quietly watching the course of events.  It will be observed that his biography is not like that of Cicero, with whose life we are acquainted in most trifling details; but that the curtain rises and falls on isolated scenes, throwing into sudden brilliancy or into the deepest shade long and important periods of his history.  Nor are his letters and other writings full of those political and personal allusions which convert them into an autobiography.  They are, without exception, occupied exclusively with philosophical questions, or else they only refer to such personal reminiscences as may best be converted into the text for some Stoical paradox or moral declamation.  It is, however, certain from the sequel that Seneca must have seized the opportunity of Caius’s death to emerge from his politic obscurity, and to occupy a conspicuous and brilliant position in the imperial court.

It would have been well for his own happiness and fame if he had adopted the wiser and manlier course of acting up to the doctrines he professed.  A court at most periods is, as the poet says,

     “A golden but a fatal circle,
      Upon whose magic skirts a thousand devils
      In crystal forms sit tempting Innocence,
      And beckon early Virtue from its centre;”

but the court of a Caius, of a Claudius, or of a Nero, was indeed a place wherein few of the wise could find a footing, and still fewer of the good.  And all that Seneca gained from his career of ambition was to be suspected by the first of these Emperors, banished by the second, and murdered by the third.

The first few acts of Claudius showed a sensible and kindly disposition; but it soon became fatally obvious that the real powers of the government would be wielded, not by the timid and absent-minded Emperor, but by any one who for the time being could acquire an ascendency over his well-intentioned but feeble disposition.  Now, the friends and confidents of Claudius had long been chosen from the ranks of his freedmen.  As under Louis XI. and Don Miguel, the barbers of these monarchs were the real governors, so Claudius was but the minister rather than the master of Narcissus his private secretary, of Polybius his literary adviser, and of Pallas his accountant.  A third person, with whose name Scripture has made us familiar, was a freedman of Claudius.  This was Felix, the brother of Pallas, and that Procurator who, though he had been the husband or the paramour of three queens, trembled before the simple eloquence of a feeble and imprisoned Jew.[29] These men became proverbial for their insolence and wealth; and once, when Claudius was complaining of his own poverty, some one wittily replied, “that he would have abundance if two of his freedmen would but admit him into partnership with them.”

[Footnote 29:  Acts xix.]