1: The Palatine: the reception wing of Caligula’s palace

Messalina: Please, let’s not go in. If Gaius is playing dice tonight, we may escape without being raped or hands being cut off, but we will certainly be ruined financially by his cheating .

Claudius: Here comes Herod -- and Seneca is close behind. Let’s see whether they’ll heed the Emperor’s summons. Herod, it’s to be an evening of dice. 
 

Herod: Such dread I’m witnessing from the two of you! I’m not greatly worried. I have taken precautions against such an invitation Claudius. Even if he cheats Judaea’s treasure away from me, I have secreted enough wealth in Arabia to buy it back. I’m ready for bootikins. Let’s be off.

Messalina: No, Herod! Claudius and I have no such recourse. My dear husband, don’t you think we should hide from Gaius tonight? Remember how often it’s a greater mistake to do what he says as it is not to do what he says. He is so perfectly unpredictable it‘s as equally dangerous to obey a summons as it is to disobey.

Seneca: If I may add, I would very much like to follow the Lady Messalina’s advice. My life was already forfeited by the emperor, but as I was reported to be dying of consumption several months ago he has spared me in hopes I would die abandoned and ignored. Unfortunately,  I only had influenza, and although I’m deathly thin , I will seem quite a disappointment in the eyes of our pubescent father. I don’t think I can act the consumptive very convincingly tonight.

Claudius: Well, Herod, my Messalina has made a very good argument against gambling with my nephew tonight. And Seneca will certainly not be risking his life but offering it. I suggest we retire to the palace kitchen. The kitchen slaves and I  have an understanding. No slave in that division will betray our hiding spot.    

Seneca:  Thank you Claudius.
 

Herod: I knew it would be an interesting night. 

        II

All four are now in the kitchen in the palace

Claudius: I remember that Augustus, during his final days, would irregularly come down here to taste the food as it was being made hoping to taste it before it could be doctored. The fresh figs were very boring and he felt the need for variety now and then. After all what is more fearful, Livia’s poisons, or living without sweetmeats? I remember it was here also where his final words where spoken, he asked for a mirror to look at himself, quite uncharacteristically, and he said, “Have I played my part in this farce of life creditably enough”?  If only Gaius could act this uncharacteristically. FThen again contradiction is his character. Perhaps he is attempting to personify Farce more than he is trying to play Jupiter.

Seneca: Isn’t Farce the same as God by the verdict of most men? But there is a reason for everything, for reason is according to nature. Even Caligula’s madness and his injustice. The universe is reason itself, and our fate, all our fates, is the glimpse of that reason; and though man’s free will is the cause of evil, in the long view, the universe will turn all evils to good ends.  

Herod:  And just as the good ends arrive, we die.  I prefer not to be disappointed by fate.

Seneca: Our souls will outlive our bodies and we will see the ends for which we have suffered.

Claudius: And see them again and again forever, the immortal soul in the endlessly recurring play. In the Stoic view, which our friend is elaborating, our souls are immortal but the universe repeats the same script again and again. Could not the injustices come out in the rewrites Seneca?  

Seneca:   Reason is perfect, though everything changes but good is meaningless without evil, so the evil exists to make the good exist .

Messalina: Has any good been made to exist by evil?

Seneca: Now you phrase it differently from what I meant.  Good is an absolute property of virtuous behavior, there are no degrees of good. Virtue is a will in agreement with nature; to do less is evil. Evil does not create good, but one without the other is logically impossible.

Claudius: Seneca, my friend, you forgot to add that a virtuous will is free while others are determined.

Seneca: Yes, that is absolutely true. The virtuous man determines his actions by reason while the world temps and suggests and forces and so determines the actions of the all the others.

Claudius: Then is a will that is in agreement with nature “free”, as you say, when to be in agreement it must be in line with nature, and identical to every other virtuous will, while the non-virtuous man will be found in agreement with nothing and may think anything he desires?

Seneca: Yes, if it is remembered that the anything he can think which is not virtue will give him only one result, the prison of unhappiness.

Herod: Well Plato was wrong after all. Dialectics can force a man to admit agreement and yet not gain knowledge. I suggest a more adequate contest of wits. Claudius versus Seneca. The son of a great warrior versus the son of a great rhetorician. I will stand in as Caesar in judgment, which may not be fair, but that is the will of nature. The topic is justice and the question is “Where is justice at this time in history?”

                III

Herod: before you begin to argue over points to which you already agree I suggest you try to come to some common ground. The weapons are philosophical so may I suggest you are both lovers of wisdom.

Seneca: Yes indeed.

Claudius: A lover a truth, I’d prefer.  Truth regarding the universe, or Nature, whatever you wish.

Seneca: This ground is common to my own. To live according to what Nature dictates, not what convention stumbles upon.

Claudius: To conform to nature is enough.  I don’t think nature dictates, but to conform to what nature suggests, seems to be the more practical way to discover relevant truths.

Herod: And both of you believe there is in truth something called justice?

Seneca: Justice is a property of the mind, one of the elements of virtue. All evil or good actions can change in relation to their situation, but virtue alone is an absolute property of the mind, so Justice is an absolute.  One must have blind faith in virtue .

Claudius: I accept justice exists but in quite dissimilar terms. Justice is a convention of human society. I also believe that all evil and good changes in relation to the situation, however, there is no evidence that virtue and so justice is a property of the mind and so I have no kind of faith to offer, much less blind faith.

Herod: very good. The battle is about to commence.

Messalina: I bet the honourable Seneca ten thousand sesterses that my husband is the closest to the truth.

Seneca: I’m not going to squander the money I saved tonight while this pseudo-Caligula, Herod, is the presiding judge.

Messalina: I have such faith in my husband’s position that I will let you decide if you have won the bet or not.

Seneca: Agreed.

IV

Herod: You may begin, Seneca.

Seneca: Socrates says in the Republic that the just man is always happy and the unjust miserable. So with Socrates, the happiest of men, it is the natural way to begin, especially as we hide from one of the most unjust and so most miserable of men, Caligula. Caligula is all the proof one needs that it is madness to choose evil over good for the simple reason that one can never be happy doing evil.  Man is innately good and kind and all nature is reason incarnate. That is why to act adverse to nature is always irrational and so it is madness. Further, what is according to reason is also according to nature and so whatever is reasonable is good as it is as solid and everlasting as the universe itself. So reason is unchangeable and all good men’s use of reason is identical, which proves it. Reason is the most powerful force in the universe and will subdue any evil. Reason is quite literally God. Of the four natures that live, animal, vegetable, human and God, the latter two are the ones that use reason and understand everything is placed here to serve us.  When we use reason we are only doing what the universe was designed to do, we are discovering how everything is to serve man, as directed  by the single divine nature. But while the divine is reason, man has direct access to that same pure reason through a cognitive impression which needs no outside corroboration. To attain the happy life one need not look further than ones own mind, for that’s where reason and happiness resides. When one looks within, all reason is there and it is the same for all good men, and each good man uses his cognitive impressions of reason to conform to nature and this act of conforming to nature is virtue, the happy life. The reverse is insanity, disease of the mind and evil. Virtue is absolute, without degrees. Everything else is merely relative. Justice is only one aspect of virtue. The just will act exactly according to reason, without the need to judge something based on an action’s consequences, and it does not matter if the act is desired by others or praised by others, all that matters is that the act be according to reason and it will give others happiness. Justice is a virtue which gives others happiness. 
    

Claudius: Whether they know it or not?

Seneca: Yes, or course.

Herod: And where is justice today? as that is our question presently.

Seneca: Where it has always been, in the mind of good men.

  V

Herod: So Claudius, what is your understanding of the question?

Claudius: Well, as my learned colleague, referred to the sage, Socrates, I will begin by asking Seneca what was the result of Plato’s Lysis -- what did Socrates conclude?

Seneca: I don’t think he concluded in any form.

Claudius: Yes, but when looked at another way he concluded that there is no conclusion and we should argue sometimes only to exercise our minds. I’m aware of your dislike of such a position, but as you are the son of a rhetorician I think you may forgive my impertinence. So while I will make certain statements which appear conclusive I will only be exercising an idea or two. My proclivity has always been Ciceronian , and rather the unfashionable side of his eclecticism, the sceptical side. As such, I’m always reminding myself of that great commotion Cicero writes about regarding Carneades visit to Rome. The subject of Carneades lectures was justice. On one day he had one thesis and on the following day he employed its opposite. While the sophistry of it rankles the Socratic mind, it is perhaps no injustice that Socrates spiritually gave birth to the movement which Carneades was the inheritor, the Academy of Athens.

