SELECTED LETTERS. oxford world s classics

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2 oxford world s classics SELECTED LETTERS Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born some time between 1 bce and 4 ce, in Corduba in southern Spain, to a Roman equestrian family. Seneca s father ( Seneca the Elder ) had a successful rhetorical career, and educated his sons in Rome, in rhetoric and philosophy. Seneca was a lifelong adherent to Stoic philosophy. Accused of committing adultery with Caligula s sister Julia Livilla, Seneca was exiled by Claudius in 41 ce and sent to Corsica, where he spent the next eight years. Several of Seneca s philosophical treatises were probably written in exile, along with many or most of his dramatic tragedies. He was brought back to Rome in 49 ce, through the intercession of Agrippina, who wanted a tutor for her son, Nero. On the accession of Nero, in 54 ce, Seneca became Nero s tutor and adviser, together with the praetorian prefect Burrus. Their power diminished after 59 ce, when they refused to help Nero kill his mother, Agrippina. In the early 60s Seneca officially retired from public life, and wrote his Epistulae Morales, the Letters on Morality. In 65 ce Nero accused Seneca of involvement in the plot to kill him, and forced him to commit suicide. Elaine Fantham taught at Princeton University from 1986 to Her most recent books include Roman Literary Culture (1996), Ovid s Metamorphoses (Oxford Approaches to Literature, 2004), and The Roman World of Cicero s De Oratore (2004). She has introduced and annotated Virgil s Georgics and introduced the Aeneid for Oxford World s Classics.

3 oxford world s classics For over 100 years Oxford World s Classics have brought readers closer to the world s great literature. Now with over 700 titles from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century s greatest novels the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy, and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers.

4 OXFORD WORLD S CLASSICS SENECA Selected Letters Translated with an Introduction and Notes by ELAINE FANTHAM 1

5 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in 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 Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Elaine Fantham 2010 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford World s Classics paperback 2010 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, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Glyph International, Bangalore, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Clays ISBN

6 CONTENTS Introduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Lucius Annaeus Seneca vii xxxv xxxvii xli SELECTED LETTERS 1 Appendix: Excerpts from the lost Book XXII preserved by Aulus Gellius 275 Explanatory Notes 277 Index of Persons 311 Index of Places and Things 313

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8 INTRODUCTION Seneca s Home and Family We often speak of Seneca as the most distinguished of the many Spanish writers and poets of Rome s imperial age, starting from his own father of the same name, and his nephew Lucan, and including Columella, Martial, and Quintilian. But although all of these writers came from Spain, they were Roman (or Italian) in descent, culture, and tradition. Scipio Africanus had taken eastern and southern Spain from the Carthaginians during the Hannibalic war, and most of the Spanish peninsula had been Roman since the second century bce. The cities of Baetica (the region of southern Spain around the River Baetis) boasted elites of predominantly Roman or Italian origin. We know Seneca s father from the reminiscences of the Roman declamatory schools during the Augustan age which he assembled for publication towards the end of his long life: 1 he also wrote an unpublished history of the Roman civil wars. However, despite possessing a very personal work full of his opinions, we can neither date his birth precisely nor the years in which he was living on his estates in Spain or visiting Rome. Father Seneca came from the city of Corduba (Cordova in Andalucia), which had been settled with Roman citizens as early as 152 bce. It had ties of loyalty to both Pompey and Caesar, and must have found it difficult to stay on good terms with both sides in the civil war, but did not suffer any loss of status, becoming a formal Roman colony either under Caesar or Augustus. Its culture was clearly somewhat colonial, and we should assume that once the civil wars were over its leading men travelled freely and frequently between Corduba and Rome, whether on financial or political business. The elder Seneca told his sons, in the preface to his reminiscences, that only civil war stopped him going as a boy to Rome 1 The title Oratorum et Rhetorum Sententiae Divisiones Colores is difficult to translate without paraphrase or supplement. I would suggest The aphorisms, argumentative analyses and psychological turns of speakers and teachers of rhetoric. My chief modern source on Seneca the Elder is the fine study of Janet Fairweather, Seneca the Elder (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981). References to this work in the text will be given as Contr. = Controversiae, a simplified version of the title.

