SENECA IN EXILE.
So, in A.D. 41, in the prime of life and the full vigour of his
faculties, with a name stained by a charge of which he may have been
innocent, but of which he was condemned as guilty, Seneca bade farewell
to his noble-minded mother, to his loving aunt, to his brothers, the
beloved Gallio and the literary Mela, to his nephew, the ardent and
promising young Lucan, and, above all--which cost him the severest
pang--to Marcus, his sweet and prattling boy. It was a calamity which
might have shaken the fortitude of the very noblest soul, and it had by
no means come upon him single handed. Already he had lost his wife, he
had suffered from acute and chronic ill-health, he had been bereaved but
three weeks previously of another little son. He had been cut short by
the jealousy of one emperor from a career of splendid success; he was
now banished by the imbecile subservience of another from all that he
held most dear.
We are hardly able to conceive the intensity of anguish with which an
ancient Roman generally regarded the thought of banishment. In the long
melancholy wail of Ovid's "Tristia;" in the bitter and heart-rending
complaints of Cicero's "Epistles," we may see something of that intense
absorption in the life of Rome which to most of her eminent citizens
made a permanent separation from the city and its interests a thought
almost as terrible as death itself. Even the stoical and heroic Thrasea
openly confessed that he should prefer death to exile. To a heart so
affectionate, to a disposition so social, to a mind so active and
ambitious as that of Seneca, it must have been doubly bitter to exchange
the happiness of his family circle, the splendour of an imperial court,
the luxuries of enormous wealth, the refined society of statesmen, and
the ennobling intercourse of philosophers for the savage wastes of a
rocky island and the society of boorish illiterate islanders, or at the
best, of a few other political exiles, all of whom would be as miserable
as himself, and some of whom would probably have deserved their fate.
The Mediteranean rocks selected for political exiles--Gyaros, Seriphos,
Scyathos, Patmos, Pontia, Pandataria--were generally rocky, barren,
fever-stricken places, chosen by design as the most wretched conceivable
spots in which human life could be maintained at all. Yet these islands
were crowded with exiles, and in them were to be found not a few
princesses of Caesarian origin. We must not draw a parallel to their
position from that of an Eleanor, the wife of Duke Humphrey, immured in
Peel Castle in the Isle of Man, or of a Mary Stuart in the Isle of Loch
Levin--for it was something incomparably worse. No care was taken even
to provide for their actual wants. Their very lives were not secure.
Agrippa Posthumus and Nero, the brothers of the Emperor Caligula, had
been so reduced by starvation that both of the wretched youths had been
driven to support life by eating the materials with which their beds
were stuffed. The Emperor Caius had once asked an exile, whom he had
recalled from banishment, in what manner he had been accustomed to
employ his time on the island. "I used," said the flatterer, "to pray
that Tiberius might die, and that you might succeed." It immediately
struck Caius that the exiles whom he had banished might be similarly
employed, and accordingly he sent centurions round the islands to put
them all to death. Such were the miserable circumstances which might be
in store for a political outlaw.[30] If we imagine what must have been
the feelings of a d'Espréménil, when a _lettee de cachet_ consigned him
to a prison in the Isle d'Hières; or what a man like Burke might have
felt, if he had been compelled to retire for life to the Bermudas; we
may realize to some extent the heavy trial which now befel the life
of Seneca.
[Footnote 30: Among the Jews the homicides who had fled to a city of
refuge were set free on the high priest's death, and, in order _to
prevent them from praying for his death_, the mother and other relatives
of the high priest used to supply them with clothes and other
necessaries. See the author's article on "Asylum" in Kitto's
_Encyclopedia_ (ed. Alexander.)]
