Seneca’s Nausea: “Existential” Experiences and Julio-ClaudianLiterature

Kurt Lampe

Helios, Volume 35, Number 1, Spring 2008, pp. 67-87 (Article)

Published by Texas Tech University PressDOI: 10.1353/hel.0.0002

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HELIOS, vol. 35 no. 1, 2008 © Texas Tech University Press

Seneca’s Nausea: “Existential” Experiencesand Julio-Claudian Literature

KURT LAMPE

A proper commentary, however, never understands the text better thanits author understood it, though it certainly understands it differently.Only this difference in understanding must be such that it encountersthe same thing which the explicated text is meditating.

—Martin Heidegger, “Nietzsche’s Word: God Is Dead”

I

Persius’s third satire begins with the question, “Oh, this still?” (nempe haecadsidue, 3.1), and proceeds to show us a poet reluctant to wake up, thenyelling at his slave and complaining about the recalcitrance of his ink andreed, much like (the narrator observes) a “tender dove” or “the royalbrats,” refusing to let himself be lullabied away from his crankiness (lal-lare recusas, 3.18). Horace, in his Epistles, dictates a notice to Celsus that“I am living neither rightly nor pleasantly . . . because I am less healthy inmind than in the rest of my body, and don’t want to hear or learn any-thing to relieve my illness” (1.8.1–8). After giving further details aboutthis lethargy (veternus), but saying nothing about how it could be cured,he simply moves on to asking Celsus how he is. Seneca, finally, ends histwenty-fourth letter to Lucilius with the warning that “at the impulsionof philosophy itself” (ipsa inpellente philosophia) we may despairingly ask,“How much longer [must we endure] the same things?” (Quo usqueeadem?). Speaking in the persona of such a questioner, “I do nothingnew,” he perorates, “I see nothing new. Eventually there’s a nausea evenof this [fit aliquando et huius rei nausea]” (24.26).We are tempted to ask ourselves, What is wrong with these people?1

In Persius’s satire, at least, an answer is given (though the exposition isfar from pellucid). As Cynthia Dessen (1968, 53–7), following a long tra-dition, has outlined, the poem offers a Stoic criticism of the protagonistas being of “unhealthy” mind, but either unaware of his “illness” or

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unwilling to seek a cure.2 For Stoics, the cure for this ill health is thewisdom gained through philosophy (see Persius 3.66–72). Of course,modern theorists have taught us that we can enter this text from infi-nitely many angles: if a reader finds here a meditation on the use andabuse of alcohol, or asserts that the angry Stoic really just needs to beloved, we shall not invalidate those readings. However, if, by asking“What is wrong?,” we choose to imply that there is some experience beingexpressed in the text (at least for some group of presumed, even if notexplicitly posited, likeminded readers), then we may want to restrict this“polysemy.” Since we are aiming at an initial consensus, we might beginfrom the broadly—though certainly not universally—accepted method-ology of investigating, against the appropriate historical and genericbackgrounds, the conceptual and narrative frameworks in which thatexperience is situated. Thus, we would acknowledge the structure out-lined by Dessen, for example, before beginning to speak of “depressivemelancholia, of an essentially existentialist sort” (Toohey 2004, 54) inPersius’s satire.Now that “existentialism” has made its way into this paper, perhaps I

had better add that a certain consensus will be helpful here as well.Although the general interest of the topic may be well indicated byMonty Python’s The Meaning of Life, for ease of handling I shall turn tosomewhat less humorous sources. In this article, when speaking of “exis-tentialist” theories or “existential” ennui (nausea, angst, boredom, etc.), Idenote those representations that make ennui an inescapable concomi-tant of the human condition. This need not entail that our actionscannot mitigate the problem. I have in mind, for example, the theoriesput forward by Sartre and Camus,3 for whom differing susceptibilities to“nausea” or the feeling of “absurdity” are certainly conceivable (see fur-ther below). If we weigh the narrative framework of Persius’s third satireagainst these stipulations, then we should not use the term “existen-tial(ist)” to express what his protagonist experiences: the narrativeappears to describe a problem and a solution, we would say, not aproblem without a solution.Horace and Seneca, however, seem neither to provide their readers

with a critical framework for the malaise they express nor to foresee adefinite cure. Is this more promising soil for existentialist seeds? I think itis, but salutary caution might be elicited by the remarks of GiorgioPasquali, a Horatian scholar of tremendous erudition, but one whoworked within the assumptions and associations of the early twentiethcentury. Speaking of Odes 2.16.17–20,4 with which he associates many of

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the passages that appear in this article, Pasquali (1964, 661) remarks,“Questa specie di spleen, propria di civiltà sature e già un po’ stanche,compare, per quanto so, la prima volta nella Roma nell’ultimo secolodella Repubblica.” Pondering a collection of passages in Lucretius,Horace, and Seneca, Pasquali—who, originally writing in 1920, could notyet think in terms of French existentialism—has recourse to the notion ofdecadence and decline. To this paradigm he links the image of “spleen,”thinking perhaps of the second section (“Spleen et idéal”) of Baudelaire’sFleurs du mal (published 1861) and the hookah-smoking personificationof l’Ennui in the dedicatory “Au lecteur.”5 This allegorical character cap-tures the decadent Zeitgeist to which Pasquali refers, but modern scholarsare both wary of the sources of this paradigm (it seems dangerously like anaive acceptance of the Romans’ own self-idealizing6) and unconvincedof its explanatory power. When Ovid’s Medea says, “I see what’s betterand approve of it, but I pursue what’s worse” (Met. 7.20–1), moderninterpreters readily impose critical filters in their readings: not only do weremark that Ovid must imagineMedea’s experience, but we add that con-ventions about love and gender help constitute this imagining. AlthoughHorace’s similar expression in Epistles 1.8 (“I pursue what has harmedme, and avoid what I think will help”) issues from a less markedly fic-tional persona, still we should keep in mind the structuring effects ofsocietal, philosophical, and literary expectations.One relevant framework in ancient thought is the theorization of the

“passions” or negative emotions, the subject of numerous recent studies.7

While ancient philosophers differed on the degree to which even thewisest among us can eliminate passions, all agreed that our beliefs play asubstantial role in these phenomena. Those following Aristotle and Platoallowed for an irrational part of the soul, which they called, inter alia, the“passionate” (pathêtikon) aspect.8 A well-ordered soul is one in which thispassionate aspect is habituated to obey the rational element. For mostStoics, by contrast, the soul is entirely rational, and the causes of emo-tion are wholly cognitive: harmful beliefs, especially when they becomefixed, are like “illnesses” causing emotional symptoms.9 It is this Stoictheory that underlies Persius’s third satire, though the exhaustive Stoiccatalogues of passions do not seem to comprehend anything like what wecall “ennui.”10 Horace was probably also familiar with Stoic theory, andmay have intended some reference to it in his poem, although Epistles 1.8is significantly more elusive than Persius’s long and firmly Stoic narra-tive.11

