Sejanus, Gaetulicus, and Seneca

Author(s): Zeph Stewart

Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 74, No. 1 (1953), pp. 70-85
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/292587
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 SEJANUS, GAETULICUS, AND SENECA.
The many biographers of the younger Seneca have found
scanty and imprecise evidence for his life and activities prior
to his exile in the first year of Claudius' reign (41 A.D.).1
His earliest extant work, the Consolatio ad Marciam, is now
usually dated in the preceding year,2 and although his remaining
writings are often personal in tone and the third most extensive
of any pagan Latin author, they have given for the earlier period
no more than scattered indications or clues. Place of birth, early
training, poor health, a trip to Egypt, family relations, an un-
dated quaestorship: this is the meagre harvest which the literary
historians have been able to glean from his works.3 Other
ancient sources have nothing to add, except for a novelistic
anecdote in Dio Cassius of a brush with Caligula.4 On the politi-
cal and social activities which led, when Seneca was over forty
and already prominent,5 to his exile in connection with one
sister of Caligula and to his recall eight years later through the
influence of another there has seemed to be no information.
Modern writers on Seneca have therefore confined them-
selves to piecing together the explicit evidence from his writings
and have in this way composed a sketchy account of his first
forty or more years. Such a method had led very nearly to final
results as early as 1490 (though confusion between the elder
and younger Senecas still made difficulties), and after the work
1 The most
important biographies before 1900 are: Paulus Pompilius,
Vita Senecae (Rome, 1490); Justus Lipsius, De Vita et Scriptis L.
Annaei Senecae (Amsterdam, 1605); Alfred Gercke, Seneca-Studien, in
Neue Jahrbiicher fir Classische Philologie, Suppl.-Band XXII (Leipzig,
1896). Some of the better known of this century are: Carlo Pascal,
Seneca (Catania, 1906); Rene Waltz, Vie de Seneque (also issued under
title Vie Politique de Seneque) (Paris, 1909); Concetto Marchesi,
Seneca (Messina, 1920); Francis Holland, Seneca (London, 1920);
Paul Faider, ttudes sur Seneque (Gand, 1921), with good enumera-
tion of biographies since the fifteenth century, pp. 132-5, and critical
edition of Pompilius, pp. 281-323.
2 See below, note 78.
3 Texts and discussion in Faider, pp. 155-72.
4 Discussed below,
pp. 80-1.
6 Turn maxime placens, Suetonius says of him at about this period,
Caligula, 53.
70
 SEJANUS, GAETULICUS, AND SENECA. 71
of Lipsius scholars have done little more than to repeat his
conclusions, often less accurately or less completely. Some, like
Marchesi and Holland, have merely translated the appropriate
passages from Seneca; others, like Waltz, have interpolated with
pure invention what they imagine the life of a person like Seneca
might have been; at least one writer 6 has solved an imaginary
problem (why Seneca did not give a more circumstantial account
of his shipwreck) with a fantastic answer (Seneca suffered from
permanent partial amnesia as a result of seeing his uncle's
corpse at the time); a few, like Gercke and, most completely,
Faider, have collected and evaluated intelligently what has
seemed to them all the evidence available. None of this evidence,
however, gives an adequate background for the events of the year
41 A. D., and only Waltz has vaguely seen that Seneca must
have had some part in "le groupe des soeurs de Caius." 7
More than enough evidence, however, to fill in this mysterious
background lies waiting unnoticed in the Senecan corpus.
Failure to recognize it springs from failure to recognize certain
inconsistencies and problems, partly internal, partly evident
through comparison with the historians. To take a striking
example: in his Consolatio ad Marciam Seneca makes a violent
attack on Sejanus with such terms as " perfidum militem." 8 Yet
in three other works he mentions him without animus.9 This is
all the more extraordinary in that the elder Seneca says that
Attalus, who was one of his son's most influential masters, was
forced into exile by Sejanus.l? An attack on the latter at least
in connection with Attalus might have been expected. In the
same passage of the Ad Marciam, further, he speaks with con-
tempt of Sejanus' cliens, Satrius Secundus, through whom
Marcia's father, Cremutius Cordus, had been destroyed. But it
is known from Tacitus that Cordus was the victim of two of
Sejanus' clientes, Satrius Secundus and Pinarius Natta.11 So
it is perhaps with a little surprise that we find in one of Seneca's
6 L. Cantarelli, " Per l'amministrazione e la storia
dell'Egitto Romano,
II" Aegyptus, VIII (1927), pp. 89-96.
7Vie de Seneque, p. 68, n. 1.
8
22, 4-5.
9De Vita Beata, 11,11; Ep., 55,3; Nat. Quaest., I, 1,3.
10
Suasoriae, 2, 12.
11Ann., IV, 34.
 ZEPH STEWART.

