L. Annaeus, second son of the preceding, was born at Corduba about
B.C. 3. He was from infancy of a delicate constitution, and liable to serious illnesses, in
one of which he owed his life to the devoted care of his maternal aunt, in whose company, he
tells us, he was brought to Rome. His instructors there were the eminent philosophers
Fabianus, Attalus, and Sotion , under whom he studied with unremitting ardour, carrying his
zeal for their precepts so far as to cultivate a somewhat ostentatious asceticism. His prudent
father, alive to the jealousy of the court, recommended less perilous forms of virtue.
Caligula, who affected to be a severe critic of Seneca's style, unquestionably envied his
talent, and had marked him out for destruction, but was induced to spare his feeble health,
which seemed to threaten an early grave. Under Claudius, Seneca rapidly rose to eminence. As
quaestor he had the promise of a political career opened to him. He was also a successful
pleader, a skilful professor of eloquence, and a leader in the world of fashion. But he had
made powerful enemies. An intimacy was known to exist between him and Iulia Livilla, youngest
daughter of Germanicus, which was liable to an unfavourable construction; so that when
Messalina by her intrigues effected the exile of the princess, she was able to involve Seneca
in a similar fate (A.D. 41). He was banished to Corsica, where he spent eight years, a fretful
and helpless spectator of events. With the downfall of Messalina his fortunes revived.
Agrippina, wishing to use him as the instrument of her ambitious projects, and perhaps, as Dio
insinuates, captivated by his engaging person, contrived to secure his appointment as tutor to
her son, the young Nero, then eleven years of age, and already destined for the throne. This
was a position exactly suited to Seneca's genius. There is every reason to believe that he
endeavoured to imbue his pupil's mind with maxims of wisdom and clemency; and the early part
of Nero's reign, the “golden
quinquennium” of justice
and mercy, was long remembered as due to the influence of Seneca and Durrus, who jointly
administered the State. It soon became evident, however, that Nero could not be controlled.
The tutor tried to retain his influence by dangerous and unworthy concessions to the vices of
the pupil, but without success. It was Nero who held Seneca bound by the magnetism of fear, of
a more violent will, and of imperial splendours. The minister was compelled to follow the
downward course of Nero's policy, giving such colour as his practised rhetoric afforded to its
odious features till Agrippina's murder—the motive of which he was called upon to
embody in a state-paper—brought the climax to a long series of inconsistencies
between profession and practice, and showed him at once the moral hollowness and the actual
insecurity of his position. From this time Nero seems to have turned against him; and although
the long-foreseen blow did not descend until A.D. 65, when Piso's conspiracy gave a decent
pretext for accusing him, yet for several years Seneca had been prepared for death, and had
made generous, but ineffectual, attempts to disarm the emperor's malice. Bidden to effect his
own death, the philosopher, with his high-born and beautiful wife Paulina, who insisted on
dying with him, opened his veins. Paulina was restored by her friends to life, though with
difficulty: he, after suffering excruciating agony, which he endured with cheerfulness,
discoursing to his friends on the glorious realities to which he was about to pass, was at
length suffocated by the vapour of a stove.
Seneca is undoubtedly the most brilliant figure of his time, and, except Tacitus, the most
important
|
So-called Bust of Seneca the Philosopher. (Naples Museum.)
|
thinker and writer of the post-Augustan Empire. He embodied all the leading
characteristics of the age, with which, unlike the majority of Roman citizens, he was in
thorough harmony; and consequently he has been judged with more prejudice even by posterity
than might have been expected.
That he was a truly great or good man can scarcely be maintained; that he was even a great
thinker is open to question; but the inconsistencies of a life passed amid such overpowering
temptations must not blind us to his real earnestness of purpose, or to the merit of
exercising, under constant risk, a restraining influence on perhaps the vilest character known
to history. It is impossible to doubt Seneca's love for virtue. Amid exaggerations, conceits,
paradoxes, follies, the moral end is always held out as the only one worthy of being
consistently followed, to which every kind of speculative knowledge is subordinate. His death,
though not without a conscious study of effect, was a truly noble one; and we must believe him
sincere when, on comparing himself with others and reconsidering his actions and omissions, he
declares that he can look back with satisfaction upon his life. His opinion, thrice expressed,
to the effect that true wisdom will not seek for an impracticable standard of purity in a
hopelessly corrupt age, must be referred to the lower level of moral excellence, which
Stoicism considered alone compatible with public life, and not to the ideal of the
unencumbered, untempted sage.
