Lucius Annaeus Seneca, surnamed the Philosopher to distinguish him from
his father the Rhetorician, was born in Corduba,[1] in Spain, about 4 B.
C.—authorities differ by several years as to the precise date. When
quite young he was brought to Rome by his father. He devoted himself
with great zeal and brilliant success to rhetorical and philosophical
studies. In the reign of Claudius he attained the office of quaestor and
subsequently rose to the rank of senator. In the year 41 he was banished
to the island of Corsica on a charge that is admitted to have been
false, but the nature of which is not clearly understood.
In this barren and inhospitable island he was compelled to remain eight
years. He was then recalled to Rome and entrusted with the education of
the young Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who afterwards became emperor of
Rome, and notorious as the monster Nero. For five years after his
accession to the principate, the young emperor treated his former
teacher with much deference, consulted him on all important matters, and
seems to have been largely guided by his advice. He also testified his
regard for him by raising him to the rank of consul. In course of time,
however, the feelings and conduct of the prince underwent a change. The
possession of unlimited power by a character that was both weak and
vain; the adulation of the conscienceless favorites with whom he
surrounded himself; the intrigues or cabals to whom the high morality of
the philosopher was a standing rebuke; and the naturally vicious temper
of Nero, all conspired to prepare the way for the downfall of Seneca.
When the conspiracy of Calpurnius Piso against the monarch was
discovered, the charge of participation, or at least of criminal
knowledge, was brought against Seneca, and he was condemned to die.
Allowed to choose the means of ending his life, he caused a vein to be
opened and thus slowly bled to death. It was his destiny to be compelled
to take his departure from this world in the way he had so often
commended to others; indeed it is probable that his reiterated encomiums
upon suicide as an effectual remedy against the ills of this life, was
not without its influence upon his executioners. They probably wanted to
give him the opportunity to prove by his works the sincerity of his
faith.
During the closing scene he told his disconsolate friends that the only
bequest he was permitted to leave to them was the example of an
honorable life; and this he besought them to keep in faithful
remembrance. He implored his weeping wife to restrain the expression of
her grief, and bade her seek in the recollection of the life and virtues
of her husband a solace for her loss.
It was the fortune of Seneca not only to be well born, but also to be
well brought up and carefully educated. That he appreciated the high
worth of his mother is evident from the words, “best of mothers,” with
which he addressed her in the Consolation to Helvia. His father, though
wealthy, was a man of rigid morality, of temperate habits, of great
industry, and possessed very unusual literary attainments. His older
brother, better known as Junius Gallio from the name of the family into
which he was adopted, was for some time proconsul of Achaia, in which
capacity he is mentioned in the Acts, xviii, 12-17. Seneca’s younger
brother was the father of Lucan, the well-known author of the poem,
Pharsalia. Both his mother and his aunt,—he was an especial favorite of
the latter—were not only women of exalted character, but they had
acquired an intellectual culture that was very uncommon for their sex in
their day.
Our authorities for a life of Seneca and for an estimate of his
character are fairly ample and have been variously interpreted. Nothing
can be gained by taking up the controversy anew. To some of his
contemporaries even, he was more or less of an enigma. Others, again,
regarded him as a time-server, a hypocrite, a man whose professions were
belied by his actions. Still others,—and they are largely in the
majority—are more lenient in their judgment; though they cannot
exculpate him from inconsistencies, they excuse them by pointing to the
extremely difficult position in which he was placed during the greater
part of his life. He has strong partisans who are attracted and charmed
by the sublime sentiments scattered so profusely through his writings;
his enemies, in forming their opinions, lay the chief stress on what
they regard as the inexcusable deeds of his life. It is too late to add
anything to the evidence either pro or contra. All that it is proposed
to do in this essay is to place before the reader a picture of the man,
mainly from his own writings, as the chief exponent of the highest
philosophy reached by the ancient world before this philosophy was
supplanted by the new religion that was destined to take its place in
the thought of mankind. Seneca was next to Cicero, or rather along with
Cicero, the most distinguished Roman philosopher; but as a philosopher
he has received the far greater share of attention. Both were Romans at
heart; both were earnestly engaged in the search for the supreme good;
both were guilty of conduct inconsistent with their professions; both
tried and tried in vain to combine a life devoted to reflection with
with an active career in the service of the state; and both failed. But
Seneca not only had a higher ideal than Cicero; he also came nearer
attaining it. He was less vain, less hungry for public honors and
applause, and attached less importance to mere outward display. As a
thinker Seneca has more originality than Cicero, is less dependent upon
books, knows better the motives that underlie human conduct. Both were
essentially Roman in their views of life, and it is only by keeping this
in mind that we are able to explain, if not to excuse, the lack of
harmony between what they said and what they did; between what they
preached and what they practised.
Like that of Cicero, Seneca’s was no adamantine soul, no unyielding
barrier against which the vices of his time beat in vain. He had the
Roman liking for what is practical. He tried to be a statesman and was
somewhat of a courtier when to be a courtier and an upright man was
impossible. He was no Socrates to whom virtue, the fundamentally and
intrinsically right, was more important than anything else, than all
else, even abstention from the political turmoil of his time.
When a long and acrimonious strife is carried on over a man it is
evidence that he is no ordinary person. This has been the fate of Seneca
in an eminent degree. During the Middle Ages, and even after their
close, a great deal of attention was paid to his reputed correspondence
with St. Paul. The National Library in Paris contains more than sixty
MSS. of this pseudo-correspondence. That he was claimed as a Christian
need surprise no one. The poet Virgil shared a similar fate; yet there
is far less in the writings of Virgil to mark him a Christian, or rather
as a writer who was in a sense divinely inspired, than there is in
Seneca to stamp him as a man who had accepted the new faith. The rise
and persistence of such a literature is not an anomaly in the history of
thought. It is not out of harmony with the spirit of an age when the
church was supreme in everything; when all questions were viewed from
the theological standpoint, and when every means were employed to gain
support for the existing ecclesiastical organization. It was honestly
believed that the practice or profession of a high morality, except
under the sanction and guidance of the church, was impossible. It was
taken as a matter of course, that a good man, one who eloquently
preached righteousness, who seemed to be conscious of a struggle within
himself between the flesh[2] and the spirit, must have been enlightened
from on high. Given the internal evidence of Seneca’s own writings, it
was not difficult to supply the complementary external testimony.
This all-embracing and all-absorbing power of the church lasted about a
thousand years and ended with the Reformation, though it had begun to
decline some two centuries earlier. For this condition of things the
Roman empire had prepared the way. It was the prototype to which, in
part unconsciously and in part consciously, ecclesiastical authority was
made to conform. Notwithstanding the fact that the Gospel was first
widely proclaimed in Greek lands and the body of its doctrine formulated
in the Greek tongue, when the church began to aspire to universal
dominion it naturally assumed the garb of Roman secular authority. The
Eastern Empire was regarded as an offshoot from, rather than as a
continuation of, the empire that had so long ruled the world from the
great city on the banks of the Tiber. The natural consequence was that
the Latin language in time supplanted the Greek, and ecclesiastical
thought flowed in the channels worn by the political thought that had
preceded it. The struggle in later times for the supremacy of the state
as against the church was merely the effort to return to a condition of
things that had existed before the establishment of the church. The
Greeks were not less patriotic than the Romans. The state occupied just
as prominent a place in their minds as it did in the minds of the
Romans. But it was their misfortune to appear upon the scene of history,
broken up into a large number of small polities of nearly equal
strength, and the Greek mind never got beyond the particularism thus
inherited. It was their fundamental concept of government. Rome
represented a more advanced type of political development than Greece,
and if it had been permitted to work out its own salvation without
external interference,—for the city at its worst was hardly more corrupt
than many a modern capital—it might be in existence to-day. The Roman
empire endured so long because it was upheld by the patriotism of its
citizens. This was often narrowly selfish, and frequently grossly unjust
to foreigners, but it was effectual in maintaining the supremacy of Rome
against all attempts from within or without to subvert it. The Romans
that were drawn toward philosophy pursued it in a half-hearted manner
because the state occupied the first place in their minds. To serve the
state was the ultimate goal of their ambition. The emperors, even the
most corrupt, still represented the government and as such received the
homage of good men. If we keep this fact in mind we shall be able to
understand the bravery and devotion to duty of many of the officers and
even soldiers in the imperial forces. More or less out of reach of the
contaminating influences that were so powerful in the capital, they
performed the services expected of them as became Romans.
