If, as imaginative tradition affirms, the banished stoic spent eight years of exile here, throning among the clouds, in the silent rocky wilds—then he had found a place not ill adapted for a philosopher disposed to make wise reflections on the world and fate; and to contemplate with wonder and reverence the workings of the eternal elements of nature. The genius of Solitude is the wise man's best instructor; in still night hours he may have given Seneca insight into the world's transitoriness, and shown him the vanity of great Rome, when the exile was inclined to bewail his lot. After Seneca returned from his banishment to Rome, he sometimes, perhaps, among the abominations of the court of Nero, longed for the solitary days of Corsica. There is an old Roman tragedy called Octavia, the subject of which is the tragic fate of Nero's first empress.[H] In this tragedy Seneca appears as the moralizing figure, and on one occasion delivers himself as follows:—
"O Lady Fortune, with the flattering smile
On thy deceitful face, why hast thou raised
One so contented with his humble lot
To height so giddy? Wheresoe'er I look,
Terrors around me threaten, and at last
The deeper fall is sure. Ah, happier far—
Safe from the ills of envy once I hid—
Among the rocks of sea-girt Corsica.
I was my own; my soul was free from care,