Lucius Annaeus Seneca, surnamed the Philosopher to distinguish him from his father the Rhetorician, was born in Corduba,^[1] in Spain, about 4 B. C.—authorities differ by several years as to the precise date. When quite young he was brought to Rome by his father. He devoted himself with great zeal and brilliant success to rhetorical and philosophical studies. In the reign of Claudius he attained the office of quaestor and subsequently rose to the rank of senator. In the year 41 he was banished to the island of Corsica on a charge that is admitted to have been false, but the nature of which is not clearly understood.

In this barren and inhospitable island he was compelled to remain eight years. He was then recalled to Rome and entrusted with the education of the young Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who afterwards became emperor of Rome, and notorious as the monster Nero. For five years after his accession to the principate, the young emperor treated his former teacher with much deference, consulted him on all important matters, and seems to have been largely guided by his advice. He also testified his regard for him by raising him to the rank of consul. In course of time, however, the feelings and conduct of the prince underwent a change. The possession of unlimited power by a character that was both weak and vain; the adulation of the conscienceless favorites with whom he surrounded himself; the intrigues or cabals to whom the high morality of the philosopher was a standing rebuke; and the naturally vicious temper of Nero, all conspired to prepare the way for the downfall of Seneca. When the conspiracy of Calpurnius Piso against the monarch was discovered, the charge of participation, or at least of criminal knowledge, was brought against Seneca, and he was condemned to die. Allowed to choose the means of ending his life, he caused a vein to be opened and thus slowly bled to death. It was his destiny to be compelled to take his departure from this world in the way he had so often commended to others; indeed it is probable that his reiterated encomiums upon suicide as an effectual remedy against the ills of this life, was not without its influence upon his executioners. They probably wanted to give him the opportunity to prove by his works the sincerity of his faith.

During the closing scene he told his disconsolate friends that the only bequest he was permitted to leave to them was the example of an honorable life; and this he besought them to keep in faithful remembrance. He implored his weeping wife to restrain the expression of her grief, and bade her seek in the recollection of the life and virtues of her husband a solace for her loss.

It was the fortune of Seneca not only to be well born, but also to be well brought up and carefully educated. That he appreciated the high worth of his mother is evident from the words, “best of mothers,” with which he addressed her in the Consolation to Helvia. His father, though wealthy, was a man of rigid morality, of temperate habits, of great industry, and possessed very unusual literary attainments. His older brother, better known as Junius Gallio from the name of the family into which he was adopted, was for some time proconsul of Achaia, in which capacity he is mentioned in the Acts, xviii, 12-17. Seneca’s younger brother was the father of Lucan, the well-known author of the poem, Pharsalia. Both his mother and his aunt,—he was an especial favorite of the latter—were not only women of exalted character, but they had acquired an intellectual culture that was very uncommon for their sex in their day.

Our authorities for a life of Seneca and for an estimate of his character are fairly ample and have been variously interpreted. Nothing can be gained by taking up the controversy anew. To some of his contemporaries even, he was more or less of an enigma. Others, again, regarded him as a time-server, a hypocrite, a man whose professions were belied by his actions. Still others,—and they are largely in the majority—are more lenient in their judgment; though they cannot exculpate him from inconsistencies, they excuse them by pointing to the extremely difficult position in which he was placed during the greater part of his life. He has strong partisans who are attracted and charmed by the sublime sentiments scattered so profusely through his writings; his enemies, in forming their opinions, lay the chief stress on what they regard as the inexcusable deeds of his life. It is too late to add anything to the evidence either pro or contra. All that it is proposed to do in this essay is to place before the reader a picture of the man, mainly from his own writings, as the chief exponent of the highest philosophy reached by the ancient world before this philosophy was supplanted by the new religion that was destined to take its place in the thought of mankind. Seneca was next to Cicero, or rather along with Cicero, the most distinguished Roman philosopher; but as a philosopher he has received the far greater share of attention. Both were Romans at heart; both were earnestly engaged in the search for the supreme good; both were guilty of conduct inconsistent with their professions; both tried and tried in vain to combine a life devoted to reflection with with an active career in the service of the state; and both failed. But Seneca not only had a higher ideal than Cicero; he also came nearer attaining it. He was less vain, less hungry for public honors and applause, and attached less importance to mere outward display. As a thinker Seneca has more originality than Cicero, is less dependent upon books, knows better the motives that underlie human conduct. Both were essentially Roman in their views of life, and it is only by keeping this in mind that we are able to explain, if not to excuse, the lack of harmony between what they said and what they did; between what they preached and what they practised.

Like that of Cicero, Seneca’s was no adamantine soul, no unyielding barrier against which the vices of his time beat in vain. He had the Roman liking for what is practical. He tried to be a statesman and was somewhat of a courtier when to be a courtier and an upright man was impossible. He was no Socrates to whom virtue, the fundamentally and intrinsically right, was more important than anything else, than all else, even abstention from the political turmoil of his time.

When a long and acrimonious strife is carried on over a man it is evidence that he is no ordinary person. This has been the fate of Seneca in an eminent degree. During the Middle Ages, and even after their close, a great deal of attention was paid to his reputed correspondence with St. Paul. The National Library in Paris contains more than sixty MSS. of this pseudo-correspondence. That he was claimed as a Christian need surprise no one. The poet Virgil shared a similar fate; yet there is far less in the writings of Virgil to mark him a Christian, or rather as a writer who was in a sense divinely inspired, than there is in Seneca to stamp him as a man who had accepted the new faith. The rise and persistence of such a literature is not an anomaly in the history of thought. It is not out of harmony with the spirit of an age when the church was supreme in everything; when all questions were viewed from the theological standpoint, and when every means were employed to gain support for the existing ecclesiastical organization. It was honestly believed that the practice or profession of a high morality, except under the sanction and guidance of the church, was impossible. It was taken as a matter of course, that a good man, one who eloquently preached righteousness, who seemed to be conscious of a struggle within himself between the flesh^[2] and the spirit, must have been enlightened from on high. Given the internal evidence of Seneca’s own writings, it was not difficult to supply the complementary external testimony.

This all-embracing and all-absorbing power of the church lasted about a thousand years and ended with the Reformation, though it had begun to decline some two centuries earlier. For this condition of things the Roman empire had prepared the way. It was the prototype to which, in part unconsciously and in part consciously, ecclesiastical authority was made to conform. Notwithstanding the fact that the Gospel was first widely proclaimed in Greek lands and the body of its doctrine formulated in the Greek tongue, when the church began to aspire to universal dominion it naturally assumed the garb of Roman secular authority. The Eastern Empire was regarded as an offshoot from, rather than as a continuation of, the empire that had so long ruled the world from the great city on the banks of the Tiber. The natural consequence was that the Latin language in time supplanted the Greek, and ecclesiastical thought flowed in the channels worn by the political thought that had preceded it. The struggle in later times for the supremacy of the state as against the church was merely the effort to return to a condition of things that had existed before the establishment of the church. The Greeks were not less patriotic than the Romans. The state occupied just as prominent a place in their minds as it did in the minds of the Romans. But it was their misfortune to appear upon the scene of history, broken up into a large number of small polities of nearly equal strength, and the Greek mind never got beyond the particularism thus inherited. It was their fundamental concept of government. Rome represented a more advanced type of political development than Greece, and if it had been permitted to work out its own salvation without external interference,—for the city at its worst was hardly more corrupt than many a modern capital—it might be in existence to-day. The Roman empire endured so long because it was upheld by the patriotism of its citizens. This was often narrowly selfish, and frequently grossly unjust to foreigners, but it was effectual in maintaining the supremacy of Rome against all attempts from within or without to subvert it. The Romans that were drawn toward philosophy pursued it in a half-hearted manner because the state occupied the first place in their minds. To serve the state was the ultimate goal of their ambition. The emperors, even the most corrupt, still represented the government and as such received the homage of good men. If we keep this fact in mind we shall be able to understand the bravery and devotion to duty of many of the officers and even soldiers in the imperial forces. More or less out of reach of the contaminating influences that were so powerful in the capital, they performed the services expected of them as became Romans.