Long, long afterward, and when Rome was nominally a Christian city, a
German monk left its walls as he was returning to his northern home, a
far less zealous churchman than he had entered it. Strange coincidence!
The city that had become the head of a spiritual empire was no less
corrupt and corrupting than it had been as the head of a temporal
empire. More than sixteen centuries of experience, some of it of the
bitterest kind, had wrought no perceptible change. The Christian
followed in the footsteps of the heathen.
For us who have been brought up in the belief that morality and right
and justice have a claim to our services for their own sake, without
accessory support and under all circumstances, the devotion of the Roman
to his government, even the most unworthy, is not easy to understand.
Rome owed her greatness more to the bravery of her citizens in war than
to any other cause. To this virtue they always accorded the foremost
place, and to those who displayed it, the highest honors the state could
bestow.
But Seneca was a man of peace. This fact had without doubt something to
do in producing the unfavorable estimate some of his contemporaries
formed of him. Tacitus, too, was not a military man; yet he looks with a
certain disdain upon those who devoted themselves to the arts of peace
rather than to the profession of arms. He regards with less favor the
man who has wisely administered a province than him who had extended the
boundaries of the empire.
We naturally incline to the opinion that no man who respected himself
could accept service under such a ruler as Nero, or Caligula, or
Domitian, unless it were in the hope that he might mitigate a ferocious
temper or avert calamity from personal friends. And yet, many tyrants
since the dissolution of the Roman empire have been served by honorable
men; and they have usually requited their services in the same way, with
exile, or confiscation of goods, or an ignominious death.
The readiness with which many of the best Romans resorted to
self-destruction as a release from misfortune strikes us with surprise.
Suicide is often mentioned in the writings of Seneca, and always with
approval. It is not hard to understand this attitude of mind if we
recollect the relation the Roman regarded as existing between himself
and the state. The government was in a sense a part of himself, and an
essential part. To the Greek there was still something worth living for
after the loss of country and citizenship. He could devote himself to
literature, or philosophy, or to some more ignoble means of gaining a
livelihood. To the Roman such a thing was well-nigh impossible,
especially if he was a member of one of the ruling families. Exile,
exclusion from service in the state, was to him the end of every thing.
Many Romans of whom one would have expected better things are
inconsolable so long as they are compelled to live away from the capital
with no certain prospect of return. Need we wonder that to many others
life was no longer worth living, and that they freely put an end to it
with their own hand. Often the best men sought surcease of sorrow in
this unnatural way. Those in whom the moral sense was weak, plunged
recklessly into debauchery and sensual gratification. Literature, too,
was corrupted to minister to their corrupt tastes. We know little of the
life of the average Roman citizen; but there is sufficient evidence
within reach of the modern reader to prove that the ruling class had few
redeeming traits. The downward tendency is plainly discernible in the
last days of the Republic. Julius and Augustus Cæsar were men of
depraved appetites and low morals. Their talents as military captains
and administrators, their patronage of letters, and their tastes as
literary men, have somewhat put their moral delinquencies into the
background. There is no doubt that the example of these and such men,
accelerated the evil propensities to which the Roman people were only
too prone. When the lowest depth of moral degradation was reached, as in
the declining years of Seneca, crime and debauchery held high carnival
in the imperial household. There was no wickedness so flagrant, no
species of immorality so bestial, no deed so horrible, that men shrank
from it. For, had they not more than once the example of the prince
himself? It is sometimes charitably said that Nero was insane. There are
men who think it too degrading to human nature to hold it responsible
for his crimes and indecencies. Yet Nero’s excesses were the natural
results of unlimited power in irresponsible hands, when the hands were
servants of a heart that was thoroughly corrupt, and a character that
was weak, and vain as it was weak. The same things have often been
repeated within the last eighteen hundred years; but never was vice so
rampant and so unblushing, on such a large scale, as it was in Rome in
the days of Seneca.
We must not believe, however, that there was no decency, no regard for
morality, no love of culture, to be found in the Roman empire even in
its worst estate. There were always groups and coteries of noble men and
women who kept themselves free from the prevailing corruption. There was
always a saving remnant that remained uncontaminated. Quintillian was
the center of such a group, and what he was in Rome, Plutarch was in
another part of the empire, for they were almost exactly contemporaries.
The belief in God, in the immortality of the human soul, and in man’s
personal responsibility to a higher power, kept some, perhaps many, who
were not directly under the degrading influence of the court, or who had
the moral strength to resist it, from deviating very far from the path
of rectitude. There were slaves of whom better things could be said than
of their masters. But what were these among so many?
Seneca and other writers of his time frequently express contempt for
those men who professed to be philosophers, and whose lives brought only
disgrace upon the fair name of philosophy. He does not seem to be aware
that, in a measure at least, he is recording an unfavorable verdict upon
himself. Does he think that his abstemiousness, his untiring industry,
his devotion to study ought to cover his shortcomings? It looks so. He
commends solitude, yet always remained in the noonday of publicity. He
inveighs against riches, yet was the possessor of vast estates, and was
not above lending money at usurious rates of interest. He teaches men to
bear with fortitude the inevitable ills of life, and ends by commending
suicide as a final resort. Compared with Socrates, to cite but a single
name, Seneca was a very unworthy exponent of practical philosophy. The
former took philosophy seriously, so seriously that he not only wanted
to live for it but was willing to die for it. He kept aloof from
politics because he felt that a public career would interfere with a
duty he owed to a higher power. He, too, believed in a Providence, but
with him this belief amounted to a conviction. All his reported words
and deeds testify to this, while Seneca acts and writes as if trying to
convince himself quite as much as others. Socrates had an abiding faith
in a personal God who not only watched over his life, but cared for him
in death. Duty was to him a thing of such supreme importance that he
never hesitated to perform it, no matter what the consequences to
himself might be. Socrates taught nothing he did not himself practice;
Seneca, much. Socrates feared neither God nor man; Seneca was afraid of
both. Socrates expected nothing of others that he did not exact of
himself; Seneca sets up a higher standard of morals than he, under all
circumstances, attained. His precepts are better than his practice. His
fatal mistake lay in trying to do two things that have always been found
incompatible: to be a successful politician and an upright man. There
were others besides Socrates, before the days of Seneca, in whose life
and character philosophy had had more consistent exponents and faithful
devotees than in him. But when they found that philosophy and a career
in the service of the state were incompatible and reciprocally
exclusive, they unhesitatingly gave up the latter. Seneca can always
admire high ideals, but he cannot always imitate them. He is fascinated
when he gazes on the lofty heights to which virtue had sometimes
attained, and he often makes heroic efforts to follow after; but he is
only now and then successful. It is no wonder, then, that Socrates had
even in his lifetime many ardent admirers and enthusiastic disciples
that remained true to his memory, while Seneca had none.
