Sen'e-ca,[Fr. SENEQUE,*.sa'n?k'.](r.ucius Ann.eus,)
an eminent Roman Stoic, philosopher, and moralist, born
at Corduba, in Spain, about 5 H.c. He was educated in
Rome, whither he was brought by his parents in his
childhood.
Having studied rhetoric, philosophy, and law, he
gained distinction as a pleader. Accused by Messalina
of improper intimacy with Julia, a niece of Claudius, he
was banished to Corsica in4l A.n. During his exile he
composed his " Consolatio ad Helviam." (Ilelvia was
the name of his mother.) Through the influence of
Agrippina, he obtained permission to return to Rome in
49 A.D., was raised to the prastorship, and appointed
tutor to L. Domitius, (commonly known as Nero,) who
became emperor in 54 a.d. According to Tacitus, Seneca
endeavoured to reform or restrain the evil propensities
of his pupil. Some writers, however, censure his
conduct in this connection, by arguments which derive
plausibility from the immense wealth which Seneca
amassed. About the year 56 he wrote a treatise on
clemency, addressed to Nero,
" De Clementia, ad Neronem."
Seneca consented to the death of Nero's mother,
Agrippina, who was killed by order of her son in 60 a.d.,
and wrote the letter which Nero addressed to the senate
in his justification. He was afterwards supplanted in
the favour of Nero by Tigellinus and Rufus, who sought
to ruin Seneca by exciting the suspicion of the tyrant
against him. He was accused of being an accomplice
of Piso, (who had conspired against the emperor,) and
was ordered to put himself to death. Having opened
his veins, he died in a warm bath in 65 a.d. He was
an uncle of the poet Lucan.
Seneca was an eloquent and popular writer. His style
is aphoristic, antithetical, and somewhat inflated. Anion"
his numerous works are a treatise "On Anger," (" De
Ira,") "A Book on Providence," (" De Providentia
Liber,") "On Tranquillity of Mind," ("De Animi
Tranquillitate,")
"On the Brevity of Eife,"("De Krevitate
Vita?,") essays on natural science, entitled
"
Qutestiones
Naturales," and numerous epistles,
"
Epistolae ad Lucilium,"
which are a collection of moral maxims. We
have also ten tragedies in verse which are attributed to
Seneca, and which, though not adapted to the stage,
have considerable literary merit.
There has been great diversity of opinion respecting
the character and writings of Seneca. He has been
quoted as an authority by councils and fathers of the
Church. He was highly extolled as a writer by Montaigne.
Quintilian observes that his writings "abound
in charming defects," (dulcibusvitiis.) Macaulay is among
those who take the least favourable view of the character
and influence of the great Stoic. He says, "It is very
reluctantly that Seneca can be brought to confess that
anv philosopher had ever paid the smallest attention
to anything that could possibly promote what vulgar
people would consider as the well-being of mankind.
. . . The business of a philosopher was to declaim in
praise of poverty, with two millions sterling out at
usury ; to meditate epigrammatic conceits about the evils of
luxury, in gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns
; to rant about liberty, while fawning on the
insolent and pampered freedmen of a tyrant." ("Essay
on Lord Bacon.")
See Rosmini, "Vita di Seneca," 1793; Justus Lipsius, "Vita
L. A. Senecas," 1607; Klotzscu, "Seneca," 2 vols., 1799-
1802;
Rkinhardt, "De Seneca Vita et Scriptis," 1817; Vernier,
" Vie
de Seneque," 1812; Am. Fi.euky, "Seneque et Saint-Paul," 2
vols., 1853; P. Ekerman, "Vita et Dogmata L. A. Senecae,"
1742;
Hitter,
"
History of Philosophy;" Hirschig,
" Dood en Gedachtenis
van Seneca," 1831 ; Denis Diderot, " Essai sur la Vie de
Seneque," 1779; F. Salvador], "II Filosofo cortigiano, o sia
il Seneca," 1674; Tacitus, "Annales;" "Nouvelle Biographie
Generate?
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L. Annaeus, second son of the preceding, was born at Corduba
about B.C. 3. He was from infancy of a delicate
constitution, and liable to serious illnesses, in one of
which he owed his life to the devoted care of his maternal
aunt, in whose company, he tells us, he was brought to Rome.