Corsica was the island chosen for his place of banishment, and a spot
more uninviting could hardly have been selected. It was an island
"shaggy and savage," intersected from north to south by a chain of wild,
inaccessible mountains, clothed to their summits with gloomy and
impenetrable forests of pine and fir. Its untamable inhabitants are
described by the geographer Strabo as being "wilder than the wild
beasts." It produced but little corn, and scarcely any fruit-trees. It
abounded, indeed, in swarms of wild bees, but its very honey was bitter
and unpalatable, from being infected with the acrid taste of the
box-flowers on which they fed. Neither gold nor silver were found
there; it produced nothing worth exporting, and barely sufficient for
the mere necessaries of its inhabitants; it rejoiced in no great
navigable rivers, and even the trees, in which it abounded, were neither
beautiful nor fruitful. Seneca describes it in more than one of his
epigrams, as a
"Terrible isle, when earliest summer glows
Yet fiercer when his face the dog-star shows;"
and again as a
"Barbarous land, which rugged rocks surround,
Whose horrent cliffs with idle wastes are crowned,
No autumn fruit, no tilth the summer yields,
Nor olives cheer the winter-silvered fields:
Nor joyous spring her tender foliage lends,
Nor genial herb the luckless soil befriends;
Nor bread, nor sacred fire, nor freshening wave;--
Nought here--save exile, and the exile's grave!"
In such a place, and under such conditions, Seneca had ample need for
all his philosophy. And at first it did not fail him. Towards the close
of his first year of exile he wrote the "Consolation to his mother
Helvia," which is one of the noblest and most charming of all his works.
He had often thought, he said, of writing to console her under this deep
and wholly unlooked-for trial, but hitherto he had abstained from doing
so, lest, while his own anguish and hers were fresh, he should only
renew the pain of the wound by his unskilful treatment. He waited,
therefore till time had laid its healing hand upon her sorrows,
especially because he found no precedent for one in his position
condoling with others when he himself seemed more in need of
consolation, and because something new and admirable would be required
of a man who, as it were, raised his head from the funeral pyre to
console his friends. Still he now feels impelled to write to her,
because to alleviate her regrets will be to lay aside his own. He does
not attempt to conceal from her the magnitude of the misfortune, because
so far from being a mere novice in sorrow, she has tasted it from her
earliest years in all its varieties; and because his purpose was to
conquer her grief, not to extenuate its causes. Those many miseries
would indeed have been in vain, if they had not taught her how to bear
wretchedness. He will prove to her therefore that she has no cause to
grieve either on his account, or on her own. Not on his--because he is
happy among circumstances which others would think miserable and because
he assures her with his own lips that not only is he _not_ miserable,
but that he can never be made so. Every one can secure his own
happiness, if he learns to seek it, not in external circumstances, but
in himself. He cannot indeed claim for himself the title of wise, for,
if so, he would be the most fortunate of men, and near to God Himself;
but, which is the next best thing, he has devoted himself to the study
of wise men, and from them he has learnt to expect nothing and to be
prepared for all things. The blessings which Fortune had hitherto
bestowed on him,--wealth, honours, glory,--he had placed in such a
position that she might rob him of them all without disturbing him.
There was a great _space_ between them and himself, so that they could
be _taken_ but not _torn_ away. Undazzled by the glamour of prosperity,
he was unshaken by the blow of adversity. In circumstances which were
the envy of all men he had never seen any real or solid blessing, but
rather a painted emptiness, a gilded deception; and similarly he found
nothing really hard or terrible in ills which the common voice has so
described.
What, for instance, was exile? it was but a change of place, an absence
from one's native land; and, if you looked at the swarming multitudes in
Rome itself, you would find that the majority of them were practically
in contented and willing exile, drawn thither by necessity, by ambition,
or by the search for the best opportunities of vice. No isle so wretched
and so bleak which did not attract some voluntary sojourners; even this
precipitous and naked rock of Corsica, the hungriest, roughest, most
savage, most unhealthy spot conceivable, had more foreigners in it than
native inhabitants. The natural restlessness and mobility of the human
mind, which arose from its aetherial origin, drove men to change from
place to place. The colonies of different nations, scattered all over
the civilized and uncivilized world even in spots the most chilly and
uninviting, show that the condition of place is no necessary ingredient
in human happiness. Even Corsica had often changed its owners; Greeks
from Marseilles had first lived there, then Ligurians and Spaniards,
then some Roman colonists, whom the aridity and thorniness of the rock
had not kept away.
