Chapter III: Seneca the Philosopher: Miscellaneous Learning

Widely varied problems regarding Seneca—His
family—Education—His relations with Caligula, Claudius and
Nero—Retirement from the imperial court—Character—Works lost
and extant—Vexed questions of chronology—Brief survey of his
prose writings—Style in theory—Style in practice—Seneca as
essayist—The pithy sentence—Composite language—Ancient traces
of his influence—The exponent of Latin Stoicism—Vitality of the
Stoic creed—The human and the humorous—Bracing spirit of his
philosophy.

Contemporary learning—History, jurisprudence and
philosophy—Stoics of the day—Scholarship—Asconius and
Probus—Orators, informers and rhetoricians.

SENECA THE PHILOSOPHER

The jungle of literature which has grown up around Seneca[588] testifies to the manifold inquiries stimulated by his personality and works. The bare enumeration of representative treatises or essays on Senecan subjects becomes oppressive. In Latin and in many modern languages they have dealt with problems of his life—the cause of his exile, his moral character, his inconsistencies, his political significance and control or want of control over Nero; they have dealt with the chronology of his writings; with his theology, philosophy and cosmology, so that what he thought of God, man and the world has been scrutinized in relation to Stoicism as well as to those eclectic modifications which were always typical of the practical Roman; they have dealt, too, with his science, with aspects of his style, his characteristic prose, his gift of piquant satire, his poetic and tragic powers; with difficulties, still unsolved, in his text; with questions of his influence upon Christian literature, European drama and modern essay-writing. There is, then, no lack of Senecan themes, and his influence makes him one of the most prominent figures in the history of letters.

The Seneca family belonged to Corduba, the chief city of Baetica, which was the most civilized province of Spain. There, about 4 B.C.,[589] L. Annaeus Seneca,[590] second son of the so-called “rhetor,” was born. His mother Helvia, we learn in the _Consolatio_ sent to her by her exiled son, had a philosophical bent—a contrast in this respect to her husband, whose interest lay in rhetoric. The family was well-to-do and talented. The elder Seneca and Helvia had three sons. The eldest was Novatus, to whom his brother dedicated his treatises _On Anger_ and _On A Happy Life_: he became “Gallio” through adoption by L. Junius Gallio, the orator, and, when governor of Achaea in 51-52, happened to have the apostle Paul brought before his tribunal.[591] The second son, called “Seneca” by his father, became, as a statesman and writer, the most famous bearer of the name. The youngest son, Mela, of whose ability his father[592] held a high opinion, was of a more retiring disposition, but, without courting senatorial honours, proved himself a successful money-maker, and possesses his best title to fame as father of Lucan.

Seneca was brought when a child, in the arms of an affectionate aunt,[593] to Rome, whither his parents either preceded or followed him. His preliminary training under a _grammaticus_ left him with a memory of much barren detail and a pronounced distaste for verbal criticism or the _minutiae_ of book learning;[594] his subsequent training in rhetoric by such masters as Mamercus Scaurus, Gallio, Musa, Julius Bassus,[595] and under the auspices of his father, made an indelible impress upon his genius. No doubt his true intellectual love was reserved for philosophy, and he saw the weaknesses of declamation;[596] but we have his father’s evidence that all three sons were captivated by rhetorical _sententiae_,[597] and Seneca’s own style—disconnected, pointed, antithetic, metaphorical and piquant—is the best proof of its own origin. With his philosophical studies came a fuller satisfaction for intellect and spirit. Seneca was thoroughly Roman in emphasizing the practical aspect of philosophy. “Philosophy,” he says, “consists not in words but in realities. She sits at the helm and steers the voyage through the hazards of the waves.”[598] More and more Seneca was drawn to it, not merely as a guide to conduct, but as something that filled a profound need of the soul. To him it signified the divine way, truth, and life: it made, especially through the Neo-Stoicism which he accepted and developed, a religious appeal. For the elect there was a turning away from the world,[599] a disdain of earthly things,[600] the duty of self-examination,[601] the joys of conversion,[602] the apostolic call to enlighten others.[603] There were ascetic privations,[604] hard at first in their disciplinary stringency, although afterwards joyously welcomed: there were ecstatic possibilities of drawing close to God.[605] The boy might not at once grasp all the implications of the higher teaching, and in life he may have practised very imperfectly the doctrines to which he gave eloquent and noble expression; yet it is certain that from the outset his philosophical masters exercised a deep influence upon him. They were three disciples of the Sextii—Sotion, Attalus and Fabianus. Sotion, arguing on Pythagorean principles, persuaded Seneca to become vegetarian; Attalus, the Stoic, with a contempt for luxury, induced him to renounce perfumes, wines, oysters, mushrooms and a soft bed; while Fabianus, who had given up a career as a speaker to devote himself to philosophical discussion, conveyed to him much of his own enthusiasm. Seneca was the first to arrive for a lecture, and last to leave: his abstinence and fasts were so rigorous that his health, never of the best,[606] began to suffer, and his father intervened with the timely reminder that he might be mistaken for a devotee of the foreign superstitions which Tiberius had endeavoured to extirpate about A.D. 19. If Seneca sighed as a theorist, he obeyed as a son. Fits of melancholy drove him to thoughts of suicide, which Stoicism permitted in certain circumstances: only regard for his father prevented him from losing control over himself. The state of his health may have accounted for visits to Pompeii and to Egypt, where an aunt was wife of the Governor.[607] One of his early works, a lost treatise on Egyptian religious practices (_De Ritu et Sacris Aegyptiorum_), must be put down to his stay in the country. His aunt was more than a good nurse; she could use her influence for her nephew, and on his return to Rome about A.D. 31 helped to secure the quaestorship for him. Then his career as a speaker at the bar began. Some years passed, and his oratorical performances drew upon him the jealousy of Caligula, who, not content with sneering at them as “mere competitive exercises” and “sand without lime,”[608] would have put Seneca to death but for the whisper from one of the emperor’s favourites that he was in any case doomed to die soon from consumption.[609] Threatened men, however, live long, and Seneca’s future fame lay in other fields than the dangerous one of oratory.

