On the Nature of Ancient Consolation

Consolation was widely practiced in the ancient world and could in princi­ple be offered for any misfortune.^[854] It had as its objective the alleviation of grief, a passion broadly conceived as any form of mental pain or distress (λύπη, aegritudo),^[855] which was to be replaced with the opposite disposition of joy (χαρα, gaudium)^[856] To reach these ends consolers employed a range of therapeutic methods,^[857] the most common of which was rational persua­sion bolstered by frank exhortation and, if need be, the occasional rebuke.^[858] Common misfortunes eventually received stock treatment in the rhetorical handbooks.^[859] At Tusc.

Whether philosophically inclined or not, ancient consolers were keen to distinguish between sympathy and consolation. We see this already in Thucydides, who has Pericles introduce the peroration of his famous fu­neral oration with just this distinction: “I am not here to lament with you, but to console you.”^[860] Aelianus preserves a similar dictum of Aristippus’s: “I have not come to share your grief (συλλυπουμενο$) but to stop it.”^[861] Plutarch is even more pointed, dismissing sympathy as tantamount to the “weeping and wailing [of a] tragic chorus,” while recommending consola­tion as manly “frank exhortation and rational instruction.”^[862]

Given this emphasis on reason - which will produce unique challenges to ancient consolers of women, as we shall see - it is no surprise that each of the major philosophical schools developed its own theory of consolation based on such things as its view of the soul, its doctrine of good and evil, and its theory of the passions (πάθη).^[863] Cicero surveys these theories in Tusculanae Disputationes books 1 and 3, summarizing them at 3.31.76:

Some, like Cleanthes, believe that the consoler’s only task is to convince the person af­flicted with grief that the alleged “evil” is not an evil at all.

This may be to put too fine a point on it, however, since in times of intense grief comfort was sought wherever it could be found and school lines were frequently crossed. Indeed, Cicero himself goes on to say: “and still others favor employing all these types of consolation... much as I in my Conso­lation tossed them all into one attempt to find comfort, since my soul was infected and swollen and I was trying to heal it by every means.”^[864] As we shall see, Seneca is anything but a philosophical purist when it comes to consoling Marcia and his mother Helvia, but that rather he tailors his ar­guments to what he imagines will be most effective to them in their partic­ular sorrow, and as grief-stricken women.^[865]

The first view Cicero lists is that of the Stoic scholarch Cleanthes, ac­cording to which “the consoler’s only task is to convince the person af­flicted with grief that the alleged ‘evil’ is not an evil at all” and that grief is therefore unwarranted. This is the Stoic ideal of απάθεια (“apathy”) ap­plied to the πάθο$ of grief.^[866] Three suppositions underlie the Stoic theory of the passions in general and Cleanthes’s theory of grief in particular: (1) that the soul is unitary and is therefore wholly rational,^[867] (2) that the only real good is virtue, the only real evil vice, and that everything else is mor­ally “indifferent” (aSia^opov),^[868] and (3) that the passions (including grief), derive from incorrect judgments of good and evil and are therefore always wrong and have no place in the rational soul.^[869] On this account grief always originates in a false judgment of the form “X is an evil” (where X stands for some present state of affairs), when the correct judg­ment would have been “X is neither good nor evil but a matter of indiffer­ence.”^[870] Cleanthes’s method was regularly employed in consolations treat­ing lesser forms of misfortune such as poverty and exile, and we will have occasion to return to it below in our discussion of the exiled Seneca’s letter to his mother Helvia.^[871]

Cicero next mentions Peripatetic theory,^[872] according to which the con­soler’s task is to convince the person afflicted with grief that “the evil in question is not great” and that he or she should therefore show moderation in their grief.

The third view Cicero mentions is that of Epicurus. Unlike Stoic and Peripatetic theorists, Epicurus was constrained by his philosophical hedon­ism to take most conventional forms of evil at face value. For Epicurus, therefore, the consoler’s task was to distract the grieving person from his or her current misfortune to other more pleasurable memories. Cicero ex- plains:^[876]

He [Epicurus] places the alleviation of distress in two activities: calling the mind away from thinking about things that disturb us (avocatione a cogitanda molestia) and calling the mind back to the contemplation of pleasure (et revocatione ad contemplandas volup­tates).

Epicurus’s technique was simple and versatile and proved popular with a broad range of intellectuals, who often modified its basic strategy of self­distraction to fit their own ideological preferences.^[877] Even Cicero, who with characteristic moral exhibitionism rejected the technique’s focus on pleasure (voluptas),^[878] proposed a modified version that called for the con­templation of virtue.^[879] Along with the Peripatetic ideal of μετριοπάθεια, the Epicurean technique of distraction or avocatio was considered a hu­mane and accessible approach.

Cicero next mentions Cyrenaic theory, according to which grief is caused not by misfortune as such but by misfortune that is unexpected (in­opinatus)?⁰ Like the surprise attack of an enemy or a sudden storm at sea - two popular Cyrenaic analogies^{[880] [881] - misfortune overwhelms us when it catches us off guard. But when misfortune is foreseen, or when we have adequately prepared ourselves for it, this is not the case.[882] The Cyrenaics offered two practical remedies to grief, the first to be applied prophylacti- cally before the advent of grievous circumstances, and the second after the fact. For those not currently experiencing misfortune they recommended the contemplation of future evil (praemeditatio futuri mali) as a prepara­tion for its eventuality.[883] For those already afflicted with grief they sought to stop the pain, that is, to calm the violent motion caused by unexpected calamity, with the reminder that “nothing unexpected has happened.” We have already seen Cicero’s summary of this technique at Tusc. 3.31.76. He describes the method again at Tusc. 3.23.55, this time in the words of a Cyrenaic interlocutor:}

What need is there of arguments or of all the consolation that we so routinely offer when we want to lighten the grief of mourners? For in all but the most extreme circumstances we have ready to hand the words “Nothing should seem unexpected (nihil oportere inop­inatum videri).”