"Varro thought that nature, Brutus that the consciousness of virtue,
were sufficient consolations for any exile. How little have I lost in
comparison with those two fairest possessions which I shall everywhere
enjoy--nature and my own integrity! Whoever or whatever made the
world--whether it were a deity, or disembodied reason, or a divine
interfusing spirit, or destiny, or an immutable series of connected
causes--the result was that nothing, except our very meanest
possessions, should depend on the will of another. Man's best gifts lie
beyond the power of man either to give or to take away. This Universe,
the grandest and loveliest work of nature, and the Intellect which was
created to observe and to admire it, are our special and eternal
possessions, which shall last as long as we last ourselves. Cheerful,
therefore, and erect, let us hasten with undaunted footsteps
whithersoever our fortunes lead us.
"There is no land where man cannot dwell,--no land where he cannot
uplift his eyes to heaven; wherever we are, the distance of the divine
from the human remains the same. So then, as long as my eyes are not
robbed of that spectacle with which they cannot be satiated, so long as
I may look upon the sun and moon, and fix my lingering gaze on the other
constellations, and consider their rising and setting and the spaces
between them and the causes of their less and greater speed,--while I
may contemplate the multitude of stars glittering throughout the heaven,
some stationary, some revolving, some suddenly blazing forth, others
dazzling the gaze with a flood of fire as though they fell, and others
leaving over a long space their trails of light; while I am in the midst
of such phenomena, and mingle myself, as far as a man may, with things
celestial,--while my soul is ever occupied in contemplations so sublime
as these, what matters it what ground I tread?
"What though fortune has thrown me where the most magnificent abode is
but a cottage? the humblest cottage, if it be but the home of virtue,
may be more beautiful than all temples; no place is narrow which can
contain the crowd of glorious virtues; no exile severe into which you
may go with such a reliance. When Brutus left Marcellus at Mitylene, he
seemed to be himself going into exile because he left that illustrious
exile behind him. Caesar would not land at Mitylene, because he blushed
to see him. Marcellus therefore, though he was living in exile and
poverty, was living a most happy and a most noble life.
"'One self-approving hour whole worlds outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Caesar with a senate at his heels.'
"And as for poverty every one who is not corrupted by the madness of
avarice and luxury know that it is no evil. How little does man need,
and how easily can he secure that! As for me, I consider myself as
having lost not wealth, but the trouble of looking after it. Bodily
wants are few--warmth and food, nothing more. May the gods and goddesses
confound that gluttony which sweeps the sky, and sea and land for birds,
and animals, and fish; which eats to vomit and vomits to eat, and hunts
over the whole world for that which after all it cannot even digest!
They might satisfy their hunger with little, and they excite it with
much. What harm can poverty inflict on a man who despises such excesses?
Look at the god-like and heroic poverty of our ancestors, and compare
the simple glory of a Camillus with the lasting infamy of a luxurious
Apicius! Even exile will yield a sufficiency of necessaries, but not
even kingdoms are enough for superfluities. It is the soul that makes us
rich or poor: and the soul follows us into exile, and finds and enjoys
its own blessings even in the most barren solitudes.
"But it does not even need philosophy to enable us to despise poverty.
Look at the poor: are they not often obviously happier than the rich?
And the times are so changed that what we would now consider the poverty
of an exile would then have been regarded as the patrimony of a prince.
Protected by such precedents as those of Homer, and Zeno, and Menenius
Agrippa, and Regulus, and Scipio, poverty becomes not only safe but
even estimable.
"And if you make the objection that the ills which assail me are not
exile only, or poverty only, but disgrace as well, I reply that the soul
which is hard enough to resist one wound is invulnerable to all. If we
have utterly conquered the fear of death, nothing else can daunt us.
