For a couple of weeks, while I was preparing this review, Russo’s book sat openly on my desk and almost everybody who passed through my office and noticed the title commented on it: “Flattery and Seneca – that makes sense!” Indeed it does. But this repeated reaction also showed the kind of expectation many people may have of flattery and Seneca – namely that they belong together and Seneca is just that: a flatterer. Martina Russo does not deny that he was one, nor does she try to convince the reader otherwise; instead, she shows us how to reconsider the framework and let go of the familiar moralising viewpoint. Flattery – and this is a fresh and insightful perspective – was a necessary strategy of communication and survival in Imperial times and at the Imperial court. People were compelled to flatter, using the only weapon they had against the powerful (p. 9), while on the other hand, flattery was also a mechanism for rulers to validate their power, since a tyrant seeks blatant praise, not signs of real approbation (p. 228). The topic of this book is the discourse of flattery as exemplified and explained in Seneca’s work; that is, the author seeks to show us how Seneca, an experienced practitioner and a theorist of flattery, performs, uses, discusses, and also theorises flattery.
Before I describe the book in greater detail, I will comment briefly on Russo’s theoretical approach and the presuppositions of her readings. Central to Russo’s analysis of flattery is the concept of doublespeak (as laid out by Shadi Bartsch, 1994). In a situation where free speech is impossible and an unequal distribution of power ensures that those in subordinate positions do what is expected of them and perform their official role, flattery becomes a strategy to avoid collision with those in power, especially the emperor. It may even become an alternative method of giving one’s authentic opinion or voicing criticism in a covert manner without visibly deviating from the official code of conduct or “public transcript” (as opposed to a “hidden transcript”, terms adopted from political theory, p. 7). This is where doublespeak comes into play: two messages or two levels of meaning may coexist and convey different messages to different audiences, meeting different expectations at the same time. This approach to flattery certainly fits Seneca. However, it also presupposes an author who deliberately places double meanings in the text to express their opinion while reducing personal danger. This emphasis on the author and his intentions is constantly present (and openly communicated) in Russo’s analyses: she attempts to trace Seneca’s views and intentions and draws clear conclusions about his situation, purposes, and aims. Indeed, Russo organises her book in the chronological order of Seneca’s writings and uses his biography and personal relationship to power to sketch a kind of development in his usage and criticism of flattery. Nevertheless, biographical interpretations have certain limitations and authorial intention remains a difficult concept for good reasons.
Russo combines her emphasis on the author’s life and intentions with a quite specific attitude on the side of the reader (that is: Seneca’s contemporary readers) which she explains by the social and political circumstances: “Suspicion and paranoia seem to be the unavoidable result of this [i.e. the Imperial] political environment” (p.8). Accordingly, Russo assumes, ancient readers at the Imperial court were constantly on the lookout for underlying and well-hidden critical statements and meanings. She derives this interpretive approach from the “hermeneutics of suspicion” and “paranoid reading” as laid out by Paul Ricoeur and Rita Felski and by Eve Kosofski Sedgwick, respectively (p. 8): according to them, underneath what is said openly always lies a deeper meaning which must be unearthed and brought to the surface. Russo transfers this approach (which was originally developed with regard to explicitly modern readers) to ancient readers or listeners, but she also combines it with the idea of a doublespeaking author. By doing so, she noticeably shifts the focus of the hermeneutics of suspicion because they do not rely on such a strong author figure (usually, in this theoretical approach, it is not assumed that the author is aware of the hidden meanings that are to be brought to light). This combination looks like a perfect complement – an author who intentionally incorporates ambiguous statements and hidden criticism into his writings and an ever-suspicious reader who actively searches for what is hidden and concealed in a text –, but on closer inspection, the two factors appear to reinforce each other and so, in a kind of automatism, to lead in only one direction: the more flattery is involved in Seneca’s writings, the more criticism must be suspected behind it. Sometimes, Russo seemed to me to be projecting her own reading of Seneca’s texts onto the way his contemporary readers read them; she openly admits that her own interpretation is a “deep reading” that is intended to uncover hidden and implied criticism.
These are very specific assumptions about the author and the reader with which Senecan flattery is approached. Not all of them are cogent and not everybody will agree with them; however, it must be admitted that Russo’s approach is consistent in itself and works out in the argumentation of the book. So even if a reader is sceptical (maybe suspicious even) about these assumptions, it is worth going along with them for a while.
The book is well-organised and covers an extensive selection of Seneca’s works as it leads from Seneca’s personal practice of flattery in the Dialogues, especially Ad Polybium and De Clementia, via historical examples of flattery (from De Ira) to a final theorization of adulatio in the Epistulae Morales and the Naturales Quaestiones; there are also occasional glances at De Beneficiis and the tragedies. Since flattery is conceived of not as a moral but as a political issue shaped by asymmetric power relations, the analysis of the texts not only contains stimulating interpretations of particular passages but also offers insightful observations on social transformations and the change in values and moral ideas that are affected by matters of power from the Republican to the Imperial period. These ideas include – as is to be expected – adulatio, which is associated with servitude and the “lowest stratum of society” in Terence but starts concerning everybody with the arrival of the princeps (p. 3–4). Another intriguing example is fides, which, as Russo shows, changes from describing a concept of sincerity between equals to signifying the bonds between powerful and subordinate people, i.e., “a relationship centred on profit, interest, and personal advantage” (p. 224).
