public life, the life of the State, was everything; domestic life, the life of the individual, occupied but a small share of their consideration.  All the innocent pleasures of infancy, the joys of the hearth, the charm of the domestic circle, the flow and sparkle of childish gaity, were by them but little appreciated.  The years before manhood were years of prospect, and in most cases they offered but little to make them worth the retrospect.  It is a mark of the more modern character which stamps the writings of Seneca, as compared with earlier authors, that he addresses his mother in terms of the deepest affection, and cannot speak of his darling little son except in a voice that seems to break with tears.

[Footnote 1:  See, however, the same question treated from a somewhat different point of view by M. Nisard, in his charming Etudes sur les Poetes de la Decadence, ii. 17, sqq.]

Let us add another curious consideration.  The growth of the personal character, the reminiscences of a life advancing into perfect consciousness, are largely moulded by the gradual recognition of moral laws, by the sense of mystery evolved in the inevitable struggle between duty and pleasure,—­between the desire to do right and the temptation to do wrong.  But among the ancients the conception of morality was so wholly different from ours, their notions of moral obligation were, in the immense majority of cases, so much less stringent and so much less important, they had so faint a disapproval for sins which we condemn, and so weak an indignation against vices which we abhor, that in their early years we can hardly suppose them to have often fathomed those “abysmal deeps of personality,” the recognition of which is a necessary element of marked individual growth.

We have, therefore, no materials for forming any vivid picture of Seneca’s childhood; but, from what we gather about the circumstances and the character of his family, we should suppose that he was exceptionally fortunate.  The Senecas were wealthy; they held a good position in society; they were a family of cultivated taste, of literary pursuits, of high character, and of amiable dispositions.  Their wealth raised them above the necessity of those mean cares and degrading shifts to eke out a scanty livelihood which mark the career of other literary men who were their contemporaries.  Their rank and culture secured them the intimacy of all who were best worth knowing in Roman circles; and the general dignity and morality which marked their lives would free them from all likelihood of being thrown into close intercourse with the numerous class of luxurious epicureans, whose unblushing and unbounded vice gave an infamous notority to the capital of the world.