In Epistle 46, Seneca tells Lucilius how he quickly devoured the book that Lucilius had written and compliments its style, subject-matter, and its “impossible to put down” quality. He demurs, however: “I will write more about the book when I have been over it a second time; at present my judgment is hardly settled” (Ep. 46.3, trans. Graver and Long). Seneca’s admission that he will need to reread the book to truly unpack its meaning and worth is telling. Rereading is necessary, and, as scholars, we all know how often we revisit texts and how such rereadings can bring out nuance, hidden significance, and elements we first passed over. I write this as an introduction to Graver’s new collection of essays on Seneca, many of which I had read previously.[1] Nevertheless, when collected, put in dialogue with one another, and reread, these pieces acquire additional punch and power and reveal Graver’s probing intellect and engaged interest in Seneca’s philosophical texts. Throughout the collection, Graver stresses the beauty and complexity of Seneca’s writing style as part and parcel of the philosophical message(s) he strives to convey. As Graver remarks: “These obviously literary features belong to one and the same project with his studies in ethics, psychology, and natural science, for in Seneca’s conception, studia or ‘studies’ are not a set of different disciplines. They are a single discipline whose aim is the creation of an aesthetic and intellectual self.”[2] Graver frequently notes this thread in these essays, and calls attention to Seneca’s role as a (re)reader of the philosophical tradition and his subsequent interpretations of that tradition for his own therapeutic and didactic purposes.
The book is split into four sections: “Recreating the Stoic Past”, which investigates Seneca’s own brand of Stoicism and its antecedents; “Rival Traditions in Philosophy”, which accentuates how Seneca engages with Epicurean and Peripatetic ideas; “Models of Emotional Experience”, which explores his therapeutic views as well as his understanding of Stoic joy (gaudium); and “The Self within the Text”, which hammers home not only the idea that “as we live, so do we speak” (talis oratio qualis vita, Ep. 114.1) but also the strong connections between Seneca’s written “self” and the literature and philosophy that helped to create that “Seneca.”[3] While each essay in this collection admirably explicates some element of Seneca’s Stoicism and his interpretation of the Stoic tradition, in the interest of space I have chosen to discuss a single essay from each section that seems particularly valuable and critical for our understanding of Seneca.
The opening section consists of three essays, of which the first, “The Life of the Mind: Seneca and the Contemplatio Veri,” stands out for the original way it links De Otio and the Epistulae Morales. If De Otio offers a theoretical view of leisure’s offerings to a philosopher, the Epistulae Morales show that theory in action. However, such “action” may not be the traditional Stoic political engagement, but rather speculative contemplatio and self-amelioration, with an eye to posterity and one’s legacy. Seneca’s reading, writing, and conversations with others (even books, cf. Ep. 67.2) make up his life of study according to many of the Epistulae Morales. Graver stresses that Seneca is creative and flexible in his application of Stoic ethical theory and illuminates what Seneca’s life in retirement was like, even if some aspects of Seneca’s reports may be fictionalized for didactic purposes. Her reading of letters 64–68 is especially suggestive as it hints at the way Seneca works through Stoic concepts – in this case, the contemplative life – from different viewpoints in a linked series of letters. Graver’s reading displays Seneca’s literary craftsmanship: imagery, philosophical allusions (Plato and Cicero lurk in the background), and epistularity itself help to define his stance.
The second section of the book includes essays detailing Seneca’s relationship with Epicurean and Peripatetic thinkers. Seneca engaged often with competing philosophical schools in his works; indeed, although current consensus sees Seneca as a more orthodox Stoic, it used to be fashionable to consider him an “eclectic” philosopher, who picked up and adapted rival philosophies as he saw fit.[4] Graver’s piece on Peripatetic themes in Seneca’s work shows how he engages with Aristotle and his school in various ethical works (though debts to Peripatetic physics and meteorology found in Naturales Quaestiones are passed over for the most part). Graver’s reading of Ep. 92 against the Peripatetic Doxography “C”[5] uncovers how Seneca creates an opponent informed by Peripatetic ethics and how Seneca can hone his Stoic positions on virtue and psychic tripartition against that opponent’s views. Seneca takes Peripatetic claims seriously and is eager to reevaluate them in his works.
The penultimate section of this volume features strong pieces on Seneca’s conception of emotions, including the exceptional essay, “The Weeping Wise: Stoic and Epicurean Consolations in Seneca’s 99th Letter.” Interest in Seneca’s strategies of consolation and general therapeutic methods is on the rise,[6] and this close reading of Ep. 99 reflects not only Seneca’s ability to tailor a message for his addressee but also the way opposing philosophical schools approached consolation. Graver points out that sometimes the Stoic sage could honorably weep when remembering the good deeds and conversations of a friend who has passed away, but that Metrodorus’ strategy of “compensating for a mental pain with a corporeal pleasure” is problematic (173).
