Between Heathenism and Christianity · Charles William Super
SENECA: HIS CHARACTER AND ENVIRONMENT.
But he could not indulge incessantly in bacchanalian orgies; the jaded body needed some relaxative that could be found neither in sleep nor in such business that could not be delegated to a subordinate. There he regaled himself with the sight of blood. The huge structures erected for the gladiatorial combats testify to the Roman passion for these cruel sports. Every living creature that could be induced to fight was exhibited in the arena where men and women took equal delight in the bloody spectacle. Lecky, in his History of European Morals, sets forth in graphic colors the pomp and circumstance with which these horrible exhibitions were given. I cannot do better than to transcribe his words: “The gladiatorial games form, indeed, the one feature of Roman society which to a modern mind is almost inconceivable in its atrocity. That not only men, but women, in an advanced period of civilization—men and women who not only professed, but very frequently acted upon, a high code of morals—should have made the carnage of men their habitual amusement; that all this should have continued for centuries, with scarcely a protest, is one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is, however, perfectly normal, and in no degree inconsistent with the doctrine of natural moral perceptions, while it opens out fields of ethical enquiry of a very deep, though painful interest.”
“The mere desire for novelty impelled the people to every excess or refinement of barbarity. The simple combat became at last insipid, and every variety of atrocity was devised to stimulate the flagging interest. At one time a bear and a bull, chained together, rolled in fierce contest along the sand; at another, criminals dressed in the skins of wild beasts, were thrown to bulls, which were maddened by red-hot irons, or by darts tipped with burning pitch. Four hundred bears were killed in a single day under Caligula; three hundred on another day under Claudius. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and elephants; four hundred bears and three hundred lions were slaughtered by his soldiers. In a single day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by Titus, five thousand animals perished. Under Trajan, the games continued for one hundred and twenty-three successive days. Lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even crocodiles and serpents, were employed to give novelty to the spectacle. Nor was any form of human suffering wanting. The first Gordian, when edile, gave twelve spectacles, in each of which from one hundred and fifty to five hundred pair of gladiators appeared. Eight hundred pair fought at the triumph of Aurelian. Ten thousand men fought during the games of Trajan. Nero illumined his gardens during the night by Christians burning in their pitchy shirts. Under Domitian, an army of feeble dwarfs was compelled to fight, and more than once female gladiators descended to perish in the arena.”
“So intense was the craving for blood, that a prince was less unpopular if he neglected the distribution of corn than if he neglected the games; and Nero himself, on account of his munificence in this respect, was probably the sovereign who was most beloved by the Roman multitude.” “It is well for us to look steadily on such facts as these. They display more vividly than any mere philosophical disquisition the abyss of depravity into which it is possible for human nature to sink. They furnish us with striking proofs of the reality of the moral progress we have attained, and they enable us in some degree to estimate the regenerating influence that Christianity has exercised in the world. For the destruction of the gladiatorial games is all its work. Philosophers, indeed, might deplore them, gentle natures might shrink from their contagion, but to the multitude they possessed a fascination which nothing but the new religion could overcome.”
How deeply the virulent poison of inhumanity and the insatiable thirst for blood had infected the Roman people is further evident, not only from the means employed to make these sanguinary spectacles as fascinating as possible, but also from the impress they made upon the current phraseology. Lecky says further: “No pageant has ever combined more powerful elements of attraction. The magnificent circus, the gorgeous dresses of the assembled court, the contagion of a passionate enthusiasm thrilling almost visibly through the mighty throng, the breathless silence of expectation, the wild cheers bursting simultaneously from eighty thousand tongues, and echoing to the fartherest outskirts of the city, the rapid alternations of the fray, the deeds of splendid courage that were manifested, were all well fitted to entrance the imagination. The crimes and servitude of the gladiator were for a time forgotten in the blaze of glory that surrounded him. Representing to the highest degree that courage which the Romans deemed the first of virtues, the cynosure of countless eyes, the chief object of conversation in the metropolis of the universe, destined, if victorious, to be immortalized in the mosaic and the sculpture, he not unfrequently rose to heroic grandeur....
Beautiful eyes, trembling with passion, looked down upon the fight, and the noblest ladies of Rome, even the empress herself, had been known to crave the victor’s love. We read of gladiators lamenting that the games occurred so seldom, complaining bitterly if they were not permitted to descend into the arena, scorning to fight except with the most powerful antagonists, laughing aloud at their wounds when dressed, and at last, when prostrate in the dust, calmly turning their throats to the sword of the conqueror. The enthusiasm that gathered round them was so intense that special laws were found necessary, and were sometime insufficient, to prevent patricians from enlisting in their ranks, while the tranquil courage with which they never failed to die, supplied the philosopher with his most striking examples. The severe continence that was required before the combat, contrasting vividly with the licentiousness of Roman life, had even invested them with something of a moral dignity; and it is a singularly suggestive fact, that, of all pagan characters, the gladiator was selected by the fathers as the closest approximation to a Christian model. St. Augustine tells us how one of his friends, being drawn to the spectacle, endeavored by closing his eyes to guard against a fascination that he knew to be sinful. A sudden cry caused him to break his resolution, and he never could withdraw his gaze again.”
