The Deaths of Seneca

The Deaths of Seneca

This page intentionally left blank

The Deaths of Seneca james ker

1 2009

3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ker, James, 1970– The deaths of Seneca / James Ker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-19-538703-2 1. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, ca. 4 B.C.–65 A.D. 2. Nero, Emperor of Rome, 37–68—Friends and associates. 3. Statesmen—Rome—Biography. 4. Philosophers—Rome—Biography. I. Title. PA6675.K47 2009 878'.0109—dc22 [B] 2009000874

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

J. M. K.

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

Many people supported me as I worked on this book. There are two teachers and friends without whom I couldn’t have started, let alone finished. Beginning from my time as a graduate student at Berkeley, Leslie Kurke has been an outstanding mentor: she has fueled my interests, read my drafts, and offered the very best of advice. Tony Long has listened with an open mind, and inspired me with his audacious thinking and writing. Other teachers willingly shared their methods and their expertise with me, particularly Maurizio Bettini, William Fitzgerald, Mark Griffith, and Kathleen McCarthy. Thomas Rosenmeyer commented on early chapters with lightning speed; I only wish he were still here to smile at my misconceptions. I was also fortunate to have Thomas Habinek as a reader of my dissertation; his reactions frequently pointed me in better directions, which I hope I have sometimes taken. The members of a Seneca reading group, Louise Clubb, Timothy Hampton, and Victoria Kahn, opened my eyes to the Renaissance Seneca, while my fellowship group at the Townsend Center for the Humanities engaged me in a broader conversation. Before this, as an undergraduate in New Zealand, I was blessed to have, in Charles Manning, a knowing guide to Seneca. When I thought I was done, Elaine Fantham and Gareth Williams both patiently read the manuscript in full and offered the perfect combination of critique and encouragement, which led to many improvements. Several others read chapters and offered helpful suggestions: Joseph Farrell, Sheila Murnaghan, Timothy O’Sullivan, Enrica Sciarrino, and Antonia Syson. Cynthia Damon shared with me a draft of her new translation of Annals book 15, which shed new

viii

acknowledgments

light on Tacitus for me. Others listened to me, shared their own work, or at various stages lent their support: Yelena Baraz, Shadi Bartsch, Robin Bond, Susanna Braund, Shane Butler, Catharine Edwards, Denis Feeney, Giovanni Ferrari, Victoria Frede, Laura Gibbs, Cheryl Graham-Seay, Celina Gray, Gianni Guastella, Stephen Hinds, Brad Inwood, Natalie Kampen, Sean Keilen, Ann Kuttner, David Larsen, Mary LeBlanc, Zack Lesser, Mark Morehouse, Melissa Mueller, Matt Neuburg, John Oksanish, Brendon Reay, Matthew Roller, Dylan Sailor, Alessandro Schiesaro, Alan Shapiro, Steven Smith, Sarah Stroup, Hakan Tell, Katharina Volk, Amanda Wilcox, Aldo Setaioli, Marcus Wilson, Tony Woodman, David Wray, and Graham Zanker. Equally supportive were colleagues at Harvard, especially Kathleen Coleman, Betsey Robinson, Richard Tarrant, Richard Thomas, and Zeph Stewart, who is fondly remembered. I can’t imagine a more stimulating group than my Classical Studies colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania: Rita Copeland, Cynthia Damon, Joseph Farrell, Cam Grey, Jeremy McInerney, Sheila Murnaghan, Julie Nishimura-Jensen, Brian Rose, Ralph Rosen, Peter Struck, Thomas Tartaron, and Emily Wilson. The students in my Seneca seminar at Penn in the fall of 2006 may recognize some of their ideas in this book: John Paul Christy, Carrie Mowbray, Kelcy Sagstetter, Sira Schultz, Sarah Scullin, Emlen Smith, and David Turner III. Individual chapters were also shaped by the questions of audiences at Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Canterbury, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, UC San Diego, Temple, Washington (Seattle), Wellesley, and Wesleyan. The support of library and museum staff was indispensable for securing many of the images; I thank especially Marissa Hendriks and John Pollack at Penn’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library and AnnaLee Pauls and Don Skemer in Princeton’s Rare Books and Special Collections Department. A research leave from Penn, combined with a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Grant, allowed me to spend 2007–8 finishing the manuscript. My editor at Oxford, Stefan Vranka, took a spontaneous interest in the manuscript long before it existed and ensured its smooth passage into print. For their infinite love and optimism from afar, I thank my mother, Barbara, my brother, Alastair, my sisters, Christine and Dorothy, and my good friend Sam Storey. I also thank the Park family for many fun outings. This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, John Milne Ker, who taught me my first Latin words and some more important things. But I could never have completed the book, or anything at all, without the support of one person: Jo Park, who is the greatest.

Contents

Illustrations, xi Abbreviations, xiii Introduction, 3 Part I: Historical Narratives 1. Three Descriptions, 17 2. Neronian Exits: Writing Death into History, 41 Part II: Seneca the Author 3. The Man of Many Genres in His Death, 65 4. Consolations on the Departure of the Consoler, 87 5. A Closing Scene in the Theaters of Ethics, Tragedy, and History, 113 6. End of a Series: Death in Epistolary Time, 147 Part III: Receptions 7. Tracing the Tradition, 179

x

contents

Part IV: Three Themes 8. Forced Suicide and the Bodily Paths to Libertas, 247 9. Passing into Memory: Seneca’s Imago and Its Reproduction, 281 10. Places Suburban and Serious: The Ruins of Seneca and Scipio, 325 Epilogue, 359 Editions of Primary Texts, 361 Bibliography, 365 Index of Passages, 389 General Index, 399

Illustrations

0.1 0.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 7.15 7.16

Luca Giordano, Seneca morente (c. 1650–53), 8 Luca Giordano, Seneca morente (c. 1684–85), 9 Double herm of Seneca and Socrates (early third century), 183 Historiated initial for Sen. Ep. 89 (thirteenth century, Waltham Abbey), 190 Illumination for Roman de la Rose (c. 1490–1500), 195 Illumination for Vincentis Bellovacensis Speculum historiale, 196 J. Zainer, wood engraving for Paulina chapter, Giovanni Boccaccio, Buch von den berühmten Frawen (Ulm, 1473), 204 Jörg Syrlin the Elder, oak bust of Seneca (1469–74), 208 Antonio Filarete (?), Nero Witnessing the Death of Seneca, reverse of medallion (late fifteenth century), 209 Peter Paul Rubens, Der sterbende Seneca (c. 1614–15), 213 Gerrit van Honthorst, De Dood van Seneca, drawing on blue paper (c. 1622–27), 217 Luca Giordano, Seneca morente (c. 1699), 219 Francesco Pittoni, Seneca (1714), 226 Barbieri, Giovanni Francesco, Sénèque dans le bain, vu à mi-corps, tourné vers la droite (1640s), 227 Giambattista Pittoni, La morte di Seneca / Il cadavere di Seneca mostrato a Nerone (c. 1712–15), 228 Jean-François Pierre Peyron, La mort de Sénèque, engraving (c. 1773), 231 Jacques-Louis David, La mort de Sénèque (1773), 232 Jean-Joseph Taillasson, Pauline, femme de Sénèque, . . . on la rend à la vie (1793), 234

xii

illustrations

7.17 Joseph Noël Sylvestre, La mort de Sénèque (1875), 236 8.1 R. Collin after J. von Sandrart, engraving from Sandrart, Sculpturae veteris admiranda (Frankfurt, 1680), 272 8.2 Anonymous, Mort de Sénèque, drawing, France (eighteenth century), 278 9.1 Theodor Galle, L. Senecae imago, engraving from J. Lipsius, ed. L. Annaei Senecae philosophi opera (Antwerp, 1605), 293 9.2 Cornelis Galle after Rubens, dying Seneca, engraving from J. Lipsius, ed. L. Annaei Senecae philosophi opera (Antwerp, 1615), 296 9.3 Cornelis Galle after Rubens, bust of Seneca, engraving from J. Lipsius, ed. L. Annaei Senecae philosophi opera (Antwerp, 1615), 297 9.4 Engraving from Thomas Lodge, trans. The Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca (London, 1620), 298 9.5 Fisherman, black marble (second-century copy of Hellenistic original), 300 9.6 So-called pseudo-Seneca bust, marble (Roman copy of Hellenistic original), 302 9.7 Peter Paul Rubens, The Four Philosophers (1611), 303 9.8 Luca Giordano, Morte di Seneca (c. 1682–83), 305 9.9 Nicolas Poussin, Le baptême du Christ (1650s), 307 9.10 “Prétendu Sénèque,” engraving for Jean Gaspard Lavater, Essai sur la physiognomie, 309 9.11 Guido Reni, Seneca, terracotta (post-1601), 311 9.12 Guido Reni, The Adoration of the Shepherds (1640–42), 313 10.1 Torregaveta, viewed from the south, 326 10.2 Villa Vazia, street entrance, 326 10.3 Engraving in Sir Roger L’Estrange, Seneca’s Morals by Way of Abstract (London, 1729), 330 10.4 Charles Le Brun, Le tombeau de Sénèque (mid to late seventeenth century), 343 10.5 Literno, sign at ancient forum excavations, 354 10.6 Literno, ancient forum excavations, modern commemorative monument, 354

Abbreviations

Most classical titles are abbreviated using the conventions of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. For works attributed to Seneca I use the following: Aga. Amic. Apocol. Ben. Brev. Clem. Const. Ep. Epigr. F Helv. Herc. HO Ira Marc. Matrim. Med. NQ Oct. Oed. Ot. Pha.

Agamemnon Quomodo amicitia continenda sit Apocolocyntosis De beneficiis De brevitate vitae De clementia De constantia sapientis Epistulae morales Epigrams [fragment in Vottero 1998] Consolatio ad Helviam Hercules Hercules Oetaeus De ira Consolatio ad Marciam De matrimonio Medea Naturales quaestiones Octavia Oedipus De otio Phaedra

xiv

abbreviations

Pho. Polyb. Prov. Remed. Thy. Tranq. Tro. VB

Phoenissae Consolatio ad Polybium De providentia De remediis fortuitorum Thyestes De tranquillitate animi Troades De vita beata

I give the following abbreviations for postclassical titles: CD Cen. Chron.

Civitas dei Cenodoxus Chronicon; Chronica

Cité Comm. di Dant. Cons. Consp. Contr. quatt.

Cité des dammes Commento di Dante Consolatio philosophiae The Conspiracy Contra quattuor labyrinthos Francie

De mul. clar. De vir. ill. De vita solit. Ep. Fam. IP Leg. aur.

De mulieribus claribus De viris illustribus De vita solitaria Epistulae Rerum familiarium libri L’Incoronazione di Poppea Legenda aurea

Mand. Mort de Sen. MT Ner. Perist. QV RR Script. ill. Lat. ling.

Manductio ad Stoicam philosophiam La mort de Seneque The Monk’s Tale Nero Peristephanon Quo Vadis Roman de la Rose Scriptorum illustrium Latinae linguae libri xvii Seneca Senecas Tod Speculum historiale

Sen. Sen. Tod Spec. hist.

Augustine Bidermann Jerome; Otto of Freising Christine de Pizan Boccaccio Boethius Hersey Walter of St. Victor Boccaccio Jerome; Petrarch Petrarch [multiple authors] Petrarch Monteverdi Jacobus de Voraigne Lipsius Tristan l’Hermite Chaucer Gwinne Prudentius Sienkiewicz Jean de Meun Polenton Kleist; Hiebel Hacks; Müller Vincent de Beauvais

abbreviations Tod Sen. Vita Sen.

Der Tod des Seneca: Roman Vita Senecae

Vita Soc. et Sen.

Vita Socratis et Senecae

xv

Schönegg Jerome; Barzizza; Polenton; Pompilio Manetti

This page intentionally left blank

The Deaths of Seneca

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

When the news broke, in late April of the year 65 CE, that Nero had forced his estranged adviser to kill himself, it was not the first time that Roman audiences had been through death with Seneca. No two words better distil Seneca’s literary voice than cotidie morimur, “we die each day” (Ep. 24.20), and throughout his writings in prose and poetry Seneca had confronted readers with repeated representations of himself and others facing death. Seneca’s death thus arrived in one sense as just the latest in a series, albeit the last and most real. In another sense, though, it was just the beginning: from the first century to the present, Seneca’s exitus has been retold through all manner of representations. Analyzing the representations together—those that preceded the death and those that followed—allows us to see how, in his own lifetime and beyond, (1) Seneca was a central force in the intellectual history of death and dying, and (2) death was the major focus in the invention of Seneca as a cultural figure. Interpreters have not overlooked the importance of Seneca’s death, or of death in Seneca. But when we examine this tradition as a whole, “Seneca” begins to appear in a new light.

Representations Seneca’s death can be approached through three forms of representation that are useful for us to distinguish: ancient historical narratives, the literary projects of Seneca, and the tradition of reception in both word and image. The ancient historical narratives, most prominently

4

introduction

the pages devoted to it in Tacitus’ Annals, are the primary form, even if they are not chronologically the first. Written some fifty years after the fact, the Annals offer a more “direct” access to the death scene than any other surviving representation. But this and the other historical narratives will require various types of literary and cultural analysis. Consider, for example, Tacitus’ description of how Seneca, bleeding already from his arms and legs, began to dictate to his scribes (Ann. 15.63.3): et novissimo quoque momento suppeditante eloquentia advocatis scriptoribus pleraque tradidit, quae in vulgus edita eius verbis invertere supersedeo. And his eloquence persisting at each final moment, he summoned scribes and dictated a considerable amount to them, which was published in his words and which I refrain from adapting. We can (and we will) pursue a close reading of this virtual eyewitness account of Seneca’s last authorial performance, as well as Tacitus’ self-conscious omission of the now lost dictated words. This will require us, however, to compare it with other details of his account such as the prior removal of Seneca’s wife Paulina from the room—herself also bleeding—and Seneca’s subsequent unsuccessful attempt to die from hemlock; and with the account by Cassius Dio, who openly mocks Seneca’s final acts as author. We will need to contextualize the death scene in the Annals more generally, where Seneca’s eloquence is a complex theme, and where vein opening and the uttering of last words are both regular exitus motifs. We must also locate the description in relation to the longer tradition of Greek and Roman death writing, including the influential model of Plato’s Phaedo. Such inquiries will advance our understanding of how the death scene was perceived and interpreted by its earliest audiences. Yet an earlier form of representation is constituted by Seneca’s own surviving writings. Although these writings are ignorant of his death’s actual details, they nevertheless help us to appreciate the interpretive lenses through which the death would have been viewed by some contemporaries. Whether or not we think the authorial Seneca is directly echoed in the narratives by Tacitus and others (as I will argue he is), Seneca’s writings are so closely identified with the theme of death that they must have entered into an intense dialectical relationship with Seneca’s death in the minds of Seneca’s readers even before the death, as they certainly did after it. We will benefit, then, from rereading Seneca. Keeping to the text quoted above, for example, we may observe that the image of Seneca dictating while bleeding resonates with Seneca’s own description, in the De tranquillitate animi, of the execution of one Julius Canus by Caligula. Seneca admires Canus’ efforts to console his assembled friends (Tranq. 14.9–10):

introduction

5

“observare” inquit Canus “proposui illo velocissimo momento an sensurus sit animus exire se.” ecce in media tempestate tranquillitas, ecce animus aeternitate dignus, qui fatum suum in argumentum veri vocat, qui in ultimo illo gradu positus exeuntem animam percontatur nec usque ad mortem tantum sed aliquid etiam ex ipsa morte discit: nemo diutius philosophatus est. “I have determined,” said Canus, “to observe at that most fleeting moment whether my mind will feel itself depart.” Behold tranquillity in the middle of a storm! Behold a mind worthy of eternity, which summons its own fate to serve as evidence of the truth—which, poised in that final step, interrogates its departing soul and learns something not only right up until death but even from death itself! No one ever philosophized longer! The phrase illo velocissimo momento is probably echoed in the phrase novissimo quoque momento used by Tacitus to describe Seneca’s dictation above. But even aside from this echo, Seneca’s text offered his contemporaries a potential interpretive apparatus for deaths such as his own. Many texts from Seneca’s prose and tragedies have a similar—and at the same time varied—potential. In this instance the emphasis is not simply on Canus’ display of tranquillitas and constantia in the face of death but on his pressing death itself to serve a heuristic function, as the frontier where new philosophical discoveries are made and communicated back to a living audience. Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis, by contrast, explores some of the ways in which a slow death may be satirized. Scrutinizing the different ways in which Seneca writes about death allows us to see better how his first readers, as well as subsequent readers, were equipped to understand the exemplary potential(s) of his death. Also, scrutinizing Seneca’s death in its own right allows us to discover how the death offered a vantage point from which his writings could themselves be seen anew. A third and final form of representation is found in the receptions that have ensued in the centuries since Tacitus and the other Roman historians. Staying with Julius Canus (or Canius as he is later known), we may note that in the sixth century Boethius in his Consolatio philosophiae clusters Canus together with Seneca: they are both among the Roman examples of those who have died for their devotion to philosophy (Cons. 1.3). Although the Boethian allusion is merely suggestive, in Matthew Gwinne’s play Nero (1603) the dying Seneca says that he aspires to die “like the excellent Canius of my own time” (qualis aevo Canius nostro optimus, Ner. 4113)—a degree of self-consciousness about his own repertoire of examples that is a hallmark of Gwinne’s Seneca character. In Gwinne’s day, in fact, all deaths and not just Seneca’s could potentially be held to this standard: the section on Canus from the De tranquillitate animi above is quoted extensively in a sixteenth-century text of the Ars moriendi tradition to illustrate how “naturall

6

introduction

men” (that is, pagans) were capable of making death a learning experience even “without the teching of God” (Lupset, Waye of Dyenge Well 71).1 Independently of Canus, we can also consider more broadly how the coextension between bleeding and dictating seen in Tacitus was refigured in the later tradition; and we can turn our eyes from text to image. In two works by the late-baroque painter Luca Giordano, a figure is located at Seneca’s feet. In the first painting, from c. 1650–53 (Fig. 0.1), the figure is recognizable as a scribe, with pen poised to take dictation from the dying man. In the later version, from c. 1684–85 (Fig. 0.2), the figure holds a scalpel and is clearly engaged in cutting the veins in Seneca’s foot.2 Giordano’s alternation draws a visual analogy between the two figures and also between the two events they signify. Beyond simply registering the temporal coextension between bleeding and dictating, the analogy hints rather at a codependency and indeed a functional equivalence between them. Without the letting of blood, Seneca’s words would be just like any other words; and without being recorded in ink, Seneca’s bloody death would disappear from memory. To this extent, bloodletting is writing and writing is bloodletting. (Elsewhere in the visual tradition, too, the scalpel used for opening Seneca’s veins is often wielded like a pen or brush.) Furthermore, if the figure of the scribe may be understood as a placeholder for all other documenters of the event—the series of authors and painters to which Giordano himself now belongs—then the painter himself is in some sense also complicit in the slow violence of Seneca’s death. Although Giordano’s paintings belong to an era that was predominantly concerned with reinforcing the authority of Seneca’s dictated words and participating in the chain of transmission, a contrast can be made with Heiner Müller’s poem SENECAS TOD (1992). Müller portrays the dictating Seneca as a mind persisting in spite of the weakening of the body (lines 32–34): Die Hand konnte den Schreibgriffel nicht mehr halten Aber das Gehirn arbeitete noch die Maschine Stellte Wörter und Sätze her notierte die Schmerzen the hand could no longer hold the stencil but the mind still worked the machine produced words and sentences noted the pain. But he undermines Seneca’s authority when he presents his failed attempt to use hemlock as a metaphorical writing failure (lines 40–42): Und das Gift das vielen geholfen hatte vor ihm Konnte nur eine Fußnote schreiben in seinen Schon beinahe blutleeren Leib keinen Klartext

1. In Atkinson (1992). 2. The same alternation already occurs in two versions by Claude Vignon (1593–1670) from the second quarter of the 17th c.

introduction

7

and the poison which had helped many before him could only write a footnote in his already nearly bloodless belly no clear-text. Müller’s poem gives the impression that there are lingering problems in the conversion of the dying body into a text—just one of several misgivings that we will encounter in Müller and others.

“Senecanizing” Seneca Although our account of Seneca’s death will be a history of the three forms of representation distinguished above, let us pause to consider the dynamics of the third category, reception. The refiguring of the death by different narrators requires us to account for the labor that each representation performed for its interpreter in his or her world, and indeed this will be the major thread of my account: the heterogeneity of the death scene’s successive receptions.3 At the same time, a fairly persistent thread of this tradition will be the specifically “Senecan” flavor of many retellings. In his manifesto on the importance of reception theory for classical studies Charles Martindale formulates a weak and a strong thesis: (1) “that numerous unexplored insights into ancient literature are locked up in imitations, translations and so forth,” and (2) “that our current interpretations of ancient texts, whether or not we are aware of it, are, in complex ways, constructed by the chain of receptions through which their continued readability has been effected” (1993, 7). Both theses are amply illustrated in the receptions of Seneca. Already in Tacitus, for example, (1) the Tacitean phrase novissimo quoque momento may unlock (or provoke) new insights both on Seneca’s De tranquillitate animi and on Tacitus’ own account, while (2) the successive references to Canus by Boethius, Gwinne, and the Ars moriendi tradition show that at some point the Canus genie had been let out of the bottle, with irreversible consequences for the associations of Seneca’s death. Thus we might ask about Seneca what Martindale asks about Virgil: “What else could . . . [Seneca] be other than what readers have made of him over the centuries?” (8). But in the case of Seneca we can often be very specific about what has been “made of ” him. For if a focus on Martindale’s thesis (2) in particular requires us to be prepared for a Seneca who is unanchored from the putative “original Seneca,” the drift has in a majority of instances been guided by currents that are themselves Senecan, in what I will refer to as a process of “senecanization.” This process has been characterized by two complementary hermeneutic pressures. On the one hand, Senecan biography (including his death) has frequently been refigured through framing contexts that derive wholly or partially from Senecan 3. For the importance of this see Hexter (2006), 26–31.

8

introduction

figure 0.1 Luca Giordano, Seneca morente (c. 1650–53). Schleissheim Palace, Germany, Inv. No. 516. Courtesy of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY.

moral and literary discourse—sometimes by circuitous paths and sometimes unknowingly, and not necessarily in ways that preserve the dying Seneca’s reputation. Gwinne, for example, has his dying Seneca apply the standard of Canus to himself, though the outcome within the drama is not in the end flattering to Seneca, who falls short of the example. To the extent that we observe this tendency, we witness the well-known phenomenon of an author’s writings being

introduction

9

figure 0.2 Luca Giordano, Seneca morente (c. 1684–85). Paris, Louvre, Inv. 2578, M.I. 871. Courtesy of Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

used creatively to supplement gaps in the same author’s biography,4 while also seeking to do justice to the unusually diverse routes along which this particular author’s writings have traveled. On the other hand, Senecan moral and literary discourses, or discourses derived from these, have often exhibited an unusually strong “cannibalistic” tendency, because they are applied to the retelling of Senecan biography—a narrative that serves as their eponymous and foundational focus. Gwinne’s play, and a number of other English plays, go to great lengths to represent Seneca himself, and not as they do other characters: he is in some sense a personification of the Senecan tragic paradigm, and the dramatization of his death offers allegorical or meta-literary potentials. These two hermeneutic pressures are manifested in different forms, but they are so recognizable that the reception of Seneca’s death—in most, though not all, cases—may be 4. Cf. Lefkowitz (1981) on the lives of the Greek poets; Chitwood (2004) on the deaths of the philosophers.

10

introduction

described as the product of an internal symbiotic relationship (not always harmonious) between Seneca the man and Senecan discourse.

Why Seneca’s Death? In a modern era characterized by what Tony Walter has called “the revival of death” (1994, 26–38) and accompanied by new scholarly interest in the history of deathways (that is, culturally specific practices around death and dying), there are reasons to single out this death for attention.5 Although Seneca’s historical personality varies in the different accounts of Neronian history penned by Tacitus, Dio, and Suetonius, and in allusions by other authors, in every case the telling of his death has illustrative, not merely informational, dimensions. These authors work within specific conventions of death writing as they inscribe Seneca in the history of the Roman Principate and offer a basis for comparing or contrasting him with pagan “martyrs” (to use this term loosely for now) such as Socrates, Cato, Cicero, Lucan, Petronius, and Thrasea Paetus. As Thomas Habinek has observed, Seneca’s death was interpreted in the generation after his death, especially in the first-century historical drama Octavia, in terms of “the age-old function of foundation sacrifice for a Rome that required continuous renewal,” which in Seneca’s case was accomplished through a mastery that was cultural rather than military (2000, 266). Jerome, in turn, perhaps with his eye on his Chronicon, located Nero’s murder of Seneca “two years before Peter and Paul were crowned with martyrdom” (De vir. ill. 12.3), exploiting its proximity to the early Christian persecutions to effect a convergence of histories and a mutual assimilation of Stoic and Christian deaths. As a martyr and writer, however, Seneca belongs to the more circumscribed group of those whose deaths can be “authorial”—whose literary works come into play in the interpretation of their deaths, or whose oeuvres can themselves be reread from a posthumous vantage point. Seneca also stands apart from all other writers in the amount of attention he gives to death as a literary theme across multiple genres. Successive audiences have been inclined to test and transform these writings’ various messages about death in the crucible of the author’s death scene. Senecan tragedy, to take one example, has been the literary model for several distinct cultural forms in which human experiences of death and suffering are dramatized: not only ancient Roman drama and neoStoic tragedy but also Elizabethan tragedy, Jesuit drama, French burlesque, Venetian opera, German Trauerspiel, and the twentieth-century theaters of cruelty and the absurd. The history of this generic tradition has conspicuously

5. Note the centrality of Seneca’s death in recent discussions by Flemming (2005), in connection with ancient and modern euthanasia; Edwards (2007), on Roman death; Dollimore (1998), 26–31, on Western death; Hill (2004), on Roman suicide; and Minois (1999), on Western suicide.

introduction

11

included its being used in various forms to represent the biographic Seneca’s own downfall—a use seen already in the Octavia. Furthermore, in the history of reception, the ubiquitous narrative of Seneca’s death became a showcase in which specific attitudes to death would be distinguished and exhibited. In the narratological reconfigurations of the dying Seneca’s agency, for example, where emphasis has shifted between the decree of Nero, the role of executioners, the choices and initiative of Seneca himself, the assistance of Seneca’s freedman and friend who is also a doctor, and the complicated role of Paulina (sometimes entirely suppressed) as she voluntarily opens her veins but is subsequently revived, the Seneca scene has proven responsive to the distinct interests and values of each interpretive milieu. The narrative’s uses also extend to the more abstract notions of mortality that accompany various “renaissance” moments in the hermeneutics of reception (not confined to the Italian Renaissance), in which the figure of the bleeding Seneca is useful for emplotting the periodization of a dead, distant, historicized Roman past, or a past that must be killed off in order to be known. Conversely, the transcendental ambitions of Seneca’s death performance help to establish lines of communication and assimilation across boundaries of time. Seneca’s death is thus the locus in which a varied tradition of cultural production around the themes of death and revival has taken place.

Why Seneca’s Death? With this book I also make an argument about the study of Seneca, whom we often struggle to see whole.6 Two now indispensable works in the Anglophone scholarship, Miriam Griffin’s Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (1976; second edition 1992) and Brad Inwood’s Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (2005), produce relatively synoptic pictures of Seneca as a man of action and a man of letters, but both exclude his tragedies, and his reception, from consideration. In the Seneca that emerges from these accounts, there are perhaps still tacit echoes of the Renaissance division of Seneca into two or more separate persons. The present book may be vulnerable to the criticism that it “reduces” Seneca to the dying Seneca. But it is my contention that one remedy to the fragmentation of Seneca into statesman, philosopher, and tragedian—together with opportunities to trace Seneca’s career amid, say, his conversions into and out of Christianity, or from one iconographic makeover to the next—lies precisely in examining how the death narrative has in practice been preferred as a way to tell the Seneca story. In order to know the anatomy of Seneca the

6. Recent exceptions include Bartsch (2006); Habinek (2000); and the introduction in Fitch (2008). Many collections of essays on Seneca also exhibit a catholic approach; see esp. Volk and Williams (2006) and already Costa (1974).

12

introduction

cultural figure and to read the corpus of Senecan writings in a way that respects equally their Roman context and the contexts of their later reception, we need to acknowledge the role that the death scene has played, even since before Seneca died, in the invention and contestation of his cultural authority. A historian of ancient Egypt has recently asserted that “death is the origin and the center of culture,” on the basis of his observation that death is “a center of cultural consciousness, one that radiated out into many—we might almost say, into all—other areas of ancient Egyptian culture.”7 Similar observations have been made about other distinct cultures, from modern Mexico to ancient Rome: death in Rome was all-permeating and, in the words of Catharine Edwards, was “rooted in other aspects of Roman culture” (2007, 6). I claim, however, that death—more specifically, dying—may also be said to be the center of Senecan culture. The scene in which a person faces death and is witnessed by others (or at least by him- or herself) is a lingua franca in which most things of value for Seneca can be expressed. The interpretive frameworks employed by Roman historiographers, by Seneca in his own writings, and by successive receivers in the classical tradition, not only have produced a specifically Senecan approach to death, as discussed above, but also have defined the sense in which the dying Seneca can stand for Seneca as a whole. In historiography it is the death narrative that offers the most synoptic view: a defining (because final) scene, witnessed by internal audiences, in which the paterfamilias, husband, friend, politician, celebrity, and author attends equally to the domestic concerns of his final hours and to his sole legacy of an imago vitae suae (“image of his life,” Ann. 15.62.1) that is to persist in the minds of others. The literary aspect of the scene lies not just in the fact that Seneca is shown actively engaged in the production of a text by dictation but also in the ambiance, in Tacitus’ telling, of Seneca’s characteristic stylistic modes, such as vivid description, consolation, theatricality, and epistolography. Tacitus’ telling is just one exercise in the superimposition of different Senecan literary layers in the death scene. The scene affords an opportunity, which other readers also took up and will continue to take up (consciously or unconsciously), for seeing the different aspects of Seneca’s cultural identity integrated, if not into a logically coherent persona, at least into a singular performance that is narratologically coherent. In the classical tradition, in turn, the death narrative, realized in multiple written and visual forms, was a favored accessus to manuscripts and printed editions of Seneca’s works, where the dying Seneca is spliced together with the authorial Seneca in the body of his writings, and the reader embarking on a Senecan text is called upon to witness the death scene in a retelling, often accompanied by a visual image. If, then, we are looking for a holistic approach to Seneca, the tradition offers one in the virtual convergence of Seneca with his death—in the heuristic function of the death narrative as the gateway for learning what makes Seneca Seneca. 7. Assmann (2005), 1–2.

introduction

13

Consider for a moment the varied fates of Seneca’s name.8 Although the associations with old age (senectus) already played an important role in Seneca’s own literary engagements with personal proximity to death and in Tacitus’ portrayal of his “aged body” (senile corpus, Ann. 15.63.3), a medieval etymology sees in Seneca one who se necavit (“killed himself,” Leg. aur. 84.221).9 And in studies of twentieth-century Italian popular culture some speakers report that the colloquial phrase seneca svenato (“vein-drained Seneca”), when applied to a person, connotes not just the deathly qualities of old age, emaciation, poverty, pallor, and unburied corpses, but also miserliness, moralism, and hypocrisy—typical satirizations of the philosophical Seneca.10 In these separate instances Seneca, and the authorial voice and moral authority for which Seneca stands, are identified with or through his death and his particular manner of dying.

The Shape of This Book In part I below, I analyze the earliest versions of the death narrative through close readings of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio (chapter 1), and then situate these within the broader representational edifices constructed by these authors, particularly of Tacitus as he moderates the pressure of death writing upon the Annals and endows Seneca with a privileged symbolism (chapter 2). I turn in part II to Seneca’s complex literary profile, identifying the ways in which his death can be understood as a performance of authorship, and I preview Seneca’s own flexible approach to the representation of death in different genres (chapter 3). Beyond the basic descriptive form of the exitus, the three modes that inform Seneca’s death writing most precisely are the retrospective narratives of recovery from loss that he promotes during his extensive career of consolatory writing (chapter 4); the theatricalization of death events that he explores from separate angles in the prose writings and the tragedies (chapter 5); and the anticipatory and meditative approach to death that he serializes in the Epistulae morales to Lucilius (chapter 6). In each of these areas of Seneca’s authorial output it is possible to see Tacitus and other early audiences taking up the opportunity to creatively reread Seneca’s death in the light of his writings, and vice versa. Part III, consisting of a single chapter, maps out the death narrative’s reception from the third to the twenty-first century, tracing its extensive filiations through different versions and different discursive forms (chapter 7). Part IV ranges more freely over the tradition, pressing into service the synoptic view that the first three parts cumulatively make possible. Here I focus on 8. The name’s career is surveyed by Citti and Neri (2001), 165, 175–76. 9. Literal confirmation of Hampton’s (1990) comment that in the reception of classical exemplars “the name is a noun with a verb phrase (the various great deeds) condensed inside it” (25). 10. Cf. Coccia (2000).

14

introduction

three central themes of the death scene that originate in ancient representations but are subsequently redefined in the course of the tradition. First I consider the refigurations of Seneca’s “forced suicide,” both against the backdrop of his philosophical writings and in relation to the strategic and practical considerations around self-killing and its representation in narrative: the multiple agents involved, and the corporeal dynamics of blood, poison, and bath through which the event flows (chapter 8). I turn next to the question of posthumous memory, focusing on the imago vitae suae that Seneca is described as offering to his friends as a metaphorical legacy; I also show how the very identity of Seneca’s “image” has been reinvented in the iconographic tradition and in appropriations of Senecan literary style (chapter 9). The final chapter addresses the distinct question of location. Because the death takes place in Seneca’s suburban villa on the day of his return from the allusive landscape of Campania, it is informed by the symbolic languages of domestic space and geography that Seneca explores in his letters. These languages were subsequently adapted by authors such as Petrarch, who pursued his own path of self-fashioning within the itineraries of Seneca’s last years (chapter 10).

part i

Historical Narratives

This page intentionally left blank

1 Three Descriptions

Seneca’s name is frequently on the lips of Roman authors recollecting (or seeking to forget) the age of Nero, confirming that they found Seneca “good to think with.”1 As it happens, however, only glancing references to the death survive from the immediately following decades. In the anonymous Octavia, written sometime after the death of Nero in 68, a Seneca character arrives onstage lamenting that he has been seduced by Fortune to return from exile only “to fall more heavily (gravius ut ruerem) and confront so many fears” (Oct. 379–80); yet his death is left beyond the scope of the plot. Pliny the Elder alludes to it when he refers to Seneca’s “power which, in the end, excessive, crashed down on him” (potentia quae postremo nimia ruit super ipsum, HN 14.51)—words that appeal to the same logic of tragic reversal as in the Octavia. And when Juvenal wants an example of the precariousness of wealth, he points out that Nero’s troops “shut off the great gardens of super-wealthy Seneca” (magnos Senecae praedivitis hortos / clausit, 10.16–17), probably referring to the aftermath of his death. These passages offer important information on how Seneca’s death was obliquely remembered. But it is only in a trio of second- and third-century works that we can read of the death directly: the Annals of Tacitus, Suetonius’ De vita Caesarum, and the epitomated text of Cassius Dio’s third-century Roman History. These three authors diverge at more than one level of the narrative. Even at those points where they are in agreement on the “fabula” (the 1. Habinek (2000), 265. For the ancient testimonia see Trillitzsch (1971); Faider (1921), 9–107; also PIR 617.

18

historical narratives

putative sequence of events) and the “story” (the configuration of the events in terms of internal ordering, location, character, point of view, and so on), still the textual devices through which these are inflected are different in each case, and make for different impressions.2 In this chapter we will examine each version and note some of its distinctive narrative and textual features, postponing for now our consideration of their authors’ broader histories.

“Sources” As we approach the death descriptions, there are two important general qualifications to bear in mind, concerning their relationship to lost sources and their use as sources: 1. Our three historians tend not to draw upon one another, but draw independently upon three Flavian-era historians—Pliny the Elder, Cluvius Rufus, and Fabius Rusticus—whose accounts are now lost and whose impact is debated.3 Scholars have attributed the negative portrayals of Seneca in Dio’s history variously to Cluvius and to Pliny; the latter has been thought especially hostile to Seneca.4 The role of Fabius, possibly an equestrian of Spanish origin, is relatively more certain.5 Tacitus, early in his Neronian narrative, reports a statement made by Fabius that was either absent or contradicted in Pliny and Cluvius: that Sex. Afranius Burrus, the praetorian prefect, was almost expelled from the Neronian court through the agitation of Paris, the imperial freedman, and that only Seneca had prevented this from happening. But Tacitus adds the following qualification: “Of course, Fabius tends toward praise of Seneca, by whose friendship he prospered” (sane Fabius inclinat ad laudes Senecae, cuius amicitia floruit, Ann. 13.20.2).6 Fabius may, in fact, have been writing later than Cluvius and Pliny, in the late 70s, and thus may have been reacting to their histories, and his work may have been less a narrative history than an apologetic biography of Seneca.7 Tacitus also cites Fabius as a source for one detail in Seneca’s death narrative itself (15.61.3 below); this has inclined some scholars to imagine that Fabius was himself an eyewitness to the death, one of the friends whose presence is mentioned by Tacitus and implied by Dio. The consequence of this overall uncertainty about sources is that it is perilous to seek to identify any specific individual other than the primary narrator 2. On narrative systems and these levels see Bal (1997), 3–15. 3. On the Neronian historiographic tradition see Champlin (2003), 36–52; D’Anna (2003), 196–97; Griffin (1992), 420–44; Wilkes (1972), 199–203. Flavian historiography and biography are surveyed by K. Coleman (1999), 20–25. 4. On the hostile source(s) see D’Anna (2003), 195; Ramelli (2002); Koestermann (1968), 303. 5. Cf. PIR, F62. Tacitus refers to Fabius in glowing terms as the Livy of his day (Agr. 10.3). 6. On these and other references to Fabius (Ann. 13.20.2, 14.2.2) see Paratore (1962), 456–58 n. 58. 7. See Champlin (2003), 42; Questa (1960a), 151–52.

three descriptions

19

(that is, Tacitus, Suetonius, or Dio) as responsible for the form and content of a given version. The uncertainty serves as a reminder that the death was already known to each narrator in conflicting versions, that inconsistencies are to be expected, and equally that any unified representation is likely to be the product of the primary narrator’s own efforts of adaptation and/or suppression. There is also no reason to discount as “sources” the multiple models of death writing (including Seneca’s own writings) with which the historians (and writers such as Fabius) were familiar; although I exclude these from consideration in the present chapter, their imprint will ultimately be more conspicuous to us than that of specific lost histories. 2. The three surviving versions have themselves had a varied role as sources in the historical narratives constructed by later interpreters, both because of their idiosyncratic transmission and because of their particular rhetorical form. Versions disappear from view (most famously the version of Tacitus, which lay hidden in the Middle Ages), just as versions enjoy the hegemony that comes with religious authority (such as Jerome’s later sketch). Versions enjoy an aura (such as the aura of a “renaissance epiphany” since Boccaccio’s rediscovery of the Annals), just as versions are actively marginalized (such as the testimony of Dio—found now, if at all, in a footnote). Shifts are evident at every stage. It helps to notice the strategies employed for presenting Tacitus in modern scholarship. In some cases his version is cited briefly or paraphrased, with the effect of removing rhetorical color but also of elevating its story to the status of citable fact. More often, it is given verbatim, implying that its reportage needs to be understood (and enjoyed) as an utterance of Tacitus’ literary voice. In the Tacitean voice some commentators hear an ultimately negative or satirizing portrayal of the death scene,8 whereas others hear Seneca portrayed in overall positive terms, with an emphasis on his constantia.9 But most perceive a mixed tone—whether Tacitus showcases in the death a “non liquet” (Alexander 1952) or “hermeneutic vicious circle” (Schönegg 1999, 22) that he himself cannot resolve; deliberately balances light and shade to create a portrait appropriate to its complex subject; uses “realistic details” that set the death apart from the more “poetic” death of Socrates (Waltz 1909, 437); or opts for a dignified tone that is, however, “not devoid of irony,” especially given Tacitus’ later description of the parody performed by the dying Petronius (Rudich 1997, 105). All such “mixed” accounts, incidentally, are facilitated by Tacitus’ characteristic inclusion of multiple internal audiences in his narrative that offer the reader divergent colorings of a Roman death.10 It also helps that Tacitus (like Suetonius and Dio, for that matter) does not seek to give any closing summary 8. E.g., Erasmo (2008), 27–33; Henry and Walker (1963), on Seneca presented as loquacious and dull. 9. The highest encomium comes from Koestermann (1968): “Never anywhere else do we find an account of a man’s death that is so detailed and has the same degree of compassionate sympathy” (303). 10. See Levene (1997) on Tac. Hist. 3.36–86 describing the death of Vitellius.

20

historical narratives

or evaluation of Seneca’s life of the sort that other major characters sometimes receive—no consummatio totius vitae. None of the three versions, in fact, offers decisive interpretive closure— only beginnings for later readers.

Tacitus In the Annals, his final work, begun in the 110s under Trajan and completed (if it was completed) under Hadrian, Tacitus does not tell a continuous narrative about Seneca but mentions him sporadically in the course of his year-by-year history. Although we will return to the broader Seneca story told by Tacitus in the next chapter, it is useful to have an outline of the episodes in mind as we consider the death scene. They can be sketched as follows: Seneca is recalled from exile by Agrippina in 49 to serve as Nero’s teacher (Ann. 12.8.2); in 54, he joins Afranius Burrus in managing Nero and resisting Agrippina (13.2.1–2); he writes Nero’s speeches (§3.1); he prevents Agrippina from ascending the tribunal (§5.2); together with Burrus, he is perceived by some as an experienced adviser of Nero (§6.3); in 55, he is understood to be the voice behind Nero’s speeches on clemency (§11.2); he facilitates Nero’s affair with Acte by supplying Annaeus Serenus as a cover (§13.1); together with Burrus, he is accused by Agrippina of ambition and ineptitude (§14.3); he is instrumental in saving Burrus from expulsion (according to Fabius Rusticus, §20.2); he is present when Burrus delivers Nero’s ultimatum to Agrippina (§21.1); in 58, he is informally accused of hypocrisy by the professional prosecutor P. Suillius Rufus (§§42.1–43.1); in 59, he diverts Nero from incest with Agrippina by sending in Acte (14.2.1); he is summoned to advise on what to do after Agrippina escapes from the collapsing boat (§7.2–3); he suffers disrepute for having written Nero’s letter to the Senate justifying Agrippina’s murder (§11.3); with Burrus, he indulges Nero’s zeal for circus races to curb his interest in musical performance (§14.2); in 62, after the death of Burrus, he is exposed to extensive criticism and stripped of power—an episode dramatized as the interview in which Seneca pleads to be allowed to withdraw, while Nero outwardly refuses his request (§§52.1–57.1); he is accused by a certain Romanus of allegiance to C. Calpurnius Piso, but retaliates with the same accusation (§65.2); in 63, he reputedly responds to Nero’s “reconciliation” with Thrasea Paetus by congratulating him (15.23.4); and in 64, after the Great Fire at Rome, he seeks to distance himself from Nero’s despoliation of temples, is refused his request for a rural retreat, and supposedly escapes an attempt by Nero to poison him (§45.3).

The Death Is Introduced The immediate context of Seneca’s death is the catalogue of killings that continues in book 15 and continues to the death of Thrasea Paetus, where book

three descriptions

21

16 breaks off. The more immediate context is the discovery of the Pisonian conspiracy in 65, in which he is accused by one of the conspirators, Antonius Natalis—whether, Tacitus says, because Natalis really was “an intermediary (internuntius) between [Seneca] and Piso” or simply “in order to secure the goodwill of Nero, who was hostile to Seneca and was exploring every means to crush him (infensus Senecae omnes ad eum opprimendum artes conquirebat)” (15.56.2). Among those pursued for their role in the conspiracy, Tacitus dwells first on the torture and suicide of the freedwoman Epicharis (§57), then the suicide of Piso himself (§59.5) and the consul designate Plautius Lateranus (§60.1). He continues:11 (§60.2) sequitur caedes Annaei Senecae, laetissima principi, non quia coniurationis manifestum compererat, sed ut ferro grassaretur, quando venenum non processerat. Next comes the killing of Annaeus Seneca, a special joy to the emperor—not because he had found him to be implicated in the conspiracy, but to advance with the blade where poison had not succeeded. The opening word sequitur (“Next comes”) orders Seneca’s death in time, just as Tacitus elsewhere uses sequi in a formulaic way: for example, to introduce death notices for two nobles who died apparently of natural causes.12 But here, coming directly after the deaths of Piso and Lateranus, sequitur captures the momentum of Nero’s growing cruelty. Since the Great Fire of 64 had been introduced earlier in the same book with “Next comes a catastrophe (sequitur clades), though whether by chance or by the subterfuge of the emperor (dolo principis) is uncertain” (15.38.1), the present event arrives as just the latest in a nefarious pattern. Sequitur, however, being in the (historic) present tense, also signals that the death of Seneca is the next event within the time of his own developing text. As he announces the death, Tacitus establishes Nero’s point of view. Although he does not go out of his way to deny that Seneca was part of the conspiracy,13 he emphasizes the convergence of this justification with Nero’s longstanding desire to do away with him. In saying “where poison had not succeeded” (quando venenum non processerat), he implies that Nero’s present actions give retrospective verification to what he had previously mentioned only as a rumor about the attempt to poison Seneca (cf. “Some have recorded,” tradidere quidam, §45.3).

11. I draw on the commentaries of Miller (1973); Koestermann (1968); Furneaux (1891). The most helpful discussions are Edwards (2007), 110–13, 156–57; D’Anna (2003); Schönegg (1999), 19–24; Hutchinson (1993), 263–68; Griffin (1992), 369–72; Maurach (1990), 507–17; R. Fabbri (1978–79). 12. Ann. 14.19: sequuntur virorum inlustrium mortes, Domitii Afri et M. Servilii; cf. Koestermann (1968), 197. 13. Positions taken by scholars on Seneca’s guilt are summarized by Koestermann (1968), 309–10; see also the arguments of Griffin (1974), 25–27. Compare the more direct implication of Seneca by Dio 62.24.1 and Polyaenus, Strat. 8.62.

22

historical narratives

The portrayal of Nero’s viewpoint is heightened here by the fact that laetissima principi (“a special joy to the emperor”) captures the feeling of anticipation with which Nero plans “to advance with the blade” (ut ferro grassaretur). But Seneca’s death will lack the simplicity with which Nero is here shown imagining it, and the state of Seneca’s body that will make him bleed too slowly is seemingly due to the same “plain diet” (simplice<m> victu<m>, §45.3) that may have allowed him to evade Nero’s poison earlier. There is also a perverse correspondence between Nero’s multiple attempts and Seneca’s ultimately multistage death.

Nero’s Interrogation Tacitus next gives a painstaking account of the episodes that led up to Nero’s final command: (§60.3) solus quippe Natalis et hactenus prompsit, missum se ad aegrotum Senecam, uti viseret conquerereturque, cur Pisonem aditu arceret: melius fore, si amicitiam familiari congressu exercuissent. et respondisse Senecam sermones mutuos et crebra conloquia neutri conducere; ceterum salutem suam incolumitate Pisonis inniti. (4) haec ferre Gavius Silvanus tribunus praetoriae cohortis, et an dicta Natalis suaque responsa nosceret percontari Senecam iubetur. is forte an prudens ad eum diem ex Campania remeaverat quartumque apud lapidem suburbano rure substiterat. illo propinqua vespera tribunus venit et villam globis militum saepsit; tum ipsi cum Pompeia Paulina uxore et amicis duobus epulanti mandata imperatoris edidit. (§61.1) Seneca missum ad se Natalem conquestumque nomine Pisonis, quod a visendo eo prohiberetur, seque rationem valetudinis et amorem quietis excusavisse respondit. cur salutem privati hominis incolumitati suae anteferret, causam non habuisse; nec sibi promptum in adulationes ingenium. idque nulli magis gnarum quam Neroni, qui saepius libertatem Senecae quam servitium expertus esset. (2) ubi haec a tribuno relata sunt Poppaea et Tigellino coram, quod erat saevienti principi intimum consiliorum, interrogat an Seneca voluntariam mortem pararet. tum tribunus nulla pavoris signa, nihil triste in verbis eius aut vultu deprensum confirmavit. ergo regredi et indicere mortem iubetur. (3) tradit Fabius Rusticus non eo quo venerat itinere redi<sse> tum, sed flexisse ad Faenium praefectum et expositis Caesaris iussis an obtemperaret interrogavisse, monitumque ab eo ut exsequeretur, fatali omnium ignavia. (4) nam et Silvanus inter coniuratos erat augebatque scelera, in quorum ultionem consenserat. voci tamen et aspectui pepercit intromisitque ad Senecam unum ex centurionibus, qui necessitatem ultimam denuntiaret.

three descriptions

23

(§60.3) After all, Natalis, and he alone, divulged only this much: that he had been sent to visit the ailing Seneca and complain that he was barring Piso from access to him; that it would be better if they could conduct their friendship face to face. Seneca, [he said], had replied that shared discussions and frequent conferences were in neither’s interest, but that his own well-being depended on Piso’s safety. (4) Gavius Silvanus, tribune of the praetorian cohort, was ordered to communicate this and question Seneca on whether he acknowledged Natalis’ words and his own replies. [Seneca], whether by chance or by foresight, had come back from Campania on that day and had stopped at the fourth milestone at his suburban estate in the countryside. The tribune came to that place as evening approached and surrounded the villa with bands of soldiers. Finding him feasting with his wife Pompeia Paulina and two friends, he then made known the emperor’s commands. (§61.1) Seneca replied that Natalis had been sent to him and had complained on Piso’s behalf that he was being kept from seeing him, and that he had excused himself on the grounds of his health and his desire for rest. He hadn’t, [he said], had any reason for valuing the well-being of a private individual ahead of his own safety, nor was he liable to engage in flattery—as was known to no one better than to Nero himself, who had more often experienced the liberty of Seneca than any servility. (2) When this was reported by the tribune in the presence of Poppaea and Tigellinus, who were the inner circle of counsellors to the raging emperor, [Nero] asked whether Seneca was preparing a voluntary death. Then the tribune affirmed that no signs of fear and no sadness had been detected in his words and face. And so he was ordered to return and decree death. (3) Fabius Rusticus relates that the tribune did not return by the same path by which he had come, but detoured to Faenius the prefect, explained Caesar’s orders, and asked whether he should obey them; whereupon he was advised by him to carry them out. Inevitable cowardice was shared by all. (4) For Silvanus himself was one of the conspirators and was adding to the outrages that he had sworn to avenge. Nevertheless, he spared himself the telling and the seeing, and sent in one of the centurions to Seneca to announce the final necessity. There is a folkloristic strangeness to the repetitions and redundancies of this narrative.14 Nero’s response to the ambiguous story of Natalis the middleman is to have his own messenger, Gavius Silvanus, attempt to draw Seneca into reprising the exchange with Natalis in a way that will show him to be

14. Rudich (1997), 102 speculates that Tacitus draws on an official “white paper” (cf. Ann. 15.73.1).

24

historical narratives

complicit with Piso or at least nudge him toward suicide. Throughout these episodes, however, Seneca is presented as asserting his autonomy and keeping his distance from both Piso and Nero. In relation to Piso, Seneca repeats the characteristic excuses of health and solitude that Tacitus had attributed to him since his exclusion from Nero’s court. He conspicuously modifies the terms of the utterance Natalis had attributed to him: where Natalis had quoted him as saying “that his own well-being (salutem suam) depended on Piso’s safety (incolumitate)” (§60.3), he himself says “he hadn’t had any reason for valuing the well-being (salutem) of a private individual [that is, of Piso] ahead of his own safety (incolumitati suae)” (§61.1). Seneca’s response not only denies any special favor for Piso, but emphasizes Piso’s status as a privatus homo and reverses the terms salus and incolumitas so that the latter—which may have had a special application to an emperor’s safety in this period—is not applied to Piso.15 However we read Seneca’s politesse, the quick-thinking inversion adds to the strangeness of the repetition between Natalis’ and Silvanus’ visits. Seneca’s mind games are also intensified by his direct appeal to Nero’s knowledge of the “liberty of Seneca,” which serves as a reminder of Seneca’s now-terminated role as Nero’s adviser (exacerbated by the fact that libertas Senecae, with its thirdperson self-reference, may have the tone of a political slogan).16 And Seneca withholds what Nero really appears to be after: signs of a voluntaria mors. The problems of this preliminary episode—problems of communication and of ethics—are centered in the tribune Silvanus. He is a conspirator (as mentioned by Tacitus already at §50.3), and at least one scholar has suggested that he actively sought to portray Seneca to Nero as innocent.17 Certainly it is his divided role as Neronian proxy and conspirator that leads to the embedded episode in which he swerves to consult Faenius Rufus. The information about the path not taken, attributed explicitly to Fabius Rusticus, has the effect of inserting the two minor conspirators into the causal chain leading to Seneca’s death, and gives Tacitus the opportunity for a brief “analytical”18 moral judgment (“Inevitable cowardice was shared by all,” fatali omnium ignavia, §61.3), which applies generally to the whole conspiracy (cf. omnium) but lays blame in particular at the door of Faenius Rufus, who had originally seemed to give the plot its “core strength” (summum robur, §50.3) but will later die in cowardice (§68.1). Yet Silvanus himself is also shown to be cowardly: the proxy delegates his own proxy in the form of the centurion, to serve as Nero’s voice and eyes, and to save Silvanus’ own. Despite the tribune’s evasion, the narrator still presses the paradox that he “was adding to the outrages that he had sworn to avenge.” This paradox, however, will be resolved through a further paradox described by Tacitus some chapters later: that “Gavius Silvanus died by his own 15. 16. 17. 18.

On privati hominis, see Furneaux (1891), 551; on incolumitas, Alexander (1952), 347. See Miller (1973), 114. Koestermann (1968), 299. I borrow this term from Levene (1997).

three descriptions

25

hand even though he had been found free of guilt (quamvis absolutus sua manu cecidit)” (§71.2)—thereby, it would seem, keeping to his oath by taking revenge on himself. As Tacitus situates the scene in space and time, Seneca’s absence from the city—visiting Campania and returning only as far as the fourth milestone— is congruous with the historian’s earlier portrayal of him, after his exclusion by Nero in 62, as “seldom in the city” (rarus per urbem, 14.56.3). Although it is left uncertain whether Seneca’s return to the suburban estate is accidental or intended,19 the phrase ad eum diem (§60.4)—instead of eo die, the more usual way of saying “on that day”—seems to suggest that Seneca was aware of meeting an appointment of sorts. But an appointment with death (that final day), or with the hatching of the conspiracy? The latter fits well with one scholar’s theory that the date of Seneca’s death is in fact the same date on which the conspiracy was set to take place: April 19, the final day of the Cerealia (cf. §53.1).20 The specific time of day when Silvanus makes his first visit (“as evening approached,” propinqua vespera, §60.4) implies that the time of his second visit is well into the evening, and although no further indication of time is given, the protraction of Seneca’s bleeding puts his time of death late at night. The discovery of Seneca banqueting with friends and wife (epulanti suggests festivity) reinforces the impression that he is aware either of the impending success of the conspiracy or of imminent death. Although the two friends have been tentatively identified by scholars—the possibilities include Caesonius Maximus (cf. Sen. Ep. 87.2), Lucilius Junior (addressee of multiple Senecan works), Fabius Rusticus (the possible eyewitness source), and Statius Annaeus (whose presence is mentioned at §64.3)—it is not at all clear that the friends whom Seneca later addresses (§62.1) are meant to be still just two in number. Pompeia Paulina—probably the sister of the Pompeius Paulinus whose career had up till this point flourished under Nero (cf. Ann. 13.53.2, 15.18.3), and the daughter of Pompeius Paulinus, the prefect of the grain supply under Claudius—has usually been understood to be Seneca’s second wife, aged 30 or less.21 The presence of friends and wife will serve in the present narrative as witnesses responding in diverse ways to the news of Seneca’s death sentence, with Paulina playing a conspicuous role. The audience around Nero (“the inner circle of his counsellors,” intimum consiliorum, §61.2) makes his deliberations a parody of official procedure. It also offers implicit reminders about the symptoms and motivating forces of Nero’s cruelty. While Poppaea had displaced Octavia in 62, inciting Nero to divorce her, send her into exile, and have her killed (14.60–64), Tigellinus 19. Scholars have tended to resolve forte an prudens in favor of Seneca’s knowing; cf. R. Fabbri (1978–79), 214–15; Treves (1970), 516–17; Koestermann (1968), 297. 20. Treves (1970), tentatively followed by Griffin (1992), 367. 21. On Paulina’s identity see Mauch (1997), 67 n. 385; Griffin (1992), 84–85, 94; Bourgery (1936). Seneca’s mention of a deceased son at Helv. 2.5 (written in 41 or 42) indicates that he had at least one prior wife.

26

historical narratives

had displaced Seneca himself in that same year, immediately after the death of Burrus: “With Seneca destroyed (perculso Seneca), . . . Tigellinus grew in strength by the day (validiorque in dies Tigellinus) and, thinking that the evil ways that were his sole source of power would be more welcome if he could bind the emperor by complicity with his crimes (si principem societate scelerum obstringeret), he delved into [Nero’s] fears (metus eius rimatur) . . .” (14.57.1).

Seneca’s (and Paulina’s) Response The above-quoted section concluded with the centurion delivering the necessitas ultima to Seneca—a euphemism for compulsory death. He is, however, implicitly granted illud breve mortis arbitrium (“the standard brief freedom to decide about his death,” §60.1), which had been denied to Plautius Lateranus immediately before him. Tacitus next describes the sequence of sub-episodes in which Seneca responds and communicates with the others present: (§62.1) ille interritus poscit testamenti tabulas; ac denegante centurione conversus ad amicos, quando meritis eorum referre gratiam prohiberetur, quod unum iam et tamen pulcherrimum habeat, imaginem vitae suae relinquere testatur, cuius si memores essent, bonarum artium famam tam constantis amicitiae <pretium> laturos.22 (2) simul lacrimas eorum modo sermone, modo intentior in modum coercentis ad firmitudinem revocat, rogitans ubi praecepta sapientiae, ubi tot per annos meditata ratio adversum imminentia? cui enim ignaram fuisse saevitiam Neronis? neque aliud superesse post matrem fratremque interfectos, quam ut educatoris praeceptorisque necem adiceret. (§63.1) ubi haec atque talia velut in commune disseruit, complectitur uxorem, et paululum adversus praesentem fortitudinem mollitus rogat oratque temperaret dolori aeternum susciperet, sed in contemplatione vitae per virtutem actae desiderium mariti solaciis honestis toleraret. illa contra sibi quoque destinatam mortem adseverat manumque percussoris exposcit. (2) tum Seneca gloriae eius non adversus, simul amore, ne sibi unice dilectam ad iniurias relinqueret, “vitae” inquit “delenimenta monstraveram tibi, tu mortis decus mavis: non invidebo exemplo. sit huius tam fortis exitus constantia penes utrosque par, claritudinis plus in tuo fine.” post quae eodem ictu brachia ferro exsolvunt. (3) Seneca, quoniam senile corpus et parco

22. The insertion of pretium by Nipperdey (compare fructum, Halm and Furneaux; laudem, Ritter) reflects the perceived need for an explicit object for laturos distinct from famam and modified by the genitive constantis amicitiae; see Koestermann (1968), 301–2; Furneaux (1891), 553.

three descriptions victu tenuatum lenta effugia sanguini praebebat, crurum quoque et poplitum venas abrumpit; saevisque cruciatibus defessus, ne dolore suo animum uxoris infringeret atque ipse visendo eius tormenta ad inpatientiam delaberetur, suadet in aliud cubiculum abscedere. et novissimo quoque momento suppeditante eloquentia advocatis scriptoribus pleraque tradidit, quae in vulgus edita eius verbis invertere supersedeo. (§62.1) He, fearless, asked for the tablets of his will. When the centurion refused, he turned to his friends and testified that since he was being kept from recompensing them for their services to him, he was leaving the only thing he still had, and yet the finest: the image of his life. If they kept this in their memories, [he said], their reward for such steadfast friendship would be renown for moral conduct. (2) At the same time, he called their tears back to resoluteness, now conversing with them, now more intently and in a forceful manner, asking them what had happened to their philosophical precepts and their rationality rehearsed for so many years against impending misfortunes. Who, after all, hadn’t known about Nero’s cruelty? Surely after killing his mother and brother, there was nothing left except the murder of his teacher and adviser? (§63.1) When he had set forth these and similar words to all, he embraced his wife. Despite his present courage, he softened a little, asking and beseeching her to temper her grief and not hold onto it forever, but to endure her longing for her husband by noble consolations, contemplating a life conducted through virtue. She, however, was insistent that she too had an appointment with death, and demanded the hand of the executioner. (2) Then Seneca, unopposed to her glory and also moved by love, not wanting to leave his one and only beloved vulnerable to abuse, said: “I had shown you the means of soothing life, but you prefer the honor of death. I won’t stand in the way of your good example. Let us both be equally steadfast in this brave exit, but let there be greater renown in your ending.” After this, they opened their arms with the same stroke of the blade. (3) Since Seneca’s body was losing blood slowly, being old and thin from his frugal diet, he also broke open the veins at his shins and knees. Exhausted by the extreme afflictions of pain, he persuaded his wife to withdraw into another private room, so that he would neither break her spirit with his own suffering nor himself lose his ability to endure from seeing her torment. And his eloquence persisting at each final moment, he summoned scribes and dictated a considerable amount to them, which was published in his words and which I refrain from adapting.

