Four Tragedies and Octavia Read Free Page A

retorted: ‘What branch of learning, what philosophical school, won Seneca three hundred million sesterces during four years of imperial friendship? In Rome, he entices into his snares the childless and their legacies. His huge rates of interest suck Italy and the provinces dry.’ 3 With the death of Burrus in A.D . 62, his position became still more precarious, and he himself chose this moment to ask for retirement. In a dignified interview he thanked Nero for his kindness over fourteen years, and offered to surrender all his superfluous property. Nero replied that theobligations were all on his side – adding, ambiguously, ‘Your gifts to me will endure as long as life itself; my gifts to you, gardens and mansions and revenues, are liable to circumstances’ – and they parted with ceremonies of mutual affection. 1 Before the year was out – the year of the events concentrated into the tragedy
Octavia
– Nero had removed Burrus’s successor, Rufus, retaining the reliable services of his colleague Tigellinus, and had discarded his wife Octavia for his new love Poppaea. At the same time Seneca had been denounced for association with the anti-Neronian conspiracy led by Piso, for in fact Seneca’s name had been put forward as a possible successor to the throne. His nominal withdrawal into private life and into the resumption of his literary pursuits could not save him from the consequences of his public career; Nero was not likely to leave for long at large a potential opponent so well acquainted with his own dark secrets. In A.D . 65 (the year after the fire of Rome) the Pisonian conspiracy came to a head, and Seneca was implicated, on the slender evidence of a letter expressing friendly compliments to Piso. His death was ordered, and Seneca made preparations to meet it in the manner which he had often contemplated, and advocated in his letters, as the only one befitting a man of dignity. 2 After painful attempts to end his life by incision of the veins, he had recourse to poison, which still failed to have the desired effect; finally, a hot bath hastened the loss of blood, and a steam bath brought his life to an end by suffocation. His wife Paulina attempted to share his fate, but on Nero’s orders her suicide was arrested and she survived her husband by a few years.
    Of the earliest assessments of Seneca’s character, that of Dio Cassius is perhaps the most uncompromising, whichdescribes him as totally unscrupulous and inconsistent, preaching liberty and encouraging a tyrant; condemning flattery and courtship, enjoying luxury and contributing to flattery of the court; and sexually libertine. A modern critic has a more charitable view: 1 .
    Seneca, with his high brain-power and the low vitality of prolonged ill-health, with his clever, subtle mind and his lack of solid commonsense, with his amiable but not passionate temperament, is perhaps after all not so hard to understand. He desired more than most to do the right things; but he hated more than most the unpleasant things, especially unpleasantness with other people. In a perfectly desperate position, with only one path before him, he could tread it finely; but it was a desperate position indeed when that agile brain could not find a way round and justify to itself the same. Less clever he would have proved a great deal more edifying.
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    The tragedy of violence and intrigue in the real life about them, as well as in the organized spectacles of butchery in the amphitheatres (against which Seneca made his protest), seems to have blunted the taste of the Roman people for tragedy as a dramatic art. It is generally agreed that the tragedies of Seneca were intended for reading or recital at private gatherings and could never have appeared in what we should call public performance; partly because in many of their scenes the implied condemnation of autocracy would have had too dangerous a topical application; and partly because there