e., in Ionia), now Asia Minor sends its (Lydian?) colonies to Etruria (7.2 Tuscos Asia sibi uindicat)30; in 7.2 Tyrii Africam incolunt, [in] Hispaniam Poeni, the Phoenicians who colonized Carthage give way in (over-)clinical Senecan sequence to Carthaginian expansion31; the chiastic structure of Graeci se in Galliam 28 For the universal urbs, e.g., Cic. Nat. D. 2.154, Parad. 18, Leg. 1.61, Fin. 3.64 (cf. 4.7 oppidum) with Schoﬁeld 1999, 64–92; M. Aur. 2.16, 4.3.2, 4.4, 10.15, 12.36 with van Geytenbeek 1963, 144–146 and Stanton 1968. 29 7.1 gentes populosque uniuersos in contrast to individuals voluntarily migrating in 6.2– 5. For the line of argument cf. Favor. On Exile 10.3–4 Barigazzi (fn. 6 above), duly noted by Coccia 1959, 155 n. 22. Given 7.7 on Romanum imperium tracing its origins back to an exile, shades also of a familiar Roman literary strain; cf. Edwards 1996, 112 n. 8, citing “Livy’s repeated insistence on the heterogeneity of Rome’s population” early in his history, and also the Rome of the Aeneid, “settled successively by exiles: Saturn, Evander, Aeneas and Romulus …” 30 Athenian colonization in Ionia: V. Pat. 1.4.3, under the leadership of Ion (or Neileus? Cf. Pausan. 7.2.1–3), overpopulation apparently the cause (abundantia uirium; cf. Helv. 7.4 nimia superﬂuentis populi frequentia). For the Etruscans allegedly originating from Lydia, Austin 1964, 282 on Aen. 2.781. 31 For Phoenician expansion westwards, and the founding of Carthage, Lancel 1995, 1–34, Fantar 1993, 63–107. The Phoenicians also established settlements in southern Spain; but, despite Carthage’s “extending inﬂuence in North Africa, Spain, Sardinia

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inmiserunt, in Graeciam Galli (7.2)32 replicates in its precious formulation the shifting of fortunes over time—an emphasis taken up in Seneca’s subsequent portrayal (7.4) of the diﬀerent motives, the sudden needs and changes (e.g., civil strife, over-population, invasion from outside), that have forced peoples to resettle themselves over the ages. Secondly (a related point), as we look back on the processes of migration and colonization in 7.1–4 from our detached cosmic viewpoint, the distinctions of city, language, ethnicity and culture that are so powerfully felt at ground-level, separating, e.g., Athens from Miletus, Greek from Scythian, Roman-Italian from Greek, Spain from Carthage, recede into an amorphous system of exchanges and overlappings over time; common experience prevails over local divisions when we take the broader view.33 On this approach, Roman imperium, however far-reaching and inﬂuential in one way (cf. 7.7 ubicumque uicit Romanus, habitat), is again “normalized” by its integration into a larger pattern of experience, with Alexander’s implicit presence in 7.1 delivering its own warning of the ebbs and ﬂows of empire. Already on 7.3 liberos coniugesque et graues senio parentes traxerunt Favez notes the poeticism in senio34 and compares Ben. 3.37.1, where the same expression is used of Anchises (patrem … grauem senio). On 7.3 alii longo errore iactati non iudicio elegerunt locum sed lassitudine proximum occupauerunt Favez compares Aen. 1.755 erroresque tuos35; and it is hard not to detect further shades of Aeneas’ Troy in 7.4 alios excidia urbium suarum hostilibus armis elapsos in aliena spoliatos suis expulerunt. Aeneas himself is explicitly introduced only at 7.7 Romanum imperium nempe auctorem exulem respicit, but the various pre-allusions (as it were) to his story in 7.4 already condition us to view it in a normalizing context, inevitably qualifying the uniqueness of the Roman foundation myth. and Sicily” (H.H. Scullard in CAH 2 7.2, 487), “there was only one genuine [Spanish] colony of Carthage,” in Ibiza (G. Ch. Picard in CAH 2 6, 364–365). But for the establishing of operational bases in southern Spain under Hamilcar Barca in 237–229, Lancel 1995, 376–380 and 449. 32 Graeci: presumably the Phocaeans, apparently founders of Marseilles (Mela 2.77) via Corsica after most citizens chose emigration during the Persian siege of 540 (cf. Hdt. 1.163–167, albeit Rhegium the Phocaeans’ ﬁnal destination at 1.166; see also fn. 36 below). Galli: the Celts, in 279 one group reaching Delphi (Paus. 10.23.1–14), in 278 another crossing the Hellespont and settling in Asia Minor, giving their Celtic name to Galatia (further, Favez 1918, 26). 33 A similar eﬀect detectable in Favor. On Exile 10.3–4 Barigazzi. 34 1918, 26 “poétique pour senectute” (cf. lx). 35 1918, 26; for Seneca’s iactati cf. also Aen. 1.3.

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Thirdly, Seneca’s concise survey of Corsica’s previous settlers in 7.8– 9 ostensibly oﬀers a crowning example of migration and movement as a pervasive human tendency. His account of the peoples who have inhabited the island over the ages—Ionian Phocaeans, Ligurians, Spanish Cantabrians and then Roman colonists under Marius and Sulla—is problematic in point of detail,36 but what matters for now is that his Corsica is drawn as the sum of all the cultural parts and players that have arrived and departed over time, so that, e.g., in dress and at a linguistic level the Corsicans have lost their original identity through foreign inﬂuence: transierunt deinde Ligures in eam [sc. Corsicam], transierunt et Hispani, quod ex similitudine ritus apparet; eadem enim tegmenta capitum idemque genus calciamenti quod Cantabris est, et uerba quaedam; nam totus sermo conuersatione Graecorum Ligurumque a patrio desciuit.37 (7.9) Subsequently the Ligurians crossed over to the island, and also the Spaniards, as is evident from the similarity of their ways; for the Corsicans wear the same head coverings and the same kind of shoes as the Spaniards, and they use some of the same words—some only, because through association with the Greeks and Ligurians their language as a whole has lost its ancestral idiom.

Corsica has no ﬁxed, intrinsic identity but is in a permanent state of admixture and cultural overlap—a conclusion that has obvious implications for Seneca’s Rome, itself always in development, in contrast to the steady order that prevails in the sublime region to which he raises our consciousness later in the work. So at 8.6 Seneca, the cosmopolitan exile, paradoxically ﬁnds himself at home when he ﬁxes his gaze on the motions of the stars and heavens: 36 For the Phocaean settlers, fn. 32 above; 7.8 Phocide relicta surely in error for Phocaea (OLD Phocis1 1b with Viansino 1988–1990, 2.817). No mention of Carthaginian/Etruscan control after the Phocaeans’ expulsion, nor of the process of Roman conquest from 259, preceding the colonia Mariana (c. 100 BCE) and the Sullan Aleria (c. 82–80 BCE: Zucca 1996, 103–106); in general, Caratini 1995, 21–40, Vergé-Franceschi 1996, 58–83, Zucca 1996, 29–108. Also suspect is Seneca’s portrayal of Ligurians and Cantabrians after the Phocaeans (cf. Zucca 1996, 30); and Ligurians and Cantabrians in what order? At 7.9 transierunt deinde Ligures in eam [sc. Corsicam], transierunt et Hispani, Hispani may in fact be the earlier settlers, earlier even than the Phocaeans on one interpretation (Cosimi 1954) that faces up to a real diﬃculty in 7.9 nam totus sermo conuersatione Graecorum Ligurumque a patrio desciuit (see fn. 37). For (slender) traces of Sallustian colour, La Penna 1976. 37 The force of nam is to suggest that the patrius sermo was markedly Cantabrian, eroded over time by Phocaean and Ligurian inﬂuence; in which case (and despite deinde)

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proinde, dum oculi mei ab illo spectaculo cuius insatiabiles sunt non abducantur, dum mihi solem lunamque intueri liceat, dum ceteris inhaerere sideribus, … dum cum his sim et caelestibus, qua homini fas est, inmiscear, dum animum ad cognatarum rerum conspectum tendentem in sublimi semper habeam, quantum refert mea quid calcem? Accordingly, so long as my eyes are not drawn away from that spectacle for which they are always hungry; so long as I may look upon the sun and the moon; so long as I may ﬁx my attention on the other stars; … so long as I commune with these and mingle with the divine as far as a mortal may; so long as I keep my mind always focused upwards, striving for the sight of kindred things above; what does it matter to me what ground I tread under foot?

In his elaboration here of a familiar consolatory topos,38 “exile” is to turn his eyes from the heavens (oculi … non abducantur),39 while the terms that ﬁx his interactive cosmic gaze—intueri, inhaerere, inmiscear, animum … in sublimi semper habeam—ﬁrmly implant him in the midst of a world fully possessed as his, as if he is protected against the oscillations of everyday life and the relativities of place (be it Rome or Corsica) by training his mind’s eye on a diﬀerent, unchanging standard.

II The hint of paradox in exile as a form of spiritual release and cosmic homecoming,40 or as a form of empowerment in deﬁance of an imperial edict,41 is no novelty in the ad Heluiam, given Seneca’s inversion at the outset (1.2) in casting himself, the victim, ironically as his mother’s

Seneca seemingly posits Cantabrian settlement and inﬂuence before the Phocaean and Ligurian interventions. See now Cosimi 1954, and cf. fn. 36 above. 38 Extending from 8.1 quocumque uenimus eadem rerum natura utendum est, from Varro (his Logistorici? So speculates Giesecke 1891, 100). Cf. Muson. p. 41.6–10 Hense, Plut. De exil. 5 = Mor. 601a, Epict. 3.13.16, 3.22.22 with Giesecke 1891, 46–47 and Favez 1918, xlvi– xlvii; but poetic touches (e.g., inhaerere, in its sense here apparently not in prose before Val. Max.; OLD 6, incl. Ov. Tr. 3.7.11, 4.3.19) distinguish the more elaborate Senecan eﬀect. 39 Contrast abduco of the way “home” at 9.2 angustus animus est quem terrena delectant: ad illa [sc. the heavenly bodies] abducendus est … 40 Or, for the sapiens, as conﬁrmation of a pre-existing state of “exile”? Cf. Whitmarsh 2001a, 146: “the philosopher, divorced by his insight and education from a parochial world-view, is, by deﬁnition, always already an exile of sorts.” 41 Cf. Whitmarsh 2001a, 149: “The deliberately contrived paradox that exile (conventionally viewed as a submission to the power and authority of the emperor) in

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consoler. The broader tendency initiated by this ﬁrst inversion in the ad Heluiam ﬁnds its most obvious manifestation in Seneca’s report (9.4– 8) of M. Iunius Brutus’ portrayal in his De uirtute of M. Claudius Marcellus (cos. 51),42 that vigorous opponent of Caesar who retired to Mytilene after Pharsalus, only to be murdered at Piraeus in 45 after Caesar had permitted his return to Rome. By allowing him freedom for philosophical study, exile is cast more as a release than a hardship for Seneca’s self-suﬃcient Marcellus (cf. 9.4 beatissime uiuentem). Hence the paradoxical situation whereby Brutus apparently visited Marcellus, only to sense that he himself was going into exile when he took his leave (9.4 adicit uisum sibi se magis in exilium ire, qui sine illo rediturus esset, quam illum in exilio relinqui). “What a great man that was,” exclaims Seneca (9.5), “who caused someone to feel like an exile because he was leaving an exile behind!” The senate apparently secured Marcellus’ return by public petition, pleading, Seneca adds, not so much for Marcellus but for themselves, ne exules essent si sine illo fuissent (9.6). In his imagined words (9.7) Marcellus mouths the familiar (Stoic) consolatory topos that “to the wise man every place is his country,”43 and the cosmopolitan self-mastery on display here is set in eﬀective contrast to Marcellus’ portrayal of Caesar, himself an “exile” from Italy for a decade (cf. 9.7 hic qui te expulit, non ipse per annos decem continuos patria caruit?): nunc ecce trahit illum ad se Africa …, trahit Hispania, … trahit Aegyptus inﬁda, totus denique orbis, qui ad occasionem concussi imperii intentus est: cui primum rei occurret? cui parti se opponet? aget illum per omnes terras uictoria sua … (9.8) See—now he is being dragged to Africa …, he is dragged to Spain, … he is dragged to faithless Egypt—in short, to every part of the world, which is carefully watching for its chance against the stricken empire. Which problem will he meet ﬁrst? Which part will he set himself against? His own victorious record will drive him from one land to the next …

In contrast to Marcellus’ serene self- and cosmic possession, the allconquering Caesar is harried (cf. occurret) and carried as the object of trahit and aget from one trouble-spot to the next, his victory over fact stimulates the (internal, personal) power of the philosopher is implicit throughout [Musonius’] essay.” 42 For whom RE 3.2, 2760–2764 (Claudius 229); Broughton 1951–1952, 2.240–241. 43 Cf. fnn. 2, 28, 38.

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the world-parts suspect and wavering where Marcellus’ is complete and certain; Marcellus’, paradoxically, is the truer conquest and worlddominion.44 These diﬀerent plays on ﬁgurative exile in 9.4–8 are symptomatic, I propose, of an important but underestimated inﬂuence on the ad Heluiam generally, namely the tradition of Stoic paradoxa, that form of “surprising arguments” that the Stoics inherited from the Cynic tradition as an arresting way of delivering doctrine.45 Cicero for one portrays the Stoic paradoxes in a mixed light, on occasion implicating them in wider (and contextually driven) critiques of Stoicism (Fin. 4.74–78, Mur. 60–66), elsewhere treating them more sympathetically (Parad. 4).46 Gently needling the stern younger Cato in the Pro Murena, Cicero oﬀers an ironic caricature of Stoic procedure and of precepts that extend to the position that “we … who are not philosophers are runaway slaves, exiles, enemies, even mad” (61 nos … qui sapientes non sumus fugitiuos, exsules, hostis, insanos denique esse). Defending scepticism against Antiochus of Ascalon’s “Old Academic” dogmatism in the Lucullus, Cicero at one point rounds on Antiochus’ agreement with paradoxical Stoic doctrine (136): illi [sc. Aristotle and Xenocrates, head of the Academy from 339–314] umquam dicerent sapientes solos reges, solos diuites … postremo solum ciuem [sc. sapientem], solum liberum, insipientes omnes peregrinos, exsules, seruos, furiosos?47 Would Aristotle and Xenocrates ever assert that wise men alone are kings, alone wealthy …, and ﬁnally that the wise man alone is a citizen and a free man, and that all non-philosophers are foreigners, exiles, slaves and madmen?

