What I Am Reading: "Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero" by James Romm
This was another attempt to ease into Ancient Roman history, especially in the Imperial time period that I know only the basics of. This post is also a read for my Republican followers (as if); after a fair number of books about resistance to fascism and authoritarianism, here is a book that examines complicity with it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, or Seneca the Younger, was a stoic philosopher and politician who wrote many important ethical tracts. He also served as tutor to the young Nero, prior to his ascension to the throne, and as an advisor during much of Nero's reign. The book is about the latter; it touches on Seneca's philosophical and literary works as they relate to and can be viewed through the prism of his political career. There are mixed opinions on Seneca in the historiography, starting from the first with Tacitus and Cassius Dio, the earliest historians of Nero's reign. Some historians praise his works and even his possible moderation of Nero's most despotic tendencies; but others charge him with gross levels of hypocrisy and corruption from his time in office, and see a shadow cast on his philosophy. The author, a professor at Bard College, says that he wavered between these views while writing the book; I think that the text leans fairly heavily toward condemnation, though some of its conjectures raise (or at least highlight) the possibility of Seneca's own moral conflict. Such conjecture is the only way to proceed, as Seneca's writings can be guarded and opaque, and prevent a clear view of his character.
Some of Seneca’s guardedness, to be fair, is out of necessity. Some of us, I think, tend to view Ancient Rome from a distance, marveling at those wacky Romans and their outré hijinks. The book, though, uses modern terms like "autocracy" and "thought-crime" to describe the Rome of this time, less than a century removed from the civil war and with ruthless emperors shedding blood to secure their hold on the ostensibly non-monarchic throne. Seneca, moving in from the provinces (Spain), internalized this early in his combined philosophical and political career, and spent his entire life shaping his philosophy and his rhetoric to serve the political interest of his own advancement and eventually his own preservation. All of the literate elite were under watch, and nobody was allowed to say or write what they meant if they didn't want to face exile or death.
Though from an equestrian family, Seneca (born around the turn of the millennium) rose up the cursus honorum to the Senate in the late 30s. Here he gained a reputation for short, punchy speeches, not demagogic, but devoid sometimes of depth or substance. Later historian Lord Macaulay later said that "there is hardly a sentence which might not be quoted; but to read him straightforward is like dining on nothing but anchovy sauce." (p. 10). The emperor during Seneca's early career was Claudius, paranoid and execution-happy at the time (I will say that this book made me want to check out the famous I, Claudius). Though Rome was not a monarchy, its rulers kept close watch on the important bloodlines, including the descendants of Caesar and Augustus. I don't want to wade too deep into the complicated and incestuous family tree, but I will suffice to say that Agrippina, the daughter of popular general Germanicus, married Claudius, and then in turn Claudius' daughter Octavia married Nero, son of Agrippina; and various adoptions and marriages were carried out to make this legally less incestuous (this summary is slightly out of order).
Seneca was close, during his Senatorial career, with Agrippina. During this time, he put his learning to work through letters, ostensibly private but really meant for circulation, such as an apologia to a woman whose dead son was a martyr to a pro-Claudian cause. Through these letters, Seneca both curried favor and worked through his stoic philosophy, urging calmness in the face of pain and death and the eventual apocalypse and rebirth of the cosmos. Everyone dies, not just the old; in fact, each of us are "dying every day" as soon as we are born. Eventually, Seneca's closeness with Agrippina (still on her rise, not yet having displaced Claudius' first wife) led to his exile during a period of her disfavor, and he lived for most of a decade on Corsica. Here, he was able to philosophize and watch the stars, praising the simple life to his correspondents while declaiming his wasteland to those who might reverse his sentence.
As politics evolved and Agrippina came to power, she recalled Seneca to serve as tutor to her son Nero. Nero, as Claudius' stepson, was a potential claimant to the throne despite not yet having come of age, and Agrippina wanted to reassure the Roman elite that Nero was a serious young man receiving a good education. Her plan to enthrone him faced a political threat from Britannicus, the younger but biological son of the ailing Claudius.