27

28

historical narratives

In this opening to the death scene proper, the description becomes more vivid, presenting the point of view of a firsthand observer.23 The impression of vividness results in part from precise details, such as the centurion’s refusal of access to the will24 or Seneca’s resort to cutting his legs at the ankles and knees, but equally by the withholding of certain details such as the identity of the friends and of the “executioner” (percussoris), whose hand is to wield the blade, or the precise words uttered by Seneca. Tacitus paraphrases Seneca’s verbal interactions (“these and similar words,” haec atque talia, §63.1), using diverse speech terms to describe his demand for his will from the centurion, his transfer of the imago vitae suae (“testified,” testatur—underlining its status as a metaphorical substitute for the “will,” testamentum, §62.1), his alternations between discussion and exhortation, his strings of rhetorical questions (“asking them what had happened to their philosophical precepts”),25 and the rising tricolon with which he ends: “Surely after killing his mother and brother, there was nothing left except the murder of his teacher and adviser?”26 Only his response to Paulina’s death wish is given in direct speech. These oscillations create a chiaroscuro effect that isolates and enhances the details that are mentioned and makes them symbolic (or gestural) rather than documentary. The description is also vivid in its slowing to match the pace of events, moving in quasi-real time from one sub-episode to the next as the Seneca character is shown responding to successive interventions by different parties present (the centurion, his friends, his wife). The simple portrait of Seneca as interritus (“fearless”)—a term used earlier in book 15 to refer to Domitius Corbulo, the paradigmatic Roman soldier (cf. ille interritus, 15.12.1)—amid tearful friends is rendered more complex by the comment that, when he turned to Paulina, “despite his present courage, he softened a little” (paululum adversus praesentem fortitudinem mollitus, §63.1).27 This leads in turn to the equally complex portrait of Paulina, her participation “complicating” and “increasing” the death scene.28 She initially serves as a focus of Seneca’s more tender words of consolation, and Seneca’s initial advice for her, that she should “contemplate his life conducted through virtue” (contemplatione vitae per virtutem actae, §63.1), partly echoes the consolatory ending of the Agricola directed toward the women of the deceased’s household (the only other instance of contemplatio in Tacitus; Agr. 46.1).29 23. Maurach (1990), 507–17 sees here an impressionistic “imago mortis.” 24. On the centurion’s reasons, see Maurach (1990), 510–11. 25. On the speech motifs see Miller (1973), 115. 26. The absence of Octavia from Seneca’s list of victims led Nipperdey to read fratresque (“and his siblings”) for fratremque; cited by Furneaux (1891), 553. See also R. Fabbri (1978–79), 419. 27. An alternative ms. reading, formidinem, yields: “a little softened in view of the terrors which at the moment threatened her”; cf. Furneaux (1891), 553–54. Lipsius (1605) characteristically suggests an emendation that would have adversus praesentem formidinem mollitam, with Paulina, not Seneca, the one softened. 28. Hutchinson (1993), 265–67; quoted from 267. On Paulina’s role see also Reydams-Schils (2005), 171–75; Mauch (1997), 70–74; Plass (1995), 110; Harich (1994), 359. 29. See R. Fabbri (1978–79), 421.

three descriptions

29

But Paulina’s demand for “the hand of the executioner” (§63.1) instantly places her ahead of the friends in resoluteness, and even ahead of Seneca to the extent that she imposes on herself an entirely voluntary death. There are echoes of Epicharis, whose recent clarius exemplum set a standard for the male conspirators (§57.2). Paulina, however, is motivated by marital devotion and, as part of this, her death has the appearance of being long prepared for—if not by a pact, then by her implied status as a stellar student of her husband’s philosophy.30 Within the Annals she more closely echoes such women as Sextia, who was incitamentum mortis et particeps (“a spur to death and a participant in it”) when her husband Mamercus Scaurus committed suicide under Tiberius (6.29.4), and more generally she echoes the legendary gesture of Arria, whose dying words were “Paete, non dolet” (“Paetus, it does not hurt”; Mart. 1.13; cf. Plin. Ep. 3.16.2).31 Seneca, assenting to Paulina’s wish ostensibly out of affection and concern for her,32 also wastes no time in calculating the claritudo she will earn. In telling her that the two of them should be equally “steadfast” in their exit but that she should have “greater renown in [her] ending” (§63.2), he acknowledges precise gradations in the discourse of exemplarity.33 To begin with, when they open their veins together, Paulina’s death appears to be completely synchronized with Seneca’s in an image of marital concordia. The symmetry is soon disrupted by the distinction between the two bodies bleeding at different rates, with Seneca’s body, “old and thin from his frugal diet” (senile . . . et parco victu tenuatum), a conspicuous sign of the difference of age between them (§63.3). As Seneca becomes “exhausted from extreme afflictions of pain” (saevisque cruciatibus defessus)34 and undergoes the separate, slower, and more challenging experience that will delay Tacitus’ own description, the possibility of mutual spectation cannot be sustained, leading to the splitting of the scene into two separate rooms. This conveniently allows Seneca to call for his scribes, suggesting an ultimate incompatibility between the fragile dynamics of the matrimonial death and his ambitions as a philosopher.

Paulina’s Survival, Seneca’s Death The next chapter continues the now separate tales of wife and husband, in successive passages of almost identical length: (§64.1) at Nero nullo in Paulinam proprio odio, ac ne glisceret invidia crudelitatis, inhiberi mortem. hortantibus militibus 30. On Bickel’s theory of a pactum mortis see Mauch (1997), 72 n. 420; but compare Griffin (1992), 371 n. 3. 31. See Veyne (2003), 186 n. 24; Griffin (1992), 371, (1986), 200; Musurillo (1979), 242 n. 1. 32. Tacitus’ language is marked: e.g., unice is a Tacitean hapax; cf. R. Fabbri (1978–79), 421. 33. See the analysis of Habinek (2000), 273: “Paulina’s glory would seem to derive from a freely chosen suicide, the heightened distinction from the rarity of such an act.” 34. The “afflictions” are explained as convulsions due to blood loss by Furneaux (1891), 554; but Miller (1973), 116 suggests that they are due to pain from the cuts.

30

historical narratives servi libertique obligant brachia, premunt sanguinem, incertum an ignarae. (2) nam, ut est vulgus ad deteriora promptum, non defuere qui crederent, donec inplacabilem Neronem timuerit, famam sociatae cum marito mortis petivisse, deinde oblata mitiore spe blandimentis vitae evictam; cui addidit paucos postea annos, laudabili in maritum memoria et ore ac membris in eum pallorem albentibus, ut ostentui esset multum vitalis spiritus egestum. (3) Seneca interim, durante tractu et lentitudine mortis, Statium Annaeum, diu sibi amicitiae fide et arte medicina probatum, orat provisum pridem venenum, quo nati publico Atheniensium iudicio exstinguerentur, promeret; adlatumque hausit frustra, frigidus iam artus et cluso corpore adversum vim veneni. (4) postremo stagnum calidae aquae introiit, respergens proximos servorum addita voce libare se liquorem illum Iovi liberatori. exim balneo inlatus et vapore eius exanimatus, sine ullo funeris sollemni crematur. ita codicillis praescripserat, cum etiam tum praedives et praepotens supremis suis consuleret. (§64.1) But Nero had no personal animosity toward Paulina, and to avoid inflating the outrage over his cruelty, he ordered her death to be interrupted. With the soldiers urging them on, her slaves and freedmen bound up her arms and constricted the flow of blood. Whether they did so without her knowledge is uncertain. (2) Since the mob is ready to assume what is more disreputable, there were those who believed that for as long as she feared that Nero was implacable she had sought the fame of sharing death with her husband, but that after she was given reason to hope for a milder outcome, she was won over by the enticements of life. To her life she added a few further years, earning praise for her fidelity to her husband’s memory and with face and limbs blanched to a pallor that showed that much of her vital spirit had drained out. (3) Seneca meanwhile, the length and slowness of his death being protracted, requested Statius Annaeus, long trusted as a friend and tried and tested in medical skill, to produce the poison which he had long ago prepared, used [he said] for executing those condemned by the Athenians in public trial. When it was brought to him he drained it without result: his limbs were cold and his body was cut off from the effect of the poison. (4) Finally he entered a pool of hot water. Sprinkling the nearest of his slaves, he explained that he was giving the water as a libation to Jupiter the Liberator. Then being carried into a [steam] bath and choked by its steam, he was cremated without any funeral ceremony. This was as he had stipulated in his will, when he was giving thought to his last rites even while still supremely wealthy and powerful.

three descriptions

31

Tacitus’ remarkable insertion of Paulina’s afterlife into the middle of Seneca’s own death scene—since he next resumes with “Meanwhile, Seneca . . .” (Seneca interim, §64.3)—helps also to signal the sense in which Paulina’s surviving image, the pallor of her face and limbs, is a monument on which the continuing recollection of Seneca’s death is to be inscribed.35 But the digression on Paulina’s revival is complicated. Nero makes a surprising reappearance, with an act of clemency that is ironic given that Seneca had once sought to teach him this virtue36 and he recently had his own wife Octavia put to death. The plausibility of Nero’s intervening so decisively from a distance of four miles is questionable: a return journey by messengers would surely have taken an hour at the very least. The soldiers play an encouraging role: whether or not they have orders, they soon act.37 The mention of both soldiers and household staff (servi libertique) also gives explicit presence to a larger ensemble than has previously been mentioned by Tacitus (though Seneca already has his scribes)—an audience that greets the change of plan. The digression, moreover, offers a broad vista on Paulina’s survival and its perception in popular tradition. Tacitus’ position is that “whether they [revived her] without her knowledge is uncertain” (incertum an ignarae),38 and he rejects the contention of the “mob” (vulgus) that she knew, and that she desired it (§64.2). But he lingers over the rumor long enough for us to glimpse an ironic parallel between the blandimenta vitae to which Paulina supposedly succumbs (§64.2) and the delenimenta vitae with which Seneca had sought to persuade her to console her widowhood (§63.2). Indeed, Tacitus’ mention of the rumor must infuse some ambiguity into our reading of his following statements about Paulina’s afterlife, in which the pallor of her face and limbs serves to “show” (ostentui)39 her loss of “much of her vital spirit” (multum vitalis spiritus) and her “fidelity to her husband’s memory” (in maritum memoria, §64.2), whereas some might also read her face as connoting her own possible lack of resolve and her indebtedness to Nero’s reprieve.40 On the negative reading, Paulina recalls such figures as Plancina, the wife of Cn. Calpurnius Piso, who, “so long as there was some measure of hope for Piso, promised . . ., if the need should arise, to be his companion in death (comitem exitii),” but after receiving a pardon “began bit by bit to distance herself from her husband” (paulatim segregari a marito, Ann. 3.15.1).41 But in more positive terms, Paulina is comparable to another widow 35. On the insertion see Hutchinson (1993), 266 n. 18. An insightful negative reading, with Paulina as “living corpse” and Nero as deus ex machina, is offered by Erasmo (2008), 27. 36. See Plass (1995), 110. 37. R. Fabbri (1978–79), 422 suggests a spontaneous intervention by the soldiers, or that Paulina was saved by an embolism. 38. Furneaux (1891) translates: “when she was perhaps unconscious” (555). 39. An “ostentatious” aspect in the present context is suggested by Miller (1973), 117; Furneaux (1891), 555 compares an evocative application of the term to corpses at Ann. 1.29.4: corpora extra vallum abiecta ostentui. 40. Habinek (2000), 273 stresses the relatively slight prestige granted Paulina even by Tacitus’ phrase laudabili in maritum memoria (15.64.2). 41. I thank Cynthia Damon for the Plancina comparison.

32

historical narratives

of the Annaean household from the same period: Polla, the wife of Lucan, of whom Statius says, “She both cultivates and frequently honors the man himself, deeply embedded as he is in her innermost marrow” (ipsum . . . colit et frequentat ipsum / imis altius insitum medullis, Silv. 2.7.126–27). Paulina’s own brush with death and its tangible signs on her body make her more specifically a persisting reminder of the death scene itself; her pallid face is described by Roland Barthes as “the very sign of a communication with the void” (1972, 102). She resembles the wife in a Controversia recorded by Seneca the Elder: hearing of her husband’s death and making good on their death pact by jumping off a cliff, the wife by chance survives her fall and yet is celebrated for joining the ranks of women who die with or for their husbands: “O you happy wife, to be numbered among these women, though you still live” (o te felicem, uxor! inter has viva numeraris, Contr. 2.2.1). In Tacitus, however, “overliving” characters hover somewhere between vindicating the deceased and embodying a survivor’s guilt.42 The digression makes for a jarring return to Seneca’s slow death with Seneca interim (§64.3). In Tacitus’ portrayal of these end stages, however, as Seneca has recourse to poison, hot water, and steam, the appearance of clumsy desperation is balanced by elements of foresight, ritual process, and rhetorical composure.43 The bleeding process is measured out in language conveying tardiness (“the length and slowness of his death being protracted,” durante tractu et lentitudine mortis),44 and an equally poeticized description of the body’s resistance to dying (for example, adlatumque hausit frustra, frigidus iam artus et cluso corpore adversum vim veneni, §64.3). But the hemlock is “long ago prepared” (provisum pridem), and the grandeur it acquires through its Athenian associations (though Tacitus leaves it for the reader to make the connection with Socrates) is not undermined by the poison’s failure to circulate through Seneca’s body.45 This failure, in turn, is remedied by immersion in the pool of hot water (implicitly to speed circulation, whether to aid bleeding or the effect of the poison) followed by entry into the steam bath (to induce fainting or choking). Seneca’s redoubled efforts to die also entail a widening of the circle of characters involved in conveying him to death: it becomes a domestic team effort. Statius Annaeus is otherwise unknown, but his cognomen (likely indicating that he is a freedman of Seneca)46 marks him as not just a friend, 42. E.g., Agr. 3.2: non modo aliorum sed etiam nostri superstites sumus. On “overliving” see E. R. Wilson (2004), esp. 89. 43. See Edwards (2007), 111; Hutchinson (1993), 267–68. 44. Hutchinson (1993), 267 emphasizes the sluggishness of this (entirely nominal) phrase. Note also that (inter)ı̄m dūrāntē trāct(u) ēt lēntı̌tūdı̌ně mōrtı̄s is a tortured near hexameter (reading the final syllable of durante as long by position, and forcing the second syllable of lentitudine). 45. Hutchinson (1993) notes that a mention of Socrates by name here “would be alien to [Tacitus’] ethos” (264). The subjunctive in quo . . . exstinguerentur “indicat[es] that Seneca’s own words are being imagined as quoted,” observes Woodman (2004), 336 n. 90. 46. See Furneaux (1891), 556. His status as a doctor also suggests low status and/or Greek origin; cf. Miller (1973), 117.

three descriptions

33

but a surrogate. The slaves who accompany Seneca when he enters the hot pool lend physical labor and are sprinkled with his makeshift libation of water, presumably mixed with blood, accompanied by the explanation “that he was giving the water as a libation to Jupiter the Liberator” (libare se liquorem illum Iovi liberatori, §64.4)—note the quasi-ritual alliteration. Later in Tacitus’ narrative, the libation to Jupiter Liberator will be repeated by the dying Thrasea Paetus (16.35.1). Tacitus’ anticlimactic portrayal of the death (given in a participle: exanimatus), and of the cremation without funeral, might seem to convey the dissolution of Seneca’s agency. But the historian counteracts this impression by explaining that the lack of a funeral was itself a product of foresight (he had realized, after all, that after Britannicus and Agrippina he might be next)—something Seneca had “stipulated” ahead of time (praescripserat) even while super-wealthy (praedives) and super-powerful (praepotens). This explanation places the death within the teleological structure of a life spent anticipating death, and is the closest that Tacitus comes to giving Seneca a consummatio totius vitae.

The Rumor of a Senecan Conspiracy Having narrated Seneca’s death, however, Tacitus appends some further information about a planned second conspiracy involving Seneca: (§65) fama fuit Subrium Flavum cum centurionibus occulto consilio, neque tamen ignorante Seneca, destinavisse, ut post occisum opera Pisonis Neronem Piso quoque interficeretur tradereturque imperium Senecae, quasi insonti et claritudine virtutum ad summum fastigium delecto. quin et verba Flavi vulgabantur, non referre dedecori, si citharoedus demoveretur et tragoedus succederet (quia ut Nero cithara, ita Piso tragico ornatu canebat). (§65) There was a rumor that Subrius Flavus had secretly planned together with the centurions, but not without Seneca’s knowledge, that after the slaying of Nero by Piso’s handiwork Piso also should be killed and power given to Seneca, on the reasoning that he was without blame and that his renown for his virtues made him a welcome choice for the highest power. Flavus was even quoted as saying that there was no difference in the disgrace if the citharasinger should be ousted and the tragedy-singer take his place (for just as Nero used to sing to the cithara, Piso did so in tragic costume). Tacitus here sketches some public perceptions of Seneca around the time of his death. Even if the suggestion that Seneca knew about the plan to kill Piso is somewhat incriminating, Subrius and his accomplices are shown as confident that Seneca would have been perceived as suitable for the position of

34

historical narratives

emperor on account of his being “without blame” (insonti) and having “renown for his virtues” (claritudine virtutum). But Seneca’s suitability is also established negatively here through contrast with the perceived unsuitability of both Nero and Piso; their satirization as musical performers, respectively citharoedus and tragoedus, not only yields the unsettling image of the Pisonian revolution as a progression (or decline) from lyric to tragedy, but also helps to cast Seneca as the only one of the three who possesses authenticity and moral authority.47 Tacitus’ placement of this passage here helps to portray Seneca’s death as symbolizing the loss of the superior political revolution that might have been.

Suetonius In the briefest of the three versions, Suetonius mentions Seneca’s death in the course of his Nero biography in the De vita Caesarum, written (most probably) soon after Tacitus’ Annals, in the early 120s.48 It is one of three anecdotes about Seneca that arise in the course of the Nero:49 earlier, Suetonius reports that Nero was adopted by Claudius and entrusted “for teaching” (in disciplinam) to Seneca the senator, whereupon Seneca supposedly dreamt that he was teaching Caligula (Ner. 7.1); and later, Suetonius mentions that Nero was diverted from philosophy by Agrippina, and from older orators by Seneca, who wanted to monopolize Nero’s admiration (52). Suetonius narrates the death (or, more accurately, categorizes it) as one item among many in a catalogue of Nero’s parricidia et caedes, his killings of family members and of others more generally (33.1–38). This catalogue is presented in accordance with Suetonius’ analytic arrangement throughout the biographies. He has been listing various types of kin who were Nero’s victims, proceeding from stepfather (Claudius) to stepbrother (Britannicus), mother (Agrippina), aunt (Domitia), wives (Octavia, Poppaea), stepsister (Antonia), a young man whom he had defiled (Aulus Plautius), stepson (Rufrius Crispinus), and nurse’s son (Tuscus), until he comes to “Seneca his adviser” (Senecam praeceptorem, Ner. 35.5). Seneca will be followed by the praetorian prefect Burrus and by wealthy older freedmen, and then a series of other groups: persons outside Nero’s household such as supposed conspirators (exteros; coniurati, 36.1–2), then “anyone for any reason that pleased him, indiscriminately” (quoscumque libuisset quacumque de causa, 37.1), and finally the people and the city of Rome itself (populo; moenibus patriae, 38.1).

47. On the negative resonances of citharoedus and tragoedus see Miller (1973), 118. Subrius is closely associated with criticisms of Nero as actor (cf. Ann. 15.50.4, 67.2). 48. For commentary on the Nero see Warmington (1977); Trillitzsch (1971), 1.98–104. 49. Outside of the Nero, Seneca is mentioned as the victim of Caligula’s stylistic criticisms (Calig. 53.2) and is identified (unless Seneca refers to Seneca the Elder) as a source of information concerning Tiberius’ death (Tib. 73.2). Suetonius presumably dealt more extensively with Seneca’s life (and death) in the lost De viris illustribus, usually assumed to be the source for Jerome.

three descriptions

35

Here is Suetonius’ report on Seneca: (35.5) Senecam praeceptorem ad necem compulit, quamvis saepe commeatum petenti bonisque cedenti persancte iurasset suspectum se frustra periturumque potius quam nociturum ei. (35.5) He forced his adviser Seneca to death, even though he had solemnly sworn, when Seneca repeatedly asked for a leave of absence and was yielding his wealth to him, that his suspicions of him were misguided and that he would sooner die than do him any harm. Even in its compressed form, this version gives its own distinct coloring to Seneca’s death. The analytical list to which it belongs does not entirely lack a chronological dimension, to the extent that Seneca’s death arrives after the murders of Nero’s main kin have been mentioned in chronological order (Claudius in 54, Britannicus in 55, Agrippina in 59, and Octavia in 62). But the emphasis is on the various nonchronological classifications, with Seneca arriving, for example, before Burrus (who had died earlier, in 62) and also before the Great Fire of Rome (in 64). Two principles of the list are simultaneously at work: decreasing degrees of kinship to Nero and a general intensification in the number of victims and in the indiscriminacy of the motives. Note that the killing of Seneca is here detached from association with the Pisonian conspiracy, which Suetonius mentions under the separate category of exteri, those outside Nero’s household (Ner. 36.1). Instead, it is portrayed as the conclusion of Seneca and Nero’s quasi-familial, advisorial relationship. The event itself is introduced without specific details on the method of killing, although the phrase ad necem compulit (which appears, incidentally, to include a gentle wordplay on Senecam) indicates that the death was a forced suicide. Suetonius juxtaposes the event with a flashback to earlier encounters between Seneca and Nero centering on a repeated oath. The oath is given here in solemn spondaic language, pērsānctē iūrāssēt sūspēctūm sē frūstrā—which gives the killing a strongly transgressive aspect. Indeed, its content ironically prefigures Nero’s death by suicide (described at Ner. 49), as if in killing Seneca he has cursed himself to the self-harm that formed part of the terms on which he had sworn.

Cassius Dio The Neronian years of Dio’s Roman History (begun in 202 and written over the next two to three decades) now survive mostly in the form passed on by epitomators of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Like Tacitus and Suetonius, Dio tells only a sporadic story about Seneca, though this story includes two

36

historical narratives

critical episodes from the reigns of Caligula and Claudius that are not extant in Tacitus. Dio’s Senecan episodes can be sketched as follows: (in Dio’s unepitomated books) in 39, after hearing a senatorial speech by the talented Seneca, Caligula nearly puts him to death but is told that he is sick and can be expected to die anyway (59.19.7–8); in 41, Seneca is exiled by Messalina and Claudius on the charge of adultery with Julia Livilla (also banished) (60.8.5); (in the epitomated books) in 49, he is entrusted by Agrippina with Nero’s education (60.32.3); in the account of the year 54, he is mentioned as the author of the work on Claudius titled Apocolocyntosis (our only source for this title, 60.35.2–3); he is the composer of Nero’s early speeches to soldiers and Senate (61.3.1); along with Burrus, he initially succeeds in resisting Agrippina and Paris, intercepts Agrippina at the tribunal, and takes hold of the reigns of government, but indulges Nero with ill effect, especially after Nero is persuaded to throw off his advisers (61.3.3–5.1); in 55, after the murder of Britannicus, he (along with Burrus) resorts to sheer survival tactics (61.7.5); in 58, he is accused of hypocrisy, including intimacy with Agrippina and being teacher of a tyrant and having sexual relations with mature males, among other things, but eludes being formally accused (61.10.1–6); in 59, he incites Nero to conspire against Agrippina (62.12.1); he is reported to have told Nero, “You cannot kill your successor” (62.18.3); along with Burrus, at Nero’s performance in the theater, he prompts Nero and signals for the audience to applaud (62.20.3); and in 61, he is mentioned as partial cause for the uprising in Britain, having loaned the Britons forty million sesterces on extortionate terms (62.2.1). The immediate context of the death narrative (62.25.1–3) is Dio’s account of the year 65, which in the (sometimes jumbled) epitomated text is in somewhat loose chronological order.50 In the chapter preceding Seneca’s death Dio has described the plan by Seneca, Faenius Rufus, and other prominent men (Piso is not named) to kill Nero in order to free themselves, and free Nero himself, from Nero’s outrages (§24.1). The plot, however, is discovered, and multiple suspects are put to death (§24.4). Turning to these deaths, Dio (or his epitomator, Xiphilinus) writes:51 (§25.1) peq≠ lçm ot῏m sx ῀m kkxm sx ῀ m pokxkæsxm pokÀ ìqcom eÆpeπm· ¡ dç dó Remåja| òhåkgre lçm ja≠ sóm ctmaπja Patkπmam pojseπmai, kåcxm pepeijåmai aÃsóm so‹ se hamsot jasafiqomrai ja≠ s| rÀm aÃs{ ῀ lesakkac| épihtlrai, ja≠ ìrvare ja≠ s| éje¨mg| fikåba|, (2) dtrhamasñra| dç dó ja≠ pqø| søm √kehqom Õpø sx ῀m rsqasixsx ῀m épeivhe≠| pqoapgkkcg aÃs|, ja≠ olsx| ô Patkπma peqiecåmeso. 50. For discussions of Dio’s death narrative see Griffin (1992), 369–72; Trillitzsch (1971), 1.107–19; Marchesi (1944), 170–87 passim. On Dio’s career and writings, see Millar (1964). 51. Caution in using the epitomated passages is counseled by Champlin (2003), 37–38. But as Millar (1964) notes, the epitomator tends to give “not so much a précis of Dio as a rather erratic selection from his material, . . . often keeping very close to Dio’s wording” (2).

three descriptions

37

(§25.1) It would be a lengthy task to tell of the others who perished. Seneca, however, wished to kill his wife Paulina as well, saying that he had persuaded her to scorn death and to desire departure with him. And he opened her veins also. (2) But his death turned out to be difficult and he was assisted toward death by the soldiers and died before her, with the result that Paulina survived. In keeping with his general hostility to Seneca, Dio (or Xiphilinus) includes Seneca’s death only because of its seemingly most perverse element. Although the Seneca character is presented as “saying” (kåcxm)—presumably to an audience of some kind—that “he had persuaded” (pepeijåmai) Paulina to wish to die with him, it is exposed by the narrator as a form of duress, in which there is no ambiguity in the agency: “Seneca . . . wished to kill his wife Paulina as well” (òhåkgre lçm ja≠ sóm ctmaπja Patkπmam pojseπmai); and “he opened her veins also” (ìrvare ja≠ s| éje¨mg| fikåba|).52 Gretchen Reydams-Schils has suggested that Dio’s account exposes Paulina’s case as one in which “the distinction between freedom and social pressure becomes blurred” (2005, 174)—a concern that might also be raised retrospectively for the seemingly less forceful scene described by Tacitus. Even the idea that Paulina had been successfully “persuaded” has a strongly negative aspect in Dio’s narrative, given that he had earlier criticized both Seneca’s hypocritical pedagogy and his homosexual infidelity toward his new wife of distinguished family, that is, Paulina (cf. 61.10.3). In Dio’s account the specifics of Seneca’s own suicide are left implicit: the historian says only, for example, that “he opened her veins also,” without describing Seneca’s vein opening directly. The slowness of Seneca’s death is compressed into a single word with unflattering connotations, dtrhamasñra| (“his death turned out to be difficult”),53 and the intervention of the soldiers turns a suicide into an execution combined with mercy killing. In this version, then, the salvation of Paulina is facilitated by the fact that Seneca “died before her” (pqoapgkkcg aÃs|); the soldiers are here implied to intervene in Paulina’s fate just by their dispatching of Seneca. Dio elaborates on the death scene by focusing on one final act of Seneca and the more general context of his relationship with Nero: (§25.2) oà låmsoi pqæseqom èatso‹ úwaso pq≠m sæ se bibk¨om ƒ rtmåcqafiem épamoqhx ῏kka (éded¨ei cq ló ja≠ é| søm Måqxma ékhæmsa fihaqͺ ) ῀rai ja≠ sa paqajasahårhai sir¨m. (3) ja≠ ¡ lçm olsx| éseke sgre, ja¨peq sñm se rtmotr¨am sóm pqø| aÃsøm „| ja≠ rhemx ῀ ῀m pqoeilåmo|, ja≠ pãram aÃsH 52. Two significant details here are different in other readings from the mss.: “he had made Paulina wish to die” (pepoigjåmai in V, for pepeijåmai in C) and “he split her veins” (ìrvire in VC, for ìrvare in Bk). Alain Gowing suggests to me that the appearance of duress may be an artifact of minor but consequential changes made by Xiphilinus. 53. Marchesi (1944), 183 n. 42 reads the term as implying a fear of dying.

38

historical narratives sóm oÃr¨am ép≠ sͺ sx ῀m oÆjodolotlåmxm pqofirei jevaqirlåmo|, ja≠ oØ dekuo≠ lrseqom épap›komso. (§25.2) But he did not lay hands on himself before amending the book he had been writing and depositing the rest with certain persons (since he feared that they might come into Nero’s hands and be destroyed). (3) This, then, is how he died, despite having given up contact with him on the grounds of ill health and having given him all his wealth ostensibly for his buildings. His brothers later perished in addition.

The disruption of temporal sequence here, in which Dio twice follows a statement of Seneca’s death with reference to the time prior to it (“But he did not lay hands on himself before revising . . . ,” oà låmsoi pqæseqom èatso‹ úwaso pq≠m . . . épamoqhx ῀rai; “This, then, is how he died, despite having given up . . . ,” ja≠ ¡ lçm olsx| éseke sgre, ja¨peq . . . pqoeilåmo|) is similar to the “interim” moment in Tacitus’ version (Ann. 15.64.3) in its undoing of an apparent closure. Dio’s added description of Seneca’s earlier attempts to give up contact with Nero and to lavish his wealth on him (marked by a wordplay emphasizing exhaustiveness: sñm se rtmotr¨am . . . ja≠ pãram . . . sóm oÃr¨am, “all contact with him . . . and all his wealth”) adds a note of urgent desperation to the portrayal, especially because there had been no earlier mention of these measures by Dio, at least in the extant narrative. Dio’s analepsis portrays Seneca as willing to contribute to Nero’s rebuilding program after the Great Fire (a difference from Tacitus, who mentions Seneca’s reluctance to be associated with this, because Nero had been despoiling temples to pay for it, Ann. 15.45.1–3) and uses a final flashback to show Seneca desperately seeking to avert death. The final, premature mention of Seneca’s brothers’ deaths (compare Tac. Ann. 15.73.3; 16.17) hints strongly at Seneca’s direct and negative impact on the lives of others in addition to Paulina. In Dio’s account of Seneca’s hurried authorial activities, some elements seen in Tacitus’ version are absent, such as the dictation to scribes. But there are also some details not found elsewhere. Because the book that Seneca is here represented as amending prior to his death appears to have been begun previously (cf. “which he was writing,” ƒ rtmåcqafiem, §25.2), it may be understood to be distinct from the posthumous published work mentioned by Tacitus (Ann. 15.63.3), or Dio may be understood here to elucidate the nature of that work, which Tacitus appears to present as if it were dictated entirely during the death scene.54 Seneca’s act of depositing “the rest” (sa ῏kka) of his books with 54. See Trillitzsch (1971), 1.117. But Griffin (1992), 370 observes: “Dio probably alludes, however inaccurately, to these same [dictated] words [mentioned by Tacitus] when he says that Seneca took time to revise a bibk¨om he was writing and, by adding that he entrusted others to his friends, Dio implies that the last words were similar to Seneca’s other books, hence philosophical.”

three descriptions

39

“certain persons” (sir¨m, §25.2) is a form of transferral with no corresponding term in Tacitus’ account, except perhaps the giving of the imago vitae suae. The act is motivated by specific concerns about the material survival of his writings, and as such it portrays Seneca as an author anxiously seeking to protect his own literary transmission. The implied audience who attend (“certain persons,” sir¨m) are not the recipients of consolatory discourse or exhortations to virtue, but must witness a botched showcasing of philosophical pedagogy in the bleeding body of Paulina and themselves serve as the repositories for Seneca’s written works.

Toward Further Contexts Each version, then, establishes its own set of conditions and constraints for the interpretation of Seneca’s death. These result from the authors’ own exercises in narrative technique dominated by specific discursive modes: vivid description (Tacitus), analytic catalogue (Suetonius), and polemical anecdote (Dio)—though such labels oversimplify. Each of these versions has had its own interpretive career, offering a frame, as well as sets of thematic concerns, around which new versions have been organized in the long tradition of refiguration. But our analysis of both the context and the content of these versions with regard to Roman antiquity has scarcely begun: we must now consider how they functioned within their authors’ broader historiographic projects.

This page intentionally left blank

2 Neronian Exits: Writing Death into History

Let us now consider Seneca’s death as part of a story of broader scope— in fact, as part of three stories. The first story is the arc of Seneca’s life and career as it is sketched in Tacitus and Dio. The second is the more self-consciously literary story of how Tacitus adapts existing models of death writing. The third and most precise story is the catalogue of executions and suicides in books 15 and 16 of the Annals. Seneca’s death plays an equally prominent role in each of these stories; taken together they illustrate his symbolic proportions as a subject of Julio-Claudian history, and as a focus in historians’ reflections on their craft. Anyone who reads the Annals and arrives at Seneca’s death is likely to recognize familiar motifs from the historian’s growing repertoire. Take, for example, Tacitus’ accounts of the deaths of Nero’s major family members: Britannicus, surprised while banqueting (Ann. 13.16.1), Agrippina, killed on the second try, her villa surrounded (14.8.2), and Octavia, her veins opened, finished off in a steam bath (14.64.2).1 Even fleeting resemblances to these in Seneca’s death may leave the reader with the feeling that assimilative processes are at work both in the reproduction of death upon death in the Julio-Claudian universe and in the cataloguing of deaths in the Tacitean text. Tacitus offers the reader a useful perspective on the above pattern when he has the dying Seneca say to his friends: “Who, after all, hadn’t known about Nero’s cruelty? Surely after killing his mother and brother, there was nothing left except the murder of his teacher and 1. The mention of the bath in Octavia’s case seemed so implausible to Questa (1960a), 209 that he suggested that the historian retrospectively modeled it on Seneca’s death.

42

historical narratives

adviser?” (15.62.2). Although Seneca here is heard rationalizing that his death is the inevitable sequel to Nero’s spiral of parricide, there is more than one way to understand this inevitability. On the one hand, it seems, there was nothing Seneca or anyone else could do to prevent it. This is an impression that Tacitus occasionally allows, although a scholiast to Juvenal gives a more conspicuous version of it in reporting that Seneca, at the outset, “quickly discerned that [Nero] had been born cruel and monstrous (saevum immanemque natum . . . sensit cito), and he tamed him, though repeatedly saying to his friends that inevitably that cruel lion’s innate cruelty would return (ingenita redeat saevitia) as soon as he had a single taste of human blood” (schol. ad Juv. 5.109). On the other hand, we may also have the sense that in referring to himself conspicuously as “teacher and adviser” (educatoris praeceptorisque) the Tacitean Seneca exposes his own associations with the regime and his responsibility for the lessons Nero had and hadn’t learned. Tacitus himself, although he does not call Seneca stqammodidrjako| (“tyrant teacher”) as Dio does (61.10.2), had earlier given the reader every opportunity to surmise that Seneca profited financially from the death of Britannicus (Ann. 13.18.1),2 and to learn that Seneca was recognized as having written Nero’s scandalous letter to the Senate justifying Agrippina’s death (14.11.3). In other words, it is easy for the reader of Tacitus to understand the dying Seneca’s rhetorical question, “Surely after killing his mother and brother, there was nothing left except the murder of his teacher and adviser?” as infused with guilty self-recognition.3 By presenting this self-perception in the dying Seneca, Tacitus gets to tell a deeper and darker story about the patterns of Neronian killing: in this case, that the victims of violence were themselves often ironically complicit in the larger series of violent acts from which their own suffering derived. But this is only one of a whole repertoire of stories to which Seneca’s death scene has something to contribute.

Telling the Seneca Story The passage from the scholia to Juvenal quoted above, tentatively dated to the fourth century, is one of the only texts surviving from antiquity that resembles a continuous biographic sketch of Seneca.4 Commenting on a line in which Juvenal mentions Seneca’s liberality as a patron, the scholiast writes (ad 5.109): 2. See Martin (1981), 165. 3. This reading may be supported by the Tacitean Seneca’s exclusion of Octavia from the pattern (cf. matrem fratremque, 15.62.2): hers was the only death of the three that Seneca had not been in a position to prevent or been required to try to justify, because it came in late 62 after his removal (pace the Octavia, where Seneca seeks to prevent Octavia’s banishment). Octavia’s fate would thus have made a less ironic comparison for his own death. See also R. Fabbri (1978–79), 419. 4. Also explicitly biographic (and possibly deriving from the Seneca biography in Suetonius’ lost De viris illustribus) is Jerome’s De viris illustribus §12, which would become known as the Vita Senecae.

writing death into history

43

hic . . . sub Claudio quasi conscius adulteriorum Iuliae, Germanici filiae, in Corsicam relegatus post triennium revocatus est. qui etsi magno desiderio Athenas intenderet, ab Agrippina tamen erudiendo Neroni in Palatium adductus saevum immanemque natum et sensit cito et mitigavit, inter familiares solitus dicere non fore saevo illi leoni quin gustato semel hominis cruore ingenita redeat saevitia. This man . . . after being banished to Corsica under Claudius as guilty of adultery with Julia, the daughter of Germanicus, was recalled after a three-year period.5 Although he longed greatly to go to Athens, he was, however, introduced to the imperial palace by Agrippina for the purpose of educating Nero. He quickly discerned that Nero had been born cruel and monstrous, and he tamed him, though repeatedly saying to his friends that there was no way that cruel lion’s innate cruelty would not return as soon as he had his first taste of human blood. In the 1486 Venice edition of this text by Giorgio Valla, there follows a compressed version of Tacitus’ Annals 15.61–64, which may perhaps have been part of the original scholion (the manuscript used by Valla is now lost), though it is more likely to be an addition by Valla himself.6 With or without the death narrative, this text is obviously not a biography in any real sense, and it is silent on Seneca’s writings. But even in its meager attempt to put together a biographic cursus, referring, for example, to Seneca’s thwarted ambition to visit Athens (for philosophical study?), the text is a striking illustration of what we do not find in the works of Tacitus or Dio. What, then, do we find there?

Julio-Claudian Gestures In the Annals and the Roman History, the death of Seneca is the last in a series of passing mentions in the year-by-year narrative of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.7 (For a survey of these mentions see above, pp. 20, 36.) Although Tacitus and Dio both seem interested in Seneca as a recognizable personality, virtually all of their anecdotes about him illustrate something about the imperial court in general, and how specific types of people function, survive, and decline within it. Both authors tend to disregard coherent biographic portraits in favor of “trans-regnal” features that are relevant to the Principate as a

5. On this apparently erroneous period of time see Trillitzsch (1971), 1.104. 6. For the text see Wessner (1931), 73, 252–53, and discussion by Bartalucci (1973), 340–41. 7. My approach below is in tune with the comment by Leach (1989) that “[Seneca’s] historical personality may appear less as a monolithic structure of fixed attributes than as a series of interactive responses to personas and circumstances” (199). For relatively “coherent” (but subtly shaded) readings of Tacitus’ presentation of Seneca, see D’Anna (2003), 193–95; Schönegg (1999), 19, 25; Dyson (1970). For “incoherent” readings emphasizing the absence of any analytical passages, see Treves (1970), 521–22; Paratore (1962), 456–68; Alexander (1952).

44

historical narratives

system of recurring scenarios.8 Neither author abandons a distinctive sense of Seneca as a unique individual, but what makes him interesting is the unusually broad variety of paradigmatic motifs or gestures that arise in the episodes of his life (and death).9 These, in turn, cohere with the perception of Seneca (emphasized in recent scholarship) as the first Roman observer to recognize, and to conspicuously exploit, the nature of the Augustan Principate as an irreversibly monarchic structure and as an institution founded on dissimulation.10 The recurring motifs and gestures, I suggest, can be assigned to three main categories: 1. The historians frequently use the insider-outsider Seneca to highlight tensions around the court as a social space.11 The charge of adultery with Julia Livilla by which Messalina secured Seneca’s banishment in 42 (cf. Dio 60.8.5) was recollected by later detractors such as P. Suillius Rufus in 58, whom Tacitus shows asserting that Seneca’s excessive intimacy had met with a iustissimum exilium (Ann. 13.42.2). But Dio, himself taking up the voice of the detractor, portrays a recidivist pattern: “It was not enough for [Seneca] to have committed adultery with Julia, nor did he improve from his exile, but he became close (épkgr¨afem) with Agrippina” (61.10.1).12 Although Dio reports that Seneca escaped punishment, he adds that “later he did not get away so lightly” (Œrseqom dç oà jakx ~| pñkkanem, 61.10.6)—a comment that establishes Seneca’s death as the outer and concluding limit in the cycle of centripetal and centrifugal movements in relation to the court. A separate spatial motif is the recalling of Seneca, which Tacitus describes both on the occasion of the recall by Agrippina in 49, “judging that it would be a cause for public celebration on account of the renown of his studies (ob claritudinem studiorum eius)” (Ann. 12.8.2), and—in strikingly similar terms— in the rumored plan in 65 to kill Piso after the conspiracy and bring Seneca back to be emperor, “on the reasoning that he was without blame and that his renown for his virtues (claritudine virtutum) made him a welcome choice for the highest power” (15.65). Here claritudo denotes the independently generated legitimacy that Seneca was supposedly able to confer on an imperial regime,13 though his death marks the removal of this legitimating potential once and for all.

8. For “trans-regnal” features and limited “biostructuring” in Dio’s Imperial books, see Pelling (1997). 9. The exemplary potential of Seneca’s career is discussed by Habinek (2000), who observes that its episodes “contain within them an implicit analysis of the paths to power in the Roman world” (281). On the exemplary function of Seneca (and Thrasea Paetus) in the Annals see Turpin (2008), esp. 378–92. 10. See Gowing (2005), 69; Haynes (2003), 3. On the theme of Seneca and dissimulation see Rudich (1997), 17–106. 11. On the notion of a Julio-Claudian “court” see Wallace-Hadrill (1996). For other aspects of Seneca as insider-outsider see Ker (2009). 12. An adulterous relationship with Agrippina is explored by Giancotti (1953). 13. On this legitimizing function of Seneca’s renown, see Habinek (2000), 280.

writing death into history

45

Alongside the motifs of intimacy, banishment, and recall, there is also the motif of prevented withdrawal which prevails during the end stages of Seneca’s career. Dio portrays Seneca’s death as resulting from a failure to detach himself (62.25.3): he cannot be extricated by any ordinary path. Tacitus explores the same motif in his detailed dramatization of the interview between Seneca and Nero, to which I return below. 2. During the insider years of 49–62, the historians typically mention Seneca in contexts that illustrate the Neronian regime’s internal mechanisms. The salient gesture is Seneca’s writing of speeches, edicts, and letters for Nero— the mixed agency of aliena facundia (“another’s eloquence,” Ann. 13.3.2) that at once fuses the emperor with his teacher-adviser and complicates the pragmatics of imperial communication. The speeches communicate a Senecan style, policy, or pedagogy (Ann. 13.3.1; 11.2; Dio 61.3.1) and conversely implicate Seneca in Nero’s actions such as the matricide (cf. Ann. 14.11.3).14 The ghostwriting role inevitably complicates the later attempts of Seneca and Nero at mutual separation. Another element is the frequent mention of “Burrus and Seneca” together by Tacitus and Dio. The duo is, for Tacitus, the symbol of two allied forces:15 “These men, regents of the emperor’s youth and (a rare thing in the sharing of power) in concord with one another, held equal strength through their contrasting skills (diversa arte ex aequo pollebant): Burrus, through care for military matters and the sternness of his character, Seneca, through instruction in rhetoric and social tact” (Ann. 13.2.1).16 Tacitus shows this dual personification of equilibrium being mocked by Agrippina through the revealing metonyms of “mutilated hand and professorial tongue” (trunca . . . manu et professoria lingua, 13.14.3). Their concord is resilient in the face of attack but, as Tacitus presents it: “The death of Burrus [in 62] shattered Seneca’s power (mors Burri infregit Senecae potentiam), because good conduct did not have the same sway with one of the two ‘guides’ removed (altero velut duce amoto), and Nero was declining toward the less reputable party (ad deteriores inclinabat)” (14.52.1). The pairing, I suggest, also represents a telling substitute for the traditional annalistic language on consuls as paired leaders; Seneca’s suffect consulship in 55 or 56, by contrast, goes unmentioned. In Seneca’s regency several more specific motifs emerge. There is the early gesture of repeated deflection (Ann. 13.2.1, 5.2): ibaturque in caedes, nisi Afranius Burrus et Annaeus Seneca obviam issent.

14. On Seneca’s “ghostwriting” see O’Gorman (2000), 147–153: Nero is “an absence (of voice)” (151). 15. On this “duality of the soldier and sage” see Habinek (2000), 299, 297–300. 16. I take the translation “social tact” (for comitate honesta) from Syme (1958a), 551.

46

historical narratives Killing was on the cards, had not Afranius Burrus and Annaeus Seneca headed it off. escendere suggestum imperatoris et praesidere simul parabat, nisi ceteris pavore defixis Seneca admonuisset, venienti matri occurrere. ita . . . obviam itum dedecori. [Agrippina] was getting ready to ascend the emperor’s tribunal and preside alongside him, except that Seneca, while the others were transfixed by fear, advised [Nero] to go to meet his mother as she approached. Thus . . . was disgrace headed off.

Closely tied to this is the pedagogy of substitution, by which Acte is used to divert Nero from incest with Agrippina (Ann. 14.2.1) and by which, when Nero could not be prevented from his twin loves of chariot racing and singing, “Seneca and Burrus decided to concede the one, so that he wouldn’t win out on both (ne utraque pervinceret, alterum concedere)” (14.14.2; cf. 13.2.1). The latter policy plays a prominent role in Dio’s more polemical account: he faults Burrus and Seneca’s pedagogical technique, “as if they did not know” (Árpeq oÃj eÆdæse|) that Nero would be corrupted by the activities they had conceded to him (61.4.2). To this extent Seneca’s death arrives as an effect of Seneca’s pedagogy. In Tacitus the critics of Seneca—both Suillius in 58 (Ann. 13.42.2–4; cf. Dio. 61.10.1–6) and others after Burrus’ death (Ann. 14.52.2–4)—also seek to challenge his cultural power. This power’s diversity allows critics to emphasize arbitrariness (poetry written just because Nero liked poetry), inconsistencies (for example, between philosophy and luxury), and a monopolization of audiences and of fields: “He was diverting the enthusiasm of the citizens toward himself . . . When, finally, would it not be the case that there was nothing renowned in the city that was not thought to be his invention?” (studia civium in se verteret . . . quem ad finem nihil in re publica clarum fore, quod non ab illo reperiri credatur? 14.52.2, 4). The monopolization in turn serves as an opportunity to present Seneca as a threat to the scale of Nero’s own popularity and wealth, “as if surpassing the emperor” (quasi principem supergrederetur, 14.52.2). Seen in this light, the killing of Seneca arrives as a solution resembling Nero’s elimination of, among others, Britannicus as a rival performer and potential successor. 3. There is also a mapping of Julio-Claudian chronology—both the periodization of a single reign and the delineation of trans-regnal patterns. Seneca, after all, born under Augustus in around 5 BCE,17 lived to see the reigns of all five

17. On the chronology of Seneca’s birth see Setaioli (2000), 378–83.

writing death into history

47

Julio-Claudian emperors. The scope of Seneca’s renown under Caligula, when he is already described by Dio as “the one preeminent in expertise beyond all the Romans of his time as well as many others” (¡ pmsa| lçm soÀ| jah\ èatsøm < Qxla¨ot| pokkoÀ| dç ja≠ kkot| rou¨y Õpeqqa|, 59.19.7), serves as the model for his growing renown in the ages of Claudius and Nero. But Dio’s successive accounts of Seneca’s near-death punishments by Caligula and Claudius in turn (59.19.8; 60.8.5), as well as the statement that Nero, as time went by, “began tending toward Gaius” (pqø| søm Ciom ìseimem, 61.5.1; cf. Suet. Ner. 7.1), makes Seneca’s eventual death under Nero just the final and most successful instance in a recurring Julio-Claudian cycle of jealousy and persecution. The phrase Tacitus uses for describing Burrus and Seneca, rectores imperatoriae iuventae (“regents of the emperor’s youth,” Ann. 13.2.1), echoes his characterization of Sejanus as rector iuveni [sc. Tiberio] (“regent to the young Tiberius,” 1.24.2)18—an echo that does not augur well for Rome, or for Burrus and Seneca. Conversely, in Tacitus’ brief digression on the history of imperial oratory, which mentions that “older observers (seniores) who had the leisure to compare past with present” recall that all the earlier emperors had produced their own speeches (Ann. 13.3.2), Seneca’s role as ghostwriter marks the unique decadence of the Neronian age. Other scenes from Seneca’s career reflect smaller sub-periodizations: his banishment emblematizes the Messalina period of Claudius’ reign, his recall the period dominated by Agrippina; his collaborations with Burrus, in turn, are the characteristic motif of the quinquennium Neronis (if this poorly understood label can be used for the five years prior to 59),19 whereas the collapse of his power after Burrus’ death ushers in the Tigellinus period. The latter is accompanied, in Tacitus’ account, by detractors seeking to present the end of Seneca’s influence (quem ad finem . . . ? Ann. 14.52.4) as a rite of passage for Nero: “Surely Nero’s childhood was at an end and his adulthood was solid: he should remove his teacher . . .” (certe finitam Neronis pueritiam et robur iuventae adesse: exueret magistrum . . . , 15.52.4; cf. Dio 61.4.5). This closural rhetoric provokes the interview between Seneca and Nero, and Seneca’s removal.

The Estrangement In the climactic interview scene (Ann. 14.53–56) Tacitus stages the contradiction between, on the one hand, Nero’s ostensible refusal to grant Seneca leave to retire and, on the other, Tacitus’ own two words of summary: perculso Seneca

18. See O’Gorman (2000), 148. 19. See Murray (1965).

48

historical narratives

(“Seneca destroyed,” §57.1).20 This makes the interview a dramatization of dissimulated violence, encapsulated in the comment that “Seneca gave thanks, as all conversations with a despot end” (Seneca, qui finis omnium cum dominante sermonum, grates agit, §56.3).21 The rhetorical transaction of the paired speeches, even if it is immediately overridden by a real expulsion, is interesting for the terms in which Seneca’s “failure” to secure permission is posed. Seneca argues (and then, in his speech, Nero systematically denies) that his retirement would be in line with the examples of Agrippa and Maecenas, who were granted leave by Augustus;22 that his modest (equestrian, provincial) origins and his services to Nero do not entitle him to keep the gifts he has received from him; that his old age and Nero’s maturation make this the appropriate time for him to retire; and that his retirement can be made to accrue to Nero’s glory (§§53.2–54.3). Their brazen dissimulations make this a case study in the troubled agency of aristocrats (not to mention, of emperors) negotiating a life course in the Principate. Nero’s reply self-consciously advertises his Senecan rhetorical training: “The fact that I can match your rehearsed speech on the spot I consider the first sign of your gift to me (quod meditatae orationi tuae statim occurram, id primum tui muneris habeo): you have taught me to address surprise situations as well as foreseen ones . . .” (§55.1). With this ploy Nero seeks to refute Seneca’s claim that his gifts to Nero have been mere “studies conducted, as it were, in the shade of learning” (studia, ut sic dixerim, in umbra educata, §53.4). Like the corresponding scenario in the Octavia by which it may partly have been inspired (Oct. 437– 589), the Tacitean interview confronts Seneca with a rhetorical doppelgänger and confronts the reader with the image of “two Senecas arguing.”23 Here the imperial court’s boundary is rendered more impermeable by the indelibility of past pedagogical transfers. The argument even extends to a contestation of the senectus that Seneca asserts as the basis for his rite of passage (cf. “we older friends,” seniores amici, §54.2, 3) and that Nero emphatically contradicts, saying, “But your age is still strong” (verum et tibi valida aetas, §56.1). In the end, however, the multiple levels of dissimulation prevent any outright victory on either side. If Nero ostensibly wins the rhetorical transaction, this is also a victory for Seneca’s prior rhetorical lessons, albeit misapplied by Nero. And although Seneca wins the retirement he sought, Nero succeeds in forcing the expulsion—even if some scholars, in turn, see Seneca as having deliberately provoked Nero into effectively confessing that he is unjustified in 20. For commentary see Koestermann (1968), 126–37; for recent discussions, Woodman (forthcoming); O’Gorman (2000), 151–54; Habinek (2000), 264; Shumate (1997), 403. Some have imagined an official transcript as Tacitus’ source; cf. Vottero (1998), 12–13. Most have approached the passage primarily through its echoes of Senecan writing: e.g., Syme (1958a), 334–35. 21. O’Gorman (2000), 153–54 sees this moment as echoed in Tacitus’ exasperated remarks on the thanksgivings after Nero’s murders and exiles at Ann. 14.64.3. 22. On the “irony and pathos” of these problematic exempla, see Bastomsky (1972), 178. 23. The phrase of Alexander (1952), 331–32.

writing death into history

49

removing Seneca and that this will earn him infamy (“Fear of my cruelty will be on everyone’s lips,” meae crudelitatis metus in ore omnium versabitur, §56.2)—a moral victory for Seneca.24 The lack of an outright victor may on one level illustrate the intractable struggle between political power and moral authority. But Tacitus’ presentation particularly highlights Seneca’s inescapable history of entanglement with the production of Nero’s autocracy in the first place, or at least with its self-legitimating devices. The ambiguities persist in the remaining episodes of Seneca’s life. Tacitus writes that immediately following the interview Seneca “changed the habits of his former power, kept crowds of greeters away, avoided followers, was scarce in the city, as if detained at home by poor health or philosophical studies (quasi valetudine infensa aut sapientiae studiis domi attineretur)” (14.56.3)—pretexts inviting public speculation. He later reports that in 64 “it was said that Seneca, in order to deflect ill will from himself over the sacrilege [of Nero’s temple robbing], had asked for a distant retreat in the countryside, and after it was not granted, that he had feigned poor health, as if with a muscular disease, and not left his bedroom (longinqui ruris secessum oravisse, et postquam non concedebatur, ficta valetudine, quasi aeger nervis, cubiculum non egressus)” (15.45.3). This revisits the Nero of the interview who refused to grant Seneca any autonomy in defining an outsider status for himself, except that this time Nero (reputedly) seeks to “remove” Seneca more fully—by secretly poisoning him (§45.3). These ambiguous anecdotes have even sown disagreement among scholars about whether Seneca really was removed at all in 62, as the interview suggests.25 After all this ambiguity, one might expect the death to bring a decisive closure. Yet the protraction and difficulties of Seneca’s death as Tacitus and Dio describe it, not to mention Nero’s ironic exercise of clemency in the revival of Paulina (Ann. 15.64.1), partly recall the earlier ambiguities, perpetuating Seneca’s difficult exit from the court. In chapter 10 we will return to consider the alternative, “Scipionic” approach that the authorial Seneca adopts for inventing the space of his withdrawal and death.

Exit Writing Tacitus’ longest series of death descriptions in the Annals (and all of his writings) begins in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy in book 15, rising to a climax only in book 16 with the announcement that “after butchering so many distinguished men, Nero finally desired to tear out virtue itself, by killing Thrasea Paetus and Barea Soranus” (trucidatis tot insignibus viris ad postremum 24. Seneca’s tactics of entrapment are charted by O’Gorman (2000), 152. 25. E.g., Griffin (1992) argues that even after 62 “the public was meant to think that [Seneca] . . . was still amicus principis” (94); conversely, Gercke (1895), 272–73, 280, 282 saw the interview as decisive, and Ann. 15.45 as merely a doublet of that earlier scene (Tacitus being confused).

50

historical narratives

Nero virtutem ipsam exscindere concupivit interfecto Thrasea Paeto et Barea Sorano, Ann. 16.21.1). Scholars have long suspected that in these books Tacitus comes to rely on the now lost collections loosely known as Exitus illustrium virorum, in which multiple death scenes were described in succession.26 Tacitus certainly acknowledges that his readers (and he himself) may grow bored from so many “exits of citizens, however noble”27 (quamvis honestos civium exitus, 16.16.1), though he persists (§16.2): detur hoc inlustrium virorum posteritati, ut, quo modo exsequiis a promisca sepultura separantur, ita in traditione supremorum accipiant habeantque propriam memoriam. Let the following be given to the posterity of illustrious men: just as in their funerals they are kept apart so as not to have indiscriminate burial together, so, too, let them receive and retain their own commemoration in the transmission of their last moments. Whether or not this statement was inspired already by the proem to an exit collection as some have suggested,28 Tacitus’ decision to give each man his due has two distinct effects for his work:29 (1) It shows the annalistic structure of his text disrupted by the increasing frequency of the emperor’s killings (and, to some extent, of ambitious martyrdoms by aristocrats). (2) It commemorates each man with a dignity that is in many ways compatible with annalistic writing. Tacitus’ representation of the career and death of Seneca is closely aligned with these simultaneous developments in his text.

Death Enters the Annals Tacitus gives the most explicit characterizations of his annalistic project at moments when he is excluding material. Declining, for example, to give the structural statistics of Nero’s wooden amphitheater in book 13, he explains that such information does not count as “worthy of memory” (memoria digna) and is better suited to the diurna urbis acta than to annales (Ann. 13.31.1).30 His choice to write in the annalistic tradition is to this extent a traditional move grounded in a selectivity attentive to dignitas. It also in theory entails “relating each thing in its own year” (suum quaeque in annum referre, 4.71.1) and ordering events within the year according to a traditional Republican structure.31 As Judith 26. See D’Anna (2003), 204–10; Ronconi (1968), 206–36; Questa (1960a), 203–10. 27. I often use “exit” to translate exitus, the Latin term variously denoting “departure,” “exit (from stage or arena),” “close,” “death,” “death description.” 28. E.g., Ronconi (1968), 225. 29. Both effects are addressed, in slightly different terms, by O’Gorman (2000), 145–46. 30. Tacitus may be thinking specifically of Pliny the Elder; see Wilkes (1972), 201. 31. On the annalistic tradition see Frier (1979).

writing death into history

51

Ginsburg shows, however, Tacitus took up the annalistic genre only “to deny its application to the present,” because his character- and episode-driven narrative of Julio-Claudian history plays fast and loose with the traditional structures (1981, 100).32 At the same time, however, Tacitus still retains the ideal of giving due commemoration to whatever events are worthy of memory. It is thus no surprise that early in the Annals Tacitus explicitly acknowledges the tension between serialized exits and annalistic rhythm. During the narrative on Tiberius he holds himself back and writes, “Had it not been my policy to relate each thing in its own year, I would have been enthusiastic to preempt, and to recall immediately the exits (avebat animus antire statimque memorare exitus)” that several of the villains met with in later years; but, he says, “I will give this and other punishments of the guilty in their due time (in tempore trademus)” (Ann. 4.71.1).33 He generates some literary suspense here through keeping at bay the temptation to simply catalogue deaths. This type of suspense will be relieved explosively, and indeed in a way that tests his and his readers’ endurance, when he gives free rein to death descriptions in the final Neronian books. At the same time, however, death writing is in accord with the commemorative focus of annalistic style and of Tacitean history more generally. Although Tacitus’ dislike of ambitiosa mors prevents him from being sympathetic to an exit that seems of no use to the res publica (Agr. 42.4), he begins the Histories with the promise that the good examples of his age included “exits equal to the glorious deaths of the ancients” (laudatis antiquorum mortibus pares exitus, Hist. 1.3).34 In the Annals, an obituary for L. Piso in the year 32 restores dignity to the narrative amid the demise of Sejanus and his associates (Ann. 6.10.3–11.3), and the death notices for two senators at the end of 59 serve as a momentary reminder of the structure of the annalistic year and the acta senatus (14.19).35 But this is precisely the kind of material that sometimes runs thin in the later books of the Annals.36 Tacitus directly acknowledges the contrast between Republican and Imperial history already in his account of the year 24: in the former, “the illustrious exits of generals hold readers’ minds and energize them” (clari ducum exitus retinent ac redintegrant legentium animum), whereas Tacitus feels forced “[to] string together the ruin of innocent persons and the same causes of destruction, with a conspicuous general resemblance and excess” (easdem exitii causas coniungimus, obvia rerum similitudine et satietate, 4.33.3). His sense of his responsibility to give each death its due commemoration—a goal in tune with annalistic writing, though probably also shared by the exit writers—grows great

32. The model is updated by Feeney (2007), 190–93. 33. See Ash (2003), 215–16; Martin and Woodman (1989), 254. 34. His description of the death of Otho in particular (Hist. 2.47–51) is compared with his description of Seneca’s death by Schönegg (1999), 20 n. 15. 35. See Pomeroy (1991), 192. 36. See Syme (1958b), 20.

