THE EDUCATION OF SENECA.
For a reason which I have already indicated--I mean the habitual
reticence of the ancient writers respecting the period of their
boyhood--it is not easy to form a very vivid conception of the kind of
education given to a Roman boy of good family up to the age of fifteen,
when he laid aside the golden amulet and embroidered toga to assume a
more independent mode of life.
A few facts, however, we can gather from the scattered allusions of the
poets Horace, Juvenal, Martial, and Persius. From these we learn that
the schoolmasters were for the most part underpaid and despised,[5]
while at the same time an erudition alike minute and useless was rigidly
demanded of them. We learn also that they were exceedingly severe in the
infliction of corporeal punishment; Orbilius, the schoolmaster of
Horace, appears to have been a perfect Dr. Busby, and the poet Martial
records with indignation the barbarities of chastisement which he daily
witnessed.
[Footnote 5: For the miseries of the literary class, and especially of
schoolmasters, see Juv, _Sat_. vii.]
The things taught were chiefly arithmetic, grammar--both Greek and
Latin--reading, and repetition of the chief Latin poets. There was also
a good deal of recitation and of theme-writing on all kinds of trite
historical subjects. The arithmetic seems to have been mainly of a very
simple and severely practical kind, especially the computation of
interest and compound interest; and the philology generally, both
grammar and criticism, was singularly narrow, uninteresting, and
useless. Of what conceivable advantage can it have been to any human
being to know the name of the mother of Hecuba, of the nurse of
Anchises, of the stepmother of Anchemolus, the number of years Acestes
lived, and how many casks of wine the Sicilians gave to the Phrygians?
Yet these were the dispicable _minutiae_ which every schoolmaster was
then expected to have at his fingers' ends, and every boy-scholar to
learn at the point of the ferule--trash which was only fit to be
unlearned the moment it was known.
For this kind of verbal criticism and fantastic archaeology Seneca, who
had probably gone through it all, expresses a profound and very rational
contempt. In a rather amusing passage[6] he contrasts the kind of use
which would be made of a Virgil lesson by a philosopher and a
grammarian. Coming to the lines,
"Each happiest day for mortals speeds the first,
Then crowds disease behind and age accurst,"
the philosopher will point out why and in what sense the early days of
life are the best days, and how rapidly the evil days succeed them, and
consequently how infinitely important it is to use well the golden dawn
of our being. But the verbal critic will content himself with the
remark that Virgil always uses _fugio_ of the flight of time, and
always joins "old age" with "disease," and consequently that these are
tags to be remembered, and plagiarized hereafter in the pupils'
"_original_ composition." Similarly, if the book in hand be Cicero's
treatise "On the Commonwealth," instead of entering into great political
questions, our grammarian will note that one of the Roman kings had no
father (to speak of), and another no mother; that dictators used
formerly to be called "masters of the people;" that Romulus perished
during an eclipse; that the old form of _reipsa_ was _reapse_, and of
_se ipse_ was _sepse_; that the starting point in the circus which is
now called _creta_, or "chalk," used to be called _caix_, or _carcer_;
that in the time of Ennuis _opera_ meant not only "work," but also
"assistance," and so on, and so on. Is this true education? or rather,
should our great aim ever be to translate noble precepts into daily
action? "Teach me," he says, "to despise pleasure and glory;
_afterwards_ you shall teach me to disentangle difficulties, to
distinguish ambiguities, to see through obscurities; _now_ teach me what
is necessary." Considering the condition of much which in modern times
passes under the name of "education," we may possibly find that the
hints of Seneca are not yet wholly obsolete.
[Footnote 6: Ep. cviii.]
