The youth and early manhood of the famous writer and philosopher, Lucius Annæus Seneca, fell within the twenty-three years of the reign of Tiberius. He had been born seven years before the Christian era, at Cordova, in Spain. His father was a man of knightly rank; and his mother, Helvia, a Spanish lady, is praised by her son for the nobility and sweetness of her character. They were people of wealth, and had cultivated tastes.
When Seneca was still a babe only two years old the family migrated to Rome. He had two brothers,—Marcus Annæus Novatus and Lucius Annæus Mela. The latter was the father of Lucan, the poet of Rome’s declining literature. The former is known in history as Julius Gallio, a name which he took when adopted by an orator of that name. It was the same Gallio who became deputy of Achaia in Greece and before whom the Apostle Paul was dragged at Corinth by the Jews, who were indignant at his success in preaching. When some Greeks seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat, Gallio “cared for none of those things.” How little he dreamed that the one thing that would keep his name before the ages would be the fact that a Christian Jew, obscure at that time, was brought for a few moments before his tribunal! But he was popular in his day for his culture and refinement and was called dulcis Gallio,—the sweet Gallio.
Seneca had the best educational advantages of his times. He studied rhetoric and philosophy. From Sotion, a Pythagorean, he imbibed the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and from Attalus, the Stoic, a hatred of “vice, of error, and of the ills of life.” He learned in theory to commend poverty, to despise luxury, and to declare that the mind should be superior to its surroundings. He was too far from Palestine to have been brought in contact with the ministry there of Christ and of his apostles, but it is striking to remember (and here we may quote the language of Dean Farrar) that “amid all the guilty and stormy scenes in which his earlier destiny was cast there lived and taught in Palestine the Son of God, the Saviour of the World.” While the young Seneca was being guarded by his attendant slave through the crowded and dangerous streets of Rome on his way to school, Saint Peter and Saint Andrew were fisher lads by the shore of Lake Gennesareth; while Seneca was ardently assimilating the doctrine of Attalus, Saint Paul with no less fervency of soul sat learning at the feet of the Rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem, and long before Seneca had made his way through paths dizzy and dubious to the zenith of his fame, the Saviour of men, unknown to him, had been cruelly crucified.
Seneca’s writings during the life of Tiberius were chiefly on subjects drawn from nature and on India and Egypt,—countries in which he had been traveling. He won a high reputation in literature. He had little to do with the imperial court. He was not brought into any personal relation with the emperor Tiberius, but not infrequently in his pages refers to that “brutal monster” and to the dangerous power of his prime minister, Sejanus. We shall hear more of Seneca farther on.
While a few men such as Seneca were beginning to reach after higher things, the reign of Tiberius was, on the whole, a period of dark skepticism, of degraded morals, of manifold intrigues. Thoughtful persons had lost faith in the old mythology, the conventional paganism. Many were longing for something better. Many had settled into the worst pessimism. Various dreadful tragedies went on in high life at Rome. There was a great deal of contention, and much confusion among all orders of citizens. Accusations and suspicions were everywhere rife.
Twice during his residence at Capri Tiberius determined to go back to Rome. Each time he started from that mountainous island to make the journey. He pursued it until he had come near the imperial city. Then, without entering Rome, he, in each case, took a meditative view of its walls and buildings and turned back, terrified, it was reported, by some evil omen. The last time, as he was retracing his route through Campania, he was taken ill at Asturia. At Cerceii he presided at festive sports in the military camp, even casting with his own hand javelins at wild beasts, which were driven before his seat in the amphitheater.
But this was too much for his physical strength. Though he reached Misenum near Puteoli, he could go no farther. There he died in A. D. 37, when he was seventy-eight years old, at the close of a reign of twenty years. His funeral was soon after conducted with formal pomp by his successor, and his body was laid in the mausoleum of Augustus, at Rome.
Such was the emperor within the limits of whose administration fell the greater part of the youth and all the public ministry of Jesus Christ. It seemed as if in his person selfish power was allowed to run to every excess before divine mercy should make its great manifestation and self-sacrifice for mankind.
We read in Luke’s third chapter that it was in the fifteenth year of this Tiberius Cæsar that John the Baptist began to preach in all the country about Judea. As Jesus was “about thirty years old” when he came to John to be baptized, we suppose Luke’s reckoning to be made from the time that Tiberius became associated with Augustus in the government. In that dark age there were many who were defying God and going to every extreme of injustice and vice, but there were others who were “waiting humbly and prayerfully for the consolation of Israel.” How startling to the former and how welcome to the latter must have been the great forerunner’s cry echoing in the wilderness of Judea: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord and make his paths straight!” Among the people who went out to hear John were some of the soldiers of Tiberius, who were then stationed in Palestine.
“What shall we do?” they asked.