John Henderson - Morals and Villas in Seneca's Letters - Places To Dwell-Cambridge University Press (2004) PDF

MORALS AND VILLAS IN
S E N E C A’ S LET TERS
John Henderson explores three letters of Seneca describing visits to

Roman villas, and surveys the whole collection to show how these villas
work as designs for contrasting lives. Seneca’s own place is ageing dras-
tically; a recent Epicurean’s paradise is a seductive oasis away from the
dangers of Nero’s Rome; once a fortress of the dour Rome of yesteryear,
the legendary Scipio’s lair is now a shrine to the old morality: Seneca
revels in its primitive bath-house, dark and cramped, before exploring
the garden with the present owner. Seneca brings the philosophical
epistle to Latin literature, creating models for moralizing which feature
self-criticism, parody, and reanimated myth. Virgil and Horace come
in for rough handling, as the Latin moralist wrests ethical practice and
writing away from Greek gurus and texts, and into critical thinking
within a Roman context. Here is powerful teaching on metaphor and
translation, on self-transformation and cultural tradition.
j o h n h e n d e r s o n is Reader in Latin Literature at the University

of Cambridge and Fellow of King’s College. His recent books include:
Pliny’s Statue: the Letters, Self-Portraiture & Classical Art (2002), Telling
Tales on Caesar: Roman Stories from Phaedrus (2001), Writing down
Rome: Comedy, Satire, and Other Offences (1999), and Fighting for Rome:
Poets and Caesars, History and Civil War (1998). Aesop’s Human Zoo:
Roman Stories about Our Bodies and HORTVS: the Roman Book of
Gardening are both forthcoming (2004).
MORALS AND VILLAS
I N S E N E C A ’ S LET TERS
Places to Dwell
JO H N H E N D E R S O N
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© John Henderson, 2004
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It’s down the end of lonely street . . .
(Axton, Presley, Durden (1956)
‘Heartbreak Hotel’, Multimood Music)
Contents
Acknowledgements page ix
Introduction 1
1 Twelve steps to haven
Book 1: Letters 1–11 6
2 Dropping in (it) at s e n e c a ’s
With text and translation of Letter 12 19
3 You can get used to anything
Books 2–10 28
4 The long and winding mode
Books 14–20+ 40
5 Booking us in
Letters 84–88 46
6 Now and then; here and there: at s c i p i o ’s
Text and translation of Letter 86 53
7 Bound for vat i a ’s
Text and translation of Letter 55 62
8 Knocking the self: genuflexion, villafication, vat i a ’s
Letter 55 67
9 The world of the bath-house: s c i p i o ’s
Scipio in Letter 86
with: Horace’s common scents 93
10 The appliance of science: s c i p i o ’s
Aegialus in Letter 86
with: Virgil’s funny farm 119
vii
viii Contents
11 Shafts of light: transplantation and transfiguration
Metaphorics and visuality in Letter 86 139
12 Still olive, still s c i p i o ’s
Digging Scipio in Letter 86 with: the dirt on Seneca 158
Appendix 1 Here to stay
Places and persons named in the
Epistulae Morales 171
Appendix 2 From: Letter 86 To: A Dying Light in Corduba 175
Bibliography 177
Indexes 184
Passages discussed 184
General index 187
Acknowledgements
h ac i e n d e r s o n to f r i e n d s : g re e t i n g s
Dear Landlord,
This loco study contains home truths for me (13k p 3-y 7-g 04-68k rd).
I really must thank my favourite hosts for epistolary stopovers at Ann
Arbor, Columbia NY, Columbia Mizzou, NYU, OSU, Oxford CCC,
Washu Missouri, and Yale, and, especially, Sue Alcock, John Cherry, Jas
Elsner, Kirk Freudenburg, Holly Haynes, Dan Hooley, Cathy Keane, John
Marincola, Susanna Morton Braund, Jim Porter, Gareth Williams (places
and people); and thank, too, two caring readers for Cambridge University
Press (anonymous and utopian), my copy-editor, Jan Chapman (eagle-eyed
and unflinching), and my new editor, Michael Sharp (neatly named and
well placed). The extracts in Appendix 2 come from ‘A Dying Light in
Corduba’ by Lindsey Davis, published by Century. Reprinted by permis-
sion of The Random House Group Ltd.
Fare well.
ix
Introduction
Dear Reader,
Seneca’s Moral Epistles are no easy ride, no homogeneous concatenation,
or sequence. Charm; irritation. Tormenting and tormented, they are a tease
of technical quaestiunculae pursued to the death, amid casual notelets of
worthy chat and ephemeresque self-caricature. They make generalizations,
and they make them odious.1
Readers will first be acclimatized to a particular style of epistolarity, then
weaned from it; teased with sudden signals of a reprise, only to find the
repeat subjected to critical re-examination, and on occasion to outright
theorization, deferred. Seneca piles in; checks us out. This is critical writing,
it puts itself under pressure.
The line of thought must cartwheel and career onwards, dogged and
aleatory by turns; over before anything can settle, or unfurling exponentially
into an ocean of fulmination. Catch as catch can.
Collaterally, these intense bursts of philosophical fire are concentrated on
the one single addressee, and fellow-disciple: enlightening Lucilius; more or
less lucid, looking to mature towards the recessive goal, virtuous integrity.
Seneca the ultimate senex cares for committed readers; out to cure them,
more suo, from human cares with cold-turkey treatment. Intimidating, in-
sinuating, everything in these Moral Letters is going to hurt bad. Bad enough
to warrant Seneca’s emergency pack of never-ending salvation.2
Queror, litigo, irascor: ‘I grouch, sue, rage’ (Epp. 60.1). Locked in a lift
with a booby! This genial ghoul implants annoyingly wry, recalcitrant,
habits. It hurts him, too, this chummy ‘Teacher-and/as-Pupil’.3
1 For authoritative protreptic to rate the Letters’ epistolarity, see Wilson (1987) and (2001). Edwards
(1997) presents a fine aggiornamento on the Epistles: her slogans ‘self-scrutiny’ and ‘self-transformation’
govern this essay. Schönegg (1999) brilliantly pioneers engaged investment with the Letters ‘als
philosophisches Kunstwerk’. For Seneca’s complete image-repertoire: Armisen-Marchetti (1989).
2 See Edwards (1999) for the logic and dynamics of Seneca’s teaching with torture.
3 See Henderson (1999) 228–48, on Persius’ Satires.
1
2 Morals and Villas in Seneca’s Letters
Perverse as the author [could wish], my enquiry homes in on the strictly
rationed moments when the Epistulae Morales let us glimpse the twinned
lives of the correspondents within a spatialized environment. On more or
less dry land, the main textual loci/loca are just three in number.
In general, all modes of specification in the Letters are endangered species:
in particular, the collection only very rarely partakes in descriptive location.
Reading our triad of textual loci will be three special doses of vital immu-
nization against folly. As therapy, with these three homes, these theorems,
of Roman theory we can project for our selves a theatrical show house of
uncanny philosophical self-positioning.4
But forget hype. You just won’t find any more intelligent writing to
provoke intelligent reading anywhere.
Seneca’s signposts always point traffic away from his point of departure,
Rome, away from seething hordes of writhing hysteria in the ancient world’s
vastest ever conurbation; but his soothing words of writing tranquillizer
barely resort to showing us around his refuges, around oases in the epistolary
world’s meanest ever collocation. Three goes, in all. In fact, a start and
two real shots are all. Actually, a start, a zip past (a) folly, and one ideal
habit(u)ation, all told.
t h e to u r
In this book, we will first get ready for off:
Letters 1–11: chapter 1.
Then pop in and out of s e n e c a’s place [somewhere] ‘in suburbia’, once.
Just in time to catch himself out. Seneca the gardening expert, past ripe for
excruciation:
Letter 12: chapter 2.
True, a couple of ‘late’ letters are simply postmarked from s e n e c a’s
places. This had been the role of the out-of-town estate in Cicero’s corre-
spondence, where his numerous uillae, and others’, played the indispensable
part of ‘stopover’ (deuersorium) in the hectic round of a busy life. For epis-
tolary description of an estate we turn to Horace’s Sabinum, the fullest
appraisal coming in Epistles 1.16, where its land is offered up as hostage to
fortune, staking out a considered, polished-up, self-promotion for Horace
4 ‘Threeorhomes’: for exploration of the transferential and counter-transferential dynamics of ‘Advice
Literature’, see Henderson (1999). To sloganize, the Epistulae Morales inculcate a philosophical brand
of writerly ‘irreference’, persuasively drawing attention to the persuasive wiles of their own poetics –
screening their screen (cf. Kinzie (1986–7)).
Introduction 3
as a (relatively) right-minded Roman of culture. He trades it in to earn
the moral platform to take a severe look at his correspondent Quinctius’
reputation, and, getting into his manner, to challenge him on his right to
own it. Elsewhere in Horace’s œuvre, the ever-mounting series of fragmen-
tary glimpses of this selfsame estate builds it into a composite place for
many-faceted autoportraiture. Pliny’s epistolary inductions to his row of
mansions would take much much further the lead offered by Horace’s and
Seneca’s rare moments of epideixis. With the villa poetry of Statius, the
genre would truly take off in fully developed form.5
In the Epistulae Morales, once the visits to s e n e c a ’s, vat i a ’s, and
s c i p i o ’s are done, ‘addresses’ are attached to a couple more letters, and
that is all: a brace for s e n e c a, ‘at Nomentum’, and ‘at Alba’; and there is
a bare hon. mention of lu c i l i u s ’ place ‘at Ardea’:
Letters 104.1; 110.1; 123.1; 105.1: chapter 4.
But just twice we stop long enough to dwell on Roman ‘villas’ (‘farm-
house’ . . . ‘country estate’ . . . ‘out-of-town mansion’ . . . ‘manor’; cf. maneo,
‘I remain’):
(1) Once to leer and jeer at a palatial dump from the outside, ‘along the
bay from Cumae’, to shake up vat i a ’s:
Letter 55: chapters 3, 8 be your guide (and see 12).
Find text and translation on your way past at chapter 7.
(2) Once only to visit, make our selves a(t) home, and take an engrossed
look inside: ‘at Liternum, on the shore of Campania’, for immersion in
scipio’s:
Letter 86: Introduction to the neighbourhood featured in chapter 5, on
Letters 84–8.
Text and translation await your arrival at chapter 6.
Discussion of this prize property will check in at chapter 9, and out at
chapter 12.
The rest of the going first gets rough:
Chapter 11 must room with metaphor, and sleep-over metaprosaics.
Then flattens out:
Most of what can be known about nominal reality at vat i a ’s and s c i p i o ’s
is relegated, exiled, with some poetic myth-making, to a tight corner in
chapter 12.
5 An exception to prove Cicero’s rule: Ad Q. fratrem 3.1, on Marcus’ interference with Quintus’ Mani-
lianum. For Horace’s Sabinum: esp. Leach (1993). On Statius’ villa poetry: Newlands (2002) esp. 119–
53, 154–98, on Siluae 1.3, 2.2.
MORALS and VILLAS will, then, pick its way through the Letters’
figuring of metaphor and simile, working out from Seneca’s triple turn of
localized expatiation as models of moralization: introduction and induction,
extrapolation and education. They are here for us to see what we can get
out of them, teach-ourself-ethics:
r A flash into the hole in selfish Seneca’s head.
r The vista outside wan Vatia’s cowardly priest hole.
r The séance inside evergreen Scipio’s bracing bolthole.
Pilgrimage to this last single-minded, solitary, shakedown is the destina-
tion. Where we try out for size a legendary shrine to Roman mores. In all
three shots on location, imagery plumbs the depths to implant lessons in
morality topicalized through mimesis. These are interior designs for living.
o u t o n yo u r ow n
So much by way of itinerary, and programme. Now to imagine a nichette
for Morals and Villas in Senecan, epistolary, and classical (Latin) scholar-
ship. There’s no denying that the Epistulae Morales have yet to prosper in
modern literary scholarship in English.6 In France and Italy Seneca is still a
strong spiritual guide and counsellor, ‘next stop Augustine’.7 In Germany
he has not ceased to be a major intellect of Antiquity, a one-off master-
thinker.8 Our analytic philosophers mostly process him, not very rivet-
tingly so far, for his indispensable take on Stoicizing reason and Hellenistic
doctrine, though Roman Philosophy shows signs of reclaiming its proper
stature.9 Interest in the empire of Senecan prose has been recharged by
recent focus on the body, and on emotions – on self-fashioning ‘after
Foucault’.10
In general, epistolary writing in Latin (as well as in Greek)11 now enjoys
critical attention and appreciation, sparked off by Ovid’s letters from exile
and then his letters from abandoned heroines,12 and already featuring a
rush of critical revaluation for Cicero’s, and Pliny’s, Letters of civility.13
Morals and Villas aims to wring the dynamics of ‘the philosophical letter’
from the Epistulae Morales, while losing none of Seneca’s literariness – his
‘epistoliterarity’.14
6 See Wilson’s critical review (2001). 7 See esp. Armisen-Marchetti (1989); Maso (1999).
8 E.g. Hachmann (1995), and esp. Schönegg (1999). 9 Esp. Barnes (1997); cf. Inwood (1997).
10 See n. 1 above: Edwards (1999); Wilson (1997); Edwards (1997). 11 See esp. Rosenmeyer (2001).
12 E.g. Williams and Walker (1997); Spentzou (2003).
13 E.g. Hutchinson (1998); Beard (2002a); Henderson (2002a); Gibson and Morello (2003).
14 See pp. 29, 45, 91.
Introduction 5
‘My’ Seneca will be a writer, whose Latin style is inextricably bound up
in his Roman thinking, his Roman revision of post-Hellenistic reasoning.15
I shall underline from time to time that the writing of the Epistulae Morales
has more than enough ‘reality’ to satisfy anyone, for here superannuated
Seneca is indeed writing for his life – or (to get closer) for his death. Yes,
mortality will close down these Letters at any moment, if court politics
don’t suck him back in from retirement (and, as we know, exact more or
less foreseen suicide). With this pledge, the drama, the project, the praxis
huff and hustle after ‘Self Consciousness’ at every level of textuality. In
order to show how this full-scale ensemble of writing weaves together an
overall work of suasion and manipulation, I shall see if I can whizz the
whole corpus of Epistles past, in suitable clusters and the right bunches
(esp. in chapters 1, 3, 4): if the effect has an element of fast-forward ver-
tigo in it, this will deliver Senecan ‘shock therapy’; and, in retrospect,
the survey will prove to have prepared and pre-quelled the main business
ahead. Yet, as I see it, the several parts of the collection are designed to
interact, so that topics handled in separate compositions thicken, trou-
ble, and reconceptualize one another, and I shall therefore focus on the
letters that prop up my keystone, with readings strictly slanted toward
thematic responsion (chapter 5, less hectic, on Epp. 84–8), before finally
feeding in a run of frames for construal of the centrepiece (chapter 11,
applying Epp. 58, 59, 100). But the core of this book will feature ‘close read-
ing’ techniques of intense, even minute, interpretation, as those visits to
Roman homes fuse into a triptych that shows up Senecan epistolary po-
etics as an exquisite experience in verbal-conceptual artistry: I shall expose in
slo-mo each twist and turn of Epp. 12, 55, and especially 86 (chapters 6–12:
the translations are gauged to accentuate my take on the didaxis). ‘My’
Seneca wants moral philosophers (Seneca makes philosophes manqués of us
all) to take the scrupulous Self Criticism in exact rhetoric seriously.
NB There are no dates. Not one.
Translations are mine.
The symbol [. . .] will indicate a person- or place-name finessed
from Seneca’s text.
15 For the panorama, see Boys-Stones (2001).

chapter one
Twelve steps to haven

Book 1: Letters 1–11
The impressive (indelibly imprinting) first book shuffles twelve composi-

tions into a decisively disputatious, analytical mode.1 Referential moments
are shockingly rare, as names, locales, dates, and events are either repressed
or repeatedly, emphatically, anonymized.2 As we shall find, in fact this flight
of letters will terminate with its most graphic episode: a charmingly self-
satirizing ‘at home’ with a rueful Seneca. A dose of chagrin d’amour propre,
our first stopover, the shady uilla of Epp. 12, will model the moral topos in
which manors make manners make Man. Mimetic writing takes us inside
the owner to own up.
By contrast, the rest of those textual apostles will by then have loaded the
book in favour of principles, away from principals. Dicta, not data; eleven
to one. Disorientation of the reader is the first objective of the correction
programme. Scrubbing the interrogation clean of external coordinates is
part of a sensory-deprivation therapy which aims to reconfigure and redirect
the new recruit, inside, inside the mind, wherever morals live.
In the first twelve-session course, we shall find, just one vignette is re-
counted, apart from a[n unlocalized] confrontation between tyrant and
philosopher, which supplies extra ammunition in the real battle of wills,
between philosophers (Demetrius Poliorcetes and Stilbon, 9.18: Stilbon
besieged by Epicurus).
The solitary geographical referent of any sort named in the book features
in the sarcastic anecdote told on its last page, the first to involve a Roman –
a dead Roman, in fact, and one who played a dead unRoman while he still
1 Book 1 is presented as a book by Scarpat (1975). Hachmann (1995) 19–123 reads it as a cumula-
tively administered warm-up course preparing access to the full-blown cursus philosophicus to follow
(Epp. 13–29, ‘Die bona mens’; 31–65, ‘Die ratio als Führerin zur bona mens perfecta’). Maurach (1970)
reads Epp. 1–32 + 60–80 hard, and spiritedly, as suites.
2 With the exception of an analogy featuring Phidias’ sculpture (9.5), every proper noun in Letters 1–11
will be mentioned in this brief sketch. In this chapter, above all, you will need to bear in mind
that material placed within square brackets will indicate the occlusion of a reference. Demetrius
Poliorcetes’ intervention (9.18) will be considered at once: cf. Appendix 1, pp. 171–2.
6
Twelve steps: Book 1 7
lived (12.8). Here an eccentric stand-in legate [under Tiberius] ‘made s y r i a
his own by squatters’ rights’ (qui Syriam usu suam fecit), in a caricature of
Seneca’s interior rehabituation régime acted out in the de-moralized empire
[of the Caesars].
This drop of mockery is the vaccine in our homoeopathy and is in line
with a wholesale change of treatment for this last dose in Dr Seneca’s first
course: for external onomastication only (see chapter 2). Accordingly, this
understudy dropout from history sports the name Pacuuius – surrounded by
contaminating orgy, accompanied by unphilosophical chanting in Greek,
and choreographed for depraved pantomimic parody! Pacuvius meant to
appropriate for him self from society the right to determine what his life
meant, and what, if anything, it would mean as a memory in other lives
to come. He would ‘hold his own funeral on a regular basis’!3 Now Seneca
means to appropriate this mockery of social ritual into his own. We are
to make our lives mean what we mean them to mean, only ‘from good,
not bad consciousness’ (conscientia). As for Rome, forget it! Eliminate the
very thought! Write your own epitaph (script yourself, act your life, don’t
rehearse it . . .)!4
But let’s begin at the beginning.
letter 1
The stark ‘proem’ sets the trend by eliminating all proper nouns, as Time
decants into life/death, day/hours, tomorrow/today. The venerable Seneca
mood-sets, appropriates this as his principal topic,5 and culminates in a
[Hesiodic] maxim, teasingly attributed to ‘our ancestors’.6 Tartly closing
the piece with the proverbial last stare into ‘the bottom of the barrel’ (in
fundo = in imo). ‘Late thrift’ – ‘too late for thrift’ – stamps the collection with
the hallmark of the imminently ‘late’ Seneca’s look back at life’s mistakes
(sera parsimonia). Such a dignified entrée. So spare. [So Spartan.]7
3 Seneca is telling us how we live our (dead) lives. He, and we, are here to save us. Cf. strange friend
Bassus, ‘seemingly following his own funeral, and living his life as if he’d outlived himself and it’ (et
uiuere tamquam superstes sibi, 30.5).
4 See Tacitus, Annals 6.27. The name Pacuuius satirically leaves us with the taste of staginess, and
honour besmirched: it functions as catachresis for the great tragedian of the Republic, M. Pacuvius
(never named in the Epistles).
5 See Armisen-Marchetti (1995), esp. 552–3; Motto and Clark (1987); for the pointed signal to reflect
back on Epp. 1 at 62.1: Motto and Clark (1991b). For the developing explication of Time/Luxury
through the course of the Letters, see Hijmans (1976) 160–6.
6 See Scarpat (1975) 42.
7 On Epp. 1, see Andria (1982) 7–16; Henderson (2002a) 84–5.
letter 2
Letter 2 parallels with Place. Changing place – the unsettling instability of
travel. We are urged to ‘hang out with our (literary) selves’ (secum morari ∼
ingeniis immorari). Stay put in our reading-haunts and -habits, so the initial
slogan will swiftly unpack: locorum mutationibus (‘with multiple change of
places/passages’).8 For all that the topic is topography, not a single site is in
fact situated [for this ‘utopia’], and even the map of the library starts and
stops at just the one entry ‘e p i c u ru s’. This unStoic sage we shall, soon
enough, love to hate to love: for this is Stoic Seneca’s first bad habit, he
gibes, the mos in his morality, ‘transplanting himself’ into the enemy camp
as spy not turncoat (soleo enim . . . transire, 2.5).
Later we shall recall the details here, as Seneca underscores the motif of
food for thought in book consumption by demanding ‘good digestion’ of a
single chosen author (concoquas), and, in deploring readers who through-
put everything with full throttle (transmittunt), intones: ‘No slip grows
strong which is often transplanted, nothing is so gainful as to pay off in
transit’ (transfertur . . . in transitu, 3).9 Stigmatizing spatial displacement is
the core of the Stoic’s adamantine lifeplan, ‘We shall not be moved’, and
this karma is the nucleus of his incessant campaign of internal resistance to
Roman superpower, that swirl of the worldwide City in its fast-breeding
Cosmos: Route 1, the ‘Journey – within’.
The next two letters import incipient scenes from public life [in Rome.
But without landmarks, without cityscape; no personnel, no Caesars].
letter 3
Letter 3 has Seneca receiving Lucilius’ letter delivered by an unnamed de-
named, friend
——- [cut], but bucking at the warning (attached) not to blab
—– r r r r [censored] about Lucilius’ concerns, any more than Lucilius
to said
habitually does (non soleas). These cannot, then, be ‘f r i e n d s’, who must
practise total mutual disclosure. And the ‘g re e t i n g s’ that usher in this,
as every other, Roman letter, including the present text, must rate as in-
sincere as the formulaic ‘Heroes’ that Romans mouth indiscriminately
for election candidates, or the formula of ‘Sirs’ that we resort to when
their name eludes us . . . (3.1). Surely Seneca means us to ponder his own
8 This punceptry grounds further discursive play between reading (uolu-mina . . . euoluere) and living
(discurris . . . inquietaris . . . iactatio, etc.).
9 Add 2.5, transfuga. See Andria (1982) 19, 21–2, 24; cf. 50, 52 on 6.1, 6.4 (see below).
suppression of the data about these friends, as he weighs in to pressurize
Friendship, topicalized as the nitty-gritty business of epistolary communica-
tion. Mentioning, all told, the sainted teachings of Theophrastus, and wind-
ing up with a quotation he has read in Pomponius (one Pomponius or an-
other),10 about blind human moles. And, yes, these are the only coordinates
provided.
letter 4
Letter 4 directs Lucilius to keep on keeping on (Perseuera = ‘perfect mores’ =
‘push Stoic austerity to the logical conclusion’ = ‘“watchword” of Senecan
Letters’). A mind clothed in Philosophy’s purity and splendour. Greater
joy than when he put on the toga of Romanness for the coming-of-age
parade that officially certified him as duly transplanted into adulthood (in
forum deductio . . . transcripserit, 4.2).11 Here we are formally introduced
to the Senecan gimmick of the wind-up ‘Quote for the Day’ to sign off
a letter, with a second shot of Epicurus [cued, but unnamed].12 And (as
in Letters 2 and 7) shutdown comes with the self-reflexive watchword and
compositional tic of Roman satire, as Seneca memorably images excess –
‘threadbare toga . . . senile soldiery under canvas . . . shipwrecks hammered
onto foreign shores’ – before calling (for) ‘e n o u g h’ (sat, 4.11).
A gang of famous Romans with cruel ends did obtrude in Letter 4,
before Seneca ordered Lucilius and us to ‘Replay exempla of victims of
domestic coups’ – only to make us do his will, by withholding all exem-
plificatory names (4.7–8). We should think this flash of Dread through:
what would it be like for this material to occupy just an instant in our
consciousness? To spell it out, as I shall now risk doing, is on one side to
ruin the existential point but on the other to realize the thought, make it
real, and push us through Senecan Angst. It is a matter of momentum
within the moment. The ‘list of historical exempla’ was a prod at the
reader that was all the more pungent because intense but rare – sudden
bursts of names in rows; and all the odder because unusually oratorical for
letters.13
10 Pomponius Secundus, L. Pomponius of Bologna, or . . .? Senatorial courtier and penman, Comic
playwright, or . . .? Not Cicero’s best friend and perpetual correspondent . . . Lots in a name.
11 ‘Seneca preferisce transcribere al ciceroniano adscribere perché vuol mettere l’accento sul componente
trans-, che sottolinea cambiamento sostanziale, una conversione totale di vita; questo cambiamento
è ottenuto dalla filosofia intesa non come disciplina, ma come acquisito metodo di vita (= virtus); è
quella filosofia divenuta habitus animi’ (Scarpat (1975) 77–8).
12 See esp. Hachmann (1996).
13 Mayer (1991) esp. 153, 159, cf. Maso (1999) chapter 1; see Appendix 1, pp. 171–2.
Here, the ‘fear of death’ concretizes in [thoughts of]:
‘Pompey –
– Crassus –
– C. Caesar’
[. . . But no. Halt or I fire.
. . . Not that Gaius Caesar:
Dread instead his nominal caricature. Closer to home. Nearer the knuckling
under:]
‘C. Caesar [Caligula] –
– [Caligula’s] victim Lepidus –
– tribune Dexter –
– [Cassius] Chaerea,
. . . who were the agents of both their
. . . “deaths” [to equate tyrannous murder
. . . with its rival, heroic/futile tyrannicide].’
Feel how thought hops down the genealogy. Follow how one name
leads to another. Generating generational recapitulation and supple-
ment, substitution and displacement, as the Roman naming system dic-
tates it should and they should. Thinking in names, figuring out Roman
futility.14
When the tricolon aborts, political competition over the corpse of the
Republic yields to dynastic in-fighting for the throne of the Czar. The new
world’s locus of power is the palace, and this is in Seneca’s day the primal
scene for craven death-wish anxiety. This is what makes the second-string
cast of co-stars tumble up out of the well of paranoia: between them they
diagram a surreal scene of serial stabbing and stabbers stabbed now in-
grained into the Roman psyche as the customary shorthand for modern
normality
———– .
Two Caesars in one, plus a triumvirate of bit parts. Between their names
and their selves, they summarize a courtier’s phobia:
(1) Welcome:
‘Messrs. Charming –
– Right Hand (= Aue, = Well-omened, Righteous, Skilled) –
– Joy (= Vale, So long, On your way, Welcome).’
(2) Seneca’s relay, from Big Names to small fry, also acts out his whole
programme, writ small. Precisely. He writes small the Universe of Empire,
14 Henderson (1997a) 14–21, ‘Rome in the nomen: naming in Latin’.

degraded into write-off Mundanity. In its locus he inscribes the Cosmos of
Self-Rule, Spirituality.
Thus the First Triumvirate that originated imperial Roman History is
(syntactically) broken up before it is completed, (rhetorically) beggared by
the Caesars it hatched.15 The pivotal figure in this cosmology would have
been C. Iulius Caes –
[aposiopesis: cut.]
In place of Civil World War epics of decapitation in Egypt, death and
decapitation in Parthia, and multi-perforated assassination in the Forum,
we are menaced with the truly upsetting stuff of imperial (Julio-Claudian)
Roman History.
In this familiar territory of the present, Seneca’s bogeyman Emperor has
his hit-man eliminate a potential rival, and in a trice see what happens to
‘Rome’:
The pride of the Roman army (tribunus) is barbarized into Newspeak Latin for
(let’s say) a prototype of the ‘Waffen SS’ –
– [L. Aemilius] Lepidus [no longer automatically M. Lepidus the lieutenant of
the first C. Caesar, and later third-party in the Second Triumvirate] models for the
fate of all peers of the Republican aristocracy too close to the Augustus–Antony
machine, fed into the Caesar complex as the fall-guys whose destiny is to let down
their homonymy with their forefathers, ‘putting their own necks on the block’
(4.7)16 –
– Chaerea [another Cassius who killed another C. Caesar, need we remark?] is
demoted from hero to instrument as Caligula ‘puts his own head in the noose’
(4.7).
Of course the Letters are one long exercise in [unspoken] ‘fear of death’.
Seneca will meet his long-scripted Socratic death17 because he did not join
in the attempted rerun of Chaerea’s blow [for ? Liberty? ], when the ‘Piso
Conspiracy’ failed to rename ‘Nero’ as another exterminated Caesar. To
repeat, there are no dates in the Letters. Only the practice of his project to
get out of this nightmare, to get this nightmare out of his head, to find a
Haven. Avant moi, la déluge.
letter 5
Letter 5 has Lucilius studying hard, but instead of a reading list, or at least an
appetizer of [which?] Great Books in store, the willing horse is flogged with
15 Seneca explains the ambiguity of references to ‘C. Caesar’, at 83.12. The old formula survives at
104.29: ‘Pompey – Caesar – Crassus’.
16 See Henderson (1997a) 47, unpacking the tell-tale plural at Juvenal, Satire 8.9, coram Lepidis.
17 See Schönegg (1999) 19–24, on Tacitus, Annals 15.60–4.
more mos, mores, and consuetudo, with satis and the nomen ‘philosophiae’
(5.1–2). With the back-reference ‘Not that splendid a toga, not a dirty one,
either’ (non splendeat toga, ne sordeat quidem, 5.3), and, by way of a guru
to study, only a tag from ‘our Hecato’, which is subtended as this epistle’s
bonus track of ‘lucid lucre’ for Lucilius (huius . . . diei lucellum tecum, 5.7).
letter 6
This Hecato recurs in Letter 6, in the same role, after we have negotiated a
quizzical congregation of Greek greats in philosophy (Zeno + Cleanthes,
Socrates + Plato ’n’ Aristotle, Epicurus + Metrodorus ’n’ Hermarchus ’n’
Polyaenus, 6.6). The script releases Good News: Seneca is radically trans-
formed, as new unrecognized flaws attest transplantation of self (transfig-
urari, translati animi).18 The instant conversion is down to something [or
other] Lucilius (he ventriloquizes) now asks him to send along. Longing
to transfuse the lesson into Lucilius (transfundere),19 he will forward the
[mystery] book – the relevant passages marked. Yet, so he instantly objects
to himself, to the power of writing, and to the institution of epistolary
interaction, here is the rub – you really can’t beat live shared speech (6.5):
longum iter est per praecepta, breue et efficax per exempla.
Long is the journey through commandments, short and effective the journey
through exempla.
Polarized routes, alternative routines. Those (named) classic philosophers
were cited on this very, perverse, count: not for any stories they might bring
us, nor for their ‘precepts’, but for what they ‘exemplify’. They learned to
become great teachers through witnessing their great teachers teaching
(learning). As the ‘postscript’ brakes, all in a day’s work, Seneca writes, as
usual, as if there is no difference between enjoying Hecato’s mot in person
or in book form (quid me hodie apud Hecatonem delectauerit dicam, 6.7).20
Between them, these philosophers preach on Friendship, that ‘a friend
to oneself’ is ‘a friend to all’. Is Lucilius ‘with’ Seneca, already? Are we,
readers of ‘Seneca’? We could never verify, only ever aver, it, but this Letter
18 ‘[T ]ransfigurari corrisponde al gr. meta-schmat©zesqai, cioè mutare di sc¦ma, figura che è termine
sinonimo di forma, nel senso filosofico di causa formale della cosa . . .; transfigurari indica, quindi,
un mutamento sostanziale. . . . translati . . . è certamente intenzionale per il trans- . . .; il part.
translatus serve a Seneca per insistere sul mutamento radicale’ (Scarpat (1975) 116, 118, following
Bickel (1957)).
19 ‘[A]ltro composto con trans-, dopo transfigurari, e translatus’ (Scarpat (1975) 121).
20 Disciple of Panaetius: read first-hand by Seneca, not via a gnomology? (Scarpat (1975) 110.)
itself mimes the shattering breakthrough text that it trumpets, in all its
transfiguring glory. And its transferential relay on to its next convert. So to
us. Seneca can change lives. Can epistolary writing transcend absence, as it
proposes, and transpose Seneca into our lives?
Half-way through the book, now.
Letters 7 and 8 take two bites at the same cherry.
letter 7
The aptly named turba is billed, indeed nominated, as – disturbing – shib-
boleth (turbatur: the effect on mores, on bonis moribus, 7.1–2); plus reaffir-
mation. First Seneca goes out into the world in person. For his first scenario
in the full glare [of imperial Rome]. Out into the lion’s den, for a narrative,
exposed to the arena at noon. An incident must be imminent (casu . . . incidi,
7.3). But no, this was more bait: Philosophy and its heroes will feature in
a theatrical three-fingers to the People, ‘a threat to the mos of Socrates, of
Cato, of Laelius’ (7.6), plus a three-in-one technicolour postscript, where
Democritus takes a bow, or two – ‘(but there is a dispute over the author-
ship)’ – to be followed by Epicurus ‘writing to one of his co-researchers
[unnamed]’.
Legitimated by humane revulsion at civic sadism, the moral crusade
turns away from the spiritual ruination of attendance at a Roman show,
to the autarchy of ‘inner retreat’ (recede in te, 7.8). So it is that the faceless
medium impresses its faceless triply reinforced message: ‘One’s an army,
an army’s one. That’s me’, and, ‘Few friends are enough, one is enough,
none is enough.’ Not enough: add this: ‘You and I, we are to fill a the-
atre’ (7.10–11). Here, too, Seneca is miming some more. For the specta-
cle of Epistolarity is itself another scene where ‘Three’s a crowd.’ Seneca.
Lucilius. The reader. Who needs those sights and stars, when we know that
private viewing is the only cinema that counts? Not a gladiator, nor impre-
sario, neither sensational anecdote nor imperial scandal: some visit to the
superbowl.
This censored panorama
———– is as close as we may come to Rome. Enough
to put you off lunch for good. True Good is internal(ized). Psychic.
letter 8
Now Lucilius is put into the firing line. Next question: can a Stoic urge
retreat, behind closed doors (secedere, 8.1)? Seneca can. For he has. Replacing
any adventure out at the full house for the bloodbath, Seneca is in fact
manoeuvring his addressee in order to elicit (i.e. contrive, motivate) a
private apologia, for withdrawal to privacy.
‘Seneca’s business is with Posterity.’ Whatever his calculation may have
been about his chances for a long retirement, he turns his back on the bustle
of immediacy, uniquely among ancient epistolographers.21 And, instead,
writes ‘Sermons that Save’, not least beneath every Letter’s ‘g re e t i n g s’
(salutares admonitiones, 8.2 ∼ Lucilio salutem). So The Voice booms out
what resounds like a public harangue of the public, dinning full blast from
the page at US (clamo . . . cum posteris loquor, 8.3):
re c t v m i t e r, qvo d s e ro co g n ov i e t l a s s v s e r r a n d o , a l i i s
m o n s t ro.
t h e r i g h t e o u s j o u r n ey, t h at i h ave d i s cove re d to o l at e ,
wo r n o u t w i t h s t r ay i n g , i p o i n t o u t to ot h e r s .
Yea, the direct route, over the straits and shoals of life, across the Red Sea
(tcnh st␫n xiv ¾dopoihtikE . . .).22 Straight-talking Seneca’s Jeremiad
doth outshout the civic utility of a panoply of regular social duties (law,
politics . . .). He dooms the masses to failure to escape the fate of all masses;
they have been warned:
v i tat e qva e c v m qve v v lg o p l ac e n t
yo u m u s t a l l s h u n a l l t h at at t r ac ts t h e m o b! (8.3)23
And yet, Seneca’s never short of company.
(Like his reader.)
His apologia extends from the grand Mission Statement broadcast to
reflection on the practice of appending the regulation ‘postscript’ maxim.
Still reading Epicurus, not Stoics? Why not? – for anything in the public
domain is Seneca’s oyster: ‘You must be slave to Philosophy in order to be
blessed with true Freedom’ (Epicurus) performs its own truth; so it guides us
to ‘Freedom is being slave to Philosophy’ (Seneca. 8.7–8). Simple, see? Go
farther afield, out into the marketplace of Literature. Sample Publilius’ lowly
pontifications, or Lucilius’ own versified dicta. Why not? In principle, poets
do express, even supplement, Philosophy (8.8–10). So we have our three-
names-in-one-clausula routine, and Seneca can ostentatiously economize
21 See Epp. 79.17; Lana (1991) 270–1; Schönegg (1999) 192–4. Did Seneca knowingly set out to write
the Letters into the grave? Are they his praeparatio mortis for real? It was waiting just around the
corner. (For praemeditatio in the Letters, cf. 63.15, 74.33–4, 91.3–4, 98, with Armisen-Marchetti (1986);
Manning (1976).)
22 Zeno apud Olympiodorum, In Gorgiam 53. ‘The journey metaphor’ in Seneca: Lavery (1980) 151–5.
23 Schönegg (1999) 58–9.
on his cast, finessing ‘so many poets’, all the ‘philosophers’ – ‘not to touch
on high tragedians, or Roman tragic-comic playwrights’. Mention the odd
name, but ration them (‘Epicurus – Publilius – [Lucilius]’, 8.8–10). For
all Seneca’s sources feed Seneca’s mill.24 Philosophy enslaves and liberates
wisdom. It is all Seneca’s now.
All ours, Lucilius(es’).
letter 9
Letter 9 is the first piece to engross dramatically: twice the size of the rest.
This is Seneca’s first intimation that scale will be a variable, a diagnostic,
a performative figure of epistolarity. He makes a fundamental point, into
the bargain, unpacking the predilection for Epicurus which makes him the
third point of the Letters’ triangulation of their medium for the reader. He is
now revealed as Seneca’s formal inspiration, for Epicurus, too, wrote letters
(. . . in quadam epistula Epicurus, 9.1).
We are introduced to a scrap between philosophizing epistolographer
and his rival (Stilbon). We shall be reading a (pugnacious) reading of this
pre-text. This, then, is the kind of prolonged disputation that the letter can
stretch its stage to encompass, as it approaches the capacity of a modest
disquisition, or mini-essay, approximating to a gospel for Rome after the
pattern of those doctrinal missives to the (misguided, but at least guided)
herds of Epicurean faithful.
Here in Seneca’s spiritual struggle for the path of righteousness, real-
ity concretizes as debate featuring classic texts – alongside Epicurus and
Stilbon, there are quotes from Hecaton (for the third and last time in the
collection), from Attalus, and from Chrysippus – before a[n anonymous]
comic verse sets the seal by ventriloquizing Nature (natura scilicet dictante,
10.21):25
‘Non est beatus, esse se qui non putat.’
‘Think you’re blessed. Or you’re not.’
No place for a ‘postscript’ here. Because we have just put that ‘Epicurus
tic’ under the magnifying glass, and found that it always codes in, not just
philosophy to fill each day, but epistolarity, in concentrate.26
24 See esp. Schönegg (1999) 163–9.
25 This Stoicizing figure of speech is espoused by Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria 3.4.12, 8 Praef.
26: Scarpat (1975) 232).
26 So, more or less alone, Habinek (1992) 189, n. 10, ‘. . . a way of assimilating the philosopher’s influence
to his own as well as a means of signalling generic competition with antiquity’s most famous writer
of philosophical letters’.
let ter 10
The point is reinforced as Letter 10 positions itself as further reaffirmation
of 7 and 8, and (through explicit back reference) as continuation of 9.
(An opening chreia (word of wisdom: 33.7) from Crates tells a boy walking
along talking to himself [somewhere unspecified] that he’s ‘talking to bad
company’, 10.1, en passant contriving to dub Crates (model) audience for
Stilbon of 9.)
Back to basics, at a regular magnitude: herein a philosopher’s quip, for
kick-off; then a cameo memory of Lucilius’ promise; and the ‘regular’ (more
meo) postscript – but this time a one-off from one Athenodorus [pax in
the Letters]. Epicurus is the active absence here.27
Here.
Now the book, this programmatic, precedent-setting, book, reels in.
let ter 11
In Letter 11 Seneca talks again to Lucilius ad hominem, back in the social
frame [of the Roman panoptikon].
An [anonymous] ‘friend of yours’ was impressive well into his interview
with the great (ex-)patron. Then, he blushed. A review of this sign of char-
acter (‘good blood’, puns Seneca) features ‘Sulla, Pompey, and – that rarity,
a personal memory from Seneca’s days in power – Fabianus’, all redden-
ing ‘in the public eye’ (in conspectu populi, 11.2).28 Even especially here, as
[Papirius] Fabianus is both named and situated (‘before the senate’), we are
told he was ‘there to be a witness’, precisely so that we must confront the
point that we are not to be told what he was witness to, since the point we
are to witness, and memorize, is that Fabianus was there to be witnessed by
[his pupil] Seneca.
Blush and all, Fabianus completes a trio of exempla; he has no call on
our attention in his own write. No more than that other expository device,
Lucilius’ hot-flushing protégé. Read on, and find Seneca teaming up with
comrade Epicurus at the death, as they concur in recommending that we
27 See Motto and Clark (1968) esp. 40, n. 27, ‘Epicurus is mentioned, defended, and/or quoted outright
in 27 of the first 33 epistles; often he is cited more than once in a single letter.’ They don’t add that
Epicurus is named in only two of the last thirty-six epistles (= Books 14–20: at 92.25, 97.13, 15 (bis)).
Cf. Setaioli (1988) 171–222, ‘Seneca e le lettere di Epicuro / Le sentenze delle prime 29 Epistole’.
28 Plutarch, Life of Sulla 2.1 tells us that Sulla was named for the red and white blotches on his face
(the etymology eludes us). ‘The skin of his face looked as if it had been partially flayed, most of
it a raw and bloody crimson, some few places still showing their original whiteness’ (McCullough
(1993) 52). For ‘The Roman blush’ see Barton (1999).
‘pick’ Someone to be Our Hero. Nail this in your mind – the command-
ment, and the paradigm it commands, both (11.10):
Elige itaque Catonem; . . . elige . . . uirum Laelium. elige eum cuius tibi placuit et
uita et oratio et ipse animum ante se ferens uultus . . .
May be a Cato, may be a Laelius, may be Someone that gets your vote for the way
they live, speak, and their face displays their thoughts up front . . .
‘Somebody’, it is plain to see, well calculated to ‘keep true our morality’
(mores nostri, 11.10).
How could Seneca promote more neatly his Epistulae, his Epistulae
Morales? Where we skip names and games in favour of generalization and
argument, sketching a possible Roman mind (to be) reclaimed from the
engrained imperatives of fame and engagement.
En passant, more than a hint of a flicker of a shadow of another reflex
tricolon of exemplary figures in Roman thought:
1. Cato –
2. – Laelius –
3. – [ ].
‘Cato + Laelius’ cannot but spell the Elder Cato’s rival-and-enemy s c i p i o
and Laelius’ hero-and-friend, s c i p i o (Aemilianus). The pairing betokens
Traditional Homegrown Sense and Progressive Hellenizing Theory, and
leaves us to complete the triad with [the missing synthesis]. So if we are to
complete the thought process, we already supply one extra name to add to
the chosen few: a Senecan s c i p i o, or two.
When one arrives, you could almost presume, the formula has been
pre-set: ‘s c i p i o’ will be a match for severe, agricultural, Stoic-avant-la-
lettre c ato, rolled into the like-minded, inspirational, civilized Friend of
l a e l i u s (legendarily nicknamed Sapiens, ‘The Wise’). Does it need saying?
What could any such [‘s o m e b o d y’] be but a figure for [s e n e c a]?
The more sinister reflex, a move which sums up in a millisecond the re-
visionary Rome of Seneca’s Nero, is to twin c ato [m a i o r] + s c i p i o [or
s c i p i o n e s a f r i c a n u s / i] with their namesakes from the Civil War that
handed the Republic over to [the] Caesar[s]: c ato [m i n o r] + [his lieu-
tenant m e t e l lu s] s c i p i o.29 This suicidal pair summed up the existential
response of [Stoic] heroes to the prospect of ‘enslavement’ to emperors: they
inaugurated what became the Julio-Claudian dynasty that would ultimately
enjoy Seneca’s suicide, as his pen quit over some last, missing, Letter. While
29 See 24.9–10, 71.10–11, with Mayer (1991) 154–5. See Appendix 1, p. 173.
his nephew Lucan would die in the plot to stop the story of Augustus’
family, still writing his direct onslaught on Julius’ world conquest, the epic
Bellum Ciuile. A political history of Rome could simply write:
c ato m a i o r + s c i p i o m a i o r + m i n o r
| |
c ato m i n o r + m e t e l lu s s c i p i o
| |
s e n e c a + lu c a n.
let ter 12
The book’s finale takes us home from home chez Seneca, for his first episto-
lary journey out of Rome, for a shot of parabolic autobiographical narrative.
Another flash down the pan? Let’s drop in.
c h a p t e r t wo
Dropping in (it) at s e n e c a ’s
With text and translation of Letter 12
Gardening is not about those mythical ‘green fingers’. Gardeners know

that the plants, the trees, the staff, and the grounds are the identity they
create for themselves by doing every single thing that can be done, over
and over, as the year wheels about. The peculiar boon of growing into
your garden is, since time immemorial, that you live the life-cycle a million
times, through the plants; you have the best chance of anyone to grab the
moral for your own life, wherever you knock around. Ever since Homer
wound up the Odyssey so touchingly with Laertes in his idyllic plot on
Ithaca, ‘hoeing around’ the plants until his son came home to take care
of his family, ‘getting to know vines and counting up the fruit-trees’ has
imaged an idealized existence with hearts and values in the right place, an
islet of self at one with life on the land, the ‘island’ politics of the self at
one with itself.1
Book 1 of the Letters ends by showcasing Seneca as senectus. (He had in
fact recently retired in his mid sixties.2 ) He proudly suppresses the location
of the location of ‘my just-out-of-town property’ (in suburbanum meum,
12.1), where he comes to image ‘my senility’, in the form of ‘an ancient
manor’ that ‘grew in my hands’, ‘its stone ∼ my age’ (uillam ueterem . . .
haec uilla inter manus meas creuit . . . aetatis meae saxa, 12.1).3 But this
opening tableau does showcase reportage, at l(e)ast.
Crisp, emotional, specific, naming names, affixing relations, in a word
graphic.
Something to visualize.
1 Henderson (1997b) explores the pervasive thematics of ‘care’ in the poetics of the Odyssey, through
the sign of the Father’s ‘I-land’ (= the Fatherland (as)) orchard (24.340–4). Cf. (2004) Preface, on
Virgil’s figuration of [Tradition as] the ‘Old Man in the Garden’.
2 See Harlow and Laurence (2000) 125–6, on this montage of dotage. ‘Epistel 12: Abschluss oder
Neubeginn?’: Hachmann (1995) 99–116 (‘Ep. 12 ist aber nicht nur ein Einleitungsbrief, sonder sie ist
der letzte Einleitungsbrief ’).
3 ‘It may also have been the scene of his last philosophical discourse’ (Griffin (1976) 287, cf. Tacitus,
Annals 15.60.4, his passion scene).
19
Everything that we have been starved of, almost to the end, at first
base.
We shan’t forget it – Seneca’s flash of self-incriminating, ultimately self-
lacerating, bullying of the manor’s manager.4 His unphilosophical debacle
of petulant rage:
s e n e c a lvc i l i o s vo s a lv t e m
Quocumque me uerti, argumenta senectutis meae uideo. ueneram in 1
suburbanum meum et querebar de impensis aedificii dilabentis. ait
uilicus mihi non esse neglegentiae suae uitium; omnia se facere, sed
uillam ueterem esse. haec uilla inter manus meas creuit: quid mihi
futurum est, si tam putria sunt aetatis meae saxa?
iratus illi proximam occasionem stomachandi arripio. ‘Apparet’, 2
inquam, ‘has platanos neglegi: nullas habent frondes. quam nodosi sunt
et retorridi rami, quam tristes et squalidi trunci! hoc non accideret, si
quis has circumfoderet, si irrigaret.’ iurat per genium meum se omnia
facere, in nulla re cessare curam suam, sed illas uetulas esse. quod intra
nos sit, ego illas posueram, ego illarum primum uideram folium.
conuersus ad ianuam, ‘Quis est iste?’ inquam, ‘iste decrepitus et 3
merito ad ostium admotus? foras enim spectat. unde istunc nanctus es?
quid te delectauit alienum mortuum tollere?’ At ille, ‘Non cognoscis
me?’ inquit. ‘ego sum Felicio, cui solebas sigillaria afferre; ego sum
Philositi uilici filius, deliciolum tuum.’ ‘Perfecte’, inquam, ‘iste delirat:
pupulus, etiam delicium meum factus est? prorsus potest fieri: dentes illi
cum maxime cadunt.’
debeo hoc suburbano meo quod mihi senecta mea, quocumque 4
aduerteram, apparuit: complectamur illam et amemus; plena est
uoluptatis, si illa scias uti. gratissima sunt poma, cum fugiunt; pueritiae
maximus in exitu decor est; deditos uino potio extrema delectat, illa
quae mergit, quae ebrietati summam manum imponit.
quod in se iucundissimum omnis uoluptas habet in finem sui differt. 5
iucundissima est aetas deuexa iam, non tamen praeceps, et illam quoque
in extrema tegula stantem iudico habere suas uoluptates; aut hoc ipsum
succedit in locum uoluptatium, nullis egere. quam dulce est cupiditates
fatigasse ac reliquisse!
‘Molestum est’, inquis, ‘mortem ante oculos habere.’ primum ista 6
tam seni ante oculos debet esse quam iuueni (non enim citamur ex
4 ‘L’kjrasiv (la descriptio) . . . divenne argomento epistolare’ (Scarpat (1975) 277).

At s e n e c a ’s : l e t t e r 12 21
censu); deinde nemo tam senex est ut improbe unum diem speret. unus
autem dies gradus uitae est. tota aetas partibus constat et orbes habet
circumductos maiores minoribus: est aliquis qui omnis complectatur et
cingat (hic pertinet a natali ad diem extremum); est alter qui annos
adulescentiae excludit; est qui totam pueritiam ambitu suo adstringit;
est deinde per se annus in se omnia continens tempora, quorum
multiplicatione uita componitur; mensis artiore praecingitur circulo;
angustissimum habet dies gyrum, sed et hic ab initio ad exitum uenit, ab
ortu ad occasum.
ideo Heraclitus, cui cognomen fecit orationis obscuritas, ‘Unus’, 7
inquit, ‘dies par omni est.’ hoc alius aliter excepit. dixit enim parem
esse horis, nec mentitur; nam si dies est tempus uiginti et quattuor
horarum, necesse est omnes inter se dies pares esse, quia nox habet
quod dies perdidit. alius ait parem esse unum diem omnibus
similitudine; nihil enim habet longissimi temporis spatium quod non
et in uno die inuenias, lucem et noctem, et in alternas mundi uices
plura facit ista, non alias contractior, alias productior. itaque sic
ordinandus est dies omnis tamquam cogat agmen et consummet atque
expleat uitam.
Pacuuius, qui Syriam usu suam fecit, cum uino et illis funebribus 8
epulis sibi parentauerat, sic in cubiculum ferebatur a cena ut inter
plausus exoletorum hoc ad symphoniam caneretur: ‘Beb©wtai,
beb©wtai.’ nullo non se die extulit. hoc quod ille ex mala conscientia
faciebat nos ex bona faciamus, et in somnum ituri laeti hilaresque
dicamus, uixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi.
crastinum si adiecerit deus, laeti recipiamus. ille beatissimus est 9
et securus sui possessor qui crastinum sine sollicitudine expectat;
quisquis dixit ‘uixi’ cotidie ad lucrum surgit.
sed iam debeo epistulam includere. ‘Sic,’ inquis, ‘sine ullo ad me 10
peculio ueniet?’ noli timere: aliquid secum fert. quare ‘aliquid’ dixi?
multum. quid enim hac uoce praeclarius quam illi trado ad te
perferendam? ‘Malum est in necessitate uiuere, sed in necessitate uiuere
necessitas nulla est.’ quidni ‘nulla sit’? patent undique ad libertatem uiae
multae, breues faciles. agamus deo gratias quod nemo in uita teneri
potest: calcare ipsas necessitates licet.
‘Epicurus,’ inquis, ‘dixit: quid tibi cum alieno?’ quod uerum est, 11
meum est; perseuerabo Epicurum tibi ingerere, ut isti qui in uerba
iurant nec quid dicatur aestimant, sed a quo, sciant quae optima sunt
esse communia.
uale.
s e n e c a to f r i e n d lu c i l i u s : g re e t i n g s
Wherever I’ve been turning myself, I see proof upon proof that old age 1
is with me. I had come to my out-of-town place and was moaning about
the cost of a collapsing building. The manager told me the defect wasn’t
down to his neglect, he was doing all that could be done, but the uilla is
ancient. This villa grew up in my hands: what’s to become of me now, if
the stonework of my lifetime is crumbling so?
Angry with him, I grab the very next chance for spleen. ‘It’s 2
obvious’, I said, ‘that these plane trees suffer neglect, they have no leaves.
How knotty and shrivelled the branches are, how sad and squalid the
trunks! This wouldn’t happen if someone was trowelling round the roots
and watering them.’ He swears by my lucky star that he is doing
everything that can be done, his level of care is not slacking in any area,
but those trees are well ancient. Let this stay inside the pair of us, I
planted them; I saw their first leafing.
I turned to the door, and said, ‘Who is that? That wreck, quite 3
rightly stuck by the door, looking out. Where did you get him from?
What kicks did you get from getting rid of someone else’s corpse?’ He
said back, ‘You don’t recognize me? I am Felicio. You used to bring me
trinkets for Xmas. I am son of Philositus the manager. Your wee
playmate.’ ‘Perfect,’ I said, ‘perfect-ly deranged he is. Is my playmate
infantilized? Straight up, it’s a possibility: his teeth are falling out sixteen
to the dozen.’
I owe it to my place out of town that my old age was obvious, 4
wherever I turned. Let’s embrace it and love it. Old age is full of joy, if
you can know how to put it to work for you. Fruit about to go off is at
its nicest; a manchild’s grace climaxes on the way out; the wine slave’s
thrill is the very last swig, the one that drowns him – puts the finishing
touches to his drunkenness. Every turn-on has some peak of pleasure,
and defers that for its finale.
The time when life is at its pleasure zenith comes when it is over the 5
hill, yes – but not off a cliff. And my verdict is that that time – perched
on the bottom row of rooftiles – also has thrills all its own, or else this is
exactly what fills the place of thrills – not wanting any. How sweet to
have worn out your cravings and left ’em behind!
‘It’s a drag’, you say, ‘to keep eyes trained on death.’ Point 1: an old 6
man’s eyes must lock onto it as much as a young man’s (because the call
doesn’t come for us by working down some list). Point 2: no old man is
so old that hope for one more day is a wicked hope. One day is a step in
life. The whole of a lifetime has subdivisions; it has a wrap of rings,
larger ones round smaller: there’s one that embraces, girdles, them all
(this one relates to day one through the last day on earth). There’s a
second that closes out on the years of youth; there’s one whose perimeter
laces in the whole of childhood. Next there’s the year as such,
boundarying inside itself all the time units which multiply up to make a
life. The month is edged by a narrower circumference. The day owns the
tightest orbit, but even a day travels from its in to its out, from sun-up
to sundown.
That’s why, quoth Heraclitus, nicknamed for the murk of his 7
rhetoric, ‘One day is equal to all.’ This received various interpretations:
one said it’s equal to hours, and that’s no lie, because, as ‘day’ is the time
unit of twenty-four hours, it’s necessarily true that all days are equal to
each other, because a night gets what a day has lost. Another states that
one day is equal to all by analogy, because the very longest duration of
time ain’t got a thing you couldn’t come up with in a single day, too –
daylight + night-time – and it multiplies these to swing the cosmic
pendulum, sometimes shrinking, sometimes extending . . . So it is, every
day must get in line, as if it rounded up the column, totalizing and
filling up . . . Life.
Pacuvius, who made Syria his own by squatters’ rights, used to 8
conduct his own burial, wine, funeral feast, and all; he would ride from
dinner party to bedroom, just so, between rows of clapping rent boys,
and this song backed by the band: ‘Sich auslebend, sich auslebend.’ Not
a day went by and he didn’t give himself a send-off.
A bad mental state made him do it – let a good one make us. And
on the way to the big sleep, let’s be joyful and happy, and say:
My life is lived. The trip ticketed by Fortune is done and dusted.
If god hands us a bonus tomorrow, let’s be joyful and say thanks very 9
much. Most blessed among men, serene owner of his own self, is the one
who awaits tomorrow without a qualm. Anyone who has said ‘My life is
lived’ gets up each day further into the black.
But I must draw a line under this letter. Right away. You say, ‘Is it 10
going to arrive like this, then, minus dividend?’ Never fear, it fetches
something on board. Why’d I say ‘something’ – lots. For what beacon’s
brighter than the following dictum which I’m handing to the letter to
deliver to you?
i t ’s b a d to l i ve i n n e c e s s i t y.
bu t t h e re ’s n o n e e d to l i ve i n a dve r s i t y.
And why shouldn’t there ‘be none’? Wide open to all points of the
compass run roads to Freedom – and plenty of ’em, short, and easy
access. Let’s thank god that no one can be detained in life. The
necessities, the actual necessities, we can use our heels on.
‘Epicurus,’ you say. ‘His pronunciamento. What are you up to, 11
using someone else’s stuff?’ Anything true belongs to me. I’ll keep on
firing Epicurus at you, so that that lot who take an oath of loyalty and
evaluate not what is said, but who it is said by, can know that the best
things are common property.
Farewell.
Seneca-the-senex fails to recognize anything.

