IMAGO_FINALIS

Curating the Future in Seneca’s Epistulae Morales

Mason Wheelock-Johnson

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

(Classics)

at the

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

2021

Date of final oral examination: 05/20/2021

The dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee:

Alex Dressler, Associate Professor, Classics and Ancient Near Eastern Studies

Jeffrey Beneker, Professor, Classic and Ancient Near Eastern Studies

Emily Fletcher, Associate Professor, Philosophy

Grant Nelsestuen, Associate Professor, Classics and Ancient Near Eastern Studies

For my parents

Si agricolam arbor ad fructum perducta delectat, si pastor ex

fetu gregis sui capit voluptatem, si alumnum suum nemo aliter

intuetur quam ut adulescentiam illius suam iudicet, quid

evenire credis iis qui ingenia educaverunt et quae tenera

formaverunt adulta subito vident? – Ep. 34.1

Acknowledgments

Graduate education is not a walk in the park, and completing my dissertation in the midst

of a global pandemic has not lessened this fact. Any thanks that I give here cannot possibly sum

up the contributions that each fo the following and more have made to bringing me to this point,

but I hope that I can do brief justice to it by including mention of it here. As such, I am

incredibly grateful for the support that has allowed me to continue to survive and produce this

dissertationver the last two years. I give great thanks that the Classical and Ancient Near Eastern

Studies department extended me financial support to complete my dissertation by nominating for

fellowships both from the Graduate School and through the Institute for Research in the

Humanities, and I would like to thank Carl Reinhold for his generous support of the Robert J.

Reinhold Dissertation Fellowship.

This dissertation would not have been possible without the kind, rigorous, and patient

support and feedback of Dr. Alex Dressler, my advisor, without whom this dissertation would

not exist. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Jeffrey Beneker, Dr. Emily

Fletcher, and Dr. Grant Nelsestuen, whose feedback on the final product and on my previous

years’ coursework throughout my graduate education has been invaluable. The faculty in the

Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies department have provided me with incredible

support, shaping my approach to Greek and Roman language and culture, preparing me for life

in the wider world, and providing a welcoming environment to talk about ancient language or the

Premier League or what have you. So, I would like to thank Dr. William Aylward, Dr. Will

Brockliss, Dr. Paula Gottlieb, Dr. Jeremy Hutton, Dr. Dan Kapust, Dr. Laura McClure, Dr. Jim

McKeown, Dr. Nandini Pandey, and Dr. Patricia Rosenmeyer. Also, without the guidance and

care of Bill Bach and Toni Landis, I would never have been able to put everything together to

iii

reach this point. I could not possibly name all of my classmates over the years, graduate and

undergraduate, whose insights, discussions, or flippant comments formed my understanding of

Latin and Greek language and culture, but I hope that these individuals know how much value

they have added to my work and my life.

If it is hard to thank my academic mentors and peers, it is impossible to give enough

thanks to my friends and family who have supported me throughout this time. I am so

appreciative of the labor that Claire Trivax, Ryan Scott, Pete Thomas, and Kyle Winn put into

reading and editing things so beyond their concern just to help me. Thank you to Anne-Marie

and Martin, without whose love and hospitality my life in Madison would be immeasurably

worse. Thank you to my parents, Pat and Kevin, who have loved and nurtured me and my

curiosity from an early age, even when it comes to Latin philosophy. Without you, none of this

or anything else would be possible. I also want to thank my partner, Bailey, who has put up with

me throughout all of my graduate career and especially during the year and a half of lockdown

and stress that aligned with the dissertation. I love you, and I could not have done this without

you. Finally, I want to send special thanks to Woodford and Susan, the two best dogs and friends

to go outside and recharge with.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION – MISE EN SENECA ....................................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER 1 – CURO, ERGO SUM ............................................................................................................................. 28

CHAPTER 2 – OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS ........................................................................................................... 64

CHAPTER 3 – FROM METAPHOR TO METAPHYSICS ...................................................................................... 102

CHAPTER 4 – HAND-WRITING ............................................................................................................................. 142

CONCLUSION – VALE ............................................................................................................................................. 180

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................................................... 182

Mise en Seneca

In what is considered to be his magnum opus, 1927’s Being and Time, Martin Heidegger

discusses his conception of Sorge, “care or concern,” by appealing to the antiquity of his position

through a juxtaposition of two Latin authors. On the one hand, he brings forth a myth from the

Fabulae of Hyginus, No. CCXX, which discusses how Cura, the divine personification of care,

shapes human beings out of clay from a riverbed. On the other, he turns to Lucius Annaeus

Seneca, better known as Seneca the Younger, who explains in the final extant letter of his

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (EM), “Nature accomplishes the good of the one (i.e., god), and

care that of the other (i.e., the human being)” (Ep. 124.14, ex his ergo unius bonum natura

perficit, dei scilicet, alterius cura, hominis). This positive connotation differs from the use of the

word by previous authors, who use care largely in the sense of anxieties or troubles, like Horace

does at Satires II.7.113-5:

…teque ipsum vitas fugitivus et erro,

iam vino quaerens, iam somno fallere curam,

frustra: nam comes atra premit sequiturque fugacem.

And you flee yourself, a fugitive and a wanderer, seeking to deceive your trouble

in vain, now with wine, now with sleep: for the dark companion presses you and

follows you as you flee.

The alignment of the Good and the divine in Seneca stands out markedly compared to the dark

companion, which Horace describes. As Luciano Perelli (1994) points out, Seneca stands out

from other Latin authors in having a largely positive conception of care (cura) that is more akin

Traina (2011: 15) links this passage via Ovid (Met. 4.461) to Seneca in terms of the image of fleeing oneself, but

he does not comment on the change of the connotation of cura.

to Heidegger’s.

For Seneca, care is not a trouble, for it is care which “accomplishes” the Good

for human beings.

In this dissertation, I take Heidegger’s unexpected reference to the obscure and critically

denigrated mythographer Hyginus as a clue to how to read Seneca and understand his definition

of the Good in a human life. I explore the EM through close philological and etymological study

of the concept of care in order to show its centrality to the work, building on the analyses of Brad

Inwood (2005), Jula Wildberger (2006b), Shadi Bartsch (2006), Alex Dressler (2016), and

others, who have sought to rehabilitate the image of Seneca as a philosopher from the evaluation

of previous generations. Current scholarship pushes back against the evaluation of Seneca as a

sourcebook for previous Greek philosophical positions that is both too bombastic when it comes

to morality and too freewheeling to present a coherent philosophical system. However, this

dissertation joins the efforts of those above to show Seneca as a proper philosopher in his own

right, one who understands philosophy in a practical way and uses concrete, imagistic language

to communicate this practical understanding of philosophy. Using the mythical and allegorical

work of Hyginus as a guide—highlighted by Heidegger but generally ignored by classicists—this

dissertation will show how Seneca systematically evokes care in a conscious network of images

throughout the EM as a key concept which ties together all of the letters and Seneca’s entire

philosophical project. The common tie of Seneca’s use of care in the EM is care as the proper use

of time, and the activity of care is that which emphasizes the future over and above the past and

present.

The overarching metaphor, to which Seneca’s descriptions of care as a physical activity

appeal, is what I shall refer to as the “hand of care.” Seneca uses the language of hands—direct

This dissertation does not seek to make any definitive claims about the relationship of Heidegger and Seneca, but

the connection of Stoicism to existentialism is made (and illustrated) by Mounier (1962).

references to the body part as well as to activities such as lifting, throwing, crafting—to develop

a positive conception of care as a key to self-realization; this also extends to include imagery of

manual labor and slavery. My approach owes much to the spirit of George Lakoff and Mark

Johnson’s (2003) approach to everyday metaphorization in language, which resonates with

Seneca’s project of using the quotidian as a path toward philosophical instruction.

I also argue

that the metaphorical hand of care which Seneca deploys in the EM appeals specifically to the

Latin myth of Cura, which personifies her as an artisan.

Fabulae 220 of Hyginus, a 1

Century

CE Latin mythographer,

reads as follows:

Cura cum quendam fluvium transieret, vidit cretosum lutum, sustulit cogitabunda

et coepit fingere hominem. Dum deliberat secum quidnam fecisset, intervenit Iovis;

rogat eum Cura ut ei daret spiritum quod facile ab Iove impetravit. Cui cum vellet

Cura nomen suum imponere, Iovis prohibuit suumque nomen ei dandum esse dixit.

Dum de nomine Cura et Iovis disceptarent, surrexit et Tellus suumque nomen ei

imponi debere dicebat, quandoquidem corpus suum praebuisset. Sumpserunt

Saturnum iudicem; quibus Saturnus aequus videtur iudicasse: “Tu Iovis quoniam

spiritum dedisti <animam post mortem accipe; Tellus, quoniam corpus praebuit>

corpus recipito. Cura quoniam prima eum finxit, quamdiu vixerit Cura eum

possideat; sed quoniam de nomine eius controversia est, homo vocetur quoniam ex

humo videtur esse factus.

When Cura was going across a certain river, she saw some clay-filled mud, wrapped

in thought she lifted it up and began to fashion a person. While she is deliberating

with herself just what she had made, Jove interrupts; Cura asks him to give to this

spirit, which she easily obtained from Jove. When Cura wanted to put her own name

on it, Jove held her back and said that his name was to be given to it. While Cura

and Jove were debating about the name, Tellus also rose up and was saying that her

name ought to be put on it, seeing as she had offered up her own body. They got

hold of Saturn as a judge: Saturn seems to them to have judged fair: “You, Jove,

since you gave the spirit, take the soul after death; Tellus, since you offered up the

body, take back the body. Cura, since she first fashioned this, for as long as it has

lived let Cura possess it; but since there is dispute concerning its name, let it be

called homo since it seems to have been made from the dirt.

Bartsch, 2009: 213; Wildberger, 2006b: xi–xix

For more on the figure of Hyginus, cf. iii below

The text used is that of Marshall (1993), and the notes on the text are those from his edition. Translation is my

own, with some reference to that of Hamilton (2013).

Cura’s activity in the myth is described by verbs for making (fingere, facere) as she crafts human

beings with her hands, and the other activities, in which she engages, like lifting (tollere) and

taking (sumere), underscore the link between hands and care through metaphors based in human

physicality.

The etymology which the myth offers, connecting humans to the dirt from which they

were made (humus à homo), is specifically Latin, which makes this myth a specifically Roman

or Italic story.

Among the Stoic authors extant for us today, Seneca is unique in writing in Latin,

even including his native Italian contemporary Stoic, Musonius Rufus.

This authorial linguistic

choice, as shall be discussed below,

marks Seneca as a philosopher addressing a specifically

Latin speaking crowd, taking full advantage of the conventions of Roman literature and Latin

language. Seneca’s turn to Hyginus follows this same pattern, adding on traditional Latin-Italic

religious and mythographical content to this self-conscious Latin philosophical style. To fully

appreciate the presentation of Stoic moral pedagogy, time, and the Good that the Epistulae

Morales portray, we must reckon with Seneca’s use of the backdrop of this Roman myth of Cura.

Seneca uses the concept of care throughout the work to take technical elements of Stoic

philosophy and apply them concretely in a specific Latin-speaking Roman cultural milieu.

“The Care of the Self”

The discussion of care as it appears in the work of Seneca must call to mind the study of

Michel Foucault (1986), who wrote the eponymous book on the “care of the self,” chronicling

Werth, 1901: 25-7; Smith and Trzaskoma, 2007:xlviii; Guidorizzi, 2000: 488 n. 955

Ross and Griffin (2012) for a brief summary of Musonius Rufus’ biography; compare also the “Imperial Stoics”

Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, as well as the summaries from Hierocles and Aëtius discussed in Reydams-Schils

(2005)

Cf ii below.

the change in sexual and marital relations from Classical Greece into the Roman Imperial period.

Foucault helpfully elaborates several techniques which were deployed in a move towards a

renegotiation of social relations between these periods in response to the differing political

orders which arose during the shift from Classical Greece through Imperial Rome. These

practices include the daily review (meditatio), as well as the practice of journaling

(ὑπομνήματα).

Foucault takes his title from a reformulation of Seneca’s use of “care for

myself” (cura mei) at Ep. 121.17. He equates Seneca’s concept with the Greek ἐπιμελεία

ἑαυτοῦ, placing Seneca’s formulation of care in a tradition leading back to Socrates.

However, many scholars have argued, and I agree, that in pushing back against pre-

existing “individualist” theses,

Foucault overemphasizes the social construction of this attitude,

particularly in terms of what he calls the “crisis of subjectification.”

Martha Nussbaum (1994:

5) points out the absence of philosophical argument as a force of shaping the ethical subject in

Foucault’s analysis.

As Pierre Hadot (1995: 206-7) notes: “The description M. Foucault gives

of what… he prefers to call ‘techniques of the self,’ is precisely focused far too much on the

‘self,’ or at least on a specific conception of the self.” In light of this project, Foucault is right to

highlight the aspect of care as labor, as something which requires physical exertion and work,

but the nature of this labor is not particularly aesthetic, as Foucault would have it.

Given the

Foucault, 1986: 49-53; cf. Foucault, 1997.

Foucault, 1986: 47. Warren (2001: 102-5) discusses this in terms of μελετή θανάτου and the Phaedo, and this

morbid concern is picked up by Hamilton (2013: 81), with reference to Foucault (2007: 128-9). While Foucault

turns to ἐπιμελεία as Greek equivalent for Latin cura, Heidegger (SZ 199 n. vii) provides Greek μέριμνα in a

conscious effort to build off of a “Helleno-Christian” interpretation, linking Augustine to Aristotle. As we shall see,

neither appeals to the Greek adequately captures what Seneca is doing in the EM.

Foucault, 1986: 42

On the “crisis of subjectification”, Foucault, 1986: 95. Bartsch (2006: 251-5), in addition to her own unique

criticisms, provides a bibliography of previous objectors to Foucault’s interpretation, both in terms of his aesthetic

criterion as well as his social thesis.

Though, one may perhaps forgive Foucault’s omission when it comes to Seneca among his chosen authors, given

the Latin philosophers’ varied attacks on syllogisms. cf. Cooper 2006.

So Hadot, (1995:211), who also accuses Foucault of misrepresenting ancient sculpture in his picture of

aestheticization, saying that (1995: 102) “for the ancients, sculpture was an art which ‘took away,’ as opposed to

image of Cura from Hyginus as a goddess working with the dirt, the aesthetic value of beauty has

to be reevaluated in terms of the humble material and the varied and vile deaths, which Seneca

counts among proper Stoic lives.

Because of Foucault’s description of the many methods by which students of philosophy,

particularly Stoics, practiced their meditation and internal review of their activity, the question of

the relation of care to the self has been relegated to the background in favor of grappling with the

larger question of the nature of the self in antiquity. As Hadot notes in the above quotation,

Foucault has a particular conception of the self which underlies his thesis, a post-Cartesian

concept based on the interiority of the mental,

which he sees developing in the Roman imperial

period and which Christopher Gill (2006) characterizes as “subjective-individualist.” Instead,

Gill appeals to the Stoics’ belief in psychophysical and psychological holism – that matter and

soul are an inseparable unity and that the soul itself is an indivisible unit – to argue that Stoics

including Seneca had an “objective-participant” model of the self, since the self is ultimately on

display for all and woven into a fabric of social relations in which the individual participates.

her discussion of the Senecan self, Shadi Bartsch notes the diminished role of the social in

Seneca’s corpus,

and in the EM in particular the outside world is nearly anonymized, apart from

a few pointed scenes, as John Henderson catalogues.

Thus, in this reflection to oneself—

painting, an art which ‘added on.’ Given Foucault’s genealogical-cum-archaeological method, it is not surprising

that his thesis shares elements of the Nietzschean ideal of living beautifully; on the link to Nietzsche in Foucault’s

thinking on Mediterranean antiquity and reinterpretations of the debate on the self, Nehamas (2005:128–88),

Dressler (2016: 167–72), Porter (2017:113–33).

In particular, suicide by asphyxiation on a toilet sponge and by cervical fracture via cartwheel, described in Ep.

70. These deaths which Seneca praises are of (sociologically) enslaved persons, which seems to contradict Foucault

and others’ focus on providing new avenues for elite representation under the principate.

Inwood (2009) takes Foucault to task over his somewhat tendentious reading of Alcibiades I, though he allows

that Seneca may be trending more in the subjective-individualist direction by writing as a Latin author; about which,

see below.

Gill (2009) applies this structure in discussion of Medea; Cf. Reydams-Schils, 2005: 34-45

Bartsch, 2006: 230-81 and 2015

Henderson, 2004 passim and 2006.

literally and metaphorically—Bartsch traces the emergences of a new conception of the self she

calls “objective-individualist”, between the “first-order self” that acts and the “second-order self”

that evaluates action.

This position resonates with that of James Ker (2009b), whose study of

the De Ira suggests that Seneca’s language of reflexivity builds on the use of the medium of

metaphor, particularly as a means of engaging through rhetoric with a Roman audience.

Many of the themes of these scholars’ discussion and debate about the nature of the self

in Seneca will appear in the chapters to follow, but the subject of the self will not be approached

as such in what follows. Given the introduction of Martin Heidegger on the very first page of this

dissertation, the reader will gather that I have strong sympathies with the “subjective-

individualist” conception of the self and some kind of transhistorical application of this

concept.

However, the purpose of my analysis is to recenter the question of the “care of the

self” in the study of Seneca and particularly his Epistulae Morales around the concept of care

rather than the self. Future study may help to show how bolster a connection between Seneca and

existential phenomenology more specifically, but the present effort aims at a more functionalist

approach to the titular “care of the self” when it comes to Seneca. Thus, my goal is to illustrate

what the self does, rather than what the self is, and I see care as the crucial element in the EM,

since it is care which accomplishes the Good. Following Ker, as well as those cited above, I

Bartsch, 2006:250. She appeals to the modern philosophical position of Frankfurt (1971), as well as to Inwood

(2000)

About which more below, section ii.

See CAMWS 2019’s “Counting Out Time: Senecan Stoicism and Human Temporality.” Also, Perelli (1994)

builds on the connection made by Mounier (1962) to analyze the ways in which Heidegger and Seneca share similar

focuses on death and the influence of the crowd (or in Heideggerian terminology, Das Man). Deleuze (1990) applies

some elements of existential phenomenology to his approach to Stoicism, though his endeavor is creative rather than

historical, which clearly informs the sympathetic approach of Viparelli (2000: 5-10) who notes Seneca’s position on

time focuses much more on the lived individual experience compared to older Stoic theories of time, up to the point

of a morbid fascination with suicide near comparable to Heidegger’s being-toward-death (though for criticisms, see

n.80 below), see also the connection of Seneca and Husserl made by Dressler (2016). For a contrasting view, Citti

and Neri (2001:16).

begin with the fact that Seneca writes as a Roman for a Roman audience by means of Latin,

rather than the traditional philosophical Greek.

Seneca in and of Latin Literature

While the techniques which scholars such as Foucault and Bartsch discuss fit under the

banner of a concern for the moral individual, their discussion also builds on a larger

philosophical tradition. Situating Seneca in the history of philosophy is certainly not an incorrect

move, but the timeline they produce makes Seneca a representative of history framed in terms of

Greek language philosophers. In this picture, Seneca is an heir to philosophical positions and

methodologies passed down from Archaic Greece in Empedocles and Pythagoras, down through

their interpretation by Plato and Aristotle in Classical Greece, and then to the leading figures of

the old Stoa, like Zeno and Chrysippus, as well as Epicurus in the Hellenistic period. Seneca then

goes on to influence the “Roman” Stoics writing in Greek, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and in

Foucault’s work he is connected with later authors such as Artemidorus of Daldi,

(Pseudo)-

Lucian, and Plutarch.

With the exception of Cicero—who, though often sympathetic to Stoic

positions, was a student of the skeptical Academy—Seneca is the only author educed in this

lineage who wrote in Latin for a Latin-speaking Roman audience.

Thus, the equation of “the

In particular, Inwood (2005: 13) on producing “primary philosophy” as opposed to commentary, and Dressler

(2016: 34–7) on overcoming the supposed “eclecticism” of Roman/Latin philosophers.

Shout out to David Sick of Rhodes College, who had the wherewithal to study Artemidorus and make an upper-

level Greek class read the Oneirocritica

Foucault, 1986, passim

Even in his De Officiis, which is rightly connected to a precursor work by the Middle Stoic Panaetius, Cicero

explicitly states that he does not differ much from the Peripatetics, who had been somewhat reintegrated into the

Academy by way of Socrates at this period (so Sedley, 1989). For a brief treatment of Cicero’s relation to the

Greeks vis-à-vis mythography, see Ch. 3.

care of the self” (cura sui) with Greek terminology for similar concepts (ἐπιμελεία ἑαυτοῦ)

does not do justice to Seneca as a Roman writing in Latin as opposed to Greek.

The specific linguistic context also speaks to the social context Seneca’s audience,

namely wealthy elite males in Rome, as crystallized in the figure of the collection’s epistolary

addressee, Lucilius Junior.

As Matthew Roller (2001:88-124) explores, Seneca’s imagery and

use of exempla from the past appeals to the shared cultural history of the Roman senatorial elite

while at the same time trying to refigure these exempla in light of both the political shifts

brought about through the principate as well as Seneca’s understanding of the tenets of Stoicism.

John Henderson (2004:139-70) shows how Seneca does this through the frames of particular

letters as well, particularly in the visit to Scipio’s Villa in Ep. 86, bringing together the image of

Scipio Africanus, exiled to Campania after his martial victories, and the arboricultural precepts

and stylings of Virgil’s Georgics II. The use of these specific Roman historical and literary

touchstones forms an important part of Seneca’s literary presentation as well as his philosophical

exposition (as we shall discuss below), and these figures either were not used by other Stoics or

actively dismissed.

As an example of the dismissal of Latin literature by the Greek Stoics, one may compare

the practice of Seneca’s close contemporary, Annaeus Cornutus.

In the Greek Theology

Reydams-Schils’ (2005) project, while important in elevating the “Roman Stoics” as competent and fully

instructed philosophers in their own right, also treats these Greek Roman Stoics together with Seneca and Cicero (to

the extent that Cicero preserves Stoic positions). In this, I tend toward Dressler’s (2016:38) assessment of a “Latin

culture” distinct, though not wholly separate from Greek speaking as well.

Despite the gender disparity in Seneca’s day, where possible I use the singular “they” or “human beings” to

translate singular agents, with the exception of the discussion of gender hierarchies and personification in Ch. 3. On

Lucilius’ life, Griffin (1976: 91-4); on the fictional nature of the correspondence, rather than the man, Griffin

(1976:347-53)

In his discussion of Cornutus’ biography and work, Boys-Stones (2018:3 n. 5) cites previous attempts to connect

the one Annaeus to the other, from the erroneous and largely wishful hypothesis that Cornutus was a freedman of

Seneca the Elder (on analogy with the Stoic freedman Epictetus) to the idea that Cornutus may be a target of some

Senecan polemic. In any case, Boys-Stones states it is “unthinkable” that Cornutus would not have been aware of

Seneca the Younger, since the Life of Persius makes clear he tutored his nephew Lucan, but whether a connection in

the other direction occurred is speculative at best.

(ἐπιδρομὴ τῶν κατὰ τὴν ἑλληνικὴν θεολογίαν παραδεδομένων), Cornutus engages in the

very Stoic practice of etymologizing the names of divinities to reveal their original meanings and

connections with Stoic concepts. Specifically, Cornutus turns to Hesiod as a repository of ancient

wisdom that just needs the proper allegorical understanding to be approached philosophically.

On the other hand, Servius, Macrobius and Aulus Gellius record how Cornutus did not think that

the Roman poet had the same level of wisdom as Hesiod because of excessive fabrications,

including his portrayal of Vulcan and Venus marriage in Aeneid 8.

Meanwhile, Seneca does not hesitate to avail himself with lines and quotations from

Virgil’s works throughout the EM, though he does caution in Ep. 86.15 that the Georgics,

didactic in form, are only meant to delight readers.

Meanwhile, in Seneca’s De Beneficiis,

where he does provide etymologies of Roman deities like Jupiter Stator,

he also disparages

people who, like Cornutus, are so “enslaved to the Greeks” that they would privilege the names

that Hesiod made up for the gods over Roman ones.

He even accuses Chrysippus, the “second

founder” of the Stoa,

of running afoul of such an obsession, summing up his position on the

philosopher thus: “a great man, by Hercules, but nevertheless a Greek” (De Ben. I.4.1, magnum

mehercules virum, sed tamen Graecum). Seneca shares the same methodology as his Greek Stoic

Greek Theology 17.29 makes explicit reference to Theogony 127 which explains the pairing of Earth and Heaven

as an explanation of the formation of aether out of the terrestrial elements in Stoic cosmogony; for more on aether

specifically, ch.1

Setaioli, 2004: 356-64, with the full list of these fragments of Cornutus.

Mazzoli (1970: 215-32) provides statistics, as well as the qualification that Seneca only means agricultural truths

and not philosophical truth. Setaioli (2000:193-4) sees this line as an admonition against allegorical reading of poetry,

though not etymological practice as such. For a discussion of this comment in the context of Ep. 86, Henderson (2004:

129-38). For a particular interpretation of Virgilian intertext in the EM, Mann (2006).

De Beneficiis IV.7.1, discussed in Ch. 3

I.3.6

For a timeline of the Hellenistic Stoa, Dorandi (2008: 37-43)

forebears and contemporaries, but he chooses to apply these philosophical tools to specifically

Roman and Latin materials and places them as superior to their Greek language materials.

As Brad Inwood (2009: 54) sums up, “A Roman, writing about philosophy as a Roman –

that is, in Latin – asserts himself with a kind of defiant pride.” This writing in Latin, Inwood also

acknowledges, shapes the philosophical positions themselves, and are more than just “window

dressing.”

Part of this owes to the brute fact of language difference: Greek has different words

and structures than Latin, and so to philosophize in Latin means rephrasing and reframing.

Henderson (2004: 149) describes, Seneca builds off the translatory and creative philosophy of his

Republican predecessor Cicero by challenging “Philosophy to transcend its Greekness… In the

less sublimated, pragmatic, terms of moral reformation, the challenge is to prove that the world

through Roman eyes is indeed always already philosophized.” The epistolary format of the EM

synthesizes this challenge to Greekness and Seneca’s intention to move beyond Cicero. The most

famous previous writer of philosophical epistles, to whom Seneca appeals in his own collection,

was his philosophical rival Epicurus; so, in writing his own moralizing epistles Seneca

appropriates the Greek format for proper—i.e., Roman and Stoic—edification.

Meanwhile, Seneca’s closest Roman forebear in the literary tradition is Cicero. Seneca

was familiar with Cicero’s contributions in bringing Greek thought into Latin literature, but he

departs from Cicero’s style—one of the charges leveled against Seneca by Quintilian and

Fronto—and also criticizes the contents of his predecessor’s letters.

At Ep. 118.1-2, Seneca

A nationalistic instance of the “self-conscious Latinization” of Roman philosophy, for which Trapp (2007);

Dressler (2016: 37).

So Ker (2009b: 161) in his discussion of the self in Seneca’s De Ira

“Translate-or-neologize” as Henderson (2004: 149) frames it; cf. Armisen-Marchetti (1991:106).

Schiesaro (2015:239-51) provides an overview of Seneca’s use of Epicurus and the Latin epicurean Lucretius

Setaioli (2007: 336) and Setaioli (2000: 112-120), building on Hadot’s (1969: 184) contention that Seneca cares

more about “proving” and “moving” (probare, movere) than Cicero’s ideal of simply “teaching” (docere); cf. Traina

(2011) and Henderson (2004: 2 and 31), connecting Cicero and Epicurus. Seneca’s dismissal of Cicero may be

forgives Lucilius for not writing so often and tells him not to gossip by quoting Cicero as a

negative example, who tells his friend Atticus “If he does not have anything, he should write

whatever has come to his mouth” (Ad Att. I.12.4, si rem nullam habebit, quod in buccam venerit

scribat).

Seneca’s format may be epistolary and make use of particular occasions to spark

conversation like Cicero’s correspondence, but this veneer hides a carefully crafted program of

Stoic instruction, beginning with more direct and concrete practical advice and leading towards

more in-depth philosophical discussions.