Canon Farrar is mistaken when he calls Seneca a “seeker after God.” God
was in no man’s thoughts oftener than in his. Nor has any uninspired
writer given utterance to a larger number of noble sentiments and lofty
precepts than he. It is easy to extract from his writings a complete
code of morals, a breviary of human conduct, that would differ but
little from that contained in the New Testament. He is a conspicuous
example of the heathen of whom Paul says, they are without excuse. But
while Seneca is not a seeker after God he can with justice be called a
seeker after Christ. He is an earnest inquirer after the peace that
passeth understanding; after that serene confidence that sustained the
greatest and the least of the Apostles, and the noble army of martyrs no
less. He lacks that Christian enthusiasm that comes only through faith
in a living Christ and in His atonement.
Seneca now and then caught a glimpse of that universal kingdom which the
company of believers expected would one day be established upon the
earth. He says, “No one can lead a happy life who thinks only of himself
and turns everything to his own use. If you would live for yourself, you
must live for others. This bond of fellowship must be diligently and
sacredly guarded,—the bond that unites us all to all and shows to us
that there is a right common to all nations which ought to be the more
sacredly cherished because it leads to that intimate friendship of which
we were speaking.”
It is hard to see how he could write the following striking passage
without thinking of himself; for, though guiltless of some of the vices
he condemns, there are others of which he cannot be acquitted. After
defining philosophy as nothing else than the right way of living, or the
science of living honorably, or the art of passing a good life, and
denouncing the fraudulent professors of it, he proceeds: “Many of the
philosophers are of this description, eloquent to their own
condemnation; for if you hear them arguing against avarice, against lust
and ambition, you would think they were making a public disclosure of
their own character, so entirely do the censures which they utter in
public flow back upon themselves; so that it is right to regard them in
no other light than as physicians whose advertisements contain medicine,
but their medicine-chests, poison. Some are not ashamed of their vices;
but they invent defenses for their own baseness, so that they may even
appear to sin with honor.”
To the same effect is the testimony of Nepos: “So far am I from thinking
that philosophy is the teacher of life and the completer of happiness,
that I consider that none have greater need of teachers of living than
many who are engaged in the discussion of this subject. For I see that a
great part of those who give most elaborate precepts in their school
respecting modesty and self-restraint, live at the same time in the
unrestrained desires of all lusts.”
Both Seneca and Plutarch are firmly convinced that man is the arbiter of
his own happiness; but the former found great difficulty in making a
practical application of the doctrine to his own case. Notwithstanding
the sorry spectacle presented to the world by many professed
philosophers, neither lost faith in philosophy. It was the court of last
resort. For the man to whom philosophy will not bring happiness there is
no happiness in this world. To the importance and benign influence of
this culture of mind, Seneca reverts again and again. He contends that
“He who frequents the school of a philosopher ought every day to carry
away with him something that will be to his profit: he ought to return
home a wiser man. And he will so return, for such is the power of
philosophy that it not only benefits those who devote themselves to it,
but even those who talk about it.” “You must change yourself, not your
abode. You may cross the sea, or as our Virgil says, ‘Lands and cities
may vanish from sight, yet wherever you go your vices will follow you.’
When a certain person made the same complaint to Socrates that you make,
he answered, ‘Why are you surprised that your travels do you no good,
when you take yourself with you everywhere?’ If we could look into the
mind of a good man, what a beautiful vision, what purity, we should
behold beaming forth from its placid depths! Here justice, there
fortitude; here self-control, there prudence. Besides these, sobriety,
continence, frankness and kindliness, and (who would believe it?)
humaneness, that rare trait in man, shed their luster over him.”
Though Seneca’s life was full of contradictions and inconsistencies when
measured by the standard of his own writings, it would be unjust to
charge him with hypocrisy. He was, within certain limits, a man of
moods; a man in whose mind conflicting desires were continually striving
for the mastery. It seems to have been a hard matter for him to attain
settled convictions on a number of important questions. Even the
immortality of the soul, a subject upon which he has much to say, and
which to Plutarch is an incontestable dogma, is to Seneca hardly more
than a hope. His mind matured early and there is almost no evidence of
development or change of views or of style in his writings. He was such
a man as nature made him, and he was on the whole pretty well satisfied
with the product. Though he now and then seems to be conscious of a
certain lack of constancy, and on the point of confessing his sins, he
generally ends by excusing them or by trying to show that they are
venial. Yet the fact that he at times acknowledges a kind of moral
weakness is perhaps the chief reason why Seneca has been so often
claimed as a Christian, while no such claim has ever been made for
Plutarch who sees no defects either in himself or his doctrine.
The chief problem of philosophy has at all times been, how to make the
judgment supreme in all matters that present themselves before the mind
and how to make the will carry out the decisions of the critical
faculty. When the poet says, “Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor,”
he is thinking of this irrepressible conflict. Paul himself was not a
stranger to it, for he exclaims in a moment of self-abasement when
writing to Seneca’s fellow citizens, “The good which I would, I do not;
but the evil which I would not, that I practice.” He, too, finds within
himself a “law,” a fact of human experience, that the flesh wars against
the spirit; that the appetencies are hard to reconcile with the
judgment. Seneca’s own writings furnish abundant evidence that many who
professed to be philosophers used their intellects solely, or chiefly,
in devising means for gratifying their desires. To men of his way of
thinking the Epicureans were a constant object of attack; yet the
Epicureans were generally consistent from their point of view and in
accordance with the postulates of their system. The all-important
question with every man who is in the habit of giving an account to
himself of his life is how to get the most out of it,—how to formulate a
system of complete living. If the individual is the goal, considered
solely from the standpoint of his earthly life, it is evident that he
will act differently in the same circumstances from him whose aim is the
good of society considered as an undying entity, or the happiness of the
individual regarded as an immortal soul. The disagreements of
philosophers have always hinged on these fundamental problems and it is
strange that so little note has been made of them. It is too often taken
for granted that the mere use of the reasoning faculties, that is,
philosophy _per se_, and without reference to the highest good, is able
to make men as nearly perfect as they can become in this life, both as
individuals and as members of the community. It was the conviction that
philosophy had run its course; that it was “played out,”—to use a phrase
more expressive than elegant—that made so many of the best men, in the
first Christian centuries, turn from it and seek refuge in Christianity.
They had become weary of the ceaseless and acrimonious discussions of
the different philosophical schools. Disgusted with contradictions and
inconsistencies, they turned to the Gospel as offering a solution of
problems at which so many acute thinkers had labored for centuries in
vain.
It has often been remarked that the Roman world had grown old. Every
experiment had been tried, every theory had been suggested that might
lead to complete living; all had ended in failure and disappointment for
those who had the good of their fellow men at heart. He who would
perform a successful experiment in physics or chemistry must see to it
that all the necessary conditions have been provided. If this is not
done, no amount of care in manipulation will bring about the desired
result. The mere presence of the proper ingredients, however pure, will
not insure success. So in society, the existence and vitality of social
forces will avail the reformer in no wise unless he knows how to put a
motive force into men’s minds and hearts that will induce them to aid
him in bringing about the changes he proposes. Some good men have been
made so by a noble system of philosophy, to the practical
exemplification of which they have devoted their lives. Both Greece and
Rome furnished not a few such. On the other hand there have been many
bad men who were made so by following the tenets of a vicious
philosophy.
There are two reasons why Seneca has, for more than eighteen hundred
years, engaged the attention of thinking men. No doubt the most
important is his extraordinary ability. The world will not willingly
forget the words of a great man, nor suffer his life to pass into
oblivion. It clings to thoughts and deeds that are worthy to survive.
Seneca not only had something to say that men wanted to hear, but he
knew how to say it in such a way that they were glad to listen. Great as
has been the evil in the world at all times it has never lacked many men
who felt that they were made for something better than the daily
concerns that occupied their time and labor. In their better moments
they found pleasure in listening to the voices that spoke to them of
something more abiding than the fleeting affairs of this transitory
life.
