Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

plationEXILE IN CORSICA 39of its own nature and that of the universe.First, I consider the land and its situation ; next, thesurrounding sea with its ebb and flow ;then the spacebetwixt heaven and earth, and all its terror-striking andtumultuous appearances— the thunder and lightning, theclouds and hurricanes, the snow and hail ; and, lastly,my mind, leaving behind in its progress all that is below,pierces through to the heights, and enjoys the mostbeautiful spectacle of things divine, while, mindful of itseternity, it wanders through all that is past and dreamsof all that through all the ages is to come.^Another treatise, or fragment of a treatise,of a very different character has generally beenascribed to Seneca, and issupposed to have beenwritten by him from his place of exile. Thisis the ' Consolation to Polybius ' on the death ofhis brother. The rich freedman Polybius actedas literary secretary {a studiis) to Claudius— — animportant post under that learned prince andwas the author of prose translations of Homerinto Latin and of Virgil into Greek. Not onlyis the'Consolation' filled with the most abject flattery,both of him and yet more of the emperor, but itis flattery of such a kind, so maladroit, so obviouslyinsincere, that it is hard to believe that it can everhave given pleasure to a human being; and stillharder to suppose that a learned, witty,and selfrespectingman of the world, with the talent forpleasing which even his critics allowed Seneca topossess— a writer, moreover, very sensitive in thematter of his own reputation— could have imagined1Peragratis humilioribus, ad summa prorumpit, et pulcherrimodivinorum spectaculo fruitur, aeternitatisque suae memor, inomne quod fuit futurumque est omnibus saeculis, vadit.