Alfonso Traina (2011) shows how Seneca innovates

in the use of reflexive pronouns and dative constructions previously unattested, building off of

innovations in philosophical vocabulary from Cicero to develop a new Roman philosophical

style for himself, one shaped by a rhetoric of phrases borrowed from declamation.

Thus,

through his “epistoliterarity,” Seneca makes a Roman philosophy which combines and refashions

but also overcomes the contributions of his philosophical and literary rivals.

By focalizing the world through Roman eyes, Seneca relies heavily on exempla, as noted

above, and metaphors drawn from Roman daily life, which include appeals to slavery, military

service, and jurisprudence.

As Bartsch (2009:213) describes, Seneca’s use of metaphors

“almost always tries to exploit a pre-existing mode of thought or attitude by coopting it for a less

occasioned by Cicero’s own denigration of Stoic rhetoric arising from their theory of language, for which see

Armisen-Marchetti (1989:36-44) and Schenkveld and Barnes (2008: 177-255).

Cooper (2006: 44-5) believes that if Cicero had been more conversational in his philosophy, like Seneca, his texts

would have been more popular.

Setaioli (2000: 111-20), Schafer (2009, esp. 67-83); Consonant with the quasi-fictional nature of the

correspondence (n. 28 above), Schafer (2011) shows how the particulars and occasional elements of the letter form a

dramatized relationship of teacher and student.

This style, likely owing to that of Seneca the Elder, earned Seneca opprobrium from ensuing rhetoricians,

including Fronto – cf. Traina (2011: 25), Bartsch (2009: 188) – and Quintilian (IO X.1.125-31)

A term used by Henderson (2004: passim). Seneca’s synthesis is part and parcel of his recommended style of

reading and writing advocated in Ep. 84 through the metaphor of bees.

For specific discussion of slavery, Edwards (2009); for military conquest, Roller (2001: 98-123), Asmis (2009);

Armisen-Marchetti (1989: 69-202) provides an exhaustive catalogue of the images used in Seneca’s prose.

familiar way of thinking.”

Seneca’s preference for imagery and rhetorical or “epistoliterary”

presentation also surfaces in explicit denigration of the kind of syllogistic proofs drafted by Zeno

and Chrysippus, and this sometimes leads Seneca to say things which appear contradictory to the

tenets of Stoicism.

However, as John M. Cooper (2006) shows, it is not the case that Seneca is

not familiar with the technicalities of logic or a particularly aberrant thinker.

Rather, his

preference for appeals to literature, rhetorical positioning, and metaphor are part and parcel of his

self-conscious choice to develop Stoicism as a Latin author and appeal to a Roman audience.

Seneca’s fondness for Latin language and Roman cultural touchstones justifies the “practical”

approach to care adopted in this dissertation by appealing to the everyday experience of the

(Roman) reader of their daily movements in Roman society. This facet of Seneca’s philosophical

presentation also positions Hyginus’ unique Latin mythography and the Italic myth of Cura as a

prime target for Seneca to develop in his Roman Stoicism.

Hyginus: The Man, the Myths and Legends

Commentators agree that the myth of Cura must be of Latin origin,

and Guidorizzi

(2000: 488) notes that it has certain Stoic elements, linking this to Ep. 124.14 above.

Additionally, Hyginus’ Fabulae represent a rare representative of mythography written in

Following Henderson (2004: 149): “All Seneca’s writing is a double shift between Stoic terminology and Roman

perspective”

On his criticisms of syllogisms, e.g., Epp. 87, where Seneca gathers various Stoic paradoxes and arguments to

ridicule them. See also Cooper (2006: 49–50). Janine Fillion-Lahille (1984) and Jula Wildberger (2006b: XI-XIX)

among others have pushed back on the un-Stoic quality of certain positions, such as the Platonizing picture of the

soul which Seneca takes from Posidonius in Ep. 92, to show the coherence with core Stoic beliefs while highlighting

the creative developments these images represent.

In a similar vein, Wildberger (2006a: 82-3) likens the EM to Aristotle’s Organon for Senecan Stoicism.

See above, n. 6

Latin.

This collection shares a similar orientation to Seneca’s self-conscious choice to write

philosophy in Latin for a Latin-speaking Roman audience, and so the choice of including the

myth of Cura points toward recording a Roman or Italic story for a literary public to take up and

redeploy in their own work.

As such, it provides a cultural thread for Seneca to weave together

with the philosophical threads of Stoicism, the generic thread of Epicurus’ letters, and the Roman

literary threads of Cicero and Virgil. I separate Hyginus’ story from the “literary” here because

the general consensus of previous scholars has barred him from this on stylistic grounds,

but in

what follows I hope to show why Hyginus is relevant to Seneca and deserves a bit more

consideration as an important literary reference point for ancient authors.

It is generally agreed that the text of Hyginus’ Fabulae circulated in antiquity, thanks to a

citation by the schoolteacher Pseudo-Dositheus, who undertakes to provide some translations in

Greek and Latin of a few of the stories from the collection which he labels “known to all”

(III.4.2588/2613, πᾶσιν γνωστήν/omnibus notam).

Based on the consular attribution which he

makes, we have the exact date of Ps.-Dositheus’ transcription: September 11, 207 AD. However,

this date is about the extent of any certainty there is concerning the text. First, the thing that is

“known to all” is Hyginus’ Genealogy, a different name from the modern collection. This later

appellation was likely thanks to the first editor of the collection, Micyllus, also known as Jakob

Molsheim.

Micyllus published his collection in 1535 CE based on a very worn 9

/10

Century-

CE manuscript in tryingly legible Beneventan script. Subsequent fragmentary portions

Smith and Trzaskoma (2007: xxvi) notes that two of the best examples before Late Antiquity and Fulgentius are

both by Hyginus – the Fabulae/Genealogiae and the De Astronomia, reliably linked to the same author, pace Rose

(1967).

On the use of mythographies as handbooks, Guidorizzi (2000: XXII-XXIV), Smith and Trzaskoma (2007: x-xvi)

Including Werth, 1901; Rose, 1967, continuing up to Smith and Trzaskoma (2007: liv)

Arabic numerals refer to the Greek and Latin text of Flammini (2004).

Guidorizzi, 2000:xx; Smith and Trzaskoma, 2007: xliv

discovered elsewhere testify to Micyllus’ difficulties in transcribing his manuscript and reveal

parts where it appears he changed words based on wear or illegibility.

In any case, his text

presents the fullest complement of myths preserved, but his manuscript was lost or repurposed

within twenty-five years of original publication, leaving the print-edition as the standard.

addition to being the most complete collection, Micyllus’ text also supposedly carried with it the

appellation of G. Julius Hyginus, though it is possible that the only name attached was just

Hyginus like the collection named by Ps.-Dositheus.

Connecting the text to G. Julius Hyginus, the freedman of Augustus who was the first

Palatine librarian, would place the collection much earlier than the terminus ante quem which

Ps.-Dositheus provides. Suetonius writes that this Hyginus was also a friend of Ovid, whose

work in the Fasti and Metamorphoses constitutes perhaps the greatest literary exercise in

mythography in Latin.

However, Rose (1967) questions the credentials of our author to be the

kind of learned figure that Suetonius portrays, given the less than literary style and some a few

strange errors, which he felt a proper scholar would not make, and so he calls our author

dismissively some “half-way learned guy” (semidoctus).

However, Guidorizzi is much more

sanguine about the positive identification of the author as the freedman librarian, saying the

Smith and Trzaskoma, 2007: l

Guidorizzi (2000: xlii) also offers the name Möltzer.

Smith and Trzaskoma, 2007: xliii

Guidorizzi’s (2000: xxx) evaluation reflects the generally negative appraisal of the style of Hyginus. As Smith and

Trzaskoma (liv) note, the Latin is “crabbed and clumsy” with a such unique use of subordination that Werth

(1901:1) believes the text is in fact split between a Greek translation and some Latin additions. Suetonius’ brief

biography at De Grammaticis 20 notes that later in life fell into poverty and was supported by Clodius Licinus, a

consular and historian, which suggested to van de Woestjine (1929) that Hyginus was caught up in the same courtly

intrigue which got his friend Ovid exiled. Given that Werth (1901:21-4) finds the most intertext with Ovid in the

work, this may suggest a stronger case for the collection being attributed to the Palatine librarian.

Rose, 1933: iii. One of Rose’s criticisms concerns Fabula 186 about Melanippe, who is labelled “daughter of

Desmon” based on a misreading of Euripides’ “Μελανίππη ἡ δεσμῶτις.” However, Smith and Trzaskoma (2007:

xlvii) note that Hyginus’ sources were largely from hypotheseis of Euripides’ plays, and so it is entirely likely that

Hyginus’ source was to blame as much as the man. Were Rose around today to witness the rise of e.g., Jordan

Peterson, he may be less ready to assume that academic credentials suggest general intellectual rigor and honesty.

arguments against this are “very crumbly and subjective,” particularly given the way similar

antiquarian literary works have come to us likewise with evidence of heavy emendation and

interpolation.

In any case, Rose does agree with Guidorizzi that the Hyginus of our Fabulae is

the same as the Hyginus who wrote the extant De Astronomica, a poem about astrological

phenomena which makes reference to our collection as the Genealogiae, a work which some

date to the late 1

century CE thanks to a possible reference to Quintilian.

These references

place our work closer to Seneca’s time than the edge of the Ps.-Dosithean terminus.

Given the evidence of many hands going through the text, the extent to which the Cura

myth preserved is original to the collection may be in some doubt. However, among the fables

which Ps.-Dositheus reports to translate is one which is about the creation of humans (III.4.2604-

5/2628, περὶ ἀνθρωποπλασίας/de hominum factura). Both Flammini (2004: 103) and Smith

and Trzaskoma (2007: 194) take it to be that this myth is Hyginus’ Fab. 220, the myth of Cura.

Hyginus’ Fabulae does contain other stories of anthropogenesis, but none take up the entirety of

their individual stories like the myth of Cura does.

Additionally, among these it is only the

myth of Cura where human beings are specifically “made” (fecisset, factus esse), and the Greek

compound ἀνθρωποπλασία contains a form of the verb πλάττειν, itself the translational

“molto friabili e soggetivi” (2000:xli-xlii)

Smith and Trzaskoma, 2007: xliv

Fab. 142, ostensibly the story of Pandora, mentions that Prometheus created men (homines ex luto finxit) and

Vulcan made the image of a woman, following the account of Hesiod (Theogony 570-80); in addition to this being a

passing mention of creation, it seems clear from the focus on Pandora that there is a specific sexual difference

lacking in the general creation in Fab. 220. While Fab. 145 focuses on Prometheus himself – reproduced by Ps.-

Dositheus – this myth only relates the theft of fire and his imprisonment until Hercules’ labors. Fab. 153 recounts

the repopulation of the earth by Deucalion and Pyrrha after the great flood (and is sexually segregated into creation

of viri and mulieres akin to the creation of the mulier Pandora). However, this story opens with the “cataclysm,”

which Ps.-Dositheus mentions as a separate story immediately after the story de factura hominum. This story ends

on an etymological explanation, similar to the myth of Cura, but it is a specifically Greek one (λαός from λᾶας),

and unlike the myth of Cura this is an explanation in the voice of the mythographer rather than put into the mouth of

a divinity.

equivalent of Latin fingere used to describe Cura’s creative act (fingere, finxit).

With these

lexical similarities in mind, it appears safe to assume that the myth of Cura would have been

present in the original Genealogia.

Despite the arguments above in favor of placing the availability of Hyginus’ text in

Seneca’s ambit, it is still reasonable to assume that the myth of Cura would have been available

to Seneca, even if the collection we have is of later Antonine origin,

and this relates to the

practice of ancient mythography more generally. The title which our text bore in antiquity,

Genealogia, places it in long line of mythographical treatises dating back to the late 6

/early 5th

BCE and Acusilaus and Hecataeus, each bridging the gap between Greek myth and history.

This genealogical format was common in Greek mythography over time, exemplified by the

Bibliotheke of Apollodorus, a similarly shadowy figure but one whose dates correspond to those

of our Hyginus and who provides our fullest extant mythography in Greek.

The genealogical

form was necessitated by the nature of the Greek divinities themselves, who had sexual pairings

between them and produced new offspring and pairings all the way down through the heroes into

the historical period.

Thus, in as much as Greek mythographical collections followed

genealogical lines, Hyginus’ work constitutes in itself a Genealogia as Ps.-Dositheus terms it. In

his discussion, the schoolteacher notes that Hyginus’ work has a genealogy, but this is only part

On the translation of πλάττειν, Setaioli (2004:363) connects this with also to Cornutus specifically, who also uses

πλάσμα and fingere to describe poetic fictions invented by e.g. Virgil.

Rose (1967:viii)

Smith and Trzaskoma, 2007:xx

Smith and Trzaskoma, 2007: xxix-xxx

On sexual pairings, Corbeille (2015:109, 111); on the historical (and political) use of divine genealogy, Smith and

Trzaskoma (2007) cite the early efforts of Pherecydes (fl. 475-450) to link Miltiades’ line back to Ajax, and this

Hellenistic practice is taken up as well by the gens Iulia in linking to Aeneas and Venus (Guidorizzi, 2000: xxxvi).

of the work, as it already has the tripartite structure of the text which we have of a genealogy or

theogony, individual stories, and catalogues of important figures.

When it comes to Latin mythological storytelling, the nature of the Latin divinities

themselves as numinous forces rather than anthropomorphic pairs led to a different kind of

explanation linked etymologically to names for divinities. As I discuss in more depth in Chapter

3, the “conceptual transparency” of traditional Roman deities obviated the need for extensive

mythography, and what stories there were existed in an oral tradition largely kept out of the

literary world thanks to the ready-made narratives from Greece as well as their cultural weight.

In writing the EM as a Latin philosophical text for Romans, I argue that Seneca turns back the

clock on this cultural adoption of Greek literature and culture, returning to an indigenous myth as

a source of truth befitting his status as a Stoic, seeking the primordial truth that later culture has

occluded.

This focus on etymology points toward the use of the figure of Cura as a guide for

how Seneca deploys care in the EM as a distinct traditional Roman touchstone for proper Stoic

moral edification in Latin.

Guidorizzi, 2000: xxv. Smith and Trzaskoma (2007:l) suggest that the singular genealogia means that this text had

already been severely edited by the time a copy survived for Pseudo-Dositheus.

Horace’s contention that “Once taken, Greece took her wild captor and brought the arts into rustic Latium” (Ep.

II.1.156, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio) comes to mind here, and though much

debated as to the actual truth of the statement, it attests to the cultural force which Greek literature had in Roman

(elite) society. Guidorizzi (2000: 123) notes this “elite suppression” of the native Italic divinities in favor of the

Greeks as well as a similar phenomenon alongside a certain iconographic syncretism amongst the Etruscans (cf.

Pallottino (1955:140). Thus, the Fasti and Metamorphoses (and the EM) stand out for engaging with Italic stories in

any depth whatsoever.

Compare the comparison of Cornutus and Seneca above. cf. Setaioli, 2004: 343 and 358; Barnes, 2008: 65-76;

Corbeill (2016:132) connecting Stoicism and mythology through Cicero’s Hellenizing interpretation of Liber (De

Natura Deorum 2.62); I return to Cicero’s mythological exegesis in Ch. 3

For an example of how far others have taken Seneca’s use of etymology, Henderson (2004: 142) argues that the

hapax “with big branches” (grandiscapiae) at Ep. 86.19 is a play on the etymology of Scipio, whose home is

visiting. The elite preference for Greek stories and culture highlights the status of the author of the Fabulae as well:

as a freedman, Hyginus represents a link from the elite to the underclasses of Rome, and thus his inclusion of the

myth of Cura may arise from his connection to other areas of Roman life apart from the Hellenizing elite.

A Brief History of (Stoic) Time

The myth of Cura’s focus on lived time and death matches Seneca’s widespread morbid

fixation on death and his sanguine approval of suicide. Part of this, as I discuss in Chapter 1, is

Seneca’s focus on the future as the division of time which provides access to the Good, as

opposed to the present or the past.

However, Seneca’s focus on futurity puts him somewhat at

odds with the larger Stoic tradition, at least superficially. In their discussions, both Victor

Goldschmidt (1953) and Valeria Viparelli (2000) focus on the expanded present as the proper

domain of activity, and they neglect the future. Goldschmidt’s analysis, because it treats of the

whole of the Stoa from Zeno through Marcus Aurelius, seeks to present the single “Stoic” picture

of time, rather than the different Stoics’ takes, and it also for this reason ignores the figurative

presentation of Seneca as a Latin author writing for a Roman audience. As such, Goldschmidt

focuses on the ideal use of time, whereas Seneca directs much of his attention to moral students

instead.

While he acknowledges a methodological time for learners who act in a series of steps,

the main focus is on how the sage’s activities are viewed in toto like the always-already of the

divine.

Part of this is the sage’s full knowledge of the sympathetic causal chain of events, the

dual-edge of god as both necessity and as providence, as well as their place within this causal

web, such that they will their fate at all times.

In this, Goldschmidt does not account for

Seneca’s sanguine appraisal of suicide as the path toward freedom, and by omission regards it as

an aberration compared to the more staid appraisals of Chrysippus and Epictetus. Viparelli

(2000:121) does reckon with the morbid aspect of Seneca, equating the mastery of fear of death

Rist (1969: 247) calls Ep. 70’s “virtually a paean to suicide,” though Evenepoel (2004: 217) notes the hyperbole

of the suggestion.

Setaioli 2000: 142-53; Cooper, 2006. Reydams-Schils (2005) extends this evaluation to the Roman Stoics more

generally.

1953: 62-3

1953: 80-90, not without hints of Nietzsche’s amor fati.

with a hope for death and joining in with the whole of the cosmos so as to become one with all of

time. At the same time, Viparelli along with Goldschmidt hold to the (Greek) Stoic distrust of

both past and future as domains for mental torment.

Thus, Viparelli disagrees with Joseph

Moreau’s (1969: 122) insight that Seneca’s idea of possessing time includes the past and future,

chalking this up not to a creative aspect of his thought but rather to “Stoic thought transferred to

the literary page,” coupled with a psychoanalysis of the Latin philosopher as a man wracked by

anxiety in the face of the precariousness of life.

The general temporal trajectory between these two authors is not wrong, particularly in a

synthetic picture of Stoicism on the whole. Seneca’s progression of moral time does move from

the infinitesimal present of the aion to the always-already present of the divine chronos, but they

neglect the diachronic growth of human beings overtime to be able to achieve this expanded

present. It is not just a literary fancy that leads Seneca to consider both the past and the future

alongside the present,

but it is into these domains that the moral agent must expand their

present activity in order to rise up from the infinitesimal present on the plane of sensation to the

cosmic present on the plane of the understanding. Each also ignore the import of Seneca’s

discussion at Ep. 124.18 of the unique access to the future for human beings as rational animals.

Goldschmidt (1953: 171-74) links care (souci, the same word from Foucault’s (1986) French title) to sollicitus

specifically in a negative manner, but later (177-8) when discussing the Stoic doctrine of reservation in action, does

allow for a reading of care (here, cura) in a unitary manner, akin to Heidegger’s (SZ 199) use.

2000:83. Here and elsewhere, Viparelli betrays a strong tendency toward phenomenological eisegesis, importing

concepts from Kierkegaard/Heidegger (a particular definition of anxiety and explicit use of Dasein), Sartre (the in-

itself/for-itself distinction), and directly using the texts of Merleau-Ponty (2013 (Eng.)) and Deleuze (1990 (Eng.)).

While I am sympathetic to the use of these authors, and indeed do draw particularly from the last of these,

Viparelli’s overly theoretical approach is not justified within the work and overrides the way that Seneca’s language

and metaphors contribute to his unique contribution to Stoicism and to Latin literature as a practice.

Cf. Wildberger (2006: 125-32), calling Seneca’s image that of Das Gegenwartsfenster which makes of time a

passing force, citing the mention of Heraclitus’ River at Ep. 58.22, while Moreau (1969: 119) rightly notes that for

Seneca time is a thing (res), which is not inconsistent with Stoic corporalism, especially given Seneca’s use of the

term incorporalis res at de Brevitate Vitae 8.1; though Wildberger (2006:115) disputes this as being an appeal to the

“everyday,” I agree with Bartsch (2009) that this is precisely how Seneca’s philosophical and pedagogical program

works, by making the everyday philosophical and the philosophical everyday.

At Ep. 1.2, Seneca forecloses the use of the past portion of this expanded present: “whatever of a

lifetime is behind, death holds” (quicquid aetatis retro est, mors tenet). Because the past is no

longer a possible domain for activity, the only way to properly expand the present to rival the

divine chronos is by working toward the future. Seneca’s task, as an author focused on moral

pedagogy for those still struggling to attain wisdom rather than on discussing the ideal sage, is to

deploy methods which allow for the individual to act to create the good in the future by exposing

them to something in the present which encourages them to see their proper end and learn to die.

James Ker (2009a:147-76) has shown how the structure of the EM themselves enact this

different conception of temporality, which allows for the past and the future as well. This is a

product of the interaction between two axes which Ker identifies. The first is that of the letters’

“momentum,” such that each letter together enacts a full growth from the beginner to the fully

competent Stoic. Thus, earlier letters are heavy with parenetic use of admonition and praecepta,

“precepts” and sententiae, little aphorisms meant to catch the ear of the student, while later

letters focus on deeper conversations about the doctrinal content of Stoic philosophy, decreta.

The second is the letters’ “multiplicity,” where every letter itself, from “hello” to “goodbye,”

acts as an example of a full life. Along both of these axes, Seneca allows the reader to confront

death, the end goal of the imitation of Nature, as each letter of different lengths models the

Senecan dictum that it is quality and not quantity of life which matters.

Ker, as well as Schafer

(2011) also note the element of time-travel encapsulated in the choice of addressee, Lucilius

Iunior, a “Seneca writ small.”

As such, the letters are in a way addressed to the public and to

Schafer, 2009; Setaioli, 2000: 111-22; Graver (1998: 625) notes that the sentential style was also favored by

Epicurus, and Schiesaro’s (2015: 241) survey notes that Lucilius was likely previously an Epicurean, and so this

style is a way to wean him from the rival school and set him up for success as a Stoic. For more on education and

care, Ch. 4

E.g., Ep. 92.2-3

Schafer (2011: 44).

Seneca’s friend, but also to Seneca himself, as a way to combat the preoccupation of his lived

time by worldly and sensuous distractions in the present. The course of the letters models the rise

from the development individual letters as well as overtime, and it does so for the author himself

as well as the addressee and larger readership.

To discuss the way that Seneca conceives of time in relationship to care, I use a

schematization based on the spatial paradigm set up by the myth of Hyginus, which Seneca also

uses in his discussions in Ep. 124.

I refer to the “plane of sensation” as the starting point, based

in the sublunary and perceptible world, that tied most closely to Tellus, as well as the “plane of

the understanding,” connected with the ethereal astral realm, connected with that of Jupiter.

Stoicism, this corresponds to the range of concentration of divine pneuma (πνεῦμα), the

combination of the lightest elements (air and fire), which is connected with the activity of god as

the divine reason (λόγος) in the material universe: the earth has the least concentration of

pneuma, while the stars have the highest concentration.

The trajectory of moral development on

the metaphorical level appears as follows (Figure 1):

Analyzed in Ch. 1

With the discussions of planes, I am inspired by the geometrical interpretation of Stoicism made by Deleuze

(1990).

Wildberger (2006: 67-8) provides very precise percentages of pneumatic concentration.

In terms of access to time, the vertical axis from earth to the astral is also shared by the temporal

change from the infinitesimal present as aion to the eternal present as chronos. The hand of care

begins its work on the sublunary level with the least pneuma characterized by the momentary

aion, and these elements together characterize the “plane of sensation.” In order for care to

approximate the work of Nature for humans to achieve the divine good, it must work up toward

the “plane of the understanding”—the astral realm, where the highest concentration of the divine

pneuma is and corresponds to the chronos. The way that the hand of care accomplishes this and

the Good is through a focus on the future available to human reason.

How care accomplishes

this task will be explored in the following chapters.

Outline of the Dissertation

In the first chapter, I provide close etymological readings of selections of both Epp. 121

and 124, letters which come late in the collection in an area recognized as a portion characterized

by more theoretically oriented conceptual discussions.

Leaving Hyginus’ Cura behind for the

moment, I analyze the use of cura in light of Ep. 124’s insistence that the Good is accomplished

by care comes in the context of a discussion of the Stoic scala naturae. The connections with

animals, plants, and god are also brought up in the discussion on self-consciousness in Ep. 121.

In order to demonstrate the work of the hand and its centrality to Seneca’s concept of care , I

analyze the verbiage and metaphors which he uses to discuss the human being’s relation to the

other three rungs of the scala naturae: god, plant, and speechless animals. Seneca’s language of

The dip in the trajectory is a nod to the force of preoccupation, discussed in Ch. 2, a concept shared with the

“distortion” (διαστροφή) of human reason brought on by social influences (SVF III.53-55 and Bénatouïl, 2007:

113–18)

Cf. n. 43 about the structure/dramatic presentation of the letters.

care and the manual image of care draws elements from each of these to allow it to create the

human Good. First, from the divine, care takes on the knowledge and ability to act with the

future in mind. Then, from plants, it takes on characteristics of diachronic development of the

moral subject. Lastly, from animals, it takes on a unitary power of both sense-perception and

understanding. The hand of care which Seneca appeals to is not without precedent in earlier

Greek Stoics, as the school’s founder, Zeno, conceived of the mind as a hand through the

concepts of “anticipated” innate notions (προλήψεις) and the “full grasp” of perfect cognition

(κατάληψις). Seneca takes the hand image of the earlier Stoics and the hand of the roman Cura

and combines them to exemplify the qualities of care which are key to its activities: self-directed

activity aimed at the future, practically and theoretically creating the Good for the complete and

perfect state of the individual in the future.

The second chapter addresses the fact that human beings do not achieve the Good, for

Seneca notes it can only be reasonably expected with intense dedication over a long period of

time. This occurs through misapplication of care from the future Good to be accomplished and

onto work in and for the present. In this, I argue that Seneca recasts Roman institutional slavery

not in terms of master/enslaved person (dominus/servus) but rather in terms of philosophers and

morally enslaved individuals, who are taken by the hands of others (mancipia). Seneca separates

those individuals who are “sociologically enslaved” (servi), the actual humans held as property

and instruments in the Roman social hierarchy, from the morally or “pathologically enslaved”

(mancipia), whose status is determined by the misuse of their time and their care. I first trace and

discuss this process of “occupation” (occupatio) through its connection with Cura in Epp. 15 and

124, where I show that positive moral application of care is cura proper, while the negative

application of the hand of care results in moral occupation. Next, through a reading of Epp. 18,

50, and 76, I analyze military-cum-medical analogy of warring with the diseases of emotions and

fortune which also highlight the temporal elements of occupatio, a process which has been

ongoing for agents before they were aware (praeoccupatio). Thus, positive active preoccupation

of the goods of others leads to increased activity and the continued positive activity of care,

while applying one’s care to present pleasures and trifles makes oneself an object in the hands of

fortune and others, who limit their possibilities. Similar to Roman military practice, once

occupied by the opposing force of fortune, those misapplying their cura are turned into enslaved

persons, but specifically manicipia rather than servi, who remain the moral ambiguous actual

sociologically enslaved individuals. To discuss slavery, I turn to Seneca’s discussion in Ep. 47.

Thus, Seneca’s ethics of care plays on the institution of slavery as an image for elite

philosophizing and transfers concerns for enslaved persons into the realm of images and away

from the lived realities of a slaved holding society.

In the third chapter, I analyze Seneca’s relation to imagery and metaphor. I begin with the

combination of the social elements of slavery and of gender relations through Seneca’s

contention that true ethical freedom is enslavement to Philosophy, a feminine personification.

