In this loose and complex age, when freedom was so limited and life was so free, philosophy flourished alongside of sensuality, and the two were not above joining hands. The decay of the native religion had left a moral vacuum which philosophy sought to fill. Parents sent their sons, and themselves often went, to hear the lectures of men who offered to provide a rational code of civilized conduct, or a formal dress for naked desire. Those who could afford it paid philosophers to live with them, partly as educators, partly as spiritual counselors, partly as learned company; so Augustus had Areus, consulted him on almost everything, and for his sake (if we may believe a ruler) was lenient to Alexandria. When Drusus died Livia called in “her husband’s philosopher”—so Seneca phrases it—“to help her bear her grief.”9 Nero, Trajan, and of course Aurelius had philosophers residing with them at court, as kings have chaplains now. In their last moments men would summon philosophers to chart their passing, as centuries later they would ask for a priest.10
The public never forgave these teachers of wisdom for taking salaries or fees. Philosophy was esteemed a sufficient substitute for food and drink, and philosophers who had a less exalted opinion of their profession were the butt of popular jokes, of Quintilian’s criticism, of Lucian’s satire, and of imperial hostility. Many of them deserved it, for they put on the philosopher’s coarse cloak, and grew a profound beard, to give a learned front to gluttony, avarice, and vanity. “A short survey of life,” says a character in Lucian,
had convinced me of the absurdity and meanness . . . that pervade all worldly purposes. … In this state of mind the best I could think of was to get at the truth of it all from the . . . philosophers. So I selected the best of them—if solemnity of visage, pallor of complexion, and length of beard are a criterion . . . I placed myself in their hands. For a considerable sum down, and more to be paid when they had perfected me in wisdom, I was to be . . . instructed in the order of the universe. Unfortunately, so far from dispelling my previous ignorance, they perplexed me more and more with their daily drenches of beginnings and ends, atoms and voids, matters and forms. My greatest difficulty was that, though they differed among themselves, and all they said was full of contradictions, they expected me to believe them, each pulling me in his own direction. . . . Often one of them could not tell you correctly the number of miles from Megara to Athens, but had no hesitation about the distance in feet from the sun to the moon.11
Most of the Roman philosophers followed the Stoic creed. The epicureans were too busy pursuing wine, woman, and food to have much time for theory. Here and there in Rome were mendicant preachers of the Cynic philosophy, ignoring speculation, and calling men to a simple and soapless life; they acceded to the popular demand that philosophers should be poor, and were in consequence the least respected of the schools. Seneca, however, made one of them his intimate friend. “Why should I not hold Demetrius in high esteem?” he asked. “I have found that he lacks nothing;” and the millionaire sage marveled when the nearly naked Cynic refused a gift of 200,000 sesterces from Caligula.12
Since the Roman Stoic was a man of action rather than of contemplation, he eschewed metaphysics as a hopeless quest, and sought in Stoicism a philosophy of conduct that would support human decency, family unity, and social order independently of supernatural surveillance and command. The essence of his code was self-control: he would subordinate passion to reason, and train his will to desire nothing that would make his peace of soul contingent upon external goods. In politics he would recognize the universal brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God; at the same time he would love his country and hold himself ready to die at any time to avert its disgrace or his own. Life itself was always to remain within his choice; he was free to leave it whenever it should become an evil rather than a boon. A man’s conscience was to be higher than any law. Monarchy was a sad necessity for the rule of wide and diverse realms; but to kill a despot was an excellent thing.
Roman Stoicism had at first profited from the Principate; the limitations on political freedom had driven men from the forum to the study, and had inclined the finest of them to a philosophy that made the self-controlled subject more sovereign than the impassioned king. The government did not check freedom of thought or speech so long as these made no public attack upon the emperor, his family, or the official gods. But when the professors and their Senatorial patrons began to denounce tyranny, there arose between philosophy and autocracy a war that lasted till the adoptive emperors united them on the throne. When Nero ordered Thrasea to die (65), he at the same time exiled Thrasea’s friend Musonius Rufus, the most sincere and consistent of the Stoic philosophers in first-century Rome. Rufus had defined philosophy as inquiry into right conduct, and had taken his quest seriously. He denounced concubinage despite its legality, and demanded of men the same standard of sexual morality that they required of women. Sexual relations, said this ancient Tolstoian, were permissible only in marriage and for procreation. He believed in equal educational opportunities for both sexes and welcomed women to his lectures; but he bade them seek from education and philosophy the means of perfecting themselves as women.13 Slaves, too, attended his classes; one of them—Epictetus—honored his teacher by surpassing him. When civil war flared in Rome after Nero’s death, Musonius went out to the attacking army and lectured it on the blessings of peace and the horrors of war. Antonius’ troops laughed at him and resumed the ultimate arbitrament. Vespasian, in expelling the philosophers from Rome, excepted Rufus; but he kept his concubines.