Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

SENECA

THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORYOF ENGLAND since the Accessionof George III. 1760-1860.By the Right Hon. Sir ThomasErskine May, K.C.B., D.C.L. (LordFarnborough). Edited and continuedto 191 1 by Francis Holland. 3 vols.8vo.Vols. I.-II., 1760-1 860.Vol. III., i860 -191 1. By FrancisHolland.LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.LONDON NEW YORK BOMBAYCALCUTTA AND MADRAS

SENECA.From the double bust of Seneca and Socrates inthe Berlin Museum.

SENECAFRANCISBYHOLLANDWITH FRONTISPIECELONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDONFOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORKBOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS1920All rights reserved

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INTRODUCTORY NOTEletters,This essay in biography was originally intendedas an introduction to a translation of Seneca'sthe greater part of which has been completed.But as this translation is not likely everto be published, I have decided, after long hesitation,to print the introduction by itself, on thechance that here or there some reader may befound to share my interest in the subject.Of the three branches into which philosophy,in the ancient view, divided itself— ethic, physic,and logic— it is with the two first alone that Senecawas concerned. He never lost touch with life andreality. To those who ' love to lose themselves ina mystery,' and rest in an O ''Altitudo ! Senecaas a philosopher makes no appeal. Rather wouldhe teach men how to find themselves and, so faras is possible to souls closed in by a ' vesture ofdecay,' to understand the meaning of life and ofdeath. His meaning is never ambiguous. Howevershallow a pool may be, as has often beensaid, you cannot see to the bottom if the waterismuddy. Like the waters of the Lake of Garda,on the other hand, Seneca's thoughts combineclearness with depth. He played too large a part

viINTRODUCTORY NOTEin a critical period of history and of thoughtto find time for the abstract speculations anddialectical subtleties with which the logicalbranch of philosophy was concerned, and inwhich the Greek masters of the Stoic schoolwere mainly interested; and no doubt it is thisesprit positifwhich so commended him to hisgreat debtor, Montaigne.I have added, 'to fill the page,' a paper onCaius Maecenas, which appeared long ago in theDublin Review. I have to thank the editor forthe permission to republish, which has not beenrefused.

CONTENTSCHAPTERIntroductory NotePAGEI. Marcus Ajsj^eus^Sen^xla^ ANii__iiis_.SQNS:r-The Controversiae — Helvia — TheBattle of the Books . . . , iII. Early Years and Education— Sotion,Attalus, Fabianus . . . .rs"III. The Principate of Caligula, a.d. 37-42.24IV. Exile in Corsica, a.d. 41-49 ... 32V. Return from Exile— Last Years ofClaudius, a.d. 48-54 .... 46VI. The Quinquennium Neronis, a.d. 54-59.57VII. Seneca in Power 75VIII, The Tragedy of Baiae, a.d. 59 . . .86IX.Decline of Seneca's Influence— Death ofBurrhus and of Octavia ... 98X. Seneca in Retirement— His Friends andOccupationsviiFXI. Letter to Lucilius on Aetna— Seneca'sRiches and Apologia .... 136XII.The Conspiracy of Piso and the Death ofSeneca 150XIII. The Philosophy of Seneca . .164Caius Maecenas 187vu

FRONTISPIECESeneca.— From the double bust of Seneca and Socrates inthe Berlin Museum.{From tJic Volume on Petronius in the Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann)

SENECACHAPTER IMARCUS ANNAEUS SENECA AND HIS SONS— THECONTROVERSIAE— HELVIA — THE BATTLE OFTHE BOOKSA PLEASANT impression of the tranquil old ageof Marcus Annaeus Seneca, the father of thephilosopher, under the principate of Tiberius,is given in the dedications to his three sons,Novatus, Lucius Seneca, and Mela,^ which are prefixedto his five books of Controversiae. TheseControversiae, which first came into fashion inthe time of Cicero,^ were imaginary cases arguedon one side and the other by the professors inthe schools of rhetoric for the instruction of theirpupils, or by the pupils in the presence andunder the direction of their masters. They turnedon disputable questions of ethics or law— a1 'Docti Senecae ter numeranda domus ' (Martial, iv. 40).'Dialog, de Orat. 35. Before the age of Cicero generalquestions were discussed in the schools as theses, in Cicero'stime these became causae, and were modelled on the actual casestried in the courts, and these in their turn were succeeded bythe controversiae, which came to hold, as the form through whicheloquence was taught, the chief place in the education of theyoung Roman (Seneca, Controv. i. Pref.).B

2 SENECAnon-existent rule of law being generally assumedfor the purpose of the pleadings — and the moredramatic and improbable the circumstancesimagined by the rhetoricians, the more crowdedwith pupils were their schools, and the greatertheir consequent renown.^In the great days of the republic, when thesovereign power at Rome was vested ultimatelyin the various assemblies of her citizens, the facultyof swaying these assemblies by eloquence wasalmost the one necessary qualification for asuccessful career, yet it was not till the generationimmediately preceding the establishment ofthe Empire that the art of rhetoric was taughtsystematically at Rome. Before that time ayouth who looked forward to a forensic careerwould be introduced by his father to one ofthe celebrated orators of the day, whose methodshe would study, whose pleadings he would neverfail to attend, and to whom he would render1Tyrants and pirates were favourite characters in thesedeclamations— tyrants who issue edicts ordering sons to executetheir fathers, pirates with lovely daughters who rescue and elopewith their father's prisoners. The art is to involve the actorson either side in a conflict between equally sacred obligations.In their beginnings, however, in the time recalled by the elderSeneca, the controversiae were less extravagant and more nearlyrelated to reality. Thus in a controversy declaimed before theEmperor Augustus with Agrippa and Maecenas in attendance,in which Marcus Seneca's chief friend, Porcius Latro, was theprincipal interlocutor, the case supposed relates to a father oftwo sons, one of whom he had disinherited. The disinheritedson forms a connection with a woman who bears him a son.On his death-bed he sends the woman to his father, and commendsto him his son. The father adopts the boy. The otherson disputes this arrangement, and pleads that his father is notof sound mind or capable of making such a disposition. Thecase is argued between them.

MARCUS ANNAEUS SENECA 3what assistance he could.^ When rhetoric wasfirst studied in Rome as an art, and for thetraining just described was substituted that ofthe schools, the causae there discussed weremade to resemble as closely as possible the casesof the forum— the one bearing to the other thesame sort of relation that the proceedings inpolitical debatingsocieties bear to the debatesin the House of Commons. But after the fallof the republic, when the orators who hadnumbered kings and nations among their clients,or had impeached proconsuls for the oppressionof provinces, were succeeded by the delatores, whoearned fame, indeed, and vast sums of money,but also the detestation of all honest men bybringing accusations against great senators whomthe emperors wished to destroy,^ the rhetoricalexercises of the schools became ever more andmore remote from reality. The object of teachersand pupils alike was not to bring convictionto the minds of their hearers, but to win applausefor their own cleverness. Rhetoric ceasedto have an object outside itself— it became anart for art's sake. The triumph of the controversialistsin these fantastic contests was the1The next step for an ambitious youth was the impeachmentof some great State offender. Thus Juhus Caesar in his twentyfirstyear impeached Dolabella, and Asinius PolHo at about thesame age became famous by his prosecution of Cato.* The State having become, as it were, personified in theemperor, the prosecution of the victims of imperial tyrannyappeared to the prosecutors to be of the same nature as thefamous impeachments of republican times, and an orator suchas Memmius Regulus, while serving as the instrument of aDomitian's cruelty, would regard himself as a Cicero accusingVerres.

4 SENECAinvention of the effective aphorisms, antitheses,or epigrams called sententiae, which were applaudedfor their pithiness or ingenuity, andeasily retained in the *memory. Knowledge isthe foundation of eloquence '—' rem tene, verbasequentur/ wrote the elder Cato in the earliestRoman treatise on oratory. The rhetoriciansof the schools seemed to reverse this maxim,and to believe — eloquence to be the foundation ofknowledge so all-important a place did rhetorichold in the later Roman scheme of education,and so remote from the real business of lifeand of the forum had their rhetorical exercisesbecome. No one, as Tacitus wrote, in republicantimes attained great power without the aidof eloquence. Consequently,the attainment oflinguistic mastery of expression was the chiefaim of education, and so continued to be after theestablishment of the Empire. In the grammaticalcourse, which preceded that of rhetoric, boys weretrained through the medium of classical poetry.Marcus Annaeus Seneca is himself generallydescribed in modern books as a rhetorician ;but although he was intimate with the greatestmasters of the art, attended their lectures anddeclamations with assiduity, and treasured theirthere is no directsententiae in his memory,evidence that he himself ever taught in theschools. He came to Rome from his nativeCorduba in Spain as soon as the close of thecivil wars allowed him to leave that colony,afterwards regretting that he had not beenable to come sooner, since then he might have

MARCUS ANNAEUS SENECA 5heard the living voice of Cicero— an epithetcommonly used, he adds, but to the voice ofCicero really applicable.*His collection of Controversiae was made atthe request of his sons who, anxious to knowsomething of the character and style of thefamous rhetors of the preceding generation,begged their father to tell them all he couldremember on the subject. His memory hadbeen famous in the days of his youth; and wecannot wonder that it was esteemed a prodigyif we may believe his assurance that he wasthen able to repeat without an error two thousandnames in the right order after a single hearing.But in his old age, he adds, it had becomecapricious he could no longer count on its ready;and immediate obedience to his will, but wasobliged to wait its pleasure. For the events ofhis youth it was as strong as ever, but it couldnot retain what was in later yearsentrusted tofilled toits keeping just as in a vessel already ;which more water is added what is on the surfaceoverflows and is lost, but what is below remains.He applauds the desire of his sons to learn1 Cicero, after Julius Caesar's final victories had silenced hislessons in declama-voice in the forum, amused himself by givingtion to Hirtius and Dolabella— two of the most distinguished ofCaesar's officers— on their return from the war. These greatgrandes praetextatos ' he calls them— were at—pupils of his 'that time compensating themselves for the fatigues of theircampaigns by a life of pleasure at Rome. ' They were mymasters,' said Cicero, 'in the art of dining, as I was theirs in theart of speaking ' (Cicero, Ep. ix. i6 ;Suet, de clans Rhet.). Thiswas in the year 46 B.C. If Marcus Seneca was fifteen or sixteenyears of age at the time, he would have been born about the year61 B.C. (Sen. Controv. i. Pref.).

6 SENECAsomething of the eloquence of the past generation— in the first place, because the more numerousand various the models before them the less arethey likely to become mere imitators ; and, inthe second place, because the age is degenerate,and because the art of rhetoric having reachedits height about the time of Cicero had, accordingto the universal law of change, been decliningever since. In the days of freedom, sohe continues, rhetorical exercises had a seriousobject, since by eloquence a man might reachthe highest offices of the State ; but, since theoverthrow of the republic, this spur to efforthad largely been withdrawn. He had heard allthe great orators except Cicero, and the taskof satisfying the praiseworthy curiosity of hissons by returningas it were to school in his oldage, and bringing to light out of the caverns ofhis memory all that they contained of the declamationsmade in the schools by the celebratedrhetoricians of the past, would be to him a delightfullabour. The publication of their wittysayings and ingenious subtleties would also incidentallyhave the useful effect of checking theunacknowledged plagiarisms of their degeneratesuccessors.The elder Seneca was a Roman of the oldschool, of equestrian rank, a lover of the past—orderly, austere, and methodical. His wife, Helvia ,belonged to an influential provincial family,in which a severe simplicity was a tradition.^* 'Helv. xvi.).Bene in antiqua et severa institutam domo ' {Cons, ad

MARCUS ANNAEUS SENECA 7Like most mothers of distinguished men shewas, if we may accept the description leftof her by her son the philosopher, a womanof remarkable character and intelligence. Herhusband, to whom any departure from oldRoman customs and ideas was distasteful,^ wasopposed to what we now call the higher educationof women, and would not suffer her to devotemuch time to study, a circumstance regrettedby her son, in whose judgment there were fewon whom such opportunities would have beenless likely to be wasted, or who in the little timeactually allowed could have acquired so much.He tells us that his mother took deep interestin his philosophical studies, while her delightin his society was inexhaustible ; and, on theother hand, that the very sight of her alwaysfilled him with an almost boyish gaiety andgladness. After her widowhood, which succeededwithin thirty days the death of the kindest ofbrothers, she administered with the utmost careand disinterestedness the inheritance of her threesons ; refusing all personal advantage from it asif it had been another's, and giving as much careto itsmanagement as if it had been her own.In the same way the course of honours whichtwo of her sons successfully pursued, and thefortunes they acquired, though giving her pleasurefor their sake, were a source not of profit to— herself, but of additional expense so muchbetter did she deem it to give than to receive.Novatus, the eldest of the three sons of Marcus^''Nimis majorum consuetudini deditus {Cons, ad Helv. xvi.).

8 SENECASeneca and Helvia, was adopted by his father'sfriend, Junius GalUo the rhetorician, by whosename he became known. He entered early onan official career, passing through all the officialdignities till he became consul suffedus, afterwhich he became Proconsul of Achaia in the year52, where the accident of a riot, resulting in theappearance of Paul of Tarsus before his tribunal,immortalised a name which all the praises ofhis brother Seneca, who describes him as themost irresistibly charming man of his age, couldnot have rescued from oblivion.^ If we maytrust his brother's description, he was indeeda man made to be loved. 'No one man,' writesthe younger Seneca, with his usual rhetoricalexaggeration, ' is so agreeable to another as Gallicnemo enim mortaliumto all who know him '—'1 The identity of the Gallio of the Acts with GalHo the brotherof Seneca is made practically certain by an incidental referenceto his brother in Achaia in one of the philosopher's letters to'Lucilius : Illud mihi in ore erat domini met Gallionis, qui cumin Achaia febrem habere caepisset, protinus navem adscendit, clamitansnon corporis esse, sed loci morbum' {Ep. civ.). Achaia, whichcomprised all the Peloponnesus and the greater part of Hellasproper with the islands, had been an imperial province underTiberius and Caligula, but was transferred to the Senate byClaudius in a.d. 44 (Tac. Ann. i.76; Suet. Claudius, 25). Thedate of Gallio's proconsulship (52) has been ascertained by thediscovery of an inscription at Delphi containing four fragmentsof a letter of Claudius to the city. Pliny alludes to a voyagemade by Gallio for the sake of his health, which may be thesame as that spoken of by Seneca 'Praeterea est alius usus multiplex,principalis vera navigandi phthisi a^ectis, ut diximus, aut san-:guinem egerentibus : sicut proxime Anneum Gallionem fecisse postConsulatum meminimus' (Plin. N.H. xxxi. 6). Seneca had beenrecalled from exile in 49, and his brother Gallio must have beenconsul suffectus in 50 or 51. It was the custom of the emperorsat that time to nominate consuls for short periods, though theyear was named only after those first appointed.

MARCUS ANNAEUS SENECA 9uni tarn dulcis estquam hie omnibus.' ^ ' Hisand unstudied charm of manner wincourtesyevery heart, yet so modest is he that not onlydoes he shrink from the very approaches offlattery, but listens with equal reluctance to thepraises which his numerous excellences havereally deserved.' ^The youngest brother Mela, to whom the'second book of Controversies ' is exclusivelyaddressed, though described by his father asmentally the best endowed of the three, madean early resolution to content himself with hishereditary rank and, leaving the career of honoursto his two accomplished brothers, to devotehimself to a life of studious retirement. Hisfather, though he did not conceal his own preferencefor an active career, acquiesced withoutmuch difficulty in this decision, declaring thathe was ready, when his two elder sons had putout to sea, to keep the third in harbour. ThatMela was his favourite son, and that this lackof ambition was a disappointment to one soenamoured of traditionary ways as the elderSeneca, will seem probable to the reader of thededication addressed to him; nor would he havebeen greatly consoled had he been able to foreseethat this contempt for the ancient Statedignities would not prevent his son from accumulatinga large fortune as procurator of the imperialdemesne under the principate of Nero.1'Cf .Statius, Sylv. ii. 7 Hoc : plusmundo, Aut dulcem generasse Gallionem.'2Nat. Quaest. iv. Praef.quamSenecam dedisse

10 SENECAThe Senecas appear to have been a mostunited family. But whereas the father heldthe view common to old men in every age thatthe era of great men was over, and that inthe new generation there was an unexampleddearth of talent and ability in every kind, thesons were believers in progress, with scantrespect for authority, tradition, or nationalfeeling.The reminiscences of the Controversiae inwhich the father endeavours to convince hissons by description and quotation of thesuperiority of the past generation, were theoutcome of this difference of view. In thepreface of the last book he declares that theyshall trouble him no longer. He owns he isweary of the subject. At first he thoughtitwould be pleasant to summon up remembranceof things past and recall the best years of hislife under the mild Augustus, but he now feelshalf ashamed, as if he attached too much importanceto such studies. These exercises of ingenuity,he says, are well enough if taken lightly : takethem too seriously and they disgust. He couldnot admire the modern rhetorician Musa, whomhis sons had insisted on his accompanying themto hear. He thinks his style turgid and unnatural,declares the man has no sincerity, and,in spite of Mela's frowning disapproval '— —'licetMela mens confrahat frontem gives instancesof what he means from the declamation he hadheard. Clearly between father and sons, inspite of high mutual affection and respect, no

MARCUS ANNAEUS SENECAiiagreement on these points was reached orpossible.The positions of the various controversialistsin the 'battle of the books,' fought in the secondhalf of the first century between the upholdersof the classical tradition in writing and speakingand the new school, between ancient and modernideas and standards, are admirably given in thedialogue De Oratorihus, generally ascribed toTacitus. The dialogueis for all time a model ofurbane controversy, in which the most completedifference of opinion is effectively expressed withouta trace of acerbity or sarcasm. The viewsof the author are probably represented by thegentle Maternus, who, after Afer and Messalahave pleaded the cause of the moderns and ofthe ancients respectively, takes a middle course.He admits with Messala the fact of the decay ofeloquence, but argues that this is the result ofthe change in the character of the times and inthe nature of the government rather than of anydecline in the abilities of men. Augustus, indeed,together with everything else, had pacifiedeloquence which could only flourish in turbulenttimes ;but he suggests that eloquence was notof such importance that it was desirable thatthe times should be turbulent in order that itmight flourish. He might have added that goodart being the true representation of emotion,passion, or thought, which the artist has himselfexperienced either actually or through sympathy,it must change with the changinglife of theday and cannot be limited by old conventions.

12 SENECAOriginal minds may not force their ideas into anancient mould on pain of illustrating the coupletof Boileau :'Voulant se redresser soi-meme on s'estropie,Et d'un original devient une copie.'When, however, we compare the graceful, easyflowingstyle of Livy, Cicero, and Virgil, theiravoidance of over-emphasis or abrupt transitions,the rise and fall of their periods, andthe even texture of their narrative, comparableto a good mountain road, which is neverirksome to a traveller whatever the height towhich it rises— when we compare this with thebold realism, the disregard for convention andtradition, the cosmopolitanism, and the strikingbut often isolated thoughts and aphorisms ofLucan and Tacitus and Juvenal, we can understandthe extreme dislike which such admirersof antiquity in later generations as Quintilianor Aulus Gellius or Pronto felt for the youngerSeneca, whom they rightly regarded as thechief author of this revolution in taste. Thetransition resembles, both in its nature and inthe circumstance of the intervening revolution,that from the French encyclopaedists of theeighteenth century toChateaubriand and VictorHugo — a transition deplored by Sainte-Beuve,who might be called the Quintilian of the nineteenthcentury.

CHAPTER IIEARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION— SOTION,ATTALUS, FABIANUSLucius Annaeus Seneca, the second son ofMarcus Seneca and Helvia, was born at Cordubaabout the commencement of the Christian era.^He was living at Rome, as we have seen, withhis parents and brothers in the days of Tiberius,and while still a boy was seized with a passionfor those philosophical studies which were tobe the chief interest of his life and his best titleto fame. His earliest master in philosophy wasSotion, a native of Alexandria, under whoseinfluence he ' thought nobly ' for a time of thedoctrines of Pythagoras.Sotion showed us [he afterwards wrote in a letter to'Lucilius ^]the reasons of Pythagoras and afterwards ofSextius — for abstaining from meat reasons differing from1 'Quae Tritonide fertiles AthenasUnctis, Baetica, provocas trapetis,Lucanum potes imputare terris.Hoc plus quam Senecam dedisse mundo,Aut dulcem generasse Gallionem.'*Ep. cviii.(Statius, Sylv. ii. 7.)

14 SENECAone another yet in each case of a high nature. Sextiusmaintained that man could find food enough in theworld without shedding blood, and that the associationof the satisfaction of his appetites with the slaughterof beasts was a cause of cruelty. He thought, too, thatit was wise to circumscribe as much as possible the rawmaterial of luxury, and, moreover, that a vegetariandiet was best for the health. But Pythagoras beUevedin the common nature and the inter-communion of allthings. Nothing, he thought, that has Ufe can perish;but all things must suffer change and pass in neverendingsuccession from one form into another. Wecannot tell after how many vicissitudes and how manydwelling-places a soul will return into the form of man,but we run the risk of committing murder or even parricidewhen we slay or devour an animal in which somesoul we have known in human shape may be abiding.When Sotion had expounded to us these doctrines ofPythagoras, he would ask us whether we believed thatlives passed from one body to another, that what wecalled death was but transmigration, that the souls ofmen might inhabit flocks or wild beasts or fishes, thatnothing perished in the universe but only changed itsplace, and that men and animals no less than the heavenlybodies go their appointed rounds and know the same''vicissitudes ? Great men,' he would add, have believedthese things, but I do not wish to fetter your judgmentconcerning them. Yet if they be true you are right toabstain from meat, and if false what harm can you sufferfrom such abstention ? It is at least a useful economy,'Moved by these considerations I eat no meat for awhole year, and after a very short time found thisregimen not only easy but agreeable. My mindseemed lighter and more agile— to this day I cannotaffirm with certainty whether it really was so or not.You will wonder whyI abandoned this diet. I willexplain to you why. My youth was passed under theprincipate of Tiberius, at a time when foreign rites

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION 15were prohibited in Rome.^ Abstention from the fleshof certain animals was held to be evidence of an inchnationtowards the Jewish superstition, and thereforeat the request of my father, who was no enemyto philosophy but feared a scandal, I returned to myformer habits, and he found no difficulty in persuadingme to eat better dinners.^From Sotion the Pythagorean, the youngSeneca passed to the lecture-room of Attainsthe Stoic, whose influence upon his life andideas was of a more decisive character. Attainsfar theis described by the elder Seneca as byacutest and most eloquent philosopher of histime—*magnae vir eloquentiae, ex philosophis,quos nostra aetas vidit, longeet subtilissimus etfacundissimus.' ^ We know nothing of his life,except that, having been cheated of his propertyby Sejanus, he consoled himself as a philosophershould by following the plough but we know;something of his mind by the many references tohim and quotations from his sayings to be foundin the works of his admiring pupil,1This edict was issued in the year 19:'Lucius Seneca.Actum et de sacrisaegyptiis judaicisque pellendis factumque patrum consultum,:" ut quatuor millia Hbertini generis, ea superstitione infecta,quis idonea aetas, in insulam Sardinian! veherentur . . . cetericederent Italia, nisi certam ante diem profanos ritus exuissent " '(Tac. Ann. ii. 85).2Ep. cviii. The old reading was : Patre itaque me rogante,'qui non calumniam timebat, sed phUosophiam oderat, adpristinam consuetudinem redii,' but it is probable that thesuggested emendation of Lipsius is correct, since we may inferfrom the decorous conservatism manifest in the writings of theelder Seneca that he was unlikely to be indifferent to scandal,and from '— 'his words to Mela— non sum bonae mentis impedimentumthat his attitude to philosophy was at least tolerant.^ Suas. ii.

i6SENECAThe young enthusiast besieged, so he tells us, thedoor of Attains' classroom ;he was always thefirst to enter when it was opened, and the lastto leave. Nor was this all. Attains was aman of easy access, most friendly disposedtowards his pupils, whose ingenuous advanceshe was ever ready to meet more than half-way.The young Seneca would walk with him anddraw him into discussion on subjects of perennialinterest. It was Attalus, he tells us, who taughthim to distinguish between reality and appearances,between the eloquence of truth and thatof display, between intrinsic beauty and the emptysound of swelling words. He would pour contemptalike on luxury and on avarice ;he wouldextol a chaste body, a sober table, a mind purifiednot only from unlawful but even from superfluouspleasures. He told his pupils that those whocame to a philosopher's lectures merely as anagreeable way of passing the time, to hear andnot to learn, to listen to eloquent phrases andingenious conceits, without any intention ofshaping anew the conduct of their life, wouldderive no profit from philosophy.However transitory [Seneca afterwards wrote] mightbe on many the effect of such exhortations, yet theminds of the young being tender and impressionable,if the master is sincere and solely occupied with thegood of his pupils his words will have lasting effects.At all events [he adds] this was true in my case. Myadmiration for him was boundless, and when I heardhim speak of the faults, the errors, and the evils of life,I often was moved with compassion for mankind, andhe seemed to me more than human.

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION 17Under the influence of this teaching Senecafor a time lived a life of asceticism accordingto the strictest rule of the Stoics and, though itwas not long before he reverted to a more ordinaryway of life, there were some habits then contractedand some abstinences then resolved upon whichhe never abandoned. In the letter already quoted,written to Lucilius near the end of his life, afterdescribing the teaching of Attains and his ownyouthful enthusiasm, he adds :Something of all this remained with me, Lucilius.After the great original impulse had spent its force, Ipersevered in some fragments of that high enterprise.Thus I have abstained throughout mylife from suchdelicacies as oysters and mushrooms. They are not food,but condiments, meant to stimulate a jaded appetite,and the delight of the gluttonous because they are easilyswallowed and easily vomited. So, too, from that timeonward I have never used ointment, believing that thebest odour for the body is the absence of odour ;nevertouched wine ;and always avoided hot-air baths. Toboil down the body and exhaust itby sweating alwaysseemed to me a luxurious superfluity. From otherrenunciations I desisted ;but I returned to what I hadabandoned with a moderation that came much nearerto abstinence than self-indulgence— a moderation perhapseven more difficult in practice than total abstention,for certainly it is often easier to abandon a habitaltogether than to keep it within modest bounds.^Another of Seneca's habits, dating probablyfrom this time, which ought to win him somesympathy from Englishmen, was the daily cold1Ep. 108.

i8SENECAbath all the year round, for which, as in one ofhis letters he tells us, he became known :I, that famous cold-bather (Psychrolutes), who, onthe first of January, used to disport myself in themoat ;who used to celebrate the coming of the new yearby leaping into the water brought down from the hills,j ust as others would celebrate it by some auspicious wordsspoken read or written, first transferred my camp tothe Tiber, and lastly to this tub of mine which, whenI am feeling my strongest and acting in perfect goodfaith -with myself, is heated only by the sun.^was everAnother master, whose memoryhonoured by Seneca, and by whom at this timehe was instructed, was the learned author PapiriusFabianus, an old friend of his father. Fabianushad acquired an early reputation as a rhetorician,—having studied rhetoric under Blandus the firstman of equestrian rank to teach that art in Rome.^The elder Seneca describes his style in declamationas easy fluent and rapid, but lacking invigour and incisiveness. He had succeeded sowell, he tells us, in banishing such passions asanger or grief from his own breast that he hadlost the power of representing them and this in a;rhetorician was a defect. But his critic had notlong the opportunity of hearing him, for Fabianussoon transferred his allegiance from rhetoric tophilosophy and natural science, and it was as a1Ep. 83.*Until that time the teaching of rhetoric had been confinedto freedmen. The elder Seneca, in stating this, expresses hiswonder that it should at any time have been considered dis-universal admission it was honourablehonouring to teach what byto learn.

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION 19philosopher that he contributed to the educationof the younger Seneca.^Fabianus was a copious author. His works arefrequently cited by Pliny in the Natural History,and Lucius Seneca says of his philosophicalwritings that they were surpassed only by thoseof Cicero, Pollio, and Livy. He wrote in a levelstyleand with a certain carelessness of dictionthat seemed to prove him more occupied withhis matter than his manner. 'Too much attentionto style,' replied Seneca to his correspondentLucilius who had read on his recommendation abook of Fabianus and been much disappointed,'does not become a philosopher who should bethinking of more important matters. How cana man defy fortune if he is nervous about words ?Had you heard him, as I did, your admirationfor the whole would have leftyou no leisure tocriticise the parts. What though the calm progressof his discourse was interspersed by no sudden andstriking reflections {" suhiti ictus sententiarum"),the very evenness of its flow had a charm of its own.There was nothing laboured about his eloquence ;itaccompanied him like a shadow without anyeffort on his part. You could see that he feltwas towhat he said or wrote ;that his objectshow you what he admired and not to excite youradmiration for himself. He was not slovenly1Even after he had formally abandoned rhetoric forphilosophy he continued to study eloquence as a means, thoughno longer as an end— his example in this respect being held upfor imitation by Marcus Seneca to his son Mela whom heendeavoured to convince of the importance of eloquence whateverway of life he might see fit to adopt.

20 SENECAin his use of words, but unconcerned ;his soleinterest was the profit of his hearers/ Senecaends his description by adding that Fabianus'lectures were admirably calculated to elevate themind of a well-disposed youth and to spur himon to imitate so excellent an example, withoutcausing him to despair of success.^Such were the instructors of the young Senecaunder the principate of Tiberius. His healththroughout life was delicate. While still younghe was brought to great misery by an affectionof the lungs, which he calls suspirium.^Wasted to a shadow [he afterwards wrote], I wasoften tempted to cut short my life, but the old age ofthe kindest of fathers still held me back. I reflectedthat I ought to consider not so much with what fortitudeI could die, but how impossibleit was that he couldbear my loss with fortitude. Therefore I bade myselflive ;for there are times when it is a mark of courage evento live. I will tellyou what were then my consolations,observing first that these were also the most useful of medicines,for certain it is that whatever elevates the soul doesgood to the body. My studies saved me. It was toPhilosophy that I owed the power to rise from my bedand the recovery of my health — and this is the leastof my obligations to her. My friends watched with me :their encouragements and their conversation contributedmuch to my restoration. There is nothing, my dearestLucilius, like the affection of friends to assist and renewa sick man ; nothing that so certainly beguiles us fromthe expectation and the fear of death. ^1Ep. loo.^'Satis enim apte dici suspirium potest.Brevis autem valde,et procellae similis, impetus est intra horam fere desinit' {Ep. :liv.),»Ep. 78.

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION 21Through several of his illnesses, and probablythrough this one, Seneca was nursed byaunt— hisa half-sister of Helvia and the widow ofVetrasius Pollio, for sixteen years governor of^Egypt under Tiberius. It was she who hadbrought him as a child from Spain to Rome;and he regarded her with especial admirationand respect. He relates in her honour anincident of which he was himself a witness.Her husband died at sea ;there was a storm ;the ship's tackle was destroyed and the ship ingreat danger the only thought of the widow;was for her husband's body from which nodanger could separate her and which shesucceeded in saving. At a later date, thoughnaturally modest and retiring with a dislike ofpublicity of any kind that stood out in strongcontrast to the general tone of the fashionablewomen of her time, she exerted all her influenceto obtain for her nephew the quaestorship andbecame, as he wrote to his mother, ambitiousfor his sake.^Towards the end of the principate of Tiberius,Lucius Seneca, at the desire of his father,abandoned for a time the schools of philosophyand practised with success at the Bar, Thiswas the usual beginning for those who wereambitious to succeed in an official career and toraise themselves through the various ascending1 It was the custom of Tiberius to continue in their civiland military governments and offices for long periods of years,and sometimes for life, those whom he thought worthy of hisconfidence.*Consol. ad Helviam,

22 SENECAmagistracies to senatorial rank and the governmentof provinces.Your brothers [the elder Seneca wrote to Mela] areambitious ;and are preparing themselves for a careerin the forum and in office in which even success has itsdangers. Time was when I myself longed for andapplauded such a career ; and, dangerous though it be,I have urged your brothers to pursue it, so far at leastas they can do so within the strictest limits of honour.^That the temptations to overstepthese limitsin the closing years of Tiberius were numerousmay be inferred from the short description leftus by Seneca of the time — a description by adisinterested eye-witness with no anti-imperialprejudices which the defenders of that emperorfind it more difficult to explain away than theinvectives of later writers.Under Tiberius [he wrote] there grew up a frenziedpassion for bringing accusations which increased till itbecame almost universal and proved more destructiveto citizens than any civil war. Words spoken by menwhen drunk and the most harmless pleasantries weredenounced. There was safety nowhere ; any pretextwas good enough to serve for an information. Nor,after a time, did the accused think it worth while toawait the result of their trials, for this was always thesame.^There had never been a public prosecutorin Rome it had been of old the ;duty of citizensto keep watch over one another in the interestsof the republic ;and for the republic was after-*'^DeSeneca, Controv. ii.Benef. iii. i6.Praef.

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION 23wards substituted the emperor. To bring acharge under the law of majestas, in the presumedinterest of the emperor, had become the quickestroad to forensic distinction and a fortune. It isto the credit of Seneca that, unhke SiHus Italicusand many others, he remembered his father'sproviso with regard to honour and was innocentof this kind of impeachment.

