CHAPTER VII
_SENECA AND HIS FAMILY_
‘Palpitantibus præcordiis vivitur.’--SENECA, _Ep._ lxxii.
‘Sæculo premimur gravi, Quo scelera regnant.’
ID. _Octav._ act. ii.
If there was one man in all Rome whom the world envied next to theyoung Emperor, or even more than the Emperor himself, it was histutor, Seneca. He was the leading man in Rome. By the popular criticsof the day his style was thought the finest which any Roman hadwritten, though the Emperor Gaius, in one of his lucid intervals,had wittily remarked that it was ‘sand without lime.’ His abilitieswere brilliant, his wealth was immense. In all ordinary respectshe was innocent and virtuous--he was innocence and virtue itselfcompared with the sanguinary oppressors and dissolute Epicureansby whom he was surrounded on every side.
But his whole life and character were ruined by the attempt toachieve an impossible compromise, which disgraced and could not savehim. A philosopher had no place in the impure Court of the Cæsars.To be at once a Stoic and a minister of Nero was an absurd endeavour.Declamations in favour of poverty rang hollow on the lips of a manwhose enormous usury poured in from every part of the Empire. Thepraises of virtue sounded insincere from one who was living inthe closest intercourse with men and women steeped in unblushingwickedness. And Seneca was far from easy in his own mind. He wassurrounded by flatterers, but he knew that he was not ranked withpatriots like Pætus Thrasea, and genuine philosophers like Cornutusand Musonius Rufus. Unable to resist temptations to avarice andambition, he felt a deep misgiving that the voice of posterity wouldhonour their perilous independence, while it spoke doubtfully of hisendless compromises.
Yet he might have been so happy! His mother, Helvia, was a woman who,in the dignity of her life and the simplicity of her desires, set anexample to the matrons of Rome, multitudes of whom, in the highestcircles, lived in an atmosphere of daily intrigue and almostyearly divorce. His aunt, Marcia, was a lady of high virtue anddistinguished ability. His wife, Paulina, was tender and loving.His pretty boy, Marcus, whose bright young life was so soon to end,charmed all by his mirthfulness and engaging ways. His gardens wereexquisitely beautiful, and he never felt happier than when he laidaside his cares and amused himself by running races with his littleslaves. His palace was splendid and stately, and he needed notto have burdened himself with the magnificence which gave him nopleasure and only excited a dangerous envy. It would have been wellfor him if he had devoted his life to literature and philosophy. Buthe entered the magic circle of the Palace, and with a sore consciencewas constantly driven to do what he disapproved, and to sanction whathe hated.
Short as was the time which had elapsed since the death of Claudius,he was already aware that in trying to control Nero he was holdinga wolf by the ears. Some kind friend had shown him a sketch, broughtfrom Pompeii, of a grasshopper driving a griffin, and he knew that,harmless as it looked, the griffin was meant for himself and thegrasshopper for Nero. Men regarded him as harnessed to the car ofthe frivolous pupil whom he was unable to control.
He was sitting in his study one afternoon, and the low windsounded mournfully through the trees outside. It was a room offine proportions, and the shelves were crowded with choice books.There were rolls of vellum or papyrus, stained saffron-colour atthe back, and fastened to sticks of ebony, of which the bosseswere gilded. All the most valuable were enclosed in cases ofpurple parchment, with their titles attached to them in letters ofvermilion. There was scarcely a book there which did not representthe best art of the famous booksellers, the Sosii, in the VicusSandalarius, whose firm was as old as the days of Horace. A glanceat the library showed the taste as well as the wealth of the eminentowner--the ablest, the richest, the most popular, the most powerfulof the Roman senators.
They who thought his lot so enviable little knew that his pomp andpower brought him nothing except an almost sleepless anxiety. Everyvisitor who came to him that morning spoke of subjects which eithertortured him with misgivings or vexed him with a touch of shame.
The first to visit Seneca that day was his brother Gallio, withwhom he enjoyed a long, confidential, and interesting conversation.Gallio, to whom every one gave the epithet of ‘sweet’ and ‘charming,’and of whom Seneca said that those who loved him to the utmost didnot love him enough, had recently returned from the proconsulshipof Achaia. He had just been nominated Consul as a reward for hisservices. The brothers had much to tell each other. Gallio describedsome of his experiences, and made Seneca laugh by a story of how aJewish Rabbi had been dragged before his tribunal by the Jews ofCorinth, who were infuriated with him because he had joined thisnew, strange, and execrable sect of Christians. This Jew’s name wasPaulus, and his countrymen accused him of worshipping a malefactorwho, for some sedition or other--but probably only to please theturbulent Jews--had been crucified, in the reign of Tiberius, bythe Procurator Pontius Pilatus.
‘I naturally refused to have anything to do with their abjectsuperstition,’ said Gallio.
‘Abject enough,’ answered Seneca; ‘but is our mythology much better?’
Gallio answered with a shrug of the shoulders.
‘They are the gods of the mob,’ he said, ‘not ours; and they areuseful to the magistrates.’
‘A new god has recently been added to their number,’ said Seneca,‘the divine Claudius.’
‘Yes,’ said Gallio, significantly; ‘he has been dragged to heavenwith a hook! But you have not let me finish my story. It appears thatthis Paulus was a tent-maker, and for some reason or other, in spiteof his absurd beliefs, he had gained the confidence of Erastus, thecity chamberlain, and of a great many Greeks; for, strange to say,he had--so I am told--preached a very remarkable and original codeof ethics. It is almost inconceivable that a man can hold insanedoctrines, and yet conform to a lofty morality. Yet such seems tohave been the case with this strange person. I looked at him withcuriosity. He was dressed in the common Eastern costume of the Jews,wearing a turban and a coarse striped robe flung over his tunic.He was short, and had the aquiline nose and general type of Judaicfeatures. But though his eyes were sadly disfigured by ophthalmia,there was something extraordinary about his look. You know how thoseJews can yell when once their Eastern stolidity is roused to fury.Even in Rome we have had some experience of that; and you rememberhow Cicero was once almost terrified out of recollection of hisspeech by the clamour they made, and had to speak in a whisper thatthey might not hear what he said. To stand in the midst of a mob ofsuch dirty, wildly gesticulating creatures, shouting, cursing, wavingtheir garments in the air, flinging up handfuls of dust, is enough toterrify even a Roman. I, as you know, am a tolerably cool personage,yet I was half appalled, and had to assume a disdainful indifferencewhich I was far from feeling. But this man stood there unmoved. Ifhe had been a Regulus or a Fabricius he could not have been moreundaunted, as he looked on his infuriated persecutors with a glanceof pitying forgiveness. Every now and then he made a conciliatorygesture, and tried to speak; but though he spoke in Hebrew, whichusually pacifies these fanatics to silence, they would not listento him for an instant. But the perfect dignity, the nobleness ofattitude and aspect, with which that worn little Jew stood there,filled me with admiration. And his face! that of Pætus Thrasea isnot more striking. The spirit of virtue and purity, and somethingmore which I cannot describe, seemed to breathe from it. It is anodd fact, but those Jews seem to produce not only the ugliest and thehandsomest, but also the best and worst of mankind. I sat quiet in mycurule chair, and let the Jews yell, telling them once more that, asno civil crime was charged against Paulus, I refused to be a judge inmatters of their superstition. At last, getting tired, I ordered thelictors to clear the prætorium, which they did with infinite delight,driving the yelling Jews before them like chaff, and not sparing theblows of their fasces. I thought I had done with the matter then; butnot at all! It was the turn of the Greeks now. They resented the factthat the Jews should be allowed to m
ake a riot, and they sided withPaulus. He was hurried by his friends into a place of safety; butthe Greeks seized the head of the Jewish Synagogue--a fellow namedSosthenes--and administered to him a sound beating underneath my verytribunal.’
‘Did you not interfere?’ asked Seneca.
‘Not I,’ said Gallio. ‘On the contrary, I nearly died with laughing.What did it matter to a Roman and a philosopher like me whether arabble of idle Greeks, most of them the scum of the Forum, beat anynumber of Jews black and blue? It is what we shall have to do to thewhole race before long. But, somehow, the face of that Paulus hauntedme. They tell me that he was educated at Tarsus, and he was evidentlya man of culture. I wanted to get at him, and have a talk with him.I heard that he had been lodging in a squalid lane of the city witha Jewish tent-maker named Aquila, who was driven from Rome by thefutile edict of Claudius. But my lictor either could not or wouldnot find out the obscure haunt where he hid himself. The Christianswere chary of information, and perhaps, after all, it was as wellnot to demean myself by talking to a ringleader of a sect whomall men detest for their enormities. If report says true, the oldBacchanalians, whose gang was broken up two hundred years ago, werenothing to them.’[6]
‘I have heard their name,’ said Seneca. ‘Our slaves probably know agood deal more about the matter than we do, if one took the troubleto ask them. But unless they stir up a riot at Rome I shall nottrouble the Emperor by mentioning them.’
At this point of the conversation a slave announced that Seneca’sother brother, the knight Marcus Annæus Mela, and his son Lucan, werewaiting in the atrium.
‘Admit them,’ said Seneca. ‘Ah, brother, and you, my Lucan, perhapsit would have been a better thing for us all if we had never left oursunny Cordova.’
‘I don’t know that,’ said Mela. ‘I prefer to be at Rome, a senatorin rank, though I choose the station of a knight. To be procurator ofthe imperial demesnes is more lucrative, as well as more interesting,than looking after our father’s estates in Spain.’
‘What does the poet say?’ asked Gallio, turning to the youngSpaniard, a splendid youth of seventeen, whose earlier poems hadalready been received with unbounded applause, and whose dark eyesglowed with the light of genius and passion. ‘Is he content to standonly second as a poet--if second--to Silius Italicus, and CæsiusBassus, and young Persius?’