In the fourth of his Paradoxa Stoicorum,48 on the proposition that “every fool is mad,” Cicero plays consistently on literal and ﬁgurative modes 44 Suggestive remarks also in Viansino 1988–1990, 2.824: Marcellus’ renown demonstrates that, far from bringing disgrace (6.1 ignominia), exile can enhance one’s fama (cf. 13.6–8, Muson. p. 47.1–15 Hense, Plut. De exil. 15 = Mor. 605d–f; Giesecke 1891, 50–56); and Seneca implicitly challenges Claudius by emulating Marcellus, that embarrassment to Caesar (cf. 9.6 Caesar erubuit), in serene exile. 45 Diatribic background: Ronnick 1991, 10–14, 18–19. 46 But cf. Michel 1968, 224–229, arguing for “une unité de la pensée cicéronienne” (229). 47 For the Stoic play on exile, also SVF 3 nos. 328.3–5, 678–680 (in Wallach 1990, 173), adding Philo Every good man is free 6–7 (6 pp. 2–3 Cohn-Reiter); cf. Cic. De or. 3.65, Sen. Dial. 1.3.7. 48 The work addressed, of course, to M. Iunius Brutus (praef. 1); suggestive given

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of exile to cast his enemy, P. Clodius Pulcher,49 as an exile at Rome because of his lawlessness (cf. 31, 32 quomodo igitur tot legibus in exilium eiectus nomen exulis non perhorrescis?), while Cicero presents himself as no exile when he withdrew from Rome in 58 BCE, on the modestly stated grounds that when he departed, the respublica went with him (30 … cum omnes meo discessu exsulasse rempublicam putent).50 If we look beyond Seneca’s portrayal of Marcellus as “an exile but no exile,” his outbursts against self-indulgent excess later in the ad Heluiam (10.1–12.7, 16.3–5)51 reﬂect a broader diatribic inﬂuence that is shared by Cicero’s Paradoxa. But while overlaps in tone and topos between the ad Heluiam and the Paradoxa52 need hardly signal any direct Senecan debt to Cicero, two particular features of the Paradoxa usefully illuminate parallel phenomena in the consolatio. The ﬁrst, in Cicero’s ﬁfth paradox (only the wise man is free, and every fool a slave), is the process by which literal slavery is stretched into various ﬁgurative permutations. So in 35 “all the wicked are slaves,” but not of course literal slaves: nec hoc tam re est quam dictu inopinatum atque mirabile. non enim ita dicunt eos esse seruos ut mancipia quae sunt dominorum facta nexu aut aliquo iure ciuili; sed si seruitus sit, sicut est, obedientia fracti animi et abiecti et arbitrio carentis suo, quis neget omnes leues omnes cupidos omnes denique improbos esse seruos? Nor is this paradox really as startling and remarkable as it sounds. For they don’t mean that they are slaves as those chattels are that have become their masters’ property by obligation through debt or by some civil law. But if slavery amounts—as indeed it does—to the obedience of a broken and dejected spirit that lacks all freedom of action, who would deny that all weak-minded people, all the covetous, in short all the wicked, are slaves? (acc. to Helv. 9.4–6) the paradoxical emphasis in Brutus’ portrayal of Marcellus in his De uirtute. 49 Unnamed in the paradox, its opening also lacunose; but his identity is inferred from the crimes to which Cicero later alludes (cf. §§ 30, 31, 32 with Stella 1940, 48–51). 50 Cf. 28, Red. sen. 34, 36, Red. pop. 14, Dom. 17; on his identiﬁcation with the state, Nicholson 1992, 35–39. 51 Occasioned by his rising to the consolatory topos that disputes the apparent incommoda of exile (cf. Helv. 6.1 paupertas, ignominia, contemptus). For externals such as wealth, honours etc. similarly rejected (hence no deprivation for the exile), cf. esp. Favor. On Exile 19–22 Barigazzi; but the colour and rhetorical force of Seneca’s outrage sets the ad Heluiam apart within the exilic tradition. 52 E.g., happiness reliant on virtuous self-suﬃciency (Parad. 17): cf. Helv. 5.1; servitude to material wealth, luxury etc. (Parad. 36): cf. Helv. 11.2–3; distinguished Republican exempla invoked to expose and emphasize vice now (Parad. 38, 48): cf. Helv. 10.8, 12.5–7, 16.6–7; mind makes for true wealth (Parad. 43–44): cf. Helv. 11.5.

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Once established, this ﬂexible notion of seruitus gives way to the “slavery” of man to woman (36), “slavery” to wealth and luxury (36), to money (39), to social or professional ambition and to fear (40). This Ciceronian procedure, with the movement between literal and ﬁgurative applications of slavery carefully negotiated in 35, oﬀers a template, I suggest, for Seneca’s more daring elaboration of exile into a ﬁgurative condition in the ad Heluiam; more daring because, in contrast to Cicero’s sustained use of seruitus and seruus in a ﬁgurative sense, Seneca works more by suggestion than by explicit verbal marker, not persisting with the language of exilium to anchor his every ﬁgurative play on the exilic condition. Secondly, in Cicero’s second paradox, that the possession of virtue is suﬃcient for happiness, the theme of exile illustrates a familiar Stoic emphasis (17): nemo potest non beatissimus esse qui est totus aptus ex sese quique in se uno sua ponit omnia; cui spes omnis et ratio et cogitatio pendet ex fortuna, huic nihil potest esse certi … No one can fail to be extremely happy who is completely self-reliant, and all of whose possessions are centered in the self alone; but for the person whose hopes, purposes and thoughts depend entirely on fortune, nothing can have certainty …

In contrast to the self-suﬃcient sapiens (in nemo … omnia above), those who centre their existence not in themselves but in externals such as possessions and place (cui … certi) are vulnerable to the threat of, e.g., exile (17–18): eum tu hominem terreto, si quem eris nactus, istis mortis aut exilii minis; … exilium [sc. terribile est] … illis quibus quasi circumscriptus est habitandi locus, non eis qui omnem orbem terrarum unam urbem esse ducunt. That’s the kind of man, if you come across one, for you to frighten with your threats of death or exile … Exile is terrible to those whose place of living is as if demarcated by a boundary-line, not to those who think that the whole world is one city.

This common contrast between investment in the (philosophical) self and investment in externals is fundamental to the ad Heluiam, but applied with a creativity which, as we shall now see, complements the striking eﬀect of Seneca’s plays on (states of) alienation and “exile.”

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We have seen that Seneca eﬀects a general displacement (Helv. 6– 8), challenging our local aﬃnities by promoting a diﬀerent, cosmic awareness. By uprooting Helvia (and us) in this way he applies a radical and carefully premeditated treatment,53 which fully accords with his announcement (2.2) that, in uncompromising Stoic fashion, he will oﬀer no gentle prescription for healing her wounds but will use cautery and the knife (urere ac secare),54 directly confronting her with the grief which he works to overcome (omnis … luctus illi [sc. animo] suos … admouebo; cf. 3.2–4.1). The change of outlook that he promotes does not admit of half-measures but amounts to a deracination of sorts, a cut-and-burn procedure that exposes and refashions Helvia’s (our) inner core. Helvia for one is well equipped for such treatment, at least to judge by the misfortunes that have apparently befallen her throughout her life: nullam tibi fortuna uacationem dedit a grauissimis luctibus, ne natalem quidem tuum excepit: amisisti matrem statim nata, immo dum nasceris, et ad uitam quodam modo exposita es. creuisti sub nouerca …; … auunculum indulgentissimum, optimum ac fortissimum uirum … amisisti55; et … intra tricesimum diem carissimum uirum … extulisti. lugenti tibi luctus nuntiatus est omnibus quidem absentibus liberis … modo modo in eundem sinum ex quo tres nepotes emiseras ossa trium nepotum recepisti; intra uicesimum diem quam ﬁlium meum in manibus et in osculis tuis mortuum funeraueras, raptum me audisti: hoc adhuc defuerat tibi, lugere uiuos. (2.4–5) Fortune has allowed you no respite from the most grievous of sorrows, and even the day of your birth was not exempt: you lost your mother 53 Seneca’s delay before treatment (cf. 1.1–2) after Chrysippus: better to wait for the injury to settle (Cic. Tusc. 4.63 quod … uetat Chrysippus, ad recentis quasi tumores animi remedium adhibere … with Dougan and Henry 1934, 177 and Graver 2002, 123 and 209–210 [f] = SVF 3 no. 467, 212–213 [m] = SVF 3 no. 474; Johann 1968, 37–38). Alternatively, better to apply quick treatment (so apparently the Academic Crantor); so Seneca to Marcia in hindsight at Dial. 6.1.8 (cf. Ep. 63.3; Viansino 1988–1990, 2.468). On the apparent contradiction between the consolations ad Marciam and ad Heluiam in this respect, Borgo 1978, 72 (the contradiction, “lungi dal denunciare una grave incoerenza di pensiero nel ﬁlosofo, rivela in lui un carattere nuovo di umanità e di autonomia rispetto alla tradizione”), with Grollios 1956, 20–27 for accumulated sources on “the appropriate time.” For Stoic development of the analogy between philosophy and medicine, Nussbaum 1994, 13–14, 316–317 with Foucault 1986, 54–58. 54 In keeping with the Stoic preference for “une ‘chirurgie’ morale énergique” (Favez 1918, 5); cf. Dial. 2.1.1 ceteri sapientes molliter et blande … medentur, as opposed to Stoici uirilem ingressi uiam. 55 Helvia’s uncle, not the uncle (Seneca’s) at 19.4 (Favez 1918, xxxi–xxxii).

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as soon as you were born, or rather in the process of being born, and you were in a sense exposed on coming into life. You grew up under a step-mother …; you lost your uncle, the most kindly, upstanding and courageous of men; and within a month you buried your most beloved husband. You were already in mourning when the sad news was brought to you, and when all of your sons were away. Just recently you received the bones of three grandchildren into the very lap from which you had sent forth three grandchildren. Within twenty days of burying my son, who died in your arms and amid your kisses, you heard that I had been taken from you. This only you had lacked so far—to mourn for the living.

While Seneca’s overt argument here is that Helvia’s previous suﬀerings can teach her how to endure her latest grief,56 from the ﬁrst she is cast (not unlike the exile)57 as a ﬁgure left bereft and isolated in life, her resilience tested and strengthened over time. It is this self-reliance, this (our) naked core self, that becomes a main object of Seneca’s focus and development in the ad Heluiam, where Helvia appears as a nonphilosophical version of the self-suﬃcient sapiens (cf. 5.1 laborauit [sc. sapiens] … semper ut in se plurimum poneret, ut a se omne gaudium peteret). While the sapiens looks within, Seneca ﬁguratively applies the language of place and distance to portray his own non-investment in externals (aduenticiae res): numquam ego fortunae credidi, etiam cum uideretur pacem agere; omnia illa quae in me indulgentissime conferebat, pecuniam honores gratiam, eo loco posui unde posset sine motu meo repetere. interuallum inter illa et me magnum habui; itaque abstulit illa, non auulsit. (5.4) I have never trusted fortune, even when she seemed to be at peace; all that she has most generously bestowed upon me—money, position, inﬂuence—I deposited in that place [i.e., among the indiﬀerents] whence she could retrieve them without causing me any disturbance. I kept a great distance between them and me; and so she has taken them away, not torn them from me.

Exile or not, he casts himself as permanently distanced from the vagaries of popular opinion (so 5.6, on exile as an evil only in the popular 56

68.

On this topos, appealing “alla forza d’animo della destinataria,” Borgo 1978,

57 Hence the suggestive applicability of Seneca’s language here to exile. amisisti: Ov. Tr. 3.2.22 quicquid … amissa restat in urbe mei, 3.3.53 patriam amisi, 5.9.6, Pont. 1.8.41; exposita es (Helvia as if exposed as a child; OLD 2a): cf. Tr. 4.8.15–16 qui [sc. di] me … Sarmaticis exposuere locis (OLD 2b); raptum: cf. of exilic deprivation Tr. 3.7.45–46 cum … rapta … sint, adimi quae potuere mihi, Pont. 3.4.14.

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imagination; cf. 6.1 remoto ergo iudicio plurium, … uideamus quid sit exilium). Again, in answering the objection (13.1) that his separate treatment of the suﬀerings of exile fails to address their combined force, he asserts the all-round inviolability of the mind fortiﬁed by uirtus (13.2). Hence the sapiens is proof against insult (13.4): ignominia tu putas quemquam sapientem moueri posse, qui omnia in se reposuit, qui ab opinionibus uulgi secessit? Do you think that any wise man who relies entirely upon himself and who stands aloof from the opinions of the crowd can be aﬀected by disgrace?

Yet while the sapiens withdraws from the world, the uulgus is itself estranged from what Seneca portrays as the favourable conditions of our birth: bona condicione geniti sumus, si eam non deseruerimus (5.1). On this Senecan approach alienation is the common lot of mankind, extending even (or especially) to the detached sapiens; what varies is the mode, virtuous or vicious, vulgar or philosophical, of that alienation. When we begin to extend the notions of exile and alienation in these ﬁgurative directions, the paradoxical emphasis in 9.4–8 (Marcellus) resurfaces in the shared but diﬀerent estrangements of the masses and the sapiens, and signiﬁcantly also in Seneca’s outbursts of moral outrage later in the ad Heluiam. In contrast to the sapiens, his existence centered in self and his needs simple (cf. 10.2 corporis exigua desideria sunt), the gourmet scours the world for the ultimate in culinary perfection and exotic luxury in 10.2–3: non est necesse omne perscrutari profundum nec strage animalium uentrem onerare nec conchylia58 ultimi maris ex ignoto litore eruere: di istos deaeque perdant quorum luxuria tam inuidiosi imperii ﬁnes transcendit! ultra Phasin capi uolunt quod ambitiosam popinam instruat, nec piget a Parthis, a quibus nondum poenas repetimus, aues petere. undique conuehunt omnia nota fastidienti gulae; … uomunt ut edant, edunt ut uomant. There’s no need to scour the depths of every sea, to burden the belly with the carnage of animals, or to pluck shell-ﬁsh from the uncharted shores of the furthest sea. May the gods and goddesses destroy those whose appetite for luxury goes beyond the limits of an empire that is already so enviable! They want to catch game beyond the Phasis to supply their ostentatious kitchens, and they are not ashamed to ask for birds from the Parthians, from whom we have yet to exact vengeance. From all quarters 58 Dietary excess in 10.2, in clothing at 11.1–2: complementary passages, mouthwatering conchylia and then conchylium of ﬁne dye (11.2) conﬁrming the connection.

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they bring together all the delights known to fussy palates. … They vomit to eat and eat to vomit.

The chiastic paradox at the close here reﬂects the irrationality of the feasters themselves. In contrast to the cosmopolitan sapiens, the stomach prevails over the animus in these false cosmopolitans; in contrast to the sapiens who courses where he will in his cosmic consciousness (a triumphant vision which, at 20.2, Seneca appropriates for himself at the consolation’s close), the gourmet scours the world not as a liberated soul but as an ever more slavish prisoner to luxury and to each new course. The more distant his travels to ﬁnd ever fresh excitement for jaded palates, the more estranged he becomes from all limit and (Stoic) reason (cf. 10.11 rationem …, cuius certi ﬁnes sunt), and so the more in need of recall from his blind, exilic-like wanderings (cf. 10.5 alioqui, si ad sanam illis mentem placeat reuerti, quid opus est tot artibus uentri seruientibus? … passim iacent alimenta …; sed haec uelut caeci transeunt). So also in chapter 11 (on the basic simplicity of nature’s needs, 11.1) the freedom of the sapiens who knows no limit in his cosmic wanderings gives way to a very diﬀerent kind of limitlessness, in that the manic collectors who pile up their exotic treasures (furniture, statuary, precious stones from every land etc.) will never satisfy themselves (11.3 ista congerantur licet, numquam explebunt inexplebilem animum; cf. 11.4 quidquid illi [sc. desiderio] congesseris, non ﬁnis erit cupiditatis sed gradus). While the sapiens stays within limit in one way (11.4 intra naturalem modum), from a philosophical perspective it is these manic collectors, not Seneca, who are the “truer” exiles here; their precious stones (11.3 nationum omnium lapides) are the terrena pondera (11.6) which weigh down the philosophical soul and obscure our “true” vision (cf. 9.2 angustus animus est quem terrena delectant). That vision is of consistent measure and movement in the heavens (cf. 9.2 ubique aeque apparent [sc. the heavenly bodies], ubique aeque splendent)—a vision of even perfection, in contrast to the uneven contentions of the comparative adjectives that characterize ever restless ambition for “longer,” “wider,” “higher” etc. in the correlative structure of 9.2 quo longiores porticus expedierint, quo altius turres sustulerint, quo latius uicos porrexerint, … hoc plus erit quod illis caelum abscondat (“cut oﬀ the sight of heaven”); the higher sights are set, the greater the loss of insight. Far from intruding upon his consolatory theme or merely adding rhetorical colour through familiar moralizing motions, Seneca’s diatribic outbursts thus play an integral role in the ad Heluiam by stretching the condition of exile into these multiple ﬁgurative permutations. So