CHAPTER IIITHE PRINCIPATE OF CALIGULA, A.D. 37-42We know little of the life of Seneca during theclosing years of Tiberius and the principate ofCaligula. Tiberius died in 37, and the elderSeneca at a great age some years earlier, probablyin Spain, as his three sons were absentfrom his death-bed ^ and we know that hiswidow administered with care and sagacity theirrich inheritance. Writing in the first year ofClaudius, the younger Seneca speaks of themoney reputation and honours lavishly bestowedon him by fortune of which exile had deprivedhim and of the public honours earned bythe industry of his brother Gallio. For thesedistinctions the philosophical Mela had scornedto compete ; but he too isspoken of as wealthy. ^Seneca was married and the father of a boy,whom he thus described to his mother :1 ' Carissimum virum, ex quo mater trium libeforura eras,extulisti, Lugenti tibi luctus nuntiatus est, omnibus quidemabsentibus liberis ; quasi de industria in id tempusconjectis malistuis ut nihil esset ubi se dolor tuus reclinaret ' {Consol. ad Helv. ii.).Lucius Seneca wrote a biography of his father with the titleDe Vita Patris. Of this only the fragment of a sentence remains.»His son Lucan was born in the year 39 at Corduba andbrought to Rome in 40 when seven months old. The author ofthe ancient life of Lucan who tells us this says also that Melawas known at Rome through his brother Seneca, 'a man famousfor every virtue,' and through his love of a quiet life (' propterstudium vitae guietioris ').

THE PRINCIPATE OF CALIGULA 25Marcus, the most winning of children, in whosepresence sadness cannot endure. What breast so heavyladenthat his embrace cannot lighten ? What woundso fresh that his kisses cannot soothe ? What tearscan resist his gaiety ? What mind so oppressed bycare that his nonsense cannot relax ? Who can helplaughing at his pranks ? What brooding meditation soconcentrated and absorbed that his deHghtful chattercannot interrupt and turn the brooder himself intoa fellow-chatterbox ? I pray the gods that he maysurvive me.-^Gallic, too, had married and was a widower.Kis daughter Novatilla was regarded by Senecaalmost as a child of his own and lived as muchwith him as with his brother.No work of Seneca published before thedeath of Caligula has come down to us, butthat his publications before that date werenumerous and successful we know from a referenceof Suetonius, who speaks of him as thenat the height of his turn maximepopularity—'placentem.' His earlier books must have containedthe bulk of the poetry dialogues andspeeches mentioned by Quintilian.^ Connectedwith the official class through his mother'sfamily, witty, accomplished, original, and ofgentle and conciliating manners, he appealedto the new generation by his daring innovationsin manner and disregard for old conventions, bythe freedom of his criticisms of the great oratorsand poets of the past, and by the singularpower in which he was afterwards only excelledby Tacitus, of enshrining striking thoughts* Cons, ad Helv. xvi.^Inst. Oral. x. i.

26 SENECAin short sentences that fixed themselves in thememory by their precision and completeness.Caligula who, vain about everything, wasespecially vain of his oratorical powers, affectedto despise the style of Seneca which he describedin an oft-quoted phrase as 'sand without lime/ ^The tyrant really possessed some genuine talentfor invective— when angry his words camereadily, he moved restlessly from place to placeas he spoke, and his loud voice could be heardfrom a distance. He had also much skill inpersuasion, and in his saner moments a winningmanner that was almost irresistible.^ It washis custom to make speeches before the Senate atthe trials of great offenders, on which occasionsthe equestrian order was summoned by proclamationto attend the sittings, and the fate of theprisoner was often decided by the opportunitieswhich an attack on the one hand or a defenceon the other respectively offered to the imperialrhetoric.^The ornamental manner of Seneca, studdedwith detached epigrams, contrasted strongly withthe torrential eloquence of the emperor and onone occasion nearly cost him his life. He hadspoken in the Senate in the emperor's presencewith such eloquence and success that Caligula'sjealousy was aroused, and the orator would havepaid the extreme penalty for his triumph had notone of the imperial mistresses persuaded her loverthat Seneca was in a rapid consumption and must* 'Arenam sine calce'*(Suet., Cal. 53).^Joseplius, Ant. xix. 2.Suet., Cal. 53.

THE PRINCIPATE OF CALIGULA 27shortly die in any case.^It was doubtless to thisescape that he alluded when he wrote long afterwardsto Lucilius that a disease, seemingly mortalhad prolonged the lives and proved the salvationof many men.^ Whether from this alarm, orfrom the state of his health, or because after thedeath of his father he felt more at liberty tofollow his own inclinations, Seneca at this timeceased to plead causes and devoted himself toliterature and philosophy. Through his quaestorshiphe was a member of the Senate, where hemust have been present at the remarkable sceneswhich followed the assassination of Caligulaand may have shared in the brief dream of arestoration of their old supremacy from whichthe senators were so rudely awakened by thesoldiers and the populace.Scattered about in Seneca's works are storiesof the emperor whom he declared that Naturecould only have produced to show what thegreatestvices could effect when found in thehighest station; and they are interesting as theonly accounts of the tyrant, exceptthat of PhiloJudaeus, which we have from an eye-witness.Though one of the chief amusements of Caligulawas to hold up to ridicule the bodily imperfectionsof others, his own appearance, Seneca tellsus, inhis last years was itself well adapted to mockery.He was bald, with stray hairs drawn down overhis forehead to conceal his baldness ;his livid^Dion, lix. ig.*Ep. 78.fuit videri perire.''Multorum mortem distulit morbus ;et saluti illis

28 SENECAcomplexion bore witness to the disorder of his mind ;he had the wrinkled brow of an old woman, anddeep set under it wild and ferocious eyes. Hisneck was hairy, his legs slender, and his feetenormous.^This description, overcharged perhaps at anytime, can only have been applicable to Caligulaas he was when the illness which destroyed hismind had in its effects led him to those shamefulphysical excesses and yet more shameful crueltiesand extravagances which degraded the last twoyears of his principate. It cannot have been trueof the young Caius during the first months of hisreign, adored throughout the Empire, courteous,generous, eloquent, and charming as he thenappeared while, with ' Youth on the prow andPleasure at the helm,' the ship of State rodeproudly along after the gloomy closing years ofTiberius.Nothing [wrote Philo of that time] was to be seenthroughout our cities but altars and sacrifices, priestsclad in white and garlanded, the joyous ministers of thegeneral mirth, festivals and assemblies, musical contestsand horse-races, wakes by day and night, amusements,recreations, pleasures of every kind and addressed toevery sense.For the Roman aristocracy this halcyon periodcame to an end with the recovery of Caius fromhis illness,^ for the exigencies of his luxury andhis megalomania having exhausted his treasury, a^De Constant. Sapientis, i8. Cp. Suet., Cal. 50.2"With the people the emperor, hke Nero, seems to have retainedpopularity to the end (Josephus, Ant. Jud. xix. i. 20, ii. 5).

THE PRINCIPATE OF CALIGULA 29veritable reign of terror began in order to supplyit from the spoils of rich victims, and increasedin intensity as the consciousness of guilt madehim suspect the designs of every man of note orhonesty. We are reminded o'f the death of SirThomas More by Seneca's account of the serenelast hours — of Julius Canus one of the senatorswho was put to death.Canus Julius [he writes], a man of such commandinggreatness that his glory could not be obscured evenby the envy that always attaches to contemporaries,was leaving the presence after a long altercation with*Caligula. I may as well tell you,' said the tyrantby way of final rejoinder, so that you may not flatter'yourself with false hopes, that I have given orders foryour execution.''I thank you, most excellent prince,'replied Canus. He . . . passed the ten days' intervalbetween sentence and execution with a mind free fromany kind of anxiety — indeed, the perfect tranquillity displayedin his words and actions almost passes belief.He was playing at draughts when summoned by thecenturion in charge of the prisoners destined to die thatday. He counted his pieces, and said to the other player,*Look, I have most left. Now you are not after mydeath to pretend you have won.' And turning to thecenturion, ' I call you to 'witness,' he said, that Iam a piece to the good.' His friends were lamenting ;grieved at ''losing such a man. Why so sad ? he said.'You will go on discussing whether the soul is immortal ;but I shall know in a few minutes.' His search fortruth persisted to the very end and death itself afforded;him a new subject for investigation. He was accompaniedby a philosopher and already stood near to thealtar on which the daily sacrifice was offered to ourgod CaHgula. What were the subjects of his thoughts ?He declared his intention in that last rapid moment

30 SENECAcarefullyto observe whether the soul is conscious of itsflight ; and he promised,if he discovered anything, toreturn and tell his friends where and what were thesouls of the departed.^It was impossible, as Seneca observed, to practisephilosophy longer and this tranquillity in the;midst of tempests argued a soul vi^orthy of eternity.To pity the fates of such men as Canus, Socrates,or Sir Thomas More w^ould be to misunderstandthem. But the emperor's freakish cruelty couldnot always be so thwarted and another incident;related by Seneca isprobably more characteristicof the time than that just recorded. There wasa rich knight called Pastor whose son, havingoffended Caligula by the luxuriance of his hairand the elegance of his apparel, had been throwninto prison. Pastor came to the emperor to begfor his son's release; whereupon Caligula, asifsuddenly reminded of something he had forgotten,ordered the youth to instant execution.The same day he invited the father to a banquetof one hundred covers ;and instructed a spy toobserve his looks and conduct. Pastor came,showing no discomposure in his countenance.The feast was splendid, and the emperor drankto his health, plied him with wine, sent himointments and garlands, treated him with especialcourtesy, and bade him drown his cares in wineand good-fellowship. Pastor, a gouty old man,showed no sign of distress. He anointed himselfwith the oil, crowned himself with the garlands,and drank more than would have become him1De Tranquill. Animi, c. 14.

THE PRINCIPATE OF CALIGULA 31had he been celebrating his son's birthday insteadof his funeral. Why did he act thus when sickto death at heart ? He had another son.^After Caligula, paying the penalty of hismisdeeds, had died by the hand of a militarytribune named Cassius Chaerea whom jeeringpersonal insults had goaded into action, his uncleClaudius was discovered by a soldier hiding behinda curtain in a dark corner of the palace, draggedtrembling from his hiding-place to the praetoriancamp, and saluted as emperor by the soldiery.On the news of the assassination the Senatemet and resolved to restore the ancient constitution.They were at first supported by four urbancohorts ; and, for the last time in Roman history,the watchword was given by the consuls. Chaerea,who came to ask for it, was received with loudapplause ; and the word, chosen was Lihertas.But the praetorian soldiers were determined thatthe supreme power should be their own gift ;and the people, far from desiring a return to thetroublous times of the republic, regarded theemperor as a refuge against senatorial oppressionmasters as the worst of evils. Onand manythe second day only one hundred senators obeyedthe summons of the consuls to the Temple ofJupiter, whence their own militia, after clamorouslycalling on them to choose an emperor, repaired,on their hesitation, to the camp and took theoath of fidelity to Claudius. The Senate thereuponsubmitted to necessity and decreed toClaudius all the honours attached to the principate.1De Ira, ii.33.

CHAPTER IVEXILE IN CORSICA, A.D. 4I-49The new emperor had all his life been the objectof ridicule and contempt. He was fifty yearsold, slow-minded, awkward in his motions, weakon his legs, with tremulous head and handsand a tongue too large for his mouth, fearfulto excess, apathetic to such a degree that noinsult could rouse in him resentment nor sufferingsmove him to pity, greedy and sensuous,learned, pedantic, and absent-minded— honestwithal and well-meaning. As a child his motherAntonia described him as a monstrosity, anunfinished and abandoned attempt of Nature ;and would say of a man that he was as great afool as her son Claudius. The Emperor Augustus,noted for his grace and beauty, was ashamedof his strange young kinsman ;and sequesteredhim as much as possible from the public view.He was kept in rough hands under the disciplineof pupilage for an unusually long time, andadmitted to no public honours until after thedeath of Augustus, when Tiberius, who treatedhim with more consideration, bestowed uponhim consular privileges while still denying him

EXILE IN CORSICA 33the consulship. To this honour he was at lastpromoted by Caligula on his accession ; butthe mortifications he was compelled to endureat his nephew's Court exceeded all that he hadpreviously experienced. He became the buttof the courtiers, and the victim of a thousandpractical jokes played upon him to amuse theemperor. When he arrived late for dinner hewas made to take the lowest place at the table ;when he slept, as he usually did after satisfyinghis gluttonous appetite, they pelted him witholive stones or drew slippers over his hands,so that he might rub his eyes with them onwaking. In Campania, however, where he hadlived in retirement for many years on his exclusionfrom public business, in the intervals of thetime given to the pleasures of the table and tothe gaming which he loved, he had cultivatedhis understanding, and studied to some effect.He was an excellent Greek scholar, could makea good set speech when given time for preparation,and was the author of numerous works onhistorical and grammatical subjects.Claudius began his reignwell. He recalledthe citizens unjustly exiled by his predecessor,and restored to them their goods ; he repealedthe oppressive new taxes ;he administeredjustice personally with great assiduity, assistedby the consuls and praetors as assessors ;heburnt aU incriminating letters left by Caligulaafter having shown them to the persons concerned;he forbade the practice of makingbequests to] the emperor to which rich men

34 SENECAhad been accustomed to resort as the only wayof securing the disposition of the rest of theirproperty in accordance with their will and he;restored to the cities from which they had beentaken the statues which Caligula had broughtto Rome. Other measures, such as the prohibitionof Jewish ceremonies and the closingof public-houses, were of a more questionablecharacter.But the emperor's dull, timorous, and selfindulgentnature soon tired of well-doing ; acreature of habit, and dreading change of anykind, he fell ever more completely under theinfluence of his dissolute, cruel, and rapaciouswife Messalina, and of the freedmen to whosefaces he was accustomed, until at last he becamealmost as neglected and despised as he had beenbefore his accession. That no man isdespisedby others until he first despises himself,observation made by Seneca. Claudius despisedhimself and was comically conscious of hisweakness. Once when a female witness wasis angiving her evidence before the Senate, he said :'This was my mother's maid and freedwoman ;but she always regarded me as her master.I saythis because there are still some people living inmy house who do not regard me as their master.'The empress and the freedmen, by workingon his fears, were able to secure the condemnationof anyone whose estates they coveted orwhose designs they suspected ; and, by sellingoffices and justice, to amass huge fortunes forthemselves. The two ruling passions of Claudius

EXILE IN CORSICA 35were for women and for the bloody spectaclesof the arena. The first enslaved him to his successivewives and their favourites ;the secondmade him find more satisfaction in the condemnationswhich provided material for hisamusements than in the acquittal of accusedpersons.Among those who were recalled from exileat the beginning of the new reign were theemperor's nieces, Julia and Agrippina, whomtheir brother Caligula, with his usual inconstancy,had banished after having heaped upon themevery kind of honour. Julia was beautiful andambitious ;and Seneca, attached as he was tothe house of Germanicus, was much in hersociety. The emperor also conversed with heroften alone and seemed likely to fall under herinfluence. Messalina, w^ho received from theproud beauty neither honour nor flattery, becamejealous and alarmed. Julia's husband had beensuggested as a possible successor to Caligulaafter his assassination,^ and the remembranceof this may perhaps have enabled the empressto persuade Claudius again to banish her withina year of her recall from exile. However thatmay be, banished she was on a charge of adultery,and shortly afterwards put to death in her placeof exile. Seneca, in the brief struggle for powerbetween the empress and Julia, had attachedhimself to Julia, and shared her disgrace. Hewas accused of a criminal intrigue with Julia andbanished to Corsica by a decree of the Senate.^1Josephus, Ant. Jud. xix. 4.^Dion Cassius, Ix. 8,

36 SENECAA capital sentence was firstproposed but;this, on the emperor's interposition, was changedto one of exile.^From the barren and inhospitable shoresof Corsica, where Seneca in middle life was detainedfor nearly eight years, he wrote, after aninterval of six months from his arrival, the 'Consolation'to his mother H elvia which Bolingbrokehas paraphrased in his ' Reflections upon Exile.'She must grieve, he tells her, neither for hissake nor her own. Not for his ;for he is notunhappy. All that he has lost, all that fortunehad so lavishly bestowed upon him— honours,—money, fame he had never held as ifthey werehis own.I kept a great interval between me and them.She took them, but she could not tear them fromme. No man suffers by bad fortune, but he whohas been deceived by good. If we grow fond of hergifts, fancy that they belong to us, and are perpetuallyto remain with us, if we lean on them, and expect to beconsidered for them, we shall sink into all the bitternessof grief as soon as these false and transitory benefitspass away, as soon as our vain and childish minds,unfraught with solid pleasures, become destitute evenof those which are imaginary. But if we do not sufferourselves to be transported by prosperity, neither shallwe be reduced by adversity. Our souls wiU be of proofagainst the danger of both these states ;and havingexplored our strength we shaU be sure of it.^All that is best in man, he urges, liesbeyond^ 'Consol. ad Pol. xxxvii. :Deprecatus est pro me senatum,et vitam mihi non tantum dedit, sed etiam petiit.'*Consol, ad Helviam, v.(Bolingbroke's translation.)

EXILE IN CORSICA 37the power of others. It cannot be given it;cannot be taken away. No change of place—and exile isnothing more— can take from himthe glorious spectacle of the universe, nor thecontemplating mind, roaming sacred and immortalthroughall the past and all the future,which is itself the noblest part of that universe.In support of his contention, not very convincingin itself, that since so many people quittheir country of their own accord there can beno great hardship in an involuntary exile, Senecagives an interestingday:account of the Rome of hisConsider Rome. How few of the inhabitants ofthat vast city are Romans !They come from coloniesand municipalities ; they flow together from the wholeworld. Some are brought by ambition ;some by theirpublic duties ;others have been entrusted with missions ;luxury in search of opportunities, and industry seekinga larger field for action, entice others. Many come insearch of pleasure many others to improve their minds;by liberal studies ;while some bring their beauty andothers their eloquence to market. Every race of manhastens to the city which offers the greatest prizes bothto virtue and to vice.If,then, his mother has no cause to grieve forhim, neither should she grieve for herself. Tothe loss of a protector he knows that she is indifferent,for she has never cared for the successof her sons in respect of her own interests. Forher distress at her son's absence it is indeed harderto find a remedy. But he exhorts her to consoleherself with her other sons, to one of whom,Gallio, his honours will be chiefly valuable as

38 SENECAornaments to be laid at her feet ;to the other,Mela, his leisure, as it may enable him to enjoymore of her society. Her grandchild, Novatilla,^has recently lost her mother ;let Helvia be amother to her and undertake the formation of hermind and manners ;she will find relief in anoccupation so honourable. Her widowed sister,too, will prove to her the greatest comfort of all.It is not, however, to these that she must lookfor the real cure of her distress. That must besomething beyond the reach of fortune and;can only be found in the philosophical studies towhich she must return. Philosophy, if in goodfaith she receive it within her soul, will leave noroom for grief or for anxiety, or for the unprofitabletroubles of a vain despair;to all other faultsand infirmities her breast has long been closed,with philosophyit will be closed to these also.Seneca ends his letter by describing his occupationson the island :Since you will be constantly thinking of me whetheryou will or no ; since, indeed, I shall be with you morethan your other children, not because I am dearer toyou than they, but because the hand naturally seeksthe painful spot, I will tell you how to think of me.Picture me, then, as happy and active, believe thatall is as well with me as possible ;and all is reallywell when the soul, freed from cares, is at leisure forpleasure in lighter studies,its own business, now takingnow in an eager pursuit of truth rising to the contem-1This was the daughter of GalUo, then known as Novatus.To bim Seneca dedicated his treatise De Ira published in 41, inthe interval between the death of Caligula and his banishmentto Corsica.

plationEXILE IN CORSICA 39of its own nature and that of the universe.First, I consider the land and its situation ; next, thesurrounding sea with its ebb and flow ;then the spacebetwixt heaven and earth, and all its terror-striking andtumultuous appearances— the thunder and lightning, theclouds and hurricanes, the snow and hail ; and, lastly,my mind, leaving behind in its progress all that is below,pierces through to the heights, and enjoys the mostbeautiful spectacle of things divine, while, mindful of itseternity, it wanders through all that is past and dreamsof all that through all the ages is to come.^Another treatise, or fragment of a treatise,of a very different character has generally beenascribed to Seneca, and issupposed to have beenwritten by him from his place of exile. Thisis the ' Consolation to Polybius ' on the death ofhis brother. The rich freedman Polybius actedas literary secretary {a studiis) to Claudius— — animportant post under that learned prince andwas the author of prose translations of Homerinto Latin and of Virgil into Greek. Not onlyis the'Consolation' filled with the most abject flattery,both of him and yet more of the emperor, but itis flattery of such a kind, so maladroit, so obviouslyinsincere, that it is hard to believe that it can everhave given pleasure to a human being; and stillharder to suppose that a learned, witty,and selfrespectingman of the world, with the talent forpleasing which even his critics allowed Seneca topossess— a writer, moreover, very sensitive in thematter of his own reputation— could have imagined1Peragratis humilioribus, ad summa prorumpit, et pulcherrimodivinorum spectaculo fruitur, aeternitatisque suae memor, inomne quod fuit futurumque est omnibus saeculis, vadit.

40 SENECAthat it was capable of giving such pleasure.Claudius — iscomplimented on the excellence of hismemory Claudius who inquired when Messalinawas coming to dinner on the day after her execution^ ; Polybiusis assured that he is on a level withHomer and Virgil, and that if he celebrates theacts of the emperor, in whose super-excellence hemay find at once material for his history and aperfect model for historical composition, his workwill be read by the latest posterity.All the serious works of Seneca abound withlofty and striking thoughts so happily expressedthat they stamp themselves upon the mind.Scarce any writer has been more often quotedwith or without acknowledgment, or more deservesquotation, than he of whose treatises it has beensaid by one of the best of English critics that intheir combination of high thought with deepfeeling they have rarely, if ever, been surpassed.But high thought and deep feeling and moral'dignity are alike absent from the Consolation toPolybius.' There is hardly a sentence in it worthyof quotation. The sentiment iscommonplacewhere it is not affected. The writer observes^Consol. ad Pol. xxxiii. : 'Tenacissiraa memoria retulit.* Atfirst sight it seems incredible that Seneca could have written thisexcept in conscious mockery, on which an unlimited faith in theemperor's dullness of apprehension could alone have emboldenedhim to venture. Even the flatterers of Louis XIV did not speakof his frugality or humility, nor would it have served them to doso. Flattery to gain its end must rest, however superficially, onsome foundation of fact. But the learned Claudius may reallyhave had a good verbal memory, often to be found in combinationwith the forgetfulness that comes from want of interest orattention

EXILE IN CORSICA41of the Stoic school to which Seneca belonged,that its philosophers were more remarkable forhardness than for judgment, and that had theyever known what it was to suffer real adversitythey would have been compelled to recant theirdoctrines and confess the truth. Moreover, Senecawas no flatterer; for the noble panegyric of theyoung Nero's clemency, written before the emperorhad forfeited all title to that virtue, and at a timewhen it was of high importance to the commonwealthto interest the vanity which was his rulingpassion in the maintenance of his reputation inthat regard, was not flattery. Tacitus tells us that,in Seneca's last message to Nero, he remindedhim that he was not given to adulation, addingthat no one knew this better than the emperor,who had more reason to complain of his freedomthan of his servility.^Again, we are told that hisenemies, when plotting his fall, among manyother accusations charged him with aversion tothe emperor's favourite amusements, with depreciatinghis skill in horsemanship, and with thinkingscorn, and expressing it, even of the celebratedvoice. ^ He himself in the De dementia, afterdescribing the golden age that had followed theaccession of Nero, says that he does not dwellupon this picture to flatter the emperor's ears,for that he would always rather trouble them bya truth than please them by adulation. Dion^ 'Tac. Ann. xv. 6i : Nee sibi promptum in adulationesingenium. Idque nulli magis gnarum, quam Neroni, qui saepiuslibertatem Senecae, quam servitium expertus esset.'^ Ann. xiv. 52.

42 SENECACassius, it is true, or his abbreviator, in the courseof that singular invective against Seneca whichcontrasts so strangely with his earlier referencesto him, saysthat he addressed a book full offlattery from Corsica to the imperial freedmen ;but adds, that on his return from exile hewas ashamed of it and succeeded in suppressingit.i The conjecture of Diderot is, that theoriginal treatise having perished that which wenow possessis a forgery, composed by one of thenumerous hostile critics of the life and writings ofSeneca whom the conservative reaction againsthim in the second century called into existence,and that it was designed to load with odium andridicule philosopher, freedman, and emperor alike.Much of itcertainly reads like a parody; forthose characteristics of Seneca, which are easy ofimitation or caricature— the short sentences, theantitheses,the sudden turns, the rhetoric, and soforth—are all there ;while there is little traceof his wit, or subtlety, or imagination, or depth,or mental elevation. The climax is replaced byanti-climax, the sursum corda by unworthy repiningsof which Ovid might have been ashamed.Yet glad though one might be to take refugein the surmise of Diderot from a conclusiondiscreditable to Seneca, the internal evidence ofhis authorship is almost irresistible, and the circumstancesin which a man of his temperamentthen found himself go far to explain, though theycannot altogether excuse, the temporary supersessionof his finer instincts. There are passages*Dion, Ixi. lo.

EXILE IN CORSICA 43in the treatise so characteristic of Seneca, bothin manner and in matter, that they may seem toreaders famihar with his other writings almostthe skill of an imitator.^beyondIn the last chapter, after exhorting Polybiusto distract his mind from his sorrow by plungingmore deeply than ever into his learned studies,the writer, by a sudden and characteristic turn,admits that to root it out altogether wouldneither be possible nor even desirable.Let your tears flow [he says] as nature will ;neithercheck nor encourage them. But do not hug your sorrow,or think that by so doing you honour the dead. Letyour lost brother be often in your thoughts, talk naturallyabout him, meditate on his excellent qualities anddescribe them to others ;tell them all that he mighthave been had he lived. You will forget him and ceaseto honour his memory if you associate it with sadness,for the soul naturally turns away from what is painful.These very arguments in the same sequencebut in different words, this very advice and consolation,Seneca many years later addressed toanother friend who had lost a little son.^ The^E.g. in chap, xxviii. 'Si velis credere altius veritatem:intuentibus, omnis vita supplicium est. In hoc profunduminquietumque projecti mare, alternis aestibus reciprocum, etmodo allevans nos subitis incrementis. modo majoribus damnisdeferens, assidueque jactans, nunquam stabili consistimus loco :pendemus et fluctuamur, et alter in alterum illidiniur, et aliquandonaujragium Jacimus, semper timemus.'*Ep. 99. Cp. especially the reflection in the ' Consolation,''Naturale est enim, ut semper animus ab eo refugiat ad quod'cum tristitia revertitur,' with that in the letter, Nemo enimlibenter tristi conversatur, nedum tristitiae ' ; and the advicein the former, Omnia 'dicta ejus ac facta et aliis expone, ettibimet ipse commemora,' with that of the latter, 'De illo frequenterloquere, et memoriam ejus quantum potes celebra.'

44 SENECAcoincidence may, of course, have its origin inthe skill of a forger, but in that case he musthave possessed a power of reserve very unusualin his kind ;for we have here no caricature, butan apparent example of the manner in which atrain of thought recurs to a writer after a longinterval of years when once again treating asimilar subject.Moreover, when we consider the circumstancesin which Seneca then found himself, and thecharacter of the man, we find it less difficultto believe in his authorship. In the prime oflife, at the summit of his fame, ambition, andpopularity {'turn maxime placentem'), havingalready entered through his quaestorship on thecourse of honours, married happily, and with a littleson Marcus to whom he was tenderly attached,reunited to an adored mother whom helatelywas not likely, if his exile were prolonged, everagain to see,he was suddenly thrown on a falsecharge into solitary exile in a barren and unhealthyisland. And Seneca was not cast in anheroic mould. Though his gaze was on thestars, his feet were often in the mud. He himselfhumbly owned that he did not live up tohis own ideals, and said with Horace, ' Videomeliora pr oho que, deteriora sequor.' At the endof a few years of an exile which was destinedto last for nearly eight, his spirit was broken.In the verses which he wrote in Corsica hespeaks of himself as a corpse, and threatensa false friend— whoever that —might be nowbecome his enemy, with the vengeance of the

EXILE IN CORSICA 45dead.^ Everything in the island displeased him— the burning heat of the summer, the terriblecold of the winter, the unfertile soil, the lonelinessand ruggedness of the country.^The cri de cceur with which he ends the work— perhaps the only sincere passage it contains —bears strong witness to its authenticity :I have strung together these thoughts [he writessadly] to the best of my ability {utcimque potui) from abrain dulled and confused by the rust of a long inactivity.They are, perhaps, quite unworthy of your attention,quite unfitted for the object I had in view. But whatwould you have ? How can a man overwhelmed byhis own misfortunes give comfort to others ? How canhe find the words he wants, or express his meaningwith felicity,when the only language he hears is one soharsh and uncouth as to offend the ears even of themore civilised among barbarians themselves ?^Occisi jugulum quisquis scrutaris amici,Tu miserum necdum me satis esse putas ?Desere confossum. Victor! vulnus iniquoMortiferum impressit mortua saepe manus.*Non panis, non haustus aquae, non ultimus ignis;Hie sola haec duo sunt : exsul et exsilium.

CHAPTER VRETURN FROM EXILE— LAST YEARSCLAUDIUS, A.D. 48-54OFA PALACE revolution at Rome in the year 48brought the exile of Seneca to an end. Messalina,made reckless by passion for her lover Silius,resolved to risk all on a desperate throw, and,at his urgent entreaty, agreed publicly to marryhim while Claudius was away at Ostia, afterwhich he was to seize the supreme power andadopt her son Britannicus. The freedmen ofClaudius— Narcissus, Callistus, and Pallas— fearfulof losing their power and fortunes, hesitatedbetween three courses— either to do nothing, orby secret threats of informing the emperor tosever Messalina from Silius and force her toabandon her designs, or without further delayto communicate to Claudius what was goingforward and to risk the destruction that wouldalmost inevitably follow should Messalina oncemore find an opportunity of controlling ina personal interview the infirm will of thetimorous and besotted Caesar. The last courserecommended itself to Narcissus, at once theboldest of the freedmen and the most attachedto the emperor. Claudius, informed, was on

RETURN FROM EXILE47his way back from Ostia, while in the gardenof his palace the Bacchanalia were being celebratedwith feasting and drinking and the wildestexcesses. Messahna herself, as a Bacchante, herhair flowing and shaking the thyrsus, andSilius, crowned with ivy, led the revels ; andaround them women, clad in skins, dancedand sang in mad self-abandonment. One ofthe revellers, who had climbed to the top of atree, was asked by his comrades what he saw :'An awful storm coming up from Ostia,' he replied,in words afterwards regarded as a presage.Soon after came the news that Claudius knewall, and was returning post-haste to Rome andvengeance. The company scattered, and Messalinawent out to meet the emperor with her children,Octavia and Britannicus. Narcissus, however,and his confederates contrived to prevent ameeting ; Claudius, stunned, stupid, and silent,left all to the freedman ;Silius was seized andput to death ;and the same night Messalina,by Narcissus' direction and the emperor's pretendedorder, suffered the same fate. The newswas brought to Claudius at his dinner. He wasnot told whether she died by her own hand or bythat of another, nor had he the curiosity to ask.In the ensuing days [says Tacitus]he showed nosigns of anger or of hatred, of joy or of grief,or ofany human emotion ;nor was he moved in any degreeby the sight either of his sorrowing children or ofthe triumphant satisfaction displayed by Messalina'saccusers.-^1Ann. xi. 38.

48 SENECAThe crisis over, the next object of the freedmenwas to provide a successor to the place andpower of Messahna. The candidate of Narcissuswas AeHa Petina, a former wife of Claudius,whom he had divorced for trivial reasons/ andthe mother of his daughterAntonia. Callistussupported the claims of Lollia Paullina, a beautifulwoman of immense wealth, who hadbeen married for a short time to Caligula.Pallas espoused the cause of Agrippina, thedaughter of Germanicus, the sister of Caligula,and the niece of the emperor. Claudius, theslave of habit and easily governed by thosewho had access to him, was exposed to the artsof Agrippina, whose relationship gave her opportunitiesnot enjoyed by her rivals of alluringher amorous uncle. This relationship, however,was in another way an obstacle to the alliance,for Roman public opinion regarded such marriagesas incestuous, and Claudius himself had recentlybeen prevailed upon by Agrippina— who wishedto clear the way for her son's marriage — to cancelthe betrothal of his daughter Octavia to LuciusSilanus by a false charge against that senatorof a criminal attachment to his sister. But thecourtier Vitellius, conspicuously servile even inan age of servility, who had been employed toconcoct the charge against Silanus, again placedhis services at the disposal of Agrippina, andeasily persuaded the Senate to implore theemperor, in the public interests, to contract thismarriage. At the same time such marriages1 'Ex levibus offensis ' (Suet., Claudius, 26).

RETURN FROM EXILE 49were declared legal by a decree of the Senate.Claudius was married to Agrippina, her sonDomitius was betrothed to Octavia and soonafter adopted by the emperor under the nameof Nero, Silanus slew himself, while LoUia, accusedof consulting the Chaldaeans concerning the emperor'smarriage, was driven into exile, and soonafterwards obliged to end her lifeby order of theempress.But Agrippina [adds Tacitusj, that she might notbecome known through evil deeds alone, obtained forAnnaeus Seneca his recall from exile, and at the sametime the praetorship. She thought that this would bea popular step, because of his high reputation for learningand eloquence, and she was, moreover, desirous to entrustto him the education of her son Nero, whose successionto the Empire he might be expected to further by hiscounsels, bound to Agrippina, as he would be, throughgratitude, and hostile to the house of Claudius out ofresentment of his exile .^His return to Rome gave Seneca an opportunityof observing at close quarters the abusesof one of the worst governments that Romehad known. The chief feature of the reign ofClaudius was the transfer of the administrationfrom the ancient magistracies to a kind of imperialcivil service, at the head of which were the freedmenof the imperial household. The provinceswere governed for the most part by procurators,or direct representatives of the emperor, chosennot from among the senators, but from knightsand freedmen ;and to these were committed, by*Ann. xii, 8.

