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10 - Socrates speaks in Seneca, De vita beata 24–28

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2010

Andrea Nightingale
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
David Sedley
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Only once does Socrates say more than a few words in Seneca: in the final chapters of De vita beata, written in 58 ce, when Seneca was at the height of his power and wealth as Nero's adviser. In response to an imagined accuser who asks how it is that someone can study philosophy and be so wealthy (VB 21.1), Seneca has Socrates speak at length, including the following (VB 25.4):

Make me conqueror of all the world. Have that luxurious chariot of Liber carry me in triumph from the rising of the sun all the way to Thebes.…I will be thinking of myself as human precisely when I am greeted by one and all as a god. Then follow this lofty pedestal with a radical transformation. Let me be placed on someone else's float to decorate the procession of a fierce and arrogant conqueror. I will not be carried any more humbly beneath another's chariot than I would if I had stood in my own. So? I nevertheless prefer to conquer than to be captured.

When the text breaks off several chapters later, Socrates is still speaking.

What kind of Socratic voice is this? Below I consider four aspects, partly of the voice itself and partly of the content of the utterance: (1) The voice belongs to a prosopopoeia. (2) Socrates espouses the Stoic doctrine of preferred indifferents. (3) He invokes recognizably Roman examples such as the triumph.

Type
Chapter
Information
Ancient Models of Mind
Studies in Human and Divine Rationality
, pp. 180 - 195
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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