Presumably declamation gained some of its peculiar cultural power in this period from the fact that political institutions were being steadily curtailed. At a period when the emperor—first Augustus and then his successors in the Julio-Claudian line (Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero)—was taking more and more power for himself, the Senate became increasingly impotent, and as a result, public political speech lost much of its potency. The real power of speech lay in the mouth of the emperor himself, which makes it particularly important that, as we shall see, Seneca the Younger would build on his father’s educational legacy by becoming speechwriter for Nero.
Even if rhetoric no longer had the same political power that it had had under the Republic, declamation still had a central cultural position throughout the lifetimes of Seneca the Elder and his sons, for entertainment as well as a training for politics or the law schools. Moreover, Seneca the Elder suggests that all professions, including philosophy, may benefit from a thorough training in rhetoric. Roman culture in this period was thoroughly implicated in the style of writing, speaking, quick thinking, and feats of memory that were cultivated by declamation. The challenge was to come up with convincing arguments on both sides of any given topic. Almost all elite young men were trained in this style of speaking and thinking, so that those who were uneducated in declamation would have been seen as socially alien.
The elder Seneca’s work preserves for posterity the voices of his dead intellectual heroes. One of the most important of these is a Spanish-born declaimer named Porcius Latro, his “dearest friend” (1. preface 12), who (on Seneca’s telling) always came up with the best possible approach to any topic set up for debate. Seneca sets Latro up as an example for his sons to follow: he can throw himself into any pursuit (in work or play), shows incredible feats of memory and a vast knowledge of history, and can perform beautifully well-organized, fluent, and always well-judged speeches.
The poet Ovid was a declamation student at the same time as the elder Seneca, and he vividly evokes the boy’s struggle to conform to the constraints of the declamatory genre: he was, we are told, a natural-born poet, such that even when he tried to imitate the best lines of Latro, he found himself converting them into verse (2.2.8). He was an excellent declaimer but undisciplined, and unwilling to perform except on the subject of love. In his poetry, Seneca tells us, Ovid enjoyed indulging his faults, of which he was well aware: at one point, his friends asked him to suppress three lines of his poetry, and he agreed only on the condition that he could choose three lines of his own to retain and write them out in secret. When all was revealed, Ovid and his friends had chosen exactly the same lines (2.2.12). Seneca tells the story without explicit comment, but with a hint of admiration as well as disapproval for one who managed to follow his own vision so stubbornly. But it is clear that he hoped his own sons would stay much more firmly under his own thumb. Ovid—who was exiled by Augustus for his indecent literary output and for some kind of involvement in the adultery scandal of Augustus’ daughter—would remain for the younger Seneca a literary inspiration and a tantalizing model of literary and intellectual freedom, and its dire consequences.
Seneca the Elder was keen to defend declamation itself as a way of training young men in good Roman values—and as an endlessly fascinating way of exploring and telling stories. This case was worth making, since there were already rumblings of hostility to declamation in Roman society. A character in Petronius (a contemporary of our Seneca) describes it as “trivial and inane” and—worse—conducive to the “weakening and death of the substance of oratory” (Encolpius, in Petronius 1–2). Tacitus, writing a generation later, complains that the “highly rhetorical style is used to present this subject matter, divorced from reality” (Dialogus 35). Tacitus also laments that, once upon a time, young men would be instructed by observing or “shadowing” a real orator as he went about his daily experience in court or public assemblies; he was taught “in the open air,” not in the fake indoor rooms of declamation halls; he got to see “an opposition and adversaries who fought not with fake swords but with the real thing” (Dialogus 34). Pliny, similarly, bewails the loss of real power in education and in speech (Pliny, Natural History, 8, 14.8). Juvenal denounced the displays for being horribly boring: “rehashed cabbage” is the term he uses (7.155). Seneca the Elder was defending a form of education that was seen by others as a marker of cultural decline—while also suggesting that the best declaimers (like Latro) were long dead.
The criticism that declamation was entirely divorced from cultural realities was somewhat unfair, although it picked up on the dramatic qualities of the exercise. Implausible premises allowed for explorations of genuinely important points of cultural tension. Here is one example: “A sick master asked his slave to give him poison; he refused. The master put a provision in his will that the slave should be crucified by his heirs. The slave appeals to the tribunes” (3.9). To deal with a premise like this, the speakers had to consider how to characterize both master and slave, as well as how to negotiate the complex Roman ethical and legal nexus surrounding slavery and the relationship of slaves and masters. Declamation provides a historical lens into Roman cultural preoccupations and helps us see not just how the Romans of this period argued and performed, but also what kinds of behavior patterns they thought were either plausible or admirable.
Anxieties about the relationship of fathers and sons, and about female sexuality as a dangerous, potentially disruptive force, were absolutely central to Roman cultural life. Declamation allowed practitioners to work through these issues. Common topics included conflicts between fathers and sons over inheritance, extravagance, or betrayal; many dealt with chastity, seduction, or rape. There is little about the relationship of mothers and daughters. Declamation was an entirely male sphere, such that women figure as topics for discussion (mostly as priestesses, prostitutes, wives, and rape victims) but not as participants. The Suasoriae and Controversiae are highly artificial texts, whose purpose is not to reveal the father’s deep feelings about his family but rather to showcase the skills involved in declamatory oratory. But in reading them, we can catch at least a glimpse of how Seneca’s father saw fatherhood in general, and perhaps his own relationship with his sons in particular.
The Preface to Controversiae Book 2 provides a particularly interesting glimpse of the father’s relationship with his three sons.15 It also gives us clues as to the father’s attitudes toward the relative values of political, financial, and social success, and philosophy. The passage suggests a very competitive family structure in which the three sons are played off against one another and in which a dominant father tries, with a great deal of psychological ingenuity, to maintain control over even his adult children.
The “boys” were probably all in their late thirties at the time their father was addressing them, although he pretends for rhetorical purposes that they are only just on the point of embarking on their careers in life. He addresses all three: “Seneca, to Novatus, Seneca and Mela, his sons: greetings!” But the focus shifts to single out just one of the three: the youngest, Mela, who is keen to pursue philosophy rather than a public political or legal career. “I see that your heart shudders at public office and shrinks from all ambition: you have just one desire—to have no desires.” The father is quick to suggest that he is not disappointed that Mela has renounced worldly ambition and insists that he is not pressuring him in any way: “I am no obstacle to a good mind! Go where your inclination takes you! Be happy with your father’s social position [i.e., there is no need to rise above the equestrian rank], and put most of yourself out of the reach of fortune” (2. Preface. 3).