9 viii Introduction where he might have heard Cicero that is, before Cicero s murder in 43 bce. This suggests that he was born well before 50 bce. He probably reached Rome soon after 40 bce, and we know that he enjoyed the patronage of the former Caesarian Asinius Pollio, consul in that year. Pollio had celebrated his triumph in 39, but after the breach between Octavian and Antony he held aloof from their growing conflict and devoted himself to civilian activities, founding Rome s first public library in the Atrium Libertatis, and acting as host for private recitations and rhetorical declamations. 2 Seneca apparently stayed in Rome most of the next twenty years or more until his late marriage (in around 10 bce?) to Helvia, the only child of a prominent Roman family from his own part of Spain. They had three sons: Novatus, subsequently adopted by the consul Junius Gallio, 3 born in or soon after 8 bce; our Lucius Annaeus Seneca, born between 4 and 1 bce; and M. Annaeus Mela, who would become the father of the poet Annaeus Lucanus (Lucan). When father Seneca dedicated his reminiscences to his sons almost forty years later, he would have been over 80 years old, about the age of his wife Helvia s father who was still alive a few years later (Dialogues, XII.18.9). Given his advanced years, it is not surprising that the preface dedicating his work to his three sons reflects stern moral disapproval of the ways of modern youth (now two generations his junior); the sons themselves, already in their thirties, were presumably old enough to have passed through the youthful debaucheries father Seneca denounces: Now our discipline is growing worse daily, whether from the luxury of this generation for nothing is so deadly to intellects as luxury or because when the rewards were lost of this most noble art, all competition was transferred to shameful activities that thrived with great honour and profit, or by that malicious law of fate that matters brought to their highest level of achievement slip back to their lowest, faster indeed than they rose. For now the minds of our idle youth are sluggish, and men do not keep awake in toil over a single honourable achievement; sleep and apathy and worse than sleep and apathy, a perverted energy for bad behaviour, has seized their minds, and the disgusting passion for singing and dancing keeps them effeminate: to crimp their hair and strain their voices to the 2 The elder Seneca reports attending these on several occasions. 3 He took on the name of his adoptive father: Gallio was proconsul of Achaea, and one of the suffect consuls of 56 ce.

10 Introduction endearments of women, to compete with women in the softness of their bodies and grooming themselves with the most unclean of cleansing, is the model of behaviour for our young men. Who of your contemporaries is, should I say, talented enough, dedicated enough, or need I say it, enough of a man? Softened and gutless, they remain as they were born through their lives, taking others virtue by storm but indifferent to their own. (Contr. Pref., 7 9) Romans of this period were trained in composing such denunciations of fashionable amusements, but one can only hope that the old man recognized the difference between his rhetoric and the more ordinary weaknesses of the new generation. Diatribes like this should perhaps increase our sympathy for young Seneca and appreciation for the respect he always shows for his father s views. From the writings of our Seneca, dated from approximately 37 ce to his death in 65, we can more or less reconstruct his troubled early life. 4 He was brought to Rome as a child by his maternal aunt (Consolation to Helvia, 19: perhaps his mother was detained by being pregnant with his younger brother) and educated there, but he was delicate (he describes his own attacks of asthma) and would later spend many years for the sake of his health with his aunt in Egypt, where her husband Galerius was imperial prefect. His aunt was important in promoting Seneca s political career and his quaestorship, but we do not know how he spent his early adult years. If he was still delicate he may have delayed entry into public life, which made severe physical demands on orators in the courts. Or he may have found the later years of Tiberius an unfavourable climate for starting his career. No doubt father Seneca hoped that his sons, or at least the two eldest, would make a name in the lawcourts and be considered for public office, but by the time he composed his reminiscences (probably during the reign of Caligula, ce) he speaks quite clearly of the dangers of a political career. To his youngest son, Mela, he says: since your brothers are preoccupied with ambition and preparing themselves for public life and public offices, in which the very honours hoped for are to be feared, being eager to encourage and praise their efforts, dangerous as they may be, so long as they are ix 4 Apart from the writings of Seneca himself my primary guide has been Miriam Griffin s Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1976). Where no ancient or modern source is credited my account is shaped by hers.

11 x Introduction honourable; while they are on their voyage I am happy to keep you in harbour (Contr. 2, Pref. 4). By this time Seneca had held the junior magistracy of the quaestorship, but his family seems to have been compromised by association with Tiberius controversial praetorian prefect Sejanus, and will have come under suspicion after the latter s fall in 30 ce. 5 We do not know whether Seneca held his quaestorship before the fall of Sejanus, but he offended Gaius Caesar (Caligula), possibly for the same reason which was to lead to his exile under Claudius in 41 ce his friendship with Gaius dangerously power-hungry sisters Agrippina and Livilla. 6 It is rather earlier that we should place Seneca s serious interest in philosophy. He tells us on separate occasions that as a young man he studied with the philosophers of the school of Sextius (such as Papirius Fabianus) and developed an enthusiasm for moral philosophy, but was discouraged by his father, partly because students of philosophy were suspected by the emperor (Tiberius) and associated with dissidence (letter 104). Probably the father was happy to let his delicate son spend some time listening to the lectures of philosophers, but became alarmed when young Seneca began to take this pursuit too seriously. The family s wealth might seem to have made it unnecessary for Seneca to enrich himself further through public life, but it may equally have led father Seneca to regard a life spent in practising philosophy with as little favour as a modern father would consider his expensively educated son entering the church or becoming an underpaid academic. Certainly, by the time he composed the preface to his reminiscences the old man had acquiesced, not without regret, in the apolitical life of his youngest son Mela: in a passage which seems unkind to his older sons, he says: I am glad to report this [critical appraisal of Papirius spoken eloquence] dearest Mela, because I see that your spirit is alien to public duties and averse to any kind of ambition, eager for one thing only to be eager for nothing. But do devote yourself to eloquence, it is easy to pass from this into 5 There is evidence for this at Annals, VI.3, where Tacitus resumes his narrative after the fall of Sejanus in 30: Tiberius rebukes Gallio as a junior senator, for proposing privileged seating for members of the praetorian guard (which Sejanus commanded) at the theatre. 6 On Gaius attitude to Seneca and his jealousy of Seneca s eloquence see Suetonius, Caligula, 51.

