Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

SENECA IN RETIREMENT 113the leading motive, according to Pliny, of all hisactivities— must have been abundantly gratified.Among the rest came Seneca, who was so charmedwith what he saw that he purchased the propertyat a price four times as large as that which Palaemonhad paid for it less than ten years previously.The farm did not suffer from the change of ownership.Columella, a contemporary, writes thatin his time the vineyards of Nomentum werecelebrated for their excellence, and that the bestyield of all was from that belonging to Seneca.^The practical character of Seneca's philosophy,his love of tangible results, his constant desireto penetrate through appearances to realities,render comprehensible his taste for agriculture.A rival vine-grower, mentioned by Pliny, wasVetalinus Aegialus, by origin a freedman, wholived on an estate in the district of Liternum, inCampania, formerly occupied by Scipio Africanusduring his exile from Rome. Seneca visited himthere, and has left in one of his letters an interestingdescription of the house and olive plantations,with a detailed account of the various methodsof planting and transplanting olive-trees andvines :I am writing you [Lucilius] this letter from the actualhouse of Scipio Africanus, where I am staying, and whereI have adored his ' manes ' and the cofhn which I beheveto contain the body of that great man ... I find ahouse constructed of square stones, in a wood, surrounded1 Colum., De re rustica, iii. :3 Nomentana regio celeberrima'fama est illustris, et praecipue quam possidet Seneca, vir excellentisingenii atque doctrinae, cujus in praediis vinearum jugerasingula cuUeos octonos reddidisse plerumque compertum est.'I