52

historical narratives

in the course of books 15 and 16, and may be responsible for the “slowness” of many individual descriptions in these books.37 Tacitus’ portrayal of Seneca’s career exhibits some interesting parallels with the growing role of the exit genre in his text. Tacitus describes Seneca’s death itself, of course, with a vividness and depth that (even if many readers detect ambivalence) helps to distinguish it from others and to make it an object of memory. This extends to quoting Seneca’s own words when he addresses Paulina and refers self-consciously to “this brave exit [of ours]” (huius tam fortis exitus, 15.63.2). At the same time, the death arrives in the middle of a whole series of deaths, and the words with which Tacitus introduces it, sequitur caedes Annaei Senecae (15.60.2), can be understood to acknowledge its position within this series. Although many of the death descriptions in books 15 and 16 exhibit commemorative and serial aspects like Seneca’s, the exit of Seneca stands out, I suggest, because of his longer, complex history in relation to Nero. We may recall that Tacitus mentions Seneca in the narrative of Nero’s early reign precisely as an impediment to killing: “Killing was on the cards, had not Afranius Burrus and Annaeus Seneca headed it off ” (ibaturque in caedes, nisi Afranius Burrus et Annaeus Seneca obviam issent, Ann. 13.2.1). This aligns Seneca closely with the literary suspense that Tacitus exploits in the buildup to Nero’s later years. But by the year 59, Seneca becomes more entangled in Nero’s entry into caedes: he is depicted as conferring about what to do after Agrippina escapes her collapsing boat, asking Burrus “whether her killing should be assigned to the soldiers” (an militi imperanda caedes esset, 14.7.3), as well as seeking to justify her killing in the letter to the Senate (14.11.3). His eventual (ironic) assimilation to Agrippina as a victim of caedes—no longer an inhibitor or a perpetrator—occurs in tandem with the generic development we have noted above, from annalistic writing toward exit description. Moreover, the same transition can be traced between the moment at the beginning of 55 when Tacitus implies that Senecan clemency was responsible for Nero’s leniency toward Plautius Lateranus (secutaque lenitas in Plautium Lateranum, 13.11.2) and the fact that the merciless execution of the same Plautius Lateranus immediately precedes Tacitus’ account of the death of Seneca (15.60.1).38 In other words, Seneca’s career from Neronian insider to Neronian outsider closely accompanies the historian’s eventual yielding to the pressure to give serial death descriptions, necessitated by Nero’s crescendo of cruelty in the Tigellinus period. Seneca’s shifting role symbolizes, and indeed helps to explain, the shift to which the historian himself must adapt.

37. On this “slowness” see Hutchinson (1993), 267 n. 19. 38. Noted by Koestermann (1968), 197.

writing death into history

53

Exitus illustrium virorum At this point it will be useful, as far as the evidence allows, to consider the models of death literature that were available to Tacitus in writing Seneca’s death—both the Exitus illustrium virorum and the longer tradition from which they grew. The Exitus illustrium virorum, as such, are known only through two letters by Pliny the Younger.39 In one letter, Pliny notes the death of C. Fannius: “[H]e was writing . . . the exits of men killed or banished by Nero (exitus occisorum aut relegatorum a Nerone), and had already completed three books, which are plain, careful, in good Latin, and balanced between speech and history (inter sermonem historiamque medios). His desire to finish the remaining books was fueled by the popularity with which the existing books were read (quanto frequentius hi lectitabantur)” (Ep. 5.5.3).40 Pliny’s characterization of Fannius’ books as inter sermonem historiamque medios, which I have translated “between speech and history,” likely suggests that his death descriptions combined historical narrative with lively presentations of direct speech.41 In the other letter Pliny mentions Titinius Capito,42 whose recitations he enjoys attending: “He is writing the exits of famous men (exitus inlustrium virorum), including certain men very dear to me. Thus I feel as though I am fulfilling a pious duty in being present for the funeral eulogies, as it were (quasi funebribus laudationibus), of those whose wakes I wasn’t permitted to attend—and all that much more truthful for being after the fact” (Ep. 8.12.4–5). Although there is a good chance that Pliny is partly acknowledging that there is greater scope for praising victims more frankly and accurately after a tyrant (here, Domitian) is dead, the comparison to laudatio funebris implies exaggerated praise. In any case, Pliny’s broad characterization of the exit genre offers background for his contemporary Tacitus’ incorporation of exits in his own historical work. It is almost certain that Seneca’s death was included in the works of Fannius and others, and equally likely that Tacitus’ account of the death, with its vivid narrative and sermo, drew to some extent on the Exitus version(s) as a model for the commemoration of Seneca as a vir illustris. But in the Fannius letter in particular, something else leaps out: the work’s seriality. Until Fannius himself died, the books of Exitus had been increasing in number and had continued to be read (and reread: cf. lectitabantur, Ep. 5.5.3). In Pliny’s portrayal of author and audience reliving the reign of Nero through the rhythm of successive descriptions and books, we can see a model for the reader’s experience of the last books of the Annals.43 In Pliny’s letter the role of 39. On the Exitus in general see Musurillo (1979), 236–46; Ronconi (1968), 206–36, (1966); Marx (1937). 40. On Fannius see PIR F116; also K. Coleman (1999), 24. He most probably published his works after the death of Domitian in 96, in the spirit of Plin. Ep. 9.13.2; see Musurillo (1979), 241. 41. On the sense of sermo here, see Questa (1960a), 203–4; Sherwin-White (1966), 320–21, 460. 42. Capito also wrote commemorative poems and erected statues (cf. Plin. Ep. 1.17.1, 3); see Ash (2003), 218–19. 43. Not to mention of Pliny’s own epistolary death notices; see Ash (2003), 215–24.

54

historical narratives

Nero is fascinating: Fannius already long ago had dreamt that he was lying on his couch writing and that Nero came and sat on the couch and began to read, but gave up after the third book and departed (§5). After this dream, Fannius “was afraid and interpreted it to mean that he would have the same end in writing as Nero had had in reading. And the end was the same” (expavit et sic interpretatus est, tamquam idem sibi futurus esset scribendi finis, qui fuisset illi legendi: et fuit idem, §6). The dream-Nero’s role as a reader who has the power of life and death over Fannius serves to illustrate how, even as Fannius’ text comes to an end and can offer no further commemoration of Nero’s victims, the series of victims itself continues to grow—with Fannius the latest addition. The dream, then, dramatizes (in its own elusive logic) a tension around the twin serialities of authorial production and imperial killing and their respective capacities to preserve and destroy memory. Fannius is the figure whose authorial endeavors in the end prove incapable of controlling (through fully chronicling) Nero’s spree of killing, and who himself falls victim. There is a significant analogue here, too, for Seneca’s role in the Annals: in Tacitus, Seneca’s pedagogical endeavors prove incapable of restraining Nero from pursuing caedes without limit, and his power to impede caedes is annihilated once and for all by his own exit. Seneca and Fannius thus belong to an identical category: monitors of Neronian killing who themselves became victims of it. This makes them useful figures for both Tacitus and Pliny to think with, as each constructs his own literary work.

Writing Death from Plato to Cato The Exitus illustrium virorum, and indeed Tacitus’ careful depiction of the exit of Seneca, are just local instances in a tradition that goes back at least as far as the death of Socrates.44 As collections, the Exitus resemble Pliny the Elder’s selected examples of “sudden deaths” (repentinae mortes) in the Natural History (HN 7.180–86) and Valerius Maximus’ section “On extraordinary deaths” (De mortibus non vulgaribus) in his encyclopedia of exempla (9.12).45 The potential for death to serve as a metonymic point of comparison between lives is illustrated by Valerius’ statement that “the first and last day in particular encapsulate the conditions of a human life” (humanae . . . vitae condicionem praecipue primus et ultimus dies continet 9.12.praef.).46 In biographic and historical writing, the death serves as a privileged signifier of character, as we find in Suetonius where the death description tends to be the most elaborate rubric under which the emperor’s life and times are revealed. Seneca the Elder charts the genealogy of the consummatio totius vitae topos and describes how, after sporadic 44. On the Phaedo as model for the Exitus see Ronconi (1968), 210–15. 45. Cicero, too, collected clarissimorum hominum nostrae civitatis gravissimos exitus in his Consolatio (cf. Div. 2.22). 46. On the character-revealing potential of Roman deaths see Edwards (2007), 5–9.

writing death into history

55

occurrences in Thucydides and Sallust, Livy “generously provided one for every great man (benignus omnibus magnis viris praestitit); subsequent historians did it much more copiously (multo effusius)” (Suas. §21; cf. §§21–25). Much license is afforded the historian in the area of death description: Cicero, for example, maintains the historian’s right, when describing a death in particular, to “adorn it rhetorically and tragically” (rhetorice et tragice ornare, Brut. 11.42).47 Variations on the formula hic (vitae) exitus fuit, which was used for the first time in surviving Latin literature by Cornelius Nepos (talem habuit exitum vitae, Eum. 13.1), constitute one of the threads by which Roman death writing has been associated with the model of Plato’s Phaedo, with its closural formula, “This was the end, Echecrates, of our companion” (úde ô seketsñ, x ῏ $ Evåjqase|, so‹ èsa¨qot ôlπm écåmeso, Phd. 118a) and, more significantly, its focus on the ethical signification of “the death itself” (aÃsøm søm hmasom, Phd. 58c).48 The Phaedo is an obvious model, in any case, for the lost Teleutai (“Endings”) by Hermippus of Smyrna (third century BCE), which is known through citations in Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius. In Diogenes, the deaths of philosophers turn out to be “illustrative” in both positive and negative ways.49 These deaths also tend to come as the ending of a philosophical career whose topoi include (as in Seneca’s life) the mid-career exile and the final conflict with a tyrant. The Phaedo’s presence in the Roman tradition is advertised most directly in the death of Cato, who is said to have read “Plato’s dialogue on the soul” on the night of his suicide at Utica in 46 BCE (Plut. Cat. Min. 68.2). Different accounts are given of Cato’s act of reading: it is variously implied to help him to motivate himself (Plutarch has him reading the work twice, 68.2; 70.2) or to give him an excuse to be alone. This variety is symptomatic of the prolific representations of Cato’s death in Roman literature, beginning with Cicero’s lost pamphlet Cato and Caesar’s response in his Anticato, and extending to versions by Plutarch, Appian, and Dio, as well as by Seneca and Thrasea Paetus.50 The tradition on Cato’s death offers points of partial resemblance to Tacitus’ narrative of Seneca’s: the evening setting; the presence of companions and a family member (Cato’s son); a preparatory bath; an after-dinner philosophical disputation; a multistage death; and an emphasis on libertas in confrontation with Caesar—even if the death of Thrasea, Cato’s biographer, resembles Cato’s even more closely than does that of Seneca.51 Both Seneca and Thrasea, with their imitations of Socrates in the taking of hemlock (Seneca, Ann. 15.64.3) and the discussion of the nature of the soul (Thrasea, 16.34.1), also follow a more general pattern established by Cato’s death, namely, the free assimilation to Socrates despite significant differences. This assimilative framework is present 47. On this passage, referring to Atticus’ portrayal of the death of Coriolanus, see Ronconi (1968), 235. 48. See Currie (1989). 49. See Chitwood (2004), 1–11, 48–58. 50. See Goar (1987); also Edwards (2007), 1–5, 9–10. 51. See Edwards (2007), 156–58.

56

historical narratives

from the beginnings of the Catonian tradition in Cicero’s formulations, such as ut tunc Socrati, nunc Catoni (“as then for Socrates, now also for Cato,” Tusc. 1.74), where discrepancies between the conditions of the two men’s deaths are suppressed in favor of licensing Cato’s (or Seneca’s, or Thrasea’s) appearance as a Roman Socrates. The model of the Phaedo is relevant to Seneca’s death far beyond Seneca’s use of hemlock.52 The Tacitean death narrative responds implicitly to adapted versions of Echecrates’ questions about “what [Socrates] said” ( ssa ei῏pem) and “how he died” (px ~ | éseke sa, Phd. 57a), and both narratives tap the same repertoire in representing the event in the evening (ödg éccÀ| ôk¨ot derlx ῀ m, Phd. 116b; propinqua vespera, Ann. 15.60.4) and in mentioning the arrival of an official announcing the time for death, followed by the condemned man’s taking the initiative and calling for the hemlock himself (116c–d; 15.64.3); a contrast between the fearless condemned man (cf. dex ῀ |, 58e; interritus, 15.63.1) and his tearful audience (dajq omse|, 59a; lacrimas, 15.62.2); the disinterest in funereal grandeur (115c; 15.64.4); and so on. But such similarities make the contrasts between the two death scenes all the more striking. Compare, for example, Xanthippe and Paulina.53 Although both women will ultimately become monuments of their husbands’ deaths,54 in the Phaedo Xanthippe is present mostly as a foil, crying out with excessive grief and being excluded so that the philosophical discussion may resume;55 this partly echoes her reputation as a shrew who tests Socrates’ calm.56 Although Paulina also is excluded so that Seneca may dictate to his scribes, her resoluteness and participation (while it lasts) indicate that Xanthippe’s role has been overwritten by several centuries of cultural and philosophical history. Paulina may be the most conspicuous trace of Seneca’s effort to surpass, rather than simply emulate, the Socratic paradigm; Tacitus certainly embraces her involvement as an opportunity to depart from the Platonic model. Phaedo’s first-person point of view also gives a more detailed emotional characterization than that conveyed by Tacitus, seen in his description of his “curious feeling” of pleasure and pain (sopæm si . . . pho|, 59a). At various points the model of tragedy is invoked as a foil for the interpretation of Socrates’ death (115a)57—something not explored so explicitly by Tacitus. The Tacitean narrative also conspicuously excludes the formula of superlative encapsulation by which Phaedo describes Socrates as “the best and also the most wise and most 52. For close comparison see Edwards (2007), 156–58; E. R. Wilson (2007), 130–34; Staley (2002); Ronconi (1968), 216–18, (1966), 1258–61. 53. See Hutchinson (1993), 266 n. 17; Mayer (1991), 142. 54. For Xanthippe’s association with Socrates’ memory see the Cynic Epistles (edited by Malherbe 1977), esp. Ep. 21.3. Cf. Reydams-Schils (2005), 144–45. 55. Cf. Pl. Phd. 60a–b, 116b, 117d–e. For commentary see Rowe (1993), 118. 56. E.g., Xen. Symp. 2.10. She appears in this role in Seneca, De matrimonio F31, Ep. 104.27. Cf. ReydamsSchils (2005), 48, 144. 57. See Rowe (1993), 1, 200, 290–91.

writing death into history

57

just of all the men we knew in our time” (sx ῟m épeiqhglem q¨rsot, ja≠ ῀ m sæse x kkx| fiqomilxssot ja≠ dijaoiossot, 118a); this formula recurs in the tradition on Cato, and may in fact be alluded to in Tacitus’ portrayal of Thrasea—not Seneca!—as virtus ipsa (16.21.1). We will return to the Phaedo as we focus on individual details of Seneca’s death in later chapters.

Death Reproduction As Tacitus follows death with death in books 15 and 16, Seneca stands in varied relations of resemblance and difference to the other dying Romans.58 These patterns change in tandem with the reader’s experience of a rapid succession of episodes, gaining ever new vistas on the agency of the emperor and of those who die. If we wish to make any claims about the paradigmatic status of Seneca’s death, we need also to recognize the other paradigms that emerge in the course of this series.

System in Neronian Killing The deaths that follow the discovery of the Pisonian conspiracy are foreshadowed in the degraded annalistic framing with which Tacitus begins the year 65: “Next to enter the consulship were Silius Nerva and Atticus Vestinus, whereupon a conspiracy at once began and grew (coepta simul et aucta coniuratione)” (Ann. 15.48.1).59 I say “degraded” not simply because the conspiracy is mentioned, but because the consul Vestinus himself, tenuously accused of complicity, will himself be put to death (§§68.2–69.3). During the initial stages of what Victoria Pagán calls the most “detailed” and “convoluted” account of any event in the Annals, (2004, 74), Tacitus mentions over a dozen of the conspirators by name and repeatedly emphasizes their varied identities (“senators, equestrians, soldiers, even women,” §48.1) and varied motives (“both out of hatred for Nero and out of favor for C. Piso,” §48.1). Particular attention is given to Epicharis, the freedwoman involved with the conspiracy who refuses to give information even under torture (15.51, 57). Indeed, hers is the first death to be described.60 Tacitus describes how, whereas others such as Lucan would freely divulge what they knew, Epicharis forestalled the second day of her interrogation through suicide (§57.1–2): She defied the first day of questioning. On the next day, as she was being conveyed back for more of the same tortures by means of a litter (for she was unable to walk, with her limbs dislocated),

58. On all these deaths see Plass (1995), 92–115; Martin (1981), 183–88. 59. On the conspiracy narrative see Pagán (2004), 68–90; Rutledge (2001), 166–70; Woodman (1993). 60. See Pagán (2004), 76–83.

58

historical narratives removing her breast-band from her breast and tying it to the roof of the litter to serve as a noose, she put her neck into it, put all her weight on her body, and squeezed out what little breath she had left (indidit cervicem et corporis pondere conisa tenuem iam spiritum expressit)—a freedwoman even in such circumstances protecting strangers whom she scarcely even knew, in a more glorious exemplary act (clariore exemplo), whereas freeborn male equestrians and senators, untouched by torture, all betrayed their nearest and dearest.

In the catalogue that follows, all of the deaths described by Tacitus have Epicharis as an explicit standard of comparison. The subsequent deaths of Calpurnius Piso himself (rumored next emperor), Plautius Lateranus (consul designate), and Seneca (thorn in side; rumored next emperor), have the appearance of a series, with Nero killing off three potential successors in a row (15.59–64). In the rhetoric of killing this is a rising tricolon, because Seneca’s death stands apart in length, and in other ways. Piso’s rapid suicide (“he perished by breaking open the veins in his arms,” obiit abruptis brachiorum venis, §59.5) contrasts with Seneca’s protracted process (§63.3). Piso’s overtures to Nero in his will, seeking to protect his disreputable wife (§59.5), are inverted in Seneca’s allowing the virtuous Paulina to join him in death (§63.2). The fate of Plautius, butchered “so quickly that [Nero] did not allow him to embrace his children or to have that brief freedom to choose his death (ut non conplecti liberos, non illud breve mortis arbitrium permitteret),” throws into relief the fact that Seneca is allowed time, a choice of method, freedom of speech, and an embrace of Paulina (cf. complectitur uxorem, §63.1). Yet Plautius shows constantia no less than Seneca: he submits to the tribune Statius Proxumus’ sword, “maintaining steadfast silence and not seeking to expose the tribune’s own identical guilt” (plenus constantis silentii nec tribuno obiciens eandem conscientiam, §60.1). It would be misleading to privilege Seneca’s death. Better to see it as one of the more elaborate paradigms in a representational system whose center shifts as the reader progresses. Even brief mentions by Tacitus amount to privileging, given that he expressly excludes the many who died “without doing or saying anything worth remembering” (nullo facto dictove memorando, 15.70.2). But his descriptions include bad examples, such as the death of Statius Proxumus, who “spoiled the pardon he had received from the emperor by the vanity of his exit (vanitate exitus)” (§71.2), and polar opposites, such as the juxtaposition of the centurion Sulpicius Asper’s constantiae exemplum with the cowardice of his superior, Faenius Rufus (§68.1). Distinctive commemorations are given to Subrius Flavus, whose last words Tacitus repeats “because unlike Seneca’s they were not published” (§67.3), to Petronius, whose role as Nero’s arbiter elegantiae recalls Seneca’s own cultural hegemony in the court and whose whimsical

writing death into history

59

suicide turns philosophical constantia on its head (16.19.2), and to Thrasea Paetus (16.21.1, 34–35). Each unique death complicates the overall network of resemblances. In a brief but profound essay on Tacitus’ “funerary baroque,” Roland Barthes (1972) identifies some of the peculiarities of this representational system. Assuming that the average reader’s impression is of a Tacitus full of deaths, Barthes points out that the deaths in the Annals are in fact “few enough (some fifty for three principates),” but that the impression of multiplicity— what he encapsulates in his notion of a Tacitean baroque—is produced by “a growing contradiction between unit and totality, an art in which extent is not additive but multiplicative, the density of an acceleration” (99). Barthes notes the relative insignificance of rational causation in Nero’s murders, in which “it is because death is a raw fact, and not the element of a reason, that it is contagious: the wife follows her husband into suicide without being obliged to do so, relatives die in clusters as soon as one of them is condemned” (100–101). He also emphasizes that the internal resemblances do not preclude heterogeneity: “[I]t is the vegetable image which substantiates the baroque: the deaths correspond, but their symmetry is false, spread out in time, subject to a movement, like that of sprouts on the same stalk; the regularity is a delusion, life directs the funerary system, terrorism is not bookkeeping but vegetation: everything is reproduced and yet nothing is repeated; such is perhaps the meaning of this Tacitean universe . . .” (102). Within this organic system of the death catalogue, the narrative of Seneca’s death may be perceived by the reader as reproducible in some elements and yet sui generis. The death of the consul Vestinus is a sped-up version of Seneca’s vein opening followed by bath, without the delaying effect of a final speech (15.69.2–3). In the following book, P. Anteius combines vein opening with poison, as Seneca did, but in the opposite order and with a desire for haste: “Having drunk poison he objected to its slowness, and sped up death by cutting into his veins” (hausto veneno, tarditatem eius perosus intercisis venis mortem adproperavit, 16.14.3). L. Vetus and his mother-in-law and daughter together “open their veins with one and the same weapon” (eodem ferro abscindunt venas), but persist in mutual gazes as they bleed to death in baths next to one another “in one and the same room . . . with father looking at his daughter, the grandmother her granddaughter, and she both of them” (eodem in cubiculo . . . pater filiam, avia neptem, illa utrosque intuens, 16.11.2). In this death tableau there is a contrast with Seneca and Paulina, who had cut their veins together but then broke off their mutual gaze (15.63.3). Within this reproductive economy, the eventual fates of Seneca’s brothers Junius Gallio (intimidated, though his death is not described, 15.73.3) and Annaeus Mela (forced to suicide, 16.17.5–6) echo and reenact Nero’s original act of killing Seneca himself—though without repeating it, because Mela shows conspicuous cowardice. The senator who attacks Gallio in the Senate is persuaded to desist, “in order that he not draw

60

historical narratives

[the emperor] back into a new rage” (ne . . . novam ad saevitiam retraheret)—as if the killing of yet another Annaeus would induce a new (or the same) cycle (15.73.3).

Thrasea Paetus and Seneca Imitatio Senecae might be more obviously at play in the suicide of Thrasea Paetus (16.34–35),61 which has the appearance of being “an intertextual reenactment of Seneca’s death scene,”62 though any conclusions must be qualified by the fact that Plato’s Phaedo and Thrasea’s own biography of Cato existed as prior models for Tacitus and his sources,63 and already for the dying men. In any case, the scene is set vesperascente iam die (16.34.1; cf. 15.60.4), and there is a meeting with mournful friends that is followed by encouraging words, an exhortation to a wife who insists on joining him, withdrawal “into a private room” (in cubiculum), an opening of veins, and a libation to Jupiter Liberator, along with “the slowness of his departure causing convulsions of extreme pain” (lentitudine exitus graves cruciatus adferente, 16.35.1–2; cf. 15.63.3, 64.3). Thrasea’s wife Arria, in volunteering to die, may have in mind not only the examples of Thrasea and her mother Arria (temptantem mariti suprema et exemplum Arriae matris sequi, Ann. 16.34.2), but also of Paulina.64 But the differences are revealing. Thrasea succeeds in persuading Arria to live on, since they have a daughter (16.34.2). Thrasea’s philosophical credentials are established by other means than Seneca’s: Tacitus depicts him in conversation with the Cynic philosopher Demetrius, “with whom, to guess from the attention in his face and from overhearing whatever words of their conversation were distinguishable, he was inquiring about the nature of the soul and the separation of spirit and body (de natura animae et dissociatione spiritus corporisque inquirebat)” (§34.2; cf. §35.2). The spatial setting also—Thrasea begins “in the gardens” (in hortis) and proceeds “into the porch” (in porticum, §34.1, §35.1)—adds precise Epicurean and Stoic philosophical resonances. The libation to Jupiter Liberator, in turn, although directly echoing Seneca’s libation, is given by Tacitus in direct speech this time (“libamus” inquit “Iovi liberatori,” §35.1) and is made with blood sprinkled on soil (cf. cruorem effudit, humum super spargens, §35.1).65 Thrasea also self-consciously offers an exemplum for Helvidius Priscus and advises him: “Watch, young man (specta, iuvenis), and indeed let the gods prevent it, but you have been born into times when it is profitable to bolster your mind with examples of steadfastness (in ea tempora

61. On Thrasea see Wirszubski (1968), 138–43; Edwards (2007), 157–58. 62. Connors (1994), 228; cf. 231. 63. Tacitus’ sources for Thrasea must have included Arulenus Rusticus (cf. Agr. 2.1). 64. See Mayer (1991), 142. 65. Dio conspicuously credits Thrasea with the same libation (måseime sóm veπqa, ja≠ ìug “ro≠ so‹so sø ai῟la, x ῏ Fe‹ $ Ekethåqie, rpåmdx,” 62.26.4), whereas he omits the libation in Seneca’s case.

writing death into history

61

natus es quibus firmare animum expediat constantibus exemplis)” (§35.1). These words evince an historian’s perspective upon the end stages of the Neronian era and Helvidius’ eventual death under Domitian. Thrasea’s death, then, is something different from the death of Seneca, reproducing it but not repeating it, and recycling it more explicitly for a following generation.

Epicharis and Seneca Although in the present chapter we have turned a blind eye to manifestations of Seneca’s authorial identity in Tacitus (the topic of the next chapter), there is one manifestation that is so relevant to the dynamics of Tacitus’ catalogue as whole that we cannot pass over it. This concerns Tacitus’ portrayal of Epicharis. A. J. Woodman has heard here some echoes of Senecan tragedy. Among these, the statement that Epicharis tenuem iam spiritum expressit (“squeezed out what little breath she had left,” Ann. 15.57.2) recalls a scene from the Oedipus in which Manto, daughter of Teiresias, describes the death of a sacrificial bull that animam . . . fessus vix reluctantem exprimit (“exhausted, can barely force out its last resisting breath,” Oed. 344, translations mine).66 It is easy to see, I would add, that the echo of the Oedipus might lend Epicharis the aura of a sacrificial figure and might license analogies between Nero, as he unravels the conspiracy, and Oedipus, who tries to get to the bottom of the plague for which he himself unwittingly bears blame.67 But I would also point out a parallel for Epicharis’ suicide in a passage not from the tragedies but from the Epistulae morales (Ep. 70.19–27). There is a close structural resemblance between, on the one hand, Epicharis’ death sought with the breast-band noose en route to her second day of torture and, on the other, Seneca’s examples of captives who preempted an impending death in the amphitheater by engineering some way to die in the morning before they arrive in the arena: one suffocated himself on a toilet brush in the latrines (“blocking his airways, he stifled his breath,” interclusis faucibus spiritum elisit), while another shoved his head in the spokes of the wagon that was ferrying him to the spectacle (Ep. 70.20, 23).68 The purpose of Seneca’s examples in this letter is to serve both as inspirations and as ex maiore proofs: that is, to shame Lucilius with the realization that because “persons of the lowest station” (vilissimae sortis homines, 70.19) are capable of inventively finding a path to libertas, so should he.69 Seneca the author, then, has a role to play in Tacitus’ construction of a dramatic and exemplary ambiance for the death catalogue, even before he arrives

66. Woodman (1993), 119 n. 56; he also notes the parallel of Pha. 882–85, where Phaedra’s nurse keeps silent in the face of impending torture. For declamatory themes in the torture scene see Pagán (2004), 80–81. 67. For the Oedipal shading of Nero’s decline, cf. Suet. Ner. 46.3. 68. The examples are discussed by Leigh (1997), 259–60. 69. See Turpin (2008), 393. On exempla ex maiore, see Quint. Inst. 5.11.9–10.

62

historical narratives

at his description of Seneca’s own death. As each successive death either meets or, more often, fails to meet, the high standards of Epicharis’ clarius exemplum, the mimetic relationship is framed already by Senecan discourse. This is not to deny the darker implications in the politics of exemplary appropriation by which Epicharis’ death can become an inspiring spectacle, particularly when we are informed by a later source that Epicharis was the mistress of Seneca’s brother, Mela70—a fact that raises questions about Seneca’s own relationship to the conspiracy. But it indicates the degree to which Tacitus depends on Senecan literary modes, from more than one genre, as a resource. All the more reason, then, to look to his (and Dio’s) account of Seneca’s own death for more Senecan literary echoes.

Beyond Historiography A scene of “historic” value then, Seneca’s death. And in more stories than one. It is the last, telling gesture in a paradigmatic career spent close (too close) to the Julio-Claudian household, a pivotal and emblematic moment in Tacitus’ appropriation of exit writing, and one of many models for an organic and contagious form of exemplary reproduction. Yet Seneca dies not only as a subject of history and historiography. Or, at least, the special appeal of his death to the historian, and to his audiences, included a conception of his death scene as part and parcel of his literary career. We turn, then, to Seneca the author.

70. Polyaenus, Strat. 8.62 (written c. 162 CE), with Woodman (1993), 114; Griffin (1974), 25.

part ii

Seneca the Author

This page intentionally left blank

3 The Man of Many Genres in His Death

Our first step, as we consider the dying Seneca as an author, will be to recognize more fully the ways in which his authorship is registered in Tacitus. But although the historian’s text serves as a useful initial guide, it is also essential to survey Seneca’s literary roles more broadly and to gauge their likely influence on how contemporaries perceived his death. Quintilian’s posthumous criticisms of Seneca are particularly instructive. We will then turn more directly to Seneca’s own written representations of death. Cato’s exit in the De providentia is a good example to consider; but it also prompts us to look at the author’s very flexible approach to death writing across multiple genres. If we peruse the surviving accounts of Cicero’s death collected by Seneca the Elder, we will find that the historians and declaimers who describe it are invested in having Cicero die in a way that fully symbolizes his profile as an orator and writer.1 All the versions agree that Cicero’s severed head was brought back to Rome and placed on the Rostra with his right hand (or both hands) mounted beside it—a visible undoing of his oratorical authority and revenge for the writing of the Philippics (Suas. 6.17).2 But as the historian Bruttedius Niger tells it, the display in fact prompted a unique form of laudatio funebris: “Nor did the crowd, as it usually does, listen to the biography of a dead body placed on the Rostra: [the crowd] itself told it (nec, ut solet, vitam depositi in rostris corporis contio

1. On the shaping of Cicero’s death with declamatory colores see Roller (1997). For this death’s central role in early Imperial thought about writing and authorship see Sailor (2008), 282–91; Degl’Innocenti Pierini (2003a). 2. On the hand see Butler (2002).

66

seneca the author

audivit, sed ipsa narravit). There was no part of the Forum that was not marked by some trace of a distinguished action [by him] (nulla non pars fori aliquo actionis inclutae signata vestigio erat), no one who didn’t recount some service of his to himself” (Suas. 6.21). Cicero’s death, then, appeals one more time to the people’s personal and collective memories of his authorial performances. The historians who describe the death of Seneca, however, are not inclined to map its significance in public space beyond the publication of his dictated words, or the mob’s rumors (Ann. 15.63.3, 64.2). In an earlier book, Tacitus explicitly draws attention to Seneca’s “pleasing style suited to the ears of his age” (ingenium amoenum et temporis eius auribus accommodatum, 13.3.1), and the structure of Seneca’s career as a novus homo who became the preeminent orator of his age, wrote in multiple genres of poetry and prose (including dialogues, consolations, letters), suffered a mid-career exile, and rose to power at more than one stage of his career, before dying at the hands of an autocratic regime, is nothing if not Ciceronian. But Seneca’s public appearances during his authorial career, as far as we can tell, came mostly in the form of textual circulation and small-scale literary recitation, or were manifested in Nero’s aliena facundia (13.3.2)—symptoms of the disappearance of political oratory from the Forum in the Principate.3 Indeed, the absence of public commemoration in Seneca’s case to some extent follows from the periodizing significance of Cicero’s death as the moment when “the sad eloquence of the Latin tongue fell silent” (conticuit Latiae tristis facundia linguae, Cornelius Severus quoted by Sen. Suas. 6.26–27). Robert Kaster has tentatively suggested that the declaimers, in giving disproportionate emphasis to Cicero’s death, chose an icon of their own “condition” (1998, 262–63). Certainly, Seneca’s near-death at the hands of the emperor Caligula, as the consequence of a senatorial speech (Dio 59.19.7–8), suggests the dangers of eloquence in this era.4 If, then, Seneca’s death has an authorial dimension, it will necessarily register the changed discursive contexts of the Imperial age in which his career took shape.

When an Author Says His Last Seneca dies writing. Dio depicts him anxious, “amending the book he had been writing and depositing the rest with certain persons (since he feared that they might come into Nero’s hands and be destroyed)” (62.25.2). Tacitus presents him bleeding and dictating (Ann. 15.63.3), in a certain sense authoring his own, and Paulina’s, exitus (cf. huius tam fortis exitus, §63.2).5 What difference do the authorial dimensions of Seneca’s death make? 3. On this shift see Dupont (1997). 4. A political career is charted for Seneca by his father (Contr. 2.praef.4), but the central theme of Contr. 1.praef. is the periodizing gulf between the age of Cicero and that of Seneca the Elder’s sons; cf. Gunderson (2003), 33. Seneca the Younger himself mentions Cicero’s death as a frequent literary topic (Ira 2.2.3; Tranq. 16.1). 5. See Griffin (1986), 65; Marx (1937), 86–87.

the man of many genres in his death

67

The Discourse on Authorship and Death Seneca’s death is defined in part by its relationship to other “writerly” deaths catalogued by Tacitus—other “utterances,” as it were, in the “discourse on authorship and death” that Catherine Connors (1994) sees at work in Neronian literature.6 Seneca’s brother Annaeus Mela (whose renown, Tacitus explains, derives from that of his poet son Lucan) does not die before writing codicilli that accuse and flatter (Ann. 16.17).7 Mela’s act serves as a foil to Seneca’s metaphorical will—the imago vitae suae—and to his codicilli stipulating private cremation (15.62.1, 64.4). Lucan himself, implicated in the conspiracy and condemned to death, remains conscious as he bleeds (15.70.1): recordatus carmen a se compositum, quo vulneratum militem per eius modi mortis imaginem obisse tradiderat, versus ipsos rettulit, eaque illi suprema vox fuit. Remembering a poem he had composed in which he had related how a wounded soldier died through an image of that kind of death, he recited the actual verses, and that was his final utterance. The recitation creates a double position for Lucan as both narrator and bleeding soldier, aestheticizing the scene through one of his poetic fictions.8 Ellen O’Gorman has noted that mortis imago here may recall Virgil’s account of Troy in flames (and Nero’s singing while Rome burned), as well as Tacitus’ own accounts of civil war in the Histories.9 Coming so soon after the account of Seneca’s death, mortis imago may also echo and contrast with Seneca’s imago vitae suae (§62.1). The starkest authorial comparison for Seneca, however, is the dying Petronius, who binds and unbinds his wounds in an apparent parody of Seneca’s death scene and Paulina’s revival.10 Petronius “listened to [readers] reciting nothing about the immortality of the soul or the doctrines of the philosophers, but light poems and easy verses (nihil de immortalitate animae et sapientium placitis, sed levia carmina et faciles versus)” (16.19.2). The scene accords with both the prosimetric form and the satirizing approach to death (including mock deaths) that we find in the Satyricon—some of which was

6. Her observations are developed by O’Gorman (2000), 157–59; Edwards (2007), 111–12, 158–59. 7. On Mela’s codicilli as an “utterance,” see Connors (1994), 227. See also Sullivan (1985a), 34 n. 35 on the codicilli of A. Fabricius Veiento (Ann. 14.50.1) and the list of Petronius (16.19.3). 8. See Connors (1994), 229. For the poem, possible passages from Lucan’s Bellum civile are listed by Faider (1921), 307 n. 1; Koestermann (1968), 320 compares BC 3.635–46 on the death of Lycidas. But Tacitus’ wording may suggest a stand-alone poem. 9. O’Gorman (2000), 158–59, citing Aen. 2.369 (plurima mortis imago); Tac. Hist. 3.28.1 (omni imagine mortium). 10. On Petronius’ death see Edwards (2007), 158–59, 176–78; Bertrand-Dagenbach (1992), 604–5.

68

seneca the author

already a literary parody of Senecan writing.11 Tacitus thus builds upon an existing history of rivalry between the two authors. In the discourse on authorship and death, the relationship between death and authorship is strongly reciprocal:12 (1) The death scene may be read as repeating, adding to, or in some way issuing from (even contradicting) the writing career and its genres.13 (2) The author’s writings may subsequently be read in new ways in the wake of his death: the death may punctuate the corpus, confer new authority on it, dissolve its coherency, or be read back into it in a way that offers new referential possibilities, and changes how it exists or is perceived.14 Seneca’s dictation, for example, both continues his writing career into the death scene and produces a text that “will have been received as a composition whose end coincided with the death of its author” (Connors 1994, 231). The potential for this double effect—of writings on death, and of death on writings—means that if the reader of Tacitus’ phrase novissimo quoque momento (Ann. 15.63.3) hears an echo of Seneca’s own illo velocissimo momento in the De tranquillitate animi (Tranq. 14.9), discussed in the introduction to this book,15 then this echo (1) presents Seneca dying like his literary character, Julius Canus, and (2) has consequences for future readings of Seneca’s authorial voice, whether in the published version of the dictated last words or in any of his works—not least, the De tranquillitate animi.

Listening for Seneca’s Authorial Voice in Tacitus Let us observe the remarkably creative role played by Tacitus in mediating Seneca the author, beginning with the varying degrees of mimesis he employs in his representation of Seneca’s last speeches. Having first used indirect speech and paraphrase, saying that Seneca spoke in “these words and words like them, as if for all” (haec atque talia velut in commune, Ann. 15.63.1), he uses direct speech to give Seneca’s exhortation to Paulina (§63.2): “vitae” inquit “delenimenta monstraveram tibi, tu mortis decus mavis: non invidebo exemplo. sit huius tam fortis exitus constantia penes utrosque par, claritudinis plus in tuo fine.” “I had shown you,” he said, “the means of soothing life, but you prefer the honor of death. I won’t stand in the way of your good example. Let us both be equally steadfast in this brave exit, but let there be greater renown in your ending.” 11. On the prosimetric form see Connors (1994), 229–30. On the Satyricon’s allusions to Seneca see Courtney (2001), 216–18; Sullivan (1985b); Amat (1992). 12. I build on Connors (1994), 228–31. 13. “Generic” death, in the formulation of O’Gorman (2000), 158. 14. Crucial is the observation of Edwards (2007), 111: “Tacitus’ account of Seneca’s death has inevitably had a significant bearing, not always explicitly acknowledged, on the way readers have responded to Seneca’s own voluminous writings on death.” 15. See also Cancik (1967), 108.

the man of many genres in his death

69

Putting aside the unanswerable questions about the speech’s authenticity,16 we may observe that Tacitus’ choice to use direct speech may respond to the fact that, as Dio’s version clearly demonstrates (62.25.1), Seneca’s enthusiasm for Paulina’s decision was potentially controversial. In Tacitus Paulina’s act is licensed by Seneca’s stylized voice, with the sense of a finely calibrated pedagogical relationship. The direct voice here may be meant to offer a taste of the affectionate relationship with Paulina that Seneca characterizes in one of his letters (Ep. 104.1–5), although in that instance the focus was on Seneca’s selfpreservation out of concern for her. It may also recall the exempla collected in his De matrimonio, which included faithful widows and suicidal wives, not least the Indian satı¯.17 But when Tacitus describes the scene of dictation, he goes to the opposite mimetic extreme: Seneca, he writes, “summoned scribes and dictated a considerable amount to them, which was published in his words and which I refrain from adapting” (advocatis scriptoribus pleraque tradidit, quae in vulgus edita eius verbis invertere supersedeo, 15.63.3).18 And some chapters later he refers back to this same act of suppression. After relating the final utterance of the tribune Subrius Flavus, with its harsh direct accusations of Nero (§67.1–2), he explains: “I have related the exact words because they were not published, as Seneca’s were (quia non, ut Senecae, vulgata erant), nor did it seem less fitting for the unpolished and staunch expressions of a military man (militaris viri sensus incomptos et validos) to be known” (§67.3).19 This alludes (once again) to the publication of Seneca’s words, but also hints that Subrius’ style offers a corrective or counterweight to Seneca’s polished and nonconfrontational style.20 Scholars have seen Tacitus’ suppression of Seneca’s words variously as respecting the autonomy of Seneca’s published text and establishing the narrator’s emotional detachment (Hutchinson 1993, 264–65); maintaining the dignity of the death through protecting Seneca from the appearance of loquacity (R. Fabbri 1978–79, 420–21) or from the mob’s mockery (Dyson 1970, 77); and even ironically echoing Seneca’s portrayal of a similar suppression in the Apocolocyntosis (Apocol. 9.2; Woodman forthcoming). However we understand it, the implication is the same: Tacitus presupposes his reader’s independent access to Seneca’s published words. 16. A Tacitean paraphrase is suggested by Miller (1973), 116 and by Abel (1991), 3162, who notes that Seneca uses claritas, never claritudo. The utterance is read as Senecan by Syme (1958a), 336, noting Senecan rhythms. Note, in any case, the multiple synonyms for death (mortis, exitus, fine) and the iconic word order beginning with vitae and ending with fine. 17. For the De matrimonio fragments see Vottero (1998), 22–31, 134–67, 237–88. That work’s relevance to Paulina is discussed by Mauch (1997), 70; Griffin (1992), 371–72 n. 3. On the satı¯ in Matrim. F52 see Vottero (1998), 278; more generally, Heckel and Yardley (1981). 18. Koestermann (1968), 305 paraphrases invertere with mutatis verbis reddere. Miller (1973), 116 observes that “adapting” is precisely what Tacitus has been doing to Seneca’s words earlier in the death scene itself. For lucid discussion of Tacitus’ approach to Seneca’s ipsa verba see Laird (1999), 127–30, 141–42. 19. On Subrius’ words see W. Schmidt (1914), 33–34; also Champlin (2003), 186; Woodman (1993), 125. 20. In sensus incomptos et validos the contrast may be pointed by a reminiscence of Caligula’s critique of Seneca’s “more mild and polished style” (lenius comptiusque genus, Suet. Calig. 53.2); cf. Lausberg (1989), 1952.

70

seneca the author

Tacitus’ omission has long been lamented, and Seneca’s words have been the subject of speculation.21 When did the text circulate? And in what form?22 The term pleraque and the presence of more than one scribe suggest a fairly extensive discourse, and the term eloquentia indicates a relatively formal utterance—albeit under conditions of extreme pain. Some have surmised that it was like the last discussion of Socrates, or of Thrasea Paetus, “investigating the nature of the soul and the separation of spirit and body” (Ann. 16.34.1).23 Understandably, the reader may seek to fill the gap in Tacitus’ account by using Seneca’s own works,24 such as his comment in the De providentia that Socrates “inquired about death right up until he reached it” (de morte disputavit usque ad ipsam, Prov. 3.12), or in the De tranquillitate animi that Julius Canus died telling his friends that he was going to inquire “whether [his] mind would feel itself depart” (an sensurus sit animus exire se, Tranq. 14.9). The account of Dio, however, suggests that a specific work of Seneca—not a “last words” dictation as such—was being amended in these moments (62.25.2). This has variously been taken to be the seventh and final book of the De beneficiis, which addresses how to deal with tyrants, or the Libri moralis philosophiae, which Seneca mentions working on in his final years.25 There have also been fantastical attempts either to locate the words in the byways of the manuscript tradition or to compose the lost words anew.26 An influential, though implausible, candidate for Seneca’s last words is the so-called Epitaphium Senecae (Anth. Lat. 667 = Epigr. 71 Prato) that is reproduced in medieval manuscripts of the Epistulae morales and in Renaissance biographies of Seneca, where it is repeatedly presented as the dictated words suppressed by Tacitus. But if Tacitus invites the reader to supplement the scene from readings of Seneca, he also leads by example in his own narration. In the previous chapter, we noted that Tacitus portrays the death of Epicharis in terms that echo Seneca’s tragedies and letters. There is much more: Tacitus’ historical voice frequently echoes Seneca’s writing in such a way that historical events involving Seneca himself frequently seem to obey a Senecan logic.27 A sampling of such events can lead us all the way from the interview in book 14 to the conclusion of the death narrative in book 15.

21. Lipsius (1600), ad loc. exclaims: verba viri ultima utinam ipsa! 22. Inclusion in an exit description is suggested by Ronconi (1968), 230–21; in the work of Fabius Rusticus, by Vottero (1998), 85. W. Schmidt (1914), 54 argues that Seneca’s last words were unique in antiquity for being published “statim,” although immediacy is not indicated by Tacitus; Koestermann (1968), 305 suggests publication after Nero’s death. 23. See Griffin (1992), 369; (1986), 65. 24. Gnilka (1979), 7 contrasts with this the Christian tradition of the Holy Spirit speaking through the martyr. 25. Ben. 7 is suggested by Préchac (1926–27), 1.xvi–xxvii; the Libri moralis philosophiae by Vottero (1998), 83 n. 395. 26. See Vottero (1998), 81–82. Woelfflin (1878) boldly claimed to have located these words in additions made to the Senecan florilegium Monitorum liber. 27. Echoes are noted by Schönegg (1999), 25 n. 30; Syme (1958a), 126, 141, 199–200, 336; and already M. Zimmermann (1889).

the man of many genres in his death

71

During the interview scene, for example,28 Tacitus represents Seneca asking egone, equestri et provinciali loco ortus, proceribus civitatis adnumeror? (“Am I, arisen from equestrian and provincial origins, counted among the foremost citizens?” Ann. 14.53.5), which seems to echo the question that Seneca invites Nero to ask himself at the beginning of the De clementia: egone ex omnibus mortalibus placui electusque sum qui in terris deorum vice fungerer? (“Have I, of all mortals, found favor and been chosen to take the place of the gods on earth?” Clem. 1.1.2).29 Tacitus thus portrays Seneca using the same rhetorical device—an incredulous questioning of the arbitrary distributions of dynastic power—now ostensibly to detach himself from power, whereas he had formerly used it (in his guise as mirror for the prince, Clem. 1.1.1) to have Nero embrace his own universal power and the moral responsibilities that came with it. In this way the De clementia becomes an echo chamber for establishing ironic resonances between the contrasting insider and outsider moments of Seneca’s career. A second and complementary example can be taken from the interview’s end. Tacitus’ description of how “Seneca gave thanks, as all conversations with a despot end” (Seneca, qui finis omnium cum dominante sermonum, grates agit, 14.56.3), closely echoes an anecdote given by Seneca in the De ira (2.33.2):30 notissima vox est eius qui in cultu regum consenuerat: cum illum quidam interrogaret quomodo rarissimam rem in aula consecutus est, senectutem, “iniurias” inquit “accipiendo et gratias agendo.” Everyone knows what was said by the man who had grown old in the company of kings: when someone asked him how he had come by that rarest of things in a court, old age, he replied: “By accepting injuries and saying thank you.” The Tacitean Seneca’s dissimulative behavior after the interview is allowed to instantiate the De ira’s recommended strategy for surviving in the Roman imperial household (which was, in that text, newly imagined as a “court”).31 But the De ira was a work that had been shaped by the tyrannical world of Caligula and the early Claudius, which Seneca had been lucky to survive, but whose obsolescence had been announced by his positive program in the De clementia. Tacitus’ description of Seneca here, however, specifically signals a return to that nightmare and places Seneca’s death on the horizon again as it had been under Caligula. 28. Pace Woodman (forthcoming), who argues that Tacitus here (unlike in the death scene) “declines” to write like Seneca. 29. The echo is noted by Braund (2008), 160. 30. The echo is noted by many, e.g., O’Gorman (2000), 153; already Gercke (1895), 279. The sense of Seneca’s literary dominance here is deepened by the multiple concealed meanings that Seneca at Tranq. 14.4–5 offers for the phrase “gratias . . . ago, optime princeps” uttered by Julius Canus to Caligula; on the latter passage, see Roller (2001), 120–24; also Edwards (2007), 113; Motto and Clark (1955). See also Electra’s defiant grates ago at Aga. 1010. 31. As O’Gorman (2000), 153 n. 51 notes, the senex anecdote evokes the name of Seneca himself. For aula at Ira 2.33.2 as a turning point in Roman political terminology, see Wallace-Hadrill (1996), 283.

72

seneca the author

Tacitus’ death narrative, too, is infused with Senecan allusions.32 In the prelude he reports that Gavius Silvanus “affirmed that no signs of fear and no sadness had been detected in [Seneca’s] words and face (nihil triste in verbis eius aut vultu)” (Ann. 15.61.2). This recalls Senecan assertions such as “Nothing will ever befall me that I receive sadly or with unhappy face” (nihil umquam mihi incidet, quod tristis excipiam, quod malo vultu, Ep. 96.2), in keeping with the ideal of Socratic aequalitas (Ep. 104.28). In the following stage the centurion conveys to Seneca necessitatem ultimam (“the final necessity,” 15.61.4). As Philippe Bruggisser (2004) has noted, the term ultima necessitas, which generally refers to various dire circumstances, in Seneca’s writings had sometimes become more simply “a euphemism for death”—or, we might say, a euphemism for circumstances that make death inescapable (cf. Ep. 70.5).33 Tacitus, Bruggisser observes, tends to use the variants suprema and extrema; only here, in the context of Seneca’s death, does he use the Senecan formulation with ultima, an instance of Tacitean “finesse littéraire” that makes Seneca die in his own words (“de ses propres paroles,” 491). The specific intertext Tacitus has in mind probably is, in fact, letter 70, to which we will return in chapter 8. In a final, intriguing example, Tacitus writes that Seneca “was cremated without any funeral ceremony. This was as he had stipulated in his will, when he was giving thought to his last rites even while still supremely wealthy and powerful (ita codicillis praescripserat, cum etiam tum praedives et praepotens supremis suis consuleret)” (15.64.4). The term praescripserat arguably hints at Seneca’s characteristic interest in a technique of advance preparation, the praemeditatio futurorum malorum. In fact, the wordplay by which Tacitus registers the simultaneity between Seneca’s act of praescribere (prae- in a temporal sense) and his being still praedives et praepotens (prae- as an intensifier) closely parallels a figura etymologica that Seneca puts into the mouth of Socrates in the De vita beata: sapiens tunc maxime paupertatem meditatur cum in mediis divitiis constitit (“The wise man practices for poverty precisely when he stands in the middle of wealth,” VB 26.1).34 In both instances, wordplay is used to emphasize the simultaneity of the wise man’s prosperity and his anticipations. The praemeditatio structure suits Tacitus’ needs as a historian here, providing a broader temporal perspective that juxtaposes the dying Seneca with Seneca at the height of his success—the closest thing Seneca gets to an obituary. As G. O. Hutchinson remarks on this passage, “[h]ere the philosopher’s and the historian’s sense of time richly blend” (1993, 268). Taken together, these examples add to our understanding of how one reader—Tacitus—rewrote Seneca’s death in dialogue with Seneca’s literary career 32. In addition to the allusions discussed below, note also Ann. 15.61.1: nec sibi promptum in adulationes ingenium, which echoes Clem. 2.2.2: non ut blandum auribus tuis (nec enim hic mihi mos est: maluerim veris offendere quam placere adulando); see Trillitzsch (1971), 1.91–92. 33. Cf. Woodman (forthcoming), noting echoes of Ep. 70. 34. See also Ker (forthcoming b).

the man of many genres in his death

73

conducted in the un-Ciceronian sphere of the Imperial court. Yet Tacitus, as noted above, assumes that his reader is also undertaking the more open-ended process of supplementing the death narrative from his or her own readings of Seneca.

End of a Polygeneric Career There is no single sense in which Seneca can be said to die in accord with his authorial identity: he dies as he lived, a man of many studia. For example, the early allusions made in the Octavia (“to fall more heavily,” gravius ut ruerem, 379–80) and in Pliny the Elder (“having the power which, in the end, excessive, crashed down on him,” potentia quae postremo nimia ruit super ipsum, 14.51), present Seneca’s demise through the precise motifs of a regretful return from exile or a self-ruining excess, both familiar from Senecan tragedy.35 This angle differs sharply from the Senecan discourse of praemeditatio through which we saw Tacitus portraying Seneca preparing for his death already when wealthy (Ann. 15.64.4)—though Tacitus also draws on Senecan tragedy elsewhere. How Seneca’s contemporaries could have perceived and portrayed his death is therefore an open question.

Seneca’s Oeuvre and the Recurrence of Death Foucault observes that “the function of the author is to characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society” (1977, 124). My goal in the present section is to draw attention to the unusual breadth of discourse types associated with Seneca, and to consider how his death may have served as an epistemological opportunity—a moment in which to stage one’s knowledge of (or attitudes to) this author and his distinctive function. In Julio-Claudian literary culture Seneca had been an innovator, applying sententious and figurative rhetoric to literary scenarios in both prose and verse36 and emphasizing the ethical aspects of style.37 He had written works in many genres, some now known only by title or through fragments preserved by other authors or in palimpsest. In no particular chronological order, as their dates are in many cases unknown, we may note the following:38 epigrams,39

35. For this association in the Pliny passage see Ramelli (2002), 503–4. 36. For surveys and studies of, e.g., the prose style see G. D. Williams (2003), 25–32; Setaioli (2000); Traina (1974); Currie (1968); Trillitzsch (1962); Guillemin (1957); and Summers (1910), xlii–liv, with the qualifications of Hine (2005). 37. E.g., Seneca promoted the nexus of ideas associated with talis oratio qualis vita (Ep. 114.1). See Dominik (1997). 38. On the chronology see Griffin (1992), 395–411; prior hypotheses in Giancotti (1957). For the fragmentary and lost works see Vottero (1998). The textual transmissions are surveyed in Reynolds (1983), 357–81. On florilegia and spurious works, see Ross (1974); Faider (1921), 117–22. 39. Some epigrams attributed to Seneca in Prato (1964) (though in the Latin Anthology only a few are explicitly attributed to him) are likely to be authentic, pace Holzberg (2002). See Dingel (2007), 12–20, 33–35; Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1999), 109–37.

74

seneca the author

frivolous verses,40 tragedies on Greek myths (transmitted in this order: Hercules, Troades, Phoenissae, Medea, Phaedra, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes), a biography of his father (De vita patris),41 a work from exile flattering Messalina and Claudius’ freedmen (cf. Dio 60.8.5), a prosimetric satire on the apotheosis of Claudius (Ludus de morte Claudii, that is, the Apocolocyntosis; cf. Dio 60.35.2–3), a work of political advice for Nero (De clementia),42 twelve books of Dialogi on various moral topics (transmitted in this order: De providentia ad Lucilium, De constantia sapientis ad Serenum, De ira ad Novatum [in three books], Consolatio ad Marciam, De vita beata ad Gallionem, De otio ad Serenum, De tranquillitate animi ad Serenum, De brevitate vitae ad Paulinum, Consolatio ad Polybium, Consolatio ad Helviam matrem),43 letters (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium; possibly also Epistulae ad Maximum), a seven-book guide to gift giving (De beneficiis ad Aebutium Liberalem), a work on meditatio (De remediis fortuitorum),44 other works on moral topics (De matrimonio, De officiis, Quomodo amicitia continenda sit, De inmatura morte, De superstitione, Libri moralis philosophiae, Exhortationes), works of ethnography (De situ et sacris Aegyptiorum) and geography (on India), and an eight-book discussion of natural science (Natural Questions), as well as some smaller treatises (De terrae motu [cf. NQ 6.4.2]; De forma mundi). Death is a privileged concern throughout, but especially in the genres of consolation and tragedy and in individual works such as the De brevitate vitae, De inmatura morte, De remediis fortuitorum, De providentia, and Epistulae morales.45 Even more extensively than his contemporaries Lucan and Petronius,46 Seneca had engaged creatively with influential treatments of death in the literary tradition, such as Lucretius’ De rerum natura book 3, Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and Tusculan Disputations book 1, and Virgil’s Aeneid book 6.47 Taking up these texts’ philosophic and poetic approaches to the representation of death and the afterlife, Seneca had developed his own distinctive rhetorical emphases within each of his genres, but in every case had foregrounded people’s subjective experience of time and temporality, and the place of death within this. He had also given death a special structural and stylistic prominence. Hence his characteristic framing of individual prose books or choral odes as meditatio mortis or cogitatio mortalitatis, his use of the ghost prologue and mid-play katabasis as

40. Cf. Plin. Ep. 5.3.2–5, listing Seneca among famous authors of versiculi; Sen. Helv. 20.1 on his own leviora studia (with Vottero 1998, 13–14); Tac. Ann. 14.52.3 on Seneca’s production of carmina catering to Nero’s tastes. For overview see Dingel (2007), 11–12. 41. See Vottero (1998), 75–81; Griffin (1992), 33. 42. On the historical-literary scenario of the Apocolocyntosis and the De clementia, see Leach (1989). 43. On the Dialogi as a group see Abel (1967). 44. On its authenticity, though it survives only in epitomated form, see Newman (1988). 45. Just as Inwood (2005), 241 observes that the lex mortalitatis is “a basic principle of ethics” for Seneca, so, too, death may be said to be a basic principle of his writings more generally. See also Inwood (2007a), 303 on death in the Epistulae morales. 46. The general culture is evoked by Hutchinson (1993), 256–87, 288–326, on death in Imperial prose and high poetry. 47. E.g., Inwood (2005), 184 on Lucretius; Setaioli (1997), 321–22 on Cicero, 361–63 on Virgil.

the man of many genres in his death

75

devices for shaping dramatic space and time in the tragedies, and his use of a memento mori in his rhetorical theory: if you wish your sermo and vita to be in harmony, he advises, simply “Look to death!” (respice ad mortem, Ep. 114.27). We will consider individual literary approaches to death below and in the following chapters. Although each of Seneca’s literary explorations of death offered its own distinct lens on his death, it is worth emphasizing that contemporaries would likely have expected the dying Seneca to embody, in one way or another, his polygeneric profile. In positive terms, the death might have been an occasion for a “mega-performance” of his polymathic rofi¨a (Dio 59.19.8),48 the master role of princeps eruditorum (Plin. HN 14.51), or an expert instantiation of the mythic triad of “philosophy-oratory-song” that subtends Roman literature, and especially Seneca’s oeuvre.49 In negative terms, it might have brought to light the inherent contradictions of his diverse endeavors, from the writing of tragedies to the tending of vineyards. Even if the reactions of Seneca’s contemporaries are mostly irrecoverable, we must try to keep these broader positive and negative possibilities in mind.50

Quintilian on the Dead Author We can bring ourselves closer to contemporary perceptions if we look at Quintilian’s discussion of Seneca’s style in book 10 of his Institutio oratoria, written some twenty to thirty years after Seneca’s death.51 Turning to Seneca at the end of his survey of Greek and Latin authors whom the orator-in-training should imitate (Inst. 10.1.125–131), Quintilian emphasizes how imperfectly Seneca was imitated in the days when “virtually he alone was in the hands of the young men” (solus hic fere in manibus adulescentium fuit, §126)—a period during which he himself had published a harsher critique of Senecan style (§125).52 Although Quintilian now praises some aspects of Senecan style, his ultimate assessment is that Seneca has a complex value as a model: he is to be read “because he can exercise one’s judgment on either side” (quod exercere potest utrimque iudicium, §131). Quintilian explains how specific aspects of Senecan style had been selected for imitation, but the wrong ones: “Only for his faults did he find favor” (placebat propter sola vitia, §127). The rhetorician has many vitia in mind, though the one he defines most explicitly is Seneca’s 48. On rofi¨a and “mega-performers” see Martin (1993). 49. On the triad in Seneca see Habinek (2005), 104; see also (1998), 212 on Seneca’s master role as exhortator. 50. On the diversity of Seneca’s oeuvre and studia see further Ker (2006). 51. See Dominik (1997), 50–59 and bibliography in Vottero (1998), 9 n. 24. In addition to the passages discussed here, note Quintilian’s quotations from Seneca’s letter to the Senate on Agrippina (Inst. 8.5.18) and the Medea (9.2.8). 52. I.e., the lost work De causis corruptae eloquentiae; cf. Russell (2001), 5.319 n. 163. It is easy to read Quintilian’s description of Seneca’s monopoly at §126 as referring specifically to his jealous shielding of Nero from other models in Suet. Ner. 52.