letters a non-committal reference to Pinarius Natta as a social

wit in terms which suggest that he might have been of the same
circle as the author.12 These two inconsistencies are in them-
selves not unnatural and would hardly call for explanation, were
there not other evidence linking Seneca to a prominent group
which had been favorable to Sejanus. It will be worth while to
look more carefully at some of the figures who appear in Seneca's
pages.
The greatest friend of the philosopher's last years was
Lucilius Junior, to whom his latest works were dedicated. Not
very much younger than Seneca,l3 Lucilius had been a friend as
early as the exile, when the dangerous enmity of Narcissus and
Messalina had not affected his loyalty.l4 This early connection
has not been sufficiently noted, for it might have suggested that
Seneca too had known well another friend for whom, as Seneca
says, Lucilius had risked his life only two years before, Cn.
Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus.15 Now Gaetulicus did not make
his first appearance on the stage of Roman history in connection
with his abortive attempt against Caligula in 39 A. D., in which
he lost his life and to which Seneca here refers. In 26 A. D. he
had shared the consulship with C. Calvisius Sabinus,l6 later
governor of Pannonia, whose wife Cornelia, it has been plausibly
suggested, may have been Gaetulicus' sister.17 At the death of
Sejanus in 31 A. D. Gaetulicus was commander of the legions in
Upper Germany. His father-in-law, L. Apronius, was the Legate
of Lower Germany. Both had been given their posts during the
ascendancy of Sejanus.18 This was not, however, the full extent
of their connections with the fallen minister, for Gaetulicus'
daughter had been engaged to Sejanus' eldest son (who was
executed soon after his father),19 and Apronius' son, L. Apronius
Caesianus, was accused of maiestas in connection with the affair,
but was pardoned.20In 34 A. D. Gaetulicus was himself accused
(probably of treason) for his connections with Sejanus, but the
12 14 Nat.
Ep., 122, 11. Quaest., IVa, Praef. 15.
13 Ep., 35, 2. 15 Ibid.
6 Tacitus, Ann., IV, 46.
17 Groag, in P. I. R.2, II, p. 85, no. 354.
1s Tacitus, Ann., IV, 73; VI, 30; Dio Cassius, LIX, 22, 5.
19 Tacitus, Ann., VI, 30; V, 8-9.
20 Dio Cassius, LVIII, 19, 1-2.
 SEJANUTS, GAETULICUS, AND SENECA. 73

charges were suppressed, reportedly because of his vigorous

defence.21
In 32 A. D., furthermore, five other members of the nobility
were charged with treason, among them Gaetulicus' former
colleague (and perhaps brother-in-law), Calvisius Sabinus.22
Now the latter is not mentioned in any of Seneca's works,23but
two of the men who were accused with him are: Mamercus
Scaurus and Annius Pollio are in fact introduced together in a
manner which shows clearly that Seneca had taken his anecdote
from the circle in which they moved.24 A witty remark of
Scaurus quoted elsewhere again indicates that it was this group
which supplied Seneca with such gossip.25 It can now no longer
seem mere chance which led him to quote Pinarius Natta,
another member of the Sejanus circle. The remaining two of
the accused nobles, Annius Vinicianus and Appius Junius
Silanus, will have significant parts later in our story. All five
were saved, though Scaurus was later accused again and killed
himself.26
It seems possible, therefore, to associate Seneca, partly
through his own writings and partly through his friendship with
Lucilius, with a number of the prominent friends of Sejanus.
And this connection is entirely one-sided: not one of the known
enemies of Sejanus appears in his works except Cremutius
Cordus in the Consolatio ad Marciam.27
21Tacitus, Ann., VI, 30. It is even
probable that Gaetulicus and
Sejanus were blood relatives, since the latter's mother was a daughter
of a Cornelius Lentulus, but the relationships of the many Cornelii
Lentuli are too little known for any assurance of this point. See
P. I. R.2, II, p. 328, table.
22
Tacitus, Ann., VI, 9.
23As
Groag implies (P.I.R.2, II, p. 83, no. 351), he is surely not
the Calvisius Sabinus of Ep., 27, 5-8.
24 De
Ben., IV, 31, 3-5.
25 Ep., 29, 6. Mamercus Aemilius Scaurus and C. Annius Pollio
were consuls suffecti during the ascendancy of Sejanus, the former in 21
A. D., the latter in 21 or 22 A. D. For the coss. suff. of this period, many
of whom must have been of the Sejanian circle, see A. Degrassi,
"Osservazioni su alcuni consoli suffetti dell'eta di Augusto e Tiberio,"
Epigraphica, 1946, pp. 34-9 and the informative remarks of F. W.
Adams, "Some Ob'servations on the Consular Fasti in the Early
Empire," A. J. A., LV (1951), pp. 239-41.
26 In 34 A.D. (Tacitus, Ann., VI, 29; Dio Cassius,
LVIII, 24, 3-5).
27Asinius Gallus (Ep., 55, 3) was perhaps an enemy of Sejanus, but
74 ZEPH STEWART.