Horace’s lethargy thus opens onto a broad vista of interpretive obsta-

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cles and opportunities, a landscape made even more complex by hiseclectic philosophical apparatus and his use of humor. This is not a land-scape I shall attempt to chart here. Rather, my intention has been to raisethe difficulties to be faced if we wish to speak about the “ennui”expressed in late republican and early imperial writers. Before we com-pare Heidegger’s Angst and das Unheimliche or the nausée of Sartre or l’ab-surde of Camus, we will surely enrich our analyses by first placing the phe-nomena within the structure and conceptual language of the text. Tothese we will inevitably add something, as my opening quotation sug-gests, inasmuch as these parameters are insufficient to determine eventhe most punctilious reading. Between the Scylla of positivism and theCharybdis of relativism, however, the specifics of the text at hand willhelp us to chart a path.

II

The end of Seneca’s twenty-fourth letter appears, at first glance, to be avery promising candidate for an expression of existential ennui in Romanliterature. Like Horace’s verse epistle (1.8), it offers a problem without a(stated) solution. With Seneca, moreover, we have a less variable set of“faces” than that employed by Horace:12 his letters and dialogues gener-ally issue from the same position of authoritative Stoic philosophizing,and recent literature has even minimized the “eclecticism” with whichearlier generations characterized his use of non-Stoic philosophers (e.g.,Plato and Epicurus).13 We ought still to keep in mind the colorationsometimes borrowed from his declamatory training, but on the whole hispersona—if we restrict ourselves to the letters and dialogues—and itsconceptual framework display a great deal of consistency. Nevertheless, asensitive investigation of the contexts for this passage will suggest arather different causal history and moralizing framework than we mightat first supply ourselves. Not only is the devil, as they say, in the details,but even these details take on anachronistic shapes unless we bring tobear the focalizing power of Stoic philosophy generally and Senecanusage specifically.The text runs as follows (my sentence numbering):

(1) Est enim, mi Lucili, ut ad alia, sic etiam ad moriendum inconsultaanimi inclinatio, quae saepe generosos atque acerrimae indolis viroscorripit, saepe ignavos iacentesque; illi contemnunt vitam, hi gra-vantur. (2) Quosdam subit eadem faciendi et videndi satietas et vitae

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non odium sed fastidium, in quod prolabimur ipsa inpellentephilosophia, dum dicimus: (3) ‘Quousque eadem? nempe expergiscardormiam, [edam] esuriam, algebo aestuabo. (4) Nullius rei finis est,sed in orbem nexa sunt omnia, fugiunt ac secuuntur. (5) Diem noxpremit, dies noctem, aestas in autumnum desinit, autumno hiempsinstat, quae vere compescitur; omnia sic transeunt ut revertantur. (6)Nihil novi facio, nihil novi video: fit aliquando et huius rei nausia.’ (7)Multi sunt, qui non acerbum iudicent vivere, sed supervacuum. Vale.(Ep. 24.25–6)

(1) As there is a hasty inclination of the mind toward other things, mydear Lucilius, so too is there one toward death. This has often seizedupon noble men of fierce dispositions, often too upon the cowardly andhumble: the former disdain life, the latter are weighed down by it. (2)Some people experience a certain satiety of doing and seeing the samethings, not a hatred of life, but a distaste for it, into which we slip dueto the impulse of philosophy itself, when we say, (3) “How long [shallwe endure] these same things? I’ll get up and go to sleep, I’ll eat and I’llbe hungry, I’ll be cold and be warm. (4) There’s an end to nothing: allthings are connected in a circle, they flee and follow. (5) Night presseson day, day on night, summer ends in autumn, winter is right behindautumn, and is itself suppressed by spring. Everything passes only toreturn. (6) I do nothing new, I see nothing new: eventually there’s anausea even of this.” (7) There are many people who think that livingis, not harsh, but superfluous. Farewell.

The prima facie case for some kind of existentialist reading is not negli-gible. Thematically, the weariness of a seemingly meaningless repetition,the consequent “nausea” (nausia) and “distaste” (fastidium), and theobservation that life may be “superfluous” (superfluum) find striking par-allels in Camus and Sartre. For example, take the following passage fromthe former’sMyth of Sisyphus:

It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, street-car, four hours inthe office or the factory, meal, street-car, four hours of work, meal,sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Sat-urday according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed mostof the time. But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in thatweariness tinged with amazement. (1942, 27; translation in O’Brien1955, 12)

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A similar passage occurs in Sartre’s novel Nausée, when the protagonistlaments the fact that life, unlike narratives, has no beginnings, endings,or meaningful order (1938, 54–6). Seneca’s choice of vocabulary mayreinforce this initial impression. His fastidium and nausia remind us ofSartre’s “nausée,” which is theorized in Being and Nothingness as theinescapable, “insipid taste” of our contingency, generally manifested asthe basic awareness of our body qua “flesh” (1966, 444–5). Further,Seneca’s suggestion that living may be supervacuum reminds us of therepeated assertion that beings are de trop and “unjustifiable” in Sartre’sNausée (1938, 158–71; cf. 1966, 132). Finally, the question Quo usqueeadem? has a certain vague resemblance to this issue of “justifying” one’sexistence and the question “why” asked in the Camus passage.In Camus and Sartre, these symptoms of illness are situated in theo-

ries about the “human condition,” and some scholars have postulated asimilar background for the ennui in Seneca’s letter. In Camus, theproblem may be summarized as the incompatibility of the human desirefor unity, the absolute, comprehension, and happiness with the “irra-tional” silence of the universe (1942, 28–37). In Sartre’s much moreelaborate Being and Nothingness, the problem is basically the troubled rela-tion of the human desire to be (absolutely, as a stone is a stone) with ourdesire to retain our self-fashioning freedom.14 For the philosophers ofletter 24, too, Gianfranco Lotito (2001) has provided a thoughtful recon-struction of what may underlie such ennui. He prepares the ground forthis reconstruction with a lengthy analysis of a related Senecan work, Detranquillitate, to which I now turn.Seneca’s De tranquillitate—the only other work in which he asks the

question Quo usque eadem?—has provoked several existentialist readings.For example, Jackie Pigeaud (1981, 514) says that “C’est au malaise, aumal de l’être, au mal de vivre que s’adresse ce discours.” Pigeaud’s workcovers a vast number of texts, however, and leaves unclear just what shemeans by “le mal de l’être” in Seneca’s dialogue. Similar positions aredeveloped against the backdrop of Stoic philosophy by GianfrancoLotito (2001) and Karlhans Abel (1995), both of whom base their read-ings on acute analyses of the psychological condition depicted in De tran-quillitate.15 In this dialogue, Seneca suggests that all vice (vitium) and stu-pidity (stultitia) are founded on the incorrect use of desire. The result isdistaste for the world and for oneself, which intensify over time, gradu-ally becoming suicidalWeltschmerz:

