SEEKERS AFTER GOD 
 
 REV. F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S., 
 
 l 
 
 ARCHDEACON OF WESTMINSTER. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1885. 
 
2)505 
 
 C 65 
 
TO MY ESTEEMED COLLEAGUE 
 
 GUSTAVE MASSON, ESQ. B.A. UNIV. GALL. 
 
 WHO HAS OFTEN ASSISTED ME 
 
 NOT ONLY WITH HIS LEARNING AND MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS, 
 BUT ALSO WITH THE RARER AND BETTER AID 
 
 OF KINDLY SYMPATHY AND FAITHFUL FRIENDSHIP, 
 1 \ 
 
 I CORDIALLY AND AFFECTIONATELY 
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGES. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured in the following pages to give 
 in a popular manner as full an account of the lives 
 and opinions of three great heathen philosophers as 
 was possible in the space at my command. In the 
 title of the book they are called " Seekers after God," 
 and surely they deserve that title if it may be given 
 to men who, amid infinite difficulties and surrounded 
 by a corrupt society, devoted themselves to the 
 earnest search after those truths which might best 
 make their lives " beautiful before God." 
 
 The Divine declaration that " every one that ask .' 
 receiveth ; and he that seeketh, findeth ; and to him that 
 knocketh it shall be opened" does not apply to Chris- 
 tians only. It would indeed be a bitter and bigoted 
 view of the world's history which should refuse to 
 acknowledge the noble standard of morality and 
 practice to which the invisible workings of Go Ts 
 Holy Spirit enabled many of the heathen to attain. 
 We know that there were those among them whose 
 virtue and chanty, in spite of their dim and imper 
 
vriii PREFACE. 
 
 knowledge, might put many a Christian to the 'blush ; 
 we may believe with unfeigned gratitude that in 
 " seeking after the Lord, if haply they might feel 
 after Him and find Him," they learned to recognise 
 that deep and ennobling truth to which some of their 
 own poets had given expression, that " He is not 
 far from every one of us, for in Him we live, and 
 move, and have our being." 
 
 Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are not only the 
 most clear-sighted moralists among ancient philoso- 
 phers, but are also, with the single exception ot 
 Socrates, the best and holiest characters presented 
 to us in the records of antiquity. In many respects 
 Seneca is wholly unworthy to be placed by their 
 side, nor have I attempted to gloss over his terrible 
 inconsistencies. Yet in spite of all his failures, he 
 was a good man, and we must apply to those who 
 speak of him without consideration or generosity, 
 the censure of Gothe : 
 
 " Und steh' beschamt wenn Du bekennen musst 
 Ein guter Mensch in seinem dtinkeln Drange 
 1st sich des rechtes Weges ivohl bewusst" 
 
 Had more space been at my command, that further 
 examination of his writings which formed part of my 
 original plan would perhaps have placed him higher 
 in the reader's estimation ; but I have entered into 
 the details of his life because I had the ulterior object 
 of showing what was at that time the moral and 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 political condition of the Roman world, and in what 
 atmosphere the influences of Christianity were forced 
 to work. The two subsequent biographies will show 
 us how in every estate of life the grace of God was 
 sufficient to enable men to struggle successfully with 
 immense temptations, sufficient to make any man 
 pure and holy who aimed at being so, sufficient to 
 give humility, and patience, and tenderness to an 
 irresponsible Roman Emperor, and freedom, and con- 
 tentment, and imperial magnanimity to a persecuted 
 Phrygian slave. 
 
 People sometimes talk and write as though Pagan 
 truth were one thing and Christian truth another; 
 but Truth comes only from Him who is the Truth, 
 and neither Jewish prophet nor heathen philosopher 
 can attain to it, or act up to it, save by His aid. 
 '* The reader must ill have understood these pages if 
 he sees in them any glorification of Stoicism as com- 
 pared with Christianity, or of natural as opposed to 
 revealed religion. Surely even the most ignorant 
 might deduce from them the lesson that ; n every 
 Sunday-school 
 
 " Each little voice in turn 
 
 Some glorious truth proclaims, 
 What sages would have died to learn 
 
 Now taught by cottage damss." 
 
 A Seneca, a Musonius Rufus, an Kpictetus, ^ 
 .vlarcus Aurelius mi^ at have been taught by the hum- 
 blest Christian child about a Comfort, an Example, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 a Hope, which were capable of gilding their lives 
 with unknown brightness and happiness, capable of 
 soothing the anguish of every sorrow, of breaking 
 the violence of every temptation, of lightening the 
 burden of every care. And yet with all our know- 
 ledge and enlightenment we fall far short of some 
 of them ; we are less stern with our own faults, less 
 watchful, less self-denying, less tender to one another. 
 With our superior gifts, with our surer hopes, with 
 our more present means of grace, what manner of 
 men ought we to be ? We ought to have attained to 
 far loftier moral altitudes than they, but we have not. 
 Let us admit with shame and sorrow that some 
 among these heathens showed themselves to be 
 nobler, loftier, holier, freer from vanity, freer from 
 meanness, freer from special pleading, freer from false- 
 hood, more spiritual, more reasonable, on some points 
 even more enlightened, than many among ourselves. 
 The ve-y ideal of the Christian life seems to have 
 been dwarfed to a poor, and vulgar, and conventional 
 standard. Perhaps the contemplation of virtue, and 
 zeal, and integrity, and consistency, even in heathen 
 lives, may produce at least some infinitesimal effect, 
 in arousing some of us to a desire for "something 
 more high and heroical in religion than the present 
 ap-* affecteth." If so, these pages v,ill not have been 
 written quite in vain. 
 
 F. W. F. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 '' 
 SENECA. 
 
 INTROUCTORY X 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS OF SENECA 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF SENECA ... 23 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 36 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 POLITICAL CONDITION OF ROME UNDER TIBERIUS AND CAIUS. 54 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE REIGN OF CLAUDIUS, AND THE BANISHMENT OF SENECA. 74 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 SENECA IN EXILE , 8/ 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SENECA'S PHILOSOPHY GTVES WAY ..... + ,. IOO 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 SENECA'S RECALL FROM EXILE .,,..,..... 106 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 {LGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO ......... Ill 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 NERO AND HJS TUTOR ............ . . 12) 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END ........... 14* 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE DEATH OP SENECA 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SENECA AND ST. PAUL . 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 SENECA'S RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE . 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 EPICTETUS. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE LIFE OF EPlCTETUS, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT ... l86 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LIFE AND VIEWS OF EPICTETUS (continued) 203 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LIFE AND VIEW. OF EPICTETUS (continued) . ...... 211 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE "MANUAL" AND "FRAGMENTS" OF EPICTETUS. . . . 221 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DISCOURSES OF EPICTETUS 22 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THF EDUCATION OF AN EMIEROR .... ...... 257 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS ..... 27! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS (continued} . 284 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE "MEDITATIONS" OF MARCUS AURELIUS ...... 303 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 AURKLIUS AND HIS MOTHER (p. 273). By ARTHUR HUGHES. 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 ILLUMINATED TITLE; WITH VIGNETTE OF MARCUS AURELIUS 
 FROM A BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 
 
 LUCIUS ANNjEUS SENECA To face I 2 
 
 ANTONIN' S PIUS, FROM A BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 
 
 To face 271 
 
 
UN IV 
 
 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. 
 
 SENECA. 
 
 * Ce nuage frange de rayons qui touche presqu' a 1'immortelle aurort 
 des verites chretiennes." PONTMARTIN. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 ON the banks of the Baetis the modern Guadal- 
 quiver, and under the woods that crown the south- 
 ern slopes of the Sierra Morena, lies the beautiful 
 and famous city of Cordova. It had been selected 
 by Marcellus as the site of a Roman colony ; and 
 so many Romans and Spaniards of high rank chose 
 it for their residence, that it obtained from Augustus 
 the honourable surname of the "Patrician Colony." 
 Spain during this period of the Empire exercised no 
 small influence upon the literature and politics of 
 Rome. No less than -three great Emperors Tra- 
 jan, Hadrian, and Theodosius, were natives of 
 Spain. Columella, the writer on agriculture, was 
 born at Cadiz ; Quintilian, the great writer on" the 
 education of an orator, was born at Calahorra ; the 
 poet Martial was a native of Bilbilis ; but Cordova 
 
SENECA. 
 
 could boast the yet higher honour of having givei: 
 birth to the Senecas, an honour which won for it 
 the epithet of " The Eloquent." A ruin is shown 
 to modern travellers which is popularly called the 
 House of Seneca, and the fact is at least a proof 
 that the city still retains some memory of its illus- 
 trious sons. 
 
 Marcus Annaeus Seneca, the father of the philo- 
 sopher, was by rank a Roman knight. What causes 
 had led him or his family to settle in Spain we do 
 not know, and the names Annasus and Seneca are 
 alike obscure. It has been vaguely conjectured that 
 both names may involve an allusion to the longevity 
 of some of the founders of the family, for Annaeus 
 seems to be connected with annus, a year, and Sen- 
 eca with senex, an old man. The common English 
 composite plant ragwort is called senecio from the 
 white and feathery pappus or appendage of its seeds ; 
 and similarly, Isidore says that the first Seneca was 
 so named because " he was born with white hair." 
 
 Although the father of Seneca was of knightly 
 rank, his family had never risen to any eminence ; it 
 belonged to the class of nouveaux riches , and we do 
 not know whether it was of Roman or of Spanish 
 descent. But his mother Helvia an uncommon 
 name, which, by a curious coincidence, belonged 
 also to the mother of Cicero was a Spanish lady ; 
 and it was from her that Seneca, as well as his 
 famous nephew, the poet Lucan, doubtless derived 
 many of the traits which mark their intellect and their 
 character. There was in the Spaniard a richness and 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 splendour of imagination, an intensity and warmth, 
 a touch of "phantasy and flame," which we find in 
 these two men of genius, and which was wholly 
 wanting to the Roman temperament. 
 
 Of Cordova itself, except in a single epigram, 
 Seneca makes no mention ; but this epigram suffices 
 to she vv that he must have been familiar with its 
 stirring and memorable traditions. The elder Seneca 
 must have been living at Cordova during all the 
 troublous years of civil war, when his native city 
 caused equal offence to Pompey and to Caesar. 
 Doubtless, too, he would have had stories to tell of the 
 noble Sertorius, and of the tame fawn which gained 
 for him the credit of divine assistance; and contem- 
 porary reminiscences of that day of desperate disaster 
 when Caesar, indignant that Cordova should have 
 embraced the cause of the sons of Pompey, avenged 
 himself by a massacre of 22,000 of the citizens. From 
 his mother Helvia, Seneca must often have heard 
 about the fierce and gallant struggle in which her 
 country had resisted the iron yoke of Rome. Many a 
 time as a boy must he have been told how long and 
 how heroically Saguntum had withstood the assaults 
 and baffled the triumph of Hannibal ; how bravely 
 Viriathus had fought, and how shamefully he fell ; 
 and how at length the unequal contest, which reduced 
 Spain to the condition of a province, was closed, when 
 the heroic defenders of Numantia, rather than yield 
 to Scipio, reduced their city to a heap of blood- 
 stained ruins. 
 
 But, whatever may have been the extent to which 
 
SENECA. 
 
 Seneca was influenced by the Spanish blood which 
 flowed in his veins, and the Spanish legends on which 
 his youth was fed, it was not in Spain that his lot 
 was cast. When he was yet an infant in arms his 
 father, with all his family, migrated from Cordova to 
 Rome. What may have been the special reason for 
 this important step we do not know ; possibly, like 
 the father of Horace, the elder Seneca may have 
 sought a better education for his sons than could be 
 provided by even so celebrated a provincial town as 
 Cordova ; possibly for he belonged to a somewhat 
 pushing family he may have desired to gain fresh 
 wealth and honour in the imperial city. 
 
 Thither we must follow him ; and, as it is our object 
 not only to depict a character but also to sketch the 
 characteristics of a very memorable age in the world's 
 history, we must try to get a glimpse of the family 
 in the midst of which our young philosopher grew 
 up, of the kind of education which he received, and 
 of the influences which were likely to tell upon him 
 during his childish and youthful years. Only by such 
 means shall we be able to judge of him aright. 
 And it is worth while to try and gain a right con- 
 ception of the man, not only because he was very 
 eminent as a poet, an author, and a politician, not 
 only because he fills a very prominent place in the 
 pages of the great historian, who has drawn so 
 immortal a picture of Rome under the Emperors ; 
 not only because in him we can best study the in- 
 evitable signs which mark, even in the works of men 
 of genius, a degraded people and a decaying litera 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 ture ; but because he was, as the title of this volume 
 designates him, a " SEEKER AFTER GOD." Whatever 
 may have been the dark and questionable actions of 
 his life and in this narrative we shall endeavour to 
 furnish a plain and unvarnished picture of the manner 
 in which he lived, it is certain that, as a philosopher 
 and as a moralist, he furnishes us with the grandest 
 and most eloquent series of truths to which, unillumi- 
 nated by Christianity, the thoughts of man have 
 ever attained. The purest and most exalted philo- q?. 
 sophic sect of antiquity was " the sect of the Stoics ; " 
 and Stoicism never found a literary exponent more 
 ardent, more eloquent, or more enlightened than 
 Lucius Annaeus Seneca. So nearly, in fact, does he 
 seem to have arrived at the truths of Christianity, 
 that to many it seemed a matter for marvel that he 
 could have known them without having heard them 
 from inspired lips. He is constantly cited with appro- 
 bation by some of the most eminent Christian fathers. 
 Tertullian, Lactantius, even St. Augustine himself, 
 quote his words with marked admiration, and St. 
 Jerome appeals to him as " our Seneca." The 
 Council of Trent go further still, and quote him as 
 though he were an acknowledged Father of the 
 Church. For many centuries there were some who 
 accepted as genuine the spurious letters supposed to 
 have been interchanged between Seneca and St. 
 Paul, in which Seneca is made to express a wish to 
 hold among the Pagans the same beneficial position 
 which St. Paul held in the Christian world. The 
 possibility of such an intercourse, the nature and 
 
SENECA. 
 
 extent of such supposed obligations, will come under 
 our consideration hereafter. All that I here desire to 
 say is, that in considering the life of Seneca we art 
 not only dealing with a life which was rich in 
 memorable incidents, and which was cast into an age 
 upon which Christianity dawned as a new light in the 
 darkness, but also the life of one who climbed the 
 loftiest peaks of the moral philosophy of Paganism, 
 and who in many respects may be regarded as the 
 Coryphaeus of what has been sometimes called a 
 Natural Religion. 
 
 It is not my purpose to turn aside from the 
 narrative in order to indulge in moral reflections, 
 because such reflections will come with tenfold force 
 if they are naturally suggested to the reader's mind 
 by the circumstances of the biography. But from 
 first to last it will be abundantly obvious to every 
 thoughtful mind that alike the morality and the 
 philosophy of Paganism, as contrasted with the 
 splendour of revealed truth and the holiness of 
 Christian life, are but as moonlight is to sunlight. 
 The Stoical philosophy may be compared to a 
 torch which flings a faint gleam here and there 
 in the dusky recesses of a mighty cavern ; Chris- 
 tianity to the sun pouring into the inmost depths 
 of the same cavern its sevenfold illumination. The 
 torch had a value and brightness of its own, but 
 compared with the dawning of that new glory it 
 appears to be dim and ineffectual, even though its 
 brightness was a real brightness, and had been drawn 
 from the same ethereal source. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS OF SENECA. 
 
 THE exact date of Seneca's birth is uncertain, but 
 it took place in all probability about seven years 
 before the commencement of the Christian era. It 
 will give to his life a touch of deep and solemn 
 interest if we remember that, during all those guilty 
 and stormy scenes amid which his earlier destiny 
 was cast, there lived and taught in Palestine the 
 Son of God, the Saviour of the world. 
 
 The problems which for many years tormented his 
 mind were beginning to find their solution, amid far 
 other scenes, by men whose creed and condition he 
 despised. While Seneca was being guarded by his 
 attendant slave through the crowded and dangerous 
 streets of Rome on his way to school, St. Peter and 
 St. John were fisher-lads by the shores of Genne- 
 sareth; while Seneca was ardently assimilating the 
 doctrine of the stoic Attalus, St. Paul, with no less 
 fervency of soul, sat learning at the feet of Gamaliel ; 
 and long before Seneca had made his way, through 
 paths dizzy and dubious, tc the zenith of his fame, 
 unknown to him that Saviour had been crucified 
 
8 SENECA. 
 
 through whose only merits he and we can ever attain 
 to our final rest. 
 
 Seneca was about two years old when he was 
 carried to Rome in his nurse's arms. Like many 
 other men who have succeeded in attaining eminence, 
 he suffered much from ill health in his early years. 
 He tells us of one serious illness from which he 
 slowly recovered under the affectionate and tender 
 nursing of his mother's sister. All his life long he 
 was subject to attacks of asthma, which, after suffering 
 every form of disease, he says that he considers to 
 be the worst. At one time his personal sufferings 
 weighed so heavily on his spirits that nothing save a 
 regard for his father's wishes prevented him from 
 suicide ; and later in life he was only withheld from 
 seeking the deliverance of death by the tender affection 
 of his wife Paulina. He might have used with little 
 alteration the words of Pope, that his various studies 
 but served to help him 
 
 " Through this long disease, my life" 
 
 The recovery from this tedious illness is the only 
 allusion which Seneca has made to the circumstances 
 of his childhood. The ancient writers, even the 
 ancient poets, but rarely refer, even in the most cur- 
 sory manner, to their early years. The cause of this 
 reticence offers a curious problem for our inquiry, but 
 the fact is indisputable. Whereas there is scarcely a 
 single modern poet who has not lingered with undis- 
 guised feelings of happiness over the gentle memo- 
 ries of his childhood, not one of the ancient poets 
 
HIS FAMILl AND EARLY YEARS. g 
 
 has systematically touched upon the theme at all. 
 From Lydgate down to Tennyson, it would be easy 
 to quote from our English poets a continuous line of 
 lyric songs on the subject of boyish years. How to 
 the young child the fir-trees seemed to touch the sky, 
 how his heart leaped up at the sight of the rainbow, 
 how he sat at his mother's feet and pricked into 
 paper the tissued flowers of her dress, how he chased 
 the bright butterfly, or in his tenderness feared to 
 brush even the dust from off its wings, how he learnt 
 sweet lessons and said innocent prayers at his father's 
 knee : trifles like these, yet trifles which have been 
 rendered noble and beautiful by a loving imagination, 
 have been narrated over and over again in the songs 
 of our poets. The lovely lines of Hemy Vaughan 
 might be taken as a type of thousands more : 
 
 " Happy those early days, when I 
 Shined in my Angel infancy. 
 Before I understood this place 
 Appointed for my second race, 
 Or taught my soul to fancy aught 
 But a white celestial thought ; 
 
 '*' 
 
 Before I taught my tongue to wound 
 My conscience with a sinful sound ; 
 Or had the black art to dispense 
 A several sin, to every sense ; 
 But felt through all this fleshly dress, 
 Bright shoots of everlastingness. " 
 
 The memory of every student of English poetr> 
 will furnish countless parallels to thoughts like these. 
 How is it that no similar poem could be quoted from 
 the whole range of ancient literature ? How is it 
 
io SENECA. 
 
 that to the Greek and Roman poets that morning of 
 life, which should have been so filled with " natural 
 blessedness," seems to have been a blank ? How is it 
 that writers so voluminous, so domestic, so affectionate 
 as Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, do not make so much 
 as a single allusion to the existence of their own 
 mothers ? 
 
 To answer this question fully would be to write an 
 entire essay on the difference between ancient and 
 modern life, and would carry me far away from my 
 immediate subject.* But I may say generally, that 
 the explanation rests in the fact that in all probability 
 childhood among the ancients was a disregarded, and 
 in most cases a far less happy, period than it is with 
 us. The birth of a child in the house of a Greek or 
 a Roman was not necessarily a subject for rejoicing. 
 If the father, when the child was first shown to him, 
 stooped down and took it in his arms, it was received 
 as a member of the family ; if he left it unnoticed, 
 then it was doomed to death, and was exposed in 
 some lonely or barren place to the mercy of the wild 
 beasts, or of the first passer-by. And even if a child 
 escaped this fate, yet for the first seven or eight years 
 of life he was kept in the gynaeceum, or women's 
 apartments, and rarely or never saw his father's face. 
 No halo of romance or poetry was shed over those 
 early years, Until the child was full grown the abso- 
 lute power of life or death rested in his father's 
 
 * See, however, the same question treated from a somewhat different 
 point of view by M. Nisard, in his charming Etudes sur les Pottes de la 
 Decadence, ii. 17, sqq. 
 
HIS FAMIL Y AND EARLY YEARS. n 
 
 hands ; he had no freedom, and met with little notice. 
 For individual life the ancients had a very slight 
 regard; there was nothing autobiographic or intro- 
 spective in their temperament. With them public 
 life, the life of the State, was everything; domestic 
 life, the life of the individual, occupied but a small 
 share of their consideration. All the innocent pleasures 
 of infancy, the joys of the hearth, the charm of the 
 domestic circle, the flow and sparkle of childish 
 gaiety, were by them but little appreciated. The 
 years before manhood were years of prospect, and in 
 most cases they offered but little - to make them 
 worth the retrospect. It is a mark of the more 
 modern character which stamps the writings of 
 Seneca, as compared with earlier authors, that he 
 addresses his mother in terms of the deepest affec- 
 tion, and cannot speak of his darling little son except 
 in a voice that seems to break with tears. 
 
 Let us add another curious consideration. The 
 growth of the personal character, the reminiscences 
 of a life advancing into perfect consciousness, are 
 largely moulded by the gradual recognition of moral 
 laws, by the sense of mystery evolved in the inevi- 
 table struggle between duty and pleasure, between 
 the desire to do right and the temptation to do 
 wrong. But among the ancients the conception of 
 morality was so wholly different from ours, theit 
 notions of moral obligation were, in the immense 
 majority of cases, so much less stringent and so 
 much less important, they had so faint a disapproval 
 for sins which we condemn, and so weak an indigna- 
 
(2 SENECA. 
 
 tion against vices which we abhor, that in their 
 early years we can hardly suppose them to have 
 often fathomed those " abysmal deeps of personality/ 1 
 the recognition of which is a necessary element of 
 marked individual growth. 
 
 We have, therefore, no materials for forming any 
 vivid picture of Seneca's childhood ; but, from what 
 we gather about the circumstances and the character 
 of his family, we should suppose that he was ex- 
 ceptionally fortunate. The Senecas were wealthy ; 
 they held a good position in society ; they were a 
 family of cultivated taste, of literary pursuits, of high 
 character, and of amiable dispositions. Their wealth 
 raised them above the necessity of those mean cares 
 and degrading shifts to eke out a scanty livelihood 
 which mark the career of other literary men who 
 were their contemporaries. Their rank and culture 
 secured them the intimacy of all who were best worth 
 knowing in Roman circles ; and the general dignity 
 and morality which marked their lives would free 
 them from all likelihood of being thrown into close 
 intercourse with that numerous class of luxurious 
 epicureans, whose unblushing and unbounded vice 
 gave an infamous notoriety to the capital of the 
 world. 
 
 Of Marcus Annaeus Seneca, the father of our 
 philosopher, we know few personal particulars, except 
 that he was a professional rhetorician, who drew up 
 for the use of his sons and pupils a number of 
 oratorical exercises, which have come down to us 
 under the names of Suasoria and Controversies. 
 
HIS FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS. 13 
 
 They are a series of declamatory arguments on both 
 sides, respecting a number of historical or purely 
 imaginary subjects ; and it would be impossible to 
 conceive any reading more utterly unprofitable. But 
 the elder Seneca was steeped to the lips in an 
 artificial rhetoric ; and these highly elaborated argu- 
 ments, invented in order to sharpen the faculties for 
 purposes of declamation and debate, were probably 
 due partly to his note-book and partly to his memory. 
 His memory was so prodigious that after hearing two 
 thousand words he could repeat them again in the 
 same order. Few of those who have possessed such 
 extraordinary powers of memory have been men of 
 first-rate talent, and the elder Seneca was no ex- 
 ception. But if his memory did not improve his 
 original genius, it must at any rate have made him a 
 very agreeable member of society, and have furnished 
 him with an abundant store of personal and political 
 anecdotes. In short, Marcus Seneca was a well-to-do, 
 intelligent man of the world, with plenty of Common 
 sense, with a turn for public speaking, with a profound 
 dislike and contempt for anything which he con- 
 sidered philosophical or fantastic, and with a keen 
 eye to the main advantage. 
 
 His wife H el via, if we may trust the panegyric of 
 her son, was on the other hand a far less common- 
 place character. But for her husband's dislike to 
 learning and philosophy she would have become a 
 proficient in both, and in a short period of study she 
 had made a considerable advance. Yet her intellect 
 was less remarkable than the nobility and sweetness 
 
14 SENECA. 
 
 of her mind ; other mothers loved their sons because 
 their own ambition was gratified by their honours, 
 and their feminine wants supplied by their riches ; but 
 Helvia loved her sons for their own sakes, treated 
 them with liberal generosity, but refused to reap any 
 personal benefit from their wealth, managed their 
 patrimonies with disinterested zeal, and spent her 
 own money to bear the expenses of their political 
 career. She rose superior to the foibles and vices of 
 her time. Immodesty, the plague-spot of her age, 
 had never infected her pure life. Gems and pearls 
 had little charm for her. She was never ashamed of 
 her children, as though their presence betrayed her 
 own advancing age. " You never stained your face," 
 says her son, when writing to console her in his exile, 
 " with walnut-juice or rouge ; you never delighted in 
 dresses indelicately low ; your single ornament was a 
 loveliness which no age could destroy; your special 
 glory was a conspicuous chastity." We may well say 
 with Mr. Tennyson 
 
 " Happy he 
 
 With such a mother ! faith in womankind 
 Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
 Comes easy to him, and, though he trip and fall, 
 He shall not blind his soul with clay." 
 
 Nor was his mother Helvia the only high-minded 
 lady in whose society the boyhood of Seneca was 
 spent. Her sister, whose name is unknown, that aunt 
 who had so tenderly protected the delicate boy, and 
 nursed him through the sickness of his infancy, seems 
 
HIS FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS. 15 
 
 to have inspired ftim with an affection of unusual 
 warmth. He tells us how, when her husband was 
 Prefect of Egypt, so far was she from acting as was 
 usual with the wives of provincial governors, that she 
 was as much respected and beloved as they were for 
 the most part execrated and shunned. So serious 
 was the evil caused by these ladies, so intolerable was 
 their cruel rapacity, that it had been seriously debated 
 in the Senate whether they should ever be allowed 
 to accompany their husbands. Not so with Helvia's 
 sister. She was never seen in public ; she allowed no 
 provincial to visit her house ; she begged no favour 
 for herself, and suffered none to be begged from her. 
 The province not only praised her, but, what was still 
 more to her credit, barely knew anything about her, and 
 longed in vain for another lady who should imitate her 
 virtue and self-control. Egypt was the head-quarters 
 of biting and loquacious calumny, yet even Egypt 
 never breathed a word against the sanctity of her life. 
 And when during their homeward voyage her husband 
 died, in spite of danger and tempest and the deeply- 
 rooted superstition which considered it perilous to sail 
 with a corpse on board, not even the imminent peril 
 of shipwreck could drive her to separate herself from 
 her husband's body until she had provided for its safe 
 and honourable sepulture. These are the traits of a 
 good and heroic woman ; and that she reciprocated 
 the regard which makes her nephew so emphatic in 
 her praise may be conjectured from the fact that, when 
 he made his ctibut as a candidate for the honours of 
 the State, she emerged from her habitual seclusion, 
 
 c2 
 
16 SENECA. 
 
 laid aside for a time her matronly reserve, and, in order 
 to assist him in his canvass, faced for his sake the 
 rustic impertinence and ambitious turbulence of the 
 crowds who thronged the Forum and streets of Rome. 
 
 Two brothers, very different from each other in 
 their habits and character, completed the family 
 circle, Marcus Annaeus Novatus and Lucius Annaeus 
 Mela, of whom the former was older, the latter 
 younger, than their more famous brother. 
 
 Marcus Annaeus Novatus is known to history 
 under the name of Junius Gallio, which he took 
 when adopted by the orator of that name, who was 
 a. friend of his father. He is none other than the 
 Gallio of the Acts, the Proconsul of Achaia, whose 
 name has passed current among Christians as a pro- 
 verb of complacent indifference.* 
 
 The scene, however, in which Scripture gives us a 
 glimpse of him has been much misunderstood, and to 
 talk of him as " careless Gallio," or to apply the ex- 
 pression that " he cared for none of these things " 
 to indifference in religious matters, is entirely to 
 misapply the spirit of the narrative. What really 
 happened was this. The Jews, indignant at the suc- 
 cess of Paul's preaching, dragged him before the 
 tribunal of Gallio, and accused him of introducing 
 illegal modes of worship When the Apostle was 
 about to defend himself, Gallio contemptuously cut 
 him short by saying to the Jews, " If in truth there 
 were in question any act of injustice or wicked mis- 
 conduct, I should naturally have tolerated your com- 
 
 * Acts xxv. 19. 
 
HIS FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS. i7 
 
 plaint. But if this is some verbal inquiry about 
 mere technical matters of your law, look after it 
 yourselves. I do not choose to be a judge of such 
 matters." With these words he drove them from 
 his judgment-seat with exactly the same fine Ro- 
 man contempt for the Jews and their religious 
 affairs as was subsequently expressed by Festus to 
 the sceptical Agrippa, and as had been expressed 
 previously by Pontius Pilate* to the tumultuous 
 Pharisees. Exulting at this discomfiture of the 
 hated Jews, and apparently siding with Paul, the 
 Greeks then went in a body, seized Sosthem s, the 
 leader of the Jewish synagogue, and beat him in 
 full view of the Proconsul seated on his triounal. 
 This was the event at which Gallic looked on with 
 such imperturbable disdain. What could it possibly 
 matter to him, the great Proconsul, whether the 
 Greeks beat a poor wretch of a Jew or not ? So 
 long as they did not make a riot, or give him any 
 further trouble about the matter, they might beat 
 Sosthenes or any number of Jews black and blue 
 if it pleased them, for all he was likely to care. 
 
 What a vivid glimpse do we here obtain, from 
 the graphic picture of an eye-witness, of the daily 
 
 * Matt, xxvii. 24, " See ye to it." Cf. Acts xiv. 15, " L jok ye to it.' 1 
 Toleration existed in the Roman Empire, and the magistrates often 
 interfered to protect the Jews from massacre ; but they absolutely and 
 persistently refused to trouble themselves with any attempt to under- 
 stand their doctrines or enter into their disputes. The tradition that 
 Gallio sent some of St. Paul's writings to his brother Seneca is utterly 
 absurd ; and indeed at this time (A. D. 54), St. Paul had written nothing 
 except the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. (See Conybcaro ard 
 Howson, St. Paul, vol. i. ch. xii. ; Aubertin, Sentque et St Paul.} 
 
i8 SENECA. 
 
 life in an ancient provincial forum ; how completely 
 do we seem to catch sight for a moment of that 
 habitual expression of contempt which curled the 
 thin lips of a Roman aristocrat in the presence of 
 subject nations, and especially of Jews ! If Seneca 
 had come across any of the Alexandrian Jews in 
 his Egyptian travels, the only impression left on his 
 mind was that expressed by Tacitus, Juvenal, and 
 Suetonius, who never mention the Jews without ex- 
 ecration. In a passage, quoted by St. Augustine 
 \De Ctvit. Dei, vi. n) from his lost book on Super- 
 stitions, Seneca speaks of the multitude of their pro- 
 selytes, and calls them "gens sceleratissima," " a 
 most criminal race." It has been often conjec- 
 tured it has even been seriously believed that 
 Seneca had personal intercourse with St. Paul and 
 learnt from him some lessons of Christianity. The 
 scene on which we have just been gazing will show 
 us the utter unlikelihood of such a supposition. Pro- 
 bably the nearest opportunity which ever occurred to 
 bring the Christian Apostle into intellectual contact 
 with the Roman philosopher was this occasion, when 
 St. Paul was dragged as a prisoner into the presence 
 of Seneca's elder brother. The utter contempt and 
 indifference with which he was treated, the manner 
 in which he was summarily cut short before he could 
 even open his lips in his own defence, will give us 
 a just estimate of the manner in which Seneca would 
 have been likely to regard St. Paul. It is highly 
 improbable that Gallio ever retained the slightest im- 
 pression or memory r f so every-day a circumstance 
 
HIS FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS. K 
 
 as this, by which alone he is known to the world. It 
 is possible that he had not even heard the mere name 
 of Pa-ul, and that, if he ever thought of him at all, it 
 was only as a miserable, ragged, fanatical Jew, of dim 
 eyes and diminutive stature, who had once wished to 
 inflict upon him an harangue, and who had once come 
 for a few moments " betwixt the wind and his no- 
 bility." He would indeed have been unutterably 
 amazed if any one had whispered to him that well 
 nigh the sole circumstance which would entitle him 
 to be remembered by posterity, and the sole event 
 of his life by which he would be at all generally 
 known, was that momentary and accidental relation 
 to his despised prisoner. 
 
 But Novatus or, to give him his adopted name 
 Gallio presented to his brother Seneca, and to the 
 rest of the world, a very different aspect from that 
 under which we are wont to think of him. By them 
 he was regarded as an illustrious declaimer, in an age 
 when declamation was the most valued of all accom- 
 plishments. It was true that there was a sort of 
 " tinkle," a certain falsetto tone in his style, which 
 offended men of robust and severe taste ; but this 
 meretricious resonance of style was a matter of envy 
 and admiration when affectation was the rage, and 
 when the times were too enervated and too corrupt 
 for the manly conciseness and concentrated force of 
 an eloquence dictated by liberty and by passion. 
 He seems to have acquired both among his friends 
 and among strangers the epithet of " dulcis," " the 
 charming or fascinating Gallic:" "This is more," 
 s 
 
20 SENECA. 
 
 says the poet Statius, " than to have given Seneca tc 
 the world, and to have begotten the sweet Gallio.'' 
 Seneca's portrait of him is singularly faultless. He 
 says that no one was so gentle to any one as Gallio 
 was to every one ; that his charm of manner won- 
 over even the people whom mere chance threw in his 
 way, and that such was the force of his natural good- 
 ness that no one suspected his behaviour, as though 
 it were due to art or simulation. Speaking of flattery, 
 in his fourth book of Natural Questions he says to 
 his friend Lucilius, " I used to say to you that my 
 brother Gallio (whom every one loves a little, even 
 people who cannot love him more) was wholly ignorant 
 of other vices, but even detested this. You might try 
 him in any direction. You began to praise his intel- 
 lectan intellect of the highest and worthiest kind, 
 . . . and he walked away ! You began to praise his 
 moderation ; he instantly cut short your first words. 
 You began to express admiration for his blandness 
 and natural suavity of manner, . . . yet even here he 
 resisted your compliments ; and if you were led to 
 exclaim that you had found a man who could not be 
 overcome by those insidious attacks which every one 
 else admits, and hoped that he would at least tolerate 
 this compliment because of its truth, even on this 
 ground he would resist your flattery ; not as though 
 you had been awkward, or as though he suspected 
 that you were jesting with him, or had some secret 
 end in view, but simply because he had a horror of 
 every form of adulation." We can easily imagine that 
 Gallio was Seneca's favourite brother, and we are not 
 
HIS FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS. 21 
 
 surprised to find that the philosopher dedicates to 
 him his three books on Anger, and his charming 
 little treatise " On a Happy Life." 
 
 Of the third brother, L. Annaeus Mela, we have 
 fewer notices ; but, from what we know, we should 
 conjecture that his character no less than his reputa- 
 tion was inferior to that of his brothers ; yet he seems 
 to have been the favourite of his father, who distinct- 
 ly asserts that his intellect was capable of every ex- 
 cellence, and superior to that of his brothers.* This, 
 however, may have been because Mela, " longing 
 only to long for nothing," was content with his fath- 
 er's rank, and devoted himself wholly to the study of 
 eloquence. Instead of entering into public life, he 
 deliberately withdrew himself from all civil duties, 
 and devoted himself to tranquillity and ease. Appa- 
 rently he preferred to be a farmer-general (publtca- 
 nus)and not a consul. His chief fame rests in the fact 
 that he was father of Lucan , the poet of the decadence 
 or declining literature of Rome. The only anecdote 
 about him which has come down to us is one that sets 
 his avarice in a very unfavorable light. When his 
 famous son, the unhappy poet, had forfeited his life, 
 as well as covered himself with infamy by denoun- 
 cing his own mother Atilla in the conspiracy of Piso, 
 Mela, instead of being overwhelmed with shame and 
 agony, immediately began to collect with indecent 
 avidity his son's debts, as though to show Nero that 
 he felt no great sorrow for his bereavement. But this 
 was not enough for Nero's malice ; he told Mela that 
 
 * M. Ann. Senec. Controv. ii. Prcef. 
 
22 SENECA. 
 
 he must follow his son, and Mela was forced to obev 
 the order, and to die. 
 
 Doubtless Helvia, if she survived her sons and her 
 grandsons, must have bitterly rued the day when, 
 with her husband and her young children, she left the 
 quiet retreat of a life in Cordova. Each of the three 
 boys grew up to a man of genius, and each of them 
 grew up to stain his memory with deeds that had 
 been better left undone, and to die violent deaths by 
 their own hands or by a tyrant's will. Mela died as 
 we have seen ; his son Lucan and his brother Seneca 
 were driven to death by the cruel orders of Nero. 
 Gallio, after stooping to panic-stricken supplications 
 for his own preservation, died ultimately by suicide. 
 It was a shameful and miserable end for them all, 
 but it was due partly to their own errors, partly to 
 the hard necessity of the degraded times in which 
 they lived. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF SENECA. 
 
 FOR a reason which I have already indicated I 
 mean the habitual retience of the ancient writers 
 respecting the period of their boyhood it is not 
 easy to form a very vivid conception of the kind 
 of education given to a Roman boy of good family 
 up to the age of fifteen, when he laid aside the 
 golden amulet and embroidered toga to assume a 
 more independent mode of life. 
 
 A few facts, however, we can gather from the scat- 
 tered allusions of the poets Horace, Juvenal, Martial, 
 and Persius. From these we learn that the school- 
 masters were for the most part underpaid and de- 
 spised,* while at the same time an erudition alike 
 minute and useless was rigidly demanded of them. 
 We learn also that they were exceedingly severe in 
 the infliction of corporal punishment ; Orbilius, the 
 schoolmaster of Horace, appears to have been a per- 
 fect Dr. Busby, and the poet Martial records with 
 
 * ^or the miseries of the literary class, and especially of school. 
 n:asters, see Juv. Sat. vii. 
 
 D 23 
 
SENECA. 
 
 indignation the barbarities of chastisement which he 
 daily witnessed. 
 
 The things taught were chiefly arithmetic, grammar 
 both Greek and Latin reading, and repetition ol 
 the chief Latin poets. There was also a good deal 
 of recitation and of theme-writing on all kinds of trite 
 historical subjects. The arithmetic seems to have 
 been mainly of a very simple and severely practical 
 kind, especially the computation of interest and 
 compound interest ; and the philology generally, 
 both grammar and criticism, was singularly narrow, 
 uninteresting, and useless. Of what conceivable ad- 
 vantage can it have been to any human being to 
 know the name of the mother of Hecuba, of the 
 nurse of Anchises, of the stepmother of Anchemolus, 
 the number of years Acestes lived, and how many 
 casks of wine the Sicilians gave to the Phrygians ? 
 Yet these were the despicable minHtia which every 
 schoolmaster was then expected to have at his fingers' 
 ends, and every boy-scholar to learn at the point of 
 the ferule trash which was only fit to be unlearned 
 the moment it was known. 
 
 For this kind of verbal criticism and fantastic 
 archaeology, Seneca, who had probably gone through 
 it all, expresses a profound and very rational contempt. 
 In a rather amusing passage* he contrasts the kind of 
 use which would be made of a Virgil lesson by a phi- 
 losopher and a grammarian. Coming to the lines, 
 
 *' Each happiest clay for mortals speeds the first, 
 Then crowds disease behind and age accurst," 
 
 * Ep. cviii. 
 
HIS EDUCATION. 
 
 the philosopher will point out why and in what sense 
 the early days of life are the best days, and how 
 rapidly the evil days succeed them, and consequently 
 how infinitely important it is to use well the golden 
 dawn of our being. But the verbal critic will content 
 himself with the remark that Virgil always uses fugio 
 of the flight of time, and always joins " old age " with 
 " disease," and consequently that these are tags to be 
 remembered, and plagiarised hereafter in the pupils' 
 "original composition." Similarly, if the book in 
 hand be Cicero's treatise " On the Commonwealth," 
 instead of entering into great political questions, our 
 grammarian will note that one of the Roman kings 
 had no father (to speak of), and another no mother ; 
 that dictators used formerly to be called " masters of 
 the people ; " that Romulus perished during an 
 eclipse ; that the old form of reipsa was reapse, and 
 of se ipse was sepse ; that the starting-point in the 
 circus which is now called creta, or "chalk," used to 
 be called calx, or career; that in the time of 
 Ennius opera meant not only " work," but also 
 " assistance," and so on, and so on. Is this true 
 education ? or rather, should our great aim ever be to 
 translate noble precepts into daily action ? " Teach 
 me," he says, " to despise pleasure and glory ; after- 
 wards you shall teach me to disentangle difficulties, to 
 distinguish ambiguities, to see through obscurities ; 
 noiL teach me what is necessary." Considering the 
 condition of much which in modern times passes 
 under the name of " education," we may possibly find 
 that the hints of Seneca are not yet wholly obsolete. 
 
26 SF.NtfCA. 
 
 What kind of schoolmaster taught the little Seneca 
 when under the care of the slave who was called 
 padagogus, or " boy-leader " (whence our word 
 pedagogue], he daily went with his brothers to school 
 through the streets of Rome, we do not know. He 
 may have been a severe Orbilius, or he may have 
 been one of those noble-minded tutors whose ideal 
 portraiture is drawn in such beautiful colours by the 
 learned and amiable Quintilian. Seneca has not 
 alluded to any one who taught him during his early 
 days. The only schoolfellow whom he mentions by 
 name in his voluminous writings is a certain Claranus, 
 a deformed boy, whom, after leaving school, Seneca 
 never met again until they were both old men, but 
 of whom he speaks with great admiration. In spite 
 of his hump-back, Claranus appeared even beautiful 
 in the eyes of those who knew him well, because his 
 virtue and good sense left a stronger impression than 
 his deformity, and "his body was adorned by the 
 beauty of his soul," 
 
 It was not until mere school-lessons were finished 
 that a boy began seriously to enter upon the studies of 
 eloquence and philosophy, which therefore furnish some 
 analogy to what we should call "a university educa- 
 tion." Gallio and Mela, Seneca's elder and younger 
 brothers, devoted themselves heart and soul to the 
 theory and practice of eloquence ; Seneca made the 
 rarer and the wiser choice in giving his entire en- 
 thusiasm to the study of philosophy. 
 
 I say the wiser choice, because eloquence is not a 
 thing for which one can give a receipt as one might 
 
HIS EDUCATION. 2? 
 
 give a receipt for making eau-de-Cologne. Eloquence 
 is the noble, the harmonious, the passionate expression 
 of truths profoundly realized, or of emotions intensely 
 felt. It is a flame which cannot be kindled by 
 artificial means. Rhetoric may be taught if any one 
 thinks it worth learning; but eloquence is a gift as 
 innate as the genius from which it springs. " Cujus 
 vitafulgur, ejus verba tonitrua" " if a man's life be 
 lightning, his words will,be thunders." But the kind 
 of oratory to be obtained by a constant practice of 
 declamation such as that which occupied the schools 
 of the Rhetors will be a very artificial lightning and a 
 very imitated thunder not the artillery of heaven, 
 but the Chinese fire and rolled bladders of the stage. 
 Nothing could be more false, more hollow, more per- 
 nicious than the perpetual attempt to drill numerous 
 classes of youths into a reproduction of the mere 
 manner of the ancient orators. An age of unlimited 
 declamation, an age of incessant talk, is a hotbed in 
 which real depth and nobility of feeling runs miserably 
 to seed. Style is never worse than it is in ages which 
 employ themselves in teaching little else. Such teach- 
 ing produces an emptiness of thought concealed under 
 a plethora of words. This age of countless oratorical 
 masters was emphatically the period of decadence 
 and decay. There is a hollow ring about it, a falsetto 
 tone in its voice ; a fatiguing literary grimace in the 
 manner of its authors. Even its writers of genius were 
 injured and corrupted by the prevailing mode. They 
 can say nothing simply ; they are always in contor- 
 tions. Their very indignation and bitterness of heart, 
 
 D2 
 
28 SENECA. 
 
 genuine as it is, assumes a theatrical form of ex 
 pression.* They abound in unrealities : their whok 
 manner is defaced with would-be cleverness, with 
 antitheses, epigrams, paradoxes, forced expressions, 
 figures and tricks of speech, straining after originality 
 and profundity when they are merely repeating 
 v^ery commonplace remarks. What else could one 
 expect in an age of salaried declaimers, educated 
 in a false atmosphere of superficial talk, for ever 
 haranguing and perorating about great passions 
 which they had never felt, and great deeds which they 
 would have been the last to imitate ? After per- 
 petually immolating the Tarquins and the Pisis- 
 tratids in inflated grandiloquence, they would go to lick 
 the dust off a tyrant's shoes. How could eloquence 
 survive when the magnanimity and freedom which 
 inspired it were dead, and when the men and books 
 which professed to teach it were filled with despicable 
 directions about the exact position in which the 
 orator was to use his hands, and as to whether it was 
 a good thing or not for him to slap his forehead 
 and disarrange his hair? 
 
 The philosophic teaching which even from boyhood 
 exercised a powerful fascination on the eager soul of 
 Seneca was at least something better than this ; and 
 more than one of his philosophic teachers succeeded in 
 winning his warm affection, and in moulding the prin- 
 ciples and habits of his life. Two of them he mentions 
 
 * "Juvenal, &eve dans les cris de 1'ecole 
 
 Poussa jusqu'a 1'exces sa mordante hyperb tfe." 
 
 BOH.EAU. 
 
HIS ED UCA TJON. 
 
 with special regard, namely, Sotion the Pythagorean, 
 and Attalus the Stoic. He also heard the lectures 
 of the fluent and musical Fabianus Papirius, but 
 seems to have owed, less to him than to his other 
 teachers. 
 
 Sotion had embraced the views of Pythagoras 
 respecting the transmigration of souls, a doctrine 
 which made the eating of animal food little better 
 than cannibalism or parricide. But, even if any of his 
 followers rejected this view, Sotion would still main- 
 tain that the eating of animals, if not an impiety, was 
 at least a cruelty and a waste. " What hardships does 
 my advice inflict on you ? " he used to ask. " I do 
 but deprive you of the food of vultures and lions." 
 The ardent boy for at this time he could not have 
 been more than seventeen years old was so con- 
 vinced by these considerations that he became a 
 vegetarian. At first the abstinence from meat was 
 painful, but after a year he tells us (and many vege- 
 tarians will confirm his experience) it was not only 
 easy but delightful ; and he used to believe, though 
 he would not assert it as a fact, that it made his 
 intellect more keen and active. He only ceased to 
 be a vegetarian in obedience to the remonstrance of 
 his unphilosophical father, who would have easily 
 tolerated what he regarded as a mere vagary had it 
 not involved the danger of giving rise to a calumny. 
 For about this time Tiberius banished from Rome all 
 the followers of strange and foreign religions ; and, as 
 fasting was one of the rites practised in some of them, 
 Seneca^s father thought that perhaps his son might 
 
30 SENECA. 
 
 incur, by abstaining from meat, the horrible suspicion 
 of being a Christian or a Jew ! 
 
 Another Pythagorean philosoper whom he admired 
 and whom he quotes was Sextius, from whom he 
 learnt the admirable practice of daily self-examina- 
 tion : " When the day was over, and he betook him- 
 self to his nightly rest, he used to ask himself, What 
 evil have you cured to-day ? What vice have you 
 resisted ? In what particular have you improved ? " 
 " I too adopt this custom," says Seneca, in his book 
 on Anger, " and I daily plead my cause before myself, 
 when the light has been taken away, and my wife, 
 who is now aware of my habit, has become silent ; I 
 carefully consider in my heart the entire day, and 
 take a deliberate estimate of my deeds and words." 
 
 It was however the Stoic Attalus who seems to 
 have had the main share in the instruction of Seneca ; 
 and his teaching did not involve any practical results 
 which the elder Seneca considered objectionable. 
 He tells us how he used to haunt the school of the 
 eloquent philosopher, being the first to enter and the 
 last to leave it. "When I heard him declaiming/' 
 he says, "against vice, and error, and the ills of life, 
 I often felt compassion for the human race, and 
 believed my teacher to be exalted above the ordinary 
 stature of mankind. In Stoic fashion he used to call 
 himself a king ; but to me his sovereignty seemed 
 more than royal, seeing that it was in his power to 
 pass his judgments on kings themselves. When he 
 began to set forth the praises of poverty, and to 
 show how heavy and superfluous was the burden 
 
HIS EDUCA TION. 31 
 
 of all that exceeded the ordinary wants of life, I 
 often longed to leave school a poor man. When 
 he began to reprehend our pleasures, to praise a 
 chaste body, a moderate table, and a mind pure 
 not from all unlawful but even from all superfluous 
 pleasures, it was my delight to set strict limits 
 to all voracity and gluttony. And these precepts, 
 my Lucilius, have left some permanent results ; for 
 I embraced them with impetuous eagerness, and 
 afterwards, when I entered upon a political career, 
 I retained a few of my good beginnings. In con- 
 sequence of them, I have all my life long renounced 
 eating oysters and mushrooms, which do not satisfy 
 hunger but only sharpen appetite: for this reason 
 I habitually abstain from perfumes, because the 
 sweetest perfume for the body is none at all : for 
 this reason I do without wines and baths. Other 
 habits which I once abandoned have come back 
 to me, but in such a way that I merely substitute 
 moderation for abstinence, which perhaps is a still 
 more difficult task ; since there are some things which 
 it is easier for the mind to cut away altogether than 
 to enjoy in moderation. Attalus used to recommend 
 a hard couch in which the body could not sink ; and, 
 even in my old age, I use one of such a kind that it 
 leaves no impress of the sleeper. I have told you these 
 anecdotes to prove to you what eager impulses our 
 little scholars would have to all that is good, if any 
 one were to exhort them and urge them on. But the 
 harm springs partly from the fault of preceptors, who 
 teach us how to argue, not how to live; and partly 
 
SENECA. 
 
 from the fault of pupils, who bring to their teachers 
 a purpose of training their intellect and not their 
 souls. Thus it is that philosophy has been degraded 
 into mere philology." 
 
 In another lively passage, Seneca brings vividly 
 before us a picture of the various scholars assembled 
 in a school of the philosophers. After observing that 
 philosophy exercises some influence even over those 
 who do not go deeply in it, just as people sitting in a 
 shop of perfumes carry away with them some of the 
 odour, he adds, " Do we not, however, know some who 
 have been among the audience of a philosopher for 
 many years, and have been even entirely uncoloured by 
 his teaching ? Of course I do, even most persistent and 
 continuous hearers ; whom I do not call pupils, but 
 mere passing auditors of philosophers. Some come 
 to hear, not to learn, just as we are brought into a 
 theatre for pleasure's sake, to delight our ears with 
 language, or with the voice, or with plays. You will 
 observe a large portion of the audience to whom 
 the philosopher's school is a mere haunt of their 
 leisure. Their object is not to lay aside any vices 
 there, or to accept any law in accordance with which 
 they may conform their life, but that they may enjoy 
 a mere tickling of their ears. Some, however, even 
 come with tablets in their hands, to catch up not 
 things but words. Some with eager countenances 
 and spirits are kindled by magnificent utterances, and 
 these are charmed by the beauty of the thoughts, not 
 by the sound of empty words ; but the impression is 
 not lasting. Few only have attained the power of 
 
HIS EDUCATION. 33 
 
 carrying home with them the frame of mind into 
 which they had been elevated." 
 
 It was to this small latter class that Seneca 
 belonged. He became a Stoic from very early years. 
 The Stoic philosophers, undoubtedly the noblest and j. 
 purest of ancient sects, received their name from the 
 fact that their founder Zeno had lectured in the 
 Painted Porch or Stoa Paecile of Athens. The 
 influence of these austere and eloquent masters, 
 teaching high lessons of morality and continence, and 
 inspiring their young audience with the glow of their 
 own enthusiasm for virtue, must have been invaluable 
 in that effete and drunken age. Their doctrines were 
 pushed to yet more extravagant lengths by the 
 Cynics, who were so called from a Greek word 
 meaning " dog," from what appeared to the ancients 
 to be the doglike brutality of their manners. Juvenal 
 scornfully remarks, that the Stoics only differed from 
 the Cynics " by a tunic," which the Stoics wore and 
 the Cynics discarded. Seneca never indeed adopted 
 the practices of Cynicism, but he often speaks ad- 
 miringly of the arch-Cynic Diogenes, and repeatedly 
 refers to the Cynic Demetrius, as a man deserving of 
 the very highest esteem. " I take with me every- 
 where," writes he to Lucilius, " that best of men, 
 Demetrius ; and, leaving those who wear purple robes, 
 I talk with him who is half-naked. Why should I not 
 admire him ? I have seen that he has no want. Any 
 one may despise all things, but no one can possess all 
 things. The shortest road to riches lies through 
 contempt of riches. But our Demetrius lives not as 
 
34 SENECA. 
 
 though he despised all things, but as though he 
 simply suffered others to possess them." 
 
 These habits and sentiments throw considerable 
 light on Seneca's character. They show that even 
 from his earliest days he was capable of adopting 
 self-denial as a principle, and that to his latest 
 days he retained many private habits of a simple 
 and honourable character, even when the exigencies 
 of public life had compelled him to modify others. 
 Although he abandoned an unusual abstinence out 
 of respect for his father, we have positive evidence 
 that he resumed in his old age the spare practices 
 which in his enthusiastic youth he had caught from 
 the lessons of high-minded teachers. These facts 
 are surely sufficient to refute at any rate those 
 gross charges against the private character of Seneca, 
 venomously retailed by a jealous Greekling like Dio 
 Cassius, which do not rest on a tittle of evidence, 
 and seem to be due to a mere spirit of envy and 
 calumny. I shall not again allude to these scandals 
 because I utterly disbelieve them. A man who in 
 his " History " could, as Dio Cassius has done, put 
 into the mouth of a Roman senator such insane false- 
 hoods as he has pretended that Fufius Calenus 
 uttered in full senate against Cicero, was evidently 
 actuated by a spirit which disentitles his statements 
 to any credence. Seneca was an inconsistent phi- 
 losopher both in theory and in practice; he fell 
 beyond aH question into serious errors, which deeply 
 compromise his character; but, so far from being a 
 dissipated or luxurious man, there is every reason to 
 
I VI 
 
 Cj 
 N 
 
 HIS EDUCATION. 
 
 believe that in the very midst of wealth and splen- 
 dour, and all the temptations which they involve, 
 he retained alike the simplicity of his habits and 
 the rectitude of his mind. Whatever may have 
 been the almost fabulous value of his five hundred 
 tables of cedar and ivory, they were rarely spread 
 with any more sumptuous entertainment than 
 water, vegetables, and fruit. Whatever may have 
 been the amusements common among his wealthy 
 and noble contemporaries, we know that he found 
 his highest enjoyment in the innocent pleasures of 
 his garden, and took some of his exercise by run- 
 ning races there with a little slave. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 
 
 WE have gleaned from Seneca's own writings what 
 facts we could respecting his early education. But 
 in the life of every man there are influences of a far 
 more real and penetrating character than those which 
 come through the medium of schools or teachers. 
 The spirit of the age, the general tone of thought, the 
 prevalent habits of social intercourse, the political 
 tendencies which were moulding the destiny of the 
 nation, these must have told, more insensibly indeed 
 but more powerfully, on the mind of Seneca than 
 even the lectures of Sotion and of Attalus. And, if 
 we have had reason to fear that there was much 
 which was hollow in the fashionable education, we 
 shall see that the general aspect of the society by 
 which our young philosopher was surrounded from 
 the cradle was yet more injurious and deplorable. 
 
 The darkness is deepest just before the dawn, and 
 never did a grosser darkness or a thicker mist of 
 moral pestilence brood over the surface of Pagan 
 society than at the period when the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness arose with healing in His wings. There have 
 
STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 37 
 
 been many ages when the dense gloom of a heart- 
 less immorality seemed to settle down with unusual 
 weight ; there have been many places where, under 
 the gaslight of an artificial system, vice has seemed 
 to acquire an unusual audacity ; but never probably 
 was there any age or any place where the worst 
 forms of wickedness were practised with a more 
 unblushing effrontery than in the city of Rome under 
 the government of the Caesars. A deeply-seated 
 corruption seemed to have fastened upon the very 
 vitals of the national existence, it is surely a lesson 
 of deep moral significance that just as they became 
 most polished in their luxury they became most vile 
 in their manner of life. Horace had already bewailed 
 that " the age of our fathers, worse than that of 
 our grandsires, has produced us who are yet baser, 
 and who are doomed to give birth to a still more 
 degraded offspring." But fifty years later it seemed, 
 to Juvenal that in his times the very final goal of 
 iniquity had been attained, and he exclaims, in a 
 burst of despair, that " posterity will add nothing to 
 our immorality ; our descendants can but do and 
 desire the same crimes as ourselves." He who would 
 see but for a moment and afar off to what the Gentile 
 world had sunk, at the very period when Christianity 
 began to spread, may form some faint and shuddering 
 conception from the picture of it drawn in the Epistle 
 to the Romans. 
 
 We ought to realize this fact if we would judge of 
 Seneca aright. Let us then glance at the condition 
 of the society in the midst of which he lived. Happily 
 
38 SENECA. 
 
 we can but glance at it. The worst cannot be told 
 Crimes may be spoken of; but things monstrous and 
 inhuman should for ever be concealed. We can but 
 stand at the cavern's mouth, and cast a single ray of 
 light into its dark depths. Were we to enter, our 
 lamp would be quenched by the foul things which 
 would cluster round it. 
 
 In the age of Augustus began that "long slow 
 agony," that melancholy process of a society gra- 
 dually going to pieces under the dissolving influence 
 of its own vices, which lasted almost without inter- 
 ruption till nothing was left for Rome except the fire 
 and sword of barbaric invasion. She saw not only 
 her glories but also her virtues " star by star expire." 
 The old heroism, the old beliefs, the old manliness 
 and simplicity, were dead and gone ; they had been 
 succeeded by prostration and superstition, by luxury 
 and lust. 
 
 "There is the moral of all human tales, 
 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 
 First freedom, and then glory ; when that fails, 
 Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last : 
 And history, with all her volumes vast, 
 Hath but one page ; 'tis better written here 
 Where gorgeous tyranny hath thus amassed 
 All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear, 
 Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask." 
 
