Chapter XV: Book II: he gives his threefold division of the knowledge of nature into

astronomy, meteorology, and geography, according as the investigation is directed to phenomena in the heavens (_caelestia_), or between the heavens and earth (_sublimia_), or upon the earth (_terrestria_). He does not, however, treat these subjects equally or in order, as a glance at the contents of the different books will prove. Indeed, the order of these books is much disputed.[664] It is possible that Seneca never finally settled their succession; for the work may have been ultimately issued by Lucilius, to whom it was dedicated. The time of composition can be determined within limits. Book III shows that it was the work of the author’s old age after his retirement in 62, and the opening of Book VI records the earthquake at Pompeii in February of 63.

The main themes are distributed among the books thus: I, Fire (meteors, rainbow, mock sun, etc.); II, Air (Thunder and Lightning); III, Water in various forms; IV, The rise of the Nile and (after a sudden break) snow, hail, and rain; V, Wind and atmospheric movement; VI, Earthquakes; VII, Comets.

The historical importance of the work is considerable. Here Seneca is in the succession to the Augustan Sextii, who had some reputation for scientific inquiry. Their influence and that of the “pneumatic” physicians, who took a Stoic view of the mechanism of physiology, contributed to keep physical speculation alive in the first century. Science, however, was still too much a literary manipulation of material bequeathed by predecessors to facilitate real advance. This in the main applies to the compiler of the _Naturales Quaestiones_. Although he undoubtedly developed germs of independence (_e.g._ in ridiculing the divination with which he could not irrevocably break), he is not possessed by his subject, as the Epicurean poet Lucretius was. For Western Europe, in default of direct access to Aristotle, the work remained during the Middle Ages the prevalent authority on cosmology; but scientific, according to modern standards, it certainly is not. The absence of the exact equipment nowadays available rendered nice experiment impossible, and with the best will in the world the observer was exposed to all the risks attendant on the inaccuracy of sense-perception. To the utmost of his ability, nevertheless, Seneca sought to secure trustworthy data; _e.g._ with respect to a comet (VII. ii.); he was a searcher after causes, and stated fairly the points of conflicting theories; eclectic by preference, he even rejected the explanations of his own Stoic school when he deemed them incorrect; and he realized that generations of workers might be needed to reach truth in complex subjects (VII. xxv.). On the other hand, he never learned to divorce ethics from physics, and consequently some of the most interesting parts of the _Naturales Quaestiones_ are his unscientific digressions. Thus, lightning suggests other presages and leads to discussions on fate and religion in Book II. Closing the same book, he recognizes that some would rather be delivered from the fear of lightning than know its origin, and, conceding that a moral should attach to every study, he proceeds to reason against the dread of death. Again, the chafing of the sea, he believes, indicates that Nature will ultimately inundate the world to make a new world. Lucilius is admonished at the beginning of Book IV that he must not be arrogant, although governor of Sicily; for the island is “a province, not an empire”; and the topic of snow occasions one of his tirades against the despicable luxury of effeminate Romans who would bathe in it or use ice to cool their thirst. In such passages the physicist has reverted to the moral philosopher.

Much labour has been spent in arguing that the 124 _Epistles to Lucilius_ were not real letters. In the last resort, the question is hardly a vital one; for supposing the form were proved to be fictitious, Seneca must at least have meant the collection to be taken for a budget of correspondence despatched by him to his friend, because he introduces references to letters received.[665] Several scholars[666] have followed Lipsius in his denial of the reality of the correspondence; but it is more satisfactory to accept the epistles as representing a real correspondence subjected to the author’s editorial suppression of the regular opening or closing phrases, of very intimate passages, and of certain personal names. They were written in A.D. 63 and 64, and sent, as written, to Lucilius. At different points in the collection a subject is often reopened, and there are inconsistencies in thought, so that no logical order is to be looked for, although it is possible to trace certain chronological groups[667] according to Seneca’s change of reading or residence. Thus, the model of Epicurus’s letters to Idomeneus especially pervades the first twenty-nine letters, most of which close with an Epicurean maxim sent to Lucilius under some such jocular labels as “a little gift” (_munusculum_), “a windfall” (_lucellum_) or “toll” (_portorium_). Similarly, we note the effect of his concurrent study of Posidonius in many letters after No. 78. About forty letters (Nos. 49-87) seem to have been composed in Campania, and the subsequent letters in Rome or the neighbourhood. Some are brief notes: others treatises many pages long. Seneca remarks on the difference between Cicero’s epistolary notes[668] about current politics and his own letters discussing moral and intellectual problems. Promising Lucilius a literary immortality[669] through the publication of the correspondence, he keeps his eye fixed on posterity as firmly as ever the younger Pliny or Madame de Sévigné did.

