‘Yes—the Roman Empire. He holds it because Claudius adopted him as the husband of his daughter.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He pouted like a chidden boy, and I have not the least doubt that he will remember the answer against me.’
‘But, Burrus,’ said Seneca, ‘I really think that we had better promote, rather than oppose, this love-affair. Acte is harmless and innocent. She will never abuse her influence to injure so much as a fly; nay, more, she may wean Nero from far more dangerous excesses. I think that in this case a little connivance may be the truest policy. To tell you the truth, I have endeavoured to prevent scandal by removing all difficulties out of the way.’
‘You are a philosopher,’ said Burrus, ‘and I suppose you know best. It would not have been my way. We often perish by permitted things. But, since you do not take so serious a view of this matter as I did, I will say no more. Forgive a brief interview. My duties at the camp require my presence. Farewell.’
Seneca, as we have seen, had spent a somewhat agitated day, but he had one more visitor before the afternoon meal. It was the philosopher Cornutus, who had been a slave in the family of the Annæi, but was now free and had risen to the highest literary distinction by his philosophical writings.
‘Cornutus is always a welcome visitor,’ he said, as he rose to greet him; ‘never more so than this morning. I want to consult you, in deep confidence, about the Emperor’s education.’
‘Can Seneca need any advice about education?’ said Cornutus. ‘Who has written so many admirable precepts on the subject?’
Seneca, with infinite plausibility, related to his friend the arguments which he had just used to Burrus. He felt a restless desire that the Stoic should approve of what he had done. To fortify his opinion he quoted Zeno and other eminent philosophers, who had treated graver offences than that of Nero as mere adiaphora—things of no real moment. Cornutus, however, at once tore asunder his web of sophistry.
‘A thing is either right or wrong,’ he said; ‘if it is wrong no amount of expediency can sanction it, no skill of special pleading can make it other than reprehensible. The passions cannot be checked by sanctioning their indulgence, but by training youth in the manliness of self-control. You wish to prevent the Emperor from disgracing himself with the crimes which rendered execrable the reigns of Tiberius and Gaius. Can you do it otherwise than by teaching him that what he ought to do is also what he can do? Is the many-headed monster of the young man’s impulses to be checked by giving it the mastery, or rather by putting it under the dominion of his reason?’