 The mere elements of society at Rome during this 
 period were very unpromising. It was a mixture of 
 extremes. There was no middle class. At the head 
 of it was an emperor, often deified in his lifetime, and 
 separated from even the noblest of the senators by 
 
STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 39 
 
 a distance of immeasurable superiority. He was, in 
 the startling language of Gibbon, at once "a priest, 
 an atheist, and a god." * Surrounding his person and 
 forming his court were usually those of the nobility 
 who were the most absolutely degraded by their 
 vices, their flatteries, or their abject subservience. 
 But even these men were not commonly the reposi- 
 tories of political power. The people of the greatest 
 influence were the freedmen of the emperors men 
 who had been slaves, Egyptians and Bithynians who 
 had come to Rome with bored ears and with chalk 
 on their naked feet to show that they were for sale, 
 or who had bawled " sea-urchins all alive " in the Vela- 
 brum or the Saburra who had acquired enormous 
 wealth by means often the most unscrupulous and 
 the most degraded, and whose insolence and base- 
 ness had kept pace with their rise to power. Such 
 a man was the Felix before whom St. Paul was 
 tried, and such was his brother Pallas.f whose golden 
 
 " To the sound 
 
 Of fifes and drums they danced, or in the shade 
 Sung Caesar great and terrible in war, 
 Immortal Caesar ! ' Lo, a god ! a god! 
 He cleaves the yielding skies ! ' Caesar meanwhile 
 Gathers the ocean pebbles, or the gnat 
 Enraged pursues ; or at his lonely meal 
 Starves a wide province ; tastes, dislikes, and flings 
 To dogs and sycophants. ' A god, a god ! ' 
 The flowery shades and shrines obscene return." 
 
 DYER, Ruins of Rome. 
 
 t The pride of this man was such that he never deigned to speak a 
 word in the presence of his own slaves, but only made known his wishes 
 fty signs ! TACITUS. 
 
 E2 
 
40 SENECA. 
 
 statue might have been seen among the house- 
 hold gods of the senator, afterwards the emperor, 
 Vitellius. Another of them might often have 
 been observed parading the streets between two 
 consuls. Imagine an Edward II. endowed with 
 absolute and unquestioned powers of tyranny, 
 imagine some pestilept Piers Gaveston, or Hugh de 
 le Spenser exercising over nobles and people a hideous 
 despotism of the back stairs, and you have some 
 faint picture of the government of Rome under some 
 of the twelve Caesars. What the barber Olivier le 
 Diable was under Louis XI., what Mesdames du 
 Barri and Pompadour were under Louis XV., what 
 the infamous Earl of Somerset was under James 
 I., what George Villiers became under Charles I., 
 will furnish us with a faint analogy of the far more 
 exaggerated and detestable position held by the 
 freedman Glabrio under Domitian, by the actor 
 Tigellinus under Nero, by Pallas and Narcissus under 
 Claudius, by the obscure knight Sejanus under the 
 iron tyranny of the gloomy Tiberius. 
 
 I. It was an age of the most enormous wealth 
 existing side by side with the most abject poverty. 
 Around the splendid palaces wandered hundreds of 
 mendicants, who made of their mendicity a horrible 
 trade, and even went so far as to steal or mutilate 
 infants in order to move compassion by their hideous 
 maladies. This class was increased by the exposure 
 of children, and by that overgrown accumulation of 
 landed property which drove the poor from their native 
 fields. It was increased also by the ambitious attempt 
 
STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 41 
 
 of people whose means were moderate to imitate the 
 enormous display of the numerous millionaires. The 
 great Roman conquests in the East, the plunder of 
 the ancient kingdoms of Antiochus, of Attalus, of 
 Mithridates, had caused a turbid stream of wealth to 
 flow into the sober current of Roman life. One reads 
 with silent astonishment of the sums expended by 
 wealthy Romans on their magnificence or their plea- 
 sures. And as commerce was considered derogatory 
 to rank and position, and was therefore pursued by 
 men who had no character to lose, these overgrown 
 fortunes were often acquired by wretches of the 
 meanest stamp by slaves brought from over the 
 sea, who had to conceal the holes bored in their ears;* 
 or even by malefactors who had to obliterate, by 
 artificial means, the three letters f which had been 
 branded by the executioner on their foreheads. But 
 many of the richest men in Rome, who had not 
 sprung from this convict origin, were fully as well 
 deserving of the same disgraceful stigma. Their 
 houses were built, their coffers were replenished, from 
 the drained resources of 'exhausted provincials. Every 
 young man of active ambition or noble birth, whose 
 resources had been impoverished by debauchery and 
 extravagance, had but to borrow fresh sums in order 
 to give magnificent gladiatorial shows, and then, if 
 
 * This was a common ancient practice; the very words "thrall," 
 "thraldom," are etymologically connected with the roots "thrill/* 
 "trill," "drill." (Compare Exod. xxi. 6; Deut. xv. 17; Plut. Cit. 26; 
 and Juv. Sat. i. 104.) 
 
 t Fur, "thief." (See Martial, ii. 29.) 
 
SENECA. 
 
 he could once obtain an aedileship, and mount to the 
 higher offices of the State, he would in time become 
 the procurator or proconsul of a province, which he 
 might pillage almost at his will. Enter the house 
 of a Felix or a Verres. Those splendid pillars of 
 mottled green marble were dug by the forced labour 
 of Phrygians from the quarries of Synnada ; that 
 embossed silver, those murrhine vases, those jewelled 
 cups, those masterpieces of antique sculpture, have 
 all been torn from the homes or the temples of Sicily 
 or Greece. Countries were pillaged and nations 
 crushed that an Apicius might dissolve pearls * in 
 the wine he drank, or that Lollia Paulina might 
 gleam in a second-best dress of emeralds and pearls 
 which had cost 40,000,000 sesterces, or more than 
 32,ooo/.f -* 
 
 Each of these " gorgeous criminals " lived in the 
 midst of a humble crowd of flatterers, parasites, 
 clients, dependants, and slaves. Among the throng 
 that at early morning jostled each other in the 
 marble atrium were to be found a motley and 
 heterogeneous set of men. Slaves of every age and 
 nation Germans, Egyptians, Gauls, Goths, Syrians, 
 Britons, Moors, pampered and consequential freedmen, 
 impudent confidential servants, greedy buffoons, who 
 lived by making bad jokes at other people's tables ; 
 Dacian gladiators, with whom fighting was a trade ; 
 philosophers, whose chief claim to reputation was the 
 
 * "Dissolved pearls, Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy." BEN 
 
 JONSON. 
 
 t Pliny actually saw her thus arrayed. (Nat. Hist. ix. 35, 36.) 
 
 t ii ' 
 

 STA TE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 43 
 
 length of their beards ; supple Greeklings of the Tar- 
 tuffe species, ready to flatter and lie with consumrmfce 
 skill, and spreading their vile character like a pollu- 
 tion wherever they went : and among all these a 
 number of poor but honest clients, forced quietly to 
 put up with a thousand forms of contumely* and 
 insult, and living in discontented idleness on the 
 sportula or daily largesse which was administered by 
 the grudging liberality of their haughty patrons. The 
 stout old Roman burgher had weii-nigh disappeared ; 
 the sturdy independence, the manly self-reliance of 
 an industrial population were all but unknown. The 
 insolent loungers who bawled in the Forum were 
 often mere stepsons of Italy, who had been dragged 
 thither in chains, the dregs of all nations, which 
 had flowed into Rome as into a common sewer,f 
 bringing with them no heritage except the speciality 
 of their national vices. Their two wants were bread 
 and the shows of the circus ; so long as the sportula of 
 their patrons, the occasional donative of an emperor, 
 and the ambition of political candidates supplied 
 these wants, they lived in contented, abasement, 
 anxious neither for liberty nor for power. 
 
 II. It was an age at once of atheism and super- 
 stition. Strange to say, the two things usually go 
 
 * Few of the many sad pictures in the Satires of Juvenal are more 
 pitiable than that of the wretched "Quirites" struggling at their patrons 1 
 doors for the pittance which formed their daily dole. (Sat. i. 101.) 
 
 t See Juv. Sat. iii. 62. Scipio, on being interrupted by the tnob in 
 the Forum, exclaimed, " Silence, ye stepsons of Italy ! What ! shall 
 I fear these fellows now they are free, whom 1 myself have brought 
 in chains to Rome?" (See Cic. DC Orct. ii. 6l.) 
 
44 SENECA. 
 
 together. Just as Philippe Egalite", Duke of Orleans, 
 disbelieved in God, and yet tried to conjecture his 
 fate from the inspection of coffee-grounds at the 
 bottom of a cup, just as Louis XI. shrank from no 
 perjury and no crime, and yet retained a profound 
 reverence for a little leaden image which he carried in 
 his cap, so the Romans under the Empire sneered 
 at all the whole crowd of gods and goddesses 
 whom their fathers had worshipped, but gave an im- 
 plicit credence to sorcerers, astrologers, spirit-rappers, 
 exorcists, and every species of impostor and quack. 
 The ceremonies of religion were performed with 
 ritualistic splendour, but all belief in religion was 
 dead and gone. "That there are such things as 
 ghosts and subterranean realms not even boys believe," 
 says Juvenal, " except those who are still too young 
 to pay a farthing for a bath."* Nothing can exceed 
 the cool impertinence with which the poet Martial 
 prefers the favour of Domitian to that of the great 
 Jupiter of the Capitol. Seneca, in his lost book 
 "Against Superstitions," t openly sneered at the old 
 mythological legends of gods married and gods un- 
 married, and at the gods Panic and Paleness, and at 
 Cloacina, the goddess of sewers, and at other deities 
 whose cruelty and licence would have been infamous 
 even in mankind. And yet the priests, and Salii, and 
 Flamens, and Augurs continued to fulfil their solemn 
 functions, and the highest title of the Emperor himself 
 
 * Juv. Sat. ii. 149. Cf. Sen. Ep. xxiv. " Nemo tarn puer est ut 
 Cerberum timeat, et tenebras," &c. 
 t Fragm. xxxiv. 
 
STA TE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 45 
 
 was that of Pontifex Maximus, or Chief Priest, which 
 he claimed as the recognised head of the national 
 religion. " The common worship was regarded," says 
 Gibbon, " by the people as equally true, by the philo- 
 sophers as equally false, and by the magistrates as 
 equally useful." And this famous remark is little more 
 than a translation from Seneca, who, after exposing 
 the futility of the popular beliefs, adds : " And yet 
 the wise man will observe them all, not as pleasing to 
 the gods, but as commanded by the laws. We shall 
 so adore all that ignoble crowd of gods which long 
 superstition has heaped together in a long period of 
 years, as to remember that their worship has more to 
 do with custom than with reality." " Because he was 
 an illustrious senator of the Roman people," observes 
 St. Augustine, who has preserved for us this fragment, 
 " he worshipped what he blamed, he did what he 
 refuted, he adored that with which he found fault." 
 Could anything be more hollow and heartless than 
 this ? Is there anything which is more certain to 
 sap the very foundations of morality than the public 
 maintenance of a creed which has long ceased to 
 command the assent, and even the respect, of its 
 recognised defenders ? Seneca, indeed, and a few 
 enlightened philosophers, might have taken refuge 
 from the superstitions which they abandoned in a 
 truer and purer form of faith. " Accordingly," says 
 Lactantius, one of the Christian Fathers, " he has said 
 many things like ourselves concerning God."* He 
 utters what Tertullian finely calls " the testimony 
 
 * LactatiHus* Divin, Inst. i. 4. 
 
SENECA. 
 
 Of A MIND NATURALLY CHRISTIAN." But, mean- 
 while, what became of the common multitude ? They 
 too, like their superiors, learnt to disbelieve or to 
 question the power of the ancient deities ; but, as the 
 mind absolutely requires some religion on which to 
 rest, they gave their real devotion to all kinds of 
 strange and foreign deities, to Isis and Osiris, and 
 the dog Anubis, to Chaldaean magicians, to Jewish 
 exorcisers, to Greek quacks, and to the wretched 
 vagabond priests of Cybele, who infested all the 
 streets with their Oriental dances and tinkling tam- 
 bourines. The visitor to the ruins of Pompeii may 
 still see in her temple the statue of Isis, through 
 whose open lips the gaping worshippers heard the 
 murmured answers they came to^seek. No doubt 
 they believed as firmly that the image spoke, as our 
 forefathers believed that their miraculous Madonnas 
 nodded and winked. But time has exposed the cheat. 
 By the ruined shrine the worshipper may now see 
 the secret steps by which the priest got to the back 
 of the statue, and the pipe entering the back of its 
 head through which he whispered the answers of the 
 oracle. 
 
 III. It was an age of boundless luxury, an age in 
 which women recklessly vied with one another in the 
 race of splendour and extravagance, and in which 
 men plunged headlong, without a single scruple of 
 conscience, and with every possible resource at their 
 command, into the pursuit of pleasure. There was 
 no form of luxury, there was "no refinement of vice 
 invented by any foreign nation, which had not been 
 
STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 47 
 
 eagerly adopted by the Roman patricians. " The 
 softness of Sybaris, the manners of Rhodes and 
 Antioch, and of perfumed, drunken, flower-crowned 
 Miletus," were all to be found at Rome. There was 
 no more of the ancient Roman severity and dignity 
 and self-respect. The descendants of /Emilius and 
 Gracchus even generals and consuls and prsetors 
 mixed familiarly with the lowest canaille of Rome in 
 their vilest and most squalid purlieus of shameless 
 vice. They fought as amateur gladiators in the arena. 
 They drove as competing charioteers on the race- 
 course. They even condescended to appear as actors 
 on the stage. They devoted themselves with such 
 frantic eagerness to the excitement of gambling, 
 that we read of their staking hundreds of pounds 
 on a single throw of the dice, when they could not 
 even restore the pawned tunics to their shivering 
 slaves. Under the cold marble statues, or amid the 
 waxen likenesses of their famous stately ancestors, they 
 turned night into day with long and foolish orgies, 
 and exhausted land and sea with the demands of 
 their gluttony. " Woe to that city," says an ancient 
 proverb, "in which a rish costs more than an ox;" 
 and this exactly describes the state of Rome. A 
 banquet would sometimes cost the price of an estate ; 
 shell-fish were brought from remote and unknown 
 shores, birds from Parthia and the banks of the 
 Phasis ; single dishes were made of the brains of 
 the peacocks and the tongues of nightingales and 
 flamingoes. Apicius, after squandering nearly a 
 million of money in the pleasures of the table, com- 
 
18 SENECA. 
 
 mitted suicide, Seneca tells us, because he found that 
 he had only 8o,ooo/. left. Cowley speaks of 
 
 " Vitellius' table, which did hold 
 As many creatures as the ark of old.." 
 
 " They eat," said Seneca, " and then they vomit ; they 
 vomit, and then they eat." But even in this matter 
 we cannot tell anything like the worst facts about 
 
 " Their sumptuous gluttonies and gorgeous feasts 
 On citron tables and Atlantic stone, 
 Their wines of Setia, Gales, and Falerne, 
 Chios, and Crete, and how they quaff in gold, 
 Crystal, and myrrhine cups, embossed with gems 
 And studs of pearl"* 
 
 Still less can we pretend to describe the unblushing 
 and unutterable degradation of this period as it is 
 revealed to us by the poets and the satirists. "All 
 things," says Seneca, " are full of iniquity and vice ; 
 more crime is committed than can be remedied by 
 restraint. We struggle in a huge contest of crimi- 
 nality : daily the passion for sin is greater, the shame 
 in committing it is less. . . . Wickedness is no longer 
 committed in secret : it flaunts before our eyes, and 
 
 * Compare the lines in Dyer's little- remembered Ruins of Rome % 
 
 " The citron board, the bowl embossed with gems, 
 
 whate'er is known 
 Of rarest acquisition ; Tyrian garbs, 
 Neptunian Albion's high testaceous food, 
 And flavoured Chian wines, with incense fumed, 
 To slake patrician thirst : for these their rights 
 In the vile streets they prostitute for sale, 
 Their ancient rights, their dignities, their laws, 
 Their native glorious freedom." 
 
STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. ' 49 
 
 has been sent forth so openly into public sight, and 
 nas prevailed so completely in the breast of all, that 
 innocence is not rare, but non-existent!" 1 
 
 IV. And it was an age of deep sadness. That it 
 should have been so is an instructive and solemn lesson. 
 In proportion to the luxury of the age were its misery 
 and its exhaustion. The mad pursuit of pleasure 
 was the death and degradation of all true happiness. 
 Suicide suicide out of pure ennui and discontent at 
 a life overflowing with every possible means of in- 
 dulgence was extraordinarily prevalent. The Stoic 
 philosophy, especially as we see it represented in 
 the tragedies attributed to Seneca, rang with the 
 glorification of it. Men ran to death because their 
 mode of life had left them no other refuge. They 
 died because it seemed so tedious and so superfluous 
 to be seeing and doing and saying the same things 
 over and over again ; and because they had exhausted 
 the very possibility of the only pleasures of which 
 they had left themselves capable. The satirical 
 epigram of Destouches, 
 
 " Ci-git Jean Rosbif, ecnyer. 
 
 Qui se pendit pour sc desenr.uyer," 
 
 was .Htcrally and strictly true of many Romans during 
 this epoch. Marcellinus, a young and wealthy noble, 
 starved himself, and then had himself suffocated in a 
 warm bath, merely because he was attacked with a 
 perfectly curable illness. The philosophy which 
 alone professed itself able to heal men's sorrows 
 applauded the supposed courage of a voluntary death, 
 
SENECA. 
 
 .and it was of too abstract, too fantastic, and too 
 purely theoretical a character to furnish them with any 
 real or lasting consolations. No sentiment caused 
 more surprise to the Roman world than the famous 
 one preserveci in the fragment of Maecenas, 
 
 " Debilem facito manu, 
 
 Debilem pede, coxa. 
 Ti'.ber adstrue gibberum, 
 
 Lubricos quate denies ; 
 Vit?. cum superest bene est : 
 
 .Hanc rnihi vel acnta 
 Si. sedeam cmce sustkit ; '* 
 
 whVh may be paraphrased, 
 
 " Numb my hands with palsy, 
 
 Rack my feet with gout, 
 Hunch my back and shoulder, 
 
 Let my teeth fall out ; 
 Still, if Life be granted, 
 
 I prefer the loss : 
 Save my life, and give me 
 
 Anguish on the cross." 
 
 Seneca, in his icist Letter, calls this "a most dis- 
 graceful and most contemptible wish ;" but it may 
 be paralleled out of Euripides, and still more closely 
 out of Homer. " Talk not," says the shade of Achilles 
 to Ulysses in the Odyssey, 
 
 " * Talk not of reigning in this dolorous gloom, 
 
 Nor think vain lies,' he cried, 'can ease my doom. 
 Better by far laboriously to bear 
 A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air t 
 Slave to the meanest hind that begs his bread, 
 Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead, ' " 
 
STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 51 
 
 But this falsehood of extremes was one of the sad 
 outcomes of the popular Paganism. Either, like the 
 natural savage, they dreaded death with an intensity 
 of terror ; or, when their crimes and sorrows had made 
 life unsupportable, they slank to it as a refuge, with a 
 cowardice which vaunted itself as courage. 
 
 V. And it was an age of cruelty. The shows of 
 gladiators, the sanguinary combats of wild beasts, the 
 not unfrequent spectacle of savage tortures and capital 
 punishments, the occasional sight of innocent martyrs 
 burning to death in their shirts of pitchy fire, 
 must have hardened and imbruted the public sensi- 
 bility. The immense prevalence of slavery tended still 
 more inevitably to the general corruption. " Lust," 
 as usual, was "hard by hate." One hears with per- 
 fect amazement of the number of slaves in the 
 wealthy houses. A thousand slaves was no extra- 
 vagant number, and the vast majority of them were 
 idle, uneducated, and corrupt. Treated as little better 
 than animals, they lost much of the dignity of men. 
 Their masters possessed over them the power of life 
 and death, and it is shocking to read of the cruelty 
 with which they were often treated. An accidental 
 murmur, a cough, a sneeze, was punished with rods. 
 Mute, motionless, fasting, the slaves had to stand by 
 while their masters supped. A brutal and stupid 
 barbarity often turned a house into the shambles of an 
 executioner, sounding with scourges, chains, and yells.* 
 One evening the Emperor Augustus was supping at 
 the house of Vedius Pollio, when one of the slaves, whc 
 
 * Juv. Sat. vi. 219 222. 
 
 R F2 
 
2 SENECA. 
 
 was carrying a crystal goblet, slipped down, and broke 
 it. Transported with rage Vedius at once ordered the 
 slave to be seized, and plunged into the fish-pond as 
 food to the lampreys. The boy escaped from the 
 hands of his fellow-slaves, and fled to Caesar's feet 
 to implore, riot that his life should be spared a 
 pardon which he neither expected nor hoped but 
 that he might die by a mode of death less horrible 
 than being devoured by fishes. Common as it was to 
 torment slaves, and to put them to death, Augustus, 
 to his honour be it spoken, was horrified by the cruelty 
 of Vedius, and commanded both that the slave should 
 be set free, that every crystal vase in the house of 
 Vedius should be broken in his presence, and that 
 the fish-pond should be filled up. Even women in- 
 flicted upon their female slaves punishments of the 
 most cruel atrocity for faults of the most venial 
 character. A brooch wrongly placed, a tress of hair 
 ill-arranged, and the enraged matron orders her slave 
 to be lashed and crucified. If her milder husband 
 interferes, she not only justifies the cruelty, but asks 
 in amazement : " What ! is a slave so much of a 
 human being ? " No wonder that there was a pro- 
 verb, "As many slaves, so many foes." No wonder 
 that many masters lived in perpetual fear, and that 
 " the tyrant's devilish plea, necessity," might be 
 urged in favour of that odious law which enacted 
 that, if a master was murdered by an unknown hand, 
 the whole body of his slaves should suffer death, 
 a law which more than once was carried into effect 
 under the reigns of the Emperors. Slavery, as we 
 
STATE OF ROMAN SOCIETY. 53 
 
 see in the case of Sparta and many other nations, 
 always involves its own retribution. The class of 
 free peasant proprietors gradually disappears. Long 
 before this time Tib. Gracchus, in coming home from 
 Sardinia, had observed that there was scarcely a single 
 freeman to be seen in the fields. The slaves were 
 infinitely more numerous than their owners. Hence 
 arose the constant dread of servile insurrections ; the 
 constant hatred of a slave population to which any 
 conspirator or revolutionist might successfully appeal ; 
 and the constant insecurity of life, which must have 
 struck terror into many hearts. 
 
 Such is but a faint and broad outline of some of 
 the features of Seneca's age ; and we shall be unjust 
 if we do not admit that much at least of the life he 
 lived, and nearly all the sentiments he uttered, gain 
 much in grandeur and purity from the contrast they 
 offer to the common life of 
 
 " That people victor once, now vile and base, 
 Deservedly maJe vassal, who, once just, 
 Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well, 
 But govern ill the nations under yoke, 
 Peeling their provinces, exhausted all 
 By lust and rapine ; first ambitious grown 
 Of triumph, that insulting vanity ; 
 Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured 
 Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed, 
 Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still, 
 And from the daily scene effeminate. 
 What wise and valiant man would seek to free 
 These thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved ; 
 Or could of inward slaves make outward free?" 
 
 MILTON, Paradise Regained^ iv. 132-145, 
 
CHAPTER IV, 
 
 POLITICAL CONDITION OF ROME UNDER TIBKRIUS AND CAIUS, 
 
 THE personal notices of Seneca's life up to the 
 period of his manhood are slight and fragmentary. 
 From an incidental expression we conjecture that 
 he visited his aunt in Egypt when her husband was 
 Prefect of that country, and that he shared with her 
 the dangers of shipwreck when her husband had 
 died on board ship during the homeward voyage. 
 Possibly the visit may have excited in his mind that 
 deep interest and curiosity about the phenomena of 
 the Nile which appear so strongly in several pas- 
 sages of his Natural Questions; and, indeed noth- 
 ing is more likely than that he suggested to Nero the 
 earliest recorded expedition to discover the source of 
 the mysterious river. No other allusion to his travels 
 occurs in his writings, but we may infer that from 
 very early days he had felt an interest for physical in- 
 quiry, since while still a youth he had written a book 
 on earthquakes, which has not come down to us. 
 
 Deterred by his father from the pursuit of philoso- 
 phy, he entered on the duties of a profession . He be- 
 came an advocate, and distinguished himself by his 
 54 
 
ROME UNDER TIBERIUS AND CAIUS. 55 
 
 genius and eloquence in pleading causes. Entering 
 on a political career, he became a successful candidate 
 for the quaestorship, which was an important step 
 towards the highest offices of the state. During this 
 period of his life he married a lady whose name has 
 not been preserved to us, and to whom we have only 
 one allusion, which is a curious one. As in our own 
 history it has been sometimes the fashion for ladies of 
 rank to have dwarves and negroes among their at- 
 tendants, so it seems to have been the senseless and 
 revolting custom of the Roman ladies of this time to 
 keep idiots among the number of their servants. The 
 first wife of Seneca had followed this fashion, and 
 Seneca in his fiftieth letter to his friend Lucilius* 
 makes the following interesting allusion to the fact. 
 " You know," he says, " that my wife's idiot girl 
 Harpaste has remained in my house as a burdensome 
 legacy. For personally I feel the profoundest dislike 
 to monstrosities of that kind. If ever I want to 
 amuse myself with an idiot, I have not far to look for 
 one. I laugh at myself. This idiot girl has suddenly 
 become blind. Now, incredible as the story seems, it 
 is really true that- she is unconscious of her blindness, 
 
 * It will be observed that the main biographical facts about the life 
 of Seneca are to be gleaned from his letters to Lucilius, who was his 
 constant friend from youth to old age, and to whom he has dedicated his 
 Natural Questions. Lucilius was a procurator of Sicily, a man of cul- 
 tivated taste and high principle. He was the author of a poem on 
 ^fitna, which in the opinion of many competent judges is the poem 
 which has come down to us, and has been attributed to Varus, Virgil, 
 and others. It has been admirably edited by Mr. Munro. (See Nat. 
 Qucest, iv. ad init. Ep. Ixxix. ) He also wrote a poem on the fountain 
 Arethusa. (Nat. Qiucst. iii. 26.) 
 
$6 SENECA. 
 
 and consequently begs her attendant to go elsewhere, 
 because the house is dark. But you may be sure that 
 this, at which we laugh in her, happens to us all ; no 
 one understands that he is avaricious or covetous. 
 The blind seek for a guide ; we wander about without 
 a guide." 
 
 This passage will furnish us with an excellent 
 example of Seneca's invariable method of improving 
 every occasion and circumstance into an opportunity 
 for a philosophic harangue. 
 
 By this wife, who died shortly before Seneca's 
 banishment to Corsica, he had two sons, one of whom 
 expired in the arms and amid the kisses of Helvia 
 less than a month before Seneca's departure for 
 Corsica. To the other, whose name was Marcus, he 
 makes the following pleasant allusion. After urging 
 his mother Helvia to find consolation in the devotion 
 of his brothers Gallic and Mela, he adds, " From these 
 turn your eyes also on your grandsons to Marcus, 
 that most charming little boy, in sight of whom no 
 melancholy can last long. No misfortune in the 
 breast of any one can have been so great or so recent 
 as not to be soothed by his caresses. Whose tears 
 would npt his mirth repress ? whose mind would not 
 his prattling loose from the pressure of anxiety ? 
 whom will not that joyous manner of his incline to 
 jesting ? whose attention, even though he be fixed in 
 thought, will not be attracted and absorbed by that 
 childlike garrulity of which no one can grow tired ? 
 God grant that he may survive me: may all the 
 cruelty of destiny be wearied out on me ! " 
 
ROME UJVDE R TIBERIUS AND CAIUS. 57 
 
 Whether the' prayer of Seneca was granted we 
 do not know; but, as we do not, again hear of Marcus, 
 it is probable that he died before his father, and that 
 the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, 
 became extinct in the second generation. 
 
 It was probably during this period that Seneca 
 laid the foundations of that enormous fortune which 
 excited the hatred and ridicule of his opponents. 
 There is every reason to believe that this fortune was 
 honourably gained. As both his father and. mother 
 were wealthy, he had doubtless inherited an ample 
 competency ; this was increased by the lucrative 
 profession of a successful advocate, and was finally 
 swollen by the princely donations of his pupil Nero. 
 It is not improbable that Seneca, like Cicero, and like 
 all the wealthy men of their day, increased his pro 
 perty by lending money upon interest. No disgrace 
 attached to such a course ; and as there is no proof 
 for the charges of Dio Cassius on this head, we may 
 pass them over with silent contempt. Dio gravely 
 informs us that Seneca excited an insurrection in 
 Britain, by suddenly calling in the enormous sum of 
 40,000,000 sesterces ; but this is in all probability the 
 calumny of a professed enemy. We shall refer again 
 to Seneca's wealth ; but we may here admit that it was 
 undoubtedly ungraceful and incongruous in a philo- 
 sopher v/ho was perpetually dwelling on the praises 
 of poverty, and that even in his own age it attracted 
 unfavourable notice, as we may see from the epithet 
 Prcedives, " the over-wealthy," which is applied to him 
 alike by a satiric poet and by a grave historian, 
 
58 SENECA. 
 
 Seneca was perfectly well aware that this objectior 
 could be urged against him, and it must be admitted 
 that the grounds on which he defends himself in his 
 treatise On a Happy Life are not very conclusive or 
 satisfactory. 
 
 The boyhood of Seneca fell in the last years of 
 the Emperor Augustus, when, in spite of the general 
 decorum and amiability of their ruler, people began 
 to see clearly that nothing was left of liberty except 
 the name. His youth and early manhood were spent 
 during those three-and-twenty years of the reign of 
 Tiberius, that reign of terror, during which the 
 Roman world was reduced to a frightful silence and 
 torpor as of death ; * and, although he was not thrown 
 into personal collision with that " brutal monster," he 
 not unfrequently alludes to him, and to the dangerous 
 power and headlong ruin of his wicked minister 
 Sejanus. Up to this time he had not experienced 
 in his own person those crimes and horrors which fall 
 to the lot of men who are brought into close contact 
 with tyrants. This first happened to him in the reign 
 of Caius Caesar, of whom we are enabled, from the 
 writings of Seneca alone, to draw a full-length portrait. 
 
 Caius Caesar was the son of Germanicus and the 
 elder Agrippina. Germanicus was the bravest and 
 most successful general, and one of the wisest and 
 most virtuous men, of his day. His wife Agrippina, 
 in her fidelity, her chastity, her charity, her nobility 
 
 * Milton, Paradise Regained, iv. 128. For a picture of Tiberius as 
 he appeared in his old age at Caprese, "hated of all, and hating," se 
 Id. 9097. 
 
ROME UNDER TIBERIUS AND CAIUS. 59 
 
 of mind, was the very model of a Roman matron of 
 the highest and purest stamp. Strange that the son 
 of such parents should have been one of the vilest 
 cruelest, and foulest of the human race. So, however, 
 it was ; and it is a remarkable fact that scarcely one of 
 the six children of this marriage displayed the virtues 
 of their father and mother, while two of them, Caius 
 Caesar and the younger Agrippina, lived to earn an 
 exceptional infamy by their baseness and their crimes. 
 Possibly this unhappy result may have been partly 
 due to the sad circumstances of their early education. 
 Their father, Germanicus, who by his virtue and his 
 successes had excited the suspicious jealousy of his 
 uncle Tiberius, was by his distinct connivance, if not 
 by his actual suggestion, atrociously poisoned in Syria. 
 Agrippina, after being subjected to countless cruel 
 insults, was banished in the extremest poverty to the 
 island of Pandataria. Two of the elder brothers, Nero 
 and Drusus Germanicus, were proclaimed public ene- 
 mies : Nero was banished to the island Pontia, and 
 there put to death ; Drusus was kept a close prisoner 
 in a secret prison of the palace. Caius, the youngest, 
 who is better known by the name Caligula, was 
 summoned by Tiberius to his wicked retirement at 
 Capreae, and there only saved his life by the most 
 abject flattery and the most adroit submission. 
 
 Caprese is a little island of surpassing loveliness; 
 forming one extremity of the Bay of Naples. Its 
 soil is rich, its sea bright and limpid, its breezes cool 
 and healthful. Isolated by its position, it is yet 
 within easy reach of Rome. At that time, before 
 
 G 
 
60 SENECA. 
 
 Vesuvius had rekindled those wasteful fires which 
 first shook down, and then deluged under lava and 
 scoriae, the little cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, 
 the scene which it commanded was even more pre- 
 eminently beautiful than now. Vineyards and olive- 
 groves clothed the sides of that matchless bay, down 
 to the very line where the bright blue waters seem to 
 kiss with their ripples the many-coloured pebbles of 
 the beach. Over all, with its sides dotted with pic- 
 turesque villas and happy villages, towered the giant 
 cone of the volcano which for centuries had appeared 
 to be extinct, and which was clothed up to the very 
 crater with luxurious vegetation. Such was the deli- 
 cious home which Tiberius disgraced for ever by the 
 seclusion of his old age. Here he abandoned himself 
 to every refinement of wickedness, and from hence, 
 being by common consent the most miserable of men, 
 he wrote to the Senate that memorable letter in which 
 he confesses his daily and unutterable misery under 
 the stings of a guilty conscience, which neither soli- 
 tude nor power enabled him to escape. 
 
 Never did a fairer scene undergo a worse degra- 
 dation ; and here, in one or other of the twelve villas 
 which Tiberius had built, and among the azure 
 grottoes which he caused to be constructed, the 
 youthful Caius* grew up to manhood. It would have 
 
 * We shall call him Caius, because it is as little correct to write oi 
 him by the sobriquet Caligula as it would be habitually to write of our 
 kings Edward or John as Longshanks or Lackland. The name Caligula 
 means "a little shoe," and was the pet name given to him by the 
 soldiers of his father, in whose camp he was born. 
 
ROME UNDER TIBERIUS AND CAIUS. 61 
 
 been a terrible school even for a noble nature ; for a 
 nature corrupt and bloodthirsty like that of Caius it 
 was complete and total ruin. But, though he was so 
 obsequious to the Emperor as to originate the jest 
 that never had there been a worse master and never 
 a more cringing slave, though he suppressed every 
 sign of indignation at the horrid deaths of his mo- 
 ther and his brothers, though he assiduously re- 
 flected the looks, and carefully echoed the very 
 words, of his patron, yet not even by the deep dis- 
 simulation which such a position required did he suc- 
 ceed in concealing from the penetrating eye of Tibe- 
 rius the true ferocity of his character. Not being the 
 acknowledged heir to the kingdom, for Tiberius 
 Gemellus, the youthful grandson of Tiberius, was 
 living, and Caius was by birth only his grand- 
 nephew, he became a tool for the machinations of 
 Marco the praetorian praefect and his wife Ennia. 
 One of his chief friends was the cruel Herod Agrip- 
 pa,* who put to death St. James and imprisoned St. 
 Peter, and whose tragical fate is recorded in the I2th 
 chap, of the Acts. On one occasion, when Caius had 
 been abusing the dictator Sulla, Tiberius scornfully 
 remarked that he would have all Sulla's vices and 
 none of his virtues ; and on another, after a quarrel 
 between Caius and his cousin, the Emperor em- 
 braced with tears his young grandson, and said to the 
 frowning Caius, with one of those strange flashes of 
 
 * Josephus adds some curious and interesting particulars to the story 
 of this Herod and his death which are not mentioned in the narrative 
 of St. Luke. (Antiq. xix. 7, 8. Jahn, Hebr, Commonwejlth, cxxvi.) 
 
52 SENECA 
 
 prevision of which we sometimes read in history, 
 " Why are you so eager ? Some day you will kill 
 this boy, and someone else will murder you." There 
 were some who believed that Tiberius deliberately 
 cherished the intention of allowing Caius to succeed 
 him, in order that the Roman world might relent 
 towards his own memory under the tyranny of a 
 worse monster than himself. Even the Romans, who 
 looked up to the family of Germanicus with extra- 
 ordinary affection, seem early to have lost all hopes 
 about Caius. They looked for little improvement 
 under the government of a vicious boy, " ignorant 01 
 all things, or nurtured only in the worst," who would 
 be likely to reflect the influence of Macro, and 
 present the spectacle of a worse Tiberius under a 
 worse Sejanus. 
 
 At: last health* and strength failed Tiberius, but not 
 his habitual dissimulation. He retained the same 
 unbending soul, and by his fixed countenance and 
 measured language, sometimes by an artificial affa- 
 bility, he tried to conceal his approaching end. After 
 many restless changes, he finally settled down in a 
 villa at Misenum which had once belonged to the 
 luxurious Lucullus. There the real state of his 
 health was discovered. Charicles, a distinguished 
 physician, who had been paying him a friendly visit 
 on kissing his hand to bid farewell, managed to 
 ascertain the state of his pulse. Suspecting that this 
 was the case, Tiberius, concealing his displeasure, 
 ordered a banquet to be spread, as though in honour 
 of his friend's departure, and stayed longer than 
 
ROME UNDER TIBERIUS AND CAIUS. 63 
 
 usual at table. A similar story is told of Louis XIV 
 who, noticing from the whispers of his courtiers that 
 they believed him to be dying, ate an unusually large 
 dinner on the very day of his death, and sarcastically 
 observed, " Jl me semble que pour un homme qui va 
 mourir je ne mange pas mal." But, in spite of the 
 precautions of Tiberius, Charicles informed Macro 
 that the Emperor could not last beyond two days. 
 
 A scene of secret intrigue at once began. The court 
 broke up into knots and cliques. Hasty messengers 
 were sent to the provinces and their armies, until at 
 last, on the i6th of March, it was believed that 
 Tiberius had breathed his last. Just as on the death 
 cf Louis XV. a sudden noise was heard as of thunder, 
 the sound of courtiers rushing along the corridors to 
 congratulate Louis XVI. in the famous words, " Le 
 roi est mort, vive. le roi." so a crowd instantly thronged 
 round Caius with their congratulations, as he went 
 out of the palace to assume his imperial authority. 
 Suddenly a message reached him that Tiberius had 
 recovered voice and sight. Seneca says, that feeling 
 his last hour to be near, he had taken off his ring, 
 and, holding it in his shut left hand, had long lain 
 motionless ; then calling his servants, since no one 
 answered his call, he rose from his couch, and, his 
 strength failing him, after a few tottering steps fell 
 prostrate on the ground. 
 
 The news produced the same consternation as that 
 which was produced among the conspirators at 
 Adorijah's banquet, when they heard of the measures 
 taken by the dying David, There was a panic- 
 
SENECA. 
 
 stricken dispersion, and every one pretended to be 
 grieved, or ignorant of what was going on. Caius, in 
 stupified silence, expected death instead of empire. 
 Macro alone did not lose his presence of mind. With 
 the utmost intrepidity, he gave orders that the old 
 man should be suffocated by heaping over him a 
 mass of clothes, and that every one should then leave 
 the chamber. Such was the miserable and unpitied 
 end of the Emperor Tiberius, in the seventy-eighth 
 year of his age. Such was the death, and so mise- 
 rable had been the life, of the man to whom the 
 Tempter had already given "the kingdoms of the 
 world and the glory of them," when he tried to tempt 
 with them the Son of God. That this man should 
 have been the chief Emperor of the earth at a time 
 when its true King was living as a peasant in his 
 village home at Na/.arcth, is u fact suggestive ot many 
 and of solemn 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE REIGN OF CAIUS. 
 
 THE poet Gray, in describing the deserted deathbed 
 of our own great Edward III., says : 
 
 " Low on his funeral couch he lies ! 
 No pitying heart, no eye afford 
 A tear to grace his obsequies ! 
 
 ***** 
 The swarm that in the noontide beam were born ? 
 Gone to salute the rising Morn. 
 Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the zephyr blows, 
 While proudly riding o'er the azure realm, 
 In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes ; 
 Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm ; 
 Regardless of the sweeping Whirlwind's sway, 
 That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey." 
 
 The last lines of this passage would alone have been 
 applicable to Caius Caesar. There was nothing fair or 
 gay even about the beginning of his reign. From first 
 to last it was a reign of fury and madness, and lust 
 and blood. There was an hereditary taint of insanity 
 in this family, which was developed by their being 
 placed on the dizzy- pinnacle of imperial despotism, 
 and which usually took the form of monstrous and 
 abnormal crime. If we would seek a parallel for 
 
r>6 SENECA. 
 
 Caius Caesar, we must look for it in the history of 
 Christian VII. of Denmark, and Paul of Russia. In all 
 three we find the same ghastly pallor, the same sleep- 
 lessness which compelled them to rise, and pace their 
 rooms at night, the same incessant suspicion, the same 
 inordinate thirst for cruelty and torture. He took a 
 very early opportunity to disembarrass himself of his 
 benefactors, Macro and Ennia, and of his rival, the 
 young Tiberius. The rest of his reign was a series of 
 brutal extravagances. We have lost the portion of 
 those matchless Annals of Tacitus which contained 
 the reign of Caius, but more than enough to revolt 
 and horrify is preserved in the scattered notices of 
 Seneca, and in the narratives of Suetonius in Latin 
 and of Dio Cassius in Greek. 
 
 His madness showed itself sometimes in gluttonous 
 extravagance, as when he ordered a supper which cost 
 more than 8,ooo/. ; sometimes in a bizarre and dis- 
 graceful mode of dress, as when he appeared in public 
 in women's stockings, embroidered with gold and 
 pearls ; sometimes in a personality and insolence of 
 demeanour towards every rank and class in Rome, 
 which made him ask. a senator to supper, and ply 
 him with drunken toasts, on the very evening on 
 which he had condemned his son to death ; sometimes 
 in sheer raving blasphemy, as when he expressed his 
 furious indignation against Jupiter for presuming to 
 thunder while he was supping, or looking at the 
 pantomimes ; but most of all in a ferocity which 
 makes Seneca apply to him the name of " Bellua," or 
 " wild monster," and say that he seems to have been 
 
THE REIGN OF CAIUS. 67 
 
 produced " for the disgrace and destruction of the 
 human race." 
 
 We will quote from the pages of Seneca but one 
 single passage to justify his remark "that he was 
 most greedy for human blood, which he ordered to 
 stream in his very presence with such eagerness as 
 though he were going to drink it up with his lips." 
 He says that in one day he scourged and tortured 
 men of consular and quaestorial parentage, knights, 
 and senators, not by way of examination, but out of 
 pure caprice and rage ; he seriously meditated the 
 butchery of the entire Senate ; he expressed a wish 
 that the Roman people had but a single neck, that he 
 might strike it off at one blow ; he silenced the screams 
 or reproaches of his victims sometimes by thrusting a 
 sponge in their mouths, sometimes by having their 
 mouths gagged with their own torn robes, sometimes 
 by ordering their tongues to be cut out before they 
 were thrown to the wild beasts. On one occasion, 
 rising from a banquet, he called for his slippers, which 
 were kept by the slaves while the guests reclined on 
 the purple couches, and so impatient was he for the 
 sight of death, that, walking up and down his covered 
 portico by lamplight with ladies and senators, he then 
 and there ordered some of his wretched victims to be 
 beheaded in his sight. 
 
 It is a singular proof of the unutterable dread 
 and detestation inspired by some of these Caesars, 
 that their mere countenance is said to have inspired 
 anguish. Tacitus, in the life of his father-in-law 
 Agricola, mentions the shuddering recollection of the 
 
SENECA. 
 
 red face of Domitian, as it looked on at the games. 
 Seneca speaks in one place of wretches doomed to 
 undergo stones, sword, fire, and Cams ; in another he 
 says that he had tortured the noblest Romans with 
 everything which could possibly cause the intensest 
 agony, with cords, plates, rack, fire, and, as though it 
 were the worst torture of all, with his look ! What 
 that look was, we learn from Seneca himself: " His 
 face was ghastly pale, with a look of insanity ; his 
 fierce dull eyes were half hidden under a wrinkled 
 brow ; his ill-shaped head was partly bald, partly 
 covered with dyed hair ; his neck covered with bristles, 
 hrs legs thin, and his feet mis-shapen." Woe to the 
 nation that lies under the heel of a brutal despotism ; 
 treble woe to the nation that can tolerate -a despot 
 so brutal as this ! Yet this was the nation in the 
 midst of which Seneca lived, and this was the despot 
 under whom his early manhood was spent. 
 
 " But what more oft in nations grown corrupt, 
 And by their vices brought to servitude, 
 Than to love bondage more than liberty, 
 Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty?" 
 
 It was one of the peculiarities of Caius Caesar that 
 he hated the very existence of any excellence. He 
 used to bully and insult the gods themselves, frown- 
 ing even at the statues of Apollo and Jupiter of 
 the Capitol. He thought of abolishing Homer, and 
 ordered the works of Livy and Virgil to be removed 
 from all libraries, because he could not bear that they 
 should be praised. He ordered Julius Grsecinus to be 
 
THE REIGN OF CAIUS. 
 
 put to death for no other reason than this, " that he 
 was a better man than it was expedient for a tyrant 
 that any one should be ; " for, as Pliny tells us, 
 the Caesars deliberately preferred that their people 
 should be vicious than that they should be virtuous. 
 It was hardly likely that such a man should view 
 with equanimity the rising splendour of Seneca's 
 reputation. Hitherto, the young man, who was 
 thirty-five years old at the accession of Caius, had 
 not written any of his philosophic works, but in 
 all probability he had published his early, and no 
 longer extant, treatises on earthquakes, on super- 
 stitions, and the books On India, and On the Man- 
 ners of Egypt, which had been the fruit of his 
 early travels. It is probable, too, that he had 
 recited in public some of those tragedies which have 
 come down to us under his name, and in the com- 
 position of which he was certainly concerned. All 
 these works, and especially the applause won by the 
 public reading of his poems, would have given him 
 that high literary reputation which we know him to 
 have earned. It was not, however, this reputation, 
 but the brilliancy and eloquence of his orations at the 
 bar which excited the jealous hatred of the Emperor. 
 Caius piqued himself on the possession of eloquence ; 
 and, strange to say, there are isolated expressions of 
 his which seem to show that, in lucid intervals, he was 
 by no means devoid of intellectual acuteness. For 
 instance, there is real humour and insight in the 
 nicknames of " a golden sheep " which he gave to 
 the rich and placid Silanus, and of " Ulysses in 
 
70 SENECA. 
 
 petticoats," by which he designated his grandmother, 
 the august Livia. The two epigrammatic criticisms 
 which he passed upon the style of Seneca are not 
 wholly devoid of truth ; he called his works Com- 
 missiones meras, or mere displays.* In this expression 
 he hit off, happily enough, the somewhat theatrical, 
 the slightly pedantic and pedagogic and professorial 
 character of Seneca's diction, its rhetorical ornament 
 and antithesis, and its deficiency in stern masculine 
 simplicity and strength. In another remark he showed 
 himself a still more felicitous critic. He called 
 Seneca's writings Arena sine Calce, " sand without 
 lime," or, as we might say, " a rope of sand/' This 
 epigram showed a real critical faculty. It exactly 
 hits oft" Seneca's short and disjointed sentences, con- 
 sisting as they often do of detached antitheses. It 
 accords with the amusing comparison of Malebranche, 
 that Seneca's composition, with its perpetual and 
 futile recurrences, calls up to him the image of a 
 dancer who ends where he begins. 
 
 But Caius did not confine himself to clever and 
 malignant criticism. On one occasion, when Seneca 
 was pleading in his presence, he was so jealous and 
 displeased at the brilliancy and power of the orator 
 that he marked him out for immediate execution. 
 Had Seneca died at this period he would probably 
 have been little known, and he might have left few 
 traces of his existence beyond a few tragedies of 
 uncertain authenticity, and possibly a passing notice 
 in the page of Dio or Tacitus. But destiny reserved 
 
 * Sv.et. Calig. liii. 
 
THE REIGN OF CAWS. 71 
 
 him for a more splendid and more questionable career. 
 One of Caius's favourites whispered to the Emperor 
 that it was useless to extinguish a waning lamp ; 
 that the health of the orator was so feeble that a 
 natural death by the progress of his consumptive 
 tendencies would, in a very short time, remove him 
 out of the tyrant's way. 
 
 Throughout the remainder of the few years during 
 which the reign of Caius continued, Seneca, warned in 
 time, withdrew himself into complete obscurity, em- 
 ploying his enforced leisure in that unbroken industry 
 which stored his mind with such encyclopaedic wealth. 
 " None of my days," he says, in describing at a later 
 period the way in which he spent his time, " is passed 
 in complete ease. I claim even a part of the night 
 for my studies. I do not find leisure for sleep, but I 
 succumb to it, and I keep my eyes at their work even 
 when they are wearied and drooping with watchful- 
 ness. I have retired, not only from men, but from 
 affairs, and especially from my own. I am doing 
 work for posterity ; I am writing out things which 
 may prove of advantage to them. I am intrusting to 
 writing healthful admonitions compositions, as it 
 were, of useful medicines." 
 
 But the days of Caius drew rapidly to an end. His 
 gross and unheard-of insults to Valerius Asiaticus 
 and Cassius Chsereas brought on him condign ven- 
 geance. It is an additional proof, if proof were 
 wanting, of the degradation of Imperial Rome, that 
 the deed of retribution was due, not to the people 
 whom he had taxed ; not to the soldiers, whole regi- 
 
 H 
 
72 SENECA. 
 
 ments of whom he had threatened to decimate, not 
 to the knights, of whom scores had been put to death 
 by his orders ; not to the nobles, multitudes of whom 
 had been treated by him with conspicuous infamy ; 
 not even to the Senate, which illustrious body he had 
 on all occasions deliberately treated with contumely 
 and hatred, but to the private revenge of an insulted 
 soldier. The weak thin voice of Cassius Chsereas, 
 tribune of the praetorian cohort, had marked him out 
 for the coarse and calumnious banter of the imperial 
 buffoon ; and he determined to avenge himself, and 
 at the same time rid the world of a monster. He 
 engaged several accomplices in the conspiracy, which 
 was nearly frustrated by their want of resolution. 
 For four whole days they hesitated while, day after 
 day, Caius presided in person at the bloody games ot 
 the amphitheatre. On the fifth day (Jan. 24, A.D. 41), 
 feeling unwell after one of his gluttonous suppers, he 
 was indisposed to return to the shows, but at last rose 
 to do so at the solicitation of his attendants. A 
 vaulted corridor led from the palace to the circus, and 
 in that corridor Caius met a body of noble Asiatic 
 boys, who were to dance a Pyrrhic dance and sing a 
 laudatory ode upon the stage. Caius wished them 
 at once to practise a rehearsal in his presence, but 
 their leader excused himself on the grounds of hoarse- 
 ness. At this moment Chaereas asked him for the 
 watchword of the night. He gave the watchword, 
 "Jupiter." "Receive him in his wrath!" exclaimed 
 Chsereas, striking him on the throat, while almost at 
 the same moment the blow of Sabinus cleft the tyrant's 
 
THE REIGN OF CAWS. 73 
 
 jaw, and brought him to his knee. He crouched 
 his limbs together to screen himself from further 
 blows, screaming aloud, " I live ! I live !" The bearers 
 of his litter rushed to his assistance, and fought with 
 their poles, but Caius fell, pierced with thirty wounds ; 
 and, leaving the body weltering in its blood, the con- 
 spirators rushed out of the palace, and took measures 
 to concert with the Senate a restoration of the old 
 Republic. On the very night after the murder the 
 consuls gave to Chaereas the long-forgotten watchword 
 of " Liberty." But this little gleam of hope proved 
 delusive to the last degree. It was believed that the 
 unquiet ghost of the murdered madman haunted the 
 palace, and long before it had been laid to rest by 
 the forms of decent sepulture, a new emperor of the 
 great Julian family was securely seated upon the 
 throne. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE REIGN CF CLAUDIUS, AND THE BANISHMENT OF SENECA. 
 
 WHILE the senators were deliberating, the soldiers 
 were acting. They felt a true, though degraded, 
 instinct that to restore the ancient forms of demo- 
 cratic freedom would be alike impossible and use- 
 less, and with them the only question lay between 
 the rival claimants for the vacant power. Strange 
 to say that, among these claimants, no one seems 
 ever to have thought of mentioning the prince who 
 became the actual successor. 
 
 There was living in the palace at this time a brother 
 of the great Germanicus, and consequently an uncle 
 of the late emperor, whose name was Claudius Caesar. 
 Weakened both in mind and body by the continuous 
 maladies of an orphaned infancy, kept under the cruel 
 tyranny of a barbarous slave, the unhappy youth had 
 lived in despised obscurity among the members of a 
 family who were utterly ashamed of him. His mother 
 Antonia called him a monstrosity, which Nature had 
 begun but never finished ; and it became a proverbial 
 expression with her, as is said to have been the case 
 with the mother of the great Wellington, to say of a 
 
THE REIGN OF CLAUDIUS. 75 
 
 dull person, " that he was a greater fool than her son 
 Claudius." His grandmother Livia rarely deigned to 
 address him except in the briefest and bitterest terms. 
 His sister llivilla execrated the mere notion of his 
 ever becoming emperor. Augustus, his grandfather 
 by adoption, took pains to keep him as much out of 
 sight as possible, as a wool-gathering* and discredit- 
 able member of the family, denied him all public 
 honours, and left him a most paltry legacy. Tiberius, 
 when looking out for a successor, deliberately passed 
 him over as a man of deficient intellect. Caius kept 
 him as a butt for his own slaps and blows, and 
 for the low buffoonery of his meanest jesters. If the 
 unhappy Claudius came late for dinner, he would find 
 every place occupied, and peer about disconsolately 
 amid insulting smiles. If, as was his usual custom, 
 he dropped asleep after a meal, he was pelted with 
 olives and date-stones, or rough stockings were drawn 
 over his hands that he might be seen rubbing his face 
 with them when he was suddenly awaked. 
 
 This was the unhappy being who was now sum- 
 moned to support the falling weight of empire. While 
 rummaging the palace for plunder, a common soldier 
 had spied a pair of feet protruding from under the 
 curtains which shaded the sides of an upper corridor. 
 Seizing these feet, and inquiring who owned them, he 
 dragged out an uncouth, panic-stricken mortal, who 
 immediately prostrated himself at his knees and 
 begged hard for mercy. It was Claudius, who, scared 
 
 * He calls him /uercwpos, which impl'Cf awkwardness and constant 
 absence of mind. 
 
 II? 
 
SENECA. 
 
 out of his wits by the tragedy which he had just 
 beheld, had thus tried to conceal himself until the 
 storm was passed. " Why, this is Germanicus !"* ex- 
 claimed the soldier, " let's make him emperor." Half 
 joking and half in earnest, they hoisted him on their 
 shoulders for terror had deprived him of the use of 
 his legs and hurried him off to the camp of the Prae- 
 torians. Miserable and anxious he reached the camp, 
 an object of compassion to the crowd of passers-by, 
 who believed that he was being hurried off to exe- 
 cution. But the soldiers, who well knew their own 
 interests, accepted him with acclamations, the more 
 so as, by a fatal precedent, he promised them a largess 
 of more than 8o/. apiece. The supple Agrippa (the 
 Herod of Acts xii.), seeing how the wind lay, offered 
 to plead his cause with the Senate, and succeeded 
 partly by arguments, partly by intimidation, and 
 partly by holding out the not unreasonable hopes of 
 a great improvement on the previous reign. 
 
 For although Claudius had been accused of gam- 
 bling and drunkenness, not only were no worse sins 
 laid to his charge, but he had successfully established 
 some claim to being considered a learned man. Had 
 fortune blessed him till death with a private station, 
 he might have been the Lucien Bonaparte of his 
 family a studious prince, who preferred the charms 
 of literature to the turmoil of ambition. The anec- 
 dotes which have been recorded of him show that he 
 was something of an archaeologist, and something oi 
 
 * The full name of Claudius was Tiberius Claudius Drusus Caesai 
 Germanicus. 
 
THE REIGN OF CLAUDIUS. 7'/ 
 
 a philologian. The great historian Livy, pitying the 
 neglect with which the poor young man was treated, 
 had encouraged him in the study of history ; and he 
 had written memoirs of his own time, memoirs of 
 Augustus, and even a history of the civil wars since 
 the battle of Actium, which was so correct and so 
 candid that his family indignantly suppressed it as a 
 fresh proof of his stupidity. 
 
 Such was the man who, at the age of fifty, became 
 master of the civilized world. He offers some singular 
 points of resemblance to our own " most mighty and 
 dread sovereign," King James I. Both were learned, 
 and both were eminently unwise ;* both of them 
 were authors, and both of them were pedants ; both 
 of them delegated their highest powers to worthless 
 favourites, and both of them enriched these favourites 
 with such foolish liberality that they remained poor 
 themselves. Both of them had been terrified into 
 constitutional cowardice by their involuntary presence 
 at deeds of blood. Both of them, though of naturally 
 good dispositions, were misled by selfishness into acts 
 of cruelty ; and both of them, though laborious in the 
 discharge of duty, succeeded only in rendering royalty 
 ridiculous. King James kept Sir Walter Raleigh in 
 prison, and Claudius drove Seneca into exile. The 
 parallel, so far as I am aware, has never been noticed, 
 but is susceptible of being drawn out into the minutest 
 particulars. 
 
 "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers," says our own poet, 
 Heraclitus had said the same thing more than two thousand years before 
 him, 
 
7 SENECA* 
 
 One of his first acts was to recall his nieces, Julia 
 and Agrippina, from the exile into which their brother 
 had driven them ; and both these princesses were 
 destined to effect a powerful influence on the life of 
 our philosopher. 
 
 What part Seneca had taken during the few 
 troubled days after the murder of Caius we do not 
 know. Had he taken a leading part had he been 
 one of those who, like Chaereas, opposed the election of 
 Claudius as being merely the substitution of an imbecile 
 for a lunatic, or who, like Sabinus, refused to survive 
 the accession of another Caesar, we should perhaps 
 have heard of it ; and we must therefore assume either 
 that he was still absent from Rome in the retirement 
 into which he had been driven by the jealousy of 
 Caius, or that he contented himself with quietly watch- 
 ing the course of events. It will be observed that 
 his biography is not like that of Cicero, with whose 
 life we are acquainted in most trifling details ; but 
 that the curtain rises and falls on isolated scenes, 
 throwing into sudden brilliancy or into the deepest 
 shade long and important periods of his history. Nor 
 are his letters and other writings full of those political 
 and personal allusions which convert them into an 
 autobiography. They are, without exception, occupied 
 exclusively with philosophical questions, or else they 
 only refer to such personal reminiscences as may best 
 be converted into the text for some Stoical paradox 
 or moral declamation. It is, however, certain from 
 the sequel that Seneca must have seized the oppor- 
 tunity of Caius's death to emerge from his polif jr 
 
THE REIGN OF CLA UDIUS. 
 
 obscurity, and to occupy a conspicuous and brilliant 
 position in the imperial court. 
 
 It would have been well for his own happiness and 
 fame if he had adopted the wiser and manlier course 
 of acting up to the doctrines he professed. A court 
 at most periods is, as the poet says, 
 
 " A golden but a fatal circle, 
 Upon whose magic skirts a thousand devils 
 In crystal forms sit tempting Innocence, 
 And beckon early Virtue from its centre ; " 
 
 but the court of a Cains, of a Claudius, or of a Nero, 
 was indeed a place wherein few of the wise could 
 find a footing, and still fewer of the good. And all 
 that Seneca gained from his career of ambition was 
 to be suspected by the first of these Emperors, 
 banished by the second, and murdered by the third. 
 
 The first few acts of Claudius showe^d a sensible and 
 kindly disposition ; but it soon became fatally obvious 
 that the real powers of the government would be 
 wielded, not by the timid and absent-minded l^mperor, 
 but by any one who for the time being could acquire 
 an ascendency over his well-intentioned but feeble 
 disposition. Now, the friends and confidants of 
 Claudius had long been chosen from the ranks of his 
 freedmen. As under Louis XL and Don Miguel, the 
 barbers of these monarchs were the real governors, so 
 Claudius was but the minister rather than the master 
 of Narcissus his private secretary, of Polybius his 
 literary adviser, and of Pallas his accountant. A 
 third person, with whose name Scripture has made us 
 familiar, was a freedman of Claudius. This was Felix; 
 
SENECA. 
 
 the brother of Pallas, and that Procurator who, though 
 he had been the husband or the paramour of three 
 queens, trembled before the simple eloquence of a 
 feeble and imprisoned Jew.* These men became 
 proverbial for their insolence and wealth ; and once, 
 when Claudius was complaining of his own poverty, 
 some one wittily replied, "that he would have abun- 
 dance if two of his freedmen would but admit him 
 into partnership with them." 
 
