The Historians' History of the World 06

The circumstances of this adulation, and of its disappointment, it is due to the memory of Claudius to detail. We have no distinct account of the cause of Seneca’s banishment, which is ascribed, by little better than a guess, to the machinations of Messallina against the friends and adherents of Julia. However this may be, we have seen with what impatience the philosopher bore it. On the occasion of the death of a brother of Polybius, he addressed a treatise from his place of exile to the still powerful freedman, such as was styled a “consolation,” in which he set forth all the arguments which wit and friendship could suggest to alleviate his affliction and fortify his wisdom. After assuring him of the solemn truth that all men are mortal, and reminding him that this world itself, with all that it contains, is subject to the common law of dissolution; that man is born to sorrow; that the dead can have no pleasure in his grief; that his grief at the best is futile and unprofitable; he diverts him with another topic which is meant to be still more effectual. “The emperor,” he says, “is divine, and those who are blessed by employment in his service, and have him ever before their eyes, can retain no idle interest in human things; their happy souls neither fear nor sorrow can enter; the divinity is with them and around them. Me,” he declares, “this god has not overthrown; rather he has supported when others supplanted me; he still suffers me to remain for a monument of his providence and compassion. Whether my cause be really good or bad, his justice will at last pronounce it good, or his clemency will so regard it. Meanwhile, it is my comfort to behold his pardons travelling through the world; even from the corner where I am cast away his mercy has called forth many an exile before me. One day the eyes of his compassion will alight on me also. Truly those thunderbolts are just which the thunderstricken have themselves learned to adore. May the immortals long indulge him to the world! May he rival the deeds of Augustus and exceed his years! While still resident among us, may death never cross his threshold! Distant be the day, and reserved for the tears of our grandchildren, when his divine progenitors demand him for the heavens which are his own.”

HADRIAN

(FROM THE STATUE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM)

Such were the phrases, sonorous and unctuously polished, which Polybius was doubtless expected to recite in the ears of the imperial pedant. Standing high as he still did in the favour of Claudius and Messallina, he had the means, and was perhaps not without the will, to recommend them with all his interest, and intercede in the flatterer’s behalf. Yet Claudius, it would seem, remained wholly unmoved by a worship more vehement than Ovid’s, and enhanced still more by the unquestioned reputation of its author. Whatever had been the motives of his sentence against Seneca, it was not by flattery that he could be swayed to reverse it. Surely, as far as we are competent to judge, we must think the better both of his firmness and his sense. Shortly afterwards Polybius was himself subverted by the caprice of Messallina; Messallina in her turn was overthrown by Agrippina; and it was not till the sister of Julia had gained the ascendant that Seneca obtained at her instance the grace he had vainly solicited through the good offices of the freedman.

THE DEAD CLAUDIUS SATIRISED BY SENECA

But however little Claudius may have relied on the sincerity of this brilliant phrase-monger, he could scarce have anticipated the revulsion of sentiment to which so ardent a worshipper would not blush to give utterance on his demise. It was natural of course that the returned exile should attach himself to his benefactress; from her hands he had received his honours, by her he was treated with a confidence which flattered him. No doubt he was among the foremost of the courtiers who deserted the setting to adore the rising luminary. Yet few, perhaps, could believe that no sooner should Claudius be dead, ere yet the accents of official flattery had died away which proclaimed him entered upon the divine career of his ancestors, than the worshipper of the living emperor should turn his deification into ridicule, and blast his name with a slander of unparalleled ferocity. There is no more curious fragment of antiquity than the Vision of Judgment which Seneca has left us on the death and deification of Claudius.

“Seneca”

(From a bust in the Naples Museum)