He goes off home and fails to recognize him self. As he now tells us. Why
else does anyone go home? Patrolling his door, the decrepit servant trips
him up: ‘Right now all, but all, his teeth are falling out’ (dentes illi cum
maxime cadunt, 12.3). His toothless gums. Seneca has lost touch with his
childhood, his own story. His bark is worse; his bite is worst. Something
(embarrassment at his own inhumanity?) pulls him up short. It tugs at us.
For the writing gets us into the scene; we don’t just ‘imagine’ it. Down
tumbles your shack: you crumblies cost everyone you meet dear. ‘Dig round’
your roots before watering, and still you won’t see yourself, ‘turning yourself
round’, before giving your mind a feed. No amount of bluster from you,
or nursery care for you, can protect you from owning up to what you own
(senectutis meae ∼ suburbanum meum, inter manus meas ∼ aetatis meae,
per genium meum ∼ ego, 12.1–2, closing the ring set by the equivalence,
suburbano meo ∼ senectus mea, 12.1).
Thought bowls on apace, to unpack the letter’s opening slogan, ‘wherever
I turn my self’. Weirdly opaque philosopher Heraclitus once declared, ‘One
day is equal to all.’ Whatever he may have meant by this trope (this verbal
‘turning’), we may be able to make it mean for us that our last day completes
the arithmetic of life. This might then make us live each day as if it is to be
our last (12.7–9)? Stuff in, as the after-thought for the day, a final lesson of,
for, from, old age, a rider on the maxim that ‘It’s bad to live in necessity,
but there’s no necessity to live in necessity’, namely that we are always free
to die . . . (12.10–11).
Earlier, dropping in on his clapped-out farm to visit his own senility
had made Seneca think hard about the good years before the final years;
it had leapt to mind that, if the end is so important to us (death, dying,
the shadow of death on our life), it would mean that a single day – the
last – must, bizarrely, matter to us far too much. ‘No one is so ancient
that it’s wicked for them to hope for one (more) day.’ (12.4–6) So could we
think ‘life’ better if we thought ‘day’ through? [Someone’s] diagram occurs
(who-knows-whence), with concentric circles expanding step by step with
the units of:
(1) day > (2) month > (3) year >
+
(4) childhood > (5) adolescence > (6) life time.
What you can say of these circles drawn around each other is that they are
homologous: the bands therefore enjoy equivalence in a definable sense;
there is an equation between ‘one day’ and ‘all (of them)’ . . . (tota aetas . . .
orbes habet circumductos maiores minoribus: est aliquis qui omnis complectatur
et cingat . . . ambitu . . . circulo . . . gyrum, 12.6). So this is quite an image.
A core image, this, of the image of a ‘core’.5 Certainly the image gets us
where we wanted to go, seeing ourselves ‘turning our selves around’. For the
chronogram does literally visualize, for our benefit, that chance idiom of
colloquial Latin: ‘Wherever I’ve turned around’, and finds ‘in’ it a calculus
of the life-cycle (∼ argumenta senectutis . . . uideo, 12.1).
As we have seen, this has been a lively visit to s e n e c a’s lax atrium (to coin
a phrase, for later reference: pp. 69, 81). One more, quite exceptional, detail
is bound to focus our attention: among the staff, those slaves, these members
of Seneca’s ‘family’, one seneschal (& son) gets named. For as master wheels
at the mouth of his cave to round on the gummy doorman, this lump of
manor finds a voice (12.3):
‘Non cognoscis me?’ inquit. ‘ego sum f e l i c i o, cui solebas sigillaria afferre; ego
sum ph i lo s i t i uilici filius, deliciolum tuum.’
‘Don’t you recognize me? I am lu c k y. You used to fetch me dolls. I am son of
ph i lo s u p pe r the manager. Your wee playmate.’
Plain to see, those precious philosopher’s trees planted by Seneca’s own hand
are children of his praxis; in a moment, they can speak volumes to us.6 But
the human touch that out-Senecaed Seneca was the exquisite encounter
with his abjected reflection.
Those vernacular words touch(ed) the heart, to give the head a sound
spanking. The misrecognized Speaking Figure of Speech vocalizes a lesson
5 See Habinek (1982).

6 A type of evergreen plane for shade imported via Sicily from Asia was planted in Claudius’ reign
by a eunuch freedman in a mansion outside Rome: sed quis non iure miretur arborem umbrae gratia
tamquam ex alieno petitam orbe? platanus haec est (Pliny, Natural History 12.6–12: see Scarpat (1975)
286).
about selfhood, selfishness, and the self as obstacle to self-perception. The
vignette plays off actor against writer, inditing Seneca for undoing all those
long years of hard work, and so giving us Seneca at his most blushingly
likeable. A strategy to be husbanded, used sparingly: letting himself off
lightly. Yet actually lowering the tone to name a s l ave is an acrid tactic:
see how close Seneca-son-of-Seneca, ph i lo s o ph u s, comes to (t)his abject
reflection, Felicio-son-of-ph i lo s i t u s. What a lightning stroke of lu c k y
for us all. Plenty of food for thought, on a plate. On the way out.
To recap, then, and make our exit. Characteristically, character-forming
discussion of today’s topic in this latest version of the quest for teaching
psychic invulnerability (‘teaching-by-learning’: 7.8) took for its keynote that
Latin idiom: ‘Where’er I have turned myself . . .’ The domestic interior-
cum-garden scene focussed on Seneca, for the first time, as the expert in
relentlessly unpacking propriety from property. That momentarily rounded
and personalized melodrama was both a high-point of his excruciation, and
a perfect specimen of his modus scribendi. Next, we managed to visualize
the master-figure inherent in the letter’s opening slogan as, exactly, that
cranky two-in-one diagram, showing homologies between temporal units
in the form of concentric rings:
. . . Time round life round youth round childhood,
round the year round the month round the day . . .
This [anonymous] schema evokes by association our aphorism from

Heraclitus, whose fit nickname was ‘the Obscure’, and which itself re-
quires multiple [anonymous] interpretation (alius aliter . . . alius . . .).
This move bridged to that brief satirical sketch of the eccentric named
Pacuvius, who kept staging his own funeral once a day, like some mystic
initiate from the Orient.7 A thought that ushers in an [unattributed] line
[from the Aeneid: the Letters’ first touch of Virgil]8 to make us take a look
around, too, before signing off our lives (uixi . . .). Finally, the now ha-
bitual postscript quote from Epicurus signs off the letter and the book of
letters.
7 ‘Pacuvius is locked inside the circle that is his life, consigned to endless, tedious repetition of the same
action’ (Habinek (1982) 69).
8 In fact, Aeneid 4.653, one-hit-wonder Dido’s swansong; not to be missed: in the structure of the
Aeneid, Dido represents a one-year-long circular voyage off the narrative map on which the line of
history is set to chart the ages from olim Troy to nunc Rome: one epic life is wasted getting back to
square one. Was a Carthaginian suicide relatively painless, or heroic beyond compare? Aeneas must
persevere, recoup on Sicily, and sail the line to the next square in Italy, over the sacrifice visited by
Deathstiny on his helmsman Palinurus.
One last time, Seneca rubs it in. And promises Lucilius he will keep on
keeping on, at Lucilius (in books to follow: perseuerabo, 12.11). For, wherever
he turns, Seneca finds truth.
To repeat, for Book 1 + for what follows. One last time, for now: what
counts is ‘what is said, not who said it’ (12.11):
. . . quae optima sunt esse communia.
The best things are our common property. ([Seneca!])
The turn around his own garden has stimulated what must be the most
memorable thought chain in the book. Who will forget that moment when
lu c k y, that voice of gnarled abjection from deep in Seneca’s formation,
precisely spoke that most heart-rending rebuke, in perfect innocence, for
wisdom, authority, and for ph i lo s o ph y ?
But now any reader should choose to read the parable as their own. Seneca
may have said it, but this is not an item for his hagiobiography. Wherever
you turn, we are to remember what the story said, what it is said to have
said, what it said about saying, about parables.
That is what representation contrived to teach, about what we would
call symbolism, projection, identification, psychecology, when s e n e c a the
———- garden, bringing it all back home.9
gardener was spotted in Epicurus’
9 On Epp. 12: Henderson (2002a) 27–30.

c h a p t e r t h re e
You can get used to anything

Books 2–10
In the course of the next nine books, the Letters revisit and revise the
product. Variation and complexification play their part. But there are new
departures, and old turns are dropped. Twelve letters fill a book once more
(Book 4), but this ceiling is never exceeded.
The format stays highly stable for a good while, but the proportions
alter, until Book 10 is composed of just three letters. When the parameters
of individual books become clear again (between Books 14 and 20), the
bulk of the books will enlarge by around 50 per cent while the predomi-
nance of relatively enormous compositions (in correspondingly low-count
book units) continues, until in the last two collections extant the pieces
proliferate and shrink once again, back to something more like the first
books.1
Naturally enough, these variations go hand-in-glove with subject matter
and cultural purchase, across the spectrum between intense technical or
analytical set-piece, and expert engagement with the staple business of
Roman correspondence retuned to dramatize protreptic to Philosophy:
Books 1–6: × 12; 9; 8; 12; 11; 10
(@ steady average of c. 28 pp. of Oxford Text)
Books 7–10: × 7; 5; 6; 3
(@ c. 32; 29; 30; 24 pp. of Oxford Text)
Books 11–13: ×5
(total of c. 38 pp. of Oxford Text)
Books 14–20: × 4; 3; 5; 9 in 2; 8; 7
(@ steady average of c. 45 pp. of Oxford Text)
It is infuriating, and so aptly self-convicting, that the Letters stop after
Book 20, only for Aulus Gellius to quote at length snippets of a piece from
‘Book 22’ (= Excerpta) – thereby blessing the project with eternal
1 Lana (1991) 292–302 gives all the statistics: Epp. 55 is 79/124 in length (646 words); 86 is 34/124 (1115
words). Cf. Mazzoli (1989) 1823–5.
28
Used to anything: Books 2–10 29
open-endedness. It is yet more salutary pain that the transmission of the
first half of the extant corpus carefully stipulates the suite of book divisions,
only to lapse when the incipit to Book 11, before our Epp. 84, is succeeded
by the explicit of Book 13, after our Epp. 88 (i.e. five pieces, to account for
three books, in a total of only 38 pp. of Oxford Text). I say this with feeling,
because this undercuts confident reception of the target Letter 86, at least
in terms of assured contextualization within a definite book unit.2
I shall in fact grasp this nettle by pretending that 84–8 are a rather strongly
interlinked sequence which responds to treatment as (if ) a book pro-
grammed at 84. This is not necessarily so self-satirizing a procedure as it
seems.
In this chapter, I shall indicate, at breakneck speed, at least some of the
‘story’ which linear ‘reading’ of the ‘journey’ or ‘voyage’ through Seneca’s
text will accomplish between the foundation or baseline set by Book 1
and arrival at the close of Book 10. Book divisions are indeed part of the
definition of the Letters as, more than epistolary writing, a monumental
will to master ‘epistoliterarity’. As our sprint through Book 1 presumed to
establish as a given for all that ensues (chapters 1–2), Seneca brings a strong
element of ever-unfolding design to all aspects of his project. Reception of
any later composition, of any group, run, or set, of Letters, will be the prod-
uct of expectations, and their defeat or finessing, that arise from reception,
and revisionist reinterpretation, of the tracts already read. However tied
the epistolary genre may be to occasion and improvisation, to crisis and
intermittence, the challenge is inescapable: to read is to react in the light
of the reading experience, and to project the result into reading further.
The unending work of indoctrination here is, so I claim, performatively to
inculcate reading habits (mores).
e p i c u ru s i n l e t t e r s 1 3 – 3 3
The introduction of mimetic parable at Epp. 12 is followed by the inaugu-
ration of Lucilius’ mundane circumstances as a prolific frame for instructive
advice of general pertinence. In the next Letter (= Book 2.1) Seneca busies
himself over the routine of inoculating each session with the tailpiece shot
of Epicurus once more (13.16):
‘Stultitia . . . semper incipit uiuere.’
‘Folly is always starting to live.’
2 The problem reviewed: Cancik (1967) 9.

The game runs hot, before running into the ground in the most piquant
fashion you could imagine: in 13, Epicurus had to be named because this
was one of his esoteric dicta; whereas in 14, the postscript is anonymous,
(imaginarily) prompting Lucilius to request confirmation of the authority.
But whether it was Epicurus himself or a colleague must not signify: ‘“he”
said it to all’. In 15, the by-play – ‘You ask who provided the “PS”: same
as above’ – rubs it in that this routine has become a constant. When an
extra intrudes as an integral, the effect is to destabilize the whole pack-
age. 16 tells Lucilius he is literally preoccupied with the ‘PS’ – reading
ahead for it. Yes, it’s from the Auld Enemie Epicurus again: but now it’s
Seneca’s. The routine continues through into Book 4, interspersed with
more reminders that Epicurus is the epistolary forerunner (18.9, Letter to
Polyaenus; 21.3, 22.5, 7, To Idomeneus). The bottom line of Book 2 runs
once more through the lesson of citation as appropriative liberation, before
taking time out to underline the philosophy of visiting ‘Epicurus’ garden’
as the ideal method for dealing with the snares of Pleasure (21.9–10). The
opening ‘PS’ in Book 3 calls for interpretation; the next is stressed as rep-
resenting, still, Seneca’s current reading (23.9, 24.22). So it goes on, the
constant drip of salutary virus, until the finale of Book 3, which lacks a
postscript (29).3
The first three pieces in Book 4 next come and go without their ‘signa-
ture’ quotation. To make us notice, Lucilius is provoked into demanding
more doses of final ‘mots from our leading lights’. Epicurus or A.N.Other
(Epp. 33). But neither does this letter carry its own bonus maxim, nor do
any others in this book, or the next, or the rest (with the exception of 36,
which has ‘PS’, but without quotation).
We must gather, as we go, that this initial obsession of the Letters has
served its purpose, and that the protest at 33 is designed to oblige us to
ruminate on the difference it has made, and its disappearance will be
making.4 Certainly for a stack of pages thereafter, Epicurus is both miss-
ing, and missed. And I think he and his garden never do fade entirely
from reading our way along Seneca’s path. For example, along his garden
path.
At the peak of fixation with Epicurus, he provides the vehicle for Seneca’s
first declared spin on his own brand of Letters (21.3–6): Epicurus’ To
Idomeneus told his addressee ‘My letters will make you famous.’ Likewise,
3 See Germani (1958) and Russell (1974) 78, for the widely supported thesis that Books 1–3 represent a
first series of Letters, with ‘Death’ emerging as the thematic core of Book 3.
4 See Maso (1999) chapter 4 for close reading of Epp. 33, and esp. Wilson (2001) 179–81, 183–4.
‘Cicero’s letters do not allow the name Atticus to die.’ So too (21.5),
hoc tibi promitto, Lucili: habebo apud posteros gratiam, possum mecum duratura
nomina educere.
My promise, To Lucilius, is this: I shall have influence with posterity, I can raise up
names to last alongside Seneca.
As surely as ‘our’ (named) ‘Virgil’ keeps his promise to immortalize his two
uniquely apostrophized epic characters (who are, however, named neither
in the citation, nor in its frame). A cross between a gospel from Epicurus
and the Best of Roman Friends’ exclusive file of confidences from Cicero,
the Epistulae Morales generate fame for their two long-suffering charac-
ters, the ever-present Seneca and never-absent Lucilius. By implication,
they pair as another [Nisus and Euryalus]. Failure as man, and failure as
boy? Eternally acclaimed for the inspirational lessons of losers and loss.5
But further instalments of self-definition and explicit self-promotion on
behalf of the Letters must wait their turn. Not before Seneca is good and
ready.
l e t t e r s 1 3 – 4 8 : t h e e m e rg e n c e o f lu c i l i u s
The arrival of ‘Seneca’ as his own theme in 12 was twinned, across the book
division, with the emergence of ‘Lucilius’ in 13 (featured, outside titles,
fifty-seven times in 1–69; thirty-five times in 70–124). One exploits its
postscript from Epicurus to make that grim adversarial promise to keep on
keeping on at Lucilius (12.11, perseuerabo). The other inaugurates Book 2,
firing off a ‘magniloquent utterance’ at the newly dignified ‘Lucilius, best
of heroes’: he must not be an old fool ‘always beginning to live’ (13.16). The
volume had itself begun this way (13.1):
Multum tibi esse animi scio.
You have tons of spirit, I know it.
Letter 14 at once lives a little through Lucilius: off to Sicily, preferring
proximity to Charybdis over Scylla. In Book 3, Lucilius is worried about the
outcome of a lawsuit (24);6 but gets a ticking off for complaining that ‘such
long travel, so many unique places’ have not lifted his mental depression,
for all that he has crossed a vast ocean like Virgil’s hero Aeneas, on his
way [to Sicily] (28). Book 4 just recognizes him as another Ulysses figure,
5 See esp. Schönegg (1999) 175–8. 6 See Russell (1974) 85–8.

who sailed past Scylla and Charybdis, to reach his procuratorship (31.9);7
while Seneca gets news of him from arrivals ‘from his territory’ (32). Book 5
recoups this: rumour tells of Lucilius in his province (43); he complains
of having no books with him, and Seneca would love to brave Scylla and
Charybdis, cross the mythical strait, even swim over (45); and ‘Lucilius,
best of heroes’ gets the sort of reply he hadn’t solicited in a letter ‘written
on a journey, as long as the journey itself ’ (48). But this is the point in the
collection where the more regularly brief and Epicurus-free missives that
have come to typify and predominate issue in an unheralded and never-to-
be-rivalled surge of mimetic narrative that bounces to and fro between the
two correspondents.
l e t t e r s 4 9 – 6 2 : s e n e c a o n t h e coa s t o f c a m pa n i a
The high point of the theme comes in Book 6 (Letters 53–62).8 En route,
Seneca dragged us into Rome at large, to join in, the little we can bear, with
their Christmas, December celebrations (18). First he had recalled being in
sight of senectus; then he was leaving it behind him, and needed a new term
for a ‘Seneca’ (26). Only then a pair of notelets had him shaking off age,
in exultant mood, before urging Lucilius to make haste (34–5). Lucilius’
long letter written on the hoof suddenly uncorks Seneca’s bottle, too, as
he scolds himself for letting territory jog his friend back into his thoughts
(48–9).
For Seneca has, to our surprise, quit Rome (49.1):
ecce Campania et maxime Neapolis ac Pompeiorum tuorum conspectus . . . : totus
mihi in oculis es.
Look! Campagna. Above all, Naples. The sight of your Pompeii . . . : you, all you,
fill my eyes.
After the delay of a reply to a just-arrived letter, which was delayed many
a moon since posted, the pen-pal partners share a single composition, in
a colourful reprise of the question of the (in)difference that geographical
location makes, but should not (51.1):
tu istic habes Aetnam . . . nobilissimum Siciliae montem . . . , nos, utcumque
possumus, contenti sumus Bais.
7 Motto and Clark (1991a). The other journeys – to the Alps, trackless Candavia in Epirus, African
Syrtes – look to stake out Lucilius’ military service: Vassileiou (1971).
8 See Motto and Clark (1971) / Motto (1973) 117–19 on the suite Epp. 49–57. There is no generally
accepted scheme for clumping these letters: Hachmann (1995) 238–62 reads together 31–41, 42–52,
and 53–59 as clusters within his ‘dritte Briefkreis (ep. 31–65)’.
You have Etna over there, Sicily’s grandest mountain . . . ; I am content with Baiae,
any way I can be.
True, the name ‘Baiae’ at once repulses and repels its visitor, who left this
‘place to avoid’ the very next day. Seneca knows that no place is worth
a declaration of hatred, but this ‘motel for vices’ cannot connote sane
‘retreat’, and instead demands ‘a long enough speech of indictment’. This
very drunken, partying, cacophonous shoreline sapped and sank Hannibal.
To think Freedom, you must choose (51.10):
loca seria sanctaque
a jokeless zone, consecrated ground.
But, turn this round the way a Seneca should, and this letter’s initial slogan
is realized on the instant. He had struck up with (51.1): ‘Whatever way
anyone can manage . . .’ Effete Baiae is bound to stir haunting thoughts of
Romans building their manors, their castles, like forts, where tough terrain
strengthens talent and readies for epic ambitions. Marius, Pompey, Caesar.
But not Cato. Nor, in fact, the great Scipio, holed up in the not too distant
(51.11):
Literni honestius Scipio quam Bais exulabat: ruina eiusmodi non est tam molliter
collocanda.
At (litoral) Liternum, Scipio was in more honourable exile than at Baiae. Downfall
of this sort should not be given such a floppy scenario.
This letter will indeed prove to be a milestone in the evolution of the world
of the collection: truly, ‘our avalanche [of Seneca] should not be tucked up in
such geophysical eiderdown’. As precedent, Epp. 51 establishes the constant
possibility that epistolary relations between writer and addressee (the axiom
of mutual ‘present absence’ that motivates correspondence) may be plotted
in terms of their loci in the Roman empire. And its lesson is that this business
of ‘comparing notes’ may at any point pile into one pole of this antithesis,
while occluding the other. The ‘Sicily–Campagna’ correlation holds out
the promise of further excursions into worldliness; tentative or sanguine,
readers will anticipate more mundanity ahead, whether the synkrisis proves
to generate a sustained series of frames for ratiocination, or to fade, all too
soon, to a discomfiting (abashing) trace. Only one way to find out which:
that character-forming reading habit.9
9 For the statistics on references to Sicily, Campania, and the rest of Italy: see Appendix 1, p. 171.
As the opening sally of Book 6 now headlines, anything can happen next
(sc. whether or not it will. 53.1):
Quid non potest mihi persuaderi, cui persuasum est ut nauigarem?
What can’t I be talked into when I’ve been talked into a voyage?
From Naples to Puteoli. Running the gauntlet of a gathering downpour

and gale. Risking a dash over the deep, to cut out the bays. The world’s
worst mariner begs for ‘a shore, any shore . . . Head for shore’ (53.2–3).
We have waded through four emetic books since Seneca last played actor-
director (in Epp. 12). Literally nauseating, this Ulysses manqué goes down
a storm:10 here again is that engaging trick of first-person narrative, by
which swelling animus against the preacher’s cumulative ascendancy is
‘talked into’ empathy, the instant that mockery capsizes into self-mockery.
But this time, adventures in the shallows unroll into a strip-cartoon of
representation unprecedented in the collection.
Naturally the farce will buy more moral high ground, for ‘sea-legs’ (the
land-lubber let down by his tummy) is just body, to be deplored by Philo-
sophy, which fits out the mind ‘to blunt any chance assault’. Mind put that
passenger in the drink: so that we can go on, ultimately, to enjoy a verbal
glimpse of the wise man ‘dispelling and spitting back’ any hail of missiles
hurled his way. For sure, that short cut gets us somewhere fast: at the very
first hint of physical trouble, the body makes a noise (< nausea); whereas
spiritual malaise anaesthetizes, sedates, tranquillizes, and sends the psyche
to the bottom.
The next post brings word of an asthma attack: ‘just like a gust of
wind – wham-bam, and over in minutes’ (54.1). Followed by a diptych
featuring Seneca safe ashore, and then aloft as the world takes the plunge
below. First he traverses, by bumpy sedan, the ‘enticing shore between
Cumae and a (legendary) landmark manor . . . with Baiae through the
wall’; then he pictures himself enduring, then quitting, the annoyance of
splashing customers making their decibels of noise in the public bath-
house below his hotel room (55 + 56).11 Villa + balneum: this double-
barrelled volley of caricature-forming first-person mimesis pulls together,
for dialectical friction, Seneca’s first trip, to his manor (12), and the current
saga of passengers immersed at the ‘seaside’. (Our visit will come in chapters
7, 8, 12.) We shall at length be relayed back to this memorable conjunction
when we reach Letter 86 (chapters 6, 9–12).
10 On Epp. 53: Motto and Clark (1971) / Motto (1973) 117–24; Wenskus (1994).
11 On Epp. 56: Motto and Clark (1970) / Motto (1973) 103–6.
Next, however, the Ancient Mariner must at once ‘make the return leg
from Baiae to Naples’ (57.1). Easily talked into forecasting a tempest, so as
to deny us the pleasure of a second nautical debacle, he land-lubbed (∼ 56).
But it might as well have been Voyage No. 2 (∼ 53). Instead of hurling a
tempest or putting through the wash, Seneca makes himself an image-
matrix of mud – travelling ‘a road of mud’, wading ‘a mud road’. Some of
it sticks agreeably to this sedan-ridden butt of his own send-up, as his day
does a double-take, and Seneca segues into the Olympics. Our ‘athlete’ dies
an afternoon death in a tussle with metaphor – as the demoralized moralist
treats himself to a roll in ‘oil ’n’ mud’: a hellish black-out of choking,
roasting dust asphyxiates the asthmatic as he negotiates the prison of the
Naples underpass.12 What a day’s rough ride – but (you guessed?) what a
boon for the inner mind: the ideal sensory deprivation unit (obscuritas, 57.3).
A melodramatically video-diaried bolt from the blue brings us searing
agony by web-cam. In a scenario which he has word-painted, he comes
clean / he cashes out, not for flawed, self-satirized, Seneca, not for any
Seneca defective, but for The Sage.13 But only the Sage in those terms that
don’t count, the inescapable embodiedness He shares with all the rest of
us Senecas. Somatic so traumatic, the Sage can faint, too, and skyscraper
vertigo et sim. are bio-physical events. Seneca plumbs the deaths to hand
us our moment of primal experience: light at the end of the tunnel . . . ,
collapse . . . , heart of darkness . . . , the horror. Bodies crushed under
masonry or mountain; crushed souls pulverized; spirit escaping through
corpuscles, corpse, body, like a lightning bolt that flashes, then bolts back
through a tiny sky-tube.14
De profundis.
Subterranean subconscious sublimation stares out of every pore. And
with this mimetic-imagistic effulgence, the Letters are spent, for pretty well
a book’s respite.
l e t t e r s 6 3 – 8 3 : t h e o cc a s i o n a l f l a s h
Seneca does have another equivocal yesterday, ill before noon, his own man
after lunch (65).15 And decease of an alter ego – no chicken, but ‘verdant’
12 In crypta Neapolitana (57.2): Maiuri (1937) 11–14.
13 On this demystificatory unmasking of Seneca’s role-playing: Edwards (1997) 33–4.
14 ‘The Tunnel’ vision: two-in-one synthesis of unmediated ‘Break-on-Through’ flash of insight ex-
perienced + re-imagined ‘Life-as-Hell’ metaphysics relocated, Plato’s Socratic parable in Greek
translated into Seneca’s epistolary happening in Latin (cf. 58.1–2: pp. 130, 147–9). Poetics: Motto
and Clark (1973) / Motto (1973) 124–8. Philosophy: Schönegg (1999) 73–6.
15 This startling start leads swiftly into one of Seneca’s pithiest reflections on his project, the artistic
imitation of nature as ‘transference from the cosmos to the code for Mankind’ (65.3): Scarpat (1965);
Mazzoli (1970) 24–5; Schönegg (1999) 109–30, ‘causa und materia: ep. 65’.
psychically (uiridem animo, 66.1) – spurs a new record for expatiation (com-
plete with a nod to Epicurus that turns into connected discussion: 66.18,
46–8). Cue for spring, the lowest common denominator among symbols for
‘starting over’ (initium, 67.1). But even so, or as such, spring is the archety-
pally inconstant symbol of symbolic inconstancy. Spring is the play in the
mechanism that makes symbols function (spring into life) the way they do.
Summery spring, spring, wintry spring. Like . . . senectus, green through
grey and back to black; pinning down bedridden Seneca (67.2). Time for
a decision from Lucilius, about life, about time, and space (68.1):
Consilio tuo accedo: absconde te in otio . . .
I second your strategy: tuck your self away at rest.
A brace of terse and tense messages close Book 7 by talking Lucilius out of
the active world at large and into spatio-temporal constancy (Epp. 68–9).
The key concept of ‘retreat’ (secessus) is subjected to intensive critical
scrutiny, and so articulated in extensive theorized protreptic. The picture
shows off, in particular, a conceptual bridge between the manors we have
visited and the one where this book means to stay.
Passing reference to ‘hiding out at Tarentum, locking up at Naples, and
decades without leaving your own front door’ is all the cueing we get: surely
it is plenty (68.5). And as for ‘changing places’, we cannot allow Lucilius
‘transience’ (Mutare te loca et aliunde alio transilire nolo . . . , 69.1). Stop.
Constantly. To spell out what we learned back then and there at s e n e c a’s
manor (69.2, 4 ∼ 12.1):
quocumque processeris, in ipso transitu aliqua quae renouent cupiditates tuas tibi
occurrent . . .
quocumque se uerterit [affectus], pretium aliquod praesens occupationis suae
aspiciet . . .
Where’er you promenade, in the actual transit some things to refresh your desires
will bump into you . . .
Where’er [emotion] has turned itself, its gaze will fall upon some immediate pay-off
for getting busy with it . . .
∼
Quocumque me uerti, argumenta senectutis meae uideo. ueneram in suburbanum
meum et . . .
Wherever I’ve been turning myself, I see proof upon proof that old age is with me. I
had come to my out-of-town place and . . .
Book 8 starts with a referential bang, like Book 6, and with a back-reference,
too. Back to Seneca’s first foray to the coast in the middle of Book 5
(70.1 ∼ 49.1, Pompeiorum tuorum conspectus):
Post longum interuallum Pompeios tuos uidi. in conspectum adulescentiae meae
reductus sum . . .
After a lengthy gap, I have set eye on your Pompeii. It took me back to a sighting
of my own youth . . .
Typical: this momentary rejuvenation of ——– Seneca will prove to be the book’s
only sight of either of the friends or of the worlds they must be inhabiting.
The letter works its ‘address’ into the cliché repertory of Life as Voyage,
with Seneca thinking back and thinking over the ‘déjà vu / déjà lu’ effect
of feeling that he has ‘pre-voyaged’ the long, post-Aeneid, voyage ‘of life’
that he charged against Lucilius’ Sicilian account back in Book 3 (prae-
nauigauimus . . . uitam, 70.2 ∼ 28.1, with Virgil, Aeneid 3.72):
quemadmodum in mari, ut ait Vergilius noster, ‘terraeque urbesque recedunt’ . . .
∼
licet uastum traieceris mare, licet, ut ait Vergilius noster, ‘terraeque urbesque
recedant’ . . .
All Seneca will add, by way of Sitz im Leben, will be the matching act
of separation between the two just superposed friends. Epistolary distance
engulfs these lives (71.1):
. . . oblitus uasto nos mari diuidi . . .
. . . but you forget we are divided by a vast sea – in fact by that ‘vast sea’ [sc.
of 28.1].
We will have visited most other parts of the Letters repertoire before,
deep into Book 9, our eyes are pricked wide open (77.1–2):
Subito nobis hodie Alexandrinae naues apparuerunt . . . gratus illarum Campaniae
aspectus est: omnis in pilis Puteolorum turba consistit . . .
cum intrauere Capreas . . .
Suddenly, today, the ships from Alexandria appeared over the horizon. Campagna
loves catching sight of them: the whole throng takes up position on the pier:
Pozzuoli . . .
Once they’ve negotiated their way in past Capreae . . .
Seneca’s joy is in not sharing the excited dash to the shore (magnam . . .
sensi uoluptatem, 77.3). These are the ‘mailboats’ (tabellariae), and no news
from the end of the world can matter to our grand master of indifference.
Where all Campagna can read these packet-ships’ ‘(en)signs’ (insigne: their
unique topsail), Seneca’s readers ponder Roman humanity as worldwide
postal union. These ‘one-liners’ arrive first: to ‘announce the imminent
arrival of the whole fleet’. Seneca’s Letters head, sign for, and update, the
whole dashboard of Latin Literature. To bring us the news, the hour that
the ship comes in.
Next up, for a change, Lucilius is poorly; Seneca has (he forewarned
us) been down that sea-road before, too. And how (78.1–2). Just take this
Letter, give it time to take effect (he prescribes), and the dose of Thought
medicine will make a new man of you (78.28).16
The time will come (he consoles), when Time will join and fuse the
friends. But meanwhile, he awaits a map from Lucilius: a letter contain-
ing the logbook of discoveries made on his circular tour round all Sicily.
Especially (since Scylla is just a rock and no danger to shipping, at that)
the low-down on Charybdis – any connection with the actual Taurome-
nium shore purely mythical? (79.1 ∼ 14.8, 31.9, 45.2) Lucilius is dying
to climb Etna, so Seneca obliges him by requesting that he does; but
tells him that is what he is doing, and tells him off – it’s his ‘disease’,
not down to Seneca, and is bound to result in yet another version of the
topos in the form of a descriptio loci in a gobbet of Lucilius’ verse (79.2,
4–5; 7):
aut ego te non noui aut Aetna tibi saliuam mouet; iam cupis grande aliquid et par
prioribus scribere.
Either I don’t know you at all or else Etna makes your mouth water. You crave
right now to write something huge, something to match your predecessors [i.e.
Virgil, Ovid, Cornelius Seuerus . . .].
Seneca disclaims responsibility. It is the doing of the place. But the locale
at once transcodes into the metapoetic locus classicus for mountainous writ-
ing: playing at making out what his friend’s new Etna will be like, Seneca
is himself already reworking the traditional image. And the lesson is in line
with the strategy he is recommending to Lucilius: the method looks for a
‘well-dug but not exhausted’ topos ready for reappropriation to produce
new effects. The volcano at once serves up the World’s Greatest Model for
Innovation-through-Tradition, the impossible co-presence of dynamic ‘im-
manence + transcendence’. Always effluent / never diminished, eternally
changing / forever the same . . .17
16 See Schrijvers (1990); Edwards (1999) 260–3.

17 See Schönegg (1999) 179–94, ‘Der Ätna als Bild für immanente und transzendente Schaffenskraft’,
esp. 182–4.
One characteristically bleak Senecan visit to another [Roman] show
(80),18 plus a virtually unsituated sketch of his Daily Routine (83.5: once a
dive in the Virgo aqueduct, then a plunge into the Tiber, but now – no,
just a bracing bath al fresco . . .) – and not one further sliver of ekphrastic
text (descriptio) will stake a referential claim on our memory-bank in the
book-length trek of Letters between 79 and 86, from etna to scipio.19
18 Seneca on vacation: see Hijmans (1976) 151–7.

19 For the roster of place-names in Epp. 13–83: see Appendix 1, pp. 172–3.
chapter four
The long and winding mode

Books 14–20 + ( Letters 89–124 . . .)
The undistributed sequence bracketing Books 11–13 will prove to showcase

only the one crucial locale, s c i p i o’s Liternum, twinned with a vivid but
unreferenced ‘sub-Catonesque’ journey (86 ∼ 87). After this pinnacle of
narration, the collection will feature just three significantly rounded vistas.
First, the imperial colony of Lyons, born only a human lifespan before,
burns to the ground. Empathize with its patriot, our [Aebutius] Liberalis –
but be stoical (91: it does happen). Play the raconteur, and make a moralizing
difference to, and with, this public topos of imperial Roman annals.1
Second comes the bare notice of a second manor of s e n e c a’s. He bolts
by carriage to an estate of his ‘at Nomentum’. Away from fever, and for
that reason from the City [of Rome]: from his wife, his wife, his brother,
his health, his (Senecan) old age, his wife, his fear. From Pompeia Paulina.
From Gallio. The moment he touched the vines, it was a case of ‘Once let
into pasture, I went for my food’ (104.6), and recovery of his s e l f (full
concentration on study). This letter cements the equation which condenses
‘his health’ into ‘his hearth’ (salutis suae ∼ domum tuam, 104.10 ∼ 11).
Denunciation of journey and travel blasts us into the next message, where
Lucilius is told to heed his starting orders ‘as if getting a prescription for
keeping good health on lu c i l i u s ’ estate at Ardea’ (105.1). Book 19 begins
and ends its orientation with ‘greetings from s e n e c a’s’ ‘Nomentum estate
again’ (110.1).2
But the final shot of mimesis only just makes the cut of our paradosis:
here we arrive at s e n e c a’s third estate, ‘at Alba’, after a disagreeable but
short trip, late at night and ahead of cook, baker, any reception: a chance
for our host to lighten his own heart with thought for food, now served
up to us guests as food for thought (123.1). This matrix chases a bustling
1 Cf. Tacitus, Annals 16.13 for his transcription of conflagration at Lyons: Bedon (1991).
2 Seneca’s contemporary, fellow-Spaniard, and farming expert Columella boasts three estates in Latium,
at Alba, Ardea, and Carseoli (3.9.2). Statius inherited his estate at Alba from his father, with added
water supply by imperial gift (Siluae 3.1.61–4).
40
Long and winding: Books 14–20+ 41
account of his ‘declining days’, namely nights lengthening into winter,
which prompted leisurely Roman tales of insomniac nightbirds. Featuring
banter at a recitation over less than inspiring poetry (122.11–13), and a
sparkling anecdote calculated to jog the memory. The story features living
above another noisy downstairs (122.15–16 ∼ 56). The life below is logged
through the night, with dinner ‘strictly guillotined at daybreak’.
Here the storyteller is marked for attention (122.15):
erat autem fabulator elegantissimus
he was a superlatively suave raconteur.
So it is that, at last, Seneca comes out of his shell to focus on the function
of vivid narration in the Epistles. Their occasional spurt of mimesis.3
This spate of villas, late arrivals in the collection as we have it, merely
gestures at the potential for mythic resonance immanent in each ambience.
None is spared an explicit thought, but they indicate the primeval Latin
heartland ringing around early Rome. n o m e n t u m, a l b a, and a rd e a
are one-word primary condensations of Romanitas, well-plumbed and deep-
rooted. These loca need explicitation for our benefit, not for Romans. Thus:
(1) s e n e c a’s n o m e n t u m spells (congenial) desolation (twice).
‘Seneca’ as ruin. Plus the name as all-there-is-where-once-there-was-
a-community (nomen). For ‘Rome, it has been said, re-jigs the force of
“every Latin word”: tunc o-m-n-e Latinum | fabula n-o-m-e-n erit . . ., under
the empire, the “names” of “all that once comprised the Roman state in its
widest definition, will be just a string of empty nouns” (Lucan 7.390–1).
“The whole Latin league” (o-m-n-e n-o-m-e-n Latinum, Livy 1.38.4) will be
just a fringe of “ghost-towns” . . . “The Republic is but folklore . . . The
map of Latium is blanked out.” So Nomentum featured at the head of the
list, when Anchises blithely promised (Aeneid 6.773, 776):4
haec tum nomina erunt, nunc sunt sine nomine terrae
These will then be towns in name only; in the now, in the Aeneid now, they are
bits of planet Earth minus a name’ . . .5
Seneca has made it to Utopia. He can live Nowhere he likes. Naming no
names.
(2) s e n e c a n a l b a would advert to ‘Alba Longa and Mons Albanus.
Matrix of Rome and destroyed by Rome, last of the Latin cities Rome
3 Thomsen (1979–80), esp. 152–71 on Epp. 122, with 174–82 on Epp. 56.
4 Cf. Ovid, Fasti 4.905, 937, 942, Nomento . . . | tum . . . nil nisi nomen habet|.
5 Henderson (2000) 10–11, citing Henderson (1998) 199–200 and n. 121.
founded. The heartland of Roma, Latinitas, entrée to the Aeneid (Aeneid
1.5–7) . . . The magistrates and senate of the Roman Republic (would)
travel the Via Triumphalis to spend the night of the feriae Latinae at Alba
in the holiest and hoariest of state sacrifices, to Iuppiter Latiaris on the
Alban Mount.’6
Before Rome, minus Rome, Seneca has ‘whited out’ the world. He can
live in a [Blank] of his own. Avoid: a void.
(3) lu c i l i u s ’ a rd e a would orient us to another crucial ‘sacrifice’ in
the building of imperial Rome (Virgil, Aeneid 7.411–13):
. . . locus Ardea quondam
dictus auis, et nunc magnum manet Ardea nomen,
sed fortuna fuit . . .
Topical history of Ardea: hallowed by fore-
fathers in bird legend, still today, as we speak, lives on Ardea, epic name – but the
good days are done and gone . . .
‘As one of these hard luck stories, Ardea is always already a name on an
outdated map, put in an epic text to mark a lost world of shrouded Latin
myth . . . Ardea’s was not to be a beginning, but a suppressed end, the end
that marks suppression – Ardea . . . was to burn itself out, for Rome . . . Ardea
fades from the geopolitical map of Latin culture and from the semantic order
of the proper name . . . Yes, the myth of Ardea – Ardea is a Roman myth of
Italy – is a “great story” we cannot tell . . . So many towns are chewed up to
found (this) Rome . . . so many homes are cleared away, so many Romes,
too, are bulldozed . . .’7 The Letters explicitly confirm that it was a proverb,
part of Roman Truth, that ‘Ardea got just as sacked as Rome’ (91.16).
Poetaster Lucilius has somewhere to fly, a place to burn, he can run the
gamut of passion. All on his own, this dwarf [‘Turnus’] manqué, can elude
his fate as belittled catachresis for the father of free speech in Latin letters:
the Lucilius, founder of Roman Verse Satire. In private, privation.
But, let us not lose perspective. These are minimal, ‘bracketed’, moments
marked as ripe for mimetic exploration, which Seneca nonetheless resists
filling in. It would be out of place for him to spell out any of this [ ].
And meantime quite different concerns have dominated the vast bulk of
the writing in the Letters.
True, there are a few lively anecdotes:
(1) ‘Once there was Calvisius Sabinus, I remember it well’, more
money than sense (27.5–8: i.e. an apomnemoneuma, with quip by Satellius
6 Henderson (1998) 198–9. 7 Henderson (2000) 11–12.

Quadratus, the ‘Full-Square Flunkey’); and there is prematurely senile
Tullius Marcellinus, starving himself to death (77.5–9: a self-proclaimed
‘welcome fabella excursion’).
(2) Piso the inebriate Prefect of Rome was implicitly trusted by both of
Rome’s first two emperors (83.14–15).
And (3) news of a series of named acquaintances motivates several Letters.
Can Marcellinus be saved? (29); old Aufidius Bassus is sinking fast (30);
Flaccus is dead – so is Annaeus Serenus (63); Metronax is dead at eighty
(93); Cornelius Senecio’s death from angina was devotedly graphic (101).8
Also, a few stark cameos play closer to home, standing in for self-
portraiture:
(1) ‘Green with age’, crippled Claranus pops up after full many a year,
not just to brighten the days, but to clarify the (Senecan) learning/teaching
life-project, by mirroring his old comrade from student days (66.1–5).
(2) A letter to Marullus, rallying him against the loss of his son, is
forwarded, whole, to Lucilius: now it is for him, rallying him against any
loss he may [soon?] suffer . . . For the consolatio is irrepressibly narcissistic,
intrinsically transferential; and always about that – about transference. Vale
lines up every reader into the queue, behind Seneca (99).9
(3) Whereas apology for less-than-scintillating Papirius Fabianus (re-
member his blush, in Epp. 10) sparks modelling of the (Senecan?) style-
free teacher of philosophy: teacher of Seneca’s teaching (taught through,
and as, the reader’s reading of Seneca’s reading of his teacher; 100: see
pp. 153–6).
(4) Undone Maecenas bloats a tract: in order to unfrock writer, patron,
and culture system, sketching (Senecan!) agenda-setting through put-down
caricature (114).10
At the very least, the skilful variation of styles and trends has underlined
just how pointedly the epistolary medium may incarnate its message – this
imprinting course-work of spiritual bricolage.
But virtually all else in this interminable monastic barrage of ribbing,
nagging, and flaying of self, friend, and all humanity is scrubbed scrupu-
lously bare of referents and ambient presence. As if these Letters are dead
set on stigmatizing their genre’s attractions (as distractions from the war of
self-purgation).
In Book 15, for instance, the steadily growing length of most letters yields
to a brace of truly gargantuan excursions which Seneca at once dubs, and
8 See Wilson (1997).
9 See Wilson (1997) for the Letters’ theme of mourning as motivation for the repression of grief.
10 See especially Graver (1998) for this grand rhapsody on the ‘abstraction of masculinity’.
debates as, ‘epistolary bulk’ (94; 95.3, ingentem epistulam). To start Book 19,
too, discussion is rigged to naturalize, at last, Seneca’s most stark and ex-
plicit discussion of his epistolarity:11 Seneca had planned on responding to
Lucilius’ lead, but he’ll trust him and go first (118.1):
nec faciam quod Cicero, uir disertissimus, facere Atticum iubet, ut etiam ‘si rem
nullam habebit, quod in buccam uenerit scribat’.
= I shall not do what Cicero, hero of heroes of eloquence, bids Atticus to do, so
even ‘if he has not a thing, he should write whatever comes into his gob’.
Seneca can never dry up of topics, so skip all the themes that fill up Cicero-
nian letters, for example election news and money matters (see Epistulae
ad Atticum 1.12).12 Instead, handle your own sins, give yourself a shake out,
cover your own campaigning (118.2).
Similarly, the Letters’ most direct declaration of their Morality only arrives
in the run-in, when Lucilius complains at Seneca’s fiddling over today’s
brainteaser (121.1):13
‘hoc quid ad mores?’
‘What’s that to do with mores?’
The (borrowed) answer:
non quicquid morale est mores bonos facit.
It is not the case that whatever is to do with mores makes good mores.
Different things, he explains, relate to mores differently, and so, for more
than an example, research into human versus animal nature does not leave
mores behind (121.2–3: in fact, such research is a necessary precondition).
As these conclusive credos ultimately confirm, resistance to concern with
the specifics of ‘Ciceronian’ investment in the grain of Roman public life
is doctrinally vital, and paraded as morally inevitable. By the time he has
finished with us, we friends are very alone with Seneca, with the texts of
philosophy, with that voice buzzing round its hive in our skull. He has got
us where he wanted us, seizure of the philosophical letter from Epicurus,
for a Stoicizing imperial Rome.14
11 Book 9 had opened with the epistolary credo: Seneca would prefer, where possible, to show what he
thinks rather than say it; and his words are not to delight but to benefit (75.1; 5). Cf. Russell (1974)
73–4. On Epp. 118: Schmidt (1958).
12 See Habinek (1992) 190, n. 12. Epp. 97.2–10 rehearses the Clodius scandal made memorable by
Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 1.16 (quoted). Seneca’s Cicero: Gambet (1970), esp. 174.
13 Could only arrive in the run-in: Cancik (1967) 88.
14 For the roster of place-names in Epp. 89–124: see Appendix 1, pp. 173–4.
The other side of the coin is, as it must be, that the rare mimetic frames
shot on location are bound to settle in the readers’ imagination all the more
firmly. A proof of their deliberate design – their epistoliterarity – is to be
found in their tight imbrication. The thesis of Morals and Villas is that
simple.
So I shall pressurize Letters 12, 55, 86 until they combine to teach us the
teaching of Moral Philosophy as Spiritual Hydroponics:
‘Triple Bypass’ + ‘Three-pronged Trencher’.
c h a p t e r f i ve
Booking us in
Letters 84–88
let ter 84: the beesness

Book 11 opens with a shock that is meant to stay with readers reading:
Itinera ista, quae segnitiam mihi excutiunt, et ualetudini meae prodesse iudico et
studiis.
The ‘journeys’ you mention, ‘shaking the sloth out’ of me, are in my judgement
beneficial at once to my well-being and my studies.
We will for once recuperate travel by bracketing it with adventures across
the page. Routes routinize. Bouts of physical-plus-mental ‘to-and-fro-ing’
integrate a productive self, while reading and writing phases reinvigorate
by rotation (commeandum). ‘“We must”, as they say, “make like the bees”’
(84.3): go all round the garden for suitable flowers, then back home to sort
out the combs, and ‘stuff their cells/rooms with sweet nectar’.
Here Seneca journeys out to read-and-raid Virgil’s Aeneid (quoting 1.432–
3), only to collect a reprocessed Georgics passage, and message (after 4.163–4).
As he says, reading is collecting readings, and when writing turns them into
a corpus, we don’t know whether the human ‘honey’ is essentially found,
and ready-made, or if it is the product of a conversion process (neglegentem
corporis . . . lectionibus, . . . lectio . . . legere . . . lectione collectum . . . , redigat in
corpus, . . . collegerunt ∼ collegerunt . . . colligendi ∼ lectione congessimus . . . in
corpore nostro, 1–5).1
Our brief open-air sortie turns out to be already over.
For we honey-bees have a different production-line. Our business is to
internalize and process what we ingest until it is converted for incorporation
(transeunt). We are here to ‘digest’ food for thought (concoquamus), which
means, more than memorization, mentation, so that (for our example)
Seneca can think honeyed Senecan thoughts from verse nectar after Virgil –
not just quote him. We are to put our raw materials under wraps, and show
1 See Schönegg (1999) 71–2.
46
Booking us in: Letters 84–88 47
up our product instead. Even if ‘admiration’ fixes deep in you the ‘likeness’
of a paragon (similitudo, 8),
similem esse te uolo quomodo filium, non quomodo imaginem; imago res mortua
est.
I want you to be ‘like’ like a son, not ‘like’ like a photograph – live imagery, not
dead.
Far as that from flitting round the planet(ary library), Seneca wants you,
sweetheart, to fill your head with the symphony of you – mixed (as his
image puts it) by your synthesizer from a virtual orchestra of orches-
tras, to make customized Muzak from a computerized chorale. In fine
(10):
talem animum nostrum esse uolo: multae in illo artes, multa praecepta sint, mul-
tarum aetatum exempla, sed in unum conspirata.
I want the Senecan mind to be like this: polymathic, multidisciplinary, trans-
historical, but welded into a unity.
Those forays which were our jump-off point were left as anonymized as
the quotation from Virgil. And they were put under wraps in favour of the
heavily familiarized Journey Within of Senecan self-improvement.
Take a reading of the Aeneid which brought home a simile that pointed
silently to the process of processing within the same ‘corpus’ which silently
incorporated the earlier project of the Georgics, so as to write a definitive
v i rg i l.
Take a Senecan reading which ‘gathered’ from Virgilian inspiration
(technique + example) how to stuff his cell/self with similitudes that them-
selves represented many-faceted, multidimensional, omni-capacious ‘arts-
creeds-cultures’ in a live genealogy of thinking. With the aspiration of
making s e n e c a ‘son, not clone’, of tradition.
How else was (a) v i rg i l made?
What else is the imaginary but a repertory of likenesses, plus the infolded
imperative to make an exemplary likeness with them?
To become the next exemplification of self made from fully digested,
incorporated, unified, paradigms for digestion, incorporation, and spiritual
well-being.
OK, honey, plenty of adventures ahead – to mind, mind you, to write.
The metaphorization of Seneca hops along apace. Who said ‘Those
journeys you mention are beneficial’? Who meant by this, all along (11):
relinque ista iamdudum, ad quae discurritur.
Those things people scurry after to all points of the compass – drop them, it’s long
since time.
Life out there is all a chase for things that bring envy back home (inuidia).
Insults to clients outside palaces, then more inside (potentium domos, 12).
Up the staircase, on the podium, up the slippery precipice, when the true
path all along is the non-geophysical and non-sociocultural climb to the
Everest of Dignity. End of epistolary journey.
Now Macrobius was to purloin those reflections on ‘Making Like the
Bees’ from Epp. 84, for his own Preface (5–10) [as unacknowledged and
assimilated as Seneca could wish].2 The letter’s analysis and practice of the
imaging of imaging in creating a trajectory for pedagogical style, and/as
forming a unified self, emboldens me to treat it as (if ) ‘prooemial’ to an
integrated ‘body of writing’, namely the sequence Epp. 84–8, for all that it
is transmitted to us as (if ) ‘Books 11 through 13’ (pp. 28–9).
l e t t e r 8 5 : u n wave r i n g
In outline, 85 ‘links’ 84 to 86 by going out to gather ‘syllogisms’ (collectio,
85.1), as Seneca protests his absence of disturbance by this traditional brand
of Stoic argumentation (non delectari). It could fill a book, not just a letter
(and perhaps it does). The example that emerges as today’s challenge for
Senecan assimilation, as our topic for readers’ digestion, will be definition
of The Sage as ‘Undisturbed Constancy’. There can be no disturbance or
inconstancy in this definition, no unsettling or wavering play in applying
it, for it’s all or nothing when it comes to Virtue facing up to valorous
assault on machineguns and napalm ‘for Country, for Law, for Liberty’
(3, 16). The Sage is bound fast to the constitutive terms of his definition,
he must ply Virtue in prosperity, or if not, in adversity – ‘if he can, in
his country; if not, in exile’. ‘Exile’ comes last but not least in the list
of horrors tamed by this immovable uncompromise (. . . exilium, ubique
horrenda, 41).
Setting himself to unpack the logic made Seneca act out its logic. As
he transmuted reading to writing (to reading), he defined resistance to
pleasure as the rigour of definition. Created a dour, one-issue, adamant
‘Seneca’.
Linear sequence, contiguity, may imply carry-over, whether method-
ological or substantive, from Epp. 84 through 85, and into our negotiation
2 See esp. De Rentiis (1998).
of 86. In general terms, that letter will cue a challenge to take, but recuper-
ate, a particular, highly circumstantial, ‘journey’. On my reading, straggle
between topics, plus struggle within its concluding topic, will invite com-
mitment of energy to resolve the worrisome show of unvirtuous disunity
apparently enacted as its message (especially chapter 11: pp. 143–5).
l e t t e r 8 7 : ro u g h i a n
When we come away from 86, we’ll at once take another trip, not yet
particularized and, initially, more than decontextualized, a paradox of un-
performability (87.1):
Naufragium, antequam nauem ascenderem, feci.
My voyage was shipwrecked before my embarcation.
He refuses, too, to say how.3 You might think it one of those annoying Stoic
logical paradoxes. But these aren’t as false or wondrous as appears prima
facie (87.1):
cum uolueris, approbabo, immo etiam si nolueris. interim hoc me iter docuit . . .
I shall prove when you want, in fact, no, I’ll prove it even if you don’t want.
Meanwhile the lesson this journey taught me is . . .
Two days of happy roughing it with my ‘Greatest’ friend (Maximus), min-

imum retinue and paraphernalia, ‘cushion on the ground and me on the
cushion’, iron rations of figs (like New Year’s Day!) + notebooks.4 Good
company, moral-sodden conditions, but without direction, landmark, or
destination (4):
uehiculum in quod impositus sum rusticum est . . . uix a me obtineo ut hoc
uehiculum uelim uideri meum.
The carriage I was put on is for peasants . . . I can hardly permit myself to let this
carriage be seen as mine.
Because Seneca has yet to assimilate his own sermon. He blushes in shame
and at his shame, caught in materialism by a ‘dirty carriage’ (sordido
uehiculo, 4; 5):
3 Cf. 88.7, . . . uel naufragus nauigem. There is room for multivalence in this ‘motto’, to be explored
through the letter, see Allegri (1999); Armisen-Marchetti (1989) 140–2, ‘La navigation, image de la
condition humaine / de la vie intérieure’.
4 For Epicurean frugal dieting on certain days: Avotins (1977), on esp. Epp. 18.9.
parum adhuc profeci.
Up to now I have got absolutely nowhere.
Imagining mundane riches (‘dream home’, etc., 6) is the reason for riding
this shoddy mule-cart. We find our trail leads straight enough to the Elder
Cato – ‘The Censor’ – (9):
quem tam e re publica fuit nasci quam Scipionem, alter enim cum hostibus nostris
bellum, alter cum moribus gessit.
whose birth was as much of an asset to the Republic as Scipio. One made war on
our foes; the other on our mores.
In 86 Seneca visited s c i p i o ’s at journey’s end; 87 now rides beside Cato
‘riding a donkey, with all his gear in the saddle-bags . . . – one pony-back,
or in fact, a share of same’. Does money make people dirty or do they foul
money (16, impurum . . . spurcauit)? ‘It falls into some hands like a penny
into a sewer.’
As the journey lengthens (to match that of 84), the itinerary never wavers,
the assault on wealth never falters.5 As this unitary vehicle of thought pays
a visit to [somewhere in] the country, a long passage from the Georgics is in
place (20 = 1.53–8), and dogma concretizes sympathetically at 25:
non nascitur itaque ex malo bonum, non magis quam ficus ex olea. ad semen nata
respondent, bona degenerare non possunt.
Good can’t be born from Bad. Any more than a fig from an olive-tree. Things are
born corresponding to their seed. Good can’t run to the bad.
Seneca’s trip through the countryside has therefore s(p)liced the imagery
of Cato with the repertoire of farming (a drop of oleiculture). Read for
its potential for useful integration with 84–6, this Travelling Light has a
self-help course in anti-materialism tucked in the saddlebags of its clapped-
out mule: Seneca, cushioned on the ground, has revelled in his weekend
jaunt toward Philosophy, a novice who knows enough to know that he is a
———–).6
novice. Almost ready to begin (proficiens
l e t t e r 8 8 : l i v i n g ( a s ) p o e t ry
Letter 86 was transient, bipartite, descriptive; 88 is the same expansive quasi-
‘book-length’ as 84, 85, 87 – it is, if anything, more systematically structured,
5 The Letters are, we could argue, one all-out assault on the fear of losing (material) wealth: see Rosivach
(1995) esp. 96.
6 Cancik (1967) 35–9 reads Epp. 82 : 83 and 85 : 87 as strong dialectical ‘interlocutors’.
and at least as exegetic. It passes under review ‘liberal studies’. In fact, a sneer
at formalism in the study of poetry, music, geometry, astronomy . . . (beyond
words: art, sculpture, etc.; wrestling; parfumerie, cooking, etc.; military
training). Reading Homer is not about tracking Ulysses’ wanderings in
Lucilius’ land, between Italy and Sicily, but our wanderings, for Homer
can teach me how to love my country, how to voyage even when my ship
is wrecked.7 The Georgics afford a couple more gleanings (14 ∼ 1.336–7;
16 ∼ 1.424–6), and as critical review of Posidonius’ philosophical system-
atization of the Arts arrives, to process claims on civilization for Greek
gurus,8 Seneca’s tirade turns his target progressively, for Goodness’ sake,
into sceptical, cynical, nihilist Philosophy (38, in place of inauguration of
that PhD summa cum laude):
‘O hominem litteratum!’ simus hoc titulo rusticiore contenti: ‘O uirum bonum!’
‘My Professor!’ No, let’s find content in this peasants’ acclamation : ‘My Goodness!’
All that silent reading, behind all this writing, has integrated a partic-
ular simulacrum of ‘Seneca’, seemingly swapping his Epicurus for Virgil’s
Farming, in a honeyed synthesis of the nectar bulging the combs in his
hive:
Epistle Georgic
58.2 3.146–50
86.15, 16 2.58, 1.215–16
87.20 1.53–8
88.14, 16 1.336–7, 424–6
90.9, 11, 37 1.144, 139–40, 125–8
95.68 3.75–81 + 83–5
108.24 (bis), 34 3.66–8, 284, 260–1
114.23 4.212–13
122.2 1.250–1
124.1 1.176–7
× 16 × 16
7 See Batinski (1993).

