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Self-Scrutiny and Self-Transformation in Seneca' Letters*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Catharine Edwards
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Extract

The idea of a collection of letters from a Roman senator to his equestrian friend might encourage the reader familiar with the Letters of Cicero to expect a certain kind of self-revelation. Seneca, like Cicero, was one of the most prominent men in Rome in his own time. We might expect his letters to tell us his views on the emperor Nero, for instance, or what his motives were for retiring from public life (as he had done by the time he came to write the Letters). But readers of Seneca's Letters, at least in modern times, have often felt disappointed at his failure to provide information about himself and the world he lives in.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , April 1997 , pp. 23 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

Notes

1. Seneca explicitly refers to Cicero's correspondence with Atticus, at Ep. 21.4Google Scholar; 97; 118; on self-revelation in Cicero's, Letters (e.g., Ad Att. 4.3)Google Scholar, see Misch, Georg, A History of Autobiography in; Antiquity (London, 1950), ii. 363Google Scholar.

2. Griffin, for instance, in her biography of Seneca, comments that for the historian, he ‘is a most uncooperative author’ (Seneca, a philosopher in politics (Oxford, 1976), vii)Google Scholar. For he ‘did not discuss his political career or his policies, although he wrote voluminously and in the first person’ (op. cit., 1). Cf. Brown's, Peter comments on Augustine's Confessions, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley, and Los Angeles, 1967), 28Google Scholar.

3. Other passages which have been treated as self-revelatory include Seneca's description of his physical illnesses (78); of the physical inconveniences associated with aging (83.3–4); of visits to particular places such as Baiae (56) and Scipio's villa (86); his discussion of his feelings for his wife (104.3–5); his account of the influence over him of his teacher Attalus (108).

4. Op. cit., lOff. Griffin has been rightly critical of scholars who attempt to make extensive inferences about Seneca's life from his work, though she herself incorporates some details given by Seneca as ‘facts’ about his life, e.g., flirtation with vegetarianism (p. 40) and abstinence from delicacies (p. 42).

5. Griffin, , op. cit., 4Google Scholar.

6. For the influence of Epicurus' Letters on Seneca see Griffin, , op. cit., 3–4Google Scholar.

7. Kahn, C. H., ‘Discovering the Will: from Aristotle to Augustine’ in Dillon, J. M. and Long, A. A. eds., The Question of ‘Eclecticism’: studies in later Greek philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), 234–59 at pp. 255–9Google Scholar.

8. Foucault, Michel, The Care of the Self (London, 1986), 41Google Scholar.

9. Op. cit., 42.

10. Kahn, , op. cit., esp. 248ffGoogle Scholar. on significance of Latin terminology.

11. Long, A. A., ‘Representation and the Self in Stoicism’ in Everson, S.Companions to Ancient Thought 2: Psychology (Cambridge, 1991), 102–30Google Scholar: ‘innovative approach to the self’, at p. 103. See too Kahn, , op. cit., 253ffGoogle Scholar.; Engberg-Pederson, Troels, ‘Stoic Philosophy and the Concept of the Person’ in Gill, Christopher ed., The Person and the Human Mind: issues in ancient and modern philosophy (Oxford, 1990), 109–35Google Scholar.

12. Cf. Long, , op. cit., 103Google Scholar.

13. Long, , op. cit., 117Google Scholar. Cf. Kahn, : ‘The life of the committed Stoic is thus a continual process of self-definition, of identification with the inner world that is “in our power”, of deliberate detachment from the body and from the outer world that lies beyond our control’ (op. cit., 253)Google Scholar.

14. Long, , op. cit., 118Google Scholar.

15. Cf. Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, 1989), 137Google Scholar. On the importance of Stoic notion of assent in development of theories of the will, see Kahn, , op. cit., 245fGoogle Scholar.

16. Long, , op. cit, 109Google Scholar.

17. Misch, , op. cit., 195ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. Long, A. A. & Sedley, David, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987), i. 427–8Google Scholar and Cic. De off. 1.107–17. This issue is discussed by Gill, Christopher, ‘Personhood and Personality: the Four-personae Theory in Cicero De officiis l’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 6 (1988), 169–99Google Scholar.

18. For Panaetius' influence on Seneca, see Brunt, Peter, ‘Stoicism and the Principate’, PBSR 43 (1975), 7–35Google Scholar, App. 12. Christopher Gill argues that concern with the specific qualities of individuals was not a major strand in Panaetius', thought, ‘Peace of Mind and Being Yourself: Panaetius to Plutarch’, ANRW II 36.1 (Berlin, 1994), 4599–640Google Scholar.

19. As Keith Hopkins has observed to me.

20. Op. cit., 53.

21. As Foucault emphasizes, texts written under the principate regularly represent the interplay between care of the self and help of the other as blending ‘into preexisting relations’, constituting an ‘intensification of existing social relations’.

22. Op. cit., 420. Cf. Foucault, ‘this activity devoted to oneself … constituted, not an exercise in solitude but a true social practice’ (op. cit., 51)Google Scholar.

23. Op. cit, 422.

24. Op. cit, 421.

25. The limits of this metaphor are emphasized by Foucault, (op. cit, 61ffGoogle Scholar.).

26. N.b. The same word is used to mean to play a part in Ep. 28.10. Other words used include formare (50.5, cf. 112). In 34, Seneca goes on to describe the good man as perfectum–‘complete’. The word of course has an etymological link with ‘making’. On the range of vocabulary used, cf. Foucault, , op. cit, 46Google Scholar.

27. Op. cit, 117.

28. Cf. Galen's advice to those seeking to cure the passions — they should seek the aid of a man of good reputation, which is discussed by Foucault, , op. cit, 53Google Scholar.

29. Cf. 104.21–2.

30. Cf. 68.6: ‘When you withdraw from the world it is not so that people will talk about you but that you may talk with yourself … Criticize yourself when by yourself … Above all, though, consider what you come to feel is your greatest weakness.’

31. Lucilius is imagined in a similar role: at 89.23 he is told to give certain pieces of advice to the avaricious, the luxurious, the greedy. Seneca observes: ‘Say these sorts of things to other people – so long as you listen when you're talking; write these sorts of thing so long as you read when you're writing.’

32. Op. cit, 53.

33. Griffin, , op. cit., 5Google Scholar. See too p. 417.

34. Cf. 71.29.

35. Cf. Epictetus’ question ‘how may a man maintain what his prosopon requires on every occasion?’ (1.2). This is discussed by Gill, , op. cit., n. 17, esp. 187ffGoogle Scholar.

36. Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Daniel Anderson for drawing to my attention the relevance of Greenblatt's arguments for Seneca's self-presentation.

37. Edwards, Catharine, ‘Beware of Imitations: Theatre and the Subversion of Imperial Identity’ in Eisner, J. and Masters, J. eds., Reflections of Nero: culture, history and representation (London, 1994)Google Scholar.

38. Cf, e.g., Tac. Ann. 13.16.

39. Oswyn Murray suggests the Letters should be seen as an extended attempt on Seneca's part to distance himself from Nero and his activities.

40. Interestingly, there is no reference to the emperor in Seneca's Letters.