Long, long afterward, and when Rome was nominally a Christian city, a German monk left its walls as he was returning to his northern home, a far less zealous churchman than he had entered it. Strange coincidence! The city that had become the head of a spiritual empire was no less corrupt and corrupting than it had been as the head of a temporal empire. More than sixteen centuries of experience, some of it of the bitterest kind, had wrought no perceptible change. The Christian followed in the footsteps of the heathen.

For us who have been brought up in the belief that morality and right and justice have a claim to our services for their own sake, without accessory support and under all circumstances, the devotion of the Roman to his government, even the most unworthy, is not easy to understand. Rome owed her greatness more to the bravery of her citizens in war than to any other cause. To this virtue they always accorded the foremost place, and to those who displayed it, the highest honors the state could bestow.

But Seneca was a man of peace. This fact had without doubt something to do in producing the unfavorable estimate some of his contemporaries formed of him. Tacitus, too, was not a military man; yet he looks with a certain disdain upon those who devoted themselves to the arts of peace rather than to the profession of arms. He regards with less favor the man who has wisely administered a province than him who had extended the boundaries of the empire.

We naturally incline to the opinion that no man who respected himself could accept service under such a ruler as Nero, or Caligula, or Domitian, unless it were in the hope that he might mitigate a ferocious temper or avert calamity from personal friends. And yet, many tyrants since the dissolution of the Roman empire have been served by honorable men; and they have usually requited their services in the same way, with exile, or confiscation of goods, or an ignominious death.

The readiness with which many of the best Romans resorted to self-destruction as a release from misfortune strikes us with surprise. Suicide is often mentioned in the writings of Seneca, and always with approval. It is not hard to understand this attitude of mind if we recollect the relation the Roman regarded as existing between himself and the state. The government was in a sense a part of himself, and an essential part. To the Greek there was still something worth living for after the loss of country and citizenship. He could devote himself to literature, or philosophy, or to some more ignoble means of gaining a livelihood. To the Roman such a thing was well-nigh impossible, especially if he was a member of one of the ruling families. Exile, exclusion from service in the state, was to him the end of every thing. Many Romans of whom one would have expected better things are inconsolable so long as they are compelled to live away from the capital with no certain prospect of return. Need we wonder that to many others life was no longer worth living, and that they freely put an end to it with their own hand. Often the best men sought surcease of sorrow in this unnatural way. Those in whom the moral sense was weak, plunged recklessly into debauchery and sensual gratification. Literature, too, was corrupted to minister to their corrupt tastes. We know little of the life of the average Roman citizen; but there is sufficient evidence within reach of the modern reader to prove that the ruling class had few redeeming traits. The downward tendency is plainly discernible in the last days of the Republic. Julius and Augustus CÆsar were men of depraved appetites and low morals. Their talents as military captains and administrators, their patronage of letters, and their tastes as literary men, have somewhat put their moral delinquencies into the background. There is no doubt that the example of these and such men, accelerated the evil propensities to which the Roman people were only too prone. When the lowest depth of moral degradation was reached, as in the declining years of Seneca, crime and debauchery held high carnival in the imperial household. There was no wickedness so flagrant, no species of immorality so bestial, no deed so horrible, that men shrank from it. For, had they not more than once the example of the prince himself? It is sometimes charitably said that Nero was insane. There are men who think it too degrading to human nature to hold it responsible for his crimes and indecencies. Yet Nero’s excesses were the natural results of unlimited power in irresponsible hands, when the hands were servants of a heart that was thoroughly corrupt, and a character that was weak, and vain as it was weak. The same things have often been repeated within the last eighteen hundred years; but never was vice so rampant and so unblushing, on such a large scale, as it was in Rome in the days of Seneca.

We must not believe, however, that there was no decency, no regard for morality, no love of culture, to be found in the Roman empire even in its worst estate. There were always groups and coteries of noble men and women who kept themselves free from the prevailing corruption. There was always a saving remnant that remained uncontaminated. Quintillian was the center of such a group, and what he was in Rome, Plutarch was in another part of the empire, for they were almost exactly contemporaries. The belief in God, in the immortality of the human soul, and in man’s personal responsibility to a higher power, kept some, perhaps many, who were not directly under the degrading influence of the court, or who had the moral strength to resist it, from deviating very far from the path of rectitude. There were slaves of whom better things could be said than of their masters. But what were these among so many?

Seneca and other writers of his time frequently express contempt for those men who professed to be philosophers, and whose lives brought only disgrace upon the fair name of philosophy. He does not seem to be aware that, in a measure at least, he is recording an unfavorable verdict upon himself. Does he think that his abstemiousness, his untiring industry, his devotion to study ought to cover his shortcomings? It looks so. He commends solitude, yet always remained in the noonday of publicity. He inveighs against riches, yet was the possessor of vast estates, and was not above lending money at usurious rates of interest. He teaches men to bear with fortitude the inevitable ills of life, and ends by commending suicide as a final resort. Compared with Socrates, to cite but a single name, Seneca was a very unworthy exponent of practical philosophy. The former took philosophy seriously, so seriously that he not only wanted to live for it but was willing to die for it. He kept aloof from politics because he felt that a public career would interfere with a duty he owed to a higher power. He, too, believed in a Providence, but with him this belief amounted to a conviction. All his reported words and deeds testify to this, while Seneca acts and writes as if trying to convince himself quite as much as others. Socrates had an abiding faith in a personal God who not only watched over his life, but cared for him in death. Duty was to him a thing of such supreme importance that he never hesitated to perform it, no matter what the consequences to himself might be. Socrates taught nothing he did not himself practice; Seneca, much. Socrates feared neither God nor man; Seneca was afraid of both. Socrates expected nothing of others that he did not exact of himself; Seneca sets up a higher standard of morals than he, under all circumstances, attained. His precepts are better than his practice. His fatal mistake lay in trying to do two things that have always been found incompatible: to be a successful politician and an upright man. There were others besides Socrates, before the days of Seneca, in whose life and character philosophy had had more consistent exponents and faithful devotees than in him. But when they found that philosophy and a career in the service of the state were incompatible and reciprocally exclusive, they unhesitatingly gave up the latter. Seneca can always admire high ideals, but he cannot always imitate them. He is fascinated when he gazes on the lofty heights to which virtue had sometimes attained, and he often makes heroic efforts to follow after; but he is only now and then successful. It is no wonder, then, that Socrates had even in his lifetime many ardent admirers and enthusiastic disciples that remained true to his memory, while Seneca had none.