76

seneca the author

fragmentation of his themes through pointed style (cf. si rerum pondera minutissimis sententiis non fregisset, §130).53 Such selective imitation, he says, produced a distorted caricature: “In claiming to speak in the same manner, [the imitator] maligned Seneca” (cum se iactaret eodem modo dicere, Senecam infamabat, §127). Quintilian’s response, vindicating Seneca as a model, is to explain which features of his style would be chosen by a better or more mature judge. He seems to have in mind Seneca’s “many distinguished sententiae, and much also that is worth reading for its moral value” (multae . . . claraeque sententiae, multa etiam morum gratia legenda, §129)—the things that defined him as “an outstanding persecutor of vices” (egregius . . . vitiorum insectator, §129). Here we may note Quintilian’s strategy of selecting specific stylistic modes or specific discursive roles in which Seneca variously appears as a bad or good model. At the same time, Quintilian’s emphasis is on Senecan multiplicity. He explains that the present discussion has been delayed to the end of his genreby-genre survey because he wanted to give special attention to Seneca’s style as containing both good and bad elements (stylistic multiplicity) and because Seneca could have been mentioned under many different literary rubrics (cf. in omni genere eloquentiae, §125).54 The polygeneric Seneca is validated as a master writer of great power and flexibility (§§128–29): cuius et multae alioqui et magnae virtutes fuerunt, ingenium facile et copiosum, plurimum studii, multa rerum cognitio. . . . tractavit etiam omnem fere studiorum materiam: nam et orationes eius et poemata et epistulae et dialogi feruntur. Otherwise he had many great virtues: a flexible and abundant style, much research, a great knowledge of things. . . . He also pursued almost every potential endeavor, for we have speeches of his, poems, letters, and discourses. But Quintilian also reacts sharply to Seneca’s monopolization. He explains his earlier criticisms, for example, by saying, “I wasn’t going to allow him to be ranked ahead of other better ones, whom he had not ceased from detracting because, being conscious of the difference of his style, he doubted that his style could please those whom they pleased (diversi sibi conscius generis placere se in dicendo posse quibus illi placerent diffideret)” (§126). He also identifies weaknesses in Seneca’s overall profile, portraying his oeuvre as the imperfect product of more than one man: in his knowledge, for example, Seneca “was sometimes put wrong by those to whom he had entrusted certain things to investigate”

53. As Calboli (1999), 25–26 notes, Quintilian here criticizes Seneca (si . . . contempsisset, si non . . . amasset, si . . . non fregisset, . . . comprobaretur, 130) in terms that echo Seneca’s criticism of Maecenas at Ep. 114.4: magni vir ingenii fuerat si illud egisset via rectiore, si non vitasset intellegi, si non etiam in oratione difflueret. 54. Cf. Dominik (1997), 56: Seneca “does not really conform to Quintilian’s generic expectations of a writer.”

the man of many genres in his death

77

(aliquando ab iis quibus inquirenda quaedam mandabat deceptus est, §128).55 Seneca would have been better, Quintilian laments, “if he had not loved everything of his own” (si non omnia sua amasset): “You wish he had spoken with his own style, but another’s judgment” (velles eum suo ingenio dixisse, alieno iudicio, §130). Quintilian does not refer to Seneca’s death explicitly. Yet the death is an implicit factor in the succession of snapshots we receive of: (1) Quintilian’s having heard Seneca in person during his own lifetime (for example, giving prefatory comments with Pomponius Secundus at a tragic recitatio, 8.3.31; cf. 12.10.11),56 (2) his earlier criticisms of Seneca, reacting at the height of his influence (10.1.125– 26), and (3) the present portrait in which Seneca no longer dominates the field and his status as a model is characterized in hindsight and from a distance.57 There may also be, I suggest, an implicit gesturing toward Seneca’s death in Quintilian’s final words: “For there are many things to approve of in him, as I have said, and many even to admire, as long as you take care in selecting. If only he had. For his nature was one worthy of better intentions; what he intended, he accomplished (quod voluit effecit)” (§131). Here we see Quintilian condensing his assessment of Seneca into the closing phrase, quod voluit effecit, which juxtaposes Seneca’s misguided exercise of judgment (voluit) with his rhetorical capabilities (effecit), both touting and tainting Seneca’s accomplishment. Quod voluit effecit is a phrase used by Seneca himself in the De beneficiis when emphasizing that a giver whose gift is willingly received by the recipient has already “accomplished what he intended” (quod voluit effecit), regardless of whether a counter-gift is given (Ben. 2.31.2; 2.32.4). Here Quintilian, with a heavy touch of irony, adapts the phrase to describe Seneca’s rhetorical performance in which his style is efficacious, but his judgment is off mark: he got what he (foolishly) wanted. It is easy to read Quintilian’s comment, in addition, as pointing to the judgments that led to Seneca’s ultimate undoing. The phrase hints either that Seneca reaped what he sowed or even that he “succeeded” in meeting with the end he wanted, however misguided the judgments that put him there.

A Script for Mortality: De Providentia How might contemporary expectations have been shaped by specific whole works or groups of works by Seneca? A useful place to begin is the dialogus known as De providentia,58 in which Seneca examines human mortality with his eyes fixed primarily on the example of Cato the Younger. Erich Koestermann in fact suggested

55. Compare Seneca’s own criticism of the freedman Calvisius Sabinus, who relied on his slaves to know literature for him (Ep. 27.7). 56. On the nature of these prefatory discussions see Lausberg (1989), 1952–53, who dates them to c. 51–57. 57. Laureys (1991) emphasizes Quintilian’s active shaping of Seneca’s posthumous reception. 58. The date is uncertain, though some have placed it in Seneca’s final years; see Griffin (1992), 396, 400– 401. For discussions of the work see Inwood (2005), 307–8; Biondi (2001), 31–32; Mazzoli (2000), 254–60.

78

seneca the author

that the De providentia may be a close approximation of the themes that Seneca touched on in the dictated text mentioned by Tacitus (1968, 305). The work responds to a question Lucilius has asked, namely: “Why, if the world is governed by Providence, do many bad things happen to good men (multa bonis viris mala acciderent)” (Prov. 1.1). Seneca’s solution is to explain that apparent misfortunes are not in fact bad for men who are good: they are in their interest (pro ipsis, 3.1), because they give them “a chance to exhibit their virtue” (4.2); they are also in the interest of all humankind (pro universis, 3.1), not least because they “teach others to endure” (6.3). Seneca lays particular emphasis on the perspective of the gods. Early in the text he suggests, “It is in fact no surprise to me if occasionally the gods get the urge to watch (impetum capiunt spectandi) great men wrestling with some catastrophe” (2.7). The text effectively concretizes pro-videntia’s visual metaphor, in conjunction with the beneficial aspect implied in pro-, and invites the reader to share the providential view.

Three Textual Strategies of Senecan Exit Writing Without necessarily subscribing to Koestermann’s theory, we can benefit from considering how Seneca uses writing to address death’s spectatorial and experiential aspects in the De providentia and in some other works that exhibit both overlaps and variations. Three strategies stand out: 1. Seneca explores the different things that an exitus can become. Arriving at the death of Cato in the second chapter, he invokes the analogy of beast hunts watched by men in the amphitheater, suggesting that the gods might take pleasure in a similar, though more noble, duel: “Behold the spectacle, a pairing worthy of God (ecce spectaculum, par deo dignum): a brave man matched with a bad fortune, all the more so if he actually incited it. I do not see, I tell you, what Jupiter has on earth that is more beautiful—if he is willing to turn his attention to it—than to watch Cato, his party now shattered more than once (quam ut spectet Catonem iam partibus non semel fractis), standing no less upright amid the ruins of the Republic” (2.9). The scene of Cato dying is then sketched out in vivid and dramatic detail, with a prosopopoeia in Cato’s own voice rationalizing his death as a victory over Caesar’s dictatorship: “Cato has a way out (Cato qua exeat habet): with one hand he will make a wide road for freedom (una manu latam libertati viam faciet). This weapon will give to Cato the freedom that it was unable to give to the fatherland. Go to it, spirit, take up the long-practiced task: tear yourself out of the human world (aggredere, anime, diu meditatum opus, eripe te rebus humanis)” (2.10). Every aspect of Cato’s speech implies a quasidivine and providential perspective toward his body and its sufferings.59 59. On Cato’s self-apostrophe see Star (2006), 219. Mazzoli (2000), 256 notes the third-person perspective and compares the scene to a fabula praetexta (cf. Tac. Dial. 2).

the man of many genres in his death

79

But it is the gods’ own point of view that dominates Seneca’s presentation: “It is clear to me that the gods watched with great pleasure (cum magno spectasse gaudio deos) while (dum) that man, that fierce self-liberator (acerrimus sui vindex), looked to the safety of others and prepared a means for their escape, while (dum) he worked at his studia even on that final night, while (dum) he stuck the sword into his sacred breast, while (dum) he splayed his intestines and extracted with his hand (manu educit) that soul too sacred to be sullied by steel” (2.11). Seneca’s correlation between his drawn-out description and the gods’ aesthetic pleasure is used implicitly to explain the well-known details of Cato’s death, such as his reading and rereading of the Phaedo (studia . . . tractat, Prov. 2.11; cf. Ep. 24.6) and the double-wounding that amounts to an iteration of Cato’s exit: “It was not enough for the immortal gods to watch Cato once (spectare Catonem semel): he held onto his virtue and summoned it to show itself in a greater challenge. For a great spirit is shown not in the entry into but in the repeating of death (non enim tam magno animo mors initur quam repetitur)” (2.12). “Repeating” (repetitur) captures the paradoxical notion of entering into an exit, without yet exiting life. Thus, the gods’ observation of “their foster-son going out in such a distinguished and memorable exit” (alumnum suum tam claro ac memorabili exitu evadentem, 2.12) suggests a kind of repetitioncompulsion on their part.60 Seneca’s writing reveals much about the death-writing tradition as it was developing under (and in response to) the early emperors—what would later become the Exitus illustrium virorum. His writing of Cato’s death in particular may have contributed to the repertoire that was sketched in the previous chapter; certainly his description of the dying Cato as spectaculum, par deo dignum (Prov. 2.9) became central to early Christian martyrology. But Seneca’s exit writing is not restricted to Cato, and comparison with other instances can illustrate its flexibility in theme and tone—and in the meaning of exitus itself. For example, in the death of Julius Canus in the De tranquillitate animi, which we have touched on before, the dying man says to his philosopher: “I have determined to observe at that most fleeting moment whether my mind will feel itself depart (an sensurus sit animus exire se)” (14.9; cf. Plut. fr. 211 Sandbach). As Seneca explains, Canus’ mind (animus) “interrogates its departing soul” (exeuntem animam percontatur, 14.10). In this heuristic death, the exit is converted from being simply a departure of the person watched by others into being a moment observed by the dying man himself, exploiting the special epistemological potential of the soul’s exit from the body (cf. ex ipsa morte discit, 14.10).

60. This is characterized as an encore performance by Star (2006), 218.

80

seneca the author

In the Apocolocyntosis, by contrast, and in keeping with that text’s transmitted title as a Ludus de morte Claudii, Seneca precedes his mockery of the emperor’s deification with a kind of anti-exitus—a popular subgenre?61 When the narrator begins to describe how Claudius started to die, he explains that “he began to give up the ghost and could not find an ending” (animam agere coepit nec invenire exitum poterat, Apocol. 2.4). The culmination of the death narrative, after seemingly endless protraction and double description, notoriously converts Claudius’ “exit” into an excretion of the soul (“and he indeed bubbled out his last breath,” et ille quidem animam ebulliit; cf. expiravit, Apocol. 4.2) and of excrement itself, in a perversion of the exit genre’s last-words topos:62 “His final utterance among mortals was heard when had emitted a rather loud sound from the part from which he spoke more easily: ‘Oh no, I think I’ve shit myself ’ ” (ultima vox eius inter homines audita est, cum maiorem sonitum emisisset illa parte, qua facilius loquebatur: “vae me, puto, concacavi me,” 4.2–3). Claudius’ exit from life and from power becomes a purely bodily evacuation. 2. In addition to its exercise in the flexible-exit form, the De providentia also approaches death and suffering through the rhetoric of cataloguing. Developing his argument that adversity is in fact good for the good man, Seneca compares Fortune to a gladiator who picks out only worthy opponents (Prov. 3.4) and proceeds to list historical exempla in a set of stylized phrases: “She tries out fire in Mucius, poverty in Fabricius, exile in Rutilius, torture in Regulus, poison in Socrates, death in Cato” (3.5).63 Cato thus now reappears as part of a larger list, and Seneca elaborates each of the exempla in the same anaphoric frame: “[This man] is unhappy because he . . . because he . . . because he . . .? Well? Would he have been happier, if he . . .?” (infelix est . . . quod . . . quod . . . quod? . . . quid ergo? felicior esset, si . . .? with minor modulations, 3.5–14). Seneca develops each individual anecdote, in sometimes shocking images, through the role of a distinct body part and a fanciful set of contrasts centering on other uses of the same body part. Socrates is described as drinking the poison that makes his veins congeal, in contrast with people who quaff luxurious drinks, vomit, and redrink their own bile (3.12–13). The hand of Mucius Scaevola, the stomach of C. Fabricius Luscinus, the refusal of P. Rutilius Rufus to look upon the heads of dead senators, and the forced-open eyes of M. Atilius Regulus (his eyelids having been removed) are all developed with equal inventiveness. The

61. For commentary see Eden (1984). Martin and Woodman (1989) extrapolate from Tac. Ann. 4.11.2 (atrociore semper fama erga dominantium exitus) to suggest that “the deaths of other dominantes may have been given similar treatment [to that given to Claudius in the Apocol.] in works which are now lost” (128). 62. Cf. Ronconi (1966), 1258–63. 63. For variations on the same basic list compare Marc. 22.3; Tranq. 16.1; Epp. 24.4–8 (with similar privileging of Cato); 67.7; 79.14; 98.12.

the man of many genres in his death

81

repeated frame invites comparison with the gods’ desire for iteration described by Seneca earlier in the Cato scene. It also serves to habituate the reader to every possible spectacle of adversity, and of endurance, in a kind of moral anatomy of the human body. This exhaustiveness also has a revealing monotony: each successive trial is simply another version of corporeal suffering, each equally irrelevant to the animus of the good man. This rhetoric of cataloguing is central to the De providentia’s goal of teaching the reader to adopt the perspective of providentia. Although the catalogue is a regular component of Seneca’s rhetoric on multiple topics,64 he applies it to death and destruction with unique intensity. Sometimes he uses the catalogue to habituate the reader to actual deaths of varying type, sometimes to convey the ease of self-killing. In the Epistulae morales, Seneca depicts the choosing of one’s exit by asking first, “Why do you ask the gods for what they gave you when you were born (nascenti)?” (Ep. 117.22), and then proceeding to explain: “No one is holding you back. Go out wherever it occurs to you. Pick out any part of the nature of the world (quamlibet rerum naturae partem): you can command it to give you an exit (praebere exitum). These are in fact the very elements (et elementa) by which the world is governed. Water, earth, breath—all of these are equally bases of living and paths to death (aqua, terra, spiritus, omnia ista tam causae vivendi sunt quam viae mortis)” (117.23). But the ultimate rhetorical goal of such catalogues varies with context. Early in the Phoenissae, Antigone describes to her blinded father, Oedipus, the different features of the surrounding wilderness by which they might seek death together (Pho. 67–73): Here a lofty cliff (hic alta rupes) projects with a steep ridge and looks long and wide over the stretches of sea below. Would you like us to seek this? Here there is a hard overhanging rock (nudus hic pendet silex) while here the ground is split (hic scissa tellus) and gapes open in an abyss. Would you like us to seek this? Here a greedy torrent plunges down (hic rapax torrens cadit) and rolls the boulders it has eaten from a subsiding mountainside. Would you like us to hurl ourselves into this? Antigone’s deictic catalogue of the landscape suggests death by implied use of three elements—earth, air, and water—in various lethal combinations. It is only her use of the first-person plural, thereby threatening her own life, that piques Oedipus’ pietas and convinces him to avoid these all, and live.

64. On anaphoric repetition in the prose works see G. D. Williams (2003), 29–31; on catalogues in the tragedies, Rosenmeyer (1989), 160–203.

82

seneca the author

3. Seneca’s third main strategy for representing death in the De providentia is to end the text in an intensive focus on the conditions of mortal existence. Already before the end, Seneca suggests that “we should give thought” (cogitemus) to mortality and to the irrelevance of bodily adversities. This thought process is guided by no less than God himself, in a prosopopoeia exhorting “you” mortals, which will finish out the text (Prov. 6.3–6.9). God explains that the “dismissal” (contemnere) of adversities is always possible through the unique remedy of death: “The way out is wide open (patet exitus): if you do not wish to fight, you are allowed to flee. This is why, of all the things that I wanted to be necessary for you, I made nothing easier than dying (nihil feci facilius quam mori)” (6.7). To make this point, God invites mortals to share in a final lesson: “Just look closely and you will see how brief and unencumbered the path is that leads to freedom” (adtendite modo et videbitis quam brevis ad libertatem et quam expedita ducat via, 6.7). The divine point of view here recalls the spectaculum of Cato dying earlier in the work, except that the future tense, “you will see,” points toward everyday spectacula and animal sacrifices from which we must “learn” (cf. mortem condiscite, 6.9) and practice for our own deaths that the gods will watch (cf. 2.9). The lesson that “death is near at hand” (in proximo mors est, 6.9) is to be brought home by the sudden way in which the text itself comes to an end (yet another sense of exitus teased out by Seneca): “Whether a knot has strangled the throat (sive . . . nodus), water has blocked off the air passage (sive . . . aqua), you fall on your head and the hardness of the ground beneath has broken you (sive . . . soli duritia), or an inhalation of fire has cut off the passage of your life breath from returning (sive haustus ignis . . .)—whatever it is, it comes fast” (6.9). Seneca, still in the voice of God, resorts to his tactic of splicing a catalogue of body parts ( fauces, spiramentum, caput, anima) together with a catalogue of the four elements (nodus [implying suspension in the air], aqua, solum, ignis). But coming at the end of the text, the catalogue takes on a closural function. God’s very last words that follow, “Do you blush? You have spent a long time fearing something that happens so quickly!” (ecquid erubescitis? quod tam cito fit timetis diu! 6.9), turn the reader back upon his or her experience of the text’s own limit, which is to serve as an icon of life’s finitude. This effect is enhanced by the forms of death alluded to in the catalogue, which are mostly forms of suffocation and therefore parallel the expiration of the text as an utterance. There is, then, a convergence between the cogitatio mortalitatis and the literary-rhetorical enactment of closure. Cogitatio mortalitatis is common in the ends of Seneca’s prose books. The third and final book of the De ira ends with the assertion that “nothing will be more beneficial than the contemplation of death” (nec ulla res magis proderit quam cogitatio mortalitatis, Ira 3.42.2), and illustrates this cogitatio with a sample of self-directed discourse that concludes: “Just as we are looking back, as they say, and turning ourselves around, already mortality will be there” (“. . . dum

the man of many genres in his death

83

respicimus, quod aiunt, versamusque nos, iam mortalitas aderit,” 3.43.5). An elaborate, inverted form of the cogitatio comes in the De brevitate vitae, where it acts out the text’s central theme: the brevitas of most people’s so-called lives. Seneca does not spend much time on death until the final pages, where he exploits the dynamics of rhetorical closure to revisit the opening image of mortals whose lives end just when they thought they were getting started (cf. Brev. 1.1).65 He now explains how “some persons, before they can work their way up to the peak of their ambition, have been abandoned by life as they struggled amid the very beginnings” (quosdam, antequam in summum ambitionis eniterentur, inter prima luctantes aetas reliquit, 20.1), and this begins a series of similar sentences each concluded by mention of death (20.1–2). He turns finally to consider the ambitious funerals and death monuments planned by the occupati and then, as a corrective to this, a different type of funeral, lacking any public proportions: “But by Hercules, their funerals, in keeping with how little they have lived, should be conducted by torch- and taper-light” (at mehercules istorum funera, tamquam minimum vixerint, ad faces et cereos ducenda sunt, 20.5). The torches and tapers are the tokens of the acerbum funus, the Roman funeral conducted at night, out of the public eye, for a death that is premature or especially regretful.66 The interrupted trochaic rhythm of the final clause, a¯d faˇce¯s ¯et | ce¯reˇ¯os du ¯- | ce¯ndaˇ su ¯ nt, infuses it with solemn pathos. There the text ends, in a dramatization of premature closure—of brevitas vitae.

Scripts for Seneca’s Exit Each of the individual textual strategies at work in the De providentia helps us to see how contemporaries might have been inclined to view Seneca’s authorial death, promoting that work’s overall program of convincing the reader both to watch and to experience human mortality from a providential perspective, with Cato’s death the paradigm. There are, for example, potential affinities between the iterative aspect of Cato’s death that caters to the tastes of divine spectators (including Jupiter) who enjoy watching the “most fierce self-liberator” (acerrimus sui vindex, Prov. 2.11), and the Tacitean Seneca’s multistage death that culminates in the libation to Jupiter Liberator (Ann. 15.64.4). The two other strategies discussed above—the catalogue and the finale in cogitatio mortalitatis—might also be integrated into a reading of Seneca’s death, and especially of his dictated text. Yet we have also seen that Seneca’s strategies for representing death in different texts are as flexible as Seneca’s ingenium. His varied exercises in death description multiply the potential resonances of his death—and not all in the direction of the De providentia. His contemporaries might have interpreted Seneca’s death through a providential discourse, but might alternatively have

65. For commentary see G. D. Williams (2003), 248–54. 66. For the acerbum funus, a favorite topos of Seneca’s, cf. Ep. 122.10; Tranq. 11.7.

84

seneca the author

seen there a stronger emphasis on death as an exercise in tranquillitas animi or philosophical inquiry, as in the death of Julius Canus. The comparison with Canus, in turn, is ripe with possibilities not considered above: for example, in the De tranquillitate animi, Canus arguably serves already as a double of Seneca—both lexically, with canus (“white, old”) corresponding to the senex element in Seneca’s name, and historically, because both men were Stoics condemned to death by Caligula. Such a reading transforms the appearance of Seneca’s death and of the De tranquillitate animi as a text. But what if the reader instead draws on Seneca’s satirization of Claudius’ awkward death in the Apocolocyntosis? The account of Dio, who apparently knew the work (cf. 60.35.3), perhaps gestures toward such a reading in his evocation of Seneca’s messy, botched death that the soldiers had to bring to an end: “His death turned out to be difficult” (dtrhamasñra|, 62.25.3). Dio’s word even has a mock-heroic rhythm (dactyl-spondee) that parallels the use of verse in the prosimetric satire. If the Apocolocyntosis becomes a privileged point of reference, neither Seneca’s death nor the Apocolocyntosis can continue to look the same.

From the Dialogi to Other Genres The De providentia is far from being the only text in which Seneca deals with death, or even the death of Cato. What can we learn, in closing, from briefly comparing his representations of Cato’s death elsewhere?67 In the Epistulae morales, Seneca uses Cato to address Lucilius’ anxieties, as in the De tranquillitate. This time, however, it is the specific anxiety that he knows Lucilius feels about a pending legal case (cf. sollicitum esse te scribis de iudici eventu, Ep. 24.1) and that arises within the day-to-day rhythm of the epistolary series. As he describes Cato on his final night and quotes his words before tearing open his wound (24.6–9), Seneca distinguishes his present use of Cato from a declamatory exercise: “I am not heaping up examples to show off my abilities, but in order to encourage you” (non in hoc exempla congero ut ingenium exerceam, sed ut te . . . exhorter, 24.9).68 And throughout the letters, the death of Cato (often combined with the death of Socrates, but sometimes also with anonymous and low-class suicides) recurs in Seneca’s exhortations of Lucilius toward meditatio mortis. Cato’s death is developed differently in the epigrams that Seneca may have written, where it is progressively reviewed in a cycle of three poems of increasing length (Epigr. 7–9 Prato).69 The cycle begins with an epitaphic

67. On Seneca’s varying portrayals of Cato see Isnardi Parenti (2000); Hutchinson (1993), 273. 68. On the portrayal of Cato in this letter see Hutchinson (1993), 273–79. 69. On this cycle see Dingel (2007), 26–29. For commentary see Dingel (2007), 124–29; Prato (1964), 124–27.

the man of many genres in his death

85

apostrophe addressed to the dead Cato: “Caesar, who had the power to conquer everything, was not able, Cato, to defeat you, unconquered on the conquered side” (invictum victis in partibus, omnia Caesar / vincere qui potuit, te, Cato, non potuit, 7.1–2). In the next poem this is expanded to a description of his tearing of the wound, culminating thus: “Fortune . . . wanted us to know that Cato’s hand was more powerful than steel” (Fortuna . . . voluit . . .Catonis / sciremus ferro plus valuisse manum, 8.5–6). The third poem concludes in an exhortation addressed by Cato to his own now reluctant hand (“Right hand, you hesitate?” “dextera . . . dubitas . . .?” 9.5) that explains, in language prefiguring the epitaphic first poem, what it will mean for Cato to die: “Now Cato wins, in dying” (“. . . vincit nunc Cato, si moritur,” 9.8). The sequence of poems, moving backward in time, shows how the event of Cato’s reopening of his wound can be progressively expanded and scrutinized through epigrammatic devices. Like the letters and the epigrams, the De providentia and the De tranquillitate animi (where Cato’s death also arises, separately from that of Canus; cf. Tranq. 16.1–4) have a generic identity of their own. They illustrate some of the conventions that recur in the collection and seem to define the dialogus as it is employed by Seneca. These include a personalized exordium addressed to the work’s dedicatee, which introduces a quasi-forensic structure (exordium, propositio, divisio, . . . peroratio) couched in judicial language (for example, “I will argue the case of the gods,” causam deorum agam, Prov. 1.1), and a polyvocalic aspect that incorporates interjections with inquit/inquis and inventive prosopopoeiai.70 There are, however, three genres that are still more tightly bound to Seneca’s literary treatment of death and that defined the main interpretive frameworks available to Seneca’s readers: consolation, tragedy, and epistolography. We consider these genres in the next three chapters.

70. On these and other features of the Dialogi see Wright (1974); on polyvocality, Mazzoli (2000); on exordia, Habinek (1998); on the “crisis” of the addressee, Mazzoli (1997a). On the meaning of the label dialogus see G. D. Williams (2003), 3–4.

This page intentionally left blank

4 Consolations on the Departure of the Consoler

As Seneca gets ready to depart from life, Tacitus portrays him rendering therapy to others. In this chapter we track the development of Seneca’s career as a consoler—a career that extends from his earliest surviving work to his last.1 We will first briefly consider the relationship of his consolations to the prior consolatory tradition, but the focus of our inquiry will be the successive “mediating narratives” that Seneca offered to the readers of his consolations, already under Caligula, then during his exile under Claudius, and after his exclusion from the court of Nero. This personalized literary history will include the changing self-representations that Seneca incorporates into his therapies for others and that defined the backdrop of memories against which contemporaries would view his death. It will also, at the chapter’s end, provide a context for interpreting Tacitus’ version of the death scene— where consolation appears variously as a powerful form of therapy and as an enterprise vulnerable to its own inner contradictions. The dying Seneca elicits a sense of déjà vu, because the profile of the “departed” as consoler is one that Seneca had sketched over 20 years earlier in the consolation from exile addressed to his mother Helvia (Helv. 1.2–4):2 When, too, I was unrolling all the monuments of the most renowned writers composed for the suppression

1. There have been few surveys of Seneca’s consolatory career as a whole; but see Scourfield (1993), 20 n. 93 for bibliography. 2. Cf. R. Fabbri (1978–79), 419; Abel (1967), 53.

88

seneca the author and tempering of grief, I did not find any instance of one who had consoled his own [family and friends] when he himself was being mourned by them (non inveniebam exemplum eius qui consolatus suos esset, cum ipse ab illis comploraretur). Thus, I hesitated over the novelty of it and was afraid that this might not be a consolation but an exacerbation of the wound. There is also the fact that a person who raises his head from the very funeral pyre to console his own needs new words that have not been taken from popular and everyday commiseration. And the overall magnitude of a grief that surpasses all measure surely tears away our ability to choose words, since it frequently even interrupts the voice itself. Even so, 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 (sed quia possum instar efficacissimae consolationis esse ipse consolator).

In adopting the role of departed consoler, Seneca was not the first author to blur some of the boundaries between the three distinct roles of departed, consoler, and consolee. It was conventional, for example, for a consoler to present himself as also in need of consolation. And Cicero, describing his Consolatio ad se, tells Atticus, “I was also doing what absolutely no one before me [had done], in consoling myself personally through writing (ut ipse me per litteras consolarem). There is, I tell you, no consolation like it (nullam consolationem esse talem)” (Att. 12.14.3).3 But Cicero’s self-consoling consoler had only conflated two roles, whereas Seneca’s self-consoling departed was effectively a conflation of all three. The Ad Helviam both echoes and outdoes Cicero’s pose of originality. The exiled Seneca’s novel role of departed consoler4 stretched the limits of the consolatory scenario in distinctive ways, as he is at pains to emphasize: (1) Although insisting on the special authority of the departed consoler, he admits that he may serve as too vivid a reminder, and his “premature medicine” (inmatura medicina, Helv. 1.2) may exacerbate the wound. (2) It is not easy for the departed consoler to summon up the necessary language, given the novel situation and his own incapacitation. In comparing himself to “a person who raises his head from the very funeral pyre to console his own” (homini ad consolandos suos ex ipso rogo caput adlevanti, 1.3), Seneca seizes upon the familiar Roman notion of exile as a virtual death to glorify his feat.5 Twenty years later, the idea of Seneca consoling others as he faces death stretches the limits of the consolatory scenario yet further: (1) Seneca is now

3. See Setaioli (2003), 63–64; Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990), 118–19. 4. Or not so novel: on the topos of the actual deceased as (imagined) consoler, see Pecere (1975), 96. Socrates in the Phaedo is the paradigmatic departing consoler; in Seneca’s later works see Julius Canus (Tranq. 14.8: “quid maesti” inquit “estis?”) and Tullius Marcellinus (Ep. 77.6: illos ultro consolatus est). 5. Cf. Wistrand (1968), 9–25.

consolations on the departure of the consoler

89

at even greater risk of being premature and exacerbating the wound. (2) The linguistic challenges to the man who is literally dying (no longer just metaphorically) can only be more extreme. Only by overcoming these greater challenges can Seneca hope to offer his friends a “most effective image of consolation” (instar efficacissimae consolationis, Helv. 1.4) such as he had once offered to his mother from exile. But this time around, Seneca has a longer history to draw upon—indeed a whole imago vitae suae. When he asks his weeping friends, “What had happened to their philosophical precepts and their rationality rehearsed for so many years against impending misfortunes?” (ubi praecepta sapientiae, ubi tot per annos meditata ratio adversum imminentia? Ann. 15.62.2), he effectively asks, hadn’t they read his writings? This will be our task, too, reviewing Seneca’s consolatory career before returning to the death scene.

Post-Republican Therapies “The age,” writes Arnaldo Momigliano of the early first century, “asked consolation from a professional philosopher” (1969, 244). And as Seneca himself writes, “For a time (interim) we wish to suppress [our grief] and to swallow our laments, yet even through the composed expressions on our face the tears well forth. For a time (interim) we busy our mind with games and gladiators, but even amid the spectacles meant to distract it, some slight sign of our longing eats away at it” (Helv. 17.1). What particular remedies, then, did Senecan consolation offer that would allow him and his contemporaries to make a full recovery from grief and to restore their public composure? When Seneca describes himself as “unrolling all the monuments . . . composed for the suppression and tempering of grief (ad compescendos moderandosque luctus)” (Helv. 1.2), he is acknowledging the extensive Greek and Roman history of consolatory writing, as well as subtle distinctions within Hellenistic philosophy that we know about through Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations between, say, the approach of Cleanthes (suppression) and other, less aggressive approaches (tempering) (Tusc. 3.75–79).6 Our most instructive comparison for Seneca as a Roman consoler is Cicero himself. In the several consolatory letters that survive in his correspondence, Cicero gives and receives consolation on events in his friends’ and his own life, including his exile and the death of Tullia in 45 BCE.7 The Tusculan Disputations are not simply a survey of Hellenistic arguments but also (like most of the philosophica of the difficult years 45–43) “a sustained consolatio composed in the aftermath of grave personal loss.”8 The Consolatio ad se 6. On the tradition see Scourfield (1993), 15–33; Johann (1968); Kassel (1958); Summers (1910), 243–45. For commentary and discussion on Cicero, see Graver (2002), esp. 121–24; 187–94. 7. On the letters of consolation in the Ciceronian corpus, see Wilcox (2005); Hutchinson (1998), 25–77; Beard (2002), 126–29. 8. White (1995), 221–26; quoted from 221.

90

seneca the author

(lost) was written just one month after Tullia’s death.9 Cicero concedes that the work, despite its eclectic combination of “all types of consolation” (Tusc. 3.76), ultimately failed to cure him. But he still expected that it “could be beneficial to others (ceteris . . . profuturam)” (Div. 2.3), and there is every reason to envisage it as a work of contemporary appeal. The section in which he elaborated on the theme “This life is in fact death” (haec quidem vita mors est, Tusc. 1.75) had probably made reference to powerful recent examples such as the death of Cato the Younger and the associated decline of the Republic (1.74–76, 83). With Cicero as a model for Roman consolation, what might Seneca have understood consolation to be about? Cicero admits to favoring the Chrysippean goal of “dislodging the belief of the griever (detrahere illam opinionem maerentis) that leads him to think he is fulfilling a duty that is both just and obligatory” (Tusc. 3.76). Within the consolatory text itself, he urges the addressee to end his grieving (and his grief ) more quickly than he would have done with the passage of time: “Let reason accomplish what the passage of time is going to accomplish” (impetret ratio quod dies impetratura est, Att. 12.10.1; cf. Sen. Marc. 8.1–3). In practice, “reason” (elsewhere paraphrased with consilium, prudentia, or virtus with masculine connotations) implies the array of therapeutic devices that the consoler makes available in the course of the text. These are primarily (1) arguments (praecepta, rationes, medicinae, consolationes), supplemented by (2) examples (exempla) and (3) comforts or compensations (solacia). Although the praecepta, exempla, and solacia are sometimes introduced explicitly and in this order, many modifications arise. Seneca, for example, will mention a traditional ordering of praecepta before exempla only to invert it, telling Marcia, “Reason leads some, while others need famous names (nomina clara) to be waved in front of them, and an authority which can take hold of their mind while they are struck dumb by its brilliance (auctoritas quae liberum non relinquat animum ad speciosa stupentibus)” (Marc. 2.1).10 And in the area of exempla, both Cicero and Seneca frequently focus on the example of the addressee’s own past behavior, appealing to his or her sense of self-consistency (constantia).11 The tailoring of this advice to suit the addressee makes the consolation an exercise in the rhetoric of occasion, and also in the offering of “mediating narratives” (my phrase). Cicero urges, “Just as in [forensic or declamatory] cases we do not always adopt the same pose . . . but adapt it to the time, the nature of the dispute, the person (ad tempus, ad controversiae naturam, ad personam accommodamus), so too in soothing distress, we must consider what remedy each is capable of accepting (quam quisque curationem recipere possit)” (Tusc. 3.79). This will often entail changes in the text’s most basic features, such as the delicate matter of its timing, the representation of the addressee’s persona, and 9. The fragments are collected in Baiter and Kayser (1860–69), vol. 11; cf. Graver (2002), xxxi–xxxii, with n. 10. 10. See Shelton (1995), 168–69. 11. See Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990), 220–32; Hutchinson (1998), 58–59.

consolations on the departure of the consoler

91

the construction of the consoler’s own authority. But although at one level this rhetoric of occasion (or of persona) is only significant to the extent that it accomplishes the basic therapeutic goal of ending a given person’s grief more quickly, at another level the therapy comes to be mediated through cultural and literary representations with their own tales to tell, thereby amplifying the therapy’s signifying potential. In the handbook written by Menander Rhetor around 300 CE, the section on consolation explains that the “everyone dies” argument “offers you an opportunity for giving narratives (digcñlasa)”—for example, tales of heroes.12 Once such mediating narratives are brought into play, their circumstantial associations do not disappear. They are the means and the residue of the persuasive process, as the ending of grief is presented to the addressee as a matter of conforming to a certain timetable, of becoming (or returning to being) a certain kind of person, or of succumbing to a certain kind of authority.13 One recurrent mediating narrative in the letters sent by and to Cicero is the fall of the Republic.14 Cicero draws upon “the very condition of our city and the confusion of these hopeless times” (status ipse nostrae civitatis et haec perturbatio temporum perditorum) to support the assertion that T. Titius’ sons have died a timely death (Fam. 5.16.3).15 Titius’ recovery, then, is a matter of his recognizing and embracing a particular point of view on a particular kind of world. Another version of the same narrative, however, helps us to recognize a fundamental tension in the consolatory enterprise. Sulpicius Rufus recycles the fall of the Republic when consoling Cicero on the death of Tullia (Fam. 4.5.3), but Cicero proves uniquely resistant to his own remedy.16 In Cicero’s mind the fall of the Republic, although it curtails Tullia’s unhappiness, is precisely what removes all solace from him as Rome’s statesman par excellence: “I am lacking those comforts (solatia) that were not lacking when those others, whose examples I have been placing before me, were in a similar misfortune” (Fam. 4.6.1). Cicero, then, uses the narrative of the Republic’s decline to undermine the consoler’s potential to appeal to solacia—a characteristic instance of Ciceronian exceptionalism and its premise of “la république, c’est moi.” This rare window on an addressee contesting grief therapy reveals to us the genre’s delicate balancing act between two distinct aims: (1) to have the addressee accept that the departed suffers no harm from dying, and may even be better off; (2) to reintegrate the addressee into society. Although (1) normally facilitates (2), in

~ ja≠ jaiqøm ìvei| heπmai digcñlasa. For the translation “narratives” see Russell 12. De cons. 414, 6–7: ém Ó and Wilson (1981), 163. 13. Here I develop further the approach of M. Wilson (1997): in Seneca’s consolations “[t]he means of quelling passion are more important than the end” (62). See also Wilcox (2006), 76 on the recovery as a “textual construction.” 14. On the multiple consolatory functions of the fallen Republic, see Kassel (1958), 99; for the overall theme of “woes escaped,” Men. Rhet. De cons. 414, 8–12. 15. See Hutchinson (1998), 50–59. 16. This letter and Cicero’s response to it (Fam. 4.5, 6) are discussed at length by Hutchinson (1998), 65–77; see also Kassel (1958), 98–103.

92

seneca the author

Sulpicius’ letter the argument for (1) happens to be an argument against (2)—at least for Cicero. This contradiction, I suggest, is ubiquitous in the consolatory enterprise, but usually suppressed; Cicero’s response brings it to a head. When Seneca adapts the tradition of Roman consolation, the fall of the Republic plays a parallel, if more intense, role. Whereas Ciceronian consolation had used the falling Republic to argue for the lack of harm (and even the benefit) in departing from life, Senecan consolation, at least in the inaugural Ad Marciam, will treat the now long-fallen Republic as an argument in favor of joining deceased Roman heroes in death or beyond death, in an immortalized Republic. These parallel approaches have similar implications for both Cicero and Seneca, to the extent that both authors tend to mention the Republic to facilitate an acceptance of the fact that the deceased may be better off, even though this argument stands in tension with the goal of reintegrating the addressee into society. Indeed both authors are, at their more extreme moments, inclined to question the possibility or desirability of existing at all in a world from which the Republic has disappeared (witness their respective glorifications of Cato). At these moments there is a striking coincidence between the consolatory rhetoric of imposing an end on one’s grief and the rhetoric, seen in works dealing with suicide, of imposing an end on one’s life. Or, if one is to be reintegrated, it is into the now compromised conditions of “this life,” which, in the Ciceronian formulation mentioned above, “is in fact death” (haec quidem vita mors est, Tusc. 1.75). Thus are consolation’s reintegrative ambitions short-circuited by consolation’s own arguments for accepting mortality.17 But to the extent that both authors are invested in the task of reintegration into the worlds of the living, Cicero has only the ruins of the Republic to present as a space into which he and his readers must be reintegrated, whereas Seneca has the structures of the Julio-Claudian world. Seneca’s career of consolation is in many ways the story of his changing perspectives on the complex and sometimes problematic methods of reintegration that he offers to himself and his age as he adapts to ever new conditions of life in the Principate. Reviewing some of the highlights of this story will bring us closer to the perspectives accumulated by Seneca’s contemporary readers by the time of his demise.18

First Therapies: Ad Marciam Senecan consolation as we know it begins around 40 CE with the work addressed to Marcia, who is grieving for her adult son Metilius, who died three years

17. Cf. Sen. Ira 3.15.4 (with ref. to Harpagus): non consolabimur tam triste ergastulum, non adhortabimur ferre imperia carnificum: ostendemus in omni servitute apertam libertati viam [sc. suicide]. 18. Other stories: Seneca’s expansion of the language of death, explored by Ficca (2001); his supposed softening of strict Stoic doctrine, detailed by Grollios (1956).

consolations on the departure of the consoler

93

before.19 The work’s opening draws attention to Marcia’s identity as a woman, but not just any woman (Marc. 1.1): If I didn’t know, Marcia, that you have escaped as far from the weakness of the feminine mind (infirmitate muliebris animi) as from other vices, and that your character is looked upon as if it is some ancient exemplar, I would not have dared to confront your grief. . . . What has given me confidence is the now fully tested mettle of your mind and your virtue proven by a great challenge (exploratum iam robur animi et magno experimento adprobata virtus tua). Seneca intimates that the therapy of Marcia’s grief is to be mediated through her exercising that aspect of her identity that sets her apart: her virtus, implying both masculinity and moral excellence.20 In the course of the work Marcia will be asked to conform to the normative and “natural” behavior of the educated Greco-Roman male—in metaphorical terms, to ignore the female-specific “wound” (cf. 1.5, 8; 7.3; 8.2) that is inscribed on her body by what are merely the dictates of identity, belief, and custom (persona, 7.4; opinio, 7.1; consuetudo, 7.4).21 As Seneca puts it in his following consolation, “the excuse of being a woman (muliebris excusatio) cannot be used by one from whom women’s faults (muliebria vitia) have all been absent” (Helv. 16.1).22 The Ad Marciam, however, is interesting not only for asking Marcia to embrace a masculinized virtue, but also for the mediating narratives of varying type that Seneca asks Marcia to embrace at the same time—narratives about herself and about Seneca: 1. Marcia must return to her Republican self and the behavior she exhibited after the death of her father, Cremutius Cordus.23 The historian had committed suicide in 25, after being prosecuted by associates of Sejanus, and his works were posthumously burned. Recalling how Marcia conducted herself “in the matter of [her] father” (in persona patris tui, 1.2), Seneca focuses on Marcia’s act of republishing his works.24 In preserving his memory for when posterity will seek to know “what it is to be a Roman man (quid sit vir Romanus), what it is to be unconquered when all men have bent their necks and have subjected them to Sejanus’ yoke, what it is to be a human being free in speech, mind,

19. For commentary see Manning (1981); for discussion, Abel (1967), 17–46. 20. On the two aspects of virtus here see Langlands (2004), 119–21. 21. On Seneca’s approach to women’s potential for virtue and/or philosophical activity, with reference to Marc., see Wilcox (2006), esp. 75; Reydams-Schils (2005), 134–41; Langlands (2004); Hemelrijk (1999), 89–92. 22. For qualification of Seneca’s supposedly equal treatment of women’s capacity for virtue, see ReydamsSchils (2005), 134–41; Asmis (1996), 80. 23. See Shelton (1995), 185–88. 24. In abridged form; cf. Suet. Calig. 16.1; Dio 57.24.4.

94

seneca the author

hand (quid sit homo ingenio animo manu liber)” (1.3), there is the sense that Marcia is a living vessel not only for her father the Republican historian but also for Cassius, whom he had provocatively praised as “last of the Romans” (Romanorum ultimum; cf. Tac. Ann. 4.34.1). The Republican theme is expanded further toward the end of the work, through Seneca’s appeal for Marcia to use her acceptance of her father’s self-starvation (vividly recalled at Marc. 22.4– 8) as a model for accepting her son’s death now, and there is a shift toward the solacium of death and the afterlife as the space where the Republic lives on.25 The spectacle of the final two chapters culminating in Cremutius’ speech from the “sacred company” (coetus sacer) in which he resides in heaven (25.2, 26.2–7) offers Marcia an eschatological vision fused from several literary models, including the Somnium Scipionis, the pageant of heroes in Aeneid 6, and Cremutius’ own annalistic history, which is now sublimated to take in whole saecula rather than just anni (26.5).26 Seneca’s focus on Marcia’s relationship to her father and son also implicates him in specific narratives of his own. Marcia’s exercise of pietas, for example, closely parallels Seneca’s plan to republish Seneca the Elder’s Historiae (indicated in the De vita patris F97) after his death sometime in the years 37–41—close in time to the Ad Marciam.27 There may also be an image of Seneca in the deceased son Metilius, whose premature demise curtailed a public career scarcely begun. Metilius’ death is here a mors opportuna, because he had already lived a full life, acquiring “though young, an old man’s wisdom” (senilem in iuvene prudentiam, 23.3). Seneca may be giving coherence to his own brief career, which, after the quaestorship in 37, had come close to being terminated by Caligula’s near-execution of him in 39. Thus the cluster of narratives that Seneca discovers in the household of Cremutius Cordus, at the same time as they mediate the therapy of Marcia’s grief, play host to his own self-representations.28 2. Seneca also mediates Marcia’s therapy through an appeal to her memories of the early Julio-Claudian household.29 This is the sequence in chapters 2–6 in which Seneca breaks with tradition in preceding his praecepta with a pair, he tells Marcia, of “great examples from your sex and your age”

25. An exceptional moment in Seneca’s usually more ambivalent eschatology; cf. Fantham (1982), 78–82; Setaioli (2000), 275–323; (1997). 26. For the models see Manning (1981), 133–35; on Aen. 6, Dunn (1989). 27. On the plan to publish, and qualified parallels with Marcia’s act, see Griffin (1992), 33; on the De vita patris, Vottero (1998), 76–81, 355–56. 28. Additional political motives (esp. Seneca’s desire to conceal earlier ties to Sejanus) are suggested by Stewart (1953), with critique by Griffin (1992), 48–56. Cf. Rudich (1997), 22–27. 29. See Shelton (1995), 166–88; Wilcox (2006), 81–87. On Octavia and Livia as representative Julian and Claudian women, and their two sons as representing internal succession (Marcellus) and adoptive succession (Drusus), see Balasa (2002), 376–77; Corbier (1995), 192.

consolations on the departure of the consoler

95

(maxima et sexus et saeculi tui exempla, 2.2). The negative case is Octavia, the sister of Augustus, who after the death of her son Marcellus in 23 BCE would not let herself be reminded of him in any shape or form, including “poetry composed for celebrating the memory of Marcellus” (carmina celebrandae Marcelli memoriae composita, 2.5); this may allude, among other things, to Virgil’s recitation of Aeneid 6, with its quasi-consolatory mention of Marcellus and his death, which Suetonius tells us that Octavia reacted to by fainting.30 The positive example is Livia, Augustus’ wife, who eventually recovered from the death of her son Drusus in 9 BCE to the point that “finally she did not cease from celebrating (celebrare) the name of Drusus, representing him to herself everywhere both in private and in public (ubique illum sibi privatim publiceque repraesentare), most willingly speaking about him, hearing about him” (3.2).31 And although the figure of Drusus may have a special appeal given his Republican sympathies (cf. Suet. Claud. 1.4), Seneca’s main emphasis is on the particular form of dynastic identity that Drusus represents, because he became something of a prototype for future imperial successors (Claud. 1.5).32 This section of the work culminates in an account of how Livia recovered through the intervention of Areus, philosopher of Augustus.33 Seneca rehearses Areus’ speech and then says to Marcia: “Change the person, and it is you he has consoled” (muta personam; te consolatus est, 6.1). Marcia, then, is invited to imagine herself in the role of Livia. The figure of Areus, in turn, allows Seneca to play at the role of court philosopher. This lends authority to his consolatory discourse, but it also advertises his consolatory voice to the Julio-Claudian household of his own age, as being of special value for the perpetuation of the dynasty—this, some years before Agrippina would choose him as an adviser.34 3. More briefly, we may recognize that Seneca appeals to Marcia as a reader of Augustan literature, and in particular of the Aeneid. An extensive pattern of references throughout the text shows Seneca to be figuring Marcia’s therapy through that poem’s central narratological conflict. Consider, for example, how

30. Suet. Virg. 32, referring to Aen. 6.883, tu Marcellus eris; Manning (1981), 38 also suggests Propertius 3.18. A letter to Octavia from the philosopher Athenodorus, possibly consolatory, is mentioned by Plut. Poplic. 17; cf. Rawson (1989), 245; Griffin (1989), 7; Kassel (1958), 26–27. 31. On the public monuments see Rose (1997), 17; Kuttner (1995), 198. 32. See also the Consolatio ad Liviam; Schoonhoven (1992) hypothesizes a Neronian date, but Fraschetti (1996) persuasively dates it in the Augustan period. 33. On Areus (usually identified with the doxographer Arius Didymus) and Augustus, see Suet. Aug. 89.1; Rawson (1989), 243–44; on the Areus speech, Shelton (1995) 178–82; Abel (1967), 17–19. 34. Pace Letta (1998), 62, who sees Seneca’s role as would-be “consigliere del principe” beginning only in the De ira.

96

seneca the author

Seneca’s early question to Marcia, “For what end will there be?” (quis enim erit finis? Marc. 1.6), evokes the voice of Jupiter upbraiding Juno for her inconsolable passion that threatens the success of Aeneas’ mission: “What end will there be, my wife?” (quae iam finis erit, coniunx? Aen. 12.793).35 Marcia’s recovery thus becomes predicated on an optimistic reading of Rome’s Augustan narrative par excellence.36 For Seneca personally, it means that his role as consoler is in some ways a refinement or reinvention of Virgil’s role as court poet, not just the role of Areus as court philosopher.

The Costs of Reintegration Even as he seeks to persuade Marcia, Seneca takes upon himself the risks and compromises that come with mediating her (and his) reintegration into contemporary society. Examples from the household of the Caesars are a persistent element in the Ad Marciam, and Seneca seeks to explain that “the reason why Fortune from time to time does violence to [the Caesars]” is “to show that not even those (ne eos quidem) who are descended from the gods, and are going to have gods as their descendants” are immune to loss (15.2).37 But although these examples are used to illustrate that death is ubiquitous and a law of nature, and also to humanize the Caesars, they have the side effect of normalizing the world of the Principate. A darker side of consolation is repeatedly hinted at in Seneca’s ambiguous language. He remarks how Julius Caesar, after his daughter Julia’s death, “overcame/conquered grief as quickly as he used to [conquer] everything” (tam cito dolorem vicit quam omnia solebat, 14.3). Of the deified Augustus he says that he bore the deaths of his many heirs bravely to prevent popular lament/ complaint (queri, 15.3). Tiberius, at the funeral of his own son Drusus, “allowed Sejanus, standing by his side, to discover how much endurance he could show when it came to losing/destroying his own” (experiendum se dedit Seiano ad latus stanti quam patienter posset suos perdere, 15.3).38 The series of examples is a Julio-Claudian history lesson: Julius Caesar’s imperial conquests, Augustus’ establishment of hegemony, and Tiberius’ callous cruelty. It exposes an unsettling alliance between the expediencies of the autocrat and the ideals of the consoler. Senecan consolation is thus cognizant of its own acceptance of, even complicity in, the moral violence required for the social reintegration of the bereaved.

35. The question also recalls Aen. 1.198–99 (Aeneas to his men): o socii—neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum—/ o passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem. These verses are echoed further at Marc. 12.4: occurrent tibi passi ubique maiora; and 20.1: o ignaros malorum suorum. 36. On tensions around closure in the Aeneid see esp. Hardie (1997). 37. A consolatory topos on the mortality of hex ~m paπde|; cf. Men. Rhet. De cons. 414, 2–6. 38. For the double edge of perdere here see Letta (1998), 56; for the event, Suet. Tib. 52.1; Tac. Ann. 4.8.2–3.

consolations on the departure of the consoler

97

Therapies from Exile Our image of Seneca’s exile (41–49 CE) derives most directly from the consolations Ad Helviam and Ad Polybium, though other works (some or all of the De ira, some of the epigrams, possibly some of the tragedies) may also belong to the same period.39 The two consolations share some affinities with Ovid’s exile poetry40 and belong to the broader history of exile writing in the Roman world, in which exile could serve as a rite of passage in the construction of a public profile, and exile consolations served as “public dramatizations of the therapeutic process.”41 Seneca, in his exile consolations, mediates (or dramatizes) the therapy of his exile through two successive narratives.

Restoring Self-Sufficiency to the Annaean Household: Ad Helviam Written in Seneca’s first year on Corsica, the Ad Helviam deals not with the temporal divide of death (like the Ad Marciam) but with exile, however deathlike, as a spatial removal.42 Although the central chapters present a range of philosophical arguments against perceiving exile as an inconvenience (Helv. 5–13),43 the work both begins and ends with a focus on Helvia in her maternal role, seeking to remedy geographic dislocation above all through characterizing the household as a secure relational space. It is around this theme that the departed consoler Seneca develops the work’s most specific mediating narratives. Simply by highlighting the experience of Helvia, who had in fact left Rome for Spain three days prior to his banishment (cf. 15.2–4), Seneca contrives a coincidence between his absence from Rome and his removal from his mother. He focuses on the figure of Helvia’s maternal body with the goal of ensuring “that a mind that has been the conqueror of so many misfortunes should feel shame to bear badly just one wound, in a body with so many scars (aegre ferre unum vulnus in corpore tam cicatroso)” (2.2). Helvia’s past losses are catalogued with a strong maternal aspect (2.4–5) right up to her latest and “most serious wound” (gravissimum . . . vulnus, 3.1), namely Seneca’s banishment: “Within twenty days . . . [of the death of my son], you heard that I had been seized; this was something you still hadn’t had to do: to mourn the living (raptum me audisti: hoc adhuc defuerat tibi, lugere vivos)” (2.5).

39. On Seneca’s exile writings see Claassen (1999), 89–98, 241–44; on the exile itself, Griffin (1992), 59–66. 40. See Hinds (forthcoming); Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990), 105–59. 41. Whitmarsh (2001), 141–55; quoted from 140 (emphasis original). Whitmarsh’s account of Seneca is refined by G. D. Williams (2006a), 171–73. 42. On Helv. see G. D. Williams (2006a); Wilcox (2006); Abel (1967), 47–69. 43. See G. D. Williams (2006a), esp. 161; O’Sullivan (2006), 141–43.

98

seneca the author

After chapters 5–13, which present the arguments against exile per se, the final part of the work (14.2–20) offers a cluster of narratives that center on specific family members and family ideals. Seneca begins by holding Helvia to the example of her own behavior as a selfless mother in her diligent yet detached management of her sons’ patrimony (14.3)—a convenient manifestation of the philosopher’s ideal of detachment from material conditions. In these sections Seneca echoes voices from the declamations preserved by Seneca the Elder, for example on pudicitia (16.3; cf. Contr. 2.7.9).44 He also exhorts Helvia to “return” (revertere!) to liberalia studia (Helv. 17.3–4) and expresses the following wish: “Would that that most excellent of men, my father, had been less devoted to ancestral custom (minus maiorum consuetudini deditus) and had wished you to be educated in the precepts of wisdom rather than just to be briefly dipped (praeceptis sapientiae erudiri potius quam inbui)” (17.4). Although this wish suggests a gentle criticism of the father, in that it is left to Seneca the Younger to turn his mother into a matrona docta, it mostly serves as a renewal and redoubling of the household’s existing values.45 An additional family narrative emerges when Seneca, presenting solacia (18–20), urges Helvia, “Look to my brothers” (respice fratres meos)—referring to Novatus and Mela. He locates the brothers at symbolic poles based on their lifestyles (18.2–3): I know my brothers’ close affections: one is cultivating his social standing so as to be your pride (alter in hoc dignitatem excolit ut tibi ornamento sit), the other has withdrawn into the tranquil and peaceful life so that he can be available for you (alter in hoc se ad tranquillam quietamque vitam recepit ut tibi vacet). . . . They will compete in their dutifulness to you and your longing for one will be compensated by the devotions of two (unius desiderium duorum pietate supplebitur). Once again Seneca the Younger updates the Elder, this time reconfiguring the preface to the second book of Controversiae, in which the father had celebrated Mela as having the best ingenium but also as being content with his equestrian rank and free from public life: “With two sons sailing the seas, I keep you in the harbor” (duobus filiis navigantibus te in portu retineo, Contr. 2.praef.3–4).46 In the present context Seneca promotes himself to the privileged position among the three in setting himself, not Mela, apart from the others, as well as in appropriating his father’s published voice. But here Seneca expresses his hope that

44. See Degl’Innocenti Pierini (2003b), 343, 349–50; Torre (2000), 54–59. 45. See Degl’Innocenti Pierini (2003b), 342–43; Hemelrijk (1999), 40–41. As G. D. Williams (2006a), 167 notes, Helvia’s embrace of studia is to be “a homecoming of sorts . . . a release or recall into territory regained.” 46. Degl’Innocenti Pierini (2003b), 351–54 suggests also a reworking of the myth of Antiope, consoled by her two sons. On Contr. 2.praef. more generally, see Inwood (2005), 9–10.

consolations on the departure of the consoler

99

in his banishment he can serve as the “atonement for the household” (domus piamentum) whose punishment will save his other family members from harm (Helv. 18.6):47 Let all the weary cruelty of the fates fall upon me (in me . . . consistat). Whatever source of grief my mother had, let it pass to me (in me transierit), whatever my grandmother had, [let it pass] to me (in me). Let the crowd that remains flourish in its present condition (floreat reliqua in suo statu turba). I will make no complaint about my bereavement or my situation, so long as I can be the atonement for a household that will experience no more grief (fuerim tantum nihil amplius doliturae domus piamentum). With these words, Seneca mediates the therapy of Helvia’s loss through constructing his exile as a devotio, a self-sacrifice serving a unique protective function for the family as a whole. In addition, the phrasing of the wish, in me . . . in me . . . , turns Seneca into the figure of the self-cursing hero seen in his tragedies.48 Seneca’s “greatest comfort” (maximum solacium) for Helvia is her (half-) sister, whom he describes as “that mind maternal to us all” (illum animum omnibus nobis maternum, 19.1).49 He spends the first part of the chapter explicating the meaning of maternum: it is not simply that the sister stands in loco parentis to Helvia, having been the one who raised her (19.2), but that she has been a mother figure to Seneca, too, because, he says, “It was by her hands that I was conveyed into the city (illius manibus in urbem perlatus sum), it was through her devoted and maternal nursing (pio maternoque nutricio) that I recovered after being sick over a long time; it was she who exercised her favor for my quaestorship and . . . most generously overcame her shyness on my behalf ” (19.2). Helvia and her sister are respectively the biological and cultural “mother” of the same Seneca—with overtones of a contest of maternal behavior, as Seneca puts it, in mea . . . persona (“in my situation,” 19.2). Indeed, the sister has just as much incentive to mourn Seneca’s loss, or perhaps even more: his expulsion from Rome reverses the public career into which she, not Helvia, had delivered him. Seneca predicts the sister’s response to his loss by delving into her past and singling out the courage she showed in securing a burial for her late husband after his death in a shipwreck. This is an event of which Seneca himself claims to have been a spectator (19.4), and we may assume that it occurred en route back from Egypt, where the uncle—C. Galerius—had been governor for the

47. On Seneca as piamentum see Degl’Innocenti Pierini (2003b), 339, 354. 48. E.g., Pha. 1159–63 (Phaedra): me me, profundi saeve dominator freti, / invade. . . . On the topos here, see Dingel (1974), 119. 49. See Torre (2000), 51–54.

100

seneca the author

years 16–31, and where Seneca had gone probably for convalescence. Seneca’s account of the selfless wife braving rough seas to carry out the corpse of her husband, in which “she endured . . . both mourning and terror and, winning out over the storms, shipwrecked she carried his body out” (tulit . . . et luctum et metum evictisque tempestatibus corpus eius naufraga evexit, 19.4), offers an evocative analogy for the present task that she (and Helvia) face in Seneca’s exile.

Renewing Clemency in the Julio-Claudian Household: Ad Polybium There is an obvious implicit goal for the Ad Polybium (written in 43),50 namely, securing Seneca’s recall. Because this goal, however, is pursued through a consolation directed at Polybius, the freedman secretary (a studiis) of Claudius, concerning his grief over the death of his brother,51 the text stands in an interesting relationship to what came before. It resembles the Ad Marciam in being a consolation on death, and it is also like the Ad Helviam in being concerned with Seneca’s exile, though Seneca now contradicts his previous self-portrait of one content to live on Corsica. Scholars have felt required to draw extreme conclusions from Seneca’s about-face in the Ad Polybium, whether arguing that the work would have been a source of embarrassment for Seneca, that it must be (like the Apocolocyntosis) a work of satire, or that it was not written by Seneca at all.52 But although it is true that the discontent with exile expressed in the Ad Polybium is inconsistent with Seneca’s idealizing portrayal of contentment in the Ad Helviam, there is also much continuity between the two works, as Seneca expands the narrative potential of his exile.53 Exile from Rome was an event that under optimal conditions would encompass the trajectory of return, whether it happened in fact (as for Cicero) or just in imagination (as for Ovid). Claudius, in anticipation of the triumph to be celebrated in early 44 after his conquest of Britain, rewarded “even some exiles” (etiam exulibus quibusdam) with permission to return to witness the procession (Suet. Claud. 17.3). As the Ad Polybium seeks to give a similar festive end to Seneca’s exile, hatching Seneca’s wish “that [he] also will be a spectator” (me quoque spectatorem futurum, Polyb. 13.2) at the triumph, it is scarcely unusual in employing the established code of imperial panegyric.54 The work’s central innovation, as in Seneca’s earlier consolatory writings, is in the specific narratives through which it seeks to effect reintegration into Roman society.

