Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals

Chapter 2 Remaining Concealed: Learned Protest Between Stoicism and the State

There is a very well-known saying by a man who had grown old in royal service. Asked how he had achieved that rarest of distinctions at court, old age, he answered, “By suffering wrongs and saying ‘Thank-you.’” —seneca the younger Suicide and Strategy With one swift pass of the knife, he opened the veins of four wrists. While the blood of his wife pooled freely at her feet, Seneca the Younger refused to hemorrhage. So he severed the arteries of his legs and knees. With blood still escaping slowly, he ordered a stock of hemlock to be prepared. And when even this failed to subdue him, Seneca entered a cauldron of heated water and ordered his servants to carry him into a bath, where steam and suffocation eventually claimed his life. Senecaneverintendedtoendhis careersodramatically.Twiceherequested permission to retire from court life, presenting Nero with claims of old age, poor health, and absorption in philosophy, and twice the princeps refused. Between his first failure to retire in 62 CE and his state-ordered suicide three years later, Seneca lost more than the persuasive leverage needed to retire unscathed into philosophical leisure. Having fallen from Nero’s good graces, he also lost the political influence needed to sway imperial affairs. All along the way, Seneca was addressing letters to his friend, Lucilius Junior. More than a collection of “carelessly written” notes, as Seneca famously described them, his Letters to Lucilius (Ad Lucilium epistulae morales) 2 remaining concealed: learned protest between stoicism and the state McCormick_02.indd 19 9/21/11 1:51 PM offer a correspondence course in the art of securing retirement and, where the path to retirement is blocked, remaining concealed in hazardous political landscapes.1 Cataloging and conceptualizing these persuasive techniques, especially as they lend themselves to purposes of learned activism, is the primary task of this chapter. Letter-Essays to Lucilius Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius rely on the epistolary techniques of Demetrius and Cicero, both of whom understood the letter as one side of a naturally occurring conversation. “You have been complaining that my letters to you are rather carelessly written,” Seneca remarks to Lucilius. “Now who talks carefully unless he also desires to talk affectedly? I prefer that my letters should be just what my conversation would be if you and I were sitting in one another’s company or taking walks together,—spontaneous and easy; for my letters have nothing strained or artificial about them.”2 And with artlessness comes intimacy, Seneca goes on to insist: “I never receive a letter from you without being in your company forthwith.” Unlike “pictures of our absent friends,” which only “lighten our longing by a solace that is unreal and unsubstantial,” letters bring with them “real traces, real evidences” of their remote authors: “For that which is sweetest when we meet face to face is afforded by the impress of a friend’s hand upon his letter—recognition.”3 Casual, impulsive, and personal—these are the attributes with which Seneca inscribes his letters. Nevertheless, the authenticity of these letters is doubtful. This is partly because Seneca wrote them for posterity.4 But it has more to do with the pace of philosophical education and epistolary exchange in imperial Rome. Given that Seneca probably wrote his letters between winter 63 and autumn 64 CE, it is unlikely that Lucilius could have made the kind of spiritual progress ascribed to him.5 That Lucilius—a Roman knight with Epicurean tendencies —could come of age as a stoic in a matter of months would have surprised even the most accomplished pedagogue. And because Seneca’s correspondence comprises 124 extant letters, and Lucilius’s letters sometimes took months to arrive, the legitimacy of their exchange depends on Seneca having written to Lucilius before receiving replies to previous posts, and frequently sending many letters at once.6 To this extent, the epistolarity of his letters may be little more than a formal attribute. Indeed, when coupled with his gestures toward posterity, these traces of fabrication suggest 20 letters to power McCormick_02.indd 20 9/21/11 1:51 PM that, despite his claim to have written carelessly, as though engaged in an intimate conversation, Seneca’s letters are highly stylized texts designed for audiences other than Lucilius.7 Seneca’s letters are neither intimate nor official, their purpose being neither to manage interpersonal relations nor to conduct affairs of state...