Canon Farrar is mistaken when he calls Seneca a “seeker after God.” God was in no man’s thoughts oftener than in his. Nor has any uninspired writer given utterance to a larger number of noble sentiments and lofty precepts than he. It is easy to extract from his writings a complete code of morals, a breviary of human conduct, that would differ but little from that contained in the New Testament. He is a conspicuous example of the heathen of whom Paul says, they are without excuse. But while Seneca is not a seeker after God he can with justice be called a seeker after Christ. He is an earnest inquirer after the peace that passeth understanding; after that serene confidence that sustained the greatest and the least of the Apostles, and the noble army of martyrs no less. He lacks that Christian enthusiasm that comes only through faith in a living Christ and in His atonement.

Seneca now and then caught a glimpse of that universal kingdom which the company of believers expected would one day be established upon the earth. He says, “No one can lead a happy life who thinks only of himself and turns everything to his own use. If you would live for yourself, you must live for others. This bond of fellowship must be diligently and sacredly guarded,—the bond that unites us all to all and shows to us that there is a right common to all nations which ought to be the more sacredly cherished because it leads to that intimate friendship of which we were speaking.”

It is hard to see how he could write the following striking passage without thinking of himself; for, though guiltless of some of the vices he condemns, there are others of which he cannot be acquitted. After defining philosophy as nothing else than the right way of living, or the science of living honorably, or the art of passing a good life, and denouncing the fraudulent professors of it, he proceeds: “Many of the philosophers are of this description, eloquent to their own condemnation; for if you hear them arguing against avarice, against lust and ambition, you would think they were making a public disclosure of their own character, so entirely do the censures which they utter in public flow back upon themselves; so that it is right to regard them in no other light than as physicians whose advertisements contain medicine, but their medicine-chests, poison. Some are not ashamed of their vices; but they invent defenses for their own baseness, so that they may even appear to sin with honor.”

To the same effect is the testimony of Nepos: “So far am I from thinking that philosophy is the teacher of life and the completer of happiness, that I consider that none have greater need of teachers of living than many who are engaged in the discussion of this subject. For I see that a great part of those who give most elaborate precepts in their school respecting modesty and self-restraint, live at the same time in the unrestrained desires of all lusts.”

Both Seneca and Plutarch are firmly convinced that man is the arbiter of his own happiness; but the former found great difficulty in making a practical application of the doctrine to his own case. Notwithstanding the sorry spectacle presented to the world by many professed philosophers, neither lost faith in philosophy. It was the court of last resort. For the man to whom philosophy will not bring happiness there is no happiness in this world. To the importance and benign influence of this culture of mind, Seneca reverts again and again. He contends that “He who frequents the school of a philosopher ought every day to carry away with him something that will be to his profit: he ought to return home a wiser man. And he will so return, for such is the power of philosophy that it not only benefits those who devote themselves to it, but even those who talk about it.” “You must change yourself, not your abode. You may cross the sea, or as our Virgil says, ‘Lands and cities may vanish from sight, yet wherever you go your vices will follow you.’ When a certain person made the same complaint to Socrates that you make, he answered, ‘Why are you surprised that your travels do you no good, when you take yourself with you everywhere?’ If we could look into the mind of a good man, what a beautiful vision, what purity, we should behold beaming forth from its placid depths! Here justice, there fortitude; here self-control, there prudence. Besides these, sobriety, continence, frankness and kindliness, and (who would believe it?) humaneness, that rare trait in man, shed their luster over him.”

Though Seneca’s life was full of contradictions and inconsistencies when measured by the standard of his own writings, it would be unjust to charge him with hypocrisy. He was, within certain limits, a man of moods; a man in whose mind conflicting desires were continually striving for the mastery. It seems to have been a hard matter for him to attain settled convictions on a number of important questions. Even the immortality of the soul, a subject upon which he has much to say, and which to Plutarch is an incontestable dogma, is to Seneca hardly more than a hope. His mind matured early and there is almost no evidence of development or change of views or of style in his writings. He was such a man as nature made him, and he was on the whole pretty well satisfied with the product. Though he now and then seems to be conscious of a certain lack of constancy, and on the point of confessing his sins, he generally ends by excusing them or by trying to show that they are venial. Yet the fact that he at times acknowledges a kind of moral weakness is perhaps the chief reason why Seneca has been so often claimed as a Christian, while no such claim has ever been made for Plutarch who sees no defects either in himself or his doctrine.

The chief problem of philosophy has at all times been, how to make the judgment supreme in all matters that present themselves before the mind and how to make the will carry out the decisions of the critical faculty. When the poet says, “Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor,” he is thinking of this irrepressible conflict. Paul himself was not a stranger to it, for he exclaims in a moment of self-abasement when writing to Seneca’s fellow citizens, “The good which I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I practice.” He, too, finds within himself a “law,” a fact of human experience, that the flesh wars against the spirit; that the appetencies are hard to reconcile with the judgment. Seneca’s own writings furnish abundant evidence that many who professed to be philosophers used their intellects solely, or chiefly, in devising means for gratifying their desires. To men of his way of thinking the Epicureans were a constant object of attack; yet the Epicureans were generally consistent from their point of view and in accordance with the postulates of their system. The all-important question with every man who is in the habit of giving an account to himself of his life is how to get the most out of it,—how to formulate a system of complete living. If the individual is the goal, considered solely from the standpoint of his earthly life, it is evident that he will act differently in the same circumstances from him whose aim is the good of society considered as an undying entity, or the happiness of the individual regarded as an immortal soul. The disagreements of philosophers have always hinged on these fundamental problems and it is strange that so little note has been made of them. It is too often taken for granted that the mere use of the reasoning faculties, that is, philosophy per se, and without reference to the highest good, is able to make men as nearly perfect as they can become in this life, both as individuals and as members of the community. It was the conviction that philosophy had run its course; that it was “played out,”—to use a phrase more expressive than elegant—that made so many of the best men, in the first Christian centuries, turn from it and seek refuge in Christianity. They had become weary of the ceaseless and acrimonious discussions of the different philosophical schools. Disgusted with contradictions and inconsistencies, they turned to the Gospel as offering a solution of problems at which so many acute thinkers had labored for centuries in vain.

It has often been remarked that the Roman world had grown old. Every experiment had been tried, every theory had been suggested that might lead to complete living; all had ended in failure and disappointment for those who had the good of their fellow men at heart. He who would perform a successful experiment in physics or chemistry must see to it that all the necessary conditions have been provided. If this is not done, no amount of care in manipulation will bring about the desired result. The mere presence of the proper ingredients, however pure, will not insure success. So in society, the existence and vitality of social forces will avail the reformer in no wise unless he knows how to put a motive force into men’s minds and hearts that will induce them to aid him in bringing about the changes he proposes. Some good men have been made so by a noble system of philosophy, to the practical exemplification of which they have devoted their lives. Both Greece and Rome furnished not a few such. On the other hand there have been many bad men who were made so by following the tenets of a vicious philosophy.

There are two reasons why Seneca has, for more than eighteen hundred years, engaged the attention of thinking men. No doubt the most important is his extraordinary ability. The world will not willingly forget the words of a great man, nor suffer his life to pass into oblivion. It clings to thoughts and deeds that are worthy to survive. Seneca not only had something to say that men wanted to hear, but he knew how to say it in such a way that they were glad to listen. Great as has been the evil in the world at all times it has never lacked many men who felt that they were made for something better than the daily concerns that occupied their time and labor. In their better moments they found pleasure in listening to the voices that spoke to them of something more abiding than the fleeting affairs of this transitory life.