This paradox is also shared by the relationship of the Good accomplished by care to the feminine

figure of Cura, who shapes human beings. I argue that Seneca’s use of the image of care

combines Stoic cosmology with the myth of Hyginus, Roman traditional religion, and Latin

literature in order to eliminate the possibility of male Roman subjects being subject to

femininity. First, I situate Seneca’s relation to allegorical and etymological treatments of myth

and literature by turning briefly to his work On Benefits, arguing that he is keen to interpret

Roman religious terms and stories in Stoic terms because they are Roman, while denigrating

Greek sources, including Epicurus. Then, I provide a Stoicizing interpretation of the myth of

Cura and highlight the gendered and lexical characteristics of the traditional Roman deities

(indigites) involved in the story. I apply this gendered relation to Seneca’s discussion of

enslavement to Philosophy to show how Philosophy becomes a nothing because, unlike the

wicked occupiers of Ep. 47, Philosophy does not take away the moral subject’s access to future

activity but rather gives time like the masculine force of god in the Stoic universe. Likewise, I

argue that Seneca’s sanguine approval of suicide stems from his attempt to make Cura transcend

feminine Natura, which is limited to the present.

Finally, the fourth chapter discusses the pedagogical elements of the letters themselves in

terms of the progress of care. Seneca notes that it takes care applied over a long time to

accomplish the Good, and the structure of the corpus as a whole as well as each individual letter

exemplifies the temporal progression from start to finish. I argue that Seneca’s pedagogy of care

takes textuality itself as the best way of providing exempla for students of philosophy, because

they work on a temporal level which is most conducive to the use of care. To illustrate this, I

begin with a comparison of selections from Epp. 94 and 95, the longest letters in the collection

and the ones that constitute Seneca’s most direct discussion of pedagogical method. I show how

Seneca sets up the use of “precepts” (praecepta) and “doctrines” (decreta) as the endpoints of a

spectrum which maps the axis of increased futurity from the aion to the chronos, respectively.

When combined, these elements form most efficacious method of teaching, exempla, just as the

combination of the earth and the heavens create the domain and time of Cura in the myth of

Hyginus. The efficacy of exempla relies on their appeal to the emotions (adfectus), and

specifically in their ability to make (ad + facere), and I argue for Seneca’s more positive

evaluation of the capabilities of the emotions through a reading of Ep. 76 and Ep. 26. Seneca’s

concern for the emotions shows how the act of writing creates moral development, and I briefly

show how the metaphor of the bees at Ep. 84 shows how moral development is displayed and

enacted through the use of care in writing.

These four chapters work first to clarify how Seneca imagines care as a hand which uses

future time specifically and acts in a manner which emphasizes the future. Then, they present the

two limits of the moral and temporal range which Seneca present, the one being complete

occupation and misuse of time leading down to the plane of the understanding and the other

being the proper use of reason in relation to Philosophy and Nature. Finally, the last chapter

bridges the gap between these two poles by showing how care works on the part of the student of

philosophy as well as their instructor to work toward achieving the good. As a brief conclusion, I

also consider the example of Seneca’s life and suicide as reflections of the use of care in the text

as well as on it.

Curo, ergo sum: Time and Care in the Scala Naturae (Epp. 121 & 124)

In the final extant letter of Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, Seneca discusses with Lucilius

the nature of the Good and happiness (vita beata), and how human beings can come to achieve

both of these. In order to do this, Seneca appeals to a natural continuum in the universe of living

creatures, a commonplace of Stoic thought.

As Seneca lays it out:

Quattuor hae naturae sunt, arboris, animalis, hominis, dei; haec duo, quae rationalia

sunt, eandem naturam habent, illo diversa sunt, quod alterum inmortale, alterum

mortale est. Ex his ergo unius bonum natura perficit, dei scilicet, alterius cura,

hominis. (Ep. 124.14)

There are these four natures: that of a tree, that of an animal, that of a human, and

that of god: the latter two, to which reason pertains, have the same nature, they are

separated by the fact that death does not pertain to the one, but death does pertain

to the other. Out of these, therefore, Nature accomplishes the good of the one (that

is, god), and care that of the other (that is, the human being).

Despite making four categories for the different levels of life, Seneca’s presentation really

creates three categories, one of which has a further subdivision. It is not just that reason pertains

to both humans and god, but they also “have the same nature,” which would suggest that they

are the same thing.

Indeed, compared to the natures of plants and animals, both god and humans

“belong to reason” or are “of reason” (rationalia), and thus they achieve the Good according to

Nature.

However, in this same sentence, these two natures have been “separated” split by

Armisen-Marchetti, 1989: 35 provides helpful hierarchical schemata of Stoic ontology as presented by Seneca.

Wildberger, 2008: 48–58 breaks down the scala naturae of Stoics, including also inanimate matter, as the key is the

amount of πνεῦμα in the individual object, culminating in the highest concentration – i.e., god. See also, Hankinson,

2008: 482–3; Wildberger, 2006b: 60–79. On the Stoic biological model of god and the cosmos, Furley, 2008: 434–

40.

Latin Text taken from the OCT editions.

As an analytic tool, any reference to natura or bonum without some sort of determiner will be rendered “Nature”

and “the Good” respectively; otherwise, they will be rendered in minuscules, e.g., “these natures”, “the same

nature.” All translations from the Epistulae Morales, tortured as they may be, are my own, with guidance from those

of Grummere (1917, 1920, 1925) and using his Loeb Latin texts, as well as with help from Inwood (2007).

Assuming a parallel with adjectives, e.g., australis, Cerialis, curialis, etc., each derived from a particular noun

(auster, Ceres, curia) to form an adjective to describe something characteristic of or pertaining to said noun. Breyer,

mortality: god does not belong to death (inmortale), while humans do. This razor of mortality

also splits along the grain of completeness as well. For god, being immortal, (its) Nature itself is

enough to accomplish its Good (unius bonum natura perficit); indeed, according to Stoic

physics, the operation of god simply is the operation of nature.

For humans, however, Nature is

not enough to achieve the Good: even as rational adults, humans are rational but incomplete

(inperfectum), as it is quite possible that they may never attain the Good over the course of their

lifetime.

Provided humans do attain the Good, then it is care or concern (cura) which

accomplishes (perficit) this and which makes the human good through time up to the end (per +

facere). If these two rational natures do indeed have the same nature, then what god and nature

are together, care and the human are as well.

In this chapter, we will analyze the language which Seneca uses in connection with care

to show how Seneca figures what I will term the “hand of care,” characterized by activities

which a human being would perform with their hands, such as through manual labor, as well as

in lifting, throwing, and gathering.

This chapter will engage in a close reading of the final extant

letter of the collection, which has the most programmatic assertion about the value of care – after

all, it is what accomplishes the Good. In this final letter, Seneca connects the power of the hand

of care to accomplish the Good with the access to the future, a feature granted to humans and

god thanks to their shared rational nature. This futural focus of care, aiming at the future and

1993: 48 follows Leumann, 1917: 9 in suggesting that -alis adjectives show “Bezeichnung und Zugehörigkeit,” so

the ‘of’ makes sense as a quick translation here to me. Hansenn, 1889: 40–4 relates an interesting possibility relating

to Kantian modality that the -alis relates to the future and to possibility compared to other “preterito-present’

adjectives, which would be very fitting for the present circumstance.

On the facets of God, see Wildberger, 2006b: 21–47 in connection with λόγος

As Seneca mentions at Ep. 124.12, discussed below.

For the mathematically inclined philosophical crowd, deus = homo

natura cura

This approach is informed by Lakoff & Johnson (2003, esp. 14–21) on the coherence of orientational and

experiential metaphors, and shares sympathies with the importance on embodiment and motricity in shaping

perception and cognition as theorized by Merleau-Ponty (2012: 100–49).

making use of future time, is the key to allowing human beings to accomplish the good. To begin

with, we will compare the temporality of god and the Good accomplished by (its) Nature with

that of human beings and the care which they use to accomplish the Good. The use of

temporality points back to the very first epistle, where Seneca commands Lucilius to “put his

hands on today” (Ep. 1.2, hodierno manum inieceris), showing how the hand of care is present

in the corpus from the beginning.

The discussion of care in Ep. 124 also draws on Seneca’s most explicit discussion of care

from Ep. 121. Seneca explains offers this as part of his discussion of human and animal

knowledge of their “constitution” (constitutio), which he defines, following the Stoics, as “the

leading part of the soul holding itself in a certain manner toward the body” (Ep. 121.10,

principale animi quodam modo se habens erga corpus).

When it comes to what this relationship

means for the rational human animal, Seneca once again invokes cura:

Voluptatem peto, cui? Mihi. Ergo mei curam ago. Dolorem refugio, pro quo? Pro

me. Ergo mei curam ago. Si omnia propter curam mei facio, ante omnia est mei

cura. Haec animalibus inest cunctis nec inseritur, sed innascitur. (Ep. 121.17)

I seek pleasure – for what? For myself. So, I am doing care of myself. I flee from

pain – on behalf of what? On my behalf. Therefore, I am doing care of myself. If I

do all things on account of care of myself, care of myself is before all things. This

exists in the rest of the animals and it is not planted, but rather born in them.

In this letter, Seneca now presents care as the mediating force of the soul in the world, because it

is what is nearest and dearest, that on account of which all is done and that which thus logically

precedes all one does. The use of facit here points ahead to the use of perficere in Ep. 124, where

Inwood (2007:337) notes that this is a particularly source-oriented translation from the Greek, as does Brennan

(2009: 402) in his discussion of σύστασις/constitutio as the first οἰκέιον in Alexander of Aphrodisias (De An.

Mant. 150.25 = SVF 3.183). Brennan also notes (ibid, n.15) that this definition aligns with the “fourth Stoic genus,”

πρὸς τί πως ἔχον, which according to Simplicius (in Cat. 166.15 – 29 = SVF 2.403 = LS 29C; tr. from LS 29C)

describes properties “whose nature it is to become and cease to be a property of something without any internal

change or qualitative alteration.” Bréhier (1928:43) notes that such an attribute would fall among the incorporeals

(ἀσώματα) of Stoic materialist physics; see also Sedley, (2008:395–409), with helpful SVF citations.

care reaches its completion when it “perfects” (perficit) the good for human beings; the gloss

agere curam provides a quick definition for this facere in 121, and it points to the crafting ability

that is part of perficere as well. The discussion of animal consciousness in Ep. 121, together

with Seneca’s portrayal of the Stoic scala naturae in Ep. 124, provide a means of developing the

powers of care in relation to the future by analyzing the metaphors and discussions of plants and

non-human “speechless” animals (muta animalia) to discuss human development. In particular,

the combination of tenses and voices of the verbs, which Seneca uses to describe the respective

activities of humans, plants, and animals, shows how humans – unique in the scala naturae –

take an active role in cultivating their development through time in order to arrive at their good,

the Good shared with god.

In his comparison with plants and animals, Seneca takes up concepts from Greek thinkers

from the Old Stoa and, through etymology and imagistic translation into Latin, deploys them in a

way to make them less technical and more concrete for the moral agent reading the Epistulae

Morales. In particular, Seneca takes up the terms of Stoic cognitive psychology, such as

“selection” (ἐκλογή), “anticipation” (πρόληψις) and “comprehension” (κατάληψις), breaks

them down to their etymological components, and melds into the hand of care. Seneca’s

language of moral progress constructs an axis of movement through time: the hand of care, to

accomplish the Good, must make its way upward from a plane of sensation, which the human

being shares with animals, to a plane of the understanding, which the work of care with and

through the future allows human beings to access and join with the divine in the Good. The

combination of sensation and understanding in Seneca’s discussions also show how the hand of

care precedes linguistic thought, developing the picture of rational nature which the previous

Greek Stoics held.

The hand of care becomes the active agent in the Stoic process of

“appropriation” (οἰκείωσις), by which human beings come to live in accordance with nature and

as internally coherent individuals.

Since care leads to the same result as Nature does for god,

and since Seneca shows how the hand of care is active in the human being from birth, Seneca

portrays the hand of care as the force which mediates and makes the individual cohere in order to

accomplish the Good.

The Divine in Humans—The Good of Nature

To try and reorient the scala naturae around the node of care and its temporal

implications, it will help to show the goal toward which Seneca claims human nature aims: The

Good. This is the explicit topic of Ep.124, where Seneca is glad that Lucilius has developed the

choosiness and “precision” (subtilitas) to tease apart this dense question. Hints of the

etymological linkage of the hand and care can be seen from the beginning of Ep. 124, where the

importance of care for accomplishing the Good of humanity is prefigured by the epigram with

which Seneca opens his correspondence to Lucilius. He praises his friend and student for his

progress from his first steps as a student of Stoicism in Ep.1, as he has now developed a certain

intellectual “choosiness” (elegantia) such that he “does not carelessly keep pursuing things so

great” (Ep. 124.1, non est elegantiae tuae tam magna sectari secure). Seneca juxtaposes such

Goldschmidt (1953: 160) and Wildberger (2009: 48) note that the Stoics believed that “reason” was achieved in

humans either at the age of seven or fourteen, depending on the particular author.

The terminology of coherence is primarily taken from Gill’s (2006 & 2009) appeal to holism, but it is a consistent

them in modern scholarship discussing appropriation/οἰκείωσις. In his discussion, Dressler (2016: 98–100), in a

linguistic analysis of the Greek term, emphasizes, “The suffixes of the term oikeiosis (-oô+sis) indicate its verbal

character as a process making it more appropriate to speak of ownness in terms of identification [sic] than identity”

(98). The position of Reydams-Schils (2005: 55–9) will be discussed more below. See also Engberg-Pedersen

(1990); Goldschmidt (1953: 56; 127), Steiner (2008: 39–42); Bénatouïl (2006: 21–6; 116); Inwood & Donini (2008:

677–81); Schofield (2008: 760–68).

“choosiness” with the attitude of the hesitant reader of Vergil’s Georgics, whom the poet there

tells:

Possum multa tibi veterum praecepta referre,

Ni refugis tenuisque piget cognoscere curas. (I.176–7)

I can bring back to you many precepts of the old, if you do not flee back and it is

not revolting to come to know such slender cares.

Seneca uses this passage of Virgil’s to couple ‘slender cares’ with the handling of praecepta, a

term which in Stoic pedagogy refers to adages and bits of moral advice helpful for finding one’s

way.

These precepts themselves recall handiwork through their etymology, as they are things

“taken beforehand” (prae + capere),

and Seneca excerpts this from a discussion of the arma

that farmer’s make and use to bring their fields to fruition.

Thus Lucilius’ ability to face up to

the “slender cares” and gain bits of advice and thus grapple with questions “so great” is a mark

of his proper use of his own care.

In addition to accomplishing the Good, Lucilius’ care and choosiness is also required in

order to even approach a proper understanding of the Good. Part of being able to accomplish the

Mazzoli (1970:215–32) highlights Seneca’s love for Virgil, noting that he is Seneca’s most cited author, and that

Georgics I is, along with Aeneid VI, the most cited of Virgil’s work. The citations from Virgil increase over the

corpus of the letters, a reflection of Setaioli’s (2000: 117–20) distinction between the disputatio/admonitio for public

paraenesis and sermo/institutio for more private pursuit of truth, and this follows the trajectory of the letters

discussed by Schafer (2009: 73). Trinacty (2009) argues that Seneca uses such quotations as a critique of the elder

Seneca’s work on imitatio, both as a way of enlivening philosophical points with allusion as well as a rhetorical

pedagogical exercise. Armisen-Marchetti: 1989: 24, 38–41 breaks down Seneca and other Stoics’ attitude to rhetoric

and the perceived tension with philosophizing. Setaioli (2000: 117) also notes that Seneca’s attitude toward stylistic

expression, as seen at Ep. 46.2 echoes that of Cleanthes, for whom the “great divine” concepts (θεῖα μεγέθη) need

to be expressed in poetry (SVF I.486).

Seneca provides a fuller treatment of these rules of thumbs and decreta, general theoretical doctrine, in Epp. 94 &

95, respectively. Schafer (2009) provides an in-depth analysis of the pedagogical and thematic elements of these two

longest letters of the EM. Their function in Seneca’s pedagogy of care is discussed more in Ch. 4

This etymology recalls that of the Stoic term πρόληψις, discussed below, but given that praecepta are formed

from the perfect participle, I argue that they function in different though related ways; cf. Ch. 4on Seneca’s rhetoric

and pedagogy.

Mazzoli (1970:223) suggests that Seneca has an allegorizing reading of Virgil, but Setaioli (2000:194–7) pushes

back against this interpretation, as he sees no consistent thorough-going allegory in play – rather, he says Seneca

uses poetry in an “exemplary” manner. Regarding language more generally, Armisen-Marchetti (1989: 29) notes

that Stoics saw language itself as holding intuitive truths which allegorical descriptions could uncover. This

discussion will be picked up in Ch. 3, particularly regarding mythography and hermeneutics.

Good is coming to terms with what it is and how one arrives at it, and this leads to the guiding

question for this particular letter. Seneca asks, “Is the Good grasped by sensation or by the

understanding? To this is added that it is not there for speechless creatures and for infants” (Ep.

124.1, utrum sensu conprendatur an intellectu bonum? Huic adiunctum est in mutis animalibus

et infantibus non esse). The extent to which this is a ‘moral’ letter in a clear sense is unclear from

this ostensibly epistemological question, as the apparent question is not what the Good is, but

rather by what means do we come to know it and “grasp” it with our minds. Based on the

introduction to Ep. 121, Lucilius has much the same attitude to approaching questions which are

indirectly moral, as Seneca suggests that they are going to have to go to court over it (litigabis).

So, Seneca begins by offering an insight which expands the definition of ‘moral’: “It is not the

case that whatever belongs to character makes good character… However, everything is relevant

to humans, even if it is not the case that everything makes them better” (Ep. 121.2, non quicquid

morale est, mores bonos facit….omnia tamen ad hominem pertinent, etiam si non omnia

meliorem eum faciunt). This contention considerably widens the field of what is useful for the

student of morality seeking to achieve happiness, but it also means that being able to sift through

all the things that pertain to humans – i.e., everything – requires a kind of screen to pick out the

best bits, like the ‘choosiness’ praised at Ep. 124.

As Seneca explains in the case of children and animals (Ep. 124.8–10), it is because god

and (adult) humans are rational that they have access to the Good, the one being so by Nature

and the others achieving this status over the course of a lifetime – but not as a matter of course.

As he puts it,

Quemadmodum omnis natura bonum suum nisi consummata non profert, ita

hominis bonum non est in homine, nisi cum illi ratio perfecta est. Quod autem hoc

bonum? Dicam: liber animus, erectus, alia subiciens sibi, se nulli. Hoc bonum adeo

non recipit infantia, ut pueritia non speret, adulescentia inprobe speret; bene agitur

cum senectute, si ad illud longo studio intentoque pervenit. Si hoc est bonum, et

intellegibile est. (Ep. 124.11–12)

In the manner that every nature does not bring forth its own good unless it has been

accomplished, thus the good of a human is not in a human, except when they have

completed reason. But what is this good? I will tell you: a free mind, raised up,

throwing all beneath itself, itself beneath none. Infancy does not admit this good to

such an extent that boyhood does not hope for it, that adolescence does not hope

for it rightly; it is done well at old age, if it has come through to that with long and

directed zeal. If this is the Good, it also pertains to the understanding.

Human maturation, from initium to perfectum follows the trajectory of the growth of animals and

plants according to their natures, as both end up consummatus/-a. However, because of their

reason, their good is not just a good, but the Good, not according to a specific nature but

according to universal Nature.

This “good,” moreover, pertains to the understanding both

because of this rational character and because of the contradictions which sensation provides, as

Seneca demonstrates at Ep. 124.2–7 when refuting the Epicurean position, which confuses the

work of sensation and intellection so much that it “puts the height in place of the root” (Ep.

124.7, cacumen radicis loco ponis).

On the question of human nature and universal Nature, Schafer, 2009: 86 remarks: “Nature, of course, has a dual

significance, referring both to cosmic nature and to our own individual natures. The two come to the same thing:

Nature or God has provided all we need to be good, and all we need to be good is within us.”

That Stoicism from its beginnings had a strong intellectualist streak is understood, cf. Armisen-Marchetti, 1989:

44; Wilson, 2014: 12 ; Schafer, 2009: 88; Setaioli, 2000: 141 (going so far as to call Chrysippus “intransigent” in

this respect). Sensation, for the Stoics, is problematic because pleasure and pain – the Epicurean touchstones – are in

fact among the four cardinal πάθη, the emotional sufferings which most detract from human perfection and

attainment of οἰκείωσις, the process of living according to Nature, and the objects which occasion emotions are

considered “indifferent,” as they are of no consequence to achieving virtue, the one true good; on the πάθη and their

corresponding εὐπαθείαι, see Inwood & Donini, 2008: 699ff; on the doctrine of indifferents, see Inwood & Donini,

2008: 692; Bénatouïl, 2007: 219–43 & 255–7; Reydams-Schils 2005:59–69.

However, as will be explored below, Stoics did not go so far as to completely discount the material world,

as their theory of action and cognition was based on the sensible representations of the world (φαντασίαι) which

led to impulses toward/away from it (ὁρμαί) which humans could confirm or deny with their faculty of assent

(συγκατάθεσις); cf. Bénatouïl, 2007: 21, citing Origen, De Princ. III.1.2–3, but with respect to animals who lack

assent. Also related in virtuous action is the “restraint” (ὑπεξαίρεσις/exceptio) towards objects and projects held by

the wise; see Reydams-Schils 2005; Inwood & Donini, 2008: 703. Such is the result of Stoic ‘materialism,’ as the

only things that truly existed for Stoics were bodies (Sedley, 2008: 384; Hankinson, 2008: 482–3). Wildberger:

(2006:81ff) prefers to call it corporalism, and Bréhier differentiates the mathematical/physical materialism of

moderns with Stoic biological materialism; Goldschmidt (1953: 59 n7) draws parallels with this biological

corporalism and 20

century phenomenological descriptions of existence, as done by Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, and

others.

This universality is reflected in the definition as well, as the good mind rises out from

other things and throws them down before it, being below nothing else. The vertical movement

of the consummatus, given the etymological connections of summus to topography, also traces

the upward journey of the proficiens accomplished in the figure of the homo consummatus.

order to be a free, the mind of the good human has to rise above all things in order to subject

them to and “throw them down” (sub + iacere) beneath itself. Approaching the Good, the cura

required to complete it means arriving at the heights, a move which parallels the ascent from the

sublunary world to the fiery heavens with the highest divine concentration.

Human care then

rises up and hurls down in order to reach its good, the Good, which exists with god in its own

activity by Nature. Since the Good is in the heights,

available only to the entities who belong to

ratio, this marks a clear separation from animals. As Seneca says: “Indeed, the Good cannot fall

to a speechless animal by any means: it belongs to a more fortunate and better nature”

(Ep.124.13, bonum quidem cadere in mutum animal nullo modo potest; felicioris meliorisque

naturae est). The Good is no accident (ad + cadere), because it cannot fall from its lofty realm

down to the level where animals could grasp it through sensation, let alone for humans with their

particularly dull sensation. It is cura which allows the human to rise up out of the one plane of

sensation into the higher levels thanks to the understanding.

Part of this rests on the additional abilities of which rationality avails humans and god,

compared to irrational speechless animals and plants. Humans have access to the virtue, the

Good, and completion (perfectum) because of their ability to ask certain questions:

See n. 3 above

Wildberger (2006b: 73) provides a mathematical breakdown. Strictly speaking, for Stoics there is a complete

mixture (κράσις δι᾽ὅλου) of god and matter throughout the universe (Furley, 2008: 441), but the mix is not evenly

distributed, hence the individuation of the four elements and the properties of minerals, plants, and animals in the

universe. For more interpretation in terms of mythography, see Ch. 3

With Lin-Manuel Miranda

Haec enim rationalibus solis contingunt, quibus datum est scire quare, quatenus,

quemadmodum. Ita bonum in nullo est, nisi in quo ratio. (Ep. 124.20)

For these take hold of the rational only, to whom it is given to know by what means,

to what extent, in what manner. Thus, the Good is in no one, unless reason is in

them.

The language used here recalls a similar point Seneca makes earlier in the letter, when he refutes

the Epicureans on the implications of what is manifestum or “palpable” for humans, even from

birth (Ep. 124.6). It is true, Seneca says, that:

beata esse, quae secundum naturam sint, quid autem secundum naturam sit, palam

et protinus apparet, sicut quid sit integrum. Quod secundum naturam est, quod

contigit protinus nato, non dico bonum, sed initium boni (Ep. 124.7)

What is happy is what follows Nature; but what follows Nature is at hand and

straightaway apparent, just as what is uncompromised.

What is according to

Nature, what straightaway has taken hold of one who is born, I do not say this is

the Good, but it is the beginning of Good.

At Ep. 124.7, it is what is according to nature, the beginning of the Good, which “has taken

hold” (contigit) of a child as soon as they are born. This same turn of phrase is used again at Ep.

124.20 to contend that the Good and virtue and completion also “take hold” of rational beings.

The change in tense from perfect to present shows the development of the not yet rational infant

into the actualized rational adult, while still marking the same individual: they have been taken

hold of at birth, they are taken hold of now.

Part of this development is connected to the “givens” in their knowledge: means, extent,

and manner. As Brad Inwood (2007: 374) points out, these questions are ones asked in

evaluation of actions, going back to Aristotle. However, the adverbs Seneca lists also introduce

questions very relevant to the crafting power of cura as the mind of the proficiens endeavors to

OLD 1a highlights the etymological components of in + tangere. DeVaan, 2008: 132 notes that there is a Classical

opposition between integer and contaminatus, which attests to at least an implicit understanding of the etymological

connection to tangere, which is backed by Indo-European linguistics (ibid., 606).

subject all things to itself.

To know means, extent, and manner allows the student of philosophy

to select the proper tools and know how, when, and where to apply them. This process recalls the

elegantia or “choosiness” (e+legere) which Seneca praised in Lucilius at the beginning of the

letter, and which allows Lucilius to “renders everything for some progress” (Ep. 124.1, omnia

ad aliquem profectum redigis). Through the proper selection of means, extent, and manner, that

is through the proper implementation of that which has been given to him as a rational human

being, Lucilius can exercise his cura to rise to the intelligible Good on the divine plane. In this,

Seneca provides a close translation of the Greek term ἐκλογή, the “selection” that humans can

make among indifferents given the demands of their circumstances.

These indifferents, by

definition having no intrinsic value, are thus put in service of the only task that does have value,

the virtuous achievement of the Good. Through care, the mind, having risen above all things,

thus has every tool at its disposal with which it accomplishes the Good.

However, Lucilius’ choosiness and selection has not reached the perfection of the Stoic

sage, the sapiens, as Seneca seeks to dissipate his correspondent’s impatience as Lucilius asks

“to what that argument now pertains, and how it will benefit your mind (Ep. 124.21, quo nunc

pertineat ista disputatio… et quid animo tuo profutura sit). If we recall Ep. 121.2, Seneca makes

clear that everything pertains to humans, so the end of this particular argument leads ultimately

back to the human as well, but how it will profit or how it “will be on behalf of” Lucilius’ mind

(pro + sum) may not be entirely clear. However, Lucilius is right in being concerned with how it

The crafting analogy in connection with Aristotle brings up Ep.65’s discussion of the Four Causes, in which

Seneca makes explicit reference to sculpting to explain the effect. This will be developed further in chapter 2.

Inwood & Donini (2008: 698) & Schafer (2009, 27) both note the distinction between ἐκλογή and αἵρεσις,

“choice” the latter being for the Good while the former is aimed at preferred indifferents and what is appropriate

(καθήκον); Bénatouïl (2007: 238–9) notes that this position is particularly clear for Diogenes of Babylon and

Antipater of Tarsus. De Fin. III.20 gives different levels of selection amongst indifferents based on the level of

moral progress.

will benefit him, showing his concern for his future activity and moral progress. So, Seneca

clarifies again the benefit for the mind, appealing to his place in the scala natura and again

proposing a definition of the good:

et exercet illum [animum] et acuit et utique aliquid acturum occupatione honesta

tenet. Prodest autem etiam quo moratur ad prava properantes. Sed et illud dico:

nullo modo prodesse possum magis, quam si tibi bonum tuum ostendo, si te a mutis

animalibus separo, si cum deo pono… Vis tu relictis, in quibus vinci te necesse est,

dum in aliena niteris, ad bonum reverti tuum? Quod est hoc? Animus scilicet

emendatus ac purus, aemulator dei, super humana se extollens, nihil extra se sui

ponens. (Ep. 124.21–3)

It both exercises the mind and sharpens it and holds it as something about to act

from an honorable occupation. But it is also a profit where it hinders those

approaching crooked things. But I say this too: in no way can I help more, than if I

show your good to you, than if I separate you from the speechless animals and place

you with god… Do you want to be turned back to your own good, away from the

rest where it is necessary for you to be conquered/bound, while you struggle for the

things of another? What is this? Clearly a mind freed from fault and pure, an

imitator of god, lifting itself above human things, placing nothing of its own outside

itself.

