st have known that his life hung upon a thread, for in the very
same year an attempt was made to involve him in a charge of treason as
one of the friends of C. Calpurnius Piso, an illustrious nobleman whose
wealth and ability made him an object of jealousy and suspicion, though
he was naturally unambitious and devoid of energy. The attempt failed at
the time, and Seneca was able triumphantly to refute the charge of any
treasonable design. But the fact of such a charge being made showed how
insecure was the position of any man of eminence under the deepening
tyranny of Nero, and it precipitated the conspiracy which two years
afterwards was actually formed.

Not long after the death of Burrus, when Nero began to add sacrilege to
his other crimes, Seneca made one more attempt to retire from Rome; and,
when permission was a second time refused, he feigned a severe illness,
and confined himself to his chamber. It was asserted, and believed, that
about this time Nero made an attempt to poison him by the
instrumentality of his freedman Cleonicus, which was only defeated by
the confession of an accomplice or by the abstemious habits of the
philosopher who now took nothing but bread and fruit, and never quenched
his thirst except out of the running stream.

It was during those two years of Seneca's seclusion and disgrace that an
event happened of imperishable interest. On the orgies of a shameful
court, on the supineness of a degenerate people, there burst--as upon
the court of Charles II.--a sudden lightning-flash of retribution. In
its character, in its extent, in the devastation and anguish of which it
was the cause, in the improvements by which it was followed, in the
lying origin to which it was attributed, even in the general
circumstances of the period and character of the reign in which it
happened, there is a close and singular analogy between the Great Fire
of London in 1666 and the Great Fire of Rome in 64. Beginning in the
crowded part of the city, under the Palatine and Caelian Hills, it
raged, first for six, and then again for three days, among the
inflammable material of booths and shops, and driven along by a furious
wind, amid feeble and ill-directed efforts to check its course, it burst
irresistibly over palaces, temples, and porticoes, and amid the narrow
tortuous streets of old Rome, involving in a common destruction the most
magnificent works of ancient art, the choicest manuscripts of ancient
literature, a