Letters from a Stoic. Donald Robertson

AN INTRODUCTION

      BY DONALD ROBERTSON

      Lucius Annaeus Seneca, also known as Seneca the Younger, is one of the most compelling and yet paradoxical figures in Roman history.

      Ancient historians, particularly Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, provide us with important details about his life. These mainly regard Seneca's relationship with Nero, with whose rule as emperor his own story is intertwined. Our information from these sources is very sparse and its reliability has often been questioned.

      Seneca himself was a very prolific writer. Yet if we turn to his works for clues about his life and character, we encounter another notorious problem – he was carefully constructing his own public image.

THE SENECA ENIGMA

Seneca's writings employ rhetorical methods to paint a picture of his life that is, in many ways, quite at odds with the historical evidence. For instance, those who read only the Moral Letters, written to his friend Lucilius, are bound to form a very different impression of Seneca than those who consult other Roman sources about his life. Indeed, what Seneca tells us about himself often says more about how he wished to appear than about how he actually was in reality. For example, he was by profession a rhetoric tutor. However, he says very little in his writings about his passion for rhetoric, his position as an imperial speechwriter, or his relationship with Nero's court. He wants to present himself, first and foremost, as a Stoic philosopher.

      A second example is the way Seneca describes his banishment to the island of Corsica. Corsica was a thriving colony for wealthy Romans, long known for exporting wine. Seneca almost certainly lived in relative luxury there, probably accompanied by his wife, and attended by a large retinue of slaves. Perhaps slaves even carried him around Corsica in a sedan chair, his typical mode of transportation in the later writings (e.g. Moral Letters, 55). Seneca chose, however, to portray himself as stranded on a ‘barren rock’ where he eked out a very austere and lonely existence, surrounded by uncivilized foreigners. In doing so, Emily Wilson notes, he appears to be drawing inspiration from the earlier writings of the poet Ovid, who was exiled to a remote town called Tomis, beside the Black Sea, at the edge of the Roman Empire on the so-called Scythian Frontier. Corsica, by contrast, is off the coast of Italy, just two days' sailing from the port of Ostia, near Rome. Today, it's a popular holiday destination.

      The enduring success with which Seneca reconstructed his own persona is perhaps best illustrated by the curious way in which another man's face was, for many decades, mistaken for his. Seneca tells us that he suffered throughout life from some kind of chronic lung condition, possibly pulmonary tuberculosis. He says that he ‘became totally emaciated’ through illness and often felt like taking his own life. He was only stopped by the thought that his loving father, who was now advanced in years, would be distraught at losing his son. However, Seneca's writings often contain conflicting accounts. He also says that it was philosophy that saved him from committing suicide:

      My studies were my salvation. I ascribe it to philosophy that I recovered and got stronger. It is to her that I owe my life, and that is the least of what I owe her. (Moral Letters, 78.3)

This and similar remarks about his inner struggle, and his embrace of simplicity and austerity, shape the perception many readers form of Seneca the man.

      A bronze bust discovered at Herculaneum in 1794 was believed at first to depict Seneca, whose appearance was otherwise unknown at the time. The face was suitably haggard, slightly emaciated, with straggly hair and beard, and an intense, perhaps even angst-ridden, expression. This image was widely replicated and found its way into works of art and book illustrations. Today it frequently accompanies quotations from Seneca on the Internet. However, it is not Seneca.

      This bust is now known as the Pseudo-Seneca and is believed to be modelled on an earlier Greek sculpture, perhaps of the poet Hesiod. In 1813, a double-herm – a single sculpture composed of two busts – was discovered, dating from the third century CE, which depicts Socrates and Seneca back to back. Seneca's name is conveniently engraved upon his chest. Real Seneca looks completely different from Pseudo-Seneca. He is an overweight, bald-headed man, with a double chin, heavy jowls, pursed lips, and an emotionless, perhaps slightly aloof expression.

      Of course, we can't tell much about Seneca's character from his facial appearance. What we do know is that Seneca's modern readers have tended to come away from his writings with an image of him more like Pseudo-Seneca than real Seneca. In real life, perhaps unsurprisingly, Seneca looked less like our stereotypes of an anguished poet-philosopher and more like a typical billionaire Roman senator. ‘It seems the face of a businessman or bourgeois', as James Romm put it, ‘a man of means who ate at a well-laden table’. Seneca's writings had once again created an image that proved to be dramatically at odds with the truth.

      With these notes of caution in mind, we may proceed to examine the main events of Seneca's highly eventful life.

SENECA'S FAMILY

Seneca was born around 4 BCE, in Corduba, in the Roman province of Hispania – modern-day Córdoba in Spain. However, he tells us that we should view the details of his birth as trivial.

      As for the fact of my birth: consider what it really is, in itself. Being born is a trivial thing, uncertain, with equal chance of turning into something good or bad. It's certainly the first step to everything else, but it's not better than everything else just because it came first. (On Benefits, 3.30)

      Seneca came from a moderately wealthy family of Roman-Spanish knights of the eques, i.e. equestrian class. His writings create the impression of a lifelong desire to rise above, what seemed to him, relatively humble and provincial origins. It was not by accident that Seneca sought to attract the attention of the emperors Caligula and Claudius, and was finally appointed tutor to Nero, ultimately establishing himself at the centre of the imperial court as the emperor's right-hand man. He was a determined social climber who fought hard to be accepted into the highest echelons of Roman society.

      Although Corduba had been his family's ancestral home, and his birthplace, Seneca's father brought him to Rome as a small child, where he was raised and educated. His father bore the same name and is therefore known as Seneca the Elder, or sometimes Seneca the Rhetorician. He was a historian who became famous for his work on the art of declamation. Seneca's mother, Helvia, was an educated woman, to whom he addressed an open letter of consolation, which, as we'll see, survives today.

Seneca was the middle of three brothers. His elder brother, Novatus, was adopted by the rhetorician Junius Gallio, from whom he took the name Gallio himself. Gallio was appointed consul and later made governor of the Roman province of Achaea, in modern-day Greece, in 52 CE, under Emperor Claudius. He is mentioned in the New Testament, where the apostle Paul is arraigned before him (Acts 18.12–17). Seneca's younger brother, Mela, was the father of the poet Lucan, who authored the epic Pharsalia, which lauds the great Roman Republican hero of the civil war, Cato of Utica. Lucan was a Stoic, like his uncle Seneca, and they seem to have been quite close.

      Seneca had a wife at the time of his death, Pompeia Paulina, but we know very little about her or their marriage. Some historians believe that this was his second marriage and he'd earlier been wedded to a woman whose name is unknown. He mentions having one son who died in infancy, about whom virtually nothing is known. Later in life, Lucan, his highly talented but ill-fated nephew, was perhaps the closest Seneca had to a son.