on of that guily, elaborate, shameful letter was the
last prominent act of Seneca's public life.

CHAPTER XII.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Nor was it unnatural that it should be. Moral precepts, philosophic
guidance were no longer possible to one whose compliances or whose
timidity had led him so far as first to sanction matricide, and then to
defend it. He might indeed be still powerful to recommend principles of
common sense and political expediency, but the loftier lessons of
Stoicism, nay, even the better utterances of a mere ordinary Pagan
morality, could henceforth only fall from his lips with something of a
hollow ring. He might interfere, as we know he did, to render as
innocuous as possible the pernicious vanity which made Nero so ready to
degrade his imperial rank by public appearances on the orchestra or in
the race-course, but he could hardly address again such noble teachings
as that of the treatise on Clemency to one whom, on grounds of political
expediency, he had not dissuaded from the treacherous murder of a
mother, who, whatever her enormities, yet for his sake had sold her
very soul.

Although there may have been a strong suspicion that foul play had been
committed, the actual facts and details of the death of Agrippina would
rest between Nero and Seneca as a guilty secret, in the guilt of which
Seneca himself must have his share. Such a position of things was the
inevitable death-blow, not only to all friendship, but to all
confidence, and ultimately to all intercourse. We see in sacred history
that Joab's participation in David's guilty secret gave him the absolute
mastery over his own sovereign; we see repeatedly in profane history
that the mutual knowledge of some crime is the invariable cause of
deadly hatred between a subject and a king. Such feelings as King John
may be supposed to have had to Hubert de Burgh, or King Richard III. to
Sir James Tyrrel, or King James I. to the Earl of Somerset, such
probably, in still more virulent intensity, were the feelings of Nero
towards his whilome "guide, philosopher, and friend."

For Nero very soon learnt that Seneca was no longer _necessary_ to him.
For a time he lingered in Campania, guiltily dubious as to the kind of
reception that awaited him in the capital. The assurances of the vile
crew which surrounded him soon made that fear wear off, and when he
plucked up the courage to return to his palace, he might himself have
been amazed at the ef