8 For discussion: Boys-Stones (2001) 18–24. A reader points out that Seneca’s modelling of authorship
and authority through Homer here supports the interpretation that Seneca’s dismissal of appropria-
tions of Homer as Stoic, Epicurean, Peripatetic, or Academic (88.5) would prompt him also to ‘resist
a postmodern appropriation of his own writing’; but (to act out the melodramatics of interpretation
as appropriation of writing) doesn’t this argument ‘also’ point to such ‘resistance’ as precisely what
would qualify any such ‘appropriation of writing’ as ‘postmodern’? On the whole montage of Epp. 88:
Stückelberger (1965).
Georgic Epistle
1.53–8 87.20
1.125–8, 139–40, 144 90.37, 11, 9
1.176–7 124.1
1.215–16 86.16
1.250–1 122.2
1.336–7, 424–6 88.14, 16
2.58 86.15
3.66–8 108.24
3.75–81 + 83–5 95.68
3.146–50 58.2
3.260–1, 284 108.34, 24
4.212–13 114.23
× 16 × 16
Now it must be up to the reader to assimilate the lessons (∼ rewrite your

self ). Let us simmer.9 Before we steam open the next missive
– for the sequel, the next instalment, adjustment, refinement
– for revision, rejection, revulsion; in disavowal, denial, disposal.
9 For the roster of place-names in Epp. 84–8: see Appendix 1, p. 173.
chapter six
Now and then; here and there: at s c i p i o ’s

Text and translation of Letter 86
The journey to the villa of Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Hannibal’s

Carthage, is over before it is begun.
Seneca is already (cushioned?) on the ground there as Epp. 86 begins
(iacens).1 He has not left this manor; he will give us no hint that he has
been this way before; he is still there, right now, at the eternal moment of
epistolary address.
But Letter 12 pre-primed us to ‘moralize’ the first-person narrative of the
owner’s visit to his mansion, and interference in its gardening, for scrutiny
of his imaged self. Everything we have learned about the Letters has told
us to respond by working through intimate exchange with the writer and
his presumptions about the reader. We always undergo manipulation; we
always have the manipulator’s self-manipulation before us, as mirror of the
terms for our own engagement.
Where are we as we start on s c i p i o’s?
Our approach, and gateway: we were handed a negative proof of the
ideal mansion in the caricature of vat i a’s (Epp. 55).
We were invited both to read the Letters as the transmogrified product
of the reading of classic ‘liberal’ texts, and specifically to subsume gleanings
from the philosophy of Virgil’s Georgics into our reception of Seneca’s
deployment of rustic imagery in pursuit of Virtue (Epp. 84, cf. 87, 88).
If reception of a ‘mansion’ could bridge to hubbub from a ‘bath-house’
once, then it can happen again. And why not within, rather than between,
site or sites, Letter or Letters (∼ 55–6)?
Of course a Neapolitan shoreline scenario must stir memories of both
Senecan excoriation of all journeying away from Rome (from Epp. 2 on),
1 Most likely, Seneca means to promise a humble perspective, from Scipio’s tomb, in anticipation of his
own: cf. Epp. 68.8, quid in otio facio? ulcus meum curo. si ostenderem tibi pedem turgidum . . . permitteres
mihi uno loco iacere et fouere morbum meum . . . ; 71.21, iacere in conuiuio . . . iacere in conuiuio . . .
iacere in eculeo. iacens also makes the metastylistic promise of ‘falling flat’ (e.g. Quintilian, Institutio
Oratoria 4.2.119, caret enim ceteris lenociniis expositio, et nisi commendetur hac uenustate, iaceat necesse
est, Krostenko (2001) 109).
53
and the stages of his progressive refinement of the ideal of secessus, whether
particularized in the locative or abstracted from all geodesic lines (esp. Epp.
7, 51, 55, 68, 69).
Finally, self-conscious, knowing, reflexivity in the image systems of
Senecan scenarios has been kick-started for the current spate of protreptic
(at Epp. 84).
Therefore, I propose, when this the most sustained stretch of mimetic
habitus in the entire collection arrives, a long line-up of hermeneutic triggers
have been readied for its homiletic reception (Epp. 86):
In ipsa Scipionis Africani uilla iacens haec tibi scribo, adoratis manibus 1
eius et ara, quam sepulcrum esse tanti uiri suspicor. animum quidem
eius in caelum ex quo erat redisse persuadeo mihi, non quia magnos
exercitus duxit (hoc enim et Cambyses furiosus ac furore feliciter usus
habuit), sed ob egregiam moderationem pietatemque, quam magis in
illo admirabilem iudico cum reliquit patriam quam cum defendit. aut
Scipio Romae esse debebat aut Roma in libertate.
‘Nihil’, inquit, ‘uolo derogare legibus, nihil institutis; aequum inter 2
omnes ciues ius sit. utere sine me beneficio meo, patria. causa tibi
libertatis fui, ero et argumentum: exeo, si plus quam tibi expedit creui.’
quidni ego admirer hanc magnitudinem animi, qua in exilium 3
uoluntarium secessit et ciuitatem exonerauit? eo perducta res erat ut aut
libertas Scipioni aut Scipio libertati faceret iniuriam. neutrum fas erat;
itaque locum dedit legibus et se Liternum recepit tam suum exilium rei
publicae imputaturus quam Hannibalis.
uidi uillam exstructam lapide quadrato, murum circumdatum siluae, 4
turres quoque in propugnaculum uillae utrimque subrectas, cisternam
aedificiis ac uiridibus subditam quae sufficere in usum uel exercitus
posset, balneolum angustum, tenebricosum ex consuetudine antiqua:
non uidebatur maioribus nostris caldum nisi obscurum.
magna ergo me uoluptas subiit contemplantem mores Scipionis ac 5
nostros: in hoc angulo ille ‘Carthaginis horror’, cui Roma debet quod
tantum semel capta est, abluebat corpus rusticis laboribus fessum.
exercebat enim opere se terramque (ut mos fuit priscis) ipse subigebat.
sub hoc ille tecto tam sordido stetit: hoc illum pauimentum tam uile
sustinuit: at nunc quis est qui sic lauari sustineat?
pauper sibi uidetur ac sordidus nisi parietes magnis et pretiosis 6
orbibus refulserunt, nisi Alexandrina marmora Numidicis crustis
At s c i p i o ’s : l e t t e r 86 55
distincta sunt, nisi illis undique operosa et in picturae modum uariata
circumlitio praetexitur, nisi uitro absconditur camera, nisi Thasius lapis,
quondam rarum in aliquo spectaculum templo, piscinas nostras
circumdedit, in quas multa sudatione corpora exsaniata demittimus, nisi
aquam argentea epitonia fuderunt.
et adhuc plebeias fistulas loquor: quid cum ad balnea libertinorum 7
peruenero? quantum statuarum, quantum columnarum est nihil
sustinentium sed in ornamentum positarum impensae causa! quantum
aquarum per gradus cum fragore labentium! eo deliciarum peruenimus
ut nisi gemmas calcare nolimus.
in hoc balneo Scipionis minimae sunt rimae magis quam fenestrae 8
muro lapideo exsectae, ut sine iniuria munimenti lumen admitterent; at
nunc ‘blattaria’ uocant balnea, si qua non ita aptata sunt ut totius diei
solem fenestris amplissimis recipiant, nisi et lauantur simul et colorantur,
nisi ex solio agros ac maria prospiciunt. itaque quae concursum et
admirationem habuerant cum dedicarentur, ea in antiquorum numerum
reiciuntur cum aliquid noui luxuria commenta est quo ipsa se obrueret.
at olim et pauca erant balnea nec ullo cultu exornata: cur enim 9
exornaretur res quadrantaria et in usum, non in oblectamentum reperta?
non suffundebatur aqua nec recens semper uelut ex calido fonte
currebat, nec referre credebant in quam perlucida sordes deponerent.
sed, di boni, quam iuuat illa balinea intrare obscura et gregali 10
tectorio inducta, quae scires Catonem tibi aedilem aut Fabium
Maximum aut ex Corneliis aliquem manu sua temperasse! nam hoc
quoque nobilissimi aediles fungebantur officio intrandi ea loca quae
populum receptabant exigendique munditias et utilem ac salubrem
temperaturam, non hanc quae nuper inuenta est similis incendio, adeo
quidem ut conuictum in aliquo scelere seruum uiuum lauari oporteat.
nihil mihi uidetur iam interesse, ardeat balineum an caleat.
quantae nunc aliqui rusticitatis damnant Scipionem quod non in 11
caldarium suum latis specularibus diem admiserat, quod non in multa
luce decoquebatur et exspectabat ut in balneo concoqueret! o hominem
calamitosum! nesciit uiuere. non saccata aqua lauabatur sed saepe
turbida et, cum plueret uehementius, paene lutulenta. nec multum eius
intererat an sic lauaretur; ueniebat enim ut sudorem illic ablueret, non
ut unguentum.
quas nunc quorundam uoces futuras credis? ‘Non inuideo Scipioni: 12
uere in exilio uixit qui sic lauabatur.’ immo, si scias, non cotidie
lauabatur; nam, ut aiunt qui priscos mores urbis tradiderunt, bracchia et
crura cotidie abluebant, quae scilicet sordes opere collegerant, ceterum
toti nundinis lauabantur. hoc loco dicet aliquis: ‘liquet mihi
immundissimos fuisse.’ quid putas illos oluisse? militiam, laborem,
uirum. postquam munda balnea inuenta sunt, spurciores sunt.
descripturus infamem et nimiis notabilem deliciis Horatius quid ait? 13
pastillos Buccillus olet.
dares nunc Buccillum: proinde esset ac si ‘hircum’ oleret, ‘Gargonii’ loco
esset, quem idem Horatius Buccillo opposuit. parum est sumere
unguentum nisi bis terque renouatur, ne euanescat in corpore. quid
quod hoc odore tamquam suo gloriantur?
haec si tibi nimium tristia uidebuntur, uillae imputabis, in qua 14
didici ab Aegialo, diligentissimo patre familiae (is enim nunc huius agri
possessor est) quamuis uetus arbustum posse transferri. hoc nobis
senibus discere necessarium est, quorum nemo non oliuetum alteri
ponit, ? quod uidi illud arborum trimum et quadrimum fastidiendi
fructus aut deponere.?
te quoque proteget illa quae 15
tarda uenit seris factura nepotibus umbram,
ut ait Vergilius noster, qui non quid uerissime sed quid decentissime
diceretur aspexit, nec agricolas docere uoluit sed legentes delectare.
nam, ut alia omnia transeam, hoc quod mihi hodie necesse fuit 16
deprehendere, adscribam:
uere fabis satio est; tunc te quoque, Medica, putres
accipiunt sulci, et milio uenit annua cura.
an uno tempore ista ponenda sint et an utriusque ‘uerna sit satio’, hinc
aestimes licet: Iunius mensis est quo tibi scribo, iam procliuis in Iulium:
eodem die uidi ‘fabam’ metentes, ‘milium’ serentes.
ad oliuetum reuertar, quod uidi duobus modis positum: magnarum 17
arborum truncos circumcisis ramis et ad unum redactis pedem cum rapo
suo transtulit, amputatis radicibus, relicto tantum capite ipso ex quo
illae pependerant. hoc fimo tinctum in scrobem demisit, deinde terram
non aggessit tantum, sed calcauit et pressit.
negat quicquam esse hac, ut ait, ‘pinsatione’ efficacius. uidelicet 18
frigus excludit et uentum; minus praeterea mouetur et ob hoc nascentes
radices prodire patitur ac solum apprendere, quas necesse est cereas
adhuc et precario haerentes leuis quoque reuellat agitatio. rapum autem
arboris antequam obruat radit; ex omni enim materia quae nudata est,
ut ait, radices exeunt nouae. non plures autem super terram eminere
debet truncus quam tres aut quattuor pedes; statim enim ab imo
uestietur nec magna pars eius quemadmodum in oliuetis ueteribus arida
et retorrida erit.
alter ponendi modus hic fuit: ramos fortes nec corticis duri, quales 19
esse nouellarum arborum solent, eodem genere deposuit. hi paulo
tardius surgunt, sed cum tamquam a planta processerint, nihil habent in
se abhorridum aut triste.
illud etiamnunc uidi, uitem ex arbusto suo annosam transferri; 20
huius capillamenta quoque, si fieri potest, colligenda sunt, deinde
liberalius sternenda uitis, ut etiam ex corpore radicescat. et uidi non
tantum mense Februario positas sed etiam Martio exacto; tenent et
complexae sunt non suas ulmos.
omnes autem istas arbores quae, ut ita dicam, ‘grandiscapiae’ sunt, 21
ait aqua adiuuandas cisternina; quae si prodest, habemus pluuiam in
nostra potestate.
plura te docere non cogito, ne quemadmodum Aegialus me sibi
aduersarium parauit, sic ego parem te mihi.
uale.
Inside the actual manor of the Scipio dubbed Conqueror of Africa. 1
Here I am, flat out. Writing you this. After first paying respects to his
shade and altar. This, I suspect, is the tomb of this great hero. As for his
spirit, I am convinced myself that it returned to heaven whence it came.
Not because he led great armies: Cambyses, you see, had armies too, and
he was mad – but managed to make madness work for him successfully.
Rather, in recognition of his restraint-cum-respect. Which by my
judgement was marvellous in his case, still more when he quit his
fatherland than when he protected it. When either Scipio had to be in
Rome, or else Rome had to be free.
‘No way’, he said, ‘am I prepared to undermine law. No way, 2
procedure. Equality between all citizens must be their right. Fatherland,
put my gift to work without me. I have been what made you free; I shall
be the proof that you are. I am going away. In case I have grown beyond
what is in your best interest.’
How could I not marvel at this greatness of spirit – retiring into 3
self-imposed exile, removing a burden from society? The situation had
reached the point where either freedom would do Scipio harm, or Scipio
would harm freedom. Neither alternative was right and proper, so he
deferred to the law, gave ground, and withdrew to Liternum. He would
debit the Republic for his own exile as well as for Hannibal’s. Both.
I have seen a manor built high with dressed stone; a perimeter wall 4
around a wood; tall towers, too, underslung on both sides to fortify the
manor; a water tank installed under the buildings and shrubberies, up to
underwriting the needs of an army, even; a tight wee bath-house, dark as
hell in the ancient fashion. No baths seemed to our ancestors hot that
weren’t dark.
So I underwent great joy. Beholding Scipio’s ways versus ours. Inside 5
this cranny, the famous
‘Carthage hair-raiser’,
to whom Rome owes the fact that it has been captured just the once,
used to wash down his body, tired by hard graft out in the country. You
see, he used to toil as his work-out, he trenched the earth underfoot, as
was the way with the men of yore, in person. Under this roof, the great
man stood tall – dirty as it is! This floor underpinned the hero, shoddy
as it is! Today, though, who is there who would undergo taking a bath
this a-way?
One sees oneself as poor, as dirty, if the mirrors on the walls haven’t 6
been a dazzle of great big pricey discs; if marble blocks from Alexandria
haven’t been set off against veneer slabs from Numidia; if the walls aren’t
given a border by a wash all around – elaborately worked on all sides, and
patterned like a painting; if the ceiling isn’t hidden away behind glass; if
stone from Thasos, once upon a time a rare showpiece in any temple,
hasn’t run around our pools, into which we lower bodies dehydrated by
repeat sweats; if valves made of silver haven’t released the flow of
water.
And still I’m talking pipes for the working-classes . . . – how 7
about once I get on to baths belonging to guys fathered by former
slaves? What a load of statues; what a load of pillars that undergird zilch,
installed for decoration instead – to boost the cost; what a load of
waterfalls, sluicing down the steps in a din! We’ve got on to the level of
delicacy where we’ll tread nothing but jewels.
Inside this, the bath-house of Scipio. There are the smallest chinks, 8
rather than windows, chiselled from the stone wall so as to let light in
without harming the fortification. Today, though, they call them baths
for moths, if any baths haven’t been designed so as to welcome in the
sun all day long through the most generous-sized windows; if they don’t
simultaneously bathe and tan; if they don’t look out over fields and sea
from the hip-bath. So it is that baths that had drawn a crowd to marvel
on the day of dedication are relegated to the rank of antiques, once
luxury has dreamed up some novelty it can use to bury itself.
Whereas, in olden times bath-houses were both few and with no 9
fancy décor. Why ever, you see, would something priced at a farthing get
decorated, something invented for use, not for titivation? Water-flow
didn’t keep welling up from under; water didn’t keep running forever
fresh, as though from a hot spring; they didn’t believe it mattered how
crystal clear the water was which they set their dirt in.
But, good gods, what pleasure to enter those famous bath-houses: 10
dark, hooded with mass-market stucco, and you’d know Cato was your
Housing Officer (or Fabius Maximus, or someone from the Cornelius
clan . . .) who was in control, hands-on. Because this was also one of the
duties that Housing Officers used to perform: to enter sites which
admitted the public, and insist on cleanliness, plus a temperature both
practical and healthy. Not the sort pioneered in recent times, a good
imitation of a blaze – so much so, a slave found guilty of some crime
ought to be bathed alive! It seems to me there’s no difference now
between bath on fire and hot bath.
What a load of country gaucherie people today convict Scipio of: he 11
didn’t let daylight into his sauna through wide windowpanes! He didn’t
have his skin go brown floodlit, or wait in the bath for his din to go
down! Ah – a human wreck: he didn’t know how to live! He wouldn’t
bathe in specially filtered water. No, it was regularly clouded and, when
it rained extra heavily, pretty well muddy. And it didn’t make much
difference to him, either, if he bathed that way, as he went in order to
wash away sweat, not scent.
What do you suppose some people today would say? ‘I don’t envy 12
Scipio. He truly lived in exile – bathing that way!’ But no! If you knew
it, he wouldn’t bathe daily. For as those responsible for handing on the
tradition about the ancient ways of the City of Rome tell us, they would
wash arms and legs off daily, as of course they picked up dirt through
toil, but they bathed all over weekly. At this spot someone will say, ‘It’s
crystal clear to me: they were as unclean as can be!’ What do you think
they smelled of? Soldiering. Hard work. Hero. Since clean baths were
pioneered, people are fouler.
To portray a scandal notorious for o.t.t. delicacies, Horace says . . . 13
what?
‘Mr Gobulle smells of pastilles.’
Offer Gobulle today, and it would be just as if he smelled of ‘billy-goat’,
he’d be in ‘Mr Gargonius’’ spot, the one Horace set up in antithesis,
ibid. It’s not enough to put on scent if it isn’t freshened up two or three
times a day, to stop it evaporating on the body. What of them pluming
themselves on this smell as though it’s their own?
If all this seems grim stuff to you, and o.t.t., you’ll debit the manor. 14
Inside it, I learned a lesson from Aegialus, the most conscientious head
of household of them all. (Yes, he is the owner of this farmland today.)
Namely: ‘h oweve r a n c i e n t t h e t re e , t r a n s p l a n t i n g i s
p o s s i b l e.’ This lesson is essential for old men like myself to learn –
every one of us sets an olive grove for the other fellow ? as I have seen
?
that tree ? at three or four years ? have unpalatable fruit? or ? set in.?
There will be shelter for you as well from the tree that 15
‘comes on slow, for to grow late in the day grandsons’ shade,’
as our very own Virgil says. Though he focussed not on what is said
most truthfully, but what is said most fittingly. Meant not to teach
farmers, but to delight readers.
E.g. – to skip all the other cases – here’s one where it was 16
essential for me to catch him out today. I’ll jot it in:
‘Spring is sowing for beans. Then you as well, clover, crumbling
furrows welcome in. And for millet there comes a year’s tending.’
Q.: Are these (a) to be set in at one and the same time, or (b) is ‘sowing’
to be ‘in spring’ for both? A.: You can figure it out from this: it’s the
month of June when I’m writing you, already tipping into July: on the
very same day I have seen ‘bean’ a-harvesting and ‘millet’ a-sowing.
To return to the olive grove. I have seen two methods of setting it 17
in:
1. In the case of great big trees, he cut the branches right the way round,
pruned them back to one foot, transplanted the trunks, with their
very own ball and all, severing roots to leave just the actual head they
were dependent on, and had dangled from. This he doused in dung
and let down into a trench. Then he didn’t just heap up soil beside it
but trod and flattened it.
Says there is nothing more guaranteed to produce results than 18
this (as he says) ‘pounding’. To be sure it shuts out cold and wind. In
addition, there is less disturbance and in consequence it lets the
embryonic roots emerge and ‘take’ on the soil. Essentially, it’s inevitable
that these roots, which are still flexi- (like plastic) and grip on
precariously, should tear up at even a light shaking. The ball of the tree
he gives a radical scraping before burying it: from all the wood that is
stripped bare, so he says, out come fresh roots. The trunk must not stand
proud above ground higher than three or four feet: since it will at once
put on cover right from the very bottom, and there won’t be any great
section of it left, the way it is in ageing olive groves, dry and scorched.
The alternative method of setting in was this: 19
2. Strong branches, with bark that is not hard – the sort that fresh tree
saplings generally have – he set in with the same technique. These
gain height a little more slowly. But as they have stemmed from a
quasi- ‘slip’, they have nothing hair-raising or grim about them.
Another recent sight I have seen: a vine of many years’ standing 20
transplanted away from its very own tree. Its strands must, if it can be
managed, be picked up too, then the vine must be given a pretty
generous covering, so that roots form from its body as well. Also, I have
seen them set in not just in the month of February, but also after March
is over. They hold and have embraced elms which are not their very own.
In fact, all those trees which, let me say, are ‘big-stemmed’, must, 21
he says, be given a boost with water from the water tank. If this does
good, we have rainfall in our own control.
No, I am not thinking of teaching you any more lessons. In case, just the
way that Aegialus trained me to be his opponent, I may be training you to
be mine. Like this.
Fare well.
c h a p t e r s eve n
Bound for vat i a ’s

Text and translation of Letter 55
To knock our selves into shape, we need the diversion ahead right here-
and-now. It is not so much a detour away from s c i p i o ’s , as a retroversion,
back to chapter 3. This will be a sample of ‘Making like the bees’.
For if the bareback Catonesque jaunt of 87 forces the reader to relive the
earlier jolt along the shoreline ‘between Cumae and the mansion of Vatia’,
the bare bones of the ‘location’ of 86 already refer us back, no room for
doubt, to the ‘manor’ contemplated there.
Discussion of vat i a ’s comes next, then (chapter 8).
After presentation of its text + translation:
A gestatione cum maxime uenio, non minus fatigatus quam si tantum 1
ambulassem quantum sedi; labor est enim et diu ferri, ac nescio an eo
maior quia contra naturam est, quae pedes dedit ut per nos
ambularemus, oculos ut per nos uideremus. debilitatem nobis indixere
deliciae, et quod diu noluimus posse desimus.
mihi tamen necessarium erat concutere corpus, ut, siue bilis 2
insederat faucibus, discuteretur, siue ipse ex aliqua causa spiritus densior
erat, extenuaret illum iactatio, quam profuisse mihi sensi. ideo diutius
uehi perseueraui inuitante ipso litore, quod inter Cumas et Seruili Vatiae
uillam curuatur et hinc mari, illinc lacu uelut angustum iter cluditur.
erat autem a recenti tempestate spissum; fluctus enim illud, ut scis,
frequens et concitatus exaequat, longior tranquillitas soluit, cum harenis,
quae umore alligantur, sucus abscessit.
ex consuetudine tamen mea circumspicere coepi an aliquid illic 3
inuenirem quod mihi posset bono esse, et derexi oculos in uillam quae
aliquando Vatiae fuit. in hac ille praetorius diues, nulla alia re quam otio
notus, consenuit, et ob hoc unum felix habebatur. nam quotiens aliquos
amicitiae Asinii Galli, quotiens Seiani odium, deinde amor merserat
62
At vat i a ’s : l e t t e r 55 63
(aeque enim offendisse illum quam amasse periculosum fuit),
exclamabant homines, ‘O Vatia, solus scis uiuere.’
at ille latere sciebat, non uiuere; multum autem interest utrum uita 4
tua otiosa sit an ignaua. numquam aliter hanc uillam Vatia uiuo
praeteribam quam ut dicerem, ‘Vatia hic situs est.’ sed adeo, mi Lucili,
philosophia sacrum quiddam est et uenerabile ut etiam si quid illi simile
est mendacio placeat. otiosum enim hominem seductum existimat
uulgus et securum et se contentum, sibi uiuentem, quorum nihil ulli
contingere nisi sapienti potest. ille solus scit sibi uiuere; ille enim, quod
est primum, scit uiuere.
nam qui res et homines fugit, quem cupiditatum suarum infelicitas 5
relegauit, qui alios feliciores uidere non potuit, qui uelut timidum
atque iners animal metu oblituit, ille sibi non uiuit, sed, quod est
turpissimum, uentri, somno, libidini; non continuo sibi uiuit, qui
nemini. adeo tamen magna res est constantia et in proposito suo
perseuerantia ut habeat auctoritatem inertia quoque pertinax.
de ipsa uilla nihil tibi possum certi scribere; frontem enim eius 6
tantum noui et exposita, quae ostendit etiam transeuntibus. speluncae
sunt duae magni operis, cuiuis laxo atrio pares, manu factae, quarum
altera solem non recipit, altera usque in occidentem tenet. platanona
medius riuus et a mari et ab Acherusio lacu receptus euripi modo
diuidit, alendis piscibus, etiam si assidue exhauriatur, sufficiens. sed illi,
cum mare patet, parcitur: cum tempestas piscatoribus dedit ferias,
manus ad parata porrigitur.
hoc tamen est commodissimum in uilla, quod Baias trans 7
parietem habet: incommodis illarum caret, uoluptatibus fruitur. has
laudes eius ipse noui: esse illam totius anni credo; occurrit enim
Fauonio et illum adeo excipit ut Bais neget. non stulte uidetur elegisse
hunc locum Vatia in quem otium suum pigrum iam et senile
conferret.
sed non multum ad tranquillitatem locus confert: animus est qui 8
sibi commendet omnia. uidi ego in uilla hilari et amoena maestos, uidi
in media solitudine occupatis similes. quare non est quod existimes ideo
parum bene compositum esse te quod in Campania non es. quare autem
non es? huc usque cogitationes tuas mitte.
conuersari cum amicis absentibus licet, et quidem quotiens uelis, 9
quamdiu uelis. magis hac uoluptate, quae maxima est, fruimur dum
absumus; praesentia enim nos delicatos facit, et quia aliquando una
loquimur, ambulamus, consedimus, cum diducti sumus nihil de iis quos
modo uidimus cogitamus.
et ideo aequo animo ferre debemus absentiam, quia nemo non 10
multum etiam praesentibus abest. pone hic primum noctes separatas,
deinde occupationes utrique diuersas, deinde studia secreta, suburbanas
profectiones: uidebis non multum esse quod nobis peregrinatio eripiat.
amicus animo possidendus est; hic autem numquam abest; 11
quemcumque uult cotidie uidet. itaque mecum stude, mecum cena,
mecum ambula: in angusto uiuebamus, si quicquam esset cogitationibus
clusum. uideo te, mi Lucili; cum maxime audio; adeo tecum sum ut
dubitem an incipiam non epistulas sed codicellos tibi scribere.
uale.
Back from a ride, right now, I’m on my way. No less tiring a sit than it 1
would have been a walk that far. It’s a struggle to be carried, too. Maybe
a greater struggle, because it is contrary to nature: she gave us feet for us
to walk for ourselves, and eyes to see for ourselves. Luxury has consigned
us to weakness, and we’ve stopped being able to do what we long since
refused.
For me though it was essential to have a physical shaking, whether 2
to get bile sat on the throat shaken apart or to thin the actual breathing,
extra-thickened for whatever reason, with a good chucking. (I’ve felt
that do me good in the past.) I kept on going, a sustained excursion this,
as the actual shoreline beckoned. Its curve between Cumae and the
mansion of Servilius Vatia. One side sea. The other side lake. They are
the doorway, so to speak, ‘barring a tight route’ for a strait journey.
Because it was packed after a storm just over. Repeated shaking from
buffeting waves, as you know, flattens level, whereas extra prolonged
calm undoes, when the juice withdraws from the sand that is held fast
by the wet.
From habit though, my habit, I began to look around – was there 3
anything I could find there that could do me good? – and I trained eyes
on the manor that was at one time Vatia’s. Inside this, that rich
middle-rank senator, the celeb of rest, and rest alone, grew old, and on
this one count got a reputation for good luck. You see, every time being
friends with Asinius Gallus, or being Sejanus’ hate-figure (later on, make
that love-), had sunk some people, folk used to exclaim, ‘My, Vatia,
you’re the only one knows how to live!’
But he knew how to lurk, not live. There’s a vast gulf between your 4
life being restful and slothful. I would never, in Vatia’s lifetime, pass this
At vat i a ’s : l e t t e r 55 65
mansion by without saying, ‘Vatia lies here.’ But, friend Lucilius,
Philosophy has such Holiness and such Respect that even a Philosophy
————-
Likeness is a winner, for the con. Because the masses reckon retreat
makes a person restful, anxiety-free, OK with himself, and ‘living for
himself’ – and none of all that can bless anyone but the Sage. The Sage
alone knows how to live for himself. Because he knows how to live, and
that comes first.
For someone on the run from reality, from humanity, someone 5
banished by bad luck in their desires, someone unable to watch others
have better luck, someone like a cowering timorous beastie lurking in
fear – that someone doesn’t live for himself, but, the ultimate disgrace,
for stomach, sleep, and sex. He doesn’t live for himself, just like that,
who lives for no one. That, though, is how big a deal consistency is, plus
keeping on with one’s strategy: it empowers ongoing indolence, too.
Data on the actual manor, nowt I can write for sure: I know just its 6
façade, plus the views it displays even to people in transit. There are two
grottoes. Epic constructions. A match for any wide-open reception suite.
Entirely man-made. One admits no sun, the other keeps it right till
sunset. A brook diameter bisects an area of planes, with access to both
the sea and Lake Acheron, like a tideway. Fish, for the feeding of. Up to
taking even continual draining, but when the sea is open it is let off,
whereas when a storm has granted a fishermen’s holiday, stocks are ready
to hand.
Yet the principal asset inside the manor is that it has Baiae through 7
the wall. Free from its downsides, enjoying the pleasures. I know this
litany of its plusses first hand, and believe it’s a year-round thing, as it
meets the west wind head on, so monopolizing it as to cut out Baiae. He
was no fool, evidently, to pick this location, that Vatia, to take his rest,
already a lazy, old man’s affair.
But location is not much of a positive factor for gaining calm. It is 8
the mind that has to square everything to itself. I have seen distressed
people in a cheery manor, I’ve seen workaholic lookalikes in mid-Sahara.
That’s why there is no reason for you to think that you are less than well
placed because you’re not in Campania. And why aren’t you? Do send
your thoughts all this way.
Talking with absent friends is on. Yes, as often as you want, as long 9
as you want. This pleasure, none greater, we enjoy more while we are
absent. Presence makes us pernickety, and because we talk, walk, sit
together any time, once we have split up, we don’t think at all of the
people we have just seen.
And there is a reason why we must bear absence even-tempered: no 10
one isn’t absent a lot from people even when they are present. Put here:
(1) nights apart, (2) separate study projects, (3) trips out-of-town: you’ll
see that what travel robs us of doesn’t amount to a lot.
A friend is for owning mentally. A friend is never absent. Anyone he 11
wants, he sees everyday. So study with me, eat with me, walk with me.
We were all along living in a tight cage if anything could be barred from
our thoughts. I see you, my Lucilius, right now, I hear you. I am so with
you, I’m not sure I shouldn’t start writing you, not letters, but memos.
Farewell.
chapter eight
Knocking the self: genuflexion, villafication, vat i a ’s

Letter 55
It sticks out a coastal mile that the two manors, s c i p i o’s and vat i a’s,
speak specially intimately and intricately to one another. They are more
than imbricated, they generate their significance from interaction. For
they interlock, to the death and past it, in a showdown between con-
flicting ‘Philosophies’ of life. Seneca takes and makes two memories and
memorials, and polarizes them as con and authenticity. Out with lapse
into modernity, and in with modification of traditionality. Expose polit-
ical to spiritual exposé. Explode popular views, introduce theorizing in
tandem.
In short, Seneca will lure out the Epicureanism lurking in his Stoicism.
The Letters were so magnanimous, they got launched with clips from
Epicurus’ greatest hits. But for all their generosity, they are working hard
through the glitz to the metal. And the collection will wind up beam-
ing out Thoughts for the Day from s e n e c a’s own website. Musing at
s c i p i o’s will find a classic persona for Seneca in ‘retirement’. Not some
latter-day Maecenas frivolité, but honourable autonomy to satisfy an Elder
Cato. A political strategy due for reclamation as spiritual sanctuary. But first
Epicurean sloth must be scraped and peeled away from Roman sublation.
That is why we went to suss out vat i a’s first. Seneca takes us for a ride,
so later he can catch us lying down.1
For if any of us escapists thought we might settle down and find rest
that easily, then they were hawking hand-me-down dogma that as good as
prescribes coma as remedy for living. Quitting on society may keep heads
on necks, but the Moral Epistles will not, can not, let their addressee off the
hook. We are not, today, reading – emulating – bland Cicero, who found
the nerve to front the last instalment of his manual of Roman ethics with
1 The notion of a broadminded or magnanimous or amateurish ‘eclecticism’ or ‘anti-sectarianism’ in

