This book with selections from Seneca, translated with facing Latin text and embedded in a running exposition, belongs to a series that “presents the timeless and timely ideas of classical thinkers in lively new translations. Enlightening and entertaining, these books make the practical wisdom of the ancient world accessible for modern life,” according to the press’s website.[1] Robert Kaster fulfills this purpose with great skill, drawing on his expertise as a scholar of social emotions, as editor of Seneca’s De beneficiis and De clementia,[2] and as translator of De ira and De clementia.
The topic, fairness, is a wise choice. The series already contains volumes on De ira and De beneficiis. Discussing social virtue more generally, Kaster can still draw on these works he knows so well but take a new perspective and add passages from all of Seneca’s philosophica. Fairness is a matter of justice, but interestingly that word occurs only thrice as part of a translation and never in Kaster’s own comments.[3] In this way he avoids confusion of the political concept with the individual trait of a just person, who does the morally “right thing.” Avoiding an explicit discussion of justice also serves the series’ emphasis on practice. The question is not what the right thing is, but how to do it, how we can treat each other fairly in their everyday life (p. x). What is fair derives from humans’ “primal … sense of fairness” (p. vii), according to Kaster, and he identifies a similar “sense” in Seneca’s psychology (pp. x-xi).[4]
The selections are well chosen and the thematic arrangement effective in conveying Seneca’s particular outlook. Kaster begins with magnanimity as the basis for social virtue, which he explains through its modern counterpart small-mindedness, which is selfish and self-centered, but—unlike magnanimity—not self-contained. Passages from the Epistles illustrate what “Striving for magnanimity” (ch. 1) means and why it is important.[5] The next two chapters address further necessary conditions for fair dealings with others. Controlling their emotions by rational evaluation of indifferent things as indifferent, the magnanimous keep their calm and are not carried away by what mesmerizes the small-minded crowd.[6] While striving for greatness, readers must also “judge [themselves] fairly” (ch. 3) and “moderate [their] sense of entitlement” (p. 103) as concerns both material comfort and other people’s deference.[7] While this chapter highlights the fact that the reader is one among many in a natural community, the next chapter “Doing right by others” (pp. 142-191)[8] introduces sociability as a cosmic feature and thus greatness of mind as god-like generosity of utmost intrinsic value. The lofty ideal has a flip-side: because “just about all of us, just about every day, betray our natural capacities” (p. 147) for magnanimity, we must “cut” our fellow humans “some slack” (p. 149), i.e. recognize and tolerate such failure in others. The right measure of this “slack” is calibrated in the last chapter on “Being merciful” with excerpts from De clementia.[9]
Kaster creates a meaningful and original tapestry of Senecan thought around the problem of inter-human conflict, an optimistic exhortation to believe in and act on one’s natural sense of belonging: that we are all worth something and deserve to be respected; that being kind to each other is our nature and good for us. Beyond what is required by the genre of the series, Kaster explicitly endorses what he quotes (pp. 43, 165). I conclude that he meant his book as serious advice, not a tongue-in-cheek attempt to make Latin literature palatable to a modern audience by casting it in the mold of a self-help guide. Kaster acknowledges that De clementia “considers the subject from the point of view of an autocrat with absolute power of life and death” (p. 195) and is thus only indirectly applicable to us ordinary folk. But the same is true of all of Seneca’s writings. As magistrates and enslavers, Seneca and his Roman audience had the power to kill or torture and generally were able to do harm at a scale we, luckily, no longer have. When Seneca writes about generosity, it is as if someone like Bill Gates were to address his fellow one-percent. Is it really possible to take what is worthwhile and disregard what is different, removing by omission or translation, e.g., the misogyny and slavery that pervades Seneca’s prose?[10] Or must the message, the whole system of thought change with the people it is applied to? Maybe it would be rational for a disenfranchised person to cultivate, not “moderate”, their “sense of entitlement” (p. 103)? Whatever the answer, by giving the impression that Seneca writes for you and me, Kaster (and the series) makes it hard for the non-expert reader to even raise the issue.