What kind of schoolmaster taught the little Seneca when under the care
of the slave who was called _pedagogus_, or a "boy-leader" (whence our
word _pedagogue_), he daily went with his brothers to school through the
streets of Rome, we do not know. He may have been a severe Orbilius, or
he may have been one of those noble-minded tutors whose ideal
portraiture is drawn in such beautiful colours by the learned and
amiable Quintilian. Seneca has not alluded to any one who taught him
during his early days. The only schoolfellow whom he mentions by name
in his voluminous writings is a certain Claranus, a deformed boy, whom,
after leaving school, Seneca never met again until they were both old
men, but of whom he speaks with great admiration. In spite of his
hump-back, Claranus appeared even beautiful in the eyes of those who
knew him well, because his virtue and good sense left a stronger
impression than his deformity, and "his body was adorned by the beauty
of his soul."
It was not until mere school-lessons were finished that a boy began
seriously to enter upon the studies of eloquence and philosophy, which
therefore furnish some analogy to what we should call "a university
education." Gallio and Mela, Seneca's elder and younger brothers,
devoted themselves heart and soul to the theory and practice of
eloquence; Seneca made the rarer and the wiser choice in giving his
entire enthusiasm to the study of philosophy.
I say the wiser choice, because eloquence is not a thing for which one
can give a receipt as one might give a receipt for making
_eau-de-Cologne_. Eloquence is the noble, the harmonious, the passionate
expression of truths profoundly realized, or of emotions intensely felt.
It is a flame which cannot be kindled by artificial means. _Rhetoric_
may be taught if any one thinks it worth learning; but _eloquence_ is a
gift as innate as the genius from which it springs. "_Cujus vita fulgur,
ejus verba tonitrua_"--"if a man's life be lightning, his words will be
thunders." But the kind of oratory to be obtained by a constant practice
of declamation such as that which occupied the schools of the Rhetors
will be a very artificial lightning and a very imitated thunder--not the
artillery of heaven, but the Chinese fire and rolled bladders of the
stage. Nothing could be more false, more hollow, more pernicious than
the perpetual attempt to drill numerous classes of youths into a
reproduction of the mere manner of the ancient orators. An age of
unlimited declamation, an age of incessant talk, is a hotbed in which
real depth and nobility of feeling runs miserably to seed. Style is
never worse than it is in ages which employ themselves in teaching
little else. Such teaching produces an emptiness of thought concealed
under a plethora of words. This age of countless oratorical masters was
emphatically the period of decadence and decay. There is a hollow ring
about it, a falsetto tone in its voice; a fatiguing literary grimace in
the manner of its authors. Even its writers of genius were injured and
corrupted by the prevailing mode. They can say nothing simply; they are
always in contortions. Their very indignation and bitterness of heart,
genuine as it is, assumes a theatrical form of expression.[7] They
abound in unrealities: their whole manner is defaced with would-be
cleaverness, with antitheses, epigrams, paradoxes, forced expressions,
figures and tricks of speech, straining after originality and profundity
when they are merely repeating very commonplace remarks. What else could
one expect in an age of salaried declaimers, educated in a false
atmosphere of superficial talk, for ever haranguing and perorating about
great passions which they had never felt, and great deeds which they
would have been the last to imitate? After perpetually immolating the
Tarquins and the Pisistratids in inflated grandiloquence, they would go
to lick the dust off a tyrant's shoes. How could eloquence survive when
the magnanimity and freedom which inspired it were dead, and when the
men and books which professed to teach it were filled with despicable
directions about the exact position in which the orator was to use his
hands, and as to whether it was a good thing or not for him to slap his
forehead and disarrange his hair?
[Footnote 7:
"Juvénal, élevé dans les cris de l'école
Poussa jusqu'à l'excès sa mordante hyperbole."--
BOILEAU.]
The philosophic teaching which even from boyhood exercised a powerful
fascination on the eager soul of Seneca was at least something better
than this; and more than one of his philosophic teachers succeeded in
winning his warm affection, and in moulding the principles and habits of
his life. Two of them he mentions with special regard, namely Sotion the
Pythagorean, and Attalus the Stoic. He also heard the lectures of the
fluent and musical Fabianus Papirius, but seems to have owed less to him
than to his other teachers.
