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Moral Essays. with an English Translation by J.W. Basore

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Moral Essays. with an English Translation by J.W. Basore THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY EDITED BY T. E. PAGE, UTT.D. E. CAPPS, PH.D., LL.D. W. H. D. ROUSE, litt.d. SENECA MORAL ESSAYS I i: ipssr^^ SENECA MOEAL ESSAYS WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY JOHN W. BASORE, Ph.D. PRIXCETOS CXIVERSITY IN THREE VOLUMES I LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS MCMXXVIII fin Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS OF VOLUME I PAGE Introduction . vii De Providentia De Constantia 48 De Ira . 106 De Clementia ^ 356 Index of Names 450 INTRODUCTION Sprung from the rich and talented Spanish family of the Annaei, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, second son of Seneca the rhetorician, became the most important public and literary figure at Rome in the age of Nero. His mother was Helvia, a lady of native intelligence, some culture, and many \irtues. An elder brother, Novatus, known after his adoption as Galho, was governor of Achaia under Claudius, and sur\ives in Christian annals (Acts xviii. 12-17) with undeserved odium as the Roman official before whom the apostle Paul was arraigned. Mela, the younger brother, of more retiring disposition, but rated by his father as the ablest of the three, lives only as the father of a famous son—the epic poet Lucan, whose precocious and flamboyant powers marked him out as the prodigy of his distinguished, but ill-fated, family, of which no chief member survived the catastrophe of the Pisonian conspiracy. Lucan, his father, and both his uncles were all objects of Nero's vengeance. The career of Seneca himself was marked by spectacular shifts of fortune, amid which he appears a puzzHng and at times a pathetic figure—the victim alike of imperial hostility and favour. Born INTRODUCTION at Corduba about 4 B.C., he was brought to Rome while still a child in arms. There, carefully nurtured and broadly trained in rhetoric and philosophy, he entered upon the senatorial career and gained the quaestorship probably under Tiberius. By his eloquence in the Senate, he is said to have aroused the jealousy of Caligula and to have escaped death only because, it was averred, he was already doomed by ill-health to die. Of his ill-health we hear much in his writings, but he outlived Caligula and missed no opportunity to take pitiless revenge upon him with his pen. Under Claudius he fell upon actual disaster. Through the agency of the empress Mes- sahna, Seneca, now estabhshed as a man of letters and, apparently, of fashion, was accused of an intrigue with the notorious Julia Livilla, sister of Caligula, whom her uncle promptly upon his accession had recalled from exile, and both were banished. After he had spent eight weary and fretful years in dismal Corsica, during which, however, he found some solace in writing and study, Agrippina, now the wife of Claudius, secured his recall in a.d. 49, and raised him to the post of tutor to her young son, the future emperor Nero. A year later he was praetor. From this time Seneca's fortunes were linked with those of Nero. He grew in honour, wealth," and power, and for five years after Nero's accession was, along with Burrus, the virtuous old praetorian, the emperor's acknowledged confidant and guide. But gradually his influence weakened, and after the death of Burrus in a.d. 62 he sought unavailingly for obscurity " There are many references to the lordly wealth which Seneca amassed. Cf. Tac. Ann. xiii. 42.6; Juv. x. 16; Dio, Ixi. 10. 2. viii — INTRODUCTION in retirement. Three years later, charged with comphcity in the conspiracy of Piso, he was forced to commit suicide, and met death with dignity and Stoic fortitude. The special significance of Seneca is, in brief, that he revived the subject of philosophy in Latin hterature, spiritualized and humanized Stoicism, and became the exponent of a new style, that exploited the short sentence, rhetoric, and declamation. The artificiahties of his pointed style have found many critics, both early and late.— Cahgula« called his speeches—not now extant " prize declamations, sand without hme," the archaist Gelhus ^ condemns his influence, and Fronto '^ censures his literary affecta- tions. QuintiUan** with truer discernment indicts more severely his taste than his methods, for it is in the excesses of rhetoric that he most often offends.* That he was the most brilliant vvriter, as well as the most independent thinker, of his day fevv will now deny. In philosophy Seneca's interests were purely ethical. He was a bold, but inconsistent, moraUst a preacherrather than an exemplar of Stoic virtue. His discourses are, in the end. Stoic sermons, informal in structure, lacking too often the marks of ordered presentation, but usually effective in the quickness of their appeal. While ostensibly an adherent of Stoic materiahsm, he shows the independence of an eclectic and becomes particularly noteworthy in his " Suet. Calig. 