8. On Kindnesses.
9. Epistles to Lucilius. 124 in number. They abound in lessons and precepts in morality and philosophy, and, excepting the De Irâ, have been the most read, perhaps, of all Seneca’s productions.
10. Questions on Natural History. In seven books.
Besides these moral and philosophic works, he composed several tragedies. They were not intended for the stage, but rather as moral lessons. As in all his works, there is much of earnest thought and feeling, although expressed in rhetorical and declamatory language.
What especially characterises Seneca’s writings is their remarkably humanitarian spirit. Altogether he is imbued with this, for the most part, very modern feeling in a greater degree than any other writer, Greek or Latin. Plutarch indeed, in his noble Essay on Flesh Eating, is more expressly denunciatory of the barbarism of the Slaughter House, and of the horrible cruelties inseparably connected with it, and evidently felt more deeply the importance of exposing its evils. The Latin moralist, however, deals with a wider range of ethical questions, and on such subjects, as, e.g., the relations of master and slave, is far ahead of his contemporaries. His treatment of Dietetics, in common with that of most of the old-world moralists, is rather from the spiritual and ascetic than from the purely humanitarian point of view. “The judgments on Seneca’s writings,” says the author of the article on Seneca in Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Latin Biography, “have been as various as the opinions about his character, and both in extremes. It has been said of him that he looks best in quotations; but this is an admission that there is something worth quoting, which cannot be said of all writers. That Seneca possessed great mental powers cannot be doubted. He had seen much of human life, and he knew well what man is. His philosophy, so far as he adopted a system, was the stoical; but it was rather an eclecticism of stoicism than pure stoicism. His style is antithetical, and apparently laboured; and where there is much labour there is generally affectation. Yet his language is clear and forcible—it is not mere words—there is thought always. It would not be easy to name any modern writer, who has treated on morality and has said so much that is practically good and true, or has treated the matter in so attractive a way.”
Jerome, in his Ecclesiastical Writers, hesitates to include him in the catalogue of his saints only because he is not certain of the genuineness of the alleged literary correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul. We may observe, in passing, on the remarkable coincidence of the presence of the two greatest teachers of the old and the new faiths in the capital of the Roman Empire at the same time; and it is possible, or rather highly probable, that St. Paul was acquainted with the writings of Seneca; while, from the total silence of the pagan philosopher, it seems that he knew nothing of the Pauline epistles or teaching. Amongst many testimonies to the superiority of Seneca, Tacitus, the great historian of the empire, speaks of the “splendour and celebrity of his philosophic writings,” as well as of his “amiable genius”—ingenium amœnum. (Annals, xii., xiii.) The elder Pliny writes of him as “at the very head of all the learned men of that time.” (xiv. 4.) Petrarch quotes the testimony of Plutarch, “that great man who, Greek though he was freely confesses ‘that there is no Greek writer who could be brought into comparison with him in the department of morals.’”
The following passage is to be found in a letter to Lucilius, in which, after expatiating on the sublimity of the teaching of the philosopher Attalus in inculcating moderation and self-control in corporeal pleasures, Seneca thus enunciates his dietetic opinions:—
“Since I have begun to confide to you with what exceeding ardour I approached the study of philosophy in my youth, I shall not be ashamed to confess the affection with which Sotion [his preceptor] inspired me for the teaching of Pythagoras. He was wont to instruct me on what grounds he himself, and, after him, Sextius, had determined to abstain from the flesh of animals. Each had a different reason, but the reason in both instances was a grand one (magnifica). Sotion held that man can find a sufficiency of nourishment without blood shedding, and that cruelty became habitual when once the practice of butchering was applied to the gratification of the appetite. He was wont to add that ‘It is our bounden duty to limit the materials of luxury. That, moreover, variety of foods is injurious to health, and not natural to our bodies. If these maxims [of the Pythagorean school] are true, then to abstain from the flesh of animals is to encourage and foster innocence; if ill-founded, at least they teach us frugality and simplicity of living. And what loss have you in losing your cruelty? (Quod istic crudelitatis tuæ damnum est?) I merely deprive you of the food of lions and vultures.’
“Moved by these and similar arguments, I resolved to abstain from flesh meat, and at the end of a year the habit of abstinence was not only easy but delightful. I firmly believed that the faculties of my mind were more active,[25] and at this day I will not take pains to assure you whether they were so or not. You ask, then, ‘Why did you go back and relinquish this mode of life?’ I reply that the lot of my early days was cast in the reign of the emperor Tiberius. Certain foreign religions became the object of the imperial suspicion, and amongst the proofs of adherence to the foreign cultus or superstition was that of abstinence from the flesh of animals. At the entreaties of my father, therefore, who had no real fear of the practice being made a ground of accusation, but who had a hatred of philosophy,[26] I was induced to return to my former dietetic habits, nor had he much difficulty in persuading me to recur to more sumptuous repasts....
“This I tell,” he proceeds, “to prove to you how powerful are the early impetuses of youth to what is truest and best under the exhortations and incentives of virtuous teachers. We err partly through the fault of our guides, who teach us how to dispute, not how to live; partly by our own fault in expecting our teachers to cultivate not so much the disposition of the mind as the faculties of the intellect. Hence it is that in place of a love of wisdom there is only a love of words (Itaque quæ philosophia fuit, facta philologia est).”—Epistola cviii.[27]