xxii PHYSICAL SCIENCE 



further proof of his admiration and affection is afforded 

 by his addressing to him his treatise on A Happy Life. 

 Gallic is of interest in another connection. He was 

 proconsul of Achaia during the period of the Apostle 

 Paul s activity there (Acts xviii.), and his conduct on the 

 occasion of a sectarian uproar at Corinth has attached 

 to his name a certain stigma which, perhaps, he does not 

 altogether deserve. 



Seneca was born about the beginning of the Christian 

 era, probably in the year 3. By this time the language 

 and the arts of Rome had spread widely over the conquered 

 provinces, in many of which independent centres of culture 

 and literary activity had sprung up. While Rome as the 

 capital and heart of things continued to draw to herself all 

 that was best, or, at any rate, all that was most enterprising 

 and ambitious, her literary and even her political life was 

 largely recruited and maintained by supplies from external 

 sources, such as Spain, Gaul, and Africa. 1 



Seneca was brought by his father to Rome at an early 

 age, 2 and there he was educated and spent practically his 

 whole life. His lot was cast in perilous times, those of 

 Caligula the madman (37-41), Claudius the imbecile 

 (41-54), Nero the monster ( 5 4-6 8). Seneca s early studies 

 were devoted to rhetoric. With such assiduity did he 

 prosecute them, and with such brilliant success were his 

 efforts at the bar crowned, that he speedily awakened the 

 jealousy of Caligula. The hint of danger was taken. By 

 his father s advice he abandoned law in the meantime and 

 devoted himself with equal ardour and enthusiasm to 

 philosophy. Among his philosophic tutors were Attalus, 

 a Stoic, and Sotion, a pupil of the Sextii, the decline 

 of whose school is lamented in the Q.N. (307). He 

 first embraced the Stoic doctrine, but finding the tenets 



1 From Spain, besides the Senecas, Lucan and Martial, already mentioned, 

 came Columella, Pomponius Mela, Quintilian, etc. ; from Gaul came many 

 rhetoricians ; Africa sent so many of the same class that by Juvenal s time 

 (fire. loo) it could with propriety be designated &quot; nursery of lawyers &quot; (see 

 Teuffel, Hist, of Rom. Lit. vol. ii. 6). 



2 His maternal aunt acted as nurse on the occasion : see Consol. ad 

 Helviam, xvii. 



