tises, and therefore impossible to remember more of it than fine phrases and passages; and a conscientious editor who undertakes to trace the connection of the whole is soon reduced to suspect his MSS. Apart from this want of lucid order, the treatise on Anger is easy reading. Every word and syllable is kept in place; there is nothing tumid or rough or tedious; the writing seems to be pointed only that it may be entertaining and clear; there is no effort to be sublime or startling or impressive.

But

As was natural, considering his delicate health and his education, Seneca was in early life a ladies' man, visiting matrons of rank very much as the better kind of French abbé did in the seventeenth century. A Roman of rank who took an interest in his character kept a philosopher, as in later times serious nobles kept chaplains; but, as it was not etiquette for Roman ladies to study, they were dependent upon philosophical friends. An ambitious man might hope to make his way by feminine protection; a kind-hearted man might feel he was doing good by introducing a little method among the fine feelings of high-born, high-souled, uninstructed women. His success was all the easier because society was still very much divided by sex, and a man who mixed in ladies' society found himself in the enviable situation of a solitary phoenix. his position had its temptations and dangers. When a Roman lady compromised herself, she commonly compromised all her intimates. Julia, the daughter of Germanicus, was accused of adultery and banished, and Seneca was banished to Corsica too. According to Suetonius, he was supposed to have been one of her paramours; according to others, he was supposed to have known of her intrigues and to have aided them; and in the minds of Messalina and Claudius the two charges would hardly be distinguished. He remained in exile for eight years, and was then recalled by the influence of Agrippina to superintend the education of Nero. After the death of Claudius, he and Burrus, the prætorian prefect, governed the Roman empire for five years. As neither had any independent authority, it is not surprising that their government was studiously popular, and it was so intelligent that it was quoted as a model long after.

It was necessary to humor Nero, not only in his private vices, but in his family crimes. Seneca composed the speech in which Nero apologized for the death of his mother, as we learn from the quotation' of the opening sentence in which he assured the senate that he could not yet believe or rejoice in his safety. It is possible that, if Nero had continued to respect the senate, senatorian historians might have used Agrippina's memoirs with less confidence, and have entertained the question whether, when she found it impossible to reign in her son's name, she did not pass into a formidable conspirator against his authority and even his safety. Seneca was certainly a less disinterested judge of the question than Tacitus or Suetonius, or the authors of the pasquinades which compared Nero to the matricides of Greek tragedy; on the other hand, he was much better informed. It is only fair to his memory to remember that, if Agrippina was really dangerous, the safest and easiest precaution was to put her to death. It is easier to prove that no perfectly virtuous man in Seneca's situation would have condescended to be an accomplice in a perfidious matricide, than to guess what course a perfectly virtuous minister ought to have recommended to an excitable boy whose mother-a clever, energetic woman, still in the prime of life-was conspiring against him.

Seneca was always a comparatively wealthy man: when Nero came to the throne his wealth rapidly became enormous. Nero himself gave him large sums, and every one who wished to do business with him doubtless was ready with presents. Even if Seneca had been so scrupulous as to refuse these, he would not think of refusing legacies. He appears also to have had investments in Egypt, which would become much more profitable when he was in power. When he retired, we find that he had put them on a footing which protected him against all fluctuations of profit and loss. Even if he made more moderate use of his opportunities of enriching himself than other ministers, he would still have enriched himself faster; for he clung for a long time to simplicity of food and dress, and even furniture, and these things were the largest 1 Quinctilian, iii. 5.

items of the expenditure of most of the rich. Seneca had admirable villas and gardens; we even hear that he had a set of five hundred dinner-tables, all mounted on ivory-which was not an excessive number, as he probably entertained his clients by hundreds in his gardens. He was one of the last prominent Romans who gave away considerable sums to his dependants when in difficulties; but he had large sums out at interest in all the provinces, including Britain, and when he desired to retire he provoked a rebellion there by calling in all his investments at once. Some time before his death, he vainly endeavored to propitiate Nero by resigning all his property, which Nero judiciously refused to accept. But when information came of a mysterious message to Piso,' although Seneca would have had a perfectly good defence if he could have had a fair trial, it is not surprising that Nero believed the evidence, and concluded that Seneca was at least privy to the conspiracy of which he was the latest victim. He died in character, with a great deal of philosophical eloquence, and left a high, though not an uncontested, reputation behind him.

