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THE YOUNGER SENECA
•which is such an important characteristic of his own literary achievement. The
third teacher whom he mentions, Sotion the Pythagorean, is not known to
have declaimed; but as a lecturer he was eloquent enough to convert the youthful
Seneca, temporarily, to vegetarianism — an instance of that quasi-religious
zealotry which recurred sporadically during Seneca's life, and in his hour of
death.
Yet for long periods this gifted and inconsistent man was at least equally
attracted to the charms of power. The elder Seneca, even as he was composing
the Controversiae to satisfy his sons' passion for rhetoric, noticed that to the
two elder ones ambitiosa curae sunt; foroque se et honoribus parant, in quibus ipsa
quae sperantur timenda sunt' they are concerned with a political career, preparing
for the law and for public office — in which our very hopes are what we have to
fear' (Controversiae i praef. 4). That double-edged prediction justified itself for
the rest of the younger Seneca's life. Before Caligula's reign was over, he was
prominent enough as an orator to excite the Emperor's hatred. From then on
his fortunes, good and ill, were tied directly to the imperial house. Exiled to
Corsica by Claudius in A.D. 41; recalled by Agrippina in 49, and appointed
tutor to Nero; joint adviser to the latter on the administration of the empire
from 54 to 62; retired (in effect) by Nero in 62, and instructed by him to commit
suicide in the spring of 65 — Seneca was to experience, as few major writers
in the history of the world have ever experienced, the nature and effects of
unlimited political power. He was to observe how those effects radiated from
the psychology of the rulers themselves to the entire commonwealth; how an
emperor's passion might work havoc among populations. Principum saeuitia
bellum est 'the savagery of princes is war', he says in the De dementia (1.5.2);
and in the De beneficiis (7.20.4) the extreme of wickedness in a tyrant is
portend loco habita, sicut hiatus terrae et e cauernis tnaris ignium eruptio ' equated
with a portent, like the opening of a chasm in the earth, like fire flaring out of
ocean-caves'.
School-rhetoric, the lectures of the philosophers, and the long practical
experience of power: although innumerable nuances of Seneca's biography no
doubt elude us, these are securely documented as major elements in his formation.
Out of them above all, it seems, he wrought a new kind of literature, both
in prose and in verse.
3. SENECAN PROSE
'Tu me' inquis 'uitare turbam iubes, secedere et conscientia esse contentum? Ubi
ilia praecepta uestra quae imperant in actu mori?' Quid? Ego tibi uideor inertiam
suadere? In hoc me recondidi et fores clusi, ut prodesse pluribus possem. Nullus mihi
per otium dies exit; partem noctium studiis uindico; non uaco somno sed succumbo, et
oculos uigilia fatigatos in opere detineo. Secessi non tan turn ab hominibus sed a rebus,
et in primis a meis rebus; posterorum negotium ago.
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