Its sad and abject tone confirms the inference, drawn from an allusion which it contains, that it was written towards the close of the third year of Seneca’s exile.  He apologises for its style by saying that if it betrayed any weakness of thought or inelegance of expression this was only what might be expected from a man who had so long been surrounded by the coarse and offensive patois of barbarians.  We need hardly follow him into the ordinary topics of moral philosophy with which it abounds, or expose the inconsistency of its tone with that of Seneca’s other writings.  He consoles the freedman with the “common commonplaces” that death is inevitable; that grief is useless; that we are all born to sorrow; that the dead would not wish us to be miserable for their sakes.  He reminds him that, owing to his illustrious position, all eyes are upon him.  He bids him find consolation in the studies in which he has always shown himself so pre-eminent, and lastly he refers him to those shining examples of magnanimous fortitude, for the climax of which, no doubt, the whole piece of interested flattery was composed.  For this passage, written in a crescendo style, culminates, as might have been expected, in the sublime spectacle of Claudius Caesar.  So far from resenting his exile, he crawls in the dust to kiss Caesar’s beneficent feet for saving him from death; so far from asserting his innocence—­which, perhaps, was impossible, since to do so might have involved him in a fresh charge of treason—­he talks with all the abjectness of guilt.  He belauds the clemency of a man, who, he tells us elsewhere, used to kill men with as much sang froid as a dog eats offal; the prodigious powers of memory of a divine creature who used to ask people to dice and to dinner whom he had executed the day before, and who even inquired as to the cause of his wife’s absence a few days after having given the order for her execution; the extraordinary eloquence of an indistinct stutterer, whose head shook and whose broad lips seemed to be in contortions whenever he spoke.[32] If Polybius feels sorrowful, let him turn his eyes to Caesar; the splendour of that most great and radiant deity will so dazzle his eyes that all their tears will be dried up in the admiring gaze.  Oh that the bright occidental star which has beamed on a world which, before its rising, was plunged in darkness and deluge, would only shed one little beam upon him!

[Footnote 32:  These slight discrepancies of description are taken from counter passages of Consol, ad Polyb.. and the Ludus de Morte Caesaris.]

No doubt these grotesque and gorgeous flatteries, contrasting strangely with the bitter language of intense hatred and scathing contempt which Seneca poured out on the memory of Claudius after his death, were penned with the sole purpose of being repeated in those divine and benignant ears.  No doubt the superb freedman, who had been allowed so rich a share of the flatteries lavished on his master, would take the opportunity—­if not out of good nature, at least out of vanity,—­to retail them in the imperial ear.  If the moment were but favourable, who knows but what at some oblivious and crapulous moment the Emperor might be induced to sign an order for our philosopher’s recall?