1. From the first Aphorism of Hippocrates of Cos, probably Socrates’ contemporary in the later fifth century BCE.
2. Attributed by Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 3.69) to Theophrastus, Aristotle’s associate and successor; possibly a simple misattribution, unless Seneca deliberately invokes Aristotle as a weightier presence here alongside Hippocrates.
3. A nonmetrical rendering of a poet whose identity is much disputed. Cf. 9.2 for Virgil hailed as “the greatest of poets,” and Letters 63.2 for Homer as “the greatest of Greek poets”; but no clear trace of the dictum here is to be found in either.
4. The letter is lost; Seneca is our sole witness to its existence. Its date is unclear, as is its possible relation or relevance to historical reports of Augustus contemplating retirement in the first decade of his rule.
5. Seneca proceeds to give a summary of Augustus’s consolidation of power, from the death of Caesar in 44 BCE to Antony’s defeat at Actium in 31; his pacification of the near empire (the Alpine tribes, 7–6 BCE); and his expansion of the imperial margins. This emphasis on external gains is dramatically contrasted with the threat brought increasingly closer to home in 4.5–6, first by domestic troubles at Rome (through the conspiracies of M. Aemilius Lepidus in 29 BCE, Varro Murena and Fannius Caepio in 23/22, and M. Egnatius Rufus in 19), then by sedition in the imperial household itself through the dangerous liaisons of Julia, Augustus’s daughter, who was banished in 2 BCE.
6. Iullus, Antony’s second son, was punished by death in 2 BCE for adultery with Julia, who is cast here as a second Cleopatra.
7. Catiline’s notorious conspiracy to transform the Roman order by overthrowing aristocratic senatorial power was thwarted by Cicero as consul in 63 BCE. In 61 Cicero testified against P. Clodius Pulcher, on trial for violating the mysteries of the cult of Bona Dea; acquitted by bribery, Clodius took revenge by securing Cicero’s exile in 58. Pompey and Crassus were allies, with Julius Caesar, in the First Triumvirate of 60; Cicero found Pompey in particular “a doubtful friend” when he was faced with exile in 58.
8. Apparently a Senecan distortion: Cicero’s extant writings yield no evidence of any such detestation.
9. After Pompey’s defeat by Caesar at Pharsalus in 48 BCE, Gnaeus, his elder son, was defeated at Munda (Spain) in 45. But the allusion could extend to Sextus, Gnaeus’s brother, who prolonged Pompeian activities in Spain until after Caesar’s death in 44.
10. The words are nowhere found in Cicero’s extensive extant correspondence with T. Pomponius Atticus, his friend from boyhood and relation by marriage.
11. As tribune in 91 BCE Drusus introduced radical social legislation, including land distributions for the poor and the enfranchisement of all Italians, which provoked vigorous opposition. Drusus was assassinated, but in suggesting that he committed suicide, Seneca here develops his most dramatic illustration yet of the need for escape from the pressures of high but dangerous responsibility, and of personal fortunes collapsing on themselves (cf. 4.1).
12. The Stoic notion of “meditation on death” is Platonic in origin (e.g., Phaedo 67e: “true philosophers diligently practice dying”). Seneca repeatedly urges such meditation (e.g., Letters 70.18, 114.27) because of the liberation it brings from fear of death (e.g., Letters 30.18, 36.8) by anticipating the soul’s release from bodily captivity (e.g., Consolation to Marcia 23.2).
13. Virgil Georgics 3.66–7; also quoted at Letters 108.24, 26.
14. Papirius Fabianus, ca. 35 BCE–before 35 CE, was a talented rhetorician who, by ca. 10 BCE, became a follower of Q. Sextius, founder of Rome’s only indigenous philosophical school. Fabianus’s teachings made a deep impression on the young Seneca (cf. Letters 40.12, 58.6, 100 passim) as well as his father (cf. Controuersiae 2 pref. 1–2).
15. A likely allusion to the fate of the Danaids, punished in the underworld for killing their new husbands by having always to draw water with leaking vessels or sieves.
16. Including those Stoics for whom the “now” point is itself ever fleeting and never fully “real” or “here,” being a part of the temporal continuum which consistently moves along with the Stoic universe.
17. A spear was fixed in the ground at public auctions, apparently after the ancient practice of selling war spoils under the victor’s symbol of ownership. The auctioneers overseeing the sale of state property (praecones publici) belonged to the staff of magistrates, including praetors; hence “the praetor’s spear.”
18. Mime was a theatrical medium for risqué and often vulgar realism, which Seneca elsewhere presents as having a popular moralizing component (cf. Letters 8.8–9).
19. For Seneca the pedantry of the grammatici, whose numbers grew at Rome in the first century CE, ignores the real relevance of literature and philology in nurturing mature judgment.
20. Unknown; the elder Pliny has been suggested, but with no strong supporting evidence. Seneca may simply be using a rhetorical device to introduce the point in colloquial fashion.
21. Gaius Duilius; after leading the Roman fleet to victory over the Carthaginians off Mylae (Sicily) in 260 BCE, he celebrated the first naval triumph in 259.
22. In 275 BCE, after Dentatus defeated Pyrrhus, the Molossian king of Epirus; as a hero of the Samnite and other wars, and as an exemplar of humble living, see Consolation to Helvia 10.8.
