Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Philosophical norms and political attachments: Cicero and Seneca 433
It is well known, however, that Seneca’s life was complex and that it did
not entirely accord with Stoic precepts. Roman historian Miriam Griffin,
in her masterful book Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics, has shown that
his death is the case where Seneca is most orthodoxly Stoic; on other
issues, there are grave difficulties reconciling the life with Stoic precepts.
3 I am no historian, so I shall confine myself to Seneca’s writings,
a grave limitation, since there are no personal documents there of the
sort that Cicero so conveniently leaves us.
There is, however, an odd little work in which we may glimpse a
richer view of Seneca the man than that on offer in his carefully contrived
philosophical epistles. This is a satire called The Pumpkinification
of the Divine Claudius, which depicts the unsuccessful attempt of Claudius
to be divinized like Augustus and Tiberius before him. “Pumpkinification”
or “apocolocyntosis” is a joke on “divinization” or “apotheosis”.
Nobody really gets made into a pumpkin in the text, but pumpkins are
proverbial metaphors for stupidity and hollowness, and much is made in
the text of that well-known Claudian characteristic. 4 (One must forget
the Robert Graves version of Claudius, if one knows it; the real man
was both stupider and much more vicious.)
Seneca wrote the Apocolocyntosis shortly after the death of the emperor
– under whose reign he had been exiled for some time. The
work was probably performed at the Saturnalia in the December following
the emperor’s death on October 13, 54. By then, Seneca was already
running the Empire as co-regent for the teenage emperor Nero, along
with Burrus, prefect of the praetorian guard. This regency, called the
quinquennium Neronis, was a five-year period of famously good government,
so Seneca appears to have been a leader of real ability. Imagine,
then, that a talented political leader is just taking the helm, and is writing
about the regime that has preceded him. Since the Apoc., as I shall
henceforth call it, is not widely known, I begin with a summary.
A speaker, describing himself as a historian, introduces his topic, the
death of Claudius. The gods discuss the emperor’s impending death. A
poetic passage now follows, describing the spinning of the fates: Claudius’
thread is snapped, and a wonderful new life begins to be spun out,
a thread of precious gold, inaugurating a new Golden Age, with the restoration
of the rule of law. The man is named as the new emperor,
3 Griffin 1976.
4 See the excellent commentary by Eden 1984, to which I am indebted throughout.