h we have just
been gazing will show us the utter unlikelihood of such a supposition.
Probably the nearest opportunity which ever occurred to bring the
Christian Apostle into intellectual contact with the Roman philosopher
was this occasion, when St. Paul was dragged as a prisoner into the
presence of Seneca's elder brother. The utter contempt and indifference
with which he was treated, the manner in which he was summarily cut
short before he could even open his lips in his own defence, will give
us a just estimate of the manner in which Seneca would have been likely
to regard St. Paul. It is highly improbable that Gallio ever retained
the slightest impression or memory of so every-day a circumstance as
this, by which alone he is known to the world. It is possible that he
had not even heard the mere name of Paul, and that, if he ever thought
of him at all, it was only as a miserable, ragged, fanatical Jew, of dim
eyes and diminutive stature, who had once wished to inflict upon him a
harangue, and who had once come for a few moments "betwixt the wind and
his nobility." He would indeed have been unutterably amazed if anyone
had whispered to him that well nigh the sole circumstance which would
entitle him to be remembered by posterity, and the sole event of his
life by which he would be at all generally known, was that momentary and
accidental relation to his despised prisoner.

But Novatus--or, to give him his adopted name, Gallio--presented to his
brother Seneca, and to the rest of the world, a very different aspect
from that under which we are wont to think of him. By them he was
regarded as an illustrious declaimer, in an age when declamation was the
most valued of all accomplishments. It was true that there was a sort of
"tinkle," a certain falsetto tone in his style, which offended men of
robust and severe taste; but this meretricious resonance of style was a
matter of envy and admiration when affectation was the rage, and when
the times were too enervated and too corrupt for the manly conciseness
and concentrated force of an eloquence dictated by liberty and by
passion. He seems to have acquired both among his friends and among
strangers the epithet of "dulcis," "the charming or fascinating Gallio:"
"This is more," says the poet Statius, "than to have given Seneca to the
world, and to have begotten the sweet Gallio." Seneca's portrait of him
is singularly faultless. He says that no one was so gentle to any one as
Ga