50 SENECAa decree of the Senate, the full judicial powersexercised in Rome by the emperor. In RomeClaudius became the minister of his freedmensecretaries, who accumulated vast fortunes bythe sale of honours and commands, pardonsand punishments, and at their pleasure rescindedthe emperor's decisions, tampered with his warrants,and cancelled his donatives. Pallas, themost powerful of them, was his financial secretary,and the paramour of Agrippina. Thosepowers, we are told by Tacitus, for which informer times the rival orders of the State hadso fiercely contended, which had passed fromknights to Senate and from Senate to knights,and which had been the chief subject of the warbetween Marius and Sylla, were by Claudiusgiven over to his nominees of any rank. Theearlier Caesars had indeed givenfull powersto their representatives in provinces such asEgypt, speciallyreserved to them under theconstitution of Augustus, but these had alwaysbeen knights of distinction— it was reserved toClaudius to raise the authority of freedmen ofhis household to a level with his own and thatof the laws.^Claudius himself had a passion for sittingin judgment, which recalls the judge in Racine'scomedy. In the early part of his reign he wouldsit all day in the Forum, or in the portico of oneofthe temples, hearing cases even on feast-days,^Tac. Ann. xii. 60: ' Matios posthac et Vedios et ceteraequitum praevalida nomina, referre nihil attinuerit ; cumClaudius libertos, quos rei familiari praefecerat, sibique etlegibus adaequaverit.' Also Suet., Claudius, 28.

RETURN FROM EXILE 51and giving his decisions rather on what appearedto him general principles of equity thanin obedience to the letter of the law. He had aloud, hoarse voice, difficult to follow, and thoughhe sometimes showed sagacity on the bench,his judgments were, we are told, rash and unconsidered,and at times in the highest degreeabsurd. He would always decide against theabsent in favour of the present, however involuntarysuch absence may have been, andin his anxiety to finish the greatest amountof business in the shortest possible time wouldoften pronounce judgment after hearing onlyone side of the case. He made no attempt topreserve his dignity. Pleaders would pull himback to the bench by his cloak as he was hurryingoff to his dinner. On one occasion a knight,accused of some offence by the meanest kindof witnesses, was so exasperated by the emperor'sstupidity that he flung his papers at the imperialhead.^ So long, however, as Claudius tried casesopenly no great harm was done. But after atime he was persuaded by his wives and freedmento try political offenders in camera, with hisunworthy favourites as assessors ;and the worstinstances of cruelty and oppression that disgracedhis reign were the result. The opinion of Senecaon these methods of administration may begathered from the pasquinade on the apotheosisof Claudius which he afterwards wrote, andfrom the reforms in the early part of Nero'sreignof which he was the author.* Suet., Claud, xv.

52, SENECANero was twelve years old when adopted byClaudius ; Britannicus, the emperor's son, threeyears younger. They were now brothers in theeye of the law, and Nero as the elder was givenClaudius announced the adoption inprecedence.a speech to the Senate, defending it on groundssuggested to him by Pallas as a step taken inthe public interest with a view to the lighteningof his own labours and the provision of a supportfor the childhood of Britannicus. He cited theprecedents of Augustus, who, in the lifetime ofhis grandsons, had shared his power with hisstepsons, and of Tiberius, who had adopted hisnephew Germanicus and placed him on an equalitywith his own son Drusus.^In the year 51 Nero, then at the beginning ofhis fourteenth year, assumed the toga virilis— athe lifeceremonial event of much importance inof a young Roman of distinction, for it markedthe close of his childhood and his entrance intopublic life. The usual time for this step was thebeginning of the fifteenth year, but Nero's powerfulprotectors, anxious by his early advancementto forward his succession to the principate,anticipated by a year the natural period of hismajority. The Senate, with characteristic subservience,at once petitioned the emperor byaddress that Nero might be empowered to enteron the consulship in his twentieth year, that inthe meantime as consul designate he might be1 The contemporary genealogists observed that the adoptionof Nero was the first instance of an adoption into the Claudiangens although the patrician family of the Claudii was one ofthe oldest in Rome.

RETURN FROM EXILE53granted proconsular authority outside the city, andthat the title of princeps jiiventutis, or prince ofthe youth, might be conferred upon him, to allwhich petitions Claudius was graciously pleasedto assent. The soldiers and people were at thesame time gratified with donatives.Britannicus meanwhile was the object of generalpity. He was thought a boy of much promise,though whether this opinion was well-founded, orwhether it was merely the result of the interestnaturally excited by his misfortunes, is a questionleft doubtful by the historian. He was neglectedby the Court, deprived of the most faithful of hisattendants, and surrounded by the creatures ofAgrippina. At the circus games held in honourof Nero's majority the people marked the contrastbetween that prince's splendid attire adornedwith the triumphal ornaments, and the humblepraetexta, or boy's dress, of Britannicus, and theheir to the Empire seemed to be indicated bythe distinction. The twelve-year-old child havingcontinued to call his brother Domitius instead ofNero after the adoption, this was made matterof grave complaint by Agrippina to Claudius, whothereupon removed his former tutors and substitutedfor them the stepmother's nominees.The most important step, however, taken byAgrippina in her son's interests was the reorganisationof the praetorian guard under a single chief.This force, to which the protection of the emperor'sperson was entrusted, was at that time underthe joint command of Geta and Crispinus— twoofficers who owed their commissions to Messalina,

54 SENECAand were believed to be devoted to the cause ofher children. They were now removed, on thewouldpretext that in the interests of discipline itbe better ifthe whole force were commanded bya single prefect,and Afranius Burrhus, a soldierof great distinction though of humble origin, wasappointed in their room. History has little thatisgood to record of Agrippina, but it must beadmitted to her credit that to her the world owedthe rise to power of Burrhus and of Seneca, andso indirectly the five years of admirable governmentwhich those statesmen afterwards enabledit to enjoy.Though Seneca obeyed the call of Agrippinato return to Rome and undertake the educationof her son, he would have preferred to makeother use of his recovered liberty. His own wishwas to settle in Athens, as Atticus had done, andthere to live a contemplative life in the study ofmoral and natural philosophy. He soon perceivedhow cruel and profligate was the dispositionof his young pupil; and, though he persuadedhimself that he had in some degree succeededin mollifying it, he is said to have observed inconversation with his intimates that if ever theyoung lion tasted human blood the ingrainedferocity of his nature would assert itself.^In the year 53 Nero, then in his seventeenthyear, was married to Octavia and in the same;year made his firstappearance in the Senate asan orator by pleading the cause of the citizens ofIlium. This speech was in Greek. It dealt with^Scholiast in Juv. Sat. 5, 109.

RETURN FROM EXILE 55the legendary connection of Rome with Troyand the descent of the JuHan race from Aeneas ;and won from the wilHng Senate, with the totalremission of taxes to the men of Ilium which wasits nominal, the applause which was its real, object.This success was followed by a Latin speechon behalf of Bonona which had been wasted byfire, and a large subsidy in aid of the citizenswas the result. Of all the arts eloquence possessedthe least attraction for Nero, and thosespeeches, which excited great admiration, werethe compositions of Seneca.In the following year (54) a succession of strangeoccurrences was thought to portend a revolution.There were rumours of monstrous births ;tentsand standards were struck by lightning ; onemagistrate from each rank — a quaestor, an aedile,a tribune, a praetor, and a consul— died within afew months. The emperor's health was failing ;and he was beginning to show some symptomsof a returning affection for his son Britannicus,whose interests were advanced by the still powerfulfreedman. Narcissus. One day he exclaimed inhis cups that though he was fated to suffer thecrimes of all his wives, he was fated also topunish them.^ Agrippina, thoroughly alarmed,resolved to act ;and with the help of a womancalled Locusta— a poisoner, we are told, longconsidered a necessary instrument of the Court—gave poison to her husband in his favourite dishof mushrooms. The death was concealed, and1Tac. Ann. xii. 64 : 'Fatale sibi, ut conjugum flagitia ferret,dein puniret.'

56 SENECABritannicus with his sisters kept within the palace,till all was in readiness for the peaceful successionof Nero. The Senate had been summoned onthe news of the emperor's illness, and vows wereoffered for his recovery. At last at midday onOctober 13, the doors of the palace were flungopen, Nero, escorted by Burrhus, presented to theguard and, no rival appearing, received withacclamation. Burrhus next brought him to thecamp where, after he had addressed the soldiers;and promised them a donative, he was saluted asimperator. The choice of the soldiers was confirmedby a decree of the Senate, and followedby the ready submission of the provinces.

CHAPTER VITHE QUINQUENNIUM NERONIS, A.D. 54-59The first business of the Senate in the new reignwas to decree a public funeral to Claudius, andhis apotheosis. On the day of the funeral Neromade a speech composed for him by Seneca.^So long as he spoke of the antiquity, triumphs,and honours of the Claudian race, of the unbrokenprosperity in external affairs that distinguished thereign of Claudius, and of the taste of that prince forletters and the arts, he was heard with approval ;but when he went on to praise the late emperor'swisdom and foresight his hearers could not restraintheir laughter ; though the speech,' adds Tacitus'with characteristic ambiguity, ' like all Seneca'scompositions, was of remarkable elegance andcharm, for indeed there was something in theman's turn of mind which was exactly fitted tothe taste of that generation/ It isprobable thatthe failure of this part of his speech did notgreatly displease the imperial orator for in;spiteof the magnificence of the funeral ceremonies,the memory ofClaudius and the apotheosis itself1It was observed that he was the first of the emperors whosespeeches were written for him by others. ».,

58 SENECAwere the subjects of contemptuous ridicule atthe Court. Claudius, said Gallio, in allusion tothe hooks with which the bodies of condemnedcriminals were drawn down the steps of theGemoniae and flung into the Tiber, had beendragged to heaven with a hook.^ Nero exclaimedthat now it was clear that mushrooms were foodfor the gods and Seneca produced his famous;jeu cV 'esprit under the title of the Apocolocyntosisor Pumpkinification of Claudius.'In this satirical medley of prose and versethe arrival of Claudius at the gate of heaven withdragging foot and perpetually shaking head isdescribed ;his reception by Hercules, who,accustomed as he is to monsters, is so perturbedby the sight of this one that he has to look closelybefore he can distinguish'a sort of man,' andbelieves himself at odds with a thirteenth labour ;the delight of Claudius on hearing himself addressedin Greek, and the hopehe derives therefrom ofbeing able to add his own histories to the libraryof heaven ;the debate in heaven on his admission,and his expulsion at the instance of Augustus,who makes his maiden speech on the occasion.Next we hear of his descent to the infernal regions,under the escort of Mercury, by way of Rome, wherethe sight of his own funeral taking place amidgeneral rejoicings makes him understand forthe first time that he is dead ;of his delight onhis arrival in hell to find himself in the midstof old friends, and his discomfiture at the unexpectedreply to his inquiry by what good fortune»Dion, Ix. 35.

they allTHE QUINQUENNIUM NERONIS 59came to be there assembled—'You sentus, murderer of allyour kin ' ; of his trial, followedby the condemnation to play at dice for ever witha bottomless box; and, finally, of his conveyanceto Caligula, who claimed him as his slave on theplea of having often been seen beating him onearth, and his eventual assignment as a clerkto Menander, Caligula's freedman. The piece,witty and amusing though it be and unique ofits kind in Latin literature, shows a lack ofgood feeling more characteristic of the timethan of Seneca, to whose reputation it can addnothing.The idleness, dissipation, and hatred of businesswhich distinguished the young emperor combinedwith his vanity and love of popularity to throwthe whole administration of affairs in the earlypart of his reign into the hands of Seneca andBurrhus. The single object of these two statesmenappears to have been the public good, and as aconsequence of this singleness of aim no shadowof misunderstanding from first to last marred theharmony— of their mutual relations a rare circumstance,as Tacitus remarks, in the history of publicmen. The virtues of the one supplementedthose of the other. Burrhus was known for theausterity of his life, the bluntness of his speech,and the severity of his military discipline ; Seneca,notwithstanding his stoicism, was a courtier and awit, he knew how to charm others without loss ofpersonal dignity, and was a master of eloquence.After the funeral ceremonies of Claudius hadbeen completed and the pretence of mourning

6oSENECAlaid aside/ Nero made his entry into the Senatehouseand announced the pohcy of the new reignin a speech composedfor him by Seneca. Afterreminding his hearers that his boyhood had beenpassed in no scenes of civil or domestic discord,and that he had consequently no injuries to avengeor hatreds to satisfy, he proceeded to touch onthe abuses of the late regime and to explain thenew system of government which he proposed tofollow. The reign of law, he said in effect, wasto replace that of caprice. He did not propose tobusy himself personally in the trial of offenders ;the scandal of the secret investigations in theCabinet where accusers and accused alone werepresent was to end the court was no;longer to bea market where offices, privileges, and pardonswere sold to favourites his ; private fortune mustbe distinguished from the public revenue, hishousehold from the ministers of the republic.The Senate were to be reinstated in its ancientfunctions, and consular tribunals to be restoredto Italy and the senatorial provinces, with theright of appeal to the Senate.^ Let the Senate,he said in conclusion, address themselves to theadministration of the republic he himself would;take thought for the armies committed to his care.This speech was heard with exultation by1 'Peractis tristitiae imitamentis ' {Ann. xiii. 4).-This refers to the division of the provinces into imperialand senatorial provinces made by Augustus— the latter beingadministered by the Senate, the former directly by himselfthrough procurators. Under Claudius the distinction had beenpractically abolished, and the whole Empire, with a few exceptions,sucli as Achaia, governed by the emperor's procuratorswho, like FeUx in Judaea, were often freedmen.

THE QUINQUENNIUM NERONISthe senators. They decreed that it should beengraved in letters of silver, and read publiclyat the beginning of each new year, hoping tobind the emperor by this recurring publicationto observe the charter of liberties it contained.^Nor were those hopesat first deceived. TheSenate, under the direction doubtless of Senecaand Burrhus, made early use of its recoveredliberties, and Acts were passed dealing with recentabuses. The young emperor himself declared hisintention of walking in the stepsof his ancestor6iAugustus, and seized every opportunity of showingcourtesy, humanity, and liberality. The heaviertaxes were reduced or repealed. Informers werediscouraged, and their fees reduced to a fourth.The ruinous burdens which successful candidatesfor honours had been compelled to endure werereduced within more reasonable limits ;appealswere instituted from the judges to the Senate ;the law against forgery was strengthened;andlawyers' fees were regulated.^These reforms were opposed by Agrippina,who had no wish for the downfall of a systemby which she had profited so largely. But herinfluence was already on the wane. When herpower had been threatened in the preceding reign,she had contrived the death of Claudius in orderto preserve it, but she was now to find that herambition had overleaptitself. At first, indeed,all had gone well. Her violence and imperioustemper intimidated Nero and bent him to herwishes, though he longed»Dion Cassius, Ixi. 3.to shake off a detested*Suet. Nero, x.

62 SENECAyoke. He began by heaping honours on themother to whom he owed the Empire. Sheaccepted these honours as her due, and wasimprudent enough continually to remind himof his obligations. The assassination of Silanus,Proconsul of Asia, gave early proof of what mightbe expected from the continuance of her power.Silanus had owed his safety in the preceding reignsto his inactivity and notorious lack of ambition,but as a descendant of Augustus he had beenspoken of as a possible rival to Nero, and he wasthe brother of another Silanus for whose deathunder Claudius Agrippina had been responsible.Agrippina, therefore, caused him to be poisonedat his own table, employing as her agents twomen charged with the management of the imperialestate in the province. The crime was committedwith so little attempt at concealment that it wasa secret to none. Narcissus, too, who had opposedher marriage with Claudius, was imprisoned withsuch severity that he took refuge in self-destruction.Other executions would have followed but forthe interposition of Seneca and Burrhus. Nero,who was innocent of the murder of Silanus andhad been opposed to the punishment of Narcissus,was glad to support his two ministers, and in sodoing to satisfy his vanity by earning a reputationfor clemency and good government. Moreover,the man who had most influence with Agrippinawas the fabulously rich freedman Pallas, herparamour, whose moroseness and arrogance hadmade him universally detested. The destructionof the power of the freedmen was a preliminary

THE QUINQUENNIUM NERONIS 63step essential to the restoration of the just andhumane administration contemplated by Seneca,and so long as Agrippina remained all-powerfulthat object could not be effected.An incident that occurred before Nero hadbeen many months emperor served to showwhich side had gained the victory in this briefstruggle for power between the reformers andthe upholders of the old system. Agrippinahad been accustomed during the principate ofClaudius to appear in the company of that feeblesovereign on state occasions and openly to sharehis sovereignty. Nor had she anticipated thather position in that respect would be changed forthe worse by the succession of her son to power.But one day Nero was seated on his throne andabout to receive some Armenian ambassadors,when his mother entered the audience chamberand advanced with the intention of seating herselfbeside him to share in their reception. Thoughallwho were present were indignantly consciousthat such an assessor would lower the imperialdignity in the eyes of the Armenians, Senecaalone had the courage to intervene. At hiswhispered suggestion the prince left his throneand advanced down the hall, as if out of respectto greet his mother. An excuse was then foundfor postponing the reception of the delegates, andthe scandal was averted.Seneca has been charged with ingratitude toAgrippina, to whom he owed his return fromexile and the appointment as Nero's tutor onwhich were founded his wealth and greatness.

64 SENECABut he had to choose between resistance to thepower of the empress and the abandonmentof his projects of reform, and it isby no meansclear that he ought to have chosen the latter.In his treatise De Beneficiis he says that if aman has received favours from a tyrant he oughtto repay him with what benefits he can, so longas he can do so without injury to others.^ Tohave supported the cruel and corrupt influenceof Agrippina would have been signally to haveviolated this condition ;while if he had retiredfrom public life, deserted Burrhus, and surrenderedhis opportunities of serving the State, he wouldnone the less have been accused of ingratitudeby Agrippina, who had counted on his activesupport.At all events the prosperity of the first fiveyears of the reign of Nero, the famous quinqiiennmmNeronis, during which the emperor,abandoning himself to his pleasures, left the wholebusiness of the State to Seneca and Burrhus,silenced for the time the detractors of thosestatesmen. The Emperor Trajan was afterwardswont to declare that this, in his judgment, wasthe period in which the Romans enjoyed thebest government under the Empire.^ Even themalicious historian Dion Cassius, enemy thoughhe was to Seneca's reputation, writes that thesestatesmen, once the full control of affairs hadfallen into their hands, exercised itwith a justice1 De Bene}, vii. 20.* 'Merito Trajanus saepius testatur procul differre cunctosprincipes Neronis quinquennio ' (Aurelius Victor, de Caesar, c. 5).

THE QUINQUENNIUM NERONIS 65and an ability which won for them universalapplause.^ It was something when in the strangecourse of human destiny supreme power over thecivilised world had fallen into the hands of avicious and worthless youth, not only to havesaved five years from the wreck, but even to havemade them memorable for their excellence. Thatthis feat was accomplished by Seneca cannotbe denied, though the means he employed to retainand confirm his power unquestionably needdefence.The steps taken at the end of the year (54)to repel a Parthian invasion of Armenia, andthe appointment of Corbulo, an able general,whose sole claim to promotion lay in his meritsto the chief military command there, increasedthe confidence felt in the administration, andwere taken as signs that the era of appointmentsby favour and intrigue was at an end. TheSenate wished to erect gold and silver statues tothe emperor, and to call the month of Decemberby his name, but he modestly declined thesehonours. Nor would he listen to delators whobrought accusations of disaffection against knightsand senators.The year 55, the second of the reign, wasmarked by fresh acts of a wise indulgence towhich the Romans had been unaccustomed sincethe early years of Tiberius. The young emperorpledged himself to a policy of conciliation innumerous speeches in which the world recognisedthe hand of Seneca. These speeches, adds Tacitus,1Dion, Ixi. 4.

66 SENECAhe put into the prince's mouth either in order todisplay his own talents or else that all might knowin what honourable principles he had trainedthe mind of his imperial pupil. Most of thehistorian's references toSeneca are marked by acertain reserve or unfriendly suggestion as of oneanxious not to be unfair yet resolved to do nomore than bare justice to a man with whom hewas out of sympathy. In this instance it wouldseem, on the face of it, at least as probable thatin interesting Nero's vanity in a reputation forclemency, and engaging him by public professionsto maintain it, Seneca was acting on public groundsas that he was merely endeavouring to win applausefor himself.It was at this time that he addressed to theemperor the finely conceived and nobly expressedtreatise De dementia, the firstpart of whichhas been happily preserved to us. In this treatisethe philosopher described the emperor as not onlythe principle of unity that linked together thevast regions of the Empire, but also the mind thatdirected the huge body, the limbs of which itrestrained from mutual destruction. The republic,he said, and Caesar have so grown togetherthat they cannot be torn asunder without thedestruction of both, and the union is such that•Caesar will practise clemency to his subjects forthe same reason that a man is merciful to hisown members. Bleeding or a surgical operationmay be required, but he will shed no blood norinflict any pain that is not inevitably necessaryfor the common good. Seneca pictures the young

THE QUINQUENNIUM NERONIS 67prince serenely — contemplating the vast massesof his subjects so various in race and character,so ready for internecine strife, kept in peace onlyand thus speaking toby their common allegiance ;himself :From out the host of mortal beings I have beenchosen and thought worthy to do the work of the godsupon the earth. I have been given the power of lifeand death over all the nations. To determine thecondition and to control the destinies of every raceand of every individual is my absolute prerogative.Whatever Fortune has to give, through my work shegives it from; my rephes as from a fountain peoplesand cities draw their happiness. There is no prosperityin all the world save by my favour and allowance. Thesecountless swords, sheathed by my peace, at a sign fromme would leap from their scabbards. It is in my power,were I so minded, utterly to destroy or expatriate wholenations ;their liberties are mine to give or to withhold ;kings at my word become slaves ;the brow of whom Iwill I encircle with a diadem ;cities come into being orare lost according to my will. In this supreme positionneither anger, nor the natural impetuosity of youth,nor the foolish stubbornness of men hardly to be borneby the most patient of tempers, nor even that direambition so common in princes drawing them on todisplay their power by terror-striking acts, have evermoved me to inflict a single unjust punishment. Thehumblest blood is precious to me ; my sword lies buriedin its sheath ; if a suppliant has nothing else to plead,yet as a man he will find favour in my sight. My severityI keep concealed ; my clemency in the open and readyfor use. I have rescued the laws from the obscurityand neglect into which they had fallen, and I observethem as if I too had to render an account of my actions.I have been touched by the youth of one prisoner, by theage of another ;the rank of some, the helplessness of

68 SENECAothers, have moved me to pardon ; where no otherreason for mercy could be found, I have forgiven for thepleasure of forgiving. If this day the immortal godswere to bid me give an account of my stewardship ofthe human race the reckoning would show no loss. 'is true, Caesar,' replies Seneca ;'Itand you may claimwith confidence that of all the citizens entrusted toyour care not one either through open violence or secrettreachery has been lost to the commonwealth. Youronly ambition has been to be praised for the rarest—quality of all a glory vouchsafed to none of your predecessors—the glory of innocence. You have not wastedyour pains. That singular goodness of yours has notbeen valued grudingly or unwilHngly. Your subjectsare grateful indeed. No individual was ever so dearto another as you, their great and lasting treasure, areto the whole Roman people. But you have undertakena heavy task. In this first year you have given us ataste of your rule, and have set up a new standard bywhich you yourself will be judged. No one will anylonger care to remember the times of the divine Augustusor the early years of Tiberius ; you yourself have suppliedthe only model by which men will wish that you yourselfshould be guided.'No man, wrote Seneca, in one of his letters,can paint a picture though his colours are allready unless he knows exactly what it is he wishesto paint. In this picture of the innocent autocratwho, making his choice between the two greatrival forces by which men are governed, findshis strength in their love rather than in their fear,Seneca anticipated, as he often does, the teachingof Christianity. There may be flatteryin hiswords, but it is flattery of a noble sort and directedto a noble end. So far Nero, guided by hisministers, had really governed his subjects with

THE QUINQUENNIUM NERONIS 69justice and humanity ; and would have almostdeserved the praise he received had not thisresult been attributable rather to his aversionfrom business and love of popularity than toany worthier motive.In this second year of his reign Nero, whofrom the first had abhorred his guiltless andunhappy wife Octavia, fell passionately in lovewith a young freedwoman named Acte. The affairwas confided to the prince's boon companions—chief among whom was Otho, afterwards emperor— and to the ministers, but was otherwise a secret.Seneca and Burrhus, hopeless of reconciling Neroto Octavia, regarded without displeasure his infatuationfor a good-natured girl, whose influenceinjured no one while it satisfied the dangerouspassions of her lover in a manner harmless to thecommonwealth. But Seneca carried his complaisancetoo far if it was at his suggestion thathis most intimate friend, Annaeus Serenus, captainof Nero's bodyguard, to disguise the real intrigue,played the part of Acte's lover and openly senther the presents which really came from theemperor. This artifice at first deceived Agrippina ;but she soon came to know the truth. Alwaysin extremes, she stormed, menaced, and insulted ;and then, finding her rage of no effect, passedto the most abject flattery and submission withno better success. Nero, when the discovery wasfirst made, endeavoured to conciliate her by arich present of robes and jewellery; but this shereceived with disdain, exclaiming that she hadgiven him all and he was returning her a part.

70 SENECAHer subsequent submission merely emboldenedhim to dismiss her minion Pallas from all hisoffices, and openly to bring her power to an end.On this Agrippina, flinging prudence to thewinds, gave a free rein to the ungovernabletemper which she had inherited from her mother.Britannicus, she exclaimed, was now of an ageto succeed to that inheritance which her owninjustice had transferred to a usurper. Since somany crimes had been committed in vain shewould confess them all, and, since by the mercyof the gods Britannicus still lived, make reparation.She would go to the camp accompanied byBritannicus and present herself to the soldiers—bidding them choose between the pedant Seneca,who with the low-born cripple Burrhus had theaudacity to aspire to govern the world, and thedaughter of Germanicus.^ She was to find, however,that an emperor was easier to make than tounmake.To the unfortunate Britannicus her supportproved even more disastrous than her hostility.Nero's latent jealousy and suspicion had alreadybeen roused to activity by an incident which hadoccurred during the Saturnalia of the precedingDecember. There was a game played by Romanboys consisting in the choice of a ' king ' by lot,whose commands, whatever they might be, therest were obliged one by one to obey. On thisoccasion the lot fell on Nero, and to exposeBritannicus to ridicule he ordered him to standin the middle and sing a song. The boy obeyed ;*Tac. Ann. xiii. 14.

THE QUINQUENNIUM NERONIS 71and sang in so pathetic a manner the misfortunesof one who had been driven from his father'shouse and despoiled of his inheritance, that hemoved all his hearers to compassion.Agrippina was doubtless aware of her son'ssuspicions when she threatened him with the rivalryof Britannicus ;but she does not seem to haveanticipated their natural result in that prince'sdestruction. Such, however, it proved. The ministrationsof Locusta— the recognised Court—poisonerwere again employed ; and Britannicus waspoisoned at a banquet in the presence of Neroand his Court. The wine, tried by his taster,was designedly so heated that he called for waterto cool it, and in the water thus added to hisdrink a deadly poison was administered. Sorapid was its effect that he fell back instantlydeprived of sense. A thrill of horror ranthrough the company. The more imprudentdispersed others better advised remained seated;and looked fixedly at Nero for their cue. Hewith an air of indifference remarked thatBritannicus had from his infancy been subjectto such fits and that he would soon be better.There was a short silence, and then the feastproceeded as if nothing had happened. Theterror and consternation visible in the countenanceof Agrippina served to convince all present thatshe was as innocent of complicity in the murderas Octavia herself, who in spite of her extremeyouth had been taught by adversity to concealevery symptom of feehng. In the same night theashes of Britannicus were hurriedly buried in the

72 SENECACampus Martius— all preparations having beenmade beforehand. In a subsequent edict Nerodefended these hasty obsequies and the omissionof the usual funeral speeches and ceremonies bya reference to ancient usage ; and, bewailing theloss of his brother's support, expressed his reliance,as the last of a family born to Empire, on theenhanced devotion of Senate and people. Theestate of Britannicus, his houses, and villas, weredivided by the emperor among the gravest andmost honoured of his own friends, with the object,itwas thought, of binding them to acquiescence.It would not have been safe to refuse the imperialgifts,but the conduct of such men as Seneca andBurrhus in accepting them did not escapeanimadversion }No presents, however, could soften the angerof Agrippina. Her friends were admitted tosecret interviews ;she raised money from everyquarter ; she caressed Octavia ;she made courtto the soldiers ;and extolled the qualities ofcertain of the chief among the nobility as thoughshe were seeking a leader for her party. Whenthe news of these proceedings reached Nero heand re-retaliated by discharging her bodyguardmoving her from the palace to another house,where, always accompanied by a large body ofcenturions, he made her a few brief and formalvisits.Agrippina's enemies now thoughtthat their^Tac. Ann. xiii. i8 : 'Nee defuere, qui arguerent virosgravitatem asseverantes, quod domos, villas, id temporis, quasipraedam divisissent.'

THE QUINQUENNIUM NERONIS 73her inti-time had come. Junia Silana, formerlymate friend and her rival in race, in beauty, and inwantonness, but whose friendship had been turnedby a private quarrel into hatred, devised a plotfor her ruin. Two clients of Silana, Iturius andCalvisius, agreed to accuse the empress-mother ofa plot to overthrow Nero and to marry RubelliusPlautus, a descendant through his mother ofAugustus, whom she would at the same timeplace on the throne. An actorc ailed Paris, afavourite minister of Nero's pleasures, was chosento reveal the pretended conspiracy.Late one night, when the emperor was heavywith wine, Paris entered his apartment withtragic countenance and told his story. Thefirst impulse of the terrified Nero was to giveorder for the immediate execution of his motherand Plautus, but he was dissuaded from doingso by Burrhus and Seneca, who pointed out theflimsy nature of the evidence against Agrippinaand the injustice of condemning her unheard.The next morning Seneca and Burrhus proceededto her house to inquire into the matter,when she defended herself with spirit and success,and demanded an audience of her son. Thiswas granted and; completed the discomfitureof her opponents. Agrippina knew her sonwell. Disdaining to defend herself or to remindhim of hisobligations, she boldly denouncedher accusers and demanded redress. Nero, whowas as cowardly as he was cruel and treacherous,feared those who defied him, and was accustomedto submit to his imperious mother. He

74 SENECApromisedall she asked. Silana was exiled forlife ;Calvisius and Iturius for a term of years.Paris could not be spared and was forgiven.On this occasion, at least, Seneca and Burrhusrescued their former patroness from urgentdanger.

CHAPTER VIISENECA IN POWERThe two following years (56 and 57) were quietand uneventful. Peace reigned throughout theEmpire, while in Rome the Senate, to which apart of its former authority had been restored,was occupied in legislative work, especially inconnection with the administration of therevenue, which was transferred from the quaestors,to whom it had been entrusted by Claudius,to prefects who had served as praetors, andwere men of longer experience. The decayingcolonies of Capua and Nuceria were assistedby the introduction of new drafts of veteransand by subsidies. The Roman import dutyon slaves was remitted ;but this, observesTacitus, was found to be a boon rather in appearancethan in reality to the importer, sincehe had already succeeded in transferring thetax to the consumer by adding it to his price.^The provincial cities in Italy and elsewherein the Empire enjoyed at this time analmost complete system of self-government. Their*Ann. xiii. 31 : 'Quia, cum venditor pendere juberetur, inpartem pretii emptoribus accrescebat/

76 SENECAinstitutions had been modelled on those of republicanRome, and unlike those of Rome hadendured in reality as well as in name. Of municipalmagistrates the duumviri, answering tothe consuls, presided over the municipal senateand exercised judicial powers ;the aediles werein charge of works and buildings and of thepolice ; while the quaestors administered therevenue. These magistrates were all elected bythe people,^ and were expected by public opinionto show their sense of the honour conferredupon them by a gift to their city. Aqueducts,roads, temples, theatres were habitually presentedto their fellow-citizens by magistratesduring their term of office. Thus the labour ofthe community was directed to public and notto private uses by those to whom the possessionof money had given the power of choosing itsdirection, and great prosperity was the result.'The whole world is full,' wrote the rhetoricianAristides under the Antonines, ' of gymnasia,fountains, porticoes, temples, workshops, andschools ... all the towns are radiant with eleganceand splendour, and the land has becomeone vast garden.'In Rome itself all was not so well. Theadministration was, it is true, well conducted bySeneca and Burrhus, to whom the emperor leftthe whole business of government. But the detestablecharacter of the degenerate aesthete onthe throne began so early as the year 56 to makeitself felt. The public atrocities which followed*The suffrage was universal and the elections by ballot.

SENECA IN POWERhis personal assumption of the government wereforeshadowed by the crimes and extravagancesby which his private Hfe was aheady stained.His favourite nocturnal amusement at this timewas to sally forth disguised from his palace intothe streets,^^accompanied by his boon companions,whom he would cause to attack those whomthey met, insult women, break open doors, andplunder shops. Sometimes the people attacked,not recognising their assailant, would defendthemselves vigorously ;and the marks of theirfists would be visible on the emperor's face thenext day; so, to avoid such accidents for thefuture, he directed a body of gladiators to followhim at a distance, and to use their weapons ifmatters became serious. When it became knownthat Caesar was the hero of these nocturnalexpeditions his example was followed by others,whose objects were more practical, and who usedhis name to secure their booty ; until, accordingto the historian, Rome at night came to resemblea captured city given over to plunder. Hisencouragement of faction fights in the theatreswas scarcely less mischievous.These years marked the high tide of Seneca'sprosperity.'that time,'Seneca,' wrote the elder Pliny ofthan whom no man was ever lessbeguiled by appearances, was then the prince oflearning and at the summit of that power bywhich he was afterwards overwhelmed.' ^ The*Pliny, NM. xiv. 4 :'Novissime Annaeo Seneca, principe turneruditionis ac potentiae quae postremo nimia fuit super ipsum,minima utique miratore inanium.'