Seneca, too, was intensely human. He frequently furnishes evidence of extraordinary mental strength while now and then he sinks down in sheer exhaustion. His mind ranges freely along the whole scale of mental experiences; and though he dwell, longest on the higher parts, he does not always do so. The record of such an experience has an attraction for many men. They see in it a counterpart of their own struggles, and are rarely without hope that its triumphs may be an earnest of their own.

The scholar in politics is a character of whom we hear a good deal, but as a matter of fact, scholarship, in the true sense of the word, and successful politics, as the world understands success, are a combination that has rarely been made. Again, an ecclesiastical statesman, strictly speaking, is an equally rare phenomenon and has been since the days of the supremacy of the Romish church. The greater the success of the ecclesiastic in statecraft, the farther he departed from the prescriptions of the church, or at least of the Gospel. How often has the experience of Wolsey been anticipated or repeated; and many men, both laics and priests, have felt the truth of Shakespeare’s thoughts, if they have not expressed them in his words:

We still hope to find a place for the scholar in politics, but we have given up the search so far as the ecclesiastic is concerned. Yet in Seneca we have a man who had mastered all the knowledge of his time; who was by no means an unsuccessful preacher of righteousness, and who, nevertheless, was a successful courtier and statesman during part of his life. He might have been both to the ending of his days in peace, had it not been his fate to serve one of the worst rulers that ever lived. The secret of his undying fame then is his ability and his whilom position at the court that ruled the greatest empire of the world. It is probable that the cause of his exile, at an age when he had as yet not written very much, so far as we know, was his prominence in a way that was distasteful to the emperor Claudius. While there was nothing in his past life or present conduct to justify putting him to death, his removal from Rome seemed desirable to the reigning monarch and his most influential advisers. But even in exile Seneca was not a man calmly to permit his enemies to forget him; nor would his friends suffer him to be forgotten.

Notwithstanding his sudden elevation to a position of great importance in the empire, he seems never to have lost sight of the fact that he was standing on the edge of a precipice from which he might be thrust at any moment, and that he still had need of all the consolation his philosophy could afford. Boissier rightly says, “Though praetor and consul he remained not the less a sage who gives instruction to his age; while he was governing the Romans he preached virtue to them.” And he might have added, “to himself,” for it is evident from many passages in his works that he had himself in view no less than others. He strove to fortify his own soul against temptations by giving expression to the tenets of his philosophy, just as men find relief in sorrow by recording the thoughts that pass through their minds. We may be certain, too, that to his contemporaries his speech often sounded bolder and freer than to us with our inadequate knowledge of the inner life of the Roman court-circle, and accustomed as we are to the freedom of criticism to which all our public characters, not excepting sovereigns, are subject. They doubtless saw in many of his pithy sayings, allusions, whether always intentional or not, does not matter, to occurrences to which we no longer have the key. And we may be sure that he was not without an abundance of enemies and detractors. A few of these have left themselves on record for us. There were, doubtless, also many persons who were wont to sneer at the man who professed to find the highest good in a contemplative life; in devotion to an ideal that differed so widely from the reality in which he lived; and who could yet maintain his influence at a court of which little that was good could be said. Every society contains a certain number of members who regard all who endeavor to lead a better life than they themselves do, or whose ideals are higher than their own, as offering a sort of personal challenge or directing a rebuke at them which they must needs resent. Seneca was himself conscious that his life and professions were sometimes irreconcilable. He says: “To the student who professes his wish and hope to rise to a loftier grade of virtue, I would answer that this is my wish also, but I dare not hope it. I am preoccupied with vices. All I require of myself is, not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad.”

On the much-debated question of Seneca’s responsibility for the vices of Nero, Merivale is probably right in saying that he must soon have become aware that it was impossible to make even a reasonably virtuous man out of his pupil. Under such circumstances it was natural for him to conclude that the best thing to be done was to allow the youth to indulge in private vices in order to keep him from injuring others. The morality he impressed upon Nero, the modern writer sums up in these words: “Be courteous and moderate; shun cruelty and rapine; abstain from blood; compensate yourself with the pleasures of youth without compunction; amuse yourself, but hurt no man.” This principle was a dangerous one, as we now know; but it is easy to be wise after the event. A philosopher ought to have known that it is never safe to make a compromise with vice. Our philosopher did not know it, or, knowing it, was willing to take the risk.

It is doubtless some of his detractors that he has in mind in his defense of riches. He can see no harm in large possessions when they have been honestly, or at least lawfully, acquired and are properly used. It may help us to understand his attitude in this matter if we compare it with that of some of the ministers of our own day, and with some of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the past. Seneca’s philosophy did not come to him as a divine command. It was the fruit of his own cogitation in the search for the supreme good. But there are men in our day, as there have always been, who are not only members of the church but preachers of the Gospel, who are both rich themselves and apologists of the rich. Yet they profess to be followers of the Son of God; of Him who taught that it is exceedingly difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Seneca did not profess to seek this kingdom. His search was after the kingdom of earthly felicity, and he could not see why riches should be an obstacle to his entering it.

Seneca was a good exemplar of the truth of a saying quoted by Xenophon in his Memorabilia of Socrates to the effect that even an upright man is sometimes good, sometimes bad. His writings convey the impression that their author is always under stress. The philosophical composure of which he has much to say, is an aspiration and a hope, not a fruition. When he speaks of the passions he sees them in their intensity. He seems to regard all men as either very good or very bad, and finds the latter class to include the great body of mankind. He fails to realize that the majority belong to neither extreme. The theater on which he saw the game of life played probably never had its counterpart in the world. He stands at one extreme and Plutarch at the other, just as the social circle in which each moved and knew best is the antipode of the other. Both looked too intently and exclusively upon the merely external. Though Plutarch judges the average man more correctly, neither possessed sufficient penetration of intellect to fathom all the passions that dominate or agitate the soul. Plutarch was most familiar with the man who is concerned with the ordinary affairs of life; Seneca knew best the corrupt crowd that sought to ingratiate itself into the favor of those who controlled the destinies of all about them, and, in a measure, of the entire world. Both were much in the public eye, but the public was a widely different one. Plutarch sought to make an impression by the arts of persuasion alone; Seneca, by all the arts that are within the power of a resourceful intellect. How much he was in the public eye is evident from the statement of Tacitus that his last words were written down and at once made public. His friends no less than his enemies desired this: his enemies, because they were eagerly watching for a final opportunity to prove that this famous preacher of an exalted philosophy would, after all, prove to be nothing more than a maker of fine phrases when the crucial test came; his friends, in order to furnish indubitable evidence that he had been true to his teachings to the end.

