I’ve been reading John Henderson’s Morals and Villas in Seneca’s Letters while reading Catharine Edwards’ Green & Yellow Seneca: Selected Letters and discovered yet another delight in reading Seneca in the original Latin. This is taken from Letter 86, where Seneca is visiting an estate formerly owned by Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (Hero of the 2nd Punic War at whose hands Hannibal was finally defeated at Zama). He is contrasting the austere (and more stoic) lifestyle of Scipio with the decadent, indulgent and extravagent life style of his contemporaries. At this point in the letter, he compares baths of Scipio’s time with those of his period and notes how aediles from distinguished families took pains to ensure the cleanliness of public facilities and to maintain a beneficial and healthy water temperature:
nam hoc quoque nobilissimi aediles fungebantur officio intrandi ea loca quae
populum receptabant exigendique munditias et utilem ac salubrem
temperaturam, non hanc quae nuper inuenta est similis incendio, adeo
quidem ut conuictum in aliquo scelere seruum uiuum lauari oporteat.
nihil mihi uidetur iam interesse, ardeat balineum an caleat.
I haven’t given the gist of what follows from “non hanc quae nuper…” because I don’t want to ruin the effect of Henderson’s translation:
Because this was also one of the duties that Housing Officers used to perform: to enter sites which admitted the public, and insist on cleanliness, plus a temperature both practical and healthy. Not the sort pioneered in recent times, a good
imitation of a blaze – so much so, a slave found guilty of some crime ought to be bathed alive! It seems to me there’s no difference now between bath on fire and hot bath.
When I read it, I got the jokes and chuckled. When I read Henderson’s translation, I laughed out loud!
Thanks for sharing this with everybody. Henderson is always good value. His humour (rather like Seneca’s) serves a purpose. “Aediles” has such a distancing effect and so cutting them down to size as “housing officers” (with no disrespect to housing officers - Aediles were aristocratic young men on the lowest rung of the slippery career pole with no interest in their duties beyond getting to the next step) makes great sense.
The slippage between the metaphorical and apparently realistic information is a constant trap for S.'s readers. His allusiveness and literary ambition is what, in my opinion, make him a much more interesting stoic philosopher than Marcus Aurelius although the emperor probably has a wider readership these days amongst the general public.
I particularly enjoyed too Catharine Edwards’ take on the last part of the letter where not only do we have transplanted (old) trees, we have transplanted Virgil (which Henderson thinks doesnt work so well…) and amongst other things we can take heart that Scipio (great as he was) was able to find a new role for himself for the good of the republic.
"quidni ego admirer hanc magnitudinem animi, qua in exilium uoluntarium secessit et ciuitatem exonerauit? eo perducta res erat ut aut libertas Scipioni aut Scipio libertati faceret iniuriam. neutrum fas erat; itaque locum dedit legibus et se Liternum recepit tam suum exilium rei publicae imputaturus quam Hannibalis.
How could I not marvel at this greatness of spirit – retiring into self-imposed exile, removing a burden from society? The situation had reached the point where either freedom would do Scipio harm, or Scipio would harm freedom. Neither alternative was right and proper, so he deferred to the law, gave ground, and withdrew to Liternum. He would debit the Republic for his own exile as well as for Hannibal’s. Both." (Trans. Henderson)