prone he was to flattery, might judge whether or no it was likely that he, a man of consular rank, would prefer the safety of a man of private station to his own.”  Such was the message which the tribune took back to Nero, whom he found sitting with his dearest and most detestable advisers, his wife Poppaea and his minister Tigellinus.  Nero asked “whether Seneca was preparing a voluntary death.”  On the tribune replying that he showed no gloom or terror in his language or countenance, Nero ordered that he should at once be bidden to die.  The message was taken, and Seneca, without any sign of alarm, quietly demanded leave to revise his will.  This was refused him, and he then turned to his friends with the remark that, as he was unable to reward their merits as they had deserved, he would bequeath to them the only, and yet the most precious, possession left to him, namely, the example of his life, and if they were mindful of it they would win the reputation alike for integrity and for faithful friendship.  At the same time he checked their tears, sometimes by his conversation, and sometimes with serious reproaches, asking them “where were their precepts of philosophy, and where the fortitude under trials which should have been learnt from the studies of many years?  Did not every one know the cruelty of Nero? and what was left for him to do but to make an end of his master and tutor after the murder of his mother and his brother?” He then embraced his wife Paulina, and, with a slight faltering of his lofty sternness, begged and entreated her not to enter on an endless sorrow, but to endure the loss of her husband by the aid of those noble consolations which she must derive from the contemplation of his virtuous life.  But Paulina declared that she would die with him, and Seneca, not opposing the deed which would win her such permanent glory, and at the same time unwilling to leave her to future wrongs, yielded to her wish.  The veins of their arms were opened by the same blow; but the blood of Seneca, impoverished by old age and temperate living, flowed so slowly that it was necessary also to open the veins of his legs.  This mode of death, chosen by the Romans as comparatively painless, is in fact under certain circumstances most agonizing.  Worn out by these cruel tortures, and unwilling to weaken his wife’s fortitude by so dreadful a spectacle, glad at the same time to spare himself the sight of her sufferings, he persuaded her to go to another room.  Even then his eloquence did not fail.  It is told of Andre Chenier, the French poet, that on his way to execution he asked for writing materials to record some of the strange thoughts which filled his mind.  The wish was denied him, but Seneca had ample liberty to record his last utterances.  Amanuenses were summoned, who took down those dying admonitions, and in the time of Tacitus they still were extant.  To us, however, this interesting memorial of a Pagan deathbed is irrevocably lost.