An attempt to explain the special position of this latter work

might well start with an examination of what happened to the
surviving group of Seianiani, especially those associated with
Gaetulicus, after the death of Tiberius. Gaetulicus continued to
hold his command in Germany; his father-in-law was perhaps
dead: nothing is heard of him after 34 A. D.; Calvisius Sabinus
kept his province of Pannonia; Pomponius Secundus, who had
been kept under house arrest since 31 A. D. for shielding Aelius
Gallus, was released; 28 M. Vinicius Quartinus, a friend 29 and
probablya close relative of Annius Vinicianus,30had been married
in 33 A. D. to Julia Livilla,31 one of Caligula's sisters, and was
now a part of the royal household. (Several strands meet in the
person of Vinicius: not only was he the husband of Julia
Livilla and connected with Vinicianus, but he also is familiarly
mentioned by Seneca in the same passage in which he quotes
Pinarius Natta); 3` Annius Vinicianus himself must have been
associated with Caligula by this time, perhaps through his
friendship with Aemilius Lepidus.33 But it is Lepidus who now
takes the center of the stage. His origins are uncertain; 34
possibly he was a brother of the notorious Aemilia Lepida,35the
wife of Caligula's brother Drusus, who herself had been an agent
for Sejanus.36 By the beginning of the reign, at any rate, he was
an intimate of Caligula's and was soon to marry the emperor's
favorite sister, Drusilla.37 Caligula's passionate devotion to his
his imprisonment was surely not Sejanus' doing, and he outlived the
minister (Tacitus, Ann., VI, 23; Dio Cassius, LVIII, 23, 6).
28 Dio
Cassius, LIX, 6, 2. This Aelius Gallus was not Sejanus' son,
as was once thought (e.g. by E. Ciaceri, Tiberio [Rome, 1944], p. 318),
but probably a very close relative through adoption. See A. Stein,
Die Prdfekten von Agypten (Bern, 1950), pp. 16-17 and 195, n. 8. The
names of Sejanus' sons are known from the Fasti Ostienses.
29 Josephus, Ant., XIX, 251.
30And so also connected with Vinicianus' father, Annius Pollio:
Groag in P. I. R.2, I, p. 115, no. 677; I, p. 125, no. 701.
31 Tacitus, Ann., VI, 15.
2
Ep., 122, 12.
33 Josephus, Ant., XIX, 20 and 49.
34 Balsdon (The Emperor Gaius [Oxford, 1934],
p. 42 and genealogical
chart) and the Camb. Anc. Hist. (X, Table 1) make him, without
evidence, the cousin of Caligula, which is possible.
35Groag in P.I. R.2, I, p. 61, no. 371.
36Tacitus, Ann., VI, 40; Dio Cassius, LVIII, 3, 8.
37 Dio Cassius, LIX, 11, 1 and 22, 6; Suetonius, Caligula, 36, 1.
 SEJANUS, GAETULICUS, AND SENECA. 75

three sisters, Agrippina, Drusilla, and Livilla, whom he asso-

ciated in his rule and with whom he is reported to have had
incestuous relations, is well known.38 Lepidus became a part of
this close family group and after Drusilla's death was named by
Caligula as his successor.39 It is difficult to judge whether
Lepidus had been connected with the group of Sejanus' friends
before the beginning of the reign or not. His friendship with
Vinicianus and eventual conspiracy with Gaetulicus would
suggest so. His friendship with Avillius Flaccus suggests the
opposite.40
It was apparently not nearly so clear to Caligula as it is
to modern historians that Sejanus, not Tiberius, had been the
real enemy of his mother, Agrippina, and of his brother, Nero,
for at the very time that he was visiting the places of their death
and honoring their memory, he was aiding and maintaining
Sejanus' former friends. The anomalous position of his brother
Drusus in the conspiracy may have been a confusing factor.
Just as noteworthy, at any rate, as the favor which the emperor
was now obviously showing to the former Seianiani (Gaetulicus'
brother-in-law, L. Apronius Caesianus, was Consul-designate in
38 A. D.) 41 was the fate of Sejanus' former enemies. Within a
year after the beginning of the new reign his greatest opponent
and the agent of his destruction, Naevius Sertorius Macro, was
forced to suicide.42 This act of supposed ingratitude on the part
of Caligula has been something of a mystery to historians,43but
would be the logical reflection of a return to influence of Sejanus'
old partisans. One of Macro's most prominent friends was
recalled from office and condemned before the end of this same
year: Avillius Flaccus, governor of Egypt since soon after
Sejanus' death, was accused, not of maladministration, but of
38 Dio
Cassius, LIX, 3, 4; Suetonius, Caligula, 15, 3; 24, 1; 36, 1.
An interesting sidelight in T. Mommsen, " Iusiurandum in C. Caesarem
Augustum," Gesammelte Schriften, VIII, pp. 461-6.
8' Dio Cassius, LIX, 22, 6-7; cf. Suetonius, Caligula, 24, 1.
40 Philo, In
Flaccum, 151; 181.
41 Dio
Cassius, LIX, 13, 2 and P.I. R.2, I, p. 190, no. 972 init.
42 Dio
Cassius, LIX, 10, 6; Suetonius, Caligula, 26, 1.
48 See
Balsdon, The Emperor Gaius, pp. 38-9, where Philo's fantasies
(Legatio ad Gaium, 52-7) are in effect accepted.
 ZEPH STEWART.

