2a - Rome

It’s easier for a man to die for his principles than to live by them. In this respect Seneca, the great Stoic philosopher, was no different than any other man. His philosophies, which he taught in his many letters to his friends, were doctrines of discipline, modesty, and contentment, but his life was one of unrestrained luxury.

But, living in Rome under Nero, the great Seneca, lying by his lovely young wife Paulina in their ivory bed with the gilded corners, knew no rest, and when he awoke in the morning out of his fitful sleep, it was invariably with a headache.

It wasn’t the fear of death that robbed him of sleep, not even after Nero had fallen completely under the influence of the cruel and cunning Tigellinus and of the depraved Sabina Poppea. For Seneca’s Stoic philosophy taught that death was just the beginning of a new and purified life. But his life was utterly devoid of personal values. So while he was certain that the spiritual part of him was assured of a great future, his personal life was bound up in this world. Indeed, while he consistently denied the significance of this wretched, earthly episode called life, he devoted himself with much skill and success to the accumulation of wealth, as if he expected to live forever.

But now that he stood on the brink of death, Seneca experienced emotionally what he’d proclaimed only in principle before. How foolish, he thought, to accumulate a fortune of vast estates and farms, costly furniture and art, all scattered throughout the empire. None of it mattered now that he expected the visit from the centurion who would bring him the imperial decree of death at any moment. He’d waited until his life was as insecure as that of other Roman nobles and citizens before he understood in his heart what he knew in his head when he wrote to a friend, “Not the count of days builds a long life, but their use in making a man his own master.”

At a banquet in the imperial palace just yesterday Seneca offered all his estates and palaces to Nero in exchange for release from his responsibilities as Consul. He begged to be allowed to retire to the country, to devote his remaining years to contemplation and study. Nero turned the occasion into a theatrical performance. His smooth round face took on a tinge of deep red. His watery blue eyes overflowed, his thick, swollen neck trembled, and his bosom heaved in the stress of his emotions.

“Seneca,” he said, in a sickly, gentle voice, “you guided my infant steps in the path of moral law and natural wisdom. You inducted my manhood into the ways of rulership. I ask you, what would the world say if I sent you away from my side? Would they not add this to the list of my cruelties? How can you be so unheedful to the good name of your friend?”

Then Nero leaned over, embraced him, kissed him, and promised him many other estates. But Seneca saw the familiar, deadly glitter in Nero’s eyes. He also saw the twitching grin of anticipation on Tigellinus’ lips, and the characteristic, cynical smile on Petronius’ face. Poppea tried to stop herself from giggling, but failed. They all knew the decision was made. Nero had smiled and spoken in the same emotion filled voice and with the same trembling neck when bidding his last farewell to his own mother. He’d uncovered her bosom, and said, chokingly, “These are the breasts that suckled me.” Then in all love, he’d conducted his mother to the foot of the villa and handed her into the boat that was to be her hearse.

This was an infallible sign with Nero. Whenever he became sentimental, whenever his eyes filled with tears, he was contemplating some frightful deed, so that by now every exhibition of tender emotion on the part of his pupil affected Seneca like the stench of a dead rat.


All night Seneca waits for the centurion to knock on his door. But the night passes, and no message comes, and in the morning he sees the hideous day before him. He will have to dress, wrap himself in his toga, so that the folds fall just so and no other way, not too perfectly, so as not to show up his master. Even in speech Seneca has to be skillful, but not too skillful. His phrases have to serve as a foil of his master’s phrases, but not seem to compete with them. In his bearing, in the appointments of his house and in the elegance of his banquets, he must always lag behind the imperial comedian.

Now he must proceed to the palace and become part of the hysterically flattering mob of courtiers who crowd around Nero, each seeking to outdo the other in outrageous eulogy of Nero’s verses and Nero’s performances on the lyre. If only those verses were frankly bad, and reflected some of Nero’s character! But Nero’s poetry, like his voice, is neither good nor bad. It’s commonplace. His poems are like stagnant pools in which countless bodies had bathed. They are an inspiration into decay.

