Stoicism in the Imperial Era (1)

So, what literary forms did Stoic philosophy take? A kind of moral catechism like the discourses of Musonius, sermons on philosophical themes like those of Dio Chrysostom, letters or treatises on spiritual direction, as in Seneca, talks aimed at spiritual training in Epictetus, and the examination of conscience in Marcus Aurelius. But, beneath these literary works, we must consider the countless anonymous individuals who, amidst the growing vices of Roman society, where the property-poor dreamed only of living off the patronage of the rich and on public funds, took on the mission of moral upliftment. Sometimes we witness the birth of these vocations: for example, the merchant Damasippe, who, after going bankrupt, became a Stoic; “having no more business of my own, I take care of those of others,” Horace makes him say (Horace 1883, bk. II, III, 18); it is Dio Chrysostom, the brilliant worldly lecturer who, ruined by exile under Domitian in 83, took up the staff of the Cynics and went from town to town preaching the good word. Around the most famous, circles of young people formed, a veritable hotbed of propaganda; Dio aroused the vocation of Favorinus of Arles, whose speech on the Exile was recently found on a papyrus (Cumont 1931, 370) (Collart 1932); the satirist Perse (Horace 1883, sec. V) tells us of the enthusiasm aroused in young people by the Stoic Comutus, the author of a small allegorical Stoic theology that has been preserved for us. Lucian recounts the place held in his city by Demonax, the Stoic whose soothing words calmed disputes in private as well as in public. We know how many young Romans were sent to Epictetus, on the distant shores of Nicopolis, and how hard he had it to get them to leave the shadows of school for public life. One must read Lucian’s Hermotimus to see the extent of the craze for philosophers as spiritual guides, among whom one saw disciples with whitened hair who never tired of learning.

With such multiple ramifications, it is natural that Stoicism sometimes surfaces in political life: Stoicism is suspect, especially to bad emperors: among the accusations of Tigellinus, Nero’s freedman, against Rubellius Plautus, the grandson of Augustus, whom he wanted to portray as a pretender to the empire, is the imputation of Stoicism. “He follows,” says the accuser, “the arrogant sect of the Stoics, troublemakers and desirous of disorder.” Rubellius, then in Syria (in 62), had the philosophers Coeranus and Musonius as moral advisers; and, as soldiers were sent to put him to death, against the opinion of a freedman who wanted him to resist, they advised him “instead of an uncertain and trembling life, the firmness of a ready death.” Later, in 65, the exile of Musonius and Cornutus is included in the measures ordered by Nero following the conspiracy of Pison; Musonius was suspected of teaching philosophy to young people. (Boissier 2017, chap. II) (Tacitus 2020, sec. XIV, 57 and 59; XV, 71) Mute opposition, as we see from these examples, and not open resistance; Stoicism did not become, more than it ever was, a political party; the famous Thraseas was not a politician. Under Vespasian, a new assault; Thraseas’s son-in-law, Helvidius Priscus, then a strategos, was accused of refusing to pay homage to the emperor and of making propaganda in favor of democracy; in 71, all the philosophers were driven from Rome, except Musonius, who, recalled to Rome under Galba, was not worried. It was around this time that Dio Chrysostom, still a rhetorician and untouched by the cynical grace, delivered speeches Against the Philosophers, “those weighings of cities and governments.” Later, in 85, the suspicious Domitian had the sophist Matemus killed for having given a school speech against the tyrants, Rusticus Arulinus “because he philosophized and considered Thraseas a saint”, Herennius Senecion for having written a life of Helvidius Priscus (Dion Cassius 229AD, 66, 12-19 ; 67, 13).