Letters from a Stoic. Donald Robertson
claim that Seneca, wishing suddenly to call in a 40 million sesterce loan made to native Britons under Roman rule, ‘resorted to severe means’ in demanding repayment. Some historians believe this was one of several events that provoked the famous 61 CE uprising against Roman rule in Britain, led by Queen Boudica.
Suillius was found guilty of corruption and sent into exile, forfeiting half his estate. According to Tacitus, Seneca then attempted to go after the man's son in court as well, but ‘the emperor interposed his veto, on the ground that vengeance was satisfied’. In this instance, ironically, his wayward student Nero actually showed more clemency than Seneca. However, worryingly for Seneca, it demonstrated that Nero was now willing to publicly question the wisdom of his teacher's actions.
MURDER OF AGRIPPINA
By 59 CE, Seneca's influence over Nero was waning. The emperor sidelined his powerful mother and plotted to have her murdered. He employed the bizarrely elaborate method of having Agrippina set sail in a boat rigged to collapse, with the intention of crushing and/or drowning her. However, she narrowly escaped and swam back to shore. Seneca and Burrus may have known of this entire scheme. In any case, Nero was forced to seek their help when it failed. Tacitus reports that ‘Seneca took the initiative. He looked at Burrus and asked if the military should be ordered to carry out the killing’ (Annals, 14.7). Burrus agreed and sent a group of praetorians to clean up Nero's mess by completing the assassination.
Tacitus adds that when the soldiers cornered Agrippina, in her bedroom, she pointed at her womb and yelled ‘Strike here!’, knowing that they had been sent to kill her by her own child. Cassius Dio, on the other hand, claims that her last words were the power-crazed ‘Let him kill me, as long as he rules!’ Nero was now infamous as the murderer not only of his own brother, but also his mother – and Seneca and Burrus were both thoroughly entangled in his crimes. Nero's tyranny only grew worse from this point on.
Seneca composed a letter to be read before the senate, which claimed that Agrippina, having been discovered plotting against her son, had voluntarily taken her own life. Upon hearing it, Thrasea Pateus, the leader of a faction of scholars and senators referred to as the ‘Stoic Opposition’, stood up and silently walked out in protest, thereby risking his own life. Nero became increasingly suspicious that those Stoics who saw him as a tyrant were planning to overthrow him. The following year, Nero sent Rubellius Plautus, a relative of his and perceived as a rival to the throne, into exile. Plautus was accompanied by his mentor, the famous Stoic teacher, Musonius Rufus. However, Nero was still too afraid to lift a finger against Thrasea, his staunchest opponent in the senate.
Around this time, Nero instigated a festival called Juvenalia, or Games of Youth, in commemoration of the day he reached manhood and began shaving his beard. It was an enormous, grossly extravagant festival, sinister insofar as Nero used the opportunity to humiliate his political opponents by forcing them to engage in indecent performances on stage before huge audiences. ‘Now, more than ever’, says Tacitus, ‘not only these performers but the rest as well regarded the dead as fortunate.’ At the climax, we're told that Gallio, Seneca's elder brother, would introduce Nero himself, who craved celebrity, as the headline act. He would sing, accompanying himself on the lyre, although apparently his vocals weren't very good and he ‘moved his whole audience to laughter and tears at once’.
Nero created a special corps of 5000 soldiers, the size of an entire legion, called ‘Augustans’, who surrounded the crowd and led the cheering and applause, forcing compliance under threat of execution. Tacitus says that while Nero sang, Seneca and Burrus, the latter presumably in command of the guards, were on the stage beside him, continually prompting the audience to wave their arms and togas in appreciation of their emperor's performance. The crowd were forced to call out: ‘Glorious Caesar! Our Apollo, our Augustus, another Pythian! By thyself we swear, O Caesar, none surpasses thee.’ One man in the audience refused to participate, though – Thrasea Pateus, the leader of the Stoic Opposition.