plotting with Macro and Tiberius Gemellus. He was banished

and later executed.44
In the middle of 38 A. D. Drusilla died.45 Owing to the loss
of Tacitus' account of this whole period it is hard to give
exact dates for the subsequent events and equally hard always to
distinguish cause and effect. It is clear, however, that at some
point Agrippina entered into adulterous relations with Lepidus,46
that Lepidus joined forces with Gaetulicus in a conspiracy
against Caligula,47and that Livilla was also involved,48whether
through her sister and Lepidus or through her husband,
Vinicius. It is also clear that in the year 39 A. D. Caligula for
some reason changed his opinion about Tiberius. In a speech
to the Senate he defended his predecessor, charged the Senate
(and thus the creatures of Sejanus) with responsibility for the
injustices of the previous reign, and revived the law of maiestas.49
In a passage whose significance has not been sufficiently recog-
nized Dio Cassius says of this and the succeeding period, "In
these and the following days many of the leading figures [were]
condemned [to death] (for even of those who had been released
from prison a large number were punished for the very same
crimes for which they had been imprisoned under Tiberius)." 50
This is as clear an indication as one could hope to find that a
reversal now took place of the policy of amnesty toward the
sympathizers of Sejanus who had been prosecuted in the last
years of Tiberius. The suicide at this juncture of Calvisius
Sabinus, recalled from Pannonia, and of his wife Cornelia
corroborates further the view that it was this particular group
which was involved.51 So closely associated with Gaetulicus
during his lifetime, these two were not long to precede him
in death.
Only by guesswork can one say whether Caligula finally dis-
covered the truth about Sejanus' history and by his persecutions
44Philo, In Flaccum, 10-23; 151; 185.
45Dio Cassius, LIX, 11, 1.
46
Suetonius, Caligula, 24; Dio Cassius, LIX, 22, 7; Tacitus, Ann.,
XIV, 2.
47 Suetonius, Caligula, 24; Claudius, 9.
48 Dio Cassius, LIX, 22, 6-9; Suetonius, Caligula, 24, 3.
49 Dio Cassius, LIX, 16, 1-8.
60 Dio Cassius, LIX, 13, 2.
51 Dio Cassius, LIX, 18, 4.
 SEJANUS, GAETULICUS, AND SENECA. 77

frightened the remaining Seianiani into conspiracy or whether

he discovered a conspiracy and through investigating it first
learned of facts which changed his attitude about Sejanus.
Possibly his enlightenment proceeded in both matters pari passu.
It is unlikely that he first learned the facts from the papers
of the dead Macro,52for the latter had killed himself a year
before the change appears to have taken place. It is perhaps
significant that Domitius Afer, who had under Sejanus prose-
cuted two relatives and partisans of Caligula's mother and who
was, probably on this account, prosecuted for maiestas by
Caligula, effected a mysterious reconciliation with the emperor
and was created Consul and left in Rome when Caligula started
north to crush the Lepidus-Gaetulicus conspiracy.53 Tacitus'
account of his character would support the view that he gave
at least a hint that his former Sejanian associates were not to
be trusted.54 Whatever the source of his information, Caligula
hurried to Gaul in the late summer of 39 A. D., apparently
taking Lepidus, Agrippina, and Livilla with him.55 By early
autumn Gaetulicus and Lepidus were dead, Agrippina and
Livilla in exile. Three daggers taken from the conspirators were
sent to the temple of Mars Ultor in Rome,56 and the Arval
Brotherhood sacrificed on October 27th ob detecta nefaria con-
<silia in C. Caesarem Aug. Germanic>um On. Lentuli Gae-
<tulici>.57 Suetonius on the other hand speaks of the affair as
the causa Aemili Lepidi.58 Despite this violent end of some of
its leading members, the group whose history we have been
following was not yet wholly extinct nor divided: fifteen months
later in the final, successful conspiracy of January, 41 A. D. one
of the chief participants was Annius Vinicianus, who in turn
supported M. Vinicius as Caligula's successor.59
Before trying to reconstruct the events of 40 A. D. after the
death of Gaetulicus and Lepidus (especially difficult since Dio
52
As M. P. Charlesworth (in Camb. Anc. Hist., X, p. 657) suggested.
3 Dio Cassius, LIX, 19-20; cf. Tacitus, Ann.,
IV, 52 and 66.
4 Tacitus, Ann., IV, 52; XIV, 19.
5 Dio Cassius, LIX,
21, 1-2; 22, 3-9; Suetonius, Caligula, 39, 1; 43.
6 Dio Cassius, LIX, 22, 7; Suetonius,
Caligula, 24, 3.
C. I. L., VI, 2029; Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium, p. XLIX.
8
Caligula, 24, 3.
9
Josephus, Ant., XIX, 52 and 251 (text as emended by Niese).
78 ZEPH STEWART.

