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Updated: May 2, 2025
Instead of proceeding directly to Seneca's house he went to consult with the captain of the guard, who, though really one of the conspirators, had not yet been accused, and was still at liberty, though trembling with apprehension at the imminence of his danger. The captain, after hearing the case, said that nothing was to be done but to deliver the message.
And Bacon quotes passages from Seneca's "Physical Inquiries" to show that the acquisition of knowledge is gradual. Attention has been already called to those passages, and it was shown how perverse it is, on the strength of such remarks, to claim Seneca as a teacher of the doctrine of Progress. The same claim has been made for Bacon with greater confidence, and it is no less perverse.
On whom was the odium of this barbarous action cast? What was the consequence to these unhappy men? What eminent persons suffered on this occasion? Did not these cruelties give birth to conspiracies? What persons of note suffered in consequence? Did this defence save his life? Were his exhortations effectual? Relate the circumstances of Seneca's death? Were not other means resorted to?
Reserate clusos regii postes Laris. But he says of me, That being filled with the precedents of the Ancients who Writ their Plays in Verse, I commend the thing; declaring our language to be full, noble, and significant, and charging all the defects upon the ill placing of words; which I prove by quoting SENECA's loftily expressing such an ordinary thing as shutting the door.
The action is sadly impeded, for instance, by the author's not making one business of Seneca's death, but spinning it out through four scenes of going and coming, as also with Poppæa's, and even more with Nero's, where the intercalation of long conversations with changes of places and personages is hurtful, almost destructive, to the effect.
It would indeed be cheap and easy, to attribute the general inferiority and the many shortcomings of Seneca's life and character to the fact that he was a Pagan, and to suppose that if he had known Christianity he would necessarily have attained to a loftier ideal.
To these works may be added Cicero's Offices, a piece not enough esteemed, purely because it is in the hands of every one; some of Seneca's Epistles, the Tragedies that go under his name; and the best of Plutarch's smaller pieces.
Seneca's contempt for the things of this world was doubtless suggested in the palace of Nero. He would not have treated the subject so well in disgrace and poverty. Do not suppose I am affecting to be pleasant, for I write in the sober sadness of conviction, that human fortitude is often no better than a pompous theory, founded on self-love and self-deception.
There had then come to Carthage a certain Bishop of the Manichæans, Faustus by name, a great snare of the Devil, and many were entangled by him through the smooth lure of his language. Because he had read some of Cicero's orations and a few of Seneca's books, some of the poets, and such volumes of his own sect as were written in good Latin, he acquired a certain seductive eloquence.
The only link of connection between them was the problematical one that St. Paul, with his wide sympathies, may have gazed with interest upon Seneca's villa, as it was pointed out to him on his journey to Rome; and that he was on one occasion dragged as a prisoner into the presence of Seneca's elder brother, that Gallio who dismissed the charge and the accusers with contempt.
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