By degrees his own preference turned him to literature and philosophy.[610] Some of his lost works belong to this period—collections of discourses and poems, a physical treatise _De Motu Terrarum_, a biography of his father, who died about A.D. 39, and perhaps the _Consolation to Marcia_. Most likely, too, the material for the three books _On Anger_ was collected about the same time, and published, with its bitter allusions to Caligula,[611] soon after that emperor was safely dead. Seneca was not a recluse: a measure of self-effacement may have been judicious under Caligula, but Seneca’s own choice was to make the student’s loneliness alternate with social engagements. “There should be a blend, an alternation of solitude and society: the former will cause us to want human kind, the latter to want ourselves. And the one will be a cure for the other: solitude will heal dislike for a crowd, a crowd will heal the weariness of solitude.”[612] The school of the world was essential to the thinker on wisdom. He was a good business man, able to advance his financial interests; and he had gifts of elegant expression which fitted him to mix with the highest circles in Rome. At court, after Caligula’s murder, Seneca occupied a prominent position as an asset in the party of the princesses, Julia Livilla and Agrippina, daughters of Germanicus and nieces of the emperor. His happiness was short-lived. A charge was brought against him of an immoral intrigue with Julia.[613] Messalina, the unscrupulous empress, is not unreasonably suspected of having for political reasons invented the accusation to weaken a rival faction. It involved Julia’s death ultimately, and Seneca’s trial before a subservient senate, where the death-sentence was at Claudius’s suggestion commuted to banishment. So for eight years, from 41 to 49, he underwent the punishment of “relegation” in Corsica.

In writing his _Consolation to Helvia_, probably a good many months later, he endeavours to cheer his mother by philosophical arguments that exile is quite tolerable, and very much what the exiled person makes it; but his real feelings of weary despondency are expressed in certain epigrams and in his _Consolation to Polybius_ of A.D. 43, when his sympathy proffered to Claudius’s learned Secretary for Petitions (_a libellis_) and his cringing flattery of the emperor were designed, though in vain, to facilitate his recall. Certainly, he had books and literary pursuits to occupy his mind; slaves may have been in attendance; and his friend Caesonius Maximus seems to have stayed with him for a time; but there was much that was depressing. He had lost his father, his wife and a child: like other ancients, he could take little pleasure in rugged scenery: and there was a limit to his interest in the ethnology of the island. For a capitalist, diplomat and courtier, for a literary man with social instincts, banishment meant the same poignancy of suffering as Ovid knew on the shores of the Black Sea. But relief came for Seneca as it never came for Ovid. In 49 he was recalled and made praetor, through the influence of Agrippina, who realized that a man of his literary reputation would make a suitable tutor for her boy Nero.[614] The young prince’s education consisted of all available subjects of culture, with two chief limitations according to Suetonius: Nero’s mother disapproved of philosophy for a future ruler, and Seneca jealously discouraged the study of the old orators, so that his own modern style might remain Nero’s ideal.[615] When Claudius was done to death in 54, it fell to the imperial tutor to compose a suitable panegyric for his pupil, the new emperor, to deliver: and so began the period of five years—the _quinquennium_[616] praised long afterwards by Trajan—during which Seneca, aided by the good sense of Burrus, prefect of the guard, kept Nero on paths of comparative decency and moderation.[617] Part of Seneca’s policy was directed towards keeping Nero free from undue interference on the part of his imperious mother,[618] who hotly protested against “the claim of the cripple Burrus and the exile Seneca to govern mankind with a maimed hand and a scholar’s tongue.”[619] At this period Seneca’s influence as a statesman reached its zenith; and it is a reasonable conjecture that for a time he contrived to mould governmental policy in the spirit of his own broadminded cosmopolitanism. It was of some service to the world that the author of the _De Clementia_, addressed to Nero when he was eighteen, should now be his chief adviser. Dio himself, who is usually a hostile witness where Seneca is concerned, gives to him and Burrus credit for able and fair administration.[620] There were, however, black crimes which Seneca, whether privy to them or not, had to condone. Britannicus, the true heir to the purple, had been got rid of by poison at the emperor’s table in 55; and in 59 came Agrippina’s murder by her son’s command. State policy, the historical cloak for many infamies, might argue a case on behalf of both acts: the one removed a rival and secured the throne, the other ended a woman’s ascendancy and secured the emperor’s freedom.[621] It was Seneca who composed for Nero the statement to be read in the Senate respecting his mother’s death. One can only guess what acquiescence meant for a man who could both think and feel. To his credit be it said that he seems at least to have pleaded with Nero to save his cruelly maligned empress Octavia in A.D. 62.

