SENECA THE PHILOSOPHER

The philosopher Seneca, next to Cicero, exerted the greatest literary and moral influence among the Romans, if we take into consideration both the quantity and the quality of his work. The historian Livy wrote more, but his history is a compilation from the works of others, and only here and there does he inject a moral observation of his own. Quintilian, in his famous tenth Book, when passing judgment on the great Greek and Roman writers, reserved Seneca for the concluding paragraph. He frankly stated that his own work had been directed toward counteracting the "sweet defects" in the style of Seneca. Yet his strong points were many and great, and his works were in almost the entire field of expression,-orations, poems, epistles and dialogues. The greatness of the critic attests the importance of the criticised. Besides this, many of his words and neatly turned phrases found a lodgment in the works of Tacitus, and Martial speaks of him as the "eloquent Seneca". By the time of Aulus Gellius, a century after Seneca's death, his literary rating was a debatable question. Critics seem to have been divided into two camps, and Gellius himself declined to pass judgment on the points at issue. In all of these adverse criticisms it was form, rather than content, which was held in view, and in this respect the earliest criticism, by Caligula, was the best,"lime without sand".

Contrasted with this attitude of Roman rhetoricians toward the form of Seneca's works, is the great esteem in which they were held by the early Christians because of the high standard of morality displayed. "With the tide of criticism setting in so strong against him, it is not strange that Seneca dropped out of sight at Rome, and that Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, who were philosophically akin to him, do not mention his name at all. By the time of Tertullian, born about 160 A.D., the place of Seneca among the Christians was secure. Tertullian refers to him as 'Seneca often ours'. Augustine almost claims Seneca as an ally. Midway between Tertullian and Augustine, a free use of Seneca was made by Lactantius. The above indicates the

close connection of the works of Seneca with African instruction, and suggests that he, rejected by the Roman rhetoricians, had become the basis of instruction in Africa.

So far did the admiration for Seneca extend among the Christians that someone invented a series of fourteen letters purporting to have passed between Paul and Seneca. Because of these, Seneca was placed by St. Jerome in the catalogue of the Saints. Although these letters are spurious, they are still evidence of the esteem in which Seneca was then held. We shall give a translation of two of them, as evidence of the failure of the inventor to grasp the animating ethical spirit or the elements of the style of either writer. The subject is a trivial one-the arrangement of the names in the greeting-as if one should gravely discuss the question whether these should be called the Paul-Seneca or the Seneca-Paul Epistles.

X. TO SENECA PAUL [sends] GReeting.

"As often as I write to you and place my name after yours, I do a thing serious and unsuitable to my sect. For I ought, as I have often professed, to be all with all, and to observe, in the case of your personage, that which the Roman law has conceded to the honor of the Senate (having read the letter through) to select the last place, lest, with embarrassment and discourtesy, I should desire to bring about [that] which is [a matter] of my own judgment. Farewell, most devoted master. Given on the fifth of the Calends of July, Nero the fourth time and Messalla consuls."

XI. SENECA TO PAUL GREETING.

"Hail, my Dearest Paul. If to me and to my name, you, so great a man and beloved in every way, I do not say have been joined but necessarily mingled, it has turned out the best for your Seneca. Therefore, inasmuch as you are the peak and the summit of all the highest mountains, do you not wish that I be the nearest to you in such a way that I be thought another like yourself? And so you should consider yourself not unworthy of the first glance in the letters, lest you should seem to banter as well as test me, inasmuch as you know that you are a Roman citizen. For I would wish

1See The American Journal of Philology, xxxviii, pp. 36 f.

that the place which is mine should be thine in your eyes, what is yours [should be] mine. Farewell, my dearest Paul. Given the tenth Calends of April, Apronianus and Capito consuls."

We know but little of the orations and their equivalents, the state letters, of Seneca. Tacitus states that he wrote the inaugural address of Nero, and adds "a genial disposition accommodated to the times". It was he who composed the letter of Nero to the Senate excusing the murder of his mother, Agrippina. Tacitus also gives the request of Seneca that he be allowed to dispossess himself of the cares of state and retire to private life. So far as we are able to judge of these productions they do not tend to raise Seneca in our estimation. We may well accept the verdict of Holland:

"Yet when all is said, the letter to the Senate remains of all the recorded actions of Seneca the least defensible.

