Seneca
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page 8
THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY
OF ENGLAND since the Accession of George III.
1760-1860.
the Right Hon. Sir Thomas
Erskine May, K.C.B., D.C.L. (Lord
Farnborough). Edited and continued
By
to 191 1 by Francis Holland.
8vo.
1 760-1 860.
i860 -191 1.
3 vols.
Vols. I.-II.,
Vol. III.,
By Francis
Holland.
LONGMANS, GREEN,
NEW YORK
AND
CO.
BOMBAY
CALCUTTA AND MADRAS
LONDON
page 13
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
This essay in biography was originally intended
as an introduction to a translation of Seneca's
letters, the greater part of which has been com-
But as this translation is not likely ever
pleted.
to be published, I have decided, after long hesita-
by itself, on the
chance that here or there some reader may be
tion, to print
the introduction
found to share my interest in the subject.
Of the three branches into which philosophy,
-
in the ancient view, divided itself
and logic -
ethic, physic,
it is with the two first alone that Seneca
was concerned. He never lost touch with life and
To those who love to lose themselves in
reality.
Seneca
a mystery,' and rest in an O Altitudo
as a philosopher makes no appeal.
Rather would
'
'
'
!
he teach men how to find themselves and, so far
as is possible to souls closed in by a
'
vesture of
decay,' to understand the meaning of life and of
death. His meaning is never ambiguous. How-
may be, as has often been
cannot
see
to the bottom if the water
said, you
is muddy.
Like the waters of the Lake of Garda,
ever shallow a pool
on the other hand, Seneca's thoughts combine
clearness with depth.
He played too large a part
page 14
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
vi
period of history and of thought
for the abstract speculations and
with which the logical
subtleties
in a critical
to
find time
dialectical
branch of philosophy was concerned, and in
which the Greek masters of the Stoic school
were mainly interested; and no doubt it is this
which so commended him to his
esprit positif
great debtor, Montaigne.
I have added, 'to fill the page,' a paper on
Caius Maecenas, which appeared long ago in the
have to thank the editor for
the permission to republish, which has not been
Dublin Review.
refused.
I
page 15
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
Introductory Note
I.
v
Marcus Ajsj^eus^Sen^xla^ ANii__iiis_.SQNS:rThe Controversiae
Helvia
The
Battle of the Books
-
.
II.
Early
Years
-
.
.
and
Attalus, Fabianus
.
.
.
III.
The Principate of Caligula, a.d. 37-42
IV.
Exile in Corsica, a.d. 41-49
V.
Return
from
Exile
,
i
Education - Sotion,
- Last
.
...
.
....
Claudius, a.d. 48-54
Years
VI.
The Quinquennium Neronis, a.d. 54-59
VII.
Seneca in Power
rs"
24
32
of
.
46
57
75
VIII,
The Tragedy of Baiae, a.d. 59
IX.
Decline of Seneca's Influence
Burrhus and of Octavia
X.
Seneca in Retirement
Occupations
.
.
.86
- Death of
...
- His Friends and
98
iiF
XI. Letter to Lucilius on Aetna - Seneca's
Riches and Apologia
XII.
....
Seneca
XIII.
136
The Conspiracy of Piso and the Death of
150
The Philosophy of Seneca
Caius Maecenas
.
.
164
187
vu
page 17
SENECA
CHAPTER I
-
MARCUS ANNAEUS SENECA AND HIS SONS THE
THE BATTLE OF
CONTROVERSIAE HELVIA
BOOKS
THE
-
-
A PLEASANT impression of the tranquil old age
Marcus Annaeus Seneca, the father of the
philosopher, under the principate of Tiberius,
of
given in the dedications to his three sons,
Novatus, Lucius Seneca, and Mela,^ which are preis
fixed to his five books
Controversiae, which
of Controversiae.
first
came
These
into fashion in
the time of Cicero,^ were imaginary cases argued
on one side and the other by the professors in
the schools of rhetoric for the instruction of their
pupils, or by the pupils in the presence and
under the direction of their masters. They turned
a
on disputable questions of ethics or law
-
'
Docti Senecae ter numeranda domus (Martial, iv. 40).
Before the age of Cicero general
Dialog, de Orat. 35.
questions were discussed in the schools as theses, in Cicero's
time these became causae, and were modelled on the actual cases
tried in the courts, and these in their turn were succeeded by
the controversiae, which came to hold, as the form through which
eloquence was taught, the chief place in the education of the
1
'
'
young Roman (Seneca, Controv. i. Pref.).
B
page 18, segment 1/2
SENECA
2
non-existent rule of law being generally assumed
for the purpose of the pleadings
dramatic
- and the more
and
improbable the circumstances
the rhetoricians, the more crowded
imagined by
with pupils were their schools, and the greater
their consequent renown.^
In the great days of the republic, when the
sovereign power at Rome was vested ultimately
in the various assemblies of her citizens, the faculty
swaying these assemblies by eloquence was
almost the one necessary qualification for a
of
successful career, yet it was not till the generation immediately preceding the establishment of
the Empire that the art of rhetoric was taught
systematically at Rome. Before that time a
youth who looked forward to a forensic career
would be introduced by
his
father to
one of
the celebrated orators of the day, whose methods
he would study, whose pleadings he would never
fail to attend, and to whom he would render
1
Tyrants and pirates were favourite characters in these
declamations tyrants who issue edicts ordering sons to execute
their fathers, pirates with lovely daughters who rescue and elope
with their father's prisoners. The art is to involve the actors
on either side in a conflict between equally sacred obligations.
