This is one of Seneca’s most famous letters, and one of the most surprising things written in the Roman world. Lucilius has been treating the people he enslaves as human beings, and Seneca cheers him on. He takes apart the cruelty of the Roman dinner party, reminds his friend that fortune can make anyone a slave, and lays down a rule that still holds today: treat those below you the way you’d want to be treated by those above you. Seneca never calls for ending slavery. He owned slaves himself, and that limit is real. But his insistence that character, not status, is what makes a person still cuts deep.
From Seneca to Lucilius
I’m glad to hear from people who’ve come from your house that you live on friendly terms with your slaves. That’s what I’d expect from a sensible, well-educated man like you. “They’re slaves,” people say. No: they’re human beings. “Slaves!” No, they’re companions. “Slaves!” No, they’re humble friends. “Slaves!” No, they’re our fellow slaves, if you stop to think that Fortune holds the same power over slaves and free people alike.
The Silent Crowd Around the Table
That’s why I laugh at people who think it’s beneath a man to eat with his slave. And why do they think so? Only because snobbish etiquette surrounds the head of the house at dinner with a crowd of slaves who must stand. The master eats more than he can hold. With monstrous greed he loads his belly until it’s stretched past the point of doing a belly’s job, so that he works harder to get rid of the food than he did to stuff it in.
All this time the poor slaves aren’t allowed to move their lips, not even to speak. The smallest murmur is beaten down with the rod. Even an accidental sound, a cough, a sneeze, a hiccup, earns the whip. The slightest break in the silence carries a heavy penalty. All night long they must stand there, hungry and mute.
We Make Our Own Enemies
And the result? These slaves, who may not talk in their master’s presence, talk about their master. But the slaves of earlier days, who were allowed to talk not only in their master’s presence but actually with him, whose mouths weren’t sewn shut, were ready to offer their necks for their master and to draw onto their own heads any danger that threatened him. They spoke at the feast, and kept silent under torture.
So the proverb that grew out of this same arrogant treatment became common: “You have as many enemies as you have slaves.” But they aren’t our enemies when we acquire them. We make them our enemies.
Treated Like Pack Animals
I’ll pass over the other cruel and inhuman ways we treat them. We abuse them not as though they were people but as though they were beasts of burden. When we recline at a banquet, one slave wipes up what the guests have vomited; another crouches under the table, gathering up the scraps the drunken diners leave behind.
Another carves the expensive game birds. With sure strokes and a practiced hand he slices choice pieces from the breast and the rump. Poor man, to live for nothing but carving fat chickens properly! Unless, of course, the one who teaches this art for pleasure’s sake is even more miserable than the one who learns it because he has to.
Another, who pours the wine, has to dress like a woman and fight against his own advancing age. He isn’t allowed to leave boyhood behind; he’s dragged back into it. Though he already has a soldier’s build, he’s kept smooth-faced, his hair shaved or plucked out by the roots, and he must stay awake all night, divided between his master’s drunkenness and his master’s lust.
Another has the job of sizing up the guests. The poor man has to stay at his post, watching to see whose flattery, and whose shamelessness in appetite or in speech, will earn them an invitation for tomorrow. And think of the poor caterers, who study their masters’ tastes with delicate skill: they know which flavors will sharpen his appetite, what will please his eye, what new combinations will wake up his jaded stomach, what food will disgust him simply because he’s had too much, and what will make him hungry on that particular day.
With slaves like these, the master can’t bear to dine. He’d think it beneath his dignity to sit at the same table as his slave! Heaven forbid!
The Master Who Waited Outside
But think how many masters he’s creating among these very people! I’ve seen, standing in line outside the door of Callistus, the man who used to own Callistus. I’ve seen that former master shut out while others were let in, the same master who once hung a “For Sale” sign on Callistus and put him on the market with the worthless slaves. But he’s been repaid by that slave, who had once been shoved into the first batch the auctioneer used to warm up his voice. The slave, in his turn, crossed his old master’s name off the list and judged him unfit to enter his house. The master sold Callistus, but how much Callistus has made his master pay!
Made of the Same Stuff
Please remember that the person you call your slave came from the same origins as you, enjoys the same sky, and breathes, lives, and dies on equal terms with you. You could just as easily see him as freeborn as he could see you as a slave. After the massacres in Marius’s time, many men of distinguished birth, who were taking their first steps toward the Senate through military service, were brought low by fortune: one became a shepherd, another the caretaker of a country cottage. So go ahead and look down on people whose condition you could fall into at any moment, even while you’re looking down on them, if you dare.