994

The tragedies of Seneca are based on Greek models. Of a large number of possible subjects, he selects nine in which he portrays the results of autocratic power. The words and deeds of his actors find parallels in the words and deeds of the emperors under whom Seneca lived. We hold that it is a necessary tenet of interpretation that the subjects were selected because Seneca had witnessed kindred actions among the emperors, and wished to make his tragedies in reality a portrayal of imperial conditions at Rome. The characters are to some extent Roman, although bearing Greek names, or, at least, are delineated with Roman coloring. In addition to the nine having Greek names, there is another, the Octavia, in which is set forth the fate of Octavia, the ill-starred wife of Nero. Criticism for a time rejected this as a Senecan work, but minute examinations in recent years furnish strong ground for believing that it is his. Considering the tragedies as reflections of Seneca on imperial conditions and society, they deserve more than a passing notice, for they, as much as his moral essays, are an indication of his ethical attitude.

The tragedies are not the presentation of vivid scenes dazzling the eye, but calm essays demonstrating some moral precept or expounding some moral activity. There are long messenger narrations, ranging from ninety to one hundred and fifty lines; long monologues by the speakers,-we can hardly call them actorsand long pæans by the chorus. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned", and it takes the first one hundred and twenty-four lines of the Hercules Furens to set forth the resentment of Juno against Hercules. There is a parallel in the Medea (582-672) where the chorus requires ninety lines to develop the theme:

"Not such the force of flame or boisterous wind,
Not such the dreaded force of whirling dart,
As when a wife bereft of nuptial torch
Glows and hates."

It is the pervading ethical content, however, that is of especial interest. Hate and fear are the constant companions of the king. The lofty are always on the verge of falling. Unbounded hopes. and trembling fears wander in cities: in the cottage is found the tranquil rest of innocent life. Care-free quiet knows but few who, mindful of the flight of time, grasp occasions destined never to return. Like for like is the universal law of retribution for both high and low. Here is a touch reminding us of Caligula; here, of Claudius; here, of Nero; and all of these point to the last years of Seneca as the time of composition for the latest of the tragedies. They are all thick set with reminiscences of both prose and poetry, the words in those of the first class being slightly changed in order to suit the metre, while those of the other class have undergone a metrical transformation. In this respect they are akin to Seneca's moral essays. These have always been the most widely read of his works, and in the days of the supremacy of classical instruction exerted a widespread ethical influence. A good illustration of this is the fact that in Farrar's Seekers After God a prominent place is given to Seneca.

Keeping the best for the last, we shall here touch on some of the criticisable elements in his work. What we shall present is merely an illustration of the characterization by Tacitus, "accommodated to the times". In one of Seneca's most imagi

native and flowery passages he presents a glorification of the emperor Claudius in which the wish is expressed:-"May this star ever shine which has flashed forth on a world sunk into the depths and plunged into darkness.''' He here assumes the attitude of a suppliant, suggesting a recall from exile. Later he satirized the dead emperor in his work, The Pumpkinization of Claudius, when there could be no danger in boldness, and there might be gain in the eyes of Nero.

Seneca lived from 41 to 49 A.D., as an exile in "barbarous Corsica" :

"Corsica the terrible, as soon as summer glows,

More terrible when the fierce dog shows his face,
Spare the banished, that is, those already buried:
On the ashes of the living be your earth light."

Whatever may have been the physical discomforts, there was an intellectual compensation, for there the thoughts of wind, of wave and of rock were firmly fixed in his mind, and he later made them prominent objects in all his works. But Seneca saw only the detrimental effects. At the close of Book XI of his Dialogues he has the following:

"I have written these things, in what way soever I could, with a mind blunted and decaying from long disuse. If they seem not at all to measure up to your intellect, and not at all to assuage your grief, consider how one, whom his own ills keep occupied, is not able to have strength for the consolation of another, and how Latin words do not occur to that man around whom resounds the rough jabbering of barbarians, harsh even to the more refined barbarians."

We might consider this as a spontaneous outburst, had not Ovid already given it as the result of his exile at Tomi on the Black Sea. Besides this, in the next book, especially in 9, 3, he dwells on the blessings of exile-for other men. More than once he mentions the glorious exile of Rutilius, of whom he says: "He flashed forth while being violated"."

We may, from his literary works, frame a corpus of the thoughts of Seneca, but of the work of Seneca the statesman,

'Dialogues xi, 13, 1.

Epistles, 79, 14.