Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

"
Though
Seneca:
His Character and Environment
We still hope to find a place
for the scholar in
politics, but we have given up the search so far as
the ecclesiastic is concerned. Yet in Seneca we have
a man who had mastered all the knowledge
of his
time; who was by no means an unsuccessful preacher
of righteousness, and who, nevertheless, was a success
ful courtier and statesman during part of his life.
He might have been both to the ending of his days
in peace, had it not been his fate to serve one of tinworst
rulers that ever lived. The secret of his undy
ing fame then is his ability and his whilom position
at the court that ruled the greatest empire of the
world.
It is probable that the cause of his exile, at an
age when he had as yet not written very much, so far
as we know, was his prominence in a way that was
distasteful to the emperor Claudius. While thenwas
nothing in his past life or present conduct to
justify putting him to death, his removal from Koni"
seemed desirable to the reigning monarch and his
most influential advisers. But even in exile Seneca
was not a man calmly to permit
his enemies to for
get him; nor would his friends suffer him to be for
gotten.
Notwithstanding his sudden elevation to a position
of great importance in the empire, he seems never to
have lost sight of the fact that he was standing on
the edge of a precipice from which he might be
thrust at any moment, and that he still had need of
all the consolation his philosophy could afford. Boissier
rightly says,
praetor and consul lie re-
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