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too his familiar use of historical exempla here takes on a fresh signiﬁcance in alienating Seneca’s corrupt Rome from the hallowed values that he associates with the past. Times have changed: in contrast to that bloated “prince of Roman epicures,”59 M. Gavius Apicius, paradoxically that corrupter in the very city that, in 161 BCE, had expelled philosophers as potential corrupters of youth (10.8),60 the Republican hero M’. Curius Dentatus stands as a model of old-fashioned frugality and plain eating (cf. 10.8 Samnitium legatos audît cum uilissimum cibum in foco ipse manu sua uersaret).61 At 12.5–7 those most distinguished of Republicans, Menenius Agrippa (cos. 503), reputedly the mediator who ended the secession of the plebs in 494, M. Atilius Regulus, hero of the ﬁrst Punic War, and the elder Scipio Africanus, Hannibal’s victor at Zama in 202, are adduced as relative paupers because they served the state before serving their own interests. Such exempla not only place the poverty of the exile in alleviating perspective (cf. 12.7 his ergo aduocatis non tantum tuta est sed etiam gratiosa paupertas) but also indirectly condemn the luxuria temporum that Seneca deplores in 12.4. If in this way he characterizes his Rome as estranged or relegated from her own past values, Helvia for one is cast in the mould of traditional Republican virtue when Seneca urges her to model herself in grief on such paragons of manly courage (16.5 … si modo illas intueri uoles feminas quas conspecta uirtus inter magnos uiros posuit) as Cornelia (16.6), mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus,62 and Rutilia (16.7), mother of the distinguished orator C. Aurelius Cotta, whom she followed into exile in 90 BCE after his conviction before Q. Varius’ notorious equestrian court.63 Duﬀ 1915, 264; PIR2 4 pp. 18–19 G 91. For the expulsion, Gell. NA 15.11.1 (for later expulsions, Viansino 1988–1990, 2.832). For the culinary arts as symbols of corruption, cf. Ep. 95.23 in rhetorum ac philosophorum scholis solitudo est: at quam celebres culinae sunt, quanta circa nepotum focos se iuuentus premit! Socrates (cf. 13.4), that philosophical “corrupter,” also stands in implicit contrast to Apicius here. 61 Idolized by the younger Cato (cf. Dial. 7.21.3); for Apicius contrasted, cf. Ep. 120.19. 62 At 16.6 Corneliam ex duodecim liberis ad duos fortuna redegerat the two survivors are presumably Tiberius and Gaius, the famous tribunes; this for rhetorical eﬀect and emphasis given the report of three survivors (Cornelia lost nine of twelve children in their childhood) in Plut. Ti. Gracch. 1.7 (further Favez 1918, 87; Manning 1981, 90 on another such “error” at Dial. 6.16.3). 63 Further, Favez 1918, 88. For analysis of Cornelia and Rutilia as role-models here, and comparison with Dial. 6.16.3 (to Marcia), Mauch 1997, 133–137. After inpudicitia condemned (16.3), Cornelia and Rutilia implicitly oﬀer models of pudicitia as well as of brave forbearance, esp. given Sen. De matrimonio fr. 50.16–20 Vottero 1998, 158 mulieris 59 60

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Guided by these exempla (16.7 cum his te numerari feminis uolo …), Helvia consolidates an inner strength (cf. 2.4–5) that already fortiﬁes her against the familiar vices that Seneca associates with her gender. No unchastity,64 no “unnatural” abortion, no shame in pregnancy, no cosmetic adornment, no obsession with wealth and gems (16.3–4): her unadorned body not only reﬂects her natural simplicity of character but also serves as a literal symbol of her estrangement, her “exile,” from the corruptions of the age in which she lives. If gems etc. are but “earthly burdens,” terrena … pondera, quae non potest amare sincerus animus ac naturae suae memor (11.6), Helvia’s rejection of such terrena marks her spiritual readiness even before Seneca redirects her to philosophy (17.3 ad liberalia studia).65 How best to assuage her grief ? Not through the superﬁcial methods of escape or distraction that Seneca reviews in 17.2 (travel, administering to one’s estate, involvement in new negotium) but through a radical philosophical treatment (17.3 illa [sc. liberalia studia] sanabunt uulnus tuum, illa omnem tristitiam tibi euellent) that represents a homecoming of sorts, or a new reconciliation with self. Hence the suggestive signiﬁcance of the detail that the elder Seneca had apparently curtailed Helvia’s philosophical studies, discouraged as he was by the example of women using their learning for adornment, not for the true acquisition of wisdom (17.4).66 After this restriction, Helvia’s turning to philosophy is cast as a release or recall into territory regained (cf. 17.4 nunc ad illas [sc. bonas artes] reuertere; tutam te praestabunt), her full immersion resulting in a new integrity or fortiﬁcation whose completeness is reinforced by the string of strong aﬃrmatives and resounding negatives that fully banish and shut out all grief, anxiety etc. in 17.5: illae [sc. bonae artes] consolabuntur, illae delectabunt, illae si bona ﬁde in animum tuum intrauerint, numquam amplius intrabit dolor, numquam sollicitudo, numquam adﬂictationis inritae superuacua uexatio. proprie uirtus pudicitia est … haec aequauit Corneliam Graccho (cf. 275 for Cornelia as “il modello della matrona romana”). 64 A cardinal vice (cf. Q Nat. 7.31.1–3). For pudicitia as maximum decus (16.4), De matrimonio fr. 50.1–3 Vottero 1998, 156 [doctissimi uiri uox est] pudicitiam inprimis esse retinendam, qua amissa omnis uirtus ruit. in hac muliebrium uirtutum principatus est with 274 n. 2 and Mauch 1997, 129–133. 65 On the “manly” implications of this turning (cf. 16.1 non est quod utaris excusatione muliebris nominis …), Mauch 1997, 141–142. 66 Cf. Dial. 9.9.5, 7, Ep. 59.15 on (false) joy derived ex studiorum liberalium uana ostentatione et nihil sanantibus litteris (contrast the true “cure” via philosophy at, e.g., Ep. 16.3, 53.12, 78.3); Mauch 1997, 16–17, 143–144 on Stoic endorsement of philosophical study for women.

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gareth d. williams nulli horum patebit pectus tuum; nam ceteris uitiis iam pridem clusum est. Your studies will console you, they will delight you; and if they truly penetrate your mind, never again will grief ﬁnd entry, never anxiety, never the pointless distress caused by futile aﬄiction. Your heart will be open to none of these things; it has of course long been closed to all other vices.

What Seneca constructs here for Helvia is the same philosophical safehaven (cf. 18.1 in illum portum quem tibi studia promittunt peruenis) that sustains him on Corsica, and in which they are united despite (and across) their separation.67 But while this assimilation of the circumstances of mother and son promotes an individual way of coping, a philosophical self-suﬃciency that supports the exile and the bereaved equally, there is also an important social aspect to the ad Heluiam. At the individual level Seneca works to consolidate Helvia’s inner resilience, but late in the consolation he also portrays the support system of her core family. If philosophy both consoles and delights (cf. 17.5 illae [sc. bonae artes] consolabuntur, illae delectabunt), Helvia can ﬁnd a similar balance in the assiduous attentions of Seneca’s two brothers on the one hand (18.3 certabunt in te oﬃciis et unius desiderium duorum pietate supplebitur), in the distracting amusement aﬀorded on the other (18.4) by the charm and the chatter of the young Marcus (probably Seneca’s nephew, Lucan).68 Seneca weaves a tapestry of close family involvements and supportive interactions based on intimate knowledge (cf. 18.2 noui fratrum meorum intimos adfectus; 19.2 illa [sc. Helvia’s sister] quidem adfectus tuos semper sequitur). Seneca is like a father to Novatilla, his niece (18.7 … quam sic in me transtuleram … ut possit uideri, quod me amisit, quamuis saluo patre pupilla),69 his aunt like a mother to him when she nursed him through serious illness (probably) in Egypt (19.2 illius pio maternoque nutricio; cf. 19.1, of her animum omnibus nobis maternum).70 This transference of roles extends to a sharedness of 67 For the philosophical safe-haven, Mauch 1997, 141 and n. 979; portus, Dial. 10.18.1 with Williams 2003, 236. 68 Favez 1918, xxxvi–xxxviii with Griﬃn 1976, 57–58 and Mauch 1997, 148 (surely no son of our Seneca). Cf. also [Sen.] Epigr. 49 Prato = Anth. Lat. 441 Riese2 = 439 Shackleton Bailey (5–6 sic dulci Marcus qui nunc sermone fritinnit, / facundo patruos prouocet ore duos; other overlaps also with Helv. 18.1–5) with Degl’Innocenti Pierini 1999, 150–152. 69 The daughter of Seneca’s eldest brother, Novatus: Griﬃn 1976, 59. 70 The aunt presumably Helvia’s step-sister, given 18.9 cui [sc. Helvia’s father] tu quidem tot nepotes pronepotesque dando eﬀecisti ne unica esses; Favez 1918, xxx with Mauch 1997, 152 and n. 1065 for bibliography.

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experience: given that Helvia herself was raised under a step-mother after her mother died in childbirth (2.4), her “adoption” of Novatilla is a mirroring of her own past, and Novatilla herself a potential reﬂection of Helvia’s character and manner through careful moulding (18.8 nunc mores eius compone, nunc forma: … tuis adsuescat sermonibus, ad tuum ﬁngatur arbitrium). Now as the care-taker (of Novatilla in 18.8, of her father in 18.9), now as the receiver of consolation, Helvia plays both passive and active roles in a family structure that fully activates in 18.1–19.4 Foucault’s notion of “the cultivation of the self ” in the early imperial age as “a true social practice”: … all this attention to the self did not depend solely on the existence of schools, lectures, and professionals of spiritual direction for its social base; it found a ready support in the whole bundle of customary relations of kinship, friendship, and obligation … But it is sometimes the case, too, that the interplay of the care of the self and the help of the other blends into preexisting relations, giving them a new coloration and a greater warmth. The care of the self—or the attention one devotes to the care that others should take of themselves—appears then as an intensiﬁcation of social relations.71

Seneca’s very act of consolation in the ad Heluiam exempliﬁes for Foucault this “intensiﬁcation of social relations”; but a distinction should surely be drawn between the diﬀerent kinds of cura sui, social and individual, that Seneca promotes in diﬀerent parts of the work. Foucault himself distinguishes complementary parts of the overall treatment, the one a private and personal exercise (whether via meditation, reading, the recollection of truths etc.),72 the other social and interactive. If in the main body of the ad Heluiam down to 18.1 Seneca does the “internal” work of consolidating Helvia’s self-suﬃciency, he moves from the private and closed to the open, social sphere in 18.1–19.4, the austerity of self-reliance in the earlier stages giving way to the warmth of groupcomfort in the later phase. The comfort provided by Helvia’s sister is partly by word and embrace (19.1–4), partly by her own example of fortitude in grief, losing her husband at sea but bravely bringing his body back to shore (19.4).73 Foucault 1986, 52–53. 1986, 51. 73 Hence drawn as Alcestis-like in 19.5 (see Mauch 1997, 155). Her conduct is shown to be typical: she recovers her husband’s body, and so too she “rescued” Seneca (19.2 illius manibus in urbem perlatus sum …), one action corroborating the other in Seneca’s broader tableau here (18.1–19.7) of diﬀerent role-models and modes of intra-familial 71 72

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Her fuller life-story oﬀers a model of quasi-philosophical decorum. Withdrawn in her natural reserve and modesty (cf. 19.2 for her seductum uitae genus, her modestia, her quies and her secreti et ad otium repositi mores), in her years in Egypt with her husband, C. Galerius, prefect from 16– 31 CE,74 she lived as if in obscurity (19.6): … numquam in publico conspecta est, neminem prouincialem domum suam admisit, nihil a uiro petit, nihil a se peti passa est. …never was she seen in public, she never received any provincial into her home, she never sought a political favor from her husband, she let no one seek a political favor from her.

If a main preoccupation of the ad Heluiam has been to construct and consolidate a hard inner core of self-reliance, she is its crowning example, a woman magni animi … quam non ambitio, non auaritia, comites omnis potentiae et pestes, uicerunt, non metus mortis … deterruit … (19.7) of high-mindedness, who was not conquered by either ambition or greed, those companions and plagues that are inseparable from power; and who was not deterred by fear of death …

Here is an empowering model of virtue (19.7 huic parem uirtutem exhibeas oportet …), of strong and intelligent detachment from the world: she is an exile in her own exemplary way.

IV Seneca was not alone among Roman philosophical writers in exploring the symbolic potential of exile. In his incisive treatment of Musonius Rufus (That exile is not an evil), Dio Chrysostom (his thirteenth oration) and Favorinus (On Exile), all Roman citizens writing in Greek,75 Tim Whitmarsh interestingly picks apart the layers of Musonius’ play with exile as metaphor: Musonius is not merely topographically relocated, but also conceptually isolated from the norms and conventions of regular society. In a literal aemulatio (e.g., 18.7–8 Helvia as a model for Novatilla, 19.7 Seneca’s aunt a model for Helvia). 74 For this identiﬁcation, Favez 1918, xxxii–xxxiii with Mauch 1997, 154 n. 1080 for further references. 75 Background: Whitmarsh 2001a, 141–142, 156, 167; similar 2001b, 272 and n. 19.

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sense, the emperor banished him from Rome for practising philosophy; at a deeper level, Musonius’ decision to philosophize had already condemned him to a kind of exile from society … Exile, in Musonius’ writing, is not merely a juridical state, but also a metaphor for philosophical identity.76

The metaphorical properties of exile could also express an antagonism towards Rome and Roman imperium. Given the banishment of philosophers from Rome in the late(r) ﬁrst century CE, exile became in a sense the hallmark of a free-speaking philosopher. The language of exile thus also bespeaks a polemical engagement with Roman power, and the vaunted transcendence of humiliation and suﬀering imposed by exile advertizes the philosopher’s superiority to imperial dominion.77

Whitmarsh locates the Greek writings and cultural (self-)constructions of Musonius, Dio Chrysostom and Favorinus on one side of a divide, with Seneca’s “eminently Roman approach to the exilic consolation”78 in his ad Heluiam on the other. Already well connected politically before his exile in 41 CE, Seneca returned from Corsica “into the bosom of power,” whereas “Musonius … permanently relocates from Rome to Greece, linguistically, symbolically, and culturally: his juridical exile is merely a symptom of a more general alienation from Roman power and Roman values.”79 But the contrast between “Greek” and “Roman” postulated here surely warrants qualiﬁcation as soon as the ad Heluiam itself is seen to share the critical engagement with Roman power that Whitmarsh characterizes as an oppositional, “Greek” dynamic. After all, when we ﬁnd the emperor Gaius condemned in the ad Heluiam (10.4) as a monstrous example of vastly excessive consumption and self-indulgence,80 it is hard not to view him as a symbol of a Rome that is out of moral control. If we push this line further and accept Seneca’s broader condemnation of Roman mores as still valid under Claudius, the exile looks back at Rome from a position of liberated and critical detachment on Corsica; and from this position of strength he transcends not only his punishment but also his punisher. Seneca’s

2001a, 145, 147; similar 2001b, 279. 2001a, 141; similar 2001b, 275. 78 2001a, 152. 79 2001a, 152. 80 For his extravagance, Suet. Calig. 37.1–3; for Seneca’s broader attitude to him, Griﬃn 1976, 213 (“consistently a monster”). 76 77

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exile is thus already empowering in ways well described by Whitmarsh on his favoured Greek material: Exile, especially in the light of the expulsions of philosophers by Vespasian and Domitian, inevitably implied an antagonism towards imperial power and movement away from Rome (as well as all that Rome represented: oppression, luxury, excess) into a world of introspection, ascesis, philosophical self-discovery, and autotherapy through meditation upon the paradigms of the past.81

Seneca too sets up an antagonism, or at least a moral antagonism, to his lost Rome—even a patriotic stance if his mission is to jolt or change Roman attitudes by exposing and protesting against this tide of corruption. Or does he take his probing further? A possible lead is oﬀered by an argument pursued by Favorinus in his On Exile, to the eﬀect that his fatherland, however much loved, is nothing other than the land in which my forebears settled or resided. That a fatherland is not the country in which we ourselves were born is clear from the following: many people, though born elsewhere, regard another land as their fatherland. If our fatherland is this, the territory to which our ancestors have become accustomed, why by the same token should we not also love the country in which we currently reside?82

Of special interest here is Favorinus’ (and Whitmarsh’s) emphasis on identity not as intrinsic but as created: Exile thus serves as a trope through which Favorinus, like Musonius and Dio, fashions his identity. An outsider, a latecomer, an exotic paradox, the Gallic Roman presents himself as a literary refugee in a terrain littered with native traditions. He is not content, however, with his marginal position; or, rather, the notion of cultural centrality is for Favorinus irredeemably bankrupt. What is it to ‘belong’? What is it to be ‘indigenous’? These concepts, we are told, rest upon a deluded narrative ﬁction with no solidity. For Favorinus, literary and social identity is and was ever a state of exile, a fact carefully and strategically concealed by the absurd state mythology of exclusivist systems such as that of democratic Athens.83

Whitmarsh’s insight here could, I think, be well extended to the ad Heluiam, and to the probings of Seneca, that other partial outsider as a Roman of Spanish origin, into what it is to “belong” at Rome, or what it is or ever was to be “authentically” Roman. 81 82 83

2001a, 178–179; similar 2001b, 304. On Exile 10.1–2 Barigazzi; trans. Whitmarsh 2001a, 309. Whitmarsh 2001a, 177–178; similar 2001b, 303.

