Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

8 SENECASeneca and Helvia, was adopted by his father'sfriend, Junius GalUo the rhetorician, by whosename he became known. He entered early onan official career, passing through all the officialdignities till he became consul suffedus, afterwhich he became Proconsul of Achaia in the year52, where the accident of a riot, resulting in theappearance of Paul of Tarsus before his tribunal,immortalised a name which all the praises ofhis brother Seneca, who describes him as themost irresistibly charming man of his age, couldnot have rescued from oblivion.^ If we maytrust his brother's description, he was indeeda man made to be loved. 'No one man,' writesthe younger Seneca, with his usual rhetoricalexaggeration, ' is so agreeable to another as Gallicnemo enim mortaliumto all who know him '—'1 The identity of the Gallio of the Acts with GalHo the brotherof Seneca is made practically certain by an incidental referenceto his brother in Achaia in one of the philosopher's letters to'Lucilius : Illud mihi in ore erat domini met Gallionis, qui cumin Achaia febrem habere caepisset, protinus navem adscendit, clamitansnon corporis esse, sed loci morbum' {Ep. civ.). Achaia, whichcomprised all the Peloponnesus and the greater part of Hellasproper with the islands, had been an imperial province underTiberius and Caligula, but was transferred to the Senate byClaudius in a.d. 44 (Tac. Ann. i.76; Suet. Claudius, 25). Thedate of Gallio's proconsulship (52) has been ascertained by thediscovery of an inscription at Delphi containing four fragmentsof a letter of Claudius to the city. Pliny alludes to a voyagemade by Gallio for the sake of his health, which may be thesame as that spoken of by Seneca 'Praeterea est alius usus multiplex,principalis vera navigandi phthisi a^ectis, ut diximus, aut san-:guinem egerentibus : sicut proxime Anneum Gallionem fecisse postConsulatum meminimus' (Plin. N.H. xxxi. 6). Seneca had beenrecalled from exile in 49, and his brother Gallio must have beenconsul suffectus in 50 or 51. It was the custom of the emperorsat that time to nominate consuls for short periods, though theyear was named only after those first appointed.