CHAPTER VIII SENECA AND HIS VISITORS

‘Videtur mihi cadere in sapientem ægritudo.’—Cic. Tusc. Disp. iii. 4.

Burrus was a man in the prime of life, whose whole bearing was that of an honest and fearless Roman; but his look was gloomy, and those who had seen him when he escorted Nero to the camp and the senate house, noticed how fast the wrinkles seemed to be gathering on his open brow.

We need not repeat the conversation which took place between the friendly ministers, but it was long and troubled. Burrus felt, no less strongly than Seneca, that affairs at Court were daily assuming a more awkward complexion. The mass of the populace, and of the nobles, rejoicing in the general tranquillity, were happily ignorant of facts which filled with foreboding the hearts of the two statesmen. The nobles and the people praised with rapture the speech which Nero had pronounced before the Senate after the funeral honours had been paid to the murdered Claudius. ‘I have,’ he said, ‘no wrongs to avenge; no ill feeling towards a single human being. I will maintain the purity and independence of legal trials. In the Palace there shall be no bribery and no intrigues. I will command the army, but in no particular will I encroach upon the prerogatives of the Conscript Fathers.’ Critics recognised in the speech the style and sentiments of Seneca, but that only showed that at last philosophy was at the helm of state. And the Fathers had really been allowed to enact some beneficent and useful measures. It was the beginning of a period of government of which the public and external beneficence was due to Seneca and the Prætorian Præfect, who acted together in perfect harmony, and with whom Nero was too indolent to interfere. Long afterwards, so great a ruler as Trajan said that he would emulate, but could not hope to equal, the fame of Nero’s golden quinquennium.

But, meanwhile, unknown to the Roman world in general, the ‘golden quinquennium’ was early stained with infamy and blood; and the contemporary Pliny says that all through his reign Nero was an enemy of the human race.9

The turbulent ambition of Agrippina was causing serious misgivings. When the senators were summoned to meet in the Palace she contrived to sit behind a curtain and hear all their deliberations. When Nero was about to receive the Armenian ambassadors she would have scandalised the majesty of Rome by taking her seat unbidden beside him on the throne, if Seneca had not had the presence of mind to whisper to the Emperor that he should step down to meet his mother and lead her to a seat. Worse than this, she had ordered the murder, not only of Narcissus, but of the noble Junius Silanus, whose brother, the affianced suitor of Octavia before her marriage with Nero, she had already got rid of by false accusations which broke his heart. She was doubly afraid of Junius, both because the blood of Augustus flowed in his veins, and because she feared that he might one day be the avenger of his brother, though he was a man of mild disposition. She sent the freedman Helius and the knight Publius Celer, who were procurators in Asia, to poison him at a banquet, and the deed was done with a cynical boldness which disdained concealment. So ended the great-great-grandson of Augustus, whom his great-great-grandfather had just lived to see. It was only with difficulty that Seneca and Burrus had been able to stop more tragedies, and they had succeeded in making the world believe in Nero’s unique clemency by the anecdote, everywhere retailed by Seneca, that when called upon to sign a death-warrant he had exclaimed, ‘I wish I did not know how to write!’ It was looked on as a further sign of grace that he had forbidden the prosecution of the knight Julius Densus, who was charged with favour towards the wronged Britannicus.

But now a new trouble had arisen. Nero began to seek the company of such effeminate specimens of the ‘gilded youth’ of Rome as Otho and Tullius Senecio. They were his ready tutors in every vice, and he was a pupil whose fatal aptitude soon equalled, if it did not surpass, the viciousness of his instructors.

Partly through their bad influence, he had devoted himself heart and soul to Acte, the beautiful freedwoman of Octavia. It was impossible that any secret of the Palace could long be concealed from the vigilant eyes of Agrippina. She had discovered the amour, and had burst into furious reproaches. What angered her was, not that the Emperor should disgrace himself by vice, but that a freedwoman should interfere with the supremacy of her will, and be a rival with her for the affections of her son. A little forbearance, a little calm advice, might have proved a turning point in the life of one who was not yet an abandoned libertine, but rather a shy and timid youth dabbling with his first experiences of wrong. His nature, indeed, was endowed with the evil legacy of many an hereditary taint, but if it was as wax to the stamp of evil, it was not as yet incapable of being moulded into good. But Agrippina committed two fatal errors. At first she was loudly indignant, and when by such conduct she had terrified her son into the confidence of Otho and Senecio, she saw her mistake too late, and flew into the opposite extreme of complaisance. Nero at that time regarded her with positive dread, but his fear was weakened when he saw that, on the least sign of his displeasure, she passed from fierce objurgations to complete submission. In dealing with her son, Agrippina lost the astuteness which had carried her triumphantly through all her previous designs.

