April 4 Daily

Tacitus: The Death of Seneca

"Seneca, quite unmoved, asked for tablets on which to inscribe his will, and, on the centurion's refusal, turned to his friends, protesting that as he was forbidden to requite them, he bequeathed to them the only, but still the noblest possession yet remaining to him, the pattern of his life, which, if they remembered, they would win a name for moral worth and steadfast friendship. At the same time he called them back from their tears to manly resolution, now with friendly talk, and now with the sterner language of rebuke. 'Where,' he asked again and again, "are your maxims of philosophy, or the preparation of so many years' study against evils to come? Who knew not Nero's cruelty? After a mother's and a brother's murder, nothing remains but to add the destruction of a guardian and a tutor.'"

The above quote demonstrates Stoicism becuase it speaks of Seneca being "quite unmoved."  A stoic is someone who demonstrates no major emotions or extreme feeling.  This describes Seneca and his feeling at the time.

"Having spoken these and like words, meant, so to say, for all, he embraced his wife; then softening awhile from the stern resolution of the hour, he begged and implored her to spare herself the burden of perpetual sorrow, and, in the contemplation of a life virtuously spent, to endure a husband's loss with honourable consolations. She declared, in answer, that she too had decided to die, and claimed for herself the blow of the executioner. There upon Seneca, not to thwart her noble ambition . . ."

I do not quite understand this quote, but I am pretty sure that at the end, it says that Seneca did not want to ruin his ambition.  This would demonstrate a feeling of maybe anger or frustration that a stoic would not experience.
"Nero meanwhile, having no personal hatred against Paulina and not wishing to heighten the odium of his cruelty, forbade her death. At the soldiers' prompting, her slaves and freedmen bound up her arms, and stanched the bleeding, whether with her knowledge is doubtful."



"Worn out by cruel anguish, afraid too that his sufferings might break his wife's spirit, and that, as he looked on her tortures, he might himself sink into irresolution, he persuaded her to retire into another chamber."

"He himself might sink into irresolution . . ."  This quote describes Seneca as being indecisive, as irresolution denotes not being able to make a decision.