pangea's video: Dying Every Day - Seneca at the court of Nero

James Romm on Seneca at the court of Nero. Seneca, we must remember, lived through the horrors as well as the glories of antiquity, when bullies and psychopaths held both the living of your life and the manner of your dying in their hands. Whereas Socrates had only once been crucially involved in the political apparatus of fifth-century-B.C. Athens, Seneca was there at Rome’s dark heart. So did he detest himself toward the end of his life? Did he feel his mind and morals were mildewed by the miasma of Nero’s, and Rome’s, mania? He certainly favored a Stoical solution. In his “De Ira” Seneca writes: “You ask what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.” It is easy to be seduced by the stellar lineup of characters who graze Seneca’s life, particularly Nero — that autocratic, crazed, incestuous, debt-ridden dictator — dead at 30, but a man who had ruled a fifth of the world’s population for half his short life. From the first sentence it is clear that this book is going to be a pacey, breezy ride. Arguably there could be an iota less narrative brio: The breathless enthusiasm to fit all in can occasionally result in inconsistencies and an overreliance on ancient historical sources as hard fact. But when there is analysis, it brings real clarity. Indeed there are moments of brilliance. The philosophical torment of the later years and the drama of Seneca’s tripartite death once Nero turns against him (vein opening, hemlock draft and then asphyxiation in a hot bath) are dealt with masterfully. Romm reminds us that we need to care about Seneca — he is a touchstone for the modern world. Christopher Columbus cherished his works and quoted his dream of “new worlds.” Seneca kick-started our tradition of premiers’ employing professional speechwriters. Above all, he embodies the central conflict of human life: Can we be good while engaging with the imperfect world around us? That is one of the questions Romm leaves open. “It is the mind that makes us rich,” Seneca once wrote to his mother. Is it possible that the answer to the Seneca enigma may yet turn up, in his own wily words, on a long-lost papyrus or inscribed ­fragment? Alternatively, the secrets of Seneca’s stellar, flawed, all too human mind may stay where he took them, in the rich Italian earth and a premature grave. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/books/review/dying-every-day-by-james-romm.html?_r=0