Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

i8SENECAbath all the year round, for which, as in one ofhis letters he tells us, he became known :I, that famous cold-bather (Psychrolutes), who, onthe first of January, used to disport myself in themoat ;who used to celebrate the coming of the new yearby leaping into the water brought down from the hills,j ust as others would celebrate it by some auspicious wordsspoken read or written, first transferred my camp tothe Tiber, and lastly to this tub of mine which, whenI am feeling my strongest and acting in perfect goodfaith -with myself, is heated only by the sun.^was everAnother master, whose memoryhonoured by Seneca, and by whom at this timehe was instructed, was the learned author PapiriusFabianus, an old friend of his father. Fabianushad acquired an early reputation as a rhetorician,—having studied rhetoric under Blandus the firstman of equestrian rank to teach that art in Rome.^The elder Seneca describes his style in declamationas easy fluent and rapid, but lacking invigour and incisiveness. He had succeeded sowell, he tells us, in banishing such passions asanger or grief from his own breast that he hadlost the power of representing them and this in a;rhetorician was a defect. But his critic had notlong the opportunity of hearing him, for Fabianussoon transferred his allegiance from rhetoric tophilosophy and natural science, and it was as a1Ep. 83.*Until that time the teaching of rhetoric had been confinedto freedmen. The elder Seneca, in stating this, expresses hiswonder that it should at any time have been considered dis-universal admission it was honourablehonouring to teach what byto learn.