What is disgrace to one who stands above the opinion of the multitude?
what was even a death of disgrace to Socrates, who by entering a prison
made it cease to be disgraceful? Cato was twice defeated in his
candidature for the praetorship and consulship: well, this was the
disgrace of those honours, and not of Cato. No one can be despised by
another until he has learned to despise himself. The man who has learned
to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred
fillets upon his brow, and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man
bravely wretched. Such men inflict disgrace upon disgrace itself. Some
indeed say that death is preferable to contempt; to whom I reply that he
who is great when he falls is great in his prostration, and is no more
an object of contempt than when men tread on the ruins of sacred
buildings, which men of piety venerate no less than if they stood.
"On my behalf therefore, dearest mother; you have no cause for endless
weeping: nor have you on your own. You cannot grieve for me on selfish
grounds, in consequence of any personal loss to yourself; for you were
ever eminently unselfish, and unlike other women in all your dealings
with your sons, and you were always a help and a benefactor to them
rather than they to you. Nor should you give way out of a regret and
longing for me in my absence. We have often previously been separated,
and, although it is natural that you should miss that delightful
conversation, that unrestricted confidence, that electrical sympathy of
heart and intellect that always existed between us, and that boyish glee
wherewith your visits always affected me, yet, as you rise above the
common herd of women in virtue, the simplicity, the purity of your life,
you must abstain from feminine tears as you have done from all feminine
follies. Consider how Cornelia, who had lost ten children by death,
instead of wailing for her dead sons, thanked fortune that had made her
sons _Gracchi_. Rutilia followed her son Cotta into exile so dearly did
she love him, yet no one saw her shed a tear after his burial. She had
shown her affection when it was needful, she restrained her sorrow when
it was superflous. Imitate the example of these great women as you have
imitated their virtues. I want you not to _beguile_ your sorrow by
amusements or occupations, but to _conquer_ it. For you may now return
to those philosophical studies in which you once showed yourself so apt
a proficient, and which formerly my father checked. They will gradually
sustain and comfort you in your hour of grief.
"And meanwhile consider how many sources of consolation already exist
for you. My brothers are still with you; the dignity of Gallio, the
leisure of Mela, will protect you; the ever-sparkling mirth of my
darling little Marcus will cheer you up; the training of my little
favourite Novatilla will be a duty which will assuage your sorrow. For
your father's sake, too, though he is absent from you, you must moderate
your lamentations. Above all, your sister--that truly faithful, loving,
and high-souled lady, to whom I owe so deep a debt of affection for her
kindness to me from my cradle until now,--she will yield you the
fondest sympathy and the truest consolation.
"But since I know that after all your thoughts will constantly revert to
me, and that none of your children will be more frequently before your
mind than I,--not because they are less dear to you than I, but because
it is natural to lay the hand most often upon the spot which pains,--I
will tell you how you are to think of me. Think of me as happy and
cheerful, as though I were in the midst of blessings; as indeed I am,
while my mind, free from every care, has leisure for its own pursuits,
and sometimes amuses itself with lighter studies, sometimes, eager for
truth, soars upwards to the contemplation of its own nature, and the
nature of the universe. It inquires first of all about the lands and
their situation; then into the condition of the surrounding sea, its
ebbings and flowings; then it carefully studies all this terror-fraught
interspace between heaven and earth, tumultuous with thunders and
lightnings, and the blasts of winds, and the showers of rain, and snow
and hail; then, having wandered through all the lower regions, it bursts
upwards to the highest things, and revels in the most lovely--spectacle
of that which is divine, and, mindful of its own eternity, passes into
all that hath been and all that shall be throughout all ages."
Such in briefest outline, and without any of that grace of language with
which Seneca has invested it, is a sketch of the little treatise which
many have regarded as among the most delightful of Seneca's works. It
presents the picture of that grandest of all spectacles--
"A good man struggling with the storms of fate."
So far there was something truly Stoical in the aspect of Seneca's
exile. But was this grand attitude consistently maintained? Did his
little raft of philosophy sink under him, or did it bear him safely over
the stormy waves of this great sea of adversity.