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We have seen that in ad Heluiam 6 Rome is constituted as the ﬂuid sum of all the migrant parts that stream into the city; and in 7, that Seneca’s portrayal of migration as a pervasive historical tendency is meant (however sophistically) to reconcile his exile with “ordinary” human experience. His expansive survey of migration through the ages, beginning with early Greek colonization and criss-crossing the Mediterranean world with myriad transportations of peoples and cultures over time, soon encourages us to view Roman imperium within a larger, normalizing context of cultural or societal progress and development. Given this emphasis on “natural” movement and interaction over time, the facade and solidity of Roman imperium and all that it stands for as a reassuringly ﬁxed entity begin to show cracks as a consequence of Seneca’s indirect critique of Roman state mythology: the Aeneas-story is resolved into a larger pattern of migration-experience, the Empire becomes (from the cosmic perspective) vulnerable to mutation and decay over time, and Roman identity (the exclusivist signiﬁcance of Roman citizenship) loses its aura under exilic questioning: at a theoretical level, to what extent is “being Roman” ultimately a state of negotiation, a provisional construct, in a world of such ﬂuid shiftings and interactions of ethnic or cultural identity? While on one level Seneca reﬁnes the task of consoling Helvia into a meditation on states of ﬁgurative or philosophical exile, on another he launches a more aggressive response to the Roman power that exiled him: the authority that sent him to Corsica is itself, from an enlightened cosmic viewpoint, based on a ﬁction; secular dictates now pale into insigniﬁcance when set against the liberation of thought, travel and being enjoyed by the aspiring sapiens. The (paradoxical) end-result is that it is the liberated exile who, in the ad Heluiam, is empowered to renegotiate Rome’s place in the world; and in this respect the ad Heluiam oﬀers important self-protection (or a form of spiritual detachment) for any Roman, whether a metropolitan “insider” or a political exile, from the vagaries of life under the likes of Claudius and then Nero.

ELITE SCEPTICISM IN THE APOCOLOCYNTOSIS: FURTHER QUALIFICATIONS

Spencer Cole Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis has long been received as evidence of the overwhelmingly cynical private attitudes that Roman elites had about apotheosis and emperor-worship.* As Denis Feeney notes, “Until quite recently modern scholarship has been notoriously unsympathetic to the entire apparatus [emperor-worship], falling with relief on texts such as Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis, which appeared to give weight to the view that the educated regarded the business of apotheosis as a charade.”1 Feeney goes on to say that “the existence of such parodic texts may just as well be taken to prove the opposite: that the cult was a vigorous and muscular institution which could provoke and sustain interrogation and debate.”2 Seneca joined this debate when the possibilities and parameters of emperor-worship at Rome were still taking shape: the practice was perhaps not even an “institution” yet. Augustus was the * My thanks go to William Harris for the invitation to speak at the “New Directions in Seneca Studies” conference, and to Katharina Volk and Gareth Williams for their helpful comments on this paper. 1 1998, 110. Eden 1984, 7 betrays this unsympathetic attitude in his argument for Senecan authorship of the Apocolocyntosis: “Finally, it has been argued that Seneca would have more political sense than to mock an oﬃcial governmental act like a consecratio. This argument rests on two unjustiﬁed assumptions. The ﬁrst is that the governing class went through the motions of deifying Claudius with more sincere faith, or a deeper sense of self-importance, than they showed in their other attentions to the state religion. And the immortalization of a princeps was a comparatively recent institution, open from the outset to the indiﬀerence or scepticism of the educated.” Much important recent work on Roman religions (Price 1984, Feeney 1998, Beard, North, and Price 1998, Gradel 2002) questions the value of a Christianizing concept like “sincere faith” for analyses of Roman religious attitudes. See esp. Price 1984, 114–117 “The Issue of Elite Scepticism” on the use of the Apocolocyntosis to support anachronistic claims about the elite’s ironic distance from emperor-worship. Price 1987 stresses that imperial cult was primarily the concern of the elite: high-ranking senators occupied the priesthoods of the deiﬁed emperors (78–79) and found “symbolic supremacy over both populace and emperor” in the apotheosis ceremony (91). The oﬃcial consecration of an emperor, far from being a tongue-in-cheek spectacle produced for the general populace, actually had very little to do with them (84). See also Beard, North, and Price 1998, 247 on the perils of applying rigid oﬃcial/popular elite/mass distinctions. 2 1998, 111.

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one and only deiﬁed Roman emperor before Claudius, and this just a few decades before the probable appearance of the Apocolocyntosis. As the non-divinity of Tiberius and Gaius reveals, apotheosis was not at this point a perfunctory procedure simply set in motion by the death of a Roman emperor.3 In this paper, I suggest that Seneca aims at this relatively early stage to rescue apotheosis from becoming a total charade.4 He does this not only by reversing the decree of Claudius’ apotheosis in the Apocolocyntosis but by refusing to acknowledge his divinity and its due title diuus in his other texts. This systematic deconsecration of Claudius in the Senecan corpus stands in sharp contrast to his treatment of Augustus, whose divine status and cult titles are aggressively emphasized by Seneca. By resisting the deiﬁcation of Claudius, Seneca maintains a degree of sanctity for apotheosis. He thereby saves a meaningful incentive to extend to the young princeps Nero. The role of literary texts in validating or challenging a deiﬁcation is evident not only in the very existence of the Apocolocyntosis itself, but also in the heavenly debate within the text where Seneca has Diespiter playfully propose that Claudius’ apotheosis be appended to Ovid’s Metamorphoses.5 We shall return to Diespiter’s speech after a representative glance at how Seneca inscribes Augustus’ deiﬁcation in his other works and also studiously ignores the deiﬁcation of Claudius. In the ﬁrst book of the Natural Questions on lights in the sky, we ﬁnd Seneca’s standard way of referring to Augustus. As in the Apocolocyntosis and almost everywhere else, he calls him “the god Augustus” (1.1.3)6: uidimus circa diui 3 In spite of Vespasian’s famous dying quip (Suet. Vesp. 23.4): “uae,” inquit, “puto deus ﬁo”, Price 1987, 92 sees a shift towards routinization of apotheosis after the ﬁrst century. From Augustus to Constantine, 36 of 60 emperors and 27 members of their families were deiﬁed and received the title diuus (Price 1987, 56). 4 Seneca may in part be reacting against deviations from the model of imperial apotheosis established at the demise of Augustus. Augustus was formally deiﬁed after his funeral when a witness aﬃrmed that he saw Augustus rising to heaven (Suet. Aug. 100.4), a sequence derived from the testimony of Julius Proculus at Romulus’ ascension (Cic. Rep. 2.20). The senate, Bickerman 1972 argues, formally acknowledged Augustus’ divine status but their decree in itself was not actually thought to bestow divinity— this he had independently achieved. Fishwick 2002 proposes that Claudius’ deiﬁcation may have been a striking departure from the Augustan pattern: as we can tell from the Apocolocyntosis, his divinity was decreed before his funeral without the mention of any witness. Thus Claudius’ apotheosis might anticipate early second-century procedure in which the decree of the senate becomes constitutive in itself (Fishwick 2002, 348–349). 5 I follow Price 1984, 115, who himself follows Freud, in refusing to write oﬀ jokes in the Apocolocyntosis (and the Apocolocyntosis itself) as just jokes, since often “jokes are made precisely about those things that matter most.” 6 In every Senecan text in which Augustus appears, he carries the title diuus at least

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Augusti excessum simile prodigium, “We saw a similar prodigy around the time of the departure of the god Augustus.”7 Seneca also bears witness in the Natural Questions to the prodigy occuring at the “departure” of another Caesar whose deiﬁcation is perpetuated in the Senecan corpus, Julius Caesar (7.17.2): nec est quod putemus … hunc [sc. cometen] qui sub Nerone Caesare apparuit … illi similem fuisse qui post excessum diui Iulii ludis Veneris Genetricis circa undecimam horam diei emersit, “There is no reason we should think that … the one [comet] which appeared under Nero Caesar’s rule … was similar to the one which became visible after the depature of the god Julius, around the eleventh hour on the day of the games in honor of Venus Genetrix.” Claudius, dead and oﬃcially consecrated as diuus by the senate when the Natural Questions was produced, is mentioned in the text but the honoriﬁc title diuus that he proudly bears in other early imperial texts like the elder Pliny’s Natural History is denied to him.8 Claudius and the deiﬁed Augustus, who collide in the Apocolocyntosis, also meet by way of comparison in the De beneﬁciis (1.15.5–6)9: Crispus Passienus solebat dicere quorundam se iudicium malle quam beneﬁcium,10 quorundam beneﬁcium malle quam iudicium, et subicieonce. In his surviving texts, Seneca includes diuus in 27 of his 38 uses of the name Augustus. 7 excessus is an established Roman metaphor for apotheosis as Cic. Rep. 2.52 shows: post obitum uel potius excessum Romuli. Cf. in … excessu uitae in the argument for the soul’s immortality at Cic. Tusc. 1.27 and also Tacitus’ (mock-solemn?) Ab excessu Diui Augusti. The traditional presumption of Seneca’s scepticism might explain the Loeb editor’s tendentious rendering of Seneca’s diui Augusti excessum as the “death of the deiﬁed Augustus.” The title diuus and the concept of death may have been mutually exclusive: “the title Diuus represented a honoriﬁc maximum—and, decisively, circumvented any uncomfortable connotations of death” (Gradel 2002, 67). 8 The report of the Campanian earthquake (6.1) dates the Natural Questions to 62 or 63 (Griﬃn 1976, 2). As Price 1984, 77 notes, the title diuus was at this time quite clearly conscribed: “The term diuus was originally not sharply distinguished from deus (‘god’) but from the consecration of Caesar onwards it was used almost exclusively (outside poetical texts) of properly consecrated members of the imperial family. That is not to say that diuus and deus were two exclusive categories; rather, diuus was a subcategory of deus and it was thus perfectly possible to refer to a consecrated emperor as deus.” 9 The terminus post quem of the De beneﬁciis is 56, the terminus ante quem is the summer of 64 (Griﬃn 1976, 399). It is possible that Seneca omits Claudius’ diuus in Crispus Passienus’ “quote” because he would say this while Claudius was still alive and therefore unconsecrated. Claudius was, however, dead and oﬃcially diuus when Seneca wrote this passage and chose not to award Claudius the title in his analysis of Passienus’ reasoning (non erat accipiendum a Claudio, quod dabatur?). 10 On the interpretation of iudicium and beneﬁcium in this passage see Cooper and Procopé 1995, 211 n. 37.

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spencer cole bat exempla. “malo,” aiebat, “diui Augusti iudicium, malo Claudii beneﬁcium.” ego uero nullius puto expetendum esse beneﬁcium, cuius uile iudicium est. quid ergo? non erat accipiendum a Claudio, quod dabatur? Crispus Passienus used often to say that from some men he would rather have their favorable judgement than their bounty, and that from others he would rather have their bounty than their favorable judgement; and he would add examples. “In the case of the god Augustus,” he would say, “I prefer his favorable judgement, in the case of Claudius, his bounty.” I, for my part, think that we should never seek bounty from a man whose favorable judgement is not valued. What, then, is the case? Should not the gift that was oﬀered by Claudius have been accepted?

The two deceased emperors that had oﬃcial claim to the title diuus are placed in close quarters here, and the glaring absence of the title in the case of Claudius abides by the verdict handed down by Divus Augustus in the Apocolocyntosis, the text that portrays the revocation of the title from Claudius. In the Apocolocyntosis, immediately before Augustus’ detailed indictment of Claudius’ crimes, Diespiter makes a case for Claudius’ divinity (9.5)11: “cum diuus Claudius et diuum Augustum sanguine contingat nec minus diuam Augustam auiam suam, quam ipse deam esse iussit, longeque omnes mortales sapientia antecellat sitque e re publica esse aliquem qui cum Romulo possit ‘feruentia rapa uorare,’ censeo uti diuus Claudius ex hac die deus sit ita uti ante eum quis optimo iure factus sit.” “Since the deiﬁed Claudius is connected by blood with both the deiﬁed Augustus and no less with the deiﬁed Augusta his grandmother, whom he himself commanded to be a goddess, and since he far surpasses all mortal men in wisdom, and since it is in accordance with the interests of the state for there to be someone who can ‘gobble steaming turnips’ with Romulus, I move that from this day the deiﬁed Claudius be a god just like anyone before him who became one with the best justiﬁcation.”

Seneca suggests, here through Diespiter, that the senate’s consecration is not necessarily the ﬁnal word on such matters.12 Although Claudius arrives from Rome with his newly-minted title diuus, which is used twice here by Diespiter, Seneca insists that his divine status is an issue still pending. Seneca gives the ﬁnal word in the debate on Claudius’ divinity to an emperor before Claudius who did become a god with solid justiTranslations from the Apocolocyntosis are from Eden 1984; the others are my own. Claudius’ consecration by the senate may have in any case violated Augustan precedent (Fishwick 2002, 347–349). 11 12

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ﬁcation, Divus Augustus. Seneca’s Augustus, in a speech where Momigliano found a “keener sense of the conﬂicting purposes of Claudius’ reign than any later historian has shown,”13 immediately stakes his claim to divinity by reeling oﬀ his res gestae (10.2): “in hoc terra marique pacem peperi? ideo ciuilia bella compescui? ideo legibus urbem fundaui, operibus ornaui …”, “‘Was it to this end that I secured peace by land and sea? Was it for this that I checked the civil wars? Was it for this that I gave the city of Rome a foundation of laws, and an embellishment of public works …’” Augustus also uses the title diuus Claudius, but with sneering irony14 after cataloguing Claudius’ carnage (10.4): “dic mihi, diue Claudi: quare quemquam ex his, quos quasque occidisti, antequam de causa cognosceres, antequam audires, damnasti? hoc ubi ﬁeri solet?”, “‘Tell me, deiﬁed Claudius, why did you convict any of these men and women, whom you killed, before you could examine the case, before you could hear the evidence? Where is this the customary pratice?’” He then goes on to express his fears about Claudius trivializing divinity (11.4): “quis credet? dum tales deos facitis, nemo uos deos esse credet”, “‘Who will believe in him? While you create gods of this sort nobody will believe that you are gods.’” Divus Augustus’ forceful condemnation eﬀectively reverses in Senecan ﬁction the earthly senate’s consecration, and the title of diuus is revoked and never used again for Claudius in the Apocolocyntosis or in the rest of the extant Senecan corpus.15 As Claudius journeys down to meet his end as the slave of another undivine emperor, Gaius, he becomes simply Claudius once again, a reversion emphasized by the merciless repetition of his now unembellished name. This notion that Seneca’s texts add their own candidates to the ranks of the gods regardless of senatorial decree is supported by a puzzling episode at the beginning of the Apocolocyntosis, where Tiberius, whom the senate refused to deify, is said to have ascended to the gods along with Augustus (1.2): Appiae uiae curator est, qua scis et diuum Augustum et Tiberium Caesarem ad 1934, 77. Cf. the trenchant sarcasm at Tranq. 14.9, where Seneca refers to Gaius as Caesari deo nostro. 15 Claudius’ oﬃcial consecration was undermined in other creative ways. Not only was the temple to Diuus Claudius situated on a marginal site out on the Mons Caelius, which was rife with dubious associations (Fishwick 2002, 345–346); it was also later destroyed by Nero to clear space for the Domus Aurea (Griﬃn 1984, 98). Nero’s Diuus Claudius coins also deprived Claudius of the radiate crown found on Diuus Augustus coins (Griﬃn 1984, 217). 13 14

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deos isse, “He is superintendent of the Appian Way, along which, as you know, both the deiﬁed Augustus and Tiberius Caesar went to join the gods.”16 Both Seneca and his audience seem to be privy to (scis) this alternative pantheon of Roman emperors. So what about Nero? In the De clementia, a text probably contemporaneous with and complementary to the Apocolocyntosis,17 Seneca tries to steer Nero towards mildness and restraint with the example of Augustus, who, although imperfect, has risen to an unparalled stature (1.10): haec eum clementia ad salutem securitatemque perduxit; haec gratum ac fauorabilem reddidit, quamuis nondum subactis populi Romani ceruicibus manum imposuisset: haec hodieque praestat illi famam, quae uix uiuis principibus seruit. deum esse non tamquam iussi credimus. This mercifulness led him on to safety and security, this made him appreciated and popular, although the necks of the Roman people had not yet been subdued when he laid hand upon them; and today this secures a reputation for him which is hardly maintained even by living rulers. We consider him to be a god, but not by reason of decree.