78 SENECAmost powerful statesman was atthe same timethe most admired writer of the day. His speeches,treatises, and poetry were in everybody's hands.The rising generation, says Quintihan, wouldscarcely read any other author,* and the concoctionof epigrams and aphorisms (sententiae) afterhis manner became the literary fashion.His nephew Lucan, son of the prudent Mela,was the most brilliant of the poets of the newschool. After other more conventional essaysin poetry he published, while still under twentyfiveyears of age, the first part of an epic poemon the civil wars, written on a completely new plan.Boldly discarding the whole of the supernaturalmachinery of Olympus, considered ever since thedays of Homer an indispensable adjunct to anepic, he described events and characters withwhat historical accuracy his researches couldsupply. He had no respect for remote antiquity—^—'famosa vetustas miratrixque stn ' the stirringscenes of the century which preceded his ownoffered material enough for his rushing, impetuousrhetoric. Why blunt its force and lose all theinterest attaching to the connection betweencharacter and events by invoking the interpositionof shadowy beings in whom his readershad ceased to believe ?Keenly interested inthe world as itappeared to him amid the strifeof men, and a violent partisan, he was, like Byron,of too passionate a nature, and lived too muchin the present to find time for subjective musings,^Quint. X. I 'Turn autem solus hie fere in manibus:*adolescentium fuit.'Phars. iv. 654-5.

SENECA IN POWER 79for the wonder and pathos of Virgil, or the widesurmise of Lucretius. He had, as QuintiHan observed,the temperament rather of an orator thanof a poet.^ The romance of reahty, the pictureof a rudderless world and of the interaction ofevents and character, for the first time — challengedthe ruling idea of every previous epic the ideathat men were but irresponsible puppets movedby divine agencies which the seer's eyes werealone strong enough to detect. The Senecas werea daring race of innovators who held Olympus inscanty respect.I am not such a fool [wrote Seneca in one of hisletters] as to repeat the old soothing lullabies of Epicurus,and to tell you that the fear of hell is vain, that no Ixionis bound to a revolving wheel, that the shoulder ofSisyphus rolls no stone up the hill, that no entrailscan be devoured and restored every day. No one ischildish enough to fear Cerberus and the darkness and theghostly appearance of spirits clinging to their skeletons.Death either consumes us or frees us. If we escape,better things await us when we have laid down ourburden ;if we are consumed, nothing remains.^Lucan, in the course of the extravagant complimentto Nero which disfigures the first bookof the ' Pharsalia,' declares that the worship ofallthe other gods has been rendered superfluousat Rome by the presence of that amiable prince;and entreats him, when he takes his final leaveof earth, to take up his position well in the centre* Inst. Ovat. X. i. 90; ' Lucanus ardens et concitatus etsententiis clarissimus et, ut dicam quod sentio, raagis oratoribusquam poetis imitandus.**Ep. 24.

8oof heaven lestSENECAthe balance of the universe shouldbe imperilled. In the later and republican partof the poem he contrasts in a famous line thetriumphant injustice of the gods with the defeatedvirtue of Cato.^And we know that Gallio caredfor none of these things.Nero was himself a poet as well as a painter, asculptor, a musician, and a singer. His first stepon acceding to the principate was to summonto the palace Terpnus, the most celebrated luteplayerof the day, in whose companyhe wouldspend half the day and half the night listeningto his performances and receiving his instructions.Lucan, too, the nephew of the chief minister,was at first in high favour. Nero recalled himfrom Athens, where he was finishing his education,admitted him to the company of his intimatefriends, and made him quaestor. But Lucan'spoetic success afterwards excited the emperor'sjealousy who probably also disapproved of his;disregard for the traditional rules of composition.The first publication of poems in Rome consistedin their recitation by the author to an invitedcompany of friends.^ One day when Nero waspresent at a recitation by Lucan of a newly composedpoem he affected to be weary, and suddenlyleft the room without waiting for the end. Thiswas an insult the sensitive poet could not forgive.He revenged himself by lampoons and epigramsdirected against the emperor and his friends, who^i. 128 :'Victrix causa dels placuit, sed victa Catoni.'2Attendance on such occasions was an imperative socialobligation, which became to many a nuisance almost intolerable.

SENECA IN POWER8iretaliated by forbidding him either to recite orto pubUsh any further poems. Nothing couldhave been thought of more calculated to mortifyand enrage a young author intoxicated by hispopularity and his public and private triumphs.It was then that he wrote the last part of thePharsalia,' with its stinging attacks on the'imperial system and its exaltation of the heroesof the republic.One result of the quarrel between Nero andLucan was the attack directed on the new schoolby writers connected with the Court. Conspicuousamong these was Petronius, the leader of Nero'sdissolute friends, the arbiter of fashion, an artistin luxury, a man for whose judgment in suchmatters the emperor had so high a respect thathe thought no diversion agreeable or refined untilPetronius had stamped it with the hall-mark ofhis approval. In a kind of picaresque characternovel,unique of its kind in surviving Latin literature,Petronius introduced an old poet calledEumolpus, very much out-at-elbows, to plead thecause of classical tradition against new methods.Eumolpus complains that in these degeneratetimes, when a man has learnt the art of makingglittering epigrams in the schools of rhetoricand proved a failure at the Bar, he turns to thecomposition of poetry as to a haven of rest andenjoyment. Yet really to be a poet he should besteeped in literature, he must avoid all popularor hackneyed diction, his epigrams must notstand out abrupt and disconnected from thebody of his discourse, but be woven with

82 SENECAconcealed art into the texture of the material theyadorn. Homer and Virgil, and Horace with hisexquisite ielicity— curiosa felicitas—prove this.For instance [he adds, in direct allusion to the'Pharsalia '],a man who should be daring enough toundertake to sing of the Civil War without being in thecentral current of literature will sink under the burden.We do not want him to tell us what really happened ;historians will do that far better. The poet shouldlead us rapidly hither and thither ;he should not hesitateto use his invention or to have recourse to the interventionof the gods, so that we may rather gain the impressionof a soul not mistress of herself but inspired by a divinefrenzy than of a witness giving his careful evidence ina court of justice.^Eumolpus proceeds to illustrate his meaningby reciting 295 verses of his own composition,in which he had rewritten the opening sectionof the ' Pharsalia ' accordingmethod. The gods of Olympusto the traditionalare introduced;and more or less direct events. Venus, Mercury,and Mars are on the side of Caesar ; Apollo,Diana, Hercules, and Mercury are Pompeians.But the only result of the isexperiment to convincethe reader how right Lucan was to dispense withthis antiquated machinery, especially in a subjectso modern; how superfluous in accounting forthe motives of the various actors in the dramais the hypothesis of divine suggestion ; and howthe human interest of theby that hypothesisstory is diminished.The attack on the schools of rhetoric in thefirst chapter of what is left to us of the book ismore effective. A sensible protest is there made»Sat. 118.

SENECA IN POWER 83against the emptiness of the teaching in suchplaces.The themes of declamation, the writerdeclares, are ridiculous and impossible the ;goodliterature of the pastis entirely neglected the;great object is to achieve smartness of phrase andan appearance of brilliancy however unrelated thesemay be to the realities of life ;the whole is neglectedfor the parts: in fact, he concludes, so soon aseloquence began to be studied as an art and taughtby rule of thumb, men ceased to be eloquent—just as a man who spends much time in the kitchenwill not be savoury. Whatever takes the fancyof boys is unlikely to be really fine, yet it isexactly that which is most admired and studiedin the schools. Quintilian said the same thingof Seneca when he expressed his regret that onewho could do all that he pleased should so oftenthrough lack of judgment be pleased to do whatwas not worth doing, for that ifjudgment hadbeen added to his other gifts, instead of being thedelight of boys he might have won the approvalof men of taste.^The year 58 was illustrated by the victoriesof Corbulo over the Parthians in Armenia. Thesuccesses of this able commander, who had restoredthe almost ruined discipline of the forces underhis command, were recognised by the Senate aftertheir usual manner in decrees for statues andtriumphal arches to the emperor under whoseauspices they were achieved. In the same yearSeneca incurred a certain degree of unpopularityin connection with the trial and condemnationof Publius Suilius.This man had been a notable^Quintilian, x. i.

84 SENECAinformer under Claudius, and the chief instrumentof Messalina's cruelty. He it was who, at theinstance of the Court, brought the charges whichproved fatal to Julia, daughter of Drusus, ValeriusAsiaticus, Lupus, and many others. He had, infact, been the Fouquier Tinville of the worst yearsof Claudius ;and as such was particularly odiousto the humane Seneca to whom the death of noRoman citizen during his term, of power has beenimputed by any historian. After the death ofClaudius and the change of system, Suilius showedno penitence for his misdeeds— preferring, saysTacitus, the reputation of a criminal to the attitudeof a suppliant. In the year 58 he was prosecutedunder the lex Cincia for having acceptedfees as an advocate beyond the legal limit. Thecharge itself was unfair, for the law was obsoleteand had been habitually disregarded but his;adversaries were resolved that Suilius should notaltogether escape the penalty of his misdeeds, andtheir impatience would not suffer them to awaitthe issue of the indictment for peculation andoppression in his government of Asia which, alsoto diffi-brought against him, could not, owingculties in collecting evidence, be proceeded withfor a year. Suilius, in no wise abashed, retortedby accusations against Seneca which, reportedby Tacitus, and repeated with amplifications byDion or his abbreviator, Xiphilinus, have been acceptedwith too ready a credence by later historians.Seneca [he said], who had been most justly exiledby Claudius, could never forgive that prince's friends.He had passed his life in futile controversies that amused

SENECA IN POWER 85the inexperience of youth and was envious of those who;had kept burning the torch of Hving and uncorruptedeloquence in the defence of their fellow-citizens. He(Suilius) had been quaestor to Germanicus ;but Senecahad stained the honour of that prince's house. Was itworse to accept a fee for honourable work from a clientwho was ready to give it, or to corrupt the virtue of royalwomen ? Was it virtue and the maxims of philosophythat taught him to accumulate so vast a fortune infour years of Court favour ? At Rome he had drawnin legacies as with a net ;the provinces were exhaustedbyhis usuries.The language of the old accuser was reportedto Seneca v^ith exaggerations, and did not inclinehim to indulgence. The trial was pressed on, andconducted before the emperor himself. Suiliuspleaded that all he did was by order of Claudius,but Nero interrupted him to say that he hadascertained from his father's notes that no accusationhad been commanded by him. Then Suiliusalleged the commands of Messalina, but wasasked why he alone was chosen to give his voiceand services to the tyrant? In the end a partof his goods was confiscated, and he himselfbanished to the Balearic islands, where he isto have passed the remainder of his lifesaidin greatcomfort. His son Nerulinus, who was shortlyafterwards prosecuted, was acquitted at the instanceof the emperor. Seneca has been chargedwith vindictiveness on this occasion, yetif timesand circumstances are taken into account, we mayrather wonder at the mildness of the vengeancewhich a powerful minister thoughtit sufficient toexact from such an adversary.

CHAPTER VIIIthe tragedy of baiae. institution of the'juvenalia: 59The power of Seneca, whose position had beenin some degree shaken by the attacks of Suilius,was threatened at about the same time by amore formidable antagonist. Poppaea Sabina,and intelli-beautiful, charming, nobly born, rich,gent, concealed beneath a modest exterior a coldheart, a calculating disposition, and a total lackof scruple. She was married to the brilliant anddissipated Otho, one of the chief friends of Neroand ornaments of his Court, after having beendivorced from a former husband, Crispinus. Otho,whether from imprudence or ambition, vauntedthe charms of his wife to the emperor, and wouldoften, when about to rejoin her after dining at thepalace, describe in glowing terms the happinessto which he was returning. The natural resultfollowed.Poppaea was presented to Nero, and atfirst affected to be deeply smitten by his beautywhile awed by his greatness. But when theemperor proceeded to make her his addressesshe changed her tone, spoke of her duty to Otho,and contrasted that courtier's liberality and

THE TRAGEDY OF BAIAE 87magnificence with the poorness of spirit shownin Nero's devotion to Acte the freedwoman, withwhom she scorned to enter into competition.Otho was banished from the Court and in somedanger of his Ufe, but finally Nero, through theinterposition of Seneca, sent him out as governorto Lusitania, where, like Petronius in Bithynia, heproved by the excellence of his administrationthat his extravagance and debauchery in Romehad been due rather to the lack of any morerational cutlet for his activity than to a viciousdisposition. That he was capable of magnanimityhe showed in the last scene of his life ;and hisfriendship for Seneca, of which Plutarch speaks,stands to his credit.^There were many complaints in this year ofthe rapacity and injustice of the farmers of thetaxes ;and in consequence the total abolitionof customs duties was seriously debated in Nero'sCouncil. This drastic proposal having beenabandoned other measures were taken. In orderto secure that no more moneythan was needed for public purposes,should be raisedan edict wasissued that the nature of each tax and the principleson which it was collected, which had hithertobeen kept secret, should be published by thetax-gatherers, and that no demand should bemade later than a year after a tax had becomedue. In the assessment of a merchant's possessionsfor purposes of taxation, his ships were not^He remained for ten years governor of Lusitania, returningin 68 for the stormy three months' reign which was ended by hisdefeat and death. Tac. Ann. xiii. 45 ; Suet. Otho, 3.

88 SENECAto be taken into account. Observance of theseexcellent provisions did not long outlast the powerof Seneca and Burrhus.The following year (59) brought with it thedefinite emancipation of Nero, and the consequentdecline of good government. Although theemperor hated his mother, although he exercisedhis ingenuity to contrive mortifications for herto the point of hiring bravoes to shout insultsfrom their boats as they sailed past her villa onthe Campanian coast, he could never overcomethe awe with which she inspired him, and whenshe met him face to face she could always bendhim to submission. Agrippina was therefore anobstacle to the ambitious designs of Poppaea,who knew that while she lived Nero would neverdare to discard Octavia and marry herself.Scandalous rumours were abroad and widelycredited, that Agrippina was endeavouring topreserve her power by inviting her son to incest ;while a minority declared that the horriblesuggestion proceeded from Nero himself. In anycase Acte, prompted by Seneca, brought theserumours to the notice of the emperor, with theintimation that ifthey gained credit among thesoldiers there would be a mutiny.Nero, greatlyalarmed and already moved by the persistenttaunts of Poppaea, resolved to rid himself of hismother ; and, his first attempts to poison her havingbeen foiled by the precautionary measures of theexperienced empress, cast about for other means.Anicetus, a freedman in command of the fleetat Misenum and an enemy of Agrippina, suggested

THE TRAGEDY OF BAIAE 89the expedient that was adopted. He offered tosupply a vessel so constructed that at a givensignal the roof of the principal cabin mightbe made to fall in, and the ship itself to sinkthrough the opening of a hole in the bottom.The contrivance being approved, Nero wrote aletter to his mother couched in terms of humilityand submission, in which he prayed for a reconciliation,and invited her to meet him at Baiae.Agrippina went rejoicing, was received withloving effusion, nobly entertained, placed aboveher son at table, treated at first with the affectionatelightness, ease, and familiarity natural to ayoung man in conversation with his mother, andafterwards to her yet greater satisfaction gravelyconsulted on matters of State, until the hour cameat last for her departure. Then Nero embracedher with extraordinary warmth, and seemed unableto detach his gaze from her countenance.It was a fine starlight night, and the sea wascalm when Agrippina went on board the gailydecorated ship that had been prepared for her.She was sitting in her cabin with a maid andGallus, one of her suite, when, soon after the shiphad left the harbour, part of the ceiling fell inand crushed Gallus to death. The empress andher attendant, Acerronia, however escapedallhurt ; and, the mechanism through which aleak was to have been simultaneously sprunghaving failed to act, those of the sailors whowere in the secret endeavoured to capsize theboat by bringing all weight to bear on one side.Agrippina and Acerronia were thrown into the sea,

90 SENECAwhere Acerronia either attempted to save herselfat her mistress's expense, or else her mistressat her own— it must ever be doubtful which— bycrying out that she was the empress, and callingfor help for the emperor's mother. Thereuponshe was beaten to death by the oars of the sailors.Agrippina swam for her life, and was rescued by aboat from the shore. Returned to her villa, reflectionon the circumstances convinced her boththat a crime had been attempted and that shemust conceal her suspicions. She therefore senta messenger to Nero to inform him of the gravedanger she had been in, and to relieve his anxietyon her account by the assurance that, except fora slight blow on the shoulder, she had sustainedno injury. She begged him not to come to herfor the present, though she knew his impulsewould be to come, for what she needed most ofall for her recovery was complete rest and quiet.Nero was terrified by the news that his attemptHis guilty imagination pictured thehad failed.daughter of Germanicus full of rage, rousing thesoldiers, arming slaves, and proclaiming herwrongs to Senate and people. He sent for Senecaand Burrhus, told them all that had happened,and asked their advice. They had none to give.But Anicetus was not at the end of his resources.He had already contrived to slip a dagger betweenthe feet of Agrippina's messenger while he wasperforming his commission. The man was seized,accused of having been sent by Agrippina toassassinate the emperor, and promptly executed.Anicetus now proposed to slay the empress in her

THE TRAGEDY OF BAIAE 91villa, and to give oxit that she had destroyedherself on hearing that her plot to take herson's life had failed. Nero eagerly agreed to thisproposal, and the deed was done.Matricide, even in the Rome of the first century,was thought an enormous crime ;and Nerodreaded the effect of the news on public opinion.Had his first contrivance proved successful andthe death of Agrippina seemed the result of anaccident at sea, it had been his intention to expresssorrow for her loss and to honour her memory inthe customary manner with altars and temples.As it was he knew not what to expect, and wasappalled by a sense of the magnitude of a crimewhich, had itpassed unsuspected by others, wouldhave probably given his seared conscience nouneasiness. But the next morning he was encouragedby the flattery of the military officers,who came at the suggestion of Burrhus, to congratulatehim on his escape from the dagger ofAgrippina's emissary. The neighbouring townsof Campania followed suit by sending delegatesto felicitate the emperor and by offering sacrificesof thanksgiving in their temples. Nero himselfaffected, out of grief for his mother's loss, almostto regret his own escape but he could no;longerendure the sight of Baiae and came to Naples, fromwhich place he sent a letter to the Senate composedfor him by Seneca. In this letter, after relatinghow one of Agrippina's confidential freedmenhad been surprised in his presence armed with adagger, and how the empress on the miscarriageof her attempt against his life had taken her own,

92 SENECAhe proceeded to an indictment of the whole ofhis mother's career. He dwelt on the atrocitiesof the reign of Claudius, and insinuated her responsibilityfor them he; recalled her ambitionto be his colleague in the Empire and to receivein his company the oath of allegiance and;asserted that on her failure to achieve this objectshe had opposedall donatives to soldiers or people.He was obliged, he added, to recognise, howevergreat his natural grief for her loss might be,that her death was a public benefit.^ The letterdeceived nobody. No one could believe thatthe wreck was an accident or that Agrippinawould have been mad enough to send a singleindividual to attack the emperor in the midst ofhis guards. The character of Nero was alreadyso well known that no fresh infamy on his partcould any longer cause surprise but the compositionof the letter by Seneca was the subject ;ofhostile criticism, and was not only regarded at thetime by his enemies as an avowal of complicityin the murder, but has weighed more heavily onother incidenthis memory ever since than anyin his career. Yet that Seneca and Burrhus werethe accomplices or advisers of Nero's plot tomurder his mother is in a high degree improbable;it is unlike all we know of their characters ;and, as the event proved, such advice would have^In this letter occurred the ingenious phrase afterwardsquoted by QuintiUan as an example of a form of the senientia :'Facit quasdam sententias sola geminatio qualis est Senecae:in eo scripto quod Nero ad Senatum misit occisa matre, cum se" Salvum me esse adhuc nee credopericlitatum videri vellet :nee gaudeo " ' (Quint, viii. 5),

THE TRAGEDY OF BAIAE 93been as unwise from the standpoint of their owninterests as wicked from every other. After thedeed had been done, Seneca probably convincedhimself that there was nothing better to do thanto make the best of a bad situation, and that if todesert his post, to abandon Burrhus, and to leavethe Empire to the mercies of Nero would be anunpatriotic course, the only alternative was, notto condone the crime, but to deny that a crime'had been committed. What better proof cana man give of devotion to virtue,' he wrote in*one of his letters, than a readiness to sacrificereputation itself for conscience' sake ? ' ^Yet whenall is said, the letter to the Senate remains of allthe recorded actions of Seneca the least defensible.Nero might have spared himself anxiety withregard to the Senate. The chief preoccupationof that assembly at this crisis was to show theunqualified nature of their submission to theautocrat. Decrees were passed for thanksgivingsto the gods at every shrine for the annual cele-;bration of the day on which the supposed plothad been frustrated ;and for the erection of agolden statue to Minerva to be placed next tothat of the prince in the senate-house. ThraseaPaetus, who up to that time had acquiesced insilence or in a few formal words to decrees passedin honour of Nero, refused further compliance and,decHning to assent to these new compliments onsuch an occasion, withdrew from the senate-house,'to which he but seldom returned. His action,'observes Tacitus drily,'1Ep. 81.though fullof danger to

94 SENECAhimself was of no service to the cause of hberty.'*Nor were the people to be outdone in theirmanifestations of loyalty to the prince — a loyaltywhich with them was not wholly feigned, forNero's lavish bounties, his shows, and popularmanners had made him a favourite with the mob,while Agrippina, on the other hand, had been veryunpopular. When, therefore, after an unusuallylong stay in Campania, he nerved himself toreturn to Rome, he was received with an enthusiasmwhich far surpassed his most sanguinehopes, and made a triumphant entry into the city.This experience convinced him that he might dowhat he would with impunity and from this;time forward he gave free play to the boundlessintemperance of his vicious will.Nero was inordinately vain of his voice and ofhis performances on the lute. That his musicalgenius should be universally recognised was hischief ambition, and he longed to appear on thepublic stage there to win applause such as hadbeen given to no other performer. He was wontto justify his passion for song and music by theexample of a god honoured not only in Greecebut in Rome, with whom the poets of his timenever wearied of comparing him.^ And song, he*In making this remark the historian may have had in mindhis own contrasted conduct under the tyranny of Domitian,during which he continued to attend the Senate and with bitternessin his heart shared in all its degradation.• 'Senec. Apoc. lUe mihi similis vultu : similisque decore.Nee cantu nee voce minor.' Lucan, Phars. i. 48-50 'Seu te flammiferosPhoebi transcendere currus, Telluremque, nihil : mutatosole timentem, Igne vago lustrare juvat.' Cf. also eclogues inAnthologia Latina of Riese, 725 and 726.

THE TRAGEDY OF BAIAE 95would argue with some justice, is nothing withoutan audience.^ But Phoebus was not only thegod of music, he was the charioteer of the sun ;and here also he was followed by the emperor.For Nero's second passion was the managementof horses in chariots ;his skill in which he wasalmost as anxious to exhibit to the public as thebeauty of his voice. While, however, his motherlived he shrank from degrading the majesty of theCaesars by the self-exposure involved in publicexhibitions. He hated Agrippina, but he dreadedher contempt.^After the death of Agrippina, Seneca andBurrhus found it impossible longer to resist theprince's inclinations. In the hope, therefore, thatby a compromise they might satisfy his vanitywhile averting a public scandal, they caused aspace of level ground at the foot of the Palatinehill to be enclosed on which Nero might exhibithis skill as a charioteer to a selected audience.But vanity, like jealousy, is a passion that makesthe meat it feeds on ;and the only effect on Neroof the applause of his friends was to make himhunger for a larger circle of spectators.Barrierswere cast aside and the Roman people invitedto the spectacle.The populace, delighted to see^'Suet. Nero, 20 :Jactans occultae musicae nullum esserespectum.'^It has been thought remarkable, and a proof of their hardnessof heart, that the Romans were more shocked by Nero's stageperformances than by his cruelties or debaucheries. But if weconsider what would have been the effect in modern times onthe minds of their subjects of the appearance of a German or aRussian emperor on the public stage of the opera in femalecostume we shall feel less surprise.

96 SENECAtheir emperor personally contributingto theirfavourite amusement, were loud in their plaudits ;while the ministers found to their distress thatin endeavouring to direct and control they hadonly fanned the flame of Nero's folly. To coverhis shame he persuaded the hoblest youth of Rometo follow his example, and rewarded with largesums of money those of them whose poverty ifnot their will consented.But though Nero had performed before thepublic as a charioteer, he did not as yet ventureto appear in the theatre as a singer oractor. For mimes, for all exhibitions of aman's person or physical accomplishments witha view to the public entertainment, the Romanshad a contempt unparalleled in any nation ancientor modern. Self-exposure of any kind theycondemned as a violation of that pudor whichthey ranked so high among the virtues. Nerowas a poet and musician as well as a singer. Hecould sing his own poems to the accompanimentof his own lyre and music of his own composition,and he was resolved not to hide his talents. Withthis end in view he instituted the juvenalia,or festivals of the youth, to consist of musicaland dramatic performances. These were privatelycelebrated from time to time in the emperor'spalace gardens, and were accompanied by muchprofligacy and debauchery. They were attendedby the Court, together with men and women ofnoble birth and of all ages, manyof whom sharedin the performances. Here, for the first time,Nero appeared on the boards in costume, lyre

THE TRAGEDY OF BAIAE 97in hand, to sing songs which were greeted withrapturous applause.A group of Roman knights,taking the name of Augustani, formed themselvesinto a society, the sole object of whichwas to applaud the emperor and to proclaim theglory of the ' divine voice.' Burrhus himself,with the officers of the guard, was reluctantlyobliged to be present and to join in the applause.^As Tacitus makes no mention of Seneca in thisconnection, we may perhapsphilosopherinfer that theexcused himself from attendance.'1 Ann. xiv. 15 Centuriones tribunique et maerens Burrhus:et laudans.'H

CHAPTER IXDECLINE OF SENECA's INFLUENCE—DEATHOF BURRHUS AND OF OCTAVIA, A.D. 60-62In spite of Nero's growing self-confidence andimpatience of control, his aversion from businesssecured two more years of relatively wise andhumane administration to Rome after the deathof Agrippina. Until his vanity, that ' insatiatecormorant,' had consumed the vast resourcesleft for its satisfaction by the economies of hispredecessor, he was under no temptation toresort to oppression for its further supply. Thelaw of majestashad been suffered to becomeobsolete ;informers had been discouraged ;governors of provinces had been made to give astrict account of their stewardship, and punishedwhen they deserved it ;and the popularity whichthese wise measures of his ministers broughtto the prince was more than doubled by theextravaganceof his shows and his lavish distributionsof presents to the people.The chief event at Rome of the year60 wasthe solemn institution by Nero of quinquennialgames, consisting of gymnastic and musical contests,and also of chariot racing— destined to be

DECLINE OF SENECA'S INFLUENCE 99continued at intervals of five years for centuries.A festival of this kind, copied from a Greek model,was a novelty to the Romans, who had been accustomedto profess a singular contempt for theathletic and artistic achievements held in suchhonour by the Greeks.^ There were mutteringsfrom conservatives, who deplored the Stateencouragement of Greek accomplishments unworthyof Romans but these;were answered bythe upholders of modern ideas, who dwelt on therelief to the magistrates, ruined by the expenseof the shows they were obliged to provide for thepeople out of their private means, when a part ofthis expense should be defrayed from the publicpurse and also on the stimulus to intellectual;activity which the prizes at these contests forpoetry and eloquence would supply. The firstcelebration of the Neronia, as the games werecalled, was decently conducted. The prize foreloquence was not competed for but formallyallotted to Nero.The following year (61) was rendered memorableby the disaster in Britain, where 70,000Romans are said to have been massacred in asudden rising of the inhabitants under their warriorqueen, Boadicea. The rising was suppressed bythe energy and ability of the governor, SuetoniusPaullinus. Nero had no liking for successfulcommanders, and Suetonius was rewarded forhis victory by his recall.1Lucan, vii. 270: ' Graiis delecta juventus Gymnasiis aderit,'studioque ignava palaestrae.' Tac, Ann. xiv. 20 :Degeneretquestudiis externis juventus, gymnasia et otia et turpes am oresexercendo, Principe et Senatu auctoribus.'

100 SENECAIn Rome the event of the year which excitedthe greatest interest was the murder of PedaniusSecundus, prefect of the city, by one of his ownslaves, because of the demand which followed itfor the enforcement of the old law under whichwhen a master was killed by a slave all the otherslaves of the household as well as himself wereput to death. The people had grown accustomedto a milder regime, and the proposed punishmentof so large a number of their fellow-men of bothsexes and of every age nearlyEven incaused a revolt.the Senate a minority protested againstthe application of so severe a law. The writingsof Seneca, the most widely read author of the day,in which he pleaded the cause of slaves, insistedon their common humanity, called them humble'friends ' and fellow-servants of fortune, andto sitlaughed at those who held it degradingat table in their company, may have had someeffect on public opinion.^Tacitus has preservedfor us a speech made in the Senate by oneCaius Cassius, in which we have the judgment ofa Roman senator of the old school on the newideas,full of false sentimentand degenerate softnessas he would think them, which found theirleading exponent in the treatises of Seneca :—I have very often been present, Patres Conscripti,in this assembly when proposals have been made1Ep. 47 : Servi sunt ? imo homines. Servi sunt ? imo contubernales.'Servi sunt ? imo humiles amici. Servi sunt ? imoconservi, si cogitaveris tantundem in utrosque licere fortunae.Itaque rideo istos qui tvirpe existimant cum servo suo coenare :quare ? nisi quia superbissima consuetude coenanti dominostantium servorum turbam circumdedit.'

DECLINE OF SENECA'S INFLUENCEloicontrary to the laws and institutions of our ancestors,and I have raised no opposition. This was not becauseI doubted at any time the wisdom and right policy ofour ancient institutions, or supposed they could bealtered except for the worse ; but, in the first place,because I would not in my zeal for the old order appearto attach too much importance to my own opinion ;and, in the second place, because a continual course ofopposition in matters of lesser moment isapt to weakenthe force of our resistance at times when the highestinterests of the commonwealth are threatened. Considerwhat has just happened, A man of consular rank hasbeen killed in his own house by a treacherous slave.No one interfered to save him or revealed the plot,and that although the law under which the whole familybecame responsible for his safety had not yet been calledinto question. Pass then, in the name of heaven, youract of indemnity. Whose rank will protect him whenthe prefecture of the city is of no avail ? How manyslaves shall we need for our defence when four hundredcould not secure the safety of Pedanius ? . , . Somethere are who are not ashamed to pretend that theassassin was avenging the wrongs he had sufferedbecause he was himself being robbed. Let us say atonce, then, that Pedanius was justly slain ! Would youhave me find arguments for enforcing a law establishedlong ago by wiser men than we ? Well, then, I willsuppose that it is a question of passingit for the firsttime, and I ask you whether it is credible that a slaveshould have formed the intention of kiUing his masterand given no hint to any of his design by a single rashor threatening word ? He concealed his plot very successfullyforsooth ;no one saw his weapon he passed;the guard he opened the doors of the bed-chamber ; ;he passed in bearing a torch he committed the murder; ;and no one was aware of what he was doing! It is impossible.Our ancestors mistrusted the , , . dispositionof slaves, even when born in their own houses or on theirestates and therefore bound to them by lifelong ties

102 SENECAof affection and gratitude. But now when householdsare made up from distant nations, when we have slaveswhose manners and religion differ so widely from ourown, we can certainly never keep this vile multitude inorder except by working on their fears. The innocent,it is said, will perish with the guilty. Why, so they doin a defeated army, when every tenth man is beatento death ;the lot may fall on the brave. Somethingof injustice you will find in every great example ; butthe interests of individuals must be sacrificed to thegeneral good.No senator was bold enough openly to opposethe views of Cassius, and, though dissentientmurmurs were heard condemning the mockery ofjustice that took neither sex nor age nor patentinnocence into account, it was resolved that thelaw should be enforced. Riots ensued among thepopulace, and a threat of resistance was uttered.Thereupon the imperial displeasure was proclaimedby edict, the road from the prison tothe place of execution was lined with soldiers,and the four hundred slaves, men, women, andchildren, were put to death.The year 62 opened ominously with the revivalof the law of majestas, or treason, which hadlain dormant since the death of Claudius. At abanquet given at the house of Ostorius Scapulathe praetor Antistius, one of the guests, recitedsome scurrilous verses of his own compositionagainst the emperor. Cossutius Capito, who hadbeen raised to senatorial rank by the influenceof his father-in-law, Tigellinus, accused Antistiusof treason before the Senate. Ostorius declaredthat he had heard no verses recited, but credit

DECLINE OF SENECA'S INFLUENCE 103was given to the evidence of other witnesses, andJunius MaruUus, consul designate, moved thatAntistius should be deprived of his praetorshipand put to death in the ancient fashion. ButThrasea Paetus rose to oppose this motion, and,after much praise of Caesar and reproachesaddressed to Antistius, declared that savagepunishments such as that demanded belongedto another age, and that the laws allowed theadoption of milder alternatives. He thereforemoved that Antistius should be punished by theconfiscation of his property and banishment toan island. This motion was carried on a division ;but, before venturing to give effect to it, the consulsthought it prudent to ask counsel of the emperor.Nero, offended and embarrassed, replied that hehad been attacked without a cause by Antistius,who certainly deserved to be punished. Forthe rest, had the Senate decided on the severerpenalty,he should have interfered toprevent itsinfliction, but he could make no objection to theirmoderation. Indeed, they might acquit theprisoner altogether if they so pleased. In spiteof the manifest annoyance of the emperor, theSenate did not recede from their vote ;some ofthem, says Tacitus, in order not to expose theprince to unpopularity, others perceiving safetyin numbers, and Thrasea out of his natural greatnessof soul. This was perhaps the last occasionduring Nero's reign on which the Senate showedindependence.The death of Burrhus, which soon followed,dealt a shattering blow to Seneca's power and

104 SENECAinfluence for good. It is to the credit of both menthat the friendship and union between them hadremained throughout unbroken by any sentimentof rivalry or jealousy ; and, while the militaryforce was under the command of Burrhus, Nerodid not venture to rid himself of Seneca. Burrhuswas succeeded in the command of the Praetoriansby Tigellinus,the most profligate and corrupt ofNero's associates, with whom as a concession topublic opinion was joined as a colleagueRufus— Feniusan honest man, liked by the soldiersand respected by the people on account of theintegrity with which he had administered thedistribution of corn. But Rufus was given noreal power, while Tigellinus, on the other hand,who had cultivated a good understanding withPoppaea, acquired a predominant influence overthe emperor, whose worst impulses he encouraged.After the death of Burrhus the enemies ofSeneca redoubled their attacks, to which they perceivedthat the emperor was beginning to listen withscarcely veiled satisfaction. With the exaggerationcustomary in all ages when the fortunes ofpublic men are in question, they dwelt on theextent of his revenues too vast for a subject, thenumber of his villas, and the beauty of his gardens,almost surpassing in magnificence, so they said,those of the emperor himself. They accusedhim, probably with more justice, of depreciatingNero's skill as a charioteer, and of openly deridingthe celestial voice. They insinuated that heclaimed a monopoly of eloquence, that so soonas Nero had begun to write poetry his own poetical

DECLINE OF SENECA'S INFLUENCE 105activity had been found to increase, and that, infact, he would allow nothing of eloquence toappear in the republic that did not proceed fromhimself. Nero, they said, had passed his childhood;let him shake off his yoke, and show thathe needed no other guidance than that suppliedhim by the example of his ancestors.The appointment of Tigellinus to the post ofBurrhus convinced Seneca that he could be of nofurther service to the State, and he became anxiousto retire from publiclife. But it was no easymatter to withdraw from the service of thesuspiciousNero. Seneca himself in one of hisletters, with the worldly wisdom which hecommonly blends with his philosophy, observedthat it isdangerous to seem to seek a safe retreat,since a man implicitly condemns that which heshuns. ^However, he obtained an audience, and onthe plea of age and growing infirmities begged tobe allowed to retire from the Court and devotethe short remainder of his life to his studies.At the same time he entreated the prince tocome to his assistance by allowing him to restoreto his imperial benefactor the great possessionswhich he owed to his munificence. But Nerowould not accept his resignation or the profferedsacrifice of his gardens and villas. He professedthe highest value for the services of hisminister, loaded him with caresses, and dismissedhim with tender reproaches that he*Ep. xiv. : 'Sapiens nocituram potentiam vitat, hoc primumcavens, ne vitare videatur. Pars enim securitatis et in hoc est,non ex professo earn petere ; quia quae quis fugit damnat.'