The Heart of the Matter
I don’t want to get tangled up in too large a subject and debate the whole treatment of slaves, toward whom we Romans are extremely arrogant, cruel, and insulting. But here’s the core of my advice: treat those below you the way you would want to be treated by those above you. And every time you consider how much power you have over a slave, remember that your own master has just as much power over you.
“But I don’t have a master,” you say. You’re still young; maybe you’ll have one. Don’t you know at what age Hecuba was taken captive, or Croesus, or the mother of Darius, or Plato, or Diogenes?
Let Him Talk With You
Live with your slave on kind terms, even friendly ones. Let him talk with you, plan with you, live with you. I know all the refined gentlemen will cry out against me in one voice at this point: “There’s nothing more degrading, nothing more shameful, than that!” Yet these are the very people I sometimes catch kissing the hands of other men’s slaves.
Don’t you see even this: how our ancestors took everything resentful out of the title of master, and everything insulting out of the title of slave? They called the master “father of the household” and the slaves “members of the household,” a custom still kept alive on the comic stage. They set aside a holiday when masters and slaves would eat together: not as the only day it was allowed, but as a day when it was required no matter what. They let slaves hold positions of honor in the household and even pass judgment there. They thought of a household as a small republic.
Character, Not Job Title
“So you’re saying,” comes the reply, “that I should seat all my slaves at my own table?” No, no more than you should invite every free person to it. But you’re wrong if you think I’d shut out certain slaves because their work is humbler, say, that mule driver over there or that herdsman. I mean to value them by their character, not by their jobs. Each person shapes his own character, but chance assigns his work. Invite some to your table because they deserve the honor, and others so that they may come to deserve it. If there’s anything slavish in them from the low company they’ve kept, it will be shaken off by spending time with people of gentler upbringing.
My dear Lucilius, you don’t need to hunt for friends only in the forum or the Senate. If you’re careful and pay attention, you’ll find them at home too. Good material often sits unused for lack of an artist; try it and you’ll see. A man is a fool if, when buying a horse, he inspects the saddle and bridle instead of the animal. He’s twice the fool who judges a person by his clothes or by his rank, which is really only a robe wrapped around us.
Show Me Someone Who Isn’t a Slave
“He’s a slave.” Yet his soul may be free. “He’s a slave.” But should that count against him? Show me someone who isn’t a slave. One is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all of us are slaves to fear. I’ll name you a former consul who’s a slave to an old woman, a millionaire who’s a slave to a servant girl. I’ll show you young men of the noblest families in bondage to pantomime actors! No slavery is more shameful than the kind we choose for ourselves.
Respect, Not Fear
So don’t let these fussy people stop you from showing your slaves that you’re approachable rather than proudly above them. They should respect you rather than fear you.
Some will claim I’m handing out the cap of freedom to all slaves and toppling masters from their high place, because I tell slaves to respect their masters instead of fearing them. “That’s clearly what he means,” they say. “Slaves are supposed to show respect as if they were clients or early-morning visitors!” Whoever thinks this forgets that what is enough for a god can’t be too little for a master. Respect means love, and love and fear cannot be mixed.
So I think you’re entirely right not to want your slaves to fear you, and to correct them only with words. Only dumb animals need the whip.
The Temper of Kings
What annoys us doesn’t necessarily harm us. But our pampered lives drive us into wild rage, so that anything that doesn’t match our whims makes us angry. We take on the temper of kings. They, too, forget both their own strength and other people’s weakness, and they burn white-hot with rage as if they’d been wronged, when their high position protects them completely from any such harm. They know this perfectly well. But by finding fault they seize chances to do harm: they insist they’ve been injured so that they can inflict injury.
I don’t want to keep you any longer; you don’t need urging. Among other things, this is the mark of good character: it makes its own judgments and stands by them. Badness is fickle and constantly changing, not for the better, but just for something different.
Farewell.
Breaking It Down: A Modern Take on Letter 47
Letter 47 is often held up as the moral high point of the collection. It’s worth reading with clear eyes. Seneca lived in a society built on slavery, owned enslaved people himself, and nowhere calls for abolition. Many of his arguments lean on self-interest: treat people well or they’ll turn on you, and fortune might enslave you too. But he also says things that were radical for his time: that enslaved people are fully human, that rank is only a robe, and that character is the only real measure of a person. Those ideas outgrew the man who wrote them.
1. Words shape how we see people
Seneca opens by correcting the label again and again: “‘They’re slaves,’ people say. No: they’re human beings.” Labels can make it easier to treat people as less than human. Every time we reduce a person to a category, “the help,” “the homeless,” “those people,” we make cruelty easier. Seneca’s first move is to put the person back in view.
