Contemplating clouds and thunderstorms is not just escapism. The weather system can also be seen as analogous to the threats of life in court: tyrants, like thunder, are something we must learn not to fear. On another level again, the issue is human agency, including Seneca’s own. Can a philosopher influence or even understand a tyrant, any more than he can influence the rain? On yet another level, there is a comfort in watching monumental forces that act with violence and power, but without cruelty, and always in accordance with a divine order of things.
THATCHED COTTAGES AND GOLDEN PALACES
While Seneca was struggling to remove himself to the view from above, there were important developments in Nero’s court. After Burrus and Seneca were both out of the way, a member of the Praetorian Guard named Tigellinus took over control of the guard from Burrus and became increasingly influential with Nero. Tacitus tells us that he worked to get rid of a number of rivals at court, including Rubellius Blandus Plautus, a rich young man who was a member of the Julian family and therefore had a dangerously good claim to power, as well as one Sulla, brother of Claudius’ wife, Messalina. Both had tried to keep a low profile and had withdrawn from Rome—Sulla to Gaul, and Plautus to Asia. But Tigellinus persuaded Nero that they were probably gathering support for their treason at a distance: the only safe way was assassination. Six days later, Sulla’s head was brought back to Rome, and Nero laughed at his ugly, prematurely gray hair (Tacitus 14.57). Tigellinus cited Plautus’ interest in Stoicism as a proof of his treasonous intentions—itself a marker of how far the pendulum had swung since the early days of Seneca’s tutorship of Nero. Soon Plautus, too, was tracked down. He knew death was coming and waited for the soldiers, naked as if for exercise. His head, too, was taken back to Nero, who laughed at the sight, exclaiming, “Nero, why did you fear a man with such a big nose?” (Tacitus 14.59). In such circumstances, it is not surprising that Seneca continued to keep a low profile and struggled to find things to take his mind off the current times.
A close friend of Seneca’s may well also have been among the victims of the purge. Serenus, who had (presumably thanks to the intervention of Seneca himself) been appointed as prefect of the night-watch under Nero, died suddenly, soon after Seneca’s first bid for retirement, in 62 or perhaps 63 CE. The cause was poisoned mushrooms, the same means that had been implicated in the death of Claudius. It is not clear whether the poisoning was accidental or on purpose, but it seems perfectly possible that it was part of the general attempt by Tigellinus and his cronies to eliminate all the people associated with the old crew of advisors, including Burrus, Seneca, and all the rest. We are told that all those dining on the mushroom dish—a whole group of tribunes and centurions—dropped dead (Pliny, NH, 22.96). Seneca was devastated by the loss. He notes how unphilosophical he became in his grief, failing to stick by the precepts he offered to others in times of grief: “I wept so much too much for my dearest friend Annaeus Serenus, that I myself am among the examples of those conquered by grief—not what I wanted” (Epistle 63.14). The attempt to distract himself by contemplating the great divine order of the universe did not always succeed.
In 62, the same year that Seneca first pleaded with Nero for permission to give back his wealth and retire from public life, Nero’s longtime concubine Poppaea, wife of his friend Otho, got pregnant. This was the last prompt Nero needed to divorce his long-unloved wife, Octavia, accusing her of having an affair with a slave. She was exiled to Campania. This caused a public outcry and Octavia was temporarily reinstated, only to be cast off again, under the pretext that she had supposedly been sleeping with a member of the Guard. The twenty-year-old girl was killed by having her veins cut open by soldiers, and then being suffocated in the bath.
This was a time when any person seen as a threat or even an irritation by Nero was in danger for his or her life. Two powerful freedmen were killed: Doryphorus for being opposed to the marriage with Poppaea, and Pallas—who, we remember, had wealth comparable with that of Seneca himself—simply for being too rich (Tacitus 14.65). Seneca narrowly escaped death at this time: Tacitus tells us that in the year 62, a man called Romanus accused him of conspiring against the government with Gaius Piso, although Seneca managed, on this occasion at least, to turn the accusations around on Romanus. Seneca had lost none of his strategic cunning in old age, but he knew very clearly that any day might be his last.