Seneca: I don’t think we can blame Socrates for the faults of his usurpers. His doubt in himself and in knowledge was far from the sceptic’s uncertainty.

Claudius:  Perhaps, but not only the Academy, but every philosophy today owes something to him. For the sceptics, Socrates faining ignorance was accepted as a viable and logical first principle. By acting as one humbled by ignorance one begins to see one’s own ignorance simply by reasoning through that point of view. It was Arcesilaus who said we should refrain from assenting to any position because it could be wrong. But Carneades showed that being wrong at least once during an argument may be necessary. It is not as though one can know one will be wrong, but if one takes both sides of an argument there is a good chance at least one side will be mistaken. Often, as it seemed to the audience during Carneades lectures, both sides seemed to be correct and it was not possible for both to be equally correct. It was a matter of probability which informed them as to which seemed the truer. I would add that if the point of views be given equal weight, often the arguments have equal weight and any estimate of probability of truth is superfluous. The reason being that both can be equally true given their respective points of view. What then would cause one point of view to be acceptable over another? Why do I cheer for the Blues over the Greens (the chariot teams)? Oh, I suppose, I grew up wanting to emulate Augustus, or probably the Blues have had many skilled charioteers, but however I developed my point of view I use it to the detriment of the Greens. To be fair I should not take any side, but then again what am I doing at the races?  If all judgment is based on probability, but all estimates of probability depend on point of view, and all points of view are equal and the choice is arbitrary, what do I do between now and eternity? I say I should go to the races and have a good time.

Messalina: How can you defeat that Seneca?

Seneca: Oh? Was that an argument?

Herod: Have you finished your round Claudius?

Claudius: I’m sorry I should have answered the question about justice. At the beginning I acknowledged truth as of primary importance. Well justice cannot exist without the possibility of correct and infallible judgment. The stoics claim a cognitive impression gives men, some men, this ability. Well it is a claim of faith as Seneca admitted earlier, not a claim of reason as Seneca claimed for all wise men. If this act of faith in a cognitive impression is the first principal of reason, then judgment may as well be a game, for even as an arrow will always fly straight and true even from the bow of a blind man, judgment of truth will always sound convincing from the mouth of a convinced man.

Seneca:  I see you take issue with the good man’s direct impression of truth, reason, God, the all. It is true that it takes effort to conform to the impression given in the soul. But it is there.

Claudius: You said all good men will have identical judgments. I agree that this should be the case if there was this cognitive impression in the soul. I wonder if you have seen two people with identical judgments in your career? Two people who are so a like in judgment that to know one’s opinion is to know the other?

Seneca: Of course I haven’t. I can’t know the mind of a particular man so well that I can say he matches another man. I said this belief is a requirement of faith.

Claudius: Tell me then, what is the difference between a judgment based on faith and one based on sport? They are both blind to the truth, is that not so?

Seneca: Perhaps. But sport is useless and anything useless has no value, whether it is the races or whether it is learning how to argue a useless proposition.

Claudius: But isn’t use and value determined after use and value are offered? Let’s say that the judgment of a citizen regarding a crime is in our hands. Before a judgment is made we cannot know who did the crime -- we cannot know the value of that decision -- we have not judged. So we think for a moment, he is guilty because he was caught with the merchandise. Then we consider if he is innocent, because we suddenly realize that the man who was the victim owed the guilty man more than the stolen property was worth. We go back and forth from point of view to point of view while the evidence stays exactly the same as it was when we had no opinion. It is possible that the issue should not be decided -- not that day, nor any day, because new evidence may be forthcoming -- but the rules of justice, the courtroom and of the state require s you to make a judgment within a certain time frame. Why should that be when the truth is far from certain and not all the evidence is available? Because the court is designed to make winners and losers. Any judgment needs to be made whether it is wrong or right. So in your mind you take one side and calculate how this will weigh on your career, or how it effects the victim’s family, or any number of other values and uses. Then you take the other side and do new calculations. By the time the court returns to await your final ruling, the public judgment will not be based on the scales of truth strictly regarding the case and evidence, because that is impossible, and really quite irrelevant, but on what was available to the court, good or bad. A judgment was tried on for size -- for use and value to one’s own mind -- and the side that was calculated the most useful and valuable during the casual, informal judgment of the mind was the side that won. Values and uses were determined after a judgment was tried on for size -- that doesn’t sound very grand, does it? Once the people hear the verdict the whole exercise starts again in their minds as it did in the one mind of the judge. What does this mean to the state? Will there be new evidence contradicting the decision? Will the judge need to suppress the new evidence to avoid embarrassment? Eventually a reason to change the verdict comes to light and the supporters of the verdict don’t believe it because they have used the first verdict to their advantage and it has become valuable to them. These people don’t even know why it is so valuable or what use they are making out of it. But they have decided on the verdict, used it and valued it a certain way. And what did it win in the long run? Nothing more then a game wins. A pittance, one’s own survival often. But if we look at the trial itself, and accept the limited scope of its point of view, for a moment we feel something, for moment we are alive, for a moment the judgment seems right, we have accomplished something. The next moment something changes and it doesn’t feel right so we change our minds and condemn the judgment, even if it was our own. For a moment the people feel something when they hear the verdict and they may hate it. They do not know if the verdict will benefit them in the future, but they use the judgment. Even if each of us changes his mind, for a moment at least, one may have been able to reward oneself by feeling greater than Chilo of Sparta -- for the moment is all we are.

Seneca: Remember the twenty thousand spectator’s who died at the games during Tiberius reign when the stands collapsed? They certainly lived for the sporting moment.

Claudius: And remember Titus Sabinas won a quaestorship based on an earlier drinking competition, he certainly turned a momentary sport into something useful.

Seneca: Are you trying to turn the evil of drunkenness into a good?

Claudius: I’m turning games into something potentiality useful. In both our cited cases, fate was tested for only a limited goal and in both cases fate determined an extreme result, and  how is that different from any activity?

Seneca: Those activities were useless in themselves.  

    VI

Claudius:  Nothing is isolated in the Universe, you’ve already said everything is one with God and Reason. Games work within that. What I described in terms of court actions, can be said of those useless sport and learning exercises. Think of the Blues and Greens. By supporting the Greens during Tiberius’ reign you may find it useless politically, but you may find friendship amongst the team supporters, your friendship could lead to work or to marriage. And think of the plebeian supporters of the Blues, you can feel the same as an Emperor who supports the Blues -- like a winner some times, even when nothing else in your life makes you very happy. That feeling might be useful in itself. You see, when you play something, you make a judgment regarding a seemingly useless and valueless activity and the uses and values never seem to end. Today of course, your career advancement under my nephew is improved if you are a Green supporter. By the way, I would suspect that the Green supporters agree far more frequently on issues of judgment than do the stoic sages, which makes one wonder how the stoics can believe that all virtuous men think exactly a like, unless sporting is the virtue they mean.

Seneca: That is absurd!

Claudius: Very well, it is the conventions of one’s association, from the state to family conventions, where a standard of reason may be found: not in the mind, or in a cognitive impression, but in the mere decision to take a side and to try to use it and value it to the best of one’s ability to rationalize. Your stoical everlasting life, and the recurring script of fate, Seneca, are not values I can use when my nature, and all of fate, in all its manifestations, have scripted that man can only be alive when playing a game.

Seneca: I would agree that men do some of what you say, but only because that is the best way to deal with fate. Eventually, the reason for events becomes clear if we learn to accept the will of the universe, but it is not rationalization, but reason which we accept. As regarding whether justice is like a game, or is a game, you could not be more mistaken. Games whether in the arena or among the liberal arts are useless and valueless, no matter where they lead as only the study of the good arts of philosophy will lead to virtue, which is the only value. Justice therefore could not be a game. As regarding “points of view”, I already agreed that sophistry can demonstrate the relative nature of any proposition, and how all sides may be argued equally well, that is why reason must be accessed directly by each good man. Otherwise if one acquires the standards of justice from societal convention one may become like Caligula or Tiberius, without a guide because they themselves manifested societal convention.

