Maecenas
historical figure · 4 works · 8 mentions · 10 anchored passages
in the texts
Letters to Lucilius
A Roman statesman whose prayer clinging to life even amid torment Seneca cites as a shameful example.
preserve it for me, even though I sit upon the sharp cross.
What would have been most wretched if it had befallen is here prayed for, and a prolonging of torment is sought as though it were life.
Hence that most shameful prayer of Maecenas, in which he does not refuse even feebleness, even deformity, and at the last even the sharp cross, provided that breath be prolonged amid these evils:
On Benefits
Roman statesman and patron cited for a memorable saying about financial loss
2 If it is greater, I shall not allow it to happen, as Maecenas says, that I be scolded to the tune of ten million sesterces.
"None of these things would have befallen me, if either Agrippa or Maecenas had lived!
Meditations
Gaius Maecenas, patron and advisor to Augustus, listed among his court, now dead.
The court of Augustus — wife, daughter, grandchildren, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, kinsmen, household, friends, Areius, Maecenas, physicians, sacrificers — the death of a whole court.
On Providence
Gaius Maecenas, wealthy Roman patron, cited as an example of misery despite luxury, tormented by a difficult marriage and reliant on indulgence to sleep.
Do you, then, think Maecenas the happier—who, sick with love and bewailing the daily rebuffs of a peevish wife, woos sleep with the music of symphonies softly resounding from afar?
Vices have not yet so taken possession of the human race that it should be doubtful whether, if the choice of one's fate were offered, more men would wish to be born a Regulus than a Maecenas.