(2. pref. 4)
The attitude expressed here toward public success is deeply ambivalent. Seneca acknowledges that politics and the law courts carry all kinds of hidden and even obvious dangers: the claim that in public life, “even those things which are hoped for, ought to be feared,” carries an extra resonance in retrospect, when we remember the middle son’s later position as tutor and advisor to the emperor. A wish come true can also be a fear come true, and Seneca’s father recognized the danger clearly at the start of his career. He warns his sons of the possibility that success, in politics at least, might come at a terrible cost of lost moral or social identity. But the father pressures the sons toward worldly success even while warning of its dangers.
We might have guessed that the middle brother, our Seneca, would be seen by his father as the most talented of the three, especially in philosophy. What should we make of the fact that the father here identifies the youngest as the one with most natural genius? One might conclude that Mela really was much more talented than Lucius, and the father recognized the truth. If so, an interesting further possibility is that our Seneca, the middle brother, may have been motivated in his own lifelong pursuit of philosophy by a desire to compete with his brother in his chosen field, and thus finally win his father’s wholehearted approval. Mela, who became father of the poet Lucan, makes no appearance in Seneca’s extant work, and it is impossible to tell how well or badly they got along—although the fact that he addresses no writing to him and says nothing about him, in contrast to his positive account of his elder brother, in itself suggests that his younger brother was not dear to Seneca’s heart. It is likely that at least part of Seneca’s recurrent preoccupation with the possibility of withdrawal from public life, into a quiet life of philosophy, was figured for him as a question of whether he should, after all, have been more like Mela.
The father puts the elder sons in an impossible situation here: he admits (or claims) that he himself has driven them to compete in the public goals of law and politics, but he also suggests that there is greater moral and intellectual value in not pursuing these things. He has created an imperative that is impossible to fulfill. Mela’s talent, the father notes, is incorruptible: he refuses to apply his mind to anything but philosophy. By implication, the elder sons have already (thanks to their father’s urging them on) spoilt their moral purity by applying their minds to the world of law and political ambition. All this complex pressure must have been an important formative influence for the middle son, for whom fear and guilt remained ever-present emotions, and whose writings are marked by the sense that he must always aspire upward toward an unattainable, and mutually incompatible, set of moral and social ideals.
Seneca the Elder is also here putting a good public face on what might look like a failure—Mela’s apparent stagnation in his career. We are being assured that this is due not to laziness or lack of natural talent, but the opposite (a claim that one might well mistrust). The talents of the elder brothers must have been fairly obvious by the late thirties CE, when the passage was written; family honor was salvaged by the claim that the younger brother, though unknown to the public, was actually the best of the three. In fact, Mela was not quite as purely philosophical in his interests as his father presents him here. Tacitus suggests that he was more of a strategist than a pure intellectual. He avoided politics because it was dangerous and wanted its perks without its hazards: he tried to “get power equal to an ex-consul, while remaining a Roman knight,” and he figured the best way to make money was through procuratorships, linked with the administration of the emperor’s business interests (Annals 16.17). Of the three brothers, only the eldest, Novatus, had a regular political career (including, as we shall see, a provincial governorship in Achaea). The other two, our Seneca and his younger brother, became rich and powerful by unconventional means. Their lives represent two different responses to the ambivalent attitudes toward public life that their father had taught them.
At several moments in later life, Seneca expresses his love and admiration for his two brothers, although he only mentions the elder, Novatus, by name. Middle children often find themselves trying to imitate both their older and their younger siblings, and stretched between the two. Like his younger brother, Mela, Seneca wanted to be an unworldly philosopher, above the fray of political ambition—and to be praised for it by his dominating father. But like his older brother, Novatus (later Gallio), he also aspired to be a successful career politician—which was another avenue by which to gain praise from his father, and probably his mother as well. Like Novatus, Seneca hoped to combine political success with integrity. There are several passages of admiring commentary on Novatus in Seneca’s work. For instance, he says that “I’m accustomed to telling you that Gallio, my brother, who is not loved as much as he deserves even by those who could not love him more, is innocent of other vices, and hates flattery” (NQ 4. Preface. 10) Seneca goes on to emphasize his brother’s extraordinary charm as well as his rock-solid honesty. There is a only a shadowy hint of envy in Seneca’s account of this perfect older brother, who never descends from his moral high ground, who is impervious to either praise or blame. He remarks finally that if you tried to flatter Novatus, he would refrain even from pointing out your dissimulation: “he would not catch you out, but he would reject you” (NQ 4. Preface. 12). Seneca presumably felt keen anxiety that his beloved older brother might not admire his superior political and economic status but instead might judge and condemn him in his heart for the means by which he achieved these ends.
In his Consolation to Helvia, he notes how much both his brothers have each achieved, in very different ways: “the one has gained high office by attention to business, the other has philosophically despised it.” He goes on to argue that both have made their choices primarily in order to please their mother: Novatus has chosen high office to bring glory to her, and Mela has withdrawn from society in order to have more time with her. The result, he tells her, is that “you may be protected by the authority of the one, and delighted by the literary leisure of the other. They will compete with one another in love shown you, and the loss of one son will be supplied by the love of two others. I can confidently promise that you will find nothing wanting in your sons except their number.” Seneca thus manages to ensure that he himself retains his mother’s attention, even in exile, by the virtuosity of his literary composition.
EDUCATION, PHILOSOPHY, SICKNESS
My studies were my salvation (Studia mihi nostra saluti fuerunt)
(Epistle 78.3)
Seneca was brought to Rome as a young boy, in the “arms” of his aunt, his mother’s stepsister (Helvia 19.2). They were also presumably accompanied by her husband, although Seneca does not mention him. His father was apparently already in the city, perhaps having taken his older brother on ahead. The phrasing suggests that Seneca was very young at the time (small enough to be carried), but he was old enough to understand when his father showed him the great orator, poet, and politician Pollio, who died around 5 CE. It is likely, then, that Seneca came to Rome with his aunt in approximately 4 or 5 CE, at the age of about five. They would have traveled in springtime, and begun the journey by carriage along the well-built Roman roads leading from Corduba to the Mediterranean Sea. They would have taken a raeda—a type of large, solid coach, pulled by a team of horses, mules, or oxen, which could fit several people and a good amount of baggage; such coaches could carry as much as a thousand Roman pounds (=327 kg) (Fig. 1.3). The family group would have been accompanied also by a large retinue of slaves as they made their way over the hills toward one of the coastal ports on the eastern coast of Spain—perhaps Tarraco or Barcino (modern Taracino or Barcelona). There would have been daily stops in dirty, bedbug-infested inns along the way. From the coast, they would cross the sea in a boat, perhaps pausing for a night in Sardinia or Corsica, until they finally reached Ostia, the port town nearest to the big city of Rome itself. The whole journey would have taken a little under three weeks.19