His instructors there were the eminent philosophers
Fabianus, Attalus, and Sotion , under whom he studied with
unremitting ardour, carrying his zeal for their precepts so
far as to cultivate a somewhat ostentatious asceticism. His
prudent father, alive to the jealousy of the court,
recommended less perilous forms of virtue. Caligula, who
affected to be a severe critic of Seneca's style,
unquestionably envied his talent, and had marked him out for
destruction, but was induced to spare his feeble health,
which seemed to threaten an early grave. Under Claudius,
Seneca rapidly rose to eminence. As quaestor he had the
promise of a political career opened to him. He was also a
successful pleader, a skilful professor of eloquence, and a
leader in the world of fashion. But he had made powerful
enemies. An intimacy was known to exist between him and
Iulia Livilla, youngest daughter of Germanicus, which was
liable to an unfavourable construction; so that when
Messalina by her intrigues effected the exile of the
princess, she was able to involve Seneca in a similar fate
(A.D. 41). He was banished to Corsica, where he spent eight
years, a fretful and helpless spectator of events. With the
downfall of Messalina his fortunes revived. Agrippina,
wishing to use him as the instrument of her ambitious
projects, and perhaps, as Dio insinuates, captivated by his
engaging person, contrived to secure his appointment as
tutor to her son, the young Nero, then eleven years of age,
and already destined for the throne. This was a position
exactly suited to Seneca's genius. There is every reason to
believe that he endeavoured to imbue his pupil's mind with
maxims of wisdom and clemency; and the early part of Nero's
reign, the "golden quinquennium" of justice and mercy, was
long remembered as due to the influence of Seneca and
Durrus, who jointly administered the State. It soon became
evident, however, that Nero could not be controlled. The
tutor tried to retain his influence by dangerous and
unworthy concessions to the vices of the pupil, but without
success. It was Nero who held Seneca bound by the magnetism
of fear, of a more violent will, and of imperial splendours.
The minister was compelled to follow the downward course of
Nero's policy, giving such colour as his practised rhetoric
afforded to its odious features till Agrippina's murder-the
motive of which he was called upon to embody in a state-
paper-brought the climax to a long series of inconsistencies
between profession and practice, and showed him at once the
moral hollowness and the actual insecurity of his position.
From this time Nero seems to have turned against him; and
although the long-foreseen blow did not descend until A.D.
65, when Piso's conspiracy gave a decent pretext for
accusing him, yet for several years Seneca had been prepared
for death, and had made generous, but ineffectual, attempts
to disarm the emperor's malice. Bidden to effect his own
death, the philosopher, with his high-born and beautiful
wife Paulina, who insisted on dying with him, opened his
veins. Paulina was restored by her friends to life, though
with difficulty: he, after suffering excruciating agony,
which he endured with cheerfulness, discoursing to his
friends on the glorious realities to which he was about to
pass, was at length suffocated by the vapour of a stove.
Seneca is undoubtedly the most brilliant figure of his time,
and, except Tacitus, the most important
So-called Bust of Seneca the Philosopher. (Naples Museum.)
thinker and writer of the post-Augustan Empire. He embodied
all the leading characteristics of the age, with which,
unlike the majority of Roman citizens, he was in thorough
harmony; and consequently he has been judged with more
prejudice even by posterity than might have been expected.
That he was a truly great or good man can scarcely be
maintained; that he was even a great thinker is open to
question; but the inconsistencies of a life passed amid such
overpowering temptations must not blind us to his real
earnestness of purpose, or to the merit of exercising, under
constant risk, a restraining influence on perhaps the vilest
character known to history. It is impossible to doubt
Seneca's love for virtue. Amid exaggerations, conceits,
paradoxes, follies, the moral end is always held out as the
only one worthy of being consistently followed, to which
every kind of speculative knowledge is subordinate. His
death, though not without a conscious study of effect, was a
truly noble one; and we must believe him sincere when, on
comparing himself with others and reconsidering his actions
and omissions, he declares that he can look back with
satisfaction upon his life. His opinion, thrice expressed,
to the effect that true wisdom will not seek for an
impracticable standard of purity in a hopelessly corrupt
age, must be referred to the lower level of moral
excellence, which Stoicism considered alone compatible with
public life, and not to the ideal of the unencumbered,
untempted sage.
