ght
faltering of his lofty sternness, begged and entreated her not to enter
on an endless sorrow, but to endure the loss of her husband by the aid
of those noble consolations which she must derive from the contemplation
of his virtuous life. But Paulina declared that she would die with him,
and Seneca, not opposing the deed which would win her such permanent
glory, and at the same time unwilling to leave her to future wrongs,
yielded to her wish. The veins of their arms were opened by the same
blow; but the blood of Seneca, impoverished by old age and temperate
living, flowed so slowly that it was necessary also to open the veins of
his legs. This mode of death, chosen by the Romans as comparatively
painless, is in fact under certain circumstances most agonizing. Worn
out by these cruel tortures, and unwilling to weaken his wife's
fortitude by so dreadful a spectacle, glad at the same time to spare
himself the sight of _her_ sufferings, he persuaded her to go to another
room. Even then his eloquence did not fail. It is told of Andre Chenier,
the French poet, that on his way to execution he asked for writing
materials to record some of the strange thoughts which filled his mind.
The wish was denied him, but Seneca had ample liberty to record his last
utterances. Amanuenses were summoned, who took down those dying
admonitions, and in the time of Tacitus they still were extant. To us,
however, this interesting memorial of a Pagan deathbed is
irrevocably lost.

Nero, meanwhile, to whom the news of these circumstances was taken,
having no dislike to Paulina, and unwilling to incur the odium of too
much bloodshed, ordered her death to be prohibited and her wounds to be
bound. She was already unconscious, but her slaves and freedmen
succeeded in saving her life. She lived a few years longer, cherishing
her husband's memory, and bearing in the attenuation of her frame, and
the ghastly pallor of her countenance, the lasting proofs of that deep
affection which had characterised their married life.

Seneca was not yet dead, and, to shorten these protracted and useless
sufferings, he begged his friend and physician Statius Annaeus to give
him a draught of hemlock, the same poison by which the great philosopher
of Athens had been put to death. But his limbs were already cold, and
the draught proved fruitless. He then entered a bath of hot water,
sprinkling the slaves who stood nearest to him, with the words that he
was pouring a l