Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

Seneca:
His Character and Environment
to neither extreme. The theater on
jority belong
which he saw the game of life played probably never
had its counterpart in the world. He stands at one
extreme and Plutarch at the other, just as the social
circle in which each moved and knew best is theantipode
of the other. Both looked too intently and ex
clusively upon the merely external. Though Plu
tarch judges the average man more correctly, neither
possessed sufficient penetration of intellect to fathom
all the passions that dominate or agitate the soul.
Plutarch was most familiar with the man who is con
cerned with the ordinary affairs of life; Seneca knew
best the corrupt crowd that sought to ingratiate itself
into the favor of those who controlled the destinies
of all about them, and, in a measure, of the entire
world. Both were much in the public eye, but the
public was a widely different one. Plutarch sought
to make an impression by the arts of persuasion alone:
Seneca, by all the arts that are within the power of a
resourceful intellect. How much he was in the pub
lic eye
is evident from the statement of Tacitus that
his last words were written down and at once made pub
lic.
His friends no less than his enemies desired this:
his enemies, because they were eagerly watching for a
final opportunity to prove that this famous preacher
of an exalted philosophy would, after all, prove to be
nothing more than a maker of fine phrases when the
crucial test came; his friends, in order to furnish in
dubitable evidence that he had been true to his teach
ings to the end.