Intertextuality in Seneca's Philosophical Writings

Myrto Garani, Andreas N. Michalopoulos, Sophia Papaioannou, Myrto Garani, Andreas N. Michalopoulos, Sophia Papaioannou

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367331511
• eBook ISBN: 9781000037739
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This volume is the first systematic study of Seneca's interaction with earlier literature of a variety of genres and traditions. It examines this interaction and engagement in his prose works, offering interpretative readings that are at once groundbreaking and stimulating to further study.

Focusing on the Dialogues, the Naturales quaestiones, and the Moral Epistles, the volume includes multi- perspectival studies of Seneca's interaction with all the great Latin epics (Lucretius, Vergil and Ovid), and discussions of how Seneca's philosophical thought is informed by Hellenistic doxography, forensic rhetoric and declamation, the Homeric tradition, Euripidean tragedy and Greco-Roman mythology. The studies analyzes the philosophy behind Seneca's incorporating exact quotations from earlier tradition (including his criteria of selectivity) and Seneca's interaction with ideas, trends and techniques from different sources, in order to elucidate his philosophical ideas and underscore his original contribution to the discussion of established philosophical traditions. They also provide a fresh interpretation of moral issues with particular application to the Roman worldview as fashioned by the mos maiorum. The volume, finally, features detailed discussion of the ways in which Seneca, the author of philosophical prose, puts forward his stance towards poetics and figures himself as a poet.

Intertextuality in Seneca's Philosophical Writings will be of interest not only to those working on Seneca's philosophical works, but also to anyone working on Latin literature and intertextuality in the ancient world.

Part 1

1Seneca on Augustus and Roman fatherhood

Amanda Wilcox

1 Introduction

Roman literature abounds in depictions of fathers and fatherly deportment, and it is clear that in Roman culture and life, the central role played by a man’s father and by the head of household, the pater familias, could be richly supplemented by additional father figures. Near the beginning of his speech in defense of Marcus Caelius Rufus, for instance, Cicero describes how the adolescent Caelius was carefully transferred from his father’s house to Cicero’s own home, and from there to the ‘most pure’ (castissima domo, Cael. 9) house of Marcus Crassus, who along with Cicero guided his apprenticeship in public life. Cicero even encourages the jurors in the case to take a fatherly attitude toward the defendant. He surveys their options for paternal models by turning to comedy, first quoting several severe fathers drawn from the plays of Caecilius Statius before recommending instead that they adopt the attitude of Micio, the lenient father in Terence’s comedy Adelphoe: ‘He has broken down the doors, they will be refitted; he has torn his clothing, it will be mended’ (Fores ecfregit, restituentur; discit vestem, resarcietur Cael. 38 = Ad. 120–1).

Taken as a whole, Cicero’s Pro Caelio richly illustrates the pervasive Roman preoccupation with fatherhood, both literal and figurative, to which Seneca was heir. More specifically, the speech exemplifies a Roman presumption that Seneca’s writings also share, namely, that there is a direct connection between the correct performance of duties in the domestic sphere and beneficial outcomes in the public realm.¹ But Cicero’s deft employment of Roman comedy in service of his persuasive forensic rhetoric also offers a useful point of comparison for Seneca’s deployment of ideas about fatherhood. Cicero’s transfer of the severe and lenient fathers from Roman comedy into forensic oratory engages in the most straightforward kind of intertextuality, namely, quotation. Cicero refers generically to a vehemens and durus father familiar from the plays of Caecilius Statius, and then he quotes specifically from several of these comedies before unfurling a quote from Terence’s Adelphoe to provide a model of the easy-going, forgiving father he encourages his audience of jurors to emulate. In contrast, Seneca’s borrowing of paternal models, although it is no less indebted to previous literature than that of Cicero, is far less susceptible to straightforward source analysis. Seneca certainly does engage in quotation, allusion and reference to other literary texts in his philosophical works (for many excellent examples, see other contributions to this volume), but he engages also in less overt forms of intertextual positioning. In the passages this chapter examines, Seneca depicts paternal behavior that would be in some cases reassuringly familiar to his original audience, and sometimes quite unexpected, but he consistently casts these depictions in the form of exempla.

When Seneca tells an anecdote in the form of an exemplum and installs it in a work of moral philosophy, he is not only exploiting a familiar means of advancing an argument but also practicing an art in itself. For Seneca’s Roman readers, schooled in declamation, the power of an exemplum well selected and deftly tailored to its immediate context was routinely measured by its persuasive force.² Passages that were easily recognized as exempla in formal terms but departed from conventional expectations in the moral lesson they promoted had all the greater power to surprise their readers and to provoke them into deliberation. Just as Cicero recommends Terence’s character Micio as a model of paternal leniency in his Pro Caelio, Seneca, in several of his philosophical works, invokes through an exemplum a model of paternal behavior that may have the virtue of appearing fresh and unexpected, but which will also situate his advice firmly within the mainstream of the Roman literary tradition and mos maiorum. In late Republican legal oratory or early imperial declamation, exempla were evaluated for their persuasive force. In Seneca’s philosophical writing, the value of exempla still resided in their power to persuade the reader, but the persuasive force that exempla deployed by Seneca possessed likely stemmed in part from the reassuring familiarity his readers would have had with argument by means of historical exemplum, thanks to the emphasis on rhetoric and declamatory practice in Roman elite education. This familiarity could reassure newcomers to philosophical discourse by domesticating it, by bringing it closer to genres with which these readers already felt comfortable.³