Seneca, too, was intensely human. He frequently furnishes evidence of
extraordinary mental strength while now and then he sinks down in sheer
exhaustion. His mind ranges freely along the whole scale of mental
experiences; and though he dwell, longest on the higher parts, he does
not always do so. The record of such an experience has an attraction for
many men. They see in it a counterpart of their own struggles, and are
rarely without hope that its triumphs may be an earnest of their own.
The scholar in politics is a character of whom we hear a good deal, but
as a matter of fact, scholarship, in the true sense of the word, and
successful politics, as the world understands success, are a combination
that has rarely been made. Again, an ecclesiastical statesman, strictly
speaking, is an equally rare phenomenon and has been since the days of
the supremacy of the Romish church. The greater the success of the
ecclesiastic in statecraft, the farther he departed from the
prescriptions of the church, or at least of the Gospel. How often has
the experience of Wolsey been anticipated or repeated; and many men,
both laics and priests, have felt the truth of Shakespeare’s thoughts,
if they have not expressed them in his words:
“Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.”
We still hope to find a place for the scholar in politics, but we have
given up the search so far as the ecclesiastic is concerned. Yet in
Seneca we have a man who had mastered all the knowledge of his time; who
was by no means an unsuccessful preacher of righteousness, and who,
nevertheless, was a successful courtier and statesman during part of his
life. He might have been both to the ending of his days in peace, had it
not been his fate to serve one of the worst rulers that ever lived. The
secret of his undying fame then is his ability and his whilom position
at the court that ruled the greatest empire of the world. It is probable
that the cause of his exile, at an age when he had as yet not written
very much, so far as we know, was his prominence in a way that was
distasteful to the emperor Claudius. While there was nothing in his past
life or present conduct to justify putting him to death, his removal
from Rome seemed desirable to the reigning monarch and his most
influential advisers. But even in exile Seneca was not a man calmly to
permit his enemies to forget him; nor would his friends suffer him to be
forgotten.
Notwithstanding his sudden elevation to a position of great importance
in the empire, he seems never to have lost sight of the fact that he was
standing on the edge of a precipice from which he might be thrust at any
moment, and that he still had need of all the consolation his philosophy
could afford. Boissier rightly says, “Though praetor and consul he
remained not the less a sage who gives instruction to his age; while he
was governing the Romans he preached virtue to them.” And he might have
added, “to himself,” for it is evident from many passages in his works
that he had himself in view no less than others. He strove to fortify
his own soul against temptations by giving expression to the tenets of
his philosophy, just as men find relief in sorrow by recording the
thoughts that pass through their minds. We may be certain, too, that to
his contemporaries his speech often sounded bolder and freer than to us
with our inadequate knowledge of the inner life of the Roman
court-circle, and accustomed as we are to the freedom of criticism to
which all our public characters, not excepting sovereigns, are subject.
They doubtless saw in many of his pithy sayings, allusions, whether
always intentional or not, does not matter, to occurrences to which we
no longer have the key. And we may be sure that he was not without an
abundance of enemies and detractors. A few of these have left themselves
on record for us. There were, doubtless, also many persons who were wont
to sneer at the man who professed to find the highest good in a
contemplative life; in devotion to an ideal that differed so widely from
the reality in which he lived; and who could yet maintain his influence
at a court of which little that was good could be said. Every society
contains a certain number of members who regard all who endeavor to lead
a better life than they themselves do, or whose ideals are higher than
their own, as offering a sort of personal challenge or directing a
rebuke at them which they must needs resent. Seneca was himself
conscious that his life and professions were sometimes irreconcilable.
He says: “To the student who professes his wish and hope to rise to a
loftier grade of virtue, I would answer that this is my wish also, but I
dare not hope it. I am preoccupied with vices. All I require of myself
is, not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad.”
On the much-debated question of Seneca’s responsibility for the vices of
Nero, Merivale is probably right in saying that he must soon have become
aware that it was impossible to make even a reasonably virtuous man out
of his pupil. Under such circumstances it was natural for him to
conclude that the best thing to be done was to allow the youth to
indulge in private vices in order to keep him from injuring others. The
morality he impressed upon Nero, the modern writer sums up in these
words: “Be courteous and moderate; shun cruelty and rapine; abstain from
blood; compensate yourself with the pleasures of youth without
compunction; amuse yourself, but hurt no man.” This principle was a
dangerous one, as we now know; but it is easy to be wise after the
event. A philosopher ought to have known that it is never safe to make a
compromise with vice. Our philosopher did not know it, or, knowing it,
was willing to take the risk.
It is doubtless some of his detractors that he has in mind in his
defense of riches. He can see no harm in large possessions when they
have been honestly, or at least lawfully, acquired and are properly
used. It may help us to understand his attitude in this matter if we
compare it with that of some of the ministers of our own day, and with
some of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the past. Seneca’s philosophy
did not come to him as a divine command. It was the fruit of his own
cogitation in the search for the supreme good. But there are men in our
day, as there have always been, who are not only members of the church
but preachers of the Gospel, who are both rich themselves and apologists
of the rich. Yet they profess to be followers of the Son of God; of Him
who taught that it is exceedingly difficult for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven. Seneca did not profess to seek this kingdom. His
search was after the kingdom of earthly felicity, and he could not see
why riches should be an obstacle to his entering it.
Seneca was a good exemplar of the truth of a saying quoted by Xenophon
in his Memorabilia of Socrates to the effect that even an upright man is
sometimes good, sometimes bad. His writings convey the impression that
their author is always under stress. The philosophical composure of
which he has much to say, is an aspiration and a hope, not a fruition.
When he speaks of the passions he sees them in their intensity. He seems
to regard all men as either very good or very bad, and finds the latter
class to include the great body of mankind. He fails to realize that the
majority belong to neither extreme. The theater on which he saw the game
of life played probably never had its counterpart in the world. He
stands at one extreme and Plutarch at the other, just as the social
circle in which each moved and knew best is the antipode of the other.
Both looked too intently and exclusively upon the merely external.
Though Plutarch judges the average man more correctly, neither possessed
sufficient penetration of intellect to fathom all the passions that
dominate or agitate the soul. Plutarch was most familiar with the man
who is concerned with the ordinary affairs of life; Seneca knew best the
corrupt crowd that sought to ingratiate itself into the favor of those
who controlled the destinies of all about them, and, in a measure, of
the entire world. Both were much in the public eye, but the public was a
widely different one. Plutarch sought to make an impression by the arts
of persuasion alone; Seneca, by all the arts that are within the power
of a resourceful intellect. How much he was in the public eye is evident
from the statement of Tacitus that his last words were written down and
at once made public. His friends no less than his enemies desired this:
his enemies, because they were eagerly watching for a final opportunity
to prove that this famous preacher of an exalted philosophy would, after
all, prove to be nothing more than a maker of fine phrases when the
crucial test came; his friends, in order to furnish indubitable evidence
that he had been true to his teachings to the end.
