CHAPTER XI.

NERO AND HIS TUTOR.

The imperial youth, whose destinies are now inextricably mingled with those of Seneca, was accompanied to the throne by the acclamations of the people. Wearied by the astuteness of an Augustus, the sullen wrath of a Tiberius, the mad ferocity of a Caius, the senile insensibility of a Claudius, they could not but welcome the succession of a bright and beautiful youth, whose fair hair floated over his shoulders, and whose features displayed the finest type of Roman beauty. There was nothing in his antecedents to give a sinister augury to his future development, and all classes alike dreamt of the advent of a golden age. We can understand their feelings if we compare them with those of our own countrymen when the sullen tyranny of Henry VIII. was followed by the youthful virtue and gentleness of Edward VI. Happy would it have been for Nero if his reign, like that of Edward, could have been cut short before the thick night of many crimes had settled down upon the promise of its dawn. For the first five years of Nero's reign--the famous Quinquennium Neronis--were fondly regarded by the Romans as a period of almost ideal happiness. In reality, it was Seneca who was ruling in Nero's, name. Even so excellent an Emperor as Trajan is said to have admitted "that no other prince had nearly equalled the praise of that period." It is indeed probable that those years appeared to shine with an exaggerated splendour from the intense gloom which succeeded them; yet we can see in them abundant circumstances which were quite sufficient to inspire an enthusiasm of hope and joy. The young Nero was at first modest and docile. His opening speeches, written with all the beauty of thought and language which betrayed the style of Seneca no less than his habitual sentiments, were full of glowing promises. All those things which had been felt to be injurious or oppressive he promised to eschew. He would not, he said, reserve to himself, as Claudius had done, the irresponsible decision in all matters of business; no office or dignity should be won from him by flattery or purchased by bribes; he would not confuse his own personal interests with those of the commonwealth; he would respect the ancient prerogatives of the Senate; he would confine his own immediate attention to the provinces and the army.

Nor were such promises falsified by his immediate conduct. The odious informers who had flourished in previous reigns were frowned upon and punished. Offices of public dignity were relieved from unjust and oppressive burdens. Nero prudently declined the gold and silver statues and other extravagant honours which were offered to him by the corrupt and servile Senate, but he treated that body, which, fallen as it was, continued still to be the main representative of constitutional authority, with favour and respect. Nobles and officials begun to breathe more freely, and the general sense of an intolerable tyranny was perceptibly relaxed. Severity was reserved for notorious criminals, and was only inflicted in a regular and authorized manner, when no one could doubt that it had been deserved. Above all, Seneca had disseminated an anecdote about his young pupil which tended more than any other circumstance to his wide spread popularity. England has remembered with gratitude and admiration the tearful reluctance of her youthful Edward to sign the death-warrant of Joan Boucher; Rome, accustomed to a cruel indifference to human life, regarded with something like transport the sense of pity which had made Nero, when asked to affix his signature to an order for execution, exclaim, "How I wish that I did not know how to write!"

It is admitted that no small share of the happiness of this period was due to the firmness of the honest Burrus, and the wise, high-minded precepts of Seneca. They deserve the amplest gratitude and credit for this happy interregnum, for they had no easy task to perform. Besides the difficulties which arose from the base and frivolous character of their pupil, besides the infinite delicacy which was requisite for the restraint of a youth who was absolute master of such gigantic destinies, they had the task of curbing the wild and imperious ambition of Agrippina, and of defeating the incessant intrigues of her many powerful dependents. Agrippina had no doubt persuaded herself that her crimes had been mainly committed in the interest of her son; but her conduct showed that she wished him to be a mere instrument in her hands. She wished to govern him, and had probably calculated on doing so by the assistance of Seneca, just as our own Queen Caroline completely managed George II. with the aid of Sir Robert Walpole. She rode in a litter with him; without his knowledge she ordered the poisoning of M. Silanus, a brother of her former victim, she goaded Narcissus to death, against his will; through her influence the Senate was sometimes assembled in the palace, and she took no pains to conceal from the senators that she was herself seated behind a curtain where she could hear every word of their deliberations;--nay, on one occasion, when Nero was about to give audience to an important Armenian legation, she had the audacity to enter the audience-chamber, and advance to take her seat by the side of the Emperor. Every one else was struck dumb with amazement, and even terror, at a proceeding so unusual; but Seneca, with ready and admirable tact, suggested to Nero that he should rise and meet his mother, thus obviating a public scandal under the pretext of filial affection.