 But these men gained additional power from the 
 countenance and intrigues of the young and beautiful 
 wife of Claudius, Valeria Messalina. In his marriage, 
 as in all else, Claudius had been pre-eminent in mis- 
 fortune. He lived in an age of which the most 
 frightful sign of depravity was that its women were, if 
 possible, a shade worse than its men ; and it was the 
 misery of Claudius, as it finally proved his ruin, to 
 have been united by marriage to the very worst 
 among them all. Princesses like the Berenice, and 
 the Drusilla, and the Salome, and the Herodias of 
 the sacred historians were in this age a familiar 
 spectacle ; but none of them were so wicked as two 
 at least of Claudius's wives. He was betrothed or 
 married no less than five times. The lady first 
 destined for his bride had been repudiated because 
 her parents had offended Augustus ; the next died 
 on the very day intended for her nuptials. By his 
 first actual wife, Urgulania, whom he had married 
 in early youth, he had two children, .Drusus and 
 Claudia ; Drusus was accidentally choked in boyhood 
 
 * Acts xix. 
 
THE REIGN OF CLAUDIUS. 8f 
 
 while trying to swallow a pear which had been thrown 
 up into the air. Very shortly after the birth of 
 Claudia, discovering the unfaithfulness of Urgulania, 
 Claudius divorced her, and ordered the child to be 
 stripped naked and exposed to die. His second wife, 
 ^Elia Petina, seems to have been an unsuitable person, 
 atid her also he divorced. His third and fourth wives 
 lived to earn a colossal infamy Valeria Messalina for 
 her shameless character, Agrippina the younger for 
 her unscrupulous ambition. 
 
 Messalina, when she married, could scarcely have 
 been fifteen years old, yet she at once assumed a 
 dominant position, and secured it by means of the 
 most unblushing wickedness. 
 
 But she did not reign so absolutely undisturbed as 
 to be without her own jealousies and apprehensions ; 
 and these were mainly kindled by Juiia. and Agrip- 
 pina, the two nieces of the Emperor. They were, no 
 less than herself, beautiful, brilliant, and evil-hearted 
 women, quite ready to make their own coteries, and 
 to dispute, as far as they dared, the supremacy of a 
 bold but reckless rival. They too, used their arts, 
 their wealth, their rank, their political influence, their 
 personal fascinations, to secure for themselves a band 
 of adherents, ready, when the proper moment arrived, 
 for any conspiracy. It is unlikely that, even in the 
 first flush of her husband's strange and unexpected 
 triumph, Messalina should have contemplated with 
 any satisfaction their return from exile. In this 
 respect it is probable that the Emperor succeeded 
 in resisting her expressed wishes ; so that the mere 
 
Ai SENECA. 
 
 appearance of the two daughters of Germanicus in 
 her presence was a standing witness of the limitations 
 to which her influence was subjected. 
 
 At this period, as is usual among degraded peoples, 
 the history of the Romans degenerates into mere 
 anecdotes of their rulers. Happily, however, it is not 
 our duty to enter on the chronique scandaleuse of plots 
 and counterplots, as little tolerable to contemplate as 
 the factions of the court of France in the worst periods 
 of its history. We can only ask what possible part a 
 philosopher could play at such a court ? We can 
 only say that his position there is not to the credit 
 of his philosophical professions ; and that we can 
 contemplate his presence there with as little satisfac- 
 tion as we look on the figure of the worldly and 
 frivolous bishop in Mr. Frith's picture of "The Last 
 Sunday of Charles II. at Whitehall." 
 
 And such inconsistencies involve their own retribu- 
 tion, not only in loss of influence and fair fame, but 
 even in direct consequences. It was so with Seneca. 
 Circumstances possibly a genuine detestation of 
 Messalina's exceptional infamy seem to have thrown 
 him among the partisans of her rivals. Messalina 
 was only waiting her opportunity to strike a blow. 
 Julia, possibly as being the younger and the less 
 powerful of the two sisters, was marked out as the 
 first victim, and the opportunity seemed a favourable 
 one for involving Seneca in her ruin. His enormous 
 wealth, his high reputation, his splendid abilities, made 
 him a formidable opponent to the Empress, and a 
 valuable ally to her rivals. It was determined to get 
 
 ,- 
 
THE REIGN OF CLAUDIUS. 83 
 
 rid of both by a single scheme. Julia was accused of 
 an intrigue with Seneca, and was first driven into 
 exile and then put to death. Seneca was banished to 
 the barren and pestilential shores of the island of 
 Corsica. 
 
 Seneca, as one of the most enlightened men of his 
 age, should have aimed at a character which would 
 have been above the possibility of suspicion : but we 
 must remember that charges such as those which 
 were brought against him were the easiest of all to 
 make, and the most impossible to refute. When 
 we consider who were Seneca's accusers, we are 
 not forced to believe his guilt ; his character was 
 indeed deplorably weak, and the laxity of the age 
 in such matters was fearfully demoralising ; but 
 there are sufficient circumstances in his favour to 
 justify us in returning a verdict of " Not guilty." 
 Unless we attach an unfair importance to the bitter 
 calumny of his open enemies, we may consider that 
 the general tenor of his life has sufficient weight to 
 exculpate him from an unsupported accusation. 
 
 Of Julia, Suetonius expressly says that the crime 
 of which she was accused was uncertain, and that 
 she was condemned unheard. Seneca, on the other 
 hand, was tried in the Senate and found guilty. He 
 tells us that it was not Claudius who flung him down, 
 but rather that, when he was falling headlong, the 
 Emperor supported him with the moderation of his 
 divine hand ; " he entreated the Senate on my behalf; 
 he not only gave me life, but even begged it for me. 
 Let it be his to consider," adds Seneca, with the 
 
84 SENECA. 
 
 most dulcet flattery, " in what light he may wish" 
 my cause to be regarded ; either his justice will find, 
 or his mercy will make, it a good cause. He will 
 alike be worthy of my gratitude, whether his ultimate 
 conviction of my innocence be due to his knowledge 
 or to his will." 
 
 This passage enables us to conjecture how matters 
 stood. The avarice of Messalina was so insatiable that 
 the non-confiscation of Seneca's immense wealth is a 
 proof that, for some reason, her fear or hatred of him 
 was not implacable. Although it is a remarkable fact 
 that she is barely mentioned, and never once abused, in 
 the writings of Seneca, yet there can be no doubt that 
 the charge was brought by her instigation before the 
 senators ; that after a very slight discussion, or none 
 at all, Claudius was, or pretended to be, convinced of 
 Seneca's culpability ; that the senators, with their 
 usual abject servility, at once voted him guilty oft-high 
 treason, and condemned him to death, and the con- 
 fiscation of his goods ; and that Claudius, perhaps 
 from his own respect for literature, perhaps at the 
 intercession of Agrippina, or of some powerful freed- 
 man, remitted part of his sentence, just as King 
 James I. remitted all the severest portions of the 
 sentence passed on Francis Bacon. 
 
 Neither the belief of Claudius nor the condemna- 
 tion of the Senate furnish the slightest valid proofs 
 against him. The Senate at this time were so base 
 and so filled with terror, that on one occasion a mere 
 word of accusation from the freedman of an Emperor 
 was sufficient to make them fail upon one of then 
 
THE REIGN OF CLA UDIUS. 85 
 
 -number, and stab him to death upon the spot v/ith 
 their iron pens. As for poor Claudius, his adminis- 
 tration of justice, patient and laborious as it was, 
 had already grown into a public joke. On one 
 occasion he wrote down and delivered the wise 
 decision, u that he agreed with the side which had set 
 forth the truth." On another occasion, a common 
 Greek whose suit came before him grew so impatient 
 at his stupidity as to exclaim aloud, " You are an old 
 fool." We are not informed that the Greek was 
 punished. Roman usage allowed a good deal of 
 banter and coarse personality. We are told that on 
 one occasion even the furious and bloody Caligula, 
 seeing a provincial smile, called him up, and asked 
 him what he was laughing at. "At you," said the 
 man; "you look such a humbug." The grim tyrant 
 was so struck with the humour of the thing that he 
 took no further notice of it. A Roman knight against 
 whom some foul charge had been trumped up, see- 
 ing Claudius listening to the most contemptible and 
 worthless evidence against him, indignantly abused him 
 for his cruel stupidity, and flung his pen and tablets in 
 his face so violently as to cut his cheek. In fact, the 
 Emperor's singular absence of mind gave rise to 
 endless anecdotes. Among other things, when some 
 condemned criminals were to fight as gladiators, and 
 addressed him before the games in the sublime 
 formula "Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutarnus !" 
 (" Hail, Caesar ! doomed to die, we salute thee !") he 
 gave the singularly inappropriate answer, " Avete 
 vos!" (" Hail ye also !") which they took as a sign of 
 
86 SENECA. 
 
 pardon, and were unwilling to fight until they were 
 actually forced to do so by the gestures of the 
 Emperor. 
 
 The decision of such judges as Claudius and his 
 Senate is worth very little in the questibn of a man's 
 innocence or guilt ; but the sentence was that Sen- 
 eca should be banished to the island of Corisca. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 
 
 SENECA IN EXILE. 
 
 So, in A.D. 41, in the prime of life and the full vigour 
 of his faculties, with a name stained by a charge of 
 which he may have been innocent, but of which he 
 was condemned as guilty, Seneca bade farewell to 
 his noble-minded mother, to his loving aunt, to his 
 brothers, the beloved Gallio and the literary Mela, 
 to his nephew, the ardent and promising young 
 Lucan, and, above all which cost him the severest 
 pang to Marcus, his sweet and prattling little boy. 
 It was a calamity which might have shaken the forti- 
 tude of the very noblest soul, and it had by no means 
 come upon him single-handed. Already he had lost 
 his wife, he had suffered from acute and chronic ill- 
 health, he had been bereaved but three weeks pre- 
 viously of another little son. He had been cut short 
 by the jealousy of one emperor from a career of 
 splendid success ; he was now banished by the 
 imbecile subservience of another from all that he 
 held most dear. 
 
 We are hardly able to conceive the intensity of 
 anguish with which an ancient Poman generally 
 
 i2 
 
88 SENECA. 
 
 regarded the thought of banishment. In the long 
 melancholy wail of Ovid's " Tristia ;" in the bitter 
 and heart-rending complaints of Cicero's " Epistles," 
 we may see something of that intense absorption in 
 the life of Rome which to most of her eminent citizens 
 made a permanent separation from the city and its 
 interests a thought almost as terrible as death it- 
 self. Even the stoical and heroic Thrasea openly 
 confessed that he should prefer death to exile. 
 To a heart so affectionate, to a disposition so social, 
 to a mind so active and ambitious as that of Seneca, 
 it must have been doubly bitter to exchange the 
 happiness of his family circle, the splendour of an 
 imperial court, the luxuries of enormous wealth, the 
 refined society of statesmen, and the ennobling 
 intercourse of philosophers for the savage wastes 
 of a rocky island and the society of boorish illiterate 
 islanders, or, at the best, of a few other political 
 exiles, ail of whom would be as miserable as him- 
 self, and some of whom would probably have deserved 
 their fate. 
 
 The Mediterranean rocks selected for political 
 exiles Gyaros, Seriphos, Scyathos, Patmos, Pontia, 
 Pandataria were generally rocky, barren, fever- 
 stricken places, chosen by design as the most 
 wretched conceivable spots in which human life 
 could be maintained at all. Yet these islands were 
 crowded with exiles, and in them were to be found 
 not a few princesses of Caesarean origin. We must 
 not draw a parallel to their position from that oi 
 an Eleanor, the wife of Duke Humphrey, immured 
 
SENECA IN EXILE. 89 
 
 in Peel Castle in the Isle of Man, or of a Mary 
 Stuart in the Isle of Loch Leven, for it was some- 
 thing incomparably worse. No care was taken even 
 to provide for their actual wants. Their very lives 
 were not secure. Agrippa Posthumus and Nero, 
 the brothers of the Emperor Caligula, had been so 
 reduced by starvation tnat botn of the wretched 
 youths had been driven to support life by eating 
 the materials with which their beds were stuffed. 
 The Emperor Caius had once asked an exile, 
 whom he had recalled from banishment, in what 
 manner he had been accustomed to employ his time 
 on the island. " I used," said the flatterer, " to 
 pray that Tiberius might die, and that you might 
 succeed." It immediately struck Caius that the 
 exiles whom he had banished might be similarly 
 employed, and accordingly he sent centurions round 
 the islands to put them all to death. Such were the 
 miserable circumstances which might be in store for 
 a political outlaw. If we imagine what must have 
 been the feelings of a d'Espremenil; when a lettre de 
 cachet consigned him to a prison in the Isle d'Hieres ; 
 or what a man like Burke might have felt, if he had 
 been compelled to retire for life to the Bermudas ; we 
 may realize to some extent the heavy trial which now 
 befel the life of Seneca. 
 
 Corsica was the island chosen for his place of 
 
 * Among the Jews the homicides who had fled to a city of refuge 
 were set free on the high priest's death, and, in order to prevent them 
 from praying for his death, the mother and other relatives of the high 
 priest used to supply them with clothes and other necessaries. See the 
 author's article on "Asylum" in Kitto's Encyclopedia (ed. Alexander) 
 
oo SENECA. 
 
 banishment, and a spot more uninviting could hardly 
 have been selected. It was an island " shaggy and 
 savage," intersected from north to south by a chain 
 of wild, inaccessible mountains, clothed to their sum- 
 mits with gloomy and impenetrable forests of pine 
 and fir. Its untamable inhabitants are described 
 by the geographer Strabo as being "wilder than 
 the wild beasts." It produced but little corn, and 
 scarcely any fruit-trees. It abounded, indeed, in 
 swarms of wild bees, but its very honey was bitter 
 and unpalatable, from being infected with the acrid 
 taste of the box-flowers on which they fed. Neither 
 gold nor silver were found there ; it produced noth- 
 ing worth exporting, and barely sufficient for the 
 mere necessaries of its inhabitants ; it rejoiced in no 
 great navigable rivers, and even the trees, in which it 
 abounded, were neither beautiful nor fruitful. Sene- 
 ca describes it in more than one of his epigrams, as a 
 
 " Terrible isle, when earliest summer glows 
 Yet fiercer when his face the dog-star shows ; " 
 
 and again as a 
 
 " Barbarous land, which rugged rocks surround, 
 Whose horrent cliffs with idle wastes are crowned, 
 No autumn fruit, no tilth the summer yields, 
 Nor olives cheer the winter-silvered fields : 
 Nor joyous spring her tender foliage lends, 
 Nor genial herb the luckless soil befriends ; 
 Nor bread, nor sacred fire, nor freshening wave ; 
 Nought here save exile, and the exile's grave ! " 
 
 In such a place, and under such conditions, Seneca 
 had ample need for all his philosophy. And at first 
 
SENECA IN EXILE. 91 
 
 it did not fail him. Towards the close of his first 
 year of exile he wrote the " Consolation to his 
 mother Helvia," which is one of the noblest and 
 most charming of all his works. 
 
 He had often thought, he said, of writing to console 
 her under this deep and wholly unlooked-for trial, 
 but hitherto he had abstained from doing so, lest, 
 while his own anguish and hers were fresh, he should 
 only renew the pain of the wound by his unskilful 
 treatment. He waited therefore till time had laid its 
 healing hand upon her sorrows, especially because he 
 found no precedent for one in his position condoling 
 with others when he himself seemed more in need 
 of consolation, and because something new and 
 admirable would be required of a man who, as it were, 
 raised his head from the funeral pyre to console his 
 friends. Still he now feels impelled to write to her, 
 because to alleviate her regrets will be to lay aside 
 his own. He does not attempt to conceal from her 
 the magnitude of the misfortune, because, so far from 
 being a mere novice in sorrow, she has tasted it from 
 her earliest years in all its varieties ; and because his 
 purpose was to conquer her grief, not to extenuate 
 its causes. Those many miseries would indeed have 
 been in vain, if they had not taught her how to bear 
 wretchedness. He will prove to her therefore that 
 she has no cause to grieve either on his account, or on 
 her own. Not on his because he is happy among 
 circumstances which others would think miserable 
 and because he assures her with his own lips that 
 not only i: aiserable, but that he can never 
 
02 SENECA. 
 
 be made so. Every one can secure his own happiness, 
 if he learns to seek it, not in external circumstances, 
 but in himself. He cannot indeed claim for himself 
 the title of wise, for, if so, he would be the most 
 fortunate of men, and near to God Himself; but, 
 which is the next best thing, he has devoted himself 
 to the study of wise men, and from them he has 
 learnt to expect nothing and to be prepared for all 
 things. The blessings which Fortune had hitherto 
 bestowed on him, wealth, honours, glory, he had 
 placed in such a position that she might rob him of 
 them all without disturbing him. There was a great 
 space between them and himself, so that they could 
 be taken but not torn away. Undazzled by the 
 glamour of prosperity, he was unshaken by the blow 
 of adversity. In circumstances which were the envy 
 of all men he had never seen any real or solid bless- 
 ing, but rather a painted emptiness, a gilded decep- 
 tion ; and similarly he found nothing really hard or 
 terrible in ills which the common voice has so 
 described. 
 
 What, for instance, was exile ? it. was but a change 
 of place, an absence from one's native land ; and, if 
 you looked at the swarming multitudes in Rome 
 itself, you would find that the majority of them were 
 practically in contented and willing exile, drawn 
 thither by necessity, by ambition, or by the search for 
 the best opportunities of vice. No isle so wretched 
 and so bleak which did not attract some voluntary 
 sojourners ; even this precipitous and naked rock of 
 Corsica, the hungriest, roughest, most savage, most 
 
SENECA IN EXILE. 93 
 
 unhealthy spot conceivable, had more foreigners in it 
 than native inhabitants. The natural restlessness 
 and mobility of the human mind, which arose from 
 its aetherial origin, drove men to change from place 
 to place. The colonies of different nations, scattered 
 all over the civilized and uncivilized world even in 
 spots the most chilly and uninviting, show that the 
 condition of place is no necessary ingredient in human 
 happiness. Even Corsica had often changed its 
 owners ; Greeks from Marseilles had first lived 
 there, then Ligurians and Spaniards, then some 
 Roman colonists, whom the aridity and thorniness 
 of the rock had not kept away. 
 
 " Varro thought that nature, Brutus that the con- 
 sciousness of virtue, were sufficient consolations for 
 any exile. How little have I lost in comparison with 
 those two fairest possessions which I shall everywhere 
 enjoy nature and my own integrity ! Whoever or 
 whatever made the world whether it were a deity, 
 or disembodied reason, or a divine interfusing spirit, 
 or destiny, or an immutable series of connected causes 
 the result was that nothing, except our very meanest 
 possessions, should depend on the will of another. 
 Man's best gifts lie beyond the power of man either 
 to give or to take away. This Universe, the grandest 
 and loveliest work of nature, and the Intellect which 
 was created to observe and to admire it, are our 
 special and eternal possessions, which shall last as 
 long as we last ourselves. Cheerful, therefore, and 
 erect, let us hasten with undaunted footsteps whither- 
 soever our fortunes lead us. 
 
94 SENECA. 
 
 " There is no land where man cannot dwell, no 
 land where he cannot uplift his eyes to heaven 
 wherever we are, the distance of the divine from the 
 human remains the same. So then, as long as my 
 eyes are not robbed of that spectacle with which they 
 cannot be satiated, so long as I may look upon the 
 sun and moon, and fix my lingering gaze on the other 
 constellations, and consider their rising and setting 
 and the spaces between them and the causes of their 
 less and greater speed, while I may contemplate the 
 multitude of stars glittering throughout the heaven, 
 some stationary, some revolving, some suddenly 
 blazing forth, others dazzling the gaze with a flood of 
 fire as though they fell, and others leaving over a long 
 space their trails of light ; while I am in the midst of 
 such phenomena, and mingle myself, as far as a man 
 may, with things celestial, while my soul is ever 
 occupied in contemplations so sublime as these, 
 what matters it what ground I tread ? 
 
 " What though fortune has thrown me where the 
 most magnificent abode is but a cottage ? the humblest 
 cottage, if it be but the home of virtue, may be more 
 beautiful than all temples ; no place is narrow which 
 can contain the crowd of glorious virtues ; no exile 
 severe into which you may go with such a reliance. 
 When Brutus left Marcellus at Mitylene; he seemed 
 to be himself going into exile because he left that 
 illustrious exile behind him. Caesar would not land 
 at Mitylene, because he blushed to see him. Marcellus 
 therefore, though he was living in exile and poverty, 
 was living a most happy and a most noble life. 
 
SENECA IN EXILE. 
 
 " 'One self- approving hour whole worlds outweighs 
 Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas ; 
 And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels, 
 Than Csesar with a senate at his heels.' 
 
 " And as for poverty, every one who is not cor- 
 rupted by the madness of avarice and luxury knows 
 that it is no evil. How little does man need, and how 
 easily can he secure that ! As for me, I consider my- 
 self as having lost not wealth, but the trouble of look- 
 ing after it. Bodily wants are few warmth and food, 
 nothing more. May the gods and goddesses confound 
 that gluttony which sweeps the sky, and sea, and land 
 for birds, and animals, and fish ; which eats to vomit 
 and vomits to eat, and hunts over the whole world for 
 that which after all it cannot even digest ! They 
 might satisfy their hunger with little, and they excite 
 it with much. What harm can poverty inflict on a 
 man who despises such excesses ? Look at the god- 
 like and heroic poverty of our ancestors, and compare 
 the simple glory of a Camillus with the lasting infamy 
 of a luxurious Apicius ! Even exile will yield a 
 sufficiency of necessaries, but not even kingdoms are 
 enough for superfluities. It is the soul that makes us 
 rich or poor : and the soul follows us into exile, and 
 finds and enjoys its own blessings even in the most 
 barren solitudes. 
 
 " But it does not even need philosophy to enable us 
 to despise poverty. Look at the poor : are they not 
 often obviously happier than the rich ? And the times 
 are so changed that what we would now consider the 
 poverty of an exile would then have been regarded an 
 
SENECA. 
 
 the patrimony of a prince. Protected by such prece- 
 dents as those of Homer, and Zeno, and Menenius 
 Agrippa, and Regulus, and Scipio, poverty becomes 
 not only safe but even estimable. 
 
 " And if you make the objection that the ills which 
 assail me are not exile only, or poverty only, but dis- 
 grace as well, I reply that the soul which is hardy 
 enough to resist one wound is invulnerable to all. If 
 we have utterly conquered the fear of death, nothing 
 else can daunt us. What is disgrace to one who 
 stands above the opinion of the multitude ? what was 
 even a death of disgrace to Socrates, who by entering 
 a prison made it cease to be disgraceful ? Cato was 
 twice defeated in his candidature for the praetorship 
 and consulship : well, this was the disgrace of those 
 honours, and not of Cato. No one can be despised by 
 another until he has learnt to despise himself. The 
 man who has learnt to triumph over sorrow wears his 
 miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his 
 brow, and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man 
 bravely wretched. Such men inflict disgrace upon dis- 
 grace itself. Some indeed say that death is preferable 
 to contempt ; to whom I reply that he who is great 
 when he falls is great in his prostration, and is no 
 more an object of contempt than when men tread on 
 the ruins of sacred buildings, which men of piety 
 venerate no less than if they stood. 
 
 " On my behalf therefore, dearest mother, you have 
 no cause for endless weeping : nor have you on your 
 own. You cannot grieve for me on selfish grounds, 
 in consequence of any personal loss to yourself; for 
 
SENECA IN EXILE. 97 
 
 you were ever eminently unselfish, and unlike other 
 women in all your dealings with your sons, and you 
 were always a help and a benefactor to them rather 
 than they to you. Nor should you give way out of a 
 regret and longing for me in my absence. We have 
 often- previously been separated, and, although it is 
 natural that you should miss that delightful conversa- 
 tion, that unrestricted confidence, that electrical sym- 
 pathy of heart and intellect that always existed 
 between us, and that boyish glee wherewith your 
 visits always affected me, yet, as you rise above the 
 common herd of women in the virtue, the simplicity, 
 the purity of your life, you must abstain from feminine 
 tears as you have done from all feminine follies. 
 Consider how Cornelia, who had lost ten children by 
 death, instead of wailing for her dead sons, thanked 
 fortune that had made her sons Gracchi. Rutilia 
 followed her son Cotta into exile, so dearly did she 
 love him, yet no one saw her shed a tear after his 
 burial. She had shown her affection when it was 
 needful, she restrained her sorrow when it was super- 
 fluous. Imitate the example of these great women 
 as you have imitated their virtues. I want you not 
 to beguile your sorrow by amusements or occupa- 
 tions, but to conquer it. For you may now return to 
 those philosophical studies in which you once showed 
 yourself so apt a proficient, and which formerly my 
 father checked. They will gradually sustain and 
 comfort you in your hour of grief. 
 
 " And meanwhile consider how many sources of 
 consolation already exist for you. My brothers are 
 
a8 SENECA. 
 
 still with you ; the dignity of Gallic, the leisure of 
 Mela, will protect you ; the ever-sparkling mirth of 
 my darling little Marcus will cheer you up ; the train- 
 ing of my little favourite Novatilla will be a duty 
 which will assuage your, sorrow. For your father's 
 sake, too, though he is absent from you, you must 
 moderate your lamentations. Above all, your sister 
 that truly faithful, loving, and high-souled lady, to 
 whom I owe so deep a debt of affection for- her kind- 
 ness to me from my cradle until now, she will yield 
 you the fondest sympathy and the truest consolation. 
 " But since I know that after all your thoughts will 
 constantly revert to me, and that none of your chil- 
 dren will be more frequently before your mind than 
 I, not because they are less dear to you than I, but 
 because it is natural to lay the hand most often upon 
 the spot which pains, I will tell you how you are to 
 think of me. Think of me as happy and cheerful, 
 as though I were in the midst of blessings ; as indeed 
 I am, while my mind, free from every care, has leisure 
 for its own pursuits, and sometimes amuses itself 
 with lighter studies, sometimes, eager for truth, soars 
 upwards to the contemplation of its own nature, and 
 the nature of the universe. It inquires first of all 
 about the lands and their situation ; then into the 
 condition of the surrounding sea, its ebbings and 
 flowings ; then it carefully studies all this terror- 
 fraught interspace between heaven and earth, tumul- 
 tuous with thunders and lightnings, and the blasts of 
 winds, and the showers -of rain, and snow, and hail ; 
 then, having wandered through all the lower regions 
 
SENECA IN EXILE. 99 
 
 it bursts upwards to the highest things, and revels in 
 the most lovely spectacle of that which is divine, and, 
 mindful of its own eternity, passes into all that hath 
 been and all that shall be throughout all ages." 
 
 Such, in briefest outline, and without any of that 
 grace of language with which Seneca has invested 
 it, is a sketch of the little treatise which many have 
 regarded as among the most delightful of Seneca's 
 works. It presents the picture of that grandest of 
 all spectacles 
 
 " A good man struggling with the storms of fate." 
 
 So far there was something truly Stoical in the 
 aspect of Seneca's exile. But was this grand attitude 
 consistently maintained ? Did his little raft of philo- 
 sophy sink under him, or did it bear him safely over 
 the stormy waves of this great sea of adversity ? 
 8 K 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SENECA'S PHILOSOPHY GIVES WAY. 
 
 THERE are some misfortunes of which the very 
 essence consists in their continuance. They are tole- 
 rable so. long as they are illuminated by a ray of hope. 
 Seclusion and hardship might even come at first with 
 some charm of novelty to a philosopher who, as 
 was not unfrequent among the amateur thinkers of 
 his time, occasionally practised them in the very 
 midst of wealth and friends. But as the hopeless 
 years rolled on, as the efforts of friends proved un- 
 availing, as the loving son, and husband, and father 
 felt himself cut off from the society of those whom he 
 cherished in such tender affection, as the dreary 
 island seemed to him ever more barbarous and 
 more barren, while season after season added to its 
 horrors without revealing a single compensation, 
 Seneca grew more and more disconsolate and de- 
 pressed. It seemed to be his miserable destiny to rust 
 away, useless, unbefriended, and forgotten. Formed 
 to fascinate society, here there were none for him to 
 fascinate ; gifted with an eloquence which could keep 
 listening senates hushed, here he found neither 
 
SENECA'S PHILOSOPHY GIVES WAY. 101 
 
 subject nor audience : and his life began to resemble 
 a river which, long before it has reached the sea, is 
 lost in dreary marshes and choking sands. 
 
 Like the brilliant Ovid, when he was banished to 
 the frozen wilds of Tomi, Seneca vented his anguish 
 in plaintive wailing and bitter verse. In his handful 
 of epigrams he finds nothing too severe for the place 
 of his exile. He cries 
 
 " Spare thou thine exiles, lightly o'er thy dead, 
 Alive, yet buried, be thy dust bespread." 
 
 And addressing some malignant enemy 
 
 " Whoe'er thou art, thy name shall I repeat? 
 Who o'er mine ashes dar'st to press thy feet, 
 And, uncontented with a fall so dread, 
 Draw'st bloodstained weapons on my darkened head, 
 Beware ! for nature, pitying, guards the tomb. 
 And ghosts avenge th' invaders of their gloom. 
 Hear, Envy, hear the gods proclaim a truth, 
 Which my shrill ghost repeats to move thy ruth, 
 WRETCHES ARE SACRED THINGS, thy hands refrain : 
 E'en sacrilegious hands from TOMBS abstain." 
 
 The one fact that seems to have haunted him most 
 was that his abode in Corsica was a living death. 
 
 But the most complete picture of his state of mind, 
 and the most melancholy memorial of his inconsis- 
 tency as a philosopher, is to be found in his " Con- 
 solation to Polybius." Polybius was one of those 
 freedmen of the Emperor whose bloated wealth and 
 servile insolence were one of the darkest and strangest 
 phenomena of the time. Claudius, more than any of 
 ' his class, from the peculiar imbecility of his character, 
 was under the powerful influence of this class of men ; 
 and so dangerous was their power that Messalina 
 
102 SEW EC A. 
 
 herself was forced to win her ascendency over her 
 husband's mind by making these men her supporters, 
 and cultivating their favour. Such were "the most 
 excellent Felix," the judge of St. Paul, and the slave 
 who became a husband to three queens, Narcissus, 
 in whose household (which moved the envy of the 
 Emperor) were some of those Christians to whom 
 St. Paul sends greetings from the Christians of Corinth,* 
 Pallas, who never deigned to speak to his own slaves, 
 but gave all his commands by signs, and who actually 
 condescended to receive the thanks of the Senate, 
 because he, the descendant of Etruscan kings, yet 
 condescended to serve the Emperor and the Common- 
 wealth ; a preposterous and outrageous compliment, 
 which appears to have been solely due to the fact of 
 his name being identical with that of Virgil's young 
 hero, the son of the mythic Evander ! 
 
 Among this unworthy crew a certain Polybius was 
 not the least conspicuous. He was the director of 
 the Emperor's studies, a worthy Alcuin to such a 
 Charlemagne. All that we know about him is that 
 he was once the favourite of Messalina, and after- 
 wards her victim, and that in the day of his eminence 
 the favour of the Emperor placed him so high that 
 he was often seen walking between the two consuls. 
 Such was the man to whom, on the occasion of -his 
 brother's death, Seneca addressed this treatise of con- 
 solation. It has come down to us as a fragment, 
 and it would have been weii for Seneca's fame if 
 it had not come down to us at ail. Those who are 
 
 * Rom. xvi. u. 
 
SENECA'S PHILOSOPHY GIVES WAY. 103 
 
 enthusiasts for his reputation would gladly prove it 
 spurious, but we believe that no candid reader can 
 study it without perceiving its genuineness. It is 
 very improbable that he ever intended it to be pub- 
 lished, and whoever suffered it to see the light was 
 the successful enemy of its illustrious author. 
 
 Its sad and abject tone confirms the inference, 
 drawn from an allusion which it contains, that it was 
 vvritten towards the close of the third year of Seneca's 
 exile. He apologises for its style by saying that if it 
 betrayed any weakness of thought or inelegance of 
 expression this was only what might be expected from 
 a man who had so long been surrounded by the coarse 
 and offensive patois of barbarians. We need hardly 
 follow him into the ordinary topics of moral philosophy 
 with which it abounds, or expose the inconsistency of 
 its tone with that of Seneca's other writings. He 
 consoles the freedman with the "common common- 
 places " that death is inevitable ; that grief is useless ; 
 that we are all born to sorrow ; that the dead would 
 not wish us to be miserable for their sakes. He reminds 
 him that, owing to his illustrious position, all eyes are 
 upon him. He bids him find consolation in the 
 studies in which he has always shown himself so pre- 
 eminent, and lastly he refers him to those shining 
 examples of magnanimous fortitude, for the climax of 
 which, no doubt, the whole piece of interested flattery 
 was composed. For this passage, written in a crescendo 
 style, culminates, as might have been expected, in the 
 sublime spectacle of Claudius Caesar. So far from 
 resenting his exile, he crawls in the dust to kiss 
 
SENECA. 
 
 Caesar's beneficent feet for saving him from death ; 
 so far from asserting his innocence which, perhaps, 
 was impossible, since to do so might have involved 
 him in a fresh charge of treason he talks with all 
 the abjectness of guilt. He belauds the clemency of 
 a man, who, he tells us elsewhere, used to kill men 
 with as much sangfroid as a dog eats offal ; the pro- 
 digious powers of memory of a divine creature who 
 used to ask people to dice and to dinner whom he had 
 executed the day before, and who even inquired as 
 to the cause of his wife's absence a few days after 
 having given the order for her execution ; the extra- 
 ordinary eloquence of an indistinct stutterer, whose 
 head shook and whose broad lips seemed to be in 
 contortions whenever he spoke.* If Polybius feels 
 sorrowful, let him turn his eyes to Caesar ; the 
 splendour of that most great and radiant deity will 
 so dazzle his eyes that all their tears will be dried up 
 in the admiring gaze. Oh that the bright occidental 
 star which has beamed on a world which, before its 
 rising, was plunged in darkness and deluge, would 
 only shed one little beam upon him ! 
 
 No doubt these grotesque and gorgeous flatteries, 
 contrasting strangely with the bitter language of 
 intense hatred and scathing contempt which Seneca 
 poured out on the memory of Claudius after his 
 death, were penned with the sole purpose of being 
 repeated in those divine and benignant ears. No 
 doubt the superb freedman, who had been allowed 
 
 * These slight discrepancies of description are taken from ccmntaf 
 Consol. ad Polyb. and the Ludus de Morte Ccesaris. 
 
SENEGAL PHILOSOPHY GIVES WAY. 105 
 
 so rich a share of the flatteries lavished on his master, 
 would take the opportunity if not out of good-nature, 
 at least out of vanity, to retail them in the imperial 
 ear. If the moment were but favourable, who knows 
 but what at some oblivious and crapulous moment 
 the Emperor might be induced to sign an order for 
 our philosopher's recall ? 
 
 Let us not be hard on him. Exile and wretchedness 
 are stern trials, and it is difficult for him to brave a 
 martyr's misery who has no conception of a martyr's 
 crown. To a man who, like Seneca, aimed at being 
 not only a philosopher, but also a man of the world 
 who in this very treatise criticises the Stoics for their 
 ignorance of life there would not have seemed to be 
 even the shadow of disgrace in a private effusion of 
 insincere flattery intended to win the remission of a 
 deplorable banishment. Or, if we condemn Seneca, 
 let us remember that Christians, no less than philo- 
 sophers, have attained a higher eminence only to ex- 
 emplify a more disastrous fall. The flatteries of. Seneca 
 to Claudius are not more fulsome, and are infinitely 
 less disgraceful, than those which fawning bishops 
 exuded on his counterpart, King James. And if the 
 Roman Stoic can gain nothing from a comparison with 
 the yet more egregious moral failure of the greatest 
 of Christian thinkers Francis Bacon, Viscount St. 
 Alban's let us not forget that a Savonarola and a 
 Cranmer recanted under torment, and that the anguish 
 of exile drew even from the starry and imperial spirit 
 of Dante Alighieri words and sentiments for which 
 in his noblest moments he might have blushed. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SENECA'S RECALL FROM EXILE. 
 
 OF the last five years of Seneca's weary exile no 
 trace has been preserved to us. What were his 
 alternations of hope and fear, of devotion to philo- 
 sophy and of hankering after the world which he; 
 had lost, we cannot tell. Any hopes which he may 
 have entertained respecting trie intervention of Poly- 
 bius in his favour must have been utterly quenched 
 when he heard that the freedman, though formerly 
 powerful with Messalina, had forfeited his own life 
 in consequence of her machinations. But the closing 
 period of his days in Corsica must have brought him 
 thrilling news, which would save him from falling into 
 absolute despair. 
 
 For the career of Messalina was drawing rapidly 
 to a close. The life of this beautiful princess, short 
 as it was, for she died at a very early age, was 
 enough to make her name a proverb of everlasting 
 infamy. For a time she appeared irresistible. Her 
 personal fascination had won for her an unlimited 
 sway over the facile mind of Claudius, and she had 
 either won over by her intrigues, or terrified by he; 
 
SENECA'S RECALL FROM EXILE. 107 
 
 pitiless severity, the noblest of the Romans and the 
 most powerful of the freedmen. But we see in her 
 fate, as we see on every page of history, that vice 
 ever carries with it the germ of its own ruin, and 
 that a retribution, which is all the more inevitable 
 from being often slow, awaits every violation of the 
 moral law. 
 
 There is something almost incredible in the penal 
 infatuation which brought about her fall. During 
 the absence of her husband at Ostia, she wedded 
 in open day with C. Silius, the most beautiful and 
 the most promising of the young Roman nobles. 
 She had apparently persuaded Claudius that this was 
 merely a mock-marriage, intended to avert some 
 ominous auguries which threatened to destroy "the 
 husband of Messalina;" but, whatever Claudius may 
 have imagined, all the rest of the world knew the 
 marriage to be real, and regarded it not only as a 
 vile enormity, but also as a direct attempt to bring 
 about a usurpation of the imperial power. 
 
 It was by this view of the case that the freedman 
 Narcissus roused the inert spirit and timid indig- 
 nation of the injured Emperor. While the wild 
 revelry of the wedding ceremony was at its height, 
 Vettius Valens, a well-known physician of the day, 
 had in the licence of the festival struggled up to 
 the top of a lofty tree, and when they asked him 
 what he saw, he replied in words which, though 
 meant for jest, were full of dreadful significance, " I 
 see a fierce storm approaching from Ostia." He had 
 scarcely uttered the words when first an uncertain 
 
 L 
 
I oS SENECA. 
 
 rumour, and then numerous messengers brought the 
 news that Claudius knew all, and was coming to take 
 vengeance. The news fell like a thunderbolt on the; 
 assembled guests. Silius, as though nothing had hap- 
 pened, went to transact his public duties in the Forum ; 
 Messalina instantly sending for her children, Octavia 
 and Britannicus, that she might meet her husband 
 with them by her side, implored the protection of 
 Vibidia, the eldest of the chaste virgins of Vesta, and, 
 deserted by all but three companions, fled on foot 
 and unpitied, through the whole breadth of the city, 
 until she reached the Ostian gate, and mounted the 
 rubbish-cart of a market gardener which happened 
 to be passing. But Narcissus absorbed both the looks 
 and the attention of the Emperor by the proofs and 
 the narrative of her crimes, and, getting rid of the 
 Vestal by promising her that the cause of Messalina 
 should be tried, he hurried Claudius forward, first to 
 the house of Silius, which abounded with the proofs 
 of his guilt, and then to the camp of the Praetorians, 
 where swift vengeance was taken on the whole band 
 of those who had been involved in Messalina's crimes. 
 She meanwhile, in alternative paroxysms of fury and 
 of abject terror, had taken refuge in the garden of 
 Lucullus, which she had coveted and made her own 
 by injustice. Claudius, who hac> returned home, and 
 had recovered some of his facile equanimity in the 
 pleasures of the table, showed signs of relenting; but 
 Narcissus knew that delay was death, and on his own 
 authority sent a tribune and centurions to despatch 
 the Empress. They found her prostrate on the 
 
SENECA'S RECALL FROM EXILE. 109 
 
 ground at the feet of her mother Lepida, with whom 
 in her prosperity she had quarrelled, but who now 
 came to pity and console her misery, and to urge her 
 to that voluntary death which alone could save her 
 from imminent and more cruel infamy. But the 
 mind of Messalina, like that of Nero afterwards, was 
 so corrupted by wickedness that not even such poor 
 nobility was left in her as is implied in the courage 
 of despair. While she wasted the time in tears and 
 lamentations, a noise was heard of battering at the 
 doors, and the tribune stood by her in stern silence, 
 the freedman with slavish vituperation. First she 
 took the dagger in her irresolute hand, and after she 
 had twice stabbed herself in vain, the tribune drove 
 home the fatal blow, and the corpse of Messalina, 
 like that of Jezebel, lay weltering in its blood in the 
 plot of ground of which her crimes had robbed its 
 lawful owner. Claudius, still lingering at his dinner, 
 was informed that she had perished, and neither 
 asked a single question at the time, nor subsequently 
 displayed the slightest sign of anger, of hatred, of 
 pity, or of any human emotion. 
 
 The absolute silence of Seneca respecting the 
 woman who had caused him the bitterest anguish and 
 humiliation of his life is, as we have remarked 
 already, a strange and significant phenomenon. It 
 is clearly not due to accident, for the vices which he 
 is incessantly describing and denouncing would have 
 found in this miserable woman their most flagrant 
 illustration, nor could contemporary history have 
 furnished a more apposite example of the vindication 
 
no SENECA. 
 
 by her fate of the stern majesty of the moral law. But 
 yet, though Seneca had every reason to loathe her 
 character and to detest her memory, though he could 
 not have rendered to his patrons a more welcome 
 service than by blackening her reputation, he never 
 so much as mentions her name. An J this honourable 
 silence gives us a favourable insight into his character. 
 For it can only be due to his pitying sense of the 
 fact that even Messalina, bad as she undoubtedly was, 
 had been judged already by a higher Power, and had 
 met her dread punishment at the hand of God. It has 
 been conjectured, with every appearance of proba- 
 bility, that the blackest of the scandals which were be- 
 lieved and circulated- respecting her had their origin 
 in the published autobiography of her deadly enemy 
 and victorious successor. The many who had had 
 a share in Messalina's fall would be only too glad to 
 poison every reminiscence of her life ; and the deadly 
 implacable hatred of the worst woman who ever lived 
 would find peculiar gratification in scattering every 
 conceivable hue of disgrace over the acts of a rival 
 whose young children it was her dearest object to 
 supplant. That Seneca did not deign to chronicle 
 even of an enemy what Agrippina was not ashamed 
 to write, that he spared one whom it was every one's 
 interest and pleasure to malign, that he regarded her 
 terrible fall as a sufficient claim to pity, as it was a 
 sufficient Nemesis upon her crimes, is a trait in 
 the character of the philosopher which has hardly yet 
 received the credit which it. deserves. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO. 
 
 SCARCELY had the grave closed over Messalina when 
 the court was plunged into the most violent factions 
 :ibout the appointment of her successor. There were 
 three principal candidates for the honour of the aged 
 Emperor's hand. They were his former wife, ^lia 
 Petina, who had only been divorced in consequence 
 of trivial disagreements, and who was supported by 
 Narcissus ; Lollia Paulina, so celebrated in. antiquity 
 for her beauty and splendour, and who for a short 
 time had been the wife of Caius ; and Agrippina the 
 younger, the daughter of the great German icus, and 
 the niece of Claudius himself. Claudius, indeed, who 
 had been as unlucky as Henry VIII. himself in the 
 unhappiness which had attended his five experiments 
 of matrimony, had made the strongest possible 
 asseverations that he would never again submit 
 himself to such a yoke. But he was so com- 
 pletely a tool in the hands of his own courtiers 
 that no one attached the slightest importance to 
 anything which he had said. 
 
 The marriage of an uncle with his own niece was 
 
 L2 
 
112 SENECA 
 
 considered a violation of natural laws, and was re- 
 garded with no less horror among the Romans than 
 it would be among ourselves. But Agrippina, by 
 the use of means the most unscrupulous, prevailed 
 over all her rivals, and managed her interests with 
 such consummate skill that, before many months had 
 elapsed, she had become the spouse of Claudius and 
 the Empress of Rome. 
 
 With this princess the destinies of Seneca were 
 most closely intertwined, and it will enable us the 
 better to understand his position, and his writings, 
 if we remember that all history discloses to us no 
 phenomenon more portentous and terrible than that 
 presented to us in the character of Agrippina, the 
 mother of Nero. 
 
 Of the virtues of her great parents she, like their 
 other children, had inherited not one ; and she had 
 exaggerated their family tendencies into passions 
 which urged her into every form, of crime. Her 
 career from the very cradle had been a career of 
 wickedness, nor had any one of the many fierce 
 vicissitudes of her life called forth in her a single 
 noble or amiable trait. Born at Oppidum Ubiorum 
 (afterwards called in her honour Colonia Agrippina, 
 and still retaining its name in the form Cologne), 
 she lost her father at the age of three, and her 
 mother (by banishment) at the age of twelve. She 
 was educated with bad sisters, with a wild and 
 wicked brother, and under a grandmother whom she 
 detested. At the age of fourteen she was married 
 to Cnaeus Domitius Ahencbarbus, one of the most 
 
AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO. 113 
 
 worthless and ill-reputed of the young Roman nobles 
 of his day. The gossiping- biographies of the time 
 still retain some anecdotes of his cruelty and selfish- 
 ness. They tell us how he once, without the slightest 
 remorse, ran over a poor boy who was playing on 
 the Appian Road ; how on another occasion he 
 knocked out the eye of a Roman knight who had 
 given him a hasty answer ; and how, when his friend 
 congratulated him on the birth of his son (the young 
 Claudius Domitius, afterwards the Emperor Nero), 
 he brutally remarked that from people like himself 
 and Agrippina could only be born some monster 
 destined for the public ruin. 
 
 Domitius was forty years old when he married 
 Agrippina, and the young Nero was not born till 
 nine years afterwards. Whatever there was of pos- 
 sible affection in the tigress-nature of Agrippina was 
 now absorbed in the person of her child. For that 
 child, from its cradle to her own death by his means, 
 she toiled and sinned. The fury of her own ambi- 
 tion, inextricably linked with the uncontrollable 
 fierceness of her love for this only son, henceforth 
 directed every action of her life. Destiny had made 
 her the sister of one Emperor; intrigue elevated 
 her into the wife of another ; her own crimes made 
 her the mother of a third. And at first sight her 
 career might have seemed unusually successful, fot 
 while still in the prime of life she was wielding, first 
 in the name of her husband, and then in that of her 
 son, no mean share in the absolute government of 
 the Roman world. But meanwhile that same uner- 
 
14 SENECA. 
 
 ring retribution, whose stealthy footsteps in the reaf 
 o' the triumphant criminal we can track through page 
 after page of history, was stealing nearer and nearer 
 to her with uplifted hand. When she had reached 
 the dizzy pinnacle of gratified love and pride to which 
 she had waded through so many a deed of sin and 
 blood, she was struck down into terrible ruin and 
 violent shameful death, by the hand of that very son 
 for whose sake she had so often violated the laws of 
 virtue and integrity, and spurned so often the pure 
 and tender obligations which even the heathen had 
 been taught by the voice of God within their con-- 
 science to recognise and to adore. 
 
 Intending that her son should marry Octavia, the 
 daughter of Claudius, her first step was to drive to 
 death Silanus, a young nobleman to whom Octavia 
 had already been betrothed. Her next care was to 
 get rid of all rivals possible or actual. Among the 
 former were the beautiful Calpurnia and her own 
 sister-in-law, Domitia Lepida. Among the latter 
 was the wealthy Lollia Paulina, against whom she 
 trumped up an accusation of sorcery and treason, 
 upon which her wealth was confiscated, but her life 
 spared by the Emperor, who banished her from Italy. 
 This half-vengeance was not enough for the mother 
 of Nero. Like the daughter of Herodias in sacred 
 history, she despatched a tribune with orders to 
 bring her the head of her enemy ; and when it was 
 brought to her, and she found a difficulty in recognising 
 those withered and ghastly features of a once-cele- 
 orated beauty, she is .said with her own hand to have 
 
AGR1PPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO. n$ 
 
 lifted one of the lips, and to have satisfied herself that 
 this was indeed the head of Lollia. To such horrors 
 may a woman sink, when she has abandoned the love 
 of God ; and a fair face may hide a soul " leprous 
 as sin itself." Well may Adolf Stahr observe that 
 Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth and husband-murdering 
 Gertrude are mere children by the side of this awful 
 giant-shape of steely feminine cruelty. 
 
 Such was the princess who, in the year A.D. 49, 
 recalled Seneca from exile.* She saw that her 
 cruelties were inspiring horror even into a city that had 
 long been accustomed to blood, and Tacitus expressly 
 tells us that she hoped to counterbalance this feeling 
 by a stroke of popularity in recalling from the waste 
 solitudes of Corsica the favourite philosopher and 
 most popular author of the Roman world. Nor was 
 she content with this public proof of her belief in 
 his innocence of the crime which had been laid to 
 his charge, for she further procured for him the 
 Praetorship, and appointed him tutor and governor 
 to her youthful son. Even in taking this step she 
 did not forget her ambitious views ; for she knew 
 that Seneca cherished a secret indignation against 
 Claudius, and that Nero could have no more wise 
 adviser in taking steps to secure the fruition of his 
 imperial hopes. It might perhaps have been better for 
 Seneca's happiness if he had never left Corsica, or set 
 his foot again in that Circean and bloodstained court 
 
 * Gallic was Proconsul of Achaia about A.D. 53> when St. Paul was 
 brought before his tribunal. Very possibly his elevation may have been 
 tue to the restoration of Seneca's influence. 
 
il6 SENECA. 
 
 Let it, however, be added in his exculpation, that 
 another man of undoubted and scrupulous honesty, 
 Afranius Burrus a man of the old, blunt, faithful 
 type of Roman manliness, whom Agrippina had 
 raised to the Prefectship of the Praetorian cohorts, 
 was willing to share his danger and his respon- 
 sibilities. Yet he must have lived from the first in 
 the very atmosphere of base and criminal intrigues. 
 He must have formed an important member of 
 Agrippina's party, which was in daily and deadly 
 enmity against the party of Narcissus. He must 
 have watched the incessant artifices by which Agrip- 
 pina secured the adoption of her son Nero by an 
 Emperor whose own son Britannicus was but three 
 years his junior. He must have seen Nero always 
 honoured, promoted, paraded before the eyes of the 
 populace as the future hope of Rome, whilst Britan- 
 nicus, like the young Edward V. under the regency 
 of his uncle, was neglected, surrounded with spies, 
 kept as much as possible out of his father's sight, 
 and so completely thrust into the background from 
 all observation that the populace began seriously to 
 doubt whether he were alive or dead. He must have 
 seen Agrippina, who had now received the unprece- 
 dented honour of the title " Augusta " in her lifetime, 
 acting with such haughty insolence that there could 
 be little doubt as to her ulterior designs upon the 
 throne. He must have known that his splendid 
 intellect was practically at the service of a woman 
 in whom avarice, haughtiness, violence, treachery, 
 and every form of unscrupulous criminality had 
 
AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO. 117 
 
 reached a point hitherto unmatched even in a corrupt 
 and pagan world. From this time forth the biography 
 of Seneca must assume the form of an apology 
 rather than of a panegyric. 
 
 The Emperor could not but feel that in Agrippina 
 he had chosen a wife even more intolerable than 
 Messalina herself. Messalina had not interfered 
 with the friends he loved, had not robbed him 
 of the insignia of empire, had not filled his palace 
 with a hard and unfeminine tyranny, and had of 
 course watched with a mother's interest over tne 
 lives and fortunes of his children. Narcissus would 
 not be likely to leave him long in ignorance that, in 
 addition to her other plots and crimes, Agrippina had 
 been as little true to him as his former unhappy wife. 
 The information sank deep into his heart, and he was 
 heard to mutter that it had been his destiny all 
 along first to bear, and then to avenge, the enormities 
 of his wives. Agrippina, whose spies filled the palace, 
 could not long remain uninformed of so significant a 
 speech ; and she probably saw with an instinct 
 quickened by the awful terrors of her own guilty 
 conscience that the Emperor showed distinct signs 
 of his regret for having married his niece, and 
 adopted her child to the prejudice, if not to the ruin, 
 of his own young son. If she wanted to reach the 
 goal which she had held so long in view no time was 
 to be lost. Let us hope that Seneca and Burrus 
 were at least ignorant of the means which she took 
 to effect her purpose. 
 
 Fortune favoured her. The dreaded Narcissus, the 
 most formidable obstacle to her murderous plans, was 
 
JiS SENECA. 
 
 seized with an attack of the gout. Agrippina managed 
 that his physician should recommend him the waters 
 of Sinuessa in C'.impania by way of cure. He was 
 thus got out of the way, and she proceeded at once 
 to her work of blood. Entrusting the secret to 
 Halotus, the Emperor's prcegustator the slave whose 
 office it was to protect him from poison by tasting 
 every dish before him and to his physician, Xenophon 
 of Cos, she consulted Locusta, the Mrs. Turner of 
 the period of this classical King James, as to the 
 poison best suited to her purpose. Locusta was 
 mistress of her art, in which long practice had given 
 her a consummate skill. The poison must not be too 
 rapid, lest it should cause suspicion ; nor too slow, lest 
 it should give the Emperor time to consult for the 
 interests of his son Britannicus ; but it was to be one 
 which should disturb his intellect without causing 
 immediate death. Claudius was a glutton, and the 
 poison was given him with all the more ease because it 
 was mixed with a dish of mushrooms, of which he was 
 extravagantly fond. Agrippina herself handed him 
 the choicest mushroom in the dish, and the poison at 
 once reduced him to silence. As was too frequently 
 the case, Claudius was intoxicated at the time, and 
 was carried off to his bed as if nothing had happened. 
 A violent colic ensued, and it was feared that this, 
 with the quantity of wine which he had drunk, would 
 render the poison innocuous. But Agrippina had 
 gone too far for retreat , and Xenophon, who knew 
 that great crimes if frustrated are perilous, if successful 
 are rewarded, came to her assistance. Under pretence 
 of causing him to vomit, he tickled the throat of 
 
AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO. 115 
 
 the Emperor with a feather smeared with a swift 
 and deadly poison. It did its work, and before 
 morning the Caesar was a corpse.* 
 
 As has been the case not unfrequently in history, 
 from the times of Tarquinius Priscus to those of 
 Charles II., the death was concealed until everything 
 had been prepared for the production of a successor. 
 The palace was carefully watched ; no one was even 
 admitted into it except Agrippina's most trusty parti- 
 sans. The body was propped up with pillows ; actors 
 were sent for " by his own desire " to afford it some 
 amusement ; and priests and consuls were bidden to 
 offer up their vows for the life of the dead. Giving out 
 that the Emperor was getting better, Agrippina took 
 care to keep Britannicus and his two sisters, Octavia 
 and Antonia, under her own immediate eye. As 
 though overwhelmed with sorrow she wept, and em- 
 
 * There is usually found among the writings of Seneca a most 
 remarkable burlesque called Ludus de Morte Ccesaris. As to its 
 authorship opinions will always vary, but it is a work of such undoubted 
 genius, so interesting, and so unique in its character, that I have thought 
 it necessary to give in an Appendix a brief sketch of its argument. 
 We may at least hope that this satire, which overflows with the deadliest 
 contempt for Claudius, is not from the same pen which wrote for Nero 
 his funeral oration. It has, however, been supposed (without suffi- 
 cient grounds) to be the lost 'AiroKo\oKvvT(aois which Seneca is said to 
 have written on the apotheosis of Claudius. The very name is a bitter 
 satire. It imagines the Emperor transformed, not into a god, but into 
 a gourd one of those " bloated gourds which sun their speckled bellies 
 before the doors of the Roman peasants. " " The Senate decreed his 
 divinity; Seneca translated it into pumpkinity " (Merivale, Rom. Emp. 
 /. 601). The Ludus begins by spattering mud on the memory of the 
 divine Claudius ; it ends with a shower of poetic roses over the glory 
 of the diviner Nero ! 
 
 M 
 
120 SENECA. 
 
 braced them, and above all kept Britannicus by her 
 side, kissing him with the exclamation " that he was 
 the very image of his father," and taking care that he 
 should on no account leave her room. So the day 
 wore on till it was the hour which the Chaldaeans 
 declared would be the only lucky hour in that unlucky 
 October day. 
 
 Noon came ; the palace doors were suddenly thrown 
 open ; and Nero with Burrus at his side went out t 
 the Praetorian cohort which was on guard. By the 
 order of their commandant, they received him with 
 cheers. A few only hesitated, looking round them and 
 asking " Where was Britannicus ?" Since, however, 
 he was not to be seen, and no one stirred in his favour, 
 they followed the multitude. Nero was carried in 
 triumph to the camp, made the soldiers a short 
 speech, and promised to each man of them a 
 splendid donative. He was at once saluted Emperor. 
 The Senate followed the choice of the soldiers, and 
 the provinces made no demur. Divine honours were 
 decreed to the murdered man, and preparations made 
 for a funeral which was to rival in its splendour the 
 one which Livia had ordered for Augustus. But the 
 will which beyond all doubt had provided for the 
 succession of Britannicus was quietly done away 
 with, and its exact provisions were never known. 
 
 And on the first evening of his imperial power, 
 Nero, well aware to whom he owed his throne, gave 
 to the sentinel who came to ask him the pass for 
 the night the grateful and significant watchword ot 
 " Optima Mater,"" the best of mothers i n 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 
 
 THE imperial youth, whose destinies are now in- 
 extricably mingled with those of Seneca, was accom- 
 panied to the throne by the acclamations of the 
 people. Wearied by the astuteness of an Augustus, 
 the sullen wrath of a Tiberius, the mad ferocity of a 
 Caius, the senile insensibility of a Claudius, they could 
 not but welcome the succession of a bright and 
 beautiful youth, whos.e fair hair floated over his 
 shoulders, and whose features displayed the finest 
 type of Roman beauty. There was nothing in his 
 antecedents to give a sinister augury to his future 
 development, and all classes alike dreamt of the 
 advent of a golden age. We can understand their 
 feelings if we compare tnem with those of our own 
 countrymen when the sullen tyranny of Henry VIII. 
 was followed by the youthful virtue and gentleness 
 of Edward VI. Happy would it have been for 
 Nero if his reign, like that of Edward, could have 
 been cut short before the thick night of many crimes 
 had settled down upon the promise of its dawn. 
 For the first five years of Nero's reign the famous 
 
122 SENECA. 
 
 Quinquennium Neronis were fondly regarded by the 
 Romans as a period of almost ideal happiness. In 
 reality, it was Seneca who was ruling in Nero's name. 
 Even so excellent an Emperor as Trajan is said to have 
 admitted "that no other prince had nearly equalled the 
 praise of that period." It is indeed probable that those 
 years appeared to shine with an exaggerated splendour 
 from the intense gloom which succeeded them; yet 
 we can see in them abundant circumstances which 
 were quite sufficient to inspire an enthusiasm of hope 
 and joy. The young Nero was at first modest and 
 docile His opening speeches, written with all the 
 beauty of thought and language which betrayed the 
 style of Seneca no less than his habitual sentiments, 
 were full of glowing promises. All those things 
 which had been felt to be injurious or oppressive he 
 promised to eschew. He would not, he said, reserve 
 to himself, as Claudius had done, the irresponsible 
 decision in all matters of business ; no office or 
 dignity should be won from him by flattery or pur- 
 chased by bribes ; he would not confuse his own 
 personal interests with those of the commonwealth ; 
 he would respect the ancient prerogatives of the 
 Senate ; he would confine his own immediate attention 
 to the provinces and the army. 
 
