THE EPISTLES OF SENECA THE YOUNGER, AD 63-65
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-AD 65), known as “the younger” to distinguish him from his father with the same names, was a Roman Stoic philosopher who became tutor and principal adviser to the Emperor Nero. One hundred and twenty-four of his epistles survive, all addressed in the last two years of his life, after his fall from power, to his friend the Campanian knight Lucilius, then procurator in Sicily. Presented here are all references in them to Greek love.
The translation is by Richard M. Gummere for the Loeb Classical Library volumes 75 and 77, published by William Heinemann in London in 1917 and 1925, with one amendment explained in a footnote.
LXVII. On Master and Slave
One of many examples given of the foolish inhumanity with which many treat their slaves:
| Another, who serves the wine, must dress like a woman and wrestle with his advancing years; he cannot get away from his boyhood; he is dragged back to it; and though he has already acquired a soldier’s figure, he is kept beardless by having his hair smoothed away or plucked out by the roots, and he must remain awake throughout the night, dividing his time between his master’s drunkenness and his lust; in the chamber he must be a man, at the feast a boy.[1] | [7] Alius vini minister in muliebrem modum ornatus cum aetate luctatur; non potest effugere pueritiam, retrahitur, iamque militari habitu glaber retritis pilis aut penitus evulsis tota nocte pervigilat, quam inter ebrietatem domini ac libidinem dividit et in cubiculo vir, in convivio puer est. |
XCV. On the Usefulness of Basic Principles
Amongst many examples showing society’s foolish preference for pleasure over wisdom:
| How many young fellows besiege the kitchens of their gluttonous friends! I shall not mention the troops of luckless boys who must put up with other shameful treatment after the banquet is over. I shall not mention the troops of catamites, rated according to nation and colour, who must all have the same smooth skin, and the same amount of youthful down on their cheeks, and the same way of dressing their hair, so that no boy with straight locks may get among the curly-heads. | [23] quanta circa nepotum focos iuventus premitur! [24] Transeo puerorum infelicium greges, quos post transacta convivia aliae cubiculi contumeliae exspectant. Transeo agmina exoletorum per nationes coloresque discripta, ut eadem omnibus levitas sit, eadem primae mensura lanuginis, eadem species capillorum, ne quis, cui rectior est coma, crispulis misceatur. |
XCVII. On the Degeneracy of the Age
For this, see the article A Roman Jury Corrupted by Lust for Boys, 61 BC.
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I remember some words of Attalus,[2] which elicited general applause: “Riches long deceived me. I used to be dazed when I caught some gleam of them here and there. I used to think that their hidden influence matched their visible show. But once, at a certain elaborate entertainment, I saw embossed work in silver and gold equalling the wealth of a whole city, and colours and tapestry devised to match objects which surpassed the value of gold or of silver—brought not only from beyond our own borders, but from beyond the borders of our enemies; on one side were slave-boys notable for their training and beauty, on the other were throngs of slave-women, and all the other resources that a prosperous and mighty empire could offer after reviewing its possessions. What else is this, I said to myself, than a stirring-up of man’s cravings, which are in themselves provocative of lust? What is the meaning of all this display of money? Did we gather merely to learn what greed was? For my own part I left the place with less craving than I had when I entered. I came to despise riches, not because of their uselessness, but because of their pettiness.” |
[14] Attalum memini cum magna admiratione omnium haec dicere: “Diu,” inquit, “mihi inposuere divitiae. Stupebam, ubi aliquid ex illis alio atque alio loco fulserat. Existimabam similia esse quae laterent, his, quae ostenderentur. Sed in quodam apparatu vidi totas opes urbis caelatas et auro et argento et iis, quae pretium auri argentique vicerunt, exquisitos colores et vestes ultra non tantum nostrum, sed ultra finem hostium advectas; hinc puerorum perspicuos cultu atque forma greges, hinc feminarum, et alia, quae res suas recognoscens summi imperii fortuna protulerat. [15] Quid hoc est, inquam, aliud nisi inritare cupiditates hominum per se incitatas? Quid sibi vult ista pecuniae pompa? Ad discendam avaritiam convenimus? At mehercules minus cupiditatis istinc effero quam adtuleram. Contempsi divitias, non quia supervacuae, sed quia pusillae sunt.” |
CXXII. On Darkness as a Veil for Wickedness
Amongst many examples given of unnatural behaviour:
| Do not men live contrary to Nature who endeavour to look fresh and boyish at an age unsuitable for such an attempt? What could be more cruel or more wretched? Will he never become a man so that he can continue to be submissive to a man? When his sex ought to have rescued him from indignity, will not even his age rescue him?[3] | [7] Non vivunt contra naturam qui spectant, ut pueritia splendeat tempore alieno? Quid fieri crudelius vel miserius potest? Numquam vir erit, ut diu virum pati possit? [8] Et cum illum contumeliae sexus eripuisse debuerat, non ne aetas quidem eripiet? |
[1] Glabri, delicati, or exoleti were favourite slaves, kept artificially youthful by Romans of the more dissolute class. Cf. Catullus, lxi. 142, and Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae, 12. 5 (a passage closely resembling the description given above by Seneca), where the master prides himself upon the elegant appearance and graceful gestures of these favourites. [Translator’s note]
In keeping with the rest of this epistle, Seneca is attacking the hypocrisy underlying the mistreatment of slaves. The slave here must pretend for public show at the banquet to be still a boy, thus flattering his master’s good taste and implying that the latter is an upright Roman man desiring only the active sexual role with someone young and pretty, whilst in the secrecy of the bedroom it emerges that he is really a pathic with whom the slave will play the man he is there revealed to be.
[2] Attalus was a Stoic philosopher and teacher of Seneca.
[3] Gummere frankly admitted that his rendition of this sentence was “not literally translated” (presumably for prudish reasons), so the translation of Craig A. Williams (Roman Homosexuality, 2nd edition, Oxford: OUP, 2010, p. 271) has been substituted for it. The latter historian observes that:
“Seneca’s argument comes in response to an obviously common assumption that boys, at least, could justifiably be penetrated, but mature men never; his rhetoric also assumes that, justifiably or not, some mature men sought to play the role thought to be more appropriate for boys.” (p. 203)
“Implicit in this [Seneca’s] natural order is that men may find boys attractive; it is only when boys artificially prolong their youthful appearance in order to keep being attractive past the “flower of youth” that they act contra naturam. Here Seneca gives us a passing glimpse at some Roman realities: smooth, boyish bodies were likely to attract men, some of whom may have been more interested in the youthful appearance of their partners than in how old they actually were. More important still is the function of natura in Seneca’s argumentation. It does not serve to draw a line around, let alone condemn, erotic desire or sexual acts among males, but instead to reinforce boundaries in the area of acceptable performances of masculinity.
“One detail is worth considering further: the remark that men’s maleness itself (sexus) ideally ought to rescue them from the “indignity” of being penetrated (contumeliae sexus eripuisse debuerat). The implication of the following clause is that whatever the ideal might be, in the case of young men, social realities mean that the normative, natural attractiveness of youth regularly overrides the principle of masculine impenetrability (which is not itself described as an imperative of nature). In other words, Seneca’s concession that usually only mature males can aspire to impenetrability (ne aetas quidem) corresponds to the widespread understanding that boys were different from men precisely because they could be penetrated without necessarily forfeiting their claim to masculinity. Thus men can usually count on maturity (aetas) as a protection against penetrative advances; it is the fact that some men wilfully abandon this protection that constitutes a violation of natura in Seneca’s terms.” (p. 271)
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