A Stoic Source for the Monkey-Rope

I identify a probable source for Melville's striking image of the "monkey-rope" (Moby-Dick, ch. 72) in his reading of the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca. In a passage in his essay "On Peace of Mind" (De Tranquillitate Animi), Seneca argues forcibly that "all our whole life is a servitude" and exhorts us to bear up under our state of bondage with fortitude. Seneca's passage would have furnished Melville not only the striking metaphor of life-as-bondage that he adopts in the chapter "The Monkey-Rope," but also a philosophical basis for recasting his preoccupations elsewhere in Moby-Dick. In order to argue the allusion, I briefly survey Melville's knowledge of Seneca; identify the translations of "On Peace of Mind" known to have been in his possession; and call attention to the consonance of language and imagery between Seneca's and Melville's passages.