Figure 3.5 The Roman elite enjoyed conspicuous displays of wealth, such as this jewelry and this silver cup. One of Seneca’s favorite topics is the emptiness of this kind of consumerism.
Publius Suillius had been brought low by a revival of an old law against judicial corruption; the law was revived as a deliberate, ad hominem attack on Suillius by his enemies, who apparently included Seneca. In bitterness at this, Suillius turned on Seneca in 58 CE and accused him of financial and moral abuses that went far beyond his own.30 He criticized Seneca of having acquired a vast personal fortune, three hundred million sestertii, in a mere four years of service to Nero. He claimed that Seneca had a personal grudge against anybody—presumably including himself—who spoke in defense of his fellow citizens, and against anybody who had been a friend to Claudius, under whom, he said, “Seneca endured a well-deserved exile” (Tacitus 13.42.4). Suillius’ attack interwove claims of sexual corruption (beginning with adultery with Julia Livilla, and also suggesting that Seneca slept with Agrippina and seduced Nero himself) with attacks on his wealth: “In Rome, he spread his nets to catch the wills of childless men; Italy and the provinces were sucked dry by his insatiable usury” (Tacitus 13.42.4).
The implications of Suillius’ attack were that Seneca was not only very wealthy, but wealthy despite an entirely false claim to be “philosophical,” and wealthy at the expense of other citizens. Legacy-hunting was a common corrupt practice in Rome at the time, memorably depicted in literary texts such as Petronius’ Satyricon, in which the central character, Eumolpus, poses as a childless, sickly, rich old man in order to trap the legacy-hunters into pretending to befriend him. The charge of preying on the wills of the childless elderly was such a common trope of Roman moralists that it would have appeared in Suillius’ list of accusations regardless of truth. But there is no reason to doubt that Seneca was indeed very much interested in cultivating social relationships in the city, and it seems at least possible that some of those whom he wined and dined, on those ivory tables, were also old, childless, and rich.
The charge of “sucking the provinces dry” is morally the most serious, and it is also hard to rule out. It was common for rich elite Romans to lend money at interest to the provinces, and it seems perfectly likely that Seneca did this. Cassius Dio tells us that his usury helped precipitate the British rebellion of 61 CE, since Seneca suddenly called in a loan of forty million sestertii. The figure may be exaggerated, and the relationship between the rebellion and Seneca’s loan is not likely to have been so direct; but still, there is no reason to doubt that Seneca did profit by moneylending, and also no reason to think that he felt particularly ashamed about it.
Seneca, Tacitus tells us, was soon told about Suillius’ accusations and quickly retaliated. A series of prosecutions against Suillius for corruption began and were successfully executed: half his estate was confiscated, and he was sent into exile. Seneca thus succeeded in taking savage revenge on one of his most outspoken personal enemies. Suillius, however, made the best of his situation: he remained “uncowed” during the condemnation and lived out his life in exile at ease and surrounded by luxury—never making the mistake of trying to return to Rome. It is possible that Seneca, enraged by his enemy’s spirit, tried to push his hatred even further: we are told that the son of Suillius was also prosecuted, but the emperor himself put a stop to it, arguing that vengeance had gone far enough (Tacitus 13.43). Here the pupil showed far more clementia than his philosophical teacher was able to muster.
But the charges obviously stung Seneca. Moreover, Suillius was presumably not the only person to make these charges, so ousting one enemy was not enough to silence the irritating attacks. Seneca wrote an extensive self-justification, probably the year after the accusations by Suillius, in 59 CE: On the Happy Life.31 This is a philosophical essay addressed to Seneca’s older brother, Novatus, which provides an important window into Seneca’s response to the critics who accused him of hypocrisy as well as excessive and unphilosophical profiteering. The value of worldly goods is addressed directly. Seneca approaches the issue by first discussing the relationship of happiness to pleasure (voluptas). He adamantly rejects the idea that pleasure is an inherent component of happiness. The popular but thoughtless version of this view is quickly dismissed with scorn: the supposed goods of wealth, eloquence, and power are not guarantees of real, lasting happiness; they are delusions, which “are shining on the outside, but miserable within” (2.4).
A more sustained and complex attack has to be made against the defenders of the philosophical school that was the most prominent rival of Stoicism in Rome of the period: Epicureanism. Seneca, far more than some opponents of Epicureanism, acknowledges quite fairly that the Epicureans were by no means hedonists, and he expresses some real respect for the true teachings of Epicurus: “[Hedonists] do not think about how restrained and moderate that Epicurean ‘pleasure’ really is—and indeed, I think it really is pleasure; instead, they rush to the name to find some justification and veil for their own cravings” (12.4). The problem, then, is not so much with Epicurus himself as with his false followers, those who call themselves Epicureans but fail to follow the austerity of the master. But Seneca also insists that the Epicureans are wrong to equate pleasure with virtue. The point is not that pleasure is to be despised by the truly wise person, but rather that it must always be secondary to the main aim of virtue. Physical pleasures have a place in the ideal life, but only if they are in a place “like the auxiliaries and light-armed troops in the camp: let them be slaves, not masters” (On the Happy Life 8.2). Virtue does bring pleasure, but it is chosen for itself, not for any pleasure it may bring. The problem with equating pleasure and virtue, as the Epicureans do, is that it risks making one too vulnerable to Fortune. Any physical pleasure, even the most moderate joy an Epicurean takes in his crust of bread and swig of water, seasoned only with hunger and thirst and eaten with a single good friend—even this can be taken away.
We can hear a resonance with Seneca’s own life choices in his adamant insistence that one must never be seduced by the desire for physical comfort into making choices that might be contrary not only to virtue, but also—and this comes to the same thing—to his own freedom. The insistence suggests an attempt to address the author’s discomfort with the choice he himself has made in serving the emperor—and thereby compromising his own freedom. Political language recurs when Seneca discusses the Stoic ideal of following god and Nature at all times: “We are born under a king’s rule; to obey god is freedom” (15.7). Clearly the service of Nero was not freedom, and Seneca knew it. He arranges his philosophical thinking to present himself as actually in service to a higher power than the earthly power of the emperor, and thereby he suggests the paradox that his higher kind of service allows for a higher kind of freedom—regardless of the constraints of his merely physical existence.
The treatise makes an explicit answer to the charges of hypocrisy. Seneca imagines an unnamed, typical accuser approaching him and asking “the usual thing.” This “usual thing” turns out to be a very long list of usual things, accusations about his wealth and his interest in things that, to a Stoic sage, ought to be merely indifferent: