[36]. The Octavia. [See below, n. [38].
[37]. Martial, i, 61, 7 and 8 (Fried.):
Duosque Senecas, unicumque Lucanum
Facunda loquitur Corduba.
And yet these lines never suggested to Petrarch the distinction between Seneca the rhetorician and Seneca the philosopher.
[38]. Teuffel, par. 290: “The praetexta entitled Octavia is certainly not by Seneca.” With this compare par. 290, n. 7, which gives a discussion of the above, and the bibliography. Teuffel says that l. 630 of the Octavia describes the death of Nero, and consequently could not have been written by Seneca, who died some years earlier. It is these lines to which Petrarch refers when he says: “In this play there is a passage that gives rise to the suspicion of authorship.”
[39]. The De clementia, having been written in 55-56 A.D., and dedicated to Nero, naturally contains numerous passages in praise of that emperor. We shall choose a few from the first book. De clementia, i, 1, 5-8:
This, O Caesar, you can boldly assert; that you have most diligently cherished everything entrusted to your faithful care, and that no harm has been plotted against the State by you either through open violence or through stealth. You have aspired to that rarest of praise, hitherto granted to none of our emperors—the praise of being thoroughly upright. You have not labored in vain. Your matchless virtues have not found ungrateful and spiteful appraisers. We render thee thanks. No one person has ever been as dear to a single man as you are to the entire Roman people. . . . But you have shouldered a heavy burden; you have assumed a great responsibility. No one now speaks of the deified Augustus, nor of the early years of Emperor Tiberius; no one seeks an exemplar beyond you, for it is you they wish to imitate. Your rule has been subjected to the test of the crucible—a test which it would have been difficult to resist, had your goodness been feigned for the moment, instead of its being (as it is) an innate quality of yours. . . . The Roman people ran a great risk, uncertain whither your noble disposition would end. But the prayers of the people have been answered ere this. There is no danger, unless you should suddenly become forgetful of your own self. . . . All your citizens today are compelled to make this confession—that they are happy; and this second confession—that nothing can be added to their complete happiness except the assurance that it may endure forever. Many causes urge them to this acknowledgment (the very last which man ever condescends to make)—their deep security, their prosperity, and their faith that the laws will be administered with absolute justice. There flits before our eyes a contented State, to whose complete freedom nothing is lacking except the liberty of its dying.
It would be beyond our purpose to quote more of Seneca. It will suffice to give references to an earlier and to a later work. For the former consult the Ludus (written in 54 A. D.), i, 1; iv, 1; xii, 2. For the latter, Naturales quaestiones (finished before 64 A. D.), vi, 8, 3; vii, 17, 2; 21, 3.