2. Fortune doesn’t care about status
“Fortune holds the same power over slaves and free people alike.” Anyone can lose a job, a home, health, freedom, or a country. Seneca’s examples, nobles who ended up as shepherds and queens taken captive, are a reminder that the line between “us” and “them” is thinner than we like to believe.
3. Cruelty creates its own enemies
The proverb said every slave was an enemy. Seneca turns it around: “They aren’t our enemies when we acquire them. We make them our enemies.” Contempt breeds resentment; the silence you force on people becomes the gossip they share behind your back. Treat people as people, and loyalty becomes possible.
4. Excess degrades everyone at the table
Seneca’s picture of the Roman banquet is brutal on purpose: a master gorging himself sick while hungry people stand silently around him all night. The overindulgence and the cruelty belong to the same scene. Luxury that depends on other people’s misery corrupts the one enjoying it, too.
5. The tables can turn
Callistus was sold off like a worthless slave, then rose to power in the emperor’s court, and later left his old master standing outside his door. “The master sold Callistus, but how much Callistus has made his master pay!” Power moves. The person you look down on today may hold your fate tomorrow, but the better reason to treat people well is that they deserve it now.
6. Shared humanity is the foundation
The person you call a slave “came from the same origins as you, enjoys the same sky, and breathes, lives, and dies on equal terms with you.” This is the line later writers quoted for centuries. Strip away rank and title, and we’re all the same kind of creature under the same sky, headed for the same end.
7. Seneca’s version of the Golden Rule
“Treat those below you the way you would want to be treated by those above you.” This is a practical test anyone can use. How do you treat the server, the janitor, the new hire, the patient who can’t pay? Imagine the person with power over you treating you the same way.
8. Judge by character, not job title
“I mean to value them by their character, not by their jobs. Each person shapes his own character, but chance assigns his work.” We didn’t choose most of the circumstances that set our jobs, our wealth, or our place in the world. The one thing we do shape is who we are. That’s the only fair basis for judging anyone.
9. Rank is only a robe
Judging someone by their status is like buying a horse by looking at the saddle. Rank is “really only a robe wrapped around us.” Titles, clothes, and bank balances are costumes. Look past them, and you may find friends in places you never thought to look: “Good material often sits unused for lack of an artist.”
10. Everyone is enslaved to something
“Show me someone who isn’t a slave.” Lust, greed, ambition, and above all fear hold most of us in chains. “No slavery is more shameful than the kind we choose for ourselves.” Seneca’s point isn’t to excuse real slavery; it’s to humble the masters, who are often less free inside than the people they own.
11. Respect beats fear
“Respect means love, and love and fear cannot be mixed.” Leaders, parents, bosses: if people only obey you out of fear, you haven’t earned their respect, and you’ve lost any chance of their love. Seneca tells Lucilius to correct with words: “Only dumb animals need the whip.”
12. Annoyance isn’t injury
“What annoys us doesn’t necessarily harm us.” Pampered people treat every inconvenience as an attack. Seneca warns against the “temper of kings,” the habit of claiming you’ve been wronged so you have an excuse to hurt someone with less power. It’s worth asking, before we lash out: was I actually harmed, or just inconvenienced?
13. Good character holds steady
Seneca closes by praising Lucilius’s consistency: good character “makes its own judgments and stands by them.” Doing the decent thing when your peers mock you for it takes a steady mind. Badness keeps changing, not for the better, just for something different.
Key Takeaways from Letter 47
- See the person, not the label. “They’re slaves.” No: they’re human beings.
- Fortune rules everyone. Any of us could fall into the condition of those we look down on.
- Contempt makes enemies. People aren’t born hostile to us; we make them so.
- Luxury built on misery corrupts. The gorging master and the hungry, silent servers are one picture.
- Power changes hands. Callistus’s old master ended up waiting outside his door.
- We share one origin and one fate. Same sky, same breath, same death.
- Treat those below you as you’d want to be treated by those above you.
- Character outweighs job title. Chance assigns our work; we shape our character.
- Rank is a robe. Judging by status is like buying a horse by its saddle.
- Look for friends at home. Good material often goes unused for lack of an artist.
- Self-chosen slavery is the worst kind. Lust, greed, ambition, and fear chain the “free.”
- Seek respect, not fear. Love and fear cannot be mixed.
- Annoyance is not injury. Don’t take on the temper of kings.
“But here’s the core of my advice: treat those below you the way you would want to be treated by those above you.”
— Seneca, Letter 47
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Next up: Letter 48 — On Quibbling as Unworthy of the Philosopher