It is a noteworthy fact that should always be kept in mind in the study of the writings of the ancients, and the career of their statesmen, that there existed no universal conscience to which men could appeal. Even the separate states were without any considerable party among their citizens who shared the conviction that there exist eternal principles of justice that demand the recognition of rights for all living beings, for slaves as well as for brutes, whether they are in position to enforce these rights or not. There was an interminable struggle of class with class, each striving to wrest from the other the privileges they withheld as long as they could, and finally granted only so far as they could no longer be withheld. The political economy of the ancients did not concern itself with making the public burdens bear as lightly as possible on each member of the body politic, and compelling even the most refractory to contribute their share; the problem was almost invariably how to raise the largest amount of public revenue. Only a part,—often but a small part, especially under the later republic—found its way into the imperial fisc. Most of it flowed into the coffers of the farmers of the revenue, and for this reason their representatives, the publicans or tax-gatherers, were so thoroughly detested. Their relation to the citizens was entirely different from the modern officers of the government who perform the same functions. Every privilege or alleviation granted by the governing class was usually wrung from it by force or threats on the part of the subject. Generally speaking, the empire was more lenient than the republic because the emperors needed the support of the mass of their subjects against the turbulent and avaricious nobility. The spirit of altruism that is such a powerful force in our day is of very modern growth. It was introduced into the world by Christianity, but its development was not rapid. Sociology as a scientific term is but little older than the present generation; nor does the study of political economy as a science extend far into the last century. That remarkable people, the Jews, have from time immemorial recognized the claims of a brother in the faith, upon every other, for aid and sympathy. Their voluntary contributions for the maintenance of the temple at Jerusalem and its ritual, no matter how widely scattered they might be, is the earliest indication of a spirit of altruism, the recognition of an obligation that was coextensive with the faith. The Jews, however, made but a faint impression upon the thought of antiquity. This is evident from the way they are treated by Greek writers without exception. They were perhaps never more numerous or more influential than during the last two or three centuries B. C. and the first century after Christ, until the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet Plutarch, who was the most widely read man of his time, and who might easily have obtained his knowledge of their doctrines almost at first hand from the Septuagint, does not show in a single line that he ever thought this knowledge worth the trouble. When he mentions the Jews it is only to disparage them, and to betray the grossest ignorance of their religion and their nationality. The same is true of Seneca and the other Roman writers. Tacitus, who professes to give an account of their origin and of some of the tenets of their religion, shamefully misrepresents both, while he holds the people up to the scorn of his countrymen. So little are the most intelligent men often aware of the occult forces at work in the world, and so ready are they to pour contempt upon everything that does not accord with their preconceived opinions!

The early Christians, as is well known, were reluctant to believe that the new doctrines were intended for Gentiles as well as Jews. Both the New Testament and some of the church fathers testify to this fact. Merivale makes it clear that Tertullian believed that Christianity must always, to some extent, stand apart from the ordinary march of events, and that the true faith could only be held by a chosen few. He does not intend his words to be understood in their spiritual significance, that many are called but few chosen, and he makes this plain by adding that the Roman emperors might themselves have been Christians, if governments could become Christian; in other words “mankind in general were equally incapable of moral renovation and spiritual conversion.”

Though Seneca was, during almost his whole life in the public eye and lived amid the toil and turbulence of the busiest city in the world, he professed a distaste for crowds. He tries to dissuade those who value their peace of mind, but especially those who are truly devoted to philosophy, from seeking popular applause. He loves to be the center of a circle of choice spirits, to associate on intimate terms with men of like aims and tastes with his own. It is almost exclusively against the vices of the rich and the great that he declaims. Only in “good society” is he at home; in fact he seems to know no other, has nothing in common with any other. He is profoundly ignorant, with Plutarch, of the fact that society cannot be reformed from the top or from within. Yet the refinements of luxury are hateful to him, and from boyhood to the end of his days he lived a frugal life.

How easy it is for Seneca to talk, to express himself in words whether with tongue or pen, becomes evident not only from a glance at the subjects upon which he writes, some of which are of the same tenor with those discussed by his equally fluent predecessor, Cicero, but from his own direct testimony. At the beginning of the Fifth Book on Benefits he tells his readers that he has virtually exhausted the subject. Yet he runs on through three more Books, apparently for no other reason than because he finds pleasure in discussing every question that has the remotest connection with the main theme. The result is that the portion which he considers irrelevant is almost as long as the treatise proper.

I have once or twice in the present essay, touched upon the most prominent feature of the Roman character, but the phenomenon is so important, contributes so much to a proper estimate of the career of Seneca, and goes so far toward reconciling the apparent or real inconsistencies between his life and his doctrines, between his words and his deeds, that it is necessary to dwell upon the point at greater length. The Romans were, above everything else, men of the world; men who laid the greatest possible stress on practical activity in the service of the state; men who were wholly out of their sphere when this outlet for their energies was closed to them. Greece gave birth to many individuals who lived entirely, or at least chiefly, in the realm of their thoughts; or as Jean Paul says of the Germans, the air was their domain. The precincts of abstract speculation lay in a region never entered by a Roman. A few trod the outer courts under the guidance of Greeks, but not one ever penetrated farther. The Romans had no literature of their own, no music, no pictorial or plastic arts, no architecture. Though so long under the intellectual tutelage of Greece, their taste was not refined, nor was a genuine love of culture inherent in the nation. It saw no use for these things because they were not practical; could not be employed in the service of the government. The occasional efforts of the emperors and of some of the leading families to elevate the national taste produced but meager results. Such being the case, what was there for the average Roman to do when he had become rich, or had no public duty to perform, and wanted to “have a good time”? There is abundant evidence within our reach to enable us to answer this question. He plunged headlong into debaucheries so shameful that the modern pen shrinks from describing them, and the mind from contemplating them. Fortunes were sometimes spent on a single banquet. The Roman baths ministered equally to luxury and licentiousness. In short, it seems as if all the ingenuity of the empire had at times been exerted to the utmost to devise new methods of sensual gratification.

But he could not indulge incessantly in bacchanalian orgies; the jaded body needed some relaxative that could be found neither in sleep nor in such business that could not be delegated to a subordinate. There he regaled himself with the sight of blood. The huge structures erected for the gladiatorial combats testify to the Roman passion for these cruel sports. Every living creature that could be induced to fight was exhibited in the arena where men and women took equal delight in the bloody spectacle. Lecky, in his History of European Morals, sets forth in graphic colors the pomp and circumstance with which these horrible exhibitions were given. I cannot do better than to transcribe his words: “The gladiatorial games form, indeed, the one feature of Roman society which to a modern mind is almost inconceivable in its atrocity. That not only men, but women, in an advanced period of civilization—men and women who not only professed, but very frequently acted upon, a high code of morals—should have made the carnage of men their habitual amusement; that all this should have continued for centuries, with scarcely a protest, is one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is, however, perfectly normal, and in no degree inconsistent with the doctrine of natural moral perceptions, while it opens out fields of ethical enquiry of a very deep, though painful interest.”

“The mere desire for novelty impelled the people to every excess or refinement of barbarity. The simple combat became at last insipid, and every variety of atrocity was devised to stimulate the flagging interest. At one time a bear and a bull, chained together, rolled in fierce contest along the sand; at another, criminals dressed in the skins of wild beasts, were thrown to bulls, which were maddened by red-hot irons, or by darts tipped with burning pitch. Four hundred bears were killed in a single day under Caligula; three hundred on another day under Claudius. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and elephants; four hundred bears and three hundred lions were slaughtered by his soldiers. In a single day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by Titus, five thousand animals perished. Under Trajan, the games continued for one hundred and twenty-three successive days. Lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even crocodiles and serpents, were employed to give novelty to the spectacle. Nor was any form of human suffering wanting. The first Gordian, when edile, gave twelve spectacles, in each of which from one hundred and fifty to five hundred pair of gladiators appeared. Eight hundred pair fought at the triumph of Aurelian. Ten thousand men fought during the games of Trajan. Nero illumined his gardens during the night by Christians burning in their pitchy shirts. Under Domitian, an army of feeble dwarfs was compelled to fight, and more than once female gladiators descended to perish in the arena.”

