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 the young Emperor, or even more than the Emperor himself, it was his tutor, Seneca. He was the leading man in Rome. By the popular critics of the day his style was thought the finest which any Roman had written, though the Emperor Gaius, in one of his lucid intervals, had wittily remarked that it was ‘sand without lime.’ His abilities were brilliant, his wealth was immense. In all ordinary respects he was innocent and virtuous—he was innocence and virtue itself compared with the sanguinary oppressors and dissolute Epicureans by whom he was surrounded on every side.

But his whole life and character were ruined by the attempt to achieve an impossible compromise, which disgraced and could not save him. 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 man whose enormous usury poured in from every part of the Empire. The praises of virtue sounded insincere from one who was living in the closest intercourse with men and women steeped in unblushing wickedness. And Seneca was far from easy in his own mind. He was surrounded by flatterers, but he knew that he was not ranked with patriots like Pætus Thrasea, and genuine philosophers like Cornutus and Musonius Rufus. Unable to resist temptations to avarice and ambition, he felt a deep misgiving that the voice of posterity would honour their perilous independence, while it spoke doubtfully of his endless 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 an example to the matrons of Rome, multitudes of whom, in the highest circles, lived in an atmosphere of daily intrigue and almost yearly divorce. His aunt, Marcia, was a lady of high virtue and distinguished 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 were exquisitely beautiful, and he never felt happier than when he laid aside his cares and amused himself by running races with his little slaves. His palace was splendid and stately, and he needed not to have burdened himself with the magnificence which gave him no pleasure and only excited a dangerous envy. It would have been well for him if he had devoted his life to literature and philosophy. But he entered the magic circle of the Palace, and with a sore conscience was constantly driven to do what he disapproved, and to sanction what he 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 holding a wolf by the ears. Some kind friend had shown him a sketch, brought from Pompeii, of a grasshopper driving a griffin, and he knew that, harmless as it looked, the griffin was meant for himself and the grasshopper for Nero. Men regarded him as harnessed to the car of the frivolous pupil whom he was unable to control.

He was sitting in his study one afternoon, and the low wind sounded mournfully through the trees outside. It was a room of fine proportions, and the shelves were crowded with choice books. There were rolls of vellum or papyrus, stained saffron-colour at the back, and fastened to sticks of ebony, of which the bosses were gilded. All the most valuable were enclosed in cases of purple parchment, with their titles attached to them in letters of vermilion. There was scarcely a book there which did not represent the best art of the famous booksellers, the Sosii, in the Vicus Sandalarius, whose firm was as old as the days of Horace. A glance at the library showed the taste as well as the wealth of the eminent owner—the ablest, the richest, the most popular, the most powerful of the Roman senators.

They who thought his lot so enviable little knew that his pomp and power brought him nothing except an almost sleepless anxiety. Every visitor who came to him that morning spoke of subjects which either tortured him with misgivings or vexed him with a touch of shame.

The first to visit Seneca that day was his brother Gallio, with whom 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 did not love him enough, had recently returned from the proconsulship of Achaia. He had just been nominated Consul as a reward for his services. The brothers had much to tell each other. Gallio described some of his experiences, and made Seneca laugh by a story of how a Jewish Rabbi had been dragged before his tribunal by the Jews of Corinth, who were infuriated with him because he had joined this new, strange, and execrable sect of Christians. This Jew’s name was Paulus, and his countrymen accused him of worshipping a malefactor who, for some sedition or other—but probably only to please the turbulent Jews—had been crucified, in the reign of Tiberius, by the Procurator Pontius Pilatus.

‘I naturally refused to have anything to do with their abject superstition,’ 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 are useful 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 heaven with a hook! But you have not let me finish my story. It appears that this Paulus was a tent-maker, and for some reason or other, in spite of his absurd beliefs, he had gained the confidence of Erastus, the city chamberlain, and of a great many Greeks; for, strange to say, he had—so I am told—preached a very remarkable and original code of ethics. It is almost inconceivable that a man can hold insane doctrines, and yet conform to a lofty morality. Yet such seems to have been the case with this strange person. I looked at him with curiosity. 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 Judaic features. But though his eyes were sadly disfigured by ophthalmia, there was something extraordinary about his look. You know how those Jews can yell when once their Eastern stolidity is roused to fury. Even in Rome we have had some experience of that; and you remember how Cicero was once almost terrified out of recollection of his speech by the clamour they made, and had to speak in a whisper that they might not hear what he said. To stand in the midst of a mob of such dirty, wildly gesticulating creatures, shouting, cursing, waving their garments in the air, flinging up handfuls of dust, is enough to terrify even a Roman. I, as you know, am a tolerably cool personage, yet I was half appalled, and had to assume a disdainful indifference which I was far from feeling. But this man stood there unmoved. If he had been a Regulus or a Fabricius he could not have been more undaunted, as he looked on his infuriated persecutors with a glance of pitying forgiveness. Every now and then he made a conciliatory gesture, and tried to speak; but though he spoke in Hebrew, which usually pacifies these fanatics to silence, they would not listen to him for an instant. But the perfect dignity, the nobleness of attitude and aspect, with which that worn little Jew stood there, filled me with admiration. And his face! that of Pætus Thrasea is not more striking. The spirit of virtue and purity, and something more which I cannot describe, seemed to breathe from it. It is an odd fact, but those Jews seem to produce not only the ugliest and the handsomest, but also the best and worst of mankind. I sat quiet in my curule chair, and let the Jews yell, telling them once more that, as no civil crime was charged against Paulus, I refused to be a judge in matters of their superstition. At last, getting tired, I ordered the lictors to clear the prætorium, which they did with infinite delight, driving the yelling Jews before them like chaff, and not sparing the blows of their fasces. I thought I had done with the matter then; but not at all! It was the turn of the Greeks now. They resented the fact that the Jews should be allowed to make a riot, and they sided with Paulus. He was hurried by his friends into a place of safety; but the Greeks seized the head of the Jewish Synagogue—a fellow named Sosthenes—and administered to him a sound beating underneath my very tribunal.’