As a translator, Kaster’s declared aim was to “be faithful to the Latin texts” and write “clear and idiomatic” English (p. xvii). This is an understatement. His translations are precise, stylistically appealing, and incredibly clever in reproducing the readability and affective impact of the original—a model to emulate. He allows himself the freedom to give Seneca an English voice that speaks to modern readers, as in this striking case:[11]
Tranq. 2.6, p. 51: hi qui levitate vexantur ac taedio adsiduaque mutatione propositi, quibus semper magis placet quod reliquerunt …—“the feckless, troubled souls who constantly change their goals out of boredom, only to find that they prefer what they abandoned …”
Comparison with other translations illustrates some of the secrets of his art.
Brev. vit. 2.2 Hic [sc. animus], si umquam respirare illi et recedere in se vacaverit, o quam sibi ipse verum tortus a se fatebitur …
Ker:[12] If this thing, the mind, is ever given the time to take a breath and withdraw into itself, see how it will torture itself and confess to itself the truth …
Kaster (p. 77): If ever the mind is free to catch its breath and rely on its own resources, how it will rack itself and confess the truth …
Kaster interprets technical expressions (“rely on its own resources”), omits pronouns (hic, sibi), and chooses English words, often a monosyllable, that tend to evoke the key connotation of the Latin more strongly (“catch”, “rack”). Omission of a pronoun to good effect occurs also, e.g., on p. 35: Ep. 44.2 Nec reicit quemquam philosophia nec eligit—“Philosophy neither rejects nor selects.” Further examples of effective word choice are Tranq. 12.3 inqietam inertiam—“fidgety indolence” (p. 63) or the translation of Ep. 31.2, p. 73: the voice of the Sirens was “alluring, not yet all-pervasive” (blanda, non tamen publica). In Ep. 73.15 the gods “open the door” (admittunt).
Another technique is inverted expression of agency, changing the literal meaning but rendering the sense:
Ep. 50.7, p. 36f.: ad neminem ante bona mens venit quam mala—“one comes to have a good mind only after having a bad one.”
In this example Kaster follows the inversion in Graver and Long, improving it further:
Ep. 104.29 virum fortem posse invita fortuna vivere, invita mori.
Graver and Long: “that a brave man can live and die in defiance of fortune.”
Kaster (p. 27): “that the brave can spite fortune by living and by dying.”
Kaster retains the effect of the anaphora, formally with the repetition of “by + gerund” (which invites us to stress the “and” in the middle) and semantically with the expressive verb “spite” that personifies fortune more clearly, thus again enhancing the antagonism between the vir fortis and invita fortuna. Another technique he employs here and frequently elsewhere is reordering sense units to take account of the fact that in English the middle position is the strongest:
- Tranq. 12.3, p. 63: nec quae destinaverunt agunt sed in quae incucurrerunt—”and do what comes their way, not what they had in mind” (with inversion of agency as well);
- Ben. 6.3.2, p. 119: Omnia ista quae vos tumidos et supra humana elatos oblivisci cogunt vestrae fragilitatis …—“All the things that make people forget their fragility, puffed up and exalted beyond their mere humanity …”
For translations as bold as these, interpretive choices had to be made. The great majority are felicitous, some plausible or arguable. Only rarely would I disagree:
- Ep. 115.6, p. 20: impedimentis, not “impediments” but “luggage,” i.e. no obstacle but unnecessary weight (compare Ep. 25.4 sarcinas contrahe).
- Ep. 104.33, p. 29: who despises a nota despises public humiliation, not “distinction.”
- Ep. 50.3, p. 59: The blind do not “need,” they actively “seek” a guide (quaerunt). “I haven’t yet settled on a stable sort of life” is not an explanation for irascibility but another fault to be explained by the speaker’s youth.
- Sinum expandere at Ep. 74.6 serves to catch gifts, not to “bare” one’s “breast” to missiles hurled by fortune (p. 83).
- Const. 2.4, p. 111: quae non sentias perpeti—“to be impervious to what you must bear.” Here it is hard to get the idea that the person never had a painful feeling to begin with.