It is a noteworthy fact that should always be kept in mind in the study
of the writings of the ancients, and the career of their statesmen, that
there existed no universal conscience to which men could appeal. Even
the separate states were without any considerable party among their
citizens who shared the conviction that there exist eternal principles
of justice that demand the recognition of rights for all living beings,
for slaves as well as for brutes, whether they are in position to
enforce these rights or not. There was an interminable struggle of class
with class, each striving to wrest from the other the privileges they
withheld as long as they could, and finally granted only so far as they
could no longer be withheld. The political economy of the ancients did
not concern itself with making the public burdens bear as lightly as
possible on each member of the body politic, and compelling even the
most refractory to contribute their share; the problem was almost
invariably how to raise the largest amount of public revenue. Only a
part,—often but a small part, especially under the later republic—found
its way into the imperial fisc. Most of it flowed into the coffers of
the farmers of the revenue, and for this reason their representatives,
the publicans or tax-gatherers, were so thoroughly detested. Their
relation to the citizens was entirely different from the modern officers
of the government who perform the same functions. Every privilege or
alleviation granted by the governing class was usually wrung from it by
force or threats on the part of the subject. Generally speaking, the
empire was more lenient than the republic because the emperors needed
the support of the mass of their subjects against the turbulent and
avaricious nobility. The spirit of altruism that is such a powerful
force in our day is of very modern growth. It was introduced into the
world by Christianity, but its development was not rapid. Sociology as a
scientific term is but little older than the present generation; nor
does the study of political economy as a science extend far into the
last century. That remarkable people, the Jews, have from time
immemorial recognized the claims of a brother in the faith, upon every
other, for aid and sympathy. Their voluntary contributions for the
maintenance of the temple at Jerusalem and its ritual, no matter how
widely scattered they might be, is the earliest indication of a spirit
of altruism, the recognition of an obligation that was coextensive with
the faith. The Jews, however, made but a faint impression upon the
thought of antiquity. This is evident from the way they are treated by
Greek writers without exception. They were perhaps never more numerous
or more influential than during the last two or three centuries B. C.
and the first century after Christ, until the destruction of Jerusalem.
Yet Plutarch, who was the most widely read man of his time, and who
might easily have obtained his knowledge of their doctrines almost at
first hand from the Septuagint, does not show in a single line that he
ever thought this knowledge worth the trouble. When he mentions the Jews
it is only to disparage them, and to betray the grossest ignorance of
their religion and their nationality. The same is true of Seneca and the
other Roman writers. Tacitus, who professes to give an account of their
origin and of some of the tenets of their religion, shamefully
misrepresents both, while he holds the people up to the scorn of his
countrymen. So little are the most intelligent men often aware of the
occult forces at work in the world, and so ready are they to pour
contempt upon everything that does not accord with their preconceived
opinions!
The early Christians, as is well known, were reluctant to believe that
the new doctrines were intended for Gentiles as well as Jews. Both the
New Testament and some of the church fathers testify to this fact.
Merivale makes it clear that Tertullian believed that Christianity must
always, to some extent, stand apart from the ordinary march of events,
and that the true faith could only be held by a chosen few. He does not
intend his words to be understood in their spiritual significance, that
many are called but few chosen, and he makes this plain by adding that
the Roman emperors might themselves have been Christians, if governments
could become Christian; in other words “mankind in general were equally
incapable of moral renovation and spiritual conversion.”
Though Seneca was, during almost his whole life in the public eye and
lived amid the toil and turbulence of the busiest city in the world, he
professed a distaste for crowds. He tries to dissuade those who value
their peace of mind, but especially those who are truly devoted to
philosophy, from seeking popular applause. He loves to be the center of
a circle of choice spirits, to associate on intimate terms with men of
like aims and tastes with his own. It is almost exclusively against the
vices of the rich and the great that he declaims. Only in “good society”
is he at home; in fact he seems to know no other, has nothing in common
with any other. He is profoundly ignorant, with Plutarch, of the fact
that society cannot be reformed from the top or from within. Yet the
refinements of luxury are hateful to him, and from boyhood to the end of
his days he lived a frugal life.
How easy it is for Seneca to talk, to express himself in words whether
with tongue or pen, becomes evident not only from a glance at the
subjects upon which he writes, some of which are of the same tenor with
those discussed by his equally fluent predecessor, Cicero, but from his
own direct testimony. At the beginning of the Fifth Book on Benefits he
tells his readers that he has virtually exhausted the subject. Yet he
runs on through three more Books, apparently for no other reason than
because he finds pleasure in discussing every question that has the
remotest connection with the main theme. The result is that the portion
which he considers irrelevant is almost as long as the treatise proper.
I have once or twice in the present essay, touched upon the most
prominent feature of the Roman character, but the phenomenon is so
important, contributes so much to a proper estimate of the career of
Seneca, and goes so far toward reconciling the apparent or real
inconsistencies between his life and his doctrines, between his words
and his deeds, that it is necessary to dwell upon the point at greater
length. The Romans were, above everything else, men of the world; men
who laid the greatest possible stress on practical activity in the
service of the state; men who were wholly out of their sphere when this
outlet for their energies was closed to them. Greece gave birth to many
individuals who lived entirely, or at least chiefly, in the realm of
their thoughts; or as Jean Paul says of the Germans, the air was their
domain. The precincts of abstract speculation lay in a region never
entered by a Roman. A few trod the outer courts under the guidance of
Greeks, but not one ever penetrated farther. The Romans had no
literature of their own, no music, no pictorial or plastic arts, no
architecture. Though so long under the intellectual tutelage of Greece,
their taste was not refined, nor was a genuine love of culture inherent
in the nation. It saw no use for these things because they were not
practical; could not be employed in the service of the government. The
occasional efforts of the emperors and of some of the leading families
to elevate the national taste produced but meager results. Such being
the case, what was there for the average Roman to do when he had become
rich, or had no public duty to perform, and wanted to “have a good
time”? There is abundant evidence within our reach to enable us to
answer this question. He plunged headlong into debaucheries so shameful
that the modern pen shrinks from describing them, and the mind from
contemplating them. Fortunes were sometimes spent on a single banquet.
The Roman baths ministered equally to luxury and licentiousness. In
short, it seems as if all the ingenuity of the empire had at times been
exerted to the utmost to devise new methods of sensual gratification.
But he could not indulge incessantly in bacchanalian orgies; the jaded
body needed some relaxative that could be found neither in sleep nor in
such business that could not be delegated to a subordinate. There he
regaled himself with the sight of blood. The huge structures erected for
the gladiatorial combats testify to the Roman passion for these cruel
sports. Every living creature that could be induced to fight was
exhibited in the arena where men and women took equal delight in the
bloody spectacle. Lecky, in his History of European Morals, sets forth
in graphic colors the pomp and circumstance with which these horrible
exhibitions were given. I cannot do better than to transcribe his words:
“The gladiatorial games form, indeed, the one feature of Roman society
which to a modern mind is almost inconceivable in its atrocity. That not
only men, but women, in an advanced period of civilization—men and women
who not only professed, but very frequently acted upon, a high code of
morals—should have made the carnage of men their habitual amusement;
that all this should have continued for centuries, with scarcely a
protest, is one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is,
however, perfectly normal, and in no degree inconsistent with the
doctrine of natural moral perceptions, while it opens out fields of
ethical enquiry of a very deep, though painful interest.”
“The mere desire for novelty impelled the people to every excess or
refinement of barbarity. The simple combat became at last insipid, and
every variety of atrocity was devised to stimulate the flagging
interest. At one time a bear and a bull, chained together, rolled in
fierce contest along the sand; at another, criminals dressed in the
skins of wild beasts, were thrown to bulls, which were maddened by
red-hot irons, or by darts tipped with burning pitch. Four hundred bears
were killed in a single day under Caligula; three hundred on another day
under Claudius. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and
elephants; four hundred bears and three hundred lions were slaughtered
by his soldiers. In a single day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by
Titus, five thousand animals perished. Under Trajan, the games continued
for one hundred and twenty-three successive days. Lions, tigers,
elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even
crocodiles and serpents, were employed to give novelty to the spectacle.
Nor was any form of human suffering wanting. The first Gordian, when
edile, gave twelve spectacles, in each of which from one hundred and
fifty to five hundred pair of gladiators appeared. Eight hundred pair
fought at the triumph of Aurelian. Ten thousand men fought during the
games of Trajan. Nero illumined his gardens during the night by
Christians burning in their pitchy shirts. Under Domitian, an army of
feeble dwarfs was compelled to fight, and more than once female
gladiators descended to perish in the arena.”