10 6 SENFXAshould be content to gaincredit for disinterestednessat the risk of exposinghis friend to thesuspicion of avarice, and that he should desirea retirement which would be interpreted as fearof Nero's cruelty. Seneca thanked the prince andwithdrew ;but from that time forth changedhis whole manner of life ;discontinued his receptionsof clients, spentlittle time abroad andavoided all society, devoting himself in seclusionto his studies, and writing his immortal letters toLucilius. The change in the direction of affairssoon made itself felt .Burrhus, Tigellinus told Nero,had other interests ;but for himself, the emperor'ssafety was the one object. He endeavoured toalarm Nero with reports of conspiracies, and toplunge him into crime in order to secure his ownposition as an indispensable guardian and accom-Rubellius Plautus and Cornelius Sulla wereplice.the first victims of this system. Plautus was adescendant through his mother of Augustus.He had adopted Stoic principles and, though aman of vast possessions, the simplicity and dignityof his domestic life had won him universal respect.Two years previously, in the year 6i, when theappearance of a comet, a slight illness of theemperor, and other signs had made many peoplebelieve that a change was imminent, he hadbeen spoken of as a candidate for the Empire-Thereupon Nero had sent him a letter in whichhe suggested that, in order to silence these invidiousreports for which he did not hold him responsible,it might be well that he should retire for a timeto his ancestral estates in the province of Asia,

DECLINE OF SENECA'S INFLUENCE 107and there live out his youth free from danger orintrigue. Plautus compHed, and was still livingin the province when the death of Burrhus andthe partial retirement of Seneca brought Tigellinusinto power. Cornelius Sulla, a dull man, whoseonly importance was derived from his descentfrom the dictator, had been living in exile atMarseilles since the year 58, whither he hadbeen sent on a trumped-up accusation of a plotagainst the emperor, of which no one who knewhis indolent disposition believed him to be capable.Tigellinus, closely studying the humours ofhis master, discovered that these two men werethe living fears in Nero's heart, and thereuponurged, as from himself, their destruction. Neroat once agreed, and on the sixth day afteremissaries sent for the purpose had left Rome,MarseillesSulla was assassinated while dining atand his head brought back to the emperor, wholaughed at the premature whiteness of the hairon it. The execution of Plautus was a moredangerous business. Unlike Sulla, he had manyfriends and great possessions. He was warned ofhis danger by a despatch from his father-in-law,Antistius, who urged him to resistance. ButPlautus was a Stoic philosopher and a fatalist,and he thought the doubtful chance of a longerlife not worth the struggle, while he hoped thathis submission might incline the emperor to abetter treatment of his wife and children.Nero'sassassin found him at noon stripped for theexercises of his gymnasium. Here he was slain,and his head, like that of Sulla, brought back to

io8the exulting tyrant.Senate made no directSENECAAn imperial message to themention of the deaths ofPlautus and Sulla, but spoke vaguely of theirfactious disposition and the emperor's constantwatchfulness over the public safety. They werethereupon expelled from the Senate and the usualsupplications decreed.These crimes were followed by the murderof the innocent and unhappy Octavia. Thisprincess, whose brief life had been but one seriesof calamities unredeemed by a single gleam ofhappiness, was adored by the people, who commiseratedher misfortunes and detested her rivalPoppaea. Nero began by divorcing her on theground of sterility, and removed her first toa house once inhabited by Burrhus and afterwardsinto Campania, where she was placed undera military guard. She was next charged withadultery with an Egyptian slave ;but the heroicconstancy of her waiting-maids, who continuedunder torture to declare her innocence, made itnecessary to abandon this charge, and the emperor,intimidated by popular clamour, decided to recallher. Great rejoicings followed ;the statuesof Poppaea were thrown down, and those ofOctavia adorned with flowers. The multitudeadvanced towards the palace to express theirgratitude to the emperor, but they were met bya charge from the soldiers and dispersed withbloodshed. Poppaea, assisted by Tigellinus, usedall her wiles to restore Nero's resolution and tocompassAnicetus,the ruin of Octavia. The services ofthe murderer of Agrippina, were again

DECLINE OF SENECA'S INFLUENCE 109called into requisition. This man had becomeodious to Nero, on the principle that ' they lovenot poison that do poison need,' and was readyfor any new crime to recover his favour. Heagreed to accuse himself of being the lover ofOctavia, and exceeded his instructions in theshamelessness of his pretended disclosures. Afterhis statement made to Nero's council he wasremoved to Sardinia, and there enabled to spendthe remaining years of his miserable life in physicalcomfort. Octavia, still but in her twentieth year,having witnessed the murders of her father andbrother by a husband who had hated and cruellytreated her from the firstday of their pretendedunion, was now confined in fetters in the islandof Pandataria, and after a few days put to death.Her head was brought to her cruel rival, Poppaea,whose marriage to Nero had immediately followedthe divorce.In the following year (63) Poppaea gave birthto a daughter, and Nero was beside himself withjoy. The Senate fell in with his mood andvoted temples, thanksgivings to the gods, andhonours to the child and mother, with theircustomary subservience. The child was bornat Antium— Nero's own birthplace— and thitherthe senators went to offer their congratulations—all except Thrasea, whose absence drew a bittercomment from the emperor. Afterwards Neroboasted to Seneca that he had reconciled himselfto Thrasea. A flatterer would have replied withthe anticipated protest against such an excess ofmagnanimity, but Seneca merely expressed himself

noSENECAdelighted at the news and offered his congratulations—a reply, comments Tacitus, much to hishonour and to that of Thrasea, but fraught withperil to both these excellent men. The childitself died in four months' time and Nero, excessivein all things, abandoned himself to the wildestmanifestations of grief, which the divine honoursvoted to his lost treasure by a sympathetic Senatewere powerless to assuage.

CHAPTER XSENECA IN RETIREMENT—HISAND OCCUPATIONSFRIENDSDuring the last three yearsof his Hfe Senecaoccupied himself as little as he could with publicaffairs. The emperor would not consent to hisformal retreat, and stilloccasionally consultedhim, but he lived at Rome as little as possible,making his health an excuse for spending mostof his time in one or other of his villas. In hiswhich he shared with his young wiferetirement,Paullina, to whom he was tenderly attached,Seneca occupied himself with reading, writing,self-examination, meditation on the nature ofthings, and researches into natural history. Hisbook of Naturales Quaestiones, written in thelast year of his life, was the result of these researchesin which, says Quintilian,he was sometimesmisled by those whom he employed tomake investigations. This book, though withoutscientific value, assumes the existence of naturalcauses for all phenomena however unusual,and rejects the notion that they were special

112 SENECAindications of the divine purpose, or bore any butaccidental relation to human destiny.^Seneca was also an expert vine-grower, and hisvineyard at Nomentum was the admiration ofItahan agriculturists.^ The territory of Nomentum,a small and ancient town in the neighbourhoodof Rome, was celebrated for its vineyards. Anew system of cultivation had been introducedthere with very successful results by a freedmannamed Acilius Sthenelus. The methodsof Sthenelus were imitated by the well-knowngrammarian Palaemon, a man of infamous moralsand inordinate vanity, but whose energy andhad raised him from the condition of aabilityslave to wealth and high distinction in hisprofession.^ Palaemon bought at a low pricesome neglected land at Nomentum, and set towork to grow vines on itaccordingto the systemof Sthenelus. He succeeded so well that withineight years his vineyards had become an objectof interest to all men engaged in vine-growing,and the proximity of Nomentum to Rome broughthim a stream of visitors by which his vanity —1Nat. Quaest. vi. 3 : 'lUud quoque proderit praesumere animo,nihil horum deos facere ; nee ira numinum, aut caelum concuti,aut terram. Suas ista causas habent : nee ex imperio saeviunt,sed ex quibusdam vitiis, ut corpora nostra, turbantur : et tunc,cum facere videntur, injuriam accipiunt.'*Nat. Quaest.iii.7 : ''EgoAnnaeo tibi vinearum diligens fossoraf&rmo.' Pliny, xiv. :4 Seneca . . . tanto praediiejus amore capto, ut non puderet inviso alias et ostentaturotradere palmam eam, emptis quadruplicato vineis illis intradecennium fere curae annum.' Columella, iii. 3.'Nevertheless, in the expressed opinion of both the emperorsTiberius and Claudius his moral character unfitted him to beplaced in charge of youth.

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 113the leading motive, according to Pliny, of all hisactivities— must have been abundantly gratified.Among the rest came Seneca, who was so charmedwith what he saw that he purchased the propertyat a price four times as large as that which Palaemonhad paid for it less than ten years previously.The farm did not suffer from the change of ownership.Columella, a contemporary, writes thatin his time the vineyards of Nomentum werecelebrated for their excellence, and that the bestyield of all was from that belonging to Seneca.^The practical character of Seneca's philosophy,his love of tangible results, his constant desireto penetrate through appearances to realities,render comprehensible his taste for agriculture.A rival vine-grower, mentioned by Pliny, wasVetalinus Aegialus, by origin a freedman, wholived on an estate in the district of Liternum, inCampania, formerly occupied by Scipio Africanusduring his exile from Rome. Seneca visited himthere, and has left in one of his letters an interestingdescription of the house and olive plantations,with a detailed account of the various methodsof planting and transplanting olive-trees andvines :I am writing you [Lucilius] this letter from the actualhouse of Scipio Africanus, where I am staying, and whereI have adored his ' manes ' and the cofhn which I beheveto contain the body of that great man ... I find ahouse constructed of square stones, in a wood, surrounded1 Colum., De re rustica, iii. :3 Nomentana regio celeberrima'fama est illustris, et praecipue quam possidet Seneca, vir excellentisingenii atque doctrinae, cujus in praediis vinearum jugerasingula cuUeos octonos reddidisse plerumque compertum est.'I

114 SENECAby a wall, with towers erected at each corner for itsdefence. There is a tank to supply the buildings and theplants which might suffice for the wants of a whole army.The small bath is rather dark, as we generally find inbaths of that time. It gave me great pleasure to contemplateScipio's way of Uving and to contrast it withours. It was in this dark corner that the terror ofCarthage, to whom Rome owes it that she was capturedonly once, used to bathe his body wearied with countrywork, for his exercise took the form of labour, and heused to plough his fields himself, after the manner ofthe ancients. Under this humble roof he hved ;onthis common pavement he walked. Who now wouldendure to bathe in this manner ? A man now thinkshimself poor and mean unless his walls glisten withlarge and costly marble, with Alexandrian blocks contrastingwith Numidian, with elaborate texture of mosaicas from a painter's hand ;unless his arched roof ishidden by plate glass unless marble from Thasos, once;the rare and conspicuous decoration of some temple,cover the walls of a swimming-bath into which he plungesa body exhausted by profuse perspiration unless water;flows from silver sluices. And I am speaking only ofcommon baths ;what shall be said when we come to thebaths of freedmen, with their many statues, and columnssupporting nothing but placed there merely for show, andby reason of their costUness ? What of the sound of watersrushing down the steps ? Our luxury has reached sucha pitch that the very floor on which we tread must beset with precious stones. In this bath of Scipio thereare chinks, hardly to be called windows, cut in the stonewall, so that light may be admitted without weakeningthe defences. But nowadays we think baths mustyunless they are contrived so as to admit the full raysof the sun to fallthrough vast windows upon the bathersand warm them as they bathe, and to enable them toenjoy from their seats a prospect of sea and land. Newinventions of luxury constantly outstrip the old, andevery novelty which made baths admired and run after

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 115at the time of their dedication soon becomes out ofdate and out of fashion. Of old, baths were few andtheir arrangements simple, for there was little need fordecoration when the object of bathing was cleanliness,not pleasure, and when a bath cost less than a penny.Water was not poured over the bather, nor constantlyrenewed as from a hot spring to clean the grease fromshining bodies. But, by Heaven, it was delightful toenter those dark bathing-places when you knew thata Cato or a Fabius Maximus or one of the Cornelii hadtested the water with his own hands, for the office ofinspecting the public baths, of seeing that they wereclean and in good order, and that the temperature waskept at the right and most healthy level, was in olddays discharged by the noblest aediles. . . . What aclown would Scipio now be thought, who had no broadwindow-panes through which to admit the Hght andwas not accustomed to stew in a steaming bath underthe full sunshine I The water in which he bathed wasnot filtered, but often cloudy, indeed after heavy rainalmost muddy. But that mattered little to him, forhe came to wash away sweat, not ointment. One canimagine the 'contemptuous comment : We do notenvy Scipio if that was his manner of bathing.' Butthere is worse to come ;he did not bathe every day,the recorders of old customs that ourfor we are told byancestors washed their legs and arms every day becausethey were stained by their work, but their whole bodies'only once a week. Clearly they were very dirty fellows 'someone will say. Of what do you think they smelt ?Of warfare ;of labour ;of manhood. Men becamefouler after elegant baths were invented. ... To useointment is of no use unless it is renewed twice or thricea day, otherwise it will evaporate. People glory inthese odours, as ifthey were natural to their bodies.If all this seems to you too severe you must ascribe itto the spirit of the house, where I have been learningfrom Aegialus, the present owner of the estate andthe most industrious of householders, how to trans-

ii6SENECAplant an old plantation. This is the sort of thing weveterans should learn, we are all of us planting oliveyards for the benefit of those who come after us.^In another letter he describes how, whenattacked by fever, he escaped from Rome toNomentum, disregarding the anxious remonstrancesof Paullina, his second wife, who thoughthim too ill to move, and how quickly the sightof his vines and meadows, and the enjoymentof pure air after the fetid atmosphere of thecity, restored him to health. In this letter, too,he dwells with gratitude on the devoted affectionof Paullina, and says that it was this thatreconciled him to life. His health had becomea matter of concern to himself, because it was amatter of concern to her.For since I know that I am to her as the breath oflife, I begin to be careful of myself that I may be carefulof her, and I give up that indifference to fate whichis the chief boon brought by old age. This old man,I tell myself, has youth in his keeping and must thereforespare himself. ... It is sweet, moreover, to be sodear to a wife that a man becomes dearer to himself.''Another villa owned by Seneca in the neighbourhoodof Rome was in the Alban district,where many rich Romans possessed houses andwhither the emperors themselves used to resort totheir magnificent villa first occupied by Pompey,large remains of which are still visible at Albano.Seneca gives in one of his letters a characteristicaccount of a surprise visit he paid to his Albanvilla about this time. He relates how he arrived'Ep. 86.=»Ep. 104.

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 117late at night after a troublesome journey and foundnothing ready for his reception but the contentedmind he brought with him. This he owed, so hewrites, to the reflections that nothing externalreally matters if you take it lightly ; that all thatis displeasing in our indignationfeeling itself, not from its subject;arises from thethat evil residesnot in things, but in the opinion we have of them ;and that although there was no bread in thehouse but the coarse stuff eaten by his bailiff andlabourers, he would find, if he waited long enoughto be hungry, that this was better than the breadto which he was accustomed. Amusing himselfwith these philosophical meditations he wentsupperless to bed, and determined to eat no scraptill his appetite should clamour for the homelyfare within his reach and he could digestit withpleasure. A stomach well-disciplined and trainedto put up with indignities, he moralised the nextmorning to Lucilius, is of the greatest use to onewho would be free. He is delighted to find withwhat perfect unconcern he can endure unexpectedinconveniences ; for, as he remarks, a man ifgiven time can brace himself to do without manythings, the sudden loss of which he would feel.We do not understand how many of the things weuse are superfluoustill we begin to dispense \^dth them.Then we find that we made use of them merely becausewe possessed them. With how many things we surroundourselves only because others have done the same, becauseit is the fashion ! A fruitful source of our errorsis that we live by imitation and are guided by customrather than by reason. When a practice of any kind

Ii8SENECAis adopted but by a few we leave it alone, when morepeople take to it we follow suit, just as if it were betterbecause more common, and when some extravagancebecomes general we begin to think it right. For instance,no man of fashion cares to make a journey withoutbeing preceded by an escort of Numidian outridersand runners. He would despise himself if the roadwere not cleared for his passage and unless a greatdust heralded the approach of a person of consequence,while the accoutrements of his mules must be of preciousmaterial wrought by great artists.He goes on to warn Lucilius to avoid the insidioussociety of those who declare virtue and justiceand philosophy to be empty names, and thatto take pleasure as it flies is the only sensible coursefor an ephemeral being like man. Death, thesesay, will take all ; why then anticipate its actionby the surrender of what it will take? Whatmadness to act as steward for your heir and somake him long for your departure, because themore you have the better pleased will he be tosee you go. Reputation is a bubble, pleasure theone reality. Such siren-songs as these, saysSeneca, must be shunned like the plague. Theyturn us from our country, from our parents, fromour friends, from virtue, and dash us to pieceson a rock of degradation. No one isgood byaccident ;virtue is a difficult science and mustbe learnt. Pleasure, which we share with theanimals, which attracts the meanest of createdthings, must be a petty and contemptible thing.Poverty is an evil only to him who declines it.Superstition is very madness ;it fears thosewhom it should love ;it dishonours those whom

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 119it worships. As well deny the existence of godsas report so vilely of their character. Thereis no hope for the sick man whom his physicianurges to intemperance.^One fruit of retirement, especiallyto Seneca'staste, was the increased opportunities which itbrought him of intercourse with his friends.Throughout his life he had cultivated friendshipwith chosen men of every rank, and he had ahigh idea of all that was implied in the term.a man toConsider long [he writes] before admittingbe your friend, but when you have done so, admit himto your heart of hearts, speak as freelyto him as toyourself.Do you indeed so live as to entrust nothingto yourself which you would be ashamed to confide evento an enemy yet since there are things which we are;accustomed to keep secret, share with your friend allyour cares, allyour thoughts. Ifyou think him faithfulyouwill make him so.^The wise man, even if sufficient unto himself, wishesto have a friend ;if on no other account yet that hemay practise friendship not for the reasons Epicurus, . .have someone to nurse him whengives, that he mayill or to succour him when in prison or in want, but thathe may himself have someone to nurse, or to liberatewhen a prisoner. He who regards himself and for hisown sake seeks for friendship is in error as it has;begun,so will it end. He has prepared a friend to bring himaid when in chains, at the first clank that friend willleave him. . . . You begin a friendship for your ownadvantage, if a greater advantage offers youwill breakit, because you have looked for a reward outside itself.Wherefore do I make myself a friend ? To have onefor whom I can die, whom I can follow into exile, forwhose life I may risk and spend my own.^1Ep. 123.»Ep. 3.*Ep. 9.

120 SENECAFriendship [he writes to Lucilius] makes all thingscommon between us, neither prosperity nor adversitycan fall to our single share. We live in common. Noone can live happily who looks to himself alone, whoturns everything to his own profit ; you must live for— another ifyou would live for 'yourself alteri vivasoportet, si vis iibi vivere.' The binding union whichmingles all with all and claims that there are rightscommon to the whole human race must be carefullyand sacredly observed. To this end the cultivationof that tie of intimate friendship I spokegreatest service, for he who shares all thingsof is of thewith hisfriend will share much with mankind.^The soul knows no pleasure comparable to a sweetand faithful friendship. How good it is to have one towhom you can confide every secret, whose knowledgeyou fear less than your own, whose conversation soothesyour cares, whose judgment solves your perplexities,whose cheerfulness drives away melancholy, whose verysight enchants you.^In spite of, perhaps owing to, this lofty notionof friendship, Seneca had a goodlylist of friends.Nearest of allto his heart was Annaeus Serenus,captain of Nero's bodyguard, whose name suggeststhat he may have been a relation. To him headdressed the treatise De Constantia Sapientis;and the De Tranquillitate Animi is in theform of a dialogue between Serenus and himself.The younger man is made to consult Seneca withrespect to certain difficulties which he has encounteredin his progress in philosophy. Hisreason has convinced him that a simplelife isthebest, and his real inclinations agree with hisreason. Yet he finds his eyes dazzled by the'Ep. 48.*De Tranquill. Anim. i.7.

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 121splendour he sees around him ;and he is consciousof an occasional conflict between his moral andphysical nature, troubling him much as sea-sicknessmay trouble a man though the ship is in no danger.These weaknesses humiliate and disturb him, andhe asks Seneca to prescribe some means by whichhe may gain a constant and invulnerable tranquillityof soul. Seneca in reply treats, as hesays, the whole question in order that from thegeneral remedy Serenus may extract what heneeds to meet his own case. His remedy, inbrief, is self-devotion to the welfare of others,whether by public service of the State, in which aman must regard honours only so far as theymay help him to be useful to his friends, to hisfellow-citizens, and to the whole world ; or, ifthe temptations incident to such a life may notsafely be confronted, to the equally necessarywork of teaching the world the meaning of justice,of piety, of patience, of fortitude, of the contemptof death, of the nature of the gods, and finally,what allmay have who will, of a goodWe conscience.have no power over fortune. Life is in onesense a perpetual servitude, whatever its outwardaspect but we have ;power to act rightly,however fortune may treat us, and there are noconceivable circumstances in which we may notsecure tranquillity by serving our fellow-creaturesin the measure of our power. A discriminatingchoice of friends, moderation in all things, with arational end kept constantly in view in all ouractions and desires, the elimination of the superfluous,the a\ oidance alike of anxiety and of frivolity,

122 SENECAachieved by constantly keeping in mind the truththat external things being beyond our powerand subject to fortune are unimportant, to laughrather than weep at the follies and vices of themultitude, recreation, and the cultivation ofcheerfulness— these are the more worldly-wisecounsels addressed to Serenus personally withwhich Seneca closes his treatise. It was writtenduring the Quinquennium, at the height of hisprosperity, and is free from the gloom, the senseof impending tragedy, the passionate exhortationsto constanc}^ the tremendous seriousness whichmark his later writings when the reign of terrorhad begun.Serenus died while stillyoung of a dish ofpoisonous fungi.^ Of his grief at this event Senecaafterwards wrote to Lucilius, whom he was consolingfor the loss of a friend :— younger as if the Fates preserved the order of age.^Though I write thus to you, yet I myself mournedfor my dearest friend Annaeus Serenus with such extravaganceof lamentation that I am become a nameamong those who have been vanquished by— sorrow thelast thing I desired. Now, however, I blame myself, andperceive that the chief reason of my excess of grief wasthat I had never thought that he could have died beforeme. I only reflected that he was younger, and muchAnother of Seneca's friends of a very differentsort was Demetrius, the cynic philosopher. Demetriuswas a native of Sunium, and early in hislong life became known for the originahty andindependence of his character. He illustrated^Pliny, xxii. *Ep. 63.

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 123the doctrines of his school no less by his lifethan by his teaching. Confining his wants to thebarest necessities, living on the roughest fare,clad in the coarsest garments, he was in need ofnothing that man could give him, and thereforehad no motive for concealing his opinions onlife or on the actions of mankind out of anyhuman respect. Seneca, at the summit of hisfame and power and wealth, retained the highestadmiration and regard for this half-nakedchampion of poverty and of contemptworld's goods.for theNature [he says] would seem to have bred him(Demetrius) in our times in order to show that neithercould we corrupt him, nor he correct us. He is,though he deny it, a perfectly wise man ;one whoseconstancy of resolution nothing can shake whose unlabouredeloquence following its natural course and intent;on its end is little concerned with the choice of wordsor the modulation of periods, but is exactly suited tothe great subjectsit treats, and the true expression ofa mighty soul. Providence, I am persuaded, has decreedthat the man should lead such a life, and has endowedhim with such powers of speech, that this age might lackneither an example nor a reproach.^The teaching of Demetrius was that of hisschool, but confirmed in his instance by anunchanging practice.The wise man [he taught] must despise whatever issubject to fortune, must raise himself above fear, andlearn to attach no value to riches save those that springfrom himself, remembering always that there is little tofear from men, and nothing from the goodness of the gods ;*De Benef. vii. 8.

' *124 SENECAhe must disdain all those superfluities that tormentwhile they seem to adorn our lives, and understand thatdeath is the source of no evil but the end of many ;consecrating his soul to virtue he must think her waythe plainest whithersoever it may lead him ;he musthold himself a social being born for the service of all,and regard the world as a hostel where all men arefellow-sojourners he must open his conscience to the;gods and live as if all his actions were public.-^Among the many great sayings of my friendDemetrius [Seneca writes elsewhere], here is one thatI have just heard and that still rings in my ears, * Theman who has never known adversity seems to be unhappiestof all, for he has never been able to test himself.' ^Demetrius concealed neither his thoughtsnor his dwelling-place, yet he contrived to livewithout serious molestation under tyrant aftertyrant, and died at last in extreme old age in theprincipate of Domitian. Caligula endeavoured topropitiate him by an enormous present of money,but the philosopher laughingly rejected it, observingafterwards that if the emperor wishedto corrupt him he should at least have offeredhim his whole empire. Later he lived for a timeat Corinth, where he made the acquaintance ofthe thaumaturgist Apollonius of Tyana. Comingto Rome, he became the honoured companionand spiritual adviser of Seneca, Thrasea, andother distinguished men. He was present withHelvidius at Thrasea's death, and it was to himthat that high-minded senator addressed his lastwords. ^ When Nero's gymnasium was completedhe made his way into the new building and there^De Benef. vii. i.De Providentia, 3.^Tac, Ann. xvi. 35J

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 125denounced the custom of bathing, declaring thatthe bathers only enfeebled and polluted themselves,and that such institutions were a useless expense.'He was only saved from immediate death, asthe penalty of such language, by the fact that Nerowas in extra good voice when he sang on thatday, which he did in the tavern adjoining thegymnasium, naked, except for a girdle round hiswaist.' ^ The philosopher was nevertheless chargedby TigelHnus with having ruined the bath, andwas banished from Rome. After the death ofNero he returned to the city, but, wearing outthe patience of Vespasian by the frankness ofhis criticisms, he was again banished with otherphilosophers by that emperor.A third friend of Seneca was Caesonius Maximus.He is only once mentioned in Seneca's letters, butwe know from Martial how close was the friendshipbetween the two men. * This powerful friendof the eloquent Seneca,' writes the poet,'wasalmost as dear to him as the beloved Serenus,perhapseven dearer.'^Maximus was a Roman of the governing classwho passed through the usual course of honours,ending as consul suffectus and proconsul inSicily under Nero.^ After Seneca's death Maximus^Philostratus, Apol. iv. 42.*Martial, vii. 45 :'! Facundi Senecae potens amicus,Caro proximus, aut prior, Sereno.'The consuls who gave their name to the year were thoseappointed on the first of January. These were the consulesordinavii, but under the Empire they were accustomed to resigntheir of&ces after a few months or even weeks, and consulessuffecti were appointed to fill their places.

126 SENECAwith others of his friends was banished fromItaly without trial. A certain Quintus Ovidius,to whom Martial afterwards addressed two epigrams,and who, according to that poet, wasto Maximus all that Maximus was to Seneca,braved the tyrant's resentment by accompanyinghim into exile, and earned through this gallantaction such immortality as Martial's verses couldbestow. The letters of Seneca to Maximus werepublished and were extant in Martial's time,but have been lost.^In a letter to Lucilius, Seneca describes atwo days' jaunt made by Maximus and himself.Their purpose was to try with how many ofthethings commonly thought indispensable by a richRoman on his travels it was possible, withoutreal inconvenience, to dispense.There are many things [he wrote] which we thinknecessary, but should not miss if some accident were todeprive us of them. If, then, we of set purpose wentwithout them we should not feel their loss. Thatlesson I have learnt from my expedition. Startingwith slaves so few that a single waggon could holdthem, and without any luggage that we did not carryon our persons, I and my friend Maximus have beenenjoying a delightful two days' expedition. I slepton a mattress spread on the bare ground. One rainmantleacted as sheet and one as coverlet. Nothingour meals, which took littleunnecessary was served attime to prepare. Dried figs were invariable ;and ourtablets were always ready at hand to note impressions.The figs,when there is bread, serve as a seasoning when;there is none, they serve as bread. ... I drove in arustic waggon. The mules just showed they were alive1Tac, Ann. xv. 7 ; Martial, vii. 44, 45.

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 127by moving ; the muleteer went barefoot, not becauseit was summer, but because he had no shoes. I own,however, that I felt some uneasiness at being thought theowner of this conveyance, and the fact that I did soshows that I have not yet succeeded in freeing myselffrom false shame. Whenever we met some splendid—equipage, do what I would I felt embarrassed a proofthat I am not yet steadfastly fixed in the principlesI approve and commend, for the man who is ashamedof a humble vehicle will glory in a costly one. I havemade little progress. As yet I hardly venture to practisefrugality in public ; I still have regard to the opinionof wayfarers.^But the most interesting of Seneca's friendswas the Epicurean, Lucilius Junior, to whomthe famous letters were addressed, as well asthe Naturales Quaestiones and the treatise DeProvidentia. Lucilius was an administrator, aphilosopher, and a poet. He had known Senecawhen they were both young at Pompeii, wherehe had a house, and where perhaps he wasborn.A man [Seneca wrote to him in Sicily] must be dulland insensible indeed, my Lucilius, who forgets his frienduntil reminded of him by some local association, yetfamiUar spots do sometimes wake again the sense ofbereavement deep hidden in our hearts, not by revivinga perished memory, but by rousing it from slumber.Thus the grief of mourners even when softened by timeis renewed by the sight of a familiar slave at the door,or of clothing, or of a house. I cannot describe howI missed you and how fresh seemed the pain of losingyou when I arrived in Campania, and especially atNaples and when I saw your Pompeii.I see you with1Ep. 87.

128 SENECAextraordinary distinctness, especially as you were whenI was quitting you. I see you swallowing your tearsand attempting in vain to show no signs of the strongemotion you felt. I seem but yesterday to have lostyou. But to those who remember, what may not be called'yesterday ' ?Only yesterday I sat as a boy underSotion the philosopher, yesterday Ibegan to plead causes,yesterday I ceased to wish to plead, yesterday I becameunable to plead. Infinite is the swiftness of time. Wesee this most clearly when we look back, for it escapesthe notice of men intent on the present, so unbroken andcontinuous is time's headlong flight. The reason is this.All time past is in the same position ; you may regard itas a whole, it is spread before you and uniform all :thingsbelonging to it are merged in the same abyss, nor, whenthe whole is brief, can long intervals within it exist.Our actual life is a point, less than a point but; nature,to make it seem longer, has divided it into parts. Oneshe has made infancy, another childhood, another youth,another the interval between youth and old age, anotherold age itself. How many degrees in so narrow a space !But a little time ago I was in your company, yet thislittle time is a considerable part of our life ;on thebrevity of which we should constantly meditate. I usednot to think the passage of Time so rapid. Now itsflight seems to me incredibly swift ;whether it is thatI see the goal approaching, or whether I have begun tonotice and reckon up all I lose.^And inPompeii againown youth.a later letter he relates how the sight ofrecalled to him Lucilius and hisLucilius raised himself from small beginningsby his own industry and talents. During thereigns of Caligula and Claudius he is said tohave played a difficult part with honour to him-1Ep» 49.