These last words, deum esse non tamquam iussi credimus, are among the least conventional statements about an emperor’s divinity in surviving Roman literature. They need hardly be taken as proof that Seneca and Nero thought that Augustus was a god; we will of course never know the nature or degree of their convictions in this matter. They do at least suggest, however, that such reverence and its corresponding nomenclature were taken seriously enough by the elite author and audience for Seneca to use it as a potent motivational strategy in the De clementia. And there is also overlap here with the Apocolocyntosis in the distinction made between diﬀerent kinds of deiﬁcation. There are bogus, coercive deiﬁcations18 like the one enacted at Claudius’ 16 At Ad Marc. 15.1–3, Seneca likewise elevates Tiberius’ status towards Augustus’ divine level. This Appiae uiae curator is the character who is said to have sworn in the senate that he saw Gaius’ sister Drusilla ascending to the heavens (1.3). 17 Cf. Braund 1998, 73: “It [De clementia] is one of several works composed at the beginning of Nero’s reign which welcome the new emperor with a reﬂection or articulation of his self-representation and programme, often through antithesis with his predecessor Claudius. It is therefore rewarding to situate On Clemency alongside Seneca’s political satire of Claudius, Apocolocyntosis, as well as the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus and the proem to Lucan’s epic poem, Civil War (1.33–66).” 18 Cf. (a) Velleius Paterculus’ praise of Tiberius (2.126.1) and (b) Pliny’s praise of Trajan (Pan. 11.1–2) for their sincere deiﬁcations of (respectively) Augustus and Nerva. The distinctions made in these statements (cf. Clem. 10.3, deum esse non tamquam iussi credimus) along with the similar logic that rejects Claudius’ divinity and observes Augustus’

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command and mentioned by Diespiter (9.5): “diuam Augustam auiam suam, quam ipse deam esse iussit”, “‘the deiﬁed Augusta his grandmother, whom he himself commanded to be a goddess’”; and there is Claudius’ own, which stands in contrast to Augustus’ deiﬁcation, the consecration vindicated by Seneca at the outset of Nero’s principate both in the De clementia and in the Apocolocyntosis. When the unworthy Claudius is seen to be distanced from Divus Augustus, the prospects of divine status that are revealed to Nero in Apollo’s eulogy would seem to be much more exclusive and would therefore more eﬀectively serve the protreptic aims of the Apocolocyntosis. Apollo looks ahead to a bright future for Rome and its new ruler and hints that Nero, already godlike, may ultimately transcend the limits of mortality (4.1)19: 20

“ne demite, Parcae” Phoebus ait “uincat mortalis tempora uitae ille mihi similis uultu similisque decore nec cantu nec uoce minor. felicia lassis saecula praestabit legumque silentia rumpet. 25 qualis discutiens fugientia Lucifer astra aut qualis surgit redeuntibus Hesperus astris, qualis, cum primum tenebris Aurora solutis induxit rubicunda diem, Sol aspicit orbem lucidus et primos a carcere concitat axes: 30 talis Caesar adest, talem iam Roma Neronem aspiciet. ﬂagrat nitidus fulgore remisso uultus et adfuso ceruix formosa capillo.” “Take nothing away, Fates,” Phoebus said, “let the duration of human life be surpassed by him who is my like in looks and grace, my equal in voice and song. He will guarantee an era of prosperity to the weary and break the silence of the laws. Like the Morning Star, as he rises scattering the stars in ﬂight, or like the Evening Star, as he rises when the stars return (at dusk), like the gleaming Sun, as soon as rosy Dawn has in the Apocolocyntosis challenge Gradel’s contention that “The philosophical notions of absolute divinity exploited by Seneca were simply relevant to the relative godhead accorded to the Roman emperor by the Senate.” (2002, 330). We should hesitate to concede that Pliny and Velleius Paterculus were lost along with Seneca in the “endless, airy arguments of philosophy” (Gradel 2002, 328). 19 There are intriguing points of contact between Apollo’s eulogy and the De clementia, a text in which Seneca also compares Nero to a star (1.3.3) and the Sun (1.8.4– 5). Seneca’s early use of solar imagery for Nero in the De clementia weighs in against the contention that Apollo’s epiphany in Apocol. 4 is a later interpolation (see n. 38 of Katharina Volk’s paper in this volume). Nero later develops these conceits by appearing on coins wearing Helios’ radiate crown (Griﬃn 1984, 217).

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spencer cole dispelled the shadows and led in the day, as he gazes on the world and begins to whip up his chariot from the starting barrier: such a Caesar is at hand, such a Nero shall Rome now gaze upon. His radiant face blazes with gentle brilliance and his shapely neck with ﬂowing hair.”

Seneca has Apollo sing of divinity as the ultimate reward for the princeps who presides over a new era of Roman reconstruction. We may ﬁnd here a parallel to the prospects of divinity, with their implicit conditions and challenges, that Virgil extends to Octavian in the ﬁrst Georgic, conditions and challenges largely met if we go by the curriculum vitae Divus Augustus gives us at Apocolocyntosis 10.2 (“in hoc terra marique pacem peperi? ideo ciuilia bella compescui? ideo legibus urbem fundaui, operibus ornaui …?”). Nero thus had two rather distinct models to contemplate as his reign commenced.20 By presenting the divergent fates of the deiﬁed Augustus and Claudius, Seneca intimates that the hyperbolical praise oﬀered by Apollo is ultimately contingent upon Nero realizing the hopes that Apollo relays at Apocol. 4.1.23–24.21 These words pose a challenge that Nero may have heard ﬁrst hand, if we follow Eden in locating the Apocolocyntosis among the court Saturnalia festivities of 5422; 4.1.30—talis Caesar adest—may indeed be cleverly signaling Nero’s presence in the Apocolocyntosis’ original audience. Nero of course ends up falling far short of these early hopes, but the logic of the De clementia and Apocolocyntosis ultimately holds true: because of this failure a diuus Nero is nowhere to be found.23

20 Nero’s cultivation of Apollo and his refusal of silver and gold statues of himself (Tac. Ann. 13.10) suggest that he was taking cues from Augustus. 21 Altman 1938, 204 observes that in the Senecan scheme emperors would have to prove their divinity just as anyone else would: “the emperor was not divine because of his position but had as did all men, an opportunity to become godlike through virtue.” 22 1984, 5. 23 The sole mention found is Tac. Ann. 15.74 which refers to a temple of diuus Nero proposed by Anicius Cerialis in the aftermath of the suppression of the Pisonian conspiracy of 65: reperio in commentariis senatus Cerialem Anicium consulem designatum pro sententia dixisse, ut templum diuo Neroni quam maturrime publica pecunia poneretur. quod quidem ille decernebat tamquam mortale fastigium egresso et uenerationem hominum merito, sed ipse prohibuit, ne interpretatione quorundam ad omen [dolum] sui exitus uerteretur: nam deum honor principi non ante habetur, quam agere inter homines desierit. Nero’s veto of the idea betrays not only his paranoia but also his observance of the precedent of Augustus, who was granted the title diuus by the senate only after his death/purported apotheosis.

COSMIC DISRUPTION IN SENECA’S THYESTES: TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT AN ECLIPSE

Katharina Volk One of the most striking features of the plot of Seneca’s Thyestes is the reversal of the sun: at the sight of the title character’s grisly banquet, the sungod turns his chariot around in horror, hastening back to the east and casting the earth in appropriate darkness.* One of the most striking features of the reversal of the sun is that it is impossible to tell when exactly it occurs. Throughout the play, characters react to this strange and fearsome celestial event, beginning in the Prologue (Act 1) with the Fury’s observation that the sun is hesitating to let the day begin (120–121); continuing with the Messenger’s remarks on the disappearance of Phoebus (636–638; 776–778; 784–788), the choral song about the same phenomenon (789–884), and Atreus’ gloating at his success in instilling fear in the gods (892–897); and ending with Thyestes’ realization in the ﬁnal act that he has driven the sun away by feasting on his children (1035–1036). A close look at the tenses used in these passages reveals that even when one character has described the action of the sun in the perfect, as something completed, another character will subsequently use the present to refer to the very same event as something still ongoing.1 While the motif of the sun’s ﬂight at the cena Thyestea was, by Seneca’s time, a canonical part of the myth, the multiplication of solar eclipses in the Thyestes is unusual and calls for an explanation. With a lot of special pleading, one can perhaps just about make the case that all the references throughout the play are to one and the same heavenly phenomenon, a disaster that is, as it were, unfolding in slow motion.2 * My thanks go to William Harris for inviting me to the conference “New Directions in Seneca Studies” (Columbia University, February 2004) and to the participants, especially Richard Tarrant and Gareth Williams, for comments and suggestions. 1 The present tense is used to describe the ﬂeeing of the sun by the Messenger in 637, throughout the choral song 789–884, and by Thyestes in 990–994, while the perfect occurs in 778 (Messenger), 892 (Atreus), and 1035 (Thyestes). 2 See Schmitz 1993, 109–110 and Schiesaro 2003, 180 n. 12; Hine 1981, 263 believes that the repeated mention of the sun’s disappearance is simply meant to remind the

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However, such an approach glosses over the tensions and contradictions present in the text. More radical is the suggestion of Jo-Ann Shelton (1975), who proposes that the Prologue, in which the reversal of the sun is imminent (see 120–121), takes place, not before, but at the same time as the rest of the play. There are reasons aside from the behavior of the sun that make Shelton’s idea attractive, but the technique of showing subsequent scenes that depict simultaneous events seems to me to be more at home in 20th-century ﬁlm than in 1st-century tragedy, and even if the Prologue can be understood as disconnected from the temporal sequence of the rest of the play, this still does not explain why in Acts 4 and 5, too, the ﬂight of the sun should happen more than once.3 In my opinion, the apparently repeated occurrence of the eclipse is not so much a plot device as a means to develop character psychology.4 The question is not, When does the sun disappear?, but rather, When do individual characters become aware of the sun’s disappearance?, and How do they react to it? Typically, awareness of the sun’s reversal accompanies recognition of Atreus’ terrible crime and Thyestes’ feast, and just as the celestial disturbance mimics the crime on earth, so the characters’ reactions to the sun’s behavior are for the most part closely bound up with their reactions to the happenings closer to home. What is interesting is how diﬀerently the individual characters respond to the reversal of the sun. Just as the disaster in eﬀect happens again and again for each and every person, so every character has his own special take on the event, his own way of looking at the eclipse.5 In what follows, I shall examine two of these reactions, that of the chorus in its fourth ode and that of Atreus at the beginning of Act 5. I shall attempt to put them in context, taking account not audience of the fact that it is dark (which would not have been apparent in an ancient theatrical production without artiﬁcial lighting). 3 On Seneca’s unorthodox treatment of dramatic time, see Owen 1968, 296–300 (speciﬁcally on the Thyestes) and Schiesaro 2003, 177–220 (on Senecan tragedy in general). 4 Note that I refer to the event as an eclipse merely as a kind of scientiﬁc shorthand: the phenomenon is not explicitly called or described as an eclipse in the play (the stress throughout is not on the sun’s being obscured, but on its “ﬂight”). However, Seneca’s imitation, in the fourth choral song, of Pindar’s ninth Paean, which treats a solar eclipse (see Tarrant 1985, 204), points to the fact that an eclipse is indeed what the playwright had in mind. 5 Cf. Owen 1968, 298, Schmitz 1993, 114–116 and 205–206, and Schiesaro 2003, 172.

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just of the play itself but other areas as well whose examination I believe sheds light on the text. These include Seneca’s prose works and general world-view; philosophical, especially Stoic, ideas about nature popular at the time; the political situation in which the Thyestes was composed; and the language of political ideology prevalent in this period. I am aware, of course, that this historicizing approach has its pitfalls, for how can we gauge to which extent a literary work is representative of the intellectual and political culture of its time? The relationship of Senecan philosophy to Senecan tragedy is known to be highly controversial, and so is the relationship of Senecan tragedy to contemporary politics. However, I have not been able to resist the temptation to deal in a single paper with Seneca the poet, Seneca the philosopher, and Seneca the politician, and I hope that my attempt to contextualize the eclipse of the Thyestes will throw new light on certain aspects of this fascinating play. 1. The Chorus: Catastrophe (789–884) To begin with a more philosophical approach to the reversal of the sun, the fourth and last choral song of the Thyestes constitutes the play’s most extended discussion of the celestial event. It is a tour de force of agitated anapaests, characterized by both emotional intensity and a high-style display of learning. The beginning of the ode depicts the chorus’s horror and incomprehension as they witness the sungod turn around in midcourse and make his way back to the east: quo terrarum superumque potens, cuius ad ortus noctis opacae decus omne fugit, quo uertis iter medioque diem perdis Olympo? cur, Phoebe, tuos rapis aspectus? (789–793) Whereto, lord of earth and sky, at whose rising all beauty of dark night ﬂees, whereto do you turn your path and lose the day in the middle of heaven? Why, Phoebus, are you taking your sight away from us?6

After this opening, the members of the chorus continue to confront Phoebus with horriﬁed questions about his erratic behavior (794–813) and dwell at some length on the thought of how the sudden nightfall 6 I cite the Thyestes from Otto Zwierlein’s OCT (1986); translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

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at midday constitutes an utter reversal of all laws of nature (814–826). Then, however, a new and terrifying idea occurs to them: What if this is not just night? sed quidquid id est, utinam nox sit! trepidant, trepidant pectora magno percussa metu, ne fatali cuncta ruina quassata labent iterumque deos hominesque premat deforme chaos, iterum terras et mare cingens et uaga picti sidera mundi natura tegat. (827–834) But whatever it is, if only it were night! My heart shakes, shakes, struck by great fear lest everything, hit by fatal disaster, dissolve and fall, and formless chaos take over again gods and men, and nature cover again the earth and the surrounding sea and the moving stars of the spangled ﬁrmament.

The chorus’s fear that this is the end of the world is developed at some length (835–875) and with great attention to detail as the chorus imagines how all the heavenly bodies, including every sign of the zodiac, will fall out of the sky. At the end of the ode, the chorus returns to its own situation, lamenting its “harsh fate” of being part of the generation that is to witness, and perish in, the end of the world: o nos dura sorte creatos, seu perdidimus solem miseri, siue expulimus! (879–881) Oh us, born by a harsh fate, whether we wretchedly lost the sun or whether we drove him out!

This very thought does, however, aﬀord the chorus a strange sort of comfort: abeant questus, discede timor: uitae est auidus quisquis non uult mundo secum pereunte mori. (882–884) Cease lamentations, fear go away: he is greedy of life who does not wish to die when the world is perishing together with him.

