The impulse of my subject, however, has taken me too far, and I perceive that I have begun my sowing too late to entertain any hopes of a good crop. So farewell forever.
Written in the land of the living, in Cisalpine Gaul, between the left bank of the greedy Enza and the right bank of the bridge-shattering Parma, on the Kalends of Sextilis (August 1) in the year from the birth of Him whom I am uncertain whether thou didst know or not, the thirteen hundred and forty-eighth.
Notes on Fam., XXIV, 5, to Seneca
24. A reference to the opening lines of the preceding letter, Fam., XXIV, 4.
25. Seneca, Ep., 40, 11: “Cicero quoque noster, a quo Romana eloquentia exsiluit, gradarius fuit;” (cf. Seneca, Contr., i, praef. 6). Petrarch refers to that passage in his second letter to Cicero, Fam. XXIV, 4, beginning with the words, “O Romani eloquii summe parens” (Vol. III, ).
26. The only passages in which Plutarch mentions Seneca are “De cohibenda ira,” Moralia, Vol. III, , ll. 16-23, and “Galba,” chap. XX, init. In neither of these is there any praise of the philosopher. Moreover, it is useless to search through the works of Plutarch, because Petrarch was acquainted with not a single one of his works. Hence the statement made in the Lemaire edition, Vol. CIV, p. xlviii, that “Petrarch had access to several ancient works which are absolutely lost to us,” cannot apply in this case at least. Petrarch, however, was acquainted with the “Institutio Traiani” (a Latin fabrication), the authenticity of which is today disputed. P. de Nolhac has pointed this out (II, ), and shows that Petrarch actually refers to this work by name in the Remedium, I, 81. And even closer acquaintance is revealed in Fam., XXIV, 7, where Petrarch writes to Quintilian that the indiscretions of his wards (Domitian’s grandnephews) were made to detract from his fair name (Vol. III, ). These words are quoted verbatim from the “Institutio Traiani” (Moralia, Vol. VII, ); and in the same passage Plutarch makes a precisely similar reference to Seneca and to Socrates. The grouping of these three names is somewhat contradictory to the statement which Petrarch makes in the present letter.
27. Seneca, Octavia, 441-46 (tr. by E. I. Harris):
Seneca. The garnered vices of so many years
Abound in us, we live in a base age
When crime is regnant, when wild lawlessness
Reigns and imperious passion owns the sway
Of shameless lust; the victress luxury
Plundered long since the riches of the world
That she might in a moment squander them.
28. Dante, Inf., III, 94-96 (tr. by Longfellow):
And unto him the Guide: “Vex thee not Charon;
It is so willed there where is power to do
That which is willed; and farther question not.”
It borders on the sacrilegious, however, to make this reference, when we consider the One meant in the verses of Dante.
29. Suet., Nero, 7. This passage is the source also of Rer. mem., IV, 4, De somniis, in which () Petrarch gives the story of this dream at greater length.
Annaeus Seneca (a Roman senator at the time) was chosen by Emperor Claudius as tutor for the young Nero, who then gave hopeful signs of a good and kindly nature. The very next night Seneca is said to have dreamt that he had as his pupil C. Caligula, whose most horrible cruelty had long since met with a fitting end. Seneca was awakened, and had good cause for wondering greatly. But not much later the humor of Nero changed, or, to put it more correctly, it revealed itself, and his heart became entirely devoid of feelings of gentleness. All wonder was dispelled. Nero was a second Caligula, so much like him had he become. Nay! Caligula himself seemed somehow to have returned from the regions of the dead. And now I shall return to dreams had by emperors.
30. Seneca, Ep., 107, 11: “Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.” Cf. also Dial., i, De Providentia, 5, 7: “Fata nos ducunt.” In Ep., 107, 10, Seneca distinctly says that he has translated the verses from the Greek of Cleanthes. These four verses, with their translation, can be found in Ramage, Familiar Quotations from Latin Authors, .
31. In Rer. mem., III, 3, , quoted in full in note 33 below.
32. Suet., Nero, 52. In this instance, as in all references to Suetonius in this letter, Petrarch follows his original very closely; indeed, quotes him almost verbatim (cf. Frac., Vol. III, ).