the encounter of Epp. with Epicurus does not cut it for me: see p. 15 n. 26 above.
67
close alignment of his own retirement from politics with that of Scipio
Africanus (De officiis 3.1–4).2 He would.
No, as we (should) have learned long since, your friend Seneca never
leaves you alone. There will certainly be no respite at vat i a ’s, whose
punchline upshot will be precisely that theorem: that Friends never leave
Friends alone.
ow w t f o r r t h h e e d d d d a - y - y - y
We go there to give ourselves a good shaking. Even taking a ride there
in comfort, courtesy of Seneca’s Tours by Courier, Inc., will shake us up,
put us on the road to s c i p i o ’s, thirty-one stops farther along Rome’s
riviera. Here a cold bath of reason, plenty of healthy manure, and a good
conceptual forking await us. (Em)bracing stuff: as we are told, to start us
off, ‘Nature gave us feet for walking / eyes for seeing’ (55.1).
Now Seneca is already ‘come back from his ride (gestatio) – ‘right now’.3
But so far as our traipse goes, he is ‘coming, right now, coming our way’. As
we set out to accompany him, we must use our feet-and-eyes ‘for our-
selves’ (55.1). When he showed us the far-out sight he saw along that
bumpy shore, we were being dumped into a test of our (reading-moralizing)
‘habits’, to see if we ‘could find anything with the potential to benefit us’
(ex consuetudine, 55.3). That is the direction Seneca’s example is pointing
us in.4
When he said, ‘I trained eyes on the manor of Vatia’ (derexi oculos, 55.3),
he was jolting us into seeing that the place’s description which he had
just written is designed to function as a protreptic, a turn-on. When he
‘directed eyes onto vat i a ’s’, he was jarring us into understanding our
director. Who has been out videoing on moral location, to give us a passage
to ‘train our eyes on’ (55.3). So we shall need to get the picture. And then,
it will transpire, we will need to make it stick with us, imprinted on the
retina so that later we can retain the details. This is why we lurched and
ogled our way through the vista. To be seduced with a celluloid vision for
us finally to trash and trample into the cutting-room floor.
2 Seneca squirming on the politics of ‘retirement from politics’: Epp. 68 (p. 36), Maso (1999)
chapter 4.
3 Gestatio ought to suggest a pun on the ‘gestation’ of the letter’s train of thought, but this gesture is
scarcely in the Latin. Notice, though, that gestatio, ‘riding’, brackets ‘ride’ (verbal noun) with ‘ride’
(name of a dedicated space). Epp. 55 will take us on a ride through a ride.
4 See Setaioli (1991b) 82–3.
Knocking the self: Letter 55 69
vat i a ’s is marked at once as a comparandum, whether sequel, or prequel,
or both (cf. Epp. 12 + 86. 55.6):
cuiuis laxo atrio pares
A match for any wide-open reception suite you care to name.
‘Right then’, we shall be turning the visit we made into a reprise that we can
relive ‘right now’, when we are tramping off to stare some place else. For
‘right now’ is the open epistolary moment which comprehends all extents
and tenses, in that the writer always and everywhere ‘sees and hears’ the
reader, ‘right now’, as their correspondence turns mere absence into real
presence (uideo te . . . cum maxime audio, 55.11 ∼ cum maxime uenio, 1).
w h e re o p p o s i t e s m e e t : 5 5 <> 8 6
Reading Letter 86 before Letter 55 should communicate the spirit of Seneca’s
co-present universe of relocation beyond the shrinking cage of mundane
spatiotemporality. Past the future. It should also help our habituation pro-
gramme bring to the surface the most salient features of vat i a’s for over-
dubbing with the meditative surrounds of s c i p i o’s . Just as Seneca’s writing
of his manors presses us to register them as already a reinscribing, a reread-
ing, of his own, so we are bumped along and stretched out flat in order to
reread the journey through both manors.
‘For our selves’ (per nos, 55.1):
VATIA’S
Vatiae uillam / uelut angustum iter / uillam quae aliquando Vatiae fuit. in hac /
exclamabant homines, ‘O Vatia, solus scis uiuere,’ / dicerem, ‘Vatia hic situs est.’
sed . . . philosophia sacrum quiddam est et uenerabile / solus scit sibi uiuere / scit
uiuere / qui fugit, quem . . . relegauit / ille sibi non uiuit / non . . . sibi uiuit qui
nemini / de ipsa uilla / frontem eius / speluncae sunt duae magni operis . . . manu
factae, quarum altera solem non recipit, altera usque in occidentem tenet platanona
medius riuus . . . receptus euripi modo diuidit / alendis piscibus . . . sufficiens / in
uilla / trans parietem / uoluptatibus fruitur / manus ad parata porrigitur / has laudes
eius / esse illam totius anni credo / non stulte uidetur elegisse hunc locum Vatia /
sed non multum . . . locus confert / uidi ego in uilla / uidi in media solitudine /
uoluptate quae maxima est fruimur / in angusto uiuebamus / . . .
VATIA’S mansion / barring a tight route for a strait journey / the manor that was
at one time Vatia’s. Inside this / folk used to exclaim, ‘My, Vatia, you’re the only
one knows how to live!’ / I would say, ‘Vatia lies here.’ But . . . Philosophy has such
Holiness and such Respect / alone knows how to live for himself / knows how to
live / For someone on the run, someone banished / that someone doesn’t live for
himself / He doesn’t live for himself, who lives for no one / Data on the actual
manor / its façade / two grottoes. Epic constructions . . . Entirely man-made. One
admits no sun, the other keeps it right till sunset. A brook diameter bisects an area
of planes . . . like a tideway / inside the manor / Fish, for the feeding of. Up to
taking / through the wall / enjoying the pleasures / this litany of its plusses / believe
it’s a year-round thing / Vatia was no fool, evidently, to pick this location / But
location is not much of a positive factor / I have seen in a manor / I’ve seen . . . in
mid-Sahara / This pleasure, none greater, we enjoy / We were all along living in a
tight cage . . . barred / . . .
∼
SCIPIO’S
In ipsa Scipionis Africani uilla / adoratis manibus eius et ara, quam sepulcrum
esse tanti uiri suspicor / in exilium uoluntarium secessit / locum dedit legibus et
se recepit / suum exilium / uidi uillam exstructam . . ., murum . . . turres quoque
in propugnaculum uillae utrimque subrectas, cisternam . . . quae sufficeret in
usum / balneolum angustum / magna . . . me uoluptas subiit / in hoc angulo /
exercebat . . . opere se / parietes / marmora . . . operosa / in aliquo . . . templo /
piscinas / in hoc balneo Scipionis / balnea siqua non ita aptata sunt ut totius
diei solem . . . recipiant / in usum, non in oblectamentum / non . . . diem
admiserat . . . non in multa luce . . . / o hominem calamitosum! nesciit uiuere /
uere in exilio uixit / haec si nimium tristia uidebuntur, uillae . . . in qua didici /
uidi / uidi / uidi / etiamnunc uidi / et uidi / . . .
Inside the actual manor of the Scipio dubbed Conqueror of Africa / After first
paying respects to his shade and altar. This, I suspect, is the tomb of this great
hero / retiring into self-imposed exile / deferred to the law, gave ground, and
withdrew / his own exile / I have seen a manor built high; a perimeter wall; tall
towers, too, underslung on both sides to fortify the manor; a water tank . . . up to
underwriting the needs / a tight wee bath-house / So I underwent great joy / Inside
this cranny / he used to toil as his work-out / the walls / marble blocks . . . elaborately
worked / in any temple / [fish-]pools / Inside this, the bath-house of Scipio / if
any baths haven’t been designed so as to welcome in the sun all day long / for
use, not for titivation / he didn’t let daylight in! . . . He didn’t go floodlit / Ah –
a human wreck: he didn’t know how to live! / He truly lived in exile / If all this
seems grim stuff to you, and o.t.t. . . . the manor. Inside it, I learned a lesson / I
have seen / I have seen / I have seen / Another recent sight I have seen / Also, I have
seen / . . .
The axiom that our visit to a uilla, as to any other species of locus, is
itself a journey – a reading journey through a textual journey, in a relay of
moral reiteration – does not await reaffirmation in the writing of 87. It was
reinforced by our ‘programme’ for Letters 84–8, by 84. But it was inculcated
as a foundational theorem by 55, in the praxis of spiritual self-sublation by
(t)reading that out-of-body trip out of Cumae.
At s e n e c a ’s in 12, (first person) psychotherapeutic return to the primal
scenes of his own infancy bonded mansion to owner as portrait to self: in
Latin, this can read as ‘like praetorium, like praetorius’.5 By contrast, just
visiting (third person) vat i a ’s presses home the philosophical-epistolary
truth that calibration between show house and inspected alterity exposes
the adjudicating letter-writer’s self to the inspection of the correspondent.
For describing Vatia inscribes Seneca: for a viewing of his own. Plenty of
room(s) for him and for us to reflect (in/upon). Everything significantly
pre-shaped for reactive antipathy with the mores of s c i p i o ’s.
do the strand
For habitués, manners lie somewhere along the line betwixt and between
Seneca’s tale of two manors. Both of them take us out of our world, out
of Rome, out of our selves, to plunge us knee-deep in the mucky country.
There, this pair of moral habitats will enshrine the last word in hydropathic
urbanity. Cold showers and hot water are on tap, specially installed to do
us good. Whether we know we need one (or two), or not, it’s for our own
good.
The journey to vat i a ’s was already done when we came in.
But it was rehearsed for us so we could go too.6
Seneca had ridden there: ‘as tiring a sit as it would have been a walk.
Maybe worse because unnatural: we have feet to walk for our selves, and
eyes to see for our selves’ (ambulassem, sedi, ambularemus, uideremus, 1).
Seneca, however, was, you should realize, bedridden; he needed ‘a physical
shaking, to shake apart biliousness sat on his throat and to give thickened
breathing a good chucking’ (concutere corpus, insederat, discuteretur, densior,
iactatio, 2).7 What we are about to contemplate, the writing we are about
to read, will be a psychic shaking, a good spiritual chucking. The journey
will be a vision, for ‘I-of-the-sole’ trekkies.
Seneca took to his boneshaker because he knew his needs and limitations;
but he knew, too, that he must symptomize Modern Man in general, from
Lucilius to our selves. Stoicism has written Seneca rugged: materialism has
ridden us ragged. We all need to be zapped by satire, we have been so
sapped by Sybaris (nobis . . . elegantiae . . . mihi tamen . . ., 1). In this spirit,
5 Cf. Epp. 55.3, in uillam . . . Vatiae . . ., in hac ille praetorius diues . . ., punning between praetorius,
‘former praetor’ and ‘[owner of a] praetorium (“mansion”)’.
6 On Epp. 55: Motto and Clark (1972–3). On Vatia’s villa: Maiuri (1937) 87; D’Arms (1970) 157, 224–5.
7 Celsus recommends for a ride (2.15): lenissima . . . naui uel in portu uel in flumine; uehementior uel in
alto uel lectica; etiamnum acrior uehiculo.
let us ‘go that extra mile’ with our trail-blazer, now at once our host and
co-passenger, for this latest episode in our ‘keeping on keeping on, grim,
austere, Stoicizing’ (diutius uehi perseueraui, 2). Epp. 55 will mean to carry
our minds further down the track leading to mimesis as vehicle for inner
transport. The bees’ knees, you’ll see.
Hitching this ‘outsize extravaganza’ of a ride with Seneca picks (us) up
at Cumae, delivering us from the Aeneid ’s oracular Sibyl of the Ages to our
secular Stoic of this Sage. Wisdom is still wizened, but we are in the load
to find ethics at home, not on the road to found politics at Rome. Access is
vital for down-trodden vitality: if we can hear here, the approach will heel
all (55.2):
diutius uehi perseueraui inuitante ipso litore, quod inter Cumas et Seruili Vatiae
uillam curuatur et hinc mari, illinc lacu uelut angustum iter cluditur. erat enim
a recenti tempestate spissum. fluctus autem illud, ut scis, frequens et concitatus
exaequat, longior tranquillitas soluit, cum harenis, quae umore alligantur, sucus
abscessit.
I kept on going, a sustained excursion this, as the actual shoreline beckoned. Its
curve between Cumae and the mansion of Servilius Vatia. One side sea. The other
side lake. They are the doorway, so to speak, ‘barring a tight route’ for a strait
journey. Because it was packed after a storm just over. Repeated shaking from
buffeting waves, as you know, flattens level, whereas extra prolonged calm undoes,
when the juice withdraws from the sand that is held fast by the wet.
Surely, between – s(p)licing – sea and lake, we are invited to see, and look
along this shore. Analysis of the freshly experienced sand-bar phenomenon
taught or reinforced Seneca’s lesson that a good buffeting can firm some-
thing up (concitatus), whether the object of the exercise (fresh, sustained
exercise: recenti, longior) is to dislodge or to disassemble (spissum . . . soluit).
Or not. For insidious bile and clotted breath are neither of them unequivo-
cally natural, nor for that matter resoundingly unnatural (ex aliqua causa),
and between them these ‘frogs-in-the-throat’ certainly draw attention to
this other, anatomical, ‘tight route’ (faucibus).8
Feel the pipeline of this prose draw us across the bay, draw us down the
body’s respiratory tube. For today’s journey / journée /. And this one is
going to run us into goo and gunge. It’s our own muck, some from down
below, some the filth that gets into us from up out there. Yukkh! This sand
spit is already good to traverse, good to think bad.
8 Feel the lump in your throat when reading Epp. 70.20, where the [nameless] German gladiator does
away with himself by stuffing the arse-wipe sponge down his (faucibus). This word is the ‘key’ to
Epp. 55, a plunge down every throat going, since fauces covers ‘jaws’, ‘sand bar’, ‘entrance to a house’
or to anything else, ‘entrée’ to any locus of meaning.
We need it, not for its sound footing or solid reliability, but for its
transient constitution, precariously dense-packed stream of ambivalences.
This saline solution way, en route between an inner Scylla of a sitting of
bile and a hawking Charybdis of asphyxiating gob draws us through echt
Senecan imagery. Out to draw US. To heave our selves along, in his tracks,
along this liminal route. Reading aloud, keeping on keeping on, we already
give our bile a shaking and shake our rasp apart, chucking ourselves into
the delivery of Senecan satire. The performance is itself, in itself, always
mimetic, for language is physical, locked into the physique, our only way
to be.9 And today we are going out of our way because we cannot resist the
temptation to go weak at the knees, and undo Calm. Today’s ‘passage’ (locus)
takes us ‘around’ the beach, in order to teach circumambience: mimetic
imagination may be a circuitous rather than a direct method, but even
‘a crooked path’ around the ‘curvaceous bay’, where no (other) path can
take us, can straighten out our thinking, if not our spines (curuatur).10
On occasion, instead of ramming ‘Tranquillity’ down your throat, you will
need to play ‘Tempest’ and shift lumps of grot. See how you go. It may
depend on whether.
re t i re m e n t h o m e
Here, as ever, we come to the door of today’s lesson in habituation, in
morality (ex consuetudine mea, 3), so as to direct knee-jerk aggression against
mundanity. Can the glare of satire inspire a new theme for our meditation
toward self-amelioration (circumspicere . . . an aliquid illic inuenirem quod
mihi posset bono esse, 3)? Knock before you enter, but don’t stop there. In
the stocks, to shake things up for a change, is ‘Calm’. For this ‘location’ has
spelled one thing: senescence in feet-up tranquillity (otio notus, consenuit).
Until Seneca came along to vindicate his monopoly on this theme, to in-
carnate and pontificate. Even especially when he goes out of his way to
rubbish this place as a safe haven from politics, from Rome, let alone as the
paradigm of savoir vivre.
‘Far’ from introducing us, à la s c i p i o, to some paradigmatic ‘shade and
altar’, or ‘temple’, of inspirational heroism shown on the field of Senecan
retreat (86.1), Seneca distances himself from unenlightened humanity in
9 Snyder (2000) 30–8 marshals the evidence for Seneca on the media of teaching (esp. Epp. 78.5, 15.7–8.
Cf. 54.4).
10 For this cultural cliché of the ‘bowed bay’ moralisé, see, for example, Statius, Siluae 2.2.14–15
and Virgil, Aeneid 1.159–61, with Scarpat Bellincioni (1986) 193–5. In stylistics, cf. Epp. 100.6, lege
Ciceronem: compositio eius . . . pedem curuat lenta et sine mollitia mollis.
order to flog a fake parody of ‘beatitude’ and ‘beatification’ (felix habebatur).
Someone playing the palace-political power game of ‘Friendship’ must (as
Seneca the long-time Neronian éminence grise knew only too well) hop
between the perilous passions that ‘submerged’/‘drowned’ Human Bars like
him (merserat): hate on one side, love on the other. But by plumping for
withdrawal, he may have heard, but he was not heeding, Seneca’s gospel (4):
adeo . . . philosophia sacrum quiddam est et uenerabile ut etiam si quid illi simile
est mendacio placeat.
Philosophy has such Holiness and such Respect that even a Philosophy
————- Likeness
is loved, for the con.
This is the secret we travel here to uncover. Henceforth we can take for
our own Seneca’s habit of reminding himself that the world is wrong.
Gone wrong when it imagines that ‘knowing how to live’ lives any place
where Philosophy sees only ‘lurking’ selfishness (latere, 4), self-isolation as
self-protection:11
numquam aliter hanc uillam Vatia uiuo praeteribam quam ut dicerem, ‘Vatia hic
situs est.’
I never passed this manor by in Vatia’s lifetime without saying: ‘Vatia lies here.’
For what will prove to be an interruption, but which any reader would take
to mark the expected decoction of the generously prolonged provocatory
tableau, Seneca lets the mimetic mask slip and his designing hand show (non
minus . . . quam . . . labor est . . . et diu ferri . . . nescio an . . . maior . . . et quod
diu . . . densior . . . diutius uehi . . . longior . . . consenuit . . . quotiens . . . quo-
tiens . . . multum . . . interest . . . numquam aliter . . .). That persona of
The Raconteur brought on the anecdotal scene as to the manor born (ex
consuetudine . . . mea circumspicere coepi an aliquid illic inuenirem . . ., 3),
so that we just knew we were being ferried to an incident, an accident, a
pay-off event. But now (4) we learn that this seaside flâneur has long since
habituated himself to passing this way. He is therefore relaying to us, for
our first time, a route toward moral habituation which goes over the same
ground as he had travelled for his founding routine. We have been led up the
sandy path to repeat, not Seneca’s sortie by sedan, but his long-engrained
ritual of repetition of the drive past this House of Temptation in deepest
11 Epp. 68 will go into the temptations of ostentatious, holier-than-thou, retreat and specifically ostracize
‘lurking’ (68.1): iactandi autem genus est nimis latere et a conspectu hominum secedere. For the Epicurean
claim to own the image of the citadel of the soul overlooking the troubled seas of misguided lives in
serenity, see Konstan (1973) 3–12, esp. 9.
Lotus-Eating Territory. This way for prefab rehab. For ingrained mores, the
old ’un’s are the best.
No doubt Seneca and we should be struck by the difference it makes
that the mantra of truth, once used to crush deluded opinion by exploding
a colloquial bonhomie, is now decisively confined to a past time by its own
rhetoric of rebuttal. Back when Vatia lived, they joshed (3):
Solus scis uiuere
You alone know how to live! (with intimations of: ‘You know how to live alone!’, and
of: ‘You know that solitary confinement is the only way to survive Rome/Tyranny!’)
Which vivid pleasantry sounds so like a Senecan (anti-)political watchword
to be proud of, it is for a second disappointing to find him counter with the
limp and lame retort, ‘That wasn’t living, that was lurking!’12 Something
with more life must be lurking. It is. Not in the quip that ‘Vatia is, far
from living [sc. really living life to the full], [he isn’t even in the land of
the living, but dead and] buried: here [and now: though he still breathes]’.
But in the transient barb that ‘Vatia is indeed alone – he is buried [sc.
alive]’, which has lost much of its point since Vatia’s death, Seneca’s savvy
skit underscores that any grave may be accentuated positive or negative as
‘monument’ (moneo, ‘warn’):
Vatia here is dead [sc. but when he died he left behind / took with him everything
that ‘Vatia’ ever meant].
Dead concepts, bad habits. And, lurching still further, find Seneca insist-
ing on dragging his feet, and making us stumble, too, into the words. As
he decodes for us, Seneca had always skated past the point, never come
at it head-on, but ‘curved around’ it to home in on his destined target
(praeteribam): we are not getting so near yet so far so as to mutter dis-
gust and drive a wedge between home and owner, after the example of the
pudibund nouus homo Cicero (De officiis 1.139):13
nec domo dominus, sed domino domus honestanda est.
. . . odiosum est enim cum a praetereuntibus dicitur
‘o domus antiqua, heu quam dispari
dominare domino’.
quod quidem his temporibus in multis licet dicere.
12 For a version of this routine, with superadded finality, cf. Epp. 60.4, uiuit is qui multis usui est, uiuit
is qui se utitur; qui uero latitant et torpent sic in domo sunt quomodo in conditiuo. horum licet in limine
ipso nomen marmori inscribas: ‘m o rt e m s va m a n t e c e s s e rv n t .’ uale, with Motto and Clark
(1979) 212; (1990).
13 Cf. Philippic 2.104, citing the same unattributed verse.
Accreditation must be house by master, not master by house.
. . . For it makes you sick when passers-by say:
‘O house – alas – so ill-matched
the master you’re owned by!’
And, these days, this can be said in many a case.
Seneca, instead, now, after all this time, all those lost opportunities, has
fetched and carried us this far and no farther, in order to hold the label up
to the light and see/show what he is about (4):14
Vatia hic situs est.
Vatia is dead, and now ‘Vatia’ is death,
Vatia is this site and this site is ‘Vatia’,
Now Vatia is a [literary] locus,
This is the [moralizing] topos ‘Vatia’.
Lumber over to inspect still more closely, and totter into the cliché that
anything like an epitaph included in a text serves (vatically) to emblematize
the whole. In the competition for our attention, the villa-text equips itself
with a ‘throat’, and gets to speak up – oyez. Just about standing for the
Letter, the RIP tells (its metonymic, metalinguistic) ALL:
Vatia hic situs est.
This [satirical] topos figures decadence as decay (situs).
[Try writing a] purple passage that has knock-knees (uatia).
This bumpy write for tottery readers is a moralist’s rodeo of condemnation: a
write-off.
For when a literary locus i-194(emaliase-194(inb)6(y)]TJ/T1_1 1 Tf4.6346 0 Td(situs)Tj/T1_
would not be leaving Vatia(’s) to rot where it lurks. But, it dawns, the letter
is precisely telling us that it displaces its usual calm dereliction of lapsed
humanity by addressing this locus straight-up. The (traditional) shift is to
turn the theme into the occasion for stigmatization, writing the place in so
as to write it down.16 And when a topos is dubbed situs, we know we must be
participating in iocus, jeering and sneering let out to play at stigmatization.
n a m i n g n a m e s : vat i a ’s
Now equating a fellow-citizen of some distinction with his cognomen was the
most cliché topos in all Roman civic discourse (sermo), and their wonderfully
rustic mos of cultivating peasant gibes at features of the body had even
defined Roman liberty as levelling obloquy. Hung with glee, and worn
with pride, round the necks of highest and lowest in society, this habitual
‘standing epithet’ was there ready to be trotted out, at any instant, in
As (an unusual) name, however, Vatia gave a Servilius distinctiveness,
and the mark of distinction even gave its clan opportunities to feature in
the public word and to stick in the social memory. To give just one example,
from Seneca (De constantia sapientis 17.3):20
. . . Vatinium; hominem natum et ad risum et ad odium, scurram fuisse et uenustum
ac dicacem memoriae proditum est. in pedes suos ipse plurima dicebat . . .
. . . Vatinius, a human being born for laughter a(n)d nausea(m), has gone down in
legend as wag, fun, talker. His own feet were the object of one quip after another
from him . . .
At Seruilius Vatia’s, a shambles of a Senecan ‘amble’ is only to be expected,
when the sermon addresses the satirical theme: ‘Homo Erectus——– Enslaved’.21
Remember that where we came in was when Annaeus Seneca was remind-
ing us, in line with his war of onomastic attrition and living up to the
customized self given him by Roman culture, he must ride because, su-
perannuated and senile, his poor old feet won’t work any more. Whereas
the rest of modernity won’t use the feet nature has given us, because we
are enslaved to luxury, we have forfeited (bodily) freedom, lost our footing
along the way through. Succumbing to sloth, holed up in our solipsistic
manors: letting down our genes, as woefully and as wilfully as this ‘wealthy
hermit’ was letting down the line of Servilii Vatiae.22
Seneca’s day trip was homing all along on the con in his own Similitude.
For the Letter refuses, precisely, to leave out ‘Knock-Knees’, and let him
lurk, as if that was something to be proud of, or excuse enough for not
trying to walk straight and tall to meet Rome on its own terms. This
vat i a betrays his cognomen because his life is an exercise in vindicating
the etymology of his name: the last flaw for a s e rv i l i u s to own must
be to fit the bill, by degrading civility into decayed servility. That is why
Seneca fetched us along for this unpleasant tonic of abuse, to this house of
shame, for vilification.
20 Cf., e.g., an aside in Tacitus, Annals 15.34, Vatinius . . . corpore detorto, facetiis scurrilibus, a cruel
Augustus time-and-motion ‘joke’ in Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.4.16, Vatinio . . . eleganter insultauit.
contusus ille podagra uolebat tamen uideri discussisse iam uitium et mille passus ambulare se gloriabatur.
cui Caesar ‘Non miror’, inquit, ‘dies aliquanto sunt longiores.’
21 ‘The Senecan amble’ is a ‘ridiculous notion’: Wilson (1987) 108. So it is.
22 ‘Vatia is a virtual symbol of misapplied leisure. Descending as he does from a renowned and politically
active Roman family, Vatia naturally suggests traditions’ (Motto and Clark (1972–3) 195). Our Vatia
connotes if he does not denote the row of consular Servilii Vatiae Isaurici, raised up above the Quirites
by the exceptionality of their triumphal agnomen, their permanent backwater contribution to world
conquest (ibid. n. 9): the Sullan triumphator, and later censor, was ‘a slender and attractive man of
medium colouring, . . . not one of the patrician Servilii, [but] related to everybody who mattered.
Including, by marriage, Sulla’ (McCullough (1993) 176); father of Vatia the Caesarian consul, whose
name marked for ever the advent of Roman autocracy | servility (Caesar, Civil War 3.1: 48 bce).
b e t we e n a l a k e a n d a we t p l ac e
Tripping through this musclebound text, we have all along been tripping
over our own toes. Traipsing through dud Philosophy? Accept no sub-
stitute. Everything you have ever read, everything anyone has ever said,
in recommending ‘disengagement’ from immersion in social being needs
‘dis-cussion’ and ‘ana-lysis’ – a disconcerting ‘shake-up’. All imagery, as
such, may mislead. And it may lead us to see that imagery misleads. This
may be what has been lurking between all the lines in all the letters to
date. It has been lurking in this one. It might, so far as the Epistulae
Morales are concerned, be the metaphor of all the Metaphors We Live
By.23 They made it a high priority, and took enormous care, as we saw,
to train us to inoculate our selves with Epicurean doctrine. This would
prove the no-holds-barred scrupulousness of our combative crusade in
confronting the challenges of existence, bold as Stoic novices can get it.
Internalize the enemy – ‘We’ve seen the enemy; they’re us’ – for their
stabs at truth show how thin is the carapace of Virtue: the more nearly
the Epicurean resembles the Sage, the more clearly the temptation to re-
lax vigilance must feature. The Siren in the Epicurean parody of Philo-
sophical Disengagement sings through their dogma: Lqe biÛsav.24 By
all means, let us find Truth in what this says, but ‘Lurk through Life’
may as easily poison vigilant self-vindication with the lure to live supinely
as it can stiffen civilized recuperation into positive determination to live
autarchy.
In short, the watchword should operate as a model of reflexive self-
monitoring. In the play of live imagery (‘the son, not the photo’: see p. 47),
there lurks space for lurking – and ‘lurking’ does unpack as ‘latent’ imagery,
in which you can find a whole regimen both for living the informed life
and, at the same time, for not really living at all.
The Letter forces us to see life as a fine line, another ‘Scylla and Charybdis’
dilemma. No margin for error, a tightrope across the abyss, that ‘tight route
barred by the strait betwen sea and lake’ (hinc mari, illinc lacu uelut angustum
iter cluditur, 2). Seneca puts us through this katabasis, stuck between ‘the
Acher-ontic lake on one side, and the storm-racked deep blue sea on the
other’ (a mari et ab Acherusio lacu, 6), in order to lock us up for torture
by metaphor, in ‘the shrinking cage of our unthinking lives’ (in angusto
23 The allusion is to the seminal work of Lakoff and Johnson (1980).
24 Cf., e.g., Epp. 79.15, 17, (Epicurus) ignotus ipsis Athenis fuit, circa quas delituerat . . ., nulla uirtus
latet; Horace, Epistles 1.17.10, nec uixit male qui natus moriensque fefellit; Ovid, Tristia 3.4.25, bene
qui latuit, bene uixit. Plutarch found enough lurking to fuel an essay: De Vivendo Latenter.
uiuebamus si quicquam esset cogitationibus clusum, 11).25 So think. Think
your way out of this hole. Realize you have been dead . . . The very act of
our reading Seneca rams us down our own throats.
eve ry m o d co n
Seneca takes no prisoners, and he takes no chances. He takes every pre-
caution over his description of vat i a’s, out to engrave suspicion into our
viewing. The surveyor’s report will be external inspection only: ‘just the
façade – all I know’ (frontem . . . eius tantum noui, 6). ‘The views it displays
even to people in transit’ promise us purely exterior rendering. Rather than
locating hidden depths in this so-called ‘retreat’, we should be on our met-
tle. Weren’t we warned that there is no inside: ‘what you see is what you
get’, plain to see (exposita)?
Seneca found ‘nothing clearcut, no stability’, for transcription; just the
one object of Knowledge (pistmh):26 this manor is nothing but a front,
all surface and spin, a set-piece (exposita). We are shown on our way past that
this dream home is a set-up, it is vulnerable to exposé, and offers itself up for
exposure (exposita). All for show. Show-off. Shown up. This is a cover-up.
It is a revelation. Teaching a transparent lesson about its subterfuge. The
locus takes charge of the ekphrasis: this ‘plain prose’ comes already labelled
‘epideixis’, art text (exposita . . . ostendit).
We knew from the start that this letter would be full of surprises. It is
effete to resort to the litter (unless, of course, you are elderly and poorly.
But you aren’t, are you?). Yet it is not effete to rattle along, and litter the
resort of the effete. So long as the sedan does not sedate, we can launch into
an unexpected tale of the unexpected, for once ready to praise somewhere
real, only to recommend the last place on earth that can be real.
Here, ‘between Cumae and the manor of Servilius Vatia’, are ‘two’ match-
ing ‘grottoes’ (55.6
set (magni operis . . . manu factae). Roman souls normally housed them selves
behind portals that led into impressive interior reception areas, ready to be
‘opened wide for self-display without the least resistance’ (cuiuis laxo atrio
pares). But at vat i a’s, there is neither door nor doorway, only ‘expansive-
as-you-please fake caves’, which invite the inquisitive to speculate on the
dark lair of dissolute ‘laxity’ lurking behind their front door, their front,
and affront.
Between these mock constructions of Hell on Earth, the pair of hell-
holes ‘bar or detain’ would-be guests (non recipit . . . tenet). If shutting out
‘the heat’ is in line with the function of this retreat as bolthole from the
dangerous kitchen of the imperial court (solem non recipit), then ‘hugging it
to death’ understudies the refugee’s attempt to prolong ‘the light’ of life to
the bitter-sweet end (usque in occidentem tenet). Vatia had to think how to
slide between friendship and hatred, then hatred + love. Between Asinius
Gallus and Sejanus [the Tiberian prequel to Neronian Tigellinus, bane of
Seneca’s existence].
The schizoid caverns of this solo soul act out his plight, caught on a
tightrope of a lifeline along that treacherously shifting sand bar between
the lake of Acheron and the deep blue azure. Seneca’s solution is to juggle
two antithetical resources, to cover all eventualities. Cave + cave: + ?
These dynamics cross over from architecture into topiary.
Outside in the surrounds, we shun the light still, beneath another man-
made counterfeit of nature, ‘the plantation of plane-trees’ (platanona).
House + Grounds rhyme. Both tell us that the home that Vat built pa-
rades a fig-leaf of ‘Philosophy’; but the carapace just dramatizes a collusive
dialogue between, up front, wilful resignation to captivity in the [Platonic]
Cave of unlightened life, and, out front, effete skulking masquerading as
sympathetic ambience for cool reasoning [à la Phaedrus].27 Sham(e).
vat i a’s self-made course of life here invents something that could do
us no good. To gain control, Vatia’s topiary has turned the world in on
itself, taking inspiration from the freakish natural suspension of proper
divisions between land and sea along the shoreline back to Cumae. A
brook mediates between storm-ridden sea and lethal lake. This guest is
doubly ‘welcome’, on both sides, and by it the heartland is not hugged but
‘riven’ (receptus . . . diuidit ∼ non recipit . . . tenet).
This second, outdoor, miracle of technological mastery matches Greek
platanon with Greek euripus, but, like those arch speluncae on the way in,
this ‘quasi-maelstrom’ is ersatz simulation (euripi modo). Rushing water-race
27 Cf. Schönegg (1999) 74–6 on Epp. 57.

and evergreen canopy both image a psychic economy that has solved to
its own satisfaction the problem of mortal entropy by installing a self-
regulating mechanism of continual self-replenishment. This self-sufficient
brook derives its (n)ever-changing flow from siphoned sea + infernal loch.
This is practical thinking, with unfailing ‘philosophical’ aura. For the role
of inexhaustible fish farm casts this animated stream as a graphic model of
‘self sufficiency’, the ideal of autarchic autarkeia (sufficiens).
Here the stocks never decline or run down.
Magic; but also Strategy.
When the coast is clear, there are plenty of fish in the sea, but no storms
arrive at the brook. In the fluctuating politics of Tiberius’ [and now Nero’s]
Rome, when the reigning Caesar [and now the Caesar’s former teacher,
minister, and guru, Seneca] had taken off from Rome into self-imposed
permanent ‘exile’, that outlasted [and now outrides] life, this would make
[and now makes] convincing self governance. Go easy on the Golden Goose
in the good times; in the bad, there will be eggs a-plenty.
In Seneca’s Latin, however, the piscatorial image taps into an extensive
metaphoric reservoir. Campanian resorts were full of ‘fish ponds’ in that
piscinae included commercial fish farms and exotic toys on millionnaire
ranches, but the same word was also used of tanks and vats in general, and
in colloquial idiom and jeer stretched to cover swimming pools, containers
for human fish, as in Seneca’s rant at s c i p i o’s: ‘if . . . stone from Thasos,
once upon a time a rare showpiece in any temple, hasn’t run around our
pools’ (nisi Thasius lapis, quondam rarum in aliquo spectaculum templo, pisci-
nas nostras circumdedit, Epp. 86.6). Thus, ‘she rhapsodized the pools of her
very own town of Baiae’ was a sneer from a stockpile (Baiarum suarum pisci-
nas extollebat, Tacitus, Annals 13.21). And when Varro’s self-satirizing final
book on contemporary post-agricultural hyperventilation winds up spout-
ing on freshwater ponds (affordable-profitable-plebeian-inland-rational)
versus saline ponds (showy-high-maintenance-snobbish-maritime-inane),
he is talking cultural attitude, not just marketing (piscinarum genera, Res
rusticae 3.17.2–9):
Axius and Varro swap tales of addled Hortensius, who built costly ponds at Bauli
but bought at Puteoli for the table, feeding rather than feeding on the pet fish
he doted on; who kept lots of ‘fishermen’ to keep stocking up minnows so the
mullet would never go hungry; who bought salt fish to throw in when stormy
weather prevented the landing of a live catch; who fussed more over sick mullet
than suffering servant. For the finale, Hortensius is made to tell tales on the
Lucullus brothers: Marcus’ pools dispensed with tidal basins, so his aquarium
stagnated; whereas the estimable piscinarius Lucius ‘tunnelled through a mountain
near Naples to let seawater flow into his ponds so they would automatically run
back and forth . . . and his fish friends would get refreshing coolant. Neptune
got nothing on him, in the fishery department.’ Axius himself rubs it in, with
bludgeoning detail: ‘When doing construction work on his Baiae property, Lucius
Lucullus told the architect to spend as if it was his money to spend, with one
proviso: he must sink a cavernous duct from ponds to sea, with a pier for partition,
so the tide could enter and return back to the sea twice per day, from the rising of
the moon till the next new moon – and chill out the ponds.’
Nos haec. The End. So much for this cursory round-up of ‘cropping at the villa’.
(de pastione uillatica, 3.17.10)
Romans always had more than fish to fry in their caustic ranting on piscinae.
With the dilation of, and on, his ponds, vat i a ’s is all over. No expense has
been spared to buy topological mastery. In Seneca’s version the cornucopia
is metallized – guilt-edged:
Either: the sea is an open door, and exertions can ease down (patet . . . parcitur).
Or: the nets take a break, and ‘stocks are ready to hand’ (dedit ferias, manus ad
parata porrigitur).
Paradox mocks ‘the storm’, which wreaks no damage, only ‘granting
the fishermen a day off work’ (tempestas piscatoribus dedit ferias). No one
has to work any more. Manual labour, to save the day, takes the form of
extending a palm to ‘take the fast food ready to hand’ (manus ad parata
porrigitur . . . : t proke©mena). If imperial opulence set labourers to work
digging skyscraper caves, it also turned self-fish self-ish Sybarites with the
planet’s resources in the palm of their hand into a novel paradigm of hard
graft. A revolutionary parody of labour, beside the seaside, all at sea.
All . . .
All those plosive initial p’s (-atet -arcitur . . . -iscatoribus . . . -arata
-orrigitur)! The prose is winding up to unveil vat i a’s ‘principal asset’ (com-
modissimum). To stay here is to get the best of all worlds, since ‘Hedonism
lives through the wall’ (= Baiae).28 A slick instant portrait of this local
way of living has it all under wraps: the ‘principal asset’ turns out to be
the ‘absence of liabilities’ (commodissimum . . . incommodis . . . caret), and
‘enjoying [its] pleasures’ must mean keeping it at arm’s length (uoluptatibus
fruitur). No taking rough with smooth here. For Seneca is winding up all
this rapture.29
28 Boesch (1920) went, saw, and knew this ‘wall’ has to be the crest of hillocks (Hohenzug) between
villa and Baiae. Baiae as Rome’s erotic hunting-ground: Green (1996) 238–40.
29 Rist (1972) 100–26, ‘Pleasure’, shows that Epicurean ‘absence of pain’ is to be supplemented by
positive pleasures, in their place. But this is a gift to sectarian rivals (cf. Epp. 59.1–4: see pp. 130,
151). Rist (1969) 37–53, ‘Problems of pleasure and pain’, esp. 52–3, shows that Stoic apathy militated
against unnatural pleasure, that secondary parasite on activity, not against rightly apprehended
pleasure.
As we noticed, he told us to find sage ‘knowledge’ here; now he tells us
to find this ‘knowledge’ here and now (noui ∼ noui, 6–7). The locus in
Campania was a ‘front’ and a ‘performance’; the locus in Letter 55 is its
‘epideictic encomium’ (frontem . . . eius, exposita . . . ostendit > has laudes
eius). Mastery of rhetorical surface is Seneca’s forte; he can do complimen-
tary writing, but philosophical penetration of fallacy is his purpose; he can
do understanding compliments, too, and hold them up to the light where
we have a fighting chance of resisting them.
We were warned to shake it up, direct a critical gaze at this hollow Estate
Agent’s jive, so now there is a rap for any of us who did not see through the
hypocritical hype. The expert ekphrasis was, in deed, couched as a wind-
up for the reader. If Uncle vat i a ’s came across as a customized ‘Great
Gatsby’ of an ‘American Dream’ of a ro m a n s i o n, a jazzed-up variant on
the standardized set of ‘features’ for the avant garde arriviste, the effect was
wholly intentional. For this Senecan prose was a Senecan pose, a take-off,
a parable in parody. And he wants us to congratulate him, too, on having
drawn us along the sand bar of his caricature until we had nowhere to
hide from facing its lesson in our superficiality, our vulnerability to cultural
stereotyping.
The tableau of Fabulous Calm did sap the moral fibre of this house
of seduction, and now there is no firm foundation to stand on. To level
out the landscape until there is a firm way to proceed, we need a storm.
It was for this that we hitched a ride here beside the Phlegraean fields
to dislodge that phlegm, and lighten the spirit. To wave vat i a ’s ‘hello–
goodbye’ (salutem . . . uale) with just a touch on the brakes, ‘as you know’,
we needed buffeting waves to break on the shore, because we need repeated
shaking to be sure of our footing (ut scis, 2).
Now we have been drawn to Seneca’s suave scenography, where sun
is baffled and sea is bamboozled. Behind this screen, ‘through the wall’,
neither Fire nor Flood Alert disturbs this vacation from living. Nature is
disarmed by simulation, by supplement, by design. Everything is taken care
of, in this well-stocked praise in prose. The paradisal effect distinguishes
any brochure for The Lotophage. One owner: available, vacant possession.
In the next display collection of Roman epistolography, the committed
but civilized Roman success-story Pliny will make sure to headline his own
take on the snares lurking in the trappings of Roman success. I would even
suppose that he means to reprise the Senecan manners on show in Seneca’s
manors. For us to appreciate, as metatextual compliment, the compliment
of shaking up Senecan parody in order to reinvent his critical gesture
(Epp. 1.3):
c . p l i n i v s c a n i n i o rv f o s vo s .
Quid agit Comum, tuae meaeque deliciae? quid suburbanum 1
amoenissimum, quid illa porticus uerna semper, quid platanon
opacissimus, quid euripus uiridis et gemmeus, quid subiectus et seruiens
lacus, quid illa mollis et tamen solida gestatio, quid balineum illud quod
plurimus sol implet et circumit, quid triclinia illa popularia illa paucorum,
quid cubicula diurna nocturna? Possident te et per uices partiuntur?
an, ut solebas, intentione rei familiaris obeundae crebris 2
excursionibus auocaris? si possident, felix beatusque es; si minus, ‘unus ex
multis’.
quin tu (tempus enim) humiles et sordidas curas aliis mandas, 3
et ipse te in alto isto pinguique secessu studiis adseris? hoc sit negotium
tuum hoc otium; hic labor, haec quies; in his uigilia, in his etiam
somnus reponatur.
effinge aliquid et excude, quod sit perpetuo tuum. nam 4
reliqua rerum tuarum post te alium atque alium dominum sortientur, hoc
numquam tuum desinet esse si semel coeperit.
scio quem animum, quod horter ingenium; tu modo enitere 5
ut tibi ipse sis tanti, quanti uideberis aliis si tibi fueris.
uale.
p l i n y to f r i e n d c a n i n i u s ru f u s : g re e t i n g s
How is Como, your/my delight? How’s the loveliest out-of-town place 1
of them all, how’s that colonnade in eternal spring, how’s the
plane-copse, shadiest around, how’s the canal verdant and jewelled,
how’s the lake in its sway below and a slave to it, how’s that soft, and yet
firm, promenade, how’s that bath-house that all the sunshine fills and
circles round, how’s those dining-rooms for (a) one and all, (b) reserved
for just a few of the few, how’s the bedrooms for (a) siesta, (b)
nights . . .? Are you in their hands? Do they take turns to share you?
Or, as per your habit, does concentrating on hands-on domestic 2
business mean that one trip after another call you away? If they have you
fast, you are lucky and blessed; if not, ‘join the crowd’.
Why don’t you assert yourself (it’s time), and delegate those lowly 3
and mucky cares to other people, and see to it yourself – self-liberation
for your studies in that deep and fat retreat of yours? Let this be work for
you and play; this your effort and your rest; may being awake and a
sleep too find their given place in these studies.
Shape and hammer something – something to belong to you for ever 4
and aye. Because what’s left of your other things after you will be
allotted to one owner after another, and it will never leave off being
yours, when once it has got going.
I know the mind, the talent I am giving a push; you just press your 5
way to be worth as much as others will rate you, if you rate yourself first.
‘Here is a suburban paragraph of (joy in) infectiously ebullient rhetoric
and seigneurial copia (1: nine posh properties in posh phrases). The syntax
owns up that this home truly owns the owner; with automatic-pilot “poetic”
matching of noun to epithet to feature to psychic profile. His idea of heaven
is to pour all he has into the place, but the place is the perfect setting to
sample in anticipation the fulsome regularity, the platitudinous poise, the
perspicuous simplicity of untroubled transmission through “one owner
after another”. Ten-a-penny authors this way, Pliny gently prods friend
Caninius – and, after this pen-portrait, we know too “what mind, what
talent” we are handling here (4). Here is Pliny’s programme for the correct
alignment of “effort/peace”, “being awake/a sleep” recommended for an
artist in the making, whether graphic or glyphic (3).
‘The “you” here gets to play the Pliny that he would love to be – if he
could forget the difference between work and play (3), delegate the “lower-
ing and mucky cares” of engaged life, throw himself into the “sit-down” life
of full-time study, and take a short-cut to early retirement, before complet-
ing all his obligations to the socio-politically reponsible world. It would
ruin his lean epistolary style, such “self-liberation in deep and fat with-
drawal” (3); yet it would optimize the chances of “hammering and shaping
something to belong to the author for ever and a day” (4). Something –
something like the nine-or-ten-book classic before you, the Letters. Pliny’s
Letters.’30
You see?
In the maestro’s hands, ‘the most valuable asset’ of the Senecan ekphrasis
is that it narrates, where(as) Pliny orates.
At vat i a ’s, the syntax is prettily dovetailed into an itinerary through
the pleasure palace. Those ‘grottoes’ twinned with that ‘plane grove’ as the
topicalizing first words in their successive sentences, and the ‘Nominative +
Passive Verb’ construction turned the interior into exterior by flipping the
rival attraction inside-out, into ‘Accusative + Active Verb’ lay-out (speluncae
sunt duae . . . manu factae ∼ platanona medius riuus . . . diuidit). The caves
30 Henderson (2002a) 105–7.
were the doorposts, the brook was the centrepiece: they set out defences
against external disruption (atrium ∼ sol); it set up dynamics for controlled
internal disruption (riuus ∼ euripus).
To spell this out, letter by letter through this Letter:
(1) One sported elaborately fashioned rhetorical hendiadys, internally
divided into polar antithesis, so as to double the well-formed parallel clauses
of decisive intervention; and in the process achieving a balanced design
of clearcut imperiousness: non recipit ∼ usque . . . tenet. Which acts out
triumphant finality, in a telos of strong negative dismissal that prepares the
ground for the culminating clausula of permanent self-possession.
(2) The other would conjoin polar opposites into a mediated resolution
of polar oppposites (medius . . . et . . . et . . . receptus), in order to insert a
strong editorial line through the thought-locus (/ platanona . . . diuidit /).
And this at once opened the stylistic sluicegates, as the sentence de-
bouches in choppy uariatio, compactly forcing into synergy a refresh-
ingly untidy gerundival phrase, unreal condition, and emphatically closural
Nominative Participle to make an eternally Tense Present (alendis piscibus –
etiam si . . . – sufficiens /).
This water-splash concept at once delivers Fish for Thought, in the form
of the ‘adynaton’ conceit of a ‘well-that-never-runs-dry’. We emerge with
new angling on the churning business of life, with its constantly draining
hand-to-mouth demands: Seneca undertakes to supply ‘Sufficiency’, proof
against weather, flux, participation.
But here, I fear, we have only canned Philosophy. Piped Self-Regulation.
Automated ‘Enough’ (sufficiens).
At this cue, our refined Nirvana-in-California-Campania relaxes into
soothing euphony and rhyming lullaby. For ‘those plosive initial p’s’ bab-
ble between humming m’s, and, from a sparing storm-free phraselet, they
stretch out into the fresh vallium of shapely and sign-posted telos, de-
fined by isomorph + isometry: cum mare ∼ cum manus, cum . . . patet ∼
cum . . . dedit + parcitur / ∼ porrigitur /.
If that was a ‘but’ (sed illi . . .), the following ‘however’ is an ‘if’ (hoc
tamen . . .). For the promise to cap the story so far with the superlative which
will beggar our stream of Phaeacian impossibilities in fact shatters the spell
(hoc est commodissimum . . . quod . . .). Instead of accommodating readers
within the mimesis, the shoot gestures at our viewing, to point out the point
of channelling us into the vista. The hyperbole in the last image, of ‘fish-
already-on-the-dish’ (ad parata, as if already part of the apparatus), pushed
the rhetoric into self-elevating supremacy, once the uilla was exposed as the
[name of this] set-piece of ‘advantageous’ invention (commodissimum).
(Shake that kaleidoscope. NOW.)
The climactic Endgame in the sequence needs shoring up against bathos,
since it consists in just those four matt words: Baias trans parietem habet
(‘Baiae through the wall, got it?’). The diminuendo is hardly recovered by
the amplification which recoups the shape of the previous rhetorical struc-
tures of the epideixis, in order to assert its status as summary summation
of the tableau. For ‘incommodis illarum caret, uoluptatibus fruitur’ recti-
fies the deviant structure of ‘hoc tamen est commodissimum in uilla, quod
Baias trans parietem habet’, which loses the shape of the preceding twinset
parallelism:
patet, parcitur ∼ dedit . . . porrigitur.
After the ‘lapse’ of: [est —] . . . habet, this straightens out, via inversion, as:
‘caret . . . fruitur |’. And in this same move, that sequential trick of proceeding
from ground-clearing negation to open-ended positivity is trotted out as
we pass on, the same as when we rode in: caret . . ., fruitur | ∼ non recipit . . .,
tenet | . . .
The deformity in this last, ‘most valuable asset’ of the verbal mansion is
at once marked as The Moment of Truth [in the semiotic chora]. Mention
of the proper name places the [unnamed] villa site in the image repertoire
of Roman culture. And, here and now, b a i a e ruptures the reverie.
This was the point of withholding the [name] ‘between Cumae and
vat i a ’s’.
Because this Erewhon is ‘through the wall’ from Baiae, that is, between
b a i a e and [Nutopia].
This spot instantiates the cosmopolitan creed of Epicurean Pleasure, ‘as
you know’, and encomium is sweet-talking it into a paradoxical shrine to
philosophical Dogma. Thus, ‘Pleasure’ at vat i a’s is canonized as catastem-
atic ‘Absence of Pain’ (incommodis . . . caret), securely walled-off from vulgar
hedonism, so that Holy ‘%tarax©a’ may enjoy a traffic-calmed proximity
to the hurly-burly of the seaside resort. The simultaneous mix of retreat
from officious obligations and palace terrors [in imperial Rome: see p. 81]
with retreat from the false haven of hedonistic retreat itself sums up the
most rose-tinted eulogy of Epicurean Knowledge that Seneca can manage
to trumpet.
But by now saccharine sarcasm has surely taken a firm grip of the litoral
languagescape: the ‘most valuable asset’ of this Mansion is, apparently, that
it is close, too close, all too close, far too close, to Baiae: the Harbour of
Beast Intentions . . .
The thought that ‘at least vat i a ’s isn’t actually IN Sin City’ ought
to be cold comfort in a Property Profile. And the stark conclusion is just
asking to be read as blowing the whistle on this up-market panegyric: for, in
Seneca, ‘enjoying the pleasures’ (uoluptatibus fruitur) can only sound like an
invitation to end up frankly ‘wallowing in desire’. High-minded retreat will
then have lapsed into lurking under cover, lapsed into an open ‘swoon of
carnality’. Whatever other ‘knowledge’ we may bring to this letter (to this
Pleasure Dome), we shall not miss the rebuke in ‘this litany of its plusses’
(has laudes eius).
Seneca has a surmise to add.
Not that it is verifiable on a visit, but vat i a ’s is no temporary relief
during crises when Rome gets too hot: ‘believe it’s a year-round thing’, this
mansion for all seasons.
All or nothing, this design for life.
Moral Philosophy is, exactly, a holistic commitment, a ‘creed’ (credo).
At the same time, Seneca believes that ‘belief ’ is the most that the Epi-
curean devotee can command.
And, in context, he even breathes more sarcasm here: ‘believe this is The
Answer to Everything (if you can)’.
His reasoning follows, one last selling point for this real estate, as he
takes us back down to the level of encomiastic image-mongering (7). In
concrete terms, the masonry faces ‘west’, goes out and gets ‘the West Wind’,
grabs ‘Spring before it even starts’: the villa heads for ‘Fauonius’.31 Seneca’s
flicker of impressionistic description, however, has the Villa Vatia ‘go out to
face the foe’, like some brave [would-be Stoic] soul, and ‘await the onset of
the quarry’, with a hunter’s nerves of steel, or weekend huntsman’s [spoiled
Epicurean] ‘let-it-come-to-me’ inertia (occurrit . . . excipit).32 And in satirical
terms, this exclusive Beach House has a monopoly on Spring, so ‘cuts out’
Baiae.33
31 Fauonius was etymologized from foueo, ‘foster, help conceive, mollycoddle . . .’ (Pliny, Natural
History 16.93, Maltby (1991) 226. ‘The approach of Favonius’ was a formula lodged in the heart of
the Roman farming year: e.g. Cato, De agri cultura 50.1, cf. Columella 11.2.6, Pliny, Natural History
19.60, 105, 130, 153, 156, 163, 166, 173 in Henderson (2004). Favourable aspects for growing were
‘Favonius-facing’, e.g. Pliny, Natural History 15.21, spectare oliueta in Fauonium, etc.).
32 For occurrere, ‘grasp the nettle’: Kenney (1979), on Tacitus, Annals 13.5, uenienti matri . . . occurrere.
For excipere, ‘lie in wait for the drive of prey’, as a metaphor latent in a villa’s orientation to ‘catch’
the wind: Nisbet and Hubbard (1978) 250, on Horace, Odes 2.15.16, (porticus) excipiebat Arcton.
33 Baiae was etymologized as Greek for ‘Nurses’ (¡ ba©a, Strabo, Chrestomathiae 5.39) or as archaic
Latin for ‘Port’ (a baiolandis mercibus, Isidore, Origines 14.8.40), and mythologized as the foundation
commemorating the burial of Baios from Odysseus’ crew, or of Boia, nurse of a mate of Aeneas
(Maltby (1991) 73).
At any rate, the upshot – the last word – is ‘say no to Baiae’ (neget Bais).
If that sounds like a ‘wise choice’ to conclude the passage (and, I be-
lieve, it does), then consider, before it is too late in the year, that a pre-
emptive strike on anything that Baiae wants is very likely to topicalize (not
proaAresiv but) ‘folly’. There lurks in Seneca’s conclusion, from any point
of view, at least a grain of derisive satire: ‘He was no fool, evidently, to
pick this location, that Vatia, to take his rest, already a lazy, old man’s
affair.’
For uidetur undermines non stulte: if not utter sarcasm, then at least an
element of reservation has to be the effect.
Under pressure (given a good critical shaking), the gesture of putative
approbation collapses easily into back-handed compliment veering into
insult: Vatia was not a fool to earth his own shortcomings to this location;
he was only a fool to have these shortcomings, the shortcomings that prove
folly. The manor did not, after all, take any active, virile, measures to secure
itself any advantages, for it was exactly tailored to house ‘Sloth’s lazy, senile,
inactivity’.
In short, vat i a ’s is a locus that dramatizes ‘foolish choice’ of habitat.
The narration of the topos should long since have given us a good shaking
out of our folly, our sloth, our foolish reading habits, our philosophical
mésalliance. Balmy or barmy – which is it to be? Were all the puffs for
this vanity in vain? The more palpable the narcotic techniques of Seneca’s
rhetoric of seduction, the more exasperating its psychagogic power should
have proved?
Such, at least, is our final warning. ‘But –’, Seneca breaks in, to dispel any
lingering, lurking, misapprehensions that may have survived the rattling
Seneca has given us. ‘But location is not much of a positive factor for
gaining calm. It is the mind that has to square everything to itself.’
So the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We have just read the locus:
did the rhetoric vouchsafe us to Epicurean h(e)aven, and vice versa? Or did
the passage turn us purple? Were we putty in Seneca’s parodic hands? Or
did we direct our own mind’s eye at his ‘video’ and take our own critical
distance?
The last thing Seneca is planning is to leave us up his stream without
a paddle. He goes out of his way to spell out exactly what he has been
engaged in: the genre has been [The Roman Letter of] ‘Recommendation’
(commendatio: 8).
But he had already made it quite clear. Active reading habits must do
their own dirty work, of the mind (animus, dinoia). It is up to us to
think Seneca’s sponsorship deal through ‘for ourselves’. ‘Directing [our]
eyes on vat i a’s manor’ has taken us on a sight-seeing tour round ‘caves’
to look at ‘wind ’ – as he warned, ‘nothing clearcut, no stability’ here, for
transcription. (So much for ekphrastic nrgeia, set-piece deictic clarity.)
Meantime, it is not the slightest impediment that we Luciliuses are not
setting foot ‘in Campania’ (8). ‘The locus’, we are assured, ‘is not much
of a positive factor’. So vat i a ’s may after all be dismissed as just one,
particularized, site among an infinity, where our worldly witness would
claim to have snapped [unlocalizable] human folly (uidi . . . uidi). Indeed,
our epistolary guide wishes to leave us in no doubt that mimetic expatiation
is bound to uncritical folly. For ‘being (present) there’ is only a way to lose
‘your own thoughts’ (cogitationes tuas, 8). More precisely, it is no way to
‘enjoy the greatest pleasure there is’ (uoluptate quae maxima est, fruimur,
9). Communing with the one that knows you best, the one you know
the best, just has to be the way to escape living in ‘the shrinking cage of
our unthinking lives’ (in angusto uiuebamus si quicquam esset cogitationibus
clusum, 11).34
‘But –’ . . . Seneca, notice, sponsors epistolarity. He commends corre-
spondence to us with every word he writes. So we must beware of this: do
we approve his epistoliterarity? That is the question I have all through been
(re)commending to you. At home, out riding with Seneca.
(At s e n e c a ’s ?)
d i s re g a rd t h i s n ot i c e
At a meta-critical level, this hellish katabasis of a visit through The Edge
has crushed us with its demonstration that it is worth going out of our
way to stigmatize any risk of buying into sloth masked as care of the
self. To capitalize on the negative caution, what is needed is a positive
recommendation. So, away from the blurry trauma of staring eyes out of
Cumae: ‘Not a chance of certainty, no sure guide, there’ (de ipsa uilla nihil
tibi possum certi scribere, 6). We’re off on a smoother ride, on a pilgrim’s
excursion to Liternum, to co r n e l i u s s c i p i o, and Epp. 86.
There, chapters 9–12 will put us in a better position to sort out the
‘hope-it-chokes-you’ amenities of vat i a’s claustrophobic cupboard of
34 Cf. Cancik (1967) 46–56, esp. 52. Saylor (2002) reads Epp. 55 for its disquisition on the topic of
‘friendship and how action and inaction of mind affect friendship’, seeing sections 9–11 as ‘the last
and most important part of the letter’ (102). This certainly glues the excursion to its epistolary frame.
slime + gunk. Hit by the contrast with the firm lines of s c i p i o’s health-
farm, and its latest product – sour sense from Seneca:
Henderson explains: ‘This change may become especially important in the
period between middle age and old age, which is the time when so many
people are considering what to do in their retirement – whether to work or
play, whether to stay at home or travel.’35
35 Motto and Clark (1972–3) 197 n. 14, citing Carl G. Jung et al., Man and His Symbols, ed. J. L.
Henderson, New York, 1968, p. 151. Here to stay, Forever Jung. One hell of a cliché.
chapter nine
The world of the bath-house: s c i p i o ’s

Scipio in Letter 86
with: Horace’s common scents
The visit to s c i p i o’s is an inside job. Narrative breaks through the episto-
lary manner, to take us inside the chosen ‘historical exemplum’ for a whole
rounded composition. In the next Letter, ‘Cato’ will shrink back into the
usual parameters, as a momentary concretization of the argument (87.9–
10).1 Whereas we were safely guided past the exterior of vat i a’s Siren
seduction, to shake us from comatose lethargy, we begin here, as we mean
to go on, right there:
In ipsa Scipionis Africani uilla

Inside the actual manor of the Scipio dubbed Conqueror of Africa.
This is a place to be still, to lie there and think, to let this shrine infuse,
implant, its spiritual message into our own inwards, into us (iacens). Our
whereabouts? We are now in the grave; that is all the location we get and all
we need: the ambience permeates this writing with holy miasma, as religious
atmosphere pens today’s unorthodox praeparatio mortis (adoratis manibus
eius et ara). Let us pray – for once the Letters take a positive turn, trusting to
the legacy of (Roman Republican) Tradition for solid bedrock. For all that
Seneca will shoot off shafts of morally energizing satire at the decadence
of (Roman Imperial) Modernism. This is no place for the mannered self-
ironization of our visit to s e n e c a’s gardening, not the moment to run
into superannuated staff and wallow in senile sentimentality. To be sure,
we will find a comparability between the contemporary owner of s c i p i o’s
and the recent owner of vat i a’s; but the original occupants haunt both
loca and loci, and there is only disjunction between them, to the glory of
s c i p i o, and the detriment of vat i a.
1 See Mayer (1991) 159–60.
93
You could surely write a novel out of the materials compacted in Epp. 86.
Lindsey Davis has: see Appendix 2.2
s c i p i o’s name already cues us to his fame, for a f r i c a n v s is a ‘tri-
umphal’ title that signals the special place in Roman memory of the defeat
of Hannibal’s Carthage. To apostrophize, te nunc alloquor, Africane, cuius
mortui quoque nomen splendori ac decori est ciuitati . . . (Ad Herennium 4.22,
‘You are my vocative, Africanus – dead, but still your name brings lustre
and grace to the state’). So this villa has an immediate connection to the
vast edifice of Roman History, and all of Seneca’s Roman readers were in a
position to plug into this. Before we are given any bearings on-site, Seneca
presents his own version of the heroic saga (tanti uiri). He alerts us from
the start to the creative intervention he is making to the received legend,
as he puts his own response into mini-drama form. Thus he ‘suspects’ this
is Scipio’s ‘tomb’ – there is an ‘altar’, where he just ‘paid his respects to the
shade’. But his concern is to underline his own investment in this busi-
ness of beatification, to the point of heretical apostasy from the canonical
gospel: ‘I suspect . . . I am convinced myself . . . Not because he led great
armies: . . . but . . .; by my judgement a wonder more when . . . than when . . .’
(suspicor . . . persuadeo mihi, non quia . . ., sed . . .; magis . . . admirabilem
iudico, cum . . . quam cum . . .). Clearly the narrator pitches into a contested
story, and wants us to feel the heat.
The way he sees it, transfixed, is that, when Scipio quits Rome for
the world at large, he has grown too big for Rome (exeo, si plus . . .
creui, 2).3
The letter must go out too and grow into the part: expect exorbitance –
crushed in a microwave.
scipio and whose army?

Two thoughts run together where we cannot miss either, as Seneca writes
into his own updated idiom the primitive, very likely archaizing, apparatus
of sainthood: thus raiding pirates close on determined defenders at the
Liternum villa, but soften on meeting the great Scipio, in exactly the tale
type we would posit (Valerius Maximus 2.10.2):
2 ‘At least one reader seems to have spotted my joke about the Annaei’ (personal communication from
the author).
3 The verb promises epic inflation to Scipionic proportions (Ennius-style), cf. Statius, Siluae 1.5.28,
crescit.
Scipio in Letter 86 (and Horace) 95
postes ianuae tamquam aliquam religiosissimam aram4 sanctumque templum
uenerati cupidine Scipionis dextram apprehenderunt ac diu osculati positis ante
uestibulum donis, quae deorum immortalium numini consecrari solent, laeti quod
Scipionem contigissent, ad naues reuerterunt.
Honouring the door posts like some sainted temple-altar, eagerly grabbed Scipio’s
hand, they gave it kiss after lingering kiss, setting the offerings usually consecrated
to the godhead of the immortal deities before the hall. Overjoyed to have touched
Scipio, they returned to their ships.
Whatever the shrine may have sold the pilgrim by way of customized
‘altar’, to concretize such yarns, we understand that the ultimate accolade
is to escape the treadmill of mortality, when the exceptional ‘spirit’ makes
it back to The Source, the Aether.
But, second, the banal qualifications for sublimation are flatly scotched,
and an acceptable reformulation espoused. Scipio is not a saint qua
‘Africanus’, because we have known, from the beginning of history
(Herodotus’ Cambyses: Histories 3.25),5 that success in epic campaigns need
not prove sanity, let alone spiritual excellence. Not that Seneca could openly
identify with his test case from the zenith of the Republic, but ‘quitting on
Rome’ could only take precedence over ‘defending Rome’ if imperial vic-
tory had become so passé that the cult of renunciation outranked that of
conquest. ‘Leaving Rome’ sounds like treason (relinquit patriam), but para-
doxography says otherwise: our saviour’s finest hour was when he ‘turned his
back on home’, not when they were ‘backs to the wall’ (defendit). ‘Wonder’
cues us to get minds around the puzzle (admirabilem . . . admirer).
On both counts Seneca’s tampering with Tradition is loudly trumpeted.
The eschatology business, of tomb, shade, hero, psyche, and their where-
abouts, will soon tie in with the Big Moment of Scipio’s Walk-Out. That
mocking hit at Herodotus’ Cambyses tilts us toward historiography, and
when Seneca slips crisply into his own animation of the legend of Scipio’s
Farewell to Cruel Rome, this must be the direction in which our thoughts
are led.6
The cameo energetically matches talking exemplum to moralist’s expli-
cation (1–2 ∼ 3):
4 This nails Bodel’s conjecture ((1997) 5, n. 2) of arca for ara, to pick out the Cornelii clan custom of
putting their dead in ‘a box’.
5 At about the time when Seneca wrote this, Lucan was writing Caesar up the Nile, in the tracks of mad
Cambyses (10.320; and others’). For ‘Episodei Erodotei nell’opera Senecana’: Setaioli (1988) 485–503,
esp. 490–500 on, for example, Cambyses in De ira 3.20–1; Castagna (1991).
6 A dullard retelling: Scullard (1970), 210–24; more of a swashbuckling condottiere in Morretta (1937)
295–308, ‘Literno: tramonto d’una gloria’. For exonerare ciuitatem, cf., e.g., Livy 2.2.7; Scarpat (1975)
66 on Epp. 3.4.
animum . . . eius . . . non quia magnos exercitus ∼ hanc magnitudinem animi,
non quia magnos exercitus duxit ∼ Hannibalis;
admirabilem iudico ∼ admirer;
reliquit patriam ∼ in exilium uoluntarium secessit et ciuitatem exonerauit . . .
se . . . recepit;
aut Scipio Romae esse debebat aut Roma in libertate . . . causa . . . libertatis ∼ aut
libertas Scipioni aut Scipio libertati faceret iniuriam;
aequum . . . ius ∼ faceret iniuriam;
Nihil . . . uolo derogare legibus ∼ locum dedit legibus;
uolo ∼ uoluntarium;
inter omnes ciues ∼ ciuitatem;
derogare ∼ imputaturus;
ius sit ∼ fas erat;
exeo ∼ in exilium . . . secessit, . . . suum exilium;
plus quam ∼ tam . . . quam;
creui ∼ eo perducta res erat ut . . .
In short:
The enthusiastic impersonation announces itself a bid for rhetorical glory: ero . . .
argumentum.
∼
The ebullient improvisation works the topos of Scipio’s relocation into a declam-
atory set-piece: locum dedit.7
And this double volley of wonder-struck flamboyance gets us back to where
we came in, installing Scipio ‘inside his actual manor’ at Liternum. We were
found a way to shadow Africanus’ journey to his villa after all, and replay for
ourselves Seneca’s rehearsal on the page of Scipio’s final expedition, from
his Rome to his tomb. Feel how Seneca too recaps his own valediction to
[Nero’s] cosmopolis, another one-way campaign to Campania.
t h e t r i a l s o f s c i p i o : h i s to ry
‘Not because he led great armies . . . when either Scipio had to be in Rome,
or else Rome had to be free’. Once we have taken our concentrated dose
of admiring ekphrasis inside this villa, we will resume with ‘great joy’ at
the contemplation ‘of Scipio . . . inside this cranny . . . to whom Rome
has to owe . . .’ (1 ∼ 4–5: in ipsa Scipionis . . . uilla . . . non quia magnos
exercitus . . . Scipio Romae esse debebat aut Roma in libertate ∼ magna . . .
uoluptas . . . Scipionis . . . in hoc angulo . . . cui Roma debet . . .). Now this
7 As we shall see (p. 103), locum dedit legibus even reads as locum dedit Legibus – the promise that
s e n e c a’s s c i p i o ‘affords a site for refashioning the self-immortalization through hero-worship in
Cicero’s Laws’.
frame for description of Scipio’s manor accounts for half of the appearances
of Roma in all the Letters (3 of 6: see p. 159). Scipio’s manes borrow fresh
lungs from a new acolyte to give Rome another burst of reproach, and
keep the legend alive. Now the Man’s manner has rattled the rafters of his
manor, the effect is to bind, more than owner to villa, true Roman to false
City. The best of Rome had always, it could seem, taken themselves away
on principle, and Seneca now follows suit.
‘All citizens’ must by rights have grown up themselves with all this bag-
gage for their cultural heritage and habitus. Livy takes pains to impress
this into us as the main objective of his own version. The Fall of Africanus
had been coming from way back when. For example, to seize his chance
to transport the war from Italy to Africa, over obstructionist oratory from
Fabius Maximus, Scipio had had to produce winsome ‘modesty . . . and
hold his tongue . . . to elude envy’ (28.44.18, modestia . . . et temperando
linguae . . ., inuidiae).8 Years after his triumph over Hannibal, the chickens
came home to roast the senior senator, when two tribunes impeached him
(38.50.6–57.8):9
Some denounced not the tribunes of the people, but the whole state (ciuitatem),
for putting up with this. The greatest cities in the world were found thankless
toward their leaders at virtually the same moment – Rome the more thankless
given that a conquered Carthage had expelled a conquered Hannibal into exile,
but the conqueror Rome was expelling the conqueror Africanus. Others maintained
that no single citizen ought to be so eminent as to be beyond impeachment by
the laws (debere . . . legibus). Nothing so levels up freedom as the possibility that
anyone with the most power has the chance of having to answer a case (aequandae
libertatis).
Scipio faced down the envy with one last show of bravura, touring the
temples on the anniversary of his final victory over Carthage, before with-
drawing to Liternum, seeing envy and struggle with tribunes ahead. His
spirit was too great (maior animus) to submit to prosecution.
. . . He spent life at Liternum without missing the City; when he died, soon after,
they say he ordered himself buried at that actual place, and a tomb built there, so
his funeral would not be in the fatherland that had been thankless toward him (ne
funus sibi in ingrata patria fieret).
. . . Africanus’ enemies’ spirits grew through his death, and they yapped at his
greatness into the grave (creuere . . . animi . . . magnitudinem eius).
8 Tedeschi (1998) 131–2.