At this time and throughout his intellectual career, Seneca wrote often on the subject of suicide, and the freedom it could bring to one who was suffering.
"Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it...You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body." (p. 20, from De Ira)
In Romm's formulation, stoic embrace of suicide as an option could be rebellious, as it had been when Cato ripped his own viscera out in defiance of Caesar; but by this era, it had curdled into a tool of powerlessness, as those condemned to death could, with the emperor's acceptance, choose suicide over execution and pass their fortunes down to their surviving family. In this way and others, the stoics could be thought of as preaching acquiescence in the face of unjust state power.
Seneca was also a playwright, and the two of his plays that cannot be dated within his career despaired over the coming apocalypse. Many stoics thought that the world would die and be reborn in a fiery cataclysm, but Seneca viewed omnipresent water as a likelier culprit. During his time as Nero's tutor, as Agrippina consolidated her hold on power, Seneca continued his combined philosophical mediations - politically useful advice. For example, one, De Brevitate Vitae, was a call to retire from the busy world and contemplate life philosophically (a "stirring exhortation toward the examined life," p. 54), but was also explicitly advice urging Seneca's father in law to retire from his administrative position so that one of Agrippina's favorites could assume his office.
All of this philosophizing may have been because Agrippina did not want Nero to be educated in philosophy and other effete pursuits so much as she wanted him to learn rhetoric, more useful to an emperor, and to receive reflected gravitas from the well-known Seneca. Agrippina was boxing out Britannicus and other court rivals at this time (and vied with Seneca for influence as well), and may have hastened the ailing Claudius' end.
Her scheming worked, and Nero was proclaimed as the next emperor by the Praetorian Guard. Seneca moved into position as his speechwriter, as the Senate looked to a new age of greater cooperation and reduced oppression. Some praised Seneca's speeches as good, though Romm points out that, as some said that they fit their intended audience, this may have been a sly allusion to the fact that the audience accustomed to doublespeak. These speeches dovetailed with his work De Ira, another stoic text about controlling anger: it is better to ignore a wrong than it is to strike back against it. This could be viewed as a philosophy of submission, or it could be viewed as a call for nobles to check their privilege a bit, and for all social classes to be less vengeful toward those in their power.
Agrippina, meanwhile, purged unwanted elements in the palace staff and high society, while Seneca worked with his sympatico counterpart, Sextus Afrianus Burrus, Praetorian commander, to moderate. These men and others were likely driven by the folkloric Roman fear of the exercise of political power by scheming, seductive women (as any woman would, in their view, be, in order to exercise such power). Seneca also advised Nero on how to counter his mother's influence over himself, paring down her official and unofficial power. When Agrippina feuded with Nero over his choice in women, the young emperor committed his first dark act, blatantly poisoning his young step-brother Britannicus to remove her leverage of another viable claimant to the throne. Later in his career, Nero would aggressively purge others members of the Julio-Claudian line, which then ended with him.
Following this murder, Seneca produced a new work, De Clementia, intended to reassure the jittery Roman elite that they were not dealing with a new tyrant. The work was intended, admittedly in the same vein as Nero's speeches, to instruct Nero on mercy and the use of the highest stoic concept, reason (it was not phrased as an instruction of course, but instead as praise of those qualities as if they already existed in Nero). Nero, with no interest in his wife, Octavia, continued to feud with his mother over women, began his dreamed-of career as a performer, and otherwise fucked around in this time period. Seneca and Burrus, meanwhile, quietly ran the Roman state, and got rich in the process. Seneca faced criticism from the Senate and literai for his un-stoic accumulation of wealth from gifts and favors, especially in the light of Nero's obvious lack of seriousness and emerging murderousness. Some tried to get the Greek term tyrannodidaskalos, "tyrant-teacher," to stick to him. Seneca self-servingly justified his wealth (multiple income-producing estates spanning multiple continents) through his writing, as such moral failings were allowed or expected of anyone striving toward the ideal stoic state of sapiens. He had clearly forgiven himself such failings. Politically, he now tried to prevent the balance at court from shifting too heavily against Agrippina, who did her best to reestablish control over her son as he sought to divorce his wife and marry another Roman noblewoman. Things came to a head when Nero finally decided to dispense with his mother in 59. At the resort Baiae, she failed to drown in a contrived shipwreck, and Seneca and Burrus dithered and did not object when Nero asked their advice on how to finish her off. Younger courtiers jumped into the gap, and made sure that Agrippina did not survive the night. Seneca came out of this affair both morally tainted and with less of the emperor's esteem.