The variety of interest is great, when it is remembered that the prevailing object is the consideration of philosophical points, and that, therefore, many personal details were intentionally excluded. Nothing stands out more, throughout a perusal, than Seneca’s faith in the eternal and inestimable value of philosophy, for which everything should be sacrificed. Philosophy is the guide of life (xvi.) and its joy (xxiii.): more vital than any physical exercise, it promotes the health of the mind (xv.), guarantees a pleasant old age (xii.), and teaches how to face death (a recurrent topic): it offers the glory of literary immortality (xxi.), and deserves to be made a man’s life-work (lxxii.). Hunger and poverty must be endured cheerfully in the quest after wisdom (xvii.), and social pleasures rigidly renounced to win the needful seclusion (_recede in te ipse quantum potes_, vii. 8). Such seclusion involves hard mental toil, not for oneself but for posterity (viii.), to increase the store of human wisdom. Philosophy must be studied earnestly in Stoic writings as a whole, not in merely convenient anthologies (_flosculi_, xxxiii.); for Stoics decline to practise window-dressing (_ocliferia_: “We don’t trick a purchaser, so that, when he has entered the shop, he’ll find nothing beyond what was hung up in front,” xxxiii. 3). The time-honoured traditions of philosophy stamp it as a gradual achievement of civilization (xc.). It is no self-regarding morality, but has duties to discharge—the reclaiming of backsliders (xxv.) and help for the wretched (xlviii.). Genuine philosophy is in touch with human kind (v.), despite the risk of debasement from mixing with the mob (vii.): truly democratic, it is no respecter of pedigrees (_stemma non inspicit_, xliv. 1), and it is an occupation of the heart, not a pose marked by outward peculiarities (v.).

His counsels are couched in terms of winning modesty. He is not perfect, he confesses (xxvii.); if he ventures to prescribe remedies, he is in the same infirmary (_ualitudinario_, xxvii. 1) talking with other moral invalids about common ailments of the soul and their cure. This note of sympathy with frailty in utter forgetfulness of dogmatic Stoicism is one of the most likeable traits in Seneca: it increases his hold over us and his power of doing us good. So he preached abstinence (xviii.) more effectively than many a temperance bigot; recommended the right behaviour for travel (_i.e._ learn to be at home everywhere as a citizen of the world, xxviii. 4); and pleaded the duty of kindness to slaves (“_slaves?_—nay, our humble friends: _slaves?_—nay, our fellow-slaves, for the real slavery is that of the mind, and no slavery is baser than self-imposed slavery in high rank,” xlvii. 1). He was too sensible to be misled by Stoic paradoxes about the self-sufficing sage who had no need of a friend (ix. and cix.): there had to be a _uia media_ between contamination amidst the madding crowd (vii.) and deterioration in solitude: alone with oneself, he reminds us, one might be in bad company (x.). Thus he writes:

When friendship is made, one must trust; before it is made,
one must judge. There is a topsy-turvy confusion in your folk
who, in disobedience to the rule of Theophrastus, judge one
after making a friend of him instead of making him their friend
after judging him. Ponder long whether a given person is to be
admitted to your friendship: when you have decided that he is
to be so, welcome him with all your heart. Converse with him as
boldly as with yourself (iii. 2).