After all their horror and questioning, the members of the chorus have come to accept their fate. It is obvious that the ode has a strong Stoic coloring. Famously (or infamously), the Stoics believed in the periodic destruction of the cosmos, a view that appears to underlie the chorus’s ready adoption of the

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theory that the end of the world is nigh, even though their idea of a kind of cosmic implosion is diﬀerent from the orthodox Stoic doctrine of universal conﬂagration or ekpyrosis.7 The chorus’s ﬁnal uncomplaining acceptance of imminent death would seem a textbook case of Stoic amor fati, a concept prominent in Seneca’s prose writings. Since according to Stoic doctrine humans are subject to fate no matter what, they ought to follow it willingly: ducunt uolentem fata, nolentem trahunt, as Seneca, paraphrasing Cleanthes, memorably put it himself (Ep. 107.11). By acting in accordance with fate, humans partake in the divine motions of the cosmos: Seneca considered this a comfort (cf. grande solacium est cum universo rapi, Prov. 5.8), even in those cases where it meant being subject to catastrophe. In fact, it would seem that Seneca considered being undone by natural disaster a not undesirable way of death: better to go out with a bang—being struck by lightning, for example—than to succumb, ignobly, to something as banal as diarrhea.8 When the ode is looked at in isolation, the members of the chorus appear to be good Stoics who in the face of adversity manage to display a fair amount of apatheia. Once we take into account the immediate context of the play, though, the chorus’s reaction to the reversal of the sun seems bizarre. Strikingly, it betrays no awareness of any connection between the celestial disturbance and the banquet of Thyestes; as a matter of fact, the two brothers are not mentioned a single time in the ode—and neither is anything else that pertains to the present situation in Argos. This is especially strange given that in the preceding fourth act, the chorus was treated to an extended messenger speech about the butchering of the children and the preparation of the awful meal, a speech that the chorus again and again interrupted with animated questions. At the very end of that act, the Messenger referred explicitly to the disappearance of the sun, which he himself linked to the appalling goings-on in the house of Pelops: o Phoebe patiens, fugeris retro licet medioque raptum merseris caelo diem, sero occidisti. … in malis unum hoc tuis 7 On Stoic ideas of periodic cosmic destruction, see Long and Sedley 1987, 1.274– 279 and 308–313, as well as Mansfeld 1979, Long 1985, and Wildberger (forthcoming), Ch. 1.3. 8 See Q Nat. 2.59.9–11 on death by lightning, as well as Q Nat. 6.2.7–9 and 32.8 on the positive aspects of dying in an earthquake.

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katharina volk bonum est, Thyesta, quod mala ignoras tua. sed et hoc peribit. uerterit currus licet sibi ipse Titan obuium ducens iter tenebrisque facinus obruat taetrum nouis nox missa ab ortu tempore alieno grauis, tamen uidendum est. tota pateﬁent mala. (776–778 + 782–788) O patient Phoebus, though you have turned back and drowned the day torn from the middle of the sky, you have set too late. … This is the one good thing in your misery, Thyestes: that you do not know about your misery. But this too will perish. Even if Titan turned around his chariot, journeying counter to himself, and heavy night sent from the east at the wrong time is covering the dire crime with new darkness—nevertheless, it must be seen. All the evil will become apparent.

It is hard to see how the chorus could have missed the point. This disconnection between the choral ode and what precedes has rightly exercised scholars and, together with similar instances from other tragedies, has been used as an argument for the theory that Seneca’s plays were written for recitation or solitary reading rather than for performance.9 It is hard to see, though, why the apparent contradiction should be any less strongly felt by readers or the audience at a recitation—modern scholars typically “just read” the play, and the problem is nevertheless staring them right in the face. A possible explanation for the chorus’s silence about Atreus’ crime is that they simply do not believe that it is the cause of the sun’s reversal: having been presented by the Messenger with a supposed chain of cause and eﬀect, the chorus rejects his easy thesis and embarks on a quest for its own explanation (hence the questioning, the slow progress toward a solution that we see in the ode). While not necessarily convincing, their answer ends up being much more sophisticated and philosophical than that proposed by the Messenger—or indeed by any other character in the play. Such skepticism on the part of the chorus is not unparalleled in Senecan tragedy. Another “disconnected” choral song that has caused 9 The idea that Seneca’s tragedies were written as “Rezitationsdramen” is put forth most prominently by Zwierlein 1966, who discusses the problems with the fourth choral ode in the Thyestes on 77–78. That Seneca intended the plays primarily for private reading is suggested by Fantham 1982, 48–49. In recent years, scholars have reacted against the idea that Seneca’s use of the chorus is inherently undramatic (see esp. Davis 1993 and cf. now also Hill 2000), just as the pendulum has generally swung back in favor of the idea that Seneca composed his plays for stage performance (see, e.g., the papers in Harrison 2000).

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much scholarly handwringing is the second ode of Troades. There, the chorus of Greek soldiers wonders whether the soul survives after death and comes to the conclusion that it does not.10 This is surprising since in the preceding second act (during which the chorus was present), Talthybius recounted a vision of the ghost of Achilles and the Greek leaders decided to sacriﬁce Polyxena to appease the spirit of the dead man—happenings that imply belief in a life after death. But just as in the Thyestes, the chorus, when confronted with supposedly supernatural phenomena, rejects the popular interpretation and opts instead for a scientiﬁc, philosophical way of looking at things. To return to the Thyestes, the chorus’s refusal to regard the eclipse as a consequence of Thyestes’ banquet raises a number of questions concerning the interpretation of the celestial irregularity within the play and, ultimately, about Stoic views of nature and the role of Stoic physics within Senecan tragedy. With the exception of the chorus, all characters view the reversal of the sun as a direct reaction to the killing and eating of the children, as is particularly clear from Thyestes’ words in Act 5: ATREVS epulatus ipse es impia natos dape. THYESTES hoc est deos quod puduit, hoc egit diem auersum in ortus. (1034–1036) Atreus: You yourself have feasted on your children in an impious banquet. Thyestes: This is what caused shame to the gods, this is what drove the day back to its rising.

Throughout the play, the sun’s reaction is variously attributed to fear (266 and cf. the repeated use of fugere), shame (1035), or the wish to prevent the crime (775–777) or cover it up (784–788), and in most of the references, the heavenly body is personiﬁed as an anthropomorphic 10 It is generally believed that the ode is sung by the chorus of Trojan women, but this assumption leads to insurmountable problems (cf. Zwierlein 1966, 88–89 and Fantham 1982, 262–264): if the female chorus is present during the Greek war council of Act 2, why are the Trojans of the later acts unaware of the Greek plots against them? Also, the belief that there is no life after death contradicts the sentiments voiced in the ﬁrst choral ode, where the Trojan women dwell at length on Priam’s sojourn in the realm of the blessed (see esp. Tro. 156–163). It is thus more attractive to assume that the female chorus is absent during Act 2 and replaced by a chorus of Greek soldiers, as indicated by the manuscripts of the A family, which notes the entrance of a chorus grecorum before line 164 (see Stroh and Breitenberger 1994, 261 + n. 69 and cf. Fantham 2000, 17–19). The existence of a second chorus is not without parallel in the Senecan corpus: the Agamemnon, too, has two choruses, one of Argive citizens and another of Trojan captives.

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god, the Phoebus of Greek and Roman mythology. What we have in the Thyestes therefore are two radically diﬀerent ways of understanding natural disaster: in the ultimate opinion of the chorus, even the ﬁnal cataclysm is just part of the natural course of things, the orderly evolving of fate, to which humans are subject; in the opinion of everybody else, it is a unique disruption of the order of things, an event on the divine plane that is directly caused by humans. Interestingly enough, both points of view can to a certain extent be described as “Stoic”— and the same ambivalence about the status of natural disasters can be found in Seneca’s philosophical writings as well. The idea that human crimes cause disruptions in the regular order of nature runs throughout Senecan tragedy, where hardly a hand is lifted on earth without the occurrence of thunder and lightning, eclipses, earthquakes, etc.11 As Thomas Rosenmeyer in particular has shown, the extreme susceptibility of the cosmos to disruptions of this kind is closely bound up with the Stoic concept of sympatheia—“sympathy,” but literally “suﬀering together”—the idea that in the universe, which is a physical continuum, everything is connected to everything else, with the result that the smallest event at one point will have an inﬂuence on the whole.12 Now, usually the Stoics invoked the tanta rerum consentiens, conspirans, continuata cognatio (Cic. Nat. D. 2.19) in an optimistic way, in order to stress the inherent order of the universe. However, in what Rosenmeyer terms “a kind of rogue Stoicism” (1989, 151), the same arguments can be used to demonstrate that because of sympatheia, cosmic order is in constant peril and that even the heavens can become infected with the evil done in the human sphere. As the Fury puts it at the beginning of the Thyestes, not even the stars, not even the light of day can remain unaﬀected by the sins of the Tantalids: non sit a vestris malis immune caelum—cur micant stellae polo ﬂammaeque seruant debitum mundo decus? nox alta ﬁat, excidat caelo dies. (48–51) Let heaven not be untouched by your evils—why do stars shine on the sky and the lights preserve the order owed to the cosmos? Let there be deep night, may the day fall out of the sky.

11 On cosmic disruption in Senecan tragedy see esp. Rosenmeyer 1989 (particularly 148–159 on supposed instances of the end of the world), as well as Schmitz 1993. 12 On Stoic cosmology (esp. as reﬂected in Latin literature), see Lapidge 1989, 1381– 1385 (1383–1384 on sympatheia), as well as Wildberger (forthcoming).

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So is it fate that makes the sun go out or is it human wickedness? By having his characters react to the eclipse in diametrically opposed ways, Seneca in the Thyestes manages to voice both theories, both of which smack of Stoicism, though very diﬀerent ﬂavors thereof. However, it may not be possible to distinguish clearly between the two. At the end of the fourth ode, while reﬂecting on its own role in the universal disaster, the chorus wonders, nos e tanto uisi populo digni, premeret quos euerso cardine mundus? o nos dura sorte creatos, seu perdidimus solem miseri, siue expulimus! (875–881) Of the great mass of humankind, have we been found to deserve to be crushed by heaven ripped oﬀ its hinges? Oh us, born by a harsh fate, whether we wretchedly lost the sun or whether we drove him out!

Yes, it is their fate (cf. dura sors, 878) to perish together with the mundus, but some questions remain open. Have they perhaps deserved (cf. digni, 876) to be buried by the collapsing universe? Rather than having simply lost the sun, have they actively driven it out (cf. 880–881)? Is the end of the world not so much a regularly occurring, natural event as a punishment—a punishment not for Atreus, as it seems, but for this particular generation of human beings? These questions go unanswered, but we see how even in this highly deterministic ode, human agency has come in again through the back door.13 The relationship of ethics and physics is similarly ill-deﬁned in Seneca’s Naturales quaestiones, a work devoted to providing scientiﬁc explanations for natural phenomena, especially catastrophic ones (a topic that the author seems particularly fond of). Thus, for example, Seneca dedicates the end of Book 3 (Q Nat. 3.27–30) to a description of the ﬂood that will unfailingly come and cover the earth, thereby putting an end to the present generation of men. This event is conceived of as a general cataclysm, and Seneca draws an explicit parallel to the Stoic notion of world conﬂagration (3.28.7–29.1). If we compare his vignette of the deluge with the treatment of the reversal of the sun in 13 Cf. Schmitz 1993, 97–99, who, however, believes that expulimus (881) is the chorus’s acknowledgment that Atreus’ crime is the actual cause of the reversal, with the result that there ultimately is no contradiction to the messenger speech; similarly Giancotti 1989, 164.

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the Thyestes, interesting similarities emerge. Seneca’s main point is that the ﬂood, like other disastrous events, is entirely natural and ordained by fate.14 This is orthodox Stoic doctrine, just as we ﬁnd it at the end of the fourth choral ode in the Thyestes. However—as in the ode and to an even greater extent—there is in the Naturales quaestiones a moral aspect to the disaster, which is expressly said to occur in order to rid the earth of the present evil generation of humans (3.28.2) and to replace them with a kind of man inscius scelerum et melioribus auspiciis natus (3.30.8). What Seneca has done is blend the Stoic idea of the mechanical and morally neutral destruction of the universe15 with the traditional idea of natural disaster, especially deluge, as a punishment for mortals and a wiping out of their sinful race.16 In Latin literature, this motif is found prominently in Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.260–312, which is clearly an important model for Seneca, who quotes numerous times from the poet’s description of the ﬂood and even digresses on the literary merits of individual lines (Q Nat. 3.27.13–14 and 28.2).17 As a result, two diﬀerent models of natural explanation are allowed to co-exist in the Naturales quaestiones, just as they are in the Thyestes, and the question of whether catastrophic cosmic events are somehow caused by human beings or whether they just happen according to their own rules remains unresolved.18 14 Cf. fatalis dies diluuii (3.27.1), cum aﬀuerit illa necessitas temporis, multas simul fata causas mouent (3.27.3), iam autem a primo die mundi, cum in hunc habitum ex informi unitate discederet, quando mergerentur terrena decretum est (3.30.1), and passim. 15 In orthodox Stoicism, the periodic destruction of the world is neither occasioned by human deterioration nor understood as some kind of improvement: the cosmos is perfect as it is and after its conﬂagration is reconstituted in exactly the same way as it was before; see Long 1985, 25 and Long and Sedley 1987, 1.311 (though note the somewhat puzzling claim of Plutarch, Comm. not. 1067A [= Long and Sedley 46N = SVF 2.606] that right after the Stoic conﬂagration, the universe is all wise and no evil remains). 16 See Waiblinger 1977, 44–53 (“Seneca hat diese traditionelle Vorstellung von der Sintﬂut, die die Götter zur Bestrafung des Menschengeschlechts schicken, mit der stoischen Auﬀassung der periodischen Weltuntergänge verbunden,” 44) and Mader 1983, 62–66; diﬀerently Strohm 1977, 317–319. Generally on the idea of deluge as a divine punishment in ancient literature and thought, see Caduﬀ 1986, 205–216. 17 On Seneca’s criticism and imitation of the Ovidian passage, see Degl’Innocenti Pierini 1984. 18 Note additionally the presence, in the ﬂood description of Naturales quaestiones 3, of the kind of “pessimistic” references to Stoic sympatheia that Thomas Rosenmeyer considers typical for the tragedies. The very connectedness of the universe makes it extremely unstable (quicquid ex hoc statu rerum natura ﬂexerit, in exitium mortalium satis est, 3.27.4), and the delicate balance of the cosmos is always endangered (temptatur diuelliturque concordia, 3.30.5).

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A similar conﬂation of ideas can be observed in the tragedy Octavia, which was not written by Seneca but is clearly inﬂuenced by his works (see also below). There, the character Seneca in his monologue combines the idea of the fated destruction of the world with the Myth of the Ages: qui [sc. aether] si senescit, tantus in caecum chaos casurus iterum, tunc adest mundo dies supremus ille, qui premat genus impium caeli ruina rursus ut stirpem nouam generet renascens melior, ut quondam tulit iuuenis, tenente regna Saturno poli. (391–396) When the sky grows old, about to fall again into blind chaos, then that last day of the world has come, which will crush again the impious race with the collapse of heaven in order that, reborn and improved, it may bring forth new oﬀspring, as it once bore, when it was young, when Saturn held the reigns of heaven.

The anticipated destruction of the mundus appears to be a natural process (cf. senescit, 391), but at the same time, it is explicitly said to punish the genus impium of humans. In what follows (397–434), Seneca chronicles the increasing deterioration since the Golden Age, ending with the observation that things have reached their nadir in the age of Nero: collecta uitia per tot aetates diu in nos redundant: saeculo premimur graui. (429–430) The vices, gathered together through so many ages, are breaking in on us. We are weighed down by a heavy time.

The implication, of course, is that the end is near.19 As far as the Thyestes is concerned, it is especially ironic that both interpretations of the sun’s reversal—that it happens according to fate or otherwise is caused by human fault—ultimately prove inadequate. Contrary to the conclusion of the chorus, this is not the end of the world, which makes the noble death wish at the end of the ode appear somewhat ridiculous.20 On the other hand, the supposed mechanism by which small human acts have big cosmic eﬀects according to an unbroken sympathetic chain of being turns out not always to work to satisfaction either. Sometimes, nature does not react to human crime, as Thyestes ﬁnds out at the very end of the play. After recognizing that 19 On the motif of cosmic destruction in the Octavia, see Mader 1983, 67, Schmitz 1993, 97 n. 284, and esp. Williams 1994, particularly 180–182 and 188–191. 20 Cf. Schiesaro 2003, 173–174.