The Roman people clung with amazing tenacity to this gruesome sport. Nero instituted, in a private way, games after the Grecian model, and Hadrian made a similar effort on a larger scale; but the public took little interest in them while sturdy Romans protested against these Hellenic corruptions. I have dwelt somewhat at length on this singular institution, both because it was peculiar to ancient Rome and because, above everything else, it throws light on the character of its populace. It is true that men of kindly natures like Virgil and Cicero condemned these atrocious pastimes, or at least took no pleasure in them, but their influence produced no effect on public opinion. Nothing that Seneca has written is more to his credit than the vigorous language he employs in denunciation of the gladiatorial combats. A life devoted to study and speculation was to a Roman citizen impossible. Cicero, who did more than any of his countrymen to naturalize Greek philosophy on Roman soil through the medium of the Latin language, was a practical statesman. When forced to retire from the service of the state he longed to return to its labors, notwithstanding the dangers to be incurred. Livy and Virgil devoted their lives almost exclusively to the glorification of the past in extolling the heroes by whose toil, endurance, and self-sacrifice, the Rome of their day had become what it was. Though in a sense living in retirement, their thoughts were none the less upon the state; their time and talents not the less devoted to its service. To a Roman the state embodied almost everything worth living for; asceticism was impossible for him. Even when not actively engaged in public affairs he found pleasure in observing, at close range, the machinery of government in action. He longed to live and move in the strife and turmoil of the capital.
We need not wonder that Ovid, in exile, was ready to submit with cheerful alacrity to any moral indignity, and to humiliate himself in the dust before his emperor, would he but permit him to return to the city which his spirit had never left. Seneca’s conduct, when in banishment, was even less to his credit than that of Ovid, inasmuch as he professed to be governed by far higher principles. He thought he was a philosopher, yet when compelled to live in Corsica where he had all his time to devote to study and meditation, he was wretched in the extreme; belittled himself by the most degrading exhibition of servility; did not scruple to stoop to the most shameful falsehoods and the most disgusting flattery in order to bring about his recall. His encomium on solitude, and his aversion to crowds, if they are anything more than mere theory, are the result of larger experience and of deeper insight into the human heart. Yet it is hardly open to doubt that he could have gone into voluntary retirement at any period of his life, except perhaps near its close. It has been said of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, that his mind was more Greek than Roman. While it is true that he loved philosophy, and studied it daily, he did so in the belief that in this way he could the better prepare his mind and heart to perform the duties which his exalted station imposed upon him. He seems never to have seriously entertained the thought that it was in his power at all times to lay down his official burdens in order to follow his natural inclinations. His highest ideal of virtue was to cultivate and strengthen his sense of duty; but this duty was primarily political.
There is little doubt that the conspicuous place occupied by the state in the mind of every Roman citizen prepared the way for the deification of the emperors, a form of adulation that in the course of time wrought untold mischief, and led to the most abject servility on the part of men of whom one would have expected better things. Baumgarten devotes many pages to a discussion of this curious feature of Roman politics. In the nature of the case this deification had no regard whatever to the personal character of the sovereign. It elevated him to the skies, solely as the personification of the largest possible power entrusted to a mortal. When in the course of time all the functions of the government were concentrated in the hands of a single individual, it was natural that he should become an object of worship, at least in a sense, even during his lifetime, and as a matter of course placed among the gods at his death. We shall find this transition easy if we consider further the character of the gods of antiquity. They were not distinguished from mortals by higher attributes, but only by the possession of greater power. A god, in the popular estimation, was not necessarily any better than a man—he was only stronger. His good-will was to be gained and his ill-will averted by precisely the same means that were employed in the case of men. The Roman gods were, in a far larger measure than those of the Greeks, personifications of abstract qualities. There was thus a wide scope for projecting into their character the salient traits of the worshiper.