Claudius: No, they overrided it, they didn’t manifest it. I agree they violated convention; I never claimed conventions maintain control of their members, or that there is one convention and so one form of justice. As weak as this situation sounds, justice is only a convention, not a universal law. Certainly, your idea of justice has no greater power of enforcement. From my point of view it is also certain that the nature these two tyrants manifested itself in the quality of their games. Even when issues of state were regarded they acted within a game playing mode, as when Tiberius thought it worthy to emulated Priam in outliving all his relatives, but in his case by murdering us; and also instituting a minister of pleasures, and only condescending to direct the nation himself when it became more interesting than his nymphonum. Likewise there is Caligula -- he signs execution lists calling it the clearing of his accounts, and he consistently repeats variations of “damning if they do and damning if they don’t”, as when he freed some hostages in Germany and told them to go home, then after dinner he set out to recapture them. You see, unlike you, I think Tiberius was unhappy , and Caligula was (and is) unhappy, not because they lacked virtues, but because they did not know how to play games. They both cheated at games so much that as their power grew their games became less challenging and so less rewarding to win. They grew desperate to maintain interest in their games because they could count on winning every time, and you can’t enjoy a game that you know you’ll win. Caligula quite seriously despairs that our age is prosperous and secure, and without disasters and invasions. He despairs because those are the type of games he thinks are challenging to him. He spends all his time thinking up new extravagances and even contemplates ordering legion against legion to restore his interest in warfare. It is not because he is mad, though he is mad, that he plays these games, it is because that is what all humans do, and like a man who is emperor of a prison cell, he has begun to run out of games to play. He is desperate to be human, that is all that Caligula’s game playing means . . . he wants to be human. I believe that as long as one plays games within the conventional rules one can find the games pleasurable. To cheat at games is to rob oneself, not of the “Reason” contained in human nature, but of the emotions contained in human nature. To play a game according to the conventional rules is what justice is. Justice is not enforceable if there is power which can override it, but, then again, the human emotions cannot reward actions which are too easily accomplished, and so some kind of justice enforces itself through the emotions. The book I wrote was on how to play dice well , it was not on how to win at dice, for this very reason and on this very subject.  I think happiness and justice is derived from a game played honestly and so justly.

Messalina: Oh well, that was disappointing Claudius. I should have read your book before I placed my bet.

Herod: Are you offering to forfeit your wager to Seneca my Lady?

Messalina: Well I thought it was certain that I lost the bet. Not that you didn’t speak wonderfully my dear Claudius, only that it didn’t make sense at the end. Why should the emotions not work if one cheated and fixed everything? I arrange the household so nothing unexpected happens; I don’t want to find bed bugs in the mattress, that doesn’t interest me. I want a regular income and trustworthy staff. I don’t want prices to change from day to day. These things make me calm and happy.

Claudius: But only because its a relief from the previous confusions of ones life. I agree that these and economic factors should remain assured. But once the steady reliability of the household seems assured you will look for further confusions to play with and sort out, whether it is learning Greek or  patronizing an artist. The easier it gets for you the further a field you must go to maintain the sense of challenge.

Messalina: Oh, well.

    VII

Herod: How do you respond Seneca? Do you concede, or do you claim victory? The Lady Messalina seems to be willing to concede to you.

Seneca: I claim victory of course.  It’s ridiculous to think that the universe is without reason, or that man has no purpose. His first idea that truth is ultimately unattainable undercuts every assertion Claudius has made since. Of course I win.

Herod: Then you accept his assertion on truth yourself? Otherwise you can’t use it to argue with and to undercut his use of it.

Seneca: No, I don’t accept it. Let him stand on it. For my own position, truth is absolute, reason is absolute, the universe is absolute, and I know it because virtue is absolute with everything. The sophistry of Claudius will not change nature, so I will not change my faith in it.

Herod: Well Claudius, the contest was to decide the best argument, but as usual it was only to clarify each of our beliefs. I say that you won, but only because I already believed it, perhaps someday I may grow out of it, but at present I declare you the winner of this contest. Here’s a snatch of bay leaves just for the purpose. I’ll throw them over your head, but not in triumph, no, only as preparation for Gaius cooking you. In fact, serving us all for dinner may be the only way to hide. On second thought, let’s just slink away into the night and hope for the best. What do you say?

They all agree and leave the kitchen.




The End