33. Seneca, Octavia, 388-407 (tr. by E. I. Harris):
Seneca. I was content, why hast thou flattered me,
O potent Fortune, with thy treacherous smiles?
Why hast thou carried me to such a height,
That lifted to the palace I might fall
The farther, look upon the greater crimes?
Ah, happier was I when I dwelt afar
From envy’s stings, among the rugged cliffs
Of Corsica, where my free spirit knew
Leisure for study. Ah, how sweet it was
To look upon the sky, th’ alternate change
Of day and night, the circuit of the earth,
The moon, the wandering stars that circle her,
And the far-shining glory of the sky,
Which when it has grown old shall fall again
Into the night of chaos, — that last day
Has come, which ‘neath the ruin of the skies
Shall bury this vile race. A brighter sun,
Newborn, shall bring to life another race,
Like that the young world knew, when Saturn ruled
In the high heavens.
As a comment on this passage, we may repeat, with Dante (Inf., V, 121-23, tr. by Longfellow):
There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.
At the time of his exile in Corsica, however, Seneca did not hold quite the same opinion of his life on that island, and wrote the Consolatio ad Polybium, full of flattery of Emperor Claudius, mainly to effect his recall.
Petrarch dwells upon the fate of Seneca also in Rer. mem., III, 3, :
In a certain tragedy (the Octavia) Annaeus Seneca deplores in strong and magnificent lines his return from exile in the island of Corsica, where he had been living in sweet leisure, in most welcome peace of mind, and free to pursue what studies he pleased. He shuddered at the daily increasing ungodliness of Nero, at the envy of the courtiers which enveloped everything, and often sought to escape. But fearing that his riches would prove his undoing and would overwhelm him like the waves of the sea, he surrendered them all. A wise precaution, truly. For it is the part of a wise sailor to hurl his treasures into the tempestuous sea, that he may escape by swimming, even though entirely destitute. And similarly expedient is it for him who fears death at the hands of the enemy to sacrifice calmly the limb by which he is fettered, in order that, though maimed, he may effect his escape. No one, indeed, reproves Seneca for remaining against his will in that hotbed of crimes. He left no stone unturned to escape the crisis which he foresaw. But an unswerving destiny blocked this man too, and at the very moment when success seemed about to crown his efforts. Fate did not permit him to pass, until that inhuman and perjured emperor, who had often sworn to him that he would die sooner than do him an injury, shortened the closing years of his aged teacher, not with an untimely, but with an irreverent and an undeserved death.
34. Seneca, Octavia, 89-102 (tr. by E. I. Harris):
Octavia.Ah, sooner could I tame
The savage lion or the tiger fierce,
Than that wild tyrant’s cruel heart, he hates
Those sprung of noble blood, he scorns alike
The gods and men. He knows not how to wield
The fortune his illustrious father gave
By means of basest crime. And though he blush,
Ungrateful, from his cursed mother’s hands
To take the empire, though he has repaid
The gift with death, yet shall the woman bear
Her title ever, even after death.
Octavia, 240-56:
Octavia. With the fierce leader’s breath the ver
y air
Is heavy. Slaughter new the star forebodes
To all the nations that this vile king rules.
Typhoeus whom the parent earth brought forth,
Angered by Jupiter, was not so fierce;
This pest is worse, the foe of gods and men;
He from their temples drives th’ immortal gods,
The citizens he exiles from their land,
He took his brother’s life, his mother’s blood
He drank, he sees the light, enjoys his life,
Still draws his poisonous breath! Ah, why so oft,
Mighty creator, throwest thou in vain
Thy dart from royal hand that knows not fear?
Why sparest thou to slay so foul an one?
Would that Domitian’s son, the tyrant harsh,
Who with his loathsome yoke weighs down the earth,
Who stains the name Augustus with his crimes,
The bastard Nero, might at last endure
The penalty of all his evil deeds.
Octavia, 630-43:
Agrippina. Ah, spare, revenge is thine! I do not ask
For long; th’ avenging goddess has prepared
Death worthy of the tyrant, coward flight,
Lashes, and penalties that shall surpass
The thirst of Tantalus, the heavy toil
Of Sisyphus, the bird of Tityus,
The flying wheel that tears Ixion’s limbs.
What though he build his costly palaces
Of marble, overlays them with pure gold?