In their beginnings, however, in the time recalled by the elder
Seneca, the controversiae were less extravagant and more nearly
related to reality. Thus in a controversy declaimed before the
Emperor Augustus with Agrippa and Maecenas in attendance,
in which Marcus Seneca's chief friend, Porcius Latro, was the
principal interlocutor, the case supposed relates to a father of
two sons, one of whom he had disinherited. The disinherited
son forms a connection with a woman who bears him a son.
On his death-bed he sends the woman to his father, and
page 18, segment 2/2
commends to him his son. The father adopts the boy. The other
son disputes this arrangement, and pleads that his father is not
of sound mind or capable of making such a disposition.
The
case is argued between them.
-
page 19, segment 1/2
MARCUS ANNAEUS SENECA
what assistance he
could.^
3
When rhetoric was
studied in Rome as an art, and for the
training just described was substituted that of
the schools, the causae there discussed were
made to resemble as closely as possible the cases
first
of the
forum
same
sort
- the one bearing to the other the
of
relation
that the proceedings in
political debating societies bear to the debates
But after the fall
in the House of Commons.
when the orators who had
and
nations among their clients,
numbered kings
or had impeached proconsuls for the oppression
the
of
republic,
of provinces, were succeeded by the delatores, who
earned fame, indeed, and vast sums of money,
but also the detestation of all honest men by
bringing accusations against great senators whom
the emperors wished to destroy,^ the rhetorical
exercises of the schools became ever more and
more remote from reality. The object of teachers
and pupils alike was not to bring conviction
to the minds of their hearers, but to win applause for their own cleverness.
Rhetoric ceased
-
to have an object outside itself it became an
The triumph of the controart for art's sake.
versialists
in
these
fantastic
contests
was the
The next step for an ambitious youth was the impeachment
Thus Juhus Caesar in his twentyfirst year impeached Dolabella, and Asinius PolHo at about the
same age became famous by his prosecution of Cato.
*
The State having become, as it were, personified in the
1
of some great State offender.
emperor, the prosecution of the victims of imperial tyranny
appeared to the prosecutors to be of the same nature as the
famous impeachments of republican times, and an orator such
as Memmius Regulus, while serving as the instrument of a
Domitian's cruelty, would regard himself as a
page 19, segment 2/2
Cicero accusing
Verres.
page 20
SENECA
4
invention of the effective aphorisms, antitheses,
epigrams called sententiae, which were applauded for their pithiness or ingenuity, and
or
easily retained in the memory.
the foundation of eloquence
'
*
- remKnowledge
verba
is
'
tene,
sequentur/ wrote the elder Cato in the earliest
Roman treatise on oratory. The rhetoricians
of the schools seemed to reverse this maxim,
and to believe eloquence to be the foundation of
knowledge
- so all-important a place did rhetoric
Roman scheme of education,
and so remote from the real business of life
and of the forum had their rhetorical exercises
hold in the later
become.
times
No one, as Tacitus wrote, in republican
attained
great
power
without
the
aid
Consequently, the attainment of
linguistic mastery of expression was the chief
aim of education, and so continued to be after the
establishment of the Empire. In the grammatical
of eloquence.
course, which preceded that of rhetoric, boys were
trained through the medium of classical poetry.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca is himself generally
described in modern books as a rhetorician
but although he was intimate with the greatest
;
masters of the art, attended their lectures and
declamations with assiduity, and treasured their
sententiae
his
in
evidence that
memory, there
is
no
direct
he himself ever taught in the
He came to Rome from his native
Corduba in Spain as soon as the close of the
civil wars allowed him to leave that colony,
afterwards regretting that he had not been
able to come sooner, since then he might have
schools.
page 21, segment 1/2
MARCUS ANNAEUS SENECA
5
heard the living voice of Cicero - an epithet
commonly used, he
adds, but to the voice of
Cicero really applicable.*
His collection of Controversiae was made at
the request of his sons who, anxious to know
something of the character and style of the
famous rhetors of the preceding generation,
begged their father to tell them all he could
remember on the subject. His memory had
been famous in the days of his youth; and we
cannot wonder that it was esteemed a prodigy
if we may believe his assurance that he was
then able to repeat without an error two thousand
names in the right order after a single hearing.
But in his old age, he adds, it had become
capricious he could no longer count on its ready
and immediate obedience to his will, but was
For the events of
obliged to wait its pleasure.
his youth it was as strong as ever, but it could
not retain what was in later years entrusted to
its keeping
just as in a vessel already filled to
which more water is added what is on the surface
overflows and is lost, but what is below remains.
;
;
He
applauds
the
desire
his
of
sons
to
learn
Cicero, after Julius Caesar's final victories had silenced his
voice in the forum, amused himself by giving lessons in declamation to Hirtius and Dolabella two of the most distinguished of
1
Caesar's officers
pupils of his
- on
-
their return
from the war.
- grandes praetextatos he
'
'
calls
These great
were at
them
-
that time compensating themselves for the fatigues of their
campaigns by a life of pleasure at Rome.
They were my
masters,' said Cicero, in the art of dining, as I was theirs in the
art of speaking (Cicero, Ep. ix. i6 Suet, de clans Rhet.). This
was in the year 46 B.C. If Marcus Seneca was fifteen or sixteen
years of age at the
page 21, segment 2/2
time, he would have been born about the year
61 B.C. (Sen. Controv. i. Pref.).
'
'
'
;