These surely are acts of thy Nero, O Seneca, and acts performed by him at an age when the historians still reckoned him among human beings, and when thou didst strive to set him among the gods by commendations worthy neither of the one praising nor the one praised. Indeed, thou didst not hesitate to rank him above that best of rulers, the deified Augustus.[47] I do not know whether thou art ashamed of this; I am. But I suppose thou didst deem Nero’s deeds worthy of greater praise, in that he tortured the Christians, a truly holy and harmless sect, but (as it seemed to him and to Suetonius who tells the story) guilty of embracing a new and baneful superstition.[48] Nero had now become the persecutor and the most bitter enemy of all righteousness. In all seriousness, however, I do not entertain such an evil opinion of thee, wherefore I wonder all the more at thy earlier resolutions. And naturally so, because the youthful deeds of Nero were too pitiful and vain, whereas his persecution was execrable and frightful. This must have been thy opinion, for in one of thy letters to the apostle Paul thou didst not only intimate, but actually declare it.[49] Nor, I feel sure, couldst thou have thought otherwise, once thou hadst given a willing ear to his holy and heavenly teachings, and hadst embraced a friendship so divinely held out to thee. Would that thou hadst been more steadfast and that thou hadst not in the end been torn away from him! Would that, together with that messenger of the Truth, thou hadst chosen to die for the sake of that same Truth, for the promised reward in heaven, and in honor of that great apostle!
The impulse of my subject, however, has taken me too far, and I perceive that I have begun my sowing too late to entertain any hopes of a good crop. So farewell forever.
Written in the land of the living, in Cisalpine Gaul, between the left bank of the greedy Enza and the right bank of the bridge-shattering Parma, on the Kalends of Sextilis (August 1) in the year from the birth of Him whom I am uncertain whether thou didst know or not, the thirteen hundred and forty-eighth.
Notes on Fam., XXIV, 5, to Seneca
[24]. A reference to the opening lines of the preceding letter, Fam., XXIV, 4.
[25]. Seneca, Ep., 40, 11: “Cicero quoque noster, a quo Romana eloquentia exsiluit, gradarius fuit;” (cf. Seneca, Contr., i, praef. 6). Petrarch refers to that passage in his second letter to Cicero, Fam. XXIV, 4, beginning with the words, “O Romani eloquii summe parens” (Vol. III, p. 264).
[26]. The only passages in which Plutarch mentions Seneca are “De cohibenda ira,” Moralia, Vol. III, p. 201, ll. 16-23, and “Galba,” chap. XX, init. In neither of these is there any praise of the philosopher. Moreover, it is useless to search through the works of Plutarch, because Petrarch was acquainted with not a single one of his works. Hence the statement made in the Lemaire edition, Vol. CIV, p. xlviii, that “Petrarch had access to several ancient works which are absolutely lost to us,” cannot apply in this case at least. Petrarch, however, was acquainted with the “Institutio Traiani” (a Latin fabrication), the authenticity of which is today disputed. P. de Nolhac has pointed this out (II, p. 122), and shows that Petrarch actually refers to this work by name in the Remedium, I, 81. And even closer acquaintance is revealed in Fam., XXIV, 7, where Petrarch writes to Quintilian that the indiscretions of his wards (Domitian’s grandnephews) were made to detract from his fair name (Vol. III, p. 280). These words are quoted verbatim from the “Institutio Traiani” (Moralia, Vol. VII, p. 183); and in the same passage Plutarch makes a precisely similar reference to Seneca and to Socrates. The grouping of these three names is somewhat contradictory to the statement which Petrarch makes in the present letter.
[27]. Seneca, Octavia, 441-46 (tr. by E. I. Harris):