His stature was still an asset to the regime, however, and Nero put him to work drafting a letter justifying the killing to the Senate. He had to claim that Nero had acted in self-defense against a dangerous woman, but not by celebrating the death of a mother. It did not impress the Senate, though only a hardcore stoic named Thrasea Paetus showed explicit disapproval of the blatant propaganda.
Over the next few years, Nero went on to be the Nero of history, pursuing his undignified singing career (Seneca would not countenance his performing in Rome) while putting on massive spectacles at exorbitant cost, and carrying out politically motivated murders of his opponents, factual or potential. Seneca, watching his emperor decline in wisdom, dignity, and mercy while increasing in profligacy and vaingloriousness, seems to have been stuck in the classic "it would be worse without me" trap that so many of Trump's enablers frantically leaked about. Additionally, his nephew, the poet Lucan, was in town; he was a favorite of Nero initially, and worked on an epic poem about the Roman Civil War, a break from the usual epics about even more ancient history. Seneca then had to fear for his safety as well.
Money was an important facet of Seneca's life at this time. Some historians blamed him for the Nero regime's greatest foreign policy crisis, Boudicca's rebellion in Britannia, for calling in his British debts and bankrupting (thus radicalizing) his debtors. Debt did play a role in this rebellion, and Seneca was a creditor to some Britons, but a direct connection apparently can't be established. Facing more public criticism for his role and his wealth, Seneca wrote De Benefias, wherein he justified gift-giving (the source of much of his wealth) as an important form of social relations; and noted how one refused a gift from a ruler at one's own risk. Finally, Seneca attempted to use his wealth to buy his exit: Nero was always looking for funds, and Seneca offered, guardedly, to give his fortune to the state and escape into retirement. Nero refused this offer, and any remaining bridges of friendship or influence were thus burned. This was around the same time, 62, that Nero finally had his wife, the well-liked and modest Octavia, killed so that he could remarry.
Nero still needed the legitimacy that Seneca conferred, especially as opposition in the Senate spread beyond the defiance of Thrasea Paetus, who conspicuously withheld his own participation in government affairs. Seneca lingered on as a vestigial figure, the last man standing from Nero's ascent to power (Burrus had also died in 62, perhaps poisoned by Nero). As Seneca grew into his sixties, he spent a lot of time writing, producing much of the work for which he is known. He grappled with the approach of death, and this grappling contradicted Thrasea Paetus' stoicism in that it seemed to either advocate or at least exemplify stoic passivity in the face of autocracy and state oppression. Seneca raised in one work the example of Callisthenes, the philosopher Alexander the Great invited into his court and then executed for speaking out against him. Seneca used his example as a hint to Nero as to the infamy he would come into for killing a famous philosopher such as, say, himself. Romm notes that, of course, he didn't take from the lesson that Callisthenes' example of truth-telling was one for a philosopher to follow. Seneca also preached calmness and acceptance in the face of several natural disasters in this era; Romm says that "By insisting that death is everywhere and cannot be escaped, Seneca seems to relieve himself of the burden of action." (p. 156). His works became very dark at this time, often dwelling on the topic of freedom through suicide. His third and final play Thyestes can be roughly dated to this time, about a philosopher who pursues power and comes to ruin at the hands of a tyrant. This work if any seems to be introspective and interrogative of Seneca's own career and legacy; it ends in a depiction of the apocalypse.
