The Road to Sicily: Lucilius to Seneca

Abstract

One of Horace's best-known allegations inEpistles1 is that where in the world you are is neither here nor there, as long as you have peace of mind (animus aequus): caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt. strenua nos exercet inertia; nauibus atque quadrigis petimus bene uiuere. quod petis, hie est, est Vlubris, animus si te non deficit aequus. (Hor.Ep. 1.11.27-30) Cross the sea, and you change your climate, not your mental state. Restless idleness drives us on. In ships and chariots we seek the good life. What you seek is here, it's even at Ulubrae—if your mind is only at peace with itself. This turns out to be one of the book's hugest lies. It makes all the difference how Horace and his correspondents are placed when he is writing to them: Rome is different from backwater Ulubrae, Baiae from Brundisium. InMorals and Villas in Seneca's Letters, John Henderson has attached similar importance to named locations in calibrating metaphorical distance between Seneca and the correspondent of hisEpistles, Lucilius. This paper aims to close a gap of two centuries between two of the most disparate figures in Latin literature: the same Seneca, that knotted-up recluse, and another Lucilius, the laughing cavalier satirist. The link: a journey made from Rome to Sicily, or, more precisely, the uses of the road to Sicily in epistolary-philosophical discourse (by way of Horace'sSatiresandEpistles). Lucilius'Iter Siculumand Seneca's mental journeys to Sicily in theEpistulae Moralesare related stages, I will argue, in the philosophical applications of travel writing.

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