 Nor were such promises falsified by his immediate 
 conduct. The odious informers who had flourished 
 in previous reigns were frowned upon and punished. 
 Offices of public dignity were relieved from unjust 
 and oppressive burdens. Nero prudently declined 
 the gold and silver statues and other extravagant 
 
NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 123 
 
 honours which were offered to him by the corrupt 
 and servile Senate, but he treated that body, which, 
 fallen as it was, continued still to be the main repre- 
 sentative of constitutional authority, with favour 
 and respect. Nobles and officials began to breathe 
 more freely, and the general sense of an intolerable 
 tyranny was perceptibly relaxed. Severity was re- 
 served for notorious criminals, and was only inflicted 
 in a regular and authorized manner, when no one 
 could doubt that it had been deserved. Above all, 
 Seneca had disseminated an anecdote about his young 
 pupil which tended more than any other circum- 
 stance to his wide-spread popularity. Kngland has 
 remembered with gratitude and admiration the tearful 
 reluctance of her youthful Edward to sign the death- 
 warrant of Joan Boucher ; Rome, accustomed to a 
 cruel indifference to human life, regarded with some- 
 thing like transport the sense of pity which had 
 made Nero, when asked to affix his signature to an 
 order for execution, exclaim, " How I wish that 1 
 did not know how to write ! " 
 
 It is admitted that no small share of the happiness 
 of this period was due to the firmness of the honest 
 Burrus, and the wise, high-minded precepts of Seneca. 
 They deserve the amplest gratitude and credit for 
 this happy interregnum, for they had no easy task to 
 perform. Besides the difficulties which arose from 
 the base and frivolous character of their pupil, besides 
 the infinite delicacy which was requisite for the re- 
 straint of a youth who was absolute master of such 
 gigantic destinies, they had the task of curbing the 
 
124 SENECA. 
 
 wild and imperious ambition of Agrippina, and of 
 defeating the incessant intrigues of her many powerful 
 dependents. Agrippina had no doubt persuaded her- 
 self that her crimes had been mainly committed in 
 the interests of her son ; but her conduct showed that 
 she wished him to be a mere instrument in her hands. 
 j She wished to govern him. and had probably calcu- 
 lated on doing so by the assistance of Seneca, just 
 as our own Queen Caroline completely managed 
 George II. with the aid of Sir Robert Walpole. She 
 rode in a litter with him ; without his knowledge 
 she ordered the poisoning of M. Silanus, a brother 
 of her former victim, she goaded Narcissus to 
 death, against his will ; through her influence the 
 Senate was sometimes assembled in the palace, 
 and she took no pains to conceal from the senators 
 that she was herself seated behind a curtain where 
 she could hear every word of their deliberations ; 
 nay, on one occasion, when Nero was about to give 
 audience to an important Armenian legation, she 
 had the audacity to enter the audience-chamber, and 
 advance to take her seat by the side of the Emperor. 
 Every one else was struck dumb with amazement, and 
 even terror, at a proceeding so unusual ; but Seneca, 
 with ready and admirable tact, suggested to Nero 
 that he should rise and meet his mother, thus 
 obviating a public scandal under the pretext of filial 
 affection. 
 
 But Seneca from the very first had been guilty of 
 a fatal error in the education of his pupil. He had 
 governed him throughout on the ruinous principle of 
 
NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 125 
 
 concession. Nero was not devoid of talent ; he had 
 a decided turn for Latin versification, and the few 
 lines of his composition which have come down to 
 us, bizarre and affected as they are, yet display a 
 certain sense of melody and power of language. But 
 his vivid imagination was accompanied by a want of 
 purpose ; and Seneca, instead of trying to train him 
 in habits of serious attention and sustained thought, 
 suffered him to waste his best efforts in pursuits and 
 amusements which were considered partly frivolous 
 and partly disreputable, such as singing, painting, 
 dancing, and driving. Seneca might have argued that 
 there was, at any rate, no great harm in such employ- 
 ments, and that they probably kept Nero out of 
 worse mischief. But we respect Nero the less for 
 his indifferent singing and harp- twanging just as we 
 respect Louis XVI. less for making very poor locks ; 
 and, if Seneca had adopted a loftier tone with his 
 pupil from the first, Rome might have been spared 
 the disgraceful folly of Nero's subsequent buffooneries 
 in the cities of Greece and the theatres of Rome. We 
 may lay it down as an invariable axiom in all high 
 education, that it is never sensible to permit what is 
 bad for the supposed sake of preventing what is worse. 
 Seneca very probably persuaded himself that with a 
 mind like Nero's the innate worthlessness of which 
 he must early have recognised success of any high 
 description would be simply impossible. But this 
 did not absolve him from attempting the only noble 
 means by which success could, under any circum- 
 stances, be attainable. Let us, however, remember 
 
126 SENECA. 
 
 that his concessions to his pupil were mainly in 
 matters which he regarded as indifferent or, at the 
 worst, as discreditable rather than as criminal ; and 
 that his mistake probably arose from an error in 
 judgment far more than from any deficiency in moral 
 character. 
 
 Yet it is clear that, even intellectually, Nero was 
 the worse for this laxity of training. We have already 
 seen that, in his maiden-speech before the Senate, 
 every one recognised the hand of Seneca, and many 
 observed with a sigh that this was the first occasion 
 on which an Emperor had not been able, at least to 
 all appearance, to address the Senate in his own words 
 and with his own thoughts. Tiberius, as an orator, 
 had been dignified and forcible ; Claudius had been 
 learned and polished ; even the disturbed reason of 
 Caligula had not been wanting in a capacity for 
 delivering forcible and eloquent harangues ; but Nero's 
 youth had been frittered away in paltry and indecorous 
 accomplishments, which had left him neither time 
 nor inclination for weightier and nobler pursuits. 
 
 The fame of Seneca has, no doubt, suffered griev- 
 ously from the subsequent infamy of his pupil ; and 
 it is obvious that the dislike of Tacitus to his memory 
 is due lo his connexion with Nero. Now, even 
 though the tutor's system had not been so wise as, 
 when judged by an inflexible standard, it might have 
 been, it is yet clearly unjust to make him responsible 
 for the depravity of his pupil ; and it must be remem- 
 bered, to Seneca's eternal honour, that the evidence 
 of facts, the testimony of contemporaries, and even 
 
NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 127 
 
 * 
 
 the grudging admission of Tacitus himself, establishes 
 in his favour that whatever wisdom and moderation 
 characterised the earlier years of Nero's reign were 
 due to his counsels ; that he enjoyed the cordial 
 esteem of the virtuous Burrus ; that he helped to 
 check the sanguinary audacities of Agrippina ; that 
 the writings which he addressed to Nero, and the 
 speeches which he wrote for him, breathed the loftiest 
 counsels ; and that it was not until he was wholly 
 removed from power and influence that Nero, under 
 the fierce impulses of despotic power, developed 
 those atrocious tendencies of which the seeds had 
 long been latent in his disposition. An ancient writer 
 records the tradition that Seneca very early observed 
 in Nero a savagery of disposition which he could 
 not wholly eradicate ; and that to his intimate friends 
 he used to observe that, " when once the lion tasted 
 human blood, his innate cruelty would return." 
 
 But while we give Seneca this credit, and allow 
 that his intentions were thoroughly upright, we cannot 
 but impugn his judgment for having thus deliberately 
 adopted the morality of expedience ; and we believe 
 that to this cause, more than to 'any other, was due 
 the extent of his failure and the misery of his life. 
 We may, indeed, be permitted to doubt whether 
 Nero himself a vain and loose youth, the son of bad 
 parents, and heir to boundless expectations would, 
 under any circumstances, have grown up much better 
 than he did ; but it is clear that Seneca might have 
 been held in infinitely higher honour but for the 
 share which he had in his education. Had Seneca 
 
128 SENECA. 
 
 been as firm and wise as Socrates, Nero in all proba- 
 bility would not have been much worse than Alci- 
 biades. If the tutor had set before his pupil no 
 ideal but the very highest, if he had inflexibly 
 opposed to the extent of his ability every tendency 
 which was dishonourable and wrong, he might 
 possibly have been rewarded by success, and have 
 earned the indelible gratitude of mankind ; and if he 
 had failed he would at least have failed nobly, and 
 have carried with him into a calm and honourable 
 retirement the respect, if not the affection, of his 
 imperial pupil. Nay, even if he had failed com- 
 pletely^ and lost his life in the attempt, it would 
 have been infinitely better both for him and for 
 mankind. Even Homer might have taught him that 
 " it is better to die than live in sin." At any rate 
 he might have known from study and observation 
 that an education founded on compromise must 
 always and necessarily fail. It must fail because it 
 overlooks that great eternal law of retribution for and 
 continuity in evil, which is illustrated by every single 
 history of individuals and of nations. And the edu- 
 cation which Seneca gave to Nero noble as it was 
 in many respects, and eminent as was its partial and 
 temporary success was yet an education of compro- 
 mises. Alike in the studies of Nero's boyhood and 
 the graver temptations of his manhood, he acted on 
 the foolishly-fatal principle that 
 
 " Had the wild oat not been sown, 
 The soil left barren scarce had grown 
 The grain whereby a man may live." 
 

 NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 129 
 
 Any Christian might have predicted the result ; one. 
 would have thought that even a pagan philosopher 
 might have been enlightened enough to observe it. 
 We often quote the lines 
 
 " The child is father of the man," 
 
 and 
 
 " Just as the twig is bent the tree inclines.'* 
 
 But the ancients were quite as familiar with the same 
 truth under other images. " The cask," wrote Horace, 
 " will long retain the odour of that which has once 
 been poured into it when new." Quintilian, de- 
 scribing the depraved influences which surrounded 
 even the infancy of a Roman child, said, " From 
 these arise first familiarity, then nature" 
 
 No one has laid down the principle more em- 
 phatically than Seneca himself. Take, for instance, 
 the following passage from his Letters, on evil con- 
 versation. " The conversation," he says, " of these 
 men is very injurious : for, even if it does no immediate 
 harm, it leaves its seeds in the mind, and follows us 
 even when we have gone from the speakers, a plague 
 sure to spring up in future resurrection. Just as those 
 who have heard a symphony cany in their ears the 
 tune and sweetness of the song which entangles their 
 thoughts, and does not suffer them to give their whole 
 energy to serious matters; so the conversation of 
 flatterers and of those who praise evil things, lingers 
 longer in the mind than the time of hearing it. Nor is 
 it easy to shake out of the soul a sweet sound ; it 
 pursues us, and lingers with us, and at perpetual inter- 
 
130 SENECA, 
 
 vals recurs. Our ears therefore must be closed to evil 
 words, and that to the very first we hear. For when 
 they have once begun and been admitted, they acquire 
 more and- more audacity;" and so he adds a litte after- 
 wards, " our days flow on, and irreparable life passes 
 beyond our reach." Yet he who wrote these noble 
 words was not only a flatterer to his imperial pupil, but 
 is charged with having deliberately encouraged him in 
 a foolish passion for a freedwoman named Acte, into 
 which Nero fell. It was of course his duty to recall 
 the wavering affections of the youthful Emperor to his 
 betrothed Octavia, the daughter of Claudius, to whom 
 he had been bound by every tie of honour and 
 affection, and his union with whom gave some shadow 
 of greater legitimacy to his practical usurpation. But 
 princes rarely love the wives to whom they owe any 
 part of their elevation. Henry VII. treated Elizabeth 
 of York with many slights. The union of William III. 
 with Mary was overshadowed by her superior claim 
 to the royal power ; and Nero from the first regarded 
 with aversion, which ended in assassination, the poor 
 young orphan girl who recalled to the popular memory 
 his slender pretensions to hereditary empire, and whom 
 he regarded as a possible rival, if her cowed and 
 plastic nature should ever become a tool in the hands 
 of more powerful intriguers. But we do not hear of 
 any attempt on Seneca's part to urge upon Nero the 
 fulfilment of this high duty, and we find him sinking 
 into the degraded position of an accomplice with 
 young profligates like Otho, as the confidant of a 
 dishonourable love. Such conduct, which would have 
 

 NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 131 
 
 done discredit to a mere courtier, was to a Stoic dis- 
 graceful. But the principle which led to it is the very 
 principle to which we have been pointing, the principle 
 of moral compromise, the principle of permitting and 
 encouraging what is evil in the vain hope of thereby 
 preventing what is worse. It is hardly strange that 
 Seneca should have erred in this way, for compromise 
 was the character of his entire life. He appears to 
 have set before himself the wholly impossible task of 
 being both a genuine philosopher and a statesman 
 under the Caesars. He prided himself on being no f 
 only a philosopher, but also a man of the world, 
 and the consequence was, that in both capacities 
 he failed. It was as true in Paganism as it is in 
 Christianity, that a man must make his choice be- 
 tween duty and interest between the service of 
 Mammon and the service of God. No man ever 
 gained anything but contempt and ruin by incessantly 
 halting between two opinions. 
 
 And by not taking that lofty line of duty which a 
 Zeno or an Antisthenes would have taken, Seneca 
 became more or less involved in some of the most 
 dreadful events of Nero's reign. Every one of the 
 terrible doubts under which his reputation has suf- 
 fered arose from his having permitted the principle of 
 expedience to supersede the laws of virtue. One or 
 two of these events we must briefly narrate. 
 
 We have already pointed out that the Nemesis 
 which for so many years had been secretly dogging 
 the footsteps of Agrippina made her tremble under 
 the weight of its first cruel blows when she seemed 
 
 10 N 
 
SENECA. 
 
 to have attained the highest summit of her ambi- 
 tion. Very early indeed Nero began to be galled 
 and irritated by the insatiate assumption and 
 swollen authority of "the best of mothers." The 
 furious reproaches which she heaped upon him when 
 she saw in Acte a possible rival to her power drove 
 him to take refuge in the facile and unphilosophic 
 worldliness of Seneca's concessions, and goaded him 
 almost immediately afterwards into an atrocious 
 crime. He naturally looked on Britannicus, the 
 youthful son of Claudius, with even more suspicion 
 and hatred than that with which he regarded Octavia. 
 Kings have rarely been able to abstain from acts of 
 severity against those who might become claimants 
 to the throne. The feelings of King John towards 
 Prince Arthur, of Henry IV. towards the Earl ot 
 March, of Mary towards Lady Jane Grey, of Eliza- 
 beth towards Mary Stuart, of King James towards 
 Lady Arabella Stuart, resembled, but probably by no 
 means equalled in intensity, those of Nero towards 
 his kinsman and adoptive brother. To show .him 
 any affection was a dangerous crime, and it fur- 
 nished a sufficient cause for immediate removal if 
 any attendant behaved towards him with fidelity. 
 Such a line of treatment foreshadowed the catastrophe 
 which was hastened by the rage of Agrippina. She 
 would go, she said, and take with her to the camp the 
 noble boy who was now of full age to undertake those 
 imperial duties which a usurper was exercising in 
 virtue of crimes which she was now prepared to 
 confess. Then let the mutilated Burrus and the glib- 
 
NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 
 
 133 
 
 tongued Seneca see whether they could be a match 
 for the son of Claudius and the daughter of Ger- 
 manicus. Such language, uttered with violent ges- 
 tures and furious imprecations, might well excite the 
 alarm of the timid Nero. And that alarm was in- 
 creased by a recent circumstance, which showed that 
 all the ancestral spirit was. not dead in the breast ot 
 Britannicus. During the festivities of the Saturnalia, 
 which were kept by the ancients with all the hilarity 
 of the modern Christmas, Nero had been elected by lot 
 as "governor of the feast,". and, in that capacity, was 
 entitled to issue his orders to the guests. To the others 
 he issued trivial mandates which would not make them 
 blush ; but Britannicus, in violation of every principle 
 of Roman decorum, was ordered to stand up in the 
 middle and sing a song. The boy, inexperienced as 
 yet even in sober banquets, and wholly unaccustomed 
 to drunken convivialities, might well have faltered ; 
 but he at once rose, and with a steady voice began a 
 strain probably the magnificent wail of Andromache 
 over the fall of Troy, which has been preserved to us 
 from a lost play of Ennius in which he indicated 
 his own disgraceful ejection from his hereditary rights. 
 His courage and his misfortunes woke in the guests a 
 feeling of pity which night and wine made them less 
 careful to disguise. , From that moment the fate of 
 Britannicus was sealed. Locusta, the celebrated 
 poisoner of ancient Rome, was summoned to the 
 councils of Nero to get rid of Britannicus, as she had 
 already been summoned to those of his mother when 
 she wished to disembarrass herself of Britannicus's 
 
i;U SENECA. 
 
 father. The main difficulty was to avoid discovery, 
 since nothing was eaten or drunk at the imperial 
 table till it had been tasted by the prczgustator. To 
 avoid this difficulty a very hot draught was given to 
 Britannicus, and when he wished for something cooler 
 a swift and subtle poison was dropped into the Qold 
 water with which it was tempered. The boy drank, 
 and instantly sank from his seat, gasping and speech- 
 less. The guests started up in consternation, and 
 fixed their eyes on Nero. He with the utmost cool- 
 ness assured them that it was merely a fit of epilepsy, 
 to which his brother was accustomed, and from which 
 he would soon recover. The terror and agitation of 
 Agrippina showed to every one that she at least was 
 guiltless of this dark deed ; but the unhappy Octavia, 
 young as she was, and doubly terrible on every 
 ground as the blow must have been to her, sat silent 
 and motionless, having already learnt by her mis- 
 fortunes the awful necessity for suppressing under an 
 impassive exterior her affections and sorrows, her 
 hopes and fears. In the dead of night, amid storms 
 of murky rain, which were thought to indicate the 
 wrath of heaven, the last of the Claudii was hastily 
 and meanly hurried into a dishonourable grave. 
 
 We may believe that in this crime Seneca had no 
 share whatever, but we can hardly believe that he was 
 ignorant of it after it had been committed, or that he 
 had no share in the intensely hypocritical edict in 
 which Nero bewailed the fact of his adoptive brother's 
 death, excused his hurried funeral, and threw himself 
 on the additional indulgence and protection of the 
 
NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 135 
 
 Senate. Nero showed the consciousness of guilt by 
 the immense largesses which he distributed to the 
 most powerful of his friends. " Nor were there want- 
 ing men," says Tacitus, in a most significant manner, 
 " who accused certain people, notorious for tJieir high 
 professions, of Jiaving at that period divided among 
 them villas and houses as though they had been so much 
 spoil" There can hardly be a doubt that the great 
 historian intends by this remark to point at Seneca, 
 to whom he tries to be fair, but whom he could never 
 quite forgive for his share in the disgraces of Nero's 
 reign. That avarice was one of Seneca's temptations 
 is too probable ; that expediency was a guiding 
 principle of his conduct is but too evident ; and for 
 a man with such a character to rebut an inuendo is 
 never an easy task. Nay more, it was after this foul 
 event, at the close of Nero's first year, that Seneca 
 addressed him in the extravagant and glowing lan- 
 guage of his treatise on Clemency. " The quality of 
 mercy," and the duty of princes to practise it, has 
 never been more eloquently extolled ; but it is 
 accompanied by a fulsome flattery which has in it 
 something painfully grotesque as addressed by a 
 philosopher to one whom he knew to have been 
 guilty, that very year, of an inhuman fratricide. 
 Imagine some Jewish Pharisee, a Nicodemus or a 
 Gamaliel pronouncing an eulogy on the tenderness 
 of a Herod, and you have some picture of the appear- 
 ance which Seneca's consistency must have worn in 
 the eyes of his contemporaries. 
 
 This event took place A.D. 55, in the first year of 
 
136 SENECA. 
 
 Nero's Quinquennium, and the same year was nearly 
 signalised by the death of his mother. A charge 
 of pretended conspiracy was invented against her, 
 and it is probable that but for the intervention of 
 Burrus, who with Seneca was appointed to examine 
 into the charge, she would have fallen a very sudden 
 victim to the cowardly credulity and growing, hatred 
 of her son. The extraordinary and eloquent audacity 
 of her defence created a reaction in her favour, 
 and secured the punishment of her accusers. But 
 the ties of affection could not long unite two such 
 wicked and imperious natures as those of Agrippina 
 and her son. All history shows that there can be 
 no real love between souls exceptionally wicked, 
 and that this is still more impossible when the 
 alliance between them has been sealed by a com- 
 plicity in crime. Nero had now fallen into a deep 
 infatuation for loppaea Sabina, the beautiful wife 
 of Otho, and she refused him her hand so long as 
 he was still under the control of his mother. At 
 this time Agrippina, as the just consequence of her 
 many crimes, was regarded by all classes with a fana- 
 ticism of hatred which in Poppaea Sabina was inten- 
 sified by manifest self-interest. Nero, always weak, 
 had long regarded his mother with real terror and 
 disgust, and he scarcely needed the urgency of con- 
 stant application to make him long to get rid of hen 
 But the daughter of Germanicus could not be openly 
 destroyed, while her own precautions helped to secure 
 her against secret assassination. It only remained to 
 Compass her death by treachery. Nero had long 
 
NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 137 
 
 compelled her to live in suburban retirement, and 
 had made no attempt to conceal the open rupture 
 which existed between them. Anicetus, admiral of the 
 fleet at Misenum, and a former instructor of Nero, 
 suggested the expedient of a pretended public recon- 
 ciliation, in virtue of which Agrippina should be in- 
 vited to Baiae, and on her return should be placed on 
 board a vessel so constructed as to come to pieces by 
 the removal of bolts. The disaster might then be 
 attributed to a mere naval accident, and Nero might 
 make the most ostentatious display of his affection 
 and regret. 
 
 The invitation Was sent, and a vessel specially 
 decorated was ordered to await her movements. But, 
 CJther from suspicion or from secret information, she 
 declined to avail herself of it, and was conveyed to 
 Baiae in a litter. The effusion of hypocritical affection 
 with which she was received, the unusual tenderness 
 and honour with which she was treated, the earnest 
 gaze, the warm embrace, the varied conversation, re- 
 moved her suspicions, and she consented to return in 
 the vessel of honour. As though for the purpose o 
 revealing the crime, the night was starry and the sea 
 .aim. The ship had not sailed far, and Crepereius 
 Callus, one of her friends, was standing near the 
 helm, while a lady named Acerronia was seated a* 
 her feet as she reclined, and both were vieing with 
 each other in the warmth of their congratulations 
 upon the recent interview, when a crash was heard, 
 and the canopy above them, which had been 
 weighted with a quantity of lead, was suddenly 
 
SENECA. 
 
 let go. Crepereius was crushed to death upon the 
 spot ; Agrippina and Acerronia were saved by the 
 projecting sides of the couch on which they were 
 resting ; in the hurry and alarm, as accomplices were 
 mingled with a greater number who were innocent o 
 the plot, the machinery of the treacherous vessel 
 failed. Some of the rowers rushed to one side of the 
 ship, hoping in that manner to sink it, but here too 
 their councils were divided and confused. Acerronia, 
 in the selfish hope of securing assistance, exclaimed 
 that she was Agrippina, and was immediately de- 
 spatched with oars and poles ; Agrippina, silent and 
 unrecognised, received a wound upon the shoulder, but 
 succeeded in keeping herself afloat till she was picked 
 up by fishermen and carried in safety to her villa. 
 
 The hideous attempt from which she had been thus 
 miraculously rescued did not escape her keen intui- 
 tion, accustomed as it was to deeds of guilt ; but, 
 seeing that her only chance of safety rested in dis- 
 simulation and reticence, she sent her freedman 
 Agerinus to tell her son that by the mercy of heaven 
 she had escaped from a terrible accident, but to beg 
 him not to be alarmed, and not to come to see her 
 because she needed rest. 
 
 The news filled Nero with the wildest terror, and 
 the expectation of an immediate revenge. In horrible 
 agitation and uncertainty he instantly required the 
 presence of Burrus and Seneca. Tacitus doubts 
 whether they may not have been already aware of 
 what he had attempted, and Dion, to whose gross 
 calumnies, however, we need pay no attention, 
 
NhRO AND HIS TUTOR. 139 
 
 declares that Seneca had frequently urged Nero to 
 the deed, either in the hope of overshadowing his 
 own guilt, or of involving Nero in a crime which 
 should hasten his most speedy destruction at the 
 hands of gods and men. In the absence of all 
 evidence we may with perfect confidence acquit 
 the memory of these eminent men from having 
 gone so far as this. 
 
 It must have been a strange and awful scene. The 
 young man, for Nero was but twenty-two years 
 old, poured into their ears the tumult of his agitation 
 and alarm. White with fear, weak with dissipation, 
 and tormented by the furies of a guilty conscience, 
 the wretched youth looked from one to another of his 
 aged ministers. A long and painful pause ensued. 
 If they dissuaded him in vain from the crime which he 
 meditated their lives would have been in danger ; and 
 perhaps they sincerely thought that things had gone 
 so far that, unless 'Agrippina were anticipated, Nero 
 would be destroyed. Seneca was the first to break 
 that silence of anguish by inquiring of Burrus whether 
 the soldiery could be entrusted to put her to death. 
 His reply was that the praetorians would clo nothing 
 against a daughter of Germanicus, and that Anicetus 
 should accomplish what he had promised. Anicetus 
 showed himself prompt to crime, and Nero thanked 
 him in a rapture of gratitude. While the freedman 
 Agerinus was delivering to Nero his mother's mes- 
 sage, Anicetus dropped a dagger at his feet, declared 
 that he had caught him in the very act of attempting 
 the Emperor's assassination, and hurried off with a 
 
140 SENECA. 
 
 band of soldiers to punish Agrippina as the author 
 of the crime. 
 
 The multitude meanwhile were roaming in wild 
 excitement along the shore ; their torches were seer, 
 glimmering in evident commotion about the scene of 
 the calamity, where some were wading into the water 
 in search of the body, and others were shouting in- 
 coherent questions and replies. At the rumour of 
 Agrippina's escape they rushed off in a body to her 
 villa to express their congratulations, where they were 
 dispersed by the soldiers of Anicetus, who had already 
 taken possession of it. Scattering or seizing the 
 slaves who came in their way, and bursting their 
 passage from door to door, they found the Empress 
 in a dimly-lighted chamber, attended only by a single 
 handmaid. "Dost thou too desert me?" exclaimed 
 the wretched woman to her servant, as she rose to 
 slip away. In silent determination the soldiers sur- 
 rounded her couch, and Anicetus was the first to strike 
 her with a stick. " Strike my womb," she cried to 
 him faintly, as he drew his sword, " for it bore Nero." 
 The blow of Anicetus was the signal for her immediate 
 destruction : she was despatched with many wounds, 
 and was buried that night at Misenum on a common 
 couch and with a mean funeral. Such an end, many 
 years previously, this sister, and wife, and mother o{^ 
 emperors had anticipated and despised ; for when the 
 Chaldaeans had assured her that her son would 
 become Emperor, and would murder her, she is said 
 to have exclaimed, " Occidat dum imperet," " Let 
 him slay me if he but reign." 
 
NERO AND HIS TUTOR. 141 
 
 It only remained to account for the crime, and offer 
 for it such lying defences as were most likely to gain 
 credit. Flying to Naples from a scene which had 
 now become awful to him, for places do not 
 change as men's faces change, and, besides this, his 
 disturbed conscience made him fancy that he heard 
 from the hill of Misenum the blowing of a ghostly 
 trumpet and wailings about his mother's tomb in 
 the hours of night, he sent from thence a letter to 
 the Senate, saying that his mother had been punished 
 for an attempt upon his life, and adding a list of 
 her crimes, real and imaginary, the narrative of her 
 accidental shipwreck, and his opinion that her death 
 was a public blessing. The author of this shamefu 1 
 document was Seneca, and in composing it he reached 
 the nadir of his moral degradation. Even the lax 
 morality of a most degenerate age condemned him 
 for calmly sitting down to decorate with the graces of 
 rhetoric and antithesis an atrocity too deep for the 
 powers of indignation. A Seneca could stoop to 
 write what a Thrasea Paetus could scarcely stoop to 
 hear ; for in the meeting of the Senate at which the 
 letter was recited, Thrasea rose in indignation, and 
 went straight home rather than seem to sanction by 
 his presence the adulation of a matricide. 
 
 And the composition of that guily, elaborate, 
 shameful letter was the last prominent act of Seneca's 
 public life. 
 
CHAPTER XIL 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 NOR was it unnatural that it should be. Moral pre* 
 cepts, philosophic guidance were no longer possible 
 to one whose compliances or whose timidity had 
 led him so far as first to sanction matricide, and then 
 to defend it. He might indeed be still powerful to 
 recommend principles of common sense and political 
 expediency, but the loftier lessons of Stoicism, nay, 
 even the better utterances of a mere ordinary Pagan 
 morality, could henceforth only fall from his lips with 
 ,omething of a hollow ring. He might interfere, as 
 we know he did, to render as innocuous as possible 
 the pernicious vanity which made Nero so ready to 
 degrade his imperial rank by public appearances on 
 the orchestra or in the race-course, but he could 
 hardly address again such noble teachings as that of 
 the treatise on Clemency to one whom, on grounds 
 of political expediency, he had not dissuaded from the 
 treacherous murder of a mother, who, whatever her 
 enormities, yet for his sake had sold her very soul. 
 Although there may have" been a strong suspicion 
 that foul play had been committed, the actual facts and 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 143 
 
 details of the death of Agrippina would rest between 
 Nero and Seneca as a guilty secret, in the guilt of 
 which Seneca himself must have his share. Such a 
 position of things was the inevitable death-blow, not 
 only to all friendship, but to all confidence, and ulti- 
 mately to all intercourse. We see in sacred history 
 that Joab's participation in David's guilty secret gave 
 him the absolute mastery over his own sovereign ; we 
 see repeatedly in profane history that the mutual 
 knowledge of some crime is the invariable cause of 
 deadly hatred between a subject and a king. Such 
 feelings as King John may be supposed to have had 
 to Hubert de Burgh, or King Richard III. to Sir 
 James Tyrrel, or King James I. to the Earl of 
 Somerset, such probably, in still more virulent 
 intensity, were the feelings of Nero towards his 
 whilome " guide, philosopher, and friend." 
 
 For Nero very soon learnt that Seneca was no 
 longer necessary to him. For a time he lingered in 
 Campania, guiltily dubious as to the kind of recep- 
 tion which awaited him in the capital. The assurances 
 of the vile crew which surrounded him soon made 
 that fear wear off, and when he plucked up the cou- 
 rage to return to his palace, he might himself have 
 been amazed at the effusion of infamous loyalty 
 and venal acclamation with which he was received. 
 All Rome poured itself forth to meet him ; the Senate 
 appeared id festal robes, with their wives and girls 
 and boys in long array ; seats and scaffoldings were 
 built up along the road by which he had to pass, as 
 though the populace had gone forth to see a triumph. 
 
SENECA. 
 
 With haughty mien, the victor of a nation of slaves, 
 he ascended the Capitol, gave thanks to the gods, and 
 went home to betray henceforth the full perversity 
 of a nature which the reverence for his mother, such 
 as it was, had hitherto in part restrained. But the 
 instincts of the populace were suppressed rather than 
 eradicated. They hung a sack from his statue by 
 night in allusion to the old punishment of parricides, 
 who were sentenced to be flung into the sea, tied up 
 in a sack with a serpent, a monkey, and a cock. 
 They exposed an infant in the Forum with a tablet 
 on which was written, " I refuse to rear thee, lest thou 
 shouldst slay thy mother." They scrawled upon the 
 blank walls of Rome an iambic line which reminded 
 all who read it that Nero, Orestes, and Alcmaeon were 
 murderers of their mothers. Even Nero must have 
 been well aware that he presented a hideous spectacle 
 in the eyes of all who had the faintest shade of 
 righteousness among the people whom he ruled. 
 
 All this took place in A.D. 59, and we hear no more 
 of Seneca till the year 62, a year memorable for the 
 death of Burrus, who had long been his honest, 
 friendly, and faithful colleague. In these dark times, 
 when all men seemed to be speaking in a whisper, 
 almost every death of a conspicuous and high-minded 
 man, if not caused by open violence, falls under the 
 suspicion of secret poison. The death of Burrus may 
 have been due (from the description) to diphtheria, 
 but the popular voice charged Nero with having 
 hastened his death by a pretended remedy, and 
 declared that, when the Emperor visited his sick bed, 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 145 
 
 the dying ma-n turned away from his inquiries with 
 the laconic answer, " I am well." 
 
 His death was regretted, not only from the memory 
 of his virtues, but also from the fact that Nero ap- 
 pointed two men as his successors, of whom the one, 
 Fenius Rufus, was honourable but indolent ; the other 
 and more powerful, Sofonius Tigellinus, had won for 
 himself among cruel and shameful associates a pre- 
 eminence of hatred and of shame. 
 
 However faulty and inconsistent Seneca may have 
 been, there was at any rate no possibility that he 
 should divide with a Tigeliinus the direction of his 
 still youthful master. He was by no means deceived 
 as to the position in which he stood, and the few 
 among Nero's followers in whom any spark of honour 
 was left informed him of the incessant calumnies 
 which were used to undermine his influence. Tigel- 
 linus and his friends dwelt on his enormous wealth and 
 his magnificent villas and gardens, which could only 
 have been acquired with ulterior objects, and which 
 threw into the shade the splendour of the Emperor 
 himself. They tried to kindle the inflammable 
 jealousies of Nero's feeble mind by representing 
 Seneca as attempting to rival him in poetry, and as 
 claiming the entire credit of his eloquence, while he 
 mocked his divine singing, and disparaged his accom- 
 plishments as a harper and charioteer because he 
 himself was unable to acquire them. Nero, they 
 urged, was a boy no longer ; let him get rid of his 
 schoolmaster, and find sufficient instruction in the 
 example oi his ancestors. 
 
SENECA. 
 
 Foreseeing how such arguments must end, Seneca 
 requested an interview with Nero ; begged to be 
 suffered to retire altogether from public life ; pleaded 
 age and increasing infirmities as an excuse for desiring 
 a calm retreat ; and offered unconditionally to resign 
 the wealth and honours which had excited the 
 cupidity of his enemies, but which were simply due to 
 Nero's unexampled liberality during the eight years 
 of his government, towards one whom he had regarde-d 
 as a benefactor and a friend. But Nero did not choose 
 to let Seneca escape so lightly. He argued that, 
 being still young, he could not spare him, and 
 that to accept his offers would not be at all in 
 accordance with his fame for generosity. A pro- 
 ficient in the imperial art of hiding detestation 
 under deceitful blandishments, Nero ended the in- 
 terview with embraces and assurances of friendship. 
 Seneca thanked him the usual termination, as Taci- 
 tus bitterly adds, of interviews with a ruler but 
 nevertheless altered his entire manner of life, forbade 
 his friends to throng to his levees, avoided all com- 
 panions, and rarely appeared in public wishing it to 
 be believed that he was suffering from weak health, or 
 was wholly occupied in the pursuit of philosophy. 
 He well knew the art of courts, for in his book on 
 Anger he has told an anecdote of one who, being 
 asked how he had managed to attain so rare a gift as 
 old age in a palace, replied, " By submitting to in- 
 juries, and returning thanks for them." But he must 
 have known that his life hung upon a thread, for in 
 the very same year an attempt was made to involve 
 
THE BEGIA NING OF THE END. 147 
 
 him in a charge of treason as one of the friends of 
 C. Calpurnius Piso, an illustrious nobleman whose 
 wealth and ability made him an object of jealousy 
 and suspicion, though he was naturally unambitious 
 and devoid of energy. The attempt failed at the 
 time, and Seneca was able triumphantly to refute the 
 charge of any treasonable design. Butthe fact of 
 such a charge being made showed how insecure was 
 the position of any man of eminence under the deepen- 
 ing tyranny of Nero, and it precipitated the conspiracy 
 which two years afterwards was actually formed. 
 
 Not long after the death of Burrus, when Nero 
 began to add sacrilege to his other crimes, Seneca 
 made one more attempt to retire from Rome ; and, 
 when permission was a second time refused, he feigned 
 a severe illness, and confined himself to his chamber. 
 It was asserted, and believed, that about this time Nero 
 made an attempt to poison him by the instrumentality 
 of his freedman Cleonicus, which was only defeated 
 by the confession of an accomplice or by the abste- 
 mious habits of the philosopher, who now took nothing 
 but bread and fruit, and never quenched his thirst 
 except out of the running stream. 
 
 It was during those two years of Seneca's seclusion 
 and disgrace that an event happened of imperishable 
 interest. On the orgies of a shameful court, on the 
 supineness of a degenerate people, there burst as 
 upon the court of Charles II. a sudden lightning- 
 flash of retribution. In its character, in its extent, in 
 the devastation and anguish of which it was the 
 cause, in the improvements by which it was followed, 
 11 o2 
 
148 SENECA. 
 
 in the lying origin to which it was attributed, even in 
 the general circumstances of the period and character 
 of the reign in which it happened, there is a close and 
 singular analogy between the Great Fire of London in 
 1666 and the Great Fire of Rome in 64. Beginning 
 in the crowded part of the city, under the Palatine 
 and Caelian Hills, it raged, first for six, and then again 
 for three days, among the inflammable materials of 
 booths and shops, and driven along by a furious wind, 
 amid feeble and ill-directed efforts to check its course, 
 it burst irresistibly over palaces, temples, and por- 
 ticoes, and amid the narrow tortuous streets of old 
 Rome, involving in a common destruction the most 
 magnificent works of ancient art, the choicest manu- 
 scripts of ancient literature, and the most venerable 
 monuments of ancient superstition. In a few touches 
 of inimitable compression, such as the stern genius of 
 the Latin language permits, but which are too con- 
 densed for direct translation, Tacitus has depicted the 
 horror of the scene, the wailing of panic-stricken 
 women, the helplessness of the very aged and the very 
 young, the passionate eagerness for themselves and 
 for others, the dragging along of the feeble or the 
 waiting for them, the lingering and the hurry, the 
 common and inextricable confusion. Many, while 
 they looked backward, were cut off by the flames 
 in front or at the sides ; if they sought some 
 neighbouring refuge, they found it in the grasp of the 
 conflagration ; if they hurried to some more distant 
 spot, that too was found to be involved in the same 
 calamity. At last, uncertain what to seek or what to 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 149 
 
 avoid, they crowded the streets, they lay huddled to- 
 gether in the fields. Some, having lost all their pos- 
 sessions, died from the want of daily food ; and others, 
 who might have escaped, died of a broken heart from 
 the anguish of being bereaved of those whom they had 
 been unable to rescue ; while, to add to the universal 
 horror, it was believed that all attempts to repress the 
 flames were checked by authoritative prohibition ; 
 nay more, that hired incendiaries were seen flinging 
 firebrands in new directions, either because they had 
 been bidden to do so, or that they might exercise their 
 rapine undisturbed. 
 
 The historians and anecdotists of the time, whose 
 accounts must be taken for what they are worth, 
 attribute to Nero the origin of the conflagration ; and 
 it is certain that he did not return to Rome until the 
 fire had caught the galleries of his palace. In vain 
 did he use every exertion to assist the homeless and 
 ruined population ; in vain did he order food to be sold 
 to them at a price unprecedentedly low, and throw 
 open to them the monuments of Agrippa, his own 
 gardens, and a multitude of temporary sheds. A 
 rumour had been spread that, during the terrible 
 unfolding of that great "flower of flame," he had 
 mounted to the roof of his distant villa, and de- 
 lighted with the beauty of the spectacle, exulting in 
 the safe sensation of a new excitement, had dressed 
 himself in theatrical attire, and sung to his harp a 
 poem on the burning of Troy. Such a heartless 
 mixture of buffoonery and affectation had exaspe- 
 rated the people too deeply for forgiveness, and Nerc 
 
ISO SENECA. 
 
 thought it necessary to draw off the general odium 
 into a new channel, since neither hi? largesses nor any 
 other popular measures succeeded in removing from 
 himself the ignominy of this terrible suspicion. What 
 follows is so remarkable, and, to a Christian reader, 
 so deeply interesting, that I will give it in the very 
 .words of that great historian whcin I have been so 
 closely following. 
 
 " Therefore, to get rid of this report, Nero trumped 
 up an accusation against a sect, detested for their 
 atrocities, whom the con.mon people called Christians, 
 and inflicted on them the most recondite punish- 
 ments. Christ, the founder of this sect, had been 
 capitally punished by the Procurator Pontius Pilate, in 
 the reign of Tiberius ; and this damnable superstition, 
 repressed for the present, was again breaking out, not 
 only through Judaea, where the evil originated, but 
 even through the City, whither from all regions all 
 things that are atrocious or shameful flow together and 
 gain a following. Those, therefore, were first arrested 
 wno confessed their religion, and then on their evi- 
 dence a vast multitude were condemned, not so much 
 on the charge of incendiarism, as for their hatred 
 towards the human race. And mockery was added 
 to their death ; for they were covered in the skins of 
 wild beasts and were torn to death by dogs, or 
 crucified, or set apart for burning, and after the close 
 of the day were reserved for the purpose of nocturnal 
 illumination. Nero lent his own gardens for the 
 spectacle, and gave a chariot-race, mingling with the 
 people in the costume of a charioteer, ot driving 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 151 
 
 among them in his chariot ; by which conduct he 
 raised a feeling of commiseration towards the sufferers, 
 guilty though they were, and deserving of the ex- 
 tremest penalties, as though they were being exter- 
 minated, not for the public interests, but to gratify 
 the savage cruelty of one man." 
 
 Such are the brief but deeply pathetic particulars 
 which have come down to us respecting the first great 
 persecution of the Christians, and such must have been 
 the horrid events of which Seneca was a cotemporary, 
 and probably an actual eye-witness, in the very last 
 year of his life. Profoundly as, in all likelihood he 
 must have despised the very name of Christian, a heart 
 so naturally mild and humane as his must have shud- 
 dered at the monstrous cruelties devised against the 
 unhappy votaries of this new religion. But to the 
 relations of Christianity with the Pagan world we 
 shall return in a subsequent chapter; and we must 
 now hasten to the end of our biography. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 / 
 
 THE DEATH OF SENECA. 
 
 THE false charge which had been brought against 
 Seneca, and in which the name of Piso had been 
 involved, tended to urge that nobleman and his 
 friends into a real and formidable conspiracy. Many 
 men of influence and distinction joined in it, and 
 among others Annaeus Lucanus, the celebrated poet- 
 nephew of Seneca, and Fenius Rufus, the colleague 
 of Tigellinus in the command of the imperial guards. 
 The plot was long discussed, and many were ad- 
 mitted into the secret, which was nevertheless marvel- 
 lously well kept. One of the most eager conspirators 
 was Subrius Flavus, an officer of the guards, who 
 suggested the plan of stabbing Nero as he sang 
 upon the stage, or of attacking him as he went about 
 without guards at night in the galleries of his burning 
 palace. Flavus is even said to have cherished the 
 design of subsequently murdering Piso likewise, and 
 of offering the imperial power to Seneca, with the full 
 cognisance of the philosopher himself.* However this 
 may have been and the story has no probability 
 * Seejuv. Sat. viii. 212. 
 
LUCIUS ANN7EUS SENECA. 
 
THE DEATH OF SENECA. 153 
 
 many schemes were discussed and rejected, from the 
 difficulty of finding a man sufficiently bold and suf- 
 ficiently in earnest to put his own life to such immi- 
 nent risk. While things were still under discussion, 
 the plot was nearly ruined by the information of 
 Volusius Proculus, an admiral of the fleet, to whom it 
 had been mentioned by a freedwoman of the name 
 of Ephicharis. Although no sufficient evidence could 
 be adduced against her, the conspirators thought it 
 advisable to hasten matters, and one of them, a 
 senator named Scaevinus, undertook the dangerous 
 task of assassination. Plautius Lateranus, the consul- 
 elect, was to pretend to offer a petition, in which he 
 was to embrace the Emperor's knees and throw him 
 to the ground, and then Scaevinus was to deal the 
 fatal blow. The theatrical conduct of Scaevinus 
 who took an antique dagger from the Temple of 
 Safety, made his will, ordered the dagger to be 
 sharpened, sat down to an unusually luxurious ban- 
 quet, manumitted or made presents to his slaves, 
 showed great agitation, and finally ordered ligaments 
 for wounds to be prepared, awoke the suspicions of 
 one of his freedrnen named Milichus, who hastened 
 to claim a reward for revealing his suspicions. Con- 
 fronted with Milichus, Scaevinus met and refuted his 
 accusations with the greatest firmness ; but when 
 Milichus mentioned among other things that, the day 
 before, Scaevinus had held a long and secret conver- 
 sation with another friend of Piso named Natalis, and 
 when Natalis, on being summoned, gave a very dif- 
 ferent account of the subject of this conversation from 
 
1,4 SENECA. 
 
 that which Scaevinus had given, they were both put 
 in chains; and, unable to endure the threats .and 
 the sight of tortures, revealed the entire conspiracy. 
 Natalis was the first to mention the name of Piso, 
 and he added the hated name of Seneca, either 
 because he had been the confidential messenger be- 
 tween the two, or because he knew that he could not 
 do a greater favour to Nero than by giving him the 
 opportunity of injuring a man whom he had long 
 sought every possible opportunity to crush. Scaevinus, 
 with equal weakness, perhaps because he thought that 
 Natalis had left nothing to reveal, mentioned the 
 names of the others, and among them of Lucan, whose 
 complicity in the plot would undoubtedly tend to give 
 greater probability to the supposed guilt of Seneca. 
 Lucan, after long denying all knowledge of the design, 
 corrupted by the promise of impunity, was guilty of 
 the incredible baseness of making up for the slowness 
 of his confession by its completeness, arid of naming 
 among the conspirators his chief friends Gallus and 
 Pollio, and his own mother Atilla. The woman 
 Ephicharis, slave though she had once been, alone 
 showed the slightest constancy, and, by her brave 
 unshaken reticence under the most excruciating and 
 varied tortures, put to shame the pusillanimous 
 treachery of senators and knights. On the second 
 day, when, with limbs too dislocated to admit of her 
 standing, she was again brought to the presence ol 
 her executioners, she succeeded, by a sudden move- 
 ment, in strangling herself with her own girdle. 
 
 In the hurry and alarm of the moment the slightest 
 
77/ DEATH OF SENECA, 
 
 show of resolution would have achieved the object 
 of the conspiracy. Fenius Rufus had not yet been 
 named among the conspirators, and as he sat by the 
 side of the Emperor, and presided over the torture of 
 his associates, Subrius Flavus made him a secret sign 
 to inquire whether even then and there he should stab 
 Nero. Rufus not only made a sign of dissent, but 
 actually held the hand of Subrius as it was grasping 
 the hilt of his sword. Perhaps it would have been 
 better for him if he had not done so, for it was not 
 likely that the numerous conspirators would long 
 permit the same man to be at once their accomplice 
 and the fiercest of their judges. Shortly afterwards, 
 as he was urging and threatening, SoEvinus remarked, 
 with a quiet smile, "that nobody knew more about 
 the matter than he did himself, and that he had better 
 show his gratitude to so excellent a prince by telling 
 all he knew." The confusion and alarm of Rufus be- 
 trayed his consciousness of guilt ; he was seized and 
 bound on the spot, and subsequently put to death. 
 Meanwhile the friends of Piso were urging him to 
 take some bold and sudden step, which, if it did not 
 succeed in retrieving his fortunes, would at least shed 
 lustre on his death. But his somewhat slothful nature, 
 weakened still further by a luxurious life, was not to 
 be aroused, and he calmly awaited the end. It was 
 customary among the Roman Emperors at this period 
 to avoid the disgrace and danger of public executions 
 by sending a messenger to a man's house, and order 
 ing him to put himself to death by whatever means 
 he preferred. Some raw recruits for Nero dared not 
 
156 SENECA. 
 
 intrust any veterans with the duty brought the 
 mandate to Piso, who proceeded to make a will full of 
 disgraceful adulation towards Nero, opened his veins, 
 and died. Plautius Lateranus was not even allowed 
 the poor privilege of choosing his own death, but, 
 without time even to embrace his children, was hurried 
 off to a place set apart for the punishment of slaves, 
 and there died, without a word, by the sword of 
 a tribune whom he knew to be one of his own 
 accomplices. 
 
 Lucan, in the prime of his life and the full bloom 
 of his genius, was believed to have joined the plot 
 from his indignation at the manner in which Nero's 
 jealousy had repressed his poetic fame, and forbidden 
 him the opportunity of public recitations. He too 
 opened his veins ; and as he felt the deathful chill 
 creeping upwards from the extremities of his limbs, 
 he recited some verses from his own " Pharsalia," in 
 which he had described the similar death of the soldier 
 Lycidas. They were his last words. His mother 
 Atilla, whom, to his everlasting infamy, he had be- 
 trayed, was passed over as a victim too insignificant 
 for notice, and was neither pardoned nor punished. 
 
 But, of all the many deaths which were brought 
 about by this unhappy and ill-managed conspiracy, 
 none caused more delight to Nero than that of Seneca, 
 whom he was now able to dispatch by the sword, since 
 he had been unable to do so by secret poison. What 
 share Seneca really had in the conspiracy is unknown. 
 If he were really cognisant of it, he must have acted 
 tvith consummate tact, for no particle of convincing 
 
THE DEATH OF SENECA. -57 
 
 evidence was adduced against him. All that even 
 Natalis could relate was, that when Piso had sent him 
 to complain to Seneca of his not admitting Piso to 
 more of his intercourse, Seneca had replied "that it 
 was better for them both to hold aloof from each 
 other, but that his own safety depended on that of 
 Piso." A tribune was sent to ask Seneca as to the 
 truth of this story, and found, which was in itself 
 regarded as a suspicious circumstance, that on that 
 very day he had returned from Campania to a villa 
 four miles from the city. The tribune arrived in the 
 evening, and surrounded the villa with soldiers. 
 Seneca was at supper, with his wife Paulina and two 
 friends. He entirely denied the truth of the evidence, 
 and said that "the only reason which he had assigned 
 to Piso for seeing so little of him was his weak health 
 and love of retirement. Nero, who knew how little 
 prone he was to flattery, might judge whether or no 
 it was likely that he, a man of consular rank, would 
 prefer the safety of a man of private station to his 
 own." Such was the message which the tribune 
 took back to Nero, whom he found sitting with his 
 dearest and most detestable advisers, his wife Poppaea 
 and his minister Tigellinus. Nero asked "whether 
 Seneca was preparing a voluntary death/' On the 
 tribune replying that he showed no gloom or terror 
 in his language or countenance, Nero ordered that he 
 should at once be bidden to die. The message was 
 taken, and Seneca, without any sign of alarm, quietly 
 demanded leave to revise his will. This was refused 
 him, and he then turned to his friends with the 
 
SENECA. 
 
 remark that, as he was unable to reward their merits 
 as they had deserved, he would bequeath to them the 
 only, and yet the most precious, possession left to him, 
 namely, the example of his life, and if they were 
 mindful of it they would win the reputation alike for 
 integrity and for faithful friendship. At the same time 
 he checked their tears, sometimes by his conversation, 
 and sometimes with serious reproaches, asking them 
 " where were their precepts of philosophy, and where 
 the fortitude under trials which should have been 
 learnt from the studies of many years ? Did not 
 every one know the cruelty of Nero ? and what was 
 left for him to do but to make an end of his master 
 and tutor after the murder of his mother and his 
 brother?" He then embraced his wife Paulina, and, 
 with a slight faltering of his lofty sternness, begged 
 and entreated her not to enter on an endless sorrow, 
 but to endure the loss of her husband by the aid of 
 those noble consolations which she must derive from 
 the contemplation of his virtuous life. But Paulina 
 declared that she would die with him, and Seneca, not 
 opposing the deed which would win her such perma- 
 nent glory, and at. the same time unwilling to leave 
 her to future wrongs, yielded to her wish. The veins 
 of their arms were opened by the same blow; but 
 the blood of Seneca, impoverished by old age and 
 temperate living, flowed so slowly that it was neces- 
 sary also to open the veins of his legs. This mode 
 of death, chosen by the Romans as comparatively 
 painless, is in fact under certain circumstances most 
 agonizing. Worn out by these cruel tortures, and 
 
THE DEA TH OF SENECA. 159 
 
 unwilling to weaken his wife's fortitude by so dreadful 
 a spectacle, glad at the same time to spare himself 
 the sight of her sufferings, he persuaded her to 
 go to another room. Even then his eloquence did 
 not fail. It is told of Andre Chenier, the French 
 poet, that on his way to execution he asked for 
 writing materials to record some of the strange 
 thoughts which filled his mind. The wish was denied 
 him, but Seneca had ample liberty to record his last 
 utterances. Amanuenses were summoned, who took 
 down those dying admonitions, and in the time of 
 Tacitus they still were extant. To us, however, this 
 interesting memorial of a Pagan deathbed is irrevo- 
 cably lost. 
 
 Nero, meanwhile, to whom the news of these cir- 
 cumstances was taken, having no dislike to Paulina, 
 and unwilling to incur the odium of too much blood- 
 shed, ordered her death to be prohibited and her 
 wounds to be bound. She was already unconscious, 
 but her slaves and freedmen succeeded in saving her 
 life. She lived a few years longer, cherishing her 
 husband's memory, and bearing in the attenuation of 
 her frame, and the ghastly pallor of her countenance, 
 the lasting proofs of that deep affection which had 
 characterised their married life. 
 
 Seneca was not yet dead, and, to shorten these 
 protracted and useless sufferings, he begged his friend 
 and physician Statius Annseus to give him a draught 
 of hemlock, the same poison by which the great 
 philosopher of Athens had been put to death. But 
 his limbs were already cold, and the draught proved 
 
 p2 
 
fto SENECA. 
 
 fruitless. He then entered a bath of hot water, 
 sprinkling the slaves who stood nearest to him, with 
 the words that he was pouring a libation to Jupiter 
 the Liberator.* Even the warm water failed to make 
 the blood flow more speedily, and he was finally 
 carried into one of those vapour baths which the 
 Romans called sudatoria, and stifled with its steam. 
 His body was burned privately, without any of the 
 usual ceremonies. Such had been his own wish, ex- 
 pressed, not after the fall of his fortunes, but at a 
 time when his thoughts had been directed to his 
 latter end, in the zenith of his great wealth and 
 conspicuous power. 
 
 So died a Pagan philosopher, whose life must 
 always excite our interest and pity, although we 
 cannot apply to him the titles of great or good. He 
 was a man of high genius, of great susceptibility, of 
 an ardent and generous temperament, of far-sighted 
 and sincere humanity. Some of his sentiments are 
 so remarkable for their moral beauty and profundity 
 that they forcibly remind us of the expressions of 
 St. Paul. But Seneca fell infinitely short of his own 
 high standard, and has contemptuousl)' been called 
 " the father of all them that wear shovel-hats." In- 
 consistency is written on the entire history of his 
 life, and it has earned him the scathing contempt with 
 which many writers have treated his memory. " The 
 business of a philosopher," says Lord Macaulay, in his 
 
 
 
 * Sicco Polentone, an Italian, who wrote a Life of Seneca (d. 1461), 
 makes Seneca a secret Christian, and represents this as an invocation 
 of Christ, and says that he baptized himself with the water of the bath ! 
 
THE DEA TH OF SENECA. 161 
 
 most scornful strain, "was to declaim in praise of 
 poverty, with two millions sterling out at usury ; to 
 meditate epigrammatic conceits about the evils of 
 luxury in gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns ; 
 to rant about liberty while fawning on the insolent 
 and pampered freedmen of a tyrant ; to celebrate 
 the divine beauty of virtue with the same pen which 
 had just before written a 'defence of the murder of 
 a mother by a son." " Seneca," says Niebuhr 
 " was an accomplished man of the world, who occu- 
 pied himself very much with virtue, and may have 
 considered himself to be an ancient Stoic. He 
 certainly believed that he was a most ingenious 
 and virtuous philosopher ; but he acted on the 
 principle that, as far as he himself was concerned, he 
 could dispense with the laws of morality which he 
 laid down for others, and that he might give way to 
 his natural propensities." 
 
 In Seneca's life, then, we see as clearly as in those 
 of many professing Christians that it is impossible 
 to be at once worldly and righteous. Seneca's utter 
 failure was due to the vain attempt to combine in 
 his own person two opposite characters that of a 
 Stoic and that of a courtier. Had he been a true 
 philosopher, or a mere courtier, he would have been 
 happier, and even more respected. To be both was 
 absurd : hence, even in his writings, he was driven 
 into inconsistency. He is often compelled to abandon 
 the lofty utterances of Stoicism, and to charge philo- 
 sophers with ignorance of life. In his treatise on a 
 Happy Life he is obliged to introduce a sort of indirect 
 
162 SENECA. 
 
 autobiographical apology for his wealth and position.* 
 In spite of his lofty pretensions to simplicity, in spite 
 of that sort of amateur asceticism which, in common 
 with other wealthy Romans, he occasionally practised, 
 in spite of his final offer to abandon his entire patri- 
 mony to the Emperor, we fear that he cannot be 
 acquitted of an almost insatiable avarice. We need 
 not indeed believe the fierce calumnies which charged 
 him with exhausting Italy by a boundless usury, and 
 even stirring up a war in Britain by the severity of 
 his exactions ; but it is quite clear that he deserved 
 the title of Prcedives, " the over-wealthy," by which 
 he has been so pointedly signalized. It is strange 
 that the most splendid intellects should so often have 
 sunk under the slavery of this meanest vice. In the 
 Bible we read how the " rewards of divination " 
 seduced from his allegiance to God the splendid 
 enchanter of Mesopotamia : 
 
 " In outline dim and vast 
 
 Their fearful shadows cast 
 The giant form of Empires on their way 
 
 To ruin : one by one 
 
 They tower and they are gone, 
 Yet in the prophet's soul the dreams ot avarice stay. 
 
 " No sun or star so bright, 
 
 In all the world of light, 
 That they should draw to heaven his downward eye : 
 
 He hears the Almighty's word, 
 
 He sees the angel's sword, 
 Yet low upon the earth his heart and treasure lie." 
 
 And in Seneca we see some of the most glowing 
 pictures of the nobility of poverty combined with the 
 
 * See^. PoJyb. 37; Ep. 75; De Vit. Beat. 17, 18, 22. 
 
THE DEA TH OF SENECA. 163 
 
 most questionable avidity in the pursuit of wealth. 
 Yet how completely did he sell himself for naught ' 
 It is the lesson which we see in every conspicuously 
 erring life, and it was illustrated less than three years 
 afterwards in the terrible fate of the tyrant who 
 had driven him to death. For a short period of his 
 life, indeed, Seneca was at the summit of power; 
 yet, courtier as he was, he incurred the hatred, the 
 suspicion, and the punishment of all the three Em- 
 perors during whose reigns his manhood was passed. 
 " Of all unsuccessful men," says Mr. Froude, " in every 
 shape, whether divine or human or devilish, there is 
 none equal to Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways the 
 fellow with one eye on heaven and one on earth 
 who sincerely preaches one thing and sincerely does 
 another, and from the intensity of his unreality is 
 unable either to see or feel the contradiction. He 
 is substantially trying to cheat both God and the 
 devil, and is in reality only cheating himself and his 
 neighbours. This of all characters upon the earth 
 appears to us to be the one of which there is no hope 
 at all, a character becoming in these days alarmingly 
 abundant ; and the abundance of which makes us find 
 even in a Reineke an .inexpressible relief." And, in 
 point of fact, the inconsistency of Seneca's life was a 
 conscious inconsistency. " To the student," he says, 
 " who professes his wish to rise to a loftier grade of 
 virtue, I would answer that this is my wish also, but 
 T dare not hope it. I am preoccupied with vices. Alt 
 I require of myself is, not to be equal to the best^ but 
 cniy to be better than the bad.? No doubt Seneca 
 
 12 
 
SENECA. 
 
 meant this to be understood merely for modest self- 
 depreciation ; but it was far truer than he would have 
 liked seriously to confess. He must have often and 
 deeply felt that he was not living in accordance with 
 the light which was in him. 
 
