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Updated: May 2, 2025
Seneca's rebuke to his slave-holding countrymen, 'Can you complain that you have been robbed of the liberty which you have yourselves abolished in your own homes? applies equally to nations which have enslaved or exploited the inhabitants of subject lands. If the Roman Empire had a long and glorious life, it was because its methods were liberal, by the standard of ancient times.
By failure, as we think, of that historic sense, of which he could speak so well, he got no further in this direction than the glacial condition of rationalistic Geneva. "Philosophy," he says, "can never replace religion." Only, one cannot see why it might not replace a religion such as his: a religion, after all, much like Seneca's.
Hence we may explain them partly by the natural progress in enlightenment and gentleness during the century from Cicero to Seneca, and partly also by the moral development of the philosopher himself. Resemblances of terms, however striking, must not count for more than they are worth. It is more important to ask whether the spirit of Seneca's teaching is at all like that of the Gospel.
'Inde illud Maecenatis turpissimum votum, quo et debilitatem non recusat, et deformitatem, et novissime acutam crucem dummodo inter haec mala spiritus prorogetur. "Debilem facito manu, Debilem pede, coxa; Tuber adstrue gibberum, Lubricos quate dentes; Vita dum superest, bene est; Hanc mihi vel acuta Si sedeam cruce sustine." Seneca's Epistles, No. 101.
"Mark," he said at last, "when we were at Harrow together an aged sage impressed upon us the meaning of Seneca's line, 'Veritas odit moras. I regard myself at the moment in a position of truth; but whether on calm reflection I believe the whole of your dead friend's story, I'm hanged if I know, and therefore" here he made a long pause and smoked violently "and therefore I have bought a steamer."
One is reminded of Seneca's observation: Vere magnum, habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem dei. There is about us something of the frailty of a man, something of the security of a god; the pity of it is that we cannot follow Seneca to his conclusion and comfort ourselves with the thought that we are 'truly great.
This practical Epicureanism, this idle acquiescence in the supposed incurability of evil, poisoned all Seneca's career. "He had tutored himself," says Professor Maurice, "to endure personal injuries without indulging an anger; he had tutored himself to look upon all moral evil without anger. If the doctrine is sound and the discipline desirable, we must be content to take the whole result of them.
We do not, indeed, adopt the luxurious attitude of semi-recumbency; our climate makes that less requisite; and, moreover, the Romans had no knives and forks, which could scarcely be used in that posture: they ate with their fingers from dishes already cut up whence the peculiar force of Seneca's "post quod non sunt lavandæ manus."
This of all characters upon the earth appears to us to be the one of which there is no hope at all, a character becoming in these days alarmingly abundant; and the aboundance of which makes us find even in a Reineke an inexpressible relief." And, in point of fact, the inconsistency of Seneca's life was a conscious inconsistency.
The diction is much less stilted than Seneca's or Persius's; the thoughts mostly correct, though rather tame; and the descriptions accurate even to tediousness. The arrangement of his subject betrays a somewhat weak hand, though in this he is superior to Gratius Faliscus; but he has an earnest desire to make truth known, and a warm interest in his theme.
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