12 Introduction every kind of art; it trains even those whom it does not prepare for itself... continue where your spirit leads you, and content with your father s rank (as a knight) remove a great part of your life from the risk of Fortune. You had a greater talent than your brothers, capable of every kind of virtuous skill: but it is even a pledge of a superior nature not to be corrupted by its own excellence into putting it to bad use. (Contr. 2, Pref. 3) We have no evidence of his attitude to Seneca, and can only hope he treated all his sons with the same sympathy and respect. Probably soon after his father s death Seneca was accused by political supporters of Claudius wife Messalina of adultery with Livilla. He was found guilty and exiled to the island of Corsica in 41, where he stayed for eight years. Any political career he might have aspired to was on hold. From his essay of consolation to his mother Helvia (Dialogues, XII.2 3), we know that Seneca was married and had recently lost a baby son. The Consolation itself was no doubt partly an act of self-justification aimed at a wider public, but offers a sympathetic portrait of Helvia as both mother and grandmother: his tactful description of his father s antiquus rigor and fondness for ancestral tradition suggests a degree of complicity with his (much younger, perhaps 60-year-old) mother, who had been discouraged by her husband from pursuing philosophy out of his distaste for women who used learning for social display (Dialogues, XII.17.4). But Seneca takes pains to stress his mother s sober and chaste life, and to reassure her that he will spend his exile in a fashion worthy of her virtuous standards. Seneca would be approaching 50 when Messalina s disgrace and suicide led Claudius to remarry: under various pressures the emperor chose Agrippina, great-grand-daughter of Augustus and of Mark Antony, already twice married, and mother by her first husband of a young teenage son Domitius Ahenobarbus. Agrippina s previous acquaintance with Seneca led her to have him recalled in 49 ce and made tutor to the boy. The end of Seneca s exile was the beginning of his moral enslavement but this was not immediately apparent. Both Seneca and his brother Gallio were now marked out for consulships, Gallio as a suffect 7 in 55, while Seneca apparently was one of the suffects of 56. But Seneca was faced with xi 7 Suffects were men elected consul during the year to replace the primary consuls (Ordinarii) who opened the year and gave its name in the public records.

13 xii Introduction the progressively more impossible task of guiding this overgrown boy: once adopted by his stepfather Claudius, young Domitius, now with the adoptive name Ti. Claudius Nero, was ready to marry his stepsister Octavia and displace his younger stepbrother Britannicus. Agrippina made sure that Claudius died prematurely in 54. Nero became emperor in his place. The public face of things was apparently calm during five years in which Nero s policies were guided by Seneca and the praetorian prefect Burrus the so-called Quinquennium Neronis but privately there began a power struggle which led to the sudden deaths of first Britannicus and then Agrippina. Seneca was in no position to prevent these acts, and was mocked after Agrippina s death for composing for Nero a speech of intolerable hypocrisy in which the young emperor congratulated himself on escaping the murderous intrigues of his mother. Naturally, given his wealth and influence with the young emperor, Seneca had powerful enemies, but even the most ruthless of these, the professional accuser Suillius, had no lasting effect when he launched his attack in 58 ce. 8 Seneca was still useful to Nero. But by 62 ce the emperor had become infatuated with his friend Otho s wife Poppaea, and repudiated Octavia, bringing false charges of adultery against her: despite (or because of?) public protests, she was first exiled from Rome then exiled to an island, where she was murdered. Seneca s ally in guiding Nero, the praetorian prefect Burrhus, died at about this time, and Seneca s enemies were muttering that it was time for the young emperor to dispose of his teacher. Knowing this, Seneca desperately sought to withdraw from the hazards of court life and to shed the private wealth which Nero was eager to claim for himself. Tacitus turns the interview which Seneca sought with the emperor into a black comedy, in which Nero left his former tutor no escape (Annals, XIV.52). 9 When Nero increasingly rejected his friendship, Seneca begged for an interview, and when this was granted began to speak: This is the fourteenth year, Caesar, since I was brought into contact with your prospects, 8 Tacitus, Annals, XIII.42, cf. other accusations of extortionate provincial usury in XIII On his narrative at Annals, XIV.52 5, and the speech he puts into Seneca s mouth, Griffin, Seneca (p. 281, n. 4), notes that its convincing authenticity reflects Tacitus familiarity with Seneca s public speeches indicated elsewhere.