 It would indeed be cheap and easy to attribute the 
 general inferiority and the many shortcomings of 
 Seneca's life and character to the fact that he was a 
 Pagan, and to suppose that if he had known Chris- 
 tianity he would necessarily have attained to a loftier 
 ideal. But such a style of reasoning and inference, 
 commonly as it is adopted for rhetorical purposes, 
 might surely be refuted by any intelligent child. A 
 mere intellectual assent to the lessons of Christianity 
 would have probably been but of little avail to inspire 
 in Seneca a nobler life. The fact is, that neither the 
 gift of genius nor the knowledge of Christianity are 
 adequate to the ennoblement of the human heart, 
 nor does the grace of God flow through the channels 
 of surpassing intellect or of orthodox belief. Men 
 there have been in all ages, Pagan no less than 
 Christian, who with scanty mental enlightenment 
 and spiritual knowledge have yet lived holy and 
 noble lives : men there have been in all ages, 
 Christian no less than Pagan, who with consummate 
 gifts and profound erudition have disgraced some of 
 the noblest words which ever were uttered by some 
 of the meanest lives which were ever lived. In the 
 twelfth century was there any mind which shone' 
 more brightly, was there any eloquence which flowed 
 more mightily, than that of Peter Abelard ? Yet 
 
THE DEATH OF SENECA. i6 
 
 Abelard sank beneath the meanest of his scholastic 
 cotemporaries in the degradation of his career as 
 much as he towered above the highest of them in the 
 grandeur of his genius. In the seventeenth century 
 was there any philosopher more profound, any 
 moralist more elevated, than Francis Bacon? Yet 
 Bacon could flatter a tyrant, and betray a friend, 
 and receive a bribe, and be one of the latest of 
 English judges to adopt the brutal expedient ot 
 enforcing confession by the exercise of torture. If 
 Seneca, defended the murder of Agrippina, Bacon 
 blackened the character of Essex. " What I would, 
 I do not ; but the thing that I would not, that I do," 
 might be the motto for many a confession of the sins 
 of genius ; and Seneca need not blush if we compare 
 him with men who were his equals in intellectual 
 power, but whose " means of grace," whose privileges, 
 whose knowledge of the truth, were infinitely higher 
 than his own. Let the noble constancy of his death 
 shed a light over his memory which may dissipate 
 something of those dark shades which rest on portions 
 of his history. We think of Abelard, humble, silent, 
 patient, God-fearing, tended by the kindly-hearted 
 Peter in the peaceful gardens of Clugny ; we think 
 of Bacon, neglected, broken, and despised, dying of 
 the chill caught in^ a philosophical experiment, and 
 leaving his memory to the judgment of posterity ; 
 let us think of Seneca, quietly yielding to his destiny 
 without a murmur, cheering the constancy of the 
 mourners round him during the long agonies of his 
 enforced suicide, and dictating some of the purest 
 
166 SENECA. 
 
 utterances of Pagan wisdom almost with his latest 
 breath. The language of his great cotemporary, the 
 Apostle St. Paul, will best help us to understand his 
 position. He was one of those who was seeking- the 
 Lord, if haply he might feel after Him, and find Him, 
 though He be not far from every one of us : for in 
 Him we live, and move, and Juive our being. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SENECA AND ST. PAUL. 
 
 IN the spring of the year 61, not long after the time 
 when the murder of Agrippina, and Seneca's jus- 
 tification of it, had been absorbing the attention of 
 the Roman world, there disembarked at Puteoli a 
 troop of prisoner, whom the Procurator of Judsea 
 had sent to Rome under the charge of a centurion. 
 Walking among them, chained and weary, but 
 affectionately tended by two younger companions,* 
 and treated with profound respect by little deputa- 
 tions of friends who met him at Appii Forum and 
 the Three Taverns, was a man of mean presence and 
 weather-beaten aspect, who was handed over like the 
 rest to the charge of Burrus, the Praefect' of the Prae- 
 torian Guards. Learning from the letters of the 
 Jewish Procurator that the prisoner had been guilty 
 of no serious offence,t but had used his privilege of 
 Roman citizenship to appeal to Caesar for protection 
 against the infuriated malice of his co-religionists 
 possibly also having heard from the centurion Julius 
 some remarkable facts about his behaviour and history 
 
 * Luke and Aristarchus. t Acts xxiv. 23, xxvii. 3. 
 
 Q 
 
i68 SENECA. 
 
 Burrus allowed him, pending the hearing of his 
 appeal, to live in his own hired apartment* This 
 lodging was in all probability in that quarter of the 
 city, opposite the island in the Tiber, which corre- 
 sponds to the modern Trastevere. It was the resort 
 of the very lowest and meanest of the populace that 
 promiscuous jumble of all nations which makes Tacitus 
 call Rome at this time " the sewer of the universe." 
 It was here especially that the Jews exercised some 
 of the meanest trades in Rome, selling matches, and 
 old clothes, and broken glass, or begging and fortune- 
 telling on the Cestian or Fabrician bridges.^ In one 
 of these narrow, dark, and dirty streets, thronged by 
 the dregs of the Roman populace, St. Mark and St. 
 Peter had in all probability lived when they founded 
 the little Christian Church at Rome. It was un- 
 doubtedly in the same despised locality that St. Paul, 
 
 the prisoner who had been consigned to the care of 
 Burrus, hired a room, sent for the principal Jews, 
 and for two years taught to Jews and Christians, and 
 to any Pagans who would listen to him, the doctrines 
 which were destined to regenerate the world. 
 
 Any one entering that mean and dingy room would 
 have seen a Jew with bent body and furrowed counte- 
 nance, and with every appearance of age, weakness, 
 and disease, chained by the arm to a Roman soldier. 
 
 * Acts xxviii. 30, 
 
 f MART. Ep. i. 42 ; Juv. xiv. 186. In these few paragraphs I follow 
 M. Aubertin, who (as well as many other authors) has collected many 
 of the principal passages in which Roman writers allude to the Jews 
 and Christians. 
 
SENECA AND ST. PAUL. 169 
 
 But it is impossible that, had they deigned to look 
 closer, they should not also have seen the gleam of 
 genius and enthusiasm, the fire of inspiration, the 
 serene light of exalted hope and dauntless courage 
 upon those withered features. And though he was 
 chained, "the Word of God was not chained."* Had 
 they listened to the words which he occasionally 
 dictated, or overlooked the large handwriting which 
 alone his weak eyesight and bodily infirmities, as well 
 as the inconvenience of his chains, permitted, they 
 would have heard of read the immortal utterances 
 which strengthened the faith of the nascent and 
 struggling Churches in Ephesus, Philippi, and Colossae, 
 and which have since been treasured among the most 
 inestimable possessions of a Christian world. 
 
 His efforts were not unsuccessful ; his misfortunes 
 were for the furtherance of the Gospel ; his chains 
 were manifest " in all the palace, and in all other 
 places ; " f and many waxing confident by his bonds 
 were much more bold to speak the word without 
 fear. Let us not be misled by assuming a wrong 
 explanation of these words, or by adopting the 
 Middle Age traditions which made St. Paul convert 
 some of the immediate favourites of the Emperor, 
 and electrify with his eloquence an admiring Senate. 
 The word here rendered " palace " J may indeed have 
 that meaning, for we know that among the early 
 converts were "they of Caesar's household ;" but 
 these were in all probability if not certainly Jews 
 
 * 2 Tim. ii. 9. % iv oAoi 
 
 t Phil. i. 12. Phil.'iv. 22. 
 
1 70 SENECA. 
 
 of the lowest rank, who were, as we know, to be found 
 among the hundreds of unfortunates of every age and 
 country who composed a Roman familia. And it is 
 at least equally probable that the word " praetorium " 
 simply . means the barrack of that detachment of 
 Roman soldiers from which Paul's gaolers were taken 
 in turn. In such labours St. Paul in all probability 
 spent two years (6 1 63), during which occurred the 
 divorce of Octavia, the marriage with Poppaea, the 
 death of Burrus, the disgrace of Seneca, and the many 
 subsequent infamies of Nero. 
 
 It is out of such materials that some early Christian 
 forger thought it edifying to compose the work which 
 is supposed to contain the correspondence of Seneca 
 and St. Paul. The undoubted spuriousness of that 
 work is now universally admitted, and indeed the 
 forgery is too clumsy to be even worth reading. But 
 it is worth while inquiring whether in the circum- 
 stances of the time there is even a bare possibility 
 that Seneca should ever have been among the readers 
 or the auditors of Paul. 
 
 And the answer is, There is absolutely no such 
 probability. A vivid imagination is naturally attracted 
 by the points of contrast and resemblance offered 
 by two such characters, and we shall see that there 
 is a singular likeness between many of their senti- 
 ments and expressions. But this was a period in 
 which, as M. Villemain observes, " from one extre- 
 mity of the social world to the other truths met each 
 other without recognition." Stoicism, noble as were 
 many of its precepts, lofty as was the morality it 
 
SENECA AND ST. PAUL. 171 
 
 professed, deeply as it was imbued in many respects 
 with a semi-Christian piety, looked upon Christianity 
 with profound contempt. The Christians disliked 
 the Stoics, the Stoics despised and persecuted the 
 Christians. " The world knows nothing of its greatest 
 men." Seneca would have stood aghast at the very 
 notion of his receiving the lessons, still more of his 
 adopting the religion, of a poor, accused, and wander- 
 ing Jew. The haughty, wealthy, eloquent, prosperous, 
 powerful philosopher would have smiled at the notion 
 that any future ages would suspect him of having 
 borrowed any of his polished and epigrammatic 
 lessons of philosophic morals or religion from one 
 whom, if he heard of him, he would have regarded 
 as a poor wretch, half fanatic and half barbarian. 
 
 We learn from St. Paul himself that the early con- 
 verts of Christianity were men in the very depths 
 of poverty,* and that its preachers were regarded as 
 fools, and weak, and were despised, and naked, and 
 buffeted persecuted and homeless labourers a 
 spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men, 
 " made as the filth of the earth and the offscounng 
 of all things." We know that their preaching was 
 to the Greeks " foolishness," and that, when they spoke 
 of Jesus and the resurrection, their hearers mocked f 
 and jeered. And these indications are more than 
 confirmed by many contemporary passages of ancient 
 writers. We have already seen the violent expressions 
 
 * 2 Cor. viii. 2. 
 
 t 'Ex^ewaC "? Acts xvii. 32. The word expresses the most profound 
 and unconcealed contempt. 
 
 Q2 
 
172 SENECA. 
 
 of hatred which the ardent and high-toned soul 
 of Tacitus thought applicable to the Christians ; and 
 such language is echoed by Roman writers of every 
 character and class. The fact is that at this time 
 and for centuries afterwards the Romans regarded 
 the Christians with such lordly indifference that like 
 Festus, and Felix, and Seneca's brother Gallic they 
 never took the trouble to distinguish them from the 
 Jews. The distinction was not fully realized by 
 the Pagan world till the cruel and wholesale massacre 
 of the Christians by the pseudo-Messiah Barchochebas 
 in the reign of Adrian opened their eyes to the fact of 
 the irreconcileable differences which existed between 
 the two religions. And pages might be filled with 
 the ignorant and scornful allusions which the heathen 
 applied to the Jews. They confused them with the 
 whole degraded mass of Egyptian and Oriental im- 
 postors and brute-worshippers ; they disdained them 
 as seditious, turburlent, obstinate, and avaricious ; they 
 regarded them as mainly composed of the very 
 meanest slaves out of the gross and abject multitude ; 
 their proselytism they considered as the clandestine 
 initiation into some strange and revolting mystery, 
 which involved as its direct teachings contempt of 
 the gods, and the negation of all patriotism and all 
 family affection ; they firmly believed that they wor- 
 shipped the head of an ass ; they thought it natural 
 that none but the vilest slaves and the silliest women 
 should adopt so misanthropic and degraded a super- 
 stition ; they characterized their customs as "absurd, 
 sordid, foul, and depraved," and their nation as " prone 
 
SENECA AND ST. PAUL. i; \ 
 
 to superstition, opposed to religion."* And as far as 
 they made any distinction between Jews and Chris- 
 tians, it was for the latter that they reserved their 
 choicest and most concentrated epithets of hatred 
 and abuse. A "new," "pernicious," "detestable," 
 "execrable," superstition is the only language with 
 which Suetonius and Tacitus vouchsafe to notice it. 
 Seneca though he must have heard the name of 
 Christian during the reign of Claudius (when both 
 they and the Jews were expelled from Rome, " be- 
 cause of their perpetual turbulence, at the instigation 
 of Chrestus," as Suetonius ignorantly observed), and 
 during the Neronian persecutions never once alludes 
 to them, and only mentions the Jews to apply a 
 few contemptuous remarks to the idleness of their 
 sabbaths, and to call them " a most abandoned race." 
 The reader will now judge whether there is the 
 slightest probability that Seneca had any intercourse 
 v/ith St. Paul, or was likely to have stooped from his 
 superfluity of wealth, and pride of power, to take 
 lessons from obscure and despised slaves in the 
 purlieus inhabited by the crowded households of 
 Caesar or Narcissus. 
 
 * Tac. Hist. \. 13 : ib. v. 5 : Juv. xiv. 85 : Pers. v. 190, &c. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SENECA'S RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE.' 
 
 AND yet in a very high sense of the word Seneca 
 may be called, as he is called in the title of this book, 
 a Seeker after God ; and the resemblances to the 
 sacred writings which may be found in the pages of 
 his works are numerous and striking. A few of 
 these will probably interest our readers, and will put 
 them in a better position for understanding how large 
 a measure of truth and enlightenment had rewarded 
 the honest search of the ancient philosophers. We 
 will place a few such passages side by side with the 
 texts of Scripture which they resemble or recall. 
 
 I . God's Indwelling Presence. 
 
 " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and 
 that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" asks St. 
 Paul (i Cor. iii. 16). 
 
 " God is near you, is -with you^ is within you? 
 writes Seneca to his friend Lucilius, in the 41 st of 
 those Letters which abound in his most valuable mo- 
 ral reflections ; "# sacred Spirit dwells within us, the 
 
RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE. 17$ 
 
 observer and guardian of all our evil and our good . . . 
 there is no good man without God" 
 
 And again (Rp. 73) : " Do you wonder that man goes 
 to the gods ? God comes to men : nay, what is yet 
 nearer, He comes into men. No good mind is holy 
 without God" 
 
 2. The Eye of God. 
 
 " All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of 
 Him with whom we have to do." (Heb. iv. 13.) 
 
 " Pray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy 
 Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee 
 openly." (Matt. vi. 6.) 
 
 Seneca (On Providence, i) : "/ is no advantage 
 that conscience is slmt within us ; we lie open to God? 
 
 Letter 83 : " What advantage is it that anything is 
 hidden from man ? Nothing is closed to God : He is 
 present to our minds, and enters into our central 
 thoughts? 
 
 Letter 83 : " We must live as if we were living in 
 sight of all men ; we must think as though some one 
 could and can gaze into our inmost breast? 
 
 3. God is a Spirit. 
 
 St. Paul, " We ought not to think that the God- 
 head is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by 
 art and man's device." (Acts xvii. 29.) 
 
 Seneca (Letter 31): "Even from a corner it is 
 possible to spring up into heaven : rise, therefore, and 
 form thyself into a fashion worthy of God; thou canst 
 not do this, however t with gold and silver : an image 
 
1 7 6 
 
 SENECA 
 
 like to God cannot be formed out of such materials as 
 these." 
 
 4. Imitating God. 
 
 "Be ye therefore followers (fupijTal, imitators) of 
 God, as dear children." (Eph. v. I.) 
 
 " He that in these things [righteousness, peace, 
 joy in the Holy Ghost] serveth Christ is acceptable 
 to God." (Rom. xiv. 18.) 
 
 Seneca (Letter 95) : " Do you wish to render the 
 gods propitious ? Be virtuous. To honour them it is 
 enough to imitate them" 
 
 Letter 124: "Let man aim at the good which 
 belongs to him. What is this good? A mind reformed 
 and purs, the imitator of God, raising itself above thing" 
 human., confining all its desires within itself" 
 
 5. Hypocrites like whited Sepulchres. 
 
 " Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! 
 for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed 
 appear beautiful outward, but are within full of 
 dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." (Matt, 
 xxiii. 27.) 
 
 Seneca : " Those whom you regard as happy, if you 
 saw them, not in their externals, but in their hidden 
 aspect, are wretched, sordid, base ; like their own walls 
 adorned outwardly. It is no solid and genuine felicity ; 
 it is a plaster, and that a thin one ; and so, as long as 
 th#y can stand and be seen at their pleasure, they shine 
 and impose on us : when anything has' fallen which 
 disturbs and uncovers tnevi. it is evident hoiv muck 
 
RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE. 177 
 
 deep and real foulness an extraneous splendour has 
 concealed? 
 
 6. Teaching compared to Seed. 
 
 " But other fell into good ground, and brought 
 forth fruit ; some an hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, 
 some thirty-fold." (Matt. xiii. 8.) 
 
 Seneca (Letter 38) : " Words must be sown like 
 seed; which, although it be small, when it hath found 
 a suitable ground, unfolds its strength, and from very 
 small size is expanded into the largest increase. Reason 
 does the same .... The things spoken are few ; but if 
 the mind have received them well, they gain strength 
 and grow" 
 
 J. A II Men are Sinners. 
 
 " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves 
 and the truth is not in us." (i John i. 8.) 
 
 Seneca (On Anger, i. 14, ii. 27): " If we wish to 
 be just judges of all things, let us first persuade our- 
 selves of this: that there is not one of us without 
 fault. . . . No man is found who can acquit himself : 
 and he who calls himself innocent does so with reference 
 to a witness, and not to his conscience'.' 
 
 8. Avarice. 
 
 44 The love of money is the root of all evil.'' 
 (I Tim. vi. 10.) 
 
 Seneca (On Tranquillity of Soul, 8): " Riches 
 . . . the greatest source of human trouble" 
 
 " Be content with such things as ye have." 
 (Heb. xiii. 5.) 
 
ITS SENECA. 
 
 " Having food and raiment, let us be therewith 
 content." (i Tim. vi. 8.) 
 
 Seneca (Letter 114): " We shall be wise if we desire 
 but little ; if each man takes count of himself, and at 
 the samt time measures his own body, he will know how 
 little it can contain, and for how short a time." 
 
 Letter no: " We have polenta, we have water-, let 
 us challenge Jupiter himself to a comparison of bliss ! " 
 
 " Godliness with contentment is great gain." (i Tim. 
 vi. 6.) 
 
 Seneca (Letter no): " Why are you struck with 
 wonder and astonishment ? It is all display ! Those 
 things are shown, not possessed. . . . Turn thyself 
 rather to the true riches, learn to be content with little'' 
 
 " It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
 needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom 
 of God." (Matt. xix. 24.) 
 
 Seneca (Letter 20) : " He is a high-soulcd man who 
 sees riches spread aroimd him, and Jiears rather than 
 feels that they are his. It is much not to be corrupted 
 by fellowship with riches: great is he who in the midst 
 of wealth is poor, but safer he who has no wealth at all." 
 
 9. The Duty of Kindness. 
 
 "Be kindly affectioned one to another with 
 brotherly love." (Rom. xii. 10.) 
 
 Seneca (On Anger, i. 5) : " Man is born for mutual 
 aw'rtance" 
 
 "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Lev, 
 xiv. 1 8.) 
 
RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE. 179 
 
 Letter 48 : " You must live for another, if you 
 ivish to live for yourself '.' 
 
 On Anger, iii. 43 : " While we are among men let 
 us cultivate kindness ; let us not be to any man a cause 
 either of peril or of fear'' 
 
 10. Our common Membership. 
 
 " Ye are the body of Christ, and members in par- 
 ticular." (l Cor. xii. 27.) 
 
 "We being many are one body in Christ, and 
 every one members one of another." (Rom. xii. 5.) 
 
 Seneca (Letter 95) : " Do we teach that he should 
 stretch his hand to the shipwrecked, show his path to 
 the wanderer, divide his bread with the hungry f . . . 
 when I could briefly deliver to him the formula of 
 human duty : all this that you see, in which things 
 divine and human are included, is one: we are 
 members of one great body'' 
 
 1 1. Secrecy in doing Good. 
 
 " Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand 
 doeth." (Matt. vi. 3.) 
 
 Seneca (On Benefits, ii. 11): "Let him who hath 
 conferred a favour hold his tongue. . . . In conferring 
 a favour nothing should be more avoided than pride'' 
 
 12. God's impartial Goodness. 
 
 ' He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and CD. the 
 good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.*' 
 (Matt. v. 45,) 
 
 13 R 
 
i8r SENECA. 
 
 Seneca (On Benefits, i. i) : " How many are 
 uniuorthy of the light ! and yet the day dawns!' 
 
 Id. vii. 31:" The gods begin to confer benefits on 
 those who recognise them not, they continue them to those 
 who are thankless for them. . . . They distribute their 
 blessings in impartial tenor through the nations and 
 Peoples ; . . they sprinkle the earth with timely showers, 
 they stir the seas with wind, they mark out the seasons 
 by the revolution of the constellations, they temper the 
 winter and summer by the intervention of a gentler air" 
 
 It would be a needless task to continue these 
 parallels, because by reading any treatise of Seneca 
 a student might add to them by scores ; and they 
 prove incontestably that, as far as moral illumination 
 was concerned, Seneca " was not far from the king- 
 dom of heaven." They have been collected by several 
 writers ; and all of these here adduced, together with 
 many others, may be found in the pages of Fleury, 
 Troplong, Aubertin, and others. Some authors, like 
 M. Fleury, have endeavoured to show that they can 
 only be accounted for by the supposition that Seneca 
 had some acquaintance with the sacred writings. 
 M. Aubertin, on the other hand, has conclusively 
 demonstrated that this could not have been the case. 
 Many words and expressions detached from their 
 context have been forced into a resemblance with 
 the words of Scripture, when the context wholly 
 militates against its spirit ; many belong to that 
 great common stock of moral truths which had been 
 elaborated by the conscientious labours of ancient 
 
RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE. iSl 
 
 philosophers ; and there is hardly one of the thoughts 
 so eloquently enunciated which may not be found 
 even more nobly and more distinctly expressed in 
 the writings of Plato and of Cicero. In a subsequent 
 chapter we shall show that, in spite of them all, the 
 divergences of Seneca from the spirit of Christianity 
 are at least as remarkable as the closest of his 
 resemblances ; but it will be more convenient to do 
 this when we have also examined the doctrines of 
 those two other great representatives of spiritual en- 
 lightenment in Pagan souls, Epictetus the slave and 
 Marcus Aurelius the emperor. 
 
 Meanwhile, it is a matter for rejoicing that writings 
 such as these give us a clear proof that in all ages 
 the Spirit of the Lord has entered into holy men, 
 and made them sons of God and prophets. God 
 "left not Himself without witness" among them. 
 The language of St. Thomas Aquinas, that many a 
 heathen has had an "implicit faith," is but another 
 way of expressing St. Paul's statement that "not 
 having the law they were a law unto themselves, and 
 showed the work of the law written in their hearts."* 
 To them the Eternal Power and Godhead were known 
 from the things that do appear, and alike from the 
 voice of consience and the voice of nature they 
 derived a true, although a partial and inadequate, 
 knowledge. To them i( the voice of nature was the 
 voice of God." Their revelation was the law of 
 nature, which was confirmed, strengthened, and ex- 
 tended, but not suspended, by the written law of God.f 
 
 * Rom. i. 2. t Hooker, Ecd. Pol. iii. 8. 
 
1 83 SENECA. 
 
 The knowledge thus derived, i.e. the sum-total of 
 religious impressions resulting from the combination 
 ?f reason and experience, has been called "natural 
 religion ;" the term is in itself a convenient and 
 unobjectionable one, so long as it is remembered that 
 natural religion is itself a revelation. No antithesis 
 is so unfortunate and pernicious as that of natural 
 with revealed religion. It is "a contrast rather of 
 words than of ideas ; it is an opposition of abstractions 
 to which no facts really correspond." 'God has re- 
 vealed Himself, not in one but in many ways, not only 
 by inspiring the hearts of a few, but by vouchsafing 
 His guidance to all who seek it. " The spirit of man 
 is the candle of the Lord," and it is not religion but 
 apostasy to deny the reality of any of God's reve- 
 lations of truth to man, merely because they have 
 not descended through a single channel. On the 
 contrary, we ought to hail with gratitude, instead of 
 viewing with suspicion, the enunciation by heathen 
 writers of truths which we might at first sight have 
 been disposed to regard as the special heritage of 
 Christianity. In Pythagoras, and Socrates, arid Plato, 
 in Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius we 
 see the light of heaven struggling its impeded way 
 through clouds of darkness and ignorance ; we thank- 
 fully recognise that the souls of men in the Pagan 
 world, surrounded as they were by perplexities anc 
 dangers, were vet enabled to reflect, as from the dim 
 
 O w 
 
 surface of silver, some image of what was divine and 
 true; we hail, with the great and eloquent Bossuet, 
 "THE CHRISTIANITY OF NATURE." "The divine 
 
RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE. 183 
 
 image in man," says St. Bernard, " may be burned, but 
 it cannot be burnt out." 
 
 And this is the pleasantest side on which to con- 
 sider the life and the writings of Seneca. It is true 
 that his style partakes of the defects of his age, that 
 the brilliancy of his rhetoric does not always com- 
 pensate for the defectiveness of his reasoning ; that 
 he resembles, not a mirroi which clearly reflects the 
 truth, but " a glass fantastically cut into a thousand 
 spangles;" that side by side with great moral truths 
 we sometimes find his worst errors, contradictions, and 
 paradoxes ; that his eloquent utterances about God 
 often degenerate into a vague Pantheism ; and that 
 even on the doctrine of immortality his hold is too 
 slight to save him from waverings and contradictions :* 
 yet as a moral teacher he is full of real greatness, and 
 was often far in advance of the general opinion of 
 his age. Few men have written more finely, or with 
 more evident sincerity, about truth and courage, about 
 the essential equality of man,f about the duty of 
 kindness and consideration to slaves, \ about tender- 
 ness even in dealing with sinners, about the glory of 
 unselfishness, jj about the great idea of humanity^ as 
 something which transcends all the natural and arti- 
 ficial prejudices of country and of caste. Many of 
 his writings are Pagan sermons and moral essays of 
 the best and highest type. The style, as Quintilian 
 
 '* Consol. ad Polyb. 27; Ad Helv. 17; Ad Marc. 24, scqq* 
 t Ep. 32 ; De Benef. iii. 2. J De Ira, iii. 29, 32, 
 
 Ibid. i. 14 ; De Vit. beat. 24. || Ep. 55, 9. 
 
 If Ibid. 28 ; De Oti Sapentis, 31. 
 
184. SENECA. 
 
 says, " abounds in delightful faults," but the strain oi 
 sentiment is never otherwise than high and true. 
 
 He is to be regarded rather as a wealthy, eminent, 
 and successful Roman, who devoted most of his 
 leisure to moral philosophy, than as a real philo- 
 sopher by habit and profession. And in this point 
 of view his very inconsistencies have their charm, 
 as illustrating his ardent, impulsive, imaginative 
 temperament. He was no apathetic, self-contained, 
 impassible Stoic, but a passionate, warm-hearted man, 
 who could break into a flood of unrestrained tears at 
 the death of his friend Annaeus Serenus,* and feel a 
 trembling solicitude for the welfare of his wife and 
 little ones. His was no absolute renunciation,- no 
 impossible perfection ;f but few men have painted 
 more persuasively, with deeper emotion, or mare 
 entire conviction, the pleasures of virtue, the calm of 
 a well-regulated soul, the strong and severe joys of a 
 lofty self-denial. In his youth, he tells us, he was 
 preparing himself for a righteous life, in his old age 
 for a noble death. { And let us not forget, that when 
 the hour of crisis came which tested the real calm 
 and bravery of his soul, he was not found wanting. 
 " With no dread," he writes to Lucilius, " I am pre- 
 paring myself for that day on which, laying aside 
 ail artifice or subterfuge, I shall be able to judge 
 respecting myself whether I merely speak or really 
 feel as a brave man should ; whether all those words 
 of haughty obstinacy which I have hurled against 
 fortune were mere pretence and pantomime 
 
 * Ep. 63. t Martha, Les Moralistes, p. 61. + Ep. 6'., 
 
RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE. 185 
 
 Disputations and literary talks, and words collected 
 from the precepts of philosophers., and eloquent dis- 
 course, do not prove the true strength of the souL 
 For the mere speech of even the most cowardly is 
 bold ; what you have really achieved will then be 
 manifest when your end is near. I accept the terms, 
 I do not shrink from the decision."* 
 
 " Accipio conditionem, non reformido judicium" 
 They were courageous and noble words, and they 
 were justified in the hour of trial. When we remember 
 the sins of Seneca's life, let us recall also the constancy 
 of his death ; while we admit the inconsistencies of 
 his systematic philosophy, let us be grateful for the 
 genius, the enthusiasm, the glow of intense conviction, 
 with which he clothes his repeated utterance of truths, 
 which, when based upon a surer basis, were found 
 adequate for the moral regeneration of the world. 
 Nothing is more easy than to sneer at Seneca, or to 
 write clever epigrams on one whose moral attainments 
 fell infinitely short of his own great ideal. But after 
 all he was not more inconsistent than thousands of 
 those who condemn him. With all his faults he yet 
 lived a nobler and a better life, he had loftier aims, 
 he was braver, more self-denying nay, even more 
 consistent than the majority of professing Christians. 
 It would be well for us all if those who pour such 
 scorn upon his memory attempted to achieve one 
 tithe of the good which he achieved for humanity and 
 for Rome. His thoughts deserve our imperishable 
 gratitude : let him who is without sin among us be 
 oager to fling stones at his failures and his sins ! 
 * E P . 26. 
 
EPICTETUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE LIFE OF EPICTETUS, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT. 
 
 IN the court of Nero, Seneca must have been thrown 
 into more or less communication with the power- 
 ful freedmen of that Emperor, and especially with 
 his secretary or librarian, Epaphroditus. Epaphro- 
 ditus was a constant companion of the Emperor ; 
 he was the earliest to draw Nero's attention to the 
 conspiracy in which Seneca himself perished. There 
 can be no doubt that Seneca knew him, and had visited 
 at his house. Among the slaves who thronged that 
 house, the natural kindliness of the philosopher's 
 heart may have drawn his attention to one little lame 
 Phrygian boy, deformed and mean-looking, whose 
 face if it were any index of the mind within must 
 even from boyhood have worn a serene and patient 
 look. The great courtier, the great tutor of the 
 Emperor, the great Stoic and favourite writer of his 
 age, would indeed have been astonished if he had been 
 suddenly told that that wretched-looking little slave- 
 
HIS LIFE, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT. 187 
 
 lad was destined to attain purer and clearer heights 
 of philosophy than he himself had ever done, and 
 to become quite as illustrious as himself, and far more 
 respected as an exponent of Stoic doctrines. For 
 that lame boy was Epictetus Epictetus for whom was 
 written the memorable epitaph : " I was Epictetus, a 
 slave, and maimed in body, and a beggar for poverty, 
 and dear to the immortals" 
 
 Although we have a clear sketch of his philosophical 
 doctrines, we have no materials whatever for any but 
 the most meagre description of his life. The picture 
 of his mind an effigy of that which he alone regarded 
 as his true self may be seen in his works, and to this 
 we can add little except a few general facts and 
 uncertain anecdotes. 
 
 Epictetus was probably born in about the fiftieth 
 year of the Christian era ; but we do not know the 
 exact date of his birth, nor do we even know his real 
 name. "Epictetus" means "bought" or "acquired," 
 and is simply a servile designation. He was born at 
 Hierapolis, in Phrygia, a town between the rivers 
 Lycus and Meander, and considered by some to be the 
 capital of the province. The town possessed several 
 natural wonders sacred springs, stalactite grottoes, 
 and a deep cavern remarkable for its mephitic exha- 
 lations. It is more interesting to us to know that it 
 was within a few miles of Colossse and Laodicea, and 
 is mentioned by St. Paul (Col. iv. 13) in connexion 
 with those two cities. It must, therefore, have pos- 
 sessed a Christian Church from the earliest timer., ar*d, 
 if Epictetus spent any part of his boyhood there, he 
 
1 88 " EPICTETUS. 
 
 might have conversed with men and women of humble 
 rank who had heard read in their obscure place of 
 meeting the Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians, and 
 the other, now lost, which he addressed to the Church 
 of Laodicea.* 
 
 It is probable, however, that Hierapolis and its 
 associations produced very little influence on the 
 mind of Epictetus. His parents were people in the 
 very lowest and humblest class, and their moral 
 character could hardly have been high, or they would 
 not have consented under any circumstance to sell 
 into slavery their sickly child. Certainly it could 
 hardly have been possible for Epictetus to enter into 
 the world under less enviable or less promising 
 auspices. But the whole system of life is full of divine 
 and memorable compensations, and Epictetus expe- 
 rienced them. God kindles the light of genius where 
 He will, and He can inspire the highest and most 
 regal thoughts even into the meanest slave : 
 
 " Such seeds are scatter'd night and day 
 
 By the soft wind from heaven, 
 And in the poorest human clay 
 Have taken root and thriven." 
 
 What were the accidents or rather, what was " the 
 unseen Providence, by man nicknamed chance " 
 which assigned Epictetus to the house of Epaphroditus 
 we do not know. To a heart refined and noble there 
 could hardly have been a more trying position. The 
 slaves of a Roman familia were crowded together in 
 immense gangs; they were liable to the most violent 
 * Col. iv. 16. 
 
HIS LIFE, AND HOW HE REGARDED I7\ 189 
 
 and capricious punishments ; they might be subjected 
 to the most degraded and brutalising influences. 
 Men sink too often to the level to which they are 
 supposed to belong. Treated with infamy far long 
 years, they are apt to deem themselves worthy of 
 infamy to lose that self-respect which is the inva- 
 riable concomitant of religious feeling, and which, 
 apart from religious feeling, is the sole preventive 
 of personal degradation. Well may St. Paul say, 
 "Art thou called, being a servant? care not for it: 
 but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather."* 
 
 It is true that even in the heathen world there began 
 at this time to be disseminated among the best and 
 wisest thinkers a sense that slaves were made of the 
 same clay as their masters, that they differed from 
 freeborn men only in the externals and accidents of 
 their position, and that kindness to them and consi- 
 deration for their difficulties was a common and 
 elementary duty of humanity. " I am glad to learn, 1 ' 
 says Seneca, in one of his interesting letters to Luci- 
 lius, " that you live on terms of familiarity w r ith your 
 slaves ; it becomes your prudence and'your erudition. 
 Are they slaves ? Nay, they are men. Slaves ? Nay, 
 companions. Slaves ? Nay, humble friends. Slaves ? 
 Nay, fellow-slaves, if you but consider that fortune 
 has power over you both." He proceeds, in a passage 
 to which we have already alluded, to reprobate the 
 haughty and inconsiderate fashion of keeping them 
 standing for hours, mute and fasting, while their 
 masters gorged themselves at the banquet. He 
 
 * 1 Cor. vii, 21. 
 
loo EP1CTETUS. 
 
 deplores the cruelty which thinks it necessary 
 to punish with terrible severity an accidental cough 
 or sneeze. He quotes the proverb a proverb 
 which reveals a whole history " So many slaves, so 
 many foes," and proves that they are not foes, 
 but that men made them so ; whereas, when kindly 
 treated, when considerately addressed, they would 
 be silent, even under torture, rather than speak to 
 their master's disadvantage. " Are they not sprung," 
 he asks, " from the same origin, do they not breathe 
 the same air, do they not live and die just as we 
 do?" The blows, the broken limbs, the clanking 
 chains, the stinted food of the ergastula or slave- 
 prisons, excited all Seneca's compassion, and in all 
 probability presented a picture of misery which the 
 world has rarely seen surpassed, unless it were in 
 that nefarious trade which England to her shame 
 once practised, and, to her eternal glory, resolutely 
 swept away. 
 
 But Seneca's inculcation of tenderness towards 
 slaves was in reality one of the most original of his 
 moral teachings ; and, from all that we know of Roman 
 life, it is to be feared that the number of those who 
 acted in accordance with it was small. Certainly 
 Epaphroditus, the master of Epictetus, was not one 
 of them. The historical facts which we know of this 
 man are slight. He was one of the four who accom- 
 panied the tragic and despicable flight of Nero from 
 Rome in the year 69, and when, after many waverings 
 of cowardice, Nero at last, under imminent peril of 
 being captured and executed, put the dagger to his 
 
HIS LIFE, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT. 191 
 
 breast, it was Epaphroditus who helped the tyrant to 
 drive it home into his heart, for which he was sub- 
 sequently banished, and finally executed by the 
 Emperor Domitian. 
 
 Epictetus was accustomed to tell one or two anec- 
 dotes which, although given without comment, show 
 the narrowness and vulgarity of the man. Among 
 his slaves was a certain worthless cobbler named 
 Felicio ; as the cobbler was quite useless, Epaphro- 
 ditus sold him, and by some chance he was bought 
 by some one of Caesar's household, and made Caesar's 
 cobbler. Instantly Epaphroditus began to pay him 
 the profoundest respect, and to address him in the 
 most endearing terms, so that if any one asked what 
 Epaphroditus was doing, the answer, as likely as not, 
 would be, " He is holding an important consultation 
 with Felicio." 
 
 On one occasion, some one came to him bewailing, 
 and weeping, and embracing his knees in a paroxysm 
 of grief, because of all his fortune little more than 
 50,ooo/. was left! "What did Epaphroditus do?" 
 asks Epictetus ; " did he laugh at the man as we did ? 
 Not at all ; on the contrary, he exclaimed, in a tone of 
 commiseration and surprise, ' Poor fellow ! how could 
 you possibly keep silence and endure such a mis- 
 fortune ? ' " 
 
 How brutally he could behave, and how little 
 respect he inspired, we may see in the following 
 a-necdote. When Plautius Lateranus, the brave 
 nobleman whose execution during Piso's conspiracy 
 wo have already related, had received on his neck 
 
1 01 EPICTETUS. 
 
 an ineffectual blow of the tribune's sword, Epaphro- 
 ditus, even at that dread moment, could not abstain 
 from pressing him with questions. The only reply 
 which he received from the dying man was the con- 
 temptuous remark, " Should I wish to say anything, 
 I will say it (not to a slave like you, but) to your 
 master." 
 
 Under a man of this calibre it is hardly likely that 
 a lame Phrygian boy would experience much kind- 
 ness. An anecdote, indeed, has been handed down to 
 us by several writers, which would show that he was 
 treated with atrocious cruelty. Epaphroditus, it is 
 said, once gratified his cruelty by twisting his slave's 
 leg in some instrument of torture. " If you go on, 
 you will break it," said Epictetus. The wretch did 
 go on, and did break it. " I told you that you would 
 break it," said Epictetus quietly, not giving vent to 
 his anguish by a single word or a single groan. 
 Stories of heroism no less triumphant have been au- 
 thenticated both in ancient and modern times ; but 
 we may hope for the sake of human nature that this 
 story is false, since another authority tells us that 
 Epictetus became lame in consequence of a natural 
 disease. Be that however as it may, some of the 
 early writers against Christianity such, for instance, 
 as the physician Celsus were fond of adducing this 
 anecdote in proof of a magnanimity which not even 
 Christianity could surpass ; to which use of the 
 anecdote Origen opposed the awful silence of our 
 Saviour upon the cross, and Gregory of Nazianzen 
 pointed out that, though it was a j thing to 
 
HJS LIFE, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT. 193 
 
 endure inevitable evils, it was yet more noble to 
 undergo them voluntarily with an equal fortitude. 
 But. even if Epaphroditus were not guilty of breaking 
 the leg of Epictetus, it is clear that the life of the 
 poor youth was surrounded by circumstances of the 
 most depressing and miserable character ; circum- 
 stances which would have forced an ordinary man 
 to the low and animal level of existence which appears 
 to have contented the great majority of Roman slaves. 
 Some of the passages in which he speaks about the 
 consideration due to this unhappy class show a very 
 tender feeling towards them. " It would be best," 
 he says, " if, both while making your .preparations 
 and while feasting at your banquets, you distribute 
 among the attendants some of the provisions. But if 
 such a plan, at any particular time, be difficult to 
 carry out, remember that you who are not fatigued 
 are being waited upon by those who are fatigued ; 
 you who are eating and drinking by those who are 
 not eating and drinking ; you who are conversing by 
 those who are mute ; you who are at your ease by 
 people under painful constraint. And thus you will 
 neither yourself be kindled into unseemly passion, 
 nor will you in a fit of fury do harm to any one else." 
 No doubt Epictetus is here describing conduct which 
 he had often seen, and of which he had himself expe- 
 rienced the degradation. But he had early acquired 
 a loftiness of soul and an insight into truth which 
 enabled him to distinguish the substance from the 
 shadow, to separate the realities of Jife iirom its 
 accidents, and so to turn his very misfortunes into 
 
EPICTETUS; 
 
 fresh means of attaining to moral nobilitv, in oroof 
 of this let us see some of his own opinions as to his 
 state of life. 
 
 At the very beginning of his Discourses he draws a 
 distinction between the things which the gods have 
 and the things which they have not put in our own 
 power, and he held (being deficient here in that light 
 which Christianity might have furnished to him) that 
 the blessings denied to us are denied not because the 
 gods would not, but because they could not grant them 
 to us. And then he supposes that Jupiter addresses 
 him : 
 
 " O Epictetus, had it been possible, I would have 
 made both your little body and your little property 
 free and unentangled ; but now, do not be mistaken, 
 it is not yours at all, but only clay finely kneaded. 
 Since, however, I could not do this, I gave you a por- 
 tion of ourselves, namely, this power of pursuing and 
 avoiding, of desiring and of declining, and generally 
 the power of dealing with appearances : and if you 
 cultivate this power, and regard it as that which 
 constitutes your real possession, you will never be 
 hindered or impeded, nor will you groan or find 
 fault with, or flatter any one. Do these advantages 
 then appear to you to be trifling ? Heaven forbid ! 
 Be content therefore with these, and thank the 
 gods." 
 
 And again in one of his Fragments (viii. ix.) : 
 
 " Freedom and slavery are but names, respectively, 
 of virtue and of vice : and both of them depend upon 
 the will. But neither of them have anything to do 
 
LIFE, AND HO W HE REGARDED IT. 195 
 
 with those things in which the will has no share. For 
 no one is a slave v/hose will is free." 
 
 " Fortune is an evil bond of the body, vice of the 
 soul ; for he is a slave whose body is free but whose 
 soul is bound, and, on the contrary, he is free whose 
 body is bound but whose soul is free." 
 
 Who does not catch in these passages the very tone 
 of St. Paul when he says, " He that is called in the 
 Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman : likewise 
 also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant ?" 
 
 Nor is his independence less clearly expressed when 
 he speaks of his deformity. Being but the deformity 
 of a body which he despised, he spoke of himself as 
 " an ethereal existence staggering under the burden of 
 a corpse." In his admirable chapter on Contentment, 
 he very forcibly lays down that topic of consolation 
 which is derived from the sense that " the universe is 
 not made for our individual satisfaction." " Must my 
 leg be lame?" he supposes some querulous objector to 
 inquire. " Slave ! " he replies, " do you then because 
 of one miserable little leg find fault with the universe ? 
 Will you not concede that accident to the existence of 
 general laws ? Will you not dismiss the thought of it ? 
 Will you not cheerfully assent to it for the sake of him 
 who gave it ? And will you be indignant and dis- 
 pleased at the ordinances of Zeus, which he ordained 
 and appointed with the Destinies, who were present 
 and wove the web of your being ? Know you not what 
 an atom you are compared with the whole ? that is, 
 as regards your body, since as regards your reason 
 you are no whit inferior to, OT less than, the gods 
 14 ?2 
 
196 EPICTETUS. 
 
 For the greatness of reason is not estimated by size 
 or height, but by the doctrines which it embraces. Will 
 you not then lay up your treasure in those matters 
 wherein you are equal to the gods ? " And, thanks to 
 such principles, a poor and persecuted slave was able 
 to raise his voice in sincere and eloquent thanks- 
 giving to that God to whom he owed his " creation, 
 preservation, and all the blessings of this life." 
 
 Speaking of the multitude of our natural gifts, he 
 says, " Are these the only gifts of Providence towards 
 us ? Nay, what power of speech suffices adequately 
 to praise, or to set them forth ? for, had we but true 
 intelligence, what duty would be more perpetually 
 incumbent on us than both in public and in private 
 to hymn the Divine, and bless His name and praise 
 His benefits ? Ought we not, when we dig, and 
 when we plough, and when we eat, to sing this hymn 
 to God ? ' Great is God, because He hath given us 
 these implements whereby we may till the soil ; great 
 is God, because He hath given us hands, and the means 
 of nourishment by food, and insensible growth, and 
 breathing sleep ;' these things in each particular we 
 ought to hymn, and to chant the greatest and the 
 divinest hymn because He hath given us the power 
 to appreciate these blessings, and continuously to use 
 them. What then ? Since the most of you are 
 blinded, ought there not to be some one to fulfil this 
 province for you, and on behalf of all to sing his 
 hymn to God ? And what else can / do, who am a 
 lame old man, except sing praises to God ? Now, had 
 I been a nightingale, I should have sung the songs of 
 
HIS LIFE, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT. 197 
 
 a nightingale, or had I been a swan the songs of a 
 swan ; but, being a reasonable being, it is my duty to 
 hymn God. This is my task, and I accomplish it; 
 nor, so far as may be granted to me, will I ever 
 abandon this post, and you also do I exhort to this 
 same song." 
 
 There is an almost lyric beauty about these ex- 
 pressions of resignation and faith in God, and it is the 
 utterance of such warm feelings towards Divine Pro- 
 vidence that constitutes the chief originality of Epic- 
 tetus. It is interesting to think that the oppressed 
 heathen philosopher found the same consolation, and 
 enjoyed the same contentment, as the persecuted 
 Christian Apostle. " Whether ye eat or drink," says 
 St. Paul, " or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of 
 God." " Think of God," says Epictetus, " oftener 
 than you breathe. Let discourse of God be renewed 
 daily more surely than your food." 
 
 Here, again, are his views about his poverty 
 (Fragment xix.) : 
 
 " Examine yourself whether you wish to be rich or 
 to be happy ; and if you wish to be rich, know that it 
 neither is a blessing, nor is it altogether in your own 
 power ; but if to be happy, know that it both is a 
 blessing, and is in your own power ; since the former 
 is but a temporary loan of fortune, but the gift of 
 happiness depends upon the will." 
 
 "Just as when you see a viper, or an asp, or a 
 scorpion, in a casket of ivory or gold, you do not love 
 or congratulate them on the splendour of their ma- 
 terial, but because their nature is pernicious you turn 
 
EPICTETUS. 
 
 from and loathe them, so likewise when you see vice 
 enshrined in wealth and the pomp of circumstance do 
 not be astounded at the glory of its surroundings, but 
 despise the meanness of its character." 
 
 " Wealth is not among the number of good things ; 
 extravagance is among the number of evils, sober- 
 mindedness of good things. Now sober-mindedness 
 invites us to frugality and the acquisition of real 
 advantages ; but wealth to extravagance, and it drags 
 us away from sober-mindedness. It is a hard matter, 
 therefore, being rich to be sober-minded, or being 
 sober-minded to be rich." 
 
 The last sentence will forcibly remind the reader of 
 our Lord's own words, " How hardly shall they that 
 have riches (or as the parallel passage less startlingly 
 expresses it, " Children, how hard is it for them that 
 trust in riches to ") enter into the kingdom of God." 
 
 But this is a favourite subject with the ancient 
 philosopher, and Epictetus continues : 
 
 4< Had you been born in Persia, you would not have 
 been eager to live in Greece, but to stay where you 
 were, and be happy ; and, being born in poverty, why 
 are you eager to be rich, and not rather to abide in 
 poverty, and so be happy ? " 
 
 " As it is better to be in good health, being hard- 
 pressed on a little truckle-bed, than to roll, and to be 
 ill in some broad couch ; so too it is better in a small 
 competence to enjoy the calm of moderate desires, 
 than in the midst of superfluities to be discontented." 
 
 This, too, is a thought which many have expressed. 
 11 Gentle sleep," says Horace, " despises not the 
 
HIS LIFE, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT 199 
 
 humble cottages of rustics, nor the shaded banks, nor 
 valleys whose foliage waves with the western wind ;'' 
 and every reader will recall the magnificent words of 
 our own great Shakespeare 
 
 " Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smokv cribs, 
 Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, 
 And hush'd with buzzing nightflies to thy slumber, 
 Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 
 Under the canopies of costly state, 
 And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody ? " 
 
 To the subject of freedom, and to the power which 
 man possesses to make himself entirely independent 
 of all surrounding circumstances, Epictetus inces- 
 santly recurs. With the possibility of banishment to 
 an ergastulum perpetually before his eyes, he defines 
 a prison as being any situation in which a man is 
 placed against his will ; to Socrates for instance 
 the prison was no prison, for he was there willingly, 
 and no man need be in prison against his will if he 
 has learnt, as one of his primary duties, a cheerful 
 acquiescence in the inevitable. By the expression of 
 such sentiments Epictetus had anticipated by fifteen 
 hundred years the immortal truth so sweetly ex- 
 pressed by Lovelace : 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison 
 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 That for a hermitage." 
 
 Situated as he was, we can hardly wonder that 
 thoughts like these occupied a large share of the 
 mind of Epictetus, or that he had taught himself to 
 
200 EPICTETUS. 
 
 lay hold of them with the firmest possible grasp. 
 When asked, " Who among men is rich ? " he 
 replied, " He who suffices for himself;" an expres- 
 sion which contains the germ of the truth so forcibly 
 expressed in the Book of Proverbs, " The backslider 
 in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and a good 
 man shall be satisfied from himself'' Similarly, when 
 asked, " Who is free ? " he replies, " The man who 
 masters his own self," with much the same tone of 
 expression as that of Solomon, "He that is slow to 
 anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth 
 his spirit than he that taketh a city." Socrates was 
 one of the great models whom Epictetus constantly 
 sets before him, and this is one of the anecdotes 
 which he relates about him with admiration. When 
 Archelaus sent a message to express the intention of 
 making him rich, Socrates bade the messenger inform 
 him that at Athens four quarts of meal might be 
 bought for three halfpence, and the fountains flow 
 with water. " If then my existing possessions are in- 
 sufficient for me, at any rate I am sufficient for them, 
 and so they too are sufficient for me. Do you not 
 see that Polus acted the part of CEdipus in his royal 
 state with no less beauty of voice than that of CEdipus 
 in Colonos, a wanderer and beggar ? Shall then a 
 noble man appear inferior to Polus, so as not to act 
 well every character imposed upon him by Divine 
 Providence ; and shall he not imitate Ulysses, who 
 even in rags was no less conspicuous than in the 
 curled nap of his purple cloak ? " 
 
 Generally speaking, the view which Epictetus took 
 
HIS LIFE, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT. 201 
 
 of life is always simple, and always consistent ; it is 
 a view which gave him consolation among life's 
 troubles, and strength to display some of its noblest 
 virtues, and it may be summed up in the following 
 passages of his famous Manual: 
 
 " Remember," he says, " that you are an actor ol 
 just such a part as is assigned you by the Poet of the 
 play ; of a short part, if the part be short : of a long 
 part, if it be long. Should He wish you to act the 
 part of a beggar, take care to act it naturally and 
 nobly ; and the same if it be the part of a lame man, 
 or a ruler, or a private man ; for this is in your power, 
 to act well the part assigned to you ; but to choose 
 that part is the function of another." 
 
 " Let not these considerations afflict you : ' I shall 
 live despised, and the merest nobody ; ' for if dishonour 
 be an evil, you cannot be involved in evil any more 
 than you can be involved in baseness through any one 
 else's means. Is it then at all your business to be 
 a leading man, or to be entertained at a banquet ? 
 By no means. How then can it be a dishonour not 
 to be so ? And how will you be a mere nobody, 
 since it is your duty to be somebody only in those 
 circumstances which are in your own power, in which 
 you may be a person of the greatest importance ? " 
 
 " Honour, precedence, confidence," he argues in 
 another passage, " whether they be good things or 
 evil things, are at any rate things for which their own 
 definite price must be paid. Lettuces are sold for a 
 penny, and if you want your lettuce you must pay 
 your penny ; and similarly, if you want to be asked 
 
202 EPICTETUS. 
 
 out to a person's house, you must pay the price which 
 he demands for asking people, whether the coin he 
 requires be praise or attention ; but if you do not give 
 these, do not expect the other. Have you then 
 gained nothing in lieu of your supper ? Indeed 
 you have ; you have escaped praising a person whom 
 you did not want to praise, and you have escaped the 
 necessity of tolerating the upstart impertinence of his 
 menials." 
 
 Some parts of this last thought have been so 
 beautifully expressed by the American poet Lowell 
 that I will conclude this chapter in his words : 
 
 " Earth hath her price for what earth gives us ; 
 
 The beggar is tax'd for a corner to die in ; 
 The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us ; 
 
 We bargain for the graves we lie in : 
 At the devil's mart are all things sold, 
 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold, 
 For a cap and bells our lives we pay. 
 
 Bubbles we earn with our whole soul's tasking, 
 *7& only God that is given away, 
 
 'Tts only heaven may se had for the asking" 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 LIFE AND VIEWS OF EPICTETUS (continued). 
 
 WHETHER any of these great thoughts would have 
 suggested themselves spontaneously to Epictetus 
 whether there was an inborn wisdom and nobleness in 
 the mind of this slave which would have enabled him 
 to elaborate such views from his own consciousness, 
 we cannot tell; they do not, however, express his 
 sentiments only, but belong in fact to the moral 
 teaching of the great Stoic school, in the doctrines of 
 which he had received instruction. 
 
 It may sound strange to the reader that one 
 situated as Epictetus was should yet have had a 
 regular tutor to train him in Stoic doctrines. That 
 such should have been the case appears at first sight 
 inconsistent with the cruelty with which he was 
 treated, but it is a fact which is capable of easy ex- 
 planation. In times of universal luxury and display 
 in times when a sort of surface-refinement is found 
 among all the wealthy some sort of respect is always 
 paid to intellectual eminence, and intellectual amuse- 
 ments are cultivated as well as those of a coarser 
 character. Hence a rich Roman liked to have people 
 
204 EPICTETUS. . 
 
 of literary culture among his slaves ; he liked to have 
 people at hand who would get him any information 
 which he might desire about books, who could act as 
 his amanuenses, who could even correct and supply 
 information for his original compositions. Such 
 learned slaves formed part of every large establish- 
 ment, and among them were usually to be found 
 some who bore, if they did not particularly merit, the 
 title of " philosophers." These men many of whom 
 are described as having been mere impostors, osten- 
 tatious pedants, or ignorant hypocrites acted some- 
 what like domestic chaplains in the houses of their 
 patrons. They gratified an amateur taste for wisdom, 
 and helped to while away in comparative innocence 
 the hours which their masters might otherwise have 
 spent in lassitude or sleep. It was no more to the 
 credit of Epaphroditus that he wished to have a 
 philosophic slave, than it is to the credit of an illiterate 
 millionaire in modern times that he likes to have 
 works of high art in his drawing-room, and books of 
 reference in his well-furnished library. 
 
 Accordingly, since Epictetus must have been sin- 
 gularly useless for all physical purposes, and since 
 his thoughtfulness and intelligence could not fail to 
 command attention, his master determined to make 
 him useful in the only way possible, and sent him to 
 Caius Musonius Rufus to be trained in the doctrines 
 of the Stoic philosophy. 
 
 Musonius was the son of a Roman knight. His 
 learning and eloquence, no less than his keen appre- 
 ciation of Stoic truths, had so deeply kindled the 
 
HIS LIFE AND VIEWS. 205 
 
 suspicions of Nero, that he banished him to the rocky 
 little island of Gyaros, on the charge of his having 
 been concerned in Piso's conspiracy. He returned to 
 Rome after the suicide of Nero, and lived in great 
 distinction and respect, so that he was allowed to 
 remain in the city when the Emperor Vespasian 
 banished all the other philosophers of any eminence. 
 
 The works of Musonius have riot come down to us, 
 but a few notices of him, which are scattered in the 
 Discourses of his greater pupil, show us what kind of 
 man he was. The following anecdotes will show that 
 he was a philosopher of the strictest school. 
 
 Speaking of the value of logic as a means of train- 
 ing the reason, Epictetus anticipates the objection 
 that, after all, a mere error in reasoning is no very, 
 serious fault. He points out that it is a fault, and. 
 that is sufficient. " I too," he says, "once made this 
 very remark to Rufus when he rebuked me for not 
 discovering the suppressed premiss in some syllogism. 
 ' What ! ' said I, ' have I then set the Capitol on fire, 
 that you rebuke me thus ? ' ' Slave ! " he answered ; 
 ' what has the Capitol to do with it ? Is there no 
 other fault then short of setting the Capitol on fire ? 
 Yes ! to use one's own mere fancies rashly, at random, 
 anyhow ; not to follow an argument, or a demon- 
 stration, or a sophism ; not, in short, to see what 
 makes for oneself or not, in questioning and answering 
 is none of these things a fault ? ' ' 
 
 Sometimes he used to test the Stoical endurance of 
 his pupil by pointing out the indignities and tortures 
 which his master might at any moment inflict upon 
 
206 EPICTETUS. 
 
 him ; and when Epictetus answered that, after all, 
 such treatment was what man had borne, and there- 
 fore could bear, he would reply approvingly that every 
 man's destiny was in his own hands ; that he need 
 lack nothing from any one else ; that, since he could 
 derive from himself magnanimity and nobility of 
 soul, he might despise the notion of receiving lands 
 or money or office. " But," he continued, "when any 
 one is cowardly or mean, one ought obviously in 
 writing letters about such a person to speak of him 
 as a corpse, and to say, ' Favour us with the corpse 
 and blood of So-and-so.' For, in fact, such a man is 
 a mere corpse, and no.thing more ; for if he were any- 
 thing more, he would have perceived that no man 
 ever suffers any real misfortunes by another's means." 
 I do not know whether Mr. Ruskin is a student of 
 Epictetus, but he, among others, has forcibly expressed 
 the same truth. " My friends, do you remember that 
 old Scythian custom, when the head of a house died ? 
 How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in his 
 chariot, and carried about to his friends' houses ; and 
 each of them placed him at his table's head, and all 
 feasted in his presence? Suppose it were offered to 
 you, in plain words, as it is offered to you in dire 
 facts, that you should gain this Scythian honour 
 
 gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive 
 
 Would you take the offer verbally made by the death- 
 angel ? Would the meanest among us take it, think 
 you ? Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, 
 every one of us., in a measure ; many of us grasp at 
 it in the fulness of horror." 
 
HIS LIFE AND VIEWS. 207 
 
 The way in which Musonius treated would-be 
 pupils much resembled the plan adopted by Socrates. 
 " It is not easy," says Epictetus, " to train effeminate 
 youths, any more than it is easy to take up whey 
 with a hook. But those of fine nature, even if you 
 discourage them, desire instruction all the more. For 
 which reason Rufus often discouraged pupils, using 
 this as a criterion of fine and of common natures ; for 
 he used to say, that just as a stone, even if you fling 
 it into the air, will fall down to the earth by its own 
 gravitating force, so also a noble nature, in proportion 
 as it is repulsed, in that proportion tends more in its 
 own natural direction." As Emerson says, 
 
 " Yet on the nimble air benign 
 
 Speed nimbler messages, 
 That waft the breath of grace divine 
 
 To hearts in sloth and ease. 
 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, 'THOU MUST,' 
 
 The youth replies, ' I CAN. ' " 
 
 One more trait of the character of Musonius will 
 show how deeply Epictetus respected him, and how 
 much good he derived from him. Tn his Discourse 
 on Ostentation, Epictetus says that Rufus was in 
 the habit of remarking to his pupils, "If you have 
 leisure to praise me, I can have done you no good." 
 " He used indeed so to address us that each one of 
 us, sitting there, thought that some one had been 
 privately telling tales against him in particular, so 
 completely did Rufus seize hold of his characteristics, 
 so vividly did he portray our individual faults." 
 
