Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

Given the dates of his first political office, we can be confident he was born in 25 AD or earlier, and must have, from a young age, been a dedicated and earnest student. Tacitus tells us that from his early days he “devoted his extraordinary talents to higher studies, not as most youths do to cloak a useless leisure with a pretentious name, but that he might enter public life better fortified against the chances of fortune.” From Tacitus we also learn that his early teachers were Stoics, who counted “only those things ‘good’ which are morally right and only those things ‘evil’ which are base, and who reckon power, high birth, and everything else that is beyond the control of the will as neither good nor bad.”

Like Seneca’s brother Gallio, and like Scipio several generations before, Helvidius was adopted into a wealthy and powerful family, likely that of Helvidius Priscus, who served as a legate under the Syrian governor Quadratus. How young Helvidius—who took his new family’s name—met these allies we are not sure. Perhaps his adoptive father served in the army with his family, perhaps the bright up-and-comer dazzled the heirless couple with his educational promise.

In any case, he was no longer the plebeian son of a nobody, but someone on the rise. Fortune does that, Seneca had written, brings us low, as well as proud. Breaks our hearts as well as gives us lucky breaks.

What matters is what we do with either one, and Helvidius, trained as a Stoic, would not waste the material life gave him.

After achieving the first rung of magistracy by winning the post of quaestor in Achaea, the young Helvidius distinguished himself enough in character and success that he married Thrasea’s daughter Fannia. It would have been like marrying into the Cato family, as Brutus had, except the old man was still there to teach and to inspire. As Tacitus tells us, from Thrasea, Priscus learned everything about “the spirit of freedom” and how to, “as citizen, senator, husband, son-in-law, and friend,” prove “equal to all of life’s duties, despising riches, determined in the right, unmoved by fear.” Priscus and his new wife moved to a beautiful home in Rome, a startling transition from his early life in the camps on the Roman frontier.

By 56 AD, Helvidius won the office of tribune of the plebs, where he distinguished himself by defending the poor against a punitive young treasurer, Olbutronius Sabinus, who abused his authority to liquidate their assets. Priscus made a convincing enough case against Sabinus that Nero stepped in to declare that future treasury officers would be held to a higher standard.

It was a begrudging reform that Nero could not have enjoyed having to make.

The specifics of Helvidius’s political career, as for several other Stoics, are a mystery to us until it careened off course and into open conflict with the ruling regime. In 66 AD, Thrasea was brought up on charges for plotting against Nero. Helvidius’s alleged sympathies for Brutus and Cassius of Julius Caesar’s time—perhaps heard in an offhand remark, or in something he had written—were used as evidence against his beloved father-in-law.

Shortly thereafter, Helvidius was asked to help Thrasea commit suicide. No sooner had Thrasea’s blood poured from his body than Helvidius and his grieving wife were sent with their two children to distant Macedonia in exile.

After two years and Nero’s death, Helvidius was recalled to Rome by the emperor Galba. Unlike Rutilius Rufus, who had chosen to stay where he was, free of Rome’s insanity, Helvidius was hopeful enough to return. Perhaps Nero had been only a bad dream—a passing tyranny—and the new emperor would be better.

Certainly Helvidius’s first actions reveal a naive faith in the stability of Rome at that time. Almost immediately, he brought impeachment charges against Eprius Marcellus, the man who had persecuted Thrasea and himself. This faith in the institutions of his country were quickly shaken—how many other senators shared guilt with Marcellus, how fair-weather was the new emperor’s support of the son of an executed traitor—and Helvidius ended up dropping his charges. Within months, Galba was dead, and thus began the so-called “Year of the Four Emperors,” in which the throne resembled a game of musical chairs.

Otho, the next emperor, would serve for barely three months—just enough time for Helvidius to receive permission to bury Galba. After the death of Otho, Helvidius gained the office of praetor, where he quickly found himself at odds with the new emperor, Vitellius, who himself lasted only eight months. In what must have seemed like an endless series of unresolved but exhausting battles of wills, Helvidius found himself cornered in 70 AD, in opposition to the new emperor, Vespasian, over whether the Senate or the emperor controlled the empire’s spending.