Of Seneca's poetical writings, some few epigrams are preserved in the
Anthologia
Latina. We possess also nine tragedies correctly ascribed to him, viz.:
Hercules Furens, Troades (or
Hecuba), Phoenissae (not all
genuine),
Medea, Phaedra (or
Hippolytus), Oedipus, Agamemnon,
Thyestes, and
Hercules Oetaeus, and one
praetexta,
the
Octavia, incorrectly ascribed. Doubts have been thrown on the
identity of the tragedian with the philosopher, but they are quite unfounded. The tragedies no
doubt belong to his earlier life, and probably were written, partly during his exile, partly
after his return to Rome, to assist the poetic proclivities of Nero. They are free imitations
of Greek originals, which have in most cases survived so as to admit of a comparison. Both in
dramatic power and loftiness of tragic feeling the Latin plays are immeasurably inferior. They
abound, however, in brilliant declamation, philosophic contemplation, and witty aphorisms.
They can hardly have been intended for the stage, to which they are wholly unsuited; but they
are admirably fitted for declamatory reading, though even for this purpose overloaded with
rhetoric.
Seneca's prose works were numerous and important; a considerable portion are lost, but the
larger and more valuable part remains. Among the former are his speeches, written to be
delivered by Nero, a treatise
De Situ Indiae, another
De Situ et Sacris
Aegypti, another
De Motu Terrarum; several treatises on moral
philosophy, viz.:
Exhortationes, De Officiis, De Immatura Morte, De Superstitione, De
Matrimonio, Quo Modo Amicitia Continenda Sit, De Paupertate, De Misericordia, De Remediis
Fortuitorum, and
De Verborum Copia; a biography of his father, a
panegyric on Messalina, and several books of letters. His extant works comprise (
a) the twelve so-called dialogues, viz.:
Ad Lucilium de Providentia,
Ad Serenum de Animi Tranquillitate, Ad S. de Otio, Ad S. de Constantia Sapientis, Ad Novatum
de Ira Libri III., Consolatio ad Marciam, Consolatio ad Polybium, Consolatio ad Helviam
Matrem, De Vita Beata ad Gallionem, De Brevitate Vitae ad Paulinum; (b) three books,
Ad Neronem de Clementia; (c) seven books,
De Beneficiis ad Aebutium
Liberalem; (d) twenty books of moral letters,
Ad Lucilium (but the
collection is incomplete); (
e) seven books,
Naturales
Quaestiones, addressed to Lucilius; (
f) a political satire on
the death and apotheosis of Claudius, called by
διο
ἀποκολοκύντωσις, which is of interest as the only remaining example of the Satura
Menippea; (
g) fourteen spurious letters of a correspondence with St.
Paul, which seem to have imposed upon St. Jerome (
De Vir. Illust. 12). See
Epistola.
From this catalogue it will be seen how wide was the field embraced by Seneca's genius.
Little need be said about his scientific works, except that they show no mean acuteness of
conjecture and considerable knowledge of physical theories, though these are often
subordinated to an ethical purpose. His views of nature are in the main Stoic, and his
examples are probably drawn from Greek sources.
It is on his moral treatises that Seneca's fame rests. In the particular department that he
selected, viz., the application of certain leading principles to practical life, he excels all
other writers of antiquity. Nominally a Stoic, he belonged really to the Eclectic School,
culling precepts from every form of doctrine with impartial appreciation. “The
remedies of the soul,” he says, “have been discovered long ago: it is for
us to learn how to apply them.” On this text his system is a comment. It requires,
above all else, a thorough knowledge of the human heart, and in this Seneca is
preëminent. In that dark and perilous period, when universal mistrust prevailed, the moralist must be able to dive into the secret recesses of the soul,
drawing to light its hidden disquiet, and fortifying it against the blows of circumstance or
the deeper thrusts of human turpitude. No writer, ancient or modern, shows a more complete
mastery of the pathology of mind. Many of his letters are of the nature of sermons; others are
spiritual meditations; others, brilliant attacks on the falsehood and vice of the time. In all
these is the same incisiveness of style, the same fertility of illustration, the same varied
experience, the same emphatic and reiterated pressing home of his point. This last feature is
apt to weary the reader; and Seneca, well aware of the danger, endeavours, by every artifice
of rhetorical ingenuity, to maintain the interest of his theme. “To impress the dull
conscience, reiteration is a necessity: to knock once at the door when night is come is never
enough: you must knock frequently and hard.” This leads him to use a tone of
exaggeration which, by its seeming insincerity, does injustice to the writer's heart, and has
caused him to be too severely judged. His religious and moral maxims so often approximate to
those of Christianity that the fathers of the church adopted the view that he had adopted
their faith, to which the fictitious correspondence with St. Paul seemed to lend support. The
coincidences, however, though sufficiently remarkable, are accidental only, and arise from the
character of his mind, which was essentially that of a “seeker after God.”
