soon Claudius was married to Messalina,
the handsomest summer-girl in Rome.

For a short time he bore up bravely, and was filled with the wish to
benefit and bless. One of his first acts was to recall Julia and
Agrippina from exile, they having been sent away in a fit of jealous
anger by their brother, the infamous Caligula.

Julia was beautiful and intellectual, and she had a high regard for
Seneca.

Agrippina was beautiful and infamous, and pretended that she loved
Claudius.

Both men were undone. Seneca's friendship for Julia, as far as we know,
was of a kind that did honor to both, but they made a too conspicuous
pair of intellects. The fear and jealousy of Claudius was aroused by his
young and beautiful wife, who showed him that Seneca, the courtly, was
plotting for the throne, and in this ambition Julia was a party. A
charge of undue intimacy with Julia, the beloved niece and ward of the
Emperor, was brought against Seneca, and he was exiled to Corsica.
Imagine Edmund Burke sent to Saint Helena, or John Hay to the Dry
Tortugas, and you get the idea.

The sensitive nature of Seneca did not bear up under exile as we would
have wished. Unlike Victor Hugo at Guernsey, he was alone, and
surrounded by savages. Yet even Victor Hugo lifted up his voice in
bitter complaint. Seneca failed to anticipate that, in spite of the
barrenness of Corsica, it would some day produce a man who would jostle
his Roman Caesar for first place on history's page.

At Corsica, Seneca produced some of his loftiest and best literature.
Exile and imprisonment are such favorable conditions for letters, having
done so much for authorship, that the wonder is the expedient has fallen
into practical disuse. Banishment gave Seneca an opportunity to put into
execution some of the ideas he had so long expressed concerning the
simple life, and certain it is that the experience was not without its
benefits, and at times the grim humor of it all came to him.

Read the history of Greek ostracism, and one can almost imagine that it
was devised by the man's friends--a sort of heroic treatment prescribed
by a great spiritual physician. Personality repels as well as attracts:
the people grow tired of hearing Aristides called the Just--he is
exiled. For a few days there is a glad relief; then his friends begin to
chant his praises--he is missed. People tell of all the noble, generous
things he would do if he were only here.

If he were only here!

P