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 129self, to have refused to flatter the reigningfavourites, and to have risked his hfe throughfidehty to his friends. ^ Under Nero he becameProcurator of Sicily, and it was from that islandthat he corresponded with Seneca. Seneca warnshim so earnestly against ambition and the dangerof listening to flatterers,that we may fairly conjecturethat this warning indicates the presenceof corresponding infirmities in the man to whomit was addressed. But he praises his temperance,modesty, and disinterestedness.Lucilius from his youth gave much of histime to liberal studies, and especially to poetryand philosophy. While he was in Sicily he wrote,at the suggestion of Seneca, a poem on Aetna,which is still extant.^ In this poem Lucihus1Sen., Nat. Quaest. iv. in Praef.circumstances to which he alludes.Seneca does not explain the*The authorship has been disputed, especially by Lipsius ;but the identification seems almost established. It isprobablethat Cornelius Severus, a poet of the Augustan age, whomSeneca mentions together with Virgil and Ovid as havingtreated the subject, and to whom the poem has in consequencebeen attributed, like Virgil and Ovid only introduced a descriptionof Aetna into one of his poems and in any case he;cannot have been the author of the existing work which containswords first used in a later generation. On the other hand, thecoincidences with Seneca are so striking that those who holdthat the poem was written by Severus have been driven to thehypothesis that Seneca borrowed from it some of his ideas inthe Naturales Quaestiones. Here we have, on the one hand,a poem written on the subject of Aetna by a philosopher ofthe Epicurean school, and from the style and language bearingthe marks of the Neronian age and of the school of Seneca ;and on the other, a Lucilius Junior who is not only procuratorof Sicily, a poet, and an Epicurean philosopher of the age ofNero, but one to whom Seneca suggests that he should writea poem on this very subject. Such is a summary of part ofthe evidence.

130 SENECAtreats his subject in a scientific and philosophicalspirit, discarding, not in silence Uke Lucan, butwith open contempt, all supernatural explanationsof the phenomena. The poets, he tells us, vainlyimagined the pallid kingdom of Pluto beneaththe ashes, the waters of Styx with Cerberus, thegiant Tityos spread over seven acres, Tantaluswith his eternal thirst foiled by the retreatingwater, Ixion and the wheel, Minos and his judgments.Not content with this they pry intothe manners of the gods, and picture them fullof worse than human lusts and passions. Butas for me, he continues, ' truth is my only care.'Seneca says the same thing in prose :Remember [he says to Marcia]that evil exists notfor the dead. All those tales of infernal regions arefables invented to terrify us. For the dead there isneither darkness nor prison, nor rivers of fire, nor Lethe,nor tribunals, nor accused. In that free state there areno fresh tyrants. These things are the fond imaginationsof poets who delude us into emptyfears. Deathis alike the reward and the end of all pain ; beyonditour sufferings cannot extend ;it replaces us in thatstate of perfect tranquillity which was ours before wewere born. If we pity the dead, we should pity thoseunborn.And again, in the treatise De Vita Beata hespeaks of the — folly of poets who impute every viceto Jupiter making him a parricide, a usurper,and a seducer. Their motive must be, he says,men by such examples from any senseto relieveof guiltin their own actions.^1Beata, 26.Aetna, 72-89 ; Seneca, Cons, ad Marc. 19: DeVita

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 131For Seneca philosophy was divided intotwobranches, the one concerned with human andthe other with divine matters. The former iswhat we should now call moral philosophy orethics ;the latter natural science. For the purelyspeculative part of philosophy, for all that hadno bearing either upon the conduct of humanlife or upon the order of nature, he felt not onlyindifference but an impatient contempt.Lucilius,on the other hand, was much more attracted bymetaphysics. He enjoyed the logical puzzles,paradoxes, and distinctions of the schools, andwas constantly endeavouring in his letters toentice Seneca into abstract discussions. Again,in the matter of style, to which Lucilius attacheda high importance, Seneca istoo muchconstantly impressingupon him the danger of paying'attention to words. Ovatio vultus animi est,'*he says. Speech is the countenance of the soul ;if it is over-polished and coloured and, so tospeak, manipulated, one infers that the soul alsois unsound and feeble.' Constantly he returns tothese topics, and dwells on the waste of timeinvolved in idle exercises of ingenuity.How do they help me ?[he asks]. Do they make mebraver, more just, more temperate? I have no leisurefor such exercises ;I still need a doctor. Why teachme this useless science ? You promise great things ; yougive me small ones. You told me I should be fearlesswhen swords were glancing around me, when the dagger'spoint was at my throat ; you said I should be withoutconcern in fire or shipwreck. Teach me to despisepleasure and glory when I have learnt that, we may;

132 SENECAproceed to the solution of riddles, to nice distinctions,to the elucidation of obscurities ;for the present let uskeep to the essential.^To understand Seneca's reiterated inp^istencein these letters on the vital necessity of a mentaldiscipline which should brace the mind againstall that might befall, and prepare a man toface death at any moment at the hands of atyrant, we must remember that they were writtenat a time when these trials were becomingincreasingly possible for every man of mark.Philosophy, he is always saying,is concernedwith action, not with words ;and the test ofproficiency is the concordance of practice withtheory. It teaches us to distinguish realitiesfrom appearances. Death, for instance, maycome through a tyrant or a fever, pain throughdisease or an executioner ;such differences cannotchange their nature, they are still but deathand pain. Yet we fear them far more in theone case than in the other, for it is the pompand circumstance of things and not the thingsthemselves that form the subjects of our fear.^'Remember,' he tells him, ' that there is nothingadmirable in man except his soul, to which whengreat all other things are small.' ^ Wisdom consistsin constancy of will — a constancy unalter-1Ep. 109. In tliis long controversy between the rhetoriciansand philosophers, between 'the artists of the pure form of speechand the investigators of the inmost nature of things,' Seneca, indirect opposition to his father's view, was the protagonist of thephilosophers. See Friedlander, iii. 3.*'Ef&cientia non effectum spectat timor.'^'Cogita in te, praeter animum,magno nihil magnum est ' {Ep. 8).niliil esse mirabile : cui

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 133able by external circumstances. It is thus thatthe service of philosophy becomes the only truefreedom. This constancy can only be acquiredby continual attention to realities — the spinningof syllogisms and the ravelling and unravellingofacademical knots are nothing to the purpose.It is the first sign of a weak and untrained mindto dread the unexperienced. To banish this dreadshould be the chief end of our endeavours. Weshall find our medicine pleasant to the taste,it is one that pleases while itheals.forA happy life [he says] is founded in a freedom fromconcern and an abiding tranquillity. These are the giftsof greatness of soul, and of a steady persistence in whathas been well resolved. We may reach this goal ifwe behold truth as a whole,if in all we do we preserveorder, moderation, fitness, and a will guiltless and kindly,looking to Reason for guidance and never departingfrom her precepts, which are alike lovable and wondrous.. . , Let the man who finds his chief goodin tastesand colours and sounds renounce the fellowship of themost glorious of living beings second only to the gods ;and join dumb animals rejoicing in their pasture. . . .No man is free who is the slave of his body. Fornot only does his anxiety on its behalf throw him intothe power of all those who can injure it, but it is itselfa surly and exacting commander. The free spiritsometimes quits it with calm indifference, sometimessprings from it with a generous ardour, and in eithercase cares as little for its future destiny as we do forthat of the bristles of our beards after shaving.^Seneca's counselsThough the main object ofwas to prepare his friend to meet with forti-1Ep. 92.

134 SENECAtude whatever fate might have in store forhim, he does not neglect the humbler warningsof prudence. He advises him to live as retireda life as possible,to avoid singularity, to occupyhimself as little as possible with politics whileavoiding a conspicuous withdrawal from them,for this too excites suspicion, and to be cautiouswith whom he conversed.For your greater security [he writes] I would have youobserve certain precautions, which you must take fromme as though I were prescribing rules for the preservationof your health when living in your Ardeatine villa.Reflect what are the motives which incite a man tothe destruction of another :you will find them to behope, envy, hatred, fear, or contempt.He proceeds to give admirable advice as tohow to avoid exciting these emotions in theminds of others ;but ends by saying that, afterall, every man's best securityis his innocence,and that the guilty, though they sometimeschance to escape, can never feel sure of doing so.The man ispunished who expects punishment ;and whoever deserves it expectsit. Thus theof their folliesimprudent always suffer the penaltyand crimes. But if all these precautions aretaken, can I ?guarantee your safety I can nomore promise you that, replies Seneca, than I canhealth to a man who takes duepromise perpetualcare of himself .^ Roman senators during the lasthalf of Nero's principate lived under a sword ofDamocles comparable to that which threatenedFrench aristocrats during the Reignof Terror.>Ep. 14.

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 135'Palpitantibus praecordiis vivitur.' The mission ofSeneca was to give courage to the despairing, toteach them to meet death with fortitude, and toconvince them that no man need be a slave, sincethe liberty to die could not be taken from him.Thus the great refuge from tyranny was selfdestruction,the right to which he asserts time'and again with terrible earnestness. There areprofessors of wisdom,' he writes, 'to whom it isanathema to offer violence to our own persons orcut short our own lives. We must wait till Naturereleases us. Those who say this do not see thatthey are barring the way to liberty. The eternallaw contains nothing better than this, that ithasgiven us only one entrance into life but manyexits.' 'No one is justified in complaining of life,for no one is obliged to live. Are you content ?Then live. Not contf^^-n^ ? You may return whenceyou came. ' ^ 'And later in the same letter, The wayto that great liberty isopened with a bodkin : oursafety is contained in a prick.' ^And again in the'De Ira : Wherever you cast your eyes youwill find the end of your Do ills. you see thatprecipice ? It is the descent to liberty. That sea ?that river ? that well ? Beneath their waters libertylies concealed. Do you see that little misshapentree ?There hangs liberty.'^*Ep. 68 : Hoc est unum, cur de vita non possumus queri;'neminem tenet. . . . Placet ? vive. Non placet? licet eo revertiunde venisti.'' ' Scalpello aperitur ad illam magnam libertatem via : etpuncto securitas constat.' Cp. Hamlet, 'When he himself mayquietus make with a bare bodkin.'3De Ira, ii.15.

CHAPTER XILETTER TO LUCILIUS ON AETNA— SENECA'SRICHES AND APOLOGIASeneca was greatly interested in an expeditionround Sicily made by Lucilius, and the letter inwhich he speaks of it may be given in full, notonly as an illustration of his inquiring and speculativemind, but because in it he makes the firstsuggestion of the poem on Aetna :I am waiting for your letters to hear what new discoveriesyou have made in sailing round Sicily, andespecially what fuller information you can give meabout Charybdis. For I know very well that Scyllais a rock and not very formidable to navigators, but Iam anxious to hear from you whether Charybdis answersto her reputation in story. If you happen to haveobserved it (and it is worthy of observation),whether the whirlpools appear when the wind isquarter only,tell mein oneor if that sea is afflicted with them inevery kind of weather and also if it is true that ; anythingdrawn into that vortex is carried many milesunder water and only reappears near the coast of Tauromenium.After you have written fully to me of aU this,Ishall venture to commission you further, for my sake,to ascend Aetna, which is said to have been formerlyseen by navigators from a greater distance than now,whence the inference is drawn that it is consuming

LETTER TO LUCILIUS ON AETNA 137away and gradually subsiding. But the cause may ratherbe that the fire has died away and bursts forth withless force and magnitude than formerly, the smoke alsobecoming more sluggish for the same reason. Neitherof these theories is incredible ;the one that themountain by daily consumption is becoming less, theother that the fire does not remain the same— the firethat does not spring from the mountain itself but boilsup from some underground pit where it is generatedand fed from below, the mountain itself yielding it notahment but a passage. There is a well-known districtin Lycia, called Hephaestion by the inhabitants, wherethe soil is perforated in several places, and a perfectlyharmless fire runs round it which does no injury tothe plants. So the country is fertile and grassy, nothingis scorched by the flames, which gHmmer but faintlyand have no force. But let us reserve these thingsfor another time, and then when you write to me onthe subject I shall also ask how far the snows, whicheven summer cannot melt, much less the volcanic fires,are distant from the crater's mouth. And you have noright to impute this trouble to me, for if no one hadcommissioned you to do so you suffer from a certainmalady which would not have allowed you to rest tillyou had described Aetna in a poem and approached thisground sacred for ail poets. That Virgil had alreadydone full justice to this subject did not prevent Ovidfrom handlingit ;nor did both of them together deterSeverus Cornelius. So happy a material does this placeafford to all, that those who have gone before appearto me not to have anticipated all that can be said, butto have opened the way. It makes a great differencewhether your subject has been exhausted or only treated ;in the latter case itgrows as time goes on, and the inventionof former writers is no obstacle to that of theirsuccessors. Moreover, the latter are placed in the bestposition. They find words ready for use, and by arrangingthese differently can give them a new appearance ;nor do they steal them as ifthey belonged to others.

138 SENECAfor they are public property. Lawyers deny that anypublic property can be appropriated by prescription. Iam mistaken in you if Aetna does not whet your appetite.Already you are wishing to write something great andequal to the work of your predecessors — equal, I say,for j^our modesty does not allow you to hope for more ;a modesty so great that I think you would rather withholdsomething from the full force of your genius thanrun the risk of surpassing them, so high is your reverencefor the elder poets. Wisdom has this good point amongthe rest, that no one can be surpassed therein by anotherexcept during the ascent. When you reach the summitall are equal, there is no room for an increase, a halt ismade. Can the sun add aught to his greatness ? Canthe moon wax further than she is wont ? The seas donot increase ;the universe preserves the same habit andmeasure. Whatever has completed its natural magnitudecannot gain in stature. Wise men, in so far aswise, are equal and on a level. Each of them mayhave his own proper gifts: one will be more easyof access, another readier, another more fluent, anothermore eloquent ;that wisdom of which we are speaking,that only source of happiness, will be equal in all. Whetheryour Aetna can sink down and fall in upon itself, orwhether the constant action of the fire can draw downthis lofty summit, so conspicuous over a wide expanseof sea, I know not ; neither flame nor crumbling awaycan lower the height of virtue. This is the one majestythat can never be degraded ; it can be neither extendednor reduced. Its magnitude is fixed, like that of theheavenly bodies. To her let us endeavour to raiseourselves : much is already done, or rather, to confessthe truth, not much. For it is not goodness to be betterthan the worst. Who boasts of eyes that shrink fromdayhght ? for which the sun shines through a mist ?Though he may be satisfied to have escaped from totaldarkness, he does not yet enjoy the full light of day.Then will our soul have cause for rejoicing when escapingfrom the darkness in which it was involved, it sees no

LETTER TO LUCILIUS ON AETNA 139longer dimly and uncertainl}^ but admits the perfectlight ; when it is restored to its heavenly home and hasrecovered the place to which it was born. Our soul'sorigin calls it heavenward. It will gain heaven evenbeiore it is loosed from these bonds if it fling away itsfaults and emerge unstained and untrammelled into thecontemplation of the divine mysteries. This is whatwe should do, my dearest Lucilius ;toward this endshould we strain with our whole strength, though fewknow what we do, and none see us. Gloryis the shadow•of virtup it willaccompany even those who shun it. Butjust as a shadow sometimes goes before and sometimesfollows after, so glory is sometimes before us and offersitself to the view, but at other times holds back untilenvy has passed away, when it appears the greater forhaving come late. How long Democritus seemed amadman ! Fame scarce welcomed Socrates. How longwas Cato ignored by the State It !rejected him, and onlyunderstood when it had lost him. Had Rutilius neversuffered wrong his innocence and virtue would have remainedhidden ;he became famous through the violencedone to him. Did he not thank his fortune and embracehis exile ? I speak of those whom Fortune by persecutionhas rendered illustrious in their lifetime ;how manyare those whose accomplishments have become knownonly after their death ! howreceived but dragged out You !many whom Fame has notsee how greatly notmerely the learned, but this whole throng of theunlearned, admire Epicurus. He was quite unknownat Athens itself, where he lived in obscurity. Manyyears after the death of his friend Metrodorus, speakingin one of his letters with grateful recollection of theiramong so many ad-—friendship, he ends with this thatvantagesit was of no disservice to Metrodorus and himselfthat they lived in that famous country of Greece, notonly unknown, but almost unheard. Did he on this accountremain undiscovered after he had ceased to exist ?Did not his opinions then shine forth ? Metrodorus alsoconfesses in one of his letters that Epicurus and himself

140 SENECAwere less audible than they should have been, butforetold that they would have a great and estabhshedname among those who were willing to follow in theirfootsteps. No virtue remains concealed ; to have l^inconcealed is no loss. The day will come which willreveal what is hidden and suppressed by the maUgnityThe man who thinks only of his own genera-of the age.tion is born for few. Many thousands of years, manythousands of peoples, will come after : look to them.Even if all your contemporaries are silent through envy,there will come those who will judge you without favouror prejudice. If Fame can offer any reward to virtue,neither will this be lost. The verdict of posterity, indeed,will be nothing to us ; yet posterity will honour us andresort to us though we perceiveit not. Virtue willrequite us whether alive or dead, if only we follow herin good faith, if we adorn not ourselves with the falseand meretricious, but remain the same whether we haveto act in a conspicuous position and after due warning ;or suddenly and unprepared. Simulation profits nothing.A false exterior adopted for appearance' sake imposessuperficially upon a few ;truth isalways the same inall her parts. There is no soHdity in the things thatdeceive. A lie is thin; if you look closely you can seethrough it.^Seneca was immensely rich. His gardens(' Senecae praedivitis hortos ' ^), his villas, his furniturewere renowned ;and although he was completelyfree from the grosser forms of self-indulgenceand was personally simple to the point of austerityi-in his manner of life, these riches and the eleganceof his surroundings laid him open to a charge ofinconsistency between his theory and his practice,which was pressed home by his enemies duringhislifetime, and has never ceased to be repeated*Ep. 79,^Juv. ix.

LETTER TO LUCILIUS ON AETNA 141by later critics, '^^ut to supposethat Senecathought riches an evil in themselves — as the firstChristians, who were his contemporaries andwhose teaching resembles his on many otherpoints, really did think — is to misunderstand hiswhole doctrine. Things in themselves, accordingto the Stoics, are neither good nor evil, but onlythe use we make of them and the manner inwhich we regard and handle them. They arethe material, not the substance, of goodand evil.A wise man may possess riches so long as heregards himself merely as Fortune's banker, andis ready to yield them up at her demand withas littleregret as a banker pays out the depositsof his clients. The dangeris lest the rich manshould confound his shirt with his skin and regardhis possessions as part of himself. If he does notdo this he may without inconsistency prefer richesthat exile isto poverty, just as he may denyan evil, and yetif it be in his power spend his lifethink a shortin his native land, or as he mayHfe as desirable as a long, and yet may live to atranquil old age. The reason, indeed, for thinkinglightly of such things is not that we may ridourselves of them, but that we may enjoy themwithout anxiety. The difference between you and)me, wrote Seneca to his critics, is that my richest*belong to me; you to your riches.In the treatise De Vita Beata, addressed to hisbrother Gallio, Seneca stated with uncompromisingfrankness and force— impossible, one would think,to a disingenuous man— the charges broughtagainst him on this head, and gave his answer.

142 SENECAThe following extracts will enable the reader toform his own judgment on accusation and defence.The genuine humility of the man— rare indeedoutlook and hisamong Romans— his objectivemental detachment, are nowhere more conspicuous.If, then, one of these barking critics of philosophy'Why are your words so much strongersays to me :than your deeds ? How is it that you talk submissivelyto superiors ;and consider money a necessary means toyour ends, and are affected by its loss ? Why do youweep when you hear of the loss of a wife or a friend ?Why are you careful of your reputation and vexedby slander Why ? that elaborate adornment of yourcountry-seats so far beyond the needs of nature ?Whyare your banquets not restricted to the limits of yourrule ?Why this beautiful furniture, this wine olderthan yourself, these trees that yield nothing but shade ?Why does your wife wear in her ears the fortune of arich family Why ? are your attendants clothed in preciousraiment ?Why does the service at your house amountto a fine art, the plate arranged with the utmost skilland attention, the chief carver himself an artist ? ' Youmay add if 'you please Why do you : possess estatesacross the sea ?Why have you slaves whose namesyou know not ?— are you so forgetful that you cannotremember the few there are, or are you so unthriftyas to have more than you can remember ? * I will helpyou to abase me anon and suggest for your use freshobjections which have escaped your attention now:'hear my reply. I am not a wise man, and, so pleaseyour malice, I never shall be. I therefore do not claimto be equal with the best, but only better than theworst. Enough for me if every day I make some littleprogress, and can clearly see and denounce my ownerrors. I am not cured ;I never shall be cured. I contrivepalliations rather than remedies for my malady ;and am content if its attacks become gradually rarer.

LETTER TO LUCILIUS ON AETNA 143Compared to your pace, however, I am a tolerable runner.In what I am going to say I speak not for myself ; forI am sunk in every kind of fault, but for one who has madeprogress. This charge of inconsistency was broughtby the mahgnant enemies of all virtue against Plato,against Epicurus, against Zeno, It is of virtue, not ofmyself, that I speak ; I make war upon vices, my ownbefore all others. When I can, may I live as I ought.Your poisonous malice, the gall with which in sprinklingothers you destroy yourselves, shall never affright mefrom communion with the best, or prevent me fromcelebrating — not the life which I lead, but the lifewhich I know should be led— or from adoring virtue andfollowing her footsteps at however vast a distance, evenon my hands and knees. . . . Philosophers, it is said,do not practise what they preach. But they practisemuch of what they preach and finely conceive. If, indeed,their lives were on a level with their doctrines, what couldequal their felicity ?In the meantime good words anda breast stocked with good thoughts are not to be despised.So excellent a form of study, thoughit fail of its fulleffect, in itself deserves to be had in honour. Whatwonder that few should reach so difficult a summit ?Yet we ought to respect the climbers, even ifthey slip ;for great is their attempt. The man is generous who,regarding not his own individual strength but that ofthe nature proper to man, conceives in his mind andendeavours to carry out an ideal so high that in practiceit lies beyond the reach even of the loftiest of the humanrace. Such a man has thus resolved within himself :I will meet death as calmly as I hear of it :my soul*supporting my body, there is no labour that I will notundergo. Riches, whether present or absent, I willequally despise ; neither the sadder if I have them not,nor elated ifthey shine in my possession. I shall consideraU land as if it were mine ;my own land as if it belongedto all. I shall live as knowing that I am born for others ;and for this I shall give thanks to Nature. For howcould she better have consulted my interests ? She

144 SENECAgave me to all men ;but she has given all men to me.That which I have I shall neither meanly hoard norfoolishly squander. None of my possessions will seem tome more truly my own than what I have well bestowed ;benefits I shall reckon neither by number nor by weight,but by the worth of the recipient. I shall never countthe cost of what I give to merit. Opinion shall never,and conscience always, guide my actions. ... I will bepleasant to my friends, mild and placable to my enemies,I will forgive before my forgiveness is asked, I willsatisfy all honest petitions.I shall know that the worldis my country with the gods as its rulers, and these Ishall regard as the judges of all I do and all I say. Andso whenever Nature takes once more my spirit to herself,or when my reason releases it, I shall go hence bearingwitness that I have loved a good conscience and a goodmanner of life, and that none through me have sufferedloss of liberty, myself least of all.' ^Such was the apologia of Seneca, and we cannotdoubt that it was sincere. His personal habitswere simple to the verge of austerity ;the choicewine that he gave to his guests he did not himselftouch ;he was distinguished as a generousfriend to honest poverty, especially among men ofletters ; nothing is recorded by historians of hisfive years of power to lead us to question the truthof his boast, that by his means no man had beenunjustly deprived of liberty.But there was another consideration relatingto the source of his wealth which he could notdirectly advance, but which he suggested inseveral other passages in his books. Withoutmortal offence to the emperor he could not haverefused his gifts.In his treatise On ' Benefits '»De Vita Beata, 17, 20.

LETTER TO LUCILIUS ON AETNA 145he lays down the rule that we should not receivefavours except from those on whom, werethe circumstances altered, we would conferthem.It is a burden to incur obligation to those whomwe can neither love nor respect. Thereupon thequestion is raised whether if a brutal and passionatetyrant, who will hold himself insulted by a refusal,offers us a present we are bound to refuse it.The king has the soul, let us say, of a robber orpirate and is unworthy that we should accepthis bounty. The answer made is that when weare free to choose we must take nothing fromthe unworthy but that in the case supposed we;are not accepting but obeying,^ and again:To refuse a giftis to incense against ourselves aninsolent monarch, who would have all that comes fromhis hands valued at a high rate. It matters not whetheryou are unwilUng to give to a king or to receive fromhim, the offence is equal in either case, or rather evengraver in the latter, since to the proudto be disdained than not to be feared.^it is more bitterIn another passage of the same work he discussesthe question whether gratitudeis due totyrants, and whether their favours should be returned,and answers affirmatively with respect toall cases where this is consistent with the publicweal. If, he says, he had had the misfortune tobe obliged by one who subsequently became themost infamous of tyrants, who found a pleasurein shedding human blood and breakingall therights and laws of human society, then he wouldfeel aU bonds dissolved between them, because1 De BeneJ.ii. i8.* Ibid., v. 6.

146 SENECAthe duty he owed to humanity must alwaystake precedence of an obUgation to a singleindividual.But [he adds] although this is so, and althoughfrom the time when by violating every human rightand so making it impossible for himself to be wrongedby any man, he has made me free to do what I willagainFi; him, yet I shall still reckon myself bound todischarge my debt so far as may stand with my pubhcduty. I must not add to his power for evil ;I must notincrease his destructive forces or confirm those he has.But if without injury to the commonwealth Imayreturn his kindness, I will do so. I would save hisinfant son from death, for that could not injure thevictims of his cruelty but I would not contribute a;penny to the support of his mercenaries. If he hankerafter marbles and fine raiment, that can do no mischiefto any man, and I will help him to them ; soldiers andarms I will not supply. If he entreat me as a greatkindness to send him comedians and women, and othersuch delights which may temper his brutaUty, I willfind them for him willingly. Though I will not supplyhim with triremes and ships of war, he shall haveluxuriously fitted boats of pleasure for his amusement.But if I despair altogether of his amendment, the samehand shall at one blow discharge my debt to him andconfer a benefit on all mankind, for to such a naturedeath is a remedy, and to speed his departure the onekindness I can do him.^These words were written after Seneca's retirementand shortly before the outbreak of the conspiracyof Piso, with the aims of which, whetheror not, he must unquestionably havehe knew of itsympathised.Bythat time Nero had sunk into^De BeneJ. vii. 20.

'jLETTER TO LUCILIUS ON AETNA 147an abyss of infamy from which it was evidentthat death alone could rescue him.That Seneca made a good and generous use \of his riches, we have not only his own testimonybut that of Juvenal and Martial. And first asto his own. In the De Vita Beata, after explain-\ {Iing that a philosopher may legitimately be rich, ,;provided that his riches are \honourably acquired,taken from no man, earned at the expense of jno man's sufferings, stained with no blood, andspent as honourably as they were 'gained, he adds\that they should not be rejected, unless either |they are thought by their possessor to be useless,or unless he confesses that he does not knowhow to use them. This brings him to a descriptionthus :of their proper employment, and he proceedsHe will give either to the good,or to those whom hecan make good. He will take the greatest trouble todiscover the worthiest and give to them, as one whoremembers that he must account not only for what he hasreceived but for what he has spent. He will give for goodand adequate reasons, since an ill-bestowed gift must becounted as a bad form of wastefulness. His purse will beopen indeed, but have no holes in it ;much wiU comefrom it, but nothing fall. It is a mistake to suppose thatbounty is an easy art. If it is thoughtfully given, ifthere is no promiscuous squandering,it is on the contrarymost difficult. I oblige one man, I discharge my obligationsto another, I come to the aid of a third, I takepity on a fourth. I find one whose poverty binds himto —occupations unworthy of his abilities I releasehim from that poverty. To some, even though theyare in need, I wiU not give, because, whatever I give,they mil always be in need ;to others I will offer aid

148 SENECAthough they have not asked it ;on others, again, Iwill press it though they refuse. 1 cannot be carelessin this matter ;I never invest with more care than instock of tliis nature. Do you expect interest, then ?I am asked. Well, at least, I do not wish to throw myinvestment away. I wish so to place my donation thatthough I must never seek a return, yet I may believea return to be possible. It should resemble a buriedtreasure which you do not disinter unless it be necessary.What an opportunity for kindness may not a rich manfind in his own household— for why should our liberalitybe confined to the free ? Nature bids us do good untoall men, whether free legally, or virtually by our consent :wherever there is a man, there is room for kindness.-^— - Such were Seneca's views, instinct with hiscustomary good sense and moderation, on thesubject of almsgiving and the use of money.They have a modern ring, and would have qualifiedhim in the island of Britain eighteen hundred yearslater for high office in the Charity OrganisationSociety. We have some evidence that, in thisinstance at least, his practice was on a level withhis precepts.No one [wrote Juvenal, some twenty years afterwards]now expects to receive what Seneca used tosend to very humble friends, or what the good Pisoor Gotta used to give ;for in those days a bountifuldisposition was thought to add lustre to honours andtitles.^And Martial, whose Spanish origin may haverecommended him toSeneca, in the same vein regretsin two of his epigrams the spacious days ofPiso and Seneca and Memmius, whom he prefers1De Vita Beata, 24.'Juv. v. 108.

LETTER TO LUCILIUS ON AETNA 149to the most liberal patrons of his own time.^Three other of Martial's epigrams are addressedto Lucan's widow Polla, so that it is clear that hisfriendship with Seneca's family did not end withthe philosopher's death.^*Martial, iv. 40; xii. 36.* Ibid., vii. 21, 22, 23.

CHAPTER XIITHE CONSPIRACY OF PISO AND THE DEATHOF SENECA, A.D. 64-65The last public office held by Seneca was thatof consul suffedus, which he shared with TrebelliusMaximus. During their consulship a senatusconsultum was passed to protect executors ortrustees, who by a legal fiction were technicallythe sole heirs of the estates which theyadministered, from liabilities attaching to suchestates, on the principle that no man ought tosuffer on account of a trust which he has faithfullydischarged.^ Trebellius was afterwards governorof Britain, where his inactivity and want ofmilitary experience made him unpopular withthe army. The date of this consulship is generallyassigned to the year 62, on the insufficient groundthat Tacitus makes mention of a decree passed1 'Ins. Tit. 23 (4) Neronis quidem temporibus, Trebellio:Maximo et Annaeo Seneca coss. senatus-consultum factum est,quo cautum est, ut, si haereditas ex fidei-commissi causa restitutasit, actiones, quae jure civili haeredi et in haeredem competerent,ei et in eum darentur, cui ex fidei-commisso restituta esset haereditas.Post quod senatus-consultum, praetor utiles actiones eiet in eum qui recepit haereditatem, quasi haeredi et in haeredem,dare coepit.'

THE CONSPIRACY OF PISO 151by the Senate in that year for the restraint offictitious adoptions.^The year 64, though a year of peace, was onefor Rome. From the time whenof calamityTigeUinus had succeeded to the power andinfluence of Seneca and Burrhus, the progressof Nero in the path of infamy had become evermore rapid. Early in this year he sang on thestage of the theatre at Naples, choosing thatcity for his first public appearance because itspopulation was Greek. Thence he designed togo to Greece, the home of the arts, and competefor prizes at the historical festivals; butabandoned that project for the time. He thenreturned to Rome and made preparations for avisit to Egypt but, to the great joy of the populace,who thought that his presence in Rome;secured their supply of amusements and provisions,he changed his mind as to this also and remainedin the city. Charmed with this evidence of thepopularity he always coveted, and inferring thatit was more easily and more agreeably gainedby the methods of TigeUinus than by thoserecommended by Seneca, he thereupon plungedinto the wildest excesses of luxury, extravagance,and open debauchery. He entertained thecitizens at gorgeous banquets in public places,1 It seems unlikely that Seneca should have been namedconsul by the emperor in the year of the death of Burrhus andhis own partial disgrace. On the other hand, we know thatNero refused to accept his resignation, and may at that time havedesignated him consul as a mark of continued confidence. MoreoverTrebellius, who was governor of Britain at the time of Nero'sdeath, would probably have received this appointment not verylong after holding the consulship.

