Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

Trajan to Pliny: "In sifting the cases of those who have been indicted on the charge of Christianity, you have adopted, my dear Secundus, the right course of proceeding; for no certain rule can be laid down which will meet all cases. They must not be sought after, but if they are informed against, and convicted, they must be punished; with this proviso, however, that if any deny that he is a Christian, and proves the point by offering prayers to our deities, notwithstanding the suspicions under which he has labored, he shall be pardoned on his repentance. On no account should any anonymous charges be attended to, for it would be the worst possible precedent, and is inconsistent with the habits of our time."

8. PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE.—Philosophy, and particularly moral philosophy, became a necessary study at this time, when the popular religion had lost its influence. In the general ruin of public and private morals, virtuous men found in this science a guide in the dangers by which they were continually threatened, and a consolation in all their sorrows. The Stoic among the other schools met with most favor from this class of men, for it offered better security against the evils of life, and taught men how to take shelter from baseness and profligacy under the influence of virtue and courage. The doctrines of the Stoics suited the rigid sternness of the Roman character. They embodied that spirit of self-devotion and self- denial with which the Roman patriot, in the old times of simple republican virtue, threw himself into his public duties, and they enabled him to meet death with a courageous spirit in this degenerate age, in which many of the best and noblest willingly died by their own hands, at the imperial mandate, in order to save their name from infamy, and their inheritance from confiscation.

Seneca, (12-69 A.D.), a native of Cordova in Spain, was the greatest philosopher of this age. He early displayed great talent as a pleader, but in the reign of Claudius he was banished to Corsica, where he solaced his exile with the study of the Stoic philosophy; and though its severe precepts exercised no moral influence on his conduct, he not only professed himself a Stoic, but imagined that he was one. A few years after, he was recalled by Agrippina, to become tutor to her son Nero. He was too unscrupulous a man of the world to attempt the correction of the vicious propensities of his pupil, or to instill into him high principles. After the accession of Nero, he endeavored to arrest his depraved career, but it was too late. Seneca had, by usury and legacy-hunting, amassed one of those large fortunes of which so many instances are met with in Roman history; feeling the dangers of wealth, he offered his property to Nero, who refused it, but resolved to rid himself of his former tutor, and easily found a pretext for his destruction. In adversity the character of Seneca shone with brighter lustre. Though he had lived ill, he could die well. He met the messengers of death without trembling. His noble wife, Paulina, determined to die with him. The veins of both were opened at the same time, but the little blood which remained in his emaciated frame refused to flow. He suffered excruciating agony. A warm bath was tried, but in vain; and a draught of poison was equally ineffectual. At last he was suffocated by the vapor of a stove.

Seneca lived in a perilous atmosphere. He had not firmness to act up to the high moral standard which he proposed to himself. He was avaricious, but avarice was the great sin of his times. The education of one who was a brute rather than a man was a task to which no one would have been equal; he therefore retained the influence which he had not the uprightness to command, by miserable and sinful expedients. He had great abilities, and some of the noble qualities of the old Romans; and had he lived in the days of the republic, he would have been a great man.

Seneca was the author of twelve ethical treatises, the best of which are entitled, "On Providence," "On Consolation," and "On the Perseverance of Wise Men." He cared little for abstract speculation, and delighted to inculcate precepts rather than to investigate principles. He was always a favorite with Christian writers, and some of his sentiments are truly Christian. There is even a tradition that he was acquainted with St. Paul. He may unconsciously have imbibed some of the principles of Christianity. The gospel had already made great and rapid strides over the civilized world, and thoughtful minds may have been enlightened by some of the rays of divine truth dispersed by the moral atmosphere, just as we are benefited by the light of the sun, even when its disk is obscured by clouds. His epistles, of which there are one hundred and twenty-four, are moral essays, and are the most delightful of his works. They are evidently written for the public eye; they are rich in varied thought, and their reflections flow naturally, and without effort. They contain a free and unconstrained picture of his mind, and we see in them how he despised verbal subtleties, the external badges of a sect or creed, and insisted that the great end of science is to learn how to live and how to die. The style of Seneca is too elaborate to please. It is affected, often florid, and bombastic; there is too much sparkle and glitter, too little repose and simplicity.

Pliny the elder (A.D. 23-79) was born probably at Como, the family residence. He was educated at Rome, where he practiced at the bar, and filled different civil offices. He perished a martyr to the cause of science, in the eruption of Vesuvius, which took place in the reign of Titus, the first of which there is any record in history. The circumstances of his death are described by his nephew, Pliny the younger, in two letters to Tacitus. He was at Misenum, in command of the fleet, when, observing the first indications of the eruption, and wishing to investigate it more closely, he fitted out a light galley, and sailed towards the villa of a friend at Stabiae. He found his friend in great alarm, but Pliny remained tranquil and retired to rest. Meanwhile, broad flames burst forth from the volcano, the blaze was reflected from the sky, and the brightness was enhanced by the darkness of the night. Repeated shocks of an earthquake made the houses rock to and fro, while in the air the fall of half burnt pumice-stones menaced danger. He was awakened, and he and his friend, with their attendants, tied cushions over their heads to protect them from the falling stones, and walked out to see if they might venture on the water. It was now day, but the darkness was denser than the darkest night, the sea was a waste of stormy waters, and when at last the flames and the sulphureous smell could no longer be endured, Pliny fell dead, suffocated by the dense vapor.

The natural history of Pliny is an unequaled monument of studious diligence and persevering industry. It consists of thirty-seven books, and contains 20,000 facts (as he believed them to be) connected with nature and art, the result not of original research, but, as he honestly confessed, culled from the labors of other men.

Owing to the extent of his reading, his love of the marvelous, and his want of judgment in comparing and selecting, he does not present us with a correct view of the science of his own age. He reproduces errors evidently obsolete and inconsistent with facts and theories which had afterwards replaced them. With him, mythological traditions appeared to have almost the same authority as modern discoveries; the earth teems with monsters, not exceptions to the regular order of nature, but specimens of her ingenuity. His peculiar pantheistic belief prepared him to consider nothing incredible, and his temper inclined him to admit all that was credible as true.

He tells us of men whose feet were turned backwards, of others whose feet were so large as to shade them when they lay in the sun; others without mouths, who fed on the fragrance of fruits and flowers. Among the lower animals, he enumerates horned horses furnished with wings; the mantichora, with the face of a man, three rows of teeth, a lion's body, and a scorpion's tail; the basilisk, whose very glance is fatal; and an insect which cannot live except in the midst of the flames. But notwithstanding his credulity and his want of judgment, this elaborate work contains many valuable truths and much entertaining information. The prevailing character of his philosophical belief, though tinctured with the stoicism of the day, is querulous and melancholy. Believing that nature is an all- powerful principle, and the universe instinct with deity, he saw more of evil than of good in the divine dispensation, and the result was a gloomy and discontented pantheism.

Celsus probably lived in the reign of Tiberius. He was the author of many works, on various subjects, of which one, in eight books, on medicine, is now extant. The independence of his views, the practical, as well as the scientific nature of his instructions, and above all, his knowledge of surgery, and his clear exposition of surgical operations, have given his work great authority; the highest testimony is borne to its merits by the fact of its being used as a text-book, even in the present advanced state of medical science. The taste of the age in which he lived turned his attention also to polite literature, and to that may be ascribed the Augustan purity of his style.