That was the year of Burrus’s death and of Tigellinus’s elevation, when Nero had begun to lean upon worse advisers, who urged him to shake off his mentor.[622] The mentor himself, recognizing that his influence was undermined, placed before Nero his request to retire.[623] The wealth of a professing Stoic made an easy target for criticism,[624] and a tempting lure for an avaricious emperor. Seneca’s speech, therefore, at his interview, as reported by Tacitus, took mainly the form of an _apologia pro diuitiis suis_. His wealth amassed in these years of service was an index surely of his Majesty’s bounty; and, now that he was old, it should return to his Majesty. Nero’s own ability to give a ready rejoinder he adroitly set to the credit of his excellent teacher, who was not nearly so old that his imperial pupil could think of dropping his pilotage and whose wealth he could not possibly accept—for what would people say?[625] Fair dissembling words did not deceive Seneca. From that day he changed his mode of life: he no longer kept open house or made public appearances attended by troops of friends. He had some three years yet to devote to studious retirement: and to this period, A.D. 62-65, can be assigned with confidence his essay _On Leisure_ (_De Otio_), his elaborate _Moral Letters_ (_Epistulae Morales_), the seven books of the _Quaestiones Naturales_, and with less certainty some other works. Once again he made an offer of his substance to the emperor: it was in A.D. 64 when he proposed to help in repairing the devastation caused by the burning of Rome.[626] He was not however destined to escape the despot. In 65, on an allegation of complicity in Piso’s conspiracy—and there were some who said that the next emperor was intended to be the philosopher[627]—the old man was ordered to put himself to death. What Tacitus records of the last hours of Seneca, his dignified calm, his reliance upon philosophy, his farewell advice to friends, his devoted wife’s desire to die with him, the too slow ebbing of life from the chill, attenuated frame, is an account few can read unmoved.[628]

The character of Seneca presents anomalies comparable to those which are notorious in Lord Bacon’s case. If Seneca does not merit to the full the absolute superlatives which Pope applied to Bacon, “the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind,” still the noble grandeur of his theoretical morality was deplorably sullied by lapses in actual life. Many of the charges date from his own time; and never was the calumny of enemies more rife, more gross, more readily believed than in the days when creatures like Suillius threw their slanderous mud. Among the historians, Dio is too biased to be trusted in his enumeration of the immoralities and inconsistencies laid to Seneca’s account. The story of improper relations with Julia so obviously served Messalina’s machinations that it cannot be accepted as incontrovertible fact, while the suggestion of an amour with Agrippina is even more incredible. That Seneca was privy to the deaths of Claudius, of Britannicus and of Agrippina was whispered and repeated, but the rumours can be neither proved nor disproved. His weak condonation of such deeds very naturally subjects him to suspicion. That he advocated the contempt of wealth and yet accumulated it, is not to be gainsaid; even so, and granted that he lent money on interest, we are not bound to believe Dio’s statement that Seneca caused an insurrection in Britain by suddenly calling in the huge sum of forty million sesterces. If he was a thrifty financier all his life, he at least thereby escapes the accusation of a vicious abuse of his money in an age of luxury.

While, however, some of the blackest charges may be parried as not proven, one count in the indictment is beyond denial, even if it be capable of extenuation. Outside the study, he lacked true moral bravery. Nothing could transcend the elevation of his ethical theory; but this emphatic assertor of moral principles tamely saw them trampled upon at court. Circumstances overbore his protests, perhaps even his qualms: his wisdom failed in courage and his prudence degenerated into pusillanimity. A voluptuous court, it must be allowed, had no atmosphere of bracing discipline in which an austere philosopher could practise virtue: its extravagant opulence and titanic depravity were better calculated to stifle the moral sense with a rankly perfumed sultriness. The danger was twofold: at one time, the aesthetic taste and social charm of Nero might lull the conscience to rest; at another, his tigerish nature might unnerve any counsellor. Let it be admitted that Seneca was incapable of maintaining an impolitic opposition, and that he was, in Carlyle’s words, “so wistfully desirous to stand well with Truth and yet not ill with Nero” that he remains “our perhaps niceliest proportioned half-and-half, the plausiblest plausible on record.” Such scathing words may be glibly repeated by critics who are safe from Nero. But is no allowance to be made, if Seneca failed to transfer the dogmatism of the schools to an emperor’s acts? The philosopher’s heart at least was on the side of goodness. Nero’s court, life, policy must have often caused inexpressible pain to a believer in the Fatherhood and Providence of God, the brotherhood of man, the divine spark within all, the sovereign excellence of virtue, the vanity of worldly goods, the sin of luxury; and it must have been hard to adapt to Neronian orgies Seneca’s own ascetic preferences and practices. But a personality endowed with philosophic will, like Seneca’s, aimed sincerely at a higher life for himself and a better world for others: it could not choose but exert some influence. When one complains of Seneca’s inconsistencies, is one prepared to say that he would have served Rome better by avoiding court? To say this is to forget the good he did. To his credit stand Nero’s promising _quinquennium_, a policy of toleration in religion, and an endeavour to lessen cruelty in gladiatorial shows: besides, he preached clemency in life, as the author of the _Octauia_ makes him do in the play. Nero’s deterioration after Seneca’s retirement is in itself a testimony to his previous authority.

