LUCIUS ANNÆUS SENECA.

§ V. We further learn from Tacitus, "That Agrippina obtained for Seneca a revocation from exile, and with it the prætorship A high-ranking judicial office in Rome.: favors which she supposed would be well pleasing to the public, on account of his signal eloquence and accomplishments; besides her own private views, namely, the education of her son Domitius (Nero) under such a master, and the use they should make of his counsels, both to obtain the empire and to govern it."

Seneca was therefore prætor in the year of the city 805 U.C. DCCLII is an error in the original text; 805 is the corrected historical year.. But it is not as certain that he attained to consular dignity, though some contend for it n, and mark the year as 815. For in the beginning of that year, as we learn from the indisputable authority of Tacitus, Nero's affection began to cool. He had withdrawn his customary affability from Seneca, and the various efforts of his slanderers increased daily. Whereupon Seneca himself addressed the Emperor in a spirited oration, imploring a retreat and offering to refund his treasures. Nero neither permitted the one nor accepted the other. Seneca, however, changed the methods and symptoms of his former power; he stopped the usual conflux of a levee, avoided any train of attendants when abroad, and his appearances in public were exceedingly rare, as if he were confined at home by ill health or the study of philosophy. This, indeed, is not acting like a new consul, or even a candidate, and his death followed soon after. We shall therefore rest this matter here and only observe further that he was undoubtedly the governor and tutor of the young prince, who behaved himself exceedingly well so long as he was attentive to the good counsels and admonitions of Seneca and his colleague, Burrus.

"A torrent of slaughter," says Tacitus, "had now ensued, had not Afranius Burrus and Annæus Seneca prevented it. These were the governors of the Emperor's youth; two men, though engaged in a partnership of power, were yet, by a rare instance, well united. They were different in their accomplishments, but of equal weight and authority. Burrus was his instructor in arms and the gravity of manners; Seneca in the precepts of eloquence and polite address. In this office they helped and supported each other, the easier to manage between them the dangerous age of the prince; or if he rejected the pursuits of virtue, to restrain him at least within the bounds of guiltless pleasures."

But to go on with Seneca.

Error: perhaps 815.

(n) According to Ulpian: "In the time of Nero, in the octaves of the kalends of September, when Annæus Seneca and Trebellius Maximus were consuls, it was ordained." And in the common Fasti (chronological records), the year 814. The consuls were P. Marius Celsus and L. Afinius Gallus, who were succeeded from the first of July by L. Annæus Seneca and Trebellius Maximus. But those who compiled the Fasti suppose these consuls were only substitutes (for they were not ordinary consuls). So in Ausonius: "Dives Seneca, nec tamen consul" (The rich Seneca, yet not consul).