The real significance of his career is that he brought declamation into literature, and that he brought philosophy into literature too, at a time when literature was languishing for the want of something new. Cicero's philosophical treatises, though they often have more substance than Seneca's, have too much the appearance of school-books, as if philosophy required a great deal of introduction to Roman society. Seneca always has the air of discussing a familiar matter of practical concern. He always appears to have something to say which wants saying; and this was a great advantage at a time when literature practically consisted of three thingsorations, which were a great deal too pretentious for the cases tried; histories, which dealt with events too recent for impartiality, and were deficient even in the attraction of novelty; and poetry, which was mainly a series of variations upon too familiar themes. The great intellectual interest of

1 Seneca had sent word to Piso that it was better they should not meet so often, but that Piso's safety was the guarantee of his own.

the day had been supplied by declamations on imaginary subjects. It was a great change to have declamations on general and permanent interests; and the public, used to satisfy themselves for a time with a display of ingenuity about nothing, were reasonably fascinated with a display of ingenuity on the regulation of the temper. Seneca's weak health was probably an advantage to him in two ways: it forced him to write instead of speaking, and it threw him forcibly upon the inner life. It is important to notice throughout that his philosophy deals with temper, and not with conduct, or only with conduct so far as it is connected with temper. There are two treatises, on Anger and on Benefits, which refer more or less to behavior; the first is the expression of his disgust at the feverish tyranny of Caligula; the second is a theory of how he and Nero ought to exercise their patronage. There is a treatise on Clemency, which is meant to encourage Nero in his sentimental dislike to inflicting extreme penalties. But the main current of Seneca's teaching flows elsewhere, especially in its latest form. The letters to Lucilius, which are really a philosophical diary, turn upon cheerfulness and fearlessness and self-possession, and say nothing about external duties. It is remarkable that Seneca, as soon as he wishes himself to withdraw from power, begins a vigorous though intermittent polemic against the Stoical doctrine that the wise man will take part in the government of the state. He observes that the celebrated Stoical sages, Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and the rest, remained private teachers all their lives; and therefore, if they were consistent, must have intended the precept to take part in the common weal in some other sense, or have attached some condition or other as to its performance. Either they abstained from public affairs because they had not sufficient station to make their virtue and wisdom of use to their fellow-citizens, and then their example would justify any philosopher who thought he was precluded by circumstances from public life; or they considered that they did their part of the public service by forming the characters of those who would be called to undertake it in their own persons; or they thought chiefly of the great com

monwealth of the universe, and in practising and teaching virtue they were certainly active citizens of this. Such versatility in explaining away one of the most distinctive tenets of Stoicism prepares us to find that Seneca was not a very strict Stoic. He wishes to be the disciple of truth, and not of men: he professes to think it desirable that there should be different schools of philosophy to suit different temperaments, and to prefer Stoicism for himself, as the manliest; because all schools practically recommended very much the same course of behavior, while the Stoics professed most confidence in the sufficiency of their recommendations. No philosophy undertook to guarantee its disciples against the undesirable accidents of life; but Stoicism undertook to prove that they were not real evils, and the conviction might be bracing or consoling when they could not be honorably avoided. Not that Seneca asserts the absolute indifference of prosperity and adversity; in his early writings he dwells by choice on the glory which is only to be won by difficult heroism, on the need that every courageous nature will feel to prove its strength, on the glory and gladness of God in beholding of what the lesser spirits which have communion with his are capable. It is quite of a piece with the rest of the discussion of such subjects in Seneca that he expects his readers to be edified by the example of gladiators who were disappointed if kept long without a chance of being killed.

Later on, in the letters to Lucilius and the essay 'De Otio Sapientis,' there is another feeling: the wise man will always rejoice in any call to exercise his virtue; but there are calls of different kinds, and it is permissible to prefer a call to the virtue which is least laborious; for in prosperity virtue is shown by self-control, which is easier than the efforts which are required in adversity. This casuistry reminds us of the better aspects of the casuistry which Pascal criticised without much study, with a little carelessness of the facts of an old and complex society. In such a society it is difficult to get many people capable of large practical success to move far from the conventional standard of action: if so, it is something gained to get them to conform to it in a higher than the conventional