Gluttony and Drunkenness. Exaggeration as a Philosophical Tool in Seneca’s Moral Letters

Abstract

This paper investigates the concept of exaggeration in Seneca's epistolary work, the Moral Letters. Seneca tries to initiate Lucilius into Stoic ethics, to achieve a life without passions, a moderate lifestyle through the practice of virtue. I focus on the insatiable bodily desires, gluttony and drunkenness, as the two immoderate attitudes of the main expressions of Roman luxury, and discuss them as manifestations of moral and spiritual enslavement. The Romans are concerned only with their physical needs, which, according to Stoicism and Seneca, are superfluous (i.e. not in accordance with nature) and mostly illusory. They overlook their real needs and ignore the soul (animus) which is capable of ensuring the well-being of human life. While constantly striving to satisfy physical desires, people are distracted from achieving the essential goal of liberation from passions, which is what Natura and modus demand. Seneca thus uses the concept of exaggeration as a literary, rhetorical and philosophical tool to analyse the human behaviour and to motivate people not to act excessively.