Cassius also is here lacking as a source except through his

epitomizers) we should examine two other, more tentative indi-
cations of Seneca's connection with the Seianiani in the earlier
period. In his Consolatio ad Helviam he tells of an uncle who
was Prefect of Egypt for sixteen years, whom he visited in
Egypt, and who died on a sea voyage while being accompanied
by his wife and Seneca.60 The language of the passage has
suggested to most scholars that the uncle died on the ship on
his way home from his post to Italy. Only in recent times has
this Prefect been identified as C. Galerius and the dates of his
tenure fixed probably from 16 or 17 A. D. to 31 or 32 A. D.61
The period of his office, then, corresponds exactly to the as-
cendancy of Sejanus. So far as is known, furthermore, his pre-
decessor as Prefect had been Sejanus' father. And there appear,
lastly, to be unusual circumstances connected with his departure
from office. This departure corresponds in date, first of all,
with the downfall of Sejanus, and although some caution must
be used in relating all political events of the year 31 A. D. with
that momentous change, yet a simultaneous change in the second
most important imperial office appears significant. Secondly,
the succession after Galerius may have been unusual. Dio
(LVIII, 19, 6) speaks of a Vitrasius Pollio dying in office at
about this time and being replaced by a Vice-Prefect, not
from among the equestrian officials, but an imperial freedman,
Hiberus, the only one ever known to hold this office. Since a
Vitrasius Pollio was Prefect eight years later, however, this
may be a confusion in Dio, and Hiberus may have followed
60
Cons. ad Helviam, 19, 2-7. Seneca's trip to Egypt has been deduced
from indirect evidence (see Faider, Ptudes sur Seneque, p. 167, n. 3)
and has been the subject of some interesting reconstructions and
fantasies, e.g. H. de la Ville de Mirmont, "La date du voyage de
Seneque en igypte," Rev. Phil., XXXIII (1909), pp. 163-78 and Can-
tarelli, article cited in note 6 above.
61The scholarship relating to the identification of Galerius with
Seneca's uncle has been notably sloppy. L. Cantarelli made the original
suggestion in Rom. Mitt., XIX (1904), pp. 15-22. On page 21 the date
of the guiding inscription (C. I. G., 4711 = Cagnat, I. G. Rom., I, no.
1150) should read 23 A.D., as also in Aegyptus, VIII (1927), p. 91,
n. 5, where the reference to Cagnat is also misprinted. In O. W. Rein-
muth's note on Galerius in "The Prefect of Egypt" (Klio, Beiheft
XXXIV [1935]), p. 5, n. 6, read 23 for 27. The most recent and
complete treatment is in A. Stein, Die Prifekten von Agypten, p. 25.
 SEJANUS, GAETULICUS, AND SENECA. 79

Galerius.62 Lastly, Galerius did not live to return to Rome. It

would appear that at Sejanus' death Tiberius did not trust the
administration in Egypt. One is reminded of the sudden death
of the knight Mela, who is thought to have taken poison when
recalled by Tiberius on charges of maladministration of his
procuratorship.63 The date and circumstances both point to a
connection between Galerius and Sejanus. The political influence
possessed by Galerius' widow at Rome 64 would then probably
have been among the members of the pro-Sejanian party. It is
just possible that these facts would also explain what has been
always something of a mystery-the lateness of Seneca and his
brother Novatus in entering the political cursus.65
One of the elder Seneca's closest friends was Junius Gallio,
an intimate of the family and later the adoptive father of
Novatus.66 Now Gallio made a tactless speech in the Senate
about the Urban Cohorts shortly after the death of Sejanus and
paid for his lack of tact first by exile and later by arrest at
Rome for an unknown period 67 (but the parallel with Pomponius
[above, p. 74] suggests until the beginning of Caligula's reign).
It has never been explicitly emphasized that the reason for such
severity was not Tiberius' unreasonableness, but rather, as
Tacitus implies in Tiberius' words (satelles Seiani), Gallio's
close association with Sejanus and his friends. This would make
still another link between the Senecas and that group. Though
the political sympathies of the elder Seneca are not easy to
determine from his own works, a pro-Sejanian bias is suggested
by his attack on the accuser of Mamercus Scaurus.68
We are now in a position to review what must have happened

