38. This is emphasized by Griffin 2013.
39. Fear 2007.
40. Troades 1125: “A valley slope with a gentle rise encloses the intervening space and sprouts up like a theater.” This is the location in which the crowd gathers to watch the sacrificial murder of the young girl Polyxena on the tomb of Achilles.
41. Dio 62.10.3.; Tacitus notes only Burrus’ encouragement, not Seneca’s, at 14.15.
42. See Edwards 1993, Chapter Three: “Playing Romans.”
43. Epictetus 4.1.45–50; the passage is discussed by Long 2004.
Chapter IV
1. On Leisure, 1.4: Dices mihi: “Quid agis, Seneca? Deseris partes?” The term used for “party” can also connote a part in a play: Seneca imagines retirement as a change of theatrical role, but with implications of desertion of a political duty or military post.
2. Date disputed; it could have been composed almost any time before the addressee, Serenus, died, which was 64, but likely Neronian but pre-retirement; see Griffin 1976.
3. This is Griffin’s argument (Griffin 1962, and Griffin 1976, 319–320).
4. Petronius, 28. This is the notice on the door of Trimalchio’s house.
5. The original title for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was “Trimalchio in West Egg.”
6. See especially Williams 2012.
7. On this passage see Bartsch 2006.
8. Ker 2011, p. 33.
9. This is the same passage in which Seneca launches into a self-justificatory account of his own biography, in which he insists on his loyalty to his friends as the reason why he suffered exile (on which, see Chapter II).
10. See below: the Golden House was built after the Great Fire at Rome.
11. See Bradley 2008, who rightly objects to the idealizing readings of Sørensen 1984 and others.
12. Nussbaum 2004 gives a brilliant account of the ways in which this logically inconsistent and morally repugnant view still lurks behind many modern discussions of international aid to people in poorer nations.
13. Wimbush 1998 gives useful background on the various different ancient movements toward rejection of materialism. In the United States, there is a growing movement toward “voluntary simplicity”: practitioners call themselves VS-ers, minimalists, or participants in simple living. There are several complementary movements toward buying, producing, or amassing unnecessary material goods. Some focus less on the simple lifestyle than on modes of acquisition other than purchase (“freeganism,” “up-cycling,” “dumpster diving”).
14. Closs 2013.
15. The killing of Christians by Nero in the wake of the Great Fire is attested to only by Tacitus and is impossible to verify. The numbers were presumably fairly small compared to the many other types of undesirables who were thrown to the lions in the same period.
16. Dyson 1970.
17. This is the account of Suetonius, Nero, 47–49; for assessment of the various sources, see Champlin 2003.
Epilogue
1. The dating of the play is the subject of much scholarly dispute. Some argue that it was composed very soon after Seneca’s death, perhaps in 68, under the emperor Galba; others favor a much later dating. See discussion in Ferri 2003, 5–30.
2. On Quintilian’s response to Seneca, see Taoka 2011, who argues that Quintilian is actually imitating Seneca (Epistle 114) while supposedly attacking him.
3. See also Abbott 1978, who argues—not very convincingly—that Seneca may well have met Paul in Rome.
4. See Engberg-Pedersen, 2004 and 2000.
5. There is a vigorous account of Augustine’s rejection of Stoicism in Chapter 14 of City of God, in Brooke 2012, 1–11.
6. On this material, Colish 1985.
7. Ebbensen 2004, 108.
8. Through Origen, by a monk named Evagrius in the fourth century.
9. The story is well told by Sorabji 2004.
10. The passage is discussed by Cunnally 1986, 316.
11. The most important were by Erasmus, the French humanist Marc-Antoine Muret, and Justus Lipsius. On Muret, see Kraye 2005.
12. This is well articulated by Monsarrat 1984, 6.
13. Edwards 1997.
14. “Self-fashioning” is a term popularized by Stephen Greenblatt’s 1980 study, Renaissance Self-fashioning, which focused on Thomas More, among others; its relevance for Seneca, and the link between More and Seneca, is made by Edwards 1997. For more on Seneca’s relevance for modern understanding of selfhood, see Long 2006.
15. Braden 1985.
16. Stacey 2007 analyzes Machiavelli’s response to Seneca; built on by Brooke 2012.
17. See Brooke 2012, 67–69.
18. Montaigne, Essays i. 12: “On constancy” (“De la constance”) (Montaigne 1993).
19. Quint 1998 shows how Montaigne’s ideal of opposition to cruelty emerged from his study of Seneca.
20. On Lipsius, see Lagrée 2004 and Brooke 2012, 12–36, who emphasizes the ways that the Lipsian prince is an alternative, and more Senecan, figure than the Machiavellian autocrat.
21. Oeuvres Morales Mêlées, 12, cited in Lagrée 2004, 160.
22. Cited in Lagrée 2004, 165.
23. Quoted in Oestreich 2008, 70.
24. The Passions of the Soul, cited in Rutherford 2004, 191.
25. From On Anger 2.13. The Rousseau passage is discussed in Brooke 2012, 189.
26. Cited in Brooke 2012, 125.
27. Cassirer 1961, 166–170, cited in Brooke 2012, 1.
28. Discussed in Brooke 2012, 148.
29. Natural History of Religion, 174, quoted in Brooke 2012, 180.
30. On this much-studied topic a good starting point is Boyle 1997.
31. The affinity between early modern and Roman forms of violence is noted in Boyle 1997, 409.
32. Racine, vol. 1, 390, citing Tacitus. The relationship of Racine to Seneca is well discussed by Levitan 1989.
33. Eliot 1932 p. 54.
34. Ziolowski 2004.
35. Hughes 1983.
36. Hadot 1995.
37. Foucault 1985. See Long 2006 on the particular contemporary resonances of Seneca’s presentation of the self.
38. James Bond Stockdale, a U.S. Navy officer who spent seven years in captivity (mostly in solitary confinement) in Vietnam, has written and spoken extensively about the use he made of Epictetus (with a dash of Marcus Aurelius) during those years and as a guide for his men. Despite his commitment to ancient Stoicism, Stockdale shows no interest in Seneca, and the reason is that Seneca is much less useful as a guide to Stockdale’s macho military “will” and “self-respect,” even in times of extraordinary suffering and apparent failure. Stockdale’s model of Stoicism involves a belief that “your good and your evil are of your own making” (1995, 240) and an insistence on the total rightness of one’s own actions at all times. He is dismissive of those who wonder whether he ever feels that he has “blood on his hands”; pity, guilt, and fear are, in his view, a distraction to be dismissed.
39. Compare Ehrenrich 2010 on the dangers of modern U.S. optimism.
40. Becker 1999.
41. Grimal 1978.
Bibliography
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