But at this point Seneca also made a mistake no less ruinous. If he had remonstrated, and endeavoured to awaken his pupil to honourable ambition, it was not impossible that the world might have found in Nero a better Emperor than most of his predecessors. Instead of this, the philosopher adopted the fatal policy of concession. He even induced his cousin Annæus Serenus, the Præfect of the police, to shield Nero by pretending that he was himself in love with Acte, and by conveying to her the presents which were, in reality, sent to her by the Emperor. Seneca soon learnt by experience that the bad is never a successful engine to use against the worst, and that fire cannot be quenched by pouring oil upon it. When Nero had been encouraged by a philosopher to think lightly of immorality, the reins of his animal nature were seized by ‘the unspiritual god Circumstance,’ and with mad pace he plunged into the abyss.

Burrus had come to tell Seneca that Nero’s passion for Acte was going to such absurd lengths that he talked of suborning two Romans of consular dignity to swear that the slave girl, who had been brought from Asia, was in reality a descendant of Attalus, King of Pergamus! The Senate would be as certain to accept the statement as they had been to pretend belief that Pallas was a scion of Evander and the ancient kings of Arcadia; and Nero had actually expressed to Burrus a desire to divorce OctaviaT2 and marry Acte!

‘What did you say to him?’ asked Seneca.

‘I told him frankly that, if he divorced Octavia, he ought to restore her dower.’

‘Her dower?’

‘Yes—the Roman Empire. He holds it because Claudius adopted him as the husband of his daughter.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He pouted like a chidden boy, and I have not the least doubt that he will remember the answer against me.’

‘But, Burrus,’ said Seneca, ‘I really think that we had better promote, rather than oppose, this love-affair. Acte is harmless and innocent. She will never abuse her influence to injure so much as a fly; nay, more, she may wean Nero from far more dangerous excesses. I think that in this case a little connivance may be the truest policy. To tell you the truth, I have endeavoured to prevent scandal by removing all difficulties out of the way.’

‘You are a philosopher,’ said Burrus, ‘and I suppose you know best. It would not have been my way. We often perish by permitted things. But, since you do not take so serious a view of this matter as I did, I will say no more. Forgive a brief interview. My duties at the camp require my presence. Farewell.’

Seneca, as we have seen, had spent a somewhat agitated day, but he had one more visitor before the afternoon meal. It was the philosopher Cornutus, who had been a slave in the family of the Annæi, but was now free and had risen to the highest literary distinction by his philosophical writings.

‘Cornutus is always a welcome visitor,’ he said, as he rose to greet him; ‘never more so than this morning. I want to consult you, in deep confidence, about the Emperor’s education.’

‘Can Seneca need any advice about education?’ said Cornutus. ‘Who has written so many admirable precepts on the subject?’

Seneca, with infinite plausibility, related to his friend the arguments which he had just used to Burrus. He felt a restless desire that the Stoic should approve of what he had done. To fortify his opinion he quoted Zeno and other eminent philosophers, who had treated graver offences than that of Nero as mere adiaphora—things of no real moment. Cornutus, however, at once tore asunder his web of sophistry.

‘A thing is either right or wrong,’ he said; ‘if it is wrong no amount of expediency can sanction it, no skill of special pleading can make it other than reprehensible. The passions cannot be checked by sanctioning their indulgence, but by training youth in the manliness of self-control. You wish to prevent the Emperor from disgracing himself with the crimes which rendered execrable the reigns of Tiberius and Gaius. Can you do it otherwise than by teaching him that what he ought to do is also what he can do? Is the many-headed monster of the young man’s impulses to be checked by giving it the mastery, or rather by putting it under the dominion of his reason?’