The slaves finish massaging Seneca, for twice a day he submits his aging, swollen body to the masseurs, whose strong, skillful fingers awaken a fleeting sensation of youth in him as they rub costly oils into his flesh. Slave girls come in and anoint and perfume the flesh, spreading Oriental balsam on his skin with delicate fingers and working it into the pores, so that the skin blossoms and sings. He looks down at his body and it looks to him like a vessel about to be trampled. He tries unsuccessfully to summon the principles and rules of the Stoic life to his aid.

While all this is happening, Seneca follows his normal routine of dictating his moralistic letters to his friends. He writes to his friend Lucius “On the Welfare of the Body and the Neglect of the Soul,” warning him against preoccupation with bodily needs, and advising him to pay more attention to the needs of the soul. “Hasten to return from the body to the soul, and discipline yourself in her day and night.”

But none of these distractions allow him to get rid of the persistent thought that his body, which is receiving so much attention, is to have its functions prematurely suspended. It might happen today, or it might happen tomorrow.

The masseurs and slave girls pass Seneca’s body on to the hairdresser, for Nero is particularly finicky about his hair. Nero’s heavy, copper-yellow locks have to fall in certain designs on his fat neck and low forehead. And if Caesar is finicky about his hair, then his couriers can be no less so. The Syrian hairdresser and his assistants do what they can to soften the lines and pouches on Seneca’s face that the restless night has accentuated. And while the features are being fondled and smoothed out, and little beauty spots are being place on them, he listens to the reports of his estate managers.

He lays and listens to the long reports on his granaries and farms, his loans at interest, and his slaves. Here and there he interjects a question. Wouldn’t it be better to sell this or that harvest now? Did they have too large a stock of produce in the granaries?

When he completes the session with the directors, other slaves dress him, draw a tunic of Persian silk over his body and throw a heavy woolen toga over that. A highly specialized task, this is only performed by special slaves, “folders”, who are trained in this art. Properly “thrown”, the toga keeps its straight up and down folds all day.

Once the majordomo, reviewing the total effect of the hairdressing and the folding of the toga, expresses satisfaction with his lord’s appearance, the doorkeeper, who is chained to the corridor wall like a dog, throws open the heavy cedar doors.

* * * * *

Seneca’s city residence was surrounded by gardens large enough and beautiful enough to arouse even Nero’s jealousy. They contained exotic plants from all over the world. Long rows of pillars, made of Italian and African marble, ran parallel to the alleys of fantastic trees. There were basins set like jewels under overhanging trellises and surrounded by many-colored jasmine. Parrots, peacocks, and doves were kept in the gardens, and countless statues of gods and goddesses, athletes and flute players, peeped out of ingeniously planted thickets. Long lines of oleander bounded by thick bushes sheltered the residence from the noises and unpleasant odors of the streets.

As soon as Seneca came out of his house, men of every age appeared from between the pillars within the garden, crawling men in woolen togas, each trying to get as near as he could, pushing others out of the way. With outstretched hands, fawning smiles and bodies bent double they called out to him.

“Hail, patron!”
“Hail to you, lord!”
“My lord! Your appearance is like Jupiter!”
“No, not like Jupiter! Like Apollo!”
“Like neither, I say! Like Mars!”

One who fancied himself a philosopher, cried out, “Is this how you praise our lord? With commonplace words in stupid flattery? Leave such flatteries for the ignorant. For our lord’s appearance is like that of Plato, and no other.”

Seneca turned with a smile to the last speaker. “And who flatters you, Atonis? Is there anyone left to cringe before you?”

“Aye, my lord, my wife flatters me,” answered the philosopher.

Seneca laughed. “True, in Rome everyone flatters and is flattered.”

This group of people was Seneca’s claque, or groupies as we might call them today. For however much his better nature revolted from the all-encompassing corruption he saw in Rome, he could not, he would not as a Consul, dispense with their services. Like every Roman politician he kept a large staff of them. He paid them a few sesterces more than other patrons and was a little more generous in providing them with wool for togas. But he did this more for his own honor, than for any altruistic reason.

He was also different from other patrons in that he tried to pick his men from among the more intelligent sort, like obscure authors, unsuccessful dramatists and poets. He did pick ordinary clients as well, so that he might be certain of reaching every level of the populace. He was compassionate toward them, especially the “philosophers”, for Seneca saw himself as nothing more than a philosopher-client of the emperor.

“Clients, nothing but clients,” he thought. “That is what the Romans have become. As these are the clients of the ‘mighty,’ so we, the ‘mighty’, are the clients of the one patron of Rome –Caesar.”

The slaves with the litter waited at the foot of the broad flight of marble stairs in front of the house. Seneca disliked the ordinary litter, which he deemed only fit for women. He preferred the two-seater, one for him and one opposite for his secretary, who took down dictation or read to him. This morning, however, Seneca traveled alone.

A procession formed, led by Negro slaves in loincloths, who carried long, silver-tipped staves, to break a path through the crowds. Behind them came the younger clients in their togas, whose duty was to shout loudly, “Make way for the lord Seneca, the Consul.” Seneca’s most intimate servants, his secretaries, managers and other favorites, crowded around the litter. The older clients, who followed behind, had the honor of talking loudly about the great merits of their patron so that all bystanders could hear. Some of them proclaimed their own verses about Seneca’s achievements in education and literature. Others chanted about his great plans for the welfare of the Romans, how he would bring down the price of bread and arrange gigantic spectacles in the arena at his own expense. The whole procession was surrounded by a double row of slaves with pointed sticks and ox hide whips to keep the plebs at a respectful distance.

The wide gates swung open, and the procession poured into the street.

Seneca lived in the Vicus Patricius quarter, between the Viminale and Esquiline hills. Like all patrician palaces, it was surrounded by narrow, dirty streets, in which every foot of ground was needed for the swarming populace. Stone houses rose five and six stories on either side, so that the lower apartments were in perpetual darkness. Patricians and plebeians both lived there, thrown together like herrings in a barrel.

Tiny shops, booths, and work stalls were on the ground floor, with the display of goods on the street so that even the narrow passage between the houses was only partially open. Some of the ground floors were used as warehouses and an odor of decaying meat came from the shops, mixing with the odor that escaped from the open sewers.

The patricians, house owners, or their most important tenants lived above the shops in apartments whose rooms were fairly large, and had windows covered with cloth curtains. In the topmost floors, reached by narrow, twisted lightless stairs, were the smallest rooms inhabited by the poorest citizens. In order to earn part of the rent, they subleased rooms, or parts of rooms, to lodgers. Thus, on these floors there were large families crowded into rooms that were nothing more than open holes. The sole furniture was the bed, on which the family slept at night and ate its meals by day.

Along with smoke from three-legged braziers and the sour smell of unwashed linen, or of garbage the residents were too lazy to carry down to the sewers, there was a perpetual tumult of shouting, quarreling, and laughing, mixed with hammers ringing, millstones grinding, and steam whistling. But for the most part the rooms were used only at night for sleeping. During the day the inhabitants were all out on the streets.

The procession soon entered the Suburra, Rome’s gutter, and marketplace of the poor. A veritable babel of tongues was heard here from slaves and freedmen who visited the movable wooden booths stocked with every imaginable variety of merchandise. Sackcloth coverings for slaves could be found next to silk Persian shawls, although the latter were most likely stolen. The huge casks of wine that the dealers had to keep in the open, for lack of space, would surely have been broken or emptied by the rabble, were it not for the guards who were stationed at close intervals in the market with whips in hand.

A strange mixture of many races filled the Suburra. A red-haired Briton and a black-haired Gaul dragged a load of planks across the market. Blond Germans, bent double like beasts, carried a block of marble on a wooden frame.

In one corner sat a woman of Judea, her face covered with a black sackcloth veil, her stock of balsams and cosmetics in a basket in front of her. A Chaldean stargazer nearby offered to read people’s horoscopes, while next to him a snake charmer blew into his flute while the heads of the snakes swayed before him in the basket. Over here a crowd was betting on a cockfight and over there a dice game was in progress. A drunken legionary was dragging a whore by the hair out of the door of an inn.

And high above this sea of labor, sweat, and drunkenness floated the litter of the mighty Seneca.

Next the procession turned from the Suburran gutter and swung through an alley into the opulent and resplendent Via Sacra

Here, the richest shops and business houses of Rome displayed their wares for the aristocracy just a few steps from the Suburra. There were gigantic pearls the size of hazelnuts, as opalescent and transparent as Poppea’s skin. There were precious stones flashing in all the colors of the rainbow and vessels of ivory overlaid with Corinthian bronze. There were shirts and tunics of Sidonian linen and Persian silk, and drinking cups of rare and costly Phoenician glass. There were also marketplaces for the sale of beautiful slaves, young athletes and Egyptian flute players with lithe bodies.

The Roman aristocracy strolled through the Via Sacra, always accompanied by its suites of freedmen and slaves. They purchased rare, exotic fruits and flower wreaths, wines and honeys, for their nightly banquets. Men did most of the buying for the households and where a woman was seen, it was usually a matron carried in her litter, her face and lips painted, her hair built into a towering coif, her fingers and headdress adorned with jewels, and her dress drenched in perfume. She too had her attendant suite of slaves who brought along her favorite pets, the parrots, apes and trained wild animals.

For the first time Seneca seemed to actually see the frightful contrast between the human swamp of the Suburra and the boundless luxury of the Via Sacra, abysmal slavery and immeasurable self-indulgence virtually in contact with each other! But wasn’t this physical condition symbolic of Rome’s spiritual condition? A government whose legal system was based on a supreme concept of justice was headed by a Caesar whose nightly pleasure it was to seek the entertainment of lust and cruelty in assaults on his own citizens! A Caesar who was a tyrant, whose chief minister was a robber, whose consort was a whore, and whose nearest kindred spirit, the “arbiter of elegance,” was a pornographer.

Clearly, justice and law, the foundations of government, were not enough to sustain a moral system, for government was only an accumulation of human efforts, and a Nero-Caesar had become the government. Seneca understood that whatever the moral convictions issuing from the philosophic system, they lacked the power to impose themselves and be transformed into action. They lacked the voice of ultimate authority.

“My moral system,” he confessed, “has led to no obligation in my personal conduct. Rome’s gods have everything, and they can bestow everything on mankind – everything except righteousness. Who can give Rome a God of righteousness?”


Among other matters that day, Seneca found the case of one “Paul, born in Tarsus, a Roman citizen: appeal to Caesar in connection with alleged transgression of the law of his faith, the faith of the Jews, said law being under the protection of Rome.”

Appeals to Caesar by Roman citizens were considered matters of honor by the emperors ever since Augustus, and were taken very seriously. They attended the trials in person and often examined the person who made the appeal personally. But Nero was not like his predecessors. The tedium of trials for the honor of Rome was not for him. He had more important matters to attend to. Even now, he was closeted in one of the palace chambers proclaiming one of his thunderous poetical compositions at the top of his voice to a group of actors. Tonight at the banquet, he would inflict the same torment on his guests, who would compete with each other in groveling praise of the imperial buffoon. Seneca knew all this. So he asked Burrus, the commandant of the Praetorium, who was in charge of the appeals, what had been done in the case of the man Paul.

“He’s only a Jew,” he told Seneca. “I’ve had too much trouble with the Jews.’”

“But he’s a Roman citizen,” said Seneca to the old general, “and he’s appealed to Caesar. The man’s committed no crime against the state. As a Roman citizen, he’s entitled to his trial, and he must be treated with every consideration.”

“Then the man must be judged by Caesar himself.”

“True, Burrus, but you know as well as I that if he has to wait that long, he may rot away in prison. Caesar has other matters to attend to. We can make an investigation, and at least find out the nature of the accusation. And if he’s no danger to the peace of the state, I see no reason why he shouldn’t be allowed to take up quarters elsewhere, under guard, of course, until his case comes up.”

“I know nothing about these distinctions in crime, Seneca. Do you want to talk to the man?”

“I am interested in the man because he is a Roman citizen,” answered Seneca. “Let him be brought to me.”