Moreover, Roman exemplary discourse was thoroughly intertextual, though what I will term ‘exemplary intertextuality’ differs in its aims and effects from literary intertextuality as it is has been most frequently examined in Latin poetry.⁴ The intertextuality exhibited by Senecan exempla is far less identifiable or isolable, in its sources or its effects, than quotation or allusion. This intertextuality is, instead, akin to that of the topos, in Stephen Hinds’ formulation: ‘[R]ather than demanding interpretation in relation to a specific model or models, like the allusion, the topos invokes its intertextual tradition as a collectivity, to which the individual contexts and connotations of individual prior instances are firmly subordinate’.⁵ Tara Welch has recently used Hinds’ discussion of the topos as a springboard for her exploration of the intertextuality of Valerius Maximus’ Memorable Doings and Sayings.⁶ Welch characterizes Valerius’ engagement with the texts of previous authors, specifically Cicero and Livy, as a kind of ‘anti-intertextuality’, which ‘functions not only aesthetically, as a statement about texts and creation, but also socially, as a statement about who may participate in Roman culture (79)’. Valerius privileges the common threads of a story over the particularities of specific versions. In a conventional sense, he plagiarizes his sources, by failing to acknowledge extensive quotation.⁷ But Welch argues that Valerius saw his role as an author as a ‘conduit… for content: for tradition (75)’ and so in his telling of exempla, he ‘erases them as texts (76)’ as a means of recuperating and advertising ‘the truth [that these stories convey] beyond and independent of Cicero’s or Livy’s interpretation’ and thus engaging actively in ‘a process by which communal property becomes available to members of society at large (77)’.⁸ This way, Welch shows that Valerian intertextuality can neither be described as ‘historiographical intertextuality, valuing [authority derived from] source texts’ nor as typically ‘declamatory or literary intertextuality, valuing the destination text (74)’. Instead, Valerius engages in ‘intertextual streamlining’, that strips his versions of idiosyncratic stylistic markers or controversial historical details. What Welch discovers to be true of Valerian intertextuality is in significant measure also true for Seneca, mutatis mutandis, in his philosophical writings. At times Seneca flags his borrowing from other authors, whether to appeal to their authority or to challenge it, or to engage in stylistic homage or rivalry. But more often, the mission of sharing and handing down the truth (translatio) takes precedence over crediting individual sources. In fact, Seneca makes this priority explicit in his Moral Epistles:

‘Epicurus’ inquis ‘dixit: quid tibi cum alieno?’ Quod verum est meum est; perseverabo Epicurum tibi ingerere, ut isti qui in verba iurant nec quid dicatur aestimant, sed a quo, sciant quae optima sunt esse communia.

(Ep. 12.11)

You say, ‘Epicurus said this—what are you doing with another person’s property?’ What is true is mine. I will keep heaping Epicurus on you so that those who swear by words and do not evaluate what is said but only who said it may finally learn that what is best is held in common.⁹

So, like Valerius, Seneca may strategically omit the names of his sources. Moreover, Seneca is concerned to illustrate that his exempla demonstrate moral behaviors that will be transferrable and useful for different actors in different circumstances. If smoothing away contested historical details or otherwise fictionalizing the episode best serves this aim, Seneca does not hesitate to do so. The resulting exempla, fashioned by Seneca to most effectively serve their persuasive and philosophically therapeutic aims, may, at least superficially, resemble the ‘streamlining’ done by Valerius Maximus. But Seneca’s ‘exemplary intertextuality’ does not relinquish careful literary and rhetorical shaping. Moreover, Seneca’s frequent choice to omit his sources rather than advertising them itself has an ethical and didactic purpose. His practice as a maker and transmitter of exempla itself exemplifies what he recommends to his readers. At Ep. 84.3, Seneca advises his addressee Lucilius to alternate reading various authors with writing his own work: ‘We should, as they say, imitate the bees, who roam around the flowers and snatch from those suitable for making honey, then whatever they have carried back they dispose and arrange in the comb’ (Apes, ut aiunt, debemus imitari, quae vagantur et flores et mel faciendum idoneos carpunt, deinde quidquid attulere disponunt ac per favos digerunt).¹⁰ Seneca digresses briefly to speculate on the process by which honey is made, a matter of some dispute, but he reins in his digression by pointing out that although the sources and process for making honey are mysterious, the natural end result is one delicious substance. Though discerning taste buds may differentiate sources for distinct flavors within it, the honey itself is an indivisible new whole. Seneca explains his analogy further by comparing the correct practice of reading and writing to the incorporation of food into our bodies:

Quamdiu [alimenta] in sua qualitate perdurant…, onera sunt; at cum ex eo, quod erant, mutata sunt, tum demum in vires et in sanguinem transeunt. […] Concoquamus illa; alioqui in memoriam ibunt, non in ingenium.

(Ep. 84.6)

So long as food remains food in its own identifiable state…, it is a burden. But when it has changed from what it was, then at length it transforms into strength of body and into blood. […] Let us thoroughly digest our sources. Otherwise, they will enter into our memory, but not into our character.

Further developing the idea, Seneca writes, ‘Let our mind hide away the sources that have assisted it, and only display what it has produced’ (Hoc faciat animus noster: omnia quibus est adiutus abscondat, ipsum tantum ostendat quod effecit, 84.7).¹¹ Welch notes that Quintilian also advises the would-be orator to make the best his own (quod prudentis est quod in quoque optimu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Intertextuality in the philosopher Seneca
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Bibliography
• Index locorum
• General index