Читать книгу Letters from a Stoic - Donald Robertson - Страница 9

Seneca's writings employ rhetorical methods to paint a picture of his life that is, in many ways, quite at odds with the historical evidence. For instance, those who read only the Moral Letters, written to his friend Lucilius, are bound to form a very different impression of Seneca than those who consult other Roman sources about his life. Indeed, what Seneca tells us about himself often says more about how he wished to appear than about how he actually was in reality. For example, he was by profession a rhetoric tutor. However, he says very little in his writings about his passion for rhetoric, his position as an imperial speechwriter, or his relationship with Nero's court. He wants to present himself, first and foremost, as a Stoic philosopher.

A second example is the way Seneca describes his banishment to the island of Corsica. Corsica was a thriving colony for wealthy Romans, long known for exporting wine. Seneca almost certainly lived in relative luxury there, probably accompanied by his wife, and attended by a large retinue of slaves. Perhaps slaves even carried him around Corsica in a sedan chair, his typical mode of transportation in the later writings (e.g. Moral Letters, 55). Seneca chose, however, to portray himself as stranded on a ‘barren rock’ where he eked out a very austere and lonely existence, surrounded by uncivilized foreigners. In doing so, Emily Wilson notes, he appears to be drawing inspiration from the earlier writings of the poet Ovid, who was exiled to a remote town called Tomis, beside the Black Sea, at the edge of the Roman Empire on the so-called Scythian Frontier. Corsica, by contrast, is off the coast of Italy, just two days' sailing from the port of Ostia, near Rome. Today, it's a popular holiday destination.

The enduring success with which Seneca reconstructed his own persona is perhaps best illustrated by the curious way in which another man's face was, for many decades, mistaken for his. Seneca tells us that he suffered throughout life from some kind of chronic lung condition, possibly pulmonary tuberculosis. He says that he ‘became totally emaciated’ through illness and often felt like taking his own life. He was only stopped by the thought that his loving father, who was now advanced in years, would be distraught at losing his son. However, Seneca's writings often contain conflicting accounts. He also says that it was philosophy that saved him from committing suicide:

My studies were my salvation. I ascribe it to philosophy that I recovered and got stronger. It is to her that I owe my life, and that is the least of what I owe her. (Moral Letters, 78.3)

This and similar remarks about his inner struggle, and his embrace of simplicity and austerity, shape the perception many readers form of Seneca the man.

A bronze bust discovered at Herculaneum in 1794 was believed at first to depict Seneca, whose appearance was otherwise unknown at the time. The face was suitably haggard, slightly emaciated, with straggly hair and beard, and an intense, perhaps even angst-ridden, expression. This image was widely replicated and found its way into works of art and book illustrations. Today it frequently accompanies quotations from Seneca on the Internet. However, it is not Seneca.

This bust is now known as the Pseudo-Seneca and is believed to be modelled on an earlier Greek sculpture, perhaps of the poet Hesiod. In 1813, a double-herm – a single sculpture composed of two busts – was discovered, dating from the third century CE, which depicts Socrates and Seneca back to back. Seneca's name is conveniently engraved upon his chest. Real Seneca looks completely different from Pseudo-Seneca. He is an overweight, bald-headed man, with a double chin, heavy jowls, pursed lips, and an emotionless, perhaps slightly aloof expression.

Of course, we can't tell much about Seneca's character from his facial appearance. What we do know is that Seneca's modern readers have tended to come away from his writings with an image of him more like Pseudo-Seneca than real Seneca. In real life, perhaps unsurprisingly, Seneca looked less like our stereotypes of an anguished poet-philosopher and more like a typical billionaire Roman senator. ‘It seems the face of a businessman or bourgeois', as James Romm put it, ‘a man of means who ate at a well-laden table’. Seneca's writings had once again created an image that proved to be dramatically at odds with the truth.

With these notes of caution in mind, we may proceed to examine the main events of Seneca's highly eventful life.