Dissidence and Literature Under Nero

The Price of Rhetoricization

Vasily Rudich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415867276
• eBook ISBN: 9781134680894
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This work inquires into the impact of dissident sensibilities on the writings of the major Neronian authors. It offers a detailed and innovative analysis of essays, poetry and fiction written by Seneca, Lucan and Petronius, and illuminates their psychological and moral anguish.
The study is intended as a companion volume to Vasily Rudich's earlier work Political Dissidence under Nero: The Price of Dissimulation, where he discussed the ways in which 'dissident sensibilities' of the Neronians affected their actual behaviour. Dissidence and Literature under Nero extends this analysis to show how the same sensibilities became manifest in the texts written by the Neronian authors. It explores the pressures on authors under a repressive regime, who strive to maintain their artistic integrity.
Thus the argument of this book can be seen as a comparison between the predicament of a Neronian dissident and the situation of the postmodern intellectual. It will interest professional classicists and the wider audience concerned with the ongoing debate on the benefits and perils of rhetorical discourse.

1

SENECA

The immoral moralist

1

Seneca's extant work is voluminous, and he wrote in many different genres: consolation, philosophical diatribe, political treatise (De dementia), scientific monograph (Naturales Quaestiones), moral epistles, tragedy, and finally “menippean satire.” One might expect that this diversity would facilitate our comprehension of his personality. In fact, actual study betrays this expectation.¹ Struggling through the jungle of Seneca's elaborate and repetitious periods, admiring or disapproving his pointed sententiae, one may eventually arrive at the stage of confusion close to despair. The voices we hear are so dissimilar, even in the same work, their author seems so protean that it is no wonder the debate on some attributions (Octavia, Hercules Oetaeus, Apocolocyntosis) never ceases. It is true that in different contexts Seneca advocates different, sometimes even mutually exclusive, views. He may appear as an opponent and an adulator, an inflexible Stoic sage and a sly opportunist. But the problem remains to what extent these contradictions manifest a tortuous debate within the self and to what extent they relate to his own ambitious desire, by satisfying the expectations of every reader, to win the greatest literary reputation of the age.²

In addition, there are at least three major factors to be taken into account in any attempt to assess Seneca's own thinking from the evidence of his writing: the political repercussions, the tenets of Stoicism, and the elaborate rhetoricized mentality characteristic of the times.

Studying Seneca's biography hardly helps the situation. It is clear that we are dealing with a remarkable man, much loved, but also much hated, as well as a skillful dissimulator. His contemporaries did not fail to see a discrepancy between his message and his personal conduct, and his enemies exploited this gap. His defensive stand in De Vita Beata indicates that attacks on his character like those of the delator Suillius Rufus (Tac. Ann., 13, 42) were by no means irrelevant and could touch upon vulnerable spots. Even the most intransigent of his later apologists have never succeeded in exonerating him fully from the charge of duplicity. But the man was much more than that, and it is a testimony to his greatness that heated debate about his merits and demerits, both within and without academe, continues to the present day.³ He belonged with those rare individuals whose vices contrast not only with their powerful and creative minds, but also with the gift of remarkable charisma. In Seneca's case the loyalty and admiration of friends and disciples led to a kind of canonization. An actual cult of him was created by the refusal to read his work critically, a refusal much in the vein of post-Flavian martyrology.⁴ The spell of this image combined with his moralistic ardor moved his later unknown Christian admirer to forge his fictitious correspondence with St Paul.⁵ And he is the only pagan included by St Jerome in his De Viris Illustribus (12). The two opposite traditions on Seneca that one finds blended in our sources are equally deceptive because they are so extreme. In Dio they are both present, and this results in psychological implausibility; in Tacitus the picture is more complex but ultimately equally confusing.⁶ The zigzags of his remarkable career, however, are reflected in the zigzags of thoughts and arguments found in his work. It was the same man who wrote and who acted. This fact is the only link between his many masks. The danger lies in projecting upon him our own expectations, among them that of consistency. The initial problem is not in what sense Seneca was consistent, but whether he could or even wanted to be.

