taylormcneil 's review for:

Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, James Romm

4.25

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

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Can you attain power, and not sell your soul in the process? That’s a question that James Romm asks in Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero, and one he never really answers satisfactorily. It’s not his fault, though. He’s telling the life of Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca, and it’s still not clear, even with the hindsight of two millennia, if Seneca truly learned the lessons he preached. Famous as a Stoic philosopher—the Greek school of philosophy that prided itself on a rational approach to life, facing all its vicissitudes with equanimity—Seneca also was Roman senator and power player in the 50s and 60s AD. Called back from exile in Corsica in 49 AD, he was first the young Nero’s tutor. When Claudius died (likely poisoned by Agrippina, his wife and Nero’s mother), Nero became the princeps—essentially the emperor—and Seneca became one of his highest advisors. 

All the while, Seneca penned Stoic tracts, often in the form of public letters to family, friends and acquaintances, that extolled the imperative of the carefully examined life. He seemed to be trying to make sense of the world he was living in, or at least justifying his place in it. 

With Seneca at his side, Nero began his deadly march to absolute power. He first had his half-brother and rival for power Brittanicus poisoned during a family meal, insisting, after Brittanicus keeled over, that everyone continue eating. He had other, more distant potential rivals killed, ordered his scheming mother murdered, and disposed of his devout young wife, so he could marry an alluring and wily widow. All the while, Seneca was in some sense his chief of staff, and must have been privy to the plans, at least in part. And of course, that was only how Nero dealt with his close relatives: at the same time, he was bleeding the Roman Empire dry through profligate spending, building memorials to himself and lavishly paying his Praetorian Guard to keep them loyal. 

Seneca was soon enough on the outs thanks to more palace intrigue—politics as a blood sport. He longed to get away, but could not. He had amassed a fortune—properties as far and wide as Britain, where he was a notorious moneylender—all thanks to his powerful position close to Nero, but it did him no good. Nero would not let him retire, even though he was in his 60s by then; it would make Nero lose face. Seneca was prolific in this period, writing Stoic tracts and plays that highlighted the struggles between human rationality and deluded evil. But he never wrote directly (or indirectly) about Nero, except in praise; to do otherwise was to court a death sentence. 

Not just a megalomaniac, Nero, of course, had his artistic side: he thought himself a poet, musician, and singer, not to mention chariot racer. When Rome burned in a devastating fire in 64 AD, Nero wouldn’t have been playing a fiddle, as the legend has it: he was strictly a lyre man. Seneca and others found it degrading for the princeps to perform in public, but Nero did, to frightened and rapturous audiences as far away as Greece. 

By 65 AD, Seneca was next in line, falling victim to intrigues in Nero’s court. He was ordered to commit suicide—as opposed to being killed outright: that way in theory at least half his vast estate could go to his relatives. He had known it would come to this for many years, and had written about the Stoic approach to one’s end: better to do it oneself, as opposed to having someone do it to you. Having seen so many people die in the quest for power, he acceded, too, bleeding to death from his own wounds. Nero’s disastrous rule came to an end shortly after, in 68 AD, hunted down as he had hunted others. 

Romm recounts the history with flair and generous brevity—unlike many writers, he doesn’t burden his readers with extraneous facts and asides. Throughout, it’s hard not to think of Seneca’s dilemma as it recurs, with less bloodshed, in our own times. How many sycophants linger around those in power, from Capitol Hill to every office, justifying their ways by thinking themselves righteous or somehow above the fray? Seneca thought deeply about what were the right things to do in life, but he just couldn’t quite resist the lure of power and lucre. His unintended lesson—that all that power and wealth could not save him—was one he never learned until, perhaps, the end.