Dialogues and Letters (2 page)

Thus Stoicism was the most important single strand in Seneca's teaching – Stoicism modified to the mental and moral requirements of thoughtful Romans. It is not usually clear to what extent Seneca himself was responsible for these modifications, but he certainly endorsed them. The changes were mainly in emphasis: ‘Roman' Stoicism was more interested in the ethical side of Stoic teaching, and less in Stoic logic and the Stoic account of the physical structure and behaviour of the cosmos. Of course, Stoicism had not remained a static and unchanging system of beliefs since its beginnings in the late fourth century
BC
. Already in the second and first centuries
BC
two major theorists, Panaetius and Posidonius, had made important modifications to earlier Stoic theory; and by the time Stoicism became a force in the Roman world there was less interest in logic and purely theoretical knowledge than in questions regarding ethics and personal behaviour. This was not Seneca's only interest in Stoic theory: his thirst for knowledge included many aspects of the workings of the physical world, and his long book
Natural Questions
is clear evidence of his detailed study of natural phenomena. Moreover, he followed the later Stoics in accepting the traditional Stoic picture of the cosmos as informed and controlled by a force called variously God, Nature, Reason (
logos
); and as containing not only the visible heavenly bodies, but an all-pervading rarefied fiery air, the Greek
pneuma
. He has many references to this
pneuma
, and to the belief that the human soul derives from it and seeks instinctively to return to it after the death of the body.

But the Stoic conception of the physical world serves for Seneca mainly as a background for his principal interest, the moral standards by which we should run our lives and behave towards our fellow men. Here he lines himself up squarely with two basic Stoic injunctions, that publicly we should devote ourselves to the service of our country, and that personally we should do our best to acquire wisdom. The ideal goal for the individual is the state of the wise man (
sapiens
), and one standard Stoic definition of wisdom or virtue (frequently interchangeable terms) is ‘living
according to nature', that is, training ourselves to acquire such standards and values that our own desires are the same as what nature would desire for us. This goal was recognized to be virtually unattainable, and examples of the
sapiens
in human history were admitted to be as rare as the appearance of the phoenix. The best of us can do no more than approach this ideal, but it is the effort to do so which produces a worthwhile life. Seneca himself frequently disclaims the title of
sapiens
, and in the
Letters
he offers himself as a guide to Lucilius simply by virtue of having got a little further on the road towards wisdom, so that Lucilius can profit by his advice and his mistakes. In trying to attain wisdom, however unattainable, we are thereby approaching the condition of the gods, and there are practical advantages as well. It is standard Stoic teaching that the
sapiens
is self-sufficient and immune to the caprices of fortune: fate has lost its hold over him, and stability and inner calm are increasingly possible for us as we approach closer to the state of wisdom.

Many of the moral lessons Seneca offers to Lucilius and the other addressees of his works are not, of course, confined to Stoicism. To regard fortitude, constancy and self-reliance as virtues and to attack avarice, greed and time-wasting (three of Seneca's favourite targets) would clearly be consistent with other moralizing creeds. As we saw above, Seneca was eclectic in his beliefs, and he is, for example, remarkably fair and generous to the Epicureans and to Epicurus himself. This is the more noteworthy because in many respects Stoicism and Epicureanism were the most ostensibly opposed of Hellenistic creeds; but Seneca recognized wisdom and obvious common sense under whatever formal garb they appeared. In several of the early letters to Lucilius he quotes Epicurus approvingly, and he defends himself for doing so, remarking that the best thoughts are common property (Letter 12.11).

Seneca was also familiar with the views of the Cynics and their principle of rigorous self-denial, and with Platonic and Aristotelian theories, whether at first or second hand. All his reading
and reflections combined to form the amalgam of high moral principle and self-aware, practical common sense that is the essence of his teaching. We do not know how much Lucilius and Seneca's other addressees needed the lessons, but they are among the most memorably formulated doctrines that have come down to us from the ancient world.

LATER REPUTATION AND INFLUENCE

As we have already seen, Seneca enjoyed great popularity and influence in later European literature through both his prose and his verse. The plays do not feature in this selection, but we should note the extraordinary impact they had on European tragedy, especially French and English. In fact, Seneca had to wait many centuries before his plays received recognition. Writing in the late first century
AD
, Quintilian does not include Seneca in his list of Latin tragedians, even though he quotes a line from the
Medea
(453) as Seneca's (Quint. 9.2.8–9). However, along with other classical writers Seneca enjoyed a boom in popularity in what is called the ‘twelfth-century Renaissance', and by the late thirteenth century his tragedies were attracting attention from scholars and imitators in Italy. England followed suit in the early fourteenth century with Nicholas Trevet's commentary on the tragedies; in around 1484 they were first printed at Ferrara; and during and after the sixteenth century the Senecan model became deeply influential on French and English tragedians. In France Garnier's tragedies (1563–90) and in England Kyd's
Spanish Tragedy
(
c
. 1590) were early examples of this influence; and in due course the much greater figures of Shakespeare, Corneille and Racine give clear evidence of the Senecan style. It is the style particularly that we should note here: many rhetorical and declamatory techniques and possibly too other formal elements like the chorus and the five-act structure. (The crude horrors of the ‘revenge' tragedy – mass murders, ghosts and so on – which
used to be laid at Seneca's door are nowadays rightly seen as less due to Seneca than endemic in earlier vernacular drama.) That was the zenith of Seneca's reputation as a playwright, and thereafter interest in the plays declined sharply. In the late nineteenth century scholarly interest revived in the text of the tragedies, but Seneca had to wait until the mid to late twentieth century before there was a real resurgence of wider interest in and, more important, understanding of his plays, and editions, translations – even performances – have by now given them a modest revival.
1