The argument itself sharpens the mind and exercises it, which recalls the subilitas that Lucilius is

praised for at the beginning of the letter. In this respect, the use of the argument as a tool to

approach the Good also helps to improve the mind as a tool to achieve the same thing: the

argument is a whetstone for honing the mind to “precision,” such that it can pursue the “slender

cares” mentioned in the Virgilian epigraph. Such an argument also serves to hold the mind “as

something about to act in an honorable pursuit,” which adds a future element to the image of the

mind being held.

The beginning of the Good did hold it; the Good does hold it, for fully

rational people; and now for the proficiens, such arguments do hold it so that it will act

virtuously. Thus, the honing of the mind through cura as a tool points it in future direction,

aiming at the completion of the Good. At the same time, it also works in the present to delay the

On the other sense of occupatio, see chp. 4.

approach to “crooked things” (prava). The prava in the present contrasts with the erectus animus

which is the Good and the goal. The future aim seeks to lift up and straighten out the soul

vertically toward the Good and god in the plane of understanding, while the present holds the

crooked things limited to the lower plane of sensation. This is highlighted by Seneca’s repetition

of the profit, this time which he himself can provide. In order to show the human good, Seneca

must set humans apart from the other, speechless animals and set them with god. When Seneca

asks if Lucilius wants to be returned to his own good – the Good – the reverti recalls the

ontological diversa sunt which he appeals to in discussing the “same nature” of rational humans

and god.

In order to make this return, one has to recognize what is one’s own and use it as such.

Τhis use of what is one’s own recalls another distinction separating humans from

speechless animals and placing them with god. At Ep.124.16–8, Seneca discusses a side effect of

the lack of reason in animals and plants: incomplete time, particular their lack of access to the

future:

Tertium vero tempus, id est futurum, ad muta non pertinet. Quomodo ergo potest

eorum videri perfecta natura, quibus usus perfecti temporis non est? Tempus enim

tribus partibus constat, praeterito, praesente, venturo… Non potest ergo perfectae

naturae bonum in inperfecta esse natura, aut si natura talis hoc habet, habent et sata.

(Ep. 124.15–8)

The third time, i.e. the future, does not extend to the speechless. So, how can their

nature be seen as perfect, for whom there is no use of complete time? For time

consists of three parts, that which has gone by, that which is present, and that about

to come…Therefore, the good of completed nature cannot be in incomplete nature,

or if such a nature has this, also planted things have it.

The completion of human nature and of the good requires not just the ability to understand the

different parts of time but particularly the use of this completed time. Previously, at Ep. 124.13,

Goldschmidt (1953: 55ff) describes the ethical journey to sapientia as a passage from self back to self akin to the

tensional movement of the universe and each individual thing. On τόνος/tenor, see Graver, 1998: 618–23;

Wildberger, 2006: 61–2 & 72

explains that the Good cannot fall from the plane of understanding to speechless animals and the

plane of sensation because it is “of a more fortunate and better nature,” namely the perfect

Nature of god.

The imperfection of animals that bars them from the Good corresponds to the

imperfection in temporal access, and so the dividing line between these planes and the (in)perfect

nature is a temporal one. Animals only have the present,

and so they cannot cross from the

plane of sensation to the plane of understanding. Humans, partaking of reason, can cross from

the one plane to the next, and they can do this through their use of the future.

The midway position between god and speechless animals characterizes the unique work

of temporality for humans. Though god and humans share the same nature, which is

differentiated through mortality and perfectibility, temporality does not per se differentiate the

two. Rather, it is their respective relations to temporality and futurity which determine their

approach to and achievement of the Good. The future, as unique to rational beings, allows for the

attainment of the Good. For god, this futurity is built right into Nature. God ordains the future

good in the universe, qua providential logos, but this future is a necessity of the function of

Nature, qua deterministic natural laws. Thus, god is always already good, constantly enacting its

perfection throughout the entire universe. Humans, in as much as they have complete

temporality, are perfectible, but their use of temporality is not the same as their natural process.

Care, then, most work by focusing on future time to approximate the always-already divine

present brought about by Nature.

For an overview of the Stoic positions on animal cognition in relation to scala naturae, Wildberger (2008: 47–63)

Seneca also allows for a very limited past parasitic upon the present at Ep. 124.15; this will be discussed further

below.

The relation of the human and divine is revisited in Ch. 3 in relation to a Stoic reading of Hyginus.

Deleuze, 1990 (61–4, & passim) makes a similar distinction appealing to Stoic theory of time, borrowing from

Goldschmidt (1953), but the time of god is the chronos of the “always limited present” while the time of events and

sense is the aion, the infinitely subdivided past/future. I follow this analysis in as much as chronos removes the

personal quality from god, but, given the providence of god and the multifarity of Stoic λόγος—as actual speech,

the laws of nature, the determined necessity of the universe, the divine foresight, and colloquial “logical” thinking

The use of time in this way further clarifies the ethical ideal that Seneca describes for

Lucilius of a “mind freed from fault and pure” at Ep. 124.23.

In as much as this mind is “an

imitator of god, lifting itself (extollens) above human things,” this mind takes advantage of the

time available to rational beings – the future – so that through its care it can approximate the

work of Nature and accomplish the Good. Thus, the hand of care lifts it up from the plane of

sensation throws down there all that is not its own (sub + iacere).

This description of the ideal

mind “placing nothing of its own outside itself,” points readers all the way back to the very

beginning of the work, where Seneca advises the beginner Lucilius that “all things belong to

another, only time is ours” (Ep. 1.3, omnia, Lucili, aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est).

What begins as a pithy precept is reintegrated into the full metaphysical landscape. If time alone

is ours, then the good mind places none of its time outside of itself, particularly the future, the

time of the perfect nature of god. Seneca makes the temporal progression to which he alluded in

the work of reason clear here: the return to god is a return gained through time, and the good of

reason is one made through the proper use of time.

Seneca has told Lucilius from the very beginning that he must “throw his hand onto the

things of today” (Ep. 1.2, hodierno manum inieceris).

The appearance of the hand here also

mirrors the activities of the mind as it works to perfect itself and imitate the divine. Many of

these activities indicative of cura are specifically manual: it throws (subicere, inicere), it lifts

(Wildberger, 2006b: 45–6)—god’s time is just as much the futural aion of sense as that of the human actor and

event.

As both Maltby (1991: 204) and DeVaan (2008: 372), emendare derives from the mendum, a physical blemish and

then fault or error. In this physical aspect, we may see emendatus as a synonym for eruditus, both educated but also

polished and smoothed.

On the root of Seneca’s term for “rival,” aemulator, OLD for aemulus (n.) 1 highlights the adversarial nature of

this, while 3 & 4 focus on the imitative. The link is also made with imitatio and the imago, discussed further in Ch.

Strictly speaking, the only real things for Stoics were bodies (σώματα), and time was one of the quasi-real

incorporeals (ασώματα) (Bréhier, 1928; Goldschmidt, 1953: 13–45; Sedley, 2008: 395–401). The use of time as

material and metaphor will be discussed in chapter 3.

(extollere) it places (ponere), it makes (facere, perficere), it gathers and selects – even its ability

to understand shares manual characteristics (inter + legere).

The hand of care works, via its

selection of means and methods, to sharpen the mind into the subtlest and most precise of tools,

namely a mind that has all the capability of god. Care works on honing the mind (acuit) so that

once it has its faults smoothed out (emendatus) and it can approach and deal with any matter or

argument which is presented to it and always render and make something good out of it. The

image of the hand which these verbs reinforce allows us to also see Seneca’s own care, as he

“prepares” humans “apart” from animals (se + parare) and places them with god (pono). In the

text as well as in philosophical activity, the hand of care works to align the human being with

god.

However, just as Seneca has shown the divine power of the hand of cura as it has

completed its work, he rejoins what has been separated by reintroducing the animal and

reminding Lucilius that he is not consummatus:

Rationale animal es. Quod ergo in te bonum est? Perfecta ratio. An tu ad suum finem

hanc evocas, in quantum potest plurimum crescere? Tunc beatum esse te iudica, cum

tibi ex ea gaudium omne nascetur, cum visis, quae homines eripiunt, optant,

custodiunt, nihil inveneris, non dico quod malis, sed quod velis. Brevem tibi

formulam dabo, qua te metiaris, qua perfectum esse iam sentias: tunc habebis tuum,

cum intelleges infelicissimos esse felices. Vale. (Ep. 124.23–4)

You are a rational animal. So, what is the good in you? Completed reason. Are you

yourself calling this out to its own end, to how very much it can grow? Judge that

you are happy then, when every joy is born to you from this, when, having seen the

things that humans snatch away, they hope for, they guard, you find nothing (I don’t

mean that you prefer, but that you want). I will give you a little rule to measure

yourself and feel that you are now complete: you will have your own then, when

you understand that the most unfortunate are fortunate. Be Well.

DeVaan (2008:332) notes concerning the evolution of the meaning of legere as “to read” that intellegere and

neglegere arise in a similar move from the “original” meaning of to gather; the latter verb stands in opposition to

both sollicitudo and securitas in Seneca’s discussions of style, as Setaioli (2000:123) shows. Further, DeVaan

attests to a similar developmental path for Greek λέγειν as for Latin legere.

This relates to the pedagogical work of care in the EM and literature for Seneca, about which cf. Ch. 4

The Good in a human may be the achievement of perfect reason, but this is not in the same way

as in god because humans are animals themselves, an intermediary between two rungs on the

same ladder. Human reason is not already complete but is to be completed. It must grow, which

again recalls the imagery of plants, but it is a growth which one must call it to complete – that is,

in the future.

Lucilius still must summon his reason, and then it must stand trial as he judges for

himself whether he is happy. The final verdict aligns with the Stoic distinction of “selection”

(ἐκλογή) mentioned previously, since he will have not just ‘preferred’ things, but what he wants,

that is what aims at the Good directly. To help him realize when he has achieved this, Seneca

provides the closing maxim as a model for measuring. These elements each point back to the

crafting work of care, particularly in how it would assess the quatenus of his virtuous activity.

However, the careful measurement bridges the two planes of the moral proficiens: Lucilius will

feel that he is perfect—i.e., that he “has his own”—when he understands that the most

unfortunate are fortunate – literally, when he will be able to pick the unfortunate out from the

fortunate.

In this brief sentence, Seneca highlights two important distinctions. On the one hand, the

fact that Seneca has to provide this “little rule” (formula) shows that in order to achieve the

Good, human beings have to work through time to make it happen.

The measure that Seneca

provides emphasizes the future goal to focus on: “I will give,” “you will have,” “you will

understand (dabo, habebis, intelleges). While sharing reason with god gives the ability to access

future time, it does not ensure the Good for humans. On the other hand, the connection of

Cf p. 25–76 below, particularly n. 49 on the vocal etymology of the conciliatio involved in the relationship of

person and subject. Bénatouïl (2006: 125–7) provides an account of virtuous and unvirtuous behavior and mental

health in terms of beliefs consistent with Chrysippus.

OLD 7a turns to Epp. 6 & 92 for a definition referring to a general standard, along with a guide, measure, or

paradigm, the latter of which also refers to Seneca being about to give a future model (Ep. 92.3, Denique ut breviter

tibi formulam scribam, talis animus esse sapientis viri debet qualis deum deceat).

sensation and understanding with this accomplishment points to the primacy of care in human

cognition. To fully understand how these two elements affect Seneca’s conception of the hand of

care, we will now turn to the other two, irrational elements of the scala naturae.

The Hand of Care Over Time

i. The Seeds of the Subject

To reevaluate the relationship of understanding and sensation in humans, we must return

to the argument Seneca pitches against his Epicurean interlocutor. The first argument against the

Epicurean position, as Seneca describes it, is that human sensation leads us towards things that

are both shameful and honorable, and given our sensation is much weaker than animals, it is the

least reliable guide we have. (Ep. 124.2–5). The second is a developmental critique:

Tu summum bonum, voluptatem, infantiae donas, ut inde incipiat nascens, quo

consummatus homo pervenit. Cacumen radicis loco ponis. (Ep. 124.7)

You are gifting the highest good, pleasure, to infancy, such that being born they

begin from that place where the accomplished human arrives in the end. You are

putting the height in place of the root.

Seneca does not agree that the highest good is pleasure, as we have seen, but the issue is that the

infant has sensation just like the adult, and so this cannot be where the Good lies, because the

Good is that of perfected reason and a free mind. To assume that this kind of model of the Good

is correct is, by the analogy he provides, akin to planting a tree upside down and assuming that

this is the proper growth pattern. This absurdity also points out the developmental similarity

between plants and humans, as each must grow into their good. However, they do not share the

same good: “But by what means is the Good not in a tree or in a speechless animal? Because

there is no reason” (Ep. 124.8, Quare autem bonum in arbore animalique muto non est? Quia

nec ratio). Seneca’s language in the tree metaphor above shows, on the one hand, that plants do

have a diachronic development, but it is given to them from without by the hand of Nature and

so they simply pass through their developmental stages. On the other hand, human development

shares in this diachronic trajectory, but the development is one that must be initiated from within

the human being, and so it must look to the future and act with the future in its aim.

Seneca’s comparisons with plants shows care as the activity of the human aimed at the

future as well as how the hand of care can be trained overtime to make the Good come to

fruition. Although infants have the beginning of the Good, i.e., what is according to nature, they

are as far from achieving it as “the completed is from the beginning” (Ep. 124.10, ab initio

perfectum). To illustrate this, Seneca returns to a more explicit analogy with plants than the one

he uses against the Epicureans:

Ergo nec in tenero, modo coalescente corpusculo est.

Quidni non sit ? Non magis

quam in semine. Hoc si dicas, aliquod arboris ac sati bonum novimus; hoc non est

in prima fronde, quae emissa cum maxime solum rumpit. Est aliquod bonum tritici;

hoc nondum est in herba lactente nec cum folliculo se exerit spica mollis, sed cum

frumentum aestas et debita maturitas coxit. (Ep. 124.10–11)

So, it is not in the tender little body, just now coming together. Why should it be?

No more than in the seed. If you should say this, we have come to know that there

is a certain good of the tree and plant; this is not in the first leaf, which sent out just

breaks the soil. There is a certain good of wheat; this is not yet in the suckling grass

nor when the soft bristle has gone out of its husk, but once the summer heat and the

ripeness owed has cooked it.

The ‘suckling grass’ of a young wheat plant is “not yet” (nondum) in possession of its good, and

this word recalls Seneca’s discussion of human development shortly before, where Seneca

describes infants as “not yet belonging to reason” (Ep. 124.9, nondum rationale). The language

of breastfeeding blends the young grass into a child itself, emphasizing the developmental

similarity of the two genera. Thus, just as the plant does not achieve its good until the “ripeness

OLD (2) notes that the term corpusculum is one of the terms Lucretius and other Latin authors use to speak of

atoms.

owed” has cooked the grains, so too the human does not achieve the good until maturity.

Seneca makes a similar analogy in Ep. 121, which more closely matches his assertion that it is

specifically “old age” when a human can hope to reach maturity. Here, Seneca seeks to address

the question of the constitution (constitutio) of human beings and how it can change over time:

Nam et illa herba, quae in segetem frugemque ventura est, aliam constitutionem

habet tenera et vix eminens sulco, aliam, cum convaluit et molli quidem culmo, sed

quo ferat onus suum, constitit, aliam cum flavescit et ad aream spectat et spica eius

induruit; in quamcumque constitutionem venit, eam tuetur, in eam componitur. (Ep.

121.15)

For also that grass, which is about to come into harvest and fruition, tender and

scarcely jutting out from the furrow it has one constitution, it stands by another,

when it has grown strong and with a soft stalk indeed, but with which it bears its

own burden, another, when it turns golden and looks at the threshing floor and its

bristles have hardened; whatever constitution it has come into, it looks after this, it

is put together into this.

We shall return to discuss constitution more fully in comparison with animals, but it is sufficient

here to point out the stages of plant life as they closely follow those of humans. The tender

sapling just emerging with its ‘first frond’, the self-supporting stalk, the first bristling wheat, and

the cooked and hardened fruit each match the tottering infant (described at Ep. 121.8), childhood,

adulthood, and finally old age which “looks at the threshing floor” at the end of its life.

Plants cannot literally see the threshing floor nor “look after” the constitution of their

particular stage of life, but this visual language does highlight the closeness of developing plants

with developing humans, and it recalls the privileging of vision in comparison with touch at Ep.

The use of frumentum and the reference to the threshing floor in the following analogy from Ep. 121 both

highlight the Stoic position that all life lower down the scala natura was ordained for use by humans; cf. Bénatouïl,

2007: 43–62; Wildberger (2009: 63) suggests that humans are made for god on the Stoic view.

As part of her study of death in Roman literature (both Greek & Latin), Edwards (2007: 144–60) approaches

“watching death” from the point of view of spectators and exemplarity (about which more, Ch. 4). Dressler (2020:

227–35) approaches the theme of looking to the end and foresight in Ep. 113 & De Vita Beata in terms of the post-

human, though with separate foci than this dissertation. Inwood (2005: 241) and Ker (2009: 74) highlight the morbid

preoccupation Seneca has with death in his work, and the latter shows clearly how the very epistolary structure of

the corpus enacts the course of a life (147–76). This practice has its roots in the μελέτη θανάτου of Socrates at Phd.

81a, discussed more fully by Warren (2001: 102–5).

124.5.

The use of visual metaphor to describe this self-perception shows that the relationship of

the human and plant to their respective constitutions is not a matter of ignorance on the part of

the individual perceiving it. Further, the use of tuetur also prefigures Seneca’s later assertion that

“because the surest oversight is from closest by, each [of nature’s offspring] has been entrusted

to themselves (Ep. 121. 18, quia tutela certissima ex proximo est, sibi quisque [fetus naturae]

commissus est).

Thus, this subject – whether child or anthropomorphic plant – “looks after” its

constitutions in time, and these successive persons are what have been entrusted to or “sent along

with” (con + mittere) the subject. As Seneca sums up the comparison:

non enim puerum mihi aut iuvenem aut senem, sed me natura commendat. ergo

infans ei constitutioni suae conciliatur, quae tunc infanti est, non quae futura iuveni

est. (Ep. 121.16)

Nature does not entrust a boy or a youth or an old man to me, but me to me.

Therefore, the infant is brought together with its own constitution, which is for the

infant then, not that which is about to be for the youth

To slightly alter the terminology employed by Alex Dressler (2016: 179), for humans and plants

there is a “subject” which remains the same through the diachronic development into the

“person” of the fully grown individual, or indeed the different persons at the various immature

stages. As with the personae theory of Panaetius, as well as the popular image of actors in Stoic

authors,

the person reflects the relationship of the subject with other subjects (its “role”) at any

given time and reflects the proper actions (καθήκοντα) to be undertaken given that role as

Quid si quis vellet non oculis, sed tactu minuta discernere? Subtilior ad hoc acies nulla quam oculorum et

intentior daret bonum malumque dinoscere. Vides in quanta ignorantia veritatis versetur et quam humi sublimia ac

divina proiecerit, apud quem de summo, bono malo, iudicat tactus (Ep. 124.5)

Dressler, 2016: 120–1 highlights the familial and specifically maternal imagery employed in this description of

natura. Nature’s humanity will be discussed further in chp. 2

In addition to the verbiage of the πρόσωπον/persona from De Off. I, Goldschmidt (1953:150ff) points out

Cicero’s appeal by the character of Cato at De Fin. III.7.24, as well as later uses by Epictetus (e.g. Diss. I.29.41).

Gill (1988: 189) contrasts Cicero’s more individualistic presentation of personae while Epictetus stresses that the

general human role comes first.

viewed from an outside perspective.

Thus, just as one actor could play both Hamlet and Falstaff

and still act well while modulating their activity to fit each role, so too the one subject can be an

infant and act toward the Good as befits the person of an infant and later grow to maturity and

then old age and act as befits their respective persons.

The same can be said for plants, with

each individual plant at certain points going through the more generic stages of their

development, i.e. this plant as a seed, this plant as fully ripe, etc.

Where the analogy breaks down is in the manner in which this development takes place.

The plant shows no signs of enacting the stages to which it has been committed. In the passage

from Ep. 124. 10–11, the good of the plant comes from without and is described in the past. In

the first stages, the very first frond of the plant is passively “sent forth” (emissa), and the

subsequent husk “has gone out” (exerit) from the plant. Its good finally arrives when it “has been

cooked” by the summer heat and the “ripeness owed.” The plant itself is only active in its stage

as “suckling grass,” an image which itself suggests dependency rather than activity. The plant’s

good comes from outside of itself, as a matter of course, which Seneca explicitly denies of the

Good which is of a “more fortunate and better nature” such as to not simply fall to things. Thus,

Gill (1988:171) notes that Cicero’s presentation of Panaetius’ theory is a “markedly social” one, and he (1993:

343) also points out that Cicero’s treatment of the virtue of decorum stresses the visibility to others more than to

oneself; cf. Reydams-Schils, 2005: 93–7. On the theory of καθήκοντα, see Goldschmidt, 1953: 125, 155–7 & 204;

Setaioli, 2000: 170 & 181–9; Bénatouïl, 2007: 121–3; and Inwood & Donini, 2008: 728ff.

There is some debate about the extent to which particular individual characteristics are emphasized in the

metaphor of the actor and in Panaetius’ personae theory. Gill (1993:352) uses Friedrich Nietzsche to contrast

Panaetius’ stance on individuality: “Nietzsche seems to want to make the specific, individual self (which Panaetius

thinks we should take account of in choosing our role) into the sole normative criterion, or rather into the “essential”

self that Panaetius presents as the deeper ethical norm…. But it is clear that [Panaetius] does not want to collapse the

second into the first and to make our particularity (in both its good and its bad aspects) the only basis for shaping our

lives).” Setaoli: 2000 highlights particularly Panaetius’ equation of aesthetics and ethics and thus appears to err more

on the side of Nietzsche in emphasizing the need to focus on individual style rather than universal (particularly 188–

90). In either case, Goldschmidt (1953: 185n6) notes that Panaetius’ individualism is more marked than the position

of the Old Stoa and that of Epictetus, and this is among his many ‘unorthodox’ positions, e.g., rejection of

ἐκπύρωσις (Furley, 2008: 433), divination (Hankinson, 2008: 533ff; Cambiano, 2008: 598–9), and the void

(Bréhier, 1928: 51). Despite many parallels with Panaetius, Seneca appears to strike a balance between

individualism and naturalism (Grimal, 1953: 63), and we may see his assertion at Ep. 124.22 that animals will

always out do humans with respect to decus as evidence of some distance from Panaetius (cf. n.31)

it is that plants have only “a certain good” based on their individual nature, not the Good based

on Nature simpliciter which humans can achieve. The difference in goods is also seen in how the

developmental stages are shown to not have the Good: as quoted above, compared to the plants,

“Infancy does admit of (recipit) this good to such an extent that boyhood does not hope for it,

that adolescence does not hope for it rightly; it is done well at old age, if it has come through to

that with long and directed zeal” (Ep. 124.11–12). Despite their failure to achieve the Good, each

immature stage for humans actively engages with the Good as the grammatical object. When it

comes to old age, in which “the Good is done well,” the means or agent of the passive agitur is

left out, but we see this passive formulation as the reversal of the contention at Ep. 121. 17:

curam ago. “If I make all things on account of care of myself” (si omnia propter curam mei

facio), then this elliptical agitur reflects the proper fulfillment of a care which has accomplished

the Good.

The plant’s lack of care, thanks to its externally derived good, is on display also in the

second passage from Ep. 121.15. The change in tenses, here with a full use of perfect, present,

and future, reflects the focus on development and the constitutions fitting for each stage. In each

case its self-relationship of subject to ‘person’ is consistent with the human trajectory, its

looking-after of its constitution lacks the productive elements associated with cura. The plant-

subject simply ‘comes’ into each constitution, and it looks after it because it is “put together”

into it (componitur).

The passive composition (and not constitutio) of the plant runs counter to

the description of the free mind and the Good in Ep.124, where the hand of cura “places nothing

Armisen-Marchetti, 1989: 42 and Ker, 2009: 171 highlight the valence of the textual project implied in componere

vitam, one which the personification of Nature also brings to light. Wildberger (2006b:9) also points out how Seneca

(Ep. 102) uses componere to describe the total mixture of the stoic universe, in which “composite” things are

together but not unified.

of its own outside of itself (Ep.124.23, nihil extra se sui ponens).

The plant, being itself put

together, reverses the activity of cura, experiencing rather the hand of Nature. The hand of cura

is an aemulator dei in its positing power, and this distinguishes the self-relationship of humans

from that of plants.

The difference between the passive componitur and active ponens recalls the active hand

of care associated with the perfected mind, which selects things with an aim at future moral

improvement and also grasps time itself. The association with hands and productive activity

aimed at the future appears here as well, as Seneca differentiates the different genera based on

their relation to active or passive attainment of their good . The plant offspring here are passively

entrusted to themselves, and they have already been entrusted in the past. Their individual

natures are a matter of course: as it has been, so it shall be. The ripeness owed is the repayment

of this particular commission.

Conversely, Nature “entrusts” (commendat) the human subject to

itself in its present person – infant, elder, or in between . The active commendat suggests that the

human is the object, but the activity described is a reciprocal one, namely the giving of hands

(con + manus + dare).

The hand of human cura and the hand of god and Nature, each one

approximating the other, shake on it, as it were, entering into a kind of cosmological agreement.

Regarding the ambiguous use of the sui, Inwood (2007:103) translates this phrase as “regarding nothing that is

beyond itself as its own,” while Grummere (1925:449) renders it as, “counting nothing of its own to be outside of

itself”

The coordination of committere/debita brings to light legal proceedings, such as in the jurist Gaius, Institutiones

3.200.2–3 and frequent in Justinians’ Digest (e.g. 21.2.35.pr.2–3; passim). With literary applications, there is an

intertext with Vergil, Georgics I.223, the most quoted book in the EM:

Et si triticeam in messem robustaque farra

exercebis humum solisque instabis aristis, 220

ante tibi Eoae Atlantides abscondantur

Cnosiaque ardentis decedat stella Coronae,

debita quam sulcis committas semina quamque

inuitae properes anni spem credere terrae.

Thus Isidore (Orig. 5.24.20): “mandatum is said, because once upon a time one used to give their hand to the

other in a transaction, once it was committed” (mandatum dictum, quod olim in commisso negotio alter alteri

manum dabat). The reappearance of committere in the definition heightens the gradations of the process described in

Seneca while also making the hand the operator in this entrusting (Maltby, 1991: 363).

Nature gives to the hand of care the appropriate constitution for each stage, and then it is up to

care to work toward the next stage.

This activity of the hand is shown even in the infancy, as it is unable to grasp the Good at

this stage and take it (recipit) . The entrusting of the hand, the “commending” of constitution to

the subject, also shares features with the description of infancy in Ep. 124 as well: “That which is

according to Nature and has taken hold of a person as soon as they are born, I do not call the

Good, but the beginning of Good” (Ep. 124.7, Quod secundum naturam est, quod contigit

protinus nato, non dico bonum, sed initium boni). The beginning of the Good “takes hold of”

(con + tangere) the person of the infant, but the subject as an infant cannot take the complete

Good because of the handshake deal with Nature (commendat). The hand involved – touching

and taking, albeit in the negative – shows the presence of care in the human from the beginning,

albeit in need of practicing. Like Hyginus’ Cura, care possesses the human being from the very

beginning. Its hand is the one which makes the deal with Nature, since it is through these that the

Good is accomplished for rational beings following the parallel from Ep. 124.14 (bonum natura

perficit, dei scilicet, alterius cura, hominis). As noted above, virtue and the Good also “take hold

of” rational beings alone, and the rational natures are those “to whom it is given” (quibus datum)

to ask about means, extent, and manner. The emphasis on giving and touching with these rational

beings recalls the hand of care and its own work, but now these marks of reason are part of the

initial toolkit which has been entrusted to human care by Nature. The hand of care is the

beginning of the Good, slowly sharpening the rational mind to use the givens of Nature to reach

its own perfection.