“So intense was the craving for blood, that a prince was less unpopular if he neglected the distribution of corn than if he neglected the games; and Nero himself, on account of his munificence in this respect, was probably the sovereign who was most beloved by the Roman multitude.”

“It is well for us to look steadily on such facts as these. They display more vividly than any mere philosophical disquisition the abyss of depravity into which it is possible for human nature to sink. They furnish us with striking proofs of the reality of the moral progress we have attained, and they enable us in some degree to estimate the regenerating influence that Christianity has exercised in the world. For the destruction of the gladiatorial games is all its work. Philosophers, indeed, might deplore them, gentle natures might shrink from their contagion, but to the multitude they possessed a fascination which nothing but the new religion could overcome.”

How deeply the virulent poison of inhumanity and the insatiable thirst for blood had infected the Roman people is further evident, not only from the means employed to make these sanguinary spectacles as fascinating as possible, but also from the impress they made upon the current phraseology. Lecky says further: “No pageant has ever combined more powerful elements of attraction. The magnificent circus, the gorgeous dresses of the assembled court, the contagion of a passionate enthusiasm thrilling almost visibly through the mighty throng, the breathless silence of expectation, the wild cheers bursting simultaneously from eighty thousand tongues, and echoing to the fartherest outskirts of the city, the rapid alternations of the fray, the deeds of splendid courage that were manifested, were all well fitted to entrance the imagination. The crimes and servitude of the gladiator were for a time forgotten in the blaze of glory that surrounded him. Representing to the highest degree that courage which the Romans deemed the first of virtues, the cynosure of countless eyes, the chief object of conversation in the metropolis of the universe, destined, if victorious, to be immortalized in the mosaic and the sculpture, he not unfrequently rose to heroic grandeur.... Beautiful eyes, trembling with passion, looked down upon the fight, and the noblest ladies of Rome, even the empress herself, had been known to crave the victor’s love. We read of gladiators lamenting that the games occurred so seldom, complaining bitterly if they were not permitted to descend into the arena, scorning to fight except with the most powerful antagonists, laughing aloud at their wounds when dressed, and at last, when prostrate in the dust, calmly turning their throats to the sword of the conqueror. The enthusiasm that gathered round them was so intense that special laws were found necessary, and were sometime insufficient, to prevent patricians from enlisting in their ranks, while the tranquil courage with which they never failed to die, supplied the philosopher with his most striking examples. The severe continence that was required before the combat, contrasting vividly with the licentiousness of Roman life, had even invested them with something of a moral dignity; and it is a singularly suggestive fact, that, of all pagan characters, the gladiator was selected by the fathers as the closest approximation to a Christian model. St. Augustine tells us how one of his friends, being drawn to the spectacle, endeavored by closing his eyes to guard against a fascination that he knew to be sinful. A sudden cry caused him to break his resolution, and he never could withdraw his gaze again.”

The Roman people clung with amazing tenacity to this gruesome sport. Nero instituted, in a private way, games after the Grecian model, and Hadrian made a similar effort on a larger scale; but the public took little interest in them while sturdy Romans protested against these Hellenic corruptions.

I have dwelt somewhat at length on this singular institution, both because it was peculiar to ancient Rome and because, above everything else, it throws light on the character of its populace. It is true that men of kindly natures like Virgil and Cicero condemned these atrocious pastimes, or at least took no pleasure in them, but their influence produced no effect on public opinion. Nothing that Seneca has written is more to his credit than the vigorous language he employs in denunciation of the gladiatorial combats.

A life devoted to study and speculation was to a Roman citizen impossible. Cicero, who did more than any of his countrymen to naturalize Greek philosophy on Roman soil through the medium of the Latin language, was a practical statesman. When forced to retire from the service of the state he longed to return to its labors, notwithstanding the dangers to be incurred. Livy and Virgil devoted their lives almost exclusively to the glorification of the past in extolling the heroes by whose toil, endurance, and self-sacrifice, the Rome of their day had become what it was. Though in a sense living in retirement, their thoughts were none the less upon the state; their time and talents not the less devoted to its service. To a Roman the state embodied almost everything worth living for; asceticism was impossible for him. Even when not actively engaged in public affairs he found pleasure in observing, at close range, the machinery of government in action. He longed to live and move in the strife and turmoil of the capital. We need not wonder that Ovid, in exile, was ready to submit with cheerful alacrity to any moral indignity, and to humiliate himself in the dust before his emperor, would he but permit him to return to the city which his spirit had never left. Seneca’s conduct, when in banishment, was even less to his credit than that of Ovid, inasmuch as he professed to be governed by far higher principles. He thought he was a philosopher, yet when compelled to live in Corsica where he had all his time to devote to study and meditation, he was wretched in the extreme; belittled himself by the most degrading exhibition of servility; did not scruple to stoop to the most shameful falsehoods and the most disgusting flattery in order to bring about his recall. His encomium on solitude, and his aversion to crowds, if they are anything more than mere theory, are the result of larger experience and of deeper insight into the human heart. Yet it is hardly open to doubt that he could have gone into voluntary retirement at any period of his life, except perhaps near its close.

It has been said of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, that his mind was more Greek than Roman. While it is true that he loved philosophy, and studied it daily, he did so in the belief that in this way he could the better prepare his mind and heart to perform the duties which his exalted station imposed upon him. He seems never to have seriously entertained the thought that it was in his power at all times to lay down his official burdens in order to follow his natural inclinations. His highest ideal of virtue was to cultivate and strengthen his sense of duty; but this duty was primarily political.

There is little doubt that the conspicuous place occupied by the state in the mind of every Roman citizen prepared the way for the deification of the emperors, a form of adulation that in the course of time wrought untold mischief, and led to the most abject servility on the part of men of whom one would have expected better things. Baumgarten devotes many pages to a discussion of this curious feature of Roman politics. In the nature of the case this deification had no regard whatever to the personal character of the sovereign. It elevated him to the skies, solely as the personification of the largest possible power entrusted to a mortal. When in the course of time all the functions of the government were concentrated in the hands of a single individual, it was natural that he should become an object of worship, at least in a sense, even during his lifetime, and as a matter of course placed among the gods at his death. We shall find this transition easy if we consider further the character of the gods of antiquity. They were not distinguished from mortals by higher attributes, but only by the possession of greater power. A god, in the popular estimation, was not necessarily any better than a man—he was only stronger. His good-will was to be gained and his ill-will averted by precisely the same means that were employed in the case of men. The Roman gods were, in a far larger measure than those of the Greeks, personifications of abstract qualities. There was thus a wide scope for projecting into their character the salient traits of the worshiper.

The gods, then, being an abstraction, and the state being the mightiest visible representation of human power, it required no great effort of the imagination to regard its head as divine, in the sense which the Romans attached to the term. The unthinking multitude naturally fell in with the ideas of their leaders, and even the better class of men rarely protested because they considered the ceremony of little moment, or because protests would have been unavailing.

