SENECA (Biography)

Seneca the Younger (c. A.D. 3-65) was born in Cordoba, Spain, about the .11ne time as Christ;
his father, Seneca the Elder, was an accomplished rheto--:cian and writer. Seneca went to
Rome to study philosophy and rhetoric and ecame a renowned orator and writer himself He also
took up the philoso hy of Stoicism, which counseled that perfection and contentment could be
·eached through reason, simple living, indifference to pain and death, and ocial equality. To the
Stoics, a wise man was one who played the cards that were dealt him, uncomplainingly and with
dignity, whether a slave or a king. Exiled by the emperor Claudius, who was said to fear the
philosopher's growing popularity, Seneca was recalled eight years later in triumph to be come
the young Nero's tutor. His influence over Nero was, at least initially, salutary; for a while, the
emperor's tutor and the military leader Burrus ruled Rome together harmoniously behind the
scenes. But eventually Nero's cruel propensities revealed themselves: he killed his mother, his
brother, and, after Seneca was again sent into exile, his tutor; that is, he demanded that Seneca
kill himself, and the old man obliged. The nobility with which Seneca took his life was much
admired, and was considered an apt demon stration of his philosophy, suicide being a Stoic
virtue. However, he was often criticized /or the disparity between his Stoic beliefs and his
practices in other respects: he amassed enormous wealth, curried favor, and even whined at
misfortune-he acted, in short, like a human being instead of a paragon of virtue. Seneca was a
prolific author of tragedies (which strongly influenced Eliza bethan drama), dialogues, and
orations, but his reputation as the founder of the essay rests on his letters, which both
Montaigne and Bacon cited as their inspiration and which remain his most attractive and
accessible work. Essays in disguise, these "moral letters," written during Seneca's last exile,
were probably intended /rom the start /or publication rather than /or their ostensi ble recipient, a
civil servant named Lucilius. Each has a homiletic, ethica~ Stoic message to convey. In them, a
portrait of Seneca also emerges: asth matic, aging, wry, alternately crabby and serene, critical of
hypocrisy and luxury, observant of manners and mores (we learn much /rom him about Roman
daily lz/e), argumentative, worldly. In his style Seneca stressed brevity and clarity. Reacting in
part against Cicero's "grand style," a beautiful but wordy, florid oratory that rounded out
sentences on the basis of sound, Seneca developed a more clipped, epigram matic manner
known as the humble or familiar style, which used common language and relied more heavily on
metaphor, antithesis, and wit. Since writing in Seneca's time was a/ten read aloud and drew
applause at "points" -witty turns of phrase-it tended to devolve into aphoristic series. The results
can be both dazzling and fatiguing. Macauley once complained that Seneca's "works are made
up of mottoes. There is hardly a sentence which might not be quoted,· but to read him
straightforward is like dining on noth ing but anchovy sauce." The paradox of Seneca's style is
that it is at once simpler, more plainspoken than Cicero's and more baroque, contorted under
brevity's lash. A virtue of his jerky, abrupt manner is that it gives the im pression of a mind in
action-thought, counterthought, without any smooth ing over the bumps. Its importance to us
here is that it affected the develop ment of the essay during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, when classicism had returned and the reigning academic model was the euphoni ous
Cicero. The anti-Ciceronians, such as Bacon, Montaigne, and Lipsius, led a rebellion, taking
Seneca as their mode~ and out of it came modern prose: quick, pungent, ironic,
self-questioning, reflective of mental process. It all goes back to Seneca.
On Noise
I cannot for the life of me see that quiet is as necessary to a person who has shut himself away
to do some studying as it is usually thought to be. Here am I with a babel of noise going on all
about me. I have lodgings right over a public bathhouse. Now imagine to yourself every kind of
sound that can make one weary of one's years. When the strenu ous types are doing their
exercises, swinging weight-laden hands about, I hear the grunting as they toil away-or go
through the motions of toiling away-at them, and the hissings and strident gasps every time they
expel their pent-up breath. When my attention turns to a less active fellow who is contenting
himself with an ordinary inexpensive massage, I hear the smack of a hand pummelling his
shoulders, the sound varying according as it comes down flat or cupped. But if on top of this
some ball player comes along and starts shouting out the score, that's the end! Then add
someone starting up a brawl, and someone else caught thieving, and the man who likes the
sound of his voice in the bath, and the people who leap into the pool with a tremendous splash.