“So intense was the craving for blood, that a prince was less unpopular
if he neglected the distribution of corn than if he neglected the games;
and Nero himself, on account of his munificence in this respect, was
probably the sovereign who was most beloved by the Roman multitude.”
“It is well for us to look steadily on such facts as these. They display
more vividly than any mere philosophical disquisition the abyss of
depravity into which it is possible for human nature to sink. They
furnish us with striking proofs of the reality of the moral progress we
have attained, and they enable us in some degree to estimate the
regenerating influence that Christianity has exercised in the world. For
the destruction of the gladiatorial games is all its work. Philosophers,
indeed, might deplore them, gentle natures might shrink from their
contagion, but to the multitude they possessed a fascination which
nothing but the new religion could overcome.”
How deeply the virulent poison of inhumanity and the insatiable thirst
for blood had infected the Roman people is further evident, not only
from the means employed to make these sanguinary spectacles as
fascinating as possible, but also from the impress they made upon the
current phraseology. Lecky says further: “No pageant has ever combined
more powerful elements of attraction. The magnificent circus, the
gorgeous dresses of the assembled court, the contagion of a passionate
enthusiasm thrilling almost visibly through the mighty throng, the
breathless silence of expectation, the wild cheers bursting
simultaneously from eighty thousand tongues, and echoing to the
fartherest outskirts of the city, the rapid alternations of the fray,
the deeds of splendid courage that were manifested, were all well fitted
to entrance the imagination. The crimes and servitude of the gladiator
were for a time forgotten in the blaze of glory that surrounded him.
Representing to the highest degree that courage which the Romans deemed
the first of virtues, the cynosure of countless eyes, the chief object
of conversation in the metropolis of the universe, destined, if
victorious, to be immortalized in the mosaic and the sculpture, he not
unfrequently rose to heroic grandeur.... Beautiful eyes, trembling with
passion, looked down upon the fight, and the noblest ladies of Rome,
even the empress herself, had been known to crave the victor’s love. We
read of gladiators lamenting that the games occurred so seldom,
complaining bitterly if they were not permitted to descend into the
arena, scorning to fight except with the most powerful antagonists,
laughing aloud at their wounds when dressed, and at last, when prostrate
in the dust, calmly turning their throats to the sword of the conqueror.
The enthusiasm that gathered round them was so intense that special laws
were found necessary, and were sometime insufficient, to prevent
patricians from enlisting in their ranks, while the tranquil courage
with which they never failed to die, supplied the philosopher with his
most striking examples. The severe continence that was required before
the combat, contrasting vividly with the licentiousness of Roman life,
had even invested them with something of a moral dignity; and it is a
singularly suggestive fact, that, of all pagan characters, the gladiator
was selected by the fathers as the closest approximation to a Christian
model. St. Augustine tells us how one of his friends, being drawn to the
spectacle, endeavored by closing his eyes to guard against a fascination
that he knew to be sinful. A sudden cry caused him to break his
resolution, and he never could withdraw his gaze again.”
The Roman people clung with amazing tenacity to this gruesome sport.
Nero instituted, in a private way, games after the Grecian model, and
Hadrian made a similar effort on a larger scale; but the public took
little interest in them while sturdy Romans protested against these
Hellenic corruptions.
I have dwelt somewhat at length on this singular institution, both
because it was peculiar to ancient Rome and because, above everything
else, it throws light on the character of its populace. It is true that
men of kindly natures like Virgil and Cicero condemned these atrocious
pastimes, or at least took no pleasure in them, but their influence
produced no effect on public opinion. Nothing that Seneca has written is
more to his credit than the vigorous language he employs in denunciation
of the gladiatorial combats.
A life devoted to study and speculation was to a Roman citizen
impossible. Cicero, who did more than any of his countrymen to
naturalize Greek philosophy on Roman soil through the medium of the
Latin language, was a practical statesman. When forced to retire from
the service of the state he longed to return to its labors,
notwithstanding the dangers to be incurred. Livy and Virgil devoted
their lives almost exclusively to the glorification of the past in
extolling the heroes by whose toil, endurance, and self-sacrifice, the
Rome of their day had become what it was. Though in a sense living in
retirement, their thoughts were none the less upon the state; their time
and talents not the less devoted to its service. To a Roman the state
embodied almost everything worth living for; asceticism was impossible
for him. Even when not actively engaged in public affairs he found
pleasure in observing, at close range, the machinery of government in
action. He longed to live and move in the strife and turmoil of the
capital. We need not wonder that Ovid, in exile, was ready to submit
with cheerful alacrity to any moral indignity, and to humiliate himself
in the dust before his emperor, would he but permit him to return to the
city which his spirit had never left. Seneca’s conduct, when in
banishment, was even less to his credit than that of Ovid, inasmuch as
he professed to be governed by far higher principles. He thought he was
a philosopher, yet when compelled to live in Corsica where he had all
his time to devote to study and meditation, he was wretched in the
extreme; belittled himself by the most degrading exhibition of
servility; did not scruple to stoop to the most shameful falsehoods and
the most disgusting flattery in order to bring about his recall. His
encomium on solitude, and his aversion to crowds, if they are anything
more than mere theory, are the result of larger experience and of deeper
insight into the human heart. Yet it is hardly open to doubt that he
could have gone into voluntary retirement at any period of his life,
except perhaps near its close.
It has been said of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, that his mind was more
Greek than Roman. While it is true that he loved philosophy, and studied
it daily, he did so in the belief that in this way he could the better
prepare his mind and heart to perform the duties which his exalted
station imposed upon him. He seems never to have seriously entertained
the thought that it was in his power at all times to lay down his
official burdens in order to follow his natural inclinations. His
highest ideal of virtue was to cultivate and strengthen his sense of
duty; but this duty was primarily political.
There is little doubt that the conspicuous place occupied by the state
in the mind of every Roman citizen prepared the way for the deification
of the emperors, a form of adulation that in the course of time wrought
untold mischief, and led to the most abject servility on the part of men
of whom one would have expected better things. Baumgarten devotes many
pages to a discussion of this curious feature of Roman politics. In the
nature of the case this deification had no regard whatever to the
personal character of the sovereign. It elevated him to the skies,
solely as the personification of the largest possible power entrusted to
a mortal. When in the course of time all the functions of the government
were concentrated in the hands of a single individual, it was natural
that he should become an object of worship, at least in a sense, even
during his lifetime, and as a matter of course placed among the gods at
his death. We shall find this transition easy if we consider further the
character of the gods of antiquity. They were not distinguished from
mortals by higher attributes, but only by the possession of greater
power. A god, in the popular estimation, was not necessarily any better
than a man—he was only stronger. His good-will was to be gained and his
ill-will averted by precisely the same means that were employed in the
case of men. The Roman gods were, in a far larger measure than those of
the Greeks, personifications of abstract qualities. There was thus a
wide scope for projecting into their character the salient traits of the
worshiper.
The gods, then, being an abstraction, and the state being the mightiest
visible representation of human power, it required no great effort of
the imagination to regard its head as divine, in the sense which the
Romans attached to the term. The unthinking multitude naturally fell in
with the ideas of their leaders, and even the better class of men rarely
protested because they considered the ceremony of little moment, or
because protests would have been unavailing.
Strangely, too, the belief in fate, in an inevitable destiny, did much
to paralize the free action of many of the bravest men. The fate of the
republic, the destiny of the Roman people, regarded as an immutable law
of nature, the utter insignificance of the individual either expressed
or implied, are ideas that figure prominently in the literature of
ancient Rome. It has been truly said that Rome attained its greatness
without great men. Almost from its remotest beginnings it was like an
organism in which each separate cell, though incapable of life by
itself, performs its function as part of a whole and contributes to its
life and growth. In this case the cell, as we may designate each
individual moral entity, though conscious in a sense of a life apart,
was powerless to modify the whole organism.