152 SENECAseemed to regard, in Tacitus' phrase, the wholecity as his house, and prostituted the noblestRomans to the pleasures of the mob.There followed the great fire, in the courseof which the greater part of Rome was burntto the ground. Nero, who was reported to havewatched the flames from the tower of Maecenaswith aesthetic delight, while he chanted in costumea poem of his own composition on the destructionof Troy, was accused of having himself contrivedthe fire. Incendiaries were seen in the confusionrushing about with torches in their hands,stopping attempts to extinguish the fire, andcrying out that they had authority for whatthey were doing. These were probably robbers,but they were widely believed to be emissariesof the emperor. Nero, alarmed at the loss ofhis darling popularity, was roused to unwontedefforts. He threw open his gardens and theCampus Martins to the homeless multitude, andran up hastily built shelters for their reception ;he imported necessaries from Ostia and theneighbouring towns ;he supplied the peoplewith food at the lowest prices. Finally, hesought to divert suspicion from himself by accusingthe new and unpopular sect of Christiansof the crime, and after having by torture extractedconfessions from some among them, largenumbers were arrested on their information andput to horrible deaths. He illuminated hisgardens at night with the burning bodies ofthese victims, and in the habit of a charioteermingled with the throng at the circus games,

THE CONSPIRACY OF PISO 153where the Christian martyrs, clad in the skins ofwild beasts, were torn to pieces by his hounds.Whether or not Nero was concerned in theburning of Rome, the catastrophe allowed himto satisfy his passion for the grandiose in therebuilding of Rome, and especially of his ownpalace, on a magnificent scale. The old city withits tall houses and narrow winding streets wasgone, and broad regular thoroughfares with housesof moderate height, built of stone and frontedby colonnades, were laid out in its place. Atthe same time a fire-brigade and an improvedwater-supply were organised. For the erectionof his own ' Golden House,' with its gardens andlakes, its woods and solitudes, its open spacesand prospects, a large area was reserved, andeven the Romans of that day, accustomed asthey were to every form of idle display, wereamazed at its superb extravagance.This reckless prodigality, coinciding as itdid with the great destruction of wealth dueto the fire, was followed by the inevitable consequences.The treasury was exhausted, and couldonly be refilled by injustice and oppression.Italy, says Tacitus, was devastated, the provincesruined. The gods themselves did not escape, forthe temples were despoiled of their treasures andtheir images, and ancient historical memorialsruthlessly destroyed in both Italy and Greece.Seneca, who, though he had lost all influence,had never been allowed entirely to break hisconnection with the government, protested againstthese proceedings, and, when his protests were

154 SENECAdisregarded, made a last effort to obtain permissionto withdraw into some distant retreat.When this was refused, he made his health apretext for not quitting his bed-chamber, andis said to have guarded himself against Nero'sattempts to poison him by reducing his diet towater and the simplest food, the source of whichhe could control. This is the last notice we haveof his intervention in public affairs.The following year (65), the last of Seneca'sHfe, was marked by the great conspiracy of Pisoand the ruthless proscription of senators andothers that followed its discovery. Piso, the headof the ancient and illustrious Calpurnian family,had been favoured alike by nature and by fortune,and was perhaps the most popular man in Rome.With a handsome countenance and a gracefulperson he showed courtesy to all, and indulgedthe love of magnificence which he combined withliterary tastes in a profusion which concihatedthe affections and gained the admiration of apleasure-loving age. He was a generous patronof men of letters, and was bracketed with hisfriend Seneca in regretful reminiscence by theFlavian poets. He was, moreover, famed for hiseloquence, which he had employed in pleadingthe cause of citizens in the Forum. With allthese advantages Piso was too indolent and easygoingto make a good chief of an enterprise thatrequired energy, active ambition, and resolutionto bringit to a successful issue.The object of the conspiracy was the deathof Nero and the transfer of the Empireto Piso.

THE CONSPIRACY OF PISO 155The conspirators were many in number, and forthe most part of senatorial or equestrian rank.They included the consul designate PlautiusLateranus ; Lucan, the poet who, forbidden byNero to publish or recite his poetry, had alreadyavenged himself in secret by the invective againstthe tyranny of the Caesars contained in the laterbooks of the Pharsalia ;Subrius Flavins, a tribuneof the praetorian guard; Senecio, who had beenan intimate friend of Nero's ;and Fenius Rufus,the colleague of Tigellinus in his praetorian command.Various schemes, dictated by their respectivetemperaments, were suggested by oneor other of the plotters. Some were for boldlyattacking the emperor while he was singing onthe public stage, trusting for success to the disgustso widely felt for these performances but the;desire for impunit}^ 'ever adverse to great enterprises,'led others to prefer a scheme for settingfire to the palace, when Nero might be slain inthe midst of the ensuing confusion. While theconspirators were discussing these proposals anddisputing with one another, the indiscretion of awoman named Epicharis nearly led to the discoveryof the plot. Volusius Proculus, who hadbeen among those employed by Nero in the murderof his mother, was a naval officer of the fleet atMisenum in high command. Dissatisfied withthe manner in which his guilty services had beenrewarded, he complained of his wrongs to Epicharis,and spoke of revenge. This woman, who was inthe secret of the plot, was induced by his wordsto hope that she might obtain for her friends

156 SENECAthis important recruit, and so, without betrayingthe names of the conspirators, sufficiently indicatedwhat was afoot to lead him to report to the emperorwhat he had heard. Epicharis was summonedto Rome and confronted with the informer who,however, found it impossible to confute her resolutedenials. Nero's suspicions had nevertheless beenaroused, and Epicharis was detained in custody.This alarm determined the conspirators tohasten their attempt. Nero was about to be Piso'sguest in his villa at Baiae, and the opportunityseemed to many of them an excellent one forcarrying out their designs. But Piso refused toviolate, after the manner of Macbeth, the laws''of hospitality. Better,' he said, that the deedshould be done in the city, in that detested housefounded on the spoils of citizens. What wasdone for the sake of the republic should be doneopenly.' At last they resolved to execute theirplot at the Circus' games, where Nero was moreaccessible than at other times. Lateranus, onpretence of a petition, was to fall at the knees ofthe emperor and, seizing them, to overturn him,when the other conspirators would attack himwith their daggers. Piso, who was to await eventsat the Temple of Ceres, was then to be summonedto the camp by Fenius the prefect and by others,and proclaimed emperor. The first blow was tobe struck by Flavins Scevinus, a conspiratorof senatorial rank, who had consecrated to thisend a dagger in the Temple of Safety, and nowwithdrew it for its work.To the imprudence of Scevinus the discovery

THE CONSPIRACY OF PISO 157of the conspiracy was due. On the day beforethat fixed upon for the execution of the plot,after a long conference with his fellow-conspiratorNatalis, he returned home, signed his will, andcomplaining of the rustiness of the dagger whichhe had withdrawn from the temple, ordered hisfreedman Milichus to sharpen it. There followeda dinner of unwonted splendour and numerouslyattended, when it was evident to all that thehost had something on his mind, and the gaietywhich he affected appeared forced and unnatural.Afterwards he emancipated his favourite slaves,and gave presents of money to others ; and,lastly, he bade Milichus prepare bandages forwounds, and all that was necessary for stoppingthe flow of blood. All these circumstances rousedthe suspicions of Milichus. The hope of rewardwith the fear lest his treachery might be anticipatedby the inferences of some other observerfrom the same tokens, in which case his fidelitywould be of no service to his master and dangerousto himself, overcame his sense of obligation tothe patron to whom he owed his freedom, andled him early the next morning to report hissuspicions to the emperor. Scevinus was seizedand brought to the palace. There he answeredsome of thebroken down had not Milichus recalledthe charges with boldness, denyingacts imputed to him, and explaining others withsuch plausibility that the charge would havethe conferencewith Natahs and suggested that thelatter should be arrested and examined as toits subject. This was done, and Natalis and

158 SENECAScevinus, being separately examined and givinginconsistent accounts of their conversation, wereflung into irons and, succumbing to the threatof torture, made both of them a full confession,each doubtless under the impression that theother had first confessed. Natalis was the firstto name Piso, and then with the view, accordingto Tacitus, of giving pleasure to Nero, he relatedthat he had visited Seneca on Piso's behalf tocomplain of the cessation of their intercourse.Seneca, he said, had excused himself on theground that frequent conversations and meetingswould conduce to the interests of neither,but had added that his own welfare depended onPiso's safety. Lucan and others were incriminatedby Scevinus. Lucan, after long denials,was led to confess by a promise of pardon, butadmirers of his poetry may hope that the reportthat, in order to conciliate the sympathy of amatricide emperor, he had the unspeakable basenessto accuse his mother, Atilia, of complicity wasan invention of his enemies.Nero now bethought himself of Epicharis,who had been detained in custody on the informationof Proculus. Tigellinus caused this womanto be questioned under torture ;but the mostexquisite inventions of his exasperated crueltycould not wring from her a single name, andwhile on the second day, unable to walk, shewas being supported to the torture-chamber,she contrived by strangling herself to thwart thefurther efforts of her persecutors. Her constancywas in striking contrast to the weakness of herdistinguished confederates, whose courage had

THE CONSPIRACY OF PISO 159been broken by the very sightof torture.of instrumentsThe friends of Piso urged him at this junctureto repair to the camp and appealto soldiers andpopulace. As things were, they said, nothingworse could happen to him if he failed than ifhe submitted, while Nero with his degeneratefollowing were easily to be overcome. But theindolent and indifferent Piso was destitute ofthe imagination that might have brought suchan attempt to a successful issue. Without awaitingthe band of soldiers sent by the emperorto arrest him— a band chosen from among themost recent recruits, since the fidelity of the—veterans in such an employment was suspecthe opened his veins and died, havingup a will wherein in terms of fulsome adulationhe made a large legacy to the emperor, in thehope of thereby securing a peaceful successionto the rest of his estate for the beautiful wifewhom he had stolen from a friend. There followeda great proscription of conspirators realfirst drawnor alleged, conducted with great cruelty byTigellinus, actively assisted b}/ his colleague,Fenius Rufus, who hoped by the zeal with whichhe prosecuted his late accomplicesto clear himselffrom all suspicion of a share in their guilt.Whether or how far Seneca was cognisant ofthis conspiracy must remain uncertain, nor doesTacitus express an opinion on the subject. Thatthe friend of Piso, the uncle of Lucan, wouldhave rejoiced at its success we cannot doubt,just as Cicero rejoiced at the Ides of March.But, Uke Cicero, he was probably not consulted

i6oSENECAbeforehand, and even if the evidence drawn byfear of torture from Scevinus was accurate, itonly went to show that he was indirectly soundedon Piso's behalf and returned an ambiguousanswer. We are told, indeed, by the untrustworthyhistorian Dion Cassius that Seneca was deeplyconcerned in the conspiracy, and that he declaredthat it was necessary to rescue the State fromNero and Nero from himself, but this seems tobe merely an adapted quotation of a generalmaxim in the treatise De Vita Beata. Howeverthis may be, the discovery of the plot provedthe ruin of Seneca, for itgave Nero the longcovetedopportunity of effecting the destructionof a mentor whom he hated ever the more themore he departed from his precepts and meriteda disapproval which was not concealed.The remainder of the story may be transcribedwithout paraphrase from Tacitus, since,if we except the brief and malignant narrativeof Dion— an historian who ever gives proof ofan envious dislike of great men and a desire tobelittle them— he is the only extant authorityfor the last scene of Seneca's life.^Then came the death of Annaeus Seneca, whichgave great joy to Nero not that he had any clear:evidence of his guilt, but because he could now do bythe sword what he had failed to do by poison. Thesole witness against him was Natalis, and his evidenceonly came to this, that he had been sent to see Senecawhen ill, and to complain of his refusing to see Piso 'It:'would be better,' he had said, for such old friends to1 I have ventured to borrow Mr. G. G. Ramsay's excellenttranslation.

THE CONSPIRACY OF PISOi6ikeep up their habits of intercourse.' To this Seneca'had replied:Frequent meetings and conversationswould do neither of them any good: but his own welfaredepended on Piso's safety.'Gavius Silvanus, Tribune of a Praetorian Cohort,was ordered to take the report of this incident to Seneca,and to ask him, ' Whether he admitted the correctnessof the question of Natalis, and of his own answer to it ?Either by chance or purposely, it happened that Senecawas returning on that day from Campania, and hadhalted at a suburban villa four miles from Rome. Thither,towards evening, the tribune proceeded and having;surrounded the house with soldiers, he delivered theemperor's message to Seneca when he was at tablewith his wife Pompeia Paulina and two friends,'Seneca's reply was : Natalis had been sent tocomplain on behalf of Piso that he was not permittedto visit him ;and he had tendered in excuse the stateof his health and his love of quiet. As to his reasonfor regarding the welfare of a private individual as ofmore value than his own safety, he had had none. Hewas not a man addicted to flattery: and that no oneknew better than Nero himself, who had more oftenfound him too free than too servile in his utterances.'On receiving this report from the tribune in the presenceof Poppaea and Tigellinus, who formed the emperor's'inner council of cruelty, Nero asked, Was Seneca preparingto put an end to himself '? The tribune declaredthat he had observed no sign of alarm or dejectionin Seneca's face or language. He was therefore orderedto go back and tell him he must die. Fabius Rusticusstates that the tribune did not return by the sameroad by which he had come, but that he went out ofhis way to see Faenius, the prefect and; having shownhim Caesar's order, asked him, ' Should he obey it ? 'and that Faenius, with that fatal weakness which hadcome over them all, told him to execute his orders.For Silvanus himself was one of the conspirators, andhe was now adding one more crime to those which heM'

i62SENECAhad conspired to avenge. But he spared his own eyesand tongue, sending in one of the centurions to announceto Seneca that his last hour was come.Seneca, undismayed, asked for his will ;but this thecenturion refused. Then turning to his friends, hecalled them to witness that, Being forbidden to requitethem for their services, he was leaving to them the sole,and yet the noblest,—possession that remained to himthe pattern of his life. If they bore that in mind, theywould win for themselves a name for virtue as the rewardof their devoted friendship.' At one moment he wouldcheck their tears with conversation ;at another hewould brace up their courage by high-strung languageof rebuke, asking, ' Where was now their philosophy ?Where was that attitude towards the future whichthey had rehearsed for so many years? To whom wasNero's cruelty unknown ? What was left for one whohad murdered his mother and his brother but to slayhis guardian and teacher also ?'Having discoursed thus as if to the whole company,he embraced his wife, and abating somewhat of histone of high courage, he implored her to moderate hergrief, and not 'cling to it for ever : Let the contemplationof her husband's hfe of virtue afford her noble solacein her bereavement.'She, however, announced her resolve to die withhim ;and called on the operator to do his part. Senecawould not thwart her noble ambition ;and he lovedher too dearly to expose her to insult after he was gone.1 have pointed out to thee,' he said,'how thou mayest'soothe thy life ;but if thou prefer a noble death, I willnot begrudge thee the example. Let us both share thefortitude of thus :nobly dying but thine shall be thenobler end.'A single incision with the knife opened the arm ofeach, but as Seneca's aged body, reduced by spareliving, would scarcely let the blood escape, he openedthe veins of his knees and ankles also. Worn out at'last by the pain, and fearing to break down his wife's

THE CONSPIRACY OF PISO 163courage by his suffering, or to lose his own self-commandat the sight of hers, he begged her to move into anotherchamber. But even in his last moments his eloquencedid not fail ;he called his secretaries to his side, anddictated to them manj^ things which being pubhshedin his own words I deem it needless to reproduce.Nero, however, had no personal disHke to Paulina ;and, not wishing to add to his character for cruelty,he ordered her death to be stayed. So, at the biddingof the soldiers, the slaves and freedmen tied up herarms and stopped the flow of blood ;perhaps she wasunconscious. But with that alacrity to accept theworst version of a thing which marks the vulgar, somebelieved that so long as she thought Nero would beimplacable she clutched at the glory of sharing herhusband's death ;but that when the hope of a reprievepresented itself the attractions of lifeproved too strongfor her. She lived on for a few years more, worthilycherishing her husband's memory ; but the pallor ofher face and hmbs showed how much vitality had goneout of her.Meanwhile Seneca, in the agonies of a slow andlingering death, implored Statius Annaeus, his triedand trusted friend and physician, to produce a poisonwith which he had long provided himself, being thesame as that used for public executions at Athens. Thedraught was brought and administered, but to no purpose ;the limbs were too cold, the body too numb, to let thepoison act. At last, he was put into a warm bath ;and'as he sprinkled the slaves about him he added : This'libation is to Jupiter the Liberator ! He was thencarried into the hot vapour bath, and perished of suffocation.His body was burnt without any funeral ceremony,in accordance with instructions about his end whichhe had inserted in his will in the heyday of his wealthand power.

CHAPTER XIIITHE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECAThe practical and unsystematic character ofto describeSeneca's philosophy makes it less easythan to understand. Its chief aim was the formationof character, and his pupils were taught topossess their souls in peace by the acceptance,so far as they were applicable to actual life, ofStoic principles. Philosophy, he says, is not apopular professiondevised for ostentation or thedisplay of ingenuity ; it lies not in words, but inrealities. Nor do we pursueit in order to spendour days agreeably or to banish weariness from^'our leisure ;it cultivates and forms the mind,orders life, guides our actions by showing uswhat to do and what not to do, sits at the helmand directs our course through the changes andchances of the world. What is the one true,possession of man ? Himself, answers Seneca.What isLiberty ? — to be the slave of no want,of no chance, to meet Fortune on equal terms ;but ifa man desire or fear external things he isso far the slave of him who has them to give orto withhold.Among the external things to be regarded ob-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 165jectively as neither good nor evil in themselves,save through the opinion we form of them, mustbe reckoned in Seneca's philosophy our own ""bodies, in which as in boats we travel so strangely. \from port to port. In these bodies is sown the \>^\2divine seed which develops or decays, according-^to the soil in which it isplanted and the cultivationit receives. If the seed prospers and a reasonablesoul isengendered this is the real man-spiritstill cleaving, like a sun-ray, to its divine origin,and his body but the case in which the jewel lies,indispensable certainly to his appearance in thephysical world, as the instrument is indispensableto the heard melody, but no more the source fromwhich he springs than the violin on which it isplayed is that of a sonata of Beethoven, or theground on which the sun's rays shine is that of light. ^This complete separation in thought of our spiritual ';:selves from the few pounds of matter in which

,poweri66SENECAmay— have power over our bodies indeed everyman has that if he chooses — to exert it withoutregard to consequences they '— can have none over'ourselves. Vindica te tibi claim to be lord ofyourself, make good yourclaim to be free foryour own sake, subject not 3^our will to another's,wrote Seneca in the first of his letters to Lucilius,and the remaining series are largely a commentaryon that text,fPhilosophy, as Seneca understood it, is the)study/man;of the works of God and of the nature ofof natural science and of the moral law.^He would have understood and assented to thesaying of the modern sage who declared thatthe two great subjects of his admiration andreverence were the starry heaven outside himand the moral law within. Man's nature he heldto be twofold— an inherited instinctive or physicalnature which he shares with the animals, and arational nature which is divine. The last is theproper or distinguishing character of man, andonly so far as it gains the mastery can he trulybe said as man to live. The end of philosophyis to secure this predominance, and so far as itsucceeds in so doing man is placed beyond theof Fortune and his felicity is assured.His good and evil reside in the choice which it—isalways in his power to make. External thingshis own body included— are in themselves neithergood nor evil, but they are the material out of'which man makes the one or the other. Theyreach not unto the soul,' as Marcus Aureiius'says, but stand without still and quiet, and

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 167it is from the opinion only which is within thatall the tumult and all the trouble doth proceed.'It isexcellent, wrote Seneca, to combine the freedomfrom concern of a God with the physicalfrailty of man.^ All nature is one. We are allmembers of a single great body.^ In the physicalworld this is clear to the view, for the actualmaterial of which it iscomposed is used successivelyfor all things— for minerals, for plants, and foranimals. But it is also true of the spiritual worldto which man alone of living things has beengranted admission. Hence it follows that we arecalled by our spiritual nature to recognise ouruniversal kinship and to love one another, hencecome our notions of equity and justice, and abelief which consciously or unconsciously we musthold that it is better for a man to be wrongedthan to wrong.Thus Seneca was a dualist. For him, as hasbeen said, there is the world of matter of whichour bodies__are_a part, and there is the world ofspirit "wEich isjdLvine. Bodies are the instrumentsof our free action when we possess ourselves, butwhen we obey their behests we lose our freedomand become the slaves of those who can threatenus with or save — us from the perils to which thebody is exposed poverty, sickness, or externalviolence. Of these we dread the last most becauseof its tumultuous onset, whereas the others creepsilently upon us accompanied by nothing formid-^Ep- 53- 'Ecce res magna, habere imbecillitatem hominis,securitatem Dei.''^Ep. 95 Omne hoc quod vides, quo divina et humana:conclusa sunt, unum est : membra sumus corporis magni.'

i68SENECAable to our eyes or ears. Yet there is no differencein respect of the — sole physical realities pain anddeath. It was a Stoic maxim that the good ofman lies in a certain regulation of his choice withregard to the appearances of things ; and it isonly in the spiritual world that this faculty ofchoice can be said to exist. So far as the bodycontrols the human will in its own interests—answering with corresponding reactions the strokeof its —perceptions and sensations that will isdetermined and becomes the servant of what itshould command. To obey the orders of thebodyis to serve another's will and to surrenderthat true liberty which to the Stoic was life itself.Again and againSeneca recurs to this thesis :My dearest Lucilius [he writes], do, 1 beseech you,the one thing that can make you happy. Scatter andtread under foot all those extrinsic splendours whichhang on the promises of others ;look to the true good,and rejoice in what isyour own. And what is that ?Yourself, and the best part of yourself.l This littlebody, even though nothing can be done without it,is rather a necessary than a great matter.^My body [he says in another letter] I regard butas a chain by which my liberty is fettered. I offerit therefore to Fortune as an object for her attacks ;nor through this shield do I allow myself to be pierced.In this is all my vulnerable part this frail and;exposedhouse does my soul inhabit inviolate. This flesh shallnever constrain me to fear or unworthy simulation.Let me never lie for the sake of this poor carcase.^^2Ep. 23.'Ep. 65 Nunquam me caro ista compellet ad metum : ;nunquam ad indignam bono sinaulationem ; nunquam in honoremhujus corpusculi mentiar.'

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 169In Seneca's view a man cannot be said to livea man's life who does not serve his own will.He becomes an automaton acted on by the materialworld outside him, on which he himself in histurn reacts. True he cannot live for himselfunless he live for others,^ for we are all childrenof the same Father, all members of one greatbody but it is of his own free will that he must;live for others, and not through submission ofhis will to theirs. All action is really voluntary.No man need be a slave who — is ready to take theconsequences to his body pain or death at themost— of a refusal to serve. The doctrine of thedivine immanence was held by Seneca as firmlyas was possible to an understanding so scepticaland an imagination so mobile, and it lies at theroot of his theoryof life.There is no need to raise our hands to heaven [hetells I^uciUus] or to prevail upon the keeper of the templeto admit us to the presence of the image, as ifby suchmeans our prayers were more likely to be heard. Godis near you, He is with you, He is within you. I tellyou, LuciUus, the Holy Spirit abides within us,^ watchingover and guarding our good or evil destiny as we treat:Him, so He treats us. No good man is without God.Can any unassisted by Him rise above Fortune ? Loftyand sublime are His counsels. In every good man Goddwells, though what God is uncertain. ... If you see aman unmoved by danger, unaffected by desires,happyin adversity, calm in the midst of tempests, looking atmen from a higher station, at the gods from a level,1 ' Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse'{Ep. 6). Alteri vivas oportet, si tibi vis vivere ' {Ep. 48).*'Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumquenostrorum observator et custos.'

170 SENECAwill you feel no veneration for him ? Will you notg,say, Here issomething so great and so sublime that itis incredible he should resemble the Httle body in whichhe dwells ? . . .Just as the rays of the sun reach indeedthe earth yet are still in the place whence they are transmitted: so a great and sacred soul sent down to theearth, that we might have closer knowledge of divinethings, holds intercourse indeed with us but cleaves toits own origin.^At the same time Seneca was no believer inextreme asceticism— a practice which he regardedas a confusion of means with end. The bodyisnot to be indulged, lest like an overfed horse itshould get out of hand ;but since it is our instrumentof action, our only means of communicationwith the outside world, since through it we enterinto relations with the external things that formthe materials on which, and the medium throughwhich, our choice can be exercised, we are to regardit as a useful servant, and to clothe, clean, protect,and maintain it in a manner suitable to its natureand with a view to its highest efficiency. It is atool which we are to keep in good condition,a house to be kept in repair ;but we must everbe careful not to confound the tool with the workman,the house with its inhabitant.Seneca held, as we have seen, that man'scharacteristic excellence and peculiar attributeis his reason, which is nothing but a part of thedivine nature sunk in a human body.^ Thereforeto follow reason is to act according to his nature ;just as for other animals to follow the lead oftheir bodies is to act after their kind. It is^Ep. 41.*Ep. 64.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 171opposed to his physical, inherited, or irrationalself in respect of which he belongs to the worldof matter. Though this latter partgreater dynamic power, and has ever been thesource of the greater number of human actions,yet inasmuch as body and the necessary actionsthat proceed from bodily passions—affections orwhether hunger, fear, or lust— are not peculiarto human beings but are common to them andof him has theall other animals, we do not speak of them asnatural to man. Such words as ' humanity ' and'kindness,' recurring as they do in many languages,pointto this distinction. It was ever in themind of the Roman Stoics, and isthe foundationupon which many of their seeming paradoxes rest.In one of the very few allusions to Seneca to befound in the writings of his actual contemporaiies,we are told by the elder Pliny that no man wasless beguiled by the appearances '— —of things'minime mirator inanium and this indeed isjust what we might infer from his works. In spiteof the rhetoric by which they are sometimesadorned, and sometimes disfigured, we hear andrecognise a familiar human voice in reading hisletters. The sense of remoteness which we feeltowards writers of past generations is proportionedto the greater or less degree in which their naturewas subdued to the transient humours of thetime in which they worked. Shakespeare could—perceive and describe these humours the stringsby which human puppets are moved — as clearlyas Ben Jonson, but because he could also perceiveand describe the universal humanity that lies

172 SENECAat the back of them, because he recognises thesomething in every man that either controls orchecks or yields to them, his characters seem to usmodern and natural, and Jonson's, because hecannot do this, mechanical and obsolete. Seneca,with his constant desire to see with his own eyesthings as they are and not as they are reputed to be— to remove the mask from things as well as frompersons— has the same power.^ We never have toplead the opinions of his time as an apology forany opinion he holds. We may agree with himor disagree, but it is a Hving voice we hear— nevera mere echo. For Reason being universal andabsolute, independent of time and place, and of thehumours of mankind, the voice of Reason, no matterfrom what distance of space or time, reaches usas a living voice. We feel our kindred with thespeaker however great an interval may separateus from his physical presence. We recogniseand greet in him our common nature, for this isthe true nature of man, the X0709— the'spiritof the New Testament as 'opposed to the flesh,'the seed, the new birth, the divine spark, the realhumanity.Seneca defines wisdom —as constancy of will'semper idem velle atque idem nolle.' There is nodanger, he adds, lest this constancy should have awrong object, since it is impossible that anythingbut what is right should at all times please us.There must be but one same efficient motive to'^'Ep. 24 Illud ante omnia memento, demere rebus:tumultum, ac videre quid in quaque re sit : scies nihil esse inistis terribile nisiipsum timorem.— Non hominibus tantum, sadet rebus persona demenda est, et rgddenda fades sua.'

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 173all our actions, and we shall never regret themwhatever their results. Actions, like things, arein themselves neither good— nor bad it is themanner and the circumstances that qualify them.The veiy same action is base or honourable,according to the mental disposition of the actor.A man attends assiduously the sick bed of hisfriend, and we approve. But if he does this witha view to an inheritance, we regard him as avulture awaiting his prey. The action is thesame in both cases, but in the first we recognisewhat we significantly call the man's humanity,that is, goodness, truth, and beauty, those fruitsof the universal human spirit, of which man couldnot have formed the idea were they not the verymaterial of his reasonable soul ;and our consciousnessof the self-regarding source of the same actionin the other case fills us with a certain disgust.As with things so with actions, we must weighthem without regard to their reputation, and considernot what they are called but what they are.Notwithstanding his rhetoric and antitheses,it is this recall to reality which is the dominantnote in Seneca's writings. An excellent critic,who was by no means an undiscriminating admirerof his subject, has written: 'The less aman cares for the practical, the real, the lesshe will value Seneca. The more a man envelopshimself in words and ideas without exact meaning,the less will he comprehenda writer whodoes not merely deal in words, but has ideaswith something to correspond1G. Long.to them.'^ Seneca

174 SENECAhad the contempt of a man of the world forpedantry, though the impatience with purespeculation that he felt as an ethical instructorwas tempered in some degree by his own insatiablecuriosity. We sometimes find,' he'wrotein one of his letters,'that the pursuit of liberalarts makes men tedious, wordy, unreasonable,self-satisfied, and ignorant of what they shouldknow, just because they have learnt what isneedless.' ^Philosophy, in his view, is the science'of reality, the knowledge of which the godshave given to none,' he tells us, ' but the powerof attainment to all. Had they indeed made thisa common possession, had we been born wise,wisdom would have lost her chief excellence andhave been subject to Fortune, whereas it is hermost precious and noble quality that she falls ofherself to no man's lot, that each man owes herto himself, and seeks her from no other.' ^Thisacquisition of ' self-control in accordance with'fixed principles that are self-prescribed formswhat is called character, which, as Kant remarks,implies a subject conscious of something which hehas himself acquired. The man who possessesit is free, for he is the slave of nothing — of nowant, of no chance; he meets Fortune on equalterms and can do what he pleases, for nothingpleases him that he ought not to do. Thephilosopher sees things as they are presented tohim by nature, not as they are represented to himby hisof others.imagination worked on by the suggestion'Above all things, remember,' writes1Ep. 88. 2Ep. 90.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 175Seneca, ' to strip things of their glamour and tocontemplate each as it is in itself: youwill findthat they contain nothing formidable but yourown fear. ' ^ 'Non effedus sed efficientia timorspectat,'he says elsewhere; it is the pomp andcircumstance of pain and death (the only positivephysical evils), not pain and death themselves,which we fear, that is, from which we suffer inanticipation. We think death the greatest ofevils, when the only evil connected with it isone which vanishes on its appearance, namely,the terror it inspires. We are indignant andcomplain, and do not perceive that the onlyreality of ill is to be found in our indignationand complaints.To have a right judgment in all things it issufficient to have our own judgment (or perceptionof the differences between things) unbiased bythat of others ;then we acquire the inestimableboon of becoming lords of ourselves. When aman serves his own will and not other persons orthings he will do right, because he then acts onand general thoughts are just.general principles ;No man is a rogue for the pleasure of being arogue, but to gain some end which seems to him ,a good one, but which to the philosopher would'not seem worth a struggle were it even attainableinnocently. The slave of his passions may fancythat in serving them he is serving his own will ;but it is not so, for he has lost his self-controland must obey those who are able to gratify ornot to gratify those passions. He is, as Hamlet*Ep. 24.

176 SENECA'says, a pipe for Fortune's finger to sound whatstop she please.' One gift, says Seneca, we havefrom Nature, and that is, that the hght of virtueis visible to all ;even those who do not followperceive it but if we are not distracted ;by theto us fromfalse opinions of things suggestedoutside or by our own bodily selves,and to follow the light will be all one.^to perceiveStoicism in the centuries before Christ waslike a motor started but off the clutch. There isa great deal of potential energy, but being merelypotential it results in nothing but noise. Senecasupplied the clutch to Stoicism by applying it tothe practical conduct of life, and he was followedin this work by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.Thus a statesman, a slave, and an emperor, differingas widely in temperament as they did in position,the same conclusions as toreached, nevertheless,the nature of man and the secret of his felicity.What the Greeks — preach, the Romans practise,says Quintilian a greater matter.^ As was naturalto one who had lived in the centre of things andseen much of men and affairs, Seneca felt littlebut disdain for the logical and metaphysical puzzleswhich occupied so much of the time and thoughtof the earlier Greek philosophers and schoolmen,and which seem to have had a great attractionfor his Epicurean friend, Lucilius. He reproachesphilosophers with teaching how to dispute ratherthan how to live, and their pupils with attending^De Beneficiis, 717.2'Quantum enim Graeci praeceptis valent, tantum Romani(quod est majus) exemplis ' (Quintilian, xii. 2).

THE. PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 177lectures in order to sharpen their wits rather thanimprove their characters. The most mischievousof mortals he declares to be those who bring theirphilosophy to market and by not practising whatthey preach seem a living proof of the futilityof their doctrines. He argues with force againstthose who maintained the sufficiency of generalprinciples and the needlessness of precepts fortheir application to the conduct of life. Virtue,he says, consists partly in theory and partly inpractice you ought both to learn and to make;good what you have learnt by your actions. Ifthis is so, the precepts of wisdom are of service aswell as her decrees ;they issue, as it were, edictsby which our affections are bound and constrained.The earlier philosophers were so occupied withthe form of the human understanding that theyneglectedits material content. The driving powerwas supplied but continued unlinked to theengine to be driven. Seneca, too, considered theexternal world but as the material of wise men—the ball, not prized for its own sake, on whichthe playeris to exercise his skill— but to showthe bearing of this discovery on the actualcircumstances of life and action seemed to himthe main business of philosophy.Not out of ivory only [he tells us] was Phidias skilledmaking statues, he made them of bronze ;ifyoubrought marble or any cheaper material to him hewould turn it to the best use of which it was capable.So, if riches fall to him, the wise man wiU display hiswisdom amidst riches, if not, then in poverty ; if hecan, in his native country,if not, then in exile; if heN

178 SENECAcan, as a general, if not, then as a soldier ;if he can,in health, if not, then in sickness. Whatever fortunebefall him, he will carve out of itsomething memorable.^The lives of most men are passed in a perpetualstruggle to improve the external circumstances— of their lives ;either their reputations that is, theopinions held of them by other people — or theirfortunes— that is, their power of directing thelabour of other people to the satisfaction of theirown desires and caprices. Thus for the sake ofan imaginedlifethey lose their real life. Couldwe recognise that the attainment of these objectsis not in our own power, and that even ifby theaid of Fortune they are attained they bring noreal happiness with them, but only through theirtransitory nature disillusionment, we should acceptthe chances and circumstances of our lives withoutperturbation or care, use them as it befits us touse them with the same tendency whatever theyare, and be at peace.Seneca was a man of quick sympathies, impressionable,witty, and amiable, humane, fastidious,and full of good sense, interested perhapsin man rather than in men, yet devoted to hisfriends, and combining a desire to please andsuccess in pleasing, with a love of nature andsolitary meditation. He was a citizen of theworld,^ who could take a detached view of men andthings, and his generous conviction that distinctionsof rank and status had their origin in opinion,itself the child of fortune, and in the names in'Ep. 85.*Non sum uni ' angulo natus ;patria mea totus hie est mundus.'