6a See Reinmuth, loc. cit., p. 5 and Stein, op. cit., pp. 25-6. Though
Reinmuth is extreme in denying without proof the evidence of Dio, the
eventual replacement of Galerius by Flaccus looks like the
replacement
of a Sejanus man by a Macro man.
63 Pliny, Nat. Hist.,
XIX, 110. This was possibly a relative of
Seneca, whose brother Mela was also an equestrian procurator (Tacitus,
Ann., XVI, 17). The name is uncommon (P. I. R., s. .).
64Cons. ad
Helviam, 19, 2.
65 Seneca, Controversiae, 2, Praef.
4; Waltz, Vie de Se&nque, pp. 54-5.
66 Seneca, Controversiae and
Suasoriae, passim (see Miiller's index);
P. I. R., II, p. 237, no. 494.
67
Tacitus, Ann., VI, 3; Dio Cassius, LVIII, 18, 3-4.
I8
Suasoriae, 2, 22.
80 ZEPH STEWART.

in the year 40 A. D. After the failure of the Gaetulicus-

Lepidus conspiracy we may suppose that their circle (which
seems in nucleus to have been Seianiani, but had grown to
include others, such as Agrippina and Livilla) was the object
of suspicion and persecution. Lucilius faced torture at this time,
or immediately before the discovery of the plot (as Seneca's
language suggests).69 It is hard to believe, in view of the other
connections now established, that he was not already one of
Seneca's friends. It is interesting to note that Seneca preserves
in his works the names of more victims of Caligula, probably
from this period, than any other writer.70 Of particular interest
among these victims is Julius Graecinus, who must have died in
late 39 A. D. or 40 A. D., as Balsdon has shown, not in 38 A. D.,
as Tacitus implies.71 He is another contemporary whom Seneca
quotes familiarly on two occasions, once, significantly enough, in
conjunction with Mamercus Scaurus,72which would suggest that
his connection too with this group dated from the earlier
period.
Against this background of conspiracy and suspicion in which
the circle of Gaetulicus-to use a convenient term-was now
involved it will be illuminating to examine two important
passages, one from Dio Cassius, the other from Seneca. Dio 73
tells us that Seneca too was the object of Caligula's disordered
jealousy, was condemned to death by the emperor after a too
brilliant speech, and was saved by a courtesan who persuaded
69 Nat.
Quaest., IV a, Praef. 15. The phrases non mihi in amicitia
Gaetulici Gaius fidem eripuit, cervicem pro fide opposui, and pro amicis
omnia timui suggest that Gaetulicus was still alive at the time. It is to
be noted, further, that in Dio's account Seneca's own narrow escape
(see below) comes before the death of Lepidus and Gaetulicus. There
may then have been inquisitions leading up to the discovery of the
plot, but the apparent suddenness of Caligula's move against the con-
spirators is not consonant with a lengthy prelude. The investigations
would more naturally have come afterwards. Caution in attempts to
fix exact chronology is here again to be recommended.
70 See
Balsdon, pp. 98-9.
71 Balsdon, p. 38; Tacitus, Agricola, 4. Balsdon makes the unproved
assertion that Graecinus was alive at the birth of his son Agricola
(June, 40 A. D., according to Tacitus, Agricola, 44). He must, at any
rate, have been alive at his conception.
72 Ep., 29, 6.
73 LIX, 19, 7.
 SEJANUS, GAETULICUS, AND SENECA. 81

Caligula that his victim was in such bad health he would die
soon anyway. Though Dio claims Seneca's complete innocence
of any suspicion of crime, the details of this anecdote have
rightly been the object of considerable doubt,74but no one has
emphasized that in its details it might be no more than a con-
flation from two other passages: Caligula's unfavorable judg-
ment of Seneca's style is known from Suetonius,75 while in one
of Seneca's letters there appears the example of those "many
for whom illness has delayed death and who have found sal-
vation in appearing to be in a hopeless condition." 76 Without
trying to identify the originator of these details, we can safely
say that the sources are apparent. All that is left then is the
report that Seneca was in danger of losing his life under Caligula.
But this is hardly a surprise, once we have recognized all the
evidence for his long association with the suspect circle of the
Seianiani.
An unrecognized allusion to this same period is to be found
in Seneca's own Consolatio ad Helviam. In the second chapter he
enumerates, apparently chronologically, all the blows of fortune
which his mother has suffered from the time of her birth until
his own exile in 41 A. D. After speaking of the death of the
elder Seneca, which is generally placed in about 39 A. D.,77 he
says, "I pass over all those dangers, all those fears which you
endured as one after another they assailed you," and he then
proceeds to the most recent events. These words have never
been thought worthy of comment, probably on the ground that
they were "pure rhetoric," and yet they must surely refer to
the period when the circle of which Seneca and his mother were
a part was suffering from the well-founded
suspicions of
Caligula. It is not unnatural, furthermore, that his language
here should be so vague, for he had good reason when he wrote
this Consolatio not to emphasize his connection with the
group
which had included Livilla and Agrippina.
To return at last to the Consolatio ad Marciam: datable on

74Marchesi, Seneca, p. 11; Faider, Etudes, p. 166, n. 3; Balsdon,

op. cit., pp. 55-6.
76Caligula, 53, 2.
76Ep.,
78, 6.
7 Rossbach, in R.-E., I, col.
2238; Teuffel-Kroll-Skutsch, Rom. Lit.,
II7, ? 269; Faider, op. cit., p. 168.

