Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

42 SENECACassius, it is true, or his abbreviator, in the courseof that singular invective against Seneca whichcontrasts so strangely with his earlier referencesto him, saysthat he addressed a book full offlattery from Corsica to the imperial freedmen ;but adds, that on his return from exile hewas ashamed of it and succeeded in suppressingit.i The conjecture of Diderot is, that theoriginal treatise having perished that which wenow possessis a forgery, composed by one of thenumerous hostile critics of the life and writings ofSeneca whom the conservative reaction againsthim in the second century called into existence,and that it was designed to load with odium andridicule philosopher, freedman, and emperor alike.Much of itcertainly reads like a parody; forthose characteristics of Seneca, which are easy ofimitation or caricature— the short sentences, theantitheses,the sudden turns, the rhetoric, and soforth—are all there ;while there is little traceof his wit, or subtlety, or imagination, or depth,or mental elevation. The climax is replaced byanti-climax, the sursum corda by unworthy repiningsof which Ovid might have been ashamed.Yet glad though one might be to take refugein the surmise of Diderot from a conclusiondiscreditable to Seneca, the internal evidence ofhis authorship is almost irresistible, and the circumstancesin which a man of his temperamentthen found himself go far to explain, though theycannot altogether excuse, the temporary supersessionof his finer instincts. There are passages*Dion, Ixi. lo.