Seekers After God
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page 11
TO MY ESTEEMED COLLEAGUE
GUSTAVE MASSON, ESQ. B.A. UNIV. GALL.
WHO HAS OFTEN ASSISTED ME
NOT ONLY WITH HIS LEARNING AND MANY ACCOMPLISHMENT^
BUT ALSO WITH THE RARER AND BETTER AID
O*
KINDLY SYMPATHY AND FAITHFUL FRIENDSHIP,
I
CORDIALLY AND AFFECTIONATELY
THE FOLLOWING PAGIvS.
page 13
PREFACE.
I
HAVE endeavoured in the following pages to give
in a
popular manner as
full
an account of the
lives
and opinions of three great heathen philosophers
was possible in the space at my command.
title of the
book they are called
"
as
In the
Seekers after God,"
and surely they deserve that title if it may be given
to men who, amid infinite difficulties
and surrounded
a corrupt society, devoted themselves to the
earnest search after those truths which might best
by
make their lives beautiful before God."
The Divine declaration that every one that asketh
receivctJi ; and he that secketJi, findeth ; and to him tJiat
"
"
knockcth
it
tians only.
shall be opened" does not apply to Chris
It would
indeed be a bitter and bigoted
view of the world s history which should refuse to
acknowledge the noble standard of morality and
workings of God s
Holy Spirit enabled many of the heathen to attain.
We know that there were those amon^ them whose
practice to
which the
invisible
virtue and charity, in spite of their dim and imperfect
page 14
PREFACE.
viii
knowledge, might put many a Christian to the blush
we may believe with unfeigned gratitude that in
;
"
seeking after the Lord,
after
if
haply they might
feel
Him and find Him," they learned to recognise
that deep and ennobling truth to which some of their
own poets had given
expression, that
from every one of us, for in
move, and have our being."
far
"
He is not
Him we live, and
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are not only the
most clear-sighted moralists among ancient philoso
phers, but
with the single exception ot
Socrates, the best and holiest characters presented
In many respects
to us in the records of antiquity.
are also,
wholly unworthy to be placed by their
side, nor have I attempted to gloss over his terrible
Seneca
is
inconsistencies.
Yet in spite of all his failures, he
was a good man, and we must apply to those who
speak of him without consideration or generosity,
the censure of Gothe
"
:
Und steh beschamt wenn Du bekennen musst
Kin gutcr Mcnsch in seinem dunkeln Drange
1st sick des rechtes
Weges ivM heivusst."
Had more space been at my command, that further
examination of his writings which formed part of my
original plan would perhaps
in
the reader s estimation
;
have placed him highei
but
I
have entered intc
the details of his life because I had the ulterior
of showing
what was
at
that time
the
object
moral and
page 15
PREFACE.
political condition of the
ia
Roman world, and in what
atmosphere the influences of Christianity were forced
The two subsequent biographies will show
us how in every estate of life the grace of God was
sufficient to enable men to struggle successfully with
immense temptations, sufficient to make any man
pure and holy who aimed at being so, sufficient to
lo work.
and patience, and tenderness to an
give humility,
irresponsible Roman Emperor, and freedom, and con
tentment, and imperial magnanimity to a persecuted
Phrygian slave.
People sometimes talk and write as though Pagan
truth were one thing and Christian truth another
;
but Truth comes only from Him who is the Truth,
and neither Jewish prophet nor heathen philosopher
up to it, save by His aid.
The reader must ill have understood these pages if
can attain to
it,
or act
he sees in them any glorification of Stoicism as com
pared with Christianity, or of natural as opposed to
revealed religion.
Surely even the most ignorant
might deduce from them the lesson that
in
every
Sunday-school
"
Each litlla voice in turn
Some glorious truth proclaims,
What sages "would have died to learn
Ninu taught by cottage (fames.
"
A Seneca, a Musonius Rufus, an Epictctus, a
Marcus Aurelius might have been taught by the hum
blest Christian child
about a Comfort, an Example,
page 16
PREFACE.
a Hope, which were capable of gilding their lives
with unknown brightness and happiness, capable of
soothing the anguish of every sorrow, of breaking
violence of every temptation, of lightening the
burden of every care. And yet with all our know
flie
ledge and enlightenment we fall far short of some
of them we are less stern with our own faults, less
;
watchful, less self-denying, less tender to one another.
With our superior gifts, with our surer hopes, with
our more present means of grace, what manner of
men ought we to be ? We ought to have attained to
far loftier moral altitudes than they, but we have not.
Let us admit with shame and sorrow that some
among these heathens showed themselves to be
nobler, loftier, holier, freer
from vanity,
freer
from
meanness, freer from special pleading, freer from false
hood, more spiritual, more reasonable, on some points
even more enlightened, than many among ourselves.
The very ideal of the Christian life seems to have
been dwarfed to a poor, and vulgar, and conventional
standard.
Perhaps the contemplation of virtue, and
and
zeal,
integrity, and consistency, even in heathen
lives,
may produce at least some infinitesimal effect
arousing some of us to a desire for "something
more high and heroical in religion than the present
in
age affecteth."
If so, these pages will not
have been
written quite in vain.
F.
W. F.
page 17
CONTENTS.
SENECA.
INTROUCTORY
CHAPTER I.
THE FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS OF SENECA
.....
7
CHAPTER II.
THE EDUCATION OF SENECA
............
2
CHAPTER III.
THE STATE OF ROM/VN SOCIETY
...........
36
CHAPTER IV.
POLITICAL CONDITION OK ROMK UNDER TIBERIUS AND CAIUS.
54
CHAPTER V.
THE REIGN OF CAIUS
..............
56
CHAPTER VI.
THE REIGN OF CLAUDIUS, AND THE BANISHMENT OF SENECA.