9 The best revisionary account of Livy’s ‘The Trials of the Scipios’: Jaeger (1997) 132–76; cf. Luce (1977)
92–104; Walsh (1961) 93–100; and Bodel (1997) esp. 6, n. 6. On ‘the Scipionic legend’: Walbank
(1967).
. . . Speeches from this feud [like others, both Scipio’s10 and his enemies’] were
preserved.
. . . A profusion of versions pull in different directions, in the case of Scipio’s
departure – especially his capital impeachment, his death, his funeral, his tomb.
So much so, I’m at a loss which tradition to assent to, which texts. There is no
agreement about the prosecutor: some write X, some Y. None about the date of
the prosecution. None about the year he died. Nor the place he died and took that
last ride. Some say he both died and was buried at Rome, some say at Liternum.
Both places have tombs plus statues flagged up: (1) at Liternum there was a tomb
and statue surmounting tomb – I have actually seen it, not long since, toppled –
and (2) at Rome outside the Capena Gate on the Tomb of the Scipios there are
three statues, two of them said to be those of Publius and [his brother] Lucius,
and number three that of the poet Q. Ennius. And the controversy is not only
between historians. No: the speeches of Publius Scipio and of Tiberius Gracchus –
if only they are by the people they are claimed for – are mutually incompatible . . .
A completely different story has to be spun to fit in with Gracchus’ speech, and
those authorities must be followed who hand down [a very different account,
impugning] Scipio’s old acclamation for moderation and restraint (moderationis et
temperantiae) . . . [The attempt to capsize Scipio’s reputation works as back-handed
compliment from envy, for] These points would indicate, even if in the context of
an encomium, the greatness of a spirit moderating honours in line with a citizen’s
role (ingentem magnitudinem animi moderantis ad ciuilem habitum honoribus) –
and here is an enemy conceding them, by turning them into slurs.
. . . All this had to be set out before you: what a rainbow of views in the
interpretations and written memorials concerning this great hero (de tanto uiro)!
This saga, the Envy of the Scipios (38.60.10), closes its book. It has broken
Livy’s onward march toward the present with his longest extant derailment
over proliferating traditions, rival authorities, suspect contemporary docu-
ments. When Seneca follows Scipio to Liternum, he also treads on the heels
of Livy. Had he leafed through Livy’s definitive ‘despair’ of establishing a
once-for-all myth? Had he consulted those variants that faced Livy in the
writings of his predecessors? Had he dug up those racy orations supposedly
surviving from the cut-and-thrust of political debate in the hey-day of the
Republic? He would know that pilgrimage to Liternum was a vote against
reclamation of Scipio for Rome, for the Tomb of the Scipios [in Rome]
would spell conciliation and celebration of the fraternity and their con-
trol of poetic tradition, whereas the altar to exile perpetuates holier-than-
thou principle: Seneca comes to the villa precisely in order to witness that
Scipio’s only ‘return’, the only return that matters, is philosophic-
religious ascension of his spirit to rejoin its source in the heavenly aether
10 Cf. Gellius 4.18.3, quoting a speech of Africanus from the Trials.

(animum . . . in caelum, ex quo erat, redisse).11 He will not descend to argue
the toss with any primitivesque paraphernalia of genius cult at the manor
(see chapter 12, pp. 163–5). For Seneca is here to consecrate moral uirtus.
To badger our souls with inspired psychagogia. Out to make a difference,
in one more intervention on this hot property, to sort Roman heroism, to
rewrite the mos maiorum:
On the one hand, this was Traditionalism (Jaeger (1997) 133):12
[I]f . . . the goal of the Ab Urbe Condita is to teach its audience to adopt new
perspectives on the past rather than simply to reflect the past ‘as it really happened’,
it helps if we read the account of Scipio’s last days with this goal in mind.
And on the other hand, too many tales to simplify into a single myth is a
sure sign of magnified importance.13 Scipio’s ‘decade’ in Livy had therefore
climaxed with fuss over his unprecedented new title ‘Africanus’ (30.45.6):
The nickname Africanus: was it the soldiers’ approval or was it the people’s whim
that first spread it around – or . . . did it start from his intimates’ glad hand? I have
not found out to any satisfaction.
t h e b i g g e r t h ey a re
The Triumph/Fall of s c i p i o a f r i c a n u s had over centuries staged a
fundamental exercise in the inculcation of Romanness, directing every re-
cruit toward collusion in the project of lifting the Übermensch above His
fellow-citizens, in the very act of protesting his refusal to be so elevated.
The shift from ‘great armies’ – trans-Iberian, transalpine Hannibal, battle,
triumph, Africanus – to a spiritual elect of ‘restraint-cum-respect’ (egre-
giam moderationem pietatemque) had been inside the legend from the start.
It had taken root when succeeding generalissimos had failed to renounce
their exceptionality, ‘defending’ themselves rather than ‘deserting’ Rome.
And then it had canonized the self-marginalizing genius as the superior
form of role model that suited a post-imperial world which had no place
11 See, for example, Cicero, De re publica 6.13, Manilius 4.887; with Woodman (1977) 219–20 on
Velleius 2.123.3; Brena (1999), 275–91, ‘La beatificazione di Pompeo (vv. 1–18)’, for the complex of
manes-hero-Stoic saint-Roman uirtus at Lucan 9.1–18.
12 ‘The narrative seems to suggest that in the end Africanus’ burial place and the date of his trial and
death are not as meaningful as the replacement of his egocentric and transforming worldview with
that of Gracchus the mediator’ (Jaeger (1997) 160). Cf. Livy 39.52.1–6, where neither Polybius and
Rutilius nor Valerius Antias can be followed on the year Scipio died.
13 Livy signals the hermeneutic overload of his hero already at 26.19.9, where popular wonder ‘goes
beyond the bounds befitting a human being’.
for ‘leading great armies’, and every incentive to find an honourable way
out of invidious presence in the vicinity of Rome under its Caesars.14
Crawling away to lick wounds and keep head on shoulders may have
been all right for the Tiberian courtier Servilius Vatia, with his fig-leaf of
Epicurean respectability, but our fearless coach in Stoic crusading needs to
find more rousing cover in Cornelius Scipio’s Republican pride.
Seneca will shift the exemplum on into a developed rhapsody on location,
which will explore just this process of shifting the exempla on into revital-
ized functioning (chapter 11, pp. 146–7). He can rely on readers already
knowing, for themselves, the gusto of release in disgust at Rome that this
topos licensed. He and they could know and would have produced their
own version of Valerius Maximus’ bash at the locus (5.3.2b):
Our last protest still resounds, and another arises to take its turn: The earlier/greater
(superior) Africanus . . .
. . . Counter-balancing his glorious achievements, his fellow-citizens made him
denizen of a demeaning village, an abandoned swamp. He did not keep silent, and
take to the folk down below the bitterness of his voluntary exile (uoluntarii exilii),
but ordered the legend on his tomb (sepulcro suo):
‘t h a n k l e s s fat h e r l a n d , yo u d o n ’t eve n h ave m y b o n e s.’
(‘i n g r ata pat r i a , n e o s s a qu i d e m m e a h a b e s . ’)
What is more shaming than the necessity, more just than the protest, more restrained
(moderatius) than the retaliation? He refused her his ashes, after he hadn’t let her
collapse into ashes. Accordingly, the city of Rome suffered just this one hit back
from Scipio for its thanklessness of spirit (ingrati animi) . . .
He did not tolerate even protesting about her – what a rock is true respect!
(pietatis) – until after he had met his fate.
When we re-emerge from Seneca’s description of s c i p i o ’s manor (4–5),
still ‘beholding Scipio’s manners versus ours’, we run into a sublime quo-
tation tucked ‘inside the cranny’, as well as a wooden conceit: our Scipio
has been, all along, ‘The one made famous as “the Carthage hair-raiser”’
(ille ‘Carthaginis horror’ ), and to him ‘Rome owes the fact that it has been
captured just the once’ – the ‘debit’, this, called by Scipio (imputaturus, 3).
The quotation is paraded (ille) [but unattributed].
Seneca is muttering loudly some more: if we know what he is burying in
the decent obscurity of this ‘cranny’, we shan’t need to disinter it, in order
to appreciate what he is doing to Roman Tradition – we shall move ahead
14 See Seneca, De otio 6.4, nos certe sumus qui dicimus et Zenonem et Chrysippum maiora egisse quam
si duxissent exercitus, gessissent honores, leges tulissent, quas non uni ciuitati sed toti humano generi
tulerunt.
anyway. If we don’t, we shall have to become Romans by reading Seneca
neat, and miss the precise way he has shifted, metamorphosed, ancient
legend to make Roman Modernism.
s c i p i o a n d p o e t ry
We can see just enough to be sure that along with Livy’s monument to
history and Valerius’ storehouse of rhetoric, the old world of pre-Catonian
mores was sealed in the vast lays of Rome told by the greatest poet of the Re-
public. As we saw, the Tomb of the Scipios at Rome s(up)ported a stone Q.
Ennius beside Africanus and his brother, the no less triumphal Asiaticus,
on a neo-Atticizing architectural façade replete with arches and engaged
Corinthian columns (probably a generation after Africanus’ death).15 Ho-
race avers that Ennius’ verse brought Scipio more glory than any public
inscription (Odes 4.8.13–15). There were not only epigrams and features in
the national epic, the Annales, but a dedicated poem with the title ‘Scipio’.
For s c i p i o’s shrine in Seneca, we have a serendipitous set of remarks from
Cicero to link the topics of his burial, ascension, credit with Rome, excep-
tionality, and (impossibly) his polarity with Servilius Vatia. First – and I
shall eventually suggest that this particular Ciceronian retooling of Ennius
makes a likely matrix and spur for Seneca’s own self-heroization in Epp. 86
(pp. 165–9) – Laws 2.56–7:
redditur enim terrae corpus et ita locatum ac situm quasi operimento matris ob-
ducitur. eodemque ritu . . . gentem . . . Corneliam usque ad memoriam nostram
hac sepultura scimus esse usam. . . . declarat enim Ennius de Africano, ‘Hic est ille
situs.’ uere, nam siti dicuntur ii qui conditi sunt.
For the body is returned to the earth, and so, placed and laid to rest, it is cloaked,
so to speak, by mother’s coverlet. And in the same style . . . we know that the clan
of the Cornelii used this inhumation all the way up to my time . . . For Ennius
broadcasts concerning Africanus, ‘Here lies the Man’ – truly, since those who have
been interred are said to ‘lie’ in peace.
Lactantius (Institutiones diuinae 1.18.10) quotes from Ennius (Epigram 3–4
Warmington):
apud Ennium sic loquitur Africanus, ‘Si fas endo plagas caelestum ascendere cui-
quam est, | mi soli caeli maxima porta patet.’
In Ennius, Africanus says this:
If it is lawful for anyone to rise inside the realms of heaven’s people,
Then the greatest gate of heaven opens wide for me alone.
15 Holliday (2002) 33–5.
Seneca, who champions Virgil above (hoary) Ennius, quotes the latter only
very rarely, and then as a misguided hero of Cicero’s.16 When mocking
the pedantry of grammarians in Epp. 108.33–4, he will collect a pair of
Ennian citations from Cicero, the first containing a precious archaism
(= De re publica, fr. 4 Keyes / Ennius, Epigram 5–6 Warmington), the
second an intertextual stemma Homer–Ennius–Virgil, with the Ennius
courtesy, again, of Cicero (= De re publica, fr. 3 Keyes / Ennius, Epigram
3–4 Warmington):17
deinde Ennianos colligit [sc. Cicero] uersus et in primis illos de Africano scriptos:
‘cui nemo ciuis neque hostis | quibit pro factis reddere opis pretium . . .
. . . esse enim apud Ciceronem in his ipsis De re publica hoc epigramma Enni:
‘si fas endo . . . porta patet.’
Then [Cicero] collects Ennian lines, esp. the famous ones penned on the subject of
Africanus: ‘that no one, citizen or foe | will be able to pay back a reward to match
his deeds’ . . .
. . . For in Cicero, in this same On the Republic, there’s this Ennius epigram: ‘If
it is lawful inside . . . the gate opens wide.’
As he says, Seneca is in mortal danger of ‘sliding into The Scholar and

Grammarian’ (108.35) . . . He has certainly set an irresistible trap for the
likes of us, and when another Cicero quotation is put into the frame, from
(another) Ennius epigram with Africanus for speaker, we have resurrected
a whole quatrain to go with the other couplet on his ascension (Cicero,
Tusculanae disputationes 5.49 / Ennius, Epigram 1–2 Warmington):18
Hic est ille situs + cui nemo ciuis neque hostis
quibit pro factis reddere opis pretium.
+
a sole exoriente supra Maeotis paludes
nemo est qui factis aequiperare queat.
Here lies the Man + that no one, citizen or foe
will be able to pay back a reward to match his deeds.
+
From the sun rising above the swamps of Maeotis,
there is no one who could equal him in deeds.
16 This is the subject of the Book 22 Excerpta made by Gellius 12.2.2–13. See Mazzoli (1970) 150,
189–94 (esp. 190), citing Epp. 58.5, quantum apud Ennium . . . uerborum situs occupauerit (but see
p. 148), Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 10.1.88, Ennium sicut sacros uetustule lucos adoremus in quibus
grandia et antiqua robora iam non tantam habent speciem quantam religionem.
17 Cf. Silius, Punica 15.77–8, . . . at quis aetherii seruatur seminis ortus, | caeli porta patet.
18 See Mazzoli (1970) 190, n. 30; Setaioli (1991a) 38–40; Dominik (1993) 49–50.
The pilgrim incubating at s c i p i o ’s could hardly block ears to echoes of
Seneca’s refrain outside vat i a’s (55.4):19
vat i a h i c s i t u s e s t.
h e re l i e s vat i a.
No wonder that Seneca’s awe took the form of separating out this interred
Cornelius’ soul for elevation to ‘heaven’ (caelum).
Perhaps the Scipio poem would bring us fresh angles on Seneca’s recyc-
ling.20
If we ever recover Ennius’ Annales, a tangle of points trounced by Seneca
will surely come to light.21 We (pedant scholars) might be able to pick up
traces of Ennian Scipio in Cicero’s spectacular ‘Dream of Scipio’, where
the Elder is an epiphany to the Younger Africanus (see pp. 166–7).22 We
will certainly convince ourselves that Seneca’s ‘deafeningly silent’ quotation
‘Carthage hair-raiser’ (ille ‘Carthaginis horror’ ) is from Ennius once we
weigh up the context of Lucretius 3.1034–5:23
Scipiadas, belli fulmen, Carthaginis horror,
ossa dedit terrae proinde ac famul infimus esset
Scipiads: bolt of war, Carthage hair-raiser,
gave earth his bones, just as if he were the lowest slave there be.
For in Lucretius, we had taken on board the point that [Scipio’s-Ennius’]
Punic Wars can mean zilch to us (833), and throughout the ensuing satirical
attack on funeral rites we knew that Ennius was providing the quotations
as the scathing atomist hits out at our ‘Hellish lives’ (1023) – wheeling out
Good King Ancus Martius (1025), then the famous [Xerxes] and his fellow
generalissimo, Scipio (1034),24
magnis qui gentibus imperitarunt
who commanded great nations.
19 Odysseus ‘closes his ears’ against Sirens: cf. Epp. 31.2, 123.9.
20 See Scipio fr. 13 Warmington / Cicero, De finibus 2.106, beatior Africanus cum patria loquens . . . ‘nam
tibi moenimenta mei peperere labores’ (cf. Livy 38.50.11, Seneca, Epp. 86.8, munimenti).
21 See Annales 320–1 Warmington, libertatemque, ut perpetuassit | quaeque axim, from the end of the
Hannibalic War.
22 See Africanus Maior in Cicero, De re publica: passim, e.g. 6.13, quo sis, Africane, alacrior ad tutandam
rem publicam, sic habeto: omnibus qui patriam conseruauerint, adiuuerint, auxerint, certum esse in
caelo definitum locum, ubi beati aeuo sempiterno fruentur; 6.25, reditum in hunc locum [= caelum];
6.26, Ego uero, inquam, Africane, siquidem bene meritis de patria quasi limes ad caeli aditum patet . . .
23 Does the phrase ossa dedit terrae advert to Cornelian interment? Are these the bones that Scipio
refused Rome (Valerius Maximus 5.3.2b, see above, p. 100)?
24 Cf. Epp. 86.1, magnos exercitus duxit. How did Ennius’ elogium, or elogia, for Africanus put it?
We are certain that the metre-saving Scipiadas + its etymological gloss
fulmina are Ennian, because of the triangulation provided by Virgil, Aeneid
6.842–6, duo fulmina belli | Scipiadas, cladem Libyae. For the s c i p i o s’ true
name speaks, two at a time, of sk¦ptra – as both ‘bolts of lightning’ (i.e.
fulgemen) and ‘props’ (i.e. walking-sticks: fulcimen).25 The same goes for
Silius, ceaselessly dusting off Ennius, Livy, and Virgil.26 His Marcellus in
death trail-blazes – rivals Scipio (as Diomedes to Achilles. Punica 15.340–2):
. . . iacet campis Carthaginis horror,
forsan Scipiadae confecti nomina belli
rapturus, si quis paulum deus adderet aeuo.
. . . There lies on the field the hair-raiser of Carthage,
perhaps soon to snatch Scipio’s title as war
finisher, if some god would add a little to his lifespan.
Silius has his Africanus treated to a prophecy from the Sibyl of Cumae
(Punica 13.514–15):
. . . pudet urbis iniquae,
quod post haec decus hoc patriaque domoque carebit.
. . . I am ashamed of iniquitous Rome,
because after these achievements this jewel will lose fatherland and
home.
And when he has Africanus pitch into World Burial Customs (Punica
13.466–87), presumably as the Cornelian expert on against-the-grain inhu-
mation, Silius weaves in Lucretius 3 or his Ennian penumbra, to fashion his
supreme hero.27 On the other hand, he has his attention rivetted on Liter-
num as the locus where s c i p i o’s altar would preside for ever, and therefore
billetted Hannibal there on purpose so that he could taste, eschew, and
destroy epic representations of his father’s First Punic War lost to Rome,
years before the ‘sand and swamp’ of the place could host the post-war
Roman garrison colony there.28
25 See O’Hara (1996) 179–81: for example, Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.6.26 explains scipio as = baculum,
‘walking-stick’ (cf. chapter 11, pp. 141–2). Cladem Libyae of course = Africanus.
26 Punica 7.106–7, ubi nunc sunt fulmina gentis | Scipiadae? For Ennius’ ‘Scipio’: Scholz (1984).
27 Bassett (1963) esp. 75, cf. Fucecchi (1993), esp. 38; Ahl, Davis, and Pomeroy (1986) 2542–55, ‘Scipio
Africanus’. Barchiesi (2001) 138–9 explains how Silius’ self-destructing ekphrasis stages epic metaplay
between Naevius and Ennius on Punic War.
28 E.g. Livy 22.16.1, Literni harenas stagnaque; cf. Pomeroy (1990) 129; Fowler (1996) 63–73; and Bodel
(1997) 5, n. 2. For the site of stagnosi . . . Literni (Silius, Punica 6.653–4): Johannovsky (1976) 520.
‘Excavation has provided no trace of Scipio’s rustic mansion’ (McKay (1975) 103).
h o l d i n g t h e f o rt i t u d e
Such are the main lines of tradition which Seneca is out to revise. Now
for his ekphrastic testimony. Seeing is believing: at s c i p i o ’s there is no
hermeneutic gap between thing, percept, word, signification; what you
see is what you get, the immediacy of witness: uidi (3–4). This is, I have
seen, a sight for sore eyes. Not so much a mansion or farmhouse as a
major military installation. This redoubt is ‘built high’, from stone drawn
up like an army ready for allcomers in hollow-square formation (lapide
quadrato): the very picture of the Stoic sage (quadrato agmine, 59.7).29 The
‘perimeter wall around a wood’ is the Roman army camp’s circumvallation
turned inside-out: enclosing the forest rather than protecting troops from
ambush out in the wild. Expect no interior garden at Liternum (bush,
flower, bird, gnome . . .). This fastness is truly a castle: at the gate, ‘twin
towers rear up to fortify the manor’. Not vat i a’s twin grottoes, that feat of
Ego-engineering, but straight-backed Stoic marshals standing tall. Taking a
firm stance. Based on well-founded suppositions: turres . . . subrectas. Bold
aggression meeting trouble half-way. Before it arrives: in propugnaculum
uillae. We were prepared to embrace these bracing barracks when Scipio’s
Liternum trounced Vatia’s Baiae in a trice (51.11):30
seuerior loci disciplina firmat ingenium aptumque magnis conatibus reddit. Literni
honestius Scipio quam Bais exulabat: ruina eiusmodi non est tam molliter collo-
canda.
More austerity in the régime of a locale toughens the mind and makes it fit for
great enterprises. Scipio spent exile more honourably at Liternum than at Baiae: a
collapse of that ilk must not be eased into a location so wimpishly.
The first millionaire Romans built up mansions near Baiae, but stuck them
atop high ground, military-style (51.11):31
aspice quam positionem elegerint, quibus aedificia excitauerint locis et qualia: scies
non uillas esse sed castra.
Look at the situation they chose, the locations where they raised up buildings –
and the type of buildings: you will know they are not manors but outposts.
Seneca is frank about the siege mentality: the place was built to take on
the combined forces of the universe, to keep out all the armies of sin. An
29 Where Seneca gives the reader clear instructions: mouit me imago. See Wilson (1997) 64 and cf.
p. 152.
30 See Lavery (1980), esp. 147–51. As I have remarked, praetorium, ‘C.-in-C.’s HQ’, had become a
standard term for a Roman mansion before Seneca’s day: p. 71 n. 5.
31 See Henderson (2001a) 22–3 on Phaedrus 2.5.
impregnable fortress able to supply all its needs from within: ‘a water tank
installed under the buildings and shrubberies’ is ‘up to underwriting the
needs of an army, even (cisternam . . . quae sufficeret in usum uel exercitus).32
Pull up the drawbridge at Fort Self-Sufficiency – the dashing young ‘Alexan-
der’ or ‘Hannibal’ figure at the head of legion legions has wizened into the
guerrilla chief holed up in his lair, living off the land. With water safe in
store below buildings and greenery, s c i p i o’s need never run out of all a
place needs (usus): for drinking, cooking, washing, sanitation (inside); for
home-grown food, fodder, shade, kindling, timber (outside, but brought
inside the stockade). The invisible underpinning essential to any (psychic)
economy. Nothing showy at this HQ, Systems Inc.
Syntax says this is plain solid unvarnished Real estate:
§ uillam extructam, comprising:
(1a) murum circumdatum
(1b) turres . . . subrectas
(2a) cisternam . . . subditam.
For the spartan list of munitions has one last item to issue, smuggled in as
a pair with the water tank to match the brace of wall + turrets:
(2b) balneolum . . .
‘A tight wee bath-house, dark as hell in the ancient fashion. No baths seemed
to our ancestors hot that weren’t dark.’ As yet, no past participle to situate
the featured noun. Instead, a flicker of deprivation takes off from the spark
of subsistence thinking that was siphoned into the cistern: bare necessity
supplies balneolum, diminutive and/as hypocoristic. Pleonasm insists on
the cramped style, which is to turn the vast villa – forested, bastioned,
reservoired indeed! – into a ‘tight spot’ for us to huddle up and rough
it, for the good of our souls: here is the miniature locus we require, to
fit the contours of a letter. Here we shall feel at home, make ourselves
uncomfortable (1, 5, 8):
In ipsa Scipionis Africani uilla
>
Scipionis . . ., in hoc angulo
>
in hoc balneo Scipionis
32 Cf. Varro, Res rusticae 1.11.2, si omnino aqua non est uiua, cisternae faciendae sub tectis; Columella
1.5.2, si deficiet et spes artior aquae manantis coegerit, uastae cisternae hominibus . . . struantur – quae
tamen pluuialis aqua salubritati corporis est accommodatissima . . .
At once, World Conquest and Cosmopolis, Epic and History, Military
Genius and Grandes Armées, Mansion and Castle, shrink to one pinched
cell.
Here is right for the lean times, exile, basics, bedrock: ‘a tight spot, a
cranny’ – plenty of room for throttling anguish from our favourite Jeremiah
(angustum . . . in hoc angulo).33
Already, see, hear, say, the perfect description of the description we have
just read: no tighter calculus of fort-itude in this austere régime of belt-
tightening war on wealth. In fact, already so enthusing a celebration of
Stoic Virtue that our guide is losing it as he jams it in. For the flicker of
excess in balne-olum angustum is redoubled with two ponderous phrases
of repetitive fat. Something of a choker, reading this struggle to repress
exultant yelps of joy behind clenched teeth – or so we will be signalled, to
ham up the sentence’s rising curve of pleasure as we are given our cupboard
to crawl into and diet:
Dark as hell ∼ dark.
In the ancient fashion ∼ it seemed to our ancestors.
s c i p i o here unpacks as symbol of Roman Tradition-and-Rome as Tradi-
tion + Roman Morality-and-Roman Moralism (ex consuetudine antiqua +
maioribus nostris). Before The Fall, our Roman selves were greater than us,
but their greatness was squashed out of the limelight – in fact their Great-
ness was their crushing view that Heat depends on Dark. This steaming
reverie is what the mind sees in this masonry, discovers, from a viewing,
insight into an ethical design embodied in the way of seeing that was, and
is, made concrete in this locus (from uidi to uidebatur). Morality maketh
man(ors): ‘So I underwent great joy. Beholding Scipio’s ways versus ours’
(maioribus nostris > mores Scipionis ac nostros). As Seneca’s hot flush wells
up from the depths (sub-iit), ‘great joy’ has gushed at once from the sight
of that tiny, unlit, shower stall. In our case, from the very thought of it.
Scipio’s booth is as complex an ideological site as its iconoclastic parody,
former bakehouse (Petronius, Satyrica 73.2): balneum intrauimus, angustum
scilicet et cisternae frigidariae simile, in quo Trimalchio rectus stabat . . . (‘We
entered a bath-house, tight for sure, and just like a cold-water tank. In it,
there stood Trimalchio, upright’).34
Languish, yes, and look back in anguish.
33 Cf. Propertius 4.9.65–6, angulus hic mundi nunc me mea fata trahentem / accipit, with Nisbet and
Hubbard (1978) 102 on Odes 2.6.14. For the etymology: Varro, De lingua Latina 6.41, angulus, quod
in eo locus angustissimus, Maltby (1991) 36. (Modern etymology points to ango(r).)
34 See Courtney (2001) 117–18. Petronius’ editors find the spray of connotations too hard to swallow,
and excise.
l i ta n y at l i t e r n u m
The strain to contain Grandeur within a Shoe Box plants a ‘cranny’ too
angular to carry a quotation from Roman Epic, mass panic, Carthage versus
Rome, shades of the sack of the City by barbarian Gauls . . . The effort is
just too much for one hip-bath to bear. So description of this Booth for
Reflection must yield, and Scipio set our example.
The way to cope with s c i p i o ’s is to make like him: ‘take a bath’. Watch
how he does it, and ‘contemplate’ that – in ‘joy (un)confined’:
(1) The traditional regimen (mos fuit priscis):

‘Country toil’ is physically exhausting, so do some: ‘trench the earth under-
foot, in person’. Then ‘wash down’. For stability, make this a steady routine
(-ebat, -ebat, -ebat). Once bitten, twice shy: we don’t get fooled again: one
sack of Rome is plenty.
(2) The man in his manor (hoc ille tecto, . . . hoc illum pauimentum):
Picture the fit of hero to shack, just managing to squash himself into (t)his
rustic hole. There he stands tall, stooping under the filthy ceiling – an Atlas in
a coop. There he steps proud, planting feet on crude flags – an Agamemnon
on a mat.
(3) The plot on the page – all subliminal sublime:
Seneca is channelling us through s c i p i o ’s so that the infrastructure will
deliver the crucial work of subtext: the battlements are subrectas, the tank is
subditam quae sufficere . . . posset; pleasure subiit; Scipio subigebat; sub hoc . . .
tecto; hoc pauimentum . . . sustinuit; qui . . . sustineat?
To ‘understand’ an operational villa, first look ‘under Scipio’s roof, underfoot’
and find a subterranean organism (boiler and hypocaust, pipes and drains);
then look into organic horticulture, for gardening is all about looking ‘un-
derneath’ the surface. Look down in that hole Scipio is digging. s c i p i o’s
is, when you get right down to it, supplying the suggestion that subsoil is
where all growth stems from (subconscious). (Chapters 10–11)
The composition hitches a ride on the shameless pun contrived between

‘the floor underpinned the hero’ and ‘who would undergo this?’ (susti-
nuit . . . sustineat;35 add tam sordido ∼ sordidus). Ekphrasis at s c i p i o’s
will boil down to just one further detail. A second floor to match a second
ceiling (camera) will provide a symmetrical cue, presented as the ultimate
destination in a mental tour of modern decadence:
35 Compounded by the correlative in(s)anity of columnarum . . . nihil sustinentium (7).
adhuc . . . quid cum . . . peruenero?
. . . eo deliciarum peruenimus ut nisi gemmas calcare nolimus.
Still . . . – how about once I get on to . . .?
. . . We’ve got on to the level of delicacy where we’ll tread nothing but jewels.
With this, we have internalized Scipio’s mindset, when he drew the line
and jumped the Roman tracks (3):
eo perducta res erat . . . ut . . ., neutrum fas erat.
The situation had reached the point where . . . Neither alternative was right and
proper . . .
This surge is over; we rejoin Seneca ‘inside the villa’ = ‘inside this
cranny’ = ‘inside this cubicle of Scipio’ (1, 5, 8). The shaft of light penetrates
the murk of s c i p i o ’s sauna (8):
in hoc balneo Scipionis minimae sunt rimae magis quam fenestrae muro lapideo
exsectae, ut sine iniuria munimenti lumen admitterent.
Inside this, the bath-house of Scipio. There are the smallest chinks, rather than
windows, chiselled from the stone wall so as to let light in without harming the
fortification.
Here is that past participle that went missing in all the flutter of joy at
squashing into s c i p i o’s balneolum angustum . . . (pp. 106–7):
rimae . . . exsectae.
Still thinking tiny, thinking dark (minimae . . . rimae), but still thinking
solid stone bastions and precision-hewn buttresses (muro lapideo exsectae . . .,
munimenti).36
Not windows, but arrow-slits . . .
These chinks of righteousness give way at once to sheer bliss again –
a second volley of abuse for lapsed morality: at nunc . . . ∼ at nunc . . .
(8 ∼ 6; cf. quondam, 6; at olim, 9; quantae nunc . . ., 11; quas nunc . . .,
12; olim, 12; dares nunc, 13). The first whoop of disgust takes the form of a
sustained string of six visions of unScipionic decadence topped off by an
exclamatory triplet that splits and doubles the signal of impending climax
in that fantastic ‘jewel-crunching’ conceit.37
36 Cf. Ennian Africanus’ moenimenta: n. 20 above. With muro lapideo exsectae, 8, cf. exstructam
lapide . . . murum, 4.
37 Cf., e.g., Epp. 12.10, calcare ipsas necessitates, and esp. 16.8, calcare diuitias. Statius finds a ‘sur-
prise’ twist, when calcabam necopinus opes turns out to mean that the trompe l’oeil ‘Unswept Floor’
mosaic – asarota – had worked on him! (Siluae 1.3.53, 57).
More heat than light, perhaps, but Seneca floors readers with a dousing of
flattening rhetoric. Recall how he introduced terms for the maiores’ mores,
‘No baths hot that aren’t dark’ (non . . . caldum nisi obscurum, 4). Now he
starts up a litany of conditions for an anti-Scipionic design for life, a truly
‘poor, dirty’ way of seeing the self (sibi uidetur . . . nisi . . . nisi . . . nisi . . .
nisi . . . nisi . . . nisi . . . nisi, 6 ∼ uidebatur . . . nisi, 4).
This carbolic-hyperbolic fantasia lines up:
r Not ‘square-dressed stone, a perimeter wall around a wood’ + ‘a tight wee bath-
house, dark as hell, dark’ + ‘shoddy floor’.
But ‘mirrors on the (internal) walls, a dazzle of great big pricey discs’.
(quadrato ∼ orbibus; tenebricosum . . . obscurum ∼ refulserunt; balneolum
angustum ∼ magnis; uile ∼ pretiosis)
r Not plain ‘built high with dressed stone’.
But exotic ‘marble blocks from Alexandria . . . set off against tawny veneer slabs
from Numidia’.38
(exstructam lapide ∼ marmora . . . crustis distincta)
r Not ‘a wall around, underslung on both sides, installed under’.
But ‘a border, a wash all around, on all sides . . . patterned’.

(murum circumdatum, utrimque subrectas, subditam, . . . opere ∼ undique
operosa . . . uariata circumlitio praetexitur)
r Not ‘dark as hell, dark, dirty roof ’.
But ‘ceiling hidden away behind glass’.

(tenebricosum . . . obscurum, tecto . . . sordido ∼ uitro absconditur camera)
r Not ‘built with dressed stone, wall around a wood; our ways; in this cranny; for
needs; used to wash down his body; by hard graft out in the country; tired . . .
used to toil as his work-out’.
But ‘stone from Thasos;39 run around our pools; in any temple; showpiece; we
lower bodies; by repeat sweats; dehydrated’.
(exstructam lapide quadrato ∼ Thasius lapis; murum circumdatum siluae ∼
piscinas circumdedit; mores . . . nostros ∼ piscinas nostras; in hoc angulo ∼
in aliquo . . . templo; in usum ∼ spectaculum; abluebat corpus ∼ corpora
38 Cf. Statius, Siluae 1.5.36.

39 Cf. Statius, Siluae 1.5.35: white stone excluded from Etruscus’ new bath-house: outmoded by the
coloured marbles from across the empire (Pliny, Natural History 36.44).
demittimus; laboribus rusticis ∼ multa sudatione; fessum . . . exercebat se ∼
exinanita)
r Not ‘he trenched the earth underfoot, in person; dirty . . . shoddy’.
But ‘valves haven’t released the flow of water; made a dazzle, . . . made of silver’.
(terram ipse subigebat ∼ aquam . . . epitonia fuderunt; sordido . . . uile ∼
refulserunt, argentea)40
r Not ‘this shoddy floor underpinned’.
But ‘tread nothing but jewels’.

(pauimentum . . . uile sustinuit ∼ gemmas calcare)
At s c i p i o’s, however, we meet not just the great a f r i c a n v s , but ‘that

mythical “c a rt h a g e h a i r - r a i s e r ”’ (1, 4). In consequence, the lacer-
ation of ‘our ways’ (mores . . . nostros, 4) has not reached his pitch, and to
get there means descending past ‘pipes for the working-classes’, to reach
the heady level of ‘guys fathered by former slaves’,41 and, finally, to that
‘jewel-crunching’ ultimate [of Roman Rajahs]. Seneca will turn out to
have used this idea of our keeping on to the end of our journey to (the
pay-off for visiting) s c i p i o ’s both to cap his first barrel, and to prelude his
second.
In its moment, however, indignation pits Herculean Samson against
House of Shame:
Under this roof, the great man stood tall – dirty as it is! This floor underpinned
the hero, shoddy as it is! Today, though, who is there who would undergo . . . this
a-way?
∼
What a load of statues; what a load of pillars that undergird zilch, installed for
decoration instead – to boost the cost; what a load of waterfalls, sluicing down the
steps in a din! We’ve got on to the level of delicacy where we’ll tread nothing but
jewels.
(tam . . . tam ∼ quantum . . . quantum . . . quantum; ille stetit ∼ statuarum; tecto ∼
columnarum; sustinuit ∼ nihil sustinentium; sordido ∼ in ornamentum; uile ∼
impensae causa; stetit . . . sustinuit . . . sustineat ∼ libertinorum: statuarum,
columnarum . . . positarum, aquarum = deliciarum . . . calcare)
40 Cf. Statius, Siluae 1.5.48–9.

41 Edwards (1993) 155 comments: ‘For Seneca, there was something “wrong” and “unnatural” about
men who had money but no real status, just as there was . . . about pillars which masqueraded as
structural features.’
When the grand finale of the tricolon caps ‘statues’ and ‘columns’ with
‘waters’, the resounding rhetoric trumpets its own fanfare, and assures us
we have made the grade:42
quantum,
quantum,
quant<um> aquarum per gradus
cum fragore labentium!
What a load of waterfalls, sluicing
down the steps
in a din!
s p lu t t e r a n d b at h o s
The main function of this second, more rambling and discursive, storm in
a shower is to clinch the antithesis between s c i p i o ’s and vat i a ’s.43
In précis, we glimpse through the ‘arrow-slit’ chinks, or ‘baths for moths’,
an exultant slamming of modern comfort, as Seneca’s plumbing reaches the
depths of this favourite topic for a Roman rant.44
r Rhetorical amplification builds on sheer cumulation.
(abluebat corpus . . . sic lauari, 5 ∼ lauantur, lauari, lauabatur, sic lauabatur, non
cotidie lauabatur, cotidie abluebant, nundinis lauabantur, 8–12)
r Stocky ‘running style’ composition pays out the thread of essayistic thinking,
moving in and out of the line of sight.
(fenestrae > fenestris amplissimis; admitterent > recipiant > deuitantur > re-
iciuntur > receptabant > admiserat;45 commenta > reperta > inuenta; exor-
nata > exornaretur; usum > utilem; nec referre > nihil . . . interesse > nec
multum . . . intererat; intrare > intrandi; quam > quam; temperasse > tem-
peraturam; munditias > immundissimos > munda; aedilem > aediles; caleat >
42 Gradatio (= kl±max) was a rhetorical figure in which clauses were linked by ‘steps’ of verbal repetition,
as in the ‘tralatician Latin’ example Africanus uirtutem industria, uirtus gloriam, gloria aemulos
comparauit (Ad Herennium 4.34; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 9.3.56, cf. Krostenko (2001) 96 and
n. 18).
43 See Bek (1976). Tossi (1974–5) contextualizes Seneca’s villas within a Catonian tradition of denigra-
tion of corrupting art. Roman riches as the formula ‘big house–gardens–hot baths’: Plutarch, Life
of Sulla 31.5.
44 See Nisbet and Hubbard (1978) 288–9, on Odes 2.18; Toner (1995) 54–64, ‘The baths’; Newlands
(2002) esp. 199–226; Nielsen (1990) 207 (but the contrast proposed at 182, for Epp. 86, between
new-fangled villa design and age-old agriculture, can only survive a superficial glance). Hardie (1983)
132–6 points out that Seneca may stand near the start of bath-house ekphrasis in Latin.
45 Amplifying Scipio’s se recepit, 3. So, too, sine iniuria, 8 traces back to Scipio . . . faceret iniuriam, 3.
calidum; uiuere > uixit; unguentum > unguentum; oluisse > ‘olet’ > oleret >
odore; nimiis > parum > nimium, 8–13)
r The sermon works to expand s c i p i o ’s to accommodate every last washroom
and water closet in the past history and present empire of Rome.
(illa balinea intrare obscura . . . an caleat, 10 ∼ balneolum . . . caldum =
obscurum, 4):
r This en-suite echo chamber bounces off the walls of its ‘smallest room’ a stream
of verbal figures: superlatives, totalizations, pleonasms, multiplications, paradig-
matic big names, tricola, ornamentation with mood-setting poetic quotation
(with, and featuring, fuss and nonsense), and, to boot, a sarcastic puff of inani-
tion in a closing harangue.
(minimae, totius; amplissimis; et -antur simul et -antur; X ac Y, X et Y, X et Y, et
X nec Y; X et in Y, non in Z; non X, nec Y, nec Z; X et Y; Catonem . . . aut Fabium
Maximum aut ex Corneliis aliquem; nobilissimi; -andi . . . -endique X et A ac B
Y, non C, adeo ut . . . nihil; quantae; latis; quod non in X . . . quod non in Y . . . ut
in Z; X et Y, non saccata, sed saepe turbida et . . . paene lutulenta; uehementius;
ut X . . . non ut Y; X et Y; toti; immundissimos; militiam, laborem, uirum; A
et B, 8–13; Horatius Flaccus quid ait? . . . idem Horatius; ne euanescat . . ., quid
quod . . . odore . . . gloriantur?)
This second fun jet of denunciatory vitriol catches up the energy of its
predecessor, recapitulating, as we noticed, the ‘Now versus Once’ antithetics
(at nunc – quondam ∼ at nunc – at olim, 6 ∼ 8–9), and resuming the
checklist strategy of negative conditions with three more, two to open the
score (non ita aptata . . . ut . . . nisi . . ., nisi . . ., 8), and an ace to round off
the game, in the parting shot (parum est . . . nisi . . ., 13).
For the Professor Emeritus of Roman Rhetoric is in his element, and en-
joys telling us so, in running self-commentary. He has inflicted on himself
the most miserable topic – ‘the smallest chinks’ – in the world for praise:
how is he ‘to let light into’ (lumen) his prose ‘without harming’ his brief ?
‘Amplification’ works for the opposition (fenestris amplissimis). Seneca is
barred from treating ‘bathing’ as an opportunity to indulge in oratorical
‘colours’ (lauantur ∼ colorantur). Out of the cityscape, he is denied graphic
ekphrasis, where land meets sea, ‘receding fields, and changing sea . . .’,
those staple loci of epideixis (agros et maria prospiciunt).46 He must back
a once popular, formerly acclaimed thesis (concursum et admirationem),
now shunned, long rejected (deuitantur et . . . reiciuntur). Our task is to
46 Cf. Statius, Siluae 2.2.74–82, omni proprium thalamo mare . . .

plug something that is an absolute classic, a nightmare, the ultimate chal-
lenge: poverty-stricken (∼ luxuria), outmoded (∼ noui), uncreative (∼
commenta), undramatic (∼ se obrueret), many-times-attempted (∼ pauca),
already encrusted baroque (cultu exornata), low-remuneration (res quad-
rantaria), utilitarian (in usum), anti-fun (non in oblectamentum), beyond
replenishment and revitalization (non suffundebatur . . . nec recens . . .),
clogged with detritus where it is least wanted – in the limelight (in quam
perlucida sordes deponerent).
The locus de balneis is, in short, exactly the theme of a Seneca’s dreams
(quam iuuat). It is just like him, a prehistoric relic long written into the
ground, still disgorging vitriol. Ripe for revival – rescue from obscurity
(obscura). Ready for stripping down to the bare stone – peel away the
patina of vulgarization (gregali tectorio inducta).
For arcane lore has indeed been filed away under this topic (haec loca,
10). Our example will be that in old Rome the greatest heroes, whether a
Scipio, a rival, or an opponent, took their first lessons on statesmanship
by administrating The RePublic Baths. With these beginner aristocrats
at the controls, the political temperature was gauged and set (temperasse),
moderation prevented overheating (temperaturam; incendio ———), kept society
clean and neat (munditias), efficient and functional (utilem), healthy and
sane (salubrem), free and live (seruum
——– uiuum). Nice and hot (ardeat ——– . . .
caleat). Link their ‘hands-on’ managerial style to s c i p i o’s domestic régime,
as they test the water and he turns the soil (manu sua, 10 ∼ opere . . . ipse, 4).
For the city’s ‘aediles’ took their name from the ‘aedes’ (‘house’), and their
‘homely’ role taught them to treat the populus Romanus as they should
their guests.47 See modern ways as bad housekeeping – fire hazard, death-
trap, virtual arson (similis incendio, seruum uiuum . . . lauari; mihi uidetur;
ardeat) . . .
The tactic just used welded The Good Bath to The Good House to
The Good City. But s c i p i o’s sauna puts him out of Rome (rusticitatis),
in private (suum). A natural target for punitive satire – apt for ‘boiled-
down’ caricature, rich ‘food for thought ’ (non . . . decoquebatur . . ., ut . . .
concoqueret, 11).48 A butt for Seneca to envy – this clown washes himself
muddy.49 Ostracized for b.o., a magnet for malicious jokes (nesciit uiuere,
lutulenta, sudorem, in exilio uixit, quorundem uoces . . . ‘Non inuideo . . .’ ).
But Seneca mustn’t change his spots: he is agent, operator, and vehicle
47 Cf. Paulus chez Festus 13, ‘aedilis’ initio dictus est magistratus quia aedium non tantum sacrarum, sed
etiam priuatarum curam gerebat, Maltby (1991) 10.
48 Cf. Epp. 2.2–4, concoquas: p. 8.
49 Does saccata aqua, 11, amount to treating water like wine?
of Roman morality (mores urbis), and is duty-bound to hand over more
antique lore, an absolute gift for ridicule: s c i p i o is a stereotype, a locus
(12). It writes itself (dicet aliquis). For ‘o l i m ’ is redolent (oluisse). Its ‘liquid
manure’ feeds that whole culture of the ‘National Service Fatigues Hero’
(‘liquet . . . immundissimos fuisse’ . . . militiam-laborem-uirum).
Seneca knows: in writing the history of Rome as dialectic between ma-
terial and moral hygiene (munda ∼ spurciores), the locus de balneis has
handed Satire its lead role as evolving site of Tradition (loco). Does the
sermon deserve its high-point of exultation (gloriantur?)?
In strategic terms, the tirade first pretended its brief gave no room to
work, then muscled in on the act with self-mockery, but finally turns the
tables by relativizing modernism: if the argument is about deciding what is
‘too much’ and ‘too little’ (nimiis, parum), how should we rate Horace? And
how should we rate Seneca? To view him as ‘too much austerity’ would be
to take on both s t o i c i s m and s c i p i o (si tibi nimium tristia uidebuntur,
uillae imputabis, 14; cf. mihi uidetur, 10). But it would be a sad misreading
of the pleasure (any) Lucilius must have taken in this masterful splurge
of opinionated melodrama (non in oblectamentum . . . sed, di boni, quam
iuuat, 9 ∼ magna me uoluptas subiit, 4). And it would most likely wreck
our introduction to the final scenario, ‘inside’ s e n e c a n s c i p i o ’s (14):
. . . uillae . . . in qua didici . . .
. . . the manor. Inside it, I learned a lesson . . .
Inside this, the bath-house of Scipio:
They call them ‘baths for moths’ if any baths haven’t been designed so as to welcome
in the sun all day long. For use, not for titivation.
Water flow didn’t keep welling up from under; water didn’t keep running forever
fresh, as though from a hot spring. But, good gods, what pleasure to enter those
famous bath-houses: dark, hooded with mass-market stucco, and you’d know Cato
was your Housing Officer (or Fabius Maximus, or someone from the Cornelius
clan . . .) who was in control, hands-on.
What a load of country gaucherie people today convict Scipio of: he didn’t let
daylight into his sauna through wide windowpanes! He didn’t have his skin go brown
floodlit, or wait in the bath for his din to go down! Ah – a human wreck: he didn’t
know how to live! What do you suppose some people today would say? ‘I don’t envy
Scipio. He truly lived in exile – bathing that way!’
If all this seems grim stuff to you, and o.t.t., inside the manor, I learned a lesson . . .
I have seen . . . I have seen . . . I have seen . . . Another recent sight I have
seen . . . Also, I have seen . . .
∼
Two grottoes. Entirely man-made. One admits no sun, the other keeps it right till
sunset. A brook, fish, for the feeding of. Up to taking even continual draining, but
when the sea is open it is let off, whereas when a storm has granted a fishermen’s
holiday, stocks are ready to hand. Yet the principal asset inside the manor is that
it has Baiae through the wall. Free from its downsides, enjoying the pleasures. I
know this litany of its plusses first hand, and believe it’s a year-round thing, as it
meets the west wind head on, so monopolizing it as to cut out Baiae . . .
I have seen . . . I have seen . . .
(in hoc balneo Scipionis ∼ in uilla; balnea siqua non ita aptata sunt ut totius diei
solem . . . recipiant ∼ esse illam totius anni credo; in usum, non in oblectamen-
tum ∼ uoluptatibus fruitur; non suffundebatur aqua nec recens semper uelut ex
calido fonte currebat ∼ alendis piscibus, etiam si assidue exhauriatur, sufficiens;
manu sua ∼ manu factae; manus . . . porrigitur; non in caldarium suum latis
specularibus diem admiserat . . . non in multa luce decoquebatur et exspectabat ut
in balneo concoqueret! ∼ quarum altera solem non recipit, altera usque in occi-
dentem tenet;50 ‘o hominem calamitosum! nesciit uiuere.’ quas nunc quorundam
uoces futuras credis? ‘Non inuideo Scipioni: uere in exilio uixit qui sic lauabatur.’
haec si nimium tristia uidebuntur ∼ ‘o Vatia, solus scit uiuere.’ scit uiuere, non
uiuit, non sibi uiuit; uillae . . . in qua didici . . . uidi . . . uidi . . . uidi . . . etiamnunc
uidi . . . et uidi . . . ∼ uidi ego, uidi . . .)
I shall propose that the diatribe has another role in the construction
of s c i p i o ’s , but this can only filter through in retrospect (chapter 11, pp.
139–41).
On the surface, the bathroom rant was supposed to spend itself in bliss
before finally running into the ground, as the roll-call of unpleasantnesses
mounts: humiliating ‘moth-baths’ and ‘thrones’ (= hip-baths) with a view.51
Self-burying fashion. Some thing, priced at a farthing. How crystal clear
was the water you set your dirt in (perlucida sordes)? Yukkh – what fun
to dive into those bath-houses: ‘dark’, hooded with mass-market stucco. /
The slave criminal bathed alive! / Scipio the human wreck. His mud bath.
Sweat, not scent. His weekly bath. ‘Unclean as can be!’ / Stink: clean baths,
foul people: Horace’s ‘Mr Gobulle smells of pastilles.’ Just as, if he smelled
of ‘billy-goat’, he would be in ‘Mr Gargonius’’ spot, the one Horace set up
in antithesis, ibid. / Scent needs freshening up two or three time a day, to
stop it evaporating on the body.52
Grim stuff (nimium tristia, 14)? If so, ‘you’ll debit the manor’, and
find yourself trying on the shoes of a bitter exile: Scipio Africanus (rei
50 Cf. Statius, Siluae 2.2.45–7.