Bibliography
1. Editions of the Tragedies:
Delrio
(Antwerp, 1576; Paris, 1620); Lipsius
(Leiden, 1588);
Gruter
(Heidelberg, 1604); Scriverius
(Leyden, 1621-51); Gronovius
(Leyden, 1661; Amsterdam, 1682); Schröder
(Delft, 1728).
More modern editions are those of F. H. Bothe
(Leipzig, 1819); T. Baden, 2
vols.
(Leipzig, 1821); Peiper and Richter
(Leipzig, 1867); Holtze
in Tauchnitz series
(Leipzig, 1872); and Leo, 2 vols.
(Berlin,
1878-79).
2. Editions of Complete Prose Works:
Erasmus
(Basle, 1515-20); Muretus
(Rome, 1585); Gruter
(Heidelberg, 1593); Lipsius
(Antwerp, 1605); Variorum edition
with Gronovius's notes in 2 vols.
(Leiden, 1649; Amsterdam, 1672), enlarged and
illustrated by Ruhkopf
(Leipzig, 1797-1811); F. Haase in the Teubner series, 3
vols.
(1852, 1872- 1874); Holtze in Tauchnitz series in 5 vols.
(Leipzig,
1832, 1873-78);
Œuvres Complètes de
Sénèque, avec la traduction française de la collection
Panckoucke par Charpentier et F. Lemaistre, précédes d'une notice sur
Sénèque et d'une préface par Charpentier, 4 vols.
(Paris, 1860-61, 1867-73) (Garnier);
Œuvres
complètes de Sénèque, avec traduction en
Français, being part of Nisard's collection of Latin authors in Didot's
Latin classics
(Paris, 1877).
The Workes of L. A. Seneca, both
Morall and Naturall, translated by Thos. Lodge, D. in Physicke (London,
1614), contains all but the
Apocolocyntosis and the (spurious)
epistles to St. Paul.
3. Editions of Separate Works
De Providentia, by Nauta
(Leiden, 1825);
Ad
Marciam, by Michaelis
(Haarlem, 1840);
Lib. de Beneficiis et
Clementia, by M. C. Gertz
(Berlin, 1876);
Dialogorum Lib. XII,
ex Recensione et cum Apparatu Critico, H. A. Koch, revised by Vahlen
(Jena,
1879). These dialogues are also edited by Gertz
(Copenhagen, 1886); the
Epistolae Morales, by Schweighäuser
(Strassburg,
1809);
Selectae Epist., with arguments and French translation by
Sommer
(Paris, 1872);
Epistolae Aliquot, by Bücheler
(Bonn, 1879);
Nat. Quaestiones, by Köler
(Göttingen, 1819); the
Apocolocyntosis, by Schusler
(Utrecht, 1844), and by Bücheler in the
Symbola
Philol. p. 31 (Bonn) and in his smaller edition of Petronius
(Berlin,
1882).
4. General Criticism.
A full list of the authorities for Seneca will be found in Teuffel's
History of
Roman Literature, vol. ii., translated by Warr
(London, 1892).
Biographical notices in Merivale,
Romans under the Empire, chs. 52-54. On his
philosophical and religious ideas, see Zeller,
Gk. Phil., English translation
under “Eclecticism.” Also his
Stoics, Epicureans, and
Sceptics, translated by Reichel; Farrar,
Seekers after God
(London, 1869); Martha,
Les Moralistes sous l'Empire Romain
(Paris, 1872); Dörgens,
Senecae Disciplinae Moralis cum
Antoniniana Comparatio (Leipzig, 1857); Gelpke,
De Senecae
Vita et Moribus (Berne, 1848).