6
82 ZEPH STEWART.

internal grounds to 40 A. D.,78 it was written, as Seneca says

in his introduction,79 to console Marcia for the death of a son
which had occurred more than two years before. Although there
is no explicit explanation for this long delay, the reason is
implied in Seneca's short account of the various sources of
consolation which had proved worthless: he might have thought
that these other factors would have made his type of consolation
unnecessary, but now sees that Marcia is still so sorely mourning
that one is more than ever needed.80 Though this explanation
has seemed to scholars a bit weak, no better one has been sug-
gested, and Albertini concluded somewhat lamely, " II est plus
simple d'admettre que les choses se sont passees comme Seneque
le dit lui-meme." 81 If in the year 40 A. D., however, Seneca was
in considerable danger because of his association with friends of
Sejanus, what would be more natural for him than to try to
demonstrate that he had friends in the other camp as well and
incidentally to attack Sejanus and his hangers-on and praise
their enemy, Cremutius Cordus? The use of literary forms for
personal and political ends quite external to their avowed object
was no novelty in literary history and was especially prevalent
at Rome in this period: the lines on Marcellus in the Aeneid,
certain poems of Horace, the Remedium Amoris and some
Epistulae ex Ponto of Ovid, the Consolatio ad Polybium of
Seneca himself, and Martial's epigrams on the games at the
Flavian amphitheater are among the most obvious examples.
This indeed was the purpose of the Consolatio ad Marciam, a
purpose which explains its composition three years after the loss
for which it consoles and, more importantly, its attitude towards
Sejanus and his friends so much at odds with the other notices
in Seneca's works.82
78 The fact that it alone of all the admitted
early works contains
no attack on Caligula seems to me conclusive evidence for its compo-
sition before the death of that emperor. The arguments of Albertini
(La Composition dans Seneque [Paris, 1923], pp. 14-15) for the year
40 A. D. are convincing.
79
1,7.
80 1,8.
81R. Pichon, "Les travaux recents sur la
chronologie des oeuvres de
Seneque," Journal des Savants, 1912, p. 221; Albertini, op. cit., p. 16.
82 The unsuccessful efforts of W. L. Friedrich (De Senecae libro qui
inscribitur de constantia sapientis [Darmstadt, 1909]; "Zu Seneca de
 SEJANUS, GAETULICUS, AND SENECA. 83

It seems unlikely that this literary ruse should have been

entirely responsible for saving Seneca. It is possible, as the
story in Dio hints, that he had a friend in court who was still
considered trustworthy by Caligula and who interceded on his
behalf. One known figure, Crispus Passienus, possessed all the
necessary qualifications, and the hypothesis of his intervention-
this is pure speculation-would explain why a man who was
notable for his friendship with Caligula 83 should have been the
subject of an extraordinary tribute by Seneca in that same
Preface to the fourth book of the Natural Questions in which
Lucilius' loyalty to Gaetulicus is extolled.84 Crispus' father
seems to have been a friend of Seneca the Elder; 85 this might
have been the origin of friendship between the sons.
Whatever the reason for his survival, Seneca outlived Caligula,
though the experiences of those years return again and again
in his writings-the figure of a monstrous emperor and his
victims. And from the associations which had harrassed him at
this time he had not yet escaped. When, a few months after her
recall from exile, Livilla fell under the suspicious envy of the
new empress, Messalina, it was Seneca, long a well-known mem-
ber, as we now can see, of her circle, who was accused of
immoral connections with her and sent into exile.86 Livilla
constantia sapientis," Wochenschr. kl. Phil., XXVIII [1911],
pp. 1098-
1102; "Zu Senecas Nat. Quaest. IV Praef. 7 und 8," B. phil. Woch-
enschr., XXXIV [1914], pp. 1213-16, and articles on De Beneficiis,
ibid., same year. See Albertini, op. cit., pp. 11-13) are a
warning
against attempts to find contemporary allusions in Seneca's works. It is
nonetheless interesting that in the Consolatio ad
Marciam, 2 and 3,
Seneca draws a vivid contrast between Augustus' wife,
Livia, and sister,
Octavia, most unfavorable to the latter. This lengthy glorification of
Tiberius' mother (at the expense of Caligula's other
great-grandmother,
wife of Marc Antony) would reflect
admirably the change in Caligula's
attitude toward Tiberius and that side of his ancestral line. The hostile
or contemptuous use of the adjective Aegyptius
(14, 2; 20, 4) may be a
flattering allusion to Caligula's difficulties with the Alexandrians in
the last year of his reign.
83 Scholiast ad
luvenalem, 4, 81.
84 Nat. Quaest.,
IVa, Praef. 6.
86 Seneca, Controv., 3,
Praef. 10.
s8 Quasi conscius adulteriorum Iuliae is the
ambiguous phrase of
Scholiast ad luvenalem, 5, 109. Faider (op.
cit., p. 189, n. 3) piously
but wrongly thought that the word quasi attenuated the
charge. This
84 ZEPH STEWART.

