Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius

"They literally were letters. The reason I picked this book is because a great deal of writing by Seneca has survived, more than that of other Stoics. Seneca was a playwright: he wrote tragedies, and even influenced Shakespeare. He also wrote long essays and epistles—a lot of epistles. There is a particular collection of epistles, normally referred to as either The Moral Epistles or the Letters to Lucilius . This book consists of more than a hundred letters. Many of them are short, just a few pages long. We know that Seneca wrote them late in life, during the last two or three years before he was ‘invited’ to commit suicide by Nero after he had fallen out of favour with the emperor. They’re written to his friend Lucilius, who was probably a real person living in Sicily at the time. Yes, they were. Yes. Unlike the Meditations , these were not meant just as personal correspondence. They were personal correspondence, but when scholars look at the way the text is structured, they are convinced they were meant for publication. A lot of people, not just Seneca, wrote letters that were meant both as personal letters to friends or acquaintances, but also for broader circulation. The Moral Epistles is in some ways Seneca’s philosophical testament because it conveys his mature thought. Of course he didn’t know he was about to die prematurely, but he was an old man already, he was in his sixties, and he knew he wouldn’t live that much longer and was frank about it. Seneca is often criticised, even by modern Stoics, as a somewhat ambiguous figure because despite being a self-professed Stoic he was preaching virtue at the same time that he oversaw Nero’s first five years in power. It was during those years that Nero became unhinged: he killed his mother, several of his wives, and his stepbrother. Exactly. Not just because he was there, but because he was Nero’s principal advisor, and in a couple of cases he wrote public letters defending some of Nero’s actions. On top of that he was immensely wealthy. He was a senator, and owned land all over the Roman Empire. As I mentioned earlier, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that for a Stoic. Stoics are not Cynics (in the ancient sense), so they’re not against wealth. But, one can make an argument, as Seneca himself does, that too much wealth becomes obscene because you become focused on the externalities at the expense of virtue. If you can use your wealth for good, you’re fine from a Stoic perspective, there’s nothing wrong with that; but if you keep accumulating wealth for the sake of it, then you’re definitely not a good Stoic. These are some of the reasons why Seneca is criticised even by modern Stoics. There are two recent biographies of Seneca that take that kind of attitude towards the man. But there’s more to be said. First of all, this is all very debatable, since we don’t really have a lot of independent historical evidence on his life; and secondly, it’s a very recent development in the way we look at Seneca. Throughout the Renaissance, for example, Seneca was thought of as close to being a secular saint because he tried to do the best that he could do in the impossible situation of having to deal with Nero, and because in the end he did the right thing, by committing suicide, partly to save some of his properties for his family. If he’d refused to commit suicide then he’d have been killed anyway, and on top of that his family would have lost his property. It was a practical decision, but on behalf of others. I’m talking to you from Rome where I’m on my sabbatical, and I’m writing a book on how to be a Stoic, which will be published next year by Basic Books. One of the things that I do, the reason I’m here in Rome, other than that my family is here and it’s a nice place to visit, is because I wanted to be in a place that would inspire me—I’m literally next door to the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. Whenever I need a break, like after our conversation today, I’ll just go down and walk by the Forum. One of the things that I have done while here was to visit the Domus Aurea. This was Nero’s huge villa that he had built, as it turns out not for himself but mostly for public gatherings and diplomatic purposes. I’d never seen the Domus Aurea because when I was living in Rome, it was underground. Over the last few years archaeologists here in Rome have opened it up. It is right in front of the Colosseum, but it’s several metres below ground. You can visit now, but you have to make an appointment, and there is a nice guide from the Ministry of Cultural Goods, who walks you through for an hour or so. So I did this, and the woman that was leading the excursion of course talked a lot about Nero, and she also talked a lot about Seneca. I was surprised that her take on Seneca, which she says reflects the angle taken by many Italian historians and archaeologists, was much more positive than anything I had read in the English-speaking literature. The reason for this is interesting. She said that if you examine the historical records, Seneca did a good job in the first five years of Nero’s reign. The first five years of Nero’s reign were a very good time for Rome and for the Empire, precisely because, she argued, Seneca and a colleague of his who was the chief of the Praetorian Guard managed to counsel Nero and restrain him to some degree. He would have been much worse without Seneca’s advice. When Seneca saw that Nero was going too far and was definitely going off the rails, Seneca tried several times to retire. He said: ‘This is it. I can’t do this any more. I can’t handle Nero, I can’t do any more good. So I’d rather retire outside of Rome in my own villa.’ He used some of his great wealth to try to bribe Nero to let him retire, offering two thirds of his lands to the emperor. Now I don’t know exactly how much money we are talking about, but it would have been a substantial offer. Nero refused it. Exactly. Nero refused and tried to keep Seneca in his entourage. Seneca eventually managed to achieve a sort of semi-retirement anyway. He started spending more time outside of Rome, and that’s when he wrote the Epistles to Lucilius. That’s right. If you look at just the titles of the letters, that’s revealing, titles such as: ‘On true and false friendship’. This was a crucial Stoic principle, the idea that you really should surround yourself with good people, ideally people who are better than you, because that’s the way you learn, that’s the way you challenge yourself. I know, right. Then there’s: ‘On the terrors of death.’ Death was a constant Stoic theme. Seneca famously said that ‘we die every day of our life,’ by which he meant that our entire life is a preparation for the ultimate test: how you handle death. No. Seneca meant that every day that passes brings us one step closer to the end of our lives. For the Stoics, what makes our life worth living is precisely the fact that it’s finite, and it is something that we need to be aware of. Exactly, and in fact that is the title of one of the two recent biographies I mentioned of Seneca: Dying Every Day. Then there is an essay on old age, for instance, on how to age gracefully and deal with it if you’re lucky enough to live to experience that. That’s right, it depends on how you look at it, on your attitude. There are so many topics that Seneca covers. Another one I like is called, ‘On festivals and fasting’. Seneca wasn’t fond of the Roman games and festivals: he thought they produced a lot of noise and a lot of confusion. He uses that starting point as a way to counsel his friend Lucilius, and therefore his audience at large, about moderation. He writes, for instance, that it’s good to fast every now and then, because these moderate exercises of self-deprivation, a day or two without eating, remind you that you can deal with not being fed. If in fact one of these days, as a result of externalities or adversity, you really do find yourself starving, you will be psychologically prepared. You know that you can handle it, within physiological limits. That’s one benefit, but the other one, and this is something that Bill Irvine in one of the other books that I mentioned also emphasises, is that the psychological effect of these exercises in self-deprivation is that when you come out of them you enjoy what you have much more: the self-deprivation reminds you of just how good it is even to eat some simple food. You don’t need to go for a gourmet meal, you don’t need to go for really fancy cuisine, you can appreciate some good bread, or good wine and recognise that this is an incredibly enjoyable experience. That would be pushing it. I think the Romans would definitely not go that far. Seneca and the other Stoics are very careful to remind you that you don’t do these things in order to punish yourself, something that, again, some of the late medieval Christians actually did. Yes. There’s nothing like self-flagellation in Stoicism. In fact one of the four Stoic virtues is temperance—self-control, so that you do everything in moderation, including, of course, these Stoic exercises of self-deprivation. One of my favourite exercises which does come straight out of Seneca’s writing and the ancient Roman tradition is this idea of taking a hot shower and then during the last few seconds turning it completely cold. This shocks your system. “The psychological effect of these exercises in self-deprivation is that when you come out of them you enjoy what you have much more” The Romans did this on a regular basis. They went to the thermal baths, starting with a hot sauna; then they went into hot water, what they called a calidarium; and then they jumped into what they called the frigidarium, which was this pool of really, really cold water. This cold shock has a number of effects. First of all, interestingly, there is modern research that shows that this really does have physical benefits: it helps to boost your immune system, and things like that. Obviously the Romans didn’t know that. Beyond that, it reminds you that you can deal with these kind of things. A hot shower is a luxury. Most people throughout most of history didn’t have hot showers, didn’t have hot baths. That’s a good point. Think about it this way. What you’re describing seems to me to be a perversion of the Stoic idea. One of the things that I learned very early on, both from reading the ancient Stoics and also from modern Stoics, is that Stoicism is not supposed to be something that you impose on other people. It comes from within. It’s your own discipline. You shouldn’t go around with either a metaphorical or an actual stick beating people and saying, ‘you’re not virtuous enough.’ There’s no tradition of proselytising for Stoicism. The ancients simply opened schools, and competed with other schools. This was a time in ancient Rome where philosophy was all over the place: Stoicism had to compete with Epicureanism, with Cynicism, with the Platonic Academy, with the Peripatetics, followers of Aristotle , and so on. There was an open market of philosophical ideas, and to some extent, people just gravitated to one school or another depending on either the fame of the teacher or the appeal of the teaching. Back in Athens, Cleanthes (the second head of the Stoa) was apparently a good philosopher, but not a particularly engaging teacher and by the end of his career the number of students dropped off significantly. Then Chrysippus, a charismatic figure, took over, and students returned. The idea is that you should just live your life as a Stoic and lead by example, not going round telling people, ‘Hey, I’m a Stoic, look at me, come and join us!’ I think the ancient Stoics believed it was the only way. You can see that from the fact that they spent a certain amount of time—not a lot, but a certain amount of time—arguing against other schools. Cicero was not a Stoic; rather he was a Platonic and academic sceptic. But he was very sympathetic to Stoicism. He presents Stoicism in good light. If you read Cicero, and if you read Epictetus himself, it becomes clear that many Stoics did believe that they had the best way, if not the only way, certainly the best way of achieving eudaimonia. In contrast, in the Letters to Lucilius, Seneca recognised that good ideas for living can come from diverse sources. In the early letters, over and over he ends with what he calls a gift for Lucilius, and it’s always a quotation from somebody else, a quotation from Epicurus, or whoever. At a certain point he felt like he had to justify doing this. So he says: ‘My dear Lucilius, you might wonder why am I quoting our competitor’; his answer in Latin is ‘ quod verum est meum est’ which means ‘that which is true is mine’. As he put it: ‘I do occasionally wander into the enemies’ camp and I pay attention to what they’re saying, and if there is something good, I will use it’."