‘Well,’ said Lucan, ‘perhaps a man might equal Silius without anysuperhuman merit. Persius, like myself, is still young, but I wouldgive up any skill of mine for his delightful character. And, as forRome, if to be a constant guest at Nero’s table and to hear him readby the hour his own bad poetry be a thing worth living for, then I ambetter off at Rome than at Cordova.’
‘His poetry is not so very bad,’ said Seneca.
‘Oh! it is magnificent,’ answered Lucan, and, with mock rapture, herepeated some of Nero’s lines:--
‘Witness thou, Attis! thou, whose lovely eyes Could e’en surprise the mother of the skies! Witness the dolphin, too, who cleaves the tides, And flouncing rides on Nereus’ sea-green sides; Witness thou likewise, Hannibal divine, Thou who didst chine the long ribb’d Apennine!’[7]
What assonance! What realism! What dainty euphuistic audacity! AsPersius says, ‘It all seems to swim and melt in the mouth!’
‘Well, well,’ replied the philosopher, ‘at least you will admit thathe might be worse employed than in singing and versifying?’
‘An Emperor might be better employed,’ said the young man; ‘andwith him I live on tenter-hooks. I heartily wish that he had neversummoned me from Athens, or done me the honour of calling me hisintimate friend. Frankly, I do not like him. Much as he tries toconceal it, he is horribly jealous of me. He does all he can to makeme suppress my poems, though he affects to praise them; and though,of course, when he reads me his verses, I cry “_Euge!_” and “?????!”at every line, as needs must when the master of thirty legionswrites, yet he sees through my praise. And I really cannot alwayssuppress my smiles. The other day he told me that the people calledhis voice “divine.” A minute after, as though meaning to expressadmiration for his verses, I repeated his phrase--
‘“Thou d’st think it thundered under th’ earth.”[8]
He was furious! He took it for a twofold reflection, on his voice andon his alliteration; and I was desperately alarmed. It was hard workto pacify him with a deluge of adulation.’
Seneca sighed. ‘Be careful, Lucan,’ he said, ‘be careful! Thecharacter of Nero is rapidly altering. At present I have kept backthe tiger in him from tasting blood; but when he does he will bathehis jaws pretty deeply. It is ill jesting when one’s head is in awild beast’s mouth.’
‘And yet,’ said Gallio, ‘I have heard you say that no one couldcompare the mansuetude even of the aged Augustus with that of theyouthful Nero.’
Seneca thought it disagreeable to be reminded of his politicinconsistencies. ‘I wish to lead him to clemency,’ he said, ‘evenif he be cruel. But he is his father’s son. You know what LuciusDomitius was. He struck out the eye of a Roman knight, and hepurposely ran over and trampled on a poor child in the Appian road.Have I ever told you that the night after I was appointed his tutorI dreamt that my pupil was _Caligula_?’
There was an awkward pause, and to turn the conversation, Lucansuddenly asked, ‘Uncle, do you believe in Babylonians and theirhoroscopes?’
‘No,’ said the philosopher. ‘The star of each man’s destiny is in hisheart.’
‘Do you not? Well, I will not say that I do. And yet--would youlike to hear what a friend told me? He said that he had been a_mathematicus_ under Apollonius of Tyana.’
‘Tell us,’ said his father, Mela. ‘I am not so wise as our Seneca,and I feel certain that there is something in the predictions of theastrologers.’
‘He told me,’ said Lucan, ‘that he had read by the stars that,before ten years are over, you, my uncles, and you, my father, and I,and’--here the young poet shuddered--‘my mother, Atilla--and all ofyou through my fault--would die deaths of violence. Oh, ye gods, ifthere be gods, avert this hideous prophecy!’
‘Come, Lucan,’ said Seneca, ‘this is superstition worthy of a Jew,almost of a Christian. The Chaldæans are arrant quacks. Each manmakes his own omens. I am Nero’s tutor; you, his friend; our wholefamily is in the full blaze of favour and prosperity.--But, hark!I hear a soldier’s footstep in the hall. Burrus is coming to seeme on important state business. Farewell, now, but sup with me thisevening, if you will share my simplicity.’
‘Simplicity!’ answered Mela, with a touch of envy, ‘your humblecouches are inlaid with tortoise-shell; and your table shines withcrystal and myrrhine vases embossed with gems.’
‘What does it matter whether the goblets of a philosopher be ofcrystal or of clay?’ answered Seneca gaily; ‘and as for my poorThyine tables with ivory feet, which every one talks of, Cicero was astudent, and he was not rich, yet he had one table which cost 500,000sesterces. One may surely admire the tigrine stripes and panther-likespots of the citron-wood without being a Lucullus or an Apicius.’
‘But you have five hundred such tables,’ said Mela, ‘worth--I amafraid to say how many million sesterces.’
Seneca smiled a little uneasily. ‘_Accepimus peritura perituri_; weand our possessions are but for a day,’ he said, ‘and even calumnywill bear witness that on those citron tables nothing more sumptuousis usually served to me personally than water and vegetables andfruit.’
Then with a whispered caution to Lucan to control his vehementimpulses and act with care, the ‘austere intriguer’ said farewellto his kinsmen, and rose to greet his colleague Burrus.