14 Introduction and the eighth that you have been in imperial power; in the intervening time you have heaped so great a quantity of honours and wealth upon me that nothing is lacking to my happiness except its moderation. I shall use great models, not of my fortune but your own. Your great-grandfather Augustus permitted Marcus Agrippa seclusion at Mytilene, and Gaius Maecenas retirement in the city itself as if travelling abroad. One of these as his partner in warfare, the other after being wearied by many toils at Rome, had received rewards generous indeed but in proportion to their great services. What else have I been able to offer your generosity than studies reared in the shadow, which have acquired glory because I seemed to be a supporter in the early training of your youth, a great reward for this action. But you have enveloped me in vast influence and money beyond counting, so much that I usually wonder to myself: Am I, born in equestrian rank in the provinces, being counted among the city s leading men? Has my new birth shone forth among nobles displaying their long-lived honours? Where is that spirit once content with moderate circumstances? Does it lay out these parklands and stroll through these suburban estates and overflow with such expanses of land and such widespread interest? Only one defence has occurred to me, that I ought not to resist your gifts. But each of us has reached his limit, you of as much generosity as any leader should bestow on a friend, and I as much as a friend should accept from his leader: any more simply increases resentment. This indeed, like all mortal things, lies beneath your greatness, but it is weighing upon me and I need succour. Just as I would ask for a support if I were weary in warfare or on a journey, so in this journey of life as an old man, unequal to the lightest of anxieties, now that I can support my wealth no further, I am asking for help. Have your business administered by your agents, and taken into your private portfolio. I will not thrust myself down to actual poverty, but after handing over the resources whose splendour blinds me, I will recall to spiritual concerns whatever time is set aside for the care of my parks and villas. You have abundant strength and control of the highest level of achievement seen over so many years; we older friends can request our repose. And this too will redound to your glory, to have raised to the heights men who would also be content with a moderate fortune. Nero s answer is clever and cruelly insincere. He begins by claiming that his ability to refute Seneca s protests is itself a debt to Seneca s teaching, and leads into the claim that he still needs Seneca s wisdom to save him from backsliding. Besides, if Seneca returned his wealth and property people would talk not of Seneca s nobility but of his, Nero s, covetousness and cruelty: it would not be becoming for a xiii

15 xiv Introduction wise man to win glory for himself from something that begets dishonour for his friend. Tacitus adds that Nero ended with an embrace and kisses, being an expert in concealing his hatred in treacherous blandishment. So Seneca, as was the outcome of every conversation with a master, gave him thanks; but he changed the habits of his former powerful position, banning gatherings of clients to greet him, avoiding escorts, seldom coming to the city, as if he were kept at home by adverse health or the pursuit of philosophy (Annals, XIV.53 6). The interview is the product of Tacitus literary art, but it conveys with bloodcurdling vividness the claustrophobic world in which Seneca now had to operate. Tacitus confirms Seneca s fearful position incidentally at Annals, XV.45.3: he avoided even leaving his cubiculum (more like a study than a bedroom), and after Nero attempted to have him poisoned by a freedman, kept to a very simple diet, varied only with country-grown fruit and running water. So let us take refuge, as Seneca did, in his writings. Seneca s Writings The major problem for would-be critics is that there is no external evidence and surprisingly little internal evidence to guide us in dating his works either relatively, to each other, or absolutely. Seneca was both poet and prose writer, and one s instinct is to look for work that he might have produced to occupy himself in exile; he actually claims to divert himself not only with philosophical speculation but with less serious writings (levioribus studiis, Dialogues, XX.1). A body of his tragedies has survived, 10 which cannot be dated by internal allusions but have been given relative datings by various stylistic features. The first in the oldest manuscript of this group of plays, Hercules Furens, contains a lament which is closely par odied in the satirical account of Claudius deification, Ludus de Morte Claudi or Apocolocyntosis (Pumpkinification of Claudius), written in 55 ce, the year after Claudius death. Stylistic features have been 10 There are two manuscript traditions: editors usually follow the order of the plays in the Codex Etruscus: this contains Hercules, Medea, Troades, Phaedra, Agamemnon, Oedipus, Thyestes, Phoenissae, and Hercules Oetaeus. The other family of manuscripts presents a different order, uses some different titles, and includes the post-senecan tragedy Octavia about Nero s divorce and relegation of his wife. On the Octavia see now A. J. Boyle s edition and translation (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008).

