e and offensive _patois_ of barbarians. We need hardly
follow him into the ordinary topics of moral philosophy with which it
abounds, or expose the inconsistency of its tone with that of Seneca's
other writings. He consoles the freedman with the "common commonplaces"
that death is inevitable; that grief is useless; that we are all born to
sorrow; that the dead would not wish us to be miserable for their sakes.
He reminds him that, owing to his illustrious position, all eyes are
upon him. He bids him find consolation in the studies in which he has
always shown himself so pre-eminent, and lastly he refers him to those
shining examples of magnanimous fortitude, for the climax of which, no
doubt, the whole piece of interested flattery was composed. For this
passage, written in a _crescendo_ style, culminates, as might have been
expected, in the sublime spectacle of Claudius Caesar. So far from
resenting his exile, he crawls in the dust to kiss Caesar's beneficent
feet for saving him from death; so far from asserting his
innocence--which, perhaps, was impossible, since to do so might have
involved him in a fresh charge of treason--he talks with all the
abjectness of guilt. He belauds the clemency of a man, who, he tells us
elsewhere, used to kill men with as much _sang froid_ as a dog eats
offal; the prodigious powers of memory of a divine creature who used to
ask people to dice and to dinner whom he had executed the day before,
and who even inquired as to the cause of his wife's absence a few days
after having given the order for her execution; the extraordinary
eloquence of an indistinct stutterer, whose head shook and whose broad
lips seemed to be in contortions whenever he spoke.[32] If Polybius
feels sorrowful, let him turn his eyes to Caesar; the splendour of that
most great and radiant deity will so dazzle his eyes that all their
tears will be dried up in the admiring gaze. Oh that the bright
occidental star which has beamed on a world which, before its rising,
was plunged in darkness and deluge, would only shed one little beam
upon him!

[Footnote 32: These slight discrepancies of description are taken from
counter passages of _Consol, ad Polyb._. and the _Ludus de Morte
Caesaris._]

No doubt these grotesque and gorgeous flatteries, contrasting strangely
with the bitter language of intense hatred and scathing contempt which
Seneca poured out on the memory of Claudius after his death, were penned
with the sole purpo