The gods, then, being an abstraction, and the state being the mightiest visible representation of human power, it required no great effort of the imagination to regard its head as divine, in the sense which the Romans attached to the term. The unthinking multitude naturally fell in with the ideas of their leaders, and even the better class of men rarely protested because they considered the ceremony of little moment, or because protests would have been unavailing. Strangely, too, the belief in fate, in an inevitable destiny, did much to paralize the free action of many of the bravest men. The fate of the republic, the destiny of the Roman people, regarded as an immutable law of nature, the utter insignificance of the individual either expressed or implied, are ideas that figure prominently in the literature of ancient Rome. It has been truly said that Rome attained its greatness without great men. Almost from its remotest beginnings it was like an organism in which each separate cell, though incapable of life by itself, performs its function as part of a whole and contributes to its life and growth. In this case the cell, as we may designate each individual moral entity, though conscious in a sense of a life apart, was powerless to modify the whole organism.
To what extent the Roman emperors took their apotheosis seriously we have scant means of knowing. It is well established that a few of them regarded it as a huge joke. But it is beyond question that on the great mass of the people it had a most deleterious effect. How could it be otherwise, when some of them reached the lowest depths of degradation to which human nature could sink? When the monarch in his official capacity was recognized not only as the political and military head of the government but also its divine head, it is easy to imagine what the effect of such a recognition must be upon the average Roman, in contracting his spiritual outlook. As long as the gods were mere abstract qualities, or even to some extent personal beings like those of the Greeks, there was a sort of indistinctness in which they were veiled that did not invite imitation. But a deified emperor was, or had been, a creature of flesh and blood; no matter what he might do, there would be many ready to tread in his footsteps, so far as they could. The pernicious influence of the ancient mythology engaged the attention of thoughtful men from the remotest times. How much worse, then, would this influence be when the vilest that tradition reported of the gods was actually done by men in flesh and blood. “Like priest, like people,” is a true saying even when both priest and people are pagans.
Aside from the restraints of religion, there is, in modern times, in all civilized countries, a certain restraining influence exercised by public opinion that keeps the rich, who are inclined to a lax personal morality, within reasonable bounds. But so far as we can discover, the inhibitive force of public opinion in Rome upon the individual in the matter of ethics was very slight, especially under the empire. It is plain then where a debauched public sentiment placed no check upon any form of vice from without, and but few individuals yielded to moral restraints from within, the condition of society was such that it could hardly have been worse. We are sometimes inclined to wonder that so few protests were made by enlightened Romans against the deification of the emperors. The explanation may be found in the prevailing rationalism of the age. To the majority of those men one religion was just as good as another, and all religions were but forms of superstition. The persecutions directed against the early Christians were urged on the general ground that the failure to follow the multitude was a mark of treason against the government, and for this reason the best men were naturally the instigators. To perform the religious functions enjoined by the state was regarded as a mark of loyalty; to refuse, the badge of disloyalty. It is not necessary to go back to ancient Rome and to heathen religions to find parallels for treating the externals of worship as matters of indifference, or for requiring the subject, under penalties, to conform to the creed of the sovereign.
When we come to speak of the relation of Seneca to Christianity, but especially of his conversion by St. Paul, a thesis laboriously defended by more than one modern writer, we cannot do better than to transcribe a passage from Merivale setting forth clearly the courses that led men into a very natural error. After calling attention to the fact that both Seneca and Paul were moral reformers, he proceeds: “There is so much in their principles, so much even in their language, which agrees together, so that one has been thought, though it must be allowed without adequate reason, to have borrowed directly from the other. But the philosopher, be it remembered, discoursed to a large and not inattentive audience, and surely the soil was not all unfruitful on which this seed was scattered, when he proclaimed that _God dwells not in temples of wood or stone, nor wants the ministration of human hands; that He has no delight in the blood of victims; that He is near to all His creatures; that His spirit resides in men’s hearts; that all men are truly His offspring; that we are members of one body, which is God or nature; that men must believe in God before they can approach Him; that the true service of God is to be like unto Him; that all men have sinned, and none performed all the works of the law; that God is no respecter of nations, ranks, or conditions, but all, barbarian and Roman, bond and free, are alike under His all-seeing providence._ St. Paul enjoined submission and obedience even to the tyranny of Nero, and Seneca fosters no ideas subversive of political subjection. Endurance is the paramount virtue of the Stoic. To forms of government the wise man was wholly indifferent; they were among the external circumstances above which his spirit soared in serene self-contemplation.
We trace in Seneca no yearning for a restoration of political freedom, nor does he ever point to the senate, after the manner of the patriots of the day, as a legitimate check to the autocracy of the despot. The only mode, in his view, of tempering tyranny is to educate the tyrant himself in virtue. His was the self-denial of the Christians, but without their anticipated compensation. It seems impossible to doubt that in his highest flights of rhetoric—and no man ever recommended the unattainable with a finer grace—Seneca must have felt that he was laboring to build up a house without foundations; that his system, as Caius said of his style, was sand without lime. He was surely not unconscious of the inconsistency of his own position, as a public man and a minister, with the theories to which he had wedded himself; and of the impossibility of preserving in it the purity of his character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware that in the existing state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to men high in station; wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor minister became at once contemptible.