Though cohorts watch the armored chieftain’s gates,
Though the world be impoverished to send
Its wealth to him, though suppliant Parthians kneel
And kiss his cruel hand, though kingdoms give
Their riches, yet the day shall surely come
When for his crimes he will be called to give
His guilty soul; when, banished and forlorn,
In need of all things, he shall give his foes
His life-blood.
35. Ovid, Tristia, ii, 381: “Omne genus scripti gravitate tragoedia vincit.”
36. The Octavia. See below, n. 38.
37. Martial, i, 61, 7 and 8 (Fried.):
Duosque Senecas, unicumque Lucanum
Facunda loquitur Corduba.
And yet these lines never suggested to Petrarch the distinction between Seneca the rhetorician and Seneca the philosopher.
38. Teuffel, par. 290: “The praetexta entitled Octavia is certainly not by Seneca.” With this compare par. 290, n. 7, which gives a discussion of the above, and the bibliography. Teuffel says that l. 630 of the Octavia describes the death of Nero, and consequently could not have been written by Seneca, who died some years earlier. It is these lines to which Petrarch refers when he says: “In this play there is a passage that gives rise to the suspicion of authorship.”
39. The De clementia, having been written in 55-56 A.D., and dedicated to Nero, naturally contains numerous passages in praise of that emperor. We shall choose a few from the first book. De clementia, i, 1, 5-8:
This, O Caesar, you can boldly assert; that you have most diligently cherished everything entrusted to your faithful care, and that no harm has been plotted against the State by you either through open violence or through stealth. You have aspired to that rarest of praise, hitherto granted to none of our emperors — the praise of being thoroughly upright. You have not labored in vain. Your matchless virtues have not found ungrateful and spiteful appraisers. We render thee thanks. No one person has ever been as dear to a single man as you are to the entire Roman people. . . . But you have shouldered a heavy burden; you have assumed a great responsibility. No one now speaks of the deified Augustus, nor of the early years of Emperor Tiberius; no one seeks an exemplar beyond you, for it is you they wish to imitate. Your rule has been subjected to the test of the crucible — a test which it would have been difficult to resist, had your goodness been feigned for the moment, instead of its being (as it is) an innate quality of yours. . . . The Roman people ran a great risk, uncertain whither your noble disposition would end. But the prayers of the people have been answered ere this. There is no danger, unless you should suddenly become forgetful of your own self. . . . All your citizens today are compelled to make this confession — that they are happy; and this second confession — that nothing can be added to their complete happiness except the assurance that it may endure forever. Many causes urge them to this acknowledgment (the very last which man ever condescends to make) — their deep security, their prosperity, and their faith that the laws will be administered with absolute justice. There flits before our eyes a contented State, to whose complete freedom nothing is lacking except the liberty of its dying.
It would be beyond our purpose to quote more of Seneca. It will suffice to give references to an earlier and to a later work. For the former consult the Ludus (written in 54 A. D.), i, 1; iv, 1; xii, 2. For the latter, Naturales quaestiones (finished before 64 A. D.), vi, 8, 3; vii, 17, 2; 21, 3.
40. Suet., Nero, 10.
41. Suet., op. cit., 19, with which cf. Petrarch, Vol. III, .
42. Ibid., 22 (cf. Petrarch, loc. cit.).
43. Ibid., 12 (cf. Petrarch, loc. cit.).
44. Ibid., 22 (cf. Petrarch, loc. cit.).
45. It may, perhaps, prove interesting to the reader to see by what epithets Nero is referred to in the Octavia. From a cursory reading of the tragedy we glean the following: “vir crudelis” (Nutrix, 49); “capax scelerum” (Nutrix, 158); “immitis” (Nutrix, 182); “impius” (Chorus, 374); “dirus” (Chorus, 674); “coniunx scelestus” (Octavia, 230); “saevus” (Octavia, 667); “princeps nefandus” (Octavia, 232); “cruentus” (Chorus, 681); “ferus” (Chorus, 703); “dux saevus” (Octavia, 240); “impius” (Octavia, 242); “hostis deum hominumque” (Octavia, 245); “monstrum” (Chorus, 383); “natus crudelis” (Agrippina, 615); “nefandus” (Agrippina, 655); “saevus” (Chorus, 984); “tyrannus” (Octavia, 34, 115, 919); “ferus” (Agrippina, 621b, Octavia, 986).
46. Suet., Nero, 12.
47. Seneca, De clementia, i, 11, 1-3:
While speaking of your clemency, no one will dare, in the same breath, to mention the name of the deified Augustus. . . . He displayed moderation and kindness, I grant you; but it was only after the sea of Actium had been dyed with Roman blood, after his own and his enemy’s fleets had been destroyed off the coast of Sicily, after the slaughter and proscriptions at Perugia. As for me, I do not call exhausted cruelty mercy. This, O Caesar, this which you exhibit is true mercy — which conveys no idea of repentance for previous barbarity, which is immaculate, unstained by the blood of fellow-citizens. . . . You, O Caesar, have kept the State free from bloodshed, and your greatest boast is that throughout the length and breadth of your empire you have shed not a single drop of man’s blood, which is all the more remarkable and amazing because no one has been intrusted with a sword at an earlier age than you.
In the Octavia, however, during a discussion between Seneca and Nero, in which the philosopher endeavors to destroy his pupil’s belief in an emperor’s right to rule by the sword, the author says of a ruler that to
Give the world rest, his generation peace,
This is the height of virtue, by this path
May heaven be attained; this is the way
The first Augustus, father of the land,
Gained ‘mid the stars a place and as a god
Is worshiped now in temples (Oct., 487-90).
And Nero, who could learn at least those sayings of his tutor that suited his fancy and served his purpose, thereupon replies in terms identical with those used by Seneca in De clementia, i, 11, 1-3. Granted that the Octavia was written by Seneca, this discussion gives a very human touch to the relationship between the subject and his sovereign.
48. Suet., Nero, 16 (cf. Petrarch, loc. cit.).
49. It is very probable that Petrarch received the first suggestion of the friendship between the philosopher
and the apostle from the statement of St. Jerome, De viris ill., 12 (Seneca [Teubner], III, ):
Lucius Annaeus Seneca of Cordova, disciple of Sotion the Stoic and uncle of the poet Lucan, was a man of the most temperate life. I should not place him in the catalogue of saints, were it not for those letters, which are read by so many, of Paul to Seneca and of Seneca to Paul. In these Seneca, though the tutor of Nero and the most powerful man of his age, says that he wished he held the same position among his fellow-men that Paul held among the Christians. He was killed by Nero two years before Peter and Paul received the crown of martyrs.
The correspondence referred to in the above is mentioned also by St. Augustine, Ep., 153, 14 (Migne, Vol. XXXIII, col. 659). It consists of fourteen letters, which are given in the Teubner edition of Seneca, Vol. III, p-81. The wish said to have been expressed by Seneca is to be found in Ep., xi, . The letter, however, which Petrarch seems to have had in mind — the one describing the persecution of the Christians in Rome — is Ep., xii (op. cit., ), which I give in full, that Petrarch’s state of mind may be the better appreciated.
Greetings, Paul most dear. Do you suppose that I am not saddened and afflicted by the fact that torture is so repeatedly inflicted upon the innocent believers of your faith? that the entire populace judges your sect so unfeeling and so perpetually under trial as to lay at your doors whatever wrong is done within the city? Let us bear it with equanimity, and let us persevere in the station which fortune has allotted, until happiness everlasting put an end to our suffering. Former ages were inflicted with Macedon, son of Philip, with Dareius and Dionysius. Our age, too, has had to endure a Caligula, who permitted himself the indulgence of every caprice. It is perfectly clear why the city of Rome has so often suffered the ravages of conflagration. But if humble men dared affirm the immediate cause, if it were permitted to speak with impunity in this abode of darkness, all men would indeed see all things. It is customary to burn at the stake both Christians and Jews on the charge of having plotted the burning of the city. As for that wretch, whoever he is, who derives pleasure from the butchering of men and who thus hypocritically veils his real intentions — that wretch awaits his hour. Even as all the best men are now offering their lives for the many, so will he some day be destroyed by fire in expiation of all these lives. One hundred and thirty-two mansions and four blocks of houses burned for six days, and on the seventh the flames were conquered. I trust, brother, that you are in good health. Written on the fifth day before the Kalends of April, in the consulship of Frugus and Bassus.
Collected Poetical Works of Francesco Petrarch Page 56