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 179which that opinion was registered rather than inany real superiority or inferiority, often led himto anticipate the ideas of a very distant future.Quintilian describes him as no great philosopher('in philosophia parum diligens but'), praises himas a moral instructor of distinction whose worksare to be studied— by those able to sift the goodfrom the bad— for the sake of the striking thoughtswith which they abound. He allows him a readywit, flowing perhaps too easily from a perennialsource, industry, and a wide knowledge of naturalhistory, though he remarks that he was sometimesmisled by those whom he had commissionedto make investigations but with all this he;chargeshim with an absolute lack of judgment and withbeing the chief corrupter of eloquence and introducerof new methods in composition which utterlyunfitted him to guide the taste of the youthof his generation, in whose hands for a timehis books alone were to be found. He denounceshim, indeed, as a sort of literary anarchist, whoseinfluence on the manner of his age was disastrous,and having once again admitted that there wasmuch in his works to approve, much even to admire,by those who could distinguish (andwhose taste was sufficiently formed this,would be good practice), he sums up hiswith the remark that itfor thosehe says,criticismwas a pity one capableof doing what he pleased should not more often^have been pleased with better things. Quintilian,' ^Digna enim fuit ilia natura, quae meliora vellet, quae quodvoluit effecit.' One is reminded of Jonson's reply to Shakespeare'sfellow-players, who boasted that he had never blotted a line,'"Would he had blotted a thousand.'

i8oSENECAon conventional lines, was one of the best criticsthat have ever passed judgment on the worksof others— the Sainte-Beuve of his age. ButSeneca was in literature a revolutionary, with adislike of convention, scant respect for tradition,and impatience of authority ^ and; Quintilian,the classicist, was of opinion that he owed his— popularity not to his good qualities the ' multaeetmagnae virtutes ' which he freely recognised—but to his dangerously attractive faults — hisrhetoric and his detached sentences, good, bad,and indifferent, not woven according to the rulesof art into the texture of a complete work, butscattered in careless profusion as they occurredto him and lying where theyfell. For Romanconservatives such as Quintilian, Roman citizenshipwas a primary consideration, and for a Romancitizen moral obligations were in large measureconfined to their relations with their fellowcitizens.For Seneca, on the other hand, and hisschool, man was sacred to man as man ^— the idea ofcitizenship with its rights and duties was swallowedup and lost in that of humanity, all men werebrothers and sprang from the same origin.^ Themost useful life a man could lead was spent inhelping, teaching, and consoling his fellow-men— be they Romans or barbarians, free or slave.The maxims in which Seneca enshrined thesenotions seemed to Quintilian rhetorical commonplacecalculated to please children and of a sub-1Ep. 33 'Non sumus sub rege, sibi quisque se vindicet.':*Ep. 95 'Homo res sacra ho mini.':»Deus est mortaliCp. his contemporary, Pliny, ii. '7 :juvare mortalem ' ;and St- Paul passim.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECAi8iversive tendency. Such ideas, he may havethought, might be suited to the schools of declamation;but introduced into serious treatises andfound in conjunction with much that was really justand wise, they could not be too strongly condemned.Was Seneca the author of the tragedies whichbear his name ? That they were written by himor by one of his family we know from the quotationby Quintilian of an extant line of the Medea,^while other mentions are made of the tragedies of'Seneca 'by the grammarians of the second century— Terentianus Maurus, and Valerius Probus. Itis evident, however, that one of the plays, theOdavia, cannot have been written by LuciusSeneca, who appears in it as a principal character,since it contains in the guise of a prophecy afairly accurate description of the death of Nero.''Conceding this, most modern writers have neverthelessattributed the remaining eight tragediesto the philosopher. Yet apart from the fact thatthere seems no sufficient reason for separatingthe Octavia from the rest of the collection, thecase against his authorship seems to me so strongas to be almost conclusive. Quintilian, in hisaccount of Roman writers of tragedy from Acciusand Pacuvius down to Pomponius Secundus, whommakes no mention ofhe had known personally,Seneca.This, if at the time he was writing Seneca' 1— " quas peti terras " 'jubes ?* 'Interrogamus, aut invidiae gratia ut Medea apud Senecam:(Quint, ix. 2. 8).Veniet dies tempusque, quo reddat suisAnimam nocentem sceleribus, jugulum hostibus,Desertus, et destructus, et cunctis egens.'Oct. 629-631.

i82SENECAthe tragedian were actually alive, is comprehensible,for Quintilian avoids all criticism of his livingcontemporaries, and only alludes without naminghim to Tacitus himself. But if Lucius Senecawere the author of the plays, how could he havepassed him over in silence ? Moreover, he tells usthat Lucius Seneca practised almost every formof literature, leaving behind him orations, poems,epistles, and dialogues. Why no mention of thetragedies ? But the strongest external reasonfor disbelieving in the identity of Seneca thetragedian with Seneca the philosopheris to befound in the poem of Sidonius ApoUinaris, writtenin the fifth century, in which he distinguishesbetween the two.^ It is difficult to believe thatSidonius, to whom letters were the chief interestin life, and who lived in an age before the finalbreak up of the Empire had cast a doubt on somany origins, could have been mistaken on sucha point. He writes, too, as he naturally would ifno question on the subject had been raised, as ifthe matter were one of common knowledge.As to the internal evidence, the defects ofSeneca are visible in the plays, tempered by few1'Non quod Corduba praepotens alumnisFacundum ciet, hie putes legendum :Quorum unus colit hispidum Platona,Incassumque suum monet Neronem :Orchestram quatit alter Euripidis,Pietum faeeibus AeSv^hylum secutusAut plaustris solitum sonare Thespin :Qui post pulpita trita sub cothurnoDucebant olidae matrem capellae.'Carm.ix.Cp.Carm. xxiii, :'Quid celsos Seneeas loquar.'

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 183of his better qualities. Quintilian says of thelater writers of that school, that all they can dois to imitate and exaggerate the faults and mannerismsof their master, since his real excellence isbeyond their capacity. By resembling they, so tospeak, slander him.^ I do not dwell upon theabsence of all allusion to the tragedies in hisletters, though he quotes Euripides and Publius,for Seneca was completely free from that literaryvanity which was so conspicuous in Cicero, andin no one of his letters does he mention any otherof his works. Indeed, with the exception of asingle passage in his twenty-first letter, in whichwith a certain solemnity he promises Lucilius thatas Idomeneus lives for ever in the letters ofEpicurus, Atticus in those of Cicero, so it wasalso in his power to confer immortality on hisown correspondent, we hear nothing of his greatposition and reputation from himself.The denunciations of tyrants and tyranny withwhich the plays abound, and the direct references,as they appear to be, to Seneca's own relationswith Nero which they contain, have appeared toM. Boissier conclusive evidence of his authorship.But they also make it in a high degree unlikely thatthe plays were published during Nero's lifetime,and would rather indicate their publication underVespasian by another member of Seneca's family.'He who distributes crowns at his will,' we read'in the Thyestes, before whom trembling nationsbend the knee, who by a sign of his hand disarms^One wonders whether he maytragedian among others in his mind when so writing.not have had Seneca the

i84SENECAMedes, Indians, and tribes dreaded of the Parthians,is himself uneasy on his throne ;he shudders atthe thought of the caprices of fortune and of the unforeseenstrokes by which ^empires are overthrown.'Again, in the same 'play, Believe me, we aredeceived by the glozing surface of prosperity, andwe are wrong indeed to regret its loss. WhileI was powerful, I never ceased to tremble ;butnow I can cause fear or jealousy to none, I amhappy. Crime does not seek out the poor manin his hut. He dines at a modest table, whereaswe run the risk of poison when we drink fromgolden goblets. I speak from experience.' ^ It isevident that the writer of these passages had Neroand Seneca in his mind; Seneca had indeed experiencedthe danger he describes,^ but that hewould have published or even committed to writingsuch sentiments in the tyrant's lifetime ishard to believe. Who, then, can be the author ofthe plays? Seneca's brothers did not long survivehim. His nephew Lucan was condemned ;and asthe blood spurted from his opened veins with hisdying voice he declaimed a passage from the Pharsaliadescriptive of his situation. His father, Mela,claimed his estate; but the claim was contestedby Lucan's intimate friend, Fabius Romanus, whoprofessed to find among the papers left him lettersinvolving Mela in the conspiracy. This wasenough for Nero, who coveted Mela's great wealth,and a message was sent him, with the usualresult. He at once anticipated a condemnationby opening his veins, leaving*Thyestes, 600. *Ibid., 446.behind him a will^Tac, Ann. xv. 45.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 185in which he bequeathed a great sum ofmoney toTigeUinus^ in the hope that by interesting the prefectin the vahdity of the document his remaininglegacies might be secured to his family. Thathe was successful in this is probable, because ageneration later we find Lucan's widow, PoUa,living wealthy and honoured under Domitian, andreceiving the seldom disinterested attentions ofthe Flavian poets. Gallio, after Seneca's death,was violently attacked in the Senate ;but savedfor the moment by friends, who reproached hisantagonist with taking advantage of the publicmisfortunes for the gratification of private hatredand opposing the humane impulses of their mercifulprince. We hear no more of him from Tacitus ;but Dion relates that he perished shortly afterwardsby his own hand. The only other Senecaof whom any mention has survived is Marcus,the son of the philosopher, of whom he wrote sotenderly from his Corsican exile. Can he havebeen the dramatist ?Nothing obliges us tobelieve it ;but it is possible, and has beenbelieved.Seneca's reputation has passed through manyvicissitudes. He has been long neglected, andhis character when discussed has been harshlyappreciated. Yet good wine cannot come froma tainted vessel ;and if we judge his work by theuse that has been made of itby famous poetsand moralists, we must call it a noble heritage.Shakespeare and Milton have transmuted — manyof his thoughts into glorious poetry Miltontaking directly from him, Shakespearein all

i86SENECAprobability by way of Florio's Montaigne.the firstFromhe has excited admiration and hostihtyin almost equal measure. He isperhaps theonly pagan whom —the early Christian writersTertullian, Augustine, Lactantius, and Jerome—regarded with all but unmixed approval. Onthe other hand, the pedantic Roman archaists ofthe Antonine period— Aulus Gellius and Fronto —detested him as the corrupter of taste and adangerous innovator. It must always be rememberedthat his was no abstract philosophy of thestudy. It was addressed bya former man ofaction to men living under a reign of terror,whose lives were in daily peril and its ;object wasto free them from anxiety and brace their mindsto meet their fate with indifference and dignity.Consequently it is in dangerous times that hehas found the greatest favour.

CAIUS MAECENAS

CAIUS MAECENASThe battle of Actium had been fought and won.For the third time in Roman history the gates ofthe Temple of Janus were closed as a sign thatwar had ceased. After a century of civil war andconfusion the Romans accepted, some of themwith joy, others with a half-ashamed relief, othersagain with melancholy resignation, the reposeand security offered to them by the new government.The historian Livy, whom the emperorwas accustomed playfully to tax with his Pompeiansympathies, turned, as he tells us, to thecomposition of Roman history and the contemplationof the ancient glories of the State in orderto distract his mind from what seemed to himthe incurable degeneracy of the times. Horace,who had served as an officer under Brutus atPhilippi, took refuge in Epicurean philosophyand the cultivation of friendship, while he advisedhis friends to rid themselves of hopes and fears,to make the best of the passing hour, and not totrouble about the future. We must all die : sowhat, after all, does anything matter ? is theconstant burden of his song. ReconciUation and

190 CAIUS MAECENASoblivion were the order of the day. To the sonof that Cicero, the thunder of whose eloquencein defence of the old constitution had cost himhis life, fell the duty as consul of announcing tothe people the news of the battle of Actium andof presiding over the games and pageants givenin honour of the victory. The untamable soulof Cato was applauded with impunity by theCourt poets. Men, like Messala, who had distinguishedthemselves on the republican side in thecivil war were admitted to the intimacy of theemperor and the letter of the old constitution;was preserved inviolate at a time when its spiritwas fundamentally subverted.Augustus seems really to have been by temperamenta conservative. He cared little for thepomp and circumstance of power, and was underno temptation to imitate those excesses of unconstitutionallanguage and demeanour, the fatalcandour of which had proved more disastrousto his uncle Julius Caesar than the most violentof his actions. He knew that wounded vanityis a more potent factor in the making of patriotsthan loss of liberty. Moreover, he was attachedto the Roman traditions and religion;he was alover of order, system, and decorum ;he had thehistorical sense ;he had an admirable taste inliterature ;he was an indulgent friend ;andhe loved the freedom from restraint in socialintercourse secured with such difficulty byprinces.When Augustus returned from his final victoryat Actium, he contemplated a genuine

CAIUS MAECENAS191restoration of the republic ;and to this coursehe was urged by his most powerful lieutenant,Marcus Agrippa. But he was dissuaded fromadopting it by his other chief adviser, the Tuscanknight, Caius Maecenas, who, left in charge ofthe city while the emperor was still absent, hadrecently increased his influence by hisskilful suppressionin its inception of a conspiracy againsthis master's formed life, by Lepidus, the son ofthe triumvir.^The character of this celebrated man is initself an interesting study ; and, typically differingas it does from that of all the public menin earlier Roman history, it enables us to appreciatemore clearly the nature of the change that cameover Roman life after the accession of Augustusto sole power, and to weigh with more intelligencethe advantages and disadvantages of thatchange.Maecenas, in the first place, was a great realist.He professed and probably felt nothing butdisdain for allgood and evil derived not fromthings themselves, but from the opinions menform of them. Thus, though proud of his oldEtruscan lineage, he would never consent to enterthe Senate or to hold the official honours— nowbecome in the main titular— of praetor or consul.He died^as he was born^ inthe equestrian order.It is indeed possible that his moderation in thismatter was in part a compliment to the emperor,who, himself descended from an equestrianfamily in which his father had been the first1 Yell. Paterculus, ii. 88 ; Appian, iv. 49.

192 CAIUS MAECENASsenator, was not at allashamed to avow the factin his published memoirs ^ and;this theoryreceives some support from the circumstancethat the successor of Maecenas inthe confidenceof Augustus, Crispus Sallustius, followed his examplein this respect, as he did in his luxuriousway of—'living diversus a veterum instituto-—'and in his Melbournesque pose of indolence andindifference. None the less were his contemporariesastonished by the modesty of Maecenas,there being no prior instance in Roman history ofa public man who enjoyed all the reality withoutany of the titular distinctions of power. Whateverits real origin, this much-commended abstentionfrom the honours of the State can havecaused the statesman little effort. His penetratingvision pierced through the appearances ofthings to their essence, and so all those dignitieswhich owed their importance to the vain opinions'of mortal men were to him as nothing. Niladmirari prope res est una.' Perhapsit was ofMaecenas that Horace was thinking when hewrote that celebrated line.His, again, was the tolerant temperament oftenfound to spring from complete scepticism. Ofthe substantial well-being of his fellow-men hewas sincerely desirous. But he did not thinkthis likely to be promoted by the restoration oftheir ancient liberties. His good-nature, likethat of Sir Robert Walpole, was the childof his low opinion of human nature— of his* Suet., Oct. 2.*Tac, Ann. iii. 30.

CAIUS MAECENAS 193pessimism. He expected little from the virtuesof others, and therefore felt no anger when theiractions did not exceed his expectations. Withidealism he had no sympathy. He cared fornothing but the actual and the tangible. Theonly way in which he showed his power, we aretold by a hostile critic, was by doing as he pleased— by his contempt for appearances. Romans ofthe old school were shocked to see him loungingabout the streets of Rome at a time when, in theabsence of Augustus, his power in that city wasabsolute, with his robe hanging loosely about himand a hood pulled over his head leaving his earsexposed ; like a fugitive slave in a comedy, soafter deaththey said.^ For the fate of his bodyhe felt a very characteristic indifference. Nee'tumulum euro :sepelit Natura relicfos,' ^ he wrotein one of the few Unes of his poetry that havebeen preserved to us. What to him was a graveor a monument ? Life was the great reality ;death the negation of life. And accordingly heclung to Hfe with a passionate and patheticinsistence which to the Stoic Seneca appearedcontemptissimus, but from another point ofview may even be 'regarded as heroic. Torturemy body,' he cries in the well-known lines toFortune, ' rack me with gout ;break and distortmy Hmbs ;nail me to a cross ;grant me butLife, and it is well.' Seneca has generally beenechoed, and these verses have been often quotedto show the innate effeminacy of Maecenas ;buthow do they differ, save by inferior expression,*Seneca, Ep. 114.*Id., Ep. 92.

194 CAIUS MAECENASfrom the great lines which Milton puts into themouth of Belial ?Who would lose,Though full of pain, this intellectual being.Those thoughts that wander through eternity,To perish rather, swallowed up and lostIn the wide womb of uncreated nightDevoid of sense and motion ?However, that Maecenas was really selfindulgentand over-luxurious in his manner oflife is, of course, undeniable. All the Romanauthorities are agreed upon this point. Epicureanismwas the fashionable philosophy of thetime, and there can be little doubt that of thisfashion the indolent statesman was a principalleader. He disliked forms and despised conventions.The small Roman banquets, with theirwines and their sweet ointments, their music andtheir roses, were clearly delightful to him. Heforgave the numerous infidelities of his beautifulwife Terentia ;and although he often divorcedher he as often took her back, thinking perhapsthat to act otherwise would be to fling away thesubstance of his pleasure for a shadow. But,realist though he was, the fact that the emperor,to whom he was sincerely attached, was amongher lovers appears to have troubled his decliningyears. He forgave Augustus, nevertheless, andbequeathed to him the greater part of his possessions.Velleius Paterculus tells us that thoughprovident and energetic enough when somethingdefinite had to be done, as soon as the businessin hand ceased to be urgent he relapsed into an

CAIUS MAECENAS195Heindolence and softness more than feminine.^delighted in the games of the Campus Martius.His friends he chose from inclination and withoutrespect of persons from among the poets and witsof his time ; his acquaintance with a view toamusement. Horace describes a dinner-party atthe house of the rich parvenu Nasidienus atwhich Maecenas was present attended by twoboon companions (umbrae). For the diversionof the great man the pomposity and vanity ofthe host were ruthlessly exploited by his twofollowers under the forms of politeness ;thenoise increased as the wine circulated ;and thefeast came to an end amid riotous buffoonery.*We see him, through the eyes of Propertius,driving through Rome in a cunningly-wrought twowheeledchariot of a kind lately imported fromBritain ^ while at other times he would; forgetthe cares of State and dine merrily with Horace'sine aulaeis et ostro ' at the Sabine farm whichthe poet owed to his munificence.The Palace of Art, the construction of whichas an habitation for his soul was the object ofMaecenas's later life, proved, as we shall see, buta crumbling and unstable edifice. But in themeantime it demanded a splendid material environment,and this he provided by his house andgardens on the Esquihne. Here he transformedthe old Roman plebeian cemetery into a park,famous through many succeeding generations;and here he built a lofty tower, from the sunmiitof which he would spend hours in contemplating1 ii. 88.«Hon, Sai. ii. 8.» Prop.ii. i.

196 CAIUS MAECENASthe beautiful prospect of the Campagna with theof Tibur in the distance and nearer at handslopesthe fume and fret and riches of the EternalCity.^ Maecenas was a valetudinarian, with ahorror of death. He was a victim to acuteinsomnia. The elder Pliny assures us that forthe last three years of his life he never enjoyed^a moment's sleep ; and, quite incredible as thisstatement may be, even itsapproximate accuracyisquite enough to account for the ceaselesscomplaints with which, as we know from Horace,he was accustomed to overburden his friends.Ingenuity was exhausted to devise a remedy forthis terrible affliction. The sound of fallingwaters, the choicest wines, the music of symphoniesgently rising and falling in the distance —*symphoniarum '— cantum ex longinquo lene resonantiumall were vain.' The tower itself——standing amid its vast gardens and orchardswas a centre of quiet. There Augustus tookrefuge when attacked by illness thither;camethe unsocial and unhappy Tiberius to rest his eyesfrom the hated sight of his fellow-men ;thereNero sang in costume the story of burning Troyas he watched with aesthetic delight the flamesthat were consuming his ill-fated capital. Suchwas the retreat chosen by Maecenas, when heobtainedthe emperor's permission to retire frompubliclife and to seek what Tacitus calls a sortof peregrinum otium within the city. Here heentertained the poets to whom he owes most of^Hor., Od. iii. 29.»Sen., De Prov. iii. g.»Pliny, Hist. Nat. vii, 52.

CAIUS MAECENAS197his fame, and here he held close intercourse withthe pure spirit of Virgil, to whom he had presenteda house on the Esquiline close to his own.Augustus, in one of the pleasant letters to himhappily preserved to us by Suetonius, declareshis wish to steal from him Horace, whom he desiresto engage as a private secretar3^ Veniet'ergo' he writes, ' ah ista parasitica mensa adhanc regiant, et nos in scrihendis episfolis'juvabitLet him (' quit that parasitic table of yours forour palace, and he shall help us with our correspondence' But Horace declined the^) . proposal ;and Augustus, ever reasonable, had the good sensenot to be offended. Both Horace and Virgil,however, much preferred the country to the town,and their patron, sorely against his will, wasobliged to indulge their inclinations in this respect.Maecenas had evidently a genius for friendship.We read that a certain Melissus, a distinguishedgrammarian, although free-born, hadbeen exposed in his infancy by his mother andbrought up as a slave. He became of the householdof Maecenas, and was by him treated ratheras a friend than as a servant. Afterwards, hismother, repenting of her action, claimed him asher son, and he was thus given the opportunityof recovering his freedom. But, preferring toliberty his actual condition in the service ofMaecenas, he rejected the proffered acknowledgment.He was afterwards manumitted byMaecenas, introduced to the emperor, and appointedlibrarian to the new Octavian Library.''» Suet,, in vita Hor. » Suet,, De Illus. Gramm. 21,

198 CAIUS MAECENASIt is often the case with men whose friendshipis valuable and enduring that their manner inthe early stages of acquaintance shows a certaintentative reserve. The plant of genuine affectionbetween male friends isapt to be of slow growth.Maecenas was no exception to this rule. Horacetells us that when he was first introduced toMaecenas, to whom he was recommended byVirgil, he was received rather coldly and notrecalled for nine months. But from that timeonwards there seems to have been no break in amutual sympathy that ever increased. As afriend Maecenas was no respecter of persons.With the emperor he used a freedom which hepermittedto those who were more or less dependenton himself. The well-known story of how,when Augustus was sitting at the seat of justiceand about to condemn many men to death,Maecenas, unable from the press to approach him,threw to him a little scroll with ' Surge tandemcarnifex ' (' Rise,!hangman written on') it, andhow the emperor at once rose and left the tribunalwithout another word, is equally creditableto both these friends. The lives of theaccused were spared, and the bold ministergained rather than lost credit with his master.^Nor did he lose his favour when, by his indiscretionin confiding to his wife Terentia the secretof the discovery of Murena's conspiracy, he riskedthe failure of the measures taken for its suppression.To his own dependents he extended theindulgence received by him from the emperor.*Dion Cassius, iv. 7

CAIUS MAECENAS199He was not offended when Horace broke hispromise of returning to Rome, and Hngered monthafter month first in his Sabine farm and afterwards,during the winter months, on the southern coast.The poetic apology he earned from him would,it is true, have soothed the indignation of mostmen.'Horati Flacci, ut mei, mentor esto '('Remember Horace as you would myself),was his last testamentary recommendation to theemperor.^ Horace did not long survive him, andwas buried on the Esquiline close to his patron'sgrave.The patience of Maecenas was tried by therather feeble character of Propertius, and he usedoften to urge that poet to quit his lovelorn dittiesand compose something more worthy of histalents. Propertius replied by citing his patron'smoderation in remaining a knight as an exampleto others to confine themselves within modestspheres of action.* Virgil was an even olderfriend than Horace, but his shyness and taciturnityprobably rendered their relations lesseasy and unreserved. In the anonymous biographyof Virgil which has descended to us fromancient times there are two replies made by thepoet to the minister which one would fain believeto be authentic. On one occasion he wasasked by Maecenas, characteristically enough, 'there anything, Virgil, that man can possess withoutsatiety? ' ' In everything,' was the reply,staleness or abundance produces disgust— except'in understanding.' At another time Maecenas1Suet., in vita Hor.* Prop. iii. 9.Is

200 CAIUS MAECENASasked him in what manner it was profitable toenjoy and preserve great gifts of fortune. Virgil'replied Then :only when a man is ambitious tosurpass others as greatly in justice and liberalityas he does in wealth and honours.'Maecenas was a copious author, but he probablydid not attach much importance to his owncompositions. It is remarkable that among allthe compliments showered upon him by his parasiticamensa— by Horace, Virgil, and—Propertiusnot one relates to his literary productions, andit is a fair inference that his vanity was not muchinterested in their success. He was as indifferentto the literary as he was to the political traditionsof Rome. The nova elocutio which he introducedinto his poetry, the transpositions of words fromtheir natural places for the sake of effect, thepreciosities of his style, were derided by hislater critics likecontemporaries, and cited bySeneca and Quintilian as the classical examplesof this kind of vicious composition.^ The fewspecimens of his poetry that have descended tous abundantly bear out the charge, though itmust be remembered that, for the most part,they are expressly cited with that object. Thesevere taste of Augustus, who equally disliked theaffected imitation of old writers bythe use ofobsolete words, and the over-ornate and eccentricmanner of the new school, did not spare theof the minister'seuphemisms and quaintnessesstyle. Macrobius has preserved for us the endof a letter from the emperor to Maecenas in*Sen., Ep. 19, 114 ; Quint, ix. 4.

CAIUS MAECENAS 201which he parodies his friend's style with happyeffect :'Vale mel gentium,' so it runs, ' melcule,ebur ex Hetruria, laver Aretinum, adamas supernus,Tiberinum margaritum, Cilniorum smaragde,jaspis figulorum, berylle Porsennae, carbunculumItaliae.' ^ Maecenas's love of precious stones, ofwhich we have evidence in some surviving hendecasyllablesaddressed by him to Horace, is alsorallied in this letter. Seneca, to whom we owemuch of our scanty knowledge of Maecenas, tellsus that his writings were often greatin theirmeaning, but enervated by their expression.^The change effected in the Roman characterat the close of the first century before Christ, withits subsequent developments, offers an interestingstudy to the philosophic historian. The housewas completed, the architects who had superintendedits completion had fought for its possession,into which the strongest of them had finallyentered. The employment which had absorbedthe lives of the workmen was at an end, and nowtheir unemployed descendants began to look aboutthem and to wonder what they were to do next.In fact, the cultivated Romans, havingfirst time leisure to remember that they werealive,life.was stillfor thebegan the dangerous search for theories ofPhilosophy, which, as we learn from Cicero,in his time by many considered a studybelow the dignity of a Roman gentleman,nowbegan powerfully to attract the attention of theeducated classes, and the writings of the Greekphilosophers were eagerly»Mac, Sat. ii.4discussed. Stoicism,»Ep. 92-

202 CAIUS MAECENASwith its seeming paradoxes, appealed very little atfirst to the downright Roman mind. A love of thepalpable and a contempt for subtlety were amongits prominent characteristics. The via media ofthe Peripatetics found more favour, but men insearch of a new belief do not readily adopt compromises,which spring from the attempt to adaptto new conditions an old creed that we are lothto desert. But Epicureanism, which professedto base itself upon common sense and the directtestimony of the senses, and which swept impatientlyaway the whole paraphernalia of logicwith its definitions and distinctions, progressedwith amazing rapidity. Bodily pleasure, criedthe Epicureans,is the ultimate good ; and arespectable life is to be recommended, becausewithout itbodily pleasure becomes impossible.Pain is the only real evil ;other so-called ills arethe artificial creations of opinion. The foolishare tossed to and fro on the phantasmal wavesof hopes and fears let them; pull themselvestogether and shake off the dream, and they willfind themselves on dry land. By the study ofunsophisticated beasts we maysee nature as in amirror ;let us imitate them, and no longer groanunder the tyranny of convention. The oppositeof pain is exemption from pain, and this is thehighest enduring pleasure. Pain must often beendured and even courted in order to avoid afuture greater pain, and pleasure sacrificed to theattainment of a future greater pleasure. To attainthese objects courageis a useful and temperancean essential quality. As objects in space appear

CAIUS MAECENAS 203smaller or larger as they are nearer or more distant,The functionso do pleasures and pains in time.of wisdom is to estimate their real magnitude,and to correct by reason the errors induced bythe fallacious aspect which they offer to thepassions.The accessories of pleasure and painrather than the things themselves excite our hopesand fears ; by philosophy these accessories willbe made to vanish, and the two objects— whichalone have a real existence— will be regarded intheir own naked proportions. Providence is a;mythinfinite time has formed man, is fortuitous ;the combination of atoms, which inthere is a continual passage of elements intothings and of things into elements the world;and all that therein is are things, and thereforemortal ;nothing endures but the atoms of whichthe number of shapes is limited, while in eachshape the number of atoms is infinite.Though the contradictions and poverties involvedin this system were ably exposed by Ciceroin his book De Finibus, yet the tenets continuedto spread, and deeply affected the Roman characterand history. Liberty now seemed an unsubstantialnotion, an empty name, for which it wasthe height of absurdity to suffer. Alone amongphilosophers the Epicurean lecturers never alludedin their discourses to the ancient heroes of Greeceand Rome. Atticus is a good specimen of thebest class of men who at this time adopted Epicureanism.Living in accordance with his principlesin retirement at Athens, where his amiabilitymade him the idol of the people, he remained

204 CAIUS MAECENASthroughout his life on the best terms with thevarious party-leaders, nor did the assassinationof his friends appear to him a sufficient reasonfor quarrelling with their assassins. Sylla andPompey, Marcus Brutus and Julius Caesar, Ciceroand Antony, and finally Octavius, were all includedin the listof his friends.Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueriPer campos instructa tua sine parte pericU.Consistent to the end, he deliberately starvedhimself to death in order to avoid the greaterpain of a lingering illness. The civil wars musthave appeared to him a melancholy absurdity,useful only as they placed in more striking reliefhis own philosophical tranquillity.It is not difficult to account for the rapidspread of the new philosophy among the RomanThe miseries of the civil wars gaveupper classes.reason to those who asserted their irrationality.The contrast between the tangible enjoymentspossible under the strong imperial governmentand the pains which were endured while Brutusand Cato were still struggling for an idea wasmade and registered by the practical Romanmind. The Emperor Augustus, who regardedlife as a sorry play in which he was amused tofind that the principal part had fallen to himself,Augustus, with his sceptical good sense andmoderation, encouraged to some extent the ideaswhich afforded so effective a guarantee for thestability of his government, though at times hewas alarmed at the progress they had made

and endeavoured toCAIUS MAECENAS 205check them by precept andexample.And his minister, Maecenas, found ready tohis hand a theory of Ufe which exactly accordedwith his own inclinations and habits of mind.Cultured, luxurious, and good-natured, he disUkedstiffness, whether in manners, literature, or dress.He was himself of noble birth, but believed thedistinctions of rank to be the creations of anempty convention. His enjoyment of the pleasuresof life has seldom been rivalled, and hismain departure from the principles of his schoollay in his consequent horror of death. He wasa man of great intellect, of an exquisite taste inliterature, and there was probably no affectationin his laughing disregardof all the old Romanconventions. Such was Maecenas ;and greatindeed must have been the change which hadpassed over the genius of the Roman Commonwealthwhen such a man could appear at itshead.

IAPPENDIXTABLE IAugustus Imp. = (i) Claudia, (2) Scribonia, (3) LiviaJulia = (i) Marcellus, (2) M. Agrippa, (3) TiberiusCaiusCaesarLuciusCaesarAgrippaPostumusJuliaL. Aemilius Agrippina (major)Paulus — GennanicusAemilia = (i) Claudius, (2) App.Lepida | Junius SilanusL. Silanus,affianced to Octavia,d. of ClaudiusINero =Julia,d. of Drusus,the son ofTiberiusIDrususCaius CaligulaImp.AgrippinaCn. DomitiusDrusilla= M. LepidusLivil'= M. ViNero Imp.TABLE IILivia Drusilla = (i) Tiberius Claudius Nero, (2) AugustusTiberius Imp. = Vipsania AgrippinaDrusus Claudius = Antonia (minoIDrususGermanicus Tiberius Claudius iiAgrippina minor. = Valeria MessaSee Table I|IBritannicusOcta.TABLE IIIMarcus Annaeus Seneca = HelviaIM. AnnaeusNovatus,by adoptionJunius GallioNovatillaLucius Annaeus = (i)— (2) PompeiaSeneca|PaulinaMarcusM. Annaeus I= Atiliad. of Atilius Luof CordubaIM. Annaeus Lu'the poet= Polla ArgenPrinted by Spottiswoode, Ballantyne &• Co. Ltd.Colchester, London &• Eton, Eagl&nd

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PA6675H6Holland, Francis CaldwellSenecaPLEASE DO NOT REMOVECARDS OR SLIPSFROM THIS POCKETSCARBOROUGH COLLEGE LIBRARY