LEAVING NERO
In 62 CE, Burrus, who had been a restraining influence on the emperor, died mysteriously. Suetonius mentions the rumour that Nero had him poisoned. Two new praetorian prefects were appointed, Faenius Rufus and Ofonius Tigellinus. Rufus did little to discourage Nero's excesses. Tigellinus actively encouraged them by, among other things, convincing Nero that his exiled relative Plautus and other Stoics were plotting a coup. Nero finally snapped and had Plautus assassinated.
Seneca, now in desperation, responded by trying to distance himself from his former student. He even asked to turn over his wealth to Nero so that he could retire in peace. Seneca was probably afraid that Nero might eventually have him killed in order to recover his wealth. This was a common threat hanging, like the Sword of Damocles, over the heads of conspicuously wealthy men in the ancient world.
In 64 CE, the Great Fire consumed much of Rome. Nero was suspected of starting it, or at least allowing it to burn unstopped, so that he might rebuild the city in accord with his own designs. The Christians were ultimately blamed for starting the fire and many were rounded up and executed, including St Paul.
Following the death of Burrus, Seneca had increasingly withdrawn from public life. He appears to have been continually on the move, perhaps a precaution against assassination. He focused on writing his Moral Letters, On Providence, and Natural Questions, all dedicated to his friend Lucilius. Despite obvious concerns, Seneca still found himself praising the emperor as ‘a man passionately devoted to truth, as he is to the other virtues’. By this point, such flattery must have seemed remarkably at odds with the increasingly violent and despotic nature of Nero's rule. In any case, according to Tacitus, Nero ‘in his hatred of Seneca, grasped at all methods of suppressing him’. The perfect opportunity was about to arise.
ENDGAME: THE PISONIAN CONSPIRACY
In 65 CE, Epaphroditus, a freedman who served as secretary to the emperor, gave Nero some information: a group led by a popular senator named Gaius Calpurnius Piso was planning to overthrow him and seize power. Nero responded with swift force, carrying out a violent purge of his enemies. Many prominent individuals were implicated in the plot. Some were exiled. Piso was ordered to commit suicide, along with other ringleaders including the praetorian prefect, Faenius Rufus, and the tribune, Subrius Flavus. The same fate would be visited on Seneca and his nephew Lucan. Tacitus reports the following remarkable twist:
It was rumoured that Subrius Flavus and the centurions had decided in private conference, though not without Seneca's knowledge, that, once Nero had been struck down by the agency of Piso, Piso should be disposed of in his turn, and the empire made over to Seneca; who would thus appear to have been chosen for the supreme power by innocent men, as a consequence of his distinguished virtues. (Annals, 15.65)
It's worth pausing for a moment to imagine what history may have been like if such a plot had succeeded in replacing Nero with Seneca, a Stoic man of letters, as the emperor of Rome.
In fact, Nero engaged in a total purge of the Stoic Opposition to his rule. The philosopher, Musonius Rufus, who had returned after the death of Plautus, was sent once again into exile, and several of his Stoic followers were either killed or exiled. Thrasea was finally put on trial for treason. His crimes were mainly to have publicly abstained, in numerous ways, from expressing praise or support for Nero as emperor, including not applauding at his festivals when prompted to do so by Burrus and Seneca. Defiant until the last, Thrasea is reputed to have said at his trial: ‘Nero can kill me but he cannot harm me.’ Nero had him executed. Barea Soranus, another prominent Stoic, and distant relative of the future emperor Marcus Aurelius, was executed for alleged conspiracy against Nero. Thrasea's son-in-law Helvidius Priscus, and his friend, Paconius Agrippinus, were put on trial at the same time and exiled.
As it happens, Epaphroditus was also the owner of a slave named Epictetus, who would become famous. Epictetus was probably just reaching manhood in Roman terms, aged around fifteen, when these events unfolded. Nevertheless, it's likely that he had a ringside seat to observe the drama at Nero's court.