16 Introduction used to classify three tragedies, Agamemnon, Phaedra, and Oedipus, as having been written earlier than Hercules Furens: two others, Medea and Trojan Women, are close to Hercules in technique and so probably come from the same few years; and two more, Thyestes and Phoenissae (the latter without choral odes, so incomplete), have been seen as composed after 59 under an increasingly tyrannical Nero. It is true that the plots of both Phoenissae and Thyestes are concerned with sibling hatred the expulsion of Polynices from Thebes by Eteocles, and the exile of Thyestes by Atreus. The latter play in particular is saturated with the tyrannical boasts of Atreus, and an atmos phere of evil in his court which may remind us strongly of Tacitus portrait of Nero. But these boasts were inherent in the traditional presentation of the myth, from Accius version late in the second century bce if not earlier. Critics have also tried to see Agrippina in the Jocasta of Seneca s Oedipus, who dies cursing her womb for conceiving an abomination, 11 but such gestures were known to educated Romans from Greek tragedy and did not need to wait for Nero s birth or Agrippina s last words. Seneca s prose writings begin with the Consolation to Marcia (one of a series of philosophical writings collected under the rather misleading title of Dialogues), composed under Gaius, then further Consolations to his mother Helvia (41 ce) and to Polybius, the emperor s freedman in charge of petitions (probably written in 43 after Claudius successful campaign against Britain): the three books On Anger (Dialogues III V) are full of resentment against Gaius, and also seem to be early. The other dialogues are harder to date. On Providence and The Constancy of the Wise Man are placed first and second in the collected dialogues, but On Providence is addressed to Lucilius, the younger friend who is also the addressee of the Letters on Morality (Epistulae Morales) and Natural Questions (Quaestiones Naturales). Does this mean that it was composed in the same period as those late works? There is nothing in its content to suggest that it could not have been written early in Seneca s career, but the common addressee and overlap of themes with several of the letters encourage us to think that On Providence could be a later composition, placed first within the corpus of Dialogues because of its fundamental topic Why do xv 11 This is the reference of her last exclamation to Nero s assassins: strike me in the belly (ventrem feri, Tacitus, Annals, XIV.8.6).

17 xvi Introduction bad things happen to good men? vindicating divine providence by reinterpreting misfortunes, rather than because of its date of composition. I have passed over four of the essays collected among the Dialogues, but they invite closer attention because they share a number of elements with the Letters on Morality, including a number of veiled allusions to the hazards of public life: these are De Vita Beata (VII, On the Happy Life, to his brother Gallio); De Otio (VIII, On Leisure, to Annaeus Serenus); De Tranquillitate (IX, On the Tranquillity of the Mind, to Serenus); and De Brevitate Vitae (X, On the Shortness of Life, to his father-in-law Paulinus). Thus De Vita Beata opens with a warning against the corrupting influence of public opinion: we shape ourselves too much to respond to gossip... the mass of people are opposed to the demands of reason. It moves through a re-examination of Epicureanism which repudiates living for pleasure, but affirms that the teachings of Epicurus himself have been misunderstood, and were chaste and upright (13.1). But one ingredient which may suggest that this was an early dialogue is Seneca s extended defence of the wise man who enjoys wealth, balanced by insistence on its proper use (21 6); this anticipates his later analysis of the liberality of conferring benefits (On Benefits); to this add Seneca s arguments for the rightness of showing one can live without wealth something treated in several letters. 12 On Leisure is mutilated; we have neither its beginning nor its end, but the first surviving sentences again advocate withdrawal: it will be good for a man to withdraw into himself; we do better acting as individuals. Seneca divides modes of life into living for contemplation, living for pleasure, and living for action. The last was always the most esteemed course for Romans, but Seneca recognizes that this may not be possible. A man is required to benefit other men if possible, many men; if not, then a few; if not a few, then the men closest to us; if not them, then oneself (3.2). But participating in civic life depends on the condition of the community, and after reviewing various states Seneca concludes (8.3) that he is able 12 The argument echoes attitudes shown by Panaetius and Poseidonius (who did not want to offend wealthy patrons) but is at variance with other writings. There is no simple explanation, as is shown by Griffin, Seneca, ch. 9.

18 Introduction xvii to think of no state which can tolerate a wise man, or which he in turn can tolerate. 13 On the Tranquillity of the Mind is complete, and is the only dialogue in which Seneca includes a speech for his interlocutor; this is his friend Annaeus Serenus, who had risen to be one of the two prefects of the praetorian guard, and would suffer poisoning from mushrooms at a banquet along with many other guests. 14 Serenus asks Seneca what he should do in his state of anxiety and discontent; Seneca in reply quotes the philosopher Athenodorus: the best remedy for this discontent would have been to keep oneself busy with administering public life and citizen obligations (the latter could be individual services in the courts); but given the prevalence of slanderers it will be best to avoid public life altogether. If a man cannot be a soldier, let him seek office. If he must live without office, let him be an orator. If silence is imposed on him, let him help a fellow citizen by silent recommendation. If even entering the Forum is dangerous, let him play the good companion, faithful friend, and abstemious guest in private homes, at shows and parties. If he has lost the citizen s duties, let him perform those of a man (4.3 6). Later Seneca seems to come closer to his own condition in the later years under Nero, claiming that many men of necessity must cling to their high position (fastigium) since they cannot step down without falling (10.6). But his recommendation to Serenus is retirement, a retirement well spent in serious study of virtue, together with cultivation of one s family estate and judicious relaxation. How early did Seneca begin longing to withdraw from Nero s intolerable court? Did he write this before 55, when he would irrevocably be in the position that the ancient proverb called holding a wolf by the ears, where one can neither hold on nor let go? The last of these dialogues, placed in the manuscripts before the two Consolations from 41 and 43, is On the Shortness of Life, dedicated to his fatherin-law Paulinus, who held the responsible position of curator annonae, supervisor of the public grain supply. Its message is again the shortness of life and hazards of postponing otium (leisure), as otherwise 13 For arguments for and against positing a late, Neronian dating for On Leisure, see Griffin, Seneca, 317, 355, and G. D. Williams (ed., Seneca: De Otio; De Brevitate Vitae (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), Our source is Pliny, Natural History, XII.96, writing about this type of mushroom. It is not clear whether deliberate poisoning was suspected.

