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The province praised her, and perhaps what was better, didn't know her, and begged the Emperor to send them more of such excellent and virtuous women from which we infer that virtue consists in minding one's own business. In making up a list of great mothers, do not leave out Helvia, mother of three sons and a daughter who made their mark upon the times. It is no small thing to be a great mother!
But this was not enough for Nero's malice; he told Mela that he must follow his son, and Mela was forced to obey the order, and to die. Senec. Controv. ii. Doubtless Helvia, if she survived her sons and grandsons, must have bitterly rued the day when, with her husband and her young children, she left the quiet retreat of a life in Cordova.
Yet her intellect was less remarkable than the nobility and sweetness of her mind; other mothers loved their sons because their own ambition was gratified by their honours, and their feminine wants supplied by their riches; but Helvia loved her sons for their own sakes, treated them with liberal generosity, but refused to reap any personal benefit from their wealth, managed their patrimonies with disinterested zeal, and spent her own money to bear the expenses of their political career.
The second Consolation is to his mother Helvia, whom he tenderly loved; and this is one of the most pleasing of his works. Already he is beginning to assume the tone of a philosopher. His work De Ira must be referred to the commencement of this period, shortly after Caligula's death. It bears all the marks of inexperience, though its eloquence and brilliancy are remarkable.
This passage will furnish us with an excellent example of Seneca's invariable method of improving every occasion and circumstance into an opportunity for a philosophic harangue. By this wife, who died shortly before Seneca's banishment to Corsica, he had two sons, one of whom expired in the arms and amid the kisses of Helvia less than a month before Seneca's departure for Corsica.
To the other, whose name was Marcus, he makes the following pleasant allusion. After urging his mother Helvia to find consolation in the devotion of his brothers Gallio and Mela, he adds, "From these turn your eyes also on your grandsons to Marcus, that most charming little boy, in sight of whom no melancholy can last long.
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