To what extent the Roman emperors took their apotheosis seriously we
have scant means of knowing. It is well established that a few of them
regarded it as a huge joke. But it is beyond question that on the great
mass of the people it had a most deleterious effect. How could it be
otherwise, when some of them reached the lowest depths of degradation to
which human nature could sink? When the monarch in his official capacity
was recognized not only as the political and military head of the
government but also its divine head, it is easy to imagine what the
effect of such a recognition must be upon the average Roman, in
contracting his spiritual outlook. As long as the gods were mere
abstract qualities, or even to some extent personal beings like those of
the Greeks, there was a sort of indistinctness in which they were veiled
that did not invite imitation. But a deified emperor was, or had been, a
creature of flesh and blood; no matter what he might do, there would be
many ready to tread in his footsteps, so far as they could. The
pernicious influence of the ancient mythology engaged the attention of
thoughtful men from the remotest times. How much worse, then, would this
influence be when the vilest that tradition reported of the gods was
actually done by men in flesh and blood. “Like priest, like people,” is
a true saying even when both priest and people are pagans.
Aside from the restraints of religion, there is, in modern times, in all
civilized countries, a certain restraining influence exercised by public
opinion that keeps the rich, who are inclined to a lax personal
morality, within reasonable bounds. But so far as we can discover, the
inhibitive force of public opinion in Rome upon the individual in the
matter of ethics was very slight, especially under the empire. It is
plain then where a debauched public sentiment placed no check upon any
form of vice from without, and but few individuals yielded to moral
restraints from within, the condition of society was such that it could
hardly have been worse.
We are sometimes inclined to wonder that so few protests were made by
enlightened Romans against the deification of the emperors. The
explanation may be found in the prevailing rationalism of the age. To
the majority of those men one religion was just as good as another, and
all religions were but forms of superstition. The persecutions directed
against the early Christians were urged on the general ground that the
failure to follow the multitude was a mark of treason against the
government, and for this reason the best men were naturally the
instigators. To perform the religious functions enjoined by the state
was regarded as a mark of loyalty; to refuse, the badge of disloyalty.
It is not necessary to go back to ancient Rome and to heathen religions
to find parallels for treating the externals of worship as matters of
indifference, or for requiring the subject, under penalties, to conform
to the creed of the sovereign.
When we come to speak of the relation of Seneca to Christianity, but
especially of his conversion by St. Paul, a thesis laboriously defended
by more than one modern writer, we cannot do better than to transcribe a
passage from Merivale setting forth clearly the courses that led men
into a very natural error. After calling attention to the fact that both
Seneca and Paul were moral reformers, he proceeds: “There is so much in
their principles, so much even in their language, which agrees together,
so that one has been thought, though it must be allowed without adequate
reason, to have borrowed directly from the other. But the philosopher,
be it remembered, discoursed to a large and not inattentive audience,
and surely the soil was not all unfruitful on which this seed was
scattered, when he proclaimed that _God dwells not in temples of wood or
stone, nor wants the ministration of human hands; that He has no delight
in the blood of victims; that He is near to all His creatures; that His
spirit resides in men’s hearts; that all men are truly His offspring;
that we are members of one body, which is God or nature; that men must
believe in God before they can approach Him; that the true service of
God is to be like unto Him; that all men have sinned, and none performed
all the works of the law; that God is no respecter of nations, ranks, or
conditions, but all, barbarian and Roman, bond and free, are alike under
His all-seeing providence._ St. Paul enjoined submission and obedience
even to the tyranny of Nero, and Seneca fosters no ideas subversive of
political subjection. Endurance is the paramount virtue of the Stoic. To
forms of government the wise man was wholly indifferent; they were among
the external circumstances above which his spirit soared in serene
self-contemplation. We trace in Seneca no yearning for a restoration of
political freedom, nor does he ever point to the senate, after the
manner of the patriots of the day, as a legitimate check to the
autocracy of the despot. The only mode, in his view, of tempering
tyranny is to educate the tyrant himself in virtue. His was the
self-denial of the Christians, but without their anticipated
compensation. It seems impossible to doubt that in his highest flights
of rhetoric—and no man ever recommended the unattainable with a finer
grace—Seneca must have felt that he was laboring to build up a house
without foundations; that his system, as Caius said of his style, was
sand without lime. He was surely not unconscious of the inconsistency of
his own position, as a public man and a minister, with the theories to
which he had wedded himself; and of the impossibility of preserving in
it the purity of his character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware
that in the existing state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to
men high in station; wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor
minister became at once contemptible. Both Cicero and Seneca were men of
many weaknesses, and we remark them the more because both were
pretenders to unusual strength of character: but while Cicero lapsed
into political errors, Seneca cannot be absolved of actual crime.
Nevertheless, if we may compare the greatest masters of Roman wisdom
together, the Stoic will appear, I think, the more earnest of the two,
the more anxious to do his duty for its own sake, the more sensible of
the claims of mankind upon him for such precepts of virtuous living as
he had to give. In an age of unbelief and compromise, he taught that
Truth was positive and Virtue objective. He conceived, what never
entered Cicero’s mind, the idea of improving his fellow creatures; he
had, what Cicero had not, a heart for conversion to Christianity.”
Notwithstanding the many points of contact between the doctrines of the
New Testament and the teachings of Seneca, no competent judge now holds
that he was a Christian. The wonder is that there should ever have
arisen any serious controversy on the subject. The very fact that
Seneca’s faith underwent no change from first to last ought to be
decisive. He did not pass through the experience of conversion; he shows
no vicissitudes of intellectual or moral growth; he never wavered in his
faith in philosophy, and in the power of man to attain the supreme good
by mere force of will. Yet Seneca is, to the Christian, unquestionably,
the most interesting personality that heathen antiquity has produced.
His philosophy and his morality show, in a striking way, that a man may
approach very close to the boundary line of Christianity without
crossing it; without even knowing what is before him. The best thought
of the age clearly proves that Greek philosophy had, in a sense,
prepared a few noble minds for the reception of the ethical and
altruistic precepts of the Gospel; but it was in no sense the harbinger
of its spiritual doctrines.
It remains yet to consider briefly an institution which, while not
peculiar to Rome, was, nevertheless, here characterized by some features
that were unique in their influences for evil. Slavery rested like a
horrible incubus upon the ancient world, though few persons seem to have
been aware of it. It placed a curse upon labor and almost prevented the
development of the mechanic arts. It seriously impeded the growth of the
moral sentiments by the hindrances it placed in the way of free
discussion, and by the opportunities it afforded the basely inclined for
the gratification of carnal lusts. It placed a large part of the
population virtually beyond the range of human sympathy by branding the
expression of such sympathy as a symptom of treason. While it did these
things everywhere, in Rome it made a people that were naturally coarse
and brutal still more so, by placing within the easy reach of every
slave-owner helpless objects upon which he could vent his rage, and
whose services he could exploit in the most unfeeling manner. A lurid
light is thrown on the barbarity of the Romans toward their slaves by an
occurrence that took place in the later years of Seneca. A plain
statement of the facts is more impressive than many pages of theory. A
prefect of the city, Pedanius Secundus by name, was murdered by one of
his slaves and the criminal could not be apprehended. According to law,
all the bondmen of the murdered man, four hundred in number, were to be
put to death. The populace, to their honor be it said, more humane than
the senators, raised a tumult of protest against the execution of the
sentence. Their sympathy availed nothing; the unhappy victims were led
away to die. One of the senators even proposed a decree that all the
freedmen belonging to the household of the late prefect should be
transported beyond the confines of Italy. But the emperor, and that
emperor was Nero, more humane than the optimates, alleged that the laws
were already severe enough, and that it would be cruel to add to their
severity by fresh enactments. The decree of expulsion was not passed.
