Nec minus noto Sallustius epigrammate incessitur:
‘Et verba antiqui multum furate Catonis,
Crispe, Iugurthinae conditor historiae.’
Quint. VIII. iii. 29.
‘The last of the Ciceronians, Sallust is also in a sense the first of the imperial prose-writers.’—Mackail.
Primus Romana Crispus in Historia (Mart. XIV. cxci.)
L. ANNAEUS SENECA THE YOUNGER, circ. 4 B.C.-65 A.D.
1. Life.
SENECA.
The son of Seneca the Elder, the famous rhetorician, was born at Corduba (Cordova), in Spain, and brought to Rome by his parents at an early age. His life was one of singularly dramatic contrasts and vicissitudes. Under his mother Helvia’s watchful care he received the best education Rome could give. Through the influence of his mother’s family he passed into the Senate through the quaestorship, and his successes at the bar awakened the jealousy of Caligula (37-41 A.D.) By his father’s advice he retired for a time and spent his days in philosophy. On the accession of Claudius (41-54 A.D.) he was banished to Corsica at the instance of the Empress Messalina, probably because he was suspected of belonging to the faction of Agrippina, the mother of Nero. After eight years he was recalled (49 A.D.) by the influence of Agrippina (now the wife of Claudius), and appointed tutor to her son Nero, then a boy of ten. When Nero became emperor, at the age of seventeen (54 A.D.), Seneca, in conjunction with his friend Burrus, the prefect of the praetorian guards, became practically the administrator of the Empire. ‘The mild and enlightened administration of the earlier years of the new reign, the famous quinquennium Neronis, may indeed be largely ascribed to Seneca’s influence; but this influence was based on an excessive indulgence of Nero’s caprices, which soon worked out its own punishment.’—Mackail. His connivance at the murder of Agrippina (59 A.D.) was the death-blow to his influence for good, and the death of Burrus (63 A.D.) was, as Tacitus says (Ann. xiv. 52), ‘a blow to Seneca’s power, for virtue had not the same strength when one of its champions, so to speak, was removed, and Nero began to lean on worse advisers.’ Seneca resolved to retire, and entreated Nero to receive back the wealth he had so lavishly bestowed. The Emperor, bent on vengeance, refused the proffered gift, and Seneca knew that his doom was sealed. In the year 65, on the pretext of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso, he was commanded to commit suicide, and Tacitus (Ann. xv. 61-63) has shown his love for Seneca, in spite of all his faults, by the tribute he pays to the constancy of his death.