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he has eaten his own children, he asks Jupiter to hit him with a bolt of lightning: uindica amissum diem, iaculare ﬂammas, lumen ereptum polo fulminibus exple. … me pete, trisulco ﬂammeam telo facem per pectus hoc transmitte. (1085–1087 + 1089–1090) Avenge the lost day, hurl ﬂames, make up with lightning for the light snatched away from the sky. … Aim at me, send a torch with threepronged missile through this breast.

Such an action on the part of god/nature would be an adequate response to what Thyestes has done, but the hoped-for disaster does not materialize. Thyestes therefore pathetically has to scale down his prayer, asking instead for eternal night: si nihil superos mouet nullumque telis impios numen petit, aeterna nox permaneat et tenebris tegat immensa longis scelera. (1092–1095) If nothing moves the ones above, and no god aims at the impious with missiles, may eternal night persist and cover immense crime with long darkness.

However, this wish is not be granted either. Ultimately, cosmic disruption cannot be explained or second-guessed, and it deﬁnitely cannot be predicted or made to happen.21 The play’s characters aﬀected by the reversal of the sun simply have to suﬀer through it as its passive victims, just as they are passive victims to the crime of Atreus. This brings me to the second part of my paper, and to a rather diﬀerent way of looking at the eclipse. 2. Atreus: Apotheosis (885–919) Immediately after the end of the choral ode, Atreus enters, and unlike all other characters, he is not disturbed by the reversal of the sun. On the contrary, he is delighted, beginning his monologue with the following assertion: 21 See Rosenmeyer 1989, 160–203 on the futile “rage to embrace nature” exhibited by Senecan tragic characters; cf. also Schmitz 1993, 3–4.

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aequalis astris gradior et cunctos super altum superbo uertice attingens polum. (885–886) I walk equal to the stars and, above everyone, touching high heaven with the top of my head.

“Touching the sky” is the Roman equivalent of our “being on cloud nine.” It connotes elation, as well as achievement and fame, as is apparent, for example, from the famous end of Horace’s ﬁrst ode22: quodsi me lyricis uatibus inseres, sublimi feriam sidera uertice. (Hor. Carm. 1.1.35–36) And if you count me among the lyric poets, I will touch the stars with the top of my head.

However, in the case of Atreus, I suggest that he is saying more than that he is really pleased with himself. Describing himself as moving among the stars, Atreus takes on the role of the sun that he has driven away. Since the other gods have ﬂed, he is now the most exalted of heavenly beings: o me caelitum excelsissimum regumque regem! (911–912) Oh me, most prominent of heavenly gods and king of kings!

Even in the prevailing darkness, he will “throw light” on Thyestes’ suﬀering, that is, act like the sun: etiam die nolente discutiam tibi tenebras, miseriae sub quibus latitant tuae. (896–897)23 Even against the wish of the day, I will scatter for you the darkness, under which your misery lies hidden.

In other words, Atreus presents himself as having undergone catasterism (transformation into a heavenly body) and apotheosis (transformation into a divinity). He has become the sungod.24 22 On the Senecan expression and its Horatian intertext, see Calder 1983, 189 and 197 n. 45, Tarrant 1985, ad loc., Giancotti 1989, ad loc., Davis 1993, 215, and Schiesaro 2003, 59. 23 For discutere (cf. discutiam, 896) in a solar context, see Verg. G. 3.357 (tum sol pallentis haud umquam discutit umbras), the references in OLD s.v. “discutio 3a,” and Schmitz 1993, 101 + n. 296. 24 For a linguistic parallel, see [Sen.] Herc. Oet. 1581, where the anticipated apotheosis of Hercules is described, tu comes Phoebo, comes ibis astris. Generally on Atreus’ tendency toward “auto-apotheosis” throughout the Thyestes, see Hine 1981, 264–265, Giancotti 1989, 125–126 and 191, and Schiesaro 2003, esp. 97–98 and 152.

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The idea that human beings, especially powerful rulers, could become stars and/or gods was, of course, perfectly acceptable at the time of Seneca. Ever since Julius Caesar had been turned into a comet after his death, it had become expected for the Julio-Claudian emperors to be posthumously deiﬁed (though not all of them were) and to be treated already during their lifetime, if not as gods, then at least as future gods. I suggest that in portraying Atreus as usurping the role of Phoebus, Seneca is alluding to the antics of a particular emperor, Nero, who as part of his massive program of self-promotion particularly liked to present himself as the sungod.25 We see this equation in, for example, the proem to Lucan’s Bellum civile, where the poet suggests that once the emperor has risen to the stars after his death, he might take over the chariot of the sun: te, cum statione peracta astra petes serus, praelati regia caeli excipiet gaudente polo; seu sceptra tenere, seu te ﬂammigeros Phoebi conscendere currus, telluremque nihil mutato sole timentem igne uago lustrare iuuet, tibi numine ab omni cedetur, iurisque tui natura relinquet, quis deus esse uelis, ubi regnum ponere mundi. (Luc. 1.45–52) When your watch on earth is over and you seek the stars at last, the celestial palace you prefer will welcome you, and the sky will be glad. Whether you choose to wield Jove’s sceptre, or to mount the ﬁery chariot of Phoebus and circle earth with your moving ﬂame—earth unterriﬁed by the transference of the sun; every god will give place to you, and Nature will leave it to you to determine what deity you wish to be, and where to establish your universal throne. (Translation from J.D. Duﬀ’s Loeb)

Even while still alive, however, Nero, who was himself an avid charioteer, by various means pressed his identiﬁcation with the god. To mention just a few examples: the emperor was depicted on coins with a radiate crown26; at the extravagant pageant put on in 66 for the coronation of the Armenian king Tiridates, the Theater of Pompey was covered with an awning that showed Nero driving Phoebus’ chariot27; 25 There is ample literature on Nero’s self-presentation as the sungod; see esp. Bergmann 1998, 133–230 and now Champlin 2003a, 112–144. 26 See Bergmann 1998, 150–151, 157–167, 174–181, 185–189, and 201–213 and Champlin 2003a, 116–117 + 300 nn. 8 and 9. 27 See Dio 62.6.2 and the comments of Bergmann 1998, 181–185 and Champlin 2003a, 126.

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and the emperor’s infamous Golden House was understood to be a replica of the palace of the sun.28 Given this prevalence of solar ideology and iconography in Nero’s reign, it is attractive to view Atreus’ quasi-apotheosis as the sun as a subtle anti-Neronian allusion. Readers of the Thyestes have always been taken with the idea that the mad and cruel, but perversely fascinating, tyrant of Seneca’s tragedy is meant to evoke the mad and cruel, but apparently also fascinating, tyrant of the poet’s own lifetime, and that the play is thus an indictment of Nero’s reckless pursuit of power.29 I think this hunch is correct. In addition to the “Neronian feel” of Atreus’ identiﬁcation with the sungod, there are three further arguments to be adduced in favor of a Nero-critical reading: First, the story of Atreus and Thyestes had in Rome long been considered a kind of testing-ground for assessing the relationship of potentially tyrannical rulers and their subjects, with the result that a play based on the myth automatically raised the expectation that it would be critical of the regime.30 Thus Seneca himself implies in De ira 1.20.4 that the famous oderint dum metuant, uttered by Accius’ Atreus in the celebrated play of the same name, was a jab at Sulla (which, however, is chronologically quite impossible31); during the reign of Tiberius, the playwright Aemilius Scaurus was forced to commit suicide because the emperor suspected that his tragedy Atreus was meant to reﬂect circumstances in contemporary Rome (see Dio 58.24.3–5); and in Tacitus, Dialogus 3.3, the tragedian Curiatius Maternus hints that his next tragedy, Thyestes, will provide outspoken political commentary. The famous Thyestes of Varius Rufus, too, may have had a political, specif-

See Bergmann 1998, 190–194 and Champlin 2003a, 127–132. See, e.g., Lefèvre 1985, 1280–1281 (“Natürlich liegt es nahe, bei Atreus an Nero zu denken,” 1280), with references to earlier literature. Putative allusions in the Thyestes to contemporary events are discussed by Picone 1976 and Nisbet 1990. Schiesaro 2003, 5–6, 97, and 153 raises the possibility of a parallel Atreus ~ Nero, but warns against a narrow reading à clef, while Calder 1983 claims that Atreus was intended by Seneca as a positive (!) role-model for Nero. Generally speaking, in what follows I am more interested in detecting an allusion to Nero in the play than in interpreting it in detail; see my remarks in fn. 40 below. 30 Cf. Leigh 1996, who observes how in Rome, the story of Atreus and Thyestes became “the fundamental paradigm for anti-tyrannical discourse in tragedy” (187); see also the survey of “Thyestes on the Roman stage” in Erasmo 2004, 101–117. 31 See Leigh 1996, 187 and 195–196 n. 76. Seneca uses the Accius quote in the context of the topic of tyranny also at Clem. 1.12.4 and 2.2.2; cf. Richard Tarrant’s paper in this volume. 28 29

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ically anti-Antonian, agenda.32 Seneca’s very choice of the myth must therefore have appeared suspicious, and even if the author had no intention of alluding to Nero’s reign, there would have been a good chance that his contemporary audience and readers would nevertheless have made the connection.33 Which, as a matter of fact, is exactly what happened (and this is my second argument). This is apparent from the pseudo-Senecan tragedy Octavia, probably written only after the death of Nero. This play is modeled at least in part on the Thyestes34: the dependence is clearest in the scene where the tyrannical ruler has a conversation with a subordinate who tries in vain to prevent his master’s brutal schemes—a situation straight out of Act 2 of the Thyestes. However, while there it is Atreus who confers with his satelles (Thy. 204–335), in the Octavia, it is Nero who talks to Seneca (Oct. 437–592). Whoever wrote the Octavia must have caught on to the Neronian character of Seneca’s Atreus. In addition, just as Atreus’ crimes in the Thyestes cause cosmic disruption on so large a scale that to some observers, at least, the end of the world appears to have come, Nero’s burning of Rome in the Octavia, as Williams 1994, 189–191 has shown, is likewise presented in eschatological terms, as an instance of Stoic world conﬂagration. This brings me to my third and ﬁnal argument. While throughout human history celestial events have been connected to happenings on earth and especially to the dealings of those in power, it appears that Nero, a ruler both intensely loved and intensely hated, was in the contemporary imagination to an especially large extent associated with abnormal natural phenomena.35 Supposedly one earthquake occurred at Nero’s donning of the toga uirilis in 51 (Dio 61.33.2c) and another shortly before his death in 68 (Dio 63.28.1)—not even to mention the famous Campanian earthquake of 62. Also, six comets appeared in the course of Nero’s reign, phenomena traditionally interpreted as bad omens,36 and the great ﬁre of 64, while man-made, could also be See Leigh 1996. Cf. Bartsch 1994, 63–97, who discusses how in Rome, esp. during the Empire, theater audiences were accustomed to interpret utterances on stage as critical of the regime, whether or not this was intended by the author (cf., e.g., p. 71). 34 See Calder 1983, 193–195, Williams 1994, 191, and Davis 2003, 82–84. 35 See Sonnabend 1999, 149–151. 36 For full documentation and discussion of the ancient evidence, see Rogers 1953 and Bicknell 1969. 32 33

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understood as a disaster on a cosmic scale.37 All this makes it likely that the close connection, in the Thyestes, of cosmic disruption and the evildoings of an overbearing king would have struck a chord with a Neronian audience or readership. I conclude, therefore, that the Thyestes is indeed an anti-Neronian play and that Atreus’ reaction to the eclipse—his reference to his own transformation into the sungod—serves additionally to drive home the similarities between the ruler of Argos and that of Rome. However, one question remains open: the date of the Thyestes. Seneca’s tragedies cannot be dated exactly and could in theory have been written at any point during the philosopher’s life (and of course, there are those people who think that Seneca did not write them at all). It has often been thought that the author composed them comparatively early: after all, the Romans typically considered poetry a triﬂing pastime for young men, and during his Corsican exile, Seneca had plenty of time on his hands and might plausibly have used it to turn out some tragedies; also, at least Troades and Hercules furens appear to have been written before 54, since there are probable allusions to both in the Apocolocyntosis (Apocol. 12.3.1 ~ Tro. 131; Apocol. 12.3.2 ~ Herc. fur. 1108). However, in his generally accepted stylometric analysis and resulting relative chronology of the tragedies, John Fitch (1981) has shown that the Thyestes belongs to the group of tragedies composed last. This still does not tell us how late, but there is no reason in principle why the play could not have been written during the reign of Nero. Now, if my suggestion is accepted that Atreus’ presentation of himself as a kind of new sungod constitutes a reference to Nero’s use of solar imagery, then the play must be Neronian and, as a matter of fact, it must be fairly late. For it seems that Nero did not begin to style himself as Phoebus until 59, after the murder of Agrippina (Lucan’s proem, for example, was performed at the Neronia in 60), with the majority of instances of the explicit identiﬁcation of the emperor with the sungod dating to 64 and after.38 I therefore suggest that the Thyestes was written in the Cf. Williams 1994, 189–191 and my remarks on the Octavia above. That the oﬃcial representation of Nero as the sungod is a phenomenon of the later years of his reign is a generally accepted view (see the discussion in Bergmann 1998, 133–230, esp. 214–230). Controversial, however, is the extent to which solar ideology appears already in the 50’s, in particular in panegyric contexts (i.e., not necessarily controlled or inspired by Nero or his court). Champlin 2003b now argues that all putative poetic references to a solar Nero postdate 59. Crucially, this means that the epiphany of Apollo in Sen. Apocol. 4 is a later interpolation (diﬀerently Spencer 37 38

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very last years of Seneca’s life, in the period of his ﬁnal alienation from Nero,39 and—not incidentally in my opinion—at the same time as the philosopher was working on his Naturales quaestiones.40

Cole in this volume); it also aﬀects the dating of Calpurnius Siculus and the Einsiedeln Eclogues. For the purpose of this paper, it matters little whether solar imagery occurred in panegyric contexts already in the early years of Nero’s reign (perhaps even in Seneca’s writing itself): the suggested allusion to Nero in Atreus’ auto-apotheosis makes sense only once the emperor insists himself on his (near-)identity with the god. 39 Citing putative allusions to contemporary events, Nisbet 1990 (partly anticipated by Tarrant 1985, 13 n. 68 and ad 629–630 and followed by Davis 2003, 15–16) suggests that the Thyestes was written in 62; this is not impossible, though for the reasons mentioned in the text I would like to push the date forward a couple of years. 40 This implies that the Thyestes was not circulated widely, but read (and perhaps performed?) among a small circle of Seneca’s friends. On the assumption that these friends were opposed to Nero, I suggest that they would have taken the proposed jab at “Nero the sungod,” together with other features of the text, as an invitation to read the play as critical of the emperor. Note that by positing a political dimension, I do not wish to claim that the Thyestes “is all about Nero.” In my opinion, the criticism of the emperor is just one aspect of the tragedy’s complexity, and instead of narrowing our interpretation, it actually widens and enriches it. Finally, one might argue that instead of criticizing Nero, the play in fact provided the emperor, who of course liked to act, with a plum part and with an opportunity to style himself … as Atreus (cf. Calder 1983). This is not as absurd as it sounds: Champlin 2003a, 84–111 has argued that Nero delighted in taking on theatrical roles that all but invited problematic comparisons with the emperor himself (thus, for example, he liked to play the matricide Orestes). However, the late date for the play suggested above militates against such an interpretation: even if we want to believe that Seneca would at some stage have been complicit in such cynical role-playing, he surely would no longer have done so once he had fallen from Nero’s favor. And for what it is worth, Dio 63.9.4–5, 10.2, and 22.6 (see also Juv. 8.228) reports that among Nero’s favorite roles was—not Atreus, but Thyestes!

