1. Cremutius Cordus was a historian who wrote under Augustus and Tiberius. His history of the civil wars (which does not survive) celebrated the republican side, and was the basis for the charges that Seneca refers to.
2. Lucius Aelius Seianus was prefect of the praetorian guard under Tiberius, and became the most powerful man in Rome from 26 CE, when Tiberius retired to Capri, until his fall from power and execution in 31.
3. Some translate this as “you openly routed [i.e., defeated] your tears,” but this is a strained translation. However, the sequence of ideas is puzzling.
4. After the accession of Caligula in 37.
5. The Romans regarded a person’s writings as giving him immortality.
6. Octavia, Augustus’s sister, was first married to C. Claudius Marcellus; upon his death in 40 BCE she was soon married to Mark Antony. The Marcellus Seneca talks about was the child of her first marriage. Livia, born 58 BCE, first married Ti. Claudius Nero, and they had two sons: the future emperor Tiberius, and Drusus, who died in 9 BCE. In 39 BCE she divorced, and married Octavian, the future Augustus. She outlived him and died in 29 CE.
7. M. Claudius Marcellus, born in 42 BCE, married Augustus’s daughter Julia in 25 BCE (so Augustus was both his uncle and his father-in-law). He died in 23 BCE.
8. Octavia died in 11 BCE.
9. In extant poetry, Marcellus is praised in Virgil Aeneid 6.861–83; Propertius 3.18.
10. Octavia had four daughters.
11. Drusus led the Roman campaigns in Germany from 12 BCE until his death in 9 BCE.
12. He was buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus.
13. Reading mala sua augere.
14. Seneca alludes to the strict Stoic view that any kind of grieving is wrong.
15. After Augustus’s death in 14 CE, under his will, Livia was adopted into his family with the names Julia Augusta.
16. The philosopher Areus (or Arius) Didymus, originally from Alexandria, was closely associated with Augustus.
17. His other support was Tiberius, mentioned below.
18. Livia acquired the name Julia only after Augustus’s death, so here in Areus’s speech it is anachronistic. Some manuscripts read “Livia,” but it is unnecessary to follow them, for such anachronisms are not unknown in Seneca.
19. Seneca alludes to the Stoic doctrine of propatheiai: even the wise man will at first be shaken by a sudden misfortune, but in his case reason will swiftly take control and prevent fear or grief or other damaging emotions from developing. See also 7.1.
20. Livia’s surviving son was Tiberius; Drusus had two sons, Germanicus and Claudius (who became emperor, 41–54 CE), and a daughter, Livia.
21. The Stoics said that bereavement produced a physical contraction in the mind or soul, a propatheia (see 5.6).
22. Roman boys started to wear the adult toga around the age of sixteen.
23. The “you” of the rest of this chapter is a generalized masculine “you,” not Marcia specifically.
24. A line of the mime-writer Publilius Syrus (C34 Meyer). (Roman mime was a popular form of comedy that, unlike modern mime, used dialogue.)
25. The masculine suggests that Seneca is here thinking of god as the giver, though elsewhere in this section it is (feminine) fortune.
26. Seneca here switches to second-person plurals.
27. Seneca returns to the second-person singular.
28. Seneca again addresses Marcia individually.
29. Reading uidelicet <pertinet>.
30. Hercules and Achilles were familiar examples of offspring of the gods who were mortal.
31. L. Cornelius Sulla Felix (ca. 138–78 BCE), one of the most prominent military and political figures of the early first century BCE; his ruthlessness and cruelty in the civil wars of the eighties was long remembered. Felicissimo, “most fortunate,” is a play on Sulla’s cognomen Felix, “fortunate,” to which Seneca alludes in what follows.
32. In 88 Sulla was appointed commander in the war against Mithradates but then deprived of the command, whereupon he marched on Rome with his army to reclaim it. Later, in 79, he voluntarily laid down his powers and returned to private life.
33. This refers to the behavior of Xenophon, Greek soldier and writer (ca. 430–354 BCE), upon hearing of the death of his son Gryllos in 362.
34. The temple of Jupiter on the Capitol was dedicated in the late sixth century BCE. Other ancient sources say that Pulvillus was consul at the time, not pontifex. Holding the doorpost was an essential part of the dedication ritual.
35. L. Aemilius Paulus defeated Perses, king of Macedonia, at the battle of Pydna in 168 BCE, and celebrated the triumph in the following year. The sons given in adoption were sons of an earlier marriage, and the adoptions probably occurred some years earlier. Seneca refers to the one who became P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, the conqueror of Carthage.
36. The young sons of a triumphing general regularly rode with him in his chariot.
37. Marcus (Seneca’s “Lucius” is a mistake) Calpurnius Bibulus and Gaius Julius Caesar were the consuls of 59 BCE. In an attempt to block Caesar’s legislation, Bibulus refused to leave his home, declaring that he was watching for omens.
38. The sons were killed in 50, while Bibulus was proconsul of Syria. Other sources say they were killed by Roman soldiers stationed in Egypt.
39. Britain was regarded as lying across the ocean, and attempting to cross the ocean was commonly represented as a sign of reckless ambition. (The Greeks and Romans believed that the landmass of Europe, Asia, and Africa was encircled by the ocean.)
40. Caesar’s daughter Julia died in 54 BCE. Her marriage to Pompey in 59 had strengthened the alliance between Caesar and Pompey, which was widely thought to have been weakened by her death.
