Can't buy philosophy. Seneca, Epistles 3.27.4-8
Seneca
explains to Lucilius the difference between mastering something
yourself (philosophy), and getting others to correct mistakes you
never fix (the approach to literature taken by Calvisius Sabinus).
Having a team of fact- and grammar-checkers does not make Sabinus
either learned or wise, anymore than keeping a stable of wrestlers
would make him strong. If you want strength or erudition as part of
your life, then you must personally embrace the discipline of
wrestling and studying for yourself, taking your own lessons as best
you can. You won't be the greatest, perhaps, but you will have real
experience, ability, and respect, rather than annoy everyone like Sabinus. When Seneca says that a good mind cannot be lent or bought,
he means that you cannot acquire someone else's mind. Even if they
lend it to you, or you pay for it, it will never be yours. Bad minds
can be purchased because whenever we buy another's mind, what
we get is not good in the way our own experience would be. Also,
trade in mental work often generates ill will, much like trade in
other things that should be freely given or left alone.
Aliud
litterarum genus adiutorium admittit. Calvisius Sabinus memoria
nostra fuit dives; et patrimonium habebat libertini et ingenium;
numquam vidi hominem beatum indecentius. Huic memoria tam mala erat
ut illi nomen modo Ulixis excideret, modo Achillis, modo Priami, quos
tam bene noverat quam paedagogos nostros novimus. Nemo vetulus
nomenclator, qui nomina non reddit sed imponit, tam perperam tribus
quam ille Troianos et Achivos persalutabat. Nihilominus eruditus
volebat videri. Hanc itaque compendiariam excogitavit: magna summa
emit servos, unum qui Homerum teneret, alterum qui Hesiodum; novem
praeterea lyricis singulos assignavit. Magno emisse illum non est
quod mireris: non invenerat, faciendos locavit. Postquam haec familia
illi comparata est, coepit convivas suos inquietare. Habebat ad pedes
hos, a quibus subinde cum peteret versus quos referret, saepe in
medio verbo excidebat. Suasit illi Satellius Quadratus, stultorum
divitum arrosor et, quod sequitur, arrisor, et, quod duobus his
adiunctum est, derisor, ut grammaticos haberet analectas. Cum
dixisset Sabinus centenis millibus sibi constare singulos servos,
minoris inquit totidem scrinia emisses. Ille tamen in ea
opinione erat ut putaret se scire quod quisquam in domo sua sciret.
Idem Satellius illum hortari coepit ut luctaretur, hominem aegrum,
pallidum, gracilem. Cum Sabinus respondisset, et quomodo possum?
vix vivo! noli, obsecro te inquit istuc dicere: non vides quam
multos servos valentissimos habeas? Bona mens nec commodatur nec
emitur; et puto, si venalis esset, non haberet emptorem: at mala
cotidie emitur.
The
assistance afforded by literature is different from what philosophy
requires. In our own time, Calvisius Sabinus was quite wealthy: he inherited the estate of a successful freedman, but also the character of
one (†). I never saw a man at once so fortunate, and so loutish.
His memory was so bad that he would constantly forget names, even
losing track of characters like Ulysses, Achilles, or Priam, with
whom he was ostensibly as familiar as we are with the tutors who
brought us up. No senile valet (⁑), though he were so foregone as
to impose names on his master's guests rather than recall them, would
confuse them as thoroughly as this poor fellow did the Trojans and
Achaeans. Still, he wanted to be regarded as a learned man (‡). So
he came up with a workaround. This involved purchasing slaves at
great expense: one to master Homer, and another to take on Hesiod; he
assigned nine of them to look after the lyric poets, one slave for
each. You shouldn't marvel that the expense was great: the slaves he
purchased were not scholars before he discovered them; he sent them
deliberately to school, to tackle the lessons he couldn't master.
When this small army had completed its training and joined his
family, then he began to annoy his dinner-guests in earnest, for he
kept the scholars constantly at his side, so that he could have them
recite any verse he might begin, the moment he lost track of it,
sometimes in the middle of a word. Satellius Quadratus—one of those
nibblers that attach themselves to rich fools, joining in their folly
and then mocking them to others for it—persuaded our Sabinus to add
some grammarians to his line-up. When the poor fellow reckoned he
would need as many as one hundred thousand slaves to collect and
control Greek grammar, his helpful parasite remarked that it would be
cheaper just to buy that many bookshelves (*). Satellius was the sort
of moron who supposes that he himself knows whatever anyone in his
house happens to know. One time he decided to urge his patron to take up
wrestling, though Sabinus was sickly, pale, and thin. When Sabinus objected—“How am I supposed to wrestle, when I can
barely manage to stay alive?”—the rat had a glib response ready:
“Don't say that, I beg you. Don't you see how many strapping slaves
you have?” A good mind cannot be loaned or bought, you see, and in
my opinion, even if it were up for sale, it would find no buyers. But
bad minds are purchased every day.
---
(†)
Slavery was a normal part of Roman society, as was manumission.
When slaves were freed, they often remained within the family of
their former masters, becoming clients instead of servants and taking the name of their erstwhile master (as the father of Seneca's Calvisius Sabinus appears to have done: the Calvisii were well-known nobles in the late republic and early empire). Many freedmen ran lucrative businesses, especially in services whose mastery entailed
discipline or drudgery deemed unfit for nobles (cf. banking,
manufactures, management, education). Sometimes, they undertook these
businesses originally as slaves, using the proceeds of the business
to purchase freedom, and then vast material estates, if they were notably successful. Manumission secured them greater access to high
culture, and some aspired to master the Greek letters and manners
affected by Roman nobility, their patrons and former masters. This
did not always come readily or easily to them (as it did not to all
the nobility, either, but the stereotypical rich lout in imperial
Roman society is a freedman).
(⁑)
The nomenclator whom I have
made into a valet here
was a slave whose duty was to provide his master with the names of
strangers he might approach in society (when canvassing for elections
or hosting meetings of clients and hangers-on).
(‡)
In imperial Roman society, learning was demonstrated by familiarity
with Greek literature. Young children of good family were tutored in
poetry, initially, working through the authors Seneca mentions here.
The nine lyric poets he refers to after Homer and Hesiod, who
composed epics, are Alcman, Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Stesichorus,
Ibycus, Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar.
(*)
Scrinia are technically
boxes, sometimes cases, and the books in them are probably scrolls.