Impíus lucri furor (Séneca, Fedra 540): riqueza y pobreza en el discurso de Hipólito

Abstract

Wealth and poverty are recurring motifs in Seneca’s writings because they support
his stoic conception by proposing a paradigm of sapiens, who detaches himself from all inner dependence on what is not his own and rejects the supervacua, that is,
what obstructs his search for human perfection. Although in all his works there are
references to the idea that luxuries and riches are contrary to the progress of the
sage and that poverty is beneficial to the virtus, this is a particularly illuminating
text: Hippolytus’ parliament in Phaedra (vv. 483-564). This discourse occurs in
the context of a situation that separates Seneca’s work from its Greek antecedents:
Phaedra’s insane passion arises not from the intervention of a deity but from her
condition as a rich and powerful woman, and this is expressed by the nurse (v 204
et seq.). Hippolytus will draw a picture of a remote golden age without greed, a pact
(foedus) of harmonious collaboration between man and nature that will be broken
by the thirst for profit and the desire for riches, which causes numerous catastrophes
and the advent of a dark age.