The volume is carefully edited, and I have noticed only one misprint (p. 49: “of that sort of”). However, sometimes what is omitted in the translation is printed in Latin (e.g., p. 2: aliena seposuit; p. 90: quae conatus eius irritus efficit), and in the latter case the omission is not marked in the English translation either.
Explanations are overall accurate and helpful, well geared to the needs of the intended audience. However, the sage will not “experience ‘caution'” (p. 47) toward a dangerous dog since, as an indifferent, it is not the rational object of an ekklisis but rather “a four-legged manifestation of divine providence” (p. 49).
Notes
[1] Other volumes of the series reviewed for BMCR are Philip Freeman’s Cicero. How to think about God, Johanna Hanink’s Thucydides. How to Think about War, and Jeffrey Beneker’s Plutarch. How to be a leader.
[2] His OCT edition appeared in 2022, as did his Studies in the text of Seneca’s De beneficiis.
[3] Including the Stoic definition of justice might have been useful. Kaster translates both iustitia and aequitas with “fairness.”
[4] It is not clear what exactly that may be. Kaster points to Stoic social oikeiōsis (pp. 99-100, 145-146), but presents it as the outcome of a rational, albeit natural, process of widening the range of concern from self to others. What people actually believe appears as false: ubiquitous folly leads to diastrophē and requires great-minded forgiveness (33-34; 49-51; 67-79; 147).
[5] Ep. 39.3; 87.3; 72.7-8; 115.3-6; 104.27-30, 33-34; 21.7-8; 44.1-2; 50.5, 7-8; 71.32, 36. Again, the Stoic definition of megalopsychia is not given. Is Seneca’s magnitudo animi something different from the disposition that “makes a person stand above what is common to sages and fools” (Stob. 2.7.5b2, p. 61 Wachsmuth = SVF 3.264; see also SVF 3.95 and 265) and consists in „the contempt of human things“ (Cic. Off. 1.14 = Panaetius fr. 55 Alesse: humanarum rerum contemptio)?
[6] “Being Calm, Thinking Clearly” (40-93) with Ira 1.21.4; Tranq. 2.6-8, 10-11; Ep. 50.2-4; Tranq. 12.1-5, 13.2-3; Ep. 123.6-9; Ep. 31.2-3; Vit. Beat. 1.3-4, 2.2-4; Ep. 74.1-2, 4, 6-10; Ep. 85.33-34.
[7] Pp. 94-142 with Ira 2.31.3; Ep. 59.11-13; Const. 10.3-4; Ep. 47.19-20; Ep. 22.9-10, 12; Ben. 6.3.1-4; Const. 16.3-4; Ep. 28.9-10; Ep. 68.6-8; Ep. 83.2; Ira 3.36.2-37.5.
[8] Featuring Ep. 92.30; Tranq. 15.2-3; Clem. 1.6.1-3, 17.1; Ben. 2.28.2; Ira 3.12.2-3; Ben. 6.9.1-2; Ep. 81.25; Ira 2.31.7; Vit. Beat. 20.3, 5; Ep. 48.2-3; Ben. 4.22.1-2; Ben. 2.17.3-4; Ep. 113.31-32; Clem. 1.7.1-2; Ben. 1.1.9; Ben. 4.25.1-3; Ben. 7.31.2, 4-5; Ep. 31.10-11; Ep. 73.14-15.
[9] 1.5.2; 1.22.1-2, 23.2; 2.3.1-2, 4.1, 3; 2.4.4-5.4, 6.1-3, 7.1-3; 1.9.2-12; 1.14.1, 3, 15.2-7; in the introduction also Ira 2.31.6.
[10] Where Seneca speaks of men, Kaster uses gender-neutral expressions (pp. xvii-xviii). Mention of slaves are either omitted (Ben. 6.1.4, p. 121) or obfuscated by a synonym (“porter”, p. 189).
[11] Kaster reuses his published translations of De ira and De clementia (p. 252 n. 4). Therefore, the examples that follow are from other works.
[12] In Elaine Fantham et al. (trans.). Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Hardship and happiness. Chicago / London: University of Chicago Press, 2014.