Innumberabiles deinceps proprietates sunt sed unus effectus vitii, sibidisplicere. Hoc oritur ab intemperie animi et cupiditatibus timidis aut

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parum prosperis, ubi aut non audent quantum concupiscunt aut nonconsequuntur. (Tranq. 2.2)

There are innumerable properties of vice, but only one outcome, to bedispleasing to oneself. This arises from incontinence of the soul anddesires that are timid or insufficiently fulfilled, when [people] are eitherless daring or less successful than they are full of desires.

We shall return later to explain why a Stoic believes that stupidityentails vice and that either is entailed by incorrect desideration; but fornow, note the prognosis Seneca gives for this condition:

Tunc illos et paenitentia coepti tenet et incipiendi timor subrepitqueilla animi iactatio non invenientis exitum, quia nec imperare cupiditat-ibus suis nec obsequi possunt, et cunctatio vitae parum se explicantiset inter destituta vota torpentis animi situs. (Tranq. 2.8)

Then they are possessed by regret for what they’ve begun and fear ofnew beginnings. Their minds, unable to find a way out, beginto toss and turn, because they can neither command their desiresnor obey them; their lives, which cannot untangle themselves, arecaught in hesitation; and their minds are left languid amid aban-doned intentions.

The result is the fickle restlessness depicted also in the Horatian epistlewith which we began, although in this case the syndrome goes rather fur-ther:

Quod proposita saepe mutando in eadem revolvebantur et non reli-querant novitati locum, fastidio esse illis coepit vita et ipse mundus, etsubiit illud tabidarum deliciarum: ‘Quo usque eadem?’ (Tranq. 2.15)

Because, by frequently changing their plans, they [nevertheless] endedup in the same situation, and left no place for novelty, life and theworld became distasteful to them, and that [question] of decadent del-icacies came upon them: “How much longer [shall we endure] the samethings?”16

The analyses of Lotito and Abel both appear to base their existentialterminology on the detection of a problem of “meaning” or “value” in

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this dialogue. Lotito concentrates on the loss of distinction between sat-isfaction and disappointment in the buildup to what he calls “noiaesistenziale.” He describes this leveling of affect as the “sempre-uguale.”17 Abel (1995, 132), meanwhile, sees here a fight against“nihilism,” which he calls “die schärfste Form des Lebens- und Weltüber-drusses.” This “world-weariness,” in turn, is first introduced as“Unglauben an die Zweckhaftigkeit von Sein, Seienden, und Dasein,” inwhich phrase we see both the problem of meaning (Zweckhaftigkeit) andits relation to existentialism (Sein, Seienden, und Dasein).18 Of course, theprogression from meaninglessness to existential anxiety is entirely reason-able: Heidegger and Sartre are deeply concerned with the creation ofmeaning or value, and Camus makes the “meaning of life” a fundamentalproblem.19 Moreover, Seneca’s description of the “languid mind amid itsabandoned intentions” answers fairly well to these analyses. Thus, it isnot perhaps implausible to claim that Seneca’s dialogue addresses some-thing similar to what we call existential problems, provided that we recall(as do Lotito and Abel) that Seneca does not speak in fact in those termsand sees the problem as moral (one of vitium) or intellectual (one of stul-titia), rather than as one pertaining necessarily to the human condition.It will then appear to be a corollary of this moralizing viewpoint that justas vice and stupidity are (at least, on the Stoic account, in some individ-uals) eradicable, so is this condition escapable.This comparison brings existentialist thought to bear on Seneca’s dia-

logue in a manner that remains sensitive to its conceptual universe andargumentative structure, even as it allows us to qualify our reading withthe proviso that Seneca thinks in other terms and does not see a “humancondition” problem here. Although the passage appears more robustlyexistentialist than Persius’s satire, it remains excluded by the outline defi-nition I proposed in section 1 above. Letter 24, however, might appear toelicit what would be, even by this exacting definition, a full-blooded exis-tentialist interpretation, since the moralizing distance between the vir-tuous, intelligent Stoic admonisher and the despairing addressee seemsto have collapsed. This could be the implication of ipsa inpellentephilosophia in sentence 2, as well as the repeated and vivid use of the firstperson (first in the plural, then in the singular) in sentences 2–6. Spokenby a committed Stoic, this passage might seem to describe a properlyinescapable “nausea,” since philosophy not only does not prevent it buteven seems to encourage it.This is roughly the reading offered by Lotito, who appends some

provocative thoughts on this passage to his chapter on De tranquillitate 2.

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The complaint of nihil novi (nothing new) in sentence 6 is now referred,not to the fickle restlessness that motivated the search for novelty in Detranquillitate, but rather to Stoic cosmology:

La massiccia visione di un cosmo determinato dalla rete della necessitasuniversale, la sua terribile razionalità e perfezione, la sua rigidezza, lateoria del ciclo cosmico, il ritorno cioè, dopo ogni distruzione delcosmo, dell’identico (perché perfetto), si traduce alla fine in un annien-tamento della libertà del singolo. (2001, 68)

Here Lotito refers to the Stoic doctrine that god is immanent in theworld as all-containing nature (phusis, natura) and the reason (logos, ratio)that optimizes it as the active principle (to poioun), providence (pronoia,providentia), and fate (heimarmenê, fatum).20 This ubiquitous god/reason/nature/fate produces universal determinism, as Seneca happily accepts inthe Quaestiones naturales (Natural Questions).21 Moreover, the Stoic modelincludes the periodical conflagration and rebirth of the world in identicalform, in which the same fatal sequences will recur ad infinitum. Thisnotion, too, is accepted by Seneca (although he seems to be more inter-ested in inundation than in conflagration).22 There is thus thought-pro-voking evidence for Lotito’s position, but we might stop to ask whetherthere is any indication, here or elsewhere, that Seneca ever perceived allthis “rationality and perfection” as bearing an “overload of meaning”(sovraccarico di senso), as Lotito puts it. The discussion in Natural Questionsbetrays no obvious discomfort, and, looking back to the repetitions men-tioned in letter 24 (sentences 3–4), we find the tedium of the daily grind(eating and being hungry, sleeping and waking, etc.) rather than Lotito’s“annihilation of the liberty of the individual” (“annientamento della lib-ertà del singolo”).In order to move beneath the surface of letter 24, and thus to assess

the plausibility of an existentialist reading, let us begin by returning toSeneca’s choice of diction. A good starting point is the complaint, “I donothing new, I see nothing new” in sentence 6. Although we may findthis connection of sameness with tedium “only natural,” we should recallthat novelty did not have the same value for the Romans that it oftendoes today. Not only were the Romans enormously deferential to mosmaiorum (the way of the ancestors), but they also tended to be wary ofanything they qualified as novus (new). For example, studium rerumnovarum usually signifies, not the eagerness for adventure, but desire tooverturn the state (e.g., Cicero, Cal. 1.1.3; Sallust, Cat. 37.1). This pref-

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erence for the status quo explains why Seneca often employs the“nothing is new” topos for consolatory purposes. Here he follows hisphilosophical predecessors in general and Lucretius in particular, who hasthe personified Nature object, “There is, besides, nothing which I coulddevise or invent to please you; everything is the same, always” (3.944–5).Lucretius aims to mitigate the fear of death, as does Seneca in letter 36:

I’ll show you that everything which appears to perish actually changes.If someone is going to return, he should leave calmly. Observe theworld of things cycling back through one another: you’ll see thatnothing in this universe is extinguished, but rather falls and rises inturn. Summer’s gone, but another year will bring it back. Winter hasfallen, but its months will return it. The night has overwhelmed thesun, but the day will drive off the night. (Ep. 36.11)

The suggestion here, as in Lucretius 3.944–5, is that we should findsolace in our common subjection to the law of nature; to this Senecaadds that no departure is, in any event, permanent (see note 22 below).We might also recall that the repetitions here (the circadian and annualcycles) are very similar to those in letter 24. This is not promising for theexistentialist reading: if, from the Roman perspective, sameness is oftencomforting rather than nauseating, then we must be cautious inattributing an inevitability to the perception of tedium.Other prominent terms in Ep. 24.25–6 increase the burden of proof

for anyone seeking to distinguish sharply the tone of this passage fromthat in De tranquillitate 2. Besides words expressing novelty (nov-) andsameness (eadem), others express distaste (fastidi-, nausi/e-) and satiety(sati-). In letter 24 we have an initial description (sentence 2) of the“satiety of acting and seeing” (faciendi et videndi satietas), also described asa “distaste for life” (vitae . . . fastidium). After the plaintive question andlisting of iterations, there follow a regretful denial of novelty (nihil novifacio, nihil novi video) and a stronger statement of distaste (fit aliquando ethuius rei nausia, sentence 6). These same words, which evince the moral-izing tone of De tranquillitate, frequently appear together in Seneca’sprose works. For example, in the De tranquillitate, we read quod . . . non reli-querant novitati locum, fastidio esse illis coepit vita (2.15), while elsewhere thereference may be to corporeal consumption and satiety, as in Seneca’sdescription of the conveyors of delicacies, “who have a fine knowledge ofthe master’s palate. They know . . . what novelty can awaken him whenhe’s rather nauseous, and what he now finds distasteful, simply due to

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satiety” (sciunt . . . cuius novitate nauseabundus erigi possit, quid iam ipsa sati-etate fastidiat, Ep. 47.8). These descriptions are never value-neutral, how-ever. In context, the gluttonous master of letter 47 forms part of anattack on those who look down on their slaves, failing to recognize thatthey too are slaves—to their stomachs! Intemperance with food turns outto be a paradigmatic bête noire for Seneca’s ethical program. In letter 95,for example, the expansion of philosophical therapy is compared withthat of medicine. As diets have become less healthy, Seneca asserts, med-icine has become more sophisticated; just so, philosophy has developednew weapons to combat new depravities. But the boundaries betweenmedicine and philosophy soon blur: immediately after implying that thenumber of infirmities keeps pace with that of cooks, Seneca goes on tosay, “The schools of orators and philosophers are deserted, but howcrowded the kitchens are!” (95.23). Further on, when he is explicitly dis-cussing the spread of depravity combated by philosophy, he begins fromthe simple vices of those who “indulge in wine and look for more delicatefood” (95.32).The connecting thread between these small “indulgences” and both the

homicidal vitia with which letter 95 concludes (95.33) and the suicidal“results of vice” in De tranquillitate is intemperance. Gluttony not onlyserves as a fundamental example of intemperance, but also supplies mostof the vocabulary to describe the effects of indulgence we have beenexamining (e.g., distaste, satiety, nausea). The basic pattern is that in theConsolation to Helvia: “They bring everything known [to man] from every-where to the fastidious throat [fastidienti gulae]. What the stomach, madedissolute with delicacies, can barely admit, they bring from the far reachesof the ocean. They vomit so they can eat, and eat so they can vomit”(10.3). Here, the act of vomiting to make room is only the consummationof a disorder already indicated by the pickiness attributed to the “fastid-ious throat” and its need for exotic novelties. In the beneficently provi-dential Stoic cosmos, there are natural limits set on desire, transgressionof which leads to discomfort. Rules on limiting desire apply far beyondthe glutton’s table, as indicated by Epictetus’s educational topos on orexis(desire) and ekklisis (aversion). Although the orthodoxy of Epictetus’s useof these technical terms is dubious, his substantial point is clearly in themainstream of Stoicism,23 namely that the person who mistakes theproper field of application for desire and aversion will be miserable.Epictetus asks, “I want something and it doesn’t happen. What is moremiserable than I?” (qevlw ti kai; ouj givnetai: kai; tiv ejstin ajqliwvteron ejmou,Disc. 2.17.18). This pithy rule generalizes Stoic theories on negative emo-

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tions, according to which incorrect value judgments cause the discomfortof grief, yearning, or fear (see notes 8–11 below). To avoid this, Epictetusrepeatedly advises restriction of desire and aversion only to those thingsin our power (eph’ hêmin; see, especially, Disc. 1.4, Ench. 1–2; also Disc.2.5.6, 3.23.9, 3.12.7, 3.22.13, 3.23.35, 4.4.1–5, Ench. 48.3). It is thisview of desire as something that should be adapted to the order of naturewhich allows Seneca to reduce the problem of De tranquillitate to “intem-perance of soul” (intemperies animi), that is, the failure to moderate “con-cupiscence” (quantum concupiscunt); further, it is the paradigmatic role ofgluttony as intemperate desire that elicits the language of satiety and dis-taste. For Seneca, distaste with oneself and the world is an affect centralto the human condition (arising in all the domains of desire).24 However,this syndrome is curable: Seneca agrees with Epictetus that we can edu-cate our desires, inasmuch as all desires and passions are based on judg-ments, and all judgments are within our power.Let us now return to letter 24. The words we first took to express exis-

tential ennui (distaste, satiety, lack of novelty) now appear situated inrather different patterns. The consolatory pattern (which does notemploy distaste or satiety) gives little purchase for existentialist readings.The moralizing pattern also fails to meet our definition for an “existen-tialist” theory, because this pattern does not describe an inescapable partof the human condition but is given as a reason to study Stoic philosophyand put it into practice. Yet we must still reckon with the appearance ofjust that philosophy (ipsa inpellente philosophia) in sentence 2 of the Ep. 24passage, where it appears to contribute to the problem. The key to fittingthis remark within Seneca’s Stoic framework is to realize that “philos-ophy,” unlike “wisdom” or “virtue,” is not an all-or-nothing concept forthe Stoics. To say that “philosophy itself” contributes to ennui is not nec-essarily to imply that this philosophy is being understood and applied cor-rectly. Zeno himself, the founder of the Stoa, reportedly said: “Those whoheard his words incorrectly and did not understand would be rude andilliberal” (oiJ parakouvsante~ aujtou twn lovgwn kai; mh; sunevnte~ e[sontairJuparoi; kai; ajneleuvqeroi, Athenaeus 565D). In letter 2, Seneca warnsLucilius against reading too many books, to which he imagines thatLucilius may respond, “But at one time I want to open this book, atanother time, that book.” To this Seneca answers, “It’s the mark of a pickystomach [fastidientis stomachi est] to taste many things; when these thingsare various and different, they harm rather than nourish” (2.4). Thus, inthe very practice of philosophical education, we find the danger of incor-rect desire already coiled in wait. As there are limits to what foods we

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should reach for, so there are limits to our philosophical reading. Senecaconsequently invites Lucilius to gather a small library of trusted booksand pick one thing each day “to digest” (unum excerpe quod illo die concoquas,2.2).25 In reading habits, as in listening to a lecture, there emerge the pos-sibilities of “correct” and “incorrect” philosophizing. Stoic philosophy is atricky complex of receiving precepts, drawing connections in systematicunderstanding, and habituating oneself to apply the doctrines.26 Thisleaves abundant room for practitioners of philosophy to err (indeed, theStoic “sage” is proverbially as rare as the phoenix), so we need not assumethat the “philosophy” of letter 24 refers to Stoic cosmology in the grasp ofone who understands it. As Seneca says in letter 78.26, “For the personreviewing the nature of things, the truth will never lead to distaste. It isfalse things that will cause satiety” (rerum naturam peragranti numquam infastidium veritas veniet: falsa satiabunt).27

We have come some way in qualifying our first existentialist reading ofletter 24, but the fact remains that this letter ends with the enigmaticstatement of the condition—Multi sunt, qui non acerbum iudicent vivere, sedsupervacuum (sentence 7)—and without the moralizing corrective thatSeneca applies in De tranquillitate and elsewhere. Even if no explicit moralfollows, however, we shall not say that we find no relevant context for thepassage. This is the third letter in the second book, in which the first twoend as follows:

No one worries about how well they live [quam bene vivat], but howlong, although all may live well, but none may live long. (Ep. 22.17)

We should see to it that we have lived enough [ut satis vixerimus]: noone provides for this, if he is just beginning life. . . . Indeed, some startjust when they must finish. If you think that’s remarkable, I’ll addsomething you’ll find more amazing: some have finished living beforethey began. (Ep. 23.10–1)

Set against this inquiry into living “well” or “enough,” the concernexpressed in letter 24 (that living is “superfluous”) begins to seem morelike a variation on a theme. Yet the point of letters 22 and 23 is preciselythat most people’s worries over living, over its duration, are incorrect;they should rather strive to live “enough,” where “enough” is proclaimedjust by those individuals who have learned to live “well.” Perhaps, then,the bored sufferers of letter 24 are a negative example, much like thosewho strain for longer life in letters 22 and 23.

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The internal progression of letter 24 also suggests that we should readits conclusion critically. The letter’s leitmotif is “anxiety” (sollicitudo),beginning with its opening line: “You write that you are anxious . . .” (sol-licitum esse te scribis). Although the initial source of this anxiety is a trial,the letter encompasses many other worries, such as poverty, exile, impris-onment (16–7), and everywhere, as the ultimate concerns, physical pain(dolor) and death. Seneca offers a variety of consolations for these wor-ries, ranging from the repeated (but unattributed) Epicurean assertionthat pains are either brief and intense or long and mild (3, 14) to theexamples of such role models as Cato, Socrates, and Mucius Scaevola.Finally, he adds his usual quotations from another author (as often, fromEpicurus) in section 22: “It is laughable to run after death because you’retired of life [taedio vitae], when it is by your manner of living [genere vitae]that you’ve made it necessary to run after death.” The desire to die, then,is just one more sollicitudo that Seneca means to lay to rest in this letter.He gives another variation on this thought in section 23 and then says:“Whichever of these you take up, you’ll strengthen your mind forenduring either life or death. We require admonition on both counts, inorder neither to love nor to hate life excessively [et ne nimis amemus vitamet ne nimis oderimus]” (24.24). Loving life (that is, fearing death) andhating it are thus represented as parallel anxieties, so that we have goodreason to be skeptical of the “philosophical” weariness of living (vitae nonodium sed fastidium, sentence 2). Of course, Seneca does allow that suicidemay be an option in unusual conditions,28 but he does not encourage usto think that those conditions are being met here. “A brave and wise manshould depart from life, not flee from it,” he says, “and let this passionalso, which has seized many men, be avoided above all: the longing to die[libido moriendi]” (Ep. 24.25). Here he reminds us of his repeated asser-tion that suicide must be a choice made by reason, which comprehendsby various signs that divine providence has released us.29 It is for thisreason that he prefaces this remark by saying, “Even when reason per-suades you to put an end to yourself, this impulse should not be taken uprashly or hastily.” Suicide is an option adopted after one has consideredthe ratio of the cosmos and where one fits. Such “ultimate necessities” asa painful illness may make it impossible to continue living “according tonature,” as a Stoic ought,30 but there is no evidence that weariness of lifeis one of these necessities. To the contrary, in the light of Seneca’s con-ceptual framework and the context of this letter, the sufferers appearrather to be themselves responsible for this ennui due to their “incorrect”thoughts and desires. Inasmuch, then, as this “longing to die” is opposed

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to “brave” and reasoned self-termination, and as such is something to beavoided (vitanda), we again find that the very parameters we imposed tocreate a foundation for existentialist explorations have in fact induced usto substantially weaken this particular reading.