Apart from those whose voices are, if nothing else, natural, think of the hair remover, continually
giving vent to his shrill and penetrating cry in order to advertise his presence, never silent unless
it be while he is plucking someone's armpits and mak ing the client yell for him! Then think of the
various cries of the man selling drinks, and the one selling sausages and the other selling
pastries, and all the ones hawking for the catering shops, each publicizing his wares with a
distinctive cry of his own. "You must be made of iron," you may say, "or else hard of hearing if
your mind is unaffected by all this babel of discordant noises around you, when continual 'good
morning' greetings were enough to finish off the Stoic Chrysippus!" But I swear I no more notice
all this roar of noise than I do the sound of waves or falling water-even if I am here told the story
of a people on the Nile who moved their capital solely because they could not stand the
thundering of a cataract! Voices, I think, are more inclined to distract one than general noise;
noise merely fills one's ears, battering away at them while voices actually catch one's attention.
Among the things which create a racket all around me without distracting me at all I include the
carriages hurrying by in the street, the carpenter who works in the same block, a man in the
neighbourhood who saws, and this fellow tuning horns and flutes at the Trickling Fountain and
emitting blasts instead of music. I still find an intermittent noise more irritating than a continuous
one. But by now I have so steeled myself against all these things that I can even put up with a
coxswain's strident tones as he gives his oarsmen the rhythm. For I force my mind to become
self-absorbed and not let outside things distract it. There can be absolute bedlam without so
long as there is no commotion within, so long as fear and desire are not at loggerheads, so long
as meanness and extravagance are not at odds and harassing each other. For what is the good
of having silence throughout the neighbour hood if one's emotions are in turmoil? The peaceful
stillness of the night had lulled The world to rest. • This is incorrect. There is no such thing as
"peaceful stillness" except where reason has lulled it to rest. Night does not remove our worries;
it brings them to the surface. All it gives us is a change of anxieties. For even when people are
asleep they have dreams as troubled as their days. The only true serenity is the one which
represents the free development of a sound mind. Look at the man whose quest for sleep
demands absolute quiet from his spacious house. To prevent any sound disturbing his ears
every one of his host of slaves preserves total silence and those who come anywhere near him
walk on tip-toe. Naturally enough he tosses from side to side, trying to snatch some fitful sleep
in between the spells of fretting, and complains of having heard sounds when he never heard
them at all. And what do you suppose is the reason? His mind is in a ferment. It is this which
needs to be set at peace. Here is the mutiny that needs to be suppressed. The fact that the
body is lying down is no reason for suppos ing that the mind is at peace. Rest is sometimes far
from restful. Hence our need to be stimulated into general activity and kept occupied and busy
with pursuits of the right nature whenever we are victims of the sort of idleness that wearies of
itself. When great military commanders notice indiscipline among their men they suppress it by
giving them some work to do, mounting expeditions to keep them actively employed. People
who are really busy never have enough time to become skittish. And there is nothing so certain
as the fact that the harmful consequences of inactivity are dissipated by activity. We commonly
give the impression that the reasons for our having gone into political retirement are our disgust
with public life and our dissatis faction with some uncongenial and unrewarding post. Yet every
now and then ambition rears its head again in the retreat into which we were really driven by our
apprehensions and our waning interest; for our ambition did not cease because it had been
rooted out, but merely because it had tired-or become piqued, perhaps, at its lack of success. I
would say the same about extravagant living, which appears on occasion to have left one and
then, when one has declared for the simple life, places temptation in the way. In the middle of
one's programme of frugality it sets out after pleasures which one had discarded but not
condemned, its pursuit of them indeed being all the more ardent the less one is aware of it. For
when they are in the open vices invariably take a more moderate form; diseases too are on the
way towards being cured when once they have broken out, instead of being latent, and made
their presence felt. So it is with the love of money, the love of power and the other maladies that
affect the minds of men-you may be sure that it is when they abate and give every appearance
of being cured that they are at their most danger ous. We give the impression of being in
retirement, and are nothing of the kind. For if we are genuine in this, if we have sounded the
retreat and really turned away from the surface show, then, as I was saying a little while ago,
nothing will distract us. Men and birds together in full chorus will never break into our thinking
when that thinking is good and has at last come to be of a sure and steady character. The
temperament that starts at the sound of a voice or chance noises in general is an unstable one
