conspiracy of Piso may be doubted,
but some ambiguous phrases he had used were reported to the Emeror,
whose messenger demanded an explanation of their meaning. The reply of
Seneca was either unsatisfactory or the tyrant had decided to be rid of
his former guide. As in more recent times in Japan the condemned man was
expected to be his own executioner, and Seneca opened his veins and
allowed the life to ooze from them with a stoicism that was certainly
heroic if not untainted by theatrical display. The character of Seneca
will ever remain one of the puzzles of history, for the grave moralist
was accessory to the murder of Agrippina, and not unsuspected of
licentiousness, and of the accumulation of an enormous fortune of three
hundred million sestertii by injustice and fraud. The statements of Dion
Cassius as to the misdeeds of the philosopher must be weighed against
the absence of any condemnation of his proceedings in the pages
of Tacitus.

The Theodore Cerem named on p. 12, is Theodorus Cyrenaicus, who was
probably a native of Cyrene, and a disciple of Aristippus. He was
banished from the (supposed) place of his birth, and was shielded at
Athens by Demetrius Phalerus, whose exile he is assumed to have shared.
Whilst in the service of Egypt he was sent as an ambassador to
Lysimachus, whom he offended by the directness and plainness of his
speech. The offended monarch threatened him with crucifixion, and he
replied in a phrase which became famous, "Threaten thus your courtiers,
for it matters not to me whether I rot on the ground or in the air."[40]
The king's threat was not executed, as Theodorus was afterwards at
Corinth, and is believed to have died at Cyrene. That he was condemned
to drink hemlock is a statement cited from Amphicrates by Diogenes
Laertius (_Aristippus_, xv.). The anecdote of his colloquy with
Lysimachus would easily be perverted into a belief that he had been put
to death for the freedom with which he exercised his biting wit.

The Democreon mentioned at pp. 12 and 16 is Democritus of Abdera, of
whom the anecdote is told. He was a man whose knowledge and wisdom won
even the respect of Timon, the universal scoffer. The tradition that he
deprived himself of sight with a view to philosophic abstraction is
mentioned by Cicero, Aulus Gellius, and others, but it is hardly
necessary to account for a too uncommon calamity by a supposition so
remarkable.

The transformations of some of the names are pecul