Perhaps it is not merely fanciful to trace a dynamic evolution in Seneca’s character determined by his continuous struggle against hindrances and failures. If a worldling like Petronius came in time to feel out of touch with the vanity of court life, what of Seneca, who realized its vanity from the outset? In spite of much to disillusionize and to disgust, he persevered at court until his prospects of influencing Nero faded into nothingness, and his offered renunciation of riches had been hypocritically declined. His very faults made him in a sense a better man, and so acquired a spiritual value; for a recognition of his own backsliding and cowardice showed the force of temptation and taught indulgence towards human frailty. This is why Seneca is less bigoted, less overbearing than most of his fellow-Stoics. His habit of self-examination must have often revealed his faults to him, so that one outcome was a tolerance which might well be imitated in judging him. “We have all done wrong,” he says in the _De Clementia_[629]—_peccauimus omnes_. It is then, more charitable, as well as more profitable, to forget his imperfections and omissions in favour of positive qualities like his humility[630] and humanity—to forget his timidities in favour of his bravery at the end. In one of his later years he wrote to Lucilius: “Before old age my aim was a good life; in old age my aim is a good death.”[631] And in another letter there is an utterance of dignified courage on which the hour of trial set the final seal of validity:

Without dread, then, I am composing myself for that day on
which, laying aside shifts and subtleties, I shall have to
judge respecting myself whether I merely speak or really feel
as brave men should, whether all my insolent words hurled
against fortune were mere pretence and mumming. Discount
man’s opinion: it is uncertain and partial. Discount the
philosophical pursuits of a lifetime: it is death that is
to pass judgement on you. ’Tis true: discussions, literary
conversations, words collected from the precepts of sages, and
learned discourse do not exhibit the true strength of the mind.
The greatest cowards can talk big. What you have achieved will
then be made plain when you come to die. I accept the terms: I
do not shrink from the decision.[632]

Besides his tragedies, short poems and the satire on Claudius, which are to be considered in another chapter, the following prose works by Seneca are extant—twelve so-called _Dialogues_, two books _On Clemency_, seven _On Benefits_, seven books of _Natural Problems_, and 124 _Moral Epistles_. His works that are lost, or survive only in fragments, trenched on the provinces of geography, physics, natural history, biography and ethics. Among these were _De Situ Indiae_, _De Ritu et Sacris Aegyptiorum_, _De Motu Terrarum_, _De Forma Mundi_, _De Piscium Natura_, _De Vita Patris_, _De Superstitione_, _De Immatura Morte_, _Moralis Philosophiae libri_. Some of his _Orationes_ and additional books of _Letters_ also circulated. The twelve _Dialogi_ collected in the Ambrosian MS. are given in the following order: _De Prouidentia_, _De Constantia Sapientis_, _De Ira libri_ III, _Ad Marciam de Consolatione_, _De Vita Beata_, _De Otio_, _De Tranquillitate Animi_, _De Breuitate Vitae_, _Ad Polybium de Consolatione_, _Ad Heluiam Matrem de Consolatione_. Unfortunately, these are not in the sequence of composition; had they been so, fuller light would have been shed on the author’s intellectual development. Much labour has been spent on the chronology of the works, and respecting some of them at any rate the conclusions reached by inquirers are vain and conflicting. Several avenues of approach have been explored along the lines of internal evidence drawn from statement, expression or rhythm. But contemporary allusions (apart from those sometimes merely imagined in the searcher’s enthusiasm) are scarce in Seneca, as if to remind us that the treatises are concerned with themes which are independent of the years. Similarities of thought yield inconclusive criteria of contemporaneous composition in an author who, on some subjects, expressed himself in much the same manner from first to last throughout his career, but who conversely, on other subjects, contradicted himself within the range of the same treatise. Then, again, statistics, like M. Bourgery’s, showing relative frequency of definite metrical sentence-endings form an unsubstantial foundation on which to base theories of earliness or lateness in composition. M. Pichon[633] in 1912 considered that, on the chronology of the works, Gercke in his _Seneca-Studien_ of 1895 had to a great extent superseded Jonas’s dissertation of 1870; and now it is suggested[634] that M. Albertini[635] has made it almost unnecessary to consult Gercke. If one constructs a table to exhibit the dates assigned by different critics to the works, the variation of opinion is at first sight bewildering. For instance, the _Consolatio Ad Marciam_, which Lipsius placed after the exile, was, according to others, written during it (41-49); and, according to Albertini, before it (A.D. 40). All three books of the _De Ira_ were, according to Jonas, published in 41, but, according to Lehmann and Rossbach, in 49 after the recall; or—to take what marks perhaps the maximum of divergence—the _De Prouidentia_, in which Waltz sees a similarity of tone linking it with the _De Constantia_, is referred by him to the first months of exile, 41-42, while Albertini, agreeing with Gercke that it is “_après la disgrâce_,” gives A.D. 63. Respecting dates for the tragedies, opinions are equally at variance. The general proportion of uncertainty is so great that one is tempted to fall back upon Madvig’s dictum of 1873, _librorum Senecae praeter paucos tempora incerta sunt_.[636] Yet, after all, there are points on which we can lay firm hold. Few of the extant prose works were written before Seneca’s exile in 41, and most of the best-known ones belong to the sixteen years which he had to live after his recall, when he was well over fifty years of age. There is much to say for believing that the _Consolatio Ad Marciam_ is the oldest of the surviving treatises (A.D. 40), and that at least two books of the _De Ira_ were composed in 41. We can be quite certain that the other two _Consolations_, namely _Ad Heluiam_ and _Ad Polybium_, belong to the early part of the exile, the one to 41-42, the other to 43. No other work can be, without challenge, ascribed to this Corsican period, although some authorities think that to it belong the _De Breuitate Vitae_ as well as the _De Constantia_ and the _De Prouidentia_. As to the period after Seneca’s recall in 49, there is no doubt that the _De Clementia_ was written early in Nero’s reign, probably in 55 (Albertini thinks 56). It is generally agreed that the _De Otio_, _Epistulae Morales_, and the _Quaestiones Naturales_ follow the retirement of A.D. 62, the composition of the last two works spreading over more than one year.