51 Cf. Petronius 73.5, 92.6, Maiuri (1950) on the solium with a view.
52 Seneca wades a step further into this river at Naturales Quaestiones 1.17.7: cum antiqui illi uiri
incondite uiuerent, satis nitidi si squalorem opere collectum aduerso flumine eluerent.
publicae imputaturus, 3 ∼ uillae imputabis). But if you are in the swing
of this declamatory purge, you will have entered into the caustic spirit of
s e n e c a ’s s c i p i o’s .
The revulsion is what we are here for, flat out, busted.
H O R AC E ’ S C O M M O N S C E N TS
The Horace citation is the first of three in the Epistulae Morales, all
from the first stretch in Horace’s first book of poetry: Satires 1, and all
with their author named (86.13 = 1.2.27/4.92; 119.13–14 = 1.2.114–16;
120.20–1 = 1.3.11–17).53 This first ornament is part of the structural de-
sign of the Letter (chapter 11, pp. 143–5), but it also calls for scrutiny in its
own right.
Firstly, Horace already cites his own line, picking it out from the bluff
tirade on extremism in sex-object selection as an instance of the backbiting
grudgery that proves Satire an outlet and alibi for sadistic envy. So this
wonderfully vocal verse stands as a one-line essence of Horatian Satire,
and is held up for our appraisal, to choose between (sadistic, envious,
and wilfully ignorant) damnation or (witty, wise, informed) approval: a
chiasmus that polarizes luscious liquids against grotty gutturals (pastillos
Rufillus ol- ∼ -et Gargonius hircum), and hinges between artificial chem-
icals and animal pheremones through the tiny but all-embracing verbal
hub (olet, ‘scent’). Trying to be sociable, we put on airs; trying to be nat-
ural, we pollute the air. Satire uses its favourite organ to sniff out disguise
and posture, finding out extraneous accessories and gross bodies, dedi-
cated to denying the middle ground it stands on:54 a trial for our own
take on the satirist’s take (liuidus et mordax uideor tibi?). In this spirit,
Seneca’s hit on this self-selected gem of rough-talking diatribe from Ho-
race presents us with a specially ticklish challenge: what to make of his
misquotation?
For Horace gave us facetus | pastillos Rufillus . . . , and then ineptus |
pastillos Rufillus . . . Seneca gives us pastillos Buccillus. This ‘improves’ Ho-
race, in the sense that the image of ‘pastilles’ to kill bad breath precisely
focusses on the bucca, ‘puffed cheek, gob’, which betokens the overdone
bad-mouth slanging of Satire – of the Horatian satirist (Satires 1.1.20–1,
Iuppiter ambas | iratus buccas inflet). And the improvement is at the cost
of pious preservation of the tradition, even at the point where quotation
53 Mazzoli (1970) 233–8, esp. 234; Berthet (1979). 54 See Otto (1971) 252, s.v. olere.
precisely honours tradition. Seneca adapts and updates? Seneca cares for
the issue not the expression? Seneca makes mistakes – the right mis-
takes? We can only block out the light, lie flat, and ponder. Nothing less
will do.55
55 An indefatigable reader presses for comment on the problem of construing Horace’s line – whether
to punctuate before, or after, facetus | – and asks ‘What might Seneca’s text have done? Or what does
he (mis?)remember it doing?’ The question leads toward its own pert answer – Seneca is fresh out
of respect – and at 1.4.91–2, enjambment is inescapable: does Horace’s ineptus | there point to his
(comically) ‘ill-fitting’ writing? But had usque facetus | in the first place signalled a jeu of enjambment
at 1.2.25–6? Well, I am defatigable.
chapter ten
The appliance of science: s c i p i o ’s

Aegialus in Letter 86
with: Virgil’s funny farm
At the hinge between the two grand topics combined in Letter 86, we were
given notice that disjunction in tone should feature in our reception of
what lies ahead. By implication we may be promised a lightening of tone,
as we move from Schloss s c i p i o, on to a lesson we can learn from the
present owner (haec si tibi nimium tristia uidebuntur, 14). But this is not
spelled out, and the letter of the text even locates the up and coming lesson
firmly ‘inside’ the very selfsame ‘mansion’ wherein we have just learned our
lesson in lugubrious revulsion (in uilla).
If, or rather, since, as we just saw (in chapter 9: pp. 107, 115–17), it
is a major test of the reader’s own orientation to suggest that they may
not have wallowed in Scipio’s cranny and may not have exulted in Seneca’s
diatribe (haec si tibi nimium tristia uidebuntur, 14), there is a firm underlying
directive to anticipate something just as excessively ‘grim’ in store. This
editorial hinge (diuisio) even amounts to a boast that what follows will live
up to the mighty s c i p i o. We are cued to read as ‘conscientiously’ as we
can (diligentissimo). Here, now, today, under present management, the site
is Roman respectability itself (patre familiae).1
the field trip

‘Within’ the estate, Seneca learns to think of the locus as ‘farmland’ (huius
agri). The abrupt introduction of, and to, Aegialus is, at base, insistently
marked as the provision of a personification of Liternum, a transmogri-
fication and paradigmatic acolyte of s c i p i o’s (chapter 12, pp. 160–3).
Specifically, it is hard to miss that the complex Aegialus-nunc-huius agri is
itself an instantiation, a rhetorical ‘operator’, of Seneca’s lesson. In literal
1 For the culture hero diligens paterfamilias, see, for example, Columella 1.1.3, 1.2, 1.8.18; he idolizes
his Uncle Marcus as doctissimum et diligentissimum agricolam (2.15.4); in retirement, Seneca pictures
himself as uinearum diligens fossor (Naturales Quaestiones 3.7.1).
119
terms, naturally, ‘Ownership of trees, however ancient, is transferable.’ Ae-
gialus has indeed acquired s c i p i o’s estate (possessor: Scipio even serves now
as his rhetorical foil).
Evidently he has preserved it religiously, in the full glory of its archaic
pokiness, murk, and primitive plumbing. When Scipio went to Liternum,
he made his own citadel, made it his own, and it has remained that way,
however often it has changed hands. Could it have predated, trail-blazed,
prompted Roman colonization of the swamp? Whether or not part of the
original settlement, did the castle stand permanently aloof? Had it outlasted
the outpost built on sand? s c i p i o’s villa had certainly conquered time, and
collected the tree rings to prove it (chapter 12, pp. 163–4).
Of course Seneca means more than the truism, but our job is to find a
portentous lesson rooted in it, and the lesson has to match up to the hero’s
mansion.
The cue ‘farmland’ spells agricultural know-how. At the point of delivery,
we are in no position to decide whether the lesson is formulated by Seneca,
or was imparted to him already formulated: had Aegialus been an exemplum,
or had he uttered a precept? Either way, the next sentence will confirm
that the particular species of ‘transfer’ in question is to be ‘transplantation’
(transferri).
seneca joins a team

s e n e c a appropriates the topic for himself, right away (uetus > nobis >
senibus), and keeps it, too, since his lecture to Lucilius is based fair and
square on his first-person witness: uidi . . . uidi, 14, 16). The thought-chain
slides from the lesson of the trees, ‘an essential lesson for old men like myself
to learn’, to an objection to Virgilian agronomy, ‘He meant not to teach
farmers . . ., for example . . . here’s one where it was essential for me to catch
him out today’ (hoc nobis senibus discere necessarium est, 14 > nec agricolas
docere uoluit . . ., nam . . . hoc quod mihi hodie necesse fuit deprehendere, 15).
As the thinking takes us away from Aegialus and the ‘inside’ of s c i p i o ’s,
and into hunting down Virgil in his course on agriculture, this trajectory
is marked by formal recognition of digression, ‘return to the olive grove’
(ad oliuetum reuertar, 17 ∼ oliuetum, 14), and a third pledge of personal
testimony: uidi (17).
Seneca had opened bizarrely, with a notion apparently prompted in-
stantly by the lesson of Aegialus: ‘Old trees can transplant.’ But ‘oldster
Senecas can only set an olive grove for the other fellow’.
After his detour into poetry, he returns with ‘the olive grove. I have seen
two methods of setting it in’ (quorum nemo non oliuetum alteri ponit, quod
Aegialus in Letter 86 (and Virgil) 121
uidi illud arborum . . . deponere, 14 > oliuetum reuertar, quod uidi duobus
modis positum . . ., arborum, 17).
After another conclusive image of ‘heeling underfoot’ (calcauit, 17 ∼
calcare, 7), however, a e g i a lu s speaks, with a word all his own (negat . . .,
ut ait, 18). The owner has not just been doing the gardening, as he will
continue to do, but he talks us through his recommended technique, too
(ut ait, 18, again).
For the remainder of the letter, stereophony between Seneca’s recording
eye and Aegialus’ vocal commentary both brings the pair together and
pushes them apart (20–1):
illud etiamnunc uidi, uitem . . .
et uidi . . . positas . . .
omnes autem istas arbores quae, ut ita dicam, ‘grandiscapiae’ sunt, ait aqua adiu-
uandas . . .
Another recent sight I have seen: a vine . . .
Also, I have seen them set in . . .
In fact, all those trees which, let me say, are ‘big-stemmed’, must, he says, be given
a boost with water . . .
The reinforcement, bonding, and transfer involved in teaming a e -
g i a lu s + s e n e c a model for the next phase of Tradition attested, se-
cured, and taught, through Transition (chapter 11, pp. 146–7). We can catch
the Elder Pliny dreaming the same dream for himself and his would-be
avatar among herbalists, Antonius Castor, who taught a whole generation:
‘by the sight of his garden, in which he grew a huge variety of organic
medicines, beyond his hundredth year of life, never having known physical
suffering, neither memory nor vigour shaken by age’ (Natural History 25.9).
The Letter just is this talismanic chain of transplantation: s c i p i o –
a e g i a lu s – s e n e c a > lu c i l i u s .
Hence its summation is its summary (21: cf. pp. 143–5):
plura te docere non cogito, ne quemadmodum Aegialus me sibi . . . parauit, sic
ego parem te mihi.
No, I am not thinking of teaching you any more lessons. In case, just the way that
Aegialus trained me to be his . . ., I may train you to be mine. Like this.
We are not to be told if Aegialus has old age on his side, to match
Seneca’s. We are not told whether either instructor’s techniques are as old
as the hills or are new-fangled science. We do shuffle between mimesis and
paraenesis as two twin methods, or aspects, of instruction. For, to return
to the olive grove before it went digressive, there is no doubt that Virgil is
fetched in to supplement Aegialus in order to allegorize the transmission of
knowledge from Senecas to Luciliuses: te quoque, 15 ∼ ‘te quoque’, 16 (see
p. 145).
n o t i m e to lo s e : o l i ve
We must struggle undeterred past a sentence in the paradosis that we cannot
decipher (quod uidi . . . deponere, 14), just at the point where Senecas
are calibrated against Luciliuses. For it seems secure that the argument
grounded the general lesson ‘However ancient the tree, transplanting is
possible’ in the specific, loaded, instance of the ‘olive grove’.
The olive had been proverbial for the lag between planting and harvesting
that makes it a gift for posterity, as the initial tag from Virgil intimates; in
the case of the very old, tree-planting must be an altruistic legacy. (Even a
delay of ‘three or four years before first fruiting’ would see off a Seneca, as it
did between the penning of Epistle 86 and suicide.) Whereas a Lucilius can
turn the appliance of science into the opportunity to share in the rewards
of our labour, along with generations of readers to come.
Exploration of Virgil’s (initial) lesson leads us on to look at other plants,
and at other growth-cycle principles, including both ‘setting in’ and ‘sowing’
(ponenda, serentes, 16). Here timing is about time of year, not time of life;
time to plant according to the plant’s bioclock, so it seems, rather than the
planter’s.
Yet just as the text for the sermon equivocated between the ‘aged tree’
and ‘Seneca’, so that gardener figured both planter and their plant, so the
quarrel with Virgil’s second lesson wrests planting away from a monopoly
by spring. It opens up a more diversified calendar, to suggest that the human
organism may find itself either ‘sowing late’ and ‘reaping early’ or ‘sown
late’, ‘reaped early’, according to circumstance as well as type (16).
re a d i n g t h e fa r m
For Aegialus-Seneca, the message is of adaptability, not circumscription.
Their eye ‘has regard’ for the ‘messiness’ of ‘Truth’: quid uerissime, non
quid decentissime . . . aspexit (15: variable, malleable, capable of reschedul-
ing; unbecomingly unruly, untidily relativistic, inelegantly capable of
disaggregation).
As the Letter has been dolefully teaching us all along, ‘teaching country
living’ is not to be confused with ‘delighting readers’ in the ordinary sense
(nec agri-colas docere, sed legentes delectare, 15); but we are readers, and we
have learned to share Seneca’s ecstatic ‘sourness’ in teaching us ‘farmland’
truths at s c i p i o ’s (tristia, huius agri, 14).
add the vine

So it is that when we return to the olive grove after ‘the digression’ (17),
we have been readied for the testing challenge to Plant Science of develop-
ing techniques for transplanting old wood to deliver early yield. And the
prospect of ‘two methods of setting in’ the single species, olive, will prove
to fit the parallel disjunction between superannuated Senecas who have
to be in a rush to see any returns, and Luciliuses who have time to play
with, and every expectation of enjoying their own payback. Whereas the
introduction of a different plant culture will bring a divergent focus to the
course of instruction – viticulture (20):
uidi uitem ex arbusto suo annosam transferri.
I have seen a vine of many years’ standing transplanted away from its very own
tree.
Before Aegialus and Seneca finally wind up a double act again, combin-
ing for a sweeping joint statement to cover ‘all those trees’ (omnes . . .
istas arbores, 21), Seneca’s own speciality, the vineyard, figures transplanta-
tion of a radically different kind from oleiculture.2 As we shall see, he is
2 Pertinent olive gen.:

(1) Theophrastus, History of Plants 2.1.2: ‘grown by all the methods except from a twig . . . although
many, or all, trees permit growing from a branch – be it smooth, young, putting on good weight’;
4, ‘grows, so to say, in the most ways of all: from trunk, sections of stock, root, twig – and even
a stake’.
(2) Cato, De agri cultura 28.1: ‘When you sow e.g. olives, or vines, or the like, remove them well,
with roots, with as much of their own soil as possible (cum radicibus . . . cum terra sua quam
maxima), and with ties right around them . . . Take care not to dig up or transport them during
wind or rain . . . When you set them in the trench (in scrobe), put top soil beneath; afterwards,
cover with earth, with the roots setting the limits, and then heel in well with feet, then heel in
with rods and bars the best you can manage (calcato . . . calcato) . . . Trees thicker than five fingers’
width, chop short and sow, smear the tops with manure and tie up with leaves (fimo).’ Cf. 61.2,
general orders: ‘The rest of the farming is, right on time, carrying as many roots as possible,
together with the earth (cum terra); when you’ve well covered the roots, heel in well (calcare), so
the water can do no harm.’ Quoting all this from Cato: Pliny (Natural History 17.125–6); De agri
cultura 45.1, ‘olive truncheons (taleas = qal©av) for planting in the trench cut three feet long and
handle carefully in chopping or cutting to go easy on the bark . . . When you put a truncheon
in, press on truncheon with foot; if it doesn’t go down, force with mallet or beetle and take
care not to split the bark in forcing . . . Truncheons at three years old are ready when the bark
turns. . .’
(3) Varro, Res rusticae 1.40.4, ‘With an olive cutting one must see it is from a tender branch sharpened
evenly both ends – some call them scions, others truncheons (clauolae, taleae), making them
c. one foot long’; 41.6, ‘Since olive seed is a nut, because the stem grows out of it more slowly
than from other plants, for that reason we plant truncheons in nurseries, as stated.’
(4) Columella 5.9.1–3, ‘When you have trenched three feet deep . . . let it loosen. Then take new
branches tall and shiny (ramos), that a hand can grip and enfold (= a handle’s width), off the
highest-yield trees, and cut off the freshest truncheons so as not to harm the bark or any other
bit (except where the saw has gone) . . . Truncheons should be cut one and a half feet long . . .
extraordinarily neat and brutally clipped about this, but still contrives to
parade telling parallels with the reflections that had grown from his Virgil
excursus, and even to start up hooking back to s c i p i o ’s bath-house (20:
see pp. 140–1).
d i rt y wo rk
The olive grove comes first, matching ‘two methods of setting in’ (duobus
modis depositum, 17 ∼ alter ponendi modus, 19):
r (1) Transplantation involves the bodily transfer of live olive (transtulit).
Savage systematic brutalization is required. It comes across in two chunks:
(A1) Take a ‘great tree’ (magnarum). Take the ‘trunk’ and ‘truncate’ the torso.
‘Chop right round’ the limbs. Hack them off down to one-foot long stumps
(truncos circumcisis ramis . . .). Do not detach ‘their very own ball’ (cum suo
rapo). Do ‘sever the roots’ (amputatis radicibus). ‘Leave just the actual head
they depend on’ (relicto . . . capite ipso).
Give this horribly mangled remnant the treatment: ‘transplantation’ means

the works:3
but it will be necessary to smear the truncheons’ heads and lowest parts with manure mixed with
ashes . . .’; 8, ‘The small trees can transplant this way: before uprooting a baby tree from the
soil . . . let a one-foot-long space be left in a circle and the plant be disinterred with its turf and
all (cum suo caespite) . . .’
(5) Seneca had his teacher (the blushing, rough-and-ready stylist) Fabianus’ Causarum naturalium
libri before him: Fabianus negat prouenire in frigidissimis oleam neque in calidissimis . . . (Pliny,
Natural History 15.4).
Relevant vine low-down:
(1) Theophrastus, History of Plants 2.1.3: ‘grown from branches, though it cannot grow from the
“prow” (= “head”)’.
(2) Cato, De agri cultura 32.1, ‘Layer them into furrows’; 49.1, ‘if you want to shift an old vine, it’s
on up to an arm’s thickness . . . Dig away well from the roots, chase up the roots all the way, take
care not to wound the roots; then, just the way it was, set into the ditch or furrow, cover and heel
down well’; and see on olive, above.
(3) Columella 4.2.2, ‘The selfsame Atticus’ commandment is to propagate old vineyards with layers
rather than to give them a covering whole (totas sternere), since layers soon root easily, in such a
way that each vine rests on its own roots as if on customized foundations. A vine whose whole
body is covered flat out, once it has criss-crossed and meshed the soil underneath, makes a mat
and chokes on too many roots knotted together, and fails in the same way as it would if weighed
down with lots of sprouts.’
For olives and vines in competition, see pp. 129, 144 versus 164.
3 See Pliny, Natural History 17.67, auolsi . . . arboribus stolones uixere; quo in genere et cum perna sua
auelluntur partemque aliquam e matris quoque corpore auferunt secum fimbriato corpore. hoc modo
plantantur . . . in primis . . . uites. Virgil’s young vines are tended until old enough to take the rough
stuff (Georgic 2.362–70).
(A2) Douse it in dung. Lower it down a hole. Heap soil on it. But don’t stop there:
tread it down, flatten it (fimo tinctum . . . demisit, . . . terram . . . adgessit . . .,
calcauit . . . pressit).
Now cut through the clutter of annotation, to locate the deferred core of
the atrocity:
(B) Before burying it alive, give said ball a radical scraping. Cut the truncated
torso to three or four feet, max. (antequam obruat radit; non plures autem super
terram eminere debet truncus quam tres aut quattuor pedes).
The two bunches of instructions carry assurances from the experts:
(i) Embryonic roots emerge and ‘take’ on the soil (nascentes radices prodire . . .
solum apprendere).
(ii) New roots come from all the flayed wood (ex omni enim materia quae nudata
est, ut ait, radices exeunt nouae).
The latter is vouched for by the owner, and the correct term for the sadistic
torture was also a e g i a lu s ’ (ut ait ∼ ut ait): ‘pounding’ (pinsatio). We
learn the correct word-and-thing at s c i p i o ’s, where it takes effect most
productively of all, in our learning process.
Inset, a double list of advantages is noted:
(a4) shuts out cold (frigus excludit);
(a2) shuts out wind (excludit et uentum);
(a3) lessens disturbance (minus . . . mouetur);
(a4) not even a light shaking will tear up young roots, still flexi-, gripping on
precariously (radices . . . leuis quoque reuellat agitatio).
+
(b1) puts on cover right away, from the very bottom (uestietur).
(b2) there won’t be any great section of it left, the way it is in ageing olive groves,
dry and scorched (nec magna pars quemadmodum in oliuetis ueteribus arida et
retorrida erit).
So the strategy of renewal is blessed. As old wood gets a new lease of life,
it rejuvenates (radices nouae . . ., oliuetis ueteribus). It is just as ‘essential’ to
realize the new vulnerability as it was ‘for us Senecas to learn’ and ‘to catch
out Virgil’ (necesse est, 18 ∼ necessarium fuit . . . necesse fuit, 14, 16).
r (2) Use the same techniques of ‘setting in’ (deposuit). Report briefly,
enact non-violently (30 ∼ 124 words). Simulate a hypernatural process
of growth. Axe verbiage, use minimalist figures of speech (quales . . .
tamquam). Smoothe away from view all unpleasantness:
(A) Take strong branches, with pliant bark (ramos fortes nec corticis duri).
(B) Set in ‘with the same technique’ (eodem genere).
Now for expert reassurance:
These gain height a little more slowly (surgunt).
Quietly ditch jargon. Once set, let the olives grow without visible assistance
(by imagery).
Twin advantages are listed:
a. They are soft, so like new (young) saplings (quales . . . nouellarum arborum).
+
b. They have stemmed from a quasi-‘slip’, so they have nothing hair-raising or grim
about them (cum tamquam a planta processerint, nihil habent in se abhorridum
aut triste).
Again the strategy is holy renewal. Again old wood rejuvenates (nouellarum
arborum . . ., a planta). There is no appeal to necessity; instead, it is a matter
of habit (solent). But this arboriculture misses the urgency of the butchered
torso option (statim): these brave new branches take time, and that is in
short supply, if you’re a Seneca (paulo tardius surgunt).
re pe at t h e d o s e
No reader of Letter 86 trying to be as ‘conscientious a head of household’ as
Aegialus (14) should miss the sense that this dyad of horticultural approaches
re-produces diction, images, ideas, and values, that we have encountered
not far from ‘this farmland’. Some items transfer us to s e n e c a ’s;4 others
to vat i a ’s;5 most, however, to the mansion ‘inside’ whose grounds we now
ruminate, with Seneca and Lucilius: s c i p i o ’s.6
4 Epp. 86: creui, terramque . . . ipse subigebat, aliquem manu sua temperasse, quamuis uetus arbustum . . .
in oliuetis ueteribus, positum . . . ponendi . . . deposuit, truncos circumcisis ramis . . . truncus, retorrida,
triste, tenent et complexae sunt, aqua adiuuandas ∼ 12.1–4: uillam ueterem esse . . . illas uetulas esse. haec
uilla inter manus meas creuit . . . ego illas posueram, retorridi rami, tristes . . . trunci, circumfoderet . . .
inrigaret, complectamur illam et amemus.
5 Epp. 86: Scipionis . . . uilla, sepulcrum, locum dedit legibus et se Liternum recipit, utrimque, balneolum
angustum, operosa, in aliquo . . . templo, ut totius diei solem . . . recipiant, manu sua, ‘nesciit uiuere’,
excludit ∼ 55: Vatiae uillam, uelut angustum iter cluditur, scis uiuere . . . latere sciebat, non uiuere . . .
scit sibi uiuere . . . scit uiuere, hic situs est, sacrum quiddam, magni operis, duae . . . quarum altera solem
non recipit, altera usque in occidentem tenet, manus, totius anni, elegisse hunc locum Vatia in quem otium
suum . . . conferret.
6 Epp. 86.1–14: magnos . . . magnitudinem . . . magna . . . magnis, libertatis . . . libertas . . . libertati,
omnes ciues, circumdatum . . . circumlitio . . . circumdedit, cisterna, caldum . . . calido . . . incendio . . .
ardeat an caleat, horror, antiqua . . . priscis . . . priscos, corpus . . . corpora . . corpore, opere . . . operosa . . .
opere, terram, sordido . . . sordidus . . . sordes . . . sordes, distincta, demittimus, positarum . . . deponerent,
aquarum . . . aqua . . . aqua, calcare, exsectae, admitterent . . . recipiant, obrueret, plueret, lutulenta . . .
spurciores, collegerunt, opposuit, tamquam suo, tristia ∼ 86.14–21: uetus, ponit . . . deponere . . . ponenda . . .
depositum . . . ponendi . . . deposuit . . . positas, magnarum . . . magna, circumcisis, cum rapo suo . . . ex
We shall explore the import of these didactic prosaics in chapter 11
(pp. 140–1). But first, there is more to come, in this bipartite oleaginous
garden full of ‘precious little material that is dry and scorched’, and ‘nothing
hair-raising or grim about them’:7
nec magna pars . . . a r i d [a] e t r e t o r r i d a
∼
nihil . . . . . . . . . . a b h o r r i d [um] a u t t r i s t e.
For we have yet to hear it through the grapevine (20).
s ay i t w i t h g r a pe s
Vintography. Our instruction on shifting a vine is formally presented as a
second disquisition (illud etiamnunc: ‘another’ and ‘recent’ item) on today’s
text from s c i p i o ’s - a e g i a lu s ’ - s e n e c a ’s gnomic locus (14 ∼ 20):
h oweve r a n c i e n t t h e t re e , t r a n s p l a n t i n g i s p o s s i b l e (quamuis
uetus arbustum posse transferri).
∼
A vine of many years’ standing transplanted away from its very own tree (uitem ex
arbusto suo annosam transferri; . . . if it can be managed, si fieri potest).
We noticed already that this exercise in brachylogy will pack in minia-
turized resumptions of previous themes, traits, and tropes from the body
of the letter. Our instant vista of vine-clothed terraces flashes past, blurring
away into the formal recapitulation of the entire lecture on agribusiness,
which of course began from Aegialus’ general proclamation before focussing
on Seneca’s example of the olive grove (21 ∼ 14):
(b2) Vine . . ., [vines] . . .
(a2) In fact, all those trees . . . must get a boost . . . (uitis . . ., [uites] . . . ∼ omnes
autem istas arbores . . . adiuuandas . . .)
∼
(a1) However . . . the tree, the possibility . . .
(b1) every one of us . . . an olive grove for the other fellow (quamuis . . . arbustum
posse . . .∼ nemo non oliuetum alteri . . .)
As I have remarked already, the bold claim to authority for Seneca as witness
leads once again to citation of Aegialus as expert, though his teaching is
arbusto suo . . . non suas, fimo tinctum, demisit, terram . . . calcauit, frigus excludit, obruat, abhorridum,
triste, colligenda, liberalius, corpore, omnes . . . arbores, aqua . . . cisternina, pluuiam, aduersarium.
7 Cf. Mucius Scaevola’s incinerated wrist: truncam illam et retorridam manum (Epp. 66.51). We saw
Seneca imaged in his trees: retorridi rami . . . tristes et squalidi trunci (12.2; see Scarpat (1975) 286–7).
reinforced by Seneca’s own voice and phrasing – and the pledge of allegiance
may of course smuggle in his own extrapolation, within the amplification
(pp. 120–1: 20–1):
uidi . . . et uidi . . . ut ita dicam . . . ait . . .
A sight . . . Also, I have seen . . . let me say . . . he says . . .
If the main point is to miniaturize the rhetoric used and reused for olives,
nevertheless Seneca’s vines also contrive to connect back to the digression
on v i r g i l ’s agronomy (20 ∼ 16):
‘Also, I have seen them set in not just in the month of February, but also after
March is over. They hold and have embraced elms. (et uidi non tantum mense
Februario positas, sed etiam Marte exacto; tenent et complexae sunt . . . ulmos)
∼
It’s the month of June . . . already tipping into July: on the very same day I have
seen bean a-harvesting and millet a-sowing. (Iunius mensis est . . . iam procliuis in
Iulium; eodem die uidi fabam metentes, milium serentes).
But our greatest marvel and joy as conscientious readers of Epistle 86 is
surely reserved for the syncopated tailoring of the tailpiece on the vine to
the mannequin provided by our double dose of oleography.8
r [(3)] Do ‘set in’ (positas). ‘No need to reiterate’ (huius quoque, 20 ∼ eodem
genere, 19). Instead: careful, loving précis (sixteen words; + eighteen words
to decoct the earlier ‘digression’ of ninety-two words). Do not damage
this tree. Bring care to each plant: gently. Generously. Holistically. Charm
response from nearly dead wood:
(A) Pick up the strands too (huius capillamenta quoque . . . colligenda sunt).
(B) Give the vine a pretty generous covering (liberalius sternenda uitis).
Now for expert reassurance:
They hold and have embraced elms (tenent et complexae . . . ulmos).
Go on to bring in some characterful earthy jargon (grandiscapiae, 21 ∼
pinsatione, 18). Once set, let the vines take properly (tenent et complexae
sunt, 20 ∼ apprehendere . . . haerentes . . . reuellat, 18).
A crucial advantage:
8 I have not convinced a reader that ‘§20 on vines is not still part of what Seneca saw and heard on
Aegialus’ farm’. Rather, ‘Aegialus has equipped Seneca to be as good a farmer as he is himself; Seneca
will not do the same favour for Lucilius.’ Did(n’t) I mean to set up adversaries for myself all along?
(a) [They root like other trees.] ‘No need to mention’ (etiam).
+
(b) They also ‘root from their body’ (ex corpore radicescat).
The old wood rejuvenates, responding to the onset of spring, and subject to
an obligatory technical schedule (-enda sunt, deinde . . . -enda), even under the
pressurized time constraints of an April catch-up. No dismemberment, no ‘trunk’,
no root-dangling ‘head’, only ‘strands’ (truncos . . . capite, 17 ∼ capillamenta, 20).
No ‘chopping, amputating’, and so on, but instead ‘picking up, giving a pretty
generous covering’ (circumcisis . . . amputatis, 17 ∼ colligenda, liberalius sternenda,
20).
c a re f o r o l i ve s a n d v i n e s
Both Cato’s and Varro’s farms attend to vine and olive pretty well even-
handedly, intercut into each link in the chain of farming operations. ‘Bac-
chus’’ vine + ‘slow-growing olive’ are announced as the particular highlights
of Virgil’s botany book, On Arboriculture (Georgics 2.1–9). But ‘melding
vines to elms’ was the initial billing (1.2), and olives will occupy only six
devoted verses (2.420–5), while viticulture amasses 160 (2.259–419, 454–7).9
Among Seneca’s contemporaries, Pliny gives almost all of Natural Histories
14 to Viticulture, and just 15.1–23 to Oleiculture (7–23 on oil), and Colu-
mella brackets vine and olive as ‘most complex and least demanding of all
trees’ (5.8.1), but dedicates just 5.8–9 to the olive, as against Books 3–4, plus
5.3–7, to the Italian, and to the provincial vine (‘properly neither tree nor
bush’, 3.1.2). Seneca’s dwarfing of vine by overshadowing olive is therefore
a considerable surprise. This will bear pondering (pp. 143–4, 163–4).
V I RG I L ’ S F U N N Y FA R M
As we saw (chapter 5, pp. 46–7), the visit to s c i p i o’s garden inaugurated a
strengthening habit of thinking through Virgil’s lessons in Farming which
helps to replace Epicurus’ authority with Seneca’s revisionary clout. As it
transpires, the final letter in the paradosis headlines the Georgics for a formal
‘epigraph’ (124.1 = 1.176–7):
‘Possum multa tibi ueterum praecepta referre,
ni refugis tenuisque piget cognoscere curas.’
9 Pliny, Natural History 15.4 objects to Virgil’s misrepresentation of olivage as ‘no-maintenance’ here.
– non refugis . . .
‘I can relate to you many Commandments from the Elders
– unless you do a runner, unless it’s a drag to study tenuous
concerns.’
– No runner from you . . .
And this letter duly features agricultural images applied to human per-
fectibility – ‘root up, top-down’, ‘Goodness in tree or beast? . . . Not in the
seed, or first leaf, or the like, not until the perfection of summer-ripened
grain’ (nb, ‘just as our old age is doing well if it arrives at Goodness through
long and focussed study’ . . .), but of course there can be no true Goodness
where there is no reason, as in trees and grass, and dumb creatures, and such
like . . .’ (8–13). Georgic imagery of course cropped up in the armature of
Seneca’s argumentation from the first – ‘reap and sow’, ‘trees fruit, farmers
are delighted’, ‘sowing seed, ripe corn, overladen branches’, ‘the old old
grove’, ‘praise the loaded vine’, and so on (Epp. 9.7; 34.1; 38.2, 4; 41.3, 7),
and significantly the first quote from Virgil’s poem introduced discussion
of the problems of Translation, from Greek to Latin, from one code to
another (58.2: cf. chapter 11, pp. 147–9).
The longest quotation in the Letters sets out Seneca’s strongest lesson in
metaphorical reading, when Virgil’s profile of Nobility is savoured at length
(95.67–9 ∼ Georgic 3.75–81 + 83–5).10 Horse-fanciers rely on the animal’s
good points, ‘How much more useful to know the marks of an exceptional
spirit, when it is legitimate to translate (transferre) those marks from others
to one’s self.’ Listen to Virgil; then reflect, explicitly: ‘In handling some-
thing other, our Virgil has picture-written (descripsit) The Brave Hero. For
sure I wouldn’t give the Epic Hero an image any different’ (95.67–9: the
application continues through to the end at 73).11
Admiration for ‘our Virgil’ (seventeen times in Epp.), however, must
also take the form of ‘critique’, or this would not be severe Seneca: ‘When
Virgil speaks of ‘the mind’s evil | joys’, he speaks eloquently, of course –
but imprecisely as hell: no Evil is a joy. He pinned the name to pleasures,
and did express what he meant, because his meaning was that their evil
makes humans happy. Yet, all the same, I, Seneca, did speak with good
cause when I said . . .’ (59.3–4, citing Aeneid 6.278–9). And, sparing the
10 Pliny grants that Virgil’s ‘form’ book here is ‘most beautifully done’, but – getting on his high
horse – advertises the revise featured in his own first work, De iaculatione equestri (Natural History
8.162).
11 Horse-flesh. We should recall how Horace played at drooling over appraisal of human fillies’ ‘good
points’ in the meat-market of male desire in, precisely, Satires 1.2: Henderson (1989) 104–6.
name, ‘It seems to me that he was going wrong, [the one] who said: ‘Virtue
is all the more winsome when it comes from a beautiful body.’ Because she
needs no recommendation, but is her own epic glory and hallows her own
body. For sure it was on different principles that I began to survey . . .’
(66.2, minimally adapting Aeneid 5.344: ‘from’ for ‘in’). So when we turn
from mansion to grounds at s c i p i o ’s, we are alert to the need to inspect
Virgil citation for more than borrowed plumage (86.15–16):12
. . . te quoque proteget illa quae
tarda uenit seris factura nepotibus umbram,
ut ait Vergilius noster, qui non quid uerissime sed quid decentissime diceretur
aspexit, nec agricolas docere uoluit sed legentes delectare.
nam, ut alia omnia transeam, hoc quod mihi hodie necesse fuit deprehendere,
adscribam:
uere fabis satio est; tunc te quoque, Medica, putres
accipiunt sulci, et milio uenit annua cura.
an uno tempore ista ponenda sint et an utriusque ‘uerna sit satio’, hinc aestimes
licet: Iunius mensis est quo tibi scribo, iam procliuis in Iulium: eodem die uidi
‘fabam’ metentes, ‘milium’ serentes.
. . . There will be shelter for you as well from the tree that
‘comes on slow, for to grow late in the day grandsons’ shade,’
as our very own Virgil says. Though he focussed not on what is said most truthfully,
but what is said most fittingly. Meant not to teach farmers, but to delight readers.
E.g. – to skip all the other cases – here’s one where it was essential for me to
catch him out today. I’ll jot it in:
‘Spring is sowing for beans. Then you as well, clover, crumbling
furrows welcome in. And for millet there comes a year’s tending.’
Q.: Are these (a) to be set in at one and the same time, or (b) is sowing to be in
spring for both? A.: You can figure it out from this: it’s the month of June when
I’m writing you, already tipping into July: on the very same day I have seen ‘bean’
a-harvesting and ‘millet’ a-sowing.
The first quotation, Seneca’s only foray into Georgics 2, comes from the
most complex section on Virgil’s farm, the section on complexity (2.9.34–
135: all assembled in Italy, 136–76. It therefore needs more than a hundred
tongues in a ton of mouths, plus an iron implement of a voice, 2.42–4).
The first point for Virgil to make about/with trees is that ‘nature comes
12 See Mazzoli (1970) 215–32, esp. 221; I have not seen Pasoli (1975).
in all colours when it comes to producing them’ (2.9).13 For some grow
spontaneously, under their own impulsion. Some spring from seed. Others
from the root. Experience + utility have found supplementary methods:
propagation by sucker, stem, layer, cutting, planted hunk of trunk, grafting
and budding (2.22–34, recap in 42–72). Some plants, then, need no root,
just plant a cutting; olive root, though, sprouts miraculously from chopped
pieces of olive log (2.28–9; 30–1). But the rule is that spontaneous growth is
low-yield but successful and strong, whereas farmed growth by grafting or
transplantation in dug-over trenches domesticates and forces (scrobibus . . .
mutata subactis, 2.50; haud tarda, 2.52). Take the case where (2.57):
iam quae seminibus iactis se sustulit arbos,
the tree raises itself from dispersed seed.
That variety ‘comes on slow, for to grow late in the day grandsons’ shade’.
Run through the same range of technological shifts – growth from the trunk,
layers, stems, suckers, grafting: all of it hard and specific work, species-
determined, for olives respond better via trunks, vines through layering
(truncis oleae melius, propagine uites | respondent, 2.63), and so on.
So Seneca’s first quotation is excerpted from a context that is all about
unpacking infinitely nuanced care, and broadcasts that, loudly. Farming
means response to what works best with each plant, what suits: the block
headline ‘slow-growing olive culture’ seeds a rich education in husbandry.14
That is why it works, and increasingly suits, as a productive model for
Seneca’s project of farming philosophical crops (see pp. 139–41).
The run of Seneca’s thinking is obscured by our uncertainty about the
sentence that sprouted the quotation, but it seems that his excerpt is both
exactly in tune with the idea he is presenting and an item of knowledge
consonant with his own.
Where the gnomic tradition had held that olives just do take a generation
or more before cropping, Virgil and Seneca knew that human technology
could do better, accelerating the process by transplantation of olive stock.
Much better: three or four years should do it. This is how Pliny introduces
his olive section (Natural History 15.3):
Hesiodus quoque, in primis culturam agrorum docendam arbitratus uitam, negauit
oleae satorem fructum ex ea percepisse quemquam – tam tarda tunc res erat; at
nunc etiam in plantariis ferunt, translatarumque altero anno decerpuntur bacae.
13 For what follows, see Thomas’ brilliant exegesis (1988), esp. the diuisiones at 1.157, 165, 170–1.
14 For his section on Bacche + tarde crescentis oliuae (Georgic 2.2–3), Virgil had Varro before him (Res
rusticae 1.41.4, ficus, malus punica et uitis propter femineam mollitiam ad crescendum prona, contra
palma et cupressus et olea in crescendo tarda . . .
Plus: Hesiod, who judged that life was above all the teaching of agriculture, declared
that no grower of an olive had realized fruit from it, so slow a business it was
back then. Whereas nowadays they fruit even in the nursery, and once they are
transplanted there is berry-picking in the next year but one.
Seneca sits atop this tale of technological advance. His wrinkle arises from
a e g i a lu s’ intervention. Even the oldest tree can bear with transplanta-
tion: very old humans must realize they still won’t see a return on their
olives. How many months stretch out ahead of a Seneca? Other people,
such as Lucilius, will see an end result even if they do not intervene to
accelerate the process; they will see their olives crop. For when Virgil says
grandchildren will get the benefit, he is telling us traditional wisdom, and
it presumably holds still, for self-sown trees. But Virgil will next teach us
(how) to shift and speed up our groves in order to finesse frustration.
There is therefore plenty to ponder when Seneca comes out of his quo-
tation with his one-liner about the intent of the Georgics, which has itself
become one of the most cited interpretations of a classical text from Anti-
quity, and maybe one of the least pondered.15 (How) Does thinking through
‘our Virgil’s’ first quotation lead to the thought that ‘he focussed not on
what is said most truthfully, but what is said most fittingly. Meant not to
teach farmers, but to delight readers’? Was the point where Virgil neglected
True for Fitting here? To read just the verse quoted might mean we should
see Virgil harking back to the old ways, the works and the days of He-
siod, when humanity was sufficiently dominated by nature to be forced to
go at the given pace, and when reconciliation with natural limits defined
righteous living. But once we know that Virgil had invoked ‘generosity
to grandsons’ in conjunction with self-sown trees, but only as preliminary
to spelling out the improvements on nature available to latter-day farmers
on a species-specific basis, including ideal methods to use on both olive
and vine, it is hard indeed to see that he ‘downplayed Truth in favour of
Decorum’, let alone that he was out to ‘delight readers rather than teach
farmers’.
If anything, it seems that Seneca grossly misrepresents Virgil, and so
makes it clear that his take on rapid-pay-off techniques is far from a staple
desideratum of a course in agronomy. To put it more strongly, even though
mean old Cato flatly affirms ‘Old vines you can transplant’ (De agri cultura
49.1: uineam ueterem si in alium locum transferre uoles . . . : see p. 124
n. 2), shifting old trees, just to show it can be done, was not what farming,
15 E.g. Wilkinson (1969) 15, ‘Seneca said no more than the obvious when he remarked that Virgil was
interested in what could be said decentissime, not verissime, and that he wrote not to teach farmers,
but to delight readers.’
even symbolic farming, had ever been about.16 Only Seneca’s special need to
improve still more on the already radical transformation of arboricultural
possibilities, so that Senecas on their last legs could enjoy their own success,
could fantasize this transparent frame-up of the Georgics!
Yet whatever avenue dwelling on the process of quotation of the first
snippet of Virgil leads us to explore, we can be sure of two sticky facts: we
are reading, with or without ‘delight’ (and for that, or not); and Seneca does
mean to ‘teach’ his readers, to be ‘cultured’. We can feel that he would see
himself as always putting Truth above Decorum, if obliged to choose. But
how should that discomfit readers of Virgil?
There is another possibility. Perhaps both aspects of the damning exposé
of the Georgics look, not back, but forward – to the second quotation?
In which case, Seneca’s rough handling of Virgil’s (age-old, symbolic, self-
sown) olive will be another aspect of the drive to make Tradition work for
today; no time to lose. As this stickler loved rubbing in, it can make for
‘grim reading’ (14); and ‘teaching farmers’ isn’t really in his sights.
We reach the second Virgil quotation via ‘E.g. – to skip all the other
cases –’ (nam, ut alia omnia transeam). Here, apart from meeting a rhetorical
bid to gain credit for saving us time and effort (in praeteritio), we cross a
structural bridge or modulation in the compositional design (‘transition’).17
The build-up stresses that the translocation from bathroom to nursery did
not rupture the Letter, but transformed the coding of its business (pp. 139–
41). The staggered steps in turning the ‘hinge’ serve to displace immediate
challenge to Aegialus by introducing the straw man Virgil, who can be
given respect, and a let-out for non-existent failings on the part of poetic
decorum, while he prepares the ground for Seneca to plant himself in the
role of independent witness to horticultural realities (quod uidi . . ., uidi,
14, 16).
As I have remarked (pp. 121–2, 125), the double wedge of Georgics turns
the ‘essential lesson for old men like myself to learn’ into the test case
‘where it was essential for me to catch Virgil out today’, and transmission
of knowledge from Senecas to readers is cued, and instantiated, by the
rhyme between Seneca’s te quoque (15) and Virgil’s ‘te quoque’ (16). The
negative critique of the citation is, unsurprisingly by this point, hard to
endorse; or even to comprehend!
Taken from Seneca’s (and/or everyone’s?) favourite patch (nine excerpts
from Book 1), the two verses jotted in from the Georgics (1.215–16) come
half-way through the instructions to synchronize ploughing and sowing
16 ‘Shifting “late” elms’ is a paradisal touch in the old Corycian’s marvellous garden: Virgil, Georgic
4.144–7 (serus: vv. 122, 132, 138, 144).
17 See Henderson (2002a) 126–9, on Pliny, Epistles 3.9.
operations with the stellar calendar, as authorities have agreed from archaic
Hesiod to Roman Varro (210–30):
barley, flax, and poppy go in before winter soaks the soil (210–14); our ‘bean,
lucerne, and millet’ wait for mid-April (217–18).
candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum
Taurus et aduerso cedens Canis occidit astro.
when shining Taurus the bull opens the year with gilded horns, and the Dog sinks
giving ground before the star bully.
Wheat and spelt are for some time late in the year; vetch, eye-bean and lentil come
in November (219–29; 227–30).
This paragraph does not present a farming calendar! The lesson of age-old
reliance and obedience to the laws written into the cosmos is the point.
The examples bracket the all-important ploughing and sowing of grain with
marginal concerns (poppies, millet), and the order of exposition scatters
temporal order and orders to the winds! We must internalize that sorting
out all the crops to fit their own specific trajectories will take all the care
we can find in ourselves as well as in the sum of human agroscience: all by
reading the celestial signs on the face of Nature’s clock.
Virgil’s perennial lucerne sows in spring (endorsed by Columella 2.10.25–
8: end of April; it then lasts up to a decade); so, too, its complement, the
annual millet (endorsed by Columella 2.9.17–18: cannot be sown before
spring; best in late March). And before this pair came Virgil’s vernal bean-
sowing. So what’s Seneca’s problem?18 First, he prods, ‘do these things plant
at one and the same time?’ Second, ‘do both of them “sow in spring”?’ When
the appeal to the evidence of the eye against the text arrives, we will find
he is blotting out one of the antithetical pair: forget lucerne (which farmers
only (only!) have to remember to plant every ten years . . .), and go for
the kill. There’s nothing wrong with millet in spring. It’s the half-baked
bracketing of bean with millet + spring that is in our bad books (16):
end of June, and ‘bean’ a-harvesting and ‘millet’ a-‘sowing’ on the very same day.
Columella’s spread on The Bean (2.10.5–14) comes when he has seen off
most legumes-and-fodder (2.7.1: catalogue, with bean first; including lentil,
eye-bean, millet, flax, barley(-grits), lucerne, vetch). His discussion begins
with a pointed memo (2.7.2):19
18 Georgics scholarship goes too fast to let the quandary affect them: e.g. Wilkinson (1969) 271–2, citing
Columella 2.10.9 and Pliny, Natural History 18.120: ‘Virgil may here be simply reporting what he
knew from childhood.’
19 The antiquissimus just has to be Cato: De agri cultura 34.1, ubi quisque locus frigidissimus aquosis-
simusque erit, ibi primum serito; in caldissimis locis sementim postremum fieri oportet. (Which argues
in favour of seramus in Columella.)
memores antiquissimi praecepti quo monemur ut locis frigidis nouissime, tepidis
celerius, calidis ocissime? metamus/seramus? .
Never forgetting that most ancient Commandment which warns us to ? reap/sow?
last in cold places, quicker than that in the warm, fastest in the hot.
‘His own Commandments will therefore now address as they would a tem-
perate area’ (nunc autem proinde ac si temperatae regioni praecepta dabimus).
His very next words invoke Virgil’s timing for corn and spelt (2.8.1 ∼
Georgic 1.219–21):
placet nostro poetae adoreum atque etiam triticum non ante seminare quam oc-
ciderint Vergiliae. quod ipsum numeris sic edisserit:
‘At si . . .
...
. . . abscondantur’.
Our poet rules that spelt and even wheat do not sow before the setting of the
[aptly-named!] Vergiliae [= Pleiades]. Here is how he promulgates this, in metre:
‘But if . . .
...
. . . be out of sight’.
Upon which he adds the precise timing, fifty-six days from 24 October,
before reminding us of his reminder (2.8.2 ∼ Georgic 1.214):
nos quoque non abnuimus in agro temperato et minime umido sementem sic
fieri debere; ceterum locis uliginosis atque exilibus aut frigidis aut etiam opacis
plerumque citra Kalendas Octobris seminare conuenire,
‘dum sicca tellure licet, dum nubila pendent’ . . .
Columella too accepts that sowing in temperate, minimally wet, land should be
done this way; but in marshy and weak places, or in cold, or even shaded, places,
it usually suits to sow this side of 1 October,
‘while dry soil permits, and the rain-clouds hang fire’ . . .
The ensuing discussion, of grain, never does lose grip of geophysical and
climatic differences. Soon enough, however, he introduces a retrospective
proviso (2.9.4):
So far I have been speaking of autumn sowing, as I consider this most important.
But there is another, when needs must, called ‘half-monthly sowing’ by farmers.
This is rightly attempted in extra cold and snowy places, where the summer is wet
and low on evaporation; other places hardly ever respond significantly.
Sowing topics run past, featuring seed-selection à la Virgil (2.9.12, citing
Georgic 1.197–200: in full recognition that ‘Virgil was dealing with other
matters when he made this perfectly clear proclamation on seeds’, Vergilius
cum et alia tum et hoc de seminibus praeclare sic disseruit). Then we roll on
towards legumes, and The Bean feast (2.10.8–9):
Part must sow at mid sowing-season, part at the end . . . Early is the more usual
practice; sometimes, however, late sowing is better. After midwinter it doesn’t sow
right, in spring, worst of all.
But farming with Columella never excerpts well, and his next words add a
modification (2.10.9):
– although, there is a three-monthly bean, too, which sows in February; taking
20 per cent more than the early bean, but yielding little straw and not much
podding. So I hear wizened countrymen saying often enough that they take the
bean-straw of the early sort over the beans of the three-monthly (malle se maturae
fabalia quam fructum trimestris).
Georgic 1.195–6 are cited on seed-protection: ‘Countrymen of yore, plus
Virgil, were on the same side . . .’ and the team sheet is completed with
‘Columella, too’ (nos quoque . . .). Then beans are through.
To an enquirer who comes from Seneca, it must appear that Columella
is comically skirting round Virgil’s ‘vernal bean-sowing’: quoting the lines
after and the line before, as he grubs for usable material from this scattered
passage,20 before rustling up an ‘out’ for Virgil’s at first sight springfever
gaffe. ‘Ah – those “three-monthlies”.’
. . . And, lest we forget, all these practices are dependent on local conditions.
Pliny goes one step further, in his entry for ‘the legume with the highest
honour: beans [of the world]’ (Natural History 18.117–22). Bean-sowing
takes two sentences, one on the Vergiliae, the other on Vergilius (120):21
seritur ante Vergiliarum occasum leguminum prima, ut antecedat hiemem.
Vergilius eam per uer seri iubet circumpadanae Italiae ritu, sed maior pars malunt
fabalia maturae sationis quam trimestrem fructum; eius namque siliquae caulesque
gratissimo sunt pabulo pecori.
It sows before the setting of the Vergiliae, the first of the legumes, to get in before
winter. Virgil bids sowing it through vernal spring, in the manner of Italy in the
Po valley, but most folk take the bean-straw of the early sort over the beans of the
20 See de Saint-Denis (1971) and Henderson (2002c) 116. The Georgics are quoted forty-nine times in
Columella (forty-three times in agreement, twice in dispute or disagreement: 3.12.5; 4.11.1; 9.2.4;
9.14.6); eleven times in Res rusticae Book 2 = four from Book 2 and seven from Book 1, including the
concentration 2.8.1 ∼ 1.219–21; 8.3 ∼ 1.214; 9.12 ∼ 1.197–200; 10.11 ∼ 1.195–6 (cf. 11.1.31 ∼ 1.204–7).
After 2.13.3 ∼ 1.77–8, on flax and poppies, Virgil takes long leave.
21 Cato just tucks bean-sowing in with transplanting olives, and the rest of ‘seed-time’ (De agri cultura
27). Varro crisply notes: fabam optime seri in Vergiliarum occasu, which must read as a ‘provocation’
to Virgil (Res rusticae 1.34.1).
three-monthly (malunt fabalia maturae sationis quam trimestrem fructum). For its
pods and stalks make the animals’ favourite fodder.
This boffin is pretty obviously singing from the same sheet as Columella,
but comes up with one more ‘out’ for ‘our poet’. Over-protected Virgil?
Pliny is in general inclined to criticize Virgil’s grasp of facts,22 but isn’t it
tempting to imagine that the three mid first-century writers are reacting
to some early commentator picking over the Georgics’ momentary hill of
beans? Does Seneca ape a critical scourge, whereas Columella and then
Pliny come up with answers, whether from more commentary or from
their own research?
However this may have been, Seneca’s ‘once-for-all refutation’ of Farmer
Virgil’s Truth quotient amounts to a roughing up of Holy Tradition. And its
purpose may not lie in convincing us that the Georgics is a has-been. Rather,
Seneca’s abuse of the teaching text of Augustan morality looks to serve as a
model for his bruising approach to transplanting Tradition into fresh life
(chapter 11). For Seneca, the suggestion might go, to ‘see with his own eyes’,
wherever it may be, people busy ‘sowing and reaping’ their crops according
to the season that suits their circumstances, amounts to a vindication of
the anti-dogmatic ethical strategy articulated through the Epistulae Morales,
where control is wrested away from cut-and-dried formulae, and handed
back for embedding in the thick texture of ongoing life?
Te quoque . . .
i t h a d to b e v i rg i l
r Horace > Virgil. ‘Two halves of one soul’ (Odes 1.3); now dual ‘hinge’ of
one Letter.
r Tomb of Scipio on the Campanian coast > Virgil. For the poet’s tomb
became another shrine for first-century acolytes, above all his clone Silius
Italicus (Pliny, Epistles 3.7.8):23
monumentum eius adire ut templum solebat.
His habit was to approach his tomb as a temple.
22 See Bruère (1956) esp. 240–1, ‘a mild protest’ on Virgil’s beans in spring.
23 See Henderson (2002a) 116–17.
c h a p t e r e l eve n
Shafts of light: transplantation and transfiguration

Metaphorics and visuality in Letter 86
Composition at s c i p i o’s featured spine-snapping interruption of the ser-

mon on ablution at its satirical zenith (13):
parum est sumere unguentum nisi bis terque renouatur, ne euanescat in corpore.
quid quod hoc odore tamquam suo gloriantur?
It’s not enough to put on scent if it isn’t freshened up two or three times a day, to
stop it evaporating on the body. What of them pluming themselves on this smell
as though it’s their own?
With this flourish, we are meant to have had enough (rupture/rapture),

and plenty. Grafting on the topic of arboriculture in the grounds brought
us first to the agony (17):
magnarum arborum truncos . . . cum rapo suo transtulit, amputatis radicibus, relicto
tantum capite ipso ex quo illae pependerant.
of full-grown olive trunks transplanted, with their very own ball and all, roots
severed to leave just the actual head they were dependent on, and had dangled
from.
And the nursery brought us, too, at the death, to a second, matching, climax,
when ‘transplantation for a long-established vine meant being shifted away
from its very own tree’ (20, uitem ex arbusto suo annosam transferri), and
their peak attained saw (20):1
[uites] tenent et complexae sunt non suas ulmos.
[The vines] hold fast in their embrace elms which are not their very own.
1 Cf. Virgil, Georgic 2.367, on young vines, ualidis amplexae stirpibus ulmos; Epp. 4.5, uitam . . . complec-
tuntur et tenent (with Scarpat (1975) 37–8, on 1.2, complectere, ‘ha in sé qualche cosa di aggressivo, sia
in senso buono (affettivo), sia in senso ostile; è sempre un “avvinghiare” . . . ; è più che un semplice
“tenere”’, comparing 12.4, [senectutem meam] complectemur . . . et amemus).
139
Virgilian wonder at implanted fruition through the miracle of grafting
presents a quite different image of altered relation to self (Georgic 2.82: end
of the subsection on grafting, 73–82):2
. . . arbos
miratast nouas frondes et non sua poma.
. . . the tree
marvelled at strange leafage and fruit not its own.
For here at Liternum Seneca dwells on transformation of self and selves, by
whatever means – from brutal through violent to careful handling. Rub it
in. The lesson of s c i p i o ’s is finally one of empowerment through seizing
control of the means of self production. Letter 86 even runs this theme,
‘subliminal/underground’, through the whole course of its thinking.
Just go with the flow, from Jupiter’s sky into our soil.
Follow the water:
. . . cisternam aedificiis ac uiridibus subditam quae sufficere in usum uel exercitus
posset, balneolum angustum . . .
. . . abluebat corpus laboribus rusticis fessum . . .
. . . quantum aquarum per gradus cum fragore labentium! . . .
. . . non suffundebatur aqua nec recens semper uelut ex calido fonte currebat, nec
referre credebant in quam perlucida sordes deponerent . . .
. . . non saccata aqua lauabatur sed saepe turbida et, cum plueret uehementius,
paene lutulenta . . .
. . . bracchia et crura cotidie abluebant, quae scilicet sordes opere collegerant . . .
+
. . . [caput] fimo tinctum in scrobem demisit . . .
. . . omnes autem istas arbores quae, ut ita dicam, ‘grandiscapiae’ sunt, ait aqua
adiuuandas cisternina; quae si prodest, habemus pluuiam in nostra potestate.
A water tank installed under the buildings and shrubberies, up to underwriting
the needs of an army, even; a tight wee bath-house . . .
. . . He used to wash down his body, tired by hard graft out in the country . . .
. . . Our pools, into which we lower bodies dehydrated by repeat sweats; if valves
made of silver haven’t released the flow of water . . .
. . . What a load of waterfalls, sluicing down the steps in a din! . . . Water-flow didn’t
keep welling up from under; water didn’t keep running forever fresh, as though
from a hot spring; they didn’t believe it mattered how crystal clear the water was
which they set their dirt in . . .
2 Cf. Ovid, Heroides 14.90, [Io] cornua . . . non sua uidit; Metamorphoses 3.303, [Actaeon] lacrimae . . .
per ora non sua fluxerint; with Tissol (1997) 52–61, ‘Self-cancelling and self-objectifying witticisms’,
at 60, ‘Here the very elements of one’s proper self, one’s definitive identity, become their opposite,
paradoxically alien to oneself.’ (Education –
Metaphor and visuality in Letter 86 141
. . . He wouldn’t bathe in specially filtered water. No, it was regularly clouded and,
when it rained extra heavily, pretty well muddy . . .
. . . They would wash arms and legs off daily, as of course they picked up dirt
through toil . . .
+
This [olive ‘head’] he doused in dung and let down into a trench.
. . . In fact, all those trees which, let me say, are ‘big-stemmed’, must, he says, be
given a boost with water from the water tank. If this does good, we have rainfall
in our own control.
In this hydropathic groove, God’s rain is envisioned ‘in our power’, and we
get to play autarchic masters of our own selves, transported to Philosophical
renaissance (= t j’ ¡m±n).3
big stick scipio

