Still, we can learn quite a lot about Seneca’s expressed opinions about marriage in general, if not in particular, since he wrote a treatise On Marriage of which some quotations survive.10 Seneca argued against the Epicurean view of marriage, which was that in most cases it is a mistake to marry and to have children, because these things are liable to disrupt one’s tranquility.11 Seneca followed the standard Stoic line instead, which was that love between the sexes was not a source of delusion and frustration but rather a natural and spiritual necessity, which should be founded on reason, not passion. Seneca’s treatise may well have been written at or near the time of his own first marriage, perhaps around 38 or 39 CE, or a little later. Marriage was presented in this work as a feature of the ideal life. In accordance with Stoic theory, Seneca admits that marriage is an indifferent thing, not valuable in the same way that virtue is valuable; but it is a preferable indifferent, such that a good wife is definitely better than no wife at all. Seneca insists that the Epicureans were too negative about the institution:
Epicurus says that the wise man rarely gets married, because marriage is accompanied by many inconveniences. Although riches and honor and physical health are named “indifferent things” by our school, and are neither good nor bad; nevertheless, we can compromise with what you might call a middle position: by how these things are used and how they turn out, they become either good or bad. So too with wives, who are on the cusp of either good or bad things. But a wise man must think hard about whether he’s about to marry a good or a bad woman.
(Fragment 5)
Seneca is here, as so often, on the lookout for a compromise between the ideals of old-school Stoicism and the realities of contemporary Roman life. He hopes to reconcile the Stoic notion that only virtue is essential for happiness with the social and psychological reality that most people, including himself, tend to want rather more things in their lives than just virtue, and those things may well include getting married. Moreover, in what could be seen as an entirely un-Stoic spirit, he suggests that what really makes or breaks a marriage is not how “you” (i.e., the husband) behave, but rather, what kind of woman “you” choose to marry. The real issue then is not the husband’s behavior, but the wife’s. This goes contrary to the hardline Stoic position that what matters is the individual’s own behavior, not that of other people. The wife, for Seneca, is the one responsible for making the marriage work.
Seneca strikingly seems to suggest that the greatest moral danger for a married man is not that he might be tempted to have affairs with others and break his marriage vows, but rather that he might love his wife too much. He mocks a “certain man,” apparently the source of numerous comic anecdotes, who was joined at the hip with his wife:
they took no drink unless it was touched by both their lips, and they did other things, no less ridiculous, in which the thoughtless force of their burning passion broke out. Certainly the origin of their love was good, but its magnitude was monstrous. If somebody acts crazily, it doesn’t matter how good their intentions are.
(Fragment 26, Haase 1852)
The point is developed: “Lust for another person’s wife is base; excessive lust for one’s own is just as bad … Nothing is more disgusting than lusting after one’s wife as if for a mistress” (fragment 27). Seneca goes on (in fragment 28) to inveigh against marriages that begin with an adulterous affair, and then, after divorce, are legitimated by law. He suggests that such relationships are bound to fizzle out—a wife is not, and never can be, as tempting as a mistress: “the man despises a lust that is legitimate.”
The general point Seneca insists upon here is that marriage must be based on something other than lust. That “something else” is not reproduction: as we have seen, children are, for the Stoics, an indifferent thing, although one that many people prefer to have rather than not. The main reason for getting married is rather, for Seneca, to make one’s environment more conducive to living a virtuous life, which can happen more readily in the company of a virtuous woman. Marriage could also be helpful in more worldly ways: Seneca presumably did not emphasize the importance of marriage for climbing the social ladder, but this was an essential element of the institution. It is very likely that Seneca’s first wife, like his second, was a well-born and well-connected woman, who would have helped him on his ascent to the centers of imperial power.
Seneca’s purpose in composing the marriage treatise was not merely to celebrate legitimate forms of marriage, but also to speak out against current Roman legislation that put pressure on people to get married, whether they wanted to or not. “What,” he asks, “shall I say of poor men who mostly are led to the name of husband in order to evade the laws passed against the celibate? How can one who weds regulate the habits and advise chastity and maintain the authority of the husband?” (fragment 29). Seneca presents himself as both a political and moral guide, a voice of real ethical strength in a time of uncertainty and social change, especially in relationships between the sexes. As so often, Seneca’s writing is unlikely to represent his biographical realities in any transparent fashion: it, too, is an artful piece of rhetoric, calibrated for particular literary, philosophical, and personal reasons. The treatise On Marriage may well have been an attempt on Seneca’s part to clear his own name, in the wake of his own public sexual scandal—to which we now turn.
Fortune Tested My Loyalty
As we have seen, Seneca seems to have done rather well under Caligula: he had created strong social networks in the court and among the aristocracy, if not with the emperor himself. But in 41 CE, Caligula—who was unpopular, for obvious reasons—was assassinated in a plot that involved several members of the Senate. He had no male heir, and the Praetorian Guard (the group of bodyguard soldiers who protected the imperial palace) insisted that Claudius (Fig. 2.3) should be appointed the next emperor. The Senate reluctantly agreed. Claudius was descended from the Julio-Claudian family, the grandson of Octavia, sister of the emperor Augustus; he thus had a fairly good claim to the throne in terms of birth. But he had a limp and a stutter and was generally considered to be half-witted, so he had rarely been seen as a viable candidate.
Figure 2.3 Claudius, emperor from 41 to 54 CE, exiled Seneca to the island of Corsica on charges of adultery.
However, Claudius turned out to be an active ruler, who produced many public building projects and managed to expand the Roman empire for the first time since Augustus. The most important of these was Britain (Britannia), a Roman province that had been struggling against Roman rule. Seneca later took financial advantage of the opportunities afforded by this new wing of the empire. The ancient historians Suetonius and Tacitus maintain that Claudius was not really qualified for the task of ruling the empire and was therefore the tool of his wives and freedmen.12 This view has been challenged by more recent historians. One possibility, memorably proposed by the Claudius novels of Robert Graves (and the TV adaptation, I, Claudius), is that Claudius was actually far cleverer than anybody around him believed. His pose of weakness and dependency was cultivated in order to stay alive, in a world where any display of ability would guarantee his assassination.