When Poppaea’s baby was born, a girl, the Senate rushed to Antium to attend the celebrations. Thrasea was forbidden to attend and took it rather well. Nero, it was said, told Seneca that he was now reconciled with Thrasea, and Seneca congratulated the emperor. Tacitus comments that this increased both “the glory and the danger for these famous men” (15.23). In a world so deeply committed to flattery and double-speak, even Thrasea’s failure to suggest bitterness at being excluded, and even Seneca’s congratulations at Nero’s obviously ironic claims of friendship with Thrasea, could be interpreted as expressions of dissent. Saying anything at all, or even not saying anything at all, was now dangerous.
The baby lived only four months, and grief did nothing for Nero’s mental stability. And yet Seneca managed to hang onto life. The secret of his survival lay in his ability to be both there and not there at the same time. He was supposedly still in the emperor’s service but withdrawn from society, sometimes actually sick (with the usual bronchial complaints) and sometimes feigning illness. He ate and drank even more moderately than usual in these last years: dry bread, figs, and other fruit made a suitable diet for a philosopher and were also harder to poison than more elaborate fare. Although Seneca was a keen viticulturalist and owned vineyards on several of his estates, he was always a moderate wine drinker. Now, he gave up wine more or less entirely, drinking spring water instead—which helped him to escape from the fate of Britannicus. He traveled around the country, visiting one of his country estates after another; he owned several, including one particularly well-loved one at Nomentum, and another in Alba. He traveled to various tourist destinations, such as the well-known seaside pleasure-resort of Baiae, in the Gulf of Naples, as well as to Naples itself, to Campania, and to villas once owned by the famous general Scipio, and the famous voluptuary, Vatia. He even at one point (if we are to believe his own report) took boarding rooms above a noisy bathhouse in the city, temporarily enjoying the challenge of trying to study through the bustle below: the grunts of the weightlifters, the patter of the masseur as he wielded his paddle on the oil of the customers’ backs, the high-pitched camp voice of the hair depilator and the screams of his clients as they got their armpits and legs plucked, the songs of those who liked to sing in the bath, the splash of the more enthusiastic swimmers, and the various cries of the food vendors, the sausage seller, the candy man, and the cake seller, each hawking their wares (Epistle 56.1–2). Eventually, the noise was too much even for the self-professed philosopher and he was off again, back to the country. The vividness with which Seneca evokes his various locations is one of the major joys of the Letters to Lucilius. He hardly ever gives any indication of why exactly he is traveling, presenting his movements as simply whims. But clearly, there was a reason why Seneca had to keep moving in these years: he was trying to stay below Nero’s radar.
The Letters give a vivid picture of his daily life in this period. In response to the shakiness of all human careers and attempts to establish oneself in security and prosperity, Seneca suggests that the only solution is the lifestyle of ascetic philosophy: “Let your food relieve hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothes keep out the cold, and let your home be just a protection against the enemies of your body. It is unimportant whether you live in a hut made of turf, or one built of many types of colorful marble; remember that thatch keeps a man sheltered, just as well as gold” (7.5). The image of the person sheltered by gold is not merely a fanciful exaggeration: rich Romans of the period, presumably including Seneca himself at the height of his wealth, did live in houses whose walls and ceilings were inlaid with gold leaf, as well as other luxurious decorations (such as wall paintings, mosaics, statues, and stucco); Nero built a magnificent palace of this type for himself in 64, the Golden House.10 Seneca’s simple life in quasi-retirement allowed him enough distance to criticize the kind of pampered lifestyle that he himself had lived for most of his middle years, and to be quietly critical of Nero’s increasingly extravagant and autocratic ways. At the same time, as always, Seneca remained open to the possibility that wealth, in itself, is no bad thing: “He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware” (5.6). His goal was not poverty or even voluntary simplicity, but rather, peace of mind; he seeks ways to limit the psychological damage caused to rich people by wealth. Living at subsistence level, he acknowledges, is simply “what many thousands of slaves and many thousands of poor folks do all the time.” Rich people should emulate them, not so that they can see how hard their lives are, but in order to see how easy it is to bear.