III

The foregoing analysis is certainly not intended to foreclose the possi-bility of discovering existential ennui (angst, anxiety, etc.) in Roman liter-ature, but rather to clear the ground for a historically, literarily, and philo-sophically sensitive encounter between these extremely differentmanners of constructing human experience. I prioritized lexical and the-matic unities precisely in order to avoid what might be characterizedeither as anachronism (if we located a certain sort of ennui somehow inthe ancient works) or as irreducible relativism (if we allowed that anyonemight discover ennui anywhere). Yet these unities still allow for multiplereadings. Not surprisingly, a Senecan passage that appears anxiously exis-tentialist may come to seem comfortingly Stoic, if we allow our criticalvision to be entirely determined by Seneca’s conceptual universe. Per-haps we might find other passages without such subtle moralizing under-tones. Perhaps no Roman author had the concepts, beliefs, and reader-ship that would allow them to generate a stream of consciousness such asappears to meet us in Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature: “The intense viewof these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason hasso wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject allbelief and reasoning . . .” (1.4.7.8). Much less may the Romans have for-mulated a problem such as that outlined by Nietzsche: “What doesnihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim islacking; ‘why?’ finds no answer” (1968, aph. 2). However, using theRomans’ conceptual machinery for orientation does not entail whollybuying into it. Regardless of the words through which we express existen-tial dilemmas, Sartre might say, we are all at least “nonthetically” awareof them. Hence, we should ask, not where Seneca “puts his finger” onexistential problems, but rather how and where those problems corre-spond to his conceptual schemes, argumentative and rhetorical frames,etc. I will outline just one such point of correspondence.Instead of asking whether Seneca (or his textual persona) openly con-

fronts an existential problem in letter 24, we might inquire instead howthe paired Stoic absolutes of wisdom (correct philosophy, virtue) andfolly (vice) relate to the existentialist problem of being. After all, when

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the Stoics say “there is nothing between virtue and vice” (ajreth~ de; kai;kakiva~ oujde;n ei\nai metaxuv: Arius Didymus, Epit. of Stoic Ethics 5b8[Pomeroy 1998]; cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.127), we could, with Heideggerand Sartre, probe further into the nature of this “nothing.” Of course weshould not be captivated by sophisms: there is rather an excess than adearth of qualitative differentia between wisdom/virtue and vice/folly(the Stoic “paradox” states that all sages are healthy, free, successful, andfriendly, while all fools are mad, enslaved, unsuccessful, and hostile), andwe can also outline the educational and ascetic program by which Zeno’s“covered fist” of knowledge, or Epictetus’s “good faculty of choice,”might eventually replace folly and vice.31 In these qualitative and devel-opmental terms, there is plenty between virtue and vice. However, thevery absolutism of the excluded middle—the fact that the existence of“progress” does not make wisdom or folly gradable qualities32—could berelated to the human necessity, in Heidegger or Sartre, to “transcend” thegiven by “nihilating” it.33 Thus, we might re-inspect the totalizing con-cern in Seneca that links desire, temperance, and affect. On the onehand, this is the domain of progress; but on the other, as it is idealized inthe pursuit of sagedom, or panoramically glimpsed in the meditation ondeath, it is the crossing of an infinite gap and the appropriation of a new,inalienable totality.34 Does this not bear comparison with the Sartreandrive toward being “in-itself-for-itself” (1966, 704–6)? If so, it is not thedesperation of De tranquillitate 2 that represents Stoic ennui but theuncertain grasp on progress—the fluctuatio (Tranq. 1.17)—that Serenusarticulates at the beginning of the dialogue. Sartre uses “vertigo” as animage of “anguish” before our nihilating freedom (What stops me fromchoosing to throw myself over the railing? Nothing), while Serenus,speaking of his weak virtue (bonae mentis infirmitas), worries “that I shallalways be leaning over like someone about to fall.”35 Similarly, the “philo-sophical” restlessness of letter 24, rather than being a reaction to theoppressive perfection of the cosmos, might arise from, inter alia, a premo-nition that no quantity of daily actions will add up to the quiescentplenum of being a perfected member of that ideal cosmos (that is, asage).36

Of course, I should now proceed to deepen the correspondence I havejust adumbrated by supporting it with a renewed analysis of letter 24 orof other, perhaps less superficially “existential” passages. I would alsowant to develop further a theoretical apparatus for relating the non-thetic existential concerns, which I have just posited, to Seneca’s reflec-tively Stoic program. According to the relation I have begun to outline,

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existential ennui would find expression in the incompletely integratedmargins of that program (e.g., Serenus’s uneasiness). This is one place acommitted Stoic might explore the anxiety that, even granted thesoundness of his theory and sincerity of his practice, nevertheless some-thing makes itself felt as lacking. There could certainly be other placesas well, which we might elucidate through a subtler appropriation ofexistentialist theory, a more careful survey of Seneca’s writings, or both.Whatever the details of any such approach, its methodological presup-position would remain the same: if we want to apply an alien concep-tual system to Roman texts, the results will interest a larger interpretivecommunity insofar as we acknowledge the literary, doctrinal, and argu-mentative or narrative structures around which we usually take thosetexts to be built.

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Abel, K. 1995. “Displicentia sui auf dem Weg zur Selbstheit. Seneca, Dial. 9.” In K.Abel, Die Sinnfrage des Lebens: Philosophisches Denken im Vor- und Umfeld des frühenChristentums. Stuttgart. 104–32.

Albrecht, M. von. 2004.Wort und Wandlung: Senecas Lebenskunst. Leiden.Bonhöffer, A. 1890. Epictet und die Stoa. Stuttgart.Braund, S., and C. Gill, eds. 1997. The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature. Cam-

bridge.Brennan, T. 2005. The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate. Oxford.Camus, A. 1955. The Myth of Sisyphus. English translation by J. O’Brien. New York.