Realizing, then, that a full and exact chronology is unattainable, we proceed to a brief survey of the works.[637] Of the twelve _Dialogi_[638] it may be convenient to consider the three _Consolations_ first, then the three books _On Anger_, and finally the remaining half-dozen treatises. The _Consolations_ are not spontaneous expressions of sympathy, but literary efforts following broadly a scheme. It was a Greek invention thus to cure one of the maladies of the soul—grief; and the philosophers of different schools[639] who composed such exercises were in time joined by the rhetoricians, so that two streams of influence converged in what was a kind of popular philosophy, with general features of similarity. Among these features were eclecticism in argument; insistence upon our inability to control external circumstances in contrast with the possession of our own reason and will; the employment of rhetorical _loci communes_ and historical examples, as in a declamation; and a typical structure. Usually this structure consisted of an introduction, on the evil to be remedied; the main body of the consolation, on the cause of the affliction and the person afflicted; and a conclusion. It is evident that this species of moral pharmacy, based on an established science of consolation, possessed its time-honoured conventions alike in plan and thought. While, therefore, in Seneca the colour borrowed from Stoics and others is pronounced, it is fruitless to endeavour to trace his sources in detail. What gave a _Consolation_ its distinctive value was very much what gives value to any work of art—the genius of its author and his power, within the limitations of an old form, to achieve a fresh result. The special circumstances deplored, the personality of the individual consoled, sometimes even digressions indulged in, and the signal mastery of style displayed, might all open up paths to an original effect.

The _Ad Marciam_ is addressed to the brave daughter of Cremutius Cordus, who published some of the writings of her dead father, one of Sejanus’s victims. Its design is to console her in her continued mourning for her son, whom she had lost three years earlier. Between its exordium and its peroration it contains a fairly systematic reasoning based on examples of other mothers in grief and on precepts for the control of grief. Seneca’s hand, however, is not so sure as it is in the _Ad Heluiam_, the most regularly arranged and, at the same time, the cleverest and most readable of the three _Consolations_. Once he has passed the exordium and a recapitulation of the troubles which have already taught his mother, Helvia, to be courageous, he addresses himself to the immediate task of consoling her under the loss of her exiled son—himself. The situation, it will be observed, was unique; for the person whose loss is mourned comforts the mourner. His ingenuity and prevailing Stoicism are apparent in the defence of the two main positions. On the one hand, the exile himself is not really unfortunate, because he has been trained not to mind the deprivation of external blessings; banishment is but a change of place which cannot affect virtue; enforced poverty does not hurt the sage (an argument which gives a handle for invectives against luxury); and the disgrace of exile lies only in man’s opinion. On the other hand, his mother is not really unfortunate; it cannot be that she laments her son’s support, since her affection has always been disinterested; her natural pangs over the separation give her an excellent chance of displaying fortitude after the manner of other courageous women whom Seneca proceeds to cite; her melancholy can be dispelled through her favourite studies in philosophy, and through the affection of the dear ones who are left. Seneca’s recognition here of ordinary human feelings outside the chill reason of the Stoics makes the one truly touching portion of his _Consolation_. For himself, he is happy to have leisure both for the study of the universe and for light literary work.

In the _Ad Polybium_, written about the middle of A.D. 43, he is far less cheerful. Here the object is to comfort Polybius, a learned and influential freedman at court, on the death of a brother. Apart from the reasoned consolation, two features stand out—the author’s acknowledgement of his misery in a remote corner (_angulo_) of the world, where his very Latin might suffer,[640] and his flatteries of the emperor in the hope of securing a remission of his sentence. The inconsistency with his previous fortitude and the undignified abasement in respect of Claudius have made all Seneca’s admirers wish that he had never written this treatise. Diderot’s denial of Seneca’s authorship in the eighteenth century has, however, received only slight support in modern times. The manner is Seneca’s, and there are not wanting memorable sayings; _e.g._ on the obligations of high rank, “great fortune is great servitude” (_magna seruitus magna fortuna_, vi. 5); on a dilemma for mourners, “to lament one in bliss is jealousy; to lament the non-existent, insanity” (_beatum deflere inuidia est, nullum dementia_, ix. 3); on life as a torture (_omnis uita supplicium est_, ix. 6), at the beginning of a fine passage on the troublous ocean of life whose one final haven is death; respecting the dead man, “he has not left us but gone before” (_non reliquit ille nos sed antecessit_, ix. 9); and on the grumbler under a reversal of fortune, “the man who gives to the close of a spell of pleasure the name of injustice has no gratitude” (_ingratus est qui iniuriam uocat finem uoluptatis_, x. 2).