The textual pipework even plumbs straight from epic hero to hus-
banded trees. For that [unsignalled] Ennius sobriquet ‘Carthage hair-raiser’
(‘Carthaginis horror’, 5: p. 103) can respond figuratively, transfiguratively,
with the doubly authorized marked locution, ‘big-stemmed’ trees, in the
final sweeping gesture of Mastery (arbores . . . ‘grandi-scapiae’, 21: let me
say, . . . he says).
As we saw (p. 104), by the grace of etymology / traditional fame, ‘s c i p i o’
bespoke ‘stick’, ‘sceptre’, ‘bolt’ – and ‘branch’ (skpov).
It is very likely, in addition, that ‘co r n e l i u s’ specified ‘cornel-tree’,
so ‘spear’, so ‘stick’ again, although this is not attested in our word-hoards.
Silius, for one, surely demonstrates the association, twice (13.235, 15.441):4
effudit lacrimas pariter cornumque s o n a n t e m Scipio.
Scipio by zeugma released tears and (l i s t e n !) cornel both.
and
audax Scipiadae s t r i d e n t e m Sabura cornum excepit.
Sabura the Bold took in Scipio’s (zoom – l i s t e n !) cornel.
Shock, horror: the stock ‘frisson’ of heroic aura around the very thought,
or word, ‘s c i p i o’ translates straight into our family-tree diagram as the
3 E.g. Arrian, Epictetus 1.1.17, de± t j’ ¡m±n bltista kataskeuzein, to±v d’lloiv cr¦sqai Þv
pjuken.
4 Cf. Virgil, Georgic 2.447–8, bona bello | cornus (cf. Aeneid 3.23).
shiverish ‘bristling’ of foliage, horror, as in Lucan’s horrific poetic grove
(3.409–10):5
non ulli frondem praebentibus aurae,
arboribus suus horror inest.
As they offered their leafage to not one waft,
the trees come out with their own bristling.
Those Spear Shafts of Rome, ‘c o r n e l i i s c i p i o n e s ’, would truly make
horrentia tela uirorum fit for classic Ennian warfare (Annals 280 Warming-
ton): sparsis hastis longis campus splendet et horret (Satires 6 Warmington: nb,
cited by Macrobius (Saturnalia 5.6.46) as from Ennius . . . in ‘Scipione’).
One pax, ‘nothing hair-raising here’(19, nihil habent in se abhorridum
aut triste), may squeeze out extra juice from another, when we reach the
other pax ‘grandi-scapius’ (grandis, ‘outsize, long’, cf. magnos exercitus, 1,
maioribus . . ., magna . . . uoluptas, 4–5, magnarum arborum, 17, magna
pars, 18; + scapus, ‘stem, stalk, esp. long, straight sort’, cf. sk¦ptron,
Eng. ‘shaft’).6 Which draws itself up to its full height to match our tow-
ering hero, cramped between his ceiling and floor like some human col-
umn (5, stetit . . . sustinuit). Maybe we scent, simultaneously, the sweat
of sermo rusticus from Aegialus (akin to makro-kaul»teron or makro-
kaulwdsteron, Dioscorides 2.175.1, pax, of a kind of wild parsley?),
and the perfume of a para-epic solecism from Seneca: grandiscapiae =
‘s c i p i o ’s–e p i c g r a n d e u r’. And, finally, to stick my neck right out
before the magic fades, poetic symbolism conjures the ghostly trace of the
mythic scipio/sk¦ptron passed on, time out of mind, from poet to poet . . .
. . . undercurrent, undertone . . .
. . . the baton of Tradition . . .7
g e n e r at i n g f r i c t i o n
The mimetic scenario at s c i p i o ’s plays epistolary host to two distinct
units of teaching. First, epideixis shows us the ethically soaked sight/site
indoors, prompting a stentorian blast of diatribe. Second, a gnomic lesson
5 So Santini (1999) 214–17; cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.345, tremulo ramos horrore moueri; Seneca, Oedipus
576, totum nemus concussit horror.
6 Cf. Charisius, Ars grammatica 1.57.5, abhorride (also pax). abhorridus in Seneca has, of course, often
been emended away.
7 True, it starts as ‘leaf-stripped sceptre of bay’ in Hesiod (Theogony 30), but becomes a wild olive
‘hare-boomerang/club’, exactly fit gift for a ‘scion fashioned for Truth from God’, by the time it hits
Theocritean bucolic (7.43–4, cf. Goldhill (1991) 232).
is reported, prompting empirical exploration, proving, and contestation.8
Filling the visual field with striking objects and their designs impacts on the
reader (in hoc angulo . . ., sub hoc . . . tecto, hoc . . . pauimentum in hoc balneo,
hoc loco (pun), 5, 6, 8, 12); and demand for moralized response materializes
in a succession of ‘impressions’ attributed to sender or receiver (suspicor,
uidi, non uidebatur, contemplantem, sic . . . pauper sibi uidetur, spectaculum,
prospiciunt, mihi uidetur, si tibi . . . uidebuntur, uidi, uidi, uidi, uidi, 1, 4,
6, 8, 10, 14, 16, 17, 20: a bombardment with fantas©a).9
Ekphrasis triggers joyous reaction, expressed in its writing, and the ensu-
ing sermon fully rehearses, operates, and models, the process of response.
This induces repetition, in and through our reading and processing of
Seneca’s readings in ours, and as ours. As the Letter winds up telling us,
the visual impressions that lead to readerly impressions make up a chain
of replication that breeds difference. The eyes that register the bath ap-
pointments see all the views that Romans behold and express of all the
bathing establishments that ever were the world over; and they stir Seneca’s
polemical blood to eristic disputation. Then Seneca’s antagonism stimu-
lates emulation – he must set out to set us against him, to implant critical
habits as we grow (21):
plura te docere non cogito, ne quemadmodum Aegialus me sibi aduersarium pa-
rauit, sic ego parem te mihi.
No, I am not thinking of teaching you any more lessons. In case, just the way that
Aegialus trained me to be his opponent, I may be training you to be mine. Like
this.
The locus on the bath spurted lusty declamation that transmuted from
Scipionic Martyrdom into ‘post-Horatian’ Satire. Discussion took the tell-
tale form of interrogation (quidni ego . . .?, 3; at nunc qui est . . .?, 6; adhuc
loquor; quid cum . . . peruenero?, 7; cur enim . . .?, 9; quas nunc . . . uoces . . .
credis?, 12; quid putas . . .?, 12; quid quod . . .?, 13).
The locus on the trees grows quarrels, first with the textual expert Virgil,
playing quarrelsome, it may seem, for the sake of it; and second with
Aegialus, our ‘garden Scipio’, whose general pronunciamento on trees
is probed, but whose general pronunciamento on watering is instantly
8 The place of praecepta and decreta in psychagogic activity is discussed in Epp. 94 + 95, cf. Dihle (1973);
Newman (1989) 1489–90.
9 Admirabilem . . . quidni admirer? . . . admirationem; uoluptas . . . quam iuuat . . . tristia; in usum, non
in oblectamentum? ? (1–3, 8; 4, 10, 14; 9)
(Stoic) Theorizing of visuality-conceptualization-imagination-textualization: Goldhill (1994) esp.
208 and n. 23, and (2001) esp. 168, 175–6.
endorsed, just when Seneca is on the point of finally exposing the dynamic
which makes dis-cussion lead to dissension, and conflict.
By then, Aegialus’ demonstrations of oleicultural methods have impelled
Seneca into rivalry, armed with his matching cameo on viticultural method.
As he trains up this straight-up paradigm for his lesson in the logic of
education, Seneca is at the same time clearly displaying a meta-paradigm for
the set of such lessons, by (re-)deploying a topic of traditional disputation
through botany. For ‘olive versus vine’ had always stood for rivalry in the
figuration of Culture. Thus, Theophrastus argues himself into a percipient
knot when pitting vine against olive as the ‘longest-lived’ tree in the wood
(History of Plants 4.13.4–5: makrobiwttav):
Since if it is true, as some at least say, that the vine is the longest-lived of trees by
always filling itself up from its roots, not by growing more, perhaps the comparative
judgement may seem ridiculous, if the trunk does not keep on going (this being
the basis, the nature, of trees). Whichever way this should be put may not make
any difference for present purposes, and maybe the longest-living is the one that
has the power of overall self-sufficiency, for example the olive, by stem, sidegrowth,
and having near-indestructible roots.
. . . Olives can last two hundred years. As for the vine:
If what some say of vines is so – that the trunk can keep on going when the roots
are partly removed, and the whole nature is the same, bearing the same sort of
yield, for however long a time – it would be the longest-living of all.
We have seen how Virgil and other authorities lined up olive and vine
(p. 129). Can we help thinking of the immemorial folk-genre of The Dispute
between Species?10 The classic instance of Callimachus’ ‘Bay versus Olive’,
for example, finds closure when Bramble intervenes, pointing up the logic
of the idiom by pretending to deplore it (Iambi 4.98–100):
Let’s stop and not bring joy to our enemies,
let’s not shamelessly utter cheap gibes at each another.
t h e a rg u m e n t h e ats u p
‘A friend is for owning mentally. A friend is never absent. Anyone he wants,
he sees everyday. So study with me, eat with me, walk with me . . . I see
you, my Lucilius, right now, I hear you. I am so with you, I’m not sure
I shouldn’t start writing you, not letters, but text-message memos’ (55.11).
10 ‘Oriental’: see Kerkhecker (1999) 86, n. 15.

Precisely because this correspondence is unidirectional, the shadow of its
other half falls on every directive.11
In Letter 86, epistolary dialogism insistently outcrops into the text, as
one ‘adversary’ after another looms up to obstruct Seneca’s thought path.
Seneca’s (= s c i p i o ’s) visible disputants begin with Rome (its ‘liberty’
and ‘laws’, versus Liternum, 2–3), positioned as its own worst enemy, as
next in line after Hannibal, just as Carthage spelled the second coming of
the Gauls (3, 5).12 Then he-and-the-maiores front up to ‘us’ (5); those of us
‘who call baths’ à la s c i p i o ‘strictly for the moths’, voice of ‘Luxury and its
dreamed-up novelty’ (8). Seneca-Cato-Fabius Maximus-one of the Cornelii
(nobilissimi) sponsor the right ‘temperature’ versus ‘the sort pioneered in
recent times’ (10). ‘People today convict Scipio – some people today’ (11, 12).
‘Those responsible for handing on the tradition about the ancient ways of
the City of Rome’ versus ‘someone will say’ (12). Seneca’s Horace, twitting
‘Messrs Gobulle’ and ‘Gargonius’ (the one he set in polarity, opposuit; 13).
The pair Seneca and Aegialus recedes behind Seneca versus Virgil (14–15),
and then we champion Aegialus’ ‘pounding’ method for olives (and his
alternative method) against allcomers; add the ‘generosity’ of Seneca’s way
for vines, and watch us win control of the rain with our tanks (18–21). But
the keynote recurs last: ‘just the way that Aegialus trained me to be his . . . I
may train you to be mine. Like this.’ (21) Seneca conjured up memorable
sneers at Scipio in terms of ‘envy’ (12):
non inuideo Scipioni. uere in exilio uixit, qui sic lauabatur.
I don’t envy Scipio. He truly lived in exile – bathing that way!
This was where we came in.
For in grand Roman Myth, [here masked] ‘envy’ was the core of the
parting of the ways between Scipio and his opponents, crystallized in the
polarity Liternum versus Rome (1–3: cf. Livy 28.44.18, inuidiae, see p. 97).
In recalcitrant Senecan Myth, ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ includes Seneca versus
Lucilius. Setting writer against reader.
te quoque (15,16).13
11 See Saylor (2002), who finds modelling of a ‘forceful and beneficial’ approach to friendship in the
letter’s thinking with the human body, geographical landscape, and – lotus-eating mansion economy
(104): ‘In making itself so available to the eye, the villa is doing what it is, or being what it stands
for.’
12 This traditional notion of a tradition of enmity passed down between the enemies of Rome structures
Lucan’s epic, starring Caesar(s) as their ultimately triumphant heirs (Henderson (1998) 202, n. 126).
13 Seneca rounds on his ‘friend’ on principle, e.g. 25.1, non amo illum nisi offendo; 75.5, non delectent
uerba nostra, sed prosint; 87.1, . . . cum uoluerim approbabo, – immo, etiam si nolueris; 60.1: see
p. 153.
co m e ac ro s s
Liternum is once again a place to crawl off and die (iacens, 1). Urgency
surfaces when Aegialus’ gnome promises new life for ‘however old trees’
(14): faced with ‘a three or four year’ wait, at once ‘Senecan senility’ diverges
from Lucilius’ outlook on life. In t/his Plot of Anxiety, ‘slowcoach’ olive
must be hustled into ‘at once’ putting on cover (tarda . . ., 15; statim, 18).
Alternatively, olives ‘gain height a little more slowly, but have nothing hair-
raising or grim about them’ (paulo tardius, 19). Senecan vines will even
force on, though planted ‘after March is over’ (20).
The composition busies itself from the start with taking up attitudes to
Tradition (see pp. 93–5, 107). s c i p i o ’s altar, and tomb? History of Rome,
Histories of Herodotus – not that myth, but this one (1). Bad modernity
practises perverse models of Tradition (8, 13):
So it is that baths that had drawn a crowd to marvel on the day of dedication are
relegated to the rank of antiques (in antiquorum numerum reiciuntur), once luxury
has dreamed up some novelty it can use to bury itself.
Offer Horace’s Mr Gobulle today, and . . . he’d be in ‘Mr Gargonius’’ spot . . . It’s
not enough to put on scent if it isn’t freshened up anew two or three times a day
(renouatur), to stop it evaporating on the body.
In short, s c i p i o’s mansion harbours a brace of instructive loci: first,
the stock dinosaur of the archaic bath-house, a stick to beat decadence;
second, the stocked cynosure of the state-of-the-art arboretum, a stake to
seat resurgence. We have noticed that ‘transition’ is signalled from shower
unit to nursery trench (transeam, 16: p. 119), and proposed that connec-
tion is provided by the transfusion of rain water from tank to bath to bed
(pp. 140–1). So the structure of s c i p i o’s Letter is a hendiadys, where the
twinned topoi unite as transformations of each other.14 The languages of
civil and arboreal culture double up at s c i p i o ’s-a e g i a lu s ’ place, as
mutual translations (pp. 119–20). Transmigration of Scipio, from Rome to
exile at Liternum, opens out into transmission of his story as the tradition
of Roman morality (priscos mores urbis tradiderunt, 12). Whereupon the
Scipio-bionic topic of Tradition as the contestation of tradition is abruptly
transfigured as Aegialus’ agronomous locus of ‘The Transplantability of
However Old a Tree’ (quamquam uetus arbustum posse transferri, 14). This
14 See Henderson (2002a) 126–9 on Pliny, Letters 3.9, as a dramatized ‘theory of description’. The
events are plural and heterogeneous. Handling them in the story, and handling them as the story,
fold into each other, and must double up as one. The goal is . . . escape from vertiginous chaos, plus
a neat final full stop. It takes Pliny roughly three rough bites at the cherry.
image for the transfer of character conditioning encoded and effected in
reading was introduced to Seneca’s textual armature at Epp. 2.3, where
‘transplantation’ was aligned with other manifestations of ‘transmission’ to
fashion a ‘trans-itive’ image of teaching/learning (transfertur > transmit-
tunt, transitus, transire, transfuga, 2.2–5: see p. 8). When we reach Epp. 86,
we have negotiated the ‘transience’ of our textual ‘transit’ past vat i a’s
(transeuntibus, 55.6: p. 80).
We have experienced and studied ‘transition’ from Greek to Roman
wisdom as ‘translation’ from Greek to Latin, not least in rendering Epicurus
into Seneca (transire, 26.8).
And we have a generous Letter devoted to the topic of ‘translation’ be-
tween the languages as the crucial vector of Tradition, at Epp. 58, where
‘today’s problem in rendering Plato’ at once led to the first introduction of
Virgil’s Georgics to the Epistulae Morales, as analogue for Seneca’s Socratic
‘gadfly’ of a project (see p. 130. Plato, Apology 30e5).15 The poem was ush-
ered in both as a site of translation, and as a space of explicit promulgation
for Translation as the nub of didaxis (58.2–5 ∼ 3.146–50):16
hunc quem Graeci ‘oestron’ uocant . . . ‘asylum’ nostri uocabant. hoc licet Vergilio
credas:
15 See esp. Schönegg (1999) 78–83. Seneca’s ‘terminologia del tradurre’: Setaioli (1988) 453–67. ‘La
Transposition directe de la terminologie Stoicienne’: Armisen-Marchetti (1989) esp. 215–20.
16 See Thomas (1982); (1988) 2.66–8 ad loc., explaining, after Nigidius Figulus (as cited by Servius on
Georgic 3.146), that Aeschylus’ gloss that Egyptians call the (Greek) mÅwy ‘o²strov’ (Supplices 307–8)
shifted round in the Alexandrian gloss that the o²strov is called ‘mÅwy’ by herdsmen (Callimachus,
Hecale fr. 301 Pfeiffer/Apollonius 3.276–7); so ‘Virgil, too’, is following Tradition in making a shift,
but a Roman shift, which implicitly involves ‘a passing rejection of the normal Latin word for
the gadfly, tabanus, Varro, R. R. 2.5.14 – in the very section from which V. has been adapting’
((1988) 2.68). Note that Virgil is thus aping Varro’s characteristic innovation on Cato, grafting his
habitual logophily onto the culture of agronomy. The paradosis prompts the thought that the poet
is also aping Graeco-Roman philology in suggesting that asilus is so-called because of its buzz (in
any language); because this buzz is venomous (Lucretius’ asper, acerba tuens is the mythic dragon’s
unsleeping gaze, 5.33); because this is a Latin gem set in Italian rock (between the groves and oaks
a-growing beside the Silarus [= Siler-us, ‘Brook-Willow’] and the [sickly] ‘Whitish’ [green-covered]
mountain Alb-urnus [∼ alburnum, ‘white sap-wood’], and all the sylvan places (lucum/lucos) that
could ever host classical poetry’s locus de asilo; because the poet and the philosopher of Rome, whose
start was Romulus’ asylum (Virgil, Aeneid 8.342–3, lucum ingentem quem Romulus acer asylum |
rettulit), are bound to see that this natural plague, the ‘asilus’, has the surreal effect of starting the
herds to seek refuge, leave the jungle behind, and seek ‘asylum’ (that naturalized Grecian word for
the grove of sanctuary in Rome).
Seneca’s scribes duly present us with asylum and asylo; and switch locum for Virgil’s lucos: the play
with the scene-setting formula est locus . . . is already in Virgil’s design. The paradosis also gives us
iuxta for Virgil’s circa, underlining juxta-position of the alliterating tree species siler and ilices, to
reiterate the buzz of asili that hovers through the words of its set-piece. The paradosis’ pluribus for
Virgil’s plurimus is presumably assimilated to ilicibus: here is a place to mean what I say. Essentially,
I have suppressed pluribus for just one reason, in order to pun ‘There is a plague . . .’ in place of
‘There is a place . . .’
e s t l u c u m Silari iuxta ilicibusque uirentem
plurimus Alburnum uolitans, cui nomen ‘asylo’
Romanum est, ‘oestron’ Grai uertere uocantes,
asper, acerba sonans, quo tota exterrita siluis
diffugiunt armenta.
puto intellegi istud uerbum interisse . . . id ago . . . ut ex hoc intellegas quantum
apud Ennium et Accium uerborum situs occupauerit, cum apud hunc quoque,
qui cotidie excutitur, aliqua nobis subducta sint.
The Greeks call it ‘o²strov’ . . .; our folk would call it ‘asylus’. You can trust Virgil
on this:
There’s a plague, beside Siler’s grove and oak-green Mt
Auburn, a hovering zillion whose gadfly name ‘asylus’
Is Rome’s: in calling it ‘o²strov’ Grecians made their shift.
Asp buzz, acid assonance; stampedes from the woods,
Whole herds on the run.
I think the understanding here is that that word has died the death . . . My point
here is . . . for you to understand to what extent word decay has taken over in
Ennius and Accius, considering that several items have been confiscated from us
in Virgil, too, who is scoured every day.
This sting on myopia about linguistic entropy by way of ‘build-up’ (praepa-
ratio) to discussion of essentia as (Ciceronian + Fabianus’) transcription of
oÉs©a, the indispensable and foundational term for the indispensable and
foundational ‘essence’ of all ‘being’ (res necessaria, natura continens funda-
mentum omnium, 6)!17 Seneca’s attack on the poverty of Latin is concen-
trated in this one quintessential, universal, mundane, cosmogonic example
(7):
magis damnabis angustias Romanas, si scieris unam syllabam esse quam mutare
non possum. quae sit haec, quaeris? t¼ Àn.
You’ll curse the Roman Cage of Quibbles once you find out it is one single syllable
that I can’t switch. What is it, you ask? t¼ Àn.
Just one syllable, that is, which names the unswitchable essence of im-
mutability! The usual rendering, ‘quod est’, shifts part of speech, which is
more than a matter of wording (7, sic transferri). And so we are ‘prepared’
for full discussion of Plato’s sixfold categorization of t¼ Àn / t Ànta,
and, in good time, for pressure to ‘capitalize on this subtlety’ – serious
17 To say what I mean, the essence: here the paradosis enters the dispute on language and reality;
for essentiam dicere is conjectured by ‘Mur[et].’ against quid sentiam dicere w (= omnium codicum
consensus)!
entertainment that can carry ethical impact, by shifting morality (reforma-
tione morum), if Platonic denigration of the sensory world leads us to wor-
ship divine eternity and scorn corporeal pettiness. How did Plato manage
to reach a ripe old age, dying on his eighty-first birthday? By the ‘broad’
chest that gave him his name (< platÅv), plus frugality . . . [sc. How
did Seneca manage to reach his ripe senectus? Something more than his
name . . .!] (8–24, 25–6, 30–1).
But this is epistolary Ethics, or
ph i lo s o ph y i n t r a n s l at i o n
And translation is a graphematic project – a matter of Philosophy, not Lexi-
cology; in question, the philosophy of Philosophy. Seneca in general, and
the Moral Epistles as particulars, are a continuous problematic of Transla-
tion. The registration of resistance in the word and the world to translation
from Greek to Latin is the general form of the specific challenge to relearn
living as the transference of philosophical theorem to realized instance,
metaphorized as pre-philosophical Rome versus Hellenized Rome.
So all Seneca’s writing is a double shift between Stoic terminology and
Roman perspective. He is forever locked into and onto the hermeneutic
heuristics, or interpretative inventiveness, of transposing Philosophy into
Culture, as well as between the classical cultures.
We (Latinists) can even transvalue his work as the discovery that Phi-
losophy only realizes its essence as a(n im)possible project of ‘Translation’,
beyond the confines of a particular language and its culture, once it is
necessary to feel yourself inside that ‘Roman cage’ of Latinity.
Seneca’s intervention (and Cicero’s; alas for lost Fabianus) constitutes
the original challenge to Philosophy to transcend its Greekness. To face the
otherness to its own conceptualization that is necessarily and foundationally
built into the language, and the Language, in which it operates (a politics
of epistem-ontics).
In the less sublimated, pragmatic, terms of moral reformation, the chal-
lenge is to prove that the world through Roman eyes is indeed always
already philosophized – in conformation with, and in confirmation of,
Stoic Hellenism, beyond the imperative to Transliterate-or-Neologize.18
Reification is brought in by Romans to check, and chuck, out Filoso-
j©a, in the name of philosophia.
18 See Armisen-Marchetti (1991) 106.

m e ta ph o r
The Grecians had a word for it: metajuteÅw, ‘transplant’ (Theophrastus,
History of Plants 2.5, 4.13). Seneca will neither transliterate nor neologize:19
as we have ‘learned’ (heard) and ‘seen’, a e g i a lu s ’ d»gma, his dictum,
spoke of ‘transfer’, whether of chunks of olive, or of carefully entire vine
(14, 20; cf. 17, transtulit):
didici . . . quamuis uetus arbustum posse transferri.
h oweve r a n c i e n t t h e t re e , t r a n s p l a n t i n g i s p o s s i b l e
∼
uidi uitem ex arbusto suo annosam transferri.
I have seen a vine of many years’ standing transplanted away from its very own
tree.
The advantage of a circumscribed lexikon, the linguistic ‘cage of Latin’,
is of course that it allows multivalence to proliferate, or rather makes dis-
course radically, ineradicably, polynomial. Seen as a stab at policing their
language, the Romans’ celebrated cult of simplificatory integrity, their ide-
ology of transparent sincerity, attests the essential impossibility of their
ever contriving to speak of one thing at a time – without also necessarily
speaking of many other things, too.
Translatio imports to Latin the semiotic maximization of metajor. And
then some.
Transferre constantly patrols Latin discourse on the quis uiuit for trans-
lation, sc. Translatability from Greek to Latin.
How much could a Roman ever say without heading or falling into a
stream of calques on what Hellenes would say? How much of their sapientia,
‘savvy’, consisted in refusing catachresis on non-transferable Greek hang-
ups and vices? Romans even refused to call them Hellenes, preferring to
label the whole of the civilized world after the raiko© of Thessaly, rarely
rated as Hellenes by Hellas!
All along, Tradition at Rome, nomothetically ideologized as synony-
mous and coterminous with Rome, handed down its stock of exemplary
metaphors, and this metaphoricity imposed – implanted – itself into
the grain of Latin word and thought: metaphor ‘proper’ could be cat-
egorized as cases of necessity – interlingual loan signings to cover gaps
(i.e. catachresis on Greek terms), or translingual appeal to imagery to
take us places neither our words nor ourselves can go (e.g. talk about
19 See Armisen-Marchetti (1991) esp. 125–8.
our – metaphorical – ‘insides’); or as the technology of mimesis – designed
to summon before our very eyes what literal, unmarked, familiarized lan-
guage risks leaving the mind’s eye/I as good as shut (demonstrandae rei
causa).20
t r a n s l ata b i l i t y
The Epistles’ prime discussion of metaphorics is tellingly juxtaposed, suo
more (∼ moribus nostris), to their shake-up of Translatability (59 ∼ 58).
Seneca starts by scrutinizing his own remark. Imagine Lucilius’ raised
eyebrows as anticipated in Seneca’s mind as he writes: he must at once
check over his opening gambit (59.1):
Magnam ex epistula tua percepi uoluptatem.
I felt a feeling of great pleasure from your letter.
He was talking ordinary Latin of the bus-stop variety, off the Stoic semiotics
leash for a moment of release. In the same way, appreciating the words of
a poet like Virgil may mean you pawn doctrinal correctness for eloquence
(3 ∼ Aeneid 6.278: see p. 130). Seneca’s ‘pleasure’ was, mind, triggered by a
[doctrinally correct] appraisal of his pupillage (4: cf. 86.21):
habes uerba in potestate.
You have your words under control.
Lucilius has not been diverted by the charms of language: ‘everything is
battened down shipshape’ (5: unlike my bus-stop English, pressa sunt omnia
et rei aptata):
loqueris quantum uis et plus significas quam loqueris. hoc maioris rei indicium
est; apparet animum quoque nihil habere superuacui, nihil tumidi.
You say as much as you want and signify more than you say. This is the indicator
of something really huge: it’s plain to see that your mind, too, has not a jot of
superfluity or puffery.
This ominously upbeat report is not yet done – it motivates next the crucial
position-statement on metaphoricity (6):21
inuenio tamen translationes uerborum ut non temerarias ita quae periculum sui
fecerint. inuenio imagines, quibus si quis nos uti uetat et poetis illas solis iudicat esse
20 See below, with Armisen-Marchetti (1991) 102–9 and 109–18; 118–24, respectively; and cf. Armisen-
Marchetti (1989) 23–9.
21 See Mazzoli (1970) 82–3 and Armisen-Marchetti (1991) 125. Wilson (1987) 102 begins his important
position-statement on the Epistulae from this locus classicus.
concessas, neminem mihi uidetur ex antiquis legisse, apud quos nondum captabatur
plausibilis oratio. Illi qui simpliciter et demonstrandae rei causa eloquebantur,
parabolis referti sunt, quas existimo necessarias, non ex eadem causa qua poetis,
sed ut imbecillitatis nostrae adminicula sint, ut et dicentem et audientem in rem
praesentem adducant.
Sextium ecce cum maxime lego, uirum acrem, Graecis uerbis, Romanis moribus
philosophantem. mouit me imago ab illo posita: ire ‘quadrato agmine’ exercitum,
ubi hostis ab omni parte suspectus est, pugnae paratum: ‘Idem’, inquit, ‘sapiens
facere debet.’
However. I discover textual metaphors which are by the same token not reckless
and have passed their probation. I discover images, and if anyone bans us from
using them, thinking that only poets are allowed them, to my way of thinking
t h ey h ave n ’t re a d c l a s s i c s: with them, style that puts hands together
wasn’t yet carped at. The old writers, they spoke out simply and demonstratively,
and are stuffed with Figurality, which I reckon necessary, not on the same basis as
for poets, but to serve as props for our feeble limitations, so they can take both
speaker and audience to water and splash them with presence.
Sextius. I’m right now reading him. Human acid. The lexikon is Greek, the
mores are Roman: Philosophy. An image planted by him physically moved me: an
army, on the go ‘in hollow-square formation’, when the enemy is anticipated from
any quarter. Prepared, ready to fight. ‘The very same thing’, he said, ‘the [Stoic]
Sage must do’ . . .
Notice here that Seneca equivocates between the metaphoricity planted by

the writer Lucilius and uncovered by the reader Seneca: inuenio . . . inuenio
cover both.
Necessarily, since we have just met with Seneca’s graphic demonstration
that writing can both carry unintended messages and imply more than what
is said. Straddle between Sextius and Seneca.
Discovering – inventing – passion and feeling pathos through texts tran-
scends unidirectional intentionality.
Our self-reflexively self-conscious reading of reading through reading
writing at once runs into exponential saturation of text with metaphor (9):
nos multa alligant, multa debilitant. diu in istis uitiis iacuimus, elui difficile est.
non enim inquinati sumus, sed infecti. ne ab alia imagine ad aliam transeamus,
hoc quaeram, quod saepe mecum dispicio: quid ita nos stultitia tam pertinaciter
teneat?
Many things truss us. Many disable us.
For so long have we lain flat out inside those Vices. It’s tough to wash them away:
we have not been stained. We have been permed.
– Not to transpose one image into/onto another, I shall set myself a Question –
I often spot it in myself: ‘How come Stupidity gets such a stranglehold on us?’
As he is saying, while he is saying it, spot the chain of metaphors and their
stranglehold on the argument, posing but at once transposing the Question
even as we attempt to break away from the self-scrutiny and make sure we
don’t get carried away by the verbal charms that we claimed Lucilius avoided
(sc. by playing safe; by writing dull copy, risk-free, house-style, sanctioned
by usage).
With a heave, the sermon sets in, shifting via our ‘superficiality’ to
the congenial topic of ‘adulation’ (10–11). Flattery of course satisfies the
‘pleasure-seeker’ in us (si appetis uoluptates, 14), whereas ‘The Sage is full of
Joy’ (plenus est gaudio, 14).
So we come round the spiral to pay for Seneca’s unbuttoned opening.
Seneca is now talking hard Stoic, forbidding us even to ask if ‘Fools and
sinners are joyless’ (17), condemning them to more Virgilian hell, as they
tell us how ‘they spent their last night on earth among transports of false joy’
(falsa inter gaudia, 17 ∼ Aeneid 6.513–14). Stoic Joy emerges from the genial
pussy-footing with Lucilius as no topic for loose talk: ‘it is not for someone
else to give. It is not even for someone else to control. What Fortune did
not give, Fortune does not steal. Farewell’ (18).
Back in the groove, Epp. 60 instantly thunders out (1: see p. 1):
Queror, litigo, irascor . . .
I grouch, sue, rage.
s t y l i s t i c s i n ph i lo s o ph y
Seneca’s mansions have proved to demonstrate (as he told Lucilius à propos
his aim to write a poem on, or at least about, Aetna) that the latecoming
writer ‘discovers/invents a supply of words which, when given a different
design, wear a new look’ (Epp. 79.6, parata uerba inuenit, quae aliter instructa
nouam faciem habent. t proke©mena).
Design – compositio – comes into Seneca’s sights at Letter 100, which cuts
straight to the quick by querying the call for anything approaching design,
or stylistics, in the practice of Philosophy, and so extracts from himself
an outline sketch of a philosophy of Style. Since Seneca is clearly not not
writing here about his own writing, and what it should teach us, about
writing and teaching, this is the most rewarding communiqué to digest. As
will soon become clear, Letter 100 even stakes a strong claim to read as the
authorized commentary on Letter 86.
Seneca’s pupil has been reading disquisitions by Seneca’s teacher on ‘So-
ciality’ (Ciuilia). Lucilius’ feeling of let-down is because he is forgetting that
Papirius Fabianus is a philosopher (100.1). No compositio, then, because
avatar Fabianus ‘designs habits, not words’ (mores ille, non uerba composuit,
2). But Seneca has already conceded that even false first impressions matter,
and initial discussion of Fabianus’ delivery in terms of ‘flow’ (effundi uerba,
non figi, exciderit an fluxerit, non effundere . . . orationem, sed fundere, 1–2)
is challenged by talk of his ‘[stance]’ (sollicita . . . timet versus fortis et
constans, 4–5). The philosopher’s compromise is unmarked style treading
every thin line in the book: in ‘stance’ (non neglegens in oratione, sed securus,
5); in choice of sociolect (electa uerba . . . , non captata, splendida tamen,
quamuis sumantur e medio, 5); in phraseology (sensus honestos et magnificos,
non coactos in sententiam, sed latius dictos, 5); and in style, for which Seneca
splashes colour on the page (5–6):
uidebimus quid parum recisum sit, quid parum structum, quid non huius recentis
politurae; cum circumspexeris omnia, nullas uidebis angustias inanis.
desit sane uarietas marmorum et concisura aquarum cubiculis interfluentium et
pauperis cella et quicquid aliud luxuria non contenta decore simplici miscet; quod
dici solet, domus recta est.
We shall see what has not been pruned enough, or built enough, or lacks our
modern polish. When you have looked right round everything, you’ll see no tight
corner of empty quibble.
By all means do without a rainbow of marbles, a water-distribution system con-
necting up the rooms, a ‘slum-it’ suite, and whatever else Luxury puts in the brew,
because simple grace is never enough. As the cliché has it, the house stands upright.
This graphic bridge delivers us to the destination: ‘design’ (compositio, 6).

And dispute: ‘should it have hair-raising shag combed out, or roughness
shoved in’ (ex horrido comptam, aspera, 6)? Cicero or Pollio, smooth or
staccato? ‘Everything in Cicero ceases; everything in Pollio crashes’ (desinunt
versus cadunt, 7). A rider takes the portrait of our ‘non-non-stylist’ guru
on some more, denying he doesn’t ‘stand tall’ enough (erecta), just does
without an orator’s ‘buzz ’n’ kick’ (uigor stimulique), along some more of
that thin line (non . . . humilia illa sed placida, nec depressa sed plana), rising
to a triumphant mot: ‘His “oratory” does not own, but will grant, Dignity’
(non habet oratio eius, sed dabit, dignitatem, 8). He may well only rank
somewhere in the Classics Top 10, but why should his ‘oratory’, his delivery,
be the complete package? ‘Not heroic, though uplifted; not forceful or
torrential, though a flood; not crystal clear, but clean’ (fortis versus elata,
uiolenta . . ., torrens versus effusa, non perspicua, sed pura, 10).
In short, no good at all for the all-important crusade against Sin, Evil,
Vice. But neither ‘stance’ nor the rest – sociolect, phraseology, style – should
outweigh ‘being clear that he means it’ (liqueat tibi illum sensisse quae
scripsit, 11).
Such is the general tone (color) of Seneca’s teacher as recalled by his
pupil: ‘not solid, but full’ (non solida, sed plena, 12). In teaching, the best
guarantee of results is to call the young to do better, and not despair of it
(adhortatio . . . efficacissima, 12). With all the finality at his disposal, Seneca
settles the question once and for all: grant Fabianus ‘a tide of words, overall
greatness minus approval of its individual components’.
This key discussion must trigger a flood of connections with the ? stylish?
mimetic performances we are studying. Seneca’s pupils must judge whether
he has taken up Fabianus’ challenge – and whether he leaves us room
to appreciate his ‘greatness – with reservations’. He invokes a model of
Tradition extended through Emulation, and browbeats us into assent. He
does mean what he says – what he writes. He treads the same ‘not X, but Y’
line, but – let’s argue – with the debater’s ‘buzz ’n’ kick’.
As in the locus de balneis of Epistle 86, the thought will occur, and its
‘flood’ of satirical invective.22
An early Letter mentioned this jaded millionaire’s trick of keeping a
Luxury ‘“slum-it” suite’ (pauperis cella, 18.7): hasn’t Seneca inveigled us
into one of these by inviting us to lie on the bed of nails thoughtfully
provided at s c i p i o’s shrine? Catering for the hair-shirt flagellant tourist
trade . . . with the fig-leaf of Sainted Antiquity.
The vivid passage on ? style? is crying out to run as commentary on
the architecture, décor, plumbing, and agriculture on show at Liternum:
pruned, built, polished, tight corner, rainbow of marbles, water-distribution
system. All the individual components that add up to a magnificent mythical
Luxury ‘slum-it’ suite. Where ‘the house stands upright’.23
As Roman cliché had it.
By habit (solet).
22 Cf. subrectas, 86.4; suffundebatur, 9; perlucida, 9; efficacius, 17; abhorridum, 19. Add nihil . . . sordidum,
100.5 ∼ sordido . . . sordidus, 86. 5–6.
23 recisus ∼ circumcisis, 86.17; structum ∼ exstructam, 4; recentis politurae ∼ refulserunt, 6; exornata . . .
exornaretur . . . recens, 9; angustias ∼ angustum, 4; uarietas marmorum ∼ marmora . . ., uariata, 6;
concisura aquarum ∼ aquarum per gradus . . . labentium, 7. All the individual components that add up
to a magnificent mythical Luxury ‘slum-it’ suite: pauper, 6; luxuria, 8. A house standing tall: erecta ∼
subrectas, 86.4 (cf. 46.2, grandis, erectus).
Thus, at De oratore 1.160–2, Cicero has Crassus end in a breakneck dash through his speech:
Cotta protests, ‘Just as though I had entered some rich, packed domus, with none of the treasures
out on view – cloth, silver, art collection, statuary . . .’ Scaevola pleads: ‘Why don’t you do what
you would if you’d come into some house or villa full of objects? . . . You wouldn’t hesitate to ask
the master to have them fetched out . . .’
In particular, what may catch the eye is that ‘water-distribution system’,
as a principle of Stylistics en route to Design. The tussle for unity despite
abruptness (‘smooth versus staccato’) is on at s c i p i o ’s. But the question
remains, how much we are meant to notice.24 If Senecan Style services
‘clear, thinking’ Philosophy, it should matter how Rome bathes; but should
it bother us if his prose runs as ‘muddy’ as satirical Horace dared to satirize
Design in the father of Satire, the great Lucilius (Satires 1.4.11)?25
cum flueret lutulentus, erat quod tollere uelles.
since his flow was muddy, there was some you’d want to get rid of.
His satisfyingly encrusted digressive reactionary rant on Baths can strike us
so, in its unfiltered ‘flow’ from sky to tank to bath-house to fields (9, 11):
non suffundebatur aqua nec recens semper uelut ex calido fonte currebat, nec referre
credebant in quam perlucida sordes deponerent . . . non saccata aqua lauabatur
sed saepe turbida et, cum plueret uehementius, paene lutulenta.
Water flow didn’t keep welling up from under; water didn’t keep running forever
fresh, as though from a hot spring; they didn’t believe it mattered how crystal clear
the water was which they set their dirt in . . . He wouldn’t bathe in specially filtered
water. No, it was regularly clouded and, when it rained extra heavily, pretty well
muddy.
s t ro n g ro ots
As demonstrative paradigms of written reality, Seneca’s mansions make their
habit-forming (moralizing) mark on the Epistulae. But they also represent
his most sustained analyses of mimesis as a form of cultural transmission.
At once a performance and an analysis of tradition, translation, transfer,
metaphor, transcription, transfiguration and transplantation, the derivation
of nursery from bathroom at s c i p i o ’s tells its own story (see pp. 140–1,
143–4, 146–7).26
24 Statius notes the piped water in every suite at Manilius Vopiscus’ mansion, carrying the river Anio,
which specially tames itself from torrential flooding spate to play cooperative ‘divider’, through the
rooms to reach the baths (Siluae 1.3.35–7, 43–6, Newlands (2002) 131–2). When the river transects,
splits and doubles, this mansion into symmetrical twins (nec . . . diuidit, 24–5; geminos . . . Penates, 2)
we should note that uopiscus means ‘the survivor of baby twins’. The Romans had a word for that.
25 See Freudenburg (1993) 158: ‘Without discarding the Hellenistic allusion [sc. to Callimachus’ jibe
against the writers of epic in the grand style at Hymn to Apollo 108], one should also grasp the analogy’s
more immediate referent in the contemporary rhetorical debates centering on word arrangement
[where] the river analogy was a favorite.’ For turbidus of ‘style’: e.g. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria
3.8.60.
26 The most famous verbal icon in Roman poetry, Horace’s fons Bandusiae (Odes 3.13), presents us
with the classic self-mirroring poem of metapoetics, where the programme of this ‘instrument for
We began inside s c i p i o ’s , to plumb the depths. In the arboretum, we
take ‘Tradition’, in one form or another, as appropriate, to us and to the
specific material. We prepare a fresh ‘setting’, and put the old down in
the ditch so it will grow anew. The stock projects – it projects its planter.
The treatment we give the plants transcodes the turn that the Letter gives
to s c i p i o , metaphorizes the teaching of s e n e c a at work in this revision
of Tradition, and images the project of breeding strong reader disciples.
s c i p i o’s shower-room reeked of sweat. Modern baths reek of per-
fume; the trenches are smeared with manure. The fort is built four-square.
s c i p i o’s cubicle may be hooded with mass-market stucco, but Luxury is
all flash veneer slabs, rainbow wash all around a border, decoration, fancy
décor, decorated. The apostle-growing factory is all root-and-branch radi-
calism, all ‘ramifying, roots, abrasion, and rooting’ (ramis, radicibus, radices,
radit, radices, ramos, radicescat, 17–20).27
w h i c h o n e i s yo u ?
If we are to distribute the arboricultural archetypes, we might decide that
the rough-hewn olive trunk takes its pounding for Seneca, would-be ‘im-
movable’ sage (minus . . . mouetur, 18).28 His slower-growing but unshaggy,
jolly, alternative, the branchlet, sticks up for relatively ‘young sapling’ Lu-
cilius (nouellarum arborum, 19). This leaves Seneca’s old vines, the strands,
if possible, picked up too, before the vine gets a generous covering, so that
roots form from its body as well: they must cling to, embrace, supports
which are not their very own (20). They look remarkably like –
– us.
presenting images’ is itself a flow of ‘poetic metaphors – flowers, springs, wine, the concept of
withdrawal’ . . . (Smith (1976)).
27 Cf. Isidore 17.6.14, alii radicem . . . dictam putant . . . quia si eradicatur, non repullulat. (Add: rapo,
rapum, 17–18; and the abrasive noises: arida et retorrida . . . abhorridum, 18–19.) Pliny, Natural History
17.206 reports a recent breakthrough in viticulture: take a draco, an old branch hardened through
many a year, and sow near the tree as a support; ‘shave off the bark’ for the three-quarters of its
length ‘that will be buried’, and push it down in a furrow (deraso cortice quatenus obruatur). Hence
its name: ‘razored’ (rasilem).
28 Cf. Epp. 35.4 (sapiens perfectus versus proficiens) hic commouetur quidem, non tamen transit, sed suo
loco nutat; ille ne commouetur quidem (t¼ metptwton).
c h a p t e r t we lve
Still olive, still s c i p i o ’s

Digging Scipio in Letter 86
with: the dirt on Seneca
The Letters never mention [Nero]. When vat i a’s villa was sited ‘through
the wall from Baiae’, Seneca deafeningly muted out history, avowing only the
cultural infamy of the place (see p. 88). Writer, addressee, and [Neronian]
reader could scarcely forget one fateful day just past, when (as the decade
before Seneca’s retirement closed, Tacitus, Annals 14.1–8):1
[Nero] ‘put off the long-pondered abomination no more’ . . . His mother and
kingmaker [Agrippina] just had to go. Bizarrely as you please, it was the feast
of virgin goddess Minerva: ‘he was holidaying at Baiae, lured mother there . . .
welcomed, hugged and led her to Bauli, which is the name of a villa that is lapped
by a kink in the sea between Cape Misenum and Lake Baiae’ (id uillae nomen est
quae promunturium Misenum inter et Baianum lacum flexo mari adluitur). The plot
was leaked, everyone agrees, and ‘not sure whether to believe it, she rode to Baiae
as sedan freight’ (an crederet ambiguam, gestamine sellae Baias peruectam).
[Agrippina] escaped the booby-trapped and scuttled boat across the bay, swam
for it, made it ashore, got a lift to her villa by the Lucrine Lake, and there
awaited brain-bashing, womb-sticking, wounds a-plenty. The mother of Oedipal
erasures.
An eery reminder that Seneca is indeed writing for his life as author of
the Epistulae Morales, in preparing himself for death on its inexorable way
(p. 14 n. 21), inheres for us, at least, in this very same place to dwell (Annals
15.52):
The bungled plot to assassinate [Nero], which would fatally tar Seneca, ‘agreed to
get a move on with the killing at Baiae, in the villa of their ringleader [Piso], as the
Emperor had so fallen for its loveliness that he was a frequent visitor and used to
enter baths and banquets without bothering with bodyguards’. What can you do
1 Perhaps the cartoon story of Seneca’s desperate bid to jump ship, swim for it, and wade ashore
in the Bay of Naples mimics, or at least echoes, his former protectress’s last voyage: Epp. 53
(p. 34).
158
Digging in Letter 86 (and Seneca) 159
with a high-minded assassin? (apud Baias in uilla Pisonis, cuius amoenitate captus
Caesar crebro uentitabat balneasque et epulas inibat omissis excubiis . . .)
Apart from the three mentions in the course of Epp. 86, all the collection
has to say about the City of Rome by name is this:
r Someone owned up: ‘No one can live any other way at Rome (than by climbing)’
(50.3).
r The bitter foe Timagenes would say ‘I only hurt when Rome burns because I
know it will rise all the better for it’ and, proverbially, ‘Ardea got just as sacked
as Rome’ (91.13, 16).2
r The Meta Sudans [in the Circus Maximus], once, and the Capitol, thrice (never
as a locale), are the only metropolitan landmarks named (56.4; 21.5 (from Virgil),
95.72, 98.13).3
As we have seen, Seneca tells us virtually nothing about even the proper-
ties he deigns to mention as his own: does he reckon there is no chance, or
every chance, that we ‘Luciliuses’ will be told stories of Seneca by the fame
industry?
We cannot fill out his addresses ‘in reach of Rome’ and ‘at Alba’, let alone
Lucilius’ ‘at Ardea’, but, whereas Seneca tells us zilch about his estate ‘at
Nomentum’, Columella (friend of Seneca’s brother Gallio) and Pliny both
want us to know that Seneca purchased fine vineyards there from Remmius
Palaemon, and between them recount that he paid an exorbitant price, but
maintained the remarkable yield there.4
Seneca at the former (?) ‘sand ’n’ swamp’ of Liternum (p. 104) does give
us a peek at his expertise in viticulture, and later he will even come out
and declare this (112.1, nostrum artificium); but in the Letter the symbolic
potential of this transfer at evocative Nomentum, from notoriously unlike-
able ‘grammarian’ to world-famous minister-turned-moralist, remains an
2 Ardea: evocative site of lu c i l i u s ’ estate, Epp. 105.1, cf. p. 42.

3 Perhaps add the Via Latina (77.18). As we saw (pp. 8–9, 13), metropolitan scenarios such as the
electioneering of 3.1, 8.6, and the arena of 7.1–5 cluster at the outset of the collection; they are
skimped of mimesis and starved of presence in the telling; summoned up to be dismantled in favour
of inner drama, they are soon dismissed from the repertoire. For the next wave of publi-city, we go
out on location, to the townscapes of coastal Campania (pp. 32–5).
4 Columella 3.3.3, Pliny, Natural History 14.49–51: see Suetonius, De grammaticis 23, with Kaster (1995)
228–32 (esp. 240–1, on 23.6, the miraculous productivity of a vine planted by Palaemon’s own hand)
and Griffin (1976) 289–90, esp. 289, n. 4, and 434. In Pliny, the Remmius Palaemon/Seneca story
seems to stem from hagiography of Acilius Sthenelus, son of a freedman, who takes the plaudits
for one farm of his at Nomentum, and sold another to Remmius; the item on Aegialus fills their
sandwich.
unrealized resource, a characterful asset unexploited.5 Perhaps we are meant
to know anyhow, and need no reminder. Or perhaps this material comes
uncomfortably close to materialism (commerce, Seneca’s billions, imperial
politics . . .)?6
No such prudence can lie behind Seneca’s elision of a e g i a lu s’ full
name at Liternum.
a e g i a lu s ’
We also know from Pliny that this present proprietor of the villa was the
socially mobile v e t u l e n u s a e g i a lu s , and we are specifically told that
he was a celebrity, not the nonentity we have met, as he wanders into a
private encounter with Seneca (Natural History 14.49):
. . . magna fama et Vetuleno Aegialo perinde libertino fuit in Campania rure
Liternino, maiorque etiam fauore hominum quoniam ipsum Africani colebat
exilium.
. . . Great fame also attached to Vetulenus Aegialus, likewise the son of a former
slave, in the countryside at Liternum in Campania – greater in fact, since people
really appreciated the fact that he was tending Africanus’ actual place of exile.
Which report faces us with the possibility-or-probability that ‘we’ might

recognize – might be expected to recognize – that Seneca’s visit was in no
way a casual drop-in.
Not only is this a planned tourist swoop, it is a devotional pilgrimage to
a principal locus of ‘Exile’.7
But it was never a simple matter of Seneca ‘sleeping in s c i p i o’s bed’,
to feel as one with a saint by incubation, and come to terms with his own
calling through meditation.
There was also Vetulenus Aegialus.
This current occupant was worth a visit, too. In his own right, as rightful
owner: Literninus libertinus. Pliny’s notice witnesses his availability as a
widely celebrated success in ministering to the physical and spiritual ‘estate’
of the great World Conqueror. His tending the shrine at Liternum is already
ad rem, a locus in Roman culture that calls for a call, to check out mos
5 The grammaticus as the type of intolerable pedant: e.g. Epp. 88.3.