 T2 
 
ao8 EPICTETUS. 
 
 Such was the man under whose teaching Epictetua 
 grew to maturity, and it was evidently a teaching 
 which was wise and noble, even if it were somewhat 
 chilling and austere. It formed an epoch in the 
 slave's life ; it remoulded his entire character ; it was 
 to him the source of blessings so inestimable in their 
 value that it is doubtful whether they were counter- 
 balanced by all the miseries of poverty, slavery, and 
 contempt. He would probably have admitted that 
 it was better for him to have been sold into cruel 
 slavery, than it would have been to grow up in 
 freedom, obscurity, and ignorance in his native 
 Hierapolis. So that Epictetus might have found, and 
 did find, in his own person, an additional argument 
 in favour of Divine Providence : an additional proof 
 that God is kind and merciful to all men ; an addi- 
 tional intensity of conviction that, if our lots on earth 
 are not equal, they are at least dominated by a prin- 
 ciple of justice and of wisdom, and each man, on the 
 whole, may gain that which is best for him, and that 
 which most honestly and most heartily he desires. 
 Epictetus reminds us again and again that we may 
 have many, if not all, such advantages as the world 
 has to offer, if we are willing to pay the price by which 
 they are obtained. But if that price be a mean or a 
 wicked one, and if we should scorn ourselves were we 
 ever tempted to pay it, then we must not even cast one 
 longing look of regret towards things which can only 
 be got by that which we deliberately refuse to give. 
 Every good and just man may gain, if not happiness, 
 then something higher than happiness. } Let no one 
 
HIS LIFE AND VIEWS. 209 
 
 regard this as a mere phrase, for it is capable of a 
 most distinct and definite meaning. There are certain 
 things which all men desire, and which all men 
 would gladly, if they could lawfully and innocently 
 obtain. These thirds are health, wealth, ease, com- 
 fort, influence, honour, freedom from opposition and 
 from pain ; and yet, if you were to place all these bles- 
 sings on the one side, and on the other side to place 
 poverty, and disease, and anguish, and trouble, and 
 contempt, yet, if on this side also you were to place 
 truth and justice, and a sense that, however densely 
 the clouds may gather about our life, the light of God 
 will be visible beyond them, all the noblest men who 
 ever lived would choose, as without hesitation they 
 always have chosen, the latter destiny. It is not 
 that they like failure, but they prefer failure to falsity ; 
 it is not that they love persecution, but they prefer 
 persecution to meanness ; it is not that they relish 
 opposition, but they welcome opposition rather than 
 guilty acquiescence ; it is not that they do not shrink 
 from agony, but they would not escape agony by crime. 
 The selfishness of Dives in his purple is to them less 
 enviable than the innocence of Lazarus in rags ; they 
 would be chained with John in prison rather than loll 
 with Herod at the feast ; they would fight with beasts 
 with Paul in the arena rather than be steeped in the foul 
 luxury of Nero on the throne. It is not happiness, but 
 it is something higher than happiness ; it is stillness, it 
 is assurance, it is satisfaction, it is peace ; the world can 
 neither understand it, nor give it, nor take it away, 
 it is something indescribable it is the gift of God. 
 
210 EPICTETUS. 
 
 " The fallacy " of being surprised at wickedness in 
 prosperity, and righteousness in misery, " can only 
 lie," says Mr. Froude, in words which would have 
 delighted Epictetus, and which would express the 
 inmost spirit of his philosophy, " in the supposed 
 right to happiness. . . . Happiness is not what we 
 are to look for. Our place is to be true to the best 
 we know, to seek that, and do that ; and if by ' virtue 
 is its own reward ' be meant that the good man cares 
 only to continue good, desiring nothing more, then 
 it is a true and a noble saying. . . . Let us do 
 right, and then whether happiness come, or unhap- 
 piness, it is no very mighty matter. If it come, life 
 will be sweet; if it do not come, life will be bitter 
 bitter, not sweet, and yet to be borne. . . . The 
 well-being of our souls depends only on what we 
 are ; and nobleness of character is nothing else but 
 steady love of good, and steady scorn of evil. . . . Only 
 to those who have the heart to say, ' We can do 
 without selfish enjoyment : it is not what we ask 
 cr desire/ is there no secret. Man will have what he 
 desires, and will find what is really best for him, 
 exactly as he honestly seeks for it. Happiness may 
 tfy away, pleasure pall or cease to be obtainable, 
 wealth decay, friends fail or prove unkind : but t/u 
 -power to serve God never Jails, and the love of 
 Him is never rejected. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LIFE AND VIEWS OF EPICTETUS (continued.) 
 
 OF the life of Epictetus, as distinct from his opin- 
 ions, there is unfortunately little more to be told. 
 The life of 
 
 " That halting slave, who in Nicopolis 
 Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son 
 Cleared Rome of what most shamed him," 
 
 is not an eventful life, and the conditions which sur- 
 rounded it are very circumscribed. Great men, it 
 has been observed, have often the shortest biogra- 
 phies ; their real life is in their books. 
 
 At some period of his life, but how or when we do 
 not know, Epictetus was manumitted by his master, 
 and was henceforward regarded by the world as free. 
 Probably the change made little or no difference in 
 his life. If it saved him from a certain amount of 
 brutality, if it gave him more uninterrupted leisure, it 
 probably did not in the slightest degree modify the 
 hardships of his existence, and may have caused him 
 some little anxiety as to the means of procuring 
 the necessaries of life. He, of all men, would have 
 attached the least importance to the external con- 
 ditions under which he lived ; he always regarded 
 
 15 
 
212 EPICTETUS. 
 
 them as falling under the category of things which 
 lay beyond the sphere of his own influence, and 
 therefore as things with which he had nothing to do 
 Even in his most oppressed days, he considered him- 
 self, by the grace of heaven, to be more free free in 
 a far truer and higher sense than thousands of those 
 who owed allegiance to no master's will. Whether 
 he had saved any small sum of money, or whether 
 his needs were supplied by the many who loved anc 
 honoured him, we do not know. He was a man who 
 vvas content with the barest necessaries of life, and 
 we may be sure that he would Jiave refused to be 
 indebted to any one for more than these. 
 
 It is probable that he never married. This may 
 have been due to that shade of indifference to the 
 female character of which we detect traces here and 
 there in his writings. In one passage he complains 
 that women seemed to think of nothing but admira- 
 tion and getting married ; and, in another, he observes, 
 almost with a sneer, that the Roman ladies were fond 
 of Plato's Republic because he allowed some very 
 liberal marriage regulations. We can only infer from 
 these passages that he had been very unfortunate in 
 the specimens of women with whom he had been 
 thrown. The Roman ladies of his time were certainly 
 not models of character ; he was not likely to fall 
 in with very exalted females among the slaves of 
 Epaphroditus or the ladies of his family, and he had 
 probably never known the love of a sister or a 
 mother's care. He did not, however, go the length of 
 condemning marriage altogether ; on the contrary, he 
 
HIS LIFE AND VIEWS. 
 
 213 
 
 blames the philosophers who did so. But it is equally 
 obvious that he approves of celibacy as a " counsel of 
 perfection," and indeed his views on the subject have 
 so close and remarkable a resemblance to those of 
 St. Paul, that our readers will be interested in seeing 
 them side by side. 
 
 In I Cor. vii. St. Paul, after speaking of the noble- 
 ness of virginity, proceeds, nevertheless, to sanction 
 matrimony as in itself a hallowed and honourable 
 estate. It was not given to all, he says, to abide 
 even as he was, and therefore marriage should be 
 adopted as a sacred and indissoluble bond. Still, 
 without being sure that he has any divine sanction for 
 what he is about to say, he considers celibacy good 
 " for the present distress," and warns those that marry 
 that they "shall have trouble in the flesh." For mar- 
 riage involves a direct multiplication of the cares of 
 the flesh : " He that is unmarried careth for the things 
 that belong to the Lord, how he may please the 
 Lord : but he that is married careth for the things 
 that are of the world, how he may please his wife. 
 .... And this I speak for your own profit, not 
 that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which 
 is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord- 
 without distraction'' 
 
 It is clear, then, that St. Paul regarded virginity as a 
 " counsel of perfection," and Epictetus uses respecting 
 if almost identically the same language. Marriage 
 was perfectly permissible in his view, but it was much 
 better for a Cynic (i.e. for all who carried out most 
 fully their philosophical obligations) to remain single : 
 
214 EPICTETUS. 
 
 " Since the condition of things is such as it now is, 
 as though we were on the eve of battle, ought not 
 the Cynic to be entirely without distraction " [the Greek 
 word being the very same as that used by St. Paul] 
 11 for the service of God? ought he not to be able to 
 move about among mankind free from the entangle- 
 ment of private relationships or domestic duties, 
 which if he neglect he will no longer preserve the 
 character of a wise and good man, and which if he 
 observe he will lose the function of a messenger, and 
 sentinel, and herald of the gods?" Epictetus pro- 
 ceeds to point out that if he is married he can no 
 longer look after the spiritual interests of all with 
 whom he is thrown in contact, and no longer maintain 
 the rigid independence of all luxuries which marked 
 the genuine philosopher. He must, for instance, have 
 a bath for his child, provisions for his wife's ailments, 
 and clothes for his little ones, and money to buy them 
 satchels and pens, and cribs and cups ; and hence a 
 general increase of furniture, and all sorts of undigni- 
 fied distractions, which Epictetus enumerates with an 
 almost amusing manifestation of disgust. It is true 
 (he admits) that Crates, a celebrated cynic, was mar- 
 ried, but it was to a lady as self-denying as himself, 
 and to one who had given up wealth and friends to 
 share hardship and poverty with him. And, if 
 Epictetus does not venture to say in so many words 
 that Crates in this matter made a mistake, he takes 
 pains to point out that the circumstances were far too 
 exceptional to be accepted as a precedent for the 
 imitation of others. 
 
HIS LIFE AND VIEWS. 21$ 
 
 "But," inquires the interlocutor, "how then is the 
 world to get on ? " The question seems quite to 
 disturb the bachelor equanimity of Epictetus ; it 
 makes- him use language of the strongest and most 
 energetic contempt : and it is only when he trenches 
 on this subject that he ever seems to lose the nobility 
 and grace, the " sweetness and light," which are the 
 general characteristic of his utterances. In spite of 
 his complete self-mastery he was evidently a man of 
 strong feelings, and with a natural tendency to ex- 
 press them strongly. " Heaven bless us," he exclaims 
 in reply, " are they greater benefactors of mankind who 
 bring into the world two or three evilly-squalling 
 brats,* or those who, to the best of their power, keep 
 a beneficent eye on the lives, and habits, and ten- 
 dencies of all mankind ? Were the Thebans who had 
 large families more useful to their country than the 
 childless Epaminondas ; or was Homer less useful to 
 mankind than Priam with his fifty good-for-nothing 
 sons ? . . . . Why, sir, the true cynic is a father to 
 all men ; all men are his sons and all women his 
 daughters ; he has a bond of union, a lien of affection 
 with them all." (Dissert, iii. 22.) 
 
 The whole character of Epictetus is sufficient to 
 prove that he would only do what he considered most 
 desirable and most exalted ; and passages like these, 
 the extreme asperity of which I have necessarily 
 
 * KaKAppwyx* wa'Sfo. Another reading is Koicdpuyxct, which M. Mar- 
 tha renders, "Marmots a vilain petit museaul" It is evident that 
 Ep^ f etus did not like children,, which makes his subsequently men- 
 tic ' <n to the poor neglected child still more creditable 
 kg 
 
 u 
 
7t6 EPICTETUS. 
 
 softened down, are, I think, decisive in favour oi 
 the tradition which pronounces him to have been 
 unmarried. 
 
 We are told that he lived in a cottage of the 
 simplest and even meanest description : it neither 
 needed nor possessed a fastening of any kind, for 
 within it there was no furniture except a lamp and 
 the poor straw pallet on which he slept. About his 
 lamp there was current in antiquity a famous story, to 
 which he himself alludes. As a piece of unwonted 
 luxury he had purchased a little iron lamp, which 
 burned in front of the images of his household deities. 
 It was the only possession which he had, and a thief 
 stole it " He will be finely disappointed when he 
 comes again," quietly observed Epictetus, "for he 
 will only find an earthenware lamp next time." At 
 his death the little earthenware lamp was bought by 
 some genuine hero-worshipper for 3,000 drachmas. 
 "The purchaser hoped," says the satirical Lucian, 
 " that if he read philosophy at night by that lamp, he 
 would at once acquire in dreams the wisdom of the 
 admirable old man who once possessed it." 
 
 But, in spite of his deep poverty, it must not be 
 supposed that there was anything eccentric or osten- 
 tatious in the life of Epictetus. On the contrary, his 
 writings abound in directions as to the proper bearing 
 of a philosopher in life. He warns his students that 
 they may have ridicule to endure. Not only did the 
 little boys in the streets, the gamins of Rome, appear 
 to consider a philosopher " fair game," and think it 
 fine fun to mimic his gestures and pull his beard, but 
 
HIS LIFE AND VIEWS. 217 
 
 he had to undergo the sneers of much more dignified 
 people. " If," says Epictetus, " you want to know 
 how the Romans regard philosophers, listen. Maelius, 
 who had the highest philosophic reputation among 
 them, once when I was present, happened to get into 
 a great rage with his people, and as though he had 
 received an intolerable injury, exclaimed, ' I cannot 
 endure it ; you are killing me ; why, you'll make me 
 like him? pointing to me," evidently as if Epictetus 
 were-, the merest insect in existence. And, again he 
 says in the^Wanuat: " If you wish to be a philosopher, 
 prepare yourself to be thoroughly laughed at since 
 many will certainly sneer and jeer at you, and will 
 say, ' He has come back to us as a philosopher all of 
 a sudden/ and ' Where in the world did he get this 
 superciliousness ? ' Now do not you be supercilious, 
 but cling to the things which appear best to you in 
 such a manner as though you were conscious of 
 having been appointed by God to this position," 
 Again in the little discourse On the Desire of 
 Admiration, he warns the philosopher "not to walk 
 as if he had swallowed a poker" or to care for the 
 applause of those multitudes whom he holds to be 
 immersed in error. For all display, and pretence, 
 and hypocrisy, and Pharisaism, and boasting, and 
 mere fruitless book-learning he seems to have felt a 
 genuine and profound contempt. Recommendations to 
 simplicity of conduct, courtesy of manner, and modera- 
 tion of language were among his practical precepts. 
 It is refreshing, too, to know that with the strongest 
 and manliest good sense, he entirely repudiated that 
 
218 EPICTETUS. 
 
 dog-like brutality of behaviour, and repulsive eccen- 
 tricity of self-neglect, which characterised not a few 
 of the Cynic leaders. He expressly argues that the 
 Cynic should be a man of ready tact, and attractive 
 presence ; and there is something of almost indignant 
 energy in his words when he urges upon a pupil the 
 plain duty of scrupulous cleanliness. In this respect 
 our friends the Hermits would not quite have satisfied 
 him, although he might possibly have pardoned them 
 on the plea that they abode in desert solitudes, since 
 he bids those who neglect the due care of their bodies 
 to live " either in the wilderness or alone." 
 
 Late in life Epictetus increased his establishment 
 by taking in an old woman as a servant. The cause 
 of his doing so shows an almost Christian tenderness 
 of character. According to the hideous custom of in- 
 fanticide which prevailed in the pagan world, a man 
 with whom Epictetus was acquainted exposed his 
 infant son to perish. Epictetus in pity took the child 
 home to save its life, and the services of a female were 
 necessary to supply its wants. Such kindness and 
 self-denial were all the more admirable because pity, 
 like all other deep emotions, was regarded by the 
 Stoics in the light rather of a vice than of a virtue. 
 In this respect, however, both Seneca and Epictetus, 
 and to a still greater extent Marcus Aurelius, were 
 gloriously false to the rigidity of the school to 
 which they professed to belong. We see with delight 
 that one of the Discourses of Epictetus was On the 
 Tenderness and Forbearance due to Sinners ; and he 
 abounds in exhortations to forbearance in judging 
 
HIS LIFE AND VIEWS. 219 
 
 others. In one of his Fragments he tells the follow- 
 ing anecdote : A person who had seen a poor ship- 
 wrecked and almost dying pirate took pity on him, 
 carried him home, gave him clothes, and furnished 
 him with all the necessaries of life. Somebody 
 reproached him for doing good to the wicked " I 
 nave honoured," he replied, "not the man, but 
 humanity in his person." 
 
 But one fact more is known in the life of Epictetus. 
 Domitian, the younger son of Vespasian, succeeded 
 his far nobler brother the Emperor Titus ; and in the 
 course of his reign a decree was passed which 
 banished all the philosophers from Italy. Epictetus 
 was not exempted from this unjust and absurd decree. 
 That he bore it with equanimity may be inferred from 
 the approval .with which he tells an anecdote about 
 Agrippinus, who while his cause was being tried in the 
 Senate went on with all his usual avocations, and on 
 being informed on his return from bathing that he had 
 been condemned, quietly asked, " To death or banish- 
 ment?" "To banishment," said the messenger. " Is 
 my property confiscated ?" " No." " Very well, then 
 let us go as far as Aricia" (about sixteen miles from 
 Rome), " and dine there." 
 
 There was a certain class of philosophers whose 
 external mark and whose sole claim to distinction 
 rested in the length of their beards ; and when the 
 decree of Domitian was passed these gentlemen con- 
 tented themselves with shaving. Epictetus alludes to 
 this in his second Discourse, " Come, Epictetus, shave 
 off your beard," he imagines some one to say to him. 
 
220 EPICTETUS. 
 
 " If I am a philosopher I will not," he replies. " Then 
 I will take off your head." " By all means, if that will 
 do you any good." 
 
 He went to Nicopolis, a town of Epirus, which had 
 been built by Augustus in commemoration of his 
 victory at Actium. Whether he ever revisited Rome 
 is uncertain, but it is probable that he did so, for we 
 know that he enjoyed the friendship of several eminent 
 philosophers and statesmen, and was esteemed and 
 honoured by the Emperor Hadrian himself. He is 
 said to have lived to a good old age, surrounded by 
 affectionate and eager disciples, and to have died with 
 the same noble simplicity which had marked his life. 
 The date of his death is as little known as that of his 
 birth. It only remains to give a sketch of those 
 thoughts which, poor though he was, and despised, 
 and a slave, yet made him "dear to the immortals." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ' MANUAL" AND "FRAGMENTS" OF EPICTETUS. 
 
 IT is nearly certain that Epictetus never committed 
 any of his doctrines to writing. Like his great ex- 
 emplar, Socrates, he contented himself with oral 
 instruction, and the bulk of what has come down to us 
 in his name consists in the Discourses reproduced for 
 us by his pupil Arrian. It was the ambition of Arrian 
 "to be to Epictetus what Xenophon had been to 
 Socrates," that is, to hand down to posterity a noble 
 and faithful picture of the manner in which his master 
 had lived and taught. With this view, he wrote four 
 books on Epictetus ; a life, which is now unhappily 
 lost ; a book of conversation or " table-talk," which is 
 also lost ; and two books which have come down to 
 us, viz. the Discourses and the Manual. It is from 
 these two invaluable books, and from a good many 
 isolated fragments, that we are enabled to judge what 
 was the practical morality of Stoicism, as expounded 
 by the holy and upright slave. 
 
 The Manual is a kind of abstract of Epictetus's 
 ethical principles, which, with many additional illus- 
 trations and with more expansion, are also explained 
 
222 EPICTETUS. 
 
 in the Discourses. Both books were so popular that 
 by their means Arrian first came into conspicuous 
 notice, and ultimately attained the highest eminence 
 and rank. The Manual was to antiquity what the 
 Imitatio of Thomas a Kempis was to later times, and 
 what Woodhead's Whole Duty of Man or Wilberforce's 
 Practical View of Christianity have been to large 
 sections of modern Englishmen. It was a clear, 
 succinct, and practical statement of common daily 
 duties, and the principles upon which they rest. Ex- 
 pressed in a manner entirely simple and unornate, its 
 popularity was wholly due to the moral elevation of 
 the thoughts which it expressed. Epictetus did not 
 aim at style ; his one aim was to excite his hearers to 
 virtue, and Arrian tells us that in this endeavour he 
 created a deep impression by his manner and voice. 
 It is interesting to know that the Manual was widely 
 accepted among Christians no less than among Pagans, 
 and that, so late as the fifth century, paraphrases were 
 written of it for Christian use. No systematic treatise 
 of morals so simply beautiful was ever composed, and 
 to this day the best Christian may study it, not 
 with interest only, but with real advantage. It is like 
 the voice of the Sybil, which, uttering things simple, 
 and unperfumed, and unadorned, by God's grace 
 reacheth through innumerable years. We proceed to 
 give a short sketch of its contents. 
 
 Epictetus began by laying down the broad compre- 
 hensive statement that there are some things which 
 are in our power, and depend upon ourselves ; other 
 things which are beyond our power, and wholly inde- 
 
HIS " MANUAL" AND "FRAGMENTS." 223 
 
 pendent of us. The things which are in our power are 
 our opinions, our aims, our desires, our aversions in 
 a word, our actions. The things beyond our power are 
 bodily accidents, possessions, fame, rank, and what- 
 ever lies beyond the sphere of our actions. To the 
 former of these classes of things our whole attention 
 must be confined. In that region we may be noble, 
 unperturbed, and free ; in the other we shall be 
 dependent, frustrated, querulous, miserable. Both 
 classes cannot be successfully attended to ; they are 
 antagonistic, antipathetic ; we cannot serve God and 
 Mammon. 
 
 Now, if we take a right view of all these things 
 which in no way depend on ourselves we shall regard 
 them as mere semblances as shadows which are to 
 be distinguished from the true substance. We shall 
 not look upon them as fit subjects for aversion or desire. 
 Sin, and cruelty, and falsehood we may hate, because 
 we can avoid them if we will ; but we must look upon 
 sickness, and poverty, and death as things which are 
 not fit subjects for our avoidance, because they lie 
 wholly beyond our control. 
 
 This, then, endurance of the inevitable, avoidance 
 of the evil is the key-note of the Epictetean philo- 
 sophy. It has been summed up in the three words, 
 'Avexov Kal d-Tre^ou, " Sustine et abstine" " Bear and 
 forbear," bear .whatever God assigns to you, abstain 
 from that which He forbids. 
 
 The earlier part of the Manual is devoted to 
 practical advice which may enable men to endure 
 nobly. For instance, " If there be anything," says 
 
224. EPICTETUS. 
 
 Epictetus, " which you highly value or tenderly love, 
 estimate at the same time its true nature. Is it some 
 possession ? remember that it may be destroyed. Is 
 it wife or child ? remember that they may die." 
 " Death," says an epitaph in Chester Cathedral 
 
 " Death, the great monitor, comes oft to prove, 
 'Tis dust we dote on, when 'tis man we love." 
 
 " Desire nothing too much. If you are going to 
 the public baths and are annoyed or hindered by the 
 rudeness, the pushing, the abuse, the thievish propen- 
 sities of others, do not lose your temper : remind 
 yourself that it is more important that you should 
 keep your will in harmony with nature than that you 
 should bathe. And so with all troubles ; men suffer 
 far less from the things themselves than from the 
 opinions they have of them." 
 
 " If you cannot frame your circumstances in accord- 
 ance with your wishes, frame your will into harmony 
 with your circumstances.* When you lose the best 
 gifts of life, consider them as not lost but only resigned 
 to Him who gave them. You have a remedy in your 
 own heart against all trials continence as a bulwark 
 against passion, patience against opposition, fortitude 
 against pain. Begin with trifles : if you are robbed, 
 remind yourself that your peace of mind is of more 
 value and importance than the thing which has been 
 stolen from you. Follow the guidance of nature; 
 that is the great thing ; regret nothing, desire nothing, 
 
 * " When what thou wiliest befalls not, thou then must will what 
 befalleth." 
 
HIS " MANUAL " AND " FRA GMENTS" 225 
 " 
 
 which can disturb that end. Behave as at a banquet 
 take with gratitude and in moderation what is set 
 before you, and seek for nothing more ; a higher and 
 diviner step will be to be ready and able to forego 
 even that which is given you, or which you might 
 easily obtain. Sympathise with others, at least 
 externally, when they are in sorrow and misfortune ; 
 but remember in your own heart that to the brave 
 and wise and true there is really nu such thing as 
 misfortune ; it is but an ugly semblance ; the croak 
 of the raven can portend no harm to such a man, 
 he is elevated above its power. 
 
 " We do not choose our own parts in life, and have 
 nothing to do with those parts ; our simple duty is 
 confined to playing them well. The slave may be as 
 free as the consul ; and freedom is the chief of bless- 
 ings ; it dwarfs all others ; beside it all others are 
 insignificant, with it all others become needless, with- 
 out it no others are possible. No one can insult you 
 if you will not regard his words or deeds as insults.* 
 Keep your eye steadily fixed on the great reality of 
 death, and all other things will shrink to their true pro- 
 portions. As in a voyage, when the ship has come to 
 anchor, if you have gone out to find water, you may 
 amuse yourself with picking up a little shell or bulb, 
 
 * Compare Cowper's Conversation : 
 
 " Am I to set my life upon a throw 
 Because a bear is rude and surly? No. 
 A modest, sensible, and well-bred ma a 
 Will not insult me, and no other can." 
 
226 EPICTETUS. 
 
 but you must keep your attention steadily fixed upon 
 the ship, in case the captain should call, and then you 
 must leave all such things, lest you should be flung 
 on board, bound like sheep. So in life ; if, instead of 
 a little shell or bulb, some wifeling or childling be 
 granted you, well and good ; but, if the captain call, 
 run to the ship and leave such possessions behind 
 you, not looking back. But if you be an old man, 
 take care not to go a long distance from the ship 
 at all, lest you should be called and come too late." 
 The metaphor is a significant one, and perhaps the 
 following lines of Sir Walter Scott, prefixed anony- 
 mously to one of the chapters of the Waverley 
 Novels, may help to throw light upon it : 
 
 " Death finds us 'midst our playthings ; snatches us, 
 As a cross nurse might do a wayward child, 
 From all our toys and baubles the rough call 
 Unlooses all our favourite ties on earth : 
 And well if they are such as may be answered 
 In yonder world, where all is judged of truly." 
 
 " Preserve your just relations to other men ; their 
 misconduct does not affect your duties. Has your 
 father done wrong, or your brother been unjust ? 
 Still he is your father, he is your brother ; and you 
 must consider your relation to him, not whether he be 
 worthy of it or no. 
 
 "Your duty towards the gods is to form just and 
 true opinions respecting them. Believe that they dc 
 all things well, and then you need never murmur ot 
 complain." 
 
HIS "MANUAL* AND "FRAGMENTS? 227 
 
 "As rules of practice," says Epictetus, "prescribe 
 to yourself an ideal, and then act up to it. Be mostly 
 silent ; or, if you converse, do not -let it be about 
 vulgar and insignificant topics, such as dogs, horses, 
 racing, or prize-fighting. Avoid foolish and immo- 
 derate laughter, vulgar entertainments, impurity, dis- 
 play, spectacles, recitations, and all egotistical remarks. 
 Set before you the examples of the great and good. 
 Do not be dazzled by mere appearances. Do whaf 
 is right quite irrespective of what people will say or 
 think. Remember that your body is a very small 
 matter, and needs but very little ; just as all that the 
 foot needs is a shoe, and not a dazzling ornament of 
 gold, purple, or jewelled embroidery. To spend all 
 one's time on the body, or on bodily exercises, shows 
 a weak intellect. Do not be fond of criticising others, 
 and do not resent their criticisms of you. Every- 
 thing," he says, and this is one of his most charac- 
 teristic precepts, " has two handles ; one by which it 
 may be borne, the other by which it cannot. If your 
 brother be unjust, do not take up the matter by that 
 handle the handle of his injustice for that handle 
 is the one by which it cannot be taken up ; but 
 rather by the handle that he is your brother and 
 brought up with you ; and then you will be taking it 
 up as it can be borne." 
 
 All these precepts have a general application, but 
 Epictetus adds others on the right bearing of a phi 
 losopher; that is, of one whose professed ideal is 
 higher than the multitude. He bids him above 
 
 16 V 
 
EPICTETUS. 
 
 all things not to be censorious, and not to be 
 ostentatious. " Feed on your own principles ; do 
 not throw them up to show how much you have 
 eaten. Be self-denying, but do not boast of it. Be in- 
 dependent and moderate, and regard not the opinion 
 or censure of others, but keep a watch upon your- 
 self as your own most dangerous enemy. Do 
 not plume yourself on an intellectual knowledge of 
 philosophy, which is in itself quite valueless, but on a 
 consistent nobleness of action. Never relax your 
 efforts, but aim at perfection. Let everything which 
 seems best be to you a law not to be transgressed ; 
 and whenever anything painful, or pleasurable, or 
 glorious, or inglorious, is set before you, remember 
 that now is the struggle* now is the hour of the 
 Olympian contest, and it may not be put off, and that 
 by a single defeat or yielding your advance in virtue 
 maybe either secured or lost. It was thus that Socrates 
 attained perfection, by giving his heart to reason, and 
 to reason only. And thou, even if as yet thou art not 
 a Socrates, yet shouldst live as though it were thy 
 wish to be one." These are noble words, but who that 
 reads them will not be reminded of those sacred and 
 far more deeply-reaching words, "Be ye perfect, even as 
 your Father which is in heaven is perfect" " Behold, 
 now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of 
 salvation"' 
 
 In this brief sketch we have included all the most 
 important thoughts in the Manual. It ends in these 
 words, " On all occasions we may keep in mind these 
 three sentiments : 
 
HIS "MANUAL* AND "FRAGMENTS." 229 
 
 "'Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, Destiny, whither- 
 soever ye have appointed me to go, for I will follow, 
 and that without delay. Should I be unwilling, I 
 shall follow as a coward, but I must follow all the 
 same.' (Cleanthes.) 
 
 "'Whosoever hath nobly yielded to necessity, I 
 hold him wise, and he knoweth the things of God.' 
 (Euripides.) 
 
 " And this third one also, ' O Crito, be it so, if 
 so be the will of heaven. Anytus and Melitus can 
 indeed slay me, but harm me they cannot.' 
 (Socrates.) 
 
 To this last conception of life, quoted from the end 
 of Plato's Apology, Epictetus recurs elsewhere : "What 
 resources have we," he asks, " in circumstances of 
 great peril ? What other than the remembrance of 
 what is or what is not in our own power ; what is 
 possible to us and what is not ? I must die. Be it 
 so ; but need I die groaning ? I must be. bound ; 
 but must I be bound bewailing ? I must be driven 
 into exile ; well, who prevents me then from going 
 with laughter, and cheerfulness, and calm of mind ? 
 
 " ' Betray secrets.' 
 
 " ' Indeed I will not, for that rests in my own 
 hands.' 
 
 " ' Then I will put you in chains.' 
 
 " ' My good sir, what are you talking about ? Put 
 me in chains ? No, no ! you may put my leg in 
 chains, but not even Zeus himself can master my 
 will.' 
 
 " ' I will throw you into prison.' 
 
EPICTETUS. 
 
 "'My poor little body; yes, no doubt.' 
 
 " ' I will cut off your head.' 
 
 " ' Well, did I ever tell you that my head was tbe 
 only one which could not be cut off?' 
 
 " Such are the things of which philosophers should 
 think, and write them daily, and exercise themselves 
 therein." 
 
 There are many other passages m which Epictetus 
 shows that the free-will of man is his noblest privilege, 
 and that we should not " sell it for a trifle ; " or, as 
 Scripture still more sternly expresses it, should not 
 "sell ourselves for nought." He relates, for instance, 
 the complete failure of the Emperor Vespasian to 
 induce Helvidius Priscus not to go to the Senate. 
 " While I am a senator," said Helvidius, " I must go." 
 " Well, then, at least be silent there." " Ask me no 
 questions, and I will be silent." " But I must ask 
 your opinion." " And / must say what is right." 
 " But I will put you to death." " Did I ever tell you 
 I was immortal ? Do your part, and / will do mine. 
 It is yours to kill me, mine to die untrembling ; 
 yours to banish me, mine to go into banishment 
 without grief." 
 
 We see from these remarkable extracts that the 
 wisest of the heathen had, by God's grace, attained to 
 the sense that life was subject to a divine guidance. 
 Yet how dim was their vision of this truth, how in- 
 secure their hold upon it, in comparison with that 
 which the meanest Christian may attain ! They 
 never definitely grasped the doctrine of immortality 
 
HIS " MA NUA L " A ND FRA GMENTS." 23 1 
 
 They never quite got rid of a haunting dread that 
 perhaps, after all, they might be nothing better 
 than insignificant and unheeded atoms, swept hither 
 and thither in the mighty eddies of an unseen, im- 
 personal, mysterious agency, and destined hereafter 
 " to be sealed amid the iron hills," or 
 
 " To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
 And blown with reckless violence about 
 The pendent world." 
 
 Their belief in a personal deity was confused with 
 their belief in nature, which, in the language of a 
 modern sceptic, " acts with fearful uniformity : stern 
 as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death ; too 
 vast to praise, too inexorable to propitiate, it has no 
 ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm to 
 save." How different the soothing and tender cer- 
 tainty of the Christian's hope, for whom Christ has 
 brought life and immortality to light ! For " chance " 
 is not only " the daughter of forethought," as the old 
 Greek lyric poet calls her, but the daughter also of 
 love. How different the prayer of David, even in the 
 hours of his worst agony and shame, "Let Thy loving- 
 Spirit lead me forth into tJie land of righteousness'' 
 Guidance, and guidance by the hand of love, was as 
 even in that dark season he recognised the very law 
 of his life ; and his soul, purged by affliction, had but a 
 single wish -the wish to be led, not into prosperity, 
 not into a recovery of his lost glory, not even into the 
 restoration of his lost innocence ; but only, through 
 
 v2 
 
232 EPICTEPUS. 
 
 paths however hard only into the land of righteous- 
 ness. And because he knew that God would lead 
 him thitherward, he had no wish, no care for anything 
 beyond. 
 
 We will end this chapter by translating a few of 
 the isolated fragments of Epictetus which have been 
 preserved for us by other writers. The wisdom and 
 beauty of these fragments will interest the reader, for 
 Epictetus was one of the few "in the very dust of 
 whose thoughts was gold." 
 
 "A life entangled with accident is like a wintry 
 torrent, for it is turbulent, and foul with mud, and 
 impassable, and tyrannous, and loud, and brief." 
 
 " A soul that dwells with virtue is like a perennial 
 spring ; for it is pure, and limpid, and refreshful, and 
 inviting, and serviceable, and rich, and innocent, and 
 uninjurious." 
 
 "If you wish to be good, first believe that you are 
 bad." 
 
 Compare Matt. ix. 12, " They that be whole need 
 not a physician, but they that are sick ; " John ix. 41, 
 " Now ye say, We see, therefore your sin remaineth;" 
 and I John i. 8, " If we say that we have no sin, we 
 deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." 
 
 "It is base for one who sweetens that which he 
 
HIS "MANUAL* AND "FRAGMENTS: 1 233 
 
 drinks with the gifts of bees, to embitter by vice his 
 reason, which is the gift of God." 
 
 " Nothing is meaner than the love of pleasure, the 
 love of gain, and insolence : nothing nobler than high- 
 mindedness, and gentleness, and philanthropy, and 
 doing good." 
 
 "The vine bears three clusters: the first of 
 pleasure ; the second of drunkenness ; the third of 
 insult." 
 
 " He is a drunkard who drinks more than three 
 cups : even if he be not drunken, he has exceeded 
 moderation." 
 
 Our own George Herbert has laid down the same 
 limit : 
 
 " Be not a beast in courtesy, but stay, 
 Stay at the third cup, or forego the place, 
 Wine above all things doth God's stamp deface." 
 
 "Like the beacon-lights in harbours, which, kindling 
 a great blaze by means of a few fagots, afford suf- 
 ficient aid to vessels that wander over the sea, so, 
 also, a man of bright character in a storm-tossed city, 
 himself content with little, effects great blessings fot 
 his fellow-citizens." 
 
 The thought is not unlike that of Shakespeare : 
 
 " How far yon little candle throws its beams , 
 So shines a good deed in a naughty world." 
 
EPICTETUS. 
 
 But the metaphor which Epictetus more commonly 
 adopts is one no less beautiful. " What good/' asked 
 scfne one, " did Helvidius Priscus do in resisting 
 Vespasian, being but a single person ? " " What 
 good," answers Epictetus, " does the purple do on the 
 garment ? Why, it is splendid in itself, and splendid 
 also in the example which it affords" 
 
 " As the sun does not wait for prayers and incan- 
 tations that he may rise, but shines at once, and is 
 greeted by all ; so neither wait thou for applause, and 
 shouts, and eulogies, that thou mayst do well ; but 
 be a spontaneous benefactor, and thou shalt be be- 
 loved like the sun." 
 
 " Thales, when asked what was the commonest of 
 all possessions, answered, ' Hope ; for even those 
 who have nothing else have hope.'" 
 
 "Lead, lead me on, my hopes," says Mr. Mac- 
 donald ; " I know that ye are true and not vain. 
 Vanish from my eyes day after day, but arise in new 
 forms. I will follow your holy deception ; follow till 
 ye have brought me to the feet of my Father in 
 heaven, where I shall find you all, with folded wings, 
 spangling the sapphire dusk whereon stands His 
 throne which is our home." 
 
 "What ought not to be done do not even think 
 of doing." 
 
HIS "MANUALS AND "FRAGMENTS." 235 
 
 Compare 
 
 Guard well thy thoughts, for thoughts are heard in heaven.' 9 
 
 Epictetus, when asked how a man could grkvi 
 his enemy, replied, " By preparing himself to act in 
 the noblest way/' 
 
 Compare Rom. xii. 20, " If thine enemy hunger, 
 feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink : for in so doing 
 thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." 
 
 " If you always remember that in all you do in soul 
 or body God stands by as a witness, in all your 
 prayers and your actions you will not err ; and you 
 shall have .God dwelling with you." 
 
 Compare Rev. iii. 30, " Behold I stand at the door 
 and knock : if any man hear my voice, and open the 
 door, / will come in to him and will sup with him, 
 and lie with me" 
 
 In the discourse written to prove that God keeps 
 watch upon human actions, Epictetus touches again 
 on the same topic, saying that God has placed beside 
 each one of us His own guardian spirit a spirit that 
 sleeps not and cannot be beguiled and has handed 
 us each over to that spirit to protect us. " And to 
 what better or more careful guardian could He have 
 entrusted us ? So that when you have closed your 
 doors and made darkness within, remember never to 
 say that you are alone. For you are not alone ; God, 
 too, is present there, and your guardian spirit ; and 
 what need have they of light to see what you are 
 doing?" 
 
EP1CTETUS. 
 
 There is in this passage an almost startling coinci- 
 dence of thought with those eloquent words in the 
 Book of Ecclesiasticus: "A man that breaketh wedlock, 
 saying thus in his heart, Who seeth me ? / am com- 
 passed about witJi darkness, the walls cover me, and no 
 body seeth me : what need I to fear ? the Most Highest 
 will not remember my sins : such a man only feareth 
 the eyes of man, and knoweth not that the eyes of the 
 Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun, 
 beholding all the ways of men, and considering the 
 most secret parts. He knew ail things ere ever they 
 were created : so also after they were perfected He 
 looked upon all. This man shall be punished in the 
 streets of the city, and where he expecteth not he 
 shall be taken." (Ecclus. xxiii. n 21.) 
 
 " When we were children, our parents entrusted us 
 to a tutor who kept a continual watch that we might 
 not suffer harm ; but, when we grow to manhood, 
 God hands us over to an inborn conscience to guard 
 us. We must, therefore, by no means despise 
 this .guardianship, since in that case we shall both 
 be displeasing to God and enemies to our own 
 conscience." 
 
 Beautiful and remarkable as these fragments are 
 we have no space for more, and must conclude by 
 comparing the last with the celebrated lines of George 
 Heibert : 
 
 " Lord ! with what care hast Thou begirt us round 1 
 
 Parents first season us. Then schoolmasters 
 Deliver us to laws. They send us bound 
 To rules of reason. Holy messengers ; 
 
HIS "MANUAL" AND "FRAGMENTS? 237 
 
 Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin ; 
 
 Afflictions sorted ; anguish of all sizes ; 
 Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in ! 
 
 Bibles laid open ; millions of surprises ; 
 Blessings beforehand ; ties of gratefulness ; 
 
 The sound of glory ringing in our ears : 
 Without one shame ; within our consciences ; 
 
 Angels and grace ; eternal hopes and fears 1 
 Yet all these fences and their whole array, 
 One cunning bosom sin blows quite away." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DISCOURSES OF EPICTETUS. 
 
 THE Discourses of Epictetus, as originally published 
 by Arrian, contained eight books, of which only fou-r 
 have come down to us. They are in many respects 
 the most valuable expression of his views. There is 
 something slightly repellent in the stern concision, 
 the " imperious brevity," of the Mamial. In the 
 Manual, says M. Martha,* " the reason of the Stoic 
 proclaims its laws with an impassibility which is little 
 human ; it imposes silence on all the passions, even 
 the most . respectable ; it glories in waging against 
 them an internecine war, and seems even to wish to 
 repress the most legitimate impulses of generous 
 sensibility. In reading these rigorous maxims one 
 might be tempted to believe that this legislator of 
 morality is a man without a heart, and, if we were not 
 touched by the original sincerity of the language, one 
 would only see in this lapidary style the conventional 
 precepts of a chimerical system or the aspirations of 
 an impossible perfection." The Discourses are more 
 illustrative, more argumentative, more diffuse, more 
 * Moralistes sous 1'Empire, p. 200. 
 
HIS " DfSCO URSES" 239 
 
 human. In reading them one feels oneself face to 
 face with a human being, not with the marble statue 
 of the ideal wise man. The style, indeed, is simple, 
 but its "athletic nudity" is well suited to this militant 
 morality ; its picturesque and incisive character, its 
 vigorous metaphors, its vulgar expressions, its ab- 
 sence of all conventional elegance, display a certain 
 " plebeian originality '' which gives them an almost 
 autobiographic charm. With trenchant logic and 
 intrepid conviction " he wrestles with the passions, 
 questions them, makes them answer, and confounds 
 them in a few words which are often sublime. This 
 .Socrates without grace does not amuse us by making 
 his adversary fall into the long entanglement of a 
 captious dialogue, but he rudely seizes and often 
 finishes him with two blows. It is like the eloquence 
 of Phocion, which Demosthenes compares to an axe 
 which is lifted and falls." 
 
 Epictetus, like Seneca, is a preacher; a preacher 
 with less wealth of genius, less eloquence of ex- 
 pression, less width of culture, but with far more 
 bravery, clearness, consistency, and grasp of his sub- 
 *ect. His doctrine and his life were singularly homo- 
 geneous, and his views admit of brief expression, 
 for they are not weakened by any fluctuations, or 
 chequered with any lights and shades. The Discourses 
 differ from the Manual only in their manner, thei-r 
 frequent anecdotes, their pointed illustrations, and 
 their vivid interlocutory form. The remark of Pascal, 
 that Epictetus knew the grandeur of the human heart, 
 but did not know its weakness, applies to the Manual, 
 
 w 
 
240 EPICTETUS. 
 
 but can hardly be maintained when we judge him by 
 some of the answers which he gave to those who came 
 to seek for his consolation or advice. 
 
 The Discourses are not systematic in their character, 
 and, even if they were, the loss of the last four books 
 would prevent us from workiner out their system with 
 any completeness. Our sketch of the Manual 'will 
 already have put the reader in possession of the main 
 principles and ideas of Epictetus ; with the mental 
 and physical philosophy of the schools he did not in 
 any way concern himself; it was his aim to be a 
 moral preacher, to ennoble the lives of men and touch 
 their hearts. He neither plagiarised nor invented, but 
 he gave to Stoicism a practical reality. All that 
 remains for us to do is to choose from the Discourses 
 some of his most characteristic views, and the modes 
 by which he brought them home to his hearers. 
 
 It was one of the most essential peculiarities of 
 Stoicism to aim at absolute independence, or self- 
 dependence. Now, as the weaknesses and servilities 
 of men arise most frequently from their desire for 
 superfluities, the true man must absolutely get rid of 
 any such desire. He must increase his wealth by 
 moderating his wishes ; he must despise all the 
 luxuries for which men long, and he must greatly 
 diminish the number of supposed necessaries. We 
 have already seen some of the arguments which point 
 in this direction, and we may add another from the 
 third book of Discourses. 
 
 A certain magnificent orator, who was going to 
 Rome on a lawsuit, had called on Epictetus. The 
 
HIS " DISCO URSES* 241 
 
 philosopher threw cold water on his visit, because he 
 did not believe in his sincerity. "You will get no 
 more from me," he said, " than you would get from 
 any cobbler or greengrocer, for you have only come 
 because it happened to be convenient, and you will 
 only criticise my style, not really wishing to learn 
 principles" "Well, but," answered the orator, "if I 
 attend to that sort of thing, I shall be a mere pauper 
 like you, with no plate, or equipage, or land." " I 
 don't want such things," replied Epictetus ; " and, 
 besides, you are poorer than I am, after all." " Why, 
 how so ? " " You have no constancy, no unanimity 
 with nature, no freedom from perturbations. Patron 
 or no patron, what care I ? You do care. I am richer 
 than you. / don't care what Caesar thinks of me. / 
 flatter no one. This is what I have instead of your 
 silver and gold plate. You have silver vessels, but 
 earthenware reasons, principles, appetites. My mind 
 to me a kingdom is, and it furnishes me abundant 
 and happy occupation in lieu of your restless idleness. 
 All your possessions seem small to you, mine seem 
 great to me. Your desire is insatiate, mine is satis- 
 fied." The comparison with which he ends the dis- 
 cussion is very remarkable. I once had the privilege 
 of hearing Sir William Hooker explain to the late 
 Queen Adelaide the contents of the Kew Museum. 
 Among them was a cocoa-nut with a hole in it, and 
 Sir William explained to the Queen that in certain 
 parts of India, when the natives want to catch the 
 monkeys they make holes in cocoa-nuts, and fill 
 them with sugar. The monkeys thrust in their hands 
 
U2 EPICTETUS. 
 
 and fill them with sugar ; the aperture is too small to 
 draw the paws out again when thus increased in size ; 
 the monkeys have not the sense to loose their hold 
 of the sugar, and so they are caught. This little 
 anecdote will enable the reader to relish the illustra- 
 tion of Epictetus. " When little boys thrust their 
 hands into narrow-mouthed jars full of figs and 
 almonds, when they have filled their hands they can- 
 not draw them out again, and so begin to howl. Let 
 go a few of the figs and almonds, and you'll get your 
 hand out. And so you, let go your desires. Don't 
 desire many things, and you'll get what you do 
 desire." " Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for 
 he shall not be disappointed ! " 
 
 Another of the constant precepts of Epictetus is 
 that we should aim high ; we are not to be common 
 threads in the woof of life, but like the laticlave on 
 the robe of a senator, the broad purple stripe which 
 gave lustre and beauty to the whole. But how are 
 we to know that we are qualified for this high func- 
 tion ? How does the bull know, when the lion ap- 
 proaches, that it is his place to expose himself for all 
 the herd ? If we have high powers we shall soon 
 be conscious of them, and if we have them not we 
 may gradually acquire them. Nothing great is 
 produced at once, the vine must blossom, and bear 
 fruit, and ripen, before we have the purple clusters 
 of the grape, " first the blade, then the ear, after 
 that the full corn in the ear." 
 
 But whence are we to derive this high sense of 
 duty and possible eminence ? Why, if Caesar had 
 
HIS "DISCOURSES? 24* 
 
 adopted you, would you not show your proud sense 
 of ennoblement in haughty looks ; how is it that 
 you are not proud of being sons of God ? You 
 have, indeed, a body, by virtue of which many men 
 sink into close kinship with pernicious wolves, and 
 savage lions, and crafty foxes, destroying the rational 
 within them, and so becoming greedy cattle or mis- 
 chievous vermin ; but above and beyond this, " If," 
 says Epictetus, " a man have once been worthily 
 interpenetrated with the belief that we all have been 
 in some special manner born of God, and that God is 
 the Father of gods and men, I think that he will 
 never have any ignoble, any humble thoughts about 
 himself." Our own great Milton has hardly ex- 
 pressed this high truth more nobly when he says, that 
 " He that holds himself in reverence and due esteem, 
 both for the dignity of God's image upon him, and 
 for the price of his redemption, which he thinks is 
 visibly marked upon his forehead, accounts himself 
 both a fit person to do the noblest and godliest 
 deeds, and much better worth than to deject and 
 defile, with such a debasement and pollution as sin is, 
 himself so highly ransomed, and ennobled to a new 
 friendship and filial relation with God." 
 
 "And how are we to know that we have made 
 progress ? We may know it if our own wills are bent 
 to live in conformity with nature; if we be noble, 
 free, faithful, humble ; if desiring nothing, and shunning 
 nothing which lies beyond our power, we sit loose to 
 all earthly interests ; if our lives are under the distinct 
 governance of immutable and noble laws. 
 17 w2 
 
244 EPICTETUS. 
 
 11 But shall we not meet with troubles in life ? 
 Yes, undoubtedly ; and are there none at Olympia ? 
 Are you not burnt with heat, and pressed for room, 
 and wetted with showers when it rains ? Is there not 
 more than enough clamour, and shouting, and other 
 troubles ? Yet I suppose you tolerate and endure all 
 these when you balance them against the magnificence 
 of the spectacle ? And, come now, have you not re- 
 ceived powers wherewith to bear whatever occurs ? 
 Have you not received magnanimity, courage, forti- 
 tude? And why, if I am magnanimous, should I 
 care for anything that can possibly happen? what 
 shall alarm or trouble me, or seem painful ? Shall I 
 not use the faculty for the ends for which it was 
 granted me, or shall I grieve and groan at all the 
 accidents of life? On the contrary, these troubles 
 and difficulties are strong antagonists pitted against 
 us, and we may conquer them, if we will, in the 
 Olympic game of life. 
 
 " But if life and its burdens become absolutely into- 
 lerable, may we not go back to God, from whom we 
 came ? may we not show thieves and robbers, and 
 tyrants who claim power over us by means of our 
 bodies and possessions, that they have no power? In 
 a word, may we not commit suicide ?" We know how 
 Shakespeare treats this question : 
 
 " For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
 Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely. 
 The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 Which patient merit of the unworthy takes, 
 When he himself tnight his quietus make 
 
HIS "DISCOURSES.* 24! 
 
 With a bare bodkin ? Who would these fardels bear, 
 
 To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 
 
 But that the dread of something after death. 
 
 The undiscovered country from whose bourne 
 
 No traveller returns, puzzles the will : 
 
 And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
 
 Than fly to others that we know not of? " 
 
 But Epictetus had no materials for such an answer. 
 I do not remember a single passage in which he refers 
 to immortality or the life to come, and it is therefore 
 probable either that he did not believe in it at all, or 
 that he put it aside as one of those things which are 
 out of our own power. Yet his answer is not that 
 glorification of suicide which we find throughout the 
 tragedies of Seneca, and which was one of the com- 
 monplaces of Stoicism. " My friends," he says, " wait 
 God's good time till He gives you the signal, and 
 dismisses you from this service ; then dismiss your- 
 selves to go to Him. But for the present restrain 
 yourselves, inhabiting the spot which He has at present 
 assigned you. For, after all, this time of your sojourn 
 here is short, and easy for those who are thus dis- 
 posed ; for what tyrant, or thief, or judgment-halls, 
 are objects of dread to those who thus absolutely 
 disesteem the body and its belongings ? Stay, then, 
 and do not depart without due cause." 
 
 It will be seen that Epictetus permits suicide with- 
 out extolling it, for in another place (ii. i) he says: 
 " What is pain ? A mere ugly mask ; turn it, and 
 see that it is so. This little flesh of ours is acted on 
 roughly, and then again smoothly. If it is not for 
 your interest to bear it, the door is open ; if it is for 
 
 l\ 
 
EPICTETUS. 
 
 your interest endure. It is right that under all 
 circumstances the door should be open, since so men 
 end all trouble." 
 
 This power of endurance is completely the key- 
 note of the Stoical view of life, and the method of 
 attaining to it, by practising contempt for all external 
 accidents, is constantly inculcated. I have already 
 told the anecdote about Agrippinus by which Epic- 
 tetus admiringly shows that no extreme of necessary 
 misfortune could wring from the true Stoic a single 
 expression of indignation or of sorrow. 
 
 The inevitable, then, in the view of ( ':e Stoics, 
 comes from God, and it is our duty not _o murmur 
 against it. But this being the guiding conception as 
 regards ourselves, how are we to treat others ? Here, 
 too, our duties spring directly from our relation to 
 God. It is that relation which makes us reverence 
 ourselves, it is that which should make us honour 
 others. " Slave ! will you not bear with your own 
 brother, who has God for his father no less than 
 you ? But they are wicked, perhaps thieves and 
 murderers. Be it so, then they deserve all the more 
 pity. You don't exterminate the blind or deaf 
 because of their misfortunes, but you pity them : 
 but how much more to be pitied are wicked men ? 
 Don't execrate them. Are you yourself so very 
 wise?" 
 
 Nor are the precepts of Epictetus all abstract 
 principles ; he often pauses to give definite rules of 
 conduct and practice. Nothing, for instance, can 
 exceed the wisdom with which he speaks of habits 
 
HIS " DISCO URSES? 247 
 
 (ii. 1 8), and the best means of acquiring good habits 
 and conquering evil ones. He points out that we are 
 the creatures of habit ; that every single act is a 
 definite grain in the sand-multitude of influences 
 which make up our daily life ; that each time we are 
 angry or evil-inclined we are adding fuel to a fire, 
 and virulence to the seeds of a disease. A fever may 
 be cured, but it leaves the health weaker ; and so also 
 is it with the diseases of the soul. They leave their 
 mark behind them. 
 
 Take the instance of anger. " Do you wish not to 
 be passionate ? do not then cherish the habit within 
 you, and do not add any stimulant thereto. Be calm 
 at first, and then number the days in which you have 
 not been in a rage. I used to be angry every day, now 
 it is only every other day, then every third, then every 
 fourth day. But should you have passed even thirty 
 days without a relapse, then offer a sacrifice to God. 
 For the habit is first loosened, then utterly eradicated. 
 * I did not yield to vexation to-day, nor the next day, 
 nor so on for two or three months, but I restrained 
 myself under various provocations.' Be sure, if you 
 can say that, that it will soon be all right with you." 
 
 But how is one to do all this ? that is the great 
 question, and Epictetus is quite ready to give you 
 the best answer he can. We have, for instance, 
 already quoted one passage in which (unlike the 
 majority of Pagan moralists) he shows that he has 
 thoroughly mastered the ethical importance of con- 
 trolling even the thought of wickedness. Another , 
 anecdote about Agrippinus will further illustrate the 
 
248 EPl'CTETUS. 
 
 same doctrine. It was the wicked practice of Nerc 
 to make noble Romans appear on the stage or in 
 gladiatorial shows, in order that he might thus seem 
 to have their sanction for his own degrading displays. 
 On one occasion Fionas, who was doubting whether 
 or not he should obey the mandate, consulted Agrip- 
 pinus on the subject. " Go by all means," replied 
 Agrippinus. " But why don't you go, then ? " asked 
 Florus. "Because" said Agrippinus, "/ do not de- 
 liberate about it" He implied by this answer that to 
 hesitate is to yield, to deliberate is to be lost ; we 
 must act always on principles, we must never pause to 
 calculate consequences. " But if I don't go," objected 
 Florus, " I shall have my head cut off." " Well, then, 
 go, but / won't." " Why won't you go ? " " Because 
 I do not care to be of a piece with the common 
 thread of life ; I like to be the purple sewn upon it." 
 
 And if we want a due motive for such lofty choice 
 Epictetus will supply it. " Wish," he says, " to win 
 the suffrages of your own inward approval, wish to 
 appear beautiful to God. Desire to be pure with 
 your own pure self, and with God. And when any 
 evil fancy assails you, Plato says, ' Go to the rites of 
 expiation, go as a suppliant to the temples of the 
 gods, the averters of evil.' But it will be enough 
 should you even rise and depart to the society of 
 the noble and the good, to live according to their 
 examples, whether you have any such friend among 
 the living or among the dead. Go to Socrates, and 
 gaze on his utter mastery over temptation and 
 passion ; consider how glorious was the conscious 
 
HIS "DISCOURSES. 
 
 victory over himself ! What an Olympic triumph ! 
 How near does it place him to Hercules himself ' 
 So that, by heaven, one might justly salute him, 
 ' Hail, marvellous conqueror, who hast conquered, 
 not these miserable boxers and athletes, nor these 
 gladiators who resemble them.' And should you thus 
 be accustomed to train yourself, you will see what 
 shoulders you will get, what nerves, what sinews, 
 instead of mere babblements, and nothing more. 
 This is the true athlete, the man who trains himself 
 to deal with such semblances as these. Great is the 
 struggle, divine the deed ; it is for kingdom, for free- 
 dom, for tranquillity, for peace. Think on God ; call 
 upon Him as thine aid and champion, as sailors call on 
 the Great Twin Brethren in the storm. And indeed 
 what storm is greater than that which rises from 
 powerful semblances that dash reason out of its 
 course ? What indeed but semblance is a storm 
 itself? Since, come now, remove the fear of death, 
 and bring as many thunders and lightnings as thou 
 wilt, and thou shalt know how great is the tran- 
 quillity and calm in that reason which is the ruling 
 faculty of the soul. But should you once be worsted, 
 and say that you will conquer hereafter, and then 
 the. same again and again, know that thus your con- 
 dition will be vile and weak, so that at the last you 
 will not even know that you are doing wrong, but 
 you will even begin to provide excuses for your sin ; 
 and then you will confirm the truth of that saying of 
 Hesiod, 
 
 "'The man that procrastinates struggles ever with ruin.'" 
 
250 EPICTETUS. 
 
 Even so ! So early did a heathen moralist learn 
 the solemn fact that " only this once " ends in " there 
 is no harm in it." Well does Mr. Coventry Patmore 
 sing : 
 
 " How easy to keep free from sin ; 
 
 How hard that freedom to recall ; 
 For awful truth it is that men 
 Forget the heaven from which they fall." 
 
 In another place Epictetus warns us, however, not to 
 be too easily discouraged in our attempts after good ; 
 and, above all, never to despair. " In the schools 
 of the wrestling master, when a boy falls he is bidden 
 to get up again, and to go on wrestling day by day 
 till he has acquired strength ; and we must do the 
 same, and not be like those poor wretches who after 
 one failure suffer themselves to be swept along as 
 by a torrent. You need but will" he says, " and it 
 is done ; but if you relax your efforts, you will be 
 ruined ; for ruin and recovery are both from within. 
 And what will you gain by all this ? You will 
 gain modesty for impudence, purity forvileness, mode- 
 ration for drunkenness. If you think there are any 
 better ends than these, then by all means go on in sin, 
 for you are beyond the power of any god to save." 
 
