Читать книгу Letters from a Stoic - Donald Robertson - Страница 12

After spending about a decade convalescing in Egypt, Seneca finally returned to Rome in the year 31, during the rule of Tiberius. He soon rose to the office of quaestor, the first rung on the Roman cursus honorum, or course of offices, which earned him the right to sit in the senate. The elderly Emperor Tiberius finally passed away in 37 CE. According to some accounts, he was poisoned or smothered by Caligula, his grand-nephew and adopted grandson, who succeeded him as emperor.

Seneca appears at first to have pursued a promising legal career. However, according to the historian, Cassius Dio, he was almost executed by Caligula, merely because he ‘pleaded a case well in the senate while the emperor was present’. Presumably, Caligula didn't like the direction in which Seneca was influencing the senate and therefore saw his eloquence as a threat:

Gaius [Caligula] ordered him to be put to death, but afterwards let him off because he believed the statement of one of his female associates, to the effect that Seneca had a consumption in an advanced stage and would die before a great while. (Cassius Dio, 59.19)

It was perhaps following this incident that Seneca ‘lost the desire to plead’ and, as he puts it, later also the ability. Around this time, shortly after his return to Rome, he became known more as a writer and rhetorician. The Consolation to Marcia, believed to be the earliest of his known works, is thought to date from around 40 CE, when he was approaching middle age. It is, like his other consolations, an open letter, although it reads more like a modern essay. Marcia was a wealthy and influential Roman noble, the daughter of Aulus Cremutius Cordus, a famous historian. She had been mourning the loss of her son for three long years. Seneca employs typical Stoic arguments, not so much to console her empathically as to persuade her to accept her loss, finish her period of mourning, and move on. We can probably infer from Seneca's continued output as a writer, and reports of his growing celebrity, that his early letters sparked public interest and were well received.

Meanwhile in the political realm, Caligula's rule was becoming increasingly tyrannical. In 39 CE, the emperor exiled his own sisters, Julia Livilla and Agrippina the Younger, for involvement in a failed plot to overthrow him. As we'll see, both of these powerful women were friends of Seneca and their stories are closely interlinked. In 41 CE, Caligula was assassinated by a faction of his own praetorian guard. Reputedly, a group of praetorians sympathetic to imperial rule found his uncle, Claudius, cowering in fear behind a curtain, where he was hiding from the assassins. They whisked him away to the safety of their camp where he was acclaimed emperor in place of his nephew. Seneca's troubles, however, were about to worsen.