and one that has yet to attain inward detach ment. It has an element of uneasiness in it, and an
element of the rooted fear that makes a man a prey to anxiety, as in the description given by our
Virgil: And I, who formerly would never flinch At }lying spears or serried ranks of Greeks, Am
now alarmed by every breeze and roused By every sound to nervousness, in fear For this
companion and this load alike. • The earlier character here is the wise man, who knows no fear
at the hurtling of missiles, or the clash of weapons against weapons in the close packed ranks,
or the thunderous noise of a city in destruction. The other, later one has everything to learn;
fearing for his belongings he pales at every noise; a single cry, whatever it is, prostrates him,
being immediately taken for the yelling of the enemy; the slightest movement frightens him out
of his life; his baggage makes him a coward. Pick out any one of your "successful" men, with all
they trail or carry about with them, and you will have a picture of the man "in fear for this
companion and this load." You may be sure, then, that you are at last "lulled to rest" when noise
never reaches you and when voices never shake you out of yourself, whether they be menacing
or inviting or just a meaningless hubbub of empty sound all round you. "This is all very well," you
may say, "but isn't it sometimes a lot simpler just to keep away from the din?" I concede that,
and in fact it is the reason why I shall shortly be moving elsewhere. What I wanted was to give
myself a test and some practice. Why should I need to suffer the torture any longer than I want
to when Ulysses found so easy a remedy for his companions even against the Sirens?•

Asthma
I L L H E A L T H -which had granted me quite a long spell of leave has attacked me without
warning again. "What kind of ill health?" you'll be asking. And well you may, for there isn't a
single kind I haven't experienced. There's one particular ailment, though, for which I've always
been singled out, so to speak. I see no reason why I should call it by its Greek name,•• difficulty
in breathing being a perfectly good way of describing it. Its onslaught is of very brief
duration-like a squall, it is generally over within the hour. One could hardly, after all, expect
anyone to keep on drawing his last breath for long, could one? I've been visited by all the
troublesome or dangerous complaints there are, and none of them, in my opinion, is more
unpleasant than this one-which is hardly surprising, is it, when you consider that with anything
else you're merely ill, while with this you're constantly at your last gasp? This is why doctors
have nicknamed it "rehearsing death," since sooner or later the breath does just what it has
been trying to do all those times. Do you imagine that as I write this I must be feeling in high
spirits at having escaped this time? 1 o, it would be just as absurd for me to feel overjoyed at its
being over as if this meant I was a healthy man again-as it would be for a person to think he has
won his case on obtaining an extension of time before trial. Even as I fought for breath, though, I
never ceased to find comfort in cheerful and courageous reflections. "What's this?" I said. "So
death is having all these tries at me, is he? Let him, then! I had a try at him a long while ago
myself." "When was this?" you'll say. Before I was born. Death is just not being. What that is like
I know already. It will be the same after me as it was before me. If there is any torment in the
later state, there must also have been torment in the period before we saw the light of day; yet
we never felt conscious of any distress then. I ask you, wouldn't you say that anyone who took
the view that a lamp was worse off when it was put out than it was before it was lit was an utter
idiot? We, too, are lit and put out. We suffer somewhat in the intervening period, but at either
end of it there is a deep tranquillity. For, unless I'm mistaken, we are wrong, my dear Lucilius, in
holding that death follows after, when in fact it pre cedes as well as succeeds. Death is all that
was before us. What does it matter, after all, whether you cease to be or never begin, when the
result of either is that you do not exist? I kept on talking to myself in these and similar
terms-silently, needless to say, words being out of the question. Then little by little the affliction
in my breathing, which was coming to be little more than a panting now, came on at longer
intervals and slackened away. It has lasted on, all the same, and in spite of the passing of this
attack, my breathing is not yet coming naturally. I feel a sort of catch and hesitation in it. Let it do
as it pleases, though, so long as the sighs aren't heartfelt. You can feel assured on my score of
this: I shall not be afraid when the last hour comes-I'm already prepared, not planning as much
as a day ahead. The man, though, whom you should admire and imitate is the one who finds it a
joy to live and in spite of that is not reluctant to die. For where's the virtue in going out when
you're really being thrown out? And yet there is this virtue about my case: I'm in the process of
being thrown out, certainly, but the manner of it is as if I were going out. And the reason why it
never happens to a wise man is that being thrown out signifies expulsion from a place one is
reluctant to depart from, and there is nothing the wise man does reluc tantly. He escapes
necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him.

