Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

68 SENECAothers, have moved me to pardon ; where no otherreason for mercy could be found, I have forgiven for thepleasure of forgiving. If this day the immortal godswere to bid me give an account of my stewardship ofthe human race the reckoning would show no loss. 'is true, Caesar,' replies Seneca ;'Itand you may claimwith confidence that of all the citizens entrusted toyour care not one either through open violence or secrettreachery has been lost to the commonwealth. Youronly ambition has been to be praised for the rarest—quality of all a glory vouchsafed to none of your predecessors—the glory of innocence. You have not wastedyour pains. That singular goodness of yours has notbeen valued grudingly or unwilHngly. Your subjectsare grateful indeed. No individual was ever so dearto another as you, their great and lasting treasure, areto the whole Roman people. But you have undertakena heavy task. In this first year you have given us ataste of your rule, and have set up a new standard bywhich you yourself will be judged. No one will anylonger care to remember the times of the divine Augustusor the early years of Tiberius ; you yourself have suppliedthe only model by which men will wish that you yourselfshould be guided.'No man, wrote Seneca, in one of his letters,can paint a picture though his colours are allready unless he knows exactly what it is he wishesto paint. In this picture of the innocent autocratwho, making his choice between the two greatrival forces by which men are governed, findshis strength in their love rather than in their fear,Seneca anticipated, as he often does, the teachingof Christianity. There may be flatteryin hiswords, but it is flattery of a noble sort and directedto a noble end. So far Nero, guided by hisministers, had really governed his subjects with