The major methodological problem is presented by the debate on the chronology of Seneca's extant prose works which so far has not yielded truly satisfactory results.⁷ On the basis of internal evidence there can be no doubt that two of the consolations, Ad Helviam and Ad Polybium, were written during the philosopher's exile at Corsica; the De Clementia and the Apocolocyntosis are both datable shortly after Claudius' death; and, finally, Seneca must have been working on the Naturales Quaestiones and Epistulae Morales in the years of his retirement. It is likely that the third consolation, Ad Marciam, belonged to an even earlier period, the reign of Caligula, while the De Vita Beata may have been published in response to the allegations of Suillius Rufus around the time of the latter's trial in AD 58, but for the rest we have no firm evidence at all. This quandary, however, is itself significant. It suggests that the man and his outlook essentially did not change. There are no varieties in style or in major themes or in patterns of thought. At best, the difference between his earlier and later work is in intonation. All this makes impossible any persuasive discussion as regards the development of Seneca's thought. Its main components were present in his work from the beginning.

The format of this book makes it impossible to present an extensive treatment of Seneca, or even a comprehensive analysis of his dissident dimension. Consequently, my argument, as well as the choice of passages to be examined, although my intent is to make it emblematic, will be necessarily selective, omitting much that is relevant to the variety of themes and motifs, but at the same time reflecting on the inconsistencies of Seneca's own procedures.⁸

Biographically Seneca started both his political and his literary career about fifteen years before Nero's accession to power.⁹ The second son of a wealthy provincial, of equestrian status, from Corduba, in Baetica, who later established himself in Rome and acquired considerable fame as a rhetorician, Seneca was born into a family with both political and literary connections. The exact date of his birth is unknown; the modern calculation makes it between 4 and 1 BC.¹⁰ By AD 5 he had been brought to Rome as a child by his aunt (his mother's stepsister), who seems to have played a major role in his early life, and he was sent to the appropriate grammar and rhetorical school. Very little is known of Seneca's activities until the age of thirty, except for the uncommon enthusiasm for philosophy that he displayed even to the point of causing annoyance to his father (Epist., 108, 22). A sickly youth, apparently of consumptive constitution, he travelled to Egypt, perhaps for reasons of health, sometime in the period AD 16–31 when his uncle (his aunt's husband) C. Galerius governed it as prefect. On the way back in AD 31, all three of them suffered the shipwreck in which Galerius perished, but Seneca and his aunt managed to survive (Helv., 19, 4). One does not know what prompted him, despite his relatively late age (he was past thirty) and his father's implicit advice, to start pleading in the forum and seeking political advancement at the dangerous time of transition from Tiberius to Caligula, but it was the same aunt who, very likely by exploiting her late husband's connections, helped to procure him the quaestorship which was the first step in entering upon the cursus honorum of a senatorial career.¹¹

Some of Seneca's writings were composed under Caligula and Claudius. The analysis of these will allow us to test the limits both of his political traditionalism and of moral pragmatism. It will also allow us to explore the peculiar dynamics of his creative psyche, for which an interaction of external circumstances with internal inhibitions represented at the same time the source of inspiration and of self-censorship.

2

Nostri saeculi exempla non praeteribo. Sub Tib. Caesare fuit accusandi frequens et paene publica rabies, quae omni civili bello gravius togatam civitatem confecit; excipiebatur ebriorum sermo, simplicitas iocantium; nihil erat tutum; omnis saeviendi placebat occasio, nec iam reorum expectabantur eventus, cum esset unus.

(De Beneficiis, 3, 26, l)¹²

And I will not pass over the examples of our own age. There was under Tiberius Caesar such a widespread and almost universal mania for bringing charges of treason that it affected those who wear the toga worse than any civil war; the babble of drunkards was seized upon, the simple-mindedness of those who made jokes. Nothing was safe; any occasion led to savagery, and there was no need to wait for what could have happened to the accused since there was only one outcome.