Slaves
Your attitude to your slave is one of familiarity, as I learn from people who have been in your
company. I am pleased; it is what one expects of your good sense and cultivation. "They are
slaves"-no, men. "They are slaves"-no, comrades. "They are slaves" -no, humble friends. "They
are slaves"-no, fellow slaves, if you remem ber that Fortune holds equal sway over both. That is
why I laugh at people who think it degrading for a man to dine with his slave. Why, except that
conventional exclusiveness has decreed that a master must be surrounded at his dinner by a
squad of slaves stand ing at attention? The master eats more than he can hold; his inordinate
greed loads his distended belly, which has unlearned the belly's function, and the digestion of all
this food requires more ado than its ingestion. But the unhappy slaves may not move their lips
for so much as a word. Any murmur is checked by a rod; not even involuntary sounds-a cough,
a sneeze, a choke-are exempted from the lash. If a word breaks the silence the penalty is
severe. Hungry and mute, they stand through the whole night. In consequence, when they
cannot speak in the master's presence, they speak about him. Yet when slaves spoke not only
in the master's presence but with him, when their lips were not sewn tight, they were ready to
put their necks out for their master, to turn any danger that threatened him upon their own
heads; they spoke at dinners, but under torture their lips were sealed. But afterward the
arrogance of masters gave currency to the proverb, "So many slaves, so many enemies." We
do not acquire them as enemies, we make them such. Other cruel and inhuman treatment I
pass over: we abuse them as one does pack animals, not even as one abuses men. When we
recline at table one slave wipes up the hawking, another crouches to take up the leavings of the
drunks. One carves the costly game, separating the portions by deft sweeps of a practiced
hand-un happy man, to live solely for the purpose of carving fowl neatly, unless the man who
teaches the trade for pleasure's sake is more wretched than the man who learns it for
necessity's! Another, who serves the wine, is got up like a woman and must wrestle with his
age; he can never escape boyhood but is dragged back to it. His figure may now be a soldier's,
but his hairs are rubbed away or plucked out by the roots to make him smooth, and he must
divide his sleepless night between his master's drunkenness and his ust; in the bedroom he is a
man, in the dining room a boy. Another has the assignment of keeping book on the guests; he
stands there, poor fel ow, and watches to see whose adulation and whose intemperance of gul
·et or tongue will get him an invitation for the following day. Add the caterers with their refined
expertise of the master's palate; they know what flavors will titillate him, what table decorations
will please his fancy, what novelty might restore his appetite when he feels nauseous, what his
surfeit .. ill scorn, what tidbit he would crave on a particular day. With slaves like these the
master cannot bear to dine; he would count it an affront to his dignity to come to table with his
own slave. Heaven forbid! But how many of those slaves are in fact his masters! I have seen
Callis tus' master a suitor outside Callistus' door and have seen him shut out while others were
achnitted==the master who tagged hh+n for sale and sent him to market with a job-lot of
chattels. But the slave included in this preliminary batch on which the auctioneer tried out his
voice paid tit for rat. He crossed Callistus' name from the roster in turn and judged him unfit to
enter his house. His master sold Callistus, but how much did Callistus cost his master!