 But Epictetus is particularly in earnest about warn- 
 ing us that to profess these principles and talk about 
 them is one thing to act up to them quite another. 
 He draws a humorous picture of an inconsistent and 
 unreal philosopher, who after eloquently proving 
 that nothing is good but what pertains to virtue, and 
 nothing evil but what pertains to vice, and that alJ 
 
HIS " DISCO URSES* zc \ 
 
 other things are indifferent, goes to sea. A storm 
 comes on, and the masts creak, and the philosopher 
 screams ; and an impertinent person stands by and 
 asks in surprise, " Is it then vice to suffer shipwreck ? 
 because, if not, it can be no evil ; " a question which 
 makes our philosopher so angry that he is inclined to 
 fling a log at his interlocutor's head. But Epictetus 
 sternly tells him that the philosopher never was one 
 at all, except in name ; that as he sat in the schools 
 puffed up by homage and adulation, his innate 
 cowardice and conceit were but hidden under bor- 
 rowed plumes; and that in him the name of Stoic 
 was usurped. 
 
 " Why," he asks in another passage, "why do yu.: 
 call yourself a Stoic ? Why do you deceive the 
 multitude ? Why do you act the Jew when you are 
 a Greek ? Don't you see on what terms each person 
 is called a Jew? or a Syrian ? or an Egyptian ? And 
 when we see some mere trimmer we are in the habit 
 of saying, ' This is no Jew ; he is only acting the 
 part of one ; ' but when ja rrjan takes up the entire 
 condition of a proselyte, thoroughly imbued with 
 Jewish doctrines, then he both is in reality and is 
 called a Jew. So we philosophers too, dipped in a 
 false dye, are Jews in name, but in reality are some- 
 thing else. . . . We call ourselves philosophers when 
 we cannot even play the part of men, as though a 
 man should try to heave the stone of Ajax who 
 cannot lift ten pounds." The passage is interesting 
 not only on its own account, but because of its 
 curious similarity both with the language and with 
 
252 EPICTETUS. 
 
 the sentiment of St. Paul " He is not a Jew who is 
 one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is 
 outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew who is one 
 inwardly ; and circumcision is that of the heart, in 
 the spirit and not in the letter ; whose praise is not 
 of men, but of God." 
 
 The best way to become a philosopher in deed is 
 not . by a mere study of books and knowledge of 
 doctrines, but by a steady diligence of actions and 
 adherence to original principles, to which must be 
 added consistency and self-control. " These prin- 
 ciples," says Epictetus, " produce friendship in a 
 house, unanimity in a city, peace in nations ; they 
 make a man grateful to God, bold under all circum- 
 stances, as though dealing with things alien and 
 valueless. Now we are capable of writing these 
 things, and reading them, and praising them when 
 they are read, but we are far enough off following 
 them. Hence comes it that the reproach of the 
 Lacedaemonians, that they are ' lions at home, foxes 
 at Ephesus,' will also apply to us ; in the school we 
 are lions, out of it foxes." 
 
 These passages include, I think, all the most 
 original, important, and characteristic conceptions 
 which are to be found in the Discourses. They are 
 most prominently illustrated in the long and im- 
 portant chapter on the Cynic philosophy. A 
 genuine Cynic one who was so, not in brutality of 
 manners or ostentation of rabid eccentricity, but a 
 Cynic in life and in his inmost principles was evi- 
 dently in the eyes of Epictetus one of the loftiest 
 
HIS " DISCO URSES." 253 
 
 of human beings. He drew a sketch of his ideal 
 conception to one of his scholars who inquired of 
 him upon the subject. 
 
 He begins by saying that a true Cynic is so lofty a 
 being that he who undertakes the profession without 
 due qualifications kindles against him the anger of 
 heaven. He is like a scurrilous Thersites, claiming 
 the imperial office of an Agamemnon. " If you 
 think," he tells the young student, "that you can 
 be a Cynic merely by wearing an old cloak, and 
 sleeping on a hard bed, and using a wallet and staff, 
 and begging, and rebuking every one whom you see 
 effeminately dressed or wearing purple, you don't 
 know what you are about get you gone ; but if you 
 know what a Cynic really is, and think yourself 
 capable of being one, then consider how great a thing 
 you are undertaking. 
 
 " First as to yourself. You must be absolutely 
 resigned to the will of God. You must conquer every 
 passion, abrogate every desire. Your life must be 
 transparently open to the view of God and man. 
 Other men conceal their actions with houses, and 
 doors, and darkness, and guards ; your house, your 
 door, your darkness, must be a sense of holy shame. 
 You must conceal nothing ; you must have nothing 
 to conceal. You must be known as the spy and 
 messenger of God among mankind. 
 
 " You must teach men that happiness is not there, 
 where in their blindness and misery they seek it. It 
 is not in strength, for Myro and Ofellius were not 
 happy: not in wealth, for Croesus was not happy: 
 
254 EPICTETUS. 
 
 not in power, for the Consuls are not happy : not in 
 all these together, for Nero, and Sardanapalus, and 
 Agamemnon sighed, and wept, and tore their hair, 
 and were the slaves of circumstances and the dupes 
 of semblances. It lies in yourselves ; in true freedom, 
 in the absence or conquest of every ignoble fear ; in 
 perfect self-government ; in a power of contentment 
 and peace, and the ' even flow of life ' amid poverty 
 exile, disease, and the very valley of the shadow o, 
 death. Can you face this Olympic contest ? Ar 
 your thews and sinews strong enough ? Can you fac*. 
 the fact that those who are defeated are also disgraced 
 and whipped ? 
 
 " Only by God's aid can you attain to this. Only 
 by His aid can you be beaten like an ass, and yet 
 love those who beat you, preserving an unshaken 
 unanimity in the midst of circumstances which to 
 other men would cause trouble, and giief, and dis- 
 appointment, and despair. 
 
 " The Cynic must learn to do without friends, for 
 where can he find a friend worthy of him, or a king 
 worthy of sharing his moral sceptre ? The friend of 
 the truly noble must be as truly noble as himself, 
 and such a friend the genuine Cynic cannot hope to 
 find. Nor must he marry ; marriage is right and 
 honourable in other men, but its entanglements, its 
 expenses, its distractions, would render impossible 
 a life devoted to the service of heaven. 
 
 " Nor will he mingle in the affairs of any common- 
 wealth : his commonwealth is not Athens or Corinth, 
 but mankind. 
 
;UNJ ISITT? 
 
 HIS "DISCOURSES." 
 
 " In person he should be strong, and robust, and 
 hale, and in spite of his indigence always clean and 
 attractive. Tact and intelligence, and a power oi 
 swift repartee, are necessary to him. His conscience 
 m-ust be clear as the sun. He must sleep purely, and 
 wake still more purely. To abuse and insult he must 
 be as insensible as a stone, and he must place all fears 
 and desires beneath his feet. To be a Cynic is to be 
 this : before you attempt it deliberate well, and see 
 whether by the help of God you are capable of 
 achieving it." 
 
 I have given a sketch of the doctrines of this lofty 
 chapter, but fully to enjoy its morality and eloquence 
 the reader should study it entire, and observe its 
 generous impatience, its noble ardour, its vivid interro- 
 gations, " in which," says M. Martha, " one feels as it 
 were a frenzy of virtue and of piety, and in which the 
 plenitude of a great heart tumultuously precipitates a 
 torrent of holy thoughts." 
 
 Epictetus was not a Christian. He has only once 
 alluded to the Christians in his works, and there it is 
 under the opprobrious title of " Galileans," who prac- 
 tised a kind of insensibility in painful circumstances 
 and an indifference to worldly interests which Epic- 
 tetus unjustly sets down to " mere habit." Unhappily 
 it was not granted to these heathen philosophers in 
 any true sense to know what Christianity was. They 
 ignorantly thought that it was an attempt to imitate 
 the results of philosophy, without having passed 
 through the necessary discipline. They viewed 
 it with suspicion, they treated it with injustice. 
 
 x2 
 
256 EPICTETUS. 
 
 And yet in Christianity, and in Christianity alone, 
 they would have found an ideal which would have 
 surpassed their loftiest conceptions. Nor was it only 
 an impossible ideal ; it was an ideal rendered attain- 
 able by the impressive sanction of the highest 
 authority, and one which supported men to bear the 
 difficulties of life with fortitude, with peacefulness, 
 and even with an inward joy ; it ennobled their 
 faculties without overstraining them ; it enabled them 
 to disregard the burden of present trials, not by 
 vainly attempting to deny their bitterness or ignore 
 their weight, but in the high certainty that they are 
 the brief and necessary prelude to " a far more exceed- 
 ing and eternal weight of glory." 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF AN EMPEROR. 
 
 THE life of the noblest of Pagan Emperors may 
 well follow that of the noblest of Pagan slaves. 
 Their glory shines the purer and brighter from the 
 midst of a corrupt and deplorable society. Epic- 
 tetus showed that a Phrygian slave could live a life 
 of the loftiest exaltation ; Aurelius proved that a 
 Roman Emperor could live a life of the deepest 
 humility. The one a foreigner, feeble, deformed, 
 ignorant, born in squalor, bred in degradation, the 
 despised chattel of a despicable freedman, sur- 
 rounded by every depressing, ignoble, and pitiable 
 circumstance of life showed how one who seemed 
 born to be a wretch could win noble happiness and 
 immortal memory ; the other a Roman, a patri- 
 cian, strong, of heavenly beauty, of noble ancestors, 
 almost born to the purple, the favourite of Emperors, 
 the greatest conqueror, the greatest philosopher, the 
 greatest ruler of his time proved for ever that it 
 is possible to be virtuous, and tender, and holy, and 
 
273 MARCUS A URELTUS. 
 
 contented in the midst of sadness, even on an irre- 
 sponsible and imperial throne. Strange that, of the 
 two, the Emperor is even sweeter, more simple, more 
 admirable, more humbly and touchingly resigned, than 
 the slave. In him, Stoicism loses all its haughty self- 
 assertion, all its impracticable paradox, for a manly 
 melancholy which at once troubles and charms the 
 heart. " It seems," says M. Martha, "that in him the 
 philosophy of heathendom grows less proud, draws 
 nearer and nearer to a Christianity which it ignored or 
 which it despised, and is ready to fling itself into the 
 arms of the ' Unknown God.' In the sad Meditations 
 of Aurelius we find a pure serenity, sweetness, and 
 docility to the commands of God, which before him 
 were unknown, and which Christian grace has alone 
 surpassed. If he has not yet attained to charity in all 
 that fulness of meaning which Christianity has given 
 to the word he has already gained its unction, and one 
 cannot read his book, unique in the history of Pagan 
 philosophy, without thinking of the sadness of Pascal 
 and the gentleness of Fenelon. We must pause 
 before this soul, so lofty and so pure, to contemplate 
 ancient virtue in its softest brilliancy, to see the moral 
 delicacy to which profane doctrines have attained 
 how they laid down their pride, and how penetrating 
 a grace they have found in their new simplicity. To 
 make the example yet more striking, Providence, 
 which, according to the Stoics, does nothing by 
 chance, determined that the example of these simple 
 virtues should bloom in the midst of all human 
 grandeurs that charity should be taught by the 
 
THE EDUCA TION OF AN EMPEROR. 259 
 
 successor of blood-stained Caesars, and humbleness of 
 heart by an Emperor." 
 
 Aurelius has always exercised a powerful fascina- 
 tion over the minds of eminent men. " If you set 
 aside, for a moment, the contemplation of the Chris- 
 tian verities/' says the eloquent and thoughtful Mon- 
 tesquieu, "search throughout all nature, and you will 
 
 ^jiot find a grander object than the Antonines. . . . 
 
 I One feels a secret pleasure in speaking of this Em- 
 peror ; one cannot read his life without a softening 
 feeling of emotion. He produces such an effect upon 
 our minds that we think better of ourselves, because 
 he inspires us with a better opinion of mankind." " It- 
 is more delightful," says the great historian Niebuhr, 
 " to speak of Marcus Aurelius than of any man in 
 history ; for if there is any sublime human virtue it 
 is his. He was certainly the noblest character of his 
 time, and I know no other man who combined such 
 unaffected kindness, mildness, and humility, with 
 such conscientiousness and severity towards him- 
 self. We possess innumerable busts of him, for 
 every Roman of his time was anxious to possess his 
 portrait, and if there is anywhere an expression 
 of virtue it is in the heavenly features of Marcus 
 Aurelius." 
 
 Marcus Aurelius was born on April 26, A.D. 121. 
 His more correct designation would be Marcus 
 Antoninus, but since he bore several different names 
 at different periods of his life, and since at that age 
 nothing was more common than a change of desig- 
 nation, it is hardly worth while to alter the name b^ 
 
 18 
 
26o MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 which he is most popularly recognised. His father, 
 Annius Verus, who died in his Praetorship, drew his 
 blood from a line of illustrious men who claimed 
 descent from Numa, the second King of Rome. His 
 mother, Domitia Calvilla, was also a lady of consular 
 and kingly race. The character of both seems to 
 have been worthy of their high dignity. Of his 
 father he can have known little, since Annius died 
 when Aurelius was a mere infant ; but in his Medi- 
 tations he has left us a grateful memorial of both his 
 parents. He says that from his grandfather he 
 learned (or, might have learned) good morals and 
 the government of his temper ; from the reputation 
 and remembrance of his father, modesty and manli- 
 ness ; from his mother, piety, and beneficence, and 
 abstinence not only from evil deeds, but even from evil 
 thoughts ; and, further, simplicity of life far removed 
 from the habits of the rich. 
 
 The childhood and boyhood of Aurelius fell during 
 the reign of Hadrian. The times were better than 
 those which we have contemplated in the reigns of the 
 Caesars. After the suicide of Nero and the brief 
 reigns of Galba and Otho, the Roman world had 
 breathed more freely for a time under the rough good 
 humour of Vespasian and the philosophic virtue of 
 Titus. The reign of Domitian, indeed, who succeeded 
 his brother Titus, was scarcely less terrible and in- 
 famous than that of Caius or of Nero ; but that prince, 
 shortly before his murder, had dreamt that a golden 
 neck had grown oXit of his own, and interpreted the 
 dream to indicate that a better race of prir.ces 
 
THE EDUCA TION OF AN EMPEROR. 261 
 
 should follow him. The dream was fulfilled. What- 
 ever may have been their other faults, Nerva, Trajan, 
 Hadrian, were wise and kind-hearted rulers; Anto- 
 ninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius were among the very 
 gentlest and noblest sovereigns whom the world has 
 ever seen. 
 
 Hadrian, though an able, indefatigable, "and, on the 
 whole, beneficial Emperor, was a man whose character 
 was stained with serious faults. It is, however, greatly 
 to his honour that he recognised in Aurelius, at thjs 
 early age of six years, the germs of those extra- 
 ordinary virtues which afterwards blessed the empire 
 and elevated the sentiments of mankind. "Hadrian's 
 bad and sinful habits left him," says Niebuhr, " when 
 he gazed on the sweetness of that innocent child. 
 Playing on the boy's paternal name of Verus, he 
 called him Vtrissitttus, ' the most true.' " It is inte- 
 resting to find that this trait of character was so 
 early developed in one who thought that all men 
 " should speak as they think, with an accent of heroic 
 verity." 
 
 Towards the end of his long reign, worn out with 
 disease and weariness, Hadrian, being childless, had 
 adopted as his son L. Ceionius Commodus, a man 
 who had few recommendations but his personaJ 
 beauty. Upon his death, which took place a year 
 afterwards, Hadrian, assembling the senators round 
 his sick bed, adopted and presented to them as their 
 future Emperor Arrius Antoninus, better known by 
 the surname of Pius, which he won by his gratitude to 
 the memory of his predecessor. Had Aurelius been 
 
262 MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 older he was then but seventeen it is known that 
 Hadrian would have chosen him, and not Antoninus, 
 for his heir. The latter, indeed, who was then fifty- 
 two years old, was only selected on the express con- 
 dition that he should in turn adopt both Marcus 
 Aurelius and the son of the deceased Ceionius. 
 Thus, at the age of seventeen, Aurelius, who, even 
 from his infancy, had been loaded with conspicuous 
 distinctions, saw himself the acknowledged heir to the 
 empire of the world. 
 
 We are happily able, mainly from his own writings, 
 to give some sketch of the influences and the 
 education which had formed him for this exalted 
 station. 
 
 He was brought up in the house of his grandfather 
 a man who had been three times consul. He makes 
 it a matter of congratulation, and thankfulness to the 
 gods, that he had not been sent to any public school, 
 where he would have run the risk of being tainted 
 by that frightful corruption into which, for many 
 years, the Roman youth had fallen. He expresses a 
 sense of obligation to his great-grandfather for having 
 supplied him with good teachers at home, and for 
 the conviction that on such things a man should 
 spend liberally. There was nothing jealous, barren, 
 or illiberal, in the training he received. He was fond 
 of boxing, wrestling, running ; he was an admirable 
 player at ball, and he was fond of the perilous 
 excitement of hunting the wild boar. Thus, his 
 healthy sports, his serious studies, his moral instruc- 
 tion, his public dignities and duties, ail contributed 
 
THE EDUCA TION OF AN EMPEROR. 263 
 
 to form his character in a beautiful and rnanly mould. 
 \ There are, however, three respects in which his educa- 
 tion seems especially worthy of notice ; I mean the 
 diligence, the gratitude, and the hardiness in which 
 he was encouraged by others, and which he practised 
 with all the ardour of generous conviction.^ 
 
 1. In the best sense of the word, Aurelius was 
 diligent. He alludes more than once in his Medi- 
 tations to the inestimable value of time, and to his 
 ardent desire to gain more leisure for intellectual 
 pursuits. He flung himself with his usual undeviating 
 stedfastness of purpose into every branch of study, and, 
 though he deliberately abandoned rhetoric, he toiled 
 hard at philosophy, at the discipline of arms, at the 
 administration of business, and at the difficult study 
 of Roman jurisprudence. One of the acquisitions for 
 which he expresses gratitude to his tutor Rusticus, is 
 *hat of reading carefully, and not being satisfied with 
 fhe superficial understanding of a book. In fact, so 
 strenuous was his labour, and so great his abstemious- 
 ness, that his health suffered by the combination of 
 the two. 
 
 2. His opening remarks show that he remembered 
 all his teachers even the most insignificant with 
 sincere gratitude. He regarded each one of them as 
 a man from whom something could be learnt, and 
 from whom he actually did learn that something. 
 Hence the honourable respect a respect as honour- 
 able to himself as to them which he paid to Pronto, 
 to Rusticus, to Julius Proculus, and others whom his 
 noble and conscientious gratitude raised to the highest 
 
264 MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 dignities of the State. He even thanks the gods that 
 " he made haste to place those who brought him up 
 in the station of honour which they seemed to desire, 
 without putting them off with mere hopes of his 
 doing it some time after, because they were then 
 still young." He was far the superior of these men, 
 not only socially but even morally and intellectually ; 
 yet from the height of his exalted rank and character 
 he delighted to associate with them on the most 
 friendly terms, and to treat them, even till his death, 
 with affection and honour, to place their likenesses 
 among his household gods, and visit their sepul- 
 chres with wreaths and victims. 
 
 3. His hardiness and self-denial were perhaps still 
 more remarkable. I wish that those boys of our day, 
 who think it undignified to travel second-class, who 
 dress in the extreme of fashion, wear roses in their 
 buttonholes, and spend upon ices and strawberries 
 what would maintain a poor man for a year, would 
 learn how infinitely more noble was the abstinence of 
 this young Roman, who, though born in the midst cf 
 splendour and luxury, learnt from the first to loathe 
 Ithe petty vice of gluttony, and to despise the unmanli- 
 ness of self-indulgence. Very early in life he joined 
 the glorious fellowship of those who esteem it not 
 only a duty but a pleasure 
 
 " To scorn delights, and live laborious days," 
 
 and had learnt "endurance of labour, and to want 
 little, and to work with his own hands." In his 
 eleventh year he became acquainted with Diognetus, 
 
THE EDUCA TION OF AN EMPEROR. 265 
 
 who first introduced him to the Stoic philosophy, 
 and in his twelfth year he assumed the Stoic dress. 
 This philosophy taught him " to prefer a plank-bed 
 and skin, and whatever else of the kind belongs to 
 the Grecian discipline." It is said that "the skin" 
 was a concession to the entreaties of his mother, and 
 that the young philosopher himself would have 
 chosen to sleep on the bare boards or on the ground. 
 Yet he acted thus without self-assertion and without 
 ostentation. His friends found him always cheerful ; 
 and his calm features, in which a dignity and 
 thoughtfulness of spirit contrasted with the bloom 
 and beauty of a pure and honourable boyhood, 
 were never overshadowed with ill-temper or with 
 gloom. 
 
 The guardians of Marcus Aurelius had gathered 
 around him all the most distinguished literary teachers 
 of the age. Never had a prince a greater number of 
 eminent instructors ; never were any teachers made 
 happy by a more grateful, a more humble, a more 
 blameless, a more truly royal and glorious pupil. 
 Long years after his education had ceased, during 
 his campaign among the Quadi, he wrote a sketch 
 of what he owed to them. This sketch forms the 
 first book of his Meditations, and is characterised 
 throughout by the most unaffected simplicity and 
 modesty. 
 
 The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were in fact his 
 private diary ; they are a noble soliloquy with his 
 own heart, an honest examination of his own con- 
 science ; there is not the slightest trace of their having 
 
266 MARCUS AURELWS. 
 
 been intended for any eye but his own. In them he 
 was acting on the principle of St. Augustine : " Go up 
 into the tribunal of thy conscience, and set thyself 
 before thyself." He was ever bearing about 
 
 " A silent court of justice in himself, 
 Himself the judge and jury, and himself 
 The prisoner at the bar." 
 
 And writing amid all the cares and distractions of a 
 war which he detested, he averted his eyes from the 
 manifold wearinesses which daily vexed his soul, 
 and calmly sat down to meditate on all the great 
 qualities which he had observed, and all the good 
 lessons that he might have learnt from those who 
 had instructed his boyhood, and surrounded his 
 manly years. 
 
 And what had he learnt? learnt heartily to admire, 
 and (we may say) learnt to practise also ? A sketch 
 of his first book will show us. What he had gained 
 from his immediate parents we have seen already, 
 and we will make a brief abstract of his other 
 obligations. 
 
 From " his governor" to which of his teachers 
 this name applies we are not sure he had learnt to 
 avoid factions at the races, to work hard, and to 
 avoid listening to slander; from Diognetus, to despise 
 frivolous superstitions, and to practise self-denial ; 
 from Apollonius, undeviating steadiness of purpose, 
 endurance of misfortune, and the reception of favours 
 without being humbled by them ; from Sextus of 
 Chaeronea (a grandson of the celebrated Plutarch), 
 
THE EDUCATION OF AN EMPEROR. 267 
 
 tolerance of the ignorant, gravity without affectation ; 
 and benevolence of heart ; from Alexander, delicacy 
 in correcting others ; from Severus, " a disposition to 
 do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish 
 good hope, and to believe that I am beloved of my 
 friends;" from Maximus, "sweetness and dignity, 
 and to do what was set before me without complain- 
 ing ; " from Alexander the Platonic, " not frequently 
 to say to any one, nor to write in a letter, that I have 
 no leisure ; nor continually to excuse the neglect of 
 ordinary duties by alleging urgent occupations." 
 
 To one or two others his obligations were still 
 more characteristic and important. From Rusticus, 
 for instance, an excellent and able man, whose advice 
 for years he was accustomed to respect, he had learnt 
 to despise sophistry and display, to write with sim- 
 plicity, to be easily pacified, to be accurate, and an 
 inestimable benefit this, and one which tinged the 
 colour of his whole life to become acquainted with 
 the Discourses of Epictetus. And from his adoptive 
 father, the great Antoninus Pius, he had derived 
 advantages still more considerable. In him he saw 
 the example of a sovereign -and statesman firm, self- 
 controlled, modest, faithful, and even-tempered ; a 
 man who despised flattery and hated meanness ; who 
 honoured the wise and distinguished the meritorious ; 
 who was indifferent to contemptible trifles, and inde- 
 fatigable in earnest business ; one, in short, " who had 
 a perfect and invincible soul," who, like Socrates, " was 
 able both to abstain from and to enjoy those things 
 which many are too weak to abstain from and cannot 
 
 Y2 
 
s68 MARCUS A UR&LIUS. 
 
 enjoy without excess."* Piety, serenity, sweetnesj, 
 disregard of empty fame, calmness, simplicity, 
 patience, are virtues which he attributes to him in 
 another full-length portrait (vi. 30) which he con- 
 cludes with the words, "Imitate all this, that thou 
 mayest have as good a conscience when thy last 
 hour comes as he had." 
 
 He concludes these reminiscences of thankfulness 
 with a summary of what he owed to the gods. [And 
 for what does he thank the gods ? /or being wealthy, 
 < and noble, and an emperor ? Nay, for no vulgar or 
 dubious blessings such as these, but \ for the guidance 
 which trained him in philosophy, and for the grace 
 which kept him from sin. And here it is that 
 his genuine modesty comes out. As the excellent 
 divine used to say when he saw a criminal led 
 past for execution, " There, but for the grace A 
 God, goes John Bradford," so, after thanking the 
 gods for the goodness of all his family and relatives, 
 Aurelius says, " Further, I owe it to the gods that 
 I was not hurried into any offence against any of 
 them, though I had a disposition which y if opportunity 
 had offered, might have led m^ to do something of 
 this kind ; but through their favour there never was 
 such a concurrence of circumstances as put me to the 
 trial. Further, that I was subjected to a ruler and 
 
 * My quotations frvy.j. Marcus Aurelius will be made (by permission) 
 from the forcible and admirably accurate translation of Mr. Long. 
 In thanking Mr. Long, I may be allowed to add that the English 
 reader will find in his version the best means of becoming acquainted 
 with the purest and noblest book of antiquity. 
 
THE EDUCA TION OF AN EMPEROR. 269 
 
 father who took away all pride from me, and taught 
 me that it was possible to live in a palace without 
 guards, or embroidered dresses, or torches, and statues, 
 and such-like show, but to live very near to the fashion 
 of a private person, without being either mean in 
 thought or remiss in action ; that after having 
 fallen into amatory passions I was cured ; that 
 though it was my mother's fate to die young, she 
 spent the last years of her life with me ; that, when- 
 ever I wished to help any man, I was never told that 
 I had not the means of doing it ; that I had abund- 
 ance of good masters for my children : for all these 
 things require the help of the gods and fortune." 
 [_The whole of the Emperor's Meditations deserve the 
 profound study of this age. The self-denial which 
 they display is a rebuke to our ever-growing luxury ; 
 their generosity contrasts favourably with the in- 
 creasing bitterness of our cynicism ; their contented 
 acquiescence in God's will rebukes our incessant 
 restlessness ; above all, their constant elevation 
 shames that multitude of little vices, and little mean- 
 nesses, which lie like a scurf over the conventionality 
 of modern life. But this earlier chapter has also a 
 special v^alue for the young. It offers a picture 
 which it would indeed be better for them and for us 
 "f they could be induced to study. If even under 
 
 " That fierce light that beats upon the throne," 
 
 the life -of Marcus Aurelius shows no moral stain, it 
 is still more remarkable that the free and beautiful 
 boyhood of this Roman prince had early learnt to 
 
270 MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 recognise only the excellences of his teachers, theif 
 patience and firmness, their benevolence and sweet- 
 ness, their integrity and virtue. Amid the frightful 
 ^universality of moral corruption he preserved a stain- 
 less conscience and a most pure soul ; he thanked 
 God in language which breathes the most crystalline 
 delicacy of sentiment and language, that he had pre- 
 served uninjured the flower of his early life, and that 
 under the calm influences of his home in the country, 
 and the studies of philosophy, he had learnt to value 
 chastity as the sacred girdle of youth, to be retained 
 and honoured to his latest years. " Surely," says 
 Mr. Carlyle, " a day is coming when it will be known 
 again what virtue is in purity and continence of life ; 
 how divine is the blush of young human cheeks ; how 
 high, beneficent, sternly inexorable is the duty laid 
 on every creature in regard to these particulars. 
 Well, if such a day never come, then I perceive much 
 else will never come. Magnanimity and depth of 
 insight will never come ; heroic purity of heart and of 
 eye ; noble pious valour to amend us and the age of 
 bronze and lacquers, how can they ever come ? The 
 scandalous bronze-lacquer age of hungry animalisms, 
 spiritual impotencies, and mendacities will have to 
 run its course till the pit swallow it" 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 ON the death of Hadrian in A. D. 138, Antoninus 
 Pius succeeded to the throne, and, in accordance 
 with the late Emperor's conditions, adopted Marcus 
 Aurelius and Lucius Commodus. Marcus had been 
 betrothed at the age of fifteen to the sister of Lucius 
 Commodus, but the new Emperor broke off the 
 engagement, and betrothed him instead to his 
 daughter Faustina. The marriage, however, was not 
 celebrated till seven years afterwards, A. D. 146. 
 
 The long reign of Antoninus Pius is one of those 
 happy periods that have no history. An almost 
 unbroken peace reigned at home and abroad. Taxes 
 were lightened, calamities relieved, informers dis- 
 couraged; confiscations were rare, plots and execu- 
 tions were almost unknown. Throughout the whole 
 extent of his vast domain the people loved and 
 valued their Emperor, and the Emperor's one aim 
 was to further the happiness of his people. He, too, 
 like Aurelius, had learnt that what was good for the 
 bee was good for the hive. He strove to live as the 
 civil administrator of an unaggressive and united 
 
272 MARCUS AVRELIUS. 
 
 /epublic ; he disliked war, did not value the military 
 title of Imperator, and never deigned to accept a 
 triumph. 
 
 With this wise and eminent prince, who was as 
 amiable in his private relations as he was admirable 
 in the discharge of his public duties, Marcus Aurelius 
 spent the next twenty-three years of his life. So 
 close and intimate was their union, so completely did 
 they regard each other as father and son, that during 
 all that period Aurelius never slept more than twice 
 away from the house of Antoninus. There was not a 
 shade of jealousy between them ; each was the friend 
 and adviser of the other, and, so far from regarding 
 his destined heir with suspicion, the Emperor gave him 
 the designation " Caesar," and heaped upon him all 
 the honours of the Roman commonwealth. It was in 
 vain that the whisper of malignant tongues attempted 
 to shake this mutual confidence. Antoninus once 
 saw the mother of Aurelius in earnest prayer before 
 the statue of Apollo. " What do you think she is 
 praying for so intently ? " asked a wretched mischief- 
 maker of the name of Valerius Omulus ; " it is that 
 you may die, and her son reign." This wicked 
 suggestion might have driven a prince of meaner 
 character into violence and disgust, but Antoninus 
 passed it over with the silence of contempt. 
 
 It was the main delight of Antoninus to enjoy the 
 quiet of his country villa. Unlike Hadrian, who 
 traversed immense regions of his vast dominion, Anto- 
 ninus lived entirely either at Rome, or in his beautiful 
 villa at Lorium, a Uttle seacoast village about twelve 
 

 HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 273 
 
 miles from the capital. In this villa he had been 
 born, and here he died, surrounded by the remi- 
 niscences of 'his childhood. In this his real home it 
 was his special pleasure to lay aside the pomp and 
 burden of his imperial rank. " He did not," says 
 Marcus, " take the bath at unseasonable hours ; he 
 was not fond of building houses, nor curious about 
 what he ate, nor about the texture and colour of his 
 clothes, nor about the beauty of his slaves." Even 
 the dress he wore was the work of the provincial 
 artist in his little native place. So far from checking 
 the philosophic tastes of his adopted son he fostered 
 them, and sent for Apollonius of Chalcis to be his 
 teacher in the doctrines of Stoicism. In one of his 
 notes to Pronto, Marcus draws the picture of their 
 simple country occupations and amusements. Hunt- 
 ing, fishing, boxing, wrestling, occupied the leisure 
 of the two princes, and they shared the rustic festi- 
 vities of the vintage. "I have dined," he writes, "on 
 a little bread. . . . We perspired a great deal, shouted 
 a great deal, and left some gleanings of the vintage 
 hanging on the trellis work. , . . When I got jhome I 
 studied a little, but not to much advantage I had a 
 long talk with my mother, who was lying on her 
 couch." Who knows how much Aurelius anc how 
 much the world may have gained from such con- 
 versation as this, with a mother from whom he had 
 learnt to hate even the thought of evil? Nor will 
 any one despise the simplicity of heart which 
 made him mingle with the peasants as an amateur 
 vintager, unless he is so tasteless and so morose as 
 
MARCUS A U RE LI US. 
 
 to think with scorn of Scipio and Laelius as they 
 gathered shells on the seashore, or of Henry IV. as 
 he played at horses with his little boys on all-fours. 
 The capability of unbending thus, the genuine cheer- 
 fulness which enters at due times into simple amuse- 
 ments, has been found not rarely in the highest and 
 purest minds. 
 
 For many years no incident of importance broke 
 the even tenor of Aurelius's life. He lived peaceful, 
 happy, prosperous, and beloved, watching without 
 envy the increasing years of his adopted father. But 
 in the year 161, when Marcus was now forty years 
 old, Antoninus Pius, who had reached the age of 
 seventy-five, caught a fever at Lorium. Feeling that 
 his end was near, he summoned his friends and the 
 chief men of Rome to his bedside, and there (without 
 saying a word about his other adopted son, who is 
 generally known by the name of Lucius Verus) 
 solemnly recommended Marcus to them as his suc- 
 cessor ; and then, giving to the captain of the guard 
 the watchword of " Equanimity," as though his 
 earthly task was over he ordered to be transferred to 
 the bedroom of Marcus the little golden statue of 
 Fortune, which was kept in the private chamber of 
 the Emperors as an omen of public prosperity. 
 
 The very first public act of the new Emperor was 
 one of splendid generosity, namely, the admission of 
 his adoptive brother Lucius Verus into the fullest 
 participation of imperial honours, the Tribunitian 
 and Proconsular powers, and the titles Caesar and 
 Augustus The admission of Lucius Verus to a 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 275 
 
 share of the Empire was due to the innate modesty 
 of Marcus. As he was a devoted student, and cared 
 less for manly exercises, in which Verus excelled, he 
 thought that his adoptive brother would be a better 
 and more useful general than himself, and that he 
 could best serve the State by retaining the civil 
 administration, and entrusting to his brother the 
 management of war. Verus, however, as soon as he 
 got away from the immediate influence and ennobling 
 society of Marcus, broke loose from all decency, and 
 showed himself to be a weak and worthless personage, 
 as unfit for war as he was for all the nobler duties of 
 peace, and capable of nothing but enormous gluttony 
 and disgraceful self-indulgence. Two things only can 
 be said in his favour ; the one, that, though depraved, 
 he was wholly free from cruelty ; and the other, that 
 he had the good sense to submit himself entirely to 
 his brother, and to treat him with the gratitude and 
 deference which were his due. 
 
 Marcus had a large family by Faustina, and in the 
 first year of his reign his wife bore twins, of whom 
 the one who survived became the wicked and detested 
 Emperor Commodus. As though the birth of such 
 a child were in itself an omen of ruin, a storm of 
 calamity began at once to burst over the long 
 tranquil State. An inundation of the Tiber flung 
 down houses and streets over a great part of Rome, 
 swept away multitudes of cattle, spoiled the harvests, 
 devastated the fields, and caused a distress which 
 ended in wide-spread famine. Men's minds were 
 terrified by earthquakes, by the burning of cities, and 
 
275 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 by plagues of noxious insects. To these miseries, 
 which the Emperors did their L'^st to alleviate, was 
 added the horror of wars and rumours of wars. The 
 Parthians, under their king Vologeses, defeated and 
 all but destroyed a Roman army, and devastated 
 with i npunity the Roman province of Syria. The 
 wild tribes of the Catti burst over Germany with fire 
 and sword ; and the news from Britain was full of 
 insurrection and tumult. Such were the elements of 
 trouble and discord which overshadowed the reign of 
 Marcus Aurelius from its very beginning down to its 
 weary close. 
 
 As the Parthian war was the most important of the 
 three, Verus was sent to quell it, and but for the 
 ability of his generals the greatest of whom was 
 Avidius Cassius would have ruined irretrievably the 
 fortunes of the Empire. These generals, however, 
 vindicated the majesty of the Roman name, and 
 Verus returned in triumph, bringing back with him 
 from the East the seeds of a terrible pestilence which 
 devastated the whole Empire and by which, on the 
 outbreak of fresh wars, Verus himself was carried off 
 at Aquileia. 
 
 Worthless as he was, Marcus, who in his lifetime 
 had so often pardoned and concealed his faults, paid 
 him the highest honours of sepulture, and interred 
 his ashes in the mausoleum of Hadrian. There were 
 not wanting some who charged him with the guilt of 
 fratricide, asserting that the death of Verus had been 
 hastened by his means ! 
 
 I have only one reason for alluding to atrocious 
 
hIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 27? 
 
 and contemptible calumnies like these, and that is 
 because since no ^ubt such whispers reached his 
 ears they help to account for that deep unutterable 
 melancholy which breathes through the little golden 
 book of the Emperor's Meditations. We find, for 
 instance, among them this isolated fragment : z- 
 
 " A black character, a womanish character, a 
 stubborn character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, 
 counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent, tyrannical." 
 
 We know not of whom he was thinking perhaps 
 of Nero, perhaps of Caligula, but undoubtedly also of 
 men whom he had seen and known, and whose very 
 existence darkened his soul. The same sad spirit 
 breathes also through the following passages : 
 
 " Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, 
 and either a name, or not even a name ; but name is 
 sound and echo. And the things which are much 
 valued in life are empty, and rotten, and trifling, and 
 little dogs biting one another, and little children quarrel- 
 ling, laughing, and then straightway weeping. But 
 fidelity, and modesty, and justice, and truth are fled 
 
 " ' Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.' " 
 (V- 33-) 
 
 " It would be a man's happiest lot to depart from 
 mankind without having had a taste of lying, and 
 hypocrisy, and luxury, and pride. However, to 
 breathe out one's life when a man has had enough of 
 those things is the next best voyage, as the saying 
 is." (ix. 2.) 
 
 " Enough of this wretched life, and murmuring, and 
 
2/ 8 MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 apish trifles. Why art thou thus disturbed ? What 
 is there new in this ? What unsettles thee ? . . . . 
 Towards the gods, then, now become at last more 
 simple and better/' (ix. 37.) The thought is like that 
 which dominates through the Penitential Psalms of 
 David, that we may take refuge from men, their 
 malignity and their meanness, and find rest for our 
 souls in God. From men David has no hope ; mockery, 
 treachery, injustice, are all that he expects from them, 
 the bitterness of his enemies, the far-off indifference 
 of his friends. Nor does this greatly trouble him, so 
 long as he does not wholly lose the light of God's 
 countenance. " I had no place to flee unto, and no 
 man cared for my soul. I cried unto thee, O Lord, 
 and said, Thou art my hope, and my portion in 
 the land of the living." " Cast me not away 
 from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit 
 from me." 
 
 But whatever may have been his impulse at times 
 to give up in despair all attempt to improve the "little 
 breed " of men around him, Marcus had schooled his 
 gentle spirit to live continually in far other feelings. 
 Were men contemptible ? It was all the more reason 
 why he should himself be noble. Were men petty, 
 and malignant, and passionate, and unjust ? In that 
 proportion were they all the more marked out for pity 
 and tenderness, and in that proportion was he bound 
 to the utmost of his ability to show himself great, and 
 forgiving, and calm, and true. Thus Marcus turns his 
 very bitterest experience to gold, and from the vile- 
 nesses of others, which depressed his lonely life, so far 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 279 
 
 from suffering himself to be embittered as well as 
 saddened, he only draws fresh lessons of humanity 
 and love. 
 
 He says, for instance, " Begin the morning by say- 
 ing to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the un- 
 grateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All 
 tJiesc things happen to them by reason of their ignorance 
 of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the 
 nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad 
 that it is ugly, and the nature of him that does wrong < 
 that it is akin to me, . . . and that it partakes of the 
 same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured 
 by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is 
 ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate 
 him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, likel 
 hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and I 
 lower teeth. To act against one another then is con- 
 trary to nature ; and it is acting against one another 
 to be vexed and turn away." (ii. i.) Another of his 
 rules, and an eminently wise one, was to fix his 
 thoughts as much as possible on the virtues of others, 
 rather than on their vices. " When thou wishest to 
 delight thyself, think of the virtues of those who live 
 with thee the activity of one, the modesty of another, 
 the liberality of a third, and some other good quality 
 of a fourth." What a rebuke to the contemptuous 
 cynicism which we are daily tempted to display ! 
 " An infinite being comes before us," says Robertson, 
 " with a whole eternity wrapt up in his mind and soul, 
 and we proceed to classify him, put a label upon him, as 
 we would upon a jar, saying, This is rice, that is jelly \ 
 
2o MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 and this pomatum : and then we think we have saved 
 ourselves the necessity of taking off the cover. How 
 differently our Lord treated the people who came to 
 Him ! . . . . consequently, at His touch each one gave 
 out his peculiar spark of light." 
 
 Here again is a singularly pithy, comprehensive, 
 and beautiful piece of advice : 
 
 " Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach 
 them or bear with them'.' (viii. 59.) 
 
 And again : " The best way of avenging thyself is 
 not to become like the wrong doer." 
 
 And again : "If any man has done wrong, the 
 harm is his own. But perhaps he has not done 
 wrong." (ix. 38.) 
 
 Most remarkable, however, are the nine rules which 
 he drew up for himself, as subjects for reflection when 
 any one had offended him, viz. 
 
 1. That men were made for each other : even the 
 inferior for the sake of the superior, and these for the 
 sake of one another. 
 
 2. The invincible influences that act upon men, and 
 mould their opinions and their acts. 
 
 3. That sin is mainly error and ignorance, an in- 
 voluntary slavery. 
 
 4. That we are ourselves feeble, and by no means 
 immaculate ; and that often our very abstinence from 
 faults is due more to cowardice and a care for our 
 reputation than to any freedom from the disposition 
 to commit them. 
 
 5. That our judgments are apt to be very rash and 
 premature. " And in short a man must learn a great 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 281 
 
 deal to enable him to pass a correct judgment on 
 another man's acts." 
 
 6. " When thou art much vexed or grieved, con-"/ 
 sider that man's life is only a moment, and after a 
 short time we are all laid out dead." 
 
 7. That no wrongful act of another can bring shame 
 on us, and that it is not men's acts which disturb us, 
 but our own opinions of them. 
 
 8. That our own anger hurts us more than the acts 
 themselves. 
 
 9. That benevolence is invincible, if it be not an 
 affected smile, nor acting a part. " For what will the 
 most violent man do to thee if thou continuest be- 
 nevolent to him ? gently and calmly correcting him, 
 admonishing him when he is trying to do thee harm, 
 
 dying, 'Not so, my child : we are constituted by nature 
 for something else: I shall certainly not be injured, 
 but thou art injuring thyself, my child' And show 
 him with gentle tact and by general principles that 
 this is so, and that even bees do not do as he does, 
 nor any gregarious animal. And this you must 
 do simply, unreproachfully, affectionately ; without 
 rancour, and if possible when you and he are alone." 
 (xi. 1 8.) 
 
 " Not so, my child ; thou art injuring thyself, my 
 child." Can all antiquity show anything tenderer 
 than this, or anything more close to the spirit *>{ 
 Christian teaching than these nine rules ? They were 
 worthy of the man who, unlike the Stoics in general, 
 considered gentleness to be a virtue, and a proof at 
 once of philosophy and of true manhood. They 
 
282 MARCUS AU RE LI US. 
 
 are written with that effusion of sadness and benevo- 
 lence to which it is difficult to find a parallel. They 
 show how completely Marcus had triumphed over all 
 petty malignity, and how earnestly he strove to fulfil 
 his own precept of always keeping the thoughts so 
 sweet and clear, that "if any one should suddenly 
 ask, ' What hast thou now in thy thoughts ? ' with 
 perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, 
 ' This or That' " In short, to give them their 
 highest praise, they would have delighted the great 
 Christian Apostle who wrote, 
 
 " Warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble- 
 minded, support the weak, be patient towards all 
 men.. See that none render evil for evil unto any 
 man ; but ever follow that which is good, both among 
 yourselves, and to all men." (i Thess. iv. 14, 15.) 
 
 " Count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as 
 a brother." (2 Thess. iv. 15.) 
 
 " Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, 
 if any man have a quarrel against any." (Col. iii. 13.) 
 
 Nay, are they not even in full accordance with the 
 mind and spirit of Him who said, 
 
 " If thy brother trespass against thee, go and telt, 
 him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall 
 hear thee thou hast gained thy brother." 
 
 In the life of Marcus Aurelius, as in so many lives, 
 we are able to trace the great law of compensation. 
 His exalted station, during the later years of his life, 
 threw him among many who were false and Phari- 
 saical and base ; but his youth had been spent under 
 happier conditions, and this saved him from falling 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 28.} 
 
 into the sadness of those whom neither man noi 
 woman please. In his earlier years it had been his 
 lot to see the fairer side of humanity, and the recol- 
 lection of those pure and happy days was like a 
 healing tree thrown into the bitter and turbid waters 
 of hib reigu. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS (continued). 
 
 MARCUS was now the undisputed lord of the Roman 
 world. He was seated on the dizziest and most 
 splendid eminence which it was possible for human 
 grandeur to obtain. 
 
 But this imperial elevation kindled no glow of 
 pride or self-satisfaction in his meek and chastened 
 nature. He regarded himself as being in fact the 
 servant of all. It was his duty, like that of the bull 
 in the herd, or the ram among the flocks, to confront 
 every peril in his own person, to be foremost in 
 all the hardships of war and most deeply immersed 
 in all the toils of peace. The registry of the citizens, 
 the suppression of litigation, the elevation of public 
 morals, the restraining of consanguineous marriages, 
 the care of minors, the retrenchment of public ex- 
 penses, the limitation of gladiatorial games and 
 shows, the care of roads, the restoration of senatorial 
 privileges, the appointment of none but worthy 
 magistrates even the regulation of street traffic 
 these and numberless other duties so completely 
 absorbed his attention that, in spite of indiflferen! 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 
 
 health, they often kept him at severe labour from 
 early morning till long after midnight. His position 
 indeed often necessitated his presence at games and 
 shows, but on these occasions he occupied himself 
 either in reading, in being read to, or in writing notes. 
 He was one of those who held that nothing should 
 be done hastily, and that few crimes were worse 
 the waste of time. It is to such views and suc 
 habits that we owe the composition of his works. 
 His Meditations were written amid the painful self- 
 denial and distracting anxieties of his wars with 
 the Quadi and the Marcomanni, and he was the 
 author of other works which unhappily have perished. 
 Perhaps of all the lost treasures of antiquity there 
 are few which we should feel a greater wish to re- 
 cover than the lost autobiography of this wisest of 
 Emperors and holiest of Pagan men. 
 
 As for the external trappings of his rank, those 
 gorgeous adjuncts and pompous circumstances which 
 excite the wonder and envy of mankind, no man 
 could have shown himself more indifferent to them. 
 He recognised indeed the necessity of maintaining 
 the dignity of his high position. " Every moment," 
 he says, " think steadily as a Roman and a man 
 to do what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple 
 dignity, and affection, and freedom, and justice" 
 (ii. 5) ; and again, ' Let the Deity w-hich is in thee 
 be the guardian of a living being, manly and of ripe 
 age, and engaged in matters political, and a Roman, 
 and a ruler, who has taken his post like a man 
 waiting for the signal which summons him from 
 
286 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 life" (iii. 5). But he did not think it necessary 
 to accept the fulsome honours and degrading adu- 
 lations which were so dear to many of his prede- 
 cessors. He refused the pompous blasphemy of 
 temples and altars, saying that for every true ruler 
 the world was a temple, and all good men were 
 priests. He declined as much as possible all golden 
 statues and triumphal designations. All inevitable 
 luxuries or splendour, such as his public duties 
 rendered indispensable, he regarded as a mere hollow 
 show, Marcus Aurelius felt as deeply as our own 
 Shakespeare seems to have felt the unsubstantiality, 
 the fleeting evanescence of all earthly things : he 
 would have delighted in the sentiment that, 
 
 ' ' We are stick stuff 
 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is r minded by a sleep. " 
 
 "When we have meat before us," he says, "and 
 such eatables, we receive the impression that this is 
 the dead body of a fish, and this is the dead body of 
 a bird, or of a pig; and, again, that this Falernian 
 is only a little grape-juice, and this purple robe some 
 sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shellfish: such 
 then are these impressions, and they reach the things 
 themselves and penetrate them, and so we see what 
 kind of things they are. Just in the same way ..... 
 where there are things which appear most worthy of 
 our approbation, we ought to lay tJum bare, and look 
 at their worthlessness, and strip them of all the words 
 by which they are exalted." (vi. 13.) 
 
 " What is worth being valued ? To be received 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 287 
 
 with clapping of hands ? No. Neither must we 
 value the clapping of tongues, for the praise which 
 comes from the many is a clapping of tongues." 
 (vi. 1 6.) 
 
 " Asia, Europe, are corners of the universe ; all the 
 sea is a drop in the universe ; Athos a little clod 
 of the universe ; all the present time is a point in 
 eternity. All things are little, changeable, perishable" 
 (vi. 36.) 
 
 And to Marcus too, no less than to Shakespeare, it 
 seemed that 
 
 " All the world's a stage, 
 And all the men and women merely players ; " 
 
 for he writes these remarkable words : 
 
 " The idle business of show, plays on the stage, flocks 
 of sheep, herds, exercises with spears, a bone cast to 
 little dogs, a bit of bread in fisliponds, labourings of 
 ants, and burden-carrying runnings about of frightened 
 little mice, puppets pulled by strings this is what life 
 resembles. It is thy duty then in the midst of such 
 things to show good humour, and not a proud air; 
 to understand however that every man is worth j.ust 
 so much as t/te things are worth about which he busies 
 himself!' 
 
 In fact, the Court was to Marcus a burden ; he 
 tells us himself that Philosophy was his mother, 
 Empire only his stepmother ; it was only his repose 
 in the one that rendered even tolerable to him the 
 burdens of the other. Emperor as he was, he thanked 
 the gods for having enabled him to enter into the 
 souls of a Thrasea, an Helvidius, a Cato, a Brutus. 
 
 2A 
 
283 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 * -^ 
 
 Above all, he seems to have had a horror of evei 
 becoming like some of his predecessors ; he writes : 
 
 " Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar ;* 
 take care thou art not dyed with this dye. - Keep 
 thyself then simple, good, pure, serious, free from 
 affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the 
 gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. 
 Reverence the gods and help men. Short is life. 
 There is only one fruit of this terrene life, a pious 
 disposition and social acts? (iv. 19.) 
 
 It is the same conclusion as that which sorrow 
 forced from another weary and less admirable king : 
 " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter : 
 Fear God, and keep His commandments ; for this is 
 the whole duty of man." 
 
 But it is time for us to continue the meagre record 
 of the life of Marcus, so far as the bare and gossiping 
 compilations of Dion Cassius,^ and Capitolinus, and 
 the scattered allusions of other writers can enable us 
 to do so. 
 
 It must have been with a heavy heart that he set 
 out once more for Germany to face the dangerous 
 rising of the Quadi and Marcomanni. To obtain 
 soldiers sufficient to fill up the vacancies in his army 
 which had been decimated by the plague, he was 
 forced to enrol slaves ; and to obtain money he had 
 
 * Marcus here invents what M. Martha justly calls " an admirable 
 barbarism" to express his disgust towards such men op* M) nw/foi' 
 
 " take care not to be Casarised" 
 As epitomised by XiphMinus. 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 280 
 
 to sell the ornaments of the palace, and even some of 
 the Empress's jewels. Immediately before he started 
 his heart was wrung by the death of his little boy, 
 the twin-brother of Commodus, whose beautiful 
 features are still preserved for us on coins. Early 
 in the war, as he was trying the depth of a ford, he 
 was assailed by the enemy with a sudden storm of 
 missiles, and was only saved from imminent death 
 by being sheltered beneath the shields of his soldiers. 
 One battle was fought on the ice of the wintry 
 Danube. But by far the most celebrated event of 
 the war took place in a great victory over the Quadi 
 which he won in A.D. 174, and which was attributed 
 by the Christians to what is known as the " Miracle 
 of the Thundering Legion." 
 
 Divested of all extraneous additions, the fact which 
 occurred, as established by the evidence of medals, 
 and by one of the bassi-relievi on the " Column of 
 Antonine," appears to have been as follows. Marcus 
 Aurelius and his army had been entangled in a 
 mountain defile, into which they had too hastily 
 pursued a sham retreat of the barbarian archers. In 
 this defile, unable either to fight or to fly, pent in by 
 the enemy, burned up with the scorching heat and 
 tormented by thirst, they lost all hope, burst into 
 wailing and groans, and yielded to a despair from 
 which not even the strenuous efforts of Marcus could 
 arouse them. At the most critical moment of their 
 danger and misery the clouds began to gather, and 
 heavy showers of rain descended, which the soldiers 
 1 t in their shields and hehnets to quench their 
 
290 MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 own thirst and that of their horses. While they 
 were thus engaged the enemy attacked them ; but 
 the rain was mingled with hail, and fell with blinding 
 fury in the faces of the barbarians. The storm was 
 also accompanied with thunder and lightning, which 
 seems to have damaged the enemy, and filled them 
 with terror, while no casualty occurred in the Roman 
 ranks. The Romans accordingly regarded this as 
 a Divine interposition, and achieved a most decisive 
 victory, which proved to be the practical conclusion 
 of a hazardous and important war. 
 
 The Christians regarded the event not as providential 
 but as miraculous, and attributed it to the prayers of 
 their brethren in a legion which, from this circum- 
 stance, received the name of the " Thundering Le- 
 gion." It is however now known that one of the 
 legions, distinguished by a flash of lightning which 
 was represented on their shields, had been known by 
 this name since the time of Augustus; and the 
 Pagans themselves attributed the assistance which 
 they had received sometimes to a prayer of the pious 
 Emperor and sometimes to the incantations of an 
 Egyptian sorcerer named Arnuphis. 
 
 One of the Fathers, the passionate and eloquent 
 Tertullian, attributes to this deliverance an interpo- 
 sition of the Emperor in favour of the Christians, and 
 appeals to a letter of his to the Senate in which he 
 acknowledged how effectual had been the aid he had 
 received from Christian prayers, and forbade any one 
 hereafter to molest the followers of the new religion, 
 lest they should use against him the weapon of suppli- 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 291 
 
 cation which had been so powerful in his favour. Thii 
 letter is preserved at the end of the Apology of Justin 
 Martyr, and it adds that, not only are no Christians 
 to be injured or persecuted, but that any one who 
 informed against them is to be burned alive ! We 
 see at once that this letter is one of those impudent 
 and transparent forgeries in which the literature of 
 the first five centuries unhappily abounds. What 
 was the real relation of Marcus to the Christians we 
 shall consider hereafter. 
 
 To the gentle heart of Marcus, all war, even when 
 accompanied with victories, was eminently distasteful ; 
 and in such painful and ungenial occupations no 
 small part of his life was passed. What he thought 
 of war and of its successes is graphically set forth 
 in the following remark : 
 
 " A spider is proud when it has caught a fly, and 
 another when he has caught a poor hare, and another 
 when he has taken a little fish in a net, and another 
 when he has taken wild boars or bears, and another 
 when he has taken Sarmatians, Are not these robbers, 
 when thou examinest their principles?" He here 
 condemns his own involuntary actions ; but it was his 
 unhappy destiny not to have trodden out the embers 
 of this war before he was burdened with another far 
 more painful and formidable. 
 
 This was the revolt of Avidius Cassius, a genera, 
 of the old blunt Roman type, whom, in spite of some 
 ominous warnings, Marcus both loved and trusted. 
 The ingratitude displayed by such a man caused 
 Marcus the deepest anguish ; but he was saved from 
 20 2A2 
 

 292 MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 all dangerous consequences by the wide-spread aflfec 
 tion which he had inspired by his virtuous reign. 
 
 The very soldiers of the rebellious general fell away 
 from him; and, after he had been a nominal Empero* 
 for only three months and six days, he was assassi- 
 nated by some of his own officers. His head was sent 
 to Marcus, who received it with sorrow, and did not 
 hold out to the murderers the slightest encourage- 
 ment. The joy of success was swallowed up in 
 regret that his enemy had not lived to allow him the 
 luxury of a genuine forgiveness. He begged the 
 Senate to pardon all the family of Cassius, and to 
 suffer this single life to be the only one forfeited in 
 consequence of civil war. The Fathers received these 
 proofs of clemency with the rapture which they 
 deserved, and the Senate-house resounded with accla- 
 mations and blessings. 
 
 Never had a formidable conspiracy been more 
 quietly and effectually crushed. Marcus travelled 
 through the provinces which had favoured the cause 
 of Avidius Cassius, and treated them all with the 
 most complete and indulgent forbearance. When he 
 arrived in Syria, the correspondence of Cassius was 
 brought to him, and, with a glorious magnanimity of 
 which history affords but few examples, he consigned 
 it all to the flames unread. 
 
 During this journey of pacification, he lost his wife 
 Faustina, who died suddenly in one of the valleys of 
 Mount Taurus. History, or the collection of anec- 
 dotes which at this period often passes as history, 
 has assigned to Faustina a character of the darkest 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 293 
 
 infamy, and it has even been made a charge against 
 Aurelius that he overlooked or condoned her offences. 
 As far as Faustina is concerned, we have not much to 
 say, although there is strong reason to believe that 
 many of the stories told of her are scandalously ex- 
 aggerated, if not absolutely false. Certain it is, that 
 most of the imputations upon her memory rest on the 
 malignant anecdotes recorded by Dion, who dearly 
 loved every piece of scandal which degraded human 
 nature. The specific charge brought against her of 
 having tempted Cassius from his allegiance is wholly 
 unsupported, even if it be not absolutely incompatible 
 with what we find in her own extant letters ; and, 
 finally, Marcus himself not only loved her tenderly, 
 as the kind mother of his eleven children, but in his 
 Meditations actually thanks the gods for having 
 granted him " such a wife, so obedient, so affectionate, 
 and so simple." No doubt Faustina T vas unworthy of 
 her husband ; but surely it is the glory and not the 
 shame of a noble nature to be averse from jealousy 
 and suspicion, and to trust to others more deeply than 
 they deserve. 
 
 So blameless was the conduct of Marcus Aurelius 
 that neither the malignity of contemporaries nor the 
 spirit of posthumous scandal has succeeded in dis- 
 covering any flaw in the extreme integrity of his life 
 and principles. But meanness will not be baulked of 
 its victims. The hatred of all excellence which made 
 Caligula try to put down the memory of great men 
 rages, though less openly, in the minds of many 
 They delight to degrade human life into that 
 
994 MARCUS AUREUUS. 
 
 and barren plain " in which every molehill is a 
 mountain, and every thistle a forest-tree." Great 
 men are as small in their eyes as they are said to be 
 in the eyes of their valets ; and there are multitudes 
 who, if they find 
 
 " Some stain or blemish in a name of note, 
 Not grieving that their greatest are so small, 
 Inflate themselves with some insane delight, 
 And judge all nature from her feet of clay, 
 Without the will to lift their eyes, and see 
 Her godlike head crown'd with spiritual fire, 
 And touching other worlds. " 
 
 This I suppose is the reason why, failing to drag 
 down Marcus Aurelius from his moral elevation, some 
 have attempted to assail his reputation because of 
 the supposed vileness of Faustina and the actual 
 depravity of Commodus. Of Faustina I have spoken 
 already. Respecting Commodus, I-think it sufficient 
 to ask with Solomon : " Who knoweth whether his 
 son shall be a wise man or a fool ?" Commodus was 
 but nineteen when his father died ; for the first three 
 years of his reign he ruled respectably 'and acceptably. 
 Marcus Aurelius, had left no effort untried to have 
 him trained aright by the first teachers and the wisest 
 men whom the age produced ; and Herodian dis- 
 tinctly tells us that he had lived virtuously up to 
 the time of his father's death. Setting aside natural 
 affection altogether, and even assuming (as I should 
 conjecture from one or two passages of his Medv- 
 tations) that Marcus had misgivings about his son, 
 would if have been easy, would it have been even 
 possible, to set aside on general grounds a son whc 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 295 
 
 had attained to years of maturity ? However this 
 may be, if there are any who think it worth while 
 to censure Marcus because, after all, Commodus 
 turned out to be but " a warped slip of wilderness," 
 their censure is hardly sufficiently discriminating to 
 deserve the trouble of refutation. 
 