23. Appius Claudius Caudex, consul in 264 BCE; he crossed to Sicily in the First Punic War to counter the alliance between the Carthaginians and Hieron II of Syracuse.
24. M.’ Valerius Maximus Messalla, consul in 263 BCE, forced Hieron II of Syracuse to come to terms with Rome in that year, and celebrated a triumph for his capture of Sicilian Messana.
25. As praetor urbanus in 93 BCE; leashed lions were apparently first exhibited in games at Rome in 104 BCE.
26. King of Mauretania, who was persuaded by Sulla to betray Jugurtha, his son-in-law, to the Romans; he remained on cordial terms with Sulla after the end of the Jugurthine War.
27. In 55 BCE, when Pompey celebrated the opening of his new stone theater in the Campus Martius. Seneca’s ensuing protest against public slaughter (13.6–7; cf. Letters 7.3–5, 95.33) is already anticipated by Cicero’s report (Letters to His Friends 7.1.3; cf. Pliny Natural History 8.21) that the crowd was moved to compassion for the persecuted elephants.
28. After defeat at Pharsalus in 48 BCE, Pompey sought protection from Ptolemy XIII of Egypt, his cliens and possible ward; but while going ashore at Alexandria he was murdered by Ptolemy’s agent.
29. Magnus = “Great.”
30. As in 13.3 above.
31. L. Caecilius Metellus, consul in 251 BCE, triumphed after defeating Hasdrubal at Panormus (Palermo) in 250; the exact number of elephants is disputed.
32. At Rome the pomerium was the sacral boundary, plowed and then marked by stone pillars, beyond which the city auspices (auspicia urbana) could not be taken. Post-Sullan extensions are in fact attributed to Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Claudius; but Seneca (or his informant) arguably presses the point that Sulla was the last to extend the pomerium for legitimate reasons (Italian territory acquired).
33. Twice according to Livy, in 494 BCE and then in 449.
34. In their legendary contest to become Rome’s founder, Remus was defeated when, taking auspices on the Aventine, he counted six birds, Romulus on the Palatine twelve.
35. If Socrates effectively founded the skeptical Academy (cf. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.11), Arcesilaus (316/15–242/1 BCE) was founder of the second or Middle Academy, and Carneades of Cyrene (214–129 BCE) the third or New Academy.
36. While the Stoic strives to be free of the passions (apathês), Stoic apatheia did not connote complete impassivity (cf. On Anger 1.16.7). But the more extreme Cynic position casts the sage as completely detached, even unemotional.
37. The nomenclator, or guest-announcer, discreetly attends his master.
38. Cf. 7.3 and n. 12 above.
39. During his visit to Alcmena, wife of Amphitryon and mother of Hercules.
40. Xerxes, on his campaign against Greece in 480 BCE; cf. Herodotus 7.45–46.
41. Most obviously, at sea at Salamis in 480 BCE, on land at Thermopylae in 480 and Plataea in 479.
42. Gaius Marius won election to the consulship in 107 BCE. After Jugurtha’s defeat, he was elected again in 104, and four more times down to 100, and then again in 86. The full impact of the allusion here lies not just in Marius’s rapid transition from soldier to statesman but implicitly also in the sheer number of his consulships, offering their own illustration of how “new preoccupations take the place of old” (17.5).
43. According to tradition L. Quintius Cincinnatus was appointed dictator in 458 BCE (after defeating the Aequi in fifteen days, he laid down his office), and again in 439. The legend that he was called from the plow is usually associated with his first dictatorship, but by linking it with the second and overlooking the distance between 458 and 439 Seneca stresses Cincinnatus’s restlessness ex officio.
44. P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus (235–183 BCE), appointed at age twenty-six to the command against Carthage in the Second Punic War. Resentment at his successes may have fueled the accusations of financial dishonesty leveled in the so-called trials of the Scipios of the 180s; embittered, he withdrew to Liternum on the Campanian coast, where he died in 184/83.
45. As legate serving under his brother, Scipio negotiated peace terms after the defeat in 189 BCE of Antiochus III, king of Syria, at Magnesia.
46. Gaius was assassinated on January 22 or 24 in 41 CE. Seneca conflates events by connecting a food crisis in 41 with Gaius’s notorious construction of a bridge of boats from Baiae to Puteoli in 39. Gaius allegedly sought to emulate Xerxes’ bridging of the Hellespont in 480 BCE.
47. I.e., clients rise early to pay their patron the formal morning call (salutatio; cf. 14.4), then escort him in public; the client-patron relationship also dictated political and social allegiances.
48. The consules ordinarii (“normally appointed” consuls, as opposed to suffecti, or “replacement” consuls), after whom the year of their office was dated.
49. According to Tacitus (Annals 1.7.2, 11.35.1), Gaius Turannius was praefectus annonae in 14 CE (hence naturally an example of special relevance to Paulinus) and, still in office, close to Claudius in 48. If, as Seneca has it, he was past ninety before the end of Gaius’s reign in 41, it hardly seems likely that he would still be in office some seven years later. Hence the case for reading S[extus] with the Senecan MS tradition, and for positing another elderly Turannius apart from the impossibly old Gaius—unless Seneca simply exaggerates his age before 41 CE.
50. To avoid attention, the funerals of children were conducted at night by torchlight and taper.