Remember, if you please, that the man you call slave sprang from the same seed, enjoys the
same daylight, breathes like you, lives like you, dies like you. You can as easily conceive him a
free man as he can conceive you a slave. In the Marian disasters many men of noble birth who
had entered military service as the preliminary to a senatorial career were declassed by Fortune
and reduced to being shepherds or cottagers; now despise a man 'or his condition when you
may find yourself in the same even as you espise it! I do not wish to take up the large topic of
the treatment of slaves, where we show ourselves proud, cruel, and insulting in the highest
degree. The essence of my teaching is this: Treat your inferior as you would wish your superior
to treat you. Whenever the thought of your wide power over your slave strikes you, be struck,
too, by the thought of your master's equally wide power over you. "But I have no master!" you
object. All in good time; you may have one. Remember how old Hecuba was when she be came
a slave, or Croesus, or Darius' mother, or Plato, or Diogenes. Treat your slave with compassion,
even with courtesy; admit him to your conversation, your planning, your society. Here the
genteel will pro test loudly and unanimously: "Nothing could be more degrading or dis gusting!"
But these same people I shall catch kissing the hands of other people's slaves. Can't you see
how our ancestors stripped the title of mas: ter of all invidiousness and the title of slave of all
contumely? The master they called "paterfamilias" and the slaves "family"; this usage still
obtains in the mimes. They instituted a festival at which masters dined with their slaves-not, of
course, the only day they could do so. They allowed slaves to hold office in the household and
to act as judges; the household they regarded as a miniature republic. "What is the upshot? Am
I to bring all slaves to my table?" No more than all free men. But if you imagine I would exclude
some because their work is dirty, that muleteer, for example, or that cowhand, you are mis
taken. I value them not by their jobs but by their character; a man gives himself his own
character, accident allots his job. Have some dine with you because they are deserving, some
to make them deserving. If their sordid contacts have left a taint, association with respectable
people will shake it off. There is no reason to go to the forum or senate house in search of a
friend, my dear Lucilius; if you pay careful heed you will find one at home. Without an artisan
good material often lies unused; try it and you will find out. A man is a fool if he looks only at the
saddle and bridle and not at the horse itself when he is going to buy one; he is a greater fool if
he values a man by his clothing and condition, which only swathes us like clothing. "He is a
slave!" But perhaps a free man in spirit. "He is a slave!" Shall that count against him? Show me
a man who is not; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, all to fear. I can
show you a consu lar who is slave to a crone, a millionaire who is slave to a housemaid; I can
point to young aristocrats indentured to pantomimes. Voluntary slavery is the meanest of all.
Those squeamish types should not deter you, therefore, from camarade rie with your slaves and
make you proudly superior. Slaves ought to re spect rather than fear you. Here someone will
protest that I am now rally ing slaves to the cap of liberty and toppling masters from their
elevation by saying, "Slaves ought to respect rather than fear a master." "That is what he said:
slaves ought to respect him, like his clients or those who pay him formal calls." The protester
forgets that what is enough for a god is not too little for a master. If a man is respected he is
also loved, and love cannot blend with fear. Your own attitude is consequently as right as can
be, in my judgment; you do not choose to have your slaves fear you, you use words to castigate
them. A lash is to admonish dumb beasts. What offends need not wound. It is our daintiness
that drives us to distraction, so that anything that does not meet our caprice provokes our wrath.
We assume regal lordliness. Kings forget their own strength and others' weakness and fly into a
white hot fury as if they had really been injured, when their exalted position guarantees them
complete immunity to any possibility of injury. Nor are they unaware of their immunity; by
complaining, they solicit an opening for inflicting harm. They profess they have been injured in
order to work injury. I do not wish to detain you longer; you need no exhortation. Among its other
traits good character approves its decisions and abides by them. Wickedness is fickle and
changes frequently, not for something better but for something different. Farewell.