Seneca has been dubbed the “conscience of the Empire,”41 although it would be more accurate to see him as its unconscious—but an unconscious with a public voice and a beautiful literary style. His wide-ranging and contradictory body of work articulates the psychological contradictions and pressures of consumerism, globalization, and empire—all themes of enormous importance for the modern Western and non-Western worlds. The theme that one can find peace only within oneself—and quite likely not even there—is an idea that is particularly attractive in a fragmented and frightened society. Seneca’s difficult negotiations between interior and exterior, and between center and periphery, have a strikingly modern feel. We may well wonder whether the notion that only the truly virtuous person can be happy is either true or helpful, politically or ethically. But even Stoic-skeptics can acknowledge the continuing fascination of Seneca’s contradictory psychology, lurid life story, and complex, paradoxical, rich literary work.
Notes
Introduction
1. The best and most thorough account of Seneca’s death (and its later reception) is Ker 2009 (The Deaths of Seneca).
2. On which, see my Death of Socrates, 2007.
3. I allude here to the title of the most informative modern scholarly account of Seneca’s political life: Miriam Griffin’s Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (Griffin 1976).
4. Rubens himself was deeply influenced by Seneca, through the Neo-Stoicism of his friend Lipsius: on this see Morford 1991.
5. Seneca’s exile will be discussed in more detail in Chapter II.
6. The most sustained attempt to do this is Griffin 1976—who provides a nuanced and detailed account, which fully acknowledges the problems inherent in the quest. On the difficulties and desirability of looking at all Seneca’s extant work together, see especially Volk and Williams 2006.
7. See Bartsch and Wray 2009.
8. On the term see Rudich 1993 and 1997. See also Bartsch 1994.
9. The best account of Cicero’s life story is Rawson 1975.
10. See especially Tacitus, Dialogus.
11. Much of our information about early Stoicism comes from the (unreliable and anecdotal) account in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers.
12. See Asmis 1996.
13. See especially Lucian’s Hermotimus, or the Choice of the Schools, which is a (presumably imaginary) dialogue between a stand-in for the writer himself and a foolish friend who has been taken in by the Stoics. Lucian’s alter ego insists, over and over, that the Stoics are misleading in their claims to teach wisdom, and suggests to his friend that life is too short to waste on their shenanigans.
14. See Long and Sedley 1987.
Chapter I
1. Cf. Horace, Serm. 1.4.
2. See Edwards and Woolf 2003, on Roman notions of the capital city and its peripheries.
3. Valerius Maximus 4.4.4; Livy 3.26–29.
4. See Keay 1988; Curchin 1995.
5. Knapp 1983.
6. There has been quite a lot of debate among historians about what exactly the status of the new city was, in terms of Roman law: Knapp 1983; Griffin 1976.
7. Knapp 1983.
8. Griffin 1976.
9. The iugerum was about two thirds of an acre, and “sacks” are cullei—the total is over four thousand liters.
10. See Griffin 1976, 287, and Griffin 1972 on Seneca’s devotion to vineyards and olive groves.
11. An epigram from the Anthologia Latina, 409, whose authenticity has been doubted: see Knapp 1992, 103, for arguments for and against. Knapp sees it as authentic.
12. For more on educated Roman women, see Hemelrijk 1999; Levick 2002.
13. On performance aspects of declamation see Gleason 1995.
14. See Winterbottom 1974, introduction.
15. See Vassileiou 1973, as well as Sussman 1978, and especially the discussion of Fairweather 1981.
16. On exemplarity, see Roller 2004; on Valerius Maximus, Bloomer 1992.
17. As argued by Sussman 1978, 27–28.
18. See Sussman 1978, 28. Cf. Epistle 108 (on which, see below) and To Helvia 17.3–4.
19. Scheidel, W., and Meeks, E. (May 2, 2012). ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. Retrieved Dec. 31, 2012, from http://orbis.stanford.edu.
20. Morley 1996, 33–39.
21. Succinctly discussed in Volk and Williams 2006; see Morford 2002 for more detailed cultural and philosophical analysis.
22. On the Sextians: Manning 1987 makes the most careful distinction between the Sextians and other sects (such as Pythagoreans and Stoics). See also Lana 1959, Griffin 1976.
23. Tacitus, Annals Book 2. 85.
24. On this passage, and its resonances with the similar scene in Seneca’s HF, see Wilson 2004.
25. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Chapter 25: “Fear and Anxiety.”
Chapter II
1. On the Good Life 20: “I will know that the whole world is my country, and that the gods, my guardians, stand above me and around me as judges of my words and actions” (Patriam meam esse mundum sciam et praesides deos, hos supra me circaque me stare factorum dictorumque censores).
2. There is a strong revisionist account of Caligula in Winterling 2011. Winterling argues that many of Caligula’s supposedly insane actions were actually very sane and calculated political moves designed to consolidate imperial power against the threat of the hostile Senate and aristocracy.
3. See On Constancy 18, where he describes how Caligula’s brutal behavior toward his subordinates aroused a corresponding rage in them and led to his assassination; On Anger 1.20, evoking Caligula’s insane belief that he was more powerful than the gods; On Anger 3.18.1, describing Caligula going for a nighttime stroll with some senators and their wives, and suddenly chopping off their heads; On the Shortness of Life xviii.5; To Polybius 17, on Caligula’s lack of grief for his dead sister; To Helvia, on his extravagance and crazily expensive dinner parties; On Benefits 2.12. on his outrageous treatment of a senator; On Benefits. 7.10 on his attempts at bribery; Epistle 94.64 on his (evil) motives for warfare.
4. Bartsch 1994.
5. Julius Canus also appears in Plutarch, fragment 211.
6. See Rudich 1993.
7. Griffin 1976.
8. Rudich 1997, 27–35.
9. See Bougery 1936.
10. They are gathered, with extensive commentary in Italian, by Vottero 1998.
11. The Epicurean view is actually somewhat complex, and evidence for it hinges on a disputed passage of Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Epicurus, DL X.119, which seems to say that a wise man ought to marry and have a child—but has sometimes been amended to say that the wise man ought NOT to marry and have a child. For scholarly discussion of the text of this passage, see Chilton 1960.