But Seneca from the very first had been guilty of a fatal error in the education of his pupil. He had governed him throughout on the ruinous principle of concession. Nero was not devoid of talent; he had a decided turn for Latin versification, and the few lines of his composition which have come down to us, bizarre and effected as they are, yet display a certain sense of melody and power of language. But his vivid imagination was accompained by a want of purpose; and Seneca, instead of trying to train him in habits of serious attention and sustained thought, suffered him to waste his best efforts in pursuits and amusements which were considered partly frivolous and partly disreputable, such as singing, painting, dancing, and driving. Seneca might have argued that there was, at any rate, no great harm in such employments, and that they probably kept Nero out of worse mischief. But we respect Nero the less for his indifferent singing and harp-twanging just as we respect Louis XVI. less for making very poor locks; and, if Seneca had adopted a loftier tone with his pupil from the first, Rome might have been spared the disgraceful folly of Nero's subsequent buffooneries in the cities of Greece and the theatres of Rome. We may lay it down as an invariable axiom in all high education, that it is never sensible to permit what is bad for the supposed sake of preventing what is worse. Seneca very probably persuaded himself that with a mind like Nero's--the innate worthlessness of which he must early have recognised--success of any high description would be simply impossible. But this did not absolve him from attempting the only noble means by which success could, under any circumstances, be attainable. Let us, however, remember that his concessions to his pupil were mainly in matters which he regarded as indifferent--or, at the worst, as discreditable--rather than as criminal; and that his mistake probably arose from an error in judgment far more than from any deficiency in moral character.

Yet it is clear that, even intellectually, Nero was the worse for this laxity of training. We have already seen that, in his maiden-speech before the Senate, every one recognized the hand of Seneca, and many observed with a sigh that this was the first occasion on which an Emperor had not been able, at least to all appearance, to address the Senate in his own words and with his own thoughts. Tiberius, as an orator, had been dignified and forcible; Claudius had been learned and polished; even the disturbed reason of Caligula had not been wanting in a capacity for delivering forcible and eloquent harangues; but Nero's youth had been frittered away in paltry and indecorus accomplishments, which had left him neither time nor inclination for weightier and nobler pursuits.

The fame of Seneca has, no doubt, suffered grieviously from the subsequent infamy of his pupil; and it is obvious that the dislike of Tacitus to his memory is due to his connexion with Nero. Now, even though the tutor's system had not been so wise as, when judged by an inflexible standard, it might have been, it is yet clearly unjust to make him responsible for the depravity of his pupil; and it must be remembered, to Seneca's eternal honour, that the evidence of facts, the testimony of contemporaries, and even the grudging admission of Tacitus himself, establishes in his favour that whatever wisdom and moderation characterized the earlier years of Nero's reign were due to his counsels; that he enjoyed the cordial esteem of the virtuous Burrus; that he helped to check the sanguinary audacities of Agrippina; that the writings which he addressed to Nero, and the speeches which he wrote for him, breathed the loftiest counsels; and that it was not until he was wholly removed from power and influence that Nero, under the fierce impulses of despotic power, developed those atrocious tendencies of which the seeds had long been latent in his disposition. An ancient writer records the tradition that Seneca very early observed in Nero a savagery of disposition which he could not wholly eradicate; and that to his intimate friends he used to observe that, "when once the lion tasted human blood, his innate cruelty would return."