As the object of “having been put together” (con + positus), plants are the object of the

hand of Nature which puts them together. They are made to grow through time from without by

Nature, which takes care to ensure this trajectory. However, human persons are not the object of

Nature’s hand like plants are, but rather are called to a rapprochement by Nature. Conciliatio is

derived from concilio, associated with formal weddings and frequently indicating a meeting or

settlement between two individuals.

Seneca says at Ep. 121.15 (and then at 121.17, quoted

above), that the parties brought together here are the person of the particular constitutio and the

human subject with cura: “To each age is its own constitution, one for the infant, one for the

boy, one for the old man: all are endeared to that constitution in which they are” (Ep. 121.15,

Unicuique aetati sua constitutio est, alia infanti, alia puero, alia seni; omnes ei constitutioni

conciliantur in qua sunt). Unlike with plants, Nature does not take complete control of the

human. It does not put it hand on humans to put them together as with plants, rather it can only

set up a meeting between the subject and its various persons.

The proper reconciliation between

the person and the subject is accomplished by care. The fitting together of subject and person in

order to finally accomplish the Good according to the given constitution also raises the questions

which are the mark of rationality as well as that of care. While Nature oversees how best to make

the seeds grow into saplings and then into mature plants, care mediates as the active force to

make the subject and the person harmonize together through out a human life to accomplish the

Good.

ii. The Grasp of Care & Stoic Cognitive Theory

When it comes to the infant, they may not be rational yet, but the fact that they will be

changes the way in which the child can interact with the world, compared to the animal. Infants

OLD 1–3. DeVaan (2008: 84–5) notes the connection to the archaic calare, “to call,” which would highlight the

aspect of the logos involved in the Stoic picture of the universe as well as in human development; cf. Maltby, 1991:

147.

On the implications of transcending the feminine personification of Nature, cf. Ch. 3

On how this process can go wrong, however, cf. Ch. 2. On the implications of this activity in the agricultural

metaphor, Ch. 3.

do have the beginning of the Good, that which is according to Nature. Stoics believed that part of

our cognitive construction consisted of προλήψεις, “anticipations,” which provided the ability to

derive further truths about the world a priori.

These anticipations, these “takings ahead of

time,” reflect the conciliatio of Nature as well. As an infant, the subject is brought together with

the innate goal of the Good that can be accomplished. The hand of their care, though not as

dexterous as that of the accomplished human, is still able to reach out with understanding in a

manner which aims beyond the plane of sensation and toward the higher plane of understanding.

Seneca’s description of the infant’s grasp of their constitution points to a pre-linguistic

grasp which the child has: “Nature is more easily understood than explained; so, that infant

hasn’t come to know what “constitution” is, but it has come to know its own constitution” (Ep.

121.11, Facilius natura intellegitur quam enarratur; itaque infans ille quid sit constitutio non

novit, constitutionem suam novit). The process of coming to know their constitution is connected

to the understanding (intellegitur), a verb which shares the legere root of the “selection”

(elegantia) which Lucilius has cultivated in Ep. 124. The figuring of the hand of care for the

infant is intensified by the use of facilius, “easier” but also more equipped to make (facere). The

understanding is easier because it is more closely related to care than an explanatory definition

is.

Care, as the beginning of the Good, allows the infant to grasp their constitution in the

manner of an anticipation, and this grasp can then change over time to include reason as the hand

of care reconciles the subject to its ensuing persons over time.

Frede (2008:319–20) paints a rather Kantian picture of the role of anticipations in Stoic cognition; see also

Sandbach 1930, Todd 1973, Schofield 1980. Wildberger (2006b:27) notes that Seneca uses praesumptio as a

translation when discussing the innate notion of God.

This recalls the distinction between logos endiathetos and logos prophorikos – “inner language” and “spoken

language” – first testified by Philo of Alexandria, who likely took it from his familiarity with Stoicism (so Kamesar,

2004, but challenged by Panaccio (2017: 29–34)), and taken up from the Stoics by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (for

overview, Hamrick & van der Veken, 2011: 103–22)

The diachronic development of the infant’s prolepsis highlights the fact that for Stoics,

humans have two paths of οἰκείωσις, “appropriation,” which the Stoics used to refer to the

process of coming to live according to nature. The one path shared with animals consists in

getting a feeling for one’s own constitution, and the other uniquely human path is in the

perfection of reason. As Gretchen Reydams-Schils (2005: 55–9) points out in her discussion of

Cicero’s account of appropriation at De Finibus III.62, these two levels of appropriation—the

one for human qua animal and the other for human qua rational—neither cancel each other out

nor coexist at the same time, but the former is subsumed by the latter.

This follows the

rationalizing of sensation which increases overtime, as Long describes, but this also points to the

way in which these two levels of appropriation are in fact one for humans, as shown through the

connection of sensation and understanding in Seneca. These two processes intersect in human

cura which precedes everything else: “If I make all things on account of care of myself, care of

myself is before all things” (Ep. 121.17, si omnia propter curam mei facio, ante omnia est mei

cura). For Seneca, as the human subject takes on successive persons, the hand of care has to

expand its activity from the limited grasp of animals to the complete katalêptic grasp of perfect

reason in order to mediate the diachronic changes from which the animal’s appropriation is

exempted.

Though their intelligent sensation is still that of an animal, infants’ anticipations provide

the intellectual seed which allow the human to grow up and to develop (ideally) into the perfectly

Citing Cicero’s De Officiis as well as Ep. 124. While Reydams-Schils sees Roman Stoics as generally promoting

sociability and not denigrating more intimate personal relationships compared to the agapism of Stoic

cosmopolitanism, Bartsch (2015) points out that Seneca’s EM are markedly asocial, with little reference to family or

political life compared to his other works, possibly because of his unique position among Roman Stoics in having to

negotiate ruling and being ruled.

Dressler (2016: 191) builds off Deleuze’s (1990: 36–41) account of the serialization of signifiers and signifieds,

which is mediated by the presence of meaning/sense and argues that appropriation is a reflexive operation in the

grammatical sense.

rational sapiens. Thus it is that care is “planted in” humans (inseritur), while it is merely “born”

in animals (innascitur): human care has time to grow and works through time to develop the

beginning of the good, while animal care is what it is.

Care’s development moves from

anticipations to correspond with the end goal of Stoic epistemology, the most sure form of

knowledge, “comprehension” (κατάληψις). Cicero renders this term at Acad. I.41 as

comprehensio,

so called because “it is similar to those things which are grasped by the hand”

(similem is rebus quae manu prenderentur).

This cognitive hand with the firmest grasp appears

through the verb conprendere in Ep. 124 to address in which humans and animals interact with

the Good and what is “palpable” (manus + fendere) in their environment (Ep. 124.1, utrum

sensu conprendatur an intellectu bonum; Ep. 124.6, omnis scientia atque ars aliquid debet

habere manifestum sensuque conprehensum).

Before all things, care as anticipation begins the

work of rising from animal intelligent sensation up to the completed sensible understanding. The

future aim of care ends in the tight grasp of comprehension, but this ultimate grasp is not

expressed explicitly in propositional terms. Ultimately, understanding is a matter of careful

On the agricultural roots, OLD 1d, as seen in another of Seneca’s turns to Virgil, this time Eclogues i.74, “Plant

your pairs, Meliboeus, put your vines in order” (Ep. 101.4, insere nunc, Meliboee, piros, pone [in] ordine vites); cf.

also Ep. 112.2. This rational seed in a human reflects the Stoic cosmological conception of the σπερματικός λόγος

which begins to recreate the universe in the cycle of ἐκπύρωσις. Cf. Armisen-Marchetti, 1989: 233–40; Sedley,

2008: 388–9; Furley, 2008: 434–9. Schönegg (1999: 53–6) and Ker (2009: 147–9) point to Ep. 38 on conversation

and reason as embodying this principle. Pertinent to this interpretation, Seneca says that “reason does the same

thing” (ratio facit idem) as plant growth, and the mind grows stronger by “having taken the best” of what is said

(bene excepit).

Frede (2008: 298–300) and Wildberger (2006: 82) discuss Cicero’s synonyms for comprehensio. Wildberger

(ibid, n. 18) also notes that Seneca appears not to observe strict adherence to this term, but she does note that his use

of certissima rerum comprehensio at Ben 4.33.2 “concerns the future results [sic] of our action”; she also lists Ep.

85.32 in this regard, where Seneca explains huic enim propositum est in vita agenda nouitque quod temptat efficere,

sed omnia recte facere [emphasis added]. Given the lack of at least two more books of EM attested by Gellius, it is

entirely possible that what Wildberger views as “Seneca’s Organon” could very well have had a more technical

discussion of κατάλεψις

Cicero also records at Luc. 145 how Zeno, founder of the Stoa, used the image of a clenched fist to express the

exactitude of the knowledge and how “from this likeness he set the name κατάληψις upon this thing” (qua ex

similitudine etiam nomen ei rei, quod ante non fuerat, κατάληψιν imposuit)

On the etymylogy of manifestum from manus + fendere, OLD 1&2 (with the general entry turning to infestus as a

comparandum); cf. Leumann, 1977: 390; DeVaan, 2008: 303, 363, citing the Twelve Tables (VII, fr. 14 &16),

concerning punishments for thieves caught in the act or not, respectively.

rational selection, a “gathering from between,” or sorting out (inter + legere), and the most

precise elegantia, or picking (elegantia) out (elegantia), is required to accomplish the Good. In

blending sensation and understanding, care's hand reaches into the heart of things, beyond the

expressed (as expressed by enarratur).

as Emile Bréhier (1928: 14–36) points out, the

definition is a kind of surface-effect, an incorporeal λέκτον or “sayable” according to Stoic

metaphysics.

Seneca’s interpretation of Zeno’s hand, which grasps the surest impressions

available to the mind, reintegrates reason and sensation in a different way, one which has

transcended the plane of sensation and unites it with the plane of understanding in the firm grasp

of the Good not in definition but in itself .

As we have seen, however, Seneca makes a certain concession to speechless animals in

sharing the starting point of sensible understanding with infants, though they do not progress

beyond this point. As a nod to animal abilities, he notes that human sensation is generally “a

dulled and blunt thing, and even slower in a human than in some animals” (Ep. 124.4, obtunsa

res et hebes et in homine quam in aliis animalibus tardior). Not only are animals better at

sensation than humans, but Seneca comes close to even granting animals cura early in Ep. 121.

As Emile Bréhier (1928: 62–3) notes of κατάληψις, “This manner of knowing, related intimately with the soul

and its object, has no kind of relation with the knowledge of dialectic: it does not reach sayables or events: it reaches

the object itself, the being with its proper quality behind the result of events which appear at the exterior. It is an

understanding of the real, which is intuitive and certain, but it is at the same time a knowledge which does not find

its expression in language. For understanding to reach the real, the Stoics are thus obliged to radically separate

dialectical thought and the representation of reality, and to place the latter in the single real world, the world of

bodies. This is itself only an action of the vital force in its relation to the action of exterior objects. Understanding of

the real, opposed to dialectic, relates much more to an activity than to contemplation. Further, it is a taking

possession of the object and a kind of intimate penetration. The complete divide between this mode of understanding

and rational/logical thought, a schism which derives from the theory of incorporeals, should have had later in

Stoicism a huge influence” (translation my own).

Reydams-Schils (2005: 14) points out that Logic was not totally out of fashion with the ‘later’ Stoicism of

the Roman stoics; cf. Barnes (1997).

Bréhier, 1928: 14–36; Wildberger, 2006b: 133–200; Sedley, 2008: 395–401; Barnes, Bobzien & Mignucci 2008;

Schenkveld & Barnes, 2008: 190–8. Deleuze (1990) interprets the Stoic theory of λέκτα into a theory of sense and

meaning as “surface effects” or “events” arising from the causal chain of material objects. For more on incorporeals

and surfaces, see Ch. 3

In his explanation of animal’s understanding of their own constitutio, Seneca compares the

apparently “educated” (erudita) movements of animals and their “nimbleness” (agilitas) to

human craftspeople:

Artifex instrumenta sua tractat ex facili, … pictor colores, quos ad reddendam

similitudinem multos variosque ante se posuit, celerrime denotat et inter ceram

opusque facili vultu ac manu commeat; sic animal in omnem usum sui mobilest.

Mirari solemus saltandi peritos, quod in omnem significationem rerum et

adfectuum parata illorum est manus, et verborum velocitatem gestus adsequitur.

Quod illis ars praestat, his natura. Nemo aegre molitur artus suos, nemo in usu sui

haesitat. Hoc edita protinus faciunt. Cum hac scientia prodeunt; instituta nascuntur.

(Ep. 121.5–6)

The craftsperson wields their tools out of ease, … the painter very quickly marks

out colors, which many and varied they have placed before themselves to return a

likeness, and they traverse with an easy face and hand between the wax and the

work: thus an animal’s loose in every use of itself. We are accustomed to marvel at

people experienced in dancing, because their hand has been prepared for every

signification of things and emotions, and their bearing achieves the speed of words.

What art presents to those [dancers], Nature does for these [animals]. No one exerts

their joints sickly,

no one hesitates in the use of themselves. As soon as they have

been born, they do this straightaway. They come forth with this knowledge: they

are born educated.

As with their constitutio, the knowledge that animals have of their limbs and the “use of

themselves” (usus sui) is not propositional, but it is rather a knowledge like skill.

Thus, their

limbs are like the tools of artisans and painters, who work with such an “easy hand” (facili manu)

that even the description of their nimble movement blends together in the contracted mobilest.

The appeal to care-language of the hand is heightened by the application of facilis to describe it,

Because of Stoic materialism, improper functioning of the soul is often equated with disease; cf. Long, 2008: 583.

On the motivated inconsistencies with medical science which Chrysippus embraced, Cambiano: 2008

The most complete account of the theory of animal self-perception (συναίσθησις) is preserved by Hierocles (fl.

150s CE, per Ramelli (2009: xix) in his epitome of Stoic theory, Elements of Ethics. on infants vs animals vis-à-vis

propositions and self-consciousness, Bastiani & Long, 1992: 441–2; Bees, 2004: 29; Dressler, 2016: 122–3. The

relationship of propositions and the young may explain the contention of Schafer (2009: 89–91) that Seneca’s

pedagogical methods are like those used on children (despite the adult audience he advocates later, 2009: 112); on

these, see Ch. 4.

If this is not Senecan but a product of transmission, it is perhaps telling that this results from precisely the fluidity

and facility of motion which is described.

which prefigures its cognate faciunt which describes the activity of usus sui. The image of the

dancer with the “prepared hand” appears alongside that of the actor as an important model of

Stoic morality and καθήκοντα, so Seneca’s use of the dancer also serves to elevate animal

movement to a kind of quasi-sapientia.

However, such artful activity is rather “presented” (praestat) by Nature for speechless

animals. They appear “educated” in one sense (erudita), but Seneca says that they are actually

“educated” in another (instituta). This “education” recalls their constitution, but the participle

reflects that this education is a past fact. They are already organized from birth, and so there is no

possibility for a further growth trajectory like humans. Like plants, Nature is the guiding force in

this education for animals, while it is the ars that presents the education to humans; this

dichotomy between Nature and art also recalls the same dichotomy of Nature and care which

separates the paths to the good for god and humans, respectively. Thus, while the plant-like seeds

of human care are planted in humans by nature and can grow and develop, the “care” of animals

which is born in them is already past and already achieved. Further, their activity “appears”

concernful and like cura, but it is only an approximation. The comparison with the dancer serves

also to highlight the distance between the human and the animal, as animals lack the speech

Goldschmidt (1953: 150ff). He refers specifically to Cicero, De Finibus III.7.23–4, about which he notes

(translation my own), “The image of the ‘realization of the art” (artis effectio) interior to the art itself (the techniques

of the dancer or of the comedian carrying their end in themselves) ought to explain how the tendency and the ‘ratio

et perfecta ratio’ are to us ‘given’ initially with an inherent finality (‘ad quondam rationem vivendi data esse

appareant’). See n. 35 on Seneca’s distance from Cicero/Panaetius and the ideal of the actor or dancer. The example

of the dancer is taken up by Deleuze (1990: 161), who defines the activity of the “true” dancer and actor as

“identification with a distance.”

necessary for signification.

As Seneca says of the “good” of speechless animals as well as

plants, their “care” is said so “as a favor.”

The reason that animals only have usus sui, compared to the cura mei at the source of all

human activity, returns to their lack of rationality, which further determines the activity of their

sensible and intelligent hand by delimiting their access to temporality. As Seneca explains of

animals, Nature must “present” their activities to them because the present is all they have:

In muto animali non est beata vita nec id, quo beata vita efficitur, in muto animali

bonum non est. Mutum animal sensu conprendit praesentia. Praeteritorum

reminiscitur, cum id incidit, quo sensus admoneretur; tamquam equus reminiscitur

viae, cum ad initium eius admotus est. In stabulo quidem nulla illi viae est quamvis

saepe calcatae memoria… Animalibus tantum quod gravissimum est intra cursum

datum, praesens. Praeteriti rara memoria est nec umquam revocatur nisi

praesentium occursu. (Ep. 124.15–8)

In a speechless animal there is no happiness, nor is there this good in a speechless

animal, from which happiness is made.

A speechless animal grasps present things

with sensation. It is reminded of things gone by, when it comes across that by which

the sensation was brought to mind, just as a horse is reminded of the road when it

has been moved to the beginning of it. Indeed, in the stable there is no memory for

it of the road, though often trod… Animals are only given what is heaviest within

their course, the present. The memory of what has gone by is loose and it is not

ever recalled except in running up against present things.

Straight away, animals do not have the proper marks of cura, since they lack the matter from

which happiness and the Good is produced (efficitur). Their hand cannot make happiness,

because Nature does not present them with the productive questions of means, extent, and

manner, which mark the future-oriented work of cura. Instead, they are “given” by nature the

present, and they can grasp (conprendit) present things through sensation, because these are what

Wildberger (2008: 59) notes that Stoics theorized that animals had λέξις rather than λόγος. In his discussion of

the divisions of philosophy at Ep. 89, Seneca divides the pars rationalis of philosophy into ῥητορική and

διαλεκτική, the latter of which he further subdivides into verba and significationes, “that is, into the things which

are said and the terms with which they are said” (Ep. 89.17, id est in res quae dicuntur et vocabula quibus dicuntur).

Even granting λέξις, Stoic moral psychology would bar animals from having emotions (adfectus), as emotions are

just misguided reasoning; cf. Bénatouïl, 2006: 104–6; Inwood & Donini, 2008: 699–705; Long, 2008: 571ff.;

Cf. Ep. 124.13, verum bonum nec in arboribus nec in mutis animalibus; hoc, quod in illis bonum est, precario

bonum dicitur.

are heaviest in their course. With the unified sensation/understanding of Ep. 121 in mind, the

emphasis on sensation here specifically aligns interaction with the present with sense-perception.

Animals themselves do not have the future, and their interaction with the past is completely tied

to their present and only occurs haphazardly when they “fall onto” something or “run into” it

(incidere, occurrere). Their ‘hand’ can only grasp givens in the present on the plane of sensation,

while the hand of human care, being a rational hand, has the matter to create happiness.

The temporal limitations on animal cognition also explains the description of their limited

intellectual grasp in Ep. 121. Seneca describes their self-understanding as “thick and superficial

and dark” (crasse…et summatim et obscure). Animal ‘understanding’ is thus like a hand reaching

into a dark box trying to identify what is inside. They gather what they can only in the present,

the time of sensation, and since they are born already “set up” (instituta) with no further

development, they can never move beyond this superficial grasp to get into the heart of the

matter in the way that the hand of care can incomprehension. By grasping things in sensation,

animals grasp the appearances in the present, but a momentary present which they can never

expand to include the future. While the time of god is a present always-already, the time of

speechless animals is a temporal quantum, with no room for future or past, and so the animals’

grasp limited only to sensation is perpetually benighted.

The futural hand of human care,

meanwhile, can work from the initial grasp of the world to get past the surface appearance and

get a sure hold of the Good over time.

In the elevation of cura, as it functions through uniting sensation and understanding in

Ep. 121 & 124, Seneca takes Zeno’s tight fist and puts it in motion, making it into a hand of care

which works to hone its skills and increase its range to be able to approach all things and reach

Cf. n. 27 – divine time on the whole is the complete chronos, while animal time is the differential aion. This

distinction is returned to in Ch. 3.

them in the manner of god. Seneca adds to this picture the plantlike element of growth over time

and the importance the futurity of this activity has for perfecting the Good in humans. In order to

truly grasp the world, care recognizes its own futurity while working with other objects with

future aim, by asking of the means, extent, and manner of accomplishing its own goal, making

everything amenable to its work. The handiwork of cura takes the unclear anticipatory

understanding of the child and grasps it fully thanks to its interaction with the world. Care may

be for the human subject, but “everything reaches out to humans” (Ep. 121.2) omnia tamen ad

hominem pertinent), and this provides the material for its craft. Its aim is along the axis of the

future, for this time alone is what is ours (Ep. 1.3), but the work of care with everything else

toward the future is what achieves the end goal of the Good. Seneca follows the Greek Stoics in

asserting philosophy as the master craft and ‘art of living,’ but he develops the image of the hand

of care to provide a concrete image of the practice of philosophy on the soul, crafting it into the

most precise tool for creating the Good. The mark of the elegantia of Lucilius at the beginning of

Ep. 124 is that he can lead back every question to some moral progress; likewise, the mark of

elegant care is its ability to use all the world to reach the Good. In this way, making through care

realigns with the activity of god, whose Nature accomplishes the Good through its activity in all

things.

The metaphor of the hand of care, as brought out by Epp. 121 and 124, shapes the

trajectory of philosophical progress, which Seneca maps from the plane of sensation up to the

plane of the understanding. As we will explore in the next chapters, the ethical status of the

student of philosophy at any time is shown by the relationship of the individuals’ handiwork to

the time in which they are acting. In the next chapter, we will examine hand of care at the

negative limit of morality, the individual who fails to use their care and accomplish the Good in

the future. In the following chapter, we will turn to look to the end and the positive limit of

morality, the perfectly wise person who has trained their care to perfect their soul for achieving

the Good. Finally, we will see how Seneca’s pedagogical program in the EM appeals to the hand

of care and displays its efforts in making progress from the one limit to the other.

Occupational Hazards: Diseased Cura and Mancipium

In order to achieve the Good of reason which god achieves by nature, human beings have

to rise from the plane of sensation up to the level of the divine on the plane of the understanding.

They have to use the hand of care to work toward the future even from infancy, training their

hand to make the Good through each stage of life. The fact that accomplishing the Good is a

matter of work required highlights the larger ethical problem: unlike the rest of the members of

the scala naturae discussed in the previous chapter humans can fail to achieve their Good. As

Seneca explains at Ep. 124.12, it requires the whole of a life to craft one’s soul to be able to

complete the Good, as it is a product of “long and directed zeal” (longo studio intentoque). So, it

is imperative that the moral agent gets a head start to make sure that they can have a fighting

chance at accomplishing the Good and rising up beyond the present in the plane of sensation, for

otherwise they will fall into slavery.

In this chapter, we will examine how Seneca recasts the institution of Roman slavery in

terms of the hand of care to create a new conception of moral freedom opposed to moral slavery

which differs from the traditional sociological hierarchy. Seneca’s renegotiation of slavery offers

positive content to the conception of freedom through his focus on the use of time by care.

Previous treatments of slavery in Seneca have focused on the dichotomy of servus/liber, where

the latter term is defined only in the negative in relation to the former, as Matthew Roller

suggests.

This negative definition is cited by Catharine Edwards (2009) as she claims, “[T]he

master/slave dichotomy plays a key role in Seneca’s definition of freedom [,] but this is hardly

2001: 221, “Freedom is a default category, negatively defined, with no conceptual core.”

surprising, if we see the term libertas, as it is used more generally, as essentially deriving its

meaning from the institution of slavery.”

As a definition of the sociological relationship, this

definition may stand; however, when applied to the philosophical domain which Seneca portrays

in the EM, this hierarchical dichotomy does not adequately map the moral dilemma which

Seneca poses, because it underestimates the power of care in Seneca’s Stoic project.

This “true”

slavery is most adequately summed up in the status of mancipium—that which is held in hand

(manus + capere).

We may certainly grant, along with Edwards and Susanne Bobzien (1998),

that freedom (libertas) is conceived in opposition to slavery,

but this does not necessarily make

freedom the negative concept in relation to slavery. Rather, through the use of mancipium in

relation to the manipulation suggested in the vocabulary of care, we can understand freedom as

the ability to use one’s own hands to accomplish the Good, while moral enslavement is the

misuse of the hand of care which turns the individual over to the hands of others.

The hand or care’s work with time and its relationship to moral enslavement arises at the

very beginning of the EM. From the first lines of the collection, Seneca commands Lucilius to

make use of his care straight away and keep on the right temporal track: “Make it so, my

Lucilius: lay claim to yourself for yourself, and the time, which up to now was either being

carried away or snatched out from under you or was falling out, gather it together and preserve

it” (Ep. 1.1, ita fac, mi Lucili; vindica te tibi, et tempus, quod adhuc aut auferebatur aut

subripiebatur aut excidebat, collige et serva). Seneca’s commands evoke the hand of care: first,

2009: 154; Graver (2007: 81) notes of the Stoic paradox, following Bobzien (1998), “… the Stoics certainly did

not mean by this that the actions of the wise are autonomous while those of ordinary persons are not! The point is

rather that the person of perfect understanding does exactly what he or she wishes to do”

Edwards also points out how in much of Seneca’s writing, philosophical libertas operates like political libertas

(154), but the apolitical focus of the EM suggests that this needs reevaluating at least in terms of the EM. Edwards

also notes that the greatest freedom which Seneca consistently champions is the freedom to die (153–4), discussed in

more detail in Ch. 3.

OLD 1 refers to the process of claiming by laying on hands.

Opp. cit.

he tells Lucilius to “make it so” (ita fac), and then gather up his time (colligere).

Interlocked

with exhortations to use the hand of care to “make” and “gather” are two which evoke the

institution of Roman slavery: that Lucilius “lay claim to himself for himself,” (vindica te tibi)

and to “look after” his time (serva).

Seneca is sending Lucilius a wake-up call: despite his

victory in the political domain in the present, in the all-important moral domain Lucilius is losing

the battle for his time, which other forces are stealing and carrying away from him. This

synchysis of commands shows an important link between care and enslavement: failure to

accomplish the Good and achieve a katalêptic grasp on the universe through the use of reason

and future time results in moral enslavement to the present.

In order to show the divergence of the sociological servus/liber hierarchy and the

philosophical mancipium/liber hierarchy, we shall begin by a close reading of Ep. 15 and the

connection of mancipium to the process of occupatio, “occupation.” In this letter, as in Ep. 124,

Seneca links occupation to care, and in comparing the usage of care and occupation in these two

letters, we can see how these are really one and the same faculty: care accomplishes the Good by

focusing on the future and the plane of the understanding, while occupation derails this

movement by mistakenly focusing on the present in the plane of sensation. The image of

occupation which Seneca presents in Ep. 15 not only relates to the mismanagement of time and

Rather than relegating the commands to a subjunctive clause as one might expect from the imperative fac, Seneca

elevates the commands in a collapsed manner which increases the urgency and personal stakes. For other such

strategies, see Traina, 2011.

Regarding vindica, Berger (1953:766–7) lists the many uses, including rights of vengeance and property claims; on

the use in enslavement specifically, Edwards, 2009: 139; Ker, 2009: 157. As for serva, Maltby (1991: 564) reports

the definition of Sextus Pomponius from the Digest (50.16.239.1), “The term servi has sprung from the fact that our

generals were accustomed to sell captives and for this reason protect them and not kill them” (servorum appellatio

ex eo fluxit, quod imperatores nostri captivos vendere ac per hoc servare nec occidere), and Donatus (Ter. Ad. 181)

corroborates similarly, saying “servi, because they have been preserved, when it was fitting that they be killed

according to the law of war” (servi quod servati sunt, cum eos occidi oportet iure belli).

objects of sensation, but it also casts this process as a disease, which an individual brings upon

themself, one which displaces the individual from the proper human rung on the scala naturae.