Strangely, too, the belief in fate, in an inevitable destiny, did much to paralize the free action of many of the bravest men. The fate of the republic, the destiny of the Roman people, regarded as an immutable law of nature, the utter insignificance of the individual either expressed or implied, are ideas that figure prominently in the literature of ancient Rome. It has been truly said that Rome attained its greatness without great men. Almost from its remotest beginnings it was like an organism in which each separate cell, though incapable of life by itself, performs its function as part of a whole and contributes to its life and growth. In this case the cell, as we may designate each individual moral entity, though conscious in a sense of a life apart, was powerless to modify the whole organism.

To what extent the Roman emperors took their apotheosis seriously we have scant means of knowing. It is well established that a few of them regarded it as a huge joke. But it is beyond question that on the great mass of the people it had a most deleterious effect. How could it be otherwise, when some of them reached the lowest depths of degradation to which human nature could sink? When the monarch in his official capacity was recognized not only as the political and military head of the government but also its divine head, it is easy to imagine what the effect of such a recognition must be upon the average Roman, in contracting his spiritual outlook. As long as the gods were mere abstract qualities, or even to some extent personal beings like those of the Greeks, there was a sort of indistinctness in which they were veiled that did not invite imitation. But a deified emperor was, or had been, a creature of flesh and blood; no matter what he might do, there would be many ready to tread in his footsteps, so far as they could. The pernicious influence of the ancient mythology engaged the attention of thoughtful men from the remotest times. How much worse, then, would this influence be when the vilest that tradition reported of the gods was actually done by men in flesh and blood. “Like priest, like people,” is a true saying even when both priest and people are pagans.

Aside from the restraints of religion, there is, in modern times, in all civilized countries, a certain restraining influence exercised by public opinion that keeps the rich, who are inclined to a lax personal morality, within reasonable bounds. But so far as we can discover, the inhibitive force of public opinion in Rome upon the individual in the matter of ethics was very slight, especially under the empire. It is plain then where a debauched public sentiment placed no check upon any form of vice from without, and but few individuals yielded to moral restraints from within, the condition of society was such that it could hardly have been worse.

We are sometimes inclined to wonder that so few protests were made by enlightened Romans against the deification of the emperors. The explanation may be found in the prevailing rationalism of the age. To the majority of those men one religion was just as good as another, and all religions were but forms of superstition. The persecutions directed against the early Christians were urged on the general ground that the failure to follow the multitude was a mark of treason against the government, and for this reason the best men were naturally the instigators. To perform the religious functions enjoined by the state was regarded as a mark of loyalty; to refuse, the badge of disloyalty. It is not necessary to go back to ancient Rome and to heathen religions to find parallels for treating the externals of worship as matters of indifference, or for requiring the subject, under penalties, to conform to the creed of the sovereign.

When we come to speak of the relation of Seneca to Christianity, but especially of his conversion by St. Paul, a thesis laboriously defended by more than one modern writer, we cannot do better than to transcribe a passage from Merivale setting forth clearly the courses that led men into a very natural error. After calling attention to the fact that both Seneca and Paul were moral reformers, he proceeds: “There is so much in their principles, so much even in their language, which agrees together, so that one has been thought, though it must be allowed without adequate reason, to have borrowed directly from the other. But the philosopher, be it remembered, discoursed to a large and not inattentive audience, and surely the soil was not all unfruitful on which this seed was scattered, when he proclaimed that God dwells not in temples of wood or stone, nor wants the ministration of human hands; that He has no delight in the blood of victims; that He is near to all His creatures; that His spirit resides in men’s hearts; that all men are truly His offspring; that we are members of one body, which is God or nature; that men must believe in God before they can approach Him; that the true service of God is to be like unto Him; that all men have sinned, and none performed all the works of the law; that God is no respecter of nations, ranks, or conditions, but all, barbarian and Roman, bond and free, are alike under His all-seeing providence. St. Paul enjoined submission and obedience even to the tyranny of Nero, and Seneca fosters no ideas subversive of political subjection. Endurance is the paramount virtue of the Stoic. To forms of government the wise man was wholly indifferent; they were among the external circumstances above which his spirit soared in serene self-contemplation. We trace in Seneca no yearning for a restoration of political freedom, nor does he ever point to the senate, after the manner of the patriots of the day, as a legitimate check to the autocracy of the despot. The only mode, in his view, of tempering tyranny is to educate the tyrant himself in virtue. His was the self-denial of the Christians, but without their anticipated compensation. It seems impossible to doubt that in his highest flights of rhetoric—and no man ever recommended the unattainable with a finer grace—Seneca must have felt that he was laboring to build up a house without foundations; that his system, as Caius said of his style, was sand without lime. He was surely not unconscious of the inconsistency of his own position, as a public man and a minister, with the theories to which he had wedded himself; and of the impossibility of preserving in it the purity of his character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware that in the existing state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to men high in station; wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor minister became at once contemptible. Both Cicero and Seneca were men of many weaknesses, and we remark them the more because both were pretenders to unusual strength of character: but while Cicero lapsed into political errors, Seneca cannot be absolved of actual crime. Nevertheless, if we may compare the greatest masters of Roman wisdom together, the Stoic will appear, I think, the more earnest of the two, the more anxious to do his duty for its own sake, the more sensible of the claims of mankind upon him for such precepts of virtuous living as he had to give. In an age of unbelief and compromise, he taught that Truth was positive and Virtue objective. He conceived, what never entered Cicero’s mind, the idea of improving his fellow creatures; he had, what Cicero had not, a heart for conversion to Christianity.”

Notwithstanding the many points of contact between the doctrines of the New Testament and the teachings of Seneca, no competent judge now holds that he was a Christian. The wonder is that there should ever have arisen any serious controversy on the subject. The very fact that Seneca’s faith underwent no change from first to last ought to be decisive. He did not pass through the experience of conversion; he shows no vicissitudes of intellectual or moral growth; he never wavered in his faith in philosophy, and in the power of man to attain the supreme good by mere force of will. Yet Seneca is, to the Christian, unquestionably, the most interesting personality that heathen antiquity has produced. His philosophy and his morality show, in a striking way, that a man may approach very close to the boundary line of Christianity without crossing it; without even knowing what is before him. The best thought of the age clearly proves that Greek philosophy had, in a sense, prepared a few noble minds for the reception of the ethical and altruistic precepts of the Gospel; but it was in no sense the harbinger of its spiritual doctrines.