6 ‘Seneca Praediues’: Rozelaar (1976) 97 and n. 18; Griffin (1976) 286–314, esp. 287–92. For property as
a Roman drama of propriety: Henderson (2002a) 24–30.
7 Seneca focuses on Rutilius as his referent for ‘exile’: 24.4 (bis), 67.7, 79.14, (82.11), 98.12, Mayer (1991)
156. As we have seen, Seneca readies the reader for the mimetic tableau on exilium to follow (at
85.40–1).
maiorum and locate its proper place in the market of contemporary mores.8
And, ad hominem, taking the measure of v e t u l e n u s is poetically just for
a n n a e u s s e n e c a , and topicalizes this site for interaction between the
pair of them, as authority figures in their chosen fields of expertise. Which
linked them as major players in the vineyards of central Italy.
In short, the letter’s linkage between Villa + Gardening may have been
an obvious turn to the composition, after all. Perhaps even expected by a
good number of contemporaries.
Thus when Seneca veils the nature of his sojourn: ‘Here I am, flat out’
(iacens), he so finesses Aegialus from the scene, that we cannot watch
the business of negotiating and calculating hospitality, very likely effected
through tact-full, well-mannered, correspondence between guest and host.
Aegialus will just pop up unheralded, one more stranger on the shore, for
citation of his oracular watchword, and will then play silent sparring part-
ner for today’s strenuous spiritual work-out, before he is left behind at his
station, unglossed (86.14–21).
Yet this libertinus was more than a walking monument to upward mo-
bility in the social landscape of imperial Rome. (Meritocracy or lottery?
Worth or wealth?) Certainly, a freedman’s son had crossed the divide be-
tween servile non-existence and the freedom to be a person in a way that
his father never could. How could any free-born citizen ever experience
the difference that liberty made to living?9 And yet . . ., a e g i a lu s ’ name
stereotypes him permanently as forever short of absolution from alienation,
the shadow of ? slavery? .10 With or without his ascription to the clan Ve-
tulena, the Greek label figures his cultural identity as originating outside
8 Silius Italicus’ cult(ivation) of Virgil’s memory through dedicated appropriation and preservation
of his estate near Naples becomes the example of this heritage phenomenon best known to us:
Henderson (2002a) 102–24, on Pliny, Epistles 3.7. Pliny’s Silius is his version of Seneca’s paragon of
politically expedient sloth, Servilius Vatia: they manage their style of residence very similarly indeed,
while the lessons they incarnate for their diarists are chalk and cheese (cf. Henderson (2001b) 74–8,
(2002b) 283–4). Bodel (1997) 13 presents other examples, especially Augustus’ numinous and lore-
infested cradle near Velitrae (Suetonius, Life of Augustus 6, cf. 94.6–7).
Statius’ tale of Pollius Felix’s expansive rebuild of the tight wee shrine of Hercules on his estate
reminds us, however, not to be too sure that Seneca was emoting over a genuine, unrestored, ‘shrine’
at s c i p i o ’s (Siluae 3.1.82, 88, stabat dicta sacri tenuis casa nomine templi, angusta . . . aedes).
9 See Henderson (1998) 184, for a rosy view of ‘libertine’ status as the inverted ‘birthright’ that
authorized an upstart up-and-coming satirist to speak out frank and free, for liberty: but Horace’s
Daunian-Venusian-Apulian identity was not impugned or queered by his personalization as Flaccus –
only his manhood, his virility as his worth, the rigidity of his moral frame, the upstanding character
of the views he voices and the causes he presumes to espouse . . . : Mr Floppy may be written down
as incorrigibly soft, but he is not excluded from Latinity, neither blessed nor cursed with Hellenism,
badge of hyper-culture and infra-status (Henderson (1999) 104, on Epode 8).
10 Cf. Epp. 27.5, Caluisius Sabinus memoria nostra fuit diues. et patrimonium habebat libertini et
ingenium.
the gentilician system of citizenship policed by endogamy. Slave-born or
slave-born-at-one-remove? You cannot tell. But no Vatia or Seneca? That’s
for sure. For an Aegialus has been given his name to mark him indelibly,
incorrigibly: ‘UnRoman
——– ’.
Take p u b l i u s c o r n e l i u s s c i p i o by way of contrast, and of com-
parison. His classic inheritance of ‘three names’ had marked him from
cradle to grace as a pre-eminent scion fully bedded into [the upper eche-
lons of ] the ciuitas. Then, however, his own triumphant achievements had
fastened upon him one of the first new-style imperial titles, Africanus. This
triumphal agnomen set him apart from the body of Quirites, too.11 Marked
out for envy, for levelling, he became a Roman myth of overachievement
as threat to liberty, and provocation for civil dissension. Cast as World
Conquering imperator, so lined up to play scapegoat.
By winning new territory on faraway foreign shores, Africanus had saved
Italy, from the hub of Rome to the rim of its seaboard. It would cost him
his home in his city, land him at Liternum, all washed-up. This, however,
saved his soul (ask Seneca), and blessed him with the hero’s martyrdom of
‘voluntary exile’. Brushed-up for eternal exemplarity.
Fate the poet bonded a e g i a lu s to a f r i c a n u s through geotec-
tonic as well as l-i-t-e-r-a-l symmetry, since slave-owning domination or-
dained the ex-ex-slave ‘Master Shore’, where world-domination rechris-
tened its one-and-ownly super-hyper-patriarch ‘Niggeratus from Nigeria’.
For Afer spelled, not ‘black’ like ater, but ‘black-and-as-alien’,12 and the
title Africanus was a monstrous neologizing extravagance that risked con-
secration to catachresis: ‘Afroesquean’.
Like libertinus, it would never be clear that the new-fangled label ‘Lord
Africa’ could catch the positive without netting the negative.
Adnomination by geographical classification ships off Africanus to Cam-
pania, and it digs in a e g i a lu s at Liternum, too – so they can come together
courtesy of victorious transgression + victimized transfiguration, courtesy
of linguistic translation + imagistic transubstantiation.
Pliny’s report brings out that Seneca has dignified Aegialus with the
honorific rank of ‘the most conscientious head of household of them
all’: the paterfamilias as purest of Roman authority figures (14). Call-
ing him ‘the owner of this farmland today’ both semi-detaches the agri-
cultural role he will play from his vocation as self-appointed sacristan,
and covertly cements him into the position of modern equivalent of the
11 Africanus: Henderson (1997a) 35–6.
12 Cf. Suetonius, Life of Terence 5, fuisse dicitur . . . colore fusco, reading the life from the name Terentius
Afer.
original father-figure s c i p i o, back in pre-cosmopolitan peasant Days of
Yore.13
As the nominal equivalent of Liternum (sounds like litus, ‘shore’),
14
A I G I A L O S (Greek for ‘shore’) instantiates by perfect integration the
governing formula which condenses owner + property into a single signal
‘personification’. ‘s c i p i o - a e g i a lu s - l i t e r n u m ’, at one.
re d e co r at i n g s c i p i o
Reading between Seneca’s lines to see how they arise from the rewriting of
the Scipionic legend shows us how he is transforming the ‘Villa + Garden’
complex by reconfiguring its story as the product of a ‘legend + visit’
synthesis: behind the scenes, he is remoulding a ‘tradition + experience’
hendiadys. This, we are privileged to document, arises from rewriting the
Aegialus legend, too.
Courtesy of the Letter, we are challenged to integrate, and internalize for
our selves, the drama of Seneca’s effort to adapt him self to the assimilation
of tradition, to make a tradition which contrives both to reduplicate the
old as the new (s c i p i o = a e g i a lu s ) and to displace the old with its
renewal (s c i p i o > a e g i a lu s ).
s e n e c a is the right name for this process of ‘Wave + Particle’ correla-
tivism. And not only does his bricolage make the example work for acolytes,
but his critical discussion also impacts on its beneficiaries: ‘practice + the-
ory’ (see p. 146).
t h e c ave at l i t e r n u m
Thanks to another remarkable fact that is again showcased by Pliny, we
can feel very clear indeed that Seneca is deliberately covering his tracks in
13 Compare and contrast Martial’s hero-worshipping Silius (11.48):
Silius haec magni celebrat monumenta Maronis,

iugera facundi qui Ciceronis habet.
heredem dominumque sui tumuliue larisue
non alium mallet nec Maro nec Cicero.
Silius’ acclaim: this is Virgil’s tomb.
Silius owns fluent Cicero’s patch.
For heir and master of their grave and home
no other choice to be made, Virgil and Cicero.
Here literary heroism assigns tomb to poet, farmland to statesman/orator, as a binary definition of
an ‘estate/legacy’: it could only outmatch and mock Silius’ – but that is his humility . . .
14 Cf. Pliny, Natural History 4.12, Achaia antea Aegialos uocabatur propter urbes in litore per ordinem
dispositas, Maltby (1991) 11–12.
another vital respect. This time there is no need to speculate on hidden
depths. The occlusion in question confronts us with an astonishingly spec-
tacular level of perverse subterfuge and narratorial violence (Natural History
16.234):
. . . durauit in Liternino Africani prioris manu sata olea, item myrtus eodem
loco conspicuae magnitudinis – subest specus in quo manes eius custodire draco
traditur.
. . . On his estate at Liternum, there lasted long an olive planted by the hand
of the Elder Africanus; likewise a myrtle of spectacular size at the same spot –
underground, a cave in which tradition tells that a serpent guards his shade.
Seneca has so dislocated his on-site visit that this memorable bipartite fact
about The Oldest Trees in the Roman World is well and truly buried in the
villa’s midden. Many readers must have taken the bait which disaggregates
villa from garden, to the point where the composition bifurcates as under:
It is curious that the information as to the transplanting of olives and vines at the
end of the letter is given apparently for itself, and not, as it might so easily have
been, as the text of some moral lesson. (Summers (1910) 289, Introduction to Epp. 86)15
It is not, as we have seen (p. 157), that Seneca makes no visible effort to
bridge from his initial rapture over the manor to his straggling finale in
horticultural enthusiasm. Indeed the Scipio letter starts by ‘first paying
respects to his shade (manibus) and altar. This, I suspect, is the tomb of this
great hero. As for his spirit, I am convinced myself that it returned to heaven
whence it came’: Seneca is whiting out throwback lore that made Scipio an
undying genius loci, and he marks the suture by narratorial interventions
on the storyline. And this corrective (as he soon makes clear) is but a first
instalment in Seneca’s campaign to relocate the grounds of heroism by
rewriting the traditional legends (chapter 9, pp. 94–104).
So now we must take on board that the back-grounded detail of ‘Scipio
Out Digging’, which is motivated as his back-grinding way of working out,
and so working up a sweat that would call for healthy ablutions (86.5), must
represent a further stage in the same bid to revise the saga.16
To be sure, as we noticed, the fact that the same unfiltered rainwater tank
supplies both bath-house plant and garden plantation serves as a conduit
15 Selections have even cut, suppressed, the horticulture as impertinent.

16 When Scipio ‘trenched the earth underfoot, as was the way with the men of yore, in person’ (86.6,
terramque (ut mos fuit priscis) ipse subigebat), his stance was that of Virgil’s farmer waging his ‘war’ on
the soil (cf. Georgic 1.125, ante Iouem nulli subigebant arua coloni, as in Ovid’s parody, Metamorphoses
11.31, boues presso subigebant uomere terram).
through the wall between the two halves of the composition (cisternam,
4 ∼ aqua . . . cisternina, 21; cum plueret, 11 ∼ habemus pluuiam, 21. See
pp. 140–1).
And I (in my Scipionic ‘-sub-Brando’ solitude) did find mighty s c i -
p i o lurking in the etymological landscape of ‘long-stemmed species’
(grandiscapiae; pp. 141–2).17
But, however potent the mix of ‘Fusion + Transfusion’ we can spread
around, to deny Scipio his olive grove, and forfeit his gift to posterity of
marvels among long-lived plants . . . – surely the perverse obliteration of
that storyboard must radically de-couple uilla from hortus?
Root + branch.
Just recall how Seneca burst imperiously into his suburban garden to
reclaim the hand-set plane-trees of his youth, so he represented to us, for
his very own self(ishness) (Epp. 12: chapter 2).
What are we to make of this audacious bouleversement? Are we meant to
take it on the chin?18
Of course we paused at Liternum to reflect on the point of cancelling
the Roman myth of the Last Days of Scipio, as Philosophy steels itself
to metaphorize and/or displace Politics. The question remains: are we to
ponder, or be spared, the cut which supplants Scipio’s Green Fingers with
rivalries between Seneca and Virgil, and between Seneca and Aegialus?
For myself, I am persuaded that this is a case of Seneca suppressing the
reading that lurks behind his writing, on principle, and that we are meant
to appreciate how Scipio does still watch over (in fact, under) this site, albeit
in the modernized form of s e n e c a n s c i p i o .19
t h e b at t l e h y m n o f t h e re p u b l i c rev i s e d
In general, instances of the RoMan mirrored by his mansion abound. Cen-
tred, focal, to the praxis of Rome: ‘Gabinius is now building for all to see
a palace of such dimensions that L. Lucullus’ Tusculan villa would look
17 Inevitably, Scipio Africanus’ Punic victory tied him for ever to heroic Roman ascension (Romulus-
Quirinus) and to the pomegranate (‘Punic apple’): ‘the Vicus ad Malum Punicum, the street which
led to the temple of Quirinus on the Alta Semita. There in the lovely precinct of Quirinus stood the
Punic apple tree itself, planted by Scipio Africanus after his victory over Carthage’ (McCullough
(1993) 445).
18 If we knew what we now know, courtesy of Pliny, about s c i p i o ’s when we were rereading vat i a ’s ,
might we have even jolted from those ‘twin grots’ (speluncae . . . duae, 55.6) to that spooky ‘cave’
under Liternum (specus, Natural History 16.234)?
19 Cicero’s idealized Scipio already ‘appears to his grandson not as he remembers him in the flesh but
“in that form which was more familiar to me from his imago than from the man himself”’ (Penwill
(1995) 74, citing Cicero, De re publica 6.10).
like a shack in comparison – but when he was just starting in politics he
showed the people as their tribune a picture of that villa . . . to arouse
your indignation against as brave and good a citizen as can be’ (Cicero,
Pro Sestio 93). But according to the reading I have now transplanted into
writing, plumbing the depths, the legacy of s c i p i o’s estate, the ‘Olive that
Never Died’, must now reconfigure as a highly specific matrix for ‘Moving
On’.20
The culture myth of s c i p i o as the Man who planted Trees, hidden by
Seneca where we can still see it, must also stand as a remapping of the culture
myth paraded by the greatest writer of Latin prose before the Caesars, in
memorialization of another grand hero of the Republic – likewise the self-
projection of the encomiast.21 As we shall now see. I have noted already
that, in its discussion of funeral rites and tomb monuments, Cicero’s Laws
showcases a re-elaboration of Ennius’ consecration of s c i p i o Africanus,
featuring the formula uncannily brandished by Seneca at vat i a ’s: ‘Here
lies the Man’ (see pp. 101–3). I also found cause to recall the revisionist re-
presentation of ‘The Dream of Scipio’ after Ennius, the climax of the whole
Republic (p. 103). When the earlier work, mounted as holiday discussion
between Scipio Africanus Aemilianus and friends, in the great man’s garden,
gives way to its sequel, it is true to say that the Republic receives, and ‘makes
room for Laws’ (p. 96 n. 7). Here, too, Cicero takes up the format rejected
for Republic for the Laws’ discussion between another great Roman and
his circle, and books himself to star in the ‘Scipio’ role, flanked by his
brother and his (other) best friend.22 Immediately set in Cicero’s grounds
at his Arpinum homebase, Laws opens by picking out a grove with a very
special tree, and a mighty warrior for the Roman Republic, and delivers an
audacious plug for the writer’s renewed efforts to recondition and recycle his
memory – both their memories (1.1–3 / Cicero fr. 15–16 Courtney; Scaevola
fr. 1 Courtney):23
A. Lucus quidem ille et haec Arpinatium quercus agnoscitur saepe a me lectus 1
in Mario. si manet illa quercus, haec est profecto. etenim est sane uetus.
Q. Manet uero, Attice noster, et semper manebit. sata est enim ingenio. nullius
autem agricolae cultu stirps tam diuturna quam poetae uersu seminari potest.
A. Quo tandem modo, Quinte, aut quale est istuc, quod poetae serunt? mihi enim
uideris fratrem laudando suffragari tibi.
20 Cf. Henderson (2002c) 124–5 on the metaphorics of the preservative in the production-model villa
of Columella 12.
21 I owe this clinching argument to George Pepe.
22 The classic treatment: Pohlenz (1965); cf. Feeney (1991) 258–60, Wiseman (2002) 339–40.
23 The boy Marius caught in his sinus seven eaglets from a falling nest, so he would collect seven
consulates (Plutarch, Life of Marius 36).
Q. Sit ita sane. uerum tamen, dum Latinae loquentur litterae, quercus huic loco
non deerit, quae Mariana dicitur, eaque, ut ait Scaeuola de fratris mei Mario,
canescet saeclis innumerabilibus
– nisi forte Athenae tuae sempiternam in arce oleam tenere potuerunt 2
aut, quod Homericus Ulixes Deli se proceram et teneram palmam uidisse
dixit, hodie monstrant eandem. multaque alia multis locis diutius commem-
oratione manent quam natura stare potuerunt. quare ‘glandifera’ illa quercus,
ex qua olim euolauit
nuntia fulua Iouis miranda uisa figura,
nunc sit haec. sed cum eam tempestas uetustasue consumpserit, tamen erit
his in locis quercus, quam Marianam quercum uocabunt.
A. Non dubito id quidem. sed haec iam non ex te, Quinte, quaero, uerum 3
ex ipso poeta, tuine uersus hanc quercum seuerint, an ita factum de Mario,
ut scribis, acceperis.
M. Respondebo tibi equidem, sed . . .
at t i c u s . The grove there, the townsfolk of Arpinum’s oak here. Familiar to 1
me. Read, over and over, by me, in the ‘Marius’ poem. If the oak there abides,
it’s the one here, for a fact. It sure is OLD.
qu i n t u s c i c e ro. It does abide, dear Atticus, and shall always abide. It was
planted by the mind. No farmer’s care can plant stock to live as long as a
poet’s lines.
at t i c u s . How can you mean, Quintus? What is that – ‘poets a-planting’? In
blessing your brother, you seem to me to be plugging yourself !
qu i n t u s . Sure thing, so be it. But still, so long as Latin literature shall have a
voice, an oak will never go missing from this spot, to be called ‘Marius’’, and
it will, as Scaevola says about my brother’s Marius/Marius,
‘grow old and grow through aeons beyond counting’
– unless, maybe, your home, Athens, has managed to keep an eternal 2
olive tree on the Acropolis, or, given that Homer’s Ulysses told that he saw
a tall young palm on Delos, they still point to the selfsame tree. And many
other things in many spots abide longer by being memorialized than have
managed to stand tall by being alive. So the ‘acorn-laden’ oak there, from
which once upon a time there flew away
‘Jupiter’s golden herald, wondrous profile beheld’
can be the one here, and vice versa. But when weather or age have eaten it up,
still there will be an oak in the spot there, and they will call it ‘Marius’.
at t i c u s . Of that I have no doubt. But this question I put, not to you, Quintus,
but to the poet himself: did your lines plant the oak here, or did you inherit
the story of Marius the way you write it?
m a rc u s . I will give you an answer, but . . .
The plot thickens. Writing at about the same time as he wrote the Re-
public, and using the mouthpiece of brother Quintus, Cicero contrives
in his work on Roman manticism to quote the chunk from his Marius
poem where augur Marius observed the legendary auspicium of another
eagle as it flew from a tree (De diuinatione 1.106 / Marius fr. 17 Courtney,
1–2):24
hic Iouis altisoni subito pinnata satelles
arboris e trunco . . .
Here high-rumbling Jupiter’s winged messenger of a sudden
from out of the trunk of the tree . . .
. . . as an insertion intruded within his excursus on the primal augur
of Rome: pre-Roman Romulus, as immortalized in a chunk of verse by
Ennius, taking the founding auspicium in the first book of the Annales (De
diuinatione 1.105; 107 / Annales fr. 80–100, Warmington, at 95–6):25
. . . et simul ex alto longe pulcherrima praepes
laeua uolauit auis . . .
. . . and right then from on high, far and away the fairest
straight-ahead
bird flew on the left . . .
Here is Rome regenerating Rome on the page, big time. Cicero the arch-
poet eulogist and multiple patriotic myth-maker – Cicero the Ennius of his
day. Cicero the second saviour of the Roman state to emerge from nowhere,
from Marius’ Arpinum, and third in line from the founder himself, and
from Romulean apotheosis. Cicero the statesman of the Republic/Republic,
lawyer and writer of Laws. One mind, one tree. A tradition, an intervention.
——– > Cicero. Politicized philosophy, politics philoso-
Marius-Cicero, Marius
phized. An imaginary Rome must redress the times; a (pragmatically futile,
morally inspirational) call to the future enshrines the man of peace. To
believe, enthuse, imagine, too.
A century on, Seneca pits philosophy against his state, his legality. The
saving grace of another, adjusted, philosophical ‘Dream of Scipio’ takes an
epistolary turn. Braves the inner heroics of skulking in the subterfuge of
another, reclaimed, ‘Disgrace of Scipio’. Seneca leaves it for his long-lived
contemporary Silius Italicus, the survivor of Julio-Claudians, Civil War, and
24 This eagle pecked to death, in mid-air, the snake that had bitten it, portending Marius’ ‘well-
omened . . . return’ to rid Rome of Sulla’s partisans (Marius v. 11).
25 Romulus watches the birds for a favourable omen to bless his fledgling Roma, not Remus’ Remora.
Flavians, too, into the Ulpian dynasty,26 to return ‘Scipio’s Dream’ to the
sublimity of national epic. As we have seen, in life as in text, Silius tended
the memory of the greatest poets of Rome, bracketing Ennius and Virgil
by honouring the fame of Scipio, hero of the Annales, in the Punica, and
Virgil’s tomb in Campania, alike (see pp. 104, 138). Silius will have his Sibyl
foretell the Fall of Scipio (p. 104); but will point to the transcendence his
poem effects by recounting his perpetual triumph: as Rome debates whether
to entrust its fate to so young a hero, epiphany paid him a visit. Virtus and
Voluptas came for their tug of war, Vice luring him to a life of [Vatia], before
Virtue promises a sainted soul ascension to the aetherial source (pp. 101–
03). This fateful moment for Romanness stamps this Scipionic scion, once
again, as the arborescent bearer of dendrophilous, dendritic, dendriform,
Tradition. For this [Herculean] myth of [philosophical-political] Choice is
framed between the lines (Punica 15.18–20, 118–20):27
has, lauri residens iuuenis uiridante sub umbra,
aedibus extremis uoluebat pectore curas,
cum subito assistunt dextraque laeuaque . . .
The boy sat beneath the verdant shade of a laurel,
in a far corner of the mansion, rolling these concerns around his
heart
– when suddenly there stood by his side, to right and to left . . .
...
. . . sed dabo, qui uestrum saeuo nunc Marte fatigat
imperium, superare manu laurumque superbam
in gremio Iouis excisis deponere Poenis.
. . . But it shall be my gift, that you overcome the foe who now
exhausts your people’s empire, and with the selfsame hand take the
laurel of pride and lay it on the lap of Almighty Jupiter after
deforesting Carthage.
Scipio’s olive, Scipio’s legend; Scipio’s laurels, Scipio’s legends. Roman mores
were continuously reaffirmed in, as, through, this continuing story of den-
drogram(matology).
26 In Epistles 3.7 Pliny underlines how to read the drawn-out saga of the occlusive career/life of Silius:
see p. 161 n. 8.
27 All the many ‘Hercules’ culture-heroes of Rome, with his ‘Greatest of all Altars’ homing the political
city on worship (Ara Maxima; e.g. Galinsky (1972) 131–49), while his ‘philosophical self ’ consecrates
the Stoicized soul to the struggle to ascend to the Aetherial Source (‘Hercules at the crossroads’,
grafted onto [Ennius’?, Cicero’s?, and Silius’] Scipio; the classic study by Alpers (1912)), reduce to
just one single, subordinated, naming in the Letters (94.63), where Alexander the Great Maniac goes
for aggression unlimited, indignatur ab Herculis Liberique uestigiis uictoriam flectere, and so, into
Latin, to Pompey the Great Maniac, and through Caesar, &c., ad infinitum.
t h e co n c lu s i o n f o l low s
Everything says it. Seneca’s preferred model for teaching (as) the Transpo-
sition of Old Stocks into New Shares incorporates and embodies a pro-
gressively adaptive series of implanted images for the transformation of the
self.28 That is the burden of his massive missive, the long and short of the
Letters.
See you.
PS we’d rise post-obstacle more defined more grateful
we would heal be humbled and be unstoppable
we’d hold close and let go and know when to do which
we’d release and disarm and stand up and feel safe.
(Morrissette (2002), ‘utopia’)
28 But – I may have been training up an opponent for myself. You.

a p pe n d i x 1
Here to stay
Places and persons named in the Epistulae Morales
NB Places and persons named in Epp. 12, 55, and 86 appear in bold; likewise the
other villas named in the collection.
Items discussed in the text are enclosed in square brackets.
1. References to Rome in the collection.

See pp. 96–7, 159:
Epp. 50.3; 86.1 (× 2), 5; 91.13, 16; cf. Meta Sudans (56.4), Capitol (21.5: from Virgil),
95.72; 98.13).
2. References to Sicily, Campania, Italy in the collection.
All these references which have any locative function are discussed in this book:
(a) References to Sicily in the collection:
Aetna: Epp. 51, 79 (× 3); Charybdis: 14, 31, 45, 79 (× 2); (Panhormitani: 114);
Scylla: 31, 45, 79, 92 (× 2); Sicilia: 14, 51, 79, 88, 90, (115); Sirenes: 57; (Syracusani:
114); Tauromenium: 79.
NB These references are from Epp.: 14 (× 2), 31 (× 2), 45 (× 2), 51 (× 2), 57,
79 (× 8), 88, 90, 92 (× 2), (114 × 2), (115).
(b) References to Campania in the collection:
Acherusius lacus: 55; Baiae: 51 (× 4), 55 (× 2), 57; Campania: 49, 51, 55, 77,
(83); Capreae: 77; Cumae: 55; Liternum: 51, 86; Neapolis: 49, 57 (× 2), 68,
76 = Parthenope: 53; Pompeii: 49, 77.
NB These references are from Epp.: 49 (× 3), 51 (× 6), 53, 55 (× 4), 57 (× 3),
68, 76, 77 (× 3), (83), 86.
(c) References to the rest of Italy in the collection:
Alburnum: 58; Apulia: 87; Italia: 88, 90; lucus Silari: 58; Tarentum: 68; plus those
villa sites: Alba: 123; Ardea: 91, 105; Nomentum: 104, 110.
NB These references are from Epp.: 58 (× 2), 68, 87, 88, 90, 91, 104, 105, 110,
123.
3. EPP. 1–12 (= 29 pp. of OCT)
Almost every proper noun is mentioned in the text:
171
172 Appendix 1
Place named:
Syria (12)
Persons named (showing clumps):
(i) Philosophers
Stoics: Attalus (9), Cleanthes-Zeno-Plato-Aristotle-Socrates-Epicurus-Metro-
dorus-Hermarchus-Polyaenus (6), Chrysippus (9).
Epicureans: Epicurus (2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12), Hecato (5, 6, 9).
Others: Athenodorus (10), Heraclitus (12), Socrates-Cato-Laelius (7), Stilbon
(9, 10)-Demetrius Poliorcetes (9)-Crates (10), Theophrastus (2).
(ii) Other Greeks: Phidias (9).
(iii) Romans
Early Rome: none.
Punic Wars: none.
Civil Wars: Sulla-Pompey-Fabianus (11), Pompey-Crassus-Parthian-C. Caesar-
Lepidus-Dexter-Chaerea (4).
Others: Cato-Laelius (11), Felicio, son of Philositus (12), Pacuvius (12).
Writers: Pomponius (3), Publilius (8).
4. EPP. 13–83 (= 254 pp. of OCT)

Places named (excluding items in 1):
Africa (24, 71), [Alexandria (77)], Alps (51), [Aqua Virgo (83)], Argos-Hellespont-
Ionian Sea-Isthmos (80), Asia (53), Athens (58), Canopus (51), Carthage (24), Egypt
(51, 71), Germany (36), Hephaestion in Lycia (79), Parthia (17, 36), Pennine-Graiae-
Candavia-Syrtes (31), Persians-Medes-Dahae (71), Scythians-Sarmatians (80), Spain
(71), [Tiber (83)].
Persons named:
(i) Philosophers
Stoics: Ariston of Chios (36), Attalus (63, 67, 72, 81), Cleanthes (33, 44, 64), Chrysip-
pus (22, 33, ? 56? ), Panaetius (22), Posidonius (33, 78, 83), Zeno (22, 33, 64, 82, 83).
Epicureans: Epicurus: [13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29,
30, 33, 46, 52, 66, 67, 79, 81], Hermarchus (33, 52), Metrodorus (14, 18, 33, 52, 79,
81), Polyaenus, (18), Pythocles (21).
Others: Ariston (29), Aristotle (58, 65), Demetrius the Cynic (20, 62, 67), Dem-
ocritus (79), Diogenes (29, 47), Fabianus (52, 58), Heraclitus (58), Metronax (76),
Petrodorus (52), Plato (44, 47, 58, 64, 65), Pythagoras (52), Serapio (40), Sextius
(59, 64, 73), Socrates (23, 28, 44, 64, 67, 70, 71, 79).
(ii) Other Greeks et sim.: Alexander (53, 59, 83), Clitus (83), Croesus (47), Leonidas +
300 (82), Phalaris (66).
(iii) Romans
Early Rome: Decii Mures (67), Fabii (82), Mucius Scaevola (24, 66), Porsenna
(24, 66), Regulus (67, 71).
Punic Wars: [Hannibal (51)], Regulus (71), Scipio (24, [51], 70).
Places and persons in the Epistles 173
Civil Wars: Agrippa (21), Antony (82, 83), [Atticus (21)], Augustus (83), D. Brutus
(82), Caesar (14, 24, [51], 83), Cassius (83), Cato [Minor] (14, 24, [51], 58, 64, 67,
70, 71, 79, 82), Cicero (17, [21], 23, 40, 49, 58), Cleopatra (83), Juba (71), Maecenas
(19), Marius (47, [51]), Metellus Scipio (24, 71), Pompey (14, [51], 71, 83), Tillius
Cimber (83).
Others: [Annaeus Serenus (63)], Asinius Gallus (55), [Aufidius Bassus (30)],
Caligula (77), Callistus (47), [Calvisius Sabinus (27)], Cato [Maior] (24, 25, 64,
70), [Claranus (66)], Cossus (83), Drusus (21), Drusus Libo (70), [Flaccus (63)],
Geminus Varius (40), Haterius (40), Iulius Graecinus (29), Harpaste (50), Laelius
(25, 64), M. Lepidus (29), [Marcellinus (29)], Metellus [Numidicus] (24), Pharius
(83), [L. Piso (83)], Rutilius [Rufus] (23, 67, 79), [Satellius Quadratus (27)], Sat-
tia (77), Scaurus (29), Scipio [Aemilianus] (24, 25, 66), Scipio [Nasica], 70, 71),
Scribonia (70), Sejanus (55), Sulla (23), Tiberius (21, 83), Timagenes (91), [Tullius
Marcellinus (77)], Vinicius (40).
Writers: Accius (58), [Cornelius Severus (79)], Ennius (58), Homer (58), Livy (46),
Lucretius (58), Messalla (51), [Ovid (79)], Sallust (60), Valgius (51), Virgil ([21], 28,
58, 59, 67, [70], 73, 77, 78, [79], 82).
5. EPP. 84–88 (= 39 pp. of OCT)

Places named (excluding Rome, Sicily, Italy).
Almost all are discussed in the text:
Alexandria (86), Apulia (87), [Carthage (86)], Ethiopia (85), Numidia (86, 87),
Thasos (86), Tmolus-India-Sabaei-Chalybes (87).
Persons named:
(i) Philosophers
Stoics: Antipater (87), Posidonius (87, 88).
Epicureans: Epicurus (85).
Others: Nausiphanes (88), Parmenides (88), Protagoras (88), Speusippus (85),
Xenocrates (85), Zeno of Elea (88).
(ii) Other Greeks et sim.: [Cambyses (86)], Ladas (85), Phidias (85).
(iii) Romans
Punic Wars: [Fabius Maximus (86)], [Hannibal (86)], [Scipio (86, 87)].
Civil Wars: Maecenas (87).
Others: [Aegialus (86)], ‘Buccillus’ (86), Caligula (88), [Cato [Maior]
(86, 87)], Chelidon (87), [Cornelii (86)], [Gargonius (86)], Maximus (87), Natalis
(87).
Writers: Apion (88), Aristarchus (88), Didymus (88), Dossennus (89), Hesiod (88),
Homer (88), [Horace (86)], [Virgil (84, 85, [86], 87, 88)].
6. EPP. 89–124 + Excerpta (= 214 + 2 pp. of OCT)

Places named (excluding Rome and Italy):
174 Appendix 1
Achaea (91, 104), Adriatic-Ionian-Aegean (89), Africa (94, 104, 114, 115), Alexandria
(102), Alps (95), Argolid (104), Armenia (94), Asia (91, 94), Athens (90, 94), Cyprus
(91), Egypt (115), Germany (124), Greece (94), Hyrcania (113), India (113, 119), [Lyons
(91)], Macedonia (91), Maeander (104), Nile (104), Numidia (123), Paphos (91), Parthia
(124), Persia (94, 113), Scythians (90, 124), Spain (94), Sparta (94), Syria (91), Syrtes
(90), Tibur (119), Tigris (104).
Persons named:
(i) Philosophers
Stoics: Antipater (92), Ariston of Chios (89, 94, 115), Archedemus (121), Attalus
(108, 110), Cleanthes (94, 107, 108, 113), Chrysippus (104, 108, 113), Panaetius (116),
Posidonius (90, 92, 94, 95, 104, 108, 113, 121), Zeno (94, 95, 98, 101, 102, 104, 107,
108, 114, 115, 122, 124).
Epicureans: Epicurus (97), Metrodorus (98, 99).
Others: Anacharsis (90), Demetrius the Cynic (91), Democritus (90), Diogenes
(90), Fabianus (100), [Metronax (93)], Nausiphanes (88), Parmenides (88), Phaedo
(94), Plato (94, 108), Protagoras (88), Pythagoras (90, 94, 108), Sextius (98, 108),
Socrates (98, 104), Sotion (108), Speusippus (85), Xenocrates (85), Zeno of Elea (88).
(ii) Other Greeks et sim.: Alexander (91, 94, 113, 119), Charondas (90), Darius (94, 119),
Lycurgus (90), Philip of Macedon (94), Pyrrhus (120), Solon (90), Zaleucus (90).
(iii) Romans
Early Rome: Ancus Martius (108), Coruncanius (114), M’. Curius Dentatus (120),
C. Fabricius (98, 120), Horatius [Cocles] (120), Mucius Scaevola (98), Pyrrhus (120),
Romulus (108), Servius Tullius (108).
Punic Wars: Regulus (98, 114), Scipio (108).
Civil Wars: [Atticus (118)], Agrippa (94), Augustus (114), M. Brutus (95), Caesar
(94, 95, 97, 104, 118), Calvus (94), Cato [Minor] (94, 95, 97, 98, 104, 117, 118, 119,
120, 122), Cicero (97, 100, 107, 108, 111, 114, [118], Excerpta), M. Crassus (104, 119),
Maecenas (92, 101, [114], 120), Marius (94), [Marullus (99)], Plancus (91), Pompey
(94, 95, 97, 104, 118).
Others: Apicius (95, 120), [Acilius] Buta (122), Caecilius (118), Caelius (?) (113),
Cato [Maior] (95, 104), Catulus (97), Appius Claudius (114), P. Clodius (97), L.
Crassus (114), [C. Scribonius] Curio (114), [Annaeus] Gallio (104), [C. Sempronius]
Gracchus (114), Jugurtha (94), Laelius (95, 104), Licinus (119, 120), [Liberalis (91)],
Mithridates (94), Natta (122), P. Octavius (95), S. Papinius (122), [Pompeia] Paulina
(104), Rutilius [Rufus] (98), Scipio [Aemilianus] (95), [Cornelius Senecio (101)],
Sertorius (94), Themison (95), Tiberius (95, 108, 122), Timagenes (91), [Q Aelius]
Tubero (95, 98, 104, 120), P. Vatinius (94, 118, 120), Vinicius (122).
Writers: Arruntius (114), Asclepiades (95), Cethegus (Excerpta), Dossennus (89),
Ennius (108, Excerpta), Euripides (115), Fenestella (108), Hippocrates (95), Homer
(90, 108), Horace (119, 120), Livy (100), Lucretius (95, 106, 110), Montanus (122),
Naevius (102), Ovid (90, 110, 115), Albinovanus Pedo (122), Pollio (100), Publi-
lius (94, 108), Sallust (109, 114), Sotericus (Excerpta), Tanusius (93), Terence (95),
Themison (95), Varus (122), Virgil (89, 90, 92, 101, 104, 108, 115, 122, Excerpta).
a p pe n d i x 2
From: Letter 86
To: A Dying Light in Corduba
Lindsey Davis’ twelfth ‘Falco’ novel, A Dying Light in Corduba (1996), spreads the
detective’s net all the way out west, to the Spanish homeland of Seneca’s clan, the
Annaei, caught in the after-shadow of his disgrace, not ten years past. Watch his
homage to s c i p i o in Letter 86 disaggregate and recombine here, hosed down and
rerooted.1
Falco persuades downtrodden honest smallholder Marius Optatus to tour the
estate (120–2):
We set off to inspect the olive trees that all the fuss was about.
‘Then we have the olive trees – suffering badly.’
. . . He showed me where he was himself stripping back the soil to expose the roots, then
removing young suckers. Meanwhile the upper branches were being severely pruned to
reduce the trees to a manageable height.
‘Will this harsh treatment set them back?’
‘Olives are tough, Falco. . . .’
‘Is that how they can live so long?’
‘Five hundred years, they say . . . The new cuttings I have planted this month in the
nursery will not bear fruit for five years; it will take at least twenty for them to reach their
best. Yes, the olive business is long-term.’
Nux the Falco dog digs disastrously in the nursery, so Optatus finds he has a
trained-up rival gardening expert on his hands (125):
I picked off the damaged leaves, checked the stem for bruising, redug the planting hole,
found the supporting stake, and firmed in the little tree in the way my grand-uncle had
taught me when I was a small boy. If Optatus was surprised that a street-pounding Roman
knew how to do this, he showed nothing.
The plot thickens. The hunt takes in (259) ‘the oldest Roman town in Hispania’:
Italica, ‘founded by s c i p i o as a colony of veterans’. Optatus, the tenant with
a grievance, reports a terrible accident – the dodgy young hopeful with a secret
crushed by the oil-press on his grandfather’s estate (306), as Falco hastens back,
himself severely battered and bruised, to his lady, Helena, at her senatorial father’s
mansion on his family estate out in the province (308):
1 ‘Only I will know’ – quoth our friend the author (per epistulam electronicam).
175
176 Appendix 2
The bath-house at the villa was designed for hardy old republicans. I won’t say it was crude,
but if anyone hankered for the unluxurious days of dark, narrow bathing places with mere
slits for windows, this was ideal. You undressed in the cold room. Unguents were stored on
a shelf in the warm room, which was certainly not very warm at night; you got up a sweat
by vigorously shaking an oil jar to try to dislodge the congealed contents . . . The promised
hot water had been used up by someone else.
‘That’s just typical!’ Helena stormed moodily. ‘I’ve had three days of this, Marcus, and
I’m ready to scream.’
In a Didius who-did-it, description has to be suspect. Under pressure of literary
genre. As ironic as, less tart than, under Seneca’s direction at vat i a ’s in Epp. 55,
we home on the villains of the piece (356–7):
The Quinctius estate was much like others I had visited, though it bore signs of the absentee
landlord at his most astute: abundant flocks, tended by the fewest possible shepherds, and
secondary cereal crops growing below the olive trees. Everything looked in respectable
condition. Moneymakers don’t neglect their land. Believe me, there was a great deal of land.
The house had charm and character. Thick walls to keep it cool in summer and cosy
in winter. Vine-clad pergolas leading to statues of coy maidens. A separate bath-house. A
terrace for airy exercise. It spoke of wealth, yet wealth possessed by an honest country family.
Long harvest lunches taken with the tenantry. Girls with pink cheeks and boys who were
keen on horseflesh. Life lived with a constant supply of fresh fodder and an old earthenware
jug of home-produced wine always ready to hand. Amazing. Even their damned house lied.
True and false. Olives + bath-house. Two morals and two villas. Between them,
Seneca.
One old letter and one new novel.
Yes, Aegialus-Optatus, ‘Old trees can transplant.’
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Index of passages discussed
Ad Herennium 4.22: 94 3.1.2: 129

3.3.3: 159 n. 4
Callimachus, Iambi 4.98–100: 144 4.2.2: 124 n. 2
Cato, De agri cultura 5.3–7, 8–9: 129
27: 137 n. 21 5.9.1–3, 8: 123–4 n. 2
28.1, 32.1: 123 n. 2
34.1: 135 n. 19 Davis, Lindsey, Dying Light in Corduba: 175–6
45.1: 123 n. 2 Dioscorides 2.175.1: 142
49.1: 133, 124 n. 2
61.2: 123 n. 2 Ennius
Celsus 2.15: 71 n. 7 Annals
Charisius, Ars grammatica 1.57.5: 142 n. 6 80–100 W: 168
Cicero 95–6 W: 168
Ad Atticum 280 W: 142
1.12: 44 320–1 W: 103 n. 21
16: 44 n. 12 Epigrams
De diuinatione 1.105–7: 168 1–2 W: 102
De finibus 2.106: 103 n. 20 3–4 W: 101
De legibus 5–6 W: 102
1.1–3: 166–7 Scipio
2.56–7: 101 fr. 6 W: 142
De officiis fr. 13 W: 103 n. 20
1.139: 75–6
3.1–4: 67–8 Gellius 12.2.2–13: 102 n. 16
De oratore 1.160–2: 155 n. 23
De re publica Herodotus 3.25: 95
6.10: 165 n. 19 Hesiod, Theogony 30: 142 n. 7
13, 25–6: 103 n. 22 Horace
fr. 3–4 K: 102 Epistles
Marius 1.16: 2–3
fr. 15–16 C: 166–7 Odes
fr. 17 C: 168 1.3: 138
Pro Sestio 93: 166 3.13: 156–7 n. 26
Tusculanae disputationes 5.49: 102 3.30.2: 77 n. 16
Columella 4.8.13–15: 101
∼ Virgil, Georgics: 135–7, 137 n. 20 Satires
1.5.2: 106 n. 32 1.1.20–1: 117
2.7.1–2: 135–6 1.2: 130 n. 11
2.8–10: 136–7 1.2.27: 117, 118 n. 55
2.9.17–28, 10.5–14, 25–8: 135 1.2.114–16: 117
3–4: 129 1.3.11–17: 117
184
Index of passages discussed 185
1.4.11: 156 17.125–6: 123 n. 2
1.4.92: 117–18, 118 n. 55 17.206: 157 n. 27
18.117–22: 137–8
Isidore, Etymologiae 25.9: 121
14.8.40: 89 n. 33 Propertius 4.9.65–6: 107 n. 33
17.6.14: 157 n. 27
Quintilian 10.1.88: 102 n. 16
Lactantius, Institutiones diuinae 1.18.10:
101 Scaevola fr. 1 C: 166–7
Livy Seneca
1.38.4: 41 De constantia sapientis 17.3: 78
28.44.18: 97, 145 Epistles
30.45.6: 99 ∼ Horace, Satires 1: 117–18, 138
38.50.6–57.8: 97–8, 103 n. 20 ∼ Virgil, Georgics: 51–2, 129–38
38.60.10: 98 1–11: 2, 6–18
Lucan 2.2–5: 8, 147
3.409–10: 142 12: 2, 19–27
7.390–1: 41 13–33: 29–31
8.792–3: 76 n. 15 13–48: 31–2
Lucilius 851 W: 77 n. 17 18.7: 155
Lucretius 27.5: 42–3
3.833, 1025, 1034–5: 103 35.4: 157 n. 28
5.33: 147 n. 16 49–62: 32–5
51.11: 33, 105
Macrobius, Saturnalia 53: 158 n. 1
Praefatio 5–10: 48 55: 3, 62–92
2.4.16: 78 n. 20 55.11: 144–5
Martial 11.48: 163 n. 113 58: 35 n. 14, 130, 147–9, 151
58.2–5: 147–8
Ovid 58.5: 76 n. 15
Amores 1.12.29–30: 77 n. 16 59: 151–3
Fasti 4.905, 937, 942: 41 n. 5 59.3–4: 130, 151
Metamorphoses 11.31: 164 n. 16 59.7: 105
60.1: 1, 153
Paulus ap. Festum 13: 114 n. 47 60.4: 75 n. 12
Petronius, Satyrica 73.2: 107 63–83: 35–9
Plato, Apology 30e5: 147 66.2: 131
Pliny 68: 36, 74 n. 11
Epistles 70.20: 72 n. 8
1.3: 85–6 79.6: 153
3.7: 138 83.14–15: 43
Natural History 84–88: 3, 29, 46–52
∼ Virgil, Georgics: 137–8 86: 3, 53–61, 93–138
8.162: 130 n. 10 89–124: 40–4
11.254: 77 n. 18 91.16: 42
12.6–12: 25 n. 6 94.63: 169 n. 27
14: 129 95.67–73: 130
14.49–51: 159 n. 4 100: 43, 153–6
14.49: 160 104.1: 3, 40
15.1–23: 129 105.1: 3, 40
15.3: 132–3 108.33–5: 102
15.4.4: 124 n. 2, 129 n. 9 110.1: 3, 40
16.93: 89 n. 31 112.1: 104
16.234: 164 122.11–13: 41
17.67: 124 n. 3 123.1: 3, 40
186 Index of passages discussed
Seneca (cont.) 1.34.1: 137 n. 21
124.1: 129–30 1.40.4: 123 n. 2
Excerpta: 28–9 1.41.4: 132 n. 14
De otio 6.4: 100 n. 14 1.41.6: 123 n. 2
Silius 2.5.14: 147 n. 16
7.106–7: 104 n. 26 3.17.2–10: 82–3
13.235: 141 Virgil
13.466–87, 514–15: 104 Aeneid
15.18: 169 1.5–7: 42
15.77–8: 102 n. 17 1.159–61: 73 n. 10
15.119–20: 169 1.432–3: 46
15.340–2: 104 3.23: 141 n. 4
15.441: 141 3.72: 37
Statius, Siluae 4.653: 26 n. 8
1.3.2, 24–5, 35–7, 43–6: 156 n. 24 5.344: 131
1.3.53–7: 109 n. 37 6.278–9: 130
2.2.14–15: 73 n. 10 6.513–14: 153
3.1.82, 88: 161 n. 8 6.773, 776: 41
Strabo, Chrestomathiae 5.39: 89 n. 33 6.842–6: 104
Suetonius 7.411–13: 42
Life of Augustus 6, 94.6–7: 161 n. 8 9, Nisus and Euryalus: 31
Life of Terence 5: 162 n. 12 Georgics
1.53–8: 50
Tacitus, Annals 1.125: 164 n. 16
6.27: 7 n. 4 1.176–7: 129–30
13.21: 82 1.195–6: 137
14.1–8: 158 1.197–200: 136–7
15.34: 78 n. 20 1.210–30: 135
15.52: 158–9 1.214: 136
Theocritus: 7.43–4: 142 n. 7 1.215–16: 134–5
Theophrastus, History of Plants 1.219–21: 135, 136
2.1.2: 123 n. 2 1.336–7, 424–6: 51
2.1.3: 124 n. 2 2.1–9: 129
2.5: 150 2.2–3: 132 n. 14
4.13: 150 2.9–176: 131
4.13.4–5: 144 2.57: 132
2.73–82: 140
Valerius Maximus 2.362–70: 124 n. 3
2.10.2: 94–5 2.367: 139 n. 1
5.3.2b: 100 2.420–5: 129
Varro 2.447–8: 141 n. 4
De lingua Latina 3.75–81, 83–5: 130
6.41: 107 n. 33 3.146–50: 147–8, 147
9.10: 77 n. 19 n. 16
Res rusticae 4.144–7: 134 n. 16
1.11.2: 106 n. 32 4.163–4: 46
General Index
NB Persons and Places named in Epp. 12, 55, 86 appear in bold; likewise the other villas named in
the collection.
abhorridus, -e: 142, 142 n. 6 Demetrius Poliorcetes: 6 n. 2

Acherusian lake: 79, 80 n. 25 Dexter: 10
aedilis: 114
Aegialus, Vetulenus: 119, 160–3 ekphrasis: see epideixis
Aetna: 32–3, 38 Ennius, tomb of: 101
Agrippina: 158 Epicurus: 8, 9, 13, 15, 67, 67 n. 1, 79
Alba: 3, 40 n. 2, 42 epideixis: 80, 90–1, 113–14, 142–3
Alburnus: 147 n. 16, 148 epistolarity, ancient: 4
Alexander: 106, 169 n. 27 Epicurus: 15, 16 n. 27, 26, 29–31, 67
ango, angulus, angustus: 106–7, 107 n. 33 ∼ epistoliterarity: 4–5, 43–4
Annaeus Serenus: 43 ∼ mail-boats: 37–8
Ardea: 3, 40 n. 2, 42, 159 postscript, Quote of the Day: 9, 14–15, 16
asilus/myops/oistros: 147–8, 147 n. 16 n. 27, 26, 29–30
Asinius Gallus: 81 Senecan: 5
triangle of reading: 15, 69
Baiae: 32–3, 83, 83 n. 28, 88, 89 n. 33 Etna, see Aetna
bath-house: 34, 53, 106, 112 n. 44 excipio: 89, 89 n. 32
bay: see laurel exonero ciuitatem: 95 n. 6
bean: 135–8
bees make/find honey: 46–7 Fabianus, Papirius: 16, 43, 124 n. 3,
blush: 16 154–5
Buccillus (for Rufillus): 117 Falco, M. Didius: 175–6
fauces: 72 n. 8
Caesar. C. (Julius Caesar / Caligula): Favonius: 89, 89 n. 31
10–11 Felicio: 25–6
Campania: 32–5, 37 fish stocks, private: 82
Cassius Chaerea: 10–11 food for thought: 8, 46–7
Cato Maior: 13, 17–18, 50, 67, 93 fulmen: 104
Cato Minor: 17–18
choke, on reading: 72–3 gardening: 19
Cicero: 165–8 gestatio: 68, 68 n. 3
Letters to Atticus: 31, 44 gradatio, gradus: 112, 112 n. 42
consuetudo: 68, 73, 107 Graeci: 150
copia: 86 grandiscapius: 141–2
Cornelius, cornus: 141
Crassus: 10 Hannibal: 106, 145
Crates: 16 Heraclitus: 24, 26
Cumae: 72 Hercules: 161 n. 8, 169, 169 n. 27
187
188 General Index
Homer, Odyssey: 19, 51 Publilius: 14–15
horror: 103, 141–2, 142 n. 5 Puteoli: 34, 37, 82
Italy: 33 n. 9 radix, rado, ramus, rasilis: 157, 157 n. 27

Remmius Palaemon: 159, 159 n. 4
journey, of reading: 32, 46–7, 48–9, 53–4, 70 retorridus: 127 n. 7
Rome: 8, 13, 39, 159
Laelius: 13, 17 Romulus: 168
‘lathe biosas’: 73–5, 79, 79 n. 24 Rutilius: 160 n. 7
laurel: 169
Lepidus (L. Aemilius/M. Aemilius): 10–11 Satellius Quadratus: 42–3
Liternum: 33, 104 n. 28, 105, 120, 160 satire: 71–3, 89–90, 114, 143–4
live, know how to: 75, 79–80 Scipiadas: 103–4
Lucan: 18 scipio: 104, 141
Lucilius: 31–2, 32 n. 7, 38, 42 Scipio
lux: 12 P. Cornelius Aemilianus: 17–18, 166
lucre: 12 P. Cornelius Africanus: 17–18, 33, 93–138,
Lyons: 40 162–4; epitaph: 100, 102; legend: 94–5,
96–104, 145, 164; re-mythologized: 93–104,
mail-boats: see epistolarity 164; tomb: 93–4, 97–8, 100–1, 138, 164–5
Marius’ oak: 166–7 Metellus: 17–18
metaphor(icity): 150–2 Scylla and Charybdis: 31–2, 38
mos, mores: 17, 29, 44, 107–8, 115, 154 secedo, secessus: 13, 36, 54, 87–8, 96
see consuetudo; soleo Sejanus: 81
Seneca
names, Roman: 77, 160–3 anecdotage: 42–3, 74
Naples: 32, 35–6 Annaeus: 78, 161
Nero: 81, 82, 158–9 asthma: 34–5
Nomentum: 3, 40–1, 41 n. 5, 159 bedridden: 36
blacks out: 35
occurro: 89, 89 n. 32 commends: 90–1
olive: 50, 122, 123–4 n. 2, 124–6, 129, 164 consoles: 43
declaims: 110–15, 116–17
Pacuvius: 7, 7 n. 4, 26 lying down: 53, 93
pauperis cella: 155 ‘misquotes’: 117–18, 133–8, 147 n. 16
perseuero: 9, 27, 31 necrologizes: 43, 76–7
Philosophy, and politics: 67, 73–4, 149, 165, preparation for death: 5, 14 n. 21, 93
168–9 roughs it: 49–50
Roman: 149–51 = senex: 32, 73–4, passim
sacred: 74 storyteller: 40–1, 74–5, 86, 164
Philositus: 25–6 teacher-as-pupil: 26
pinsatio: 125 utters Jeremiad: 14, 107
piscina: 82 viticulturalist: 159
place: 8, 73–7, 91 witness: 105, 120–1, 142–3
plane-tree: 81–2 Seneca’s Epistles
Plato: 35 n. 14, 81, 147–9 location, rare in: 2, 19–20, 44–5
longevity: 149 proper names (persons and places) in:
politics and politics: see philosophy 171–4
Pompeii: 32 shape and extent of corpus: 28–9
Pompey: 10, 16, 37 Senecio, Cornelius: 43
Pomponius: 9, 9 n. 10 Servilius Vatia: 62–91, esp. 78 n. 22
praeparatio mortis: 14 n. 21, 93 shaking, physical, as therapy: 46, 71–2, 79, 84
praeteritio: 73, 76–7, 134 shipwreck of life: 34–5, 49
praetorium: 71, 71 n. 5 Sicily: 31–2, 38
precepts vs exempla: 12, 143 n. 8 Silarus/siler: 147 n. 16
General Index 189
situs: 76–7, 76 n. 16 transilio: 36
hic situs est: 74–7, 76 n. 15, 101–3 transitus: 8
Socrates: 13 translation: 149–51
soleo: 8 transmitto: 8
solium: 116, 116 n. 51 transplantation: 120, 146–7, 150
Spring: 36 see metaphor(icity)
Stilbon: 15–16 turba/turbare: 13
stylistics
‘flow’: 154 Ulysses: 31–2, 34
‘house’: 155, 155 n. 23
‘pruning’: 155 uatia: 77 nn. 18–19, 78
‘water system’: 155–6, 156 n. 24 Vatinius: 77 nn. 18, 20, 78
sub-: 108 Vetulenus, see Aegialus
Sulla: 16, 16 n. 28 uilla
as castle: 105–6
teaching as filiation, not cloning: 47 euripus: 81–2
Tiberius: 81–2 grottoes: 80–1
time: 7, 24–6 as self-portrait: 19–20
chronogram: 25, 26 stopover: 2
tradition: 93–5, 107, 146, 150, 156 as tomb: 138, 164, 166
trans-: 8, 9 n. 11, 12 nn. 18–19, 146–7, 150, 156, water-splash: 81–2, 87
170 see also bath-house; praetorium
transcribo: 9 n. 11 vine: 123–4, 124 nn. 2–3, 127, 128–9
transeo: 8, 46, 147 uopiscus: 156 n. 24
transfero: 8, 12, 12 n. 18, 120, 127 voyage of life: 34, 37, 49 n. 3
transfiguro: 12, 12 n. 18
transfundo: 12 zzz: see asilus

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MORALS AND VILLAS IN

John Henderson explores three letters of Seneca describing visits to

j o h n h e n d e r s o n is Reader in Latin Literature at the University

Cambridge University Press

© John Henderson, 2004

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

isbn-13 978-0-511-18484-0 eBook (NetLibrary)

isbn-13 978-0-521-82944-1 hardback

15 For the panorama, see Boys-Stones (2001).

Twelve steps to haven

The impressive (indelibly imprinting) ﬁrst book shufﬂes twelve composi-

14 Henderson (1997a) 14–21, ‘Rome in the nomen: naming in Latin’.

Gardening is not about those mythical ‘green ﬁngers’. Gardeners know

4 ‘L’kjrasiv (la descriptio) . . . divenne argomento epistolare’ (Scarpat (1975) 277).

Seneca-the-senex fails to recognize anything.

5 See Habinek (1982).

This [anonymous] schema evokes by association our aphorism from

9 On Epp. 12: Henderson (2002a) 27–30.

You can get used to anything

2 The problem reviewed: Cancik (1967) 9.

5 See esp. Schönegg (1999) 175–8. 6 See Russell (1974) 85–8.

From Naples to Puteoli. Running the gauntlet of a gathering downpour

16 See Schrijvers (1990); Edwards (1999) 260–3.

18 Seneca on vacation: see Hijmans (1976) 151–7.

The long and winding mode

The undistributed sequence bracketing Books 11–13 will prove to showcase

6 Henderson (1998) 198–9. 7 Henderson (2000) 11–12.

let ter 84: the beesness

Two days of happy roughing it with my ‘Greatest’ friend (Maximus), min-

7 See Batinski (1993).

Now it must be up to the reader to assimilate the lessons (∼ rewrite your

Now and then; here and there: at s c i p i o ’s

The journey to the villa of Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Hannibal’s

Bound for vat i a ’s

Knocking the self: genuﬂexion, villaﬁcation, vat i a ’s

1 The notion of a broadminded or magnanimous or amateurish ‘eclecticism’ or ‘anti-sectarianism’ in

27 Cf. Schönegg (1999) 74–6 on Epp. 57.

The world of the bath-house: s c i p i o ’s

In ipsa Scipionis Africani uilla

1 See Mayer (1991) 159–60.

scipio and whose army?

8 Tedeschi (1998) 131–2.

10 Cf. Gellius 4.18.3, quoting a speech of Africanus from the Trials.

As he says, Seneca is in mortal danger of ‘sliding into The Scholar and

(1) The traditional regimen (mos fuit priscis):

The composition hitches a ride on the shameless pun contrived between

But ‘a border, a wash all around, on all sides . . . patterned’.

But ‘ceiling hidden away behind glass’.

38 Cf. Statius, Siluae 1.5.36.

But ‘tread nothing but jewels’.

At s c i p i o’s, however, we meet not just the great a f r i c a n v s , but ‘that

40 Cf. Statius, Siluae 1.5.48–9.

46 Cf. Statius, Siluae 2.2.74–82, omni proprium thalamo mare . . .

50 Cf. Statius, Siluae 2.2.45–7.

The appliance of science: s c i p i o ’s

the field trip

seneca joins a team

add the vine

2 Pertinent olive gen.:

Give this horribly mangled remnant the treatment: ‘transplantation’ means

Shafts of light: transplantation and transﬁguration

Composition at s c i p i o’s featured spine-snapping interruption of the ser-

With this ﬂourish, we are meant to have had enough (rupture/rapture),

4 ‘L’kjrasiv (la descriptio) . . . divenne argomento epistolare’ (Scarpat (1975) 277).