The correspondence referred to in the above is mentioned also by St. Augustine, Ep., 153, 14 (Migne, Vol. XXXIII, col. 659). It consists of fourteen letters, which are given in the Teubner edition of Seneca, Vol. III, pp. 476-81. The wish said to have been expressed by Seneca is to be found in Ep., xi, p. 479. The letter, however, which Petrarch seems to have had in mind—the one describing the persecution of the Christians in Rome—is Ep., xii (op. cit., p. 480), which I give in full, that Petrarch’s state of mind may be the better appreciated.
Greetings, Paul most dear. Do you suppose that I am not saddened and afflicted by the fact that torture is so repeatedly inflicted upon the innocent believers of your faith? that the entire populace judges your sect so unfeeling and so perpetually under trial as to lay at your doors whatever wrong is done within the city? Let us bear it with equanimity, and let us persevere in the station which fortune has allotted, until happiness everlasting put an end to our suffering. Former ages were inflicted with Macedon, son of Philip, with Dareius and Dionysius. Our age, too, has had to endure a Caligula, who permitted himself the indulgence of every caprice. It is perfectly clear why the city of Rome has so often suffered the ravages of conflagration. But if humble men dared affirm the immediate cause, if it were permitted to speak with impunity in this abode of darkness, all men would indeed see all things. It is customary to burn at the stake both Christians and Jews on the charge of having plotted the burning of the city. As for that wretch, whoever he is, who derives pleasure from the butchering of men and who thus hypocritically veils his real intentions—that wretch awaits his hour. Even as all the best men are now offering their lives for the many, so will he some day be destroyed by fire in expiation of all these lives. One hundred and thirty-two mansions and four blocks of houses burned for six days, and on the seventh the flames were conquered. I trust, brother, that you are in good health. Written on the fifth day before the Kalends of April, in the consulship of Frugus and Bassus.
Petrarch elsewhere clearly states that he did not think Seneca a Christian, “tamen haud dubie paganum hominem,” in spite of his having been placed by St. Jerome among the Christian writers, “inter scriptores sacros” (Sen., XVI, 9, written in 1357).
The fourteen letters are today considered fictitious. Teuffel, par. 289 (and n. 9): “The estimation in which the writings of Seneca were held caused them to be frequently copied and abridged, but also produced at an early time such forgeries as the fictitious correspondence with the apostle Paul” (cf. also Wm. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen [London, 1898], 4th ed., pp. 353-56).
IV. TO MARCUS VARRO
(Fam., XXIV, 6)
Thy rare integrity, thine activity, and the great splendor of thy name urge me to love and in fact revere thee. There are some, indeed, whom we love even after their death, owing to the good and righteous deeds that live after them; men who mold our character by their teaching and comfort us by their example when the rest of mankind offends both our eyes and our nostrils; men who, though they have gone hence to the common abode of all (as Plautus says in the Casina[50]), nevertheless continue to be of service to the living. Thou, however, art of no profit to us, or, at best, of only small profit. But the fault is not thine—it is due to Time, which destroys all things. All thy works are lost to us of today. And why not? ’Tis only of gold that the present age is desirous; and when, pray, is anyone a careful guardian of things despised?