The knowledge and influence of Seneca's prose works have also had a chequered history. From the second century onwards into the early medieval period he cannot be said to have had any dynamic philosophical influence. The reason for this is clearly that, as we saw above, he was not an original thinker but a brilliant formulator and popularizer of received Stoic doctrines. So later thinkers interested in Stoicism would go straight to the earlier Stoic writers, who were still available to them, rather than to the filter of Seneca's writings. With the subsequent loss of earlier texts Seneca's position as Stoic witness and authority acquired greater dominance: he was the survivor. On the other hand, as a very readable moralizer he was remembered and quoted throughout most of this period. He is mentioned frequently by Christian writers, starting with Tertullian (
c
. 160–
c
. 240). On the whole they approved of him: many of his moral precepts harmonized with Christian teaching, and he was very quotable. Lactantius (
c
. 240–
c
. 320) was enthusiastic about him; Jerome (
c
. 348–420) more temperate. Augustine (354–430), on the other hand, was much more critical, and accused Seneca of hypocrisy in not matching his life-style to his teaching (
Civ
. 6.10–11). At around this time too, in the fourth century, a curious fillip was given to Seneca's reputation by the appearance of a so-called correspondence between him and St Paul. These letters are certainly spurious, and were no doubt forged in order to establish a closer link between Seneca and Christianity. From the eleventh century they are actually found in manuscripts attached to the genuine letters
to Lucilius. One other landmark worth mentioning from this earlier period is St Martin of Braga, who in the sixth century wrote a treatise that was quarried without acknowledgement almost entirely from Seneca's works.

The cultural renaissance of the twelfth century, referred to in connection with the tragedies, saw the prose works also really coming into their own, and henceforward as a prose writer Seneca's popularity was exceeded only by Cicero's. The favourite works were the
Letters
,
De Beneficiis
and
De Clementia
; but, as happens frequently to famous authors, spurious works also appeared, apart from the correspondence with St Paul, and circulated under his name. His reputation now caused him to be widely quoted by men of such distinction as Peter Abelard, John of Salisbury and William of Malmesbury, and he was also a regular quarry for the currently popular anthologies called
florilegia
. These were collections of moral precepts used in elementary education, and Seneca's highly quotable
sententiae
were a favourite source in compiling them. Thereafter Seneca's influence fluctuated, but in the thirteenth century Roger Bacon much admired and frequently quoted him; and in the fourteenth century the great humanist Petrarch quoted him more often than any other classical writer except Virgil. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw another peak of Seneca's influence: here our witnesses can include the towering figure of Erasmus, who greatly admired him and edited his works in 1515; Montaigne, whose
Essais
borrow frequently from Seneca's works; and Thomas Lodge, who in 1614 published the first complete English translation of the prose works.

Since the seventeenth century Seneca's popularity has certainly declined, but the eighteenth century saw some distinguished admirers in Hume, Diderot and Rousseau. In our day, as with the tragedies, there is something of a revival of interest in the prose works, helped by reliable texts and by critical work that has shown a better understanding of Seneca's good qualities as well as his faults, and of what he was trying to do.
2

Finally, we should note briefly another important area where Seneca's impact has been felt: the influence of his prose style on English writers. One feature of the last great period of his popularity, the seventeenth century, was that Seneca began to replace Cicero as a model of Latin prose style. A consequence of this was that important writers like Bacon and Jonson began to model their own English styles on Seneca's, and the dominant prose style of that century became the ‘pointed' style explicitly inspired by Seneca. It is a fascinating example of literary imitation between languages as different as English and Latin, and it forms a distinctive phase in the history of English prose style.
3

THE SELECTED WORKS

The selection offered here shows Seneca in many moods, but all the works have in common his characteristic interests in offering informed discussion or giving advice, and most frequently a combination of the two.

The general features of the
Letters
, which have been outlined above, can be found in different degrees in the four selected ones, from which we see how Seneca varies his technique. Letter 24 is a good example of how he uses an issue or event in Lucilius' life as a peg on which to hang more general ethical observations. Lucilius is worried about an impending lawsuit, and Seneca, starting from this, points to ways of coping with it and anxieties in general. A good method, he suggests, is to imagine the worst that could happen and prepare for that, and some familiar examples are produced of heroic endurance to encourage Lucilius.

Letter 57 takes an episode in Seneca's own life, an unpleasant journey through a tunnel, as a trigger for reflections on the sorts of irrational shocks and fears which even the bravest people suffer, and these reflections lead on to a declaration of the soul's immortality.

Letter 79 shows us Lucilius making a tour of Sicily, and Seneca
using this as an excuse to ask him for physical details of the fearsome whirlpool Charybdis. Seneca goes on to suggest that Lucilius might consider writing a poetic account of Mount Etna: this leads to a discussion of literary emulation, and that in turn to the question of rivalry in wisdom and virtue. This kind of rivalry, Seneca stresses, is impossible, for all who have attained these qualities are equal. Here we have a good example of how a Senecan letter proceeds by an association of ideas to what we may assume is the important point. The letter is also particularly interesting because Seneca, in encouraging Lucilius to literary efforts, gives us an important statement about the relationship of Latin writers to their models: it is perfectly acceptable to take up a subject that has been dealt with by a previous writer, provided you make it your own by producing a new effect. This is an explicit endorsement of an obvious feature of much Latin literature – creative reworking of earlier models.

Letter 110 is an eloquent protreptic to cultivate a healthy state of mind with the aid of philosophy. By such help we can banish mental darkness and illusory fears, and learn to distinguish the essential from the superfluous. This is a letter of sustained seriousness; the thoughts expressed can be compared with those of Letter 24; and Seneca underpins his arguments with a long quotation from the Stoic philosopher Attalus, making the point that we can and should reduce our needs to nothing.

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