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PASSAGES CITED Aristotle Rhetoric 2.2.1378a31–33 63 Arius Didymus Ap. Stob. 2.73.19–23 2.111.18–20

79 79

Cicero Academica 83 De Finibus 3.22 117 4.74–78 159 De Natura Deorum 2.19 190 Epistulae ad Atticum 12.14.3 39 Epistulae ad Familiares 5.16.1 39 Lucullus 136 159 Paradoxa Stoicorum 2.17–18 161 4 159–160 5.35 160 Pro Murena 60–66 159 Tusculanae Disputationes 5.9 33 5.106 149 Columella De Re Rustica 3.3

24

Diogenes Laertius 7.52 84 7.113 62

Horace Carmina 1.1.35–36 4.12.28 Epistulae 1.11.27

2

Lactantius De Ira Dei 17.13

65

Lucan 1.45–52

196

Lucretius De Rerum Natura 3.1068

2

Martial 1.61.7–8

20

Ovid Metamorphoses 1.260–312 1.260–261 1.144–148 2.328 6.585–586 8.739–740 Tristia 3.3.53

192 3 4 3 4 12

195 2

150

Plato Philebus 34e–36b

64

Pliny Naturalis Historia 14.51 31.40

25 25

214 Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 8.3.31 10.1.123 10.1.125–131 10.1.128 10.1.128–129 12.10.11

passages cited

21 xiii, 21 xiii, 21 33 1, 21 21, 33

Seneca Agamemnon 23 228–229 11 606 12 996 16 Apocolocyntosis xviii, 31, 175–182 1.2 179–180 4.1.20–32 181–182 9.5 178, 181 10.2 179, 182 10.4 179 11.4 179 De Beneﬁciis 37 1.10.3 6 1.15.5–6 177–178 2.31.1 11 3.37.1 155 5.17 105 7.1.1–2 37 De Clementia 14 1.1.3 29–30 1.6.3 6 1.10 180 1.26.1–4 7 2.7.1 10 De Remediis Fortuitorum 19–20, 23 Dialogi (1) De Prouidentia 31 2.10 12 3.9–10 8–9 5.8 187 5.10–11 3 (2) De Constantia Sapientis 10.2 11 (3–5) De Ira 57–74 1.1.1 57, 65 64 1.3.3

1.20.4 197 1.20.7–8 15 2.1.2 76 2.1.3 65–66 2.1.4 72 2.1.5 65 2.3.4 70 2.3.4–5 72 2.4.1 65, 69–70 2.8.1 6 2.9.2 3–4 2.23.3 15 2.33.4 15 2.36.4 7 3.5.7–8 11 3.9.1 12 11 3.10.2 3.11.4 15 (6) Consolatio ad Marciam 148 1.2–4 28 18.2 154 23.1 5 (7) De Vita Beata 1.4 6 2 12–13 6.1 11 7.3 8 12.2 10 19.1 105 20.5 3 (9) De Tranquillitate Animi 2.11 11 2.13–15 2 12.4 7 14.4 15 16.3 16 17.10 2 (10) De Breuitate Vitae 4–6 37 9.2 1, 6 10.1 31, 37 12.1 7 18.3 36–37 18.5 15 20.5 16

passages cited (11) Consolatio ad Polybium 148 (12) Consolatio ad Heluiam matrem xvii, 147–173 1.2 147 1.2–3 38–39 2.4–5 162–163 5.1 164 5.4 163 6.2 149, 150, 153 6.2–8 150–152, 162 7 154–155, 173 7.8–9 156 8.6 156–157 9.2 153, 165 9.4–8 158–159, 164 10.2–3 164–165 10.8 166 11 165 12.5–7 166 13.1–4 164 16.3–4 167 16.5–7 166 17 167–168 18.1–19.4 168–169 19.1–4 169 19.6, 7 170 20.2 165 Epistulae 26, 29, 31–33 1.1 125 1.2 125 1.4 36 1.5 125 2.1 125 2.4 126 3 126 4 126 4.3–6, 8–9 112–114 4.5 120 4.9 120 5.7 126 7.2 7 7.1 127 7.7 7 8.1 127 9.18–19 127 10.1 127

12 12.9 12.10 12.11 13 13.16–17 14 15 16 16.1 16.3 17 17.2 17.7 18 18.12 19 20.1 20.5 21.3–5 21.6 22.1 24.1 26.8–10 26.10 27.2 28 29 30.18 31 32.1 33.1 33.11 33.5 33.8 34 35 38 38.2 39 40 41 43.1 44.1 45 45.8

215 xvi, 122, 127, 134, 136 105, 127 121 127 96 128 128 128 128 89, 99 87 92 86 and n. 28 128 87, 128 129 128, 129 129 128 128 36 129 129 114–115 16, 120, 121 22 129 129–130 130 130 130 130 131 76 87 131 131 131 36 131 131 131 131 131 49, 132 50

216 45.13 46.1–3 47.1 48 48.9 49 50 50.9 51 53.1 54.1 55.2 55.3 55.11 55.8 56 56.7 57 58 59.4 60 61 62 63 64.1 65.1 66 67.1–2 68.1 69.1 69.6 70 71.1 73.15 74 75 76 77 77.20 78 79 82 83 83.1–7 84 84.2 84.8–10

passages cited 133 132 132 49, 132 50 49, 132, 134 132 89 132–133, 136 140 140 142 36 142 141 8, 141 11 123–124, 137–146 145 145 146 146 146 133 133 133 133 134 134 134 104, 111 134 134 134 134 134 134 134–135 135 135 135 50, 51 50, 51, 136 36 34, 75, 98 75 and n. 1 77

84.11 85 86 87 88 88.43–46 89.4–5 89.18–22, 23 90.44 94.5–6, 36 94.25 94.36 95.4 102 104 105 106 107.11 108 108.24–27 109 110 110.11 111 113 113.18 117 117.6 118 118.1–3 118.2 118.4–5 118.16–17 120.4–5 120.13 123 Hercules Furens 353 Medea 520 565–566 893–944 982–984 [Octauia] 384 377–592 391–396

35 50 38, 136 50 102 83 83 136 99 86 90 99 88 49 136 136 51–52 187 87–88, 136 88 136–137 136 133 49 51 67, 78 and n. 7 51, 52 n. 13 53 32–36 32, 35 26–27 33, 35 34 101 102 and n. 67 136 14 12 12 13 37–38 19 22 23 193

passages cited 397–434 193 429–430 193 437–592 198 Phaedra 54–80 31 Naturales Quaestiones 1.1.3 176–177 3 praef. 5 28 3.1.1 2 3.7.1 24 3.27–30 191–192 3.27.13 1 3.27.13–28.2 3 4A praef. 19 6 6 31 7 7 7.4 29 7.17.2 177 Thyestes xviii, 183–200; date of, 199 48–51 190 176–204 13 204–335 198 720 12 776–778, 782–788 187–188 789–884 185–194 789–793 185 827–834 186 875–881 191 879–881 186 882–884 186 885–919 194–195 903–907 15 1034–1036 189 1085–1087, 1089–1090 194 1092–1095 194 Troades 189 Sextus Empiricus Aduersus Mathematicos 7.151–152 79–80 7.253–257 86 7.257 80 8.248 80

217

Sidonius Apollinaris Carmina 9.232–238 20 Stobaeus 2.73.19–23 2.86.17–87.6 2.88.2–6 2.88.8–90.6 2.90.19–91.9 2.91.10 2.97.15–98.6

79 67 67 61, 68, 71 62 62 67

Suetonius Nero 52

21

Tacitus Annals 13.3 13.42 14.52 14.53–56 15.60–64 Dialogus 3.3 Virgil Georgics 1 3.66–67 Aeneid 1 1.257–263 1.297–300 1.657–688 1.755 4 4.90–128 4.160–172 4.305–330 4.365–392 4.450–477 4.653–656 4.696–697 6.103–105

23 23, 40 23 24 24 197

182 6 108–109, 110 109 109 108 155 xvii, 103–122 108 108 107 107 107 105, 107 104, 111 16

218 8.7 10

passages cited 12 110

10.467–472 10.467

110 104

INDEX Alexander the Great, 14, 15, 154, 155 animus, 11–13, 144 Antiochus of Ascalon, 159 Apicius, M. Gavius, 166 apotheosis and emperor worship, 175–182, 196 Aristotle, on anger, 63, 64–65 M. Atilius Regulus, 8–9, 166 Atreus, xviii, 13, 14, 15, 37, 184– 200; as god, 194–195; evocative of Nero, 197–200 Auﬁdius Bassus, 130 Augustus, 14, 37, 175–182

Curiatius Maternus, Thyestes of, 197 M’. Curius Dentatus, 166

Baiae, 132, 136, 140, 141 Bakhtin, M., 30, 31 Barton, C., 7 Behistun inscription, 103 Blackburn, Lancs., 145 Brutus, M. Iunius, 158

economics, language of in Seneca, 35–39 Eden, P.T., 182 Edwards, C., 27 Ellison, R., 124–125 Epictetus, 45 Epicurus/Epicureanism, 2, 36, 46, 114 and n. 17, 120, 122, 126, 128, 141 epistolarity, Senecan experimentation with, 123–146 essentia, 145 Etna, 132, 135 excutere se, 35 exile, ﬁgurative potential of, 147–173

Cambyses, 103 Cassius Dio, 148 chronotope, 31 Chrysippus, 43, 48, 53, 54 n. 14, 55, 59, 66, 97, 162 n. 53 Cicero, xiii, 32, 37, 39, 83, 159–161 Claudius, 171, 175–182 Cleanthes, 187 P. Clodius Pulcher, 160 Columella, on Seneca, 24 communis, of universal urbs, 154 consolatio, 31, 39; on exile, 147, 148 and n. 6; topoi, 157, 158 Cornelia, mother of Gracchi, 166 Corsica, 147, 149, 150, 152 and n. 21, 156, 168, 171 Cossura, 152 Cremutius Cordus, 28 crypta Neapolitana, xi, xvii, 141 and n. 36 Cugusi, P., 27

Darius I, 103 dialectici, 49 dialogus, 19, 26 Dido, xvi, xvii, 104–111, 121–122, 127 “died his own death” = “dying a natural death,” 103 Dio Chrysostom, 148, 170, 171 Duﬀ, J.D., 150 Dyson, S., 24

fabula praetexta, 19, 31 Favez, C., 151, 152, 155 Favorinus, 148, 170, 171, 172 Feeney, D., 175 Fitch, J., 5, 199 ﬂatterer, 98 fortune, 33, 35, 154 Foucault, M., 169 Frede, M., 80, 117–118 and 118 n. 19 Gaius Caligula, 15, 171, 179 Gaius Galerius, 170

220

index

genre, Senecan experimentation with, xv, 19–41; one genre embedded in another, 31 Graver, M., 60, 75, 77, 98 Griﬃn, M., xiv, 41, 75 Guastella, G., 37 Gyara, 152 and n. 21 Habinek, T., 23, 31 Harris, W.V., 7 Helvia, 147–173 Hengelbrock, M., 75, 77 Horace, 2 Inwood, B., 29 Iron Age, 3–4 Juvenal, 7 Levick, B., 40, 41 Livius Drusus, 37 Lucan, 7, 168, 199 Lucretius, 2 Maecenas, 8–9 Marcellus, M. Claudius, 158, 160, 164 Marcus Aurelius, 45 Mazzoli, G., 26, 29, 30 meditatum, negative in connotation, 12 Menenius Agrippa, 166 metaphor and image, in Seneca, 7, 11, 34, 76, 142, 145 Morissette, A., 123 Musonius Rufus, 147, 170–172 Nero, xviii, 44, 173, 181–182, 196– 200; associated with abnormal natural phenomena, 198–199 Nicks, S., 140 Novatilla, 168, 169 Ovid, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 150 Pacuvius, xvi, 105–106, 111, 114, 121, 122

Page, T.E., 109 Panaetius, 43 paradox, 49, 120, 156, 158–161, 164, 165 patria, 149, 150 Phaethon, 3 philosophical progress, 43–45 Plato, 64 Pliny (the Elder), on Seneca, 24–25 Plutarch, 148 Posidonius, 43, 58, 59, 60, 65 praemeditatio futurorum malorum, 92, 94 priuatus, 33 progrediens/προκπτων, 45, 100 prosopopoeia, 13, 26 Quintilian, on Seneca, xiii, 1, 21–22, 33 reversal of sun, in Thyestes, 183–184 Rome, 132, 136, 142, 150–155, 171– 173 Rosenmeyer, T., 27, 190 Rutilia, mother of C. Aurelius Cotta, 166 Schiesaro, A., 5, 27, 37 Schulze, W., 103, 104 Sciathus, 152 Seneca accentuation of the negative in, 5–11 and concept of “grasping,” 82–83 animus in, 11–13 appeal to rhetorical, emotionevoking devices, 46–47, 51 attitude to the value of Stoic philosophical knowledge, 43– 55 aunt of, nursing him in Egypt, 168; a role-model for Helvia, 169–170 brothers of, 168 charge of hypocrisy against, 20, 40 Cicero, emulation of, 28 contemplation on death, 16, 114

index death of, 24 disparagement of Stoic argumentation, 49 diversity of studia, 21–25, 38 exile on Corsica, xvii, 147 genre and generic experimentation, xv, 19–41, 22 language of economics in, 35 literary/stylistic reputation, xiii, 1 money, 40–41 oeuvre, xiv, 19; how shaped by Seneca, 25–41; heterogeneity of, 27; principles of selection in, 28 poetic quotation in prose works, 2–3 predilection for images of vice and corruption, 6–11 reader of Ovid, 1–5 relation to Stoic “orthodoxy,” 43 resistance to deiﬁcation of Claudius, 175–182 Spanish origin, 172 spiritual adviser, 44, 46 therapeutic emphasis in, 30 tragedies written for performance?, 188 use of metaphor, 7 viticulture of, 24 Seriphus, 152 and n. 21 sermocinatio, 26 Servilius Vatia, 141 Q. Sextius, 29 Shelton, J.-A., 184 Sicily, 128, 132, 135 slavery, ﬁgurative, 160–161 Socrates, 8, 101, 166 n. 60 Stevens, J.A., 60 Stilbo, 127 Stoicism/Stoics assent to impressions, xvi, 65– 74, 77–78, 79, 85; weak assent, 89–93 attitudes to natural disaster, 190 cognition as origin of wisdom, xvi, 75–102; importance in Stoic ethics, 77–79

221

“concepts” (= 4ννοιαι or προλψεις), 94–102 cosmopolitan(ism), 147, 153–154, 156, 158, 165 emotion as pain or desire, 57– 58 emotions, four classes of, 61, 64, 71 “expert impressions,” 99 “grasping” towards knowledge, 79–82; “grasping impressions” generated by written texts?, 84–85; exhortation as cause of “grasping,” 86–88; “grasping” vs. “convincing” impressions, 91–93 indiﬀerents, 47, 115–116, 118, 119 leading to spiritual cure/selfimprovement, 45 on anger, xvi, 57–74; as kind of desire, not pain, 58; as desire to punish or avenge, 58 on passions in general, 10; passion as epistemic error, 78 paradoxa, 159–161 periodic destruction of cosmos, by ﬂood or by ﬁre, 186–187, 191–192 “preparing for death,” xvi providence, 117, 119 required understanding of philosophical truth(s), 45 “sayables,” 53, 78, 81, 84 self-suﬃciency, 161, 163 (Helvia’s brand of), 168, 169 Seneca’s relation to “orthodoxy,” 43 soul as part of Stoic pneuma, 152 sympatheia, 190 suicide, 121, 135 Suillius Rufus, 40, 41 syllogism, 49, 50, 51, 84, 85, 90, 97, 98 Syme, R., 14 Tacitus, on Seneca, 23–24, 40

222 Teles, 148 Tieleman, T., 59 Tullius Marcellinus, 135 tyrant, in Senecan tragedy, 14–15 urbs, cosmic, 154 Varius Rufus, Thyestes of, 197 Veyne, P., 38, 40

index Virgil, xvi, 1, 2, 88, 103–122, 130, 134, 143 Whitmarsh, T., 148–149, 170–173 Wilson, M., 27, 31 Xerxes, 14, 15 Zeno, 48, 50, 51, 55, 80