This pathological dimension, which develops from Stoic theories of cognition and the

emotions, is also explored in connection with the military connotation of occupation, as seen

through examples from Epp. 18, 50, & 75 (and a brief excerpt from Columella).

As noted

above, military conquest was a large part of the slave trade in ancient Rome, and Seneca plays on

the sense of occupation as a military siege to connect the self-inflicted elements of occupation to

being conquered by outside forces. Asmis discusses, Seneca breaks from earlier Stoics in

painting the figure of the moral sage as an active military victor over Fortune.

I argue that this is

precisely because of Seneca’s appeal to the activity of care to overcome the threat of occupation

with its military associations.

The necessity for activity is all the more important in the EM

because of Seneca’s insistence that those who have not yet begun to improve their moral station

are in fact “preoccupied” (praeoccupatus), already enslaved on the plane of sensation without

their awareness. Thus, the struggle to overcome the pathological effects of occupation require

intense focus on the tenses of the activities one engages in. Seneca’s use of future tenses in his

descriptions correlates to the progress of individuals toward the Good achieved by care, while

the past tense and passive voice show fixity in occupation.

Tracing the descent through occupation into full pathological and ethical mancipium

leads to a discussion of Ep. 47, where Seneca notoriously contends that even legally enslaved

Because of Stoic corporalism and their commitment to the rational soul, psychological conditions were described

in terms of physical movements and biological disturbances. For example, Chrysippus referred to a person with

aberrant moral judgments as νευρώδης, referring to the physical body (Sedley, 2008:583). See also n. 13 below.

2009:115 et passim

Thus De Vaan (2008: 89–90) on the root, occupare, itself derived from ob + capere. This definition is attested as

early as Livius Andronicus.

persons can be said to have more freedom than their legal owners.

Here, we will see the ways

in which those labeled as servi in the text, those individuals enslaved according to the social

Roman social hierarchy, exhibit facility with their hands which mark them as able to use their

care to possibly achieve the good, while the masters in the letter are rendered as completely

inactive mancipia through their misguided and immoral activities. By focusing on immediate

pleasures, these socially dominant individuals follow the trajectory of occupation to complete

disintegration and inactivity, while the socially dominated servi still have a chance to gain

freedom and health through the continued possibility of applying the hand of care on the future.

Occupation in the Body: Misapplied Care in Ep. 15

In Ep. 15, which juxtaposes both cura and occupatio in the same letter for the first time,

Seneca explains to Lucilius what the proper ratio of physical exercise to study should be and how

to balance physical health and spiritual health. The letter itself begins discussing the old way that

Roman letter writers used to greet each other. Seneca says that even up to his own lifetime,

people would add onto their initial salutation, si vales bene est, ego valeo,

and that “Rightly we

say, “If you philosophize, it is well” (15.1, si philosopharis, bene est). As it turns out, it is rightly

said because this is in fact a tautology: “But this term just is “to be strong” (15.1, valere autem

hoc demum est). The valence of valere is tied to the body more specifically, as Seneca explains

how philosophari just is valere: “Without this [i.e., philosophari] the mind is sick (aeger). Even

This position is an extension of the familiar Stoic paradox that “no one but the wise is free,” as voiced by Cato at

De Finibus III.75; Armisen-Marchetti, 1989 (39) recounts how Cicero saw Stoic orators recounting such paradoxes

as Cassandra, telling the truth with no one listening, and sums up their stylistic reputation thus: “the Stoics passed as

the adversaries par excellence of movere.” Seneca’s take on rhetoric will be addressed in Ch. 4

And thus, Seneca himself perpetuates the format with Lucilius by tacking on these words to the beginning of his

own letter. This aligns with Henderson’s (2002: 153–7) reading of Ep. 84 as an appeal to old Roman practice which

actually attempts to reconfigure Roman tradition.

if it has great strength, the body is also strong in no other way than those who are mad (furiosi)

or delirious (phrenetici) are.”

Based on this distinction, the philosophy necessary for proper

human function is a means of attuning the body properly, rather than eschewing it completely,

while those who are traditionally or superficially validus are unable to act and control their

bodies akin to those with certain psychical afflictions.

With this in mind, Seneca thus advises Lucilius how to properly direct his care between

the psychic and the anatomical aspects of his well-being:

Ergo hanc praecipue valitudinem cura, deinde et illam secundam, quae non magno

tibi constabit, si volueris bene valere. Stulta est enim, mi Lucili, et minime

conveniens litterato viro occupatio exercendi lacertos et dilatandi cervicem ac latera

firmandi; cum tibi feliciter sagina cesserit et tori creverint, nec vires umquam opimi

bovis nec pondus aequabis. Adice nunc, quod maiore corporis sarcina animus

eliditur et minus agilis est. Itaque quantum potes, circumscribe corpus tuum et

animo locum laxa. (Ep. 15.2)

Therefore, concern yourself with this state of health, taking it before all (praecipue),

then also that second state, which will not cost you much, if you want to really be

strong (bene valere). For the occupation with exercising the arms and broadening

the neck and tightening up the sides is stupid, my dear Lucilius, and hardly fitting

for a man of letters;

although the plumping up might come to you with success

and your brawn might grow, you will never match the strength nor the mass of a

plump ox. Now, consider that the mind is bumped out by the greater load of the

body and is less nimble (agilis). So, as much as you can, limit your body and open

up a place for the mind.

Regarding furiosi, Laes, 2018: 47ff notes that this refers to a temporary condition while dementia designated a

permanent condition of non compos mentis according to Roman law, giving them the same legal protections and

privileges as children and minors. On the causes of φρενῖτις, see De morbis acutis I.1. As Cambiano, 2008 notes,

Chrysippus follows Praxagoras of Cos’ cardiocentric picture of the body, and so I am more inclined to regard his

definition of the condition as the Stoic one; regardless, all reflect physical causes of mental phenomena consonant

with Stoic materialism/corporalism.

A point echoing Ep. 10.4, roga bonam mentem, bonam valetudinem animi, deinde tunc corporis

With reference to the discussion of slavery below, it is interesting to note that a letteratus may also refer to

branded enslaved persons; cf. Plautus Cas.2.6.49 and Apuleius M. 9.12.3–4.

The appeal to circumscribe shows highlights the literary element of the EM’s “epistoliterarity” (Henderson, 2004:

29). For more on the power of writing in terms of Seneca’s ethics of care, see Ch. 4

The combination of the hand-related praecipue, an adjective formed from praecipere,

with care

highlights the manipulative activity that the concern for watching total health requires. Seneca’s

command for Lucilius concern gets orientation from the manual adverb, giving him a general

rule about how best to “be well.”

Meanwhile, the occupation of the bodybuilder is called

stultus, suggesting that the immobility and inactivity of those engaged in such pursuits is

explicitly attributed to their cramped or erased animi.

The appearance of “nimble” (agilis) to

describe these animi points forward to its appearance in Ep. 121, where the agilitas of the

naturally adept animal world is compared to the nimble motions of artisans and craftspeople. The

sentiment of not trying to outdo animals in physical traits is also echoed at the end of Ep. 124

when Seneca tries to set Lucilius apart from animals with the divine. As such, this occupation is

“hardly fitting” for an individual like Lucilius as a human, but it is also not conveniens in the

sense that it goes against the proper ethical actions that befit his station, referring to the Stoic

proper actions (καθήκοντα).

Through occupation, humans fail to engage in a properly ‘active’

way, and instead their activities lead to their own immobilization and stultification. In

transforming the bodybuilders into an animal like the plump ox, occupation takes these humans

away from the Good that is couched in their own rational nature and aims them at another good,

toward which they are ill equipped to work.

OLD tracks praecipua à praecipuus à praecipere.

This direction may also signal the pedagogical move that Seneca is engaging her as well, offering a praeceptum

here in this early letter of the collection, an area still aimed more at the protreptic advice characterized by praecepta

than the decreta of the later letters. Cf. Schafer, 2009, esp. 67–83; on the importance of the order of the letters, see

Cancik, 1967; Maurach, 1970; Hachmann, 1995; Wilson, 2001; Schafer, 2011

Maltby, 1991: 588 cites Isidore’s etymology of stultus as qui per stuporem non movetur iniuria; this emphasis on

inactivity is corroborated by De Vaan, 2008: 590, tracing the word back to the Indo-European *stel- root, suggesting

that the stultus was “placed” in its location by some force.

See Ch. 1,

Despite the separation of negative occupation here and positive care at Ep. 124.14, the

two concepts come closer together as Seneca uses cura with a distinct negative connotation.

Seneca uses this term to describe the detrimental effects of the occupation he has just described:

Multa secuntur incommoda huic deditos curae; primum exercitationes, quarum

labor spiritum exhaurit et inhabilem intentioni ac studiis acrioribus reddit. Deinde

copia ciborum subtilitas inpeditur. Accedunt pessimae notae mancipia in

magisterium recepta, homines inter oleum et vinum occupati, quibus ad votum dies

actus est, si bene desudaverunt, si in locum eius, quod effluxit, multum potionis

altius ieiuno iturae regesserunt. Bibere et sudare vita cardiaci est. (Ep. 15.3–4)

Many inconveniences follow those given to this concern; first, the exercises, the

work of which draws out the spirit and renders it unwieldy for attention and for

more penetrating (acrioribus) studies. Next, their keenness (subtilitas) is tripped up

by the supply of food. They approach the enslaved (mancipia) taken into the office

of the worst stamp, people occupied between oil and wine; for such people, a day

has gone as hoped for if they have sweated well, if they have put back, in place of

what has flown out, more drink, which will go deeper from their fasting. Drinking

and sweating is life for a dyspeptic (cardiaci).

“This care” has many issues, as evidenced by Seneca’s use of the marked Stoic phrase

incommoda, which recalls the theory of moral indifferents.

The first major problem pertains to

the “spirit” (spiritus) of the subject in question, a term which renders the Greek pneuma

(πνεύμα), a particularly potent substance in Stoic metaphysics. Not only is the human soul made

of particularly rarified pneuma suffused and mixed throughout the body, but this pneuma is also

the stuff which gives any differentiated thing in the cosmos its particular qualities.

In drawing

away the pneuma of the bodybuilder, this work focused on the body not only dampens or

However, not the negative connotation which many Latin authors associate with cura, as noted by Perelli,

1994:45. For example, Horace Satires II.7.113f:

…teque ipsum vitas fugitivus et erro—

iam vino quaerens, iam somno fallere curam—

Frustra: nam comes atra permit sequiturque fugacem

Traina (2011: 15) suggests this as a precursor to Seneca’s De Tranquilitate 2.14 (sed quid prodest, si non effugit?

sequitur se ipse et urget gravissimus comes), following a quote Seneca claims from Lucretius.

Cicero Fin. III.69 classes the (in)commoda—εὐχρηστήματα/δυσχρηστήματα in Greek—in the category those

things quae praeposita et reiecta diximus; cf. SVF III.22.1ff., Reydams-Schils (2005:59–69), Inwood & Donini

(2008: 691–3), Schafer (2009:27, 49–52)

On the layout of the soul, see Long (2008); on the theory of ποιότης, see Sedley, 2008, 401ff.

removes thoughtful activity but also threatens to remove what makes them a human in the first

place

That this is not properly care, however, is made clear from the fact that the pneuma of

this person is rendered “unwieldy” (inhabilis) by this activity.

Not only does this distract from

the “attention” (intentio) necessary to perfect the Good, but this activity, rather than making the

soul nimble or mobile, renders it unable to be handled and utilized for the proper work of

accomplishing the Good. This recalls Seneca’s previous analogy with the mad and delirious

those whose pneuma and its intimate connection with their body is distorted in some way, thus

making them dyspeptic (cardiaci) in the double sense of having indigestion from their copious

diet and of having some mental infirmity owing to the disturbance of the seat of their spiritus.

The focus of the activity, which leads to these outcomes, pairs with the work of occupation rather

than of care, as seen in Epp. 121 & 124, for it continues to diminish the domain of activity for

these people. When occupation first appears, it is not marked as belonging to anyone in

particular, but rather a simple operation of working arms or necks or the sides, creating an image

of the disintegration of the body.

At Ep. 15.2, Lucilius is not actively bulking up, but this body

mass merely comes to him (tibi sagina feliciter cesserit), the adverb itself indicative of the work

of fortune and not of individual activity.

In the next section, those individuals becoming less

nimble and unwieldy are also less active in the processes described. They themselves are “given”

to this kind of activity, which means they have upended the scala naturae of Ep. 124, if we recall

the “given” good of plants in their relation to diachronic development. In attempting to compete

For a more concrete application of this adjective indicative of the work of the hand, cf. Livy (24.34.5): “the light-

armed soldiers also, whose spear is unwieldy to throw back for those inexperienced with it” (…velites etiam, quorum

telum ad rimittendum inhabile imperitis est)

Cf. n. 13 on the Stoic belief that the ruling part of the soul (ἡγεμονικόν) was in the heart

Cf. n. 77 below

Cf. Ep 101.5: omnia… etiam felicibus dubia sunt.

with animals and focusing on the present, these individuals expect their good from without as if

they were plants.

This misguided competition reduces their agency, as shown in the grammar itself. When

Seneca describes the effects on the body, the dulling of the soul’s ability to act aligns with the

removal of these individuals from the syntax itself. The reader assumes that Seneca is talking

about the spiritus of the bodybuilders, but there are no pronouns to connect back to these

individuals. Rather, the labor itself, removed from personal attachment, is what gives the pneuma

back in its dulled and unwieldy state (labor spiritum exhaurit et inhabilem intentioni ac studiis

acrioribus reddit). The “sharpness” (acrioribus) of the studies involved represents the soul as a

blunted tool, unfit for the craft necessary to delicately pursue such studies and to manage the

subtilitas of these subjects.

These people are labeled occupati, itself a passive participle, and

then they approach enslaved people—whether literally or in likeness—those “held in hand,” who

are also passively recepta, “taken back”.

For them, the day “is done” (actus est); they are only

active when they are personally sweating (desudaverunt), approaching mancipia (accedunt), and

replacing their bodily fluids (regesserunt). Cardiaci takes on yet another meaning, for in their

activities their agency is so limited that they function only as anatomical systems: the activity of

spiritus only appears in as much as it takes in and expels fluids.

So, “this care,” which Seneca describes here is in fact occupation, since the process

described does not facilitate activity to reach the Good on the plane of the understanding.

Instead, this fallen form focuses on the body in the present and transfixes the individual in the

plane of sensation. Understood as the misapplication of care, occupation leads such individuals,

On the physics of sharpness: Atkins, 2009: 221–44.

Viparelli (2000:25) notes that Seneca claims that someone occupatus is also “directed at the present time”

(intentus ad praesens tempus) at De Brevitate Vitae 10.6. Viparelli’s analysis focuses on the inability of such

individuals to adequately accept their past based on shame

elevating their musculature above their psychical well-being, to reduce their actual psychical

health and indeed their humanity. Care in its proper use appears again further into the letter,

when Seneca discusses the proper parameters of exercise:

Sunt exercitationes et faciles et breves, quae corpus et sine mora lassent et tempori

pareant, cuius praecipua ratio habenda est… Quicquid facies, cito redi a corpore ad

animum. Illum noctibus ac diebus exerce; labore modico alitur ille. Hanc

exercitationem non frigus, non aestus inpediet, ne senectus quidem. Id bonum cura,

quod vetustate fit melius. (Ep. 15.4–5)

There are exercises, both easy to do and short, to tire out the body without delay as

well as to complies with time, a reckoning of which must be had straightaway…

Whatever you do, return quickly from body to mind. Exercise it night and day; it is

nourished with moderate effort. Neither cold nor heat will trip up this exercise, not

even senility will. Concern yourself with this good, which is made better in old age.

The proper exercises are productive capacity and temporally related through the pairing of “easy

to do” (faciles) and “short” (breves).

Being healthy movements, these exercises happen without

delay, like the healthy animal movements which do not hesitate in Ep. 121.

The ratio praecipua

of one’s workout schedule recalls Seneca’s admonition previously, praecipue valitudinem cura

(Ep. 15.2), showing the work of care in looking to the future to reckon for exercise regimens

ahead of time; the grasp of the hand of care “ahead of time” is an important element in

overcoming occupation, as we shall return to below.

The interchange of grammatical tenses and persons which Seneca uses in discussing the

activity of care, highlights the differences from care’s fallen and diverted form, occupation.

Seneca’s direct commands—elige, redi, and exerce—single out Lucilius/the reader as responsible

for these respective activities.

Further, the future appears here with a personal attachment—

This recalls Seneca’s claim about the value of exempla at Ep. 6.5: iter est… breve et efficax per exempla; for a

discussion of exempla and care, see Ch. 4

See p.9

This personal touch reflects the parenetic function of Seneca’s style, particularly in this earlier portion of the

letters which are still seeking to form Lucilius into a proper Stoic and provide more praecepta, particularly like the

“whatever you will do” (quidquid facies)—in Seneca’s discussion of the proper course, the

cultivation of the animus, which also recalls definition of time as what is truly belongs to an

individual at Ep. 1.3 (omnia, Lucili, aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est). The efficacy of this

personalized care is shown by the future tense inpediet to illustrate what will not trip up this

progress, compared to the present passive inpeditur describing the shortcomings of occupation.

This futurity is then highlighted further through its twofold reference to human temporality:

senility will not interrupt this progress, and old age is what assures the goodness of “this good”,

i.e. The Good, the object of proper care.

The coming of age of “this good” recalls the plantlike

qualities of human care as well, particularly in the metaphor of the ripened wheat which looks

toward the threshing floor in Ep. 121.

However, the closest that the occupied get to futurity in

their own person is their “approaching” the status of mancipia; even the drink they consume has

more access to the future, since it is this which “will go” (iturae) into them more effectively. The

personal nature reflects their active walk into the hands of slavery, while the futural element is

transferred to inanimate matter which acts upon their now purely anatomical selves.

Seneca directs us back to the future at the end of the letter as well. He displays a maxim

of Epicurus to sum up his point: “Look at this outstanding precept: “A fool’s life is unpleasant

and confused: it is carried whole into the future’” (Ep. 15.9, ecce insigne praeceptum: “Stulta

vita ingrata est et trepida; tota in futurum fertur.”).

Once again, occupation does not act in

relation to the future, but it is passively carried in the hands of another (fertur). Seneca uses the

one from Lucretius discussed below. In particular, see Mazzoli, 1970; Setaioli, 2000: 141–2 et passim; Schafer,

2009: 56; Traina, 2011: 39–40.

OLD’s definitions for vetustas, particularly 4b, highlight the age component as well as its valence as future

oriented, i.e., “when x becomes old,” compared to senectus, which reflects the present state or person of the subject.

Cf. Ch. 1, p. 47

For more on the contentious relationship with Epicurus, see Graver, 1998: 624–7; Setaioli, 2000: 192; Henderson,

2002: 6–18, 29–31; Traina, 2011: 36–7;

deictic ecce to close out the epistle with a rather grim look to the future: “Behold, this is the last

day; should it not be, it is close by the last. Vale” (Ep. 15.11: ecce hic dies ultimus est. ut non sit;

prope ab ultimo est. vale). The connection with the ‘goodbye’ and the future is telling. James

Ker (2009: 173) suggests that Seneca “exploits the closure of the literary form (the vale) to lend

greater weight to the death-rehearsing utterance… the letter’s ending should be infused with the

same urgency and solemnity as life’s ending.”

The look forward to the last day or its close

neighbors brings back the old age mentioned earlier in the letter. Seneca seeks to bring

Lucilius/the reader to this point in time to make them examine their engagements according to

the calculus of vetustas. The ‘vale’ not only figures the temporal end of the old age imagined, but

it connects back to the introduction of the letter; we could just as easily read philosophare as the

close instead, given the definition of proper bodily care as doing philosophy.

Despite the superficial equivocation between care and occupation and care in the letter,

Ep. 15 actually serves to highlight the pitfalls of human activity which reason enables. As

rational animals, humans have the beginning of the Good, their care, given to them by Nature

from the beginning of their life. This care accomplishes the Good according to the proper means,

extent, and manner of the moment with an eye toward its future perfection.

However, it is

possible to act improperly, like the bodybuilders singled out in this letter who are attempting to

become animals. Compared with the artful animals of Ep. 121, among whom “none exert their

joints as if diseased, none hesitate in the use of themselves” (Ep. 121.6, nemo aegre molitur artus

suos, nemo in usu sui haesitat), these individuals do indeed get sick, and in dulling and slowing

their souls by their own activity, they do “hesitate” in the most literal way of repeatedly and

Ker also cites Barbara Herrnstein-Smith (1968: 128) and her concept of ‘temporal punctuation’ in his discussion

of the intersection of epistolary form and meditatio mortis. For more on care and death, Ch. 3

See Ch. 1, p. 37

continually getting themselves stuck (haesitare being the frequentative of haereo). Thus, by not

aiming into the future when seeking to create their Good, these individuals transfix themselves in

the present on the plane of sensation, such that they are fit to be occupied and carried off by

others. Care and occupation are two different ways of answering the questions of reason by

choosing a particular direction of activity, the former aiming up toward the future and the plane

of understanding and the latter toward the present. The images of a hand’s activity are shared

between the two, but the results of these factors lead in opposite directions, with care

maintaining active crafting ability while occupation leads to the abnegation of this.

Thus, occupation can be described as “this concern,” as seen above, and care can likewise

be described in terms of occupation, as appears in Ep. 124. The context is similar to that in Ep.

15, discussing proper exercises, this time from the beneficial disputatio concerning the greatest

good: “It both exercises and sharpens [your mind] and it holds it as something about to act with

honorable occupation” (Ep.124.21, et exercet illum et acuit et utique aliquid acturum

occupatione honesta tenet). Not only does the adjective honesta separate this occupation from

the negative form discussed in Ep. 15, which leads to such dispreferred effects, but it also differs

in leading to activity and particularly future oriented activity. This spiritual exercise does not

promote sluggishness and fixity, but rather agility and lightness. Further, the “sharpening” of the

mind of this occupation reverses the effect of “this care” for physique, which dulled the subtilitas

of the soul.

Having progressed through one hundred and nine subsequent Epistulae Morales,

Lucilius is now properly equipped to tackle the acrioribus studiis above: “You don’t flee back,

nor does any exactness (subtilitas) drive you away… I approve of that, because you bring back

everything to some advancement and then you are only offended, when nothing is done with the

greatest exactness.” (Ep.124.1, non refugis autem nec ulla te subtilitas abigit… illud probo, quod

omnia ad aliquem profectum redigis et tunc tantum offenderis, ubi summa subtilitate nihil

agitur.) Having progressed beyond the previous trap of occupation, Lucilius is now properly

equipped with exactness, compared to his previous dull state. With his soul honed, Lucilius can

work with the katalêptic grasp on the world through his understanding to achieve the Good.

Meanwhile, those who have become occupied dull their souls to the point of the animal grasp,

superficial and merely sensory, but they also go further than animals in threatening their bodily-

cum-psychical unity, distending their pneuma to the point of even ruining their anatomy.

However, it is not just the bodybuilders who are at risk of occupation through their activities. As

Seneca explains, everyone is already engaged in a veritable psychomachia against psychical

disease: “We have all been taken ahead of time” (Ep. 50.7, omnes praeoccupati sumus). The

hand of care’s work becomes all the more urgent since it must counteract a disease in the midst

of a battle.

Preoccupying or Preoccupied: Disease and Conquest of Time

Through the work of honesta occupatio—i.e., care proper—the soul becomes a powerful

tool, compared to the blunt and useless soul produced through dangerous, wayward occupation.

It is not just that the subject hones their soul to create the Good aiming into the future, but the

subject is active in wielding this psychic tool with the hand of their care. This activity is a closed

circuit, and this loop is reflected in the very opening line of the EM: vindica te tibi. This

pronominal coupling follows a formula which Alfonso Traina (2011: 11–24) discusses in the

case of reflexive pronouns, indicative of self-possession, but also with the particular use of both

the dative and accusative together to reflect the setting off point and the destination of the moral

journey.

This centripetal motion in the grammar follows Victor Goldschmidt’s description of

the ethical work of the Stoic sage, a passage from self to self, but one which for the Stoics is also

a matter of conquest.

If the moral journey is a matter of conquest, the subject may either

succeed and keep themself out of another’s grasp or fall into this grasp. When the latter happens,

those who have fallen and remain on the plane of sensation “approach enslaved people,” as seen

above (Ep. 15.3, accedunt pessimae notae mancipia).

However, with great care the subject can produce a mind that is “unconquered.” After

Seneca praises Lucilius for the progress he has begun to see, he explains,

Ille prudens atque artifex pro tempore quaeque repellet aut eliget; sed nec quae

repellit timet nec miratur quae eligit, si modo magnus illi et invictus animus est.

(Ep. 31.6)

That person, practically wise and a craftsperson, will push back or select each thing

in light of the time; but they do not fear what they push back nor marvel at what

they choose, if there is now for that person a great and unconquered mind.

The metaphor of military conquest and victory is mixed with the image of the craftsperson, who

uses their care in selecting whatever for their work. While the description of the subject with the

unconquered mind uses the present, the activity of the artifex takes place in the future tense

(repellet, eliget). This futural activity reflects the fact it is done pro tempore, both in relation to

the specific time of making but also in relation to time as such, and also that it is done by a

Esp. ibid 18–19, where Traina says (my translation), “The two reflexives, the point of departure and the point of

arrival, delimit the horizon of Senecan interiority with a circular motion that returns to oneself.” Though this is in

reference specifically to Ep. 27.3, where Seneca says nullum [bonum] est, nisi quod animus ex se sibi invenit, given

the serial structure of the letters discussed above at n. 12, the parenetic admonitio of an early praeceptum like te tibi

vindica reflects the dialectic sermo of later decretum of Stoic moral theorizing. See Ch. 4 for the work of the hand of

cura in the course of pedagogy.

Goldschmidt, (1953:55): “But, if everything were really given, philosophy and life would have to limited to a

letting-be and a letting-go, to this precise attitude which justifies the “lazy argument” and which the Stoics always

refused. Quite the contrary, the extreme tension of the will which they claim for the wise seems to indicate that

everything is always to be conquered. In fact, philosophy, i.e., ‘the art of living,’ is really a conquest, but it is

necessary to add that nothing can be conquered in the eyes of the Stoics which, in a sense, was not given to us in

advance. The conquest, so envisioned, is a passage from self to self. In the structural movement of the system, the

point of departure coincides with the point of arrival.” The image of conquest is at the heart of the titular image of

Hadot (1998).

“practically wise” person, someone with foresight (pro + videns).

Here, the foresight of the

prudens is not just looking into the future but doing so with time as the criterion of doing so. The

only criterion that the wise have in exercising the “choosiness,” which Lucilius is cultivating by

the end of the EM,

is a futural question of time itself.

With the end goal being victory in

aiming toward the future, the command for Lucilius to “gather together and preserve” time

(collige et serva) prefigures the combination of the artifex with military service again. In order to

come out on top on the moral battlefield, one must actively look after one’s time or be looked

after by someone else.

The opening insistence on temporal control is made more explicit later, as Seneca reveals

a source of trouble for the Stoic student. It is not just that one must fight and control one’s time,

but one must fight back from a disadvantage. In Ep. 50, he compares the blindness of his wife’s

clown Harpastê with the lack of awareness that everyone has for their own faults in terms of the

struggle against moral occupation: “We have all been taken ahead of time” (Ep. 50.7, omnes

praeoccupati sumus). The moral dilemma is not just taking care to avoid falling into occupation

but also recognizing that one is already occupied, and then rising above it. As at Ep. 15, this

process is figured in terms of possession and being held in the present: “badness now holds

us…it is in possession of us for a long time” (Ep. 50.7, malitia nos iam tenet, […] diu in

possessione nostri est). The nature of this badness is pathological, just like the occupation in Ep.