Cyrenaic theory was obviously better suited to preventing grief than alle­viating it.^[884] Nevertheless, the assumption that grief is due, at least in part, to the fact that it was unexpected is found in a broad range of consolatory texts.^[885]

The fifth and final theory Cicero identifies is that of Cleanthes’s succes­sor Chrysippus. Chrysippus agreed with Cleanthes that grief is traceable to false conventional judgments regarding the nature of evil, and that as such it has no place in the rational soul.^[886] However, he located the proximate or immediate cause of grief in the additional opinion (opinio) that, given a particular misfortune, grief is an obligatory response: “grief is an opinion about some present misfortune in which is contained the [further judg­ment] that it is right to feel grief.”^[887] Grief thus has its origin in a kind of double misjudgment: 1) that a misfortune has indeed occurred, and 2) that grief is the appropriate response.

But when, to the opinion that some great evil has occurred, the further opinion is added that it is appropriate, that it is right, that it is a matter of duty to be distressed at what has happened, then, and only then, does the passion of deep distress occur.

In as much as Seneca accepted the Stoic doctrine that women are by nature as capable as men of virtue, including the virtue of bravely facing loss, he is forced to account for the fact, as he and most of his contemporaries saw it, that women are more prone to excessive grief than men by the thesis that they have been habituated to this weakness by false opinio. We will return to this diagnosis of women’s grief in our discussion of the Ad Mar­ciam in the second part of this essay.

In addition to these more technical philosophical strategies for consola­tion, it is possible to identify a number of popular consolatory arguments and techniques. These grew up independently of specialized philosophical reflection and were used by philosophers and non-philosophers alike, though they too, of course, continued to emphasize reason over emotion. Some of the more common of these arguments were: (1) time heals all grief; (2) grief is unhealthy; (3) grief accomplishes nothing; and (4) others have suffered similar things. Three popular arguments specific to death were: (5) grief does not benefit the dead; (6) the dead do not want the liv­ing to grieve, and (7) death is gain.^[889]

A popular consolatory technique particularly prominent in treating the grief of women was the semi-Epicurean consolation of employing some sort of substitute to take the place of a lost or absent loved one.^[890] Ideally, this substitute would be a person, typically a child or grandchild, but some­times another close friend or relative could be used. A famous example of this is Dido’s attempt to console herself after the departure of Aeneas:^[891] If only I had conceived a child of yours before your flight; if only there were a little Ae­neas (parvulus Aeneas) to play here in my halls, who might bring you back to me in the features of his face (qui te tamen ore referret) - then I would not feel so entirely van­quished and abandoned.

The early Greek novelist Chariton has his heroine Callirhoe console herself with a similar thought after the supposed death of Chaereas: “Nevertheless you have given to me [in this child] an image of a most beloved man, so that I am not completely bereft of my Chaereas.”^[892] Tacitus exploits the topos at Ann. 12.68, where after the death of Germanicus he has Agrippina, “as if overcome by grief and seeking consolation (solacid),” wrap Britan­nicus in her arms and call him “a true portrait of his father” (veram paterni oris effigiem).”^[893] In early Christian literature the strategy is deployed by Jerome in his letter of consolation (Ep. 79.7) to the recently widowed Salvina:

You have, therefore, Salvina, those whom you nurse, in whom you can imagine yourself to hold your absent husband Indeed, you have in the place of one man gained two

sons, increased in number by love.

Basil similarly deploys the strategy in Ep. 302 when he urges Briso’s wid­ow to embrace her children as “living images” of their father.

Sometimes it was not possible to find a person to take the place of an absent loved one. In such cases a portrait or some other realistic image could be used. Apuleius at Met. 8.7 tells how Charite in her search for con­solation (solacium) commissioned numerous imagines of Tlepolemus after his death. Similarly, Statius tells how Polla Argentaria slept beneath a por­trait of her dead husband the poet Lucan.^[894] The practice received canonical form in the often repeated legend of Laodamia, the wife of Protesilaus, the first Greek killed at Troy,^[895] who was said to have commissioned a statue of

her dead spouse that she kept in her bedroom.^[896] According to version of the legend known to Ps.-Apollodorus, the statue was extremely realistic and Laodamia consorted with it regularly.^[897] According to Hyginus, La- odamia’s devotion to the statue became so extreme that her father had the image burned, at which point Laodamia killed herself.^[898] Ovid presses the conceit even further and claims that Laodamia had a realistic portrait of Protesilaus crafted immediately after his departure for Troy, as her letter to him at Aulis reports:^{[899] [900]}

While you, a soldier, are bearing arms in a far-off land, I keep for myself an image in wax that brings back your face. I say to it sweet words which I would otherwise say to you; it receives my embraces. Believe me, that image is more than it seems: give the wax a voice, and it would be Protesilaus! I gaze upon it and press it to my breast in place of my true husband.

Cornelia Galla describes her husband’s funerary monument in similar

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terms:

Here lies Varius Frontonianus, interred by his dear wife, Cornelia Galla. In order to re­store to life the sweet consolations of the past (dulcia restituens veteris solacia vitae), she placed this face in marble, so that her eyes and soul could yet sate themselves with the sight of his dear features.

B.