This passage from the De Beneficiis, that least accomplished of Seneca's Dialogi, is one of the few literary gems worthy of the pen of Tacitus. It is also one of the rare occasions when Seneca, usually reticent, expresses freely and precisely his feelings towards the atrocious events of recent history. The episode deals with a certain Paulus, the former praetor, and his faithful slave who saved him from prosecution for an involuntary “blasphemy” — that is, for having a ring with the emperor's impression on his finger while fulfilling his natural needs in the toilet. On the one hand, because of its anecdotal character this episode strongly resembles the series of maiestas cases on trivial or ridiculous charges started after Tiberius revived the law about AD 15 (Tac. Ann., 1, 72 ff.). If so, Seneca's passage is independent evidence that even Tiberius' early reign was by no means rosy and benign. Seneca arrived at the age of puberty when the first treason trials were initiated. On the other hand, the story could relate to the aftermath of Sejanus' conspiracy when Seneca started to consider a career in politics. Whatever the case, in the passage quoted he described what he had to witness personally at a crucial point in his psychological development — whether at the approach of early maturity or at the dawn of his public life. A very personal anxiety, mixed with fear and apprehension, suggests that the initial experience of political terror that Seneca lived through in his youth was powerful and overwhelming. Incidentally, there is another indication of the impact that terror and its repercussions played on Seneca's psyche: the famous “vegetarian surrender.”¹³ Explaining why he abandoned the vegetarian practices he adopted under the influence of his teacher Sotion, Seneca writes in his Epistolae Morales:

In primum Tiberi Caesaris principatum iuventae tempus inciderat. Alienigena tum sacra movebantur, sed inter argumenta superstitionis ponebatur quorundam animalium abstinentia. Patre itaque meo rogante, qui non calumniam timebat sed philosophiam oderat, ad pristinam consuetudinem redii.

(108, 22)

The time of my youth fell in the early period of Tiberius Caesar's Principate. At that time, alien rites began to be observed, and abstinence from certain kinds of animal flesh was reckoned among the proofs of foreign superstition. Consequently, at my father's request, although he did not fear calumny, yet hated philosophy, I returned to my old practices.

The statement that the Elder Seneca hated philosophy is inaccurate: the Rhetor's attitude was more complex.¹⁴ But the reference to Tiberius Caesar and his fight against superstition reveals what must have been a real and terrifying predicament. Tiberius' attempts to curb the Oriental cults (superstitio) resulted in the same patterns of delatory paranoia as described in our initial passage. Innocent behavior could consequently result in incrimination. Seneca's conduct is characteristic: he accepts paternal pressure with ease and thereby resolves the problem. His conscience remains clear since a suitable explanation is discovered for an otherwise unworthy compromise. Evidently, this young man lacked the contumacia — “stubbornness” — of a Thrasea Paetus or a Musonius Rufus.

Those examples of political pressure suffice as a starting point for further discussion. From the very beginning Seneca was ambitious. This ambition was in constant conflict with fear (the fear motive in Seneca may require a special monograph). In order to comprehend him properly we have therefore to develop a special empathy with his plight.¹⁵

What we would now call “ideological issues” were of small importance as regards Seneca's political attitudes. Not theoretical deliberation but pragmatic activity proved then the chief means of survival. The necessity of discussing a variety of opinions had not died out yet, but a widening gap between word and act became a major characteristic of the age.¹⁶ Nothing in Seneca's personal background would have pushed him into the ranks of the discontented. His provincial family, not even senatorial, never belonged to the clique of magnates of Republicanist descent. Unlike Thrasea Paetus, he did not marry into a clan with odium paternum principis — “the hereditary hatred of the emperor.” This is not the proper place to elaborate upon the political views and vicissitudes of Seneca's father, the Rhetor. It is enough to say that he seems perfectly accommodated, enjoying a number of influential connections, to the Rome of Tiberius and Sejanus. He appears to have been indifferent, and on occasion even apprehensive, of the Republicanist past, primarily because of his hatred of civil strife.¹⁷ He approved the pax Augusta, although without illusions, and prepared for all its consequences and the sacrifices it demanded. And he was profoundly aware of the dangers of politically active life, having chosen not to indulge in it. His feelings about the opposite choices made by t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY
• 1 SENECA: THE IMMORAL MORALIST
• 2 LUCAN: THE MORAL IMMORALIST
• 3 PETRONIUS: THE IMMORAL IMMORALIST
• CONCLUSION
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects
• Index Locorum