SENECA. THE STOICS. 265 



stant affectation of brilliant sentences, naturally carried him to such an 

 extreme. 



As a writer, Seneca may be commended for occasional felicities ; 

 and as he was always striving to add wit to reason, and to express 

 something weighty and solid in a striking manner, it is not to be won- 

 dered, that he should sometimes have succeeded. But he is justly 

 termed the grand corrupter of Roman eloquence; and his style, brilliant 

 as it is, is the more dangerous on account of the author's abilities. 1 It 

 is a perpetual succession of efforts ; and in the range of antitheses, of 

 points, of figures, prettinesses and exaggerations, the reader finds him- 

 self without intermission, amused, surprised, dazzled, baffled, and 

 fatigued. There is no repose in the composition, and thoughts and 

 expressions which singly might make some impression, are lost in the 

 crowd of others which are protruded with equal ostentation, and with 

 the same glare. A sentiment which, in the pages of Tully, we should 

 find reflected in one continued impression, as from a clear mirror, is 

 dealt out to us in the sentences of Seneca, as from a glass fantastically 

 cut into a thousand spangles. 



Contemporaneous with Seneca flourished Dio of Prusa, surnamed DionPruaeus 

 Chrysostom. His character is handed down as that of a severe and 

 unsparing censurer of the follies and vices of his time. His speeches 

 which remain to us are rather remarkable for their abruptness and 

 affected importance, than for any genuine vigour or eloquence. 



Epictetus was the great ornament of the Stoic school during the Epictetus, 

 reigns of Domitian and Hadrian. Born a slave, and maimed in person, ^^Teif 

 he obtained his manumission by the excellence of his conduct; and 

 not only instructed the age in which he lived, by his irreproachable 

 example and illustrious doctrine, but has edified succeeding ages by 

 those precepts which his pupil and admirer Arrian collected into a 

 manual of moral wisdom, and illustrated with a commentary. No 

 philosopher has surpassed Epictetus in urging the claims of virtue to 

 independence. His maxims are terse and pregnant with sense, and his 

 exhortations earnest and affectionate. Though there is much severity 

 of discipline recommended, there is no sternness in the rrjanner of the 

 teacher. He speaks, perhaps, with some degree of injustice of the 

 world at large ; and too often describes virtue as necessarily in a state 

 of persecution. But no production of any heathen writer is better 

 adapted than the manual which is inscribed with the name of Epic- 

 tetus, to summon virtue to a proper steadiness and reliance upon itself, 

 or to arm a wavering mind with resolution amidst the occasional dis- 

 couragements and untoward circumstances of life. 



Next in succession to this illustrious slave among the ornaments of Marcus 

 the Stoic school, appears the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. It lUtoirnus. 

 is unnecessary here even to glance at those victories on the Euphrates A - c - 17 - 



1 Quintilian has very justly sketched the character of Seneca (x. 125). " Abundat 

 dulcibus vitiis," is one of the terse and closely applicable strokes by which he por- 

 trays him. 