The human appeal of the letters is intensified by the light thrown on contemporary life. They place before us the loathsome butchery at gladiatorial shows (vii.), the seductions of a seaside resort (li.), the arrival of mailboats from Alexandria (lxxvii.), the treatment of runaway slaves (cvii.), the pleasure of travelling light in contrast to the overpowering magnificence of some travellers (lxxxvii.). No less enlivening are personal details which bring the author nearer to us—even his asthma (liv.) and other ailments (lxxviii.), depressing attacks of fever, and his decision to be careful out of consideration for his wife’s solicitous feelings (civ.), sea-sickness on a trip in the Bay of Naples (liii.), an outing in a litter (lv.), trying experiences during a day of mud and dust in a tunnel near Naples (lvii.), lodgings over a noisy public bath (lvi.), feelings on the death of a friend (lxxvii. and lxiii., 1 and 4, “at a friend’s loss the eyes should be neither dry nor streaming ... let us see to it that the recollection of our lost ones is a pleasant one”), attendance at philosophy lectures when old (lxxvi.), thoughts suggested by a wrestling-school or Scipio’s villa (lxxxvi.). Here the work on Italian fields is put before us (“It’s late June ... this very day I noticed peasants harvesting beans and sowing millet,” lxxxvi. 16); and another letter gives Seneca’s own experiences in vine-grafting (cxii.). Elsewhere we find reminiscences of his teachers with entertaining anecdotes (cviii.), or a hint to Lucilius that he must climb Aetna (lxxix.). His attitude to the government of the day appears in exhortations to practise circumspection and avoid offence (xiv.). It is noteworthy that he says nothing to indicate whether he looked back with satisfaction upon his public life. No doubt, his own tastes preferred the serene detachment of an onlooker portrayed in the following passage:

You dun me for more frequent letters: let’s compare
accounts—you’ll not be solvent! The bargain, of course, was
that _you_ were to start—_you_ were to write, I was to write
back. But I’m not going to make difficulties: I know you’re
safe for credit, and so I’ll pay in advance, and not do as that
master of style, Cicero, tells Atticus to do—write anything
that rises to his lips, even if he has got no news. I can never
be at a loss for matter, though I skip all the details that
fill Cicero’s letters—what candidate is in difficulties; who
is fighting with other people’s backing, who with his own;
who is standing for the consulship in reliance on Caesar or
on Pompey or on a money-chest; what a skin-flint Caecilius
is, out of whom his own relations can’t shift a coin under
twelve per cent. No, it’s better to handle one’s own troubles
than other folk’s, better to examine oneself to see in how
many affairs one is a candidate, and yet decline to vote.
This, my dear Lucilius, is the noble line—the line that means
tranquillity and freedom—to compete for nothing, and entirely
to give the elections of fortune the go-by. How great do you
take the pleasure to be when the assembly of the tribes has
been summoned, when the candidates are on tenterhooks within
their respective quarters, when one is offering money, another
acting through an agent, another smearing with kisses the hands
of folk to whom he’ll refuse his handshake after election, when
all are waiting in dumb amazement for the crier’s voice—how
great the pleasure to stand at one’s ease, a spectator of that
Vanity Fair without either buying or selling anything?[670]

The discussions frequently bear, like St. Paul’s epistles, the mark of the Stoic diatribe. Objections are supposed to be raised (_inquis_) by Lucilius or by an imaginary opponent to be scrutinized and refuted. And there is something Bionean in sharp sarcasms recalling those of the _Apocolocyntosis_. The philosopher makes great game of the futile queries raised by pedantic teachers (lxxxviii. 7-8 and 37); of brainless pleasure-seekers in Rome, the human “antipodes” who turn night into day (cxxii.); of an outrageously vulgar parvenu freedman who purchased highly educated slaves to enable him to parade learning by proxy (xxvii.); of a philosophical lecturer’s rapid delivery, which was too like the glibness of a cheap-jack (xl. 3, _istam uim dicendi rapidam atque abundantem aptiorem esse circulanti quam agenti rem magnam ac seriam docenti_); or of luxurious baths hot enough to parboil a condemned criminal (lxxxvi. 10).

