Sublime

Julius Canus was executed soon afterward—but at least, so Seneca assures us, he went out with true philosophical dignity.

While Seneca was struggling to remove himself to the view from above, there were important developments in Nero’s court.

The names you encounter in this book—Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca—belonged to, respectively, a Roman emperor, a former slave who triumphed to become an influential lecturer and friend of the emperor Hadrian, and a famous playwright and political adviser. There were Stoics like Cato the Younger, who was an admired politician; Zeno was a

Seneca’s presentation of Stoicism is distinctive in a number of ways. He writes constantly about suicide, death, and the briefness of life—apparently much more than the Greek Stoics had done. He is also focused on practical, as opposed to theoretical, advantages of the Stoic way of life. Seneca made a number of original contributions to the Stoic

“Trust me, real joy is a serious thing. Do you think someone can, in the charming expression, blithely dismiss death with an easy disposition? Or swing open the door to poverty, keep pleasures in check, or meditate on the endurance of suffering? The one who is comfortable with turning these thoughts over is truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful.

“The first thing to do—don’t get worked up. For everything happens according to the nature of all things, and in a short time you’ll be nobody and nowhere, even as the great emperors Hadrian and Augustus are now. The next thing to do—consider carefully the task at hand for what it is, while remembering that your purpose is to be a good human being.

Certainly Stoics were known to counsel retirement from politics (a theme in Seneca’s own life as he sought Nero’s permission for retirement, unsuccessfully), and they were thought to believe that upheaval is worse than lawless tyranny. Plutarch reports that Brutus (a Platonist) questioned potential coconspirators in the assassination of Julius

Seneca’s death scene is thus a moment when the veil is stripped away, when the philosopher can finally, at last, speak truth to power (Fig. 4.5