 " But Marcus Aurelius cruelly persecuted the 
 Christians." Let us briefly consider this charge. 
 That persecutions took place in his reign is an 
 undeniable fact, and is sufficiently evidenced by the 
 Apologies of Justin Martyr, of Melito Bishop of 
 Sardis, of Athenagoras, and of Apollinarius, as well 
 as by the Letter of the Church of Smyrna describing* 
 the martyrdom of Polycarp, and that of the Churches 
 of Lyons and Vienne to their brethren in Asia Minor. 
 It is fair, however, to mention that there is some 
 documentary evidence on the other side ; Lactantius 
 clearly asserts that under the reigns of those excellent 
 princes who succeeded Domitian the Church suffered 
 no violence from her enemies, and " spread her hands 
 towards the East and the West :" Tertullian, writing 
 but twenty years after the death of Marcus, distinctly 
 says (and Eusebius quotes the assertion), that there 
 were letters of the Emperor, in which he not only 
 attributed his delivery among the Quadi to the 
 prayers of Christian soldiers in the "Thundering 
 Legion," but ordered any who informed' against the 
 Christians to be most severely punished ; and at the 
 end of the works of Justin Martyr is found a letter 
 of similar purport, which is asserted to have been 
 addressed by Marcus to the Senate of Rome. We 
 
496 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 may set aside these peremptory testimonies, we may 
 believe that Tertullian and Eusebius were mistaken, 
 and that the documents to which they referred were 
 spurious ; but this should make us also less certain 
 about the prominent participation of the Emperor in 
 these persecutions. My own belief is (and it is a 
 belief which could be supported by many critical 
 arguments), that his share in causing them was almost 
 infinitesimal. If those who love his memory reject 
 the evidence of Fathers in his favour, they may be at 
 least permitted to withhold assent from some of the 
 assertions in virtue of which he is condemned. 
 
 Marcus in his Meditations alludes to the Chris- 
 tians once only, and then it is to make a passing 
 complaint of the indifference to death, which ap- 
 peared to him, as it appeared to Epictetus, to arise, not 
 from any noble principles, but from mere obstinacy 
 and perversity. That he shared the profound dislike 
 with which Christians were regarded is very probable. 
 That he was a cold-blooded and virulent persecutor 
 is utterly unlike his whole character, essentially at 
 variance with his habitual clemency, alien to the 
 spirit which made him interfere in every possible 
 instance to mitigate the severity of legal punishments, 
 and may in 'short be regarded as an assertion which 
 is altogether false. Who will believe that a man who 
 during his reign built and dedicated but one single 
 temple, and that a Temple to Beneficence ; fhat a 
 man who so far from showing any jealousy respecting 
 foreign religions allowed honour to be paid to them 
 all ; that a man whose writings breathe on every 
 
LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 297 
 
 page the inmost spirit of philanthropy and tender- 
 ness, went out of his way to join in a persecution of 
 the most innocent, the most courageous, and the 
 most inoffensive of his subjects ? 
 
 The true state of the case seems to have been this, 
 The deep calamities in which, during the whole reign 
 of Marcus the Empire was involved, caused wide- 
 spread distress, and roused into peculiar fury the 
 feelings of the provincials against men whose atheism 
 (for such they considered it to be) had kindled the 
 anger of the gods. This fury often broke out into 
 paroxysms of popular excitement, which none but 
 the firmest-minded governors were able to moderate 
 or to repress. Marcus, when appealed to, simply let 
 the existing law take its usual course. That law was 
 as old as the time of Trajan. The younger Pliny, 
 Governor of Bithynia, had written to ask Trajan how 
 he was to deal with the Christians, whose blameless- 
 ness of life he fully admitted, but whose doctrines, 
 he said, had emptied the temples of the gods, and 
 exasperated their worshippers. Trajan, in reply, had 
 ordered that the Christians should not be sought for, 
 but that, if they were brought before the governor, 
 and proved to be contumacious in refusing to abjure 
 their religion, they were then to be put to death. 
 Hadrian and Antoninus Pius had continued the same 
 policy, and Marcus Aurelius saw no reason to alter it. 
 But this law, which in quiet times might become a 
 mere dead letter, might at more troubled periods be 
 converted into a dangerous engine of persecution, as 
 it was in the case of the venerable Polycarp, and ia 
 
?o8 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 the unfortunate Churches of Lyons and Vienne. The 
 Pagans believed that the reason why their gods were 
 smiling in secret, 
 
 " Looking over wasted lands, 
 Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery 
 
 sands, 
 Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying 
 
 hands," 
 
 was the unbelief and impiety of these hated Galileans, 
 causes of offence which could only be expiated by 
 the death of the guilty. "Their enemies," says 
 Tertullian. " call aloud for the blood of the innocent, 
 alleging this vain pretext for their hatred, that they 
 believe the Christians to be the cause of every public 
 misfortune. If the Tiber has overflowed its banks, 
 or the Nile has not overflowed, if heaven has refused 
 its rain, if famine or the plague has spread its 
 ravages, the cry is immediate, ' The Christians to the 
 lions.' " In the first three centuries the cry of " No 
 Christianity" became at times as brutal, as violent, 
 and as unreasoning as the cry of " No Popery " has 
 often been in modern days. It was infinitely less 
 disgraceful to Marcus to lend his ear to the one than 
 it has been to some eminent modern statesmen to be 
 carried away by the insensate fury of the other. 
 
 To what extent is Marcus Aurelius to be con- 
 demned for the martyrdoms which took place in his 
 reign ? Not, I think, heavily or indiscriminately, or 
 with vehement sweeping censure. Common justice 
 surely demands that we should not confuse the present 
 with the past, or pass judgment on the conduct of the 
 Emperor as though he were living in the nineteenth 
 
HIS UFE AND THOUGHTS. 240 
 
 century, or as though he had been acting in full 
 cognisance of the Gospels and the stories of the Saints 
 Wise and good men before him had, in their haughty 
 ignorance, spoken of Christianity with execration and 
 contempt. The philosophers who surrounded his 
 throne treated it with jealousy and aversion. The 
 body of the nation firmly believed the current 
 rumours which charged its votaries with horrible mid- 
 night assemblies, rendered infamous by Thyestian 
 banquets and the atrocities of nameless superstitions. 
 These foul calumnies these hideous charges of can- 
 nibalism and incest, were supported by the reiterated 
 perjury of slaves under torture, which in that age, as 
 well as long afterwards, was preposterously regarded 
 as a sure criterion of truth. 
 
 Christianity in that day was confounded with a 
 multitude of debased and foreign superstitions ; and 
 the Emperor in his judicial capacity, if he ever 
 encountered Christians at all, was far more likely to 
 encounter those who were unworthy of the name, than 
 to become acquainted with the meek, unworldly, 
 retiring virtues of the calmest, the" lioliesl, and the 
 best. When we have given their due weight to con- 
 siderations such as these we shall be ready to pardon 
 Marcus Aurelius for having, in this mattet, acted 
 ignorantly, and to admit that in persecuting Chris- 
 tianity he may most honestly have thought that he 
 was doing God service. The very sincerity of his 
 belief, the conscientiousness of his rule, the intensity 
 of his philanthropy, the grandeur of his own philo- 
 sophical tenets, all conspired to make him a worse 
 
 2B 
 
joo MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 enemy of the Church than a brutal Commodus or ^ 
 disgusting Heliogabalus. And yet that there was not 
 in him the least propensity to persecute ; that these 
 persecutions were for the most part spontaneous and 
 accidental ; that they were in no measure due to his 
 direct instigation, or in special accordance with his 
 desire, is clear from the fact that the martyrdoms 
 took place in Gaul and Asia Minor, not in Rome. 
 There must have been hundreds of Christians in 
 Rome, and under the very eye of the Emperor ; nay, 
 there were even multitudes of Christians in his own 
 army ; yet we never hear of his having molested any 
 of them. Melito, bishop of Sardis, in addressing the 
 Emperor, expresses a doubt as to whether he was 
 really aware of the manner in which his Christian 
 subjects were treated. Justin Martyr, in his Apology, 
 addresses him in terms of perfect confidence and deep 
 respect. In short he was in this matter " blameless, 
 but unfortunate." It is painful to think that the 
 venerable Polycarp and the thoughtful Justin may 
 have forfeited their lives for their principles, not only 
 in the reign of so good a man, but even by virtue 
 of his authority ; but we must be very uncharitable 
 or very unimaginative if we cannot readily believe 
 that, though they had received the crown of martyr- 
 dom from his hands, the redeemed spirits of those 
 great martyrs would have been the first to welcome 
 this holiest of the heathen into the presence of a 
 Saviour whose Church he persecuted, but to whose 
 indwelling Spirit his virtues were due, whom igno- 
 rantly and unconsciously he worshipped, and whom, 
 
HIS LIFE AND THOUGHTS. 30! 
 
 had he ever heard of Him and known Him, he would 
 have loved in his heart and glorified by the con- 
 sistency of his noble and stainless life. 
 
 The persecution of the Churches in Lyons and 
 Vienne happened in A.D. 177. Shortly after this 
 period fresh wars recalled th? Emperor to the North. 
 It is said that, in despair of ever seeing him again, 
 the chief men of Rome entreated him to address 
 them his farewell admonitions, and thac for three 
 days he discoursed to them on philosophic questions. 
 When he arrived at the seat of war, victory again 
 crowned his arms. But Marcus was now getting old, 
 and he was worn out with the toils, trials; and travels 
 of his long and weary life. He sunk under mental 
 anxieties and bodily fatigues, and after a brief illness 
 died in Pannonia, either at Vienna or at Sirmium, on 
 March 17, A.D. 180, in the fifty-ninth year of his age 
 and the twentieth of his reign. 
 
 Death to him was no calamity. He was sadly 
 aware that " there is no man so fortunate that there 
 shall not be by him when he is dying some who are 
 pleased with what is going to happen. Suppose that 
 he was a good and wise man, will there not be at last 
 some one to say of him, ' Let us at last breathe freely, 
 being relieved from this schoolmaster. It is true that 
 he was harsh to none of us, but I perceive that he 
 tacitly condemns us.' . . . Thou wilt consider this 
 when thou art dying, and wilt depart more content- 
 edly by reflecting thus : ' I am going away from a life 
 in which even my associates, on behalf of whom I have 
 iiriven, and cared, and prayed so much, themselves wish 
 
302 MA RCUS A UREL1 US. 
 
 me to depart, hoping perchance to get some little 
 advantage by it.' Why then should a man cling to 
 a longer stay here ? Do not, however, for this reason 
 go away less kindly disposed to them, but preserving t/n> 
 own character, and continuing friendly, and benevolent, 
 and kind'' And dreading death far less than he 
 dreaded any departure from the laws of virtue, he 
 exclaims, " Come quickly, O Death, for fear that at 
 last I should forget myself." This utterance has been 
 well compared to the language which Bossuet put 
 into the mouth of a Christian soul : " O Death, thou 
 dost not trouble my designs, thou accomplishest them. 
 Haste then, O favourable Death ! . . . Nunc dimittis" 
 A nobler, a gentler, a purer, a sweeter soul, a soul 
 less elated by prosperity, or more constant in adversity 
 a soul more fitted by virtue, and chastity, and self- 
 denial to enter into the eternal peace, never passed 
 into the presence of its Heavenly Father. We are 
 not surprised that all, whose means permitted it, pos- 
 sessed themselves of his statues, and that they were 
 to be seen for years afterwards among the household 
 gods of heathen families, --^o felt themselves more 
 hopeful and more happy from the glorious sense ot 
 possibility which was inspired by the memory of one 
 who, in the midst of difficulties, and breathing an 
 atmosphere heavy with corruption, yet showed him- 
 self sc wise, so great, so good a man. 
 
 '* O framed for nobler times and calmer hearts ! 
 O studious thinker eloquent for truth ! 
 Philosopher, despising wealth and death, 
 But patient, childlike, full of life and love I 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE "MEDITATIONS" OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 EMPEROR as he was, Marcus Aurelius found himself 
 in a hollow and troublous world ; but he did not give 
 himself up to idle regret or querulous lamentations. 
 If these sorrows and perturbations came from the 
 gods, he kissed the hand that smote him; "he de- 
 livered up his broken sword to Fate the conqueror 
 with a humble and a manly heart." In any case he 
 had duties to do, and he set himself to perform them 
 with a quiet heroism zealously, conscientiously, even 
 cheerfully. 
 
 The principles of the Emperor are not reducible to 
 the hard and definite lilies of a philosophic system. 
 But the great laws which guided his actions and 
 moulded his views of life were few and simple, and in 
 his book of Meditations, which is merely his private 
 diary written to relieve his mind amid all the trials of 
 war and government, he recurs to them again and 
 again. " Plays, war, astonishment, torpor, slavery," 
 he says to himself, "will wipe out those holy prin- 
 ciples of thine ;" and this is why he committed those 
 'rnciples to writing. Some of these I have already 
 
304 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 adduced, and others I proceed to quote, availing 
 myself, as before, of the beautiful and scholar-like 
 translation of Mr. George Long. 
 
 All pain, and misfortune, and ugliness seemed to 
 the Emperor to be most wisely regarded under a 
 threefold aspect, name.lv, if considered in reference to 
 the gods, as being due to laws beyond their control ; 
 if considered with reference to the nature of things, 
 as being subservient and necessary ; and if considered 
 with reference to ourselves, as being dependent on 
 the amount of indifference and fortitude with which 
 we endure them. 
 
 The following passages will elucidate these points 
 of view : 
 
 " The intelligence of the Universe is social. Ac- 
 cordingly it has made the inferior things for the sake 
 of the superior, and it has fitted the superior to one 
 another." (v. 30.) 
 
 " Things do not touch the soul, for they are eternal, 
 and remain immovable; but our perturbations come 
 only from the opinion which is within. . . . The Uni- 
 verse is transformation ; life is opinion" (iv. 3.) 
 
 " To the jaundiced honey tastes bitter, and to those 
 bitten by mad dogs water causes fear ; and to little 
 children the ball is a fine thing. Why then am I 
 angry ? Dost thou think that a false opinion has less 
 power than the bile in the jaundiced, or the poison in 
 him who is bitten by a mad dog ?" (vi. 52.) 
 
 " How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every 
 impression which is troublesome and unsuitable, and 
 immediately to be at tranquillity." (v. 2.) 
 
HIS " M EDIT A TIONS." 305 
 
 The passages in which Marcus speaks of evil as a 
 relative thing, as being good in the making, the 
 unripe and bitter bud of that which shall be here- 
 after a beautiful flower, although not expressed with 
 perfect clearness, yet indicate his belief that our view 
 of evil^ingsjds^sjn^reat m easuxeJrorjL our inabijity 
 to perceive the great , whole, of which they are but 
 subservient parts, 
 
 "All things," he says, "come from that universal 
 ruling power, either directly or by way of consequence. 
 And accordingly the lions gaping jaws, and that which 
 is poisonous, and every hurtful thing, as a thorn, as 
 mud, are after-products of the grand and beautiful. 
 Do not therefore imagine that they are of another 
 kind from that which thou dost venerate, but form a 
 just opinion of the source of all." 
 
 In another curious passage he says that all things 
 which are natural and congruent with the causes 
 which produce them have a certain beauty and 
 attractiveness of their own ; for instance, the split- 
 tings and corrugations on the surface of bread when 
 it has been baked. " And again, figs when they are 
 quite ripe gape open ; and in the ripe olives the very 
 circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a 
 peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the ears of corn 
 bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, and the foam 
 which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many 
 other things though they are far from being beau- 
 1, if a man should examine them severally still ; 
 ause they are consequent upon the things which 
 formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they 
 
3<X> MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 please the mind ; so that if a man should have a 
 feeling and deeper insight about the things found in 
 the universe there is hardly one of those which follow 
 by way of consequence which will not seem to him to 
 be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure." (iv. 2.) 
 
 This congruity to nature the following of nature, 
 and obedience to all her laws is the key-formula to 
 the doctrines of the Roman Stoics. 
 
 " Everything which is in any way beautiful is beau- 
 tiful in itself, and terminates in itself, not having 
 praise as part of itself. Neither worse, then, nor 
 better is a thing made by being praised . ... Is such 
 a thing as an emerald made worse than it was, if it is 
 not praised? or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little knife, 
 a flower, a shrub ?" (iv. 20.) 
 
 " Everything harmonizes with me which is har- 
 monious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too 
 early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. 
 Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, 
 O Nature ! from thee are all things, in thee are all 
 things, to thee all things return. The poet says, Dear 
 city of Cecrops ; and will not thou say, Dear city of 
 "(iv. 23.) 
 
 " Willingly give thyself up to fate, allowing her to 
 spin thy thread into whatever thing she pleases." (iv. 34.) 
 
 And here, in a very small matter getting out of 
 bed in a morning is one practical application of the' 
 formula : 
 
 " In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let 
 these thoughts be present ' I am rising to the work 
 of a human being. Why, then, am I dissatisfied if I 
 
HIS " MED IT A TIONS." 307 
 
 am going to do the tilings for which I exist, and for 
 which I was brought into the wtrld? Or have I been 
 made for this, to lie in the bedclothes and keep myself 
 warm ?' ' But this is more pleasant.' Dost thou exist, 
 then, to take thy pleasure, and not for action or 
 exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the 
 little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, working 
 together to put in order their several parts of the 
 universe ? And art thou unwilling to do the work of 
 a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do 
 that which is according to thy nature ? " (v. I.) [" Go 
 to the ant, thou sluggard ; consider her ways, and be 
 wise ! "] 
 
 The same principle, that Nature has assigned to us 
 our proper place that a task has been given us. to/v * 
 perform, and that our only care should be to perform f^ 
 it aright, for the blessing of the great Whole_of .which 
 we are but insignificant parts dominates through the 
 admirable precepts which the Emperor lays down for 
 the regulation of our conduct towards others. Some 
 men, he says, do benefits to others only because they 
 expect a return ; some men even, if they do not 
 demand any return, are not forgetful that they have 
 rendered a benefit ; but others do not even know 
 what they have done, but are like a vine which has 
 produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has 
 produced its proper fruit. So we ought to do good to 
 others as simply and as naturally as a horse runs, or 
 a bee makes honey, or a vine bears :grapes season 
 after season, without thinking of thq grapes which it 
 has borne. And in another passage, " What more 
 21 
 
?o8 MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 dost thou want when thou hast done a service to 
 another ? Art thou not content to have done an act 
 conformable to thy nature, and must thou seek to be 
 paid for it, just as if the eye demanded a reward for 
 seeing, or the feet for walking ? " 
 
 "Judge every word and deed which is according to 
 nature to be fit for thee, and be not diverted by the 
 blame which follows .... but if a thing is good to 
 be done or said, do not consider it unworthy of thee." 
 
 (v- 3.) 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, Marcus Aurelius wavers. The 
 evils of life overpower him. " Such as bathing appears 
 to thee," he says, " oil, s^veat, dirt, filthy water \ all 
 things disgusting so is every part of life and every- 
 thing" (viii. 24); and again: "Of human life the 
 time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and 
 the perception dull, and the composition of the whole 
 body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and 
 fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of 
 judgment" But more often he retains his perfect 
 tranquillity, and says, " Either thou livest here, and 
 hast already accustomed thyself to it, or thou art 
 going away, and this was thine own will ; or thou art 
 dying, and hast discharged thy duty. But besides 
 these things there is nothing. Be of good cheer, then" 
 (x. 22.) "Take me, and cast me where thou wilt, for 
 1 then I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, con- 
 1 tent, if it can feel and act conformably to its proper 
 constitution." (Viii. 45.) 
 
 There is something delightful in the fact that even 
 in the Stoic philosophy there was some comfort to 
 
HIS " M EDIT A TIONS" 
 
 keep men from despair. To a holy and scrupulous 
 conscience like that of Marcus, there would have been 
 an inestimable preciousness in the Christian doctrine 
 of the " forgiveness of sins." Of that divine mercy 
 of that sin-uncreating power the ancient world knew 
 nothing; but in Marcus we find some dim and faint 
 adumbration of the doctrine, expressed in a manner 
 which might at least breathe calm into the spirit of 
 the philosopher, though it could never reach the hearts 
 of the suffering multitude. '' For " suppose," he says, 
 "that thou hast detached thyself from the natural 
 unity, for thou wast made by nature a part, but now 
 hast cut thyself off yet here is the beautiful provision 
 that it is in thy power again to unite thyself. God 
 has allowed this to no other part after it has been 
 separated and cut asunder, to come together again. I 
 But consider the goodness with which He has privileged \ 
 man ; for He has put it in his power, when he has been 
 separated, to return and to be reunited, and to resume 
 his place" And elsewhere he says, " If you cannot 
 maintain a true and magnanimous character, go 
 courageously into some corner where you can main- 
 tain them ; or if even there you fail, depart at once 
 from life, not with passion, but with modest and 
 simple freedom which will be to have done at least 
 one laudable act." Sad that even to Marcus Aurelius 
 death should have seemed the only refuge from the 
 despair of ultimate failure in the struggle to be wise 
 and good ! 
 
 Marcus valued temperance and self-denial as being 
 the best means of keeping his heart strong and pure ; 
 
MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 but we are glad to learn he did not value the rigours 
 of asceticism. Life brought with it enough, and more 
 than enough, of antagonism to brace his nerves ; 
 enough, and more than enough, of the rough wind 
 of adversity in his face to make it unnecessary to 
 add more by his own actions. " It is not fit," he 
 says, "that I should give myself pain, for I have 
 never intentionally given pain even to another." 
 (viii. 42.) 
 
 It was a commonplace of ancient philosophy that 
 the life of the wise man should be a contemplation of, 
 and a preparation for, death. It certainly was so 
 with Marcus Aurelius. The thoughts of the nothing- 
 ness of man, and of that great sea of oblivion which 
 shall hereafter swallow up all that he is and does, are 
 ever present to his mind ; they are thoughts to which 
 he recurs more constantly than any other, and from 
 which he always draws the same moral lesson. 
 
 " Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from 
 life this very moment, regulate every act and thought 
 accordingly .... Death certainly, and life, honour 
 and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things 
 happen equally to good men and bad, being things 
 which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore 
 they are neither good nor evil." (ii. n.) 
 
 Elsewhere he says that Hippocrates cured diseases 
 and died ; and the Chaldaeans foretold the future and 
 died ; and Alexander, and Pompey, and Caesar killed 
 thousands, and then died ; and lice destroyed De- 
 mocritus, and other lice killed Socrates ; and Augustus, 
 and his wife, and daughter, and all his descendant^ 
 
HIS " MED IT A TIONS* 3 1 1 
 
 and all his ancestors, are dead ; and Vespasian and 
 all his Court, and all who in his day feasted, and 
 married, and were sick and chaffered, and fought, 
 and flattered, and plotted, and grumbled, and wished 
 other people to die, and pined to become kings or 
 consuls, are dead ; and all the idle people who are 
 doing the same things now are doomed to die ; and 
 all human things are smoke, and nothing at all ; 
 and it is not for us, but for the gods, to settle 
 whether we play the play out, or only a part of 
 it. " There are many grains of frankincense on the 
 same altar ; one falls before, another falls after; 
 but it makes no difference" And the moral of all 
 these thoughts is, " Death hangs over thee while thou 
 livest: while it is in thy power be good." (iv. 17.) 
 "Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, 
 thou hast come to shore ; get out. If, indeed, to 
 Another life there is no want of gods, not even there. 
 But if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to 
 be held by pains and pleasures." (iii. 3.) 
 
 Nor was Marcus at all comforted under present 
 annoyances by the thought of posthumous fame. 
 " How ephemeral and worthless human things are," 
 he says, " and what was yesterday a little mucus, 
 to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes." " Many who 
 are now praising thee, will very soon blame thee, and 
 neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor 
 reputation, nor anything else." What has become 
 of all great and famous 5 men, and all they desired, 
 and all they loved ? They are " smoke, and ash, 
 and a tale, or not even a tale." After all theii 
 
 2o 
 
3 1 2 MARCUS A URELIUS. 
 
 rages and envyings, men are stretched out quiet 
 and dead at last. Soon thou wilt have forgotten 
 all, and soon all will have forgotten thee. But here, 
 again, after such thoughts, the same moral is always 
 introduced again : " Pass then through the little 
 space of time conformably to nature, and end the 
 journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it 
 is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking 
 the tree on which it grew!' " One thing only troubles 
 me, lest I should do something which the constitution 
 of man does not allow, or in the way which it does 
 not allow, or what it does not allow now." 
 
 To quote the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius is to me 
 a fascinating task. But I have already let him speak 
 so largely for himself that by this time the reader 
 will have some conception of his leading motives. 
 It only remains to adduce a few more of the weighty 
 and golden sentences in which he lays down his rule 
 of life. 
 
 " To say all in a word, everything which belongs to 
 the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is 
 a dream and vapour ; and life is a warfare, and a 
 stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What, 
 then, is that which is able to enrich a man ? One 
 thing, and only one philosophy. But this consists 
 in keeping the guardian spirit within a man free from 
 violence and unharmed, superior to pains and plea- 
 sures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely, 
 and with hypocrisy .... accepting all that happens 
 and all that is allotted .... and finally waiting fof 
 death with a cheerful mind'' (ii. 17.) 
 
HIS " MEDITA TIONS? 313 
 
 " If thou findest in human life anything better than 
 justice, truth, temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, 
 than thine own soul's satisfaction in the things which 
 it enables thee to do according to right reason, and 
 in the condition that is assigned to thee without thy 
 own choice ; if, I say, thou seest anything better than 
 this, turn to it with all thy soul, and enjoy that which 
 thou hast found to be the best. But .... if thou 
 findest everything else smaller and of less value than 
 this, give place to nothing else .... Simply and 
 freely choose the better, and hold to it." (iii. 6.) 
 . " Body, soul, intelligence : to the body belong sen- 
 sations, to the soul appetites, to the intelligence prin- 
 ciples." To be impressed by the senses is peculiar to 
 animals ; to be pulled by the strings of desire belongs 
 to effeminate men, and to men like Phalaris or Nero ; 
 to be guided only by intelligence belongs to atheists 
 and traitors, and " men who do their impure deeds 
 when they have shut the doors. . . . There remains 
 that which is peculiar to the good man, to be pleased 
 and content with what happens > and with the thread 
 which is spun for him ; and not to defile the divinity 
 which is planted in his breast, nor disturb it by a 
 crowd of images ; but to preserve it tranquil, following 
 it obediently as a god, neither saying anything con- 
 trary to truth, nor doing anything contrary to justice." 
 (iii. 1 6.) 
 
 " Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the 
 country, sea-shores, and mountains, and thou too art 
 wont to desire such things very much. But this is 
 altogether a mark of the commonest sort of men, for 
 
3T4 MARCUS A URELIUS, 
 
 it is in thy power whenever thou shalt chose to retire 
 into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or 
 with more freedom does a man retire than into his 
 own soul, particularly when he has within him such 
 thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately 
 in perfect tranquillity, which is nothing else than the 
 good ordering 'of the mind." (iv. 3.) 
 
 " Unhappy am I, because this has happened to me ? 
 Not so, but happy am I though this has happened to 
 me, because I continue free from pain ; neither crushed 
 by the present, nor fearing the future." (iv. 19.) 
 
 It is just possible that in some of these passages 
 some readers may detect a trace of painful self-con- 
 sciousness, and imagine that they detect a little grain of 
 self-complacence. Something of self-consciousness is 
 perhaps inevitable in the diary and examination of 
 his own conscience by one who sat on such a lonely 
 height ; but self-complacency there is none. Nay, 
 there is sometimes even a cruel sternness in the way 
 in which the Emperor speaks of his own self. He 
 certainly dealt not with himself in the manner of a 
 dissembler with God. " When," he says (x. 8), 
 " thou hast assumed the names of a man who is good, 
 modest, rational, magnanimous, cling to those names; 
 and if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to 
 them .... For to continue to be such as thou hast 
 hitherto been, and to be torn in pieces, and defiled in 
 such a life, is the character of a very stupid man, and 
 one over-fond of his life, and like those half-devoured 
 fighters with wild beasts, who, though covered with 
 wounds and gore, still entreat tj be kept till the follow- 
 
HIS t: MED IT A TfONS." 315 
 
 ing day, though they will be exposed in the same state 
 to the same claws and bites. Therefore fix thyself in 
 the possession of these few names : and if thou art 
 able to abide in them, abide as if thou wert removed 
 to the Islands of the Blest." Alas ! to Aurelius, in 
 this life, the Islands of the Blest were very far away. 
 Heathen philosophy was exalted and eloquent, but 
 all its votaries were sad ; to " the peace of God, which 
 passeth all understanding," it was not given them to 
 attain. We see Marcus " wise, self-governed, tender, 
 thankful, blameless," says Mr. Arnold, "yet with 
 all this agitated, stretching out his arms for some- 
 thing beyond tendentemque manns ripa ulterioru 
 amore" 
 
 I will quote in conclusion but three short pre- 
 cepts : 
 
 "Be cheerful, and seek not external help, nor the 
 tranquillity which others give. A man must stand 
 erect, not be kept erect by others" (wr-f^) <)" 
 
 "Be like the promontory against which the waves 
 continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury 
 of the water around it" (iv. 49.) 
 
 This comparison has been used many a time since 
 the days of Marcus Aurelius. The reader will at once 
 recall Goldsmith's famous lines : 
 
 " As some tall cliff that rears its awful form, 
 
 Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
 Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
 Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 
 
 "Short is the little that remains to thee of life 
 
 2c2 
 
316 MARCUS AURELWS. 
 
 Live as on a mountain. For it makes no difference 
 whether a man lives there or here, if he lives every- 
 where in the world as in a civil community. Let men 
 see, let them know a real man who lives as he was 
 meant to live. If they cannot endure him, let them 
 kill him. For that is better than to live as men do." 
 (x. 15.) 
 
 Such were some of the thoughts which Marcus 
 Aurelius wrote in his diary after days of battle with 
 the Quadi, and the Marcomanni, and the Sarmatae. 
 Isolated from others no less by moral grandeur than 
 by the supremacy of his sovereign rank, he sought the 
 society of his own noble soul. I sometimes imagine 
 that I see him seated on the borders of some gloomy 
 Pannonian forest or Hungarian marsh ; through the 
 darkness the watchfires of the enemy gleam in the 
 distance ; but both among them, and in the camp 
 around him, every sound is hushed, except the tread 
 of the sentinel outside the imperial tent ; and in that 
 tent long after midnight sits the patient Emperor by 
 the light of his solitary lamp, and ever and anon, 
 amid his lonely musings, he pauses to write down the 
 pure and holy thoughts which shall better enable him, 
 even in a Roman palace, even on barbarian battle- 
 fields, daily to tolerate the meanness and the ma- 
 lignity of the men around him ; daily to amend his 
 own shortcomings, and, as the sun of earthly life 
 begins to set, daily to draw nearer and nearer to the 
 Eternal Light. And when I thus think of him, I 
 know not whether the whole of heathen antiquity, 
 out of its gallery of stately and royal figures, car 
 
HIS "MEDITATIONS." 317 
 
 furnish a nobler, or purer, or more lovable picture 
 than that of this crowned philosopher and laurelled 
 hero, who was yet one of the humblest and one of 
 the most enlightened of all ancient " Seekers after 
 God" 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 A SCEPTICAL writer has observed, with something 
 like a sneer, that the noblest utterances of Gospel 
 morality may be paralleled from the writings of 
 heathen philosophers. The sneer is pointless, and 
 Christian moralists have spontaneously drawn atten- 
 tion to the fact. In this volume, so far from trying to 
 conceal that it is 'so, I have taken pleasure in placing 
 side by side the words of Apostles and of Philo- 
 sophers. The divine origin of Christianity does not 
 rest on its morality alone. By the aid of the light 
 which was within them, by deciphering the law written 
 on their own consciences, however much its letters 
 may have been obliterated or dimmed, Plato, and 
 Cicero, and Seneca, and Epictetus, and Aurelius were 
 enabled to grasp and to enunciate a multitude of 
 great and memorable truths ; yet they themselves 
 would have been the first to admit the wavering 
 uncertainty of their hopes and speculations, and the 
 absolute necessity of a further illumination. So 
 strong did that necessity appear to some of the wisest 
 among them, that Socrates ventures in express words 
 to prophesy the future advent of some heaven-sent 
 
CONCLUSION. 319 
 
 Guide.* Those who imagine that without a written 
 revelation it would have been possible to learn all 
 that is necessary for man's well-being, are speaking in 
 direct contradiction of the greatest heathen teachers, 
 in contradiction even of those very teachers to whose 
 writings they point as the proof of their assertion. 
 Augustine was expressing a very deep conviction 
 when he said that in Plato and in Cicero he met with 
 many utterances which were beautiful and wise, but 
 among them all he never found, " Come unto me, all 
 ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh 
 you." Glorious as was the wisdom of ancient thought, 
 its knowledge respecting the indwelling of the Spirit, 
 the resurrection of the body, and the forgiveness of 
 sins, was but fragmentary and vague. Bishop Butler 
 has justly remarked that " The great doctrines of a 
 future state, the dangers of a course of wickedness, 
 and the efficacy of repentance are not only confirmed 
 in the Gospel, but are taught, especially the last is, 
 with a degree of light to which that of nature is 
 darkness." 
 
 The morality of Paganism was, on its own con- 
 fession, insufficient. It was tentative, where Christi- 
 anity is authoritative : it was dim and partial, where 
 Christianity is bright and complete ; it was inadequate 
 to rouse the sluggish carelessness of mankind, where 
 Christianity came with an imperial and awakening 
 power ; it gives only a rule, where Christianity sup- 
 plies a principle. And even where its teachings were 
 absolutely coincident with those of Scripture, it failed 
 * Xen. Mem. I, iv. 14 ; Plato, Alcib. ii 
 
320 CONCLUSION. 
 
 to ratify them with a sufficient sanction ; it failed to 
 announce them with the same powerful and contagious 
 ardour ; it failed to furnish an absolutely faultless and 
 vivid example of their practice ; it failed to inspire 
 them with an irresistible motive ; it failed to support 
 them with a powerful comfort under the difficulties 
 which were sure to be encountered in the aim after a 
 consistent and holy life. 
 
 The attempts of the Christian Fathers to show that 
 the truths of ancient philosophy were borrowed from 
 Scripture are due in some cases to ignorance and in 
 some to a want of perfect honesty in controversial 
 dealing. That Gideon (Jerubbaal) is identical with the 
 priest Hierombalos who supplied information to San- 
 choniathon the Berytian; that Thales pieced together 
 a philosophy fro*m fragments of Jewish truth learned 
 in Phoenicia ; that Pythagoras and Demgcritus availed 
 themselves of Hebraic traditions, collected during 
 their travels ; that Plato is a mere " Atticising Moses ;" 
 that Aristotle picked up his ethical system from a Jew 
 whom he met in Asia ; and that Seneca corresponded 
 with St. Paul : are assertions every bit as unhistorical 
 and false as that Homer was thinking of Genesis when 
 he described the shield of Achilles, or (as Clemens 
 of Alexandria gravely informs us) that Miltiades won 
 the battle of Marathon by copying the strategy of 
 the battle of Beth-Horon ! To say that Pagan 
 morality " kindled its faded taper at the Gospel light, 
 whether furtively or unconsciously taken," and that it 
 " dissembled the obligation, and made a boast of the 
 splendour as though it were originally her own, or 
 
CONCLUSION. 321 
 
 were sufficient in her hands for the moral illumination 
 of the world," is to make an assertion wholly un- 
 tenable.* Seneca, Epictetus, Aurelius, are among the 
 truest and loftiest of Pagan moralists, yet Seneca 
 ignored the Christians, Epictetus despised, and Au- 
 relius persecuted them. All three, so far as they 
 knew anything about the Christians at all, had un- 
 happily been taught to look upon them as the most 
 degraded and the most detestable sect of what they 
 had long regarded as the most degraded and the most 
 detestable of religions. 
 
 There is something very touching in this fact ; but, 
 if there be something very touching, there is also 
 something very encouraging. God was their God as 
 well as ours their Creator, their Preserver, who left 
 not Himself without witness among them ; who, as 
 they blindly felt after Him, suffered their groping 
 hands to. grasp the hem of His robe; who sent them 
 rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their 
 hearts with joy and gladness. And His Spirit was 
 with them, dwelling in them, though unseen and un- 
 known, purifying and sanctifying the temple of their 
 hearts, sending gleams of illuminating light through 
 the gross darkness which encompassed them, comfort- 
 ing their uncertainties, making intercession for them 
 with groanings which cannot be uttered. And, more 
 than all, our Saviour was their Saviour too ; He whom 
 
 * See for various statements in this passage, Josephus, c. Apion. ii. 
 36 ; Cic. De Fin. v. 25 ; Clem. Alex. Strom. I, xxii. 150, xxv. 
 v. 14 ; Euseb. Praf. Evang. x. 4, ix. 5, &c. ; Lactant. Inst. Div. hr. 
 2, &c. 
 
522 CONCLUSION. 
 
 they regarded as a crucified malefactor was their true 
 invisible King; through His righteousness their poor 
 merits v/ere accepted, their inward sickensses were 
 healed ; He whose worship they denounced as an 
 " execrable superstition " stood supplicating for them 
 at the right hand of the Majesiy on high, helping 
 them (though they knew Him not) to crush all that 
 was evil within them, and pleading for them when 
 they persecuted even the most beloved of His saints, 
 " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what 
 they do." 
 
 * Yes, they too were all His offspring. Even if they 
 had not been, should we grudge that some of the 
 children's meat should be given unto dogs ? Shall we 
 deny to these " unconscious prophecies of heathen- 
 dom " their oracular significance ? Shall we be jealous 
 of the ethical loftiness of a Plato or an Aurelius ? 
 Shall we be loth to admit that some power of the 
 Spirit of Christ, even mid the dark wanderings of 
 Seneca's life, kept him still conscious of a nobler and 
 a better way, or that some sweetness of a divine hope 
 inspired the depressions of Epictetus in his slavery ? 
 Shall our eye be evil because God in His goodness 
 granted the heathen also to know such truths as 
 enabled them " to overcome the allurements of 
 the visible and the terrors of the invisible world ? " 
 Yes, if we have of the Christian Church so mean a 
 conception that we look upon it as a mere human 
 society, " set up in the world to defend a certain 
 religion against a certain other religion." But if on 
 the other hand we believe " that it was a society 
 
CONCLUSION 323 
 
 established by God as a witness for the true coalition 
 of all human beings, we shall rejoice to acknowledge 
 its members to be what they believed themselves 
 to be, confessors and martyrs for a truth which 
 they could not fully embrace or comprehend, but 
 which, through their lives and deaths, through the 
 right and wrong acts, the true and false words, of 
 those who understand them least, was to manifest 
 and prove itself. Those who hold this conviction 
 dare not conceal, or misrepresent, or undervalue, any 
 one of those weighty and memorable sentences which 
 are to be found in the Meditations of Marcus Au-' 
 relius. If they did, they would be underrating a portion 
 of that very truth which tkz preachers of the Gospel 
 were appointed to set forth ; they would be adopting 
 the error of the philosophical Emperor without his 
 excuse for it. Nor dare they pretend that the Chris- 
 tian teaching had unconsciously imparted to him a 
 portion of its own light while he seemed to exclude 
 it. They will believe that it was God's good pleasure 
 that a certain truth should be seized and apprehended 
 by this age, and they will see indications of what that 
 truth was in the efforts of Plutarch to understand the 
 * Daemon' which guided Socrates, in the courageous 
 language of Ignatius, in the bewildering dreams of the 
 Gnostics, in the eagerness of Justin Martyr to prove 
 Christianity a philosophy ... in the apprehension of 
 Christian principles by Marcus Aurelius, and in his 
 hatred of the Christians. From every side they will 
 derive evidence, that a doctrine and society which were 
 meant for mankind cannot depend upon the partial views 
 22 2D 
 
324 CONCLUSION. 
 
 and apprehensions of men, but must go on justifying, 
 reconciling, confuting, those views and apprehensions by 
 the demonstration of facts' 1 * 
 
 But perhaps some reader will say, What advantage, 
 then, can we gain by studying in Pagan writers truths 
 which are expressed more nobly, more clearly, and 
 infinitely more effectually in our own sacred books ? 
 Before answering the question, let me mention the 
 traditional anecdote f of the Caliph Omar_ When he 
 conquered Alexandria, he was shown its magnificent 
 library, in which were collected untold treasures of 
 literature, gathered together by the zeal, the labour, 
 and the liberality of a dynasty of kings. " What is 
 the good of all those books ? " he said. " They are 
 either in accordance with the Koran, or contrary to 
 it. If the former they are superfluous ; if the latter 
 they are pernicious. In either case let them be 
 burnt." . Burnt they were, as legend tells ; but all the 
 world has condemned the Caliph's reasoning as a 
 piece of stupid Philistinism and barbarous bigotry. 
 Perhaps the question as to the use of reading Pagan 
 ethics is equally unphilosophical ; at any rate, we can 
 spare but very few words to its consideration. The 
 answer obviously is, that God has spoken to men, 
 TroXfyu-e/ow? teal TroXuT/aoTro)?, " at sundry times and in 
 divers manners," f with a richly variegated wisdom. 
 
 * Maurice, Philos. of the First Six Centuries, p. 37. We venture 
 specially to recommend this weighty and beautiful passage to the 
 reader's serious attention. 
 
 t Now known to be unhistoricaL 
 
 % Heb. i. I. 
 
 irc\inrotiti\os <ro<Ho. 
 
CONCLUSION. 335 
 
 Sometimes He has taught truth by the voice of 
 Hebrew prophets, sometimes by the voice of Pagan 
 philosophers. And all His voices demand our listen- 
 ing ear. If it was given to the Jew to speak with 
 diviner insight and intenser power, it was given to 
 the Gentile also to speak at times with a large and 
 lofty utterance, and we may learn truth from men of 
 alien lips and another tongue. They too had the 
 dream, the vision, the dark saying upon the harp, the 
 " daughter of a voice," the mystic flashes upon the 
 graven gems. And such truths come to us with a 
 singular force and freshness ; with a strange beauty 
 as the doctrines of a less brightly illuminated man- 
 hood ; with a new power of conviction from their 
 originality of form, which, because it is less familiar 
 to us, is well calculated to arrest our attention after 
 it has been paralysed by familiar repetitions. We 
 cannot afford to lose these heathen testimonies to 
 Christian truth ; or to hush the glorious utterances of 
 Muse and Sibyl which have justly outlived " the 
 drums and tramplings of a hundred triumphs." 
 We may make them infinitely profitable to us. If 
 St. Paul quotes Aratus, and Menander, and Epime- 
 nides,* and perhaps more than one lyrical melody 
 besides, with earnest appreciation, if the inspired 
 Apostle could both learn himself and teach others 
 out of the utterances of a Cretan philosopher and 
 an Attic comedian, we may be sure that many of 
 Seneca's apophthegms would have filled him with 
 pleasure, and that he would have been.abla to read 
 
 * See Acts xvii. 28 ; I Cor. ; Tit. i. 12. 
 
CONCLUSIOr. 
 
 Epictetus and Aurelius with the same noble admira- 
 tion which made him see with thankful emotion that 
 memorable altar TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. 
 
 Let us then make a brief and final sketch of the 
 three great Stoics whose lives we have been con- 
 templating; with a view to summing up their speciali- 
 ties, their deficiencies, and the peculiar relations to, 
 or divergences from, Christian truth, which their 
 writings present to us. 
 
 " Seneca saepe noster," " Seneca, often our own," is 
 the expression of Tertul'lian, and he uses it as an 
 excuse for frequent references to his works. Yet if, of 
 the three, he be most like Christianity in particular 
 passages, he diverges most widely from it in his general 
 spirit. 
 
 He diverges from Christianity in many of his modes 
 of regarding life, and in many of his most important 
 beliefs. What, for instance, is his main conception of 
 the Deity ? Seneca is generally a Pantheist. No 
 doubt he speaks of God's love and goodness, but with 
 him God is no personal living Father, but the soul of 
 the universe the fiery, primaeval, eternal principle 
 which transfuses an inert, and no less eternal, matter, 
 and of which our souls are, as it were, but divine 
 particles or passing sparks. " God," he says, " is 
 Nature, is Fate, is Fortune, is the Universe, is the all- 
 pervading Mind. He cannot change the substance ol 
 the universe, He is Himself under the power of 
 Destiny, which is uncontrollable and immutable. It 
 is not God who rolls the thunder, it is Fate. He does 
 not rejoice in His works, but is identical with them." 
 
CONCLUSION. 327 
 
 In fact, Seneca would have heartily adopted the words 
 of Pope : 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body nature is, and God the soul." 
 
 Though there may be a vague sense in which those 
 words may be admitted and explained by Christians, 
 yet, in the mind of Seneca, they led to conclusions 
 directly opposed to those of Christianity. With him, 
 for instance, the wise man is the equal of God ; not 
 His adorer, not His servant, not His suppliant, but 
 His associate, His relation. He differs from God in 
 time alone. Hence all prayer is needless, he says, and 
 the forms of external worship are superfluous and 
 puerile. It is foolish to beg for that which you can 
 impart to yourself. " What need is there of vows ? 
 Make yourself happy." Nay, in the intolerable arro- 
 gance which marked the worst aberration of Stoicism, 
 the wise man is under certain aspects placed even 
 higher than God higher than God Himself because 
 God is beyond the reach of misfortunes, but the wise 
 man is superior to their anguish ; and because God is 
 good of necessity, but the wise man from choice. This 
 wretched and inflated paradox occurs in Seneca's 
 treatise On Providence, and in the same treatise he 
 glorifies suicide, and expresses a doubt as to the 
 immortality of the soul. 
 
 Again, the two principles on which Seneca relied as 
 the basis of all his moral system are : first, the principle 
 that we ought to follow Nature ; and, secondly, the 
 supposed perfectibility of the ideal man. 
 
 I. Now, of course, if we explain this precept of 
 
328 CONCLUSION. 
 
 " following Nature " as Juvenal has explained it, and 
 say that the voice of Nature is always coincident with 
 the voice of philosophy if we prove that our real 
 nature is none other than the dictate of our highest and 
 most nobly trained reason, and if we can establish the 
 fact that every deed of cruelty, of shame, of lust, or of 
 selfishness, is essentially contrary to our nature then 
 we may say with Bishop Butler, that the precept " to 
 follow Nature " is " a manner of speaking not loose 
 and undeterminate, but clear and distinct, strictly 
 just and true." But how complete must be the 
 system, how long the preliminary training, which alone 
 can enable us to find any practical value, any appre- 
 ciable aid to a virtuous life, in a dogma such as this ! 
 And, in the hands of Seneca, it becomes a very empty 
 formula. He entirely lacked the keen insight and 
 dialectic subtlety of such a writer as Bishop Butler ; 
 and, in his explanation of this Stoical shibboleth, 
 any real meaning which it may possess is evaporated 
 into a gorgeous mist of confused declamation and 
 splendid commonplace. 
 
 2. Nor is he much more fortunate with his ideal 
 man. This pompous abstraction presents us with a 
 conception at once ambitious and sterile. The Stoic 
 wise man is a sort of moral Phcenix, impossible and 
 repulsive. He is intrepid in dangers, free from all 
 passion, happy in adversity, calm in the storm ; he 
 alone knows how to live, because he alone knows how 
 to die ; he is the master of the world, because he is 
 master of himself, and the equal of God ; he looks 
 down upon everything with sublin imperturbability, 
 
CONCLUSION. 329 
 
 despising the sadnessess of humanity and smiling with 
 irritating loftiness at all our hopes and all our fears. 
 But, in another sketch of this faultless and un- 
 pleasant monster, Seneca presents us, not the proud 
 athlete who challenges the universe and is invulner- 
 able to all the stings and arrows of passion or of 
 fate, but a hero in the serenity of absolute triumph, 
 more tender indeed, but still without desires, without 
 passions, without needs, who can feel no pity because 
 pity is a weakness which disturbs his sapient calm ! 
 Well might the eloquent Bossuet exclaim, as he read 
 of these chimerical perfections, " It is to take a tone 
 too lofty for feeble and mortal men. But, O maxims 
 truly pompous ! O affected insensibility ! O false and 
 imaginary wisdom, which fancies itself strong because 
 it is hard, and generous because it is puffed up I 
 How are these principles opposed to the modest 
 simplicity of the Saviour of souls, who, in our Gospel, 
 contemplating His faithful ones in affliction, confesses 
 that they will be saddened by it ! ' Ye shall weep and 
 lament' " Shall Christians be jealous of such wisdom 
 as Stoicism did really attain, when they compare this 
 dry and bloodless ideal with Him who wept over 
 Jerusalem and mourned by the grave of Lazarus, who 
 had a mother and a friend, who disdained none, who 
 pitied all, who humbled Himself to death, even the 
 death of the cross, whose divine excellence we cannot 
 indeed attain because He is God, but whose example 
 we can imitate because He was very Man ?* 
 
 * Sf * Martha, Les Moralities, p. 50 ; Aubertin, S/ntytte et St. Pail, 
 p. 250. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 The one grand aim of the life and philosophy of 
 Seneca was Ease. It is the topic which constantly 
 recurs in his books On a Happy Life, On Tranquillity 
 of Mind, On Anger, and On the Ease and On the Firm- 
 ness of the Sage. It is the pitiless apathy, the stern 
 repression of every form of emotion, -which was con- 
 stantly glorified as the aim of philosophy. It made 
 Stilpo exclaim, when he had lost wife, property, and 
 children, that he had lost nothing, because he carried 
 in his own person everything which he possessed. It 
 led Seneca into all that is most unnatural, all that is 
 most fantastic, and all that is least sincere in his 
 writings ; it was the bitter source of disgrace and 
 failure in his life. It comes out worst of all in his 
 book On A nger. Aristotle had said that " Anger 
 was a good servant but a bad master ; " Plato had 
 recognised the immense value and importance of the 
 irascible element in the moral constitution. Even 
 Christian writers, in spite of Bishop Butler, have 
 often lost sight of this truth, and have forgotten 
 that to a noble nature " the hate of hate " and the 
 " scorn of scorn " are as indispensable as " the love 
 of love." But Seneca almost gets angry himself at 
 the very notion of the wise man being angry and 
 indignant even against moral evil. No, he must 
 not get angry, because it would disturb his sublime 
 calm ; and, if he allowed himself to be angry at 
 wrong-doing, he would have to be angry all day long. 
 This practical Epicureanism, this idle acquiescence in 
 the supposed incurability of evil, poisoned all Seneca's 
 career. " He had tutored himself," says Professot 
 

 /^P 
 
 
 fffivz 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 \C/ 33? 
 
 
 X^A~ 
 
 Maurice, " to endure personal 
 dulging in anger ; he had tutored himself to look 
 upon all moral evil without anger. If the doctrine is 
 sound and the discipline desirab.le, we must be con- 
 tent to take the whole result of them. If we will 
 not do that, we must resolve to hate oppression and. 
 wrong, even at the cost of philosophical composure? 
 But repose is not to be our aim : 
 
 " We have no right to bliss, 
 No title from the gods to welfare and repose." 
 
 It is one of the truths which seems to me most 
 needed in the modern religious world, that the type 
 of a Christian's virtue must be very miserable, and 
 ordinary, and ineffectual, if he does not feel his whole 
 soul burn within him with an almost implacable 
 moral indignation at the sight of cruelty and in- 
 justice, of Pharisaic faithlessness and social crimes. 
 
 I have thus freely criticised the radical defects of 
 Stoicism, so far as Seneca is its legitimate exponent ; 
 but I cannot consent to leave him with the language 
 of depreciation, and therefore here I will once more 
 endorse what an anonymous writer has said of him : 
 " An unconscious Christianity covers all his senti- 
 ments. If the fair fame of the man is sullied, the 
 aspiration to a higher life cannot be denied to the 
 philosopher; if the tinkling cymbal of a stilted 
 Stoicism sometimes sounds through the nobler music, 
 it still leaves the truer melody vibrating on the ear." 
 
 2. If Seneca sought for EASE, the grand aim of 
 Epictetus was FREEDOM, of Marcus Aurelius was 
 
 'I 
 1* 
 
332 CONCLUSION. 
 
 SELF-GOVERNMENT. This difference of aim charac- 
 terises their entire philosophy, though all three ol 
 them are rilled with precepts which arise from the 
 Stoical contempt of opinion, of fortune, and of death. 
 " Epictetus, the slave, with imperturbable calm, volun- 
 tarily strikes off the desire for all those blessings of 
 which fortune had already deprived him. Seneca, 
 who lived in the Court, fenced himself beforehand 
 against misfortune with the spirit of a man of the 
 world and the emphasis of a master of eloquence. 
 Marcus Aurelius, at the zenith of human power 
 having nothing to dread except his passions, and 
 finding nothing above him except immutable necessity, 
 surveys his own soul and meditates especially on 
 the eternal march of things. The one is the resigned 
 slave, who neither desires nor fears; the other, the 
 great lord, who has everything to lose ; the third, 
 finally, the emperor, who is dependent only on him- 
 self and upon God." 
 
 Of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius we shall have 
 very little to say by way of summary, for they show 
 no inconsistencies and very few of the imperfections 
 which characterise Seneca's ideal of the Stoic philo- 
 sophy. The " moral peddling," the pedagogic display, 
 the puerile ostentation, the antithetic brilliancy, which 
 we have had to point out in Seneca, are wanting 
 in them. The picture of the inner life, indeed, of 
 Seneca, his efforts, after self-discipline, his untiring 
 asceticism, his enthusiasm for all that he esteems holy 
 and of good report this picture, marred as it is by 
 rhetoric and vain self-conceit, yet "stands out in noble 
 
CONCLUSION. 333 
 
 contrast to the swinishness of the Campanian villas, 
 and is, in its complex entirety, very sad and affecting." 
 And yet we must admit, in the words of the same 
 writer, that when we go from Seneca to Epictetus and 
 Marcus Aurelius, "it is going from the florid to the 
 severe, from varied feeling to the impersonal sim- 
 plicity of the teacher, often from idle rhetoric to 
 devout earnestness." As far as it goes, the morality 
 of these two great Stoics is entirely noble and entirely 
 beautiful. If there be even in Epictetus some passing 
 and occasional touch of Stoic arrogance and Stoic 
 apathy ; if there be in Marcus Aurelius a depth and 
 intensity of sadness which shows how comparatively 
 powerless for comfort was a philosophy which glorified 
 suicide, which knew but little of immortality, and 
 which lost in vague Pantheism the unspeakable bless- 
 ing of realizing a personal relation to a personal God 
 and Father there is yet in both of them enough and 
 more than enough to show that in all ages and in all 
 countries they who have sought for God have found 
 Him, that they have attained to high principles of 
 thought and to high standards of action that they 
 have been enabled, even in the thick darkness, reso- 
 lutely to place their feet at least on the lowest rounds 
 of that ladder of sunbeams which winds up through 
 the darkness to the great Father of Lights." \ 
 
 And yet the very existence of such men is in itself 
 a significant comment upon the Scriptural decision 
 that " the world by wisdom knew not God." For 
 how many like them, out of all the records of 
 antiquity, is it possible for us to count ? Are there 
 
334 CONCLUSION. 
 
 five men in the whole circle of ancient history and 
 ancient literature to whom we could, without a 
 sense of incongruity, accord the title of "holy? 
 When we have mentioned Socrates, Epictetus, and 
 Marcus Aurelius, I hardly know of another. Just men 
 there were in multitudes men capable of high actions ; 
 men eminently worthy to be loved ; men, I doubt 
 not, who, when the children of the kingdom shall be 
 rejected, shall be gathered from the east and the west 
 with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into the kingdom of 
 heaven. Yes, /&.$/ men in multitudes ; but how many 
 righteous, how many holy ? Some, doubtless, whom 
 we do not know, whose names were never written, even 
 for a few years, on the records of mankind men and 
 women in unknown villages and humble homes, " the 
 faithful who were not famous." We do not doubt that 
 there were such but were they relatively numerous ? 
 If those who rose above the level of the multitude 
 if those whom some form of excellence, and often of 
 virtue, elevated into the reverence of their fellows 
 present to us so few examples of stainless life, can we 
 hope that a tolerable ideal of sanctity was attained by 
 any large proportion of the ordinary myriads ? Seeing 
 that the dangerous lot of the majority was cast amid 
 the weltering sea of popular depravity, can we ven- 
 ture to hope that many of them succeeded in reaching 
 some green island of purity, integrity, and calm ? We 
 can hardly think it ; and yet, in the dispensation of 
 the Kingdom of Heaven we see such a condition daily 
 realized. Not only do we see many of the eminent, but 
 also countless multitudes of the lowly and obscure, 
 
CONCLUSION. 335 
 
 hose common lives are, as it were, transfigured with 
 light from heaven. Unhappy, indeed, is he who has 
 ot known such men in person, and whose hopes and 
 abits have not caught some touch of radiance reflected 
 om the nobility and virtue of lives like these. The 
 lought has been well expressed by the author of Ecu 
 '{omo y and we may well ask with him, " If this be so, 
 as Christ failed, or can Christianity die ? " 
 No, it has not failed ; it cannot die ; for the saving 
 nowledge which it has imparted is the most inesti- 
 lable blessing which God has granted to our race. 
 Ve have watched philosophy in its loftiest flight, but 
 lat flight rose as far above the range of the Pagan 
 opulace as Ida or Olympus rises above the plain: 
 nd even the topmost crests of Ida and Olympus are 
 nmeasurably below the blue vault, the body of 
 eaven in its clearness, to which it has been granted 
 D some Christians to attain. As regards the multi- 
 ade, philosophy had no influence over the heart 
 nd character ; " it was sectarian, not universal ; the 
 iligion of the few, not of the many. It exercised 
 
 creative power over political or social life; it 
 :ood in no such relation to the past as the New 
 estament to the Old. Its best thoughts were but 
 tews and aspects of the truth ; there was no centre 
 round which they moved, no divine life by which 
 icy were impelled ; they seemed to vanish and flit 
 
 1 uncertain succession of light." But Christianity, 
 i the other hand, glowed with a steady and un- 
 avering brightness ; it not only swayed the hearts of 
 xlividuals by stirring them to their utmost depths, 
 
 2E 
 
336 CONCLUSION. 
 
 but it moulded the laws of nations, and regenerated 
 the whole condition of society. It gave to mankind a 
 fresh sanction in the word of Christ, a perfect example 
 in His life, a powerful motive in His love, an all 
 sufficient comfort in the life of immortality made sure 
 and certain to us by His Resurrection and Ascension. 
 But if without this sanction, and example, and 
 motive, and comfort the pagans could learn to do 
 His will, if, amid the gross darkness through which 
 glitters the degraded civilization of imperial Rome, an 
 Epictetus and an Aurelius could live blameless lives 
 in a cell and on a throne, and a Seneca could practise 
 simplicity and self-denial in the midst of luxury and 
 pride how much loftier should be both the zeal and 
 the attainments of us to whom God has spoken by His 
 Son ? What manner of men ought we to be ? If Tyre 
 and Sidon and Sodom shall rise in the judgment to 
 bear witness against Chorazin and Bethsaida, may 
 not the pure lives of these great Seekers after God add 
 a certain emphasis of condemnation to the vice, the 
 pettiness, the mammon- worship of many among us to 
 whom His love, His nature, His attributes have been 
 revealed with a clearness and fulness of knowledge for 
 which kings and philosophers have sought indeed 
 and sought earnestly, but sought in vain ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
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