7|
page 18
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
PAGE
t-FNECA IN EXILE
-
.
.
.
8j
CHAPTER VIII.
SENECA S PHILOSOPHY
ttlVES
WAY
IOC
CHAPTER IX.
SENECA S RECALL FROM EXILE
106
CHAPTER X.
\GRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO
Ill
CHAPTER XI.
NERO AND HJS TUTOR
121
,
CHAPTER XII.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
143
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DEATH OF SENECA
152
CHAPTER XIV.
SKNECA AND ST. PAUL
.........
.... 167
CHAPTER XV.
SENECA S RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE
.
.
174
page 19
CONTENTS.
xin
E P I C T E T U S.
CHAPTER
I.
THE LIFE OF- EPICTETUS, AND HOW HE REGARDED IT
.
PAG I
l86
,
CHAPTER II.
LIFE AND VIEWS OF EPICTETUS (continued)
203
CHAPTER III.
LIFE AND VIEW- OF EPICTETUS (continued}
2ii
CHAPTER IV.
THE "MANUAL" AND "FRAGMENTS" OF EPICTETUS.
.
.
.
221
CHAPTER V.
THE DISCOURSES OF EPICTETUS
228
.
MARCUS AURELIUS.
CHAPTER I.
THE EDUCATION OF AN EMFEROR
257
CHAPTER II.
THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURRLIUS
..... 271
CHAPTER III.
THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS {continued}
.
284
CHAPTER IV.
THE "MEDITATIONS" OF MARCUS AURELIUS
303
CONCLUSION ....
318
page 21
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
AURELIUS AND HIS MOTHER (p. 273).
By ARTHUR HUGHES.
Frontispiece.
ILLUMINATED TITLE; WITH VIGNETTE OF MARCUS AURELIES
FROM A BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
LUCIUS ANNyEUS SENECA
A.NTONIN* S
PIUS,
FROM A BUST
To fact
IN
THE BRIT SH MUSEUM
To face
I $2
page 23
SEEKERS AFTER GOD.
SENECA.
f
Ce nuage frange de rayons qui touche presqu a immortelie auror*
des verites chretiennes." PONTMARTIN.
1
INTRODUCTORY.
ON the banks of the Baetis
the modern Guadaland under the woods that crown the south
quiver,
ern slopes of the Sierra
Morena, lies the beautiful
and famous city of Cordova. It had been selected
by Marcellus as the site of a Roman colony and
so many Romans and Spaniards of high rank chose
it for their residence, that it obtained from
Augustus
the honourable surname of the
Patrician Colony."
Spain during this period of the Empire exercised no
small influence upon the literature and politics of
;
"
Rome.
No less than three great Emperors
Tra
w ere natives of
jan, Hadrian, and Theodosius,
the
writer
on
Columella,
Spain.
agriculture, was
born at Cadiz Quintilian, the great writer on the
education of an orator, was born at Calahorra the
poet Martial was a native of Bilbilis but Cordova
r
;
;
;
page 24
SENECA.
could boast the yet higher honour of having givei:
birth to the Senecas,
the epithet of
to modern
"
an honour which won for it
The Eloquent."
travellers which
is
A ruin is shown
popularly called the
House of Seneca, and the fact is at least a proof
that the city still retains some memory of its illus
trious sons.
Marcus Annseus Seneca, the father of the philo
sopher, was by rank a Roman knight. What causes
had led him or his family to settle in Spain we do
not know, and the names Annaeus and Seneca are
alike obscure.
It has been vaguely conjectured that
both names may involve an allusion to the longevity
of some of the founders of the family, for Annaaus
seems to be connected with annus, a year, and Sen
eca with senex, an old man. The common English
composite plant ragwort is called senecio from the
white and feathery pappus or appendage of its seeds
;
and similarly, Isidore says that the first Seneca was
he was born with white hair."
so named because
the
father
of Seneca was of knightly
Although
never
had
risen to any eminence it
his
rank,
family
the
class
of
notiveaux
to
riches, and we do
belonged
not know whether it was of Roman or of Spanish
But his mother Helvia an uncommon
descent.
"
;
name, which, by a curious coincidence, belonged
was a Spanish lady ;
also to the mother of Cicero
and it was from her that Seneca, as well as his
famous nephew, the poet Lucan, doubtless derived
many of the traits which mark their intellect and their
character. There was in the Spaniard a richness and
page 25
INTRODUCTOR Y.
splendour of imagination, an intensity and warmth,
phantasy and flame," which we find in
two men of genius, and which was wholly
a tour.h of
these
"
wanting to the Roman temperament.
Of Cordova itself, except in a single epigram,
Seneca makes no mention but this epigram suffices
to she v\ that he must have been familiar \\ith its
;
and memorable traditions. The elder Seneca
must have been living at Cordova during all the
stirring
troublous years of civil war, when his native city
caused equal offence to Pompey and to Caesar.
Doubtless, too, he would have had stories to tell of th^
noble Sertorius, and of the tame fawn which gained
for
him J:he credit of divine assistance; and contem
porary reminiscences of that day of desperate disaster
when Caesar, indignant that Cordova should have
embraced the cause of the sons of Pompey, avenged
himself by a massacre of 22,000 of the citizens.
From
mother Helvia, Seneca must often have heard
about the fierce and gallant struggle in which her
country had resisted the iron yoke of Rome. Many a
time as a boy must he have been told how long and
how heroically Saguntum had withstood the assaults
and baffled the triumph of Hannibal how bravely
Viriathus had fought, and how shamefully he fell
and how at length the unequal contest, which reduced
Spain to the condition of a province, was closed, when
his
;
;
the heroic defenders of Numantia, rather than yield
to Scipio, reduced their city to a heap of blood
stained ruins.
But, whatever
2
may have been the extent to which