But while we give Seneca this credit, and allow that his intentions were thoroughly upright, we cannot but impugn his judgment for having thus deliberately adopted the morality of expedience; and we believe that to this cause, more than to any other, was due the extent of his failure and the misery of his life. We may, indeed, be permitted to doubt whether Nero himself--a vain and loose youth, the son of bad parents, and heir to boundless expectations--would, under any circumstances, have grown up much better than he did; but it is clear that Seneca might have been held in infinitely higher honour but for the share which he had in his education. Had Seneca been as firm and wise as Socrates, Nero in all probability would not have been much worse than Alcibiades. If the tutor had set before his pupil no ideal but the very highest, if he had inflexibly opposed to the extent of his ability every tendency which was dishonourable and wrong, he might possibly have been rewarded by success, and have earned the indelible gratitude of mankind; and if he had failed he would at least have failed nobly, and have carried with him into a calm and honourable retirement the respect, if not the affection, of his imperial pupil. Nay, even if he had failed completely, and lost his life in the attempt, it would have been infinitely better both for him and for mankind. Even Homer might have taught him that "it is better to die than live in sin." At any rate he might have known from study and observation that an education founded on compromise must always and necessarily fail. It must fail because it overlooks that great eternal law of retribution for and continuity in evil, which is illustrated by every single history of individuals and of nations. And the education which Seneca gave to Nero--noble as it was in many respects, and eminent as was its partial and temporary success--was yet an education of compromises. Alike in the studies of Nero's boyhood and the graver temptations of his manhood, he acted on the foolishly-fatal principle that

"Had the wild oat not been sown,
The soil left barren scarce had grown,
The grain whereby a man may live."

Any Christian might have predicted the result; one would have thought that even a pagan philosopher might have been enlightened enough to observe it. We often quote the lines--

"The child is father of the man,"

and

"Just as the twig is bent the tree inclines."

But the ancients were quite as familiar with the same truth under other images. "The cask," wrote Horace, "will long retain the odour of that which has once been poured into it when new." Quintilian, describing the depraved influences which surrounded even the infancy of a Roman child, said, "From these arise first familiarity, then nature."

No one has laid down the principle more emphatically than Seneca himself. Take, for instance, the following passage from his Letters, on evil conversation. "The conversation," he says, "of these men is very injurious; for, even if it does no immediate harm, it leaves its seeds in the mind, and follows us even when we have gone from the speakers,--a plague sure to spring up in future resurrection. Just as those who have heard a symphony carry in their ears the tune and sweetness of the song which entangles their thoughts, and does not suffer them to give their whole energy to serious matters; so the conversation of flatterers and of those who praise evil things, lingers longer in the mind than the time of hearing it. Nor is it easy to shake out of the soul a sweet sound; it pursues us, and lingers with us, and at perpetual intervals recurs. Our ears therefore must be closed to evil words, and that to the very first we hear. For when they have once begun and been admitted, they acquire more and more audacity;" and so he adds a little afterwards, "our days flow on, and irreparable life passes beyond our reach." Yet he who wrote these noble words was not only a flatterer to his imperial pupil, but is charged with having deliberately encouraged him in a foolish passion for a freedwoman named Acte, into which Nero fell. It was of course his duty to recall the wavering affections of the youthful Emperor to his betrothed Octavia, the daughter of Claudius, to whom he had been bound by every tie of honour and affection, and his union with whom gave some shadow of greater legitimacy to his practical usurpation. But princes rarely love the wives to whom they owe any part of their elevation. Henry VII. treated Elizabeth of York with many slights. The union of William III. with Mary was overshadowed by her superior claim to the royal power; and Nero from the first regarded with aversion, which ended in assassination, the poor young orphan girl who recalled to the popular memory his slender pretensions to hereditary empire, and whom he regarded as a possible rival, if her cowed and plastic nature should ever become a tool in the hands of more powerful intriguers. But we do not hear of any attempt on Seneca's part to urge upon Nero the fulfillment of this high duty, and we find him sinking into the degraded position of an accomplice with young profligates like Otho, as the confident of a dishonourable love. Such conduct, which would have done discredit to a mere courtier, was to a Stoic disgraceful. But the principle which led to it is the very principle to which we have been pointing,--the principle of moral compromise, the principle of permitting and encouraging what is evil in the vain hope of thereby preventing what is worse. It is hardly strange that Seneca should have erred in this way, for compromise was the character of his entire life. He appears to have set before himself the wholly impossible task of being both a genuine philosopher and a statesman under the Caesars. He prided himself on being not only a philosopher, but also a man of the world, and the consequence was, that in both capacities he failed. It was as true in Paganism as it is in Christianity, that a man must make his choice between duty and interest--between the service of Mammon and the service of God. No man ever gained anything but contempt and ruin by incessantly halting between two opinions.

And by not taking that lofty line of duty which a Zeno or an Antisthenes would have taken, Seneca became more or less involved in some of the most dreadful events of Nero's reign. Every one of the terrible doubts under which his reputation has suffered arose from his having permitted the principle of expedience to supercede the laws of virtue. One or two of these events we must briefly narrate.

We have already pointed out that the Nemesis which for so many years had been secretly dogging the footsteps of Agrippina made her tremble under the weight of its first cruel blows when she seemed to have attained the highest summit of her ambition. Very early indeed Nero began to be galled and irritated by the insatiate assumption and swollen authority of "the best of mothers." The furious reproaches which she heaped upon him when she saw in Acte a possible rival to her power drove him to take refuge in the facile and unphilosophic worldliness of Seneca's concessions, and goaded him almost immediately afterwards into an atrocious crime. He naturally looked on Britannicus, the youthful son of Claudius, with even more suspicion and hatred than that with which he regarded Octavia. Kings have rarely been able to abstain from acts of severity against those who might become claimants to the throne. The feelings of King John towards Prince Arthur, of Henry IV. towards the Earl of March, of Mary towards Lady Jane Grey, of Elizabeth towards Mary Stuart, of King James towards Lady Arabella Stuart, resembled, but probably by no means equalled in intensity, those of Nero towards his kinsman and adoptive brother. To show him any affection was a dangerous crime, and it furnished a sufficient cause for immediate removal if any attendant behaved towards him with fidelity. Such a line of treatment foreshadowed the catastrophe which was hastened by the rage of Agrippina. She would go, she said, and take with her to the camp the noble boy who was now of full age to undertake those imperial duties which a usurper was exercising in virtue of crimes which she was now prepared to confess. Then let the mutilated Burrus and the glib-tongued Seneca see whether they could be a match for the son of Claudius and the daughter of Germanicus. Such language, uttered with violent gestures and furious imprecations, might well excite the alarm of the timid Nero. And that alarm was increased by a recent circumstance, which showed that all the ancestral spirit was not dead in the breast of Britannicus. During the festivities of the Saturnalia, which were kept by the ancients with all the hilarity of the modern Christmas, Nero had been elected by lot as "governor of the feast," and, in that capacity, was entitled to issue his orders to the guests. To the others he issued trivial mandates which would not make them blush; but Britannicus in violation of every principle of Roman decorum, was ordered to stand up in the middle and sing a song. The boy, inexperienced as yet even in sober banquets, and wholly unaccustomed to drunken convivialities, might well have faltered; but he at once rose, and with a steady voice began a strain--probably the magnificent wail of Andromache over the fall of Troy, which has been preserved to us from a lost play of Ennius--in which he indicated his own disgraceful ejection from his hereditary rights. His courage and his misfortunes woke in the guests a feeling of pity which night and wine made them less careful to disguise. From that moment the fate of Britannicus was sealed. Locusta, the celebrated poisoner of ancient Rome, was summoned to the councils of Nero to get rid of Britannicus, as she had already been summoned to those of his mother when she wished to disembarrass herself of Britannicus's father. The main difficulty was to avoid discovery, since nothing was eaten or drunk at the imperial table till it had been tasted by the praegustator. To avoid this difficulty a very hot draught was given to Britannicus, and when he wished for something cooler a swift and subtle poison was dropped into the cold water with which it was tempered. The boy drank, and instantly sank from his seat, gasping and speechless. The guests started up in consternation, and fixed their eyes on Nero. He with the utmost coolness assured them that it was merely a fit of epilepsy, to which his brother was accustomed, and from which he would soon recover. The terror and agitation of Agrippina showed to every one that she at least was guiltless of this dark deed; but the unhappy Octavia, young as she was, and doubly terrible on every ground as the blow must have been to her, sat silent and motionless, having already learnt by her misfortunes the awful necessity for suppressing under an impassive exterior her affections and sorrows, her hopes and fears. In the dead of night, amid storms and murky rain, which were thought to indicate the wrath of heaven, the last of the Claudii was hastily and meanly hurried into a dishonourable grave.

We may believe that in this crime Seneca had no share whatever, but we can hardly believe that he was ignorant of it after it had been committed, or that he had no share in the intensely hypocritical edict in which Nero bewailed the fact of his adoptive brother's death, excused his hurried funeral, and threw himself on the additional indulgence and protection of the Senate. Nero showed the consciousness of guilt by the immense largesses which he distributed to the most powerful of his friends, "Nor were there wanting men," says Tacitus, in a most significant manner, "who accused certain people, notorious for their high professions, of having at that period divided among them villas and houses as though they had been so much spoil." There can hardly be a doubt that the great historian intends by this remark to point at Seneca, to whom he tries to be fair, but whom he could never quite forgive for his share in the disgraces of Nero's reign. That avarice was one of Seneca's temptations is too probable; that expediency was a guiding principle of his conduct is but too evident; and for a man with such a character to rebut an innuendo is never an easy task. Nay more, it was after this foul event, at the close of Nero's first year, that Seneca addressed him in the extravagant and glowing language of his treatise on Clemency. "The quality of mercy," and the duty of princes to practise it, has never been more eloquently extolled; but it is accompanied by a fulsome flattery which has in it something painfully grotesque as addressed by a philosopher to one whom he knew to have been guilty, that very year, of an inhuman fratricide. Imagine some Jewish Pharisee,--a Nicodemus or a Gamaliel--pronouncing an eulogy on the tenderness of a Herod, and you have some picture of the appearance which Seneca's consistency must have worn in the eyes of his contemporaries.

This event took place A.D. 55, in the first year of Nero's Quinquennium, and the same year was nearly signalized by the death of his mother. A charge of pretended conspiracy was invented against her, and it is probable that but for the intervention of Burrus, who with Seneca was appointed to examine into the charge, she would have fallen a very sudden victim to the cowardly credulity and growing hatred of her son. The extraordinary and eloquent audacity of her defence created a reaction in her favour, and secured the punishment of her accusers. But the ties of affection could not long unite two such wicked and imperious natures as those of Agrippina and her son. All history shows that there can be no real love between souls exceptionally wicked, and that this is still more impossible when the alliance between them has been sealed by a complicity in crime. Nero had now fallen into a deep infatuation for Poppaea Sabina, the beautiful wife of Otho, and she refused him her hand so long as he was still under the control of his mother. At this time Agrippina, as the just consequence of her many crimes, was regarded by all classes with a fanaticism of hatred which in Poppaea Sabina was intensified by manifest self-interest. Nero, always weak, had long regarded his mother with real terror and disgust, and he scarcely needed the urgency of constant application to make him long to get rid of her. But the daughter of Germanicus could not be openly destroyed, while her own precautions helped to secure her against secret assassination. It only remained to compass her death by treachery. Nero had long compelled her to live in suburban retirement, and had made no attempt to conceal the open rapture which existed between them. Anicetus, admiral of the fleet at Misenum, and a former instructor of Nero, suggested the expedient of a pretended public reconciliation, in virtue of which Agrippina should be invited to Baiae, and on her return should be placed on board a vessel so constructed as to come to pieces by the removal of bolts. The disaster might then be attributed to a mere naval accident, and Nero might make the most ostentatious display of his affection and regret.

The invitation was sent, and a vessel specially decorated was ordered to await her movements. But, either from suspicion or from secret information, she declined to avail herself of it, and was conveyed to Baiae in a litter. The effusion of hypocritical affection with which she was received, the unusual tenderness and honour with which she was treated, the earnest gaze, the warm embrace, the varied conversation, removed her suspicions, and she consented to return in the vessel of honour. As though for the purpose of revealing the crime, the night was starry and the sea calm. The ship had not sailed far, and Crepereius Gallus, one of her friends, was standing near the helm, while a lady named Acerronia was seated at her feet as she reclined, and both were vieing with each other in the warmth of their congratulations upon the recent interview, when a crash was heard, and the canopy above them which had been weighted with a quantity of lead, was suddenly let go. Crepereius was crushed to death upon the spot; Agrippina and Acerronia were saved by the projecting sides of the couch on which they were resting; in the hurry and alarm, as accomplices were mingled with a greater number who were innocent of the plot, the machinery of the treacherous vessel failed. Some of the rowers rushed to one side of the ship, hoping in that manner to sink it, but here too their councils were divided and confused. Acerronia, in the selfish hope of securing assistance, exclaimed that she was Agrippina, and was immediately despatched with oars and poles; Agrippina, silent and unrecognized, received a wound upon the shoulder, but succeeded in keeping herself afloat till she was picked up by fishermen and carried in safety to her villa.