It remains yet to consider briefly an institution which, while not peculiar to Rome, was, nevertheless, here characterized by some features that were unique in their influences for evil. Slavery rested like a horrible incubus upon the ancient world, though few persons seem to have been aware of it. It placed a curse upon labor and almost prevented the development of the mechanic arts. It seriously impeded the growth of the moral sentiments by the hindrances it placed in the way of free discussion, and by the opportunities it afforded the basely inclined for the gratification of carnal lusts. It placed a large part of the population virtually beyond the range of human sympathy by branding the expression of such sympathy as a symptom of treason. While it did these things everywhere, in Rome it made a people that were naturally coarse and brutal still more so, by placing within the easy reach of every slave-owner helpless objects upon which he could vent his rage, and whose services he could exploit in the most unfeeling manner. A lurid light is thrown on the barbarity of the Romans toward their slaves by an occurrence that took place in the later years of Seneca. A plain statement of the facts is more impressive than many pages of theory. A prefect of the city, Pedanius Secundus by name, was murdered by one of his slaves and the criminal could not be apprehended. According to law, all the bondmen of the murdered man, four hundred in number, were to be put to death. The populace, to their honor be it said, more humane than the senators, raised a tumult of protest against the execution of the sentence. Their sympathy availed nothing; the unhappy victims were led away to die. One of the senators even proposed a decree that all the freedmen belonging to the household of the late prefect should be transported beyond the confines of Italy. But the emperor, and that emperor was Nero, more humane than the optimates, alleged that the laws were already severe enough, and that it would be cruel to add to their severity by fresh enactments. The decree of expulsion was not passed. Yet Tacitus, from whom this narrative is taken, a writer who never tires of lamenting the degeneracy of his age, has not a word of compassion for the unfortunate sufferers, nor a syllable of condemnation for an atrocious law.

Still it must be said that some of the Roman philosophers, especially Cicero and Seneca, lay stress in their writings, upon the universal brotherhood of man. They have much to say about the intrinsic worth of the human soul. While these ideas are largely borrowed from the Greeks, or at least suggested by Greek philosophers, the Romans are singularly eloquent in proclaiming them. But slavery is never attacked by name. It is doubtful whether a passage can be found in any Greek or Roman writer explicitly asserting that it is wrong for one man to hold another in bondage. This may be due to the conviction that such a doctrine would be extremely dangerous among a large servile population, even if the government allowed entire freedom of speech. The New Testament is almost silent about slavery. Its authors did not wish to give utterance to any views that could be used by their enemies as the basis for a charge of disaffection with the “powers that be.”

Again, slavery in some form was universal. Servitude was held to be the proper condition of a large part of the human race. No man who lived during the existence of the Roman empire would have ventured to predict the ultimate downfall of slavery. It is interesting to note in this connection that Basil Hall, writing as late as 1828, while admitting everything that could be alleged on the evils of slavery, thought that to do away with it seemed “so completely beyond the reach of any human exertions that I consider the abolition of slavery as one of the most profitless of all possible subjects of discussion.”

On the supposition, then, that slavery must continue indefinitely, if it could ever be abolished, it was the duty of the philanthropist to do what he could to ameliorate the condition of the servile class by educating their masters in the principles of a humane philosophy, rather than to incur the risk of making it worse by the suggestion of emancipation. If the good man is kind to his beast, he cannot fail to treat kindly his bondman. It does not seem inconsistent with the general tenor of Seneca’s writings to assume that he thought the best way to mitigate the condition of the slaves was to indoctrinate their owners with a philosophy that would accord to them kind treatment, rather than to seek to bring about their liberation.

Besides, the slaves themselves were not often conscious of their unfortunate legal status. The best they desired for themselves was that they might fall into the hands of a good master. That such men were not altogether wanting, even among the Romans, is evident from the many instances of rare devotion shown by their slaves.

It is one of the surprising things in the history of mankind that the progress of the anti-slavery sentiment was so rapid when the cause of the slave had obtained a hearing before the bar of public conscience. Slavery had existed from time immemorial. The wrongs it condoned, the evils entailed upon its victims, attracted but little attention until the close of the last century. Within less than a hundred years after the agitation had begun there was not a slave recognized as such by law in Christendom. The contemplation of this fact may well teach political prophets to be careful in their predictions as to what will or will not happen in the future.

In the foregoing essay I have, for the most part omitted such biographical data as may be found in any encyclopedia, and have confined myself chiefly to a study of the society in which Seneca moved, and to a consideration of some of the leading characteristics of the age in which he lived. Every man should be judged by his times, for no man is uninfluenced by them. It is only men of the strongest character that rise far above the manners and thoughts of their contemporaries. Seneca was not one of these. Though endowed with a penetrating intellect and strong moral convictions he sometimes yielded to temptations against the protest of his better judgment. He compelled his intellect to sanction or at least to excuse conduct that he felt to be unworthy of the philosophy he professed and taught. Yet after making all due allowance for his shortcomings, I am persuaded that one cannot long study his writings and his career without reaching the conviction that among the great men of Rome none towered above him in moral grandeur and but few surpassed him in intellectual stature. If I may be allowed to express a personal opinion I do not hesitate to affirm that in the first thousand years of its history no more interesting and attractive character lived and died in the City of the Seven Hills than the philosopher Seneca.

The following is a list of Seneca’s extant works:

De Providentia, (On Providence).

De Constantia Sapientis, (On the Constancy of the Sage).

De Ira, (On Anger).

De Vita beata, (On a happy life).

De Otio, (On Leisure).

De Tranquillitate Animi, (On Peace of Mind).

De Brevitate Vitae, (On the Shortness of Life).

De Beneficiis, (On Beneficence).

De Clementia, (On Clemency).

Ad Marciam de Consolatione, (A Letter of Condolence to Marcia).

Ad Polybium de Consolatione, (A Letter of Condolence to Polybius).

Ad Helviam matrem de Consolatione. (A Letter of Condolence to his mother Helvia).

Apocolocynthosis, (Pumpkinfication, as it may be translated by a parody on Deification; or we may call it Pumpkinosis to correspond with Apotheosis).

Epistolae Morales ad Lucilium, (Letters to Lucilius on the Conduct of Life).

Quaestiones Naturales, (Questions relating to Physical Phenomena). This is the only work of the kind belonging to Latin literature. During the Middle Ages it was much used as a text-book.

In the Charpentier-Lemaistre edition the letters to Lucilius fill the first volume and a little more than half of the second. The first Book on Beneficence is in the third volume; the remainder with the Problems in Physics fill the fourth and last. The smaller treatises occupy the rest of the four volumes. A number of Tragedies with Greek titles are also attributed to our Seneca, probably with justice.

Note:—To translate Seneca adequately is not an easy task. While his meaning is usually plain, the modern reader is not in all cases certain that he clearly apprehends the exact signification of his words when taken separately. He is thus in danger of reading into them ideas that savor more of modern theology than the author intended,—a common fault of interpreters. It has been demonstrated that Seneca knew nothing of the Gospels directly, yet he has often been claimed as a Christian. Evidently, then, there must be a good deal in his writings that can be used to support such a claim. Attention has already been called to his use of caro. He seems also to be the first Roman who uses Providentia to designate an intelligent guide and guardian of the affairs of the world. There are other terms to which he gives a signification not found in the profane writers of ancient Rome.

But the chief obstacle the translator has to contend against is his diction. This is highly rhetorical and very difficult to transfer into another language, unless the translator has at command all the resources of his mother tongue. Such a wealth of resources, I do not hesitate to confess, is not within my reach. If a translation is to make the same impression on the reader or hearer that is made by the original, it is as important to preserve the peculiarities of a writer’s style as to render accurately the meaning of the separate words. While I flatter myself that I have been fairly successful in the interpretation of Seneca’s words, I am not equally sanguine as to his diction. I believe, however, that I have in no case strayed very far afield and that the reading of the following pages will convey not only a fairly correct idea of what Seneca thought on many important problems, but also of the manner in which he expressed himself. I hope at some future time, if life and health are vouchsafed to me, to prepare a complete translation of Seneca’s moral writings.