Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

44 SENECAcoincidence may, of course, have its origin inthe skill of a forger, but in that case he musthave possessed a power of reserve very unusualin his kind ;for we have here no caricature, butan apparent example of the manner in which atrain of thought recurs to a writer after a longinterval of years when once again treating asimilar subject.Moreover, when we consider the circumstancesin which Seneca then found himself, and thecharacter of the man, we find it less difficultto believe in his authorship. In the prime oflife, at the summit of his fame, ambition, andpopularity {'turn maxime placentem'), havingalready entered through his quaestorship on thecourse of honours, married happily, and with a littleson Marcus to whom he was tenderly attached,reunited to an adored mother whom helatelywas not likely, if his exile were prolonged, everagain to see,he was suddenly thrown on a falsecharge into solitary exile in a barren and unhealthyisland. And Seneca was not cast in anheroic mould. Though his gaze was on thestars, his feet were often in the mud. He himselfhumbly owned that he did not live up tohis own ideals, and said with Horace, ' Videomeliora pr oho que, deteriora sequor.' At the endof a few years of an exile which was destinedto last for nearly eight, his spirit was broken.In the verses which he wrote in Corsica hespeaks of himself as a corpse, and threatensa false friend— whoever that —might be nowbecome his enemy, with the vengeance of the