(Originally published as Le Mythe de Sisyphe [Paris 1942])Dessen, C. S. 1968. Iunctura callidus acri: A Study of Persius’ Satires. Illinois Studies in

Language and Literature, 59. Chicago.Dufour, R. 2004. Chrysippe: Oeuvre Philosophique. 2 vols. Paris.Fortenbaugh, W. W. 1975. Aristotle on Emotion. London.Foucault, M. 2005. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France,

1981–2. Edited by F. Gros, with English translation by G. Burchell. New York.(Originally published as L’herméneutique du sujet: cours au Collège de France,1981–1982 [Paris 2001])

Graver, M., trans. and comm. 2002. Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and4. Chicago.

Griffin, M. 1976. Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics. Oxford.———. 1986a. “Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: I.” G & R 33: 64–77.———. 1986b. “Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: II.” G & R 33: 191–202.Hadot, P. 1998. The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. English transla-

tion by M. Chase. Cambridge, MA. (Originally published as La Citadelle intérieure[Paris 1992])

———. 2002.What is Ancient Philosophy? English translation by M. Chase. Cambridge,MA. (Originally published as Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique? [Paris 1995])

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Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time. English translation by J. Macquarrie and E.Robinson. Oxford. (Originally published as Sein und Zeit, 4th ed. [Halle 1935])

———. 2002. “Nietzsche’s Word: God is Dead.” In M. Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track.English translation by J. Young and K. Haynes. Cambridge. 157–99.

Hense, O. ed. 1905. C. Musonii Rufi Reliquiae. Leipzig.Hooley, D. M. 1997. The Knotted Thong: Structures of Mimesis in Persius. Ann Arbor.Hume, D. 2000. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton.

Oxford.Inwood, B. 1985. Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism. Oxford.———. 2005. Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome. Oxford.Lloyd, G. 2003. In the Grip of Disease: Studies in the Greek Imagination. Oxford.Long, A. A., and D. Sedley. 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge.Lotito, G. 2001. Suum esse: Forme dell’interiorità Senecana. Bologna.Moles, J. 2002. “Poetry, Philosophy, Politics and Play: Epistles I.” In T. Woodman and

D. Feeney, ed., Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace. Cambridge. 141–57,235–7.

Nietzsche, F. 1968. The Will to Power. Edited, with commentary, by Walter Kaufman.English translation by Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale. New York.

Nussbaum, M. 1994. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics.Princeton.

Oliensis, E. 1998. Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority. Cambridge.Pasquali, G. 1964. Orazio Lirico: Studi. Ristampa xerografica con introduzione, indici ed

appendici di aggiornamento bibliografico a cura di Antonio La Penna. Florence.Pigeaud, J. 1981. La maladie de l’âme: étude sur la rélation de l’âme et du corps dans la tradi-

tion médico-philosophique antique. Paris.Pomeroy, A., ed. and trans. 1998. Arius Didymus: Epitome of Stoic Ethics. Atlanta.Sartre, J.-P. 1938. La Nausée. Paris.———. 1966. Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. English

translation by H. Barnes. New York. (Originally published as L’être et le néant: essaid’ontologie phénoménologique [Paris 1943])

Schrijvers, P. 1992. “Horace Moraliste.” In W. Ludwig, ed., Horace. Fondation Hardt,39. Geneva. 41–90.

Sihvola, J., and T. Engberg-Pedersen, eds. 1998. The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy.Dordrecht and Boston.

Sorabji, R. 2000. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation.Oxford.

Thirry, A.G., ed. 1977. Pseudo-Andronicus de Rhodes, Peri; pavqwn. Corpus LatinumCommentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum, Suppl. 2. Leiden.

Tieleman, T. 2003. Chrysippus’ On Affections: Reconstruction and Interpretations.Philosophia Antiqua, 94. Leiden.

Toohey, P. 2004. Melancholy, Love, and Time: The Boundaries of the Self in Ancient Litera-ture. Ann Arbor.

Veyne, P. 2003. Seneca: The Life of a Stoic. English translation by D. Sullivan. New York.(Originally published as Sénèque, Entretiens, Lettres à Lucilius [Paris 1993])

Wyllie, R. 1973. “Views on Suicide and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy and SomeRelated Contemporary Points of View.” Prudentia 5: 15–32.

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Notes1 So Toohey 2004, 49: “What is wrong with Persius? In his magnificent Satires 3 he

seems to suffer a strange psychological illness. . . .” This article began life in a panel onpost-Hellenistic philosophy at the 2006 meeting of the American Philological Associa-tion. I would like to thank the chair (Brad Inwood) and participants in that meeting, aswell as the editor and anonymous reader at Helios, for their helpful comments. Alltranslations from classical texts are mine, unless otherwise indicated.

2 Hooley’s (1997, 202–29) much more complex treatment still presumes this basicnarrative structure. On the multivalence of the concept of “disease” in Greek thought,see Lloyd 2003, esp. chs. 1 and 8; on mental disease particularly, Pigeaud 1981.

3 Camus wished to distance himself from what he called “l’attitude existentielle”(1942, 61–9), but the position of The Myth of Sisyphus is “existentialist” in my sensebecause an ineluctable dissatisfaction with the human condition is one of its funda-mental elements. See further below.

4 Odes 2.16.17–20: quid brevi fortes iaculamur aevo / multa? quid terras alio calentis / solemutamus? patriae quis exsul / se quoque fugit?

5 I owe this suggestion to David Konstan.6 Two famous examples are the prologues to Livy and to Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae.7 General studies include Nussbaum 1994, Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen 1998,

and Sorabji 2000. For more detailed studies, see notes 8–11 below.8 Of course Plato more famously divides, in the Republic, the soul into three parts—

appetitive, spirited, and rational—but Fortenbaugh (1975, 9–44) argues cogently thatthe Laws anticipate the bipartition of Aristotle’s ethical psychology. Plato does not usepathêtikon to refer to an “affective” aspect/part of the soul, and Aristotle uses the wordin this way only in the Politics (e.g., 1254b8); however, a middle Platonist like Plutarchfrequently speaks of “the irrational and affective/passive part” (to pathêtikon kai alogon;see, e.g., passim in De prof. virt. mor.; De tranq. anim. 465B, 475C), apparently under theinfluence of the physical psychology of Plato’s Timaeus.

9 See Long and Sedley 1987, §65 for a selection of texts with basic commentary.Inwood’s (1985, 127–81) clearheaded treatment remains among the best but alreadytakes stances on the controversial issues that are differently developed by Nussbaum1994, 316–401; Sorabji 2000; Tieleman 2003; and Brennan 2005, 82–114.

