264 ROMAN PHILOSOPHY. 



who himself had been engaged in Piso's conspiracy, had not resolution 

 enough to be the bearer of such a message ; and therefore despatched 

 one of his officers with it. Seneca, upon receiving the command, ex- 

 pressed his desire to make some alterations in his will ; but the officer 

 refusing to allow him access to his papers, he turned to his friends, 

 and told them, that, since nothing else was left to him, he could at 

 least bequeath to them the picture of his life; and intimated that 

 some of the features of his own character were the best model for 

 them on the present occasion. When some of them gave way to their 

 feelings of grief, he rebuked them for their want of fortitude, or of 

 foresight : " Where now," said he, " is our boasted philosophy ; or of 

 what avail is it, if it fails us when the most required ? We cannot any 

 of us have been unaware of the character of Nero : after the murder of 

 his mother and his brother, it was scarcely to be expected that he 

 would spare his preceptor." The death of Seneca was a lingering 

 one, from the exhausted and the emaciated state of his frame. He 

 opened the veins in his arms, in the presence of his wife, and other 

 friends, and afterwards those in his legs. Finding this course in- 

 effectual, he persuaded his wife to quit the room, and procured a 

 draught of poison to be administered to him. As this, too, seemed 

 to fail in its influence, he desired to be removed into a warm bath ; 

 and, as he entered, he sprinkled those who stood near him, saying, 

 " I offer this libation to Jupiter the deliverer." His life-blood then 

 gushed forth, and he speedily expired. 



His works. Seneca's works consist of separate treatises, on ' Anger ;' ' Consola- 

 tion ;' * Providence ;' * Tranquillity of Mind ;' ' Constancy ;' ' Cle- 

 mency;' 'The Shortness of Life;' 'A Happy Life;' 'Retirement;' 

 * Benefits;' of one hundred and twenty-four ' Epistles;' and of seven 

 books of questions in ' Natural Philosophy and History.' As a philo- 

 sopher, Seneca is certainly not entitled to very high respect, either for 

 the consistency or the temperateness of his opinions. His general 

 principles are those of the Stoics ; but his fondness for display and 

 exaggeration, makes him caricature even some of their paradoxes. He 

 thus maintains, in one place, that the wise man of the Stoics is not an 

 ideal figment ; but, that it has been realised in many individuals of the 

 sect, and that it is such a model, as it is expected others should attain 

 to. In another place he proposes Bion's insensibility as a model of 

 Stoical wisdom, when after the loss of his wife and children in the 

 course of a siege, he boasted that he was consummately happy, because 

 he had escaped himself: for a wise man has no concern about anything 

 else ; his own person is the whole of his property. 



But Seneca does not scruple to adopt any notion, however incon- 

 sistent with the leading principles of Stoicism, if it gives him an 

 opportunity of showing some of his turns and niceties of diction. He 

 is, indeed, to be considered rather as a moral declaimer, than as a 

 philosopher of any sect. As a moralist, his theory inclined to the 

 asperities and singularities of Cynicism. His love of effect, and con- 



