the Cynics, who were so
called from a Greek word meaning "dog," from what appeared to the
ancients to be the dog-like brutality of their manners. Juvenal
scornfully remarks, that the Stoics only differed from the Cynics "by a
tunic," which the Stoics wore and the Cynics discarded. Seneca never
indeed adopted the practices of Cynicism, but he often speaks admiringly
of the arch-Cynic Diogenes, and repeatedly refers to the Cynic
Demetrius, as a man deserving of the very highest esteem. "I take with
me everywhere," writes he to Lucilius, "that best of men, Demetrius;
and, leaving those who wear purple robes, I talk with him who is half
naked. Why should I not admire him? I have seen that he has no want. Any
one may despise all things, but no one _can_ possess all things. The
shortest road to riches lies through contempt of riches. But our
Demetrius lives not as though he _despised_ all things, but as though he
simply suffered others to possess them."

These habits and sentiments throw considerable light on Seneca's
character. They show that even from his earliest days he was capable of
adopting self-denial as a principle, and that to his latest days he
retained many private habits of a simple and honourable character, even
when the exigencies of public life had compelled him to modify others.
Although he abandoned an unusual abstinence out of respect for his
father, we have positive evidence that he resumed in his old age the
spare practices which in his enthusiastic youth he had caught from the
lessons of high-minded teachers. These facts are surely sufficient to
refute at any rate those gross charges against the private character of
Seneca, venomously retailed by a jealous Greekling like Dio Cassius,
which do not rest on a tittle of evidence, and seem to be due to a mere
spirit of envy and calumny. I shall not again allude to these scandals
because I utterly disbelieve them. A man who in his "History" could, as
Dio Cassius has done, put into the mouth of a Roman senator such insane
falsehoods as he has pretended that Fufius Calenus uttered in full
senate against Cicero, was evidently actuated by a spirit which
disentitles his statements to my credence. Seneca was an inconsistent
philosopher both in theory and in practice; he fell beyond all question
into serious errors, which deeply compromise his character; but, so far
from being a dissipated or luxurious man, there is every reason to
believe that in the very midst of