The three books _De Ira_ (which have certain gaps) were dedicated to Seneca’s brother, Novatus. They investigate the characteristics, uselessness and curability of anger. The plan, although the author several times indicates his line of treatment and his transitions, is not satisfactory.[641] There are repetitions and contradictions,[642] and the relation of Book III to the preceding couple presents difficulties. The work must be later than Caligulas’s reign; for it contains frank criticism on his mad anger, I. xx. 8-9, and on his barbarities, III. xviii. 3-4 and xix. 1-2. In the last passage Seneca indulges in the bitter climax: “Caligula tortured his victims by means of all the grimmest things in the world, with the cord, boot, rack, fire, and with that face of his (_uultu suo_).” Possibly the first two books were written, as Albertini suggests, in 41, just before the banishment; and Book III, which reads as if it came from Nero’s preceptor, may have been added in 49 to the work interrupted eight years before. Seneca’s handling of so unfortunately common a human frailty could not fail to possess interest. He reminds us that ungovernable rage is the one passion that seizes a nation as a whole and so leads to war.[643] The gift of apt illustration which marks the _Letters to Lucilius_ is already noticeable. Irascible men, he suggests, ought not to meddle with the more exacting sorts of task, or, if they do, should stop short of weariness: their tempers need to be softened with milder pursuits; “for who does not know that clarions and trumpets are irritants, just as some airs are lullabies to soothe the mind? Green is good for wearied eyes (_confusis oculis prosunt uirentia_), and some colours are restful for weak sight, while the brilliancy of some is dazzling.”[644] There is the gift too of graphic description and anecdote. A reader never forgets the opening chapter, where, after citing the sage who called anger “a brief insanity,” the author gives his tellingly repulsive portrayal of the outward symptoms of mad wrath leading up to his words of dismissal, “You could not tell whether the vice is more hateful or ugly.”[645] Nor does one forget the idle Sybarite who was annoyed over seeing a labourer hard at work, and who complained about the discomfort caused him by the rumpling of some of the rose-leaves on which he lay.[646]

Years elapsed before Seneca indited to the same brother the now imperfect _De Vita Beata_. Novatus had become Gallio by adoption, as the superscription _Ad Gallionem_ shows: most likely his governorship of Achaea was over. Two main questions are propounded—what makes life happy? and what is the way to the happy life? Happiness for Seneca consists not in what the many, but in what Stoic sages, think happy. It is “to live according to nature,”[647] in possession of a sound mind, true courage, true patience, and a true estimate of things, so reaping “an immense joy, unshaken and equable, along with peace and harmony of spirit, greatness of mind and gentleness; for all savagery is the outcome of weakness.”[648] From another point of view, happiness is to practise virtue. Against pleasure a polemic is directed, although Seneca takes up a broadminded attitude towards the Epicurean system when properly interpreted (ch. xii). The mode of attainment to happiness is not clearly formulated, but the essay develops a spirited retort to those who yelp (_conlatrant_) at philosophy on the ground that philosophers do not perform what they preach.[649] In particular a defence is needed for the ownership of wealth by the sage who affects to despise it. For himself Seneca can reply that he does not claim the virtuous perfection of the sage, but a wise use of wealth justifies its retention. Even in high estate a virtuous life may be led. Since the impression is given that the author is answering criticisms levelled at him as a rich man, a plausible date is 58 or 59, after Suillius’s attack upon Seneca.

The three treatises _De Constantia Sapientis_, _De Tranquillitate Animi_, and _De Otio_ were addressed to a recipient, whose name, Serenus, fits the tenets conveyed. Annaeus Serenus died as prefect of Nero’s _uigiles_ during one of Seneca’s later years: he had been accommodating enough to lend himself as a screen to prevent Agrippina from detecting Nero’s passion for the freedwoman Acte. Waltz,[650] following Hense, has pointed out that the three treatises mark progressive stages of philosophical attitude in Seneca’s pupil. In the _De Constantia_ Serenus is Epicurean; in the _De Tranquillitate_, he is already Stoic in sympathy, though restless; in the _De Otio_, he is a convinced disciple. The fuller title for the _De Constantia_, states its theme, “that the wise man can receive neither wrong nor insult” (_nec iniuriam nec contumeliam accipere sapientem_). Not unnaturally, considering its subject, some have referred it to the early months of exile; but a reference to a recent discussion on Cato[651] implies Rome rather than Corsica as the place of writing. As the purpose is to prove a paradox—admittedly a hard saying for Serenus—Seneca begins by explaining that Stoic doctrine is too manly to aim at attractiveness. The answers to the supposed adversary’s objections involve a good deal of hair-splitting; but there is a fine confidence in the emphasis laid upon the calm of the sage amidst the storm of war; “for no siege-engines can be invented to shake the well-established mind” (_nulla machinamenta posse reperiri quae bene fundatum animum agitent_), and he sums up:

