xxvi PHYSICAL SCIENCE, 



make his choice, and never was choice more difficult. 

 To Agrippina he owed everything life, position, fortune, 

 his past belonged to her. But he saw that Nero was to 

 be the winner in the struggle ; his safety, his hopes, his 

 future lay with the ruling power. He may have felt that 

 expostulation was vain and resistance fruitless. He does 

 not appear to have attempted either. He decided to cast 

 in his lot with the Emperor. When Nero finally decided 

 to get rid of his mother, Seneca not only adhered to the 

 plan but consented to vilify her memory by composing 

 the letter to the Senate, in which the matricide sought to 

 justify his act. It was the great treason of his life. In a 

 critical situation he had chosen a wrong course, and it 

 cannot have been without a pang, a sense of moral 

 cowardice and tergiversation. He had sacrificed self- 

 respect, he had lost philosophic caste. 



After the murder of his mother, Nero abandoned 

 himself to the wildest excesses and extravagances. The 

 philosopher had perforce to follow in his wake, and 

 humiliating enough he must have felt the part he 

 was obliged to play. Still, he and Burrus continued 

 to act as a sort of drag, conspiring with what of con 

 science was left to Nero in checking his headlong 

 course. The beginning of the end, so far as Seneca was 

 concerned, came with the death in 63 of Burrus, his 

 constant friend and ally. Various indications now showed 

 that the tyrant was anxious to be freed from the last 

 remaining restraint. The philosopher felt his position was 

 insecure. The man who had murdered his mother, not 

 to mention his (step-)brother and his wife two of his 

 other victims was not likely to have great compunction 

 in ridding himself of his tutor. Seneca sought to anticipate 

 the storm by abandoning politics, retiring from Court, 

 and surrendering his estates. Nero refused the offer, and 

 expressed profusely his continued regard for his tutor ; 

 shortly afterwards he displayed the sincerity of his pro-* 

 fessions by an insidious attempt to poison him ! The 

 philosopher then renounced all his state, adopted a 

 voluntary poverty, and by putting into practice his 