15. While the bodybuilders are cardiaci, the general public are unaware of the source of their

ailment:

OLD, in the heading for the adjective (rather than substantive nominal use). SVF IV p. 173 notes the use of the

cognate term prudentia as a gloss for φρόνησις as well as for the etymologically linked πρόνοια for providentia.

Cf Ch. 1, p. 32

The work of the artifex in Ep. 31 is discussed further in Ch. 3

quid nos decipimus? Non est extrinsecus malum nostrum: intra nos est, in

visceribus ipsis sedet, et ideo difficulter ad sanitatem pervenimus quia nos aegrotare

nescimus. (Ep. 50.4)

Why do we deceive ourselves? Our bad is not from the outside: it is within us, it

sits in our very guts, and thus it is with difficulty we arrive at health, since we do

not know that we are sick.

The occupation is a result of literal self-deception: the subject takes themselves down (de +

capere), trapping themselves in the belief that they should be looking for a disease coming from

without rather than recognizing the disease they cultivate within.

Thus, the illness settles into

the gut, and in so settling it forces the diseased self-deceived to settle as well, as the way toward

health is now more troublesome for the making power of care to handle (difficulter Þ dis- +

facilis). In the moral conquest of Stoicism, the enemy is not a foreign one, but rather the subject

themself sabotaging their efforts to perfect the Good

The preoccupation of disease returns again at Ep. 75, where once again Seneca notes that

the tides have already been turned against those who seek happiness: “We have been taken ahead

of time, we stretch out for virtue detained between vices” (Ep. 75.16, praeoccupati sumus, ad

virtutem contendimus inter vitia districti). The occupied are figured as prisoners bound by their

vices while attempting to stretch the hand of their care toward their virtue, prisoners approaching

those prisoners-of-war who will be taken and enslaved as servi.

This imprisonment and

immobilization is a product of the failure to grasp their future. Earlier in this same letter, Seneca

admonishes Lucilius for his concern about the style of Seneca’s recent letters:

Curare debes morbum veterem, gravem, publicum. Tantum negotii habes, quantum

in pestilentia medicus. Circa verba occupatus es? Iamdudum gaude, si sufficis

rebus… Quando illa experieris? Non enim ut cetera, memoriae tradidisse satis est;

in opere temptanda sunt. Non est beatus, qui scit illa, sed qui facit (Ep. 75.7)

OLD 1d on a very literal meaning of decipere attested in relation to hunting traps (cf. Livy 22.4.4).

Cf. n. 3.

You ought to concern yourself with a longstanding, serious, endemic disease. You

have as much business as a doctor in a plague. Have you been occupied with words?

Rejoice already, if you are supplied enough with things… When will you try out

that [which you have learned]? For it is not enough to have handed them over to

memory, as it is with the rest: they will have to be tested in practice. The one who

knows them is not blessed, but the one who does them.

Here, the opposition of care vs. occupation is made explicit, and this recalls the pathological

metaphors from Epp. 15 & 50. There is an actual moral plague which requires Lucilius’

attention;

instead, he has been taken in the area of words, ignoring the “things” which are the

necessary prerequisite for such an occupation.

The bits of knowledge and skill which Seneca

calls upon Lucilius to employ in his “cure” of the disease are proven not in their possession, but

in their use.

Additionally, these uses are also projected into the future: “when will you test them

out;” “they will have to be tested in the work.” The past—represented here in memory—may be

enough for certain matters, like Lucilius’ questions about epistolary quality, but for care, it

requires an additional temporal dimension beyond the past for its application; it cannot simply

hand off things, but rather must continue to wield them. The presence of the opus as the object of

Or rather Lucilius owes his cura to something/someone, ; the etymological link to habeo (de + habeo) suggests

that the curare is possessed thanks to Nature, as discussed in Ch. 1. The obverse of Nature’s entrusting of subject to

person is the owed cura.

occupo and circa appear in contexts of conquest as well, e.g., Livy 36.16.8 and 44.7.1, but with the active form

rather than the passive form; Seneca uses it only in the passive with circa, e.g., Epp. 33.1 (Seneca denies that

previous Stoics were circa flosculos occupati), 89.10, (Some argue for a ‘civil philosophy’ circa aliam materiam

occupata sit), 95.8 (all those arts differ from philosophy as follows: circa instrumenta vitae occupatae sunt, non

circa totam vitam); De Beneficiis 7.28.2. Other comparable contemporary examples: Valerius Maximus 6.8.7, 9.3.4;

Frontinus Strategemata 1.6.3.5; Suetonius Nero 23.1. Armisen-Marchetti, 1989: 75–7 lists several images related to

conquest, but occupatio is not numbered among them.

An old ethical position, one shared by Aristotle (NE II.1 1103b) who compares the acquisition of the ἕξεις of

virtue to learning any skill (τέχνη). Preceding Seneca more closely, Cicero (De Re Publica I.2) claims, “But, it is

not enough to have virtue unless you use it, like any skill: even if a skill can indeed be held, when you don’t use it,

by just knowing it, virtue has been set wholly in its use: but its use is greatest in the governing of a city and the

perfection of those very things in fact, not in speech, which those [philosophers] send echoing in their corners” (nec

vero habere virtutem satis est quasi artem aliquam nisi utare; etsi ars quidem cum ea non utare scientia tamen ipsa

teneri potest, virtus in usu sui tota posita est; usus autem eius est maximus civitatis gubernatio, et earum ipsarum

rerum quas isti in angulis personant, reapse non oratione perfectio). In this, Cicero follows Aristotle in the

elevation of the lawgiver in his virtue ethics, whereas Seneca aims at the individual, especially in the EM as Bartsch

(2015: 191) points out. In relation to the preceding Stoa and Hellenistic world,

this care points us back to the craft necessary to achieve the Good, with the icing on the cake of

the verbs of making (facio, sufficio) attending it.

This distinction comes out again as Seneca discusses those “who have set aside both the

greatest evils of the mind and the emotions, but in such a way that they do not have a sure

possession of their own lack of concern” (Ep. 75.13, qui et maxima animi mala et adfectus

deposuerunt, sed ita, ut non sit illis securitatis suae certa possessio). The surety or lack thereof

of such people’s “possession” of this state hearkens back to Seneca’s insistence that such

knowledge must be actively put to the test and not simply “handed over to memory.”

Here,

these individuals “have set aside” the disease of occupation as well as the emotions—in the

past—but not in such a way that they can operate sine cura with respect to these.

Seneca

reflects this precarity in the text through the grammatical relations of the individuals to their

status. The possessio is the grammatical subject, but the possessors are not actively holding the

state and are instead pushed into the oblique case. One may compare the relation each subject

has to their constitution from birth thanks to Nature at Ep. 121.11, where Seneca uses the

possessive sua; the use of the dative separates the subject from the sure possession of virtue,

noting the distance still to be traveled to reach the Good on the plane of understanding and

demoting them from the surest possession that the sage would possess.

Foucault (1986:53) discusses the connection of the opus to self-fashioning, though is perhaps too sanguine about

the social dimension of this practice (cf. Nussbaum, 1994; Harris, 2001; Roller, 2001: 77–88; Bartsch, 2014: 117–

51, all mentioned in the Introduction). Stylistically, one can compare the focus on the opus to the Senecan equation

of style and character, particularly at Ep. 114, discussed in depth by Setaioli, 2000.

Traina (2011:11ff) discusses the metaphor self-as-possession alongside that of self-as-refuge, noting that the

metaphor of possession is taken from Greek philosophical texts but cast in the light of Roman jurisprudence, just as

in the opening line of the EM’s use of vindicare.

The ‘security’ does not refer to a total lack of care, but it rather reflects that these are still very much issues which

merit the continued work of care to manage them with an aim to the proper end. On the valence of security in Latin

literature more broadly, Hamilton (2013: 51–82;114–33), and in connection with Seneca’s style, Setaioli (2000:

123–6), for which more see Ch. 4. On the emotions, Graver (2007), as well as further discussion in Ch. 4.

Dressler (2016:89, 109, 228–32) follows Pinkster (1992: 160ff) and Suárez-Martinez (2005:744) in discussing

Latin impersonal constructions and expands to discuss both “subject promotion” and “subject demotion” in terms of

Once Seneca has outlined the third category—those who are not even free from vice but

vacillate back and forth between them—he explains to Lucilius and the reader that this third

category is a worthy stop on the way to sagacity, but “the second step [i.e., uncertain possession]

is occupied with great luck from nature and with great and constantly pressing attention to study”

(Ep. 75.15, magna felicitate naturae magnaque et adsidua intentione studii secundus occupatur

gradus). Here, the operation of occupation appears more positive, as achieving this state requires

good luck and surpasses the even more precarious step below, but this is because the thing being

occupied is not a human subject, but rather a topographical location.

The location “is occupied”

for further moral progress, and so it is taken in order to be used.

This tactical valence of occupare comes to the fore when Seneca uses praeoccupare in

the active voice as well. Whereas the passive voice praeoccupatus denotes capture and

succumbing to psychic disease, to take the initiative in this struggle is a great boon, as we see at

Ep.18. Here, Seneca tells Lucilius how Epicurus managed to live on less than one as, while

Metrodorus needed a full one for his food—perhaps prefiguring the distinctions on the ranks of

the wise at Ep. 75. Each, however, are examples of living beyond the ability of Fortune to

“snatch away” their pleasure (Ep. 18.10). Seneca exhorts,

Liberaliora alimenta sunt carceris, sepositos ad capitale supplicium non tam

anguste qui occisurus est pascit: quanta est animi magnitudo ad id sua sponte

descendere quod ne ad extrema quidem decretis timendum sit! Hoc est

praeoccupare tela fortunae (Ep. 18.11)

The prison offers more generous nourishment, the executioner does not feed those

put away for capital punishment so meagerly: how great is the size of a mind, that

the figuration of metaphor, such as in the relation of human agents to the demoted agent of Nature herself in the

discussion of οἰκείωσις at De Finibus 3.16ff. For more on personified figures, see Ch. 3

Cf n. 28. For the military context of gradus, e.g., Livy 34.39.3, in suo quisque gradu obnixi urgentes scutis, sine

respiratione ac respectu pugnabant

it descends of its own accord to that which even those decreed to death need not

fear—namely, to take the spears of Fortune ahead of time.

The connection of occupare to food also brings us back to the occupati from Ep. 15, whose

“supply of food” (copia ciborum) has dulled the keenness and subtlety of their minds. The latter

focus on the present, and the misguided attempt to perfect the body through nourishment thus

contrasts with the enlightened. These individuals eschew the pleasure of food—or rather draw

pleasure from the least food—to such an extent that not even an executioner would condemn

them to eat less or more meagerly. While the bodybuilders approach enslaved persons of the

worst sort, the magnanimity of the wise is likewise connected with comparatively liberaliora

foods, the kind more fitting of a free person. So too, in outdoing the food of those about to be

killed (occisuri, mutatis mutandis), these individuals take on the role of those who would die in

battle compared to those who would be taken and enslaved.

The medical side of preoccupation intersects with the military aspect of preoccupying at

the beginning of this letter. Right after the salutation, Seneca notes: “It is the month of

December: the citizenry sweats now especially” (Ep. 18.1, December est mensis: cum maxime

civitas sudat). In Ep. 15, sweating is specifically linked to the baseline function of the occupied

dyspeptic, reduced to simple excretion (Ep. 15.4, bibere et sudare vita cardiaci est). The fact that

the whole of the citizen body is suffering in this way points forward to Seneca’s rebuke of

Lucilius at Ep. 75.7, where the student has forgotten the plague of emotional mismanagement

that is all around and which is the root of the preoccupation of everyone Where the later letter

As discussed further in Ch. 4, the other active use of praeoccupare comes in the explicit discussion of Stoic

pedagogy outlined in Ep. 94 (and mapped out thoroughly by Schafer, 2009). It is interesting that it comes into close

proximity with decreta used in a different context as well as with a recommendation to “really concern oneself”

with the mind of a student (percurare). On the figure of Fortune as a military enemy, Asmis (2009).

See n. 5 for the etymological references in relation to servi. Regarding liberalis, Maltby (1991: 338) uses Ep. 88’s

discussion of the liberal arts as an ancient etymological reference. On the presentation of the Stoic body as a point of

torture and pain, Bartsch (2006: 174–80)

goes on to discuss more fully the gradations of psychical and moral disease, this earlier letter

makes the connection with slavery more explicit. In Ep. 15, the bodybuilders approach enslaved

persons (mancipia), both in their everyday associations and in the distension of their spiritus. In

Ep. 50, the blindness of moral fault from which the preoccupied suffer is symbolized by the

blindness of the clown Harpastê, an enslaved person of his wife. Here, Seneca describes the

Saturnalia as a crowd of freedmen:

Si te bene novi, arbitri partibus functus nec per omnia nos similes esse pilleatae

turbae voluisses nec per omnia dissimiles; nisi forte his maxime diebus animo

imperandum est, ut tunc voluptatibus solus abstineat cum in illas omnis turba

procubuit; certissimum enim argumentum firmitatis suae capit, si ad blanda et in

luxuriam trahentia nec it nec abducitur. Hoc multo fortius est, ebrio ac vomitante

populo siccum ac sobrium esse, illud temperantius,

non excerpere se nec insignire

nec misceri omnibus et eadem sed non eodem modo facere… (Ep. 18.3–4)

If I know you well, after performing the role of a judge, you would not have wanted

to be either similar to the capped crowd in all things nor dissimilar in all things;

unless, perhaps, especially in these days, the mind must command, that it alone

abstain from pleasures then, when all the crowd has sunk into them; for one takes

the surest proof of one’s steadfastness, if one neither goes nor is led away to

charming things and things dragging them to luxury. Being dry and sober in a drunk

and vomiting crow, this is much stronger; not picking oneself out, standing out, or

mixing with everyone, and doing the same things but not in the same way, that is

more measured (temperantius)…

The crowd is capped like freedmen, who by definition are no longer a state of slavery.

However, the crowd carry markers of the cardiaci from Ep. 15 in their penchant for drinking and

expelling. Further, Lucilius is told that his mind should “command” and exercise imperium, the

military power of a Roman general in the field.

Thus, Seneca configures the festival as yet

On the etymological connection with time, see Ch. 3

On the dress of freedmen, Edmondson, 2008. Asmis (2009: 127) points Ep. 44.5–6 where Seneca tells Lucilius to

imagine himself as a libertinus as a positive marker of freeing oneself (se vindicare). However, Seneca also tells

Lucilius that the end goal is to become “free alone among the freeborn” (liber inter ingenuos), and Seneca’s

denigration of freedmen elsewhere (cf. n. 49 below) suggests a more nuanced picture. For a different take on the

image of freeing oneself, see discussion in Ch. 3.

Drogula, 2007 provides an overview of scholarship while advancing a view that imperium only refers to military

command.

another battlefield. Lucilius could be captured at the Saturnalia by giving himself to present

concerns rather than strategically positioning himself to continue his trajectory toward his future

goal of the intelligible Good. The Saturnalia is “charming” and “dragging into luxury,” showing

the force of the hand pulling Lucilius away from the upward trajectory.

The crowd, who have let themselves be conquered already, “have sunk” (procubuit) into

their pleasures, which lead to drunkenness and vomiting. The position at the root of the verb,

lying down, invokes both the fall from the path toward the Good, as they are no longer upright

and they are no longer active, as well as surrender in a campaign.

This formulation of

procumbere + in appears in relation to disease in Seneca’s contemporary Columella,

where he

describes a disease of pigs and recommends abstention from food and drink as the cure:

solet etiam universum pecus aegrotare ita, ut emacietur, nec cibos capiat,

productumque in pascua medio campo procumbat, et quodam veterno pressum

somnos aestivo sub sole captet. (VII.10.4)

Also, the whole herd usually gets sick, such that it wastes away and does not take

food, and when led forth into pasture they fall down in the middle of the field, and,

pressed by a certain slowness, it takes dreams under the summer sun.

The “entire crowd” (omnis turba) of the Saturnalia falls ill just like the whole herd, using the

same verb (aegrotare) as Seneca does at Ep. 50.4 to describe people’s ignorance of their

preoccupation. Just like the cardiaci of Ep. 15, their moral illness equates to their failure to

pursue the human good by wrongly acting like speechless animals through their occupation in

the present. Columella recommends giving the pigs an emetic to cure them (VII.10.5), which

once again shows the misguided efforts of the occupied: while the vomiting of pigs is a step

On the “charming” aspects of external things/impressions, Graver, 2007: 149–72

For lying down, OLD 2; for surrender, OLD 1, and thus e.g., De Bello Gallico 7.15, procumbunt Gallis omnibus

ad pedes Bituriges, ne pulcherrimam urbem succendere cogerentur

Ash, 1941: xiii–xiv.

toward healing the herd, the vomiting of the crowd displays their occupation and submission to

disease.

Thus, it is imperative—imperandum est—that in order to win the day, the moral agent

must “do the same things but not in the same way” (Ep.18.4, eadem sed non eodem modo

facere). In order to act and preoccupy this territory and avoid succumbing to occupation, the

hand of care must hold the mind away from the pleasures which lead to their diseased state.

When it comes to the quemadmodum, the manner in which the hand of care acts to accomplish

the Good, Seneca provides a negative example in this early letter: not like the crowd of

freedpersons. However, when it comes to the means which care will use, this separation of the

diseased, slavish crowd (or ex-enslaved) from the proper use of care is not so complete. When he

is speaking of the kind of effort that Metrodorus and Epicurus exerted to transcend those

condemned to death, Seneca tells Lucilius that he will in fact be acting like an enslaved person:

Non est tamen quare tu multum tibi facere videaris (facies enim quod multa milia

servorum, multa milia pauperum faciunt): illo nomine te suspice, quod facies non

coactus, quod tam facile erit tibi illud pati semper quam aliquando experiri (Ep.

18.8)

However, there is no means by which you would seem to do much for yourself (for

you will be doing what many thousands of enslaved people, many thousands of the

poor do): look up at yourself in that name, that you will not do it compelled, that

you will have suffering that always as easy as trying it out sometimes.

The repetition of facere and cognate facilis, especially in the personalized future tense facies,

emphasize that the Lucilius will be properly employing the hand of his care. The use of experiri

to describe this activity looks forward to Ep. 75.7, where Seneca tells Lucilius that he will have

to practice his moral education in addition to reading about philosophy. However, Seneca

explicitly says that Lucilius should not overvalue the means that he will be employing to do this,

because it is what enslaved people and the poor already do. In this, the dictionary distinction

breaks down. Lucilius simultaneously is striving to be one of the glorious war-dead by

preoccupying the tools that would be used against him, but at the same time he is performing

activities that many who have been captured in war, the servi, do actually perform. How does

Lucilius make his way to the Good if that activity is also the way of the enslaved?

Social Slavery vs Pathological Slavery

As the section title suggests, the issue is not the status of enslavement as such. Rather,

Seneca’s discourse on slavery reinterprets the Roman institution to accommodate the social

reality while also creating space for a new hierarchy of moral slavery. This new hierarchy is not

that of liber/servus, but rather liber/mancipium.

The best way to exhibit the invention of this

new spectrum is to analyze the ways that the hand of care and its (mis)applications are seen in

Seneca’s most famous discussion of slavery, Ep. 47, in contexts suggesting the abject nature of

mancipium in relation to the social status of the enslaved person (servus), who could still attain

greater virtue than their masters. The first of these references appears as Seneca gives the

example of Callistus, who gained great wealth and prominence under Caligula, and how he

relates to his former master.

Seneca recounts,

Stare ante limen Callisti dominum suum vidi et eum, qui illi inpegerat titulum, qui

inter reicula mancipia produxerat, aliis intrantibus excludi.

Rettulit illi gratiam

servus ille in primam decuriam coniectus, in qua vocem praeco experitur; et ipse

illum invicem apologavit, et ipse non iudicavit domo sua dignum. Dominus

Callistum vendidit; sed domino quam multa Callistus! (Ep. 47.9)

In what follows, I strictly use mancipium/-a in the Latin to differentiate from the sociologically enslaved, servi,

whom I refer to as “an enslaved person/enslaved people” so as to focus on the humanity of the individuals

sociological enslaved, consonant with the trends highlighted by Waldman (2015), which also maps the

dehumanizing trend of the psychic distension resulting in mancipium.

Balsdon & Griffin (2012) in their entry highlight some of the tangled web of court intrigue, in which Callistus was

involved, and given Seneca’s largely apolitical stance or even anti-political posturing in the letters (pace Bartsch,

2015; Henderson, 2002), his example may not be entirely positive. This may relate to his status as a freedman, for

which see n. 65 below.

The manuscripts preserve ridicula, but Muretus conjectures reicula; in either case, whether the enslaved are

rejected or laughable, it is certainly a pejorative image.

I saw standing before the threshold of Callistus his own master, and that he, who

had thrust the label onto that one, who had led him forth among the little useless

enslaved people, was being shut out while others were entering. That enslaved

person has returned the favor to him, having been thrown together with the first

bloc, in which the crier tests his voice. And he himself has spurned him in turn

himself judged him unworthy of his own home. The master has sold Callistus; but

how much Callistus has sold at his master’s price!

Strictly speaking, neither of the two individuals, Callistus or his former master, are the mancipia

here in view, but the language of the hands and care appears to show the reversal of fortune in

more damning terms. First, it is the master acting to thrust the label on Callistus to put him up for

sale in the market among the reicula mancipia, and this seems to be the case when we reach the

next finite verb, rettulit. However, the one who is acting with their hands this time is in fact “that

enslaved man” Callistus, not the master, as the freedman returns the favor to his former master.

Seneca goes even further to ascribe logos to Callistus in judging his former master seen through

the hapax apologavit, derived from ἀπολέγειν, showing how he both selects and refuses the man

on account of his lack of worth in Callistus’ eyes.

The role reversal in the economic transaction summed up in the end of the section thus

colors the reading of Callistus and the master’s relationship to the mancipia before it: where once

the master believed Callistus worthy of the lowest status of useless tools, now it is the master

who is kept outside and up for sale. This does not necessarily paint Callistus as the pinnacle of

virtue, but rather as an agent who is capable of exercising his care in such a way that he could

achieve proper living. There are hints here that Callistus has fallen short of the good, however, as

his position in the top economic bracket is a result of his having been thrown there (coniectus),

not through any manual faculty of his own. That Callistus is in such a position to be able to

Mouritsen (2011: 182) describes the operae, rather than gratiae, which liberti were expected perform and to some

extent legally required to do so (though to what extent, see p.225–6).

This is not only economic worth, but likely connected to the dignitas accorded to Roman elites; Balsdon, (1960)

offers a survey of this value in practice.

choose either care or occupation is thus up to chance and not a result of his own directed activity,

and so it is also in question. However, whether or not this evaluation is justified,

Callistus’

example shows that the label of servus is not enough to render one ‘truly’ enslaved. The

mancipia are the useless ones in this example, for sale as incapable tools, while Callistus is later

labeled as a servus when he gains his manipulative power over his former master; the social

status does not map onto the ethical status, because the enslaved person has the power to exercise

his manus while the dominus loses this ability.

The ability of the enslaved people to use their manus appears earlier than our first

mention of mancipium in the letter. Seneca discusses several roles of enslaved people, who suffer

abysmal abuse from their masters: “we abuse them as if they were not even humans, but as if

they were beasts of burden” (Ep. 47.5, ne tamquam hominibus quidem, sed tamquam iumentis

abutimur). The enslaved people here are treated as if they were animals, showing a cognitive

fault in the masters.

The bodybuilders from Ep. 15 share in this fault, but there it is directed at

themselves, as they insist on working out and competing with oxen in strength and size. Thus,

the legally enslaved people are hemmed in by the pathologically enslaved. While the legally

As may be gleaned from Seneca’s continued use of servus for rhetorical effect to describe the now libertus

Callistus, Seneca’s relationship to freedmen is complicated. Where different freedmen appear in the Epistulae

Morales and other works, they are generally looked down upon; as we have seen, the diseased crowd of the

Saturanalia is pilleatus like freedmen. Elsewhere, the freedman Licinus is placed alongside Crassus as the examples

of financially wealthy but morally bankrupt individuals (Epp. 119.9, 120.19); the freedman Timagenes is described

as felicitati urbis inimicus (Ep. 91.13) and as a scandalous writer of histories in juxtaposition to the composed

Augustus at De Ira 3.23.4–8. Pliny the Elder records Seneca’s reaction to the unbelievable harvests of Palaemon:

…novissime Annaeo Seneca, principe tum eruditorum ac potentia, quae postremo nimia ruit super ipsum, minime

utique miratore inanium, tanto praedii huius amore capto, ut non puderet inviso alias et ostentaturo tradere palmam

eam, emptis quadriplicato vineis illis intra decimum fere curae annum… (NH 14.5.51). It may be no coincidence,

given the current project, that Seneca’s prejudices are overridden in recognition of Palaemon’s ten years of cura. On

Seneca’s relation to the son of a freedman Aegialus in Ep. 86, Henderson (2002: 158–62)

One of many which leads to their profligate emotional responses; on the cognitivist picture of Stoic emotional

psychology, Graver, 2007: 35–60.

enslaved are tools for the pathologically enslaved, in their occupation they abuse them and

restrain them from accomplishing the Good.

Seneca describes several ways in which the diseased mancipia abuse their legal servi.

First, there are the enslaved people at the dinner parties themselves, including the one who cleans

up food that has been spit out, the one who “having been given to the underside of the cushions

gathers together the remnants of the drunk people” (Ep. 47.5, reliquias temulentorum toro

subditus colligit). What the diseased ‘masters’ lose through their mouths, the legally enslaved

persons gather this up with their hands; the subjugation of the second class is highlighted in the

fact that they are given (sub + datus) to their particularly distasteful task. Next are the poultry

carvers, who

per pectus et clunes certis ductibus circumferens eruditam manum frusta excutit,

infelix, qui huic uni rei vivit, ut altilia decenter secet, nisi quod miserior est, qui hoc

voluptatis causa docet quam qui necessitatis discit (Ep. 47.6)

Shake out the morsels, carrying their educated hand around through the chest and

haunches with sure conduct; they are unfortunate, who live for this one thing alone,

to cut up fattened birds in seemly manner, except that they, who teach this because

of pleasure, are more wretched than they, who learn it because of compulsion.

These enslaved people take a step up in their use of their hands, not just collected but wielding

their eruditam manum to craft a beautiful meal—an object of opprobrium, as Seneca sees it, but

one which nonetheless involves skill. The use of eruditam— “instructed,” but also “polished” or

“honed” in their separation from a rudis craft into becoming subtilis in their task—hearkens back

to the imagery of Ep. 15, where the souls of the occupati are dulled, but it is here that the servi

are the ones who are the truly sharp compared to the drunk men who have control over them.

Their craft also recalls the “easy hand” (facili manu) of the craftspeople at Ep. 121.5, whose

Bénatouïl (2006:113ff) discusses the right and wrong reason of reason in Stoicism, which properly conceived

exhibits a ‘univocity’ of thought and action, which the servi are restrained from achieving here.

movements are as fluid as the natural movements.

The misfortune of enslaved person’s

position is not just the social position, but that their manus has the markings of one that could

bring them the Good through their care, as they wield it and guide it with sure ductibus, leading

according to a plan they possess and in defined ways;

yet, they are reduced to the tools of those

who have occupied themselves concerning pleasures.

Next is the vini minister, whose abilities are taken not through the explicit control of their

hands but through the confinement of their temporality through the sexual violence imposed by

the drunken hands of the dominus:

in muliebrem modum ornatus cum aetate luctatur. non potest effugere pueritiam,

retrahitur, iamque militari habitu glaber retritis pilis aut penitus evulsis tota nocte

pervigilat, quam inter ebrietatem domini ac libidinem dividit et in cubiculo vir, in

convivio puer est. (Ep. 47.7)

They struggle with their age, adorned in a womanly manner. They cannot flee from

their childhood, they are dragged back, and already in military comportment they

stay up through the whole night, smooth from their hairs being cut back or plucked

out altogether, that night which they divide between the drunkenness of their master

and hist lust and in which they are a man in the bedroom, at the party a boy.

When such a person struggles against their age, this is not merely performing unseemly tasks,

but also acting against their proper form as a being. As we saw form Ep. 121, every stage of life

has its own constitution; thus, to act contrary to a particular time in one’s life is to break free

from nature, both own’s own and simpliciter.

