26 - Seneca and Pliny

Summary

A century after Cicero’s death, another Roman senator, also a gifted orator, again demonstrated the power of philosophical writing in Latin, but in a different vein and a different style. Like Cicero Seneca regarded the moralis pars philosophiae, which traditionally included political theory, as the most important branch of philosophy, but unlike Cicero, who used a leisured periodic style suited to the balanced tone of a sceptical Academic, Seneca expounded ethics in a nervous epigrammatic style suited to the passionate tone of a committed Stoic. And whereas Cicero had been inspired by the example of Plato and the Peripatetics to compose a de Re Publica and to embark on a de Legibus, Seneca did not write about the relative merits of different constitutions and showed little confidence in what could be achieved by legislation. Indeed it is often said that Seneca showed no interest in political theory and restricted the moralis pars philosophiae to individual ethics.

Similar points have been made about Hellenistic philosophy itself, including Stoicism, and Seneca’s de Clementia, his most explicit work of political theory, is clearly indebted to lost Hellenistic works on kingship, of which there were many Stoic examples. Moreover, between Cicero’s time and Seneca’s there had been important political developments with the advent of the Principate. Cicero had placed his faith in the Roman Republican constitution which, he believed, had once realized the Greek ideal of the mixed constitution, equitable and durable. The divisive trends he perceived, however, led to protracted civil wars and Caesar’s dictatorship, which shattered the dream of constitutional stability.