19 xviii Introduction admirable men like Augustus and Cicero had done. But otium must be wisely used. As for Paulinus, Seneca reminds him of the strains of a political position and the quest for office (17.5 6): he has given enough of his life to service and should now give what is left to studious leisure. Miriam Griffin argued some years ago 15 that the dialogue was intended to provide a public justification for Paulinus, who was probably aged around 65 in 55 ce, to step down from this onerous job. But we should also take into account the arguments advanced for an earlier date of 49, or one as late as 62. Most recently, G. D. Williams s introduction to the dialogue 16 has left the date open between 49 and 55. Perhaps, then, the preference for leisure explicit and implicit in several of these dialogues, along with some themes in common with the letters avoidance of the crowd, finding wisdom in Epicurus, learning to do without riches favours a later composition, when Seneca himself had begun to long for withdrawal, but there is nothing to determine a clear dating. On Mercy was written for the new emperor Nero, and its praise for his merciful nature has to do the job of an exhortation or Mirror for the Prince. It almost certainly belongs in the emperor s first year, but it seems unfinished Book 2 is truncated. The seven books On Benefits also seem to have been written to advocate generosity and discrimination to the emperor, whose role entailed enormous disbursements to cities (after disasters) and individuals, but to modern eyes its length is out of proportion to its theme. I have left to last the works we know Seneca was writing after 62 ce. In his Consolation to Helvia Seneca declared that there were two things which exile and temporal powers could not take away from anyone: the laws and forces of nature (chiefly the heavenly bodies, which could be seen from all over the Roman world), and the improvement of one s own soul. He could have added that these topics were both safe from provoking political suspicion. Now withdrawn to his own rooms in his villa, Seneca devoted himself to the seven books of Natural Questions comparing and to some extent evaluating theories of cosmology and meteorology, on the behaviour of thunder and comets, earthquakes and volcanoes, and rivers. These were not 15 Journal of Roman Studies, 52 (1962), 104 f. 16 pp

20 Introduction xix original research but based on the works of Greek scientists up to and including Posidonius, and Seneca is content to state the problem and offer a choice of solutions without hoping to settle on a reply. As the preface to what is called Book IV of the Natural Questions shows, this work is dedicated to Lucilius: As you say, Lucilius, best of men, Sicily and the service of your leisured administration delights you and will continue to delight you if you are willing to control it within its limits and not turn an administrative task into a governor s command. I don t doubt you will do this, because I know how foreign you are to ambition and how attached to leisure and culture. Let men who can t stand themselves hanker after a crowd of tasks and people, but you are on the best terms with yourself... so do as you have been accustomed to, dear Lucilius, and detach yourself as much as you can from crowds. Note that the italicized phrase coincides with the opening of the Letters. But a lot of the advice which follows in this preface is very specific, and probably familiar to readers of manuals for governors, even the most judicious, like Cicero s carefully personalized letter to his brother Quintus as governor of Asia ( Letters to his Brother 1.1). The Letters, by contrast, are not concerned with Lucilius administrative task, his staff, or his social relations with Romans or provincials. Their themes are far more personal and need separate consideration. In what sense is this a correspondence? The Letters on Morality As Personal Communication We naturally want to know something about Lucilius Iunior, Seneca s partner in this correspondence. But we know only what Seneca himself tells us (or tells Iunior!) in the letters and Natural Questions, which he was also composing in these years between 63 and his death. 17 The Preface to Natural Questions, Book IV, shares with some of the early letters the recommendation to Lucilius to shun the worldly crowd around him, even to seek retirement from his privileged position as 17 Lucilius is also the dedicatee of the dialogue On Providence (De Providentia), but it cannot be dated, and contains no personal information about him. We cannot assume from its relative simplicity of theme, or its position first in the collection of Dialogues, that it was written early.