The remarks on style in various letters are instructive, as coming from one whose own style has provoked severe criticism in ancient and modern times. Letter 84 discusses the assimilation of reading, and states a theory of style in the making: bee-like we should gather widely, but the combined products must finally be made our own. In Letter 100, writing for the soul is contrasted with writing for the ear, and Seneca distinguishes the prose of Fabianus with the artificially inverted prose of the day. Letter 114 examines decadence in style, which is explicable on the hypothesis that it is a mirror of morals. Seneca’s citations here illustrate the loose and undisciplined compositions which, he argues, reflected the character of Maecenas. With the spread of luxury the affected manner in literature keeps pace, and eccentricity of expression captures the cultivated public as well as the common herd. There is no absolute standard: fashion sways style. While some ape the diction of earlier generations, others cannot abide the old-fashioned; and Seneca points the distinctions between the long rhythmic sentences of Cicero and the terse abruptness of Sallust. In the next letter, 115, he warns Lucilius not to be over-anxious to attain to a fine style: matter is more than manner—the question should be “what?” not “how?” Then, anticipating the famous _Le style est de l’homme même_, he declares that style is the yield of a man’s mind (_oratio cultus animi est_).

This raises the question of Seneca’s own prose. The stress laid on the “what,” rather than the “how,” goes some way, though not all the way, towards explaining why he wrote, as many would have it, so badly. Quintilian, the champion of a phase of restored Ciceronianism in the next generation, may be taken to speak for the hostile critics. In a well-known passage[671] he examines Seneca’s merits and demerits. In Quintilian’s eyes Seneca’s style was spoilt by all sorts of blemishes, and he felt it his duty to point his students to stricter standards of taste. Tacitus afterwards recorded Seneca’s power of appealing to his contemporaries.[672] This very attractiveness Quintilian recognized, but feared: “he charmed because of his faults only” (_placebat propter sola uitia_). Conceding Seneca’s ready and rich intellect, his learning and versatility, brilliant _sententiae_ and moral value, he at the same time indicates his weaknesses—liability to be misled by those who “devilled” for him in scientific inquiries (_aliquando ab his quibus inquirenda quaedam mandabat deceptus est_); want of strict accuracy in philosophy; and a style all the more pernicious because full of fascinating faults (_eo perniciosissima, quod abundant dulcibus uitiis_). Yet Quintilian considers that, in spite of wilful mannerisms, Seneca is safe reading for those of maturely trained judgement, for he allows there is much in him to approve and to admire. Next century, when an archaising movement had set in, Fronto condemns his style more sweepingly for its “fever-producing plums” (_febriculosis prunuleis_), while Gellius records some readers’ dislike for his glib vulgarity as well as other alleged defects, and censures Seneca for having, in the now lost twenty-second book of the _Epistles_, dared to pass unfavourable criticisms on Ennius, Cicero and Virgil.

It is clear that a lover of Cicero’s polished amplitude will not feel drawn to the Senecan sentence which, by comparison, must appear offhand, and, despite frequent use of pointed balance, to a large extent formless. In order that a sententious thought might go home impressively and might be easily recalled and quoted, a premium was set upon its smart and brief formulation. The literary fashion was everything by fits and starts and nothing long; for the copious rounded periods of the older oratory had for the time lost their power of attraction. So eloquence no longer flowed in a full broad stream, but glittered iridescent like intermittent jets shot into sunlight from a cleverly contrived fountain. Seneca himself writes[673] that he would like his _Letters to Lucilius_ to be as natural in tone as if he were chatting with his friend seated or walking at his side; and so colloquial words and phrases do not surprise us. Indeed they fit the easygoing argument, as homeliness fits some sermons. But Seneca adheres to this simple model no more rigidly than Wordsworth to his theory of “a selection of the language really spoken by men.” Seneca is far from avoiding the artificial; and his style, like his character, has complexities and inconsistencies. It is intelligible, then, that critics should distinguish good and bad qualities in his composition, but perhaps it is more profitable to ask whether, with his style, he fulfilled his main object in writing. He had to face the fresh problem of composing readable tracts on ethical questions mainly Stoic: so, as an experimenter and innovator, he was sure to depart from traditional lines. Yet sometimes it looks as if he were censured for not being another Cicero. In literature, however, there are many mansions. The opening for Seneca was to create the Latin philosophical essay; and here he is, on the whole, a success.

