Skip to main content

Seneca before Nero



A story from history

“You will kill yourself,” Emperor Nero uttered majestically staring straight into the eyes of Seneca.  Seneca had been summoned to the Palace.  When he was ushered in, the Emperor was playing a violently cheerful tune on his fiddle.  He made Seneca stand and listen to his recital for a long time.  Every now and then he threw a mocking look at Seneca, his former advisor.

“You have the liberty to choose the means of your death,” the Emperor said with ostensible magnanimity.

“That’s very generous of you,” said Seneca.

Nero glowered at him for a moment, ran the bow on his fiddle to produce a culminating crescendo and then handed over the fiddle to the maid who stood near him holding a chalice of wine. The Emperor took the wine from her hand just as he handed over the fiddle and took a sip.

“Death,” said the Emperor, solemn and mocking at once.  “Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.  Which is it for you, Seneca?”

The Emperor was throwing at him his own words, Seneca knew.

“Man is often more frightened than hurt.  He suffers more from imagination than from reality,” Seneca said.  “I’m more hurt than frightened. But I embrace reality bravely.”

“Good, good,” the Emperor chuckled.  “You brought this upon yourself.  I had forgiven you too much.  I overlooked all the allegations against you: corruption, amassing wealth, your lust to be equal to the Emperor. Yet you dared to conspire against the Emperor.”

“When the Emperor becomes like the captain of a ship which destroys the little boats in the ocean, he has no right to sail on.”

“Ha ha ha, the same old Seneca with wise words.  Words won’t save you now, old man.  You once counselled me that when the captain does not know the port, all the winds are unfavourable to him.  I know the port, old man.  You are the iceberg blocking my way.”

“When disasters are waiting to fall upon a man, he becomes blind.  You don’t see clearly, Nero.  Power has blinded you.  Your power will be useless to you soon.”

Nero gulped down the remaining wine in his chalice and threw the empty chalice at Seneca.  The philosopher ducked and the chalice hit the wall behind him with a clatter.

“Take him away,” Nero commanded.  “Make sure he is dead before tomorrow’s sunrise whatever means he may choose for his end.”

Seneca chooses his death
“I selected my ship when I went on a voyage, I chose the house for my residence, and now I choose my death.”  Seneca cut the veins on his arms one by one.  “Take me to the bathtub if the water is hot enough.”

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” Seneca mumbled as his energy kept draining into the bathtub whose water turned redder and redder.  “A new beginning is awaiting Rome.  New … begin…”

Comments

  1. Ravish ManiApril 19, 2017 at 10:09 PM

    You said a lot in just few words. Amazing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ravish ManiApril 19, 2017 at 10:12 PM

      After giving my first comment, I read it again and saved it for offline reading. It's a masterpiece.

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalApril 20, 2017 at 7:47 AM

      Thank you so much, Ravish.

      Delete
  2. UppalApril 20, 2017 at 8:05 AM

    Some revelations here!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Prasanna RaghavanApril 20, 2017 at 8:17 AM

    A nice read. History always hide jewels of wisdom, only someone search for that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Pranju chakrapaniApril 20, 2017 at 2:39 PM

    His bathtub became his sinking ship. But what difference did it make in the end to him who drowned dead under the knowledge of ports and to the other who got blind under the knowledge of ports. Perhaps no-one can know the extent of ports while being on the sea.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 20, 2017 at 7:41 PM

      Seneca was a bundle of contradictions. I couldn't bring even a fraction of the complexity of his character in the story. I didn't want to make it too boring for a blog.

      What difference does it all make in the end is a question that has bothered me quite a lot.

      Delete
  5. Amit AgarwalApril 20, 2017 at 6:23 PM

    Absolutely wonderful! A masterpiece indeed!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
122 comments
Read more

Emergency - then and now

  When Indira Gandhi imposed a draconian Emergency on India 50 years ago on this day (25 June), I had just completed the first train journey of my life and started an entirely different kind of life. I had just joined a seminary as what they call an ‘aspirant’. One of the notice boards of the seminary always displayed the front page of an English newspaper – The Indian Express , if I recall correctly. I was only beginning to read English publications and so the headlines about Emergency didn’t really catch my attention. Since no one discussed politics in the seminary, it took me all of six months to understand the severity of the situation in the country. When I was travelling back home for Christmas vacation, the posters on the roadsides caught my attention. That’s how I began to take note of what was happening in the name of Emergency. A 15-year-old schoolboy doesn’t really understand the demise of democracy. It took me a few years and a lot of hindsight to realise the gravit...
9 comments
Read more

Goodbye, Little Ones

They were born under my care, tiny throbs of life, eyes still shut to the world. They grew up under my constant care. I changed their bed and the sheets regularly making sure they were always warm and comfortable. When one of them didn’t open her eyes after a fortnight of her birth, I rang up my cousin who is a vet and got the appropriate prescription that gave her the light of day in just two days. I watched each one of them stumble through their first steps. Today they were adopted. I personally took them to their new home, a tiny house of a family that belongs to the class that India calls BPL [Below Poverty Line]. I didn’t know them at all until I stopped my car a little away from their small house, at the nearest spot my car could possibly reach. They lived in another village altogether, some 15 km from mine. Sometimes 15 km can make a world of difference. A man who looked as old as me had come to my house in the late afternoon. “I’d like to adopt your kittens,” he said. He...
6 comments
Read more