21 xx Introduction procurator (senior financial officer) of the emperor s huge estates in Sicily. Along with a powerful invective against the flatterers who lobbied and molested Roman officials Seneca puts into Lucilius mouth proud statements that he had faced the risk of tortures threatened by Gaius (Caligula) without resorting to escape by suicide, and had maintained his loyalty to Gaetulicus against the slanders of Messalina, wife to Claudius when he was made emperor in 41. The same preface stresses Lucilius humble origin and indifference to wealth as well as his devotion to composing poetry. 18 If he was genuinely of humble origin he may not have known the elite figures like Passienus Crispus or Gallio whom Seneca mentions in the preface, or even the cynic teacher Demetrius. But if he was implicated, as Seneca seems to have been, in the alleged conspiracy of Gaetulicus around 40 ce Lucilius cannot have been much younger than Seneca. It is simply the premiss of these Letters on Morality that Seneca as spiritual trainer is senior to Iunior. Why are they called Morales? Because their purpose and dominant theme is to reinforce Lucilius struggle to achieve the wisdom and serenity of a man uninfluenced by worldly emotions desires and fears, and angry or envious reactions to others. While many of the letters open with lively vignettes of Seneca s day-to-day experience and expand into literary critical or social comment, the letters are, as it were, a course of moral therapy, designed to sustain Lucilius integrity. It is part of this continuing moral programme that Seneca s first letter is styled as a reply. Yes, do just that, dear Lucilius means that we are to imagine Lucilius having written to report some new moral initiative he has taken up for Seneca s approval. And this is supported by the key passage in letter 118: You are demanding more frequent letters from me, so let us compare our accounts; you will find you cannot pay off your debt. In fact we had agreed that your letters would come first: you would write and I would write back. But I am not going to be difficult; I know that it is safe to be your creditor. So I will give you a letter in advance... This would imply that Seneca usually waited for an enquiry from Lucilius (and many of his letters actually begin with the words You ask me what... ; You would 18 For Lucilius poetic ambitions see letter 79 in this selection: fragments of his poetry are quoted by Seneca in letters 8.10 and

22 Introduction like to know; You are curious whether... ) before sending his next letter. But this carries the fictive assumption of the correspondence too far. 19 As an imperial procurator Lucilius would certainly have the use of the fast imperial post, at least to Rome itself, from where Seneca s servants could retrieve missives but this would take, say, three days at best to reach Rome, and Seneca himself, as Tacitus indicates and as is confirmed by several letters, stayed out of Rome and kept continually on the move. (Lucilius too was often on the move within Sicily as part of his administrative duties.) So we should assume anything from four to eight days for a letter to reach either correspondent. Many of the earlier letters open by reacting to something Lucilius has said, and some letters style themselves as replies: one at least (letter 46) thanks him for sending Seneca a treatise, and the next in the series speaks of talking to Lucilius people, seemingly the slave messengers. The uncertainties of delivery are represented as a real problem: so letters 59 and 74 open by thanking Lucilius for a letter which has just been delivered. But letter 50 speaks of receiving a letter many months after it was written. If we consider 124 letters (not to mention the lost letters deduced from Gellius quotation from Book XXII, reproduced here in the Appendix) written in just over two years, this averages a letter every six or seven days, but once we abandon the hypothesis of a reciprocal exchange of letters it is clear that Seneca wrote whenever he wanted to discuss a new topic or revive an old one. He may well have written several letters within a few days, or taken some time in order to complete a longer missive, like the dialogue-length letters 66, 90, 94, and The letters confine themselves to personal moral concerns, often introduced by some relevant anecdote. But there are very few perhaps only half-a-dozen indications of where Seneca xxi 19 Griffin, Seneca, appendix B4: The Fictional Character of Seneca s Correspondence with Lucilius, lists opening gambits which either mention a letter from Lucilius or imply one by mentioning Lucilius requests. For a balanced presentation of the distinctive nature of this correspondence see Donald Russell s chapter, Letters to Lucilius, in C. D. N. Costa (ed.), Seneca (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974) and two essays by Marcus Wilson, Seneca s Epistles... A Revaluation, in Imperial Muse = Ramus, 16 (1987), and Seneca s Epistles Reclassified, in S. J. Harrison (ed.), Texts, Ideas and the Classics: Scholarship, Theory and Classical Literature (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001). 20 Only letters 90 and 95 are included in this selection.

23 xxii Introduction is writing from, 21 and in contrast with conventional letters (which tended to bear exact dates in order to alert the recipient to the time consumed in delivery) slightly fewer and certainly vaguer chronological markers, limited only to the time of year. 22 The correspondence seems most likely to have been a one-sided initiative by Seneca, with Lucilius consent, even gratitude. The pose of response to Lucilius requests was in the tradition of treatises dedicated to trusted friends and often claiming to be answering their requests. Thus Cicero addressed his Orator to Brutus in order to satisfy Brutus protests at his previous arguments. Poetry too adopted this pose, as in the anecdote told by Pliny of the absent-minded Iavolenus Priscus, in the audience when his friend began an epigram Priscus, you bid me... Perhaps half-asleep, Priscus leapt up and said: I certainly am not bidding you (Pliny, Letters, VI.15.2). Given the contexts in which Seneca composed his correspondence, and his desire to keep a close focus on timeless moral issues, it is interesting to see his discreet attempts at circumstantiality to achieve verisimilitude. Thus letter 15 takes up the traditional opening If you are well that is good; I am well, and offers his own variant: If you are practising philosophy, it is good... Other early letters also pay some general attention to Lucilius official position, which exposed him to flatterers, busybodies, and slanderers, and intermittently mention his official travel in Sicily. One letter (24) shows Lucilius apparently frightened of an impending lawsuit a situation repeated in one of Pliny s letters to Suetonius; another responds to Lucilius passing sickness; a letter about half-way through the sequence (64) speaks of regret for their long separation. But although the early letters (such as 7) reflect Seneca s own frequent concerns by urging Lucilius to resign from official duties and withdraw from society, there is no sense even in the last few letters that Lucilius tour of duty is coming to an end or that Seneca has reached the end of his programme 21 The clearest cases are the letters from Campania. 22 Letter 18 notes that it is December, and the Saturnalia; letter 23 claims winter has been short and is nearly over, but in letter 67 it is still only spring, presumably of the same year (63?). Letter 91 can be dated by the great fire of Lyons (Sept. 63?), and 122 marks the shrinking daylight of autumn. We might also expect that the Campanian letters would come from either the April vacations of senate and courts, or August, when the summer heat made Rome unbearable.