50. On Polyb. see Abel (1967), 70–96; Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990), 213–48. 51. Polybius had lost his brother, an adulescens, inter prima incrementa (Polyb. 3.1). Because the beginning of the work is lost, it is not clear how Seneca first broached the question of his recall. 52. For overview and critique see Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990), 213–17; Giardina (2000), 59–61, 76–90; also Griffin (1992), 415–16. Seneca’s changing representation of his guilt between Helv. (innocent) and Polyb. (guilty) is discussed by Abel (1967), 71–73 n. 61, 91–92. 53. Helv. has been read by Ferrill (1966) as already a plea for recall; Polyb. involves simply “a bolder method” (255). 54. Cf. Ovid Trist. 4.2 on the desire to watch the German triumph of Tiberius.

consolations on the departure of the consoler

101

Seneca’s approach to Polybius as antistes et cultor [sc. studiorum] (“high priest and cultivator of literary studies,” Polyb. 8.1) resembles the exiled Ovid’s appeal to Hyginus, the librarian of Augustus on the Palatine, in his attempt to effect his return (or his books’ return) to the heart of Roman literary life.55 In encouraging Polybius to apply his mind to studia, Seneca explains that he is not urging the grieving man to undertake “more cheerful or relaxed studies” (hilariora/solutiora studia) such as the translation of Aesopic fables (Aesopeos logos, Polyb. 8.3–4) into Latin—an implicit contrast with the moral courage of Socrates (Pl. Phd. 60d, 61b) and of Seneca himself, who had concluded the Ad Helviam by claiming to amuse himself sometimes with “lighter studies” (leviora studia, Helv. 20.1). Polybius is being asked, rather, to use studia to commemorate his brother (cf. Polyb. 18.1–2), or to consult epic poetry for moral self-instruction (8.2). But as a cultivator of studia, Polybius is also able to cast both positive and negative light on the studia of the exiled Seneca. On the one hand, Seneca celebrates Polybius’ ambidextrous translations (of Homer into Latin and Virgil into Greek) in terms that evoke his own successful preservation of virtue in exile. “You have,” he says, “transported (transtulisti) them from one language into the other in such a way that—no mean feat—all of their virtues have followed you into the other’s language (omnes virtutes in alienam te orationem secutae sint)” (11.5; cf. duo quae pulcherrima sunt quocumque nos moverimus sequentur, natura communis et propria virtus, Helv. 8.2). On the other hand, Polybius’ studia stand in contrast to the image of an isolated Seneca to whom “Latin words do not easily suggest themselves” (non facile . . . Latina verba succurrant, Polyb. 18.9) with which the Ad Polybium closes. Most of all, however, Seneca urges Polybius to become an in-house historian for Claudius (8.2): “He himself will most capably give you both the material for the shaping and composing of history, and a model (et materiam dabit et exemplum)” (8.2). And Claudius, as it turns out, is at the heart of all the narratives through which Seneca both mediates Polybius’ recovery and figures his own reintegration into Rome. By chapter 14 Seneca has subtly (or not so subtly) insinuated Claudius into every component of consolatory discourse, referring to him in quick succession as “the public comfort of all men” (publicum omnium hominum solacium), as one who “with his keen memory has recalled all of the examples (omnia exempla) by which you could be pressed to be calm in your mind,” and as one who “with his characteristic eloquence has set forth the precepts of all the wise men (omnium praecepta sapientium)” (14.1). This complete fusion of consolatory discourse with panegyric is followed by Seneca’s daring consolation-within-a-consolation, given in the voice of the living emperor (14.2–16.3) and recounting to Polybius examples of those who overcame their fraternal grief: illustres viri of the Republic are followed by men of his own household, from his grandfather M. Antonius to his uncle Tiberius 55. Trist. 3.14.1: cultor et antistes doctorum sancte virorum. See Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990), 115–16.

102

seneca the author

(14.4–16.3). As in the Ad Marciam, we glimpse the darker side of consolation as an expediency of power: Augustus and Tiberius are again portrayed as conquerors (of nations and of griefs, 15.3) and as commanders (of military discipline and of grieving, 15.5), and Antonius is said to have “mourned” (lugere) by “making sacrifice to his dead brother with the blood of twenty legions” (viginti legionum sanguine fratri parentare, 16.2)!56 But Seneca allows Claudius to describe his own response to the death of his brother Germanicus in more noble terms: “I ruled my emotions (adfectum meum rexi) in such a way that I neither neglected anything which ought to have been transacted by a good brother, nor did anything that could be criticized in a princeps (quod reprehendi posset in principe)” (16.3). In the course of Claudius’ own speech, then, the therapy of grief is shown to be hovering between two distinct discourses of power: one founded in cruelty or expediency, the other a function of good rule (cf. rexi). Seneca next elaborates the wiser role of the princeps/king in his own voice, interweaving the role that Claudius plays for Polybius (practitioner of consolation) with that which he might play for Seneca (practitioner of clemency), thereby making Seneca and Polybius interchangeable as recipients of Claudian generosity (16.4–17.6). Here Seneca prays, in panegyric mode, for Fortune to “learn clemency from [Claudius]” (discat ab illo clementiam, 16.6). But Seneca also chooses to define Claudius’ role dialectically through the example of Caligula,57 who after the death of his sister Drusilla (in 38) “could no more grieve than rejoice in the way that a princeps should” (is homo qui non magis dolere quam gaudere principaliter posset, 17.4)—where Seneca possibly coins a new adverb.58 The concept of principaliter is defined in contrast with failed civilitas—Caligula “fled the sight and the company of his own citizens” (conspectum conversationemque civium suorum profugit, 17.4). Claudius’ uses of both consolation and clemency will thus help him to effect a major dynastic shift. As Seneca explains, “The empire charred and turned on its head [by Caligula] is renewed by the clemency of the mildest of emperors (principis mitissimi recreat clementia)” (17.3). Caligula had once violently executed all current exiles around the islands (cf. Suet. Calig. 28). Claudius, by contrast, is here urged to include Seneca (himself once nearly a victim of Caligula) among the exiles he restores to Rome. Thus the reintegration of the grieving Polybius and the reintegration of the exiled Seneca are mediated through the narrative of the Julio-Claudian dynasty’s transformation and renewal. Moreover, the Ad Polybium offers a prehistory of Seneca’s more specific role as the imperial adviser of the De clementia. The closing lines of the work, however, return to the task of presenting Seneca’s exile as a central problem in the life of Roman studia, with studia, though elsewhere constituting a form of therapy, here revealed to be vulnerable

56. I.e., at Philippi. I doubt that the reference to Antony is positive or neutral, as Letta (1998), 65 assumes. 57. Cf. Suet. Calig. 24.2–3. On Caligula as an exemplum in Seneca more generally, see Wilcox (2008). 58. The term is taken up by Pliny at Paneg. 47.1: mores iuventutis quam principaliter formas!

consolations on the departure of the consoler

103

in their own right. In contrast to the opening of the Ad Helviam, the Ad Polybium concludes with an elegiac consolator consolandus. After asking Polybius to “think about” (cogita) his deceased brother (Polyb. 18.8), Seneca asks him also to think about the departed Seneca: “Think about how one who is in the grasp of his own troubles is not free to console others . . .” (cogita quam non possit is alienae vacare consolationi quem sua mala occupatum tenent, 18.9). This is partly a formulaic apology for the shortcomings of the present work, but it also asserts that Seneca’s ability to offer aliena consolatio—the main basis of his literary reputation at this time—is in danger of ceasing. The message becomes more vivid in the work’s closing words (18.9): et quam non facile Latina ei homini verba succurrant quem barbarorum inconditus et barbaris quoque humanioribus gravis fremitus circumsonat. . . . and [think about] how Latin words do not suggest themselves easily for a man when the uncultivated noises of foreigners resound around him—distressing even to the ears of the more cultivated locals. Echoing Ovid’s motifs of exilic deprivation,59 Seneca effaces the Ad Helviam’s images of the dying man finding words of consolation even on the pyre, and of the wise man’s exile as more Roman than Rome (cf. Helv. 1.3; 9.4–6). He also partly explains his succumbing to his own grief: he is coming to resemble the barbari who, as he had pointed out in the Ad Marciam, grieve even longer than women (Marc. 7.3). In contrast with his self-sacrificial profile in the Ad Helviam (Helv. 18.6), his absence now comes as a loss, not as a benefit, to those left behind. Thus the survival of consolation as a genre available for Roman audiences becomes a matter of the audience’s rendering consolation to the master consoler himself, by seeking his recall from a barbarous land.

Epigrams Motifs from the exile consolations are elaborated in the Senecan epigrams.60 Two poems echo the portrayal of the Annaean household in the Ad Helviam. The poet ends one of these by expressing the hope that he will be outlived by his two brothers ( frater uterque) after a quiet life and death from old age (senectus, Epigr. 72.13–14 Prato). He begins the other with the same idea (Epigr. 49.1–2):

59. Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990), 115, 120–21 notes multiple echoes of Trist. 3.14. 60. For commentary see Dingel (2007), Prato (1964). For discussion, see Degl’Innocenti Pierini (2003b); (1990), esp. 161–66; Claassen (1999), 241–44. As Degl’Innocenti Pierini (2003b), 353 notes, the existence of these poems demonstrates the renown of the Annaei among their contemporaries—even and especially if Seneca didn’t write them.

104

seneca the author sic mihi sit frater maiorque minorque superstes et de me doleant nil nisi morte mea. Just so, let my elder and younger brother survive me, and let them have no grief from me except at my death.

The same poem ends with a focus on the young Lucan (49.5–6): sic dulci Marcus qui nunc sermone fritinnit, facundo patruos provocet ore duos. Just so, let Marcus, who now chirps with sweet speech, challenge his two uncles with eloquent mouth. The poem thus echoes the Ad Helviam’s references both to Novatus and Mela and to Marcum blandissimum puerum (“Marcus, sweetest of boys,” Helv. 18.1–6), with the poet recycling both the presentation of himself as the sacrificed brother among the three and the privileging of Mela in Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae— Mela here being celebrated metonymically through the eloquent Lucan. Several other poems (Epigr. 2, 3, 4, 18) present an elegiac view of Corsica’s (or exile’s) harsh conditions, using epigrammatic conventions to develop the conceit of exile as death. One poem, addressing Corsica directly, concludes as follows (Epigr. 2.7–8):61 parce relegatis, hoc est: iam parce solutis [sepultis, in some mss.]. vivorum cineri sit tua terra levis! Go easy on the banished—that is, go easy on the finished [the buried]. May your earth rest lightly on the ashes of the living. Another calls upon Seneca’s hometown of Corduba to lament, shifting attention from the household (and Helvia) to the patria of which he is, he says, “your glory and great citizen” (magnus, tua gloria, civis, Epigr. 18.13). Here also the poet (a self-proclaimed vates, 18.3) exclaims, “I am impaled on the rock” (infigor scopulo, 18.14), in which the profile of Seneca as an atonement of his household (cf. Helv. 18.6) takes on the aspect, as it were, of a shipwrecked Prometheus.62 In a third group of poems (Epigr. 28–34) celebrating Claudius’ conquest over Britain and his imminent triumph,63 epigrammatic novelty allows the poet to refer to Britain as a land that “fell down, Caesar, struck by your thunderbolt” (icta tuo, Caesar, fulmine procubuit, Epigr. 28.2). With fulmen the standard metaphor for the ira of the banishing emperor in both Ovid and Seneca,64 Britain

61. Cf. Epigr. 3. On exile as “death,” and defense of the reading sepultis, see Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990), 161–63; Wistrand (1968), 17–18. 62. Degl’Innocenti (1990), 135–42 traces the Promethean associations. 63. See Tandoi (1962) on this cycle, though skeptical about Senecan authorship. 64. Cf. Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990), 157–58.

consolations on the departure of the consoler

105

is cast in the role of the exile’s fellow victim, and the discourse of empire (conquest, incorporation of periphery) is paired with the topic of exile and recall.

The Exile Recalled The subsequent tradition around the post-exile Seneca is suggestive for how contemporaries may have perceived the costs of the reintegration that Seneca the consoler had ultimately pursued. Tacitus describes Agrippina as having recalled Seneca not only “on account of the renown of his studies” (ob claritudinem studiorum eius) but also “so that [she and Nero] might use his advice to further their hopes for supreme power” (ut . . . consiliis eiusdem ad spem dominationis uterentur, Ann. 12.8.2)—hopes fostered already by Seneca’s advisorial savvy in both the Ad Marciam and Ad Polybium.65 During the time of Seneca’s ascendancy under Nero, his survival of exile is held against him, both in the accounts of Tacitus and Dio (Ann. 13.14.3, 42.2; Dio 61.10.2) and in Seneca’s own rehearsal of his critics’ views in the De vita beata: “Yet, if he can, he grows old in the fatherland (si licet, senescit in patria)? And he holds that there is no difference between a longer and a shorter span of time, yet, if nothing prevents him, he extends his life and calmly flourishes well into old age (extendit aetatem et in multa senectute placidus viret)?” (VB 21.1). This complaint about his exile survival, which Seneca is happy to parody, uses the terms senescere and senectus to make Seneca’s own name stand for a paradox: this is the same man who had offered consolations for banishment and for a life cut short! Although Seneca offers an immediate rebuttal in the De vita beata, many years later the poet of the Octavia represents Seneca, in the period of Nero’s growing cruelty, expressing regrets about the consequences of reintegration (Oct. 381–88):66 melius latebam procul ab invidiae malis remotus inter Corsici rupes maris, ubi liber animus et sui iuris mihi semper vacabat studia recolenti mea. o quam iuvabat, quo nihil maius parens Natura genuit, operis immensi artifex, caelum intueri, solis et cursus sacros mundique motus, noctis alternas vices . . . I would have been better to remain hidden far from the evils of resentment remote among the rocks of the Corsican sea, where my mind was free and had its own authority and was always available for me as I renewed my studies. 65. See Balasa (2002), 380 on Agrippina’s exploitation of Seneca. 66. For commentary, including echoes from Helv., Polyb., and the tragedies, see Boyle (2008), 168–73; Ferri (2003a), 226–34.

106

seneca the author How pleasant it was, greater than anything else produced by mother Nature, designer of a measureless work, to contemplate the heavens, the sacred courses of the sun and motions of the world, the alternations of the night . . .

The image here of Seneca’s contemplative solitude on Corsica echoes and elaborates that sketched in the Ad Helviam (especially Helv. 20), but presents that lifestyle as a path not fully taken. “Seneca” learns his own consolatory lessons too late. In the Octavia more generally, Seneca’s regrets about having returned from exile offer a framework for tragic lament over Britannicus, Agrippina, and now the soon-to-be-exiled Octavia.67 For its Flavian audience, the play demonstrates the cost of the consoler’s self-reintegration into the structures of Julio-Claudian society.

Therapies from a Second Exile When Seneca is excluded from Nero’s court in 62, Tacitus presents it as a second exile of sorts. His phrase perculso Seneca (“with Seneca destroyed,” Ann. 14.57.1) echoes the exiled Seneca’s own description of his banishment (perculsus sum, “I was destroyed,” Helv. 15.2). In the interview with Nero, Seneca is portrayed withdrawing to focus on his animus, much as he had done on Corsica (Ann. 14.54.3; cf. Helv. 20.1). Even the unfulfilled plan for the recall of Seneca after the Pisonian conspiracy (Ann. 15.65) corresponds to the pattern of the Senecan exile followed by return seen first in Agrippina’s earlier recall of him (12.8.2). But the consolatory writings from Seneca’s final years, presented to Lucilius in the course of the Natural Questions and Epistulae morales, are different from his earlier exercises in the genre. They do not mediate the addressee’s (or Seneca’s) grief through narratives of sociopolitical identity—no memories of the Republic, no Annaean household, no Julio-Claudian dynasty.68 They pursue methods of reintegration that reflect the new political and literary conditions.

Consoling the Public in Pompeii, Lyons, Rome In Seneca’s consolations on two major public disasters, he assumes a collective audience yet avoids any direct reference to contemporary Rome. The earlier instance comes in book 6 of the Natural Questions, where he broaches

67. Note that “Senecan” consolation is also present, in Octavia’s self-consolation through allusions to Aen. 1. 198–99 (Oct. 652–53) and in the chorus’ appeal to domestica exempla of Julio-Claudian women (e.g., Oct. 929–30). 68. Seneca’s shift away from historical exempla to negations of memory is emphasized by Gowing (2005), 75–76.

consolations on the departure of the consoler

107

the book’s topic—earthquakes—by describing the quake that took place very recently in Campania (February 5, 63 or 62) (NQ 6.1.1):69 We have heard, Lucilius best of men, that Pompeii, the celebrated city of Campania, on which the Sorrentine and Stabian coast and the coast of Herculaneum converge from either side, encircling the sea in a pleasing bay and sheltering it from the open water, has collapsed after an earthquake (consedisse terrae motu), along with a shaking up of the adjacent regions—and this in the days of winter, which our ancestors were accustomed to promise us were immune from such a danger. Seneca uses this sentence to reenact the serenity of Campania shattered by calamity (the phrase consedisse terrae motu is at its exact syllabic center) and then to portray the survivors struggling to reconcile it with their science. This allows him to present the scientific arguments of the book as a way to mediate the recovery of the Campanians, and of the Pompeian Lucilius, to whom the earthquake is no doubt of special interest. The causes of earthquakes need to be explained, writes Seneca, in part because “comforts must be found for those who are afraid, and their great terror needs to be removed” (quaerenda sunt trepidis solacia, et demendus ingens timor, §1.3–4). Thus, in the course of the book, Seneca fuses scientific content (on terrae motus) with the movere function of his consolatory rhetoric. The text seeks to reintegrate its audience into the world, returning them to normal behavior through having them embrace a healthy “scorn for life” (contemptus animae, §32.4–12) and the notion of death as a “law of Nature” (cf. mors naturae lex est, §32.12) with which Seneca ends the book. This is, of course, fully in keeping with the emphasis of the Natural Questions as a text: the natural science framework itself offers a sphere for consolation in which recovery is mediated exclusively in terms of nature. Or nearly. Occasionally a political motif, such as the description of the aftershocks as shaking Campania “with greater clemency” (clementius, 6.31.1), hints at the possibility that the natural incidents for which he is offering therapy could be analogous to tremors in the social and political world of Rome. The other public disaster comes in Epistulae morales 91, in which Seneca discusses the recent devastation of the colony of Lyons by fire in August of 64 and focuses on the experience of his friend Aebutius Liberalis: “I am offering these and similar comforts to our Liberalis, who burns with a remarkable passion for his fatherland” (haec ergo atque eiusmodi solacia admoveo Liberali nostro incredibili quodam patriae suae amore flagranti . . . , Ep. 91.8). The letter’s real purpose may be partly to present the disaster as an opportunity for Liberalis

69. On NQ book 6, see G. D. Williams (2006b); Inwood (2005), 178–85; for commentary, Parroni (2002). On the date of the earthquake (62 in Tac. Ann. 15.22.2; 63 in Seneca), see Wallace-Hadrill (2003).

108

seneca the author

to live up to his name and contribute beneficia for the rebuilding of his native city,70 though there is some satire in his depiction (note, for example, the fire imagery of flagranti). It also has the more general purpose of using the case of Lyons to prepare “us” for all types of disaster, even if it prefaces this with an acknowledgement of the uniqueness (or near uniqueness) of the present catastrophe: “Scarcely . . . was any earthquake ever so serious and destructive that it leveled whole cities” (terrarum . . . vix umquam tam gravis et perniciosus fuit motus ut tota oppida everteret, §1). Yet here the parallel of the recent earthquake that destroyed Pompeii is implicit but unmistakable. It gives us every reason, I suggest, to see the present letter as part of the same project of collective consolation as Natural Questions 6. A further resonance not made explicit, however, is Rome’s very recent Great Fire, which took place in July of the same year.71 Although Seneca keeps silent about the Rome fire, as he does about Rome more generally throughout the letters, the letter presents his Roman audience with much-needed perspective on their seemingly singular event. A major subtext here, however, is Nero’s rebuilding program after the Rome fire, which, as we know from the historians, he did either with the aid of Seneca’s beneficia (cf. Dio 62.25.3) or with Seneca seeking to distance himself from Nero’s robbing of temples in Asia and Greece to raise funds (Tac. Ann. 15.45.3).72 Interestingly, Tacitus later reports that sometime in the year 65 “the emperor consoled (solatus est) the disaster at Lyons with four million sesterces, to allow them to replace what the city had lost—the same money that the people of Lyons had previously offered for the misfortunes of the city [of Rome]” (Ann. 16.13.3). This both reinforces the perception of an historical reciprocity between the two fires and casts Nero more specifically as Seneca’s rival in the role of consoler.

Epistolary Consolation Another noticeable difference in Seneca’s late consolations concerns their shaping by the genre of epistolography as it is developed in the Epistulae morales.73 In letter 63 the subject of grief arises as just the latest topic on which Seneca needs to offer instruction to his friend: “Seneca to Lucilius, greetings. I bear it hard that your friend Flaccus has passed away, but I do not wish you to grieve more than is reasonable” (Seneca Lucilio suo salutem. moleste fero decessisse Flaccum, amicum tuum, plus tamen aequo dolere te nolo, Ep. 63.1). As Seneca proceeds to console Lucilius, there is no systematic presentation of exempla or solacia, and in an exercise of epistolary brevitas Seneca moves quickly through a 70. On Liberalis, dedicatee of the De beneficiis, see Griffin (1992), 455–56. 71. Bedon (1991), 53–57 argues that the Lyons fire is exaggerated by Seneca to a scale that is more accurate of the Rome fire. 72. Allusions to Nero’s constructions are detected by André (2002), 174–77 in the letters around Ep. 91. 73. On consolation in the Epistulae morales, see M. Wilson (1997), emphasizing generic flexibility and epistolarity; also Op het Veld (2000); Summers (1910), 243–50.

consolations on the departure of the consoler

109

series of relevant praecepta, molding them into first- and second-person exhortations. The epistolary framework is flexible enough, however, to allow Seneca to have Lucilius eavesdrop on his consolation of another addressee, Marullus (a probably fictional friend), in letter 99. Seneca’s epistolary therapy is mediated through a reintegration of the addressee not into broader society, but (as often in Cicero; cf. Fam. 5.16.6) into the community of amicitia. Letters 63 and 99 are lessons about grief over friends (not over kin, as in the situations of Marcia, Helvia, and Polybius) and are dispensed by friend to friend. Marullus is criticized for excessive grief over the death of his young son, who was “a boy still known better to his nurse than to his father” (99.14), because in Seneca’s mind only the loss of a friend— which is “the worst of all losses” (damnorum omnium maximum, 99.3)—could conceivably have justified such an extreme reaction. This may help to explain Seneca’s sternness throughout the letter: Marullus’ grief amounts to a betrayal of amicitia. In letter 63, Seneca’s philosophy of friendship is encapsulated in this epigrammatic statement: “It is preferable to replace a friend than to mourn a friend” (satius est amicum reparare quam flere, 63.11). The consoler, in other words, mediates the therapy of a grieving friend through reintegrating him into the amicitia of new friends, or other existing friends. In the closing section of letter 63, however, Seneca applies this philosophy of friendship and loss to his own experience, with results that are symptomatic of his consolations written during this “second exile” phase. In a confessional moment he admits, “I write this to you—I who wept for Annaeus Serenus, so dear to me (carissimum mihi), so uncontrollably that I am an example of those whom grief has conquered (tam inmodice flevi ut . . . inter exempla sim eorum quos dolor vicit)—what I least wanted to happen” (63.14). Serenus’ death could symbolize Seneca’s more recent exclusion from Nero’s court, though the date of his death is uncertain.74 In any case, one therapy implied here is that Seneca has “replaced” (cf. reparare, 63.11) his Serenum carissimum (“dearest Serenus,” 63.14) with Lucilius, whom he in fact now addresses as Lucili carissime (63.16).75 This is certainly the impression conveyed by Seneca’s literary dedications: after addressing works to Serenus prior to his death (De tranquillitate animi; De otio; De constantia sapientis), he addressed his final works to Lucilius (Natural Questions; Epistulae morales; also De providentia, though its date is less certain).76 Seneca thus mediates his grief therapy through the narrative of a new literary friendship. 74. Serenus had died after eating a mushroom; cf. Pliny, HN 22.96. On Serenus, see Griffin (1992), 447–48. Seneca’s now terminated relationship with Nero had also been technically an amicitia (cf. Ann. 13.42.4: regiae amicitiae; 14.54.3: seniores amici). 75. This echo was pointed out to me by Tony Long. 76. Seneca’s friendship with Serenus is celebrated by Martial: Caesonius Maximus is facundi Senecae potens amicus, / caro proximus aut prior Sereno (7.45.1–2). On Martial’s portrayals, see Galán Vioque (2002), 285. On Serenus as dedicatee, see G. D. Williams (2003), 13; Griffin (1992), esp. 353–55, emphasizing his function as a “literary persona.”

110

seneca the author

A second, more explicit, therapy comes with Seneca’s realization that, as he puts it, “I had never considered that he could die before me (mori eum ante me posse)” (63.14). The remedy, he explains, is to enlarge our own cogitatio mortalitatis, the major theme of the Epistulae: “Let us ceaselessly give thought both to our own mortality and [to the mortality] of all those whom we love” (adsidue cogitemus tam de nostra quam omnium quos diligimus mortalitate, 63.15). The expanded cogitatio serves to prepare us before the deaths of friends and helps to comfort us after the loss of a friend by invoking the following thought: “It may be the case that, if the rumor of the wise is true and some place receives us, the one you think has died, has been sent ahead. Farewell” ( fortasse, si modo vera sapientium fama est recipitque nos locus aliquis, quem putamus perisse praemissus est. vale, 63.16). Seneca repeats the same thought in letter 99 (quem putas perisse praemissus est, 99.7), making it a leitmotif of his late consolatory discourse. It shows him to be mediating the therapy of grief through a narrative that would integrate us not into any society of the contemporary world, but proleptically into the community of friends that lies beyond death.

Final Therapy—and Travesty The above survey allows us to see the broader fabric of memories against which Seneca’s contemporaries must have viewed his final consolation. Although their ultimate judgments in most cases remain unknown, the Tacitean version of the death scene offers us enough evidence to conclude that conflicting attitudes arose in reaction to his consolatory writings. Tacitus shows Seneca urging his friends to be courageous and to remember him and his advice as part of a posthumous exercise in amicitia (Ann. 15.62.1).77 He is shown appealing to the “everyone dies” argument as particularly relevant to Romans close to Nero (cf. §62.2)! In addition to Seneca’s overall resemblance here to the departed consoler figure of the Ad Helviam, which we considered at the beginning of this chapter, the most specific echoes come as he turns to Paulina alone, like one of his literary addressees, “asking and beseeching her to temper her grief and not hold onto it forever, but to endure her longing for her husband by noble consolations, contemplating a life conducted through virtue” (rogat oratque temperaret dolori aeternum susciperet, sed in contemplatione vitae per virtutem actae desiderium mariti solaciis honestis toleraret, §63.1). Seneca’s reduced expectations of the female addressee—his simple hope that she won’t grieve forever—echo the relatively lenient timetables he had ultimately allowed for Marcia and Helvia to get over their grief.78 The exhortation to contemplatio 77. On both amicitia and consolatory motifs in Tacitus’ death description, see Schönegg (1999), 19–31 passim. 78. E.g., Helv. 16.1 (mentioning a Roman tradition of ten months for widows); cf. Ep. 63.13 (one year for women; no time allowance for men). Cf. Summers (1910), 249. The phrase solaciis honestis echoes Ep. 78.3: in remedium cedunt honesta solacia; cf. Woodman (forthcoming).

consolations on the departure of the consoler

111

recalls Seneca’s advice to Marcia to engage in “contemplation of the virtues [of her deceased son]” (contemplatione virtutum, Marc. 24.4). Yet Paulina, initially seeking to join Seneca in death, proves that his consolations are in fact redundant: there is no need for him to reconcile her to the widow’s life through “the means of soothing life” (delenimenta vitae, Ann. 15.63.2), because she recognizes “that she too had an appointment with death” (sibi quoque destinatam mortem, §63.1)—that she, along with everyone else, is mortal. Paulina, it would seem, is part of Seneca’s instar efficacissimae consolationis (Helv. 1.4). So fully does she accept mortality that she is prepared to use mortality to preempt grief. But if Paulina is the focus of the most powerful consolatory allusions in the death scene, her revival from death is the point on which the consolatory enterprise appears most liable to be embarrassed. The popular rumor that Paulina was recalled to life with blandimenta vitae (§64.2) suggests not only an undoing of her self-consolation through suicide but also, more specifically, a travesty of the consolatory delenimenta vitae by which Seneca had initially sought to persuade her that her life as a widow could be made tolerable. Whether the implied “consoler” who restores Paulina to life is understood to have been Nero or simply her own fickle self, the restoration of Paulina to the society of the living is perceived as a perverse, alternative form of consolation, reintegrating her into society for the wrong reasons. Senecan consolation is subject to a parody of precisely this sort in Petronius’ version of the matron of Ephesus in the Satyricon. In the retelling of this tale by Eumolpus, who seeks to illustrate the levitas of women, the techniques employed by the soldier to persuade the matron not to waste away with the corpse of her husband, but instead to rejoin the living, are explicitly consolatory (Sat. 111.8–9): And [the soldier] began to exhort the mourning woman not to continue in a superfluous grief and not to rend her breast with groaning that served no purpose: all people had the same end and resided in the same place—and other words by which wounded minds are recalled to health (et cetera quibus exulceratae mentes ad sanitatem revocantur). But she, greatly shaken by the unfamiliar consolation (at illa ignota consolatione percussa), tore her breast all the more violently and placed her torn-out hair over the body of the deceased. Scholars agree that Petronius, both here and when he has the soldier use life’s blanditiae such as food, drink, and sex as successful instruments of consolation, is here satirizing the rhetoric of the age’s most famous consoler, Seneca.79 But the parody, we should note, centers upon an unmasking of consolation’s 79. See Courtney (2001), 169–70, 217; Pecere (1975), 76–102.

112

seneca the author

often ulterior motives. The self-interest of the soldier resembles the self-interest of Seneca in his early and most famous consolations, with their mediation of therapy through narratives that benefit him personally. In the end, the surviving Paulina, “with face and limbs blanched to a pallor that signified that much of her vital spirit had drained out” (15.64.2), appears for some audiences to have been either a matron of Ephesus or, in more specifically Senecan terms, an echo of the consoler who had initially embraced exile but ultimately returned “[to] grow old in the fatherland” (senescit in patria, VB 21.1). She recalls the Seneca portrayed in the Octavia, seduced back by Fortune. As we noted in our readings of Seneca’s early consolations, Seneca frequently acknowledged the expediency of consolatory therapy in the hands of violent autocrats such as Julius Caesar and Tiberius. Seen from this perspective, an event such as Seneca’s death can itself be “consoled” to the autocrat’s advantage. Nero may be understood to have offered Romans an expedient consolation over Seneca’s death through his seeming exercise of clemency in reviving Paulina. Moreover, an event such as Seneca’s death could even be therapy for a grieving party. In the world of Seneca’s tragedies, the primary narrative through which therapy of “grief/grievance” (dolor) is mediated is a narrative of violence or nefas. Whether it is Medea seeking a bloody “compensation” (solamen) for her banishment (Med. 539) or Clytemnestra using murderous “reasoning” (ratio) to overcome a grief that time has not healed (Aga. 130), the structure of consolatory discourse survives even when the plots by which it brings an end to grief will inflict their own lethal damage.

5 A Closing Scene in the Theaters of Ethics, Tragedy, and History

Even to ancient observers familiar with dramatic exits, Seneca’s death would have stood out as especially theatrical. The precise nature of the “theater,” however, is open to exploration. This is because Seneca himself had developed two largely separate theatrical modes in his philosophical prose and his tragedies, both equally familiar to his contemporaries. In the first two sections of this chapter we will examine these two modes and the dramatic functions that death serves in each. In the third and final section we will look at how both these Senecan modes were taken up in early literary portrayals of Julio-Claudian society and of Seneca’s death, from first-century drama (Hercules Oetaeus; Octavia) to Tacitus. The passage from Seneca’s writings most frequently cited in connection with his death is one in which the author imagines the day of death as the time when theatrical illusion is put aside.1 In Epistulae morales 26, Seneca tells Lucilius how, as he gets older, he frequently advises himself on facing up to death (Ep. 26.4–5): I, for my part, as if a test were approaching and that day has come that will give a verdict on all my years, examine myself and address myself and say: “What we have shown in action or in word up till now is nothing. Those things are insubstantial and deceptive guarantees of our state of mind, and wrapped up in ornamentation. The measuring of my progress I leave

1. In addition to the scholars discussed below, see Cancik (1967), 107–13; Marchesi (1944), 186–87. For commentary on Ep. 26 see Laudizi (2003), 171–93.

114

seneca the author to death. And so without cowardice I compose myself for that day on which I will remove all tricks and cosmetics and give judgment about myself (non timide itaque componor ad illum diem quo remotis strophis ac fucis de me iudicaturus sum): Do I speak brave things or actually feel them (utrum loquar fortia an sentiam)? Were the scornful words I uttered against Fortune just pretend and a mime (numquid simulatio fuerit et mimus quidquid contra fortunam iactavi verborum contumacium)?. . . . ”

Seneca uses the theatrical comparisons of mime and costume to characterize brave words uttered in advance that may be falsified when death arrives and passes judgment.2 What he means by brave words becomes clearer when he next tells himself to remove from his mind such considerations as the notoriously polarized “judgment of men” (existimatio hominum) and his own “studies pursued for a lifetime” (studia tota vita tractata, §§5–6). He does not necessarily mean that these were misrepresentations—just that none of them guarantees how he will act in the face of death. By contrast, he characterizes the day of death through the anti-theatrical procedures of self-judgment (cf. de me iudicaturus sum, §5) and judgment by death itself (cf. mors de te pronuntiatura est, §6). On this occasion, it would seem, the person’s true relationship to whatever quasi-theatrical role he had been playing can finally be determined. It is obvious why scholars should have cited this passage in connection with Seneca’s death: it seems to define the special epistemological status of death as the test of character. But the passage can be used in radically different ways. C. J. Herington elides the element of self-testing3 and emphasizes letter 26’s apologetic function: it prefigures the “physical action taken one day in 65 A.D.,” in other words Seneca’s suicide, in which his deeds and words were in fact found to correspond, disarming any labeling of his words as mere “rhetorical commonplace” (1966, 431, 435). In the account of Elisabeth Henry, however, the letter is vulnerable to the objection that “[t]o detach philosophical attitudes from rhetorical, or theatrical, attitudinising might be an impossibility for any observer,” even when the observer is oneself (Henry and Henry 1985, 135–36). “Could one possibly know,” she asks with reference to deaths such as Seneca’s, “whether the motives and manner of such a death—one’s own, or another’s—were truly virtuous, or self-deceiving?” (136). When Henry refers to “attitudinising,” she may have in mind the fact that in letter 26, even as Seneca holds out the prospect of transparent revelation, he describes it with overtones of self-preparation (cf. “I compose myself for that day,” componor ad illum diem, 26.5),4 which he will refer to later in the letter with the language of rehearsal

2. Hijmans (1966), 246 cites the passage as illustrating Seneca’s appeal to the customary “Roman contempt for the theatre.” 3. Contrast Hill (2004), 156. 4. For the cosmetological aspect of componere see esp. Helv. 17.1: per ipsum tamen compositum fictumque vultum lacrimae profunduntur; cf. Laudizi (2003), 185–89.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

115

(cf. meditare mortem, 26.8–9). When she contrasts the “virtuous” death and the “self-deceiving” death, she is evidently also registering the misguided selfperceptions that are frequent in the tragedies. What we learn from both these readings is that Seneca’s death is repeatedly evaluated through its relationship to theatrical illusion, whether as its opposite or as an instance of it.5 Seneca being the author he is, and given his contributions to the overall theatricalization of his era,6 his death cannot easily be viewed apart from the theatrical modes of his prose and his plays. It is no surprise that scholars have read Tacitus as evoking “a piece of theater” (Santoro L’Hoir 2006, 215) whose details are deliberately “stylized, almost histrionic” (for example, the libation to Jupiter Liberator; Martin 1981, 184) or have “a suggestion of comedy” (the failure of the hemlock, Henry and Walker 1963, 105).7 Seneca’s “theatrical suicide” serves as a countermove in Imperial Rome’s “game of death” (Plass 1995, 102), or the “abrupt tragicomic peripeties” of Seneca’s biography culminate in “its ultimate catastrophe” (Herington 1966, 429). Our task is to consider the theatrical models by which some of the most salient “dramatic” readings of his death were inspired.

The Prose Theater In his prose writings Seneca frequently exploits theatrical concepts both for criticizing misguided ethical behavior and for idealizing the way in which the Stoic student or wise man will act—not least, how he will die. We may distinguish at least three paradigms of this prose theater: dramaturgic, spectatorial, and tragic-heroic (distinct from the tragedies themselves). In each of these paradigms, however, Stoic idealization is not without its own performative aspects and its own vulnerabilities.

A Dramaturgic Paradigm If life is like a drama,8 then to value any object other than virtue is like succumbing to the machinery of theatrical illusion. Such, anyway, is the Stoic account. In letter 80 Seneca illustrates “this mime of human life, which assigns parts for us to act badly” (hic humanae vitae mimus, qui nobis partes quas male agamus adsignat) through pointing out that “he who walks broadly on the stage and

5. See especially the vivid and negative formulation by Norden (1958), 1.306: “[W]ie sein Leben ein merkwürdiges Widerspiel zwischen Wahrheit und Schein war, so auch sein Ende. . . .” 6. See Edwards (2007), 144–60; Santoro L’Hoir (2006), 204–220; Habinek (2000), 285–86. 7. See also Griffin (1992), 368; Mayer (1991), 141; Dollimore (1998), 31: Seneca is “in thrall to his reputation and his audiences.” On Seneca’s Socratic imitation as theater, see Edwards (2007), 157–58; Cancik (1967), 111–13, with summary of 19th–c. debates. 8. On the analogy see Edwards (2007), 144–60, with particular reference to death scenes; Bartsch (2006), 183–229, esp. 208 for the term “ethical theater”; Solimano (1991), 64–91; Rosenmeyer (1989), 37–62.

116

seneca the author

bends back and says ‘Look, I am the king of Argos . . . ,’ is a slave (servus est)” (Ep. 80.7–8). He then turns from the stage to the social pageant and asserts that the wealthy, like actors, possess only a “masked happiness” (personata felicitas, 80.8).9 In a slightly earlier letter he had offered Lucilius an imaginary “scenario” (imaginem): “Fortune holds games (ludos facere fortunam) and tosses out honors, riches, and gifts into this gathering of mortals (in hunc mortalium coetum). . . . And so any smart man, as soon as he sees these little gifts/games (munuscula) being brought out, flees from the theater (a theatro fugit). . . . No one raises a hand against him as he withdraws, no one hits him as he exits (exeuntem): the quarrel is over the prize” (Ep. 74.7–8). The image of the exiting wise man here both echoes a popular anecdote about Cato the Younger’s outraged exit from the theater10 and applauds his unfettered departure from the mortalium coetus—a reference to self-killing (cf. exeuntem). The analogy between life and drama also supplies a language for describing inconsistent and inauthentic personal behavior. “No one,” as Seneca tells Nero in the De clementia, “can keep on a mask for long; fictions quickly return to their own nature” (nemo . . . potest personam diu ferre, ficta cito in naturam suam recidunt, Clem. 1.1.5)—a passage that, read in retrospect, allows us to view Nero’s killing of Seneca as a symptom of the tyrant’s unmasking. In letter 120 Seneca criticizes the repeated changing of masks (Ep. 120.22):11 You should know that it is a great thing to play a single man (unum hominem agere). Apart from the wise man, however, no one plays one: the rest of us take many forms (multiformes sumus). At one moment we will seem to you to be frugal and serious, the next moment wasteful and frivolous. We change our mask in turn, putting on the opposite of the one that we removed (mutamus subinde personam et contrariam ei sumimus quam exuimus). So demand of yourself that, whatever kind of man you began by showing yourself to be, you keep yourself as that kind of man until the end (ut qualem institueris praestare te, talem usque ad exitum serves). Try to make it so that you can be praised, but if not, that you can be recognized (adgnosci). This emphasis on consistency up until the exitus—both dramatic and existential—builds upon an earlier theme of the letter: that the wise man is capable of remaining consistent and intrepid because he recognizes his status as a mere “traveler” (peregrinus) in this life (§18). Although the letter spells out a philosophy of aequalitas and constantia, Catharine Edwards has noted the possibility of

9. See Hijmans (1966), 246. Compare Lucretius, DRN 3.58: eripitur persona, manet res; with Edwards (2002), 381. Seneca applies this to death at Ep. 24.13–14: non hominibus tantum sed rebus persona demenda est et reddenda facies sua. . . . mors es, quam nuper servus meus, quam ancilla contempsit. 10. E.g., Val. Max. 2.10.8. 11. On the subtleties of the letter see Star (2006), 211–15.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

117

applying Seneca’s critiques of inconsistency and inauthenticity in this letter to his own imitative death: “Can he really become ‘Seneca’ in playing ‘Socrates’ or ‘Cato’?” “When the Stoic becomes his own playwright, aesthetics may undermine philosophy” (2007, 158). This registers the slippage between Seneca’s varying emphases on (1) being one’s natural self rather than playing a role, (2) playing one role rather than many, and (3) emulating an exemplary character. Interestingly, Shadi Bartsch has argued that Seneca himself was the one who had actively revived the theatrical implications of persona (2006, 216–29). As letter 120 itself shows, the theatrical analogy also offers Seneca a language with which to characterize a life lived out well. If life is like a drama, to live well is partly a matter of being conscious of the shaping hand of the dramaturge, whether Fortune, Nature, or the gods—or even of taking on the dramaturge’s role oneself, especially in the choice of an ending. The dying Cato, for example, made his path to liberty by means of dramaturgic ingenuity: “His virtue was detained and called back so that it could show itself in a more challenging role” (retenta ac revocata virtus est ut in difficiliore parte se ostenderet, Prov. 2.12).12 The background to Seneca’s ethics of persona comes principally from the theory of Panaetius outlined by Cicero in the De officiis, distinguishing the four personae that each of us wears: the first and second given us by Nature (our common rationality and our individual characteristics), the third by circumstance (such as our degree of wealth or power), and the fourth by our own choice (such as our pursuits: philosophy, law, oratory, etc.; Off. 1.107–116).13 Cicero emphasizes that the moral goal of decorum can be met only through our being conscious of all the roles we inhabit and exhibiting “consistency in the whole way of life and in single actions” (aequabilitas universae vitae, tum singularum actionum, §111), which can best be ensured through “care” (cura), “practice” (meditatio), and “diligence” (diligentia, §114). Anything else, after all, would be a betrayal of the first and most important persona that itself enables us to identify our duties (ex qua ratio inveniendi officii exquiritur, §107). The dramaturgic analogy is most explicit when he observes that actors (scaenici) “do not choose the best plays, but the ones best suited to them (non optumas, sed sibi accommodatissimas fabulas). . . . Will an actor (histrio), then, see this on the stage (in scaena), but a wise man not see it in life? (§114).14 Cicero is drawn to the recent event of Cato’s self-killing as an illustration of adherence to one’s second persona. Whereas “for others it would have been counted as a fault if they had killed themselves (si se interemissent), because of the fact that their way of life was gentler and their character was more flexible,” Cato’s natural habit of constantia meant that “it was necessary to die rather than look upon the face 12. For theatrical terms here see Hijmans (1966), 237–38. Cato is called back “for an encore,” observes Star (2006), 218. See also Bartsch (2006), 217–21; Reydams-Schils (2005), 217–28. 13. See Edwards (2007), 147–52; Brunt (1975), 10–16; for commentary, Dyck (1996), 269–71. 14. On the analogy here see Goldberg (2000b), 53–54.

118

seneca the author

of the tyrant” (moriendum potius quam tyranni vultus aspiciendus fuit, §112). As P. A. Brunt has noted, precisely this theory seems to underlie the conspicuous divergence in the paths pursued by various Imperial Stoics, with some opposing the Neronian regime even at the cost of their lives, and others working within it (1975, 7, 32). The most frequently discussed example of Seneca’s dramaturgic approach to self-killing is the conclusion of letter 77: “Just make sure to put a good ending on it” (tantum bonam clausulam impone, Ep. 77.20). But the context of this passage has not always been fully appreciated. Signing off, Seneca explains to Lucilius (§20):15 quomodo fabula, sic vita: non quam diu, sed quam bene acta sit, refert. nihil ad rem pertinet quo loco desinas. quocumque voles desine: tantum bonam clausulam inpone. vale. As in a story, so too in life: it is not how long, but how well it was acted, that matters. It is irrelevant in what place you cease. Cease wherever you want: just make sure to put a good end on it. Farewell. He asserts both the potential to be one’s own dramaturge and the ultimate importance of the “good ending” (an ethical but also aesthetic notion, here neatly underlined by the clausula of the letter itself ), rendering irrelevant the number of one’s years. Giannina Solimano has taken this comparison of vita to fabula fairly directly as a guide to reading the performativity of Seneca’s own death, albeit before the more intimate audience of his friends (1991, 73). But it is also useful to note that in the letter’s opening pages Seneca had given a brief narrative ( fabella, §10), about the death of Tullius Marcellinus, a man both he and Lucilius had known who had suffered from chronic illness. Seneca’s account is remarkable for its detail, from Marcellinus’ summoning of “a number of friends” (complures amicos) to help him deliberate about taking his own life to his self-starvation for three days and his entry into a bathtub (§§5–9). A central role in the fabella is played by the “Stoic friend of ours” (amicus noster Stoicus) who emerges as the only one willing to exhort Marcellinus to scorn life.16 Seneca gives the friend a speaking part, having him utter such (recognizably Senecan) words as, “It is nothing great to be alive: all your slaves and all your animals are alive. What is great is to die virtuously, wisely, bravely” (“non est res magna vivere: omnes servi tui vivunt, omnia animalia: magnum est honeste mori, prudenter, fortiter,”§6). Even if we are not tempted to identify this friend with Seneca himself, the friend clearly emerges as a dramaturge who helps Marcellinus to act out the successful death scene. The fabella turns out to have 15. On this ending, see E. R. Wilson (2004), 96–98, contrasting it with “the Aristotelian idea that a play needs to be of a certain length in order to have dignity” (97); also Connors (1994), 127; Mazzoli (1970), 123–24. 16. On the friend’s conspicuous frankness see Roller (2001), 117–19.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

119

served an important role vis-à-vis the ending of the letter with its vita/fabula analogy: it has already allowed the letter’s reader to watch a “playlet”17 within the letter itself, illustrating what a good clausula—the one choreographed by the Stoic friend—actually looks like.

A Spectacular Paradigm Seneca treats the relationship between actor and spectator as an important ethical question in its own right.18 He urges Lucilius to withdraw from the city: “Solitude is not on its own a teacher of innocence, nor does the countryside teach frugality, but when witness and spectator (testis ac spectator) have departed, the vices settle down, because their goal is to be shown and seen (monstrari et conspici)”; they like an “admirer” (admirator), “witness” (conscius), and “stage” (scaena; Ep. 94.69–71). This is relevant to the agent, but also to the spectator addicted to specific kinds of spectacle: in the De ira, Seneca recounts how Hannibal “supposedly said, upon seeing a ditch full of human blood, ‘O beautiful sight!’ (‘o formosum spectaculum!’)” (Ira 2.5.4). In letter 7 Seneca famously describes his own recent visit to the amphitheater and then, at the letter’s end, offers Lucilius an interesting alternative.19 The anecdote centers upon the surprise Seneca received when he had “chanced upon a noontime spectacle” (casu in meridianum spectaculum incidi)—a show at which he suggests he was expecting “games . . . and jests and some form of relaxation by which the eyes can get a rest from human bloodshed” (lusus . . . et sales et aliquid laxamenti quo hominum oculi ab humano cruore adquiescant, Ep. 7.3). The noontime show, however, turned out to be more, not less, violent than the beast hunts of the morning show.20 This intensification of violence is presented by way of proving the following basic moral observation about spectacle crowds: “Nothing is so injurious to good character as to lounge at some spectacle. For that is when the vices creep up on us more easily, through pleasure (tunc enim per voluptatem facilius vitia subrepunt). What do you think I am saying: that I come home more greedy, ambitious, extravagant? Yes, and more cruel and less human—having been among human beings (inhumanior, quia inter homines fui)” (§§2–3). In his vivid account of the show itself, in which criminals are forced to fight each other to the death, Seneca inventively recasts the spectators in various roles, comparing them to lions and bears and treating them as connoisseurs of killing and dying, suggesting that their spectatorship punishes them, not the victims, and emphasizing the didactic implications of their spectatorial demands upon the fighters themselves: 17. For the term “playlet” of the Marcellinus fabella, see Hijmans (1966). 18. See Edwards (1998); Solimano (1991), esp. 30–63. 19. For commentary see Scarpat (1975), 126–57; Summers (1910), 156–63. For discussion see Shelton (2000), 99–100; Abel (1981), 478–82. 20. On the matutinum and meridianum spectaculum see Scarpat (1975), 126–27; K. Coleman (1990), 55–56. Note the emperor Claudius as a possible precedent for noontime cruelty at Suet. Claud. 34.2.

120

seneca the author

“Thank the immortal gods that you are teaching to be cruel one who cannot learn” (agite dis immortalibus gratias quod eum docetis esse crudelem qui non potest discere, §§4–5).21 But Seneca concludes the letter by urging Lucilius to consider sayings by different philosophers on the superiority of a small but appropriate audience—for example, from Epicurus, who wrote to one of his students: “I don’t [write] these for the many, but for you. For we are a big enough theater for one another (satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus)” (§11). The quotation hints that the epistolary correspondence itself is an intimate substitute for the amphitheater, perhaps with echoes of Cicero, who states that “there is no greater theater for virtue than conscience” (nullum theatrum virtuti conscientia maius est, Tusc. 2.64).22 Seneca, then, characterizes the life of virtue not by turning away from spectacle per se but by appealing to spectacles of a different kind. On more than one occasion he alludes to a nearby spectacle event as an incentive to his own contemplative activity (for example, Ep. 80.2). But if vice is responsive to a popular audience, the aspiring philosopher is to imagine himself as subject to the witnessing of the gods (as in the spectacle of Cato versus Fortune, Prov. 2.9), the public, an idealized wise man or moral exemplar, or himself.23 In his exhortations Seneca effectively gives conscientia, however much it is cast as a form of self-appraisal that stands in opposition to fama and opinio,24 its own status as a form of spectacle. He is not quite content with the basic truth that virtue is its own reward, but, as he says to Nero at the beginning of the De clementia, “it is pleasing to look upon and to inspect one’s good conscience” (iuvat inspicere et circumire bonam conscientiam, Clem. 1.1.1). In a displacement of the De ira’s tyrant feasting his eyes on cruelty, the young emperor is to enjoy looking at the conscience that signifies his being witnessed by an imagined viewer, whether this is himself, Seneca (his “mirror”), or, as Seneca goes on to suggest, the Roman people more generally.25 Seneca thus charts the ways in which the value of virtue can be authenticated, communicated, or enjoyed, through visual transactions whether literal or metaphorical. Thomas Rosenmeyer describes Seneca as espousing a “Stoic heroism” in which virtue can scarcely be conceived of without an audience (1989, 38; cf. 37–62). The philosopher is also the spectator par excellence, and in the detached observation of the world and the contemplation of universal Nature and one’s

21. Since Lipsius, some interpreters have taken eum to be Seneca’s one direct reference to Nero in the letters. On this interpretation, see Scarpat (1975), 128–29; Abel (1981), 473, 477. But Griffin (1992), 360 n. 1 is skeptical, while Summers (1910), 160 takes it to refer to an imagined fighter who shows restraint. 22. On the interiorized theater here, see Edwards (2007), 152; Scarpat (1975), 155; Summers (1910), 163, citing Senecan parallels. 23. On Prov. 2.9, see Leigh (1997), 262–63; Cancik (1967), 108–9. On the internalized audience as a central conceit of Senecan philosophy, see Edwards (2007), 151–52, (1997); Bartsch (2006), 194–208; Roller (2001), 64–126. 24. E.g., VB 20.4. On conscientia in Seneca, and this contrast, see Roller (2001), 82–83; Grimal (1992), 157–59. 25. On the specular dynamics of Clem. 1.1.1, see Ker (2009).

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

121

own personal nature, Seneca privileges the recognition of our mortality. “No one,” he complains, “keeps death in view” (nemo in conspicuo mortem habet, Brev. 20.5). But to premeditate death requires (or helps to ensure) that we are able to respond rationally or dispassionately to whatever we see—and hear. In the De ira Seneca emphasizes the difference between, on the one hand, “that first sting of the mind” (primus ille ictus animi)—the unavoidable impact (the socalled pqopheia) that is caused even in wise men by such things as “theatrical stage shows and readings of history” (ludicra scaenae spectacula et lectiones rerum vetustarum; subjects include the execution of Cicero)—and, on the other, the subsequent emotions that reason allows us to resist (Ira 2.2.2–6).26 This form of viewing takes seriously the Stoic categorization of externals as indifferent. Detachment is integral to watching one’s own pain in progress—an ongoing emphasis in Seneca’s writings with special relevance to our topic. In letter 30 Seneca describes how he has recently visited the aged Aufidius Bassus. He begins by saying, “I saw Bassus Aufidius, an excellent man, tattered and struggling with his age” (Bassum Aufidium, virum optimum, vidi quassum, aetati obluctantem), casting the old man in the role of a gladiator (Ep. 30.1).27 He goes on to describe Bassus with the simile of “a crumbling building” (tamquam in putri aedificio, §2), echoing the “crumbling stones” (putria saxa) of Seneca’s own villa mentioned in an earlier letter (Ep. 12.1) and thus identifying Bassus’ old age with the senectus of Seneca himself. But Seneca focuses on Bassus as a spectator (§§3, 5):28 eo animo vultuque finem suum spectat quo alienum spectare nimis securi putares. . . . Bassus noster videbatur mihi prosequi se et componere et vivere tamquam superstes sibi et sapienter ferre desiderium sui. He watches his own end with a state of mind and an expression that you might think were too detached even if he were looking on someone else’s end. . . . Our Bassus seemed to me to be seeing himself off, and composing himself, and living as if he were a survivor of himself, and enduring grief over himself wisely. Bassus’ postmortem perspective puts him in the role of a messenger, as one of those “who have stood alongside [death], and have seen it and accepted it as it came” (qui secundum illam [sc. mortem] steterunt, qui venientem et viderunt et receperunt) and is therefore specially placed to give information about “what disturbance the approach of death brings” (accessus mortis quam perturbationem

26. See Littlewood (2004), 173; Leigh (1997), 30; Mazzoli (1997b), 83, (1970), 125–27. 27. See Solimano (1991), 69. 28. On Bassus’ self-spectation see Hill (2004), 178–79. For looking at one’s own wounds, compare Helv. 3.2 (of veteran soldiers): velut aliena corpora exsaniari patiuntur. The motif is discussed by Leigh (1997), 280.

122

seneca the author

adferat, §9). Toward the end of the letter, however, Seneca contextualizes his own spectation of Bassus watching himself die, asking, “Have I not watched many breaking off their lives (non multos spectavi abrumpentes vitam)? I have indeed seen this, but I am much more moved by those who come to death without hatred for life and allow it in, rather than bringing it on (admittunt illam, non adtrahunt)” (§15). While Bassus has been looking on his own death as calmly as if it were someone else’s, Seneca has in turn been looking on Bassus’ measured death as if it were a rehearsal of his own patiently awaited end.

A Tragic-Heroic Paradigm (in the Prose Works) Seneca also uses tragic heroes as the basis both for criticisms of problematic behavior and for idealizations of Stoic ethics, just as in the dramaturgic and spectatorial paradigms. Two repeated “tragic” scenarios (though, strictly speaking, Seneca quotes them via epic poetry) involve the essentially self-destructive characters Dido and Phaethon. Both these characters, for example, are cited in the later chapters of the De vita beata where Seneca celebrates the philosophical way of death: 1. Dido comes up in connection with the Epicurean Diodorus, who very recently committed suicide but, because he cut his own throat, was accused (apparently by Epicurean objectors) of having violated Epicurean doctrine: “Some want us to see this act of his as madness, others as rashness” (alii dementiam videri volunt factum hoc eius, alii temeritatem, VB 19.1).29 Seneca, however, does not go in for such pedantry and confidently asserts Diodorus’ sanity and rationality. He depicts Diodorus in the moment of death, quoting Dido: “He, meanwhile, happy and full of good conscience, bore witness to himself as he departed from life (beatus ac plenus bona conscientia reddidit sibi testimonium vita excedens), and praised his quiet life spent in harbor and at anchor, and said what you [detractors] did not want to hear, as if you also would need to say it: ‘I have lived and have run to its end the course which Fortune had given me’ (‘vixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi’)” (19.1). In using this verse, which comes from Dido’s final speech before she kills herself with Aeneas’ sword (Aen. 4.653), Seneca capitalizes on the heroic qualities of the utterance, with its assertive embracing of limits. But he also suppresses obvious incongruities. Virgil’s Dido, for example, goes on to portray herself as “happy, alas, all too happy, if only Trojan ships had never touched our shores” ( felix, heu nimium felix, si litora tantum / numquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae, 4.657–58), whereas Seneca describes Diodorus as “happy” (beatus) without qualification; Virgil describes Dido as having died “miserable, before her time, and aflame with sudden madness” (misera ante diem

29. On aspects of Epicurean theory in Seneca’s discussion of Diodorus, see Warren (2004), 207–8.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

123

subitoque accensa furore, 4.696–97), whereas Seneca emphasizes that Diodorus did not die out of “madness” or “rashness.” Seneca thus shores up his defense of Diodorus through appropriating the tragic scenario selectively. A selective use of the same Dido quotation is elsewhere justified by Seneca through a more explicit dichotomy between the mala conscientia of the passionate or melancholy suicide (or mock funeral) and the bona conscientia of the philosopher.30 The exercise of bona conscientia seems to entail the ability to say what a tragic character might say but without succumbing to a tragic scenario—in which the act of selective quotation itself may serve as a test and a proof. 2. Phaethon arises in the De vita beata’s sketch of the Stoic philosopher who dies before he can attain perfected virtue. Seneca responds to his objectors that at least the philosopher aims high, and he presents an imaginary philosopher saying, “When Nature calls our life back or reason dismisses it, I will exit bearing witness that I loved a good conscience” (“quandoque aut natura spiritum repetet aut ratio dimittet, testatus exibo bonam me conscientiam amasse,” VB 20.5). Applauding such sentiments (which again strikingly invoke the dying testimony of a bona conscientia), Seneca quotes from Ovid’s description of Phaethon: “The man who makes plans such as these, and wants them, and attempts them, will make his journey to the gods—indeed, even if he does not attain them, ‘he still fell having dared great things’ (etiam si non tenuerit, ‘magnis tamen excidit ausis’ [= Met. 2.328])” (20.5). Seneca capitalizes on the heroic associations of Ovid’s portrayal and even deploys the solar imagery of the myth to criticize his objectors as “nocturnal animals” (nocturna animalia) whose “eyes are weak and afraid of the sun” (solem lumina aegra formidant, 20.6). In the De providentia also, Seneca exploits the tale of Phaethon’s rite of passage as a charioteer, and his becoming a real vir, to characterize the Stoic quest for virtus (Prov. 5.9–11; quoting Met. 2.63–69, 79–81). At the same time, however, Seneca suppresses the features of the original context that would undermine the comparison—just as in his quotation of Dido. Elsewhere, for example, Seneca uses elements precisely from Ovid’s Phaethon narrative—the description of the golden chariot, the reckless ambition (Ep. 115.12–13)—to evoke the desire for wealth that poets are capable of inflaming in us. It is not that Seneca in the De vita beata and De providentia tries to hide the fact of Phaethon’s failure. He appeals rather to the grandiosity of Phaethon’s celestial ambitions, however unfulfilled, to glorify the philosopher’s discerning quest for virtue. The “failed” philosopher, then, is tragic only in the structure of his situation; he is not ethically tragic. Of course, Seneca’s use of tragic-heroic scenarios to glorify the philosopher’s death within the theater of ethics represents one of two uses that Seneca makes 30. Ep. 12.8–9, on which see Mann (2006); Görler (1996), 163–69; Neumeister (1995), 76–77.

124

seneca the author

of such material in his writings more generally—the other being in the tragedies proper. There, Dido becomes a model for the passionate subjectivity of Seneca’s tragic women, and especially for Phaedra’s unrequited amorous passion and suicide by lover’s sword. Or, when Phaethon is mentioned in a choral ode of the Medea as a comparison for the uncontrollable flames of Medea’s wrath, the same daring that is celebrated in the De vita beata (cf. “he fell having dared great things,” “magnis tamen excidit ausis,” VB 20.5; Met. 2.328) is now presented as the origin of the young hero’s irrational and self-destructive violation of natural boundaries (Med. 599–602):31 Having dared (ausus) to drive the eternal chariot, the young man, unmindful of his father’s limit, himself received the fires which he in his madness spread over the sky. The uses of Dido and Phaethon in the De vita beata, however, belong within the Stoic tradition of using fictional (especially tragic) characters both to illustrate misplaced values and as analogies for ideal behavior. Epictetus, for example, acknowledges that Medea can be criticized for being deceived by her passions, but at the same time appropriates her heroic exclusion of externals: “She had . . . the right impression, namely, what it means not to yield one’s will to anyone” (ei῏ve . . . ùm deπ fiamsar¨am, o῟iæm érsi sø  håkei sim≠ ló pqovoqeπm, 2.17.19; cf. 1.28.8–9).32 This is the procedure we have seen Senecan prose apply to the tragic scenarios of Dido and Phaethon. The procedure is partly a means to heroize the philosopher through the connotations of the original scenario, but it also heroizes him through testing and proving his ability as a discerning reader, identifying what is internal and valuable while suppressing that which, in the original context, is external and guided by wrong values. It is, in other words, a peculiarly Stoic method of intertextual appropriation.