To this success his power of awakening interest greatly contributed; for he is not a dull writer. He secures varied effects by neglecting logical method, so that he becomes pleasantly discursive; he diversifies his science with rhetorical descriptions; he illuminates a point with wonderful fertility in examples; and he holds the attention by his lively manner in arguing a question. Homeliness of expression alternates with elevation of thought. It is a personal and unmistakeable style, crowded with those disconnected, jerky, antithetic and epigrammatic sentences which made Macaulay say: “to read him straightforward is like dining on nothing but anchovy sauce.” After all, those same forcible and quotable sentences have the merit of leaving Seneca’s position clear. Now, the virtue of an essay, in the true and original sense, lies largely in this, that, while it may not exhaust a subject, it must, if a good essay, convey a lucid impression. The qualities here noted are parallel to those in the writings of Montaigne and Bacon, and constitute Seneca one of the most admirable essayists in the world.

Everywhere we meet with such terse sayings as these:[674] “A life is not incomplete, if it is honourable”; “it is not an important matter to live—it is important to die honourably, wisely, courageously”; “as a play, so is life—it matters not how long, but how good the acting is”; “success is a restless thing ... it intoxicates in more ways than one” (_res est inquieta felicitas ... mouet cerebrum non uno genere_); “a humiliating and grotesque sight is an old man at his A B C” (_turpis et ridicula res est elementarius senex_); “old age is an ailment for which there’s no cure” (_senectus insanabilis morbus est_). There are paradoxes like “some people have stopped living before they could start” (_quidam ante uiuere desierunt quam inciperent_); or balanced clauses, “in a multitude of books is distraction—so, as you can’t read all you’ve got, it’s enough to have as much as you can read”; or pieces of workaday wisdom, “what’s the good of meeting one’s trouble halfway? You’ll have the trouble fast enough when it comes” (_quid iuuat dolori suo occurrere? satis cito dolebis cum uenerit_), or “if you don’t want a man to lose his head in a crisis, you should give him practice beforehand.”[675]

Superabundant terseness of this sort leaves the reader dazzled and fatigued. Seneca’s is a prose which produces an effect analogous to that of his nephew Lucan’s hectic verse.

His language,[676] as we might expect, is an amalgam of the literary and the vulgar. On the one hand, there is the contribution of rhetoric and learning—poetic words, archaisms, philosophical terms, Hellenisms; on the other hand, the contribution of spoken Latin. A good deal of his vocabulary he shares, not with the more literary authors, but with Varro, Columella and the elder Pliny. From trade come such words as _botularius_ (“sausage-maker”) and _libitinarius_ (“undertaker”); and from agriculture, such as _folliculus_ (“pod”) and _retorridus_ (“parched up”). There are colloquial words like _pilicrepus_ (“ball-player,” found in inscriptions), _scordalus_ (“brawler,” in elder Seneca and Petronius), and diminutives like _centunculus_ (“a little patch”). There are also rare words, not known before Seneca, like _collatrare_ (“yelp at”) and _perpessicius_ (“much enduring”). To other words he gives a new meaning.

Traces of Seneca’s influence are found in Juvenal and Tacitus; and early Christian writers[677] like Tertullian, Lactantius and Jerome were attracted by the spirit and words of one who was for long believed to have corresponded with St. Paul. His prose style is definitely echoed in Tertullian’s _Apologeticum_; for its peroration, fiercely triumphant in its eulogy upon martyrdom, contains antitheses, exclamations, historical instances and short crisp utterances which ring as if they might have come from a converted Seneca.

If only as the exponent of Latin Stoicism, Seneca deserves lasting fame. The spirit of the later Stoicism can be gathered from his Latin essays and epistles, and in Greek from the _Discourses of Epictetus_ recorded by Arrian and from the _Meditations_ composed by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. In the eyes of all three, the Stoic mode of thought guarantees healing for the wounds of life. But internal peace can be attained only by hard-won victories over self and over circumstance, by persevering progress towards virtue—a progress which, Seneca wisely insists, is in itself virtue—by trust in Providence, by acceptance of the Divine Will, by harmonizing oneself with Nature. The precept of Epictetus, “endure and abjure” (ἀνέχου καὶ ἀπέχου), expresses much of this ascetic faith. The tranquillity which the stricter Stoics of Greece would confine to the perfect sage is, in the more sensible Roman spirit, claimed by Seneca for him also who is advancing and has made some headway. It is a hard fight to advance, he says, but “you are sworn to make yourself a good man”[678] and the very striving is virtue.[679] This is typical of the Roman rejection of the more pedantic early Stoicism. In Seneca the system has become an enlightened and broadened one, too practical to mistake paradoxes for genuine intellectual or moral sustenance. So too Seneca’s breadth of sympathy indicates the widening of the moral ideal; for cosmopolitanism has transcended the old opposition between Greek and barbarian. The claims of others are infinitely heightened, when in each fellow-man there is recognized, notwithstanding imperfections, some spark of an all-pervading divine essence. Forbearance, kindliness and true humanity are the fruits of such a creed: so out of a once rigid and unbending system disdainful of feeling, intolerant of human frailty, was evolved the Neo-Stoicism which could not but be moved by the sorrows and follies of the world, and could not look upon a distressed gladiator or a sick slave without seeing a kinsman deserving commiseration. It was a great gain for the world that at Rome the strength of Stoicism had grown less harsh, its exaltation less arrogant, its integrity less priggish, its calm less unfeeling.