24 Introduction xxiii of therapy. Perhaps he was intending to continue when the aftermath of the abortive conspiracy led to Seneca s imposed suicide. Adapting the Epistolary Tradition to a Moral Purpose As Russell ( Letters to Lucilius ) points out, the Hellenistic manual On Style attributed to Demetrius of Phalerum singles out letters for their effectiveness in representing a personality: The letter, like the dialogue, should abound in glimpses of character (ethos). It may be said that everybody writes a letter as the image of his soul. In every other genre of writing we can discern the writer s character, but in none so clearly as the epistolary (On style, 227, tr. Rhys Roberts, modified). Is this how Seneca saw his own correspondence? Besides the all-important personal relationship we need to put the letters in the context of the literary and philosophical traditions. The same letter 21 which promises Lucilius immortality quotes from Cicero s letters to Atticus, and from a letter of Epicurus to Idomeneus which claimed that his own letters would make Idomeneus more famous than all his other activities (compare also letter 79). Seneca himself ends most of the first thirty letters with sayings from Epicurus, and will cite him at length in later letters. 23 Brad Inwood has rightly stressed the importance of Epicurus letters as a precedent, 24 but what remains of his correspondence are three long treatises with little actual epistolary setting, and some significant excerpts from letters to other friends. There is a certain inconsistency in Seneca s insistence on doing one s own thinking rather than quoting moral tags from the great names of Stoicism given his free quotation of these excerpts from Epicurus. Cicero s letters to Atticus are another matter. Atticus outlived Cicero by some fifteen years, and it is assumed that he edited and circulated Cicero s letters to himself (we do not know how many letters 23 See in this selection the last paragraphs of letters 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 21, 24, 27, 28; the comments in 33 on why Seneca had left off adding these maxims, and from later letters 67, 79 (like 21, preoccupied with posterity), 89, and 97. For the surviving letters and excerpts of Epicurus see B. Inwood and L. P. Gerson, Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988). 24 See Reading Seneca (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005), esp. ch. 1 on Seneca s cultural background: also Inwood s annotated translation of Seneca s Philosophical Letters, and his paper The Importance of Form in Seneca s Philosophical Letters in R. Morello and A. Morrison (eds.), Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007).

25 xxiv Introduction he suppressed). In letter 21 Seneca claims that it is Cicero s letters, not his connections with the imperial house, which do not permit Atticus name to fade. There is no critical assessment here, but two later letters quote from the first book of the Letters to Atticus: letter 97 uses it as evidence for the moral corruption of Clodius bribery in the time of Cato the Stoic saint; letter 118, with which we began above, quotes Cicero s request to Atticus to write him whatever comes into his mouth in terms of political gossip, in order to repudiate this kind of material in favour of one s own moral needs. The fact that Seneca only quotes Cicero in these later letters, and only from Book I of the Letters to Atticus, suggests that he knew of the letters as early as letter 21 but had some difficulty in getting to read them; he is in fact one of the earliest sources. Seneca himself insists that the purpose of his writing is to encourage or compel Lucilius to act for the best interests of his own mind, taking moral initiatives. 25 This is why certain themes, like the importance of honourable behaviour (Greek to kalon, Latin pulchrum), are reiterated; this is why Seneca constantly appeals to his own experience and his day-to-day moral successes and lapses to keep Lucilius striving for moral improvement. Almost every letter carries its own measure of encouragement, and any letter which concerns itself with explanation, whether of physics or psychology or ethics, explicitly moves forward to what Lucilius must do to benefit from this knowledge. Seneca was a highly committed philosopher, impatient with logical puzzles but ready to argue in detail important points of doctrine. Nonetheless, he was writing for Lucilius and for an amateur public. It is important to keep in mind that Seneca put moral impact before intellectual debate: he called these philosophical essays by an entirely new title, Epistulae Morales, and wrote them with a moral purpose to promote moral behaviour in their readers. Seneca thought of himself as following and occasionally modifying Stoic teaching, and yet as we saw, he repeatedly quotes and interprets sayings of Epicurus, founder of the rival school, in his early 25 Until twenty years ago most students of ancient philosophy did not recognize the value of any philosophical discussion not aimed at logically cohesive systems and a Platonic search for truth. Martha Nussbaum should be credited for reaffirming the value of protreptic, and moral therapy that is, arguments aimed at healing the disturbed mind and activating moral behaviour.