Of Seneca's poetical writings, some few epigrams are
preserved in the Anthologia Latina. We possess also nine
tragedies correctly ascribed to him, viz.: Hercules Furens,
Troades (or Hecuba), Phoenissae (not all genuine), Medea,
Phaedra (or Hippolytus), Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes, and
Hercules Oetaeus, and one praetexta, the Octavia,
incorrectly ascribed. Doubts have been thrown on the
identity of the tragedian with the philosopher, but they are
quite unfounded. The tragedies no doubt belong to his
earlier life, and probably were written, partly during his
exile, partly after his return to Rome, to assist the poetic
proclivities of Nero. They are free imitations of Greek
originals, which have in most cases survived so as to admit
of a comparison. Both in dramatic power and loftiness of
tragic feeling the Latin plays are immeasurably inferior.
They abound, however, in brilliant declamation, philosophic
contemplation, and witty aphorisms. They can hardly have
been intended for the stage, to which they are wholly
unsuited; but they are admirably fitted for declamatory
reading, though even for this purpose overloaded with
rhetoric.
Seneca's prose works were numerous and important; a
considerable portion are lost, but the larger and more
valuable part remains. Among the former are his speeches,
written to be delivered by Nero, a treatise De Situ Indiae,
another De Situ et Sacris Aegypti, another De Motu Terrarum;
several treatises on moral philosophy, viz.: Exhortationes,
De Officiis, De Immatura Morte, De Superstitione, De
Matrimonio, Quo Modo Amicitia Continenda Sit, De Paupertate,
De Misericordia, De Remediis Fortuitorum, and De Verborum
Copia; a biography of his father, a panegyric on Messalina,
and several books of letters. His extant works comprise (a)
the twelve so-called dialogues, viz.: Ad Lucilium de
Providentia, Ad Serenum de Animi Tranquillitate, Ad S. de
Otio, Ad S. de Constantia Sapientis, Ad Novatum de Ira Libri
III., Consolatio ad Marciam, Consolatio ad Polybium,
Consolatio ad Helviam Matrem, De Vita Beata ad Gallionem, De
Brevitate Vitae ad Paulinum; (b) three books, Ad Neronem de
Clementia; (c) seven books, De Beneficiis ad Aebutium
Liberalem; (d） twenty books of moral letters, Ad Lucilium
(but the collection is incomplete); (e) seven books,
Naturales Quaestiones, addressed to Lucilius; (f) a
political satire on the death and apotheosis of Claudius,
called by διο ἀποκολοκύντωσις, which is of interest as the
only remaining example of the Satura Menippea; (g) fourteen
spurious letters of a correspondence with St. Paul, which
seem to have imposed upon St. Jerome (De Vir. Illust. 12).
See Epistola.
From this catalogue it will be seen how wide was the field
embraced by Seneca's genius. Little need be said about his
scientific works, except that they show no mean acuteness of
conjecture and considerable knowledge of physical theories,
though these are often subordinated to an ethical purpose.
His views of nature are in the main Stoic, and his examples
are probably drawn from Greek sources.
It is on his moral treatises that Seneca's fame rests. In
the particular department that he selected, viz., the
application of certain leading principles to practical life,
he excels all other writers of antiquity. Nominally a Stoic,
he belonged really to the Eclectic School, culling precepts
from every form of doctrine with impartial appreciation.
"The remedies of the soul," he says, "have been discovered
long ago: it is for us to learn how to apply them." On this
text his system is a comment. It requires, above all else, a
thorough knowledge of the human heart, and in this Seneca is
preeminent. In that dark and perilous period, when universal
mistrust prevailed, the moralist must be able to dive into
the secret recesses of the soul, drawing to light its hidden
disquiet, and fortifying it against the blows of
circumstance or the deeper thrusts of human turpitude. No
writer, ancient or modern, shows a more complete mastery of
the pathology of mind. Many of his letters are of the nature
of sermons; others are spiritual meditations; others,
brilliant attacks on the falsehood and vice of the time. In
all these is the same incisiveness of style, the same
fertility of illustration, the same varied experience, the
same emphatic and reiterated pressing home of his point.
This last feature is apt to weary the reader; and Seneca,
well aware of the danger, endeavours, by every artifice of
rhetorical ingenuity, to maintain the interest of his theme.
"To impress the dull conscience, reiteration is a necessity:
to knock once at the door when night is come is never
enough: you must knock frequently and hard." This leads him
to use a tone of exaggeration which, by its seeming
insincerity, does injustice to the writer's heart, and has
caused him to be too severely judged. His religious and
moral maxims so often approximate to those of Christianity
that the fathers of the church adopted the view that he had
adopted their faith, to which the fictitious correspondence
with St. Paul seemed to lend support. The coincidences,
however, though sufficiently remarkable, are accidental
only, and arise from the character of his mind, which was
essentially that of a "seeker after God."
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