Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE CAREER OF SENECA.I35emperor's sentence on the accused carries little orno presumption of their guilt.At most, perhaps,we may infer that the successful lawyer movedin the highest circles of the capital, and seemedto careless eyes to live more as a worldling than astudious ascetic. The blow was a very heavy oneto bear, and may wellhave overtasked his powers ofresignation. He could find, indeed, topics of consolation,such as those he urges in his letter to hismother Helvia, but there issomething strained andartificial in the phrases, which lack the ring of genuineconviction ;he sadly owns that he is very far frombeing perfect, and the lessons of the sages had hardlypower to cheer him in the hardships and monotonyof these long years of forced inaction. His spiritmust have been much broken before he penned hisletter to Polybius, the confidential minister of Claudius,in which master and servant are alike addressed interms of extravagant and cringing adulation. Of theformer he speaks as if he weare a very Solomon uponthe seat of justice, or a Titan supporting on his wearyshoulders the burden of a subject world ; yet a fewmonths later he insults his memory with savage ironyin the merciless burlesque where he describes theappearance of the late emperor among the realmsof spirits, to which he was pursued with the cursesand the scorn both of the living and the dead.^Dion Cassius does not fail to notice the mean flatteryto which Seneca stooped on this occasion, but hetells us also that the letter had been lost before his^Seneca, Ludus de morte Claudii.