The Fragility of the Death Theater The ethical theater, as we have seen, relies for its authority on the delicate dynamics of performance. Tacitus conveys something of its vulnerability in his portrayal of the moment when Seneca, after opening the veins in his legs, persuades Paulina to withdraw, “so that he would neither break her spirit with his own suffering nor himself lose his ability to endure from seeing her torment” (ne dolore suo animum uxoris infringeret atque ipse visendo eius tormenta ad inpatientiam delaberetur, Ann. 15.63.3). Here Seneca’s anxiety about “losing the ability to endure” suggests a concern for protecting the ethical theater—the dramaturgic, spectatorial, and tragic-heroizing conditions that are optimal for

31. Cf. Med. 605–6: Phaethon (like the Argo) violated sancta / foedera mundi. 32. On Medea especially in Epictetus and Chrysippus see Dillon (1997).

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

125

exhibiting the constantia for which he expects his and Paulina’s deaths will become famous. It is not that a squeamish response by Seneca would necessarily have reflected a flaw in his virtue: elsewhere Seneca writes that “certain brave persons, fully prepared to shed their own blood, cannot look upon another’s [blood]” ( fortes quidam et paratissimi fundere suum sanguinem, alienum videre non possunt), and he excuses such a reaction as “a natural affection that cannot be combated by reason” (Ep. 57.5).33 But in the theater of Stoic heroism, looks do matter.

The Tragedies Why and how is death so present in Seneca’s plays?34 Yes, Seneca chose to retell myths in which deaths are a major part of the story—most often, infanticide, suicide, or the death of a spouse—and he presents them as the products of irrational psychological forces (dolor, furor, ira, amor) and malevolent actions (nefas, scelus, malum).35 But it is also significant that Seneca’s is the first tragic theater we know of—Sophocles’ Aiax being the exception that proves the rule—whose conventions allow for homicides and suicides to occur on the (real or implied) stage, such as Hercules’ and Medea’s killings of their children, and Phaedra’s and Jocasta’s killings of themselves.36 Even if this were not the case, the death descriptions in messenger speeches, such as the novel pairing of the deaths of Astyanax and Polyxena in the Troades and the extended account of Hippolytus’ dismemberment in the Phaedra, bring the death event on stage in exaggerated verbal form.37 And even if this were not the case, death is always present as a kind of lingua franca through which the characters speak about virtually everything else, and also as something that can itself be continually reinvented through language. Although tragedy had long functioned as “a fundamental part of the Romans’ cultural education and experience,”38 the audience of Senecan tragedy was habituated to witnessing the crisis event of character and chorus facing death “in the immediate foreground of an emotional present”39

33. Cited in this context by R. Fabbri (1978–79), 422. 34. On death in the tragedies see Hutchinson (1993), 306–14; Henry and Henry (1985), 116–49; Opelt (1984), 29–35; Herington (1966), 434–45; Regenbogen (1961), 442–50. On suicide in particular, see Palmieri (1999); Tadic-Gilloteaux (1963), 550–51. 35. On the psychological world of the tragedies see Schiesaro (2003), (1997); Guastella (2001); Dupont (1995). On the centrality of nefas see Opelt (1972). 36. See Coffey and Mayer (1990), 190, commenting on the onstage suicide of Phaedra. Seneca’s Medea goes against the preference of Horace at AP 185: ne puros coram populo Medea trucidet. 37. On the verbalization of violence see Aygon (2004), 120–27; Goldberg (2000a), (1997); Dupont (1995), 118–22, on the “spectacle des mots.” 38. Goldberg (2000b), 54. On Seneca and prior Roman dramatic tradition see Boyle (2006); Erasmo (2004); Tarrant (1978). 39. Segal (1986), 4.

126

seneca the author

and speaking about it at length and from different points of view both rational and irrational. As we will see, several dramatic functions of death can be identified: death is a marked form of agency and object of spectation, and it is manifested in particular thematic “localizations” such as in Troy or the underworld. Surveying these functions will bring us closer to the perspectives of Seneca’s contemporaries and of the dramatists of the following generation who alluded to Seneca’s death in a tragic framework.

The “Authority” of Senecan Tragedy As we approach the functions of death in the tragedies, however, we need first to recognize how scholars have differed in their assessment of Senecan tragedy’s literary authority, focusing on four major areas: (1) literary history, (2) performance, (3) Julio-Claudian history, and (4) philosophy. Each of these questions introduces complexity to our task: 1. The literary historical status of Senecan tragedy has in the past been defined in heavily diachronic terms, of which T. S. Eliot’s account is a virtual caricature: “[I]f we imagine this unacted drama,” he writes, “we see at once that it is at one remove from reality, compared with the Greek” (1932, 53). Though Eliot is kind to Senecan tragedy, negative assessments of Seneca within the history of the tragic genre are not hard to come by—at least, they weren’t. The recent focus on such topics as Seneca’s intertextual engagement with Republican drama and Augustan poetry, characters who are declamatory self-fashioners and revel in meta-theatricality, appropriations of other genres such as epic or Horatian lyric, and a thematization of diachrony within the plays themselves (iteration, amplification, fragmentation of time, belatedness), have turned what might have been an objective narrative of literary decline—the destruction or dilution of the tragic—into a historicizing portrait of Seneca engaging with the concerns of Julio-Claudian audiences who were self-conscious about their lateness in literary history.40 The work communicates partly through its inherently diachronic perspective upon the tragic tradition. This historical self-consciousness, in turn, has implications for the function of death in the tragedies. Among other things, it signals that death, beyond its literal reference, at the same time potentially has a meta-literary comment to make on a genre that is conscious of its own mortality or, alternatively, of its own “overliving”—the term used by Emily Wilson (2004, 88–112). Death, in other words, as a literary-historical dynamic.

40. Among recent approaches see Littlewood (2004); Schiesaro (2003); Boyle (1997); Goldberg (1997). Liebermann (2004) reviews changes in the scholarly assessment, with emphasis (1–6) on the pivotal article of Regenbogen (1961, originally published in 1930), which historicized the works’ focus on emotion, suffering, and death within the Lebenswelt and Lebensgefühl of the Neronian age. Important 19th- and 20th-c. evaluations are sampled in Lefèvre (1972).

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

127

2. As the above statement by Eliot also illustrates, Senecan tragedy’s decadence—its distancing from the Greek original—has tended to be characterized as coinciding with a trajectory in which the (literary-rhetorical) “word” becomes distanced from (dramatic) “action.”41 A spectrum of different positions has been adopted concerning the event status of Senecan drama in its ancient contexts, with the plays variously treated as performable (and performed) in full-scale theatrical production; as catering to recitation in part or in full with different degrees of staging; or as enacting a textual theatricality for the private reader.42 The stakes for us can be illustrated by asking, for a recurrent Senecan motif such as the representation of killing in the language of ritual sacrifice (which is, in turn, closely bound up with Seneca’s use of the altar as a recurring point of spatial reference),43 how its impact might change relative to the conditions of spectation or reading. Conclusions about event status are of special importance in the case of death. The plays’ performed “reality” of characters facing death might elicit different reactions in the implied audience, ranging from psychological engagement to various degrees of detachment or irony. 3. The plays’ status as events has often come to turn upon their referentiality within the age of the Julio-Claudians.44 This approach depends to some extent on where and how the plays are situated inside the chronology of Seneca’s career, using the blurry outlines that can be established by the fact that the Apocolocyntosis, written in 54, makes satirizing references to Seneca’s own Hercules, and by Fitch’s (2002–4, 1.12) ordering of the plays in three groups based on stylometric principles: (1) Agamemnon, Oedipus, Phaedra; (2) Hercules, Medea, Troades; (3) Thyestes, Phoenissae—the last of these plays perhaps left unfinished due to the author’s death? Modern readers frequently discern mutual resonances between the plays and Seneca’s biography, psychological profile, or historical milieu. For a sampling of instances involving death, we can note a suggestion that “Roman listeners might have been reminded of Tiberius or Gaius” in Atreus’ assertion that “in my kingdom death is given as a favor” (in regno meo / mors impetratur, Thy. 247–48),45 or the theory that Amphitryon’s dissuasion of Hercules from suicide (Herc. 1317) resembles Seneca the Elder’s deterrence of his son from the same (cf. Ep. 78.2), or a possible allusion to Seneca’s Jocasta by the dying Agrippina (Oed. 1032–39; Ann.

41. See also Herington (1966), 456. 42. For an overview see Fitch (2000); on stagecraft, Sutton (1986); on literary theatricality engaging with nondramatic models such as Augustan poetry and declamation, see Littlewood (2004), 3–4; Goldberg (2000a); Tietze (1989). 43. On the theme of perverted ritual see Dupont (1995), 189–222; on the altar, Sutton (1986), 19–20. 44. Crucial here is Nisbet (2008), esp. on Seneca’s likely avoidance of specific volatile references. On changing relationships between onstage action and historical events in Roman drama see Erasmo (2004), 81–121. 45. Tarrant (1985), 125–26.

128

seneca the author

14.8.5).46 In other words, death events and death attitudes within the plays have been squeezed to reveal mimetic relationships to the much-noted culture of death in Julio-Claudian society.47 We will return to the relationship between tragedy and Julio-Claudian history in the final section of this chapter. 4. In relation to philosophy,48 the tragedies have been seen, variously, as teaching it (or at least illustrating it) through negative and, in some cases, positive exemplary characters or through the moralizing voices of the choral odes, perhaps testing and training the spectator’s self-restraint through exposure to the passions in an extreme form;49 as exploring philosophy’s limit cases in characters who have deceptive surface similarities to the wise man, thereby exposing, even parodying, the illusory representations on which the wise man’s ethical theater is built;50 as pursuing philosophy by a heterogeneous, possibly more profound, path;51 as rewriting tragic myths on the universal scale defined by Stoic heroism or cosmological theory;52 as unleashing a poetic unconscious or visions of sociopolitical reality that are fundamentally in conflict with Stoic providentialism or virtue ethics;53 or as having no specific philosophical message, except through readings imposed by later interpreters.54 The choice of answer has major consequences for how an audience should interpret the much-expanded function of death in the tragic world. As I observed earlier in this chapter, there is a form of Stoic reading in which the spectation of tragic death (of Dido or Phaethon, for example) might serve as a proof or test of the power to perform one’s detachment from externals—to appropriate the tragic hero’s utterance as a model for death in bona conscientia.55 Yet it is clear that the expanded signification of death and suffering in the tragedies cannot be treated as merely a philosophical case study. The fundamental reason for such varied positions, however, is the pervasive polysemy of Seneca’s tragic register. Mireille Armisen-Marchetti has illustrated the “overdetermined” (“surdeterminé”) nature of specific elements (1992, 386)

46. See also Herington (1966), 458–60, on the life lessons Seneca supposedly drew from Hippolytus and Thyestes. 47. On the culture of death see Boyle (1994), 19. 48. For a survey see Rosenmeyer (1989), 3–11; Dingel (1974), 11–14. 49. See Gill (2006), 421–35; Mazzoli (1997b); Nussbaum (1994). 50. See Littlewood (2004), on “the fragility of Stoic self-representation” (8); also Bartsch (2006), 230–81; Star (2006). 51. See Goldberg (2000b), esp. 57; Nussbaum (1997), 247; Putnam (1995), 279–80. 52. See Rosenmeyer (1989), 62 and already Pratt (1948), 11. 53. See Schiesaro (2003). The argument was pursued furthest by Dingel (1974): the tragedies are “die poetische Negation stoischer Vorstellungen” (17), and Seneca’s poetic voice is more authentic, because “wenn Seneca eine Maske trägt, er sie als Philosoph trägt.” 54. See Hine (2004); Mayer (1994). 55. E.g., the tragedies were read as a meditatio mortis by Hadas (1939), 230.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

129

such as the Nurse’s advice at Phaedra 130–35, that “whoever resists passion at the outset and drives it out, is safe and wins” (quisquis in primo obstitit / pepulitque amorem, tutus ac victor fuit, 132–33). The utterance may variously be read as echoing director-of-conscience discourse, popular moral therapy, and/ or poetic and humorous erotic literature (for example, Ovid). Glenn Most, in turn, has illustrated how the description of Hippolytus’ death and dismemberment (Pha. 1068–1114) participates simultaneously in a popular discourse (on the amphitheater), a Stoic discourse (on the body and the self), and a metaliterary discourse (on texts as bodies)—even if Most, for his part, privileges the last option (1992, 408). Ultimately, we cannot second-guess the purpose and impact of specific representations of death in the tragedies. Even with these considerations in mind, however, it is still possible to distinguish basic forms and functions of death as it is brought before the eyes (and ears) of the audience.

Death Multiplied by Forms of Agency In the tragedies death expands to accommodate the multiple, often contradictory, forms of agency taken up by Seneca’s characters as the plot unfolds. In the Phaedra, departing from the Euripidean version of the Hippolytus myth in which Phaedra’s suicide precedes Theseus’ return, Seneca makes Phaedra’s death and last words the vehicle by which the climactic truth of Hippolytus’ innocence is made known to Theseus (Pha. 1191–98). But this comes as just the last in a long series of suicidal gestures by Phaedra throughout her time on the stage.56 Her initial dialogue with the Nurse culminates in the declaration, “I will preempt the forbidden act with death” (morte praevertam nefas, 254) and “I am decided on death, and am only looking for a way to die” (decreta mors est: quaeritur fati genus, 256–57), echoing Virgil’s Dido.57 In her encounter with Hippolytus, “a death-like color clouded her face” (ora morti similis obduxit color, 585–86). When Hippolytus discovers her desire and threatens her with his sword, she deters him with her enthusiasm: “To die in your hands with my chastity intact, surpasses my prayers” (maius hoc voto meo est, / salvo ut pudore manibus immoriar tuis, 711–12). When Theseus returns to find Phaedra with Hippolytus’ abandoned sword in hand and considering suicide once again, she pleads for death (permitte mortem, 871), both appealing to the philosophical commonplace that “when someone wants to die, death can never elude them” (mori volenti desse mors numquam potest, 878) and alluding to the historical exemplum of Lucretia: “Our blood will wash away this stain on our chastity” (labem hanc pudoris eluet noster cruor, 893). After the death of Hippolytus Phaedra reappears in the final act with the sword still in hand, which allows her to characterize her

56. For discussion see Hill (2004), 159–75; Palmieri (1999), 47–82; also Gill (2006), 425–27. 57. Aen. 4.475–76: decrevitque mori, tempus secum ipsa modumque / exigit. Cf. Coffey and Mayer (1990), 116.

130

seneca the author

death in part as a penetration by Hippolytus (1197) at the same time as it echoes Dido’s use of Aeneas’ abandoned sword.58 Her death itself aspires to multiple meanings (1184–85, 1188–89): morere, si casta es, viro; si incesta, amori . . . o mors amoris una sedamen mali, o mors pudoris maximum laesi decus. If you are chaste, die for your husband; if unchaste, for your love . . . O death, sole sedative for illicit love, o death, great badge for wounded chastity. The event thus both consummates incestuous desire and delivers moral penance or even purification (1176–90).59 The entire plot of the play, then, has been carried forward and concluded through Phaedra’s rhetoric of self-killing. The result: a tragedy centered upon the heroine’s irreconcilable perceptions of her own death’s status and meaning. The focus on suicide is seldom limited to the single character. This may be said of the Phaedra, in which the Nurse, Hippolytus, and Theseus all express a willingness to die, and even more so of the Agamemnon, in which the plot is told through the successive death gestures of a whole ensemble of characters and choral voices. “Destroy your husband,” Clytemnestra exhorts herself, “yourself perishing: to die together with one with whom you wish to die is no unhappy death” (perde pereundo virum: / mors misera non est commori cum quo velis, Aga. 201–2), and Aegisthus proves himself to her by saying he would happily “open with the sword [his] breast laden with troubles” (aperire ferro pectus aerumnis grave, 305). The chorus of Trojan women console themselves by praising “the freedom of death . . . , a harbor tranquil with eternal calm” (libera mors . . . / portus aeterna placidus quiete, 591–92), and at the center of an ode that catalogues their autopsy of Troy’s destruction, they sing, “O how unhappy it is to not know how to die!” (o quam miserum est nescire mori! 604–10). This attitude serves as the backdrop to the courage of Cassandra, who greets Agamemnon’s attempts to soothe her (“Live free of anxiety,” secura vive) by countering, “For me freedom from anxiety is to die” (mihi mori est securitas, 796). Electra, in turn, escapes death precisely by replying to her mother’s threat, “You will die today” (morieris hodie), by insisting, “So long as I can die by this hand” (dummodo hac moriar manu, 971). The only characters in the play who do not espouse a willingness to die are Agamemnon and the chorus of Argives—those who are ignorant of the plot and erroneously see “that

58. Cf. Aen. 4.507, 4.664. For detailed analysis of the intertextual associations of the sword see Hinds (forthcoming). 59. See Segal (1986), 195.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

131

longed-for harbor from troubles” (optatus ille portus aerumnis; Agamemnon speaking, 790) in a more literal form than the Trojan chorus did: in Argos itself.

Death Multiplied by Spectation Seneca also multiplies death through an accumulation of distinct visual perspectives.60 The overarching environment of Nature within which the play’s action takes place is the visual-temporal dies (“daylight”; “day”) dominated by the witnessing figure of Titan or “the witnessing sun” (sol conscius, Oed. 1001), whose climatological reactions write large the cosmic proportions of nefas. A perverse desire for precisely this form of witnessing is what distinguishes the brazen malice of Medea and Atreus, as they seek out the gods to watch, along with the victims themselves (Med. 992–93; Thy. 895)—a disturbing model for the audience’s spectatorial pleasure, as Alessandro Schiesaro has emphasized (2003, 45). But spectators in the tragedies are more often reluctant. Theseus, viewing Phaedra’s suicide and Hippolytus’ unrecognizable bodily remains (Pha. 1199–1200; 1247–79), expresses regret that he had come back from the underworld “to see twin deaths and funerals” (bina ut viderem funera et geminam necem) and longs for the underworld’s “black light” (atrae lucis, 1213–19). Spectatorial dynamics are at work most fully in the final act of the Troades, in which the messenger’s speech overlays several points of view.61 There are the victims themselves, who face death more dispassionately than does the audience: “Of the entire crowd, the one wept for [that is, Astyanax] does not weep” (non flet e turba omnium / qui fletur, Tro. 1099–1100); “All are moved by [Polyxena’s] courageous spirit, standing in death’s path” (movet animus omnes fortis et leto obvius, 1146). There are the Greeks, whose viewing positions are qualified by the history of the landscape: when “some brutish spectator sits on Hector’s tomb—unspeakable!” (atque aliquis (nefas) / tumulo ferus spectator Hectoreo sedet), the act of viewing is signaled as itself an act of violence (1086– 87). Their object of vision—Astyanax plummeting from the tower—reverses the tower’s earlier visual function as the site from which “the old man [Priam] used to point out to the boy his father’s battles” (paterna puero bella monstrabat senex, 1074). The Greeks do not respond univocally but, in awaiting Polyxena’s death (1126–29), hi classis moram hac morte solvi rentur, hi stirpem hostium gaudent recidi. magna pars vulgi levis odit scelus spectatque . . .

60. See Littlewood (2004), 12–13, 172–75; also Erasmo (2004), 122–39, emphasizing spectators on the stage. On spectatorial engagement and detachment see Leigh (1997). 61. For commentary see Fantham (1982); Boyle (1994). The theme is discussed by Littlewood (2004), 90–102; Shelton (2000); Owen (1970), 134–37.

132

seneca the author Some think the fleet’s delay is being released by this death, others rejoice in the extirpation of the enemy’s race. A great share of the people hate the crime and yet, capricious, watch it . . .

When she is about to be stabbed, “they show wonder and pity” (mirantur ac miserantur, 1148), and these tragic emotions are accompanied by descriptions of the scene in meta-dramatic terms: “The field rises up in the form of a theater” (campus . . . crescit theatri more, 1125), and here the Trojans “see the final act of the ruin of Troy” ( partem ruentis ultimam Troiae vident, 1131). The Trojans, who “flock no less to their own funeral” (nec . . . minus / suum frequentant funus, 1129–30), enter into a fleeting communion of viewing with the Greeks, as “terror holds both populations stunned” (terror attonitos tenet / utrosque populos, 1136–37). Greater emphasis, however, is placed on the angst of the perpetrators, especially the ambivalent Helen, “her mournful head downcast” (maestum caput / demissa, 1133–34). The messenger’s speech describing this spectacle has in turn been delivered to satisfy the needs of Andromache, who observes, “Great grief finds joy in reviewing its troubles in full” ( gaudet magnus aerumnas dolor / tractare totas, 1066–67), even if she must recognize that the mutilated Astyanax “resembles his father” (est similis patri, 1117). The whole event is summed up by Hecuba in terms that echo the completion of a gladiatorial spectacle: bellum peractum est (“The battle is done,” 1168).62 Then, finally, there is the literary audience, whose perspective is further refined through intertextual resonances.63

Death “Trojanized” In both the Agamemnon and the Troades Seneca dramatizes death through the psychological perspectives of Trojans and Greeks just after Troy’s fall, far beyond the emphasis inherent in the mythic plots. In the Agamemnon Clytemnestra approaches her deed as a maius nefas (“greater crime”) in which she will compete with her sister Helen by bringing on “wars” (bella) of her own (Aga. 123–24; 192) and, as the Nurse points out, will be seeking to kill one “whom not Achilles, not the superior Ajax, not Hector . . . ” (quem non Achilles . . . non melior Aiax . . . non . . . Hector, 208–19) succeeded in killing. For the chorus of Trojan women, the narrative of Troy lives on as a sequence of vivid firsthand accounts (“We saw . . . I saw,” vidimus . . . vidi) centering on their festivities and joy at the Trojan horse followed by the fall of the fatherland and murder of Priam (611–58). In Act 4 these memories are transposed to the house of Atreus by Cassandra, who answers her own question, “Where am I?” (ubi sum? 725), by asserting, “I see the groves of Mt. Ida” (Idaea cerno nemora, 730), and drawing comparisons between Paris and Aegisthus:

62. Peractum est recurs at Med. 1019; Aga. 901; the latter discussed by Erasmo (2004), 129. 63. See, e.g., Fantham (1982), 380 on Tro. 1146 (movet animus omnes fortis et leto obvius) as an echo of the death of Democritus at Lucr. DRN 3.1041: sponte sua leto caput obvius obtulit ipse.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

133

“That rustic son will overturn the household” (agrestis iste alumnus evertet domum, 733). She invokes the Trojans in the underworld as observers, in which the verse spectate, miseri: fata se vertunt retro! (“Watch, unhappy ones: the fates are turning themselves back!” 758) frames the new scelus as both a reversal (because justice is done through the Furies’ revenge against Troy’s conqueror, Agamemnon) and a repetition (another Troy). This intriguingly makes the perspective of the dead Trojans resemble that of the ghost of Thyestes, who has seen the action already during the play’s prologue (“I can see,” video, 46): both parties see their distinct vengeful agendas played out in one and the same plot. In the Troades, a piece whose dramatic scenario immediately precedes that of the Agamemnon though it was probably written later, the fall of Troy has in principle already taken place but is repeated over and over again through the eyes of different characters. The primary viewpoint is that of Hecuba, whose initial statement, Pergamum incubuit sibi (“Pergamum has imploded on itself,” Tro. 14) is followed by unravelings of this closure: she describes how “burning Troy is torn apart” (diripitur ardens Troia, 19) and emphasizes the continuation of suffering for “protracted Ilium” (lentum Ilium, 22) over ten years and into the future. The Troades is a study both in the singularity of Troy’s fall—the Trojans’ special monopoly on extreme grief—and in the endless and evocative mutation of the forms that this fall can take.64 Andromache, for example, sees Troy falling at specific moments in both the past and the future. She tells the chorus first, “For you, Troy fell just now, for me a long time ago (Ilium vobis modo, / mihi cecidit olim), when the savage wheel of Peleus’ son . . . tore my limbs apart . . .” (412–15). But she then repeats the words of Hector in her dream, “You cry because Troy has fallen? I only wish it was completely down” (“ . . . Troia quod cecidit gemis? / utinam iaceret tota!” 454–55), and later describes Astyanax’s death as something that the city itself lives on to witness (784–85). The deaths of the two children in the final act are both elaborately trojanized, both in the Iliadic landscape of Astyanax’s death discussed above, and in a special function of Troy’s flames: “Troy extends the torch for a new wedding” (thalamis Troia praelucet novis, 899–900). Although the children’s deaths have a closural and redemptive force through the replacement of Trojan grief by the intrepid animus exhibited in the good death, diverse exiles await each of the surviving Trojan women, and Troy is transposed for future repetition elsewhere. Indeed, within Seneca’s tragedic career, a question posed already in the fourth ode of Troades seems to look forward to the post-Trojan states of mind in the prewritten sequel, the Agamemnon, discussed above: “What state of mind will we wretches have (quis status mentis miseris), when the whole land shrinks and the sea grows, when lofty Mt. Ida lies hidden far in the distance?” (Tro. 1047–49). Although the post-Troy experience had been the recurring scenario of Greek tragedy and of Roman Republican drama (ever since the versions of 64. See Henry and Henry (1985), 152–55.

134

seneca the author

Equos Troianus by Livius Andronicus and Naevius), Seneca’s interest in it must be seen within the more local Julio-Claudian, post-Virgilian context.65 Given the Aeneid’s epic emplotment of a Julian teleology from Troy to Rome, Seneca’s trojanized tragedies amount to a troubling revisitation of Roman origins in which there is no trace of Aeneas, and Trojan survivors are not consoled with any hint of Rome’s foundation.66 If elements of the Aeneid’s post-Trojan world are present in Senecan tragedy, they take the form, as Michael Putnam has shown, of the negative “inner realm” of the passions (ira, furiae, saevitia, dolor, etc.) that are manifested as temporary interruptions in the Aeneid but become, in Seneca, an entire state of being, characterized by reiteration (1995, 277–278). The Trojan ambiance of Rome had grown and transformed in the Neronian renaissance, whether we look to Nero’s own interests in developing selected Trojan themes, to the poetry of Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius, or to contemporary wall painting.67 Within this milieu, Senecan tragedy sought to link the Trojan epic scenario almost exclusively with a grand vision of death and mortality. But the most interesting Trojan reception for our purposes is the Pompeian graffito of a half-line fragment of Seneca’s Agamemnon—Cassandra’s assertion, quoted above, Idaea cerno nemora (“I see the groves of Mt. Ida,” Aga. 730).68 The graffito, from a house wall in Pompeii, evokes Cassandra’s feeling that Troy’s story has been moved from Troy to Argos—only now it has been moved one extra step, from Argos to Julio-Claudian Italy.

Death Localized and Subdivided Death is reshaped to fit each new tragic scenario. Just as the Trojan women who have endured the storm en route to Argos view death, fittingly, as a “harbor” (portus, Aga. 592), the self-banishing king Oedipus sees self-killing as an exercise in “kingship over [himself ]” (regnum mei, Pho. 105). One death can surpass another by its method, as when the chorus of the Oedipus, recounting the plague, exclaims, “O horrible new form of death, harder to bear than death itself!” (o dira novi facies leti / gravior leto, Oed. 180–81). More than once a Medea or Andromache will calculate that the worst form of punishment in a certain situation is in fact life (cf. “Let [Jason] live,” vivat, Med. 20; cf. Tro. 577). In the Troades the ambiguity between life and death also licenses Andromache’s strategy of concealing Astyanax in the death mound (tumulus) of Hector—a variation on the themes of both Scheintod and katabasis (Tro. 519–21). This burial is sufficiently death-like to license her deception of Ulysses through such statements as, “He lies among the dead” (inter extinctos iacet, 603).69 65. Boyle (1994), 15–18 sketches the tradition on Trojan themes prior to Seneca. 66. On the Troades as a “controcanto” to the Aeneid see Biondi (2001), 25–26; contra, Fantham (1982), vii. 67. On the topic in Julio-Claudian culture see Boyle (1994); O’Gorman (2000), 162–75. On Trojan themes in Senecan tragedy and Neronian visual culture see Varner (2000), 123. 68. On the graffito see Gigante (2001), 91–93; Tarrant (1976), 307. 69. On the “dramatic conundrum” of the tumulus scene see Owen (1970), 119, 129.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

135

The two Oedipus plays map out Senecan tragedy’s most protracted death, a “death” that begins with the self-blinding at the end of the Oedipus and carries over to the Phoenissae, where it is never in fact completed.70 Oedipus initially regards blindness as an ingenious substitute for actual death, since the messenger quotes him as saying to himself (Oed. 945–49): “ . . . iterum vivere atque iterum mori liceat, renasci semper ut totiens nova supplicia pendas—utere ingenio, miser: quod saepe fieri non potest fiat diu; mors eligatur longa. . . .” “ . . . May it be permitted to live and die repeatedly, always to be reborn, so that you [Oedipus] can pay new punishments just as repeatedly. Use your brain, you wretch: If it can’t happen repeatedly, let it happen protractedly. Choose a long death. . . .” Yet the mors longa that would separate him from his father in the underworld (949–51) also requires him to be vigilant against future encounters with Jocasta (1014–18). The wandering Oedipus of the Phoenissae in fact enjoys separation from Jocasta (who in this play lives on, but never appears with Oedipus), and he now strives after death. Although he will reluctantly concede to Antigone, “If you demand it, this Oedipus will even live” (hic Oedipus . . . iubente te vel vivet, Pho. 313–19), the same scene has already charted out his desired death in excruciating detail. He has yielded to the summons of Laius from the underworld (39–40) and regards his blindness as inadequate: “I want to be buried in Tartarus, and whatever lies beyond Tartarus” (Tartaro condi iuvat, / et si quid ultra Tartarum est, 144–45). He also embraces Mt. Cithaeron as an apt venue “for dying as an old man where [he] should have died as an infant” (ut expirem senex / ubi debui infans, 32–33), and he ponders both the different features of the landscape and his body through which his death might be enacted (110–39; 151–65). The possible separation of the (early?) Oedipus and (late?) Phoenissae in the chronology of Seneca’s career may add to the effect: the protracted death not only creeps slowly across Oedipus’ body, but spans the length of Seneca’s tragic corpus.

Death in the Form of the Underworld The underworld is Seneca’s dominant motif for localizing death.71 It functions as a locus of past time in the form of ghosts or exemplary ancestors

70. On the diu mori of Oed. and Pho., see Palmieri (1999), 149–82. For commentary on the Phoenissae see Frank (1994). 71. On the underworld as a “semanticized space” in the tragedies see E. A. Schmidt (2004), 349–51; more generally, Schiesaro (2003), 177–220; Henry and Henry (1985), 143–45; Owen (1968).

136

seneca the author

who watch (and often cause) the present events, and of the future to be faced after death. This future, in turn, is previewed and reversed through ritual or through the hero’s katabasis and triumphal return, just as the already dead can be visited there.72 Seneca multiplies the ways in which the underworld (or its infernal powers) are accessed: it is discovered at the heart of the storm in the Agamemnon, in the burial mound in the Troades, and in the palace in the Thyestes—specifically, the “innermost region of the kingdom” (penetrale regni, Thy. 652) where a domestic museum of Tantalid artifacts hanging on the wall (“trophies of each of the family’s deeds,” omne gentis facinus, 662) mirrors the underworld’s capacity to hold the past within it (641–82). In the surprising second ode of the Troades the underworld’s existence is fundamentally questioned. The chorus, self-consciously framing the underworld as a product of poetic invention in the manner of Seneca’s mocking references to the underworld in his prose works,73 conclude, “You wish to know in what place you lie after death? Where the unborn lie” (quaeris quo iaceas post obitum loco? / quo non nata iacent, Tro. 371–72, 407–8).74 They map out an alternative space for death—a nowhere space—and thereby expose the characters’ beliefs (for example, in ghosts) as the products of a deceptive fabula (371).75 The logic of the underworld is most on show in the Phaedra and the Hercules, which feature the returns of Theseus and Hercules from their katabases. It is the absence of Theseus that initially gives license to Phaedra’s desire to use Hippolytus as a substitute: “The father of Hippolytus,” she announces, “is pursuing rapes and forbidden unions in the depths of Acheron” (stupra et illicitos toros / Acheronte in imo quaerit Hippolyti pater, Pha. 97–98; cf. 646–60).76 Later, Theseus’ point of view on the realm that he has just visited leads him to respond to the charge of incest by condemning Hippolytus to a katabasis of his own (946–47). But after he discovers the truth about Phaedra and Hippolytus, Theseus’ attitude leads him to demand a second katabasis for himself, following his son (1239–40). The katabasis in the Hercules is more fully articulated as a medium for thinking about death.77 Although most characters’ points of view on Hercules’ journey are cautiously celebratory, Juno sees Hercules’ return as a threat, because it is both a victory over her personally (“He drags me in triumph,” de me triumphat, 58) and it prefigures his upwardly mobile ambitions for apotheosis: “He seeks a path to the gods above” (quaerit ad superos viam, 74). When she 72. Note also the katabasis as a perversion of apotheosis, and a god’s descent from heaven as a “katabasis,” discussed by Owen (1968), 297, 303. 73. E.g., Marc. 19.4; Ep. 24.18; Ep. 82.15–17; Ep. 104.24 (on Aen. 6.277); cited and discussed by Aygon (2004), 198–207; McGuiness (1956), 87–88. 74. On this passage see Littlewood (2004), 95; Biondi (2001), 27–31, comparing Polyb. 9.2: in eum restitutus est locum in quo fuerat antequam nasceretur. 75. For Lawall (1982), 244–46, this counters the Virgilian underworld with a Lucretian ontology. 76. On the psychological symbolism of Theseus’ katabasis see Segal (1986), 180–201. 77. For a close reading see Shelton (1978), 50–57; also E. R. Wilson (2004), 100–104.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

137

makes him insane, Juno says, “I will show him the underworld here [on earth]” (hic tibi ostendam inferos, 91) and commands, “Let him conquer himself, and having returned from the underworld let him wish to die” (et se vincat, et cupiat mori / ab inferis reversus, 116–17). A vivid account of the katabasis is offered by Hercules’ accomplice, Theseus: he observes that “the place of death is worse than death itself” (ipsaque morte peior est mortis locus, 706), and his narrative of the journey—an element largely absent in the Phaedra—develops the space of the underworld both as a dramatic presence and as a locus classicus in which Seneca engages creatively with the epic, especially Virgilian, tradition. Hercules is initially triumphant, boasting, “I carried off the secrets of the world . . . I saw . . . I conquered” (extuli / arcana mundi . . . vidi . . . vici, 596–97, 606, 612), and joking about the freshly killed tyrant: “Let Lycus be the messenger who tells Dis that I have already made it back [to earth]” (nuntiet Diti Lycus / me iam redisse, 639–40). But when he recovers from his insanity, he questions the reality of his return: “Or has my mind not yet shed the phantoms infernal?” (an nondum exuit / simulacra mens inferna? 1144–45). Like Theseus in the Phaedra he soon desires to kill himself and thereby undo his return: “I will give Hercules back to the underworld, . . . I will go to the furthermost end of Tartarus to stay” (inferis reddam Herculem . . . Tartari ad finem ultimum / mansurus ibo, 1218, 1225–26). Yet he decides not to die in part because even the underworld, where he is already known, can’t offer him a place to hide. Throughout the Hercules, the underworld also serves as a shifting point of reference in successive choral odes. The first ode offers an ambivalent moralizing perspective on his katabasis: “Alcides, you hurry too much with courage in your breast to see the mournful spirits of the dead” (nimium, Alcide, pectore forti / properas maestos visere manes, Herc. 186–88). The second ode expresses hope for Hercules’ safe return, taking heart from the prior example of Orpheus: “The palace that could be overcome by poetry will be able to be overcome by force” (quae vinci potuit regia carmine, / haec vinci poterit regia viribus, 589–90). (Orpheus’ unhappy ending is passed over in foreboding silence.) The third responds to Theseus’ katabasis description with an apostrophe to the human beings crowding into the underworld (858–59). This ode ends by once again celebrating Hercules’ latest labor, concluding from it that “there is now nothing further to be afraid of: nothing lies beyond the underworld” (iam nullus superest timor: / nil ultra iacet inferos, 891–92). But the fourth and final ode invokes the underworld in new ways that correspond to the development of the plot, observing that even the underworld should grieve for Hercules’ sorrows—“Let three kingdoms resound with one lamentation!” (uno planctu tria regna sonent, 1114)—and ushering his murdered children into death: “Go, innocent shadows, go to the Stygian harbors” (ite ad Stygios, umbrae, portus, / ite, innocuae, 1131– 32). These choral perspectives include a hint of the meta-poetic implications of the katabasis, with Orpheus’ song illustrating the power of poetry to overcome the forces of darkness, as well as a more specifically meta-theatrical aspect: the

138

seneca the author

numbers of the dead are compared to “the size of a crowd which moves through the city eager for the games at a new theater” (quantus incedit populus per urbes / ad novi ludos avidus theatri, 838–39).78 This evokes the power of Senecan drama to engage with its audience’s perceptions of their shared mortality.

Theatricalized History We can mostly only speculate on how Seneca’s tragedies were read in connection with specific historical and biographic events.79 What we can say is that the anatomy of Senecan tragedy soon served as a reservoir for the formation of narratives about Seneca and the Senecan tradition. We have noted above that Pliny the Elder drew on the tragic lexicon to portray Seneca’s own “power which, in the end, excessive, crashed down on him” (HN 14.51),80 and also the echo of Seneca’s Oedipus in Tacitus’ account of the death of Epicharis (Ann. 15.57.2; cf. Oed. 344). These are not the only traces of early reception. Tacitus was preceded by the dramatic tradition to which the Hercules Oetaeus and the Octavia belong. Both of these plays allude to Seneca’s death within literary frameworks that draw upon Seneca’s writings in both verse and prose.

Hercules Oetaeus Centering on Hercules’ protracted death and apotheosis, the Hercules Oetaeus is of unknown authorship but has tentatively been dated to the very end of the first century or beginning of the second. Although it is in theory possible that this 2,000-line play was awaiting a last stage of editing and compression, in its present state it is a kind of meta-text of the Senecan tragic corpus, compiling scenarios and utterances from Seneca’s dramatic representations of death.81 Deianira, for example, says, “Death alone will be given as a harbor for my troubles” (mors sola portus dabitur aerumnis meis, HO 1021), which resembles the attitude of the Trojan chorus from the Agamemnon (cf. Aga. 591–92), and the response of the audience to Hercules’ self-immolation, “The people are all stunned” (stupet omne vulgus, HO 1745), is a verbatim echo of the messenger in the Troades (Tro. 1143). The imperative uttered by Deianira, “Let the sword be thrust through my limbs; this, this is how it must be done” (eat per artus ensis exactus meos. / sic, sic agendum est, HO 845–46), may not simply be a matter of

78. On underworldly aspects of poetic inspiration in the tragedies see Schiesaro (1997), 90–98. 79. E.g., Dingel (1974), 119 speculates that the image of Oedipus departing into exile taking all evils with him (mecum ite, mecum . . . , Oed. 1061) casts Seneca as a scapegoat along the lines of Helv. 18.6 (in me omnis fatorum crudelitas lassata consistat). 80. Ramelli (2002), 503–4 compares, e.g., Thy. 336–403. See also Tro. 14: Pergamum incubuit sibi. 81. Cf. Henry and Henry (1985), 139: the Hercules Oetaeus’ “vision of death . . . transcends all the others” seen in Senecan tragedy. Marti (1945) once read the Senecan tragedies, in the order in which they are found in the Codex Etruscus, as “a sort of glorified Essay on Man” (223) bracketed at either end by the two Hercules plays.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

139

what she ought to do morally, but what she ought to do as a Senecan heroine, given the Dido-like sword suicides of Phaedra and Jocasta. The focus on Hercules serves in part as a return to Seneca’s repeated interest in Hercules as a mostly positive hero not only in his Hercules but also in all the other plays, in which roles ranging from ill-fated Argonaut (Med. 634–42) to parricidal katabasis veteran (Pha. 843–49) make him the ubiquitous inhabitant of Seneca’s mythic world. But the description and enactment of the stages of Hercules’ ultimately self-controlled death (HO 751–1755!) and his appearance post-apotheosis (1940–96) steer the drama toward a more explicitly triumphal event than is seen in the Senecan corpus, even the Troades. In the eyes of the chorus, a “great tamer of beasts and at the same time pacifier of the world” (domitor magne ferarum / orbisque simul pacator, 1989–90) is embodied in the risen Hercules. As Victoria Larson has shown, the chorus’ portrayal of Hercules’ robustness in the face of death serves to concretize the numerous images—a soldier’s invulnerability, upturned eyes, oak-like endurance, and so forth—that are used to characterize virtus or the sapiens in Seneca’s prose works (1991, 41, 45). The play’s fusion of tragic and Stoic modes in the figure of the dying Hercules may have been encouraged by knowledge of Seneca’s death. Scholars have long been intrigued by the resonances between Seneca’s statement that long ago his father’s old age had disinclined him from committing suicide (Ep. 78.2) and the plot of Seneca’s Hercules in which Amphitryon succeeds in dissuading his son.82 In the Hercules Oetaeus, in turn, Hercules, now confronting certain death, resembles Seneca in following through with his own self-killing. More specifically, John Fitch briefly observes that “Hercules’ self-immolation as a conscious exhibition of courage (in his case, to a double audience, divine and human) resembles Seneca’s own enforced suicide as described by the historian Tacitus in his Annals (15.62–64), with its display of calmness, absence of haste, concern for friends rather than self” (2002–4, 2.330, emphasis original). This makes other parallels all the more intriguing. The presence of Alcmene as Hercules dies, for example, makes her the primary audience of his amazing persistence in consoling others from the funeral pyre. Hercules is reported to have encouraged his mother, “This is how it befits you, mother, to stand at the pyre, this is how it is fitting for Hercules to be mourned” (sic stare ad rogum / te, mater . . . / . . . sic decet fleri Herculem, HO 1736–39). She thus resembles the grieving mother of the Ad Helviam (Helv. 1.3) and balances the role of Amphitryo in Seneca’s Hercules. And like Seneca, the ambivalent hero Hercules dies a death that is tragic in the sense that it comes either too late or too soon (cf. 1192–1206) and partly as a consequence of his own mistakes. But the mythologized paralleling of Seneca’s fate with that of Hercules is perhaps driven most immediately by a literary ambition: the Hercules Oetaeus’ author seeks to become a kind of 82. The history of this observation is reviewed by Palmieri (1999), 131–32; see also E. R. Wilson (2004), 98, 108; Biondi (2001), 19–24; Herington (1966), 429.

140

seneca the author

apotheosis of Seneca, his play a posthumous sublimation of the Senecan tragic mode that feeds upon historical and literary moments of Seneca’s career.

Octavia At some point in the generation after Seneca’s death, the Octavia (author also unknown) drew on the modes of Senecan tragedy and prose when dramatizing events from the year 62.83 Because the play derives some key aspects of its form from Senecan tragedy 84 while portraying events that involve Seneca as a character facing misfortune, its basic conceit resembles the use of Senecan language to represent Seneca that we have seen in such authors as Quintilian, Pliny the Elder, and Tacitus. One favorable implication of this conceit in the Octavia is that the author Seneca is shown to have been in command of a literary form—Senecan drama— that is capable of representing the tragedy of Neronian history.85 Even if Seneca’s philosophical and advisorial endeavors fell victim to political developments, Senecan tragic discourse persists so as to bear witness, portraying the irresistible forces of irrational behavior or tyranny by which Rome and its people—including the Seneca character himself—were assaulted. To this extent, the Octavia vindicates Seneca as an author who has anticipated the reversals of his own career, as if allowing Seneca to say, “I told you so.” The author Seneca is thus also implied not to care about his misfortune: his knowledge of tragic reversal is implicitly informed by praemeditatio and tranquil acceptance. Another, less favorable implication is that Seneca (especially when we consider the character represented in the play) fell victim to reversals that, given his control of tragic discourse, he should have been able to prevent from happening, or at least from mattering to him—as if to say that he “should have known better” than to let this happen, or at least should have known not to let it worry him if it did. Moreover, the fact that the suffering character Seneca is also the tragedian and should have known better, makes Seneca’s reversals that more ironic. Seneca’s decline from tragedian to tragic character—his subjection to his own dramatic plots—is a tragic reversal in its own right. More specific ironies can be traced in the portrayal of the Seneca character’s downfall. His first appearance is prefaced by the chorus’ extended recollection of the murder of Agrippina (Oct. 309–76). This may simply signal what Seneca has to look forward to at Nero’s hands, but its placement is especially fitting given that Agrippina was the one who had recalled Seneca from exile, and the return from exile is the first thing that Seneca laments, though he blames not Agrippina directly but the seductions of “Fortune” (377–80): 83. On the Octavia’s date and authorship, see esp. Boyle (2008), xiii-xvi; Ferri (2003a), 6–30. Senecan authorship is defended by only a few, such as Giancotti (1983); Whitman (1978). The immediacy of Seneca’s “tragic and philosophical imago vitae suae” in Oct. is noted by J. A. Smith (2003), 401. See also Erasmo (2004), 52–80, esp. 63–65; and the essays in M. Wilson (2003), esp. Goldberg. 84. On the author’s appropriations of, and divergences from, Senecan language and dramatic technique see Ferri (2003a), 31–54, (2003b). 85. Compare Ferri (2003a), 70 on Oct. as a witness to early political interpretations of Senecan tragedy.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

141

quid, impotens Fortuna, fallaci mihi blandita vultu, sorte contentum mea alte extulisti, gravius ut ruerem edita receptus arce totque prospicerem metus? Why, intemperate Fortune, fawning on me with deceitful face, when I was happy with my lot, did you raise me on high, so that being welcomed into the lofty citadel, I might fall more heavily and confront so many fears? These lines uttered by an untranquil Seneca cast his career as a series of reversals—from exile to recall to imminent downfall—in which his greatest regret is his reckless exchange of secure philosophical contemplation for an anxious political life. Seneca’s regrets here are in the mold of Theseus’ regrets on his return from the underworld to see the twin deaths of his son and his wife, or of Thyestes on his return to Argos to take up his brother’s offer of shared power.86 Next Seneca changes to the register of a tragic ode. He combines a decadent myth of the ages with a stoicizing cosmological history that foretells universal destruction followed by a day of redemption and renewal (391–96): If the sky grows old (senescit), and being so great, will fall again into unseen chaos, then that final day is present for the world, which will crush the impious race with ruin of the heavens, so that once more being born again better, it will bring into existence a new stock, just as once the young one did (ut quondam tulit iuvenis), when Saturn held the kingship of the skies. But if the vision of redemption and renewal suggests an ultimately positive sequel to the world’s (and the city’s) ruin, this is an outcome that the play leaves in the future. The play itself depicts Nero’s initiative toward a city-destroying fire, and other short-term trajectories. In Seneca’s monologue the term senescere (“grow old”) establishes a striking correlation between cosmic decline (from Saturnian age to present iron age) and Seneca’s autobiographic narrative (from principled exile to compromised return)—a correlation that connects the vision of a selfdestroying Rome to the Seneca character’s tragic distress concerning his own misguided life path.87 The final and major reversal comes in Seneca’s dialogue with Nero (Oct. 435–592) which results in Nero’s rejection of his adviser (“Let it be permitted

86. For the echo of Thyestes, see Ferri (2003a), 227, citing Thy. 405–90; also Boyle (2008), 169. For the Theseus echo, see esp. Herington (1966), 459 on Pha. 1213–19: in hoc redimus? 87. For senescere in a strikingly similar context to that of the Seneca character here, see Ep. 19.5 (addressing Lucilius): utinam quidem tibi senescere contigisset intra natalium tuorum modum, nec te in altum fortuna misisset!; also VB 21.1: senescit in patria, where post-exile life is also the focus. On senectus in Senecan prose and tragedy see Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1996).

142

seneca the author

to do what Seneca disapproves of,” liceat facere quod Seneca improbat, 589) followed by Seneca’s exit and disappearance and his replacement by the prefect.88 Overall, the reversal fits the mold of a Senecan passion-restraint scene, with Seneca occupying the role of the ineffective adviser.89 The reversal is played out through Nero’s pursuit of his own rite of passage as he breaks free of the “old man” (senem, 445), and through his meticulous inversion of structures learned from the De clementia, such as the image of the sheathed sword (“The drawn sword will accomplish,” destrictus ensis faciet, 461; versus Clem. 1.1.4) and the domesticum exemplum in which the violent Octavian was succeeded by the clement Augustus (504–7; versus Clem. 1.9–11). Seneca’s pedagogy and philosophical writing are here subjected to the inverting logic of his own tragic mode and a perverse reading by a typical Senecan tyrant. Even after the scene is over, Agrippina’s vengeful ghost ushers in the new sunrise and dooms Nero’s wedding day and the rest of his life, through the unique type scene of a Senecan tragic prologue (593–645). The logic of Neronian history is thus revealed to be a recurrence of the whole Senecan tragic form (itself already inherently iterative), over and over. The question of whether Seneca (the tragedian) is thereby vindicated on the basis of his literary insights, or the same Seneca (as character) is revealed to have fallen victim to his own misjudgments, his own anxieties, and the problematic flexibility of his own rhetorical devices—all this remains unresolved, a consequence of Seneca’s complex literary and historical profile. But there is nothing ambiguous about Seneca’s inhabitation of his own play as a character: where the Hercules Oetaeus had taken up Hercules as Senecan tragedy’s iconic hero, the Octavia puts the author’s own self at the vortex of the tragic representation.

Tacitus and “Senecan” Theatricality The Octavia is almost certainly part of the background for Tacitus’ approach to representing the events of 62 in book 14 of the Annals.90 His last dozen chapters present the following sequence of events: the interview between Seneca and Nero that is followed by Seneca’s expulsion from the court (Ann. 14.53–57.1); the banishment and execution of Rubellius Plautus and Faustus Cornelius Sulla (§§57–59); and the banishment and execution of Octavia (§§60–64). Scholars have noted resemblances between Tacitus’ description of the crowd who watched Octavia sailing into exile (“Some still remembered that Agrippina had been banished by Tiberius, and the memory of Julia banished by Claudius was fresher in their minds,” 14.63.2) and the final ode of the Octavia in which 88. For general analysis of the interview scene see J. A. Smith (2003), 411–12; Manuwald (2001), 317–23. 89. See G. W. M. Harrison (2003), 121; Goldberg (2003), 23; Ferri (2003a), 75. G. D. Williams (1994), 191 points out that the Octavia does not offer any simple vindication of Seneca or of Stoic ideology. 90. See Ferri (1998); also Billot (2003) and Wiseman (1998), 53. Not all scholars are persuaded.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

143

the chorus rehearse examples of banished imperial women that include the same Agrippina Minor and Julia (Oct. 929–57). As for the interview scenes, they are different in important ways.91 Yet Tacitus’ interview matches the Octavia in its agonistic emplotment of a double rite of passage (Nero’s maturation, Seneca’s retirement) and both scenes center upon Nero’s twisting of Senecan rhetoric against itself (especially the rhetoric of the De clementia), an appeal to the bloody accomplishments of the young Augustus (Ann. 14.55.2–3; Oct. 503–13), and even the use of a quin command in which Nero, feigning an amicable parting, invites Seneca to remain involved in his projects (Ann. 14.56.1; Oct. 592). The question is only to what degree Tacitean writing had absorbed postSenecan tragedy, and Senecan tragedy itself. Francesca Santoro L’Hoir has recently argued that Greek tragic motifs (for example, binding; reversal; feminine lack of self-control) are pervasive in the Annals (2006, 8). Some of these tragic motifs, together with Tacitus’ “progressive and persistent utilization of clustered words drawn from specific lexical fields” (102), enter the Annals “perhaps by way of Seneca” (50; cf. 101–8), even if they will have been evident to readers “only on a subliminal level” (255). Santoro L’Hoir’s theory is attractive, even if she omits consideration of the Octavia, which, as we have already seen, may have played a bridging function between Senecan tragedy and Tacitean history. But the resonances of Senecan tragedy are sometimes more than merely subliminal. Agrippina’s last utterance, for example, is described by Tacitus as follows: “When the centurion was now drawing his sword to kill her, she exposed to him her belly and cried, ‘Strike my womb’ (protendens uterum ‘ventrem feri’ exclamavit), and was finished off with many wounds” (Ann. 14.8.5; cf. Dio 61.13.5). The motif here of the suicide’s aggression against the womb cannot be paralleled in tragedy before Seneca’s Oedipus, where Jocasta exhorts her right hand as follows: “Come, lend a hand to a mother, . . . right hand, attack this capacious womb (agedum, commoda matri manum, / . . . hunc, dextra, hunc pete / uterum capacem), which has borne both husband and children” (Oed. 1032, 1038–39). Although it is uncertain what precise relationship should be understood here between tragic text, historical fact, and historical narrative, Tacitus’ text upholds a mimetic relationship between Julio-Claudian history and Senecan tragedy.92 When we turn to Tacitus’ account of Seneca more specifically, how is Senecan theatricality manifested? Santoro L’Hoir argues for tragic effects in numerous episodes: for example, Nero’s concealment of his intentions behind blanditiae in the interview with Seneca (Ann. 14.56.3), which she takes 91. See Ferri (2003a), 228: “there is no apparent link”; “[u]nlike the Seneca of Ann. 14, this Seneca [in Oct.] speaks his true mind, as good counsellors are wont to do in tragedy.” But Billot (2003), 132 sees Tacitus offering a creative contrast. 92. The range of possibilities is discussed by Hind (1966); cf. Woodman (1993), 108–9. Agripina’s last words at Oct. 370–72 are similar.

144

seneca the author

to be a spellbinding motif from tragedy (blandimenta/hekjsñqia, 2006, 154). Also, Tacitus’ portrayal of Seneca’s death as “a piece of theater” is “a fitting last act in the life of a man who was himself both a playwright and a principal actor” (215). But Santoro L’Hoir’s sketch could be filled in with more specific theatrical dynamics. The central motif of Tacitus’ exit descriptions is the performance of constantia (versus impatientia), which as we have seen is a concern of Seneca’s ethical theater, and which is central to the conduct of Seneca and Paulina. There are also specific tragic elements at play: the scene-by-scene progression of Seneca’s interrogation and death in a real-time temporal framework, the entries and exits, the dialogues and monologues, the high emotions, the messengers, the courageous heroine, the internal audiences and “choruses” who collaborate or react, the invocation of divine witnesses (Jupiter Liberator), the contestation between rival actors and rival spectators who seek outcomes and interpretations that aren’t necessarily to be reconciled. Tacitus lays particular emphasis on Nero’s point of view as spectator and director, which is mediated by Silvanus and other proxies (cf. Ann. 15.60.2). Nero’s role throughout the scene can be fleshed out by comparison with the death of the consul Vestinus a few chapters later, where Tacitus portrays the actor-emperor “visualizing and mocking” (imaginatus et inridens) the consul and his guests from afar (§69.3). The theatricality of Seneca’s death can also be defined through comparison with two other episodes in the historical narrative: (1) the Pisonian conspiracy as a whole and (2) the death of Nero. First, A. J. Woodman has argued that Tacitus portrays the Pisonian conspirators as a cast of amateur dramatists. As the conspiracy’s planned date of April 19 is the last day of the Cerealia (April 12–19), when theater games (ludi scaenici) typically gave way to circus races, and would make the assassination of Nero a supplementary ludus scaenicus for the entertainment of the people (1993, 107), so the conspirators’ failure is correspondingly couched in terms of bad theater. Only Epicharis and Subrius Flavus merit more dignified characterization, with the former described in an echo of Senecan tragedy yet “without histrionics” (119) and the latter speaking truth to Nero’s power (Ann. 15.67.2) and evoking a “late recognition of true identity” of the sort seen in tragedy (125). Within the conspiracy episode, Woodman argues, the death of Seneca is a more successful alternative, a “roleplaying performance” that builds upon the already theatrical status of Socrates in the quasi-theatrical versions of Plato’s Crito and Phaedo (118 n. 53).93 The contrast amounts not simply to the fact that Seneca accomplishes what he set out to achieve—he dies—but that he does so in a way “calculated to infuriate the theatrical Nero” (121). And contrasted with Nero the cithara-singer

93. The “upstaging” argument is strengthened if we accept the argument of Treves (1970) that Seneca’s death itself occurred on April 19.

theaters of ethics, tragedy, and history

145

(citharoedus) and Piso the tragedy-singer (tragoedus, Ann. 15.65), Seneca stands out as a less amateurish political actor. The death is further framed in retrospect by the death of Nero himself.94 The loss of Tacitus’ account leaves it unclear exactly what form of theatricality he might have presented in relating the event, but Dio offers these words: “This was the sort of drama that Fortune then prepared for him (soio‹som cq dqãla sæse sø dailæmiom aÃs{ ~ paqerje arem), so that he could act (Õpojq¨mgsai) the parts no longer of others—matricides, beggars—but of himself. And then he began to repent for his outrages, as if he were able to undo any of them. Such was the tragic part that Nero now played (soia‹sa ésqacÎdei), and he repeatedly recalled this verse: ‘Wife and father urge me cruelly to die’ ” (63.28.4–5).95 Dio’s account depicts the close link that had been established in Nero’s mind (and in the popular imagination) between his bloody deeds of parricide and his stage roles—an act of mistaken self-recognition that recalls the negative examples from the ethical theater of Seneca’s prose writings. It also shows how Nero’s death could be read as an ending straight out of tragedy—a self-recognition and a self-directed revenge for the series of parricides that we know the Tacitean Seneca had cited as precedents for his own death (cf. Ann. 15.62.2). In addition, however, as Catharine Edwards has noted, the multiple attempts of Nero’s suicide (poison, drowning in the Tiber, dagger; cf. Suet. Ner. 47–49) “could be read as an echo of the death of Seneca, who also had to use a variety of means to squeeze the life from his aged body”—except that it converts the “tragedy” of Seneca’s death scene into “farce” for Nero (2007, 160). This retrospective comparison, I would point out, does not necessarily dignify Seneca: Nero’s death potentially serves as much as a parody that exposes flaws in the original, such as the fumbling multiplicity of Seneca’s methods. It also writes large Seneca’s ultimate failure as Nero’s teacher: the dying Nero appears not to have learned from Seneca’s ethical theater or his mirror for the prince. Seneca’s death may come across as nobly tragic, but it may equally be undermined, or its tragic aspect may be turned against him, given its thin separation from the problematic life and death of his pupil.

Beyond the Roman Theater Of the elements that Seneca’s prose and tragedies made available for the theatricalization of history, the elements adopted by Tacitus and the authors of the Hercules Oetaeus and the Octavia represent only an early selection. In

94. On Nero’s death see O’Gorman (2000), 160–61; Connors (1994), 230. 95. Dio quotes from a version of “Oedipus in exile” by an unknown Greek author; the same quotation is given at Suet. Ner. 46.3.

146

seneca the author

subsequent representations of the death, both in drama and in other genres and media, the ethical and tragic modes would offer continuing opportunities for the scene to be characterized through varying forms of action and knowledge—whether through the self-recognition that comes with the day of moral transparency and vindication or through the self-recognition that results from the full manifestation of one’s entanglement, and even complicity, in the world’s irrational forces.

6 End of a Series: Death in Epistolary Time

In this chapter we take up the Epistulae morales, where meditatio mortis (“death rehearsal”) becomes a serialized habit. We will begin by surveying Seneca’s innovative use of the epistolary collection as a literary form, and then we will turn to the programmatic first letter, where the paradox of cotidie mori (“dying each day”) is identified as a central focus. In the course of the correspondence cotidie mori is mapped out across two dimensions: (1) the sequence of letters, with its momentum and multiplicity, and (2) the internal structure of the single letter, with its singularity and closure. Seneca builds a text that is defined by repetition yet may end at any point, and together these features equip the reader with a useful framework for thinking not only about his or her own death, but also about Seneca’s death, and Paulina’s attempt. In his eighty-seventh letter Seneca describes a recent journey he and his friend Maximus had taken in the countryside, conducting themselves with great frugality (Ep. 87.2–3):1 My Maximus and I have been spending two days now most happily (ego et Maximus meus biduum iam beatissimum agimus), with a very few slaves whom a single wagon was able to hold, and without any things except those that were carried on our bodies. . . . We are nowhere without figs, never without our writing tablets. The figs serve as a relish if I have bread, but if I don’t have bread they serve as bread. Each day

1. For commentary on Ep. 87 see Inwood (2007a), 240–42; also Allegri (2004) and (1981).

148

seneca the author they make for me a New Year, which I make auspicious and happy with good thoughts and greatness of mind . . .

