Assigned us at the start, and where and when
The turn is smoothest round the perilous post;
The bounds of wealth; life’s lawful aims; the use
Of hoards of coin new-minted; what the claims
Of fatherland and kinsfolk near and dear;
The will of God concerning thee, and where
Thou standest in the commonwealth of man[88].’
His contemporary M. Annaeus Lucanus (39-65 A.D.), a nephew of Seneca, plunged more deeply both into philosophy and into politics. In both he displayed ardour insufficiently tempered with discretion; he had a far keener sense of his personal grievances than became a Stoic, and was much more of a critic than of a reformer. Yet hardly any writer expresses more forcibly the characteristic doctrines of Stoicism, as they seized the imagination of young Romans of the upper classes. Amongst such doctrines that of the conflagration was clearly prominent.
‘So when this frame of things has been dissolved,
And the world’s many ages have received