eneca, the chief of the philosophers of his
time; "Seneca the saint," cry the Christians of the next century. We
will own him to be Seneca the wise, Seneca almost the good. To this sage
had been given the education of the monster who was to rule the world.
This sage had introduced him into power, had restrained his madness when
he could, and with his colleague had conducted the general
administration of the Empire with the greatest honor, while the boy was
wearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca dared say more
to Nero, to venture more with him, than did any other man. For the young
tiger was afraid of his old master long after he had tasted blood. Yet
Seneca's system was a cowardly system. It was the best of Roman morality
and Greek philosophy, and still it was mean. His daring was the bravest
of the men of the old civilization. He is the type of their excellences,
as is Nero the model of their power and their adornments. And yet all
that Seneca's daring could venture was to seduce the baby-tyrant into
the least injurious of tyrannies. From the plunder of a province he
would divert him by the carnage of the circus. From the murder of a
senator he could lure him by some new lust at home. From the ruin of the
Empire, he could seduce him by diverting him with the ruin of a noble
family. And Seneca did this with the best of motives. He said he used
all the power in his hands, and he thought he did. He was one of those
men of whom all times have their share. The bravest of his time, he
satisfied himself with alluring the beardless Emperor by petty crime
from public wrong; he could flatter him to the expedient. He dared not
order him to the right.

But Seneca knew what was right. Seneca also had a well-trained
conscience, which told him of right and of wrong. Seneca's brother,
Gallio, had saved Paul's life when a Jewish mob would have dragged him
to pieces in Corinth; and the legend is that Seneca and Paul had
corresponded with each other before they stood together in Nero's
presence, the one as counsellor, the other as the criminal.[12] When
Paul arose from that formal salutation, when the apostle of the new
civilization spoke to the tottering monarch of the old, if there had
been one man in that assemblage, could he have failed to see that that
was a turning-point in the world's history? Before him in that little
hall, in that little hour, was passing the scene which for centuries
would be acted out upon th