In this anecdote Seneca evidently carries out his own advice to Lucilius in a much earlier letter: “Set aside some days on which you can withdraw from your things and put yourself on familiar terms with little (minimoque te facias familiarem)” (Ep. 18.8).2 The term beatissimum may also echo the letter of the dying Epicurus that Seneca mentions twice elsewhere: “This is the happiest day that I have spent, and my last” (beatissimum . . . hunc et ultimum diem ago, 92.25; cf. 66.47).3 But in this instance Seneca connects their frugal diet of food with their constant use of pugillaria, implying that every day is rendered auspicious not only by repeating the New Year’s ritual of eating figs, but also by thinking the good thoughts that are facilitated through regular writing.4 This letter, then, presents a festive day-to-day routine characterized by literary activity, in which the two men test their response to diminished resources. To this extent it is representative of Seneca’s letters to Lucilius as a whole. The mention of Maximus, although it is here embedded in a letter to Lucilius, probably also reminds Seneca’s readers of the separate letters that Seneca had apparently written to Maximus. These letters are now lost, but they are vividly recalled by Martial in a pair of epigrams where he congratulates a friend, Ovidius, for his loyalty in having followed his friend Caesonius Maximus when the latter, banished by Nero, fled to Sicily (Epigr. 7.44, 45).5 In the first poem, Martial declares: “You [will be celebrated] for having been to [Maximus] what he was to his Seneca” ( fuisse / illi te, Senecae quod fuit ille suo, 44.10)— which reveals that Maximus had once accompanied Seneca into exile, or at least that their friendship was a well-known exemplum.6 In the second poem, Maximus is described as “powerful friend of eloquent Seneca, . . . he whom the happy letter7 greets on frequent page” ( facundi Senecae potens amicus, / . . . ille, quem frequenti / felix littera pagina salutat, 45.1, 3–4). This seems to imply that a series of letters from Seneca to Maximus was in circulation, familiar to Martial and his readers, though we can only speculate about the details.8 Long after the death of Seneca, and long after the death of Maximus, the poet can still

2. See Henderson (2004), 49, who also notes wordplay in Maximus’ name—both with minimo and with his status as Seneca’s “Greatest” friend. 3. Cf. D.L. 10.22 (= fr. 138 Use. = Long and Sedley (1987), 24D): sóm lajaq¨am comse| ja≠ la seketsx ~ mse| ôlåqam so‹ b¨ot écqfiolem Õlπm sats¨. On the letters of Epicurus as a model for Seneca see Inwood (2007b), 142–48. 4. See Allegri (1981), 23–24 on faustum et felicem echoing an augural formula. 5. For the banishment of Caesennius Maximus (evidently the same person as Caesonius Maximus) soon after Seneca’s death see Tac. Ann. 15.71.5. 6. If Maximus went into “exile” with Seneca, there are two possibilities: (1) Seneca’s banishment to Corsica; (2) precisely the retreat referred to in Ep. 87. On the possibility of friendship without exile, see Galán Vioque (2002), 283; Griffin (1992), 62 n. 7. 7. Galán Vioque (2002), 286 plausibly suggests a reference to S, the initial letter of the salutatio formula. 8. On these lost letters see Lausberg (1989), 1954; Vottero (1998), 15; Cugusi (1983), 195. Their existence is hypothetical: some have understood Martial to be referring to his own mentions of Maximus; see Galán Vioque (2002), 286.

death in epistolary time

149

appeal to the reader’s sense of pleasure in witnessing an epistolary friendship conducted over many pages and on many different occasions, viewing it as a standard against which to measure later long-term friendships. Martial’s sketch of the Maximus letters offers a useful external view of Roman readers’ impressions of reading a serial Senecan text. But the internal features that correspond to such impressions, including Seneca’s epistolary preoccupation with death, can be more fully discerned through looking further at the Lucilius letters.9

The Serial World of the Epistulae Morales We lack details about the degree of the letters’ fictionality and the form in which they first circulated.10 Were the first dozen letters (book 1), or perhaps some bigger cluster, published first and then added to? Whatever the answer, we can assume that Roman readers experienced the correspondence as an unfolding portrait of Seneca and Lucilius’ friendship, as letter follows letter and book follows book. We cannot say of Seneca’s letters what Cornelius Nepos asserts of the letters sent by Cicero to Atticus, namely that “whoever reads them would not have much [further] need for a connected history of those times (historiam contextam eorum temporum)” (Att. 16.3). Scholars are in basic agreement in distributing Seneca’s surviving 124 letters (in twenty books) between his withdrawal in 62 (or 63) and late 64.11 As Giancarlo Mazzoli observes, the end point of the series sometime after the lost twenty-second book quoted by Aulus Gellius (NA 12.2.3) may have come with Seneca’s death itself (1989, 1850). Yet the dates have been deduced in spite of the letters, since Seneca only occasionally makes reference to changes in the seasons and just once refers to an identifiable historical event, the fire of Lyons (August 64; Ep. 91). There are, certainly, general correspondences between themes of the letters and the portrayal of Seneca’s withdrawal and death in books 14 and 15 of Tacitus’ Annals12—for example, between Seneca and Maximus’ diet of figs (Ep. 87.2–3) and Tacitus’ description of the diet of “wild fruits” (agrestibus pomis, Ann. 15.45.3) by which Seneca supposedly escaped Nero’s poisoning attempt. But such resonances may simply 9. On Seneca’s letters in general see Inwood (2007a); Henderson (2004); M. Wilson (2001), (1987); Schönegg (1999); Hachmann (1995); Cugusi (1983), 195–206; Russell (1974); Cancik (1967); Faider (1921), 251–63. Useful overviews of statistics and scholarship are given by Lana (1991); Mazzoli (1989). On their place within ancient epistolography see Trapp (2003), 25–26; Maurach (1970), 181–95. 10. For fictionality see Griffin (1992), 416–19; Abel (1981), esp. 473–77. For the view that the letters are polished editions of genuine letters, see Lana (1991), 261; Cugusi (1983), 202. The division into books is ancient (cf. Gell. NA 12.2.2–13; with Cugusi 195, 200), but the bifurcation into Epp. 1–88 and 89–124 is medieval; cf. Reynolds (1965), 17. As Inwood (2007b), 134 notes, the likely loss of letters between 88 and 89 leaves the correspondence “maimed.” 11. See Mazzoli (1989), 1850–53. Griffin (1992), 353 opts for the short chronology beginning in 63. 12. See esp. Schönegg (1999), 25–26, with n. 30; 27, with n. 35; Abel (1985), 694–98.

150

seneca the author

reflect Tacitus’ own attempt to characterize Seneca in accord with his epistolary image. And this is an image defined precisely by a turning away from the historical world: as Marisa Squillante puts it, the letters define their own “closed universe” (2003, 170–71). What experience, then, is the reader drawn into? One in which, among other things, Seneca strives (1) to redefine epistolography, (2) to emplot the end stages of his own career, and (3) to meditate on death.

Redefining Epistolography The term epistulae morales is probably Seneca’s.13 The closest that he comes to defining this project is when he responds to Lucilius’ demand for “more frequent letters” ( frequentiores epistulas, Ep. 118.1). Though he agrees to the demand, he insists on the following: “I will not do what Cicero, the most eloquent of men, orders Atticus to do: that even “if he has nothing, he should write whatever comes to his lips” [= Att. 1.12.4]. I can never run out of things to write, and so I can pass by the things that fill Cicero’s letters—who is having trouble as a candidate, . . . how harsh Caecilius is as a money-lender. . . . It is enough to deal with one’s own troubles without dealing with someone else’s, and to scrutinize oneself (sua satius est mala quam aliena tractare, se excutere) . . .” (118.1–2).14 Turning away from Ciceronian bulletins on commerce and politics, Seneca aligns his letters exclusively with the philosophic life. Within the implied tripartite model of “lives,” epistulae morales are “theoretic,” associated with the life of detached spectation and self-scrutiny rather than with the lives of striving for money or honor.15 For Seneca, frequent letters can have pedagogical potential. He applauds an earlier request from Lucilius: “You rightly demand that we make the traffic of letters between us more frequent. Conversation is highly beneficial, because it makes inroads on the mind bit by bit” (merito exigis ut inter nos epistularum commercium frequentemus. plurimum proficit sermo, quia minutatim inrepit animo, Ep. 38.1).16 Sermo, Seneca explains in this briefest of letters, is more personal and informal than prepared disputation, and more effective.17 Besides, an adviser’s words “should be sprinkled around like seeds” (seminis modo spargenda sunt, §2), because reason (ratio) “is not widely evident if you look: it grows with the work” (non late patet, si aspicias: in opere crescit, §2).18 The

13. See Cugusi (1983), 196, citing the early testimony in Gell. NA praef.9, 12.2.3. 14. On this passage see Inwood (2007a), 307–9, with useful explication of Cic. Att. 1.12, 1.13; Ker (2006), 35–36; Thraede (1970), 65–68. On Cicero as an “antimodello” for Seneca’s letters see Lana (1991), 260–61; Cugusi (1983), 201–5. See also Brev. 4–6 criticizing the letters of Cicero and others. On the circulation and “publication” of Att., see Beard (2002), 116–19; Setaioli (1970). 15. For the tripartite model of b¨oi see Cic. Tusc. 5.3.9; Iambl. VP 58–59. But Inwood (2007a), 309 is skeptical. 16. For commentary see Trapp (2003), 249–51; discussion in Schönegg (1999), 53–59. 17. Cf. Ep. 75.1 on sermo inlaboratus et facilis. Sermo is understood primarily in terms of dialogue by Inwood (2007b), 147–48. 18. Schönegg (1999), 53–56 compares Stoic rpeqlasijo≠ kæcoi.

death in epistolary time

151

last phrase here evokes the growth of both the serial text and Lucilius himself, to whom Seneca had earlier written these evocative words: “I claim you for myself. You are my work” (adsero te mihi; meum opus es, 34.2). Seneca, however, has also recently encouraged Lucilius to move away from the Epicurean flosculi (“plucked flowers”) that he had included as closural quotations in letters 1–29, toward the totus contextus (“broad fabric”) of Stoic writers, figuring this contrast as tree versus forest and single limb versus body (Ep. 33.1–6).19 If his correspondence does not, like Cicero’s, offer a historia contexta of its times, Seneca still incorporates individual letters into multiple overlapping patterns and sequences, as any Latin author would, to give an organic structure to the collection as a whole—even if its limbs have their own distinct areas of focus.20 At various moments in the letters, Seneca charts the basic elements of Lucilius’ education (book 1 = Epp. 1–12), hones the concept of bona mens (books 3–6 = Epp. 23.1–56.6, passim), tours the moral landscape of Campania (Epp. 49–87, passim), trains Lucilius in the proper use of literary texts, and engages with specific authors such as Epicurus, Virgil, Horace, and Petronius.21 Lucilius, for his part, tends to ask the right questions at the right time, exhibiting signs of progress or regression. Seneca’s contextus is defined by the consistency of his responses to events that are themselves inconsistent or accidental.22 There is no predicting the “situational openings” with which some of the letters begin:23 Seneca has spoken with an easily embarrassed young friend of Lucilius (11.1), or has swum ashore prematurely after feeling seasick during a brief voyage from Naples to Puteoli (53.1–4). What is predictable is that after a situational opening Seneca will turn not to another topic but instead to a moral theme that is a metaphorical version of the original situation, as Catharine Edwards has observed (1997, 24, 29).24 Mikhail Bakhtin saw in Seneca’s letters (as contrasted with Cicero’s) the intensely private and internalized chronotope of “Stoic autobiography” (1981, 145). The development of each situational opening bears this out: Seneca harnesses the notion of embarrassment (verecundia) as a basis for revering (vereri) one’s internalized moral guardian (11.1, 9), or moves from describing the sensation of seasickness (nausia) to a discussion of moral illnesses (morbi) and how to cure them (53.3, 7). Senecan seriality is defined less by worldly narratives than by a repeated pattern of introversion toward the path of philosophical progress. 19. On the opposition see Graver (1998), 624–29. 20. See Hachmann (1995), 1–18; Maurach (1970), 17–24; Cancik (1967), 138–51. 21. On Seneca’s engagement with the poets see Mazzoli (1970), Tarrant (2006); on Horace in particular, Berthet (1979); on the Georgics, Henderson (2004), 50–52; on responses to Petronius, Sullivan (1985b). 22. See Inwood (2005), 341–47; M. Wilson (2001), 167. Still useful is Misch (1951), 417–35. 23. See Mazzoli (1991), who classifies the openings as “effetti di cornice” and emphasizes their “autoironic” aspects (supplemented in Mazzoli 2005, 130–32); Minarini (1997), 269 n. 17; Russell (1974), 79–84. 24. See Ep. 55.3: ex consuetudine tamen mea circumspicere coepi an aliquid illic invenirem quod mihi posset bono esse; also Ep. 62.1, with Cancik (1967), 90.

152

seneca the author

Emplotting senectus Seneca also uses the epistolary series to play out the end stages of his life and the beginnings of a posthumous identity. “Wherever I turn,” he writes, “I see signs of my old age” (quocumque me verti, argumenta senectutis meae video, 12.1). “Just now,” he soon announces, “I was saying to you that I have old age in my view, but now I fear that I may have left old age behind me” (modo dicebam tibi in conspectu esse me senectutis: iam vereor ne senectutem post me reliquerim, 26.1).25 This intensification of senectus is accompanied by many of the features to be expected in an author’s late style, such as a more self-consciously lyrical first-person voice, a retrospective vista on one’s own life, and pretensions to writing a “summa”—as well as a sense that it is now too late to begin anything new.26 Politically, Seneca scripts a cautious withdrawal from Nero: “The wise man . . . avoids power that is potentially harmful, while making sure that he is not obvious in avoiding it (ne vitare videatur). For part of being free from care involves not seeking this: when someone flees something he condemns it (quae quis fugit damnat)” (Ep. 14.8). In some instances Seneca adopts the position of an independent philosophical witness to Neronian crises—even if Nero (and, for the most part, Rome itself ) is unmentioned throughout.27 Seneca closely associates his senectus with a radical shift away from other epistolary rhythms. In the situational opening of letter 77, he describes the scene at Puteoli when the latest fleet of ships from Alexandria (Alexandrinae naves) arrived in the bay of Naples, causing great excitement for those awaiting goods or news from Egypt (77.1–3). But, he explains, “amid everyone’s scurrying and hurrying to the shore I felt great pleasure from my sluggishness, because in getting ready to receive my people’s letters I did not hurry to find out what the situation was with my things there, or what they brought (epistulas meorum accepturus non properavi scire quis illic esset rerum mearum status). For some time I have had nothing to lose or gain (olim iam nec perit quicquam mihi nec adquiritur)” (§3).28 With “my things” (rerum mearum) Seneca probably refers to the many properties that we know (from papyri) he owned in Egypt, but either lost or gave away after his estrangement from Nero.29 Seneca presents his shift of interests as especially appropriate to this stage in his life: “Even if I were not old, I should have felt this, but now all the more so: however little I had, I would still have more road-toll than road (plus iam mihi superesset viatici quam viae). After all, we have set out upon that road which it is not necessary to follow to the end 25. On a possible correlation with senectus in the technical sense (the 63rd year) see Griffin (1992), 36. 26. For the status of the letters as a final artwork see Schönegg (1999), esp. 41–44; see also Ker (2006), 25–30. 27. For “oppositional” notes see Veyne (2003), 163–65. Political navigation and survival strategies are discussed by Gowing (2005), 96–97; Reydams-Schils (2005), 86. Champlin (2003), 127–29 reads Ep. 115.12–13 as criticism of Nero’s “new solar ideology.” 28. The translation of the final sentence is taken from Summers (1910), 255. 29. See Browne (1968), 18–19, adducing a papyrus dated Oct. 62 CE that reflects dispossession.

death in epistolary time

153

(eam viam simus ingressi quam peragere non est necesse)” (§3). There is, I suggest, an implied contrast here not just between materialism and moralism but also between the two epistolary economies that are implied by each. In Seneca’s end-stage epistolarity multiple roles are played by Lucilius.30 This imperial procurator in Sicily mediates Seneca’s relationship with his audience, allowing him to address spiritual advice to someone both far away and ensconced in worldly responsibilities.31 Addressing Lucilius may also allow Seneca to revisit his earlier didactic dealings with the recently deceased friend Annaeus Serenus and, as Yun Lee Too has suggested, the now recalcitrant Nero (1994, 213). The focus on Lucilius also enhances Seneca’s recognition of his own age. If the name “Lucilius” hints at a diminutive status compared with Lucius Annaeus Seneca, as a iuvenis still immersed in public life, Lucilius’ role is rendered more transparent by his cognomen “Iunior” (cf. NQ 3.1.1; 4a.praef.9).32 In keeping with this image, Seneca uses an infantilizing metaphor to encourage Lucilius to look forward to the time when he will assume philosophy’s toga virilis (Ep. 4.2). As a proxy figure, however, Lucilius sometimes has the power to confer a vicarious rejuvenation on Seneca, who exclaims, “I grow, I rejoice, and I shake off my old age and grow warm again (cresco et exulto et discussa senectute recalesco) every time I realize from what you do and what you write how much you have surpassed—not the pack, for you have long since left them behind, but yourself” (Ep. 34.1). Seneca’s sketch of Lucilius’ life course and its luminous qualities sometimes displays remarkable similarities to his own career (Ep. 19.3–4): You were thrust into the limelight by the force of your mind, the elegance of your writings, and your famous and noble friendships (in medium te protulit ingenii vigor, scriptorum elegantia, clarae et nobiles amicitiae). Fame has already overtaken you (iam notitia te invasit). However deeply you bury yourself at the ends of the earth and hide yourself away, your earlier life will still show you off. There is no way you can be in the shadows. Wherever you flee, much of your earlier light will follow (sequetur quocumque fugeris multum pristinae lucis). Seneca’s identification with Lucilius, enhanced by common interests in such fields as natural science and poetry,33 is also accompanied by intertwined memories, so that that when Seneca visits Lucilius’ home city of Pompeii, he 30. On Lucilius see L. Delatte (1935); also Henderson (2004), 31–32; Griffin (1992), esp. 91, 347–53; Russell (1974), 75. Further symbolism of Lucilius is considered by Schönegg (1999), 91–98. 31. See R. Coleman (1974), 288. On the role of the spiritual guide in ancient philosophy see I. Hadot (1986) and esp. (1969) on Seneca’s letters. 32. The diminutive “Lucilius” is noted by Habinek (2005), 277 n. 71 (crediting Anthony Corbeill); cf. Berno (2006), 14. Delpeyroux (2002), 208 describes Lucilius as an alter ego twenty years younger. But his age is still mysterious: see Mazzoli (1989), 1853–55. 33. Lucilius’ poetry is discussed by Mazzoli (1970), 258–64, including possible associations with Lucilius the satirist; cf. Henderson (2004), 42.

154

seneca the author

remarks, “I was drawn back into a view of my youth” (in conspectum adulescentiae meae reductus sum, 70.1; cf. 49.1–4). If the letters chart an intensification of senectus, they are also unique among Seneca’s works in negotiating a relationship with posterity (posteri): “I concealed myself and closed my doors so that I could be more useful to a greater number (ut prodesse pluribus possem). . . . I have withdrawn not only from people but from things, especially my things. I am doing the work of posterity (posterorum negotium ago). . . . I show to others the right path, which I have learned too late and exhausted by error (rectum iter, quod sero cognovi et lassus errando, aliis monstro)” (Ep. 8.1–2).34 The implicit sense of obligation generated here is capitalized on in letter 21, where Seneca seeks to divert Lucilius from the “dazzle” (fulgor) of public life to the fame he can acquire through his “studies” (studia). Epicurus had promised to Idomeneus, “My letters will make you more well known than all of those things which you revere and for which you are revered” (“notiorem te epistulae meae facient quam omnia ista quae colis et propter quae coleris,” Ep. 21.3 = fr. 132 Use.), and “Cicero’s letters do not allow the name of Atticus to perish. . . . Though associated with such great names, [Atticus] would have disappeared from people’s lips if Cicero had not taken him to himself ” (nomen Attici perire Ciceronis epistulae non sinunt. . . . inter tam magna nomina taceretur nisi <sibi> Cicero illum adplicuisset, §4). With these analogies in mind, Seneca encourages Lucilius to see the letters as his ticket to future fame (§5):35 profunda super nos altitudo temporis veniet, pauca ingenia caput exerent et in idem quandoque silentium abitura oblivioni resistent ac se diu vindicabunt. quod Epicurus amico suo potuit promittere, hoc tibi promitto, Lucili: habebo apud posteros gratiam, possum mecum duratura nomina educere. A profound depth of time will come over us. Just a few authors will raise their heads and, though they will eventually disappear into the same silence, they will put up a fight against oblivion and will for a long time assert themselves. What Epicurus was able to promise to his friend, I promise to you, Lucilius: I will enjoy the gratitude of posterity, I can bring out with me names that will endure. He formalizes the promise through quoting Virgil’s promise to the freshly dead Nisus and Euryalus: “Fortunate pair! If my poetry has any sway, no day will ever remove you from the memory of eternity” ( fortunati ambo! si quid mea carmina possunt, / nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo), for as long

34. On posteri see Lana (1991), 268–71; on Ep. 8, Ker (2004), 229–32. 35. For the passage’s associations see Schönegg (1999), 171–78. Martial (7.44.7–10) may borrow from the language of Ep. 21 when characterizing the fame of Seneca and Maximus.

death in epistolary time

155

as the house of Aeneas inhabits the unmovable rock of the Capitolium and the Roman father holds power” (§5 = Aen. 9.446–49). The Virgil quotation establishes a third-person, posthumous perspective on Seneca and Lucilius, validated by the teleology of the gens Iulia—albeit with the tragic overtones of Nisus and Euryalus’ curtailed mission.36 Seneca’s promise, however, self-consciously engages posteri as eavesdroppers, signaling that in reading Seneca’s letters they are acquiring a debt to the deceased author and his friend.

Death from Day One: The First Letter A third way in which Seneca exploits seriality, and a more specific instance both of his philosophical contextus and of his emplotment of his career’s end stage, comes with the serialized reflection on death and the paradox of “dying each day,” with which we will be concerned for the remainder of this chapter. This project is already under way in the first letter, which offers the reader an abrupt entry into the epistolary series:37 SENECA LVCILIO SVO SALVTEM. (1) ita fac, mi Lucili: vindica te tibi, et tempus quod adhuc aut auferebatur aut subripiebatur aut excidebat collige et serva. persuade tibi hoc sic esse ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. turpissima tamen est iactura quae per neglegentiam fit. et si volueris adtendere, magna pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, maxima nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.38 (2) quem mihi dabis qui aliquod pretium tempori ponat, qui diem aestimet, qui intellegat se cotidie mori? in hoc enim fallimur, quod mortem prospicimus: magna pars eius iam praeterît; quidquid aetatis retro est mors tenet. fac ergo, mi Lucili, quod facere te scribis, omnes horas conplectere; sic fiet ut minus ex crastino pendeas, si hodierno manum inieceris. (3) omnia, Lucili, aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est; in huius rei unius fugacis ac lubricae possessionem natura nos misit, ex qua expellit quicumque vult. et tanta stultitia mortalium est ut quae minima et vilissima sunt, certe reparabilia, inputari sibi cum inpetravere patiantur, nemo se iudicet 36. On the failure overtones see Henderson (2004), 31. A tricolon of philosopher (Epicurus), politician (Cicero), and poet (Virgil) is noted by Schönegg (1999), 175; the role of poetry as vehicle of historical memory, by Gowing (2005), 71–72. See also Mazzoli (1970), 227–28. 37. For commentary see Scarpat (1975), 25–57. For analysis, see D. Gagliardi (1998), 51–68; Blänsdorf (1991), 83–87; Blänsdorf and Breckel (1983), 8, 18–24; von Albrecht (1989), 112–24; Maurach (1970), 25–29; Guillemin (1957), 280–81, describing the letter as an “entire drama” conducted in metaphor. Its programmatic importance was asserted already in the Renaissance; see Panizza (1983). 38. The reading magna pars . . . maxima . . . tota vita is adopted by Reynolds, following Erasmus (1529); on earlier readings see Panizza (1983), 42.

156

seneca the author quicquam debere qui tempus accepit, cum interim hoc unum est quod ne gratus quidem potest reddere. (4) interrogabis fortasse quid ego faciam qui tibi ista praecipio. fatebor ingenue: quod apud luxuriosum sed diligentem evenit, ratio mihi constat inpensae. non possum dicere nihil perdere, sed quid perdam et quare et quemadmodum dicam; causas paupertatis meae reddam. sed evenit mihi quod plerisque non suo vitio ad inopiam redactis: omnes ignoscunt, nemo succurrit. (5) quid ergo est? non puto pauperem cui quantulumcumque superest sat est; tu tamen malo serves tua, et bono tempore incipies. nam ut visum est maioribus nostris, “sera parsimonia in fundo est”; non enim tantum minimum in imo sed pessimum remanet. vale. Seneca to Lucilius, greetings. (1) Do this, my Lucilius. Reclaim possession of yourself for yourself, and whatever time was up till now taken away, was siphoned off, or fell away—gather it up and save it. Persuade yourself that this is just as I write: some times are torn from us, some are spirited away, others flow away. But the most disgraceful loss is that which comes from neglect. And if you wish to pay attention, a great part of our life glides away while we are doing something wrong, the greatest part while we are doing nothing, the whole of life while we are doing something other [than living]. (2) Who will you give me who puts a price on his time, who values the day, who understands that he dies each day? For we are deceived when we look ahead to death: a great part of it has already passed. Whatever of our life is behind us is held by death. So, my Lucilius, do what you write you are doing: embrace every hour. This way you will be made less dependent on tomorrow, if you throw your hand on today. (3) All things, Lucilius, are external: only time is ours. This is the sole thing, slippery and fleeting, that Nature has put us in possession of, and anyone who wants to can dispossess us of it. And the stupidity of mortal human beings is that when they have acquired the smallest and most worthless of things, certainly things that can be gotten back, they allow these to be charged to their account, whereas no one judges that he owes something when he has received time, when in fact this is the one thing that not even a grateful person can actually pay back. (4) You will ask, perhaps, what I do—I who give you this advice. I will frankly confess that, as happens in the case of someone who is extravagant but careful, I have a balanced account of my expenditure. I can’t say that I don’t lose anything, but I can tell what I lose and why and how: I can [or will] give the reasons for my poverty. But I face what is faced by most who are reduced to poverty by a fault not their own: everyone forgives, no one comes to help. (5) What conclusion to draw?

death in epistolary time

157

I do not think that someone is poor if what is left is enough, no matter how little. But in your case, I would prefer that you preserve what is yours, and you will be beginning [or do begin] in good time. For as our ancestors saw it, “Economy at the bottom is too late.” After all, not only the smallest amount is left at the bottom, but the worst. Farewell. An ongoing cycle of advising and practicing is already in progress. The first words, ita fac (“Do this”),39 refer forward to the advice that follows, but also backward to what Lucilius had written in a previous letter. The same cycle recurs later in the letter with “Do what you write you are doing: embrace every hour” (§2), which indicates that the advice is not new, but a reinforcement. In letter 2 also, which begins by praising Lucilius’ avoidance of disruptive travel (2.1), Seneca will assert that reiteration is necessary for ensuring that Lucilius is consistent over time and will apply it to every instance of “travel,” including his itineraries in reading (2.2)—a goal that is clearly served by Seneca’s own epistolary cycle of readings, which are thus an ideal use of the reader’s time.40 In letter 1 the cycle of advising and practicing is also characterized in terms of a cycle of exchangeable relationships, shifting between Seneca advising Lucilius and Lucilius advising himself : “Persuade yourself that this is just as I write” (1.1). In subsequent letters these relationships will be variously transformed into the following: Lucilius advising Seneca reciprocally (e.g., 6.6, 34.2), Seneca advising Seneca (27.1), Seneca advising posteri (8.6), and Seneca reminding Lucilius of something that Lucilius had written in his own poetry (8.10, 24.21). The repetitions and reconfigurations will define the letters’ day-to-day pedagogical routine. Seneca’s first piece of advice for Lucilius is vindica te tibi, and the letters themselves are to be an instrument for enabling his vindicatio of himself by himself for himself. As a term in Roman law, vindicare denotes an owner’s reclaiming of an object that he owns but that is in another’s possession; in broader usage it is also applied to various acts of liberation, protection, and revenge.41 Seneca puts many of these aspects to work both here and elsewhere.42 Here a proliferation in Seneca’s use of the term in letters 1–33, with variations in its direct object, will help tie together multiple components of the epistolary transaction:43 39. In ita fac Traina (1974), §§1.3, 2.12.4 sees Seneca deploying a quasi-oracular authority. 40. On conflations of spatial and reading itineraries see Garbarino (1996), 271–72, 284–85. Maurach (1970), 32 suggests that Epp. 1 and 2 together form a proem. 41. The archaic juridical procedure (cf. Gai. Inst. 4.16) is discussed by Crook (1967) 144–45; Gernet (1981). Phrases such as libertatis vindex and vindicare in libertatem had a well-worn political history; see Wirszubski (1968), 100–6. 42. On Seneca’s use of vindicare see Maso (1999), 102, 107–23: it is a mechanism for “distancing from others and construction of one’s own personality” (112); also von Albrecht (1989), 120; Ingrosso (1988), 111; Blänsdorf and Breckel (1983), 19, 57 n. 27; Traina (1974), §1.3. Compare the role of “vendetta” in Seneca’s revenge tragedies, in Guastella (2001), 9–30. 43. For other instances of vindicare see Epp. 45.4; 65.1; 88.24; 97.14; 113.23; also the significant instance at Brev. 2.4: nemo se sibi vindicat. Metaphors from the “law and courts” are listed by C. S. Smith (1910), 137–43.

158

seneca the author None of my days disappears in leisure. I reclaim part of the nights for my studies (partem noctium studiis vindico). (8.1) You can claim back your peace and quiet (quietem potes vindicare) without incurring anyone’s hatred, without any grief or anxiety in your mind. (19.4) Just a few authors . . . will put up a fight against oblivion and will for a long time assert themselves (se diu vindicabunt). (21.5) We [Stoics] are not under a king: each takes possession of himself for himself (sibi quisque se vindicat). (33.4)

These passages together suggest a sense of codependency between the distinct moments at which, respectively, Seneca writes, Lucilius withdraws, Seneca (and with him Lucilius) lives on in memory, and Lucilius takes on his own authoritative philosophical voice. In addition to this programmatic use of vindicare, the emphatic reflexivity of vindica te tibi signals the continuing importance of the language of self-examination and self-care that was prominent already in Seneca’s earlier works and that caught the attention of Foucault.44 In the present configuration at Ep. 1.1, te would seem to denote the self that has hitherto been alienated through time loss but is potentially recoverable. The first letter is more specifically concerned with changing Lucilius’ relationship to time. The sequence vindica te tibi et tempus . . . momentarily gives the impression that time is itself an object of vindica, until tempus becomes more specifically the object of . . . collige et serva (“gather up and save,” §1).45 Seneca next conveys the urgency of the task through rhetorically enacting Lucilius’ loss of time. Lucilius reads, first, that “whatever time was up till now taken away, was siphoned off, or fell away” (quod adhuc aut auferebatur aut subripiebatur aut excidebat), and then, that “some times are torn from us, some are spirited away, others flow away” (quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt §1). Each of these tricola iconically sketches the consumption of time, and the anticlimactic third member within each (excidebat; effluunt) is used to home in on the real problem: not the violence of others, but the neglectful self.46 This is Seneca’s characteristically “subjective” approach, reifying time within rhetoric and presenting time experience and time use (or abuse) from the perspective of the person embedded in a finite human life span.47 Here the notion of time’s loss (iactura, 44. On this topic see Bartsch (2006), 191–208, 230–55; Ker (forthcoming a). 45. Here self-possession comes through time-possession, but the order is reversed at Ep. 71.36: id agamus ut nostrum omne tempus sit; non erit autem, nisi prius nos nostri esse coeperimus. The relationship between the two passages is described as “dialectical” by Maurach (1970), 27; cf. Blänsdorf and Breckel (1983), 20. 46. On conversion through rhetoric here, see von Albrecht (1989), 120–22. For finer analysis of the compound verbs and tricola, see Panizza (1983), 41. Berthet (1979), 940 hears an echo of Hor. C 2.14.1–2: eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, / labuntur anni. 47. My discussion of time in Seneca, both in the letters and in Brev., draws on the recent flourishing of scholarship on the topic. For a selection see Viparelli (2000); D. Gagliardi (1998); Armisen-Marchetti (1995); Neumeister (1995). See further Ker (2002), ch. 1.

death in epistolary time

159

§1) ushers in Seneca’s extensive portrayal of time in economic terms emphasizing its special value: its possession by each of us as a kind of patrimony, its easy alienation by others, its unidirectionality and thus nonfungibility as contrasted with other commodities, and so on.48 This economics of time had already been characterized in the De brevitate vitae, where the common complaint that human life is too brief was traced back to the fact that people are “most profligate in that thing [that is, time] for which alone it is honorable to be greedy” ( profusissimi in eo cuius unius honesta avaritia est, Brev. 3.1).49 Now, however, Seneca will explore notions of time and value through the structure of his epistolary economy. At the exact center of the letter is the gnomic pronouncement, “All things, Lucilius, are external: only time is ours” (omnia, Lucili, aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est, §3). The formulas used for describing time here are analogous to the Stoic (and Senecan) characterization of moral choice as the only thing that is “in our power” or “one’s own” (in potestate nostra / suum; éfi\ ôlπm /oÆjeπom), and to the equally Stoic (and Senecan) characterization of virtue as a uniquely valuable and inalienable possession.50 It is not a coincidence that within Stoic physics, a similar formula captures the unique “belonging” (Õpqveim) of present time, whereas the past and future parts of time do not “belong.”51 There is, then, an implicit but strongly motivated connection between Lucilius’ recognition of time’s value and his recognition of Stoic value distinctions more generally. The way he is urged to use time now is a model of how he will soon need to regard virtue—the only difference being that time is alienable in a way that virtue will not be. There is a carefully controlled tension in Seneca’s approach to time here that is central to the temporality of the letters. Although encouraging Lucilius to repossess a maximum of time to serve as a pedagogical resource (life is short, the art of philosophy long),52 he also declares toward the end of the letter, “I do not think that someone is poor if what is left is enough, no matter how little (quantulumcumque)” (1.5). From the latter perspective a wise user’s ability to endow time with a certain quality is more valuable than its quantity, however small or great.53 Seneca had already developed this concept in the De brevitate 48. On Seneca’s economic imagery for time see Armisen-Marchetti (1995), 552–53. 49. Time lacks this tangibility in the usual Stoic analysis; cf. Ep. 58.22: sextum genus <est> eorum quae quasi sunt, tamquam inane, tamquam tempus. On its concretization, see Armisen-Marchetti (1995), 546–49. 50. E.g., Ep. 71.4: unum bonum est quod honestum est, cetera falsa et adulterina bona sunt; Const. 5.5: unius . . . in possessione virtutis est, ex qua depelli numquam potest, ceteris precario utitur. On the analogy between virtue and time here, see Viparelli (2000), 19–20; Sangalli (1988), 57–58. 51. Cf. SVF 2.509 (= Stob. 1.106, 5–23; Long and Sedley 1987, 51B): læmom Õpqveim søm émersËsa, attributed to Chrysippus (cf. SVF 2.518). On the term Õpqveim see Schofield (1986), 357–58; Pesce (1992), 61–62. On Stoic theories of time see also Viparelli (2000), 157–82; Goldschmidt (1969). But the Stoics are not unique in privileging the present (cf. P. Hadot 1995, 217–37), and Seneca draws from the Epicurean psychology of time; see D. Gagliardi (1998), 95–115. 52. Cf. Ot. 5.7: ad haec quaerenda natus, aestima quam non multum acceperit temporis, etiam si illud totum sibi vindicat. 53. See Görler (1996), 160–62; Armisen-Marchetti (1995), 566; Neumeister (1995), 74 n. 18, adding sources outside Seneca.

160

seneca the author

vitae, countering the supposed brevity of life with an image of the sage’s ability to expand even brief spans of time through the use of ratio (cf. Brev. 6.4: ratio dilatat) and to master the past, present, and future of his own life, and of eternity more broadly, through “gathering of all times into one” (omnium temporum in unum conlatio, Brev. 15.5).54 This ideal corresponds in part to the Stoic analysis of the wise man’s relationship to time, which is characterized by “opportuneness” (opportunitas / eÃjaiq¨a)—a notion of action, or even a state of the reasoning faculty without action, whose value does not depend on its extension in time.55 Indeed, although one Stoic analysis of time, mentioned above, is that “only the present belongs,” in fact the present is always, in Malcolm Schofield’s term, “retrenchable” (1986, 340), and a stricter analysis holds that “no time is wholly present”; time itself (even present time) is ultimately classified as one of the indifferents.56 Hence temporal extension cannot be guaranteed even to the wise man. As stated above, however, the wise man has no need for such a guarantee, and Seneca will reiterate the idea: “The happy life does not become more happy by being made longer” ([sc. vita beata] beatior non fit si longior, 32.3); the wise man “always thinks about the quality, not the quantity, of his life” (cogitat semper qualis vita, non quanta sit, 70.5); and “virtuous things do not grow with time” (tempore honesta non crescere, 78.27).57 Yet this focus on qualitative time does not simply displace Seneca’s initial emphasis on Lucilius’ need for a larger quantity of time to serve as a pedagogical resource. Rather, the letters will give Seneca a chance to explore both aspects of time, pursuing long-term goals through the epistolary series at the same time as he adopts postures of self-sufficiency within the present time of a single letter. In his focus on time in letter 1, Seneca privileges our nature as mortal beings (cf. mortalium, 1.3), and especially manifestations of death’s finality during our life. In his rhetorical enactments of time-loss, he reorients Lucilius by zeroing in on each single day and discovering death there: “Who will you give me . . . who understands that he dies each day?” (qui intellegat se cotidie mori, §2).58 His first attempt at explicating the phrase cotidie mori involves changing where death is looked for: we are wrong to “look ahead” (prospicimus), because “whatever of our life is behind us (retro est) is held by death” (§2). In the De brevitate vitae Seneca had sometimes made the idea of the past’s irretrievability more positive, finding security in the fact that actions or pleasures in our past are an inalienable possession and remain available through mental recollection 54. Such uses of ratio are a traditional feature distinguishing humans from animals; cf. Sen. Ep. 124.16– 17; Cic. Off. 1.11, with Neumeister (1995), 67–68; Goldschmidt (1969), 47–49. 55. On opportunitas/eÃjaiq¨a see SVF 3.54 with Pesce (1992), 62–64; Blänsdorf (1983), 13–18. 56. Cf. SVF 2.509 (= Stob. 1.106, 5–23 = Long and Sedley 1987, 51B): oÃde≠| ≈kx| ém¨rsasai vqæmo|, attributed to Chrysippus; cf. SVF 2.517, 519. Armisen-Marchetti (1995), 561–62 sees this alluded to at Brev. 10.6: praesens tempus brevissimum est, adeo quidem ut quibusdam nullum videatur. 57. Cf. Chrysippus in SVF 3.54 (= Plut. Comm. not. 8, 1061f ): cahøm ¡ vqæmo| oÃj a–nei pqorcimælemo|. 58. The phrase cotidie mori is clearly “meant to startle,” observes Hutchinson (1993), 277, n. 38; cf. Grimal (1968), 93.

death in epistolary time

161

(Brev. 10.2–4).59 Here in the letters the past slips away irresistibly into oblivion and death. Yet this notion of time’s mortality does not exhaust the potential associations of cotidie mori, especially because the singularity inherent in mori is combined with the repetitive notion of cotidie. As we will see below, Seneca sets the stage for the serial correspondence to work out the meaning of cotidie mori as both a singular and a serial notion, at the level of conceptual interpretation and in the to-and-fro of the correspondence. The reader of letter 1 is led to expect that the letters themselves will offer an account of the way in which Seneca spends his own time. Although he presents himself as an imperfect example, Seneca asserts, “I have a balanced account of my expenditure (ratio mihi constat impensae). I can’t say that I don’t lose anything, but I can [or will] tell what I lose and why and how: I can give the reasons for my poverty” (1.4). Seneca’s willingness to describe his uses of time will occasionally be illustrated in the letters themselves. The emphasis on a ratio impensae that records the time devoted to self-care is familiar already from the De brevitate vitae, where Paulinus was urged to turn his attention away from the ratio publici frumenti (“account of the public grain supply”), which was his concern as prefect of the grain supply, toward a ratio vitae suae (“account of his own life,” Brev. 18.3). In the letters, the day-to-day practice of a ratio impensae will be played out most explicitly in the economic terminology Seneca uses for registering his daily payments of wisdom to Lucilius in letters 1–29, and in the notion of preparing for death through balancing his account with life.60 In the last lines of letter 1 we see Lucilius being bid good-bye in a closural formula that immediately illustrates the letters’ economic principles: “For as our ancestors saw it, ‘Economy at the bottom is too late (sera parsimonia in fundo est).’ After all, not only the smallest amount is left at the bottom, but the worst. Farewell” (1.5). The saying derives ultimately from Hesiod’s Works and Days (deikó d\ ém pthlåmi fieid›, Op. 369). For Seneca, the implied storage vessel is a metaphor for thinking about time, and allows him to suggest both the poor quantity (minimum) and the poor quality (pessimum) of time at the “bottom.”61 For the reader of letter 1 trying to conceptualize what the letters are about, the storage-vessel image is evocative for the totality of Lucilius’ time as it will be measured out both by the correspondence and by the space of the single letter. The reader, then, is shown Lucilius being primed with basic advice that will be more fully fleshed out, and qualified, as letter follows letter. In particular, the letter’s central message, that we “die each day” (cotidie mori), is to be elaborated along two distinct axes of the serial text.

59. An Epicurean theme; see Armisen-Marchetti (1995), 549; Bertini Malgarini (1983–84), 87–89. 60. There may also be an anti-Neronian resonance, given Suet. Ner. 30 (reporting an opinion of Nero): sordidos ac deparcos esse quibus impensarum ratio constaret. See Mantovanelli (2003), 132–33. 61. For comparison and contrast with Hesiod see Longo (2000), 134–35. See also Ep. 108.26, comparing life time to the contents of an amphora.

162

seneca the author

First Axis: Momentum and Multiplicity As the collection begins to grow, Seneca cultivates a sense of momentum through his repetition and elaboration of certain themes and, more broadly, exploits the multiplication of topics. These aspects have their own respective implications for the central focus on “dying each day.”

Momentum The rhythm of the letters keeps pace with Lucilius’ philosophical regimen as a proficiens (“progressing student”) whose principal goal is to become cotidie melior (“better each day,” Ep. 5.1; cf. 50.1).62 In one letter Seneca celebrates the fact that, as he says to Lucilius, “You have surpassed yourself ” (cf. te ipse . . . superieceris, 34.1). But he is less concerned with such sudden bursts than with the goal of consistency (aequabilitas, constantia, concordia) from one day to the next: “It does not matter what one says but what one feels, nor does it matter what one feels on one day (uno die), but what one feels repeatedly (adsidue)” (9.22). This amounts to a cultivation of wisdom, the only state of mind characterized by total rational consistency. But even if wisdom itself recedes from his grasp, Lucilius must still display as much consistency as possible as he prepares for the tests of character that lie in the future—above all, the test that is death. After all, as we have seen before, “wherever you cease, so long as you cease well, [life] is whole” (ubicumque desines, si bene desines, tota est, 77.4). The path that Seneca sketches out for Lucilius leads ultimately to the perfection of wisdom but, if not, at least to making life “whole” through a good death. Daily letters are not simply a monitoring device: they also serve as the medium by which cotidiana meditatio (“daily training/rehearsal”) can be conducted.63 The Roman concern with cotidiana meditatio or exerci(ta)tio is seen in military, rhetorical, and other forms of training. Seneca’s conception of meditatio is partly encapsulated in the figura etymologica he appeals to in the De vita beata, saying that “the wise man practices for poverty precisely when he stands in the middle of wealth” (sapiens tunc maxime paupertatem meditatur cum in mediis divitiis constitit, VB 26.1).64 But the repetitive aspect of meditatio, and its associations with the theater, look to a gradual progression from theory to practice, from rehearsal to performance, as we saw in our discussion of Seneca’s theater of Stoic ethics in the previous chapter. Thus, Seneca begins letter 16 by asserting that “this obvious thing” (hoc quod liquet)—namely, the proposition that the blessed life can be accomplished only by the perfection of wisdom, but 62. On profectus in the letters see Delpeyroux (2002); Bellincioni (1978). 63. On meditatio see Newman (1989), esp. 1483–96 on Seneca. See also Bartsch (2006), esp. 192–94; Reydams-Schils (2005), 9–10; and Graver (1996), 147–62, on meditatio in the form of “therapeutic reading.” 64. Note also a familiar etymology based on mederi, discussed by Scarpat (2007), 94.

death in epistolary time

163

life can already be rendered “tolerable” if philosophy is merely begun—“must be reaffirmed and fixed deeper through daily training” ( firmandum et altius cotidiana meditatione figendum est, 16.1). Daily meditatio is essential, in this case, for turning a “good will” into a “good mind.” Although Seneca often seeks this result through repetition and variation within a single letter, the cotidiana meditatio is demonstrated more fully through the epistolary series. The daily meditatio is first and foremost a meditatio mortis.65 This, after all, is identified by Plato’s Socrates as the defining act of the philosopher (lekåsg hamsot)66—as Seneca recalled already at the beginning of his career (Marc. 23.2). His first mention of meditatio in the letters coincides with his first discussion of death, in letter 4: “Practice each day to be able to leave life with a calm mind” (hoc cotidie meditare, ut possis aequo animo vitam relinquere, Ep. 4.5). The ability “to depart with a calm mind” (aequo animo abire) is later characterized as “a major thing that needs to be learned over a long time” (magna res . . . et diu discenda, 30.4)—a task for which the long-term correspondence is well suited. A personal angle comes later with Seneca’s description of asthma, whose attacks, he explains, are referred to by doctors precisely as “meditatio mortis” (54.2).67 The asthma has trained him in readiness for death: “You should,” he writes, “know this about me: I will not quaver in the final stages, I am already prepared. I do not make any assumptions about the completion of the day (nihil cogito de die toto)” (54.7). The same idea is still being repeated in letter 70, where he asserts: “Of no thing is practice so essential [as it is of death]; . . . This is the one thing for which a day will come that will demand its use” (nullius rei meditatio tam necessaria est; . . . huius unius rei usum qui exigat dies veniet, 70.18). Death’s unique certainty—if from no other cause, then from old age, which “alone [among the forms of death] cannot be averted” (huic uni intercedi non potest, 30.4)—is accompanied by a temporal singularity: you die only once. Hence Seneca concludes letter 26 by explicating Epicurus’ advice “meditare mortem” (26.8) as follows: “Perhaps you think that it is redundant to learn something which only needs to be used once. This is precisely why we need to practice . . .” (supervacuum forsitan putas id discere quod semel utendum est. hoc est ipsum quare meditari debeamus, 26.9). But because meditatio mortis centers upon the anticipation of events that the novice might find it alarming to consider, Seneca uses the epistolary series to introduce Lucilius to it gradually.68 In one early letter, attentive to the perils of hope and fear, he points out that “many of our goods harm us. For memory retrieves the torment of fear, and foresight anticipates it (timoris . . . tormentum memoria reducit, providentia anticipat). No one is unhappy on the basis of present conditions alone

65. Or cogitatio mort(alitat)is (cf. Ep. 30.17). For death as the meditatio theme par excellence see Newman (1989), 1481. On meditatio mortis in Seneca see Schönegg (1999), 13–17, esp. 15 n. 6, 19; Cancik (1967), 110 n. 214. 66. Pl. Phd. 81a; cf. 67e; with Warren (2001), 102–5. See also Cic. Tusc. 1.74–75. 67. See Gourévitch (1984), 115–16; Leeman (1971), 327–28. 68. On Seneca’s gradual development of praemeditatio futurorum malorum see Armisen-Marchetti (1995), 559–61, (1986), 191–94; Manning (1976).

164

seneca the author

(nemo tantum praesentibus miser est)” (5.9). Just before this point in the letter he appealed to the carefree, exclusively presentist attention of animals (5.9). As a first line of therapy for Lucilius, then, he actively suppresses the human capacity to use ratio to survey nonpresent parts of time. He acknowledges his gradualist pedagogical technique in letter 13: “I do not speak to you in a Stoic register, but in this more restrained one (lingua . . . summissiore). . . . This is my advice to you: not to be unhappy before the time (ne sis miser ante tempus), since those things that you feared as if they were imminent will perhaps never come—certainly have not [yet] come” (13.4). Meditatio is left unmentioned, because Seneca’s immediate concern is the anxiety Lucilius may feel about the future, given that “the mind invents false images for itself” (animus sibi falsas imagines fingit, §12). Toward the end of the letter, however, Lucilius is led to expect that Seneca’s pedagogy is leading toward a point at which he will confront future possibilities head-on: “Let someone else say, ‘Perhaps it will not come’: you should say, ‘What if it does come (quid porro, si veniet)? We’ll see which of us comes out on top. Perhaps its coming is to my advantage, and this death will make my life virtuous (mors ista vitam honestabit)’ ” (§14). More complex meditative practices are introduced soon enough, in letter 24.69 At first Seneca treats Lucilius’ concern about the outcome of his pending legal case in the same way he had previously: “For why is it necessary to summon evils, to anticipate (praesumere) things which are to be endured soon enough when they arrive, and to waste the present time in fear of the future (praesens tempus futuri metu perdere)?” (24.1). Now, however, it is time for him to initiate Lucilius into the technique of praemeditatio futurorum malorum: “But I will lead you to freedom from care by another path. If you wish to strip off all anxiety, imagine that whatever you fear will happen really is going to happen (quidquid vereris ne eveniat eventurum utique propone), and whatever that evil is, measure it to yourself and take stock of your fear. You will immediately understand that what you fear is either not great or not long-lasting (aut non magnum aut non longum esse quod metuis)” (§2). He follows with a series of exempla of those who have scorned hardship, especially death, across the ages. This is the letter in which Seneca trains Lucilius to unmask death and downplay it, by saying, “You are death, which recently my slave and my servant-girl scorned” (mors es, quam nuper servus meus, quam ancilla contempsit, §13). The discussion also features a systematic pairing of future hardships and appropriate responses (§17): pauper fiam: inter plures ero. exul fiam: ibi me natum putabo quo mittar. alligabor: quid enim? non solutus sum? . . . moriar: hoc dicis, desinam aegrotare posse, desinam alligari posse, desinam mori posse. I will become poor: I will be in company. I will become an exile: I will imagine that I was born in the place to which I am sent. I will be

69. Note also Epp. 78, 99; on 78, see Edwards (1998).

death in epistolary time

165

bound: so what? Have I not [rather] been released? . . . I will die: what you’re saying is, I will cease to be able to be sick, I will cease to be able to be bound, I will cease to be able to die. The rhetoricized repetitions and their crescendo in the topic of death (with final triple anaphora of desinam, “I will cease”) illustrate the meditatio as internal dialogue.70 Later letters will add depth, and further momentum, to Lucilius’ practice.

Multiplicity Seneca uses the sheer multiplication of epistolary topics to tease out distinct daily perspectives on death that illustrate the meaning of “dying each day” yet more directly.71 Successive letters illustrate the equal possibility of death by natural causes, accident, murder, and if necessary suicide, at any time or place. “What time,” Seneca asks, “is immune to death?” (quod . . . morti tempus exemptum est? 30.17). Letter 101 serves as just such a memento mori: “Seneca to Lucilius, greetings. Every day, every hour (omnis dies, omnis hora) shows how we are nothing and, when we have forgotten about our fragility, reminds us with some fresh sign. Then, when we are practicing for eternity, it forces us to look back to death (aeterna meditatos respicere cogit ad mortem)” (101.1). His surprisingly morbid opening—it is more typical for Seneca to end a letter with death than to begin with it—is explained by a recent surprise incident (§§2–3): Senecio Cornelius, a distinguished and dutiful Roman knight, was known to you (Senecionem Cornelium, equitem Romanum splendidum et officiosum, noveras). . . . This man of the utmost frugality, equally careful with his patrimony and his body, after seeing me in the morning as usual, after he had sat for the whole day, and into the night, with a friend who was in a very bad way and lying without hope, after he had cheerfully dined, was seized by a sudden form of illness, angina [= an acute condition causing suffocation]. He scarcely kept breathing to the morning, his breath constricted by a tightening of the throat. And so he died, only a very few hours after he had served all the duties of a sound and healthy man (intra paucissimas ergo horas quam omnibus erat sani ac valentis officiis functus decessit). Senecio’s unexpected death is brought close to home for Seneca by the similarity of their wealth and social position, by the fact that Seneca, Senecio, and his friend are joined by ties of friendship and patronage, by the acute respiratory symptoms that preceded his death (cf. Ep. 54)—and, of course, by the similarity of their names, which Seneca emphasizes with the inverted word order of

70. The passage is analyzed in these terms by Newman (1989), 1480 n. 17; (1988), 104. 71. Seneca’s exploration of death from shifting angles is emphasized by E. R. Wilson (2004), 88–98.

166

seneca the author

Senecionem Cornelium.72 An example such as this serves to illustrate that “whatever can happen ever can happen today” (hodie fieri potest quidquid umquam potest, 63.15) and that there but for the grace of God go I. When Seneca considers deaths resulting from suicide or homicide—“Each day brings danger to man from man” (ab homine homini cotidianum periculum, 103.1)—the frequency of such examples lends them a “quotidian” aspect that should deflate our self-important fear of death. In one letter he asks, “Do you not see for what trivial reasons life is scorned (quam ex frivolis causis contemnatur [sc. vita])? One hangs by a noose before the doors of his beloved, another throws himself from the roof so that he won’t have to listen to his screaming master any longer, another plunges a sword into his guts so that he won’t be taken back after escaping” (4.4). Later he urges, “Review the examples of those who have died by treachery at home (recognosce exempla eorum qui domesticis insidiis perierunt), whether by some open means or by duplicity: you will understand that no fewer people have died from the anger of slaves than [from the anger] of kings” (4.8). Rendering death still more quotidian in a later letter, Seneca conjures a community of living creatures leveled by death in one and the same moment (77.13): fortior, ut opinor, esses, si multa milia tibi commorerentur; atqui multa milia et hominum et animalium hoc ipso momento quo tu mori dubitas animam variis generibus emittunt. You would, I believe, be braver if many thousands were to die with you. But many thousands of human beings and animals are, at this very moment when you hesitate to die, casting out their life-breath in various ways! He also embraces, however, the most literal and shocking implication of cotidie mori: not the everyday potential of our dying, but our actually dying a little bit each day. In letter 24, as part of the discussion in which he helps Lucilius to premeditate death and to unmask it, he returns explicitly to the theme of cotidie mori (24.20):73 memini te illum locum aliquando tractasse, non repente nos in mortem incidere sed minutatim procedere. cotidie morimur; cotidie enim demitur aliqua pars vitae, et tunc quoque cum crescimus vita decrescit. infantiam amisimus, deinde pueritiam, deinde adulescentiam. usque ad hesternum quidquid transît temporis perît; hunc ipsum quem agimus diem cum morte dividimus. 72. Henderson (2004), 43 draws attention to the name by italicizing it in his translation. 73. On this letter as elaborating Ep. 1.2 (se cotidie mori) see D. Gagliardi (1998), 72. For commentary on cotidie mori at 24.20 see Laudizi (2003), 141–44, who compares Ep. 120.17; Marc. 21.7; Remed. 2.2: huc me singuli dies ducunt. See also Ep. 93.3–4: quid illum octoginta anni iuvant per inertiam exacti? non vixit iste sed in vita moratus est, nec sero mortuus est, sed diu; cited by Viparelli (2000), 27.

death in epistolary time

167

I remember that you once dealt with this topic: that we do not suddenly fall into death but progress toward it bit by bit. We die each day, since each day a part of life is taken away, and even as we are growing, our life decreases. We lose our infancy, our childhood, then our youth. Whatever time has passed up until yesterday has perished. This very day which we are living—we divide it with death. Seneca will go on to recall Lucilius’ actual verse, “Not just one death comes, but the death that takes us is simply the final one” (“mors non una venit, sed quae rapit ultima mors est”), in other words, “that this death which we fear is the last one, not the only one” (hanc quam timemus mortem extremam esse, non solam, §21). This has two distinct implications: (1) In keeping with the logic of the praemeditatio it serves to deflate the importance of final death by revealing it to be little different from the steady passage of time throughout all of our life stages, and thus already familiar. (2) Conversely, in keeping with the exhortation to make good use of the present time, it invites us to feel now the same urgency as final death will possess. These separate implications also capture the logic of the epistolary series, as the letters oscillate between (1) deflating death through daily repetition and (2) infusing the present day with urgency and solemnity. The connection between cotidie mori and the epistolary series is also mediated by an exploration of liquid metaphors for time. Seneca’s exegesis in letter 24 includes the image of the water-clock (24.20): quemadmodum clepsydram non extremum stilicidium exhaurit sed quidquid ante defluxit, sic ultima hora qua esse desinimus non sola mortem facit sed sola consummat; tunc ad illam pervenimus, sed diu venimus. Just as it is not the final drop that empties the water-clock, but whatever has flowed out before, so the final hour in which we cease to exist is not the only one that produces death, but just the one that completes it. We arrive at death then, but we have long been coming to it. Even more than the Hesiodic storage vessel of letter 1, the clepsydra is an evocative metaphor in its transformation of life time, and the sensation of time in the letters themselves, into the dripping of liquid from a container. Seneca figures cotidie mori in a slightly different liquid image in letter 58.74 He has been discussing Plato on flux (58.22) and turns to the well-known river example of Heraclitus for reinforcement (§23):75

74. Seneca also plays on the images of punctum (a point of time or space, at 49.3, but also a suicidal pinprick releasing blood, at 70.16); and stilicidium (a small amount, at 70.5, but also a drop from life’s water-clock, as at 24.20). 75. For philosophical commentary see Inwood (2007a), 129–30; Reydams-Schils (2005), 30.

168

seneca the author This is what Heraclitus says: “We step, and do not step, into the same river twice.” For the name of the river persists, while the water has shifted. This is more obvious in a river than in a person (hoc in amne manifestius est quam in homine), but a no less rapid course passes us by also, and I am amazed at our madness in loving so greatly a most fleeting thing, the body, and in fearing that we will one day die, when every moment is a death of our previous state (timemusque ne quando moriamur, cum omne momentum mors prioris habitus sit). You should not be afraid of something’s happening one day, if it happens each day (vis tu non timere ne semel fiat quod cotidie fit)!

As in Seneca’s other sketches of death as a daily experience, there is both a deflation of final death and a hint of advice about coming to terms with the immediacy of death in the present—in this case, at every moment (cf. omne momentum) and as an experience of the body’s changing “state” (habitus). To illustrate this in the case of his own first-person self, Seneca says, “I myself have changed in the process of speaking about these things changing!” (ego ipse, dum loquor mutari ista, mutatus sum, §22). The river-like body that changes through dying at each successive moment is also a little like the correspondence itself. Edwards has emphasized the continual fluctuations in Seneca’s authorial persona in the letters (1997, 34), especially the passage in letter 120 where he observes how “we change our mask in turn, putting on the opposite of the one that we removed” (mutamus subinde personam et contrariam ei sumimus quam exuimus, 120.22). What letter 58 shows is that Seneca understands the continual fluctuations of the corpus and of the person, including the epistolary speaker, in terms of moment-to-moment instantiations of death. The inconsistent self in the corpus of the letters noted by Edwards is, in this sense, a realization of the cotidie mori experience at the level of literary form. This illustration of temporal discontinuity also serves as a clue to the importance of the breaks between individual letters.

Second Axis: Singularity and Closure The letters’ momentum and multiplicity have an additional effect: they place increasing pressure on each successive letter to approximate the conditions of death for the reader and the writer. This puts the focus on the single letter form, which has its own contribution to make to the idea, and the practice, of cotidie mori.

death in epistolary time

169

Unpacking Letter 61 This can best be illustrated by letter 61, which engages with finality from beginning to end:76 SENECA LVCILIO SVO SALVTEM. (1) desinamus quod voluimus velle. ego certe id ago senex eadem velim quae puer volui. in hoc unum eunt dies, in hoc noctes, hoc opus meum est, haec cogitatio, inponere veteribus malis finem. id ago ut mihi instar totius vitae dies sit; nec mehercules tamquam ultimum rapio, sed sic illum aspicio tamquam esse vel ultimus possit. (2) hoc animo tibi hanc epistulam scribo, tamquam me cum maxime scribentem mors evocatura sit; paratus exire sum, et ideo fruar vita quia quam diu futurum hoc sit non nimis pendeo. ante senectutem curavi ut bene viverem, in senectute ut bene moriar; bene autem mori est libenter mori. (3) da operam ne quid umquam invitus facias: quidquid necesse futurum est repugnanti, id volenti necessitas non est. ita dico: qui imperia libens excipit partem acerbissimam servitutis effugit, facere quod nolit; non qui iussus aliquid facit miser est, sed qui invitus facit. itaque sic animum componamus ut quidquid res exiget, id velimus, et in primis ut finem nostri sine tristitia cogitemus. (4) ante ad mortem quam ad vitam praeparandi sumus; deesse aliquid nobis videtur et semper videbitur: ut satis vixerimus, nec anni nec dies faciunt sed animus. vixi, Lucili carissime, quantum satis erat; mortem plenus expecto. vale. Seneca to Lucilius, greetings. (1) Let us cease to want what we have wanted. I myself certainly make sure that I do not want the same things as an old man that I wanted as a boy. This is where my days go and my nights, this is my work, the subject of my thought: to impose an end on my old evils. I make sure that the day is an image of my whole life for me. I do not, by Hercules, seize it as if it were the last, but I look on it as if it could well be the last. (2) This is the state of mind in which I write this letter to you, as if death were going to call me out in the very process of writing. I am ready to exit, and I enjoy life because I am not too anxious about how long it is going to continue. Prior to old age, I took care to live well, in old age, to die well; and to die well is to die willingly. (3) Make an effort to ensure that you never do anything unwillingly. Anything that will be necessary for someone who puts up resistance [that is, even though he or she puts up resistance] is not a necessity for one who is willing. Here is what I say: whoever welcomes domination 76. For commentary see Trapp (2003), 251–52.