Yet Tacitus, from whom this narrative is taken, a writer who never tires
of lamenting the degeneracy of his age, has not a word of compassion for
the unfortunate sufferers, nor a syllable of condemnation for an
atrocious law.
Still it must be said that some of the Roman philosophers, especially
Cicero and Seneca, lay stress in their writings, upon the universal
brotherhood of man. They have much to say about the intrinsic worth of
the human soul. While these ideas are largely borrowed from the Greeks,
or at least suggested by Greek philosophers, the Romans are singularly
eloquent in proclaiming them. But slavery is never attacked by name. It
is doubtful whether a passage can be found in any Greek or Roman writer
explicitly asserting that it is wrong for one man to hold another in
bondage. This may be due to the conviction that such a doctrine would be
extremely dangerous among a large servile population, even if the
government allowed entire freedom of speech. The New Testament is almost
silent about slavery. Its authors did not wish to give utterance to any
views that could be used by their enemies as the basis for a charge of
disaffection with the “powers that be.”
Again, slavery in some form was universal. Servitude was held to be the
proper condition of a large part of the human race. No man who lived
during the existence of the Roman empire would have ventured to predict
the ultimate downfall of slavery. It is interesting to note in this
connection that Basil Hall, writing as late as 1828, while admitting
everything that could be alleged on the evils of slavery, thought that
to do away with it seemed “so completely beyond the reach of any human
exertions that I consider the abolition of slavery as one of the most
profitless of all possible subjects of discussion.”
On the supposition, then, that slavery must continue indefinitely, if it
could ever be abolished, it was the duty of the philanthropist to do
what he could to ameliorate the condition of the servile class by
educating their masters in the principles of a humane philosophy, rather
than to incur the risk of making it worse by the suggestion of
emancipation. If the good man is kind to his beast, he cannot fail to
treat kindly his bondman. It does not seem inconsistent with the general
tenor of Seneca’s writings to assume that he thought the best way to
mitigate the condition of the slaves was to indoctrinate their owners
with a philosophy that would accord to them kind treatment, rather than
to seek to bring about their liberation.
Besides, the slaves themselves were not often conscious of their
unfortunate legal status. The best they desired for themselves was that
they might fall into the hands of a good master. That such men were not
altogether wanting, even among the Romans, is evident from the many
instances of rare devotion shown by their slaves.
It is one of the surprising things in the history of mankind that the
progress of the anti-slavery sentiment was so rapid when the cause of
the slave had obtained a hearing before the bar of public conscience.
Slavery had existed from time immemorial. The wrongs it condoned, the
evils entailed upon its victims, attracted but little attention until
the close of the last century. Within less than a hundred years after
the agitation had begun there was not a slave recognized as such by law
in Christendom. The contemplation of this fact may well teach political
prophets to be careful in their predictions as to what will or will not
happen in the future.
* * * * *
In the foregoing essay I have, for the most part omitted such
biographical data as may be found in any encyclopedia, and have confined
myself chiefly to a study of the society in which Seneca moved, and to a
consideration of some of the leading characteristics of the age in which
he lived. Every man should be judged by his times, for no man is
uninfluenced by them. It is only men of the strongest character that
rise far above the manners and thoughts of their contemporaries. Seneca
was not one of these. Though endowed with a penetrating intellect and
strong moral convictions he sometimes yielded to temptations against the
protest of his better judgment. He compelled his intellect to sanction
or at least to excuse conduct that he felt to be unworthy of the
philosophy he professed and taught. Yet after making all due allowance
for his shortcomings, I am persuaded that one cannot long study his
writings and his career without reaching the conviction that among the
great men of Rome none towered above him in moral grandeur and but few
surpassed him in intellectual stature. If I may be allowed to express a
personal opinion I do not hesitate to affirm that in the first thousand
years of its history no more interesting and attractive character lived
and died in the City of the Seven Hills than the philosopher Seneca.
Footnote 1:
It is a noteworthy fact that many of Rome’s great men were Spaniards,
while many others were not natives of the city. Among the former were
the emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius. The two
Senecas, Lucan, Martial and Quintillian were also Spaniards. Vespasian
was born at Reate; Livy, in Padua; Horace, at Venusia; Virgil, in
Mantua; Cicero, at Arpinum; the emperor Claudius, at Lugdunum; the two
Plinys, at Comum, etc.
Footnote 2:
Seneca is generally regarded as the first Roman writer who used
_caro_, flesh, as distinct from, and opposed to, spirit.
The following is a list of Seneca’s extant works:
_De Providentia_, (On Providence).
_De Constantia Sapientis_, (On the Constancy of the Sage).
_De Ira_, (On Anger).
_De Vita beata_, (On a happy life).
_De Otio_, (On Leisure).
_De Tranquillitate Animi_, (On Peace of Mind).
_De Brevitate Vitae_, (On the Shortness of Life).
_De Beneficiis_, (On Beneficence).
_De Clementia_, (On Clemency).
_Ad Marciam de Consolatione_, (A Letter of Condolence to Marcia).
_Ad Polybium de Consolatione_, (A Letter of Condolence to Polybius).
_Ad Helviam matrem de Consolatione._ (A Letter of Condolence to his
mother Helvia).
_Apocolocynthosis_, (Pumpkinfication, as it may be translated by a
parody on Deification; or we may call it Pumpkinosis to correspond
with Apotheosis).
_Epistolae Morales ad Lucilium_, (Letters to Lucilius on the Conduct
of Life).
_Quaestiones Naturales_, (Questions relating to Physical Phenomena).
This is the only work of the kind belonging to Latin literature.
During the Middle Ages it was much used as a text-book.
In the Charpentier-Lemaistre edition the letters to Lucilius fill the
first volume and a little more than half of the second. The first Book
on Beneficence is in the third volume; the remainder with the Problems
in Physics fill the fourth and last. The smaller treatises occupy the
rest of the four volumes. A number of Tragedies with Greek titles are
also attributed to our Seneca, probably with justice.
Note:—To translate Seneca adequately is not an easy task. While his
meaning is usually plain, the modern reader is not in all cases
certain that he clearly apprehends the exact signification of his
words when taken separately. He is thus in danger of reading into
them ideas that savor more of modern theology than the author
intended,—a common fault of interpreters. It has been demonstrated
that Seneca knew nothing of the Gospels directly, yet he has often
been claimed as a Christian. Evidently, then, there must be a good
deal in his writings that can be used to support such a claim.
Attention has already been called to his use of _caro_. He seems
also to be the first Roman who uses Providentia to designate an
intelligent guide and guardian of the affairs of the world. There
are other terms to which he gives a signification not found in the
profane writers of ancient Rome.
But the chief obstacle the translator has to contend against is his
diction. This is highly rhetorical and very difficult to transfer
into another language, unless the translator has at command all the
resources of his mother tongue. Such a wealth of resources, I do not
hesitate to confess, is not within my reach. If a translation is to
make the same impression on the reader or hearer that is made by the
original, it is as important to preserve the peculiarities of a
writer’s style as to render accurately the meaning of the separate
words. While I flatter myself that I have been fairly successful in
the interpretation of Seneca’s words, I am not equally sanguine as
to his diction. I believe, however, that I have in no case strayed
very far afield and that the reading of the following pages will
convey not only a fairly correct idea of what Seneca thought on many
important problems, but also of the manner in which he expressed
himself. I hope at some future time, if life and health are
vouchsafed to me, to prepare a complete translation of Seneca’s
moral writings.
SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF SENECA, TO WHICH PASSAGES MORE OR LESS
CLOSELY AKIN OCCUR IN THE SCRIPTURES.