53. " xii. 2. « Epist. p. 156 (Naber). <* x. 1. 130. ' An admirable analysis and discussion of Seneca's style will be found in the Introductions A and B of Mr. Summers's edition of Select Letters. INTRODUCTION conception of deity and the kindred doctrine of the brotherhood of man, in both of which he went far beyond his times. Although, utiUzing the Stoic doctrine of a Unity out of a plurality of gods (as, while there are many vii'tues, Virtue is one), he causes confusion by his terminology, yet he verges con- stantly toward the representation of God as a moral and spiritual being, a beneficent Providence, instinct with fatherly regard for the human race. Closely linked with this conception is a bitter condemnation of gladiatorial contests, slavery, and any form of cruelty of man to fellow man. Seneca was a voluminous writer of both prose and poetry. Besides some epigrams, ten extant tragedies are associated with his name, though one, the Octavia, appears from internal evidence to be unmistakably the work of a later poet. The other nine plays are unique and notable specimens of Roman tragedy adapted from Greek originals, of which, however, they appear to be little more than rhetorical tra- vesties. But their influence upon the dramatic literature of Italy, France, and England, though dis- torting, was profound. His extant prose works com- prise a significant group of writings that are moral in purpose, a quasi-scientific treatise—the Naturales Quaestiones in seven books —and the Apocolocyntosis, a satirical skit on the apotheosis of the emperor Claudius. To the group of moral writings belong the twenty books of the Epistulae Morales, a unit by reason of their form, and a series of more formal com- positions, which, developed with vague consciousness of an argumentative second person, are likewise united by a similarity of form. These quasi-dialogues are the twelve treatises grouped together in the INTRODUCTION Ambrosian manuscript iinder the title Dialogi " and traditionally known as Dialogues, the De dementia, originally in three books, and the seven books of the De Beneficiis, all of which it has been convenient for the purpose in hand to combine under the com- prehensive title of Moral Essays. The chronology of Seneca's writings is in most cases doubtful. Of the essays included in this volume, the De Provideniia and the De Constantia are associated by Waltz ^ with the early years of the exile (a. d, 41-42), but equally -wise conjecture will place them later. When Seneca Avrote the De Ira, Cahgula was un- doubtedly dead, and Novatus, to whom it was dedi- cated, had not yet been adopted by Junius Galho. It shows bitter hostiUty to CaUgula, and may well have been ^^Titten when the memorj- of his excesses was fresh. By reason of the allusion to the age of Nero (i. 9- l)j the De dementia may be definitely assigned to the year a.d. 55 or 5Q. Concerning LuciUus, to whom the De Provideniia, the Naturales Quaestiones, and the Epistulae are ad- dressed, Seneca himself supplies incidental informa- tion. A native, probably, of Naples or Pompeii, by his own energy he attained equestrian rank and was appointed procurator of Sicily. He was a student of philosophy, -vWth a leaning toward Epi- cureanism, and a writer of both prose and poetry. His name has gained some importance in literar}' histon*' as the conjectural author of the Aetna, a philosophical poem ascribed in the manuscripts to " Quintilian used the term (x. 1. 129), but that he applied it only to the treatises of the Ambrosian corpus may be doubted. * Vie de Seneque, p. 7, note. INTRODUCTION Virgil. Younger than Seneca, he seems to have maintained with him a long friendship of pecuhar loyalty. If, as Waltz supposes, the De Providentia belongs to the early years of the exile, Seneca's own fortunes may well have called forth the question- ing of Lucilius concerning the ways of Providence which gave excuse for the essay. In treating his subject Seneca elaborates the thesis that no evils can befall the good man, by interpreting adversities, not as evils, but as wholesome opportunities provided by a beneficent deity for the testing of virtue. The discourse closes with a passage of restrained rhetoric, giving Stoic approval of suicide as a reasonable departure from trials too great. Annaeus Serenus, the young friend, or relative, of Seneca to whom are addressed the De Constantia and two other treatises, is said to have been prefect of Nero's nightwatchmen {praefectus Neronis vigilum). He is mentioned by Tacitus " as an intimate friend of Seneca, who with a show of loyalty screened the indiscretions of Nero in his aflPair with Acte. Seneca had for him the deepest affection and counselled him in philosophy with fatherly solicitude.
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