Returning from an aborted singing tour in Greece, Romm gives fair credit to Nero for attempting to use state power to proactively relieve the massive fire that consumed most of Rome in 64; though he received popular blame for starting it and doing nothing about it. the common people, the source of his power, turned on him. He couldn’t even blame the Christiani, though he had many of them tortured and killed. Now more than ever, he was in search of funds to rebuild the city and expand his own pleasure gardens, and took Seneca's deal of a transfer of the latter's fortune. Seneca, however, was not allowed to retire in exchange. The spate of young, party-boy nobles that Nero had accumulated as an entourage encouraged him to fear the stoics, as beyond Paetus' opposition their "schoolteacherly" ways and frowning disapproval were seen as implicit criticisms of Nero's administration and personal conduct. Seneca ironically began to live more stoically as a practical result, drinking from his estate’s streams and eating from his fruit trees from a fear of poisoning.
Meanwhile, others such as his nephew the poet Lucan were becoming more seditious in their works, and sought to become so in their deeds as well. Lucan and many others supported an assassination plot and an effort to crown undistinguished noble Gaius Calpurnius Piso as emperor in 65. The plot, lacking a clear leader and driving force, failed after one of its more ambitious members, the former slave Epicharis, over-reached and caused discovery. Seneca, unfortunately for him, had signaled his non-opposition to the plot when approached, though he had declined to join it. Nero carried out a massive purge of conspirators, including of many of his own Praetorian Guards and one of their two commanders; and his other enemies, such as Thrasea Paetus. Seneca, with his role revealed, committed suicide in his villa upon receiving a confirmation of a death sentence. Nero was subsequently finally able to sing in Rome to great (manufactured) acclaim, though his reign lasted only three more years before he was overthrown in a military coup.
The historical debate over Seneca started shortly after his death; his works were in wide circulation during the next administration and some of his lines were found as graffiti in Pompeii. Some said right away that he was a hypocrite, and that he was not an example to follow. Tacitus' portrayal in his history was multilayered, at times critical or ironic, but evincing a clear interest in Seneca as a figure. Cassius Dio was more condemnatory. Each generation of stoics saw persecution and repression for another century until Marcus Aurelius became emperor.
Tacitus was right, Seneca is an interesting figure, and one we can learn from. The Trump administration, coming to a merciful if eventful end, didn’t necessarily have a statesman of Seneca’s stature; though perhaps Gen. James Mattis came close. He did have an entire cabinet, however, and a Senate and House full of supporters. Each supporter, especially those in the executive branch, have had to weigh their own complicity, formerly privately but more publicly in the week since the President egged on a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol in an effort to overturn the certification of the 2020 election results. Guarded Seneca, afraid for his life and influence, didn’t necessarily leave them any clear written advice (though he came close in Thyestes, De Clementia, and a few other works), but he did leave them a clear example. As influence on an instinctive authoritarian with, to understate it, a short attention span inevitably fades, the public legitimacy that one confers fades less quickly. This legitimacy can provide cover for a downward spiral, even if you don’t intend for it to. Is it best to throw your weight behind the opposition, even if it means that “it would be worse without me?” Even if it is worse in the short term, it might be better in the long run; though you might not see that if you are stoically waiting for an inevitable apocalypse.
Seneca’s opposition to Nero came too late to matter, and the world has lasted long enough for his legacy to reflect that. Though it might be best to have lived, if we take death as inevitable, it is better to look to the explicit opposition of Paetus, or the plotting of Lucan. The latter started as one of Nero’s favorites, but came around to oppose the regime. His work, De Bello Civili, reflected this through a darker portrayal of the house of Julii as the work progressed. He may not have lived to finish it, but he did leave it behind as a legacy, just as Seneca left his own works. Neither writer survived Nero, but Lucan’s legacy was untainted.