Sotion had embraced the views of Pythagoras respecting the
transmigration of souls, a doctrine which made the eating of animal food
little better than cannibalism or parricide. But, even if any of his
followers rejected this view, Sotion would still maintain that the
eating of animals, if not an impiety, was at least a cruelty and a
waste. "What hardship does my advice inflict on you?" he used to ask. "I
do but deprive you of the food of vultures and lions." The ardent
boy--for at this time he could not have been more than seventeen years
old--was so convinced by these considerations that he became a
vegetarian. At first the abstinence from meat was painful, but after a
year he tells us (and many vegetarians will confirm his experience) it
was not only easy but delightful; and he used to believe, though he
would not assert it as a fact, that it made his intellect more keen and
active. He only ceased to be a vegetarian in obedience to the
remonstrance of his unphilosophical father, who would have easily
tolerated what he regarded as a mere vagary had it not involved the
danger of giving rise to a calumny. For about this time Tiberius
banished from Rome all the followers of strange and foreign religions;
and, as fasting was one of the rites practiced in some of them, Seneca's
father thought that perhaps his son might incur, by abstaining from
meat, the horrible suspicion of being a Christian or a Jew!
Another Pythagorean philosopher whom he admired and whom he quotes was
Sextius, from whom he learnt the admirable practice of daily
self-examination:--"When the day was over, and he betook himself to his
nightly rest, he used to ask himself, What evil have you cured to day?
What vice have you resisted? In what particular have you improved?" "I
too adopt this custom," says Seneca, in his book on Anger, "and I daily
plead my cause before myself, when the light has been taken away, and my
wife, who is now aware of my habit, has become silent; I carefully
consider in my heart the entire day, and take a deliberate estimate of
my deeds and words."
It was however the Stoic Attalus who seems to have had the main share in
the instruction of Seneca; and _his_ teaching did not involve any
practical results which the elder Seneca considered objectionable. He
tells us how he used to haunt the school of the eloquent philosopher,
being the first to enter and the last to leave it. "When I heard him
declaiming," he says, "against vice, and error, and the ills of life, I
often felt compassion for the human race, and believed my teacher to be
exalted above the ordinary stature of mankind. In Stoic fashion he used
to call himself a king; but to me his sovereignty seemed more than
royal, seeing that it was in his power to pass his judgments on kings
themselves. When he began to set forth the praises of poverty, and to
show how heavy and superfluous was the burden of all that exceeded the
ordinary wants of life, I often longed to leave school a poor man. When
he began to reprehend our pleasures, to praise a chaste body, a moderate
table, and a mind pure not from all unlawful but even from all
superfluous pleasures, it was my delight to set strict limits to all
voracity and gluttony. And these precepts, my Lucilius, have left some
permanent results; for I embraced them with impetuous eagerness, and
afterwards, when I entered upon a political career, I retained a few of
my good beginnings. In consequence of them, I have all my life long
renounced eating oysters and mushrooms, which do not satisfy hunger but
only sharpen appetite; for this reason I habitually abstain from
perfumes, because the sweetest perfume for the body is none at all: for
this reason I do without wines and baths. Other habits which I once
abandoned have come back to me, but in such a way that I merely
substitute moderation for abstinence, which perhaps is a still more
difficult task; since there are some things which it is easier for the
mind to cut away altogether than to enjoy in moderation. Attalus used to
recommend a hard couch in which the body could not sink; and, even in my
old age, I use one of such a kind that it leaves no impress of the
sleeper. I have told you these anecdotes to prove to you what eager
impulses our little scholars would have to all that is good, if any one
were to exhort them and urge them on. But the harm springs partly from
the fault of preceptors, who teach us how to _argue_, not how to _live_;
and partly from the fault of pupils, who bring to their teacher a
purpose of training their intellect and not their souls. Thus it is
that philosophy has been degraded into mere philology."