herself died in exile shortly afterwards. Once again the loyalty

of Lucilius to members of his old group was tested, as it was to
be a year later in 42 A. D., when one of the two survivors of the
five nobles accused together in 32 A. D., Appius Silanus, fell a
victim, like Seneca and Livilla, of the new enemies, Messalina
and Narcissus.87 And still another test of his loyalty came when
Vinicianus, in a final attempt to throw off these opponents, died
in the unsuccessful conspiracy of 44 A. D.88 Only thirteen years
had passed since the death of Sejanus, and it should be hardly
surprising to find those who had been closely associated then still
in league now. Nor should it be any more surprising to find P.
Suillius Rufus, who had been unjustly treated during the
ascendancy of Sejanus (perhaps as a partisan of Germanicus-
Agrippina),89 now one of the chief instruments of Messalina and
Narcissus 90 and later the bitterest critic of Seneca.9' But
Seneca's trials as a member of this circle were almost over and
the rewards soon to begin. On her rise to power in 49 A. D.
after the death of Messalina one of Agrippina's first acts was to
recall the exile, arrange for his praetorship, and appoint him
tutor to her son Nero. We can now at last see clearly why it was
Seneca particularly on whom she felt she could count as a tried
and trusted aide.92

use of quasi as a substitute for ut (or better, Greek cs) to indicate

merely the grounds of a judgment without prejudice as to truth or
falsity is comparatively rare (not found in Lewis and Short's Harper's
Latin Dictionary, s. v.), but is documented in the Forcellini-De Vit
Lexicon, s. v., ? 9. It is interesting to note that the usage is especially
characteristic of Suetonius, from whom the scholium is probablyderived.
Conscius, as Marchesi (op. cit., p. 13, n. 2) says, may mean no more
than "cognizant," but it may also be a synonym of nocens, particeps,
or socius, as Spelthahn indicates (Thes. Ling. Lat., IV, p. 373). The
crucial word in the phrase, however, as my friend and teacher, A. D.
Nock, pointed out to me, is the plural adulteriorum. If the charge
described were adultery, the singular adulterii or a different phrase
would have been used. Adulteria is used often in Cicero and elsewhere
to mean " loose morals " or " immorality" (see Thes. Ling. Lat., s. v.).
87 Dio
Cassius, LX, 14; Suetonius, Claudius, 37, 2.
88 Dio Cassius, LX, 15.
Tacitus, Ann., IV, 31, and F. B. Marsh, Reign of Tiberius (Oxford,
89

1931), p. 172.
9 Tacitus, Ann., XI, 1-5; XIII, 43.
91Ibid., XIII, 42-3.
92 In view of the intimate and long-standing connection which has
 SEJANUS, GAETULICUS, AND SENECA. 85

Although this examination has, I believe, cleared up a certain

number of unknown or unevaluated quantities in the history of
the second quarter of the first century, its main interest lies
perhaps in the contribution it may make to an investigation of
Seneca's literary evolution. It has not been possible to show any
clear evolution of doctrine and theory in Seneca's prose works,93
no development in the sense in which Aristotle developed. There
are, on the other hand, some indications that the spirit of
opportunism which is so often present and sometimes so offen-
sive in his writings tends to disappear as a controlling factor in
the later works, as he makes a more genuine evaluation of the
importance of externals and gains a deeper feeling for his
relation to his cosmos, both in place and in time. Recognized,
now, as a work of pre-eminent opportunism, the Consolatio ad
Marciam stands at the beginning of this development, a mark
from which to measure its progress.94
ZEPH STEWART.
HARVARDUNIVERSITY.

been traced here, the charges of adultery against Seneca and Agrippina
(Dio Cassius, LXI, 10, 1; 12, 1) are hardly surprising.
93 Marchesi's attempt (op. cit., pp. 264-9) to show an evolution in
Seneca's concept of the divinity is fruitless. As Marchesi's own quota-
tions show (and see further Haase's Index in his edition of Seneca, s. v.
deus), God is described in the same terms in both early and later works.
94
I am greatly indebted in this paper to the careful criticisms and
suggestions of Professors A. D. Nock and Herbert Bloch.