One might think that the fable just tells us, in a vague way, that society is dangerous; if one becomes a follower of the crowd, one can lose one’s individual identity and become unable to hang on to one’s own goals and ideals. The lion is the crowd, as well as the devourer of that crowd. But there is a suggestion of a more specific and more material kind of danger, namely that those who flatter and praise and gather around the emperor may find that he is not always so safe; even a sick lion can bite. The hint of political danger is reinforced when we remember that Seneca is here alluding to an earlier Roman writer who used the same fable to discuss the dangers of a writer submitting to popular opinion—specifically, of submitting to the dangers of a close relationship with an imperial regime. A generation earlier, Horace, writing to his patron Maecenas, the friend and advisor of the then-emperor Augustus, made a similar appeal to the story:
And if the people of Rome should ask me why
I love the colonnades they love, but do not share
in their opinions, nor do I seek or reject
the things they do, I’d answer as the wary fox once answered
the sick lion: “Because the footsteps scare me:
they all go into your den, none go away.”
(Horace, Epistles, 1.1.70–75)
Horace, like Seneca, shies away from suggesting that the emperor himself may be dangerous to those who do not share his views, but both writers hint that the danger comes from a singular, powerful individual, and that the masses may be victims themselves.
Horace returns to the Aesopic fable form in another poem a little later in the same collection, and here the fox is less wary:
A slim little fox once crept through a narrow gap
into a corn barrel, and after he ate all the rats,
he tried to get free; but it was no use; his stomach was swollen.
A nearby weasel said, “If you want to get out,
you have to go back skinny, through the narrow gap your skinny self came in by.”
(Horace, Epistles, 1.7)
Horace’s promise—or perhaps threat—to his patron is that he is willing to give back all the things that he has received through his patronage, including his lovely Sabine farm: if that’s what it takes to reclaim his independence, then Horace (who boasts of his modest background as a freedman’s son) is willing to give back everything and get out as poor as he came in. He defends his right to stay away from Rome and the court, all year if he so chooses; he insists that, though grateful for what Maecenas has given him, he is no paid lap dog, and he can get out any time he likes. But the juxtaposition of the two fox fables in the same collection expresses a submerged anxiety about whether things are always so easy. The fox can easily get out of the barreclass="underline" all it takes is some dieting. But the animals that have chosen to go into the sick lion’s cave no longer have a choice; they will never come back out. As Horace says in another poem, “Cultivating a powerful friend is sweet to people who have never done it. Those who have, fear it” (Epistles 1.18.86–87).
Seneca, who knew Horace’s poetry well, transferred the problem into his own terms in the speeches he made to Nero in begging for retirement from the court. After Burrus died, more and more voices were raised against Seneca to Nero. Gossips reported to the emperor that Seneca was greedily still increasing his private fortune and abrogating to himself honors that really belonged only to Nero—including literary honor as well as vast wealth. They presented Seneca as deliberately copying and challenging Nero’s greatest accomplishments; for instance, they told him that Seneca “was writing poetry more often now that Nero had developed a love of it” (Tacitus 14.52). And, even worse, they reminded the emperor that Seneca was always scolding him about his most enjoyable activities, such as chariot racing and singing. Seneca’s intellectual and cultural talents, which had once been an asset in Nero’s court, had now become a liability: he was too productive, too clever, too talented. “How long was nothing to be believed glorious at Rome, unless it originated from Seneca?” they asked. Nero was a man now, these critics reminded him; he could afford to cast off his tutor.
Seneca was highly conscious of how hazardous his position now was. Tacitus gives us a wonderfully satirical account of Seneca’s attempt at a strategic exit speech in 62, which is worth quoting at length. Seneca asked to speak to the emperor face to face, was admitted, and began:
It is now fourteen years, Caesar, since I was joined to your hope, and eight years since you became emperor; in the meantime, you have piled such honor and wealth upon me, that nothing is lacking for my happiness, except moderation in its enjoyment.
He cites the examples of others who have helped emperors, such as Agrippa, advisor and general to Augustus, and acknowledges how little, in comparison, he has been able to offer Nero:
What have I been able to offer to your generosity, except my learning, which was trained, so to speak, in the shade, and which has become famous only because people see me as having helped the early stages of your youth? A vast reward for such a thing. But you have given me an enormous influence, huge amounts of money, so much that I often ask myself, “Is this me? Am I, born from a simple equestrian, provincial background, counted among the most important people of the state? Among those noblemen of ancient families, has my new name begun to shine?”
At this stage of the speech, Seneca still seems to be treating Nero’s bounty as more or less a good thing, despite being undeserved and unfitting for one of his station. But then he shifts to suggest that he has been morally corrupted by too much wealth:
Where is that soul that was happy with moderation? Has it laid out such gardens, walked through such suburban mansions, grown fat on such vast acres of land and such far-flung investments? I have just one defense to make: I had a duty not to stand in the way of your gifts.
But now, Seneca suggests, the emperor’s generosity has extended far enough: “We have both filled up the measure, both you of what a prince should give a friend, and I, of what a friend should take from a prince; anything more will increase envy.” The only solution is for Nero to take it all back:
I ask for help: I can no longer bear my riches. Order for my estates to be organized by your own procurators, to be taken back into your own wealth. I will not beat myself down to poverty, but I will give back the things whose splendor dazzles me, and the time I used to devote to gardens and villas, I’ll turn back to the soul.
(Annals 14.53)
It was a fine effort, but Nero saw through it. His reply was brilliant and cruel. Nero declared: “If I am able to meet the practiced rhetoric of your speech right away, that is the first of my debts to you”; at last, by this stage of his reign, Nero was able to give his own speech, with no need of Seneca’s help as speechwriter. He went on to pretend that they were still friends, that he still genuinely felt grateful to Seneca, and that he did not realize how desperately Seneca wanted to be away from him. At the same time, he insisted that there was no possibility of going back on the arrangement. The first reason was that Seneca had given him such imperishable gifts that the small things Nero could give in return—a handful of villas, a few miles of parkland, some millions of coins—were nothing in comparison. It was, frankly, embarrassing to think of how little he had managed to give his greatest benefactor: he had not even made him the richest man on earth: “I blush that you, who are first in my love, are not yet excelling everyone in fortune.”