In another lively passage, Seneca brings vividly before us a picture of
the various scholars assembled in a school of the philosophers. After
observing that philosophy exercises some influence even over those who
do not go deeply in it, just as people sitting in a shop of perfumes
carry away with them some of the odour, he adds, "Do we not, however,
know some who have been among the audience of a philosopher for many
years, and have been even entirely uncoloured by his teaching? Of course
I do, even most persistent and continuous hearers; whom I do not call
pupils, but mere passing auditors of philosophers. Some come to hear,
not to learn, just as we are brought into a theatre for pleasure's sake,
to delight our ears with language, or with the voice, or with plays. You
will observe a large portion of the audience to whom the philosopher's
school is a mere haunt of their leisure. Their object is not to lay
aside any vices there, or to accept any law in accordance with which
they may conform their life, but that they may enjoy a mere tickling of
their ears. Some, however, even come with tablets in their hands, to
catch up not _things_ but _words_. Some with eager countenances and
spirits are kindled by magnificent utterances, and these are charmed by
the beauty of the thoughts, not by the sound of empty words; but the
impression is not lasting. Few only have attained the power of carrying
home with them the frame of mind into which they had been elevated."
It was to this small latter class that Seneca belonged. He became a
Stoic from very early years. The Stoic philosophers, undoubtedly the
noblest and purest of ancient sects, received their name from the fact
that their founder Zeno had lectured in the Painted Porch or Stoa
Paecile of Athens. The influence of these austere and eloquent masters,
teaching high lessons of morality and continence, and inspiring their
young audience with the glow of their own enthusiasm for virtue, must
have been invaluable in that effete and drunken age. Their doctrines
were pushed to yet more extravagant lengths by the Cynics, who were so
called from a Greek word meaning "dog," from what appeared to the
ancients to be the dog-like brutality of their manners. Juvenal
scornfully remarks, that the Stoics only differed from the Cynics "by a
tunic," which the Stoics wore and the Cynics discarded. Seneca never
indeed adopted the practices of Cynicism, but he often speaks admiringly
of the arch-Cynic Diogenes, and repeatedly refers to the Cynic
Demetrius, as a man deserving of the very highest esteem. "I take with
me everywhere," writes he to Lucilius, "that best of men, Demetrius;
and, leaving those who wear purple robes, I talk with him who is half
naked. Why should I not admire him? I have seen that he has no want. Any
one may despise all things, but no one _can_ possess all things. The
shortest road to riches lies through contempt of riches. But our
Demetrius lives not as though he _despised_ all things, but as though he
simply suffered others to possess them."
These habits and sentiments throw considerable light on Seneca's
character. They show that even from his earliest days he was capable of
adopting self-denial as a principle, and that to his latest days he
retained many private habits of a simple and honourable character, even
when the exigencies of public life had compelled him to modify others.
Although he abandoned an unusual abstinence out of respect for his
father, we have positive evidence that he resumed in his old age the
spare practices which in his enthusiastic youth he had caught from the
lessons of high-minded teachers. These facts are surely sufficient to
refute at any rate those gross charges against the private character of
Seneca, venomously retailed by a jealous Greekling like Dio Cassius,
which do not rest on a tittle of evidence, and seem to be due to a mere
spirit of envy and calumny. I shall not again allude to these scandals
because I utterly disbelieve them. A man who in his "History" could, as
Dio Cassius has done, put into the mouth of a Roman senator such insane
falsehoods as he has pretended that Fufius Calenus uttered in full
senate against Cicero, was evidently actuated by a spirit which
disentitles his statements to my credence. Seneca was an inconsistent
philosopher both in theory and in practice; he fell beyond all question
into serious errors, which deeply compromise his character; but, so far
from being a dissipated or luxurious man, there is every reason to
believe that in the very midst of wealth and splendour, and all the
temptations which they involve, he retained alike the simplicity of his
habits and the rectitude of his mind. Whatever may have been the almost
fabulous value of his five hundred tables of cedar and ivory, they were
rarely spread with any more sumptuous entertainment than water,
vegetables, and fruit. Whatever may have been the amusements common
among his wealthy and noble contemporaries, we know that he found his
highest enjoyment in the innocent pleasures of his garden, and took some
of his exercise by running races there with a little slave.