and distinguished himself
by his genius and eloquence in pleading causes. Entering on a political
career, he became a successful candidate for the quaestorship, which
was an important step towards the highest offices of the state. During
this period of his life he married a lady whose name has not been
preserved to us, and to whom we have only one allusion, which is a
curious one. As in our own history it has been sometimes the fashion for
ladies of rank to have dwarves and negroes among their attendants, so it
seems to have been the senseless and revolting custom of the Roman
ladies of this time to keep idiots among the number of their servants.
The first wife of Seneca had followed this fashion, and Seneca in his
fiftieth letter to his friend Lucilius[21] makes the following
interesting allusion to the fact. "You know," he says, "that my wife's
idiot girl Harpaste has remained in my house as a burdensome legacy. For
personally I feel the profoundest dislike to monstrosities of that kind.
If ever I want to amuse myself with an idiot, I have not far to look for
one. I laugh at myself. This idiot girl has suddenly become blind. Now,
incredible as the story seems, it is really true that she is unconscious
of her blindness, and consequently begs her attendant to go elsewhere,
because the house is dark. But you may be sure that this, at which we
laugh in her, happens to us all; no one understands that he is
avaricious or covetous. The blind seek for a guide; _we_ wander about
without a guide."

[Footnote 21: It will be observed that the main biographical facts about
the life of Seneca are to be gleaned from his letters to Lucilius, who
was his constant friend from youth to old age, and to whom he has
dedicated his Natural Questions. Lucilius was a procurator of Sicily, a
man of cultivated taste and high principle. He was the author of a poem
on Aetna, which in the opinion of many competent judges is the poem
which has come down to us, and has been attributed to Varus, Virgil, and
others. It has been admirably edited by Mr. Munro. (See _Nat. Quaest._,
iv. _ad init. Ep_. lxxix.) He also wrote a poem on the fountain
Arethusa. _(Nat. Quaest_. iii, 26.)]

This passage will furnish us with an excellent example of Seneca's
invariable method of improving every occasion and circumstance into an
opportunity for a philosophic harangue.

By this wife, who died shortly before Seneca's banishment to Corsica, he
had two sons, one of w