At first it is not unnatural that in the restrained and self-confident Stoic philosophy a reader might seem to encounter a remote and even repellent quality as of a system too unreal to be literally practical. Yet in fact this is a mistake. The Roman Stoicism of the first century was no mere theoretic elaboration: it was a faith which offered genuine consolation amidst desperate afflictions. It could confer upon a believer the victory in defiance of the most malignant arrows of fortune. In such a faith some men could steel themselves, for the sake of the state, to help the work of government in trying times, and some could die triumphant over human injustice. History bears the clearest testimony to the inspiring vitality of the creed; and it is from this standpoint that one can best observe the human side of Seneca. Behind his preaching of Stoic doctrine there worked a powerful earnestness which goes far to justify the iteration of counsels throughout the massive corpus of his treatises and letters.

The very seriousness of this philosophy, then, related it to life: it is in part the outcome of actual and often dangerous experience in dark times. It is a seriousness which makes the lighter human touches rarer and more precious. No doubt the sage cannot descend so easily to earth from an Olympian superiority as the ordinary _littérateur_ who may be content to view mankind from the plain rather than from the heights; and one realizes that is was easier for Cicero and Pliny to unbend in their _Letters_ than for Seneca in his. It is, then, all the more to the credit of Seneca’s good sense, as it certainly adds to his interest, that, though the _Letters_ primarily subserve the purpose of permanent ethical instruction, he is by no means wanting in “small talk” and humour. The same breadth of mind that saved him from being a rigid dogmatist taught him to discover material for comment everywhere—vegetarianism, study in rowdy surroundings, slops for an invalid, the invasion of a dining-room by kitchen appliances to keep dainties hot.[680] He can make fun of and, at the same time, defend the Stoic annihilation of emotion: with a touch of mischief he reports the young man’s question to Panaetius, “Should the good Stoic fall in love?”[681] Never interested in logic, he jests at syllogisms more than once:[682] they are not applicable, he insists, to the supreme question of human good and human conduct: “such subtleties make savants rather than saints” (_non faciunt bonos sed doctos_). A similarly jocular vein at the expense of pedants runs through his letter on virtues viewed as _animalia_,[683] where he leads the Stoic argument by a _reductio ad absurdum_ to the conclusion that to make a wise speech in the senate is an “animal.” Referring to his sea-sickness, he remarks facetiously that if he had regularly to be put ashore, as he was after one brief trip on the Bay of Naples, then a voyage anywhere would take him twice as long as Ulysses’s wanderings lasted, and with mock seriousness he affects to think that we owe the elaborate _Odyssey_ ultimately to the hero’s _mal de mer_.[684] So, too, he drops the philosophic mantle to give us vivid pictures like that of his picnic with a friend,[685] or a tissue of exaggerations in satirizing the luxury of the day: “We have reached such a pitch of luxury that we decline to tread on anything but precious stones” (_eo deliciarum peruenimus ut nisi gemmas calcare nolimus_, lxxxvi. 7).