10 The “master catalogue” is pseudo-Andronicus (Thirry 1977), but lists also appearat Arius Didymus, Epitome of Stoic Ethics 10B–C (Pomeroy 1998) and Diogenes Laertius7.111–4.

11 On Horace and philosophy, see Moles 2002. On Roman thinking about the emo-tions, see Braund and Gill 1997. On Romans and Stoic emotional theory particularly,see Cicero, Tusc. 3–4, with Graver’s (2002) translation and commentary.

12 On Horatian “face,” see Schrijvers 1992 and Oliensis 1998.13 See Inwood 2005, esp. chs. 2 and 5 (23–64 and 132–56, respectively) and Veyne

2003, 31–155.14 To this we should at least add that this troubled relation is inescapable: humans

must be both factitious and contingent (as symbolized by our births and deaths) andfree (as experienced in our anxious responsibility for our being), and the two are inex-tricable: Sartre 1966, 618–29.

15 Lotito 2001, 41–67 and Abel 1995, 104–32; cf. also Foucault 2005, 130–5.

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16 Cf. Horace, Ep. 1.8.12: Romae Tibur amem ventosus, Tibure Romam. As has beennoted, Lucretius 3.1053–70 is another parallel (Seneca cites Lucretius 3.1068 at Tranq.2.14 and discusses Epicurus’s remarks on the same topic at Ep. 24.22–3).

17 Lotito 2001, 64: “Dolore e piacere si intricano, in qualche modo si perde il sensodella loro distinzione. Si prepara così lo stadio finale: quello anestetico della noiaesistenziale, del sempre-uguale.”

18 Abel 1995, 104. Abel’s language frequently recalls the terminology of Nietzscheand Heidegger. For example, he speaks of the malaise in De tranquillitate as “pureLangeweile” (107) or “blasierte Langeweile” (116), and portrays the project of Stoictranquility as the “vornehmste Daseinsaufgabe” (132).

19 For Camus (1942, 16), this is very clear: “Je juge donc que le sens de la vie est laplus pressante des questions.” Heidegger and Sartre make “being” rather than“meaning” or “value” the primary concern for every individual, but for each it turnsout that the being of the “self” either is, or is defined, in terms of value/meaning (thiscannot be fully grasped in any short passage of their work, but see Sartre 1966, 143–6and Heidegger 1962, 192–4, 364–70 = §§32 and 64).

20 For convenience of reference, see Long and Sedley 1987, §54B, although §54Urecords disputes about the relation of fate to providence. At greater length, see Dufour2004, frags. 307–40, 542, 915, 1130–4.

21 Seneca, Q Nat. 3.29.2–3: Ab initio eius [mundi] usque ad exitum quidquid facerequidquid pati debeat inclusum est. Cf. Dufour 2004, frags. 951–5. On Seneca and provi-dential nature, cf. Veyne 2003, 41–6.

22 At Nat. 3.29.2, Seneca mentions the conflagratio (in Greek, ekpurôsis), but hisextended discussion there pertains to the periodical inundation that brings a terminusor exitus to humankind (Nat. 3.29.5, 7). Thereafter humans are reborn “uncivilized andinnocent” (rudes innoxiique, 3.29.5), only again to decline, be eradicated, and reborn.Seneca even seems to accept that individual humans will be reborn in each world cycle(mors, quam pertimescimus ac recusamus, intermittit vitam, non eripit: veniet iterum, qui nos inlucem reponat dies, quem multi recusarent, nisi oblitos reduceret, Ep. 36.10–1).

23 See Bonhöffer 1890, 256; Inwood 1985, 117–9; Hadot 1998, 73–100.24 In addition to the statement in De tranquillitate that all vice leads to “displeasure

with oneself” (2.2), see also Ep. 9.22: Omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui.25 On this letter, cf. Albrecht 2004, 26–9.26 On the interrelation of precepts and habituation in Stoicism of this period, see

Seneca, Ep. 95 and Musonius Rufus, frags. 5–6 (Hense 1905). On the systematicity ofunderstanding (katalêpsis and epistêmê) in Stoic theory, see Long and Sedley 1987, §40(with commentary).

27 Note that “truth,” contrary to English usage, may also refer to systematic under-standing in Stoic theory (Sextus Empiricus, Pyr. 2.81–3).

28 See Griffin 1976, 367–88. Seneca’s actual suicide is situated against Julio-Clau-dian mores in Griffin 1986a and 1986b. Wyllie (1973, 15–6, 25–8) compares the Stoicposition with that of Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, though his interpretation ofSeneca is refuted by Griffin’s work.

29 Ep. 14.2; Vit. Beat. 20.5 (cited in Griffin 1976, 374 note 3).30 Ep. 17.9: Sed si necessitates ultimae inciderint, iamdudum exibit e vita et molestus esse sibi

desinet. See Griffin 1976, 374–7, who notes that although Seneca elsewhere speaks of“departing” before the “ultimate necessity” arrives (e.g., Ep. 70.5, 117.21), thesedepartures are still represented as justified by reason.

31 On the “paradoxes” associated with the Stoic sage, see Stoicorum Veterum Frag-menta [= SVF] 1.216–29, 3.544–684. Zeno likened assent (assensus or sunkatathesis) toan open hand, “comprehension” (comprensio or katalêpsis) to a fist, and “knowledge” (sci-entia or epistême) to that fist grasped tightly by the other: Cicero, Acad. 2.145 (= Longand Sedley 1987, §41A). For Epictetus’s definition of the good (oujsiva tou ajgaqou`proaivresi~ poiav), see his Disc. 1.29.1.

32 Concisely explained in Brennan 2005, 36–45.33 Heidegger 1962, 228–35 (= §40) and Sartre 1966, 33–85, 125–6.34 Some Stoics held that sagedom (i.e., virtue) could never be lost (it was

anapoblêtos), while Chrysippus and others apparently admitted a small qualification: itcould be lost through altered states (inebriation or medicine) or madness (SVF3.237–44). On meditation on death, see Foucault 2005, 504–5 and Hadot 2002,190–8.

35 Seneca, Tranq. 1.15: Vereor . . . ne semper casuro similis pendeam. Cf. Sartre 1966,65–9 and Heidegger’s (1962, 232) characterization of “Being free for” as an anxiouspropensio in . . .

36 Of course, even an existentialist reading need not insist that the analysis of thewisdom-ideal is exhausted in these categories. For an excellent discussion of the sagefrom the perspective of various traditions, see Veyne 2003, 66–81.

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