They are “dragged back” into the past, contrary to

nature and contrary to their own will, by the dominus’ drunkenness and desire, the former being

Cf. Ch. 1, p. 58

As OLD points out under the first and second definitions of ductus, the ‘leadings’ may evoke the precision of

engineering, specifically of aqueducts (2), as well as military command (1), further sharpening the contrast between

the servi better equipped to enact cura and the domini who have made themselves occupati.

Viparelli, 2000: 35–36 recreates the temporal discussion of Ep. 12 as a cone of interconnected rings of one’s

whole life and particular smaller units of it, converging at the peak which is the end; she notes that each of these

stages is what nature has ordained for us; to descend on this pyramid is unnatural and—strictly speaking—not

feasible.

one of the four cardinal “passions” (πάθη) of the Stoics.

The master’s diseased condition now

has infected and unbalanced the nature of the enslaved person, who is drawn into the occupation

which the master has crafted for himself. The sexual inversion which supervenes on the temporal

inversion seals the extent to which this enslaved person is reduced from the ability they have to

practice their care. They possess a habitus militaris, a way of “holding” themselves in a way

which signals they should be able to fight back, but they are so currently possessed that they are

unable to break out of this possession and are thus used alternately as man and boy, reliving their

past instead of crafting their future. The military garb makes explicit the moral conquest that the

enslaved person is waging with their care, and it contrasts with the pathological master who has

lost this particular battle already.

Time also plays a factor in the abuse of the next servus mentioned, who has received the

“censorship” of the party’s guests (censura) and thus “keeps standing, unfortunate person, and

watches out for those whom fawning and intemperance of either their throat or their tongue will

call back for tomorrow” (Ep. 47.8, perstat infelix et exspectat, quos adulatio et intemperantia aut

gulae aut linguae revocet in crastinum). Like the carver above, this “censor” of the guests

controls their access to their future project, i.e., continuing their gluttonous or intemperate

lifestyles, and in this way the enslaved person is closer to properly practicing care than the

guests, occupied individuals who have been reduced to disembodied body parts. However, the

enslaved person is prohibited from being able to actually direct their own activity into the future,

as they are kept in a thoroughly static position (perstat), from which they can only watch the

other guests. Like those who have been occupied and given to their mental diseases, the enslaved

person is reduced in their mobility and their creative activity, but they are not morally lost like

Cf. n. 28

the occupied masters, but rather physically restrained and socially disadvantaged.

The servus

remains the most human again in this situation, but they are kept from their potential due to their

position in a power structure dominated by people who are themselves occupied.

Finally, Seneca rounds out his survey of the roles of servi involved in the lavish dinner

party of the domini:

Adice obsonatores, quibus dominici palati notitia subtilis est, qui sciunt, cuius illum

rei sapor excitet, cuius delectet aspectus, cuius novitate nauseabundus erigi possit,

quid iam ipsa satietate fastidiat, quid illo die esuriat. (Ep. 47.8)

Throw in the caterers, to whom there is a subtle acquaintance with a master’s pallet,

who know which thing’s flavor stirs them up, which thing’s look entices, at which

thing’s novelty the vomit-inclined master can be lifted up, what nauseates them

now from their own fullness, what they hunger for on that day.

At this point, it is worth recognizing that Seneca does not use the word servus in this section to

refer to any of these individuals. Every other role is introduced with an anaphoric alius, and now

once Seneca “throws in the caterers,” the lack of explicit reference to servi clouds the social

distinction between master and enslaved person, which fits Seneca’s aim of showing how those

called domini are the least so in terms of their conduct rather than social standing. So it is that

these obsonatores—who derive their name from the Greek ὀψωνεῖν, “to cater,” further

highlighting their connection to the luxury of the party—end up with the most cognitive capacity

of any of the dining domini who have come in the preceding sections. They have subtilis notitia,

combining the subtilitas which we have seen is the mark of mental acuity achieved through care

with the result of their own work of noscere. Through their experience and their craft, they have

gotten to know what makes the palate of the luxuriating class tick (sciunt). However, as with

The occupati may also be falling away from humanity, like the diseased mind of Epp. 15 & 75 above, if we accept

the definition of Nonius Marcellus (17.2): adulatio est blandimentum proprie canum, discussing a line of Accius’

Prometheus (LCL 314, 532–3); this is also connected to a line from Cicero De Natura Deorum II.158 which

discusses adulatio dominorum as one of the natural tendencies of dogs.

many of the enslaved, the marks of their care, which make them positive moral agents, are

perverted by the occupied master. In this instance, the obsonator who possesses knowledge and

experience, is denied their ability to achieve sapientia through their action, and instead they must

focus their craft on the sapores of the master. The sapiens at the party is not the enslaved person

equipped to curate their sapientia, but the dominus literally excited to try new flavors.

The inversion is further highlighted by the status of the dominus being served by the

knowledgeable obsonator. On the one hand, the master is rendered the object of the actions

described. These are not even the acts of the servus—for they have been rendered a tool of

luxury by the dominus—but of the particular sensuous effects which result from the craft

involved. The flavor stirs them up. The look entices them. The novelty can arouse them. When

they become the ostensible grammatical subject in the last propositions which the obsonator

knows, the verbs themselves point out their reactive position, as they feel disgust at or hunger for

certain particular objects when they present themselves. These last reactions bring up the second

element of the hierarchical inversion, namely that the knowledge of the obsonator is used upon a

person reduced to their body, and an ill one at that.

The object of the misused knowledge is not

the dominus themself, but “a master’s palate;” like the fawning guests above, they are merely

The wordplay between sapientia and sapere is and old one in Latin literature; in his discussion of the term in

Ennius, Habinek, 2006: 479 highlights e.g., Plautus Casina 780 as an example contemporaneous with Ennius of how

“[s]apientia before, after, and during the career of Ennius retains its etymological association with "taste" or

"discrimination” (487). Maltby, 1991: 543 collects ancient definitions of both words which are all mutually

interlinked.

One may be reminded of Plato’s Gorgias (463b2–465c5), where Socrates juxtaposes the flattering art (ἡ

κολακευτικὴ) of pastry-baking (ἡ ὀψοποιικὴ), which “does not know but aims” (οὐ γνοῦσα λέγω ἀλλὰ

στοχασαμένη) with the helpful art of medicine (ἡ ἰατρική), which do for the body what rhetoric and justice do for

politics, respectively. Whether Seneca agrees with Socrates when he says “I deny that this is a craft, but it is a

knack” (τέχνην δὲ αὐτὴν οὔ φημι εἶναι ἀλλ᾽ ἐμπειρίαν) because pastry baking “aims at the pleasant without the

best” (τοῦ ἡδέος στοχάζεται ἄνευ τοῦ βελτίστου) and “I do not call anything a skill which is a thing without

logos” (ἐγὼ δὲ τέχνην οὐ καλῶ ὃ ἂν ᾖ ἄλογον πρᾶγμα) or whether he may be more amenable to a Ciceronian

position (e.g. that put in the mouth of Antonius at De Oratore I.219–226) is debatable. Armisen-Marchetti (1989)

explores the question of Stoic rhetoric in her introduction and concludes that there is a place for it, but it must be

properly curtailed and aimed.

organs and not complete persons. Further, the dominus (or their palate) is not healthy, but

nauseabundus; unlike Cura, who is “wrapped in thought” (cogitabunda), they are now wrapped

in vomiting, like the diseased and preoccupied crowd of Ep. 18.

The rousing of the dominus by

taste places them at a nexus of passions, both pain and desire, which distend the pneuma to

physically and spiritually sicken the individual.

Thus, our dominus becomes a more wretched

version of the cardiacus from Ep. 15, reduced to bodily functions but ones even more

unhealthy.

Though the masters are reduced to their body parts and to diseased reaction, their efforts

are nevertheless the product of their self-employed occupation. As we have seen above, their

moral failings rest on their use of tools in ways which further lessen their ability to act in ways

which are suited for their future good—or rather, on their abuse of people who are suited for

future good in order to derail both of their chances of creating their path toward the Good

through care. They slowly render themselves inactive, stolid and stultus, but this is only the end

result of the misguided activity of occupation aimed at the present in sensation and not toward

the future intelligible Good. Thus, it is that Seneca begins his discussion of the abused servi at

the dinner parties with an adage that more fittingly sums up the status of all involved: “Hence, an

old saying is tossed about characteristic of this presumption, that there are the same number of

enemies as enslaved people. We don’t have those enemies, we make them” (Ep. 47. 5, deinde

eiusdem arrogantiae proverbium iactatur, totidem hostes esse quot servos. Non habemus illos

Etymologically, OLD’s first definition links nausea to navis and Greek ναῦς; given Seneca’s critique of travel

and experience with boats, such as in Epp. 28 & 53, such a link may highlight the diseases which these domini

ignore, having occupied themselves with their luxury; the introduction of Ep. 77, contrasting Seneca’s calm with the

hubbub brought about with the arrival of the ships of Alexandria, may provide another such contrast.

The disintegration of the body of the mancipia at the party shares some resonance of the schizophrenic body

discussed by Deleuze (1990: 86–89), who appeals to Stoicism in a non-moral sense to explore a theory of meaning

and sense. However, given Stoic corporalism and the medical model discussed above, the connection of vice with

mental illness is à propos.

hostes, sed facimus). Without distinguishing the dominus/servus social dichotomy from the

cura/occupatio moral/pathological dichotomy, such an adage only suggests that an individual’s

bad behavior makes other people spiteful toward them. Returning to the precept after witnessing

the moral mix up, we see how the misused craft of the masters turns their dependents and tools

against them, both as people and as instruments. As human beings, the enslaved people resent the

stunting of their own moral growth by their social wielders, but as instruments they are employed

in the master’s active efforts to poison and worsen themselves.

Thus, the domini use them for their own occupation, until they reduce themselves to

mancipia. Seneca returns to an early refrain of labeling people servi and questioning the moral

claim behind it in order to show the truly important moral domain being overlooked:

“Servus est.” Sed fortasse liber animo. “Servus est.” Hoc illi nocebit? Ostende, quis

non sit; alius libidini servit, alius avaritiae, alius ambitioni, omnes timori. Dabo

consularem aniculae servientem, dabo ancillulae divitem, ostendam nobilissimos

iuvenes mancipia pantomimorum! Nulla servitus turpior est quam voluntaria. (Ep.

47.17)

“They are enslaved” But, perhaps free in their mind. “They are enslaved”. Will this

harm them? Show us who is not; one is in service of lust, another of greed, another

ambition, all are in service of greed. I will give you a consular in service to a little

old woman, I will give you a rich man in service to a little enslaved girl, I will show

you youths of the most noble families as the enslaved (mancipia) of pantomimes!

No service is more shameful than when it is voluntary.

The tricolon of individuals culminates in the youths of the highest social position reduced to the

lowest moral position, that of mancipia. The enslaved person, as we have seen above, still has

opportunity to change, as they are “free in spirit,” and this slavery need not necessarily harm

them in their moral proficiency. Though the abused enslaved people from above certainly may

call this into doubt, we may also think of Seneca’s example of the Spartan youth at Ep. 77.14,

who after he was taken (captus) shouted “I will not serve!” (non serviam) and then dashed his

brains out against the wall when ordered “to function in a task characteristic of enslavement, full

of insult” (servili fungi et contumelioso ministerio).

Enslaved people, though they all may be

taken, nevertheless have a chance to break out of their moral quandary, namely through properly

conducted suicide: “Freedom is so close, and someone serves? So, would you not prefer your

child die than be made an old person through lack of craft? (Ep. 77.15, tam prope libertas est; et

servit aliquis? ita non sic perire filium tuum malles quam per inertiam senem fieri?) The

continued servitus-slavery arises from a literal lack of ars, a lack of the exercise of care to craft

an aim to find the good even in the basest situation.

The complete inertia of the agent leads to their complete inertness, such that the child

will end up amongst the aristocratic youths who are the mancipia of pantomimes, utterly unable

to act and totally taken in the hands of another. The change in verbs signals this change in mobile

and moral status. Seneca “gives” those who are serviens—such people can break out of this state,

they still have activity and a potential to redirect their life onto the path upward toward the

intelligible Good, and so the example is changed with Lucilius. However, he “shows” the

mancipia, either stretching them out opposite Lucilius or holding them to his face,

because such

individuals are completely objectified through their self-occupation; they are not going

anywhere, so there is no need for an exchange to take place, and simply sitting in view is enough

to prove the example’s worth. The servientes are active in their service even with the present

participle, and they still have masculine/feminine quality in that they are servientes. On the other

hand, the totally occupied mancipium is reduced to the neuter.

Graver (2007: 130) points out that in discussing the diseases of the mind discussed at De Ira 2.5, Seneca describes

them with the cognate contumax, and she says “Contumax, meaning contumacious or obstinate, is applicable in

Latin usage to anything which moves forcibly and unthinkingly against the restrictions imposed by reason.” For

more on the care-ful use of suicide, Ch. 3

Maltby, 1991: 437 records Cassiodorus’ recommendation os, oris ex quo ostendo, ostentum; however, other

definitions only highlight synonyms with “display/show” just as consistent with os + tendere/tenere as with obs +

tendere.

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For socially confined servi, death may be the only path out in order to prove their moral

worth that transcends the warped social structure,

but for the consularis or dives, who put

themselves in service, who occupy themselves in the present in place of curating their future,

there are other paths out, namely the gradual acquisition of the ars sapientiae which would free

them from fear and from the other harmful desires above.

As Seneca points out to Lucilius in

Ep. 75, everyone has been occupied ahead of time, which gives us the reason why it is difficult

to find someone who is not serviens. However, that they are not all mancipia—whether

“approaching” them like the cardiaci body builders of Ep. 15 or slowly losing activity like the

disintegrating bodies of Ep. 47—points out there is potential to make one’s way out of base

enslavement (servitus), whether compelled or voluntary, and onto the upward trajectory of Stoic

moral progress. Thus, it is not just a statement of common humanity, but of common moral

exhortation to highlight the way in which people generally have let their care fall away from the

proper cycle into occupation, when Seneca defines enslaved people at the beginning of the letter:

“Servi sunt.” Immo homines. “Servi sunt.” Immo contubernales “Servi sunt.” Immo

humiles amici. “Servi sunt.” Immo conservi, si cogitaveris tantundem in utrosque

licere fortunae.

“They are enslaved.” No, humans. “They are enslaved.” No, messmates. “They are

enslaved.” No, lowly friends. “They are enslaved.” No, enslaved together with us,

if you have thought about how the same such amount is permitted to fortune against

each of us.

That they are “messmates” recalls the martial imagery displayed as Seneca recounts our moral

progress in “occupying” the second step on the way to sapientia at Ep. 75.15; that they and the

Despite the resonances of the kind of struggle for recognition, it is very likely that Seneca had no intention of

undoing the Roman slave state; Edwards (2009:141) asserts that “[i]n redeploying the master/slave distinction at the

metaphorical level Seneca’s writing ultimately serves… to reinforce [the distinction’s] power in the realm of actual

human relations,” and despite the qualifications of some her positions presented here, I think it likely that this is

closer to the truth of what could be ostensibly abolitionist material.

Or, as discussed in Ch. 3, the sociologically free individuals also have more ability to curate the proper means,

manner, and extent of their life and death.

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audience of the letters are conservi shows our distance from the final attainment of sapientia. In

this way, his contention that legally enslaved persons are “enslaved together with us” recalls his

formulation that the public have all been preoccupied at Epp. 50 and 75. That the servi and

conservi are together “lowly” reflects their position on the path upward toward the intelligible

good. For now, the preoccupied are still closer to the plane of sensation and the pull of the

present, but they still have the power to go forward. Not yet fully taken by occupation, these

individuals can still “stretch out for virtue detained between vices” (Ep. 75.16, ad virtutem

contendimus inter vitia districti). Having recognized their preoccupation and worked to remove

it, these individuals now must turn to make themselves free and healthy through philosophy.

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From Metaphor to Metaphysics

Early in the collection, at Ep. 8, Seneca explains, is to “be enslaved to philosophy” for,

“this very enslavement to philosophy is freedom” (Ep. 8.7, hoc enim ipsum philosophiae servire

libertas est). The service to philosophy, philosophari, is the practice of health, as Seneca

establishes at Ep. 15. However, compared to the formulations from Ep. 47 above, the dative

objects of servire figure as persons, and so philosophizing is also service to the personified

Philosophy, feminine thanks to her grammatical gender. Thus, while Seneca has reconfigured

institutional slavery in terms of being in the hands of fortune or holding oneself apart from them,

the goal of enslavement to philosophy puts the moral subject back in the power of another, and a

feminine other in particular which disrupts the subject’s position in the Roman gender hierarchy.

In previous chapters, we have used ‘they/them’ to refer to the singular subject, as a way

of indicating the applicability to all humans in line with the myth of Cura (homines à humus).

However, in this chapter, we will switch to focusing on the historical audience for the letters,

people like Lucilius, who were elite freeborn Roman males, and show the interaction of “him”

with “her,” be this Cura, Philosophy, or Nature. The implications of service to the feminine run

against the drive for self-presentation in Foucault, but through the language of care we can see

how Seneca subverts the power of the feminine, particularly in the philosophical personifications

of Philosophy and Nature. As Dressler (2016:57–95 et passim) discusses, feminine

personifications play on gender tensions in the male subject of activity, passivity, the former

being associated with masculinity and the latter with femininity.

Seneca’s shows how the male

subject escapes the grasp of feminine force with two connected methods. First, he relegates the

For a different view, see n. 77 below

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domain of Philosophy and Nature to the “incorporeals” (ἀσώματα) in Stoic metaphysics, which

are surface effects caused by the activity of corporeal bodies: time, void, space, and sayables.

After moving the feminine force away from material reality, Seneca then imbues the feminine

power of cura with masculine force as well.

In order to examine how care gains this power, we will first see how Seneca engages with

the myth of Hyginus in a close reading situated in Seneca’s approach to mythology and allegory.

While Aldo Setaioli points out instances where Seneca appears to disavow allegoresis

altogether,

the image of Cura shares enough in common with a Stoic picture of the cosmos as to

be less problematic than other examples of the more scholastic variety. Seneca builds on the

Stoic practice of etymology and provides an “exemplary” reading of the myth of Cura, which

presents the story as a straightforward example of a philosophical truth couched in traditional

Roman religious practice and civic theology. In several letters, such as Epp. 31 & 110 discussed

below, Seneca etymologizes certain traditional religious names and practice but reconfigures

them in ways which conform with the philosophical theology of Stoicism. As we shall see,

Hyginus’ Cura constructs a range between the poles of Jupiter, Tellus, Cura, and Saturn which

serve as the neutral parameters for possible human lives. Within this framework, Seneca applies

Stoic ethical and metaphysical doctrines which require the female Cura to take on the masculine

power of Saturn to reach the Good.

This masculinized care thus has the ability to transcend the feminine forces of Philosophy

and Nature. First, as seen through the depiction of Philosophy and matter in Epp. 53 & 65,

For a more detailed definition, particularly in relation to time, cf. pp. 132–3 below, including notes.

Setaioli (2000: 192–7), specifically with reference to Seneca’s similarities with the strictly anti-allegorical stance

of the somewhat ‘rogue’ scholarch Panaetius. Setaioli (2007: 348–9) notes that Seneca does some allegorical work

with the epithet of Jupiter Stator among at De Beneficiis 4.7.1–4.8, but he appeals to the beginning of the work

(1.3.2–4.6) when declaring that “as a rule, however, Seneca does not accept the allegorical interpretation of mythical

gods”

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enslavement to Philosophy becomes enslavement to nothing, for her control is over incorporeal

time and her power as domina is described passively, so that the moral subject is still the

grammatical subject and remains untouched. This relationship to philosophy and freedom which

differs somewhat from the picture of the male self in Foucault (1986), because it allows for

freedom and philosophical practice both in the material world as well as in the inner domain of

subjective thought.

Philosophy remains on the incorporeal realm, where care can use both it and

matter to achieve the Good. Second, care transcends Nature because of its ability to work in

things contra naturam. This arises precisely in proper care’s embrace of the limited future for a

human being. In analyzing Ep. 66 and 77, we can see how Seneca reshapes the Stoic goal of

imitating nature by taking on the agricultural associations of Saturn in Roman cult, recalling

Seneca’s analogy of plant development to human development (discussed in Chapter 1). By

taking on the characteristic of Saturn, who controls growth in religion but who for Hyginus

decrees death, Seneca’s imitatio focuses on the ability of the subject to reap themselves through

suicide. Part of Seneca’s much noted morbid fascination with death arises from care taking on

masculine force to engineer the growth of a human life so that the subject makes sure that he dies

when he should.

Seneca’s reconfiguration of mythic and religious imagery allows the male

subject to masculinize their care to gain access to the incorporeal and divine and to rise above the

material present and the power of the feminine.

See the Introduction for the critiques of Foucault’s interpretation of Seneca.

E.g., Leeman (1971), Viparelli (2000:121, passim), Evenepoel (2004), Inwood & Donini (2008:735). Seneca’s

proposals of suicide are discussed by Edwards (2007:107–9 and passim), and Ker (2007) focuses on the consonance

of Seneca’s work with his suicide. In comparison with the Greek Stoa, Seneca makes an active possibility of what

Goldschmidt (1953: 186n3) takes to be an extraordinary “act of obedience” [my translation]. Busch (2009: 263–5)

situates Seneca’s discussion of suicide alongside his positions on the afterlife and questions how they are liberating;

however, the parallel between Seneca and Martin Heidegger’s concept of “being-toward-death” (SZ 235–66) as

highlighted by Perelli (1994: 54–8) offers an alternate take, one which is shared by Pliny the Elder (NH 2.5.27, cited

by Edwards (2007)

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Hyginus’ Fabulae and Roman ‘mythology’

Despite the work being a rare example of a mythography in Latin, specifically Roman

features occupy very little of Hyginus’ Fabulae.

The myth of Cura is only one of two which

makes use of particular Latin etymologies, and besides using Latin names for the Greek gods

(such as Saturnus for Kronos), Roman (quasi-)historical figures are limited to the section of lists

(e.g., Romulus, Remus, and Camilla are all under the heading “those who were raised on the

milk of wild animals” at Fab. 252). This curious lack for modern readers can be explained on

two grounds. On the one hand, mythographical texts from antiquity, while the product of great

learning, were intended to provide a kind of encyclopedia for others to use.

The presence of the

extensive lists immediately following the myth of Cura in the collection, as well as the rather

skeletal appearance of the preceding fables, illustrates how Hyginus and other mythographers

worked for orators and poets to put new flesh back onto their bones. Additionally, Hyginus’

Latin presupposes an audience removed from the Greek culture that created the myths,

preserving figures and tales for their literary use rather than as an active, formative force for their

society.

This explains the discrete presentation of individual myths, compared to the

genealogical structure of Hesiod’s Theogony or Apollodorus’ Biblotheke, while still meriting the

title of Genealogia. Being written for a Latin and Roman audience, this text thus seeks to import

Greek myth as literature into a Roman society with a living background tradition that it does not

need to explain in the same way.

On the other hand, the structure of Hyginus’ Latin text in particular comes from the

different explanatory relationship of Roman divinities as compared to Greek divinities. The

Despite the number of Latin authors with possible intertexts catalogued by Werth (1901: 22–5). Concerning 220,

Werth remarks “tota fabula latina est” (1901: 27), but he does not place this tale among his Fabulae Italicae.

Smith & Trzaskoma, 2007: xii–xvi; Guidorizzi (2000: xxii–xxiii)

Guidorizzi, 2000:xxxiii–xxxiv; see also Gentili (1994: 785), Kirk (1974), Edmunds (1990).

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Hellenic pantheon are tied together specifically by the genealogy which then structures the works

of Greek mythography which seek to condense their stories. In order to understand the

relationship of one divinity to another, one needs a work like Hesiod’s Theogony to trace the

connections between them, and this is part of their highly anthropomorphic character. Whereas

the Greeks had divinities akin to named characters which necessitated genealogical and narrative

connection, Roman divinities had names and relationships which were “conceptually

transparent.”

The divine appellations among the Romans more or less exactly restated their

function and/or domain of oversight, as Augustine highlights in his discussion of the traditional

divinities, or indigites, invoked in a traditional Roman marriage rite:

domum est ducenda quae nubit; adhibetur et deus Domiducus; ut in domo sit,

adhibetur deus Domitius; ut maneat cum viro, additur dea Manturna…(civ. 6.9)

The bride must be led home, and for this the god Home-leader (Domiducus) is

used; so that she be at home, there’s the god Homebody (Domitius); so that she

stays with her husband, there’s also the goddess Stay-where-you-are

(Manturna)…

The names of the gods simply reflect their function in the process of the marriage, and the same

holds for other indigites in the agricultural and civic spheres as well. This conceptual

transparency lent itself to an absence of anthropomorphizing, so much so that Varro remarks that

“the ancient Romans worshipped gods without an image for more than 170 years.”

These

Corbeill (2016: 108), translating the term of Usener (1896)

Translation and emphases from Corbeill (2016: 107)

So relates Augustine (civ. 4.31 = Cardauns, frg. 18): “dicit etiam antiquos Romanos plus annos centum et

septuaginta deos sine simulacro coluisse.” This statement has led to much debate (for which, see Cardauns, 1976:

146–8), but here I agree with Corbeill (2016: 106): “… the claim’s historicity is not so important there as the fact

that Varro could conceive of a time when the gods were not in possession of physical bodies.” Van Nuffelen (2011)

uses the timeline Varro presents to connect the introduction of simulacra in worship to the rule of Tarquinius

Priscus, who, in addition to being of Greek descent, was also an initiate into the mysteries at Samothrace (Serv.

2.296 = Macrob. Sat. 3.4.7 = Cardauns, frg. 205).

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numinous forces, lacking iconic forms, did not necessitate the same kind of mythology which

tied together the universe of the Greek pantheon.

Despite the initial lack of physical representation, the indigites did often come in

gendered pairs.

However, these pairs did not signify marital couplings as they did for the

Greeks (e.g., Kronos and Rhea), but rather the aspects of the particular force or domain. Thus,

the Romans had the pair of Liber/Libera to denote the “freeing” of male and female seed in

procreation, respectively,

while Varro attests to the gendered pair of Tellumo/Tellus which

represent the aspect of the earth which actively produces seeds and that which passively accepts

the seed, respectively.

Thus, the Roman indigites could generally be mapped to their function in

the physical or social universe by their name alone; to return to Augustine’s example above, the

male Domiducus is invoked both because the god actively leads and because it maps on to the

new husband who takes the bride into his home, while Manturna reflects the bride’s passive

position as waiting in the home. This is not always strictly followed, as can be seen by the rather

evocatively named Pertunda invoked in marriage ritual, being a feminine deity overseeing the

active sexual position,

and this linguistic-cum-religious ambiguity helps to situate the position

of Cura in both Hyginus’ myth and Seneca’s appropriation of it.

A Senecan Interpretation of the Myth of Care

So much so that Rose (1928: 305–28) attributes to Rome a “pseudo-mythology;” Dionysius of Halicarnassus

(Antiq. Rom. 2.18–20) notes this phenomenon as well, owing it to Rome’s moral superiority

Corbeill (2016, 136–42) provides a catalog of these.

Perfigli, 2004: 72–8; on the assimilation of Liber to Dionysus, Corbeill, 2016: 128–33

Corbeill (2016: 111), citing Augustine (civ. 7.23 = Cardauns frg. 265); see also Weinstock, 1934: 800–2

Called out by Augustine (civ. 6.9); Corbeill (2016: 104–118) notes other grammatical/personal gender

mismatches, such as the masculine/neuter form Venus.

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As a distinctly Latin myth, Hyginus’ Fab. 220 appears as a much stronger candidate for

exemplary exegesis, rather than allegorical exegesis, as it presents the philosophical concept in

action and in a more straightforward way compared to the esoteric reading required by allegory.

The collection on the whole is in Latin for a Roman audience, and this myth in particular appeals

to specifically Roman deities and specifically Latin etymologies. However, despite the

conceptual transparency of the Roman indigites, the myth bears some interpretation, particularly

given the apparent mismatch of an active force which is explicitly female gendered. Here again

is the myth of Cura: