ULTIMA THULE.
American pride has often gloried in Seneca's “Vision of the West,” more than eighteen hundred years ago.
Venient annis
Sæcula seris, quibus Oceanus
Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens
Pateat tellus, Typhisque novos
Detegat orbes, nec sit terris
Ultima Thule.
A time will come in future ages far
When Ocean will his circling bounds unbar.
And, opening vaster to the Pilot's hand,
New worlds shall rise, where mightier kingdoms are,
This poetic forecast, of which Washington Irving wrote “the predictions of the ancient oracles were rarely so unequivocal,” is part of the “chorus” at the end of the second act of Seneca's “Medea,” written near the date of St. Paul's first Epistle to the Thessalonians.
Seneca, the celebrated Roman (Stoic) philosopher, was born at or very near the time of our Saviour's birth. There are legends of his acquaintance with Paul, at Rome, but though he wrote able and quotable treatises On Consolation, On Providence, On Calmness of Soul, and On the Blessed Life, there is no direct evidence that the savor of Christian faith ever qualified his works or his personal principles. He was a man of grand ideas and inspirations, but he was a time server and a flatterer of the Emperor Nero, who, nevertheless, caused his death when he had no further use for him.
His compulsory suicide occurred A.D. 65, the year in which St. Paul is supposed to have suffered martyrdom.