‘I cannot judge by abstract considerations of ethics. I must judge as a statesman,’ said Seneca, somewhat offended.

‘Then, if you are only a statesman, do not pretend to act as a philosopher. I speak to you frankly, as one Stoic to another.’

Seneca said nothing. It was evident that he felt deeply hurt by the bluntness of Cornutus, who paused for a moment, regarding him with a look of pity. Then he continued.

‘If it pains you to hear the truth I will be silent; but if you wish me to speak without reserve, you are committing two fatal errors. You dream of controlling passion by indulging it. You are conceding liberty in one set of vices in the vain hope of saving Nero from another. But all vices are inextricably linked together. And you have committed a second mistake, not only by addressing your pupil in language of personal flattery, but also by inflating him with a belief in his own illimitable power.’10

‘Nero is Emperor,’ answered Seneca curtly, ‘and, after all, he can do whatever he likes.’

‘Yet even as Emperor he can be told the truth,’ replied Cornutus. ‘I for one ventured to offend him yesterday.’

‘In what way?’

‘Your nephew Lucan was belauding Nero’s fantastic verses, and said he wished Nero would write four hundred volumes. “Four hundred!” I said; “that is far too many.” “Why?” said Lucan; “Chrysippus, whom you are always praising, wrote four hundred.” “Yes,” I answered, “but they were of use to mankind!” Nero frowned portentously, and I received warning looks from all present; but if a true man is to turn flatterer to please an Emperor, what becomes of his philosophy?’

‘Yes,’ sighed Seneca: ‘but your pupil Persius is a youth of the sweetest manners and the purest heart; whereas Nero is—Nero.’

‘A finer young Roman than Persius never lived,’ replied the Stoic, ‘but if I had encouraged Persius in the notion that vice was harmless, Persius might have been—Nero.’

‘Cornutus,’ said the statesman—and as he said it he sighed deeply—‘your lot is humbler and happier than mine. I do not follow, but I assent; I am crushed by an awful weight of uncertainty, and sometimes life seems a chaos of vanities. I wish to rise to a loftier grade of virtue, but I am preoccupied with faults. All I can require of myself is, not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad.’11

‘He who aims highest,’ said the uncompromising freedman, ‘will reach the loftiest ideal. And surely it is hypocrisy to use fine phrases when you do not intend to put your own advice into practice.’

Seneca was always a little touchy about his style, and he was now thoroughly angry, for he was not accustomed to be thus bluntly addressed by one so immeasurably beneath him in rank. ‘Fine phrases!’ he repeated, in a tone of deep offence. ‘It pleases you to be rude, Cornutus. Perhaps the day will come when the “fine phrases” of Seneca will still be read, though the name of Cornutus, and even of Musonius, is forgotten.’

‘Very possibly,’ answered the uncompromising freedman. ‘Nevertheless, I agree with Musonius that stylists who do not act up to their own precepts should be called fiddlers and not philosophers.’

When Cornutus rose to leave, the feelings of the most envied man in Rome were far from enviable. He would have given much to secure the Stoic’s approval. And yet the sophistries by which he blinded his own bitter feelings were unshaken. ‘Cornutus,’ he said to himself, ‘is not only discourteous but unpractical. Theory is one thing; life another. We are in Rome, not in Plato’s Atlantis.’

Seneca lived to find out that facing both ways is certain failure, and that a man cannot serve two masters.

In point of fact the struggle was going on for the preponderance of influence over Nero. Agrippina thought that she could use him as a gilded figurehead of the ship of state, while she stood at the helm and directed the real course. Burrus and Seneca, distrusting her cruelty and ambition, believed that they could render her schemes nugatory, and convert Nero into a constitutional prince. Both efforts were alike foiled. The passions which were latent in the temperament of the young Emperor were forced into rank growth by influences incomparably less virile than that of his mother, and incomparably more vile than those of the soldier and the philosopher. Otho was a more effective tutor than Seneca, and Seneca’s own vacillation paved the way for Otho’s corrupting spell. Claudius had been governed by an ‘aristocracy of valets;’ Nero was to be governed neither by the daughter of Germanicus nor by the Stoic moralist, but by a despicable fraternity of minions, actors, and debauchees.