Both Cicero and Seneca were men of many weaknesses, and we remark them the more because both were pretenders to unusual strength of character: but while Cicero lapsed into political errors, Seneca cannot be absolved of actual crime. Nevertheless, if we may compare the greatest masters of Roman wisdom together, the Stoic will appear, I think, the more earnest of the two, the more anxious to do his duty for its own sake, the more sensible of the claims of mankind upon him for such precepts of virtuous living as he had to give. In an age of unbelief and compromise, he taught that Truth was positive and Virtue objective. He conceived, what never entered Cicero’s mind, the idea of improving his fellow creatures; he had, what Cicero had not, a heart for conversion to Christianity.”
Notwithstanding the many points of contact between the doctrines of the New Testament and the teachings of Seneca, no competent judge now holds that he was a Christian. The wonder is that there should ever have arisen any serious controversy on the subject. The very fact that Seneca’s faith underwent no change from first to last ought to be decisive. He did not pass through the experience of conversion; he shows no vicissitudes of intellectual or moral growth; he never wavered in his faith in philosophy, and in the power of man to attain the supreme good by mere force of will. Yet Seneca is, to the Christian, unquestionably, the most interesting personality that heathen antiquity has produced. His philosophy and his morality show, in a striking way, that a man may approach very close to the boundary line of Christianity without crossing it; without even knowing what is before him. The best thought of the age clearly proves that Greek philosophy had, in a sense, prepared a few noble minds for the reception of the ethical and altruistic precepts of the Gospel; but it was in no sense the harbinger of its spiritual doctrines.
It remains yet to consider briefly an institution which, while not peculiar to Rome, was, nevertheless, here characterized by some features that were unique in their influences for evil. Slavery rested like a horrible incubus upon the ancient world, though few persons seem to have been aware of it. It placed a curse upon labor and almost prevented the development of the mechanic arts. It seriously impeded the growth of the moral sentiments by the hindrances it placed in the way of free discussion, and by the opportunities it afforded the basely inclined for the gratification of carnal lusts. It placed a large part of the population virtually beyond the range of human sympathy by branding the expression of such sympathy as a symptom of treason. While it did these things everywhere, in Rome it made a people that were naturally coarse and brutal still more so, by placing within the easy reach of every slave-owner helpless objects upon which he could vent his rage, and whose services he could exploit in the most unfeeling manner. A lurid light is thrown on the barbarity of the Romans toward their slaves by an occurrence that took place in the later years of Seneca. A plain statement of the facts is more impressive than many pages of theory.
A prefect of the city, Pedanius Secundus by name, was murdered by one of his slaves and the criminal could not be apprehended. According to law, all the bondmen of the murdered man, four hundred in number, were to be put to death. The populace, to their honor be it said, more humane than the senators, raised a tumult of protest against the execution of the sentence. Their sympathy availed nothing; the unhappy victims were led away to die. One of the senators even proposed a decree that all the freedmen belonging to the household of the late prefect should be transported beyond the confines of Italy. But the emperor, and that emperor was Nero, more humane than the optimates, alleged that the laws were already severe enough, and that it would be cruel to add to their severity by fresh enactments. The decree of expulsion was not passed. Yet Tacitus, from whom this narrative is taken, a writer who never tires of lamenting the degeneracy of his age, has not a word of compassion for the unfortunate sufferers, nor a syllable of condemnation for an atrocious law.
Still it must be said that some of the Roman philosophers, especially Cicero and Seneca, lay stress in their writings, upon the universal brotherhood of man. They have much to say about the intrinsic worth of the human soul. While these ideas are largely borrowed from the Greeks, or at least suggested by Greek philosophers, the Romans are singularly eloquent in proclaiming them. But slavery is never attacked by name. It is doubtful whether a passage can be found in any Greek or Roman writer explicitly asserting that it is wrong for one man to hold another in bondage. This may be due to the conviction that such a doctrine would be extremely dangerous among a large servile population, even if the government allowed entire freedom of speech. The New Testament is almost silent about slavery. Its authors did not wish to give utterance to any views that could be used by their enemies as the basis for a charge of disaffection with the “powers that be.” Again, slavery in some form was universal. Servitude was held to be the proper condition of a large part of the human race. No man who lived during the existence of the Roman empire would have ventured to predict the ultimate downfall of slavery. It is interesting to note in this connection that Basil Hall, writing as late as 1828, while admitting everything that could be alleged on the evils of slavery, thought that to do away with it seemed “so completely beyond the reach of any human exertions that I consider the abolition of slavery as one of the most profitless of all possible subjects of discussion.”
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.