See, then, Serenus, that the perfect man, full of virtues human
and divine, can lose nothing: his goods are girt with solid
and unscalable ramparts.... You cannot compare with them the
walls of Babylon which Alexander entered, nor the battlements
of Carthage or Numantia.... Those which protect the sage are
safe from fire and invasion: they yield no passage: they tower
impregnable, equalling gods. You have no ground for saying, as
you are wont to do, that this sage of ours is nowhere found. We
invent no such unreal glory of human genius (vi. 9-10).

At the opening of the _De Tranquillitate_, Serenus confesses his uneasy vacillation in the pursuit of peace of mind. What, for instance, should be the attitude of man amidst luxury? What are the claims of leisured retirement against the worries of public life? What satisfaction comes from literary fame? The answer gives Seneca’s views on the attainment and maintenance of such an unruffled course that the mind shall take pleasure in itself and in its surroundings. An extraordinary amount of human wisdom is contained in this treatise, which seeks to provide a cure for ennui and nerves. Among the interesting topics are failures in life; the restless traveller in quest of change; the teacher who performs genuine social service (_in priuato publicum negotium agit_); the value of friendship (_nihil aeque oblectauerit animum quam amicitia fidelis et dulcis_); property as a source of anxiety (a theme illustrated with characteristic fertility); foolishness in book-collecting (_multoque satius est paucis te auctoribus tradere quam errare per multos_); the defiance of fortune; the vanity of human wishes; the interest in the condition of spirits beyond death; the proper estimate of human failings and sorrows; the torment of an artificial life; and the advisability of a little nonsense now and then to obviate the dullness produced by all work and no play (_danda est animis remissio ... nascitur ex assiduitate laborum animorum hebetatio quaedam et languor_).

The _De Otio_ (mutilated at beginning and end) defends the moral value of leisure from affairs, in reply to Serenus’s statement of the strict Stoic position. Seneca’s plea is that at every age it is permissible to renounce action for philosophical meditation; but most of all is it permissible for those who have grown old in active service. Amid general corruption, such withdrawal is countenanced on both Stoic and Epicurean principles. We each belong to two commonwealths, and in retreat the sage may usefully serve the universal cosmopolis, the world at large, through his speculative life in accord with nature. Especially may he with profit devote himself to satisfying that inquiring disposition implanted in man by Nature herself. Nature has produced us to be spectators of her vast works: her beauty and complexity are not meant to pass unobserved. So by the right path of research, man must “discover something more ancient than the world itself” (_aliquid ipso mundo inueniat antiquius_); for “our thought bursts through the battlements of heaven, dissatisfied with knowing merely what is shown” (_cogitatio nostra caeli munimenta perrumpit nec contenta est id quod ostenditur scire_). The scientific impulse here is that which animates the _Quaestiones Naturales_, and the general tone befits the statesman who has resigned all responsibility for public policy.

There is a link between the _De Otio_ and the much earlier _De Breuitate Vitae_; for its final advice to Paulinus, controller of the grain-supply for Rome, is that he would make the best use of life by retiring to cultivate philosophy. Such advice could hardly come with full effectiveness from an exile; while, on the other hand, a reference shows that the treatise must have been written before Claudius extended the _pomerium_ of the city on January 24th, A.D. 50. Its date lies, therefore, presumably somewhere in 49 between the author’s recall and his acceptance of a regular appointment.[652] Paulinus perhaps was related to Seneca’s second wife.

The treatise is full of good things. Nowhere in literature are there to be read pithier remarks on the value of time. The first century of our era displayed a peculiarly keen sense of the way in which days are wasted. Under Tiberius, Phaedrus, we have seen, made fun of those fussy triflers, the _ardaliones_; and late in the century Pliny chafes against the petty but innumerable inroads made on leisure, while Martial betrays the same nervous spirit. Here Seneca speaks for the Neronian period. Life is short: yes, but it is we who make it so: life is long enough, if well employed. The general blindness to the worth of time is amazing: men will resist encroachments on land or money, but will let people trespass freely on their time, which is in reality their life. They are spendthrifts with the one thing in which greed is honourable (_profusissimi in eo cuius unius honesta auaritia est_). We live, in fact, as if we were to live for ever. You hear men coolly postponing leisurely reflection till after fifty or sixty: should they not blush to reserve for the sovereign duty of reflection the mere remnants of a life no longer fit for business? Drusus once declared that he was the only person who had never had holidays even when a boy: precocity like that must have an evil end. But the really great man will not let his hours be filched away from him; and his life will be long because devoted to self-improvement. Many a wrinkled grey-haired man has merely existed, not lived, a long time (_non ille diu uixit, sed diu fuit_). Yet for all men’s extravagance with this most precious of things, confront them with the peril of death, and how they plead for more time! For what purpose? To learn how to live and how to die demands a lifetime; but the paramount concern is laid aside in favour of toilsome exertions for a future on which no one can count. Thus the true life suffers from that procrastination which is the thief of our to-days (_expectatio quae pendet ex crastino perdit hodiernum_): so old age comes as a surprise, and death as a terror, to those who have been busy (_occupati_) over the wrong things, and have squandered time on luxury, affectation or vice. That man has true leisure who has the sense of leisure: its secret lies with philosophy, through whose study one may master centuries that are past and commune with all the ages and all the sages. Those great thinkers—not the arrogant snobs whom some court in Rome—constitute the true society of the world; and yet, Seneca reminds us, as Ruskin did long afterwards in _Sesame and Lilies_, none of those great thinkers will refuse access to him. The communicable wisdom of the ages points the right path towards immortality, and what philosophy has hallowed is beyond the reach of injurious time.

