Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 2

Why, however, would the most excellent old man, who was leading and teaching others, not guide his own in this way? He did so, and left two who were egregiously deserted, Gallio and our own: for I have read nothing of the sort concerning Mela. This is the Gallio whom Statius commends for the sweetness of his eloquence:

This, more than to have given Seneca to the lands,
And to have begotten the sweet Gallio.

That he was of a certain ringing and tinkling eloquence, the author of the booklet On the Causes of Corrupted Eloquence shows: who commemorates the tinkling of Gallio: if, however, it is of this one, and not his father. But our Seneca, besides eloquence, gave himself with great force to philosophy, and Virtue captivated his most elegant mind, even with his father resisting. He himself shows more than once that his father was averse to philosophy, and that he had turned his wife and himself away from it: nay, he writes openly elsewhere that he hated it. Yet the ardor of the son prevailed, and he assiduously heard the distinguished and serious philosophers of that age: by name, Attalus the Stoic, Sotion of the same sect (even if he also seemed to Pythagorize), and likewise Papirius Fabianus: whom he also names repeatedly, and praises with grateful memory. Indeed, he devoted himself to Sotion even when a boy, and writes: "Recently I sat as a boy at the feet of Sotion." (Epist. XLIX). But he also admired and cultivated Demetrius the Cynic: often, when he was older and already in the court, he spent time with him at home and abroad. For he even had him with him on the road and on his travels. These were his impulses toward honorable things: but his father broke them, and bound him to the forum and to lawsuits in the meantime. (See Epist. XLIX). It is apparent that he practiced these for a long time, and even in the times of Gaius, with great grace and fame of eloquence. Certainly, no philosophical writings exist from before that time.

CHAPTER IV.

And the same father also persuaded him to assume the broad stripe (latus clavus), as a candidate for honors. And so he held the quaestorship first, in the attaining of which he acknowledges the vote of his aunt. "She," he says, "extended her influence for my quaestorship, and she who could not bear the boldness of a conversation or a loud greeting, conquered her modesty on my behalf out of indulgence." (Consol. ad Helv. ch. 17).

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