The final section of the work concentrates on Seneca’s idea of the textual self. The opening piece, “The Challenge of the Phaedrus: Therapeutic Writing and the Letters on Ethics,” was heavily dog-eared by the time I completed it. In this essay, Graver concentrates on the way that Seneca manipulates and models the readers of the Epistulae Morales to help them react emotionally to the letters. Seneca may recognize some of the concerns that Socrates voiced in Phaedrus about the spoken vs. the written word, but he firmly believes, like Lucretius, that reading can be a “transformative experience” (198). While the sequential nature of his letters and the relative brevity especially of the early letters, helps to make them seem individualized and “one half of a dialogue,”[7] Seneca also stresses the need for a certain type of reader who can make moral progress. As Graver states, “Guided by his rhetorical training, his experience of the literary tradition, and the nature of his therapeutic project, he develops a habit of modeling in his own person the kind of response to a text that he wants his own readers to have: feelings of excitement at the thought of acquiring the virtues, eagerness to face adversity with courage, affection for the writer as a philosophical friend” (220). This essay does much to advance Graver’s overarching thesis about Seneca’s Letters on Ethics as an effective and novel genre that can inspire the reader to transcend mere knowledge and lead to virtuous action.[8]
Additional essays give detailed coverage of De Beneficiis and De Ira, as well as topics such as Senecan wit and humor and his representation of Maecenas. In looking over the essays as a whole, I am struck by the wide variety of interests and themes that Graver has tackled over the last three decades. Her observations and analysis are always clear and sharp, and I felt that I gained a further appreciation of the nuances of Seneca’s moral psychology and Stoic sympathies in reading these pieces. It was also interesting to observe how, for example, a mention of gaudium in an early essay resonates in later pieces, or how in certain essays Graver brings her encyclopedic knowledge of broader Greek and Roman philosophy to bear. One minor reservation I felt, however, is that a number of these chapters do not really constitute a literary reading of Seneca or even a strong analysis of the literary features of his corpus. Her pieces on Epicureanism in Seneca or “Action and Emotion” are primarily philosophical arguments with attention paid to Seneca’s ethical theory rather than, for instance, the specifics of Latin terminology, imagery, figurative language, or allusions. I believe there is still much to be done with the literary, rhetorical, and even poetic texture of Seneca’s philosophical works,[9] and books like Graver’s encourage us to return to our beat-up Oxford Classical Texts of Seneca and begin rereading them: ita fac, mi Lucili: vindica te tibi (Ep. 1.1).
Notes
[1] One chapter is previously unpublished, but the others have all appeared before in journals and edited volumes– the earliest from 1998 and the most recent from 2021.
[2] The mention of studia and self-creation puts one in mind of K. Volk’s recent The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar (Princeton, 2021; reviewed here) and Cicero’s philosophical self-creation through his studia. It must be said, however, that Seneca often downplays potential Ciceronian influence on his own philosophical thought.
[3] While Graver concludes her introduction with a non liquet about the authorship of Seneca’s tragedies, it is intriguing that many of the qualities she identifies as part of Seneca’s written philosophical persona are paralleled by protagonists in the tragedies, including the conception of ingenium. Note Seneca’s self-conscious Medea: Medea nunc sum, crevit ingenium malis (Med. 910, cf. Oed. 947), and Graver’s own definition of ingenium as “a kind of self … the potential of the written artifact to perpetuate not only one’s name and influence but even one’s very identity” (282).
[4] Graver herself in Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago, 2007; reviewed here) helped scholars see Seneca’s orthodoxy, but see also J. Rist’s “Seneca and Stoic Orthodoxy” (ANRW 2.36.3: 1993-2012, 1989) and J. Wildberger’s monumental Seneca und die Stoa: der Platz des Menschen in der Welt, 2 vols. (Berlin, 2006).
[5] Stobaeus 2.7, pp. 116-30 Wachsmuth. Its authorship is usually attributed to Arius Didymus.
[6] See F. Tutrone’s recent Healing Grief: a Commentary on Seneca’s Consolato ad Marciam (Berlin, 2022; reviewed here) and essays such as J.-C. Courtil “Les remedia doloris chez Sénèque: exercices spirituels contre la douleur physique dans le stoïcisme et l’épicurisme” (Vita Latina 203 [2023]: 42-59) and, more generally, A. Setaioli’s chapter in Damschen and Heil (eds.) Brill’s Companion to Seneca entitled “Philosophy as Therapy, Self-Transformation, and ‘Lebensform’” (Leiden, 2014: 239-256; reviewed here).
[7] As Demetrius, On Style 223 claims is ideal for a letter.
[8] Cf. Ep. 20.2: “Philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak.”
[9] Recent commentaries such Soldo’s Seneca, Epistulae Morales Book 2 (Oxford, 2021; reviewed here) and Edwards’s Seneca: Selected Letters (Cambridge, 2019) do much to help the reader appreciate these elements.