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In short, Marcus Seneca was a well-to-do, intelligent man of the world, with plenty of common sense, with a turn for public speaking, with a profound dislike and contempt for anything which he considered philosophical or fantastic, and with a keen eye to the main advantage. His wife Helvia, if we may trust the panegyric of her son, was on the other hand a far less commonplace character.
Ira furor brevis est: animum rege; qui, nisi paret, Imperat: hunc fraenis, hunc tu compesce catena. Epist. I. ii. Anger's a fitful madness: rein thy mind, Subdue the tyrant, and in fetters bind, Or be thyself the slave. The next treatise is on Consolation, addressed to his mother, Helvia, and was written during his exile.
"Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him, and, though he trip and fall, He shall not blind his soul with clay." Nor was his mother Helvia the only high-minded lady in whose society the boyhood of Seneca was spent.
Be that as it may, the name had been well established before the orator's time. Cicero's mother was one Helvia, of whom we are told that she was well-born and rich. Cicero himself never alludes to her as neither, if I remember rightly, did Horace to his mother, though he speaks so frequently of his father.
As for Demades, he did not long enjoy the new honors he now came in for, divine vengeance for the death of Demosthenes pursuing him into Macedonia, where he was justly put to death by those whom he had basely flattered. It is generally said that Helvia, the mother of Cicero, was well born; but of his father nothing is reported but in extremes.
They were sent early to Rome to the house of C. Aculeo, a learned jurisconsult, married to a sister of Helvia; and attended with their cousins, the sons of Aculeo the best schools in the city. The young Marcus shewed extraordinary ability from the first, and that avidity for reading and study which never forsook him.
The horses were loosed from the vehicle, the maiden was placed on one, and the party was hastening along the road, when suddenly there was a blinding flash and, when it had passed, the young Helvia and her horse were seen prone upon the ground.
"Terrible isle, when earliest summer glows Yet fiercer when his face the dog-star shows;" and again as a In such a place, and under such conditions, Seneca had ample need for all his philosophy. And at first it did not fail him. Towards the close of his first year of exile he wrote the "Consolation to his mother Helvia," which is one of the noblest and most charming of all his works.
As a practical exponent of morals, he stands, with Plutarch, at the head of all Greek and Roman writers. The life of Seneca was one of singularly dramatic contrasts and vicissitudes. He was born in the year 4 B.C., at Cordova, where, at a somewhat advanced age, his father had married Helvia, a lady of high birth, and brought up in the strictest family traditions.
Thus, Sosius, you have the life of Demosthenes, from such accounts as we have either read or heard concerning him. It is generally said, that Helvia, the mother of Cicero, was both well born and lived a fair life; but of his father nothing is reported but in extremes.
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