The first three chapters are devoted to Ad Polybium, probably the most notorious example of Senecan flattery. Russo explains (chapter 1) how Seneca flatters Polybius by establishing similarities between himself and his addressee and by simultaneously upgrading the freedman through this comparison. She here identifies important aspects of flattery, such as dissimulating one’s true feelings and putting on the mask required by the “public transcript.” Russo explains Seneca’s choice of addressee by Polybius’ literary studies, a kind of intellectual pursuit which mattered at the Imperial court. This appraisal of Polybius, Russo shows, also contains veiled criticism of the class of freedmen in general. The most important flattery performed in Ad Polybium, however, is directed at Claudius himself in the prosopopoeia at the end of the consolatio: Russo rejects all usual suggestions of clumsy flattery or open irony in the description of Claudius’ memoria and facundia (chapter 3) and proposes that these attributions are meant sincerely and that the veiled criticism lies somewhere else: in how facundia is used by Claudius and what his memoria tenacissima holds on to.
Chapter 4 and 5 turn from Seneca’s practice of flattery to his discussion of historical examples. Chapter 4 is devoted to De Ira, where the narration of examples from the distant past invites comparison to the (bad) examples at the contemporary court. These examples are not, however, means for emulation, though Seneca does not condemn these people, either. Rather, he appears to be interested in the mechanism of social control (p. 118): since Roman emperors love to hear even insincere flattery and courtiers oblige from fear, adulation and dissimulation are among the few means to cope with power. That way, the exempla can even be read as apologies for Seneca’s personal conduct. Chapter 5 explores behavior that is the opposite of flattery and dissimulation: the example of Iunius Canus in De Tranquillitate Animi expounds simplicitas, i.e., “living without putting on a different face” (p. 133). This example looks like a thought experiment: Iunius Canus is portrayed as if he were a Stoic sage facing a tyrant, but in the end, the example illustrates that this is an ideal only few can afford, not a practical or feasible way of behaviour.
Chapter 6 is on De Clementia and Seneca’s rhetorical strategies for approaching young Nero, an example of practice as in Ad Polybium, albeit with a different starting point: Seneca is not in exile anymore, craving for return, but much closer to the emperor and as his tutor even in a (however precarious) position of authority. While the praise of the young emperor is open and obvious, the underlying aim of the treatise is didactical, and in this regard, the chapter describes a somewhat different situation than in ad Polybium because what is veiled behind the praise is a whole hidden agenda, not merely a different underlying meaning or a critical statement: Seneca’s project is “to provide an ethical framework and coalesce the philosophical side with the political framework by considering political virtue – clementia – in terms of philosophical virtue” (p. 136). Ultimately, however, Seneca failed because he could not implement clementia in Nero the way he intended.
Working through Seneca’s writings chronologically (as far as possible) enables Russo to map Seneca’s approach to flattery onto his biographical situation. Towards the end of his career and life, she argues, while his relationship with the powerful grew more distant, Seneca seems to have felt the need to turn to theory and discuss the relationship between Stoic philosopher and flattery. In line with this, the last two chapters are more explicitly concerned with a theory of flattery: chapter 7, on the Epistulae Morales, sets out to sketch a fragmentary theory of flattery which assembles various details and includes such elements as a comparison between flatterer and amicus (epist. 45 and 77), a warning against flattery’s “alluring voices” (epist. 123 and 59), and an account of the similarities between flattery and mocking (epist. 27). Even though these are valid points in themselves, Russo does not show how they work together or whether and how they contribute to a coherent theory of flattery – tellingly chapter 7 is also the only one without a conclusion of its own.
Chapter 8, focuses on another fascinating test case of flattery, the praefatio of NQ 4, where Lucilius is criticised for (unsuccessfully) flattering Seneca’s brother Gallio. This discussion illuminates many facets of the relationship between a flatterer and a sapiens (or proficiens) within a wider framework, not focusing on the specific situation but thinking about flattery with regard to nature and ars. The flatterer is compared to a gladiator and an amator as Gallio and Lucilius are compared in their roles as adulatus and adulator; all of this shows different strategies of flattery and leads to the conclusion that adulation is an ars which requires elaboration and practice. The sage and the flatterer are both artifices but have different goals: the former works on “improving himself”, the latter “on ‘improving’ others to improve his socio-economic status” (p. 226). In this wider scope, Russo demonstrates that Seneca’s discussion of flattery is not without contradictions, as the philosophical ideal that condemns flattery collides with the practical and pragmatic needs Seneca must know from personal experience. He cannot solve the moral conflict and remains unable to find a balance between slavishness and striving for freedom (p. 229).
To sum up, this is a well-written and fascinating book that offers a fresh perspective on a topic many of us have an opinion about: how to approach and conceive of flattery in Seneca not from a moralising viewpoint but with a suspicious eye on strategies of communication, on doublespeak, on social positions, and on the distribution of power. The book is worth consulting not only on matters of flattery, but also for Russo’s many interesting and stimulating interpretations of individual passages from a wide range of texts.