An alternative analysis—not entirely incompatible with the first—is that the real problem for Claudius was the structural or institutional power of the principate, in a culture that was still ideologically loyal to the Republic.13 The Romans had not always had an emperor, and the early years of the empire—the time of the Julio-Claudian dynasty—were precarious in both institutional and political terms. Augustus had begun a complex balancing act in naming himself Princeps (“first man”) but insisting that he was still a citizen like any other, not a king. It was an essential feature of elite Roman self-definition that Rome was not a monarchy, and the kings had been cast out of the Republic back in the bad old legendary days of Tarquinius Superbus. The emperors were thus in a difficult position: they had to hold on to power, but without presenting themselves as autocratic. Moreover, there were intense difficulties in the legal basis for the principate as invented and handed down by Augustus. The Senate, and the Roman aristocracy more generally, wanted to see themselves as still living under a republican form of government, but the empire had moved far away from being a republic, and real power lay with the military and with the emperor himself. Each successive emperor struggled to govern effectively with a Senate that resisted his every move. When Claudius became emperor in 41 CE, he rewarded with cash payment the members of the Praetorian Guard who had brought him to office, and he was on the lookout against those who might remain hostile to his rule as emperor; in the course of his reign, he suppressed at least six plots against his life, and—shockingly for the Roman elite—executed some thirty-five senators.
It is in this context that we should view one of the earliest actions of his reign: to banish Seneca to exile on the island of Corsica. Seneca had developed a powerful literary and political voice and had built up powerful connections, most notably a close friendship with Caligula’s sisters, Agrippina (Fig. 2.4) and Julia Livilla, who were still important figures in court when Claudius came to power. Claudius had good reason to fear that Seneca might be a ringleader in a plot against his life. The accusations were apparently brought at the behest of Claudius’ wife, Messalina, although it seems perfectly possible that the emperor deflected responsibility onto his wife—if it had been Claudius’ idea to exile Seneca, he would surely have blamed Messalina. In any case, the story goes that Messalina accused Seneca of adultery with Julia Livilla, youngest sister of Caligula and therefore also Claudius’ niece. Julia Livilla herself had only just been recalled by Claudius from a previous relegation, along with Agrippina; they had been accused of trying to overthrow Caligula.
Figure 2.4 Agrippina the Younger, fourth wife and niece of Claudius and mother of Nero, was Seneca’s patron, the main influence in bringing him back from exile.
Was the charge of adultery true? The Greek historian Dio—whose account is often contradictory and untrustworthy—implies in one passage that Messalina invented the charge of adultery out of jealousy of Julia (60.8.5). But later, Dio implies that the charge of an affair between Julia and Seneca was indeed true, and even adds the charge that Seneca was also sleeping with Agrippina. The notion of the affair with Agrippina is surely a later embellishment, added by gossipmongers to spice up an already salacious story. Historians have taken a range of different views about the facts of the case. Messalina had a political motive for getting rid of Julia Livilla and her most prominent friends and supporters—who included Seneca. Seneca was close friends with the then-husband of Agrippina, Crispus Passienus,14 and was thus closely associated with the house of Germanicus, the father of Agrippina and Julia Livilla. Messalina was an ambitious young woman who may have been particularly anxious about Julia Livilla’s husband, Marcus Vincius, as a threat to her power. He was a friend of Seneca’s, had been involved in the assassination of Caligula, and may have had designs on the imperial throne.15 Perhaps the real reason for the charges was that Julia Livilla and Seneca were believed to be plotting against Claudius. Narcissus, a freedman and close advisor of Claudius, seems to have been important in the prosecution.
Seneca himself gives a vague but suggestive account of his own trial and condemnation:
I risked my life for loyalty; no word was forced out of me that I couldn’t speak in good conscience. I feared everything for my friends, but nothing for myself, except that I might not be a good enough friend. I wept no womanly tears, I did not kneel down low and grasp anybody’s hands to beg my life. I did nothing undignified, nothing unbefitting a good person, or a man. I rose above the dangers that faced me, ready to attack those that threatened me, and I thanked fortune that she had wanted to test how highly I valued loyalty.
(NQ 4. preface, 15–16)
The passage is obviously defensive. Seneca wants to present himself as having done entirely the right thing and as having suffered only for the most noble of reasons. He suggests that he resisted speaking in his own defense because doing so would have indicted his “friends,” people to whom he owed his loyalty. Probably the main people referred to here are Julia Livilla herself, and perhaps also her husband, both of whom may well have been plotting against Claudius. Seneca insists that he knew he might risk not only exile or death but also torture for his loyalty: and yet he stood firm, unbowed by fear of punishment and unmoved by any hope of gain. But Seneca, looking back on these events at a distance of some twenty years, acknowledges that his own self-justificatory story might not be true: “After telling yourself these things, ask yourself whether what you said was true or false” (NQ 4a18). He admits, in other words, that he might have done something wrong: but he also refuses to tell anybody (except his own secret self) what the wrongdoing was.
There is no reason to rule out the possibility that Seneca was guilty, of political scheming, or adultery, or both. His consolation in exile to his mother (To Helvia) hints that he may be innocent—but then again, a public document addressed to the writer’s mother was hardly likely to contain a full confession of the lurid details of an adulterous affair. Seneca had every reason in this piece to present himself as a brave, suffering innocent. By contrast, the essay written in exile to Claudius’ freedman, Polybius, seems to suggest at least a possibility of guilt, or rather more.16 In pleading for his recall from exile, Seneca says nothing to suggest that the charges were a mistake. Rather, he implies that the emperor has shown extraordinary mercy in only exiling him rather than putting him to death. He does not say explicitly that he was guilty as charged and presents himself not as a sinner but as a victim of “Fortune.” But the omission of any pleas of innocence tells its own tale. Seneca invites the (supposedly supremely merciful) emperor to treat him as innocent—without actually claiming to be so. “Let him judge my case however he wishes. Either let justice view it as a good cause, or mercy make it so; either one is equally a gift from him to me, whether he should know that I am innocent, or should wish me to be so” (Polybius 13.3). The possibility that Claudius might “know” Seneca to be innocent could be taken to imply that his innocence is a fact (and therefore knowable); but the phrasing also allows for the possibility that he was guilty.