The hideous attempt from which she had been thus miraculously rescued did not escape her keen intuition, accustomed as it was to deeds of guilt; but, seeing that her only chance of safety rested in dissimulation and reticense, she sent her freedman Agerinus to tell her son that by the mercy of heaven she had escaped from a terrible accident, but to beg him not to be alarmed, and not to come to see her because she needed rest.

The news filled Nero with the wildest terror, and the expectation of an immediate revenge. In horrible agitation and uncertainty he instantly required the presence of Burrus and Seneca. Tacitus doubts whether they may not have been already aware of what he had attempted, and Dion, to whose gross calumnies, however, we need pay no attention, declares that Seneca had frequently urged Nero to the deed, either in the hope of overshadowing his own guilt, or of involving Nero in a crime which should hasten his most speedy destruction at the hands of gods and men. In the absence of all evidence we may with perfect confidence acquit the memory of these eminent men from having gone so far as this.

It must have been a strange and awful scene. The young man, for Nero was but twenty-two years old, poured into the ears their tumult of his agitation and alarm. White with fear, weak with dissipation, and tormented by the furies of a guilty conscience, the wretched youth looked from one to another of his aged ministers. A long and painful pause ensued. If they dissuaded him in vain from the crime which he meditated their lives would have been in danger; and perhaps they sincerely thought that things had gone so far that, unless Agrippina were anticipated, Nero would be destroyed. Seneca was the first to break that silence of anguish by inquiring of Burrus whether the soldiery could be entrusted to put her to death. His reply was that the praetorians would do nothing against a daughter of Germanicus and that Anicetus should accomplish what he had promised. Anicetus showed himself prompt to crime, and Nero thanked him in a rapture of gratitude. While the freedman Agerinus was delivering to Nero his mother's message, Anicetus dropped a dagger at his feet, declared that he had caught him in the very act of attempting the Emperor's assassination, and hurried off with a band of soldiers to punish Agrippina as the author of the crime.

The multitude meanwhile were roaming in wild excitement along the shore; their torches were seen glimmering in evident commotion about the scene of the calamity, where some were wading into the water in search of the body, and others were shouting incoherent questions and replies. At the rumour of Agrippina's escape they rushed off in a body to her villa to express their congratulations, where they were dispersed by the soldiers of Anicetus, who had already token possession of it. Scattering or seizing the slaves who came in their way, and bursting their passage from door to door, they found the Empress in a dimly-lighted chamber, attended only by a single handmaid. "Dost thou too desert me?" exclaimed the wretched woman to her servant, as she rose to slip away. In silent determination the soldiers surrounded her couch, and Anicetus was the first to strike her with a stick. "Strike my womb," she cried to him faintly, as he drew his sword, "for it bore Nero." The blow of Anicetus was the signal for her immediate destruction: she was dispatched with many wounds, and was buried that night at Misenum on a common couch and with a mean funeral. Such an end, many years previously, this sister, and wife, and mother of emperors had anticipated and despised; for when the Chaldaeans had assured her that her son would become Emperor, and would murder her, she is said to have exclaimed, "Occidat dum imperet," "Let him slay me if he but reign."

It only remained to account for the crime, and offer for it such lying defences as were most likely to gain credit. Flying to Naples from a scene which had now become awful to him,--for places do not change as men's faces change, and, besides this, his disturbed conscience made him fancy that he heard from the hill of Misenum the blowing of a ghostly trumpet and wailings about his mother's tomb in the hours of night,--he sent from thence a letter to the Senate, saying that his mother had been punished for an attempt upon his life, and adding a list of her crimes, real and imaginary, the narrative of her accidental shipwreck, and his opinion that her death was a public blessing. The author of this shameful document was Seneca, and in composing it he reached the nadir of his moral degradation. Even the lax morality of a most degenerate age condemned him for calmly sitting down to decorate with the graces of rhetoric and antithesis an atrocity too deep for the powers of indignation. A Seneca could stoop to write what a Thrasea Paetus could scarcely stoop to hear; for in the meeting of the Senate at which the letter was recited, Thrasea rose in indignation, and went straight home rather than seem to sanction by his presence the adulation of a matricide.

And the composition of that guily, elaborate, shameful letter was the last prominent act of Seneca's public life.