Conclusion

As a matter of principle Seneca tailored his arguments to what he understood to be the specific needs and circumstances of his readers. In the Ad Marciam and the Ad Helviam matrem this included the fact that his readers were women.

Here we see in action the Stoic thesis that women share with men an equal potential for virtue. In both of these works Seneca distinguishes between nature and culture, repeatedly affirming that by nature women are equal to men in their capacity for virtue, but holding firm also to his conviction that because women have been formed by bad habits and false opinions they are in fact much more susceptible than men to vice, including the passion of grief. He constructs his consolation of Marcia and his mother accordingly. At several points in each work he reminds his reader that by nature she is equal to a man in virtue, and he can even venture the claim that she is free of bad habits and false opinions that to his mind typically corrupt women, though one senses, at least in the case of Marcia, that this is hyperbole. Despite his best efforts Seneca powerfully attests to elite Roman gender prejudice.

But when it comes to actual advice, Seneca treats his reader’s natural potential as a distant ideal. In the case of Marcia, he is never quite able to bring himself to console her along Stoic lines. He argues instead for the Peripatetic ideal of moderate grieving, and he recommends without qualification the Epicurean tactic of distracting oneself from grief with competing pleasures and positive thoughts. He also recommends that Marcia invest herself in her grandchildren. In the case of his mother, he is a bit more stringent, praising the Stoic ideal and eschewing in particular the Epicurean tactic of distraction, which he likens to a reprehensible and ineffective self-deception. But even here he must admit that she is not actually capable of finding consolation along Stoic lines - though he claims himself to practice Stoic consolation, however imperfectly.

Instead she must rely on a more immediate and characteristically womanly consolation, namely, seeking a replacement for him in her children, grandchildren, and her sister. It is to his credit, however, that Seneca criticizes his father for not allowing his mother to pursue “liberal” studies, and that he himself recommends that she take these up immediately. Typically unsparing in his criticism of women in general, at least this once Seneca lays the blame for their perceived shortcomings on the traditionalism of a Roman man.

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Source: Ahearne-Kroll Stephen P., Holloway Paul A., Kelhoffer James A. (eds.). Women and Gender in Ancient Religions: Interdisciplinary Approaches. JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck),2010. — 518 p.. 2010

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