It is possible, as Tacitus hints, that Seneca played an essential role in advising Agrippina over the course of the night’s events. She acted carefully to make sure that there was no muddle over who should inherit the throne, making sure that Britannicus was detained in her arms: Tacitus tells us that she cuddled him, as if needing the comfort in her time of grief, and assured him that he looked just like his father—anything to keep him from leaving his room and seizing power. As soon as it was clear that Claudius was definitively dead, Burrus, accompanied by his full military guard of soldiers, flung open the palace gates and brought out Nero in triumph as the new emperor. “Some, it is said, hesitated, and looked round and asked where Britannicus was; then, when there was no one to lead a resistance, they yielded to what was offered them” (Annals 12.69.1–2). It was hard to argue with a government that had the army on its side.
Seneca and Burrus played key roles in advising Agrippina and Nero through the transition of power.6 Burrus backed the new emperor with the sword, while Seneca did so with words. Immediately after Nero’s accession, Seneca wrote a speech for the teenager to deliver to the Praetorian Guard, promising the soldiers that he would continue to support them with all the perks they had received from Claudius (Dio 61.3.1). Seneca also wrote a speech for the boy to deliver on the occasion of his adopted father’s death. In Tacitus’ account of the speech, it began with a fine, dignified tone: “As long as [Nero] went over the antiquity of [Claudius’] family, the consulates, and the triumphs of his ancestors, he was taken seriously by himself and others” (Annals 13.3). But then the speaker turned to discuss the subject of the famously foolish emperor’s “prudence and wisdom,” and things fell apart: “Nobody could restrain themselves from laughing—though the speech, being by Seneca, was just as elegantly-written as one would expect from that celebrity” (Tacitus, Annals 13.3) (Fig. 3.3). One may wonder whether Seneca really expected the audience to take this seriously: was the laughter a mark of how badly he had judged the probable mood of the meeting? Given Seneca’s highly advanced social skills, it seems much more likely that he deliberately praised Claudius for virtues he was not thought to possess, so that the occasion for mourning the old, dead emperor could also slip into mockery, underlining the supposed superiority of the new inhabitant of the post.
Figure 3.3 Seneca, depicted here in a toga as a Roman orator, was Nero’s speechwriter.
Seneca composed for Nero an important speech to the Senate that defined the new principles of the future regime. He declared, we are told,
that he would not be the judge of every case, and wouldn’t shut the accusers and defendants up together to allow a minority to gain ever greater power. Nothing in his own household (he said) would be open to bribes or canvassing; home and state were separate. The Senate would keep its old responsibilities, and Italy and the provinces would be responsible to the tribunes of the consuls. They would give access to the senators, while he himself (he said) would focus on the armies under his care.
(Tacitus 13.4, cf. Dio 61.3.1)
Tacitus says that Nero put these principles into practice by restoring the Senate in many respects, and won approbation from his respectful demeanor as consul in 55.7 The new regime, then, began in a spirit of hopefulness that things would be far better for the Senate and for the Roman government in general than they had been under Claudius.
In December of the same year, Seneca composed another piece of writing that suggested the superiority of Neronian rule over the regime of Claudius: the Apocolycyntosis, or Pumpkinification of Claudius.8 This text was probably produced for the Saturnalia, a festival celebrated in late December, from December 17 to 23 (one of the precursors to the modern Christmas), in which there was a tradition of partying, feasting, and gift-giving, and in which masters were supposed to trade places, temporarily, with their slaves. The Pumpkinification was a good fit for the topsy-turvy world of the Saturnalia. It begins with an appeal to be allowed to speak freely—a common trope for the satirist, but an essential element in the Saturnalian festivals. The feast was associated mythologically with the temporary return of Saturn as king of the gods, before Jupiter was restored again to his rightful place—a suggestive background for the political context.
The Apocolycyntosis is an extraordinary work, unlike anything else in ancient literature. The premise is the journey of the dead and deified Claudius up to Olympus to take his place with the other Olympian gods. The word, “apocolycyntosis,” is a term invented by analogy with the word for becoming a deity—apotheosis. Claudius is shown as having become a god, but he also becomes an empty-headed gourd—or rather, he is revealed as always having been one. The attitude toward the dead emperor includes some aggressive personal gibes: it mocks Claudius’ limp by commenting that he is hobbling with uneven steps up to heaven, and his speech defect by having Mercury announce the arrival of a subhuman specimen who speaks incomprehensibly. The tone also hovers between playful irony and more serious political commentary.9
Seneca’s critical attitude toward Claudius in this text is obviously in stark tension with his brownnosing to the same emperor in the Consolation to Polybius (12.3–14.2), and some have therefore questioned whether Seneca was really the author of the satire. But clearly Seneca had a strong reason for being flattering to Claudius when he was still alive and had the power to release him from Corsica; he had no motive to be kind about him once he was dead and Nero had taken over.
Seneca is shockingly irreverent in his mockery of the whole institution of deifying an emperor. But it is possible that the Apocolycyntosis was not intended for a wide circulation among the general public, but simply for a private audience at court. For Nero and his cronies, the irreverence would have been delightful.
The skit also had a more serious purpose: it advised Nero himself about how to govern, by showing him where Claudius went wrong. Seneca’s Claudius, once he reaches Olympus, is criticized sharply by the dead Augustus for his practice of killing people without trial, including Julia Livilla and a number of senators and knights. The institution of Heaven turns out to be closely modeled on the Roman Senate, whose norms Claudius is said to have violated. “Tell me, deified Claudius,” asks Augustus, “why did you convict these men and women whom you killed, before you could examine the case, before you could hear the evidence? Where is this customary practice? It isn’t so in Heaven.” Claudius is eventually punished, sent down from Olympus to Hades, without trial, to be the slave of Caligula—the worst imaginable fate.
However much one may sympathize with the critique of injustice in the Apocolycyntosis, there are elements in its satire that are hard to like. Some of the satire against Claudius is very mean: he is mocked for his physical disabilities, and his final words in the text are, “Oh no! I’ve shat myself.” The humiliating treatment afforded to poor Claudius is justified only partly by the claims that he failed to respect the Senate and the rule of law. There is also the rather less attractive complaint that under Claudius, too many upstarts began to wear the Roman toga: Claudius extended citizenship for any number of Greeks, Gauls, Spaniards, and Britons (presented by Seneca as upstarts who ought to have remained excluded). It is surprising, and indeed revolting, to read such complaints from a man who was himself Hispanic and had done rather well under the regime of Claudius. But there’s no class more snobbish than the nouveau riche. Probably Seneca was particularly eager to defend the pure blood of the Roman aristocracy, since his own claim to belong to the club was so dubious—a version of the Uncle Tom syndrome. Seneca assiduously flatters the new emperor Nero, presenting those spinning sisters, the three Fates, as breaking off the thread of the “lumpy life” of Claudius to weave an amazingly long, golden thread for Nero. Apollo, god of the sun, comments that Nero is like his twin in good looks and musical talent and prophesies that this golden boy will bring in a new age of prosperity, as he rises like a morning star: “Such a Caesar is here, such a Nero Rome now shall see. His radiant face blazes with gentle brilliance; his shapely neck blazes with flowing hair …”