And by not taking that lofty line of duty which a Zeno or an Antisthenes would have taken, Seneca became more or less involved in some of the most dreadful events of Nero’s reign.  Every one of the terrible doubts under which his reputation has suffered arose from his having permitted the principle of expedience to supercede the laws of virtue.  One or two of these events we must briefly narrate.

We have already pointed out that the Nemesis which for so many years had been secretly dogging the footsteps of Agrippina made her tremble under the weight of its first cruel blows when she seemed to have attained the highest summit of her ambition.  Very early indeed Nero began to be galled and irritated by the insatiate assumption and swollen authority of “the best of mothers.”  The furious reproaches which she heaped upon him when she saw in Acte a possible rival to her power drove him to take refuge in the facile and unphilosophic worldliness of Seneca’s concessions, and goaded him almost immediately afterwards into an atrocious crime.  He naturally looked on Britannicus, the youthful son of Claudius, with even more suspicion and hatred than that with which he regarded Octavia.  Kings have rarely been able to abstain from acts of severity against those who might become claimants to the throne.  The feelings of King John towards Prince Arthur, of Henry IV. towards the Earl of March, of Mary towards Lady Jane Grey, of Elizabeth towards Mary Stuart, of King James towards Lady Arabella Stuart, resembled, but probably by no means equalled in intensity, those of Nero towards his kinsman and adoptive brother.  To show him any affection was a dangerous crime, and it furnished a sufficient cause for immediate removal if any attendant behaved towards him with fidelity.  Such a line of treatment foreshadowed the catastrophe which was hastened by the rage of Agrippina.  She would go, she said, and take with her to the camp the noble boy who was now of full age to undertake those imperial duties which a usurper was exercising in virtue of crimes which she was now prepared to confess.  Then let the mutilated Burrus and the glib-tongued Seneca see whether they could be a match for the son of Claudius and the daughter of Germanicus.  Such language, uttered with violent gestures and furious imprecations, might well excite the alarm of the timid Nero.  And that alarm was increased by a recent circumstance, which showed that all the ancestral spirit was not dead in the breast of Britannicus.  During the festivities of the Saturnalia, which were kept by the ancients with all the hilarity of the modern Christmas, Nero had been elected by lot as “governor of the feast,” and, in that capacity, was entitled to issue his orders to the guests.  To the others he issued trivial mandates which would not make them blush; but Britannicus in violation of every principle of Roman decorum, was ordered to stand up in the middle and sing a song.  The boy, inexperienced as yet even in sober banquets, and wholly unaccustomed