38 
We must not look on Seneca’s as a wasted life ; his stoicism 
may have had its influence in forming the character of the 
holiest of the Emperors a hundred years after him, and though 
his writings are neglected now, in the middle ages his reputa- 
tion stood high, and quotations from his works were regarded 
with little less respect than holy writ. We may wish he had 
been more influential as a politician, but to steer a course 
through such a sea of intrigue arid wickedness at a time when 
“ virtue meant a sentence of death,” and come out from it 
unspotted, was an impossible task. We may honestly regard 
him as a man who by his humanity and by his temperance 
in living, by many acts in his public life, and because of the 
affection of wife and friends, can claim our respect. Though 
unable to walk in a dissolute age as one of the perfect children 
of the light, he was a better man than those with whom he 
came into contact, a true seeker after righteousness, eager 
for illumination, arid one who came not far from being 
a fellow citizen with the saints and of the household of God. 