170

seneca the author willingly has escaped the most bitter part of servitude, namely, to do what one is unwilling to do. It is not someone who does a thing on command that is unhappy, but someone who does it unwillingly. So let us compose our mind in such a way that whatever the situation demands, we wish it, and especially that we think about our own end without sadness. (4) We need to prepare ourselves for death even ahead of preparing ourselves for life. Something seems to us to be lacking, and will always seem so. It is not years or days that determine that we have lived enough, but our mind. I have lived, dearest Lucilius, as much as was enough. I await death, full. Farewell.

In addition to teaching that we should conform our will (cf. velle, libenter, etc.) to whatever arises, and especially to death, the letter also shows Seneca to be living the lesson. In the previous letter he had confronted Lucilius: “Even now do you desire (optas) that which your nurse desired for you (tibi optavit), or your slave-attendant, or your mother? How harmful to us are our loved ones’ wishes (vota nostrorum)!” (60.1).77 Now he performs a repudiation in his own person: “This is the state of mind (hoc animo) in which I write this letter (hanc epistulam) to you, as if death were going to call me in the very process of writing. I am ready to exit . . .” (61.2). The two deictics in hoc animo . . . hanc epistulam seek to effect a convergence between state of mind and letter, just as phrases used elsewhere in the letter, such as “This is my work” (hoc opus meum est, §1) or “Let us compose our mind” (animum componamus, §3), portray Seneca’s psychological self-care in terms that suggest a textual project. The coincidence between a presentist state of mind and the present space and time of the letter is registered vividly in the phrase, “as if death were going to call me out in the very process of writing” (tamquam me cum maxime scribentem mors evocatura sit, §2). Here we see both the conceit of the writer interrupted by death and Seneca’s characteristic use of the future participle capturing the philosopher’s premeditative stance. The sense of presence here—Seneca’s intimate apostrophe to Lucilius combined with his awareness of death’s proximity—owes something to ancient epistolary theory and practice in which the letter was a medium of co-presence between the correspondents.78 Seneca also uses the letter to suggest how the horizons of one’s life can be confined within one’s present state of mind: “I make sure,” he says, “that the day is an image of my whole life for me. I do not, by Hercules, seize it as if it were the last, but I look on it as if it could well be the last” (id ago ut mihi instar totius vitae dies sit; nec mehercules tamquam ultimum rapio, sed sic illum aspicio tamquam esse vel ultimus possit, 61.1). The statement brings together two closely related, but distinct, themes of the Epistulae morales:79 77. On the relationship between Epp. 60 and 61 see Maurach (1970), 14–15. 78. On this and other epistolary topoi see Trapp (2003), 42–46. In Seneca, see Ep. 40.1: numquam epistulam tuam accipio ut non protinus una simus. 79. For discussion see Viparelli (2000), 42–51; also Foucault (2005), 477–80.

death in epistolary time

171

1. The day is to be an image of one’s whole life. This builds partly upon the idea that the wise man can use even a short amount of time as if it were long, which Seneca sketches out in letter 78 as a way to imagine his and Lucilius’ reunion: “There will come a time which will join us again and mingle us together. However brief it is, our knowing how to use it will make it long. As Posidonius says, ‘For educated men a single day is more expansive than the longest life is for the ignorant (unus dies hominum eruditorum plus patet quam inperitis longissima aetas)’ ” (78.28).80 Similar language arises in letter 101, but with a more direct reference to “life time” rather than eternity: “So hurry to live, my Lucilius, and think of single days as single lives” (ideo propera, Lucili mi, vivere, et singulos dies singulas vitas puta, 101.10). Within a single day Lucilius must both set to work on his life and already come to see it as complete. This is the same letter that begins with the last day of Cornelius Senecio’s life (101.1–3). Echoes here of the language of accounting (for example, “Let us settle our balance with life each day,” cotidie cum vita paria faciamus, §8) recall letter 1’s ideal of a ratio impensae of one’s own biographic time. 2. The metaphor of today-as-lifetime is usually combined with the exercise of thinking of today as if it were our life’s final day (as it appears to be in both letters 61 and 101).81 A key to the combination of these two distinct notions may come in Seneca’s characterization of one’s last day as “that day which will give a verdict on all my years” (ille laturus sententiam de omnibus annis meis, 26.4). The focus on the final day, however, involves a number of distinct emphases. It is a hypothetical exercise only: as Seneca explains in letter 61, “I do not, by Hercules, seize (rapio) it as if it were the last, but I look on it (aspicio) as if it could well be the last” (61.1). The denial of “seizing” is important for differentiating between the Stoic perspective, in which the exercise is centered on demonstrating the autonomy of reason, and the Horatian carpe diem, which suggests a goal of maximizing pleasure.82 Seneca is also careful to exclude morbidity. In letter 12 he urges us to go to bed each night saying vixi “happily and cheerfully” (laeti hilaresque), because “that man is supremely happy and a carefree possessor of himself (securus sui possessor) who awaits tomorrow without anxiety. Whoever says ‘I have lived (vixi)’ awakes each day to a profit” (12.9).83 In letter 61 Seneca alludes to both (1) and (2) in conjunction with the letter’s curtailing of life narratives. When he writes, “I myself certainly make sure that 80. Cf. Cic. Tusc. 5.5 (in the hymn to Philosophy): est autem unus dies bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus peccanti immortalitati anteponendus. The parallel is discussed by Görler (1996), 161 n. 2; its provenance, by Schmid (1976). 81. In addition to the passages discussed below see Sen. Epp. 15.11; 93.6. 82. On these contrasting Senecan and Horatian approaches see Dionigi (1995); Görler (1995); Traina (1973). But Seneca still plays with the concept of carpere; see Epp. 26.4: carpimur, singuli dies aliquid subtrahunt viribus; 120.18: carpit nos illa [sc. mors], non corripit. 83. Note parallels with Horace, C 3.29.41–43: ille potens sui / laetusque deget cui licet in diem / dixisse “vixi”; cf. C 1.9.13–18. The Horatian echo is superficial only, in the view of Mazzoli (1970), 233–36; or far reaching, in the view of Görler (1996), 163–69; see also Neumeister (1995), 75–76.

172

seneca the author

I do not want the same things as an old man that I wanted as a boy” (61.1) and “Prior to old age, I took care to live well, in old age, to die well; and dying well is dying willingly” (§2), he is organizing his life course into a simple biographic schema in which senectus is both the end stage of life and the stage in which he adopts a synoptic view of his life. Although life encapsulation is illustrated here only briefly and is not especially frequent in the letters, a significant instance arises in letter 49 in response to Seneca’s arrival in Pompeii (49.2): I feel as though I have lost you just now. For what is not “just now,” if you should recall it (quid enim non “modo” est, si recorderis)? Just now (modo) as a boy I sat at the feet of Sotion the philosopher, just now (modo) I began to plead cases, just now (modo) I ceased to want to plead them, just now (modo) I ceased to be able to. The speed of time has no limit, and is more evident to those who are looking back (infinita est velocitas temporis, quae magis apparet respicientibus). This passage would seem to suggest that the retrospective synopsis of one’s own life is involuntary and possibly traumatizing, but Seneca explains in letter 83 that respicere is in fact an often neglected procedure that is useful for giving an account of one’s life: “You order,” he says to Lucilius, “that single days of mine be revealed to you, and these in their entirety” (singulos dies tibi meos et quidem totos indicari iubes, 83.1). The form of daily-round narrative requested by Lucilius is a standard discourse of personal representation of the sort that we see in Roman biography, epistolography, and rhetorical exercises.84 Seneca readily complies: “I will observe myself (observabo me) immediately and—a thing most useful—will review my day (diem meum recognoscam). It is our undoing that no one looks back at his life (nemo vitam suam respicit)” (§2). Although the purpose of doing this is partly that “planning for the future comes from the past” (consilium futuri ex praeterito venit, §2), Seneca’s account quickly turns into a meditation on his old age, as he contrasts himself with the puer against whom he has been competing in his exercises on the racetrack, and then reflects on his different bathing practices through his life, from the chill of the Aqua Virgo to the (warmer) Tiber and now a sun-warmed tub (§5). He thus inserts a life narrative (not to mention a Roman topographic tour) into the account of his daily round, giving a sense of the increasing fragility of his body that looks backward and forward: “I’m not far from [taking] an [artificially heated] bath” (non multum mihi ad balneum superest, §5). Seneca’s self-irony, as he makes fun of the rising temperature and his fading austerity, helps him to establish a detached perspective both on the totality of his life and on his life’s potential completion. To articulate his central epistolary theme of circumscribing life’s horizons, Seneca draws on examples and comparisons from various kinds of narrative.

84. For references see Bloomer (1997).

death in epistolary time

173

In letter 93, stressing the need to accept death whenever it arrives, he appeals to the notion of alienum, explaining that “a life can be perfected in a small measure of time. Life time is among the externals. How long I exist is external: how long I will exist, in the sense of truly existing, is mine” (et in minore temporis modo potest vita esse perfecta. aetas inter externa est. quamdiu sim alienum est: quamdiu ero, ut sim, meum est, 93.7). “Do you think,” he asks, “that someone slain at the end of the day of a spectacle is happier than someone slain in the middle of the day (qui summo die muneris quam eum qui medio occiditur)?” (93.12). But he then shifts from the arena to the realm of literature: “[Someone] did not live for as many years as he was able? A book of even a few verses is a book (paucorum versuum liber est), and indeed praiseworthy and useful. You know how heavy the Annals of Tanusius are, and what people say about them. This is how it is that certain men’s lives are long, and go the way of Tanusius’ Annals (hoc est vita quorundam longa, et quod Tanusii sequitur annales)” (§11). In the contrast of brief but valuable books with bad and seemingly endless annalistic chronicles, Seneca not only asserts the importance of animus over anni (to use his wordplay from 61.4), but also implicitly elevates his (brief, finite) epistulae morales in the hierarchy of literary forms.

Ending Letter and Life There is, finally, one other formal feature of the Senecan letter that contributes repeatedly to this narrowing of horizons: the signing off. Desinamus is the first word of letter 61, but it looks to the ending—the ending of desires (61.1), the willingness for life to end (§3), and, as a culmination, the use of the letter ending to practice this state of mind: “I have lived, dearest Lucilius, as much as was enough. I await death, full. Farewell” (§4). In a fusion of time, text, and self, Seneca expresses his moral fullness just as the letter becomes full (again, the hint of a vessel, or a satisfied dinner guest),85 and uses the routine of epistolary closure as a practice for life closure. This is the sort of effect that Barbara Herrnstein-Smith has described as “temporal punctuation” (1968, 128), except that Seneca does not import a finalistic concept to give the sense of closure to his literary form, but rather exploits the closure of the literary form (the vale) to lend greater weight to the death-rehearsing utterance.86 As in Seneca’s other characterizations of “dying each day,” however, there are really two distinct functions for this device: (1) To say goodbye at the end of life should be no different from casually saying goodbye at the end of the day or the end of the letter. (2) Conversely, the letter’s ending should be infused with the same urgency and solemnity as life’s ending. The second of these functions may 85. On resonances with a banquet here see Trapp (2003), 252; Maurach (1970), 15 with n. 19. 86. For the convention of epistolary brevity (Ærvmæsg|), see Demetrius Peri herm. 235 and Sen. Ep. 45.13: ne epistulae modum excedam, quae non debet sinistram manum legentis implere (referring to the gradual unrolling of the volumen from one hand to the other); with Cugusi (1983), 34–35.

174

seneca the author

seem uppermost in letter 61 with its particularly intense and intimate tone, but the letter also belongs to the habit-forming rhythm of daily death closures. The conceit of the letter ending as death rehearsal is introduced only gradually in the course of the correspondence. Seneca first introduces Lucilius to the power of the letter ending in conjunction with economic, temporal, or moral limits: Sufficient is at hand (ad manum est quod sat est): he who lives on good terms with poverty is rich. Farewell. (4.3) No one is unhappy on the basis of present conditions alone (nemo tantum praesentibus miser est). Farewell. (5.7) Natural desires are finite (naturalia desideria finita sunt); . . . you see, what is false has no limit. If someone is traveling by a road, there is an end; wandering has no measure. . . . If you have gone far and something further still remains, recognize that this is not natural. Farewell. (16.9) Letter 24, however—the letter in which Seneca gives the first full-fledged praemeditatio mortis—ends on a more “mortal” note: “There are many who view living not only as bitter but as redundant. Farewell” (multi sunt qui non acerbum iudicent vivere sed supervacuum. vale, 24.26). His most explicit acknowledgment of this formalistic play comes just a few letters prior to letter 61, where he cuts short a discussion about ending old age by suicide (58.37):87 sed in longum exeo; est praeterea materia quae ducere diem possit: et quomodo finem imponere vitae poterit qui epistulae non potest? vale ergo: quod libentius quam mortes meras lecturus es. vale. But I am going on. There is, besides, enough material to draw out the day, and how will someone be able to impose an ending on life if he cannot do so for a letter? Farewell then—which you will read more willingly than pure death. Farewell. The repetition shows self-consciousness about the vale utterance, and Seneca’s comment plays on the distinction between the epistolary end and life’s end—a distinction that he is otherwise eager to blur.88

Death at the End of the Series, and the Case of Paulina Seneca’s death arrived at the end of the epistolary series—even, perhaps, as its final interruption. The discussion above puts us in a position to notice how 87. For analysis see Spina (1999), 16–17. 88. Additional instances include Epp. 32.5; 48.12; 69.6 (on which, see Mann 2006, 103–4); 91.21; 114.27.

death in epistolary time

175

his death was framed by the collection’s serial syntax and its defining tensions. Although the daily letters’ momentum and multiplicity were crucial for supporting Seneca and Lucilius’ progress toward a full embracing of cotidie mori, each sharply punctuated letter had taught the difficult lesson of discontinuation. And to the extent that Seneca died in his identity as the epistolographer, he faced the present moment—his genuinely final day—with an equal sense of the quotidian aspect of an occasion for which he had long been preparing himself, and of its solemn singularity as the last act and encapsulation of his life. In the final part of this book we will return to look more closely at the framing function of specific letters, such as Ep. 70 on suicide (Ch. 8) and Epp. 12, 55, and 86 on location (Ch. 10). Emanuela Sangalli has emphasized the discontinuity of Seneca’s letters as the key to their appropriateness as a medium for conveying the Stoic focus on present time, much like Marcus Aurelius’ use of radically discontinuous atoms of discourse in the Meditations (1988, 53). Such literary forms facilitate the circumscription of the present time that is sufficient for the philosopher. They shatter the notion that life has a narrative form, that continuity is essential to the structure of the good life, or that a sufficient narrative structure for life cannot be found in the single day, or even the single moment, with its own internal arc of mortality. Yet this aspect should not be taken to drown out the sense of continuity that is an obvious theme of the correspondence, however fragmentary. The letters are both discontinuous and continuous: they embody the posture of wisdom’s self-sufficiency while traveling the long pedagogical path toward wisdom.89 Yes, Seneca reinforces the ideas that the beginning of philosophical study already makes life tolerable (16.1) and also that “wherever you cease, so long as you cease well, it is whole” (77.4), through the closure of the individual letter as if it were enough for the ending of life. But the procedure gains in meaning through the dynamics of repetition and the process of shifting bit by bit from rehearsal to reality.90 We may conclude, however, by considering the case of Paulina, because her involvement in Seneca’s death scene offers perhaps the strongest sense of both connection and contrast between the death scene and the epistolary series. At Ep. 104.1–5, her only surviving mention from Seneca’s works, Seneca had described how Paulina’s affection for him led him to take better care of himself (§2):91

89. See M. Wilson (2001), emphasizing the appeal of the letters’ “surreptitious narrative” (186). 90. See Schönegg (1999), 69–72 on the “double” character of the letters as both call to action and the action itself—as both practice and product. 91. On Ep. 104 and Paulina see Reydams-Schils (2005), 47–51, 171; Pociña (2003), 336; Mauch (1997), 67–70; Harich (1994); Marchesi (1944), 177–78. Although this is the only mention of Paulina in Seneca, versions of Epp. 53, 86, 87 were dressed up as letters from Seneca to Paulina in an ancient manuscript from Oulx; cf. Lausberg (1989), 1954 n. 284.

176

seneca the author mihi valetudinem meam commendat. nam cum sciam spiritum illius in meo verti, incipio, ut illi consulam, mihi consulere. She causes my wellbeing to be a concern for me. For recognizing that her spirit turns upon mine, I begin to take care of myself in order to take care of her.

He adds to this a striking observation, namely that he forfeits the freedom from care that most old men can enjoy: “I realize,” he says, “that there is a young one in this old man who needs looking after” (venit enim mihi in mentem in hoc sene et adulescentem esse cui parcitur, §2). The denotation of adulescentem here has been debated, but the implication is clear: Seneca’s relationship to his old self is reassessed in light of Paulina’s youth.92 This example goes against the letters’ more general momentum toward death, but its sentiment recalls the passage where Seneca had recalled how, when he was a sickly young man contemplating suicide, “the old age of [his] affectionate father” (patris . . . indulgentissimi senectus) had detained him and kept him alive (Ep. 78.2).93 In Tacitus, however, Paulina’s appearance in the death scene helps to measure the transformation in circumstances, it being no longer possible for Seneca or Paulina attend to such concerns. The reader of Tacitus who also knows the Epistulae morales may surmise (as we will see Montaigne did) that the same relationship of affection between Seneca and Paulina that had once been the motive of Seneca’s self-preservation is now the motive of Paulina’s suicide, and the reason for Seneca’s consent. Conditions now dictate that the married couple must together make good on their meditatio mortis. The death scene is thus explicable through the epistolary economy, though it lies one fateful step beyond it.

92. Most interpreters take adulescentem here as feminine, referring to Paulina; cf. Harich (1994), 358–59. See also Mauch (1997), 68; Bourgery (1936), 90. 93. Epp. 78 and 104 are clustered together by Reydams-Schils (2005), 47–50.

part iii

Receptions

This page intentionally left blank

7 Tracing the Tradition

A thumbnail account of the refigurations of Seneca’s death would look something like this:1 In Late Antiquity his death was situated simultaneously in the worlds of pagan philosophical exempla and Christian historiography. In the Middle Ages the death was represented anew, both in word and in image, in manuscripts of Seneca’s texts and in scholastic and historical literature. Next Seneca and his death became a focus in the humanists’ engagement with exempla from the recovered past: lost details began to be restored to Seneca’s biography once his works were read more intensively and Tacitus’ Annals were rediscovered—although new possibilities also arose for confusion and invention, as seen in the retelling of the death scene in the form of a christianizing ritual. From the sixteenth century onward, Seneca’s writings and life were subjected to greater philological scrutiny, resulting in a reassessment of the death scene’s evidentiary function and of its compatibility with Christian thought. Somewhat at odds with this, Seneca’s death also came to be represented in new genres, such as historical painting and drama, conditioned by baroque and neoclassical aesthetics. After a virtual disappearance in the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth, the death has more recently returned to the foreground both in academia and in creative literature.

1. For surveys of Seneca’s reception overall see von Albrecht (2004), 130–72; Ross (1974); Faider (1921), 108–52. See also essays in Baier, Manuwald, and Zimmermann (2005); Dionigi (1999); Chevallier and Poignault (1991).

180

receptions

What significance is attached to a retelling of Seneca’s death? Each reception will offer its own answer to this question, but there are some revealing moments. The English Renaissance critic Thomas Nashe celebrated the waning of Seneca’s influence in English tragedy of the late-sixteenth century by asserting, “Seneca, let blood line by line and page by page, at length must needes die to our Stage.”2 Nashe’s metaphor writes large Seneca’s literary Nachleben as a single protracted death scene shaped by the dynamics of a body whose slow bleeding will one day exhaust it. This indicates that for at least some interpreters the death of Seneca might serve as an allegory for the passing away of Senecan discourse—though perhaps a slow passing away, and indeed for some interpreters (pace Nashe) a persistence or even a regeneration, especially if the revived Paulina became a focus. In other ways, too, the death of Seneca has had a habit of folding out into the world in which it is reproduced. In his Silva topográfica (1637) the Portuguese poet Mañuel de Gallegos responded to Rubens’ vivid portrayal of the dying Seneca (c. 1614–15; Fig. 7.8) by accusing the painter of complicity in Nero’s violence, a typical baroque conceit: “If the brush (el pinzel), either pious or content, / had withheld its purple colors (las purpureas colores suspendiera), / Seneca would be alive today (Seneca aun oy viuiera).”3 The act of reception, then, is subsumed by the internal dynamics of the scene being received—a killing—though in this instance it also displaces it: only Rubens, not Nero at all, killed Seneca. In the mid-eighteenth century the German playwright Friedrich von Creutz can be found justifying his own Seneca play in the following terms: “That Seneca died once is certain. As to whether he has died a second time (zum zweiten Mal), on a stage, I cannot with certainty say.”4 Creutz does not claim to be displacing the original event: it is enough for him to be producing a reenactment that is, as far as he knows, the very first in the theater. These examples each in their own way illustrate how Seneca’s death scene has supplied not only content, but also formal features and a quasi-ritual intensity, to numerous artistic and literary endeavors concerned with it. Still more frequent than this assimilation of the act of reception to the death scene itself is the “senecanization” of Seneca outlined in the introduction to this book: the tendency for later writers and artists to elaborate Seneca’s death using discursive forms that derive directly or indirectly from Seneca, and the corresponding tendency in users of Senecan discursive forms to focus on Seneca’s death as a privileged subject of representation. Senecanization will be at play in many of the receptions of the death scene we consider, though 2. From his introductory note to R. Greene’s play Menaphon (first published 1589), in the edition of McKerrow (1910), 3.315–16. The passage and its polemics are discussed by Hunter (1974), 182–84. 3. Quoted also by McGrath (1997), 2.295. 4. Quoted by Hess (1981), 214.

tracing the tradition

181

not all. Below I will not seek to announce instances of “senecanization,” but we will encounter many, in which either a given version of the death scene draws on Senecan works (for example, the De tranquillitate animi; the Thyestes) and Seneca-influenced discursive forms (martyrology; epistolography) or specific discursive forms associated with Seneca (most notably, manifestations of historical tragedy inspired by the Octavia) are preoccupied with representing Seneca’s death. In all such instances, the retelling of the death scene serves as an opportunity for writers and artists to excavate and scrutinize Seneca, and the discourses connected with his name. Our primary goal, however, will be to examine how the death was shaped in new ways for new audiences.

Late Roman and Early Christian The receptions of the death surviving from the first millennium must be viewed against a background of uneven familiarity with Seneca.5 Although Martial, mentioning “two Senecas” (duosque Senecas, 1.61.7–8), obviously meant the Elder and the Younger, Sidonius Apollinaris speaks of one Seneca who “cultivates shaggy Plato and advises his Nero without success” (colit hispidum Platona / incassumque suum monet Neronem) and another who “rocks Euripides’ stage with dancing . . .” (orchestram quatit / . . . Euripidis . . . , Carm. 9. 232–36).6 Passing critiques of Senecan style by Aulus Gellius (NA 12.2) and Fronto (Ep. de orat. 2–3), as well as unattributed topoi from Seneca’s prose in Apuleius and Macrobius, are indicative of his muffled influence.7 The early Christian writers, however, show a persistent familiarity with his prose works (including some now lost), and occasionally the tragedies. Seneca’s moral philosophy found praise with Lactantius (“the keenest mind of all the Stoics,” omnium Stoicorum acutissimus, Div inst. 2.8.23) and Tertullian (“Seneca often ours,” Seneca saepe noster, De anim. 20).8 Yet Augustine, although using Seneca’s De superstitione to attack pagan religious practices, saw a contradictory persona (CD 6.10):9 “Annaeus Seneca, . . . whom we find from various evidence to have flourished in the times of the apostles, did not lack freedom entirely, but partially. For he possessed it in his writing, but lacked it in his life (libertas . . . adfuit scribenti, viventi defuit).” 5. On receptions in this period see esp. Ross (1974), 122–31; Trillitzsch (1971), 1.120–221, 2.362–419. On Christian receptions in particular see Mastandrea (1988); Momigliano (1955). 6. On this early manifestation of the “two Senecas” problem, not resolved till the 16th c., see Bocciolini Palagi (1978b), 217–18, 220–22. 7. See Ross (1974), 121–22. On Apuleius see S. J. Harrison (2000), 166–67. 8. For discussion of Tertullian’s label see Ross (1974), 131. On Lactantius’ Seneca see Ogilvie (1978), 73–77. 9. See Ramelli (2002), 512–13; Momigliano (1955), 14–15.

182

receptions

The Seneca-Socrates Herm During this period the tradition reflects little or nothing of Tacitus and Dio. But roughly contemporary with Dio (that is, from the early third century) is the double herm of Seneca and Socrates (Fig. 7.1) unearthed on the Caelian hill in 1813, probably once displayed in a private garden or patio. As Paul Zanker has argued, the less-than-life-size image labeled SENECA may derive ultimately from a public honorific statue commissioned at the pinnacle of his career, in the veristic style of its period, emphasizing both aristocratic status and political activity—for example, in the fullness of his lips and face and in the energetic twist of his neck (2000, 54–58).10 Although its discovery initially shocked interpreters accustomed to the familiar iconography of a bearded and emaciated senex, the portrait is understandable both in terms of Seneca’s characteristic rejection of an outwardly “philosophical” look (Ep. 5.1–4) and given that the “mask of Socrates” was not donned by Roman philosophers till after Seneca’s time (cf. Zanker 1995, 258). It is worth noting, also, that it is remarkably similar to a well-known portrait bust of Cicero. The subsequent juxtaposition of Seneca with Socrates in the double herm, however, serves to make explicit the emulation of Socrates that is implicit in the death’s details. This does not entail a complete assimilation of the two men: the visible differences allow for a dialectical relationship between Greek and Roman, Socratic and Stoic.11 But it implies their common membership in the catalogues of exemplary philosophical deaths, including as busts for veneration—a practice alluded to already in Seneca’s writings.12

Jerome: Insertion into Christian History The fullest mentions of the death were in Jerome and Boethius. Jerome mentions the death in two separate contexts, possibly drawing on a lost account from Suetonius’ De viris illustribus. In Jerome’s De viris illustribus (written 392–93) there is a brief entry on Seneca—one of the few non-Christians—that would later be excerpted in countless manuscripts of Seneca’s writings as a Vita Senecae (De vir ill. 12):13 Lucius Annaeus Seneca of Corduba, pupil of Sotion the Stoic and uncle of the poet Lucan, lived a very moderate life (continentissimae vitae fuit). I would not have placed him in my catalogue of the holy

10. On the herm see also Kamp (1935); Faider (1921), 1–3. It was a lonely survivor of the Neronian damnatio memoriae, argues dell’Orto (1999), 29, 39–40. 11. See Reydams-Schils (2005), 113. Dionigi (1999), vii–xxi uses the double herm to reinforce the sense of Seneca himself as an “erma bifronte,” riven by dichotomies. 12. See Staley (2002), 282–83, citing Ep. 64.9. 13. For commentary see Halton (1999). On Jerome’s Vita Senecae and its centrality, see Albanese (2004).

tracing the tradition

183

figure 7.1 Double herm of Seneca and Socrates (early third century). Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Antikensammlung, Inv. Sk 391. Courtesy of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY.

(in catalogo sanctorum), had I not been moved by those letters of Paul to Seneca and of Seneca to Paul, which many have read (nisi me epistolae illae provocarent, quae leguntur a plurimis, Pauli ad Senecam et Senecae ad Paulum). In these, when he was the teacher of Nero and the most powerful man of that time, he says that he wishes to occupy the position among his own that Paul occupies among Christians. Two years before Peter and Paul were crowned with martyrdom, he was killed by Nero (hic ante biennium quam Petrus et Paulus martyrio coronarentur, a Nerone interfectus est). Jerome justifies Seneca’s inclusion by appealing to the Seneca-Paul correspondence—the earliest reference to this surviving text, whose status as a forgery would be fully recognized only in the fifteenth century.14 The paraphrase given here by Jerome, that Seneca “says he wishes to occupy the position among his own that Paul occupies among Christians” (optare se dicit eius loci apud suos,

14. See Bocciolini Palagi (1985), (1978a), 11, dating it between 324 and 392; Momigliano (1955); Faider (1921), 128–29. Its authenticity is revisited by Ramelli (2004).

184

receptions

cuius sit Paulus apud Christianos), is indicative of the correspondence’s significance in the minds of Christian readers.15 The historical proximity of the two famous letter writers (especially because Seneca’s brother Gallio, as proconsul in Achaia, listened to the charges against Paul; cf. Acts 18.12–17) offered the possibility of an epistolary meeting of minds. In the correspondence itself, each party endows the other with authoritative roles: Paul greets Seneca as “most faithful teacher” (devotissime magister, Ep. 10.9), and Seneca describes Paul as “a man so great and loved by God” (vir tantus et a Deo dilectus, Ep. 12.2). The reader is enticed with a quasi-pedagogical relationship unfolding amid successive historical events, in which Seneca nurtures Paul’s Latin style (cf. Ep. 9.9) and Seneca, together with the imperial household and Nero himself, is exposed to Pauline doctrine. The imagined outcome—Rome’s open friendship with Christianity—is prevented by the persecution of Christians and Jews after the Great Fire (Ep. 11.16–17), and by the apparent termination of the correspondence in 64 or soon thereafter, no doubt adhering to the facts of Seneca’s demise. As Jerome presents it, Seneca did not live long enough to convert Nero and prevent the deaths of Paul and Peter, or to be crowned with martyrdom himself. Jerome’s placement of Seneca’s death in the vicinity of Christian martyrdoms, however, is implicitly in keeping with the general homologies between pagan and Christian discourses on the welcoming of death, and indeed with Seneca’s far-reaching influence on martyrological writings, most evident in the poems of Prudentius.16 One of the central topoi of martyrdom, the notion of the spectaculum Deo, came from the account of Cato’s death in the De providentia (Prov. 2.9).17 In locating Seneca’s death close to the deaths of Peter and Paul, Jerome probably had one eye on his earlier written Chronicon (c. 380–81). Under the twelfth year of Nero’s reign, we read: “L. Annaeus Seneca of Corduba, adviser of Nero and uncle of the poet Lucan, perished by cutting of veins and drinking of poison” (L. Annaeus Seneca Cordubensis, praeceptor Neronis et patruus Lucani poetae, incisione venarum et veneni haustu perit, Chron. 184.13–16).18 Later, under the fourteenth year, we read that Nero undertook the first persecution of Christians at Rome, “in which Peter and Paul gloriously died” (185.9–10). This is a somewhat drier presentation of the chronological relationship between the deaths of Seneca and the two saints than in the De viris illustribus. But the more detailed description of Seneca’s death in the elegant chiastic phrase incisione

15. On Jerome’s (mis)quotation of Ep. 12.11–12 see Momigliano (1955), 14. 16. On the influence (including from Senecan tragedy) see von Albrecht (2004), 161–62; Deproost (1999); Roberts (1993), 155, 167; Palmer (1989), 188–93. On pagan models for martyrdom more generally see Edwards (2007), 209–20; Bowersock (1995); Perkins (1995), 15–40. 17. E.g., Lactant. De mort pers. 16.6–7: quam iucundum illud spectaculum Deo fuit. See also Deproost (1999), 169; Cancik (1967), 108–9. 18. For commentary see Donaldson (1996). On Jerome’s synchronizing project see Feeney (2007), 28–32.

tracing the tradition

185

venarum et veneni haustu (“by cutting of veins and drinking of poison”) recalls the death in more detail, though without mention of the bath. Nero’s exact motive for killing Seneca, also, is not made explicit anywhere in Jerome—for example, he locates the Pisonian conspiracy two years prior, and this is connected only with Lucan’s death (Chron. 183.14–17). The vacuum of motive left by Jerome’s text would be filled by later interpreters in interesting ways.

Diverse Responses in Christian Poetry Seneca’s death also offers us a chance to see how Christian authors responded to a pagan philosophical embrace of death that seemingly lacked the assurance of an afterlife. At some point before the ninth century, an otherwise unknown writer by the name of Honorius Scholasticus wrote a twenty-eight-line poem in elegiac couplets, Contra epistolas Senecae (Anth. Lat. 666). Comparing Seneca’s teaching of “Lucillus” unfavorably with the teaching he himself has received from his addressee, the bishop Jordanes, Honorius alludes to Seneca’s death (lines 17–20): ille mihi commenta dedit te vera docente; nec dedit infida quae sibi mente tulit. nam cum †de pretio mortis regnante perenni† Lucillum inbueret, hac sine morte perit. He gave me falsehoods where you taught me the truth, nor did he give what he took for himself with his faithless mind. For while he was instructing Lucillus about the eternal reigning prize of death[?], he perished without this death. Although scholars have puzzled over this difficult text,19 the dichotomy appears to be that Seneca teaches a misguided doctrine concerning death, whereas Jordanes teaches a death in imitation of Christ that is followed by everlasting life. Here perit (“perished”) hints at annihilation or damnation. Yet Christians seeking a less alienating image of Seneca’s death may have been responsible for the survival of an epigram of uncertain date (again, first attested in the ninth century) that purports to be Seneca’s dying words and came to be known as the Epitaphium Senecae (Anth. Lat. 667):20 cura, labor, meritum, sumpti pro munere honores, ite, alias posthac sollicitate animas. me procul a vobis deus evocat: ilicet actis rebus terrenis hospita terra vale! corpus avara tamen sollemnibus accipe saxis, namque animam caelo reddimus, ossa tibi. 19. See Mastandrea (1988), 59–77, esp. 70–73. 20. On the varying attributions see Flammini (2000), 103–6; Romano (1983).

186

receptions Worry, toil, reward, and honors received for service, be gone, henceforth wrack other souls with care. I am called by the god far away from you: that’s it, my things on earth are done, farewell to earth, my host! But receive my body, greedily, amid your solemn stones, since I confer my soul to the sky, my bones to you.

The speaker combines a philosophical detachment from worldly goods with an optimistic view of the afterlife. Resonances with Seneca’s writings have been taken by some to indicate Senecan authorship,21 but the poem may be the work of a writer with a Christian eschatological doctrine in mind. It would later be included together with Jerome’s Vita Senecae and the Seneca-Paul correspondence as part of the prefatory material in Senecan manuscripts.

Boethius and the Flexible Example If Jerome and other Christians made the best they could of imperfect correspondences between Seneca and themselves, in the sixth century Boethius identified Seneca’s fate as both a positive and a negative example from the pagan philosophical tradition. Although conspicuously silent on Seneca as a source for his Consolatio philosophiae,22 Boethius twice has Philosophy invoke Seneca’s death. In book 1 she reminds Boethius that he is not the first to have been persecuted for her sake: “But if you are unaware of the flight of Anaxagoras, the poison of Socrates, or the tortures of Zeno on the grounds that they are foreign, still you should have been aware of Canius, Seneca, Soranus and their like, who are neither old in the tradition nor lacking in fame (at Canios, at Senecas, at Soranos quorum nec pervetusta nec incelebris memoria est, scire potuisti)” (Cons. 1.3). In this catalogue, with its echoes of Roman exemplary discourse as seen in Seneca and others, the mention of Canios here evidently summons up Julius Canus, whose death is known to us principally through the De tranquillitate animi (14.4–6).23 In book 3, however, Seneca’s death is part of a cautionary tale. Setting out to refute the claim that “kingship and friendship with kings can make a person powerful” (3.5.1), Philosophy recalls (Cons. 3.5.25–26): Nero forced Seneca, a member of his household and his adviser, to exercise his freedom in choosing his death (Nero Senecam familiarem praeceptoremque suum ad eligendae mortis coegit arbitrium). . . . But both [Seneca and a second exemplary figure, Papirianus] could have abdicated their own power—Seneca even attempted to give back to Nero his riches and to take himself into retirement. But while power 21. Romano’s (1983) arguments are greeted with skepticism by Vottero (1998), 83 n. 397. 22. See Ross (1974), 130. For commentary on Boethius see Gruber (1978), 105–7, 257–58. 23. Gruber (1978) ad loc. suggests that Boethius may also have known of Canus from the lost Caligula books of Tacitus’ Annals. As Roller (2001), 107 n. 75 notes, Canus’ death is also mentioned in Plut. fr. 211 Sandbach.

tracing the tradition

187

itself was dragging his character to ruin, neither accomplished what he wanted (neuter quod voluit effecit). Here the speaker deflates Seneca’s prestige by pointing to the coercion of his suicide (cf. “forced,” coegit) and, more subtly, by closing with the remark, neuter quod voluit effecit. Although the latter phrase technically applies both to Seneca and Papirianus, it has a special connection with Seneca, given the phrase’s use by Quintilian at the conclusion of his account of Seneca’s style: “His nature was one worthy of better intentions; what he intended, he accomplished (quod voluit effecit)” (Inst. 10.1.131).24 In using the phrase to characterize Seneca’s quandary Boethius may have been aware of Quintilian’s use of the phrase, but possibly also of its provenance in Seneca’s De beneficiis (2.31.2; 32.4): even Seneca, the master gift giver, could not succeed in giving back Nero’s gifts. Later references to Seneca’s death, sometimes drawing on the tradition of commentary that grew around Boethius, would seek new but essentially parallel ways to portray it as a cautionary tale.

Medieval After a virtual hiatus in the ninth and tenth centuries, the tradition on Seneca’s life and writings reappears in the scholastic renaissance of the twelfth century, in tandem with a more frequent copying of his texts.25 During this period Seneca was a beneficiary of his own oft-quoted advice: probatos . . . semper lege (“Always read approved/proven [authors],” Ep. 2.4). As works by Seneca were reproduced, excerpted, and forged, his authorial reputation was burnished by the biographic information and colorful illuminations that appeared in his manuscripts, often emphasizing his death. At the same time, his death maintained a regular place in christianized chronicles of world history, where its connections with the history of martyrdoms were explored inventively in word and image.

Manuscript Materials: The Death as Preface From at least the eleventh century, numerous manuscripts of Seneca’s works, typically containing one or both halves of the corpus of Epistulae morales (Epp. 1–88 and 89–124) together with the De clementia and De beneficiis and increasingly the Natural Questions or Apocolocyntosis (but not yet the Dialogi and tragedies),26 were accompanied by some combination of the following: 24. The parallel from Quintilian (but not from Ben.) is noted by Gruber (1978), 258; Winterbottom (1967), 83. 25. On receptions in this period overall see Reynolds (1965); also Ross (1974), 131–39. On the 12th c. in particular see Nothdurft (1963). 26. On the textual transmissions see Reynolds (1983), s.v. “The Younger Seneca.” On the Dialogi see Nothdurft (1963), 21–28.

188

receptions

the Seneca-Paul correspondence, Jerome’s Vita Senecae, and the Epitaphium Senecae.27 Each of these items had offered its own independent angle on Seneca, but now they were used as ancillaries to the reading of his texts. The intended function of such front matter happens to be explicitly stated in some of the medieval manuscripts of the pseudo-Senecan work De moribus. As Cesare Questa has documented, in one ninth-century version (probably from the British Isles) the Vita Senecae is immediately followed by a theoretical account of the types of information to be given in the accessus itself:28 . . . in what ways the truth of each particular writing is validated (quibus modis commendatur veritas uniuscuiusque scriptionis) and what names it is known by, . . . and if he had faith or lacked faith, and if he was baptized or not; if he did not have faith, the reason why his writing is received among the men of the Church; if he was not baptized, the reasons why he was not baptized; and what end he had, and if his work was famous at the time when he ended his life (et quem finem habuit, et si fuerit opus clarum in tempore in quo finivit vitam). This template (whose terms are seen already in non-Senecan contexts already in Late Antiquity) is then worked out for the example of Seneca. About the death, our medieval scholar, who is a rather disorganized storyteller, writes the following: [Seneca] was killed together with Nero’s mother and Nero’s kin, since Seneca was the teacher of Nero (quia Seneca magister fuit Neronis). Then Nero, wishing to set fire to Rome for the reason that he did not see Troy when Troy was burned—Seneca and Nero’s mother and kin forbade him (vetuit eum Seneca atque mater Neronis et cognati eius). For that reason they were killed around the time when the passion of Peter and Paul took place (ab illa causa interfecti sunt ab eo tempore in quo passio Petri et Pauli fuit). The narrator’s solution to the vacuum of information left by Jerome concerning Nero’s motive is to draw the deaths of Seneca and Agrippina (and other kin) into the aftermath of the Great Fire in 64, and to make Nero resist their criticisms of his fire starting, as well as to assimilate them to the persecuted Christians. As front matter to the De moribus, this sketch bolsters the moral authority, and the veritas, of the unbaptized Seneca.

27. Also, several versions of a De morte Senecae are recorded by Fohlen (2002), 10 in mss. from the 12th to the 15th c. 28. Bernensis bibl. vivicae 178, ff. 110v–111r. As Questa (1960b), 188 notes, the Seneca biographic material draws from Jerome’s De viris illustribus and his Chronicon.

tracing the tradition

189

By the thirteenth century, Senecan manuscripts were sometimes accompanied by illuminations. In all of the three distinct portrait types, Seneca is visualized with a white beard, like a saint or pagan intellectual.29 In one type, he is depicted studying alone. A second type, giving Seneca with Paul and Nero, and a third, giving Seneca’s death, more directly reflect the Seneca-Paul correspondence and the Vita Senecae. These images go far beyond illustration, shaping the reader’s view through their own visual language. In the death type, the regular compositional elements are a crowned Nero gesturing with his hand,30 a naked Seneca standing in a barrel bath, with arms outstretched in cruciform pose, and one or more attendants cutting the veins of his arms— never his feet. (The element of the bath, not directly mentioned by Jerome, may be known at this time from the lost Suetonian narrative or from a commentary on Boethius; on the associations of the bath in particular, see chapter 8.) One fourteenth-century version of the image is entwined in the initial “L” of Lucius Annaeus Seneca at the beginning of Jerome’s Vita, where the blood spurting from Seneca’s arms matches the rubrication of the text beside it and below it; the elements of both vein opening and (I suggest) a vessel for the hemlock flesh out the Vita’s fairly general phrase interfectus est (De vir. ill. 12), incorporating details known from other versions.31 In another manuscript the initial “S” of the first word, scribere, in the De clementia encloses Seneca, Nero, and the attendant, visibly contradicting that work’s lessons.32 A subtle dialogue between images and textual content can be seen in a thirteenth-century manuscript produced at Waltham Abbey now at Princeton University (Fig. 7.2).33 It is inserted at the beginning of the first epistle in this partial collection (= Epp. 89–124), in the “R” of the word rem with which letter 89 begins. The gaze of the dying Seneca appears to be directed toward the unidentified face in the upright stem of the “R,” whose forward gaze invokes the reader as witness—whether the face actually represents the reader; Seneca’s anima;34 or, as I suggest, Lucilius. This illumination is the last in a sequence of four in the Senecan portion of this manuscript, which represent (1) an allegorical figure of Religion trampling Ignorance underfoot (at the beginning of the De beneficiis), (2) a Wheel of Fortune with a king placed alongside more humble personages (the De remediis fortuitorum), (3) a king throwing three dice (the Ludus de morte Claudii), and (4) the image just discussed.35 In addition to 29. See dell’Orto (1999), 30–36; also Lazzi (2004). 30. Stok’s (1996), 309 suggestion that the crowned figure above is an angel is greeted with skepticism by dell’Orto (1999), 31 n. 21. In Nero’s gestures, dell’Orto, 29 sees an elocutio combined with a negative message communicated by the left hand. 31. Pal. Lat. 1538, f. 1 = dell’Orto (1999), 29–30, fig. 2; Stok (1996), 309, fig. 267. 32. Vat. Lat. 2218, f. 2 = Villa (1996), 65, fig. 30. 33. See dell’Orto (1999), 29–30; Hoffman (1970), 255–57; Reynolds (1965), 110. The ms. also contains works by Cassiodorus. On its provenance see Thompson (1907–18), 9–10; de Ricci and Wilson (1935), 887. 34. Suggested by Hoffman (1970), 257. 35. Fols. 88r, 97r, 99r, 104r.

figure 7.2 Historiated initial for Sen. Ep. 89 (thirteenth century, Waltham Abbey). Garrett Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, No. 114, f. 104r. Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. Courtesy of Princeton University Library.

tracing the tradition

191

their resonances with the topics of their respective texts, the images establish an overarching frame of reference: the fragility of kingship. Nero’s hierarchical placement above Seneca in the fourth image has already been visually undermined by the earlier images, not only by the placement of Religion above Ignorance with which it chiastically corresponds, but also by the inversional image of the Wheel of Fortune and the implicit location of the dice-playing emperor Claudius—in the underworld (cf. Apocol. 14–15). Seneca’s moral authority as he dies is thus fortified by his authority as satirist of kings.

Catalogues and Chronicles: Revenge against the Pedagogue Seneca also inhabited a regular place in medieval texts recounting examples or narratives from the classical past. Drawing mostly on Jerome and Boethius but again deriving some details, such as the bath, from the lost Suetonius and the Boethius commentaries, a variety of authors customized the story to suit their needs. The consolatory aspect of Boethius’ version is sustained in the Elegia sive De miseria (c. 1192–93) by Henricus de Settimello, who was himself enduring hardships after his expulsion from the position of cancellarius at Arnostadt.36 The personification of Philosophy advises him on endurance (patientia) by asking (book 3, lines 547–48), nonne recordaris veluti, stimulante tyranno, moriger innocua Seneca morte perit? Do you not recall how, when the tyrant was provoking, the moralist Seneca perished by a death that did no harm? By contrast, however, a contemporary attack on Seneca’s doctrine in the Contra quattuor labyrinthos Francie of Walter of St. Victor (d. post-1180) presents the death scene as a crowning negative illustration, in which the bath indicates Seneca’s outright hedonistic reveling in death (Contr. quatt. 4.2). We will examine Walter’s version in chapter 8. But in most instances the death illustrates the complex badness of Nero. Otto of Freising in his Chronica (or Historia de duabus civitatibus; written 1143– 45) presents the death as the culmination of a quasi-Suetonian catalogue of Nero’s crimes, asking, “What is more outrageous than the one who did not refrain from the death of Seneca, his own teacher?” (quid eo sceleratius, qui magistro suo Senecae a morte non pepercit? Chron. 3.15, 153). In Otto’s mind, however, the deed is made worse by the fact that Nero was killing one who “showed that he was going to be a friend of the Christian religion” (Christianae religionis amicum se fore ostendit) and whom Jerome placed “among our citizens” (inter cives nostros). Nero’s motive is more directly anti-Christian in the thirteenth-century Chronicon mundi by Lucas of Tuy, who writes that Paul, while imprisoned 36. See Marigo (1926); also Ricklin (1997), 268–69 and Mastandrea (1988), 55–56.

192

receptions

in Rome, “converted many from the household of Nero and obtained friendship with Seneca, Nero’s teacher; for which Nero had Seneca and Lucan put to death (unde Nero Senecam & Lucanum fecit occidi).”37 A separate thread of the tradition, making no reference to Christianity, focused more closely on Nero’s mistreatment of Seneca as teacher. Already in a ninth-century commentary on Boethius we read: “Nero, however, upon becoming emperor, pretended that he was afraid of his teacher in childhood (fingebat se quasi magistrum timeret in pueritia). So when the opportunity presented itself he commanded him to choose a manner of death for himself (nacta occasione mandavit ei, ut sibi genus mortis eligeret). He, having his fill of food and drink, entered the bath and had the vein of each arm cut, and drinking poison from his ring (de anulo venenum bibens), died.”38 This differs in several ways from versions we have seen before, and most conspicuously in the pretended revenge against the teacher. The motive is further elaborated by Vincent de Beauvais (d. c. 1260) in his Speculum historiale: “A report is given that Nero himself, on one occasion looking back at Seneca and recalling in his memory the blows that he had inflicted on him since childhood, gave a roar and, as if desiring to seek revenge from him for his injuries, yet still entirely deferential to his adviser (tanquam iniuriarum ultionem expetere de illo cupiens, sed tanquam preceptori utcumque deferens), allowed him the choice of selecting whatever manner of death for himself he wanted” (Spec. hist. 9.9/10.9).39 Nero now has a heartfelt (rather than pretended) desire to take revenge for the stripes that are still visible on his body, though this is also balanced by his lingering courtesy—a detail that helps for explaining Seneca’s freedom to choose. This configuration of the death scene goes beyond the focus on Seneca’s pedagogical profile seen already in the ancient historians, heightening the symmetries—as well as the ultimate asymmetry—between didactic discipline and political violence. From this background emerged two especially prominent thirteenth-century versions. Jacobus de Voraigne, in his collection of hagiographies in the Legenda aurea (c. 1260), retells Seneca’s death as a sequel to the death of Peter (Leg. aur. 84) and dramatizes the scene with exchanges of direct speech and multiple creative details (84.212–20): It is read in a certain history, however apocryphal, that when Seneca, his teacher, was hoping for a worthy payment for his labors (condignam mercedem laboris sui speraret), Nero ordered him to select for himself the tree from whose branch he wished to be hanged (ipsum eligere in cuius arboris ramo suspendium affectaret), saying that this was the reward he would be receiving from him for his labors.

37. Quoted from Blüher (1969), 58. 38. Quoted from Blüher (1969), 56 with n. 6. 39. See Mastandrea (1988), 55; Langlois (1973), 130; Faider (1921), 130.

tracing the tradition

193

And when Seneca sought to know how he had come to deserve the punishment of death, [Nero] had a sharp sword slashed about above his head (acutum gladium super eius verticem crebro vibrari fecit). Seneca, however, avoided the threatening sword by ducking his head, intensely afraid of undergoing the danger of death (nutu capitis minanti cedebat gladio, vehementer metuens periclitari mortis periculo). Nero said to him: “Teacher, why do you avoid the threatening sword with a duck of your head?” To which Seneca replied: “I am a human being and for this reason I fear death and die unwillingly (homo sum et ideo mortem vereor et invitus morior).” To which Nero replied: “I fear you still, just as I grew accustomed to fear you as a boy; thus while you live I will not be able to live in peace (sic adhuc ego te metuo ut puer metuere consuevi, quare te vivente quiete non potero vivere).” And Seneca replied: “If it is necessary for me to die, at least grant me that I may choose the manner of death which I wish.” To whom Nero [said]: “You may quickly choose, provided that you do not postpone dying (festinus eligas, tantum mori ne differas).” Then Seneca, making a bath of water, had himself chopped on each arm, and in this way, from the flow of very much blood, he ended his life in the same place. Seneca’s freedom to choose which tree to hang from,40 his near death from the slashing of the sword, and Nero’s impatience in awaiting Seneca’s choice all seem to expose Nero’s act of murder for what it is. (At the same time, the somewhat pathetic Seneca character, uncharacteristically greedy for payment and fearful of death, is faced with a Nero who feels justified—the swinging of the sword appears to be an implicit reciprocation of the pedagogue’s use of corporal punishment.) But if Jacobus lingers over the details of Nero’s coercion, this does not stand in the way of his imposing an interpretive closure that appeals to the death’s status as technically a suicide (Leg. aur. 84.221): et sic quodam presagio Seneca nomen habuit, quasi se necans, quia quodammodo licet coactus manu propria se necavit. And thus Seneca had his name as a sort of prophecy, as if killing himself (se necans), since in a sense at least, although under coercion, he killed himself (se necavit) with his own hand. Seneca’s name comes true, even though his death was initiated by someone else.41

40. On the tree as one of several medieval additions, see Graf (1923), 591–93. 41. On the etymology’s wide circulation see Mastandrea (1988), 55; Panizza (1984), 73–74. On the function of etymologies in Leg. aur. see Ryan (1993), xvii.

194

receptions

Within just a few years of the Legenda the death was also retold as part of the Roman de la Rose. In the discourse of Reason—a portion composed by Jean de Meun (c. 1275)—the speaker seeks to illustrate the proposition that Fortune destroys the good and keeps the evil in power (RR 6175–77). After briefly mentioning Socrates (just as in Boethius), she describes Nero’s parricides (6185–250) and, in explicitly Christian terms, states that Nero “made a martyr of Seneca” (Seneque mist il a martire, 6211), and that Seneca explained his choice of the bath by saying, “Let me die in the warm water and let my cheery and joyful soul return to God its maker (E que m’ame joieuse e baude / A Deu qui la fourma se rende), and let him defend it from other torments” (6219–22). The suicidal aspect of the death is actively suppressed: “Nero had the bath made ready (Fist Nerons le baing aprester), and had the good man put in it, and then made to bleed” (6224–26). At the end of this narrative Reason proceeds to give a unique characterization of Nero’s desire for revenge against his teacher (6234–38): “Mais ce ne deit,” dist il, “pas estre, Ne n’est pas bel en nule place Que reverence a ome face Nus on, puis qu’il est empereres, Tant seit ses maistres ne ses peres.” “But,” [Nero] said, “this should not be, and it is no way fine to show reverence to another man after one has become emperor, not even to one’s teacher or one’s father.” Nero grapples with his habitual reflexes of rising to his feet “whenever he saw his teacher approaching” (Quant son maistre voait venir, 6241) and explicitly abhors his conflicted identity as emperor-pupil. The death also found a place in the rich illumination tradition that accompanied manuscripts and early printed editions of such works as the Roman and the Speculum historiale.42 The iconography of the Seneca manuscripts discussed above was only partially replicated, as the scene was presented taking place within vividly realized architectural and social spaces of the court. In one manuscript of the Roman from the end of the fifteenth century (Fig. 7.3), Nero’s all-powerful gaze is communicated in the image of a curtain drawn back from the bath, marking the political intrusion on Seneca’s private existence. The image of the beardless and feminized Seneca here, resembling contemporary portraits of Paulina more than himself (cf. Fig. 7.5), and with his hand across his heart in prayer, represents a shift in his basic physiognomy, in which contemporary cultural conventions—Seneca’s identity as preudome (RR 6245) and 42. On the Roman visual tradition in general see Fleming (1969), esp. 29–36.

tracing the tradition

195

figure 7.3 Illumination for Roman de la Rose (c. 1490–1500). British Library, Harley 4425, fol. 59v. © British Library Board. All rights reserved.

the return of his soul to God—override any concern to establish either his old age or his profile as a philosopher. This version is also distinctive for its selfconscious realization of the scalpel in a form resembling a pen, with the wielder of the scalpel adopting a pose that directly mimics the implied gesture of the manuscript’s own rubricator. The scene is incorporated into a more synoptic image of Neronian history in an illumination of Vincent’s Speculum historiale (Fig. 7.4), where Seneca bleeding in the tub is juxtaposed with the examination of Agrippina’s corpse and womb (a rich tradition in its own right)43 and a 43. See Bergdolt (2002), esp. 269–73.

figure 7.4 Illumination for Vincentis Bellovacensis Speculum historiale, trans. Jean de Vignay (Paris, 1463), BnF MS Français 50, f. 349. Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France.

tracing the tradition

197

backdrop of Rome in flames. The image’s continuous narration depicts Nero at three successive stages, culminating in his suicide at top left.

Italian Renaissance Over the next two centuries, from Dante to Erasmus, Seneca’s profile was dramatically reshaped by commentators, biographers, and emulators.44 Amid the more general revaluation of the classical past and reengagement with it on its own terms, the possibility of using Seneca as a stylistic and moral exemplar was fueled by, and fueled, a deeper and broader intimacy with his oeuvre, now encompassing the Dialogi and tragedies, not to mention the rediscovery of Tacitus’ Annals, which supplied more precise historical detail. But because humanism also gave rein to the creative imagination to explore resemblances and encounters between past and present and between pagan, secular, and Christian, in some cases Seneca’s longstanding image as a friend of Paul, while it lasted, provided the point of departure for a more extensive christianization— including conversion.45

How Many Senecas? During this period Seneca’s identity itself became a topic of investigation. Dante’s reference to Tullio e Seneca morale amid the spiriti magni in Limbo (Inf. 4.141) raised big questions, and not just about whether Dante ranked Cicero or Seneca higher. Different explanations were offered for morale in the exegetical tradition: some saw Seneca being identified as the supreme moralist, whereas others saw the moralist being distinguished from another Seneca, the tragedian.46 Recent scholarship has elucidated how the separate existence of (1) a prose Seneca (responsible for the philosophical works and the declamations) and (2) a tragedian Seneca, was “established” by Coluccio Salutati in 1371, citing Sidonius Apollinaris, though it had already been suggested by Boccaccio on the basis of Martial.47 This division of labor was also in keeping with Salutati’s skepticism about the authorship of the Octavia as a work seemingly depicting its own author (not to mention alluding to details of Nero’s death; cf. Oct. 733); this could be solved by invoking a second author—that is, (2) above—although some assigned the Octavia to yet a third author.48

44. On this period overall see Panizza (1984); Ross (1974), 140–43. 45. See Momigliano (1955), 23–26. 46. See Panizza (1984), 59–61. But Mezzadroli (1990), 3–29 sees Dante’s Seneca morale subsuming both philosopher and tragedian. 47. On these bifurcations of Seneca see Panizza (1984), 52–53; Bocciolini Palagi (1978b), 228–30; Martellotti (1972); Billanovich (1947), 109–16. 48. On these doubts about the Octavia see Goldberg (2003), 14–17; Ferri (2003a), 6 n. 15; Martellotti (1972), 160–65.

198

receptions

Within the terrain established by the two-Seneca distinction, different names and identities were assigned to the tragedian: Boccaccio refers to him as Marcus Annaeus Seneca (on the basis of Helv. 18.4), whereas others referred to him as Mella [sic]; his relationship to Seneca (son? brother?) was debated.49 Ironically, the preface to book 2 of Seneca (the Elder)’s Controversiae, with its references to the author’s three sons, could be used to show that “Seneca” had progeny. Although new light was cast on the problem during the fifteenth century, when the biographer Paolo Pompilio was the first to openly suspect that the declamations may have had a different author than the other prose works, humanists and scholars as late as the seventeenth century would persist in assigning only some, not all, of the tragedies to our “Lucius.”50 This saga had ramifications for how the death should be understood. The image of a “single super-Seneca,” as Stephen Hinds terms him (2004, 162), comprising the Elder and the Younger rolled into one, entailed that Seneca must have been well over a hundred years old at the time of his death (Sicco Polenton calculates 108, Gasparino Barzizza 114), because the author of the Controversiae had mentioned that only the civil wars had prevented him from being “present in [Cicero’s] famous atrium” (in illo atriolo . . . adesse, Contr. 1.praef.11). The idea of a super-Seneca lasting till Nero killed him surely intensified his potential to serve as a symbolic conduit of memory between Republic and Principate—or, in the case of the Seneca-Cicero missed connection, a tantalizing gap in that memory.51 The notion of a tragedian son, in turn, belonged to a fantasy, voiced by Sicco Polenton (who wrote a separate biography of him) among others, concerning the motive for the writing of the tragedies and the Octavia: “In order to avenge his injury (uliciscendam ad iniuriam), he wrote the tragedies which I have mentioned as soon as he was able to do so freely and safely (quam primum potuit libere ac tute), against the deceased Nero” (Script. ill. Lat. ling. 116). The “injury” being avenged would have included the father Seneca’s death.

Contrasting Views in the Age of Petrarch Boccaccio communicated the two-Seneca distinction to Petrarch at a pivotal stage in his career. In the De vita solitaria, written c. 1351 when he still believed Seneca to be the author of the tragedies, Petrarch had lamented Seneca’s admission “in a certain tragedy” (in quadam tragoedia)—obviously the Octavia—that he made a mistake in giving up his solitude on Corsica in order to return to power; indeed, Petrarch argues, “he himself saw so far ahead his own fate and heavy ruin, and entrusted it to writing” (casum ipse suum et ruinam gravem, tanto

49. See Mayer (1994), 152; Martellotti (1972), 155–60. 50. On Pompilio’s distinction see Panizza (1977), 319. Father and son were fully disambiguated only by Raffaele Volterrano in 1559; cf. Bocciolini Palagi (1978b), 231 n. 3. On the carving up of the tragic corpus, see Mayer (1994); also Ferri (2003a), 6 n. 15. 51. Petrarch alludes to Contr. 1.praef.11 at Fam. 24.4.6 (addressed to Cicero); on which, see Hinds (2004), 163.

tracing the tradition

199

ante praeviderit literisque mandavit, De vita solit. 2.8.3).52 Also in 1351, Petrarch had passed on to Boccaccio an early version of the famous letter (Fam. 24.5) in which he takes his beloved Seneca to task for having been Nero’s teacher and, hypocritically, having attacked him through the most serious genre of tragedy: “It is well known (notum est),” he reminds Seneca, “how bitingly, how poisonously, how sharply, you wrote this play against him” (Fam. 24.5.16). (Petrarch elsewhere [Fam. 1.1.43] admits that he had written this letter to Seneca precisely after reading the Octavia.) As a consequence Petrarch shows little sympathy for Seneca over his death; in a striking echo of the Senecan quod voluit effecit topos that we have already seen turned against Seneca’s death by Quintilian and Boethius, h