hom expired in the arms and amid the kisses of
Helvia less than a month before Seneca's departure for Corsica. To the
other, whose name was Marcus, he makes the following pleasant allusion.
After urging his mother Helvia to find consolation in the devotion of
his brothers Gallio and Mela, he adds, "From these turn your eyes also
on your grandsons--to Marcus, that most charming little boy, in sight of
whom no melancholy can last long. No misfortune in the breast of any one
can have been so great or so recent as not to be soothed by his
caresses. Whose tears would not his mirth repress? whose mind would not
his prattling loose from the pressure of anxiety? whom will not that
joyous manner of his incline to jesting? whose attention, even though he
be fixed in thought, will not be attracted and absorbed by that
childlike garrulity of which no one can grow tired? God grant that he
may survive me: may all the cruelty of destiny be weared out on me!"

Whether the prayer of Seneca was granted we do not know; but, as we do
not again hear of Marcus, it is probable that he died before his father,
and that the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, became
extinct in the second generation.

It was probably during this period that Seneca laid the foundations of
that enormous fortune which excited the hatred and ridicule of his
opponents. There is every reason to believe that this fortune was
honourably gained. As both his father and mother were wealthy, he had
doubtless inherited an ample competency; this was increased by the
lucrative profession of a successful advocate, and was finally swollen
by the princely donations of his pupil Nero. It is not improbable that
Seneca, like Cicero, and like all the wealthy men of their day,
increased his property by lending money upon interest. No disgrace
attached to such a course; and as there is no proof for the charges of
Dio Cassius on this head, we may pass them over with silent contempt.
Dio gravely informs us that Seneca excited an insurrection in Britain,
by suddenly calling in the enormous sum of 40,000,000 sesterces; but
this is in all probability the calumny of a professed enemy. We shall
refer again to Seneca's wealth; but we may here admit that it was
undoubtedly ungraceful and incongruous in a philosopher who was
perpetually dwelling on the praises of poverty, and that even in his own
age it attracted unfavourable notice, as we may see from the epithet
_Proedives_, "the o