‘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 a rabble of idle Greeks, most of them the scum of the Forum, beat any number of Jews black and blue? It is what we shall have to do to the whole race before long. But, somehow, the face of that Paulus haunted me. They tell me that he was educated at Tarsus, and he was evidently a 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 with a Jewish tent-maker named Aquila, who was driven from Rome by the futile edict of Claudius. But my lictor either could not or would not find out the obscure haunt where he hid himself. The Christians were chary of information, and perhaps, after all, it was as well not to demean myself by talking to a ringleader of a sect whom all men detest for their enormities. If report says true, the old Bacchanalians, whose gang was broken up two hundred years ago, were nothing to them.’6

‘I have heard their name,’ said Seneca. ‘Our slaves probably know a good deal more about the matter than we do, if one took the trouble to ask them. But unless they stir up a riot at Rome I shall not trouble the Emperor by mentioning them.’

At this point of the conversation a slave announced that Seneca’s other brother, the knight Marcus Annæus Mela, and his son Lucan, were waiting in the atrium.

‘Admit them,’ said Seneca. ‘Ah, brother, and you, my Lucan, perhaps it would have been a better thing for us all if we had never left our sunny Cordova.’

‘I don’t know that,’ said Mela. ‘I prefer to be at Rome, a senator in rank, though I choose the station of a knight. To be procurator of the 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 young Spaniard, a splendid youth of seventeen, whose earlier poems had already been received with unbounded applause, and whose dark eyes glowed with the light of genius and passion. ‘Is he content to stand only second as a poet—if second—to Silius Italicus, and Cæsius Bassus, and young Persius?’

‘Well,’ said Lucan, ‘perhaps a man might equal Silius without any superhuman merit. Persius, like myself, is still young, but I would give up any skill of mine for his delightful character. And, as for Rome, if to be a constant guest at Nero’s table and to hear him read by the hour his own bad poetry be a thing worth living for, then I am better 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, he repeated 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! As Persius says, ‘It all seems to swim and melt in the mouth!’

‘Well, well,’ replied the philosopher, ‘at least you will admit that he might be worse employed than in singing and versifying?’

‘An Emperor might be better employed,’ said the young man; ‘and with him I live on tenter-hooks. I heartily wish that he had never summoned me from Athens, or done me the honour of calling me his intimate friend. Frankly, I do not like him. Much as he tries to conceal it, he is horribly jealous of me. He does all he can to make me suppress my poems, though he affects to praise them; and though, of course, when he reads me his verses, I cry “Euge!” and “Σοφῶς!” at every line, as needs must when the master of thirty legions writes, yet he sees through my praise. And I really cannot always suppress my smiles. The other day he told me that the people called his voice “divine.” A minute after, as though meaning to express admiration 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 and on his alliteration; and I was desperately alarmed. It was hard work to pacify him with a deluge of adulation.’

Seneca sighed. ‘Be careful, Lucan,’ he said, ‘be careful! The character of Nero is rapidly altering. At present I have kept back the tiger in him from tasting blood; but when he does he will bathe his jaws pretty deeply. It is ill jesting when one’s head is in a wild beast’s mouth.’

‘And yet,’ said Gallio, ‘I have heard you say that no one could compare the mansuetude even of the aged Augustus with that of the youthful Nero.’

Seneca thought it disagreeable to be reminded of his politic inconsistencies. ‘I wish to lead him to clemency,’ he said, ‘even if he be cruel. But he is his father’s son. You know what Lucius Domitius was. He struck out the eye of a Roman knight, and he purposely 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 tutor I dreamt that my pupil was Caligula?’

There was an awkward pause, and to turn the conversation, Lucan suddenly asked, ‘Uncle, do you believe in Babylonians and their horoscopes?’

‘No,’ said the philosopher. ‘The star of each man’s destiny is in his heart.’

‘Do you not? Well, I will not say that I do. And yet—would you like 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 the astrologers.’

‘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 of you through my fault—would die deaths of violence. Oh, ye gods, if there 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 man makes his own omens. I am Nero’s tutor; you, his friend; our whole family is in the full blaze of favour and prosperity.—But, hark! I hear a soldier’s footstep in the hall. Burrus is coming to see me on important state business. Farewell, now, but sup with me this evening, if you will share my simplicity.’

‘Simplicity!’ answered Mela, with a touch of envy, ‘your humble couches are inlaid with tortoise-shell; and your table shines with crystal and myrrhine vases embossed with gems.’

‘What does it matter whether the goblets of a philosopher be of crystal or of clay?’ answered Seneca gaily; ‘and as for my poor Thyine tables with ivory feet, which every one talks of, Cicero was a student, and he was not rich, yet he had one table which cost 500,000 sesterces. One may surely admire the tigrine stripes and panther-like spots of the citron-wood without being a Lucullus or an Apicius.’

‘But you have five hundred such tables,’ said Mela, ‘worth—I am afraid to say how many million sesterces.’

Seneca smiled a little uneasily. ‘Accepimus peritura perituri; we and our possessions are but for a day,’ he said, ‘and even calumny will bear witness that on those citron tables nothing more sumptuous is usually served to me personally than water and vegetables and fruit.’

Then with a whispered caution to Lucan to control his vehement impulses and act with care, the ‘austere intriguer’ said farewell to his kinsmen, and rose to greet his colleague Burrus.