The remaining dialogue is the _De Prouidentia_, given first in the Milan MS. It is addressed, like the _Naturales Quaestiones_ and the _Epistulae_, to Seneca’s friend Lucilius, a man with literary tastes,[653] who had held procuratorial offices in various parts of the Roman world, including Sicily, and in whom some have seen the author of the _Aetna_. The subject discussed is summarized in the fuller title—why any misfortunes befall good men, when a Providence exists (_quare aliqua incommoda bonis uiris accidant, cum prouidentia sit_). From the Stoic doctrine of a providential government of the universe, it follows that suffering must serve a good purpose. Discipline is one of the ends subserved: misfortune is a school for virtue, and a spectacle noble enough for the gods to witness is that of good men struggling with adversity—_non miror si aliquando impetum capiunt spectandi magnos uiros conluctantis cum aliqua calamitate ... ecce par deo dignum, uir fortis cum fortuna mala, utique si et prouocauit_. The last clause “especially if he has actually thrown out the challenge,” is an addition symptomatic of a rhetorical over-statement too common in this essay. The imperfect way in which some points in the argument are worked out has led certain critics to hold that a portion is lost at the end.[654]

Of the _De Clementia_, once in three books, we possess the first and a portion of the second. The idea of writing on clemency was suggested to Seneca through recollecting Nero’s words, when he reluctantly signed a death-warrant, “Would that I had never learned to write!”[655] If one is tempted to jeer at Seneca’s compliments to Nero and his expectations that a better era had dawned, one must in fairness remember the high hopes reposed and realized during the earlier years of the young prince’s reign. Book I discusses the need for clemency in a ruler. The emperor, as war-lord, is urged to recognize his responsibilities. He should follow the model of the gods: things a subject might do, a monarch cannot, in the full light that beats upon a throne (_multa contra te lux est, omnium in istam conuersi oculi sunt_). Cruelty makes a tyrant; but the affection of subjects is a stronger defence for a prince than their fear. Book II degenerates into tedious attempts at the definition of _clementia_ in contrast with what the Stoic condemns as weaknesses—mercy (_misericordia_) and pardon (_uenia_).

The seven books _De Beneficiis_ addressed to Aebutius Liberalis were not issued together. An allusion towards the close of Book I[656] shows that Claudius was dead, and it is likely that the first four books had appeared some years after 54; being followed by the remaining books,[657] perhaps by V and VI together, as Gercke thinks, before the retirement of 62, and by VII still later.[658] The praise of Demetrius in VII. viii.-xii. best suits Seneca’s closing years. Based upon Hecaton, Panaetius and other Stoics, the treatment of _Benefits_ is marked by insight into human nature and generosity of impulse rather than by strict method. It may be too much to say that the work is incapable of analysis,[659] but it is safe to say that an attempted analysis shows the absence of exact system.

There are repetitions and anticipations, apparently because the author, instead of punctiliously exhausting a particular aspect of his subject, preferred to record, as they came, in characteristically concise and striking language, his thoughts upon points which he left himself free to illuminate again as occasion might offer. He is not unaware of such repetitions.[660] He is aware, too, of his digressions, on which he imposes a closure in such terms as, “Let us now return to the theme set before us,” or “My enthusiasm is carrying me away rather too far, for the subject is a tempting one.”[661] Even his initial definition of a benefit is unduly deferred (I. vi. 1) until after five somewhat rambling chapters. Such traits, although they may be adjudged faults in logic, actually contribute to the easiness and readability of his work.[662] Besides, some of his best thoughts are repeated in such varied form that they cannot fail to arrest the attention and impress themselves on the memory. Despite, then, a dearth of method, no man can rise from the most casual reading of a tractate by Seneca without having grasped its spirit. The redoubled beats, so keen and insistent in their staccato, ensure that effect.

The commonness of ingratitude is in Book I put down largely to the wrong mode of conferring benefits. The essence of a benefit lies in the attitude of the giver, and two points need consideration, the kind of benefits to be conferred and the mode of giving. The latter point is dealt with in Book II which turns to the mode of receiving, a topic involving that of the ungrateful disposition. Book III continues the subject of ingratitude, stating and answering problems: “Can ingratitude be prosecuted?” No. “Can a slave benefit a master?” Yes. “Can children confer on a parent more benefits than they have received?” Yes. Book IV, dealing with aspects of benefits and gratitude, puts the query, “Should one benefit the ungrateful?” The later books, from their investigation of _quaestiones_, are casuistic in character, but by no means uninteresting.