41. Pompey’s cognomen was Magnus, “Great.”
42. The Julii traced their ancestry to Venus; Julius Caesar and Augustus had already been deified after death; and, Seneca implies, subsequent members of the family could be deified in the future.
43. Seneca’s terse statements gloss over details: Augustus had only one child, his daughter Julia, who was sent into exile but outlived him; however, “children” might include his son-in-law Marcellus (see 2.3); two grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, both predeceased him, but other grandsons survived (although Augustus did not think they deserved to succeed him); the adoption referred to is that of Tiberius (although Augustus had also adopted Gaius and Lucius as sons).
44. Augustus was deified after his death, and during his lifetime was already called a god by poets.
45. Tiberius’s son Drusus died in 23 CE, his adopted son Germanicus in 19.
46. Tiberius was pontifex maximus, so he had to avoid the pollution of seeing a corpse.
47. In Latin the verb perdere can mean “destroying” as well as “losing”; on Sejanus see 1.2.
48. The legend was that Lucretia was forced to commit adultery by a son of Tarquin, the last king of Rome. After revealing what had happened to her husband and father, she killed herself. Her death prompted Brutus to lead the revolt that expelled the king and established the republic in 509 BCE.
49. The legend was that in the early years of the republic, Cloelia was given as a hostage to Lars Porsenna, king of Clusium, but she managed to escape across the river Tiber.
50. This Cornelia was the daughter of Scipio Africanus (see 13.3).
51. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, whose programs of reform were controversial both during their lifetimes and subsequently, died violent deaths. Their corpses were thrown into the Tiber in 133 and 121 BCE respectively.
52. Cornelia’s husband was M. Livius Drusus, tribune in 122 BCE; her son of the same name was murdered while tribune in 91 (or, according to another, less reliable account, he committed suicide).
53. Again Seneca addresses a generalized masculine “you.”
54. Virgil Aeneid 3.418. Hesperia is a poetic name for Italy.
55. The Homeric sea monster Charybdis was identified with a whirlpool between Italy and Sicily.
56. The river Alpheus was said to disappear underground in mainland Greece, flow beneath the sea, and reemerge as the freshwater spring of Arethusa in Syracuse. “Tainted” water is here salt water.
57. The Athenian expedition against Sicily in 415–413 BCE ended in disaster, and many Athenians were taken prisoner.
58. Dionysius II was tyrant of Syracuse in 367–357 BCE. Then he was ousted, and following an unsuccessful attempt at a comeback (346–344), he retired to Corinth. Plato twice visited his court.
59. This speech, and Seneca’s speech in chapter 18, address a generalized male audience.
60. The Stoics regarded the whole world as a city-state of which all human beings are citizens.
61. Seneca’s point is that the length of day and night varies constantly with the season of the year. Sometimes the day is longer than the night, sometimes vice versa, but the length of summer and winter is always the same.
62. The “looming” moon echoes Horace Odes 1.4.5.
63. The five planets then known were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The phrase “straining against the motion of the hurtling world” refers to their apparent gradual eastward movement through the zodiac as it and the other fixed stars move westward.
64. “others fearfully . . . marshes”: the Latin text is incurably corrupt; I have translated Madvig’s tentative suggestion aliae ripis lacuum paludibusque pauidae circumfunduntur.
65. The word translated as “blazing” is corrupt, but the reference to volcanic eruptions is clear.
66. Referring to the Mediterranean, the Caspian, and the Red Seas, which were regarded as breaking up a single landmass.
67. It was believed that some whales had poor eyesight and were guided by smaller fish.
68. Seneca alludes to the way in which wealthy childless people attracted the attentions of legacy hunters.
69. Lēthē in Greek.
70. Compare Lucretius’s denunciation of the traditional underworld in 3.978–1023, and Seneca Letter 24.18.
71. Reading incertiora reponenti.
72. The Latin of this clause is incurably corrupt, but the general sense is clear.
73. I.e., he, the commander, would rather have been killed in battle.
74. After his army was defeated at Pharsalus, Pompey fled to Egypt, but was killed by a local commander as he landed (48 BCE).
75. Cicero died in the proscriptions in 43 BCE. The conspiracy of Catiline was in 63, his daughter’s death in 45.
76. The younger Cato committed suicide in 46 BCE rather than seek pardon from Caesar after the defeat of Pompey’s forces. He had supervised the annexation of Cyprus in 58.
77. Seneca, suddenly, is once more talking about Marcia’s son.
78. Reading quas <scimus> incredibili celeritate conuolui.
79. An allusion to the Stoic doctrine of repeated, identical world cycles.
80. Virgil Aeneid 10.472.
81. P. Rutilius Rufus, consul of 105 BCE, was prosecuted for extortion and exiled in 92, though generally acknowledged to be innocent; Socrates was condemned by an Athenian court in 399, and refused to go into exile to avoid execution; on Cato see 20.3.
82. Satrius Secundus was one of Cremutius Cordus’s prosecutors.
83. “Caesar” is here Tiberius.
84. Reading consarcinatur.
85. A few hopelessly corrupt words are left untranslated. The “dogs” are Sejanus’s henchmen.
86. Phaedo 64a, 67d.
87. Papirius Fabianus was a declaimer and philosopher of the early imperial period who deeply influenced Seneca.
88. Transposing ante to before dixit.
89. Reading aeternarum rerum <potiti> per libera et uasta spatia dimissi <sunt>.
90. The Syrtes were dangerous areas of shallow sea off the coast of North Africa.
91. Reading omnia plano adeunt.
92. We know nothing more about Marcia’s grandfather.