Such ordinary human notes strengthen Seneca’s power over us when we turn to his grave and elevated thought. He does not work out systematically for us the whole body of the Stoic doctrines; but few can rise after reading in his books without feeling the better for it. A tonic bracing of the spirit comes from the serene forbearance advocated in the _De Ira_; the uncalculating generosity so estimably pervading the _De Beneficiis_; the princely, if Stoically guarded, clemency recommended in the _De Clementia_; the widely sympathetic understanding of human nature evident in the _Letters_; the virtuous conquest of desire proclaimed as the secret of bliss in _The Happy Life_; and the complete mastery of the soul indispensable for _The Constancy of the Wise Man_ or for _The Tranquillity of the Mind_. The closing words of his last letter to Lucilius show the true Stoic independence of worldly standards:

I shall give you in brief a rule whereby to measure yourself,
whereby to gauge your development: in that day you will come to
your own, when you realize that the successful are of all men
most miserable. Good-bye.

MISCELLANEOUS LEARNING

After the study of achievement so manysided as Seneca’s in philosophy, oratory and natural science (apart from his contribution to satire and drama), a brief sketch of contemporary learning is appropriate. In history the Neronian period did not shine. The impressions of Domitius Corbulo in Asia, of C. Suetonius Paulinus in Mauretania, of Ti. Claudius Balbillus in Egypt, and of L. Antistius Vetus in Germany made little mark. Agrippina, the emperor’s mother, composed memoirs which the elder Pliny and Tacitus quote. Works by jurists were not directly literary; but they were so frequently influential on Roman thought and its formulation that it is right to record the names of the younger Nerva, father of the future emperor; Proculus from whom the “Proculians” took their name, and, among their “Sabinian” rivals, C. Cassius Longinus. Much philosophy continued to be written in Greek, as was done by Musonius Rufus and by Cornutus, who also was the author of works on grammar and rhetoric. But Latin was employed for philosophical purposes not only by Seneca but by Papirius Fabianus and Celsus. Stoicism, whether in formal exposition or in the actual lives of its professors, became one of the mighty intellectual and moral forces of the time. The independence of spirit, too, which the system fostered made its followers suspect: some of their tenets might readily be misconstrued as those of a political opposition, while a defiantly courageous manner of dying gave to many victims of an emperor’s cruelty a semi-religious halo of martyrdom. Among such victims were Barea Soranus, and Paetus Thrasea of Patavium, author of a panegyric upon the younger Cato which Plutarch used. Thrasea’s ruin in A.D. 66 involved his son-in-law Helvidius Priscus in banishment; but Helvidius returned when Galba had succeeded Nero, impeached twice unsuccessfully his father-in-law’s accuser, and brought upon himself a second exile under Vespasian.

It was to Nero that Caesius Bassus dedicated his metrical treatise: he may, as mentioned elsewhere, be identical with Persius’s poet-friend. Scholarship was also represented by Q. Asconius Pedianus (A.D. 3-88) and M. Valerius Probus of Berytus. The former proved himself a thorough investigator into the subject-matter and meaning of classical writers in his _Liber contra obtrectatores Vergilii_ and his commentaries upon Cicero’s speeches. We possess, in impaired form, his commentaries on five speeches.[686] One most valuable portion is his introduction to the _Pro Milone_. On Cicero’s Verrine orations notes of a very different character, as superficial as the genuine Asconius is satisfying and as grammatical as he is historical, have come down along with the other comments, but are usually referred to a “Pseudo-Asconius” of the fifth century. The eminent grammarian Valerius Probus[687] belongs to the Neronian period, though he outlived it by many years.[688] His provincial education had brought him under the influence of older Latin books, and as a teacher in Rome he retained that interest in the style of the past which guaranteed linguistic equipment for his editions of Latin authors. He left a miscellany of notes upon archaic Latin;[689] and Gellius, who often cites him, shows that he delivered lectures to his pupils on the subject. He elucidated, with critical notes, Terence, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace and Persius.

The oratory of the day recalls the names of the Stoic speakers in the Senate, Paetus Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus. Eprius Marcellus made himself notorious as a _delator_; the rhetorician Julius Africanus we shall find praised by Quintilian[690] and coupled with Domitius Afer; Galerius Trachalus had his talents used by the Emperor Otho in the composition of speeches.[691] Fabricius Veiento, who was accused in A.D. 62 for his satiric codicils directed against senators and priests, was banished by Nero, and had his books burned, but was in Rome again practising delation under Domitian. Among the professors of rhetoric were Clodius Quirinalis from Arelate (Arles); Antonius Liberalis who maintained a feud with Palaemon; and Verginius Flavus, the eminent teacher, who had Persius for a pupil.[692]