Author: Christopher Star
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar
This book compares the thoughts of two philosophers who lived during the early days of
the Roman Empire. Lucius Annaeus Seneca and Petronius are said in this book to have
both been advisors to Emperor Nero, and traveled around the Bay of Naples during that
period.
Emperor Nero writes in letters 49-57 of his Moral Epistles about Seneca, and describes
him as a Stoic philosopher, tragedian and tutor. Meanwhile, Encolpius writes about the
other philosopher Petronius’ “amorality” in his book Satyricon.
Both collections of writings – Moral Epistles and Satyricon – are said by scholars to have been written around the years 62 CE and 66 CE (which stands for Common Era).
While Seneca and Petronius did not travel together, the author Christopher Star writes that “the form and content of their accounts are strikingly similar. Both authors pepper their highly polished prose with poetic quotations and compositions. Both narrations contain specific references to their environs…both provide vivid descriptions of the local
bathhouses and villas and the leisure activities of the inhabitants.”
Star writes that most readers familiar with Seneca and Petronius would contend that they sniped at each other and put a distance between themselves in their final years of life. The author further states that most people who have read about Seneca and Petronius, think about these two men as sworn enemies. And that their lives and philosophical
outlooks were “incommensurable” or far apart in quality and that their literary outputs were not comparable in quantity.
But Star contends that if we can “de-familiarize” Seneca and Petronius and “move away” from Seneca’s rigid Stoicism or the Satyricon’s chaotic ‘amorality’ the deeper connections between the two become more apparent.” He then goes on to enumerate many similarities between these two writers and philosophers during the early Roman era.
For example, he says that both of them used a first-person perspective in their writings. In relation to the peace and leisure provided by the Roman Empire, these two men positioned themselves similarly, being able to travel, study and write narratives of their adventures. Further, both Seneca and Petronius are able to “encapsulate, describe and in
short order, conquer and domesticate as many varieties of human experience as possible.”
Both of them deal with the problems of self-construction and presentation; both philosophers have dealt with the issues relating to conquering the self. Both wrestle with questions such as : how the body, soul and passions be brought in line with one’s desires; how the self can obey the command; what are the means by which construction can be displayed; and how can one be sure that one’s virtues are externalized and properly interpreted interpreted.
Star also points out that the role of language in these processes is demonstrated in the works of both Seneca and Petronius.
In short, Star’s thesis is: even as these two philosophers have been viewed as enemies by those who are familiar with them, there is a more involved, detailed and “complicated” relationship between them in terms of their cultural, intellectual, literary and political perspectives.
This is an insightful book by Christopher Star on the subject of conquering the self and self-command, and the view points of two philosophers on it, who lived during the reign of Roman Emperor Nero. Christopher Star is an assistant professor of classics at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.
