As a senator under Caligula, Seneca began to accumulate vast personal wealth, which he would continue to do throughout his life. But these financial rewards were mixed blessings indeed, because as Seneca rose to the pinnacle of social status and power in Rome, his life became increasingly dangerous.
At the height of his career, under the Emperor Nero, it seems that Seneca actually ran the Roman Empire—with the help of Burrus, the leader of the Praetorian Guard. Nero was a mere teenager, only sixteen years old, when he became emperor, and lacked the experience to govern the world’s greatest empire on his own. During the first five years of his reign, Seneca guided him, and things went well for both men and for the Roman Empire. Seneca was also elected consul, which was the highest political office anyone could hold in Rome. However, after that peaceful five-year period, Nero assumed full control and started to act in murderous ways.
Unfortunately, when Seneca wrote his Letters, as an old man, he knew that his life was under threat from Nero, who had a bad habit of killing people he no longer liked. Knowing that his life was in danger, Seneca twice tried to separate himself from Nero, without success.
When Seneca was around forty-three, his troubles first started with Caligula, who wanted him put to death out of jealousy, just because he felt overshadowed by a brilliant speech Seneca had given to the Senate. Fortunately, one of Caligula’s mistresses talked him out of killing Seneca because Seneca was ill, and she thought he would die soon in any case.
Later, when Seneca was forty-five, the Emperor Claudius had him exiled to the island of Corsica for eight years and took half his estate, on trumped-up charges, as an alternative to having him killed. This exile, entailing a total separation from his wife, took place only a few weeks after the death of Seneca’s only son, still just an infant.
After spending eight years on Corsica, where he got a fair amount of writing done (because there was nothing else he could do there), Seneca was finally called back to Rome, but only under the condition that he would become a tutor to the young Nero, who at the time was eleven years old.
Despite Seneca’s efforts to help Nero develop a good character, the project was a total failure. Nero had no interest in philosophy or ethics. He was only interested in self-gratification and power at the expense of others, which turned him into a monstrous tyrant. In the end, Nero had many who surrounded him killed, including his own mother, brother, and wife (whom he found to be boring, compared to his mistress). Nero finally had Seneca killed too, when Seneca was sixty-nine, after a failed conspiracy to remove Nero from power. In this new killing spree, many people lost their lives, including Seneca’s two brothers and his nephew.
But despite these severe hurdles, which would psychologically destroy many people today, Seneca’s Stoic philosophy helped him to endure the hardships and to transform the adversities into something positive. Even when Nero forced Seneca to commit suicide as an old man—which was far preferable to the alternate forms of execution available—Seneca used the occasion of his own death to give a final talk about philosophy to several friends who were present, just as Socrates did when he was forced to drink hemlock poison.
Like a good Stoic, Seneca had prepared himself for death over the course of many years, as part of his philosophical training, and didn’t show a single trace of worry or concern when surrendering his life.
He is reported to have said, quite matter of factly, “Who didn’t know about Nero’s brutality? After killing his mother and brother, there was nothing left but to add the murder of his guardian and teacher.”9 And while Seneca’s last words about philosophy haven’t come down to us, one could imagine him echoing the words of Socrates about his death: “While you can kill me, you can’t harm me.”10 Or, as we might also put it, “While you might kill me physically, you can’t destroy my inner character.”
SENECA’S WORLD IS OUR WORLD
If you read Seneca’s writings, one of the most striking things you’ll notice is how he seems to be precisely describing our present-day world, even though he was writing two thousand years ago.
The wealthy citizens of Rome had developed consumerism into a fine art, and reveled in physical luxury and hedonism. As in our own time, when we can go into a supermarket in the middle of winter and buy oranges and avocados grown halfway around the world, the Romans had developed international trade to such an extent that rare goods, foods, and luxury items flooded into Rome from distant lands.
The upper-class Romans became obsessed with displaying their wealth as a sign of social status. What we now call “keeping up with the Joneses” even existed in ancient Rome. As Seneca describes it,
How many things we acquire only because others bought them and because they are in a good many homes. Many of our problems are explained by the fact that we copy the example of others: rather than following reason, we are led astray by convention. If only a few people did something, we wouldn’t imitate them. But when the majority starts to act a certain way, we follow along, too, as if something should be more honorable just because it’s more frequent.11
The wealthy built seaside villas, crafted out of exotic, imported marble, which featured spectacular views of the ocean, swimming pools and elegant baths, and every luxury imaginable. Some cooled their drinks and swimming pools during the hot summer months with snow and ice, transported over vast distances. Others hosted extravagant feasts, dinners, and parties, often costing astronomical sums of money, with the rarest delicacies imported from around the world, which they then vomited out to make room for more. Whereas the Romans had lived modestly in earlier times, this was no longer the case.
Finally, the high-spending Roman culture of Seneca’s time displayed the same kinds of excesses associated with today’s celebrities, which we read about now in Hollywood tabloids and on celebrity gossip websites. Seneca weighs in:
Self-indulgent people want to be the focus of attention throughout their entire lives. Should the gossip go silent, they feel badly, and will do something new to arouse notoriety. Many of them drop large sums of money, and many keep mistresses. To make a name for yourself in this crowd, you need to combine extravagance with notoriety. In such a busy town, ordinary vices don’t get reported.12
The simple reason these things sound commonplace today is because human nature hasn’t changed. While our culture today is far more advanced technologically, in a psychological sense we are exactly the same as the people of Seneca’s time. We are complex creatures who suffer from greed, ambition, worry, fear, grief, anger, financial anxiety, sexual desire, and addictions—along with a desire to be good people and to make the world a better place.
While Stoicism advocated simple living, it did not prohibit the accumulation of wealth, as long as wealth could be used wisely. But as one of the wealthiest men in the Roman Empire, whose professional colleagues included the top members of the social elite, Seneca had firsthand experience of the consequences of the pursuit of excess luxury. Most likely it was this firsthand experience that made Seneca recognize the emptiness and shallowness of high living, and led him to write against it:
We admire walls veneered with a thin layer of marble, even though we know what defects the marble is hiding. We deceive our own eyes, and when we have bathed our ceilings with gold, what are we delighting in, except a lie? For we know that beneath this gilding lurks some ugly wood. Nor is such skin-deep decoration spread only over walls and ceilings. All those famous men you see strutting about grandly possess gold-leaf happiness. Look inside, and you’ll see how much corruption lies beneath that flimsy veneer of status.13